The outcast

by Selma Lagerlöf

To-day, as the Pastor entered his church, his eyes fell on Sven Elversson, the man from the starvation camp at Melville Island. And at sight of him he felt a stifling sensation in his throat.

He had helped this man, and done what he could for him; he had been glad to be the means of bringing him back to his home, and finding a refuge for an unfortunate who was made to suffer for what he had been forced to commit; a fellow creature in such desperate straits that he might otherwise have turned to suicide. But he had not thought to see him here in church.

At the vicarage, he would not have hesitated to receive him if he had come. But this he could not endure. The man had eaten human flesh—had been guilty of something heathenish, abominable. Surely, he ought to have understood himself that his presence there was intolerable.

A moment after, he reproached himself for his thoughts, accused himself of uncharitableness, and called to mind how Christ had bidden all sinners come to Him. He strove to rouse more sympathy in himself; he thought of the poor sinner's gentle, kindly bearing, and checked his first impulse to send the verger with a message asking him to leave the church. He went through the service, and delivered his sermon as usual, but could not free himself from a feeling of abhorrence.

The words he had to speak clung to his palate; he had to pause once or twice in his sermon and clear his tongue before he could go on. It was as if the taste of something loathsome actually filled his mouth; he seemed to be witnessing the scene as it had happened: the group of starving men flinging themselves upon the body of the suicide.

He would have felt nothing of this had it not been for the presence of the man himself there in the church. But the feeling had come upon him now, and he felt himself helpless in its grasp. He clenched his hands in strife with himself, turned in the pulpit so as to keep the figure of Sven Elversson away from sight; he strove to read the sermon as he had written it, forced himself to concentrate his thoughts upon his words, and suddenly the trouble was gone, and he felt at ease once more.

But now it chanced that he came to a passage in the sermon dealing with falsehood, and how far it might be justified in certain cases. And at once his thoughts turned to Grimön, and the manner in which Joel Elversson had brought his wife to realize her true feelings. It was his custom frequently to illustrate his sermons with episodes from real life, and in doing so, he did not write down the story beforehand, but told it in such words as came to him at the moment. And now it occurred to him that the little happening at Grimön might be used by way of example.

He had had no thought before of using it, but now, carried away by his subject, he took it up.

He had not been speaking long before a warning thought crossed his mind—it was perhaps hardly well to make the matter known to the whole congregation. True, no one had asked him to keep it a secret. Nevertheless, he felt uneasy, and sought for some way of altering the story as he went on, but could find none, and told it as it was. He tried to emphasize only that part which bore on his subject, of falsehood and justification, but here again he failed, and told the very thing that should have remained unsaid, making known the entire affair to all those present.

At first, he felt ashamed of what he had done, then suddenly he was seized with a sense of exultation at thus treading underfoot the unclean spirit that had dared to appear in the church itself. "Despicable worm!" he thought. "That such a creature should ever presume to enter into my church—into the house of God."