Part 21

"I knew you would think so! But if I had had to do with the management of a circus I could have provided bread for hundreds, and healthy amusement for thousands. That is not so little--it is more than most can do. As it is, what have I done? What empty trifles have I been struggling with? And to what have I attained? That I am on the point of despising both yourself and me! What has our life--what has our intercourse come to? Can you even say that you cherish any love for me? Can I say that I am fond of you?"

"No, Josephine, we both know of whom you are fond."

Had he struck her as her brother had done, she could not have been more furious--partly because he had said that (she scarcely knew that it had been in his thoughts), and partly because this man who made that speech owed everything to her brother and to herself, and yet it was he who had come between the brother and sister and separated them.

"Ah, he possesses that which you have not!" she answered, seeking to wound him. "Nevertheless, it is cowardly of you to say such a thing."

"Is it, indeed? Do you not think that I know it is his fault that I have lost you, lost the peace of my home, lost, too, all joy in my calling, and am now threatened with the loss of my child?"

His voice trembled, he began in anger, but it turned to deep grief, and it was the same with her. She felt inclined to sob and cry. But neither of them would give way to such weakness. She stood looking out of the window; he walked up and down the room. There was a long, long pause. Again she was overcome with anger. His step, too, sounded defiant; still there was silence. What he had just said was shameful, certainly.

"Well," she said, without looking round, "now you know the conditions. You can preach about such tales as that of Kristen Larssen's haunting the place, and you have not even sought to inquire into the matter! Just as with your tales of Paradise; you don't believe in them yourself, and yet you can repeat them! Can I have any respect for such conduct? I must say, my brother is much more honest than that! If you come again to my boy with those tales without telling him that they are only fairy tales," and she turned around to him, "then, Ole, there will be an end to our living together. Before God, this is the truth. It will never be any use your trying to take him from me by such means." She moved toward him: "I will never submit to it, Ole!" She left him.

On that very Sunday, at the self-same hour, Kallem returned home to dine; his dinner hour was somewhat later than his brother-in-law's.

He could see Ragni through the kitchen door, with a long apron on which reached up to her chin; she was cutting up vegetables on the kitchen table. He took his things off in the passage and went in and joined her; latterly he had an ever-increasing fear which he had to conceal. Was it the white apron that threw a pale shadow over her, or the steam from Sigrid's cooking? She really was looking fearfully ill. And surely she had been crying! It sent a pang through his heart. She did not look up from her work, but said:

"We are to have a guest for dinner."

"We are?"

"Yes, Otto Meek, Karl's father; he was here this morning, and is now coming to dinner."

"How is Karl getting on?"

"Not well. Oh, here comes Meek!"

His big head under a fur cap could be seen appearing over the prosperous-looking top-coat; he was at the other side of the hedge; now he turned in, and Kallem went to meet him. During the time that Meek practised he had turned his attention particularly to diseases of the chest, which were but too prevalent in these parts of the country, and he took the most lively interest in Kallem's writings and in his work at the hospital; Kallem was glad when he came. As he helped him off with his coat he said that Ragni had told him Karl was not well.

"No, he is not."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Well, that is the reason of my coming here," answered Meek.

"You have spoken to my wife?"

"Yes." They both went in. The room was warm and cosy, the piano stood open. Had she been playing when Meek knocked at the door? If that were the case, then she could not be as ill as she looked; he longed to examine her chest.

Meek was more silent and gloomy than ever that day.

"Well," said Kallem, "did you and my wife come to an agreement about Karl?"

Meek looked up at him, rather surprised. "Do you mean about writing to him?"

"Yes. You know there has been one or other knotty point, as was often the case."

"Yes," answered Meek, and remained sitting there quite silent.

"Do you imagine I know anything of it? Not I, not a scrap."

Meek appeared to be more and more perplexed. "I said to your wife she ought to tell you. It is very good of her not to do so. But the case is serious." His melancholy eyes looked into Kallem's.

"Serious, do you call it?"

"Yes, I shall be obliged to take him home."

Kallem jumped up from his scat. Meek continued:

"It is altogether useless, his being there."

"But what is wrong? Would you like us to try with him again?" Kallem thought there was a possibility of the youth's having relapsed into his old ways. Meek looked enquiringly at him, almost frightened.

"How do you think your wife really is?" he asked.

Kallem turned red; it struck him like a shot in the midst of his own secret fears. "She caught a nasty cold which she cannot get rid of; for a while I thought, ... I'll tell you what! Can't you sound her chest?" His own doubts had become certainty, his heart beat so that he would not have been capable of examining her himself. Meek continued to gaze at him and Kallem grew more frightened. "Won't you examine her?"

"Yes, of course. Has it not been done recently?"

"Not very recently. No. I don't wish to alarm her. Because if her imagination begins to work then there is danger for her. Besides, there was something else ... However, now I will--" he would have gone to fetch her.

"Did you know her father?" asked Meek, Kallem shuddered.

"Did you?"

"Yes, I was doctor to the fisheries up there."

"Was he--?" Kallem asked breathlessly and unable to finish his sentence. Meek merely nodded, Kallem clasped his head with both hands, hurried to the door, came back again: "You will examine her now, here, at once?"

Kallem led her in tenderly, without giving her time to take off her apron; and carefully brought her up close to the windows. Evidently she had been crying--and those rings under her eyes, her thinness, her colour! She saw his alarm but mistook the cause. Out in the kitchen she had been thinking; now they must be talking about Karl; now Kallem will hear why it is I get no more letters from him. And now that she saw Kallem's agitation she thought, can he be angry because I did not tell him? She could not bear the idea of that, it made her hot and cold by turns.

"Ragni, darling, Dr. Meek would like to sound your chest."

Was that what it was! She was much alarmed, she looked at him with imploring eyes like a stricken deer, begging to be spared. But again he entreated her and began carefully taking off her big apron; submissive as she was she gave herself up to them.

Kallem guessed at once, by the other's manner, by his stopping and then listening again that something terrible was coming. Her startled eyes sought her husband's, and increased his suffering--did she suspect anything herself? Or was she reproaching him for letting anyone but him do this?

Now the doctor's great head was pressed to her back. At the right side, what was it?... a thickening of the tip of the lung? or the tissues? He imagined the worst, and she did the same; he could see that. Could it be that she knew more than she would acknowledge? Concealed something just as he concealed his fears?... Good God, such sorrowfully beseeching eyes were never seen, save only when the fear of death was in them. He was seized with it himself.

"Have you been coughing more than usual lately?" She seemed uncertain as to what she should answer and looked imploringly at Kallem. Her hands were trembling and she tried to hide it; Meek noticed it! "Do you get very tired when you are out walking?" he asked. Again she looked at Kallem in despair, as though she ought to beg his pardon for it. "Do you become breathless quickly?" continued the other.

"Yes."

"Do you at times feel excessively weak, almost as though you were going to faint?" She now looked at Kallem in the greatest alarm. "Maybe you have fainted?"

"Yes."

"Have you?" exclaimed Kallem. "Yes, to-day I did," she said hurriedly, trembling all over.

"Was that after I had spoken to you?"

"Yes, for I wanted a little fresh air, and then--" here her tears choked her utterance.

Dr. Meek smiled a little. "When you cough I presume it hurts you here?" he pointed to the right collarbone. She nodded.

"Have you ever looked at what comes up when you cough?" She made no answer. "Have you never done that?"

"Yes, I have; yesterday evening."

"And how was it?" She was silent, staring at the floor. "Was there blood mixed with it?" She nodded, her tears were falling fast, she did not dare to look up.

Kallem was speechless. Meek asked no more questions. Ragni rearranged her dress, and Meek silently handed her a shawl she had taken off whilst he was examining her. And as she sat helplessly trying to put it on again, Kallem suddenly seemed to think of something he had to fetch from the office. He did not return. She understood the reason why, and for a little while she was doubtful whether she could get up from her chair, and felt as if she would faint again; but the thought of him alone in the office helped her to overcome her weakness, she must go to him. So she begged Dr. Meek to excuse her, got up and went toward the dining-room door and disappeared through it. She too remained away.

Meek waited first a few moments, then a little longer--and still longer. Then he went out to the passage, put on his coat and hat, told the servant in the kitchen that he was obliged to leave; and left many messages for them.

Sigrid looked for them in the rooms, knocked at the door of the office, could get no answer, she listened and at last opened the door. Kallem was lying on the sofa, Ragni kneeling beside him close up to him. Sigrid announced very quietly that the dinner was ready and that Dr. Meek had gone away. No one answered, no one looked up.

Hitherto Kallem and Ragni had always considered that the day when Ragni sailed for America was the worst they had ever gone through; both in their letters and in speaking of it they had said that they felt as though he must die. But death is different; it is not like anything else. They learned to know that now.

After that day there came a time full of hopeless struggles, speechless despair, and tenderest but joyless love. Ragni had various matters "to arrange," which she quietly set about doing; she had a good deal too to write, and whenever she was able she was thus occupied. She wrote, then scratched out; the whole thing, notwithstanding all her work, proved to be a very short affair. But as long as she was taken up with what she had set herself to get done, she really seemed tolerably well; Kallem was quite surprised.

He himself had lost all courage. He saw the worst before him. As long as he could he shrank from examining her expectoration; ... he knew beforehand that he would find tubercular bacilli there--that enemy, to fight against which he had spent both fortune and life. And now it had conquered him in his own house. But one day he was obliged to do it--and with the expected result. He did not pace up and down the laboratory, neither did he weep nor wring his hands. He only tried whether it were possible to think without her; but it ended always by his thinking of her only. From the hour they first met--all her little ways, the most trifling proofs of her charm and talents, her failings and her silent poetical love, he lived all over again in equal joy and grief; it was all just as dear to him, and just as impossible to part with; countless incidents full of humour, warmth, fear, sense of beauty, devotion; they all followed him about like so many eyes. Where could he go to, what more could he possibly find to do? She was with him in all his work. Her portrait, taken in the third year of her stay in America, was standing on the edge of the stove; it had been sent to him originally that he might see what effect the progress of her intellectual development had produced in her face and eyes, a joyful confirmation of all he had predicted when he sent her over there. Now, as always, the eyes of the portrait seemed to seek his; during that time of waiting, their smile had cheered and encouraged him; what had it not been for him--that portrait? And now there came pouring in on him all the recollections of their first meeting, the first words, first shy strangeness, the first full and entire recognition, the first embrace.

Only to remind him that now all must cease. All, too, that he had thought of and done in his life together with her; the delight in it, his capabilities, his faith. What in all the world had happened? He was bound to speak to her about it; was there anything she wished to hide from him? Some imprudence which she dare not confess? What could it be? But he must be very careful about it.

Then one day when he came home she was not downstairs. He went up to her and found her lying down. She stretched out her hand--how thin it had become! and fastened her large eyes on him with a faint, half-veiled expression: "I lay down for a little," she whispered; "only for an hour or two." She did not look so very ill; perhaps because she was in bed. He sat down beside the bed and took both her long thin hands between his.

"There is something in all this," he ventured to say, "which has not been confided to me. Once I was entirely on a wrong scent, but latterly, too, it has been more hurried than I could understand, for this reason, that I have not been watchful enough. There is something at the bottom of all this, some great, may be oft-repeated imprudence which I have not been counting on. Darling, tell it me now; I shall have no peace until you do."

"I will tell you. I have just been thinking about it now. Down-stairs in my writing-table you will find some papers in the first drawer to the left; they are all for you. You must read them when--" she broke off abruptly. "By and by," she added and pressed his hand gently.

"Then I am not to hear about it now?"

"Yes, what you are asking about? Oh, yes. I only had not got so far." She asked him to help her change her position; he did so. "Yes, you shall hear it now. It is for your sake I kept it secret," her eyes filled--"my own"--again a gentle pressure of the hand and a smile. He dried her tears with his handkerchief, letting it slip in under his own spectacles as well. She lay gazing at him but did not speak; had she forgotten or had she changed her mind? He bent down over her:

"Well--?" he asked, "you will not tell me?"

"Oh, yes, the top paper in the drawer, in Karl's handwriting; you may read that at once. But not the others."

"Does Karl's letter contain it?"

She nodded slightly, it was barely visible; then she closed her eyes.

"The key?" he whispered.

"It is in the drawer," she answered, without opening her eyes and let his hand go.

He went down-stairs, opened the drawer, and took out the letter we know of, and sat down to read it properly.

His horror! And his indignation--and his helplessness! Why had he not known of this in time? He paced up and down the room, raging, he sat down again like one paralysed; he made plans and rejected them; he would have gone to every soul in the place and told them they lied. He would force his way into the meeting-house one fine day when it was crowded, climb to the pulpit and accuse them of the most cowardly, treacherous murder ... then he suddenly remembered that even if Ragni had been perfectly well, that would have been enough to kill her.

He himself lived only to do the best he could for all people; and amongst them all there was not one honest or grateful enough, or even indignant enough to tell him that he ought to defend his own and his wife's good name and the honour of his marriage! What apathy and indifference! What free and open scope for malice and for unjust judging of others in this "Christian" community! Now he understood his sister--she had believed this slander? It was especially to talk to him about this that she had waited for him that evening when he--! And in her indignation at this, which she so fully and firmly believed to be true (for what will not people believe about a free-thinker) she continued to bring "the whale" right down upon them! Everyone believed it, everyone condemned her without hesitation. No one stood up for her, not a soul came to the rescue.

This was what Ragni had had to suffer for being so kind to Karl! It had been all the more unselfish of her because at first it had cost her a struggle, and indeed later on it had often been an effort, too; it was only now that he knew it. In all his life he had never met with any one as good as she was. To think that her tender-hearted disposition should thus be ...! The wretches, the false guardians of salvation, psalm-singing egotists, heartless prayer-makers! He read Karl's letter over again; he felt so heartily sorry for him. Poor, poor fellow. His love for her was quite a natural thing; what good honest man would not adore anyone who had been wronged so unjustly for his sake? The lad's gratitude and admiration would necessarily turn to love. As soon as Karl came home, he would have him over--that he would! And he should stay, too, till she drew her last breath! And he, and none other, would Kallem have to walk with him ... On that terrible day after her coffin! He flung himself on the sofa and cried aloud.

Perchance he had been too much taken up with his own work; he ought to have associated more with people, and taken her more about with him; then this would never have happened. None who had really felt a lasting impression of her goodness and pure soul would have dared ... though indeed who can tell? Such creatures of habit, blinded by their dogmas, cannot see.

In came Sigrid running, her mistress was very ill, had a terrible fit of coughing. He crossed the rooms, the passage, and was up the stairs in nine or ten bounds; the attack was over when he got there; but she lay bathed in perspiration, so weak and exhausted that she was on the point of fainting. What she had brought up in coughing was of a greenish colour and streaked with blood--well did he know the look of it. He accounted for this, thinking that he had stayed away too long, her excitement had increased, she had grown too warm, had probably thrown off the clothes and then ... She lay there with eyes closed and he tried what he could to make her sleep. After that she never left her room again.

From her he went straight down to his writing-table and despatched a letter to Dr. Meek, telling him what had happened, and without entering into further details, he wrote: "If Karl has come, I suppose we shall soon see him here? Now I know everything!"

He went out to fetch a woman to sit up at night, but went up to her again the moment he got back; she seemed to be easier and was asleep, and when at last she did awake, her eyes fell first on him. He waited on her, giving her something to drink, and all the questions he so plainly read in her eyes, he answered by kissing her poor thin hand, for his lips quivered and his glasses were bedewed with tears.

But they talked about other things--how that her sister would not be able to come, and that he had himself been to fetch Sissel Aune to help to nurse Ragni; she was the best person he knew of for that sort of thing, and then she was truly devoted to them. Ragni nodded her consent. They never wearied of gazing at each other, as those do who cannot be satisfied. And they both thought of that which they now both knew--the cause of her lying there ill. "Poor Karl!" whispered she.

He answered: "Poor Karl!"

He felt obliged to get up, pretended he had forgotten something down-stairs; he could always make an excuse.

Had he but been able to talk to her! But he dared not, and he could not find time to be alone. He attended to all his hospital work, and received those of his patients who came to him; but he gave up everything else so as to sit with her!

How terrible it seemed to him that he should have given both his work and his fortune to these people, and they repaid him by murdering his life's joy! What kind of measure did people mete with, if they could not understand merely by looking at her, that she was the purest, the most refined little person amongst them all--to him it was inexplicable; their blindness seemed so revolting. All those he knew were, for the most part, plain middle-class people, comfortable and fond of their homes in daily life, none of them particularly bright, of course; they were all church-going people, a few attended the meeting house too, Pastor Tuft's body-guard. Among the latter he had come across several good, prudent sort of people. And yet so pitiless in their judgment, so cruelly loving--all of them murderers without stain or blemish.

And there was none he could go to and take by the throat, exclaim: "You have done this; you are answerable to me for this!" Meek and lovable accomplices! There was one who stood apart from the others--Josephine. Josephine had not invented this; that was not her way. But she would believe what was invented when it concerned anyone she disliked. With icy-cold silence she would allow other people to keep their false, wicked belief in the slander, or she would let it go on increasing. How indignant he felt in his heart toward her! Although she was certainly not the originator of the report--he had to repeat that constantly, she would hardly sully her lips with such slander, she was too grand for that--still Josephine was the most to blame for this murder! He was convinced that however little of a Christian she was in herself, her love of Christian dogmas had been offended by the little creature's want of faith, and by such a very faulty person daring to come and reject their faith. Thence her excessive "spirit of justice" which killed with so sure and well-meaning a blow.

But there was this much likeness between them, that he, too, was filled with the greatest desire of vengeance. He, too, called it "justice;" and he had no idea that he was lying. When he was with Ragni he never had those feelings; her mere presence always did him good. He became deeply agitated if he did feel like that when with her, would well-nigh crush her hand, stroke her forehead and gazing into her eyes, watch her and wait on her till he felt he must go; otherwise he would have knelt down beside her and given way completely.