* * * * *Christian Christiansson was alone. He felt that he had come to the lees of his life and saw nothing but a blank where he might crawl to die. Could he go back to Reykjavik? That was impossible, for the Minister and his people would be preparing their banquet in honor of his visit, and to go through such rejoicing would be a scorching martyrdom at which the devil himself would laugh. Could he return to England and resume his old life as the unknown composer? That was impossible also, for he could never write as he had written before, because the old impulse was gone, the fire was burnt out, the life that had inspired him was dead, and because the foundations of his fame were broken up by the new consciousness that he had no right to it, by the sense that his career and all that had come of it had been built on the desecration of his wife's grave, and by the certainty that his success had been paid for as by the sweat of his very soul.What then was before him? Old age? What was old age without friends, without children, without love, without respect and with memory--that last joy of a man's declining days--like a poisoned river running through a wasted land?Was there nothing before him then? Yes, there was one thing--one only--and as he lay in that room alone with his head over his hands on the table, he had the trembling, thrilling, palpitating sense of supernatural wings hovering above him, and of an awful voice that seemed to say, "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!"At that moment he became aware of other voices--more human and homely voices--murmuring about him, and one of them said, "He has fallen asleep, poor gentleman," and another, "He has drunk too much, perhaps." Then a hand touched him on the shoulder and somebody cried in his ear:"Hadn't you better go to bed, sir?"It was his mother, with Magnus behind her, and looking at both he could see that they supposed he was intoxicated. In the wild laboring of heart and brain, it suited him that they should continue to think so, and indeed the strain of nerve had been so hard that when he rose to his feet he staggered like a drunken man."Heigho! What's this?" he laughed. "Your brennie-vin must be pretty heady, landlady. But no matter! It will be a good nightcap and make me sleep the sounder. I'm tired, very tired, but I'm going to have a long sleep at last--a long, long sleep at last.""But to-morrow will be New Year's Day," said Anna. "The bells ring at daybreak, and the Sheriff will be here soon after, so you'll have to be stirring early if you want to be ready for the auction.""Why, so I shall--I had forgotten all about it--and since we can not agree about the girl I must buy the farm whatever happens. I told you I wanted it for a particular purpose, but I didn't say what it was. It's my secret, landlady, but I don't mind telling you. I want it for my mother.""Your mother?""That's so! She was born in these parts, and the poor old thing would like to end her days here.""So she tells you to buy up my farmstead?""Not she! She doesn't know anything about it. That's to be my surprise. I've not been a good son, but when I go away never to come back again I want to feel that the dear old soul is happy and comfortable and has a roof to cover her."He laughed, with the same sense as before of an hysterical oppression of the heart, and then turned to Magnus and said:"Sorry to buy your house over your head, but business is business, you know, and anybody is at liberty to bid who has money to pay."Magnus moved aside with a contemptuous expression."Don't look so glum, my man. You think you've been badly treated and perhaps you have, but you're the luckiest man in Iceland if you ask me. You think because you've done well you ought to be rewarded, but what right have poor wretches like us to expect reward in this world? You think because a man is rich he is to be envied, but what's the use of having your pocket full if your heart is empty? And you think because Death kills the innocent and the happy it is a cruel monster, but there are worse things than Death, and Life is one of them when you've nobody to care whether you live or die. Then cheer up, old fellow! You've got your health and your good name, and your mother and that sweet girl to love and to love you, so what the devil have you got to complain of? Nothing at all!"Saying this with a mixture of real emotion and its mocking make-believe, a touch of the boy came back to him for a moment and he put his arm across his brother's shoulder as he used to do in the old days, but Magnus shuddered and shrank away."Your candle is burning in the bedroom, sir," said Anna coldly.And then he saw that his mother also looked black at him, as one who had come to turn them out of house and home, and as one who had tried to tempt the girl away from them, and as one who could laugh at their condition and have no thought except for himself. And thinking that this was the last he would see of her; that it was so different from the parting he had expected; that all hope of pardon and reconciliation was lost; that his mother would never hear that her lingering faith in her prodigal had been justified and never know that he had been and gone, he had as much as he could do not to break down and betray himself even at the end.But gathering up his clothes which had been drying by the stove, he turned toward the bedroom, saying with another laugh--a laugh that went to Anna's heart like a sword:"Don't look so downhearted, landlady. When things are at their worst they can't move without they mend. You've had your troubles, but you shall drink my health under my mother's roof-tree to-morrow morning. Good night!"And then he reeled into the guest-room.VIThe stranger being gone, mother and son looked into each other's faces. Then they spoken in whispers."Did you hear him?" said Anna."About his mother's roof-tree?" asked Magnus."About the auction--about everything. The man can have no feeling--no pity.""None.""'Business is business,' he said, when he talked of buying the place over our heads. And when he spoke of his mother ending her days here he never once thought of me.""He never thought of Elin either. He would have taken the girl away from us without a moment's hesitation.""He would," said Anna. "'There's enough in this purse,' he said, 'to pay your interest twenty times over.'""Did he say that?""He did. He took his pocket-book out of his breast-pocket and----""His breast-pocket, you say?""Yes, 'and I'llgivethe money to your son,' he said, 'if he'll give me the girl instead.'"Anna talked on in an innocent, helpless way without knowing what bad work she was doing, but suddenly, mysteriously, at the mention of the purse a change passed over Magnus's face and it grew ugly with evil passions."He must be rich," said Anna."Richer than anybody has a right to be," said Magnus."Surely God can not mean that anybody should be as rich as that while other people are so poor.""God!" said Magnus, and his distorted face quivered."If he would only lend us enough to satisfy the Sheriff in the morning!" said Anna."What's the good of expecting a man to help us to keep the farm when he has come to buy it for himself?""It's hard, though, cruelly hard, to be turned out of house and home by the first person who comes along with more money.""That's what I was thinking," said Magnus.Down to this moment Anna had only been trying to sympathize with Magnus's mood, but now something in his tone made her suspect that she had awakened a devil, and she looked at him in terror.He took up the bottle and drank; he drank out of the neck; and there was a new devil in every drop. His eyes began to gleam with a feverish luster, and Anna trembled. She remembered that Magnus had not taken any strong drink until to-day since the day of Thora's funeral, and then she thought of her father, and a sensation of extreme cold crept over her."Let us not talk of it any more," she said, as she tried to put the bottle away, but Magnus held on to it.Mother and son looked at each other again, and then Anna went over to the stranger's door and listened."Has he locked it?" asked Magnus."No, I'm afraid-- No, no, he has not.""What is he doing?""The candle is out--he must be in bed already.""Then," said Magnus, "he has thrown himself down without undressing and the pocket-book is on him still.""Magnus, what are you thinking of?" said Anna--her teeth were chattering."Would it be so very wicked?""What?""To take as much as would satisfy the Sheriff in the morning?""Magnus! I didn't mean that.""He would never miss it--never know it was gone--and it would enable us to keep the farm and so save us from starvation.""Oh, dear! What have I done?""He's a prodigal himself, it seems. Very well, let prodigal pay for prodigal."She could not breathe freely--she could only look at Magnus in speechless surprise. He took up the bottle again and gulped clown the last of the liquor."He has drunk a good deal--he will sleep heavily--and he won't awake until the auction is over.""Let us go to bed," said Anna."Go yourself," he growled, for the furies that march in the brain of the drunken man had mastered him."Magnus," said Anna, "if you will not go to bed I shall stay up all night with you."Then the devil that had changed Magnus into a cunning, savage beast, showed him what he had to do."Very well, let us go to bed," he replied.He bolted the outer door again and raked out the stove, while his mother extinguished the lamp and re-lit the candles. She thought the evil impulse that had come to him had been conquered, and she talked of other matters."I've made up Eric's bed for you, and you'll find everything comfortable," she said.As she passed Elin's door she opened it gently and held her head aside to listen. The sound of the soft and measured breathing came out to them for a moment and then the door was closed again."Poor child! She would lay her head on her pillow full of faith in the miracle that is to happen before to-morrow morning. Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"They parted at the door of the badstofa, and a few minutes afterward the little house lay silent and dark in the arms of the hills and on the breast of the snow, but the wings of Death hung over it.* * * * *Magnus did not go to bed. He threw himself on the eiderdown and went through a fierce fight with God as represented by God's vicar, his conscience. A vision of the pocket-book in the stranger's breast-pocket danced before his dark heart, and he told himself that come what would he must take enough of the stranger's money to pay the interest in the morning. If he did not do so the man would buy the farmstead and Elin and his mother would be turned adrift.On this thought came compunctions. To take the man's money would be to steal, and Magnus had never stolen. But faith being already gone, morality followed, and he wrestled with his conscience and overcame it. What he was going to do was what men did every day, only they called it business, and they did it to wrong the right, whereas he would do it to right the wrong. Magnus marshaled his reasons and justified himself. Here was a man so rich that he would not know to-morrow morning that he had lost what was sufficient to make his dear ones happy. That man was going to expose them to poverty and destitution. Surely it was right, it was necessary, it was his duty to prevent him.In the mad tangle of his disordered brain he saw everything that had happened that day in a sinister light, and it seemed as if fate had thrown the man into his hands. He might have gone to lodge at the Parsonage--he had come there! He might have concealed the purpose of his coming--he had revealed it! He might have said nothing of the pocket-book--he had shown it with childlike simplicity! Surely this was the way out of his difficulties which Destiny had marked out for him, and not to take it would be to cover himself with self-reproaches when his dear ones came down to want.Having persuaded himself that he could not help but take as much of the stranger's money as was necessary to pay the interest, he began to ask why he should take so little. If the pocket-book in the man's breast-pocket contained enough to pay the interest twenty times over, why not take enough to buy the farm out and out? That would enable him to leave to Elin the inheritance which he had lost through his brother's extravagance and crime. This man was about to take it away from her--he must not and he should not do so!Stage by stage he pushed back the bulwarks of conscience until he came to ask himself why he should not take all. His mind was clogged and numb by this time, but he knew well what that meant. It meant taking the stranger's life. There was at first an indescribable horror in the thought of killing a human being, but after a moment it passed away. This man alone stood between his dear ones and shelter--why shouldn't he? This man threatened to take their lives by exposing them to starvation--why shouldn't he take his life instead?A momentary qualm came with the thought that he would be attacking one who had trusted himself to the hospitality of his house, a defenseless man in his sleep. But he thought of the stranger's heartless laughter, his callousness to their condition, and recalled what he had said of his mother, and pictured her sitting there surrounded by every comfort while his own mother, born in that place, was turned out to perish, and then his gorge rose again and his heart knew no pity.He began to ask himself how it could be done. It could be done, quite easily. Nobody except themselves had seen the man; nobody else would ever know that he had been to their house. He could tell his mother and Elin that the stranger had gone away in the early morning. They would believe him, and even if they did not they would hold their tongues, for his interest would be their interest, and all he would do would be done for them.A new and awful light illumined his gloomy mind, and he saw himself doing everything. No other eye would see, no other ear would hear. It was freezing hard to-night, and if it was found in the drowning pool when the ice melted the story would be that the stranger had lost his way in the snowstorm and stumbled over the rocks.Having satisfied himself that he could defeat this world's judgment, the tortured man in the toils of his temptation began to think of the judgment of the next. But fear of that vanished in a moment. Nothing was known in the other world of what took place in this one, and God interfered but little in the affairs of men!At the thought of God a singing noise came into his ears like water in the ears of a drowning man. It was his conscience going down after its last gasp, for he was telling himself that murder though it might be, and contrary to God's law, God had done nothing for him, and therefore he was not called upon to do anything for God. He had been a good man all his life, yet God had left him in the lurch. God and the world were letting his mother and Elin perish, therefore he must fight the world--and God!In the last convulsion of his human nature he remembered that once before the impulse to kill had come to him, and that he had suffered the tortures of the damned whenever afterward he had thought of it. But that was different, that was in the whirlwind of outraged passion, and if he had carried out his threat it would have been the worst of crimes, the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost--a brother's murder! A thousand times he had thanked God that Oscar had not lived to come home, but how strange were the ways of fate--another man, another heartless prodigal, had come there, and if his dear ones were to be saved from starvation and the consequences of Oscar's crimes, he knew what he had to do!"Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he thought again, and then he leaped up from the bed.His brute nature, goaded on by the flattering devil of drink, had conquered his conscience, yet his knees knocked together as he went on tiptoe by his mother's room, and when he came to Elin's door he could hardly breathe. Their pure souls were sleeping in the protecting atmosphere of prayer; and when he asked himself what he was to say in the morning if they wanted to know where he had got the money, his mind was so clogged and numb that he could find no answer.But this thought, with the vision that came after it of how his mother and Elin would look at him with searching and suspicious glances--of how when all would be over and he hoped to be at rest he would find them sitting together in silence, staring at nothing--nearly broke down the brute in him and his whole body was shaken by a kind of tearless sob. Nevertheless the flash of human light on his dark heart only made the blackness more profound, and after a moment he went on with his preparations.When he stepped on tiptoe into the hall, the two sheep-dogs who had been sleeping on the mat by the door got up and stretched themselves and yawned, and lest they should make a noise he took them out and locked them up in a shed. After that he went over to the stable, which was at some distance from the dwelling, and saddled and bridled the stranger's mare, and then with a sharp cut of his whip he sent her galloping and whinnying into the darkness. A breath of icy wind was coming down the valley as if day were stirring in its morning sleep, and a faint pink and white light in the eastern sky, with a glint on the western glaciers, seemed to say that the dawn was near, but the drink was in Magnus's eyes and he could not see clearly.No snow had fallen since the traveler arrived, and returning to the front of the farmstead Magnus made backward tracks from the porch to the river, partly in order to obliterate the stranger's footsteps and partly to conceal his own when he should come out again, carrying a heavy burden. The man was gone by this time, and Magnus was like a night-bird hovering about his own house and thinking of his prey.When he returned to the hall there was no sound there except that of the ashes slipping in the stove, and of the clock ticking in the darkness the deliberate seconds. He took off his boots, leaving on his snow-stockings only, and then he picked up a large cushion from the arm-chair and stepped to the stranger's door and listened.But heaven as well as hell is in the heart of every man, as long as life is with him, and the tearless sob came back to Magnus and shook his whole body, as he thought at the last moment of the awful pity of the thing he had to do. Yet telling himself again that God did nothing in this world, and saying once more, "Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he turned the handle and opened the door.Then he stepped softly into the guest-room and bolted the door behind him.VIIAnna, at that moment, had awakened from a frightening dream. On first going to her room she had been troubled by the memory of what she had done to awaken evil thoughts in Magnus, and visions had come to her of how, if anything happened, Magnus might say, "You put it into my head, mother." To banish her self-reproaches she had said a prayer for forgiveness, telling God she had never once thought of theft or violence, but only of Magnus and Elin and the inheritance they had lost through her importunity, and how cruel it seemed that while other people had so much more than they wanted, such hard times should come to her dear children.Then she had gone to bed, and the voice of the stranger, which had teased her all the evening through with memories she could not fix, haunted her again, and the light being out, and her eyes no longer disturbed by sight of the stranger's different face, she knew whose voice it reminded her of. It was a voice very dear to her, a voice always near to her, Oscar's voice, which she was never to hear again.When, with a thrill of the heart, this thought came to Anna, it altered the stranger altogether. His laughter ceased to be cruel, and what he had said of himself not being a good son became touching. And when she thought of his poor mother waiting for her prodigal and so soon to see him home again, and pictured her joy when he should say, "Mother, mother! I'm here at last, and we shall never, never be parted again!" her heart overflowed with sympathy, and she was sorry she had not been kinder to him when he was going to bed.Then she went to sleep and the dream spirit took her back to the good time when she had two boys in her house, a dark one and a fair one, and the father had punished the dark one unjustly, and his stern and gloomy soul, with its sense of wrong, would not suffer him to explain, but the fair one was sobbing out a confession--"It was not Magnus, it was me, papa"--and a moment afterward two happy little heads were on the same pillow side by side, and both were laughing merrily.In the shifting kaleidoscope of her dream this picture had hardly gone when Anna awoke with the clearest consciousness of Oscar's voice crying, "Mother! Mother! Mother!" She thought it must have been the stranger calling in his sleep, for the china ornaments on her dressing-table seemed to ring, but when she listened there was no other sound.Then the memory of Magnus's temptation came rolling back on her like a thundercloud over a clear sky, and she got up to go to her son's room to make sure that he was in bed.Magnus had not been to bed!With candle in hand, and still in her night-dress, Anna hurried to the hall, crying in a whisper of only half-realized apprehension, "Magnus! Magnus!"There was no reply.She listened at the stranger's door and thought she heard a movement inside the room, but she dared not enter or knock."Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered again, but no answer came back to her. She heard the neighing of a horse that seemed to be running round and round the house and her flesh began to creep, for that sound in the night was like the cry of a disembodied soul. Then there came the deadened noise of dogs barking, and she knew they were their own dogs and that they must have been shut up in an outhouse. This started a new thought, and she ran to the outer door to see if it had been opened.The door was unbolted!She was about to open it and cry again when she heard a noise behind her. It came from the stranger's room, and putting her ear to the door she distinctly heard the sounds of sobs. Some one inside was sobbing.She knew the low, stifled voice. It was Magnus. He was on his knees or prostrate on the floor, and he was sobbing as if his heart would break. At that Anna boldly tried to open the door, but found it fastened on the inside."Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered, but he did not answer.She was now sure that the awful thing she had thought of had come to pass. Her suspense had deepened to fear, but pity and love conquered every other feeling, and going down on her knees in her night-dress, she whispered through the key-hole:"Magnus! Magnus! Open the door. It is only mother! It was all my fault, dear! Let me come in!"But the smothered sobbing inside continued, and no other sound came back to her. Then in the silence of all else she heard the sound of sleigh-bells outside. At first she thought this must be a ringing in her ears, but the bells grew louder and came nearer, and then the dogs in the outhouse barked again.Fear deepened to terror, the necessity for concealment flashed upon her, and she knocked at the bedroom door and cried in the same affrighted whisper:"Magnus, there is some one coming. Wait till he has gone. Don't stir. Don't come out. Only tell me you hear me."The sobbing ceased, but Magnus did not speak. Meantime the sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, with the cracking of a whip, the whoop of a driver, and the hiss of runners in the soft snow."Magnus! Magnus!" cried Anna loudly, in a last effort, but she was stopped by the near shout of some one outside, "Helloa! helloa there!"--and she rose to her feet with an intention of bolting the outer door.Before she could do so there was a metallic knock on the window-pane, a voice crying, "God be with you!" and footsteps hurrying up the outer steps. Then Anna turned about and fled back to her bedroom.While she dressed she heard the outer door thrown open and the sound of many persons trooping into the hall. They were very bright and happy, for they laughed merrily and talked all together, and the house was full of noise.When she came out of the badstofa she met the postboy on his way to the elt-house to boil water to give his ponies a hot drink, and on returning to the hall she found the door and the shutters of the window open, the daylight streaming in, and the postman himself there with several passengers, including the Factor, who was muffled up to the eyes, and Margret Neilsen, who was unrolling herself from the folds of a white bearskin."Helloa!" cried everybody, and the postman said, "Here we are at last, you see! We couldn't come yesterday by reason of the snowstorm, but the Factor actually got me to start away as soon as it stopped at eleven o'clock last night--eleven!""Well, we don't kill a pig every day, do we?" said the Factor, and while the men laughed and winked, Margret Neilsen said:"And how's Anna?"Anna was speechless and ghastly white, so the Factor said, "We seem to have startled her out of her senses, for she looks as if she had seen a ghost. But where's Magnus?""Magnus? Oh--somewhere about," said Anna."And how's my precious Elin?" said Aunt Margret."She's not up yet," said Anna."Then I'll go and waken her. Which is her room--this one?" said Aunt Margret, making for the guest-room."No, no," said Anna, intercepting her and standing with her back to the guest-room door. "That one," and Aunt Margret went into Elin's bedroom."And now," said the Factor, with winks all round him, "what about the other one?"Anna looked at the Factor in mute terror."The new-comer, you know? Not stirring yet, I suppose?""New-comer?""Well, guest, friend, whatever you choose to call him.""What friend?""Why, the friend who came last night, of course."Anna, who had never lied in her life, wanted to lie now, but she could not do so. "I don't understand you, Factor," she said faintly."Well!" said the Factor, and then, as if by an afterthought, "I thought he wouldn't wish to startle you, having been so long away and supposed to be dead. But don't you know yet who he is?"Anna trembled and said, "Of whom are you speaking, Oscar Neilsen?""Of the tall fair man with the pointed beard who came to lodge at your house last night."Anna was now speechless with terror, and the company, misunderstanding her silence, became suddenly very grave. "Can it be possible that he lost his way in the snowstorm?" said one. "But he knew every inch of the road, and could find his way blindfold," said another. "Such a night, though," said a third. "He got as far as the House of Rest." "But the boy there said he would never see the end of his journey.""Well, this is serious," said the Factor. "The Minister wanted him to stay at Government House over-night, but he seemed so anxious to see you----""To see me!" said Anna."Naturally, after his long absence. Strange! very strange! But do you mean to say that no traveler came here last night?"A vague shadow of the Factor's meaning had flashed upon Anna's mind, and the terror of a moment ago had deepened to horror. What had Magnus done in the blindness of his passion and despair? But even then the desire to save her son was above all other emotions, and she was about to deny all knowledge of the traveler, when the door behind her was opened and a voice over her shoulder said:"Yes, a traveler did come here last night, but he went away again in the early morning."It was Magnus, and when Anna turned to look at him she drew a deep breath of relief, for she knew he was telling the truth. His face, since she saw it last, had undergone a mysterious and miraculous change. The gloomy arrogance of despair had gone, something had carried light into the darkness of his soul, and he looked like a man who had come as from the immediate presence of his God."But this is stranger than ever," said the Factor. "It was known that he had taken a large sum of money out of the Bank, and everybody supposed he meant to buy up this place at the auction.""Yes," said Aunt Margret, coming out of Elin's bedroom, "to give to his old mother."And then Elin's soft voice was heard to say, "Has the Sheriff come yet?""Who is asking for the Sheriff?" said the Sheriff himself, coming forward at that moment."The gentleman gave me this pocket-book last night, and told me to deliver it to you before the auction began this morning.""It's not for me, though," said the Sheriff, who had taken the pocket-book to the table and opened it, and was reading the writing on the sheet of paper which fell out first, "'For Elin, Oscar's daughter, from Christian Christiansson.'""A present for Elin, perhaps," said the Factor."A thousand-crown note!" cried the Sheriff.The gaiety of the company was breaking into loud congratulations, when the Sheriff, who was still opening the folds of the pocket-book, said, "Wait! There's more than that--much more! One--two--three--fifty thousand--another--and another--and"--then the rapid rustling of bank-notes, followed by the delighted cry, "Two hundred thousand crowns!""The very sum he took out of the bank!" said the Factor."Kiss me, my precious!" said Aunt Margret."Me, too, granddaughter," cried the Factor.Anna looked stunned, and Magnus like one who wished the earth to swallow him. But the Factor rattled along with shouts and laughter."Now I understand everything. He has given the money to the girl, but left it to her friends and relations to advise her as to what she is to do with it."Elin's blue eyes being still full of bewilderment, the Factor kissed her again and said, "Now who do you think has left you this great fortune, little one?""Christian Christiansson," said the girl."Certainly! But don't you know who Christian Christiansson is? No? You neither, Anna?"Anna was trembling on the verge of discovery. "Who?" she said, but rather with her lips than with her voice."Why, Oscar--your son Oscar, who isn't dead at all, and has come back and made amends to everybody! I always knew there was good stuff in my godson!"The truth burst on Anna in a whirlwind of joy--joy that her son was alive, joy that he had come home and justified her faith in him, joy, too, though with a twinge of pain in it, that he had gone away again and further trouble with Magnus was averted. A prayer gushed from her heart and she wanted to go down on her knees."My son!" she said in a breathless whisper."My father!" said Elin, with a tenderness the word had never had for her before.The company were now cackling and crowing again, but the two women--the old one and the young one--looked round for Magnus. He was standing at the back, his strong face all broken up and melted. It was not at this moment that the truth had first burst on him. That had come like a blinding blow of light the instant he had entered the guest-room and realized that God did something after all in this world for His children."Mother--Elin!" he stammered, and he opened his arms to them."It's the miracle, isn't it?" said the girl.It was the miracle indeed.* * * * *There was no auction in Thingvellir that day, and when the bells rang for service the company went to church. The little wooden tabernacle was full of worshippers, for it was New Year's Day, and the farmers had ridden over with their families from all the country round about. They sat, in their thick mufflers and snow-stockings and the mist of their smoking breath, as far up the church as the square rail enclosing the communion table, on stools about the octagonal pulpit and even among the refuse, the lumber and potted-meat barrels that were stored in the gallery.The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson ("All we like sheep have gone astray"), while he gave out his text ("This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise"), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death's sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem ("Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning"), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin's silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother's, Magnus sat with his face toward the picture on the wall above the communion-table.It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit of war with God, he had entered the stranger's bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, "Stop! or the voice of thy brother's blood will cry unto Me from the ground!"When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumor of what had happened in Anna's household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm, for a cup of coffee.It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralyzed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret remained behind to roast it.The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast."Every snow-cowl has an end," he said, "and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson's family and over my family, is now gone for good. 'Show the man and not the table,' says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man's guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before."Brothers and sisters, I give you a health--Anna's long-lost son,ourlong-lost son, Iceland's long-lost son--Oscar Stephen-son!"The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.VIIIOn the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them, white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman's eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under his feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapor.An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!After he had passed through the heat and smoke and come out on the clear heights beyond he paused to look back. The world around was all white and stark under the snow of last night's storm, but a crimson shaft from the sun which had not yet risen was crossing the topmost peaks, and the lowlands were still sleeping in a veil of mist. He thought he could hear the ringing of the church bell, and that sweet human sound came winging its way up to him through the vapor of the sulphur-pits as the singing of a star might rise through the clouds of the world to the ears of the souls in heaven.Presently the sun strode up and the mist fell back, and then he saw in the valley far below the little church itself and the home he had left behind him. He had left happiness there, and love, and warm comfort, for that was his reparation to the dear ones he had injured, and now for his atonement to God he was going out alone, stripped of everything and unknown to any one.It was as much as he could bear to think of that, but he smiled to himself sadly while he pictured the surprise and joy of the happy scene when the girl would come out with the pocket-book and the auction would be stopped. He thought, too, of his mother in church, with a soul full of gratitude, and saw Elin with a ray of sunlight from the lead-lighted window on the heart-breaking sweetness of her smile. It was not thus that he had expected to leave them when for ten years he had worked by the sweat of body and spirit that he might come back and be forgiven. But it was not in this world that the prodigal could be taken back; not here that any earthly father could run to meet him and throw his arms about his neck. What he had sown he must reap, and not all his penitence and tears could undo what he had done.It was long before he could take his last look at the home he was leaving forever, and when at length he drew a deep breath and went on, he had to comfort himself with the thought that Thora would be pleased with him for giving up their child to Magnus. Her voice from the other world seemed to come to him and say, "Well done! Poor, brave, wounded heart, God's angels rejoice over you!" But it was hard to find solace in heavenly cheer while his blood ran warm and yearned for human company.Before he was aware of it he was at the foot of the glaciers, those great lone homes of Nature never trodden by the foot of man or animal, where no bird sings and no flower grows, where only the wind moans over motionless billows of ice and the sun rises in a blank barrenness on chasms of the frozen deep. Looking back from this place he could see nothing of the valley and the houses of men, or of anything but a wide circle of mountain peaks, all silent and white, in which he was the only living thing. And then the feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity amid these grand but grim surroundings elevated his senses and affected him like music, like composing, with a sort of ecstacy which was part rapture and partly pain.In this ecstasy of emotion he asked himself if his life had been wasted, if happiness was gone from him even if, because he had sinned, there was nothing before him now but renunciation and suffering. And then the teaching of his childhood came back to him with a new and sublime significance, and he saw for the first time the lesson of life and the meaning of death. The lesson of life was Duty--to do right without expectation of reward or fear of punishment; and the meaning of death was to bring to the sinful, penitent soul the pardon the world can not give.Then thank God for life, but thank God for death also! Whatever a man's sin, Nature could not forget it, and the laws of life could not forgive, but the mercy of God was without measure of guilt, and the gates of heaven were wide!God veiled His face from His creatures, and to man's questioning eyes the infinite wisdom was as blank as these white walls of ice and snow, but two thousand years ago a simple Galilean had read this riddle of life as no man before or since has read it. He had read it for all men, good or bad, but most of all for wayworn sinners like himself, for whom the world has no pity, and no forgiveness. And though he was the guiltiest of the guilty, and his sin had found him out, and as the price of his repentance he had had to give up everything in life that he held most dear--the love of his child and the hope of pardon and reconciliation--yet love and pardon and reconciliation were waiting for him still when God's own voice should call him, and "this mortal should put on immortality."By this time he was in that mood in which a man of his temperament finds it difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary, in which he hears the sounds of Nature and mistakes them for voices from the other world. He had wandered without knowing it from the path of the pass, which was marked by stones standing upright out of the snow, when the volcanic fire in the womb of the mountain began to shake it with mighty throbs, and then suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a crash and a resounding rumble as of echoing thunder coming down from the snow-capped heights.Oscar Stephenson did not see or hear or feel anything. He was only conscious of a burst of heavenly music, of a sense of ten thousand angels singing an anthem, a triumphant pæan of praise that grew louder and louder every moment; a sense of blinding light, and of traveling at a terrific velocity into the realms of the sun; a sense of the Day of Judgment, of the life of the world being over, its busy throngs gone, its pageants finished, its honors, distinctions, castes, gold, wealth, and fame passed into nothingness; a sense of being outside the great Judgment Hall with an infinite multitude of kings and beggars, good men and bad, the guilty and the innocent, and of kneeling there among the meanest and most ashamed; a sense of a spirit stooping to him and taking his hand and saying, "Come," of looking up into her face, and seeing it was Thora, and of his breath coming so fast and short that he could scarcely breathe; a sense of stumbling along with his head down and the spirit leading him forward and singing as they ascended; a sense of an overwhelming Presence somewhere in front of him, of the music dying down and becoming fainter and fainter, and then of an awful hush and of a blessed Voice which said:"FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, WAS LOST AND IS FOUND."
* * * * *
Christian Christiansson was alone. He felt that he had come to the lees of his life and saw nothing but a blank where he might crawl to die. Could he go back to Reykjavik? That was impossible, for the Minister and his people would be preparing their banquet in honor of his visit, and to go through such rejoicing would be a scorching martyrdom at which the devil himself would laugh. Could he return to England and resume his old life as the unknown composer? That was impossible also, for he could never write as he had written before, because the old impulse was gone, the fire was burnt out, the life that had inspired him was dead, and because the foundations of his fame were broken up by the new consciousness that he had no right to it, by the sense that his career and all that had come of it had been built on the desecration of his wife's grave, and by the certainty that his success had been paid for as by the sweat of his very soul.
What then was before him? Old age? What was old age without friends, without children, without love, without respect and with memory--that last joy of a man's declining days--like a poisoned river running through a wasted land?
Was there nothing before him then? Yes, there was one thing--one only--and as he lay in that room alone with his head over his hands on the table, he had the trembling, thrilling, palpitating sense of supernatural wings hovering above him, and of an awful voice that seemed to say, "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!"
At that moment he became aware of other voices--more human and homely voices--murmuring about him, and one of them said, "He has fallen asleep, poor gentleman," and another, "He has drunk too much, perhaps." Then a hand touched him on the shoulder and somebody cried in his ear:
"Hadn't you better go to bed, sir?"
It was his mother, with Magnus behind her, and looking at both he could see that they supposed he was intoxicated. In the wild laboring of heart and brain, it suited him that they should continue to think so, and indeed the strain of nerve had been so hard that when he rose to his feet he staggered like a drunken man.
"Heigho! What's this?" he laughed. "Your brennie-vin must be pretty heady, landlady. But no matter! It will be a good nightcap and make me sleep the sounder. I'm tired, very tired, but I'm going to have a long sleep at last--a long, long sleep at last."
"But to-morrow will be New Year's Day," said Anna. "The bells ring at daybreak, and the Sheriff will be here soon after, so you'll have to be stirring early if you want to be ready for the auction."
"Why, so I shall--I had forgotten all about it--and since we can not agree about the girl I must buy the farm whatever happens. I told you I wanted it for a particular purpose, but I didn't say what it was. It's my secret, landlady, but I don't mind telling you. I want it for my mother."
"Your mother?"
"That's so! She was born in these parts, and the poor old thing would like to end her days here."
"So she tells you to buy up my farmstead?"
"Not she! She doesn't know anything about it. That's to be my surprise. I've not been a good son, but when I go away never to come back again I want to feel that the dear old soul is happy and comfortable and has a roof to cover her."
He laughed, with the same sense as before of an hysterical oppression of the heart, and then turned to Magnus and said:
"Sorry to buy your house over your head, but business is business, you know, and anybody is at liberty to bid who has money to pay."
Magnus moved aside with a contemptuous expression.
"Don't look so glum, my man. You think you've been badly treated and perhaps you have, but you're the luckiest man in Iceland if you ask me. You think because you've done well you ought to be rewarded, but what right have poor wretches like us to expect reward in this world? You think because a man is rich he is to be envied, but what's the use of having your pocket full if your heart is empty? And you think because Death kills the innocent and the happy it is a cruel monster, but there are worse things than Death, and Life is one of them when you've nobody to care whether you live or die. Then cheer up, old fellow! You've got your health and your good name, and your mother and that sweet girl to love and to love you, so what the devil have you got to complain of? Nothing at all!"
Saying this with a mixture of real emotion and its mocking make-believe, a touch of the boy came back to him for a moment and he put his arm across his brother's shoulder as he used to do in the old days, but Magnus shuddered and shrank away.
"Your candle is burning in the bedroom, sir," said Anna coldly.
And then he saw that his mother also looked black at him, as one who had come to turn them out of house and home, and as one who had tried to tempt the girl away from them, and as one who could laugh at their condition and have no thought except for himself. And thinking that this was the last he would see of her; that it was so different from the parting he had expected; that all hope of pardon and reconciliation was lost; that his mother would never hear that her lingering faith in her prodigal had been justified and never know that he had been and gone, he had as much as he could do not to break down and betray himself even at the end.
But gathering up his clothes which had been drying by the stove, he turned toward the bedroom, saying with another laugh--a laugh that went to Anna's heart like a sword:
"Don't look so downhearted, landlady. When things are at their worst they can't move without they mend. You've had your troubles, but you shall drink my health under my mother's roof-tree to-morrow morning. Good night!"
And then he reeled into the guest-room.
VI
The stranger being gone, mother and son looked into each other's faces. Then they spoken in whispers.
"Did you hear him?" said Anna.
"About his mother's roof-tree?" asked Magnus.
"About the auction--about everything. The man can have no feeling--no pity."
"None."
"'Business is business,' he said, when he talked of buying the place over our heads. And when he spoke of his mother ending her days here he never once thought of me."
"He never thought of Elin either. He would have taken the girl away from us without a moment's hesitation."
"He would," said Anna. "'There's enough in this purse,' he said, 'to pay your interest twenty times over.'"
"Did he say that?"
"He did. He took his pocket-book out of his breast-pocket and----"
"His breast-pocket, you say?"
"Yes, 'and I'llgivethe money to your son,' he said, 'if he'll give me the girl instead.'"
Anna talked on in an innocent, helpless way without knowing what bad work she was doing, but suddenly, mysteriously, at the mention of the purse a change passed over Magnus's face and it grew ugly with evil passions.
"He must be rich," said Anna.
"Richer than anybody has a right to be," said Magnus.
"Surely God can not mean that anybody should be as rich as that while other people are so poor."
"God!" said Magnus, and his distorted face quivered.
"If he would only lend us enough to satisfy the Sheriff in the morning!" said Anna.
"What's the good of expecting a man to help us to keep the farm when he has come to buy it for himself?"
"It's hard, though, cruelly hard, to be turned out of house and home by the first person who comes along with more money."
"That's what I was thinking," said Magnus.
Down to this moment Anna had only been trying to sympathize with Magnus's mood, but now something in his tone made her suspect that she had awakened a devil, and she looked at him in terror.
He took up the bottle and drank; he drank out of the neck; and there was a new devil in every drop. His eyes began to gleam with a feverish luster, and Anna trembled. She remembered that Magnus had not taken any strong drink until to-day since the day of Thora's funeral, and then she thought of her father, and a sensation of extreme cold crept over her.
"Let us not talk of it any more," she said, as she tried to put the bottle away, but Magnus held on to it.
Mother and son looked at each other again, and then Anna went over to the stranger's door and listened.
"Has he locked it?" asked Magnus.
"No, I'm afraid-- No, no, he has not."
"What is he doing?"
"The candle is out--he must be in bed already."
"Then," said Magnus, "he has thrown himself down without undressing and the pocket-book is on him still."
"Magnus, what are you thinking of?" said Anna--her teeth were chattering.
"Would it be so very wicked?"
"What?"
"To take as much as would satisfy the Sheriff in the morning?"
"Magnus! I didn't mean that."
"He would never miss it--never know it was gone--and it would enable us to keep the farm and so save us from starvation."
"Oh, dear! What have I done?"
"He's a prodigal himself, it seems. Very well, let prodigal pay for prodigal."
She could not breathe freely--she could only look at Magnus in speechless surprise. He took up the bottle again and gulped clown the last of the liquor.
"He has drunk a good deal--he will sleep heavily--and he won't awake until the auction is over."
"Let us go to bed," said Anna.
"Go yourself," he growled, for the furies that march in the brain of the drunken man had mastered him.
"Magnus," said Anna, "if you will not go to bed I shall stay up all night with you."
Then the devil that had changed Magnus into a cunning, savage beast, showed him what he had to do.
"Very well, let us go to bed," he replied.
He bolted the outer door again and raked out the stove, while his mother extinguished the lamp and re-lit the candles. She thought the evil impulse that had come to him had been conquered, and she talked of other matters.
"I've made up Eric's bed for you, and you'll find everything comfortable," she said.
As she passed Elin's door she opened it gently and held her head aside to listen. The sound of the soft and measured breathing came out to them for a moment and then the door was closed again.
"Poor child! She would lay her head on her pillow full of faith in the miracle that is to happen before to-morrow morning. Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"
They parted at the door of the badstofa, and a few minutes afterward the little house lay silent and dark in the arms of the hills and on the breast of the snow, but the wings of Death hung over it.
* * * * *
Magnus did not go to bed. He threw himself on the eiderdown and went through a fierce fight with God as represented by God's vicar, his conscience. A vision of the pocket-book in the stranger's breast-pocket danced before his dark heart, and he told himself that come what would he must take enough of the stranger's money to pay the interest in the morning. If he did not do so the man would buy the farmstead and Elin and his mother would be turned adrift.
On this thought came compunctions. To take the man's money would be to steal, and Magnus had never stolen. But faith being already gone, morality followed, and he wrestled with his conscience and overcame it. What he was going to do was what men did every day, only they called it business, and they did it to wrong the right, whereas he would do it to right the wrong. Magnus marshaled his reasons and justified himself. Here was a man so rich that he would not know to-morrow morning that he had lost what was sufficient to make his dear ones happy. That man was going to expose them to poverty and destitution. Surely it was right, it was necessary, it was his duty to prevent him.
In the mad tangle of his disordered brain he saw everything that had happened that day in a sinister light, and it seemed as if fate had thrown the man into his hands. He might have gone to lodge at the Parsonage--he had come there! He might have concealed the purpose of his coming--he had revealed it! He might have said nothing of the pocket-book--he had shown it with childlike simplicity! Surely this was the way out of his difficulties which Destiny had marked out for him, and not to take it would be to cover himself with self-reproaches when his dear ones came down to want.
Having persuaded himself that he could not help but take as much of the stranger's money as was necessary to pay the interest, he began to ask why he should take so little. If the pocket-book in the man's breast-pocket contained enough to pay the interest twenty times over, why not take enough to buy the farm out and out? That would enable him to leave to Elin the inheritance which he had lost through his brother's extravagance and crime. This man was about to take it away from her--he must not and he should not do so!
Stage by stage he pushed back the bulwarks of conscience until he came to ask himself why he should not take all. His mind was clogged and numb by this time, but he knew well what that meant. It meant taking the stranger's life. There was at first an indescribable horror in the thought of killing a human being, but after a moment it passed away. This man alone stood between his dear ones and shelter--why shouldn't he? This man threatened to take their lives by exposing them to starvation--why shouldn't he take his life instead?
A momentary qualm came with the thought that he would be attacking one who had trusted himself to the hospitality of his house, a defenseless man in his sleep. But he thought of the stranger's heartless laughter, his callousness to their condition, and recalled what he had said of his mother, and pictured her sitting there surrounded by every comfort while his own mother, born in that place, was turned out to perish, and then his gorge rose again and his heart knew no pity.
He began to ask himself how it could be done. It could be done, quite easily. Nobody except themselves had seen the man; nobody else would ever know that he had been to their house. He could tell his mother and Elin that the stranger had gone away in the early morning. They would believe him, and even if they did not they would hold their tongues, for his interest would be their interest, and all he would do would be done for them.
A new and awful light illumined his gloomy mind, and he saw himself doing everything. No other eye would see, no other ear would hear. It was freezing hard to-night, and if it was found in the drowning pool when the ice melted the story would be that the stranger had lost his way in the snowstorm and stumbled over the rocks.
Having satisfied himself that he could defeat this world's judgment, the tortured man in the toils of his temptation began to think of the judgment of the next. But fear of that vanished in a moment. Nothing was known in the other world of what took place in this one, and God interfered but little in the affairs of men!
At the thought of God a singing noise came into his ears like water in the ears of a drowning man. It was his conscience going down after its last gasp, for he was telling himself that murder though it might be, and contrary to God's law, God had done nothing for him, and therefore he was not called upon to do anything for God. He had been a good man all his life, yet God had left him in the lurch. God and the world were letting his mother and Elin perish, therefore he must fight the world--and God!
In the last convulsion of his human nature he remembered that once before the impulse to kill had come to him, and that he had suffered the tortures of the damned whenever afterward he had thought of it. But that was different, that was in the whirlwind of outraged passion, and if he had carried out his threat it would have been the worst of crimes, the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost--a brother's murder! A thousand times he had thanked God that Oscar had not lived to come home, but how strange were the ways of fate--another man, another heartless prodigal, had come there, and if his dear ones were to be saved from starvation and the consequences of Oscar's crimes, he knew what he had to do!
"Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he thought again, and then he leaped up from the bed.
His brute nature, goaded on by the flattering devil of drink, had conquered his conscience, yet his knees knocked together as he went on tiptoe by his mother's room, and when he came to Elin's door he could hardly breathe. Their pure souls were sleeping in the protecting atmosphere of prayer; and when he asked himself what he was to say in the morning if they wanted to know where he had got the money, his mind was so clogged and numb that he could find no answer.
But this thought, with the vision that came after it of how his mother and Elin would look at him with searching and suspicious glances--of how when all would be over and he hoped to be at rest he would find them sitting together in silence, staring at nothing--nearly broke down the brute in him and his whole body was shaken by a kind of tearless sob. Nevertheless the flash of human light on his dark heart only made the blackness more profound, and after a moment he went on with his preparations.
When he stepped on tiptoe into the hall, the two sheep-dogs who had been sleeping on the mat by the door got up and stretched themselves and yawned, and lest they should make a noise he took them out and locked them up in a shed. After that he went over to the stable, which was at some distance from the dwelling, and saddled and bridled the stranger's mare, and then with a sharp cut of his whip he sent her galloping and whinnying into the darkness. A breath of icy wind was coming down the valley as if day were stirring in its morning sleep, and a faint pink and white light in the eastern sky, with a glint on the western glaciers, seemed to say that the dawn was near, but the drink was in Magnus's eyes and he could not see clearly.
No snow had fallen since the traveler arrived, and returning to the front of the farmstead Magnus made backward tracks from the porch to the river, partly in order to obliterate the stranger's footsteps and partly to conceal his own when he should come out again, carrying a heavy burden. The man was gone by this time, and Magnus was like a night-bird hovering about his own house and thinking of his prey.
When he returned to the hall there was no sound there except that of the ashes slipping in the stove, and of the clock ticking in the darkness the deliberate seconds. He took off his boots, leaving on his snow-stockings only, and then he picked up a large cushion from the arm-chair and stepped to the stranger's door and listened.
But heaven as well as hell is in the heart of every man, as long as life is with him, and the tearless sob came back to Magnus and shook his whole body, as he thought at the last moment of the awful pity of the thing he had to do. Yet telling himself again that God did nothing in this world, and saying once more, "Let prodigal pay for prodigal," he turned the handle and opened the door.
Then he stepped softly into the guest-room and bolted the door behind him.
VII
Anna, at that moment, had awakened from a frightening dream. On first going to her room she had been troubled by the memory of what she had done to awaken evil thoughts in Magnus, and visions had come to her of how, if anything happened, Magnus might say, "You put it into my head, mother." To banish her self-reproaches she had said a prayer for forgiveness, telling God she had never once thought of theft or violence, but only of Magnus and Elin and the inheritance they had lost through her importunity, and how cruel it seemed that while other people had so much more than they wanted, such hard times should come to her dear children.
Then she had gone to bed, and the voice of the stranger, which had teased her all the evening through with memories she could not fix, haunted her again, and the light being out, and her eyes no longer disturbed by sight of the stranger's different face, she knew whose voice it reminded her of. It was a voice very dear to her, a voice always near to her, Oscar's voice, which she was never to hear again.
When, with a thrill of the heart, this thought came to Anna, it altered the stranger altogether. His laughter ceased to be cruel, and what he had said of himself not being a good son became touching. And when she thought of his poor mother waiting for her prodigal and so soon to see him home again, and pictured her joy when he should say, "Mother, mother! I'm here at last, and we shall never, never be parted again!" her heart overflowed with sympathy, and she was sorry she had not been kinder to him when he was going to bed.
Then she went to sleep and the dream spirit took her back to the good time when she had two boys in her house, a dark one and a fair one, and the father had punished the dark one unjustly, and his stern and gloomy soul, with its sense of wrong, would not suffer him to explain, but the fair one was sobbing out a confession--"It was not Magnus, it was me, papa"--and a moment afterward two happy little heads were on the same pillow side by side, and both were laughing merrily.
In the shifting kaleidoscope of her dream this picture had hardly gone when Anna awoke with the clearest consciousness of Oscar's voice crying, "Mother! Mother! Mother!" She thought it must have been the stranger calling in his sleep, for the china ornaments on her dressing-table seemed to ring, but when she listened there was no other sound.
Then the memory of Magnus's temptation came rolling back on her like a thundercloud over a clear sky, and she got up to go to her son's room to make sure that he was in bed.
Magnus had not been to bed!
With candle in hand, and still in her night-dress, Anna hurried to the hall, crying in a whisper of only half-realized apprehension, "Magnus! Magnus!"
There was no reply.
She listened at the stranger's door and thought she heard a movement inside the room, but she dared not enter or knock.
"Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered again, but no answer came back to her. She heard the neighing of a horse that seemed to be running round and round the house and her flesh began to creep, for that sound in the night was like the cry of a disembodied soul. Then there came the deadened noise of dogs barking, and she knew they were their own dogs and that they must have been shut up in an outhouse. This started a new thought, and she ran to the outer door to see if it had been opened.
The door was unbolted!
She was about to open it and cry again when she heard a noise behind her. It came from the stranger's room, and putting her ear to the door she distinctly heard the sounds of sobs. Some one inside was sobbing.
She knew the low, stifled voice. It was Magnus. He was on his knees or prostrate on the floor, and he was sobbing as if his heart would break. At that Anna boldly tried to open the door, but found it fastened on the inside.
"Magnus! Magnus!" she whispered, but he did not answer.
She was now sure that the awful thing she had thought of had come to pass. Her suspense had deepened to fear, but pity and love conquered every other feeling, and going down on her knees in her night-dress, she whispered through the key-hole:
"Magnus! Magnus! Open the door. It is only mother! It was all my fault, dear! Let me come in!"
But the smothered sobbing inside continued, and no other sound came back to her. Then in the silence of all else she heard the sound of sleigh-bells outside. At first she thought this must be a ringing in her ears, but the bells grew louder and came nearer, and then the dogs in the outhouse barked again.
Fear deepened to terror, the necessity for concealment flashed upon her, and she knocked at the bedroom door and cried in the same affrighted whisper:
"Magnus, there is some one coming. Wait till he has gone. Don't stir. Don't come out. Only tell me you hear me."
The sobbing ceased, but Magnus did not speak. Meantime the sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, with the cracking of a whip, the whoop of a driver, and the hiss of runners in the soft snow.
"Magnus! Magnus!" cried Anna loudly, in a last effort, but she was stopped by the near shout of some one outside, "Helloa! helloa there!"--and she rose to her feet with an intention of bolting the outer door.
Before she could do so there was a metallic knock on the window-pane, a voice crying, "God be with you!" and footsteps hurrying up the outer steps. Then Anna turned about and fled back to her bedroom.
While she dressed she heard the outer door thrown open and the sound of many persons trooping into the hall. They were very bright and happy, for they laughed merrily and talked all together, and the house was full of noise.
When she came out of the badstofa she met the postboy on his way to the elt-house to boil water to give his ponies a hot drink, and on returning to the hall she found the door and the shutters of the window open, the daylight streaming in, and the postman himself there with several passengers, including the Factor, who was muffled up to the eyes, and Margret Neilsen, who was unrolling herself from the folds of a white bearskin.
"Helloa!" cried everybody, and the postman said, "Here we are at last, you see! We couldn't come yesterday by reason of the snowstorm, but the Factor actually got me to start away as soon as it stopped at eleven o'clock last night--eleven!"
"Well, we don't kill a pig every day, do we?" said the Factor, and while the men laughed and winked, Margret Neilsen said:
"And how's Anna?"
Anna was speechless and ghastly white, so the Factor said, "We seem to have startled her out of her senses, for she looks as if she had seen a ghost. But where's Magnus?"
"Magnus? Oh--somewhere about," said Anna.
"And how's my precious Elin?" said Aunt Margret.
"She's not up yet," said Anna.
"Then I'll go and waken her. Which is her room--this one?" said Aunt Margret, making for the guest-room.
"No, no," said Anna, intercepting her and standing with her back to the guest-room door. "That one," and Aunt Margret went into Elin's bedroom.
"And now," said the Factor, with winks all round him, "what about the other one?"
Anna looked at the Factor in mute terror.
"The new-comer, you know? Not stirring yet, I suppose?"
"New-comer?"
"Well, guest, friend, whatever you choose to call him."
"What friend?"
"Why, the friend who came last night, of course."
Anna, who had never lied in her life, wanted to lie now, but she could not do so. "I don't understand you, Factor," she said faintly.
"Well!" said the Factor, and then, as if by an afterthought, "I thought he wouldn't wish to startle you, having been so long away and supposed to be dead. But don't you know yet who he is?"
Anna trembled and said, "Of whom are you speaking, Oscar Neilsen?"
"Of the tall fair man with the pointed beard who came to lodge at your house last night."
Anna was now speechless with terror, and the company, misunderstanding her silence, became suddenly very grave. "Can it be possible that he lost his way in the snowstorm?" said one. "But he knew every inch of the road, and could find his way blindfold," said another. "Such a night, though," said a third. "He got as far as the House of Rest." "But the boy there said he would never see the end of his journey."
"Well, this is serious," said the Factor. "The Minister wanted him to stay at Government House over-night, but he seemed so anxious to see you----"
"To see me!" said Anna.
"Naturally, after his long absence. Strange! very strange! But do you mean to say that no traveler came here last night?"
A vague shadow of the Factor's meaning had flashed upon Anna's mind, and the terror of a moment ago had deepened to horror. What had Magnus done in the blindness of his passion and despair? But even then the desire to save her son was above all other emotions, and she was about to deny all knowledge of the traveler, when the door behind her was opened and a voice over her shoulder said:
"Yes, a traveler did come here last night, but he went away again in the early morning."
It was Magnus, and when Anna turned to look at him she drew a deep breath of relief, for she knew he was telling the truth. His face, since she saw it last, had undergone a mysterious and miraculous change. The gloomy arrogance of despair had gone, something had carried light into the darkness of his soul, and he looked like a man who had come as from the immediate presence of his God.
"But this is stranger than ever," said the Factor. "It was known that he had taken a large sum of money out of the Bank, and everybody supposed he meant to buy up this place at the auction."
"Yes," said Aunt Margret, coming out of Elin's bedroom, "to give to his old mother."
And then Elin's soft voice was heard to say, "Has the Sheriff come yet?"
"Who is asking for the Sheriff?" said the Sheriff himself, coming forward at that moment.
"The gentleman gave me this pocket-book last night, and told me to deliver it to you before the auction began this morning."
"It's not for me, though," said the Sheriff, who had taken the pocket-book to the table and opened it, and was reading the writing on the sheet of paper which fell out first, "'For Elin, Oscar's daughter, from Christian Christiansson.'"
"A present for Elin, perhaps," said the Factor.
"A thousand-crown note!" cried the Sheriff.
The gaiety of the company was breaking into loud congratulations, when the Sheriff, who was still opening the folds of the pocket-book, said, "Wait! There's more than that--much more! One--two--three--fifty thousand--another--and another--and"--then the rapid rustling of bank-notes, followed by the delighted cry, "Two hundred thousand crowns!"
"The very sum he took out of the bank!" said the Factor.
"Kiss me, my precious!" said Aunt Margret.
"Me, too, granddaughter," cried the Factor.
Anna looked stunned, and Magnus like one who wished the earth to swallow him. But the Factor rattled along with shouts and laughter.
"Now I understand everything. He has given the money to the girl, but left it to her friends and relations to advise her as to what she is to do with it."
Elin's blue eyes being still full of bewilderment, the Factor kissed her again and said, "Now who do you think has left you this great fortune, little one?"
"Christian Christiansson," said the girl.
"Certainly! But don't you know who Christian Christiansson is? No? You neither, Anna?"
Anna was trembling on the verge of discovery. "Who?" she said, but rather with her lips than with her voice.
"Why, Oscar--your son Oscar, who isn't dead at all, and has come back and made amends to everybody! I always knew there was good stuff in my godson!"
The truth burst on Anna in a whirlwind of joy--joy that her son was alive, joy that he had come home and justified her faith in him, joy, too, though with a twinge of pain in it, that he had gone away again and further trouble with Magnus was averted. A prayer gushed from her heart and she wanted to go down on her knees.
"My son!" she said in a breathless whisper.
"My father!" said Elin, with a tenderness the word had never had for her before.
The company were now cackling and crowing again, but the two women--the old one and the young one--looked round for Magnus. He was standing at the back, his strong face all broken up and melted. It was not at this moment that the truth had first burst on him. That had come like a blinding blow of light the instant he had entered the guest-room and realized that God did something after all in this world for His children.
"Mother--Elin!" he stammered, and he opened his arms to them.
"It's the miracle, isn't it?" said the girl.
It was the miracle indeed.
* * * * *
There was no auction in Thingvellir that day, and when the bells rang for service the company went to church. The little wooden tabernacle was full of worshippers, for it was New Year's Day, and the farmers had ridden over with their families from all the country round about. They sat, in their thick mufflers and snow-stockings and the mist of their smoking breath, as far up the church as the square rail enclosing the communion table, on stools about the octagonal pulpit and even among the refuse, the lumber and potted-meat barrels that were stored in the gallery.
The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.
Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson ("All we like sheep have gone astray"), while he gave out his text ("This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise"), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death's sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem ("Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning"), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin's silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother's, Magnus sat with his face toward the picture on the wall above the communion-table.
It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.
That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit of war with God, he had entered the stranger's bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, "Stop! or the voice of thy brother's blood will cry unto Me from the ground!"
When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumor of what had happened in Anna's household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.
The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm, for a cup of coffee.
It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralyzed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret remained behind to roast it.
The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast.
"Every snow-cowl has an end," he said, "and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson's family and over my family, is now gone for good. 'Show the man and not the table,' says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man's guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before.
"Brothers and sisters, I give you a health--Anna's long-lost son,ourlong-lost son, Iceland's long-lost son--Oscar Stephen-son!"
The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.
VIII
On the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them, white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman's eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.
You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under his feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapor.
An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.
At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!
After he had passed through the heat and smoke and come out on the clear heights beyond he paused to look back. The world around was all white and stark under the snow of last night's storm, but a crimson shaft from the sun which had not yet risen was crossing the topmost peaks, and the lowlands were still sleeping in a veil of mist. He thought he could hear the ringing of the church bell, and that sweet human sound came winging its way up to him through the vapor of the sulphur-pits as the singing of a star might rise through the clouds of the world to the ears of the souls in heaven.
Presently the sun strode up and the mist fell back, and then he saw in the valley far below the little church itself and the home he had left behind him. He had left happiness there, and love, and warm comfort, for that was his reparation to the dear ones he had injured, and now for his atonement to God he was going out alone, stripped of everything and unknown to any one.
It was as much as he could bear to think of that, but he smiled to himself sadly while he pictured the surprise and joy of the happy scene when the girl would come out with the pocket-book and the auction would be stopped. He thought, too, of his mother in church, with a soul full of gratitude, and saw Elin with a ray of sunlight from the lead-lighted window on the heart-breaking sweetness of her smile. It was not thus that he had expected to leave them when for ten years he had worked by the sweat of body and spirit that he might come back and be forgiven. But it was not in this world that the prodigal could be taken back; not here that any earthly father could run to meet him and throw his arms about his neck. What he had sown he must reap, and not all his penitence and tears could undo what he had done.
It was long before he could take his last look at the home he was leaving forever, and when at length he drew a deep breath and went on, he had to comfort himself with the thought that Thora would be pleased with him for giving up their child to Magnus. Her voice from the other world seemed to come to him and say, "Well done! Poor, brave, wounded heart, God's angels rejoice over you!" But it was hard to find solace in heavenly cheer while his blood ran warm and yearned for human company.
Before he was aware of it he was at the foot of the glaciers, those great lone homes of Nature never trodden by the foot of man or animal, where no bird sings and no flower grows, where only the wind moans over motionless billows of ice and the sun rises in a blank barrenness on chasms of the frozen deep. Looking back from this place he could see nothing of the valley and the houses of men, or of anything but a wide circle of mountain peaks, all silent and white, in which he was the only living thing. And then the feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity amid these grand but grim surroundings elevated his senses and affected him like music, like composing, with a sort of ecstacy which was part rapture and partly pain.
In this ecstasy of emotion he asked himself if his life had been wasted, if happiness was gone from him even if, because he had sinned, there was nothing before him now but renunciation and suffering. And then the teaching of his childhood came back to him with a new and sublime significance, and he saw for the first time the lesson of life and the meaning of death. The lesson of life was Duty--to do right without expectation of reward or fear of punishment; and the meaning of death was to bring to the sinful, penitent soul the pardon the world can not give.
Then thank God for life, but thank God for death also! Whatever a man's sin, Nature could not forget it, and the laws of life could not forgive, but the mercy of God was without measure of guilt, and the gates of heaven were wide!
God veiled His face from His creatures, and to man's questioning eyes the infinite wisdom was as blank as these white walls of ice and snow, but two thousand years ago a simple Galilean had read this riddle of life as no man before or since has read it. He had read it for all men, good or bad, but most of all for wayworn sinners like himself, for whom the world has no pity, and no forgiveness. And though he was the guiltiest of the guilty, and his sin had found him out, and as the price of his repentance he had had to give up everything in life that he held most dear--the love of his child and the hope of pardon and reconciliation--yet love and pardon and reconciliation were waiting for him still when God's own voice should call him, and "this mortal should put on immortality."
By this time he was in that mood in which a man of his temperament finds it difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary, in which he hears the sounds of Nature and mistakes them for voices from the other world. He had wandered without knowing it from the path of the pass, which was marked by stones standing upright out of the snow, when the volcanic fire in the womb of the mountain began to shake it with mighty throbs, and then suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a crash and a resounding rumble as of echoing thunder coming down from the snow-capped heights.
Oscar Stephenson did not see or hear or feel anything. He was only conscious of a burst of heavenly music, of a sense of ten thousand angels singing an anthem, a triumphant pæan of praise that grew louder and louder every moment; a sense of blinding light, and of traveling at a terrific velocity into the realms of the sun; a sense of the Day of Judgment, of the life of the world being over, its busy throngs gone, its pageants finished, its honors, distinctions, castes, gold, wealth, and fame passed into nothingness; a sense of being outside the great Judgment Hall with an infinite multitude of kings and beggars, good men and bad, the guilty and the innocent, and of kneeling there among the meanest and most ashamed; a sense of a spirit stooping to him and taking his hand and saying, "Come," of looking up into her face, and seeing it was Thora, and of his breath coming so fast and short that he could scarcely breathe; a sense of stumbling along with his head down and the spirit leading him forward and singing as they ascended; a sense of an overwhelming Presence somewhere in front of him, of the music dying down and becoming fainter and fainter, and then of an awful hush and of a blessed Voice which said:
"FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, WAS LOST AND IS FOUND."