Chapter IV: Part 4

Early in the afternoon Anna herself came over expecting to see the first-fruits of the peace-making, and, while Aunt Margret was below stairs preparing chocolate for the company that was expected, the motherly old thing tried various artful ways of finding out from Helga what her upbringing had been in Denmark, and, particularly, what religious instruction and society her mother had given her. Helga saw through the device in a moment, and with her red lips a little awry she painted an alarming picture of theaters and concert-halls, and a flat in Copenhagen frequented by actors and actresses, especially on Sunday evenings, where everybody, including the ladies, smoked cigarettes and drank brandy.

Meanwhile Thora watched for Oscar out of the sidelight of the projecting window, and as soon as she saw him swinging down the road, she darted into the hall and threw herself into his arms and kissed him, whereupon, with his head full of his victory, he said:

"Congratulations, eh? The sweetest I've had yet," and pushed through toward the drawing-room.

"Wait, wait, wait! Somebody to show you!" cried Thora.

Then the poor victim of God knows what maleficent powers--not knowing what she did, but laughing merrily as if a song-bird had been imprisoned in her throat--began to play the old familiar trick of children; standing behind Oscar on tip-toe in order to reach, she put her hands over his eyes, and crying, "Forward, soldier!" marched him blindfold into the drawing-room and up to the place where Helga was waiting. Then, removing her hands sharply, she cried, "There!" and stood off to see the effect.

Oscar found himself face to face with a girl as unlike Thora as could be, tall, dark, with hair parted at the side and hanging over the forehead, dressed in a light silk blouse and silver-grey skirt, and having an odor of violets about her.

"Helga! Can it be possible?"

He stretched out his hand and Helga took it, and held it, and so they stood for some moments, while Thora, breathing rapidly, watched the changing lights in their faces: in Oscar's, astonishment, admiration, and rapture: in Helga's, curiosity, satisfaction, and delight. And Thora's own face, too--to the pitying angels who alone were looking at it--showed expressions just as various: pride, joy, then uneasiness, and finally a little twinge of secret pain.

To relieve this feeling, Thora burst into laughter, and then everybody laughed, and Aunt Margret came into the room with the chocolate and cakes.

"So you've brought them together again, Thora?" said Aunt Margret, and Thora swallowed a lump in her throat and answered, "Yes."

Then Oscar and Helga went over to the window and talked together with great animation. Thora heard snatches of their conversation as she carried round the cups. It was about things of which she knew nothing--Denmark, Copenhagen, England, London, Oxford, the English theater, the Danish theater, and, above all, music, music, music.

"How well they get along," said Thora.

"Trust them for that," said Aunt Margret.

Toward dusk the Factor returned home--not having altered his habit of work by a hair's breadth; and then came half the great people of the town--the Bishop, the Sheriff, the Rector of the Latin School, and finally the Governor. Helga moved among them with the quiet ease of one accustomed to company. Within an hour she had captured all the men, but the women were less sure of her.

"The minute I set eyes on her," whispered Aunt Margret to Anna, "I said to myself, 'Thora is a Neilsen out and out, but there's more of the stranger in this one.'"

"She's the living picture of what my wife was when I saw her first," said the Factor in a low tone to the Governor, who answered significantly, in the same low tone:

"Then I don't wonder, old friend--I say I don't wonder!"

"Helga's head and yours were nearer together when I laid my hand on them last," said the Bishop to Thora. "Take care! Your sister is running away from you, little one."

"Isn't she?" said Thora.

Thora did not feel quite so happy in Helga's visit as she had expected, but still struggling to show her off, she asked her to play something on the piano--she had played after breakfast and it was beautiful.

Helga played brilliantly, and Oscar, who turned over her music, applauded her boisterously.

"And now Oscar ought to play something," said the Governor. "From his earliest years he made us conceive the highest hopes that he might become a great musician."

"He will, too--my son Neils at the College of Music says he will," said the Sheriff.

"Nonsense!" said the Factor. "Oscar has something better to do now than to scrape catgut or blow his lungs through a steam-pipe."

"Still, an occasional flirtation with the muses," said the Hector, "you wouldn't object to that, Factor?"

"I would object to flirtations of all sorts," said the Factor, "and I should think the man a fool who put himself in the way of them."

"Surprising how many men do," said the Governor with a wink at the Rector. "Would you believe it--a certain friend of yours wrote a poem in the days of his youth!"

"Never!" cried the Rector, and while the old people laughed, the Factor said:

"When I was a child I behaved as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things."

"Well, I so far agree with the Factor that I think a man can't have his heart in two places at once," said the Governor. "What do you say, Thora?"

"I suppose not," said Thora.

"Certainly not, any more than a man can love two women at the same time," said the Governor; and then Oscar began to play.

He played as the bird sings because the song is in the soul of it, and when he had finished, the company cheered him lustily, and Helga, putting her face close to his, said in a whisper:

"And you asked me to play--I who only play as I am taught, and you can play like that!"

Oscar was delighted with Helga's praises and suggested that they should play together. They played a difficult selection, full of flourishes, and the company declared they had never heard anything like it.

"Wonderful, wasn't it?" said somebody.

"Yes, wasn't it?" said Thora.

She was feeling utterly eclipsed and forgotten when Helga wheeled round on the music-stool and said:

"And now Thora must give us something on her guitar--Aunt Margret says she plays it beautifully."

"Indeed she does--beautifully!" said Aunt Margret.

But Thora begged off in alarm, saying, "No, indeed, no! I couldn't possibly play after playing like that."

So Oscar and Helga began again. This time it was an English ballad. Helga played the accompaniment, and Oscar sang the air, and there was a chorus which they gave together. The company were completely carried away. "Charming!" "Exquisite!" "But how well their voices harmonize!" "They might have been meant by nature to go together!"

"Might they not?" said Thora.

"But now Thora ought really to play her guitar," said Helga.

"Certainly! Thora and her guitar," said Oscar. "And let her sing one of her Iceland love songs to it."

It was cruel, it was heart-breaking, it was almost as if Helga were trying to humiliate her, as if Oscar were joining her, as if they were conspiring together to expose her inferiority.

"No, no, don't ask me, please don't," she pleaded.

But Helga continued to ask and Oscar to second her, and being able to bear the strain no longer, Thora burst into tears, and fled from the room.

"How extraordinary!" said Helga.

But Oscar followed Thora and coaxed and comforted her and brought her back with a smile on her face, although the tears were scarcely dry in her eyes.

"I was silly," she said. "I don't know what came over me."

"Perhaps it was the heat," said the Governor, and he opened one of the windows.

*IV*

During the next month Oscar was every day and nearly all day at the Factor's, to the total disregard of his public work and the complete neglect of business. But his visits were not always to Thora, who was ceasing to be "Baby Thora" either to him or to any one, and becoming a serious little figure with a wistful face. She never romped about the house now, but sat in a corner with a ball of wool in her lap and a crochet hook in her hand while Oscar and Helga played the piano and talked music.

It was music, music, always music at the Factor's in those days. Early in her visit Helga brought down a pile of the music of Wagner, and Oscar was completely carried away by it. Other composers produced beautiful harmonies, a subtle and clever combination of sweet sounds, but when Oscar played Wagner, the piano seemed to him to waken and weep, to burn the flame under his fingers.

"It's glorious!" he would say. "I can never thank you enough, Helga. It's a new world, a new revelation."

Helga had heard of Oscar's songs from the Sagas, and one day she said, "I wonder you don't try to compose something yourself, Oscar--something in the style of Wagner--I'm sure you could."

Then with diffidence and apologies Oscar produced his 'prentice efforts, and Helga praised them enthusiastically. "Do you know you are a born musician?" she said. "And you should never do anything except create music--never!"

Oscar was intoxicated by her applause, but he only laughed and said,

"Ah, that's impossible."

"Why impossible?"

"Parliament--public duties--and so forth."

"But, my dear Oscar, you don't mean to say you are going to waste your life like that?"

"Do you call it waste, Helga?"

"Not for everybody--not for a man like Magnus, for example--but for you, yes," said Helga, and then, with irresistible drollery, she mimicked the manners of Parliament, with its "Mr. Speaker, permit me to rise to a point of order," and "Will the honorable and learned member explain," and all the other inanities of a legislative assembly in a little country.

Oscar laughed until tears, (from more springs than one) began to roll down his cheeks, and then he said--

"What an actress you would make, Helga! But principles, my dear girl, principles are the soul of politics, and if a man can guide his country in the higher paths, he can afford to forget the plains--don't you think so, Thora?"

And Thora, who had been feeling dizzy and faint, answered in a helpless way, "Yes, Oscar. But I forgot to tell you that father wished to see you on business."

"Business!" cried Helga. "That, too!"

"Then you object to business also?" asked Oscar.

"For you--certainly, because you are not fit for it," said Helga. "And if you go into business you'll be like a man who has married the wrong woman. She may be an excellent, thrifty soul, quite suitable to somebody else, but she was never meant for him."

"There's something in that, though it's wonderful how you know it," said Oscar. "I'm about the silliest beggar at a bargain that ever breathed out of an oyster shell."

"Of course you are, Oscar--you must be. Now, if Magnus had gone into business he might have got something out of it. But you--what in the world do you expect to get?"

"Ah, now you're wrong, Helga! I have got something out of it already--I've got Thora!"

"Thora?"

"Didn't you know? Thora was the prize I was bidding for when I took over that contract."

"So that was it--was it?" said Helga; and then Thora herself, feeling sick and ill, gathered up her work and stole out of the room.

Nevertheless the seed which Helga had sown had not fallen on stony ground. Within twenty-four hours Oscar appeared with a new composition in his hands.

"An idea came to me last night and I had to get it off," he said, and then he sat down to the piano and played.

"Beautiful!" cried Helga. "Really beautiful! But this subject suggests the organ--why not set it to that, and try it on the organ in the cathedral?"

"Splendid idea!" said Oscar. "Thora knows the curator and can get the key. What do you say, Thora?"

"If you would like to," said Thora, and next day they carried out their scheme.

Oscar and Helga sat together in the organ loft, while Thora was sent down the communion steps to report the effect at a distance. "How did that go, Thora?" cried Oscar, once or twice at the beginning, and Thora answered, "Very nicely, I think," but then the two in the organ loft forgot her altogether in the rapture of their rehearsal.

During the next two or three weeks Oscar and Helga went to the cathedral every day, and sometimes Thora went with them, but more frequently she remained at home. A sudden wave of energy seemed to lift Oscar out of himself, and he produced one composition after another. Helga applauded all of them, and her praises intoxicated him like glory.

"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, Helga," he said, "for all the good things you have poured out on me since you came back to Iceland. You have given my life a new joy, a new splendor!"

"Nonsense!" said Helga. "I am nothing but a voice to awaken your genius. You were born to create music, and whatever happens you must never, never throw away a life which has the glory of a future like that."

To this, and such as this, he always answered "Ah, no!" or "Impossible!" or "It's past praying for," but Helga's words were as the very incense of the dreams which, in vaguer forms, he had been trying to forget since the day he engaged himself to Thora.

"Why shouldn't there be another Wagner, an Icelandic Wagner, a Wagner with a still grander scene and still greater stories--the Sagas and Eddas of this stern old land?"

About a month after Helga returned to Iceland she suggested to Oscar that he should write an anthem on a passage which she selected from one of the Sagas. It was that in which the old gods of the Pagan world, in anger with the family of man for permitting the establishment of Christianity, tore open the bowels of their fruitful valleys with earthquakes, and deluged them with molten lava, and how Christ came through the chaos saying, "Let there be peace!"

"Great! Glorious! A stunning subject! But can I do it?" said Oscar.

"You can, you must," said Helga, and from that moment a continual fever burned in Oscar's blood until the task was done. Thora saw nothing of him for days, except when he bounded in to run over a part of his score with Helga, and then away, without a word, to his work again. When the anthem was written and he was ready to try it on the organ, he said:

"Are _you_ coming across to the cathedral to-day, Thora? No? Perhaps you had better not. We'll have to go over the thing again and again--it might be tiresome."

It was the afternoon of a dull week-day in the early winter, and some of the dreary noises of the work-a-day world followed Oscar into the cathedral. A vessel was unloading in the fiord--he could hear the rumble of the iron trolleys as they rolled up the paved jetty to the Factor's warehouse. A new house was being erected on the corner of the cathedral square--he could hear the thin clank of the mason's trowel. A steamer was on the stocks in the shipyard down the harbor--he could hear the sharp beat of the riveter's hammer.

But there was another atmosphere in the cathedral, and Oscar floated on it as on a flood--the silent sanctuary, the rows of empty pews going up to the chancel, the empty pulpit with its sounding-board, the empty altar with the Eastern subject painted above it, the marble font for the baptism of future generations, the marble monuments to the memory of past ones, and then the listening air, awakened by a whisper or a footfall, and full of the breath of dead prayer and vanished praise.

In this atmosphere of art and religion Oscar sat down at the organ, with Helga by his side, to try his anthem for the first time. The organ throbbed under his fingers, the empty cathedral shook like a sea-cave under the boom of his waves of sound, and when he came to the end of his first reading he was quivering with excitement and Helga was in a fever.

"What did I tell you?" she said. "Was I not right? Oh, if this could be heard in Denmark!"

"Or in England!" said Oscar.

They played the piece again and again, and at every fresh playing their excitement increased until it reached the point of hysteria, and their voices in that silent place became as shrill as the wind on the mountain top. At last they tried the words, and then their emotion knew no limit.

The organ trembled and throbbed again, and then on the top of all other sounds came the sound of Helga's voice, like a human cry above the thundering waves of nature, sometimes weeping, sometimes raging, sometimes crouching, sometimes springing out of the surge, and finally sinking down to the soft whisper of "Let there be peace!"

When the anthem was over and all was still, Oscar sat quiet for some moments while the unheard echo of the music seemed to roll through the silent air; and then the lightning-flash of joy or madness which comes to every man of genius once in his life came to him also, and his heart cried out, in its delirious happiness, "I, too, am a great composer!"

In the intoxication of that moment, Oscar's hand swung down and took Helga's hand and held it, and their fingers trembled together and they seemed to hear the beating of each other's heart. They looked at each other, and his eyes were bloodshot and hers were wet.

"Helga!" he cried.

"Oscar!" she answered, but at the next moment a window blew open on the staircase to the organ loft and Oscar heard again the dreary noises of the work-a-day world without--the rumble of the iron trolleys, the thin clank of the mason's trowel, and the quick beat of the riveter's hammer. It was like the wakening of a prisoner in his cell when the warder beats at the door and the dream of glory is gone and the prison walls close round him again.

Oscar's fingers slackened, and the next moment he heard Helga's rapid breathing behind him, and her voice saying with a strange bitterness:

"Is that Thora?"

He started and turned. "Where?" he asked.

"Down there by the communion steps--by the altar. No, I was mistaken. It's only a shadow. The light is fading."

Then with the same bitterness she said, "But I suppose she will be there soon, and you with her."

Oscar shuddered as if a wounded artery had been torn open, and Helga continued:

"Then you will go back to business, and Oscar--Oscar Stephenson, the musician--will be dead."

He fingered the organ stops fumblingly, and made no reply, whereupon Helga, with undisguised irony, began to picture the dull routine of the business life that was waiting for him after marriage--its calculations of discounts, its squabbles with farmers, its buying and selling of pots and pans.

"It is such a pity," she said.

"Don't torture me, Helga," he cried.

"But is there no way out of it?"

"No, no, no!"

"No way at all, Oscar?"

"Let us go," he said, and he had got down to the door before he remembered that he had left his hat behind him in the organ loft.

Thora had tea ready when they got back to the Factor's. She was kneeling before a cozy fire, making toast, after cutting the bread and butter, and she looked up at them as they entered with a nervous, questioning, tearful smile.

"Poor little soul! She must never know--never, never!" thought Oscar.

*V*

Thora knew already, and the big heart in her little breast was breaking. She had begun to think that what had happened to Magnus when Oscar came back was now happening to her--Oscar was falling in love with Helga, and she, like Magnus, was being left alone.

Yet she could not reconcile herself to this suspicion without a hard battle, and the first skirmish of the sweet heart was to fight for the enemy--Oscar had made a great, great sacrifice when he agreed to marry her; it was not to be wondered at if he had spasms of regret sometimes. She hinted as much to Aunt Margret in one of the long hours in which they were left together.

"Don't you think that Oscar was very unselfish when he signed that contract?" she said.

"Unselfish? I don't call it unselfishness to sign yourself into a fortune," said Aunt Margret.

"But he had to take up the business, you know."

"Certainly he had--the best business in Iceland."

"Helga seems to think it is a little beneath him, Aunt Margret."

"It's good enough for Helga's father, and he made it. Besides, Oscar had nothing else, and an ugly sheep is better than no mutton."

"Oh, yes, he had his music, auntie, and Helga thinks that was a good deal."

"Does she, indeed? People who are naked needn't go about mending other people's clothes. Oscar's music wouldn't have brought him a penny of profit, and as for honor--what about Althing, and all the other things he couldn't have got without being rich?"

"So you don't think Oscar sacrificed himself very much when he signed the contract?"

"Sacrificed himself? Perhaps the boot was on the other leg, if you ask me."

Thora was happy for days after this interview, and while Oscar and Helga played their Wagner, she went about the house singing her little love ditties, and thinking of the time when Parliament would begin its session, and Oscar would throw himself into politics, and become Speaker, and perhaps Governor, and it would all come of having married her.

But it was hard to sit for hours in the same room with people who were scarcely conscious of her presence, and though Thora tried to hide her pain lest Oscar should feel ashamed, she sometimes felt bitter about Helga, and wanted to burst out on her. The only thing which restrained her from doing so was a sweet doubt which she cherished in the most secret chamber of her heart that perhaps she was mistaken after all, and Oscar did not really care for Helga.

"Auntie," she said, "don't you think it's silly to be jealous?"

"Depends upon circumstances, Thora."

"If a wife--for example--fancies her husband is paying too much attention to another woman--don't you think she is silly to be jealous?"

"She's silly to show she is, my precious. It doesn't prevent the sting to bite the head off the serpent, and if a wife shows the husband she's jealous, she's just doing what the other woman wants."

"So you think she ought to be quiet and say nothing?"

"Certainly, I do. If the man is going to run away from her, she had better let him run, and if he isn't, he'll be the more ashamed because he thinks she doesn't know."

"You mean that if the man is only fascinated for a time----"

"Just so! Fascination may be good enough for a flirtation, but it's like bright metal--it soon gets tarnished in a damp cellar. You want gold for the dark places, my honey."

"That is to say, auntie dear, that love is the only thing for married life?"

"I should think so, indeed, with its crosses and disappointments, and children and croup, and all the rest of it. And when it comes to marrying, the silliest of the men know that, bless them!"

"What a lot you know about the men, auntie darling--I wonder you never married, yourself, dear."

"That's why, my precious!"

It was easier for Thora to veil her agonies with smiles after this conversation. She pictured to herself the time when her love would be everything to Oscar. In the secret places of her soul she thought of the days when children would come, and perhaps even sickness, and they would be drawn close--so close--together, because the dear clouds of life hung over both of them. She was not beautiful, she was only a homely and humble little thing, she was unworthy of Oscar, and there were so many things in which she was inferior, but oh, her love was wonderful! Nothing in the world was so wonderful as her love. It would work miracles, it would be stronger than death, it would stand by Oscar to the end.

But all the same it was hard to receive her wounds without a cry, and when Oscar and Helga went off to the cathedral and left her at home she told herself she was too ignorant to be Oscar's wife, and all her sweet, heroic love was wasted.

"Don't you think Helga is very clever, Aunt Margret?"

Aunt Margret lifted her eyes from her knitting, and blinked through her spectacles.

"Clever?--a girl who can't darn a stocking or boil a potato!"

"But see how she can talk, auntie."

"So can the parrot, my dear, and the raven is seldom sparing of his voice either."

"But surely a man wants his wife to be a companion, auntie--to be able to converse with him on the subjects he is interested in, and to criticise his work, perhaps."

"Does he? Perhaps he does, but it would be a crazy creature of a man who would rather marry a critic than a cook for all that."

Always after this Thora had tea ready when Oscar and Helga returned from the cathedral, and if her heart had its tremors, still she tried to take care that Oscar should never see a tear in her eyes. But many a time when she felt herself to be like an isthmus between the two, holding them together, yet keeping them apart, the strung bow of her will slackened and she was nearly breaking down. She waited day by day for Oscar's heart to speak to her, and when it did not speak she told herself it was because Helga was so beautiful.

"Isn't Helga beautiful, Aunt Margret?"

"Perhaps," said Aunt Margret.

"You _know_ she is, auntie. You know she is the most beautiful girl in Iceland."

"Maybe I do--maybe I don't!"

"What an advantage beauty like Helga's gives to a girl--she gets everything and everybody. If a girl is only beautiful enough, she has all the men at her feet."

"They must he chiropodists, then, and there are not many of them in these parts. No, no, beauty isn't everything, Thora, and that's a mercy for some of us."

The color began to mount to Thora's eyes, and catching sight of this flag of distress, Aunt Margret continued:

"But fine feathers make fine birds, and I know some in Iceland dress would make Helga look small if they were done up in her Danish folderols."

Thora's blushing face began to shine like the sunrise.

"But what's the use? Beauty fills the eye, but not the belly."

"Auntie Margret, what plain things you say!"

"Do I? Then it's best to say them plainly. It isn't good to gild copper with gold, my honey."

After this talk with Aunt Margret, Thora was more the mistress of herself than before, because the dividing line between Helga and herself seemed less. She made up her mind that she would dress in the English manner, so that Oscar should not see so much difference.

She had money--the dress money her father gave her. It was not very much, but in previous years she had given away most of it, and this year she had intended to buy a Scotch overcoat for Hans, the sailor, who was losing all respect for himself and going about in cold weather with nothing over his shirt. But now she would be selfish, she would spend her money on herself, and that was only right since it was spending it on Oscar also.

It must be a secret, a great secret; it must come upon everybody as a surprise, because that would be half the battle. So she bought postal orders with her savings, and sent to Edinburgh for a costume such as she saw in the picture of a trade advertisement.

The costume came by a trading steamer, and she was like a child in her secrecy and joy, smuggling the big cardboard box up-stairs to her room, and answering the inquisitive questions of the Factor and Aunt Margret with mysterious little nods and subterfuges.

The day was crisp and frosty, and when Oscar, coming in the afternoon, suggested a walk to the lake to try the ice for skating, Helga responded readily, but Thora said no, she had something to do, something important--a little surprise, they should see when they came back again.

As soon as Helga and Oscar had gone, and Aunt Margret had promised to make tea, Thora stole up to her room, locked the door, opened the box, and took out the new garments that were to work the wondrous change. They were beautiful, they were dreams, they were lovelier than anything of Helga's--a blue voile dress with a silk corsage and embroidered yoke. The pleated skirt was like the sun's rays over Hecla after a shower of summer rain, and the silk of the blouse was as beautiful as the ice of a glacier with the flowery bubbles of air in it.

Thora laughed for joy, and taking off her old Iceland costume she threw it aside as a thing she had done with--the granny skirt, the stiff treya, and the starchy brjest. She wondered how she could have worn them so long, and even told herself what she would do with them--she would give them to a young widow who had lately lost her child by diphtheria and joined the people at the Salvation shelter.

When she took up the new garments she had some doubt as to how they were to be put on, and almost wished she had inquired of Helga. The accordion skirt was easy enough, and its ample train made her feel tall and imposing, but the blouse was a besetting trouble. It fastened behind, and after despairing efforts to catch the hooks and eyes she was tempted to call Aunt Margret; but she thought no, that would never do, so she struggled on.

The room was cold, but when she had finished dressing her face was flushed and heated. She had put on her silver belt, because it was a present from Oscar, and brushed her hair sideways over the forehead, because that was how Helga wore it. Then looking at herself in the glass she laughed again, for she was proud and happy.

What would Oscar say when he saw her? He would say, "Why, this is Helga! Another Helga! Not quite so tall perhaps--but just--yes, really just as nice-looking!" And then Helga would be angry, and envious, and perhaps go back to Denmark.

She was walking to and fro on tiptoe, glancing with sparkling eyes at her figure in the glass, when she heard voices in the hall below.

"Thora!" cried somebody from the foot of the stairs. It was Oscar.

"I'm coming," she answered.

"What about the great surprise?"

"Presently!" she cried.

She waited until she heard a door close below, and then, still laughing a little, but breathing rapidly, feeling sure of victory, yet with a fluttering at her heart, she went down the stairs, and sailed into the sitting-room.

Oscar was leaning on the marble stove, and Helga, sitting on a low seat, was warming her feet at the fire. They turned to Thora as she entered, and looked at her with wide eyes. There was a moment of chilling silence, and then Thora, breathing faster and faster, said:

"Well, what do you think of it?"

Helga began to laugh, first in a smothered titter, hut finally in an outright roar, whereupon Oscar, who had struggled not to smile, caught the contagion and joined her.

Thora's pitiful face fell, and she said, with a crack in her voice:

"But what are you laughing at, Oscar?"

"My dear, dear child!" said Oscar; and Helga, who was still laughing, said:

"A little milliner! It makes her look like a little milliner!"

"No, no, not that," said Oscar. "But it's not Thora. Thora is a sweet, simple Iceland maiden whose charm is her simplicity, whereas this----"

"I see," said Thora, and with her heart in her mouth she turned to go.

Oscar stepped to the door to stop her, but with the shrill cry of a hare that is wounded to death she flung out at him and passed through. She went up-stairs with a slow step, took off her English costume, put it back in the cardboard box, and pushed it under the bed--crying a little and wiping her eyes.

She knew the truth at last--she knew where she stood in Oscar's mind. A simple Iceland maiden--that was all he had ever seen in her! It was she who had merely fascinated him, and Helga whom he loved!

When the door of the sitting-room closed on Thora, Oscar looked at Helga and said:

"Whatever has come over her?"

"Don't you see?" said Helga.

"Why, no--what is it?"

"How stupid these clever boys can he! I could tell you in three words."

"Tell me, then--tell me."

"Thora is jealous."

"You don't mean that?"

Helga's face flushed; she looked up at Oscar, and a mysterious thrill went through him. The great surprise had come indeed.

*VI*

Oscar slept badly that night. For two months he had been moving in a garden of dreams, where the odor of sweet flowers overpower the senses, but he was awake at last, and was being dragged to trial in a tribunal of his own creating. In that court of conscience he was both righteous judge and guilty prisoner, and through the long hours of broken sleep, when he saw his life and motives as by flashes of lightning, he asked and answered some terrible questions:

Is Thora's jealousy justified?

No, yes! That is to say--I may have neglected her--thoughtlessly neglected her.

Do you love Helga?

It isn't necessary to think that. I admire her--I admire her beauty, and her intellect, but----

Then you do not love her?

I love her society--I love to be with her; she is bright and brilliant; we have many interests in common.

Then if you do not love Helga, why not cut her off rather than see Thora suffer?

I can't! I can't!

So you _do_ love Helga?

Yes! Yes! I do love her.

Then what about Thora?

I am sorry for Thora--very sorry.

Have you ceased to love her?

Don't say that. My feeling for Thora is the same now as it has always been.

Then you have _never_ loved her?

I thought I did--I sincerely thought I did.

So your feeling for Thora was an illusion?

A most unfortunate illusion, and I am troubled about her--I shall always be troubled about her.

But you are betrothed to her?

God help me, so I am!

What are you going to do now?

What am I going to do? I am--yes, I am going to obey the commandment of Nature. Accident and error and illusion have betrothed me to the wrong woman, but must I hold to her after I have found out that I do not love her? No! She is sweet and loving, and I have no fault to find with her, but I must obey the law of my heart, and who shall judge me if I do that?

But what about the law of the land--you have signed a contract to marry Thora?

Even so, is marriage like any other worldly transaction? Are you bound to go on merely because you have begun? Can human hearts be dealt with like so much merchandise?

So you do _not_ intend to marry Thora?

I cannot--it is impossible--now that her sister has appeared before me, I see too well I do not love her.

But _she_ loves _you_!

That is the pity of it. Poor Thora!

She thinks you are slipping away from her?

It is very pitiful--I see how I have made her suffer.

What will happen if you leave her altogether?

Her heart will break--her tender, sweet, child heart will break.

Can you break Thora's heart?

No, no, no! Better break my own!

Then what are you going to do?

I must go on with the marriage. I see now that I must--it is my duty--there is no help for it.

Wait! There is something you have not thought about. If you go on with your contract and marry Thora, you must be prepared to live her life.

I know! I know! And I am not fit for it! Good or bad, I am not fit for it!

But if you break your contract, and do not marry Thora, you may live the life of Helga.

Yes, yes, and I am fitted for that life above everything else. It thrills me, it inspires me, it lifts me up.

The one is the lower life, while the other is the higher life.

I cannot bear to think of it.

You know that if you marry Thora you condemn yourself for ever to the lower life, and give up all hope and all thought of the higher one?

Don't torture me! Don't torture me!

But the higher life will be a life consecrated to self, whereas the lower life will be a life devoted to self-sacrifice--which is it to be?

That settles it--I must go on with the contract, whatever the consequences.

When Oscar awoke in the morning from his restless sleep he thought he saw his way clearly. There was only one solution of the hard problem of his iron destiny--he must sacrifice himself! He was betrothed to Thora, and he must go on with the marriage. He loved Helga, but he must tear her out of his heart. He wished to be a musician, and to live the higher life, but he must be content with the lower life and do his duty.

A few irresistible pangs of regret, a few tears which he could not quite keep back, and then, feeling a certain satisfaction with himself, a certain pride in his self-sacrifice, Oscar went early to his work.

It was the autumn caravan time, when the farmers come with the last of the year's tallow and wool to have their accounts made up and settled. The offices and warehouses were like a market-place, and there was work for everybody. Oscar threw himself into the day's doings with astonishing energy, and when the Factor returned from breakfast he bantered him on his industry. "Better late than never, though," said the Factor, "and a good day in the autumn is worth two in the spring."

Oscar spent the morning in the office helping at the accounts. His part was to reconcile the farmers to their balances, for many of them were dissatisfied, and nearly all were in the Factor's debt. Some grumbled at the rate they received for their produce, others at the price they paid for foreign goods. Oscar's task was to persuade, cajole, and comfort them, and finally to draft the notes of hand on the bankers with which they discharged their debts. He felt mean and miserable.

Toward noon Helga sent a messenger to say that she hoped to rehearse some of the new music in the cathedral in the afternoon and to ask if Oscar would go with her. He answered that he could not, business was pressing, and he must stick to his work. It cost him a pang to send back this answer, but he had made his bed and he meant to lie on it.

He spent the afternoon in the warehouse, where the produce brought by the farmers was weighed and stacked away for the winter. The odor of the tallow and wool, mingling with the smell of the men's clothes and the reek of their bodies, made the atmosphere close and noisome, and to freshen the air Oscar ordered the big doors to be thrown open.

All at once through the clear, crisp winter air outside came the sound of the organ being played in the cathedral, and that was the last drop in his cup. It was like a voice calling him out of the lower world he lived in to the higher one he yearned for. It was like Helga beckoning to him in his unblessed surroundings, and through the roll of the music he could see her face.

For the first time Oscar was feeling bitterly about Thora, as if he were a prisoner and she were his jailer, when a man rode up to the warehouse door on a bright chestnut pony, with a line of pack ponies behind him. It was Magnus, and seeing him stand outside the counter, which he had formerly stood within, Oscar felt some qualms of shame, and called him into the scalesman's office.

The interview between the brothers was brief and commonplace, but every simple word seemed to throb and scorch like a flame. Oscar asked how Magnus was getting on at the farm, and if he had good servants, and Magnus answered "Yes"; he had always been fond of farming, and for servants he had only the old ones, and everything was as before. Oscar asked if the Governor had made satisfactory arrangements, and Magnus said he had, that the farm was his own now on terms of tenancy, and was to become his property at the old people's death.

"And how are you getting on here?" asked Magnus.

"I? Oh--pretty well, I think."

"You like the work?"

"Yes--well--not to say like, perhaps; I never expected to do that, you know; but I'm all right, I think."

They had to pause, for the din in the warehouse was louder than usual--some of the farmers were squabbling with the scalesmen.

"And Thora?" said Magnus after a moment.

"Thora? Oh, Thora is all right, too, I think. Yes, Thora is all right," said Oscar.

"Mother tells me she looks pale."

"Pale? Does she? I hadn't noticed it. Perhaps she does though, the weather is getting cold."

There was a painful pause in their conversation, and while they waited Oscar could hear the organ in the cathedral breaking into the opening notes of his own anthem.

"I hear that Helga has come home," said Magnus.

"Oh, yes, Helga has come home," said Oscar.

"They say she is handsome."

"Handsome? Yes, she's rather handsome, in fact, distinctly handsome--and musical--decidedly musical. Indeed, she has grown to be a very attractive girl--very!"

There was another awkward silence, in which the anthem pealed out over the jangling voices in the warehouse.

"I suppose the wedding will be soon," said Magnus.

"The wedding? Well, to tell you the truth, Magnus, nothing has been fixed yet."

"Not yet?"

"Nothing definite, I mean--no precise date. I don't know why, but----"

Oscar looked at his brother, and felt his tongue arrested.

Magnus was calm, his eyes were quiet, and his voice was soft, but there was something in his face which brought back a terrible memory. It was the memory of the night of the betrothal, the last time they talked together, when Magnus had said, "If you ever neglect or desert her or give her up for another woman, I'll take her back--do you hear me?--I'll take her back, and then, by God, I'll kill you!"

Oscar supped at the Factor's house that night. He was unusually solemn, and more than once during the meal Aunt Margret bantered him on his silence, but, at the end of it, while lighting a cigarette, he said:

"Godfather, I hope you'll consent to our having the wedding soon?"

Thora, who had been looking pale and nervous, colored up with a glad look, while Helga, who had been flushed and excited, grew white and rigid.

"What do you call soon, Oscar--Easter?" asked the Factor.

"Earlier, much earlier, say the middle of January at latest," said Oscar.

"But what does Thora say?"

Rising from her seat, with brightening eyes and heaving bosom, Thora crossed over to Oscar and kissed him.

"So that's what Thora says!" laughed the Factor. "Very well, I'm willing! The middle of January let it be then, and fix the date between you."

Helga's white face quivered. "So _that's_ settled!" she cried, and leaping up she went across to the piano and began to play with great vigor. She played the wild "Ride of the Valkyries," becoming faster and louder at every bar.

Oscar was in torture, and he went home early. "What a mercy Helga does not know!" he thought. "If she did, I could not trust myself even yet! And if she loves me as I love her--good God!"

But Thora was very happy. Going to bed that night she thought, "How wrong I have been about Oscar; how cruelly, wickedly, shamefully wrong!"

*VII*

Next morning Oscar thought the battle was over, and his conscience had conquered, but the devil was not done with him yet. He had hardly settled to his work in the warehouse when a letter came from Helga, saying:

"The ice is perfect on the lake this morning, ant in spite of business and every other botheration you must carry out your promise to take me to skate. Therefore come at two o'clock to the minute, and you will find me waiting to go with you."

It was the first letter he had received from Helga, and it seemed to burn his fingers. The scented note-paper and the free, bold handwriting gave him a physical thrill which he had never felt before.

Should he go? His soul said, "Certainly not! Why expose yourself to temptation, especially now, when you are as weak as water." But his heart said, "You must! To make any difference in your attitude toward Helga would be to run the risk of betraying your secret. And what about the future--can you always run away like that?" His heart won, and at the appointed time he was walking up to the Factor's.

Helga was standing by the door at the top of the steps. She was dressed in pale blue serge, a short skirt exposing the long tanned boots, a jersey revealing the flexible lines of her shapely figure, and a white woolen cap, like a chain helmet, covering half her forehead and closing under her chin, leaving her vivid face bare and beautiful as a young nun's in hood and bands.

Oscar was beginning to doubt himself already, and he asked where was Thora.

"I'm here," said a cheerful voice from the hall, and Thora came to the door bright and happy, but bareheaded, and sewing a piece of moleskin cloth.

"Not ready?" said Oscar.

"I'm not going, I can't skate," said Thora.

"Then we'll take a walk instead," said Oscar. But Thora would not hear of it. Helga had set her heart on skating, and she had set her heart on something else--making a sleeve waistcoat for Hans, the sailor.

"Well, if you really wish it," said Oscar.

"Really, truly! And I'll have tea ready for you at five o'clock."

"We'll be back before that," said Oscar, and then he and Helga went swinging down the road.

Helga, in her short skirt, walked with a spring, like a young horse in sharp weather, and Oscar, as he swung along by her aide, sometimes touching her, felt his blood tingling, and every nerve tremblingly alive. This frightened him a little, and turning to look back he saw Thora waving to them from the house, and said, "God bless her, the dear little soul!" And then Helga glanced at him sideways and laughed.

The frost had filtered the air, and it was crisp and quivering with currents of electricity, which stimulated all their senses. Their voices crackled when they spoke, and when Helga laughed the sound was like that of dry sticks in a quick fire.

"What are you laughing at, Helga?"

"I don't know," she said, and then they laughed together.

The ice of the lake was glorious--a broad mirror black as ink, for there had been no snow yet, the water had frozen as by first intention, and through five fathoms they could see the stones and pebbles at the bottom.

"What a pity Thora didn't come," said Oscar.

"Isn't it?" said Helga, and again she glanced at him sideways and laughed.

They sat on the bank to put on their skates, and while Helga fumbled at her straps, Oscar thought, "I must not, I will not!" But Helga looked across at him with a smile that seemed to ask a question, and at the next moment he was down on his knees in front of her, with one of her skates and one of her long tanned boots in his quivering hands.

Oscar thought Helga's skating was wonderful. It was divine, it was devilish, it intoxicated him, he could not trust himself to look at it alone, and seeing a number of skaters at the farther side of the lake, where there was an island of lava rocks, he said:

"Let us go over to the others."

Hours passed, the exercise and the air warmed his blood, his tremors left him, and he forgot about Thora. At length the sun began to set over the sea in a flood of glory, and Oscar said, "Time to go home."

"Not yet," said Helga, and they went round and round the island, sometimes apart, sometimes with clasped hands, sometimes side by side with arms interlaced across their breasts.

The sun went down, and both sea and land became gray and cold, but still the tops of the mountains were golden.

"Tea will be waiting," said Oscar.

"A little longer!" said Helga, and nothing loath, Oscar went round and round with her again.

The night came striding up from the plain behind, and somebody lit a fire on the island.

"Too late for tea now," said Helga, and once again Oscar went round and round with her. It seemed to him that Helga's face flashed with electric flame as she swirled out of the darkness into the red glow from the fire, and back again into the darkness.

One of the skaters started the Elf-song, others joined him, and then it was a scene of complete enchantment. The frost had laid its hand on the falls that fed the lake, and they were quiet; it had stroked the streams, and they were still; but if the voices of the waters were silent, the voices of the skaters rippled and rang in the crisp night air.

"Dance by night and dance by day,
Life and Time will pass away:
Love alone will last alway."

Oscar was enraptured. The humming of the skates, the swaying of the ice, the music of the singers, the heat, the glow, the sinuous movement, and above all the girl by his side, so bright, so beautiful, so full of life and laughter, carried away every sense, and flesh and blood were afire.

Then the moon rose, a brilliant moon, and it was reflected full and round and white in the black mirror of the ice, with its streamers going off from it, as if it had been a comet that had fallen to the earth, and lay there at their feet.

"Look! Let us cut across it," cried Helga, and away they shot in the darkness, with the moon's reflection receding as they followed it, until they came to the limit of the lake, and then the skaters and the fire and the singing were far behind them.

"What a will o' the wisp she is! I could catch you quicker than I could catch her!" said Oscar.

"You couldn't!"

"I could!"

"Do it then!" cried Helga, and off she went, laughing at first, but afterward silent yet breathing fast, and at last panting audibly while she twisted and turned to escape from him, until he came down on her at length with outstretched arms and a cry of "Done!" And then, before he knew what he was doing, he was clasping her to his breast, and she was clinging to him lest she should fall, and he was beating kiss after kiss upon her lips.

At the next moment consciousness came back to him like an ice wind blowing in a furnace. His arms slackened away from Helga, and he said in a cold voice:

"I beg your pardon, Helga. It was wrong of me. I am very sorry."

Helga laughed, a nervous, broken laugh which seemed to say, "Are you sure you are thinking of me?"

"I am betrothed to your sister, and in less than two months I am to be married to her. I had no right to give way to my feelings like that," said Oscar.

The nervous, broken laugh came again, and it said, as plainly as words could speak, "Do you know what you are saying, Oscar?"

Oscar trembled like a withered leaf. He was like a man standing on the hot ground of the geysers, where the crust was thin and cracking under his feet.

"Let us go home," he said.

"Take off my skates then," said Helga.