XMagnus Stephenson had indeed lost his religion. For fifteen years he had believed with all the strength of his soul that everybody in this life was treated according to his deserts; that if you did right you were rewarded sooner or later, and if you did wrong you were punished. But experience of the world had little by little, and year by year, inflicted upon his profound faith in the rule of conscience the most inexplicable contradictions. The man who lived a good life was not being rewarded, and the man who lived an evil one was not being punished. What, then, was there left to believe? That there was no God in the universe at all, or that if there were a God He did nothing!Magnus Stephenson had tried to do what was right. He had taken up the burdens which others laid down and he had struggled on with a strong heart. For fifteen years he had labored like a slave, and though his arrears of debt constantly accumulated, he had never allowed himself to believe that the end was coming on. The mortgage was monstrous, the interest was exorbitant, and the Bank would come to see that more than he got out of the land and stock it was impossible for man to make!But the deed of execution had been served on him at length, the advertisements of the sale had been published, and the two preliminary auctions had been held. Then, as if in a moment, the man's religion had disappeared and his soul had sent up that sublime if blasphemous cry, which since the beginning of the world has borne to heaven the lamentation and protest of humanity against the misery of man: "I have obeyed Your laws; I have lived a good life; I have assisted the poor and helped the oppressed; I have shared my bread with the orphan and protected the widow--what have You done for me?"In the grim silence which follows that ghastly question, it is more than a man's religion that disappears, and Magnus Stephenson's belief in right and wrong, his faith in justice, in conscience, and in virtue had gone down together, leaving nothing but the fierce convulsions of his animal nature.From the moment the Sheriff arrived to make the inventory he had done little but sit in the hall and drink. He sat there all day long, with his coarse snow-stockings over his boots, his sullen face to the stove, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, his broad forehead heavily wrinkled under the rough stubble of his iron-grey hair, his massive jaw resting on his breast, and his mighty loins making the chair creak as he moved and turned.At intervals during the day his mother tried to comfort him."Don't be too downhearted, Magnus," said Anna. "The stars shine when it is dark, you know.""Isn't it dark enough yet?" said Magnus, and he laughed bitterly and drank again.At intervals Elin came to him also. She was a tall girl now, nearly sixteen years of age, with a whisper of womanhood in her face and form, but coming in her short blue skirt and buckled shoes she would slide into a seat on Magnus's knee and, slipping one arm about his neck, put the other hand on his hot forehead, and try to soothe him in her motherly little way.But "There, there! That will do. Go to your grandmother. I'm tired," he would say.Early in the day he had been tormented by thoughts of the travelers who might come from a distance to stay over-night in order to be present at the auction, and in his mind's eye he saw the Inn-farm full of them, with their indifferent talk and heartless laughter, and himself in his impotent rage itching with a desire to fling them into the road. But when the storm broke his fears on that head were appeased, and while the wind and snow wailed and wept about the house he sat for hours alone in a gloomy and tragic pence.Besides the Sheriff, the only person who visited the house that day was the Pastor, and he came as late as ten at night to take the Sheriff back to lodge with him. By that time all that was left of the broken household had gathered in the hall, where Magnus still sat before the stove, while the Sheriff, with Anna and Elin, stood by the dresser making an end of the inventory."Ugh! What a night!" said the Pastor, stamping the snow off his stockings. "You're not likely to be brought out of bed by travelers on a night like this--that's some consolation, isn't it?"He was a garrulous old man, with a shallow heart and a shallow head, who chewed the cud of his humdrum livelihood with content on his stipend of fifty pounds a year."So this is to be your last night in the old home, Anna! What a pity! Well," tapping his snuff-box, "naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither! Blessed be the name of the Lord!"Magnus moved his chair impatiently and made contemptuous noises in his throat."I've known the old house through all its days of joy and sorrow for forty-five years, Anna. Ever since your poor father that's dead--I buried him myself, God rest his soul!----""God rest his soul," said Anna."Ever since the day he gave you away as a bride. And a nervous, blushing, tender-hearted little bride you were, too!"Again Magnus shuffled in his chair and made noises in his throat."I remember it so well because it was the same year that your father's big barn was burnt down, and his cousin Jorgen was found dead in the Chasm. What a sensation that made! What inquiries! What examining witnesses! Your predecessor had something on his hands in those days, Sheriff."The Sheriff muttered some commonplace and Magnus kicked at the smouldering wood in the stove."Suspicion actually fell upon your father, you remember, and because he had been drinking and was such an ungovernable man when he was drunk----""Oh, for the Lord's sake let's have done with this," cried Magnus."Magnus Stephenson," protested the Pastor, "if we are in trouble let us behave like God's rational creatures----""Rational hell!" growled Magnus, whereupon the Sheriff, to avoid further friction, closed his book with a bang, saying he had finished and was ready to go.Magnus sat quiet while the Sheriff--a sharp-featured man with the eyes of a ferret--put on his snow-shoes and cloak, and then with a tremor in his voice and a somber fire in his eyes he turned and said:"Is it all over, sir?""Yes; it was a long job, but it's over at last," said the Sheriff."I mean," said Magnus, "is it certain that the auction must take place?""Quite certain. There has never been any doubt of it that I know of.""Look here, sir," said Magnus, heaving up to his feet. "A Sheriff can do a good deal if he cares to use his influence. Give me another chance, and you shall have everything I owe. I've had five bad years in succession--no wonder I fell into arrears. Last spring I lost forty lambs in a single night, and next morning two heifers and a calf. The floods came in the autumn, too. And half my hay was swept into the lake. But weather like that can't last forever. We are sure to have a run of good years next. Give me four years more, sir--and you shall see what I can do.""The thing is past praying for," said the Sheriff."Don't say that, sir. Listen! My people have farmed this place for a hundred and fifty years, and a man doesn't like to be the one to lose it. My own flesh and blood are in the land too--the strength of my muscles and the sweat of my brow. Give me three years more, sir--just three.""Impossible!" said the Sheriff."Sheriff, come this way," said Magnus, drawing the man aside by the arm and speaking in a low voice, so that the women might not hear. "I don't care a straw about myself I'll get along somehow, and if I don't it doesn't matter--but there's the child. She ought to inherit the farm, and she's an orphan, but she'll get nothing. Give me a chance for the child's sake, Sheriff. Don't be hard on me. Sell up half my stock to pay part of the interest and let me have two years more--only two.""You know quite well that the mortgage is on the loose property as well as the land," said the Sheriff. "How can I sap away the security? As for the girl, she's young and strong; let her go into service."Magnus bit his lip in an effort to control himself, and then he said, "You are quite right, sir; the girl and I can take care of ourselves, but there's the old mother. She was born in this house and she expected to die here. I shouldn't so much mind if she were gone, and to tell you the truth she's not well now, sir. Give me one more year, Sheriff--one single year.""It's no use wasting words," said the Sheriff. "Matters have gone too far. The only thing I can do now is----""What, sir?""If you can pay me the whole of the interest before nine o'clock to-morrow morning I can stop the sale on my own responsibility.""Eight thousand crowns!" said Magnus, raising his voice to a cry of derision; "you ask me to find you eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning? You might as well ask me to find you the moon!""Then let us say no more on the subject. The Bank has been very patient, very indulgent----""The Bank!" cried Magnus, in the wild defiance of his despair. "Has the Bank got a mother? Has the Bank got a child? No! The Bank is a great, grinding monster without bowels of compassion for anybody. God damn the Bank and all its fools and flunkeys!""Magnus Stephenson," said the Pastor, raising his little fat hand, "I will ask you to remember that a clergyman is in your company, and if you take God's name in vain----""Take God's name in vain! You do that often enough--you do it every Sunday.""I'll not pretend to misunderstand you, Magnus Stephenson, for I know you are deeply tainted with skepticism, and since you ceased to come to church----""Church! You pray to God in your churches, and what does He do for you? What does He do for any one? What has He done for me?""If your life had been straight and pure God would have watched over you.""And hasn't it? Haven't I tried to do what was right? And yet God is seeing me sold up and turned out, and my dear ones left to die in a ditch.""God chastises His own, and if we only have faith in Him----""Faith in Him? Where is He? Is He in the Northlands? I have never heard of it. Is He in the Southlands? I've never seen Him here, though I've seen the devil often enough. He's in the clouds if He's anywhere, and that's no use to me.""Magnus Stephenson----""If God is on the earth let Him do something. Here's His chance. You call the poor His people, don't you? Well, I've fed and sheltered His people for fifteen years, and now I want feeding and sheltering myself. I want eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning, and if God can do anything in the world let him find me the money and save my mother and my child from starvation. But He can't do it! He can do nothing!""Magnus Stephenson," said the little clergyman, raising his little fat hand again, "when you come to stand before the great white throne God will have something to forgive you.""Pastor Peter, when I come to stand before the great white throne I shall have something to forgive God, it seems to me.""Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" cried the Pastor, and as he followed the Sheriff out of the house Magnus sent a ringing laugh of contempt after him into the darkness of the night. At the same moment two sheep-dogs that had been lying at the door with their snouts on their paws, as if anxious to join the uproar, began to growl and bark, whereupon Magnus (who had always been a lover of animals) kicked them savagely and then reeled back to his seat by the stove.The strangers being gone and the little family alone, Elin, who had been standing by the dresser, went over to Magnus and slid into her seat on his knee and said:"You must not think about me, Uncle Magnus. Wherever you have to go I will go too, and what is good enough for you is good enough for Elin. And then, who knows what may happen before the Sheriff comes back in the morning? This is New Year's Eve, you know. All good things come at New Year--miracles come at New Year, Uncle."But the sweet buoyancy of her girlish spirits, which had been the sunshine of his life for so many years, was failing him at last, and putting her aside with petulant expressions he got up and went out to the back.Then Anna, who had been sitting in silence by the table, took the Bible and four hymn-books from the corner cupboard and rang the bell for prayers."I wonder why I did that?" she said. "I forgot that Eric was gone. I hope he found shelter somewhere, poor boy--I should pity a dog that had to be out of doors on a night like this."And then Elin, in default of Magnus, read the lesson which Anna had marked for her. It was the psalm beginning, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." And when the short chapter was finished the two women stood up and sang a hymn--Elin in the silvery treble of youth and Anna in the husky tones of age, they two only in the lonely house among the solitary hills, with nothing about them but the darkness and the snow--nothing but that and the immeasurable wings of God."Happy the man whose tender careRelieves the poor distressed;When he by trouble's compassed roundThe Lord will give him rest."Anna sat down when the hymn was ended, but Elin continued to stand by the table, and closing her eyes with her innocent face uplifted, she said a little prayer for herself."O Father," she said, "bless Uncle Magnus, so that he may fear no evil. Show me how to help him, so that I may not be a burden and a care. Dear Jesus, send the miracle that will save Uncle Magnus and grandma and me. It will be such a little thing to you, but such a great, great thing to us, and we shall all be so happy and dwell in the house of the Lord forever. For Christ's sake. Amen."Then she opened her trustful eyes and said, "I'm sure He will, grandma," and kissing Anna she said "Good night" in a cheery voice and went off to bed.Prayers being over, Magnus returned to the hall and began to rake out the stove for the night. The clouds hung heavier on him than ever, and thinking to banish them Anna talked of Elin."She grows more and more like her mother, and sometimes I think it can only be a dream that our dear Thora is dead. If you had heard her praying for the miracle it would have filled your heart brimful. She has gone to bed quite certain that the miracle will come before morning.""It wouldhaveto be a miracle to help us now, mother," said Magnus. "And miracles don't happen--except such of them as we make for ourselves.""What do you mean by that, Magnus?" said Anna, lighting the candles."I mean--if I had to live my life over again, I shouldn't try to do what is right, mother.""You wouldn't do what is wrong, would you?""There is no wrong and no right, mother; there is only what is best, and if I had to begin over again, I should do what was best--best for myself and for the people about me.""You don't know what you are saying, Magnus. There are moments when it mightseemto be best to rob, even to kill----""And why not?" said Magnus--he was bolting the door. "If a man came to this house to-night with eight thousand crowns in his pocket, do you think I should hesitate to take them?""My son, you don't mean it.""I do!""You are driven to despair, Magnus, and a despairing man's words belong to the wind. If I thought you meant it I should die--I should die this very minute."She was crying and there was silence for a moment, and then Magnus said:"Never mind, mother. It doesn't matter whether I meant it or not, the temptation isn't likely to come to me. Give me the candle and let us go to bed.""You have borne a terrible burden, Magnus, and if I could only have helped you to bear it----""You have, mother. If it had not been for you and Elin I should have gone under ten years ago.""Your father knew he had robbed you of your inheritance, and perhaps that helped to kill him in the end.""It wasn't father's fault altogether.Hetried to do what was right, too. But the poor wretch who comes after the prodigal gleans in a barren field, you know."With their candles in hand they were turning to go--Anna to the badstofa above, and Magnus to the guest-room off the hall--when the dogs, who had risen again, and were snuffling at the bottom of the door, began to growl and bark."There's somebody coming," said Magnus.A moment later there was a sharp knock at the window, as with a metal end of a riding-whip, and a tremulous, high-pitched voice outside, making the customary Icelandic salutation, "God be with you!"They looked at each other in blank surprise, while backward thoughts galloped through their minds, and then Magnus, forgetting to give the customary reply, walked back to the door, and threw it open.There was a dull thud of heavy feet on the outside steps, and at the next moment a man stood on the threshold. He seemed to be an old man, for his eyebrows, beard, and mustache, and as much as could be seen of his hair under the peaked hood of his ulster, were white with snow. One moment he stood there as if breathless after his journey, looking from Magnus to the mother, and from the mother to Magnus. Then he said, in the same tremulous voice as before:"Can I have a bed here to-night, and shelter for my horse?"It seemed to Anna that he spoke to her, but instead of answering immediately, she looked across at Magnus with helpless eyes that were full of inexpressible fears. Magnus looked back at his mother and hesitated for an instant, while he held the door open with his hand. Then:"Come in, sir," he said, and the stranger stepped into the house.PART VII"The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,But right or left, as strikes the player goes;And He who tossed you down into the field,He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows."I"The little mare is hot--she'll want a rub down and a rest before you give her a feed.""I'll see to that, sir," said Magnus, and he went out and pulled the door after him.Christian Christiansson had taken two paces into the hall, and was standing there like a man who is dazed. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and his pulse was beating violently, and he felt that he would fall if he took another step forward. So often had he pictured himself in that place that he could not at first believe in the reality. Coming out of the darkness, the light of the candles dazzled him, but he looked round the room, trying to remember. At one glance he took in everything--the old portraits on the wall, the old Bornholme clock in the corner, the stove and the armchair in front of it--and, fresh from the warm comfort of Government House, the Inn-farm seemed bare and bleak. This sent a chill pang of remorse to his mind, and the pain of conscience increased when he looked at his mother.Her hair was white that had once been dark, and her face, which had been full of the loveliness of love and the beauty of happiness, was scored deep with lines of suffering. His heart yearned over her, and notwithstanding his determination not to reveal his identity until morning, it was as much as he could do to restrain himself from saying as well as he could for the emotion that was mastering him, "Mother, don't you know me? I am Oscar," and then throwing his arms about her dear neck as he had always meant to do.Meantime Anna, who had recovered her self-control and was lighting the lamp that swung from the ceiling, glanced across at the new-comer and thought, "He's nearly frozen stiff, and no wonder." With that thought she bustled about to rekindle the stove, and called on him to remove his snow-covered clothing."Won't you take off your cloak and boots, sir?" she said, and though the question was so commonplace he could not answer immediately, for his voice would not come."Your cloak and boots, sir, and I'll put them to dry by the stove.""Ah yes, of course, certainly."She stood by him while he threw off his ulster and shook the snow from his hair and beard, emerging a younger and stronger man, but she only thought, "A stranger, I suppose. Why does he travel in this weather?"When he had pulled off his riding-boots, she brought him a pair of Magnus's slippers and said:"You must have had a terrible ride, sir.""It was pretty bad certainly," he said, and after that he got on better."A gentleman must have been anxious to get on with his journey to travel on a day like this.""I was--I had something to do at the end of it.""Have you come far, sir?""Altogether? Yes, very far.""From Reykjavik perhaps?""Farther than that--from England.""From England!""From London."As he stooped to put on the slippers he thought his mother was looking at him, and he trembled between fear and hope of being recognized."I suppose," he said--his head was down--"I suppose you've never been as far as that, landlady?""No, sir.""Nor any of your family?"He could not resist the temptation to say this, but his mother did not seem to hear him--she was on her knees, breaking sticks into the stove."Sit up and warm yourself, sir. My son raked out the fire, but these sticks will burn presently. You are here on business, I suppose?""Yes, I'm here on business."Anna thought of the auction and waited for the stranger to speak of it. When he did not do so she said, "Travelers come from England to buy sheep and ponies, but they don't often come in the winter, sir."Still he did not speak (he was thinking of Elin and looking round for any trace of her), and rising from the stove Anna said:"But you'll be hungry after your long ride--what can I give you to eat?""Anything at all--anything you have ready.""I'm afraid I have nothing ready--that is to say, nothing that is good enough for the like of you, sir."As soon as he could find his voice after that he said, "Don't you always keep smoked mutton in an Iceland house?""Well, yes, if that will do, sir.""I should like it above all things."There was a moment's silence, and he thought his mother was looking at him again. "Then perhaps you are an Icelander?" she said."Yes, I'm an Icelander," he answered."What is your name?"Another wild impulse to reveal himself immediately to his mother, nearly swept down his fears, for he was choking with a sense of duplicity and his conscience was fighting in contrary ways, but after a moment his prudence conquered, and with a gulp in his throat he said:"They call me Christian Christiansson.""Well, it's lucky you found us up, sir. We were on the point of going to bed.""I suppose the other members of your family are gone already?""There's only one besides what you've seen--my granddaughter--and she had just gone off as you came in, sir."He looked at her as she was crossing in front of him, and saw that she was wearing the brooch which he had given her when he came back from Oxford. That sent all the blood to his head again, and he was saying, before he was aware of it--"Do you know, landlady, I've slept in this house before?""It must have been a long time ago then--I don't remember you.""It was a long time ago. That," pointing to the portrait of Anna on the wall, "that is a portrait of yourself, isn't it?""It used to be, but I was younger when it was like me, sir."A sudden softening came into his voice as he replied, "It was exactly like you when I saw you last, landlady.""Then you've not been here for ten years at least, sir.""Quite ten years," he answered. "And that," pointing to the portrait of the Governor, "is a portrait of your husband.""It must be more than ten years since you were here, sir, for my husband is more than twelve years in his grave.""It is more than ten years. In fact it is sixteen years--nearly sixteen."She looked fixedly at him for a moment and something in her memory seemed to stir, for her bosom heaved perceptibly, but she only said, with a deep sigh, "We've seen trouble since you traveled in these parts before, sir.""Ah, yes, I've heard of it--I heard of it in Reykjavik. You had a son----""That was my son who opened the door to you.""But you had another son--a younger son.""Yes, but--we never talk of him now, sir.""Who's portrait is that in your brooch, landlady?""It's his--he is dead.""Died in disgrace, didn't he?""Who knows that, sir? Man sees the deed, they say, but God the circumstance.""They think hard things of him in Reykjavik, though. They say he robbed his father of every penny when he went away, and never sent anything home toward the maintenance of his child.""It needs no skill to wound the defenceless," said Anna, bridling up. "The father robbed himself to save his son, if you want to know the truth, and as for never sending anything home for the child the poor boy had nothing to send, for he was poor himself, sir.""So you found that out, did you?""After he was dead we did--one of his father's English friends wrote to tell us so. And all the time he had been writing letters to me to say how busy he was and how well he was succeeding--just to keep up my heart and save me from fretting."The mother's lingering fondness for her prodigal was rising in her eyes and breaking in her voice and she was trying to turn away, but he could not let her go."What a pity his father didn't live long enough to hear that! It would have softened his heart toward him, perhaps.""It didn't need softening, sir--not at the end at all events.""His father forgave him, did he?""He died thinking his son had become a great man and had justified all his hopes and atoned for everything. It was only a delusion, sir, but it made him very happy.""Your son was a musician, wasn't he?""Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were.""And where were they?""In his poor father's hands."Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said:"The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel--a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him.""He was nothing of the kind, sir," said Anna. "He may have done wrong--I'm not defending him--but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me----"Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna's faltering words. "God bless her!" he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, "I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I've heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland.""I hadn't meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near--Hush! He is coming back."But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said:"Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child.""I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma."Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss--for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night."This is my granddaughter, sir," said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her--a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had traveled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.II"Well, now that you are here, you had better lay the table," said Anna."Yes, grandma," said the girl."Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee.""Yes, grandma.""Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson--my granddaughter will wait on you.""I will," he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from self-consciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some song-bird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, "My child! My child! Doesn't something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!" But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say:"Your name is Elin, isn't it?""Yes, sir," said the girl."What a beautiful name it is, too--Eleen! Your father chose it, didn't he?""I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?""Grandmother and I," he stammered, "have been talking of your father. You don't remember him?""Oh no, sir--he died when I was quite little.""What a loss that must have been to you, my child!""I can't say that, sir," said the girl, "because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference.""What a loss to your father himself then! How happy you would have made him, and how proud he would have been of you!""I can't say that either," said the girl again, "because he lived five years after I was born, and it seems he never took any notice of me.""Did grandmother tell you so?""Oh no, sir. Indeed no! Nor Uncle Magnus neither. But everybody know all about my father, and even the girls at school knew that."A feeling of mortal shame came over him, and the warm pulsing place in his breast grew still and cold."So you are not sorry your father is dead, Elin?""It wouldn't be right to say that, sir.""At all events you feel no love for him?""I never knew him--you can't love somebody you never knew, can you? Perhaps if he had lived longer and returned home I might have come to love him. But I don't see how I could if what people say about him is true.""What do they say, my child?""They say he was unkind to my mother, and that that was one of the reasons why she died so early.""Then you never wish you could have seen and known your father?""How can I? If he wasn't good to my poor mother, why should I think he would have been good to me? But see, your supper is ready. Grandma will bring the coffee presently; won't you begin with the meat, sir?"He sat down to the table but his hunger was gone. For a moment he almost wished himself back in the black night from which he had come. The girl's simple words had been ringing the death-knell of his expectations. He had left her all these years to the keeping and care of others--could he expect to come back now and find the affection he had forfeited? Ah no! He had come too late--too late! But just as one part of the plan he had formed for himself was becoming vague and shadowy a gleam of new light was shot into his brain, and his heart rose with a bound."Didn't grandma call you Christian Christiansson?" asked the girl."Yes," he answered. "Ever hear that name before, my child?"The girl turned to him with a face glowing with excitement and said, "Everybody in Iceland has heard it, sir. It is the same as the name of the great composer who lives in England."A deafening tumult of joy was rising within him, and he said, "So you--you have heard of him, have you?""I sing his songs, sir. They are beautiful! I think they are the most beautiful songs in the world. Would you like me to sing one of them while you eat your supper?""Will you?""I should like to," she said, and before he could catch the breath which had been suspended she had slipped off like a shaft of moonlight and was back like a ray of the sun, bringing a guitar in her hands."This was my mother's guitar, and now it's mine, and it's such a good one," she said, and with the utter freedom from self-consciousness which is the charm of children she sat and began to play. After a moment she stopped, with her head aside, and said:"Which should it be, I wonder? But perhaps you know them all and would like me to sing something in particular?"His face was down, the waves of emotion were surging through and through him. "Sing--sing anything you like, my darling," he replied.The fluttered earnestness of his words startled her for a moment, but she only smiled with a new sweetness and began to sing, first in low, clear half-tones, and then in a high, tremulous treble that was like the peal of a lark at the gate of heaven.Christian Christiansson could not eat; he could only rest his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hand. His own child was singing his own song to him in a voice that was like her mother's voice and like his own voice too!When the song was done she turned to him again with eyes shining with unshed tears and said, "Isn't that beautiful?""It was beautifully sung, my child, beautifully!" he said. And then, after a moment, "Elin, would you like to hear something of the man who wrote that song and how he came to write it?"Elin's eagerness was heart-breaking. "Indeed, indeed I should," she said. "Do you know your namesake then?""I have known him all his life, my child.""Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble.""He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn't know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much--oh so much--to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth."As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again."How beautiful!" she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labor he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass--her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephenson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice:"Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it."And then, having both in the room at one moment--his mother and his daughter--his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, "Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!"Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, "The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I've rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed.""Let us have a bottle of brandy first," said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus's bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.
X
Magnus Stephenson had indeed lost his religion. For fifteen years he had believed with all the strength of his soul that everybody in this life was treated according to his deserts; that if you did right you were rewarded sooner or later, and if you did wrong you were punished. But experience of the world had little by little, and year by year, inflicted upon his profound faith in the rule of conscience the most inexplicable contradictions. The man who lived a good life was not being rewarded, and the man who lived an evil one was not being punished. What, then, was there left to believe? That there was no God in the universe at all, or that if there were a God He did nothing!
Magnus Stephenson had tried to do what was right. He had taken up the burdens which others laid down and he had struggled on with a strong heart. For fifteen years he had labored like a slave, and though his arrears of debt constantly accumulated, he had never allowed himself to believe that the end was coming on. The mortgage was monstrous, the interest was exorbitant, and the Bank would come to see that more than he got out of the land and stock it was impossible for man to make!
But the deed of execution had been served on him at length, the advertisements of the sale had been published, and the two preliminary auctions had been held. Then, as if in a moment, the man's religion had disappeared and his soul had sent up that sublime if blasphemous cry, which since the beginning of the world has borne to heaven the lamentation and protest of humanity against the misery of man: "I have obeyed Your laws; I have lived a good life; I have assisted the poor and helped the oppressed; I have shared my bread with the orphan and protected the widow--what have You done for me?"
In the grim silence which follows that ghastly question, it is more than a man's religion that disappears, and Magnus Stephenson's belief in right and wrong, his faith in justice, in conscience, and in virtue had gone down together, leaving nothing but the fierce convulsions of his animal nature.
From the moment the Sheriff arrived to make the inventory he had done little but sit in the hall and drink. He sat there all day long, with his coarse snow-stockings over his boots, his sullen face to the stove, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, his broad forehead heavily wrinkled under the rough stubble of his iron-grey hair, his massive jaw resting on his breast, and his mighty loins making the chair creak as he moved and turned.
At intervals during the day his mother tried to comfort him.
"Don't be too downhearted, Magnus," said Anna. "The stars shine when it is dark, you know."
"Isn't it dark enough yet?" said Magnus, and he laughed bitterly and drank again.
At intervals Elin came to him also. She was a tall girl now, nearly sixteen years of age, with a whisper of womanhood in her face and form, but coming in her short blue skirt and buckled shoes she would slide into a seat on Magnus's knee and, slipping one arm about his neck, put the other hand on his hot forehead, and try to soothe him in her motherly little way.
But "There, there! That will do. Go to your grandmother. I'm tired," he would say.
Early in the day he had been tormented by thoughts of the travelers who might come from a distance to stay over-night in order to be present at the auction, and in his mind's eye he saw the Inn-farm full of them, with their indifferent talk and heartless laughter, and himself in his impotent rage itching with a desire to fling them into the road. But when the storm broke his fears on that head were appeased, and while the wind and snow wailed and wept about the house he sat for hours alone in a gloomy and tragic pence.
Besides the Sheriff, the only person who visited the house that day was the Pastor, and he came as late as ten at night to take the Sheriff back to lodge with him. By that time all that was left of the broken household had gathered in the hall, where Magnus still sat before the stove, while the Sheriff, with Anna and Elin, stood by the dresser making an end of the inventory.
"Ugh! What a night!" said the Pastor, stamping the snow off his stockings. "You're not likely to be brought out of bed by travelers on a night like this--that's some consolation, isn't it?"
He was a garrulous old man, with a shallow heart and a shallow head, who chewed the cud of his humdrum livelihood with content on his stipend of fifty pounds a year.
"So this is to be your last night in the old home, Anna! What a pity! Well," tapping his snuff-box, "naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither! Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
Magnus moved his chair impatiently and made contemptuous noises in his throat.
"I've known the old house through all its days of joy and sorrow for forty-five years, Anna. Ever since your poor father that's dead--I buried him myself, God rest his soul!----"
"God rest his soul," said Anna.
"Ever since the day he gave you away as a bride. And a nervous, blushing, tender-hearted little bride you were, too!"
Again Magnus shuffled in his chair and made noises in his throat.
"I remember it so well because it was the same year that your father's big barn was burnt down, and his cousin Jorgen was found dead in the Chasm. What a sensation that made! What inquiries! What examining witnesses! Your predecessor had something on his hands in those days, Sheriff."
The Sheriff muttered some commonplace and Magnus kicked at the smouldering wood in the stove.
"Suspicion actually fell upon your father, you remember, and because he had been drinking and was such an ungovernable man when he was drunk----"
"Oh, for the Lord's sake let's have done with this," cried Magnus.
"Magnus Stephenson," protested the Pastor, "if we are in trouble let us behave like God's rational creatures----"
"Rational hell!" growled Magnus, whereupon the Sheriff, to avoid further friction, closed his book with a bang, saying he had finished and was ready to go.
Magnus sat quiet while the Sheriff--a sharp-featured man with the eyes of a ferret--put on his snow-shoes and cloak, and then with a tremor in his voice and a somber fire in his eyes he turned and said:
"Is it all over, sir?"
"Yes; it was a long job, but it's over at last," said the Sheriff.
"I mean," said Magnus, "is it certain that the auction must take place?"
"Quite certain. There has never been any doubt of it that I know of."
"Look here, sir," said Magnus, heaving up to his feet. "A Sheriff can do a good deal if he cares to use his influence. Give me another chance, and you shall have everything I owe. I've had five bad years in succession--no wonder I fell into arrears. Last spring I lost forty lambs in a single night, and next morning two heifers and a calf. The floods came in the autumn, too. And half my hay was swept into the lake. But weather like that can't last forever. We are sure to have a run of good years next. Give me four years more, sir--and you shall see what I can do."
"The thing is past praying for," said the Sheriff.
"Don't say that, sir. Listen! My people have farmed this place for a hundred and fifty years, and a man doesn't like to be the one to lose it. My own flesh and blood are in the land too--the strength of my muscles and the sweat of my brow. Give me three years more, sir--just three."
"Impossible!" said the Sheriff.
"Sheriff, come this way," said Magnus, drawing the man aside by the arm and speaking in a low voice, so that the women might not hear. "I don't care a straw about myself I'll get along somehow, and if I don't it doesn't matter--but there's the child. She ought to inherit the farm, and she's an orphan, but she'll get nothing. Give me a chance for the child's sake, Sheriff. Don't be hard on me. Sell up half my stock to pay part of the interest and let me have two years more--only two."
"You know quite well that the mortgage is on the loose property as well as the land," said the Sheriff. "How can I sap away the security? As for the girl, she's young and strong; let her go into service."
Magnus bit his lip in an effort to control himself, and then he said, "You are quite right, sir; the girl and I can take care of ourselves, but there's the old mother. She was born in this house and she expected to die here. I shouldn't so much mind if she were gone, and to tell you the truth she's not well now, sir. Give me one more year, Sheriff--one single year."
"It's no use wasting words," said the Sheriff. "Matters have gone too far. The only thing I can do now is----"
"What, sir?"
"If you can pay me the whole of the interest before nine o'clock to-morrow morning I can stop the sale on my own responsibility."
"Eight thousand crowns!" said Magnus, raising his voice to a cry of derision; "you ask me to find you eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning? You might as well ask me to find you the moon!"
"Then let us say no more on the subject. The Bank has been very patient, very indulgent----"
"The Bank!" cried Magnus, in the wild defiance of his despair. "Has the Bank got a mother? Has the Bank got a child? No! The Bank is a great, grinding monster without bowels of compassion for anybody. God damn the Bank and all its fools and flunkeys!"
"Magnus Stephenson," said the Pastor, raising his little fat hand, "I will ask you to remember that a clergyman is in your company, and if you take God's name in vain----"
"Take God's name in vain! You do that often enough--you do it every Sunday."
"I'll not pretend to misunderstand you, Magnus Stephenson, for I know you are deeply tainted with skepticism, and since you ceased to come to church----"
"Church! You pray to God in your churches, and what does He do for you? What does He do for any one? What has He done for me?"
"If your life had been straight and pure God would have watched over you."
"And hasn't it? Haven't I tried to do what was right? And yet God is seeing me sold up and turned out, and my dear ones left to die in a ditch."
"God chastises His own, and if we only have faith in Him----"
"Faith in Him? Where is He? Is He in the Northlands? I have never heard of it. Is He in the Southlands? I've never seen Him here, though I've seen the devil often enough. He's in the clouds if He's anywhere, and that's no use to me."
"Magnus Stephenson----"
"If God is on the earth let Him do something. Here's His chance. You call the poor His people, don't you? Well, I've fed and sheltered His people for fifteen years, and now I want feeding and sheltering myself. I want eight thousand crowns before nine o'clock to-morrow morning, and if God can do anything in the world let him find me the money and save my mother and my child from starvation. But He can't do it! He can do nothing!"
"Magnus Stephenson," said the little clergyman, raising his little fat hand again, "when you come to stand before the great white throne God will have something to forgive you."
"Pastor Peter, when I come to stand before the great white throne I shall have something to forgive God, it seems to me."
"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" cried the Pastor, and as he followed the Sheriff out of the house Magnus sent a ringing laugh of contempt after him into the darkness of the night. At the same moment two sheep-dogs that had been lying at the door with their snouts on their paws, as if anxious to join the uproar, began to growl and bark, whereupon Magnus (who had always been a lover of animals) kicked them savagely and then reeled back to his seat by the stove.
The strangers being gone and the little family alone, Elin, who had been standing by the dresser, went over to Magnus and slid into her seat on his knee and said:
"You must not think about me, Uncle Magnus. Wherever you have to go I will go too, and what is good enough for you is good enough for Elin. And then, who knows what may happen before the Sheriff comes back in the morning? This is New Year's Eve, you know. All good things come at New Year--miracles come at New Year, Uncle."
But the sweet buoyancy of her girlish spirits, which had been the sunshine of his life for so many years, was failing him at last, and putting her aside with petulant expressions he got up and went out to the back.
Then Anna, who had been sitting in silence by the table, took the Bible and four hymn-books from the corner cupboard and rang the bell for prayers.
"I wonder why I did that?" she said. "I forgot that Eric was gone. I hope he found shelter somewhere, poor boy--I should pity a dog that had to be out of doors on a night like this."
And then Elin, in default of Magnus, read the lesson which Anna had marked for her. It was the psalm beginning, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." And when the short chapter was finished the two women stood up and sang a hymn--Elin in the silvery treble of youth and Anna in the husky tones of age, they two only in the lonely house among the solitary hills, with nothing about them but the darkness and the snow--nothing but that and the immeasurable wings of God.
"Happy the man whose tender careRelieves the poor distressed;When he by trouble's compassed roundThe Lord will give him rest."
"Happy the man whose tender careRelieves the poor distressed;When he by trouble's compassed roundThe Lord will give him rest."
"Happy the man whose tender care
Relieves the poor distressed;
When he by trouble's compassed round
The Lord will give him rest."
Anna sat down when the hymn was ended, but Elin continued to stand by the table, and closing her eyes with her innocent face uplifted, she said a little prayer for herself.
"O Father," she said, "bless Uncle Magnus, so that he may fear no evil. Show me how to help him, so that I may not be a burden and a care. Dear Jesus, send the miracle that will save Uncle Magnus and grandma and me. It will be such a little thing to you, but such a great, great thing to us, and we shall all be so happy and dwell in the house of the Lord forever. For Christ's sake. Amen."
Then she opened her trustful eyes and said, "I'm sure He will, grandma," and kissing Anna she said "Good night" in a cheery voice and went off to bed.
Prayers being over, Magnus returned to the hall and began to rake out the stove for the night. The clouds hung heavier on him than ever, and thinking to banish them Anna talked of Elin.
"She grows more and more like her mother, and sometimes I think it can only be a dream that our dear Thora is dead. If you had heard her praying for the miracle it would have filled your heart brimful. She has gone to bed quite certain that the miracle will come before morning."
"It wouldhaveto be a miracle to help us now, mother," said Magnus. "And miracles don't happen--except such of them as we make for ourselves."
"What do you mean by that, Magnus?" said Anna, lighting the candles.
"I mean--if I had to live my life over again, I shouldn't try to do what is right, mother."
"You wouldn't do what is wrong, would you?"
"There is no wrong and no right, mother; there is only what is best, and if I had to begin over again, I should do what was best--best for myself and for the people about me."
"You don't know what you are saying, Magnus. There are moments when it mightseemto be best to rob, even to kill----"
"And why not?" said Magnus--he was bolting the door. "If a man came to this house to-night with eight thousand crowns in his pocket, do you think I should hesitate to take them?"
"My son, you don't mean it."
"I do!"
"You are driven to despair, Magnus, and a despairing man's words belong to the wind. If I thought you meant it I should die--I should die this very minute."
She was crying and there was silence for a moment, and then Magnus said:
"Never mind, mother. It doesn't matter whether I meant it or not, the temptation isn't likely to come to me. Give me the candle and let us go to bed."
"You have borne a terrible burden, Magnus, and if I could only have helped you to bear it----"
"You have, mother. If it had not been for you and Elin I should have gone under ten years ago."
"Your father knew he had robbed you of your inheritance, and perhaps that helped to kill him in the end."
"It wasn't father's fault altogether.Hetried to do what was right, too. But the poor wretch who comes after the prodigal gleans in a barren field, you know."
With their candles in hand they were turning to go--Anna to the badstofa above, and Magnus to the guest-room off the hall--when the dogs, who had risen again, and were snuffling at the bottom of the door, began to growl and bark.
"There's somebody coming," said Magnus.
A moment later there was a sharp knock at the window, as with a metal end of a riding-whip, and a tremulous, high-pitched voice outside, making the customary Icelandic salutation, "God be with you!"
They looked at each other in blank surprise, while backward thoughts galloped through their minds, and then Magnus, forgetting to give the customary reply, walked back to the door, and threw it open.
There was a dull thud of heavy feet on the outside steps, and at the next moment a man stood on the threshold. He seemed to be an old man, for his eyebrows, beard, and mustache, and as much as could be seen of his hair under the peaked hood of his ulster, were white with snow. One moment he stood there as if breathless after his journey, looking from Magnus to the mother, and from the mother to Magnus. Then he said, in the same tremulous voice as before:
"Can I have a bed here to-night, and shelter for my horse?"
It seemed to Anna that he spoke to her, but instead of answering immediately, she looked across at Magnus with helpless eyes that were full of inexpressible fears. Magnus looked back at his mother and hesitated for an instant, while he held the door open with his hand. Then:
"Come in, sir," he said, and the stranger stepped into the house.
PART VII
"The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,But right or left, as strikes the player goes;And He who tossed you down into the field,He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows."
"The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,But right or left, as strikes the player goes;And He who tossed you down into the field,He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows."
"The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,
But right or left, as strikes the player goes;
And He who tossed you down into the field,
He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows."
I
"The little mare is hot--she'll want a rub down and a rest before you give her a feed."
"I'll see to that, sir," said Magnus, and he went out and pulled the door after him.
Christian Christiansson had taken two paces into the hall, and was standing there like a man who is dazed. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and his pulse was beating violently, and he felt that he would fall if he took another step forward. So often had he pictured himself in that place that he could not at first believe in the reality. Coming out of the darkness, the light of the candles dazzled him, but he looked round the room, trying to remember. At one glance he took in everything--the old portraits on the wall, the old Bornholme clock in the corner, the stove and the armchair in front of it--and, fresh from the warm comfort of Government House, the Inn-farm seemed bare and bleak. This sent a chill pang of remorse to his mind, and the pain of conscience increased when he looked at his mother.
Her hair was white that had once been dark, and her face, which had been full of the loveliness of love and the beauty of happiness, was scored deep with lines of suffering. His heart yearned over her, and notwithstanding his determination not to reveal his identity until morning, it was as much as he could do to restrain himself from saying as well as he could for the emotion that was mastering him, "Mother, don't you know me? I am Oscar," and then throwing his arms about her dear neck as he had always meant to do.
Meantime Anna, who had recovered her self-control and was lighting the lamp that swung from the ceiling, glanced across at the new-comer and thought, "He's nearly frozen stiff, and no wonder." With that thought she bustled about to rekindle the stove, and called on him to remove his snow-covered clothing.
"Won't you take off your cloak and boots, sir?" she said, and though the question was so commonplace he could not answer immediately, for his voice would not come.
"Your cloak and boots, sir, and I'll put them to dry by the stove."
"Ah yes, of course, certainly."
She stood by him while he threw off his ulster and shook the snow from his hair and beard, emerging a younger and stronger man, but she only thought, "A stranger, I suppose. Why does he travel in this weather?"
When he had pulled off his riding-boots, she brought him a pair of Magnus's slippers and said:
"You must have had a terrible ride, sir."
"It was pretty bad certainly," he said, and after that he got on better.
"A gentleman must have been anxious to get on with his journey to travel on a day like this."
"I was--I had something to do at the end of it."
"Have you come far, sir?"
"Altogether? Yes, very far."
"From Reykjavik perhaps?"
"Farther than that--from England."
"From England!"
"From London."
As he stooped to put on the slippers he thought his mother was looking at him, and he trembled between fear and hope of being recognized.
"I suppose," he said--his head was down--"I suppose you've never been as far as that, landlady?"
"No, sir."
"Nor any of your family?"
He could not resist the temptation to say this, but his mother did not seem to hear him--she was on her knees, breaking sticks into the stove.
"Sit up and warm yourself, sir. My son raked out the fire, but these sticks will burn presently. You are here on business, I suppose?"
"Yes, I'm here on business."
Anna thought of the auction and waited for the stranger to speak of it. When he did not do so she said, "Travelers come from England to buy sheep and ponies, but they don't often come in the winter, sir."
Still he did not speak (he was thinking of Elin and looking round for any trace of her), and rising from the stove Anna said:
"But you'll be hungry after your long ride--what can I give you to eat?"
"Anything at all--anything you have ready."
"I'm afraid I have nothing ready--that is to say, nothing that is good enough for the like of you, sir."
As soon as he could find his voice after that he said, "Don't you always keep smoked mutton in an Iceland house?"
"Well, yes, if that will do, sir."
"I should like it above all things."
There was a moment's silence, and he thought his mother was looking at him again. "Then perhaps you are an Icelander?" she said.
"Yes, I'm an Icelander," he answered.
"What is your name?"
Another wild impulse to reveal himself immediately to his mother, nearly swept down his fears, for he was choking with a sense of duplicity and his conscience was fighting in contrary ways, but after a moment his prudence conquered, and with a gulp in his throat he said:
"They call me Christian Christiansson."
"Well, it's lucky you found us up, sir. We were on the point of going to bed."
"I suppose the other members of your family are gone already?"
"There's only one besides what you've seen--my granddaughter--and she had just gone off as you came in, sir."
He looked at her as she was crossing in front of him, and saw that she was wearing the brooch which he had given her when he came back from Oxford. That sent all the blood to his head again, and he was saying, before he was aware of it--
"Do you know, landlady, I've slept in this house before?"
"It must have been a long time ago then--I don't remember you."
"It was a long time ago. That," pointing to the portrait of Anna on the wall, "that is a portrait of yourself, isn't it?"
"It used to be, but I was younger when it was like me, sir."
A sudden softening came into his voice as he replied, "It was exactly like you when I saw you last, landlady."
"Then you've not been here for ten years at least, sir."
"Quite ten years," he answered. "And that," pointing to the portrait of the Governor, "is a portrait of your husband."
"It must be more than ten years since you were here, sir, for my husband is more than twelve years in his grave."
"It is more than ten years. In fact it is sixteen years--nearly sixteen."
She looked fixedly at him for a moment and something in her memory seemed to stir, for her bosom heaved perceptibly, but she only said, with a deep sigh, "We've seen trouble since you traveled in these parts before, sir."
"Ah, yes, I've heard of it--I heard of it in Reykjavik. You had a son----"
"That was my son who opened the door to you."
"But you had another son--a younger son."
"Yes, but--we never talk of him now, sir."
"Who's portrait is that in your brooch, landlady?"
"It's his--he is dead."
"Died in disgrace, didn't he?"
"Who knows that, sir? Man sees the deed, they say, but God the circumstance."
"They think hard things of him in Reykjavik, though. They say he robbed his father of every penny when he went away, and never sent anything home toward the maintenance of his child."
"It needs no skill to wound the defenceless," said Anna, bridling up. "The father robbed himself to save his son, if you want to know the truth, and as for never sending anything home for the child the poor boy had nothing to send, for he was poor himself, sir."
"So you found that out, did you?"
"After he was dead we did--one of his father's English friends wrote to tell us so. And all the time he had been writing letters to me to say how busy he was and how well he was succeeding--just to keep up my heart and save me from fretting."
The mother's lingering fondness for her prodigal was rising in her eyes and breaking in her voice and she was trying to turn away, but he could not let her go.
"What a pity his father didn't live long enough to hear that! It would have softened his heart toward him, perhaps."
"It didn't need softening, sir--not at the end at all events."
"His father forgave him, did he?"
"He died thinking his son had become a great man and had justified all his hopes and atoned for everything. It was only a delusion, sir, but it made him very happy."
"Your son was a musician, wasn't he?"
"Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were."
"And where were they?"
"In his poor father's hands."
Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said:
"The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel--a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him."
"He was nothing of the kind, sir," said Anna. "He may have done wrong--I'm not defending him--but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me----"
Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna's faltering words. "God bless her!" he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, "I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I've heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland."
"I hadn't meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near--Hush! He is coming back."
But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said:
"Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child."
"I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma."
Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss--for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night.
"This is my granddaughter, sir," said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her--a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.
It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had traveled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.
II
"Well, now that you are here, you had better lay the table," said Anna.
"Yes, grandma," said the girl.
"Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee."
"Yes, grandma."
"Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson--my granddaughter will wait on you."
"I will," he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.
Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from self-consciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some song-bird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, "My child! My child! Doesn't something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!" But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say:
"Your name is Elin, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," said the girl.
"What a beautiful name it is, too--Eleen! Your father chose it, didn't he?"
"I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?"
"Grandmother and I," he stammered, "have been talking of your father. You don't remember him?"
"Oh no, sir--he died when I was quite little."
"What a loss that must have been to you, my child!"
"I can't say that, sir," said the girl, "because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference."
"What a loss to your father himself then! How happy you would have made him, and how proud he would have been of you!"
"I can't say that either," said the girl again, "because he lived five years after I was born, and it seems he never took any notice of me."
"Did grandmother tell you so?"
"Oh no, sir. Indeed no! Nor Uncle Magnus neither. But everybody know all about my father, and even the girls at school knew that."
A feeling of mortal shame came over him, and the warm pulsing place in his breast grew still and cold.
"So you are not sorry your father is dead, Elin?"
"It wouldn't be right to say that, sir."
"At all events you feel no love for him?"
"I never knew him--you can't love somebody you never knew, can you? Perhaps if he had lived longer and returned home I might have come to love him. But I don't see how I could if what people say about him is true."
"What do they say, my child?"
"They say he was unkind to my mother, and that that was one of the reasons why she died so early."
"Then you never wish you could have seen and known your father?"
"How can I? If he wasn't good to my poor mother, why should I think he would have been good to me? But see, your supper is ready. Grandma will bring the coffee presently; won't you begin with the meat, sir?"
He sat down to the table but his hunger was gone. For a moment he almost wished himself back in the black night from which he had come. The girl's simple words had been ringing the death-knell of his expectations. He had left her all these years to the keeping and care of others--could he expect to come back now and find the affection he had forfeited? Ah no! He had come too late--too late! But just as one part of the plan he had formed for himself was becoming vague and shadowy a gleam of new light was shot into his brain, and his heart rose with a bound.
"Didn't grandma call you Christian Christiansson?" asked the girl.
"Yes," he answered. "Ever hear that name before, my child?"
The girl turned to him with a face glowing with excitement and said, "Everybody in Iceland has heard it, sir. It is the same as the name of the great composer who lives in England."
A deafening tumult of joy was rising within him, and he said, "So you--you have heard of him, have you?"
"I sing his songs, sir. They are beautiful! I think they are the most beautiful songs in the world. Would you like me to sing one of them while you eat your supper?"
"Will you?"
"I should like to," she said, and before he could catch the breath which had been suspended she had slipped off like a shaft of moonlight and was back like a ray of the sun, bringing a guitar in her hands.
"This was my mother's guitar, and now it's mine, and it's such a good one," she said, and with the utter freedom from self-consciousness which is the charm of children she sat and began to play. After a moment she stopped, with her head aside, and said:
"Which should it be, I wonder? But perhaps you know them all and would like me to sing something in particular?"
His face was down, the waves of emotion were surging through and through him. "Sing--sing anything you like, my darling," he replied.
The fluttered earnestness of his words startled her for a moment, but she only smiled with a new sweetness and began to sing, first in low, clear half-tones, and then in a high, tremulous treble that was like the peal of a lark at the gate of heaven.
Christian Christiansson could not eat; he could only rest his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hand. His own child was singing his own song to him in a voice that was like her mother's voice and like his own voice too!
When the song was done she turned to him again with eyes shining with unshed tears and said, "Isn't that beautiful?"
"It was beautifully sung, my child, beautifully!" he said. And then, after a moment, "Elin, would you like to hear something of the man who wrote that song and how he came to write it?"
Elin's eagerness was heart-breaking. "Indeed, indeed I should," she said. "Do you know your namesake then?"
"I have known him all his life, my child."
"Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble."
"He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn't know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much--oh so much--to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth."
As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again.
"How beautiful!" she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.
There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labor he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass--her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephenson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?
In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice:
"Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it."
And then, having both in the room at one moment--his mother and his daughter--his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, "Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!"
Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, "The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I've rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed."
"Let us have a bottle of brandy first," said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus's bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.