Chapter XVI: Part 16

Anna hesitated as if trying to say something which she was afraid to say, and then through her gathering tears she blurted out her secret.

"To tell you the truth, sir, he cared for her mother, but gave her up to somebody else and she died, and from that day forward all the best years of his life were wasted in a cruel longing for something to love. Then the child came, and it was almost as if the mother herself had sent her little one to comfort him. _She_ could not love him, for she loved the other one to the last, but the child might, and she has--God bless her, she has!"

Christian Christiansson was wrung to the heart, but he struggled on. "So you think he could not part with the girl even for her own welfare and happiness?"

"I don't say that, sir; and perhaps if it were put to him properly----"

"Put it yourself, landlady."

"I daren't! He might suppose that I was thinking of myself."

"And if he did, would that be such a serious matter? Can it be nothing to him that his mother will be saved from being homeless if no harm is to come to the girl? And no harm shall come to her--you may take my word for that."

Anna thought for a moment and then she said, "You would tell us where she is to go, and what she is to do, and how she is to be brought up?"

"Indeed I would."

"She might write to us constantly and come to see us sometimes, perhaps?"

"Certainly she might."

"After all, it would just be like going into service."

"Just."

"Only she would be a lady, not a servant?"

"Only that."

"You would be good to her? Something tells me you would. And you would, wouldn't you?"

"I should be as good to the girl as if--as if I were her own father," said Christian Christiansson.

Anna dried her eyes and said:

"I don't know what to say, sir--I really don't know what to say to you."

"Say nothing to me--speak to your son, landlady."

"You will lend him the money to pay the interest immediately?"

"Immediately."

"Eight thousand crowns--you can find it all by nine o'clock to-morrow morning?"

"See," said Christian Christiansson, taking the pocketbook out of his breast-pocket, "there's enough in this purse to pay the interest twenty times over. And I'll not _lend_ the money to your son--I'll _give_ it to him if he will give me the girl instead."

"He will be sorry to part with her, but after all it will be one mouth less to feed, and when I'm gone that will be another, and then perhaps, having no burdens and no embarrassments----"

"Speak to him--he's here," said Christian Christiansson, and just at that moment Magnus returned to the hall carrying a wooden bowl of smoking bran.

Then in a low and trembling tone, hardly daring to raise her eyes to his face, Anna told her son of the stranger's offer, dwelling chiefly on the advantages to himself when Elin would be provided for, and she herself would be under the earth, and he, no longer crippled by grinding debt, would be able to pay his way and win back his lost inheritance. But as she went on her voice faltered, and her words became confused, for he was looking down at her with a lowering brow, and at last she stopped altogether, saying:

"I didn't mean any harm, Magnus. I only thought----"

"You thought I could sacrifice Elin to save myself, mother," said Magnus, and at that hard word Anna sank into a chair and sobbed.

Then Magnus turned to Christian Christiansson and said, "I'm much obliged for your offer, sir, but my niece is not for sale."

With that he was passing out of the house, when Christian Christiansson, who was quivering from head to foot, cried, "Wait!"

"Well?"

"You have decided for yourself fast enough--have you thought of anybody else?"

"Who else is there to think about?"

"Your mother for one. If you refuse my offer and the house is sold over your heads to-morrow morning, what is to become of her?"

Magnus flushed as if an invisible hand had smitten him across the face.

"What is to become of the girl, too--have you thought of that? Have you a right to send her into service--to be a drudge to somebody?"

Magnus was shuddering visibly--even the bowl was trembling in his hands.

"No doubt you are fond of the girl and have been good to her, but if she were your own daughter she would be a separate being, and in a case like this you would have no right to speak for her."

"Then she shall speak for herself," said Magnus, and putting the smoking bowl on the table he crossed to the inner door and cried in an agitated voice, "Elin! Elin! Elin!"

In a moment the girl came running into the room with a look of alarm, saying, "What is it? Has anything happened?"

"Listen!" said Magnus, and Christian Christiansson could see that though his voice shook as if his soul were shaken he was trying to speak calmly. "This gentleman," he said, "has told your grandmother that he wishes to adopt you as a daughter, and he offers to pay my debts if I am willing to let you go."

"Uncle!" cried the girl.

"I have told him you shall speak for yourself, and so you shall, and whatever you decide to do your grandmother and I will agree to."

"But, Uncle!"

"Don't speak yet, my child. It is only fair that you should hear everything. Elin, I am a broken man and I have no longer a home to offer you. After the auction to-morrow morning I don't know what is to become of grandmother and you and me, or where we are to go or what roof is to cover us. But this gentleman is rich, and he promises to provide for you all your life, and to give you all you need and everything you could wish for. If you stay with me you may suffer privations, but if you go to him you will never know a poor day again as long as you live."

His deep voice had all it could do to support itself, but he bore up to the end, and then Anna, whose eyes were filling as fast as she could wipe them, said:

"Isn't it wonderful, Elin? Isn't it like a miracle? Like an answer to your prayer, my child, just when we were so low and downhearted? The gentleman will satisfy us that you are going to a good Christian home and that you will be properly brought up and cared for."

And then Christian Christiansson himself, though he could scarcely speak for the contending emotions that shook Him to the soul, stepped forward and said:

"Let me tell you who I am, Elin. We spoke of Christian Christiansson the composer, and you sang his song to me and said you would like to hear something about him. I am Christian Christiansson."

The girl made a little involuntary cry, and his voice faltered for a moment.

"Yes, I am he, and the story I told you was the story of my own unhappy life, only--I have lost my daughter since I wrote that song, and now I am quite alone. Will you not come and take her place, my child? You shall be just the same to me as my own daughter, and you shall never know the difference. You will return with me to England and live my life, and whatever I do you shall do, and wherever I go you shall go also."

"Think of that, Elin!" said Anna. "You love music--you take after your poor father that way--and you will travel about just as your dear mother used to do!"

"It would be beautiful!" said Elin.

She had been standing all this time by the table with one hand resting lightly upon it, while her sweet face reflected the changing lights of alarm and pain and surprise and joy.

"I can't think of anything in the world I should love so much, but--I can not, I must not."

"Elin!"

"Grandma, didn't you tell me yourself when I came here long ago, and you put me to bed the first time, that I was never to leave Uncle Magnus, and if anybody ever came to take me away I was not to go? I was a little mite, but I gave you my word, I remember, and I am going to keep it."

"But I was thinking of somebody else then, Elin. I couldn't know that this gentleman would come--at a time like this, too----"

"But that makes no difference, grandma. Besides, if I were to go to this gentleman and he were to treat me as if I were his own daughter, I should have to think of him as if he were my own father. Would you like that, grandma? And would Uncle Magnus like it?"

"We should sacrifice ourselves, honey, we should sacrifice ourselves that you might be well off and happy."

"But I don't want to be well off if you and Uncle Magnus are going to be poor. And I shouldn't be happy at all--I should be miserable."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" moaned Anna, unable to say more. And then the girl turned with a smile to Christian Christiansson, who was throbbing with pride and pain, and she said:

"It is very, very good of you, sir, and there isn't another girl in the world who wouldn't be glad to go; but I can't, you must see yourself I can't--I must stay with my uncle. Grandma is going to do so, and why shouldn't I?"

"He would be better without either of us, Elin," said Anna.

"Don't say that, grandma."

"I do say it, my child, and if you only knew how cruel the world is----"

"But God isn't, and He will not separate us now after we have been together so long. You said so yourself, you know, when I talked of going into service. You said He would find another way, and He will--I'm sure He will."

It wrung Anna's heart to have her own teaching coming back to reproach her, yet thinking of Magnus she made one more effort. "But don't you see, dear, that if you stay with Uncle Magnus he will lose the land, whereas if you go with this gentleman he will be able to keep it?"

Then the innocent young face which had been so full of beautiful trust in the greatness and the goodness of God to triumph over all perils and privations clouded over for one moment, and she said, "Do you _want_ me to go, grandma? And does Uncle Magnus want it?"

Neither of them answered her, and she looked from one to the other--Anna brushing her eyes with the back of her wrinkled hand, and Magnus standing motionless with a white face broken up like the melting snow--and then the cruel swelling in the girl's heart subsided and her eyes shone like the sun.

"I _know_ you don't," she answered herself. "You are only thinking about _me_."

And then the brave little soul tossed up her head with a proud look and said, "As for the land--if it comes to losing that or losing me, I know what Uncle Magnus will say. He will say--I _know_ he will--'Let me keep my little Elin and the land--_the land may go_!'"

"And so I do, my darling," cried Magnus, and he opened his great arms to her, and she ran into them and was gathered to his breast.

At the next moment Anna had joined them and Magnus had put his arms around both, and it was just as if they had conquered a great temptation--as if some dark shadow which had threatened to separate them had passed away--for they were clinging together and crying like children.

Christian Christiansson stood aside for a moment and looked on at their happiness, feeling himself without part or lot in it, and then, fearing that he might cry out and betray himself or break down altogether, he turned away and fled into the guest-room.

*V*

He threw himself face downward on the bed, and the waters of Marah went over and over him. Sight of the happiness he had lost the right to claim was the hardest experience that had yet come to him, and he wept bitterly. "My child! My dear, dear child!" he had wanted to cry, but those were words of proud endearment which he might never use except in the voiceless chambers of his empty heart.

But this mood lasted only for a few moments, and then a fierce and almost savage jealousy took possession of him, and he dried his eyes and sat up in contempt of his own weakness. What right had any one to rob him of his child? Elin was flesh of his flesh, and no man should take her away. Even the law would recognize his right to his own offspring. He had merely to say to the Sheriff, "She is mine," and the Sheriff would have no choice but to deliver her up to him.

Then calmer moments came, and he saw that he could only assert his legal right to his daughter by disclosing his identity, and that was out of the question. And even if it were possible to carry his daughter away by force, it would be a poor triumph to take her body if he could not also take her soul. Every man wished his children to love him, and unless Elin could love her father, what was the good of claiming her?

He opened his eyes to calm the deafening tumult of his conflicting thoughts, and saw a little faded photograph in a stand on a table that stood beside the bed. It was an old photograph of Thora, and he remembered it immediately, for it was the same that in the better time belonged to Aunt Margret and stood on the drawers beside her door. He took it up in his shaking hand and held the candle to look at it, and then, in a moment, by that magic the Almighty knows, he was back with Thora in the birth-room at Government House, and she was saying, in the tremulous joy of her young motherhood, "Kiss me, Oscar! Put your arms about both of us, dearest! That way--so!"

Something of the tenderness of Thora's sweet heart returned to him with that haunting memory, and along with it came a new and thrilling thought. If Elin belonged to him by right of Nature, then Nature herself would speak for him. He had only to say to her, "I am your father; you are my daughter," and she would come to him--she could not help herself--because Nature is a mighty thing and none of us can resist the mysterious call that comes to our blood from the blood that gave us birth!

He would do so; he would find the girl alone and speak to her; he would whisper the secret of his life in the ear of his own child, and then the marvelous Mother of us all would do the rest.

When he returned to the hall, Elin was shaking out the cloth and removing the last of the supper things--all except the bottle and glasses, which she left on the table. "It must be now," he thought, and though his heart quailed at coming to this last throw in the game he had played for life and love, he put his fortune to the test.

"It was very brave of you, my child," he said, "to choose poverty when you might have chosen wealth. But you did well, for wealth is only of this world's making, and the angel that brings us happiness does not ask us if we are poor or rich."

His voice faltered when he came to what he had to say next, but he rallied and went on:

"It was very sweet of you, too, to remain with your uncle and your grandmother, instead of coming to a stranger, for being of your own flesh and blood they have naturally the first claim upon you. But if--if, instead of Christian Christiansson, I had been _your own father_, would you--would you have come to me then?"

Elin did not answer him immediately, and he looked steadfastly into her face, feeling that all hope of happiness for the remainder of his life hung on her reply.

"Would you?"

The sweet young face looked troubled for a moment, and then slowly--very slowly and sadly--Elin shook her head.

He felt like a man who had been sentenced to death, but while his face clouded and fell, the girl's rose and became beautifully calm.

"I don't see how that could make any difference," she said. "I couldn't feel as if you were my father unless I had known you as long as I could remember, and longer even than that. What I call a father is one who has nursed you on his knee when you were a little thing, and kissed you and coaxed you when you were sick, and thought of you and cared for you always, not one who has been away from you all your life, who has never cared for you at all, and whom you wouldn't know if you met him in the road."

"But don't you feel, dear, that there is something in the relation of a child to her father, however he may have neglected her--something intimate and sacred--something she can never know in her relation to anybody else, however much he may have done for her--don't you feel that, Elin?"

Again the girl thought for a moment, and again she shook her head.

"But if I were to say to you, 'My child, my dear, dear child, I may have done nothing for you, but still I am your father, and you are the only one who is left to me now, and I want you to come to me and be my daughter, and we shall never be parted again'--if I were to say that to you, would you still hold to your uncle?"

The tremulous fervor with which he spoke these imploring words brought tears to the girl's eyes, but her heart stood firm and strong.

"Yes," she said, "I couldn't help it, because Uncle Magnus has been my real father after all."

It was all over. His last hold of the girl was lost. Again he felt as if the world had gone away from him, as if the dark column of hope which had shown its bright face for a moment had turned again, and now all was hopeless darkness.

He had thought Nature would speak to the girl, but it had not spoken. Nature was a great, inexorable instrument in the hand of God, and God's hand was on him. _As he had done, so he was being done by_--as he had taken the love of Thora from Magnus, so Magnus, after many years, had taken the love of Elin from him. It was right, it was inevitable, and he must bow his head in speechless submission before the justice and the vengeance of God!

He must leave the house as he had come to it, not only without revealing himself to his mother and brother, but also without his child. It would be the bitterest moment of his life, but he must meet it and go on.

"You are quite right, my dear--quite right," he said. "A child's love is like a flower in the window--it cannot grow without somebody to water it. Your uncle has done everything for you, and he is entitled to all your affection. It wouldn't be fair if your father could come back, after all these years, and take you away from him. Cling to him, Elin, love him, and comfort him, and may God bless you for your loyalty and trust!"

He had tried to speak bravely, but his voice broke and he stopped. After a moment he said calmly:

"Can you give me pen and ink and a sheet of writing-paper?"

She brought them instantly, and he sat at the table and wrote a line or two. Then he took out his pocket-book, opened it, and put the paper inside of it, and closed it up again.

"Elin, will you do me a great favor?"

"Oh yes, sir," said the girl.

"It is late, and I've had a long day, and I may not be up when the auction begins in the morning--will you take this pocket-book and give it to the Sheriff the moment he arrives?"

"With pleasure, sir."

"You will not open it or show it to anybody else, but you will carry it to your room at once and put it under your pillow, and to-morrow morning you will be up early and give it to the Sheriff before he begins the sale--will you do this for me, my dear?"

"Indeed I will, sir."

"Thank you! And now you must go to bed. Good-by, my child!"

"But I'll see you in the morning, sir?"

"Who can say? We may both have other things to think about by that time, so we had better say good-by to each other now."

"But am I not to see you again?"

"Who can say that either! I have come a long way, you know, and now I may have to go--" he hesitated, and then turning away he said, "I may have to go still farther."

"You have been so kind to me, sir--I am sorry I can not go with you."

"Ah, God forbid!--I mean, you can not--I see you can not! But if you _could_ have done so I should have been so fond of you, and we should have been such good friends together."

"I shall never forget you, sir."

"Nor I you. I shall always think of the brave little girl I met once--only once--and then could see no more.

"You are only a stranger to me, sir, but--but----"

"Yes, I am only a stranger to you, my child, but we have come together on the great ocean of life, and now--now we must say good-by and part."

"Good-by, sir!"

"Good-by, little girl, and God bless you!"

The girl stepped to her bedroom door and then stopped and turned and looked back at him. Her eyes were full--she knew not why. Nature was saying something to her at last--she knew not what.

He was looking after her with all his hungry soul in his quivering face, and when she turned he stretched out his arms to her.

"Elin!" he whispered, and she came back to him, and he folded her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead and on the lips. Ah, sweet, soft, warm lips, he felt them to the last!

A mist floated before his eyes; he heard footsteps going away from him; he heard a door open and close, and then--his child was gone.

* * * * *

Christian Christiansson was alone. He felt that he had come to the lees of his life and saw nothing but a blank where he might crawl to die. Could he go back to Reykjavik? That was impossible, for the Minister and his people would be preparing their banquet in honor of his visit, and to go through such rejoicing would be a scorching martyrdom at which the devil himself would laugh. Could he return to England and resume his old life as the unknown composer? That was impossible also, for he could never write as he had written before, because the old impulse was gone, the fire was burnt out, the life that had inspired him was dead, and because the foundations of his fame were broken up by the new consciousness that he had no right to it, by the sense that his career and all that had come of it had been built on the desecration of his wife's grave, and by the certainty that his success had been paid for as by the sweat of his very soul.

What then was before him? Old age? What was old age without friends, without children, without love, without respect and with memory--that last joy of a man's declining days--like a poisoned river running through a wasted land?

Was there nothing before him then? Yes, there was one thing--one only--and as he lay in that room alone with his head over his hands on the table, he had the trembling, thrilling, palpitating sense of supernatural wings hovering above him, and of an awful voice that seemed to say, "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!"

At that moment he became aware of other voices--more human and homely voices--murmuring about him, and one of them said, "He has fallen asleep, poor gentleman," and another, "He has drunk too much, perhaps." Then a hand touched him on the shoulder and somebody cried in his ear:

"Hadn't you better go to bed, sir?"

It was his mother, with Magnus behind her, and looking at both he could see that they supposed he was intoxicated. In the wild laboring of heart and brain, it suited him that they should continue to think so, and indeed the strain of nerve had been so hard that when he rose to his feet he staggered like a drunken man.

"Heigho! What's this?" he laughed. "Your brennie-vin must be pretty heady, landlady. But no matter! It will be a good nightcap and make me sleep the sounder. I'm tired, very tired, but I'm going to have a long sleep at last--a long, long sleep at last."

"But to-morrow will be New Year's Day," said Anna. "The bells ring at daybreak, and the Sheriff will be here soon after, so you'll have to be stirring early if you want to be ready for the auction."

"Why, so I shall--I had forgotten all about it--and since we can not agree about the girl I must buy the farm whatever happens. I told you I wanted it for a particular purpose, but I didn't say what it was. It's my secret, landlady, but I don't mind telling you. I want it for my mother."

"Your mother?"

"That's so! She was born in these parts, and the poor old thing would like to end her days here."

"So she tells you to buy up my farmstead?"

"Not she! She doesn't know anything about it. That's to be my surprise. I've not been a good son, but when I go away never to come back again I want to feel that the dear old soul is happy and comfortable and has a roof to cover her."

He laughed, with the same sense as before of an hysterical oppression of the heart, and then turned to Magnus and said:

"Sorry to buy your house over your head, but business is business, you know, and anybody is at liberty to bid who has money to pay."

Magnus moved aside with a contemptuous expression.

"Don't look so glum, my man. You think you've been badly treated and perhaps you have, but you're the luckiest man in Iceland if you ask me. You think because you've done well you ought to be rewarded, but what right have poor wretches like us to expect reward in this world? You think because a man is rich he is to be envied, but what's the use of having your pocket full if your heart is empty? And you think because Death kills the innocent and the happy it is a cruel monster, but there are worse things than Death, and Life is one of them when you've nobody to care whether you live or die. Then cheer up, old fellow! You've got your health and your good name, and your mother and that sweet girl to love and to love you, so what the devil have you got to complain of? Nothing at all!"

Saying this with a mixture of real emotion and its mocking make-believe, a touch of the boy came back to him for a moment and he put his arm across his brother's shoulder as he used to do in the old days, but Magnus shuddered and shrank away.

"Your candle is burning in the bedroom, sir," said Anna coldly.

And then he saw that his mother also looked black at him, as one who had come to turn them out of house and home, and as one who had tried to tempt the girl away from them, and as one who could laugh at their condition and have no thought except for himself. And thinking that this was the last he would see of her; that it was so different from the parting he had expected; that all hope of pardon and reconciliation was lost; that his mother would never hear that her lingering faith in her prodigal had been justified and never know that he had been and gone, he had as much as he could do not to break down and betray himself even at the end.

But gathering up his clothes which had been drying by the stove, he turned toward the bedroom, saying with another laugh--a laugh that went to Anna's heart like a sword:

"Don't look so downhearted, landlady. When things are at their worst they can't move without they mend. You've had your troubles, but you shall drink my health under my mother's roof-tree to-morrow morning. Good night!"

And then he reeled into the guest-room.

*VI*

The stranger being gone, mother and son looked into each other's faces. Then they spoken in whispers.

"Did you hear him?" said Anna.

"About his mother's roof-tree?" asked Magnus.

"About the auction--about everything. The man can have no feeling--no pity."

"None."

"'Business is business,' he said, when he talked of buying the place over our heads. And when he spoke of his mother ending her days here he never once thought of me."

"He never thought of Elin either. He would have taken the girl away from us without a moment's hesitation."

"He would," said Anna. "'There's enough in this purse,' he said, 'to pay your interest twenty times over.'"

"Did he say that?"

"He did. He took his pocket-book out of his breast-pocket and----"

"His breast-pocket, you say?"

"Yes, 'and I'll _give_ the money to your son,' he said, 'if he'll give me the girl instead.'"

Anna talked on in an innocent, helpless way without knowing what bad work she was doing, but suddenly, mysteriously, at the mention of the purse a change passed over Magnus's face and it grew ugly with evil passions.

"He must be rich," said Anna.

"Richer than anybody has a right to be," said Magnus.

"Surely God can not mean that anybody should be as rich as that while other people are so poor."

"God!" said Magnus, and his distorted face quivered.

"If he would only lend us enough to satisfy the Sheriff in the morning!" said Anna.

"What's the good of expecting a man to help us to keep the farm when he has come to buy it for himself?"

"It's hard, though, cruelly hard, to be turned out of house and home by the first person who comes along with more money."

"That's what I was thinking," said Magnus.

Down to this moment Anna had only been trying to sympathize with Magnus's mood, but now something in his tone made her suspect that she had awakened a devil, and she looked at him in terror.

He took up the bottle and drank; he drank out of the neck; and there was a new devil in every drop. His eyes began to gleam with a feverish luster, and Anna trembled. She remembered that Magnus had not taken any strong drink until to-day since the day of Thora's funeral, and then she thought of her father, and a sensation of extreme cold crept over her.

"Let us not talk of it any more," she said, as she tried to put the bottle away, but Magnus held on to it.

Mother and son looked at each other again, and then Anna went over to the stranger's door and listened.

"Has he locked it?" asked Magnus.

"No, I'm afraid-- No, no, he has not."

"What is he doing?"

"The candle is out--he must be in bed already."

"Then," said Magnus, "he has thrown himself down without undressing and the pocket-book is on him still."

"Magnus, what are you thinking of?" said Anna--her teeth were chattering.

"Would it be so very wicked?"

"What?"

"To take as much as would satisfy the Sheriff in the morning?"

"Magnus! I didn't mean that."

"He would never miss it--never know it was gone--and it would enable us to keep the farm and so save us from starvation."

"Oh, dear! What have I done?"

"He's a prodigal himself, it seems. Very well, let prodigal pay for prodigal."

She could not breathe freely--she could only look at Magnus in speechless surprise. He took up the bottle again and gulped clown the last of the liquor.

"He has drunk a good deal--he will sleep heavily--and he won't awake until the auction is over."

"Let us go to bed," said Anna.

"Go yourself," he growled, for the furies that march in the brain of the drunken man had mastered him.

"Magnus," said Anna, "if you will not go to bed I shall stay up all night with you."

Then the devil that had changed Magnus into a cunning, savage beast, showed him what he had to do.

"Very well, let us go to bed," he replied.

He bolted the outer door again and raked out the stove, while his mother extinguished the lamp and re-lit the candles. She thought the evil impulse that had come to him had been conquered, and she talked of other matters.

"I've made up Eric's bed for you, and you'll find everything comfortable," she said.

As she passed Elin's door she opened it gently and held her head aside to listen. The sound of the soft and measured breathing came out to them for a moment and then the door was closed again.

"Poor child! She would lay her head on her pillow full of faith in the miracle that is to happen before to-morrow morning. Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"

They parted at the door of the badstofa, and a few minutes afterward the little house lay silent and dark in the arms of the hills and on the breast of the snow, but the wings of Death hung over it.

* * * * *

Magnus did not go to bed. He threw himself on the eiderdown and went through a fierce fight with God as represented by God's vicar, his conscience. A vision of the pocket-book in the stranger's breast-pocket danced before his dark heart, and he told himself that come what would he must take enough of the stranger's money to pay the interest in the morning. If he did not do so the man would buy the farmstead and Elin and his mother would be turned adrift.

On this thought came compunctions. To take the man's money would be to steal, and Magnus had never stolen. But faith being already gone, morality followed, and he wrestled with his conscience and overcame it. What he was going to do was what men did every day, only they called it business, and they did it to wrong the right, whereas he would do it to right the wrong. Magnus marshaled his reasons and justified himself. Here was a man so rich that he would not know to-morrow morning that he had lost what was sufficient to make his dear ones happy. That man was going to expose them to poverty and destitution. Surely it was right, it was necessary, it was his duty to prevent him.

In the mad tangle of his disordered brain he saw everything that had happened that day in a sinister light, and it seemed as if fate had thrown the man into his hands. He might have gone to lodge at the Parsonage--he had come there! He might have concealed the purpose of his coming--he had revealed it! He might have said nothing of the pocket-book--he had shown it with childlike simplicity! Surely this was the way out of his difficulties which Destiny had marked out for him, and not to take it would be to cover himself with self-reproaches when his dear ones came down to want.

Having persuaded himself that he could not help but take as much of the stranger's money as was necessary to pay the interest, he began to ask why he should take so little. If the pocket-book in the man's breast-pocket contained enough to pay the interest twenty times over, why not take enough to buy the farm out and out? That would enable him to leave to Elin the inheritance which he had lost through his brother's extravagance and crime. This man was about to take it away from her--he must not and he should not do so!

Stage by stage he pushed back the bulwarks of conscience until he came to ask himself why he should not take all. His mind was clogged and numb by this time, but he knew well what that meant. It meant taking the stranger's life. There was at first an indescribable horror in the thought of killing a human being, but after a moment it passed away. This man alone stood between his dear ones and shelter--why shouldn't he? This man threatened to take their lives by exposing them to starvation--why shouldn't he take his life instead?

A momentary qualm came with the thought that he would be attacking one who had trusted himself to the hospitality of his house, a defenseless man in his sleep. But he thought of the stranger's heartless laughter, his callousness to their condition, and recalled what he had said of his mother, and pictured her sitting there surrounded by every comfort while his own mother, born in that place, was turned out to perish, and then his gorge rose again and his heart knew no pity.

He began to ask himself how it could be done. It could be done, quite easily. Nobody except themselves had seen the man; nobody else would ever know that he had been to their house. He could tell his mother and Elin that the stranger had gone away in the early morning. They would believe him, and even if they did not they would hold their tongues, for his interest would be their interest, and all he would do would be done for them.

A new and awful light illumined his gloomy mind, and he saw himself doing everything. No other eye would see, no other ear would hear. It was freezing hard to-night, and if it was found in the drowning pool when the ice melted the story would be that the stranger had lost his way in the snowstorm and stumbled over the rocks.

Having satisfied himself that he could defeat this world's judgment, the tortured man in the toils of his temptation began to think of the judgment of the next. But fear of that vanished in a moment. Nothing was known in the other world of what took place in this one, and God interfered but little in the affairs of men!

At the thought of God a singing noise came into his ears like water in the ears of a drowning man. It was his conscience going down after its last gasp, for he was telling himself that murder though it might be, and contrary to God's law, God had done nothing for him, and therefore he was not called upon to do anything for God. He had been a good man all his life, yet God had left him in the lurch. God and the world were letting his mother and Elin perish, therefore he must fight the world--and God!

In the last convulsion of his human nature he remembered that once before the impulse to kill had come to him, and that he had suffered the tortures of the damned whenever afterward he had thought of it. But that was different, that was in the whirlwind of outraged passion, and if he had carried out his threat it would have been the worst of crimes, the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost--a brother's murder! A thousand times he had thanked God that Oscar had not lived to come home, but how strange were the ways of fate--another man, another heartless prodigal, had come there, and if his dear ones were to be saved from starvation and the consequences of Oscar's crimes, he knew what he had to do!

"Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he thought again, and then he leaped up from the bed.

His brute nature, goaded on by the flattering devil of drink, had conquered his conscience, yet his knees knocked together as he went on tiptoe by his mother's room, and when he came to Elin's door he could hardly breathe. Their pure souls were sleeping in the protecting atmosphere of prayer; and when he asked himself what he was to say in the morning if they wanted to know where he had got the money, his mind was so clogged and numb that he could find no answer.

But this thought, with the vision that came after it of how his mother and Elin would look at him with searching and suspicious glances--of how when all would be over and he hoped to be at rest he would find them sitting together in silence, staring at nothing--nearly broke down the brute in him and his whole body was shaken by a kind of tearless sob. Nevertheless the flash of human light on his dark heart only made the blackness more profound, and after a moment he went on with his preparations.

When he stepped on tiptoe into the hall, the two sheep-dogs who had been sleeping on the mat by the door got up and stretched themselves and yawned, and lest they should make a noise he took them out and locked them up in a shed. After that he went over to the stable, which was at some distance from the dwelling, and saddled and bridled the stranger's mare, and then with a sharp cut of his whip he sent her galloping and whinnying into the darkness. A breath of icy wind was coming down the valley as if day were stirring in its morning sleep, and a faint pink and white light in the eastern sky, with a glint on the western glaciers, seemed to say that the dawn was near, but the drink was in Magnus's eyes and he could not see clearly.

No snow had fallen since the traveler arrived, and returning to the front of the farmstead Magnus made backward tracks from the porch to the river, partly in order to obliterate the stranger's footsteps and partly to conceal his own when he should come out again, carrying a heavy burden. The man was gone by this time, and Magnus was like a night-bird hovering about his own house and thinking of his prey.

When he returned to the hall there was no sound there except that of the ashes slipping in the stove, and of the clock ticking in the darkness the deliberate seconds. He took off his boots, leaving on his snow-stockings only, and then he picked up a large cushion from the arm-chair and stepped to the stranger's door and listened.

But heaven as well as hell is in the heart of every man, as long as life is with him, and the tearless sob came back to Magnus and shook his whole body, as he thought at the last moment of the awful pity of the thing he had to do. Yet telling himself again that God did nothing in this world, and saying once more, "Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he turned the handle and opened the door.

Then he stepped softly into the guest-room and bolted the door behind him.

*VII*

Anna, at that moment, had awakened from a frightening dream. On first going to her room she had been troubled by the memory of what she had done to awaken evil thoughts in Magnus, and visions had come to her of how, if anything happened, Magnus might say, "You put it into my head, mother." To banish her self-reproaches she had said a prayer for forgiveness, telling God she had never once thought of theft or violence, but only of Magnus and Elin and the inheritance they had lost through her importunity, and how cruel it seemed that while other people had so much more than they wanted, such hard times should come to her dear children.

Then she had gone to bed, and the voice of the stranger, which had teased her all the evening through with memories she could not fix, haunted her again, and the light being out, and her eyes no longer disturbed by sight of the stranger's different face, she knew whose voice it reminded her of. It was a voice very dear to her, a voice always near to her, Oscar's voice, which she was never to hear again.

When, with a thrill of the heart, this thought came to Anna, it altered the stranger altogether. His laughter ceased to be cruel, and what he had said of himself not being a good son became touching. And when she thought of his poor mother waiting for her prodigal and so soon to see him home again, and pictured her joy when he should say, "Mother, mother! I'm here at last, and we shall never, never be parted again!" her heart overflowed with sympathy, and she was sorry she had not been kinder to him when he was going to bed.

Then she went to sleep and the dream spirit took her back to the good time when she had two boys in her house, a dark one and a fair one, and the father had punished the dark one unjustly, and his stern and gloomy soul, with its sense of wrong, would not suffer him to explain, but the fair one was sobbing out a confession--"It was not Magnus, it was me, papa"--and a moment afterward two happy little heads were on the same pillow side by side, and both were laughing merrily.

In the shifting kaleidoscope of her dream this picture had hardly gone when Anna awoke with the clearest consciousness of Oscar's voice crying, "Mother! Mother! Mother!" She thought it must have been the stranger calling in his sleep, for the china ornaments on her dressing-table seemed to ring, but when she listened there was no other sound.

Then the memory of Magnus's temptation came rolling back on her like a thundercloud over a clear sky, and she got up to go to her son's room to make sure that he was in bed.

Magnus had not been to bed!

With candle in hand, and still in her night-dress, Anna hurried to the hall, crying in a whisper of only half-realized apprehension, "Magnus! Magnus!"

There was no reply.

She listened at the stranger's door and thought she heard a movement inside the room, but she dared not enter or knock.

"Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered again, but no answer came back to her. She heard the neighing of a horse that seemed to be running round and round the house and her flesh began to creep, for that sound in the night was like the cry of a disembodied soul. Then there came the deadened noise of dogs barking, and she knew they were their own dogs and that they must have been shut up in an outhouse. This started a new thought, and she ran to the outer door to see if it had been opened.

The door was unbolted!

She was about to open it and cry again when she heard a noise behind her. It came from the stranger's room, and putting her ear to the door she distinctly heard the sounds of sobs. Some one inside was sobbing.

She knew the low, stifled voice. It was Magnus. He was on his knees or prostrate on the floor, and he was sobbing as if his heart would break. At that Anna boldly tried to open the door, but found it fastened on the inside.

"Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered, but he did not answer.

She was now sure that the awful thing she had thought of had come to pass. Her suspense had deepened to fear, but pity and love conquered every other feeling, and going down on her knees in her night-dress, she whispered through the key-hole:

"Magnus! Magnus! Open the door. It is only mother! It was all my fault, dear! Let me come in!"

But the smothered sobbing inside continued, and no other sound came back to her. Then in the silence of all else she heard the sound of sleigh-bells outside. At first she thought this must be a ringing in her ears, but the bells grew louder and came nearer, and then the dogs in the outhouse barked again.

Fear deepened to terror, the necessity for concealment flashed upon her, and she knocked at the bedroom door and cried in the same affrighted whisper:

"Magnus, there is some one coming. Wait till he has gone. Don't stir. Don't come out. Only tell me you hear me."

The sobbing ceased, but Magnus did not speak. Meantime the sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, with the cracking of a whip, the whoop of a driver, and the hiss of runners in the soft snow.

"Magnus! Magnus!" cried Anna loudly, in a last effort, but she was stopped by the near shout of some one outside, "Helloa! helloa there!"--and she rose to her feet with an intention of bolting the outer door.

Before she could do so there was a metallic knock on the window-pane, a voice crying, "God be with you!" and footsteps hurrying up the outer steps. Then Anna turned about and fled back to her bedroom.

While she dressed she heard the outer door thrown open and the sound of many persons trooping into the hall. They were very bright and happy, for they laughed merrily and talked all together, and the house was full of noise.

When she came out of the badstofa she met the postboy on his way to the elt-house to boil water to give his ponies a hot drink, and on returning to the hall she found the door and the shutters of the window open, the daylight streaming in, and the postman himself there with several passengers, including the Factor, who was muffled up to the eyes, and Margret Neilsen, who was unrolling herself from the folds of a white bearskin.

"Helloa!" cried everybody, and the postman said, "Here we are at last, you see! We couldn't come yesterday by reason of the snowstorm, but the Factor actually got me to start away as soon as it stopped at eleven o'clock last night--eleven!"

"Well, we don't kill a pig every day, do we?" said the Factor, and while the men laughed and winked, Margret Neilsen said:

"And how's Anna?"

Anna was speechless and ghastly white, so the Factor said, "We seem to have startled her out of her senses, for she looks as if she had seen a ghost. But where's Magnus?"

"Magnus? Oh--somewhere about," said Anna.

"And how's my precious Elin?" said Aunt Margret.

"She's not up yet," said Anna.

"Then I'll go and waken her. Which is her room--this one?" said Aunt Margret, making for the guest-room.

"No, no," said Anna, intercepting her and standing with her back to the guest-room door. "That one," and Aunt Margret went into Elin's bedroom.

"And now," said the Factor, with winks all round him, "what about the other one?"

Anna looked at the Factor in mute terror.

"The new-comer, you know? Not stirring yet, I suppose?"

"New-comer?"

"Well, guest, friend, whatever you choose to call him."

"What friend?"

"Why, the friend who came last night, of course."

Anna, who had never lied in her life, wanted to lie now, but she could not do so. "I don't understand you, Factor," she said faintly.

"Well!" said the Factor, and then, as if by an afterthought, "I thought he wouldn't wish to startle you, having been so long away and supposed to be dead. But don't you know yet who he is?"

Anna trembled and said, "Of whom are you speaking, Oscar Neilsen?"

"Of the tall fair man with the pointed beard who came to lodge at your house last night."

Anna was now speechless with terror, and the company, misunderstanding her silence, became suddenly very grave. "Can it be possible that he lost his way in the snowstorm?" said one. "But he knew every inch of the road, and could find his way blindfold," said another. "Such a night, though," said a third. "He got as far as the House of Rest." "But the boy there said he would never see the end of his journey."

"Well, this is serious," said the Factor. "The Minister wanted him to stay at Government House over-night, but he seemed so anxious to see you----"

"To see me!" said Anna.

"Naturally, after his long absence. Strange! very strange! But do you mean to say that no traveler came here last night?"