The Great Hunger

Chapter IX

There came a card from Peer, with a brief message: “Off to inspect the ground.” A fortnight later he came home, loaded with maps and plans. “Of course I’m late for the fair, as usual,” he said. “But wait a bit.”

He locked himself into his room. At last Merle knew what it was like to have him at work. She could hear him in the mornings, walking up and down and whistling. Then silence—he would be standing over his table, busy with notes and figures. Then steps again. Now he was singing—and this was a novelty to himself. It was as if he carried in him a store of happiness, a treasure laid by of love, and the beauty of nature, and happy hours, and now it found its way out in song. Why should he not sing over the plans for a great barrage? Mathematics are dry work enough, but at times they can be as living visions, soaring up into the light. Peer sang louder. Then silence again. Merle never knew now when he stopped work and came to bed. She would fall asleep to the sound of his singing in his own room, and when she woke he would already be tramping up and down again in there; and to her his steps seemed like the imperious tread of a great commander. He was alight with new visions, new themes, and his voice had a lordly ring. Merle looked at him through half-closed eyes with a lingering glance. Once more he was new to her: she had never seen him like this.

At last the work was finished, and he sent in his tender. And now he was more restless than ever. For a week he waited for an answer, tramping in and out of the place, going off for rides on Bijou, and coming back with his horse dripping with sweat. An impatient man cannot possibly ride at any pace but a gallop. The days passed; Peer was sleepless, and ate nothing. More days passed. At last he came bursting into the nursery one morning: “Trunk call, Merle; summons to a meeting of the Company Directors. Quick’s the word. Come and help me pack—sharp.” And in no time he was off again to the city.

Now it was Merle’s turn to walk up and down in suspense. It mattered little to her in itself whether he got the work or not, but she was keenly anxious that he should win.

A couple of days later a telegram came: “Hurrah, wife!” And Merle danced round the room, waving the telegram above her head.

The next day he was back home again and tramping up and down the room. “What do you think your father will say to it, Merle—ha!”

“Father? Say to what?”

“When I ask him to be my surety for a couple of hundred thousand crowns?”

“Is father to be in it, too?” Merle looked at him open-eyed.

“Oh, if he doesn’t want to, we’ll let him off. But at any rate I’ll ask him first. Goodbye.” And Peer drove off into town.

In Lorentz Uthoug’s big house you had to pass through the hardware shop to get to his office, which lay behind. Peer knocked at the door, with a portfolio under his arm. Herr Uthoug had just lit the gas, and was on the point of sitting down at his American roll-top desk, when Peer entered. The grey-bearded head with the close thick hair turned towards him, darkened by the shadow from the green shade of the burner.

“You, is it?” said he. “Sit down. You’ve been to Christiania, I hear. And what are you busy with now?”

They sat down opposite each other. Peer explained, calmly and with confidence.

“And what does the thing amount to?” asked Uthoug, his face coming out of the shadow and looking at Peer in the full light.

“Two million four hundred thousand.”

The old man laid his hairy hands on the desk and rose to his feet, staring at the other and breathing deeply. The sum half-stunned him. Beside it he himself and his work seemed like dust in the balance. Where were all his plans and achievements now, his greatness, his position, his authority in the town? Compared with amounts like this, what were the paltry sums he had been used to handle?

“I—I didn’t quite catch—” he stammered. “Did you say two millions?”

“Yes. I daresay it seems a trifle to you,” said Peer. “Indeed, I’ve handled contracts myself that ran to fifty million francs.”

“What? How much did you say?” Uthoug began to move restlessly about the room. He clutched his hair, and gazed at Peer as if doubting whether he was quite sober.

At the same time he felt it would never do to let himself be so easily thrown off his balance. He tried to pull himself together.

“And what do you make out of it?” he asked.

“A couple of hundred thousand, I hope.”

“Oh!” A profit on this scale again rather startled the old man. No, he was nothing; he never had been anything in this world!

“How do you know that you will make so much?”

“I’ve calculated it all out.”

“But if—but how can you be sure of it? Suppose you’ve got your figures wrong?” His head was thrust forward again into the full light.

“I’m in the habit of getting my figures right,” said Peer.

When he broached the question of security, the old man was in the act of moving away from him across the room. But he stopped short, and looked back over his shoulder.

“What? Security? You want me to stand security for two million crowns?”

“No; the Company asks for a guarantee for four hundred thousand.”

After a pause the old man said: “I see. Yes, I see. But—but I’m not worth as much as that altogether.”

“I can put in three hundred thousand of the four myself, in shares. And then, of course, I have the Loreng property, and the works. But put it at a round figure—will you guarantee a hundred thousand?”

There was another pause, and then the reply came from the far end of the room to which Uthoug had drifted: “Even that’s a big sum.”

“Of course if you would rather not, I could make other arrangements. My two friends, who have just been here—” He rose and began to gather up his papers.

“No, no; you mustn’t be in such a hurry. Why, you come down on a man like an avalanche. You must give me time to think it over—till to-morrow at least. And the papers—at any rate, I must have a look at them.”

Uthoug passed a restless and troubled night. The solid ground seemed to have failed him; his mind could find no firm foothold. His son-in-law must be a great man—he should be the last to doubt it. But a hundred thousand—to be ventured, not in landed property, or a big trade deal, but on the success of a piece of construction work. This was something new. It seemed fantastic—suited to the great world outside perhaps, or the future. Had he courage enough to stand in? Who could tell what accidents, what disasters might not happen? No! He shook his head. He could not. He dared not. But—the thing tempted him. He had always wanted to be something more than a whale among the minnows. Should he risk it? Should he not? It meant staking his whole fortune, his position, everything, upon the outcome of a piece of engineering that he understood nothing whatever about. It was sheer speculation; it was gambling. No, he must say: No. Then he was only a whale among the minnows, after all. No, he must say: Yes. Good God! He clenched his hands together; they were clammy with sweat, and his brain was in a whirl. It was a trial, a temptation. He felt an impulse to pray. But what good could that do—since he had himself abolished God.

Next day Merle and Peer were rung up by telephone and asked to come in to dinner with the old folks.

But when they were all sitting at table, they found it impossible to keep the conversation going. Everyone seemed shy of beginning on the subject they were all thinking about. The old man’s face was grey with want of sleep; his wife looked from one to the other through her spectacles. Peer was calm and smiling.

At last, when the claret came round, Fru Uthoug lifted her glass and drank to Peer. “Good fortune!” she said. “We won’t be the ones to stand in your way. Since you think it is all right, of course it is. And we all hope it will turn out well for you, Peer.”

Merle looked at her parents; she had sat through the meal anxious and troubled, and now the tears rose into her eyes.

“Thanks,” said Peer, lifting his glass and drinking to his host and hostess. “Thanks,” he repeated, bowing to old Uthoug. The matter was arranged. Evidently the two old folks had talked it over together and come to an agreement.

It was settled, but all four felt as if the solid ground were rocking a little under their feet. All their future, their fate, seemed staked upon a throw.

A couple of days later, a day of mild October sunshine, Peer happened to go into the town, and, catching sight of his mother-in-law at the window, he went off and bought some flowers, and took them up to her.

She was sitting looking out at the yellow sky in the west, and she hardly turned her head as she took the flowers. “Thanks, Peer,” she said, and continued gazing out at the sky.

“What are you thinking of, dear mother?” asked Peer.

“Ah! it isn’t a good thing always to tell our thoughts,” she said, and she turned her spectacled eyes so as to look out over the lake.

“I hope it was something pleasant?”

“I was thinking of you, Peer. Of you and Merle.”

“It is good of you to think of us.”

“You see, Peer, there is trouble coming for you. A great deal of trouble.” She nodded her head towards the yellow sky in the west.

“Trouble? Why? Why should trouble come to us?”

“Because you are happy, Peer.”

“What? Because I am—?”

“Because all things blossom and flourish about you. Be sure that there are unseen powers enough that grudge you your happiness.”

Peer smiled. “You think so?” he asked.

“I know it,” she answered with a sigh, gazing out into the distance. “You have made enemies of late amongst all those envious shadows that none can see. But they are all around us. I see them every day; I have learned to know them, in all these years. I have fought with them. And it is well for Merle that she has learned to sing in a house so full of shadows. God grant she may be able to sing them away from you too.”

When Peer left the house he felt as if little shudders of cold were passing down his back. “Pooh!” he exclaimed as he reached the street. “She is not right in her head.” And he hurried to his carriole and drove off home.

“Old Rode will be pleased, anyhow,” he thought. “He’ll be his own master in the workshop now—the dream of his life. Well, everyone for himself. And the bailiff will have things all his own way at Loreng for a year or two. Well, well! Come up, Brownie!”