Growth of the Soil, Knut Hamsun [best self help books to read txt] 📗

something curious in the sack, something soft and fluffy, and wants to pat it. The dog stands alert, barking and whining. Inger comes out with a parcel of food; she gives a cry, and drops down on the door-slab.

“What’s that you’ve got there? What is it?”

“ ’Tis nothing. Only a hare.”

“I saw it.”

“ ’Twas the boy wanted to look. Dog ran it down this morning and killed it, and I brought it along.⁠ ⁠…”

“Here’s your food,” said Inger.

V

One bad year never comes alone. Isak had grown patient, and took what fell to his lot. The corn was parched, and the hay was poor, but the potatoes looked like pulling through once more⁠—bad enough, all things together, but not the worst. Isak had still a season’s yield of cordwood and timber to sell in the village, and the herring fishery had been rich all round the coast, so there was plenty of money to buy wood. Indeed, it almost looked like a providence that the corn harvest had failed⁠—for how could he have threshed it without a barn and threshing-floor? Call it providence; there’s no harm in that sometimes.

There were other things not so easily put out of mind. What was it a certain Lapp had said to Inger that summer⁠—something about not having bought? Buy, what should he buy for? The ground was there, the forest was there; he had cleared and tilled, built up a homestead in the midst of a natural wilderness, winning bread for himself and his, asking nothing of any man, but working, and working alone. He had often thought himself of asking the Lensmand2 about the matter when he went down to the village, but had always put it off; the Lensmand was not a pleasant man to deal with, so people said, and Isak was not one to talk much. What could he say if he went⁠—what had he come for?

One day that winter the Lensmand himself came driving up to the place. There was a man with him, and a lot of papers in a bag. Geissler himself, the Lensmand, no less. He looked at the broad open hillside, cleared of timber, smooth and unbroken under the snow; he thought perhaps that it was all tilled land already, for he said:

“Why, this is a whole big farm you’ve got. You don’t expect to get all this for nothing?”

There it was! Isak was terror-stricken and said not a word.

“You ought to have come to me at first, and bought the land,” said Geissler.

“Ay.”

The Lensmand talked of valuations, of boundaries, taxes, taxes to the State, and, when he had explained the matter a little, Isak began to see that there was something reasonable in it after all. The Lensmand turned to his companion teasingly. “Now then, you call yourself a surveyor, what’s the extent of cultivated ground here?” He did not wait for the other to reply, but noted down himself, at a guess. Then he asked Isak about the crops, how much hay, how many bushels of potatoes. And then about boundaries. They could not go round the place marking out waist-deep in snow; and in summer no one could get up there at all. What did Isak think himself about the extent of woodland and pasturage?⁠—Isak had no idea at all; he had always thought of the place as being his own as far as he could see. The Lensmand said that the State required definite boundaries. “And the greater the extent, the more you will have to pay.”

“Ay.”

“And they won’t give you all you think you can swallow; they’ll let you have what’s reasonable for your needs.”

“Ay.”

Inger brought in some milk for the visitors; they drank it, and she brought in some more. The Lensmand a surly fellow? He stroked Eleseus’ hair, and looked at something the child was playing with. “Playing with stones, what? Let me see. H’m, heavy. Looks like some kind of ore.”

“There’s plenty such up in the hills,” said Isak.

The Lensmand came back to business. “South and west from here’s what you want most, I suppose? Shall we say a couple of furlongs to the southward?”

“Two furlongs!” exclaimed his assistant.

“You couldn’t till two hundred yards,” said his chief shortly.

“What will that cost?” asked Isak.

“Can’t say. It all depends. But I’ll put it as low as I can on my report; it’s miles away from anywhere, and difficult to get at.”

“But two furlongs!” said the assistant again.

The Lensmand entered duly, two furlongs to the southward, and asked: “What about the hills? How much do you want that way?”

“I’ll need all up as far as the water. There’s a big water up there,” said Isak.

The Lensmand noted that. “And how far north?”

“Why, it’s no great matter that way. ’Tis but moorland most, and little timber.”

The Lensmand fixed the northward boundary at one furlong. “East?”

“That’s no great matter either. ’Tis bare field all from here into Sweden.”

The Lensmand noted down again. He made a rapid calculation, and said: “It’ll make a good-sized place, even at that. Anywhere near the village, of course, it’d be worth a lot of money; nobody could have bought it. I’ll send in a report, and say a hundred Daler would be fair. What do you think?” he asked his assistant.

“It’s giving it away,” said the other.

“A hundred Daler?” said Inger. “Isak, you’ve no call to take so big a place.”

“No⁠—o,” said Isak.

The assistant put in hurriedly: “That’s just what I say. It’s miles too big for you as it is. What will you do with it?”

“Cultivate it,” said the Lensmand.

He had been sitting there writing and working in his head, with the children crying every now and then; he did not want to have the whole thing to do again. As it was, he would not be home till late that night, perhaps not before morning. He thrust the papers into the bag; the matter was settled.

“Put the horse in,” he said to his companion. And turning to Isak: “As a matter