Growth of the Soil Part 5

And Inger could only shake her head and murmur: "Well, I never did see such a man!"

Isak was no longer littleness and humility; he had paid, as it were, like a gentleman, for Goldenhorns. "Here you are," he could say. "I've brought along a horse; we can call it quits."

He stood there, upright and agile, against his wont; s.h.i.+fted the plough once more, picked it up and carried it with one hand and stood it up against the wall. Oh, he could manage an estate! He took up the other things: the harrow, the grindstone, a new fork he had bought, all the costly agricultural implements, treasures of the new home, a grand array. All requisite appliances--nothing was lacking.

"H'm. As for that loom, why, we'll manage that too, I dare say, as long as I've my health. And there's your cotton print; they'd none but blue, so I took that."

There was no end to the things he brought. A bottomless well, rich in all manner of things, like a city store.

Says Inger: "I wish Oline could have seen all this when she was here."

Just like a woman! Sheer senseless vanity--as if that mattered! Isak sniffed contemptuously. Though perhaps he himself would not have been displeased if Oline had been there to see.

The child was crying.

"Go in and look after the boy," said Isak. "I'll look to the horse."

He takes out the horse and leads it into the stable: ay, here is Isak putting his horse into the stable. Feeds it and strokes it and treats it tenderly. And how much was owing now, on that horse and cart?--Everything, the whole sum, a mighty debt; but it should all be paid that summer, never fear. He had stacks of cordwood to pay with, and some building bark from last year's cut, not to speak of heavy timber. There was time enough. But later on, when the pride and glory had cooled off a little, there were bitter hours of fear and anxiety; all depended on the summer and the crops; how the year turned out.

The days now were occupied in field work and more field work; he cleared new bits of ground, getting out roots and stones; ploughing, manuring, harrowing, working with pick and spade, breaking lumps of soil and crumbling them with hand and heel; a tiller of the ground always, laying out fields like velvet carpets. He waited a couple of days longer--there was a look of rain about--and then he sowed his corn.

For generations back, into forgotten time, his fathers before him had sowed corn; solemnly, on a still, calm evening, best with a gentle fall of warm and misty rain, soon after the grey goose flight.

Potatoes were a new thing, nothing mystic, nothing religious; women and children could plant them--earth-apples that came from foreign parts, like coffee; fine rich food, but much like swedes and mangolds.

Corn was nothing less than bread; corn or no corn meant life or death.

Isak walked bareheaded, in Jesu name, a sower. Like a tree-stump with hands to look at, but in his heart like a child. Every cast was made with care, in a spirit of kindly resignation. Look! the tiny grains that are to take life and grow, shoot up into ears, and give more corn again; so it is throughout all the earth where corn is sown.

Palestine, America, the valleys of Norway itself--a great wide world, and here is Isak, a tiny speck in the midst of it all, a sower. Little showers of corn flung out fanwise from his hand; a kindly clouded sky, with a promise of the faintest little misty rain.

Chapter IV

It was the slack time between the seasons, but the woman Oline did not come.

Isak was free of the soil now; he had two scythes and two rakes ready for the haymaking; he made long bottom boards for the cart for getting in the hay, and procured a couple of runners and some suitable wood to make a sledge for the winter. Many useful things he did. Even to shelves. He set up a pair of shelves inside the house, as an excellent place to keep various things, such as an almanac--he had bought one at last--and ladles and vessels not in use. Inger thought a deal of those two shelves.

Inger was easily pleased; she thought a great deal of everything.

There was Goldenhorns, for instance, no fear of her running away now, with the calf and bull to play with; she ran about in the woods all day long. The goats too were thriving, their heavy udders almost dragging on the ground. Inger made a long robe of blue cotton print, and a little cap of the same stuff, as pretty as could be--and that was for the christening. The boy himself watched her at work many a time; a blessed wonder of a boy he was, and if she was so bent on calling him Eleseus, why, Isak supposed she must have her way. When the robe was finished, it had a long train to it, nigh on a yard and a half of cotton print, and every inch of it money spent; but what of that--the child was their first-born.

"What about those beads of yours?" said Isak. "If as they're ever to be used at all...."

Oh, but Inger had thought of them already, those beads of hers. Trust a mother for that. Inger said nothing, and was very proud. The beads were none so many; they would not make a necklace for the boy, but they would look pretty st.i.tched on the front of his cap, and there they should be.

But Oline did not come.

If it had not been for the cattle, they could have gone off all three of them, and come back a few days later with the child properly christened. And if it had not been for that matter of getting wedded, Inger might have gone by herself.

"If we put off the wedding business for a bit?" said Isak. But Inger was loth to put it off; it would be ten or twelve years at least before Eleseus was old enough to stay behind and look to the milking while they went.

No, Isak must use his brains to find a way. The whole thing had come about somehow without their knowing; maybe the wedding business was just as important as the christening--how should he know? The weather looked like drought--a thoroughly wicked drought; if the rain did not come before long, their crops would be burnt up. But all was in the hand of G.o.d. Isak made ready to go down to the village and find some one to come up. All those miles again!

And all that fuss just to be wed and christened. Ay, outlying folks had many troubles, great and small.

At last Oline did come....

And now they were wedded and christened, everything decently in order; they had remembered to have the wedding first, so the child could be christened as of a wedded pair. But the drought kept on, and the tiny cornfields were parched, those velvet carpets parched--and why? 'Twas all in the hand of G.o.d. Isak mowed his bits of meadow; there was little gra.s.s on them for all he had manured them well that spring. He mowed and mowed on the hillsides, farther and farther out; mowing and turning and carting home loads of hay, as if he would never tire,--for he had a horse already, and a well-stocked farm. But by mid-July he had to cut the corn for green fodder, there was no help for it. And now all depended on the potato crop.

What was that about potatoes? Were they just a thing from foreign parts, like coffee; a luxury, an extra? Oh, the potato is a lordly fruit; drought or downpour, it grows and grows all the same. It laughs at the weather, and will stand anything; only deal kindly with it, and it yields fifteen-fold again. Not the blood of a grape, but the flesh of a chestnut, to be boiled or roasted, used in every way. A man may lack corn to make bread, but give him potatoes and he will not starve.

Roast them in the embers, and there is supper; boil them in water, and there's a breakfast ready. As for meat, it's little is needed beside.

Potatoes can be served with what you please; a dish of milk, a herring, is enough. The rich eat them with b.u.t.ter; poor folk manage with a tiny pinch of salt. Isak could make a feast of them on Sundays, with a mess of cream from Goldenhorns' milk. Poor despised potato--a blessed thing!

But now--things look black even for the potato crop.

Isak looked at the sky unnumbered times in the day. And the sky was blue. Many an evening it looked as if a shower were coming. Isak would go in and say, "Like as not we'll be getting that rain after all." And a couple of hours later all would be as hopeless as before.

The drought had lasted seven weeks now, and the heat was serious; the potatoes stood all the time in flower; flowering marvellously, unnaturally. The cornfields looked from a distance as if under snow.

Where was it all to end? The almanac said nothing--almanacs nowadays were not what they used to be; an almanac now was no good at all. Now it looked like rain again, and Isak went in to Inger: "We'll have rain this night, G.o.d willing."

"Is it looking that way?"

"Ay. And the horse is s.h.i.+vering a bit, like they will."

Inger glanced towards the door and said, "Ay, you see, 'twill come right enough."

A few drops fell. Hours pa.s.sed, they had their supper, and when Isak went out in the night to look, the sky was blue.

"Well, well," said Inger; "anyway, 'twill give the last bit of lichen another day to dry," said she to comfort him all she could.

Isak had been getting lichen, as much as he could, and had a fine lot, all of the best. It was good fodder, and he treated it as he would hay, covering it over with bark in the woods. There was only a little still left out, and now, when Inger spoke of it, he answered despairingly, as if it were all one, "I'll not take it in if it is dry."

"Isak, you don't mean it!" said Inger.

And next day, sure enough, he did not take it in. He left it out and never touched it, just as he had said. Let it stay where it was, there'd be no rain anyway; let it stay where it was in G.o.d's name!

He could take it in some time before Christmas, if so be as the sun hadn't burnt it all up to nothing.

Isak was deeply and thoroughly offended. It was no longer a pleasure and a delight to sit outside on the door-slab and look out over his lands and be the owner of it all. There was the potato field flowering madly, and drying up; let the lichen stay where it was--what did he care? That Isak! Who could say; perhaps he had a bit of a sly little thought in his mind for all his stolid simpleness; maybe he knew what he was doing after all, trying to tempt the blue sky now, at the change of the moon.

That evening it looked like rain once more. "You ought to have got that lichen in," said Inger.

"What for?" said Isak, looking all surprised.

"Ay, you with your nonsense--but it might be rain after all."

"There'll be no rain this year, you can see for yourself."

But for all that, it grew curiously dark in the night. They could see through the gla.s.s window that it was darker--ay, and as if something beat against the panes, something wet, whatever it might be. Inger woke up. "'Tis rain! look at the window-panes."