Complete works of hall c.., p.422
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 422
“Well, yes, if that will do, sir.”
“I should like it above all things.”
There was a moment’s silence, and he thought his mother was looking at him again. “Then perhaps you are an Icelander?” she said.
“Yes, I’m an Icelander,” he answered.
“What is your name?”
Another wild impulse to reveal himself immediately to his mother nearly swept down his fears, for he was choking with a sense of duplicity and his conscience was fighting in contrary ways, but after a moment his prudence conquered, and with a gulp in his throat he said —
“They call me Christian Christiansson.”
“Well, it’s lucky you found us up, sir. We were on the point of going to bed.”
“I suppose the other members of your family are gone already?”
“There’s only one besides what you’ve seen — my granddaughter — and she had just gone off as you came in, sir.” He looked at her as she was crossing in front of him, and saw that she was wearing the brooch which he had given her when he came back from Oxford. That sent all the blood to his head again, and he was saying, before he was aware of it —
“Do you know, landlady, I’ve slept in this house before?”
“It must have been a long time ago then — I don’t remember you.”
“It is a long time ago. That,” pointing to the portrait of Anna on the wall, “that is a portrait of yourself, isn’t it?”
“It used to be, but I was younger when it was like me, sir.” A sudden softening came into his voice as he replied, “It was exactly like you when I saw you last, landlady.”
“Then you’ve not been here for ten years at least, sir.”
“Quite ten years,” he answered. “And that,” pointing to the portrait of the Governor, “is a portrait of your husband.”
“It must be more than ten years since you were here, sir, for my husband is more than twelve years in his grave.”
“It is more than ten years. In fact it is sixteen years — nearly sixteen.”
She looked fixedly at him for a moment and something in her memory seemed to stir, for her bosom heaved perceptibly, but she only said, with a deep sigh, “We’ve seen trouble since you travelled in these parts before, sir.”
“Ah yes, I’ve heard of it — I heard of it in Reykjavik. You had a son—”
“That was my son who opened the door to you.”
“But you had another son — a younger son.”
“Yes, but —— — we never talk of him now, sir.”
“Who’s portrait is that in your brooch, landlady?”
“It’s his — he is dead.”
“Died in disgrace, didn’t he?”
“Who knows that, sir? Man sees the deed, they say, but God the circumstance.”
“They think hard things of him in Reykjavik, though. They say he robbed his father of every penny when he went away, and never sent anything home towards the maintenance of his child.”
“It needs no skill to wound the defenceless,” said Anna, bridling up. “The father robbed himself to save his son, if you want to know the truth, and as for never sending anything home for the child the poor boy had nothing to send, for he was poor himself, sir.”
“So you found that out, did you?”
“After he was dead we did — one of his father’s English friends wrote to tell us so. And all the time he had been writing letters to me to say how busy he was and how well he was succeeding — just to keep up my heart and save me from fretting.”
The mother’s lingering fondness for her prodigal was rising in her eyes and breaking in her voice and she was trying to turn away, but he could not let her go.
“What a pity his father didn’t live long enough to hear that! It would have softened his heart towards him, perhaps.”
“It didn’t need softening, sir — not at the end at all events.”
“His father forgave him, did he?”
“He died thinking his son had become a great man and had justified all his hopes and atoned for everything. It was only a delusion, sir, but it made him very happy.”
“Your son was a musician, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were.”
“And where were they?”
“In his poor father’s hands.”
Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said —
“The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel — a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him.”
“He was nothing of the kind, sir,” said Anna. “He may have done wrong — I’m not defending him — but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me—”
Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna’s faltering words. “God bless her!” he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, “I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I’ve heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland.”
“I hadn’t meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near — Hush! He is coming back.”
But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said —
“Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child.”
“I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma.”
Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss — for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night.
“This is my granddaughter, sir,” said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her — a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, and plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.
It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had travelled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.
II
“WELL, now that you are here, you had better lay the table,” said Anna.
“Yes, grandma,” said the girl.
“Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee.”
“Yes, grandma.”
“Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson — my granddaughter will wait on you.”
“I will,” he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.
Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from selfconsciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some songbird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, “My child! My child! Doesn’t something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!” But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say —
“Your name is Elin, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl.
“What a beautiful name it is, too — Eleen! Your father chose it, didn’t he?”
“I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?”
“Grandmother and I,” he stammered, “have been talking of your father. You don’t remember him?”
“Oh no, sir — he died when I was quite little.”
“What a loss that must have been to you, my child!”
“I can’t say that, sir,” said the girl, “because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference.”
“What a loss to your father himself then! How happy you would have made him, and how proud he would have been of you!”
“I can’t say that either,” said the girl again, “because he lived five years after I was born, and it seems he never took any notice of me.”
“Did grandmother tell you so?”
“Oh no, sir. Indeed no! Nor Uncle Magnus neither. But everybody knows all about my father, and even the girls at school knew that.”
A feeling of mortal shame came over him, and the warm pulsing place in his breast grew still and cold.
“So you are not sorry your father is dead, Elin?”
“It wouldn’t be right to say that, sir.”
“At all events you feel no love for him?”
“I never knew him — you can’t love somebody you never knew, can you? Perhaps if he had lived longer and returned home I might have come to love him. But I don’t see how I could if what people say about him is true.”
“What do they say, my child?”
“They say he was unkind to my mother, and that that was one of the reasons why she died so early.”
“Then you never wish you could have seen and known your father?”
“How can I? If he wasn’t good to my poor mother, why should I think he would have been good to me? But see, your supper is ready. Grandma will bring the coffee presently, — won’t you begin with the meat, sir?”
He sat down to the table but his hunger was gone. For a moment he almost wished himself back in the black night from which he had come. The girl’s simple words had been ringing the death-knell of his expectations. He had left her all these years to the keeping and care of others — could he expect to come back now and find the affection he had forfeited? Ah no! He had come too late — too late! But just as one part of the plan he had formed for himself was becoming vague and shadowy a gleam of new light was shot into his brain, and his heart rose with a bound.
“Didn’t grandma call you Christian Christiansson?” asked the girl.
“Yes,” he answered. “Ever hear that name before, my child?”
The girl turned to him with a face glowing with excitement and said, “Everybody in Iceland has heard it, sir. It is the same as the name of the great composer who lives in England.”
A deafening tumult of joy was rising within him, and he said, “So you — you have heard of him, have you?”
“I sing his songs, sir. They are beautiful! I think they are the most beautiful songs in the world. Would you like me to sing one of them while you eat your supper?”
“Will you?”
“I should like to,” she said, and before he could catch the breath which had been suspended she had slipped off like a shaft of moonlight and was back like a ray of the sun, bringing a guitar in her hands.
“This was my mother’s guitar, and now it’s mine, and it’s such a good one,” she said, and with the utter freedom from self-consciousness which is the charm of children she sat and began to play. After a moment she stopped, with her head aside, and said —
“Which should it be, I wonder? But perhaps you know them all and would like me to sing something in particular?”
His face was down, the waves of emotion were surging through and through him. “Sing — sing anything you like, my darling,” he replied.
The fluttered earnestness of his words startled her for a moment, but she only smiled with a new sweetness and began to sing, first in low, clear half-tones, and then in a high, tremulous treble that was like the peal of a lark at the gate of heaven.
Christian Christiansson could not eat; he could only rest his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hand. His own child was singing his own song to him in a voice that was like her mother’s voice and like his own voice too!
When the song was done she turned to him again with eyes shining with unshed tears and said, “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“It was beautifully sung, my child, beautifully!” he said. And then, after a moment, “Elin, would you like to hear something of the man who wrote that song and how he came to write it?”
Elin’s eagerness was heartbreaking. “Indeed, indeed I should,” she said. “Do you know your namesake then?”
“I have known him all his life, my child.”
“Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble.”
“He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn’t know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much — oh so much — to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth.”
As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again.
“How beautiful!” she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.
There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labour he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass — her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephensson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?
In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice —
“Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it.”
And then, having both in the room at one moment — his mother and his daughter — his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, “Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!”
Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, “The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I’ve rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed.”
“Let us have a bottle of brandy first,” said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus’s bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.
III
THEY were less like each other now than ever before — the elder with his matted, black beard, his strong features, and the vertical lines in his low brow under the upright stubble of his iron-grey hair; the younger with his luminous brown eyes and delicate face, his full round forehead, and his thin, silken, light hair brushed backward to the crown.
Christian Christiansson was quivering to the core at this first encounter with the brother whom he had wronged and ruined, but he tried to bear himself bravely and to see how safe it would be to reveal his identity when the time came to do so.
“It’s good of you to give up your room to me,” he began.
“That’s nothing — nothing at all,” said Magnus.
“And perhaps you ought to know why I’m here to-night.”
“Please yourself, sir — please yourself.”
“To tell you the truth, then, I’m here to attend the auction to-morrow morning. I only heard of it in Reykjavik yesterday, having arrived by the Laura the day before.”
“So that was the business that brought you, sir?”
“It was. I’ve been abroad for fifteen years, and I’ve made some money, and now I’ve come home to invest it. So knowing this was a good farm—”
“None better in Iceland, sir, if it only had a chance, and if you can afford to buy it out and out—”
“I think I can — I’ve money enough in my pocket at this moment to buy the place to-morrow and leave some for something else. I’m sorry for you, though, and if it’s painful to you to hear me talk like this—”
Magnus, who had been rolling in his chair like a man whose mind as well as his body was uneasy, began to laugh immoderately. “Not at all, sir! Not at all!” he said, filling his glass. “It’s pleasant to hear of anybody having more money than he wants. For my part, I’ve never had enough to pay my debts, sir. For sixteen years I’ve been ploughing the waves and now,” raising his glass and draining it, “I’m reaping the breakers, b — them!”
