In the Wilderness Read Free Page B

came toward him, threateningly.
    Then the horse put its forefeet on the frozen surface, slid, and looked as if it would come down on its knees. But at last it got a foothold, came up to the collar—the sledge with its lightened load came free—and dashed at a brisk pace up the slope.
    On reaching the yard Eirik turned and shouted back to his father, with tears in his voice: “Ah, you might have lent us a hand—why should you stand there and do nothing but glare!”
    A flush spread slowly over Olav’s forehead. He said nothing. Now that the boy shouted it at him, he did not know how it had been—but he
had
simply stood and glared, without ever a thought that he might give Eirik a hand. A queer, uncomfortable feeling came over Olav—it was not the first time either. Of late it had happened to him several times to wake up, as it were, and find himself standing idly by—simply staring without a thought of bestirring himself and doing the thing that lay to his hand.
    Up by the woodpile he heard Eirik talking kindly and caressingly to the horse. Olav had seen this before—such was the lad’sway with both man and beast: one moment he was beside himself with sudden passion, the next all gentleness, imploring forgiveness. With a grimace of repugnance Olav turned away and walked up again across the fields.
    The Richardsons returned to Oslo, and Eirik guessed that his father had made a bargain with them. But now he dared not ask whether he would be allowed to go too. What deterred him was that not even this last misbehaviour of his had sufficed to drive his father out of his sinister silence. When Olav suddenly appeared beside the sledge, Eirik had been so sure that now he would be given a thrashing—he winced already under his father’s hard hand. But afterwards he felt it as a terrible disappointment that nothing had happened. Blows, curses, the most savage threats he would have accepted—and returned, inwardly, at any rate—and felt it as a relief, if only it put an end to this baneful uncertainty—not knowing what to make of his father.
    Olav would sit of an evening staring straight at Eirik—and the boy could not tell whether his father were looking at him or through him at the wall, so queerly far-away were his eyes. Eirik grew red and unsteady beneath this gaze which he could not read. Sometimes Olav noticed his uneasiness: “What is it with you, Eirik?” There was a shadow of suspicion in his voice. Eirik found no answer. But it might chance that he collected himself, seized upon something that had happened during the day, and poured out his story, usually of how much work he had performed or of some remarkable thing that had befallen him—when he came to speak of it to his father, everything became far more important than he had guessed at first. Most commonly it fell out that long before Eirik had finished he found that his father was no longer listening—he had glided back into his own thoughts. But the worst was when his father finally gave the faintest of smiles and said quietly and coolly: “Great deeds are common when you are abroad.” Or “Ay, you are a stout fellow, Eirik—one need only ask yourself to find that out.”
    Yet Eirik did his best, when talking to his father, to remember everything as it had happened and to say nothing beyond that. But when his tongue was set going, it came so difficult to him—before he knew it he was relating an incident as it might havehappened, or as he thought it ought to have happened. Another thing was that the house-folk egged him on to tell everything in the way that was most amusing to listen to. They knew as well as Eirik that he tricked out his truthful tales with a few trimmings, but they agreed with him that so it ought to be, and not one of them betrayed a knowledge that Eirik was apt to tell a little more than the truth. It was only his father who was so cross and dull of apprehension and always required to be told everything so baldly and