It was a cruelly beautiful morning, one of those radiant days when Nature in her indifference to man and his sufferings, seems to conjure up every joyous sound and sight that can trouble the bitterest waters of memory--when the very sunshine seems to break one's heart.
At length the proud man who was walking through the hummocked home-field, with head bent low by the sorrow of a wrecked and shattered hope, saw plainly what he had to do. In love no less than anger, in justice no less than duty, he had to cast off forever his favorite son, the pride of his heart and the hope of his life.
As soon as he returned to the house he sent up-stairs for Oscar. After some moments Oscar came down slowly, looking more ill and weak than ever, and stood by the stove with drooping head like a prisoner about to receive his sentence. The Governor glanced up at his son from over the rims of his eye-glasses, and at first his heart failed him, but after a moment he steeled himself to his task and began to speak in a steady voice.
"I have sent for you to tell you," he said, "that for your mother's sake--I prefer to put it so--I have acknowledged that signature and am preparing to pay the money you have wasted. To do so I am compelled to mortgage every pennyworth of property we possess, so that apart from my official salary I shall soon have nothing. Worse than that I have had to eat up your brother's inheritance in order to purchase your liberty, and whether I had a right to do so God alone can say."
Oscar shivered as from cold; the Governor saw this, waited a moment, and then went on.
"The condition on which I make this sacrifice is that you leave Iceland immediately. You will sail by the 'Laura,' which goes back this evening, and, as your honor is my honor, I will give it out that your health is broken after the death of your wife, and that you have gone away to recruit."
The Governor paused a second time, and when he spoke again his voice was thick and hoarse.
"I shall not expect you to come back soon--I shall not expect you to come back at all. Inasmuch as you have done your best--or worst--to wreck my happiness I will ask you to consider that henceforth our lives are to run in different courses, and that for my own part I wish to see you no more."
The Governor's voice was now husky and indistinct, but still he struggled on.
"You will look to yourself for your livelihood in the future, but that--with your talents, little as you have made of them hitherto--should not be difficult. Whatever happens here I shall never expect you to do anything for me, or for your mother, but if fortune should favor you, and you are able to repay your brother, your conscience may be the easier and--though I do not pity him, for his heart was hard--the earth on my grave the lighter."