It was nineteen years ago now. At first, she had earned her living where and how she could—cleaning fish or washing wool. Then the child came, and she found it impossible to obtain work anywhere. Finally, she had settled down at Borg, where she had stayed three years. In spite of the kindness with which she was treated by Ormarr and Runa, however, she found herself regarded with suspicion. With her small savings, and some help from Ormarr, she had just been able to rent and stock her little holding, and had lived there now with her daughter for nearly fourteen years.
Now, life was pleasant enough, she said. And Guest the One-eyed understood that she had grown so accustomed to hard work and scanty fare that she would have found it hard now to change to another mode of life. But she looked to her daughter’s upbringing with motherly care, and her great anxiety was the girl’s future. How would it be with her when she went out into the world? Would she be able to live down her mother’s past? Would God in His mercy spare her the consequences of her mother’s sin?
That it was a sin she understood now; now, for the first time, she realized how unpardonable her act had been. The consequences might yet be visited upon her child. And her conscience made her suffer; she feared at times that the agony of her remorse would drive her to madness. She was on the edge of an abyss; only by the utmost effort could she preserve her self-control.
Guest the One-eyed had heard many secrets; listened to the story of many lives. And in his long years of life he had learned to sift the facts of a case, to find out truth as much from what was left unspoken as from what was said. The widow’s life stood out clearly to his mind’s eye in all its detail.
“And the girl’s father,” asked Guest at last—“is he still living near?”
“No,” answered the widow, and her lips tightened. “He went away across the seas soon after I left the place. Afraid, maybe, that there might be trouble, and thought it best to be out of the way.”
Then said Guest the One-eyed quietly, “You are troubled at heart by the thought that the sins of the fathers are to be visited upon the children. Do not let that weigh too heavily upon you now. There are those who suffer so deeply for their own sins that they atone for them in life, and more. You are one of these. I am not speaking empty words to you for comfort’s sake, but the truth. You can trust me. God has granted me the power to give my fellow-men in need the knowledge of remission of their sins, as far as may be in knowledge of the truth. I have sinned, and my debt is not yet paid—but my sin was greater than yours or that of any other I have met. But the Lord God is merciful, and I believe that He will grant me peace at last. At last, in death. And when that comes, I can say with truth that my life, by God’s grace, has been a happy one.”