Growth of the Soil Knut Hamsun (summer books .txt) 📖

“D’you want the cart, then?” Sivert called after him.

“No,” said his father, and walked on.

Swelling with mystery, full of pride; with a little lift and throw from the knee at every step, so emphatically did he walk. So a brave man might walk to death and destruction, carrying no weapon in his hand.

The boys came up with the horse, saw the machine, and stopped dead. It was the first mowing-machine in the wilds, the first in the village⁠—red and blue, a thing of splendour to man’s eyes. And the father, head of them all, called out, oh, in a careless tone, as if it were nothing uncommon: “Harness up to this machine here.”

And they drove it; the father drove. Brrr! said the thing, and felled the grass in swathes. The boys walked behind, nothing in their hands, doing no work, smiling. The father stopped and looked back. H’m, not as clear as it might be. He screws up a nut here and there to bring the knives closer to the ground, and tries again. No, not right yet, all uneven; the frame with the cutters seems to be hopping a little. Father and sons discuss what it can be. Eleseus has found the instructions and is reading them. “Here, it says to sit up on the seat when you drive⁠—then it runs steadier,” he says.

“Ho!” says his father. “Ay, ’tis so, I know,” he answers. “I’ve studied it all through.” He gets up into the seat and starts off again; it goes steadily now. Suddenly the machine stops working⁠—the knives are not cutting at all. “Ptro! What’s wrong now?” Father down from his seat, no longer swelling with pride, but bending an anxious, questioning face down over the machine. Father and sons all stare at it; something must be wrong. Eleseus stands holding the instructions.

“Here’s a bolt or something,” says Sivert, picking up a thing from the grass.

“Ho, that’s all right, then,” says his father, as if that was all that was needed to set everything in order. “I was just looking for that bolt.” But now they could not find the hole for it to fit in⁠—where in the name of wonder could the hole be, now?

And it was now that Eleseus could begin to feel himself a person of importance; he was the man to make out a printed paper of instructions. What would they do without him? He pointed unnecessarily long to the hole and explained: “According to the illustration, the bolt should fit in there.”

“Ay, that’s where she goes,” said his father. “ ’Twas there I had it before.” And, by way of regaining lost prestige, he ordered Sivert to set about looking for more bolts in the grass. “There ought to be another,” he said, looking very important, as if he carried the whole thing in his head. “Can’t you find another? Well, well, it’ll be in its hole then, all right.”

Father starts off again.

“Wait a minute⁠—this is wrong,” cried Eleseus. Ho, Eleseus standing there with the drawing in his hand, with the Law in his hand; no getting away from him! “That spring there goes outside,” he says to his father.

“Ay, what then?”

“Why, you’ve got it in under, you’ve set it wrong. It’s a steel spring, and you have to fix it outside, else the bolt jars out again and stops the knives. You can see in the picture here.”

“I’ve left my spectacles behind, and can’t see it quite,” says his father, something meekly. “You can see better⁠—you set it as it should go. I don’t want to go up to the house for my spectacles now.”

All in order now, and Isak gets up. Eleseus calls after him: “You must drive pretty fast, it cuts better that way⁠—it says so here.”

Isak drives and drives, and everything goes well, and Brrr! says the machine. There is a broad track of cut grass in his wake, neatly in line, ready to take up. Now they can see him from the house, and all the womenfolk come out; Inger carries little Rebecca on her arm, though little Rebecca has learned to walk by herself long since. But there they come⁠—four womenfolk, big and small⁠—hurrying with straining eyes down towards the miracle, flocking down to see. Oh, but now is Isak’s hour. Now he is truly proud, a mighty man, sitting high aloft dressed in holiday clothes, in all his finery; in jacket and hat, though the sweat is pouring off him. He swings round in four big angles, goes over a good bit of ground, swings round, drives, cuts grass, passes along by where the women are standing; they are dumbfounded, it is all beyond them, and Brrr! says the machine.

Then Isak stops and gets down. Longing, no doubt, to hear what these folk on earth down there will say; what they will find to say about it all. He hears smothered cries; they fear to disturb him, these beings on earth, in his lordly work, but they turn to one another with awed questionings, and he hears what they say. And now, that he may be a kind and fatherly lord and ruler to them all, to encourage them, he says: “There, I’ll just do this bit, and you can spread it tomorrow.”

“Haven’t you time to come in and have a bite of food?” says Inger, all overwhelmed.

“Nay, I’ve other things to do,” he answers.

Then he oils the machine again; gives them to understand that he is occupied with scientific work. Drives off again, cutting more grass. And, at long last, the womenfolk go back home.

Happy Isak⁠—happy folk at Sellanraa!

Very soon the neighbours from below will be coming up. Axel Ström is interested in things, he may be up tomorrow. But Brede from Breidablik, he might be here that very evening. Isak would not be loth to show them his machine, explain it to them, tell them how it works, and all about it. He can point out