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

Vestblad is not the same man he was. He has married a fine lady⁠—a real stunning woman, Colonel⁠—who has made a man of him. It was a wonderful piece of good luck for Vestblad that such a splendid girl should take a fancy to him. She was not exactly young any longer; but no more was he. You should go to Halstanäs, Colonel, and see what wonders love can work.”

And the Colonel went to Halstanäs to see if Örneclou spoke the truth. He had, as a matter of fact, now and then wondered what had become of Vestblad; in his young days he had kicked so recklessly over the traces that even the Major’s wife at Ekeby could not put up with him. She had not been able to keep him at Ekeby more than a couple of years before she was obliged to turn him out. Vestblad had become such a heavy drinker that a Cavalier could hardly associate with him. And now Örneclou declared that he owned a country house, and had made an excellent match.

The Colonel consequently went to Halstanäs, and saw at the first glance that it was a real old country-seat. He had only to look at the avenue of birches with all the names cut on the fine old trees. Such birches he had only seen at good old country-houses. The Colonel drove slowly up to the house, and every moment his pleasure increased. He saw lime hedges of the proper kind, so close that one could walk on the top of them, and there were a couple of terraces with stone steps so old that they were half buried in the ground. When the Colonel drove past the pond, he saw indistinctly the dark carp in the yellowish water. The pigeons flew up from the road flapping their wings; the squirrel stopped its wheel; the watchdog lay with its head on its paws, wagging its tail, and at the same time faintly growling. Close to the porch the Colonel saw an anthill, where the ants, unmolested, went to and fro⁠—to and fro. He looked at the flowerbeds inside the grass border. There they grew, all the old flowers: narcissus and pyrola, sempervivum and marigold; and on the bank grew small white daisies, which had been there so long that they now sowed themselves like weeds. Beerencreutz again said to himself that this was indeed a real old country-house, where both plants and animals and human beings throve as well as could be.

When at last he drove up to the front-door he had as good a reception as he could wish for, and as soon as he had brushed the dust off him he was taken to the dining-room, and he was offered plenty of good old-fashioned food⁠—the same old cakes for dessert that his mother used to give him when he came home from school; and any so good he had never tasted elsewhere.

Beerencreutz looked with surprise at Ensign Vestblad. He went about quiet and content, with a long pipe in his mouth and a skullcap on his head. He wore an old morning-coat, which he had difficulty in getting out of when it was time to dress for dinner. That was the only sign of the Bohemian left, as far as Beerencreutz could see. He went about and looked after his men, calculated their wages, saw how things were getting on in the fields and meadows, gathered a rose for his wife when he went through the garden, and he indulged no longer in either swearing or spitting. But what astonished the Colonel most of all was the discovery that old Ensign Vestblad kept his books. He took the Colonel into his office and showed him large books with red backs. And those he kept himself. He had lined them with red ink and black ink, written the headings with large letters, and put down everything, even to a stamp.

But Ensign Vestblad’s wife, who was a born lady, called Beerencreutz cousin, and they soon found out the relationship between them; and they talked all their relatives over. At last Beerencreutz became so intimate with Mrs. Vestblad that he consulted her about the rug he was weaving.

It was a matter of course that the Colonel should stay the night. He was taken to the best spare room to the right of the hall and close to his host’s bedroom, and his bed was a large four-poster, with heaps of eiderdowns.

The Colonel fell asleep as soon as he got into bed, but awoke later on in the night. He immediately got out of bed and went and opened the window-shutters. He had a view over the garden, and in the light summer night he could see all the gnarled old apple-trees, with their worm-eaten leaves, and with numerous props under the decayed branches. He saw the large wild apple-tree, which in the autumn would give barrels of uneatable fruit; he saw the strawberries, which had just begun to ripen under their profusion of green leaves.

The Colonel stood and looked at it as if he could not afford to waste his time in sleeping. Outside his window at the peasant farm where he lived all he could see was a stony hill and a couple of juniper-bushes; and it was natural that a man like Beerencreutz should feel more at home amongst well-trimmed hedges and roses in bloom.

When in the quiet stillness of the night one looks out upon a garden, one often has a feeling that it is not real and natural. It can be so still that one can almost fancy one’s self in the theatre; one imagines that the trees are painted and the roses made of paper. And it was something like this the Colonel felt as he stood there. “It cannot be possible,” he thought, “that all this is real. It can only be a dream.” But then a few rose-leaves fell softly to the ground from the big rose-tree just