And the days pass.
A blessed time for the soil, with sun and showers of rain; the crops
are looking well. The haymaking is nearly over now, and they have got
in a grand lot of hay; almost more than they can find room for. Some
is stowed away under overhanging rocks, in the stable, under the
flooring of the house itself; the shed at the side is emptied of
everything to make room for more hay. Inger herself works early and
late, a faithful helper and support. Isak takes advantage of every
fall of rain to put in a spell of roofing on the new barn, and get the
south wall at least fully done; once that is ready, they can stuff
in as much hay as they please. The work is going forward; they will
manage, never fear!
And their great sorrow and disaster--ay, it was there, the thing was
done, and what it brought must come. Good things mostly leave no
trace, but something always comes of evil. Isak took the matter
sensibly from the first. He made no great words about it, but asked
his wife simply: "How did you come to do it?" Inger made no answer to
that. And a little after, he spoke again: "Strangled it--was that what
you did?"
"Yes," said Inger.
"You shouldn't have done that."
"No," she agreed.
"And I can't make out how you ever could bring yourself to do it."
"She was all the same as myself," said Inger.
"How d'you mean?"
"Her mouth."
Isak thought over that for some time. "Ay, well," said he.
And nothing more was said about it at the time; the days went on,
peacefully as ever; there was all the mass of hay to be got in, and a
rare heavy crop all round, so that by degrees the thing slipped into
the background of their minds. But it hung over them, and over the
place, none the less. They could not hope that Oline would keep the
secret; it was too much to expect. And even if Oline said nothing,
others would speak; dumb witnesses would find a tongue; the walls of
the house, the trees around the little grave in the wood. Os-Anders
the Lapp would throw out hints; Inger herself would betray it,
sleeping or waking. They were prepared for the worst.
Isak took the matter sensibly--what else was there to do? He knew now
why Inger had always taken care to be left alone at every birth; to be
alone with her fears of how the child might be, and face the danger
with no one by. Three times she had done the same thing. Isak shook
his head, touched with pity for her ill fate--poor Inger. He learned
of the coming of the Lapp with the hare, and acquitted her. It led to
a great love between them, a wild love; they drew closer to each other
in their peril. Inger was full of a desperate sweetness towards him,
and the great heavy fellow, lumbering carrier of burdens, felt a greed
and an endless desire for her in himself. And Inger, for all that she
wore hide shoes like a Lapp, was no withered little creature as the
Lapland women are, but splendidly big. It was summer now, and she went
about barefooted, with her naked legs showing almost to the knee--Isak
could not keep his eyes from those bare legs.
All through the summer she went about singing bits of hymns, and she
taught Eleseus to say prayers; but there grew up in her an unchristian
hate of all Lapps, and she spoke plainly enough to any that passed.
Some one might have sent them again; like as not they had a hare in
their bag as before; let them go on their way, and no more about it.
"A hare? What hare?"
"Ho, you haven't heard perhaps what Os-Anders he did that time?"
"No."
"Well, I don't care who knows it--he came up here with a hare, when I
was with child."
"Dear, and that was a dreadful thing! And what happened?"
"Never you mind what happened, just get along with you, that's all.
Here's a bite of food, and get along."
"You don't happen to have an odd bit of leather anywhere, I could mend
my shoe with?"
"No I But I'll give you a bit of stick if you don't get out!"
Now a Lapp will beg as humbly as could be, but say no to him, and he
turns bad, and threatens. A pair of Lapps with two children came past
the place; the children were sent up to the house to beg, and came
back and said there was no one to be seen about the place. The four
of them stood there a while talking in their own tongue, then the man
went up to see. He went inside, and stayed. Then his wife went up,
and the children after; all of them stood inside the doorway, talking
Lapp. The man puts his head in the doorway and peeps through into the
room; no one there either. The clock strikes the hour, and the whole
family stand listening in wonder.
Inger must have had some idea there were strangers about; she comes
hurrying down the hillside, and seeing Lapps, strange Lapps into the
bargain, asks them straight out what they are doing there. "What do
you want in here? Couldn't you see there was no one at home?"
"H'm ..." says the man.
"Get out with you," says Inger again, "and go on your way."
The Lapps move out slowly, unwillingly. "We were just listening to
that clock of yours," says the man; "'tis a wonder to hear, that it
is."
"You haven't a bit of bread to spare?" says his wife.
"Where do you come from?" asks Inger.
"From the water over beyond. We've been walking all night."
"And where are you going to now?"
"Across the hills."
Inger makes up some food for them; when she comes out with it, the
woman starts begging again: a bit of stuff for a cap, a tuft of wool,
a stump of cheese--anything. Inger has no time to waste, Isak and the
children are in the hayfield. "Be off with you now," she says.
The woman tries flattery. "We saw your place up here, and the
cattle--a host of them, like the stars in the sky."
"Ay, a wonder," says the man. "You haven't a pair of old shoes to give
away to needy folk?"
Inger shuts the door of the house and goes back to her work on the
hillside. The man called after her--she pretended not to hear, and
walked on unheeding. But she heard it well enough: "You don't want to
buy any hares, maybe?"
There was no mistaking what he had said. The Lapp himself might have
spoken innocently enough; some one had told him, perhaps. Or he might
have meant it ill. Be that as it may, Inger took it as a warning--a
message of what was to come....
The days went on. The settlers were healthy folk; what was to come
would come; they went about their work and waited. They lived close to
each other like beasts of the forest; they slept and ate; already the
year was so far advanced that they had tried the new potatoes, and
found them large and floury. The blow that was to fall--why did it not
come? It was late in August already, soon it would be September;
were they to be spared through the winter? They lived in a constant
watchfulness; every night they crept close together in their cave,
thankful that the day had passed without event. And so the time went
on until one day in October, when the Lensmand came up with a man and
a bag. The Law stepped in through their doorway.
The investigation took some time. Inger was called up and examined
privately; she denied nothing. The grave in the wood was opened, and
its contents removed, the body being sent for examination. The little
body--it was dressed in Eleseus' christening robe, and a cap sewn over
with beads.
Isak seemed to find speech again. "Ay," said he, "it's as bad as well
can be with us now. I've said before--you ought never to have done
it."
"No," said Inger.
"How did you do it?"
Inger made no answer.
"That you could find it in your heart...."
"She was just the same as myself to look at. And so I took and twisted
her face round."
Isak shook his head slowly.
"And then she was dead," went on Inger, beginning to cry.
Isak was silent for a while. "Well, well, 'tis too late to be crying
over it now," said he.
"She had brown hair," sobbed Inger, "there at the back of her
head...."
And again no more was said.
Time went on as before. Inger was not locked up; the law was merciful.
Lensmand Heyerdahl asked her questions just as he might have spoken to
any one, and only said, "It's a great pity such things should happen
at all." Inger asked who had informed against her, but the Lensmand
answered that it was no one in particular; many had spoken of the
matter, and he had heard of it from several quarters. Had she not
herself said something about it to some Lapps?
Inger--ay, she had told some Lapps about Os-Anders, how he came and
brought a hare that summer, and gave her unborn child the hare-lip.
And wasn't it Oline who had sent the hare?--The Lensmand knew nothing
about that. But in any case, he could not think of putting down such
ignorant superstition in his report.
"But my mother saw a hare just before I was born," said Inger....
The barn was finished; a great big place it was, with hay-stalls on
both sides and a threshing-floor in the middle. The shed and the other
makeshift places were emptied now, and all the hay brought into the
barn; the corn was reaped, dried in stacks, and carted in. Inger
took up the carrots and turnips. All their crops were in now. And
everything might have been well with them--they had all they needed.
Isak had started on new ground again, before the frost came, to make a
bigger cornfield; Isak was a tiller of the soil. But in November Inger
said one day, "She would have been six months old now, and known us
all."
"'Tis no good talking of that now," said Isak.
When the winter came, Isak threshed his corn on the new
threshing-floor, and Inger helped him often, with an arm as quick to
the work as his own, while the children played in the haystalls at the
side. It was fine plump grain. Early in the new year the roads were
good, and Isak started carting down his loads of wood to the village;
he had his regular customers now, and the summer-dried wood fetched a
good price. One day he and Inger agreed that they should take the fine
bull-calf from Goldenhorns and drive it down to Fru Geissler, with
a cheese into the bargain. She was delighted, and asked how much it
cost.
"Nothing," said Isak. "The Lensmand paid for it before."
"Heaven bless him, and did he?" said Fru Geissler, touched at the
thought. She sent things up for Eleseus and Sivert in return--cakes
and picture-books and toys. When Isak came back and Inger saw the
things, she turned away and cried.
"What is it?" asked Isak.
"Nothing," answered Inger. "Only--she'd have been just a year now, and
able to see it all."
"Ay, but you know how it was with her," said Isak, for comfort's sake.
"And after all, it may be we'll get off easier than we thought. I've
found out where Geissler is now."
Inger looked up. "But how's that going to help us?"
"I don't know...."
Then Isak carried his corn to the mill and had it ground, and brought
back flour. Then he turned woodman again, cutting the wood to be ready
for next winter. His life was spent in this work and that, according
to the season; from the fields to the woods, and back to the fields
again. He had worked on the place for six years now, and Inger five;
all might have been well, if it were only allowed to last. But it was
not. Inger worked at her loom and tended the animals; also, she was
often to be heard singing hymns, but it was a pitiful singing; she was
like a bell without a tongue.
As soon as the roads were passable, she was sent for down to the
village to be examined. Isak had to stay behind. And being there all
alone, it came into his mind to go across to Sweden and find out
Geissler; the former Lensmand had been kind to them, and might perhaps
still lend a helping hand some way to the folks at Sellanraa. But
when Inger returned, she had asked about things herself, and learned
something of what her sentence was likely to be. Strictly speaking,
it was imprisonment for life, Paragraph I. But ... After all, she had
stood up in the court itself and simply confessed. The two witnesses
from the village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put
his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the
bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk;
they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such
things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great
men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always
devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no
cause to complain of the court; she made no mention of the hare, but
when she tearfully explained that she could not be so cruel to her
poor deformed child as to let it live, the magistrate nodded, quietly
and seriously.
"But," said he, "think of yourself; you have a hare-lip, and it has
not spoilt your life."
"No, thanks be to God," was all she said. She could not tell them of
all she had suffered in secret as a child, as a young girl.
But the magistrate must have understood something of what it meant; he
himself had a club-foot, and could not dance. "As to the sentence," he
said, "I hardly know. Really, it should be imprisonment for life, but
... I can't say, perhaps we might get it commuted, second or third
degree, fifteen to twelve years, or twelve to nine. There's a
commission sitting to reform the criminal code, make it more humane,
but the final decision won't be ready yet. Anyhow, we must hope for
the best," said he.
Inger came back in a state of dull resignation; they had not found it
necessary to keep her in confinement meantime. Two months passed; then
one evening, when Isak came back from fishing, the Lensmand and his
new assistant had been to Sellanraa.
Inger was cheerful, and welcomed her husband kindly, praising his
catch, though it was little he had brought home.
"What I was going to say--has any one been here?" he asked.
"Any one been? Why, who should there be?"
"There's fresh footmarks outside. Men with boots on."
"Why--there's been no one but the Lensmand and one other."
"What did they want?"
"You know that without asking."
"Did they come to fetch you?"
"Fetch me? No, 'twas only about the sentence. The Lord is kind, 'tis
not so bad as I feared."
"Ah," said Isak eagerly. "Not so long, maybe?"
"No. Only a few years."
"How many years?"
"Why, you might think it a lot, maybe. But I'm thankful to God all the
same."
Inger did not say how long it would be. Later that evening Isak asked
when they would be coming to fetch her away, but this she could not or
would not tell. She had grown thoughtful again, and talked of what was
to come; how they would manage she could not think--but she supposed
they would have to get Oline to come. And Isak had no better plan to
offer.
What had become of Oline, by the way? She had not been up this year as
she used to do. Was she going to stay away for ever, now that she had
upset everything for them? The working season passed, but Oline did
not come--did she expect them to go and fetch her? She would come
loitering up of herself, no doubt, the great lump of blubber, the
monster.
And at last one day she did. Extraordinary person--it was as nothing
whatever had occurred to make ill-feeling between them; she was even
knitting a pair of new stockings for Eleseus, she said.
"Just came up to see how you were getting on over here," said she.
And it turned out that she had brought her clothes and things up in a
sack, and left in the woods close by, ready to stay.
That evening Inger took her husband aside and said: "Didn't you say
something about seeking out Geissler? 'Tis in the slack time now."
"Ay," said Isak. "Now that Oline is come, I can go off tomorrow
morning, first thing."
Inger was grateful, and thanked him. "And take your money with you,"
she said--"all you have in the place."
"Why, can't you keep the money here?"
"No," said she.
Inger made up a big parcel of food at once, and Isak woke while it was
yet night, and got ready to start. Inger went out on the door-slab to
see him off; she did not cry or complain, but only said:
"They may be coming for me now any day."
"You don't know when?"
"No, I can't say. And I don't suppose it will be just yet, but
anyhow.... If only you could get hold of Geissler, perhaps he might be
able to say something."
What could Geissler do to help them now? Nothing. But Isak went.
Inger--oh, she knew, no doubt, more than she had been willing to say.
It might be, too, that she herself had sent for Oline. When Isak came
from Sweden, Inger was gone and Oline was there with the two children.
It was dark news for a homecoming. Isak's voice was louder than usual
as he asked: "Is she gone?"
"Ay," said Oline.
"What day was it?"
"The day after you left." And Isak knew now that Inger had got him out
of the way on purpose--that was why she had persuaded him to take the
money with him. Oh, but she might have kept a little for herself, for
that long journey!
But the children could think of nothing else but the little pig Isak
had brought with him. It was all he had for his trouble; the address
he had was out of date, and Geissler was no longer in Sweden, but had
returned to Norway and was now in Trondhjem. As for the pig, Isak
had carried it in his arms all the way, feeding it with milk from a
bottle, and sleeping with it on his breast among the hills. He had
been looking forward to Inger's delight when she saw it; now, Eleseus
and Sivert played with it, and it was a joy to them. And Isak,
watching them, forgot his trouble for the moment. Moreover, Oline had
a message from the Lensmand; the State had at last given its decision
in the matter of the land at Sellanraa. Isak had only to go down to
the office and pay the amount. This was good news, and served to keep
him from the worst depth of despair. Tired and worn out as he was,
he packed up some food in a bag and set off for the village at once.
Maybe he had some little hope of seeing Inger once again before she
left there.
But he was disappointed. Inger was gone--for eight years. Isak felt
himself in a mist of darkness and emptiness; heard only a word here
and there of all the Lensmand said--a pity such things should happen
... hoped it might be a lesson to her ... reform and be a better woman
after, and not kill her children any more!
Lensmand Heyerdahl had married the year before. His wife had no
intention of ever being a mother--no children for her, thank you! And
she had none.
"And now," said the Lensmand, "this business about Sellanraa. At
last I am in a position to settle it definitely. The Department is
graciously pleased to approve the sale of the land, more or less
according to the terms I suggested."
"H'm," said Isak.
"It has been a lengthy business, but I have the satisfaction of
knowing that my endeavours have not been altogether fruitless. The
terms I proposed have been agreed to almost without exception."
"Without exception," said Isak, and nodded.
"Here are the title-deeds. You can have the transfer registered at the
first session."
"Ay," said Isak. "And how much is there to pay?"
"Ten _Daler_ a year. The Department has made a slight alteration
here--ten _Daler_ per annum instead of five. You have no objection to
that, I presume?"
"As long as I can manage to pay ..." said Isak.
"And for ten years." Isak looked up, half frightened.
"Those are the terms--the Department insists. Even then, it's no price
really for all that land, cleared and cultivated as it is now."
Isak had the ten _Daler_ for that year--it was the money he had got
for his loads of wood, and for the cheeses Inger had laid by. He paid
the amount, and had still a small sum left.
"It's a lucky thing for you the Department didn't get to hear about
your wife," said the Lensmand. "Or they might have sold to some one
else."
"Ay," said Isak. He asked about Inger. "Is it true that she's gone
away for eight years?"
"That is so. And can't be altered--the law must take its course. As
a matter of fact, the sentence is extraordinarily light. There's one
thing you must do now--that is, to set up clear boundaries between
your land and the State's. A straight, direct line, following the
marks I set up on the spot, and entered in my register at the time.
The timber cleared from the boundary line becomes your property. I
will come up some time and have a look at what you have done."
Isak trudged back to his home.