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

use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away till his hands were blistered and had to be wrapped in rags. He had lost his appetite for a week or so, but worked none the worse for it now. Something had come over the boy; it looked perhaps as if a certain unhappy love affair or something of the sort, a touch of never-to-be-forgotten sorrow and distress, had done him a world of good. And, look you, he had by now smoked the last of the tobacco he had brought with him from town; ordinarily, that would have been enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed. Even Sivert, the jester, could not put him out of countenance. Today the pair of them were lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco⁠—“unless you’d rather smoke it raw?” he said.

“I’ll give you tobacco,” said Eleseus, and reaching out, ducked Sivert head and shoulders in the water. Ho, one for him! Sivert came back with his hair still dripping.

“Looks like Eleseus he’s turning out for the good,” thought Isak to himself, watching his son at work. And to Inger he said: “H’m⁠—wonder if Eleseus he’ll be staying home now for good?”

And she just as queerly cautious again: “ ’Tis more than I can say. No, I doubt if he will.”

“Ho! Have you said a word of it to himself?”

“No⁠—well, yes, I’ve talked a bit with him, maybe. But that’s the way I think.”

“Like to know, now⁠—suppose he’d a bit of land of his own.⁠ ⁠…”

“How do you mean?”

“If he’d work on a place of his own?”

“No.”

“Well, have you said anything?”

“Said anything? Can’t you see for yourself? No, I don’t see anything in him Eleseus, that way.”

“Don’t sit there talking ill of him,” said Isak impartially. “All I can see is, he’s doing a good day’s work down there.”

“Ay, maybe,” said Inger submissively.

“And I can’t see what you’ve got to find fault with the lad,” cried Isak, evidently displeased. “He does his work better and better every day, and what can you ask more?”

Inger murmured: “Ay, but he’s not like he used to be. You try talking to him about waistcoats.”

“About waistcoats? What d’you mean?”

“How he used to wear white waistcoats in summer when he was in town, so he says.”

Isak pondered this a while; it was beyond him. “Well, can’t he have a white waistcoat?” he said. Isak was out of his depth here; of course it was only women’s nonsense; to his mind, the boy had a perfect right to a white waistcoat, if it pleased him; anyhow, he couldn’t see what there was to make a fuss about, and was inclined to put the matter aside and go on.

“Well, what do you think, if he had Brede’s bit of land to work on?”

“Who?” said Inger.

“Him Eleseus.”

“Breidablik? Nay, ’tis more than’s worth your while.”

The fact was, she had already been talking over that very plan with Eleseus, she had heard it from Sivert, who could not keep the secret. And indeed, why should Sivert keep the matter secret when his father had surely told him of it on purpose to feel his way? It was not the first time he had used Sivert as a go-between. Well, but what had Eleseus answered? Just as before, as in his letters from town, that no, he would not throw away all he had learned, and be an insignificant nothing again. That was what he had said. Well, and then his mother had brought out all her good reasons, but Eleseus had said no to them all; he had other plans for his life. Young hearts have their unfathomable depths, and after what had happened, likely enough he did not care about staying on with Barbro as a neighbour. Who could say? He had put it loftily enough in talking to his mother; he could get a better position in town than the one he had; could go as clerk to one of the higher officials. He must get on, he must rise in the world. In a few years, perhaps, he might be a Lensmand, or perhaps a lighthouse keeper, or get into the Customs. There were so many roads open to a man with learning.

However it might be, his mother came round, was drawn over to his point of view. Oh, she was so little sure of herself yet; the world had not quite lost its hold on her. Last winter she had gone so far as to read occasionally a certain excellent devotional work which she had brought from Trondhjem, from the Institute; but now, Eleseus might be a Lensmand one day!

“And why not?” said Eleseus. “What’s Heyerdahl himself but a former clerk in the same department?”

Splendid prospects. His mother herself advised him not to give up his career and throw himself away. What was a man like that to do in the wilds?

But why should Eleseus then trouble to work hard and steadily as he was doing now on his father’s land? Heaven knows, he had some reason, maybe. Something of inborn pride in him still, perhaps; he would not be outdone by others; and besides, it would do him no harm to be in his father’s good books the day he went away. To tell the truth, he had a number of little debts in town, and it would be a good thing to be able to settle them at once⁠—improve his credit a lot. And it was not a question now of a mere hundred Kroner,