Wanderers Part 42

"Ho, are you, you goat? If you want me to wipe the floor with you, I'll do it on the spot!"

Nils and I walked away, but Lars still shouted after us. And there was Ragnhild, of course, sniffing at the lilacs as we pa.s.sed.

That evening I began to think about moving on again as soon as I had finished my work in the timber. When the three weeks were up, the Captain came back as he had said. He noticed I had sc.r.a.ped the northern wall of the barn, and was pleased with me for that. "End of it'll be you'll have to paint that again, too," he said. I told him how far I had got with the timber; there was not much left now. "Well, keep at it and do some more," was all he said. Then he went back to his duty again for another three weeks.

But I did not care to stay another three weeks at vreb as things were now. I marked down a few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper--that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but no cloudberries, no angelica.

In town.

I came in to Engineer La.s.sen, Inspector of rafting sections, and he took me on as he had promised, though it was late in the season now. To begin with, I am to make a tour of the water and see where the logs have gathered thickest, noting down the places on a chart. He is quite a good fellow, the engineer, only still very young. He gives me over-careful instructions about things he fancies I don't know already. It makes him seem a trifle precocious.

And so this man has helped Captain Falkenberg out of a mess? The Captain was sorry for it now, no doubt, anxious to free himself from the debt--that was why he was cutting down his timber to the last lot of battens, I thought. And I wished him free of it myself. I was sorry now I had not stayed on marking down a few more days, that he might have enough and to spare. What if it should prove too little, after all?

Engineer La.s.sen was a wealthy man, apparently. He lived at an hotel, and had two rooms there. I never got farther than the office myself, but even there he had a lot of costly things, books and papers, silver things for the writing-table, gilt instruments and things; a light overcoat, silk-lined, hung on the wall. Evidently a rich man, and a person of importance in the place. The local photographer had a large-sized photograph of him in the show-case outside. I saw him, too, out walking in the afternoons with the young ladies of the town. Being in charge of all the timber traffic, he generally walked down to the long bridge--it was four hundred and sixty feet--across the foss, halted there, and stood looking up and down the river. Just by the bridge piers, and on the flat rocks below them, was where the logs were most inclined to jam, and he kept a gang of lumbermen regularly at hand for this work alone. Standing on the bridge there, watching the men at work among the logs, he looked like an admiral on board a ship, young and strong, with power to command. The ladies with him stopped willingly, and stood there on the bridge, though the rush of water was often enough to make one giddy. And the roar of it was such that they had to put their heads together when they spoke.

But just in this position, at his post on the bridge, standing there and turning this way and that, there was something smallish and unhandsome about his figure; his sports jacket, fitting tightly at the waist, seemed to pinch, and showed up over-heavy contours behind.

The very first evening, after he'd given me my orders to start off up the river next day, I met him out walking with two ladies. At sight of me he stopped, and kept his companions waiting there, too, while he gave me the same instructions all over again. "Just as well I happened to meet you," he said. "You'll start off early, then, tomorrow morning, take a hooking pole with you, and clear all the logs you can manage. If you come across a big jam, mark it down on the chart--you've got a copy of the chart, haven't you? And keep on up river till you meet another man coming down. But remember to mark in red, not blue. And let me see how well you can manage.--A man I've got to work under me," he explained to the ladies. "I really can't be bothered running up and down all the time."

So serious he was about it all; he even took out a notebook and wrote something down. He was very young, and could not help showing off a little with two fair ladies to look on.

Next morning I got away early. It was light at four, and by that time I was a good way up the river. I carried food with me, and my hooking pole--which is like a boat-hook really.

No young, growing timber here, as on Captain Falkenberg's land; the ground was stony and barren, covered with heather and pine needles for miles round. They had felled too freely here; the sawmills had taken over much, leaving next to no young wood. It was a melancholy country to be in.

By noon I had cleared a few small jams, and marked down a big one. Then I had my meal, with a drink of water from the river. A bit of a rest, and I went on again, on till the evening. Then I came upon a big jam, where a man was already at work among the logs. This was the man I had been told to look out for. I did not go straight up to him at first, but stopped to look at him. He worked very cautiously, as if in terror of his life; he was even afraid of getting his feet wet. It amused me to watch him for a little. The least chance of being carried out into the stream on a loosened log was enough to make him shift at once. At last I went up close and looked at him--why ... yes, it was my old friend, Grindhusen.

Grindhusen, that I had worked with as a young man at Skreia--my partner in the digging of a certain well six years before.

And now to meet him here.

We gave each other greeting, and sat down on the logs to talk, asking and answering questions for an hour or more. Then it was too late to get any more done that day. We got up and went back a little way up the river, where Grindhusen had a bit of a log hut. We crept in, lit a fire, made some coffee, and had a meal. Then, going outside again, we lit our pipes and lay down in the heather.

Grindhusen had aged, and was in no better case than I myself; he did not care to think of the gay times in our youth, when we had danced the whole night through. He it was that had once been as a red-haired wolf among the girls, but now he was thoroughly cowed by age and toil, and had not even a smile. If I had only had a drop of spirits with me it might have livened him up a little, but I had none.

In the old days he had been a stiff-necked fellow, obstinate as could be; now he was easy-going and stupid. "Ay, maybe so," was his answer to everything. "Ay, you're right," he would say. Not that he meant it; only that life had taught him to seek the easiest way. So life does with all of us, as the years go by--but it was an ill thing to see, meeting him so.

Ay, he got along somehow, he said, but he was not the man he used to be.

He'd been troubled with gout of late, and pains in the chest as well.

His pains in the chest were cardialgic. But it was none so bad as long as he'd the work here for Engineer La.s.sen. He knew the river right up, and worked here all spring and early summer in his hut. And as for clothes, he'd nothing to wear out save breeches and blouse all the year round. Had a bit of luck, though, last year, he said suddenly. Found a sheep with n.o.body to own it. Sheep in the forest? Up that way, he said, pointing. He'd had meat on Sundays half through the winter off that sheep. Then he'd his folks in America as good as any one else: children married there and well-to-do. They sent him a little to help the first year or so, but now they'd stopped; it was close on two years now since he'd heard from them at all. Eyah! well, that's how things were now with him and his wife. And getting old....

Grindhusen lapsed into thought.

A dull, rushing sound from the forest and the river, like millions of nothings flowing and flowing on. No birds here, no creatures hopping about, but if I turn up a stone, I may find some insect under it.

"Wonder what these tiny things live on?" I say.

"What tiny things?" says Grindhusen. "Those? That's only ants and things."

"It's a sort of beetle," I tell him. "Put one on the gra.s.s and roll a stone on top of it, and it'll live."

Grindhusen answers: "Ay, maybe so," but thinking never a word of what I've said, and I think the rest to myself; but put an ant there under the stone as well, and very soon there'll be no beetle left.

And the rush of the forest and river goes on: 'tis one eternity that speaks with another, and agrees. But in the storms and in thunder they are at war.

"Ay, so it is," says Grindhusen at last. "Two years come next fourteenth of August since the last letter came. There was a smart photograph in, from Olea, it was, that lives in Dakota, as they call it. A mighty fine photograph it was, but I never got it sold. Eyah, but we'll manage somehow, please the Lord," says Grindhusen, with a yawn. "What was I going to say now?... What is he paying for the work?"

"I don't know."

But Grindhusen looks at me suspiciously, thinking it is only that I will not say.

"Ay, well, 'tis all the same to me," he says. "I was only asking."

To please him, I try to guess a wage. "I dare say he'll give me a couple of Kroner a day, or perhaps three, d'you think?"

"Ay, dare say you may," he answers enviously. "Two Kroner's all I get, and I'm an old hand at the work."

Then fancying, perhaps, I may go telling of his grumbling, he starts off in praise of Engineer La.s.sen, saying what a splendid fellow he is in every way. "He'll do what's fair by me, that I know. Trust him for that!

Why, he's been as good as a father to me, and that's the truth!"

It sounds quaint, indeed, to hear Grindhusen, half his teeth gone with age, talking of the young engineer as a father. I felt pretty sure I could find out a good deal about my new employer from this quarter, but I did not ask.

"He didn't say anything about me coming down into town?" asked Grindhusen.

"No."

"He sends up for me now and again, and when I get there, it's not for anything particular--only wants to have a bit of a chat with me, that's all. Ay, a fine fellow is the engineer!"

It is getting late. Grindhusen yawns again, creeps into the hut and lies down.

Next morning we cleared the jam. "Come up with me my way a bit," says Grindhusen. And I went. After an hour's walking, we sighted the fields and buildings of a hill farm up among the trees. And suddenly I recollect the sheep Grindhusen had found.

"Was it up this way you found that sheep?" I ask.

Grindhusen looks at me.

"Here? No, that was ever so far away--right over toward Trovatn."

"But Trovatn's only in the next parish, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's what I say. It's ever so far away from here."

But now Grindhusen does not care to have my company farther; he stops, and thanks me for coming up so far. I might just as well go up to the farm with him, and I say so; but Grindhusen, it seems, is not going up to the farm at all--he never did. And I'd just have an easy day back into town, starting now.