Independent People (59 page)

Through the marshes, in a skirt that could have held half the parish, there came a woman riding a smart roan that picked its way daintily between the patches of bog. No, it was no lumbering old draught-horse, it was Rauthsmyri-Sorli with his spirited hoofs and his arched neck. Jumping from tussock to tussock behind them came Asta Sollilja, with downcast head and eyes looking neither to right nor to left, only one step at a time. She was crying.

Bjartur, lavish as ever in his hospitality, marched down the enclosure and out into the marshes, where he gave them a royal welcome. He grasped the reins near to the horse’s head and threaded the driest path home to the enclosure, turning every now and then to throw some waggish remark at Madam, a white raven is a rare sight in these parts and so forth, then lifted her down when they reached the paving. “She gets more and more like herself every day, bless her,” he said, for she was fat and dignified and just like the Pope. “Gvendur my boy, allow Madam’s roan to graze at the bottom of my home-field while she is waiting for coffee. And upstairs immediately, Sola dear, and see if there’s a spark of life left in the fire, though I’m afraid we haven’t troubled it much since you left, we boiled a bit of fish on Sunday to last us the whole week. But what’s all this, child? You look frightfully sad and dreary to say that you’re in the company of Iceland’s poetess.”

She gave her father no answer, but stooping to avoid the lintel of home, disappeared inside, heart-broken. On the pavement there remained Bjartur and the Bailiff’s wife, to expatiate on the poetry and the economics of the Icelandic spring which they both saw in the valley, each in his own fashion.

“The old man will be pretty well on with his lambing by now, I suppose?” asked Bjartur. “Yes, I thought so. And the sheep in fairly good condition for a bungler like him? Yes, quite so; it’s nothing fresh for him to lose more than a few, poor chap; but fortunately he’s got plenty to go at. And the grass fair to middling? Yes, it has a habit of growing here too. And very few foxes and suchlike vermin about this spring? Fine. Same here. Nothing for them to batten on here, no dead sheep at this address. Can’t even say I’ve seen a black-backed gull, let alone a fox; though come to think of it I did hear a raven one day up in the gully there. And worms less rampant than usual with the old man? Tut, tut, what a pity. Why, there’s not a sign of a worm here, not even an ordinary belly-worm, and the lambing has gone beautifully and ought to be finished with today if old Kapa is as punctual as ever. She’s an old ewe of mine that I’m particularly fond of. She’s due today, bless her, and as she’s on the heavier side I was thinking of going down to the moors in the south there to see how she’s getting on with it. A few words with me? Eh? What the devil do you think we’re doing now if we aren’t having a few words with each other? Behind the house? In towards the mountain? This
is
something fresh all right. It’s not the first time her ladyship offered to dodge behind a bush with me, even though one’s technique may have been growing a little rusty of late.”

But Madam was in no mood for joking, and gathering up a handful of her skirt so as not to tread on the hem, she led the way round the corner and along the brook towards the mountain. She proposed that they should each sit on one of the little mounds by the brook.

“Listen, my high-born heroine, I always understood it was my privilege, and not yours, to offer people a seat on my own property,” he said with continued facetiousness; but this pleasantry was received just as stiffly as the others. They sat down. Soulfully and artistically she stroked the grass on the mound smoothing it backward and forward with her eloquent, ladylike hand, small and fat, and dimpled in the knuckles—but what little plot was the old hen hatching out now; surely she wasn’t going to try and swindle the croft out of him? and surely the
question of breaking up the home was no longer on the agenda now? Who could figure out their little manoeuvres? So he took some snuff. “May I offer her ladyship a pinch of snuff while she’s getting her breath back?” he asked. But Madam did not like snuff; or jokes either.

“Bjartur,” she said at length, “I don’t know whether you noticed that your daughter’s expression was scarcely radiant with girlish happiness when she came home a few minutes ago.”

“Maybe she thought it funny that you didn’t stick an old mare under her backside for the journey,” suggested Bjartur. “But perhaps they were all at work carrying peat, except for the saddle-horses. Not that it matters. I and my people have always walked on our own feet.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, a horse had been brought in for her, but she declined it. The poor child has a mind of her own. She inherits her stubbornness from you.”

“Maybe they couldn’t drive their Christianity into her,” said Bjartur. “It would be like that fool of a minister to go and say something to her. She isn’t used to having people say much to her. At home here there’s always peace and quiet, you see. And as for religion itself, I can’t say that I’ve ever done much to encourage her in suchlike studies, as, if the truth be told, I’ve always felt that all this Christianity was really rather a nuisance in the community, though the late Reverend Gudmundur was of course a great expert with sheep. But I dare bet that though she may not have a particularly good head for religion, our Sola is just as quick on the uptake as any youngster who was ever confirmed at the proper time. And I’d like to see the youngster of her age who is as strong as she is in the classics. And though most of these little chits dissolve in tears as soon as you find fault with them, that’s no reason why it should have any really serious aftereffects.”

“No,” said the poetess. “It isn’t her religious knowledge that’s at fault. More’s the pity, as I almost feel like saying.”

She went on stroking the grass on the man’s mound with those artistic movements of hers, full of deep thought. Then Bjartur said:

“I don’t know whether I told you that it’s an old ewe that’s pegged along with me through thick and thin; she was sired by one of the late Reverend Gudmundur’s rams. She seems to be so remarkably heavy in the rear this time, and yet there’s no fat on her ribs. I’m half afraid that if it’s twins she’s carrying, it will
take her all her time to bear them, so I was thinking of taking a walk down the valley before nightfall, because her time is almost upon her.”

“Yes, Bjartur,” said the woman. “I won’t delay you much longer now.”

Then came the story. “It all began when Gudny, who, for reasons of her own, has always considered that she has some small share in little Asta Sollilja, decided that she would like to have her sleeping with her for the few nights that she was staying at Rauthsmyri with us. Well, she noticed on the very first evening that there was
some
gloom darkening the child’s spirits. Something seemed to be preying on her mind; in fact, she was so worried that it took her all her time to give a sensible answer when anyone addressed her. And when they were in bed Gudny began to notice that she wept into her pillow. Sometimes she wept far into the night.”

Here the Bailiff’s wife paused for a moment, but went on blessing the grass with her artistic fingers. She was nevertheless much affected; but she had to breathe. She had the sort of breathing that is characteristic of fat people.

“Well?” said Bjartur at length, for he did not know how to appreciate artistic silences. “Is it any novelty if the tears are always on tap with these young people, particularly if they happen to be of the female sort—it’s just as I’ve said time and time again to the bitch and my wives: the female sex is even more pitiable than the human sex.”

“For the first two or three nights the girl refused to tell what was weighing on her mind.”

“Yes,” said Bjartur, “why should people who’ve been reared on independence describe what goes on in their minds? The mind is just like a weathercock. And just as apt to box the compass every five minutes.”

“She was so lost during the daytime that we thought at first that she was unhappy in her new surroundings and could not stand the company of other people. She couldn’t be persuaded to join in games with the other children.” (Bjartur: “Yes, she probably had more sense than to wear her shoes out with all this fat-headed hopping and slapping.”) “Then in the mornings Gudny began to notice that the girl was by no means well. She was miserable and listless; and sick while she was dressing.” (Bjartur: “The horse-meat can’t have agreed with her.”) “If we offer our guests horse-meat to eat, Bjartur, it’s the first I’ve heard
of it The children actually had had a lovely ragout the evening before, and the housekeeper thought that perhaps she had overeaten, for at times she had seemed strangely ravenous with her food. But when this was repeated morning after morning, Gudny could not help thinking it rather suspicious, and she began to pay more attention to the shape of the girl’s figure when they were going to bed nights. It had struck her at once that the girl was pretty well-developed for her age, her figure is almost that of a grown woman; and then in addition, as we had all noticed immediately, though without giving it much thought, she has grown quite unnaturally big round the waist for a girl who is otherwise so very slim. So last night Gudny asked her whether she could examine her a little, saying that she thought she might have something wrong with her stomach. And then of course the housekeeper soon saw what was the matter; and she accused her of it. At first the child would admit nothing. It was then that the housekeeper called me up. And naturally I saw immediately what was wrong. I told the girl that it was quite useless to try to hide it from us. Finally she owned up. She is pregnant. She is about four months on.”

Bjartur looked at the woman with eyes like those of a horse that, hearing some unpleasant clatter behind it, pricks its ears, rears its head, and is on the very point of shying; then he jumped to his feet and took one step backward, incapable at first of finding any suitable form in which to take this news. At length he gave a foolish laugh, out into space, and said: “Pregnant? My Sola? No, you don’t pull my leg this time, my dear lady.”

“Very well, then; in that case it’s the first time I’ve run round to my neighbours with lies and gossip, Bjartur,” said the woman. “And I thought I deserved more of you than to be accused of falsehood. I have always wished you well. All of you. My heart and my home have always stood open to you country folk. I have been the spokeswoman of all that is most noble in rural life. I have looked upon the farmer’s work as holy work. And at the same time I have looked upon the farmer’s sorrows as my own sorrows, his defeats as my defeats. Never have I lost sight of the fact that the dale-farmer’s dogged perseverance is a lever with which to lift the nation to higher things.” (“Yes, the Rauthsmyri nation,” interrupted Bjartur angrily, “but the Rauthsmyri nation has never been my nation, though I have been crushed under you for thirty years and have been forced to join your co-operative society at last”) “All right, Bjartur, your opinions are your own,
but I can tell you this: that every time the parish council has been on the point of breaking up your home I have invariably taken up the cudgels on your behalf and said: ‘It is the Icelandic peasant who has been the life-blood of the nation for a thousand years, leave my Bjartur alone, But now it has finally reached a point where I have to confess that I am beaten. For fifteen years I have tried to stand up in your defence while the parish sat with its heart in its mouth; first of all poor Rosa dies in that awful fashion, then your children die year after year, either at birth or in their swaddling clothes, and year after year you come with them on your back to have them buried in our little churchyard; then your second wife dies last year, and everyone knows what it was that finished her off, and finally come these strange happenings here during the winter and the loss of your oldest boy. And yet I never completely withdrew my protecting hand. But now I can do no more. To run away from all the enormities of the past winter and send an infamous wretch in your place, a notorious drunkard and jailbird who is not only a parish pauper with a horde of children but also rotten with consumption, and this blackguard is to look after your children, to look after Asta Sollilja, a full-grown young woman—”

“Now listen here, damn you, that’s enough from you, yes, go to hell, you aren’t on your own land here, you’re on my land. And if you’ve come along here today because of Asta Sollilja, let me tell you that you’ve come just fifteen years too bloody late. You palmed her off on me while she lay in her mother’s womb, damn you, and if she is my child, then it’s only because you as good as abandoned her to die and sold me some ground so that she could die on any property but your own. Do you think I didn’t know from the very first that it was you Rauthsmyrians who begot the child that was born in the hut here in the days when I rode the Devil over Glacier River and could not be killed? And if you propose to sit there and tell me that you’ve never lied, I say you lied at my wedding, when you stood up in the tent at Nithurkot with a lot of new-fangled fantasy and foreign religion on your lips after dumping your son’s bastard on me to save the Rauthsmyri reputation. And if you’ve come here to take me to task because Asta Sollilja is pregnant, then I say that that is something which has nothing at all to do with me, in the first place because I haven’t made her pregnant, and in the second place because I am in no way related to her and am therefore not responsible for her. It is you who are related to her and therefore responsible
for her. You people in Rauthsmyri begot her and then abandoned her. She has nothing to do with me. And now let me tell you once and for all that in future you can go to hell with your own bastards, and can christen them with your own names; and whether they are pregnant or not pregnant is your business entirely; henceforward they no longer exist for me.”

“Bjartur my friend,” said the woman mildly, as she sat uprooting the grass on the man’s mound, “we must try to control our tempers and discuss what has happened like rational human beings. Actually it had occurred to me while she is expecting she would be more than welcome to find shelter with us—”