Complete works of hall c.., p.404
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 404
“Sleep, baby, sleep,
Angels bright thy slumbers keep,
Sleep, baby, sleep.”
When she came to herself again it was dark in the bedroom, yet she was still singing. The baby began to cry and she wished to comfort it, but she found she could not speak. Its little body felt cold against her breast, and she wanted to cover it up in the blanket, but her arms were heavy and she could not lift them.
There was a moment of agonised consciousness, but the good Father sealed the senses of His suffering child again. She thought a majestic figure entered the room, clothed all in white, and lifted the baby out of her bosom, saying, “Suffer little children to come unto Me.” She knew quite well who It was, but when she looked a second time the figure had the face of Magnus.
Then it seemed to her that it was she herself and not the baby that had been lifted up, yet she felt no fear at all, nor any pain, nor any heartache.
At that moment the women who stood about the bed came back and they began to sing, “Safe in the arms of Jesus” — just as she had heard them singing it when she listened at the door of the Shelter.
She smiled and drew a deep sigh; a sweet, long breath of joy and rapture; and then the darkness lifted and — it was Day.
VII
THAT day had been a prolonged triumph for Oscar. The festival of the Proclamation began with service in the parish church, and though the Governor and the Thingmen only had been able to pack into the little place, the churchyard outside and the home-field of the parsonage had been thronged.
After the service there was a procession from the church door to the ancient place of proclamation, and Oscar had ordered and marshalled every one. First the town band, then the Governor and his executive in their gold-braided uniforms, the Bishop in his robes, the Thingmen in their scarves, the clergy in their black cassocks and white ruffs, and finally a vast following of the people. It was a gorgeous spectacle such as no man could remember to have seen on that spot before.
The Proclamation itself was an imposing ceremony. Sitting on the Law-mount as on a natural platform of lava rock, with his face to the east and the Cross of Dannebrog on his breast, the Governor read out one by one the titles and descriptions of the acts which had been passed by parliament; and after each of them he lifted his head and cried to the people on the plains below, “Is it Yea or Nay?” And then the people, led by Oscar, shouted “Yea.”
When the reading was finished the Governor cried, “Long live the King,” whereupon Oscar led the cheering, three times three, and when the band struck up the national “hymn he started the words of the chorus.
But the last feature of the function was the best, and that was the singing of the hymn composed by Oscar himself. It was a hymn to Iceland, the cradle of the Vikings, the scene of the Sagas, the parent of parliaments, the mother of the mighty Northlands.
Standing under the brant face of the Law-mount with his choir of one hundred and fifty on the sloping ground in front, Oscar conducted with great vigour. His prelude pleased the people, but when he rose to the height of his argument and struck the patriotic note, his love for the stern old Northland —
“Isafold! My Isafold! Great land of frost and fire,”
his hearers were carried away and some of them shouted and wept.
After the hymn was over the Thingmen crowded about Oscar to congratulate him, and some of the country-people fell upon his neck. The Governor, too, sitting above, was the object of many congratulations. “But this is genius,” said one. “An inspiration,” said another. “Our Oscar will be a great musician some day,” said a third. And the old man took the tributes quietly, almost silently, but with the shining face of a father who was proud of his favourite son.
When the ceremonies ended only one name was on everybody’s lips, and that was the name of Oscar Stephensson, and hundreds hummed the strains of “Isafold! My Isafold!” as they trooped off to dinner.
Oscar and Helga dined together at the Inn-farm in a corner of the hall which was thronged with guests. But they were both too much excited to remain in mixed company, and after dinner they escaped to the margin of the lake, and to the solitary parts of the plain. There they gathered blueberries and, partly to restrain their excitement and partly to nourish it, they talked of nothing but the wild flowers.
When the sun began to sink they returned by way of the parsonage, where the Governor, with the Factor, the Bishop, and certain other officials had taken their dinner apart. The little guest-room was dense with smoke, like the mouth of a geyser, and the faces that came and went in it were discussing the merits and defects of the old order and the new. Both Governor and Factor were for the old, as exemplified by the day’s ceremony and Oscar’s hymn, but others held that changing times brought, changing needs, and that Iceland would be the better for a new constitution, with Free Trade and modern methods.
“They’ll go on till midnight and never get home to-night,” whispered Helga, as she slipped out with Oscar.
On returning to the farm they found people striking tents, and leading horses from the crowded horsefold to prepare for the return journey.
“I’m afraid I’m too tired to go back to-night,” said Helga.
“Then stay — stay by all means,” said Oscar.
“And you?” asked Helga.
“I must go home in any case — there’s Thora,” said Oscar.
“Your mother will look after her,” said Helga.
But Oscar shook his head, and ordered Gudrun, the housekeeper, to make one of the two guest-rooms ready for Helga.
At that moment some young townspeople were clearing the floor for a dance, and they called on Oscar and Helga to lead off with a waltz. They did so with great delight, and when the waltz was finished they joined the round dance which followed it, and then they danced a second and a third waltz, until they were flushed and hot, and had to go out to cool.
By this time it was dark, and the people who meant to encamp for the night had lighted fires at the mouths of their tents, and were beguiling the hours with various pleasures. One of these was fortune-telling. An old woman, not thought to be over-wise, was going from tent to tent, making random shots amid shrieks of laughter.
“And what do you see here?” said Helga, holding out her hand.
“Ah, this is a good hand,” said the witch. “You are going to be a great lady and eat mutton and beef every day, and drink golden wine and ginger.”
“And what do you see in this?” asked Oscar.
“This? Oh dear, oh dear!” said the witch.
“What’s amiss, mother?”
“Cold water runs between my skin and my flesh.”
“Is it as bad as that, old lady?”
“Don’t ask me — don’t ask me! You have a brother, haven’t you?”
“And if I have, what about him?”
“Beware — beware!” said the witch, and Oscar and Helga turned away laughing.
The moon rose and they wandered into the great chasm, and walked among the shadows of the toppling stones, until they came under a huge stone called Stoker, which stands like a mighty gravestone over a deep pit that is like a tomb. There they sat, with the white moon above and the red campfires below them, and then the boiling, bubbling geyser of excitement in their breasts could be kept down no longer.
“You have had a great success to-day, Oscar,” said Helga.
“So have you, Helga, so have you, for without your presence to prompt and inspire me I should have done nothing.”
“I am happy if I have helped you, Oscar, but you must go on now and never look back — never.”
“You are right, Helga, you are right — to stop would be a sin — an unpardonable sin — almost like a sin against the Holy Ghost.”
“Exactly like it, Oscar, for if any one has a gift he gets it from God, and to bury it, like the man in the parable—”
“There would be no fear of that if I could have you beside me always, Helga.”
A fragrance seemed to envelop him. He felt Helga’s breath upon his face. It made him tremble all over.
“And can’t you, Oscar?”
“Would to God I could, but it is impossible. You will return to Denmark—”
“Not I indeed! I am not without my own ambitions also. I must go back to England, to France, to Germany, to Italy. And so must you, Oscar — you must if you are to be true to your talents and to yourself and to the great future—”
“I know it, Helga, I feel it, and if I could write even one song that would stir the souls of millions it would be better than making a fortune or passing an act of parliament. But when a man has given hostages to fortune, and they are dragging him down — with silken threads perhaps, but still down, down, down—”
He was speaking out of a dry and husky throat, but she answered softly and sweetly, “Are things so absolutely irretrievable, Oscar?”
“Absolutely, Helga, absolutely; and henceforth and all my life long I must learn to go without your comradeship—”
“And what must I do?”
“You must try to live as if — as if—”
The compulsion of passion was driving him on, but he was struggling to hold back. “Helga!” he cried, “do you know what is the deadliest thing in life? It is Love. The painters paint Love as a harmless little Cupid with a handkerchief about his eyes and a tiny bow and arrow in his hands. But Love is a great, blind, blundering monster with a two-edged sword, dealing destruction on every side.”
His words were as nothing, but his quivering voice sang like music in Helga’s ears and she said, “Is it Love or man that does that, Oscar — man with the false sense of right and wrong, his foolish ideals of honour?”
“God knows! Perhaps if I could have thought so a year ago, before I added injury to injury and brought unhappiness on others — but now — now—”
A sensation of triumph came over her and she said, “Isn’t it cowardly to talk like that, Oscar?”
“I am a coward, Helga,” he answered, trembling from head to foot; “to you I can speak the truth — I am a coward, a moral coward, and I cannot face the certainty—”
“But if,” said Helga excitedly, getting closer, “if you had some one beside you who had the courage of life, the defiance of life—” —
“Helga!” cried Oscar, breathing heavily — the earth seemed to be slipping under him like an avalanche.
“Some one who would go on helping you, and ask nothing but your comradeship—”
“Helga! Helga!” He was gasping as for breath in the intoxication of his emotion.
“Nothing but to work with you and to conquer the world with you—”
“Helga! Helga! Helga!”
“Oscar!”
There was a breathless cry from both, and then an almost inaudible whisper, “I shall not go back to-night, Helga.”
When they came to themselves again they were returning — more flushed and excited than before — out of the white moonlight into the yellow mist of the smoking lamp that hung over the dancers in the hall. The young townspeople received them with a shout and called on them to join the dance they were dancing. It was called “Weaving the Cloth,” and the figures were intended to represent the spinning and carding, the weaving, stretching, hammering, and rolling of the thick Icelandic vadmal. The dancers crossed and re-crossed, twisted each other about, beat each other breast against breast, and finally rolled each other round and round.
The music was going fast, and the dancers were singing loud and laughing louder, when there came from outside the sudden barking of dogs, followed by the clatter of the hoofs of a galloping horse. Immediately afterwards there was the rattle of the metal end of a riding-whip against a window-pane, and a voice crying, “God be with you!”
The new-comer did not wait for the customary answer to his salutation, but pushed the door open and entered hurriedly. It was Magnus, dusty and dirty, with a white face and wild eyes.
At that moment Oscar and Helga, blushing and smiling, were in the middle of the floor, locked in each other’s arms, performing the last figure of the dance, and it was thus that Magnus came face to face with them.
“Is she here?” he cried.
“She?”
“Thora! She is lost — I thought she might have found a horse and followed you.”
Then the shuffling feet stopped, and the fiddles tailed off into silence as Magnus, in broken sentences, told the story of Thora’s flight to the Factor’s, her disappearance with the child, and the vain search that had been made for her.
“But surely she would go back to Government House eventually,” said Oscar. “The poor girl would go the long way round to escape observation and home by way of the lake. Did nobody think of that, and stay in the house to see?”
Magnus looked like a man whose eyes, dulled by groping in a dark tunnel, had been stunned by sudden light. Before the others had recovered themselves he had turned about and was gone.
At the next moment Oscar was tramping to and fro on the floor with his clenched fists to his forehead, moaning, “My God! My God!” Helga was combing her hair and putting on her wraps.
VIII
JON, the servant at the farm, was sent over to the parsonage to tell the Governor and the Factor. He found the gentlemen settling themselves for the night, having talked so long that they had decided to remain until morning. But the news of Thora’s disappearance altered everything.
“We must go back immediately,” said the Governor.
“Bring the horses round instantly,” said the Factor.
Less than half-an-hour afterwards a silent and gloomy company were going home — the Governor, the Factor, Oscar, Helga, and a various following of the sympathetic and the inquisitive.
The two old friends were morose and ill-tempered, and for the first time in fifty years disposed to nag and quarrel The Governor blamed Aunt Margret, the Factor blamed Anna; the Governor blamed Helga, the Factor blamed Oscar; the Governor blamed the Factor, and the Factor blamed the Governor. In the half light of uncertainty and suspense their friendship fell before fear, and blood was thicker than water.
It was a miserable home-going to Oscar. The explanation of Thora’s movements with which he had surprised Magnus soon ceased to satisfy himself, and he thought of a hundred fatal consequences. Helga tried to comfort him with various plausible arguments. He had acted for the best — the best for Thora, the best for the child, the best for himself, the best for everybody — and if accident had intervened or the dreadful freaks of dementia had followed, he was not responsible and could not be blamed.
But Oscar’s worst sufferings were from a secret purgatory which Helga’s pleadings did not touch, for the cruellest part of his remorse concerned Helga herself.
The journey was long and tiresome, and every step had its own peculiar misery. During the first hour the moon was shining — a brilliant moon that bathed everything in loveliness — and Oscar remembered the scene in the chasm and reflected that in the very hour of his delirious happiness Thora, perhaps, was lying dead.
Then the moon died out and darkness fell — a murky darkness, blacker than the lava — and as Oscar pushed and plunged along over the stumbles of his pony, the thought came to him that if Thora were dead perhaps it was the best that could have happened to her — the best under the circumstances — saving her from the bitterness of a future which must surely come when Helga and he, struggle as they might, would have to break the bonds that bound them.
And then in that dark and treacherous hour, with no face to look into his face, he felt an immense relief, remembering that if Thora was gone, the consequences of his life’s error were at an end and he was free.
But the dawn came — a bleared, rainy dawn with scalves of vapour stretching across the sun like a cataract over a bloodshot eye — and Oscar’s remorse was doubled by the wounds he had inflicted upon his conscience in the darkness, and he dare not look at Helga as she rode, muffled up and silent by his side.
They were crossing the Moss Fell Heath by this time, and everything around was dark and drear. A solitary raven kept them cheerless company for a while, flying from beacon to beacon and uttering its husky cry. Oscar remembered the scenes of yesterday when the sky was blue, and their blood was warm, and then the thought came to him — like the shooting of the bolt on a man buried in a tomb — that if he was not to be henceforward the most miserable of men he must pray with all his soul and strength that when they reached the end of their journey Thora should be alive.
On reaching the more inhabited districts Oscar allowed the Governor and the Factor to forge on ahead, and Helga to wait for him on the road, while he glanced off to the farmhouses and shouted up at the bedroom windows. But the result was always the same — Thora had not been seen, and Magnus had been there before him.
When they came to the top of the hill from which they had looked back on Reykjavik and on the Danish mail-steamer entering the fiord, the little capital floated in the mist of morning like a city in a woolly sea, and the Laura lay anchored outside of it; but the apprehensions of yesterday were consumed by the fears of to-day, and Oscar thought of one thing alone.
They met farmers trotting out of the town on their little caravans of ponies, yet Oscar did not question them, lest he should hear the news he dare not listen to, and coming at length to the long street of the little capital he did not raise his face to the eyes that peered at him through the curtains of upper windows lest they should reveal the truth he dare not learn.
The fear of disaster had by this time swallowed up any flicker of hope in Oscar, and when, coming up to Government House, he found a crowd of people standing in front of it, he knew too well that all was over. From that moment onward, fact after fact led up to the fatal certainty.
