He was lunging along in the direction of the Factor's, when somebody crossed in front of him in the thoroughfare. It was Oscar himself and he was going in another direction. Magnus was like a man whose reason is clogged, but he saw everything in the light of his own making. His brother was returning from the pier after taking his baggage aboard, and he had come ashore on a last errand. Magnus knew what errand that was--it was to see Helga, and they were going to meet where they could be unobserved.
The moon had risen by this time and Magnus could keep his brother in view while he followed like a hound behind him. He saw nothing else and was not even conscious of what streets they passed through, save that they were going toward the upper part of the town, near to the lake, and down the road that runs beside it.
He tried to walk softly and to make no noise, but sometimes a hard laugh broke from his dry throat and once or twice a great sob came behind it. He was thinking of Thora, and telling himself what he would say when Oscar met Helga and he came face to face with them. He would say, "I loved your wife--I'm not ashamed to say so--I loved her and gave her up to you and you promised to cherish her, but you neglected her and allowed her child to be stolen away. I would have given my heart's blood to make her happy, but you made her miserable and now she is dead, and you are here with this woman who helped to torture her. You are a perjurer and a forger and a scoundrel and you may take that--and that--and that--and carry the mark of my hand on your face when you go where this wanton means to follow you!"
He was now outside the town, but he could not see or hear or think like a Christian man, and was merely ranging along the road like a beast. Then all at once, in the still air and the silence of all around him, he heard the voice of some one who was saying in low, quivering, pleading tones:
"My darling! My darling!"
Magnus knew whose voice it was! He thought he also knew what sight he should see a moment later. It would be Oscar and Helga locked in each other's arms as they had been when he saw them last in the dance at the farm--flushed, hot and excited.
With his fists clinched and his teeth set hard, he plunged through a gate that was like the gate to a garden, and then ran forward a few paces. But he drew up suddenly, as if an unseen hand had seized his arm. He saw where he was, and his breath seemed to leave him--he was in the cemetery, and some twenty yards farther down the path his brother Oscar was kneeling by the side of a grave and sobbing as if his heart would break.
Magnus stumbled back to the road, sobered, ashamed and broken into utter helplessness.
It might be the devil's own world, but God was in it also.
XVI