Jerusalem (Historical Novel). Selma Lagerlöf
was silent.
"Does the letter say that you care for me?" he repeated savagely.
"Yes," she answered faintly.
Then his face became horribly distorted. He shook her arm and thrust it from him. "How you can lie!" he said, with a hoarse and angry laugh. "How you can lie!"
"God knows I have prayed night and day that I might see you again before I go!" she solemnly avowed.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to America, of course."
"The hell you are!"
Ingmar was beside himself. He staggered a few steps into the woods and cast himself upon the ground. And now it was his turn to weep!
Brita followed him and sat down beside him, she was so happy that she wanted to shout.
"Ingmar, little Ingmar!" she said, calling him by his pet name.
"But you think I'm so ugly!" he returned.
"Of course I do."
Ingmar pushed her hand away.
"Now let me tell you something," said Brita.
"Tell away."
"Do you remember what you said in court three years ago?"
"I do."
"That if I could only get to think differently of you, you would marry me?"
"Yes, I remember."
"It was after that I began to care for you. I had never imagined that any mortal could say such a thing. It seemed almost unbelievable your saying it to me, after all I had done to you. As I saw you that day, I thought you better looking than all the others, and you were wiser than any of them, and the only one with whom it would be good to share one's life. I fell so deeply in love with you that it seemed as if you belonged to me, and I to you. At first I took it for granted that you would come and fetch me, but later I hardly dared think it."
Ingmar raised his head. "Then why didn't you write?" he asked.
"But I did write."
"Asking me to forgive you, as if that were anything to write about!"
"What should I have written?"
"About the other thing."
"How would I have dared—I?"
"I came mighty near not coming at all."
"But Ingmar! do you suppose I could have written love letters to you after all I had done! My last day in prison I wrote to you because the chaplain said I must. When I gave him the letter, he promised not to send it until I was well on my way."
Ingmar took her hand and flattened it against the earth, then slapped it.
"I could beat you!" he said.
"You may do with me what you will, Ingmar."
He looked up into her face, upon which suffering had wrought a new kind of beauty. "And I came so near letting you go!" he sighed.
"You just had to come, I suppose."
"Let me tell you that I didn't care for you."
"I don't wonder at that."
"I felt relieved when I heard that you were to be sent to America."
"Yes, father wrote me that you were pleased."
"Whenever I looked at mother, I felt somehow that I couldn't ask her to accept a daughter-in-law like you."
"No, it would never do, Ingmar."
"I've had to put up with a lot on your account; no one would notice me because of my treatment of you."
"Now you are doing what you threatened to do," said Brita. "You're striking me."
"I can't begin to tell you how mad I am at you."
She kept still.
"When I think of all I've had to stand these last few weeks—" he went on.
"But Ingmar—"
"Oh, I'm not angry about that, but at the thought of how near I came to letting you go!"
"Didn't you love me, Ingmar?"
"No, indeed."
"Not during the whole journey home?"
"No, not for a second! I was just put out with you."
"When did you change?"
"When I got your letter."
"I saw that your love was over; that was why I did not want you to know that mine was but just beginning."
Ingmar chuckled.
"What amuses you, Ingmar?"
"I'm thinking of how we sneaked out of church, and of the kind of welcome we got at the Ingmar Farm."
"And you can laugh at that?"
"Why not as well laugh? I suppose we'll have to take to the road, like tramps. Wonder what father would say to that?"
"You may laugh, Ingmar, but this can't be; it can't be."
"I think it can, for now I don't care a damn about anything or anybody but you!"
Brita was ready to cry, but he just made her tell him again and again how often she had thought of him, and how much she had longed for him. Little by little he became as quiet as a child listening to a lullaby. It was all so different from what Brita had expected. She had thought of talking to him about her crime, if he came for her, and the weight of it. She would have liked to tell either him or her mother, or whoever had come for her, how unworthy she was of them. But not a word of this had she been allowed to speak.
Presently he said very gently:
"There is something you want to tell me?"
"Yes."
"And you are thinking about it all the time?"
"Day and night!"
"And it gets sort of mixed in with everything?"
"That's true."
"Now tell me about it, so there will be two instead of one to bear it."
He sat looking into her eyes; they were like the eyes of a poor, hunted fawn. But as she spoke they became calmer.
"Now you feel better," he said when she had finished.
"I feel as if a great weight had been lifted from my heart."
"That is because we are two to bear it. Now, perhaps, you won't want to go away."
"Indeed I should love to stay!" she said.
"Then let us go home," said Ingmar, rising.
"No, I'm afraid!"
"Mother is not so terrible," lie laughed, "when she sees that one has a mind of one's own."
"No, Ingmar, I could never turn her out of her home. I have no choice but to go to America."
"I'm going to tell you something," said Ingmar, with a mysterious smile. "You needn't be the least bit afraid, for there is some one who will help us."
"Who is it?"
"It's father. He'll see to it that everything comes out right."
There was some one coming along the forest road. It was Kaisa. But as she was not bearing the familiar yoke, with the baskets, they hardly knew her at first.
"Good-day to you!" greeted Ingmar and Brita, and the old woman came up and shook hands with them.
"Well, I declare, here you sit, and all the folks from the farm out looking for you! You were in such a hurry to get out of church," the old woman went on, "that I never got to meet you at all. So I went down to the farm to