Chapter XV: Part 15

"Look here, sir," said Magnus, heaving up to his feet. "A Sheriff can do a good deal if he cares to use his influence. Give me another chance, and you shall have everything I owe. I've had five bad years in succession--no wonder I fell into arrears. Last spring I lost forty lambs in a single night, and next morning two heifers and a calf. The floods came in the autumn, too. And half my hay was swept into the lake. But weather like that can't last forever. We are sure to have a run of good years next. Give me four years more, sir--and you shall see what I can do."

"The thing is past praying for," said the Sheriff.

"Don't say that, sir. Listen! My people have farmed this place for a hundred and fifty years, and a man doesn't like to be the one to lose it. My own flesh and blood are in the land too--the strength of my muscles and the sweat of my brow. Give me three years more, sir--just three."

"Impossible!" said the Sheriff.

"Sheriff, come this way," said Magnus, drawing the man aside by the arm and speaking in a low voice, so that the women might not hear. "I don't care a straw about myself I'll get along somehow, and if I don't it doesn't matter--but there's the child. She ought to inherit the farm, and she's an orphan, but she'll get nothing. Give me a chance for the child's sake, Sheriff. Don't be hard on me. Sell up half my stock to pay part of the interest and let me have two years more--only two."

"You know quite well that the mortgage is on the loose property as well as the land," said the Sheriff. "How can I sap away the security? As for the girl, she's young and strong; let her go into service."

Magnus bit his lip in an effort to control himself, and then he said, "You are quite right, sir; the girl and I can take care of ourselves, but there's the old mother. She was born in this house and she expected to die here. I shouldn't so much mind if she were gone, and to tell you the truth she's not well now, sir. Give me one more year, Sheriff--one single year."

"It's no use wasting words," said the Sheriff. "Matters have gone too far. The only thing I can do now is----"

"What, sir?"

"If you can pay me the whole of the interest before nine o'clock to-morrow morning I can stop the sale on my own responsibility."

"Eight thousand crowns!" said Magnus, raising his voice to a cry of derision; "you ask me to find you eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning? You might as well ask me to find you the moon!"

"Then let us say no more on the subject. The Bank has been very patient, very indulgent----"

"The Bank!" cried Magnus, in the wild defiance of his despair. "Has the Bank got a mother? Has the Bank got a child? No! The Bank is a great, grinding monster without bowels of compassion for anybody. God damn the Bank and all its fools and flunkeys!"

"Magnus Stephenson," said the Pastor, raising his little fat hand, "I will ask you to remember that a clergyman is in your company, and if you take God's name in vain----"

"Take God's name in vain! You do that often enough--you do it every Sunday."

"I'll not pretend to misunderstand you, Magnus Stephenson, for I know you are deeply tainted with skepticism, and since you ceased to come to church----"

"Church! You pray to God in your churches, and what does He do for you? What does He do for any one? What has He done for me?"

"If your life had been straight and pure God would have watched over you."

"And hasn't it? Haven't I tried to do what was right? And yet God is seeing me sold up and turned out, and my dear ones left to die in a ditch."

"God chastises His own, and if we only have faith in Him----"

"Faith in Him? Where is He? Is He in the Northlands? I have never heard of it. Is He in the Southlands? I've never seen Him here, though I've seen the devil often enough. He's in the clouds if He's anywhere, and that's no use to me."

"Magnus Stephenson----"

"If God is on the earth let Him do something. Here's His chance. You call the poor His people, don't you? Well, I've fed and sheltered His people for fifteen years, and now I want feeding and sheltering myself. I want eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning, and if God can do anything in the world let him find me the money and save my mother and my child from starvation. But He can't do it! He can do nothing!"

"Magnus Stephenson," said the little clergyman, raising his little fat hand again, "when you come to stand before the great white throne God will have something to forgive you."

"Pastor Peter, when I come to stand before the great white throne I shall have something to forgive God, it seems to me."

"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" cried the Pastor, and as he followed the Sheriff out of the house Magnus sent a ringing laugh of contempt after him into the darkness of the night. At the same moment two sheep-dogs that had been lying at the door with their snouts on their paws, as if anxious to join the uproar, began to growl and bark, whereupon Magnus (who had always been a lover of animals) kicked them savagely and then reeled back to his seat by the stove.

The strangers being gone and the little family alone, Elin, who had been standing by the dresser, went over to Magnus and slid into her seat on his knee and said:

"You must not think about me, Uncle Magnus. Wherever you have to go I will go too, and what is good enough for you is good enough for Elin. And then, who knows what may happen before the Sheriff comes back in the morning? This is New Year's Eve, you know. All good things come at New Year--miracles come at New Year, Uncle."

But the sweet buoyancy of her girlish spirits, which had been the sunshine of his life for so many years, was failing him at last, and putting her aside with petulant expressions he got up and went out to the back.

Then Anna, who had been sitting in silence by the table, took the Bible and four hymn-books from the corner cupboard and rang the bell for prayers.

"I wonder why I did that?" she said. "I forgot that Eric was gone. I hope he found shelter somewhere, poor boy--I should pity a dog that had to be out of doors on a night like this."

And then Elin, in default of Magnus, read the lesson which Anna had marked for her. It was the psalm beginning, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." And when the short chapter was finished the two women stood up and sang a hymn--Elin in the silvery treble of youth and Anna in the husky tones of age, they two only in the lonely house among the solitary hills, with nothing about them but the darkness and the snow--nothing but that and the immeasurable wings of God.

"Happy the man whose tender care
Relieves the poor distressed;
When he by trouble's compassed round
The Lord will give him rest."

Anna sat down when the hymn was ended, but Elin continued to stand by the table, and closing her eyes with her innocent face uplifted, she said a little prayer for herself.

"O Father," she said, "bless Uncle Magnus, so that he may fear no evil. Show me how to help him, so that I may not be a burden and a care. Dear Jesus, send the miracle that will save Uncle Magnus and grandma and me. It will be such a little thing to you, but such a great, great thing to us, and we shall all be so happy and dwell in the house of the Lord forever. For Christ's sake. Amen."

Then she opened her trustful eyes and said, "I'm sure He will, grandma," and kissing Anna she said "Good night" in a cheery voice and went off to bed.

Prayers being over, Magnus returned to the hall and began to rake out the stove for the night. The clouds hung heavier on him than ever, and thinking to banish them Anna talked of Elin.

"She grows more and more like her mother, and sometimes I think it can only be a dream that our dear Thora is dead. If you had heard her praying for the miracle it would have filled your heart brimful. She has gone to bed quite certain that the miracle will come before morning."

"It would _have_ to be a miracle to help us now, mother," said Magnus. "And miracles don't happen--except such of them as we make for ourselves."

"What do you mean by that, Magnus?" said Anna, lighting the candles.

"I mean--if I had to live my life over again, I shouldn't try to do what is right, mother."

"You wouldn't do what is wrong, would you?"

"There is no wrong and no right, mother; there is only what is best, and if I had to begin over again, I should do what was best--best for myself and for the people about me."

"You don't know what you are saying, Magnus. There are moments when it might _seem_ to be best to rob, even to kill----"

"And why not?" said Magnus--he was bolting the door. "If a man came to this house to-night with eight thousand crowns in his pocket, do you think I should hesitate to take them?"

"My son, you don't mean it."

"I do!"

"You are driven to despair, Magnus, and a despairing man's words belong to the wind. If I thought you meant it I should die--I should die this very minute."

She was crying and there was silence for a moment, and then Magnus said:

"Never mind, mother. It doesn't matter whether I meant it or not, the temptation isn't likely to come to me. Give me the candle and let us go to bed."

"You have borne a terrible burden, Magnus, and if I could only have helped you to bear it----"

"You have, mother. If it had not been for you and Elin I should have gone under ten years ago."

"Your father knew he had robbed you of your inheritance, and perhaps that helped to kill him in the end."

"It wasn't father's fault altogether. _He_ tried to do what was right, too. But the poor wretch who comes after the prodigal gleans in a barren field, you know."

With their candles in hand they were turning to go--Anna to the badstofa above, and Magnus to the guest-room off the hall--when the dogs, who had risen again, and were snuffling at the bottom of the door, began to growl and bark.

"There's somebody coming," said Magnus.

A moment later there was a sharp knock at the window, as with a metal end of a riding-whip, and a tremulous, high-pitched voice outside, making the customary Icelandic salutation, "God be with you!"

They looked at each other in blank surprise, while backward thoughts galloped through their minds, and then Magnus, forgetting to give the customary reply, walked back to the door, and threw it open.

There was a dull thud of heavy feet on the outside steps, and at the next moment a man stood on the threshold. He seemed to be an old man, for his eyebrows, beard, and mustache, and as much as could be seen of his hair under the peaked hood of his ulster, were white with snow. One moment he stood there as if breathless after his journey, looking from Magnus to the mother, and from the mother to Magnus. Then he said, in the same tremulous voice as before:

"Can I have a bed here to-night, and shelter for my horse?"

It seemed to Anna that he spoke to her, but instead of answering immediately, she looked across at Magnus with helpless eyes that were full of inexpressible fears. Magnus looked back at his mother and hesitated for an instant, while he held the door open with his hand. Then:

"Come in, sir," he said, and the stranger stepped into the house.

*PART VII*

"_The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,_
_But right or left, as strikes the player goes;_
_And He who tossed you down into the field,_
_He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows._"

*I*

"The little mare is hot--she'll want a rub down and a rest before you give her a feed."

"I'll see to that, sir," said Magnus, and he went out and pulled the door after him.

Christian Christiansson had taken two paces into the hall, and was standing there like a man who is dazed. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and his pulse was beating violently, and he felt that he would fall if he took another step forward. So often had he pictured himself in that place that he could not at first believe in the reality. Coming out of the darkness, the light of the candles dazzled him, but he looked round the room, trying to remember. At one glance he took in everything--the old portraits on the wall, the old Bornholme clock in the corner, the stove and the armchair in front of it--and, fresh from the warm comfort of Government House, the Inn-farm seemed bare and bleak. This sent a chill pang of remorse to his mind, and the pain of conscience increased when he looked at his mother.

Her hair was white that had once been dark, and her face, which had been full of the loveliness of love and the beauty of happiness, was scored deep with lines of suffering. His heart yearned over her, and notwithstanding his determination not to reveal his identity until morning, it was as much as he could do to restrain himself from saying as well as he could for the emotion that was mastering him, "Mother, don't you know me? I am Oscar," and then throwing his arms about her dear neck as he had always meant to do.

Meantime Anna, who had recovered her self-control and was lighting the lamp that swung from the ceiling, glanced across at the new-comer and thought, "He's nearly frozen stiff, and no wonder." With that thought she bustled about to rekindle the stove, and called on him to remove his snow-covered clothing.

"Won't you take off your cloak and boots, sir?" she said, and though the question was so commonplace he could not answer immediately, for his voice would not come.

"Your cloak and boots, sir, and I'll put them to dry by the stove."

"Ah yes, of course, certainly."

She stood by him while he threw off his ulster and shook the snow from his hair and beard, emerging a younger and stronger man, but she only thought, "A stranger, I suppose. Why does he travel in this weather?"

When he had pulled off his riding-boots, she brought him a pair of Magnus's slippers and said:

"You must have had a terrible ride, sir."

"It was pretty bad certainly," he said, and after that he got on better.

"A gentleman must have been anxious to get on with his journey to travel on a day like this."

"I was--I had something to do at the end of it."

"Have you come far, sir?"

"Altogether? Yes, very far."

"From Reykjavik perhaps?"

"Farther than that--from England."

"From England!"

"From London."

As he stooped to put on the slippers he thought his mother was looking at him, and he trembled between fear and hope of being recognized.

"I suppose," he said--his head was down--"I suppose you've never been as far as that, landlady?"

"No, sir."

"Nor any of your family?"

He could not resist the temptation to say this, but his mother did not seem to hear him--she was on her knees, breaking sticks into the stove.

"Sit up and warm yourself, sir. My son raked out the fire, but these sticks will burn presently. You are here on business, I suppose?"

"Yes, I'm here on business."

Anna thought of the auction and waited for the stranger to speak of it. When he did not do so she said, "Travelers come from England to buy sheep and ponies, but they don't often come in the winter, sir."

Still he did not speak (he was thinking of Elin and looking round for any trace of her), and rising from the stove Anna said:

"But you'll be hungry after your long ride--what can I give you to eat?"

"Anything at all--anything you have ready."

"I'm afraid I have nothing ready--that is to say, nothing that is good enough for the like of you, sir."

As soon as he could find his voice after that he said, "Don't you always keep smoked mutton in an Iceland house?"

"Well, yes, if that will do, sir."

"I should like it above all things."

There was a moment's silence, and he thought his mother was looking at him again. "Then perhaps you are an Icelander?" she said.

"Yes, I'm an Icelander," he answered.

"What is your name?"

Another wild impulse to reveal himself immediately to his mother, nearly swept down his fears, for he was choking with a sense of duplicity and his conscience was fighting in contrary ways, but after a moment his prudence conquered, and with a gulp in his throat he said:

"They call me Christian Christiansson."

"Well, it's lucky you found us up, sir. We were on the point of going to bed."

"I suppose the other members of your family are gone already?"

"There's only one besides what you've seen--my granddaughter--and she had just gone off as you came in, sir."

He looked at her as she was crossing in front of him, and saw that she was wearing the brooch which he had given her when he came back from Oxford. That sent all the blood to his head again, and he was saying, before he was aware of it--

"Do you know, landlady, I've slept in this house before?"

"It must have been a long time ago then--I don't remember you."

"It was a long time ago. That," pointing to the portrait of Anna on the wall, "that is a portrait of yourself, isn't it?"

"It used to be, but I was younger when it was like me, sir."

A sudden softening came into his voice as he replied, "It was exactly like you when I saw you last, landlady."

"Then you've not been here for ten years at least, sir."

"Quite ten years," he answered. "And that," pointing to the portrait of the Governor, "is a portrait of your husband."

"It must be more than ten years since you were here, sir, for my husband is more than twelve years in his grave."

"It is more than ten years. In fact it is sixteen years--nearly sixteen."

She looked fixedly at him for a moment and something in her memory seemed to stir, for her bosom heaved perceptibly, but she only said, with a deep sigh, "We've seen trouble since you traveled in these parts before, sir."

"Ah, yes, I've heard of it--I heard of it in Reykjavik. You had a son----"

"That was my son who opened the door to you."

"But you had another son--a younger son."

"Yes, but--we never talk of him now, sir."

"Who's portrait is that in your brooch, landlady?"

"It's his--he is dead."

"Died in disgrace, didn't he?"

"Who knows that, sir? Man sees the deed, they say, but God the circumstance."

"They think hard things of him in Reykjavik, though. They say he robbed his father of every penny when he went away, and never sent anything home toward the maintenance of his child."

"It needs no skill to wound the defenceless," said Anna, bridling up. "The father robbed himself to save his son, if you want to know the truth, and as for never sending anything home for the child the poor boy had nothing to send, for he was poor himself, sir."

"So you found that out, did you?"

"After he was dead we did--one of his father's English friends wrote to tell us so. And all the time he had been writing letters to me to say how busy he was and how well he was succeeding--just to keep up my heart and save me from fretting."

The mother's lingering fondness for her prodigal was rising in her eyes and breaking in her voice and she was trying to turn away, but he could not let her go.

"What a pity his father didn't live long enough to hear that! It would have softened his heart toward him, perhaps."

"It didn't need softening, sir--not at the end at all events."

"His father forgave him, did he?"

"He died thinking his son had become a great man and had justified all his hopes and atoned for everything. It was only a delusion, sir, but it made him very happy."

"Your son was a musician, wasn't he?"

"Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were."

"And where were they?"

"In his poor father's hands."

Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said:

"The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel--a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him."

"He was nothing of the kind, sir," said Anna. "He may have done wrong--I'm not defending him--but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me----"

Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna's faltering words. "God bless her!" he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, "I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I've heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland."

"I hadn't meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near--Hush! He is coming back."

But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said:

"Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child."

"I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma."

Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss--for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night.

"This is my granddaughter, sir," said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her--a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.

It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had traveled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.

*II*

"Well, now that you are here, you had better lay the table," said Anna.

"Yes, grandma," said the girl.

"Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee."

"Yes, grandma."

"Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson--my granddaughter will wait on you."

"I will," he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.

Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from self-consciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some song-bird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, "My child! My child! Doesn't something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!" But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say:

"Your name is Elin, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," said the girl.

"What a beautiful name it is, too--Eleen! Your father chose it, didn't he?"

"I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?"

"Grandmother and I," he stammered, "have been talking of your father. You don't remember him?"

"Oh no, sir--he died when I was quite little."

"What a loss that must have been to you, my child!"

"I can't say that, sir," said the girl, "because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference."

"What a loss to your father himself then! How happy you would have made him, and how proud he would have been of you!"

"I can't say that either," said the girl again, "because he lived five years after I was born, and it seems he never took any notice of me."

"Did grandmother tell you so?"

"Oh no, sir. Indeed no! Nor Uncle Magnus neither. But everybody know all about my father, and even the girls at school knew that."

A feeling of mortal shame came over him, and the warm pulsing place in his breast grew still and cold.

"So you are not sorry your father is dead, Elin?"

"It wouldn't be right to say that, sir."

"At all events you feel no love for him?"

"I never knew him--you can't love somebody you never knew, can you? Perhaps if he had lived longer and returned home I might have come to love him. But I don't see how I could if what people say about him is true."

"What do they say, my child?"

"They say he was unkind to my mother, and that that was one of the reasons why she died so early."

"Then you never wish you could have seen and known your father?"

"How can I? If he wasn't good to my poor mother, why should I think he would have been good to me? But see, your supper is ready. Grandma will bring the coffee presently; won't you begin with the meat, sir?"

He sat down to the table but his hunger was gone. For a moment he almost wished himself back in the black night from which he had come. The girl's simple words had been ringing the death-knell of his expectations. He had left her all these years to the keeping and care of others--could he expect to come back now and find the affection he had forfeited? Ah no! He had come too late--too late! But just as one part of the plan he had formed for himself was becoming vague and shadowy a gleam of new light was shot into his brain, and his heart rose with a bound.

"Didn't grandma call you Christian Christiansson?" asked the girl.

"Yes," he answered. "Ever hear that name before, my child?"

The girl turned to him with a face glowing with excitement and said, "Everybody in Iceland has heard it, sir. It is the same as the name of the great composer who lives in England."

A deafening tumult of joy was rising within him, and he said, "So you--you have heard of him, have you?"

"I sing his songs, sir. They are beautiful! I think they are the most beautiful songs in the world. Would you like me to sing one of them while you eat your supper?"

"Will you?"

"I should like to," she said, and before he could catch the breath which had been suspended she had slipped off like a shaft of moonlight and was back like a ray of the sun, bringing a guitar in her hands.

"This was my mother's guitar, and now it's mine, and it's such a good one," she said, and with the utter freedom from self-consciousness which is the charm of children she sat and began to play. After a moment she stopped, with her head aside, and said:

"Which should it be, I wonder? But perhaps you know them all and would like me to sing something in particular?"

His face was down, the waves of emotion were surging through and through him. "Sing--sing anything you like, my darling," he replied.

The fluttered earnestness of his words startled her for a moment, but she only smiled with a new sweetness and began to sing, first in low, clear half-tones, and then in a high, tremulous treble that was like the peal of a lark at the gate of heaven.

Christian Christiansson could not eat; he could only rest his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hand. His own child was singing his own song to him in a voice that was like her mother's voice and like his own voice too!

When the song was done she turned to him again with eyes shining with unshed tears and said, "Isn't that beautiful?"

"It was beautifully sung, my child, beautifully!" he said. And then, after a moment, "Elin, would you like to hear something of the man who wrote that song and how he came to write it?"

Elin's eagerness was heart-breaking. "Indeed, indeed I should," she said. "Do you know your namesake then?"

"I have known him all his life, my child."

"Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble."

"He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn't know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much--oh so much--to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth."

As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again.

"How beautiful!" she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.

There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labor he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass--her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephenson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?

In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice:

"Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it."

And then, having both in the room at one moment--his mother and his daughter--his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, "Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!"

Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, "The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I've rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed."

"Let us have a bottle of brandy first," said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus's bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.

*III*

They were less like each other now than ever before--the elder with his matted, black beard, his strong features, and the vertical lines in his low brow under the upright stubble of his iron-grey hair; the younger with his luminous brown eyes and delicate face, his full round forehead, and his thin, silken, light hair brushed backward to the crown.

Christian Christiansson was quivering to the core at this first encounter with the brother whom he had wronged and ruined, but he tried to bear himself bravely and to see how safe it would be to reveal his identity when the time came to do so.

"It's good of you to give up your room to me," he began.

"That's nothing--nothing at all," said Magnus.

"And perhaps you ought to know why I'm here to-night."

"Please yourself, sir--please yourself."

"To tell you the truth, then, I'm here to attend the auction to-morrow morning. I only heard of it in Reykjavik yesterday, having arrived by the 'Laura' the day before."

"So that was the business that brought you, sir?"

"It was. I've been abroad for fifteen years, and I've made some money, and now I've come home to invest it. So knowing this was a good farm----"

"None better in Iceland, sir, if it only had a chance, and if you can afford to buy it out and out----"

"I think I can--I've money enough in my pocket at this moment to buy the place to-morrow and leave some for something else. I'm sorry for you, though, and if it's painful to you to hear me talk like this----"

Magnus, who had been rolling in his chair like a man whose mind as well as his body was uneasy, began to laugh immoderately. "Not at all, sir! Not at all!" he said, filling his glass. "It's pleasant to hear of anybody having more money than he wants. For my part, I've never had enough to pay my debts, sir. For sixteen years I've been ploughing the waves and now," raising his glass and draining it, "I'm reaping the breakers, b---- them!"

Christian Christiansson trembled to his very heart at the sound of Magnus's laughter--the bitter laughter of rebellion and despair--but he tried to cover up his fear and to carry it off with a cheery tone.

"Don't be too depressed," he said. "Nobody knows what the future has in store for him. It's a pretty dark night outside, but all the same the sun will rise to-morrow morning. Besides, there's always a sunny side to misfortune if we'll only allow ourselves to see it. Life is sweet, my friend, whatever happens."

"You think it is, sir?"

"I know it is, so why should we sit down on our little handful of thorns?"

"Because some of us have nothing else to sit upon," said Magnus, and he laughed again--the same cold, quaking laughter.

Christian Christiansson shuddered, but struggled on. "You think you've failed, but I know some that have succeeded who would be glad to change places with you any minute. They've got their gold or their fame or both pouring down on them like an avalanche, and nothing to do with it, nobody to share it with--so it is only so much Dead Sea fruit being piled on their backs. You are not like that. Even if you have to lose your land, you've got your health, and a good character and a clean conscience, and your dear ones left to you, haven't you?"

"That's why!" said Magnus. "You don't suppose I'm thinking of myself, do you? It's just because I've got my dear ones left to me that this accursed ill-luck is so hard to bear. What's it to me to have my houses full of lambs, if the floods have come and they are floating on the lake? You talk like a man who has never known misfortune, sir."

Christian Christiansson felt dizzy. "Perhaps I haven't--perhaps I have," he said in a faint voice, "but I've known despair, and I know that no man can live by that. We can only live by hope--not what is, but what is to be--and if we cannot believe when the clouds are dark, that the world is ruled in righteousness----"

"And is it?" said Magnus. "Does the bad man suffer in this world? Do his sheep die of the rot and his cattle tumble over the rocks, or do they increase faster than anybody else's? No, sir," he said, turning away in his seat, "if you're a rascal ready to rob your own father, the chances are you'll prosper in this world, but if you're an honest man trying to do good to everybody, as likely as not you'll do no good to yourself or to anybody about you."

The dizziness which had seized Christian Christiansson was increasing every moment, but he said:

"The world has its own way of punishing offenders, and even if they escape in life, death is always waiting for them----"

"Death?" said Magnus, swinging round in his creaking chair. "Death is a blind, blundering monster who strikes down the young and leaves the old, the happy and leaves the miserable, the innocent and leaves the guilty, the poor helpless betrayed one and leaves the betrayer! We have all seen that, haven't we? _I_ have, I know that much."

The heat and flame of Magnus's husky voice had fallen to a thick whisper that was like a broken sob. Christian Christiansson dared not raise his face, but he tried to say:

"God brings out all things well in the end. I have always found it so. The march of the world may be enveloped in darkness, but it tends toward justice in the long run."

"What is the long run to me, sir?" said Magnus. "I'm only here for a few years and I want justice now. I want to see the bad man punished in the present, not in some future generation. Justice, you say! The sins of the fathers visited on the children--that's the only justice I see in this world. A poor child left penniless because her father gambled or drank the money he didn't make--do you call that justice, sir? I don't!"

Magnus's thick voice was breaking again, and there was silence for a little while.

"No, no, sir! Don't tell me we get our deserts in this world--any of us--good or bad. Life gives the lie to that old story--always has, always will do. If you are a cheat or a profligate, or a prodigal, you may live in luxury and travel as far as the sun, but if you are a poor devil staying at home and working your fingers to the bone you'll get thrown out into the road. But what's the good of talking? The evil day is coming. Let it come!"

Never before had Christian Christiansson felt so little and so mean. The sources of pride were dry in him and he was brought very low in his own esteem. In the presence of the brother who had borne his burdens and broken down under them he saw himself as an abject and pitiful thing. He could not raise his head, for he felt as if his shame were written on his forehead, but he struggled to say something, and the only words that came to him seemed to scorch his tongue and parch his throat.

"I can not dispute with you," he said. "You've suffered more than I have, and no doubt your present troubles are the legacy that was left to you by the prodigal brother your mother was talking about."

Magnus's manner changed instantly at the mention of his mother. "She was talking about him again, was she?" he said.

"Does she often talk of him then?"

"Too often, and she seems to think of nothing else. He was the foundation she built her house upon, poor soul, and it fell, but she holds to him all the same."

"God bless her!" said Christian Christiansson involuntarily. "God bless all women, I say. They're always on the side of the sinners and the sufferers. They'll get their compensation somewhere--they must,"--he was thinking of to-morrow morning.

"I see no sign of it in this case," said Magnus. "She was the best mother to him a man ever had, and he knew it, but he repaid her with neglect and contempt."

"Contempt?"

"What else would you call it? He lived five years abroad and wrote to her only once in all that time. Yet every night she used to stand outside the door until the post passed, winter and summer, dry or fine, waiting for the letter that never came."

Christian Christiansson felt as if his very soul were shriveling up with shame.

"She forgave him for that, though, and when he died--you know how he died, everybody knows it--she thought that all he had been trying to do when he fell into that foul dishonor was to get money enough to come back home and make amends."

"She thought that, did she?"

"She still thinks it."

Christian Christiansson had a sense of hysterical oppression at his heart. Again he wanted to tell all, and he dared not. "But if it had been true," he said--"I don't say it was, but if it had been--if your brother had really been trying for years to make money solely in order to wipe out the debts he had left behind him--if he had come home with the fortune in his hands----"

Magnus's dark face darkened ominously, and bringing his great fist down on to the table he said, "There would have been a curse on every coin of it, and I should have flung it in his face."

Christian Christiansson did not ask him why. He knew too well what Magnus meant. In an instant, by such a flash of the lightning of the mind as must come to the guilty soul on the Day of Judgment, the past of his life lay open before him, and the most awful fact of it stood out with naked vividness--the desecration of his wife's grave.

It was impossible to plead that this had been only the act of a moment; that he had repented it a thousand times with bitter tears; that he had derived no profit or advantage from it, and had endured for ten years its fearful penalty in the death of his identity. Again and again he had soothed himself with such excuses, but he could not cheat his conscience now. Why was he Christian Christiansson? How had it come to pass that he had two hundred thousand crowns in his pocket and that his works were known all over the world?

All the miserable sophistry and false reasoning which had made him what he was, the owner of fame and fortune, had been riddled through and through by Magnus's terrible words. All the mocking vanity which had lured him onward to that hour with promises of the great surprise, the great denouement, when he should say, "See, I am here; I have justified all expectations," lay stark and dead and cold.

No, he could not reveal himself to his family to-morrow morning. He could not reveal himself at all. Having once become Christian Christiansson, he could never again be known as Oscar Stephenson. Thus did the dead punish him, and the desecration of his wife's grave had but rendered the vow he made to himself perpetual and registered the oath he made to her in heaven.

Christian Christiansson was feeling as if all the world had gone away from him when Anna came out of the guest-room, saying:

"There, sir! Your room is ready and you can go to bed at any time."

Magnus got up to go to the elt-house to mix the mash for the pony, and then mother and son were together again.

*IV*

In the confusion of that heart-quelling moment he was asking himself how he could carry out his plan of rescuing his family from their misfortunes if he could not tell them who he was, and how he could claim his daughter and take her away with him, if he could not say, "I am her father, she is mine," when chance and a commonplace word--those twin sisters of invention and wisdom--showed him what he was to do.

"I shall want to be awakened early in the morning, landlady, for I suppose the Sheriff will come soon."

"The Sheriff, sir?"

"I've just been telling your son that I intend to bid for your farm at the auction to-morrow morning."

"So that was what you had to do at the end of your journey?"

"Yes, it was what I had to do, landlady."

She looked at him for a moment, and then asked, "What can a gentleman like you want with a farm like this?"

He did not reply, so she said, "You can not think of living in such a lonesome place as Thingvellir."

Still he did not speak, and she said again, "You might let the farm certainly, but it is hungry land, I assure you, and everything depends on how you work it."

She busied herself about the table as if trying to find something to do. "My son," she said, "is the only one who has ever been able to work it properly, and if he has got into difficulties at last it wasn't his fault, for there isn't a man in Iceland who would have been able to keep his head above water."

She waited for him to say something, but he gave no sign. "His difficulties are not so very serious, either. Eight thousand crowns arrears of interest--that is all, in sixteen years, sir."

Again she waited, but he was still silent. "When the Sheriff went off this evening, he said if my son could find the money before nine o'clock to-morrow morning, he wouldn't go on with the auction."

Christian Christiansson had rested his head on his hand and seemed to be listening intently.

"If my son could only find somebody to lend him the money----"

There was a ring of appeal in her voice which startled herself, for she stopped, and looking nervously round at the stranger, said:

"I'm sure he would never regret it, sir. Magnus would work his fingers to the bone to repay every penny. He has always been a boy like that, and with better seasons and a little luck----"

It was then that the new scheme came to Christian Christiansson and he covered his face with his hand to think of it, whereupon Anna, mistaking the meaning of the altered gesture, faltered and began again.

"I'm taking a great liberty, sir, but I'm not thinking of myself--I'm thinking of my son. In one sense I'm to blame for all that has happened to him. He doesn't know it and I daren't tell him, but I am."

Christian Christiansson looked up at her.

"It was all my fault that his father took the mortgage."

"_Your_ fault?"

"Yes, sir. My husband loved the poor boy who is gone, but he was the Governor of Iceland and every eye was on him to see that he kept his own house in order, and but for me he might have let the law take its course. I pleaded and prayed with him, thinking that we ourselves would be the ones to suffer. But I only ruined one son in trying to save the other--and I didn't save him."

Christian Christiansson dropped his head, for the waters of bitterness were falling over him in a flood, and Anna, thinking she had touched him, went on more eagerly:

"Then there's the girl, sir, my granddaughter. You've seen her yourself, and you'll say she doesn't look like a servant, but if the auction comes off she'll have to go out to service. They treat girls shamefully in some farmhouses, and my son can not bear the thought of it. Neither can I, for I can't help thinking of her father. Whatever else he may have been he was a gentleman, and to think of his daughter being a drudge to somebody----"

Anna's voice was faltering again, but after a moment she went on bravely.

"As for myself, I'm an old woman, and a little misfortune more or less doesn't matter to me now. My time is short in any case, and I shall be glad to go when I'm called. Most of my loved ones are gone already--my son and my granddaughter are all that are left--and if I could feel that I was leaving them happy and comfortable----"

Christian Christiansson could bear no more. "Landlady," he said, "I had set my heart on buying the farm--I had a particular reason for wishing to buy it--but instead of doing so I'll lend your son the money to pay the interest."

Anna's eyes opened wide in astonishment, and now that her prayer was answered her breath seemed to be suspended. "You _will_, sir?" she said.

"I will, on one condition.

"Oh, never mind the condition, let me go and tell him."

"My condition is that you give me the girl to adopt as my daughter."

"Ah!"

"I'm a lonely person, too, though I'm not so old as you are, and when I'm in England I haven't wife or child or mother or brother to share my life with me. The girl's sweet face would be a great comfort to me there, and I'm ready to pay this interest if you are willing to let her go."

The light had died out of Anna's eyes--her head was down.

"I should give you every guarantee that she would be taken care of. I am rich, as men of my class go, and she should want for nothing."

"But I didn't think your condition would be like that, sir," said Anna.

"Why not? Are you thinking of the girl or of yourself, landlady?"

"I am thinking of my son. No man was ever so wrapped up in a child. He has had her nearly all her life, and he is very, very fond of her. When she was little and the snow was deep as it is to-day he used to take her to school on his shoulder, and at night when she was sleepy he would carry her in his arms to bed. If she were his own he could not love her more dearly. It is like fatherhood to him, and he will never be a father now, because----"