“Know you all, who now let me fall, know that your hour is soon coming! You shall be scattered, and your place shall stand empty. How can you stand when I do not hold you up? You, Melchior Sinclair, who have a heavy hand and let your wife feel it, beware! You, minister at Broby, your punishment is coming! Madame Uggla, look after your house; poverty is coming! You young, beautiful women—Elizabeth Dohna, Marianne Sinclair, Anna Stjärnhök—do not think that I am the only one who must flee from her home. And beware, pensioners, a storm is coming over the land. You will be swept away from the earth; your day is over, it is verily over! I do not lament for myself, but for you; for the storm shall pass over your heads, and who shall stand when I have fallen? And my heart bleeds for my poor people. Who will give them work when I am gone?”
She opens the door; but then Captain Christian lifts his head and says:—
“How long must I lie here at your feet, Margareta Celsing? Will you not forgive me, so that I may stand up and fight for you?”
Then the major’s wife fights a hard battle with herself; but she sees that if she forgives him he will rise up and attack her husband; and this man, who has loved her faithfully for forty years will become a murderer.
“Must I forgive, too?” she says. “Are you not the cause of all my misfortune, Christian Bergh? Go to the pensioners and rejoice over your work.”
So she went. She went calmly, leaving terror and dismay behind her. She fell, but she was not without greatness in her fall.
She did not lower herself to grieving weakly, but in her old age she still exulted over the love of her youth. She did not lower herself to lamenting and pitiable weeping when she left everything; she did not shrink from wandering about the land with beggar’s bag and crutch. She pitied only the poor peasants and the happy, careless people on the shores of the Löfven, the penniless pensioners,—all those whom she had taken in and cared for.
She was abandoned by all, and yet she had strength to turn away her last friend that he should not be a murderer.
She was a woman great in strength and love of action. We shall not soon see her like again.
The next day Major Samzelius moved from Ekeby to his own farm of Sjö, which lies next to the large estate.