In God's Way: A Novel

by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Kallem was speechless. Meek asked no more questions. Ragni rearranged her dress, and Meek silently handed her a shawl she had taken off whilst he was examining her. And as she sat helplessly trying to put it on again, Kallem suddenly seemed to think of something he had to fetch from the office. He did not return. She understood the reason why, and for a little while she was doubtful whether she could get up from her chair, and felt as if she would faint again; but the thought of him alone in the office helped her to overcome her weakness, she must go to him. So she begged Dr. Meek to excuse her, got up and went toward the dining-room door and disappeared through it. She too remained away.

Meek waited first a few moments, then a little longer--and still longer. Then he went out to the passage, put on his coat and hat, told the servant in the kitchen that he was obliged to leave; and left many messages for them.

Sigrid looked for them in the rooms, knocked at the door of the office, could get no answer, she listened and at last opened the door. Kallem was lying on the sofa, Ragni kneeling beside him close up to him. Sigrid announced very quietly that the dinner was ready and that Dr. Meek had gone away. No one answered, no one looked up.

Hitherto Kallem and Ragni had always considered that the day when Ragni sailed for America was the worst they had ever gone through; both in their letters and in speaking of it they had said that they felt as though he must die. But death is different; it is not like anything else. They learned to know that now.

After that day there came a time full of hopeless struggles, speechless despair, and tenderest but joyless love. Ragni had various matters "to arrange," which she quietly set about doing; she had a good deal too to write, and whenever she was able she was thus occupied. She wrote, then scratched out; the whole thing, notwithstanding all her work, proved to be a very short affair. But as long as she was taken up with what she had set herself to get done, she really seemed tolerably well; Kallem was quite surprised.

He himself had lost all courage. He saw the worst before him. As long as he could he shrank from examining her expectoration; ... he knew beforehand that he would find tubercular bacilli there--that enemy, to fight against which he had spent both fortune and life. And now it had conquered him in his own house. But one day he was obliged to do it--and with the expected result. He did not pace up and down the laboratory, neither did he weep nor wring his hands. He only tried whether it were possible to think without her; but it ended always by his thinking of her only. From the hour they first met--all her little ways, the most trifling proofs of her charm and talents, her failings and her silent poetical love, he lived all over again in equal joy and grief; it was all just as dear to him, and just as impossible to part with; countless incidents full of humour, warmth, fear, sense of beauty, devotion; they all followed him about like so many eyes. Where could he go to, what more could he possibly find to do? She was with him in all his work. Her portrait, taken in the third year of her stay in America, was standing on the edge of the stove; it had been sent to him originally that he might see what effect the progress of her intellectual development had produced in her face and eyes, a joyful confirmation of all he had predicted when he sent her over there. Now, as always, the eyes of the portrait seemed to seek his; during that time of waiting, their smile had cheered and encouraged him; what had it not been for him--that portrait? And now there came pouring in on him all the recollections of their first meeting, the first words, first shy strangeness, the first full and entire recognition, the first embrace.

Only to remind him that now all must cease. All, too, that he had thought of and done in his life together with her; the delight in it, his capabilities, his faith. What in all the world had happened? He was bound to speak to her about it; was there anything she wished to hide from him? Some imprudence which she dare not confess? What could it be? But he must be very careful about it.

Then one day when he came home she was not downstairs. He went up to her and found her lying down. She stretched out her hand--how thin it had become! and fastened her large eyes on him with a faint, half-veiled expression: "I lay down for a little," she whispered; "only for an hour or two." She did not look so very ill; perhaps because she was in bed. He sat down beside the bed and took both her long thin hands between his.

"There is something in all this," he ventured to say, "which has not been confided to me. Once I was entirely on a wrong scent, but latterly, too, it has been more hurried than I could understand, for this reason, that I have not been watchful enough. There is something at the bottom of all this, some great, may be oft-repeated imprudence which I have not been counting on. Darling, tell it me now; I shall have no peace until you do."

"I will tell you. I have just been thinking about it now. Down-stairs in my writing-table you will find some papers in the first drawer to the left; they are all for you. You must read them when--" she broke off abruptly. "By and by," she added and pressed his hand gently.