But no matter! When he stood up in court and said, "This is Oscar Stephenson's handwriting, for he is a forger and a thief," and a thrill of horror ran through the crowded room, and every eye turned on him with contempt, he would say to his secret heart, "He killed her, and he had to suffer, and there was no other way than this!"
Yet that was not what had happened. His father had saved Oscar from the just punishment of his infamous offense. And how had he saved him? By making him--Magnus--pay the price of Oscar's riotous living abroad. Thus the vengeance which he had vowed upon his brother had recoiled upon himself, and while his rightful inheritance was wiped out, while the farm on which he had built his last hopes was embarrassed beyond the possibility of redemption, and he was ruined for the rest of his life, the man for whom and by whom he was ruined--ruined in his affections as well as his fortunes--was to be allowed to steal away amid a croaking chorus of sympathy and pity under the cloak of broken health and a broken heart!
What a devil's world it was in which infamy could masquerade as honor and hypocrisy as grief! When Magnus thought in this way his eyesight grew dull and his hearing dense and he felt a cold pain at the back of his neck. Then he began to use again the only remedy he had recourse to when his head was bad--he began to drink.
But sitting in the darkest corner of the smoking-room of the hotel, every word he heard--every conversation that filtered through the smoke and noise and his deadened senses--seemed to stimulate the idea which had taken possession of him--it was the devil's own world and God had nothing whatever to do with it!
At one moment a student ran into the room and shouted, above the laughter and singing of his fellow-students, "Boys, what do you think? Oscar Stephenson is sailing by the 'Laura' to-night!" And thereupon a babel of voices cried, "Really!" "Never!" "You don't say so!" "True enough--smashed up for good and going abroad for an indefinite period!" "Not a bit of it! Oscar isn't the sort to be broken up like that. Six months abroad and he'll be home again as bright and fresh as ever."
"So he will," thought Magnus, but his heart was fierce and bitter.
At another moment the chairman of the Town Board came in panting and cried, "News, gentlemen, news! Oscar Stephenson has resigned his seat in Parliament!" "Impossible!" "Listen!" and the little fat man read, out of his rasping, asthmatical throat, from a sheet smelling of damp paper and printer's ink a letter from Oscar to his constituents. Broken in health and happiness--compelled to go abroad--impossible to fix date of return--consequently forced to tender resignation--deeply grieved and disappointed--but set the duties too high to ask his constituents to wait, etc.--"That means he's not coming back!" "But, good heavens, does he know what he's giving up? Why, there's nothing that's not within the man's reach--absolutely nothing!" "I wonder the Governor has allowed him to do it!"
And then Magnus laughed out loud in the fierce bitterness of his heart.
After that the voices were lower for a little while, and when Magnus heard them again somebody was saying, "But a man can love a woman too much altogether. Breaking your life to pieces because you've lost your wife isn't brave, it isn't manly." "Perhaps not, but it's human," said somebody else, "and if Oscar Stephenson is smashed up by the death of Thora Neilsen, he's in the right of it, I say."
"So do I," cried Magnus, and laughing wildly, he dropped his head over his arms on the table. What a devil's own world it was to be sure!