"I shall never see him again. I pretended I should, but I know quite well I shall not. 'Some day you will come back,' I said, 'and make amends and wipe out everything.' And he said 'Yes' and 'Yes,' but we both knew well it wasn't true. When the bell rang and I had to come away he said, 'Mother, you've been the best mother a man ever had,' and I knew it was the last word I shall ever hear from him."
After that she could not speak for some minutes and then she said, as if trying to comfort herself:
"Perhaps God will give my boy another chance where he is going to. If so I think he will do better, but if not----"
She could not finish what she intended to say--that God's mercy was more terrible than the vengeance of man, and he who renounced it would surely be destroyed.
They walked on in silence until they came to the gate of Government House, and then Anna took her last look at the dark ship that was dying away to an indistinguishable mass in the shades of night and the mists of her blinding tears, and said in a brave voice:
"We must be very good to each other in future, Magnus. You are the only son left to me now, and if you have to suffer for the sin of somebody else you must let me help you to bear it. I will always do so as long as I live, Magnus, and when I am gone from you God will not forget. Good-night, Magnus! And God bless you!"
Magnus stood for some time where his mother had left him, for the breakers of passion were still surging in his throat. Then he returned to the jetty and dropped the remains of Helga's letter into the sea, and they went out with the ebbing tide.
PART V
"Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before
I swore--but was I sober when I swore?
And then, and then came Spring, and rose-in-hand
My threadbare penitence apieces tore."
I