Chapter I

IT IS not easy to say how the seventeenth of August, which was Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s birthday, came to be the great day that it was. But one can imagine that with so many gifted persons all living in a little place like East Ämtervik, it was really necessary that they should have a chance, at least once a year, to show what they could do.

When, for example, there were three such fine orators as Engineer Noreen of Herrestad, Senator Nils Andersson of Bävik, and Merchant Teodor Nilsson of Visteberg, the first of whom went in for the pathetic, the second for the profound, and the third for the poetic, it would have been a great pity had they never been heard elsewhere than at small parties and town meetings.

And with a verse writer, too, like Sexton Melanoz at one’s command! Days on end he had to sit in the schoolroom and hear the youngsters spell, stammer, and stumble through the intricate mazes of the Swedish language. Surely he needed to let this maltreated tongue ring out in high-sounding eulogistic measures once a year at least!

Then, moreover, there was a male quartette in the parish composed of such good singers as Gustaf and Jan Asker, of the old musical Askers, and the brothers Alfred and Tage Schullström, who kept a store down by the church. People were thankful to them whenever they sang; but for the singers themselves it must have been both stimulating and inspiring to sing at a grand affair where they had critical and discriminating hearers.

And the old man Asker, who played dance music at peasant weddings where nobody cared what came forth from the clarinet just so it had dash and rhythm--he must indeed have been glad to come to Mårbacka on a seventeenth of August! The young folk there appreciated his art, and told him there was no music in the world so easy to dance to as his.

Then, too, there was a brass sextette made up of Tage Schullström, Sergeant Johan Dalhgren, the Gårdsjö Inspector, a shop-clerk and two infant-school teachers. They had all invested in instruments and scores, and had rehearsed marches and waltzes, overtures and folk-songs. It would have been too bad not to have had one gala day, when their efforts were crowned by the award of triumph.

When, besides, among the relatives who spent their summers at Mårbacka there were two clever entertainers like Oriel Afzelius, husband of Fru Lagerlöf’s sister, and her own brother, Kristofer Wallroth, it was well that away off here in the farming country there was a fête on a grand enough scale to tempt them to perform.

Moreover, among the guests was a born prima donna, the pretty and merry Stockholmer, Fru Hedda Hedberg, who could act as well as sing, and was in every way adapted for the stage. But she had married a poor Värmland lieutenant. Therefore, one may well say it was almost imperative that there should be a seventeenth of August celebration where all this wealth of talent might come into its own.