"You can be as nasty as you please," said he. "If you think I care...." And he went out.
And naturally enough, soon after, Barbro was wearing both her rings again.
In time, too, she ceased to care at all for what he said about the death of the child. She simply sniffed and tossed her head. Not that she ever confessed anything, but only said: "Well, and suppose I had drowned it? You live here in the wilds and what do you know of things elsewhere?" Once when they were talking of this, she seemed to be trying to get him to see he was taking it all too seriously; she herself thought no more of getting rid of a child than the matter was worth. She knew two girls in Bergen who had done it; but one of them had got two months" imprisonment because she had been a fool and hadn"t killed it, but only left it out to freeze to death; and the other had been acquitted. "No," said Barbro, "the law"s not so cruel hard now as it used to be. And besides, it"s not always it gets found out." There was a girl in Bergen at the hotel who had killed two children; she was from Christiania, and wore a hat--a hat with feathers in. They had given her three months for the second one, but the first was never discovered, said Barbro.
Axel listened to all this and grew more than ever afraid of her. He tried to understand, to make out things a little in the darkness, but she was right after all; he took these things too seriously in his way. With all her vulgar depravity, Barbro was not worth a single earnest thought. Infanticide meant nothing to her, there was nothing extraordinary in the killing of a child; she thought of it only with the looseness and moral nastiness that was to be expected of a servant-girl. It was plain, too, in the days that followed; never an hour did she give herself up to thought; she was easy and natural as ever, unalterably shallow and foolish, unalterably a servant-girl. "I must go and have my teeth seen to," she said. "And I want one of those new cloaks." There was a new kind of half-length coat that had been fashionable for some years past, and Barbro must have one.
And when she took it all so naturally, what could Axel do but give way? And it was not always that he had any real suspicion of her; she herself had never confessed, had indeed denied time and again, but without indignation, without insistence, as a trifle, as a servant-girl would have denied having broken a dish, whether she had done so or not. But after a couple of weeks, Axel could stand it no longer; he stopped dead one day in the middle of the room and saw it all as by a revelation. Great Heaven! every one must have seen how it was with her, heavy with child and plain to see--and now with her figure as before--but where was the child? Suppose others came to look for it? They would be asking about it sooner or later. And if there had been nothing wrong, it would have been far better to have had the child buried decently in the churchyard. Not there in the bushes, there on his land....
"No. "Twould only have made a fuss," said Barbro. "They"d have cut it open and had an inquest, and all that. I didn"t want to be bothered."
"If only it mayn"t come to worse later on," said he.
Barbro asked easily: "What"s there to worry about? Let it lie where it is." Ay, she smiled, and asked: "Are you afraid it"ll come after you?
Leave all that nonsense, and say no more about it."
"Ay, well...."
"Did I drown the child? I"ve told you it drowned itself in the water when I slipped in. I never heard such things as you get in your head.
And, anyway, it would never be found out," said she.
""Twas found out all the same with Inger at Sellanraa," said Axel.
Barbro thought for a moment. "Well, I don"t care," said she. "The law"s all different now, and if you read the papers you"d know.
There"s heaps that have done it, and don"t get anything to speak of."
Barbro sets out to explain it, to teach him, as it were--getting him to take a broad view of things. It was not for nothing she herself had been out in the world and seen and heard and learned so much; now she could sit here and be more than a match for him. She had three main arguments which she was continually advancing: In the first place, she had not done it. In the second, it was not such a terrible thing, after all, if she had done it. But in the third place, it would never be found out.
"Everything gets found out, seems to me," he objected.
"Not by a long way," she answered. And whether to astonish him or to encourage him, or perhaps from sheer vanity and as something to boast of, all of a sudden she threw a bombsh.e.l.l. Thus: "I"ve done something myself that never got found out."
"You?" said he, all unbelieving. "What have you done?"
"What have I done? Killed something."
She had not meant, perhaps, to go so far, but she had to go on now; there he was, staring at her. Oh, and it was not grand, indomitable boldness even; it was mere bravado, vulgar showing off; she wanted to look big herself, and silence him. "You don"t believe me?" she cried.
"D"you remember that in the paper about the body of a child found in the harbour? "Twas me that did it."
"What?" said he.
"Body of a child. You never remember anything. We read about it in the paper you brought up."
After a moment he burst out: "You must be out of your senses!"
But his confusion seemed to incite her more, to give her a sort of artificial strength; she could even give the details. "I had it in my box--it was dead then, of course--I did that as soon as it was born.
And when we got out into the harbour, I threw it overboard."
Axel sat dark and silent, but she went on. It was a long time back now, many years, the time she had first come to Maaneland. So, there, he could see "twas not everything was found out, not by a long way!
What would things be like if everything folk did got out? What about all the married people in the towns and the things they did? They killed their children before they were born--there were doctors who managed that. They didn"t want more than one, or at most two children, and so they"d get in a doctor to get rid of it before it come. Ho, Axel need not think that was such a great affair out in the world!
"Ho!" said Axel. "Then I suppose you did get rid of the last one too, that way?"
"No, I didn"t," she answered carelessly as could be, "for I dropped it," she said. But even then she must go on again about it being nothing so terrible if she had. She was plainly accustomed to think of the thing as natural and easy; it did not affect her now. The first time, perhaps, it might have been a little uncomfortable, something of an awkward feeling about it, to kill the child; but the second? She could think of it now with a sort of historic sense: as a thing that had been done, and could be done.
Axel went out of the house heavy in mind. He was not so much concerned over the fact that Barbro had killed her first child--that was nothing to do with himself. That she had had a child at all before she came to him was nothing much either; she was no innocent, and had never pretended to be so, far from it. She had made no secret of her knowledge, and had taught him many things in the dark. Well and good.
But this last child--he would not willingly have lost it; a tiny boy, a little white creature wrapped up in a rag. If she were guilty of that child"s death, then she had injured him, Axel--broken a tie that he prized, and that could not be replaced. But it might be that he wronged her, after all: that she _had_ slipped in the water by accident. But then the wrapping--the bit of shirt she had taken with her....
Meantime, the hours pa.s.sed; dinner-time came, and evening. And when Axel had gone to bed, and had lain staring into the dark long enough, he fell asleep at last, and slept till morning. And then came a new day, and after that day other days....
Barbro was the same as ever. She knew so much of the world, and could take lightly many little trifles that were terrible and serious things for folk in the wilds. It was well in a way; she was clever enough for both of them, careless enough for both. And she did not go about like a terrible creature herself. Barbro a monster? Not in the least. She was a pretty girl, with blue eyes, a slightly turned-up nose, and quick-handed at her work. She was utterly sick and tired of the farm and the wooden vessels, that took such a lot of cleaning; sick and tired, perhaps, of Axel and all, of the out-of-the-way life she led.
But she never killed any of the cattle, and Axel never found her standing over him with uplifted knife in the middle of the night.
Only once it happened that they came to talk again of the body in the wood. Axel still insisted that it ought to have been buried in the churchyard, in consecrated ground; but she maintained as before that her way was good enough. And then she said something which showed that she was reasoned after her fashion--ho, was sharp enough, could see beyond the tip of her nose; could think, with the pitiful little brain of a savage.
"If it gets found out I"ll go and talk to the Lensmand; I"ve been in service with him. And Fru Heyerdahl, she"ll put in a word for me, I know. It"s not every one that can get folk to help them like that, and they get off all the same. And then, besides, there"s father, that knows all the great folks, and been a.s.sistant himself, and all the rest."
But Axel only shook his head.
"Well, what"s wrong with that?"
"D"you think your father"d ever be able to do anything?"
"A lot you know about it!" she cried angrily. "After you"ve ruined him and all, taking his farm and the bread out of his mouth."
She seemed to have a sort of idea herself that her father"s reputation had suffered of late, and that she might lose by it. And what could Axel say to that? Nothing. He was a man of peace, a worker.
Chapter III
That winter, Axel was left to himself again at Maaneland. Barbro was gone. Ay, that was the end of it.
Her journey to town would not take long, she said; "twas not like going to Bergen; but she wasn"t going to stay on here losing one tooth after another, till she"d a mouth like a calf. "What"ll it cost?" said Axel.
"How do I know?" said she. "But, anyway, it won"t cost you anything.
I"ll earn the money myself."
She had explained, too, why it was best for her to go just then; there were but two cows to milk, and in the spring there would be two more, besides all the goats with kids, and the busy season, and work enough right on till June.
"Do as you please," said Axel.
It was not going to cost him anything, not at all. But she must have some money to start with, just a little; there was the journey, and the dentist to pay, and besides, she must have one of the new cloaks and some other little things. But, of course, if he didn"t care to....
"You"ve had money enough up to now," said he.
"H"m," said she. "Anyway, it"s all gone."