“I saw the distress of your soul,” was
the whispered answer, for it could not be spoken aloud.
“And there was nothing to forgive,” she
added. She had laid her face against his again.
“And it was quite true, Rafael,” she murmured.
She must have passed through terrible days and nights
here, he thought, before she could say that.
“Mother, mother! what a fearful time!”
Her little hand sought his: it was cold; it lay
in his like an egg in a deserted nest. He warmed
it and took the other as well.
“Was not the illumination splendid?” she
said. And now her voice was like a child’s.
He moved the screen which obstructed the light:
he must see her better. He thought, when he saw
the look of happiness in her face, if life looks so
beautiful to her still, we shall have a long time
together.
“If you had told me all that about Absalom,
the picture which you made when you were told the
story of David, Rafael; if you had only told me that
before!” She paused, and her lips quivered.
“How could I tell it to you, mother, when I
did not understand it myself?”
“The illumination—that must signify
that I, too, understand. It ought to light you
forward; do you not think so?”
I must have been somewhere about seven years old,
when one Sunday afternoon a rumour reached the parsonage
that, on that same day, two men, rowing past the Buggestrand
in Eidsfjord, had discovered a woman who had fallen
over a cliff, and had remained half lying, half hanging,
close to the water’s edge.
Before moving her, they tried to find out from her
who had thrown her over.
It was thirty-five miles by water to the doctor’s,
and then an order for admission to the hospital had
also to be procured. She had lain twenty-four
hours before help reached her, and shortly afterwards
she died. Before she breathed her last, she said
it was Peer Hagbo who had done it. “But,”
she added, “they mustn’t do him any harm.”
Everybody knew that there had been an attachment between
the girl, who was in service at Hagbo’s, and
the son of the house, and the shrewd ones instantly
guessed why he wanted to get her out of the way.
I remember clearly the arrival of the news. It
was, as I have said, on a Sunday afternoon, her death
having occurred on the morning of the same day.
It was in the very middle of summer, when the whole
place was flooded with sunshine and gladness.
I remember how the light faded, faces turned to stone,
the fjord grew dim, and village and forest shrank
away into shadow. I remember that even the next
day I felt as though a blow had been dealt to ordinary
existence. I knew that I need not go to school.
Men knocked off work, leaving everything just as it
was, and sat down with idle hands. The women
especially were paralysed: it was evident they
