Mattson returned from his journey with a gloomy face, and offered to compromise by a payment of damages. Yes, he would even try to pay a higher rent. But Tord only shouted that he wanted to be left in peace.
The following day Mattson came again, and this time he was humble and alarmed, and begged as if for his life. And now it was a joy for Tord to look into his eyes. Yes, he had a great and lovely revenge on all the prudence and calmness of the world. He escaped with a cruel feeling of pleasure from the idler’s secret feeling of inferiority.
“No!” he cut him short. “I won’t move. You’ll find here, Mattson, no use for your rake pins. Clear out now!”
Shortly before Christmas a couple of sand barges arrived at the pier, and took on board Mattson’s corn, cattle, furniture and tools. It cut one’s heart to see the kitchen table, the folding bed, the plants, moved out into the winter cold. Tord stood up on his hilltop and watched. He meant to be defiant and hard-hearted and enjoy the ice-cold wind. But as a matter of fact he was frightened and felt sick.
Then four steady and determined men from the barges came up and demanded on Mattson’s account a round sum for the autumn sowing, manure, newly planted fruit trees, and improvements to piers, fences, outhouses. Tord paid without bargaining and with a certain tremulous eagerness.
Mattson did not show himself except on a receipt.
Then one of the barges set off with the old couple on board. The other remained a little behind. There, hidden among the alders by the shore, stood a powerful youth and peered up towards the hill. When he saw Tord set out for a walk, he followed him unperceived. He chose a quiet, suitable place where there were no witnesses. There he suddenly sprang out and gave Tord a blow on the back of his head, so that he fell unconscious for a time and awoke covered with blood and with two teeth missing. The barge had already disappeared, swallowed up by the grey ice-cold winter twilight across the bay.
That was the first time Tord had suffered rough, bodily ill-treatment. It brought out again all the timid hatred of mankind that his marriage had seemed for a moment to thrust aside.
He came home late and said he had fallen and struck against a tree stump. Dagmar could not help laughing for a moment at the ridiculous gap in his teeth. But she stopped short when she saw his expression, and her laugh turned to sobs. She had evil presentiments, Dagmar, and they were to come true. …
Tord had not so many opportunities of kicking down Mattson’s fences and revelling in his new eagle-like loneliness. It soon appeared that he must go and buy provisions if they were not to starve to death when the ice came and it was too thick to get through with a boat, and not thick enough to walk on. They had, as a matter of fact, cut away the ground beneath their feet by turning Mattson out. Where were they now to procure milk, fish, meat and wood? Tord sailed about to the neighbouring islands and told the peasants to bring him these necessities, but they were annoyed at his treatment of Mattson and therefore could not spare him even a herring.
Tord was to learn to his annoyance that Mattson with his foresight and experience had stood like a rock between him and a thousand worries and difficulties. But this only strengthened him in his angry resolve to help himself. In a furious north wind he and the old gardener sailed twelve miles to the nearest store and there he bought a boatload of preserved food, ham, potatoes, flour and lamp oil. They had to hack their way out of the harbour through ice half an inch thick, frozen during the night, so it was high time. …
Then came the real winter and locked them in with dark and unsafe ice.
At the end of February the old gardener fell on the very slippery ground when he was carrying water from the well, and broke his leg above the knee. Fortunately the ice bore just then, so they were able to get him into hospital. They could not tempt another servant out to the eagle’s nest, so now they had to shift for themselves. Tord was not able to climb the hill with water and wood, so they had to move into Mattson’s humble cottage for the winter. In the spring Tord had soundings made but they found no water up on the hill: so he had to bring out more workmen to construct a proper road up. All this cost money—so much that even Tord realized he could not go on forever. Then he bought fishing and shooting implements and a few goats in order to help him out, and he took to cattle breeding. But now for the first time he really missed Mattson’s experience. … He did not know where to try for the cod. He did not know how to deal with a tangled net. The ducks flew past when he lay out in the skerries. And the goats soon dried up; and besides, they became so wild that he could not catch them. So during the course of the summer these means of support failed him, and he had to turn to expensive preserved food again.
Dagmar had not much time to run about naked in the sunshine this summer. There was not so much left that was
