SUNDAY REVIEW / A SHORT STORY BY THE FIRST WOMAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER IN LITERATURE

 

FROM A SWEDISH HOUSEHOLD [aka "The Cowboys"] 

GUEST BLOG / By Selma Lagerloff, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909, becoming the first woman ever to receive the award. The Swedish Academy praised her “lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception.” 

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It was late in the autumn when the two poor vagrants came to the homestead. They had tramped far, and the woman carried a child on her back; both were tired and hungry. 

The husband was away, but the woman of the house received them kindly and set food before them. When she had given them what she could, she said: “You must go on your way now, for my husband will soon be home, and he does not like tramps about the place.” 

But the man answered: “We can go no farther tonight. We are so worn out that we must lie down and sleep, even if it be out on the road.” 

Nobelist Selma Lagerloff

The mistress was troubled, for she knew her husband would be angry if he found them there. Yet she could not turn them away. At last she said: “Well then, you may sleep in the barn, but you must be gone before he comes in the morning.” 

So she led them to the barn, spread hay for them, and they laid themselves down. The woman laid the child by her side, and soon all three were asleep. 

When the husband came home that evening, his wife told him of the wanderers and begged him not to be angry. 

Angry from fear he said: “We cannot harbor such folk. You do not know who they may be. There are many thieves and evil-doers abroad. If they are found here, we may come to harm.” 

The woman pleaded for them, but he was not to be moved. 

In the morning he went to the barn to send them away. There he found them still asleep, but when he looked closer his heart was struck with fear, for he saw that they were the outlaws who had broken prison and whom all the country was seeking. 

He stole back to the house and told his wife. “Now you see what you have done,” he said sternly. “If they are found under our roof, we are ruined. They will say we have harbored them of our own will.” 

The wife was greatly troubled. “What shall we do?” she asked. “If we tell the officers, they will be taken and hanged. Yet if we let them go, we shall be thought guilty.” 

The man said: “There is but one thing to be done. We must fall upon them while they sleep and kill them. Then we can say we defended our house against robbers.” 

But his wife cried out: “No, that you must never do. Think of the poor woman and her child! Better let us perish than that innocent blood should come upon us.” 

Then the man said: “If we let them go, they will come back to us for food, and then we are lost. You do not know these outlaws; they are hard They will not leave us in peace.” 

Still the wife held firm. “I will never consent to it,” she said. “Let come what may, I will not have them slain here in their sleep.” 

The husband pondered long, but at last he yielded. “Well then,” he said, “we will let them go. But if evil comes of it, it will be on your head.” 

So they let the wanderers sleep in peace. At dawn the woman rose, slung the child again upon her back, and went forth with her man. They thanked the mistress for her kindness, but she only said: “Go quickly, and God be with you.”

And so they went their way. 

No one knows what became of them, but neither the master nor the mistress ever saw them again.