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

That breakfast, that breakfast! Uncle had as a beginning asked the old lady if she had heard the story of Sigrid the beautiful. He did not ask Downie, neither would she have been able to answer. The old lady knew the story well, but he told it just the same. Then Anne-Marie remembered that Maurits had laughed at his uncle because in all his house he only had two books, and those were Afzelius’ Fairy Tales and Nösselt’s Popular Stories for Ladies. “But those he knows,” Maurits had said.

Anne-Marie had found the story pretty. She liked it when Bengt Lagman had pearls sewn on the breadth of homespun. She saw Maurits before her; how royally proud he would have looked when ordering the pearls! That was just the sort of thing Maurits would have done well.

But when uncle had come to that part of the story where Bengt Lagman went into the woods to avoid the meeting with his angry brother, and instead let his young wife meet the storm, then it became so plain that uncle understood Maurits had gone hunting to escape his wrath and that he knew how she thought to win him over.⁠—Yes, yesterday, then they had been able to make plans, Maurits and she, how she should coquet with uncle, but today she had no thought of carrying them out. Oh, she had never behaved so foolishly! Every drop of blood streamed into her face, and her knife and fork fell with a terrible clatter out of her hands down on her plate.

But Uncle Theodore had shown no mercy and had gone on with the story until he came to that princely speech: “Had my brother not done it, I would have done it myself.” He said it with such a strange emphasis that she was forced to look up and to meet his laughing brown eyes.

And when he saw the trouble staring from her eyes, he began to laugh like a boy. “What do you think,” he cried, “Bengt Lagman thought when he came home and heard that ‘Had my brother?’ I think he stopped at home the next time.”

Tears rose to Downie’s eyes, and when Uncle saw that he laughed louder. “Yes, it is a fine partisan my nephew has chosen,” he seemed to say, “You are not playing your part, my little girl.” And every time she had looked at him the brown eyes had repeated: “Had my brother not done it, I would have done it myself.” Downie was not quite sure that the eyes did not say “nephew.” And fancy how she behaved. She began to cry, and rushed from the room.

But it was not then that “it” came, nor during the walk of the forenoon.

Then she was occupied with something quite different. Then she was overcome with pleasure at the beautiful place and that nature was so wonderfully near. She felt as if she had found again something she had lost long, long ago.

People thought she was a city girl. But she had become a country lass as soon as she put her foot on the sandy path. She felt instantly that she belonged to the country.

As soon as she had calmed down a little she had ventured out by herself to inspect the place. She had looked about her on the lawn in front of the door. Then she suddenly began to whirl about; she hung her hat on her arm and threw her shawl away. She drew the air into her lungs so that her nostrils were drawn together and whistled.

Oh, how brave she felt!

She made a few attempts to go quietly and sedately down to the garden, but that was not what attracted her. Turning off to one side, she started towards the big groups of barns and outhouses. She met a farm-girl and said a few words to her. She was surprised to hear how brisk her own voice sounded; it was like an officer at the front. And she felt how smart she looked when, with head proudly raised and a little on one side, moving with a quick, free motion and with a little switch in her hand, she entered the barn.

It was not, however, what she had expected. No long rows of horned creatures were there to impress her, for they were all out at pasture. A single calf stood in its pen and seemed to expect her to do something for him. She went up to him, raised herself on tiptoe, held her dress together with one hand and touched the calf’s forehead with the fingertips of the other.

As the calf still did not seem to think that she had done enough and stretched out his long tongue, she graciously let him lick her little finger. She could not resist looking about her, as if to find someone to admire her bravery. And she discovered that Uncle Theodore stood at the barn-door and laughed at her.

Then he had gone with her on her walk. But “it” did not come then, not then at all. It had only wonderfully come to pass that she was no longer afraid of Uncle Theodore. He was like her mother; he seemed to know all her faults and weaknesses, and it was so comfortable. She did not need to show herself better than she was.

Uncle Theodore wished to take her to the garden and to the terraces by the pond, but that was not to her mind. She wished to know what there could be in all those big buildings.

So he went patiently with her to the dairy and to the icehouse; to the wine-cellar and to the potato bins. He took the things in order, and showed her the larder, and the wood shed, and the carriage-house, and the laundry. Then he led her through the stable of the draught-horses, and that of the carriage horses; let her see the harness-room and the servants’ rooms; the laborers’ cottages and the woodcarving room. She