The Great Hunger

Chapter VII

The two-o’clock bell at the Technical College had just begun to ring, and a stream of students appeared out of the long straggling buildings and poured through the gate, breaking up then into little knots and groups that went their several ways into the town.

It was a motley crowd of young men of all ages from seventeen to thirty or more. Students of the everlasting type, sent here by their parents as a last resource, for—“he can always be an engineer”; young sparks who paid more attention to their toilet than their books, and hoped to “get through somehow” without troubling to work; and stiff youths of soldierly bearing, who had been ploughed for the Army, but who likewise could “always be engineers.” There were peasant-lads who had crammed themselves through their Intermediate at a spurt, and now wore the College cap above their rough grey homespun, and dreamed of getting through in no time, and turning into great men with starched cuffs and pince-nez. There were pale young enthusiasts, too, who would probably end as actors; and there were also quondam actors, killed by the critics, but still sufficiently alive, it seemed, “to be engineers.” And as the young fellows hurried on their gay and careless way through the town, an older man here and there might look round after them with a smile of some sadness. It was easy to say what fate awaited most of them. College ended, they would be scattered like birds of passage throughout the wide world, some to fall by sunstroke in Africa, or be murdered by natives in China, others to become mining kings in the mountains of Peru, or heads of great factories in Siberia, thousands of miles from home and friends. The whole planet was their home. Only a few of them—not always the shining lights—would stay at home, with a post on the State railways, to sit in an office and watch their salaries mount by increments of L12 every fifth year.

“That’s a devil of a fellow, that brother of yours that’s here,” said Klaus Brock to Peer one day, as they were walking into town together with their books under their arms.

“Now, look here, Klaus, once for all, be good enough to stop calling him my brother. And another thing—you’re never to say a word to any one about my father having been anything but a farmer. My name’s Holm, and I’m called so after my father’s farm. Just remember that, will you?”

“Oh, all right. Don’t excite yourself.”

“Do you suppose I’d give that coxcomb the triumph of thinking I want to make up to him?”

“No, no, of course not.” Klaus shrugged his shoulders and walked on, whistling.

“Or that I want to make trouble for that fine family of his? No, I may find a way to take it out of him some day, but it won’t be that way.”

“Well, but, damn it, man! you can surely stand hearing what people say about him.” And Klaus went on to tell his story. Ferdinand Holm, it seemed, was the despair of his family. He had thrown up his studies at the Military Academy, because he thought soldiers and soldiering ridiculous. Then he had made a short experiment with theology, but found that worse still; and finally, having discovered that engineering was at any rate an honest trade, he had come to anchor at the Technical College. “What do you say to that?” asked Klaus.

“I don’t see anything so remarkable about it.”

“Wait a bit, the cream of the story’s to come. A few weeks ago he thrashed a policeman in the street—said he’d insulted a child, or something. There was a fearful scandal—arrest, the police-court, fine, and so forth. And last winter what must he do but get engaged, formally and publicly engaged, to one of his mother’s maids. And when his mother sent the girl off behind his back, he raised the standard of revolt and left home altogether. And now he does nothing but breathe fire and slaughter against the upper classes and all their works. What do you say to that?”

“My good man, what the deuce has all this got to do with me?”

“Well, I think it’s confoundedly plucky of him, anyhow,” said Klaus. “And for my part I shall get to know him if I can. He’s read an awful lot, they say, and has a damned clever head on his shoulders.”

On his very first day at the College, Peer had learned who Ferdinand Holm was, and had studied him with interest. He was a tall, straight-built fellow with reddish-blond hair and freckled face, and wore a dark tortoiseshell pince-nez. He did not wear the usual College cap, but a stiff grey felt hat, and he looked about four or five and twenty.

“Wait!” thought Peer to himself—“wait, my fine fellow! Yes, you were there, no doubt, when they turned me out of the churchyard that day. But all that won’t help you here. You may have got the start of me at first, and learned this, that, and the other, but—you just wait.”

But one morning, out in the quadrangle, he noticed that Ferdinand Holm in his turn was looking at him, in fact was putting his glasses straight to get a better view of him—and Peer turned round at once and walked away.

Ferdinand, however, had been put into a higher class almost at once, on the strength of his matriculation. Also he was going in for a different branch of the work—roads and railway construction—so that it was only in the quadrangle and the passages that the two ever met.

But one afternoon, soon after Christmas, Peer was standing at work in the big designing-room, when he heard steps behind him, and, turning round, saw Klaus Brock and—Ferdinand Holm.

“I wanted to make your acquaintance,” said Holm, and when Klaus had introduced them, he held out a large white hand with a red seal-ring on the first finger. “We’re namesakes, I understand, and Brock here tells me you take your name from a country place called Holm.”

“Yes. My father was a plain country farmer,” said Peer, and at once felt annoyed with himself for the ring of humility the words seemed to have.

“Well, the best is good enough,” said the other with a smile. “I say, though, has the first-term class gone as far as this in projection drawing? Excuse my asking. You see, we had a good deal of this sort of thing at the Military Academy, so that I know a little about it.”

Thought Peer: “Oh, you’d like to give me a little good advice, would you, if you dared?” Aloud he said: “No, the drawing was on the blackboard—the senior class left it there—and I thought I’d like to see what I could make out of it.”

The other sent him a sidelong glance. Then he nodded, said, “Good-bye—hope we shall meet again,” and walked off, his boots creaking slightly as he went. His easy manners, his gait, the tone of his voice, all seemed to irritate and humiliate Peer. Never mind—just let him wait!

Days passed, and weeks. Peer soon found another object to work for than getting the better of Ferdinand Holm. Louise’s dresses hung still untouched in his room, her shoes stood under the bed; it still seemed to him that some day she must open the door and walk in. And when he lay there alone at night, the riddle was always with him: Where is she now?—why should she have died?—would he never meet her again? He saw her always as she had stood that day playing to the sick folks in the hospital ward. But now she was dressed in white. And it seemed quite natural now that she had wings. He heard her music too—it cradled and rocked him. And all this came to be a little world apart, where he could take refuge for Sunday peace and devotion. It had nothing to do with faith or religion, but it was there. And sometimes in the midst of his work in the daytime he would divine, as in a quite separate consciousness, the tones of a fiddle-bow drawn across the strings, like reddish waves coming to him from far off, filling him with harmony, till he smiled without knowing it.

Often, though, a sort of hunger would come upon him to let his being unfold in a great wide wave of organ music in the church. But to church he never went any more. He would stride by a church door with a kind of defiance. It might indeed be an Almighty Will that had taken Louise from him, but if so he did not mean to give thanks to such a Will or bow down before it. It was as though he had in view a coming reckoning—his reckoning with something far out in eternity—and he must see to it that when that time came he could feel free—free.

On Sunday mornings, when the church bells began to ring, he would turn hastily to his books, as if to find peace in them. Knowledge—knowledge—could it stay his hunger for the music of the hymn? When he had first started work at the shops, he had often and often stood wide-eyed before some miracle—now he was gathering the power to work miracles himself. And so he read and read, and drank in all that he could draw from teacher or book, and thought and thought things out for himself. Fixed lessons and set tasks were all well enough, but Peer was for ever looking farther; for him there were questions and more questions, riddles and new riddles—always new, always farther and farther on, towards the unknown. He had made as yet but one step forward in physics, mathematics, chemistry; he divined that there were worlds still before him, and he must hasten on, on, on. Would the day ever come when he should reach the end? What is knowledge? What use do men make of all that they have learned? Look at the teachers, who knew so much—were they greater, richer, brighter beings than the rest? Could much study bring a man so far that some night he could lift up a finger and make the stars themselves break into song? Best drive ahead, at any rate. But, again, could knowledge lead on to that ecstasy of the Sunday psalm, that makes all riddles clear, that bears a man upwards in nameless happiness, in which his soul expands till it can enfold the infinite spaces? Well, at any rate the best thing was to drive ahead, drive ahead both early and late.

One day that spring, when the trees in the city avenues were beginning to bud, Klaus Brock and Ferdinand Holm were sitting in a cafe in North Street. “There goes your friend,” said Ferdinand; and looking from the window they saw Peer Holm passing the post-office on the other side of the road. His clothes were shabby, his shoes had not been cleaned, he walked slowly, his fair head with its College cap bent forward, but seemed nevertheless to notice all that was going on in the street.

“Wonder what he’s going pondering over now,” said Klaus.

“Look there—I suppose that’s a type of carriage he’s never seen before. Why, he has got the driver to stop—”

“I wouldn’t mind betting he’ll crawl in between the wheels to find out whatever he’s after,” laughed Klaus, drawing back from the window so as not to be seen.

“He looks pale and fagged out,” said Ferdinand, shifting his glasses. “I suppose his people aren’t very well off?”

Klaus opened his eyes and looked at the other. “He’s not overburdened with cash, I fancy.”

They drank off their beer, and sat smoking and talking of other things, until Ferdinand remarked casually: “By the way—about your friend—are his parents still alive?”

Klaus was by no means anxious to go into Peer’s family affairs, and answered briefly—No, he thought not.

“I’m afraid I’m boring you with questions, but the fact is the fellow interests me rather. There is something in his face, something—arresting. Even the way he walks—where is it I’ve seen some one walk like that before? And he works like a steam-engine, I hear?”

“Works!” repeated Klaus. “He’ll ruin his health before long, the way he goes on grinding. I believe he’s got an idea that by much learning he can learn at last to—Ha-ha-ha!”

“To do what?”

“Why—to understand God!”

Ferdinand was staring out of the window. “Funny enough,” he said.

“I ran across him last Sunday, up among the hills. He was out studying geology, if you please. And if there’s a lecture anywhere about anything—whether it’s astronomy or a French poet—you can safely swear he’ll be sitting there, taking notes. You can’t compete with a fellow like that! He’ll run across a new name somewhere—Aristotle, for instance. It’s something new, and off he must go to the library to look it up. And then he’ll lie awake for nights after, stuffing his head with translations from the Greek. How the deuce can any one keep up with a man who goes at things that way? There’s one thing, though, that he knows nothing about.”

“And that is?”

“Well, wine and women, we’ll say—and fun in general. One thing he isn’t, by Jove!—and that’s YOUNG.”

“Perhaps he’s not been able to afford that sort of thing,” said Ferdinand, with something like a sigh.

The two sat on for some time, and every now and then, when Klaus was off his guard, Ferdinand would slip in another little question about Peer. And by the time they had finished their second glass, Klaus had admitted that people said Peer’s mother had been a—well—no better than she should be.

“And what about his father?” Ferdinand let fall casually.

Klaus flushed uncomfortably at this. “Nobody—no—nobody knows much about him,” he stammered. “I’d tell you if I knew, hanged if I wouldn’t. No one has an idea who it was. He—he’s very likely in America.”

“You’re always mighty mysterious when you get on the subject of his family, I’ve noticed,” said Ferdinand with a laugh. But Klaus thought his companion looked a little pale.

A few days later Peer was sitting alone in his room above the stables, when he heard a step on the stairs, the door opened, and Ferdinand Holm walked in.

Peer rose involuntarily and grasped at the back of his chair as if to steady himself. If this young coxcomb had come—from the schoolmaster, for instance—or to take away his name—why, he’d just throw him downstairs, that was all.

“I thought I’d like to look you up, and see where you lived,” began the visitor, laying down his hat and taking a seat. “I’ve taken you unawares, I see. Sorry to disturb you. But the fact is there’s something I wanted to speak to you about.”

“Oh, is there?” and Peer sat down as far as conveniently possible from the other.

“I’ve noticed, even in the few times we’ve happened to meet, that you don’t like me. Well, you know, that’s a thing I’m not going to put up with.”

“What do you mean?” asked Peer, hardly knowing whether to laugh or not.

“I want to be friends with you, that’s all. You probably know a good deal more about me than I do about you, but that need not matter. Hullo—do you always drum with your fingers on the table like that? Ha-ha-ha! Why, that was a habit of my father’s, too.”

Peer stared at the other in silence. But his fingers stopped drumming.

“I rather envy you, you know, living as you do. When you come to be a millionaire, you’ll have an effective background for your millions. And then, you must know a great deal more about life than we do; and the knowledge that comes out of books must have quite another spiritual value for you than for the rest of us, who’ve been stuffed mechanically with ‘lessons’ and ‘education’ and so forth since we were kids. And now you’re going in for engineering?”

“Yes,” said Peer. His face added pretty clearly, “And what concern is it of yours?”

“Well, it does seem to me that the modern technician is a priest in his way—or no, perhaps I should rather call him a descendant of old Prometheus. Quite a respectable ancestry, too, don’t you think? But has it ever struck you that with every victory over nature won by the human spirit, a fragment of their omnipotence is wrested from the hands of the gods? I always feel as if we were using fire and steel, mechanical energy and human thought, as weapons of revolt against the Heavenly tyranny. The day will come when we shall no longer need to pray. The hour will strike when the Heavenly potentates will be forced to capitulate, and in their turn bend the knee to us. What do you think yourself? Jehovah doesn’t like engineers—that’s MY opinion.”

“Sounds very well,” said Peer briefly. But he had to admit to himself that the other had put into words something that had been struggling for expression in his own mind.

“Of course for the present we two must be content with smaller things,” Ferdinand went on. “And I don’t mind admitting that laying out a bit of road, or a bit of railway, or bridging a ditch or so, isn’t work that appeals to me tremendously. But if a man can get out into the wide world, there are things enough to be done that give him plenty of chance to develop what’s in him—if there happens to be anything. I used to envy the great soldiers, who went about to the ends of the earth, conquering wild tribes and founding empires, organising and civilising where they went. But in our day an engineer can find big jobs too, once he gets out in the world—draining thousands of square miles of swamp, or regulating the Nile, or linking two oceans together. That’s the sort of thing I’m going to take a hand in some day. As soon as I’ve finished here, I’m off. And we’ll leave it to the engineers to come, say in a couple of hundred years or so, to start in arranging tourist routes between the stars. Do you mind my smoking?”

“No, please do,” said Peer. “But I’m sorry I haven’t—”

“I have—thanks all the same.” Ferdinand took out his cigar-case, and when Peer had declined the offered cigar, lit one himself.

“Look here,” he said, “won’t you come out and have dinner with me somewhere?”

Peer started at his visitor. What did all this mean?

“I’m a regular Spartan, as a rule, but they’ve just finished dividing up my father’s estate, so I’m in funds for the moment, and why shouldn’t we have a little dinner to celebrate? If you want to change, I can wait outside—but come just as you are, of course, if you prefer.”

Peer was more and more perplexed. Was there something behind all this? Or was the fellow simply an astonishingly good sort? Giving it up at last, he changed his collar and put on his best suit and went.

For the first time in his life he found himself in a first-class restaurant, with small tables covered with snow-white tablecloths, flowers in vases, napkins folded sugar-loaf shape, cut-glass bowls, and coloured wine-glasses. Ferdinand seemed thoroughly at home, and treated his companion with a friendly politeness. And during the meal he managed to make the talk turn most of the time on Peer’s childhood and early days.

When they had come to the coffee and cigars, Ferdinand leaned across the table towards him, and said: “Look here, don’t you think we two ought to say thee and thou* to each other?”

     * “Tutoyer,” the mode of address of intimate friendship or
     relationship.

“Oh, yes!” said Peer, really touched now.

“We’re both Holms, you know.”

“Yes. So we are.”

“And, after all, who knows that there mayn’t be some sort of connection? Come, now, don’t look like that! I only want you to look on me as your good friend, and to come to me if ever there’s anything I can do. We needn’t live in each other’s pockets, of course, when other people are by—but we must take in Klaus Brock along with us, don’t you think?”

Peer felt a strong impulse to run away. Did the other know everything? If so, why didn’t he speak straight out?

As the two walked home in the clear light of the spring evening, Ferdinand took his companion’s arm, and said: “I don’t know if you’ve heard that I’m not on good terms with my people at home. But the very first time I saw you, I had a sort of feeling that we two belonged together. Somehow you seemed to remind me so of—well, to tell the truth, of my father. And he, let me tell you, was a gallant gentleman—”

Peer did not answer, and the matter went no farther then.

But the next few days were an exciting time for Peer. He could not quite make out how much Ferdinand knew, and nothing on earth would have induced him to say anything more himself. And the other asked no questions, but was just a first-rate comrade, behaving as if they had been friends for years. He did not even ask Peer any more about his childhood, and never again referred to his own family. Peer was always reminding himself to be on his guard, but could not help feeling glad all the same whenever they were to meet.

He was invited one evening, with Klaus, to a wine-party at Ferdinand’s lodging, and found himself in a handsomely furnished room, with pictures on the walls, and photographs of his host’s parents. There was one of his father as a young man, in uniform; another of his grandfather, who had been a Judge of the Supreme Court. “It’s very good of you to be so interested in my people,” said Ferdinand with a smile. Klaus Brock looked from one to the other, wondering to himself how things really stood between the two.

The summer vacation came round, and the students prepared to break up and go their various ways. Klaus was to go home. And one day Ferdinand came to Peer and said: “Look here, old man. I want you to do me a great favour. I’d arranged to go to the seaside this summer, but I’ve a chance of going up to the hills, too. Well, I can’t be in two places at once—couldn’t you take on one of them for me? Of course I’d pay all expenses.” “No, thank you!” said Peer, with a laugh. But when Klaus Brock came just before leaving and said: “See here, Peer. Don’t you think you and I might club together and put a marble slab over—Louise’s grave?”, Peer was touched, and clapped him on the shoulder. “What a good old fellow you are, Klaus,” he said.

Later in the summer Peer set out alone on a tramp through the country, and whenever he saw a chance, he would go up to one of the farms and say: “Would you like to have a good map of the farm? It’ll cost ten crowns and my lodging while I’m at it.” It made a very pleasant holiday for him, and he came home with a little money in his pocket to boot.

His second year at the school was much like the first. He plodded along at his work. And now and then his two friends would come and drag him off for an evening’s jollification. But after he had been racketing about with the others, singing and shouting through the sleeping town—and at last was alone and in his bed in the darkness, another and a very different life began for him, face to face with his innermost self. Where are you heading for, Peer? What are you aiming at in all your labours? And he would try to answer devoutly, as at evening prayers: Where? Why, of course, I am going to be a great engineer. And then? I will be one of the Sons of Prometheus, that head the revolt against the tyranny of Heaven. And then? I will help to raise the great ladder on which men can climb aloft—higher and higher, up towards the light, and the spirit, and mastery over nature. And then? Live happily, marry and have children, and a rich and beautiful home. And then? Oh, well, one fine day, of course, one must grow old and die. And then? And then? Aye, what then?

At these times he found a shadowy comfort in taking refuge in the world where Louise stood—playing, as he always saw her—and cradling himself on the smooth red billows of her music. But why was it that here most of all he felt that hunger for—for something more?

Ferdinand finished his College course, and went out, as he had said, into the great world, and Klaus went with him. And so throughout his third year Peer was mostly to be seen alone, always with books under his arm, and head bent forward.

Just as he was getting ready to go up for his final examination, a letter from Ferdinand arrived, written from Egypt. “Come over here, young fellow,” he wrote. “We have got good billets at last with a big British firm—Brown Bros., of London—a firm that’s building railways in Canada, bridges in India, harbour works in Argentina, and canals and barrages here in Egypt. We can get you a nice little post as draughtsman to begin with, and I enclose funds for the passage out. So come along.”

But Peer did not go at once. He stayed on another year at the College, as assistant to the lecturer on mechanics, while himself going through the road and railway construction course, as his half-brother had done. Some secret instinct urged him not to be left behind even in this.

As the year went on the letters from his two comrades became more and more pressing and tempting. “Out here,” wrote Klaus, “the engineer is a missionary, proclaimer, not Jehovah, but the power and culture of Europe. You’re bound to take a hand in that, my boy. There’s work worthy of a great general waiting for you here.”

At last, one autumn day, when the woods stood yellow all around the town, Peer drove away from his home with a big new travelling-trunk strapped to the driver’s seat. He had been up to the churchyard before starting, with a little bunch of flowers for Louise’s grave. Who could say if he would ever see it again?

At the station he stood for a moment looking back over the old city with its cathedral, and the ancient fortress, where the sentry was pacing back and forth against the skyline. Was this the end of his youth? Louise—the room above the stables—the hospital, the lazarette, the College. . . . And there lay the fjord, and far out somewhere on the coast there stood no doubt a little grey fisher-hut, where a pock-marked goodwife and her bow-legged goodman had perhaps even now received the parcel of coffee and tobacco sent them as a parting gift.

And so Peer journeyed to the capital, and from there out into the wide world.