“It is my fault that Arne is dead—’tis but too true, what Inga said—”
“’Twas Arne himself that begged you to go and meet him,” said Lavrans, pulling the coverlid up over his daughter’s bare shoulders. “I trow it was heedless in me to let you two go about together, but I thought the lad would have known better—I will not blame you two—I know these things are heavy for you to bear. Yet did I never think that daughter of mine would fall into ill-fame in this parish of ours—and ’twill go hard with your mother when she hears these tidings—But that you went to Gunhild with this and not to me, ’twas so witless a thing—I understand not how you could behave so foolishly—”
“I cannot bear to stay here in the Dale any more,” sobbed Kristin, “—not a soul would I dare look in the face—and all I have brought upon them—the folks at Romundgaard and at Finsbrekken—”
“Aye, they will have to see to it, both Gyrd and Sira Eirik,” said Lavrans, “that these lies about you are buried with Arne. For the rest, ’tis Simon Andressön can best defend you in this business,” said he, and patted her in the dark. “Think you not he took the matter well and wisely—”
“Father”—and Kristin clung close to him and begged piteously and fervently, “send me to the convent, father. Aye, listen to me—I have thought of this for long; may be Ulvhild will grow well if I go in her stead. You know the shoes with beads upon them that I sewed for her in the autumn—I pricked my fingers sorely, and my hands bled from the sharp gold-thread—yet I sat and sewed on them, for I thought it was wicked of me not to love my sister so that I would be a nun to help her—Arne once asked if I would not. Had I but said ‘Aye’ then, all this would not have befallen—”
Lavrans shook his head:
“Lie down now,” he bade. “You know not yourself what you say, poor child. Now you must try if you can sleep—”
But Kristin lay and felt the smart in her burnt hand, and despair and bitterness over her fate raged in her heart. No worse could have befallen her had she been the most sinful of women; everyone would believe—no, she could not, could not bear to stay on here in the Dale. Horror after horror rose before her—when her mother came to know of this—and now there was blood between them and their parish priest, ill-will betwixt all who had been friends around her the whole of her life. But the worst, the most crushing fear of all fell upon her when she thought of Simon and of how he had taken her and carried her away and stood forth for her at home, and borne himself as though she were his own possession—her father and mother had fallen aside before him as though she belonged already more to him than to them—
Then she thought of Arne’s face in the coffin, cold and cruel. She remembered the last time she was at church, she had seen, as she left, an open grave that stood waiting for a dead man. The upthrown clods of earth lay upon the snow hard and cold and grey like iron—to this had she brought Arne—
All at once the thought came to her of a summer evening many years before. She was standing on the balcony of the loft-room at Finsbrekken, the same room where she had been struck down that night. Arne was playing ball with some boys in the courtyard below, and the ball was hit up to her in the balcony. She had held it behind her back, and would not give it up when Arne came after it; then he had tried to wrest it from her by strength—and they had fought for it, in the balcony, in the room amid the chests, with the leather sacks, which hung there full of clothes, bumping their heads as they knocked against them in their frolic; they had laughed and struggled over that ball—