"Ye look it, sir. Ye really do. I'm afraid she's been 'a treatin' ye cruel. I knowed she would. It's always the way with them women. Ye'd better 'a stayed with me, sir--I'd 'a been real good to ye in them days and never 'a wanted nothink.--But go inside, sir, and I'll get ye some brekfist. The kittle is just on the boil an' ye'll have a cup o' tea an' a rasher afore ye can say 'Jack Robison.'"
Jenny went scurrying down the stairs like an old slipper, and Oscar stepped into the barman's parlor and sat on the shiny leather-covered sofa. He remembered that he had sat there before, he remembered who had sat with him, he remembered all that had happened since, and then for one brief moment his visions of the future failed him; his hopes and intentions sank away; everything was blotted out except the sweet and bitter memory of the woman he had loved and lost, and he broke down utterly.
XII
It takes a long time for the truth to travel from a distance, but a lie flies on the wings of the wind. The report of Oscar's death in a gambling-house on the Riviera reached Iceland by the next steamer.
Three days before the steamer's arrival Magnus and his mother were sitting in front of their farm at Thingvellir. Anna was spinning and Magnus was making rope by a twister turned by a small boy a dozen yards away, for it was just after the wool-plucking and a little before the hay-harvest.
The sun was setting behind the crags of the Almanagja, the blueberry ling was reddening over the green waters of the chasm, and there was no sound in the evening air save the plash of the Axe waterfall, the lowing of kine and the cry of curlew. Then over the hum of the wheel and the wis-wis of the twister came the dull thud of horses' feet on that hollow ground and Anna stopped to listen.
"That must be the post coming," she said, and Magnus answered, "Perhaps," without turning to look at the road, which was still empty as far as to the top of the cleft, where it opened on to the plain.
"I wonder if there will be a letter from Oscar?"
"Why should you wonder, mother? Has he answered your letter of three years ago? Has he had the decency and humanity to reply to the news of his father's death? No!"
"Still, I can not give up hoping. He must know by this time how you are placed with the farm, and perhaps he is only waiting until he can send you some assistance."