“Our Father which art....”
He had never written to her—not a line. It was a cruel blow to her to realize that he had never loved her—and yet she bore within her the seed of life he had planted. And her whole future now was ruined and desolate....
“Our father....”
But she could not pray. A flood of thoughts streamed into her mind—memories of mild spring evenings in the past and fears for her present position in one confusion. Her brain could not set either prayer or thought into form.
Ørlygur rose and came over to her; he tried to comfort her, but found no words. One thing only he knew: reparation must be made, at whatever cost.
Sera Ketill was far from pleased to learn that his brother was returning to Iceland on the same boat with himself and his bride. Something told him that it would be to his interest to keep his father and Ormarr apart.
Ketill had come to regard himself as heir to the estate by this time, and already saw himself installed at Borg. He never dreamed that Ormarr’s present journey, which he regarded as merely a flying visit, could prove in any way a danger to himself and his plans. Ormarr had told him nothing of the transfer of the business. At the most, thought Ketill, it would be a nuisance.
His elder brother was in many ways much like his father. Both seemed eternally to regard themselves as owing a duty to all and sundry—simply because they happened to have been born in better circumstances than most of those around them. Ketill thought himself sufficiently a man of the world to be able to destroy this conviction; and he was not far from regarding it as a childish weakness on the part of Ørlygur and Ormarr. Regard for others, indeed!
Ketill was not hampered severely by trammels of faith or morality. He had gone to a school where the general rule of conduct seemed to be each for himself; his studies at college had brought him among students who for the most part made little attempt to conceal the fact that they made light of their calling. One after another, he had seen them go out into the world as priests, in the service of God, spiritually defective, rotten, and corrupt, to their task of leading others by the right way. And all this had left him with but little respect himself for his mission; he enrolled himself with the rest, as a matter of course.