When he got to the top of the stairway the dog jumped up at him madly, howling bitterly, as if someone were steadily tramping on her tail. The winter darkness had fallen early, and it was as black as pitch inside, the windows snowed up; he had to feel his way about. But he had not taken a full step across the floor before he struck his foot against some unwonted obstacle. He swore, as was his habit whenever he lost his footing—what the devil had he fallen over?
It took him a long time to find the matches, and when he had found them the lamp proved to be empty, the wick burned down, the glass black with smoke. But when he had filled the lamp and the wick had begun drawing again, it was possible even in this feeble light to make out some indication of what had happened in Summerhouses in his absence. It was his wife. She was lying dead there in her congealed blood. It looked as if she had got out of bed for something, and, too weak to climb in again, had collapsed by the bedside; in her hand a wet towel, blood-stained. The condition of the body showed plainly what had happened. And when he looked into the bed, whither the dog had suddenly leaped, he saw peeping from under the dog’s belly a small, yellow-brown face, wrinkled, with closed eyes, like a new-born old man, and over this face slight quivers were playing, feeble and spasmodic, and from this unfortunate there came, if he heard aright, an occasional very faint whimper.
The dog strove to spread herself as closely as possible over the little body that she had taken to foster and given the only thing she possessed: the warmth of her lousy body, hungry and emaciated; when Bjartur came nearer to look more closely, she showed her teeth, as if wishing him to understand that it was not he who owned this child. The mother had wrapped the poor creature in a woollen rag as soon as she had cut the cord, and had probably risen from her bed to heat some water to bathe it with, for on the range stood a pan full of water, long since cold above the dead fire. But the infant was still hanging on to life in the warmth from the animal’s body.
Bjartur lifted the body of his wife from the floor, and after laying it in the empty bedstead opposite their own bed, wiped off as much of the blood as he could. It cost him a good deal of effort to straighten the corpse out, for the limbs had stiffened in the position in which the body had lain; the arms obstinately refused to lie in a cross over her breast, the dull eyes would not close, the right eye especially, the one with a cast—her stubbornness again. But Bjartur trusted himself even less for what was now of greater importance, and that was to quicken the spark of life still left in the new-born infant. This put him in no mean quandary, the independent man, for experienced hands were needed, probably female hands; he himself dared not have anything to do with it Must he then ask help of other people? The last thing that he had impressed upon his wife was not to ask help of other people—an independent man who resorts to other people for help gives himself over into the power of the archfiend; and now this same humiliation was to be pronounced on him; on Bjartur of Summerhouses; but he was determined to pay whatever was asked of him.
RAUTHSMYRI
”WELL, at least you’re getting about a bit these days, my lad,” said Bjartur to himself as on the evening of the same day he knocked at the kitchen door at Rauthsmyri.
“So it’s you at last, is it?” said the workman who came to the door. He was in his stocking feet and had in his hand some steaming cloth that he was fulling—the domestic crafts were in full swing. ‘We thought you were dead.’
“Far from it,” replied Bjartur. ‘I’ve been over the mountains for sheep.”
“Are you sure you’re right in the head?” asked the other.
“I lost a ewe.”
“It’s like you to leave all your other sheep in danger to go chasing over the mountains after one ewe.”
“Well, I may be wrong, mate, but as far as I know it says in the Bible that one sheep on the mountains is worth more than a hundred at home,” said Bjartur, who had his own fondness for those passages in the Scriptures which mention sheep. “And besides, one doesn’t live next door to the local potentate for nothing if the weather happens to break.”
Such, indeed, proved to have been the case: the Rauthsmyri herds had taken Bjartur’s sheep in with their own the evening that the storm broke, but had not been ordered by the Bailiff to drive them back home tomorrow morning and to find out at the same time whether their owner was dead or not. “Did you find the ewe?”
“No, there wasn’t a damned thing to be seen, except a hot-spring bird in the springs south of the Blue Mountains,” replied Bjartur. “But by the way, have the lambs taken to hay yet?”
Oh yes, they’d had a sniff or two at the hay, said the workman, and gave Bjartur to understand that these valiant lambs of his would soon learn the art of eating. But while they were discussing the matter, the housekeeper, Gudny, came to the door, for she had recognized Bjartur’s voice; she bade him now come into the kitchen, and would he like a bowl of porridge and a rib of horse? He scraped the snow from his clothes with his knife and dusted his hat against the doorpost.
It was a big kitchen, used partly as a living-room; the workmen were fulling or busy with horsehair, the servant-girls with their wool, and the dogs were lying full-length on the floor, all old friends of Bjartur’s, dogs included. Bjartur was very hungry. They were all discussing the unexpected blizzard and its effect on the livestock; “we can look for a dirty January,” said the womenfolk, “when it’s started already and Advent not here yet. How is Rosa keeping?”
“Urn,” said Bjartur with his mouth full, “it was a trifle rough on the other side of Glacier River, but I’ve seen it worse many atime.”
“On the other side of Glacier River?” asked the workmen in surprise. “You aren’t trying to make us believe that you crossed Glacier River, are you?”
“Why not? Many a brook can be waded, even if it is up on the moors,” replied the crofter, “and maybe we aren’t all such hearth-hounds as the lot of you.”
“Do you mean to tell us that you’ve been fooling about up on the moors, and poor Rosa in the condition they say she is?” cried the housekeeper compassionately.
“I please myself what I do, Gunsa lass,” retorted Bjartur with a scornful grin. “I’m my own boss these days, you know, and need give account to no one, you least of all.” And throwing the horse-meat he had been given to one of the dogs as he spoke, he added: “But by the way, do you think our good Madam has gone off to bed yet?”
The Bailiff’s wife came sailing in, high of head and full of bosom, looked inquiringly at Bjartur through spectacles that ploughed creases in the fat, red cheeks, and switched on the cold, cultured, aristocratic smile that in spite of ideals and poetic talent built such a high, wide wall between her and those whose well-being was less dependent on romanticism. Bjartur thanked her heartily for the horse-meat and the porridge.
“Surely you haven’t sent for me to thank me for a ladle of porridge,” she said, without referring to the horse-meat.
“No, oh no, not exactly,” replied Bjartur. “It was something else I was wanting actually.” He was ashamed to ask of course, but he was wondering whether she wouldn’t be able to give him a little help with something, if he could have a few words with her in private—“and besides, I have to thank you and your husband for my sheep, which your lads got in all ready for me while I was away on the round-up.”
The poetess intimated that Bjartur ought to be sufficiently well acquainted with the household here to know that she never concerned herself with the livestock, but left it to more suitable people.
‘Well I know it,” said Bjartur, “and actually I’m fully determined to fetch them tomorrow—I only hope they don’t eat the poor Bailiff out of house and home tonight. But if he’s short in spring, bless him, he can always come along to me for a pack-load of lamb’s hay later on.”
“I’d rather you told me how dear Rosa is getting on,” said the poetess.
“Yes, I was coming to that,” said Bjartur. “In fact I only asked to see you because I had something to tell you. Noth
ing important, of course.”
The Bailiff’s wife looked at him as if half expecting that he was about to ask her for something, whereupon the soul within her receded like a star, far out into the frozen wastes of infinity, and only the cold smile remained on earth.
“I hope for your sake it’s nothing my husband may not hear,” said she with much determination.
“Oh, no,” replied Bjartur, “it takes more than a trifle to upset the Bailiff, bless him.”
Madam showed Bjartur into Bailiff Jon of Myri’s sanctum, one of the smallest rooms in this great house. The pair had long since given up the habit of sleeping together; Madam slept in a separate room with her little daughter Audur. This little room of the Bailiff’s would have resembled nothing so much as the miserable garret where a pauper allotted by the parish is left with little honour to his own devices, had it not been for one of the walls, which was completely hidden by bookshelves carrying volumes of parliamentary transactions bound in black, with the year on a white label. The bed, nailed to the wall, was fashioned like a peasant’s of unplaned boards and covered with a ragged self-coloured blanket. On the floor stood a blue-glazed spittoon shaped like an hour-glass; above the bed a crudely made shelf on which stood a flowered porridge-basin, a heavy china cup, and a bottle of liniment for rheumatism; by one wall a rude table bearing writing materials of indifferent quality, and beneath the window a huge chest; in front of the table a wretched old armchair without a cover, tied up with string where the joints had sprung. On the wall there hung a bright-coloured picture of the Redeemer on the Cross, another, equally bright, of the Czar Nicholas, and a calendar bearing the name of the merchant in Vik.
Bailiff Jon was lying on his bed with his hands under his head and his spectacles on the tip of his nose; had just laid aside the latest batch of newspapers. He greeted his visitor with a vague snort, careful not to lose any of the precious tobacco juice that had been accumulating in his mouth for some time now. It was his custom not to spit too quickly, but to derive as much real benefit as possible from the juice he managed to suck from every quid. He was dressed much the same as a beggar, in a shapeless old jacket, patched out of recognition and fastened at the neck with a safety-pin. Besides the various forms of dirt that had stained it for some time past there were some fresh patches of earth and some tufts of wool on it which indicated that he had just come in from the sheep-cotes. His trousers were so worn that the original cloth no longer held the patches and was giving way at the stitches. Turned up over the bottoms was a pair of yellowish socks, undyed, and the down-at-heel horsehide shoes on his feet lent support to the theory that he was newly returned from a thoroughgoing inspection of the stables, stronger testimony being provided by the smell. In clothing and general appearance Bjartur of Summerhouses was far superior to this tramplike Bailiff.
Was there then nothing individual about the man, nothing to distinguish him from the crofter’s half-wrought appearance? There was. In spite of the tramp’s equipment, no one could doubt even at first sight, that this must be a man who ruled over others and held their fate in his hands; his lips wrinkled about the quid of tobacco as an unconscious symbol that he released nothing before he had sucked everything of value out of it. The peculiarly clear eyes, hard and cold grey; the regular features; the breadth of the brow beneath the strong, dark hair, grey as yet only at the temples; the shapely lineament of jaw and chin; the pale complexion that spoke of a sedentary life; and last but not least the small, shapely hands, strangely white and soft in spite of the obvious lack of care—all these were outward manifestations of a definite personality, a nature more forceful and more complex than is usually found among those who have to depend on their own toil to win their meagre living.
Bjartur offered his hand in greeting to his former employer, and the Bailiff gave him as usual his thumb and first finger, carefully reserving the other three clenched in his palm, without saying a word. During his twenty years’ practice Bjartur had evolved a technique of dealing with the Bailiff that was entirely his own. This technique was based on the defensive attitude of an insignificant youth towards a suspicious despot, an attitude that, as the years go by, develops into the conscientious man’s passionate desire to assert himself against the superior power, then passes finally into persecution, into unremitting tension, always militant, which eyes only its own cause and refuses to meet the stronger personality on impartial ground.
The poetess offered her visitor a seat on the chest under the window with the remark that no one knew the knack of sitting in the armchair but the Bailiff himself.
“Pshaw,” exclaimed Bjartur indignantly, “what good did sitting down ever do anybody? There’s time enough for sitting when senile decay sets in. I was just telling Madam, Jon, that if you happen to run short of hay towards the end of winter through your lads’ housing my sheep for a couple of nights, well, just send along to me for a load in the spring.”
Raising his head slowly and cautiously from the pillow, so that his chew retained a level permitting it to spill neither down his gullet nor over his lower lip, the Bailiff opened his mouth a fraction of an inch and, gazing at him with tolerant contempt, replied:
“Look after your own self, my lad.”
This complacent, commiserating tone, though never definitely insulting, unconditionally relegated other people to the category of pitiable rubbish and always reacted upon Bjartur as if some criminal tendency were imputed. It had fostered the aggressive in his nature all these years, his passion for freedom and independence.
“Look after myself? Yes, you can bet your life on that. I’ll look after myself all right. I’ve never owed you anything so far, my friend—except what was agreed upon.”
The Bailiff’s wife drew the crofter’s attention to the fact that she had understood him to say that he had something to tell the pair of them; would he please be so kind as to tell them immediately, it was getting on.
Bjartur sat down on the chest, as he had been asked to do at first, said: “Hm,” clawed his head a little, and grimaced.
“The idea was this,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as was his custom when he had to feel his way. “I was a ewe short, you see.”
A long silence followed, during which she watched him through her spectacles with severe eyes. When she had given up all hope of his proceeding, she asked: “Well?”
Taking out his horn, he tapped a long train of snuff on to the back of his hand.
“Gullbra she was called,” he said. “She was a year old last spring, poor beast, and a first-rate sheep. She was sired by your Gelli, you know, one of the Reverendgudmundur breed that I’ve always had so much faith in; they’re such grand animals. I left her at home during the first round-up to keep the wife company, and then, how it happened I’m damned if I know, but she must have been missed in the second round-up and the third as well. So I said to myself a few days ago: the best thing you can do, my lad, is to take yourself a walk over the moors and have a look for this Cullbra of yours, for many’s the lamb you’ve sought south on the mountains long after the last of the round-ups, and that for other people, as I think you should both be able to testify, it being no longer ago than last autumn.”
The Bailiff’s wife still stared inquiringly at the crofter, still uncertain as to where all this was leading.
“So I went southward over the moors,” he continued, “I went south to the Blue Montains, and I even popped across Glacier River.”
“Across Glacier River?” asked Madam in surprise.
“Yes,” he said, “and crossing Glacier River would have been nothing if only I’d seen any sign of living creature, but there wasn’t a damned thing to be found except a bird in the warm springs south of the mountains, a hot-spring bird I expect. But as for anything with four feet to it, not a sign, with the exception of one buck reindeer (which I don’t class as an animal), and into this trip of mine went, you may say, five days and four nights. Well, and what sort of welcome home do you think I
had tonight?”
The others were either unable to solve this riddle or disinclined to begin cudgelling their brains too much, for the Bailiff’s wife recommended that Bjartur should tell them the answer immediately if he attached any importance to their hearing it.
“Well, my dear lady, it’s because you’re so fond of poetry that I thought I’d let you hear this little quatrain, a poor thing that happened to occur to me when I looked round me by the trapdoor at home an hour or two ago.”
Then Bjartur recited this verse:
Fearful for his flock,
Little light he knows; Frozen the fells mock,
Fallen the one rose.
The Bailiff slowly rolled his head to look at Bjartur and raised his brows as if in question, but he was very careful not to part his lips lest he unwittingly ask anything by word of mouth. It was his wife who was left to make this observation:
“I hope we aren’t being given to understand that something has happened to Rosa.”
“Hm, whether anything’s happened to her is more than I can tell you,” said Bjartur. “It all depends on how you look at it. But she lives no longer on my earth, whatever follows it.”
“Our Rosa?” asked Madam in great agitation. “Are you telling us that Rosa is dead—only a young woman?”
Bjartur inhaled his snuff with great precision, then looked up with staring eyes wet with tobacco tears, answered proudly: “Yes. And she died alone.”
At this news the Bailiff rose up in his bed and, swivelling his feet over and on to the floor, sat on the edge-board, continuing for yet a while to ruminate on his chew, and still considering the moment premature to rid his mouth of the notable juice.
“But that isn’t the worst,” pronounced Bjartur philosophically. “Death, after all, is only the debt we all have to pay, you people out here as well, whether you like it or not. It’s this so-called life that many a man finds more difficult to bring into line with his purse. It’s always springing up, as you know, and actually it’s silly to go making a fuss about who the father is, though in certain cases it may be instructive as far as paying for it is concerned. So to tell you the truth, it wasn’t because of the wife that I popped over here tonight, for I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to quicken the life in her now, the way she is; it was rather about that poor little wretch that was just hanging on to life by a thread, under the dog’s belly there, that I thought I might ask you for a little information, my dear lady.”
Independent People Page 15