There was a solemn stillness after this conversation. 114 Thora sat bent over beside the fire musing. Margaret, wearied with the feelings which her interview with Snorro had called forth, rested upon the sofa; she was suffering, and the silence and melancholy of her mother seemed almost a wrong to her. It was almost as if she had taken Jan’s part.
A knock at the door startled both women. Thora rose and opened it. It was Jan. “Mother,” he said, “I want to see my wife and child.”
“Margaret, speak for thyself.”
“I dare not see Jan. Tell him so.”
Thora repeated the message.
“Ask Margaret if that is her last word to me?”
Mechanically Thora asked the question, and after an agonizing pause Margaret gasped out, “Yes, yes—until—”
“Ask her to stand a moment at the window with the child. I long to see them.” Then he turned to go to the window, and Thora shut the door. But it was little use repeating Jan’s request, Margaret had fainted, and lay like one dead, and Thora forgot every thing till life returned to her daughter. Then as the apparent 115 unkindness was irrevocable and unexplainable, she said nothing of it. Why should she add to the sorrow Margaret was suffering?
And as for Jan, the universal opinion was that he ought to suffer. He had forfeited his wife, and his home, and his good name, and he had lost his boat. When a man has calamity upon calamity the world generally concludes that he must be a very wicked man to deserve them. Perhaps the world is right; but it is also just possible that the world, even with its six thousand years of gathered wisdom, may be wrong.