So Peer stays on and goes fishing. He catches little; but time goes leisurely here, and the summer lies soft and warm over the brown and blue hillsides. He has soon learned that a merchant named Uthoug, from Ringeby, is living in the house on the island, with his wife and daughter. And what of it?
Often he would lie in his boat, smoking his pipe, and giving himself up to quiet dreams that came and passed. A young girl in a white boat, moving over red waters in the evening—a secret meeting on an island—no one must know just yet. . . . Would it ever happen to him? Ah, no.
The sun goes down, there come sounds of cow-bells nearing the saeters, the musical cries and calls of the saeter-girls, the lowing of the cattle. The mountains stand silent in the distance, their snow-clad tops grown golden; the stream slides rippling by, murmuring on through the luminous nights.
Then at last came the day of all days.
He had gone out for a long tramp at random over the hills, making his way by compass, and noting landmarks to guide him back. Here was a marsh covered with cloud-berries—the taste brought back his own childhood. He wandered on up a pale-brown ridge flecked with red heather—and what was that ahead? Smoke? He made towards it. Yes, it was smoke. A ptarmigan fluttered out in front of him, with a brood of tiny youngsters at her heels—Lord, what a shave!—he stopped short to avoid treading on them. The smoke meant someone near—possibly a camp of Lapps. Let’s go and see.
He topped the last mound, and there was the fire just below. Two girls jumped to their feet; there was a bright coffee-kettle on the fire, and on the moss-covered ground close by bread and butter and sandwiches laid out on a paper tablecloth.
Peer stopped short in surprise. The girls gazed at him for a moment, and he at them, all three with a hesitating smile.
At last Peer lifted his hat and asked the way to Rustad saeter. It took them some time to explain this, and then they asked him the time. He told them exactly to the minute, and then showed them his watch so that they might see for themselves. All this took more time. Meanwhile, they had inspected each other, and found no reason to part company just yet. One of the girls was tall, slender of figure, with a warm-coloured oval face and dark brown hair. Her eyebrows were thick and met above the nose, delightful to look at. She wore a blue serge dress, with the skirt kilted up a little, leaving her ankles visible. The other was a blonde, smaller of stature, and with a melancholy face, though she smiled constantly. “Oh,” she said suddenly, “have you a pocket-knife by any chance?”
“Oh yes!” Peer was just moving off, but gladly seized the opportunity to stay a while.
“We’ve a tin of sardines here, and nothing to open it with,” said the dark one.
“Let me try,” said Peer. As luck would have it, he managed to cut himself a little, and the two girls tumbled over each other to tie up the wound. It ended, of course, with their asking him to join their coffee-party.
“My name is Merle Uthoug,” said the dark one, with a curtsy.
“Oh, then, it’s your father who has the place on the island in the lake?”
“My name’s only Mork—Thea Mork. My father is a lawyer, and we have a little cottage farther up the lake,” said the blonde.
Peer was about to introduce himself, when the dark girl interrupted: “Oh, we know you already,” she said. “We’ve seen you out rowing on the lake so often. And we had to find out who you were. We have a good pair of glasses . . .”
“Merle!” broke in her companion warningly.
“. . . and then, yesterday, we sent one of the maids over reconnoitring, to make inquiries and bring us a full report.”
“Merle! How can you say such things?”
It was a cheery little feast. Ah! how young they were, these two girls, and how they laughed at a joke, and what quantities of bread and butter and coffee they all three disposed of! Merle now and again would give their companion a sidelong glance, while Thea laughed at all the wild things her friend said, and scolded her, and looked anxiously at Peer.
And now the sun was nearing the shoulder of a hill far in the west, and evening was falling. They packed up their things, and Peer was loaded up with a big bag of cloud-berries on his back, and a tin pail to carry in his hand. “Give him some more,” said Merle. “It’ll do him good to work for a change.”
“Merle, you really are too bad!”
“Here you are,” said the girl, and slid the handle of a basket into his other hand.
Then they set out down the hill. Merle sang and yodelled as they went; then Peer sang, and then they all three sang together. And when they came to a heather-tussock or a puddle, they did not trouble to go round, but just jumped over it, and then gave another jump for the fun of the thing.
They passed the saeter and went on down to the water’s edge, and Peer proposed to row them home. And so they rowed across. And the whole time they sat talking and laughing together as if they had known each other for years.
The boat touched land just below the cottage, and a broad-shouldered man with a grey beard and a straw hat came down to meet them. “Oh, father, are you back again?” cried Merle, and, springing ashore, she flung her arms round his neck. The two exchanged some whispered words, and the father glanced at Peer. Then, taking off his hat, he came towards him and said politely, “It was very kind of you to help the girls down.”
“This is Herr Holm, engineer and Egyptian,” said Merle, “and this is father.”
“I hear we are neighbours,” said Uthoug. “We’re just going to have tea, so if you have nothing better to do, perhaps you will join us.”
Outside the cottage stood a grey-haired lady with a pale face, wearing spectacles. She had a thick white woollen shawl over her shoulders, but even so she seemed to feel cold. “Welcome,” she said, and Peer thought there was a tremor in her voice.
There were two small low rooms with an open fireplace in the one, and in it there stood a table ready laid. But from the moment Merle entered the house, she took command of everything, and whisked in and out. Soon there was the sound of fish cooking in the kitchen, and a moment later she came in with a plate full of lettuce, and said: “Mr. Egyptian—you can make us an Arabian salad, can’t you?”
Peer was delighted. “I should think so,” he said.
“You’ll find salt and pepper and vinegar and oil on the table there, and that’s all we possess in the way of condiments. But it must be a real Arabian salad all the same, if you please!” And out she went again, while Peer busied himself with the salad.
“I hope you will excuse my daughter,” said Fru Uthoug, turning her pale face towards him and looking through her spectacles. “She is not really so wild as she seems.”
Uthoug himself walked up and down the room, chatting to Peer and asking a great many questions about conditions in Egypt. He knew something about the Mahdi, and General Gordon, and Khartoum, and the strained relations between the Khedive and the Sultan. He was evidently a diligent reader of the newspapers, and Peer gathered that he was a Radical, and a man of some weight in his party. And he looked as if there was plenty of fire smouldering under his reddish eyelids: “A bad man to fall out with,” thought Peer.
They sat down to supper, and Peer noticed that Fru Uthoug grew less pale and anxious as her daughter laughed and joked and chattered. There even came a slight glow at last into the faded cheeks; the eyes behind the spectacles seemed to shine with a light borrowed from her daughter’s. But her husband seemed not to notice anything, and tried all the time to go on talking about the Mahdi and the Khedive and the Sultan.
So for the first time for many years Peer sat down to table in a Norwegian home—and how good it was! Would he ever have a home of his own, he wondered.
After the meal, a mandolin was brought out, and they sat round the fire in the great fireplace and had some music. Until at last Merle rose and said: “Now, mother, it’s time you went to bed.”
“Yes, dear,” came the answer submissively, and Fru Uthoug said good-night, and Merle led her off.
Peer had risen to take leave, when Merle came in again. “Why,” she said, “you’re surely not going off before you’ve rowed Thea home?”
“Oh, Merle, please . . .” put in the other.
But when the two had taken their places in the boat and were just about to start up the lake, Merle came running down and said she might just as well come too.
Half an hour later, having seen the young girl safely ashore at her father’s place, Merle and Peer were alone, rowing back through the still night over the waters of the lake, golden in the light and dark blue in the shadows. Merle leaned back in the stern, silent, trailing a small branch along the surface of the water behind. After a while Peer laid in his oars and let the boat drift.
“How beautiful it is!” he said.
The girl lifted her head and looked round. “Yes,” she answered, and Peer fancied her voice had taken a new tone.
It was past midnight. Heights and woods and saeters lay lifeless in the soft suffused reddish light. The lake-trout were not rising any more, but now and again the screech of a cock-ptarmigan could be heard among the withies.
“What made you come just here for your holiday, I wonder,” she asked suddenly.
“I leave everything to chance, Froken Uthoug. It just happened so. It’s all so homelike here, wherever one goes. And it is so wonderful to be home in Norway again.”
“But haven’t you been to see your people—your father and mother—since you came home?”
“I—! Do you suppose I have a father and mother?”
“But near relations—surely you must have a brother or sister somewhere in the world?”
“Ah, if one only had! Though, after all, one can get on without.”
She looked at him searchingly, as if trying to see whether he spoke in earnest. Then she said:
“Do you know that mother dreamed of you before you came?”
“Of me?” Peer’s eyes opened wide. “What did she dream about me?”
A sudden flush came to the girl’s face, and she shook her head. “It’s foolish of me to sit here and tell you all this. But you see that was why we wanted so much to find out about you when you came. And it gives me a sort of feeling of our having known each other a long time.”
“You appear to have a very constant flow of high spirits, Froken Uthoug!”
“I? Why do you think—? Oh, well, yes. One can come by most things, you know, if one has to have them.”
“Even high spirits?”
She turned her head and looked towards the shore. “Some day perhaps—if we should come to be friends—I’ll tell you more about it.”
Peer bent to his oars and rowed on. The stillness of the night drew them nearer and nearer together, and made them silent; only now and then they would look at each other and smile.
“What mysterious creature is this I have come upon?” thought Peer. She might be about one-or two-and-twenty. She sat there with bowed head, and in this soft glow the oval face had a strange light of dreams upon it. But suddenly her glance came back and rested on him again, and then she smiled, and he saw that her mouth was large and her lips full and red.
“I wish I had been all over the world, like you,” she said.
“Have you never been abroad, Froken Uthoug?” he asked.
“I spent a winter in Berlin, once, and a few months in South Germany. I played the violin a little, you see; and I hoped to take it up seriously abroad and make something of it—but—”
“Well, why shouldn’t you?”
She was silent for a little, then at last she said: “I suppose you are sure to know about it some day, so I may just as well tell you now. Mother has been out of her mind.”
“My dear Froken—”
“And when she’s at home my—high spirits are needed to help her to be more or less herself.”
He felt an impulse to rise and go to the girl, and take her head between his hands. But she looked up, with a melancholy smile; their eyes met in a long look, and she forgot to withdraw her glance.
“I must go ashore now,” she said at last.
“Oh, so soon! Why, we have hardly begun our talk!”
“I must go ashore now,” she repeated; and her voice, though still gentle, was not to be gainsaid.
At last Peer was alone, rowing back to his saeter. As he rowed he watched the girl going slowly up towards the cottage. When she reached the door she turned for the first time and waved to him. Then she stood for a moment looking after him, and then opened the door and disappeared. He gazed at the door some time longer, as if expecting to see it open again, but no sign of life was to be seen.
The sun’s rim was showing now above the distant ranges in the east, and the white peaks in the north and west kindled in the morning glow. Peer laid in his oars again, and rested, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. What could this thing be that had befallen him today?
How could those peaks stand round so aloof and indifferent, and leave him here disconsolate and alone?
What was it, this new rushing in his ears; this new rhythm of his pulse? He lay back at last in the bottom of the boat, with hands clasped behind his head, and let boat and all things drift.
And when the glare of the rising sun came slanting into the boat and beat dazzlingly in his face, he only turned his head a little and let it shine full upon him.
Now she is lying asleep over there, the morning streaming red through her window—of whom is she dreaming as she sleeps?
Have you ever seen such eyebrows before? To press one’s lips to them—to take her head between one’s hand . . . and so it is to save your mother that you give up your own dreams, and to warm her soul that you keep that flame of gladness burning in you? Is that the sort you are?
Merle—was ever such a name? Are you called Merle?
Day spreads over the heavens, kindling all the night-clouds, great and small, to gold and scarlet. And here he lies, rocking, rocking, on no lake, but on a red stately-heaving ocean swell.
Ah! till now your mind has been so filled with cold mechanics, with calculations, with steel and fire. More and more knowledge, ever more striving to understand all things, to know all, to master all. But meanwhile, the tones of the hymn died within you, and the hunger for that which lies beyond all things grew ever fiercer and fiercer. You thought it was Norway that you needed—and now you are here. But is it enough?
Merle—is your name Merle?
There is nothing that can be likened to the first day of love. All your learning, your travel, and deeds and dreams—all has been nothing but dry firewood that you have dragged and heaped together. And now has come a spark, and the whole heap blazes up, casting its red glow over earth and heaven, and you stretch out your cold hands, and warm them, and shiver with joy that a new bliss has come upon the earth.
And all that you could not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom of the infinite enigma.
You have but to take her by the hand, and “Here are we two,” you say to the powers of life and death. “Here is she and here am I—we two”—and you send the anthem rolling aloft—a strain from little Louise’s fiddle-bow mingling with it—not to the vaultings of any church, but into endless space itself. And Thou, Power above, now I understand Thee. How could I ever take seriously a Power that sat on high playing with Sin and Grace—but now I see Thee, not the bloodthirsty Jehovah, but a golden-haired youth, the Light itself. We two worship Thee; not with a wail of prayer, but with a great anthem, that has the World-All in it. All our powers, our knowledge, our dreams—all are there. And each has its own instrument, its own voice in the mighty chorus. The dawn reddening over the hills is with us. The goat grazing on that northern hillside, dazzled with sun-gold when it turns its head to the east—it is with us, too. The waking birds are with us. A frog, crawling up out of a puddle and stopping to wonder at the morning—it is there. Even the little insect with diamonds on its wings—and the grass-blade with its pearl of dew, trying to mirror as much of the sky as it can—it is there, it is there, it is there. We are standing amid Love’s first day, and there is no more talk of grace or doubt or faith or need of aid; only a rushing sound of music rising to heaven from all the golden rivers in our hearts.
The saeters were beginning to wake. Musical cries came echoing as the saeter-girls chid on the cattle, that moved slowly up to the northern heights, with lowings and tinkling of bells. But Peer lay still where he was—and presently the dairy-maid at the saeter caught sight of what seemed an empty boat drifting on the lake, and was afraid some accident had happened.
“Merle,” thought Peer, still lying motionless. “Is your name Merle?”
The dairy-maid was down by the waterside now, calling across toward the boat. And at last she saw a man sit up, rubbing his eyes.
“Mercy on us!” she cried. “Lord be thanked that you’re there. And you haven’t been in the whole blessed night!”
A goat with a broken leg, set in splints, had been left to stray at will about the cattle-pens and in and out of the house, while its leg-bones were setting. Peer must needs pick up the creature and carry it round for a while in his arms, though it at once began chewing at his beard. When he sat down to the breakfast-table, he found something so touching in the look of the cream and butter, the bread and the coffee, that it seemed a man would need a heart of stone to be willing to eat such things. And when the old woman said he really ought to get some food into him, he sprang up and embraced her, as far as his arms would go round. “Nice carryings on!” she cried, struggling to free herself. But when he went so far as to imprint a sounding kiss on her forehead, she fetched him a mighty push. “Lord!” she said, “if the gomeril hasn’t gone clean out of his wits this last night!”
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