"I think she is quite right," said the old mistress. "Let her go, little Ingmar! You may as well know that otherwise I"ll be the one to leave: for I"ll not sleep one night under the same roof with the likes of her."
"For G.o.d"s sake let me go!" Brita moaned.
Ingmar ripped out an oath, turned the horse, and sprang into the cart. He was sick and tired of all this and could not stand any more of it.
Out on the highway they kept meeting church people. This annoyed Ingmar. Suddenly he turned the horse and drove in on a narrow forest road.
As he turned some one called to him. He glanced back. It was the postman with a letter for him. He took the letter, thrust it into his pocket, and drove on.
As soon as he felt sure that he could not be seen from the road, he slowed down and brought out the letter. Instantly Brita put her hand on his arm. "Don"t read it!" she begged.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Never mind reading it; it"s nothing."
"But how can you know?"
"It"s a letter from me."
"Then tell me yourself what"s in it."
"No, I can"t tell you that."
He looked hard at her. She turned scarlet, her eyes growing wild with alarm. "I guess I will read that letter anyway," said Ingmar, and began to tear open the envelope.
"O Heavenly Father!" she cried, "am I then to be spared nothing?
Ingmar," she implored, "read it in a day or two--when I am on my way to America."
By that time he had already opened the letter and was scanning it.
She put her hand over the paper. "Listen to me, Ingmar!" she said.
"It was the chaplain who got me to write that letter, and he promised not to send it till I was on board the steamer. Instead he sent it off too soon. You have no right to read it yet; wait till I"m gone, Ingmar."
Ingmar gave her an angry look and jumped out of the wagon, so that he might read the letter in peace. Brita was as much excited now as she had been in the old days, when things did not go her way.
"What I say in that letter isn"t true. The chaplain talked me into writing it. I _don"t_ love you, Ingmar."
He looked up from the paper and gazed at her in astonishment. Then she grew silent, and the lessons in humility which she had learned in prison profited her now. After all she suffered no greater embarra.s.sment than she deserved.
Ingmar, meanwhile, stood puzzling over the letter. Suddenly, with an impatient snarl, he crumpled it up.
"I can"t make this out!" he said, stamping his foot. "My head"s all in a muddle."
He went up to Brita and gripped her by the arm.
"Does it really say in the letter that you care for me?" His tone was shockingly brutal, and the look of him was terrible.
Brita was silent.
"Does the letter say that you care for me?" he repeated savagely.
"Yes," she answered faintly.
Then his face became horribly distorted. He shook her arm and thrust it from him. "How you can lie!" he said, with a hoa.r.s.e and angry laugh. "How you can lie!"
"G.o.d knows I have prayed night and day that I might see you again before I go!" she solemnly avowed.
"Where are you going?"
"I"m going to America, of course."
"The h.e.l.l you are!"
Ingmar was beside himself. He staggered a few steps into the woods and cast himself upon the ground. And now it was his turn to weep!
Brita followed him and sat down beside him, she was so happy that she wanted to shout.
"Ingmar, little Ingmar!" she said, calling him by his pet name.
"But you think I"m so ugly!" he returned.
"Of course I do."
Ingmar pushed her hand away.
"Now let me tell you something," said Brita.
"Tell away."
"Do you remember what you said in court three years ago?"
"I do."
"That if I could only get to think differently of you, you would marry me?"
"Yes, I remember."
"It was after that I began to care for you. I had never imagined that any mortal could say such a thing. It seemed almost unbelievable your saying it to me, after all I had done to you. As I saw you that day, I thought you better looking than all the others, and you were wiser than any of them, and the only one with whom it would be good to share one"s life. I fell so deeply in love with you that it seemed as if you belonged to me, and I to you. At first I took it for granted that you would come and fetch me, but later I hardly dared think it."
Ingmar raised his head. "Then why didn"t you write?" he asked.
"But I did write."
"Asking me to forgive you, as if that were anything to write about!"
"What should I have written?"
"About the other thing."
"How would I have dared--I?"