"Do you think perhaps you could bring up a good-sized basket, or a box?"
"I"ve ordered some gla.s.s windows," said Isak. "and a couple of painted doors. I"ll have to fetch them up," said he in his lordly way.
"Ay well, then. It"s no great matter about the basket."
"What did you want with a basket? What"s it for?"
"What"s it for?... Oh, haven"t you eyes in your head!"
Isak went off deep in thought. Two days later he came back, with a window and a door for the parlour, and a door for the bedroom; also he had hung round his neck in front a good-sized packing-case, and full of provisions to boot.
"You"ll carry yourself to death one day," said Inger.
"Ho, indeed!" Isak was very far indeed from being dead; he took out a bottle of medicine from his pocket--naphtha it was--and gave it to Inger with orders to take it regularly and get well again. And there were the windows and the painted doors that he could fairly boast of; he set to work at once fitting them in. Oh, such little doors, and secondhand at that, but painted up all neat and fine again in red and white; "twas almost as good as having pictures on the walls.
And now they moved into the new building, and the animals had the turf hut to themselves, only a lambing ewe was left with Cow, lest she should feel lonely.
They had done well, these builders in the waste: ay, "twas a wonder and a marvel to themselves.
Chapter II
Isak worked on the land until the frost act in; there were stones and roots to be dug up and cleared away, and the meadow to be levelled ready for next year. When the ground hardened, he left his field work and became a woodman, felling and cutting up great quant.i.ties of logs.
"What do you want with all these logs?" Inger would say.
"Oh, they"ll be useful some way," said Isak off-handedly, as though he had no plan. But Isak had a plan, never fear. Here was virgin forest, a dense growth, right close up to the house, a barrier hedging in his fields where he wanted room. Moreover, there must be some way of getting the logs down to the village that winter; there were folk enough would be glad of wood for firing. It was sound enough, and Isak was in no doubt; he stuck to his work in the forest, felling trees and cutting them up into logs.
Inger came out often, to watch him at work. He took no notice, but made as if her coming were no matter, and not at all a thing he wished for her to do; but she understood all the same that it pleased him to have her there. They had a strange way, too, of speaking to each other at times.
"Couldn"t you find things to do but come out here and get stark frozen?" says Isak.
"I"m well enough for me," says Inger. "But I can"t see there"s any living sense in you working yourself to death like you do."
"Ho! You just pick up that coat of mine there and put it on you."
"Put on your coat? Likely, indeed. I"ve no time to sit here now, with Goldenhorns ready to calve and all."
"H"m, Calving, you say?"
"As if you didn"t know! But what do you think now about that same calf. Let it stay and be weaned, maybe?"
"Do as you think; "tis none of my business with calves and things."
"Well, "twould be a pity to eat up calf, seems to me. And leave us with but one cow on the place."
"Don"t seem to me like you"d do that anyway," says Isak.
That was their way. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth.
And Goldenhorns calved. A great day in the wilderness, a joy and a delight. They gave her flour-wash, and Isak himself saw to it there was no stint of flour, though he had carried it all the way himself, on his back. And there lay a pretty calf, a beauty, red-flanked like her mother, and comically bewildered at the miracle of coming into the world. In a couple of years she would be having calves of her own.
""Twill be a grand fine cow when she grows up," said Inger. "And what are we to call her, now? I can"t think."
Inger was childish in her ways, and no clever wit for anything.
"Call her?" said Isak. "Why, Silverhorns, of course; what else?"
The first snow came. As soon as there was a pa.s.sable road, Isak set out for the village, full of concealment and mystery as ever, when Inger asked his errand. And sure enough, he came back this time with a new and unthinkable surprise. A horse and sledge, nothing less.
"Here"s foolishness," says Inger. "And you"ve not stolen it, I suppose?"
"Stolen it?"
"Well, found it, then?"
Now if only he could have said: ""Tis my horse--our horse...." But to tell the truth, he had only hired it, after all. Hired horse and sledge to cart his logs.
Isak drove down with his loads of firewood, and brought back food, herrings and flour. And one day he came up with a young bull on the sledge; bought it for next to nothing, by reason they were getting short of fodder down in the village. s.h.a.ggy and thin, no ways a beauty, but decently built for all that, and wanted no more than proper feed to set it right. And with a cow they had already....
"What"ll you be bringing up next?" said Inger.
Isak brought up a host of things. Brought up planks and a saw he had got in exchange for timber; a grindstone, a wafer iron, tools--all in exchange for his logs. Inger was bursting with riches, and said each time: "What, more things! When we"ve cattle and all a body could think of!"
They had enough to meet their needs for no little time to come, and were well-to-do folk. What was Isak to start on again next spring? He had thought it all out, tramping down beside his loads of wood that winter; he would clear more ground over the hillside and level it off, cut up more logs to dry through the summer, and take down double loads when the snow came fit for sledging. It worked out beautifully.
But there was another matter Isak had thought of times out of number: that Goldenhorns, where had she come from, whose had she been? There was never a wife on earth like Inger. Ho! a wild thing she was, that let him do as he pleased with her, and was glad of it. But--suppose one day they were to come for the cow, and take it away--and worse, maybe, to come after? What was it Inger herself had said about the horse: "You haven"t stolen it, I suppose, or found it?" That was her first thought, yes. That was what she had said; who could say if she were to be trusted--what should he do? He had thought of it all many a time. And here he had brought up a mate himself for the cow--for a stolen cow, maybe!
And there was the horse he would have to return again. A pity--for "twas a little friendly beast, and grown fond of them already.
"Never mind," said Inger comfortingly. "Why, you"ve done wonders already."
"Ay, but just now with the spring coming on--and I"ve need of a horse...."
Next morning he drove off quietly with the last load, and was away two days. Coming back on foot the third day, he stopped as he neared the house, and stood listening. There was a curious noise inside.... A child crying--Eyah, _Herregud_!... Well, there it was; but a terrible strange thing. And Inger had never said a word.
He stepped inside, and there first thing of all was the packing-case--the famous packing-case that he had carried home slung round his neck in front; there it was, hung up by a string at each end from the ceiling, a cradle and a bedplace for the child. Inger was up, pottering about half-dressed--she had milked the cow and the goats, as it might have been just an ordinary day.
The child stopped crying. "You"re through with it already?" said Isak.
"Ay, I"m through with it now."
"H"m."
"It came the first evening you were gone."