Lieutenant Lagerlöf wanted to have Mårbacka not only a productive and well-cared-for farm, but a beautiful place, with stately avenues of approach and extensive gardens of flowers and shrubbery on all sides of the dwelling house.
Not far from the house stood the wretched old cow-barn, with its thatched roof, its small window-openings, and its weather-beaten timber walls. To be sure, there was a row of century-old sycamores, with yellow, lichen-clad trunks and a wealth of foliage, which concealed the building from view, so that the place was perhaps not so very ugly after all. Still, the Lieutenant declared he could never make Mårbacka look like a manor until that cow-house was torn down.
The first few years he had been wholly occupied with the cultivation of the soil, it was not till after the Strömstad visit and the death of Grandmother Lagerlöf that he set about building the new barn, which had to be finished before the old one could be pulled down. That the new barn might not be easily seen from the house, he decided to build it on the level meadow just below the sand-hill, where the other outhouses stood. When the womenfolk heard of this, a wail went up. Think of their having to go that long distance to tend the cows! And think how hard it would be on the cow-girl and the dairy-maid to have to carry the milk three times a day up the steep hill to the dairy! The Lieutenant turned a deaf ear. He was going to remove all the outbuildings and have everything of the sort, including the dairy, centred in the one place, thereby making it much easier for both serving-folk and animals.
The barn, though it would lie in an out-of-the-way spot, was going to be the finest in the whole district. It was to be built in the form of a cross, and of brick all the way up to the eaves-course, and would house at least fifty cows. It would only be lacking a spire to look like a church.
The Lieutenant discussed his building project with his father-in-law, Squire Wallroth, who had seen enough of the old cow-house to know that a new one was badly needed. He gave the Lieutenant quite a large sum of money for building purposes, and the latter immediately went ahead with the preliminary work. For two consecutive winters he quarried stone at Åsberget for the foundation; for two whole summers he had a clay-mill standing down by the duck pond, where the bricks were made and left to dry and harden in the sun; and for two autumns he had men at work in his own woodlands, cutting timber, that he might have proper material for cross-beams and rafters.
At last he was ready to stake out the ground and start digging for the foundation. It was a great moment for him when the workmen put their spades to the ground to clear away the first layer of earth. They began the digging and foundation-laying on the east side, which was nearest the house. There all went well; the ground was firm and the stones stayed where they were put. But when they came to lay the stones on the west side, which gave on the field, they found that there had been a terrible miscalculation. They had not gone very deep before they came upon soft blue-clay, into which the stones sank and disappeared. The Lieutenant had made the grave mistake of not having the ground tested. But now that the foundation had been laid on one side, he thought it best to go on with the building in the place he had staked out. An old mason advised him to put the barn farther up toward the hill, as blue clay was treacherous stuff to build on. The Lieutenant would not hear of that. It would be all right, he said, to lay the foundation on blue clay; there must be a bottom even to that. As for stone to fill it in, well—there was the whole mountain range to take from.
Load after load of stone was dumped on to the clay and before long he had a wide stone dam there—solid and steady as could be—on which it seemed safe enough to lay a foundation. Then, one day, came a couple of heavy showers, and all at once cracks appeared in the dam. The next morning it began to sink, and in a few hours it was completely swallowed up.
But all summer the Lieutenant went on dumping stone into the clay, and when by autumn it was still uncertain whether the foundation would hold, he decided to put off the masonry work till the following year, in order to see how the blue clay would behave in the spring, when the frost was out of the ground.
As soon as the snow was gone, the Lieutenant went down to have a look at his wall. Yes, it was still there, no cracks in it. But then the regular spring thaw had not begun.
Every day, and many times a day, he went down to see how things were going. The wall remained intact, and the ground seemed now to be free of frost, so he ventured to send word to the master mason to come with his journeymen, and begin work.
They put up the walls on the north and east sides first, so as to give the insecure foundation on the west side time to settle. The latter part of June they began work on the doubtful side, and by the middle of July, when they had got almost up to the coping, they noticed some cracks in the wall. Then, all at once, the wall began to sag, and several layers of brick had to be torn down quickly, lest the whole wall give way.
Now things began to look serious for Lieutenant Lagerlöf. What to do next he did not know. By that time the money he had received from his father-in-law was used up. But Squire Wallroth, who was both open-handed and reasonable, would no doubt have let him have an additional sum, had he written and explained why the building would cost more than he had estimated. But after this fresh cave-in he felt loath to write. He would have to confess that as yet the barn had neither roof nor floor, that the walls were not even finished and that he must start laying a new foundation. His father-in-law would surely think he had shown poor judgment, and lose confidence in him.
The Lieutenant almost felt like giving up the whole building scheme—yet, somehow, the mere thought of it went against him. So many of his projects had come to naught, and, besides, the old cow-house was beyond repair.
Of course he should have started building on another spot long ago. But how could he do so now, when the walls were half-finished? It was a question which would entail the lesser outlay—to start building in a new place or continue at the old one.
At East Ämtervik lies a small foundry estate known as Gårdsjö, which is about three English miles from Mårbacka. Living there at that time was a brother of Fru Lagerlöf, Iron Master Karl Wallroth, a wise and prudent man on whose judgment the Lieutenant relied implicitly. To him he went for advice. Iron Master Wallroth counselled him by all means to dismiss the whole matter from his mind.
"It would be foolish to ask Father for more money to put into your building scheme," he said. "He's always ready to give one a lift, but he wants to see the money used to good advantage. And to put a mortgage on the estate in order to finish your barn would not be advisable. No telling how many times the work will have to be done over. You might lose all you have by it."
Afterward, the Lieutenant sat talking the whole evening with the brother-in-law and his wife, who insisted on his staying for supper. He tried to be his usual jolly self, and entertain them with amusing stories; but his spirit was as if paralyzed. He knew the brother-in-law was right, and therefore felt no resentment, though it was such a crushing blow to his pride not to be able to complete a work begun.
On the way home strange, gloomy thoughts arose in him; he wondered if he were not one whose every undertaking was doomed to failure. There was a time when he thought himself a veritable Fortune's Favourite. That was when he had captured his wife and taken over Mårbacka. But later on he had had a lot of ill-luck. For one thing, he had asked for his discharge from the military service merely because of a slight reprimand from his captain. He had been overhasty, but he did not worry about that. What did rankle in him, though, was that he had not been appointed Paymaster of the Regiment, to succeed his father. The office had been abolished, and the duties pertaining to it had been divided between four muster-clerks, of whom he was one. But the work was unimportant and the remuneration small. Then there was the attempt to have the river dredged—it, too, had failed.
Midway between Gårdsjö and Mårbacka lies As Springs, an old health resort he had once undertaken to modernize. He had built a fine new bath house and engaged a corps of male and female attendants, with the hope that health-seekers would flock to the place. That was also a failure. Now and again an invalid came, but it hardly paid to keep the resort open.
And to cap it all, his barn-building was a lamentable failure! There must be something lacking in him, he thought; he was perhaps less capable than other men. The best thing he could do was to give up his plans, settle down in his rocker, read his newspaper, and let things run on in the old ruts.
Coming home he found his wife seated on the front steps awaiting him. She was very like her brother at Gårdsjö; she had the same intelligent face, the same clear head, the same serious turn of mind, the same love of work and indifference to pleasure, and the same dislike of all that was uncertain and venturesome.
The Lieutenant was very fond of his wife and moreover respected her judgment as he did her brother's. But that evening he would rather she had not sat up for him. She, too, was against him in this building project.
"What did Kalle say?" Fru Lagerlöf asked him, as they went to their room.
"He thinks like you and the rest, that I should give up the work."
Fru Lagerlöf made no reply. She had dropped into her usual place, by the sewing table, and sat looking out into the light summer night, with no thought, apparently, of retiring.
The Lieutenant had already flung off his coat. "Aren't you going to bed?" he asked. His rasping tones betrayed his irritation and despondency.
"I think," said the wife in a low, even voice—still gazing into the night—"I think you should finish it."
"What are you saying?" the Lieutenant queried impatiently. He had heard what she said, but thought he must have misunderstood.
"I think," she repeated, "that you ought to go on with it."
"Is it the barn you're speaking of?" he asked, going up to her. Her words had awakened a little hope in him, yet he was not certain that he had understood her aright.
Fru Lagerlöf had been turning this matter over in her mind the whole evening; she had said to herself that it would not be well for her husband to go short in yet another undertaking. It might be more expedient perhaps to give over the building scheme; but that would go too hard with him. This was something which her father or her brother could not understand; but she—his wife—understood.
To read the hearts of those she loved—that was as easy to Fru Lagerlöf as reading a book; but to put her own thoughts into words in a moment of deep feeling she could no more do than she could interpret Hebrew.
"I don't think as Kalle does," she said.
"What are you talking about?" The Lieutenant was almost trembling with suspense. He dared not believe even now that she had come to his way of thinking.
Seeing how agitated he was, she did her utmost to make him understand.
"I don't agree with Kalle," she said. "I think you should finish building the barn, and that it should stand where you want to have it. And I think we ought to put a mortgage on the estate so that we can get along without having to ask Father for more money."
Now at last the Lieutenant understood. A great light broke in upon him. If the wife and he were of one mind there were no difficulties ahead. The foundation was solid and the walls rose firmly.
"God bless you, Louise!" he said.
After that they seemed to be more closely drawn to each other than ever, held by new bonds of sympathy and tenderness. And the wife was consulted at every step in the building work.
When at last the doors of the new barn were thrown open, and the cows were ceremoniously led in and tied to their cribs; when the chickens and geese, the turkeys and ducks were driven into their cages and the calves into the stalls; when light streamed in through the large windows and they themselves walked in clean, smooth passageways, they felt that a good work had been done, and were glad they had both had a share in it.