Front matter (continued 10)

The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.

Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson ("All we like sheep have gone astray"), while he gave out his text ("This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise"), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death's sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem ("Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning"), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin's silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother's, Magnus sat with his face toward the picture on the wall above the communion-table.

It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.

That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit of war with God, he had entered the stranger's bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, "Stop! or the voice of thy brother's blood will cry unto Me from the ground!"

When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumor of what had happened in Anna's household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.

The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm, for a cup of coffee.

It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralyzed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret remained behind to roast it.

The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast.

"Every snow-cowl has an end," he said, "and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson's family and over my family, is now gone for good. 'Show the man and not the table,' says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man's guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before.

"Brothers and sisters, I give you a health--Anna's long-lost son, our long-lost son, Iceland's long-lost son--Oscar Stephen-son!"

The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.

VIII

On the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them, white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman's eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.

You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under his feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapor.

An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.

At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!

After he had passed through the heat and smoke and come out on the clear heights beyond he paused to look back. The world around was all white and stark under the snow of last night's storm, but a crimson shaft from the sun which had not yet risen was crossing the topmost peaks, and the lowlands were still sleeping in a veil of mist. He thought he could hear the ringing of the church bell, and that sweet human sound came winging its way up to him through the vapor of the sulphur-pits as the singing of a star might rise through the clouds of the world to the ears of the souls in heaven.

Presently the sun strode up and the mist fell back, and then he saw in the valley far below the little church itself and the home he had left behind him. He had left happiness there, and love, and warm comfort, for that was his reparation to the dear ones he had injured, and now for his atonement to God he was going out alone, stripped of everything and unknown to any one.

It was as much as he could bear to think of that, but he smiled to himself sadly while he pictured the surprise and joy of the happy scene when the girl would come out with the pocket-book and the auction would be stopped. He thought, too, of his mother in church, with a soul full of gratitude, and saw Elin with a ray of sunlight from the lead-lighted window on the heart-breaking sweetness of her smile. It was not thus that he had expected to leave them when for ten years he had worked by the sweat of body and spirit that he might come back and be forgiven. But it was not in this world that the prodigal could be taken back; not here that any earthly father could run to meet him and throw his arms about his neck. What he had sown he must reap, and not all his penitence and tears could undo what he had done.

It was long before he could take his last look at the home he was leaving forever, and when at length he drew a deep breath and went on, he had to comfort himself with the thought that Thora would be pleased with him for giving up their child to Magnus. Her voice from the other world seemed to come to him and say, "Well done! Poor, brave, wounded heart, God's angels rejoice over you!" But it was hard to find solace in heavenly cheer while his blood ran warm and yearned for human company.

Before he was aware of it he was at the foot of the glaciers, those great lone homes of Nature never trodden by the foot of man or animal, where no bird sings and no flower grows, where only the wind moans over motionless billows of ice and the sun rises in a blank barrenness on chasms of the frozen deep. Looking back from this place he could see nothing of the valley and the houses of men, or of anything but a wide circle of mountain peaks, all silent and white, in which he was the only living thing. And then the feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity amid these grand but grim surroundings elevated his senses and affected him like music, like composing, with a sort of ecstacy which was part rapture and partly pain.

In this ecstasy of emotion he asked himself if his life had been wasted, if happiness was gone from him even if, because he had sinned, there was nothing before him now but renunciation and suffering. And then the teaching of his childhood came back to him with a new and sublime significance, and he saw for the first time the lesson of life and the meaning of death. The lesson of life was Duty--to do right without expectation of reward or fear of punishment; and the meaning of death was to bring to the sinful, penitent soul the pardon the world can not give.

Then thank God for life, but thank God for death also! Whatever a man's sin, Nature could not forget it, and the laws of life could not forgive, but the mercy of God was without measure of guilt, and the gates of heaven were wide!

God veiled His face from His creatures, and to man's questioning eyes the infinite wisdom was as blank as these white walls of ice and snow, but two thousand years ago a simple Galilean had read this riddle of life as no man before or since has read it. He had read it for all men, good or bad, but most of all for wayworn sinners like himself, for whom the world has no pity, and no forgiveness. And though he was the guiltiest of the guilty, and his sin had found him out, and as the price of his repentance he had had to give up everything in life that he held most dear--the love of his child and the hope of pardon and reconciliation--yet love and pardon and reconciliation were waiting for him still when God's own voice should call him, and "this mortal should put on immortality."

By this time he was in that mood in which a man of his temperament finds it difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary, in which he hears the sounds of Nature and mistakes them for voices from the other world. He had wandered without knowing it from the path of the pass, which was marked by stones standing upright out of the snow, when the volcanic fire in the womb of the mountain began to shake it with mighty throbs, and then suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a crash and a resounding rumble as of echoing thunder coming down from the snow-capped heights.

Oscar Stephenson did not see or hear or feel anything. He was only conscious of a burst of heavenly music, of a sense of ten thousand angels singing an anthem, a triumphant pæan of praise that grew louder and louder every moment; a sense of blinding light, and of traveling at a terrific velocity into the realms of the sun; a sense of the Day of Judgment, of the life of the world being over, its busy throngs gone, its pageants finished, its honors, distinctions, castes, gold, wealth, and fame passed into nothingness; a sense of being outside the great Judgment Hall with an infinite multitude of kings and beggars, good men and bad, the guilty and the innocent, and of kneeling there among the meanest and most ashamed; a sense of a spirit stooping to him and taking his hand and saying, "Come," of looking up into her face, and seeing it was Thora, and of his breath coming so fast and short that he could scarcely breathe; a sense of stumbling along with his head down and the spirit leading him forward and singing as they ascended; a sense of an overwhelming Presence somewhere in front of him, of the music dying down and becoming fainter and fainter, and then of an awful hush and of a blessed Voice which said:

"FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, WAS LOST AND IS FOUND."

* * * * *

A moment afterward there was no one on Hengel mountain, the great lone home of Nature was calm and white and silent.

THE END