Growth of the Soil Part 10

Isak gathers stones and fills up the dangerous cleft; a wicked place; it shall break no more sheep's thighs! Isak wears leather braces; he takes them off now and fastens them round the sheep's middle, as a support for the udder. Then, lifting the animal on his shoulders, he sets off home, the lamb at his heels.

After that--splints and tar bandages. In a few days' time the patient begins twitching the foot of the wounded leg; it is the fracture aching as it grows together. Ay, all things getting well again--until next time something happens.

The daily round; little matters that are all important to the settler-folk themselves. Oh, they are not trifles after all, but things of fate, making for their happiness and comfort and well-being, or against them.

In the slack time between the seasons, Isak smooths down some new tree-trunks he has thrown; to be used for something or other, no doubt. Also he digs out a number of useful stones and gets them down to the house; as soon as there are stones enough, he builds a wall of them. A year or so back, Inger would have been curious, wondering what her man was after with all this--now, she seemed for the most part busied with her own work, and asked no questions. Inger is busy as ever, but she has taken to singing, which is something new, and she is teaching Eleseus an evening prayer; this also is something new. Isak misses her questioning; it was her curiosity and her praise of all he did that made him the contented man, the incomparable man he was. But now, she goes by, saying nothing, or at most with a word or so that he is working himself to death. "She's troubled after that last time, for all she says," thinks Isak to himself.

Oline comes over to visit them once more. If all had been as before she would have been welcome, but now it is different. Inger greets her from the first with some ill-will; be it what it may, there is something that makes Inger look on her as an enemy.

"I'd half a thought I'd be coming just at the right time again," says Oline, with delicate meaning.

"How d'you mean?"

"Why, for the third one to be christened. How is it with you now?"

"Nay," says Inger. "For that matter you might have saved yourself the trouble."

"Ho."

Oline falls to praising the children, so fine and big they've grown; and Isak taking over more ground, and going to build again, by the look of things--there's no end to things with them; a wonderful place, and hard to find its like. "And what is he going to build this time?"

"Ask him yourself," says Inger. "I don't know."

"Nay," says Oline. "'Tis no business of mine. I just looked along to see how things were with you here; it's a pleasure and delight for me to see. As for Goldenhorns, I'll not ask nor speak of her--she's fallen into proper ways, as any one can see."

They talk for a while companionably; Inger is no longer harsh. The clock on the wall strikes with its sweet little note. Oline looks up with tears in her eyes; never in all her humble life did she hear such a thing--'tis like church and organ music, says Oline. Inger feels herself rich and generous-minded towards her poor relation, and says: "Come into the next room and see my loom."

Oline stays all day. She talks to Isak, and praises all his doings.

"And I hear you've bought up the land for miles on every side.

Couldn't you have got it for nothing, then? There's none as I can see would take it from you."

Isak had been feeling the need of praise, and is the better for it now. Feels a man again. "I'm buying from the Government," says Isak.

"Ay, Government. But they've no call to be grasping in a deal, surely?

What are you building now?"

"Why, I don't know. Nothing much, anyway."

"Ay, you're getting on; building and getting on you are. Painted doors to the house, and a clock on the wall--'tis a new grand house you're building, I suspect."

"You, with your foolish talk ..." says Isak. But he is pleased all the same, and says to Inger: "Couldn't you make a bit of a dish of nice cream custard for one that comes a-visiting?"

"That I can't," says Inger, "for I've churned all there was."

"'Tis no foolish talk," puts in Oline hurriedly; "I'm but a simple woman asking to know. And if it's not a new grand house, why, 'twill be a new big barn, I dare say; and why not? With all these fields and meadow lands, fine and full of growth; ay, and full of milk and honey, as the Bible says."

Isak asks: "How's things looking your way--crops and the like?"

"Why, 'tis there as it is till now. If only the Lord don't set fire to it all again this year, and burn up the lot--Heaven forgive me I should say the word. 'Tis all in His hand and almighty power. But we've nothing our parts that's any way like this place of yours to compare, and that's the solemn truth."

Inger asks after other relatives, her Uncle Sivert in particular. He is the great man of the family, and owns rich fisheries; 'tis almost a wonder how he can find a way to spend all he has. The women talk of Uncle Sivert, and Isak and his doings somehow drop out of sight; no one asks any more about his building now, so at last he says:

"Well, if you want to know, 'tis a bit of a barn with a thres.h.i.+ng-floor I'm trying to get set up."

"Just as I thought," says Oline. "Folk with real sound sense in their heads, they do that way. Fore-thought and back-thought and all as it should be. There's not a pot nor pitcher in the place you haven't thought of. A thres.h.i.+ng-floor, you said?"

Isak is a child. Oline's flattering words go to his head, and he answers something foolishly with fine words: "As to that new house of mine, there must be a thres.h.i.+ng-floor in the same, necessarily. 'Tis my intention so."

"A thres.h.i.+ng-floor?" says Oline, wagging her head.

"And where's the sense of growing corn on the place if we've nowhere to thresh it?"

"Ay, 'tis as I say, not a thing as could be but you have it all there in your head."

Inger is suddenly out of humour again. The talk between the other two somehow displeases her, and she breaks in:

"Cream custard indeed! And where's the cream to come from? Fish it up in the river, maybe?"

Oline hastens to make peace. "Inger, Lord bless you, child, don't speak of such a thing. Not a word of cream nor custard either--an old creature like me that does but idle about from house to neighbour...!"

Isak sits for a while, then up, and saying suddenly: "Here am I doing nothing middle of the day, and stones to fetch and carry for that wall of mine!"

"Ay, a wall like that'll need a mighty lot of stone, to be sure."

"Stone?" says Isak. "Tis like as if there'd never be enough."

When Isak is gone, the two womenfolk get on nicely together for a while; they sit for hours talking of this and that. In the evening, Oline must go out and see how their live stock has grown: cows, a bull, two calves, and a swarm of sheep and goats. "I don't know where it'll ever end," says Oline, with her eyes turned heavenwards.

And Oline stays the night.

Next morning she goes off again. Once more she has a bundle of something with her. Isak is working in the quarry, and she goes another way round, so that he shall not see.

Two hours later, Oline comes back again, steps into the house, and asks at once: "Where is Isak?"

Inger is was.h.i.+ng up. Oline should have pa.s.sed by the quarry where Isak was at work, and the children with him; Inger at once guesses something wrong.

"Isak? What d'you want with him?"

"Want with him?--why, nothing. Only I didn't see him to say good-bye."

Silence. Oline sits down on a bench without being asked, drops down as if her legs refuse to carry her. Her manner is intended to show that something serious is the matter; she is overcome.

Inger can control herself no longer. Her face is all terror and fury as she says:

"I saw what you sent me by Os-Anders. Ay, 'twas a nice thing to send!"

"Why ... what...?"

"That hare."