Front matter (continued 2)

Oscar was at the top of the stairs, being too eager to wait in his bedroom. "So you have brought it! She has sent me an answer! Give it me!"

"Take it," said Magnus.

But having Thora's letter in his hands at last Oscar was afraid to open it. "Is it all right?" he asked.

"See for yourself," said Magnus, and he dropped into the seat by the desk.

As Oscar read the letter the expression of his face changed from fear to joy, and from joy to rapture. Without looking up from the paper he cried out like a happy boy, "It's all right! She agrees! God bless her! Shall I read you what she says? Yet, no! That wouldn't be fair to Thora! But it's as right as can be! How beautiful! Talk of education--nobody in the world could have put things better! The darling!"

He read the letter twice and put it in his pocket; then took it out and read it again and kissed it, forgetting in his selfish happiness that anybody else was there.

Magnus sat and watched him. The fight was almost over, but he was nearly breaking down at last.

"What an age you seemed to be away!" said Oscar. "Yet you have run hard, for you are still quite breathless. But there is nothing more to do now except what you promised to do to-morrow. You think you can do it?"

"I think I can," said Magnus.

"It will be a stiff job, though. To persuade two old men who don't wish to be persuaded! Nobody wants to see his schemes upset and his contracts broken, and with all the good-will in the world to me----"

"Wait!" said Magnus, rising--his unshaven, face had suddenly grown hard and ugly. "We have talked of you and Thora, and of the Factor and the Governor, but there is somebody who has not been too much mentioned--myself!"

"Don't suppose I am forgetting you, though," said Oscar. "I can never do that--and neither can Thora--never!"

"If I am to stand back, and take the consequences, there is something you owe me--you owe me your silence!"

"Assuredly," said Oscar.

"Whatever I do or say to-morrow," said Magnus, "you must never allow it to be seen that you know my object. Is it a promise?"

"Certainly!" said Oscar. "Silence is inevitable if I am to save Thora from her father's anger, and I will save her from that and from every sorrow."

Magnus walked to the door, and then, for the first time, Oscar looked at him.

"But what a brute I am--always talking of myself!" said Oscar, following his brother to the landing. "When everything is satisfactorily settled, what is to happen to you, Magnus?"

"God knows!" said Magnus, with his foot on the stair. "Everybody has his own wounds to bandage."

"Well, God bless you in any case, old fellow!" said Oscar, patting Magnus on the shoulder. And then he returned to his room and took out Thora's letter and read it over again.

X

The betrothal was fixed for five o'clock on the following afternoon. Aunt Margret had had women in to clean the house down, and everything was like a new pin. The large sitting-room, looking toward the town, was prepared for the legal part of the ceremony, with pens and ink on the round table, and the smaller sitting-room, divided from it by a plush curtain and overlooking the lake, was laid out with a long dining table, covered with cakes and cups and saucers and surrounded by high-backed chairs.

These rooms were standing quiet and solemn when at half-past four Aunt Margret came down in her best black silk and with ringlets newly curled, to have a last look round. She was doing a little final dusting when the first of her guests arrived. This was Anna, also in black silk, and, being already on her company manners, Aunt Margret kissed her.

"But where's Oscar, and where's the Governor?" asked Aunt Margret.

"Stephen is coming," said Anna, "but far be it from me to say where Oscar is! The boy is here and there and everywhere."

"That reminds me of something," said Aunt Margret. "Can you tell me how it came to pass that the young folks missed each other at Thingvellir yesterday, and Magnus came home alone?"

"Goodness knows! It wouldn't be Magnus's fault, that's certain. Magnus is like my poor father--as sure to be in his place as a mill-horse on the tread, but Oscar is as hard to hold as a puff of wind. It's his nature, he can't help it, but it makes me anxious when I think of it, Margret."

"Don't be afraid for Oscar, Anna! He'll come out all right. And if he is restless and unsettled, God is good to such, weak heart. He never asks more than He gives, you know."

The Factor came downstairs--a tall man, clean-shaven, bald-headed, and a little hard and angular, wearing evening dress and a skull-cap, and carrying a long German pipe in his hand.

"No smoking yet!" cried Aunt Margret, and with a grunt and a laugh the Factor laid his pipe on the mantel-piece.

"And how's Anna to-day?" he said. "No need to ask that though, our Anna is as fresh and young as ever. Upon my word, Margret, it only seems like yesterday that we were doing all this for Anna herself."

"She was a different Anna in those days, Oscar," said Anna.

"Not a bit of it! There's a little more Anna now--that's the only difference."

The Governor came in next--a broad-set man of medium height, with a beard but no mustache, and wearing his official uniform, bright with gold braid. He saluted the Factor and said:

"I have taken the liberty to ask the Bishop, the Rector of the Latin School, and the Sheriff to join us--I trust you don't object?"

"Quite right, old friend," said the Factor. "The most important acts of life ought always to be done in the presence of witnesses."

"And how's Margret? As busy as usual, I see! All days don't come on the same date; we must get ready for you next, you know!"

"For Margret!" laughed the Factor. "She'll have to be quick, or she'll be late then--people don't hatch many chickens at Christmas."

"Late, indeed!" said Aunt Margret, with a toss of her ringlets. "If I couldn't catch up to you folks with your pair of chicks apiece, I shouldn't think it worth while to begin."

The men laughed, and Anna said, "Well, two children would be enough for me if I could only keep them. But that's the worst of having boys--they marry and leave you. A mother can always keep her girls----"

"Until somebody else's boys come and carry them off, and then she sees no more of either," said Aunt Margret.

"That depends on circumstances," said the Governor--"the marriage contract, for example--eh, old friend?"

"Exactly!" said the Factor. "You can generally keep the bull about the place if you have the cow locked up in the cow-house."

The men laughed again, and then the Bishop and the Rector arrived--the Bishop a saintly patriarch with a soft face and a white beard, and the Rector--as became the schoolmaster--sharper, if not more severe.

"I was surprised when I heard it was Magnus," said the Rector. "Oscar has beaten his brother in most things, and I thought he would beat him in getting a wife. And then Thora and he are such friends, too, and so like each other!"

"They get on worst together who are most like each other," said Anna; and Aunt Margret said:

"Stuff! A dark man's a jewel in a fair woman's eye, and what does Thora want with a fair one?"

"But where is Thora?" asked the Bishop.

"She's dressing," said Aunt Margret. "Let us go and fetch her down, Anna," and the two women went up-stairs.

"Magnus ought to be here, too," said the Governor. "Where is he, I wonder?"

"Were you asking for Magnus?" said a voice from the hall. It was the Sheriff--a small man with a sly face, wearing a gold-braided uniform like the Governor's.

"He's at the warehouse, isn't he? Or is he still at the jetty?" asked the Factor.

"No," said the Sheriff entering. "To tell you the truth, when I passed the hotel he was sitting in the smoking-room."

"The smoking-room of the hotel?" said the Governor.

The Factor laughed. "Treating his friends in advance of the event, I suppose! It's bad to let the sledge go ahead of the horse, though."

"No," said the Sheriff again. "To tell you the truth, he was quite alone."

"Drinking?" asked the Governor.

"Nonsense, Stephen! Magnus does not drink," said the Factor.

"I hope not, but I'm always afraid of it. His grandfather on the maternal side, you know----"

"Ah, nobody knows what is inside another's coat," said the Bishop. "Anna's father had some trouble in his head--must have had."

"Even diseases are inherited," said the Governor.

"But the old man drank after he buried his wife, not before he married her," said the Rector.

And then Aunt Margret and Anna returned to the room saying, "Here she is at last!" bringing Thora in her simple velvet costume called the kirtle, with silver belt, bell sleeves, and white lace about the neck.

The Governor took Thora in his arms and kissed her. "But how pale, my child!" he said.

"You may well say so, Governor," said Aunt Margret. "She has been crying since early morning."

"Crying?" said the Factor. "Now, I never can understand why a woman must always cry when she is going to be married; it's such a bad compliment to her husband."

"But I agree with Thora," said the Governor. "If ever there is a time to cry, or, at least, to feel grave and anxious, it is just that moment of life when it is customary to dance and sing as if you were setting out on a triumphal procession instead of taking a leap into the dark."

"And I agree with the Governor," said the Bishop. "When I see a bride crying so bitterly at the altar that she can hardly utter the responses, I generally know she is going to be a happy wife."

"Thora might wait until the wedding, though," said Aunt Margret, and then Oscar came dashing into the room.

"Out walking--lost count of the time--only six minutes to dress--did it in five," he said, in breathless gasps.

"He's another pale one," laughed the Rector. "Has there been a frost overnight that has nipped all our rose-buds?"

"Been running to get here," said Oscar, "but I've raced Magnus it seems."

"Magnus has raced you in another way, my boy," said the Rector, nodding his head toward Thora, who was blushing and looking down; whereupon the Governor muttered:

"Oscar must not dream of marriage yet awhile. He has his career to think about, and he has not been too earnest about it hitherto."

"Well, my experience in business," said the Factor, "is that when a woman marries she slackens off, but when a man marries he tightens up."

At that the Sheriff nudged the Rector, who whispered:

"The Factor has still another daughter, Rector."

"What, if he has?" said the Factor. "A man can't have two sisters-in-law to one brother."

"No, but he can give his brother a sister-in-law, too," said the Rector, and then everybody laughed.

"That reminds me," said the Factor, "Helga sent us a photograph the other day. Where is it, Thora?"

"Here it is," said Thora, taking a photograph out of a drawer. Oscar held out his hand for it, and looked at it long and earnestly.

"How fine! I've scarcely ever seen such a splendid face! Quite grown up, too! Is Helga coming home soon, Factor?"

"Not very soon," said the Factor.

And then the lawyer came in with a large portfolio of papers and laid them on the table.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the Hector. "A rich man's child needs a careful christening, it seems!"

"You're right, Rector, and it has taken my clerk the entire day to engross the contract, but it was not that which kept me until now--it was this!"

"The rings!" cried the two elder women, as the lawyer took a small plush box from his pocket.

"Yes, you may remember that when the rings had to be ordered yesterday morning, Magnus could not be found anywhere, so I was compelled to order them myself. Well, I thought I gave careful instructions, but the idea is abroad in the town, do you know, that it is Oscar, not Magnus, who is to marry Thora--nobody believes anything else--so what does Olaf, the silversmith, do but write 'Oscar' on the inside of one of the rings!"

"Never!" said Oscar, trying to laugh with the others.

"Yes, indeed, and the error was not discovered until the very last moment, and then all I could do, as you see, was to have 'Oscar' erased--it was too late to have 'Magnus' inscribed instead."

"Where is Magnus, I wonder?" said the Governor, walking restlessly before the window.

"Don't be anxious about Magnus, Stephen," said Anna. "He grows more and more like my poor father. If father promised to be somewhere at a certain time he would turn up to the minute if he had to kill a couple of ponies in getting there."

The cathedral clock struck five at that moment, and sure enough before the clang of the last stroke had died away Magnus walked into the room. He looked slack and almost untidy in his pea jacket and long boots, and was the only person in the room who had not troubled to dress for the occasion. The Governor's face darkened at sight of him, and the Factor said in a tone of vexation:

"Well, let us get to work and have it over--I've been spoiling for a smoke this half-hour."

The lawyer opened his portfolio, and the company gathered about the table, whereupon Aunt Margret cried:

"Magnus, do you allow of this? Here's Oscar sitting beside Thora."

"Don't disturb him," said Magnus. "This is good enough for me," and he took a low seat by the side of his mother.

"Now, come," said the Factor, "let the one who has the best voice start the singing."

"It must be the lawyer, then," said the Rector, "for every lawyer has a voice of silver--passes it for silver anyway."

And then, amid the general laughter, the lawyer opened the marriage contract and began to read.

XI

The company listened intently, and at the close of every clause the Governor, who was resting his head on his hand and his elbow on the table, said: "Good!" "Very good!" "Generous!" "Most generous!"

When the lawyer had finished, the other old people leaned back and drew long breaths of satisfaction, but the Governor rose and crossed to the Factor and shook hands with him, saying: "Just like you, old friend!"

The Factor was gratified by the reception of the document and became bright and almost humorous. Imitating the manner of the auctioneer, he cried: "Anybody bid higher? Then going--going--go----"

"Wait!" said the Governor. "Hadn't we better ask the opinion of the young people themselves? After all, they are the persons ultimately concerned, and though a cow seldom kicks when you are carrying her clover----"

There was a general titter, a nodding of many heads and muttered responses of "Just so!" "Just a matter of form!"

"Very well! Thora, what do you say?" said the Factor, expecting a burst of rapturous approval, but Thora only answered timidly:

"I don't know. Hadn't you better ask Magnus first?"

"Certainly, my dear--Magnus first, as a matter of course. What do you say, Magnus? Any suggestion to make? Any little improvement? How do you like the contract?"

There was an awkward silence which astonished the older people, and then came a great surprise. Magnus, who had been sitting with his head down, raised a white and firm-set face and answered:

"I do not like the contract at all, Factor, and I cannot sign it."

At this there were looks of bewilderment among the older people, who seemed to be uncertain if they had heard aright, while Thora and Oscar, who partly understood, seemed to be struggling to catch their breath. The Factor was the first to recover his self-possession, and he said, with a slightly supercilious accent:

"Is that so? I thought I knew something of these matters; but if you think you can draw up a better document, Magnus----"

But then the Governor interposed: "Some trifle, no doubt," he said suavely. "Magnus will explain. What is the point you object to, my son?"

There was another moment of tense silence, and then Magnus said in a harsh voice:

"By this contract I am required to live in Iceland all my life--that's slavery, and I will not submit to it."

"But, my dear Magnus," said Anna, "don't you see the reason for that? To all intents and purposes Thora is the Factor's only daughter--his only child--and if she goes away, who is to cheer him up and make home bright for him? Be reasonable, Magnus!"

"Anna, hadn't we better let the young man finish?" said the Factor. "He may have other objections. Have you?"

"Yes," said Magnus. "According to this contract I am to be taken into partnership on marrying Thora, but only on a quarter share. Partnership is partnership, and where there are two partners it should be half and half--I must have half."

The company listened in consternation, and the Factor began to laugh. "Why not?" he said in a cynical tone. "Everything is hay in hard weather. I'm so hard up for a son-in-law that I shouldn't stick at a trifle."

"Old friend," said the Governor, "let us not be too hasty. Perhaps Magnus has not made himself quite plain."

"As plain as a pikestaff. He wants an equal partnership. But perhaps that is not all. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, there is, sir," said Magnus, in a rather aggressive manner. "By this deed, when you retire I am to take over the business, but I am only to have one-third share of the profits. I must have two-thirds."

"In--deed!" said the Factor. "Do you know I thought if I allowed you to come into the business that I had made, and to work it with my plant and my capital, one-third was generous."

"Most generous!" said the Governor, mopping his forehead. "But Magnus is slow--slow both of thought and speech. He must have some explanation. What do you mean, Magnus? Take your time and speak plainly."

"I mean, sir," said Magnus, "that the barter business in Iceland will break up before long. When the Factor retires--perhaps before--his business will be worth nothing--not even the name, for that will be less than nothing. A new business will have to be created, and if I am to create it I must have two-thirds of the profits, leaving one-third for the use of the Factor's money."

The Factor was losing his temper. "Why any at all?" he said. "Why not kick me out altogether? No use beating a dog with a cheese when a whip is handy."

The company were murmuring at Magnus, when the Governor interposed again. "Magnus," he said, "to say I'm astonished is to say nothing. The Factor has treated you with boundless liberality, but no well is so deep that it can't be emptied, and if you go any farther----"

"Go any farther!" said the Factor. "Why shouldn't he go farther? It isn't fair play between the wind and a straw, but why shouldn't he beat me about a little more? Anything else to ask, sir?"

"Yes," said Magnus, without the change of a muscle. "By this contract my wife is to inherit half her father's fortune at his death--she must inherit the whole of it."

"Good Lord!"

The exclamation seemed to come from everybody in the general chorus of condemnation which followed.

"Are you dreaming?" cried the Governor. "Do you forget that the Factor has another daughter?"

"No, sir, I do not forget it," said Magnus. "But the other daughter has gone away with her mother; she may never come back; and after Thora has spent her life by her father's side--cheering him up and making his home bright, as mother says--and, perhaps, nursing him in his last days--is somebody else, who has done nothing, to sweep off half of all he leaves behind? No! My wife--if I marry--must have everything!"

The older people, both strangers and members of the family, broke into loud expressions of dissent, while the Factor looked round at them, and said, "An eagle isn't displeased with a dead sheep, is it? And so, Mr. Governor's son," he said, wheeling about on Magnus, "these are the only terms on which you will do me the honor to marry my daughter?"

Without noticing the sneer, Magnus answered "Yes."

"Well, I must say I'm deceived in Magnus," said Aunt Margret. "I didn't think he had a selfish thought in his heart."

"I didn't think," said the Factor, who was not laughing any longer, "I didn't think the son of anybody in Iceland could afford to turn up his nose at a daughter of mine."

"Neilsen," said the Governor, firmly, "we have been friends since we were boys, and neither of us knows which will bury the other--don't let us quarrel now over the conduct of our children."

The company murmured approval, and then the Governor turned once more to Magnus.

"My son--for you are my son, though I'm at a loss to understand it--you are making a breach between two families by asking these utterly impossible terms! Don't you see they are impossible? Have you taken leave of your senses? Are you quite mad? Or is it true that you have been drinking--that you are drunk? Good God!"

Magnus made no answer, but the painful silence which followed the Governor's outburst was broken by a pitiful cry. It came from Thora. She understood everything at last; she knew what Magnus was doing for her and the price he was going to pay for it; and she wanted to cry out, but could not; so she dropped her head on Aunt Margret's shoulder and wept bitterly.

Anna mistook Thora's tears for shame and humiliation, and turning to Magnus she said:

"My dear son, you haven't thought of things in the right way or you couldn't do what you are doing. I don't like these marriage contracts myself. It seems like a tempting of Providence to talk about money and business just when two souls who love one another are joining themselves together and becoming one. But you are making it worse, Magnus--you are making it a mere bargain. And, then, think of Thora! If you refuse her father's offer everybody will hear of it, and the poor girl will be shamed. Do you want to see that, Magnus? I'm sure you do not! So come now, for Thora's sake--even though you don't quite like the Factor's conditions, for Thora's sake, Magnus--will you not?"

Everybody waited for Magnus's reply, and even Thora raised her head.

"No," said Magnus, in a voice like a growl, and then he sat with a stolid face while the condemnation of the company fell upon him in a chorus of denunciation. "Infamous!" "Hateful!" "Execrable!" "Damnable!" "The man's heart must be as black as a raven."

Oscar could bear no more. He had been sitting silent, with head down, as if trying to hide his agitated face, while turning Helga's photograph over and over in his restless fingers; but now he rose, walked to the curtains, which divided the front room from the back, parted them with a trembling hand, and looked out over the lake on which the sun was setting.

"Don't go away, Oscar," cried the Governor. "I know you are disgusted with your brother's turpitude; but I want you to speak to him for all that. It is hardly likely that having refused to pay attention to his mother or me, he should listen to you or anybody else, but try him. For the honor of the family, tell him that if he adheres to the attitude he has taken up, he will be an object of hatred and contempt. As long as he lives people will despise him, and his family will be ashamed to acknowledge his name. If he has no love for Thora, see if he has any respect for himself. Speak to your brother, Oscar, for mercy's sake, speak to him."

Oscar's hand on the curtain shook visibly, and he said, with an effort, while all listened without breathing, and Thora's parted lips quivered:

"I cannot do that, father. I do not feel that I have any right. No doubt Magnus knows as well as we do what he is doing, and has counted all the consequences. Everybody has to live his own life."

At this there was a murmur of disappointment, and the Governor, turning away, walked to the window. Then Oscar stepped back to the table, and said, more firmly, yet with as much emotion:

"But if I cannot appeal to Magnus, there is something I can do--I can offer to take Magnus's place. If you and the Factor will consent I can accept the conditions of the contract just as they are, and be only too proud to marry Thora if she will accept me."

At first there were looks of blank amazement about the table, then a general sigh of relief, and everybody seemed to be saying at once, "Good!" "Splendid!" "The very thing!"

"Yes," said the voice of the Governor, husky with emotion, "it is just like Oscar--always doing the great thing! But in a matter which so intimately concerns the boy's future welfare I cannot allow a momentary impulse of generosity----"

"It isn't a momentary impulse, father. Since I came home from England I have learnt to love Thora. But she was engaged to my brother, and I couldn't speak until Magnus had spoken----"

"Honorable!" "Most honorable!" said several voices, and it was with difficulty that Oscar could go on.

"But now--if it is understood that Magnus retires, that is to say, refuses to marry Thora----"

"He does, undoubtedly he does," said the Factor.

"And if Thora will take me----"

Every eye looked toward Thora; she hesitated for a moment, then rose from her chair and timidly held out her hand. Oscar grasped it eagerly and there was a chorus of congratulation.

"But we cannot allow Thora, either, to be carried away by a momentary impulse," said Aunt Margret, who was vigorously wiping her eyes, "and if she's only doing this to escape from a shameful position----"

"I'm not, auntie," said Thora. "I only consented to marry Magnus because my father wished it, but I love Oscar, and if father will agree----"

The Factor's eyes were sparkling with the light of triumph, and he cried across to the Governor, "What do you say, Stephen?"

"Well, I must say it's fast ambling--too fast," said the Governor, "but if the young people are satisfied, and if Oscar is content to give up his career in England--his music and his studies--and live in Iceland all his life, it may save a breach between our families and tide us over an ugly reef----"

"Then so be it, godson," cried the Factor, slapping Oscar on the back, "and as for England, I'll take care of that!"

This was received with a shout of approval from the strangers, and then the Factor called to the lawyer to alter the names in the contract and get it signed without delay.

"As for you, sir," he said, turning to Magnus, and snapping his fingers in his face, "your ugly chickens have come home to roost. You thought you could corner me, but your selfishness and worldliness have done the work that everybody seems to have wanted. Ha, ha, ha! he laughs best who laughs last! There's nothing I like better than to dish a man who tries to dish me, and I'll go to bed happy to-night."

Magnus had risen from his low seat and was standing with his head down and his hands on his hips while the storm beat over him, and thinking he was still unmoved the Factor burst upon him again in a tone of biting raillery:

"But if the barter trade is going to the dogs, hadn't you better cut it before the crash comes? Heavy is the fall, you know, when an old man tumbles, and I might crush you coming down. I'll trouble you to leave my house, sir, without a day's delay."

"Father!" cried Thora, and she stepped between them, but the Factor brushed her aside.

"You get away, Thora. If a daughter of mine had done to me what he has tried to do to-day she wouldn't have a roof to cover her to-night."

"Neither shall a son of mine--not in this town, at all events," said the Governor. "Magnus Stephenson----"

"Stephen! Stephen!" said Anna, and Oscar, in the same quivering voice as before, cried out to his father.

"Hold your tongue, Anna! Oscar, be quiet, you've done enough for one day! Magnus Stephenson, when you leave the Factor's house you will go to Thingvellir, and stay there, and thank your stars if for the rest of your life you are allowed to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow."

"The amended contract is ready for the signatures," said the lawyer, and then everybody save one turned back to the table, and there was a cackle of cheerful voices. When the names were all signed and witnessed, the rings were exchanged, and there was some joking and happy laughter.

"All's well that ends well," said the Bishop. "That will do as a pledge between you until you come to me to be made man and wife."

"Supper is ready," cried Aunt Margret, drawing the curtains of the inner room, and then seeing a photograph on the floor beneath them, she said, "but who's been treading on poor Helga's portrait?"

"That's Oscar," said Thora. "He had it in his hand when he got up."

When the company were seated about the supper table it was seen that there was one chair too many, and the Governor pushed it back with an impatient hand. Magnus had gone--no one had seen him go.

XII

Alone and forgotten, a prey to the devilish voices which had tortured him in the time of his temptation, angry and unsatisfied although he had carried out his purpose and triumphed as he had intended, Magnus was in his room at the top of the house gathering up his belongings by the light of a candle.

They were few and not valuable--a little money, two or three suits of clothes, two or three pairs of riding, fishing, and snow boots, some musical exercise books, the "Book of Job," "The Pilgrim's Progress" (having illustrations of Apollyon with horns), and the precious flute with which he had beguiled those blessed evenings that now seemed to belong to another existence. He had sent for two ponies to take him to the farm--a saddle pony and a pack pony--and two small boxes held everything. When all was packed he came upon the remains of a bottle of brandy which he had kept in his bedroom as medicine, and he drank the spirit and threw the bottle away.

During that short hour of pain and degradation he heard at intervals the various noises of the company at supper below--sometimes in single voices, sometimes in climbing cries like the sounds of a geyser, sometimes in peals of joyous laughter--and his heart grew bitter. He could plainly distinguish Oscar's voice among the rest, at first quiet enough, but afterward loud and hilarious, and his very soul sickened.

"You fool!" said the other voices at his ear. "What did you expect? Did you think he would be overwhelmed with sorrow? He is glad; he'll walk over your head, and over Thora's head, too! Listen to him already--the sweet, unselfish, privileged pet of everybody!"

After the boxes had been sent down-stairs Magnus took a last look round, and then he tried to shut out all bitter thoughts and evil passions, for he believed that he was leaving that room for ever. It had been his home through seven long years, and some of them had been bad years, but some of them had been good, and the good ones filled the little place with memories of many visions.

The sloping roof, the dormer window, the deal furniture, the sheep's skin on the bare floor, and the sunflower pattern on the wall-paper were all ghosts of the dreams he had dreamt there. Some were dreams of the great things he was going to do for Iceland, but more were dreams of Thora, and remembering that both sorts were dead now, and that Thora belonged to Oscar, to save himself from further repining and to crush down the riot that was rising within, he blew out the candle and that chapter of his life was at an end.

But the devilish voices were not yet done with him. Going down-stairs he had to pass the door of the front room on the first landing, and he went by it on tiptoe. For years he had always passed that door on tiptoe, for it was the door to Thora's room, a holy place, half nursery, half sanctuary, as Thora herself had grown to be half saint to him and half child; but he was not thinking of that this time. He was thinking he must get out of the house without seeing her again, for she belonged to Oscar now, and if they were to meet and she began to thank him for giving her to Oscar--but God forbid!

Thora's door was closed, but the next room stood open. It was Aunt Margret's bedroom, and Magnus knew that a photograph of Thora was on the chest of drawers near the door. He had often envied it, and now he stooped to look at it for the last time, and the voices at his ear seemed to say, "Take it; it's all you are going to carry away of her."

Going down the last flight of stairs he heard the two sitting-rooms buzzing like the mill-house, and knew that others must have joined the party; but above all other sounds he heard the sound of Oscar's voice, clear as a flute, saluting people as they came in. "Listen to him! The darling!" said the mocking voices by his side.

Coming to the hall, he encountered some of the women of the town in their feast-day dresses, and with garden flowers in their hands. Hardly any of them looked at him, but all passed into the sitting-room, where Oscar waited to welcome them.

The hat-stand in the hall had been cleared for the new-comers, therefore Magnus had to go to a rail under the stairs for his overcoat and riding-whip, and while he was there Aunt Margret opened the door of the back sitting-room to ventilate the crowded place. She did not see him, for she had taken off the spectacles she usually wore, and he was standing in the shadow, but he saw everybody in the room, and Thora among the rest.

Thora was sitting by the wall, and the townspeople were going up to her one after another and offering their flowers and making congratulatory speeches. And she was thanking them in her soft voice and looking very happy.

Magnus was hurt by Thora's happiness. He had done all he could to make her happy; he had sacrificed everything; but now that he looked on her happiness he was hurt by it; and when Oscar went and stood by her chair, looking bright and proud, he felt hot with anger and hatred.

While he pulled on his overcoat he could not help hearing what was being said within the room. "Such an extraordinary thing, Thora," said one, "people in the town actually said it was Magnus you were going to marry!" "I heard that, too," said another. "I heard it at Olaf's, the silversmith's, when we were drinking coffee." "Such an idea!" said a third, "as if any girl would marry Magnus who could get Oscar!" And then Oscar's voice, large, expansive, indulgent, almost patronizing, "Tut, tut! You mustn't say anything against Magnus, Elisabet!" "But I hear Magnus insulted Thora this evening, and the Factor has turned him out for it." "Can it be possible? I saw him in the hall as I was coming in!" "No, no, not insulted--not insulted exactly," said Oscar's voice again, and then Magnus, sick and dizzy, turned away.

He was going out of the house with head down when the door of the front sitting-room opened and closed quickly, and he found himself face to face with Thora. She was trying to look sad, but the light of her happiness was still in her eyes, and her parted lips were smiling.

"I heard you were here," she said, "and I couldn't help coming out to see you. Oscar told me yesterday I was not to speak, whatever happened, but it seems so terrible that you should leave us like this."

"We made a mistake, and we had to get out of it somehow," said Magnus.

"I know," said Thora. "And of course I think it will be the best thing in the end. You would have had no joy of me, Magnus, and I should have been very unhappy."

"Perhaps you would," said Magnus.

"But it is a great grief to me that you will have to give up all the schemes you had set your heart upon, Magnus."

"I have given up more than that, Thora," said Magnus, and he tried to push past her and go.

The light of her smile died off her face, and with a wistful look, in a pleading voice, she said:

"I feel as if I am losing a friend, Magnus, and you are saying good-by to me for good."

"Not that exactly," said Magnus.

"Good-by, Magnus!"

"Good-by!"

They were standing with hands clasped in what they believed to be their last parting when the buzz of the inner room broke out upon them again, and a cheery voice cried:

"Thora! Thora! Where are you?--Oh, it's you, Magnus?"

It was Oscar, and at the next moment Thora had gone back, the door of the sitting-room had closed behind her, and Magnus and his brother were together in the hall.

"I meant to come out to you before, old fellow," said Oscar, "but they stuck to me like leeches, and I couldn't get away. I wanted to thank you for what you did for me this evening. It was too generous, too brotherly, and I can never be sufficiently grateful."

Magnus did not answer, so Oscar went on:

"You pledged me to silence, and you were right, plainly right; but, of course, I cannot allow the error about your motive to go much farther, and as soon as it is safe to do so I will set you right. People shall know the truth about what you did, and why you did it; and they will make amends for their mistake."

Still Magnus did not speak, so Oscar continued:

"It's too bad, though, that you should suffer in the meantime, and if there is anything I could do for you--in a material way, I mean--if you are in want of----"

But the dark fire that was rising in Magnus's face frightened him, and he could not finish what he wished to say.

"I don't care a straw what people think I did it for," said Magnus, "and I don't care a damn if they never make amends. You know what I did it for, and that's enough for me. I did it for the sake of Thora. I gave her up to you that you might love her and cherish her and make her happy, and be a better husband to her than I could be. But if you don't do it; if you ever neglect her or desert her or give her up for another woman, I'll take her back. Do you hear me?"--(Magnus swayed like a drunken man and laid hold of Oscar's arm)--"I'll take her back, and then--then, by God, I'll kill you!"

Saying this, he walked heavily out of the house, leaving Oscar with white cheeks and gibbering lips, alone in the hall.

His ponies were waiting for him in the street ready for the journey to Thingvellir. The night was dark, but the windows of the house were bright, for the blinds had been drawn and the sashes thrown open. A cackle of many voices came out of them, for the company within was now large and very merry. While Magnus tightened the girths somebody played a guitar, and as he was riding away Oscar began to sing.

PART II

"Impotent pieces of the game he plays

Upon this chequer-board of nights and days;

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

And one by one back in the closet lays."

I

Oscar did his best to keep the fire burning in the inner sanctuary--the fire of love and duty--but oftener than he was aware it flickered, and seemed to be in danger of dying out. He tried to tell the truth about Magnus, but as frequently as he thought out a way of doing so he was confronted by the ugly question which would surely be asked: "Can it be possible that you stood passively aside while we condemned Magnus for a vice he was not guilty of, and praised you for a virtue you did not possess?" The humiliation of speech like that would be deeper than the degradation of silence, and from day to day Oscar postponed the painful confession. Thus a month passed, and he had said nothing.

His position would have been easier if he had been getting on better with his work--if he could have felt it impossible that the Factor could regret the loss of Magnus. Then he would have said, "After all, though naturally you didn't think so at the time, everything has been for the best," whereupon the Factor would have said, "You are right, god-son," and after that he would have told all.

But his work was going badly, and there was no blinking the fact that he was a poor business man. On first going into the Factor's, on the footing the contract gave him, he rambled from office to warehouse with aimless and shiftless uncertainty, dressed with Bohemian freedom, and looking like a butterfly in a back alley. Then the Factor said, "Come, come, young fellow, we must be getting to work; choose a department and be responsible for it."

Oscar selected the export department. This brought him into relation with the farmers, and some of them cheated him unmercifully, concealing their inferior wool in the body of the packs he bought from them. Magnus would have rooted out both the bad stuff and the men who brought it, and they would have gone flying before his threatening face; but Oscar wished to stand well with everybody, and the firm suffered accordingly.

After a week he wished to change. He thought the import department would suit him better: "Very well," said the Factor. "Mistakes are made by the young as well as the old--buckle to at the imports, my boy."

The imports brought him into relation with the mates of steamers and trading ships, and they were quick to shuffle their responsibility for damaged freights onto Oscar's shoulders.

After another week he went back to the Factor and said, "I don't think a department is what suits me best, god-father--why not let me have a general supervision?" The Factor shrugged his shoulders, but replied, "I'm willing. You shall be my right-hand man, then, and I'll ease off as soon as you are ready."

But from that moment onward Oscar did nothing, good, bad, or indifferent. He was always running about like one out of breath, but he came at any hour in the morning and left at any time in the evening, and was always skipping off to see Thora. That little lady was entirely content, but the Factor was heard to say to Aunt Margret, "There was something in Magnus after all, Margret." And Aunt Margret was heard to answer, "Many a good sword is in a bad sheath, you know."

But one day Oscar came flying to the Factor in breathless haste with his mouth full of great news. The Member of Parliament for the town was dead, and the Radical party were already preparing to run a candidate--an out-and-out Socialist named Oddsson, an enemy of the old order in both politics and trade.

"Why shouldn't I go into Althing?" said Oscar. "I could protect the business against these rascally revolutionaries, and help to preserve the old principles."

"Let me talk to your father first," said the Factor.

The old friends agreed that the scheme was a good one. Not only was the man Oddsson a believer in Magnus's doctrine about the barter trade, but he was the champion of an agitation for establishing a new constitution in Iceland, which would abolish the Governor and set up a Minister responsible to Parliament alone. He must be kept out. In self-defense they must fight the common enemy! Oscar would be a good candidate, being young and bright and clever, and a personal favorite.

"But I cannot appear in the contest," said the Governor.

"Leave it to me," said the Factor, and he went back and told Oscar, who shouted with delight and shot off to tell Thora.

By this time Thora had spent a long month in radiant happiness. If she thought sometimes of Magnus's position, she remembered that Oscar had said he would set things right, and the delay counted for little, because she measured existence by days no longer, but by emotions, and she was conscious of one emotion only--love for Oscar, and therefore for everybody and everything in the world.

As the year was growing elderly and its withering winds made further excursions to the islands of the fiord impossible, they remained at home and romped like children or played the guitar and piano. At such times Thora was not without certain backward thoughts of Magnus, for the room was the same and nothing was different except the hour of the day, but there was always the difference of its being Oscar.

He taught her some Icelandic love songs, and she sang them in a thin sweet treble, which Oscar cheered tumultuously. It did not hurt her in the least that Oscar never took her singing seriously--he did not take Thora herself seriously. He called her "Baby Thora," and she christened him the "Bad Boy."

The moment he had left her sight she would send a letter after him, like a handkerchief he had forgotten. He always replied, and his letters were full of affectionate banter, but perhaps at the bottom of her heart she was a little disappointed with them. They were not quite lover-like enough; there were scarcely any of them she could not read aloud to Aunt Margret; there was hardly one that was her very own. But Oscar made up for every deficiency when he arrived himself, and on the day when he came with a hop, skip, and a jump into the sitting-room, and announced that he was to be member of Althing, she saw him for one moment great and glorious, like the top of a mountain when it has broken through the mist and the sun has flashed on to it, and then she said, "And now the Bad Boy must play with me--he hasn't played me blindman's buff since yesterday."

Thora was too happy to think of her happiness, but she told herself sometimes that there was only one thing wanted to make it complete--that Helga should come home to share it. She broached the subject to Oscar, but it was at a moment when he was immersed in his manifestoes, and he merely said, "Good idea! Splendid! Helga looks like a stunner! Send for her certainly if the Factor approves," and he went on with his tiresome politics.

She broached it next to Aunt Margret, who was less encouraging. Putting her spectacled face close to Thora's, she shook her ringlets, and said, "Don't be a ninny! Two's company, three's none!"

But Thora mentioned the matter to Anna also, and the motherly old thing was moved. "That would be beautiful if you could manage it, Thora," she said, "and if it should lead to bringing the others together, what a blessing it would be!"

After that Thora regarded herself in the light of the family peace-maker, and in this character she approached her father. The Factor listened to her with sympathy, for nature is stronger than lawyer's ink, and he had often told himself he had been foolish to part with his child. "Well, I don't see why she shouldn't," he said. "She might come for the wedding--or, say for a year--one year at all events. I'll write to the lawyer in Denmark."

By the same mail Thora wrote to Helga:

Dearest Helga:--Father is writing to the lawyer to ask him to send you back to Iceland. It is only for a year, so I hope mamma will not object. I am sure you will not when I tell you what is to happen. There is to be a wedding, and, of course, a party, and great goings on.

Dear, I am to be married to Oscar Stephenson, who has come back from England, and is so handsome and so clever. If you could see him as he is now, you would fall in love with him instantly, but he is so fond of me, and I am so happy. I was to have married his brother Magnus, but the engagement broke down, and now I am very sorry for Magnus, and if ever you hear anything against him when you come home you are not to believe a word of it, because Magnus is as good as gold, only I could not care for him, so it was no use trying.

Dear, there are such lots of things I want to tell you, but I must save them until you come. We have had bad trade this summer, and Oscar has gone into father's business. I am weaving a web of cloth for father's Christmas suit, but it does not make much progress, because somebody is always interrupting, and when you are about to be married there is so much to do--isn't there?

Dearest Helga, I have no more to write about now, so give my love to mamma, and mind you come before long, for the wedding may be soon, although nothing is fixed yet. Your affectionate sister, Thora.

P.S.--Come quickly. I am dying to introduce you to Oscar.

A fortnight later the Factor announced that he had heard from the lawyer in Denmark, and Helga was to come by the next steamer.

"The 'Laura,' and she's due on the first of November, and that's the day of the election!" said Oscar.

"What a good omen!" said Thora, and she sang her Iceland love songs all that evening through, for she was very happy.

II

On the morning of the day when the "Laura" was due, there was no sign of her on the sea, but that was a matter of moment only to Thora, who had been up early and down at the jetty before breakfast. The rest of the little world in which she lived were immersed in preparations for the election and were going about like dogs on the leash before the hunt begins. Oscar was flying to and fro with red ribbons in his button-hole; ponies were coming and going with red ribbons in their bridles, and red flags were hanging all over the town; but, nevertheless, there was a sense of uncertainty everywhere and an atmosphere of intense excitement.

The day opened dull and rayless, with a pale sun behind a slaty sky like a white wafer on an old parchment. An hour before the polling booths opened the Governor called upon the Factor, under pretense of his morning's walk, and said:

"I'm doubtful of the result, Neilsen, and I now see that Oscar was the worst possible candidate to stand for our cause. Everybody who has a grievance against the Governor is going to vote against the Governor's son, and everybody who has a grievance against the Factor will vote against his son-in-law."

"Oh, I know the people, bless them," said the Factor. "Master when you want anything--slave when you don't. But we'll see, Stephen, we'll see!"

After finishing his breakfast comfortably the Factor walked leisurely to his counting-house and called for his ledger. It showed that nearly half of the electors of the town were indebted to him, some of them slightly, others deeply, and not a few beyond hope of payment without pressure or distraint. He counted up their total indebtedness, and it proved to be frightful. "But life is precious when death is at the door," he thought, and lighting his long German pipe, he put the leather-bound book under his arm and strolled quietly across to the polling-station.

As chairman of Oscar's committee the Factor had a right to sit inside the polling booth, but he merely asked to be allowed to take a chair outside the counter to which the voters would come up when they recorded their votes. "A low seat is often easy," he said, sitting with his face to the Sheriff and his back to the door.

When the doors were opened the Factor laid his ledger across his knees and took out a thick blue pencil. Then, as each voter came up to the counter and his name was called and looked up in the register, the Factor was seen to turn up the voter's account in his own book and hold his blue pencil over it.

"Whom do you vote for?" asked the Sheriff, "Oscar Stephenson or Jon Oddsson?" and if the voter answered "Oscar Stephenson," the blue pencil was seen to descend in two broad strokes across the account as if cancelling it altogether; but if he answered "Jon Oddsson," it was seen to score the total with a double underline as if marking it for immediate recovery.

The opposition had entered in hot haste, but the effect was instantaneous. A voter would come swaggering up to the counter, call his name in a robustious voice, and then (while waiting for the verification of his right to vote) see the Factor sitting below with his own account open before him, and, understanding everything in a moment, would begin to answer the Sheriff with a faltering, "Odd----," then pause, tremble, mumble "Stephenson," and go stumbling out of doors.

Silently, hour after hour, from the beginning of the day to the end of it, the Factor sat at his task, never once looking up from his ledger and apparently doing nothing but checking, as he had a right to do, the Sheriff's record of the votes. Aunt Margret came to say that dinner was ready, but he answered that he was not hungry. Toward three in the afternoon Thora arrived in great excitement to say that the "Laura" had been sighted outside the head, but he told her to meet her sister herself, and tell her that he did not expect to be home before midnight.

When the cathedral clock struck four the Sheriff rose and ordered the shutting of the doors. The short winter's day had closed in by this time, and while the counting was going on with its monotonous beat in the silence of the breathless room, like the splashing of rain on the pavement--"Stephenson, Stephenson, Oddsson, Stephenson"--the Factor, who had lit his pipe, was pacing the corridor outside, like a man who walks in his orchard when the fruit is ripe.

When the counting was finished the Sheriff told the attendants to open the window, and then the deep hum of a crowd which had been cheering and singing outside, with a noise like the waves breaking on a bar far off, rose to a roar, like that of the sea running up a stony beach. At the next moment everybody was shaking hands with Oscar, a band was beginning to play in the street, and the Sheriff was stepping on to the balcony.

Meantime Thora, fluttering with excitement of another sort, had gone down to the jetty to meet Helga. As soon as the "Laura" had steamed up the fiord and cast anchor outside the town, she put off in her father's white boat and drew up alongside. It was now quite dark, but lights were burning on the steamer and the dark figures of a line of passengers were silhouetted against the sky as they leaned over the rail and shouted to the friends in little boats who had come out to meet them. Thora was sure that Helga must be there, and she wanted to call to her, but her heart was beating so fast that her voice would not answer. At length the ladder was let down, and Thora's boat swayed up to it, and then she climbed up the steamer's side.

"Helga!"

"Miss Helga is below," said a voice out of the darkness, and though she felt a pang of disappointment that Helga was not waiting, she ran down the stairs to the saloon. At the bottom she called "Helga" again, and the stewardess said:

"The young lady is in her cabin."

"Which?"

"Second to the left."

Feeling conscious of increasing disappointment, but still panting in her eagerness, Thora skipped off to the cabin, and then came a shock of surprise.

Somehow she had expected to find Helga a little thing, grown certainly, but still smaller than herself. In her dreams of their first meeting she had pictured herself stooping to kiss Helga, and then in a sisterly-motherly sort of way putting her arms about her waist. But the young lady who came leisurely out of the cabin with her veil down and buttoning her kid gloves, was much taller than Thora and quite dignified and stately.

"Thora!" said the girl.

"So it is you--really you?" said Thora.

"Really me," laughed Helga, and then it was Helga who stooped to kiss Thora, who had to lift up her face to her.

Thora's heart was in her mouth in both senses. She looked at Helga again by the dim light of the saloon lamp, and felt herself small and insignificant. Helga was beautiful, with fine features, large gray eyes and rich dark complexion, and Thora felt herself to be plain and commonplace. Helga was fashionably dressed in the Danish manner, with the soft silk things about the neck and bosom which give charm to a charming girl, and Thora felt herself to be dowdy and countrified in her Iceland hufa and stiff velvet cloak.

"Have you come alone?" asked Helga.

"Quite alone," said Thora.

"But hasn't father come with you? Or Aunt Margret? Or that wonderful Oscar? Is there nobody but you?"

"Nobody but me," said Thora, and then, though she felt crushed and small, she delivered the Factor's message and told about the election.

"So that was the meaning of the band we heard as we were sailing up?" said Helga, and at the first moment Thora thought perhaps Helga had hoped it was in honor of her own arrival, but at the next she felt ashamed and foolish.

"We might as well go, then," said Helga, and she swept up the stairs, leaving Thora to follow. It was all so different from what Thora had expected--so utterly different--that she would have given anything to run away and cry.

But going ashore in the boat, she sat at the helm side by side with Helga, and there, the lights being gone, and Thora no longer in awe of Helga's fashion and beauty, she slipped her arm about her sister's waist, as she had always intended to do, and after that they got on better.

When they touched the jetty there was much shouting and scrambling in the darkness, and Thora was nervous and excited, but Helga was quiet and even amused.

"No carriages in this benighted country yet, I suppose?" said Helga.

"No, but I've brought Silvertop to take you up," said Thora.

"And what is there for you?"

"Oh, I'll walk--I love walking."

The street at the top of the jetty was thronged with the people who were waiting outside the polling place to hear the result of the election, and when the girls came to the crowd, which was good-natured but boisterous, they found it difficult to plow their way through until a big man stepped before them and swept the people aside like ninepins.

"What a tremendous creature that was," said Helga. "He could have felled an ox, I fancy."

"But didn't you know him, Helga? It was Magnus Stephenson," said Thora.

"Magnus? Why didn't he speak, I wonder?"

They had reached the outskirts of the crowd and were crossing in front of the polling place when the people raised a great shout, for it was the moment when the Sheriff stepped on to the balcony.

"He's going to declare the poll. Shall we wait?" asked Thora.

"It might be amusing," said Helga.

As soon as there was silence the Sheriff read the figures. Oscar had been elected by three votes to one. At this there was another hurricane of cheers, with cries of "Oscar!" "Oscar!" and Thora said:

"Oscar will come next. Shall we wait and see him?"

"Why not? It will be good fun," said Helga, and in the interval Thora patted Silvertop to keep him quiet, and creeping closer to her sister squeezed her hand.

Then Oscar came bounding on to the balcony amidst a wild breaker of applause, and behind him came two men bearing torches, so that his figure and face were plainly visible to the crowd below--his slight, lithe form, his fair hair slightly ruffled, his sparkling eyes, his mobile mouth and the never-failing smile that captivated everybody.

It was thus that Helga saw him for the first time since he became a man, and her face, which had worn a playful expression, became grave.

"How fine!" she said.

Thora could hardly catch the words over the sibilation of the running cheers, but she said:

"He will speak--shall we wait to hear him?"

"Assuredly," said Helga, and when Oscar began with "Fellow townsmen and fellow countrymen," Thora felt Helga's hand shiver and heard her say, "The same voice!"

Oscar's speech was punctuated by applause at the end of every sentence, and when it was finished, and the speaker and the men with the torches had disappeared, Thora spoke to Helga again, but she answered at random, and sat in her saddle like one in a dream.

Somebody else came on to the balcony and had a mixed reception.

"It must be father," said Thora, and then the Factor's voice, utterly indifferent to hostile interruptions, was heard to say that a supper had been prepared at the hotel for the committee of the successful candidate, and they were to go there at once--the new member would follow presently.

With that the crowd broke up, and the girls went their way--Thora clinging closer than ever to her sister, for her heart was warm with love and pride.

"Well," she said, "what did you think of him?"

"Think of him? Oscar?" said Helga. She laughed uncomfortably, and then stooped from the saddle and whispered:

"Only to think that a little thing like you, dear, should capture a man like that!"

Thora laughed also, but she hardly knew whether she was pleased or hurt. A sudden chill had struck her. It was like the breath of the mountain snow which sometimes comes down in summer.

III

The gods of riot were playing so hard a game with Thora that she was in a fever to introduce Oscar to Helga, and when he did not appear by noon of the following day she sent a letter across to Government House to order him to come forthwith. The "Bad Boy" was too full of his silly politics, while there was something far more charming and absorbing waiting for him there. But an answer came back from Anna to say that Oscar was still asleep, and after the excitement of the day before, and the late hour of the previous night, she was unwilling to waken him.

Early in the afternoon Anna herself came over expecting to see the first-fruits of the peace-making, and, while Aunt Margret was below stairs preparing chocolate for the company that was expected, the motherly old thing tried various artful ways of finding out from Helga what her upbringing had been in Denmark, and, particularly, what religious instruction and society her mother had given her. Helga saw through the device in a moment, and with her red lips a little awry she painted an alarming picture of theaters and concert-halls, and a flat in Copenhagen frequented by actors and actresses, especially on Sunday evenings, where everybody, including the ladies, smoked cigarettes and drank brandy.

Meanwhile Thora watched for Oscar out of the sidelight of the projecting window, and as soon as she saw him swinging down the road, she darted into the hall and threw herself into his arms and kissed him, whereupon, with his head full of his victory, he said:

"Congratulations, eh? The sweetest I've had yet," and pushed through toward the drawing-room.

"Wait, wait, wait! Somebody to show you!" cried Thora.

Then the poor victim of God knows what maleficent powers--not knowing what she did, but laughing merrily as if a song-bird had been imprisoned in her throat--began to play the old familiar trick of children; standing behind Oscar on tip-toe in order to reach, she put her hands over his eyes, and crying, "Forward, soldier!" marched him blindfold into the drawing-room and up to the place where Helga was waiting. Then, removing her hands sharply, she cried, "There!" and stood off to see the effect.

Oscar found himself face to face with a girl as unlike Thora as could be, tall, dark, with hair parted at the side and hanging over the forehead, dressed in a light silk blouse and silver-grey skirt, and having an odor of violets about her.

"Helga! Can it be possible?"

He stretched out his hand and Helga took it, and held it, and so they stood for some moments, while Thora, breathing rapidly, watched the changing lights in their faces: in Oscar's, astonishment, admiration, and rapture: in Helga's, curiosity, satisfaction, and delight. And Thora's own face, too--to the pitying angels who alone were looking at it--showed expressions just as various: pride, joy, then uneasiness, and finally a little twinge of secret pain.

To relieve this feeling, Thora burst into laughter, and then everybody laughed, and Aunt Margret came into the room with the chocolate and cakes.

"So you've brought them together again, Thora?" said Aunt Margret, and Thora swallowed a lump in her throat and answered, "Yes."

Then Oscar and Helga went over to the window and talked together with great animation. Thora heard snatches of their conversation as she carried round the cups. It was about things of which she knew nothing--Denmark, Copenhagen, England, London, Oxford, the English theater, the Danish theater, and, above all, music, music, music.

"How well they get along," said Thora.

"Trust them for that," said Aunt Margret.

Toward dusk the Factor returned home--not having altered his habit of work by a hair's breadth; and then came half the great people of the town--the Bishop, the Sheriff, the Rector of the Latin School, and finally the Governor. Helga moved among them with the quiet ease of one accustomed to company. Within an hour she had captured all the men, but the women were less sure of her.

"The minute I set eyes on her," whispered Aunt Margret to Anna, "I said to myself, 'Thora is a Neilsen out and out, but there's more of the stranger in this one.'"

"She's the living picture of what my wife was when I saw her first," said the Factor in a low tone to the Governor, who answered significantly, in the same low tone:

"Then I don't wonder, old friend--I say I don't wonder!"

"Helga's head and yours were nearer together when I laid my hand on them last," said the Bishop to Thora. "Take care! Your sister is running away from you, little one."

"Isn't she?" said Thora.

Thora did not feel quite so happy in Helga's visit as she had expected, but still struggling to show her off, she asked her to play something on the piano--she had played after breakfast and it was beautiful.

Helga played brilliantly, and Oscar, who turned over her music, applauded her boisterously.

"And now Oscar ought to play something," said the Governor. "From his earliest years he made us conceive the highest hopes that he might become a great musician."

"He will, too--my son Neils at the College of Music says he will," said the Sheriff.

"Nonsense!" said the Factor. "Oscar has something better to do now than to scrape catgut or blow his lungs through a steam-pipe."

"Still, an occasional flirtation with the muses," said the Hector, "you wouldn't object to that, Factor?"

"I would object to flirtations of all sorts," said the Factor, "and I should think the man a fool who put himself in the way of them."

"Surprising how many men do," said the Governor with a wink at the Rector. "Would you believe it--a certain friend of yours wrote a poem in the days of his youth!"

"Never!" cried the Rector, and while the old people laughed, the Factor said:

"When I was a child I behaved as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things."

"Well, I so far agree with the Factor that I think a man can't have his heart in two places at once," said the Governor. "What do you say, Thora?"

"I suppose not," said Thora.

"Certainly not, any more than a man can love two women at the same time," said the Governor; and then Oscar began to play.

He played as the bird sings because the song is in the soul of it, and when he had finished, the company cheered him lustily, and Helga, putting her face close to his, said in a whisper:

"And you asked me to play--I who only play as I am taught, and you can play like that!"

Oscar was delighted with Helga's praises and suggested that they should play together. They played a difficult selection, full of flourishes, and the company declared they had never heard anything like it.

"Wonderful, wasn't it?" said somebody.

"Yes, wasn't it?" said Thora.

She was feeling utterly eclipsed and forgotten when Helga wheeled round on the music-stool and said:

"And now Thora must give us something on her guitar--Aunt Margret says she plays it beautifully."

"Indeed she does--beautifully!" said Aunt Margret.

But Thora begged off in alarm, saying, "No, indeed, no! I couldn't possibly play after playing like that."

So Oscar and Helga began again. This time it was an English ballad. Helga played the accompaniment, and Oscar sang the air, and there was a chorus which they gave together. The company were completely carried away. "Charming!" "Exquisite!" "But how well their voices harmonize!" "They might have been meant by nature to go together!"

"Might they not?" said Thora.

"But now Thora ought really to play her guitar," said Helga.

"Certainly! Thora and her guitar," said Oscar. "And let her sing one of her Iceland love songs to it."

It was cruel, it was heart-breaking, it was almost as if Helga were trying to humiliate her, as if Oscar were joining her, as if they were conspiring together to expose her inferiority.

"No, no, don't ask me, please don't," she pleaded.

But Helga continued to ask and Oscar to second her, and being able to bear the strain no longer, Thora burst into tears, and fled from the room.

"How extraordinary!" said Helga.

But Oscar followed Thora and coaxed and comforted her and brought her back with a smile on her face, although the tears were scarcely dry in her eyes.

"I was silly," she said. "I don't know what came over me."

"Perhaps it was the heat," said the Governor, and he opened one of the windows.

IV

During the next month Oscar was every day and nearly all day at the Factor's, to the total disregard of his public work and the complete neglect of business. But his visits were not always to Thora, who was ceasing to be "Baby Thora" either to him or to any one, and becoming a serious little figure with a wistful face. She never romped about the house now, but sat in a corner with a ball of wool in her lap and a crochet hook in her hand while Oscar and Helga played the piano and talked music.

It was music, music, always music at the Factor's in those days. Early in her visit Helga brought down a pile of the music of Wagner, and Oscar was completely carried away by it. Other composers produced beautiful harmonies, a subtle and clever combination of sweet sounds, but when Oscar played Wagner, the piano seemed to him to waken and weep, to burn the flame under his fingers.

"It's glorious!" he would say. "I can never thank you enough, Helga. It's a new world, a new revelation."

Helga had heard of Oscar's songs from the Sagas, and one day she said, "I wonder you don't try to compose something yourself, Oscar--something in the style of Wagner--I'm sure you could."

Then with diffidence and apologies Oscar produced his 'prentice efforts, and Helga praised them enthusiastically. "Do you know you are a born musician?" she said. "And you should never do anything except create music--never!"

Oscar was intoxicated by her applause, but he only laughed and said,

"Ah, that's impossible."

"Why impossible?"

"Parliament--public duties--and so forth."

"But, my dear Oscar, you don't mean to say you are going to waste your life like that?"

"Do you call it waste, Helga?"

"Not for everybody--not for a man like Magnus, for example--but for you, yes," said Helga, and then, with irresistible drollery, she mimicked the manners of Parliament, with its "Mr. Speaker, permit me to rise to a point of order," and "Will the honorable and learned member explain," and all the other inanities of a legislative assembly in a little country.

Oscar laughed until tears, (from more springs than one) began to roll down his cheeks, and then he said--

"What an actress you would make, Helga! But principles, my dear girl, principles are the soul of politics, and if a man can guide his country in the higher paths, he can afford to forget the plains--don't you think so, Thora?"

And Thora, who had been feeling dizzy and faint, answered in a helpless way, "Yes, Oscar. But I forgot to tell you that father wished to see you on business."

"Business!" cried Helga. "That, too!"

"Then you object to business also?" asked Oscar.

"For you--certainly, because you are not fit for it," said Helga. "And if you go into business you'll be like a man who has married the wrong woman. She may be an excellent, thrifty soul, quite suitable to somebody else, but she was never meant for him."

"There's something in that, though it's wonderful how you know it," said Oscar. "I'm about the silliest beggar at a bargain that ever breathed out of an oyster shell."

"Of course you are, Oscar--you must be. Now, if Magnus had gone into business he might have got something out of it. But you--what in the world do you expect to get?"

"Ah, now you're wrong, Helga! I have got something out of it already--I've got Thora!"

"Thora?"

"Didn't you know? Thora was the prize I was bidding for when I took over that contract."

"So that was it--was it?" said Helga; and then Thora herself, feeling sick and ill, gathered up her work and stole out of the room.

Nevertheless the seed which Helga had sown had not fallen on stony ground. Within twenty-four hours Oscar appeared with a new composition in his hands.

"An idea came to me last night and I had to get it off," he said, and then he sat down to the piano and played.

"Beautiful!" cried Helga. "Really beautiful! But this subject suggests the organ--why not set it to that, and try it on the organ in the cathedral?"

"Splendid idea!" said Oscar. "Thora knows the curator and can get the key. What do you say, Thora?"

"If you would like to," said Thora, and next day they carried out their scheme.

Oscar and Helga sat together in the organ loft, while Thora was sent down the communion steps to report the effect at a distance. "How did that go, Thora?" cried Oscar, once or twice at the beginning, and Thora answered, "Very nicely, I think," but then the two in the organ loft forgot her altogether in the rapture of their rehearsal.

During the next two or three weeks Oscar and Helga went to the cathedral every day, and sometimes Thora went with them, but more frequently she remained at home. A sudden wave of energy seemed to lift Oscar out of himself, and he produced one composition after another. Helga applauded all of them, and her praises intoxicated him like glory.

"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, Helga," he said, "for all the good things you have poured out on me since you came back to Iceland. You have given my life a new joy, a new splendor!"

"Nonsense!" said Helga. "I am nothing but a voice to awaken your genius. You were born to create music, and whatever happens you must never, never throw away a life which has the glory of a future like that."

To this, and such as this, he always answered "Ah, no!" or "Impossible!" or "It's past praying for," but Helga's words were as the very incense of the dreams which, in vaguer forms, he had been trying to forget since the day he engaged himself to Thora.

"Why shouldn't there be another Wagner, an Icelandic Wagner, a Wagner with a still grander scene and still greater stories--the Sagas and Eddas of this stern old land?"

About a month after Helga returned to Iceland she suggested to Oscar that he should write an anthem on a passage which she selected from one of the Sagas. It was that in which the old gods of the Pagan world, in anger with the family of man for permitting the establishment of Christianity, tore open the bowels of their fruitful valleys with earthquakes, and deluged them with molten lava, and how Christ came through the chaos saying, "Let there be peace!"

"Great! Glorious! A stunning subject! But can I do it?" said Oscar.

"You can, you must," said Helga, and from that moment a continual fever burned in Oscar's blood until the task was done. Thora saw nothing of him for days, except when he bounded in to run over a part of his score with Helga, and then away, without a word, to his work again. When the anthem was written and he was ready to try it on the organ, he said:

"Are you coming across to the cathedral to-day, Thora? No? Perhaps you had better not. We'll have to go over the thing again and again--it might be tiresome."

It was the afternoon of a dull week-day in the early winter, and some of the dreary noises of the work-a-day world followed Oscar into the cathedral. A vessel was unloading in the fiord--he could hear the rumble of the iron trolleys as they rolled up the paved jetty to the Factor's warehouse. A new house was being erected on the corner of the cathedral square--he could hear the thin clank of the mason's trowel. A steamer was on the stocks in the shipyard down the harbor--he could hear the sharp beat of the riveter's hammer.

But there was another atmosphere in the cathedral, and Oscar floated on it as on a flood--the silent sanctuary, the rows of empty pews going up to the chancel, the empty pulpit with its sounding-board, the empty altar with the Eastern subject painted above it, the marble font for the baptism of future generations, the marble monuments to the memory of past ones, and then the listening air, awakened by a whisper or a footfall, and full of the breath of dead prayer and vanished praise.

In this atmosphere of art and religion Oscar sat down at the organ, with Helga by his side, to try his anthem for the first time. The organ throbbed under his fingers, the empty cathedral shook like a sea-cave under the boom of his waves of sound, and when he came to the end of his first reading he was quivering with excitement and Helga was in a fever.

"What did I tell you?" she said. "Was I not right? Oh, if this could be heard in Denmark!"

"Or in England!" said Oscar.

They played the piece again and again, and at every fresh playing their excitement increased until it reached the point of hysteria, and their voices in that silent place became as shrill as the wind on the mountain top. At last they tried the words, and then their emotion knew no limit.

The organ trembled and throbbed again, and then on the top of all other sounds came the sound of Helga's voice, like a human cry above the thundering waves of nature, sometimes weeping, sometimes raging, sometimes crouching, sometimes springing out of the surge, and finally sinking down to the soft whisper of "Let there be peace!"

When the anthem was over and all was still, Oscar sat quiet for some moments while the unheard echo of the music seemed to roll through the silent air; and then the lightning-flash of joy or madness which comes to every man of genius once in his life came to him also, and his heart cried out, in its delirious happiness, "I, too, am a great composer!"

In the intoxication of that moment, Oscar's hand swung down and took Helga's hand and held it, and their fingers trembled together and they seemed to hear the beating of each other's heart. They looked at each other, and his eyes were bloodshot and hers were wet.

"Helga!" he cried.

"Oscar!" she answered, but at the next moment a window blew open on the staircase to the organ loft and Oscar heard again the dreary noises of the work-a-day world without--the rumble of the iron trolleys, the thin clank of the mason's trowel, and the quick beat of the riveter's hammer. It was like the wakening of a prisoner in his cell when the warder beats at the door and the dream of glory is gone and the prison walls close round him again.

Oscar's fingers slackened, and the next moment he heard Helga's rapid breathing behind him, and her voice saying with a strange bitterness:

"Is that Thora?"

He started and turned. "Where?" he asked.

"Down there by the communion steps--by the altar. No, I was mistaken. It's only a shadow. The light is fading."

Then with the same bitterness she said, "But I suppose she will be there soon, and you with her."

Oscar shuddered as if a wounded artery had been torn open, and Helga continued:

"Then you will go back to business, and Oscar--Oscar Stephenson, the musician--will be dead."

He fingered the organ stops fumblingly, and made no reply, whereupon Helga, with undisguised irony, began to picture the dull routine of the business life that was waiting for him after marriage--its calculations of discounts, its squabbles with farmers, its buying and selling of pots and pans.

"It is such a pity," she said.

"Don't torture me, Helga," he cried.

"But is there no way out of it?"

"No, no, no!"

"No way at all, Oscar?"

"Let us go," he said, and he had got down to the door before he remembered that he had left his hat behind him in the organ loft.

Thora had tea ready when they got back to the Factor's. She was kneeling before a cozy fire, making toast, after cutting the bread and butter, and she looked up at them as they entered with a nervous, questioning, tearful smile.

"Poor little soul! She must never know--never, never!" thought Oscar.

V

Thora knew already, and the big heart in her little breast was breaking. She had begun to think that what had happened to Magnus when Oscar came back was now happening to her--Oscar was falling in love with Helga, and she, like Magnus, was being left alone.

Yet she could not reconcile herself to this suspicion without a hard battle, and the first skirmish of the sweet heart was to fight for the enemy--Oscar had made a great, great sacrifice when he agreed to marry her; it was not to be wondered at if he had spasms of regret sometimes. She hinted as much to Aunt Margret in one of the long hours in which they were left together.

"Don't you think that Oscar was very unselfish when he signed that contract?" she said.

"Unselfish? I don't call it unselfishness to sign yourself into a fortune," said Aunt Margret.

"But he had to take up the business, you know."

"Certainly he had--the best business in Iceland."

"Helga seems to think it is a little beneath him, Aunt Margret."

"It's good enough for Helga's father, and he made it. Besides, Oscar had nothing else, and an ugly sheep is better than no mutton."

"Oh, yes, he had his music, auntie, and Helga thinks that was a good deal."

"Does she, indeed? People who are naked needn't go about mending other people's clothes. Oscar's music wouldn't have brought him a penny of profit, and as for honor--what about Althing, and all the other things he couldn't have got without being rich?"

"So you don't think Oscar sacrificed himself very much when he signed the contract?"

"Sacrificed himself? Perhaps the boot was on the other leg, if you ask me."

Thora was happy for days after this interview, and while Oscar and Helga played their Wagner, she went about the house singing her little love ditties, and thinking of the time when Parliament would begin its session, and Oscar would throw himself into politics, and become Speaker, and perhaps Governor, and it would all come of having married her.

But it was hard to sit for hours in the same room with people who were scarcely conscious of her presence, and though Thora tried to hide her pain lest Oscar should feel ashamed, she sometimes felt bitter about Helga, and wanted to burst out on her. The only thing which restrained her from doing so was a sweet doubt which she cherished in the most secret chamber of her heart that perhaps she was mistaken after all, and Oscar did not really care for Helga.

"Auntie," she said, "don't you think it's silly to be jealous?"

"Depends upon circumstances, Thora."

"If a wife--for example--fancies her husband is paying too much attention to another woman--don't you think she is silly to be jealous?"

"She's silly to show she is, my precious. It doesn't prevent the sting to bite the head off the serpent, and if a wife shows the husband she's jealous, she's just doing what the other woman wants."

"So you think she ought to be quiet and say nothing?"

"Certainly, I do. If the man is going to run away from her, she had better let him run, and if he isn't, he'll be the more ashamed because he thinks she doesn't know."

"You mean that if the man is only fascinated for a time----"

"Just so! Fascination may be good enough for a flirtation, but it's like bright metal--it soon gets tarnished in a damp cellar. You want gold for the dark places, my honey."

"That is to say, auntie dear, that love is the only thing for married life?"

"I should think so, indeed, with its crosses and disappointments, and children and croup, and all the rest of it. And when it comes to marrying, the silliest of the men know that, bless them!"

"What a lot you know about the men, auntie darling--I wonder you never married, yourself, dear."

"That's why, my precious!"

It was easier for Thora to veil her agonies with smiles after this conversation. She pictured to herself the time when her love would be everything to Oscar. In the secret places of her soul she thought of the days when children would come, and perhaps even sickness, and they would be drawn close--so close--together, because the dear clouds of life hung over both of them. She was not beautiful, she was only a homely and humble little thing, she was unworthy of Oscar, and there were so many things in which she was inferior, but oh, her love was wonderful! Nothing in the world was so wonderful as her love. It would work miracles, it would be stronger than death, it would stand by Oscar to the end.

But all the same it was hard to receive her wounds without a cry, and when Oscar and Helga went off to the cathedral and left her at home she told herself she was too ignorant to be Oscar's wife, and all her sweet, heroic love was wasted.

"Don't you think Helga is very clever, Aunt Margret?"

Aunt Margret lifted her eyes from her knitting, and blinked through her spectacles.

"Clever?--a girl who can't darn a stocking or boil a potato!"

"But see how she can talk, auntie."

"So can the parrot, my dear, and the raven is seldom sparing of his voice either."

"But surely a man wants his wife to be a companion, auntie--to be able to converse with him on the subjects he is interested in, and to criticise his work, perhaps."

"Does he? Perhaps he does, but it would be a crazy creature of a man who would rather marry a critic than a cook for all that."

Always after this Thora had tea ready when Oscar and Helga returned from the cathedral, and if her heart had its tremors, still she tried to take care that Oscar should never see a tear in her eyes. But many a time when she felt herself to be like an isthmus between the two, holding them together, yet keeping them apart, the strung bow of her will slackened and she was nearly breaking down. She waited day by day for Oscar's heart to speak to her, and when it did not speak she told herself it was because Helga was so beautiful.

"Isn't Helga beautiful, Aunt Margret?"

"Perhaps," said Aunt Margret.

"You know she is, auntie. You know she is the most beautiful girl in Iceland."

"Maybe I do--maybe I don't!"

"What an advantage beauty like Helga's gives to a girl--she gets everything and everybody. If a girl is only beautiful enough, she has all the men at her feet."

"They must he chiropodists, then, and there are not many of them in these parts. No, no, beauty isn't everything, Thora, and that's a mercy for some of us."

The color began to mount to Thora's eyes, and catching sight of this flag of distress, Aunt Margret continued:

"But fine feathers make fine birds, and I know some in Iceland dress would make Helga look small if they were done up in her Danish folderols."

Thora's blushing face began to shine like the sunrise.

"But what's the use? Beauty fills the eye, but not the belly."

"Auntie Margret, what plain things you say!"

"Do I? Then it's best to say them plainly. It isn't good to gild copper with gold, my honey."

After this talk with Aunt Margret, Thora was more the mistress of herself than before, because the dividing line between Helga and herself seemed less. She made up her mind that she would dress in the English manner, so that Oscar should not see so much difference.

She had money--the dress money her father gave her. It was not very much, but in previous years she had given away most of it, and this year she had intended to buy a Scotch overcoat for Hans, the sailor, who was losing all respect for himself and going about in cold weather with nothing over his shirt. But now she would be selfish, she would spend her money on herself, and that was only right since it was spending it on Oscar also.

It must be a secret, a great secret; it must come upon everybody as a surprise, because that would be half the battle. So she bought postal orders with her savings, and sent to Edinburgh for a costume such as she saw in the picture of a trade advertisement.

The costume came by a trading steamer, and she was like a child in her secrecy and joy, smuggling the big cardboard box up-stairs to her room, and answering the inquisitive questions of the Factor and Aunt Margret with mysterious little nods and subterfuges.

The day was crisp and frosty, and when Oscar, coming in the afternoon, suggested a walk to the lake to try the ice for skating, Helga responded readily, but Thora said no, she had something to do, something important--a little surprise, they should see when they came back again.

As soon as Helga and Oscar had gone, and Aunt Margret had promised to make tea, Thora stole up to her room, locked the door, opened the box, and took out the new garments that were to work the wondrous change. They were beautiful, they were dreams, they were lovelier than anything of Helga's--a blue voile dress with a silk corsage and embroidered yoke. The pleated skirt was like the sun's rays over Hecla after a shower of summer rain, and the silk of the blouse was as beautiful as the ice of a glacier with the flowery bubbles of air in it.

Thora laughed for joy, and taking off her old Iceland costume she threw it aside as a thing she had done with--the granny skirt, the stiff treya, and the starchy brjest. She wondered how she could have worn them so long, and even told herself what she would do with them--she would give them to a young widow who had lately lost her child by diphtheria and joined the people at the Salvation shelter.

When she took up the new garments she had some doubt as to how they were to be put on, and almost wished she had inquired of Helga. The accordion skirt was easy enough, and its ample train made her feel tall and imposing, but the blouse was a besetting trouble. It fastened behind, and after despairing efforts to catch the hooks and eyes she was tempted to call Aunt Margret; but she thought no, that would never do, so she struggled on.