Independent People (60 page)

It’s no damned business of mine any longer whether you give your own children shelter or expose them to die. I know no better than that I did my duty when you wriggled out of doing yours. When your own child lay lifeless under the bitch’s belly, and you had abandoned it to die, I took your own child and gave it shelter, and made it the flower of my life for fifteen years, but now I say that I have had enough; and if you come along and threaten to sell me out and drive me from house and home, then do it if you dare and if you think you have the legal authority for it. But I order you to go to hell with your children in future, and leave me in peace with my children, and that’s all we have to say to each other and I’m off down the valley to see whether my ewe has lambed or not.”

With these words the dale-farmer shouldered his skins and lumbered away, down the brook, southward over the marshes; and no further word of farewell was spoken. The bitch joined him. He did not look around. The poetess was left sitting where she was, disconcerted and at a loss, with the man’s ground under her hand. She stared after him in perplexity: he was like an invincible army. It was she who had suffered defeat.

T
HE EVENING
was far spent when he came home. The return was a very lengthy business, as he was driving two ewes before him, a ewe that had lambed and another that was still carrying. The mother-ewe had had one lamb and her udders were swollen with milk; the other was old Kapa. She was suspiciously heavy for a skinny old ewe, and since her udders were practically dry, there was no prospect of her being able to suckle two. It was a devil
of a job herding them along, damned if they would keep going in the right direction. The bitch was very impatient and the man had to keep calling her off, one must not set dogs on them, never set dogs on ewes in the spring. The mother-ewe bolted off with her lamb in the opposite direction. When at last he had headed her off, old Kapa had turned also. So he had to go and fetch Kapa. The other was not long in seizing the opportunity, and raced off at full speed, with head in the air, in another direction altogether. This went on and on, and it was for this reason that the crofter was so long in returning home. But he got his own way in the end, for he happened to be more stubborn than both ewes put together; he had learned too much from sheep in his day to give in to sheep. The ewes stood at last at the foot of the home-field; now he would have to get the mother in and milk her. There was no sign of life in the house, probably they were all in bed, but he was averse to waking them up and asking for help, and went on running round the ewe. The ewe ran in endless circles; the man ran in endless circles also; for a while each party’s obstinacy seemed quite indomitable, but finally the ewe submitted and suffered herself to be driven into the stalls. The lamb hopped light-footed about the pavement and the vegetable garden; it hopped on to the roof and bleated. It sprang down from the roof and jumped on to the garden wall and bleated. It ran away in towards the mountain and down along the brook. Gripping the ewe with her head between his legs, he milked her into a bowl, and though she floundered about as if in a frenzy, he managed to get three gills or more from her. When he had released her she bleated her way to her answering lamb. Old Kapa was grazing away at the bottom of the home-field, quite contented now. The night was bright, but by no means mild; showers on the moors, mists on the mountains. The birds were silent for the space of an hour except for a loon complaining at long intervals down by the lake.

When he went inside, he saw something sitting huddled up on a box in the entry. It did not move. It was a human being nevertheless. She had changed into her old dress with the holes in the elbows and was sitting with her hands in her lap, those mature, woman’s hands with their long bones and their peculiar thumb-knuckles. Her calves were too heavy, her hips too full for a girl of her age; it was easy to see that she was a grown woman. She was Madam of Myri’s grand-daughter. She did not look up when he crawled in through the door, did not move the hands in
her lap. Was she sleeping in a heap there with her face in her bosom? Or was she afraid to look up and meet his eyes?

He struck her across the face. She cowered back and thrust one hand against the wall to prevent herself falling, shut her eyes and raised her hand to ward off a further blow, hid her face in the crook of her elbow. But he did not strike her again.

“Take that,” he said, “for the shame you have brought upon my land, the land that I have bought. But fortunately there is no drop of my blood in your veins, and therefore I will ask you to rear your bastards in the houses of those who are more nearly related to them than I am.”

“Yes, Father,” she said, gasping for breath; and standing up with her elbow in front of her face, she shrank away from him towards the door, “—I’m going.”

He went along the entry, climbed the ladder, stepped into the loft, and closed the trapdoor after him.

Yes, it was well that he had struck her and driven her away; his blow had been better than the thought of what was to come; now she knew what lay ahead of her, and what lay behind her. This blow of his had lifted a leaden weight from her heart, it had been a sort of confirmation. She stood on the paving surveying the spring night of life before her, like someone who is about to jump over a perilous ravine to save his life; with pounding heart, to be sure, but without weeping. No, it was not warm, it was very cold. There were showers on the heath, like dark walls that are built here and there and moved about. She looked to the east, but not to the west. Yes, he had beaten the uncertainty and the fear out of her body and her soul, and now she knew how she stood with him; now they both knew how they stood—and as if by revelation she realized, and felt that she would not have needed him to tell her, that in her veins there flowed no drop of his blood; the blow that he had given her at parting had been a moment of truth in both their lives. Until that moment the life of each of them had been, in its relation to the other’s, a false life, a life of lies. She had lived with him in troll’s hands, thinking that she was a troll herself. And now all at once she was standing outside his door and was discovering that she was not of the race of trolls. In one short moment she had been freed of this troll. She was only a human being, possibly a princess like Snow White and the other girls in fairy tales, and now she had nothing more to thank him for. Away.

When she had reached the marshes, she realized that she was
wearing thin, worn shoes that were already soaking; and her old dress with the holes in the elbows; and nothing on her head; could such a bedraggled dale-girl really become a princess, as it says in the stories? No, it did not matter though she was wet. She did not look around at the croft. At least she was free, like the Princess, and had set out to find him whom she loved; this was the fairy tale of the dale-girl who had dreamed so much. She belonged to him alone. She would dwell with him all her days. She would never, never leave him. His bright house stood in a meadow by the sea, and she saw the ships coming and going. They, too, would go away on a ship one day. They would go to the lands that lie beyond the seas, for he owned lands there too, lands with sun-gilded palm-avenues. Yes, yes, yes. She would walk all night until early in the morning, and it would not matter if she walked her shoes off her feet; he would give her new shoes. She would not be long in finding his bright house in the meadow by the sea. She would knock on his door before he had risen from his rest, and he would hear that someone was knocking. “Who is there?” he asks. And she answers: “It is I.”

Her heart sang with joy as she crossed the marshes, she would never have believed that her steps could still have been so light; she flew, the heart in her breast flew. It flew to meet happiness, freedom, and love. She was the poor girl who would become a princess; no, she belonged to no one but him. Again and again she heard his whispering voice as he asked: “Who is there?” And again and again she answered: “It is I.” Light-footed she followed the path that wound its way up to the brow of the heath. She was no longer the dreaming child, newly bathed in the dew of a vague, unreal St. John’s Night; no, now she knew who she was; and where she was going. She was the woman in love who, having burned all bridges behind her, resorts now to her beloved. This was reality. This was love and the heath. Henceforth all that came
to
pass in her life would be true.

Love and the heath; there were still snowdrifts in the deep hollows, and the earth was muddy under the snow. A raw wind blew in her face. Soon her shoes were quite useless, and her feet grew very sore. She felt thirsty and drank from a pool beside a snowdrift, it had a nasty taste. Then she grew hungry. Then tired. Then sleepy. Suddenly she was in the middle of an ice-cold shower; it was sleet; she could not see a yard in front of her, and in a few seconds she was soaked through. She began to feel afraid. For the heath is also frightening. Perhaps it is life
itself. Across her mind there flashed the thought of her brother Helgi, he who had been lost on the moors and never found. Many people perish on the heath. Her father could not perish on the heath—but suddenly she remembered that he was not her father, but a troll. That was why he could not be afraid either. It was she who was afraid, she who might perish. Terror banished hunger and all desire for sleep, and she began to wonder whether it might not have been wiser, when all was said and done, to throw her arms round his neck when he struck her and ask for mercy. She tried to forget her dread and to think of his bright house by the sea—what house? Was it not a dark hovel standing on a spit by the sea that he had mentioned, and many starving children? No, it was most assuredly a bright house in a meadow by the sea, it must be; his bright house on heaven and earth. Soon the sun would rise, and she would stand at his door in the rays of the morning sun, and there would be ships on the sea, and he would call out and ask: “Who is there?” But at that very moment she saw far in the distance the glint of the heath’s little tarn. The shower was passing over, and that must be the lake of unpleasant dreams; oh, why should one have to dream of such a dismal lake when one was miserable and unhappy, instead of dreaming of the ocean itself? So this was all the distance she had covered, this lonely, sore-footed wanderer of hope, and there were miles upon miles to cover yet, and she drank more water from a pool and stood up with difficulty, and then she hears the voice of her beloved as he calls to her from within his bright house and asks. He asks: “Who is there?” And she answers for the thousandth time and says: “It is I.”

Bjartur of Summerhouses did not take his clothes off that night, but went out at intervals of an hour to see to the two ewes that he had left in the home-field the evening before. At one o’clock old Kapa had lain down and was chewing the cud, but the other hoyden had made off up the mountainside and was now right under the crags. She had lain down, however, and her lamb was lying beside her. There was calm over everything; the first morning birds had begun their song, but most of them were still silent.

Yes, it was just as he had thought, old Kapa had been on the heavier side. Early in the morning she dropped three lambs, and these poor mites were now struggling to rise to their feet and get at her udders while she stood and licked them at the bottom of the home-field. It is pretty good work for an old ewe to have
triplets; she had lived through many things with Bjartur, this old sheep, weathering worms and famine and ghosts, and now she had duly delivered her three lambs into the world as if nothing had ever happened. He thanked his lucky stars that he had allowed her to profit from her qualities as a leader and had not slaughtered her last autumn. Thus did she show her gratitude, poor creature. Triplets made a lot of difference when one’s stock was so depleted. But there was very little in her udders, poor brute, she had grown so old. He warmed up the milk that he had kept from the previous evening and carried the lambs under his arm home to the paving. The ewe followed, bleating anxiously, for animals are mistrustful of man, even when he wishes them well. He sat down on the flags with the lambs between his knees and began to spit the milk into them through a quill. Heavens, how tiny their mouths were! Life was not much to boast about, especially when one examined it with a critical eye. The ewe stood on the grass some yards away, watching him suspiciously. She had always been rather a shy creature and had never been dependent on man; she was one of the Reverendgudmundur breed of course. But when she saw what the man was doing she drew nearer and nearer; she fastened upon him her large, intelligent eyes of black and yellow, full of motherly tension. Sympathy has perhaps no alphabet, but it is to be hoped that one day it will be triumphant throughout the whole world. It may be that this was by no means a remarkable heath and by no means a particularly remarkable croft on the heath, but nevertheless incredible things happened occasionally on this heath; the man and the animal understood each other. This was on Whit Sunday morning. The sheep came right up to him where he sat with her lambs in his arms, sniffed affectionately at his hard-featured face, and mewed a little into his beard with her warm breath, as if in gratitude.

PART II
Years of Prosperity