“I set thee here for a scorn and for a mockery, thou beam. I set thee here that filth might eat thee up. I set thee here in punishment for striking down that tender little maid of mine.—I should have set thee high above my hall-room door; and honoured thee and thanked thee with fairest carven ornament; because thou didst save her from shame and from sorrow,—because ’twas thy work that my Ulvhild died a sinless child—”
He turned about, reeled toward the fence and fell forward upon it, and with his head between his arms fell into an unquenchable passion of weeping, broken by long, deep groans.
His wife took him by the shoulder.
“Lavrans, Lavrans!” But she could not stay his weeping. “Husband.”
“Oh, never, never, never should I have given her to that man! God help me—I must have known it all the time—he had broken down her youth and her fairest honour. I believed it not—nay, could I believe the like of Kristin?—but still I knew it. And yet is she too good for this weakling boy, that hath made waste of himself and her—had he lured her astray ten times over, I should never have given her to him, that he may spill yet more of her life and her happiness—”
“But what other way was there?” said the mother despairingly. “You know now, as well as I—she was his already—”
“Aye, small need was there for me to make such a mighty to-do in giving Erlend what he had taken for himself already,” said Lavrans. “’Tis a gallant husband she has won—my Kristin—” He tore at the fence; then fell again a-weeping. He had seemed to Ragnfrid as though sobered a little, but now the fit overcame him again.
She deemed she could not bring him, drunken and beside himself with despair as he was, to the bed in the hearth-room where they should have slept—for the room was full of guests. She looked about her—close by stood a little barn where they kept the best hay to feed to the horses at the spring ploughing. She went and peered in—no one was there; she took her husband’s hand, led him inside the barn, and shut the door behind them.
She piled up hay over herself and him and laid their cloaks above it to keep them warm. Lavrans fell a-weeping now and again, and said somewhat—but his speech was so broken, she could find no meaning in it. In a little while she lifted up his head on to her lap.
“Dear my husband—since now so great a love is between them, maybe ’twill all go better than we think—”