Growth of the Soil Part 25

Isak did not understand. "Help?"

"Yes, help in the house--a servant-girl."

Isak must have been taken aback at this; he laughed a little in his iron beard, and took it as a jest. "Ay, we should have a servant-girl," said he.

"Housewives in the towns always have a servant," said Inger.

"Ho!" said Isak.

Well, Isak was not perhaps in the best of humour just then, not exactly gentle and content, no, for he had started work on that sawmill, and it was a slow and toilsome business; he couldn't hold the baulks with one hand, and a level in the other, and fix ends at the same time. But when the boys came back from school again it was easier; the lads were useful and a help, bless them! Sivert especially had a genius for knocking in nails, but Eleseus was better at handling a plumb-line. By the end of a week, Isak and the boys had actually got the foundation posts in, and soundly fixed with stretcher pieces as thick as the beams themselves.

It worked out all right--everything worked out all right somehow. But Isak was beginning to feel tired in the evenings now--whatever it could be. It was not only building a sawmill and getting that done--there was everything else besides. The hay was in, but the corn was standing yet, soon it would have to be cut and stacked: there were the potatoes too, they would have to be taken up before long. But the boys were a wonderful help. He did not thank them; 'twas not the way among folk of their sort, but he was mightily pleased with them for all that. Now and again they would sit down in the middle of their work and talk together, the father almost asking his sons' advice as to what they should do next. Those were proud moments for the lads, they learned also to think well before they spoke, lest they should be in the wrong.

"'Twould be a pity not to have the saw roofed in before the autumn rains," said their father.

If only Inger had been as in the old days! But Inger was not so strong as she had been, it seemed, and that was natural enough after her long spell within walls. That her mind, too, seemed changed was another matter. Strange, how little thought, how little care, she seemed to take now; shallow and heedless--was this Inger?

One day she spoke of the child she had killed.

"And a fool I was to do it," she said. "We might have had her mouth sewed up too, and then I needn't have throttled her." And she never stole off now to a tiny grave in the forest, where once she had patted the earth with her hands and set up a little cross.

But Inger was not altogether heartless yet; she cared for her other children, kept them clean and made new clothes for them; she would sit up late at night mending their things. It was her ambition to see them get on in the world.

The corn was stacked, and the potatoes were taken up. Then came the winter. No, the sawmill did not get roofed in that autumn, but that could not be helped--after all, 'twas not a matter of life or death.

Next summer would be time and means enough.

Chapter XIII

The winter round of work was as before; carting wood, mending tools and implements. Inger kept house, and did sewing in her spare time.

The boys were down in the village again for the long term at school.

For several winters past they had had a pair of _ski_ between them; they managed well enough that way as long as they were at home, one waiting while the other took his turn, or one standing on behind the other. Ay, they managed finely with but one pair, it was the finest thing they knew, and they were innocent and glad. But down in the village things were different. The school was full of _ski_; even the children at Breidablik, it seemed, had each a pair. And the end of it was that Isak had to make a new pair for Eleseus, Sivert keeping the old pair for his own.

Isak did more; he had the boys well clad, and gave them everlasting boots. But when that was done, Isak went to the storekeeper and asked for a ring.

"A ring?" said the man.

"A finger ring. Ay, I've grown that high and mighty now I must give my wife a ring."

"Do you want a silver one, or gold, or just a bra.s.s ring dipped to look like gold?"

"Let's say a silver ring."

The storekeeper thought for a while.

"Look you, Isak," he said. "If you want to do the proper thing, and give your wife a ring she needn't be ashamed to wear, you'd better make it a gold ring."

"What!" said Isak aloud. Though maybe in his inmost heart he had been thinking of a gold ring all the time.

They talked the matter over seriously, and agreed about getting a measurement of some sort for the ring. Isak was thoughtful, and shook his head and reckoned it was a big thing to do, but the storekeeper refused to order anything but a gold ring. Isak went home again, secretly pleased with his decision, but somewhat anxious, for all that, at the extravagant lengths he had gone to, all for being in love with his wife.

There was a good average snowfall that winter, and early in the year, when the roads were pa.s.sable, folk from the village began carting up telegraph poles over the moors, dropping their loads at regular intervals. They drove big teams, and came up past Breidablik, past Sellanraa farm, and met new teams beyond, coming down with poles from the other side of the hills--the line was complete.

So life went on day by day, without any great event. What was there to happen, anyway? Spring came, and the work of setting up the poles began. Brede Olsen was there again, with the gangs, though he should have been working on his own land at that season. "'Tis a wonder he's the time," thought Isak.

Isak himself had barely time to eat and sleep; it was a close thing to get through the season's work now, with all the land he had brought under tillage.

Then, between seasons, he got his sawmill roofed in, and could set to work putting up the machine parts. And look you, 'twas no marvel of fine woodwork he had set up, but strong it was, as a giant of the hills, and stood there to good use. The saw could work, and cut as a sawmill should; Isak had kept his eyes about him down in the village, and used them well. It was hearty and small, this sawmill he had built, but he was pleased with it; he carved the date above the doorway, and put his mark.

And that summer, something more than usual did come about after all at Sellanraa.

The telegraph workers had now reached so far up over the moors that the foremost gang came to the farm one evening and asked to be lodged for the night. They were given shelter in the big barn. As the days went on, the other gangs came along, and all were housed at Sellanraa.

The work went on ahead, pa.s.sing the farm, but the men still came back to sleep in the barn. One Sat.u.r.day evening came the engineer in charge, to pay the men.

At sight of the engineer, Eleseus felt his heart jump, and stole out of the house lest he should be asked about that coloured pencil. Oh, there would be trouble now--and Sivert nowhere to be seen; he would have to face it alone. Eleseus slipped round the corner of the house, like a pale ghost, found his mother, and begged her to tell Sivert to come. There was no help for it now.

Sivert took the matter less to heart--but then, he was not the chief culprit. The two brothers went a little way off and sat down, and Eleseus said: "If you'd say it was you, now!"

"Me?" said Sivert.

"You're younger, he wouldn't do anything to you."

Sivert thought over it, and saw that his brother was in distress; also it flattered him to feel that the other needed his help.

"Why, I might help you out of it, perhaps," said he in a grown-up voice.

"Ay, if you would!" said Eleseus, and quite simply gave his brother the bit of pencil that was left. "You can have it for keeps," he said.

They were going in again together, but Eleseus recollected he had something he must do over at the sawmill, or rather, at the cornmill; something he must look to, and it would take some time--he wouldn't be finished just yet. Sivert went in alone.

There sat the engineer, paying out notes and silver, and when he had finished, Inger gave him milk to drink, a jug and a gla.s.s, and he thanked her. Then he talked to little Leopoldine, and then, noticing the drawings on the walls, asked straight out who had done that. "Was it you?" he asked, turning to Sivert. The man felt, perhaps, he owed something for Inger's hospitality, and praised the drawings just to please her. Inger, on her part, explained the matter as it was: it was her boys had made the drawings--both of them. They had no paper till she came home and looked to things, so they had marked all about the walls. But she hadn't the heart to wash it off again.

"Why, leave it as it is," said the engineer. "Paper, did you say?" And he took out a heap of big sheets. "There, draw away on that till I come round again. And how are you off for pencils?"

Sivert stepped forward simply with the stump he had, and showed how small it was. And behold, the man gave him a new coloured pencil, not even sharpened. "There, now you can start afresh. But I'd make the horses red if I were you, and do the goats with blue. Never seen a blue horse, have you?"

And the engineer went on his way.

That same evening, a man came up from the village with a basket--he handed out some bottles to the workmen, and went off again. But after he had gone, it was no longer so quiet about the place; some one played an accordion, the men talked loudly, and there was singing, and even dancing, at Sellanraa. One of the men asked Inger out to dance, and Inger--who would have thought it of her?--she laughed a little laugh and actually danced a few turns round. After that, some of the others asked her, and she danced not a little in the end.

Inger--who could say what was in her mind? Here she was dancing gaily, maybe for the first time in her life; sought after, riotously pursued by thirty men, and she alone, the only one to choose from, no one to cut her out. And those burly telegraph men--how they lifted her! Why not dance? Eleseus and Sivert were fast asleep in the little chamber, undisturbed by all the noise outside; little Leopoldine was up, looking on wonderingly at her mother as she danced.

Isak was out in the fields all the time; he had gone off directly after supper, and when he came home to go to bed, some one offered him a bottle. He drank a little, and sat watching the dancing, with Leopoldine on his lap.

"'Tis a gay time you're having," said he kindly to Inger--"footing it properly tonight!"