The Prodigal Son

by Sir Hall Caine

"Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble."

"He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn't know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much--oh so much--to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth."

As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again.

"How beautiful!" she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.

There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labor he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass--her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephenson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?

In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice:

"Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it."

And then, having both in the room at one moment--his mother and his daughter--his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, "Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!"

Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, "The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I've rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed."

"Let us have a bottle of brandy first," said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus's bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.