Complete works of hall c.., p.407
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 407
After the formal introductions the Sheriff leaned above the Governor’s desk and said suavely, almost condescendingly— “These gentlemen have been anxious to show every consideration. They came on an urgent’ matter — I may say a most urgent matter — but they have waited five days rather than break in upon you at a time of domestic tribulation.”
“I am busy this morning, Mr. Sheriff,” said the Governor. “Be so good as to waste no more time than is necessary.”
The Sheriff gasped and fell back from the desk, whereupon the strangers stepped up to it, and one of them, opening a large envelope, said in a tone of indulgent courtesy —
“We have a document here, your Excellency, which claims to be drawn by your authority. Will you be good enough to see if this is your Excellency’s signature?”
The Governor fixed his eye-glasses leisurely, and glancing hastily, almost casually, at the paper put before him, replied promptly —
“It is.”
The strangers looked at each other in silence before they spoke again.
“In that case we presume your Excellency will be prepared to honour it?”
“Certainly,” said the Governor.
“Then your Excellency will be aware that the bill is already overdue, and that two applications have been made for payment?”
The Governor flinched at that question, but recovering himself in a moment, he said shortly —
“The bill shall be met immediately.”
“How soon, your Excellency — a week, a fortnight?”
“Three days,” said the Governor. “Good morning, gentlemen,” and without more ceremony he took up his pen and began to write a letter.
The Sheriff, who was perspiring visibly by this time, had edged round to the door, and after a short silence, in which nothing was heard but the scratching of the Governor’s quill, the strangers bowed to his stooping forehead and backed themselves out of the room.
The Governor’s letter was to the Factor, asking him to come immediately. He came, looking sullen and suspicious, with the air of one who knew something already of the business for which he had been summoned.
“Old friend,” said the Governor, “we have known each other for fifty years, and I have never yet asked you to do me a favour, but I am going to ask you now.”
“H’m!” said the Factor, with a cold smile.
“It is not for my own needs I ask it, but for one who is nearer to me than myself. We who are fathers know what that means; and we also know that a favour done once to our children is done twice to ourselves.”
“H’m, h’m!” said the Factor, with the same cold smile.
“It is a private matter — strictly private — but to you, old friend, I can reveal the secret — your godson has got himself into trouble.”
And then, excusing and extenuating nothing, the Governor told the story of Oscar’s downfall, and the Factor listened with the impatience of one who had heard the sorry tale before.
“He signed my name also, you say?” said the Factor.
“That too, unhappily,” answered the Governor, “but you were merely made witness to the deed, and I am responsible for the money.”
“What are you going to do about it?” asked the Factor in a hard tone.
“Pay it and give the lad another chance in life,” replied the Governor. “And that’s why I sent for you this morning. I can find fifty thousand crowns, and I want you to lend me the other fifty thousand.”
“Not fifty thousand cents,” said the Factor. “Not fifty — to shield a criminal and to cheat the law.”
The Governor’s face whitened, but he answered quietly, “Don’t speak so fast, old friend. Remember that the offence against the law is only an offence against myself, and if I choose to forgive it the law can have nothing to say.”
“What about the offence against me?” said the Factor.
“Remember too,” continued the Governor, “that if Oscar has made free with your name he has certain claims upon your purse — there is the marriage contract.”
“The marriage contract was made for Thora, and Thora is dead,” said the Factor.
“There is the child,” said the Governor.
“I hold the child now and I am prepared to provide for it in the future,” said the Factor, “but I will have nothing more to do with a man who has forged my name, and if any further claim is made — on my business or estate or what not — I will protest against it and publish my reasons for doing so.”
“Oscar Neilsen,” said the Governor, “there is something I have not told you, something I did not intend to tell you, but I must tell it to you now. I have reason to believe — to be confident — that for the trouble in which Oscar finds himself Helga is partly responsible.”
“Can you prove that, Stephen Magnusson?” said the Factor.
“If I cannot prove it,” replied the Governor, “it is because my son — whatever his faults and follies — is still a gentleman; and if you do not know it by this time it is because your daughter is not a lady.”
“Speak of your own, Stephen Magnusson, and leave mine to me,” said the Factor.
“Therefore,” continued the Governor, “when I pay this money — and I shall pay it — you will have the satisfaction to know that though I am a poor man and you are a rich one I am discharging your debt as well as mine.”
With that, red and angry, the Governor walked to the door and opened it The Factor looked at him in blank amazement, and for one swift instant his better nature conquered his greed and he saw what a pitiful thing it was that after fifty years of friendship they should quarrel thus about their children. But one sword draws another from its sheath, and he snapped his fingers contemptuously and strode out of the room.
Then the Governor sent for the manager of the Bank of Iceland.
“Manager,” he said, “I wish you to arrange a loan of one hundred thousand crowns on the security of my farm at Thingvellir.”
“The farm is hardly worth so much, sir — I say it is hardly worth so much,” said the manager. “But in your case there can be little difficulty — none whatever if you are willing to pay the higher interest — I say none whatever if you are willing to pay the higher interest.”
“I agree,” said the Governor, “and let the deed be drawn without delay.”
XIV
HAVING gone through the material part of his preparations the Governor had now a spiritual and more trying ordeal before him, and he went out into the home-field to think over it. Leaving the town behind he walked, with hands, as usual, interlaced behind him, as far as to the margin of the fiord.
It was a beautiful morning. The light was wonderful, a silvery light that made the light of other days seem dull and leaden, full of innumerable sparkles like the stars that are sown in snow. The waters of the fiord were heaving slowly under a quivering haze, and on the sea outside — wide, vast, stretching far away — a number of fishing-boats, with their white sails bellied to a breeze that could not be felt on shore, were going on and on as if sailing into the sky. The mail-steamer was lying at anchor in the bay, getting up steam for her voyage back to England, and a flock of lighters, painted white, were floating about her black hull, like seafowl at the foot of a lava rock. The gulls were calling high up in the air, and from the sheltered side of a little island the last of the year’s eider-duck were coaxing or driving their young ones into the sea to prepare them for their flight to far-off lands.
It was a cruelly beautiful morning, one of those radiant days when Nature, in her indifference to man and his sufferings, seems to conjure up every joyous sound and sight that can trouble the bitterest waters of memory — when the very sunshine seems to break one’s heart.
At length the proud man who was walking through the hummocked home-field, with head bent low by the sorrow of a wrecked and shattered hope, saw plainly what he had to do. In love no less than anger, in justice no less than duty, he had to cast off for ever his favourite son, the pride of his heart and the hope of his life.
As soon as he returned to the house he sent upstairs for Oscar. After some moments Oscar came down slowly, looking more ill and weak than ever, and stood by the stove with drooping head like a prisoner about to receive his sentence. The Governor glanced up at his son from over the rims of his eye-glasses, and at first his heart failed him, but after a moment he steeled himself to his task and began to speak in a steady voice.
“I have sent for you to tell you,” he said, “that for your mother’s sake — I prefer to put it so — I have acknowledged that signature and am preparing to pay the money you have wasted. To do so I am compelled to mortgage every pennyworth of property we possess, so that apart from my official salary I shall soon have nothing. Worse than that, I have had to eat up your brother’s inheritance in order to purchase your liberty, and whether I had a right to do so God alone can say.”
Oscar shivered as from cold; the Governor saw this, waited a moment, and then went on.
“The condition on which I make this sacrifice is that you leave Iceland immediately. You will sail by the Laura which goes back this evening, and, as your honour is my honour, I will give it out that your health is broken after the death of your wife, and that you have gone away to recruit.”
The Governor paused a second time, and when he spoke again his voice was thick and hoarse.
“I shall not expect you to come back soon — I shall not expect you to come back at all. Inasmuch as you have done your best — or worst — to wreck my happiness, I will ask you to consider that henceforth our lives are to run in different courses, and that for my own part I wish to see you no more.”
The Governor’s voice was now husky and indistinct, but still he struggled on.
“You will look to yourself for your livelihood in the future, but that — with your talents, little as you have made of them hitherto — should not be difficult. Whatever happens here I shall never expect you to do anything for me, or for your mother, but if fortune should favour you, and you are able to repay your brother, your conscience may be the easier and — though I do not pity him, for his heart was hard — the earth on my grave the lighter.”
The Governor paused for the last time, cleared his throat, and then said in a firmer tone —
“Only one word more. I thought perhaps your father-in-law might have done something for you, but apart from a promise to provide for the child, he will do nothing. Therefore, as I have reason to fear that his daughter Helga was at the root of the trouble which has so nearly wrecked us all, and perhaps a first cause of the death of our dear Thora, I will ask you to promise me — for your own sake more than mine — to hold no further intercourse with him or his — do you promise?”
There was silence for some moments, and then a muffled sob came as from the stove itself —
“I promise.”
After that there was silence again for a perceptible period, and then a voice — a strange voice that was like a cry — said —
“That is all. And now — good-bye and — and God help you!”
Choking with emotion and blind with tears, Oscar turned about to acknowledge the justice of his punishment — to say that he deserved everything — everything and more — a hundredfold more — but he found himself alone. His father had fled from the room.
XV
WHEN Magnus heard of what his father had done his wrath knew no measure. On the day when he found Thora dead in her bed he had said to himself, “Oscar has done this and he must be made to suffer.” But there was no legal way to punish a man who had tortured his wife to death by every refinement of hypocrisy and pretence, and it was at the height of his anger that the offence against his father’s property had come to him with its diabolical temptation. “Use me,” it whispered, “the damnable spirit of the world understands me better,” and after a struggle in which the devils seemed to fight for his soul, he yielded.
He thought he knew the price he would have to pay, and that was the reason he did not join his family at the funeral. Everybody would loathe him for giving up his brother to the punishment he deserved. His own mother would turn from him, and after his father, being confronted by poverty, had allowed the law to take its course, he would hate and despise the son who had saved him from beggary.
But no matter! When he stood up in court and said, “This is Oscar Stephensson’s handwriting, for he is a forger and a thief,” and a thrill of horror ran through the crowded room, and every eye turned on him with contempt, he would say to his secret heart, “He killed her, and he had to suffer, and there was no other way than this.”
Yet that was not what had happened. His father had saved Oscar from the just punishment of his infamous offence. And how had he saved him? By making him — Magnus — pay the price of Oscar’s riotous living abroad. Thus the vengeance which he had vowed upon his brother had recoiled upon himself, and while his rightful inheritance was wiped out, while the farm on which he had built his last hopes was embarrassed beyond the possibility of redemption, and he was ruined for the rest of his life, the man for whom and by whom he was ruined — ruined in his affections as well as his fortunes — was to be allowed to steal away amid a croaking chorus of sympathy and pity under the cloak of broken health and a broken heart!
What a devil’s world it was in which infamy could masquerade as honour, and hypocrisy as grief! When Magnus thought in this way his eyesight grew dull, and his hearing dense, and he felt a cold pain at the back of his neck. Then he began to use again the only remedy he had recourse to when his head was bad — he began to drink.
But sitting in the darkest corner of the smoking-room of the hotel every word he heard — every conversation that filtered through the smoke and noise and his deadened senses — seemed to stimulate the idea which had taken possession of him — it was the devil’s own world and God had nothing whatever to do with it!
At one moment a student ran into the room and shouted above the laughter and singing of his fellow-students, “Boys, what do you think? Oscar Stephensson is sailing by the Laura to-night!” And thereupon a babel of voices cried, “Really!”
“Never!”
“You don’t say so!”
“True enough — smashed up for good and going abroad for an indefinite period!” —
“Not a bit of it! Oscar isn’t the sort to be broken up like that. Six months abroad and he’ll be home again as bright and fresh as ever.”
“So he will,” thought Magnus, but his heart was fierce and bitter.
At another moment the Chairman of the Town Board came in panting and cried, “News, gentlemen, news! Oscar Stephensson has resigned his seat in parliament!”— “Impossible!”— “Listen!” and the little fat man read, out of his rasping, asthmatical throat, from a sheet smelling of damp paper and printer’s ink a letter from Oscar to his constituents. Broken in health and happiness — compelled to go abroad — impossible to fix date of return — consequently forced to tender resignation — deeply grieved and disappointed — but set the duties too high to ask his constituents to wait, &c.— “That means he’s not coming back!”— “But, good heavens, does he know what he’s giving up? Why, there’s nothing that’s not within the man’s reach — absolutely nothing!”
“I wonder the Governor has allowed him to do it!”
And then Magnus laughed out loud in the fierce bitterness of his heart.
After that the voices were lower for a little while, and when Magnus heard them again somebody was saying, “But a man can love a woman too much altogether. Breaking your life to pieces because you’ve lost your wife isn’t brave, it isn’t manly.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s human,” said somebody else, “and if Oscar Stephensson is smashed up by the death of Thora Neilsen he’s in the right of it, I say.”
“So do I,” cried Magnus, and laughing wildly he dropped his head over his arms on the table. What a devil’s own world it was, to be sure!
There was some whispering and then two louder voices: “Poor fellow! So unlike his brother! Going it fast, they say!”
“His father was pretty hard on him, though!”— “Not harder than he deserved, poor devil!”
The poison in the soul of Magnus was fermenting every moment. Hearing the contemptuous pity with which he was contrasted with his brother — his brother who had wrought all the evil — his temples beat furiously, and one wild thought expelled all other thoughts from his brain. If there was no law to punish Oscar, if his father had conspired to help Oscar to escape, and if the hypocritical community agreed to cover up his fault, one thing at least remained — before Oscar left Iceland he must meet with him! Then, if this was the devil’s own world, let the devil look after his elect!
Magnus’s mind was weltering in this thought as in a boiling sulphur-pit when the captain of the Laura came into the smoking-room with the agent of the steamship company, and seating themselves near to him began to converse apart. “Then he will have to put up with a bed in the hold, for all the berths are gone,” said the captain. “But why can’t he wait for the next steamer?”
“I’ll tell you why,” whispered the agent, “because the Factor’s daughter is to sail by the Vesta, and there seem to be reasons why they should not meet.”
“So that’s it, is it? But their fathers are fools not to know that they’ll meet on the other side if they want to.”
Overhearing this conversation Magnus lifted his head from his arms, drank a large tumbler of brandy and water to the last drop, and walked heavily out of the house. He had not been conscious of the passing of time, but the darkness was now closing in, porters were hurrying with luggage towards the pier, and the first of the Laura’s three bells was ringing.
Magnus was like a man who could not see or hear properly. More than once he collided with people on the parapet, and being big and strong he brushed them out of the way. Some of them cursed him but he did not stop. His clouded faculties were conscious of one idea only — that he must go to Government House and meet Oscar face to face before he sailed.
