The Prodigal Son

by Sir Hall Caine

The feverish soul in its hour of suffering found the reasoning sufficient, and Oscar thought he saw as in a glass everything that he had to do. He had to take another name, to bury himself in London and to set to work on the only task he was fit for! He had to write an opera, as he was now free to do, since Oscar Stephenson was dead, and he was living in the name of another man.

The scene was to be in his own country, among the lonesome grandeur of its untrodden glaciers and the stark sublimity of its burned-out plains, and the story was to be from one of the fiery Sagas of the same stern old land. And when, after many days, many months, perhaps years, eating the bread of poverty in loneliness and obscurity, he had finished his task, and had sent it out like a dove from the ark, men were to know that a new voice had come among them and the name of Iceland was to be on the lips of the world.

Then when people asked each other, who was he that in the darkness of years of labor had learned all the art and mystery of music, he would give no sign because his lips would be sealed, but there would be one who would read his secret. It would be Helga, and she would come back to him in shame if not remorse and throw herself at his feet and cry: "I did wrong, forgive me, and take me back to your heart!"

And then he would answer and say: "You came between me and my sweet young wife; you persuaded me to the act that broke her heart and killed her; you tempted me to the crime that ruined my father and to the offense that destroyed myself, and then you left me to bear my punishment alone. Therefore, I have wiped you out of my life; I have cut you off as I would cut off a rotten limb that threatened to drag the whole body down to death. I love you--yes, I can never cease to love you--that is the punishment I shall always bear--but there can be nothing more between us--we part now forever--your course lies that way, mine this. Farewell!"

As the train rolled along he found a delirious joy in this prospect, which began and ended with the idea that Oscar Stephenson was dead. In the light of that thought he looked back on the past of his life and many things that had been hard to understand became plain. Again and again he had tried to stop on his downward course and he could not do so. Before he could rise out of the degradation of his past life he had had to drink his cup to the dregs, to go down to the depths, to be covered by darkness and the shadow of death! But at last Oscar Stephenson was dead! Thank God! Thank God!

How strange that at the moment when Helga was tempting him to the infamous act, which if it had succeeded would have made him her slave and the slave of sin forever, she was leading him by one of Death's terrific strides to life and liberty! How mysterious and how mighty, aye, and how cynical also, were the powers of Destiny, whose supernatural wings hovered over the lives of men and women and moved their little motives of love and hate and revenge and selfishness like pawns on the chess-board of Fate!

It was in this mood he reached Paris, and having some three hours to wait before his train started for Calais, he walked through the streets until he came to the center of the city, and then sat outside a café to eat a roll of bread and drink a cup of coffee. It was six o'clock, and the news-vendors were crying the evening papers. He bought one to beguile the time of waiting, and had not yet opened it when he saw his own name standing out from the front page as if it had been printed in a different ink.

For some moments thereafter a mist seemed to float between the newspaper and his eyes, but he read the paragraph at last.

It was a telegram from Nice, headed: "Suicide in a Casino," giving a mangled version of the events of last night, clearly inspired by the manager to protect himself and his house, and closing with the words:

"The deceased, who was from Iceland, is understood to be a son of the late much-respected Governor-General of that country."