“And how when my wife gets to know of this?” he thought, as the sledge-bells jingled and the ice flew from the horse’s hoofs. He had put his name to Wangen’s paper without her knowledge. It must have been about three or four years ago, and the guarantee was to help Wangen to obtain larger credit with a merchant in the capital. And even earlier than that, he had promised his wife not to stand surety for any one at all, for they had lost quite enough. And now? “How in the world did he manage to fool me that time?” thought Knut. But even the wisest men have their weak moments when they are good and kind. They were both in town, and Wangen had stood a good dinner at the Carl Johan Hotel. And afterwards—this happened. That had been an expensive dinner! And now with the feeling of dread at the prospect of having to stand shame-faced before his wife, and confess that he had broken his word, Norby felt a rising dislike to Wangen, who was of course to blame for it all. “He knew what he was about, that fellow, with his dinner!” And involuntarily the old man began to recall a number of bad things about Wangen; there was a kind of self-defence in feeling enraged with him.
The shadows of the fir-trees grew black, and the stars came out; while a fiery streak in the west glowed through the darkness and threw a glare upon the ice. It shone upon the plating of the harness and sledge, and cast long shadows of man and horse, that steadily kept pace with their owners. Scarcely a living being was to be seen on the desolate expanse. A solitary fisherman was visible at his hole far out, where the red reflection met the pointed shadows of the mountains; and out at the promontory might be seen a little dot of a man moving out from the land, dragging a sledge after him.
“And Herlufsen of Rud! Won’t he be delighted!”
Norby, being himself of a combative disposition and hard in his dealings with others, imagined that a number of persons were always on the watch to pick a quarrel with him. If he did a good stroke of business in timber, his first feeling was one of satisfaction as he thought: “How they will envy me!” And in unfortunate transactions he did not care a rap about the money he lost; he was only troubled at the thought that it was now the turn of other people to exult.
He was now out in the middle of the ice, and had passed from the fiery reflection into the dark shadows. The horse heard sledge-bells near the shore, and without slackening its pace raised its head and neighed. “Suppose the ice were to give way!” thought the old man with a cold shiver of apprehension. His father, a wealthy old peasant, was once driving a heavy load of polished granite blocks across the lake. When the ice began to give loud reports and to bend under the weight, the old man, unwilling to throw off any of the valuable blocks in order to lighten the load, knelt down and prayed: “If only Thou wilt let me get safely to land, I’ll send ten bushels of my best barley to the pastor.” He got to land; but when he stood on the shore, he looked back across the ice with a chuckle, saying: “I had Him there!” And the pastor got no barley.
The sledge-bells rang out their clear, bright, silvery tones, but all the time the old man sat thinking the ice was giving way.
“If I go through, it will probably be because I didn’t want to go to the sacrament next Sunday,” he thought; for when he left home he had half promised his wife to call at the clerk’s and give in their names for the sacrament. But at the last moment the old pagan had come to life within him, and he had driven past the clerk’s house.
“It’s against my conscience,” he had said to himself. “I don’t believe in the sacrament, scarcely in the redemption even.”
There were two different men in Knut Norby. One of these had acquired ideals at school at the parsonage, in his travels, and from all kinds of books. But when, on the death of his father, Knut had had to take over the farm, he had little by little developed some traits of his father’s character. The old man still seemed present among the farm-hands, in the bank-books, in the great forest, in unsettled bargains, and above all in the Norby family’s standing in the country-side. It seemed natural to Knut to continue to be a part of his father, and often, when he was about to settle some new timber transaction, he would suddenly feel as if he actually were that father, and would involuntarily see with his father’s eyes, use his father’s artifices, and have his father’s conscience. The other Knut Norby busied himself with books and with political and religious questions, whenever the first had nothing to do.
“I ought to have given in our names for that sacrament all the same,” he said to himself, when he saw that he was still a long way from the shore. “It’s all very well with ideas and that sort of thing; but it’s not at all certain they’ll be enough when we come before the judgment-seat.” However, there would still be time to send word to the clerk, if only he got safely to land.