The Great Hunger

Chapter VI

So things went on till winter was far spent. Now that Louise, too, was a wage-earner, and could help with the expenses, they could dine luxuriously at an eating-house every day, if they pleased, on meat-cakes at fourpence a portion. They managed to get a bed for Peer that could be folded up during the day, and soon learned, too, that good manners required they should hang up Louise’s big woollen shawl between them as a modest screen while they were dressing and undressing. And Louise began to drop her country speech and talk city-fashion like her brother.

One thought often came to Peer as he lay awake. “The girl is the very image of mother, that’s certain—what if she were to go the same way? Well, no, that she shall not. You’re surely man enough to see to that. Nothing of that sort shall happen, my dear Froken Hagen.”

They saw but little of each other during the day, though, for they were apart from early in the morning till he came home in the evening. And when he lectured her, and warned her to be careful and take no notice of men who tried to speak to her, Louise only laughed. When Klaus Brock came up one day to visit them, and made great play with his eyes while he talked to her, Peer felt much inclined to take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him downstairs.

When Christmas-time was near they would wander in the long evenings through the streets and look in at the dazzlingly lit shop-windows, with their tempting, glittering show of gold and finery. Louise kept asking continually how much he thought this thing or that cost—that lace, or the cloak, or the stockings, or those gold brooches. “Wait till you marry that doctor,” Peer would say, “then you can buy all those things.” So far neither of them had an overcoat, but Peer turned up his coat-collar when he felt cold, and Louise made the most of her thick woollen dress and a pair of good country gloves that kept her quite warm. And she had adventured on a hat now, in place of her kerchief, and couldn’t help glancing round, thinking people must notice how fine she was.

On Christmas Eve he carried up buckets of water from the yard, and she had a great scrubbing-out of the whole room. And then they in their turn had a good wash, helping each other in country fashion to scrub shoulders and back.

Peer was enough of a townsman now to have laid in a few little presents to give his sister; but the girl, who had not been used to such doings, had nothing for him, and wept a good deal when she realised it. They ate cakes from the confectioner’s with syrup over them, and drank chocolate, and then Louise played a hymn-tune, in her best style, on her violin, and Peer read the Christmas lessons from the prayer-book—it was all just like what they used to do at Troen on Christmas Eve. And that night, after the lamp was put out, they lay awake talking over plans for the future. They promised each other that when they had got well on in the world, he in his line and she in hers, they would manage to live near each other, so that their children could play together and grow up good friends. Didn’t she think that was a good idea? Yes, indeed she did. And did he really mean it? Yes, of course he meant it, really.

But later on in the winter, when she sat at home in the evenings waiting for him—he often worked overtime—she was sometimes almost afraid. There was his step on the stairs! If it was hurried and eager she would tremble a little. For the moment he was inside the door he would burst out: “Hurrah, my girl! I’ve learnt something new to-day, I tell you!” “Have you, Peer?” And then out would pour a torrent of talk about motors and power and pressures and cylinders and cranes and screws, and such-like. She would sit and listen and smile, but of course understood not a word of it all, and as soon as Peer discovered this he would get perfectly furious, and call her a little blockhead.

Then there were the long evenings when he sat at home reading, by himself or with his teacher and she had to sit so desperately still that she hardly dared take a stitch with her needle. But one day he took it into his head that his sister ought to be studying too; so he set her a piece of history to learn by the next evening. But time to learn it—where was that to come from? And then he started her writing to his dictation, to improve her spelling—and all the time she kept dropping off to sleep. She had washed so many floors and peeled so many potatoes in the daytime that now her body felt like lead.

“Look here, my fine girl!” he would storm at her, raging up and down the room, “if you think you can get on in the world without education, you’re most infernally mistaken.” He succeeded in reducing her to tears—but it wasn’t long before her head had fallen forward on the table again and she was fast asleep. So he realised there was nothing for it but to help her to bed—as quietly as possible, so as not to wake her up.

Some way on in the spring Peer fell sick. When the doctor came, he looked round the room, sniffed, and frowned. “Do you call this a place for human beings to live in?” he asked Louise, who had taken the day off. “How can you expect to keep well?”

He examined Peer, who lay coughing, his face a burning red. “Yes, yes—just as I expected. Inflammation of the lungs.” He glanced round the room once more. “Better get him off to the hospital at once,” he said.

Louise sat there in terror at the idea that Peer was to be taken away. And then, as the doctor was going, he looked at her more closely, and said: “You’d do well to be a bit careful yourself, my good girl. You look as if you wanted a change to a decent room, with a little more light and air, pretty badly. Good-morning.”

Soon after he was gone the hospital ambulance arrived. Peer was carried down the stairs on a stretcher, and the green-painted box on wheels opened its door and swallowed him up; and they would not even let her go with him. All through the evening she sat in their room alone, sobbing.

The hospital was one of the good old-fashioned kind that people don’t come near if they can help it, because the walls seem to reek of the discomfort and wretchedness that reign inside. The general wards—where the poor folks went—were always so overcrowded that patients with all sorts of different diseases had to be packed into the same rooms, and often infected each other. When an operation was to be performed, things were managed in the most cheerfully casual way: the patient was laid on a stretcher and carried across the open yard, often in the depth of winter, and as he was always covered up with a rug, the others usually thought he was being taken off to the dead-house.

When Peer opened his eyes, he was aware of a man in a white blouse standing by the foot of his bed. “Why, I believe he’s coming-to,” said the man, who seemed to be a doctor. Peer found out afterwards from a nurse that he had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.

He lay there, day after day, conscious of nothing but the stabbing of a red-hot iron boring through his chest and cutting off his breathing. Some one would come every now and then and pour port wine and naphtha into his mouth; and morning and evening he was washed carefully with warm water by gentle hands. But little by little the room grew lighter, and his gruel began to have some taste. And at last he began to distinguish the people in the beds near by, and to chat with them.

On his right lay a black-haired, yellow-faced dock labourer with a broken nose. His disease, whatever it might be, was clearly different from Peer’s. He plagued the nurse with foul-mouthed complaints of the food, swearing he would report about it. On the other side lay an emaciated cobbler with a soft brown beard like the Christ pictures, and cheeks glowing with fever. He was dying of cancer. At right angles with him lay a man with the face and figure of a prophet—a Moses—all bushy white hair and beard; he was in the last stage of consumption, and his cough was like a riveting machine. “Huh!” he would groan, “if only I could get across to Germany there’d be a chance for me yet.” Beside him was a fellow with short beard and piercing eyes, who was a little off his head, and imagined himself a corporal of the Guards. Often at night the others would be wakened by his springing upright in bed and calling out: “Attention!”

One man lay moaning and groaning all the time, turning from side to side of a body covered with sores. But one day he managed to swallow some of the alcohol they used as lotion, and after that lay singing and weeping alternately. And there was a red-bearded man with glasses, a commercial traveller; he had put a bullet into his head, but the doctors had managed to get it out again, and now he lay and praised the Lord for his miraculous deliverance.

It was strange to Peer to lie awake at night in this great room in the dim light of the night-lamp; it seemed as if beings from the land of the dead were stirring in those beds round about him. But in the daytime, when friends and relations of the patients came a-visiting, Peer could hardly keep from crying. The cobbler had a wife and a little girl who came and sat beside him, gazing at him as if they could never let him go. The prophet, too, had a wife, who wept inconsolably—and all the rest seemed to have some one or other to care for them. But where was Louise—why did Louise never come?

The man on the right had a sister, who came sweeping in, gorgeous in her trailing soiled silk dress. Her shoes were down at heel, but her hat was a wonder, with enormous plumes. “Hallo, Ugly! how goes it?” she said; and sat down and crossed her legs. Then the pair would talk mysteriously of people with strange names: “The Flea,” “Cockroach,” “The Galliot,” “King Ring,” and the like, evidently friends of theirs. One day she managed to bring in a small bottle of brandy, a present from “The Hedgehog,” and smuggle it under the bedclothes. As soon as she had gone, and the coast was clear, Peer’s neighbour drew out the bottle, managed to work the cork out, and offered him a drink. “Here’s luck, sonny; do you good.” No—Peer would rather not. Then followed a gurgling sound from the docker’s bed, and soon he too was lying singing at the top of his voice.

At last one day Louise came. She was wearing her neat hat, and had a little bundle in her hand, and as she came in, looking round the room, the close air of the sick-ward seemed to turn her a little faint. But then she caught sight of Peer, and smiled, and came cautiously to him, holding out her hand. She was astonished to find him so changed. But as she sat down by his pillow she was still smiling, though her eyes were full of tears.

“So you’ve come at last, then?” said Peer.

“They wouldn’t let me in before,” she said with a sob. And then Peer learned that she had come there every single day, but only to be told that he was too ill to see visitors.

The man with the broken nose craned his head forward to get a better view of the modest young girl. And meanwhile she was pulling out of the bundle the offering she had brought—a bottle of lemonade and some oranges.

But it was a day or two later that something happened which Peer was often to remember in the days to come.

He had been dozing through the afternoon, and when he woke the lamp was lit, and a dull yellow half-light lay over the ward. The others seemed to be sleeping; all was very quiet, only the man with the sores was whimpering softly. Then the door opened, and Peer saw Louise glide in, softly and cautiously, with her violin-case under her arm. She did not come over to where her brother lay, but stood in the middle of the ward, and, taking out her violin, began to play the Easter hymn: “The mighty host in white array.” *

     * “Den store hvide Flok vi se.”
 

The man with the sores ceased whimpering; the patients in the beds round about opened their eyes. The docker with the broken nose sat up in bed, and the cobbler, roused from his feverish dream, lifted himself on his elbow and whispered: “It is the Redeemer. I knew Thou wouldst come.” Then there was silence. Louise stood there with eyes fixed on her violin, playing her simple best. The consumptive raised his head and forgot to cough; the corporal slowly stiffened his body to attention; the commercial traveller folded his hands and stared before him. The simple tones of the hymn seemed to be giving new life to all these unfortunates; the light of it was in their faces. But to Peer, watching his sister as she stood there in the half-light, it seemed as if she grew to be one with the hymn itself, and that wings to soar were given her.

When she had finished, she came softly over to his bed, stroked his forehead with her swollen hand, then glided out and disappeared as silently as she had come.

For a long time all was silent in the dismal ward, until at last the dying cobbler murmured: “I thank Thee. I knew—I knew Thou wert not far away.”

When Peer left the hospital, the doctor said he had better not begin work again at once; he should take a holiday in the country and pick up his strength. “Easy enough for you to talk,” thought Peer, and a couple of days later he was at the workshop again.

But his ways with his sister were more considerate than before, and he searched about until he had found her a place as seamstress, and saved her from her heavy floor-scrubbing.

And soon Louise began to notice with delight that her hands were much less red and swollen than they had been; they were actually getting soft and pretty by degrees.

Next winter she sat at home in the evenings while he read, and made herself a dress and cloak and trimmed a new hat, so that Peer soon had quite an elegant young lady to walk out with. But when men turned round to look at her as she passed, he would scowl and clench his fists. At last one day this was too much for Louise, and she rebelled. “Now, Peer, I tell you plainly I won’t go out with you if you go on like that.”

“All right, my girl,” he growled. “I’ll look after you, though, never fear. We’re not going to have mother’s story over again with you.”

“Well, but, after all, I’m a grown-up-girl, and you can’t prevent people looking at me, idiot!”

Klaus Brock had been entered at the Technical College that autumn, and went about now with the College badge in his cap, and sported a walking-stick and a cigarette. He had grown into a big, broad-shouldered fellow, and walked with a little swing in his step; a thick shock of black hair fell over his forehead, and he had a way of looking about him as if to say: “Anything the matter? All right, I’m ready!”

One evening he came in and asked Louise to go with him to the theatre. The young girl blushed red with joy, and Peer could not refuse; but he was waiting for them outside the yard gate when they came back. On a Sunday soon after Klaus was there again, asking her to come out for a drive. This time she did not even look to Peer for leave, but said “yes” at once. “Just you wait,” said Peer to himself. And when she came back that evening he read her a terrific lecture.

Soon he could not help seeing that the girl was going about with half-shut eyes, dreaming dreams of which she would never speak to him. And as the days went on her hands grew whiter, and she moved more lightly, as if to the rhythm of unheard music. Always as she went about the room on her household tasks she was crooning some song; it seemed that there was some joy in her soul that must find an outlet.

One Saturday in the late spring she had just come home, and was getting the supper, when Peer came tramping in, dressed in his best and carrying a parcel.

“Hi, girl! Here you are! We’re going to have a rare old feast to-night.”

“Why—what is it all about?”

“I’ve passed my entrance exam for the Technical—hurrah! Next autumn—next autumn—I’ll be a student!”

“Oh, splendid! I AM so glad!” And she dried her hand and grasped his.

“Here you are—sausages, anchovies—and here’s a bottle of brandy—the first I ever bought in my life. Klaus is coming up later on to have a glass of toddy. And here’s cheese. We’ll make things hum to-night.”

Klaus came, and the two youths drank toddy and smoked and made speeches, and Louise played patriotic songs on her violin, and Klaus gazed at her and asked for “more—more.”

When he left, Peer went with him, and as the two walked down the street, Klaus took his friend’s arm, and pointed to the pale moon riding high above the fjord, and vowed never to give him up, till he stood at the very top of the tree—never, never! Besides, he was a Socialist now, he said, and meant to raise a revolt against all class distinctions. And Louise—Louise was the most glorious girl in all the world—and now—and now—Peer might just as well know it sooner as later—they were as good as engaged to be married, he and Louise.

Peer pushed him away, and stood staring at him. “Go home now, and go to bed,” he said.

“Ha! You think I’m not man enough to defy my people—to defy the whole world!”

“Good-night,” said Peer.

Next morning, as Louise lay in bed—she had asked to have her breakfast there for once in a way—she suddenly began to laugh. “What ARE you about now?” she asked teasingly.

“Shaving,” said Peer, beginning operations.

“Shaving! Are you so desperate to be grand to-day that you must scrape all your skin off? You know there’s nothing else to shave.”

“You hold your tongue. Little do you know what I’ve got in front of me to-day.”

“What can it be? You’re not going courting an old widow with twelve children, are you?”

“If you want to know, I’m going to that schoolmaster fellow, and going to wring my savings-bank book out of him.”

Louise sat up at this. “My great goodness!” she said.

Yes; he had been working himself up to this for a year or more, and now he was going to do it. To-day he would show what he was made of—whether he was a snivelling child, or a man that could stand up to any dressing-gown in the world. He was shaving for the first time—quite true. And the reason was that it was no ordinary day, but a great occasion.

His toilet over, he put on his best hat with a flourish, and set out.

Louise stayed at home all the morning, waiting for his return. And at last she heard him on the stairs.

“Puh!” he said, and stood still in the middle of the room.

“Well? Did you get it?”

He laughed, wiped his forehead, and drew a green-covered book from his coat-pocket. “Here we are, my girl—there’s fifty crowns a month for three years. It’s going to be a bit of a pinch, with fees and books, and living and clothes into the bargain. But we’ll do it. Father was one of the right sort, I don’t care what they say.”

“But how did you manage it? What did the schoolmaster say?”

“‘Do you suppose that you—you with your antecedents—could ever pass into the Technical College?’ he said. And I told him I HAD passed. ‘Good heavens! How could you possibly qualify?’ and he shifted his glasses down his nose. And then: ‘Oh, no! it’s no good coming here with tales of that sort, my lad.’ Well, then I showed him the certificate, and he got much meeker. ‘Really!’ he said, and ‘Dear me!’ and all that. But I say, Louise—there’s another Holm entered for the autumn term.”

“Peer, you don’t mean—your half-brother?”

“And old Dressing-gown said it would never do—never! But I said it seemed to me there must be room in the world for me as well, and I’d like that bank book now, I said. ‘You seem to fancy you have some legal right to it,’ he said, and got perfectly furious. Then I hinted that I’d rather ask a lawyer about it and make sure, and at that he regularly boiled with rage and waved his arms all about. But he gave in pretty soon all the same—said he washed his hands of the whole thing. ‘And besides,’ he said, ‘your name’s Troen, you know—Peer Troen.’ Ho-ho-ho—Peer Troen! Wouldn’t he like it! Tra-la-la-la!—I say, let’s go out and get a little fresh air.”

Peer said nothing then or after about Klaus Brock, and Klaus himself was going off home for the summer holidays. As the summer wore on the town lay baking in the heat, reeking of drains, and the air from the stable came up to the couple in the garret so heavy and foul that they were sometimes nearly stifled.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Peer one day, “we really must spend a few shillings more on house rent and get a decent place to live in.”

And Louise agreed. For till the time came for him to join the College in the autumn, Peer was obliged to stick to the workshops; he could not afford a holiday just now.

One morning he was just starting with a working gang down to Stenkjaer to repair some damage in the engine-room of a big Russian grain boat, when Louise came and asked him to look at her throat. “It hurts so here,” she said.

Peer took a spoon and pressed down her tongue, but could not see anything wrong. “Better go and see the doctor, and make sure,” he said.

But the girl made light of it. “Oh, nonsense!” she said; “it’s not worth troubling about.”

Peer was away for over a week, sleeping on board with the rest. When he came back, he hurried home, suddenly thinking of Louise and her sore throat. He found the job-master greasing the wheels of a carriage, while his wife leaned out of a window scolding at him. “Your sister,” repeated the carter, turning round his face with its great red lump of nose—“she’s gone to hospital—diphtheria hospital—she has. Doctor was here over a week ago and took her off. They’ve been here since poking round and asking who she was and where she belonged—well, we didn’t know. And asking where you were, too—and we didn’t know either. She was real bad, if you ask me—”

Peer hastened off. It was a hot day, and the air was close and heavy. On he went—all down the whole length of Sea Street, through the fishermen’s quarter, and a good way further out round the bay. And then he saw a cart coming towards him, an ordinary work-cart, with a coffin on it. The driver sat on the cart, and another man walked behind, hat in hand. Peer ran on, and at last came in sight of the long yellow building at the far end of the bay. He remembered all the horrible stories he had heard about the treatment of diphtheria patients—how their throats had to be cut open to give them air, or something burned out of them with red-hot irons—oh! When at last he had reached the high fence and rung the bell, he stood breathless and dripping with sweat, leaning against the gate.

There was a sound of steps within, a key was turned, and a porter with a red moustache and freckles about his hard blue eyes thrust out his head.

“What d’you want to go ringing like that for?”

“Froken Hagen—Louise Hagen—is she better? How—how is she?”

“Lou—Louise Hagen? A girl called Louise Hagen? Is it her you’ve come to ask about?”

“Yes. She’s my sister. Tell me—or—let me in to see her.”

“Wait a bit. You don’t mean a girl that was brought in here about a week ago?”

“Yes, yes—but let me in.”

“We’ve had no end of bother and trouble about that girl, trying to find out where she came from, and if she had people here. But, of course, this weather, we couldn’t possibly keep her any longer. Didn’t you meet a coffin on a cart as you came along?”

“What—what—you don’t mean—?”

“Well, you should have come before, you know. She did ask a lot for some one called Peer. And she got the matron to write somewhere—wasn’t it to Levanger? Were you the fellow she was asking for? So you came at last! Oh, well—she died four or five days ago. And they’re just gone now to bury her, in St. Mary’s Churchyard.”

Peer turned round and looked out over the bay at the town, that lay sunlit and smoke-wreathed beyond. Towards the town he began to walk, but his step grew quicker and quicker, and at last he took off his cap and ran, panting and sobbing as he went. Have I been drinking? was the thought that whirled through his brain, or why can’t I wake? What is it? What is it? And still he ran. There was no cart in sight as yet; the little streets of the fisher-quarter were all twists and turns. At last he reached Sea Street once more, and there—there far ahead was the slow-moving cart. Almost at once it turned off to the right and disappeared, and when Peer reached the turning, it was not to be seen. Still he ran on at haphazard. There seemed to be other people in the streets—children flying red balloons, women with baskets, men with straw hats and walking-sticks. But Peer marked his line, and ran forward, thrusting people aside, upsetting those in his way, and dashing on again. In King Street he came in sight of the cart once more, nearer this time. The man walking behind it with his hat in his hand had red curling hair, and walked with a curtsying gait, giving at the knees and turning out his toes. No doubt he made his living as mourner at funerals to which no other mourners came. As the cart turned into the churchyard Peer came up with it, and tried to follow at a walk, but stumbled and could hardly keep his feet. The man behind the cart looked at him. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. The driver looked round, but drove on again at once.

The cart stopped, and Peer stood by, leaning against a tree for support. A third man came up—he seemed to be the gravedigger—and he heard the three discussing how long they might have to wait for the parson. “The time’s just about up, isn’t it?” said the driver, taking out his watch. “Ay, the clerk said he’d be here by now,” agreed the gravedigger, and blew his nose.

Soon the priest came in sight, wearing his black robe and white ruff; there were doubtless to be other funerals that day. Peer sank down on a bench and looked stupidly on while the coffin was lifted from the cart, carried to the grave, and lowered down. A man with spectacles and a red nose came up with a hymn-book, and sang something over the grave. The priest lifted the spade—and at the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on Louise’s coffin, Peer started as if struck, and all but fell from his seat.

When he looked up again, the place was deserted. The bell was ringing, and a crowd was collecting in another part of the churchyard. Peer sat where he was, quite still.

In the evening, when the gravedigger came to lock the gates, he had to take the young man by the shoulder and shake him to his senses. “Locking-up time,” he said. “You must go now.”

Peer rose and tried to walk, and by and by he was stumbling blindly out through the gate and down the street. And after a time he found himself climbing a flight of stairs above a stable-yard. Once in his room, he flung himself down on the bed as he was, and lay there still.

The close heat of the day had broken in a downpour of rain, which drummed upon the roof above his head, and poured in torrents through the gutters. Instinctively Peer started up: Louise was out in the rain—she would need her cloak. He was on his feet in a moment, as if to find it—then he stopped short, and sank slowly back upon the bed.

He drew up his feet under him, and buried his head in his arms. His brain was full of changing, hurrying visions, of storm and death, of human beings helpless in a universe coldly and indifferently ruled by a will that knows no pity.

Then for the first time it was as if he lifted up his head against Heaven itself and cried: “There is no sense in all this. I will not bear it.”

Later in the night, when he found himself mechanically folding his hands for the evening prayer he had learnt to say as a child, he suddenly burst out laughing, and clenched his fists, and cried aloud: “No, no, no—never—never again.”

Once more it came to him that there was something in God like the schoolmaster—He took the side of those who were well off already. “Yes, they who have parents and home and brothers and sisters and worldly goods—them I protect and care for. But here’s a boy alone in the world, struggling and fighting his way on as best he can—from him I will take the only thing he has. That boy is nothing to any one. Let him be punished because he is poor, and cast down to the earth, for there is none to care for him. That boy is nothing to any one—nothing.” Oh, oh, oh!—he clenched his fists and beat them against the wall.

His whole little world was broken to pieces. Either God did not exist at all, or He was cold and pitiless—one way of it was as bad as the other. The heavenly country dissolved into cloud and melted away, and above was nothing but empty space. No more folding of your hands, like a fool! Walk on the earth, and lift up your head, and defy Heaven and fate, as you defied the schoolmaster. Your mother has no need of you to save her—she is not anywhere any more. She is dead—dead and turned to clay; and more than that there is not, for her or for you or any other being in this world.

Still he lay there. He would fain have slept, but seemed instead to sink into a vague far-away twilight that rocked him—rocked him on its dark and golden waves. And now he heard a sound—what was it? A violin. “The mighty host in white array.” Louise—is it you—and playing? He could see her now, out there in the twilight. How pale she was! But still she played. And now he understood what that twilight was.

It was a world beyond the consciousness of daily life—and that world belonged to him. “Peer, let me stay here.” And something in him answered: “Yes, you shall stay, Louise. Even though there is no God and no immortality, you shall stay here.” And then she smiled. And still she played. And it was as though he were building a little vaulted chapel for her in defiance of Heaven and of God—as though he were ringing out with his own hands a great eternal chime for her sake. What was happening to him? There was none to comfort him, yet it ended, as he lay there, with his pouring out something of his innermost being, as an offering to all that lives, to the earth and the stars, until all seemed rocking, rocking with him on the stately waves of the psalm. He lay there with fast-closed eyes, stretching out his hands as though afraid to wake, and find it all nothing but a beautiful dream.