Part 14 (1/2)

He also had a talk with Paul; there were rumors that he was intending to take his money out of the Tore Peak resort. Paul's head was bent now, but he seemed even more hurt that the manufacturer should have paid a visit to the cotters to see how they were getting on.

”So that's where he's gone?” he said. ”Well, let him stay there, for all I care!”

The manufacturer cracked jokes to the very end. Of course he was a little depressed by the farewells, too, but he had to keep his family's courage up. His wife stood holding one of his arms with both hands, and the children clung to his other arm.

”I can't salute you,” the manufacturer said to us, smiling. ”I'm not allowed to say good-bye.”

The children rejoiced at this and cried, ”No, he can't have his arm back; Mummy, you hold him tight, too!”

”Come, come!” the father said. ”I've got to go to Scotland, just a short trip. And when you come home from the mountains, I'll be there, too.”

”Scotland? What are you going to Scotland for?” the children asked.

He twisted round and nodded to us.

”These women! All curiosity!” he said.

But none of his family laughed.

He continued to us:

”I was telling my wife a story about a rich man who was curious, too. He shot himself just to find out what comes after death. Ha, ha, ha! That's the height of curiosity, isn't it? Shooting yourself to find out what comes after death!”

But he could not make his family laugh at this tale, either. His wife stood still; her face was beautiful.

”So you're leaving now,” was all she said.

Mr. Brede's porter came out with his luggage; he had stayed at the farm for these three days in order to be at hand.

Then the manufacturer walked down through the field, accompanied by his wife and children.

I don't know--this man with his good humor and kindliness and money and everything, fond of his children, all in all to his wife--

Was he really everything to his wife?

The first evening he wasted time on a party, and every night he wasted time in snoring. And so the three days and nights went by....

XIX

It is very pleasant here at harvest time. Scythes are being sharpened in the field, men and women are at work; they go thinly clad and bareheaded, and call to one another and laugh; sometimes they drink from a bucket of whey, then set to work again. There is the familiar fragrance of hay, which penetrates my senses like a song of home, drawing me home, home, though I am not abroad. But perhaps I am abroad after all, far away from the soil where I have my roots.

Why, indeed, do I stay here any longer, at a resort full of schoolmistresses, with a host who has once more said farewell to sobriety?

Nothing is happening to me; I do not grow here. The others go out and lie on their backs; I steal off and find relish in myself, and feel poetry within me for the night. The world wants no, poetry; it wants only verses that have not been sung before.

And Norway wants no red-hot irons; only village smiths forge irons now, for the needs of the mob and the honor of the country.