The Prodigal Son. Hall Sir Caine
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