Arvid was accustomed to the ways of the farm, and when he said that the service was hard he might as well have said it was hard to harness a horse or to carry a bucket of water.
Robert was the youngest on the farm, and all had chores for him to do: Aron, the mistress, the old mistress, the maids. All lorded it over him, sent him hither and yon, corrected him, hurried him, scolded him. Everyone on the farm was his master. Even the animals: the farm’s four horses needed constant attention. He had to get up early in the morning to fill their mangers with fodder, in the evening he must fill them again before going to bed. And the horses must be curried, they must have their stalls cleaned, hay must be brought down from the loft for them, oats fetched from the granary, fodder cut in the barn, and water carried from the well. Robert lived his farmhand’s life in close quarters with horses, smelling horses, horse manure, horse sweat, leather and harness. Sundays and weekdays alike, the horses required attention.
The animals were bound in their stalls and the farmhands were bound to the animals. And the service year of a hired hand was three hundred and fifty-eight days, discounting his one free week a year.
During the very first week of his service at Nybacken Robert made the decision that he must escape from all his masters, human as well as animal.
— 2—
The little hand who was bossed by all had good ears and quick eyes. He listened to and observed all that happened on the farm, and picked up its secrets. He heard all insinuations, he saw all winking eyes, as when there were hints and whispers about the white heifer which had been butchered at Nybacken last fall; a fine heifer — ready to calve — had gone to the slaughter bench because Aron dared not let her live. Why dared he not let her live?
Robert collected one word here, another there: The white heifer was with calf without having been with a bull. It was said to have happened that cows had borne calves with human heads and faces — horrible monsters, half beast, half man. That was why they had slaughtered the white heifer before her calving time was near.
Robert now wondered how the heifer had become pregnant without having been with a bull. It was answered, he had better ask Arvid. No one but Arvid knew, and he could surely give information.
So he learned gradually that the farm folk were directing a horrible accusation against his comrade in service.
Nothing was ever said in the open, everything was half said. All sentences ended in the middle, they were broken off as soon as they touched the accusation itself. The maids whispered and tittered; no one could speak aloud about such things. Robert asked, and he too made a half sentence: “Did they accuse Arvid of. .?” No — no one accused Arvid of anything; but anyone wanting to know more must go to him; he was the only person who knew the truth about the white heifer. They repeated only what the old mistress had said.
It had all originated with the old woman in the reserved room in the attic. One day last summer she had happened to see Arvid drive the white heifer into the cow barn. It was in the middle of the day, no other person was in the byre, no one had asked the hired man to drive in the heifer, and she could not understand why the animal should be taken into its stall at that hour. The old mistress had seen nothing more, nothing more than this: Arvid had driven the animal into the stable. She had not accused him of any forbidden or horrible deed with the heifer, she had merely said this to the maids: what he did with the white heifer in her stall, only he and God knew.
The old mistress had said no more than she could stand by.
From the time he was a little boy Robert had gone with his father when he brought cows to the bull, and when he was herdboy he had more than once seen a bull and cow mate. There was nothing unusual about that, he knew how animals acted and he could imagine how people acted. But he couldn’t imagine people and animals together, not a man and a cow together — he did not believe his roommate guilty of the horrible deed.
Only God and Arvid knew how the white heifer had gotten with calf. . it was the old mistress who had started the ugly rumor, and the maids had believed it. They treated Arvid as if he were leprous, they pulled away from him quickly if they happened to touch him, and they refused to be left alone with him. Furthermore, the rumor about the farmhand in Nybacken and the white heifer had begun to spread through the neighborhood, and other girls now shunned Arvid. For a while he had gone visiting with a maid on the neighboring farm; now he was unable to see her. No one wanted to have anything to do with a youth accused of so shameful a deed.
Robert could not make himself speak to his friend about the horrible accusation, but he knew Arvid was aware of its existence. Arvid had earlier been cheerful and sociable, lately he had become morbidly shy of people, and taciturn. One could easily understand why.
After having been in service for one month Robert asked leave to visit his parents in Korpamoen one Sunday, but was refused. The master had not yet sufficient confidence in his little hand to allow him away from the farm. Arvid said that perhaps Aron thought he would go home and complain about the service and belittle his master. And now Robert learned that his elder comrade had not been away from the premises in half a year, though his parents’ home was only three miles distant. But Robert understood why he kept away from people: no one accused of connection with a heifer would wish to show himself more than necessary. It was a loathsome accusation if true, and still more loathsome if untrue.
Aron said that Robert would have no free days during the year because he had failed to report on time and had had to be fetched to service by the master. He also wondered why his little hand need run home to his mother: did he still nurse?
A hired man was no suckling; he could not leave the farmstead without permission of the master.
But the farmhands in Nybacken had some free moments in the stable room during Sunday afternoons in summer, when the horses were let out to graze and needed neither fodder, water, nor rubbing down. Then Robert brought forth his History of Nature and read aloud to his friend.
Arvid had attended school only two weeks, and had never learned to read. He pretended he could; he would take the History of Nature and stare into the book with a thoughtful, studied expression as if reading. After a suitable time had elapsed he would turn the page slowly and seriously, as if he had deeply considered its contents. The same was repeated with the next page. But Robert had caught him once holding the book upside down.
Arvid did not “read” for very long, he complained it hurt his eyes; the words in the book were so small and crooked that they were hard to see; his eyes never had been strong; after reading for a while they began to smart as if he had been looking into a fire. He had had to stop school, he said, because his eyes were so poor.
And so he handed the History of Nature to Robert. “You read! Your eyes can stand it.”
So the elder servant pretended that he could read, and the younger one pretended that he believed him.
And Robert read aloud from the History of Nature, about the air and the water, about the animals and the plants, about crocodiles and rattlesnakes, about silkworms and butterflies, sea lions and flying fish, spice trees and coffee bushes, about hot deserts and polar seas, about leaf lice and planets, about geysers and volcanoes. Arvid learned about all the amazing objects and phenomena which existed on the globe but which he had never seen. And when Robert closed the book, Arvid said what a pity he couldn’t read as much as he wanted to, because of his poor eyes; his sight was good otherwise, but it was of little value when it came to words in a book.