Governor. "Magnus Stephenson----"
"Stephen! Stephen!" said Anna, and Oscar, in the same quivering voice
as before, cried out to his father.
"Hold your tongue, Anna! Oscar, be quiet, you've done enough for one
day! Magnus Stephenson, when you leave the Factor's house you will go
to Thingvellir, and stay there, and thank your stars if for the rest of
your life you are allowed to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow."
"The amended contract is ready for the signatures," said the lawyer, and
then everybody save one turned back to the table, and there was a cackle
of cheerful voices. When the names were all signed and witnessed, the
rings were exchanged, and there was some joking and happy laughter.
"All's well that ends well," said the Bishop. "That will do as a pledge
between you until you come to me to be made man and wife."
"Supper is ready," cried Aunt Margret, drawing the curtains of the inner
room, and then seeing a photograph on the floor beneath them, she said,
"but who's been treading on poor Helga's portrait?"
"That's Oscar," said Thora. "He had it in his hand when he got up."
When the company were seated about the supper table it was seen that
there was one chair too many, and the Governor pushed it back with an
impatient hand. Magnus had gone--no one had seen him go.
*XII*
Alone and forgotten, a prey to the devilish voices which had tortured
him in the time of his temptation, angry and unsatisfied although he had
carried out his purpose and triumphed as he had intended, Magnus was in
his room at the top of the house gathering up his belongings by the
light of a candle.
They were few and not valuable--a little money, two or three suits of
clothes, two or three pairs of riding, fishing, and snow boots, some
musical exercise books, the "Book of Job," "The Pilgrim's Progress"
(having illustrations of Apollyon with horns), and the precious flute
with which he had beguiled those blessed evenings that now seemed to
belong to another existence. He had sent for two ponies to take him to
the farm--a saddle pony and a pack pony--and two small boxes held
everything. When all was packed he came upon the remains of a bottle of
brandy which he had kept in his bedroom as medicine, and he drank the
spirit and threw the bottle away.
During that short hour of pain and degradation he heard at intervals the
various noises of the company at supper below--sometimes in single
voices, sometimes in climbing cries like the sounds of a geyser,
sometimes in peals of joyous laughter--and his heart grew bitter. He
could plainly distinguish Oscar's voice among the rest, at first quiet
enough, but afterward loud and hilarious, and his very soul sickened.
"You fool!" said the other voices at his ear. "What did you expect?
Did you think he would be overwhelmed with sorrow? He is glad; he'll
walk over your head, and over Thora's head, too! Listen to him
already--the sweet, unselfish, privileged pet of everybody!"
After the boxes had been sent down-stairs Magnus took a last look round,
and then he tried to shut out all bitter thoughts and evil passions, for
he believed that he was leaving that room for ever. It had been his
home through seven long years, and some of them had been bad years, but
some of them had been good, and the good ones filled the little place
with memories of many visions.
The sloping roof, the dormer window, the deal furniture, the sheep's
skin on the bare floor, and the sunflower pattern on the wall-paper were
all ghosts of the dreams he had dreamt there. Some were dreams of the
great things he was going to do for Iceland, but more were dreams of
Thora, and remembering that both sorts were dead now, and that Thora
belonged to Oscar, to save himself from further repining and to crush
down the riot that was rising within, he blew out the candle and that
chapter of his life was at an end.
But the devilish voices were not yet done with him. Going down-stairs he
had to pass the door of the front room on the first landing, and he went
by it on tiptoe. For years he had always passed that door on tiptoe,
for it was the door to Thora's room, a holy place, half nursery, half
sanctuary, as Thora herself had grown to be half saint to him and half
child; but he was not thinking of that this time. He was thinking he
must get out of the house without seeing her again, for she belonged to
Oscar now, and if they were to meet and she began to thank him for
giving her to Oscar--but God forbid!
Thora's door was closed, but the next room stood open. It was Aunt
Margret's bedroom, and Magnus knew that a photograph of Thora was on the
chest of drawers near the door. He had often envied it, and now he
stooped to look at it for the last time, and the voices at his ear
seemed to say, "Take it; it's all you are going to carry away of her."
Going down the last flight of stairs he heard the two sitting-rooms
buzzing like the mill-house, and knew that others must have joined the
party; but above all other sounds he heard the sound of Oscar's voice,
clear as a flute, saluting people as they came in. "Listen to him! The
darling!" said the mocking voices by his side.
Coming to the hall, he encountered some of the women of the town in
their feast-day dresses, and with garden flowers in their hands. Hardly
any of them looked at him, but all passed into the sitting-room, where
Oscar waited to welcome them.
The hat-stand in the hall had been cleared for the new-comers, therefore
Magnus had to go to a rail under the stairs for his overcoat and
riding-whip, and while he was there Aunt Margret opened the door of the
back sitting-room to ventilate the crowded place. She did not see him,
for she had taken off the spectacles she usually wore, and he was
standing in the shadow, but he saw everybody in the room, and Thora
among the rest.
Thora was sitting by the wall, and the townspeople were going up to her
one after another and offering their flowers and making congratulatory
speeches. And she was thanking them in her soft voice and looking very
happy.
Magnus was hurt by Thora's happiness. He had done all he could to make
her happy; he had sacrificed everything; but now that he looked on her
happiness he was hurt by it; and when Oscar went and stood by her chair,
looking bright and proud, he felt hot with anger and hatred.
While he pulled on his overcoat he could not help hearing what was being
said within the room. "Such an extraordinary thing, Thora," said one,
"people in the town actually said it was Magnus you were going to
marry!" "I heard that, too," said another. "I heard it at Olaf's, the
silversmith's, when we were drinking coffee." "Such an idea!" said a
third, "as if any girl would marry Magnus who could get Oscar!" And
then Oscar's voice, large, expansive, indulgent, almost patronizing,
"Tut, tut! You mustn't say anything against Magnus, Elisabet!" "But I
hear Magnus insulted Thora this evening, and the Factor has turned him
out for it." "Can it be possible? I saw him in the hall as I was
coming in!" "No, no, not insulted--not insulted exactly," said Oscar's
voice again, and then Magnus, sick and dizzy, turned away.
He was going out of the house with head down when the door of the front
sitting-room opened and closed quickly, and he found himself face to
face with Thora. She was trying to look sad, but the light of her
happiness was still in her eyes, and her parted lips were smiling.
"I heard you were here," she said, "and I couldn't help coming out to
see you. Oscar told me yesterday I was not to speak, whatever happened,
but it seems so terrible that you should leave us like this."
"We made a mistake, and we had to get out of it somehow," said Magnus.
"I know," said Thora. "And of course I think it will be the best thing
in the end. You would have had no joy of me, Magnus, and I should have
been very unhappy."
"Perhaps you would," said Magnus.
"But it is a great grief to me that you will have to give up all the
schemes you had set your heart upon, Magnus."
"I have given up more than that, Thora," said Magnus, and he tried to
push past her and go.
The light of her smile died off her face, and with a wistful look, in a
pleading voice, she said:
"I feel as if I am losing a friend, Magnus, and you are saying good-by
to me for good."
"Not that exactly," said Magnus.
"Good-by, Magnus!"
"Good-by!"
They were standing with hands clasped in what they believed to be their
last parting when the buzz of the inner room broke out upon them again,
and a cheery voice cried:
"Thora! Thora! Where are you?--Oh, it's you, Magnus?"
It was Oscar, and at the next moment Thora had gone back, the door of
the sitting-room had closed behind her, and Magnus and his brother were
together in the hall.
"I meant to come out to you before, old fellow," said Oscar, "but they
stuck to me like leeches, and I couldn't get away. I wanted to thank
you for what you did for me this evening. It was too generous, too
brotherly, and I can never be sufficiently grateful."
Magnus did not answer, so Oscar went on:
"You pledged me to silence, and you were right, plainly right; but, of
course, I cannot allow the error about your motive to go much farther,
and as soon as it is safe to do so I will set you right. People shall
know the truth about what you did, and why you did it; and they will
make amends for their mistake."
Still Magnus did not speak, so Oscar continued:
"It's too bad, though, that you should suffer in the meantime, and if
there is anything I could do for you--in a material way, I mean--if you
are in want of----"
But the dark fire that was rising in Magnus's face frightened him, and
he could not finish what he wished to say.
"I don't care a straw what people think I did it for," said Magnus, "and
I don't care a damn if they never make amends. You know what I did it
for, and that's enough for me. I did it for the sake of Thora. I gave
her up to you that you might love her and cherish her and make her
happy, and be a better husband to her than I could be. But if you don't
do it; if you ever neglect her or desert her or give her up for another
woman, I'll take her back. Do you hear me?"--(Magnus swayed like a
drunken man and laid hold of Oscar's arm)--"I'll take her back, and
then--then, by God, I'll kill you!"
Saying this, he walked heavily out of the house, leaving Oscar with
white cheeks and gibbering lips, alone in the hall.
His ponies were waiting for him in the street ready for the journey to
Thingvellir. The night was dark, but the windows of the house were
bright, for the blinds had been drawn and the sashes thrown open. A
cackle of many voices came out of them, for the company within was now
large and very merry. While Magnus tightened the girths somebody played
a guitar, and as he was riding away Oscar began to sing.
*PART II*
"_Impotent pieces of the game he plays_
_Upon this chequer-board of nights and days;_
_Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,_
_And one by one back in the closet lays._"
*I*
Oscar did his best to keep the fire burning in the inner sanctuary--the
fire of love and duty--but oftener than he was aware it flickered, and
seemed to be in danger of dying out. He tried to tell the truth about
Magnus, but as frequently as he thought out a way of doing so he was
confronted by the ugly question which would surely be asked: "Can it be
possible that you stood passively aside while we condemned Magnus for a
vice he was not guilty of, and praised you for a virtue you did not
possess?" The humiliation of speech like that would be deeper than the
degradation of silence, and from day to day Oscar postponed the painful
confession. Thus a month passed, and he had said nothing.
His position would have been easier if he had been getting on better
with his work--if he could have felt it impossible that the Factor could
regret the loss of Magnus. Then he would have said, "After all, though
naturally you didn't think so at the time, everything has been for the
best," whereupon the Factor would have said, "You are right, god-son,"
and after that he would have told all.
But his work was going badly, and there was no blinking the fact that he
was a poor business man. On first going into the Factor's, on the
footing the contract gave him, he rambled from office to warehouse with
aimless and shiftless uncertainty, dressed with Bohemian freedom, and
looking like a butterfly in a back alley. Then the Factor said, "Come,
come, young fellow, we must be getting to work; choose a department and
be responsible for it."
Oscar selected the export department. This brought him into relation
with the farmers, and some of them cheated him unmercifully, concealing
their inferior wool in the body of the packs he bought from them.
Magnus would have rooted out both the bad stuff and the men who brought
it, and they would have gone flying before his threatening face; but
Oscar wished to stand well with everybody, and the firm suffered
accordingly.
After a week he wished to change. He thought the import department
would suit him better: "Very well," said the Factor. "Mistakes are made
by the young as well as the old--buckle to at the imports, my boy."
The imports brought him into relation with the mates of steamers and
trading ships, and they were quick to shuffle their responsibility for
damaged freights onto Oscar's shoulders.
After another week he went back to the Factor and said, "I don't think a
department is what suits me best, god-father--why not let me have a
general supervision?" The Factor shrugged his shoulders, but replied,
"I'm willing. You shall be my right-hand man, then, and I'll ease off as
soon as you are ready."
But from that moment onward Oscar did nothing, good, bad, or
indifferent. He was always running about like one out of breath, but he
came at any hour in the morning and left at any time in the evening, and
was always skipping off to see Thora. That little lady was entirely
content, but the Factor was heard to say to Aunt Margret, "There was
something in Magnus after all, Margret." And Aunt Margret was heard to
answer, "Many a good sword is in a bad sheath, you know."
But one day Oscar came flying to the Factor in breathless haste with his
mouth full of great news. The Member of Parliament for the town was
dead, and the Radical party were already preparing to run a
candidate--an out-and-out Socialist named Oddsson, an enemy of the old
order in both politics and trade.
"Why shouldn't I go into Althing?" said Oscar. "I could protect the
business against these rascally revolutionaries, and help to preserve
the old principles."
"Let me talk to your father first," said the Factor.
The old friends agreed that the scheme was a good one. Not only was the
man Oddsson a believer in Magnus's doctrine about the barter trade, but
he was the champion of an agitation for establishing a new constitution
in Iceland, which would abolish the Governor and set up a Minister
responsible to Parliament alone. He must be kept out. In self-defense
they must fight the common enemy! Oscar would be a good candidate,
being young and bright and clever, and a personal favorite.
"But I cannot appear in the contest," said the Governor.
"Leave it to me," said the Factor, and he went back and told Oscar, who
shouted with delight and shot off to tell Thora.
By this time Thora had spent a long month in radiant happiness. If she
thought sometimes of Magnus's position, she remembered that Oscar had
said he would set things right, and the delay counted for little,
because she measured existence by days no longer, but by emotions, and
she was conscious of one emotion only--love for Oscar, and therefore for
everybody and everything in the world.
As the year was growing elderly and its withering winds made further
excursions to the islands of the fiord impossible, they remained at home
and romped like children or played the guitar and piano. At such times
Thora was not without certain backward thoughts of Magnus, for the room
was the same and nothing was different except the hour of the day, but
there was always the difference of its being Oscar.
He taught her some Icelandic love songs, and she sang them in a thin
sweet treble, which Oscar cheered tumultuously. It did not hurt her in
the least that Oscar never took her singing seriously--he did not take
Thora herself seriously. He called her "Baby Thora," and she christened
him the "Bad Boy."
The moment he had left her sight she would send a letter after him, like
a handkerchief he had forgotten. He always replied, and his letters
were full of affectionate banter, but perhaps at the bottom of her heart
she was a little disappointed with them. They were not quite lover-like
enough; there were scarcely any of them she could not read aloud to Aunt
Margret; there was hardly one that was her very own. But Oscar made up
for every deficiency when he arrived himself, and on the day when he
came with a hop, skip, and a jump into the sitting-room, and announced
that he was to be member of Althing, she saw him for one moment great
and glorious, like the top of a mountain when it has broken through the
mist and the sun has flashed on to it, and then she said, "And now the
Bad Boy must play with me--he hasn't played me blindman's buff since
yesterday."
Thora was too happy to think of her happiness, but she told herself
sometimes that there was only one thing wanted to make it complete--that
Helga should come home to share it. She broached the subject to Oscar,
but it was at a moment when he was immersed in his manifestoes, and he
merely said, "Good idea! Splendid! Helga looks like a stunner! Send
for her certainly if the Factor approves," and he went on with his
tiresome politics.
She broached it next to Aunt Margret, who was less encouraging. Putting
her spectacled face close to Thora's, she shook her ringlets, and said,
"Don't be a ninny! Two's company, three's none!"
But Thora mentioned the matter to Anna also, and the motherly old thing
was moved. "That would be beautiful if you could manage it, Thora," she
said, "and if it should lead to bringing the others together, what a
blessing it would be!"
After that Thora regarded herself in the light of the family
peace-maker, and in this character she approached her father. The
Factor listened to her with sympathy, for nature is stronger than
lawyer's ink, and he had often told himself he had been foolish to part
with his child. "Well, I don't see why she shouldn't," he said. "She
might come for the wedding--or, say for a year--one year at all events.
I'll write to the lawyer in Denmark."
By the same mail Thora wrote to Helga:
Dearest Helga:--Father is writing to the lawyer to ask him to send you
back to Iceland. It is only for a year, so I hope mamma will not
object. I am sure you will not when I tell you what is to happen.
There is to be a wedding, and, of course, a party, and great goings on.
Dear, I am to be married to Oscar Stephenson, who has come back from
England, and is so handsome and so clever. If you could see him as he is
now, you would fall in love with him instantly, but he is so fond of me,
and I am so happy. I was to have married his brother Magnus, but the
engagement broke down, and now I am very sorry for Magnus, and if ever
you hear anything against him when you come home you are not to believe
a word of it, because Magnus is as good as gold, only I could not care
for him, so it was no use trying.
Dear, there are such lots of things I want to tell you, but I must save
them until you come. We have had bad trade this summer, and Oscar has
gone into father's business. I am weaving a web of cloth for father's
Christmas suit, but it does not make much progress, because somebody is
always interrupting, and when you are about to be married there is so
much to do--isn't there?
Dearest Helga, I have no more to write about now, so give my love to
mamma, and mind you come before long, for the wedding may be soon,
although nothing is fixed yet. Your affectionate sister, Thora.
P.S.--Come quickly. I am dying to introduce you to Oscar.
A fortnight later the Factor announced that he had heard from the lawyer
in Denmark, and Helga was to come by the next steamer.
"The 'Laura,' and she's due on the first of November, and that's the day
of the election!" said Oscar.
"What a good omen!" said Thora, and she sang her Iceland love songs all
that evening through, for she was very happy.
*II*
On the morning of the day when the "Laura" was due, there was no sign of
her on the sea, but that was a matter of moment only to Thora, who had
been up early and down at the jetty before breakfast. The rest of the
little world in which she lived were immersed in preparations for the
election and were going about like dogs on the leash before the hunt
begins. Oscar was flying to and fro with red ribbons in his
button-hole; ponies were coming and going with red ribbons in their
bridles, and red flags were hanging all over the town; but,
nevertheless, there was a sense of uncertainty everywhere and an
atmosphere of intense excitement.
The day opened dull and rayless, with a pale sun behind a slaty sky like
a white wafer on an old parchment. An hour before the polling booths
opened the Governor called upon the Factor, under pretense of his
morning's walk, and said:
"I'm doubtful of the result, Neilsen, and I now see that Oscar was the
worst possible candidate to stand for our cause. Everybody who has a
grievance against the Governor is going to vote against the Governor's
son, and everybody who has a grievance against the Factor will vote
against his son-in-law."
"Oh, I know the people, bless them," said the Factor. "Master when you
want anything--slave when you don't. But we'll see, Stephen, we'll see!"
After finishing his breakfast comfortably the Factor walked leisurely to
his counting-house and called for his ledger. It showed that nearly
half of the electors of the town were indebted to him, some of them
slightly, others deeply, and not a few beyond hope of payment without
pressure or distraint. He counted up their total indebtedness, and it
proved to be frightful. "But life is precious when death is at the
door," he thought, and lighting his long German pipe, he put the
leather-bound book under his arm and strolled quietly across to the
polling-station.
As chairman of Oscar's committee the Factor had a right to sit inside
the polling booth, but he merely asked to be allowed to take a chair
outside the counter to which the voters would come up when they recorded
their votes. "A low seat is often easy," he said, sitting with his face
to the Sheriff and his back to the door.
When the doors were opened the Factor laid his ledger across his knees
and took out a thick blue pencil. Then, as each voter came up to the
counter and his name was called and looked up in the register, the
Factor was seen to turn up the voter's account in his own book and hold
his blue pencil over it.
"Whom do you vote for?" asked the Sheriff, "Oscar Stephenson or Jon
Oddsson?" and if the voter answered "Oscar Stephenson," the blue pencil
was seen to descend in two broad strokes across the account as if
cancelling it altogether; but if he answered "Jon Oddsson," it was seen
to score the total with a double underline as if marking it for
immediate recovery.
The opposition had entered in hot haste, but the effect was
instantaneous. A voter would come swaggering up to the counter, call
his name in a robustious voice, and then (while waiting for the
verification of his right to vote) see the Factor sitting below with his
own account open before him, and, understanding everything in a moment,
would begin to answer the Sheriff with a faltering, "Odd----," then
pause, tremble, mumble "Stephenson," and go stumbling out of doors.
Silently, hour after hour, from the beginning of the day to the end of
it, the Factor sat at his task, never once looking up from his ledger
and apparently doing nothing but checking, as he had a right to do, the
Sheriff's record of the votes. Aunt Margret came to say that dinner was
ready, but he answered that he was not hungry. Toward three in the
afternoon Thora arrived in great excitement to say that the "Laura" had
been sighted outside the head, but he told her to meet her sister
herself, and tell her that he did not expect to be home before midnight.
When the cathedral clock struck four the Sheriff rose and ordered the
shutting of the doors. The short winter's day had closed in by this
time, and while the counting was going on with its monotonous beat in
the silence of the breathless room, like the splashing of rain on the
pavement--"Stephenson, Stephenson, Oddsson, Stephenson"--the Factor, who
had lit his pipe, was pacing the corridor outside, like a man who walks
in his orchard when the fruit is ripe.
When the counting was finished the Sheriff told the attendants to open
the window, and then the deep hum of a crowd which had been cheering and
singing outside, with a noise like the waves breaking on a bar far off,
rose to a roar, like that of the sea running up a stony beach. At the
next moment everybody was shaking hands with Oscar, a band was beginning
to play in the street, and the Sheriff was stepping on to the balcony.
Meantime Thora, fluttering with excitement of another sort, had gone
down to the jetty to meet Helga. As soon as the "Laura" had steamed up
the fiord and cast anchor outside the town, she put off in her father's
white boat and drew up alongside. It was now quite dark, but lights
were burning on the steamer and the dark figures of a line of passengers
were silhouetted against the sky as they leaned over the rail and
shouted to the friends in little boats who had come out to meet them.
Thora was sure that Helga must be there, and she wanted to call to her,
but her heart was beating so fast that her voice would not answer. At
length the ladder was let down, and Thora's boat swayed up to it, and
then she climbed up the steamer's side.
"Helga!"
"Miss Helga is below," said a voice out of the darkness, and though she
felt a pang of disappointment that Helga was not waiting, she ran down
the stairs to the saloon. At the bottom she called "Helga" again, and
the stewardess said:
"The young lady is in her cabin."
"Which?"
"Second to the left."
Feeling conscious of increasing disappointment, but still panting in her
eagerness, Thora skipped off to the cabin, and then came a shock of
surprise.
Somehow she had expected to find Helga a little thing, grown certainly,
but still smaller than herself. In her dreams of their first meeting
she had pictured herself stooping to kiss Helga, and then in a
sisterly-motherly sort of way putting her arms about her waist. But the
young lady who came leisurely out of the cabin with her veil down and
buttoning her kid gloves, was much taller than Thora and quite dignified
and stately.
"Thora!" said the girl.
"So it is you--really you?" said Thora.
"Really me," laughed Helga, and then it was Helga who stooped to kiss
Thora, who had to lift up her face to her.
Thora's heart was in her mouth in both senses. She looked at Helga
again by the dim light of the saloon lamp, and felt herself small and
insignificant. Helga was beautiful, with fine features, large gray eyes
and rich dark complexion, and Thora felt herself to be plain and
commonplace. Helga was fashionably dressed in the Danish manner, with
the soft silk things about the neck and bosom which give charm to a
charming girl, and Thora felt herself to be dowdy and countrified in her
Iceland hufa and stiff velvet cloak.
"Have you come alone?" asked Helga.
"Quite alone," said Thora.
"But hasn't father come with you? Or Aunt Margret? Or that wonderful
Oscar? Is there nobody but you?"
"Nobody but me," said Thora, and then, though she felt crushed and
small, she delivered the Factor's message and told about the election.
"So that was the meaning of the band we heard as we were sailing up?"
said Helga, and at the first moment Thora thought perhaps Helga had
hoped it was in honor of her own arrival, but at the next she felt
ashamed and foolish.
"We might as well go, then," said Helga, and she swept up the stairs,
leaving Thora to follow. It was all so different from what Thora had
expected--so utterly different--that she would have given anything to
run away and cry.
But going ashore in the boat, she sat at the helm side by side with
Helga, and there, the lights being gone, and Thora no longer in awe of
Helga's fashion and beauty, she slipped her arm about her sister's
waist, as she had always intended to do, and after that they got on
better.
When they touched the jetty there was much shouting and scrambling in
the darkness, and Thora was nervous and excited, but Helga was quiet and
even amused.
"No carriages in this benighted country yet, I suppose?" said Helga.
"No, but I've brought Silvertop to take you up," said Thora.
"And what is there for you?"
"Oh, I'll walk--I love walking."
The street at the top of the jetty was thronged with the people who were
waiting outside the polling place to hear the result of the election,
and when the girls came to the crowd, which was good-natured but
boisterous, they found it difficult to plow their way through until a
big man stepped before them and swept the people aside like ninepins.
"What a tremendous creature that was," said Helga. "He could have
felled an ox, I fancy."
"But didn't you know him, Helga? It was Magnus Stephenson," said Thora.
"Magnus? Why didn't he speak, I wonder?"
They had reached the outskirts of the crowd and were crossing in front
of the polling place when the people raised a great shout, for it was
the moment when the Sheriff stepped on to the balcony.
"He's going to declare the poll. Shall we wait?" asked Thora.
"It might be amusing," said Helga.
As soon as there was silence the Sheriff read the figures. Oscar had
been elected by three votes to one. At this there was another hurricane
of cheers, with cries of "Oscar!" "Oscar!" and Thora said:
"Oscar will come next. Shall we wait and see him?"
"Why not? It will be good fun," said Helga, and in the interval Thora
patted Silvertop to keep him quiet, and creeping closer to her sister
squeezed her hand.
Then Oscar came bounding on to the balcony amidst a wild breaker of
applause, and behind him came two men bearing torches, so that his
figure and face were plainly visible to the crowd below--his slight,
lithe form, his fair hair slightly ruffled, his sparkling eyes, his
mobile mouth and the never-failing smile that captivated everybody.
It was thus that Helga saw him for the first time since he became a man,
and her face, which had worn a playful expression, became grave.
"How fine!" she said.
Thora could hardly catch the words over the sibilation of the running
cheers, but she said:
"He will speak--shall we wait to hear him?"
"Assuredly," said Helga, and when Oscar began with "Fellow townsmen and
fellow countrymen," Thora felt Helga's hand shiver and heard her say,
"The same voice!"
Oscar's speech was punctuated by applause at the end of every sentence,
and when it was finished, and the speaker and the men with the torches
had disappeared, Thora spoke to Helga again, but she answered at random,
and sat in her saddle like one in a dream.
Somebody else came on to the balcony and had a mixed reception.
"It must be father," said Thora, and then the Factor's voice, utterly
indifferent to hostile interruptions, was heard to say that a supper had
been prepared at the hotel for the committee of the successful
candidate, and they were to go there at once--the new member would
follow presently.
With that the crowd broke up, and the girls went their way--Thora
clinging closer than ever to her sister, for her heart was warm with
love and pride.
"Well," she said, "what did you think of him?"
"Think of him? Oscar?" said Helga. She laughed uncomfortably, and then
stooped from the saddle and whispered:
"Only to think that a little thing like you, dear, should capture a man
like that!"
Thora laughed also, but she hardly knew whether she was pleased or hurt.
A sudden chill had struck her. It was like the breath of the mountain
snow which sometimes comes down in summer.
*III*
The gods of riot were playing so hard a game with Thora that she was in
a fever to introduce Oscar to Helga, and when he did not appear by noon
of the following day she sent a letter across to Government House to
order him to come forthwith. The "Bad Boy" was too full of his silly
politics, while there was something far more charming and absorbing
waiting for him there. But an answer came back from Anna to say that
Oscar was still asleep, and after the excitement of the day before, and
the late hour of the previous night, she was unwilling to waken him.
Early in the afternoon Anna herself came over expecting to see the
first-fruits of the peace-making, and, while Aunt Margret was below
stairs preparing chocolate for the company that was expected, the
motherly old thing tried various artful ways of finding out from Helga
what her upbringing had been in Denmark, and, particularly, what
religious instruction and society her mother had given her. Helga saw
through the device in a moment, and with her red lips a little awry she
painted an alarming picture of theaters and concert-halls, and a flat in
Copenhagen frequented by actors and actresses, especially on Sunday
evenings, where everybody, including the ladies, smoked cigarettes and
drank brandy.
Meanwhile Thora watched for Oscar out of the sidelight of the projecting
window, and as soon as she saw him swinging down the road, she darted
into the hall and threw herself into his arms and kissed him, whereupon,
with his head full of his victory, he said:
"Congratulations, eh? The sweetest I've had yet," and pushed through
toward the drawing-room.
"Wait, wait, wait! Somebody to show you!" cried Thora.
Then the poor victim of God knows what maleficent powers--not knowing
what she did, but laughing merrily as if a song-bird had been imprisoned
in her throat--began to play the old familiar trick of children;
standing behind Oscar on tip-toe in order to reach, she put her hands
over his eyes, and crying, "Forward, soldier!" marched him blindfold
into the drawing-room and up to the place where Helga was waiting.
Then, removing her hands sharply, she cried, "There!" and stood off to
see the effect.
Oscar found himself face to face with a girl as unlike Thora as could
be, tall, dark, with hair parted at the side and hanging over the
forehead, dressed in a light silk blouse and silver-grey skirt, and
having an odor of violets about her.
"Helga! Can it be possible?"
He stretched out his hand and Helga took it, and held it, and so they
stood for some moments, while Thora, breathing rapidly, watched the
changing lights in their faces: in Oscar's, astonishment, admiration,
and rapture: in Helga's, curiosity, satisfaction, and delight. And
Thora's own face, too--to the pitying angels who alone were looking at
it--showed expressions just as various: pride, joy, then uneasiness, and
finally a little twinge of secret pain.
To relieve this feeling, Thora burst into laughter, and then everybody
laughed, and Aunt Margret came into the room with the chocolate and
cakes.
"So you've brought them together again, Thora?" said Aunt Margret, and
Thora swallowed a lump in her throat and answered, "Yes."
Then Oscar and Helga went over to the window and talked together with
great animation. Thora heard snatches of their conversation as she
carried round the cups. It was about things of which she knew
nothing--Denmark, Copenhagen, England, London, Oxford, the English
theater, the Danish theater, and, above all, music, music, music.
"How well they get along," said Thora.
"Trust them for that," said Aunt Margret.
Toward dusk the Factor returned home--not having altered his habit of
work by a hair's breadth; and then came half the great people of the
town--the Bishop, the Sheriff, the Rector of the Latin School, and
finally the Governor. Helga moved among them with the quiet ease of one
accustomed to company. Within an hour she had captured all the men, but
the women were less sure of her.
"The minute I set eyes on her," whispered Aunt Margret to Anna, "I said
to myself, 'Thora is a Neilsen out and out, but there's more of the
stranger in this one.'"
"She's the living picture of what my wife was when I saw her first,"
said the Factor in a low tone to the Governor, who answered
significantly, in the same low tone:
"Then I don't wonder, old friend--I say I don't wonder!"
"Helga's head and yours were nearer together when I laid my hand on them
last," said the Bishop to Thora. "Take care! Your sister is running
away from you, little one."
"Isn't she?" said Thora.
Thora did not feel quite so happy in Helga's visit as she had expected,
but still struggling to show her off, she asked her to play something on
the piano--she had played after breakfast and it was beautiful.
Helga played brilliantly, and Oscar, who turned over her music,
applauded her boisterously.
"And now Oscar ought to play something," said the Governor. "From his
earliest years he made us conceive the highest hopes that he might
become a great musician."
"He will, too--my son Neils at the College of Music says he will," said
the Sheriff.
"Nonsense!" said the Factor. "Oscar has something better to do now than
to scrape catgut or blow his lungs through a steam-pipe."
"Still, an occasional flirtation with the muses," said the Hector, "you
wouldn't object to that, Factor?"
"I would object to flirtations of all sorts," said the Factor, "and I
should think the man a fool who put himself in the way of them."
"Surprising how many men do," said the Governor with a wink at the
Rector. "Would you believe it--a certain friend of yours wrote a poem
in the days of his youth!"
"Never!" cried the Rector, and while the old people laughed, the Factor
said:
"When I was a child I behaved as a child, but when I became a man I put
away childish things."
"Well, I so far agree with the Factor that I think a man can't have his
heart in two places at once," said the Governor. "What do you say,
Thora?"
"I suppose not," said Thora.
"Certainly not, any more than a man can love two women at the same
time," said the Governor; and then Oscar began to play.
He played as the bird sings because the song is in the soul of it, and
when he had finished, the company cheered him lustily, and Helga,
putting her face close to his, said in a whisper:
"And you asked me to play--I who only play as I am taught, and you can
play like that!"
Oscar was delighted with Helga's praises and suggested that they should
play together. They played a difficult selection, full of flourishes,
and the company declared they had never heard anything like it.
"Wonderful, wasn't it?" said somebody.
"Yes, wasn't it?" said Thora.
She was feeling utterly eclipsed and forgotten when Helga wheeled round
on the music-stool and said:
"And now Thora must give us something on her guitar--Aunt Margret says
she plays it beautifully."
"Indeed she does--beautifully!" said Aunt Margret.
But Thora begged off in alarm, saying, "No, indeed, no! I couldn't
possibly play after playing like that."
So Oscar and Helga began again. This time it was an English ballad.
Helga played the accompaniment, and Oscar sang the air, and there was a
chorus which they gave together. The company were completely carried
away. "Charming!" "Exquisite!" "But how well their voices harmonize!"
"They might have been meant by nature to go together!"
"Might they not?" said Thora.
"But now Thora ought really to play her guitar," said Helga.
"Certainly! Thora and her guitar," said Oscar. "And let her sing one
of her Iceland love songs to it."
It was cruel, it was heart-breaking, it was almost as if Helga were
trying to humiliate her, as if Oscar were joining her, as if they were
conspiring together to expose her inferiority.
"No, no, don't ask me, please don't," she pleaded.
But Helga continued to ask and Oscar to second her, and being able to
bear the strain no longer, Thora burst into tears, and fled from the
room.
"How extraordinary!" said Helga.
But Oscar followed Thora and coaxed and comforted her and brought her
back with a smile on her face, although the tears were scarcely dry in
her eyes.
"I was silly," she said. "I don't know what came over me."
"Perhaps it was the heat," said the Governor, and he opened one of the
windows.
*IV*
During the next month Oscar was every day and nearly all day at the
Factor's, to the total disregard of his public work and the complete
neglect of business. But his visits were not always to Thora, who was
ceasing to be "Baby Thora" either to him or to any one, and becoming a
serious little figure with a wistful face. She never romped about the
house now, but sat in a corner with a ball of wool in her lap and a
crochet hook in her hand while Oscar and Helga played the piano and
talked music.
It was music, music, always music at the Factor's in those days. Early
in her visit Helga brought down a pile of the music of Wagner, and Oscar
was completely carried away by it. Other composers produced beautiful
harmonies, a subtle and clever combination of sweet sounds, but when
Oscar played Wagner, the piano seemed to him to waken and weep, to burn
the flame under his fingers.
"It's glorious!" he would say. "I can never thank you enough, Helga.
It's a new world, a new revelation."
Helga had heard of Oscar's songs from the Sagas, and one day she said,
"I wonder you don't try to compose something yourself, Oscar--something
in the style of Wagner--I'm sure you could."
Then with diffidence and apologies Oscar produced his 'prentice efforts,
and Helga praised them enthusiastically. "Do you know you are a born
musician?" she said. "And you should never do anything except create
music--never!"
Oscar was intoxicated by her applause, but he only laughed and said,
"Ah, that's impossible."
"Why impossible?"
"Parliament--public duties--and so forth."
"But, my dear Oscar, you don't mean to say you are going to waste your
life like that?"
"Do you call it waste, Helga?"
"Not for everybody--not for a man like Magnus, for example--but for you,
yes," said Helga, and then, with irresistible drollery, she mimicked the
manners of Parliament, with its "Mr. Speaker, permit me to rise to a
point of order," and "Will the honorable and learned member explain,"
and all the other inanities of a legislative assembly in a little
country.
Oscar laughed until tears, (from more springs than one) began to roll
down his cheeks, and then he said--
"What an actress you would make, Helga! But principles, my dear girl,
principles are the soul of politics, and if a man can guide his country
in the higher paths, he can afford to forget the plains--don't you think
so, Thora?"
And Thora, who had been feeling dizzy and faint, answered in a helpless
way, "Yes, Oscar. But I forgot to tell you that father wished to see
you on business."
"Business!" cried Helga. "That, too!"
"Then you object to business also?" asked Oscar.
"For you--certainly, because you are not fit for it," said Helga. "And
if you go into business you'll be like a man who has married the wrong
woman. She may be an excellent, thrifty soul, quite suitable to
somebody else, but she was never meant for him."
"There's something in that, though it's wonderful how you know it," said
Oscar. "I'm about the silliest beggar at a bargain that ever breathed
out of an oyster shell."
"Of course you are, Oscar--you must be. Now, if Magnus had gone into
business he might have got something out of it. But you--what in the
world do you expect to get?"
"Ah, now you're wrong, Helga! I have got something out of it
already--I've got Thora!"
"Thora?"
"Didn't you know? Thora was the prize I was bidding for when I took
over that contract."
"So that was it--was it?" said Helga; and then Thora herself, feeling
sick and ill, gathered up her work and stole out of the room.
Nevertheless the seed which Helga had sown had not fallen on stony
ground. Within twenty-four hours Oscar appeared with a new composition
in his hands.
"An idea came to me last night and I had to get it off," he said, and
then he sat down to the piano and played.
"Beautiful!" cried Helga. "Really beautiful! But this subject suggests
the organ--why not set it to that, and try it on the organ in the
cathedral?"
"Splendid idea!" said Oscar. "Thora knows the curator and can get the
key. What do you say, Thora?"
"If you would like to," said Thora, and next day they carried out their
scheme.
Oscar and Helga sat together in the organ loft, while Thora was sent
down the communion steps to report the effect at a distance. "How did
that go, Thora?" cried Oscar, once or twice at the beginning, and Thora
answered, "Very nicely, I think," but then the two in the organ loft
forgot her altogether in the rapture of their rehearsal.
During the next two or three weeks Oscar and Helga went to the cathedral
every day, and sometimes Thora went with them, but more frequently she
remained at home. A sudden wave of energy seemed to lift Oscar out of
himself, and he produced one composition after another. Helga applauded
all of them, and her praises intoxicated him like glory.
"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, Helga," he said, "for all
the good things you have poured out on me since you came back to
Iceland. You have given my life a new joy, a new splendor!"
"Nonsense!" said Helga. "I am nothing but a voice to awaken your
genius. You were born to create music, and whatever happens you must
never, never throw away a life which has the glory of a future like
that."
To this, and such as this, he always answered "Ah, no!" or "Impossible!"
or "It's past praying for," but Helga's words were as the very incense
of the dreams which, in vaguer forms, he had been trying to forget since
the day he engaged himself to Thora.
"Why shouldn't there be another Wagner, an Icelandic Wagner, a Wagner
with a still grander scene and still greater stories--the Sagas and
Eddas of this stern old land?"
About a month after Helga returned to Iceland she suggested to Oscar
that he should write an anthem on a passage which she selected from one
of the Sagas. It was that in which the old gods of the Pagan world, in
anger with the family of man for permitting the establishment of
Christianity, tore open the bowels of their fruitful valleys with
earthquakes, and deluged them with molten lava, and how Christ came
through the chaos saying, "Let there be peace!"
"Great! Glorious! A stunning subject! But can I do it?" said Oscar.
"You can, you must," said Helga, and from that moment a continual fever
burned in Oscar's blood until the task was done. Thora saw nothing of
him for days, except when he bounded in to run over a part of his score
with Helga, and then away, without a word, to his work again. When the
anthem was written and he was ready to try it on the organ, he said:
"Are _you_ coming across to the cathedral to-day, Thora? No? Perhaps
you had better not. We'll have to go over the thing again and again--it
might be tiresome."
It was the afternoon of a dull week-day in the early winter, and some of
the dreary noises of the work-a-day world followed Oscar into the
cathedral. A vessel was unloading in the fiord--he could hear the
rumble of the iron trolleys as they rolled up the paved jetty to the
Factor's warehouse. A new house was being erected on the corner of the
cathedral square--he could hear the thin clank of the mason's trowel. A
steamer was on the stocks in the shipyard down the harbor--he could hear
the sharp beat of the riveter's hammer.
But there was another atmosphere in the cathedral, and Oscar floated on
it as on a flood--the silent sanctuary, the rows of empty pews going up
to the chancel, the empty pulpit with its sounding-board, the empty
altar with the Eastern subject painted above it, the marble font for the
baptism of future generations, the marble monuments to the memory of
past ones, and then the listening air, awakened by a whisper or a
footfall, and full of the breath of dead prayer and vanished praise.
In this atmosphere of art and religion Oscar sat down at the organ, with
Helga by his side, to try his anthem for the first time. The organ
throbbed under his fingers, the empty cathedral shook like a sea-cave
under the boom of his waves of sound, and when he came to the end of his
first reading he was quivering with excitement and Helga was in a fever.
"What did I tell you?" she said. "Was I not right? Oh, if this could be
heard in Denmark!"
"Or in England!" said Oscar.
They played the piece again and again, and at every fresh playing their
excitement increased until it reached the point of hysteria, and their
voices in that silent place became as shrill as the wind on the mountain
top. At last they tried the words, and then their emotion knew no
limit.
The organ trembled and throbbed again, and then on the top of all other
sounds came the sound of Helga's voice, like a human cry above the
thundering waves of nature, sometimes weeping, sometimes raging,
sometimes crouching, sometimes springing out of the surge, and finally
sinking down to the soft whisper of "Let there be peace!"
When the anthem was over and all was still, Oscar sat quiet for some
moments while the unheard echo of the music seemed to roll through the
silent air; and then the lightning-flash of joy or madness which comes
to every man of genius once in his life came to him also, and his heart
cried out, in its delirious happiness, "I, too, am a great composer!"
In the intoxication of that moment, Oscar's hand swung down and took
Helga's hand and held it, and their fingers trembled together and they
seemed to hear the beating of each other's heart. They looked at each
other, and his eyes were bloodshot and hers were wet.
"Helga!" he cried.
"Oscar!" she answered, but at the next moment a window blew open on the
staircase to the organ loft and Oscar heard again the dreary noises of
the work-a-day world without--the rumble of the iron trolleys, the thin
clank of the mason's trowel, and the quick beat of the riveter's hammer.
It was like the wakening of a prisoner in his cell when the warder beats
at the door and the dream of glory is gone and the prison walls close
round him again.
Oscar's fingers slackened, and the next moment he heard Helga's rapid
breathing behind him, and her voice saying with a strange bitterness:
"Is that Thora?"
He started and turned. "Where?" he asked.
"Down there by the communion steps--by the altar. No, I was mistaken.
It's only a shadow. The light is fading."
Then with the same bitterness she said, "But I suppose she will be there
soon, and you with her."
Oscar shuddered as if a wounded artery had been torn open, and Helga
continued:
"Then you will go back to business, and Oscar--Oscar Stephenson, the
musician--will be dead."
He fingered the organ stops fumblingly, and made no reply, whereupon
Helga, with undisguised irony, began to picture the dull routine of the
business life that was waiting for him after marriage--its calculations
of discounts, its squabbles with farmers, its buying and selling of pots
and pans.
"It is such a pity," she said.
"Don't torture me, Helga," he cried.
"But is there no way out of it?"
"No, no, no!"
"No way at all, Oscar?"
"Let us go," he said, and he had got down to the door before he
remembered that he had left his hat behind him in the organ loft.
Thora had tea ready when they got back to the Factor's. She was kneeling
before a cozy fire, making toast, after cutting the bread and butter,
and she looked up at them as they entered with a nervous, questioning,
tearful smile.
"Poor little soul! She must never know--never, never!" thought Oscar.
*V*
Thora knew already, and the big heart in her little breast was breaking.
She had begun to think that what had happened to Magnus when Oscar came
back was now happening to her--Oscar was falling in love with Helga, and
she, like Magnus, was being left alone.
Yet she could not reconcile herself to this suspicion without a hard
battle, and the first skirmish of the sweet heart was to fight for the
enemy--Oscar had made a great, great sacrifice when he agreed to marry
her; it was not to be wondered at if he had spasms of regret sometimes.
She hinted as much to Aunt Margret in one of the long hours in which
they were left together.
"Don't you think that Oscar was very unselfish when he signed that
contract?" she said.
"Unselfish? I don't call it unselfishness to sign yourself into a
fortune," said Aunt Margret.
"But he had to take up the business, you know."
"Certainly he had--the best business in Iceland."
"Helga seems to think it is a little beneath him, Aunt Margret."
"It's good enough for Helga's father, and he made it. Besides, Oscar had
nothing else, and an ugly sheep is better than no mutton."
"Oh, yes, he had his music, auntie, and Helga thinks that was a good
deal."
"Does she, indeed? People who are naked needn't go about mending other
people's clothes. Oscar's music wouldn't have brought him a penny of
profit, and as for honor--what about Althing, and all the other things
he couldn't have got without being rich?"
"So you don't think Oscar sacrificed himself very much when he signed
the contract?"
"Sacrificed himself? Perhaps the boot was on the other leg, if you ask
me."
Thora was happy for days after this interview, and while Oscar and Helga
played their Wagner, she went about the house singing her little love
ditties, and thinking of the time when Parliament would begin its
session, and Oscar would throw himself into politics, and become
Speaker, and perhaps Governor, and it would all come of having married
her.
But it was hard to sit for hours in the same room with people who were
scarcely conscious of her presence, and though Thora tried to hide her
pain lest Oscar should feel ashamed, she sometimes felt bitter about
Helga, and wanted to burst out on her. The only thing which restrained
her from doing so was a sweet doubt which she cherished in the most
secret chamber of her heart that perhaps she was mistaken after all, and
Oscar did not really care for Helga.
"Auntie," she said, "don't you think it's silly to be jealous?"
"Depends upon circumstances, Thora."
"If a wife--for example--fancies her husband is paying too much
attention to another woman--don't you think she is silly to be jealous?"
"She's silly to show she is, my precious. It doesn't prevent the sting
to bite the head off the serpent, and if a wife shows the husband she's
jealous, she's just doing what the other woman wants."
"So you think she ought to be quiet and say nothing?"
"Certainly, I do. If the man is going to run away from her, she had
better let him run, and if he isn't, he'll be the more ashamed because
he thinks she doesn't know."
"You mean that if the man is only fascinated for a time----"
"Just so! Fascination may be good enough for a flirtation, but it's
like bright metal--it soon gets tarnished in a damp cellar. You want
gold for the dark places, my honey."
"That is to say, auntie dear, that love is the only thing for married
life?"
"I should think so, indeed, with its crosses and disappointments, and
children and croup, and all the rest of it. And when it comes to
marrying, the silliest of the men know that, bless them!"
"What a lot you know about the men, auntie darling--I wonder you never
married, yourself, dear."
"That's why, my precious!"
It was easier for Thora to veil her agonies with smiles after this
conversation. She pictured to herself the time when her love would be
everything to Oscar. In the secret places of her soul she thought of
the days when children would come, and perhaps even sickness, and they
would be drawn close--so close--together, because the dear clouds of
life hung over both of them. She was not beautiful, she was only a
homely and humble little thing, she was unworthy of Oscar, and there
were so many things in which she was inferior, but oh, her love was
wonderful! Nothing in the world was so wonderful as her love. It would
work miracles, it would be stronger than death, it would stand by Oscar
to the end.
But all the same it was hard to receive her wounds without a cry, and
when Oscar and Helga went off to the cathedral and left her at home she
told herself she was too ignorant to be Oscar's wife, and all her sweet,
heroic love was wasted.
"Don't you think Helga is very clever, Aunt Margret?"
Aunt Margret lifted her eyes from her knitting, and blinked through her
spectacles.
"Clever?--a girl who can't darn a stocking or boil a potato!"
"But see how she can talk, auntie."
"So can the parrot, my dear, and the raven is seldom sparing of his
voice either."
"But surely a man wants his wife to be a companion, auntie--to be able
to converse with him on the subjects he is interested in, and to
criticise his work, perhaps."
"Does he? Perhaps he does, but it would be a crazy creature of a man
who would rather marry a critic than a cook for all that."
Always after this Thora had tea ready when Oscar and Helga returned from
the cathedral, and if her heart had its tremors, still she tried to take
care that Oscar should never see a tear in her eyes. But many a time
when she felt herself to be like an isthmus between the two, holding
them together, yet keeping them apart, the strung bow of her will
slackened and she was nearly breaking down. She waited day by day for
Oscar's heart to speak to her, and when it did not speak she told
herself it was because Helga was so beautiful.
"Isn't Helga beautiful, Aunt Margret?"
"Perhaps," said Aunt Margret.
"You _know_ she is, auntie. You know she is the most beautiful girl in
Iceland."
"Maybe I do--maybe I don't!"
"What an advantage beauty like Helga's gives to a girl--she gets
everything and everybody. If a girl is only beautiful enough, she has
all the men at her feet."
"They must he chiropodists, then, and there are not many of them in
these parts. No, no, beauty isn't everything, Thora, and that's a mercy
for some of us."
The color began to mount to Thora's eyes, and catching sight of this
flag of distress, Aunt Margret continued:
"But fine feathers make fine birds, and I know some in Iceland dress
would make Helga look small if they were done up in her Danish
folderols."
Thora's blushing face began to shine like the sunrise.
"But what's the use? Beauty fills the eye, but not the belly."
"Auntie Margret, what plain things you say!"
"Do I? Then it's best to say them plainly. It isn't good to gild
copper with gold, my honey."
After this talk with Aunt Margret, Thora was more the mistress of
herself than before, because the dividing line between Helga and herself
seemed less. She made up her mind that she would dress in the English
manner, so that Oscar should not see so much difference.
She had money--the dress money her father gave her. It was not very
much, but in previous years she had given away most of it, and this year
she had intended to buy a Scotch overcoat for Hans, the sailor, who was
losing all respect for himself and going about in cold weather with
nothing over his shirt. But now she would be selfish, she would spend
her money on herself, and that was only right since it was spending it
on Oscar also.
It must be a secret, a great secret; it must come upon everybody as a
surprise, because that would be half the battle. So she bought postal
orders with her savings, and sent to Edinburgh for a costume such as she
saw in the picture of a trade advertisement.
The costume came by a trading steamer, and she was like a child in her
secrecy and joy, smuggling the big cardboard box up-stairs to her room,
and answering the inquisitive questions of the Factor and Aunt Margret
with mysterious little nods and subterfuges.
The day was crisp and frosty, and when Oscar, coming in the afternoon,
suggested a walk to the lake to try the ice for skating, Helga responded
readily, but Thora said no, she had something to do, something
important--a little surprise, they should see when they came back again.
As soon as Helga and Oscar had gone, and Aunt Margret had promised to
make tea, Thora stole up to her room, locked the door, opened the box,
and took out the new garments that were to work the wondrous change.
They were beautiful, they were dreams, they were lovelier than anything
of Helga's--a blue voile dress with a silk corsage and embroidered yoke.
The pleated skirt was like the sun's rays over Hecla after a shower of
summer rain, and the silk of the blouse was as beautiful as the ice of a
glacier with the flowery bubbles of air in it.
Thora laughed for joy, and taking off her old Iceland costume she threw
it aside as a thing she had done with--the granny skirt, the stiff
treya, and the starchy brjest. She wondered how she could have worn
them so long, and even told herself what she would do with them--she
would give them to a young widow who had lately lost her child by
diphtheria and joined the people at the Salvation shelter.
When she took up the new garments she had some doubt as to how they were
to be put on, and almost wished she had inquired of Helga. The
accordion skirt was easy enough, and its ample train made her feel tall
and imposing, but the blouse was a besetting trouble. It fastened
behind, and after despairing efforts to catch the hooks and eyes she was
tempted to call Aunt Margret; but she thought no, that would never do,
so she struggled on.
The room was cold, but when she had finished dressing her face was
flushed and heated. She had put on her silver belt, because it was a
present from Oscar, and brushed her hair sideways over the forehead,
because that was how Helga wore it. Then looking at herself in the
glass she laughed again, for she was proud and happy.
What would Oscar say when he saw her? He would say, "Why, this is
Helga! Another Helga! Not quite so tall perhaps--but just--yes, really
just as nice-looking!" And then Helga would be angry, and envious, and
perhaps go back to Denmark.
She was walking to and fro on tiptoe, glancing with sparkling eyes at
her figure in the glass, when she heard voices in the hall below.
"Thora!" cried somebody from the foot of the stairs. It was Oscar.
"I'm coming," she answered.
"What about the great surprise?"
"Presently!" she cried.
She waited until she heard a door close below, and then, still laughing
a little, but breathing rapidly, feeling sure of victory, yet with a
fluttering at her heart, she went down the stairs, and sailed into the
sitting-room.
Oscar was leaning on the marble stove, and Helga, sitting on a low seat,
was warming her feet at the fire. They turned to Thora as she entered,
and looked at her with wide eyes. There was a moment of chilling
silence, and then Thora, breathing faster and faster, said:
"Well, what do you think of it?"
Helga began to laugh, first in a smothered titter, hut finally in an
outright roar, whereupon Oscar, who had struggled not to smile, caught
the contagion and joined her.
Thora's pitiful face fell, and she said, with a crack in her voice:
"But what are you laughing at, Oscar?"
"My dear, dear child!" said Oscar; and Helga, who was still laughing,
said:
"A little milliner! It makes her look like a little milliner!"
"No, no, not that," said Oscar. "But it's not Thora. Thora is a sweet,
simple Iceland maiden whose charm is her simplicity, whereas this----"
"I see," said Thora, and with her heart in her mouth she turned to go.
Oscar stepped to the door to stop her, but with the shrill cry of a hare
that is wounded to death she flung out at him and passed through. She
went up-stairs with a slow step, took off her English costume, put it
back in the cardboard box, and pushed it under the bed--crying a little
and wiping her eyes.
She knew the truth at last--she knew where she stood in Oscar's mind. A
simple Iceland maiden--that was all he had ever seen in her! It was she
who had merely fascinated him, and Helga whom he loved!
When the door of the sitting-room closed on Thora, Oscar looked at Helga
and said:
"Whatever has come over her?"
"Don't you see?" said Helga.
"Why, no--what is it?"
"How stupid these clever boys can he! I could tell you in three words."
"Tell me, then--tell me."
"Thora is jealous."
"You don't mean that?"
Helga's face flushed; she looked up at Oscar, and a mysterious thrill
went through him. The great surprise had come indeed.
*VI*
Oscar slept badly that night. For two months he had been moving in a
garden of dreams, where the odor of sweet flowers overpower the senses,
but he was awake at last, and was being dragged to trial in a tribunal
of his own creating. In that court of conscience he was both righteous
judge and guilty prisoner, and through the long hours of broken sleep,
when he saw his life and motives as by flashes of lightning, he asked
and answered some terrible questions:
Is Thora's jealousy justified?
No, yes! That is to say--I may have neglected her--thoughtlessly
neglected her.
Do you love Helga?
It isn't necessary to think that. I admire her--I admire her beauty,
and her intellect, but----
Then you do not love her?
I love her society--I love to be with her; she is bright and brilliant;
we have many interests in common.
Then if you do not love Helga, why not cut her off rather than see Thora
suffer?
I can't! I can't!
So you _do_ love Helga?
Yes! Yes! I do love her.
Then what about Thora?
I am sorry for Thora--very sorry.
Have you ceased to love her?
Don't say that. My feeling for Thora is the same now as it has always
been.
Then you have _never_ loved her?
I thought I did--I sincerely thought I did.
So your feeling for Thora was an illusion?
A most unfortunate illusion, and I am troubled about her--I shall always
be troubled about her.
But you are betrothed to her?
God help me, so I am!
What are you going to do now?
What am I going to do? I am--yes, I am going to obey the commandment of
Nature. Accident and error and illusion have betrothed me to the wrong
woman, but must I hold to her after I have found out that I do not love
her? No! She is sweet and loving, and I have no fault to find with her,
but I must obey the law of my heart, and who shall judge me if I do
that?
But what about the law of the land--you have signed a contract to marry
Thora?
Even so, is marriage like any other worldly transaction? Are you bound
to go on merely because you have begun? Can human hearts be dealt with
like so much merchandise?
So you do _not_ intend to marry Thora?
I cannot--it is impossible--now that her sister has appeared before me,
I see too well I do not love her.
But _she_ loves _you_!
That is the pity of it. Poor Thora!
She thinks you are slipping away from her?
It is very pitiful--I see how I have made her suffer.
What will happen if you leave her altogether?
Her heart will break--her tender, sweet, child heart will break.
Can you break Thora's heart?
No, no, no! Better break my own!
Then what are you going to do?
I must go on with the marriage. I see now that I must--it is my
duty--there is no help for it.
Wait! There is something you have not thought about. If you go on with
your contract and marry Thora, you must be prepared to live her life.
I know! I know! And I am not fit for it! Good or bad, I am not fit
for it!
But if you break your contract, and do not marry Thora, you may live the
life of Helga.
Yes, yes, and I am fitted for that life above everything else. It
thrills me, it inspires me, it lifts me up.
The one is the lower life, while the other is the higher life.
I cannot bear to think of it.
You know that if you marry Thora you condemn yourself for ever to the
lower life, and give up all hope and all thought of the higher one?
Don't torture me! Don't torture me!
But the higher life will be a life consecrated to self, whereas the
lower life will be a life devoted to self-sacrifice--which is it to be?
That settles it--I must go on with the contract, whatever the
consequences.
When Oscar awoke in the morning from his restless sleep he thought he
saw his way clearly. There was only one solution of the hard problem of
his iron destiny--he must sacrifice himself! He was betrothed to Thora,
and he must go on with the marriage. He loved Helga, but he must tear
her out of his heart. He wished to be a musician, and to live the
higher life, but he must be content with the lower life and do his duty.
A few irresistible pangs of regret, a few tears which he could not quite
keep back, and then, feeling a certain satisfaction with himself, a
certain pride in his self-sacrifice, Oscar went early to his work.
It was the autumn caravan time, when the farmers come with the last of
the year's tallow and wool to have their accounts made up and settled.
The offices and warehouses were like a market-place, and there was work
for everybody. Oscar threw himself into the day's doings with
astonishing energy, and when the Factor returned from breakfast he
bantered him on his industry. "Better late than never, though," said
the Factor, "and a good day in the autumn is worth two in the spring."
Oscar spent the morning in the office helping at the accounts. His part
was to reconcile the farmers to their balances, for many of them were
dissatisfied, and nearly all were in the Factor's debt. Some grumbled
at the rate they received for their produce, others at the price they
paid for foreign goods. Oscar's task was to persuade, cajole, and
comfort them, and finally to draft the notes of hand on the bankers with
which they discharged their debts. He felt mean and miserable.
Toward noon Helga sent a messenger to say that she hoped to rehearse
some of the new music in the cathedral in the afternoon and to ask if
Oscar would go with her. He answered that he could not, business was
pressing, and he must stick to his work. It cost him a pang to send
back this answer, but he had made his bed and he meant to lie on it.
He spent the afternoon in the warehouse, where the produce brought by
the farmers was weighed and stacked away for the winter. The odor of
the tallow and wool, mingling with the smell of the men's clothes and
the reek of their bodies, made the atmosphere close and noisome, and to
freshen the air Oscar ordered the big doors to be thrown open.
All at once through the clear, crisp winter air outside came the sound
of the organ being played in the cathedral, and that was the last drop
in his cup. It was like a voice calling him out of the lower world he
lived in to the higher one he yearned for. It was like Helga beckoning
to him in his unblessed surroundings, and through the roll of the music
he could see her face.
For the first time Oscar was feeling bitterly about Thora, as if he were
a prisoner and she were his jailer, when a man rode up to the warehouse
door on a bright chestnut pony, with a line of pack ponies behind him.
It was Magnus, and seeing him stand outside the counter, which he had
formerly stood within, Oscar felt some qualms of shame, and called him
into the scalesman's office.
The interview between the brothers was brief and commonplace, but every
simple word seemed to throb and scorch like a flame. Oscar asked how
Magnus was getting on at the farm, and if he had good servants, and
Magnus answered "Yes"; he had always been fond of farming, and for
servants he had only the old ones, and everything was as before. Oscar
asked if the Governor had made satisfactory arrangements, and Magnus
said he had, that the farm was his own now on terms of tenancy, and was
to become his property at the old people's death.
"And how are you getting on here?" asked Magnus.
"I? Oh--pretty well, I think."
"You like the work?"
"Yes--well--not to say like, perhaps; I never expected to do that, you
know; but I'm all right, I think."
They had to pause, for the din in the warehouse was louder than
usual--some of the farmers were squabbling with the scalesmen.
"And Thora?" said Magnus after a moment.
"Thora? Oh, Thora is all right, too, I think. Yes, Thora is all
right," said Oscar.
"Mother tells me she looks pale."
"Pale? Does she? I hadn't noticed it. Perhaps she does though, the
weather is getting cold."
There was a painful pause in their conversation, and while they waited
Oscar could hear the organ in the cathedral breaking into the opening
notes of his own anthem.
"I hear that Helga has come home," said Magnus.
"Oh, yes, Helga has come home," said Oscar.
"They say she is handsome."
"Handsome? Yes, she's rather handsome, in fact, distinctly
handsome--and musical--decidedly musical. Indeed, she has grown to be a
very attractive girl--very!"
There was another awkward silence, in which the anthem pealed out over
the jangling voices in the warehouse.
"I suppose the wedding will be soon," said Magnus.
"The wedding? Well, to tell you the truth, Magnus, nothing has been
fixed yet."
"Not yet?"
"Nothing definite, I mean--no precise date. I don't know why, but----"
Oscar looked at his brother, and felt his tongue arrested.
Magnus was calm, his eyes were quiet, and his voice was soft, but there
was something in his face which brought back a terrible memory. It was
the memory of the night of the betrothal, the last time they talked
together, when Magnus had said, "If you ever neglect or desert her or
give her up for another woman, I'll take her back--do you hear me?--I'll
take her back, and then, by God, I'll kill you!"
Oscar supped at the Factor's house that night. He was unusually solemn,
and more than once during the meal Aunt Margret bantered him on his
silence, but, at the end of it, while lighting a cigarette, he said:
"Godfather, I hope you'll consent to our having the wedding soon?"
Thora, who had been looking pale and nervous, colored up with a glad
look, while Helga, who had been flushed and excited, grew white and
rigid.
"What do you call soon, Oscar--Easter?" asked the Factor.
"Earlier, much earlier, say the middle of January at latest," said
Oscar.
"But what does Thora say?"
Rising from her seat, with brightening eyes and heaving bosom, Thora
crossed over to Oscar and kissed him.
"So that's what Thora says!" laughed the Factor. "Very well, I'm
willing! The middle of January let it be then, and fix the date between
you."
Helga's white face quivered. "So _that's_ settled!" she cried, and
leaping up she went across to the piano and began to play with great
vigor. She played the wild "Ride of the Valkyries," becoming faster and
louder at every bar.
Oscar was in torture, and he went home early. "What a mercy Helga does
not know!" he thought. "If she did, I could not trust myself even yet!
And if she loves me as I love her--good God!"
But Thora was very happy. Going to bed that night she thought, "How
wrong I have been about Oscar; how cruelly, wickedly, shamefully wrong!"
*VII*
Next morning Oscar thought the battle was over, and his conscience had
conquered, but the devil was not done with him yet. He had hardly
settled to his work in the warehouse when a letter came from Helga,
saying:
"The ice is perfect on the lake this morning, ant in spite of business
and every other botheration you must carry out your promise to take me
to skate. Therefore come at two o'clock to the minute, and you will
find me waiting to go with you."
It was the first letter he had received from Helga, and it seemed to
burn his fingers. The scented note-paper and the free, bold handwriting
gave him a physical thrill which he had never felt before.
Should he go? His soul said, "Certainly not! Why expose yourself to
temptation, especially now, when you are as weak as water." But his
heart said, "You must! To make any difference in your attitude toward
Helga would be to run the risk of betraying your secret. And what about
the future--can you always run away like that?" His heart won, and at
the appointed time he was walking up to the Factor's.
Helga was standing by the door at the top of the steps. She was dressed
in pale blue serge, a short skirt exposing the long tanned boots, a
jersey revealing the flexible lines of her shapely figure, and a white
woolen cap, like a chain helmet, covering half her forehead and closing
under her chin, leaving her vivid face bare and beautiful as a young
nun's in hood and bands.
Oscar was beginning to doubt himself already, and he asked where was
Thora.
"I'm here," said a cheerful voice from the hall, and Thora came to the
door bright and happy, but bareheaded, and sewing a piece of moleskin
cloth.
"Not ready?" said Oscar.
"I'm not going, I can't skate," said Thora.
"Then we'll take a walk instead," said Oscar. But Thora would not hear
of it. Helga had set her heart on skating, and she had set her heart on
something else--making a sleeve waistcoat for Hans, the sailor.
"Well, if you really wish it," said Oscar.
"Really, truly! And I'll have tea ready for you at five o'clock."
"We'll be back before that," said Oscar, and then he and Helga went
swinging down the road.
Helga, in her short skirt, walked with a spring, like a young horse in
sharp weather, and Oscar, as he swung along by her aide, sometimes
touching her, felt his blood tingling, and every nerve tremblingly
alive. This frightened him a little, and turning to look back he saw
Thora waving to them from the house, and said, "God bless her, the dear
little soul!" And then Helga glanced at him sideways and laughed.
The frost had filtered the air, and it was crisp and quivering with
currents of electricity, which stimulated all their senses. Their
voices crackled when they spoke, and when Helga laughed the sound was
like that of dry sticks in a quick fire.
"What are you laughing at, Helga?"
"I don't know," she said, and then they laughed together.
The ice of the lake was glorious--a broad mirror black as ink, for there
had been no snow yet, the water had frozen as by first intention, and
through five fathoms they could see the stones and pebbles at the
bottom.
"What a pity Thora didn't come," said Oscar.
"Isn't it?" said Helga, and again she glanced at him sideways and
laughed.
They sat on the bank to put on their skates, and while Helga fumbled at
her straps, Oscar thought, "I must not, I will not!" But Helga looked
across at him with a smile that seemed to ask a question, and at the
next moment he was down on his knees in front of her, with one of her
skates and one of her long tanned boots in his quivering hands.
Oscar thought Helga's skating was wonderful. It was divine, it was
devilish, it intoxicated him, he could not trust himself to look at it
alone, and seeing a number of skaters at the farther side of the lake,
where there was an island of lava rocks, he said:
"Let us go over to the others."
Hours passed, the exercise and the air warmed his blood, his tremors
left him, and he forgot about Thora. At length the sun began to set
over the sea in a flood of glory, and Oscar said, "Time to go home."
"Not yet," said Helga, and they went round and round the island,
sometimes apart, sometimes with clasped hands, sometimes side by side
with arms interlaced across their breasts.
The sun went down, and both sea and land became gray and cold, but still
the tops of the mountains were golden.
"Tea will be waiting," said Oscar.
"A little longer!" said Helga, and nothing loath, Oscar went round and
round with her again.
The night came striding up from the plain behind, and somebody lit a
fire on the island.
"Too late for tea now," said Helga, and once again Oscar went round and
round with her. It seemed to him that Helga's face flashed with
electric flame as she swirled out of the darkness into the red glow from
the fire, and back again into the darkness.
One of the skaters started the Elf-song, others joined him, and then it
was a scene of complete enchantment. The frost had laid its hand on the
falls that fed the lake, and they were quiet; it had stroked the
streams, and they were still; but if the voices of the waters were
silent, the voices of the skaters rippled and rang in the crisp night
air.
"Dance by night and dance by day,
Life and Time will pass away:
Love alone will last alway."
Oscar was enraptured. The humming of the skates, the swaying of the
ice, the music of the singers, the heat, the glow, the sinuous movement,
and above all the girl by his side, so bright, so beautiful, so full of
life and laughter, carried away every sense, and flesh and blood were
afire.
Then the moon rose, a brilliant moon, and it was reflected full and
round and white in the black mirror of the ice, with its streamers going
off from it, as if it had been a comet that had fallen to the earth, and
lay there at their feet.
"Look! Let us cut across it," cried Helga, and away they shot in the
darkness, with the moon's reflection receding as they followed it, until
they came to the limit of the lake, and then the skaters and the fire
and the singing were far behind them.
"What a will o' the wisp she is! I could catch you quicker than I could
catch her!" said Oscar.
"You couldn't!"
"I could!"
"Do it then!" cried Helga, and off she went, laughing at first, but
afterward silent yet breathing fast, and at last panting audibly while
she twisted and turned to escape from him, until he came down on her at
length with outstretched arms and a cry of "Done!" And then, before he
knew what he was doing, he was clasping her to his breast, and she was
clinging to him lest she should fall, and he was beating kiss after kiss
upon her lips.
At the next moment consciousness came back to him like an ice wind
blowing in a furnace. His arms slackened away from Helga, and he said
in a cold voice:
"I beg your pardon, Helga. It was wrong of me. I am very sorry."
Helga laughed, a nervous, broken laugh which seemed to say, "Are you
sure you are thinking of me?"
"I am betrothed to your sister, and in less than two months I am to be
married to her. I had no right to give way to my feelings like that,"
said Oscar.
The nervous, broken laugh came again, and it said, as plainly as words
could speak, "Do you know what you are saying, Oscar?"
Oscar trembled like a withered leaf. He was like a man standing on the
hot ground of the geysers, where the crust was thin and cracking under
his feet.
"Let us go home," he said.
"Take off my skates then," said Helga.
She sat on the bank in the moonlight, and while he knelt at her feet and
fumbled with the straps, his tongue went on with rambling sentences, but
every word was tearing as at a torn tendon.
"When a man has engaged himself to a good woman, he ought to be true to
her. It is his duty, and whatever the consequences to himself, he ought
to do it. If he has to suffer, he must suffer, Helga, and if he has to
sacrifice himself----"
A faint sound stopped him. Helga was crying. Her crying seemed to
search his innermost thoughts, and to say, "But have you any right to
sacrifice _me_?"
"Helga! Helga!" he cried, but she took no notice. She covered her face
with her hands, and her crying became deep and long and inconsolable.
He wished to comfort her, but he dare not do so. He remembered Thora
and Magnus, the Factor, and his father, and his thoughts danced about
his naked soul like demons.
"Helga! Helga!" he cried again, but still Helga's weeping continued.
If it had gone on a moment longer he must have taken her in his arms
again and told her that he loved her; that his love for her was above
all laws, all illusions, all conventions; it was the commandment of
Nature, and he was compelled to obey it; and they must fly from Iceland
and never return, whatever the waste of ruined lives they had to leave
behind them.
But Helga's crying stopped suddenly, and throwing back her head she said
fiercely, "Very well, if you are satisfied, so am I!"
Then she leapt to her feet, wiped her eyes vigorously and laughed--a
short, hard, bitter laugh, and after that Oscar recovered control of
himself.
"Let us be off," she said.
Going back by the road that skirts the lake, side by side, but neither
touching the other, and both silent, Oscar thought, "Good heavens, what
an escape! Another moment and what might not have happened! What a
fool I was to expose myself to this temptation! Marriage is my only
safeguard. It must be soon. Thora and I must go away. When we return,
Helga may be back in Denmark, and then a scene like this will never
occur again!"
When they reached the house at last, he felt like an adulterer coming
home after his first offense, but Thora looked happy and unsuspicious.
"I knew you couldn't tear yourselves away from your skating, so I put
the tea away, and now supper is nearly ready," she said.
After supper Oscar said, "Godfather, I wish you would permit me to alter
the arrangement of last evening."
"You want to go back to Easter, eh?" said the Factor.
"No, sir, to come on to Christmas," said Oscar, and then he gave his
reasons. Thora was looking pale--everybody thought so--she wanted a
change--he would like to take her to England, perhaps to France, and
even to Italy. They might stay away during the months of spring and
come back for the first of summer, when Althing would open its session,
and by that time Thora would be well, and he himself would be ready to
set to work in earnest.
"But Christmas, my gracious!" cried Aunt Margret, "hardly time for the
banns! And what about Thora's wedding-dress?"
But Thora herself was in raptures, and Aunt Margret's objections were
borne down.
"Christmas let it be then," said the Factor, whereupon Thora gave a cry
of joy, and Helga, whose eyes had passed with a quick glance from face
to face, while her own grew paler and paler, leapt up, saying:
"And now let us have a dance to celebrate the happy event!"
"No, no, no," said Oscar.
"Yes, yes," said Helga, and sitting down to the piano she played a dance
tune with a rapid and passionate touch. "Make him dance, Thora," she
cried with an awful brightness in her eyes.
Thora took hold of Oscar and dragged him to his feet, saying laughingly,
"Why not, Oscar?"
Tables and chairs were pulled aside, the Factor went off to smoke, and
Oscar and Thora danced while Helga played, laughing loudly, and calling
to them again and again.
"Helga! Helga! Not so fast! You'll kill us," cried Thora.
But Helga only laughed the louder and played the faster, with a
fierceness that seemed to consume her like a fire.
Oscar went home that night with an aching heart, but Thora went to bed
happy.
"How wrong I was about dear Helga, also!" she thought, and then drawing
a deep breath she fell asleep.
*VIII*
To think yourself happy is to be happy, and Thora thought herself the
happiest little woman in the world. The weeks before her wedding were
the brightest period of her heart's existence. She counted the days
backward from the day she was living in to the day of all days that was
to come, and every morning, the moment she awoke, she said to herself,
"Only nineteen now," and then eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen, until it
became three, two, and one. "Our Thora is like a white mouse in a
revolving cage--she can't make the world go round quickly enough," said
Aunt Margret.
Hers was not the happiness that makes the heart afraid, and she had not
a moment's misgiving about Oscar now. She never once saw him alone for
more than two minutes together, but that did not trouble her at all. He
came and went every day, always in a hurry, and always breathless, and
she gave him the benevolence of a smile, and occasionally the charity of
a kiss, when it could be done decently behind the dining-room door. But
usually he had to be content to see her seated among her dressmakers and
sewing-maids, and that suited him better than she knew.
There was nothing to tarnish the white simplicity of her happiness, and
when Oscar could come with maps and tour lists to arrange about their
journey she would say:
"Why don't you talk it over with Helga? She knows more about
traveling."
And then Oscar would stammer a little and say, "Well, if you are willing
to be guided by Helga's judgment, and Helga herself will----"
"Certainly I am, so be off to my bedroom and settle everything."
Whereupon Oscar would cry, "No, no, we're right enough here," and then
Helga and he--the one trembling lest a word should betray him, the other
going through the bitterness of looking at happiness through another's
eyes--would discuss routes and railway journeys to the click of scissors
and the buzz of the sewing machine.
"We'll go up by the Mont Cenis, eh?" "No, by the St. Gothard." "We'll
come back by San Remo and Nice." "And Monte Carlo!" "Yes, of
course--Monte Carlo."
"My gracious, it might be Helga who was going on her honeymoon," Aunt
Margret would say.
"Mightn't it?" Thora would answer, and then she would laugh like a
child.
In the Holy Land of her innocent heart she had only one thought about
her sister--that she had done her the wrong of suspecting her. Helga
might know nothing about that, but _she_ knew, and she could never be
quite satisfied until she had made amends. Time and again she thought
of a way to do this, and at length an artful scheme occurred to her. It
was a daring design, and asking herself when she could bring it to pass
she concluded that it must be on her wedding-day, because she would be
the queen of her own little kingdom then and nobody could deny her
anything. Meantime it was to be her secret, and Helga was to hear
nothing about lit, and even Oscar himself was not to know.
There was only one other streak of alloy in Thora's happiness, and that
was her memory of Magnus. The brave heart did not break and Magnus's
despair might be dumb, but the thought of his suffering was the tang of
iron in the sweet wine of Thora's life. To complete her happiness
everybody had to share it, so when Oscar came one day she took him into
the hall and said:
"Oscar, who is to be best man?" And Oscar stammered:
"Well, really, to tell you the truth, I hadn't--that is to say----"
"Why not Magnus?" said Thora.
"Magnus? I thought of that, but--" and then came the old difficulty--he
had not yet set Magnus right on the subject of the betrothal, and until
that could be done the old people would object to him.
"But why shouldn't you do it now, Oscar? Such a splendid moment to heal
every sore and let bygones be bygones."
"Yes, certainly, that's so," said Oscar, but he went off with a troubled
face, and Thora heard no more from him on the subject until the day
before the wedding, when he said:
"Oh, by the way, about the best man, that splendid scheme of yours was
impossible, Thora."
"Impossible?"
"Mother tells me Magnus has gone to the Northlands--went away about a
week ago, it seems."
"In the winter and on the eve of the wedding?"
"She thinks he'll be back for that, but, of course, we can't take risks,
so Neils--you remember Neils Finsen, the Sheriff's son?--Neils came back
in the last steamer, and he'll be best man, so that's settled."
"What a pity!" said Thora, and then Oscar, who had opened the door,
cried:
"Helloa! Snowing! We're going to have a white wedding, Thora!" and
with a nervous laugh he buttoned up his coat collar and went off without
kissing her.
She remembered this again when she was going to bed, and, sitting on the
great chair before the cheerful stove, with the curtains drawn and all
so sweet and cozy, she reflected that it was the last time she was to
sleep in her father's house. The three weeks were almost gone at last,
and so was her girlhood; and now that both were nearly over they seemed
to have vanished like a dream. She was happy still, but it would have
taken very little to turn her happiness into pain. It was a pity Oscar
had forgotten to kiss her, and it was a pity Magnus would not be present
at the wedding.
Toward the mirk of night she went to bed, and then the snow was still
falling. She thought of Magnus traveling over the desert, and wondered
why he had gone away just then. Perhaps it was because he could not
bear to look upon their happiness--hers and Oscar's! Poor Magnus!
But the memory of Magnus was whirled away in a cloud of other
thoughts--the wedding, the wedding presents, the wedding-feast, and
Oscar, always Oscar--and then the tired eyelids of her mind closed in
peace and good-will with all the world, and she slept the last sleep of
her maidenhood.
*IX*
"Thora! Thora! Well, I declare! The girl is still sleeping!"
"On her wedding-day, too. Thora! Thora!"
Thora awoke with a start at the calling and knocking at her door.
Leaping out of bed she ran to the window and parted the curtains. It
was broad morning, the sun was shining brightly over the snow, and all
the world was white.
She opened the door, the sewing-maids and dressmakers trooped into the
room, and from that moment onward for several hours the universe was a
chaos without form and void, in which all talked at once and everybody
ran up against everybody else, and Thora ate her breakfast while walking
about or being "fitted on."
But the dress and the dressing were finished at length, and Aunt Margret
was called up to look. Nobody in Iceland had ever seen such a bridal
costume--the silk kirtle, the silver-gilt crown, the faldur, the veil,
and the blue plush cloak.
"Isn't she beautiful, Margret?" said the maids, whereupon Aunt Margret,
whose eyes were glistening behind her spectacles, said:
"Talk about Helga--tut!"
Then the cathedral bells began to ring and a hush fell on everybody.
Thora went slowly down-stairs and found her father (looking taller than
ever in a new silk hat) waiting for her in the hall, and Silvertop
standing ready in the street, with a side-saddle of red plush and gilt.
There were a few jests, a few laughs, a few furtive tears, and then they
started off. The snow underfoot was as dry and soft as flour, and it
was with difficulty that the pony could be made to walk sedately.
From the moment they reached the cathedral it was all like a dream to
Thora, a beautiful day-dream, such as she had dreamt sometimes when she
thought she was dead and her happy soul was entering heaven.
The bridesmaids were waiting in the porch--Helga looking wondrously
beautiful in an English dress, and two former school-fellows in Iceland
costume.
Thora, who was moving as in a vision, felt somebody taking off her plush
cloak, and then the bells stopped and the organ began. At the next
moment the choir was singing a hymn--the usual hymn, "When God the
Father led the first of brides"--and then she was going up the aisle,
leaning on her father's arm.
She had never seen so many faces since the day she was confirmed. They
seemed to move past her, and they made her almost dizzy. She remembered
how at other weddings the congregation had watched for the bride and
looked at her as if she had been a supernatural thing. "She's coming!"
"Here she comes!" She herself was the bride now, and the people were
craning their necks to see her.
Thora could feel their smiling faces, and she knew that her own face was
smiling. She could hear what the people were saying as she passed them:
"Dear Thora!" "How lovely she looks!" "I'm satisfied now, and I don't
care if I go--I only wanted to see how Thora looked in the kirtle." And
meanwhile the voices of the choir were coming down from the gallery as
from the sky and floating round and round her.
At the top of the nave Oscar was waiting--so perfectly dressed, so
handsome, so noble-looking--with a fair young man on his right hand, and
on his left the Governor, very solemn and stately with his iron-grey
hair and beard.
The hymn came to an end, the organ died down, and Thora found herself
standing by Oscar's side at the foot of the chancel steps, with the old
Bishop in his pleated black gown and white ruff at the top of them.
There was a rustle behind her, then there was silence, and the Bishop
began to speak.
"My children," he said, "when long ago God the Father led the first of
brides to the first of men in the beautiful garden of Eden he linked
their hands together in love, and that was the first marriage. Since
then He has carried on the human story by the same sweet means, and love
is still the bond that binds man to woman, and woman to man."
"My children," said the Bishop again--he was speaking to her and
Oscar--"you come here to be made man and wife, and because you love one
another God is willing to join your hands in holy wedlock, for He
blesses and sanctifies no other union, whether of wealth or worldly
advantage or any other interest whatsoever.
"We know you both, my children; we who are gathered here have watched
the flower of your affection bud and bloom, and now we pray to God that
you may be true to the vows you are to make to-day, always bearing each
other's burdens, forgiving each other's faults, and cherishing the human
love that is a symbol of the love divine.
"My daughter, love him who is to be your husband; let him find on your
breast his solace for every sorrow, whatever the world may do to him,
and whatever the world may say.
"My son, love her who is to be your wife. There is nothing nobler in
this imperfect existence, no sight more sweet and heavenly, than when a
good girl leaves the father who loves her, and the home where she has
been happy, and says to him who is to be her husband: 'The past was
beautiful, but I trust the future all to you.' Be worthy of that trust,
my son, be strong, be brave, be faithful, and He who knows our
weaknesses, having trodden the earth before us, will bear you up if your
feet should falter.
"Be companions to each other in the journey of this world, my dear ones,
and if it should please God to give you children let them be bonds to
bind you closer together. Above all, love one another, for that is the
first commandment, and may He who gave it guard and guide you through
all the thorny paths of life."
The Bishop's voice became tremulous toward the end, and when he finished
there was some coughing and blowing of noses among the congregation.
Oscar, too, was breathing heavily by Thora's side, and Helga was
trampling on her train, but Thora herself was as calm as a trustful
child.
At the next moment she was kneeling by Oscar's side on the communion
steps--just where they had knelt as children to be confirmed--and the
Bishop was administering the vows. There was a breathless hush in the
crowded cathedral during this solemn and beautiful ceremony--a ceremony
for ever new, for ever old, for ever awful--the consecration of the man
to the woman, the woman to the man, for better or for worse, in sickness
and in health, "till death us do part."
Oscar was still breathing heavily, but Thora felt too happy to be
agitated, too sure to be afraid. When the Bishop put their hands
together, and laid his own hand on the top of them, she felt Oscar's
hand tremble and his pulse throb, and she wanted to calm and comfort
him. But it was all over in a moment, for they had risen to their feet,
and one of the assistant clergy was giving out a hymn.
"Guide Thy children, Father, guide them,
Through the thorny paths of life."
The choir began it, but the congregation joined in, and all the voices
seemed to quiver with emotion. Thora felt herself carried away, far
away, but still she was holding Oscar's hand. She thought she could
hear Magnus's voice among the voices behind her--the deep voice she used
to hear on those evenings so long ago. Poor Magnus! But then he could
have had no joy of her, so it was better even for him.
It was something of a descent when the hymn ended and the Bishop shook
hands with her, and the Governor followed his example, and the
bridesmaids came up and kissed her in the presence of the whole
congregation. But Oscar gave her his arm, and as they moved down the
nave the organ and choir began again:
"O Perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne."
She was now sure she could hear Magnus, and looking up at the organ loft
she saw him. Yes, he was there; he was in the choir; he had come back
from the Northlands to sing at her wedding.
"That theirs may be the joy that knows no ending,
Whom Thou for evermore dost join in one--"
She had only one glance at his face, but she saw it plainly. She had
never seen it like that before--so broken up, and so soft, yet so strong
and brave. His eyes were steadfastly fixed on his music book, and he
was swaying a little and singing as with all his might.
"Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow,
Grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife--"
But Magnus was whirled away from her in a moment, for the people
whispered as she was going past. "Dear Thora! God bless our Thora!"
Oscar was bowing on both sides of the aisle, and the people were talking
to him also. "How handsome he looks!" "He looks as if he could take
care of her, too!" "Take care of her, Oscar!"
They were back in the porch at length, and somebody was putting her
plush cloak over her shoulders. Silvertop was standing outside, and
Hans the sailor (in his new sleeve waistcoat) was giving him water out
of his pail.
Oscar lifted her to the saddle, and they turned their faces homeward.
The bells began to ring again--a merry peal--and then, at last, Thora's
tears began to flow. How good everybody had been to her! It was all
for Oscar's sake! How sweet to think they were good to her for the sake
of Oscar! Thank God for Oscar!
*X*
Anna and Aunt Margret were at the door of the Factor's house to receive
them. They kissed Thora, and called her "Mrs. Stephenson," and then
took her up-stairs to change. When she came down again the friends
invited to the wedding feast were coming in quickly, taking off their
snowshoes, shaking hands with Oscar, and talking all at once.
The table was laid in the double sitting-room which had been the scene
of the betrothal. The Factor sat at the head with Oscar on his right
(just in the place where he had trodden on Helga's photograph), and
Thora on his left (where Magnus had sat on the low seat beside his
mother), while the Governor faced the Factor, with Anna and Aunt Margret
at either side of him, and the Bishop, the Sheriff, and the Doctor
between. Helga sat midway down the table, with Neils Finsen on one side
of her and the Rector on the other.
Thora was bashful but bright, reddening a little with maidenly reserve
when pointed remarks were made to her, but filling the room with musical
laughter. During the meal nearly everybody raised his glass to her, and
at the end of it the Governor rose, bowed to her down the table with a
stately grace, and began to speak.
"I rise," said the Governor, "to propose the health of the bride and
bridegroom. We are all happy in the marriage which has just been
celebrated, and no one can be more happy than myself. It had been for
many years the dearest hope of my heart that the life-long friendship
between Factor Neilsen and myself might be cemented in our children by a
still closer bond."
"Your health, old friend," interrupted the Factor, raising his glass,
and the Governor stopped to drink with him.
"Time was, perhaps," he continued, "when I feared lest this hope might
be frustrated."
"No, no!" said the Factor, while Thora dropped her head, Anna sighed
audibly, and there was silence for a moment, as if the spirit of some
one who was not present had passed through the room.
"But sweet is the bliss that follows bale," said the Governor, "and
thank God we are now of one mind and one family."
When the glasses of the company had ceased to jingle, the Governor went
on to speak of Thora. "She has always been like a daughter in our
house, and now she is our daughter indeed. We have loved her all her
life, and to-day we have given her the best we had to give to any
one--our son, our favorite son, the idol of our hopes and the pride of
our hearts. God bless both of them!"
As soon as the Factor had done wiping his eyes with his print
handkerchief he rose with a laugh and said:
"Stem before stern when the sea gets up, and I'm not much used to
pulling backward, but I'm with the Governor in thanking God that the
storm that threatened has blown over and we are sailing in smooth water.
As for Oscar, he has been my godson ever since he was anything; and
to-day he has become my son, and I could not wish for a better.
"And now," said the Factor, as soon as he was allowed to go on, "a small
promise kept is better than a big one forgotten, and I'm going to keep a
little promise which I made on the day of the betrothal. Perhaps some
of you wouldn't think it, but I believe in young people enjoying their
youth while they've got any. I managed to miss mine somehow, and it's
been work, work, work with me all my days. The same with the Governor;
it's been work, work, work with him too, and we haven't had a holiday
between us. But we are going to have a holiday now--we're going to
travel to the sunny south lands, where the ground and the sea aren't
white like this and that." (The Factor waved his hands toward the
windows front and back.) "Yes, we're going to see the world in our old
age, the Governor and I, but it's got to be with eyes that are better
than ours are now--the eyes of our children."
"What's more," continued the Factor, when the company were again quiet,
"we're not going to grudge the expense either, and if Oscar will look
under his bottom plate he'll find a little oil that will grease the
wheels on the way."
Oscar lifted his fruit plate and took up two checks, and when the toast
had been honored he rose to reply. Nobody had ever before seen him so
pale, so nervous, or so serious.
"I thank the Governor and the Factor," he said, "for the splendid
present they have given us--so much more than we can possibly require on
our journey. I thank you all for coming to our wedding--it is so
pleasant to be surrounded by the people who have known us all our lives.
'Find your wife among your friends,' says one of our Sagas. I have
found mine almost in my family, and I trust the two branches now made
one may never be divided as the result of what we have done this
morning."
There was some applause, and when Oscar began again his voice faltered
and broke.
"I thank the Bishop, too," he said, "for the words--the wise and
touching words--he spoke in marrying us. I know that love--love is the
only foundation of a true marriage, and I--I trust my marriage is a true
one. I do not love my wife as much as I ought--as much as she deserves.
I can never do that; it is impossible, but I hope to love her more and
more as time goes on, and to fly from every temptation to love her less.
I know I am not worthy of the dear good girl who has given herself to me
to-day, but I will try so to live that she may never regret it. Often
forgive the woman's faults, says another of our Sagas, but a truer word
in this case would be forgive the man's, and I pray God my wife may
never have too much to forgive."
When Oscar sat down the men thought his speech had been a little
affected and far-fetched, but there was not a woman in the room who did
not want to leap up and kiss him. Thora was openly wiping her eyes, but
her face was one high noon of enjoyment, and in the buzz which followed
the silence Aunt Margret called across to her.
"Mrs. Stephenson, you had better take care of your husband or some of
these young women will run away with him."
There were other toasts, "The Governor," "The Factor," and finally, "The
Bridesmaids," proposed by the Rector in a playful speech.
"They say a kiss isn't the same thing from all women," he said, "and
being an old bachelor I know nothing about that; but the young fellow on
my left" (the Rector indicated Neils Finsen), "who has a right to
consider himself the best man in Iceland to-day, has confessed to me in
a whisper that he finds one of the bridesmaids so charming and beautiful
that if he had been in Oscar's place, and compelled by a narrow-minded
law to choose between the Factor's two daughters, he would have cut off
to some eastern country where he could have married both."
Everybody laughed and looked at Helga, who had herself been laughing
rather hysterically, and looking at Oscar all through dinner. And then
Thora, who was overflowing with happiness, glanced down at her sister,
and remembered the great scheme she had conceived to make amends for
mistrusting and suspecting her. Now was the moment to carry it into
effect--now that she was queen in her little kingdom--and, half bold,
half shy, she rose from her seat, put her arms about her father's neck,
and whispered something in his ear.
The Factor's face straightened for a moment, then broadened again, and
he said, "But what does Oscar say?"
"Oscar will be sure to agree," said Thora, and she whispered in her
father's ear again.
"Well, I'm not going back on my word; I'm willing; but you must ask
Oscar."
Then, laughing and reddening, Thora crept up behind Oscar and whispered
in his ear also, while looking sideways down at Helga. As Oscar
listened his face became serious and he said:
"But you are quite sure that you wish it, Thora?"
"Yes, yes, yes," said Thora, laughing and blushing, for now the eyes of
the whole company were on her.
"Let us talk of it to-morrow," said Oscar.
"No, no, now," said Thora.
"But perhaps Helga herself--" began Oscar, and then he stopped,
whereupon Helga, hearing her own name, said with a nervous laugh:
"What is that about Helga?"
"Yes, what is it?" said several voices at once, and then the Factor
explained.
"Thora wants to have her sister to accompany them on their tour, and she
is trying to persuade Oscar."
There were some unconvincing cries of "Why not?" and "Splendid!" and
then there was silence, broken only by Thora's voice saying:
"Please, Oscar, please!"
It was the last thing Oscar could have expected--to have temptation
thrown in his way at the moment when he was trying to escape from it; to
have the flood-gate of passion opened afresh after he had struggled so
hard to dam it--and to have this done by Thora herself, in her blind
unselfishness and innocent joy, as if the powers of hell were making
game of her.
But the company were waiting for Oscar's answer; and, not to betray
himself, he tried to escape by banter. "I'm not like Neils--I don't
want both of you," he said; but still the pleading, coaxing voice was at
his ear, saying:
"Please, Oscar, please, please!" And when Oscar continued to hesitate
the Rector said:
"Tut, tut, Oscar, refusing your wife's first request is a bad
beginning."
"I'm not refusing," said Oscar, "and if Helga herself really and truly
thinks she would like to go with us----"
"Would you like to go, Helga?" asked the Factor, and then there was
another moment's hesitation, in which Helga, biting her lower lip with a
fierceness which betrayed the struggle in her soul, looked across at
Oscar as if trying to read in his face what her answer was to be.
"Tell her to say yes, Oscar," said Thora.
"Yes," said Helga, and at the next moment Thora was clapping her hands
in triumphant delight and making the room ring with her laughter.
Neils Finsen had sat down to the piano and the servants were clearing
the table to make way for dancing, when Anna came up behind Thora and
whispered:
"Somebody outside wishes to see you, Thora."
"Is it perhaps----?"
"Yes, dear," said Anna, and Thora followed her out of the room.
*XI*
Magnus was waiting in the hall, dressed in snow stockings and a long
cape overcoat, rough and worn and belted about the waist. His face was
stamped with the deep lines which in a strong man stand for resignation
and in a weak one for despair. Thora thought she had never seen him
look so big and brawny, but his voice when he spoke to her was as soft
as a woman's, and he broke into the sunniest of smiles. She closed the
door of the sitting-room to shut out the sound of the piano, and then
came forward and held out her hand, feeling little and weak in her
kirtle and the bridal crown across her forehead.
"I came to say good-by and to wish you a good voyage," he said.
"I'm so glad you've come," said Thora. "I heard you had gone away, and
I was afraid I was going to miss you."
"I've brought you this for a wedding present," said Magnus, taking up
from the hall table a large white bear's skin which Thora had not
noticed before.
"What a magnificent rug!" said Thora.
"Is it a good one?" said Magnus.
"It is perfectly beautiful. I have never seen anything like it. It
must have cost you a fortune."
"No, not a great deal. I bought it in the Northlands."
"Then it was to get this that you went there?"
"Yes."
"In the winter, too--such a long, cold journey!"
"I am strong, Thora--I never feel the cold."
His sad eyes were glistening, and Thora's throat was thick.
"I shall use it on the ship and in the train and everywhere," she said.
"And whenever I use it I will always think of you."