The Prodigal Son

by Sir Hall Caine

The Governor did nothing from the day of Thora's death until the day of her burial. Dressed always in his official uniform he sat in his bureau, but received no one. He wrote no letters and read no books and seldom spoke at his meals. For hours together he would sit with folded arms looking fixedly at the pattern on the carpet. A shadow had fallen on him--a shadow of shame--and in the sealed chamber of his proud soul he was struggling to reconcile his conduct to himself and finding it difficult to do so.

The Factor went on with his work as usual, for in the decalogue of his duty there was no maxim that forbade business, but sometimes as he turned the leaves of his ledger he looked long and saw nothing, and once, as he counted up the figures in his bank-book, the thought smote him with the force of a blow on the brain that perhaps Nature was beginning to strike a balance with him against the sum of his successors, and that the cruel bereavement which had just befallen him was the first stroke of the Nemesis which was to follow in the wake of his wealth.

Aunt Margret and Helga were always at home, the one busy with the baby, which had been taken back to the Factor's, and the other with the "black" which had to be ordered for everybody.

Little was known of Magnus, except that he was still in town, that he had been seen with the Sheriff and two strangers, that in spite of the trouble which had overtaken his family he was spending most of his time in the dark smoking-room of the Hotel, and that he was said to be drinking heavily.

But the grief of Oscar touched and satisfied everybody. He had eaten little and had never been known to sleep. Sometimes he was seen to be sitting apart and weeping silently; sometimes he was moving from room to room, as if every spot on which his eye could rest was charged with the memory of happy days that were dead; sometimes he was heard in the white room in which Thora lay--the room in which she had been so merry and so sad, so wild with delirium and so happy with her baby--and there he was sobbing out his wild regrets in muffled cries of "Forgive me! Forgive me!" Once in the middle of the night he was heard at the harmonium in the room below the death chamber, playing softly a pitiful lament which awakened his father and mother and brought the salt tears to their eyes.

The desolate soul in these ghastly hours was prostrating itself in the dust. Death strikes sternly, and Oscar in his penitence was accusing himself of every crime. He had killed Thora--not her body only, but her heart, that faithful heart which had loved him so deeply, so tenderly, so passionately.

In this conscience-stricken condition he looked back on the path of his life with Thora, and every step as he now saw it seemed to be thick set with the stubble of sin and rank with the weeds of self-deception. When he returned from England he had taken Thora from Magnus, although he did not love her. It was true he had thought he loved her, but the brotherly thing would have been to stand back in silence, and if he had only done so Time itself would have undeceived him.

That was the first of his offenses, and the next was no less hideous. When, being betrothed to Thora, he awoke to the certainty that his heart was with Helga, he had gone on with his bargain and led the girl who loved him into a loveless marriage. It was true he thought he was doing his duty, but behind duty was fear, fear of the world and fear of Magnus, while the courageous thing, the manly thing, even the merciful thing would have been to stop at the church door, if need be, and face the facts and take the consequences.

But having cheated Thora of her love and lied to her at the altar, he had crowned the sum of his sins by exposing himself to the temptation of infidelity. It was true that Thora herself, in her innocent affection, had paved the way to this temptation; true, too, that his marriage had been an imperfect partnership; but all the same his course had been clear and he should have cut himself off from Helga at once and for ever. That he had not done so, that he had paltered with temptation was the last cause of this terrible calamity. Thora had died because her heart was dead, and he himself had killed it.

Thus the desolate soul of the unhappy man laid down its faults at the feet of God, hiding nothing, palliating nothing, and seeing everything in naked light. If to be sorry for having sinned is to be innocent, Oscar had ceased to be guilty in his pitiful, but useless, sorrow. In the dizzy hours of pain and shame, when the wheel of life goes rapidly, Oscar asked himself how it had come to pass that Thora was dead, and something whispered "Helga," and again and yet again something whispered "Helga," but his heart would not listen to that excuse. Helga had not been to blame. He alone had been at fault. He had sacrificed Thora to his ambitious dreams--his dreams of greatness, of glory. Helga had been merely the symbol of those dreams, and Thora was dead because he had tried to become a great musician.