He turned about, reeled toward the fence and fell forward upon it, and with his head between his arms fell into an unquenchable passion of weeping, broken by long, deep groans.
His wife took him by the shoulder.
“Lavrans, Lavrans!” But she could not stay his weeping. “Husband!”
“Oh, never, never, never should I have given her to that man! God help me—I must have known it all the time—he had broken down her youth and her fairest honour. I believed it not—nay, could I believe the like of Kristin?—but still I knew it. And yet is she too good for this weakling boy, that hath made waste of himself and her—had he lured her astray ten times over, I should never have given her to him, that he may spill yet more of her life and her happiness—”
“But what other way was there?” said the mother despairingly. “You know now, as well as I—she was his already—”
“Aye, small need was there for me to make such a mighty to-do in giving Erlend what he had taken for himself already,” said Lavrans. “ ’Tis a gallant husband she has won—my Kristin—” He tore at the fence; then fell again a-weeping. He had seemed to Ragnfrid as though sobered a little, but now the fit overcame him again.
She deemed she could not bring him, drunken and beside himself with despair as he was, to the bed in the hearth-room where they should have slept—for the room was full of guests. She looked about her—close by stood a little barn where they kept the best hay to feed to the horses at the spring ploughing. She went and peered in—no one was there; she took her husband’s hand, led him inside the barn, and shut the door behind them.
She piled up hay over herself and him and laid their cloaks above it to keep them warm. Lavrans fell a-weeping now and again, and said somewhat—but his speech was so broken, she could find no meaning in it. In a little while she lifted up his head on to her lap.
“Dear my husband—since now so great a love is between them, maybe ’twill all go better than we think—”
Lavrans spoke by fits and starts—his mind seemed growing clearer:
“See you not—he has her wholly in his power—he that has never been man enough to rule himself.—’Twill go hard with her before she finds courage to set herself against aught her husband wills—and should she one day be forced to it, ’twill be bitter grief to her—my own gentle child—
“—Now am I come so far I scarce can understand why God hath laid so many and such heavy sorrows upon me—for I have striven faithfully to do His will. Why hath He taken our children from us, Ragnfrid, one by one—first our sons—then little Ulvhild—and now I have given her that I loved dearest, honourless, to an untrusty and a witless man. Now is there none left to us but the little one—and unwise must I deem it to take joy in her, before I see how it will go with her—with Ramborg.”
Ragnfrid shook like a leaf. Then the man laid his arm about her shoulders:
“Lie down,” he said, “and let us sleep—” He lay for a while with his head against his wife’s arm, sighing now and then, but at last he fell asleep.
It was still pitch-dark in the barn when Ragnfrid stirred—she wondered to find that she had slept. She felt about with her hands; Lavrans was sitting up with knees updrawn and his arms around them.
“Are you awake already?” she asked in wonder. “Are you cold?”
“No,” said he in a hoarse voice, “but I cannot go to sleep again.”
“Is it Kristin you are thinking on?” asked the mother. “Like enough ’twill go better than we think, Lavrans,” she said again.
“Aye, ’tis of that I was thinking,” said the man. “Aye, aye—maid or woman, at least she is come to the bride-bed with the man she loves. And ’twas not so with either you or me, my poor Ragnfrid.”
His wife gave a deep, dull moan, and threw herself down on her side amongst the hay. Lavrans put out a hand and laid it on her shoulder.
“But ’twas that I could not,” said he, with passion and pain. “No, I could not—be as you would have had me—when we were young. I am not such a one—”
In a while Ragnfrid said softly through her weeping:
“Yet ’twas well with us in our life together, Lavrans—was it not?—all these years?”
“So thought I myself,” answered he gloomily.
Thoughts crowded and tossed to and fro within him. That single unveiled glance in which the hearts of bridegroom and bride had leapt together—the two young faces flushing up redly—to him it seemed a very shamelessness. It had been agony, a scorching pain to him, that this was his daughter. But the sight of those eyes would not leave him; and wildly and blindly he strove against the tearing away of the veil from something in his own heart, something that he had never owned was there, that he had guarded against his own wife when she sought for it.
’Twas that he could not, he said again stubbornly, to himself. In the devil’s name—he had been married off as a boy; he had not chosen for himself; she was older than he—he had not desired her; he had had no will to learn this of her—to love. He grew hot with shame even now when he thought of it—that she would have had him love her, when he had no will to have such love from her. That she had proffered him all this that he had never prayed for.
He had been a good husband to
