Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (chromebook ebook reader txt) 📕

Barbro’s clothes were hanging there; she must be out somewhere, that was all. He went back to his work on the new building, and kept at it for a while, then he looked in at the hut again⁠—no, nobody there. She must be lying down somewhere. He sets out to find her.

“Barbro!” he calls. No. He looks all round the houses, goes across to some bushes on the edge of his land, searches about a long while, maybe an hour, calls out⁠—no. He comes on her a long way off, lying on the ground, hidden by some bushes; the stream flows by at her feet, she is barefoot and bareheaded, and wet all up the back as well.

“You lying here?” says he. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“I couldn’t,” she answers, and her voice so hoarse he can scarcely hear.

“What⁠—you been in the water?”

“Yes. Slipped down⁠—oh!”

“Is it hurting you now?”

“Ay⁠—it’s over now.”

“Is it over?” says he.

“Yes. Help me to get home.”

“Where’s⁠ ⁠… ?”

“What?”

“Wasn’t it⁠—the child?”

“No. ’Twas dead.”

“Was it dead?”

“Yes.”

Axel is slow of mind, and slow to act. He stands there still. “Where is it, then?” he asks.

“You’ve no call to know,” says she. “Help me back home. ’Twas dead. I can walk if you hold my arm a bit.”

Axel carries her back home and sets her in a chair, the water dripping off her. “Was it dead?” he asks.

“I told you ’twas so,” she answers.

“What have you done with it, then?”

“D’you want to smell it? D’you get anything to eat while I was away?”

“But what did you want down by the water?”

“By the water? I was looking for juniper twigs.”

“Juniper twigs? What for?”

“For cleaning the buckets.”

“There’s none that way,” says he.

“You get on with your work,” says she hoarsely, and all impatient. “What was I doing by the water? I wanted twigs for a broom. Have you had anything to eat, d’you hear?”

“Eat?” says he. “How d’you feel now?”

“ ’Tis well enough.”

“I doubt I’d better fetch the doctor up.”

“You’d better try!” says she, getting up and looking about for dry clothes to put on. “As if you’d no better to do with your money!”

Axel goes back to his work, and ’tis but little he gets done, but makes a bit of noise with planing and hammering, so she can hear. At last he gets the window wedged in, and stops the frame all round with moss.

That evening Barbro seems not to care for her food, but goes about, all the same, busy with this and that⁠—goes to the cowshed at milking-time, only stepping a thought more carefully over the doorsill. She went to bed in the hayshed as usual. Axel went in twice to look at her, and she was sleeping soundly. She had a good night.

Next morning she was almost as usual, only so hoarse she could hardly speak at all, and with a long stocking wound round her throat. They could not talk together. Days passed, and the matter was no longer new; other things cropped up, and it slipped aside. The new house ought by rights to have been left a while for the timber to work together and make it tight and sound, but there was no time for that now; they had to get it into use at once, and the new cowshed ready. When it was done, and they had moved in, they took up the potatoes, and after that there was the corn to get in. Life was the same as ever.

But there were signs enough, great or small, that things were different now at Maaneland. Barbro felt herself no more at home there now than any other serving-maid; no more bound to the place. Axel could see that his hold on her had loosened with the death of the child. He had thought to himself so confidently: wait till the child comes! But the child had come and gone. And at last Barbro even took off the rings from her fingers, and wore neither.

“What’s that mean?” he asked.

“What’s it mean?” she said, tossing her head.

But it could hardly mean anything else than faithlessness and desertion on her part.

And he had found the little body by the stream. Not that he had made any search for it, to speak of; he knew pretty closely where it must be, but he had left the matter idly as it was. Then chance willed it so that he should not forget it altogether; birds began to hover above the spot, shrieking grouse and crows, and then, later on, a pair of eagles at a giddy height above. To begin with, only a single bird had seen something buried there, and, being unable to keep a secret like a human being, had shouted it abroad. Then Axel roused himself from his apathy, and waited for an opportunity to steal out to the spot. He found the thing under a heap of moss and twigs, kept down by flat stones, and wrapped in a cloth, in a piece of rag. With a feeling of curiosity and horror he drew the cloth a little aside⁠—eyes closed, dark hair, a boy, and the legs crossed⁠—that was all he saw. The cloth had been wet, but was drying now; the whole thing looked like a half-wrung bundle of washing.

He could not leave it there in the light of day, and in his heart, perhaps, he feared some ill to himself or to the place. He ran home for a spade and dug the grave deeper; but, being so near the stream, the water came in, and he had to shift it farther up the bank. As he worked, his fear lest Barbro should come and find him disappeared; he grew defiant and thoroughly bitter. Let her come, and he would make her wrap up the body neatly and decently after her, stillborn or no! He saw well enough all he had lost by the death of the child; how he was faced now with the prospect of being left without help again on the place⁠—and that,