Part 54 (1/2)

”My father, and his father, and all of our family I have ever known, we've all had something in us so that we've been driven to improve the soil, without thinking of our own comfort. But it certainly never entered the mind of one of us that we should ever hear it ill spoken of--and by one of our own people too!” La.s.se spoke with his face turned away--as did the Almighty when He was wroth with His people; and Pelle felt as though he were a hateful renegade, as bad as bad could be. But nevertheless he would not give in.

”I should be no use at all here,” he said apologetically, gazing in the direction of the sea. ”I don't believe in it.”

”No, you've cut yourself loose from it all, you have!” retorted La.s.se bitterly. ”But you'll repent it some day, in the long run. Life among the strangers there isn't all splendor and enjoyment.”

Pelle did not answer; he felt at that moment too much of a man to bandy words. He contained himself, and they went onward in silence.

”Well, of course, it isn't an estate,” said La.s.se suddenly, in order to take the sting out of further criticism. Pelle was still silent.

Round the house the land was cultivated, and all round the cultivated land the luxuriant heather revealed disappearing traces of cultivation, and obliterated furrows.

”This was a cornfield once,” said Pelle.

”Well, to think of your seeing that right off!” exclaimed La.s.se, half sarcastically, half in real admiration. ”The deuce of an eye you've got, you truly have! I should certainly have noticed nothing particular about the heath--if I had not known. Yes, that has been under cultivation, but the heath has won it back again! That was under my predecessor, who took in more than he could work, so that it ruined him. But you can see now that something can be done with the land!” La.s.se pointed to a patch of rye, and Pelle was obliged to recognize that it looked very well. But through the whole length of the field ran high ridges of broken stone, which told him what a terrible labor this soil demanded before it could be brought under cultivation. Beyond the rye lay newly-broken soil, which looked like a dammed-up ice-field; the plough had been driven through mere patches of soil. Pelle looked at it all, and it made him sad to think of his father.

La.s.se himself was undismayed.

”As it is, it needs two to hold the plough. Karna is very strong, but even so it's as though one's arms would be torn from one's body every time the plough strikes. And most of it has to be broken up with pick and drill--and now and again it takes a bit of a sneeze. I use dynamite; it's more powerful than powder, and it bites down into the ground better,” he said proudly.

”How much is under cultivation here?” asked Pelle.

”With meadow and garden, almost fourteen acres; but it will be more before the year is out.”

”And two families have been ruined already by those fourteen acres,”

said Karna, who had come out to call them in to dinner.

”Yes, yes; G.o.d be merciful to them--and now we get the fruit of their labors! The parish won't take the farm away again--not from us,” he said. La.s.se spoke in a tone full of self-reliance. Pelle had never seen him stand so upright.

”I can never feel quite easy about it,” said Karna; ”it's as though one were ploughing up churchyard soil. The first who was turned out by the parish hanged himself, so they say.”

”Yes, he had a hut on the heath there--where you see the elder-trees--but it's fallen to pieces since then. I'm so glad it didn't happen in the house.” La.s.se shuddered uncomfortably. ”People say he haunts the place when any misfortune is in store for those that come after him.”

”Then the house was built later?” asked Pelle, astonished, for it had such a tumble-down appearance.

”Yes, my predecessor built that. He got the land from the parish free for twenty years, provided he built a house and tilled a tonde of land a year. Those were not such bad conditions. Only he took in too much at a time; he was one of those people who rake away fiercely all the morning and have tired themselves out before midday. But he built the house well”--and La.s.se kicked the thin mud-daubed wall--”and the timber-work is good. I think I shall break a lot of stone when the winter comes; the stone must be got out of the way, and it isn't so bad to earn a few hundred kroner. And in two or three years we will make the old house into a barn and build ourselves a new house--eh, Karna? With a cellar underneath and high steps outside, like they have at Stone Farm. It could be of unhewn granite, and I can manage the walls myself.”

Karna beamed with joy, but Pelle could not enter into their mood. He was disillusioned; the descent from his dream to this naked reality was too great. And a feeling rose within him of dull resentment against this endless labor, which, inexperienced though he was, was yet part of his very being by virtue of the lives of ten, nay, twenty generations. He himself had not waged the hard-fought war against the soil, but he had as a matter of course understood everything that had to do with tilling the soil ever since he could crawl, and his hands had an inborn apt.i.tude for spade and rake and plough. But he had not inherited his father's joy in the soil; his thoughts had struck out in a new direction. Yet this endless bondage to the soil lay rooted in him, like a hatred, which gave him a survey unknown to his father. He was reasonable; he did not lose his head at the sight of seventy acres of land, but asked what they contained. He himself was not aware of it, but his whole being was quick with hostility toward the idea of spending one's strength in this useless labor; and his point of view was as experienced as though he had been La.s.se's father.

”Wouldn't you have done better to buy a cottage-holding with twelve or fourteen acres of land, and that in a good state of cultivation?” he asked.

La.s.se turned on him impatiently. ”Yes, and then a man might stint and save all his life, and never get beyond cutting off his fly to mend his seat; he'd most likely spend twice what he made! What the deuce! I might as well have stayed where I was. Here, it's true, I do work harder and I have to use my brains more, but then there's a future before me. When I've once got the place under cultivation this will be a farm to hold its own with any of them!” La.s.se gazed proudly over his holding; in his mind's eye it was waving with grain and full of prime cattle.

”It would carry six horses and a score or two of cows easily,” he said aloud. ”That would bring in a nice income! What do you think, Karna?”

”I think the dinner will be cold,” said Karna, laughing. She was perfectly happy.

At dinner La.s.se proposed that Pelle should send his clothes to be washed and mended at home. ”You've certainly got enough to do without that,”

he said indulgently. ”Butcher Jensen goes to market every Sat.u.r.day; he'd take it for you and put it down by the church, and it would be odd if on a Sunday no one from the heath went to church, who could bring the bundle back to us.”

But Pelle suddenly turned stubborn and made no reply.