The Prodigal Son. Hall Sir Caine
going one evening with the organist of the cathedral to his weekly rehearsal, he finally concluded that to be organ-blower would be best of all.
Nobody loved him the less for his infirmities of character, for it is one of the whims of the human heart that the people who run most strictly within the laws of life find an irresistible fascination in the recklessness of those who kick over the traces. Oscar was the privileged pet of everybody and the idol of his father's eyes.
"Ah, Stephen, you'll never rear that boy," said the Factor.
"Nonsense! Why shouldn't I?"
"Whom the gods love die young, you know."
"That's only because they never grow old," said the Governor.
From the first Oscar was fond of a pageant, and always wanted to be marching in procession, like a victorious general, with the juvenile equivalents for banners and bands of music. One day he was doing so, playing a tune of his own composing on a comb, with Helga as an eager lieutenant, Thora as a submissive soldier, and Magnus as a subservient slave behind him, when coming to a river that crossed the home-field a desire for carnage seized the general, and backing suddenly on the narrow bridge he toppled his followers into the water. Magnus and Helga escaped without serious consequences, but, as nobody is anybody's brother in a game, Thora, being dragged down by her sister, was drenched to the skin.
The Governor came up at the moment when Magnus was hauling Thora on to the bank, and he was angry.
"Was it an accident?" he asked, but the children did not answer. "Then who did it?" he demanded, but Thora, to whom he spoke, looked first at Oscar and then at Helga and began to cry. "Was it you, Oscar?" Oscar hesitated for an instant, but Helga touched his sleeve and he shook his head. "Was it you, Helga?" Helga promptly answered, "No." "Then it must have been you, Magnus," said the Governor, and Magnus flushed crimson all over his face and neck, but made no reply. "Was it you?" Magnus's mouth quivered, but still he did not speak. "So it was you, sir, and you can go indoors and to bed immediately."
Without a word or a tear, but with a look of defiance, Magnus wagged his head and turned toward the house. Seeing him go, Oscar wanted to blurt out the truth, but his melting eyes encountered Helga's, which held them fast, and he said nothing.
It was one of Anna's many birthdays, and from the upper room where all was silent and cold Magnus heard the children's voices below stairs, at first hushed and restrained, but after a while merry enough, with Oscar's voice amongst the rest, and Helga's above everybody's. The laughter and joking burnt into his soul, and at last he struck the table with his fist and burst into a flood of tears.
Then through the sound of his own sobs a thin whimper came from somewhere, whispering, "Magnus! Magnus!" It was Thora at the keyhole.
"Go away," said Magnus, gruffly, but Thora did not go. "Magnus, shall I tell?" said Thora, and Magnus blinked several times as the big tears rained down his cheeks, but still he answered, "Go away, I tell you."
At that Thora fell to kissing the keyhole, and Magnus had stopped his sobbing to listen, when he heard another voice--Anna's voice--outside the door, and then the child was taken away.
As soon as the birthday party was over and the girls were gone, Oscar began to ask for Magnus, but the Governor patted his curly head and said Magnus had been naughty, and must sleep alone that night. Half an hour later Anna found him crying with his head under the bedclothes, and she said, "Hide nothing from your father, my child."
The Governor was sitting alone in his bureau when a little figure in a dressing gown came in, with swimming eyes and trembling lips, saying, "It wasn't Magnus, papa. It was----" and then a wild outburst of weeping.
The Governor was more touched by Oscar's confession than by Magnus's silence. He patted Oscar's head again and said, "That was very, very wrong of you, curly pate; but go and beg your brother's pardon and take him off to bed."
When Anna went upstairs again she found two heads on the pillow side by side--the dark as well as the fair one--and Magnus was listening and Oscar was talking, and both were laughing merrily.
As soon as the youngest of the children was fourteen winters old they were confirmed together. There was only one other candidate, little Neils, the Sheriff's son, whose mother was dead. In the preliminary examination it was expected that Oscar would come first, Helga second, Neils and Thora next, and Magnus last. The Rector examined them, and when the moment came to declare the order of the candidates he looked serious and even severe.
Oscar, with a sparkle in his eyes, was carrying himself gaily, and Helga was at her ease, while Thora and Neils were trembling with anxiety, and Magnus was nibbling his thumb nail, for he was in dread of not being accepted at all, and in that case, as his new black suit had been bought, he would be afraid to go home. But when the Rector had cleared his throat, and called for silence, he announced a great surprise.
"Magnus is first," he said, "Thora second, Neils third, Helga fourth, and Oscar--Oscar is last."
Then he turned to Oscar and said, "You are rightly served, my son, for you might have done better, and you took no trouble. Take an old man's word for it, Oscar--in the race of life it isn't always the rider who comes in first that was the last to put on his spurs!"
Oscar was crushed with shame, but he recovered himself in a moment, and while the others looked at him to see what he would do--Helga, with her mouth awry, and Thora, with eyes that could not see distinctly, and a throat that could not swallow--he swung about to where Magnus was standing with head down, blushing like a baby, and gripped and shook his hand.
It was a beautiful confirmation service. The cathedral was full of women, but the Governor was with Anna in their pew in the gallery, and the Factor, who was alone, sat in his seat below. The children knelt in a line on the lower step of the communion rail, the girls in muslin frocks and veils, and the boys in black suits and white gloves. The morning was bright and warm, and the sun was shining from the chancel windows on to the five drooping heads as the old Bishop laid his hands on them one by one.
When the little ones had made their vows the Bishop delivered an address: "Be true, be strong, be faithful! Think of the covenant you have made with God, and resist temptation. If Satan tempts you with the treasures of this life, remember that wealth and power are only for a day, while a dishonored name is for a thousand years. Love one another, my children! No one knows how soon the world may separate you, or with what sorrow and tears you may yet be torn asunder, but keep together as long as you can, and may God love and bless you all!"
The service ended with the confirmation hymn, which the children sang by themselves. Anna, the Governor, and the Factor were deeply affected. Ah! the sweet and happy time of childhood! If the children could only remain children! But there was nothing to foretell the future--nothing to be seen there except five innocent boys and girls kneeling side by side, with their faces toward the altar--nothing to be heard but their silvery voices floating up over the heads of the congregation to the blue roof studded with stars.
IV
Soon after that the children were separated. Helga was the first to go. The Factor had become rich, and his wife, who had only been waiting until she could claim a separate maintenance, parted from her husband and went back to Denmark, taking their younger daughter with her. Helga, who was then fifteen years of age, was glad to go, but it was a condition of the separation that at twenty-one she should return to Iceland if her father wished her to do so, or forfeit all interest in his will.
Little Neils Finsen was the next to leave, for his father had married again, and his stepmother had persuaded the Sheriff that the boy had a genius for the violin, and ought to be sent to London.
Oscar remained a few winters longer, trying to find out the profession he wished to follow, and deciding sometimes in favor of the law, sometimes in favor of the church, but generally in favor of music (which was vetoed by everybody as a beggarly business), and being finally despatched to the care of the Governor's college friend at Oxford as a first stage toward an English degree and the pursuit of a public career in Iceland.
Thus it happened that within four years of their confirmation