Complete works of hall c.., p.423
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 423
Christian Christiansson trembled to his very heart at the sound of Magnus’s laughter — the bitter laughter of rebellion and despair — but he tried to cover up his fear and to carry it off with a cheery tone.
“Don’t be too depressed,” he said. “Nobody knows what the future has in store for him. It’s a pretty dark night outside, but all the same the sun will rise to-morrow morning. Besides, there’s always a sunny side to misfortune if we’ll only allow ourselves to see it. Life is sweet, my friend, whatever happens.”
“You think it is, sir?”
“I know it is, so why should we sit down on our little handful of thorns?”
“Because some of us have nothing else to sit upon,” said Magnus, and he laughed again — the same cold, quaking laughter.
Christian Christiansson shuddered, but struggled on. “You think you’ve failed, but I know some that have succeeded who would be glad to change places with you any minute. They’ve got their gold or their fame or both pouring down on them like an avalanche, and nothing to do with it, nobody to share it with — so it is only so much Dead Sea fruit being piled on their backs. You are not like that. Even if you have to lose your land, you’ve got your health, and a good character and a clean conscience, and your dear ones left to you, haven’t you?”
“That’s why!” said Magnus. “You don’t suppose I’m thinking of myself, do you? It’s just because I’ve got my dear ones left to me that this accursed ill-luck is so hard to bear. What’s it to me to have my houses full of lambs, if the floods have come and they are floating on the lake? You talk like a man who has never known misfortune, sir.”
Christian Christiansson felt dizzy. “Perhaps I haven’t — perhaps I have,” he said in a faint voice, “but I’ve known despair, and I know that no man can live by that. We can only live by hope — not what is, but what is to be — and if we cannot believe, when the clouds are dark, that the world is ruled in righteousness—”
“And is it?” said Magnus. “Does the bad man suffer in this world? Do his sheep die of the rot and his cattle tumble over the rocks, or do they increase faster than anybody else’s? No, sir,” he said, turning away in his seat, “if you’re a rascal ready to rob your own father, the chances are you’ll prosper in this world, but if you’re an honest man trying to do good to everybody, as likely as not you’ll do no good to yourself or to anybody about you.”
The dizziness which had seized Christian Christiansson was increasing every moment, but he said —
“The world has its own way of punishing offenders, and even if they escape in life, death is always waiting for them—”
“Death?” said Magnus, swinging round in his creaking chair. “Death is a blind, blundering monster who strikes down the young and leaves the old, the happy and leaves the miserable, the innocent and leaves the guilty, the poor helpless betrayed one and leaves the betrayer! We have all seen that, haven’t we? I have, I know that much.”
The heat and flame of Magnus’s husky voice had fallen to a thick whisper that was like a broken sob. Christian Christiansson dared not raise his face, but he tried to say —
“God brings out all things well in the end. I have always found it so. The march of the world may be enveloped in darkness, but it tends towards justice in the long run.”
“What is the long run to me, sir?” said Magnus. “I’m only here for a few years and I want justice now. I want to see the bad man punished in the present, not in some future generation. Justice, you say! The sins of the fathers visited on the children — that’s the only justice I see in this world. A poor child left penniless because her father gambled or drank the money he didn’t make — do you call that justice, sir? I don’t!”
Magnus’s thick voice was breaking again, and there was silence for a little while.
“No, no, sir! Don’t tell me we get our deserts in this world — any of us — good or bad. Life gives the lie to that old story — always has, always will do. If you are a cheat or a profligate, or a prodigal, you may live in luxury and travel as far as the sun, but if you are a poor devil staying at home and working your fingers to the bone you’ll get thrown out into the road. But what’s the good of talking? The evil day is coming. Let it come!” —
Never before had Christian Christiansson felt so little and so mean. The sources of pride were dry in him and he was brought very low in his own esteem. In the presence of the brother who had borne his burdens and broken down under them he saw himself as an abject and pitiful thing. He could not raise his head, for he felt as if his shame were written on his forehead, but he struggled to say something, and the only words that came to him seemed to scorch his tongue and parch his throat.
“I cannot dispute with you,” he said. “You’ve suffered more than I have, and no doubt your present troubles are the legacy that was left to you by the prodigal brother your mother was talking about.”
Magnus’s manner changed instantly at the mention of his mother. “She was talking about him again, was she?” he said.
“Does she often talk of him then?”
“Too often, and she seems to think of nothing else. He was the foundation she built her house upon, poor soul, and it fell, but she holds to him all the same.”
“God bless her!” said Christian Christiansson involuntarily. “God bless all women, I say. They’re always on the side of the sinners and the sufferers.”
“They’ll get their compensation somewhere — they must,” said Christian Christiansson — he was thinking of to-morrow morning.
“I see no sign of it in this case,” said Magnus. “She was the best mother to him a man ever had, and he knew it, but he repaid her with neglect and contempt.”
“Contempt?”
“What else would you call it? He lived five years abroad and wrote to her only once in all that time. Yet every night she used to stand outside the door until the post passed, winter and summer, dry or fine, waiting for the letter that never came.”
Christian Christiansson felt as if his very soul were shrivelling up with shame.
“She forgave him for that, though, and when he died — you know how he died, everybody knows it — she thought that all he had been trying to do when he fell into that foul dishonour was to get money enough to come back home and make amends.”
“She thought that, did she?”
“She still thinks it.”
Christian Christiansson had a sense of hysterical oppression at his heart. Again he wanted to tell all, and he dared not. “But if it had been true,” he said—” I don’t say it was, but if it had been — if your brother had really been trying for years to make money solely in order to wipe out the debts he had left behind him — if he had come home with his fortune in his hands—”
Magnus’s dark face darkened ominously, and bringing his great fist down on to the table he said, “There would have been a curse on every coin of it, and I should have flung it in his face.”
Christian Christiansson did not ask him why. He knew too well what Magnus meant. In an instant, by such a flash of the lightning of the mind as must come to the guilty soul on the Day of Judgment, the past of his life lay open before him, and the most awful fact of it stood out with naked vividness — the desecration of his wife’s grave.
It was impossible to plead that this had been only the act of a moment; that he had repented it a thousand times with bitter tears; that he had derived no profit or advantage from it, and had endured for ten years its fearful penalty in the death of his identity. Again and again he had soothed himself with such excuses, but he could not cheat his conscience now. Why was he Christian Christiansson? How had it come to pass that he had two hundred thousand crowns in his pocket and that his works were known all over the world?
All the miserable sophistry and false reasoning which had made him what he was, the owner of fame and fortune, had been riddled through and through by Magnus’s terrible words. All the mocking vanity which had lured him onward to that hour with promises of the great surprise, the great denouement, when he should say, “See, I am here; I have justified all expectations,” lay stark and dead and cold.
No, he could not reveal himself to his family to-morrow morning. He could not reveal himself at all. Having once become Christian Christiansson, he could never again be known as Oscar Stephensson. Thus did the dead punish him, and the desecration of his wife’s grave had but rendered the vow he made to himself perpetual and registered the oath he made to her in heaven.
Christian Christiansson was feeling as if all the world had l gone away from him when Anna came out of the guest-room, saying —
“There, sir! Your room is ready and you can go to bed at any time.”
Magnus got up to go to the elt-house to mix the mash for the pony, and then mother and son were together again.
IV
IN the confusion of that heart-quelling moment he was asking himself how he could carry out his plan of rescuing his family from their misfortunes if he could not tell them who he was, and how he could claim his daughter and take her away with him, if he could not say, “I am her father, she is mine,” when chance and a commonplace word — those twin sisters of invention and wisdom — showed him what he was to do.
“I shall want to be wakened early in the morning, landlady, for I suppose the Sheriff will come soon.”
“The Sheriff, sir?”
“I’ve just been telling your son that I intend to bid for your farm at the auction to-morrow morning.”
“So that was what you had to do at the end of your journey?”
“Yes, that was what I had to do, landlady.”
She looked at him for a moment, and then asked, “What can a gentleman like you want with a farm like this?”
He did not reply, so she said, “You cannot think of living in such a lonesome place as Thingvellir.”
Still he did not speak, and she said again, “You might let the farm certainly, but it is hungry land, I assure you, and everything depends on how you work it.”
She busied herself about the table as if trying to find something to do. “My son,” she said, “is the only one who has ever been able to work it properly, and if he has got into difficulties at last it wasn’t his fault, for there isn’t a man in Iceland who would have been able to keep his head above water.”
She waited for him to say something, but he gave no sign.
“His difficulties are not so very serious, either. Eight thousand crowns arrears of interest — that is all, in sixteen years, sir.”
Again she waited, but he was still silent. “When the Sheriff went off this evening, he said if my son could find the money before nine o’clock to-morrow morning, he wouldn’t go on with the auction.”
Christian Christiansson had rested his head on his hand and seemed to be listening intently.
“If my son could only find somebody to lend him the money —— —”
There was a ring of appeal in her voice which startled herself, for she stopped and looked nervously round at the stranger.
“I’m sure he would never regret it, sir. Magnus would work his fingers to the bone to repay every penny. He has always been a boy like that, and with better seasons and a little luck—”
It was then that the new scheme came to Christian Christiansson and he covered his face with his hand to think of it, whereupon Anna, mistaking the meaning of the altered gesture, faltered and began again.
“I’m taking a great liberty, sir, but I’m not thinking of myself — I’m thinking of my son. In one sense I’m to blame for all that has happened to him. He doesn’t know it and I daren’t tell him, but I am.”
Christian Christiansson looked up at her.
“It was all my fault that his father took the mortgage.”
“Your fault?”
“Yes, sir. My husband loved the poor boy who is gone, but he was the Governor of Iceland and every eye was on him to see that he kept his own house in order, and but for me he might have let the law take its course. I pleaded and prayed with him, thinking that we ourselves would be the ones to suffer. But I only ruined one son in trying to save the other — and I didn’t save him.”
Christian Christiansson dropped his head, for the waters of bitterness were falling over him in a flood, and Anna, thinking she had touched him, went on more eagerly —
“Then there’s the girl, sir, my granddaughter. You’ve seen her yourself, and you’ll say she doesn’t look like a servant, but if the auction comes off she’ll have to go out to service. They treat girls shamefully in some farmhouses, and my son cannot bear the thought of it. Neither can I, for I can’t help thinking of her father. Whatever else he may have been he was a gentleman, and to think of his daughter being a drudge to somebody —— — —” —
Anna’s voice was faltering again, but after a moment she went on bravely.
“As for myself I’m an old woman, and a little misfortune more or less doesn’t matter to me now. My time is short in any case, and I shall be glad to go when I’m called. Most of my loved ones are gone already — my son and my granddaughter are all that are left — and if I could feel that I was leaving them happy and comfortable—”
Christian Christiansson could bear no more. “Landlady,” he said, “I had set my heart on buying the farm — I had a particular reason for wishing to buy it — but instead of doing so I’ll lend your son the money to pay the interest.”
Anna’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, and now that her prayer was answered her breath seemed to be suspended. “You will, sir?” she said.
“I will, on one condition.”
“Oh, never mind the condition, let me go and tell him.”
“My condition is that you give me the girl to adopt as my daughter.”
“Ah!”
“I’m a lonely person too, though I’m not so old as you are, and when I’m in England I haven’t wife or child or mother or brother to share my life with me. The girl’s sweet face would be a great comfort to me there, and I’m ready to pay this interest if you are willing to let her go.”
The light had died out of Anna’s eyes — her head was down.
“I should give you every guarantee that she would be taken care of. I am rich, as men of my class go, and she should want for nothing.”
“But I didn’t think your condition would be like that, sir,” said Anna.
“Why not? Are you thinking of the girl or of yourself, landlady?”
“I am thinking of my son. No man was ever so wrapped up in a child. He has had her nearly all her life, and he is very, very fond of her. When she was little and the snow was deep as it is to-day he used to take her to school on his shoulder, and at night when she was sleepy he would carry her in his arms to bed. If she were his own he could not love her more dearly. It is like fatherhood to him, and he will never be a father now, because—”
Anna hesitated as if trying to say something which she was afraid to say, and then through her gathering tears she blurted out her secret.
“To tell you the truth, sir, he cared for her mother, but gave her up to somebody else and she died, and from that day forward all the best years of his life were wasted in a cruel longing for something to love. Then the child came, and it was almost as if the mother herself had sent her little one to comfort him. She could not love him, for she loved the other one to the last, but the child might, and she has — God bless her, she has!”
Christian Christiansson was wrung to the heart, but he struggled on. “So you think he could not part with the girl even for her own welfare and happiness?”
“I don’t say that, sir; and perhaps if it were put to him properly —— —”
“Put it yourself, landlady.”
“I daren’t! He might suppose that I was thinking of myself.”
“And if he did, would that be such a serious matter? Can it be nothing to him that his mother will be saved from being homeless if no harm is to come to the girl? And no harm shall come to her — you may take my word for that.” Anna thought for a moment and then she said, “You would tell us where she is to go to, and what she is to do, and how she is to be brought up?”
“Indeed I would.”
“She might write to us constantly and come to see us sometimes, perhaps?”
“Certainly she might.”
“After all, it would just be like going into service.”
“Just.”
“Only she would be a lady, not a servant?”
“Only that.”
“You would be good to her? Something tells me you would. And you would, wouldn’t you?”
“I should be as good to the girl as if — as if I were her own father,” said Christian Christiansson.
Anna dried her eyes and said —
“I don’t know what to say, sir — I really don’t know what to say to you.”
“Say nothing to me — speak to your son, landlady.”
“You will lend him the money to pay the interest immediately?”
“Immediately.”
“Eight thousand crowns — you can find it all by nine o’clock to-morrow morning?”
“See,” said Christian Christiansson, taking the pocket-book out of his breast pocket, “there’s enough in this purse to pay the interest twenty times over. And I’ll not lend the money to your son — I’ll give it to him if he will give me the girl instead.”
“He will be sorry to part with her, but after all it will be one mouth less to feed, and when I’m gone that will be another, and then perhaps, having no burdens and no embarrassments—”
“Speak to him — he’s here,” said Christian Christiansson, and just at that moment Magnus returned to the hall carrying a wooden bowl of smoking bran.
Then in a low and trembling tone, hardly daring to raise her eyes to his face, Anna told her son of the stranger’s offer, dwelling chiefly on the advantage to himself when Elin would be provided for, and she herself would be under the earth, and he, no longer crippled by grinding debt, would be able to pay his way and win back his lost inheritance. But as she went on her voice faltered, and her words became confused, for he was looking down at her with a lowering brow, and at last she stopped altogether, saying —
