The Great Hunger

Chapter IV

Ringeby lay on the shore of a great lake; and was one of those busy commercial towns which have sprung up in the last fifty years from a nucleus consisting of a saw-mill and a flour-mill by the side of a waterfall. Now quite a number of modern factories had spread upwards along the river, and the place was a town with some four thousand inhabitants, with a church of its own, a monster of a school building, and numbers of yellow workmen’s dwellings scattered about at random in every direction. Otherwise Ringeby was much like any other little town. There were two lawyers, who fought for scraps of legal business, and the editors of two local papers, who were constantly at loggerheads before the Conciliation Board. There was a temperance lodge and Workers’ Union and a chapel and a picture palace. And every Sunday afternoon the good citizens of Ringeby walked out along the fjord, with their wives on their arms. On these occasions most of the men wore frock coats and grey felt hats; but Enebak, the tanner, being hunchbacked, preferred a tall silk hat, as better suited to eke out his height.

On Saturday evenings, when twilight began to fall, the younger men would meet at the corner outside Hammer’s store, to discuss the events of the week.

“Have you heard the latest news?” asked Lovli, the bank cashier, of his friend the telegraphist, who came up.

“News? Do you tell me that there’s ever any news in this accursed hole?”

“Merle Uthoug has come back from the mountains—engaged to be married.”

“The devil she is! What does the old man say to that?”

“Oh, well, the old man will want an engineer if he’s to get the new timber-mills into his clutches.”

“Is the man an engineer?”

“From Egypt. A Muhammadan, I daresay. Brown as a coffee-berry, and rolling in money.”

“Do you hear that, Froken Bull? Stop a minute, here’s some news for you.”

The girl addressed turned aside and joined them. “Oh, the same piece of news that’s all over the town, I suppose. Well, I can tell you, he’s most tremendously nice.”

“Sh!” whispered the telegraphist. Peer Holm was just coming out of the Grand Hotel, dressed in a grey suit, and with a dark coat over his arm. He was trying to get a newly-lit cigar to draw, as he walked with a light elastic step past the group at the corner. A little farther up the street he encountered Merle, and took her arm, and the two walked off together, the young people at the corner watching them as they went.

“And when is it to be?” asked the telegraphist.

“He wanted to be married immediately, I believe,” said Froken Bull, “but I suppose they’ll have to wait till the banns are called, like other people.”

Lorentz D. Uthoug’s long, yellow-painted wooden house stood facing the market square; the office and the big ironmonger’s shop were on the ground floor, and the family lived in the upper storeys. “That’s where he lives,” people would say. Or “There he goes,” as the broad, grey-bearded man passed down the street. Was he such a big man, then? He could hardly be called really rich, though he had a saw-mill and a machine-shop and a flour-mill, and owned a country place some way out of the town. But there was something of the chieftain, something of the prophet, about him. He hated priests. He read deep philosophical works, forbade his family to go to church, and had been visited by Bjornson himself. It was good to have him on your side; to have him against you was fatal—you might just as well clear out of the town altogether. He had a finger in everything that went on; it was as if he owned the whole town. He had been known to meet a youth he had never spoken to before in the street and accost him with a peremptory “Understand me, young man; you will marry that girl.” Yet for all this, Lorentz Uthoug was not altogether content. True, he was head and shoulders above all the Ringeby folks, but what he really wanted was to be the biggest man in a place a hundred times as large.

And now that he had found a son-in-law, he seemed as it were to be walking quietly round this stranger from the great world, taking his measure, and asking in his thoughts: “Who are you at bottom? What have you seen? What have you read? Are you progressive or reactionary? Have you any proper respect for what I have accomplished here, or are you going about laughing in your sleeve and calling me a whale among the minnows?”

Every morning when Peer woke in his room at the hotel he rubbed his eyes. On the table beside his bed stood a photograph of a young girl. What? Is it really you, Peer, that have found someone to stand close to you at last? Someone in the world who cares about you. When you have a cold, there’ll be people to come round and be anxious about you, and ask how you are getting on. And this to happen to you!

He dined at the Uthougs’ every day, and there were always flowers beside his plate. Often there would be some little surprise—a silver spoon or fork, or a napkin-ring with his initials on. It was like gathering the first straws to make his new nest. And the pale woman with the spectacles looked kindly at him, as if to say: “You are taking her from me, but I forgive you.”

One day he was sitting in the hotel, reading, when Merle came in.

“Will you come for a walk?” she asked.

“Good idea. Where shall we go to-day?”

“Well, we haven’t been to see Aunt Marit at Bruseth yet. We really ought to go, you know. I’ll take you there to-day.”

Peer found these ceremonial visits to his new relatives quite amusing; he went round, as it were, collecting uncles and aunts. And to-day there was a new one. Well, why not?

“But—my dear girl, have you been crying?” he asked suddenly, taking her head in his hands.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Come—let’s go now.” And she thrust him gently away as he tried to kiss her. But the next moment she dropped into a chair, and sat looking thoughtfully at him through half-closed eyes, nodding her head very slightly. She seemed to be asking herself: “Who is this man? What is this I am taking on me? A fortnight ago he was an utter stranger—”

She passed her hand across her brow. “It’s mother—you know,” she said.

“Is anything special wrong to-day?”

“She’s so afraid you’re going to carry me off into the wide world at a moment’s notice.”

“But I’ve told her we’re going to live here for the present.”

The girl drew up one side of her mouth in a smile, and her eyelids almost closed. “And what about me, then? After living here all these years crazy to get out into the world?”

“And I, who am crazy to stay at home!” said Peer with a laugh. “How delicious it will be to have a house and a family at last—and peace and quiet!”

“But what about me?”

“You’ll be there, too. I’ll let you live with me.”

“Oh! how stupid you are to-day. If you only knew what it means, to throw away the best years of one’s youth in a hole like this! And besides—I could have done something worth while in music—”

“Why, then, let’s go abroad, by all means,” said Peer, wrinkling up his forehead as if to laugh.

“Oh, nonsense! you know it’s quite impossible to go off and leave mother now. But you certainly came at a very critical time. For anyway I was longing and longing just then for someone to come and carry me off.”

“Aha! so I was only a sort of ticket for the tour.” He stepped over and pinched her nose.

“Oh! you’d better be careful. I haven’t really promised yet to have you, you know.”

“Haven’t promised? When you practically asked me yourself.”

She clapped her hands together. “Why, what shameless impudence! After my saying No, No, No, for days together. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t—I said it ever so many times. And you said it didn’t matter—for YOU WOULD. Yes, you took me most unfairly off my guard; but now look out for yourself.”

The next moment she flung her arms round his neck. But when he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away again. “No,” she said, “you mustn’t think I did it for that!”

Soon they were walking arm-in-arm along the country road, on their way to Aunt Marit at Bruseth. It was September, and all about the wooded hills stood yellow, and the cornfields were golden and the rowan berries blood-red. But there was still summer in the air.

“Ugh! how impossibly fast you walk,” exclaimed Merle, stopping out of breath.

And when they came to a gate they sat down in the grass by the wayside. Below them was the town, with its many roofs and chimneys standing out against the shining lake, that lay framed in broad stretches of farm and field.

“Do you know how it came about that mother is—as she is?” asked Merle suddenly.

“No. I didn’t like to ask you about it.”

She drew a stalk of grass between her lips.

“Well, you see—mother’s father was a clergyman. And when—when father forbade her to go to church, she obeyed him. But she couldn’t sleep after that. She felt—as if she had sold her soul.”

“And what did your father say to that?”

“Said it was hysteria. But, hysteria or not, mother couldn’t sleep. And at last they had to take her away to a home.”

“Poor soul!” said Peer, taking the girl’s hand.

“And when she came back from there she was so changed, one would hardly have known her. And father gave way a little—more than he ever used to do—and said: ‘Well, well, I suppose you must go to church if you wish, but you mustn’t mind if I don’t go with you.’ And so one Sunday she took my hand and we went together, but as we reached the church door, and heard the organ playing inside, she turned back. ‘No—it’s too late now,’ she said. ‘It’s too late, Merle.’ And she has never been since.”

“And she has always been—strange—since then?”

Merle sighed. “The worst of it is she sees so many evil things compassing her about. She says the only thing to do is to laugh them away. But she can’t laugh herself. And so I have to. But when I go away from her—oh! I can’t bear to think of it.”

She hid her face against his shoulder, and he began stroking her hair.

“Tell me, Peer”—she looked up with her one-sided smile—“who is right—mother or father?”

“Have you been trying to puzzle that out?”

“Yes. But it’s so hopeless—so impossible to come to any sort of certainty. What do you think? Tell me what you think, Peer.”

They sat there alone in the golden autumn day, her head pressed against his shoulder. Why should he play the superior person and try to put her off with vague phrases?

“Dear Merle, I know, of course, no more than you do. There was a time when I saw God standing with a rod in one hand and a sugar-cake in the other—just punishment and rewards to all eternity. Then I thrust Him from me, because He seemed to me so unjust—and at last He vanished, melting into the solar systems on high, and all the infinitesimal growths here on the earth below. What was my life, what were my dreams, my joy or sorrow, to these? Where was I making for? Ever and always there was something in me saying: He IS! But where? Somewhere beyond and behind the things you know—it is there He is. And so I determined to know more things, more and more and more—and what wiser was I? A steam-hammer crushes my skull one day—and what has become of my part in progress and culture and science? Am I as much of an accident as a fly on an ant? Do I mean no more? Do I vanish and leave as little trace? Answer me that, little Merle—what do YOU think?”

The girl sat motionless, breathing softly, with closed eyes. Then she began to smile—and her lips were full and red, and at last they shaped themselves to a kiss.

Bruseth was a large farm lying high above the town, with its garden and avenues and long verandahs round the white dwelling-house. And what a view out over the lake and the country far around! The two stood for a moment at the gate, looking back.

Merle’s aunt—her father’s sister—was a widow, rich and a notable manager, but capricious to a degree, capable of being generous one day and grasping the next. It was the sorrow of her life that she had no children of her own, but she had not yet decided who was to be her heir.

She came sailing into the room where the two young people were waiting, and Peer saw her coming towards them, a tall, full-bosomed woman with grey hair and florid colour. Oho! here’s an aunt for you with a vengeance, he thought. She pulled off a blue apron she was wearing and appeared dressed in a black woollen gown, with a gold chain about her neck and long gold earrings.

“So you thought you’d come over at last,” she said. “Actually remembered my existence, after all, did you, Merle?” She turned towards Peer, and stood examining him, with her hands on her hips. “So that’s what you look like, is it, Peer? And you’re the man that was to catch Merle? Well, you see I call you Peer at once, even though you HAVE come all the way from—Arabia, is it? Sit down, sit down.”

Wine was brought in, and Aunt Marit of Bruseth lifted a congratulatory glass toward the pair with the following words:

“You’ll fight, of course. But don’t overdo it, that’s all. And mark my words, Peer Holm, if you aren’t good to her, I’ll come round one fine day and warm your ears for you. Your healths, children!”

The two went homewards arm-in-arm, dancing down the hillsides, and singing gaily as they went. But suddenly, when they were still some way from the town, Merle stopped and pointed. “There,” she whispered—“there’s mother!”

A solitary woman was walking slowly in the twilight over a wide field of stubble, looking around her. It was as if she were lingering here to search out the meaning of something—of many things. From time to time she would glance up at the sky, or at the town below, or at people passing on the road, and then she would nod her head. How infinitely far off she seemed, how utterly a stranger to all the noisy doings of men! What was she seeing now? What were her thoughts?

“Let us go on,” whispered Merle, drawing him with her. And the young girl suddenly began to sing, loudly, as if in an overflow of spirits; and Peer guessed that it was for her mother’s sake. Perhaps the lonely woman stood there now in the twilight smiling after them.

One Sunday morning Merle drove up to the hotel in a light cart with a big brown horse; Peer came out and climbed in, leaving the reins to her. They were going out along the fjord to look at her father’s big estate which in olden days had been the County Governors’ official residence.

It is the end of September. The sun is still warm, but the waters of the lake are grey and all the fields are reaped. Here and there a strip of yellowing potato-stalks lies waiting to be dug up. Up on the hillsides horses tethered for grazing stand nodding their heads slowly, as if they knew that it was Sunday. And a faint mist left by the damps of the night floats about here and there over the broad landscape.

They passed through a wood, and came on the other side to an avenue of old ash trees, that turned up from the road and ran uphill to a big house where a flag was flying. The great white dwelling-house stood high, as if to look out far over the world; the red farm-buildings enclosed the wide courtyard on three sides, and below were gardens and broad lands, sloping down towards the lake. Something like an estate!

“What’s the name of that place?” cried Peer, gazing at it.

“Loreng.”

“And who owns it?”

“Don’t know,” answered the girl, cracking her whip.

Next moment the horse turned in to the avenue, and Peer caught involuntarily at the reins. “Hei! Brownie—where are you going?” he cried.

“Why not go up and have a look?” said Merle.

“But we were going out to look at your father’s place.”

“Well, that is father’s place.”

Peer stared at her face and let go the reins. “What? What? You don’t mean to say your father owns that place there?”

A few minutes later they were strolling through the great, low-ceiled rooms. The whole house was empty now, the farm-bailiff living in the servants’ quarters. Peer grew more and more enthusiastic. Here, in these great rooms, there had been festive gatherings enough in the days of the old Governors, where cavaliers in uniform or with elegant shirt-frills and golden spurs had kissed the hands of ladies in sweeping silk robes. Old mahogany, pot-pourri, convivial song, wit, grace—Peer saw it all in his mind’s eye, and again and again he had to give vent to his feelings by seizing Merle and embracing her.

“Oh, but look here, Merle—you know, this is a fairy-tale.”

They passed out into the old neglected garden with its grass-grown paths and well-filled carp-ponds and tumble-down pavilions. Peer rushed about it in all directions. Here, too, there had been fetes, with coloured lamps festooned around, and couples whispering in the shade of every bush. “Merle, did you say your father was going to sell all this to the State?”

“Yes, that’s what it will come to, I expect,” she answered. “The place doesn’t pay, he says, when he can’t live here himself to look after it.”

“But what use can the State make of it?”

“Oh, a Home for Imbeciles, I believe.”

“Good Lord! I might have guessed it! An idiot asylum—to be sure.” He tramped about, fairly jumping with excitement. “Merle, look here—will you come and live here?”

She threw back her head and looked at him. “I ask you, Merle. Will you come and live here?”

“Do you want me to answer this moment, on the spot?”

“Yes. For I want to buy it this moment, on the spot.”

“Well, aren’t you—”

“Look, Merle, just look at it all. That long balcony there, with the doric columns—nothing shoddy about that—it’s the real thing. Empire. I know something about it.”

“But it’ll cost a great deal, Peer.” There was some reluctance in her voice. Was she thinking of her violin? Was she loth to take root too firmly?

“A great deal?” he said. “What did your father give for it?”

“The place was sold by auction, and he got it cheap. Fifty thousand crowns, I think it was.”

Peer strode off towards the house again. “We’ll buy it. It’s the very place to make into a home. . . . Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, cottars—ah! it’ll be grand.”

Merle followed him more slowly. “But, Peer, remember you’ve just taken over father’s machine-shops in town.”

“Pooh!” said Peer scornfully. “Do you think I can’t manage to run that village smithy and live here too! Come along, Merle.” And he took her hand and drew her into the house again.

It was useless to try to resist. He dragged her from room to room, furnishing as he went along. “This room here is the dining-room—and that’s the big reception-room; this will be the study—that’s a boudoir for you. . . . Come now; to-morrow we’ll go into Christiania and buy the furniture.”

Merle gasped for breath. He had got so far by this time that the furnishing was complete and they were installed. They had a governess already, and he was giving parties too. Here was the ballroom. He slipped an arm round her waist and danced round the room with her, till she was carried away by his enthusiasm, and stood flushed and beaming, while all she had dreamed of finding some day out in the wide world seemed suddenly to unfold around her here in these empty rooms. Was this really to be her home? She stopped to take breath and to look around her.

Late that evening Peer sat at the hotel with a note-book, working the thing out. He had bought Loreng; his father-in-law had been reasonable, and had let him have the place, lands and woods and all, for the ridiculous price he had paid himself. There was a mortgage of thirty thousand crowns on the estate. Well, that might stand as it was, for the bulk of Peer’s money was tied up in Ferdinand Holm’s company.

A few days after he carried Merle off to the capital, leaving the carpenters and painters hard at work at Loreng.

One day he was sitting alone at the hotel in Christiania—Merle was out shopping—when there was a very discreet knock at the door.

“Come in,” called Peer. And in walked a middle-sized man, of thirty or more, dressed in a black frock-coat with a large-patterned vest, and his dark hair carefully combed over a bald patch on the crown. He had a red, cheery face; his eyes were of the brightest blue, and the whole man breathed and shone with good humour.

“I am Uthoug junior,” said the new-comer, with a bow and a laugh.

“Oh—that’s capital.”

“Just come across from Manchester—beastly voyage. Thanks, thanks—I’ll find a seat.” He sat down, and flung one striped trouser-leg over the other.

Peer sent for some wine, and in half an hour the two were firm allies. Uthoug junior’s life-story to date was quickly told. He had run away from home because his father had refused to let him go on the stage—had found on trial that in these days there weren’t enough theatres to go round—then had set up in business for himself, and now had a general agency for the sale of English tweeds. “Freedom, freedom,” was his idea; “lots of elbow-room—room to turn about in—without with your leave or by your leave to father or anyone! Your health!”

A week later the street outside Lorentz D. Uthoug’s house in Ringeby was densely crowded with people, all gazing up at the long rows of lighted windows. There was feasting to-night in the great man’s house. About midnight a carriage drove up to the door. “That’s the bridegroom’s,” whispered a bystander. “He got those horses from Denmark!”

The street door opened, and a white figure, thickly cloaked, appeared on the steps. “The bride!” whispered the crowd. Then a slender man in a dark overcoat and silk hat. “The bridegroom!” And as the pair passed out, “Hip-hip-hip—” went the voice of the general agent for English tweeds, and the hurrahs came with a will.

The carriage moved off, and Peer sat, with his arm round his bride, driving his horses at a sharp trot out along the fjord. Out towards his home, towards his palace, towards a new and untried future.