Never before had Christian Christiansson felt so little and so mean. The sources of pride were dry in him and he was brought very low in his own esteem. In the presence of the brother who had borne his burdens and broken down under them he saw himself as an abject and pitiful thing. He could not raise his head, for he felt as if his shame were written on his forehead, but he struggled to say something, and the only words that came to him seemed to scorch his tongue and parch his throat.
"I can not dispute with you," he said. "You've suffered more than I have, and no doubt your present troubles are the legacy that was left to you by the prodigal brother your mother was talking about."
Magnus's manner changed instantly at the mention of his mother. "She was talking about him again, was she?" he said.
"Does she often talk of him then?"
"Too often, and she seems to think of nothing else. He was the foundation she built her house upon, poor soul, and it fell, but she holds to him all the same."
"God bless her!" said Christian Christiansson involuntarily. "God bless all women, I say. They're always on the side of the sinners and the sufferers. They'll get their compensation somewhere--they must,"--he was thinking of to-morrow morning.
"I see no sign of it in this case," said Magnus. "She was the best mother to him a man ever had, and he knew it, but he repaid her with neglect and contempt."
"Contempt?"
"What else would you call it? He lived five years abroad and wrote to her only once in all that time. Yet every night she used to stand outside the door until the post passed, winter and summer, dry or fine, waiting for the letter that never came."
Christian Christiansson felt as if his very soul were shriveling up with shame.