The Power of a Lie. Johan Bojer
silver chain about her neck, and a reserved expression on her face, and her daughter-in-law by her side. They still had one son living, but he was in Christiania studying philology.
“I must get you to put out my forest clothes this evening,” said Norby to Ingeborg; “I must go and see to the timber-felling in the morning.”
Ingeborg was the good angel of the house. Her fiancé, a young doctor, had been found dead in his bed three days before their wedding, and since then she had never been the same. Although she was not much more than five-and-twenty, her hair was sprinkled with grey, her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes had a timid, far-away look in them. She was worrying already as to what would become of her when her parents died; and in order to run no risk of being left with a bad conscience, she was constantly occupied in attending to their wants, was the first up in the morning, was always busy in the kitchen and larder, shed tears of despair when she had forgotten anything, and in spite of all this thought herself quite useless in the house.
“Do you eat as inelegantly when you are in town as you do here?” said the mother to Laura, looking sternly at her.
Laura looked a little embarrassed, and tried to throw an obstinate lock of hair off her rosy face; but she was not long in regaining her cheerfulness.
She went to school in town, and now began to talk about her old teacher and her mincing ways, her snuff-box and her inky fingers. “Dear children,” she mimicked, making an exceedingly funny face, and pretending to take a pinch of snuff; “do sit still and don’t give me so much trouble!” Her sister-in-law laughed, showing as she did so the absence of a front tooth; her mother could not help smiling, and even the old man glanced merrily at the lively girl.
“I will write to him to-morrow,” he said to himself as he emptied his cup. “I am sure it was not more than two thousand, and if there is more——”
When at last he got into bed in his room on the first floor, he put out the light on the table by his bedside, and yawned wearily. “I’ll pretend to be asleep when she comes up,” he said to himself, “and then I shall be spared both sacrament and guarantee for this evening.”
As he lay looking at the red glow from the half-closed draught of the stove, the door opened, and Laura crept softly in. She seated herself on the edge of her father’s bed, stroked his beard two or three times, and then confided to him in a whisper that her monthly account was in terrible disorder. Her mother had not gone over it yet, but she might ask for it any day now.
“And you think you can cheat me as much as you like, do you?” said the old man from his pillows. The child withdrew her hand from his beard in some confusion, but he caught it, and as he felt how small and soft it was, he said in a sleepy voice:
“You must come into my office to-morrow, then, and we shall see!”
The girl stroked his beard once more, and laid her cheek against his, for she knew now that her deficit would be made good.
She had scarcely gone when the door opened again. The old man hastily closed his eyes; but it was Ingeborg with the clothes he had asked for upon her arm.
“Isn’t some one crossing the yard with a lantern?” asked her father, seeing a light upon the blind.
“Yes, it’s the dairymaid,” said Ingeborg; “she’s expecting a calf to-night.”
And now Ingeborg too came and upon sat his bed.
“There’s something I must tell you, father,” she began softly. “When I was at the post-office to-day, I heard that Lawyer Basting had been declaring that you would suffer too by this failure. I didn’t dare to tell mother until I had spoken to you about it.”
The old man had made up his mind to be left in peace for this evening, so he said:
“Poor Basting! He’s always got something or other to chatter about.”
“I was sure it was untrue,” said Ingeborg, rising; and after drawing the blind farther down, she quietly left the room again.
The next morning, before Norby rose, his wife asked him whether he had remembered to call at the clerk’s. Upon his saying that he had not, a scene ensued, and Marit left the room, slamming the door behind her, and threatening to go to the sacrament alone.
Norby lay in bed longer than usual, for when Marit was thoroughly roused, as she was to-day, she would sometimes not utter a word for a week at a time; and then neither of them was willing to stoop low enough to be the first to bridge the gulf that separated them, and break the silence.
When at last he came down and went out into the yard, one of the men came up to him and asked with a knowing smile whether it were really true that Wangen had forged somebody’s signature.
“It would be very like him if he had!” said Norby, looking up at the sky to see if it were weather for tree-felling. The man, who was busied in shovelling the snow from the road, leaned upon his spade, and looking askance at the old man, continued:
“We’ve heard that it’s your name. He’s been boasting that it’s Norby himself that is surety for him; but now we hear from the house servants that it’s a lie.”
“It’s no business of that idiot’s anyhow!” thought the old man, and passed on without answering.
But on going round by the barn, where threshing was in progress, he had the same question of Wangen’s forgery put to him. He still made no answer, but plunged his hand into the grain at the back of the machine, whereupon an old labourer said, as he scratched his head:
“Well, well; haven’t I always said that man would see the inside of a prison some day?”
This, however, made Norby a little uneasy. “If it comes out that I have circulated a report like that,” he thought, “he can make it unpleasant for me, and give people enough to talk about.” He was on the point of nipping the report in the bud by explaining matters, when he caught sight, through the barn-door, of the smith going along the road with a sack upon his back.
“Has the smith been in here?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the answer from several voices amidst the rustling of straw in the half-darkness.
“Then he knows it too!” thought Norby; “and by the evening it will be all over the parish. I must stop the smith!—Why, he was to have come and done the new sledges!” he said aloud as a pretext for rushing out and hastening down the road after the smith.
The snow-plough had not been driven along the road since the fall during the night, and it was heavy walking and still heavier running. The farther the old man ran, the angrier he became. “Here am I running like a madman,” he thought, “and all because I’ve helped that rogue!—Ola, Ola!” he shouted, waving his hand.
But the sack on the smith’s back could neither see nor hear, and the old man had to go on running. The tale must be stopped, or he might have to pay dearly for it.
At last the smith stopped because he met a man on ski; but before Norby came up to them the man had gone on down the hill.
“What’s this I hear?” said the smith, advancing a few steps towards Norby. “That Wangen is a nice fellow, he is! He’s fleeced me too. I’ve just got a bill from him for a sack of rye-flour that I paid for down!”
“It’s a lie!” cried Norby, thinking of the forgery, and breathless after his run.
“A lie? No, indeed it’s not; it’s as true as I’m standing here!” said the smith, thinking of his flour.
But now the old man recollected the man on ski.
“Did you tell that man about Wangen?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed I did,” said the smith. “Ah, they’re bad times these!”
Norby wiped the perspiration from his face, removing his cap and wiping the crown of his head, as he turned and gazed after the man on ski, who