The Prodigal Son

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.”

“Will you?”

“Indeed I will. But we are going south, you know.”

“I know.”

“To England and France—perhaps to Italy.”

“It will do you good, Thora. The sun will do you good. And you will see the fruit and the flowers growing—it will be beautiful.”

“Will it not?”

The piano was becoming louder, and there was a sound of shuffling feet—the people in the sitting-room were beginning to dance.

“And what do you think—Helga is going with us,” said Thora.

“Helga!”

“Didn’t Anna tell you?”

“Is Helga to go with you to Italy?”

“Oh, yes, and we are delighted to have her. She’s so clever and bright—Oscar can never be dull for a moment while Helga is with us.”

The grave face looked sideways for a moment, and then he said, in a still gentler voice:

“I hope you’ll be happy on your journey, Thora.”

“I’m sure I shall. We shall all be happy. We sail by the ‘Laura’ to-morrow morning.”

“So mother told me—I’ve been taking your baggage aboard and seeing to your cabin.”

“And you have been doing that while we——”

“I wanted to do something for you, Thora.”

“But, Magnus, you ought to have been here by rights. Oscar always wished it. In fact he wanted you to be his best man.”

“Oscar did?”

“Indeed he did, but you couldn’t be found, because you had gone on your journey.”

Over the sound of the music and the dancing the Governor’s voice came from within, mingled with the Factor’s hearty laughter.

“Perhaps it was just as well I was away,” said Magnus. “The old people have never forgiven me for what I did, and if they ever came to suspect that somebody else was responsible——”

He stopped, and then Thora dropped her eyes and said:

“I was so glad you were in the cathedral.”

“It was beautiful,” said Magnus.

“You have no feeling against Oscar now?”

“Not now. When I saw you kneeling together at the communion rails I thought of the day when we all knelt there. And then—then Oscar was my little brother once again.”

“Magnus—won’t you—won’t you kiss me?”

He hesitated for a moment, but she held her sweet face up to him—pure as a saint’s and wet with tears—and he opened his great arms and gathered the little white figure to his breast and kissed her on the forehead under the bridal crown.

“Good-by, little girl, and God bless you and make you very happy. But if you ever want me say ‘Come,’ and I’ll come to you—if it’s to the farthest corner of the earth.”

Thora began to cry audibly and Magnus bustled about and made for the door. He must be off, he had a long journey before him.

“And then Silvertop is outside—I must not keep him waiting.

“Silvertop?”

“Mother told me to take care of him until you return—so I’m taking him back to the farm.”

“Let me say good-by to him,” said Thora.

Magnus covered her from head to foot in the bear’s skin and led her down the steps to the street. It was dark, but the stars were out and the northern lights were cleaving the sky as with the sweep of a mighty saber. All was white and silent, save for the deadened beat of the piano and the thud of the feet of the dancers. Two horses, saddled and bridled, stood quietly in the snow with their reins hanging over their heads, and Magnus, mounting one of them, said:

“This is Golden Mane—Silvertop’s big brother.”

Thora found her own pony, stroked its ears and kissed its nose, and then fled back to the door out of the frosty air.

“Good brothers go well together; we’ll be home by midnight,” cried Magnus.

Thora watched them go. A glittering shaft of the aurora lit up the three as they turned the corner of the road—Magnus riding Golden Mane, and Silvertop, with an empty saddle, running briskly beside him.

XII

When Thora returned to the sitting-room Oscar and Helga, both with sparkling eyes and flushed faces, were waltzing vigorously. Then Thora herself danced with the Governor, the Factor, the Hector, and, of course, with Oscar. But the room grew hot and stuffy, too full of excitement, and after a while Thora became pale and faint. Seeing this, after Aunt Margret had called attention to it, Oscar began to say it was time to break up. The young men bantered him (“Want to get rid of us, eh?”) and Helga, who grew more and more hysterical, protested that the evening was still young, but Oscar sent his bride up-stairs to prepare for the journey to her husband’s house.

“Let us all take her home, then,” said one of the bridesmaids, and when Thora reappeared, muffled up for her night walk, with only eyes, nose, and mouth visible, she was surrounded by a group of merry girls, similarly bandaged, and chirping over her like linnets in spring.

At last the final moment came when Thora had to leave her father’s house for good, and then Aunt Margret, whose face had become grotesquely long and watery, broke down altogether.

“It’s no use,” she said. “I’m losing her, and I don’t know what they’ll do with my precious now.”

“Nonsense, Margret,” said the Factor. “Oscar will take care of her.”

“He’d better, or I’ll murder him,” said Aunt Margret; and the idea of Aunt Margret murdering anybody was so amusing to the company that they broke up merrily.

The Factor’s family went to the door to see them off, and Helga, who was hot with dancing and excitement, but wore no wraps, stood on the top of the steps holding a lamp above her head to light them down the road. It was a paraffin lamp with a glass reservoir, but she paid no heed to any warning.

“Take care, Helga, do take care,” said Oscar, but she only cried:

“Good night, pleasant dreams!” and continued to wave the flickering lamp above her head.

“Helga, for mercy’s sake, Helga!” shouted Oscar, and Thora said:

“Yes, dear, don’t let us have an accident on our wedding-day.”

“The better the day the better the deed,” cried Helga, and she sent a ringing, hysterical laugh after them as they disappeared in the darkness.

The wedding party went off in two batches, Oscar in the midst of the young men, whose arms were round his shoulders, and Thora in the midst of the young women, who were holding her by the waist and stopping at intervals to whisper mischievous messages in her ears. The crisp snow crackled under their feet, and the starry sky, with its northern lights, pulsed and throbbed like the hearts in their bosoms.

When they came to the gate of Government House somebody suggested that Oscar, as a zealous Sagaman, ought to carry out the ancient custom of lifting his bride across the threshold; and then to Thora’s delight, amid a squealing chorus of laughter, Oscar picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house, where Anna (who had gone on ahead) smuggled her up-stairs while the others went into the drawing-room to drink the last toast before parting.

A bright fire was burning in the bridal chamber, the curtains were drawn, the bed was laid open, and the room looked like a white nest of eiderdown when Thora, with a fluttering heart, stepped into it.

“What a day it has been!” she said.

“Hasn’t it?” said Anna, closing the door behind them.

“Well, I can always say I had a wonderful wedding-day, can’t I?”

“Indeed, you can. A woman has only two days in her life that are her own—her very own—and her wedding-day is one of them.”

“And what is the other day, Anna?”

“The other? Oh, the other day is too far away for you to think about it yet, but all the days between belong to somebody else—her children or her husband.”

“But how sweet! How beautiful! To live in your husband, to give up everything to him, your life, yourself, everything! There’s happiness in that, isn’t there, Anna?”

“Indeed, there is, my dear, and pain, too, perhaps. But there’s something better in this life than happiness, Thora, and that’s blessedness, you know.”

This made Thora think of Magnus, but she heard Oscar laughing in the room below, and soon forgot everything else in a delicious shuddering which suddenly came over her. Anna helped her to undress, and when the crown and the kirtle were laid aside, she moved about for some moments without speaking. Then she said, softly:

“Will you go to bed now, dearest, or shall I give you your dressing-gown?”

“Give me my dressing-gown,” said Thora faintly.

Anna moved about on tiptoe a moment or two longer, turning the lamp down and fixing the shade. Then she opened the door and stood for an instant on the threshold looking back at Thora where she sat combing out her hair before the stove. All at once her middle-aged, homely face became young and beautiful by the magic of a memory of her own, and going softly back she kissed Thora without saying a word, and then crept silently out of the room.

Left alone, Thora looked timidly around her, and seeing things of Oscar’s lying among her own she felt a new and still more delicious sense of happiness. During the days preceding the wedding she had thought that as soon as the service in the cathedral had come to an end and she was Oscar’s wife a mysterious change would come over her, but that had not been so, and all day long she had felt quite the same. But now it was different, and in this room she had become another being—not herself only, but Oscar also. It was very sweet and beautiful, but it was a little frightening, too, and to ease her fast-beating heart she got into bed and covered up her face.

She could hear the company breaking up below, and a little later she heard their footsteps crunching the snow under her window, which fronted the road. They stood there and sang a bridal song. It was the song of the “Two Roses.”

The winter was cold and the ground was white, but two roses of love still grew in the garden of God. The frost could not freeze the two roses of love, for they were warmed by the air of heaven; the sun could not scorch the two roses of love, for they were watered from the well of life. Two roses of love on a single stem; two roses of love in two fond young hearts; two roses of love and joy!

When the song came to an end there was some merry giggling under the window, followed by shouts of “Good night, Thora!” “Happy dreams!” Then as the company went off they started the bridal song again, and in her mind’s eye Thora could see them going back to the town, arm in arm, young girls and young men.

Thora listened to the voices dying down the street, and for a moment all life seemed to be set to the music of love; Oscar and she would be children always, never growing older, but rambling hand in hand through a flowery world where everybody loved them and they loved everybody, and there could be no real trouble because love was all in all.

But just then the cathedral clock struck eleven, and she remembered Magnus. She could see him crossing the desolate white heath under the shooting stream of the northern lights—a lonesome man riding one horse, while another, with an empty saddle, was running by his side. Poor Magnus! But there was no help for it!

The voices died away in the distance, and there was a moment of silence in the cozy nest—a warm, muffled, secret kind of silence, broken by nothing but the underthrob of the ceaseless sea. Thora closed her eyes and held her breath. How happy she was! She was trembling like a bird caught and held in the hand, but even her fear was full of happiness.

At the next moment there was a noiseless footstep on the floor, a sense of somebody in the room, and then—Oscar was leaning over her and kissing her on the lips.