"There is always the possibility of a return to consciousness. Have Herr Hendriksen draw up a will or a codicil or whatever the thing is, according to your aunt's expressed wishes, and if she comes to, she may be able to sign it. I can try a hypodermic of caffeine," he added to himself, "but I'm afraid it's no use. Run down to Hendriksen and let him get the will ready in any case, I shall stop here."

Ingeborg sped down the stairs and found the solicitor enjoying a cup of coffee in the sitting-room. She explained the case to him and he agreed to draw up a codicil annulling all former wills, in the tenour of the will destroyed by Fru Boyesen after Ragna's marriage and to hold it in readiness. Accordingly he set to work and Ingeborg returned to the sick chamber.

They waited some time and as there was still no sign of returning consciousness Dr. Ericssen tried the hypodermic of caffeine, but without effect, except for a slightly stronger pulse, the stertorous breathing continued unchanged. Solicitor and doctor supped together, in a gloomy silence, while Ingeborg, unwilling to leave her aunt, had a tray sent up to her; after which the doctor returned to his patient and the man of law to his post by the fire. The evening dragged on drearily; Ingeborg sat despondently by the bedside; it all seemed such cruel irony--the waiting solicitor, the fate of her sister hanging in the balance, dependent on that unconscious figure on the bed.

Towards morning there was a change, patent even to the inexperienced eyes of the girl. Fru Boyesen opened her eyes, but they appeared oblivious of her immediate surroundings, they were fixed on s.p.a.ce, and seemed to have a glaze over them; her lips moved, and bending over her, Ingeborg caught the words:

"Solicitor--Ragna!"

"Quick!" she said to the doctor; he ran to the landing and called Hendriksen, who gathered up his papers, pen, ink, and seals, and bounded up the stairs.

"Oh!" thought Ingeborg, "if only there is time--if only she is able to sign!"

She poured some brandy into a spoon, but as she turned to administer it, the sick woman's head fell back on the pillow, and her jaw dropped--Herr Hendriksen approaching, pen and paper in hand, stopped, hesitating.

Ingeborg dropped the spoon, brandy and all, and the doctor rushed forward; one glance was enough; he waved the solicitor back, his services were no longer required.

Poor Aunt Gitta! she had put off, too long, her work of reparation, and now it was too late.

Too late! These are indeed the "saddest words of tongue or pen," a lower circle in the Inferno of Fate than the poet's "it might have been!"

Alas! for those to whom the long sought opportunity, the ardently desired happiness comes at last, and finds the sands run down in the gla.s.s, the vital energy spent. The chance is there, but an ironical voice gives the sentence "Too late!" And alas, above all, for those, who in the sunset of life see in retrospect, the false turning, the long weary miles of the road they have followed, and which they would retrace, ere darkness fall, and the night come,--but the stern voice says: "Ye have wasted the precious years, ye have put life and strength into that which is vain, and ye would unravel the strand of the Fates and plait it up afresh when the shears of Atropos are already extended?

Too late! Remorse is not reparation."

"Who shall restore the years that the locust hath eaten?"

The words sounded like a knell in the ears of Ingeborg, as she drew the sheet over her aunt's face. Ragna would have laughed a bitter laugh, but Ingeborg wept.

CHAPTER IX

"Mammina," asked Mimmo, stirring his soup with thoughtful care, "can people do just what they like, when they are big?"

Ragna was feeding Beppino out of a bowl of bread and milk. It was the usual luncheon hour, but Valentini had not yet come in, and the children chattered away, gaily.

"No," said Ragna, "no one can do exactly what he likes."

"But they can,--they does," insisted Mimmo.

"Do, you should say, dear."

"'Do,' then," corrected Mimmo, "they do. Babbo says 'accidenti' and bangs the door, but you punish us if we do,--why does no one punish him?"

"Punish Babbo!" exclaimed Beppino agape.

"Grown up people do many things that children aren't allowed to do,--but they don't always do what is right, and G.o.d punishes them," said Ragna.

"Who ith G.o.d," asked Beppino.

"I know," Mimmo hastened to show his superior knowledge,--"He is a big person sitting on a cloud in the sky, with a beard and a dove with shiny lines out of it,--I have never seen him really truly, but _Babbo_ has a picture of him."

"Yeth," a.s.sented Beppino without interest.

But Mimmo was not so a.s.sured as he wished to appear.

"Mammina," he said, "does G.o.d come off his cloud to punish people?"

"G.o.d is everywhere," said his mother.

The child puckered his brows.

"How can he be everywhere if he sits on a cloud in the sky? Is he here now, in this room?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then why can't I see Him?"

"He is here like the air,--you can't see the air."

"Is He in my soup?" he inquired eagerly, "does I eat Him in my spoon?"

Ragna could not help smiling. Mimmo's questions often puzzled her as to how to answer them in a way suited to the child's understanding. This time, she hedged.

"Eat your soup, darling; you are too little to understand yet. When you are older, Mammina will tell you."

Mimmo addressed himself to his task, but he turned the question over in his childish mind, and when Valentini made his tardy appearance, greeted him with:

"Babbo, Mammina says that I am eating up G.o.d in my soup, and that He will punish you,--but if I eat Him up, he won't be able to, will He?"

"G.o.d will punish your mother for telling such wicked lies," growled Egidio, hitching his chair to the table.

He had not deigned to greet his wife on entering, and his sullen expression, the yellow, bilious colour of his skin, the mottled puffiness about his eyes were the evidences of his rage the night before, as the retreating tide leaves uncovered the unsightly mud-flats.

He had a bad taste in his mouth, both physically and morally; an uneasy feeling possessed him that his wife by her unbroken calm had got the better of him in their acrimonious discussion. She had called him "ludicrous," that was what galled him most. He was more than her match in opprobrium, in biting sarcasm, but before ridicule and a cool, unperturbed demeanour, he felt himself helpless. He cast about in his mind for a way to humble her, to pierce the joint of her new armour of indifference, and fate had brought a weapon to his hand, though he did not yet know it. Indeed, he had finished his meal and was lighting a cigar when he bethought him of a letter addressed to Ragna, which the postman had brought that morning. It was his habit to take the letters from the postman himself, or have them brought to his studio, where he opened them, his own and those addressed to his wife, alike. It was one of his numerous ways of keeping himself informed of all that went on. He prided himself on knowing everything that occurred, and was pleased, on occasions, to give his wife a proof of his ability, by recounting minutely all her doings, both indoors and out. He wished her to acknowledge his power over her, and he wished her, above all, to believe that nothing could be hidden from him. This system of constant espionage was one of Ragna's greatest trials, and despite her efforts to free herself from it, to keep the peace, she had been obliged to submit, tacitly, at least. She had never cared to inquire into her husband's sources of information, she would not give him so much satisfaction, she despised the ingenuity and ac.u.men he displayed to such a despicable end.

It really was a symptom of the man's craving for power; it gratified his pride to feel that he had a hold over others, that they should be at the mercy of his good pleasure and discretion. He believed that the one way to get on in the world was by using other people, and these either had to be bought, or captured. "Knowledge," he said to himself, "is power,"

and certainly, in the wire-pulling for which he afterwards became famous, he used the power his "knowledge" brought him, with an unsparing hand.

Had he enjoyed a different education there is no telling to what heights he might have attained, but the early Jesuit influence, coupled with the weak indulgence of his mother, had endowed him, on the one hand, with a cynical unscrupulousness, and on the other with an unsatiable self-indulgence which sapped his better qualities at the fountain-head and warped his entire character to such an extent that his natural cleverness failed to redeem him from the narrowing distortion of his life.

Remembering the letter for his wife, he drew it from his pocket and jerked it across the table to her, without looking up, or appearing otherwise to be aware of her presence.

She seized the envelope eagerly, frowning at the torn flap, but smiled in spite of herself, as she saw that it was written in Norwegian--the nut had been too hard to crack this time! She was obliged to defer her reading until she had lifted the children down and sent them off to Carolina. They slunk away like little animals, even as they had sat silent since Valentini's entrance; they lived in mortal terror of his fits of ill-humour, and had learned to avoid irritating him, by making themselves as inconspicuous as possible.

Ragna took up her letter and began to read. It was from Ingeborg written two days after Fru Boyesen's death, telling of the old woman's intention of reinstating Ragna as her heiress and of the frustration of her design.

"You must not think hardly of poor Auntie," wrote Ingeborg, "she has been so unhappy. I have seen the struggle going on for some time, and I was sure her better nature would win in the end. Oh, Ragna, if I had only known, I might have done something, but although I could see she was relenting I never guessed she was so near to giving in, and I was afraid of doing more harm than good, if I tried to push things--If you had seen the expression of her poor eyes, when she said, 'I must make it right for Ragna,' and the agonised look in them, that last instant just before--. Oh, if only she could have lived ten minutes, five minutes longer! Isn't it awful to think of her remorse, feeling herself dying without having accomplished what was in her heart? Dr. Ericssen and Herr Hendriksen, both went to see the Directors of the Orphanage, to which she had left her money,--she did that you know, when she tore up her will in favour of you,--and told them they had no moral right to accept the bequest, as the last wishes of the deceased were otherwise, but they did not see it at all that way. Why are charities so grasping, I wonder?

I don't see how they can reconcile their consciences to accept a bequest that morally belongs to someone else! It makes my blood boil, Ragna dear, as according to Auntie's wishes it all ought to be yours--"

Ragna put the letter down with a sigh. She hardly realized as yet all that this disappointment meant to her, the hopes of relative independence dashed, nothing to look forward to beyond her own unaided effort. The news of her Aunt's death grieved her, but her senses, dulled by the nervous strain of the evening before, refused to appreciate to its full extent the enormity of the catastrophe. She sat as though stunned. Little Mimmo stole in unnoticed and installed himself on the floor with a picture-book. Valentini, smoking ostentatiously, cast furtive glances at his wife, and at last, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, shifted his chair and asked: