Chapter VI (3)

'I am Ingrid, whom you saw at Upsala many years ago, and whom you comforted because she could not learn to dance on the tight-rope.'

This went back to the time he could partly remember. Now he did remember her.

'How tall and pretty you have grown, Ingrid!' he said. 'And how fine you have become! What a beautiful brooch you have!'

He had been looking at her brooch for some time. He thought he knew it; it was like a brooch of enamel and pearls his mother used to wear. The young girl answered at once.

'Your mother gave it to me. You must have seen it before.'

Gunnar Hede put down the violin and went up to Ingrid. He asked her almost violently:

'How is it possible--how can you wear her brooch? How is it that I don't know anything about your knowing my mother?'

Ingrid was frightened. She grew almost gray with terror. She knew already what the next question would be.

'I know nothing, Ingrid. I don't know why I am here. I don't know why you are here. Why don't I know all this?'

'Oh, don't ask me!'

She went back a step or two, and stretched out her hands as if to protect herself.

'Won't you tell me?'

'Don't ask! don't ask!'

He seized her roughly by the wrist to compel her to tell the truth.

'Tell me! I am in my full senses! Why is there so much I can't remember?'

She saw something wild and threatening in his eyes. She knew now that she would be obliged to tell him. But she felt as if it were impossible to tell a man that he had been mad. It was much more difficult than she had thought. It was impossible--impossible!

'Tell me!' he repeated.

But she could hear from his voice that he would not hear it. He was almost ready to kill her if she told him. Then she summoned up all her love, and looked straight into Gunnar Hede's eyes, and said:

'You have not been quite right.'

'Not for a long time?'

'I don't quite know--not for three or four years.'

'Have I been out of my mind?'

'No, no! You have bought and sold and gone to the fairs.'

'In what way have I been mad?'

'You were frightened.'

'Of whom was I frightened?'

'Of animals.'

'Of goats, perhaps?'

'Yes, mostly of goats.'

He had stood clutching her by the wrist the whole time. He now flung her hand away from him--simply flung it. He turned away from Ingrid in a rage, as if she had maliciously told him an infamous lie.

But this feeling gave way for something else which excited him still more. He saw before his eyes, as distinctly as if it had been a picture, a tall Dalar man, weighed down by a huge pack. He was going into a peasant's house, but a wretched little dog came rushing at him. He stopped and curtsied and curtsied, and did not dare to go in until a man came out of the house, laughing, and drove the dog away.

When he saw this he again felt that terrible fear. In this anguish the vision disappeared, but then he heard voices. They shouted and shrieked around him. They laughed. Derision was showered upon him. Worst and loudest were the shrill voices of children. One word, one name came over and over again: it was shouted, shrieked, whispered, wheezed into his ear--'The Goat! the Goat!' And that all meant him, Gunnar Hede. All that he had lived in. He felt in full consciousness the same unspeakable fear he had suffered whilst out of his mind. But now it was not fear for anything outside himself--now he was afraid of himself.

'It was I! it was I!' he said, wringing his hands. The next moment he was kneeling against a low seat. He laid his head down and cried, cried: 'It was I!' He moaned and sobbed. 'It was I!' How could he have courage to bear this thought--a madman, scorned and laughed at by all? 'Ah! let me go mad again!' he said, hitting the seat with his fist. 'This is more than a human being can bear.'

He held his breath a moment. The darkness came towards him as the saviour he invoked. It came gliding towards him like a mist. A smile passed over his lips. He could feel the muscles of his face relax, feel that he again had the look of a madman. But that was better. The other he could not bear. To be pointed at, jeered at, scorned, mad! No, it was better to be so again and not to know it. Why should he come back to life? Everyone must loathe him. The first light, fleeting clouds of the great darkness began to enwrap him.

Ingrid stood there, seeing and hearing all his anguish, not knowing but that all would soon be lost again. She saw clearly that madness was again about to seize him. She was so frightened, so frightened, all her courage had gone. But before he again lost his senses, and became so scared that he allowed no one to come near him, she would at least take leave of him and of all her happiness.

Gunnar Hede felt that Ingrid came and knelt down beside him, laid her arm round his neck, put her cheek to his, and kissed him. She did not think herself too good to come near him, the madman, did not think herself too good to kiss him.

There was a faint hissing in the darkness. The mist lifted, and it was as if serpents had raised their heads against him, and now wheezed with anger that they could not reach to sting him.

'Do not be so unhappy,' Ingrid said. 'Do not be so unhappy. No one thinks of the past, if you will only get well.'

'I want to be mad again,' he said. 'I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to think how I have been.'

'Yes, you can,' said Ingrid.

'No; that no one can forget,' he moaned. 'I was so dreadful! No one can love me.'

'I love you,' she said.

He looked up doubtfully.

'You kissed me in order that I should not go out of my mind again. You pity me.'

'I will kiss you again,' she said.

'You say that now because you think I am in 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.

_From a Swedish_ HOMESTEAD