Independent People (69 page)

“Who was led out?” inquired the minister, bending over the edge of the pulpit and leaning in deep religious solemnity far out over the congregation. The lad from Summerhouses hoped and prayed with all his heart that it was a horse that had been led out.

“He was led out,” announced the minister triumphantly, with great emphasis on the word “He.” Unfortunately the object of discussion had evaded the boy.

“And who led Him out?” asked the minister, and prolonged the ensuing silence to inordinate length while he fixed every person in the church with a long, soul-searching gaze. Gvendur was stricken with immediate panic at the thought of being called upon to answer such a question. But finally the minister answered it himself: “Pilate’s soldiers led Him out. And when did they lead Him out? They led Him out at five o’clock. And where did they lead Him? They led Him into the open. And why did they lead Him out? Because He wasn’t allowed to remain inside.” The boy heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Supposing he were to sneak out of the church in the middle of the service; it need not attract much attention, he could slip out backwards with his knees well bent, and once outside he could run across to the horse pen. He would lead his horse out. He would stand with it on the rein in front of the church door, waiting until the service was over. And as she stepped out of church he would place the reins in her hand and say: “From now on, this is yours.” But then he recollected the people. They weren’t alone. What would the parish say? Was it seemly that he, a peasant’s son, should present Jon of Myri’s grand-daughter with a horse? Would not the whole parish burst out into one great roar of laughter? And would not she herself be offended by this ignominy? A cold sweat started out upon him at the thought of becoming a nationwide laughing-stock. His difficulties grew ever the more complicated and insoluble the more he racked his brains.

“Dearly beloved Christian brethren,” said the minister, “time passes.” And leaning out over the congregation, he gazed souldeep
into everyone present in the long silence that he allowed to ensue upon these words of deepest solemnity; but longest of all he gazed into Gvendur of Summerhouses. Yes, time passes,” he reiterated at length. “Yesterday was Saturday. Today it is Sunday. Tomorrow it is Monday. Then comes Tuesday. It was one o’clock only a short while ago. Now it’s past two. Soon it will be three. Then it will be four.” Gvendur felt that these words of grave warning were being directed at him in particular; the consciousness of having found no pretext, no solution to his problem, wrung his heart; the sweat streamed from his brow and ran in cold beads down his temples. Soon the end of the sermon was in sight, and the red hat still remained motionless, except that now it was tilted a trifle backward, for the girl was gazing steadfastly up at the minister, drinking into her soul every word that passed his lips, as if she were determined to live up to every single one of them, while poor Gvendur heard only a sentence here and there as his brain whirled in wilder and wilder confusion. “And the rocks were riven, my brethren; yes, there was little that could stand its ground in that hour, let me tell you. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom; yes, and that wasn’t the only thing that was rent, either. Not by a long way. And there was a darkness over the whole of heaven and earth, yes there was little light in that hour, let me assure you—”

Yes there was darkness over everything indeed, and now the sermon was practically over, and now it was over altogether. There followed yet another hymn. By this time the lad was unable to hear or see. The people stood up. He stood up too. Ought he to wait until she came past, or ought he to go out ahead of her? He waited. Ought he to make an effort to look at her as she passed, and try to send her a current, for he believed in the current of love, or ought he to look down at his feet in resignation and utter despair? He looked at her with the current of love. And then he saw that it wasn’t her at all, it was another person altogether, it was a middle-aged woman from up-country, a woman, moreover, who had had a baby to someone—it was Thorthur of Gilteig’s middle daughter in a ghastly red hat. So the boy could breathe once more in a normal fashion. But he felt now as if everything was so dreadfully empty in and around his heart, and he had sat in the church all that length of time for nothing, and his spiritual torment during the hymns and the sermon had been altogether a waste.

At the end of the service the folk went crowding along to the meeting. A gleaming automobile was standing on the paving outside
the Bailiff’s windows. The visitors thronged inquisitively around this glittering portent, scrutinizing it from every angle possible. They rapped on the windshield and the side windows, then squeezed the tires to see how hard they were. Gvendur also rapped on the windows and squeezed the tires. The Althingi member had arrived during the service and was now sitting inside with his parents. Just at this moment the banker and his followers came driving along the road from Vik; they drew up at the other end of the enclosure. The Bailiff went walking across to meet them. He was clad in an old rag of a jacket so disreputable in appearance as to suggest that it had been slept on by one of the dogs for a twelve-month past, though only to be resurrected as a change of clothes to mark the importance of the present occasion. A safety-pin held his shirt together at the neck. His trouser bottoms were tucked into his socks, which had obviously been refooted. One could hardly have been surprised had the elegant and dignified gentlemen in overcoats and stiff collars had to curb a strong desire to slip him a copper or two as he bade them welcome. The visitors were told to accomodate themselves in the Moot Hall, whither the candidates would proceed as soon as they had partaken of coffee. Gvendur took a seat in a corner with his cap on his knees and someone gave him a pinch of snuff and he sneezed. Presently the candidates entered. Gvendur of Summerhouses saw only his candidate. Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, where was his peer? His splendour beggared invention. Tall, stalwart, and lion-hearted, he had had macadamized roads laid for penniless crofters in isolated valleys; his face with its compelling eyes behind their gold-rimmed glasses shone like a sun over the decrepit peasants assembled before him, and as he began to speak, in a voice sonorous and unforced, his small, snowy-cuffed hands moved in gestures so smooth and graceful that one did not need listen to his words, it was enough simply to watch his hands. The boy from Summerhouses was amazed that anyone should be so obtuse as to doubt the justice of his cause. With quivering heart he reflected that he had loved this man’s daughter, wherever she was; that this great man, whose car stood outside the window, was in reality his father-in-law.

Soon the meeting was in full swing, and mankind’s most urgent problems under discussion—co-operatives and the peasantry, merchant power and middlemen’s profits, banking scandals, losses sustained by fishing companies, the rate of interest on farmers’ loans, the Agricultural Bill, the implements’ subsidy, the question of sewage, the sale of produce, roads, bridges, telephones, rural
colonization, education, housing, the electrification of the country districts. And Ingolfur Arnarson stood up again and again and, puffing his chest and flourishing his hands with inimitable artistry, pointed to his opponent and proved conclusively and beyond a doubt that it was he who was directly responsible for the enormous losses incurred by the banks, which had allowed speculators to squander the savings of a whole nation, for the financial scandals that had brought the fishing companies into such widespread disrepute, for the ever increasing tuberculosis of a nation that was housed in hovels, for the fall of the crown, as barefaced and blatant an act of robbery as had ever been perpetrated on the working classes of any country, and for an educational policy that aimed at bringing the nation down to the same level as the Negroes of Darkest Africa. And now that the peasantry had united to defend their rights and to secure improved conditions, this man had risen up against them, with the foul intention of dragging into the mire the very class that had borne the nation on its shoulders through fire and ice and pestilence for a thousand years, preserving its culture intact through numberless perils.

Gvendur was in agreement with everything that Ingolfur Arnarson said, because he felt he was already his son-in-law. He was filled with an unbounded admiration for this great man who was not content simply with providing people with roads and bridges, but wanted in addition to see everyone living in a house. For the life of him he could not understand why anyone should bother to listen to Ingolfur’s opponent, a fat little fellow with a poor delivery who maintained a shameless tranquillity in spite of all his crimes, who even smiled at every fresh accusation, who seemed the better pleased the more it grew obvious that he ought to have been locked up years ago. When at last each had finished describing how he proposed to save the country from the perils that beset her, and neither could be bothered to say any more, the meeting was declared over, and the rival candidates walked out side by side and strolled across the enclosure laughing loud and heartily, as if they had never been better friends than now; many people had enjoyed themselves, and some exceedingly well, but it was doubtful whether anyone had had such a good time of it as the candidates themselves. The people stood staring after them, amazed that they did not fly at each other’s throat. They said good-bye at the gate, fondly clasped hands and gazing long and expressively into each other’s eyes, like a pair of secret lovers, then the banker drove off, leaving the spectators to scratch their heads.
Shortly afterwards the voters also began to prepare for the road, led their horses out of the pen, rode off in little groups. Gvendur managed to find various pretexts for delay, with the result that when most of the others had departed he was still mooning about the house, keeping a watchful eye on the doors, and stealing an occasional glance up at the windows. He was even thinking of knocking at the back door and asking for the loan of a hammer and block to fasten a loose horseshoe with, or just for a drop of water to drink, perhaps. But it occurred to him that if he were to do this it was almost certain that one of the kitchen-maids would answer the door, and that of course would spoil everything completely. At last he had a brain-wave: he would hide his whip in the wall of the pen, as if he had lost it; then when he had ridden as far as the ridge, he would turn back, knock at the door, inform them of his loss, and ask them to look after the whip for him should they find it. Then possibly the news that he had been at Myri would spread through the house, possibly his name would be mentioned in the house, possibly someone would go out in secret to look for the whip, possibly she would find it. He stuck the whip deep between the stones of the pen wall and rode off. Half-way up the ridge he turned about and made his way back to Myri to ask them to keep the whip for him if they should find it. When he rode once more into the enclosure, the pen had long been empty, everyone gone. He dismounted and walked up to the house. But at that moment the hall door was opened and Ingolfur Arnarson, dressed in a huge overcoat, came out on the doorstep with his mother. He kissed her, opened the door of his car, and stepped in. Then there appeared a fair-haired young girl wearing a blue dress and carrying a coat slung over her arm; she threw her arms round her grandfather’s neck and kissed him good-bye. A moment later and she had swept down the steps and was sitting by her father’s side; she waved her bright hand to her grandfather and grandmother, and he saw her smile gleaming behind the glass; for him it held all the loveliness of life. There came the humming of the engine as it was started up, low and smoothly powerful. She smiled to her father as the car moved off, and as it drove past him, with the sun glinting on the enamel, the boy’s senses were filled with the pleasing scent of gasoline; neither of them had noticed him. He was left standing alone in the empty enclosure, staring after the gleaming automobile as it receded into the distance. Never had he known such utter desolation, he retrieved his whip, mounted, rode off. The car was out of sight in a hollow. A few moments later he
caught a glimpse of it on the skyline, right at the top of the ridge. Madness to have thought of giving her a horse. He lashed it with his whip and the horse snorted; probably it was just a nag anyway, a stupid, broken-down old beast that ought to have been pensioned off years ago. The best thing he could do with it would be to sell it to anyone fool enough to buy it.

“Wait here just a moment, love,” said the Althingi member. “I think I’ll pop over to the hut there for a word or two with the old man.” He drew into the side of the road, applied the brakes, and switched off the engine. “Unless you’d care to come along with me?”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “It would spoil my shoes.”

She watched her father walk briskly away up the path, stalwart and broad-shouldered in thick overcoat.

Bjartur came down the home-field to meet the co-operative manager, called him Ingi lad, and asked him in. But Ingolfur Arnarson was pressed for time and wanted only to say how-d’you-do to his old friend and foster-brother and clap him on the back. When he asked why he hadn’t been at the meeting, Bjartur replied that he had better things to do than sit and listen to their blasted squabbling.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Althingi member. “It makes things clearer for you farmers, clarifies your ideas, you know, to hear these vital questions thrashed out.”

“Sending one another to hell on a fine Sunday morning, like you high-and-mighty aristocrats do nowadays, isn’t my idea of arguing vital questions. Such muck-slinging wouldn’t have been considered argument in the old days, when there were great deeds and glorious doings, and mighty men of famous valour walked the earth, men who challenged one another to single combat, or summoned their followers and fought in great armies until the corpses of the slain lay heaped higher than the tops of the hills.”

But the Althingi member had no time to listen to ballad politics and replied only that he had heard the farmer of Summerhouses was going to start building, and if that was the case, when was he thinking of beginning?