“What do you mean?” she asked quickly, a flush coming to her face.
“There’s no use of going over it, is there? I began to drink, of course, because I was so damned blue about the boy and you. It seemed as if everything was helplessly mixed up, and there was no way of straightening it out. After all the fight I made to be something, and to win you, and to give you a good place in the world,—all that was suddenly smashed. I couldn’t stand sitting there and thinking of nothing but that. And when I looked about at those folks, and saw how gay and lively and light-hearted they were, I said to myself: ‘Why haven’t I a right to a good time, too? What’s the use of mulling over this black stuff in my mind?’ But I couldn’t make a big enough effort to keep away from it! I kept on thinking of you and little Oscar, with all those gay people talking and laughing and handsome women. ‘My God,’ I said to myself, ‘if I can’t stop thinking of this, I shall have to get up and go outside.’ So I took up my glass of champagne, which I hadn’t touched,—never drink it, as you remember; it was the stuff old Oscar used to start in with when he was on a blow-out—that is why I never could bear it.
“That first glass made everything easier and more natural. It untied the knots in my face. And another made things pleasant; well, there’s no use in going on! I made a beastly fool of myself, sang that fool song, disgraced you before all your friends. Showed them how you had married just a hand out of the mines! My God, I should think you’d want me to go away and never come back!”
He had dropped into a chair, and lay there limp, his head fallen forward upon his hands. She listened to him with increasing wonder, trying to comprehend the significance of his abasement. What was it which he made so much of? Singing a silly song, drinking too much wine. That was his man’s way of escape from the pain of living, which had fastened upon them both. Thus he had tried to live for himself and defy God to make him wretched!
And her way? She reddened with the shame of it, and was silent. Both of them, so she saw, had been trying to flee from the grief that had overtaken them; to take their lives out of the place of despair, away to some new peace and joy. She saw it now very clearly, and she knew suddenly that through that gate there was no escape for either of them. The trap that had caught them was set in the obscure past and was made secure.
“But you would not really leave me, Olaf? You could not. You could not! I and our child would follow you in your thoughts everywhere.”
She knelt beside him and took his head in her hands.
“I tried to run away, too. And I could not. Nor could you. Mine was so much worse than yours! I will tell you some day. Yours was nothing to me, nothing. Believe me. I think nothing of it, nothing more than if you spilled a glass of wine on my dress, or went out in the rain without your coat, or did something else foolish. Don’t think of that, Olaf! We have so much else to feel, you and I.”
“She knelt beside him and took his head
in her hands.”