In God's Way: A Novel

by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

"Fie!" hissed out Josephine, in all the strength of her indignation; "she may be warm, but she cannot be pure!" Kallem felt a stab at his heart; she was aiming at Ragni! His sister was cruel, and looked cruel like in her school-girl days, and he too became again the boy of those days; bang! he gave her a box on the ear. It hit the hood, but it was heartily meant.

With flaming eyes she flew at him like in the days when they used to fight. She whispered: "I think you----!" she trembled with rage and scorn, then she turned full of contempt and left him.

Had anyone seen them? They were alone in the street. He felt an indescribable fear; this might perhaps be visited on Ragni.

Kallem thought that the words "not pure," coming from Josephine's mouth, were a hit at what had happened in former years; that was why he was so indignant. But what would he not have felt if he had known that she was rather aiming at their present life? When the minister and his wife came home and kept away from them, the reason was partly that Kristen Larssen, the scoffer and blasphemer, was received in Kallem's house, that Ragni gave him English lessons, and that Kallem had long conversations with him. For the majority of the congregation Kristen Larssen appeared to be a regular devil, and when any new arrivals, both men and women, sought his company (like the Sören Pedersens), it was a great offence. Soon after Karl Meek came to live with them, and from that time Ragni was never seen anywhere except in his society. To crown all, they travelled up together to the wood district; this was too much when it a was a question of a divorced wife, who was both a free-thinker and might be accused of breaking her marriage bonds.

Josephine had come with the well-meant intention of warning her brother. If she had been allowed to talk to him quietly, she would have told him all this; she was not afraid, and she was sincerely fond of him. But now she went back branded by his scorn.

Then all her pent-up passion burst forth! First and foremost, in bitterest hatred of her who separated brother from sister; but by degrees it turned to hatred of everything that caused it. The death of Andersen, the mason--the more her husband was upset by it, the more noticeable was the contrast between them--and at a particularly unfortunate time. All that Tuft complained of in himself was like making so many concessions to her, and now he intended to put an end to it. It could not have happened at a worse time.

In the house next to theirs lived a dried up old woman, the minister's mother; she was always protesting against the other house. She never put her foot inside it at any party, and seldom otherwise except for family prayers, and when she dined there on church festival days. Her daughter-in-law's manner, her dancing, her dressing, and her friends were an abomination to her, and the minister's perpetual love-making she thought ungodly. The little boy became her spy. Josephine was sitting one summer day on the other side of the open door, and heard her questioning him as to who had been there the day before, what they had had for dinner, and if they had drunk much wine, and how many different kinds. "Grandmother asks me if mother is going out to-day, too," said he one day. "And she asks me what father says to mother when she comes home, and if father slept upstairs with us."

Josephine took it very quietly. But the knowledge that her mother-in-law was at the bottom of all the minister's religious admonitions, did not make her more inclined to give in. She intended to live as she thought fit; he might do the same.

For him, it was the struggle of his youth, from the time that he for her sake had given up the idea of being a missionary and there was always the same result; he was so much in love that he was not master of himself. But not because she enticed him--just the contrary! When she sometimes became tired of him as of everything else--for there were sudden changes in her moods--it was then that she appeared to him most lovely and most to be desired, like the women of the old legends. He could make no resistance then.

But the great task that God had imposed on him by the sick-bed of his friend, that showed him what he had neglected in his life; now he would feel the fruits of remission.