“I will give Ekeby to you and the pensioners,” repeated the major’s wife. “You are a capable man, Gösta, whom the people bless. I say like my mother, ‘You shall take charge of this work!’”
“No, we could not accept it,—we who have misjudged you and caused you such pain!”
“I will give you Ekeby, do you hear?”
She spoke bitterly and harshly, without kindness. He was filled with dismay.
“Do not tempt the old men! It would only make them idlers and drunkards again. God in Heaven, rich pensioners! What would become of us!”
“I will give you Ekeby, Gösta; but then you must promise to set your wife free. Such a delicate little woman is not for you. She has had to suffer too much here in the land of the bear. She is longing for her bright native country. You shall let her go. That is why I give you Ekeby.”
But then Countess Elizabeth came forward to the major’s wife and knelt by the bed.
“I do not long any more. He who is my husband has solved the problem, and found the life I can live. No longer shall I need to go stern and cold beside him, and remind him of repentance and atonement. Poverty and want and hard work will do that. The paths which lead to the poor and sick I can follow without sin. I am no longer afraid of the life here in the north. But do not make him rich; then I do not dare to stay.”
The major’s wife raised herself in the bed.
“You demand happiness for yourselves,” she cried, and threatened them with clenched fists,—“happiness and blessing. No, let Ekeby be the pensioners’, that they may be ruined. Let man and wife be parted, that they may be ruined! I am a witch, I am a sorceress, I shall incite you to evil-doing. I shall be what my reputation is.”