“It was she who saved me,” says Gösta. “What had I been without her?”
“As if she did not know what she was about when she kept you here at Ekeby. You can lure others to the trap; you have great gifts. Once you tried to get away from her; you let her give you a cottage, and you became a laborer; you wished to earn your bread. Every day she passed your cottage, and she had lovely young girls with her. Once it was Marianne Sinclair; then you threw aside your spade and apron, Gösta Berling, and came back as pensioner.”
“Yes, yes, of course; it lay on the highway. Then you came to Borg, were tutor there to Henrik Dohna, and might have been Countess Märta’s son-in-law. Who was it who managed that the young Ebba Dohna should hear that you were only a dismissed priest, so that she refused you? It was the major’s wife, Gösta Berling. She wanted you back again.”
“Great matter!” says Gösta. “Ebba Dohna died soon afterwards. I would never have got her anyway.”
Then the devil came close up to him and hissed right in his face: “Died! yes, of course she died. Killed herself for your sake, did she? But they never told you that.”
“You are not such a bad devil,” says Gösta.
“It was the major’s wife who arranged it all, I tell you. She wanted to have you back in the bachelors’ wing.”
“You are not such a bad devil,” he cried wildly. “Why should we not make a contract with you? I’m sure you can get us the seven estates if you like.”
“It is well that you do not longer withstand your fate.”
The pensioners drew a sigh of relief. It had gone so far with them that they could do nothing without Gösta. If he had not agreed to the arrangement it could never have come to anything. And it was no small matter for destitute gentlemen to get seven estates for their own.
“Remember, now,” says Gösta, “that we take the seven estates in order to save our souls, but not to be iron-work owners who count their money and weigh their iron. No dried-up parchments, no purse-proud money-bags will we become, but gentlemen will we be and remain.”
“The very words of wisdom,” murmurs the black one.
“If you, therefore, will give us the seven estates for one year we will accept them; but remember that if we do anything during that time which is not worthy of a gentleman, if we do anything which is sensible, or useful, or effeminate, then you may take the whole twelve of us when the year is out, and give the estates to whom you will.”