Complete works of hall c.., p.406
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 406
At the foot of the stairs he excused himself when the mourners went in to their meal, and he was seen no more that day.
The dinner was a cheerless thing, being served in the room that had witnessed the home-coming, and so chilled with memories of that happier event. Silently, or in whispers, the mourners bade their adieus and crept away one by one, leaving the few remaining members of the two families with wide spaces between them at the table like gaps in a toothless skull. —
The Governor and the Factor had not spoken since their return from the Proclamation, and the interval of silence had made the rift between the two old friends grow wide.
“Ah well,” yawned the Factor, “it’s all over, I suppose.”
Then he turned to the Governor and asked sharply, “Where is Magnus? I’ve seen nothing of him to-day.”
The Governor did not answer and Anna dropped her head, and then Helga, who was the only other person present, said quietly —
“Somebody saw him at the hotel — he did right not to come to the funeral — they say he was not quite sober.”
“Just like him,” said the Factor. “A yell is all you hear of a wolf, and but for his last drinking bout perhaps nothing of this would have happened.”
The Governor’s proud face quivered, but he did not speak, and soon afterwards the Factor and Helga went away.
XI
EARLY next morning, before the household was astir, the Governor was in his bureau, ready to begin on the arrears of business, when somebody knocked at the door. It was Magnus, white and worn, but sober and serious as a judge.
“May I speak to you, sir?” said Magnus.
“Well — perhaps for a moment — come in,” said the Governor.
It occurred to the Governor as Magnus entered the bureau that he had come for money to help him with the farm, and he said immediately —
“If you have come for financial assistance towards stock and seed and what not, I ought to tell you at once, Magnus, that I have nothing to give you. I have already spent as much on the farm as I am justified in spending — more perhaps than I ought to have spent on the inheritance of one of my sons in justice to the claims of the other one — and if it is money — ready money—”
“I do not come to ask for money,” said Magnus. “But I come to speak about it,” he added, and then he sat on a low seat and twisted his felt hat between his knees, while the Governor leaned back in his desk-chair and fingered a pen.
“I wish to ask,” said Magnus, “whether you drew, about six months ago, a bill on the Bank of Denmark for one hundred thousand crowns?”
The Governor uttered a contemptuous snort and said, “Certainly not; I have never drawn a bill in my life and never shall do so. Why do you ask?”
“Because a bill for that amount is in town at this moment,” said Magnus.
“Then it is a forgery — an impudent forgery — and the forger must be found and promptly punished.”
The Governor had risen in his chair when he looked at Magnus’s drooping head and a thought occurred to him.
“But are you sure of what you say? Is this story true?” he asked.
“I have seen the paper myself,” replied Magnus.
“And it is signed in my name?”
“It is signed in your name, sir, and witnessed in the name of the Factor.”
“That too?” said the Governor, while a painful smile came into his face. “And pray whom is this extraordinary document drawn in favour of?”
Magnus did not reply immediately — he continued to twist his hat between his knees.
“That may help us to find the motive, and therefore the forger — who is it?”
“Oscar Stephensson,” said Magnus.
“Oscar? Your brother?”
“Yes, sir — and the money was paid to him in Nice.”
“What?” cried the Governor, crossing the floor. “You tell me that Oscar — your brother Oscar — has committed a forgery? Oh, that’s what you mean — don’t deny it — you mean that my son is a forger?”
Magnus made no answer, and after a moment the painful smile about the Governor’s face broke into a more painful laugh. “But why do I trouble myself with such a trumpery story? I see how it is, Magnus — strong drink is a strong tongue — you have been drinking.”
“I have been drinking, sir — I was ill and I couldn’t help it — but I’m sober now, and what I tell you is God’s truth.” Magnus rose as he said this and father and son stood face to face — the little Governor in his uniform with flushed cheeks and pigeon breast distended, and Magnus big, black, clumsy, unkempt, and with lines of suffering in his face.
“And this document, you tell me, is at present in Iceland?”
“It is, sir — two officers of the law brought it here from Copenhagen.”
“Officers of the law, you say?”
“The Bank found reasons to suspect the signatures, so they sent across to verify them.”
“You have talked with these men yourself, no doubt?”
“The Sheriff brought them to see me,” said Magnus.
“The Sheriff too! The Sheriff of all men!”
“He is to bring the two men here to-morrow morning.”
“So he is to bring them here to-morrow morning!”
The Governor, though heated and agitated, laughed once more, and said with a sneer —
“Of course, in the interests of the family, you felt it necessary to examine the signatures they showed you?”
“I did,” said Magnus simply.
“And, without consulting me, to denounce the forger?” Magnus made no reply.
“And even to hint — only to hint — that perhaps you could point to the forger?”
Still Magnus made no answer, and dropping his cynical tone the Governor burst out in choking anger —
“Out on you, man, out on you! I thought you were drunk, or suffering from the delusions of drink, but you are worse — you are sweltering in hatred — and it is an unnatural hatred too — the hatred of your own flesh and blood.”
Magnus flinched as if a lash had cut him through the skin.
“You are jealous of your brother — always have been, always will be — because he is clever and successful and amiable and because everybody loves him — you are as jealous of your brother as Cain was of Abel, and this is your way of destroying him.”
Magnus stood with drooping head while the Governor’s lash fell over him.
“Aren’t you ashamed to stand before your father and parade the whole diabolical catalogue of your unnatural passions? You allow yourself to consort with my enemies, with Oscar’s enemies, with your own enemies if you had the sense to see it, while they try to bring him down at the highest moment of his success.”
The Governor was walking to and fro and lashing himself into a fury.
“At the deepest moment of his distress too! Just when the poor boy is unmanned by the loss of his wife — the dear girl he loved and you insulted. But I don’t believe one word of this cock-and-bull story. That accursed document is nothing but a trick to dishonour my son and to discredit me at the very time when a pack of rascals who call themselves reformers are trying to abolish the Governorship. Let them do it if they can, but while I am Governor here I’m master in this house, and Mr. Sheriff shall be suspended and those men sent back to Copenhagen.”
“Hadn’t you better speak to Oscar first, sir?” said Magnus.
“Certainly I shall, and if I find as I expect — as I am sure — that your story is a pack of falsehoods — let me never see your face again.”
Without a word of defence or explanation, Magnus left the room, and a few minutes afterwards Oscar, at the call of the Governor, entered it.
Oscar’s face was as pale as yesterday, but with a different pallor, a different expression — an expression not of grief and regret but of fear and shame.
“Oscar,” said the Governor, “I am sorry to trouble you about business so soon after your great sorrow, but an ugly story is being told about you in town, and as every lie has its tail, it is only right that you should hear of this one immediately, so that it may be quashed without delay.”
Oscar’s lower lip trembled — he felt the blow before it fell.
“Magnus — your brother Magnus — I am aware he has not been on brotherly terms with you — your mother has told me something about that — and let me say I do not sympathise with his protests and pretensions — I think them nothing but an excuse for his own selfishness — Magnus has just been here, and he tells me that a Note of Hand drawn in your favour for no less a sum than one hundred thousand crowns has been forged in my name. I do not believe the story and I do not want you to discuss it. I only ask you to contradict it — to contradict it flatly — and to leave me to deal with the real offender as I think best.”
Oscar, standing by the Governor’s desk, remained for a moment quite still. Then in a voice so low that it hardly seemed to come from him, he said —
“I cannot contradict it, father. What Magnus has told you is true.”
“True? You say it is true?”
Father and son stood facing each other for some moments without a word more being spoken. Then in hot words broken by breathless pauses the Governor poured out question after question, to which Oscar made no answer.
“You received that sum and signed for it in your father’s name? — in the name of your father-in-law also? One hundred thousand crowns? What has become of the money?”
“It is lost,” said Oscar.
“Lost?”
“It was to pay the debts I had already contracted.”
“Was that at Monte Carlo?”
“Yes.”
There was another long silence in which Oscar stood with quivering lips, and the Governor with contracted brows.
“But this document — how did it come about?”
“I ask myself that question over and over again, father, and I fail to find an answer. I cannot understand myself — I try and I cannot.”
“Were you mad?”
“Sometimes I think I was — I must have been.”
“Did somebody tempt you — put the idea into your head? Somebody, perhaps, who helped you to lose, and promised to help you to repay? If so, who was it?”
“I do not wish to accuse anybody, father — I suppose I have no right to do so.”
“Right? Don’t talk to me about rights. Think about your duties — and the first of your duties is to me, not to the person, whoever it may be, who has helped to destroy you. You have pledged my credit and my honour, but I don’t want to think you altogether bad, and if anybody suggested this devilish device to pay your debts, I ought to be told who it was. Was it Helga?”
At the mention of that name Oscar’s drooping head drooped lower still; the Governor saw this, and then he understood everything.
“Lord God forgive us,” he said in a breathless whisper. “Then Magnus was right after all! And the death of the poor child we buried yesterday was perhaps a part of the diabolical harvest we are reaping to-day! You needn’t wince, sir — I see it’s true without that.”
Oscar did not attempt to excuse himself, and after some moments of silence the Governor spoke again.
“You have deceived and disappointed me, Oscar. I thought I had one son who was an intelligent man and a gentleman, not a forger and a fool. But it is of no use to prolong a painful interview. You may go.”
Oscar staggered out of the room, and the Governor sank into his chair.
XII
THE proud man was abased. For the first time in his life he was degraded in his own eyes. His own son had committed a vulgar crime and exposed himself to a vulgar punishment.
In the first pain of surprise and humiliation he saw himself covering up the whole wretched episode. But he was too vain to be proud, and at the next moment he began to count with his conscience. Thus far he had tried to do what was right in Iceland, and he would do what was right to the end, whatever it might cost him.
Oscar had offended against the law and he must bear its righteous punishment. It might be eight years’ imprisonment, with the ruin of all his prospects, the waste of all his talents, and the wreck of all his happiness, but he must go through with it to the last hour, the last penalty, the last pang.
So felt the Governor as judge, and if as the father he felt differently it was only with a different intensity. His favourite son — the son whom he had indulged and pampered in the past — for whom he had planned and prepared so many things in the future — had committed a crime against his country and against himself, relying upon his father’s love and pride to save him from the painful consequences, no matter what sacrifice it might cost him in hard-earned money or in money still to earn; no matter how much it might put him at the mercy of a scheming crew who were striving to pull him from his place! It was selfish, it was heartless, it was shameful, it was infamous, and it deserved a double punishment.
Feeling more bitterly against his son than he had ever felt before against any human creature, the Governor passed the day in torment, and he was sitting alone in his room late at night, with no light but the sleepy glow from the open stove, when the door opened noiselessly and Anna entered. She looked as if she had been crying although her eyes were dry, and the Governor reproached himself that in all his sorry summary of the consequences of his son’s crime he had never once thought of his son’s mother.
But neither did she think of herself, and now sitting by the stove and stirring it she began to talk of Oscar.
“He has fallen asleep at last,” she said, “and his troubles are over for a little while anyway. He went up to his old bedroom to-night, Stephen, the one he slept in when he was a boy — when Magnus and he were boys together. I sat with him until he dropped off and he held my hand all the time, just as he used to do after he had been naughty and you had sent him to bed without his supper. He looks quite like himself now, poor boy, and if you could see him lying there on the pillow, you would think the old days had come back, when you used to go up with the candle to look at him, and wipe the tears from his little face while he lay asleep and stroke his curly hair. Ah dear, how easily he could throw off his troubles in those old days, Stephen! Next morning you would hear him romping about overhead, and singing like a lark.”
“A shallow nature, Anna,” said the Governor, “ a shallow nature on which nothing can make a serious impression — always has been, always will be.”
“Oh but this will, Stephen, this will make a deep impression, and if the poor boy could only have another chance he would turn over a new leaf and set to work in good earnest, and realise all your expectations. And then think — only think, father, what a dreadful thing it would be if one brother were to drag the other into the dock — dreadful for us, I mean. We should lose both our children, for Oscar would be lost to us one way and we should never be able to look on Magnus again.”
“Our children have always been at war, Anna, ever since their earliest infancy.”
“Don’t say that, Stephen. When they were little they loved each other dearly. It was not until they grew up that they were different. And then others came between them — one other anyway, and — who knows? — perhaps she has been the cause of all this trouble.”
“Has Oscar said so?” asked the Governor.
“He will say nothing against anybody,” replied Anna. “That was always the way with Oscar. But if somebody tempted him and he was weak, and if our poor boy must go to prison while she—”
“There is a weakness that is wickedness, Anna, and must bear its pains and penalties.”
“Yes, I know,” said Anna. “I remember you said the same words long ago when the sailor lad killed his sweetheart in a fit of drunken passion. The mother was a widow and she came to ask me to plead with you for her son. He was a good boy, she said, and if it had not been for the drink he would never have hurt any one. You spared his life, you know, and he was sent to prison. And, dear me, how the poor woman kissed me and wept on my face for joy! But she came to think that for her part it might have been better if her boy had died instead of being locked up for ever. She could never forget it, and when her eldest daughter was married and her house was full of people, and everybody was happy, she suddenly remembered and ran upstairs to cry. And then on wintry nights, when the wind was moaning over the sea and she was putting the little boys to bed, she always thought of their brother lying alone in the big brown house up the road and round the corner. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had been sent away, she thought. And she was only a poor widow who washed at the hot springs.”
The night wind was moaning over the sea at that moment, and the Governor, who had been walking to and fro, struggling to be righteous and severe, was feeling a pain in his parched throat.
He stood for some moments by the window with his hands interlaced behind him, looking out through the dark pane on the flying moon, and then with an obvious inward effort he said —
“Anna, if I acknowledge this signature we shall have nothing left — nothing but my salary. Even my salary is threatened, and if it goes we shall be without anything in the world.”
“Why should we think of that, Stephen?” said Anna. “We had nothing when we married, and yet we were very happy. It is true we were young then, and now we are old, but if poverty comes again we shall know better how to bear it. And if we have nothing else we will have each other — and our boys too — both our boys — wherever they may be by that time — and neither of them will love us the less because we have given up everything — everything we had in the world — that they might still be honoured and respected.”
The clock struck twelve in the tower of the cathedral with a reverberant ring that passed over the sleepy town, and the Governor stopped in his restless perambulation.
“It is late, mother,” he said in a husky voice, “let us go to bed.”
XIII
NEXT morning the Governor was in his bureau again. He was now firm and composed, and waiting calmly for the officers from Copenhagen. They came early, headed by the Sheriff, and bore themselves largely, like men who were conscious that they were about to administer a painful shock.
