The Great Hunger

Chapter I

Some years had passed—a good many years—and once more summer had come, and June. A passenger steamer, bound from Antwerp to Christiania, was ploughing her way one evening over a sea so motionlessly calm that it seemed a single vast mirror filled with a sky of grey and pink-tinged clouds. There were plenty of passengers on board, and no one felt inclined for bed; it was so warm, so beautiful on deck. Some artists, on their way home from Paris or Munich, cast about for amusements to pass the time; some ordered wine, others had unearthed a concertina, and very soon, no one knew how, a dance was in full swing. “No, my dear,” said one or two cautious mothers to their girls, “certainly not.” But before long the mothers were dancing themselves. Then there was a doctor in spectacles, who stood up on a barrel and made a speech; and presently two of the artists caught hold of the grey-bearded captain and chaired him round the deck. The night was so clear, the skies so ruddily beautiful, the air so soft, and out here on the open sea all hearts were light and happy.

“Who’s that wooden-faced beggar over there that’s too high and mighty for a little fun?” asked Storaker the painter, of his friend the sculptor Praas.

“That fellow? Oh, he’s the one that was so infernally instructive at dinner, when we were talking about Egyptian vases.”

“So it is, by Jove! Schoolmaster abroad, I should think. When we got on to Athens and Greek sculpture he condescended to set us right about that, too.”

“I heard him this morning holding forth to the doctor on Assyriology. No wonder he doesn’t dance!”

The passenger they were speaking of was a man of middle height, between thirty and forty apparently, who lay stretched in a deck-chair a little way off. He was dressed in grey throughout, from his travelling-cap to the spats above his brown shoes. His face was sallow, and the short brown beard was flecked with grey. But his eyes had gay little gleams in them as they followed the dancers. It was Peer Holm.

As he sat there watching, it annoyed him to feel that he could not let himself go like the others. But it was so long since he had mixed with his own countrymen, that he felt insecure of his footing and almost like a foreigner among them. Besides, in a few hours now they should sight the skerries on the Norwegian coast; and the thought awoke in him a strange excitement—it was a moment he had dreamed of many and many a time out there in the wide world.

After a while stillness fell on the decks around him, and he too went below, but lay down in his cabin without undressing. He thought of the time when he had passed that way on the outward voyage, poor and unknown, and had watched the last island of his native land sink below the sea-rim. Much had happened since then—and now that he had at last come home, what life awaited him there?

A little after two in the morning he came on deck again, but stood still in astonishment at finding that the vessel was now boring her way through a thick woolly fog. The devil! thought he, beginning to tramp up and down the deck impatiently. It seemed that his great moment was to be lost—spoiled for him! But suddenly he stopped by the railing, and stood gazing out into the east.

What was that? Far out in the depths of the woolly fog a glowing spot appeared; the grey mass around grew alive, began to move, to redden, to thin out as if it were streaming up in flames. Ah! now he knew! It was the globe of the sun, rising out of the sea. On board, every point where the night’s moisture had lodged began to shine in gold. Each moment it grew clearer and lighter, and the eye reached farther. And before he could take in what was happening, the grey darkness had rolled itself up into mounds, into mountains, that grew buoyant and floated aloft and melted away. And there, all revealed, lay the fresh bright morning, with a clear sun-filled sky over the blue sea.

It was time now to get out his field-glasses. For a long time he stood motionless, gazing intently through them.

There! Was it his fancy? No, there far ahead he can see clearly now a darker strip between sky and sea. It’s the first skerry. It is Norway, at last!

Peer felt a sudden catch in his breath; he could hardly stand still, but he stopped again and again in his walk to look once more at the far-off strip of grey. And now there were seabirds too, with long necks and swiftly-beating wings. Welcome home!

And now the steamer is ploughing in among the skerries, and a world of rocks and islets unfolds on every side. There is the first red fisher-hut. And then the entrance to Christiansand, between wooded hills and islands, where white cottages shine out, each with its patch of green grassland and its flagstaff before it.

Peer watched it all, drinking it in like nourishment. How good it all tasted—he felt it would be long before he had drunk his fill.

Then came the voyage up along the coast, all through a day of brilliant sunshine and a luminous night. He saw the blue sounds with swarms of white gulls hovering above them, the little coast-towns with their long white-painted wooden houses, and flowers in the windows. He had never passed this way before, and yet something in him seemed to nod and say: “I know myself again here.” All the way up the Christiania Fjord there was the scent of leaves and meadows; big farms stood by the shore shining in the sun. This was what a great farm looked like. He nodded again. So warm and fruitful it all seemed, and dear to him as home—though he knew that, after all, he would be little better than a tourist in his own country. There was no one waiting for him, no one to take him in. Still, some day things might be very different.

As the ship drew alongside the quay at Christiania, the other passengers lined the rail, friends and relations came aboard, there were tears and laughter and kisses and embraces. Peer lifted his hat as he passed down the gangway, but no one had time to notice him just now. And when he had found a hotel porter to look after his luggage, he walked up alone through the town, as if he were a stranger.

The light nights made it difficult to sleep—he had actually forgotten that it was light all night long. And this was a capital city—yet so touchingly small, it seemed but a few steps wherever he went. These were his countrymen, but he knew no one among them; there was no one to greet him. Still, he thought again, some day all this might be very different.

At last, one day as he stood looking at the window of a bookseller’s shop, he heard a voice behind him: “Why, bless me! surely it’s Peer Holm!” It was one of his fellow-students at the Technical College, Reidar Langberg, pale and thin now as ever. He had been a shining light at the College, but now—now he looked shabby, worn and aged.

“I hardly knew you again,” said Peer, grasping the other’s hand.

“And you’re a millionaire, so they say—and famous, out in the big world?”

“Not quite so bad as that, old fellow. But what about you?”

“I? Oh, don’t talk about me.” And as they walked down the street together, Langberg poured out his tale, of how times were desperately bad, and conditions at home here simply strangled a man. He had started ten or twelve years ago as a draughtsman in the offices of the State Railways, and was still there, with a growing family—and “such pay—such pay, my dear fellow!” He threw up his eyes and clasped his hands despairingly.

“Look here,” said Peer, interrupting him. “Where is the best place in Christiania to go and have a good time in the evening?”

“Well, St. Hans Hill, for instance. There’s music there.”

“Right—will you come and dine with me there, to-night—shall we say eight o’clock?”

“Thanks. I should think I would!”

Peer arrived in good time, and engaged a table on a verandah. Langberg made his appearance shortly after, dressed in his well-saved Sunday best—faded frock-coat, light trousers bagged at the knees, and a straw hat yellow with age.

“It’s a pleasure to have someone to talk to again,” said Peer. “For the last year or so I’ve been knocking about pretty much by myself.”

“Is it as long as that since you left Egypt?”

“Yes; longer. I’ve been in Abyssinia since then.”

“Oh, of course, I remember now. It was in the papers. Building a railway for King Menelik, weren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. But the last eighteen months or so I’ve been idling—running about to theatres and museums and so forth. I began at Athens and finished up with London. I remember one day sitting on the steps of the Parthenon declaiming the Antigone—and a moment with some meaning in it seemed to have come at last.”

“But, dash it, man, you’re surely not comparing such trifles with a thing like the great Nile Barrage? You were on that for some years, weren’t you? Do let’s hear something about that. Up by the first cataract, wasn’t it? And hadn’t you enormous quarries there on the spot? You see, even sitting at home here, I haven’t quite lost touch. But you—good Lord! what things you must have seen! Fancy living at—what was the name of the town again?”

“Assuan,” answered Peer indifferently, looking out over the gardens, where more and more visitors kept arriving.

“They say the barrage is as great a miracle as the Pyramids. How many sluice-gates are there again—a hundred and . . . ?”

“Two hundred and sixteen,” said Peer. “Look!” he broke off. “Do you know those girls over there?” He nodded towards a party of girls in light dresses who were sitting down at a table close by.

Langberg shook his head. He was greedy for news from the great world without, which he had never had the luck to see.

“I’ve often wondered,” he went on, “how you managed to come to the front so in that sort of work—railways and barrages, and so forth—when, your original line was mechanical engineering. Of course you did do an extra year on the roads and railway side; but . . .”

Oh, this shining light of the schools!

“What do you say to a glass of champagne?” said Peer. “How do you like it? Sweet or dry?”

“Why, is there any difference? I really didn’t know. But when one’s a millionaire, of course . . .”

“I’m not a millionaire,” said Peer with a smile, and beckoned to a waiter.

“Oh! I heard you were. Didn’t you invent a new motor-pump that drove all the other types out of the field? And besides—that Abyssinian railway. Oh well, well!” he sighed, “it’s a good thing somebody’s lucky. The rest of us shouldn’t complain. But how about the other two—Klaus Brock and Ferdinand Holm? What are they doing now?”

“Klaus is looking after the Khedive’s estates at Edfina. Agriculture by steam power; his own railway lines to bring in the produce, and so on. Yes, Klaus has ended up in a nice little place of his own. His district’s bigger than the kingdom of Denmark.”

“Good heavens!” Langberg nearly fell off his chair. “And Ferdinand Holm; what about him?”

“Oh, he’s got bigger things on hand. Went nosing about the Libyan desert, and found that considerable tracts of it have water-veins only a few yards beneath the surface. If so, of course, it’s only a question of proper plant to turn an enormous area into a paradise for corn-growing.”

“Good gracious! What a discovery!” gasped the other, almost breathless now.

Peer looked out over the fjord, and went on: “Last year he managed at last to get the Khedive interested, and they’ve started a joint-stock company now, with a capital of some millions. Ferdinand is chief engineer.”

“And what’s his salary? As much as fifty thousand crowns?”

“His pay is two hundred thousand francs a year,” said Peer, not without some fear that his companion might faint. “Yes, he’s an able fellow, is Ferdinand.”

It took Langberg some time to get his breath again. At last he asked, with a sidelong glance:

“And you and Klaus Brock—I suppose you’ve put your millions in his company?”

Peer smiled as he sat looking out over the garden. Lifting his glass, “Your good health,” he said, for all answer.

“Have you been in America, too?” went on the other. “No, I suppose not!”

“America? Yes, a few years back, when I was with Brown Bros., they sent me over one time to buy plant. Nothing so surprising in that, is there?”

“No, no, of course not. I was only thinking—you went about there, I daresay, and saw all the wonderful things—the miracles of science they’re always producing.”

“My dear fellow, if you only knew how deadly sick I am of miracles of science! What I’m longing for is a country watermill that takes twenty-four hours to grind a sack of corn.”

“What? What do you say?” Langberg bounced in his chair. “Ha-ha-ha! You’re the same old man, I can see.”

“I’m perfectly serious,” said Peer, lifting his glass towards the other. “Come. Here’s to our old days together!”

“Aye—thanks, a thousand thanks—to our old days together!—Ah, delicious! Well, then, I suppose you’ve fallen in love away down there in the land of the barbarians? Haven’t you? Ha-ha-ha!”

“Do you call Egypt a land of barbarians?”

“Well, don’t the fellahs still yoke their wives to their ploughs?”

“A fellah will sit all night long outside his hut and gaze up at the stars and give himself time to dream. And a merchant prince in Vienna will dictate business letters in his automobile as he’s driving to the theatre, and write telegrams as he sits in the stalls. One fine day he’ll be sitting in his private box with a telephone at one ear and listening to the opera with the other. That’s what the miracles of science are doing for us. Awe-inspiring, isn’t it?”

“And you talk like that—a man that’s helped to harness the Nile, and has built railways through the desert?”

Peer shrugged his shoulders, and offered the other a cigar from his case. A waiter appeared with coffee.

“To help mankind to make quicker progress—is that nothing?”

“Lord! What I’d like to know is, where mankind are making for, that they’re in such a hurry.”

“That the Nile Barrage has doubled the production of corn in Egypt—created the possibilities of life for millions of human beings—is that nothing?”

“My good fellow, do you really think there aren’t enough fools on this earth already? Have we too little wailing and misery and discontent and class-hatred as it is? Why must we go about to double it?”

“But hang it all, man—what about European culture? Surely you felt yourself a sort of missionary of civilisation, where you have been.”

“The spread of European civilisation in the East simply means that half a dozen big financiers in London or Paris take a fancy to a certain strip of Africa or Asia. They press a button, and out come all the ministers and generals and missionaries and engineers with a bow: At your service, gentlemen!

“Culture! One wheel begets ten new ones. Brr-rrr! And the ten again another hundred. Brr-rr-rrr—more speed, more competition—and all for what? For culture? No, my friend, for money. Missionary! I tell you, as long as Western Europe with all its wonders of modern science and its Christianity and its political reforms hasn’t turned out a better type of humanity than the mean ruck of men we have now—we’d do best to stay at home and hold our counfounded jaw. Here’s ourselves!” and Peer emptied his glass.

This was a sad hearing for poor Langberg. For he had been used to comfort himself in his daily round with the thought that even he, in his modest sphere, was doing his share in the great work of civilising the world.

At last he leaned back, watching the smoke from his cigar, and smiling a little.

“I remember a young fellow at the College,” he said, “who used to talk a good deal about Prometheus, and the grand work of liberating humanity, by stealing new and ever new fire from Olympus.”

“That was me—yes,” said Peer with a laugh. “As a matter of fact, I was only quoting Ferdinand Holm.”

“You don’t believe in all that now?”

“It strikes me that fire and steel are rapidly turning men into beasts. Machinery is killing more and more of what we call the godlike in us.”

“But, good heavens, man! Surely a man can be a Christian even if . . .”

“Christian as much as you like. But don’t you think it might soon be time we found something better to worship than an ascetic on a cross? Are we to keep on for ever singing Hallelujah because we’ve saved our own skins and yet can haggle ourselves into heaven? Is that religion?”

“No, no, perhaps not. But I don’t know . . .”

“Neither do I. But it’s all the same; for anyhow no such thing as religious feeling exists any longer. Machinery is killing our longings for eternity, too. Ask the good people in the great cities. They spend Christmas Eve playing tunes from The Dollar Princess on the gramophone.”

Langberg sat for a while watching the other attentively. Peer sat smoking slowly; his face was flushed with the wine, but from time to time his eyes half-closed, and his thoughts seemed to be wandering in other fields than these.

“And what do you think of doing now you are home again?” asked his companion at last.

Peer opened his eyes. “Doing? Oh, I don’t know. Look about me first of all. Then perhaps I may find a cottar’s croft somewhere and settle down and marry a dairymaid. Here’s luck!”

The gardens were full now of people in light summer dress, and in the luminous evening a constant ripple of laughter and gay voices came up to them. Peer looked curiously at the crowd, all strangers to him, and asked his companion the names of some of the people. Langberg pointed out one or two celebrities—a Cabinet Minister sitting near by, a famous explorer a little farther off. “But I don’t know them personally,” he added. “Can’t afford society on that scale, of course.”

“How beautiful it is here!” said Peer, looking out once more at the yellow shimmer of light above the fjord. “And how good it is to be home again!”