Complete works of hall c.., p.418
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 418
“Unhappily true, sir, but the Bank has been very indulgent — I say the Bank has been very indulgent — it was impossible to hold back longer.”
“I think that the debt is for interest on a mortgage on the Inn-farm at Thingvellir, and that the money was borrowed by the father of the present owner?”
“That is so, sir, but the interest is long in arrears, and the mortgage — I say the mortgage itself, sir, is the reverse of a good security.”
“Mr. Palsson,” said Christian Christiansson, “if I were to pay you the interest out of my own pocket would that stop the proceedings?”
The banker’s breath seemed to be arrested. “You are very good, sir,” he said after a moment. “But the interest is large; you can hardly be prepared for the amount of it.”
“What is the amount of it?” asked Christian Christiansson. “Eight thousand crowns at least, sir — I say at least eight thousand. And in any case I should be unable to receive it. Things have gone too far. The deed of execution has been served, the advertisements of the auction have been published, and the whole matter is now in the hands of the Sheriff.”
“When is the auction to take place?”
“Let me see,” said the banker, consulting a newspaper, “this is the last day of the year, the auction is advertised for to-morrow, sir.”
“Did you say to-morrow?” said Christian Christiansson, rising suddenly.
“To-morrow at nine in the morning, sir.”
Christian Christiansson resumed his seat and sat for some moments nibbling the top of the pen. Then he said —
“Mr. Palsson, I have been many years abroad, but I seem to remember that when landed property has to be sold by the law in Iceland three auctions are necessary — two at the office of the Sheriff, and the third on the estate itself.”
“That is so, sir, but unfortunately this is the third — the two others have taken place already.”
“So the Inn-farm must go to the hammer in any case?”
“It must go to the hammer in any case.”
“You think there is no help for it?”
“I am sure, sir — I say I am sure there is no help for it.”
“Ah, well — if it must be, it must be,” said Christian Christiansson, and then, as by an after-thought, dipping the pen in the ink, “The interest is eight thousand crowns, you say?”
“At least eight thousand, sir. With legal and other expenses probably ten — I say probably ten.”
“And the principal is—”
“The principal is one hundred thousand, sir.”
“Poor souls, poor souls!” said Christian Christiansson. He began to write his cheque, but the banker went on talking.
“I am sorry for the mother, sir — I say I am sorry for the mother. She belongs to a generation which is rapidly passing away, but there are still many in the town who remember her.
A good, motherly soul, sir — it is a pity misfortune should fall so fast on her in the evening of her days — Blotting paper?”
“Thank you.”
“I am sorry for the son too — I say I am sorry for the son. An Ishmael, sir — always was and always will be — but he seems to have had a terrible time of it. To tell the truth the farm was frightfully over-mortgaged at the beginning, and if he had thrown it up fifteen years ago it might have been better for himself and the Bank and everybody. Apparently he wished to hold on to it for the sake of the family, and to give the poor wretch his due he has made a splendid fight for it — I say he has made a splendid fight for it.”
Christian Christiansson had written his cheque and was tearing it out of the cheque-book.
“Then, as you say, sir, the mortgage was not made by himself, and everybody knows the conditions under which the first debt was contracted. Ah, if that scapegrace brother could only be here to-day! When a man does wrong he seems to think the consequences of his crime will end with his own action, but they are like snowballs rolling in the snow — I say they are like — Two hundred thousand crowns, sir?”
Christian Christiansson had handed his cheque to the banker, and the banker, fixing his eye-glasses, was reading the amount of it.
“Do you really mean that you wish to draw the whole sum at once, Mr. Christiansson?”
“If you please,” said Christian Christiansson.
The banker began to laugh. “Certainly we have no highwaymen in Iceland, sir — I say we have no highwaymen — but unless the money is wanted for immediate purposes—”
“It is wanted for immediate purposes, Mr. Palsson.”
“In that case of course — certainly — may I ask you to wait a little?”
It took half-an-hour to find the money for Christian Christiansson’s cheque, and when it came it was in three bank-notes of fifty thousand each, signed specially by the Minister, and fifty other notes of a thousand. Christiansson put the whole of them in his pocket-book, and they filled it to its utmost capacity.
“I’ve given you a great deal of trouble, Mr. Palsson.”
“It has been a pleasure, sir — I say it has been a pleasure. I only regret that I was unable to help you in that other matter. If you had come to me two days ago I should have sent a messenger to the Sheriff, and perhaps he—”
“Who is the Sheriff in that case, Mr. Palsson?”
“The Sheriff of Arnes, sir. He lives at Borg.”
“How far is that from Thingvellir?”
“Only some thirty to forty miles, sir.”
“About as far as from here to there?”
“About the same, sir, but in this country of no roads and no railways that is sometimes a long day’s journey.”
“Just so! Good day, and thank you, Mr. Palsson!”
“Good day to you, Mr. Christiansson,” said the banker, and looking after him he thought, “What does he want with two hundred thousand crowns at once, I wonder? And why — I say why did he wish to pay the interest for Magnus Stephensson?”
“Thank God I’ve come in time!” thought Christian Christiansson.
And going out of the Bank he told himself, with a thrill of hope and joy, that the mysterious powers of Destiny, which seemed to have made him the plaything of chance and error, could not be wholly evil if they had brought him back to Iceland at the moment of his people’s greatest peril, that he might succour and save them at their utmost need.
VI
THE morning was heavy and cheerless. Dark woolly clouds were rolling over the mountains, a cold wind was coming up from the east, and the voice of the North Sea was loud and shrill.
“We shall have snow before the year’s out, sir,” said one of a group of fishermen who were stamping their feet and beating their arms at the bottom of the Bank steps.
“No time to lose!” thought Christian Christiansson. “I must send for horses immediately and start off without delay.”
But before going to Thingvellir there was something to do in Reykjavik, and that was the most important thing of all — by some excuse or subterfuge he had to see his child as a first step towards claiming and recovering her. She had been ten years at the farm, but he thought she was still at the Factor’s, and he bent his steps in that direction.
Of the Factor himself he knew no more than he had been able to glean at breakfast without betraying a particular interest — that he was still alive, that enough had been saved out of the wreck of his fortunes to enable him to keep his house, and that he lived the life of a misanthrope, blaming the whole world for his misfortunes and all the trouble of his days.
Christian Christiansson might have walked to the Factor’s blindfold, but the house itself when he came in front of it seemed strangely unfamiliar. The once bright little villa looked like a witless man who has lost his place in the world and all hope and all respect for himself. The white paint of the walls was cracked and dirty, the windows were smeared with the salt which is borne on the breath of the sea, the garden was wild, and the cobbled path was overgrown with grass.
It was hardly like a house a young girl might live in, but after he had rung the bell he listened for a light step in the hall. The door was opened by a withered old woman in white ringlets, with her gown tucked up in front. It was Aunt Margret, but the little old maid, once so pert and dainty, had the neglected and frightened look of a cat in an empty house, left behind and forgotten.
Her face was the first he had yet seen of the faces of his own people, and so hard did he find it to play his part that he had mentioned her name before he was aware of it, and she had started perceptibly, as if at the sound of a familiar voice.
“Is your brother at home, Margret Neilsen?” he asked.
“He is always at home,” she answered, “but he never receives anybody now. Who shall I say wishes to see him?”
“Say that Christian Christiansson would like to speak to him.”
Aunt Margret, who was not wearing her spectacles, seemed to listen for a moment as to a voice that came to her from afar, and then she asked him into the house.
As he passed through the hall he listened, in his turn, for the silvery voice he wished to hear, but he heard nothing save the sound of his own footsteps, for the house echoed like a vault. The sense of change made him forget for a moment the object of his visit, and when he stepped into the sitting-room and found the familiar room so different from what he remembered it, so bare, so bleak, so stamped with the seal of poverty (with its scrap of worn carpet on the floor and its two broken firebricks in the cold stove), he felt as if the ironical powers that controlled his fate had brought him there not to see his child but only to torture him.
After a moment the Factor came in with the old fire in his eyes and the old spirit in his step, but wearing a threadbare skull-cap over a threadbare suit that had once been black, and looking like a grey rock in a green place when the sun has gone from it, leaving it grim and hoary.
“I heard of your arrival, Mr. Christiansson,” he said, “and I suppose I ought to thank you for your call, but I am an old man who has lived past his day, and I can’t think why you wished to see me.”
Christian Christiansson had his subterfuge ready. “Coming from London,” he said, “I thought I might be able to tell you something of your daughter.”
“Helga? You know my daughter Helga?”
“I used to know her, but our ways have parted, and we have met only once in ten years. Nevertheless I know all about her, and can tell you what has happened.”
“What has happened, sir?”
“She has become a great singer.”
“A singer, has she?”
“A great opera-singer.”
“Then she’s rich, I suppose?”
“In the way of being so, perhaps, but famous at all events, and a favourite all over Europe.”
The Factor was silent for a moment, leaning on his stick; then he said —
“Well, that will suit her mother, I daresay. As for me I don’t think it matters. It’s ten years since Helga Neilsen left Iceland, and I’ve never seen the scribe of a line from her since. If she’s rich I’m poor, and she doesn’t care anything about it What I call a daughter is one who remembers her father when he is old and past work and the world has got its heel on him. I had a daughter like that once, but they killed her between them — they killed her between them, I say.”
The old man’s voice was breaking, and thinking to comfort him Christian Christiansson said, hardly knowing what he was saying —
“I heard of your trouble, Mr. Neilsen.”
“When did you hear of it? Helga couldn’t have told you. She had too much to do with her sister’s death to talk of it. Did you perhaps — in those days you speak of — did you know my daughter’s husband?”
“Yes,” said Christian Christiansson, for in that heart-quelling moment there seemed to be no escape from it.
“Then you knew a scoundrel, sir,” said the Factor.
Christian Christiansson dared not flinch, though the Factor’s lash had cut him to the bone. With a throttled utterance he tried to plead for charity. Oscar Stephensson never ceased to reproach himself for his share in Thora’s death or to mourn —
“It’s a pretty way to mourn for one daughter to corrupt another,” said the Factor.
“Corrupt?”
“What else was it? He hadn’t been a year in London before he persuaded Helga to follow him.”
“Mr. Neilsen, I have no right to speak for the man we are talking of, but Helga is your daughter, and if it is any comfort to you I tell you that you are wrong — I know you are wrong—”
“How do you know — he lived in the same house, didn’t he?”
“Nevertheless I... I believe in my heart that whatever his failures of duty to your daughter Thora while she was alive, when she was dead he reverenced her memory too much to —— —” —
“Was it reverencing her memory to sell the right to violate her grave, and then waste the money at the gaming-tables?”
The perspiration was breaking out on Christian Christiansson’s forehead and he had forgotten the object of his errand, when the door opened and he looked up in the expectation of seeing Elin. It was only Aunt Margret again, but now washed and oiled, and wearing her spectacles.
Christian Christiansson placed a chair for the childless woman, and began to talk about the child.
“The man we are speaking of had his faults, God knows, but if you had heard him talk about you, sir, and your sister and his daughter — especially his little daughter—”
“He talked about his daughter, did he?”
“Constantly — he seemed to be always thinking of her.”
“He never did anything else then. He left me to bring her up and never sent a penny towards her support.”
“He was poor himself perhaps — indeed I know he was poor.”
“Then what about the letters he wrote to his mother, bragging of his business and the fine friends he was making?” Christian Christiansson dropped his head.
“And when my own business was broken up, did he offer to relieve me of my burden?”
“That was afterwards, Oscar — you are confusing the dates,” said Aunt Margret.
“Hold your tongue, Margret Neilsen — I know what I’m saying. No, sir, when the ingrate at Government House made me a bankrupt and I didn’t know if I should have a roof to cover me, it was the father’s brother who had to take the child off my hands.”
“Magnus?”
“Magnus Stephensson, and he had his mother to provide for already.”
“Then Elin is at Thingvellir! And Magnus has been bringing her up all these years! How good of him! And now he is a broken man himself, poor fellow!”
“Serve him right if he is,” said the Factor. “I’ve no pity for him either — he was the beginning of all the trouble.”
“But when a brave man who has borne other people’s burdens—”
“A brave fool, you mean, sir. Fortune comes to every man once, sir, and it came to him, but he wouldn’t have it. Look at this room, sir. You may not believe it, but I used to have four assistants eating and drinking with me here, and Magnus Stephensson was one of them. He had good ideas in those days, and if he had stayed with me we should have kept out the free traders, and he would have been the first man in the west of Iceland by this time. I gave him every chance, too. I was willing to make him my partner and marry him to my daughter Thora. But no, grasp all lose all, he insulted my girl and turned up his nose at my contract. And now he’s down, but he’s not done yet. What gets wet on a fool gets dry on a knave, and Magnus Stephensson will be worse than a bankrupt before we’ve heard the end of him.”
“Mr. Neilsen,” said Christian Christiansson, who was breathing heavily, “you are wrong again, and you ought to know it.”
“Who says I’m wrong, sir? And what am I wrong in?”
“You are wrong in thinking that when Magnus Stephensson refused to marry your daughter Thora he did so from selfishness.”
“If it wasn’t selfishness, sir, what was it?”
“It was unselfishness — sublime unselfishness.”
“So?”
“Thora had found that she loved his brother Oscar, and to make her happy Magnus was willing to give her up to him. But the contract was made, and you had built all your hopes on it, so to save your daughter from your displeasure he allowed it to appear that he refused her, although he loved her dearly and his heart was breaking.”
The Factor rose to his feet with a wild lustre in his eyes. “But is this true?” he said.
“It is God’s truth, sir.”
“Who did you have it from?”
“From one who should have told you himself fifteen years ago but dared not.”
The Factor turned rigidly to his sister. “Margret Neilsen, do you hear what he is saying?”
Aunt Margret, who was breathing audibly, merely bowed her head.
“I don’t know what to say to you, sir. If what you tell me is true I’ve been hating the wrong man for half a lifetime. And yet people talk of Providence!”
“God veils His face from us, Factor. We are only His little children. He has His own plans and purposes.”
“Good Lord! sir,” said the Factor in a husky croak, “what purpose can there be in blinding a man for fifteen years and letting him break up all his friendships?”
He was walking to and fro to calm his nerves under the shock as of a moral earthquake.
“If I have been wrong about Magnus I may have been wrong about Oscar also. I got frightened when he signed my name, so I helped to send him out of Iceland. And now he is dead!”
Christian Christiansson’s head was down — his throat was surging.
“His father is dead too. We quarrelled about our children, and now it seems it all began with a blunder! He was my friend for fifty years, and I’ve never had another. There’s no such thing as making an old friend in your old age, sir, and when your friends are gone the world gets lonely. Perhaps I was hard on Oscar too. He was my godson. I liked the boy in spite of everything, and he always came to see the old man the minute he set foot in Iceland.”
Christian Christiansson wanted to throw off all disguise and cry, “And I’m here again, godfather,” but he could not and dared not speak. He rose to go, and the Factor took him to the door.
