Читать книгу Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie - O. E. Rölvaag - Страница 25

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Per Hansa's house certainly looked as if it were intended for a royal mansion. When Tönseten saw it close at hand for the first time he exclaimed:

"Will you please inform me, Per Hansa, what the devil you think you're building? Is it just a house, or is it a church and parsonage rolled in one? . . . Have you lost your senses altogether, man? You won't be able to get a roof over this crazy thing in a month of Sundays! . . . Why, damn it all, there aren't willows enough in this whole region to thatch a half of it! You might just as well tear it down again, for all the good it will do."

"The hell you say!" cried Per Hansa, genially. "But there it stands, as big as Billy-be-damned, so what are you going to do about it? . . . The notion I had was this: I might as well build for my sons, too, while I was about it. Then when they got married and needed more room they could thatch a new section any time. . . . What ails you, Syvert? Isn't there plenty of sod for roofing, all the way from here to the Pacific coast?"

But Tönseten took a serious view of the affair:

"I tell you, Per Hansa, there's no sense in such a performance. It isn't the sod, it's the poles--you know it damned well! . . . You'd better go right ahead and tear it down as fast as ever you can!"

"Oh, well, I suppose I'll have to, then," said Per Hansa, dryly.

As a matter of fact, it was hardly to be wondered at that Tönseten grew excited when he saw this structure; it differed radically from the one he had built and from all the others that he had ever seen. He wondered if such a silly house as this could be found anywhere else in the whole country. . . . His own hut measured fourteen by sixteen feet; the one that the Solum boys were building was only fourteen feet each way; Hans Olsa had been reckless and had laid his out eighteen feet long and sixteen feet wide. . . . But look at this house of Per Hansa's--twenty-eight feet long and eighteen feet wide! Moreover, it had two rooms, one of them eighteen by eighteen, the other eighteen by ten. The rooms were separated by a wall; one had a door opening toward the south, the other a door opening toward the east. Two doors in a sod hut! My God! what folly! In the smaller room the sod even had been taken up, so that the floor level there was a foot below that of the larger room. What was the sense of that? . . . If we don't look out, thought Tönseten, this crazy man will start building a tower on it, too!

Things surely looked serious to Tönseten. In the first place, Per Hansa plainly was getting big-headed; heavens and earth, it was nothing but an ordinary sod hut that he was building! In the second place, it wasn't a practical scheme. If he were to search till doomsday, he wouldn't be able to find enough willows for the thatching. Why, he might just as well thatch the whole firmament, and be done with it! . . . As soon as he had looked his fill, Tönseten trotted right over to Hans Olsa's, told him all about it, and asked him to go and reason with the man. . . . But, no, Hans Olsa didn't care to meddle in that affair. Per Hansa had a considerable family already, it might grow in the next few years; at any rate, he needed a fairly large house. Above all, he wasn't the man to bite off more than he could chew.

"But that's just it--he doesn't know what he's bitten off! He doesn't know anything at all about building a house!" With these drastic words, Tönseten went directly to the Solum boys; they had been born and brought up in America, and knew what was what. Now they must go, right away, and talk to Per Hansa about this crazy building that he was putting up! The only way out of it that he could think of was for them and himself and maybe Hans Olsa--to go in a body and show him what to do, and help him to build a house then and there. The thing that he had put up was frankly impossible; the poor man would ruin himself before he got a decent start! . . .

To his great disappointment, the Solum boys wouldn't go, either. It was Per Hansa's own business, they said, what sort of a house he wanted to build for himself. So Tönseten had to give it up as a bad job. He shook his head solemnly. . . . A damned shame, that a perfectly good man had to go to ruin through sheer folly!

Per Hansa had put a great deal of thought into this matter of building a house; ever since he had first seen a sod hut he had pondered the problem. On the day that he was coming home from Sioux Falls a brilliant idea had struck him--an idea which had seemed perhaps a little queer, but which had grown more attractive the longer he turned it over in his mind. How would it do to build house and barn under one roof? It was to be only a temporary shelter, anyway--just a sort of makeshift, until he could begin on his real mansion. This plan would save time and labour, and both the house and the barn would be warmer for being together. . . . He had a vague recollection of having heard how people in the olden days used to build their houses in that way--rich people, even! It might not be fashionable any longer; but it was far from foolish, just the same.

It will go hard with Beret, he thought; she won't like it. But after a while he picked up courage to mention his plan to her.

. . . House and barn under the same roof? . . . She said no more, but fell into deep and troubled thought. . . . Man and beast in one building? How could one live that way? . . . At first it seemed utterly impossible to her; but then she thought of how desolate and lonesome everything was here and of what a comfortable companion Rosie might be on dark evenings and during the long winter nights. She shuddered, and answered her husband that it made no difference to her whichever way he built, so long as it was snug and warm; but she said nothing about the real reason that had changed her mind.

This answer made Per Hansa very happy.

"Beret-girl, you are the most sensible woman that I know! . . . Of course it's better all around, for us to build that way!"

He, too, had reasons that he kept to himself. . . . Now he would get ahead of both Hans Olsa and the Solum boys! None of them had even begun to think of building a barn yet; while according to his plan, his barn would be finished when his house was done.