Kallem did not get home from the hospital that night until eight o'clock. When he came home his wife was lying in bed with a headache. She did not get up the next morning. She was in bed several days. When at last she got up, her husband noticed that she had grown very thin; her face had a tired, delicate expression; there were dark rings around her sweet eyes, and she was troubled with a cough.
III.--The Fell Work of Slander
Ragni now did not stir outside her own door. She longed for fresh air, but she would not go out into the town for fear of the cruel, curious eyes of the scandal-mongers. Sören Kule haunted her. His house overlooked her garden, and she got the strange fancy into her head that he was always sitting at the window blindly listening for her. So she never even went for a walk in the park-like grounds which Kallem had purchased wholly for her pleasure.
The poison of scandal had done its work. Her husband, unfortunately, never suspected that she was really ill; he had a deep longing for a child of his marriage, and, misled by too eager a hope, he misinterpreted the strange alteration in his wife's health.
But one evening, when she coughed, some blood came up. Kallem saw it, and the hideous truth came upon him in a blinding flash. It was the terrible disease which he had spent the greater part of his fortune in fighting against. Tuberculosis! But how was it that it had come so suddenly, and ravaged her dear, sweet, tender body so furiously? She was in a galloping consumption, and the end was not far off ... a few weeks ... a few days, perhaps.
"Darling," he said, coming to her bedside one day, "isn't there some secret you would like to confide in me--some secret that has been hurting and distressing you? Tell me, dearest, for I shall have no peace until I know it."
"I will tell you," she said. "I have just been thinking about it. You will find some papers in my writing-table--they are all for you. Read them, dear, when----" she broke off abruptly--"by and by. You will understand that it was for your sake I kept it secret."
He went downstairs, and in the writing-table he found Karl's letter. Horror, indignation, and helplessness overcame him. Why had he not known of this in time? He would have gone to every soul in the town, and told them that they lied.
"Ay," he said, "I will tell them so yet. They have murdered her--cowardly murdered her! Ah, God, I have spent my life and my fortune in my endeavours to benefit them, and there's not one of them--not one--honest enough to tell me to defend my wife's good name!"
What drove him almost to madness was that there was none he could go to and take by the throat, exclaiming: "You have done this! You are answerable to me for this!" Still, there was one who stood apart from the others--Josephine. Josephine had not invented the slander; that was not her way. But she would believe what was invented when it concerned anyone she disliked. And how she disliked Ragni! Yes, it was Josephine and her hypocrite of a husband who had laid his darling open to this sort of attack. Very well! Everything else was gone--his joy of life, his interest in science, and his love of mankind. But he still had something to live for--vengeance!