* “Tutoyer,” the mode of address of intimate friendship orrelationship.
“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.
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!”
He sat in the train on his way up-country, and from the carriage window watched farms and meadows and tree-lined roads slide past. Where was he going? He did not know himself. Why should not a man start off at haphazard, and get out when the mood takes him? At last he was able to travel through his own country without having to think of half-pennies. He could let the days pass over his head without care or trouble, and give himself good leisure to enjoy any beauty that came in his way.
There is Mjosen, the broad lake with the rich farmlands and long wooded ridges on either side. He had never been here before, yet it seemed as if something in him nodded a recognition to it all. Once more he sat drinking in the rich, fruitful landscape—the wooded hills, the fields and meadows seemed to spread themselves out over empty places in his mind.
But later in the day the landscape narrowed and they were in Gudbrandsdalen, where the sunburned farms are set on green slopes between the river and the mountains. Peer’s head was full of pictures from abroad, from the desert sands with their scorched palm-trees to the canals of Venice. But here—he nodded again. Here he was at home, though he had never seen the place before; just this it was which had been calling to him all through his long years of exile.
At last on a sudden he gathered up his traps and got out, without the least idea even of the name of the station. A meal at the hotel, a knapsack on his back, and hey!—there before him lies the road, up into the hills.
Alone? What matter, when there are endless things that greet him from every side with “Welcome home!” The road is steep, the air grows lighter, the homesteads smaller. At last the huts look like little matchboxes—from the valley, no doubt, it must seem as if the people up here were living among the clouds. But many and many a youth must have followed this road in the evenings, going up to court his Mari or his Kari at the saeter-hut, the same road and the same errand one generation after another. To Peer it seemed as if all those lads now bore him company—aye, as if he discovered in himself something of wanton youth that had managed to get free at last.
Puh! His coat must come off and his cap go into the knapsack. Now, as the valley sinks and sinks farther beneath him, the view across it widens farther and farther out over the uplands beyond. Brown hills and blue, ridges livid or mossy-grey in the setting sun, rising and falling wave behind wave, and beyond all a great snowfield, like a sea of white breakers foaming against the sky. But surely he had seen all this before?
Ah! now he knew; it was the Lofoten Sea over again—with its white foam-crested combers and long-drawn, heavy-breathing swell—a rolling ocean turned to rock. Peer halted a moment leaning on his stick, and his eyes half-closed. Could he not feel that same ocean-swell rising and sinking in his own being? Did not the same waves surge through the centuries, carrying the generations away with them upon great wanderings? And in daily life the wave rolls us along in the old familiar rhythm, and not one in ten thousand lifts his head above it to ask: whither and why! Even now just such a little wave has hold of him, taking him—whither and why? Well, the coming days might show; meanwhile, there beyond was the sea of stone rolling its eternal cadence under the endless sky.
He wiped his forehead and turned and went his way.
But what is that far off in the north-east? three sisters in white shawls, lifting their heads to heaven—that must be Rondane. And see how the evening sun is kindling the white peaks to purple and gold.
Puh!—only one more hill now, and here is the top at last. And there ahead lie the great uplands, with marsh and mound and gleaming tarns. Ah, what a relief! What wonder that his step grows lighter and quicker? Before he knows it he is singing aloud in mere gaiety of heart. Ah, dear God, what if after all it were not too late to be young!
A saeter. A little hut, standing on a patch of green, with split-stick fence and a long cow-house of rough planks—it must be a saeter! And listen—isn’t that a girl singing? Peer slipped softly through the gate and stood listening against the wall of the byre. “Shap, shap, shap,” went the streams of milk against the pail. It must be a fairy sitting milking in there. Then came the voice:
Oh, Sunday eve, oh, Sunday eve,Ever wast thou my dearest eve!
“Shap, shap, shap!” went the milk once more in the pail—and suddenly Peer joined in:
Oh bright, oh gentle Sunday eve—Wilt ever be my dearest eve!
The milking stopped, a cowbell tinkled as the cow turned her inquiring face, and a girl’s light-brown head of hair was thrust out of the doorway—soon followed by the girl herself, slender, eighteen, red-cheeked, fresh and smiling.
“Good evening,” said Peer, stretching out his hand.
The girl looked at him for a moment, then cast a glance at her own clothes—as women will when they see a man who takes their fancy.
“An’ who may you be?” she asked.
“Can you cook me some cream-porridge?”
“A’ must finish milking first, then.”
Here was a job that Peer could help with. He took off his knapsack, washed his hands, and was soon seated on a stool in the close sweet air of the shed, milking busily. Then he fetched water, and chopped some wood for the fire, the girl gazing at him all the time, no doubt wondering who this crazy person could be. When the porridge stood ready on the table, he insisted on her sitting down close to him and sharing the meal. They ate a little, and then laughed a little, and then chatted, and then ate and then laughed again. When he asked what he had to pay, the girl said: “Whatever you like”—and he gave her two crowns and then bent her head back and kissed her lips. “What’s the man up to?” he heard her gasp behind him as he passed out; when he had gone a good way and turned to look back, there she was in the doorway, shading her eyes and watching him.
Whither away now? Well, he was pretty sure to reach some other inhabited place before night. This, he felt, was not his abiding-place. No, it was not here.
It was nearly midnight when he stood by the shore of a broad mountain lake, beneath a snow-flecked hill-side. Here were a couple of saeters, and across the lake, on a wooded island, stood a small frame house that looked like some city people’s summer cottage. And see—over the lake, that still mirrored the evening red, a boat appeared moving towards the island, and two white-sleeved girls sat at the oars, singing as they rowed. A strange feeling came over him. Here—here he would stay.
In the saeter-hut stood an enormously fat woman, with a rope round her middle, evidently ready to go to bed. Could she put him up for the night? Why, yes, she supposed so—and she rolled off into another room. And soon he was lying in a tiny chamber, in a bed with a mountainous mattress and a quilt. There was a fresh smell from the juniper twigs strewed about the newly-washed floor, and the cheeses, which stood in rows all round the shelf-lined walls. Ah! he had slept in many places and fashions—at sea in a Lofoten boat; on the swaying back of a camel; in tents out in the moonlit desert; and in palaces of the Arabian Nights, where dwarfs fanned him with palm-leaves to drive away the heat, and called him pasha. But here, at last, he had found a place where it was good to be. And he closed his eyes, and lay listening to the murmur of a little stream outside in the light summer night, till he fell asleep.
Late in the forenoon of the next day he was awakened by the entry of the old woman with coffee. Then a plunge into the blue-green water of the mountain lake, a short swim, and back to find grilled trout and new-baked waffles and thick cream for lunch.
Yes, said the old woman, if he could get along with the sort of victuals she could cook, he might stay here a few days and welcome. The bed was standing there empty, anyway.
So Peer stays on and goes fishing. He catches little; but time goes leisurely here, and the summer lies soft and warm over the brown and blue hillsides. He has soon learned that a merchant named Uthoug, from Ringeby, is living in the house on the island, with his wife and daughter. And what of it?
Often he would lie in his boat, smoking his pipe, and giving himself up to quiet dreams that came and passed. A young girl in a white boat, moving over red waters in the evening—a secret meeting on an island—no one must know just yet. . . . Would it ever happen to him? Ah, no.
The sun goes down, there come sounds of cow-bells nearing the saeters, the musical cries and calls of the saeter-girls, the lowing of the cattle. The mountains stand silent in the distance, their snow-clad tops grown golden; the stream slides rippling by, murmuring on through the luminous nights.
Then at last came the day of all days.
He had gone out for a long tramp at random over the hills, making his way by compass, and noting landmarks to guide him back. Here was a marsh covered with cloud-berries—the taste brought back his own childhood. He wandered on up a pale-brown ridge flecked with red heather—and what was that ahead? Smoke? He made towards it. Yes, it was smoke. A ptarmigan fluttered out in front of him, with a brood of tiny youngsters at her heels—Lord, what a shave!—he stopped short to avoid treading on them. The smoke meant someone near—possibly a camp of Lapps. Let’s go and see.
He topped the last mound, and there was the fire just below. Two girls jumped to their feet; there was a bright coffee-kettle on the fire, and on the moss-covered ground close by bread and butter and sandwiches laid out on a paper tablecloth.
Peer stopped short in surprise. The girls gazed at him for a moment, and he at them, all three with a hesitating smile.
At last Peer lifted his hat and asked the way to Rustad saeter. It took them some time to explain this, and then they asked him the time. He told them exactly to the minute, and then showed them his watch so that they might see for themselves. All this took more time. Meanwhile, they had inspected each other, and found no reason to part company just yet. One of the girls was tall, slender of figure, with a warm-coloured oval face and dark brown hair. Her eyebrows were thick and met above the nose, delightful to look at. She wore a blue serge dress, with the skirt kilted up a little, leaving her ankles visible. The other was a blonde, smaller of stature, and with a melancholy face, though she smiled constantly. “Oh,” she said suddenly, “have you a pocket-knife by any chance?”
“Oh yes!” Peer was just moving off, but gladly seized the opportunity to stay a while.
“We’ve a tin of sardines here, and nothing to open it with,” said the dark one.
“Let me try,” said Peer. As luck would have it, he managed to cut himself a little, and the two girls tumbled over each other to tie up the wound. It ended, of course, with their asking him to join their coffee-party.
“My name is Merle Uthoug,” said the dark one, with a curtsy.
“Oh, then, it’s your father who has the place on the island in the lake?”
“My name’s only Mork—Thea Mork. My father is a lawyer, and we have a little cottage farther up the lake,” said the blonde.
Peer was about to introduce himself, when the dark girl interrupted: “Oh, we know you already,” she said. “We’ve seen you out rowing on the lake so often. And we had to find out who you were. We have a good pair of glasses . . .”
“Merle!” broke in her companion warningly.
“. . . and then, yesterday, we sent one of the maids over reconnoitring, to make inquiries and bring us a full report.”
“Merle! How can you say such things?”
It was a cheery little feast. Ah! how young they were, these two girls, and how they laughed at a joke, and what quantities of bread and butter and coffee they all three disposed of! Merle now and again would give their companion a sidelong glance, while Thea laughed at all the wild things her friend said, and scolded her, and looked anxiously at Peer.
And now the sun was nearing the shoulder of a hill far in the west, and evening was falling. They packed up their things, and Peer was loaded up with a big bag of cloud-berries on his back, and a tin pail to carry in his hand. “Give him some more,” said Merle. “It’ll do him good to work for a change.”
“Merle, you really are too bad!”
“Here you are,” said the girl, and slid the handle of a basket into his other hand.
Then they set out down the hill. Merle sang and yodelled as they went; then Peer sang, and then they all three sang together. And when they came to a heather-tussock or a puddle, they did not trouble to go round, but just jumped over it, and then gave another jump for the fun of the thing.
They passed the saeter and went on down to the water’s edge, and Peer proposed to row them home. And so they rowed across. And the whole time they sat talking and laughing together as if they had known each other for years.
The boat touched land just below the cottage, and a broad-shouldered man with a grey beard and a straw hat came down to meet them. “Oh, father, are you back again?” cried Merle, and, springing ashore, she flung her arms round his neck. The two exchanged some whispered words, and the father glanced at Peer. Then, taking off his hat, he came towards him and said politely, “It was very kind of you to help the girls down.”
“This is Herr Holm, engineer and Egyptian,” said Merle, “and this is father.”
“I hear we are neighbours,” said Uthoug. “We’re just going to have tea, so if you have nothing better to do, perhaps you will join us.”
Outside the cottage stood a grey-haired lady with a pale face, wearing spectacles. She had a thick white woollen shawl over her shoulders, but even so she seemed to feel cold. “Welcome,” she said, and Peer thought there was a tremor in her voice.
There were two small low rooms with an open fireplace in the one, and in it there stood a table ready laid. But from the moment Merle entered the house, she took command of everything, and whisked in and out. Soon there was the sound of fish cooking in the kitchen, and a moment later she came in with a plate full of lettuce, and said: “Mr. Egyptian—you can make us an Arabian salad, can’t you?”
Peer was delighted. “I should think so,” he said.
“You’ll find salt and pepper and vinegar and oil on the table there, and that’s all we possess in the way of condiments. But it must be a real Arabian salad all the same, if you please!” And out she went again, while Peer busied himself with the salad.
“I hope you will excuse my daughter,” said Fru Uthoug, turning her pale face towards him and looking through her spectacles. “She is not really so wild as she seems.”
Uthoug himself walked up and down the room, chatting to Peer and asking a great many questions about conditions in Egypt. He knew something about the Mahdi, and General Gordon, and Khartoum, and the strained relations between the Khedive and the Sultan. He was evidently a diligent reader of the newspapers, and Peer gathered that he was a Radical, and a man of some weight in his party. And he looked as if there was plenty of fire smouldering under his reddish eyelids: “A bad man to fall out with,” thought Peer.
They sat down to supper, and Peer noticed that Fru Uthoug grew less pale and anxious as her daughter laughed and joked and chattered. There even came a slight glow at last into the faded cheeks; the eyes behind the spectacles seemed to shine with a light borrowed from her daughter’s. But her husband seemed not to notice anything, and tried all the time to go on talking about the Mahdi and the Khedive and the Sultan.
So for the first time for many years Peer sat down to table in a Norwegian home—and how good it was! Would he ever have a home of his own, he wondered.
After the meal, a mandolin was brought out, and they sat round the fire in the great fireplace and had some music. Until at last Merle rose and said: “Now, mother, it’s time you went to bed.”
“Yes, dear,” came the answer submissively, and Fru Uthoug said good-night, and Merle led her off.
Peer had risen to take leave, when Merle came in again. “Why,” she said, “you’re surely not going off before you’ve rowed Thea home?”
“Oh, Merle, please . . .” put in the other.
But when the two had taken their places in the boat and were just about to start up the lake, Merle came running down and said she might just as well come too.
Half an hour later, having seen the young girl safely ashore at her father’s place, Merle and Peer were alone, rowing back through the still night over the waters of the lake, golden in the light and dark blue in the shadows. Merle leaned back in the stern, silent, trailing a small branch along the surface of the water behind. After a while Peer laid in his oars and let the boat drift.
“How beautiful it is!” he said.
The girl lifted her head and looked round. “Yes,” she answered, and Peer fancied her voice had taken a new tone.
It was past midnight. Heights and woods and saeters lay lifeless in the soft suffused reddish light. The lake-trout were not rising any more, but now and again the screech of a cock-ptarmigan could be heard among the withies.
“What made you come just here for your holiday, I wonder,” she asked suddenly.
“I leave everything to chance, Froken Uthoug. It just happened so. It’s all so homelike here, wherever one goes. And it is so wonderful to be home in Norway again.”
“But haven’t you been to see your people—your father and mother—since you came home?”
“I—! Do you suppose I have a father and mother?”
“But near relations—surely you must have a brother or sister somewhere in the world?”
“Ah, if one only had! Though, after all, one can get on without.”
She looked at him searchingly, as if trying to see whether he spoke in earnest. Then she said:
“Do you know that mother dreamed of you before you came?”
“Of me?” Peer’s eyes opened wide. “What did she dream about me?”
A sudden flush came to the girl’s face, and she shook her head. “It’s foolish of me to sit here and tell you all this. But you see that was why we wanted so much to find out about you when you came. And it gives me a sort of feeling of our having known each other a long time.”
“You appear to have a very constant flow of high spirits, Froken Uthoug!”
“I? Why do you think—? Oh, well, yes. One can come by most things, you know, if one has to have them.”
“Even high spirits?”
She turned her head and looked towards the shore. “Some day perhaps—if we should come to be friends—I’ll tell you more about it.”
Peer bent to his oars and rowed on. The stillness of the night drew them nearer and nearer together, and made them silent; only now and then they would look at each other and smile.
“What mysterious creature is this I have come upon?” thought Peer. She might be about one-or two-and-twenty. She sat there with bowed head, and in this soft glow the oval face had a strange light of dreams upon it. But suddenly her glance came back and rested on him again, and then she smiled, and he saw that her mouth was large and her lips full and red.
“I wish I had been all over the world, like you,” she said.
“Have you never been abroad, Froken Uthoug?” he asked.
“I spent a winter in Berlin, once, and a few months in South Germany. I played the violin a little, you see; and I hoped to take it up seriously abroad and make something of it—but—”
“Well, why shouldn’t you?”
She was silent for a little, then at last she said: “I suppose you are sure to know about it some day, so I may just as well tell you now. Mother has been out of her mind.”
“My dear Froken—”
“And when she’s at home my—high spirits are needed to help her to be more or less herself.”
He felt an impulse to rise and go to the girl, and take her head between his hands. But she looked up, with a melancholy smile; their eyes met in a long look, and she forgot to withdraw her glance.
“I must go ashore now,” she said at last.
“Oh, so soon! Why, we have hardly begun our talk!”
“I must go ashore now,” she repeated; and her voice, though still gentle, was not to be gainsaid.
At last Peer was alone, rowing back to his saeter. As he rowed he watched the girl going slowly up towards the cottage. When she reached the door she turned for the first time and waved to him. Then she stood for a moment looking after him, and then opened the door and disappeared. He gazed at the door some time longer, as if expecting to see it open again, but no sign of life was to be seen.
The sun’s rim was showing now above the distant ranges in the east, and the white peaks in the north and west kindled in the morning glow. Peer laid in his oars again, and rested, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. What could this thing be that had befallen him today?
How could those peaks stand round so aloof and indifferent, and leave him here disconsolate and alone?
What was it, this new rushing in his ears; this new rhythm of his pulse? He lay back at last in the bottom of the boat, with hands clasped behind his head, and let boat and all things drift.
And when the glare of the rising sun came slanting into the boat and beat dazzlingly in his face, he only turned his head a little and let it shine full upon him.
Now she is lying asleep over there, the morning streaming red through her window—of whom is she dreaming as she sleeps?
Have you ever seen such eyebrows before? To press one’s lips to them—to take her head between one’s hand . . . and so it is to save your mother that you give up your own dreams, and to warm her soul that you keep that flame of gladness burning in you? Is that the sort you are?
Merle—was ever such a name? Are you called Merle?
Day spreads over the heavens, kindling all the night-clouds, great and small, to gold and scarlet. And here he lies, rocking, rocking, on no lake, but on a red stately-heaving ocean swell.
Ah! till now your mind has been so filled with cold mechanics, with calculations, with steel and fire. More and more knowledge, ever more striving to understand all things, to know all, to master all. But meanwhile, the tones of the hymn died within you, and the hunger for that which lies beyond all things grew ever fiercer and fiercer. You thought it was Norway that you needed—and now you are here. But is it enough?
Merle—is your name Merle?
There is nothing that can be likened to the first day of love. All your learning, your travel, and deeds and dreams—all has been nothing but dry firewood that you have dragged and heaped together. And now has come a spark, and the whole heap blazes up, casting its red glow over earth and heaven, and you stretch out your cold hands, and warm them, and shiver with joy that a new bliss has come upon the earth.
And all that you could not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom of the infinite enigma.
You have but to take her by the hand, and “Here are we two,” you say to the powers of life and death. “Here is she and here am I—we two”—and you send the anthem rolling aloft—a strain from little Louise’s fiddle-bow mingling with it—not to the vaultings of any church, but into endless space itself. And Thou, Power above, now I understand Thee. How could I ever take seriously a Power that sat on high playing with Sin and Grace—but now I see Thee, not the bloodthirsty Jehovah, but a golden-haired youth, the Light itself. We two worship Thee; not with a wail of prayer, but with a great anthem, that has the World-All in it. All our powers, our knowledge, our dreams—all are there. And each has its own instrument, its own voice in the mighty chorus. The dawn reddening over the hills is with us. The goat grazing on that northern hillside, dazzled with sun-gold when it turns its head to the east—it is with us, too. The waking birds are with us. A frog, crawling up out of a puddle and stopping to wonder at the morning—it is there. Even the little insect with diamonds on its wings—and the grass-blade with its pearl of dew, trying to mirror as much of the sky as it can—it is there, it is there, it is there. We are standing amid Love’s first day, and there is no more talk of grace or doubt or faith or need of aid; only a rushing sound of music rising to heaven from all the golden rivers in our hearts.
The saeters were beginning to wake. Musical cries came echoing as the saeter-girls chid on the cattle, that moved slowly up to the northern heights, with lowings and tinkling of bells. But Peer lay still where he was—and presently the dairy-maid at the saeter caught sight of what seemed an empty boat drifting on the lake, and was afraid some accident had happened.
“Merle,” thought Peer, still lying motionless. “Is your name Merle?”
The dairy-maid was down by the waterside now, calling across toward the boat. And at last she saw a man sit up, rubbing his eyes.
“Mercy on us!” she cried. “Lord be thanked that you’re there. And you haven’t been in the whole blessed night!”
A goat with a broken leg, set in splints, had been left to stray at will about the cattle-pens and in and out of the house, while its leg-bones were setting. Peer must needs pick up the creature and carry it round for a while in his arms, though it at once began chewing at his beard. When he sat down to the breakfast-table, he found something so touching in the look of the cream and butter, the bread and the coffee, that it seemed a man would need a heart of stone to be willing to eat such things. And when the old woman said he really ought to get some food into him, he sprang up and embraced her, as far as his arms would go round. “Nice carryings on!” she cried, struggling to free herself. But when he went so far as to imprint a sounding kiss on her forehead, she fetched him a mighty push. “Lord!” she said, “if the gomeril hasn’t gone clean out of his wits this last night!”