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

a journey to a place a long way off, and it seems to have left an ugly discontent behind. It may disappear for a time, but always it returns. She is clever and hardworking as in her best days, and a handsome, healthy wife for a man, for a barge of a man⁠—but has she no memories of Trondhjem; does she never dream? Ay, and in winter most of all. Full of life and spirits at times, and wanting no end of things⁠—but a woman cannot dance by herself, and so there was no dancing at Sellanraa. Heavy thoughts and books of devotion? Ay, well.⁠ ⁠… But there’s something, Heaven knows, in the other sort of life, something splendid and unequalled. She has learned to make do with little; the Swedish stoneworkers are something, at any rate; strange faces and new voices about the place, but they are quiet, elderly men, given to work rather than play. Still, better than nothing⁠—and one of them sings beautifully at his work; Inger stops now and again to listen. Hjalmar is his name.

And that is not all the trouble at Sellanraa. There is Eleseus, for instance⁠—a disappointment there. He had written to say that his place in the engineer’s office was no longer open, but he was going to get another all right⁠—only wait. Then came another letter; he was expecting something to turn up very shortly, a first-rate post; but meantime, he could not live on nothing at all, and when they sent him a hundred-Krone note from home, he wrote back to say it was just enough to pay off some small debts he had.⁠ ⁠… “H’m,” said Isak. “But we’ve these stoneworker folk to pay, and a deal of things⁠ ⁠… write and ask if he wouldn’t rather come back here and lend a hand.”

And Inger wrote, but Eleseus did not care about coming home again; no, no sense in making another journey all to no purpose; he would rather starve.

Well, perhaps there was no first-rate post vacant just then in the city, and Eleseus, perhaps, was not as sharp as a razor in pushing his way. Heaven knows⁠—perhaps he wasn’t over clever at his work either. Write? ay, he could write well enough, and quick and hardworking maybe, but there might be something lacking for all that. And if so, what was to become of him?

When he arrived from home with his two hundred Kroner, the city was waiting for him with old accounts outstanding, and when those were paid, well, he had to get a proper walking-stick, and not the remains of an umbrella. There were other little things as well that were but reasonable⁠—a fur cap for the winter, like all his companions wore, a pair of skates to go on the ice with as others did, a silver toothpick, which was a thing to clean one’s teeth, and play with daintily when chatting with friends over a glass of this or that. And as long as he had money, he stood treat as far as he was able; at a festive evening held to celebrate his return to town, he ordered half a dozen bottles of beer, and had them opened sparingly, one after another. “What⁠—twenty Ore for the waitress?” said his friends; “ten’s quite enough.”

“Doesn’t do to be stingy,” said Eleseus.

Nothing stingy nor mean about Eleseus, no; he come from a good home, from a big place, where his father the Margrave owned endless tracts of timber, and four horses and thirty cows and three mowing-machines. Eleseus was no liar, and it was not he who had spread abroad all the fantastic stories about the Sellanraa estate; ’twas the district surveyor who had amused himself talking grandly about it a long while back. But Eleseus was not displeased to find the stories taken more or less for truth. Being nothing in himself, it was just as well to be the son of somebody that counted for something; it gave him credit, and was useful that way. But it could not last forever; the day came when he could no longer put off paying, and what was he to do then? One of his friends came to his help, got him into his father’s business, a general store where the peasants bought their wares⁠—better than nothing. It was a poor thing for a grown lad to start at a beginner’s wage in a little shop; no shortcut to the position of a Lensmand; still, it gave him enough to live on, helped him over the worst for the present⁠—oh, ’twas not so bad, after all. Eleseus was willing and good-tempered here too, and people liked him; he wrote home to say he had gone into trade.

This was his mother’s greatest disappointment. Eleseus serving in a shop⁠—’twas not a whit better than being assistant at the store down in the village. Before, he had been something apart, something different from the rest; none of their neighbours had gone off to live in a town and work in an office. Had he lost sight of his great aim and end? Inger was no fool; she knew well enough that there was a difference between the ordinary and the uncommon, though perhaps she did not always think to reckon with it. Isak was simpler and slower of thought; he reckoned less and less with Eleseus now, when he reckoned at all; his eldest son was gradually slipping out of range. Isak no longer thought of Sellanraa divided between his two sons when he himself should be gone.

Some way on in spring came engineers and workmen from Sweden; going to build roads, put up hutments, work in various ways, blasting, levelling, getting up supplies of food, hiring teams of horses, making arrangements with owners of land by the waterside; what⁠—what was it all about? This is in the wilds, where folk never came but those who lived there? Well, they were going to start that copper mine, that was all.

So it