Independent People (7 page)

O
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the following day the bride was brought home on Blesi. The foal, unaccustomed to the burden of a rider, was restive and apt to lash out with its hoofs, so Bjartur had to lead it all the way. In a sack slung over his shoulder he carried his wife’s bedding, while two bags tied across the pommel contained a few wedding presents, among them a pan and a ladle that kept up a continual jangling, scaring the foal so that it shied incessantly and would have bolted had not Bjartur been hanging on to the reins like an anchor. Titla padded along in the rear, carelessly nosing this and that as dogs are wont to do in the fragrance of spring, but watchful enough, every time the foal shied, to rush madly at its hoofs and make it and its rider more frightened still. What with cursing the dog and the horse, the man had little breath for anything else, so there was no conversation on the way up the ridge.

When they reached Gunnvor’s cairn, however, the bride, Rosa, wished to dismount. She wanted to add a stone to Gunnvor’s tomb, because she thought it would keep ill luck away. Gunnvor demands a stone, she keeps account of all those who cross the ridge.

“Nonsense,” said Bjartur, “there’s nothing lucky about it at all. I will have no truck with superstition. She can lie where she is, the old bitch.”

“Let me down to give her a stone, Bjartur.”

“What the devil does she want with a stone? No stone from me or mine. We pay our dues to the living, which is more to the point than pandering to people that have fried in hell for centuries.”

“Bjartur, let me down, please.”

“Enough of your popery.”

“Bjartur, I want to give her a stone.”

“If I remember correctly I paid the minister his fee on the spot yesterday, and that even though he did us out of the sermon. I don’t owe anyone a penny.”

“Bjartur, if you don’t let me down something is bound to happen.”

“I thought it was enough to believe in old Reverend Gudmundur
without believing in Old Nick into the bargain. I am a free man. And you are a free woman.”

“Darling fijarte,” pleaded the woman with a sob in her throat, I’m so afraid that something will happen to me if I don’t give her a stone. It’s an old belief.”

“Let her rot, the old trollop. On with you, Blesi. Shut your trap, Tida.”

Rosa held on to the foal’s mane with both hands, like a child, and her lip quivered and her head hung, like a child’s. She did not dare say anything more. They moved off again.

But when they came down to the level stretches of meadow land on the other side of the ridge, it was Bjartur that halted, for Summerhouses could be seen in the distance. Leaning against the foal’s neck, he pointed out the new croft-house, how prosperous it looked standing there on the bright green of its low hill, with the mountain above it and the marshes in front; and the lake; and the river flowing smoothly through the marshes. The house was still brown, the newly cut slices of turf still bare of grass.

He had looked forward to showing her the croft from a distance, and it was on this very spot, actually, among the watercourses on the heath, that he had expected to hear her exclamations of delight. But there was somehow no sparkle in the listless eyes gazing down the valley; the shadows of the pain that his uncompromising behaviour at the cairn had caused her were still darkening her features. He thought she was discontented because the croft was not green yet—“but you can’t expect the turf to sprout in five minutes,” he said. “Just wait till next summer, and I’ll bet there won’t be much difference between the roof and the home-field.” She said nothing.

“It’s a fine house that,” he said.

Then she asked:

“Why didn’t you let me down at the cairn?”

“Surely you aren’t sulking because you couldn’t throw stones at that old ghoul, are you?”

But the woman went oil staring with stubborn unresponsive-ness at the horse’s marie, and a shadow had suddenly fallen over the moorland valley, for it was one of those days of early summer which have living faces—white packs of cloud cross the heavens like thoughts, and the shadows sweep over the land and take away the sun from a whole valley, though the mountains stand all around still bathed in sunshine. And when his wife made no reply, Bjartur let go his hold of the foal’s neck, took up the reins again, called
the dog, unnecessary though it was, and with the wedding presents still jangling in the saddle-bags, led his bride off once more.

The path had begun to slope downhill along the brink of the ravine which the river cuts through the ridge, and a few drops of rain were beginning to fall from the cloud over the valley before the woman broke the silence by calling to her husband. “Bjartur,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, turning on his heel.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Let me down here, will you? I’m going home.”

He stared at his wife in open-mouthed amazement.

“Have you taken leave of your senses, Rosa?” he asked finally.

“I want to go home.”

“Home where?”

“Home.”

“I’ve never known you behave like this before, Rosa,” said the man, and turning once more he led her off on his way. The tears started from her eyes; there are few things so comforting as to be able to weep. In this fashion they continued their journey down into the valley. The dog padded along quietly in the rear. And when they arrived at a point opposite the croft, Bjartur led the horse out of the path and homeward across the marshes. There were bogs and deep pools to be avoided. In one place the horse sank right up to the groin; as it floundered out on to firmer ground, the woman was thrown and lay there in water and mud. Bjartur lifted her to her feet, then wiped off the worst of the mud with his handkerchief. “You women are more to be pitied than ordinary mortals, I suppose,” he said. This remark made her stop weeping, and she walked by his side the rest of the way. She sat down by the brook to wring out her skirts, while the crofter unsaddled Blesi and hobbled him. The shadows had fled from the valley, there was sunshine over the little home-field.

It was a house and a stable in one. All that was visible of the inner, wooden shell was the door and its frame, the door so small, the threshold so high that one had to stoop on entering. Down in the stable it was cold and dark, the air sour with the smell of earth, the toadstools flabby, but when the trapdoor was lifted a faint gleam shone down from the loft. There were mangers along the sides, and in the farther wall a gap just wide enough to allow access to a hay barn that Bjartur proposed building behind the house. A ladder with seven rungs led up to the living-room above; Bjartur climbed it first to show his wife that it was safe. She followed
him up and looked round the room. She thought the window was small.

“Anyone would think you had been born in a palace,” snorted Bjartur. “If it’s sunshine you’re after, there’s plenty outside.”

I’m afraid it will be a change after the big windows in Rauthsmyri, all the same.”

“I wonder if you’ll miss anything or anybody else in Rauthsmyri,” he said bitterly.

“What do you mean?” she demanded. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying things like that.”

It was a medium-sized room, and so low that Bjartur could just stand upright under the roof-tree. Two bedsteads, made from the same sort of wood as the roof and the floor, were fixed to the wall, while the table was nailed to the window-sill. There was a little range on the left of the trapdoor, and above it, set in
the
slope of the roof, another window with a pane not much bigger than the palm of a hand; a few stalks of grass growing outside the window were swaying in the wind. But the thickness of the turf walls outside was too great to admit much light, no sunbeam could enter unless the sun shone directly on the window.

The bed nearer the table was already provided with a mattress of dry turf, the marriage bed. At the foot of this bed were boxes of provisions, for Bjartur had got his supplies in—ryemeal and sugar, best quality from Bruni, and maybe a handful of wheaten flour for pancakes, if we feel that way, and who knows if there isn’t a bag or two of raisins hiding about somewhere or other? Downstairs there was a fine sackful of refuse fish. Then Krusi of Gil had made them a wedding present of a load of dry sheep’s dung for fuel, because of a young foal that Bjartur had rescued from drowning in a pit the year before last, but that would have to be used sparingly and mixed with ling and moss at first, and besides, there’s plenty of peat, you know, lying only four spade depths down in the marshes east of the house here.

Rosa, her eyes red and elbows muddy, was sitting on the turf mattress on the bed, gazing at the large, irresolute hands in her lap.

“Well, doesn’t it suit you?” asked Bjartur of Summerhouses.

“You don’t think I expected anything better, do you?”

“Well, there’s always one good thing about it: no one that lives here need slave all day long at housework,” he said, “and I always thought you had sense enough to appreciate your independence. Independence is the most important thing of all in life. I say for my part that a man lives in vain until he is independent. People
who aren’t independent aren’t people. A man who isn’t his own master is as bad as a man without a dog.”

“A dog?” she asked indifferently, and sniffed.

He gazed out of the window for a while, without accounting for the trend of his thought, staring in silence towards the mountain.

“This land will not betray its flocks,” he said at length.

His wife wiped a drop from the end of her nose with the back of her hand.

“Where the sheep lives, there lives man,” continued the bridegroom. “It’s just as my father used to say: in a way sheep and men are one.”

I’ve had such bad dreams,” said his wife.

Turning his head to throw her a scornful glance, he said:

“Why pay any heed to suchlike things? Dreams are caused by the blood streaming upwards; you have them when you are lying in a cramped position, or if there’s a lump beneath you, that’s all. This spring, for instance, when I was busy pulling the stones out of the ruins here, I dreamed that a woman came out of the mountain, a damned fine-looking woman, too, let me tell you.”

“Yes,” said his wife, “it would be a woman, wouldn’t it?”

“Without actually believing in dreams,” continued Bjartur, “I bet that means I’m to have some fine lambs for sale in my very first autumn.”

“Everybody says that Gunnvor is fit to take the place here. It’s only two years since a horse bolted here at midday.”

“I don’t want to hear anything more about any damned Gunnvor.”

“She’s driven many a one out of the moors here all the same.”

“Some duffer or other who didn’t know a rake from a spade,” snorted Bjartur. “They can always find something to blame if they have to sell up.”

“You seem to think that nothing evil exists.”

“No, I don’t say that,” he replied. “There is danger on land and danger on the sea, but what of it? If you get into danger, either you perish or you escape. But to say that devils and fiends and all that sort of stuff exists is to say that your blood is out of order, that’s all.”

“Dogs see a lot, all the same,” said his wife.

“A dog is a dog.”

“Fancy that! I always thought you believed that dogs were all-knowing.”

“No,” he countered, “that’s a thing I’ve never said. All I say is that a dog is the only animal that understands a man. But a dog is a dog and a man
is
a man for all that, as Einar of Undirhlith would say.”

“Everybody with second sight says this place is haunted.”

“I don’t care a damn for people with second sight,” he snorted. “Give me a man who has some control over his own senses. There they go seeing things and hearing the devil only knows what, like that half-wit of a tramp that everybody made so much fuss about in Fjord a year or two ago. There he was, supposed to be falling into trances, and gabbling off all sorts of drivel from the hereafter about Jesus Christ, Egill Skallagrimsson, and King Christian IX. Then he ended up in prison for forging the Sheriff’s signature.”

“I’m sure you don’t believe in God even, Bjartur.”

“I’m saying nothing about that,” he replied, “but there’s one thing I’ll never deny: that the Reverend Gudmundur’s is a grand breed of sheep, the best that’s ever been known hereabouts.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t even say your prayers at night, Bjartur?”

“Oh, I don’t know. If they rhyme I sometimes run through a prayer or two while I’m falling off to sleep, just to fill the time in,” he said, “or used to when I had less to think about. But never the Lord’s Prayer, because I don’t call that poetry. And anyway, since I don’t believe in the Devil, I see no point in praying, so we’ll say nothing more about it. What do you say to a drop of coffee to freshen us up?”

“What awful talk, Gudbjarturl” said Rosa. “I’m sure it must frighten away the angels of God, the way you talk. You deny everything except what you want to believe; that’s the sort of man you are.”

“I have my five senses,” he replied, “and don’t see what need there is for more.”

“I know of people who stand much higher in society than you do, and who nevertheless believe in both good and evil.”

“Maybe,” said Bjartur, “and I think I can guess what they’re like. I shouldn’t be surprised if one of them wasn’t the chap who was hanging around you women at Myri this spring, that fellow who used to frighten you into his arms with ghost stories ”

“Us who?” she demanded, looking up, and for the first time a gleam showed in the eye with a cast. “What do you think you mean?”

But he was busy humming an old verse and looking for the kettle to fetch water, for he was determined to have his coffee. On the ladder he turned and left behind him this observation:

“Oh, maybe somebody got as near to somebody as he wanted to. I shouldn’t be at all surprised, shouldn’t be surprised a bit.”

T
HIS
parting observation seemed on superficial consideration neither particularly definite nor particularly significant, and yet few things exercised so profound an influence on the early domestic life of Summerhouses as the imputation it bore, or rather that fact which immediately the first evening proved to be the foundation for it.