The Great Hunger

Chapter X

“Peer, you’re surely not going away just now? Oh, Peer, you mustn’t. You won’t leave me alone, Peer!”

“Merle, dear, now do be sensible. No, no—do let go, dear.” He tried to disengage her hands that were clasped behind his neck.

“Peer, you have never been like this before. Don’t you care for me any more—or the children?”

“Merle, dearest, you don’t imagine that I like going. But you surely don’t want me to have another big breach this year. It would be sheer ruin, I do assure you. Come, come now; let me go.”

But she held him fast. “And what happens to those dams up there is more to you now than what becomes of me!”

“You will be all right, dear. The doctor and the nurse have promised to be on the spot the moment you send word. And you managed so well before. . . . I simply cannot stay now, Merle. There’s too much at stake. There, there, goodbye! Be sure you telegraph—” He kissed her over the eyes, put her gently down into a chair, and hurried out of the room, feeling her terrified glance follow him as he went.

The April sun had cleared away the snow from the lowlands, but when Peer stepped out of the train up in Espedal he found himself back in winter—farms and fields still covered, and ridges and peaks deep in white dazzling snow. And soon he was sitting wrapped in his furs, driving a miserable dun pony up a side-valley that led out on to the uplands.

The road was a narrow track through the snow, yellow with horse-dung, and a mass of holes and ruts, worn by his own teams that had hauled their heavy loads of cement this way all through that winter and the last, up to the plateau and across the frozen lakes to Besna.

The steel will on. The steel cares nothing for human beings. Merle must come through it alone.

When a healthy, happy man is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks into an easy gallop.

This was not the work he had once dreamed of finding. Now, as before, his hunger for eternal things seemed ever at the side of his accomplishment, asking continually: Whither? Why? and What then?

But by degrees the difficulties had multiplied and mounted, till at last his whole mind was taken up by the one thought—to put it through. Good or bad in itself—he must make a success of it. He had undertaken it, and he must see it through. He must not be beaten.

And so he fought on. It was merely a trial of strength; a fight with material difficulties. Aye, but was that all it was? Were there not times when he felt himself struggling with something greater, something worse? A new motive force seemed to have come into his life—misfortune. A power outside his own will had begun to play tricks with him.

Your calculations may be sound, correct in every detail, and yet things may go altogether wrong.

Who could include in his calculations the chance that a perfectly sober engineer will get drunk one day and give orders so crazy that it costs tens of thousands to repair the damage? Who could foresee that against all probability a big vein of water would be tapped in tunnelling, and would burst out, flooding the workings and overwhelming the workmen—so that the next day a train of unpainted deal coffins goes winding out over the frozen lakes?

More than once there had been remarks and questions in the newspapers: “Another disaster at the Besna Falls. Who is to blame?”

It was because he himself was away on a business journey and Falkman had neglected to take elementary precautions that the big rock-fall occurred in the tunnel, killing four men, and destroying the new Belgian rock-drill, that had cost a good hundred thousand, before it had begun to work. This sort of thing was not faulty calculation—it was malicious fate.

“Come up, boy! We must get there to-night. The flood mustn’t have a chance this year to lay the blame on me because I wasn’t on the spot.”

And then, to cap the other misfortunes, his chief contractor for material had gone bankrupt, and now prices had risen far above the rates he had allowed for—adding fresh thousands to the extra expenditure.

But he would put the thing through, even if he lost money by it. His envious rivals who had lately begun to run down his projects in the technical papers—he would make them look foolish yet.

And then?

Well, it may be that the Promethean spirit is preparing a settling day for the universe somewhere out in infinity. But what concern is that of mine? What about my own immortal soul?

Silence—push on, push on. There may be a snowstorm any minute. Come up—get along, you scarecrow.

The dun struggles on to the end of a twelve-mile stage, and then the valley ends and the full blast from the plateau meets them. Here lies the posting station, the last farm in the valley. He swings into the yard and is soon sitting in the room over a cup of coffee and a pipe.

Merle? How are things with Merle now?

Ah! here comes his own horse, the big black stallion from Gudbrandsdal. This beast’s trot is a different thing from the poor dun’s—the sleigh flies up to the door. And in a moment Peer is sitting in it again in his furs.

Ah! what a relief to have a fresh horse, and one that makes light of the load behind him. Away he goes at a brisk trot, with lifted head and bells jingling, over the frozen lakes. Here and there on the hillslopes a grey hut or two show out—saeters, which have lain there unchanged for perhaps a couple of thousand years. But a new time is coming. The saeter-horns will be heard no longer, and the song of the turbines will rise in their place.

An icy wind is blowing; the horse throws up its head and snorts. Big snowflakes come driving on the wind, and soon a regular snowstorm is raging, lashing the traveller’s face till he gasps. First the horse’s mane and tail grow white with snow, then its whole body. The drifts grow bigger, the black has to make great bounds to clear them. Bravo, old boy! we must get there before dark. There are brushwood brooms set out across the ice to mark the way, but who could keep them in sight in a driving smother like this? Peer’s own face is plastered white now, and he feels stunned and dazed under the lash of the snow.

He has worked under the burning suns of Egypt—and now here. But the steel will on. The wave rolls on its way over all the world.

If this snow should turn to rain now, it will mean a flood. And then the men will have to turn out to-night and work to save the dams.

One more disaster, and he would hardly be able to finish within the contract time. And that once exceeded, each day’s delay means a penalty of a thousand crowns.

It is getting darker.

At last there is nothing to be seen on the way but a shapeless mass of snow struggling with bowed head against the storm, wading deep in the loose drifts, wading seemingly at haphazard—and trailing after it an indefinable bundle of white—dead white. Behind, a human being drags along, holding on for dear life to the rings on the sleigh. It is the post-boy from the last stage.

At last they were groping their way in the darkness towards the shore, where the electric lights of the station showed faintly through the snow-fog. And hardly had Peer got out of the sleigh before the snow stopped suddenly, and the dazzling electric suns shone over the place, with the workmen’s barracks, the assistants’ quarters, the offices, and his own little plank-built house. Two of the engineers came out to meet him, and saluted respectfully.

“Well, how is everything getting on?”

The greybeard answered: “The men have struck work to-day.”

“Struck? What for?”

“They want us to take back the machinist that was dismissed the other day for drunkenness.”

Peer shook the snow from his fur coat, took his bag, and walked over to the building, the others following. “Then we’ll have to take him back,” he said. “We can’t afford a strike now.”

A couple of days later Peer was lying in bed, when the post-bag was brought in. He shook the letters out over the coverlet, and caught sight of one from Klaus Brook.

What was this? Why did his hand tremble as he took it up? Of course it was only one of Klaus’s ordinary friendly letters.

DEAR FRIEND,—This is a hard letter to write. But I do hope you have taken my advice and got some of your money at any rate over to Norway. Well, to be as brief as possible! Ferdinand Holm has decamped, or is in prison, or possibly worse—you know well enough it’s no good asking questions in a country like this when a big man suddenly disappears. He had made enemies in the highest places; he was playing a dangerous game—and this is the end of it.

You know what it means when a business goes into liquidation out here, and no strong man on the spot to look after things. We Europeans can whistle for our share.

You’ll take it coolly, I know. I’ve lost every penny I had—but you’ve still got your place over there and the workshops. And you’re the sort of fellow to make twice as much next time, or I don’t know you. I hope the Besna barrage is to be a success.

Yours ever,

KLAUS BROCK.

P.S.—Of course you’ll understand that now my friend has been thrown overboard it will very likely be my turn next. But I can’t leave now—to try would rouse suspicion at once. We foreigners have some difficult balancing to do, to escape a fall. Well, if by chance you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know something has happened!

Outside, the water was streaming down the channels into the fall. Peer lay still for a while, only one knee moving up and down beneath the clothes. He thought of his two friends. And he thought that he was now a poor man—and that the greater part of the burden of the security would fall now on old Lorentz D. Uthoug.

Clearly, Fate has other business on hand than making things easy for you, Peer. You must fight your fight out single-handed.