“How did he take it?”
“Every one will believe you’re guilty,” she said. “And Norby is powerful. Father is coming again to-morrow. You’d promised to bring him from town the last ten thousand krones he got for you.”
Wangen’s head drooped. A vision of her father, with his white hair and red, watery eyes, came before him. What should he say to the old man to-morrow, now that everything was lost?
“And the widow from Thorstad has been here,” she went on. “You had promised her half as soon as you came from town.”
Wangen still stared into the shadow by the piano. He was afraid she would ask him if he had the money.
“It is worst for the working-men,” she continued, “who are now quite destitute, and cannot get credit anywhere. And in the middle of winter too!” She was on the verge of tears.
Perhaps they too would be coming in the morning to ask about what he had promised them. In the half-darkness Wangen could see before him the old man with the red, watery eyes, the widow whose fortune he had wasted, the work-people—all of them. They would all come in the morning, and call him to account.
He turned cold at the thought, and the same dark accusation he had brought against himself in the train appeared once more, while he felt his clear innocence of forgery to be valueless; it grew fainter, like a lantern on the point of going out, leaving him in a darkness where the crushing sense of responsibility brought him to despair, where remorse fastened upon him with innumerable hands, and where he must eternally and inexorably remain a prisoner and be tortured with the pains of hell.
He rose suddenly. “Let’s go into the other room,” he said, raising his shoulders; “it’s so cold here.”
In the dining-room he placed the lamp on the table, and stood a moment gazing at it.