Marit now deemed it wisest to withdraw, but she closed the door slowly behind her, and walked with slow firm step. Knut remained sitting, and again passed his hand over his head two or three times. For the first time in his life Norby thought of going after his wife and thrashing her, for domestic peace was at an end anyhow.
He rose and began to wander about with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Now and again he stood still as if to make quite certain whether this was not a dream from which he might awake. But there stood the outhouses right enough, painted red, and a magpie let itself slip down the sloping roof, and left a furrow in the snow; and there hung Johan Sverdrup over the writing-table, and he himself stood here and still had his forest clothes on. No, it must be true after all that his wife had been to the bailiff—with this——
The floor seemed to become insecure beneath his feet, the office became too small, and he had to go into the large corner room, where he began to walk about with his hands in his pockets. Here there was mahogany furniture and there were large gilt-framed mirrors and other splendours, but now it seemed to Norby as if they were his no longer. He stood still again and again to wonder: “Is it you, Norby, or is it not?”
He stood at the window in the white light reflected from the snow, and looked out at the half-buried garden. But it was not the trees he saw. He saw himself being driven down the hill by the bailiff on his way to prison for having brought a false accusation.
He turned suddenly round, and went resolutely towards the door, but stopped with his hand on the handle. He felt that it was utterly impossible to go to his wife now and tell her the truth, in the first place because he felt more inclined to thrash her, and in the second because he did not know how she would take such a communication. She would perhaps only faint with rage at having run like a fool to the village, but she might also do something worse.
He mounted the stairs to his room in order to change his clothes. He must go to the bailiff. But when his trousers were off, and he was about to pull on his blue serge ones, his hands dropped and he sighed heavily.
“Now isn’t all this a sin and a shame!” he thought. “First I help the man out of kindness, then I have to pay up, then there’s a row in the house, and then I run about and make a fool of myself. And now I was actually going off to hold up my wife to the ridicule of the whole parish! No, that is really going too far!”
He remained sitting with the new trousers in his hand. Yesterday’s unpleasant picture of Wangen had become still more unpleasant now, for in reality he was to blame for all this to-day too. And for that man he was ready to——! The old man suddenly threw down the serge trousers, and drew on the old ones; for if he did withdraw his accusation from the bailiff, he would still have to answer for the report. And go to Wangen and eat humble pie? To ask pardon of that man? Never! Never would he do it!
No, there must be some back way out of this. He would think it over.
Knut Norby suddenly found himself in a misfortune for which he himself was not exactly to blame, but for which he had to bear the responsibility. He did not therefore feel the responsibility to be quite so heavy as it otherwise would have been. All the misery that had come upon his house to-day was thanks to his kindness in helping that fellow. It was Wangen’s fault altogether.