They had made a secret arrangement with the old gardener at Selambshof, the philosopher in the neglected garden, and he used to come out as their only servant. He had been a sailor before he started growing cabbages and he felt a longing for the sea. His work was to carry water, make log fires, and open tins of preserves.
Meanwhile the Mattsons down in the dell lived their quiet workaday life, tied to the soil, the water, and the seasons of the year. They banked up their potatoes, cut their hay and their rye, milked their two cows, and plied their nets and lines, all with silent, disapproving side-glances at the queer folk on the hill.
As long as there was summer and sunshine and the air vibrated with the hammer blows on his cliff fortress, Tord was contemptuous of the silent disapproval that crawled about on its ridiculous daily round somewhere below his feet. But now it was autumn, silent, still, darkening autumn, far away from the noise and the lights of the town. And Tord began by and by to realize that the Mattsons were in their neighbourhood.
One evening he took a bottle in his pocket and climbed down into the valley: “I will feel that devil’s pulse,” he thought.
“Well, Mattson, shall we have a drink to clear our heads?”
“Thank you, sir, but I don’t care about anything strong in the middle of the week like this.”
“All right, I’ll drink it myself then. What are you slaving away at?”
The old man thoughtfully turned a piece of lilac wood in his hand before he began to work with his knife:
“Summer will come again. And it’s not good for poor people to be idle....”
That was one for Tord. He struck at the nettles outside the door with his stick. The calm in Mattson’s eyes irritated him. Both sea and sky became commonplace beside that miserable plodding. What was the use of the autumn coming and the leaves falling and the darkness and loneliness when Mattson sat carving rake pins all the same?
“I will pay you back for that, old fellow,” thought Tord. And he longed for an autumn storm, a real three-day autumn gale. Especially when he had his nets out.
Then came the autumn ploughing. Nobody possessed beasts of burden out here by the sea, but Mattson’s neighbours came sailing in with their wives. And then they yoked themselves to the plough. Mattson’s wife also took part and pulled, though she was so old, but Mattson drove. Furrow after furrow they ploughed in the drizzling rain with tough sustained persistence.