From a Swedish Homestead

At that moment Olaf Haraldsson felt no love for Astrid. He hated her for having been the means of his humiliation. He knew everybody would think it right when he returned evil for evil, and if he did not avenge this insult, he would be held in derision by the Bards, and his enemies would no longer fear him. He had but one wish: to slay Astrid, to take her life. His anger was so violent that it craved for blood. If a fool had dared to put his fool's cap upon his head, would he not have torn it off, torn it to pieces, thrown it on the ground, trampled upon it? If he now laid Astrid a bloody corpse upon her ship, and sent her back to her father, people would say of King Olaf that he was a worthy descendant of Harald Haarfager.

But King Olaf still held his sword in his hand, and under his fingers he felt the hilt, upon which he had once had inscribed: 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' 'Blessed are the meek,' 'Blessed are the merciful.' And every time he, in this hour of anguish, grasped his sword firmly in order to slay Astrid, he felt these words under his hand. He thought he could feel every letter. He remembered the day when he had first heard these words.

'This I will write in letters of gold on the hilt of my sword,' he had said, 'so that the words may burn in my hand every time I would swing my sword in fury, or for an unjust cause.'

He felt that the hilt of the sword now burnt in his hand. King Olaf said aloud to himself:

'Formerly thou wert the slave of many lusts; now thou hast but one master, and that is God.'

With these words he put back the sword into its sheath, and began to walk to and fro on the bridge. Astrid remained lying in the same position. King Olaf saw that she crouched in fear of death every time he went past her.

'I will not slay thee,' he said; but his voice sounded hard from hatred.

King Olaf continued for awhile to walk backwards and forwards on the bridge; then he went up to Astrid, and asked her in the same hard voice what her real name was, and that she was able to answer him. He looked at this woman whom he had so highly treasured, and who now lay at his feet like a wounded deer – he looked down upon her as a dead man's soul looks with pity at the poor body which was once its dwelling.

'Oh, thou my soul,' said King Olaf, 'it was there thou dwelt in love, and now thou art as homeless as a beggar.' He drew nearer to Astrid, and spoke as if she were no longer living or could hear what he said. 'It was told me that there was a King's daughter whose heart was so pure and holy that she endued with peace all who came near her. They told me of her gentleness, that he who saw her felt as safe as a helpless child does with its mother, and when the beautiful woman who now lies here came to me, I thought that she was Ingegerd, and she became exceeding dear to me. She was so beautiful and glad, and she made my own heavy thoughts light. And did she sometimes act otherwise than I expected the proud Ingegerd to do, she was too dear to me to doubt her; she stole into my heart with her joyousness and beauty.'

He was silent for a time, and thought how dear Astrid had been to him and how happiness had with her come to his house.

'I could forgive her,' he said aloud. 'I could again make her my Queen, I could in love take her in my arms; but I dare not, for my soul would still be homeless. Ah, thou fair woman,' he said, 'why dost lying dwell within thee? With thee there is no security, no rest.'

The King went on bemoaning himself, but now Astrid stood up.

'King Olaf, do not speak thus to me,' she said; 'I will rather die. Understand, I am in earnest.'

Then she tried to say a few words to excuse herself. She told him that she had gone to Kungahälla not with the intention of deceiving him, but in order to be a Princess for a few weeks, to be waited upon like a Queen, to sail on the sea. But she had intended to confess who she was as soon as she came to Kungahälla. There she expected to find Hjalte and the other great men who knew Ingegerd. She had never thought of deceiving him when she came, but an evil spirit had sent all those away who knew Ingegerd, and then the temptation had come to her.

'When I saw thee, King Olaf,' she said, 'I forgot everything to become thine, and I thought I would gladly suffer death at thine hand had I but for one day been thy wife.'

King Olaf answered her:

'I see that what was deadly earnest to me was but a pastime to thee. Never hast thou thought upon what it was to come and say to a man: "I am she whom thou most fervently desirest; I am that high-born maiden whom it is the greatest honour to win." And then thou art not that woman; thou art but a lying bondwoman.'

'I have loved thee from the first moment I heard thy name,' Astrid said softly.

The King clenched his hand in anger against her.

'Know, Astrid, that I have longed for Ingegerd as no man has ever longed for woman. I would have clung to her as the soul of the dead clings to the angel bearing him upwards. I thought she was so pure that she could have helped me to lead a sinless life.'

And he broke out into wild longings, and said that he longed for the power of the holy ones of God, but that he was too weak and sinful to attain to perfection.

'But the King's daughter could have helped me,' he said; 'she the saintly and gentle one would have helped me. Oh, my God,' he said, 'whichever way I turn I see sinners, wherever I go I meet those who would entice me to sin. Why didst Thou not send me the King's daughter, who had not a single evil thought in her heart? Her gentle eye would have found the right path for my foot. Whenever I strayed from it her gentle hand would have led me back.'

A feeling of utter helplessness and the weariness of despair fell upon Olaf Haraldsson.

'It was this upon which I had set my hopes,' he said – 'to have a good woman at my side, not to wander alone amongst wickedness and sin forever. Now I feel that I must succumb; I am unable to fight any longer. Have I not asked God,' he exclaimed, 'what place I shall have before His face? To what hast Thou chosen me, Thou Lord of souls? Is it appointed unto me to become the equal of apostles and martyrs? But now, Astrid, I need ask no longer; God hath not been willing to give me that woman who should have assisted me in my wandering. Now I know that I shall never win the crown of the Saints.'

The King was silent in inconsolable despair; then Astrid drew nearer to him.

'King Olaf,' she said, 'what thou now sayest both Hjalte and Ingegerd have told me long ago, but I would not believe that thou wert more than a good and brave knight and noble King. It is only now that I have lived under thy roof that my soul has begun to fear thee. I have felt that it was worse than death to appear before thee with a lie upon my lips. Never have I been so terrified,' Astrid continued, 'as when I understood that thou wast a Saint. When I saw thee burn the chips in thine hand, when I saw sickness flee at thy bidding, and the sword fall out of thine enemy's hand when he met thee, I was terrified unto death when I saw that thou wast a Saint, and I resolved to die before thou knewest that I had deceived thee.'

King Olaf did not answer. Astrid looked up at him; she saw that his eyes were turned towards heaven. She did not know if he had heard her.

'Ah,' she said, 'this moment have I feared every day and every hour since I came hither. I would have died rather than live through it.'

Olaf Haraldsson was still silent.

'King Olaf,' she said, 'I would gladly give my life for thee; I would gladly throw myself into the gray river so that thou shouldst not live with a lying woman at thy side. The more I saw of thy holiness the better I understood that I must go from thee. A Saint of God cannot have a lying bondwoman at his side.'

The King was still silent, but now Astrid raised her eyes to his face; then she cried out, terror-stricken:

'King Olaf, thy face shines.'

Whilst Astrid spoke, God had shown King Olaf a vision. He saw all the stars of heaven leave their appointed places, and fly like swarming bees about the universe. But suddenly they all gathered above his head and formed a radiant crown.

'Astrid,' said he, with trembling voice, 'God hath spoken to me. It is true what thou sayest. I shall become a Saint of God.'

His voice trembled from emotion, and his face shone in the night. But when Astrid saw the light that surrounded his head, she arose. For her the last hope had faded.

'Now I will go,' she said. 'Now thou knowest whom thou art. Thou canst never more bear me at thy side. But think gently of me. Without joy or happiness have I lived all my life. In rags have I gone; blows have I endured. Forgive me when I am gone. My love has done thee no harm.'

When Astrid in silent despair crossed over the bridge, Olaf Haraldsson awoke from his ecstasy. He hastened after her.

'Why wilt thou go?' he said. 'Why wilt thou go?'

'Must I not go from thee when thou art a Saint?' she whispered scarcely audibly.

'Thou shalt not go. Now thou canst remain,' said King Olaf. 'Before, I was a lowly man and must fear all sin; a poor earthly King was I, too poor to bestow on thee my grace; but now all the glory of Heaven has been given to me. Art thou weak? I am the Lord's knight. Dost thou fall? I can lift thee up. God hath chosen me, Astrid. Thou canst not harm me, but I can help thee. Ah! what am I saying? In this hour God hath so wholly and fully shed the riches of His love in my heart that I cannot even see thou hast done wrong.'

Gently and tenderly he lifted up the trembling form, and whilst lovingly supporting her, who was still sobbing and who could hardly stand upright, he and Astrid went back to the King's Castle.

From a Swedish

Homestead

III

Old Agnete

An old woman went up the mountain-path with short, tripping steps. She was little and thin. Her face was pale and wizened, but neither hard nor furrowed. She wore a long cloak and a quilled cap. She had a Prayer-Book in her hand and a sprig of lavender in her handkerchief.

She lived in a hut far up the high mountain where no trees could grow. It was lying quite close to the edge of a broad glacier, which sent its river of ice from the snow-clad mountain peak into the depths of the valley. There she lived quite alone. All those who had belonged to her were dead.

It was Sunday, and she had been to church. But whatever might be the cause, her going there had not made her happy, but sorrowful. The clergyman had spoken about death and the doomed, and that had affected her. She had suddenly begun to think of how she had heard in her childhood that many of the doomed were tormented in the region of eternal cold on the mountain right above her dwelling. She could remember many tales about these wanderers of the glaciers – these indefatigable shadows which were hunted from place to place by the icy mountain winds.

All at once she felt a great terror of the mountain, and thought that her hut was dreadfully high up. Supposing those who moved about invisibly there wandered down the glaciers! And she who was quite alone! The word 'alone' gave to her thoughts a still sadder turn. She again felt the full burden of that sorrow which never left her. She thought how hard it was to be so far away from human beings.

'Old Agnete,' she said aloud to herself, as she had got into the habit of doing in the lonely waste, 'you sit in your hut and spin, and spin. You work and toil all the hours of the day so as not to perish from hunger. But is there anyone to whom you give any pleasure by being alive? Is there anyone, old Agnete? If any of your own were living – Yes, then, perhaps, if you lived nearer the village, you might be of some use to somebody. Poor as you are, you could neither take dog nor cat home to you, but you could probably now and then give a beggar shelter. You ought not to live so far away from the highroad, old Agnete. If you could only once in a while give a thirsty wayfarer a drink, then you would know that it was of some use your being alive.'

She sighed, and said to herself that not even the peasant women who gave her flax to spin would mourn her death. She had certainly striven to do her work honestly and well, but no doubt there were many who could have done it better. She began to cry bitterly, when the thought struck her that his reverence, who had seen her sitting in the same place in church for so many, many years, would perhaps think it a matter of perfect indifference whether she was dead or not.

'It is as if I were dead,' she said. 'No one asks after me. I would just as well lie down and die. I am already frozen to death from cold and loneliness. I am frozen to the core of the heart, I am indeed. Ah me! ah me!' she said, now she had been set a-thinking; 'if there were only someone who really needed me, there might still be a little warmth left in old Agnete. But I cannot knit stockings for the mountain goats, or make the beds for the marmots, can I? I tell Thee,' she said, stretching our her hands towards heaven, 'something Thou must give me to do, or I shall lay me down and die.'

At the same moment a tall, stern monk came towards her. He walked by her side because he saw that she was sorrowful, and she told him about her troubles. She said that her heart was nearly frozen to death, and that she would become like one of the wanderers on the glacier if God did not give her something to live for.

'God will assuredly do that,' said the monk.

'Do you not see that God is powerless here?' old Agnete said. 'Here there is nothing but an empty, barren waste.'

They went higher and higher towards the snow mountains. The moss spread itself softly over the stones; the Alpine herbs, with their velvety leaves, grew along the pathway; the mountain, with its rifts and precipices, its glaciers and snow-drifts, towered above them, weighing them down. Then the monk discovered old Agnete's hut, right below the glacier.

'Oh,' he said, 'is it there you live? Then you are not alone there; you have company enough. Only look!'

The monk put his thumb and first finger together, held them before old Agnete's left eye, and bade her look through them towards the mountain. But old Agnete shuddered and closed her eyes.

'If there is anything to see up there, then I will not look on any account,' she said. 'The Lord preserve us! it is bad enough without that.'

'Good-bye, then,' said the monk; 'it is not certain that you will be permitted to see such a thing a second time.'

Old Agnete grew curious; she opened her eyes and looked towards the glacier. At first she saw nothing remarkable, but soon she began to discern things moving about. What she had taken to be mist and vapour, or bluish-white shadows on the ice, were multitudes of doomed souls, tormented in the eternal cold.

Poor old Agnete trembled like an aspen leaf. Everything was just as she had heard it described in days gone by. The dead wandered about there in endless anguish and pain. Most of them were shrouded in something long and white, but all had their faces and their hands bared.

They could not be counted, there was such a multitude. The longer she looked, the more there appeared. Some walked proud and erect, others seemed to dance over the glacier; but she saw that they all cut their feet on the sharp and jagged edges of the ice.

It was just as she had been told. She saw how they constantly huddled close together, as if to warm themselves, but immediately drew back again, terrified by the deathly cold which emanated from their bodies.

It was as if the cold of the mountain came from them, as if it were they who prevented the snow from melting and made the mist so piercingly cold.

They were not all moving; some stood in icy stoniness, and it looked as if they had been standing thus for years, for ice and snow had gathered around them so that only the upper portion of their bodies could be seen.

The longer the little old woman gazed the quieter she grew. Fear left her, and she was only filled with sorrow for all these tormented beings. There was no abatement in their pain, no rest for their torn feet, hurrying over ice sharp as edged steel. And how cold they were! how they shivered! how their teeth chattered from cold! Those who were petrified and those who could move, all suffered alike from the snarling, biting, unbearable cold.

There were many young men and women; but there was no youth in their faces, blue with cold. It looked as if they were playing, but all joy was dead. They shivered, and were huddled up like old people.

But those who made the deepest impression on her were those frozen fast in the hard glacier, and those who were hanging from the mountain-side like great icicles.

Then the monk removed his hand, and old Agnete saw only the barren, empty glaciers. Here and there were ice-mounds, but they did not surround any petrified ghosts. The blue light on the glacier did not proceed from frozen bodies; the wind chased the snowflakes before it, but not any ghosts.

Still old Agnete was certain that she had really seen all this, and she asked the monk:

'Is it permitted to do anything for these poor doomed ones?'

He answered:

'When has God forbidden Love to do good or Mercy to solace?'

Then the monk went his way, and old Agnete went to her hut and thought it all over. The whole evening she pondered how she could help the doomed who were wandering on the glaciers. For the first time in many years she had been too busy to think of her loneliness.

Next morning she again went down to the village. She smiled, and was well content. Old age was no longer so heavy a burden. 'The dead,' she said to herself, 'do not care so much about red cheeks and light steps. They only want one to think of them with a little warmth. But young people do not trouble to do that. Oh no, oh no. How should the dead protect themselves from the terrible coldness of death did not old people open their hearts to them?

When she came to the village shop she bought a large package of candles, and from a peasant she ordered a great load of firewood; but in order to pay for it she had to take in twice as much spinning as usual.

Towards evening, when she got home again, she said many prayers, and tried to keep up her courage by singing hymns. But her courage sank more and more. All the same, she did what she had made up her mind to do.

She moved her bed into the inner room of her hut. In the front room she made a big fire and lighted it. In the window she placed two candles, and left the outer door wide open. Then she went to bed.

She lay in the darkness and listened.

Yes, there certainly was a step. It was as if someone had come gliding down the glacier. It came heavily, moaning. It crept round the hut as if it dared not come in. Close to the wall it stood and shivered.

Old Agnete could not bear it any longer. She sprang out of bed, went into the outer room and closed the door. It was too much; flesh and blood could not stand it.

Outside the hut she heard deep sighs and dragging steps, as of sore, wounded feet. They dragged themselves away further and further up the icy glacier. Now and again she also heard sobs; but soon everything was quiet.

Then old Agnete was beside herself with anxiety. 'You are a coward, you silly old thing,' she said. 'Both the fire and the lights, which cost so much, are burning out. Shall it all have been done in vain because you are such a miserable coward?' And when she had said this she got out of bed again, crying from fear, with chattering teeth, and shivering all over; but into the other room she went, and the door she opened.

Again she lay and waited. Now she was no longer frightened that they should come. She was only afraid lest she had scared them away, and that they dared not come back.

And as she lay there in the darkness she began to call just as she used to do in her young days when she was tending the sheep.

'My little white lambs, my lambs in the mountains, come, come! Come down from rift and precipice, my little white lambs!'

Then it seemed as if a cold wind from the mountain came rushing into the room. She heard neither step nor sob, only gusts of wind that came rushing along the walls of the hut into the room. And it sounded as if someone were continually saying:

'Hush, hush! Don't frighten her! don't frighten her! don't frighten her!'

She had a feeling as if the outside room was so overcrowded that they were being crushed against the walls, and that the walls were giving way. Sometimes it seemed as if they would lift the roof in order to gain more room. But the whole time there were whispers:

'Hush, hush! Don't frighten her! don't frighten her!'

Then old Agnete felt happy and peaceful. She folded her hands and fell asleep. In the morning it seemed as if the whole had been a dream. Everything looked as usual in the outer room; the fire had burnt out, and so had the candles. There was not a vestige of tallow left in the candlesticks.

As long as old Agnete lived she continued to do this. She spun and worked so that she could keep her fire burning every night. And she was happy because someone needed her.

Then one Sunday she was not in her usual seat in the church. Two peasants went up to her hut to see if there was anything the matter. She was already dead, and they carried her body down to the village to bury it.

When, the following Sunday, her funeral took place, just before Mass, there were but few who followed, neither did one see grief on any face. But suddenly, just as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, a tall, stern monk came into the churchyard, and he stood still and pointed to the snow-clad mountains. Then they saw the whole mountain-ridge shining in a red light as if lighted with joy, and round it wound a procession of small yellow flames, looking like burning candles. And these flames numbered as many as the candles which old Agnete had burned for the doomed. Then people said: 'Praise the Lord! She whom no one mourns here below has all the same found friends in the solitude above.'

From a Swedish

Homestead

IV

The Fisherman's Ring

During the reign of the Doge Gradenigos there lived in Venice an old fisherman, Cecco by name. He had been an unusually strong man, and was still very strong for his age, but lately he had given up work and left it to his two sons to provide for him. He was very proud of his sons, and he loved them – ah, signor, how he loved them!

Fate had so ordered it that their bringing up had been almost entirely left to him. Their mother had died early, and so Cecco had to take care of them. He had looked after their clothes and cooked their food; he had sat in the boat with needle and cotton and mended and darned. He had not cared in the least that people had laughed at him on that account. He had also, quite alone, taught them all it was necessary for them to know. He had made a couple of able fishermen of them, and taught them to honour God and San Marco.

'Always remember,' he said to them, 'that Venice will never be able to stand in her own strength. Look at her! Has she not been built on the waves? Look at the low islands close to land, where the sea plays amongst the seaweed. You would not venture to tread upon them, and yet it is upon such foundation that the whole city rests. And do you not know that the north wind has strength enough to throw both churches and palaces into the sea? Do you not know that we have such powerful enemies, that all the princes in Christendom cannot vanquish them? Therefore you must always pray to San Marco, for in his strong hands rests the chains which hold Venice suspended over the depths of the sea.'

And in the evening, when the moon shed its light over Venice, greenish-blue from the sea-mist; when they quietly glided up the Canale Grande and the gondolas they met were full of singers; when the palaces shone in their white splendour, and thousands of lights mirrored themselves in the dark waters – then he always reminded them that they must thank San Marco for life and happiness.

But oh, signor! he did not forget him in the daytime either. When they returned from fishing and glided over the water of the lagoons, light-blue and golden; when the city lay before them, swimming on the waves; when the great ships passed in and out of the harbour, and the palace of the Doges shone like a huge jewel-casket, holding all the world's treasure – then he never forgot to tell them that all these things were the gift of San Marco, and that they would all vanish if a single Venetian were ungrateful enough to give up believing in and adoring him.