Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

need of hearing it.”

“Are you in need of hearing that someone loves you?”

“If I am⁠—if I am? Ah, child,” he said, and tore himself away from her, “how can I possibly bear it, when I know that everyone who sees me thinks: ‘That fellow has been mad; he has gone about curtsying for dogs and cats.’ ”

Then he began again. He lay crying with his face in his hands.

“It is better to go out of one’s mind again. I can hear them shouting after me, and I see myself, and the anguish, the anguish, the anguish⁠—”

But then Ingrid’s patience came to an end.

“Yes, that is right,” she cried; “go out of your mind again. I call that manly to go mad in order to escape a little anguish.”

She sat biting her lips, struggling with her tears, and as she could not get the words out quickly enough, she seized him by the shoulder and shook him. She was enraged and quite beside herself with anger because he would again escape her, because he did not struggle and fight.

“What do you care about me? What do you care about your mother? You go mad, and then you will have peace.” She shook him again by the arm. “To be saved from anguish, you say, but you don’t care about one who has been waiting for you all her life. If you had any thought for anyone but yourself, you would fight against this and get well; but you have no thought for others. You can come so touchingly in visions and dreams and beg for help, but in reality you will not have any help. You imagine that your sufferings are greater than anyone else’s, but there are others who have suffered more than you.”

At last Gunnar Hede raised his eyes, and looked her straight in the face. She was anything but beautiful at this moment. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her lips trembled, whilst she tried to get out the words between her sobs. But in his eyes her emotion only made her more beautiful. A wonderful peace came over him, and a great and humble thankfulness. Something great and wonderful had come to him in his deepest humiliation. It must be a great love⁠—a great love.

He had sat bemoaning his wretchedness, and Love came and knocked at his door. He would not merely be tolerated when he came back to life; people would not only with difficulty refrain from laughing at him.

There was one who loved him and longed for him. She spoke hardly to him, but he heard love trembling in every single word. He felt as if she were offering him thrones and kingdoms. She told him that whilst he had been out of his mind he had saved her life. He had awakened her from the dead, had helped her, protected her. But this was not enough for her; she would possess him altogether.

When she kissed him he had felt a life-giving balm enter his sick soul, but he had hardly dared to think that it was love that made her. But he could not doubt her anger and her tears. He was beloved⁠—he, poor wretched creature! he who had been held in derision by everybody! and before the great and humble bliss which now filled Gunnar Hede vanished the last darkness. It was drawn aside like a heavy curtain, and he saw plainly before him the region of terror through which he had wandered. But there, too, he had met Ingrid; there he had lifted her from the grave; there he had played for her at the hut in the forest; there she had striven to heal him.

But only the memory of her came back: the feelings with which she had formerly inspired him now awoke. Love filled his whole being; he felt the same burning longing that he had felt in the churchyard at Raglanda when she was taken from him.

In that region of terror, in that great desert, there had at any rate grown one flower that had comforted him with fragrance and beauty, and now he felt that love would dwell with him forever. The wild flower of the desert had been transplanted into the garden of life, and had taken root and grown and thriven, and when he felt this he knew he was saved; he knew that the darkness had found its master.

Ingrid was silent. She was tired, as one is tired after hard work; but she was also content, for she felt she had carried out her work in the best possible manner. She knew she had conquered.

At last Gunnar Hede broke the silence.

“I promise you that I will not give in,” he said.

“Thank you,” Ingrid answered.

Nothing more was said.

Gunnar Hede thought he would never be able to tell her how much he loved her. It could never be told in words, only shown every day and every hour of his life.

Queens at Kungahälla On the Site of the Great Kungahälla

Should a stranger who had heard about the old city of Kungahälla ever visit the site on the northern river where it once lay, he would assuredly be much surprised. He would ask himself whether churches and fortifications could melt away like snow, or if the earth had opened and swallowed them up. He stands on a spot where formerly there was a mighty city, and he cannot find a street or a landing-stage. He sees neither ruins nor traces of devastating fires; he only sees a country seat, surrounded by green trees and red outbuildings. He sees nothing but broad meadows and fields, where the plough does its work year after year without being hindered either by brick foundations or old pavements.

He would probably first of all go down to the river. He would not expect to see anything of the great ships that went to the Baltic ports or to distant Spain, but he would in all likelihood think