The Prodigal Son

by Sir Hall Caine

As she passed Elin's door she opened it gently and held her head aside to listen. The sound of the soft and measured breathing came out to them for a moment and then the door was closed again.

"Poor child! She would lay her head on her pillow full of faith in the miracle that is to happen before to-morrow morning. Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"

They parted at the door of the badstofa, and a few minutes afterward the little house lay silent and dark in the arms of the hills and on the breast of the snow, but the wings of Death hung over it.

* * * * *

Magnus did not go to bed. He threw himself on the eiderdown and went through a fierce fight with God as represented by God's vicar, his conscience. A vision of the pocket-book in the stranger's breast-pocket danced before his dark heart, and he told himself that come what would he must take enough of the stranger's money to pay the interest in the morning. If he did not do so the man would buy the farmstead and Elin and his mother would be turned adrift.

On this thought came compunctions. To take the man's money would be to steal, and Magnus had never stolen. But faith being already gone, morality followed, and he wrestled with his conscience and overcame it. What he was going to do was what men did every day, only they called it business, and they did it to wrong the right, whereas he would do it to right the wrong. Magnus marshaled his reasons and justified himself. Here was a man so rich that he would not know to-morrow morning that he had lost what was sufficient to make his dear ones happy. That man was going to expose them to poverty and destitution. Surely it was right, it was necessary, it was his duty to prevent him.

In the mad tangle of his disordered brain he saw everything that had happened that day in a sinister light, and it seemed as if fate had thrown the man into his hands. He might have gone to lodge at the Parsonage--he had come there! He might have concealed the purpose of his coming--he had revealed it! He might have said nothing of the pocket-book--he had shown it with childlike simplicity! Surely this was the way out of his difficulties which Destiny had marked out for him, and not to take it would be to cover himself with self-reproaches when his dear ones came down to want.

Having persuaded himself that he could not help but take as much of the stranger's money as was necessary to pay the interest, he began to ask why he should take so little. If the pocket-book in the man's breast-pocket contained enough to pay the interest twenty times over, why not take enough to buy the farm out and out? That would enable him to leave to Elin the inheritance which he had lost through his brother's extravagance and crime. This man was about to take it away from her--he must not and he should not do so!

Stage by stage he pushed back the bulwarks of conscience until he came to ask himself why he should not take all. His mind was clogged and numb by this time, but he knew well what that meant. It meant taking the stranger's life. There was at first an indescribable horror in the thought of killing a human being, but after a moment it passed away. This man alone stood between his dear ones and shelter--why shouldn't he? This man threatened to take their lives by exposing them to starvation--why shouldn't he take his life instead?

A momentary qualm came with the thought that he would be attacking one who had trusted himself to the hospitality of his house, a defenseless man in his sleep. But he thought of the stranger's heartless laughter, his callousness to their condition, and recalled what he had said of his mother, and pictured her sitting there surrounded by every comfort while his own mother, born in that place, was turned out to perish, and then his gorge rose again and his heart knew no pity.