Complete works of hall c.., p.414
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 414
Oscar saw Helga hesitate, then take one step away from him and stop, but when somebody in the throng about the table cried excitedly, “The bank ought to be impounded,” he saw her drop her head and follow Finsen out of the room.
“Come this way, Mr. Stephensson,” whispered the manager, and while most of the company were still crowding about the croupier, he half led, half pushed Oscar through a small door to a private corridor, and a moment afterwards there was a roar from the other side of it.
“Stay here. Leave everything to me. I’ll do the best I can,” said the manager, and then Oscar found himself alone in a small room, quite dark and silent, save for the glimmering of lamps in the garden and the deadened rumble of the tumult he had left behind.
How long he stayed there he never knew. It seemed like an hour, but it could hardly have been more than a few minutes. The tumult grew louder, then there was the report of a pistol-shot, and then the noises frayed off to silence.
Unable to restrain himself any longer, and delirious with a wild desire to face the consequences of his conduct, whatever they might be, Oscar was opening the door of his room when the manager returned to it, bringing his hat, overcoat, and gloves.
“I’ve done the best I could for you,” said the manager, panting and gasping. “I have told them you have shot yourself, and your friends have supported that explanation. You must get away at once. You must catch the midnight train to Paris. You’ve only four minutes, but you’ll do it if you run. Here is a second-class ticket to London. Good night! And remember,” said the man as Oscar was passing through a private door to the garden, “remember — Oscar Stephensson is dead!”
X
OSCAR was just able to control his faculties long enough to reach the railway-station, find the train and search out an empty second-class compartment, and then he collapsed utterly. He was like a beast that has been smitten in the shambles and is shattered in every sense and nerve.
Looking up at the lamp in the roof and seeing smoke floating about it, he thought at first the carriage must be afire, but looking again the smoke was gone and then he knew his sight had suffered and he supposed he must be going blind. There was a roaring noise in his ears and he thought it was the roaring of the train, but when the train stopped the noise continued, and then he knew that his hearing was injured and he supposed he must be going deaf. Two officials came into the carriage to examine the tickets, but though he saw their lips moving he could not hear what they said, or rightly grasp what they wanted, until they were turning to go, and then the noise in his head slid off for a moment and he heard one of them say to the other, “Drunk, poor devil!”
This lasted through the dark hours of the night, and when the morning dawned his experiences were yet more terrible. At the first gleam of light his stunned soul awoke, and with a sharp pain like the after-pain of a bullet-wound, he realised where he was and what he was doing. He was flying from the consequences of perhaps the most base and infamous conduct a man could be capable of — conduct the more base and infamous because there was no law to punish it.
Low as he had sunk hitherto he had never sunk so low as this. This was as low as man could go and live in the face of other men and the eye of the light. And he had descended to this depth, he, Oscar Stephensson, son of the Governor of his country! When he thought of his father he thanked God that death had taken him before this disgrace befell.
Every artery in his body seemed to bleed, every tendon to be torn. When the sun rose on him in his ghastly solitude it seemed to sear his very brain, and he pulled the blind down to shut it out.
Then the women passengers began to move about the corridor of the train and he thought of Helga. Although it seemed so long ago as almost to belong to another existence he could still see her frightened face as she sidled away from him last night and left him standing alone at that hideous moment when it seemed certain that he must pay the penalty of the offence to which she had tempted him. He despised her for her cowardice; he loathed her for her treachery; he hated her for herself; and he told himself that never again as long as he lived should love of Helga hold dominion over him.
At one moment he found himself cursing her. At the next he found himself weeping. Could it be Helga whom he was thinking of like this? Helga, who had been so much to him during so many years, who had come so very close to him, nearer than his father, nearer than his mother, nearer — Heaven forgive him! — than his wife or child? Helga, who had been with him early and late, a soft voice always at his ear, a sweet presence always at his heart, a spirit, a support, an inspiration? Helga, whom he had loved and should always love, let her do what she would with him, let him do what he would with her? God pity him! God help him!
Yet his tenderness and tears were stronger than his hatred and rage, and he resolved that for her perfidy and selfishness Helga should be punished, and that he should punish her. There was no longer any need to ask himself how this was to be done. The words that had rumbled in his ears like the roll of a muffled drum when he ran from the gardens of the Casino were rumbling in his ears still. Oscar Stephensson is dead! At first he could not be sure that the manager had really spoken them, so exactly did they echo the wish that had been bubbling within his own breast. But Oscar Stephensson was dead indeed, and the words that might have crushed him with shame moved him more than a trumpet.
If Oscar Stephensson was dead, then the vow he had made in Thora’s death-chamber was dead also! That vow had been intended to punish himself for his infidelity and for all his failures of love and duty, by denying himself the gratification of his greatest pride, the realisation of his highest hopes. But what pride could be gratified and what hopes realised to Oscar Stephensson if his name was wiped out, his identity lost, and he was dead to all the world except himself?
The feverish soul in its hour of suffering found the reasoning sufficient, and Oscar thought he saw as in a glass everything that he had to do. He had to take another name, to bury himself in London, and to set to work on the only task he was fit for! He had to write an opera, as he was now free to do, since Oscar Stephensson was dead, and he was living in the name of another man.
The scene was to be in his own country, among the lonesome grandeur of its untrodden glaciers and the stark sublimity of its burnt-out plains, and the story was to be from one of the fiery Sagas of the same stern old land. And when after many days, many months, perhaps years, eating the bread of poverty in loneliness and obscurity, he had finished his task, and had sent it out like a dove from the ark, men were to know that a new voice had come among them and the name of Iceland was to be on the lips of the world.
Then when people asked each other who was he that in the darkness of years of labour had learnt all the art and mystery of music, he would give no sign because his lips would be sealed, but there would be one who would read his secret. It would be Helga, and she would come back to him in shame if not remorse and throw herself at his feet and cry, “I did wrong, forgive me, and take me back to your heart!”
And then he would answer and say, “You came between me and my sweet young wife; you persuaded me to the act that broke her heart and killed her; you tempted me to the crime that ruined my father and to the offence that destroyed myself, and then you left me to bear my punishment alone. Therefore I have wiped you out of my life; I have cut you off as I would cut off a rotten limb that threatened to drag the whole body down to death. I love you — yes, I can never cease to love you — that is the punishment I shall always bear — but there can be nothing more between us — we part now for ever — your course lies that way, mine this — Farewell!”
As the train rolled along he found a delirious joy in this prospect, which began and ended with the idea that Oscar Stephensson was dead. In the light of that thought he looked back on the past of his life, and many things that had been hard to understand became plain. Again and again he had tried to stop on his downward course and he could not do so. Before he could rise out of the degradation of his past life he had had to drink his cup to the dregs, to go down to the depths, to be covered by darkness and the shadow of death. But at last Oscar Stephensson was dead! Thank God! Thank God!
How strange that at the moment when Helga was tempting him to the infamous act, which if it had succeeded would have made him her slave and the slave of sin for ever, she was leading him by one of Death’s terrific strides to life and liberty! How mysterious and how mighty, aye, and how cynical also, were the powers of Destiny, whose supernatural wings hovered over the lives of men and women and moved their little motives of love and hate and revenge and selfishness like pawns on the chessboard of Fate!
It was in this mood he reached Paris, and having some three hours to wait before his train started for Calais, he walked through the streets until he came to the centre of the city and then sat outside a café to eat a roll of bread and drink a cup of coffee. It was six o’clock and the newsvendors were crying the evening papers. He bought one to beguile the time of waiting, and had not yet opened it when he saw his own name standing out from the front page as if it had been printed in a different ink.
For some moments thereafter a mist seemed to float between the newspaper and his eyes, but he read the paragraph at last. It was a telegram from Nice, headed “Suicide in a Casino,” giving a mangled version of the events of last night, clearly inspired by the manager to protect himself and his house, and closing with the words: —
“The deceased, who was from Iceland, is understood to be son of the late much-respected Governor-General of that country.”
XI
THE paper slipped from Oscar’s fingers and his transport of rapture passed. He told himself that this report would go far, that it would reach Iceland, that his mother would hear of it, and that his child would be told that she was fatherless.
Little Elin was too young to feel grief, but could he allow his mother to believe that he was dead and to weep for him as for one who was lost to her for ever? That would be too cruel; it would be impossible; he would write to his mother immediately; he would write privately saying he was still alive and that part of the report was untrue.
But then came the chilling thought that though he might dispose of the fiction of his death he could not get rid of the fact of his offence, and that when his mother pictured him as one who was flying from the consequences of his conduct, skulking in a slum and hiding his face from the faces of his friends, there would be something in the shame of that end more bitter than death itself, and even his own mother would wish that he had died.
He had not thought of this before, and in the confusion and pain of it he got up from the table at the café and began to walk the streets again. After a while he found himself ascending the steps of the Madeleine, hardly knowing what he was doing, except that he was trying to pass the time by following a stream of people into the building.
It was the hour of Benediction, the most beautiful, the most tender, the most moving of all the offices of the Roman Church. The congregation were chiefly women, and among ladies in silks, whose carriages stood outside, were some flower-sellers from the flower-market round the corner, for there is only one caste in the commune of the cross. One poor woman who took a chair and knelt close beside Oscar had the sad and storm-beaten face that the cross draws to it in every church and country, for its empire is the empire of the oppressed and bereaved and broken-hearted.
“Somebody’s mother,” thought Oscar, as she crossed herself and sighed. But when she raised her weary eyes to the figure of the world-mother above the altar her sad face softened and smiled, and it was almost as if an angel had come down and whispered to her.
Then as the sweet music swelled through the great church the hard lump rose to Oscar’s throat, and thinking of his own mother so far away, he told himself that if she believed he was really dead the angel of Death would comfort her. His faults would be forgiven, his errors would be forgotten, and the dust of death would cover all his transgressions. She would be happier in his death than she had ever been in his life, and though it was a sore thing to think of that, the pain would be his, not hers, and her poor heart would be at ease.
He thought of Magnus, too, how his hatred would be appeased when he heard that his brother was dead, and all the flames of his rage extinguished. Then he thought of his enemies at home, how they would cease to revile him, and how he would pass out of shame, reproach, and contempt into the charity of silence and the peace of forgetfulness. Finally he thought of his little Elin, his sweet motherless daughter, how she would hear no more hard words spoken of her father, but would grow up to think of him merely as one who had died early. Oh blessed and merciful death, which can make those who hate us hate us less, and those who love us love us more!
It was bitter to comfort himself with the thought that he was dead — dead in disgrace and in a foreign country, with no mother’s tears falling on his face and no child weeping by his side, that tragic consolation of the dying. But just at that moment the music ceased, the bell tinkled at the altar, and raising his eyes as the priest elevated the host the awe deepened about him, and he told himself that it was not he who was dead at all but only his sin and misery, and that he might rise, if he would, out of the shadow of death into another and better life.
Then almost before he knew it the thought had become a prayer, and he found himself praying that he might be permitted to begin again, to put the past behind him, and to think of the lost days of his life hitherto as seed that was not dead though he had trampled it into the clay. Out of the heart came the only songs that went to the heart, and out of his shame and suffering in that future he had foreshadowed for himself the voice might come that would speak to other souls as stained with sin as his.
Yet who was he, to speak to any one? Only a prodigal in a far country who had wasted his substance in riotous living, and having come to himself at last, now that no man would give to him, was turning his eyes homeward and crying, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son!”
The service came to an end and the people rose to go. As Oscar rose too, he told himself that in actual fact he would go back home some day. A little longer, only a little longer, and he would return to Iceland. His father would be gone, yes, his poor father would be gone, but his mother would be there, and he would make amends to her for everything she had suffered for his sake and wipe all tears from her eyes. His child would be there also, and he would claim her as he had always intended to do, and though she might not even know his face, she would hear the voice of nature calling her and she would come to him, and he would be a father to her, guiding and protecting her, and she would be a daughter to him, cheering and comforting him, and her love would be his solace for all the pains of life. A little longer, only a little longer!
When he came out of the great church he felt himself lifted into a purer air, where he was no longer a fugitive from the vengeance of his fellow-men, but a pardoned soul born again in a blessed resurrection; and when he had settled in the train for Calais he set himself to consider what other name he should be known by in that new existence which he had just begun.
It had to be a name that would sufficiently conceal his own, yet one that would be characteristic of his country, and, after much beating of the wings of memory, he decided on Christian Christiansson as a name which not only answered to these conditions but possessed an added nobleness of meaning and association that would for ever forbid the lowering of the flag of his purpose.
But after he had concluded that Christian Christiansson was to be his name in the future it cost him a pang to think that Oscar Stephensson was to be his name no longer. Stephen had been his father’s name, and his poor father had expected him to carry it on from strength to strength and from glory to glory. Oscar had been the name his mother had known him by, and it came back to him now in the tones of her voice with the happiest memories of his boyhood. He could hear it in Thora’s voice also in the tremulous happiness of her bridal chamber, in the tender joy of her motherhood, and in the pleading accents of her despair. It was like burying something of himself to bury his name, but Oscar Stephensson was dead, and that name could be his no more.
It was early morning when he reached London, and returning to it after six months’ absence he felt like one who had been dead and was alive again. As the empty streets echoed to his footsteps his spirits rose, and he looked to the future without fear. Though he was coming back friendless and nearly penniless, he saw himself as he would be some day — Christian Christiansson, the composer, rich, respected, honoured perhaps, and perhaps beloved. It might be months, it might be years, but God willing it should come! A little longer, only a little longer!
He had at first intended to look for a lodging where he would be quite unknown, but in his present elevation of feeling it seemed unnecessary to do so, and he determined to return to his old home in Short Street. When he came to Westminster Bridge he stopped for a moment to look down at the houseless wretches who were still asleep on the benches of the Embankment, to remember the night when he had been one of them, and to think of the other night that was soon to come, when the first-fruits of his new life would be in his hands.
He could see it all as in a glass that revealed the future. The curtain would be down on the new opera, and there would be a great demonstration in the crowded opera-house. Again and again the singers would be recalled, and then there would be loud cries for the composer. The cries would rise to a deafening clamour, and the whole audience from the royal box to the topmost gallery would be calling for the unknown man who had breathed his suffering soul into an old Saga and made the dry bones live. But the Unknown would not appear; he would not be there. Where would he be? He would be down here — here under the night sky weeping for joy and gratitude, emptying his pockets among these homeless outcasts in memory of the night when he, too, was homeless and an outcast, and vowing never again to forget the friendless and the fallen or to be hard on the sinner and the prodigal. He could see it happening as plainly as if it had already come to pass! It should come to pass! A little longer, only a little longer!
