"No," said Lotta—"no, angel dear, I did not know you had suffered like that. You have never spoken of it until yesterday and to-day. But is there no other way?"
Sigrun rose to her feet. "There is one way. And God has sent it. But Lotta Hedman will not let me take that way."
Nothing could describe the torturing power of Sigrun's beauty as she spoke such words as these. A witchery seemed to emanate from her being, and she knew it, and never, perhaps, had she used it so mercilessly, so victoriously as to-night.
"I am doing no wrong, Lotta," she said. "I am going to the war, to help the wounded. That is my one desire. I am ashamed to stay at home doing nothing. You know it is what I have longed for all my life. And God is helping me, Lotta. Why will you not help me?"
What could poor Lotta Hedman say? She had never loved Sigrun as she did this night. She resisted still, knowing that Rhånge came of a family of suicides. Perhaps he would kill himself if he lost his wife. But she dared not say anything of this to Sigrun; it might only increase her fear of him.
"But you have your father and mother at home," was all she could find to say.
"You forget the infection. I cannot go home to them now."
She went over to Lotta and made her sit down again in the chair.
"Lotta, I am so unhappy," she said. "Every day is an agony. Am I to suffer like this all my life?"
"But, Sigrun, how can you bring this sorrow on us all?"
"Sorrow?" said Sigrun—"sorrow? What is it, after all, to sorrow for the dead? What is it compared with sorrowing for the living? I must do it, Lotta, for Edward's sake. Think what a man he was when I first met him. Calm, happy, eager to make his way. A good preacher, and loved by his congregation. Now—can you not see how he has changed? He is going to ruin here in poverty and loneliness. I must leave him, Lotta. If I were dead, he would find another place, another living, where he could rise to all that he meant to do when he had the ill-fortune to meet me."
"You cannot make me see that you need do anything so dreadful."
Sigrun shrugged her shoulders.
"I am not trying to make you believe that it is only for his sake. I do it because I am miserable, and must free myself from my misery. Oh, Lotta, if only I could really die! I know that would be the best. But, next to that, the best thing is for me to disappear. I am going to pieces; it is driving me mad. Perhaps I am mad already."
"But do you ask me to help you go away so that I shall never see you again?" said Lotta despairingly. She had not thought to speak of herself, but she felt driven to use every argument she could find.
"Why should you not see me again, after a few years?" said Sigrun. "Listen, and I will tell you all my plan. I will go on foot the first few miles, till I come to a parish where no one knows me. There I can get a cart to take me to the nearest station. Then by train to Göteborg, and from there to America. There I can enter a training school for nurses, and then go to the war. You see, there is nothing impossible about it. And when a few years have passed, I can write for you."
"Do not try to persuade me," said Lotta. "I should have to tell all sorts of lies, and I could never do it."
With indescribable bitterness Sigrun answered:
"I have had to lie every day since I was married."
Lotta Hedman was overwhelmed; her heart was wrung with pity. "Let her have her will," she said to herself. And at the same time, she was so full of anxiety at what Sigrun was about to do that she began to weep.
"God was willing to help me," said Sigrun, "but Lotta Hedman would not."
"But, Sigrun," cried Lotta, dashing away a tear with the back of her hand, "will you force me to help you ruin yourself? You ask me to help you in something so dreadful that I tremble at the very thought. You will no longer have a name among the living. You will go out into the world without friends, or parents, without even being able to say where you come from. It will be misery if you succeed, and shameful and terrible if you are found out."
But her words were of no avail. The young mistress was as firmly resolved as before. But she ceased begging and persuading now; she began to threaten.
"Lotta, mark my words; if you will not help me as I ask, then to-morrow I go to the verger's to him who is waiting for me there."
"You would never do that," said Lotta.
"I would do anything. Anything but go back to the old life."
Before Lotta could reply to this, something happened. There was a sound of footsteps approaching from outside—a cautious tread, but heavy and distinct. The sound did not stop at the entrance, but continued round the house. Once or twice again it was heard; then it died away.
Sigrun made a sign to Lotta, who hurried to a window, drew aside the curtain, and looked out into the snowy-clear night.
"It was the farm lad," she said.
The beautiful woman drew herself up. Her eyebrows contracted, her head was raised, her eyes shot a furious glance at someone who was not there.
"He has done that every night," she said, "since I moved over here. It is by his master's orders. He is watching. Listening to hear if I have a lover with me."
Lotta said nothing. She was beginning to give up all further resistance.
"And you, Lotta; you think Edward will change? Well, there you can see. Does he trust me now any more than before? Sending a boy to spy on me?"
She raised her voice as she spoke; the insult of her husband's suspicion wounded every fibre of her being.
"It can never come right between them after this," thought Lotta. "He has killed all the love that was in her. Perhaps it is best that she should go."
And so it was that Lotta Hedman gave way before the sudden conviction that Sigrun's love for her husband was dead or dying, though she would not admit it herself—was not even, perhaps, aware of it.
Lotta protested no more. She did not assent in words, but she ceased to oppose.
Some time passed in hasty preparations. Sigrun took off her rings and borrowed a change of clothing from Lotta. A little underclothing and the six hundred kronor she packed away in a leather bag, likewise belonging to Lotta, who further had to provide a cloak and kerchief. It was essential that nothing of Sigrun's own clothing should be missing.
When Sigrun was nearly ready, she turned suddenly to Lotta and stood still.
"Lotta, you understand that all this has been brought about by the hand of God? Do not fear either for me or for yourself."
Her courage and presence of mind were admirable in their way. She showed not the least hesitation or fear.
But when all was ready, there came a hard moment at the last.
"I am leaving so much that is dear to me," she said. The tears flowed down her cheeks; she seemed to realize at once the full seriousness of the irrevocable step she was about to take.
"Now I shall never look at the little picture of Stenbroträsk again, that comforted me so many times. And the locket with the portrait of my little girl—I dare not take that either."
"That, at least, you might take, I think," said Lotta. "But you need not go at all," she added.
"And, Lotta, you know there is one of the cows I was so fond of. Look after her a little when you can."
She moved toward the door.
"Don't forget, Lotta, when my Christmas rose comes out, to put it on Edward's writing-table."
Then she kissed Lotta Hedman for the first time, and went away.
Sigrun had not been gone more than a quarter of an hour when Lotta again heard footsteps outside—a light, careful tread, not the heavy tramp of the farm lad. The moment she heard it, she thought to herself: "What a mercy! It is Sigrun come back again after all."
But no sooner had she drawn the bolt and opened the door than she found herself face to face with a strange man. No wonder the poor girl was terrified. Never in her life had she felt so sinful and conscience-stricken as now.
"Eh, Lotta, Lotta," she thought to herself. "It is beginning already."
The fellow was poorly dressed, with a big slouch hat. Evidently, some sort of a vagabond. "For Heaven's sake, don't come in here," said Lotta, placing herself in his way. "We've smallpox in the house, and there's one lying dead inside there."
The man did not make off at once, as Lotta had expected. He stood in the doorway, looking round the room.
And before she could guess his intention, he had thrust her aside, and strode across to the entrance of the little room beyond, looking in at the bed where the dead woman lay.
But Lotta gave him no time for close observation. She rushed after him and threw her arms about him, pulled him away, and closed the bedroom door.
The man made no resistance. He seemed to think she was anxious to keep him away from infection.
"It won't hurt me," he said. "I've got it already if I'm to have it. The woman in there is my wife. She was taken bad a couple of days ago, and this morning she was delirious and ran off."
It was evident that he was speaking the truth—and the whole of Sigrun's plan was thus of no avail. Lotta felt as if the place were falling about her ears.
"But—who are you, then?" she asked.
"I'm not exactly a stranger here," said the man in a calm, quiet voice. "I'm a knife-grinder, and they know me here at the vicarage. I was here only a week ago, doing the scissors and knives. I go about with my horse and cart and grindstone from place to place, and I've not what you could call a proper house of my own for nursing sick folk. When Ruth was taken bad, I was going to get her down to a hospital, but then she ran away, poor creature. I've been wandering about looking for her all day. I wonder how she managed to get here."
Worse and worse. Lotta felt as if the ground beneath her feet were giving way. But, in her confusion, she yet made one more endeavour to save her friend.
"But it's not your wife lying there," she said. "It's my dear mistress."
"Eh?" said the knife-grinder. "The pretty mistress—is she dead? Did they let her lie out here in an outhouse and die?"
"She wished it so herself," said Lotta Hedman.
"Why, then, I beg pardon for tramping in like I did," said the man. "I'll have to be seeking Ruth somewhere else."
He was a little, withered man, with a dark skin and one shoulder constantly thrust up, which gave him a look of sullenness and discontent. Lotta remembered well that the last time he had been at the vicarage he had been rude and troublesome. But now, in the presence of sickness and death, he was quiet and humble.
To Lotta's great relief, he moved toward the door. But then he stopped. There before him lay a pair of wet, downtrodden boots.
"But—these are Ruth's," he said. "What does this mean?"
Lotta's resourcefulness was at an end. She could find nothing for it now but to tell him the truth.
Sigrun had reached beyond the church and cemetery of Algeröd, and was just crossing the bridge over the little stream when she heard Lotta Hedman's voice calling to her.
A moment later a sledge drew up beside her, and Lotta came forward and told her what had happened, telling her, at the same time, that the knife-grinder had promised to say nothing.
The man himself was sitting on the sledge, looking sullen and angry, but he spoke as calmly and peaceably as before.
"It's this way," he said. "I don't like the fashion of it, having Ruth put away and buried under another name. But I'll stick by what I've said for the rest. Young mistress can get up in the sledge here, and I'll drive her back to the vicarage, and nobody the wiser. I'll be as silent as a stone wall."
Sigrun walked over to the man. She had tied a black kerchief round her head, but now she thrust it back.
"And all for that, I'm to go back to my misery?" she asked.
The man seemed uneasy. He cast a hasty glance at her and looked away.
"She is dead. What does it matter in whose name she is buried?" said Sigrun, in a voice trembling with desperation.
"I don't see it's acting fairly by Ruth," said the man stubbornly.
"No," said Sigrun. "It is not, I know. But do not think that I am going back home after this. That I shall not do."
She pointed toward the river, gleaming darkly between the snow-covered banks.
"I will go that way, if need be," she said.
She stood before him, firm and resolute. And the stem earnestness of her face told him clearly enough that she would do as she said.
He turned his face away, as if fearing to look at her.
"I know she'd have a better sort of burial and all that," he said. "And it's no great matter to me, after all, seeing she wasn't my lawful wife, so to speak, though she'd been going about with me these two months. But it seems to me ..."
Lotta gave a cry. Sigrun had hurried away, and stood now crouching by the rail at the side of the bridge, trying to get under.
"For the Lord's sake!" cried the man, rushing toward her. "Don't go and harm yourself! I'll do as you say."
"Remember, I will never go back to it all again," said Sigrun.
"No; you'll have no need. I'll keep silent all right."
"Sigrun is wonderful to-night," thought Lotta. "No one can resist her; she does as she pleases with us all."
And indeed it seemed so. The little ill-humoured fellow could not do enough for her.
"I haven't my proper cart with me to-night," he said. "I borrowed a sledge this morning to go out looking for Ruth. But that'll make it the easier, perhaps, for me to drive you on a bit of the way. It's not so easy to go tramping in the snow for them that's used to sitting warm and comfortable at home."
THE LONG DAY
THE day that had begun with Sigrun's flight from her home was, for many, a sad and weary day—a day so long that it seemed as if it would never reach an end.
So it was for Lotta Hedman. Coming back to the outhouse at three in the morning, she found all as she had left it, and began as well as she could to make preparations for what was to come. She gathered the dead woman's clothes together, thrust them into the stove, with an armful of wood, and burned all to ashes. Then she washed out the stove and drew her curtains across, leaving all looking as it had done the evening before.
Trembling and terrified, she went into the adjoining room where the dead woman lay. She was not afraid of the dead, as a rule, but she felt it here. Sigrun and she had sorely wronged the dead, and she could not approach the bedside without a shudder. Nevertheless, she carried out her plan—took out a sheet and laid it over the body, hiding it completely, and with deep feeling read a prayer or two.
This gave her comfort. She felt now with certainty that the dead woman was no longer an enemy to herself and her mistress, but their faithful helper and ally, of whom she need have no fear.
Lotta endeavoured also to prepare herself for what she must say to those in the house. She called to mind that no one had seen Sigrun all the previous day; she could therefore say that her new illness had begun the night before that. Sigrun had not wished a doctor to be sent for on her account; she thought it was only a little rash breaking out, and nothing dangerous. Then ... what was she to say next?
Lotta walked up and down the room, thinking it over. But after a while she felt too weary and discouraged to move about, and sat down in a chair instead. Soon this too seemed uncomfortable; she rose, and stood leaning against a wall. At last she sank to the floor, close by the bed where the dead woman lay, and stayed there so.
"I ought to go in to the Pastor," she thought. "I ought to wake the servants." But she did neither, only sat still, repeating her explanations to herself and turning them over every way.
"It will all be found out some way or other," she told herself. "And we shall be miserable and shamed, both Sigrun and I. It is terrible to sit and wait like this."
An unexpected comfort relieved her for a little while from her fears and anxiety.
As she sat there on the floor, bowed down by dread of what was to come, her soul took flight from her body, and, rising, hovered away into space between the worlds.
Soon it had risen so far that Lotta Hedman could see earthly things in their proportion; she saw now, not fragments of things, but things themselves in their whole extent. Not merely a stretch of river and stream, but the whole course of the waters from source to mouth. Not a little corner of the forest only, but the mighty expanse of trees in its whole extent. She could follow the line of a mountain chain from end to end. Plains spread out beneath her, and the contours of the land showed clearly marked against the glittering surface of the seas.
It was a beautiful and exalting sight, thought Lotta, but her soul did not stop to watch; it rose still higher.
And soon it had reached a point in space from where it could see the fates of mankind in their relation. Lotta could follow the wanderings of men through the valley of life. And it passed in what seemed to her less than seconds. She saw them enter life, go their brief way, and pass again, out into the unknown. She saw her friend Sigrun on her journey, and the way marked out for her, and the roads that crossed it.
She saw, too, the road which the woman lying dead beside her now had had to traverse. A dark and poor and difficult way, and already it was growing smoother, not smoothed, however, by a covering of darkness, but vanishing in a gleam of light.
At the end of the road stood the dead woman herself, still looking back over her course, that was now transformed into a ribbon of light, and Lotta saw that the woman's spirit rejoiced.
The dead woman pointed to Sigrun's road, and to one of those that crossed it.
"Look," she said, "the thing I longed for most of all in life is now fulfilled by my death!"
And with these words, she vanished in a great splendour, so great that Lotta's soul could not follow there, but must wait without.
And at once it returned to her body, and Lotta Hedman felt now relieved from all her fear a while, believing that what had happened was something that rightly should and must have happened so.
She retained this calm of mind until the door opened and someone asked her if she knew it was half-past seven already.
At this Lotta tried to rise, but now her confidence was gone. She thought of all the troubles that awaited her, and had not the strength to get on her feet, but remained sitting.
The door closed again, no one entered, and for a few minutes she was left in peace.
"It will all be found out very soon now," thought Lotta. "It must be."
And the shame that would come upon Sigrun and herself weighed her down.
A little later, the housemaid entered, with early breakfast for her mistress.
She saw the lamp still alight, the wick smoking and nearly spent, the room full of smoke and almost in darkness. She called out, but no one answered. Then she realized that something must be wrong. She set down the tray, struck a match, and discovered Lotta sitting in a heap beside the bed; she saw, too, that the figure lying on it had a sheet spread over, as over a corpse. She came closer, lifted the sheet a little, and saw a pair of swollen hands.
At this Lotta came to life.
"For Heaven's sake, be careful. It is smallpox."
The girl dropped the sheet and started back.
And she it was who spread the news, telling the Pastor and the rest of the household.
Lotta herself, protected as she was by the dread of infection, was scarcely questioned at all.
A messenger was sent to fetch the verger, a man of strength and authority, and he arranged everything as well as could be done.
He gave orders that Lotta Hedman should stay where she was on account of the infection, and no one was to go near her. Even if the Pastor himself were to send for her, she was not to go.
He and Lotta together laid the body in the coffin, which was afterward carried away to a hastily dug grave.
No investigation was made, hardly a question asked. The vicarage was for a time cut off from all the rest of the district. That the vicar's wife should give out that she was dead while in fact still alive was a thing too unheard of for any to suspect.
"It is that knife-grinder that has been going about the district these last few weeks—he must have brought the infection over from Norway," was the general view. "His wife was ill, too, and ran away from him in her delirium."
The doctor's words were also called to mind; the disease must have been there before any knew of it.
And the longest and most agonizing day Lotta Hedman had ever known came to an end without any discovery of what had been done.
Sigrun glanced now and again at the driver sitting on the edge of the sledge. It was still dark night, and she could only vaguely distinguish the outline of the figure—the broad-brimmed hat, the upraised shoulder, the short nose, and the sullen mouth.
"It is not a man sitting there," she told herself, "but Death. I did not know him when he came first, but I know him now. And who else could it be? I have given myself up into his power. And he has come to fetch me and carry me away to his own land."
They drove on over wide and desolate mountain tracts, covered with snow. A few scattered, stunted trees and bushes here and there rendered the barrenness of the country still more marked.
"It is the kingdom of Death," she said to herself.
And she, who had a while ago been so eager, active, and commanding, felt herself now sinking into a quiet calm. The effort of will was at an end, hopes and desires were gone.
It is dangerous, perhaps, for a mortal to make an ally of Death. For Death may take it in earnest.
And Sigrun seemed really to feel a change taking place in herself. All the links that bound her to her former life were being loosened one by one.
Love of her husband, the sorrow and misery of her married life, had filled all her thoughts before. But now, all this faded and disappeared. A great void was where it had been, but no regrets, no bitterness.
"The dead must feel like this," she thought. "Thus it must be to be freed from all earthly things. Love and sorrow disappear."
Little foolish things she had said as a child, and had been ashamed of ever since, little offences that had troubled her long, little humiliations she had never forgotten—all these vanished now in a moment. Hereafter, she would think of these as things that no longer concerned her.
She thought of her parents, and the help they had always given her—now she would never have to trouble them again for aid. All was new about her now; she was in another world. "They cannot reach me here," she thought. "They have stood by me up to now, as far as they could. Now I am gone from them for ever. I am driving into the kingdom of Death."
She was like a climbing plant, fastened with many threads to a trellis. Now, one after another was loosed, and soon the whole growth would fall to the ground.
"It must be like this to die," said Sigrun to herself. "It is not hard or painful at all, only a deep rest."
Gradually it grew light. The man on the side of the sledge became once more an ordinary vagabond, with a sullen, unkindly face. The landscape was a stony, barren, poor, but altogether earthly tract, and Sigrun herself awoke to life with its insistent demands for courage and strength of mind....
The horse had had no rest all night, and they were going very slowly. They had to halt for some hours at a peasant's hut to give the animal food and rest. At last, however, they came in sight of a village where there was an inn.
As they were thus approaching the end of their journey, the knife-grinder turned to Sigrun.
"A man like me," he said, "going about the country all ways, sees many strange things in his time. But I will say, this business to-night's the strangest I've ever had a hand in."
"You think so?" Sigrun turned to the little dark man with a friendly smile.
"I'll take my oath I've never seen nor heard the like. And I can't for the life of me see what it was made me soft enough to help with it at all. I can't make it out."
"Neither can I," said Sigrun. "But be sure you will never regret it."
"Why, as to that, you never know," said the man. "But, anyhow, I don't like to let you go on now without knowing how you're going to manage, and where you're making for."
"I am going to America," said Sigrun.
"It costs a heap of money to get to America," said the man.
"You surely do not think I should start on such a journey without money," she returned.
At this the man pulled up, went to the horse, and began lifting and fingering the harness.
"Well," he said, after a pause, "I've nothing much to do this way or that myself. Might be best, perhaps, to drive past the inn here, and I could take you on a few miles farther. There might be someone here that knew you."
For the last half-hour Sigrun had been troubled by that very thought. And the offer was welcome indeed.
"When I do a thing, I believe in doing it thoroughly," said the man, taking his place on the sledge once more.
The next few miles, however, were toilsome. Again they had to stop and rest and feed the horse. And soon they found that the snowfall in these parts had been lighter than where they had come from; the going became so bad after a time that they were forced to walk long stretches of the way.
And time went on. It was nearly noon before they came within sight of the second inn.
Just as they were near enough to distinguish the buildings, a man came driving up with a milk-cart.
"You'd better be careful, Gustavsson," he called to the knife-grinder. "They've telephoned up to the inn to be on the look-out for you. Say you're carrying infection. Vicar's wife at Algeröd died last night of the smallpox, and they say it's you and your woman brought it with you from Norway."
Again they halted, and considered what was best to be done. At last they decided to turn back. Neither cared to drive on to the inn; it was too dangerous.
The knife-grinder suggested making to the eastward, up toward Dalsland. "There's the railway runs from there to Göteborg, too, and nobody 'll know you there."
They turned off accordingly, along a road running east, leading up again through a wild and barren mountain tract.
The going was better here, but the poor beast was nearly spent. And after a third halt for rest and food, it had come to the bottom of its fodder bag.
The knife-grinder brought out some bread and butter and fell to. Sigrun had nothing to eat with her, but she was not hungry.
Afterward, when she looked back on that day, she wondered at herself.
"It was strange. I was altogether calm, and felt nothing at all. No uneasiness, no weariness, not even hunger. I knew all the time all would turn out as it should. I was numbed, as it were, in a way, but I was strong and able to hold out all the time. There must have been something at hand, too, that helped me."
While on the long road up to the plateau she asked a question.
"Did you not say this morning that the woman who died was not your wife?"
"I said so, yes. And it's the truth. She has a good husband and a decent home, but she liked better to go off with me."
And Sigrun questioned him further; not that the matter interested her at all—nothing in the world interested her that day. But talking made the time pass more easily.
"She liked you more than her husband, then?"
"Well, I don't know rightly about that. She was married to a man named Sven Elversson. Mayhap you've heard of him?"
Sigrun nodded.
"I thought at first she'd wearied of him because of—that old business, you know," the man went on. "But after, I found out it was because she thought he didn't care about her himself."
"She wasn't nice at all," said Sigrun. "And he only married her out of pity."
"She was no beauty, that's true," said the man, "but she was a good soul for all that. She was that sort that'd do anything for one they cared about."
Despite her indifference, Sigrun could not help feeling uneasy at these words. She asked no more about the woman.
"Do you know where Sven Elversson is now?"
"He lives at a place in Dalsland, called Hånger. A big place it was once, but there's so many ugly things happened there that no one would live in it, and it was let go to ruin. Sven Elversson bought it for next to nothing. And he lives there now with only his old folks, now that his wife's gone, but he's always taking in someone to help and look after, children and poor folk, as many as he can have there."
Surely there must have been some strange influence at work to-day—something affecting the vagabond knife-grinder as it had done Sigrun. This man, whose habit it was to roam about the country growling and cursing, a terror to all, was quiet and gentle now, and spoke well of everyone.
They started off again, Sigrun sitting in the sledge, and the man on the side as before, with his legs hanging down. Then suddenly he slipped, and fell down in the road.
The horse stopped at once. The man picked himself up and climbed to his seat once more. But a little after, he slipped off again.
"Queer," he said. "I don't know what's the matter with me. My head seems going round."
Sigrun suggested he should sit in the sledge beside her. He did so, and they drove on again. A little later, the reins fell from his hands.
"I must be ill," he said confusedly. "Going the same way as Ruth, by the look of it."
But Sigrun hastened to reassure him.
"You have not slept all night," she said. "Sit there in the corner, and let me drive while you sleep a little."
Again something seemed to give her courage. "He is not ill," it whispered to her, "only tired out. There, he is asleep already."
When she had driven a little way, the horse stopped and refused to go farther.
Sigrun shook her companion by the arm.
"Do you know if there is any place near where we can put up? The horse is quite exhausted now, and it is getting dark already."
The man looked up, dull and heavy with sleep.
"Do you think it's the smallpox?" he asked.
"No, you are only sleepy," said Sigrun.
"It's the smallpox, I doubt, all the same," said the man.
But a moment after he pulled himself together.
"There's no help for it," he said resolutely. "There's a place a couple of miles farther on—a 'vagabonds' hostel,' as they call it. We must try to get on to there."
"We must find shelter somewhere," said Sigrun.
"It's the only thing we can do," said the man. "Though I'd rather have kept from showing myself there again. We're across the boundary now," he went on. "We're in Dalsland, and once we're over the next rise, it's downhill the rest of the way. Turn off to the left at the cross-roads, and drive on to the first house you see."
When at last Sigrun had got the horse up over the rise, she saw in the fading daylight a broad landscape spread out before them, gently sloping, and pleasant to see, with many lakes and long wooded ridges, showing up clearly against the heavy, snow-laden air. The beauty of the sight cheered her, and she drove on with renewed vigour, reached the cross-roads, and turned off to the left.
Several times she had a view of the landscape first seen, but the country seemed as uninhabited as before. At last, however, she sighted a farmhouse just below. The house itself was fairly large, as if belonging to a rich estate, but all the outbuildings were small and mean, little better than any peasant's dwelling might possess.
She roused the sick man anew.
"Are we there now?"
"Yes," he answered, shaking off his drowsiness. "We're at Hånger now. I never thought to come seeking shelter here again."
Sigrun gave a cry. "Hånger!" For a moment she felt like a shipwrecked soul, with the waves already closing over her. "Hånger—that was where you said Sven Elversson ..."
"Ay," said the man. "And I'd never have come here by choice, but there's no help for it now."
"But—if he asked about his wife?"
"Why, I'll have to find something or other to say."
"That he should live here, of all places in the world," said Sigrun despairingly.
"He took the place because it's lonely like, and far away from folk. Ordinary people never come this way, but all sorts of tramps and vagabonds and poor folk, they go to him."
Sigrun drove down a hill toward the house. And her despair passed from her almost at once. Again the same numbness came over her, and something whispered that there was no need to fear; all would go well.
Just at the entrance to the drive stood a little red-painted hut.
"Here it is. Just go in there," said the knife-grinder.
He roused himself.
"I'll drive up to the house and get the horse in," he said. "You can go in meantime. There's nobody in the traveller's hut, it seems. You'll find a key just down under the step."
Sigrun did as he said, and found herself in a little cottage divided midway by a passage running through, with a room on either side. Both rooms were arranged and furnished in the same manner. Bare walls, fixed bedsteads with straw mattresses, a stove, a big, heavy table, and a few heavy chairs. A bucket of water and a bundle of firewood were there, but there were no pillows, no sheets, cooking-pots or plates, no towels or washing basins—nothing that could be taken away. A great cupboard stood in one of the rooms, but the key was not in the lock.
It was not altogether cold in the rooms; there had evidently been a fire there during the day. And they were clean and well aired.
"I must try to light; a fire," thought Sigrun.
While she was busy with this, the knife-grinder entered. He could hardly stand upright. Without a word, he threw himself on a bed, and in a moment was fast asleep.
"I do not think he is ill," said Sigrun to herself. "He will be all right when he has had a night's rest. No need to call for help."
She lit a fire in the other room also, and sat down before it, thinking over her plans. Suddenly she realized that she was tired—she was indeed nearly falling from her seat. Also, she was hungry. "I ought to have brought some food with me," she murmured. And then, suddenly, she remembered her bag. Where was it? It was not in the room. She must have left it in the sledge.
She hurried out. The sledge was standing outside, and the bag was there. She picked it up, and was just going back into the house when a voice hailed her.
"Is that you, Ruth?"
Darkness had fallen quickly. She could vaguely distinguish the figure of an old, bowed man, slowly approaching.
"Do not come near us," she cried; "we are infected."
"I know," answered the man. "We had a telephone message to-day, but I never thought you would come back here again. Well, well, needs must, they say, when the devil drives."
"This must be Joel Elversson," thought Sigrun—"Sven Elversson's father. He is grown old and weak; he takes me for his son's wife."
"Sven is not at home to-day," said Joel in his solemn way. "But we will receive you, Ruth, I and Thala, as he would have done if he had known you came here in need and in peril of death. Here is the key of the cupboard. You know where to find all you need there. And we will bring down food for you and set it outside the door."
He handed her a small key, which she took without a word. He did not seem to expect any answer.
"There's none here bears any grudge against you, Ruth," he said. "We know what it was that made you go. Make yourself as easy as you can, and sleep in peace."
He walked away, and Sigrun hurried into the house. In the cupboard she found pillows and sheets—all that was needed for the night. And, shortly afterward, food was brought.
Sigrun took a part of it and set it in the next room for her companion, then, barring her door carefully, she ate something herself, and went to bed.
"I must have a few hours' sleep now," she thought. "And then I can go on again. I must get away from here before anyone learns who I am."
Almost before she had framed the thought she was fast asleep.
MORNING
THEN Sigrun awoke, a little ray of red winter sun was shining into the poor chamber where she lay. She had slept, not for a few hours only, but the whole night through. She made haste to get up and set the room in order before going on her way.
The rest had strengthened her; she felt well and resolute now, and without regret for the step she had taken. The only thing that troubled her now was her fear lest she might be discovered. If only she could get away from Hånger without any one learning who she was, she felt sure the danger would be past.
Again she found a tray of food outside her door, and with it a paper, on which was written:
"We understand that you are remaining here, since the man has gone away alone. Do not doubt but that you will be welcome."
She went into the room opposite, and saw that her companion had indeed gone. It was one more source of anxiety removed. She was rested now, and would far rather go on foot than drive in his sledge. All she need do was to ask her way to a town where she could get a proper conveyance. It could not be far to the nearest railway station; she could be in Göteborg that evening.
She fastened the black kerchief round her head, put on Lotta Hedman's cloak, and, taking up her bag, prepared to start.
Before leaving the room, however, she opened her bag to see if the money and other things were safe. Then she gave a cry of dismay. The six hundred kronor were gone.
She felt in the pocket of her cloak, and in her dress. The money was not there.
She understood at once that they had been stolen. The knife-grinder had taken them out of the bag while it was in the sledge.
She staggered to a seat. This was a terrible blow. She could not go to America now. All roads were barred. Oh, Heaven!
She bowed her head on the table and tried to think. Yes, she had told the man yesterday that she had money. And he perhaps had been thinking all along how he could get hold of what she had. Tired and exhausted as he was, he had yet been able to carry out his plan.
And in so doing he had rendered life impossible for her.
"It is a hard world to go out in for one that is poor and alone," she thought. "A hard world."
She felt not exactly penitent; but she realized now the utter impossibility of accomplishing her purpose.
"I might go out as a beggar on the high road," she thought. "But what would be the good of that? I did not leave my home to be an adventuress."
To return home seemed equally impossible. How could she tell her husband that she had given herself out as dead in order to escape from him? It was impossible—not to be thought of.
She knew that for the time being she was among good people. Should she ask them to help her? Again the same difficulty arose. She would have to confess her deceit, her shame. And these honest souls would feel compelled to inform her husband at once that she was alive.
"It was no fancy, after all, that of yesterday," she told herself. "It was Death that sat beside me on the sledge. And Death will not release one who has once given herself into his hands."
"But he is not a hard master," her restless thought went on. "He loosed the bonds that held me to earthly things, and in a gentle way. Why should I not trust him now?"
And so she remained sitting at the table for about an hour, trying to familiarize herself with the thought of death.
"God will be merciful," she said. "He knows all. He knows I did not mean harm to any one. And He knows that this is the one way open to me now."
Just then someone entered the room. But Sigrun did not move. It was utterly indifferent to her now, whoever saw her. Her decision was taken, and she knew what she had to do.
She lay still bowed over the table with her face in her hands, and could not see who had come in. The step, however, told her that it was a man, and not an old, but a young man.
"It is Sven Elversson himself," she thought.
She heard him approaching her at first; then he drew back. He went to the stove, lit a fire there, and returned to the table where she sat.
"Is it so hard for you, Ruth?" he said. "Let me send some of the children to you. Is there nothing here that you might be glad to see again?"
At these words she raised her head, and turned toward him, with a look of fixed despair.
"I am not the one you thought to see," she said. "I am Sigrun Rhånge, wife of the vicar of Algeröd."
Sven Elversson drew back a step or two. But he had so trained himself to preserve the same calm, whatever news might be brought him, that he did not even utter a cry. Only his face turned pale. But his confusion was evident from the fact that he began thinking aloud.
"Sigrun Rhånge is dead," he said. "She died the night before last. When I heard she was dead, I went to Algeröd myself, to see her once more for the last time, but it was too late. She was already laid in her coffin and buried in her grave."
Sigrun sat gazing at him. There was a solemnity of grief in his words that almost touched her. She was convinced that he was unaware of having spoken aloud.
"Would it were so," she said in answer to his thought. "Would that Sigrun Rhånge were truly dead and in her grave."
"Sigrun Rhånge is dead," he repeated in a low, monotonous voice, still unable to collect himself. "I shall never see her again on earth."
"Yes," she agreed. "We may surely say that Sigrun Rhånge is dead. But I, unhappy creature that I am, I am living yet."
Something within him seemed to grasp the inner meaning of all this quicker than thought, and set his heart in fierce commotion. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes glittered.
He came toward her, took her hand and held it in one of his, while the other stroked her cheek with a swift, momentary touch. He seemed trying to convince himself that it was indeed a living woman here before him.
"You, alive!" he said, and his voice rose to a cry of joy, only to sink next moment to a low, gentle tone. "You here, in my house! What does it mean?"
There was much in his manner that astonished her. But at the same time, it gave her a little courage. Here at least was one who did not look on her misfortune with cold indifference.
"You wrote so kindly to your wife this morning," she said. "And I have always heard so much good of you. Will you help me now? I am in the greatest need that ever any could be."
The tears flowed from her eyes. And in her extremity, her desperate need of help, she threw herself on her knees before him.
He did not help her to rise at once. Instead, he laid one hand on either shoulder, and bent over her, his face almost touching her.
"You helped me once," he said, "when I was in my sorest need. Do you not think I should be glad to repay you that a thousand times, if it were in my power?"
Suddenly he checked himself, and, regaining calmness, moved quietly away from her and drew up a chair.
"Will you not tell me how all this came about?"
She stood up beside him, and began hesitatingly:
"There is so much to say. I hardly know how to begin." For a moment she was on the point of giving way to tears, but restrained herself. "We were not very happy in our marriage, my husband and I."
He did not seem to notice that she was standing while he was seated. But he understood that she needed help to tell her story.
"My wife was not happy either," he said.
He rested one elbow on the table and leaned forward so as to cover his eyes.
Sigrun understood that he was encouraging her to go on.
"There's been talk about us here and there, I dare say," she continued. "If you were in Algeröd yesterday, no doubt you heard about the scene with the man who was staying with us...."
"Yes," he said, "I heard that and more. But there was no ill-will in what was said. Only sorrow—nothing but sorrow."
His voice was almost a sob. He felt the old fierce pain once more. It hurt him beyond words to speak to her like this, when his one desire was to lay his head in her lap and tell her of the sorrow that had racked him the day before and the misery of this morning, when he learned that his wife had come back now—now that his heart longed only to be left to its sorrow for another.
"And no one doubted that I was dead?" asked Sigrun.
"No," he said. "No one doubted that you had died of the smallpox."
She grasped his arm hastily.
"You—you do not know who it was that died. It must have been ..."
She stopped, with open mouth, not daring to go on.
"Was it my wife?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I think it must have been ... your wife."
Sven Elversson said nothing, but rose and walked across the room.
Now Sigrun in her turn sank down on a chair. "Death," she thought—"Death will not let me go. I had forgotten that the dead woman was Sven Elversson's wife when I asked him to help me."
She sat crying quietly, and pulling at a handkerchief. The eerie, drowsy, death-like feeling came over her again.
A few moments later, Sven Elversson came back to the table and sat down in the same position as before.
"Now tell me everything," he said.
And she obeyed. She told him all that had passed from the moment when the strange woman had come to her door, until now, when she herself sat in the vagabonds' hostel at Hånger.
He listened with all his soul, and was filled with sorrow for the desperate thing she had done, and all the misery she had brought on herself. He understood better than she did herself that, as she was, all ways in the world were closed to her now. That if she stayed in this world at all, she must be condemned by her own act to endless unrest, endless anxiety, endless penitence and shame.
But despite his sorrow and deep sympathy for her, he could not repress a feeling of rejoicing in himself, that repeated over and over again: "At least she is alive. And she has come to you. Sits here beside you, talking to you. What does all the rest matter now that she is alive?"
Sigrun had long finished her story, and Sven Elversson sat silent, thinking what to say, what must be done. And watching him as he sat, she felt clearly that such a man as he could do nothing else but send her back to her husband. "This man cannot be led to any wrongful deed," she thought.
"And so it has all been in vain," she told herself. "All to no purpose. Death will not let me go."
She looked her fate bravely in the face. And she made no attempt to influence Sven Elversson by speaking of what she had resolved.
"This is a big thing," he said, and was surprised to find himself talking to Sigrun just as he did to others whom he helped. "But the one thing clear to me at the moment is that you must not go about the country now carrying infection. You will have to stay on here at Hånger for a time."
She looked up at him. It was so simple, and she had never thought of it. A few days' respite at least. The thought of death slipped aside.
"There is no one here but my father and mother," he went on. "And I do not think they will be afraid. But I forgot, there are some children staying here too, that I took in a while ago. But we can send them down to the village. And then we can shut up the place to travellers for a while. You can move over to the house and have one of the guest rooms to yourself."
"And after?" she asked almost harshly.
He bowed his head, and tried to think. Because he loved her, he could read her thoughts, and he knew that his answer now meant life or death to her.
He could find only strength to say:
"It must be in the hand of God."
"I cannot drive her to despair," he thought to himself; "but it may be that her own mind will change. Her love for her husband may wake anew. Surely all will go well, all will come right in time."
She understood that this was only a respite, but she gave a sigh of relief.
"The way I look at it is this," he said. "It is never well to lie, and hide things. There's no denying that. But then, again, it is not well to torture a creature to death. That's no less true. But the heart may change. Or, better, may become itself again. And then it will be easy, all that seems so difficult now. May I not believe that?"
She shook her head decisively, but said nothing.
"Nay, let us believe it," he said. "Let us trust to that. And now you will not mind if I tell my father and mother all about it. They are not the sort to tell more than they should. And then we will try not to make this more hard and serious than we need. Just think that it will all come right again in time."
Sigrun felt as if he were playing with her. At any other time his manner would have annoyed her, but now it was indescribably soothing and comforting. She felt as if this man had taken all her burden, all her trouble and misfortune, on himself, to bear it in her stead.
BOOK III
THE BEREAVED
IT WAS Sigrun's mother, the old Dean's wife from Stenbroträsk. Early in May, 1916, she was on a visit to some relatives in Bohuslän, and, being so near, thought she ought to go over to her son-in-law at Algeröd and see how he was.
On arriving at the humble little vicarage, she found that Pastor Rhånge had brought his mother over to keep house for him. A simple and straightforward soul, this mother, who, as the widow of a pilot, and in straitened circumstances, had pinched and saved to get her son into the priesthood. The visitor noticed that she was proud and happy at being able to live with her son and look after him, as was reasonable enough. Nothing to take offence at in that.
But the income arising from the living was so pitifully small that the old lady had likewise found herself obliged to eke out the money by taking paying guests. She had staying with her now two young girls, in delicate health, who had been sent there in the hope of benefiting by the fresh mountain air.
At first the two girls had been a little afraid of the dark and gloomy master of the house, who was in mourning for his wife, but when Sigrun's mother came to Algeröd they had got over their fear. It was a great surprise to her. Instead of a house full of sorrow and mourning, she found a place full of laughter and play and merriment.
The afternoon seemed long to her; she was in dread of losing her patience before it ended. Wherever she went, the vision of her daughter was before her eyes, and she could not but wonder how Rhånge ever could endure these two young girls about the place, showing off as they did, and courting his attention, so evidently that it must have annoyed and incensed him had he been as he was before.
But he was changed—that was evident in every way. He was a different man altogether.
His voice, his laugh, had grown loud and shrill, and he had, too, a strange way of boasting about his own excellence.
Before, his manner had always been marked by great dignity and seriousness. No one could be in his company for two minutes without discovering the priest in him. But now, all that had disappeared. Before, he had seemed to leave it to others to find out that he was a gifted and distinguished man; now, he took it upon himself to tell them so.
He spoke of how clever he had been at school, how easily and well he had passed his examination, of the great and wonderful things he had done among his congregations; kept on with story after story, as if he would never end.
And the two girls clapped their hands in evident admiration.
It seemed, indeed, as if he were pleased to show his mother-in-law how they looked up to him, and how completely he could do as he pleased with them. He was like a man who has made one great failure, and seeks desperately in every way to reinstate himself.
He was not in any way pleasant or obliging toward the two young girls, and there was contempt in every word he gave them. But he could not keep away from them. He spoke of work he had to do, but he did not leave the company. Sigrun's mother was hurt at first, thinking that her daughter was already forgotten. But in the course of the evening, another idea came into her mind. She began to think he felt the loss of his wife so keenly that it was driving him to ruin.
She was to stay the night, and when it was late enough for her to retire, she could not refrain from saying a few words to him: that she understood he would have to marry again soon, but she sincerely hoped he would be careful in his choice, and not take the first that came to hand.
At this he asked her to go with him into his room, but said nothing to the others.
And there he showed her how he had collected all Sigrun's belongings—things she had brought with her from her own home, as well as those from after her marriage.
Portraits of her in all sizes were spread about the room, and her books were foremost on the bookshelf.
One book there was which her mother recognized particularly; a little book of devotion which had been given her before her confirmation. It lay on the table beside the bed.
"I read in it every evening," said the Pastor—"that book and no other."
He opened the middle compartment in a large cabinet. Here he had put away a couple of little ivory boxes, which Sigrun had had as a little gill. And, taking them out, he laid them caressingly against his cheek.
"She was fond of them," he said, "and they are never touched by any hand but mine. Those others out there are never allowed to see anything of all this."
He showed her the little picture of the home at Stenbroträsk, which had comforted Sigrun so many times. It was wrapped in several layers of tissue paper, rolled up in a cloth, and packed away at the back of a drawer, as if it had been something precious.
"You don't think I would ever let any one else look at this?" he said.
He brought out a little cloth which Sigrun had worked for him.
"It is always on that table," he said, "because Sigrun herself put it there. But I have another that I put over it when the sun shines in—you can see it is not faded."
Sigrun had made a cushion for his rocking-chair, and the fringe at the bottom had come loose in one or two places. He had tried to mend it himself, sewing with coarse thread and big stitches. He held it up now to show—clumsily done it was, but he could not entrust the work to any other hand.
Sigrun's mother offered to take it up with her to her room and mend it properly. He allowed her to do so, but held the cushion long in his hands, turning it over and over, before he could let it go.
The dearest treasures of all, Sigrun's two plain rings and one other ring, and one or two little gold trinkets, he had put away in a little leather bag.
"I carry that about with me all day in my waistcoat pocket," he said. "And at night it is under my pillow. It never leaves me night or day."
Sigrun's mother was moved to deep sympathy. She saw how his sorrow was tearing at him, threatening to rend him asunder. And she understood that he strove against it in the presence of others, tried to be as he had been, but could not, and that it was this which made such discord in his being.
She sat down on a sofa and beckoned him to her.
"Come and sit down by me," she said in a gentle, motherly voice. "And tell me all your trouble."
At this he broke out into violent weeping.
"I don't know," he cried—"I don't know what is to become of me. I can find nothing in life, now that Sigrun is gone.
"She is gone," he said again, "and yet I cannot feel that she is dead. To me it seems as if she had gone from me because she was afraid of me.
"I could not make her happy, but it was only because I loved her so, beyond all bounds or reason. I wanted her all to myself. And I hemmed her in and shut her off from everything. And now it tortures me beyond measure that I let her suffer. If I had known she was going to leave me so soon, I would have kept myself in check. What would it have mattered if I had perished, as long as she was happy in her brief earthly life?
"I know they say she died of the smallpox. But I dare not believe that was it. And I dare not ask how it was that she went. I dread to hear that she died because I had made her so unhappy that she could not stay with me."
Sigrun's mother sat still and let him give vent to his feelings. She was not surprised at anything he said, for she knew, being old, that no human being ever stood beside the grave of a loved one without being torn by remorse and the pangs of conscience.