"Do come in! What's the matter with father?"
Her brother did not answer immediately, but walked past her into the room, and sat down heavily. By this time she was so frightened that she did not dare to ask, but stood dumbly waiting.
And as she stood there in the half-light, with her shawl wrapped round her, her brother told her, as carefully as he could, that the evening before they had missed his father, and had been round the neighbourhood, searching and inquiring. And at last they had found him hanging in the barn at home.
When Wangen at last came down in the morning he found his wife sitting in the same scanty attire in the sitting-room, staring straight before her. There was no coffee made, nothing was done; she only sat there.
This day, too, she had to go about and see to the day's work. The eldest girl had to go to school, the two younger ones to be taken care of, and the usual errands to be gone up to the farm to fetch food and milk. But all the time her old father seemed to be with her. Rather than leave the home of his ancestors in poverty he had parted with life. She could see him hanging by his thin neck in the barn where she had so often played blind man's buff; and all the time he kept saying: "It is your fault! Why did you marry him? Now you see!"
Great exertion was needed to make her feet carry her where she had to go.
When Wangen heard it, he sat motionless for some time, his face buried in his hands. The image of this old man, whom he had driven to death by his recklessness, took him back once more to that afternoon in the dark railway carriage when self-knowledge and cold responsibility had overwhelmed him as a superhuman burden.
"Oh!" he cried suddenly, starting up, "this is too much, Karen! I can't bear it; you must help me!"
"I think you ought to help me," she replied monotonously, without looking at him.
Later in the day he came in and found her again sitting and gazing straight before her, motionless and far away, although their youngest child was standing crying and pulling at her skirts. And when she fixed her eyes upon him he started involuntarily. He did not know whether her gaze was full of terror of him, or whether it was hatred.
"Now she thinks this is my fault, and she'll say so soon!" he thought; and although he knew it was true, he felt a desire to oppose and keep her at a distance. "As if I hadn't enough to bear already!" he thought. "And she wants to throw this upon me!" And he worked himself up to still greater irritation against her, as if this new misfortune had been in some way or other due to her.