VII
At the end of two weeks, Sigurd’s wife received a letter from her brother, and it was better than she had dared to hope. Magnus wrote that his wife was dead, his son was a student in Copenhagen, and he was all alone in the big house at Rejkiavik. He was ready to give Jon a home, even to take herself and her husband, provided the latter could sell his farm to good advantage and find some employment which would add to his means. “He must neither live an idle life nor depend on my help,” Magnus said; and his sister felt that he was right, although he told the truth in rather a hard, unfriendly way.
She read the letter to Sigurd the next morning, as he was lying very weak and quiet, but in his right mind. His eyes slowly brightened, and he murmured, at last, with difficulty:
“Sell the farm to Thorsten, for his eldest son, and go to Magnus. Jon will take my place.”
Jon, who had entered the room in time to hear these words, sat down on the bed and held his father’s hand in both his own. The latter smiled faintly, opened his lips to speak again, and then a sudden quivering passed over his face, and he lay strangely still. It was a long time before the widow and children could believe he was dead. They said to each other, over and over again, amid their tears: “He was happy; the trouble for our sakes was taken away from his heart;”—and Jon thought to himself: “If I do my best, as I promised, he will be still happier in heaven.”
When Sigurd’s death was known, the neighbors came and helped them until the funeral was over, and the sad little household resumed, as far as possible, its former way of life. Thorsten, a rich farmer of Kyrkedal, whose son was to be married in the spring, came, a few weeks later, to make an offer for the farm. No doubt he hoped to get it at a low price; for money has a greater value in Iceland, where there is so little of it. But the widow said at once, “I shall make no bargain unless Jon agrees with me;” and then Jon spoke up, looking a great deal more like a full-grown, honest man than he supposed:
“We only want the fair value of the farm, neighbor Thorsten. We want it because we need it, and everybody will say it is just and right that we should have it. If we cannot get that, I shall try to go on and do my father’s work. I am only a boy now, but I shall get bigger and stronger every year.”
“Thy father could not have spoken better words,” said Thorsten.
He made what he considered a fair offer, and it was very nearly as much as Jon and his mother had reckoned upon; the latter, however, insisted on waiting until she had consulted with her brother Magnus.
Not many days after that, Magnus himself arrived at the farm. He was a tall man, with dark hair, large gray eyes, a thin, hard mouth, and an important, commanding air. It was a little hard for Jon to say “uncle” to this man, whom he had never seen, and of whom he had heard so little. Magnus, although stern, was not unfriendly, and when he had heard of all that had been said and done, he nodded his head and said:
“Very prudent; very well, so far!”
It was, perhaps, as well that the final settlement of affairs was left to Uncle Magnus, for he not only obtained an honest price for the farm, but sold the ponies, cows, and sheep to much better advantage than the family could have done. He had them driven to Kyrkedal, and sent messengers to Skalholt and Myrdal, and even to Thingvalla, so that quite a number of farmers came together, and they had dinner in the church. Some of the women and children also came, to say “good-bye” to the family; but when the former whispered to Jon, “You’ll come back to us some day, as a pastor or a skald” (author), Magnus frowned and shook his head.
“The boy is in a fair way to make an honest, sensible man,” he said. “Don’t you spoil him with your nonsense!”
When they all set out together for Rejkiavik, Jon reproached himself for feeling so light-hearted, while his mother and Gudrid wept for miles of the way. He was going to see a real town, to enter school, to begin a new and wonderful life; and just beyond Kyrkedal there came the first strange sight. They rode over the grassy plain toward the Geysers, the white steam of which they had often seen in the distance; but now, as they drew near a gray cone, which rose at the foot of the hill on the west, a violent thumping began in the earth under their feet. “He is going to spout!” cried the guide, and he had hardly spoken when the basin in the top of the cone boiled over furiously, throwing huge volumes of steam into the air. Then there was a sudden, terrible jar, and a pillar of water, six feet in diameter, shot up to the height of nearly a hundred feet, sparkling like liquid gold in the low, pale, sunshine. It rose again and again, until the subterranean force was exhausted; then the water fell back into the basin with a dull sound, and all was over.
They could think or talk of nothing else for a time, and when they once more looked about them the landscape had changed. All was new to the children, and only dimly remembered by their mother. The days were very short and dark, for winter was fast coming on; it was often difficult to make the distance from one farmhouse to another, and they twice slept in the little churches, which are always hospitably opened for travellers because there are no inns in Iceland. After leaving the valley, they had a bitterly cold and stormy journey over a high field of lava, where little piles of stones, a few yards apart, are erected to guide the traveller. Beyond this, they crossed the Raven’s Cleft, a deep, narrow chasm, with a natural bridge in one place, where the rocks have fallen together from either side; then, at the bottom of the last slope of the lava-plains, they entered the Thingvalla Forest.
Jon was a little disappointed; still he had never seen anything like it. There were willow and birch bushes, three or four feet high, growing here and there out of the cracks among the rocks. He could look over the tops of them from his pony, as he rode along, and the largest trunk was only big enough to make a club. But there is no other “forest” in Iceland; and the people must have something to represent a forest, or they would have no use for the word!
It was fast growing dark when they reached Thingvalla, and the great, shattered walls of rock which inclose the valley appeared much loftier than by day. On the right, a glimmering waterfall plunged from the top of the cliff, and its roar filled the air. Magnus pointed out, on the left, the famous “Hill of the Law,” where for nearly nine hundred years the people of Iceland had assembled together to discuss their political matters. Jon knew all about the spot, from the many historical legends and poems he had read, and there was scarcely another place in the whole world which he could have had greater interest in seeing. The next morning, when it was barely light enough to travel, they rode up a kind of rocky ladder, through a great fissure called the Almannagjá, or “People’s Chasm,” and then pushed on more rapidly across the barren table-land. It was still forty miles to Rejkiavik,—a good two days’ journey at that season,—and the snows, which already covered the mountains, were beginning to fall on the lower country.
On the afternoon of the second day, after they had crossed the Salmon River, Magnus said:
“In an hour we shall see the town!”
But the first thing that came in sight was only a stone tower or beacon, which the students had built upon a hill.
“Is that a town?” asked Gudrid; whereupon the others laughed heartily.
Jon discreetly kept silent, and waited until they had reached the foot of the beacon, when—all at once—Rejkiavik lay below them. Its two or three hundred houses stretched for half a mile over a belt of land between the sea and a large lake. There was the prison, built all of cut stone; the old wooden cathedral, with its square spire; the large, snow-white governor’s house, and the long row of stores and warehouses, fronting the harbor—all visible at once! To a boy who had never before seen a comfortable dwelling, nor more than five houses near together, the little town was a grand, magnificent capital. Each house they passed was a new surprise to him; the doors, windows, chimneys, and roofs were all so different, so large and fine. And there were more people in the streets than he had ever before seen together.
At last Magnus stopped before one of the handsomest dwellings, and helped his sister down from her pony. The door opened, and an old servant came forth. Jon and Gudrid, hand in hand, followed them into a room which seemed to them larger and handsomer than the church at Kyrkedal, with still other rooms opening out of it, with wonderful chairs, and pictures, and carpets upon which they were afraid to walk. This was their new home.