Growth of the Soil (10 page)

But he was disappointed. Inger was gone--for eight years. Isak felt himself in a mist of darkness and emptiness; heard only a word here and there of all the Lensmand said--a pity such things should happen ... hoped it might be a lesson to her ... reform and be a better woman after, and not kill her children any more!

Lensmand Heyerdahl had married the year before. His wife had no intention of ever being a mother--no children for her, thank you! And she had none.

"And now," said the Lensmand, "this business about Sellanraa. At last I am in a position to settle it definitely. The Department is graciously pleased to approve the sale of the land, more or less according to the terms I suggested."

"H'm," said Isak.

"It has been a lengthy business, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that my endeavours have not been altogether fruitless. The terms I proposed have been agreed to almost without exception."

"Without exception," said Isak, and nodded.

"Here are the title-deeds. You can have the transfer registered at the
first session."

"Ay," said Isak. "And how much is there to pay?"

"Ten
Daler
a year. The Department has made a slight alteration here--ten
Daler
per annum instead of five. You have no objection to that, I presume?"

"As long as I can manage to pay ..." said Isak.

"And for ten years." Isak looked up, half frightened.

"Those are the terms--the Department insists. Even then, it's no price really for all that land, cleared and cultivated as it is now."

Isak had the ten
Daler
for that year--it was the money he had got for his loads of wood, and for the cheeses Inger had laid by. He paid the amount, and had still a small sum left.

"It's a lucky thing for you the Department didn't get to hear about
your wife," said the Lensmand. "Or they might have sold to some one
else."

"Ay," said Isak. He asked about Inger. "Is it true that she's gone
away for eight years?"

"That is so. And can't be altered--the law must take its course. As a matter of fact, the sentence is extraordinarily light. There's one thing you must do now--that is, to set up clear boundaries between your land and the State's. A straight, direct line, following the marks I set up on the spot, and entered in my register at the time. The timber cleared from the boundary line becomes your property. I will come up some time and have a look at what you have done."

Isak trudged back to his home.

Time flies? Ay, when a man is growing old. Isak was not old, he had not lost his vigour; the years seemed long to him. He worked on his land, and let his iron beard grow as it would.

Now and again the monotony of the wilderness was broken by the sight of a passing Lapp, or by something happening to one of the animals on the place, then all would be as before. Once there came a number of men at once; they rested at Sellanraa, and had some food and a dish of milk; they asked Isak and Oline about the path across the hills; they were marking out the telegraph line, they said. And once came Geissler--Geissler himself, and no other. There he came, free and easy as ever, walking up from the village, two men with him, carrying mining tools, pick and spade.

Oh, that Geissler! Unchanged, the same as ever; meeting and greeting as if nothing had happened, talked to the children, went into the house and came out again, looked over the ground, opened the doors of cowshed and hayloft and looked in. "Excellent!" said he. "Isak, have you still got those bits of stone?"

"Bits of stone?" said Isak, wondering.

"Little heavy lumps of stone I saw the boy playing with when I was
here once before."

The stones were out in the larder, serving as weights for so many mouse-traps; Isak brought them in. Geissler and the two men examined them, talking together, tapped them here and there, weighed them in the hand. "Copper," they said.

"Could you go up with us and show where you found them?" asked
Geissler.

They all went up together; it was not far to the place where Isak had found the stones, but they stayed up in the hills for a couple of days, looking for veins of metal, and firing charges here and there. They came down to Sellanraa with two bags filled with heavy lumps of stone.

Isak had meanwhile had a talk with Geissler, and told him everything as to his own position: about the purchase of the land, which had come to a hundred
Daler
instead of fifty.

"That's a trifle," said Geissler easily. "You've thousands, like as not, on your part of the hills."

"Ho!" said Isak.

"But you'd better get those title-deeds entered in the register as
soon as ever you can."

"Ay."

"Then the State can't come any nonsense about it after, you
understand."

Isak understood. "'Tis worst about Inger," he said.

"Ay," said Geissler, and remained thoughtful longer than was usual with him. "Might get the case brought up again. Set out the whole thing properly; very likely get the sentence reduced a bit. Or we could put in an application for a pardon, and that would probably come to the same thing in the end."

"Why, if as that could be done...."

"But it wouldn't do to try for a pardon at once. Have to wait a bit. What was I going to say ... you've been taking things down to my wife--meat and cheese and things--what?"

"Why, as to that, Lensmand paid for all that before."

"Did I, though?"

"And helped us kindly in many a way."

"Not a bit of it," said Geissler shortly. "Here--take this." And he took out some
Daler
notes.

Geissler was not the man to take things for nothing, that was plain. And he seemed to have plenty of money about him, from the way his pocket bulged. Heaven only knew if he really had money or not.

"But she writes all's well and getting on," said Isak, coming back to
his one thought.

"What?--Oh, your wife!"

"Ay. And since the girl was born--she's had a girl child, born while she was there. A fine little one."

"Excellent!"

"Ay, and now they're all as kind as can be, and help her every way,
she says."

"Look here," said Geissler, "I'm going to send these bits of stone in to some mining experts, and find out what's in them. If there's a decent percentage of copper, you'll be a rich man."

"H'm," said Isak. "And how long do you think before we could apply for
a pardon?"

"Well, not so very long, perhaps, I'll write the thing for you. I'll be back here again soon. What was it you said--your wife has had a child since she left here?"

"Yes."

"Then they took her away while she was expecting it. That's a thing
they've no right to do."

"Ho!"

"Anyhow, it's one more reason for letting her out earlier."

"Ay, if that could be ..." said Isak gratefully.

Isak knew nothing of the many lengthy writings backward and forward between the different authorities concerning the woman who was expecting a child. The local authorities had let her go free while the matter was pending, for two reasons: in the first place, they had no lock-up in the village where they could keep her, and, in the second place, they wished to be as lenient as possible. The consequence was something they could not have foreseen. Later, when they had sent to fetch her away, no one had inquired about her condition, and she herself had said nothing of it. Possibly she had concealed the matter on purpose, in order to have a child with her during the years of imprisonment; if she behaved well, she would no doubt be allowed to see it now and again. Or perhaps she had been merely indifferent, and had gone off carelessly, despite her state....

Isak worked and toiled, dug ditches and broke new ground, set up his boundary lines between his land and the State's, and gained another season's stock of timber. But now that Inger was no longer there to wonder at his doings, he worked more from habit than for any joy in what he did. And he had let two sessions pass without having his title-deeds registered, caring little about it; at last, that autumn, he had pulled himself together and got it done. Things were not as they should be with Isak now. Quiet and patient as ever--yes, but now it was because he did not care. He got out hides because it had to be done--goatskins and calfskins--steeped them in the river, laid them in bark, and tanned them after a fashion ready for shoes. In the winter--at the very first threshing--he set aside his seed corn for the next spring, in order to have it done; best to have things done and done with; he was a methodical man. But it was a grey and lonely life; eyah,
Herregud
! a man without a wife again, and all the rest....

What pleasure was there now in sitting at home Sundays, cleanly washed, with a neat red shirt on, when there was no one to be clean and neat for! Sundays were the longest days of all, days when he was forced to idleness and weary thoughts; nothing to do but wander about over the place, counting up all that should have been done. He always took the children with him, always carried one on his arm. It was a distraction to hear their chatter, and answer their questions of everything.

He kept old Oline because there was no one else he could get. And Oline was, after all, of use in a way. Carding and spinning, knitting stockings and mittens, and making cheese--she could do all these things, but she lacked Inger's happy touch, and had no heart in her work; nothing of all she handled was her own. There was a thing Isak had bought once at the village store, a china pot with a dog's head on the lid. It was a sort of tobacco box, really, and stood on a shelf. Oline took off the lid and dropped it on the floor. Inger had left behind some cuttings of fuchsia, under glass. Oline took the glass off and, putting it back, pressed it down hard and maliciously; next day, all the cuttings were dead. It was not so easy for Isak to bear with such things; he looked displeased, and showed it, and, as there was nothing swanlike and gentle about Isak, it may well be that he showed it plainly. Oline cared little for looks; soft-spoken as ever, she only said: "Now, could I help it?"

"That I can't say," answered Isak. "But you might have left the things
alone."

"I'll not touch her flowers again," said Oline. But the flowers were
already dead.

Again, how could it be that the Lapps came up to Sellanraa so frequently of late? Os-Anders, for instance, had no business there at all, he should have passed on his way. Twice in one summer he came across the hills, and Os-Anders, it should be remembered, had no reindeer to look to, but lived by begging and quartering himself on other Lapps. As soon as he came up to the place, Oline left her work and fell to chatting with him about people in the village, and, when he left, his sack was heavy with no end of things. Isak put up with it for two years, saying nothing.

Then Oline wanted new shoes again, and he could be silent no longer. It was in the autumn, and Oline wore shoes every day, instead of going in wooden pattens or rough hide.

"Looks like being fine today," said Isak. "H'm." That was how he
began.

"Ay," said Oline.

"Those cheeses, Eleseus," went on Isak again, "wasn't it ten you counted on the shelf this morning?"

"Ay," said Eleseus.

"Well, there's but nine there now."

Eleseus counted again, and thought for a moment inside his little head; then he said: "Yes, but then Os-Anders had one to take away; that makes ten."

There was silence for quite a while after that. Then little Sivert
must try to count as well, and says after his brother: "That makes
ten."

Silence again. At last Oline felt she must say something.

"Ay, I did give him a tiny one, that's true. I didn't think that could do any harm. But they children, they're no sooner able to talk than they show what's in them. And who they take after's more than I can think or guess. For 'tis not your way, Isak, that I do know."

The hint was too plain to pass unchecked. "The children are well enough," said Isak shortly. "But I'd like to know what good Os-Anders has ever done to me and mine."

"What good?"

"Ay, that's what I said."

"What good Os-Anders ...?"

"Ay, since I'm to give him cheeses in return."

Oline has had time to think, and has her answer ready now.

"Well, now, I wouldn't have thought it of you, Isak, that I wouldn't. Was it me, pray, that first began with Os-Anders? I wish I may never move alive from this spot if I ever so much as spoke his name."

Brilliant success for Oline. Isak has to give in, as he has done many
a time before.

But Oline had more to say. "And if you mean I'm to go here clean barefoot, with the winter coming on and all, and never own the like of a pair of shoes, why, you'll please to say so. I said a word of it three and four weeks gone, that I needed shoes, but never sign of a shoe to this day, and here I am."

Said Isak: "What's wrong with your pattens, then, that you can't use
them?"

"What's wrong with them?" repeats Oline, all unprepared.

"Ay, that's what I'd like to know."

"With my pattens?"

"Ay."

"Well ... and me carding and spinning, and tending cattle and sheep and all, looking after children here--have you nothing to say to that? I'd like to know; that wife of yours that's in prison for her deeds, did you let her go barefoot in the snow?"

"She wore her pattens," said Isak. "And for going to church and visiting and the like, why, rough hide was good enough for her."

"Ay, and all the finer for it, no doubt."

"Ay, that she was. And when she did wear her hide shoes in summer, she did but stuff a wisp of grass in them, and never no more. But you--you must wear stockings in your shoes all the year round."

Said Oline: "As for that, I'll wear out my pattens in time, no doubt. I'd no thought there was any such haste to wear out good pattens all at once." She spake softly and gently, but with half-closed eyes, the same sly Oline as ever. "And as for Inger," said she, "the changeling, as we called her, she went about with children of mine and learned both this and that, for years she did. And this is what we get for it. Because I've a daughter that lives in Bergen and wears a hat, I suppose that's what Inger must be gone away south for; gone to Trondhjem to buy a hat, he he!"