Complete works of hall c.., p.426
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 426
But heaven as well as hell is in the heart of every man, as long as life is with him, and the tearless sob came back to Magnus and shook his whole body, as he thought at the last moment of the awful pity of the thing he had to do. Yet telling himself again that God did nothing in this world, and saying once more, “Let prodigal pay for prodigal,” he turned the handle and opened the door.
Then he stepped softly into the guest-room and bolted the door behind him.
VII
ANNA, at that moment, had awakened from a frightening dream. On first going to her room she had been troubled by the memory of what she had done to awaken evil thoughts in Magnus, and visions had come to her of how, if anything happened, Magnus might say, “You put it into my head, mother.” To banish her self-reproaches she had said a prayer for forgiveness, telling God she had never once thought of theft or violence, but only of Magnus and Elin and the inheritance they had lost through her importunity, and how cruel it seemed that while other people had so much more than they wanted, such hard times should come to her dear children.
Then she had gone to bed, and the voice of the stranger, which had teased her all the evening through with memories she could not fix, haunted her again, and the light being out, and her eyes no longer disturbed by sight of the stranger’s different face, she knew whose voice it reminded her of. It was a voice very dear to her, a voice always near to her, Oscar’s voice, which she was never to hear again.
When, with a thrill of the heart, this thought came to Anna, it altered the stranger altogether. His laughter ceased to be cruel, and what he had said of himself not being a good son became touching. And when she thought of his poor mother waiting for her prodigal and so soon to see him home again, and pictured her joy when he should say, “Mother, mother! I’m here at last, and we shall never, never be parted again!” her heart overflowed with sympathy, and she was sorry she had not been kinder to him when he was going to bed.
Then she went to sleep and the dream spirit took her back to the good time when she had two boys in her house, a dark one and a fair one, and the father had punished the dark one unjustly, and his stem and gloomy soul, with its sense of wrong, would not suffer him to explain, but the fair one was sobbing out a confession— “It was not Magnus, it was me, papa” — and a moment afterwards two happy little heads were on the same pillow side by side, and both were laughing merrily.
In the shifting kaleidoscope of her dream this picture had hardly gone when Anna awoke with the clearest consciousness of Oscar’s voice crying, “Mother! Mother! Mother!” She thought it must have been the stranger calling in his sleep, for the china ornaments on her dressing-table seemed to ring, but when she listened there was no other sound.
Then the memory of Magnus’s temptation came rolling back on her like a thundercloud over a clear sky, and she got up to go to her son’s room to make sure that he was in bed.
Magnus had not been to bed!
With candle in hand, and still in her night-dress, Anna hurried to the hall, crying in a whisper of only half-realised apprehension, “Magnus! Magnus!”
There was no reply.
She listened at the stranger’s door and thought she heard a movement inside the room, but she dared not enter or knock.
“Magnus! Magnus!” she whispered again, but no answer came back to her. She heard the neighing of a horse that seemed to be running round and round the house and her flesh began to creep, for that sound in the night was like the cry of a disembodied soul. Then there came the deadened noise of dogs barking, and she knew they were their own dogs and that they must have been shut up in an outhouse. This started a new thought, and she ran to the outer door to see if it had been opened.
The door was unbolted!
She was about to open it and cry again when she heard a noise behind her. It came from the stranger’s room, and putting her ear to it she distinctly heard the sound of sobs. Some one inside was sobbing.
She knew the low, stifled voice. It was Magnus. He was on his knees or prostrate on the floor, and he was sobbing as if his heart would break. At that Anna boldly tried to open the door, but found it fastened on the inside.
“Magnus! Magnus!” she whispered, but he did not answer.
She was now sure that the awful thing she had thought of had come to pass. Her suspense had deepened to fear, but pity and love conquered every other feeling, and going down on her knees in her night-dress, she whispered through the keyhole —
“Magnus! Magnus! Open the door. It is only mother! It was all my fault, dear! Let me come in!”
But the smothered sobbing inside continued, and no other sound came back to her. Then in the silence of all else she heard the sound of sleigh-bells outside. At first she thought this must be a ringing in her ears, but the bells grew louder and came nearer, and then the dogs in the outhouse barked again.
Fear deepened to terror, the necessity for concealment flashed upon her, and she knocked at the bedroom door and cried in the same affrighted whisper —
“Magnus, there is some one coming. Wait till he has gone. Don’t stir. Don’t come out. Only tell me you hear me.”
The sobbing ceased, but Magnus did not speak. Meantime the sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, with the cracking of a whip, the whoop of a driver, and the hiss of runners in the soft snow.
“Magnus! Magnus!” cried Anna loudly, in a last effort, but she was stopped by the near shout of some one outside, “Helloa! helloa there!” — and she rose to her feet with an intention of bolting the outer door.
Before she could do so there was a metallic knock on the window-pane, a voice crying, “God be with you!” and footsteps hurrying up the outer steps. Then Anna turned about and fled back to her bedroom.
While she dressed she heard the outer door thrown open and the sound of many persons trooping into the hall. They were very bright and happy, for they laughed merrily and talked all together, and the house was full of noise.
When she came out of the badstofa she met the postboy on his way to the elt-house to boil water to give his ponies a hot drink, and on returning to the hall she found the door and the shutters of the window open, the daylight streaming in, and the postman himself there with several passengers, including the Factor, who was muffled up to the eyes, and Margret Neilsen, who was unrolling herself from the folds of a white bearskin.
“Helloa!” cried everybody, and the postman said, “Here we are at last, you see! We couldn’t come yesterday by reason of the snowstorm, but the Factor actually got me to start away as soon as it stopped at eleven o’clock last night — eleven!”
“Well, we don’t kill a pig every day, do we?” said the Factor, and while the men laughed and winked, Margret Neilsen said —
“And how’s Anna?”
Anna was speechless and ghastly white, so the Factor said, “We seem to have startled her out of her senses, for she looks as if she had seen a ghost. But where’s Magnus?”
“Magnus? Oh — somewhere about,” said Anna.
“And how’s my precious Elin?” said Aunt Margret.
“She’s not up yet,” said Anna.
“Then I’ll go and waken her. Which is her room — this one?” said Aunt Margret, making for the guest-room.
“No, no,” said Anna, intercepting her and standing with her back to the guest-room door. “That one,” and Aunt Margret went into Elin’s bedroom.
“And now,” said the Factor, with winks all round him, “what about the other one?”
Anna looked at the Factor in mute terror.
“The new-comer, you know? Not stirring yet, I suppose?”
“New-comer?”
“Well, guest, friend, whatever you choose to call him.”
“What friend?”
“Why, the friend who came last night, of course.”
Anna, who had never lied in her life, wanted to lie now, but she could not do so. “I don’t understand you, Factor,” she said faintly.
“Well!” said the Factor, and then, as if by an afterthought, “I thought he wouldn’t wish to startle you, having been so long away and supposed to be dead. But don’t you know yet who he is?” —
Anna trembled and said, “Of whom are you speaking, Oscar Neilsen?”
“Of the tall fair man with the pointed beard who came to lodge at your house last night.”
Anna was now speechless with terror, and the company, misunderstanding her silence, became suddenly very grave. “Can it be possible that he lost his way in the snowstorm?” said one. “But he knew every inch of the road, and could find his way blindfold,” said another. “Such a night, though,” said a third. “He got as far as the House of Rest.”
“But the boy there said he would never see the end of his journey.”
“Well, this is serious,” said the Factor. “The Minister wanted him to stay at Government House overnight, but he seemed to be so anxious to see you—”
“To see me!” said Anna.
“Naturally, after his long absence. Strange! very strange! But do you mean to say that no traveller came here last night?”
A vague shadow of the Factor’s meaning had flashed upon Anna’s mind, and the terror of a moment ago had deepened to horror. What had Magnus done in the blindness of his passion and despair? But even then the desire to save her son was above all other emotions, and she was about to deny all knowledge of the traveller, when the door behind her was opened and a voice over her shoulder said —
“Yes, a traveller did come here last night, but he went away again in the early morning.”
It was Magnus, and when Anna turned to look at him she drew a deep breath of relief, for she knew he was telling the truth. His face, since she saw it last, had undergone a mysterious and miraculous change. The gloomy arrogance of despair had gone, something had carried light into the darkness of his soul, and he looked like a man who had come as from the immediate presence of his God.
“But this is stranger than ever,” said the Factor. “It was known that he had taken a large sum of money out of the Bank, and everybody supposed he meant to buy up this place at the auction.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Margret, coming out of Elin’s bedroom, “to give to his old mother.”
And then Elin’s soft voice was heard to say, “Has the Sheriff come yet?”
“Who is asking for the Sheriff?” said the Sheriff himself, coming forward at that moment.
“The gentleman gave me this pocket-book last night, and told me to deliver it to you before the auction began this morning.”
“It’s not for me, though,” said the Sheriff, who had taken the pocket-book to the table and opened it, and was reading the writing on the sheet of paper which fell out first, “‘For Elin, Oscar’s daughter, from Christian Christiansson.”’
“A present for Elin, perhaps,” said the Factor.
“A thousand-crown note!” cried the Sheriff.
The gaiety of the company was breaking into loud congratulations, when the Sheriff, who was still opening the folds of the pocket-book, said, “Wait! There’s more than that — much more! — One — two — three — fifty thousand — another — and another — and” — then the rapid rustling of bank-notes, followed by the delighted cry, “Two hundred thousand crowns!”
“The very sum he took out of the Bank!” said the Factor.
“Kiss me, my precious!” cried Aunt Margret.
“Me too, granddaughter,” cried the Factor.
Anna looked stunned, and Magnus like one who wished the earth to swallow him. But the Factor rattled along with shouts and laughter.
“Now I understand everything. He has given the money to the girl, but left it to her friends and relations to advise her as to what she is to do with it.”
Elin’s blue eyes being still full of bewilderment, the Factor kissed her again and said, “Now who do you think has left you this great fortune, little one?”
“Christian Christiansson,” said the girl.
“Certainly! But don’t you know who Christian Christiansson is? No? You neither, Anna?”
Anna was trembling on the verge of discovery. “Who?” she said, but rather with her lips than with her voice.
“Why Oscar — your son Oscar, who isn’t dead at all, and has come back and made amends to everybody! I always knew there was good stuff in my godson!”
The truth burst on Anna in a whirlwind of joy — joy that her son was alive, joy that he had come home and justified her faith in him, joy, too, though with a twinge of pain in it, that he had gone away again and further trouble with Magnus was averted. A prayer gushed from her heart and she wanted to go down on her knees.
“My son!” she said in a breathless whisper.
“My father!” said Elin, with a tenderness the word had never had for her before.
The company were now cackling and crowing again, but the two women — the old one and the young one — looked round for Magnus. He was standing at the back, his strong face all broken up and melted. It was not at this moment that the truth had first burst on him. That had come like a blinding blow of light the instant he had entered the guestroom and realised that God did something after all in this world of His children.
“Mother — Elin!” he stammered, and he opened his arms to them “It’s the miracle, isn’t it?” said the girl.
It was the miracle indeed.
There was no auction in Thingvellir that day, and when the bells rang for service the company went to church. The little wooden tabernacle was full of worshippers, for it was New Year’s Day, and the farmers had ridden over with their families from all the country round about. They sat, in their thick mufflers and snow-stockings and the mist of their smoking breath, as far up the church as the square rail enclosing the communion table, on stools about the octagonal pulpit and even among the refuse, the lumber and potted-meat barrels that were stored in the gallery.
The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.
Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson (“All we like sheep have gone astray”), while he gave out his text (“This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise”), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death’s sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem (“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin’s silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother’s, Magnus sat with his face towards the picture on the wall above the communion-table.
It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.
That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit at war with God, he had entered the stranger’s bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, “Stop! or the voice of thy brother’s blood will cry unto Me from the ground!”
When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumour of what had happened in Anna’s household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.
The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm for a cup of coffee.
It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralysed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret to remain behind to roast it.
The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast.
“Every snow-cowl has an end,” he said, “and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson’s family and over my family, is now gone for good. ‘Show the man and not the table,’ says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man’s guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before.
“Brothers and sisters, I give you a health — Anna’s long-lost son, our long-lost son, Iceland’s long-lost son — Oscar Stephensson!”
The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.
VIII
ON the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman’s eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.
You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under your feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapour.
