[THE BEREAVED]
IT WAS Sigrun's mother, the old Dean's wife from Stenbroträsk. Early in May, 1916, she was on a visit to some relatives in Bohuslän, and, being so near, thought she ought to go over to her son-in-law at Algeröd and see how he was.
On arriving at the humble little vicarage, she found that Pastor Rhånge had brought his mother over to keep house for him. A simple and straightforward soul, this mother, who, as the widow of a pilot, and in straitened circumstances, had pinched and saved to get her son into the priesthood. The visitor noticed that she was proud and happy at being able to live with her son and look after him, as was reasonable enough. Nothing to take offence at in that.
But the income arising from the living was so pitifully small that the old lady had likewise found herself obliged to eke out the money by taking paying guests. She had staying with her now two young girls, in delicate health, who had been sent there in the hope of benefiting by the fresh mountain air.
At first the two girls had been a little afraid of the dark and gloomy master of the house, who was in mourning for his wife, but when Sigrun's mother came to Algeröd they had got over their fear. It was a great surprise to her. Instead of a house full of sorrow and mourning, she found a place full of laughter and play and merriment.
The afternoon seemed long to her; she was in dread of losing her patience before it ended. Wherever she went, the vision of her daughter was before her eyes, and she could not but wonder how Rhånge ever could endure these two young girls about the place, showing off as they did, and courting his attention, so evidently that it must have annoyed and incensed him had he been as he was before.
But he was changed—that was evident in every way. He was a different man altogether.
His voice, his laugh, had grown loud and shrill, and he had, too, a strange way of boasting about his own excellence.
Before, his manner had always been marked by great dignity and seriousness. No one could be in his company for two minutes without discovering the priest in him. But now, all that had disappeared. Before, he had seemed to leave it to others to find out that he was a gifted and distinguished man; now, he took it upon himself to tell them so.
He spoke of how clever he had been at school, how easily and well he had passed his examination, of the great and wonderful things he had done among his congregations; kept on with story after story, as if he would never end.