Growth of the Soil Part 41

"_Daler_?" cried Eleseus suddenly, mimicking his brother.

Oline, no doubt, thought this ill-timed jesting. Oh, she had herself been cheated of her due; for all that she had managed to squeeze out something like real tears over old Sivert's grave. Eleseus should know best what he himself had written--so-and-so much to Oline, to be a comfort and support in her declining years. And where was that support? Oh, a broken reed!

Poor Oline; they might have left her something--single golden gleam in her life! Oline was not over-blessed with this world's goods.

Practised in evil--ay, well used to edging her way by tricks and little meannesses from day to day; strong only as a scandalmonger, as one whose tongue was to be feared; ay, so. But nothing could have made her worse than before; least of all a pittance left her by the dead.

She had toiled all her life, had borne children, and taught them her own few arts; begged for them, maybe stolen for them, but always managing for them somehow--a mother in her poor way. Her powers were not less than those of other politicians; she acted for herself and those belonging to her, set her speech according to the moment, and gained her end, earning a cheese or a handful of wool each time; she also could live and die in commonplace insincerity and readiness of wit. Oline--maybe old Sivert had for a moment thought of her as young, pretty, and rosy-cheeked, but now she is old, deformed, a picture of decay; she ought to have been dead. Where is she to be buried? She has no family vault of her own; nay, she will be lowered down in a graveyard to lie among the bones of strangers and unknown; ay, to that she comes at last--Oline, born and died. She had been young once. A pittance left to her now, at the eleventh hour? Ay, a single golden gleam, and this slave-woman's hands would have been folded for a moment. Justice would have overtaken her with its late reward; for that she had begged for her children, maybe stolen for them, but always managed for them some way. A moment--and the darkness would reign in her as before; her eyes glower, her fingers feel out graspingly--how much? she would say. What, no more? she would say.

She would be right again. A mother many times, realizing life--it was worthy of a great reward.

But all went otherwise. Old Sivert's accounts had appeared more or less in order after Eleseus had been through them; but the farm and the cow, the fishery and nets were barely enough to cover the deficit.

And it was due in some measure to Oline that things had turned out no worse; so earnest was she in trying to secure a small remainder for herself that she dragged to light forgotten items that she, as gossip and newsmonger for years, remembered still, or matters outstanding which others would have pa.s.sed over on purpose, to avoid causing unpleasantness to respectable fellow-citizens. Oh, that Oline! And she did not even say a word against old Sivert now; he had made his will in kindness of heart, and there would have been a plenty after him, but that the two men sent by the Department to arrange things had cheated her. But one day all would come to the ears of the Almighty, said Oline threateningly.

Strange, she found nothing ridiculous in the fact that she was mentioned in the will; after all, it was an honour of a sort; none of her likes were named there with her!

The Sellanraa folk took the blow with patience; they were not altogether unprepared. True, Inger could not understand it--Uncle Sivert that had always been so rich....

"He might have stood forth an upright man and a wealthy before the Lamb and before the Throne," said Oline, "if they hadn't robbed him."

Isak was standing ready to go out to his fields, and Oline said: "Pity you've got to go now, Isak; then I shan't see the new machine, after all. You've got a new machine, they say?"

"Ay."

"Ay, there's talk of it about, and how it cuts quicker than a hundred scythes. And what haven't you got, Isak, with all your means and riches! Priest, our way, he's got a new plough with two handles; but what's he, compared with you, and I'd tell him so to his face."

"Sivert here'll show you the machine; he's better at working her than his father," said Isak, and went out.

Isak went out. There is an auction to be held at Breidablik that noon, and he is going; there's but just time to get there now. Not that Isak any longer thinks of buying the place, but the auction--it is the first auction held there in the wilds, and it would be strange not to go.

He gets down as far as Maaneland and sees Barbro, and would pa.s.s by with only a greeting, but Barbro calls to him and asks if he is going down. "Ay," said Isak, making to go on again. It is her home that is being sold, and that is why he answers shortly.

"You going to the sale?" she asks.

"To the sale? Well, I was only going down a bit. What you've done with Axel?"

"Axel? Nay, I don't know. He's gone down to sale. Doubt he'll be seeing his chance to pick up something for nothing, like the rest."

Heavy to look at was Barbro now--ay, and sharp and bitter-tongued!

The auction has begun; Isak hears the Lensmand calling out, and sees a crowd of people. Coming nearer, he does not know them all; there are some from other villages, but Brede is fussing about, in his best finery, and chattering in his old way. "_G.o.ddag_, Isak. So you're doing me the honour to come and see my auction sale. Thanks, thanks.

Ay, we've been neighbours and friends these many years now, and never an ill word between us." Brede grows pathetic. "Ay, 'tis strange to think of leaving a place where you've lived and toiled and grown fond of. But what's a man to do when it's fated so to be?"

"Maybe 'twill be better for you after," says Isak comfortingly.

"Why," says Brede, grasping at it himself, "to tell the truth, I think it will. I'm not regretting it, not a bit. I won't say I've made a fortune on the place here, but that's to come, maybe; and the young ones getting older and leaving the nest--ay, 'tis true the wife's got another on the way; but for all that...." And suddenly Brede tells his news straight out: "I've given up the telegraph business."

"What?" asks Isak.

"I've given up that telegraph."

"Given up the telegraph?"

"Ay, from new year to be. What was the good of it, anyway? And supposing I was out on business, or driving for the Lensmand or the doctor, then to have to look after the telegraph first of all--no, there's no sense nor meaning in it that way. Well enough for them that's time to spare. But running over hill and dale after a telegraph wire for next to nothing wages, 'tis no job that for Brede. And then, besides, I've had words with the people from the telegraph office about it--they've been making a fuss again."

The Lensmand keeps repeating the bids for the farm; they have got up to the few hundred _Kroner_ the place is judged to be worth, and the bidding goes slowly, now, with but five or ten _Kroner_ more each time.

"Why, surely--'tis Axel there's bidding," cries Brede suddenly, and hurries eagerly across. "What, you going to take over my place too?

Haven't you enough to look after?"

"I'm bidding for another man," says Axel evasively.

"Well, well, 'tis no harm to me, 'twasn't that I meant."

The Lensmand raises his hammer, a new bid is made, a whole hundred _Kroner_ at once; no one bids higher, the Lensmand repeats the figure again and again, waits for a moment with his hammer raised, and then strikes.

Whose bid?

Axel Strom--on behalf of another.

The Lensmand notes it down: Axel Strom as agent.

"Who's that you buying for?" asks Brede. "Not that it's any business of mine, of course, but...."

But now some men at the Lensmand's table are putting their heads together; there is a representative from the Bank, the storekeeper has sent his a.s.sistant; there is something the matter; the creditors are not satisfied. Brede is called up, and Brede, careless and light-hearted, only nods and is agreed--"but who'd ever have thought it didn't come up to more?" says he. And suddenly he raises his voice and declares to all present:

"Seeing as we've an auction holding anyhow, and I've troubled the Lensmand all this way, I'm willing to sell what I've got here on the place: the cart, live stock, a pitchfork, a grindstone. I've no use for the things now; we'll sell the lot!"

Small bidding now. Brede's wife, careless and light-hearted as himself, for all the fulness of her in front, has begun selling coffee at a table. She finds it amusing to play at shop, and smiles; and when Brede himself comes up for some coffee, she tells him jestingly that he must pay for it like the rest. And Brede actually takes out his lean purse and pays. "There's a wife for you," he says to the others.

"Thrifty, what?"

The cart is not worth much--it has stood too long uncovered in the open; but Axel bids a full five _Kroner_ more at last, and gets the cart as well. After that Axel buys no more, but all are astonished to see that cautious man buying so much as he has.

Then came the animals. They had been kept in their shed today, so as to be there in readiness. What did Brede want with live stock when he had no farm to keep them on? He had no cows; he had started farming with two goats, and had now four. Besides these, there were six sheep.

No horse.

Isak bought a certain sheep with flat ears. When Brede's children led it out from the shed, he started bidding at once, and people looked at him. Isak from Sellanraa was a rich man, in a good position, with no need of more sheep than he had. Brede's wife stops selling coffee for a moment, and says: "Ay, you may buy her, Isak; she's old, 'tis true, but she's two and three lambs every blessed year, and that's the truth."

"I know it," said Isak, looking straight at her. "I've seen that sheep before."

He walks up with Axel Strom on the way back, leading his sheep on a string. Axel is taciturn, seemingly anxious about something, whatever it might be. There's nothing he need be troubled about that one can see, thinks Isak; his crops are looking well, most of his fodder is housed already, and he has begun timbering his house. All as it should be with Axel Strom; a thought slowly, but sure in the end. And now he had got a horse.

"So you've bought Brede's place?" said Isak. "Going to work it yourself?"

"No, not for myself. I bought it for another man."

"Ho!"

"What d'you think; was it too much I gave for it?"

"Why, no. Tis good land for a man that'll work it as it should."