The question was what they should do with Captain Lennart. “We will go home with him,” said Sintram. “Think how glad his wife will be! It will be a pleasure to see her joy. I am moved when I think of it. Let us go home with him!”
They were all moved at the thought. Heavens, how glad she would be!
They shook life into Captain Lennart and lifted him into one of the carriages which the sleepy grooms had long since driven up. And so the whole mob drove up to Helgesäter; some of them, half-asleep, nearly fell out of the carriage, others sang to keep awake. They looked little better than a company of tramps, with dull eyes and swollen faces.
They arrived at last, left the horses in the back-yard and marched with a certain solemnity up to the steps. Beerencreutz and Julius supported Captain Lennart between them.
“Pull yourself together, Lennart,” they said to him, “you are at home. Don’t you see that you’re at home?”
He got his eyes open and was almost sober. He was touched that they had accompanied him home.
“Friends,” he said, and stopped to speak to them all, “have asked God, friends, why so much evil has passed over me.”
“Shut up, Lennart, don’t preach!” cries Beerencreutz.
“Let him go on,” says Sintram. “He speaks well.”
“Have asked Him and not understood; understand now. He wanted to show me what friends I had; friends who follow me home to see mine and my wife’s joy. For my wife is expecting me. What are five years of misery compared to that?”
Now hard fists pounded on the door. The pensioners had no time to hear more.
Within there was commotion. The maids awoke and looked out. They threw on their clothes, but did not dare to open for that crowd of men. At last the bolt was drawn. The captain’s wife herself came out.
They pushed forward Captain Lennart, and she saw him reel towards her, drunk, with a prize-fighter’s face; and behind him she saw the crowd of drunken, reeling men.
She took a step back; he followed with outstretched arms. “You left me as a thief,” she cried, “and come home as a vagabond.” Whereupon she turned to go in.
He did not understand. He wished to follow her, but she struck him a blow on the breast.
“Do you think that I will receive such a man as you as master in my house and over my children?”