It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralyzed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret remained behind to roast it.
The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast.
"Every snow-cowl has an end," he said, "and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson's family and over my family, is now gone for good. 'Show the man and not the table,' says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man's guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before.
"Brothers and sisters, I give you a health--Anna's long-lost son, our long-lost son, Iceland's long-lost son--Oscar Stephen-son!"
The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.
VIII
On the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them, white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman's eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.
You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under his feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapor.
An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.
At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!