It had happened before that a farmhand had disappeared, had taken the wrong road.
When Robert was ready to pull on his stockings he missed one of his wooden shoes. It had fallen into the brook; now it floated on the water near the willow thicket, far out of reach. He stood there, startled that his wooden shoe could float. Now it caught on the branches of the willows where the brook turned. The water gushed and swirled round the shoe and Robert stood there and saw his own foot kick and splash; he saw himself lying there, drowning in the brook.
What he had just now vaguely thought of had begun to happen by itself. It only remained for him to complete it.
He stuffed his stockings into the remaining shoe and threw it into the brook. Then he took off his jacket and let it follow after and was pleased when he saw it float on the water. Then he picked up his two bundles and went up on the bridge. At the parting of the roads on the other side of the bridge he turned to the left; he took the road that did not lead to Nybacken, he took the wrong road.
Caught on a branch of the big willow at the bend of the brook there now could be seen a boy’s little jacket. As the running water in the brook swung the branches back and forth, the arms of the jacket would wave to anyone passing the bridge, telling what had become of the hired hand on his way to Nybacken to begin his service: he had drowned in the mill brook, as the maid had done a few years earlier.
— 2—
The ground under Robert’s feet felt cold in the shadow of the wood: it was too early in the year to go barefooted. He had walked only a short distance when someone pulled up behind him. Robert prayed in his heart that it might be a timberman on his way to Karlshamn; then he would ask if he could ride with him. But it was only Jonas Petter of Hästebäck, their nearest neighbor in Korpamoen, on his way to the mill with grain. He stopped. Yes, Robert could sit up on the sacks beside him and ride with him to Åbro mill.
Robert crawled onto the wagon and sat down next to the farmer. Jonas Petter of Hästebäck was a kind man: he did not ask where Robert was going; he said only that it was dangerous to walk barefooted so early in the spring. Robert answered that he walked easier without shoes and stockings. Apparently Jonas Petter had not noticed the jacket as he passed the bridge.
In the mill room at Åbro there were already three farmers, waiting for their grind. They were unknown to Robert. He remained with them in the mill room, where it was nice and warm; a big fire burned in the stove, and the air smelled sweetly of flour and grain.
The peasants ate food which they had brought along and drank brännvin with it, and one of them gave Robert a slice of bread and a dram. He dunked the bread in the brännvin as children were wont to do, and he was a little conscious of this, now that he was almost grown.
The men had driven their grain wagons far alone, and now in company they were conversing loudly and noisily. Jonas Petter of Hästebäck stretched himself full length on some empty sacks in front of the fire. He was a tall-grown man with fine black side whiskers.
Below the mill room the grindstones went their even pace and rumbled softly, like thunder at a distance; it was otherwise peaceful and quiet in here. Robert sat in front of the fire next to Jonas Petter. He was not going to work as a hired man, and his heart was light.
“We all remember old Axelina here at Åbro,” said Jonas Petter, “but does anyone remember how she got the mill and became the richest wench in the parish?”
The answers from the other peasants all were negative. No one had such a good memory as Jonas Petter; he knew all the old stories of the region, and now he must tell about Axelina, whom he remembered as the owner of the mill while he was still a youth.
She was an ingenious and clever woman, this Axelina. She came as a maid to Frans the Miller, who had owned the mill for many years and had had time to steal so much flour from the sacks that he had become as rich as ten trolls. At this time he was old and sickly, and Axelina made up her mind that she was to inherit from him. And now she went about it in the only way a woman can under such circumstances: she tried to inveigle him into carnal connections with her. In the evenings after he had gone to bed she would come into his room in her shift, and as often as she could she displayed her attractions. But Frans was played out, slow in the blood — no longer to be tempted.
One cold winter evening, however, as he returned from a Christmas party where he had drunk more brännvin than was good for him, he happened to fall into a snowdrift. When he did not turn up, Axelina took a lantern and went out to look for him. She found him frozen through and through. She helped him home, put him to bed, and gave him a pint of brännvin to revive his body warmth. Frans drank the brännvin but complained that he still felt cold. Then, said Axelina, she knew only one more remedy which could help him, and that one he probably wouldn’t use. Frans was afraid he might contract a deadly sickness and he asked what kind of remedy she knew. Well, replied the maid, she must lie next to him and warm him with her own body. She had heard this was the best remedy against chills. Frans was a little startled, but he had drunk a lot of brännvin and said that if she believed she could help him in this way she might come and lie next to him. She would do it only to save his life, she insisted, and he must promise not to touch her. This he promised willingly — he had no such thoughts while shaking and shivering in his bed.
So Axelina lay down with her master, and she knew how to manage: it ended with the master and the maid being as close to each other as is possible. She used to say later that it took only half an hour until Frans the Miller lost the chills, and she could leave him.
Forty weeks after this happening Axelina bore a son who so much resembled Frans that no one needed to ask the father’s name. Frans never forgave his maid who had taken advantage of him, and marriage between them was never talked of. But he was much attached to his boy, and when he died a few years later he left all he owned to the child, with a relative as guardian. Axelina did not get a penny.
However, the boy caught smallpox and died when he was four years old. Axelina then inherited from her son. She received the Åbro mill and all Frans’ other possessions, and became the richest woman in the parish: owner of more than forty thousand riksdaler, And she bragged later that she had earned it all in one half-hour, the half-hour when she lay in Frans the Miller’s bed and warmed him after his exposure in the snow. Nor was it difficult work — she had lain quite still. No woman in the whole world, not even a queen or an empress, had earned so great an hourly pay as Axelina in her master’s bed that evening.
Yes, said Jonas Petter, and sighed, women could earn easy money if they liked: only to lie quite still.
Robert stared at Jonas Petter; he always told such unkind stories about women. It was said that he did this because he himself was tormented by a wicked wife. The couple in Hästebäck lived so ill together, and quarreled so loudly, that people could stand on the road outside the house and hear every word they said; horses had become frightened and bolted from the hubbub. It sometimes happened that Jonas Petter had to sleep in a stall in the byre because he could not sleep within the same four walls where his wife Brita-Stafva slept.