Jerusalem Part 28

"Is death so easy?" she mused.

As that thought came to her the medley of confusing noises around her--the surging of the waves, the murmur of the wind, the shrieks of the drowning, and the noises made by the colliding of the various objects that were drifting around on the water--all seemed to resolve themselves into words in the same way as shapeless clouds sometimes form themselves into pictures. And this was what she heard:

"It is a fact that death is easy, but to live, that is the difficult thing!"

"Ah, so it is!" she thought, and wondered what was needed to make living as easy as dying.

Round about her the shipwrecked people fought and struggled for the floating wreckage and the overturned boats. But amid the mad cries and curses, again the noises resolved themselves into clear and powerful words:

"That which is needed to make life as easy as death is UNITY, UNITY, UNITY."

It seemed to her that the Lord of all the earth had converted these noises into a speaking tube, through which He himself had answered her.

While the words that had been spoken were still ringing in her ears, she was rescued. She had been drawn up into a small boat in which there were only three persons besides herself--a brawny old sailor dressed in his best, an elderly woman with round, owlish eyes, and a poor little heartbroken boy, who had on nothing but a torn shirt.

Late in the afternoon of the following day a Norwegian ship sailed along the great banks of Newfoundland in the direction of the fishing grounds. The sky was clear, and the sea was like a mirror.

The vessel could make but little headway. All the sails were set so as to catch the last breaths of the dying breeze.

The sea looked very beautiful. It was a clear blue and smooth as gla.s.s, but where the faintest breeze pa.s.sed over it, it was a silvery white.

When the afternoon stillness had continued for a while, the ship's crew sighted a dark object floating on the water. Gradually it came nearer, and soon they discovered that it was a human body. As it was being carried by the current past the ship, they could tell by the clothing that it was the body of a sailor. It was lying on its back, with eyes wide open, and with a look of peace on its face.

Evidently the body had not been long enough in the water to become disfigured. It was as if the sailor were complacently letting himself be rocked by the tiny rippling wavelets.

When the sailors turned their gaze in the opposite direction, they let out a cry. Before they could turn their faces, another body appeared on the surface close to the bow of the boat. They came near pa.s.sing over it, but at the last moment it was washed away by the swell. Now they all rushed to the side of the ship and looked down. This time they saw the body of a child, a daintily dressed little girl. "Dear, dear!" said the sailors, drying their eyes.

"The poor little kiddie!"

As the body of the little girl drifted past it seemed as if the child were looking up at them. And there was such a serious expression in its wistful eyes-as if it were out upon some very urgent errand. Immediately after, one of the sailors shouted that he saw another body, and the same thing was said by one who was looking in an opposite direction. All at once they saw five bodies, they saw ten, and then there were so many they could not count them.

The ship moved slowly on among all these dead people, who surrounded the vessel as if they wanted something. Some came floating in large groups; they looked like driftwood that had been carried away from land; but they were just a ma.s.s of dead bodies.

The sailors stood aghast, afraid to move. They could hardly believe that what they saw was real. All at once they seemed to see an island rising up out of the sea. From a distance it looked like land, but, on coming nearer, they saw hundreds of bodies floating close together, and surrounding the vessel on all sides. They moved with the ship, as if wanting to make the voyage across the water in its company. Then the skipper turned the rudder, so as to coax a little wind into the sails; but it did not help much. The sails hung limp, and the dead bodies continued to follow.

The sailors turned ashen, and silence fell upon them. The ship had so little headway that she could not seem to get clear of the dead.

They were fearful lest it should go on like this the whole night.

Then a Swedish seaman stood up in the bow and repeated the Lord's Prayer. Thereupon, he began to sing a hymn. When he had got half through the hymn the sun went down, and the evening breeze came along and carried the ship away from the region of the dead.

h.e.l.lGUM'S LETTER

An old woman came out from her little log cabin in the woods.

Although it was only a week day, she was dressed in her best, as if for church. After locking her door she put the key in its usual place, under the stoop.

When the old woman had gone a few paces, she turned round to look at her cabin, which appeared very small and very gray under the shadow of the towering snow-clad fir trees. She glanced at her humble home with an affectionate gaze. "Many a happy day have I spent in that little old hut!" she mused solemnly. "Ah me! The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away."

Then she went on her way, down the forest road. She was very old and exceeding fragile, but she was one of those who hold themselves erect and firm, however much old age may try to bend them. She had a sweet face and soft white hair. She looked so mild and gentle that it was surprising to hear her speak with a voice that was as strident and solemn as that of some old evangelist.

She had a long tramp ahead of her, for she was going down to the Ingmar Farm to a meeting of the h.e.l.lgumists. Old Eva Gunnersdotter was one of the most zealous converts to h.e.l.lgum's teachings. "Ah, those were glorious times," she mumbled to herself as she trudged on, "in the beginning when half the parish had gone over to h.e.l.lgum! Who would have thought that so many were going to backslide, and that after five years there would be hardly more than a score of us left--not counting the children, of course!"

Her thoughts went back to the time when she, who for many years had lived in solitude in the heart of the forest, forgotten by every one, all at once had found a lot of brothers and sisters who came to her in her loneliness, who never forgot to clear a path to her cabin after a big snowfall, and who always kept her little shed well filled with dry firewood--and all without her having to ask for it. She recalled to mind the time when Karin, daughter of Ingmar, and her sisters, and many more of the best people in the parish, used to come and hold love feasts in her little gray cabin.

"Alas, that so many should have abandoned the only true way of salvation!" she sighed. "Now retribution will come upon us. Next summer we must all perish because so few among us have heard the call, and because those who have heard it have not continued steadfast."

The old woman then fell to pondering over h.e.l.lgum's letters, those letters which the h.e.l.lgumists regarded as Apostolic writings and read aloud at all their meetings, as the Bible is read in the churches. "There was a time when h.e.l.lgum was as milk and honey to us," she reflected. "Then he commanded us to be kind and tolerant toward the unconverted, and to show gentle forbearance toward those who had fallen away; he taught the rich that in their works of charity they must treat the just and the unjust alike. But lately he has been as wormwood and gall. He writes about nothing but trials and punishments."

The old woman had now reached the edge of the forest, from where she could look down over the village. It was a lovely day in February. The snow had spread its white purity over the whole district; all the trees were deep in their winter sleep, and not a breath of wind stirred. But she was thinking that all this beautiful country, wrapped in peaceful slumber, would soon be awakened only to be consumed by a rain of fire and brimstone.

Everything that was now lying under a cover of snow, she seemed to see enveloped in flame.

"He hasn't put it into plain words," thought the old woman, "but he keeps writing all the while about a _sore trial_. Mercy me! Who could wonder at it if this parish were to be punished as was Sodom, and overthrown like Babylon!"

As Eva Gunnersdotter wandered through the village, she could not look up at a single house without picturing to herself how the coming earthquake would shake it and crumble it into dust and ashes. And when she met people along the way, she thought of how the monsters of h.e.l.l would soon hunt and devour them.

"Ah, here comes the schoolmaster's Gertrude!" she remarked to herself as she saw a pretty young girl coming down the road. "Her eyes sparkle like sunbeams on the snow. She feels happy now because she expects to be married in the fall to young Ingmar Ingmarsson. I see she has a bundle of thread tucked under her arm. She is going to weave table covers and bed hangings for her new home. But before that weaving is done, destruction will be upon us."

The old woman cast dark glances about her. She could see that the village had grown and developed into an astonishing thing of beauty, but she thought that all these pretty white-and-yellow houses, with their fancy gables and their big bowed windows, would collapse the same as her humble gray cabin, where moss grew in the cracks between the logs, and the windows were only holes in the wall. When she reached the heart of the town, she stopped short and struck her cane hard against the pavement. A sudden feeling of indignation had seized her. "Woe, woe!" she cried, in so loud a voice that people in the street paused and looked round. "Yea, in all these houses live such as have rejected the Gospel of Christ and cling to the enemy's teaching. Why didn't they listen to the call and turn away from their sins? On their account we must all perish. G.o.d's hand strikes heavily. It strikes both the just and the unjust."

When she had crossed the river she was overtaken by some of the other h.e.l.lgumists. They were Corporal Felt and Bullet Gunner and his wife, Brita. Shortly afterward, they were joined by Hok Matts Ericsson, his son Gabriel, and Gunhild, the daughter of Councilman Clementsson.

All these people in their gayly coloured national costumes made a pretty picture walking along the snow-covered road. But to the mind of Eva Gunnersdotter, they were only doomed prisoners being led to the place of execution, like cattle driven to slaughter.

The h.e.l.lgumists looked quite dejected. They walked along, their eyes on the ground, as if weighed down by a terrible load of discouragement. They had all expected that the Celestial Kingdom would suddenly spread over the whole earth, and that they would live to see the day when the New Jerusalem should come down from the clouds of heaven. But now that they had become so few in number, and could not help seeing that theirs was a forlorn hope, it was as if something within them had snapped. They moved slowly and with dragging steps. Now and then a sigh would escape them, but they seemed to have nothing to say to each other. For this had been a matter of supreme earnest with them. They had staked their all upon it, and had lost.

"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 h.e.l.lgum 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 h.e.l.lgumists 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 ma.s.sive 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 gra.s.s, ran little shimmering brooklets. At the bottom of the picture was painted in large, ornate letters: "This is G.o.d'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 h.e.l.lgumists. "It's plain they know now that the end is near," she thought.