The Prodigal Son. Hall Sir Caine
have been, but three of them got through without serious damage, while the fourth made a slip which was perhaps the first cause of the present story.
When the time came to separate, one of the four went to Oxford as an assistant in the library, and became a University lecturer, and another went to London to be clerk in a bank, and rose to be manager. The other two remained faithful to their nationalities, and Stephen Magnusson returned to Iceland to practise law, while Oscar Neilsen stayed in Denmark to follow commerce.
Within ten years the friends had made rapid progress. Stephen had risen from advocate to assessor, from assessor to deputy-governor, and from deputy-governor to governor-general, while Neilsen had re-established himself in Iceland, first as factor for a firm in Copenhagen, and afterward as a merchant on his own responsibility.
In the meantime both men had married. The Governor married the daughter and only child of Grim, owner of the farm at Thingvellir, one of the largest farms in Iceland. The Factor, to everybody's surprise, married before he returned home, and nobody knew anything of his wife except that she came from Copenhagen. But scandal seldom loses its way in the dark, and it was whispered that the Factor's wife had been a little actress of the lighter sort, and had been compelled to marry.
The wife of the Governor had borne him two sons. He christened the first of them Magnus, after his father, but the second he called Oscar, after his friend, who had arrived in time to stand godfather at the baptism. In like manner the wife of the Factor had borne two daughters. She brought the eldest in her arms when she arrived in Iceland, and the Factor called her Thora, after his mother. The second, born soon afterward, he would have called Anna, after his friend's wife, but his own wife objected, and it was christened Helga, after herself. There were not many years between the births of the children, but Magnus was the eldest and Helga the youngest, while Oscar and Thora were almost of one age.
The wives of the two friends could hardly have been more unlike each other. Anna was homely in looks, dress, and habits. In practical matters she was a typical Iceland housewife, thrifty and economical. Although the position of Governor-General was one of considerable dignity it was far from a fat living, and Anna set her sail according to the draught of her husband's ship. She was shrewd, but not well educated, and wise, but not enlightened, and she governed the Governor by obeying him. Stephen found his wife his safest steward and most faithful counsellor. He had a profound respect for her instinct, but not too much reverence for her intellect. When in doubt he always consulted her, and while she told him what he ought to do he sat and listened attentively, but as soon as she began to explain her reasons he got up and fled.
The Factor's wife was distinctly comely, volatile, and vain, and her conduct on coming to Iceland might have been calculated to justify the scandal that was coupled with her name. She was extravagant in her dress, unthrifty in her home, restless in her habits, and romantic in her tastes, and after a while she began to gird at the monotony and dreariness of the life about her. A light wife makes a heavy husband, and the Factor, who was not then rich, was made to realize that in marrying his Danish beauty he had bought a commodity which he could neither exchange nor return--a housekeeper who neglected his house, and a mother who cared little for his children.
The children were the first to feel their mother's loss of interest in Iceland, for while Government House was forever warm and joyous with some noisy festival--Magnus's first holiday or Oscar's last birthday--there were no holidays or birthdays in their own home, which was always quiet and generally cold. But the mother's ear is thin, and across the gap that opened between the houses of the Governor and the Factor, Anna heard the hearts of the little girls and concocted schemes to get at them. The Factor's wife was nothing loth to be rid of her tiresome charges while she devoured dramatic newspapers and French novels, and thus it came to pass that Thora and Helga spent half of their early days with Anna, and that as long as they lived thereafter hers was the mother's form that stood up in their memory when they looked back to the blue mountains of childhood and youth.
Gathered together under Anna's wing, what times the four children had of it! As long as they were little, Government House was like a nest of song-birds, and if at some moments it resembled more nearly a menagerie of monkeys, it was always alive and always happy. Except the Governor's bureau, they took possession of the whole place, including the kitchen, for there was only one servant in those days, and she was as fond of them as her mistress. In summer time they ran wild over the home-field, and in winter they romped through every room in the house. Anna spoiled the whole of them, for she never knew how to be cross with children, and at Christmas and New Year she helped them to keep up their noisy customs--boiling the toffy which they pulled into twisted sticks amid shrieks of delighted laughter, and lighting the candles with which they marched in awesome procession from chimney to coal-hole to find the hidden folk from the hills--and bad fairies who came to steal good children.
On such high days and holidays the Governor and the Factor, smoking their long German pipes, would come from the bureau to the door of the kitchen to look on at the childish revels. And seeing Anna in the midst of them, like a fairy godmother grown middle-aged and matronly, but with the loveliness of love still shining over her homely face, the Governor would say to himself, "God bless her!" And the Factor would mutter, "God bless my motherless girls!" And then the two old friends would drop their heads, and go back to talk politics.
III
The child grows, but his clothes do not, neither do his characteristics. What the children of the Governor and the Factor were at the beginning of their lives they remained to the end. Thora was always a merry little woman, with a constant smile on her comely face. She was usually following or clinging to somebody--generally Oscar--but she could sit for hours coaxing, scolding, and singing to her doll, for the instinct of motherhood was strong in her from the first.
Helga was at all points the opposite of her sister. She had black hair, a broad brow, large hazel eyes that were often half closed, a nose that was very slightly turned up at the tip, and a large mouth with thin, red lips which were generally a little awry. A witch may be found under a fair complexion, and an angel under a dark skin, but Helga did not belie her looks. She was as bright as a pebble of the brook, and just as hard and self-centered. Sufficient to herself, she clung to no one, but loved to have the eyes of everybody upon her. She sang like a throstle, and was fond of dressing herself up in grand disguises of paper crowns and coronets, being full of make-believe, and never quite able to distinguish fact from fiction.
The sons of the Governor were not less unlike each other. Magnus was a big, heavy, black-haired boy, silent and slow, and thought to be rather stupid. He found it hard to learn, and his face had often a puzzled expression, sometimes a gloomy and morose one. On the other hand, his moral character was as sensitive as his intellect was sluggish. If he borrowed a penny he would never rest until he had paid it back, and if any one lent him a pencil he would walk a mile to return it. As a consequence his sense of injustice was keen to the point of agony, and he suffered more from an unmerited rebuke than from a blow. He liked best to visit the family farm at Thingvellir, and when asked what he was going to be he plumped for being a farmer. Always fond of animals he filled the house with dogs, cats and white mice, and seemed to love nothing else except his mother. Not a lovable boy, and a rather surly and unhappy one, he was by no means a general favorite, but Anna was very fond of him.
Oscar was so totally unlike Magnus in every quality of mind and heart that it was difficult to believe they could be brothers. The fair-haired little fellow with the handsome face was as sweet-tempered as the sunshine, and as full of laughter as a running river. He could learn anything without an effort, and he had an extraordinary ear for music. Before he could speak properly he imitated the notes of any instrument from the organ to the guitar, and before he knew his alphabet he wrote mysterious musical hieroglyphics on scraps of paper, which the Governor carried off to his bureau and hoarded up like treasures more precious than gold. But in giving him something like genius Nature had taken away character--without which genius is a curse. The merry little soul did not seem to know right from wrong, or truth from a lie. He was always glancing from one thing to another like the sun on an April day. If crying one minute he was laughing the next. Nothing troubled him long, but, also, nothing seized and held him. He began by announcing that he intended to be a king; rather later he thought it would be grander to be a general, but