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

The nearer they approached, the plainer he saw the child which the woman bore on her arm outlined under the raised robe. “I’m positive it is the one who got away last night. I didn’t see her face, but I recognize the tall figure. And here she comes now, with the child on her arm, and without even trying to keep it concealed. I had not dared to hope for such a lucky chance,” said the soldier to himself.

The man and woman continued their rapid pace all the way to the city gate. Evidently, they had not anticipated being intercepted here. They trembled with fright when the soldier leveled his spear at them, and barred their passage.

“Why do you refuse to let us go out in the fields to our work?” asked the man.

“You may go presently,” said the soldier, “but first I must see what your wife has hidden behind her robe.”

“What is there to see?” said the man. “It is only bread and wine, which we must live upon today.”

“You speak the truth, perchance,” said the soldier, “but if it is as you say, why does she turn away? Why does she not willingly let me see what she carries?”

“I do not wish that you shall see it,” said the man, “and I command you to let us pass!”

With this he raised his ax, but the woman laid her hand on his arm.

“Enter thou not into strife!” she pleaded. “I will try some other way. I shall let him see what I bear, and I know that he can not harm it.” With a proud and confident smile she turned toward the soldier, and threw back a fold of her robe.

Instantly the soldier staggered back and closed his eyes, as if dazed by a strong light. That which the woman held concealed under her robe reflected such a dazzling white light that at first he did not know what he saw.

“I thought you held a child on your arm,” he said.

“You see what I hold,” the woman answered.

Then the soldier finally saw that that which dazzled and shone was only a cluster of white lilies, the same kind that grew in the meadow; but their luster was much richer and more radiant. He could hardly bear to look at them.

He stuck his hand in among the flowers. He couldn’t help thinking that it must be a child the woman carried, but he felt only the cool flower-petals.

He was bitterly deceived, and in his wrath he would gladly have taken both the man and the woman prisoners, but he knew that he could give no reason for such a proceeding.

When the woman saw his confusion, she said: “Will you not let us go now?”

The soldier quietly lowered the spear and stepped aside.

The woman drew her robe over the flowers once more, and at the same time she looked with a sweet smile upon that which she bore on her arm. “I knew that you could not harm it, did you but see it,” she said to the soldier.

With this, they hastened away; and the soldier stood and stared after them as long as they were within sight.

While he followed them with his eyes, he almost felt sure that the woman did not carry on her arm a cluster of lilies, but an actual, living child.

While he still stood and stared after the wanderers, he heard loud shouts from the street. It was Voltigius, with several of his men, who came running.

“Stop them!” they cried. “Close the gates on them! Don’t let them escape!”

And when they came up to the soldier, they said that they had tracked the runaway boy. They had sought him in his home, but then he had escaped again. They had seen his parents hasten away with him. The father was a strong, gray-bearded man who carried an ax; the mother was a tall woman who held a child concealed under a raised robe.

The same moment that Voltigius related this, there came a Bedouin riding in through the gate on a good horse. Without a word, the soldier rushed up to the rider, jerked him down off the horse and threw him to the ground, and, with one bound, jumped into the saddle and dashed away toward the road.

Two days later, the soldier rode forward through the dreary mountain-desert, which is the whole southern part of Judea. All the while he was pursuing the three fugitives from Bethlehem, and he was beside himself because the fruitless hunt never came to an end.

“It looks, forsooth, as though these creatures had the power to sink into the earth,” he grumbled. “How many times during these days have I not been so close to them that I’ve been on the point of throwing my spear at the child, and yet they have escaped me! I begin to think that I shall never catch up with them.”

He felt despondent, like one who believes he is struggling against some superior power. He asked himself if it might not be possible that the gods protected these people against him.

“This trouble is in vain. Let me turn back before I perish from hunger and thirst in this barren land!” he said to himself, again and again. Then he was seized with fear of that which awaited him on his homecoming, should he turn back without having accomplished his mission.

Twice he had permitted the child to escape, and neither Voltigius nor Herod would pardon him for anything of the kind.

“As long as Herod knows that one of the Bethlehem children still lives, he will always be haunted by the same anxiety and dread,” said the soldier. “Most likely he will try to ease his worries by nailing me to a cross.”

It was a hot noonday hour, and he suffered tortures from the ride through this mountain district on a road which wound around steep cliffs where no breeze stirred. Both horse and rider were