Look Back on Happiness Part 12

That evening, Solem repeated the performance. He went up to Miss Torsen again and said:

"What about that path? Shall we go now?"

As soon as she saw him coming, she turned quickly and tried to elude him.

But Solem did not hesitate to follow her.

"Now I've just got one thing to say," she said, stopping. "If you're insolent to me again, I'll see that you're driven off the farm...."

But it was not easy to drive Solem off the farm. After all, he was guide and porter to the tourists, and the only permanent laborer on the farm as well. And soon the hay would have to be brought in, and casual laborers would be engaged to work under him. No, Solem could not be driven off.

Besides, the other ladies were on his side; the mighty Mrs. Brede alone could save him by a word. She held the Tore Peak resort in the palm of her hand.

Solem was not discharged; but he held himself in check and became a little more civil. He seemed to suffer as much as ever. Once at midday, as he was standing in the woodshed, I saw him make a scratch with the ax across the nail of his thumb.

"What on earth are you doing?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm just marking myself," he replied, laughing gloomily. "When this scratch grows out--"

He stopped.

"What then?"

"Oh, I'll be away from here then," he said.

But I had the impression that he meant to say something different, so I probed further.

"Let me look. Well, it's not a deep scratch; you won't be here long then, will you?"

"Nails grow slowly," he muttered.

Then he strolled away whistling, and I set about chopping wood.

A little later Solem returned across the farmyard with a cackling hen under his arm. He went to the kitchen window and called:

"This the kind of hen you want me to kill?"

"Yes," was the reply.

Solem came back to the woodshed and asked me for the ax, as he wanted to behead a few hens. It was easy to see that he did everything on the farm; he was, hand and brain, indispensable.

He laid the hen on a block and took aim, but it was not easy, for she twisted her head like a snake and would not lie still. She had stopped cackling now.

"I can feel her heart jumping inside her," said Solem.

Suddenly he saw his chance and struck. There lay the head; Solem still held the body, which jerked under his hand. The thing was done so quickly that the two sections of the bird were still one in my eyes; I could not grasp a separation so sudden and unbelievable, and it took my sight a second or two to overtake the event. Bewilderment was in the expression of this detached head, which looked as though it could not believe what had happened, and raised itself a little as if to show there was nothing the least bit wrong. Solem let the body go. It lay still for a moment, then kicked its legs, leaped to the ground and began to hop, the headless body reeling on one wing till it struck the wall and spattered blood in wide arcs before it fell at last.

"I let her go too soon after all," said Solem.

Then he went off to fetch another hen.

XVIII

I return to the mad idea of Solem's being discharged. This would, to be sure, have averted a certain disaster here at the farm: but who would fetch and carry then? Paul? But I've told you he just lounges all day in his room, and has been doing so lately more than ever; the guests never see him except through an unsuccessful maneuver on his part.

One evening he came walking across the lawn. He must, in his disregard of time, have thought the guests had already retired, but we all sat outside in the mild darkness. When Paul saw us, he drew himself up and saluted as he pa.s.sed; then, calling Solem to him, he said:

"You mustn't cross the field again without letting me know. I was right there in my room, writing. The idea of Josephine carrying luggage!"

Paul strode on. But even yet he felt he had not appeared important enough, so he turned round and asked:

"Why didn't you take one of my cotters with you to act as porter?"

"They wouldn't go," Solem replied. "They were busy lifting potatoes."

"Wouldn't go?"

"That's what Einar said."

Paul thought this over.

"What insolence! They'd better not go too far or I'll drive them off the place."

Then the law awoke in the lawyer's bosom, and he asked:

"Haven't they bought their land?"

"Yes," said Paul. "But I'm the master of this farm. I have a say in things too. I'm not without power up here in Reisa, believe me...."

Then he said sternly to Solem:

"You come to me next time."

Whereupon he stalked off to the woods again.

"He's a bit tight again, our good Paul," said the lawyer.

n.o.body replied.

"Can you imagine an innkeeper in Switzerland behaving like that?" the lawyer remarked.

Mrs. Brede said gently:

"What a pity! He never drank before."

And at once the lawyer was charitable again: