THE HOUSE BUILDING
The funeral was over.
The two brothers sat by the window, in thoughtful mood, and speaking little.
"… And you'll take over the place now, of course," said Olof to his elder brother, "and work the farm as it's always been done since it's been in the family. 'Twon't be long, I doubt, before you bring home a wife to be mistress here…. Anyhow, I take it you'll go on as before?"
"What's in your mind now?" asked Heikki, with a little sharp cough.
"Only what I've said—that you'll take over Koskela now," said Olof cheerfully.
"H'm. You know well enough 'twas always meant that you were to take over the place—I'm not the sort to be master myself. Look after the men at their work—yes. But run the place by myself…."
"You'll soon get into the way of it," said Olof encouragingly. "And as to the men—I've an idea a farm's the better for a master that works with his men as you've always done, instead of going about talking big and doing nothing."
The elder brother cleared his throat again, and sat staring before him, drumming with his fingers on the edge of the chair.
"And what about you?" he asked, after a while.
"Oh, I'll look after myself all right. Build a bit of a house, and maybe turn up a patch of ground or so."
"Build a house…?" repeated the other in surprise.
"Yes. You see, brother, each goes his own way," went on Olof heavily. "And I've a sort of feeling now that I can't live on anything out of the past. I must try and build up a life for myself, all anew. If I can do that, perhaps I may be able to go on living."
The elder brother stared with wide eyes, as if listening to words in a strange tongue. Then he began drumming with his fingers again.
"H'm. I don't know quite what you mean, but it's no business of mine, anyway." He spoke with a touch of respect in his voice, as if to a superior. "We'll have to do as you say. But do you think Koskela will be the same with none but me to look to it all?"
"Surely it will!" said Olof warmly.
"Why, then, have it as you please. But if things begin to go wrong here, then you'll have to take over yourself."
"I will if need be. But by the time you've ploughed this autumn you'll see yourself there will be no need. Good luck go with you, brother, and with the place."
"H'm." The elder brother coughed again. "And what about the price. We must fix that beforehand."
"What for? You take over the place as it stands, and you'll find it good enough. Give me the bit of marshland at Isosuo, and the oat fields adjoining, and the little copse that's fenced in with it, and that's all I want. You can let me take what timber I want from your part, for building and such."
"Ho, so you think that's fair, do you?" said his brother eagerly. "A nice bit of ground—and there's all the clay you'll need ready to hand. But it'll cost a deal of hard work to drain and clear it—I've thought over that many a time. As for the building timber—you shall have all you want, and help for the carting. But all the same, we must fix a price for Koskela as a whole, and make a fair division."
"There's nothing to divide, I tell you. You take over the whole place, except the bit I've said. You see how it is: each of us wants to give more than the other's willing to take, so there's no need to quarrel about that. And if I want anything later on, I'll ask you for it; if there's anything you want, you'll come to your brother first."
"Well, well—I dare say it'll be all right. Anyhow, I'll do what I can to keep up Koskela as it's always been."
And the elder brother began once more drumming with his fingers, faster this time, and as it were more firmly.
Suddenly he sprang up. "They ought to finish that field to-day—I must see they don't stop work before it's done."
He left the room and hurried across the courtyard.
Olof rose and followed his brother to the door, watching him as he strode along, with head bowed forward a little and arms swinging briskly at his sides.
"Each works best in his own way," he said to himself, smiling affectionately at the thought. "And maybe his way's like to be better for Koskela than they ever thought."
* * * * *
Olof turned off from the main road down a little forest track; he carried an axe on his shoulder.
An autumn morning, solemn and still. The night had been cold, the morning air was so fresh and light it almost lifted one from the ground—it seemed almost superfluous to tread at all.
A strange feeling had come upon Olof as he started out. Between the hedge-stakes on either side of the road hung bridges of the spider's work—netted and plaited and woven with marvellous art, and here and there a perfect web, the spider's masterpiece, hung like a wheel of tiny threads. Then as the sun came up, thread and cable caught its rays, till the road seemed lined with long festoons of silver, and decked at intervals with silver shields.
In the forest, too, it was the same—the path lined with silver hangings on either side, and webs of silver here and there along the way.
"Spiders bring luck, so they say," thought Olof.
"Well, at any rate, they're showing me the road this morning."
And he strode on briskly, eager to begin.
"To-day's the test," he thought. "All depends on how I manage now. If it goes well, then I can do what I will. But if I've lost my strength and will these years between, then—why, I don't know where to turn."
Eagerly, impatiently, he hurried on, trembling with expectation, and sweating at the brow.
"Maybe I'm taking it too seriously," he thought again. "But, no—it is life or death to me, this. And I don't know yet what I can do—it may go either way…."
He swung the axe in a wide circle from the shoulder, held it out at arm's length, then straight above his head, and swung it to either side. It weighed as lightly as a leaf, and he felt a childish delight—as if he had already passed the first test.
* * * * *
He reached the place at last—a hillside covered with tall, straight-stemmed fir and pine. He flung down coat and hat, never heeding where, glanced up along the stem he had chosen, then the axe was lifted, and the steel sank deep into the red wood—it was his first stroke in his native forest after six years' absence.
The forest answered with a ringing echo from three sides, so loud and strong that Olof checked his second stroke in mid-air, and turned in wonder to see who was there.
And the trees faced him with lifted head and untroubled brow, without nod or smile, but with the greeting of stern men bidding welcome.
"Hei!" Olof answered with a stroke of the axe.
And so they talked together, in question and answer and dispute….
"What am I working out here all alone for?" said Olof. "Why, 'tis this way…." And with the red-brown fir chips flying all around him, he told them the story.
"So that's it? Well, good luck to you," answered the trees, and fell, one after another, till the earth rang and the echoes answered far through the forest.
Olof felt himself aglow with an inward fire that flamed the more as he gave it way in ringing strokes of the axe. He counted it a point of honour to strip each branch off clean at a single blow, be it never so thick…. And the more he worked the happier he grew.
He was trying to win back the years in which he had never held an axe.
* * * * *
By noon, he stood in the middle of a clearing already.
"Well, how does it feel?" asked the trees, as he sat down, with his jacket slung over his shoulders, hastily eating the meal he had brought with him.
"None so bad—hope for the best," he answered.
Again the axe flashed, the branches shivered, and the earth rang. "Bit crooked, that one," said Olof to himself; "but I can use it all the same—do for a piece between the windows."
"Well, you know best," said the trees. "But how many windows are you going to have—and how many rooms? You haven't told us that yet."
"Two rooms, no more—but two big ones." And Olof told them all his plans for doors and windows and stoves, and an attic above the entrance—he had thought it all out beforehand.
"Yes, yes…. But where are you going to build?"
"On the little hill beside Isosuo marsh—that's where I thought."
"Isosuo marsh?" cried the trees, looking in wonder first at one another and then at Olof himself. Then they smiled triumphantly.
"Bravo!" they cried in chorus. "Bravo, and good luck go with your building, and prosperity roof over all! 'Tis good to see there's some that still dare begin life for themselves in the forest."
"'Tis that I'm hoping to do—that and no more."
"But what do folk say to it? Don't they think you're mad?"
"They call me nothing as yet, for I've not told any of what I'm doing."
"Just as well, perhaps," said the trees.
And they fell to talking of Isosuo, of drains and ditching, the nature of the soil, and all that Olof would have to do.
And the axe sang, and the chips flew, and the woods gave echo, and the talk went on. And the day came so quickly to an end that Olof started to find how it was already growing dark.
"Well, and what do you say now?" asked the trees expectantly.
Olof stepped from stem to stem, counting the fallen. There were forty in all—and he laughed.
"I shall be here again to-morrow, anyhow," he said gaily.
"If you come to-morrow, then you will come again till it's done," said the trees. "Come, and be welcome!"
* * * * *
Olof walked home whistling cheerfully; he felt as if the house were already built up round him. It was a great thing, enough to take up all his thoughts, and strong enough in itself to strengthen him anew.