“Ah!” she suddenly exclaimed, turning toward him; “ah, tell me, is not this some fearful dream induced by your presence? For you know but too well, alas! that since the day of my ruin, every night that I am visited by your fatal spirit is marked by foul apparitions, awful dreams, and frightful visions.”
“Woman, woman, cease your raving; it is as true that you are wide awake as it is true that Gill is dead.”
The memory of her past misfortunes had, as it were, blotted out all thought of her fresh grief; these words revived it.
“Oh, my son! my son!” she moaned; and the tones of her voice would have moved any but the wicked being who heard it. “No, he will return; he is not dead; I cannot believe that he is dead.”
“Well, go ask him of Roeraas rocks, which crushed out his life; of Throndhjem Fjord, which swallowed up his body.”
The widow fell upon her knees, crying convulsively, “God! great God!”
“Be silent, servant of hell!”
The wretched woman was silent. He added: “Do not doubt your son’s death; he was punished for the sins of his father. He let his granite heart melt in the sunlight of a woman’s eyes. I possessed you, but I never loved you. Your Carroll’s misfortune was also his. My son and yours was deceived by his betrothed, by her for whom he died.”
“Died!” she repeated, “died! Then it is really true? Oh, Gill, you were born of my misery; you were conceived in terror and born in sorrow; your lips lacerated my breast; as a child, you never returned my caresses or embraces; you always shunned and repulsed your mother, your lonely and forsaken mother! You never tried to make me forget my past distress, save by causing me fresh injury. You deserted me for the demon author of your existence and of my widowhood. Never, in long years, Gill, never did you procure me one thrill of pleasure; and yet to-day your death, my son, seems to me the most insupportable of all my afflictions. Your memory to-day seems to me to be twined with comfort and rapture. Alas! alas!”
She could not go on; she covered her head with her coarse black woollen veil, and sobbed bitterly.