Independent People (10 page)

“Dozing don’t do much good when our livelihood’s at stake,” grumbled the crofter.

She could make no reply, for her tongue refused to move. She saw the moon gleaming on the water of a little ditch, and in the ditch swam three or four phalaropes, their heads rhythmically ducking in leisured grace. Dear little birds, so happy in the moonlight with nothing to do, how lovely they would look on a plate! Presently it began to grow brighter. The horse’s steps grew slower and slower, its struggles more and more laborious; the moon disappeared, colourless behind darkening clouds, and the hay seemed somehow to have lost the scent it had had yesterday. She no longer knew whether she was wet or dry; it was as if the face of the world had been wiped out, both nose and eyes, and there was no feeling left but an ungovernable nausea, a bitter taste in her mouth and a stench in her nostrils. Time and again she had to halt and hang on to the foal while she retched and vomited bile. She wiped the cold sweat from her brow and tried to swallow the stinging bitterness in her throat. Such was this world war; yes; and gradually it was growing lighter, and the clouds were growing darker and darker, and once again she led the foal home. Bjartur was busy with the last rick now; soon the victory would be won, but she was not glad; no one that wins a victory in a world war is ever glad; she was utterly exhausted. Kneeling on the moss-grown bank of the brook that flowed past the croft, she leaned forward with cupped hand to drink, and felt, leaning forward, as if tender arms enfolded her and drew her gently to a bosom of rest; and in a moment she passed deeper and deeper into this embrace for ever and ever, like her grandmother, who died happily
and left one mattress to her grand-daughter; deeper and deeper, and she saw her reflection washed away in the flow of the stream, and the earth floated off with her into space like the angel that glides away with us when we die, and once more the good autumnal scent of the earth filled her senses, and finally the earth laid its cheek to hers like a mother, while the waters of the world rippled on in her ears, telling of their love; then there was nothing more.

T
HAT
was on a Sunday.

It had been raining for some time before Bjartur found her, still sleeping by the brook. She was lying there wet to the skin, with her cheek on the bank and one arm under her. One truss of hay lay crosswise in the stream, the pack-saddle, girths snapped, lay broken to pieces on the gravel, and the horse was grazing in the home-field. The woman looked about her with anguish-stricken eyes, like one whom some buffoon has waked up from death, and listened with aching spine to the sarcasms of her husband. Then, while he was busy covering the hay with turf as a temporary protection from the rain, she dragged herself into the house and, too dazed to heat up some coffee, went off to sleep once more.

Shortly before noon it brightened up, and Bjartur hurried panting into the croft to wake his wife and tell her to make some coffee; a crowd of people were riding in over the meadows, and some, at a canter ahead of the others, had reached the flats a short distance from the croft. “They’ve no pack-horses; it’s some damned fools on a jaunt from up-country, or something,” he said. They would choose a time like this.”

I can’t let anyone see me like this,” objected Rosa.

They’ll have to have their cup of coffee if they drop in on us, woman,” he said. “You’re good enough for the like of them, aren’t you?”

He leaned over the table to watch them through the window and recognized both the people and the horses as they drew nearer. Some of them were the sons and daughters of well-to-do farmers up-country, others were summer workers from Utirauthsmyri; then there were the minister’s daughters and also Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, the agriculturalist, riding his grey.
But when Bjartur looked round again his wife was nowhere to be seen.

The young men were trying out their saddle-horses, while the girls had come to pick the bilberries that were now ripe on the moors. They called this outing a day in the woods, and they had brought some food along with them in leather bags, intending to picnic in the “woods.” Ingolfur Arnarson did not come as far as the croft, but sent to ask if Bjartur minded if he did some shooting over the marshes and tried a cast or two in the lake. And could the ladies take a walk along by the mountain and see if they could find any berries?

Bjartur was proud of his rights as a landowner and it always pleased him to be asked permission. He did, of course, hint that the girls knew best themselves what they were sniffing after, once they started sniffing at all, and he didn’t mind if they picked a mouldy berry or two, but he would be surprised if it was only berries they were after, see. And if the Bailiff’s son wanted to defile himself with pulling the guts out of the lousy fish in the lake there, and wanted to martyr on a Sunday the innocent birds that flew about the marshes without doing anyone any harm, well, it would probably keep him out of worse mischief. “But,” he added, “I would have thought more of him if he’d ridden up to my door and looked me in the face, for it’s not so long since I used to help him button up his breeches, and as far as I know I’ve always paid my way with his father, so I dare look any of his gang in the face, whether they dare look me in the face or not. But I wonder what the hell’s become of Rosa. They’re so particular about their appearance, these women—never come to the door dressed as they are, only the Sunday best is good enough. But come in all the same, she’ll turn up sooner or later, I hope, and welcome to Summerhouses. There ought to be coffee by the pailful, and maybe a lousy lump of sugar lying about somewhere, if we can only find it.”

The coffee, of course, was declined with thanks, but most of them wanted to take a look round inside, for, coming as they did from the better-class farms, they thought it quite an experience to crawl doubled-up through the door of Summerhouses and feel the earthy smell breathed in a heavy wave from the darkness as they entered. Some of them climbed the ladder, and it creaked; others contented themselves with peeping in through the window from horseback; you didn’t have to stretch far, it wasn’t much more than a man’s height from the ground. Some of the girls persisted in their inquiries about Rosa, for they wanted her to go
berrying with them, so every nook and cranny was searched and shouts and shrieks resounded inside the croft and out, while Rosa tried to press herself closer to the earth wall under the horse’s manger, where, with a prayer to the Redeemer, she had sought refuge. But Bjartur soon grew tired of this fooling and dragged his wife from under the manger with a heavy hand, and asked her where her manners were and what she had to be ashamed of, a legally married woman. “And I want coffee for my guests, if it’s the last drop we have in the house. And what sort of hermit’s behaviour is this, that you have to run off and hide from your own kind? Go and welcome your guests, woman.” He hauled her up the ladder dressed as she was in a canvas skirt and a rag of a shawl round her shoulders, turf-soiled and dusty, with toadstools entangled in the flock of her shawl. “Look, here she is!” And they were all suddenly serious and held out their hands in greeting.

No, thanks, they did not feel like coffee, but the girls took Rosa by the hand and led her out of the croft, led her down to the brook and sat down beside her, and said it must be lovely to have such a little brook so close to the house, such a friendly little brook, too. They asked her how she was, and she said she was all right; so they asked her why her face was swollen so, and it was with toothache; then they asked her how she liked living on the moors, and she sniffed and kept her eyes on the ground and said she supposed there was plenty of freedom, anyway. They asked if she had seen the ghost and she said there weren’t any ghosts. Then they all rode away.

The young people roamed about the countryside till the light began to fail. At home in the croft their merry voices could be heard from the mountain slopes—their peals of laughter and their songs. But there were also heard shots from the marshes. The crofter was resting today, had been working night and day lately, and was lying on the bed asleep. His wife was sitting by the window, listening for the shots, staring out over the marshes and waiting in anguish for each fresh shot. It was as if she knew that every shot he fired would hit her, and her alone; that it would hit her in the heart, and in the heart only. But it so happened that the crofter had not been very fast asleep, and as he woke from his doze he looked at her from beneath his brows and saw that with every shot she gave a violent start.

“I don’t suppose you know those shots, do you?” he inquired.

“Me?” said his wife, jumping to her feet in confusion. “No.”

“That blasted family could never look at a living thing without
wanting to make a profit out of it, preferably by killing it,” he said. Then he dozed off again.

In the twilight the holiday-makers returned to the croft, where they were going to wait for the sportsman, who intended to keep on shooting as long as there was light. The girls, returning from the mountain slopes with berry-cans filled to the brim, contributed each to a bowlful for Rosa. “Berries from your own mountain, girl they said when she made as if to decline the offer of such a gift. They gathered into little groups and played various games out in the home-field beside Bjartur; the mountain echoed their laughter. The evening was calm, the surface of the lake unruffled, a few midges about, a new moon in the sky, the valley peaceful and free. Bjartur was in an uncertain temper, and gave it to be understood that haymaking didn’t seem to have taken much out of anybody from up-country. “I think I can see you trampling on the Bailiff’s manured grass like that,” he grumbled, “and I’m looking forward to seeing your people dance like that next spring when I come without a straw left to beg for a load of hay.”

The minister’s daughters and the girls who were working at Myri didn’t want anyone to be in a sour temper and tried to coax him out of it. They drew him willy-nilly into the ring where they were playing tag, and then they tagged him, and he wished them to hell, but finally he started chasing them, and said he had chased skittish little ewes many a time, and spat on his hands before he tagged them back. They even took him aside and asked him to recite from the rhymes, and then he was in his element and did not stop before he had given them all the smutty ones from Gongu-Hrolfur: from old Olver’s accusing Hrolfur of an unnatural passion for Vilhjalmur, when the girls fell on one another’s bosoms and tried to stifle their giggles, to Ingibjorg pouring her pot over Mondull, when they could no longer restrain their shrieks of laughter. They ended by asking him to make up something about themselves. The crofter replied that a few lines, in various metres, had indeed occurred to him while they were busy picking bilberries up on the courting slopes, but that he hadn’t really had time to polish them up yet, though the first quartrain had double rhyme and double alliteration,

The sport was at its height when the Bailiff’s son, Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, appeared upon the scene. A cold smile played about his lips, the self-satisfied, overweening smile of his mother, the smile that made the literary efforts of the Mistress of Myri less appreciated than otherwise they might have been. His catch was slung over his shoulders on two strings, on one duck and goose, on the other trout, both brown trout and char, of from one to three pounds. After telling the shepherd to tie them across the pommel of his saddle, he greeted Bjartur with the cold smile and the irritating air of patronage that characterized the whole family.

“The old man must have been dreaming when he as good as gave you Winterhouses and made you lord of this land of plenty. What do I owe you in sports rent?”

“Oh, it would be going too far to expect you to pay a rent on this gift of yours,” replied Bjartur. “Besides, as you yourself say, this croft, which, by the way, I permit myself to call Summerhouses, if you hadn’t heard it before—Summerhouses is a land of such plenty that I need begrudge you none of the carrion that you carry off with you on your expeditions here, Ingi my lad. My sheep have more faith in the short hay from the Lambey banks there. So you’re welcome to all the duck and the trout you can get, Ingi lad. They should make a welcome change of diet for you folk at Myri, because if you have fish and fowl on your table this winter, it will be for the first time that I ever heard of.”

“My, what a temper the man’s in!” said Ingolfur Arnarson with his cold smile, pulling off a few golden-eyes and one or two char and throwing them at Bjartur’s feet.

“I’ll ask you to clear this off my property,” said Bjartur. “I would far rather that you yourself bore the responsibility for the creatures you murder on a Sunday.”

But here the girls intervened and asked him for heaven’s sake
not to refuse such nice food, for Rosa’s sake if not his own, and added: ‘These birds will make lovely eating.”

“In my time,” replied Bjartur, “it was the custom at Myri for Madam to throw away the hens so that she wouldn’t have any horse-flesh left on her hands, but if fowl is on the menu there now, then the best thing you can do with this carrion is to cart it off with you to the Bailiffs, where it will be more at home.”

“I’m sure they would make an enjoyable meal for Rosa. She doesn’t look as if she’s had too much fresh food this summer.”

“For us lone workers,” retorted Bjartur, “the main consideration is the fodder for the stock. Man’s diet in summer is of less consequence than the welfare of the sheep in winter.”

They laughed at this answer, amused rather than impressed by the chant of the lone worker. But many of them were members of the local branch of the Young Icelanders’ Association, and Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson was their chairman, and they had faith in their country; all for Iceland, “Iceland for the Icelanders,” was their slogan, and now they were standing face to face with a man who had broken new soil, a man who also had faith in his country, and what was more, who showed it in his deeds. At close quarters his way of thinking might seem not without an element of the ludicrous, but he did not fail to
move
them as he stood on his own soil in the calm of the Sunday evening, with his little croft behind him, ready and eager to wage his war of independence with hostile powers, natural and supernatural, and undaunted, set the world at naught. They hung about for a little longer, while their herds were bringing in their horses, and no one took exception to Bjartur if he showed that he knew he was on his own ground. Ingolfur Arnarson called for a song. “Bjartur and I are old friends and the same as foster-brothers,” he said. “Together we’ve done a few things in our time that are maybe best forgotten, and I know that really we understand each other. I at any rate know the stuff that Bjartur’s made of, and Rosa as well. They have shown that the heroic spirit of the first settlers is not yet extinct in the Icelanders of today, and long may it reign!”