Jerusalem by Selma Lagerloef

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

"Why do they look so down-in-the-mouth?" wondered the old woman.
"They don't seem to believe the worst, and don't want to understand
what Hellgum writes. I've tried to explain his words to them, but
they won't even listen to me. Alas! those who live on the lowlands,
under an open sky, can never understand what it is to be afraid.
They don't think the same thoughts as do those of us who live in
the solitude of the dark forest."

She could see that the Hellgumists were uneasy because Halvor had
called them together on a week day. They feared that he was going
to tell them of more desertions from their ranks. They glanced
anxiously at one another, with a look of distrust in their eyes
that seemed to say: "How long will you hold out? And you--and you?"

"We might as well stop right now," they thought, "and break up the
Society at once. After all, sudden death would be easier than
slowly wasting away."

Alas! that this little community with its gospel of peace, this
blissful life of unity and brotherly love which had meant so much
to all of them, that this should now be doomed.

As these disheartened people walked along toward the farm the
sparkling winter sun rolled merrily on across the blue sky. From
the glistening snow rose a refreshing coolness, which should have
put life and courage into them; while from the fir-clad hills
encircling the parish, there fell a soothing peace and stillness.

At last they were at the Ingmar Farm.

In the living-room of the farmhouse, close to the ceiling, hung an
old picture which had been painted by some local artist a hundred
years before their time. It represented a city surrounded by a high
wall, above which could be seen the roofs and gables of many
buildings, some of which were red farmhouses with turf roofs.
Others were white manor houses with slate roofs. Others, again,
showed massive copper-plated towers, after the manner of the
Kistine Church at Falun. Outside the city wall were promenading
gentlemen, in kneebreeches and buckled shoes, who carried Bengal
canes. A coach was seen driving out of the gateway of the town, in
which were seated ladies in powdered wigs and wearing Watteau hats.
Beyond the wall were trees, with a profusion of dark green foliage;
and on the ground, between patches of tall, waving grass, ran
little shimmering brooklets. At the bottom of the picture was
painted in large, ornate letters: "This is God's Holy City
Jerusalem."

The old canvas being hung like that, so close to the ceiling, it
seldom attracted any notice. Most of the people who visited the
Ingmar Farm did not even know of its being there.

But that day it was enframed in a wreath of green whortleberry
twigs, so that it instantly caught the eye of the caller. Eva
Gunnersdotter saw it at once, and remarked under her breath: "Aha!
Now the folks on the Ingmar Farm know that we must perish. That's
why they want us to turn our eyes toward the Heavenly City."

Karin and Halvor came forward to greet her, looking even more
gloomy and low spirited than the other Hellgumists. "It's plain
they know now that the end is near," she thought.

Eva Gunnersdotter, being the oldest person present, was placed at
the head of the long table. In front of her lay an opened letter,
with American stamps on the envelope.

"Another letter has come from our dear brother Hellgum," said
Halvor. "This is why I have called the brothers and sisters
together."

"I gather that you must think this a very important document,
Halvor," said Bullet Gunner, thoughtfully.

"I do," replied Halvor. "Now we shall learn what Hellgum meant when
he wrote in his last letter that a great trial of our faith was
before us."

"I don't think that any of us will be afraid to suffer in the
Lord's cause," Gunner assured him.

All the Hellgumists had not yet arrived, and there was a long wait
before the last one finally made his appearance. Old Eva
Gunnersdotter, with her far-sighted eyes, meanwhile sat gazing at
Hellgum's letter. She was reminded of the letter with the seven
seals, in Revelation, and fancied that the instant any human hand
should touch that letter, the Angel of Destruction would come
flying down from Heaven.

She raised her eyes and glanced up at the Jerusalem picture. "Yes,
yes," she mumbled, "of course I want to go to that city whose gates
are of gold and whose walls are of crystal!" And she began reading
to herself: "'And the foundations of the wall of the city were
garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation
was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the
fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the
seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the
tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an
amethyst."'

The old woman was so deep in her precious Book of Revelation that
she started as if she had been caught napping when Halvor went over
to that end of the table where the letter lay.

"We will open our meeting with a hymn," Halvor announced. "Let us
all join in singing number two hundred and forty-four." And the
Hellgumists sang in unison, "Jerusalem, my happy home."

Eva Gunnersdotter heaved a sigh of relief because the dreaded
moment had been put off for a little. "Alack-a-day! that a
doddering old woman like me should be so afraid to die," she
thought, half ashamed of her weakness.

At the close of the hymn Halvor took up the letter and began
unfolding it. Whereupon the Spirit moved Eva Gunnersdotter to
arise and offer up a lengthy prayer for grace to receive in a
proper spirit the message contained therein. Halvor, with the
letter in his hand, stood quietly waiting till she had finished.
Then he began reading it in a tone he might have used had he been
delivering a sermon:

"My dear brothers and sisters, peace be with you.

"Hitherto I had thought that I and you, who have embraced my
teaching, were alone in this our faith. But, praise be to God! here
in Chicago we have found brethren who are likeminded, who think
and act in accordance with the principles.

"For be it known unto you that here, in Chicago, there lived in the
early eighties a man by the name of Edward Gordon. He and his wife
were God-fearing people. They were sorely grieved at seeing so much
distress in the world, and prayed God that grace might be given
them to help the sorrowing ones.

"It so happened that the wife of Edward Gordon had to make a long
voyage across the sea, where she suffered shipwreck and was cast
upon the waters. When she found herself in the most extreme peril,
the Voice of God spoke to her. And the Voice of God commanded her
to teach mankind to live in unity.

"And the woman was saved from the sea and the peril of death, and
she returned to her husband and told him about the message from
God. 'This is a great command our Lord hath given unto us--that we
should live in unity--and we must follow it. So great is this
message that in all the world there is but one spot worthy of
receiving it. Let us, therefore, gather our friends together and go
with them to Jerusalem, that we may proclaim God's holy commandment
from the Mount of Zion.'

"Then Edward Gordon and his wife, together with thirty others who
wanted to obey the Lord's last holy commandment, set out for
Jerusalem, where all of them are now living in concord under one
roof. They share with one another all their worldly goods, and
serve one another, each protecting the other's welfare.

"And they have taken into their home the children of the poor, and
they nurse the sick, they care for the aged, and succour all who
appeal to them for aid, without expecting either money or gifts in
return.

"But they do not preach in the churches or on street corners, for
they say, 'It is our works that shall speak for us.'

"But the people who heard of their way of living said of them:
'They must be fools and fanatics.' And those who decried them the
loudest were the Christians who had come to Palestine to convert
Jews and Mohammedans, by preaching and teaching. And they said:
'What sort of persons are these who do not preach? No doubt they
have come hither to lead an evil life and to indulge their sinful
lusts among the heathen.'

"And they raised a cry against these good people that travelled
across the seas all the way to their own country. But amongst those
who had settled in Jerusalem there was a rich widow, with her two
half-grown children. She had left a brother in her native land, to
whom every one was saying, 'How can you allow your sister to live
among those dreadful people, who are so loose lived? They are
nothing but idlers who live upon her bounty.' So the brother began
legal proceedings against the sister, in order to compel her to
send her children back to America to be reared there.

"And on account of these proceedings, the widow, with her children,
returned to Chicago, accompanied by Edward Gordon and his wife. At
that time they had been living in Jerusalem fourteen years.

"When they came back from that far country, the newspapers had much
to say of them; and some called them lunatics and some said they
were impostors."

When Halvor had read thus far, he paused a moment, and presently
repeated the substance of what he had read in his own words, so
that everybody would understand it. After which, he went on reading:

"But there is in Chicago a home of which you have heard. And the
occupants of this home are people who try to serve God in spirit
and in truth, who share all things in common, and watch over each
other's lives.

"We who live in this home read something in a newspaper about these
'lunatics' who had come back from Jerusalem, and said among
ourselves, 'These people are of our faith; they are banded together
to work for righteousness, the same as ourselves. We would like to
meet these persons who share our ideals.'

"And we wrote and asked them to come to see us, and those who had
come back from Jerusalem accepted the invitation and called; and we
compared our teachings with theirs, and found that our principles
of faith were the same. 'It is by the grace of God that we have
found each other,' we said.

"They told us of the glories of the Holy City, that city which lies
resplendent on its white mountain, and we deemed them fortunate in
that they had been privileged to tread the paths our Saviour had
trod.

"Then one of our own brethren said: 'Why shouldn't we go along with
you to Jerusalem?'

"They answered: 'You must not accompany us thither, for God's Holy
City is full of strife and dissension, of want and sickness, of
hate and poverty.'

"Instantly another of our brethren cried: 'Mayhap God has sent you
to us because it is His meaning that we shall go with you to that
far country, to help you fight all this?'

"Then one and all of us heard the voice of the Spirit in our hearts
say, 'Yea, this is My will!'

"Then we asked them whether they would be willing to receive us
into their fold, although we were poor and unlettered. And they
answered that they would.

"Then we determined to become brethren in the fullest sense. And
they accepted our faith, and we theirs--and all the while the
Spirit was upon us, and we were filled with a great gladness. And
we said: 'Now we know that God loves us, since He sends us to that
land where once He sent His own Son. And now we know that our
teaching is the right teaching, inasmuch as God wants it proclaimed
from his holy mountain Zion.'

"And then a third member of our own household said: 'And there are
our brothers and sisters at home in Sweden.' So we told the
brethren from Jerusalem that there were more of us than they saw
here; that we also had some brothers and sisters in Sweden. We
said: 'They are being sorely tried in their fight for righteousness,
many of them have fallen away, and the few who have remained
steadfast are obliged to live among unbelievers.'

"Then the travellers from Jerusalem answered: 'Let your brothers
and sisters in Sweden follow us to Jerusalem, and share our holy
work.'

"At first we were pleased at the thought of your following us, and
living with us at Jerusalem, in peace and harmony. But afterward we
began to feel troubled, and said: 'They will never leave their fine
farms and old occupations.'

"And the Jerusalem travellers answered: 'Fields and meadows we
cannot offer them, but they will be allowed to wander along the
pathways where Jesus' feet have trod.'

"But we were still doubtful and said to them, 'They will never
journey to a strange land where no one understands their speech.'

"And the travellers from Jerusalem answered: 'They will understand
what the stones of Palestine have to tell them about their
Saviour.'

"We said: 'They will never divide their property with strangers and
become poor as beggars; nor will they renounce their authority, for
they are the leading people of their own parish.'

"The travellers from Jerusalem answered: 'We have neither power nor
worldly possessions to offer them; but we invite them to become
participants in the sufferings of Christ their Redeemer.'

"When that was said, we were again filled with gladness, and felt
that you would come. And now, my dear brothers and sisters, when
you have read this, do not talk it over among yourselves, but be
still and listen. And whatever the Spirit bids you do, that do."

Halvor folded the letter, saying, "Now we must do as Hellgum
writes; we must be still, and listen."

There was a long silence in the living-room at the Ingmar Farm.

Old Eva Gunnersdotter was as silent as were the others, waiting
for the Voice of God to speak to her. She interpreted it all in
her own way. "Why, of course," she thought, "Hellgum wants us to
go to Jerusalem so that we may escape the great destruction. The
Lord would save us from the flood of brimstone, and preserve us
from the rain of fire; and those of us who are righteous will hear
the Voice of God warning us to flee the wrath to come."

It never for a moment occurred to the old woman that it could be a
sacrifice for any one to leave his home and his native land, when
it came to a question of this sort. It never entered her mind that
any one could doubt the wisdom of leaving his native woodlands, his
smiling river, and his fertile fields. Some of the Hellgumists
thought with fear and trepidation of their having to change their
manner of living, of renouncing fatherland, parents, friends, and
relatives; but not she. To her it simply meant that God wanted to
spare them as He had once spared Noah and Lot. Were they not being
called to a life of supernal glory in God's Holy City? It was to
her as if Hellgum had written that they would be bodily taken up
into heaven, like the prophet Elijah.

They were all sitting with closed eyes, deep in meditation. Some
were suffering such intense mental agony that cold sweat broke out
on their foreheads. "Ah, this is indeed the trial which Hellgum
foretold!" they sighed.

The sun was at the horizon, and shot its piercing rays into the
room. The crimson glow from the setting sun cast a blood-red glare
upon the many blanched faces. Finally Martha Ingmarsson, the wife
of Ljung Bjoern Olofsson, slipped down from her chair on to her
knees. Then, one after another, they all went down on their knees.
All at once several of them drew a deep breath, and a smile lighted
up their faces.

Then Karin, daughter of Ingmar, said in a tone of wonderment: "I
hear God's voice calling me!"

Gunhild, the daughter of Councillor Clementsson, lifted up her
hands in ecstasy, and tears streamed down her face. "I, too, am
going," she cried. "God's voice calls me."

Whereupon Krister Larsson and his wife said, almost in the same
breath: "It cries into my ear that I must go. I can hear God's
voice calling me!"

The call came to one after another, and with it all anguish of mind
and all feeling of regret vanished. A great sense of joy had come
to them. They thought no more of their farms or their relatives;
they were thinking only of how their little colony would branch out
and blossom anew, and of the wonder of having been called to the
Holy City.

The call had now come to most of them. But it had not yet reached
Halvor Halvorsson; he was wrestling in anguished prayer, thinking
God would not call him as He had called the others. "He sees that I
love my fields and meadows more than His word," he said to himself.
"I am unworthy."

Karin then went up to Halvor and laid her hand upon his brow. "You
must be still, Halvor, and listen in silence."

Halvor wrung his hands so hard that the joints of his fingers
cracked. "Perhaps God does not deem me worthy to go," he said.

"Yes, Halvor, you will be let go, but you must be still," said
Karin. She knelt down beside him and put her arm around him. "Now
listen quietly, Halvor, and without fear."

In a few moments the tense look was gone from his face. "I hear
I hear something far, far away," he whispered.

"It is the harps of angels announcing the presence of the Lord,"
said the wife. "Be quite still now, Halvor." Then she nestled very
close to him--something she had never done before in the presence
of others.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands. "Now I have heard it. It
spoke so loudly that it was as thunder in my ears. 'You shall go to
my Holy City, Jerusalem,' it said. Have you all heard it in the
same way?"

"Yes, yes," they cried, "we have all heard it."

But now old Eva Gunnersdotter began to wail. "I have heard nothing.
I can't go along with you. I'm like Lot's wife, and may not flee
the wrath to come, but must be left behind. Here I must stay and be
turned into a pillar of salt."

She wept from despair, and the Hellgumists all gathered round to
pray with her. Still she heard nothing. And her despair became a
thing of terror. "I can't hear anything!" she groaned. "But you've
got to take me along. You shan't leave me to perish in the lake of
fire!"

"You must wait, Eva," said the Hellgumists. "The call may come. It
will surely come, either to-night or in the morning."

"You don't answer me," cried the old woman, "you don't tell what I
want to know. Maybe you don't intend to take me along if no call
comes to me!"

"It will come, it will come!" the Hellgumists shouted.

"You don't answer me!" screamed the old woman in a frenzy.

"Dear Eva, we can't take you along if God doesn't call you!" the
Hellgumists protested. "But the call will come, never fear."

Then the old dame suddenly rose from her kneeling attitude,
straightened her rickety old body, and brought her cane down on the
floor with a thud. "You people mean to go away and leave me to
perish!" she thundered. "Yes, yes, yes, you mean to go and let me
perish!" She had become furiously angry, and once more they saw
before them Eva Gunnersdotter as she had been in her younger days--
strong and passionate and fiery.

"I want nothing more to do with you!" she shrieked. "I don't want
to be saved by you. Fie upon you! You would abandon wife and
children, father and mother, to save yourselves. Fie! You're a
parcel of idiots to be leaving your good farms. You're a lot of
misguided fools running after false prophets, that's what you are!
It's upon you that fire and brimstone will rain. It is you who must
perish. But we who remain at home, we shall live."

THE BIG LOG

At dusk, on this same beautiful February day, two young lovers
stood talking together in the road. The youth had just driven down
from the forest with a big log, which was so heavy that the horse
could hardly pull it. All the same he had driven in a roundabout
way so that the log might be hauled through the village and past
the big white schoolhouse.

The horse had been halted in front of the school, and a young woman
had come out to have a look at the log. She couldn't seem to say
enough in praise of it--how long and thick it was, and how
straight, and what a lovely tan bark it had, and how firm the wood
was, and how flawless!

The young man then told her very impressively that it had been
grown on a moor far north of Olaf's Peak, and when he had felled
it, and how long it had been lying in the forest to dry out. He
told her exactly how many inches it measured, both in circumference
and diameter.

"But, Ingmar," she said, "it is only the first!"

Pleased as she was, the thought that Ingmar had been five years
getting down the first bit of timber toward the building of their
new home made her feel uneasy. But Ingmar seemed to think that all
difficulties had now been met.

"Just you wait, Gertrude!" he said. "If I can only get the timber
hauled while the roads are passable, we'll soon have the house up."

It was turning bitterly cold. The horse stood there all of a
shiver, shaking its head and stamping its hoofs, its mane and
forelock white with hoar frost. But the youth and the maid did not
feel the cold. They kept themselves warm by building their house,
in imagination, from cellar to attic. When they had got the house
done, they set about to furnish it.

"We'll put the sofa over against the long wall here in the
living-room," Ingmar decided.

"But I don't know that we've got any sofa," said Gertrude.

The young man bit his lip. He had not meant to tell her, until
some time later, that he had a sofa in readiness at the
cabinetmaker's shop; but now he had unwittingly let out the secret.

Then Gertrude, too, came out with something which she had kept from
him for five years. She told him that she had made up hair into
ornaments and had woven fancy ribbons for sale, and with the money
she had earned in this way she had bought all sorts of household
things--pots and pans, platters and dishes, sheets and pillow
slips, table covers and rugs.

Ingmar was so pleased over what Gertrude had accomplished that he
could not seem to commend her enough. In the middle of his praises
he broke off abruptly and gazed at her in speechless adoration. He
thought it was too good to be true that anything so sweet and so
beautiful would some day be his very own.

"Why do you look at me so strangely?" asked the girl.

"I'm just thinking that the best of it all is that you will be
mine."

Gertrude could not say anything, but she ran her hand caressingly
over the big log which was to form a portion of the wall of that
house in which she and Ingmar were to live. She felt that protection
and love were in store for her, for the man she was going to marry
was good and wise, noble and faithful.

Just then an old woman passed by. She walked rapidly, muttering
to herself, as if terribly incensed over something: "Aye, aye,
their happiness shall last no longer than from daybreak to rosy
dawn. When the trial comes, their faith will be broken as though it
were a rope spun from moss, and their lives shall be as a long
darkness."

"Surely she can't mean us!" said the young girl.

"How could that apply to us?" laughed the young man.

THE INGMAR FARM

It was the day after the meeting of the Hellgumists, and a
Saturday. A blizzard was raging. The pastor, who had been called to
the bedside of a sick person who lived way up at the north end of
the great forest, was driving homeward late in the evening under
great difficulties. His horse sank deep in the snowdrifts, and the
sledge was time after time on the point of being upset. Both the
pastor and his hired man were continually getting out to kick away
the snow for a path. Happily it was not very dark. The moon came
rolling out from behind the snow clouds, big and full, shedding its
silvery light upon the ground. Glancing upward, the pastor noticed
that the air was thick with whirling and flying snowflakes.

In some places they made their way quite easily. There were short
stretches of road where the flying snow had not settled, and others
where the snow was deep, but loose and even. The really troublesome
thing was trying to get over the ground where the drifts were piled
so high that one could not even look over them, and where they were
obliged to turn from the road, and to drive across fields and
hedges, at the risk of being dumped into a ditch or having the
horse spiked on a fence rail.

Both the pastor and his servant spoke with much concern of the
drift which always, after a heavy snow, was banked against a high
boarding close to the Ingmar Farm. "If we can only clear that we
are as good as at home," they said.

The pastor remembered how often he had asked Big Ingmar to remove
the high boarding that was the cause of so much snow drifting
toward that particular spot. But nothing had ever been done about
it. Even though everything else on the Ingmar Farm had undergone
changes, certainly those old boards were never disturbed.

At last they were within sight of the farm. And, sure enough, there
was the snowdrift in its usual place, as high as a wall and as hard
as a rock! Here there was no possibility of their turning to one
side; they had no choice but to drive right over it. The thing
looked impossible, so the servant asked whether he hadn't better go
down to the farm and get some help. But to this the pastor would
not consent. He had not exchanged a word with either Karin or
Halvor in upward of five years, and the thought of meeting old
friends with whom one is no longer on speaking terms, was no more
pleasant to him than it is to most people.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18