From a Swedish Homestead

by Selma Lagerlöf

For a while he sat still, with his eyes steadily fixed upon the coffin. When one was possessed by such fear as he was, one could not be too careful. But the coffin did not move in the least; it was impossible to suspect it of containing any snare.

He was no sooner certain of this than he put his hand into a side-pocket of the pack and took out a violin and bow, and at the same time he nodded to the dead in the grave. As he was so quiet he should hear something pretty.

This was something very unusual for him. There were not many who were allowed to hear him play. No one was ever allowed to hear him play at the farms, where they set the dogs at him and called him the 'Goat'; but sometimes he would play in a house where they spoke softly, and went about quietly, and did not ask him if he wanted to buy any goat-skins. At such places he took out his violin and treated them to some music; and this was a great favour—the greatest he could bestow upon anybody.

As he sat there and played at the edge of the grave it did not sound amiss; he did not play a wrong note, and he played so softly and gently that it could hardly be heard at the next grave. The strange thing about it was that it was not the man who could play, but it was his violin that could remember some small melodies. They came forth from the violin as soon as he let the bow glide over it. It might not, perhaps, have meant so much to others, but for him, who could not remember a single tune, it was the most precious gift of all to possess such a violin that could play by itself.

Whilst he played he sat with a beaming smile on his face. It was the violin that spoke and spoke; he only listened. Was it not strange that one heard all these beautiful things as soon as one let the bow glide over the strings? The violin did that. It knew how it ought to be, and the Dalar man only sat and listened. Melodies grew out of that violin as grass grows out of the earth. No one could understand how it happened. Our Lord had ordered it so.

The Dalar man intended to remain sitting there the whole day, and let the dear tunes grow out of the violin like small white and many-coloured flowers. He would play a whole meadowful of flowers, play a whole long valleyful, a whole wide plain.

But she who lay in the coffin distinctly heard the violin, and upon her it had a strange effect. The tones had made her dream, and what she had seen in her dreams caused her such emotion that her heart began to beat, her blood to flow, and she awoke.

But all she had lived through while she lay there, apparently dead, the thoughts she had had, and also her last dream—everything vanished in the same moment she awoke to consciousness. She did not even know that she was lying in her coffin, but thought she was still lying ill at home in her bed. She only thought it strange that she was still alive. A little while ago, before she fell asleep, she had been in the pangs of death. Surely, all must have been over with her long ago. She had taken leave of her adopted parents, and of her brothers and sisters, and of the servants. The Dean had been there himself to administer the last Communion, for her adopted father did not think he could bear to give it to her himself. For several days she had put away all earthly thoughts from her mind. It was incomprehensible that she was not dead.