"Speak for your own, Stephen Magnusson, and leave mine to me," said the Factor.
"Therefore," continued the Governor, "when I pay this money--and I shall pay it--you will have the satisfaction to know that though I am a poor man and you are a rich one, I am discharging your debt as well as mine."
With that, red and angry, the Governor walked to the door and opened it. The Factor looked at him in blank amazement, and for one swift instant his better nature conquered his greed and he saw what a pitiful thing it was that after fifty years of friendship they should quarrel thus about their children. But one sword draws another from its sheath, and he snapped his fingers contemptuously and strode out of the room.
Then the Governor sent for the manager of the Bank of Iceland.
"Manager," he said, "I wish you to arrange a loan of one hundred thousand crowns on the security of my farm at Thingvellir."
"The farm is hardly worth so much, sir--I say it is hardly worth so much," said the manager. "But in your case there can be little difficulty--none whatever if you are willing to pay the higher interest--I say none whatever if you are willing to pay the higher interest."
"I agree," said the Governor, "and let the deed be drawn without delay."
XIV
Having gone through the material part of his preparations the Governor had now a spiritual and more trying ordeal before him, and he went out into the home-field to think over it. Leaving the town behind he walked, with hands, as usual, interlaced behind him, as far as to the margin of the fiord.
It was a beautiful morning. The light was wonderful, a silvery light that made the light of other days seem dull and leaden, full of innumerable sparkles like the stars that are sown in snow. The waters of the fiord were heaving slowly under a quivering haze, and on the sea outside--wide, vast, stretching far away--a number of fishing-boats, with their white sails bellied to a breeze that could not be felt on shore, were going on and on as if sailing into the sky. The mail-steamer was lying at anchor in the bay, getting up steam for her voyage back to England, and a flock of lighters, painted white, were floating about her black hull, like sea-fowl at the foot of a lava rock. The gulls were calling high up in the air, and from the sheltered side of a little island the last of the year's eider-duck were coaxing or driving their young ones into the sea to prepare them for their flight to far-off lands.