The people will not listen; they scream and threaten. But the pensioners are not discouraged.
“Only wait,” they say; “only wait a second. See, Ekeby stands open. The cellar doors are open; the store-rooms are open; the dairy is open. Your women are dropping with fatigue; the children are crying. Let us get them food first! Then you can kill us. We will not run away. The attic is full of apples. Let us go after apples for the children!”
An hour later the feasting is in full swing at Ekeby. The biggest feast the big house has ever seen is celebrated there that autumn night under the shining full moon.
Woodpiles have been lighted; the whole estate flames with bonfires. The people sit about in groups, enjoying warmth and rest, while all the good things of the earth are scattered over them.
Resolute men have gone to the farmyard and taken what was needed. Calves and sheep have been killed, and even one or two oxen. The animals have been cut up and roasted in a trice. Those starving hundreds are devouring the food. Animal after animal is led out and slaughtered. It looks as if the whole barn would be emptied in one night.
They had just baked that day. Since the young Countess Elizabeth had come, there had once more been industry in-doors. It seemed as if the young woman never for an instant remembered that she was Gösta Berling’s wife. Neither he nor she acted as if it were so; but on the other hand she made herself the mistress of Ekeby. As a good and capable woman always must do, she tried with burning zeal to remedy the waste and the shiftlessness which reigned in the house. And she was obeyed. The servants felt a certain pleasure in again having a mistress over them.
But what did it matter that she had filled the rafters with bread, that she had made cheeses and churned and brewed during the month of September?
Out to the people with everything there is, so that they may not burn down Ekeby and kill the pensioners! Out with bread, butter, cheese! Out with the beer-barrels, out with the hams from the store-house, out with the brandy-kegs, out with the apples!
How can all the riches of Ekeby suffice to diminish the people’s anger? If we get them away before any dark deed is done, we may be glad.