Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗

child, had left the baby and was gone in to town with her husband. She had promised to put in a word to the jury herself.

Gossip and scandal all abroad in the village now, and Sivert saw well enough that a certain earlier crime of the same sort was being called to mind again. Outside the church, the groups would stop talking as he came up, and had he not been the man he was, perhaps some would have turned away from him. Good to be Sivert those days, a man from a big place to begin with, son of a wealthy landowner⁠—and then beside, to be known as a clever fellow, a good worker; he ranked before others, and was looked up to for himself. Sivert had always been well liked among folk. If only Jensine did not learn too much before they got home that day! And Sivert had his own affairs to think of⁠—ay, folk in the wilds can blush and pale as well as other. He had seen Jensine as she left the church with little Rebecca; she had seen him too, but went by. He waited a bit, and then drove over to the smith’s to fetch them.

They were sitting at table, all the family at dinner. Sivert is asked to join them, but has had his dinner, thanks. They knew he would be coming, they might have waited that bit of a while for him⁠—so they would have done at Sellanraa, but not here, it seemed.

“Nay, ’tis not what you’re used to, I dare say,” says the smith’s wife. And, “What news from church?” says the smith, for all he had been at church himself.

When Jensine and little Rebecca were seated up in the cart again, says the smith’s wife to her daughter: “Well, goodbye, Jensine; we’ll be wanting you home again soon.” And that could be taken two ways, thought Sivert, but he said nothing. If the speech had been more direct, more plain and outspoken, he might perhaps⁠ ⁠… He waits, with puckered brows, but no more is said.

They drive up homeward, and little Rebecca is the only one with a word to say; she is full of the wonder of going to church, the priest in his dress with a silver cross, and the lights and the organ music. After a long while Jensine says: “ ’Tis a shameful thing about Barbro and all.”

“What did your mother mean about you coming home soon?” asked Sivert.

“What she meant?”

“Ay. You thinking of leaving us, then?”

“Why, they’ll be wanting me home some time, I doubt,” says she.

“Ptro!” says Sivert, stopping his horse. “Like me to drive back with you now, perhaps?”

Jensine looks at him; he is pale as death.

“No,” says she. And a little after she begins to cry.

Rebecca looks in surprise from one to the other. Oh, but little Rebecca was a good one to have on a journey like that; she took Jensine’s part and patted her and made her smile again. And when little Rebecca looked threateningly at her brother and said she was going to jump down and find a big stick to beat him, Sivert had to smile too.

“But what did you mean, now, I’d like to know?” says Jensine.

Sivert answered straight out at once: “I meant, if you don’t care to stay with us, why, we must manage without.”

And a long while after, said Jensine: “Well, there’s Leopoldine, she’s big now, and fit and all to do my work, seems.”

Ay, ’twas a sorrowful journey.

VII

A man walks up the way through the hills. Wind and rain; the autumn downpour has begun, but the man cares little for that, he looks glad at heart, and glad he is. ’Tis Axel Ström, coming back from the town and the court and all⁠—they have let him go free. Ay, a happy man⁠—first of all, there’s a mowing-machine and a harrow for him down at the quay, and more than that, he’s free, and not guilty. Had taken no part in the killing of a child. Ay, so things can turn out!

But the times he had been through! Standing there as a witness, this toiler in the fields had known the hardest days of his life. ’Twas no gain to him to make Barbro’s guilt seem greater, and for that reason he was careful not to say too much, he did not even say all he knew; every word had to be dragged out of him, and he answered mostly with but “Yes” and “No.” Was it not enough? Was he to make more of it than there was already? Oh, but there were times when it looked serious indeed; there were the men of Law, black-robed and dangerous, easy enough for them, it seemed, just with a word or so, to turn the whole thing as they pleased, and have him sentenced. But they were kindly folk after all, and did not try to bring him to destruction. Also, as it happened, there were powerful influences at work trying to save Barbro, and it was all to his advantage as well.

Then what on earth was there for him to trouble about?

Barbro herself would hardly try to make things look worse than need be for her former master and lover; he knew terrible things about this and an earlier affair of the same sort; she could not be such a fool. No, Barbro was clever enough; she said a good word for Axel, and declared that he had known nothing of her having borne a child till after it was all over. He was different in some ways, perhaps, from other men, and they did not always get on well together, but a quiet man, and a good man in every way. No, it was true he had dug a new grave and buried the body away there, but that was long after, and by reason he had thought the first place was not dry enough, though indeed it