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

“I must have the violin with me,” he said, “or it is no use at all.” He spoke eagerly and excitedly. “I had not intended to say anything about it, but I know that it concerns more than Munkhyttan. I saw a young girl at the Promotion Ball in the spring who, people said, was engaged to you. I don’t dance, you know, but I liked to watch her when she was dancing, looking radiant like one of the lilies of the field. And when I heard that she was engaged to you, I felt sorry for her.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew that you would never succeed if you continued as you had begun. And then I swore that she should not have to spend her whole life waiting for one who never came. She should not sit and wither whilst waiting for you. I did not want to meet her in a few years with sharpened features and deep wrinkles round her mouth⁠—”

He stopped suddenly; Hede’s glance had rested so searchingly upon him.

But Gunnar Hede had already understood that Alin was in love with his fiancée. It moved him deeply that Alin under these circumstances tried to save him, and, influenced by this feeling, he yielded and gave him the violin.

When Alin had gone, Hede read desperately for a whole hour, but then he threw away his book.

It was not of much good his reading. It would be three or four years before he could be finished, and who could guarantee that the estate would not be sold in the meantime?

He felt almost with terror how deeply he loved the old home. It was like witchery. Every room, every tree, stood clearly before him. He felt he could not part with any of it if he were to be happy. And he was to sit quietly with his books whilst all this was about to pass away from him.

He became more and more restless; he felt the blood beating in his temples as if in a fever. And then he grew quite beside himself because he could not take his violin and play himself calm again.

“My God!” he said, “Alin will drive me mad. First to tell me all this, and then to take away my violin! A man like I must feel the bow between his fingers in sorrow and in joy. I must do something; I must get money, but I have not an idea in my head. I cannot think without my violin.”

He could not endure the feeling of being locked in. He was so angry with Alin, who had thought of this absurd plan, that he was afraid he might strike him the next time he came.

Of course he would have played, if he had had the violin, for that was just what he needed. His blood rushed so wildly, that he was nearly going out of his mind.

Just as Hede was longing most for his violin a wandering musician began to play outside. It was an old blind man. He played out of tune and without expression, but Hede was so overcome by hearing a violin just at this moment that he listened with tears in his eyes and with his hands folded.

The next moment he flung open the window and climbed to the ground by the help of the creepers. He had no compunction at leaving his work. He thought the violin had simply come to comfort him in his misfortune.

Hede had probably never before begged so humbly for anything as he did now, when he asked the old blind man to lend him his violin. He stood the whole time with his cap in his hand, although the old man was blind.

The musician did not seem to understand what he wanted. He turned to the young girl who was leading him. Hede bowed to the poor girl and repeated his request. She looked at him, as if she must have eyes for them both. The glance from her big eyes was so steady that Hede thought he could feel where it struck him. It began with his collar, and it noticed that the frills of his shirt were well starched, then it saw that his coat was brushed, next that his boots were polished.

Hede had never before been subjected to such close scrutiny. He saw clearly that he would not pass muster before those eyes.

But it was not so, all the same. The young girl had a strange way of smiling. Her face was so serious, that one had the impression when she smiled that it was the first and only time she had ever looked happy; and now one of these rare smiles passed over her lips. She took the violin from the old man and handed it to Hede.

“Play the waltz from Freischütz, then,” she said.

Hede thought it was strange that he should have to play a waltz just at that moment, but, as a matter of fact, it was all the same to him what he played, if he could only have a bow in his hand. That was all he wanted. The violin at once began to comfort him; it spoke to him in faint, cracked tones.

“I am only a poor man’s violin,” it said; “but such as I am, I am a comfort and help to a poor blind man. I am the light and the colour and the brightness in his life. It is I who must comfort him in his poverty and old age and blindness.”

Hede felt that the terrible depression that had cowed his hopes began to give way.

“You are young and strong,” the violin said to him. “You can fight and strive; you can hold fast that which tries to escape you. Why are you downcast and without courage?”

Hede had played with lowered eyes; now he threw back his head and looked at those who stood around him. There was quite a crowd of children and people from the street, who