Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
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No, there was nothing to fear as long as he had his health and could
work for himself and those that looked to him, said Brede Olsen. And
the children were just growing up, and big enough now to go out and
make their own way in the world, said he. Helge was gone to the
herring fisheries already, and Katrine was going to help at the
doctor's. That left only the two youngest--well, well, there was a
third on the way, true, but, anyhow ...
Isak had more news from the village: the Lensmand's lady had had a
baby. Inger suddenly interested at this: "Boy or girl?"
"Why, I didn't hear which," said Isak.
But the Lensmand's lady had had a child after all--after all the way
she'd spoken at the women's club about the increasing birth-rate among
the poor; better give women the franchise and let them have some say
in their own affairs, she said. And now she was caught. Yes, the
parson's wife had said, "She's had some say in lots of things--but
her own affairs are none the better for it, ha ha ha!" And that was a
clever saying that went the round of the village, and there were many
that understood what was meant--Inger no doubt as well; it was only
Isak who did not understand.
Isak understood his work, his calling. He was a rich man now, with a
big farm, but the heavy cash payments that had come to him by a lucky
chance he used but poorly; he put the money aside. The land saved him.
If he had lived down in the village, maybe the great world would have
affected even him; so much gaiety, so many elegant manners and ways;
he would have been buying useless trifles, and wearing a red Sunday
shirt on weekdays. Here in the wilds he was sheltered from all
immoderation; he lived in clear air, washed himself on Sunday
mornings, and took a bath when he went up to the lake. Those thousand
_Daler_--well, 'twas a gift from Heaven, to be kept intact. What else
should he do? His ordinary outgoings were more than covered by the
produce of his fields and stock.
Eleseus, of course, knew better; he had advised his father to put the
money in the Bank. Well, perhaps that was the best, but Isak had put
off doing it for the present--perhaps it would never be done at all.
Not that Isak was above taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no
fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had
tried his hand with the scythe--but he was no master hand at that, no.
He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every
time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate
fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the
servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot
of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away
till his hands were blistered and had to be wrapped in rags. He had
lost his appetite for a week or so, but worked none the worse for
it now. Something had come over the boy; it looked perhaps as if a
certain unhappy love affair or something of the sort, a touch of
never-to-be-forgotten sorrow and distress, had done him a world of
good. And, look you, he had by now smoked the last of the tobacco
he had brought with him from town; ordinarily, that would have been
enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself
emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier
for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed. Even Sivert, the jester,
could not put him out of countenance. Today the pair of them were
lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently
offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco--"unless
you'd rather smoke it raw?" he said.
"I'll give you tobacco," said Eleseus, and reaching out, ducked Sivert
head and shoulders in the water. Ho, one for him! Sivert came back
with his hair still dripping.
"Looks like Eleseus he's turning out for the good," thought Isak to
himself, watching his son at work. And to Inger he said: "H'm--wonder
if Eleseus he'll be staying home now for good?"
And she just as queerly cautious again: "'Tis more than I can say. No,
I doubt if he will."
"Ho! Have you said a word of it to himself?"
"No--well, yes, I've talked a bit with him, maybe. But that's the way
I think."
"Like to know, now--suppose he'd a bit of land of his own...."
"How do you mean?"
"If he'd work on a place of his own?"
"No."
"Well, have you said anything?"
"Said anything? Can't you see for yourself? No, I don't see anything
in him Eleseus, that way."
"Don't sit there talking ill of him," said Isak impartially. "All I
can see is, he's doing a good day's work down there."
"Ay, maybe," said Inger submissively.
"And I can't see what you've got to find fault with the lad," cried
Isak, evidently displeased. "He does his work better and better every
day, and what can you ask more?"
Inger murmured: "Ay, but he's not like he used to be. You try talking
to him about waistcoats."
"About waistcoats? What d'you mean?"
"How he used to wear white waistcoats in summer when he was in town,
so he says."
Isak pondered this a while; it was beyond him. "Well, can't he have a
white waistcoat?" he said. Isak was out of his depth here; of course
it was only women's nonsense; to his mind, the boy had a perfect right
to a white waistcoat, if it pleased him; anyhow, he couldn't see what
there was to make a fuss about, and was inclined to put the matter
aside and go on.
"Well, what do you think, if he had Brede's bit of land to work on?"
"Who?" said Inger.
"Him Eleseus."
"Breidablik? Nay, 'tis more than's worth your while."
The fact was, she had already been talking over that very plan with
Eleseus, she had heard it from Sivert, who could not keep the secret.
And indeed, why should Sivert keep the matter secret when his father
had surely told him of it on purpose to feel his way? It was not the
first time he had used Sivert as a go-between. Well, but what had
Eleseus answered? Just as before, as in his letters from town,
that no, he would not throw away all he had learned, and be an
insignificant nothing again. That was what he had said. Well, and then
his mother had brought out all her good reasons, but Eleseus had said
no to them all; he had other plans for his life. Young hearts have
their unfathomable depths, and after what had happened, likely enough
he did not care about staying on with Barbro as a neighbour. Who could
say? He had put it loftily enough in talking to his mother; he could
get a better position in town than the one he had; could go as clerk
to one of the higher officials. He must get on, he must rise in the
world. In a few years, perhaps, he might be a Lensmand, or perhaps a
lighthouse keeper, or get into the Customs. There were so many roads
open to a man with learning.
However it might be, his mother came round, was drawn over to his
point of view. Oh, she was so little sure of herself yet; the world
had not quite lost its hold on her. Last winter she had gone so far as
to read occasionally a certain excellent devotional work which she had
brought from Trondhjem, from the Institute; but now, Eleseus might be
a Lensmand one day!
"And why not?" said Eleseus. "What's Heyerdahl himself but a former
clerk in the same department?"
Splendid prospects. His mother herself advised him not to give up his
career and throw himself away. What was a man like that to do in the
wilds?
But why should Eleseus then trouble to work hard and steadily as he
was doing now on his father's land? Heaven knows, he had some reason,
maybe. Something of inborn pride in him still, perhaps; he would not
be outdone by others; and besides, it would do him no harm to be in
his father's good books the day he went away. To tell the truth, he
had a number of little debts in town, and it would be a good thing to
be able to settle them at once--improve his credit a lot. And it was
not a question now of a mere hundred _Kroner_, but something worth
considering.
Eleseus was far from stupid, but on the contrary, a sly fellow in his
way. He had seen his father come home, and knew well enough he was
sitting there in the window at that moment, looking out. No harm in
putting his back into it then for a bit, working a little harder for
the moment--it would hurt no one, and might do himself good.
Eleseus was somehow changed; whatever it might be, something in him
had been warped, and quietly spoiled; he was not bad, but something
blemished. Had he lacked a guiding hand those last few years? What
could his mother do to help him now? Only stand by him and agree. She
could let herself be dazzled by her son's bright prospects for the
future, and stand between him and his father, to take his part--she
could do that.
But Isak grew impatient at last over her opposition; to his mind, the
idea about Breidablik was by no means a bad one. Only that very day,
coming up, he had stopped the horse almost without thinking, to look
out with a critical eye over the ill-tended land; ay, it could be made
a fine place in proper hands.
"Why not worth while?" he asked Inger now. "I've that much feeling for
Eleseus, anyway, that I'd help him to it."
"If you've any feeling for him, then say never a word of Breidablik
again," she answered.
"Ho!"
"Ay, for he's greater thoughts in his head than the like of us."
Isak, too, is hardly sure of himself here, and it weakens him; but he
is by no means pleased at having shown his hand, and spoken straight
out about his plan. He is unwilling to give it up now.
"He shall do as I say," declares Isak suddenly. And he raises his
voice threateningly, in case Inger by any chance should be hard of
hearing. "Ay, you may look; I'll say no mere. It's midway up, with a
schoolhouse by, and everything; what's the greater thoughts he's got
beyond that, I'd like to know? With a son like that I might starve to
death--is that any better, d'you think? And can you tell me why my own
flesh and blood should turn and go contrary to--to my own flesh and
blood?"
Isak stopped; he realized that the more he talked the worse it would
be. He was on the point of changing his clothes, getting out of his
best things he had put on to go down to the village in; but no, he
altered his mind, he would stay as he was--whatever he meant by that.
"You'd better say a word of it to Eleseus," he says then.
And Inger answers: "Best if you'd say it yourself. He won't do as I
say."
Very well, then, Isak is head of the house, so he should think; now
see if Eleseus dares to murmur! But, whether it were because he feared
defeat, Isak draws back now, and says: "Ay, 'tis true, I might say a
word of it myself. But by reason of having so many things to do, and
busy with this and that, I've something else to think of."
"Well ...?" said Inger in surprise.
And Isak goes off again--not very far, only to the farther fields, but
still, he goes off. He is full of mysteries, and must hide himself out
of the way. The fact is this: he had brought back a third piece of
news from the village today, and that was something more than the
rest, something enormous; and he had hidden it at the edge of the
wood. There it stands, wrapped up in sacking and paper; he uncovers
it, and lo, a huge machine. Look! red and blue, wonderful to see, with
a heap of teeth and a heap of knives, with joints and arms and screws
and wheels--a mowing-machine. No, Isak would not have gone down today
for the new horse if it hadn't been for that machine.
He stands with a marvellously keen expression, going over in his mind
from beginning to end the instructions for use that the storekeeper
had read out; he sets a spring here, and shifts a bolt there, then he
oils every hole and every crevice, then he looks over the whole thing
once more. Isak had never known such an hour in his life. To pick up a
pen and write one's mark on a paper, a document--ay, 'twas a perilous
great thing that, no doubt. Likewise in the matter of a new harrow he
had once brought up--there were many curiously twisted parts in that
to be considered. Not to speak of the great circular saw that had to
be set in its course to the nicety of a pencil line, never
swaying east nor west, lest it should fly asunder. But this--this
mowing-machine of his--'twas a crawling nest of steel springs and
hooks and apparatus, and hundreds of screws--Inger's sewing-machine
was a bookmarker compared with this!
Isak harnessed himself to the shafts and tried the thing. Here was the
wonderful moment. And that was why he kept out of sight and was his
own horse.
For--what if the machine had been wrongly put together and did not do
its work, but went to pieces with a crash! No such calamity happened,
however; the machine could cut grass. And so indeed it ought, after
Isak had stood there, deep in study, for hours. The sun had gone down.
Again he harnesses himself and tries it; ay, the thing cuts grass. And
so indeed it ought!
When the dew began to fall close after the heat of the day, and the
boys came out, each with his scythe to mow in readiness for next day,
Isak came in sight close to the house and said:
"Put away scythes for tonight. Get out the new horse, you can, and
bring him down to the edge of the wood."
And on that, instead of going indoors to his supper as the others had
done already, he turned where he stood and went back the way he had
come.
"D'you want the cart, then?" Sivert called after him.
"No," said his father, and walked on.
Swelling with mystery, full of pride; with a little lift and throw
from the knee at every step, so emphatically did he walk. So a brave
man might walk to death and destruction, carrying no weapon in his
hand.
The boys came up with the horse, saw the machine, and stopped dead.
It was the first mowing-machine in the wilds, the first in the
village--red and blue, a thing of splendour to man's eyes. And the
father, head of them all, called out, oh, in a careless tone, as if it
were nothing uncommon: "Harness up to this machine here."
And they drove it; the father drove. Brrr! said the thing, and felled
the grass in swathes. The boys walked behind, nothing in their hands,
doing no work, smiling. The father stopped and looked back. H'm, not
as clear as it might be. He screws up a nut here and there to bring
the knives closer to the ground, and tries again. No, not right yet,
all uneven; the frame with the cutters seems to be hopping a little.
Father and sons discuss what it can be. Eleseus has found the
instructions and is reading them. "Here, it says to sit up on the seat
when you drive--then it runs steadier," he says.
"Ho!" says his father. "Ay, 'tis so, I know," he answers. "I've
studied it all through." He gets up into the seat and starts off
again; it goes steadily now. Suddenly the machine stops working--the
knives are not cutting at all. "_Ptro_! What's wrong now?" Father down
from his seat, no longer swelling with pride, but bending an anxious,
questioning face down over the machine. Father and sons all stare at
it; something must be wrong. Eleseus stands holding the instructions.
"Here's a bolt or something," says Sivert, picking up a thing from the
grass.
"Ho, that's all right, then," says his father, as if that was all that
was needed to set everything in order. "I was just looking for that
bolt." But now they could not find the hole for it to fit in--where
in the name of wonder could the hole be, now?
And it was now that Eleseus could begin to feel himself a person
of importance; he was the man to make out a printed paper of
instructions. What would they do without him? He pointed unnecessarily
long to the hole and explained: "According to the illustration, the
bolt should fit in there."
"Ay, that's where she goes," said his father. "'Twas there I had it
before." And, by way of regaining lost prestige, he ordered Sivert
to set about looking for more bolts in the grass. "There ought to be
another," he said, looking very important, as if he carried the whole
thing in his head. "Can't you find another? Well, well, it'll be in
its hole then, all right."
Father starts off again.
"Wait a minute--this is wrong," cried Eleseus. Ho, Eleseus standing
there with the drawing in his hand, with the Law in his hand; no
getting away from him! "That spring there goes outside," he says to
his father.
"Ay, what then?"
"Why, you've got it in under, you've set it wrong. It's a steel
spring, and you have to fix it outside, else the bolt jars out again
and stops the knives. You can see in the picture here."
"I've left my spectacles behind, and can't see it quite," says his
father, something meekly. "You can see better--you set it as it should
go. I don't want to go up to the house for my spectacles now."
All in order now, and Isak gets up. Eleseus calls after him: "You must
drive pretty fast, it cuts better that way--it says so here."
Isak drives and drives, and everything goes well, and Brrr! says the
machine. There is a broad track of cut grass in his wake, neatly in
line, ready to take up. Now they can see him from the house, and all
the womenfolk come out; Inger carries little Rebecca on her arm,
though little Rebecca has learned to walk by herself long since.
But there they come--four womenfolk, big and small--hurrying with
straining eyes down towards the miracle, flocking down to see. Oh, but
now is Isak's hour. Now he is truly proud, a mighty man, sitting high
aloft dressed in holiday clothes, in all his finery; in jacket and
hat, though the sweat is pouring off him. He swings round in four big
angles, goes over a good bit of ground, swings round, drives, cuts
grass, passes along by where the women are standing; they are
dumbfounded, it is all beyond them, and Brrr! says the machine.
Then Isak stops and gets down. Longing, no doubt, to hear what these
folk on earth down there will say; what they will find to say about it
all. He hears smothered cries; they fear to disturb him, these beings
on earth, in his lordly work, but they turn to one another with awed
questionings, and he hears what they say. And now, that he may be a
kind and fatherly lord and ruler to them all, to encourage them, he
says: "There, I'll just do this bit, and you can spread it tomorrow."
"Haven't you time to come in and have a bite of food?" says Inger, all
overwhelmed.
"Nay, I've other things to do," he answers.
Then he oils the machine again; gives them to understand that he is
occupied with scientific work. Drives off again, cutting more grass.
And, at long last, the womenfolk go back home.
Happy Isak--happy folk at Sellanraa!
Very soon the neighbours from below will be coming up. Axel Stroem
is interested in things, he may be up tomorrow. But Brede from
Breidablik, he might be here that very evening. Isak would not be loth
to show them his machine, explain it to them, tell them how it works,
and all about it. He can point out how that no man with a scythe could
ever cut so fine and clean. But it costs money, of course--oh, a
red-and-blue machine like that is a terribly costly thing!
Happy Isak!
But as he stops for oil the third time, there! his spectacles fall
from his pocket. And, worst of all, the two boys saw it. Was there
a higher power behind that little happening--a warning against
overweening pride? He had put on those spectacles time and again that
day to study the instructions, without making out a word; Eleseus had
to help him with that. Eyah, _Herregud_, 'twas a good thing, no doubt,
to be book-learned. And, by way of humbling himself, Isak determines
to give up his plan of making Eleseus a tiller of soil in the wilds;
he will never say a word of it again.
Not that the boys made any great business about that matter of the
spectacles; far from it. Sivert, the jester, had to say something, of
course; it was too much for him. He plucked Eleseus by the sleeve and
said: "Here, come along, we'll go back home and throw those scythes on
the fire. Father's going to do all the mowing now with his machine!"
And that was a jest indeed.
Book Two
Chapter I
Sellanraa is no longer a desolate spot in in the waste; human beings
live here--seven of them, counting great and small. But in the little
time the haymaking lasted there came a stranger or so, folk wanting
to see the mowing-machine. Brede Olsen was first, of course, but Axel
Stroem came, too, and other neighbours from lower down--ay, from
right down in the village. And from across the hills came Oline, the
imperishable Oline.
This time, too, she brought news with her from her own village; 'twas
not Oline's way to come empty of gossip. Old Sivert's affairs had been
gone into, his accounts reckoned up, and the fortune remaining after
him come to nothing. Nothing!
Here Oline pressed her lips together and looked from one to another.
Well, was there not a sigh--would not the roof fall down? Eleseus was
the first to smile.
"Let's see--you're called after your Uncle Sivert, aren't you?" he
asked softly.
And little Sivert answered as softly again:
"That's so. But I made you a present of all that might come to me
after him."
"And how much was it?"
"Between five and ten thousand."
"_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 passed 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."