Gösta looked at her. How could he too have raised his voice in anger against such a person as she,—terrified and cowed, but with such a good heart!
“You do not ask how Marianne is,” he said gently.
She burst into tears.
“Will you not be angry with me if I ask you?” she said. “I have longed to ask you the whole time. Think that I know no more of her than that she is living. Not one greeting have I had from her the whole time, not once when I sent clothes to her, and so I thought that you and she did not want to have me know anything about her.”
Gösta could bear it no longer. He was wild, he was out of his head,—sometimes God had to send his wolves after him to force him to obedience,—but this old woman’s tears, this old woman’s laments were harder for him to bear than the howling of the wolves. He let her know the truth.
“Marianne has been ill the whole time,” he said. “She has had small-pox. She was to get up to-day and lie on the sofa. I have not seen her since the first night.”
Madame Gustava leaped with one bound to the ground. She left Gösta standing there, and rushed away without another word to her husband.
The people in the auction-room saw her come up to him and eagerly whisper something in his ear. They saw how his face grew still more flushed, and his hand, which rested on the cock, turned it round so that the brandy streamed over the floor.
It seemed to all as if Madame Gustava had come with such important news that the auction must end immediately. The auctioneer’s hammer no longer fell, the clerks’ pens stopped, there were no new bids.