The Great Hunger

Chapter V

A little shaggy, grey-bearded old man stood chopping and sawing in the wood-shed at Loreng. He had been there longer than anyone could remember. One master left, another took his place—what was that to the little man? Didn’t the one need firewood—and didn’t the other need firewood just the same? In the evening he crept up to his den in the loft of the servants’ wing; at meal-times he sat himself down in the last seat at the kitchen-table, and it seemed to him that there was always food to be had. Nowadays the master’s name was Holm—an engineer he was—and the little man blinked at him with his eyes, and went on chopping in the shed. If they came and told him he was not wanted and must go—why, thank heaven, he was stone deaf, as everyone knew. Thud, thud, went his axe in the shed; and the others about the place were so used to it that they heeded it no more than the ticking of a clock upon the wall.

In the kitchen of the big house two girls stood by the window peeping out into the garden and giggling.

“There he is again,” said Laura. “Sh! don’t laugh so loud. There! now he’s stopping again!”

“He’s whistling to a bird,” said Oliana. “Or talking to himself perhaps. Do you think he’s quite right in his head?”

“Sh! The mistress’ll hear.”

It was no less a person than the master of Loreng himself whose proceedings struck them as so comic.

Peer it was, wandering about in the great neglected garden, with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and his cap on the back of his head, stopping here and there, and moving on again as the fancy took him. Sometimes he would hum a snatch of a song, and again fall to whistling; here he would pick up a twig and look at it, or again it might be a bird, or perhaps an old neglected apple-tree that seemed worth stopping to talk to. The best of it was that these were his own lands and his own woods that lay there in the rusty October sunshine. Was all that nothing? And the hill over on the farther shore, standing on its head in the dark lake-mirror, clothed in a whole world of colour—yellow leaves and green leaves, and light red and dark red, and golden and blood-red patches, with the dark green of the pines between. His eyes had all this to rest on. Did he really live here? What abundant fruitfulness all around him! What a sky, so wide, so golden that it seemed to ring again. The potato-stalks lay uprooted, scattered on the fields; the corn was safely housed. And here he stood. He seemed again to be drawing in nourishment from all he saw, drinking it greedily. The empty places in his mind were filled; the sight of the rich soft landscape worked on his being, giving it something of its own abundant fruitfulness, its own wide repose.

And—what next?

“What next?” he mimicked in his thoughts, and started again tramping up and down the garden paths. What next—what next? Could he not afford now to take his time—to rest a little? Every man must have an end in view—must strive to reach this goal or that. And what was his object now? What was it he had so toiled for, from those hard years in the loft above the stable even until now? What was it? Often it seemed as if everything were going smoothly, going of itself; as if one day, surely, he would find his part in a great, happy world-harmony. But had he not already found it? What more would he have? Of course he had found it.

But is this all, then? What is there behind and beyond? Hush! have done with questioning. Look at the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace and rest.

He hurried up to the house, and in—it might help matters if he could take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.

Merle was in the pantry, with a big apron on, ranging jars of preserves on the shelves.

“Here, dearest little wife,” cried Peer, throwing his arms about her, “what do you say to a little run?”

“Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad about? Uf! my hair! you’ll make it come down.”

Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake. “There, dearest! Isn’t it lovely here?”

“Peer, you’ve asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came.”

“Yes, and you never answer. And you’ve never once yet run and thrown your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it’s never yet come to pass that you’ve given me a single kiss of your own accord.”

“I should think not, when you steal such a lot.” And she pushed him aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. “I must go in and see mother again to-day,” she said as she went.

“Huit! Of course!” He paced up and down the room, his step growing more and more impatient. “In to mother—in to mother! Always and everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!” and he began to whistle.

Merle put her head in at the door. “Peer—have you such a terrible lot of spare time?”

“Well, yes and no. I’m busy enough looking about in every corner here for something or another. But I can’t find it, and I don’t even know exactly what it is. Oh well, yes—I have plenty of time to spare.”

“But what about the farm?”

“Well, there’s the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I to do—poke around making improvements?”

“But what about the machine-shop?”

“Don’t I go in twice a day—cycle over to see how things are going? But with Rode for manager—that excellent and high-principled engineer—”

“Surely you could help him in some way?”

“He’s got to go on running along the line of rails he’s used to—nothing else for it, my darling. And four or five thousand crowns a year, net profit—why, it’s magnificent!”

“But couldn’t you extend the business?”

He raised his eyebrows, and his mouth pursed itself up.

“Extend—did you say extend? Extend a—a doll’s house!”

“Oh, Peer, you shouldn’t laugh at it—a thing that father took so much pains to set going!”

“And YOU shouldn’t go worrying me to get to work again in earnest, Merle. You shouldn’t really. One of these days I might discover that there’s no way to be happy in the world but to drag a plough and look straight ahead and forget that there’s anything else in existence. It may come to that one day—but give me a little breathing-space first, and you love me. Well, good-bye for a while.”

Merle, busying herself again in her pantry, glanced out of the window and saw him disappear into the stables. At first she had gone with him when he wandered about like this, touching and feeling all his possessions. In the cattle-stalls, it might be, stroking and patting, getting himself covered with hairs, and chattering away in childish glee. “Look, Merle—this cow is mine, child! Dagros her name is—and she’s mine. We have forty of them—and they’re all mine. And that nag there—what a sight he is! We have eight of them. They’re mine. Yours too, of course. But you don’t care a bit about it. You haven’t even hugged any of them yet. But when a man’s been as poor as I’ve been—and suddenly wakened up one day and found he owned all this—No, wait a minute, Merle—come and kiss old Brownie.” She knew the ritual now—he could go over it all again and again, and each time with the same happy wonder. Was it odious of her that she was beginning to find it a little comic? And how did it come about that often, when she might be filled with the deepest longing for him, and he burst in upon her boisterously, hungry for her caresses, she would grow suddenly cold, and put him aside? What was the matter? Why did she behave like this?

Perhaps it was because he was so much the stronger, so overwhelming in his effect on her that she had to keep a tight hold on herself to avoid being swept clean away and losing her identity. At one moment they might be sitting in the lamplight, chatting easily together, and so near in heart and mind; and the next it would be over—he would suddenly have started up and be pacing up and down the room, delivering a sort of lecture. Merle—isn’t it marvellous, the spiritual life of plants? And then would come a torrent of talk about strange plant-growths in the north and in the south, plants whose names she had never even heard—their struggle for existence, their loves and longings, their heroism in disease, the divine marvel of their death. Their inventions, their wisdom, aye, their religious sense—is it not marvellous, Merle? From this it was only a step to the earth’s strata, fossils, crystals—a fresh lecture. And finally he would sum up the whole into one great harmony of development, from the primary cell-life to the laws of gravitation that rule the courses of the stars. Was it not marvellous? One common rhythm beating through the universe—a symphony of worlds!—And then he must have a kiss!

But she could only draw back and put him gently aside. It was as if he came with all his stored-up knowledge—his lore of plants and fossils, crystals and stars—and poured it all out in a caress. She could almost have cried out for help. And after hurrying her through the wonders of the universe in this fashion, he would suddenly catch her up in his arms, and whirl her off in a passionate intoxication of the senses till she woke at last like a castaway on an island, hardly knowing where or what she was. She laughed, but she could have found it in her heart to weep. Could this be love? In this strong man, whose life till now had been all study and work, the stored-up feeling burst vehemently forth, now that it had found an outlet. But why did it leave her so cold?

When Peer came in from the stables, humming a tune, he found her in the sitting-room, dressed in a dark woollen dress with a red ribbon round her throat.

He stopped short: “By Jove—how that suits you, Merle!”

She let her eyes linger on him for a moment, and then came up and threw her arms round his neck.

“Did he have to go to the stables all alone today?”

“Yes; I’ve been having a chat with the young colt.”

“Am I unkind to you, Peer?”

“You?—you!”

“Not even if I ask you to drive me in to see mother?”

“Why, that’s the very thing. The new horse I bought yesterday from Captain Myhre should be here any minute—I’m just waiting for it.”

“A new horse—to ride?”

“Yes. Hang it—I must get some riding. I had to handle Arab horses for years. But we’ll try this one in the gig first.”

Merle was still standing with her arms round his neck, and now she pressed her warm rich lips to his, close and closer. It was at such moments that she loved him—when he stood trembling with a joy unexpected, that took him unawares. She too trembled, with a blissful thrill through soul and body; for once and at last it was she who gave.

“Ah!” he breathed at last, pale with emotion. “I—I’d be glad to die like that.”

A little later they stood on the balcony looking over the courtyard, when a bearded farm-hand came up with a big light-maned chestnut horse prancing in a halter. The beast stood still in the middle of the yard, flung up its head, and neighed, and the horses in the stable neighed in answer.

“Oh, what a beauty!” exclaimed Merle, clapping her hands.

“Put him into the gig,” called Peer to the stable-boy who had come out to take the horse.

The man touched his cap. “Horse has never been driven before, sir, I was to say.”

“Everything must have a beginning,” said Peer.

Merle glanced at him. But they were both dressed to go out when the chestnut came dancing up before the door with the gig. The white hoofs pawed impatiently, the head was high in the air, and the eyes flashed fire—he wasn’t used to having shafts pressing on his sides and wheels rumbling just behind him. Peer lit a cigar.

“You’re not going to smoke?” Merle burst out.

“Just to show him I’m not excited,” said Peer. No sooner had they taken their seats in the gig than the beast began to snort and rear, but the long lash flicked out over its neck, and a minute later they were tearing off in a cloud of dust towards the town.

Winter came—and a real winter it was. Peer moved about from one window to another, calling all the time to Merle to come and look. He had been away so long—the winter of Eastern Norway was all new to him. Look—look! A world of white—a frozen white tranquillity—woods, plains, lakes all in white, a fairy-tale in sunlight, a dreamland at night under the great bright moon. There was a ringing of sleigh-bells out on the lake, and up in the snow-powdered forest; the frost stood thick on the horses’ manes and the men’s beards were hung with icicles. And in the middle of the night loud reports of splitting ice would come from the lake—sounds to make one sit up in bed with a start.

Driving’s worth while in weather like this—come, Merle. The new stallion from Gudbrandsdal wants breaking in—we’ll take him. Hallo! and away they go in their furs, swinging out over the frozen lake, whirling on to the bare glassy ice, where they skid and come near capsizing, and Merle screams—but they get on to snow, and hoofs and runners grip again. None of your galloping—trot now, trot! And Peer cracks his whip. The black, long-maned Gudbrandsdaler lifts his head and trots out. And the evening comes, and under the wide and starry sky they dash up again to Loreng—Loreng that lies there lighting them home with its long rows of glowing windows. A glorious day, wife!

Or they would go out on ski over the hills to the woodmen’s huts in the forest, and make a blazing fire in the big chimney and drink steaming coffee. Then home again through one of those pale winter evenings with a violet twilight over woods and fields and lake, over white snow and blue. Far away on the brown hillside in the west stands a farmhouse, with all its windows flaming with the reflection from a golden cloud. Here they come rushing, the wind of their passing shaking the snow from the pines; on, on, over deep-rutted woodcutters’ roads, over stumps and stones—falling, bruising themselves, burying their faces deep in the snow, but dragging themselves up again, smiling to each other and rushing on again. Then, reaching home red and dripping, they lean the ski up against the wall, and stamp the snow off their boots.

“Merle,” said Peer, picking the ice from his beard, “we must have a bottle of Burgundy at dinner to-night.”

“Yes—and shall we ring up and ask someone to come over?”

“Someone—from outside? Can’t we two have a little jollification all to ourselves?”

“Yes, yes, of course, if you like.”

A shower-bath—a change of underclothes—how delicious! And—an idea! He’ll appear at dinner in evening dress, just for a surprise. But as he entered the room he stopped short. For there stood Merle herself in evening dress—a dress of dark red velvet, with his locket round her neck and the big plaits of hair rolled into a generous knot low on her neck. Flowers on the table—the wine set to warm—the finest glass, the best silver—ptarmigan—how splendid! They lift their glasses filled with the red wine and drink to each other.

The frozen winter landscape still lingered in their thoughts, but the sun had warmed their souls; they laughed and jested, held each other’s hands long, and sat smiling at each other in long silences.

“A glorious day to-day, Merle. And to-morrow we die.”

“What do you say!—to-morrow!”

“Or fifty years hence. It comes to the same thing.” He pressed her hand and his eyes half closed.

“But this evening we’re together—and what could we want more?”

Then he fell to talking of his Egyptian experiences. He had once spent a month’s holiday in visiting ruined cities with Maspero, the great Maspero himself, going with him to Luxor, to Karnak, with its great avenues of sphinxes, to El Amarna and Shubra. They had looked on ancient cities of temples and king’s mausoleums, where men thousands of years dead lay as if lost in thought, with eyes wide open, ready at any moment to rise and call out: Slave, is the bath ready? There in the middle of a cornfield rises an obelisk. You ask what it is—it is all that is left of a royal city. There, too, a hundred thousand years ago maybe, young couples have sat together, drinking to each other in wine, revelling in all the delights of love—and where are they now? Aye, where are they, can you tell me?

“When that journey was over, Merle, I began to think that it was not mere slime of the Nile that fertilised the fields; it was the mouldered bodies of the dead. I rode over dust that had been human fingers, lips that had clung in kisses. Millions and millions of men and women have lived on those river-banks, and what has become of them now? Geology. And I thought of the millions of prayers wailed out there to the sun and stars, to stone idols in the temples, to crocodiles and snakes and the river itself, the sacred river. And the air, Merle—the air received them, and vibrated for a second—and that was all. And even so our prayers go up, to this very day. We press our warm lips to a cold stone, and think to leave an impression. Skaal!”

But Merle did not touch her glass; she sat still, with her eyes on the yellow lampshade. She had not yet given up all her dreams of going forth and conquering the world with her music—and he sat there rolling out eternity itself before her, while he and she herself, her parents, all, all became as chaff blown before the wind and vanished.

“What, won’t you drink with me? Well, well—then I must pledge you by myself. Skaal!”

And being well started on his travellers’ tales he went on with them, but now in a more cheerful vein, so that she found it possible to smile. He told of the great lake-swamps, with their legions of birds, ibis, pelicans, swans, flamingos, herons, and storks—a world of long beaks and curved breasts and stilt-like legs and shrieking and beating of wings. Most wonderful of all it was to stand and watch and be left behind when the birds of passage flew northward in their thousands in the spring. My love to Norway, he would say, as they passed. And in the autumn to see them return, grey goose, starling, wagtail, and all the rest. “How goes it now at home?” he would think—and “Next time I’ll go with you,” he would promise himself year after year.

“And here I am at last! Skaal!”

“Welcome home,” said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.

He rang the bell. “What do you want?” her eyes asked.

“Champagne,” said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.

“Are you crazy, Peer?”

He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: “Now, gentlemen, here’s a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win his spurs—who’s ready?” And half a score of voices answered “I.” “Well, here’s the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion and have a railway—couple of hundred miles of it—what do you say to that?” “Splendid,” we cried in chorus. “Well, but we’ve got to compete with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans—and we’ve got to win.” “Of course”—a louder chorus still. “Now, I’m going to take two men and give them a free hand. They’ll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and the financial side—and a project that’s better and cheaper than the opposition ones. Eight months’ work for a good man, but I must have it done in four. Take along assistants and equipment—all you need—and a thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get the job.”

“Peer—were you sent?” Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.

“I—and one other.”

“Who was that?”

“His name was Ferdinand Holm.”

Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!

“And what came of it?” she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the lamp.

Peer flung away his cigarette. “First an expedition up the Nile, then a caravan journey, camels and mules and assistants and provisions and instruments and tents and quinine—heaps of quinine. Have you any idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything had to be planned and estimated at top speed—material, labour, time, cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting and erecting—but even then it would be no good if the Germans could come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it’s true—but then there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And sunstroke—yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed out by the rain. I lost my best assistant by snakebite. But such things didn’t count as hindrances, they couldn’t be allowed to delay the work. If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a couple of months a blacksmith’s hammer started thumping in the back of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night, little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When I looked in the glass, my eyes were just two red balls in my head. But when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief’s office.”

“And—and Ferdinand Holm?”

“Had got in the day before.”

Merle shifted a little in her seat. “And so—he won?”

Peer lit another cigarette. “No,” he said—the cigarette seemed to draw rather badly—“I won. And that’s how I came to be building railways in Abyssinia.”

“Here’s the champagne,” said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the glasses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him from head to foot.

“I feel like playing to-night,” she said.

It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old longings.

Peer sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands, listening. And there she stood, at the music-stand, in her red dress, flushed and warm, and shining in the yellow lamplight, playing.

Then suddenly the thought of her mother came to her, and she went to the telephone. “Mother—are you there, mother? Oh, we’ve had such a glorious day.” And the girl ran on, as if trying to light up her mother’s heart with some rays of the happiness her own happy day had brought her.

A little later Peer lay in bed, while Merle flitted about the room, lingering over her toilet.

He watched her as she stood in her long white gown before the toilet-table with the little green-shaded lamps, doing her hair for the night in a long plait. Neither of them spoke. He could see her face in the glass, and saw that her eyes were watching him, with a soft, mysterious glance—the scent of her hair seemed to fill the place with youth.

She turned round towards him and smiled. And he lay still, beckoning her towards him with shining eyes. All that had passed that evening—their outing, and the homeward journey in the violet dusk, their little feast, and his story, the wine—all had turned to love in their hearts, and shone out now in their smile.

It may be that some touch of the cold breath of the eternities was still in their minds, the remembrance of the millions on millions that die, the flight of the aeons towards endless darkness; yet in spite of all, the minutes now to come, their warm embrace, held a whole world of bliss, that out-weighed all, and made Peer, as he lay there, long to send out a hymn of praise into the universe, because it was so wonderful to live.

He began to understand why she lingered and took so long. It was a sign that she wanted to surprise him, that her heart was kind. And her light breathing seemed even now to fill the room with love.

Outside in the night the lake-ice, splitting into new crevices, sent up loud reports; and the winter sky above the roof that sheltered them was lit with all its stars.