THE OUTCAST

BY

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY W. WORSTER, M. A.

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, TORONTO DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922

BOOKS BY SELMA LAGERLÖF

JERUSALEM, A Novel (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

CHRIST LEGENDS (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF NILS (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NILS (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

GIRL FROM THE MARSH CROFT (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

LEGEND OF THE SACRED IMAGE (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST (Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flack)

STORY OF GÖSTA BERLING (Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flack)

THE EMPEROR OF PORTUGALLIA (Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard)

THE OUTCAST (Trans. from Swedish by W. Worster, M. A.)

GRIMÖN

ON THE island of Grimön, among the rocks and reefs of the western coast of Sweden, there lived, some years back, a man and his wife. The two were much unlike each other.

Joel Elversson, the husband, was the elder of the pair by fifteen years or so. Ill-favoured to look at, heavy and slow, he had always been, and age had not improved him. His wife, on the other hand, was still as neat and pleasant a little body as ever; far from having lost her looks, she seemed almost as pretty now, at fifty, as she had been at twenty.

One fine Sunday evening the couple were sitting on a big flat rock just outside their house, chatting together at their ease. Joel was a man who enjoyed hearing his own voice, and delivered his words with care. Just now he was giving his wife at some length the contents of an article he had read in the paper. The little woman listened, but her thoughts were not following very closely.

"Eh," she thought to herself, "he's a wonderful head has Joel, to be sure. How he can get all that out of a bit of print in a newspaper.... Pity he can't put his learning to some use for us both, instead of others."

Involuntarily she glanced across at the house. It was a good-sized place in itself, but in such a state of dilapidation as to be largely uninhabitable; the pair lived now in one small outbuilding, which the previous tenants, sea-captains all, had used for kitchen and larder.

"If only he'd had a liking for the sea," went on Mor Elversson to herself, "like his father and grandfather before him. He'd have laid by something now, and we'd be able to look forward to old age in ease and comfort. But he's always been set on farming and field work and such, and little enough it's brought us."

She did not move from her place while her husband was speaking, but her little head, that moved quickly and easily as a bird's, turned slightly as she glanced over the patches of cornfield and potato, little islands of growth among the barren rock that formed the greater part of the island.

Every little strip of cultivation was her husband's work; the very soil was, in a manner of speaking, his creation. He had brought endless boatloads of earth and manure to Grimön, in the firm conviction that he must one day reap a rich reward for his pains.

"All that trouble for so many bits of earth, and poor at that," thought his wife to herself. "Needs but one good northerly gale at Whitsuntide, and all the sowing and planting'd be nowhere Nay, 'tis to the sea we should look for our daily bread, living here as we do. There's neither right nor reason in it else."

Another movement of the quick little head, and she was looking out through the space between the tumbledown old house and the cottage, over the broad, gleaming surface of the water beyond.

"Ay, the sea," she sighed. "'Tis different with that. Freights and cargoes and good money paid. If I'd been a man, I'd have gone to sea from the first, and never taken up with the farm work at all. And here we're getting old and older, and what's to become of us when we're past work? There's none of the children'd stay at home to toil and moil that away—and small blame to them for that."

The last words must have been spoken aloud, for her husband turned sharply toward her. He had been describing the perils and hardships of an English expedition recently returned from the Arctic, and broke off now in the middle of a sentence.

"You're not listening," he said. But it was doubtless not the first time he had found himself talking to deaf ears, for he seemed neither surprised nor annoyed.

"Indeed I was," his wife assured him. "I was thinking this very moment how fine you talk, and how you'd do for a preacher."

"I don't know about that," said the husband, with a laugh. "If I can't keep one listener from thinking of all and sundry when I'm preaching, how'd I manage with a congregation?"

"But I was listening," his wife protested, somewhat discomfited. "I've got it all in my head now. How they lost their ship the very first winter and managed to build a snow house, and had to stay and live there for over a year, till all their food was gone, and they were chewing bits of hide."

There was a note of vexation in her voice, and her mouth twitched in a way it often did when anything troubled her.

"Wonder how it would feel," suggested her husband, casually, "if 'twas one of our own blood had been there starving in a snow hut."

The woman glanced at him sharply. What did he mean by that now? Something, surely. But Joel sat staring before him, with no trace of expression in his rheumy eyes.

"Well, if we were to spend all our time sitting thinking of other folks' troubles, there'd be little pleasure in life," she said, apologetically. "And, anyhow, they were saved in the end."

"That's true," Joel admitted. "There was a ship went out to find them, and they're safe back in England now."

"And all the honour and glory, and live happy ever after," concluded his wife.

To her mind, there was nothing to be so serious about when all had come well at last. But her husband went on without changing his tone.

"I dreamt last night about our boy Sven," he said. "Dreamt he came and stood by my bed and said I'd done him a sore wrong. I won't say if I've any gift of dreaming true as a rule, and I don't know if there's anything in this or not. But it's a queer thing, all the same, to see his name in the paper here to-day."

The last words were spoken carelessly, as if the speaker were thinking only of himself. But from that moment he had no reason to complain of want of attention in his listener. His wife came close to him and deluged him with questions: Where was the name? What was it he had dreamt? Was there really anything about their boy Sven? Her voice grew shrill, her nose flushed, and tears stood in her eyes.

Had it been any other of their children, she would have been less easily moved. But it was different with Sven. They had given the boy away, when nine years old, to an English gentleman and his lady, who had come sailing along the coast in a yacht. The strangers had simply fallen in love with the child, and had promised, if he were entrusted to them, to bring him up as their own, as a rich gentleman, and make him their heir.

It was a wonderful prospect for the lad; his parents had felt that for his own sake they dared not refuse. If he stayed with them, he would have none to help him but themselves. And he was a bright child, with a clever head; they had often agreed that he would surely get on in the world if he had but the chance in his upbringing.

Seventeen years now since they had let him go, and during all that time they had heard nothing from him. Never a letter, never a word of greeting. They knew no more of him than if he had lain at the bottom of the sea.

"See there," said the man, handing across the paper to his wife. "List of those saved. Here it is. 'Sven E. Springfield.'"

"Yes, yes. 'Sven E. Springfield'—it's there, right enough."

"And that can't mean anything but Sven Elversson Springfield," Joel went on. "His own name, mine, and his foster-father's. There's no mistake about that."

Mor Elversson crushed the paper close. At that moment she felt that the son she had given up to others of her own free will was dearest of all her children.

"Why didn't you say straight out at once that Sven was there?" she said, reproachfully. "I wasn't listening. Now you'll have to tell it all over again."

Joel seemed somewhat at a loss. He had thought to tell her the whole story before saying a word about Sven; it would have been easier so. Then he could have seen how she took it, and acted accordingly.

However, he must tell her now. And he went on to explain all she wished to know. What was meant by the eightieth degree of latitude, for instance. And she listened, growing eager on her son's behalf for the honours to be won, and thinking surely he and his comrades must have reached farther than any before them. And what had they lived on after the ship had gone down with all their stores? The story of how the relief expedition had found them that summer, on the shores of Melville Island, had to be repeated over and over again.

"Oh, what he must have had to go through in all that time!" she exclaimed. "No, 'tis a wicked thing to give away one's own child to strangers."

"But he's made his fortune now, I suppose," she went on, relieved. "And they'll give him a host of medals and orders and all."

Soon she began to wonder how the boy had been received in England on his return.

"Millions of people came out to see them," said Joel. "'Arctic explorers' homecoming.'"

He felt ill at ease, anxious, and in fear. All their future depended on how he framed his words now; if he could say the thing as it must be said.

"If only we could have been there too," said his wife. "If I could but have stood at a street corner and seen him go by."

"No need for you to have stood at street corners," said Joel. "It says here there was a special steamer for parents and relatives to meet them."

The look of joy faded suddenly from her face. "Eh, Joel," she sighed. "Little good it would have been if we'd been there. They'd never have let you nor me go on that steamer boat. She wouldn't have let us."

"She" was Mor Elversson's word for the English lady that had taken away her son. She had never forgiven her for forbidding her son to write to his parents. And in her thoughts this stranger woman had become a monster.

"I doubt but they'd have let us see him, all the same," said Joel.

It was some relief to him, in a way, that his wife laid stress on little details such as this. He needed time to collect his thoughts before he could break the news to her. All their future depended on how it was said and taken; he told himself this again and again, as if to urge his mind to the effort.

"Never believe it!" cried the woman, stubbornly, with a toss of her head. "When she never so much as let him write a line all these years. And I doubt but he's little thought for us, anyway. Nine years old he was, when he went away, and sense enough, if he'd cared, to write without her knowing. But it's plain enough; she's put it into his head how we were common folk, and not the sort for a little young gentleman to be asking about."

All her joy was gone and vanished now; the thoughts that had plagued her so often in the past came back with renewed force.

"I'll admit," said her husband—"I'll admit it's a strange thing Sven shouldn't have written a single word to us all that time. And it may well be 'twas their fault that wouldn't let him. I heard something up at the church to-day."

The woman said no word. She was too sick at heart to speak.

"This is going badly," said Joel to himself. "If she's in that humour, there's little hope anyway."

"The Pastor's had news from England," he said aloud. And now again he was touching on a matter he had thought to leave until his wife was more prepared, and in the mood to take it better. But there seemed no help for it now. "Pastor asked me to go along home with him. 'Twas he that gave me the newspaper here."

"The Pastor?"

"Yes. Wanted to talk to me about Sven."

"Huh! What do I care! 'Tis all the same now, the way he's turned out."

Joel made no reply to this, and they sat for a long time in silence. At last the woman burst out violently:

"I never knew the like of you for making a poor body curious. What was it Pastor's heard from England?"

"It was news of Sven. And Pastor's coming himself to tell you about it this evening."

The woman sprang to her feet. "Pastor himself—coming here! Well, of all the wonders.... And you sitting there and never said a word of it till now!"

She took a pace toward the house, thinking to look round and see that all was clean and in order. Then suddenly she stopped.

"What's he coming here for?" she said. "There must be something wrong."

She cast a keen glance at her husband, as if trying to look into his mind and read the thoughts within.

"Maybe Sven's turned softer now," she said, "after being up there in the ice and chewing bits of hide. Maybe he's wishful to come and see us, after all. But, mark my words, this time I say no! If we weren't good enough for him before, we're no better now."

"Be careful of your words," said her husband, warningly. "You never know but you might be sorry after." He felt a growing anger toward her for speaking so violently, and taking the whole thing differently from what he would have done himself.

Mor Elversson had forgotten all about seeing to the house now. Her husband's last words could mean but one thing—she had guessed rightly.

"And do you know what's the news Pastor's coming to tell?"

"I know something—yes."

"Was it himself told you to read out all that in the paper for me to hear?"

"Well, no. He was going to tell you himself, I take it. But I reckoned it was best you should know a little before he came, and be prepared."

"And just as well," said his wife. "Well that I knew of it in time. I might have been forgetting myself and saying good-day and welcome before I knew, and been sorry for it after."

Joel felt his anger increasing. "She'll spoil it all beyond mending," he thought to himself, "and it's all our future to think of. Eh, she'll never be wiser, only growing worse and worse for every year."

"I fancy Pastor 'll be glad to hear you can talk so careless like about Sven. All one to you ... well, 'twill make it easier for him to say what he's got to say."

"Easier? ..." repeated the woman, and her voice seemed harsher even than before. "What d'you mean by that?"

"Why, it looks as if Sven's in trouble after all. That procession, when they came home, that was to be last Sunday, and so it was, as fine as could be. Next day, too, there was banquets and invitations and things—and then all of a sudden it stopped. They'd come back from the Arctic all right, but folk were beginning to say strange things about them. Ugly things."

The woman's face set hard.

"You mean to tell me he's done something wrong?" she murmured between clenched teeth.

"Took down all the flowers and flags and stuff, and put a stop to everything. One day they could hardly make a way through the streets for folk crowding round to cheer the sight of them; and the next, those same folks ready to spit on them."

Mor Elversson raised her head.

"Well, I never heard ..." she cried. "I doubt it would have been better for him to have stayed with his own flesh and blood after all."

"Remember," said her husband, speaking more forcefully now, "it's not the first time such things have happened away on expeditions like that. They were starving, and mad with hunger, and didn't rightly know what they were doing. And then one of them couldn't stand it any longer, and took and cut his throat, and after that, well ..."

"Well? They ate him up, I suppose you mean?"

She spoke the words coldly, without a trace of excitement. Her heart was full of bitterness and disgust.

"They were no more accountable, really, than folk in a madhouse," said her husband. "And it says here in the paper they couldn't bring themselves to go on. Only started like."

"And Sven was in it, too?"

"When anything like that happens, they take good care all's in it. They made him do like the rest. But that was all."

"And now," cried his wife, with an indescribable contempt in her voice—"now I know what it is Pastor's got to say. Sven's not good enough for her now, and so he's got Pastor to come and persuade us to let him come back here. Isn't that it?"

"I daresay that would be best, if it could be done," said Joel, slowly.

"But I say no!" cried his wife. "I say no! He shan't come back here because he's nowhere else to go. He forgot all about us as long as he was well off and comfortable; don't let him think we're anxious to have him now. Poor and old we may be, and needing help. But we'll not have a son that's done things so nobody else will own him."

Joel Elversson looked at his wife, with anger and impatience in his eyes. He was old and weak, and it would have been a grand thing for him to have a son at home able to work. His wife's feeling seemed to him childish and unreasonable; she was obstinate; she was downright wicked. "Wait," he thought to himself. "Wait, and you'll soon hear something more to your mind."

"Just as I said," he went on aloud. "Pastor won't find it so hard, after all, to tell you what was in the letter."

"It—isn't it what I thought, then?" asked his wife in a milder tone. Her stubbornness was shaken by his evident anger and disapproval.

He looked at her sternly.

"Would you like me to tell you myself, or wait till Pastor comes?"

And in his impatience to punish her for her want of affection, he did not wait for an answer, but went on:

"They live in London—the Springfields. And Sven had gone back home to them there. But when the ugly stories began to get about, the father sent a paper with the news up to him—and a loaded revolver with it."

"And the mother—what about her? Did she know he'd sent it?"

"She knew—yes."

"And—and what then?"

"Then—why, it came about as they wished. That's all."

"And now—he's dead."

"Now—now you know what Pastor had to tell you," said her husband.

"And she," cried the poor mother—"she that was not his mother at all, but had had him with her all those years, she let him kill himself, when he'd done no wrong?"

She turned on her husband fiercely.

"You lie!" she cried. "It is not true!"

"I'd have said those very words myself an hour ago. I wouldn't have believed that a woman could be so heartless. But since I've heard you, now, I can believe it."

"But—but he hadn't only them to look to. He'd his mother and father here."

"Most likely he thought we'd take it the same way. And he wasn't so far wrong, it seems."

Mor Elversson turned away, and sat down on the rock. The tears ran down her cheeks. "Sven's dead," she said, "dead. No mother but a woman with a heart of stone—and she let him die."

She sat awhile, weeping and moaning.

"O God, why did we ever let him go? And that woman to send him to his death for nothing! When it was the others that made him ..."

"You'd better try and be calm a bit," said her husband. "Here's the Pastor coming. The boat's just putting in."

"Tell him I know all about it. He can go back again."

"Can't very well do that, when he's been at the trouble to come."

Joel walked away, and came back a moment later with the Pastor and a young man.

The priest walked up to the weeping woman.

"Joel tells me you've heard already, Mor Elversson," he said. "About Sven. He was concerned in a very unpleasant business, and his adopted parents sent him away."

Mor Elversson had risen to curtsey to the Pastor. She still held a corner of her apron to her eyes, but, for all her weeping, she caught a glimpse of the stranger with him.

"It's Sven," said a voice within her. "Sven...."