The Prodigal Son

by Sir Hall Caine

Then the moon died out and darkness fell--a murky darkness, blacker than the lava--and as Oscar pushed and plunged along over the stumbles of his pony, the thought came to him that if Thora were dead perhaps it was the best that could have happened to her--the best under the circumstances--saving her from the bitterness of a future which must surely come when Helga and he, struggle as they might, would have to break the bonds that bound them.

And then in that dark and treacherous hour, with no face to look into his face, he felt an immense relief, remembering that if Thora was gone, the consequences of his life's error were at an end and he was free.

But the dawn came--a bleared, rainy dawn, with scarfs of vapor stretching across the sun like a cataract over a blood-shot eye--and Oscar's remorse was doubled by the wounds he had inflicted upon his conscience in the darkness, and he dare not look at Helga as she rode, muffled up and silent, by his side.

They were crossing the Moss Fell Heath by this time, and everything around was dark and drear. A solitary raven kept them cheerless company for a while, flying from beacon to beacon and uttering its husky cry. Oscar remembered the scenes of yesterday when the sky was blue, and their blood was warm, and then the thought came to him--like the shooting of the bolt on a man buried in a tomb--that if he was not to be henceforward the most miserable of men he must pray with all his soul and strength that when they reached the end of their journey Thora should be alive.

On reaching the more inhabited districts Oscar allowed the Governor and the Factor to forge on ahead, and Helga to wait for him in the road, while he glanced off to the farmhouses and shouted up at the bedroom windows. But the result was always the same--Thora had not been seen and Magnus had been there before him.

When they came to the top of the hill from which they had looked back on Reykjavik and on the Danish mail-steamer entering the fiord, the little capital floated in the mist of morning like a city in a woolly sea, and the "Laura" lay anchored outside of it; but the apprehensions of yesterday were consumed by the fears of to-day, and Oscar thought of one thing alone.

They met farmers trotting out of the town on their little caravans of ponies, yet Oscar did not question them, lest he should hear the news he dare not listen to, and coming at length to the long street of the little capital, he did not raise his face to the eyes that peered at him through the curtains of upper windows, lest they should reveal the truth he dared not learn.

The fear of disaster had by this time swallowed up any flicker of hope in Oscar, and when, coming up to Government House, he found a crowd of people standing in front of it, he knew too well that all was over. From that moment onward fact after fact led up to the fatal certainty.

The window of Thora's bedroom--the window at which Oscar had shouted his adieus the day before--stood open, and a ladder had been raised against it. By the gate to the green a horse lay dead on the gravel--it was Magnus's horse, his magnificent Golden Mane--covered with dust and sweat, as it fell under its rider at the last step of his fearful journey.

In the middle of the hall Anna and Aunt Margret stood with the Governor and the Factor, sobbing out their pitiful explanations. Afraid to return to the empty house which had been the scene of a painful memory, Anna had sat the night through with Margret at the Factor's, waiting hour after hour for the reports of the Sheriff and his constables. Nothing had been heard of Thora, but in the early morning Magnus had returned and found the door of her room locked on the inside. Then he had run for them and they had called to Thora, but received no answer, though sometimes they heard the baby crying. And now Magnus, having failed to force the door, had gone for a ladder, and he intended to climb into the room from the outside.