VIThe Governor never knew that Oscar had broken faith with him.When the time came for the next session of Althing, a Bill for the reform of the Constitution, reenacting the abolition of the Governorship and the appointment of a Minister, was passed by a large majority. But an Act involving a constitutional change had to be voted by two Parliaments and therefore a dissolution of Althing became necessary. The time of dissolution was at the discretion of the Governor, and he might have delayed it until the fever for reform had passed. Instead of doing so he decided to dissolve immediately, thus feeding the agitation and precipitating his own fate.Many things befall the man whose day is done, and the measure of the Governor's errors was not yet full. When the time came to select the candidates it was found that the constituency for which Oscar had sat--the capital--was once more without its man, and to everybody's astonishment the Governor himself, in order to secure a voice in the popular assembly, determined to stand for it.This unusual step on the Governor's part created great excitement, but the fever increased tenfold when it was announced that the Factor intended to oppose him.Never had popular feeling run so high as on the night when the Governor and the Factor had to confront each other on the same hustings. The better people stayed away, being sorry and ashamed that these two friends of fifty years should claw each other face to face like eagles, but the baser sort were reveling in the prospect of that spectacle and the Artisan's Institute was crowded."You learn a lot when your servants quarrel," they told each other, and they were not to be disappointed.The Sheriff was in the chair, and it was clear from the beginning that his life-long rivalry of the Governor did not prompt him to restrain either candidate from making a fool of himself. Bad luck is a quick voter and the Governor played into the Sheriff's hands without suspicion and without delay.The once silent and dignified man had lost all reticence and self-control, and when his time came to speak he flung innuendoes on every side. If you hate a man all his deeds are hateful, and coming at length to the Factor's business life the Governor said:"Never is selfishness satisfied, my friends. Will you commit the care of your public purse to one who in order to grasp all is losing all and hurling himself into bankruptcy and want?"This thrust was received with ironical cheers and counter cheers, not unmixed with derisive laughter, and when the Factor's turn came he said with a humorous leer over a face that was white as death:"A blunt knife should seek the joints and not hack at the solid bone. But if it comes to asking conundrums I'll ask one also: Will you commit the care of your public purse to one whose son was banished from the country because he was a forger and a thief?"This charge against Oscar, often whispered, but never before publicly uttered, fell on the reeking crowd with the effect of a thunderbolt, and before the audience had recovered from its astonishment the Governor was on his feet again, against all rule and order, saying in a loud voice:"And will you commit the charge of your public morality to a man who in his youth contracted an alliance with an abandoned woman and only married his mistress after his first daughter had been born a bastard?"This was the climax of sensation. The chewing and spitting crowd were silent, save for the sound of their audible breathing which was like the hissing in-wash of an ebbing wave. The Factor was pallid and speechless, as if the Governor's cruel word had struck all sensibility as well as sneering out of his face, while the Governor faced him with bloodshot eyes and blazing cheeks and lips that quivered convulsively. Thus the two men stood for a long moment with scarcely a yard's space between them, and then a big man was seen to be parting the people at the back of the platform and coming forward with great strides. It was Magnus, and he was making for his father as if to take him forcibly away.But before the Governor had seen him, or could be conscious of his presence, another hand, an unseen hand, had been laid upon his shoulder. With a blow on the brain that was like a stroke from heaven, the Governor had realized that in returning the insult of the Factor, in his mad wrath and blind passion, he had outraged the memory of Thora, and that Thora was in her grave, and he had loved her better than any human soul that was not of his own flesh and blood. Then the noisome place in its ghastly silence spun round him, and with a low whine like that of a poisoned dog he fell heavily to the floor. Magnus took him up and carried him home--he had a stroke of paralysis.There was only one nomination for the capital, the Factor was returned unopposed, and when the writs came back from the country it was found that the reform party had a larger majority than before.The Governor made a slow recovery, but he was moving about by the time that Althing was next in session and when the constitutional question came up again he hobbled down to Parliament House on two sticks, in spite of all remonstrance, and took a seat in his little room overlooking the legislative chamber.The debate was short and not exciting, and no one looked toward the alcove in which the Governor sat in his faded uniform, a doddering shadow of his old authority, but many cruel sallies of clumsy wit were aimed in that direction. The Governor grew more and more indignant, and at length he rose, frothing at the lips, to protest against unmerited insult, and was put down by the Speaker, who had formerly been his own private secretary.The Act was passed by acclamation; there was much cheering, with the usual nine hurrahs after "God save the King," and then the fallen man was carried home.In the middle of the night he had a second seizure, and he never left his room again. But as soon as he had recovered his speech he occupied his time dictating petitions to the King praying him not to give his sanction to an Act that was designed to degrade his servant.After a few weeks Magnus came to persuade his father and mother to leave Government House and make their home at the farm."It's of no use to resist Parliament, sir," he said. "The new Minister will be appointed presently, and why should you wait until he turns you out? Come to Thingvellir--I'm strong, I can work for all of us."But his father flew at him in a fury. "How dare you make such a proposition?" he said. "And how dare you show your face in this house? Don't you know that you have been the cause of everything? If it had not been for what you did at the beginning none of this mischief would have happened. As for the new Minister, if he comes here to turn me out tell him to bring my coffin with him--do you hear me?--tell him to bring my coffin."The idea that Magnus was really to blame for all that had occurred, being the first cause and origin of the trouble, grew upon the Governor day by day, so that Oscar seemed to be without fault and even came to be regarded as a martyr. He called upon Anna to read Oscar's letter to him again, and when he had heard it a second time he was so seized by the idea that the Prime Minister of England was a friend of his son's that he had himself propped up in bed in order that he might write to Oscar with his own hand calling on him to defeat his father's enemies."You have great influence now, Oscar, and you must save your father from the machinations of these malicious scoundrels, of whom the worst and most devilish is the Factor."That was what he thought he was writing, but his poor brain was far gone by this time and the paper he scribbled on over the counterpane was merely covered with unintelligible curves and strokes which Anna could not send on to Oscar.When it seemed certain that the intensity of the Governor's wrath would kill him, and that he would die with nothing in his heart but hatred of the Factor, Anna and Aunt Margret put their heads together and thought of a way to soften his feelings and sweeten his end. It centered in the child as before. "A little child shall lead them," they said.They took little Elin to the Governor's bedroom, and left her to play on the floor. She had grown to be the sweetest thing, with an angel's face, a little beam of spring sunshine that ran about the room and talked. But the only effect of her presence was to make the sick man stretch his arms to a safe near the head of his bed and take out a roll of papers.Nobody knew what the papers were, except that they were old and that they crinkled in his stiff fingers. He kept them under his pillow at all times save when his bed was being made and then he smuggled them into the breast of his night-shirt.When the women talked of Elin and all her pretty ways and sweet mysteries of childish make-believe, the Governor talked of Oscar. Although his memory was confused about recent events it was wondrously clear about distant ones, and he had countless stories of Oscar as a child. Some of them were humorous and he would laugh at them as well as he could with his distorted face, but all were meant to show that Oscar was not like other children, and when he had come to an end he would say:"My son is a great man now, as I always said he would be, and when he gets my letter you'll see what he will do."Meantime the Act had been sent over to Denmark and the Sheriff had been called across to Copenhagen. There was only one thing that this could mean, and in the absence of telegraphic communication the little capital sat waiting for the return of the steamer that was to bring the Sheriff back. She was due on a Sunday night, and the bell-ringers of the cathedral stood ready to ring a peal in honor of the new Minister.The Governor heard that the "Laura" was expected and he conceived the idea that Oscar was coming with her to bring the King's veto and to scatter his father's enemies. He was very ill that day, and Doctor Olesen had said he might not last until morning. But he would have nobody to nurse him, and Magnus, who had come at his mother's call, but dared not show his face to his father, sat on the stairs outside the door.Aunt Margret was coming and going during the whole of the day, and toward evening the Factor himself was seen tramping to and fro outside the house, looking up at intervals at the Governor's windows with a face in which the madness of love and fear was fighting with the greater madness of pride and wrath. At length Anna went out to him and said:"Oscar Neilsen, come into the house to see your old friend.""Not till he asks me--not till he asks me," said the Factor; whereupon Anna went indoors again and whispered over the bed of the dying man:"Stephen, the Factor is outside, and he only wants to be asked to come in.""He must come in on his knees then," said the Governor, and that was the end of everything.The steamer did not arrive that night, and the bell-ringers went to bed. But at daybreak, when the fishing-boats in the bay were breaking through a veil of mist and the sunlight was glistening on the mountain-tops, the bells began to ring merrily, for the "Laura" was sailing up the fiord with flags floating from stem to stern.Magnus heard the bells, and then a shuffling movement in his father's bedroom. A little later he heard the hurrahs of people cheering in the streets, and then a smothered echo of the same sound at the other side of his father's door."Hurrah!" "Hurrah!" cried the people outside."Hur-a! Hur-a! Hur-a-a--" echoed the voice within.At the next moment the house shook as with a heavy fall and Magnus burst into his father's bedroom. His father lay in his night-shirt on the floor. He was dead, but his face was smiling and in his withered hands were the crinkled papers on which Oscar in his boyhood had scribbled his childish compositions.Later the same day Magnus wrote to Oscar: "This is to tell you that our father died this morning. I think he died happy."But the mail did not leave until the end of the week, and under Magnus's message Anna wrote for herself: "He loved you to the last, and we hav berrid him next to our dere Thora."VIIWhen Oscar received the news of his father's death he was near the close of what he had believed to be the happiest period of his life. His success as a leader of orchestra had been substantial and immediate, and when the concerts at Covent Garden came to an end he had been offered engagements in other quarters."There! Didn't I know what I was talking about?" Helga said. "But this is nothing to the reputation you will make when you consent to appear as a composer.""Ah, that is past praying for!" Oscar answered with a shake of the head, but all the same he was pleased and happy.On leaving his dismal lodgings in Short Street, he took rooms in the same house with Helga and Finsen at the corner of Piccadilly and the Green Park. There the three friends lived the innocent lives of children, observing few of the restrictions which society imposes on the manners and conduct of men and women.Helga's sitting-room was the general rendezvous, and the men used it with the utmost freedom. Oscar, in particular, was nearly always to be found there, except in the mornings when Helga was at the Academy and in the evenings when he was himself at the theater.No hour was too early and hardly any hour too late for Oscar to call on Helga. He ate with her, played with her, sang with her, read with her and helped her with her lessons. Mozart, Cherubini, Ouseley, Macfarren, Parry, and again Mozart--their work was all play and their play was all music.Helga was more than satisfied that Oscar should be always with her, always assisting her, always praising and encouraging and inspiring her, and he on his part was entirely happy to devote himself to her service. To think for a moment that this was all she wished for, all she wanted with him, was more than his heart was capable of.On their off days, and nights they went to other concerts and opera-houses; attended the English cathedral services and the masses at Catholic Oratories; heard the old masterpieces over and over again; became familiar with nearly every new opera, oratorio, symphony, and voluntary, and studied the methods of most of the great singers and players who appeared in London. It was one long feast of music eaten at the table of love.They had their social pleasures too, and kept open house on Sundays. Sometimes they supped or dined at restaurants with their new friends, who were chiefly Finsen's friends, and then brought their hosts back to Helga's rooms for cards and conversation until one, two, or three o'clock in the morning. It was a reckless, irresponsible, unconventional life, a little like the life Oscar had lived at college, a little like the life Helga had lived with her mother at Copenhagen, and more than a little dangerous, though they never thought of that.Oscar found only one cause for uneasiness and that concerned Finsen. A certain pride which he felt at first in Finsen's interest in the girl he loved, the girl who loved him, soon gave place to jealousy. He was jealous of Finsen's hold over Helga, his control of her career, his power over her destiny. Little by little this became a gnawing anxiety until at length every pleasant word Helga exchanged with Finsen, and every smile she gave him, seemed to go to Oscar's heart like a stab.He spoke to her on the subject, and she only laughed at him for his folly. Her endearing words and caresses dissipated his uneasiness for a time, but it always came back. Sometimes it seemed to him that Finsen presumed on his position as the one who was finding the ways and means, and that Finsen's friends interpreted this attitude according to the morality of the atmosphere they lived in. At length to ease the secret gnawing at his heart Oscar proposed that they should marry. Why not? There was no longer any impediment, and there would be an end of damaging misconceptions.Remembering the past he thought Helga would have received his proposal with delight, but times had changed since they were together in Iceland and a cheerless smile hung about her lips as she shook her head. She showed him how fatal marriage at this stage would be to a girl in her position,--fatal to her aims, her ambitions, her standing with the public, and above all with the men to whom she had to look for favors--until he felt almost as much ashamed as if he had proposed a guilty thing."But why should you be jealous?" she said, approaching him to embrace him. "Ifheis so there may certainly be some cause."She put her arms about his neck and added, "Business is business, you know, and I may have to do things in the future which neither of us could wish--unless," she whispered, laying her head on his breast, "my bad boy will at length consent to be true to himself and to his genius and promise to write the great works I know he can write, and let me sing them all over the world. Then," she cried with passion, while her eyes shone and her arms clutched his neck, "then he will see what I can do."To this, and such as this, Oscar answered, "No, no," or, "It's impossible," or "Don't let us talk of it;" but Helga's endearing words and caresses, again and again repeated, were like the water from sunny streams which trickles between the snow and the frozen rock and brings down the avalanche at last.The days passed--they kept no count of them--six months, a year, a year and a half, and at length the time approached when Helga, according to the program which had been mapped out for her, was to leave the Academy of Music and begin her lessons in Paris. The prospect of an early separation was a constant nightmare to Oscar, who was striving in vain to devise schemes to prevent it, when that secret play of fate which men call chance, helped out by the blind strivings of human passion, brought him unexpectedly to the end he aimed at.One day Finsen came dashing into Helga's sitting-room with his mouth full of news. The syndicate which held the theater and Casino in one of the principal towns of the Riviera had applied to him to recommend a leader of orchestra who should be capable of controlling a season of opera; he had recommended Oscar; his recommendation had been accepted, and it had been left to him to conclude terms with the company's servant and to despatch him without delay.If a desire to separate Oscar from Helga had been a part of Finsen's plan his hopes were instantly frustrated, for Helga herself cried:"Splendid! But if Oscar is to control the opera season why can't I go also? He can put me into small parts under an assumed name in that distant place where I can never be recognized, and that will be better practise for the stage than all the acting-classes in Christendom.""Admirable idea!" shouted Oscar, and Finsen--not half-convinced--was compelled to agree.It was while Oscar's heart rode high on this last freak of fortune, while he was preparing for his flight to the Riviera and while Helga was writing to Paris to postpone her lessons, that the letter came from Iceland and fell on him like a thunderbolt. The sight of a black-edged envelope addressed in Magnus's handwriting sent the blood rushing to his head. It was long before he could gather courage to open it. Feeling numb and faint he put the letter in his pocket and went out into the park to breathe and to think.He had not written to his mother since the early days in his first lodging, being afraid to write from Short Street from dread of disclosing his poverty or from Piccadilly from fear of saying anything about Helga. As a consequence he had heard nothing from home since Anna's letter; the only news that had reached him had come through Finsen by way of his father and concerned public matters chiefly--the fall of the barter trade, the passing of the new Act and the progress of the elections.Some one belonging to him was dead--who could it be? For no other reason than that little Elin was the youngest and frailest he concluded that it must be the child. His poor motherless darling! He reproached himself with having thought so little of her amid the appeals of an absorbing passion. Yet he had thought of her: he had thought he would go back for her some day, as it was his right and duty to do, and so make amends to Thora in the care and love he would bestow on her child. But perhaps that atonement was impossible now and his sweet child was with her mother in heaven.Oscar thought that of all disasters that could befall him at home the death of his child would be the worst, but when at length he opened his letter and found that it was his father who was gone from him his grief was greater still. His dear father who had loved him better, perhaps, than any one else in the world, and whom he had rewarded the worst! He remembered the forgery and felt choked with shame; he thought of the promise to break with Helga and felt crushed by remorse. His father, who had pampered him and cherished such high hopes for him that should never be realized, never justified now, was dead far away in Iceland, and had loved him to the last!Sitting on a bench under a tree he was trying to read again, as well as he could for the fading light and the blinding mist in his eyes, the written sob of his mother's misspelled postscript, when a park-keeper touched him on the shoulder to say the gates were closing, and then the dull hum of London's burrowing mazes fell on his ear again.Helga had expected him in her room that afternoon to make the last arrangements for their journey, but the sun set, the evening closed, the night fell and he did not come. Next morning he walked in with drooping head and a dejected step and she saw that something had occurred."You have had bad news, Oscar--what is it?""My father is dead," he answered, and after that they sat for some moments without speaking.Then Helga recovered herself--her brain had been going like a fly-wheel--and she said, scarcely above her breath:"Well, what do you intend to do?""I intend to go hack," said Oscar."Back to Iceland?""Yes--to my mother and my child."He lifted his eyes and looked at her, and at the sight of her face, so full of pain and disappointment the blood rushed from his heart, and he said:"Helga, why shouldn't you go with me? Why shouldn't we marry and go back together? I know it is a good deal to ask, dear, but we should be everything to each other, and I should make up to you for any sacrifice by my devotion and love. What matter if we have to forget our cherished dreams and aspirations? Life is the fulfilment of duty, and our duty is at home--mine is at all events--and if you will share it, if you will go back with me----"He stopped suddenly and dropped his head on his hands and his elbows on his knees. With every word he uttered the impossibility and folly of what he proposed forced itself upon him, and the blood that had flamed up to his head fell back to the depths of his heart.Helga sat a moment without speaking; then she said in a steady voice:"I'm sorry, very sorry, but it's impossible! If I had nothing and nobody else to think about I should have to think of Neils. He has spent money upon me and I have given him a contract, therefore I can't run away from him like that."Oscar drew deep, gasping breaths and answered, "Then I must go alone. It will be hard, terribly hard, but I must go. There is the mortgage--I must take up that burden now that my father is gone--I can not let anybody else be borne down by it. And then there is the child--I've not done too much for her hitherto, and it is my duty, my sacred duty----""The child is all right, Oscar. Aunt Margret is taking care of her. Nothing you could do for the little mite would be half as good as is being done for her already. As for the mortgage, you can bear that burden just as well in England as in Iceland! Better--far better! You'll earn more money here--ten times, a hundred times more. And then think of the difficulty of beginning over again under the old conditions. Everybody must know everything by this time. They do--I know they do!"She rose, and standing over him she stroked his hair--the uncombed curls of his fair hair--and said, softly:"No, no, dear! You can never go back to Iceland until you go back rich and famous. And you may! I say you may! And then I, too, perhaps----"But he covered his ears with his hands, for what Helga was saying sounded like mockery."Meantime you can not think of leaving me--especially now when I want your help so badly--and when everything depends upon it--my work and my future."She dropped to her knees by his side and put her arms around his neck."Say you will not leave me, dearest! Say you will not!"She loaded him with caresses, she addressed him by every endearing name, she conquered him. He felt that the impulse to go back to Iceland--the impulse of duty--was overcome by the rapture of love, and that he must stay where Helga was, whatever happened."I belong to you, body and soul, Helga--do as you like with me," he said."And you will go to the Riviera?""Yes."If he had known what he was saying he would rather have called upon the river to carry him to its lowest depths and count him in the death-roll of its damned. But none of us can foresee the future. We must all bow before the Unknown.VIIIThe engagement on the Riviera was completely successful and Oscar covered himself with honor, but when the opera season came to an end he declined all offers to come back.Finsen was there. Under cover of professional and fraternal interest he had made frequent visits to Oscar and Helga during the course of the season, and at the close of it he was staying at the same hotel. Oscar was nervous, fretful, and unhappy. The secret gnawing anxiety which had oppressed him in London had returned with redoubled force.Helga's love of the gaiety and grandeur of the life of the Riviera was only too evident, and Finsen set himself to feed it. He fed it by every art and resource of a full purse and an open hand. Races, regattas, fêtes, flowers--he gave her everything that was being enjoyed by other women living in abundance. Oscar protested, but she laughed at his protests or tried to coax him out of his jealousy. Her caresses and endearments were beginning to fail of their old effect. In spite of himself he was beginning to feel a certain contempt for her, and at some moments even a sort of hatred which tore his heart to pieces.For his own part Oscar hated the life of the Riviera. What nature had done for the place was good, but what man had done was bad. The soft air, the blue sky, the deep blue sea, the smiling gardens, the flowers, the oleanders, the orange groves, the scent of the resin and then the still nights and the nightingale--could anything be more enchanting? Yet this paradise of nature, this God-blest corner of the earth was degraded by every gross desire that was at war with beauty and art and genius and the everlasting laws of life.But Oscar's hatred of the Riviera was due to a cause more personal than his moral revolt--a poignant memory of the past. In the Casino which stood in the middle of the gardens, beyond the brilliant hall and the noisy orchestra, there was an inner room, guarded by keen-eyed door-keepers and watched by spies, where men and women sat about a green-topped table in a dusky and clammy silence; and at the end of that room, in the darkest part of it there was an alcove, almost covered by palms, where two persons could sit unseen. Helga and he had once sat there, and she had pleaded with him to do something that his soul shrank from, and he had done it. "Why not?" she had said. "He will never hear of it, and it will only be a matter of form. My luck must change, it must, and then we will pay back this money and everything will be wiped out. Do, Oscar, for me, please!"From fear of reviving this memory Oscar had avoided the Casino during his present visit. That was easy enough to do while the opera season lasted, but when it was over, and his work no longer wanted him, it was hard to see Helga go off with Finsen night after night, and to wander round the Casino like an uneasy spirit that could find no rest while they were inside of it. The jealousy that was rankling in his breast could not bear that ordeal long and when Helga said, "What nonsense! You needn't play--why should you?" he followed her into the gambling-house.He saw the usual sights there, and found the usual company gathered about the tables--all middle-class whatever their rank and station--the middle-class financier, the middle-class millionaire, the middle-class baron, the middle-class peer, the middle-class duchess smoking her cigarettes, and then the prostitute in her feathers and the black-leg in his diamonds, as well as reputable men and virtuous women, for the gambling-house knows no distinctions of means or morality or intellect and is the high court of the devil's democracy.On the night of Oscar's first visit Helga played and lost; and seeing the strained look in her face his very soul felt sick and he walked out into the gardens. On the second night she lost again and he saw her borrow from Finsen who stood behind her. On the third night it was Finsen who played and he won largely, and then Helga, who sat by his side, seemed to be intoxicated by excitement and delight.Next day she showed him a costly jewel which Finsen had bought for her out of his winnings. "For luck!" she said, and when Oscar protested against the present, she said:"But why shouldn't I take it? Every penny he spends on me makes me more necessary to him for the future. Come, dear, don't be jealous. Didn't I tell you that I should have to do things that neither of us could wish?"At this, and such as this, Oscar's sense of shame was choking him. His feeling for Helga was now in a perpetual alternation between love and hate. He loved her, he hated her, he despised her, he was proud of her, and this red riot in his blood was driving him to despair.At one moment he thought her nature was utterly selfish, and that she would sacrifice anything and anybody to gain her ends; at the next moment he believed she loved him with an unselfish love, but that her disposition was such that she had to struggle between her love for him and her love for luxury and success, and therefore she was as much an object for pity as himself.Sometimes, when he walked in the gardens of the Casino, he remembered how Thora had suffered as he was suffering now; and then, while the nightingale sang unseen above his head and the peace of the night soothed his soul, he told himself he was rightly punished. As he had done so he was being done by, and now the manly thing was to leave Helga and go away; and then if she loved him she would suffer, too, and that would be his best revenge.But at other times, when he saw Helga wearing the bracelets and brooches which Finsen had given her he felt that flight was impossible; that he must fight this man with his own weapons and subdue this woman on her own terms.Yet how was he to do it? When he asked himself that question one answer, and one only, came back to him with every breath he drew in that atmosphere of gamblers, the old, delusive, mocking answer--he must do it by means of play.But while he had money enough for his own needs he had none for the gambling-table, and it was not at first that he saw a way to the means with which to begin. Suddenly an idea came to him--he would make the man himself find the means--and without waiting to consider this, without pausing to count the cost, with his pulses throbbing painfully and his heart leaping with a devilish joy, he hurried into the Casino and drew Finsen aside to the alcove covered by palms, and said, in a false and tremulous voice:"Old friend, do you remember the first time I called on you at Covent Garden?""When you said you were starving--perfectly.""You offered me something if I would sell you some compositions of mine that are buried in Iceland.""And you said you would die in a ditch first.""Would you still be disposed to take your chance with them?""Why not? My father is Minister now--there ought to be no difficulty.""And you would be prepared to pay me the money at once?""Certainly--as soon as you are ready to sign the necessary authorization.""I'm ready to sign it now," said Oscar in the same tremulous voice.Within ten minutes everything was settled, and Oscar was pocketing the notes that were being paid on Finsen's account from the treasury of the Casino. His hands were trembling, his lips quivering, and his face was white."So you're caught by the fever at last, old fellow," laughed Finsen. "And what you wouldn't do before to feed your stomach, you are doing now to feed your luck.""Just so, to feed my luck," said Oscar.That night Oscar played carefully and won. The following night he played more freely and won again. On the third night he took the bank and won once more. He took the bank on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and many succeeding nights with the same result. Such a rapid and unbroken run of luck had scarcely ever been seen. The manager of the Casino, a plausible person with a rubicund face, congratulated Oscar. The "house" had rarely had a banker so popular as well as so fortunate, and it rejoiced in his success.Meantime Oscar was never for a moment his own man. He seemed to be laboring under a wild intoxication of soul. In a fortnight he had become rich, but he had no love for money for himself and he heaped it upon Helga. There were presents to outshine Finsen's, excursions in steam launches and in automobiles and even some social entertainments. The winsome and remarkable-looking young leader of the opera, with his handsome if reckless sister-in-law, became objects of attention. They gave one or two dinners in the restaurant of the Casino, where the rich of all nations ate their food in the glitter of a thousand diamonds and to the music of an orchestra in red coats and black silk stockings.Then the change came--the inevitable change. One night it became evident that the tide of Oscar's luck had turned. He did not flinch--he doubled his risk and played on. The ebb set in with frightful rapidity, and every night he increased his stakes, and lost his money with a smile. At the end of a week Helga, who had been transported with rapture became pallid with alarm."Your luck is leaving you--hadn't you better stop?" she said, but he would not listen.He touched bottom at last. Sitting in his usual seat he called for fresh counters, and said with a laugh, "Life or death--this is my last.""Do you mean that?" said Helga, and he nodded and laughed again.Finsen had been punting silently at the other side of the table, and now Helga went over to him and stood behind his chair. It was only the straw that told how the wind was blowing, but Oscar saw it and his twitching face grew red.The inscrutable gods of chance seemed to hover over the table. A greater risk than that of money depended on the issue of the nest coup, and both men knew it.When the cards had been cut Oscar served them slowly, very slowly, and when he came to the last card his trembling fingers seemed loath to turn it. He turned it at last with a rapid movement and at the same moment he rose from his seat and laughed.He had lost, and the clammy silence was broken."Are you going?" asked Helga, in a listless tone, with wandering eyes."Certainly. And you?""Not yet--Neils is winning splendidly."Then in a moment, as in the twinkling of an eye, his month-long intoxication of soul left him and he saw where he was and what he had done. He had taken money from Finsen to permit the grave of his wife to be opened, and he had gambled with that money and lost it!When he saw things in this way he could scarcely stand upright, but with an effort he walked out of the gambling-room, down the corridor where the spies were watching, past the restaurant where the sluggards were smoking, through the hall where the band was playing and out into the garden.There he looked for a dark place and sat on a bench under a tree. The night was clear and quiet, the stars were out, and the sea was singing in the distance, but he could hear nothing except an owl that was hooting somewhere in the eaves. Oh, for the snows of his own country to cool his hot forehead! Oh, for the storms of Iceland to silence the babel in his brain!When he thought of his conduct he hated himself, and when he remembered his temptation he hated Helga also. The one hatred counteracted the other or he would have destroyed himself. He must live, if only to subdue Helga, to bring her to his feet and then to cast her off forever!How was he to do this? There was one way, but it was closed to him--closed by the vow he had made when he stood by the open coffin of his wife and, in punishment of himself for having neglected her and sinned against her, he had sworn before God to bury his ambitions in her grave and never write another line of music as long as he lived.If he could only wipe out that vow, if he could only begin again, if he could only say to himself some day, "Oscar Stephenson is dead!" But that could never be and Oscar Stephenson must go on to the end, trailing the slag of his burned-out life behind him.Deciding to return to England immediately, he walked back to the hotel and asked for his bill. When it was given to him he found that the money remaining in his purse was hardly sufficient to discharge his debt and pay the expense of his journey. Without a moment's thought he sat down and wrote to Helga:"DEAR HELGA:--I want to go back to London by the midnight train and I find I am a little short for my railway ticket. Send me a hundred francs by the messenger who brings you this letter, and for mercy's sake do not keep him too long waiting--I can not live in this place another night."OSCAR."He had lavished so many presents upon her that he never dreamt she could refuse him, but this was the answer that came back:"DEAREST OSCAR:--How unlucky! I've just this very minute lost my last sou, and you don't like me to borrow from Finsen. But, you bad boy, you can not be in earnest about going off at midnight. It's impossible! Your devoted"HELGA."Oscar had nothing that he could turn into money except his watch, and that was his father's gift and all he had to remember him by, but after a sharp struggle he called for the manager, and parted with his keepsake.When his bill was paid and his luggage ready, the clock across the gardens was striking eleven. He had still an hour to spare, and bitterly as he felt toward Helga he could not go away without saying good-by to her, so he walked for that purpose by the shore road to the side door of the Casino.It was there that his fate encountered him.
VI
The Governor never knew that Oscar had broken faith with him.
When the time came for the next session of Althing, a Bill for the reform of the Constitution, reenacting the abolition of the Governorship and the appointment of a Minister, was passed by a large majority. But an Act involving a constitutional change had to be voted by two Parliaments and therefore a dissolution of Althing became necessary. The time of dissolution was at the discretion of the Governor, and he might have delayed it until the fever for reform had passed. Instead of doing so he decided to dissolve immediately, thus feeding the agitation and precipitating his own fate.
Many things befall the man whose day is done, and the measure of the Governor's errors was not yet full. When the time came to select the candidates it was found that the constituency for which Oscar had sat--the capital--was once more without its man, and to everybody's astonishment the Governor himself, in order to secure a voice in the popular assembly, determined to stand for it.
This unusual step on the Governor's part created great excitement, but the fever increased tenfold when it was announced that the Factor intended to oppose him.
Never had popular feeling run so high as on the night when the Governor and the Factor had to confront each other on the same hustings. The better people stayed away, being sorry and ashamed that these two friends of fifty years should claw each other face to face like eagles, but the baser sort were reveling in the prospect of that spectacle and the Artisan's Institute was crowded.
"You learn a lot when your servants quarrel," they told each other, and they were not to be disappointed.
The Sheriff was in the chair, and it was clear from the beginning that his life-long rivalry of the Governor did not prompt him to restrain either candidate from making a fool of himself. Bad luck is a quick voter and the Governor played into the Sheriff's hands without suspicion and without delay.
The once silent and dignified man had lost all reticence and self-control, and when his time came to speak he flung innuendoes on every side. If you hate a man all his deeds are hateful, and coming at length to the Factor's business life the Governor said:
"Never is selfishness satisfied, my friends. Will you commit the care of your public purse to one who in order to grasp all is losing all and hurling himself into bankruptcy and want?"
This thrust was received with ironical cheers and counter cheers, not unmixed with derisive laughter, and when the Factor's turn came he said with a humorous leer over a face that was white as death:
"A blunt knife should seek the joints and not hack at the solid bone. But if it comes to asking conundrums I'll ask one also: Will you commit the care of your public purse to one whose son was banished from the country because he was a forger and a thief?"
This charge against Oscar, often whispered, but never before publicly uttered, fell on the reeking crowd with the effect of a thunderbolt, and before the audience had recovered from its astonishment the Governor was on his feet again, against all rule and order, saying in a loud voice:
"And will you commit the charge of your public morality to a man who in his youth contracted an alliance with an abandoned woman and only married his mistress after his first daughter had been born a bastard?"
This was the climax of sensation. The chewing and spitting crowd were silent, save for the sound of their audible breathing which was like the hissing in-wash of an ebbing wave. The Factor was pallid and speechless, as if the Governor's cruel word had struck all sensibility as well as sneering out of his face, while the Governor faced him with bloodshot eyes and blazing cheeks and lips that quivered convulsively. Thus the two men stood for a long moment with scarcely a yard's space between them, and then a big man was seen to be parting the people at the back of the platform and coming forward with great strides. It was Magnus, and he was making for his father as if to take him forcibly away.
But before the Governor had seen him, or could be conscious of his presence, another hand, an unseen hand, had been laid upon his shoulder. With a blow on the brain that was like a stroke from heaven, the Governor had realized that in returning the insult of the Factor, in his mad wrath and blind passion, he had outraged the memory of Thora, and that Thora was in her grave, and he had loved her better than any human soul that was not of his own flesh and blood. Then the noisome place in its ghastly silence spun round him, and with a low whine like that of a poisoned dog he fell heavily to the floor. Magnus took him up and carried him home--he had a stroke of paralysis.
There was only one nomination for the capital, the Factor was returned unopposed, and when the writs came back from the country it was found that the reform party had a larger majority than before.
The Governor made a slow recovery, but he was moving about by the time that Althing was next in session and when the constitutional question came up again he hobbled down to Parliament House on two sticks, in spite of all remonstrance, and took a seat in his little room overlooking the legislative chamber.
The debate was short and not exciting, and no one looked toward the alcove in which the Governor sat in his faded uniform, a doddering shadow of his old authority, but many cruel sallies of clumsy wit were aimed in that direction. The Governor grew more and more indignant, and at length he rose, frothing at the lips, to protest against unmerited insult, and was put down by the Speaker, who had formerly been his own private secretary.
The Act was passed by acclamation; there was much cheering, with the usual nine hurrahs after "God save the King," and then the fallen man was carried home.
In the middle of the night he had a second seizure, and he never left his room again. But as soon as he had recovered his speech he occupied his time dictating petitions to the King praying him not to give his sanction to an Act that was designed to degrade his servant.
After a few weeks Magnus came to persuade his father and mother to leave Government House and make their home at the farm.
"It's of no use to resist Parliament, sir," he said. "The new Minister will be appointed presently, and why should you wait until he turns you out? Come to Thingvellir--I'm strong, I can work for all of us."
But his father flew at him in a fury. "How dare you make such a proposition?" he said. "And how dare you show your face in this house? Don't you know that you have been the cause of everything? If it had not been for what you did at the beginning none of this mischief would have happened. As for the new Minister, if he comes here to turn me out tell him to bring my coffin with him--do you hear me?--tell him to bring my coffin."
The idea that Magnus was really to blame for all that had occurred, being the first cause and origin of the trouble, grew upon the Governor day by day, so that Oscar seemed to be without fault and even came to be regarded as a martyr. He called upon Anna to read Oscar's letter to him again, and when he had heard it a second time he was so seized by the idea that the Prime Minister of England was a friend of his son's that he had himself propped up in bed in order that he might write to Oscar with his own hand calling on him to defeat his father's enemies.
"You have great influence now, Oscar, and you must save your father from the machinations of these malicious scoundrels, of whom the worst and most devilish is the Factor."
That was what he thought he was writing, but his poor brain was far gone by this time and the paper he scribbled on over the counterpane was merely covered with unintelligible curves and strokes which Anna could not send on to Oscar.
When it seemed certain that the intensity of the Governor's wrath would kill him, and that he would die with nothing in his heart but hatred of the Factor, Anna and Aunt Margret put their heads together and thought of a way to soften his feelings and sweeten his end. It centered in the child as before. "A little child shall lead them," they said.
They took little Elin to the Governor's bedroom, and left her to play on the floor. She had grown to be the sweetest thing, with an angel's face, a little beam of spring sunshine that ran about the room and talked. But the only effect of her presence was to make the sick man stretch his arms to a safe near the head of his bed and take out a roll of papers.
Nobody knew what the papers were, except that they were old and that they crinkled in his stiff fingers. He kept them under his pillow at all times save when his bed was being made and then he smuggled them into the breast of his night-shirt.
When the women talked of Elin and all her pretty ways and sweet mysteries of childish make-believe, the Governor talked of Oscar. Although his memory was confused about recent events it was wondrously clear about distant ones, and he had countless stories of Oscar as a child. Some of them were humorous and he would laugh at them as well as he could with his distorted face, but all were meant to show that Oscar was not like other children, and when he had come to an end he would say:
"My son is a great man now, as I always said he would be, and when he gets my letter you'll see what he will do."
Meantime the Act had been sent over to Denmark and the Sheriff had been called across to Copenhagen. There was only one thing that this could mean, and in the absence of telegraphic communication the little capital sat waiting for the return of the steamer that was to bring the Sheriff back. She was due on a Sunday night, and the bell-ringers of the cathedral stood ready to ring a peal in honor of the new Minister.
The Governor heard that the "Laura" was expected and he conceived the idea that Oscar was coming with her to bring the King's veto and to scatter his father's enemies. He was very ill that day, and Doctor Olesen had said he might not last until morning. But he would have nobody to nurse him, and Magnus, who had come at his mother's call, but dared not show his face to his father, sat on the stairs outside the door.
Aunt Margret was coming and going during the whole of the day, and toward evening the Factor himself was seen tramping to and fro outside the house, looking up at intervals at the Governor's windows with a face in which the madness of love and fear was fighting with the greater madness of pride and wrath. At length Anna went out to him and said:
"Oscar Neilsen, come into the house to see your old friend."
"Not till he asks me--not till he asks me," said the Factor; whereupon Anna went indoors again and whispered over the bed of the dying man:
"Stephen, the Factor is outside, and he only wants to be asked to come in."
"He must come in on his knees then," said the Governor, and that was the end of everything.
The steamer did not arrive that night, and the bell-ringers went to bed. But at daybreak, when the fishing-boats in the bay were breaking through a veil of mist and the sunlight was glistening on the mountain-tops, the bells began to ring merrily, for the "Laura" was sailing up the fiord with flags floating from stem to stern.
Magnus heard the bells, and then a shuffling movement in his father's bedroom. A little later he heard the hurrahs of people cheering in the streets, and then a smothered echo of the same sound at the other side of his father's door.
"Hurrah!" "Hurrah!" cried the people outside.
"Hur-a! Hur-a! Hur-a-a--" echoed the voice within.
At the next moment the house shook as with a heavy fall and Magnus burst into his father's bedroom. His father lay in his night-shirt on the floor. He was dead, but his face was smiling and in his withered hands were the crinkled papers on which Oscar in his boyhood had scribbled his childish compositions.
Later the same day Magnus wrote to Oscar: "This is to tell you that our father died this morning. I think he died happy."
But the mail did not leave until the end of the week, and under Magnus's message Anna wrote for herself: "He loved you to the last, and we hav berrid him next to our dere Thora."
VII
When Oscar received the news of his father's death he was near the close of what he had believed to be the happiest period of his life. His success as a leader of orchestra had been substantial and immediate, and when the concerts at Covent Garden came to an end he had been offered engagements in other quarters.
"There! Didn't I know what I was talking about?" Helga said. "But this is nothing to the reputation you will make when you consent to appear as a composer."
"Ah, that is past praying for!" Oscar answered with a shake of the head, but all the same he was pleased and happy.
On leaving his dismal lodgings in Short Street, he took rooms in the same house with Helga and Finsen at the corner of Piccadilly and the Green Park. There the three friends lived the innocent lives of children, observing few of the restrictions which society imposes on the manners and conduct of men and women.
Helga's sitting-room was the general rendezvous, and the men used it with the utmost freedom. Oscar, in particular, was nearly always to be found there, except in the mornings when Helga was at the Academy and in the evenings when he was himself at the theater.
No hour was too early and hardly any hour too late for Oscar to call on Helga. He ate with her, played with her, sang with her, read with her and helped her with her lessons. Mozart, Cherubini, Ouseley, Macfarren, Parry, and again Mozart--their work was all play and their play was all music.
Helga was more than satisfied that Oscar should be always with her, always assisting her, always praising and encouraging and inspiring her, and he on his part was entirely happy to devote himself to her service. To think for a moment that this was all she wished for, all she wanted with him, was more than his heart was capable of.
On their off days, and nights they went to other concerts and opera-houses; attended the English cathedral services and the masses at Catholic Oratories; heard the old masterpieces over and over again; became familiar with nearly every new opera, oratorio, symphony, and voluntary, and studied the methods of most of the great singers and players who appeared in London. It was one long feast of music eaten at the table of love.
They had their social pleasures too, and kept open house on Sundays. Sometimes they supped or dined at restaurants with their new friends, who were chiefly Finsen's friends, and then brought their hosts back to Helga's rooms for cards and conversation until one, two, or three o'clock in the morning. It was a reckless, irresponsible, unconventional life, a little like the life Oscar had lived at college, a little like the life Helga had lived with her mother at Copenhagen, and more than a little dangerous, though they never thought of that.
Oscar found only one cause for uneasiness and that concerned Finsen. A certain pride which he felt at first in Finsen's interest in the girl he loved, the girl who loved him, soon gave place to jealousy. He was jealous of Finsen's hold over Helga, his control of her career, his power over her destiny. Little by little this became a gnawing anxiety until at length every pleasant word Helga exchanged with Finsen, and every smile she gave him, seemed to go to Oscar's heart like a stab.
He spoke to her on the subject, and she only laughed at him for his folly. Her endearing words and caresses dissipated his uneasiness for a time, but it always came back. Sometimes it seemed to him that Finsen presumed on his position as the one who was finding the ways and means, and that Finsen's friends interpreted this attitude according to the morality of the atmosphere they lived in. At length to ease the secret gnawing at his heart Oscar proposed that they should marry. Why not? There was no longer any impediment, and there would be an end of damaging misconceptions.
Remembering the past he thought Helga would have received his proposal with delight, but times had changed since they were together in Iceland and a cheerless smile hung about her lips as she shook her head. She showed him how fatal marriage at this stage would be to a girl in her position,--fatal to her aims, her ambitions, her standing with the public, and above all with the men to whom she had to look for favors--until he felt almost as much ashamed as if he had proposed a guilty thing.
"But why should you be jealous?" she said, approaching him to embrace him. "Ifheis so there may certainly be some cause."
She put her arms about his neck and added, "Business is business, you know, and I may have to do things in the future which neither of us could wish--unless," she whispered, laying her head on his breast, "my bad boy will at length consent to be true to himself and to his genius and promise to write the great works I know he can write, and let me sing them all over the world. Then," she cried with passion, while her eyes shone and her arms clutched his neck, "then he will see what I can do."
To this, and such as this, Oscar answered, "No, no," or, "It's impossible," or "Don't let us talk of it;" but Helga's endearing words and caresses, again and again repeated, were like the water from sunny streams which trickles between the snow and the frozen rock and brings down the avalanche at last.
The days passed--they kept no count of them--six months, a year, a year and a half, and at length the time approached when Helga, according to the program which had been mapped out for her, was to leave the Academy of Music and begin her lessons in Paris. The prospect of an early separation was a constant nightmare to Oscar, who was striving in vain to devise schemes to prevent it, when that secret play of fate which men call chance, helped out by the blind strivings of human passion, brought him unexpectedly to the end he aimed at.
One day Finsen came dashing into Helga's sitting-room with his mouth full of news. The syndicate which held the theater and Casino in one of the principal towns of the Riviera had applied to him to recommend a leader of orchestra who should be capable of controlling a season of opera; he had recommended Oscar; his recommendation had been accepted, and it had been left to him to conclude terms with the company's servant and to despatch him without delay.
If a desire to separate Oscar from Helga had been a part of Finsen's plan his hopes were instantly frustrated, for Helga herself cried:
"Splendid! But if Oscar is to control the opera season why can't I go also? He can put me into small parts under an assumed name in that distant place where I can never be recognized, and that will be better practise for the stage than all the acting-classes in Christendom."
"Admirable idea!" shouted Oscar, and Finsen--not half-convinced--was compelled to agree.
It was while Oscar's heart rode high on this last freak of fortune, while he was preparing for his flight to the Riviera and while Helga was writing to Paris to postpone her lessons, that the letter came from Iceland and fell on him like a thunderbolt. The sight of a black-edged envelope addressed in Magnus's handwriting sent the blood rushing to his head. It was long before he could gather courage to open it. Feeling numb and faint he put the letter in his pocket and went out into the park to breathe and to think.
He had not written to his mother since the early days in his first lodging, being afraid to write from Short Street from dread of disclosing his poverty or from Piccadilly from fear of saying anything about Helga. As a consequence he had heard nothing from home since Anna's letter; the only news that had reached him had come through Finsen by way of his father and concerned public matters chiefly--the fall of the barter trade, the passing of the new Act and the progress of the elections.
Some one belonging to him was dead--who could it be? For no other reason than that little Elin was the youngest and frailest he concluded that it must be the child. His poor motherless darling! He reproached himself with having thought so little of her amid the appeals of an absorbing passion. Yet he had thought of her: he had thought he would go back for her some day, as it was his right and duty to do, and so make amends to Thora in the care and love he would bestow on her child. But perhaps that atonement was impossible now and his sweet child was with her mother in heaven.
Oscar thought that of all disasters that could befall him at home the death of his child would be the worst, but when at length he opened his letter and found that it was his father who was gone from him his grief was greater still. His dear father who had loved him better, perhaps, than any one else in the world, and whom he had rewarded the worst! He remembered the forgery and felt choked with shame; he thought of the promise to break with Helga and felt crushed by remorse. His father, who had pampered him and cherished such high hopes for him that should never be realized, never justified now, was dead far away in Iceland, and had loved him to the last!
Sitting on a bench under a tree he was trying to read again, as well as he could for the fading light and the blinding mist in his eyes, the written sob of his mother's misspelled postscript, when a park-keeper touched him on the shoulder to say the gates were closing, and then the dull hum of London's burrowing mazes fell on his ear again.
Helga had expected him in her room that afternoon to make the last arrangements for their journey, but the sun set, the evening closed, the night fell and he did not come. Next morning he walked in with drooping head and a dejected step and she saw that something had occurred.
"You have had bad news, Oscar--what is it?"
"My father is dead," he answered, and after that they sat for some moments without speaking.
Then Helga recovered herself--her brain had been going like a fly-wheel--and she said, scarcely above her breath:
"Well, what do you intend to do?"
"I intend to go hack," said Oscar.
"Back to Iceland?"
"Yes--to my mother and my child."
He lifted his eyes and looked at her, and at the sight of her face, so full of pain and disappointment the blood rushed from his heart, and he said:
"Helga, why shouldn't you go with me? Why shouldn't we marry and go back together? I know it is a good deal to ask, dear, but we should be everything to each other, and I should make up to you for any sacrifice by my devotion and love. What matter if we have to forget our cherished dreams and aspirations? Life is the fulfilment of duty, and our duty is at home--mine is at all events--and if you will share it, if you will go back with me----"
He stopped suddenly and dropped his head on his hands and his elbows on his knees. With every word he uttered the impossibility and folly of what he proposed forced itself upon him, and the blood that had flamed up to his head fell back to the depths of his heart.
Helga sat a moment without speaking; then she said in a steady voice:
"I'm sorry, very sorry, but it's impossible! If I had nothing and nobody else to think about I should have to think of Neils. He has spent money upon me and I have given him a contract, therefore I can't run away from him like that."
Oscar drew deep, gasping breaths and answered, "Then I must go alone. It will be hard, terribly hard, but I must go. There is the mortgage--I must take up that burden now that my father is gone--I can not let anybody else be borne down by it. And then there is the child--I've not done too much for her hitherto, and it is my duty, my sacred duty----"
"The child is all right, Oscar. Aunt Margret is taking care of her. Nothing you could do for the little mite would be half as good as is being done for her already. As for the mortgage, you can bear that burden just as well in England as in Iceland! Better--far better! You'll earn more money here--ten times, a hundred times more. And then think of the difficulty of beginning over again under the old conditions. Everybody must know everything by this time. They do--I know they do!"
She rose, and standing over him she stroked his hair--the uncombed curls of his fair hair--and said, softly:
"No, no, dear! You can never go back to Iceland until you go back rich and famous. And you may! I say you may! And then I, too, perhaps----"
But he covered his ears with his hands, for what Helga was saying sounded like mockery.
"Meantime you can not think of leaving me--especially now when I want your help so badly--and when everything depends upon it--my work and my future."
She dropped to her knees by his side and put her arms around his neck.
"Say you will not leave me, dearest! Say you will not!"
She loaded him with caresses, she addressed him by every endearing name, she conquered him. He felt that the impulse to go back to Iceland--the impulse of duty--was overcome by the rapture of love, and that he must stay where Helga was, whatever happened.
"I belong to you, body and soul, Helga--do as you like with me," he said.
"And you will go to the Riviera?"
"Yes."
If he had known what he was saying he would rather have called upon the river to carry him to its lowest depths and count him in the death-roll of its damned. But none of us can foresee the future. We must all bow before the Unknown.
VIII
The engagement on the Riviera was completely successful and Oscar covered himself with honor, but when the opera season came to an end he declined all offers to come back.
Finsen was there. Under cover of professional and fraternal interest he had made frequent visits to Oscar and Helga during the course of the season, and at the close of it he was staying at the same hotel. Oscar was nervous, fretful, and unhappy. The secret gnawing anxiety which had oppressed him in London had returned with redoubled force.
Helga's love of the gaiety and grandeur of the life of the Riviera was only too evident, and Finsen set himself to feed it. He fed it by every art and resource of a full purse and an open hand. Races, regattas, fêtes, flowers--he gave her everything that was being enjoyed by other women living in abundance. Oscar protested, but she laughed at his protests or tried to coax him out of his jealousy. Her caresses and endearments were beginning to fail of their old effect. In spite of himself he was beginning to feel a certain contempt for her, and at some moments even a sort of hatred which tore his heart to pieces.
For his own part Oscar hated the life of the Riviera. What nature had done for the place was good, but what man had done was bad. The soft air, the blue sky, the deep blue sea, the smiling gardens, the flowers, the oleanders, the orange groves, the scent of the resin and then the still nights and the nightingale--could anything be more enchanting? Yet this paradise of nature, this God-blest corner of the earth was degraded by every gross desire that was at war with beauty and art and genius and the everlasting laws of life.
But Oscar's hatred of the Riviera was due to a cause more personal than his moral revolt--a poignant memory of the past. In the Casino which stood in the middle of the gardens, beyond the brilliant hall and the noisy orchestra, there was an inner room, guarded by keen-eyed door-keepers and watched by spies, where men and women sat about a green-topped table in a dusky and clammy silence; and at the end of that room, in the darkest part of it there was an alcove, almost covered by palms, where two persons could sit unseen. Helga and he had once sat there, and she had pleaded with him to do something that his soul shrank from, and he had done it. "Why not?" she had said. "He will never hear of it, and it will only be a matter of form. My luck must change, it must, and then we will pay back this money and everything will be wiped out. Do, Oscar, for me, please!"
From fear of reviving this memory Oscar had avoided the Casino during his present visit. That was easy enough to do while the opera season lasted, but when it was over, and his work no longer wanted him, it was hard to see Helga go off with Finsen night after night, and to wander round the Casino like an uneasy spirit that could find no rest while they were inside of it. The jealousy that was rankling in his breast could not bear that ordeal long and when Helga said, "What nonsense! You needn't play--why should you?" he followed her into the gambling-house.
He saw the usual sights there, and found the usual company gathered about the tables--all middle-class whatever their rank and station--the middle-class financier, the middle-class millionaire, the middle-class baron, the middle-class peer, the middle-class duchess smoking her cigarettes, and then the prostitute in her feathers and the black-leg in his diamonds, as well as reputable men and virtuous women, for the gambling-house knows no distinctions of means or morality or intellect and is the high court of the devil's democracy.
On the night of Oscar's first visit Helga played and lost; and seeing the strained look in her face his very soul felt sick and he walked out into the gardens. On the second night she lost again and he saw her borrow from Finsen who stood behind her. On the third night it was Finsen who played and he won largely, and then Helga, who sat by his side, seemed to be intoxicated by excitement and delight.
Next day she showed him a costly jewel which Finsen had bought for her out of his winnings. "For luck!" she said, and when Oscar protested against the present, she said:
"But why shouldn't I take it? Every penny he spends on me makes me more necessary to him for the future. Come, dear, don't be jealous. Didn't I tell you that I should have to do things that neither of us could wish?"
At this, and such as this, Oscar's sense of shame was choking him. His feeling for Helga was now in a perpetual alternation between love and hate. He loved her, he hated her, he despised her, he was proud of her, and this red riot in his blood was driving him to despair.
At one moment he thought her nature was utterly selfish, and that she would sacrifice anything and anybody to gain her ends; at the next moment he believed she loved him with an unselfish love, but that her disposition was such that she had to struggle between her love for him and her love for luxury and success, and therefore she was as much an object for pity as himself.
Sometimes, when he walked in the gardens of the Casino, he remembered how Thora had suffered as he was suffering now; and then, while the nightingale sang unseen above his head and the peace of the night soothed his soul, he told himself he was rightly punished. As he had done so he was being done by, and now the manly thing was to leave Helga and go away; and then if she loved him she would suffer, too, and that would be his best revenge.
But at other times, when he saw Helga wearing the bracelets and brooches which Finsen had given her he felt that flight was impossible; that he must fight this man with his own weapons and subdue this woman on her own terms.
Yet how was he to do it? When he asked himself that question one answer, and one only, came back to him with every breath he drew in that atmosphere of gamblers, the old, delusive, mocking answer--he must do it by means of play.
But while he had money enough for his own needs he had none for the gambling-table, and it was not at first that he saw a way to the means with which to begin. Suddenly an idea came to him--he would make the man himself find the means--and without waiting to consider this, without pausing to count the cost, with his pulses throbbing painfully and his heart leaping with a devilish joy, he hurried into the Casino and drew Finsen aside to the alcove covered by palms, and said, in a false and tremulous voice:
"Old friend, do you remember the first time I called on you at Covent Garden?"
"When you said you were starving--perfectly."
"You offered me something if I would sell you some compositions of mine that are buried in Iceland."
"And you said you would die in a ditch first."
"Would you still be disposed to take your chance with them?"
"Why not? My father is Minister now--there ought to be no difficulty."
"And you would be prepared to pay me the money at once?"
"Certainly--as soon as you are ready to sign the necessary authorization."
"I'm ready to sign it now," said Oscar in the same tremulous voice.
Within ten minutes everything was settled, and Oscar was pocketing the notes that were being paid on Finsen's account from the treasury of the Casino. His hands were trembling, his lips quivering, and his face was white.
"So you're caught by the fever at last, old fellow," laughed Finsen. "And what you wouldn't do before to feed your stomach, you are doing now to feed your luck."
"Just so, to feed my luck," said Oscar.
That night Oscar played carefully and won. The following night he played more freely and won again. On the third night he took the bank and won once more. He took the bank on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and many succeeding nights with the same result. Such a rapid and unbroken run of luck had scarcely ever been seen. The manager of the Casino, a plausible person with a rubicund face, congratulated Oscar. The "house" had rarely had a banker so popular as well as so fortunate, and it rejoiced in his success.
Meantime Oscar was never for a moment his own man. He seemed to be laboring under a wild intoxication of soul. In a fortnight he had become rich, but he had no love for money for himself and he heaped it upon Helga. There were presents to outshine Finsen's, excursions in steam launches and in automobiles and even some social entertainments. The winsome and remarkable-looking young leader of the opera, with his handsome if reckless sister-in-law, became objects of attention. They gave one or two dinners in the restaurant of the Casino, where the rich of all nations ate their food in the glitter of a thousand diamonds and to the music of an orchestra in red coats and black silk stockings.
Then the change came--the inevitable change. One night it became evident that the tide of Oscar's luck had turned. He did not flinch--he doubled his risk and played on. The ebb set in with frightful rapidity, and every night he increased his stakes, and lost his money with a smile. At the end of a week Helga, who had been transported with rapture became pallid with alarm.
"Your luck is leaving you--hadn't you better stop?" she said, but he would not listen.
He touched bottom at last. Sitting in his usual seat he called for fresh counters, and said with a laugh, "Life or death--this is my last."
"Do you mean that?" said Helga, and he nodded and laughed again.
Finsen had been punting silently at the other side of the table, and now Helga went over to him and stood behind his chair. It was only the straw that told how the wind was blowing, but Oscar saw it and his twitching face grew red.
The inscrutable gods of chance seemed to hover over the table. A greater risk than that of money depended on the issue of the nest coup, and both men knew it.
When the cards had been cut Oscar served them slowly, very slowly, and when he came to the last card his trembling fingers seemed loath to turn it. He turned it at last with a rapid movement and at the same moment he rose from his seat and laughed.
He had lost, and the clammy silence was broken.
"Are you going?" asked Helga, in a listless tone, with wandering eyes.
"Certainly. And you?"
"Not yet--Neils is winning splendidly."
Then in a moment, as in the twinkling of an eye, his month-long intoxication of soul left him and he saw where he was and what he had done. He had taken money from Finsen to permit the grave of his wife to be opened, and he had gambled with that money and lost it!
When he saw things in this way he could scarcely stand upright, but with an effort he walked out of the gambling-room, down the corridor where the spies were watching, past the restaurant where the sluggards were smoking, through the hall where the band was playing and out into the garden.
There he looked for a dark place and sat on a bench under a tree. The night was clear and quiet, the stars were out, and the sea was singing in the distance, but he could hear nothing except an owl that was hooting somewhere in the eaves. Oh, for the snows of his own country to cool his hot forehead! Oh, for the storms of Iceland to silence the babel in his brain!
When he thought of his conduct he hated himself, and when he remembered his temptation he hated Helga also. The one hatred counteracted the other or he would have destroyed himself. He must live, if only to subdue Helga, to bring her to his feet and then to cast her off forever!
How was he to do this? There was one way, but it was closed to him--closed by the vow he had made when he stood by the open coffin of his wife and, in punishment of himself for having neglected her and sinned against her, he had sworn before God to bury his ambitions in her grave and never write another line of music as long as he lived.
If he could only wipe out that vow, if he could only begin again, if he could only say to himself some day, "Oscar Stephenson is dead!" But that could never be and Oscar Stephenson must go on to the end, trailing the slag of his burned-out life behind him.
Deciding to return to England immediately, he walked back to the hotel and asked for his bill. When it was given to him he found that the money remaining in his purse was hardly sufficient to discharge his debt and pay the expense of his journey. Without a moment's thought he sat down and wrote to Helga:
"DEAR HELGA:--I want to go back to London by the midnight train and I find I am a little short for my railway ticket. Send me a hundred francs by the messenger who brings you this letter, and for mercy's sake do not keep him too long waiting--I can not live in this place another night.
"OSCAR."
He had lavished so many presents upon her that he never dreamt she could refuse him, but this was the answer that came back:
"DEAREST OSCAR:--How unlucky! I've just this very minute lost my last sou, and you don't like me to borrow from Finsen. But, you bad boy, you can not be in earnest about going off at midnight. It's impossible! Your devoted
"HELGA."
Oscar had nothing that he could turn into money except his watch, and that was his father's gift and all he had to remember him by, but after a sharp struggle he called for the manager, and parted with his keepsake.
When his bill was paid and his luggage ready, the clock across the gardens was striking eleven. He had still an hour to spare, and bitterly as he felt toward Helga he could not go away without saying good-by to her, so he walked for that purpose by the shore road to the side door of the Casino.
It was there that his fate encountered him.