Once more a deep valley, with sun-steeped farms on the hillsides between the river and the mountain-range behind.
One day about midsummer it was old Raastad himself that came down to meet the train, driving a spring-cart, with a waggon following behind. Was he expecting visitors? the people at the station asked him. “Maybe I am,” said old Raastad, stroking his heavy beard, and he limped about looking to his horses. Was it the folk who had taken the Court-house? “Ay, it’s likely them,” said the old man.
The train came in, and a pale man, with grey hair and beard, and blue spectacles, stepped out, and he had a wife and three children with him. “Paul Raastad?” inquired the stranger. “Ay, that’s me,” said the old man. The stranger looked up at the great mountains to the north, rising dizzily into the sky. “The air ought to be good here,” said he. “Ay, the air’s good enough, by all accounts,” said Raastad, and began loading up the carts.
They drove off up the hill road. The man and his wife sat in the spring-cart, the woman with a child in her lap, but a boy and a girl were seated on the load in the baggage-waggon behind Raastad. “Can we see the farm from here?” asked the woman, turning her head. “There,” said the old man, pointing. And looking, they saw a big farmstead high up on a sunny hill-slope, close under the crest, and near by a long low house with a steep slate roof, the sort of place where the district officers used to live in old days. “Is that the house we are to live in?” she asked again. “Ay, that’s it, right enough,” said old Raastad, and chirruped to his horses.
The woman looked long at the farm and sighed. So this was to be their new home. They were to live here, far from all their friends. And would it give him back his health, after all the doctors’ medicines had failed?
A Lapland dog met them at the gate and barked at them; a couple of pigs came down the road, stopped and studied the new arrivals with profound attention, then wheeled suddenly and galloped off among the houses.
The farmer’s wife herself was waiting outside the Court-house, a tall wrinkled woman with a black cap on her head. “Welcome,” she said, offering a rough and bony hand.
The house was one of large low-ceiled rooms, with big stoves that would need a deal of firewood in winter. The furniture was a mixture of every possible sort and style: a mahogany sofa, cupboards with painted roses on the panels, chairs covered with “Old Norse” carving, and on the walls appalling pictures of foreign royal families and of the Crucifixion. “Good Heavens!” said Merle, as they went round the rooms alone: “how shall we ever get used to all this?”
But just then Louise came rushing in, breathless with news. “Mother—father—there are goats here!” And little Lorentz came toddling in after her: “Goats, mother,” he cried, stumbling over the doorstep.
The old house had stood empty and dead for years. Now it seemed to have wakened up again. Footsteps went in and out, and the stairs creaked once more under the tread of feet, small, pattering, exploring feet, and big feet going about on grown-up errands. There was movement in every corner: a rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen; fires blazed up, and smoke began to rise from the chimney; people passing by outside looked up at it and saw that the dead old house had come to life again.
Peer was weak still after his illness, but he could help a little with the unpacking. It took very little, though, to make him out of breath and giddy, and there was a sledge-hammer continually thumping somewhere in the back of his head. Suppose—suppose, after all, the change here does you no good? You are at the last stage. You’ve managed to borrow the money to keep you all here for a year. And then? Your wife and children? Hush!—better not think of that. Not that; think of anything else, only not that.
Clothes to be carried upstairs. Yes, yes—and to think it was all to end in your living on other people’s charity. Even that can’t go on long. If you should be no better next summer—or two years hence?—what then? For yourself—yes, there’s always one way out for you. But Merle and the children? Hush, don’t think of it! Once it was your whole duty to finish a certain piece of work in a certain time. Now it is your duty to get well again, to be as strong as a horse by next year. It is your duty. If only the sledge-hammer would stop, that cursed sledge-hammer in the back of your head.
Merle, as she went out and in, was thinking perhaps of the same thing, but her head was full of so much else—getting things in order and the household set going. Food had to be bought from the local shop; and how many litres of milk would she require in the morning? Where could she get eggs? She must go across at once to the Raastads’ and ask. So the pale woman in the dark dress walked slowly with bowed head across the courtyard. But when she stopped to speak to people about the place, they would forget their manners and stare at her, she smiled so strangely.
“Father, there’s a box of starlings on the wall here,” said Louise as she lay in bed with her arms round Peer’s neck saying good-night. “And there’s a swallow’s nest under the eaves too.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll have great fun at Raastad—just you wait and see.”
Soon Merle and Peer too lay in their strange beds, looking out at the luminous summer night.
They were shipwrecked people washed ashore here. But it was not so clear that they were saved.
Peer turned restlessly from side to side. He was so worn to skin and bone that his nerves seemed laid bare, and he could not rest in any position. Also there were three hundred wheels whirring in his head, and striking out sparks that flew up and turned to visions.
Rest? why had he never been content to rest in the days when all went well?
He had made his mark at the First Cataract, yes, and had made big sums of money out of his new pump; but all the time there were the gnawing questions: Why? and whither? and what then? He had been Chief Engineer and had built a railway, and could have had commissions to build more railways—but again the questions: Why? and what then? Home, then, home and strike root in his native land—well, and had that brought him rest? What was it that drove him away again? The steel, the steel and the fire.
Ah! that day when he had stepped down from the mowing machine and had been ensnared by the idea of improving it. Why had he ever taken it up? Did he need money? No. Or was the work at a standstill? No. But the steel would on; it had need of a man; it had taken him by the throat and said, “You shall!”
Happiness? Rest? Ah no! For, you see, a stored-up mass of knowledge and experience turns one fine day into an army of evil powers, that lash you on and on, unceasingly. You may stumble, you may fall—what does it matter? The steel squeezes one man dry, and then grips the next. The flame of the world has need of fuel—bow thy head, Man, and leap into the fire.
To-day you prosper—to-morrow you are cast down into a hell on earth. What matter? You are fuel for the fire.
But I will not, I will not be swallowed up in the flame of the world, even though it be the only godhead in the universe. I will tear myself loose, be something in and for myself. I will have an immortal soul. The world-transformation that progress may have wrought a thousand years hence—what is it to me?
Your soul? Just think of all your noble feelings towards that true-born half-brother of yours—ha-ha-ha! Shakespeare was wrong. It’s the bastard that gets cheated.
“Dearest Peer, do, for God’s sake, try to get to sleep.”
“Oh yes. I’ll get to sleep all right. But it’s so hot.” He threw off the clothes and lay breathing heavily.
“I’m sure you’re lying thinking and brooding over things. Can’t you do what the Swedish doctor told you—just try to think that everything is dark all round you.”
Peer turns round, and everything around him is dark. But in the heart of that darkness waves arise, waves of melody, rolling nearer, nearer. It is the sound of a hymn—it is Louise standing playing, his sister Louise. And what peace—O God, what peace and rest!
But soon Louise fades away, she fades away, and vanishes like a flame blown out. And there comes a roaring noise, nearer and nearer, grinding, crashing, rattling—and he knows now what it is only too well: it is the song of the steel.
The roar of steel from ships and from railway-trains, with their pairs of yellow evil eyes, rushing on, full of human captives, whither? Faster, faster—driven by competition, by the steel demon that hunts men on without rest or respite—that hurries on the pulse of the world to fever, to hallucination, to madness.
Crashing of steel girders falling, the hum of wheels, the clash of cranes and winches and chains, the clang of steam-hammers at work—all are in that roar. The fire flares up with hellish eyes in every dark corner, and men swarm around in the red glow like evil angels. They are the slaves of steel and fire, lashed onwards, never resting.
Is this the spirit of Prometheus? Look, the will of steel is flinging men up into the air now. It is conquering the heavens. Why? That it may rush the faster. It craves for yet more speed, quicker, quicker, dizzier yet, hurrying—wherefore?—whither? Alas! it knows not itself.
Are the children of the earth grown so homeless? Do they fear to take a moment’s rest? Do they dread to look inward and see their own emptiness? Are they longing for something they have lost—some hymn, some harmony, some God?
God? They find a bloodthirsty Jehovah, and an ascetic on the cross. What gods are these for modern men? Religious history, not religion.
“Peer,” says Merle again, “for God’s sake try to sleep.”
“Merle, do you think I shall get well here?”
“Why, don’t you feel already how splendid the air is? Of course you’ll get well.”
He twined his fingers into hers, and at last the sound of Louise’s hymn came to him once more, lifting and rocking him gently till his eyes closed.
A little road winds in among the woods, two wheel-tracks only, with a carpet of brown pine-needles between; but there are trees and the sky, quiet and peace, so that it’s a real blessing to walk there. It rises and falls so gently, that no one need get out of breath; indeed, it seems to go along with one all the time, in mere friendliness, whispering: “Take it easy. Take your time. Have a good rest here.” And so on it goes, winding in among the tree-trunks, slender and supple as a young girl.
Peer walked here every day. He would stop and look up into the tops of the fir trees, and walk on again; then sit down for a moment on a mossy stone; but only for a moment—always he was up again soon and moving on, though he had nowhere to go. But at least there was peace here. He would linger watching an insect as it crept along a fir branch, or listening to the murmur of the river in the valley far below, or breathing in the health-giving scent of the resin, thick in the warm air.
This present life of his was one way of living. As he lay, after a sleepless night, watching the window grow lighter with the dawn, he would think: Yet another new day—and nothing that I can do in it.
And yet he had to get up, and dress, and go down and eat. His bread had a slightly bitter taste to him—it tasted of charity and dependence, of the rich widow at Bruseth and the agent for English tweeds. And he must remember to eat slowly, to masticate each mouthful carefully, to rest after meals, and above all not to think—not to think of anything in the wide world. Afterwards, he could go out and in like other people, only that all his movements and actions were useless and meaningless in themselves; they were done only for the sake of health, or to keep thoughts away, or to make the time go by.
How had this come to pass? He found it still impossible to grasp how such senseless things can happen and no Providence interfere to set them right. Why should he have been so suddenly doomed to destruction? Days, weeks and months of his best manhood oozing away into empty nothingness—why? Sleeplessness and tortured nerves drove him to do things that his will disowned; he would storm at his wife and children if a heel so much as scraped on the floor, and the remorse that followed, sometimes ending in childish tears, did no good, for the next time the same thing, or worse, would happen again. This was the burden of his days. This was the life he was doomed to live.
But up here on the little forest track he harms no one; and no racking noises come thrusting sharp knives into his spine. Here is a great peace; a peace that does a man good. Down on the grassy slope below stands a tumble-down grey barn; it reminds him of an old worn-out horse, lifting its head from grazing to gaze at you—a lonely forsaken creature it seems—to-morrow it will sink to the ground and rise no more—yet IT takes its lot calmly and patiently.
Ugh! how far he has got from Raastad. A cold sweat breaks out over his body for fear he may not have strength to walk back again uphill. Well, pull yourself together. Rest a little. And he lies down on his back in a field of clover, and stares up at the sky.
A stream of clean air, fresh from the snow, flows all day long down the valley; as if Jotunheim itself, where it lies in there beneath the sky, were breathing in easy well-being. Peer fills his lungs again and again with long deep draughts, drinking in the air like a saving potion. “Help me then, oh air, light, solitude! help me that I may be whole once more and fit to work, for this is the one and only religion left me to cling to.”
High above, over the two mountain ranges, a blue flood stands immovable, and in its depths eternal rest is brooding. But is there a will there too, that is concerned with men on earth? You do not believe in it, and yet a little prayer mounts up to it as well! Help me—thou too. Who? Thou that hearest. If Thou care at all for the miserable things called men that crawl upon the earth—help me! If I once prayed for a great work that could stay my hunger for things eternal, I repent me now and confess that it was pride and vanity. Make me a slave, toiling at servile tasks for food, so that Merle and the children be not taken from me. Hearest Thou?
Does anyone in heaven find comfort in seeing men tortured by blind fortune? Are my wife and my children slaves of an unmeaning chance—and yet can smile and laugh? Answer me, if Thou hearest—Thou of the many names.
A grasshopper is shrilling in the grass about him. Suddenly he starts up sitting. A railway-train goes screaming past below.
And so the days go on.
Each morning Merle would steal a glance at her husband’s face, to see if he had slept; if his eyes were dull, or inflamed, or calm. Surely he must be better soon! Surely their stay here must do him good. She too had lost faith in medicines, but this air, the country life, the solitude—rest, rest—surely there must soon be some sign that these were helping him.
Many a time she rose in the morning without having closed her eyes all night. But there were the children to look after, the house to see to, and she had made up her mind to get on without a maid if she possibly could.
“What has taken you over to the farm so much lately?” she asked one day. “You have been sitting over there with old Raastad for hours together.”
“I—I go over to amuse myself and pass the time,” he said.
“Do you talk politics?”
“No—we play cards. Why do you look at me like that?”
“You never cared for cards before.”
“No; but what the devil am I to do? I can’t read, because of these cursed eyes of mine—and the hammering in my head. . . . And I’ve counted all the farms up and down the valley now. There are fifty in all. And on the farm here there are just twenty-one houses, big and little. What the devil am I to take to next?”
Merle sighed. “It is hard,” she said. “But couldn’t you wait till the evening to play cards—till the children are in bed—then I could play with you. That would be better.”
“Thank you very much. But what about the rest of the day? Do you know what it’s like to go about from dawn to dark feeling that every minute is wasted, and wasted for nothing? No, you can’t know it. What am I to do with myself all through one of these endless, deadly days? Drink myself drunk?”
“Couldn’t you try cutting firewood for a little?”
“Firewood?” He whistled softly. “Well, that’s an idea. Ye—yes. Let’s try chopping firewood for a change.”
Thud, thud, thud!
But as he straightened his back for a breathing-space, the whirr, whirr of Raastad’s mowing machine came to him from the hill-slope near by where it was working, and he clenched his teeth as if they ached. He was driving a mowing machine of his own invention, and it was raining continually, and the grass kept sticking, sticking—and how to put it right—put it right? It was as if blows were falling on festering wounds in his head, making him dance with pain. Thud, thud, thud!—anything to drown the whirr of that machine.
But a man may use an axe with his hands, and yet have idiotic fancies all the time bubbling and seething in his head. The power to hold in check the vagaries of imagination may be gone. From all sides they come creeping out in swarms, they swoop down on him like birds of prey—as if in revenge for having been driven away so often before—they cry: here we are! He stood once more as an apprentice in the mechanical works, riveting the plates of a gigantic boiler with a compressed-air tube—cling, clang! The wailing clang of the boiler went out over the whole town. And now that same boiler is set up inside his head—cling-clang—ugh! A cold sweat breaks out upon his body; he throws down the axe; he must go—must fly, escape somewhere—where, he cannot tell. Faces that he hates to think of peer out at him from every corner, yapping out: “Heh!—what did we say? To-day a beggar—to-morrow a madman in a cell.”
But it may happen, too, that help comes in the night. Things come back to a man that it is good to remember. That time—and that other. . . . A woman there—and the one you met in such a place. There is a picture in the Louvre, by Veronese: a young Venetian woman steps out upon the marble stairway of a palace holding a golden-haired boy by the hand; she is dressed in black velvet, she glows with youth and happiness. A lovers’ meeting in her garden? The first kiss! Moonlight and mandolins!
A shudder of pleasure passes through his weary body. Bright recollections and impressions flock towards him like spirits of light—he can hear the rushing sound of their wings—he calls to them for aid, and they encircle him round; they struggle with the spirits of darkness for his soul. He has known much brightness, much beauty in his life—surely the bright angels are the stronger and must conquer. Ah! why had he not lived royally, amidst women and flowers and wine?
One morning as he was getting up, he said: “Merle, I must and will hit upon something that’ll send me to bed thoroughly tired out.”
“Yes dear,” she answered. “Do try.”
“I’ll try wheeling stones to begin with,” he said. “The devil’s in it if a day at that doesn’t make a man sleep.”
So that day and for many days he wheeled stones from some newly broken land on the hillside down to a dyke that ran along the road.
Calm, golden autumn days; one farm above another rising up towards the crest of the range, all set in ripe yellow fields. One little cottage stands right on the crest against the sky itself, and it, too, has its tiny patch of yellow corn. And an eagle sails slowly across the deep valley from peak to peak.
People passing by stared at Peer as he went about bare-headed, in his shirt-sleeves, wheeling stones. “Aye, gentlefolks have queer notions,” they would say, shaking their heads.
“That’s it—keep at it,” a dry, hacking voice kept going in Peer’s head. “It is idiocy, but you are doomed to it. Shove hard with those skinny legs of yours; many a jade before you has had to do the same. You’ve got to get some sleep tonight. Only ten months left now; and then we shall have Lucifer turning up at the cross-roads once more. Poor Merle—she’s beginning to grow grey. And the poor little children—dreaming of father beating them, maybe, they cry out so often in their sleep. Off now, trundle away. Now over with that load; and back for another.
“You, that once looked down on the soulless toil for bread, you have sunk now to something far more miserable. You are dragging at a load of sheer stupidity. You are a galley-slave, with calamity for your task-master. As you move the chains rattle. And that is your day.”
He straightens himself up, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and begins heaving up stones into his barrow again.
How long must it last, this life in manacles? Do you remember Job? Job? Aye, doubtless Jehovah was sitting at some jovial feast when he conceived that fantasy of a drunken brain, to let Satan loose upon a happy man. Job? His seven sons and daughters, and his cattle, and his calves were restored unto him, but we read nothing of any compensation made him for the jest itself. He was made to play court fool, with his boils and his tortures and his misery, and the gods had their bit of sport gratis. Job had his actual outlay in cattle and offspring refunded, and that was all. Ha-ha!
Prometheus! Is it you after all that are the friend of man among the gods? Have you indeed the power to free us all some day? When will you come, then, to raise the great revolt?
Come, come—up with the barrow again—you see it is full.
“Father, it’s dinner-time. Come along home,” cries little Louise, racing down the hill with her yellow plaits flying about her ears. But she stops cautiously a little distance off—there is no knowing what sort of temper father may be in.
“Thanks, little monkey. Got anything good for dinner to-day?”
“Aha! that’s a secret,” said the girl in a teasing voice; she was beaming now, with delight at finding him approachable. “Catch me, father! I can run quicker than you can!”
“I’m afraid I’m too tired just now, my little girl.”
“Oh, poor papa! are you tired?” And she came up and took him by the hand. Then she slipped her arm into his—it was just as good fun to walk up the hill on her father’s arm like a grown-up young lady.
Then came the frosts. And one morning the hilltops were turned into leaden grey clouds from which the snow came sweeping down. Merle stood at the window, her face grey in the clammy light. She looked down the valley to where the mountains closed it in; it seemed still narrower than before; one’s breath came heavily, and one’s mind seemed stifled under cold damp wrappings.
Ugh! Better go out into the kitchen and set to work again—work—work and forget.
Then one day there came a letter telling her that her mother was dead.
DEAR KLAUS BROCK,—
Legendary being! Cast down from Khedivial heights one day and up again on high with Kitchener the next. But, in Heaven’s name, what has taken you to the Soudan? What made you go and risk your life at Omdurman? The same old desperation, I suppose, that you’re always complaining about. And why, of all things, plant yourself away in an outpost on the edge of the wilderness, to lie awake at nights nursing suicidal thoughts over Schopenhauer? You have lived without principles, you say. And wasted your youth. And are homeless now all round, with no morals, no country, no religion. But will you make all this better by making things much worse?
You’ve no reason to envy me my country life, by the way, and there’s no sense in your going about longing for the little church of your childhood, with its Moses and hymns and God. Well, longing does no harm, perhaps, but don’t ever try to find it. The fact is, old fellow, that such things are not to be found any more.
I take it that religion had the same power on you in your childhood as it had with me. We were wild young scamps, both of us, but we liked going to church, not for the sake of the sermons, but to bow our heads when the hymn arose and join in singing it. When the waves of the organ-music rolled through the church, it seemed—to me at least—as if something were set swelling in my own soul, bearing me away to lands and kingdoms where all at last was as it should be. And when we went out into the world we went with some echo of the hymn in our hearts, and we might curse Jehovah, but in a corner of our minds the hymn lived on as a craving, a hunger for some world-harmony. All through the busy day we might bear our part in the roaring song of the steel, but in the evenings, on our lonely couch, another power would come forth in our minds, the hunger for the infinite, the longing to be cradled and borne up on the waves of eternity, whose way is past all finding out.
Never believe, though, that you’ll find the church of your childhood now in any of our country places. We have electric light now everywhere, telephones, separators, labour unions and political meetings, but the church stands empty. I have been there. The organ wails as if it had the toothache, the precentor sneezes out a hymn, the congregation does not lift the roof off with its voice, for the very good reason that there is no congregation there. And the priest, poor devil, stands up in his pulpit with his black moustache and pince-nez; he is an officer in the army reserve, and he reads out his highly rational remarks from a manuscript. But his face says all the time—“You two paupers down there that make up my congregation, you don’t believe a word I am saying; but never mind, I don’t believe it either.” It’s a tragic business when people have outgrown their own conception of the divine. And we—we are certainly better than Jehovah. The dogma of the atonement, based on original sin and the bloodthirstiness of God, is revolting to us; we shrug our shoulders, and turn away with a smile, or in disgust. We are not angels yet, but we are too good to worship such a God as that.
There is some excuse for the priest, of course. He must preach of some God. And he has no other.
Altogether, it’s hardly surprising that even ignorant peasants shake their heads and give the church a wide berth. What do they do on Sundays, then? My dear fellow, they have no Sunday. They sit nodding their heads over a long table, waiting for the day to pass. They remind one of plough horses, that have filled their bellies, and stand snoring softly, because there’s no work today.
The great evolutionary scheme, with its wonders of steel and miracles of science, goes marching on victoriously, I grant you, changing the face of the world, hurrying its pulse to a more and more feverish beat. But what good will it do the peasant to be able to fly through the air on his wheelbarrow, while no temple, no holy day, is left him any more on earth? What errand can he have up among the clouds, while yet no heaven arches above his soul?
This is the burning question with all of us, with you in the desert as with us up here under the Pole. To me it seems that we need One who will make our religion new—not merely a new prophet, but a new God.
You ask about my health—well, I fancy it’s too early yet to speak about it. But so much I will say: If you should ever be in pain and suffering, take it out on yourself—not on others.
Greetings from us all.
Yours,
PEER DALESMAN.
Christmas was near, the days were all grey twilight, and there was a frost that set the wall-timbers cracking. The children went about blue with cold. When Merle scrubbed the floors, they turned into small skating-rinks, though there might be a big fire in the stove. Peer waded and waded through deep snow to the well for water, and his beard hung like a wreath of icicles about his face.
Aye, this was a winter.
Old Raastad’s two daughters were in the dairy making whey-cheese. The door was flung open, there was a rush of frosty air, and Peer stood there blinking his eyes.
“Huh! what smokers you two are!”
“Are we now?” And the red-haired one and the fair-haired one both giggled, and they looked at each other and nodded. This queer townsman-lodger of theirs never came near them that he didn’t crack jokes.
“By the way, Else, I dreamed last night that we were going to be married.”
Both the girls shrieked with delight at this.
“And Mari, you were married to the bailiff.”
“Oh my! That old creature down at Moen?”
“He was much older. Ninety years old he was.”
“Uf!—you’re always at your nonsense,” said the red-haired girl, stirring away at her huge, steaming cauldron.
Peer went out again. The girls were hardly out of their teens, and yet their faces seemed set already and stiff with earnestness. And whenever Peer had managed to set them laughing unawares, they seemed frightened the next minute at having been betrayed into doing something there was no profit in.
Peer strode about in the crackling snow with his fur cap drawn down over his ears. Jotunheim itself lay there up north, breathing an icy-blue cold out over the world.
And he? Was he to go on like this, growing hunchbacked under a burden that weighed and bowed him down continually? Why the devil could he not shake it off, break away from it, and kick out bravely at his evil fate?
“Peer,” asked Merle, standing in the kitchen, “what did you think of giving the children for a Christmas present?”
“Oh, a palace each, and a horse to ride, of course. When you’ve more money than you know what to do with, the devil take economy. And what about you, my girl? Any objection to a couple of thousand crowns’ worth of furs?”
“No, but seriously. The children haven’t any ski—nor a hand-sleigh.”
“Well, have you the money to buy them? I haven’t.”
“Suppose you tried making them yourself?”
“Ski?” Peer turned over the notion, whistling. “Well, why not? And a sleigh? We might manage that. But what about little Asta?—she’s too little for that sort of thing.”
“She hasn’t any bed for her doll.”
Peer whistled again. “There’s something in that. That’s an idea. I’m not so handless yet that I couldn’t—”
He was soon hard at it. There were tools and a joiner’s bench in an outhouse, and there he worked. He grew easily tired; his feet tried constantly to take him to the door, but he forced himself to go on. Is there anything in the notion that a man can get well by simply willing it? I will, will, will. The thought of others besides himself began to get the upper hand of those birds of prey ravening in his head. Presents for the children, presents that father had made himself—the picture made light and warmth in his mind. Drive ahead then.
When it came to making the iron ribbons for the sleigh runners he had to go across to the smithy; and there stood a cottar at work roughing horseshoes. Red glowing iron once more, and steel. The clang of hammer on anvil seemed to tear his ears; yet it drew him on too. It was long since last he heard that sound. And there were memories.
“Want this welded, Jens? Where’s the borax? Look here, this is the way of it.”
“Might ha’ been born and bred a smith,” said Jens, as he watched the deft and easy hammer-strokes.
Christmas Eve came, and the grey farm-pony dragged up a big wooden case to the door. Peer opened it and carried in the things—a whole heap of good things for Christmas from the Ringeby relations.
He bit his lips when he saw all the bags piled up on the kitchen table. There had been a time not long ago when Merle and he had loaded up a sledge at the Loreng storehouse and driven off with Christmas gifts to all the poor folk round. It was part of the season’s fun for them. And now—now they must even be glad to receive presents themselves.
“Merle—have WE nothing we can give away this year?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“A poor man’s Christmas it’ll be with a vengeance—if we’re only to take presents, and haven’t the least little thing to give away.”
Merle sighed. “We must hope it won’t happen to us again,” she said.
“I won’t have it happen to us now,” he said, pacing up and down. “There’s that poor devil of a joiner down at Moen, with consumption. I’m going down there with a bit of a parcel to chuck in at his door, if I have to take your shift and the shirt off my back. You know yourself it won’t be any Christmas at all, if we don’t do something.”
“Well—if you like. I’ll see if we can’t find something among the children’s clothes that they can do without.”
The end of it was that Merle levied toll on all the parcels from home, both rice and raisins and cakes, and made up little packets of them to send round by him. That was Merle’s way; let her alone and she would hit upon something.
The snow creaked and crackled underfoot as Peer went off on his errand. A starry sky and a biting wind, and light upon light from the windows of the farms scattered over the dark hillsides. High above all, against the sky, there was one little gleam that might be a cottage window, or might be a star.
Peer was flushed and freshened up when he came back into the warmth of the room. And a chorus of joyful shouts was raised when Merle announced to the children: “Father’s going to bath you all to-night.”
The sawed-off end of a barrel was the bathing-tub, and Peer stood in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, holding the naked little bodies as they sprawled about in the steaming water.
Mother was busy with something or other in the sitting-room. But it was a great secret, and the children were very mysterious about it. “No, no, you mustn’t go in,” they said to little Asta, who went whimpering for her mother to the door.
And later in the evening, when the Christmas-tree was lit up, and the windows shone white with frost, there were great doings all about the sitting room floor. Louise got her ski on and immediately fell on her face; Lorentz, astride of the new sleigh, was shouting “Hi, hi!—clear the course there!”, and over in a corner sat little Asta, busy putting her baby to bed and singing it to sleep.
Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled.
“What did I tell you?” said Merle.
Slowly, with torturing slowness, the leaden-grey winter days creep by. For two hours in the middle of the day there is pale twilight—for two hours—then darkness again. Through the long nights the north wind howls funeral dirges—hu-u-u-u—and piles up the snow into great drifts across the road, deep enough, almost, to smother a sleigh and its driver. The days and nights come and go, monotonous, unchanged; the same icy grey daylight, and never a human soul to speak to. Across the valley a great solid mountain wall hems you in, and you gaze at it till it nearly drives you mad. If only one could bore a hole through it, and steal a glimpse of the world beyond, or could climb up to the topmost ridge and for a moment look far round to a wide horizon, and breathe freely once more.
At last one day the grey veil lifts a little. A strip of blue sky appears—and hearts grow lighter at the sight. The snow peaks to the south turn golden. What? Is it actually the sun? And day by day now a belt of gold grows broader, comes lower and lower on the hillside, till the highest-lying farms are steeped in it and glow red. And at last one day the red flame reaches the Courthouse, and shines in across the floor of the room where Merle is sitting by the window patching the seat of a tiny pair of trousers.
What life and cheer it brings with it!
“Mother—here’s the sun,” cries Louise joyfully from the doorway.
“Yes, child, I see it.”
But Louise has only looked in for a moment to beg some cake for Lorentz and herself, and be off again on her ski to the hill-slopes. “Thank you, mother—you’re a darling!” And with a slice in each hand she dashes out, glowing with health and the cold air.
If only Peer could glow with health again! But though one day they might persuade themselves that now—now at last he had turned the corner—the next he would be lying tossing about in misery, and it all seemed more hopeless than ever. He had taken to the doctors’ medicines again—arsenic and iron and so forth—and the quiet and fresh air they had prescribed were here in plenty; would nothing do him any good? There were not so many months of their year left now.
And then? Another winter here? And living on charity—ah me! Merle shook her head and sighed.
The time had come, too, when Louise should go to school.
“Send the children over to me—all three of them, if you like,” wrote Aunt Marit from Bruseth. No, thanks; Merle knew what that meant. Aunt Marit wanted to keep them for good.
Lose her children—give away her children to others? Was the day to come when that burden, too, would be laid upon them?
But schooling they must have; they must learn enough at least to fit them to make a living when they grew up. And if their own parents could not afford them schooling, why—why then perhaps they had no right to keep them?
Merle sewed and sewed on, lifting her head now and again, so that the sunlight fell on her face.
How the snow shone—like purple under the red flood of sunlight. After all, their troubles seemed a little easier to bear to-day. It was as if something frozen in her heart were beginning to thaw.
Louise was getting on well with her violin. Perhaps one day the child might go out into the world, and win the triumphs that her mother had dreamed of in vain.
There was a sound of hurried steps in the passage, and she started and sat in suspense. Would he come in raging, or in despair, or had the pains in his head come back? The door opened.
“Merle! I have it now. By all the gods, little woman, something’s happened at last!”
Merle half rose from her seat, but sank back again, gazing at his face.
“I’ve got it this time, Merle,” he said again. “And how on earth I never hit on it before—when it’s as simple as shelling peas!”
He was stalking about the room now, with his hands in his pockets, whistling.
“But what is it, Peer?”
“Why, you see, I was standing there chopping wood. And all the time swarms of mowing machines—nine million of them—were going in my head, all with the grass sticking fast to the shears and clogging them up. I was in a cold sweat—I felt myself going straight to hell—and then, in a flash—a flash of steel—it came to me. It means salvation for us, Merle, salvation.”
“Oh, do talk so that I can understand a little of what you’re saying.”
“Why, don’t you see—all that’s wanted is a small movable steel brush above the shears, to flick away the grass and keep them clear. Hang it all, a child could see it. By Jove, little woman, it’ll soon be changed times with us now.”
Merle laid her work down in her lap and let her hands fall. If this were true!
“I’ll have the machine up here, Merle. Making the brushes and fixing them on will be no trouble at all—I can do it in a day in the smithy here.”
“What—you had better try! You’re just beginning to get a little better, and you want to spoil it all again!”
“I shall never get well, Merle, as long as I have that infernal machine in my head balancing between world-success and fiasco. It presses on my brain like a leaden weight, I shall never have a decent night’s sleep till I get rid of it. Oh, my great God—if times were to change some day—even for us! Well! Do you think I wouldn’t get well when that day came!”
This time she let him take her in his arms. But when he had gone, she sat still, watching the sun sink behind the snow-ranges, till her eyes grew dim and her breath came heavily.
A week later, when the sun was flaming on the white roofs, the grey pony dragged a huge packing-case up to Raastad. And the same day a noise of hammer and file at work was heard in the smithy.
What do a few sleepless nights matter now? And they are sleepless not so much from anxiety—for this time things go well—as because of dreams. And both of them dream. They have bought back Loreng, and they wander about through the great light rooms once more, and all is peace and happiness. All the evil days before are as a nightmare that is past. Once more they will be young, go out on ski together, and dine together after, and drink champagne, and look at each other with love in their eyes. Once more—and many times again.
“Good-night, Merle.”
“Good-night, Peer, and sleep well.”
Day after day the hammering went on in the smithy.
A few years back he could have finished the whole business in a couple of days. But now, half an hour’s work was enough to tire him out. It is exhausting work to concentrate your thoughts upon a single point, when your brain has long been used to play idly with stray fancies as they came. He found, too, that there were defects to be put right in the parts he thought were complete before, and he had no assistants now, no foundry to get castings from, he must forge out each piece with his own hands, and with sorry tools.
What did it matter?
He began to discipline his brain, denying himself every superfluous thought. He drew dark curtains across every window in his consciousness, save one—the machine. After half an hour’s work he would go back to bed and rest—just close his eyes, and rest. This too was discipline. Again he flooded all his mind with darkness, darkness, to save his strength for the half-hour of work next day.
Was Merle fearful and anxious? At all events she said no word about the work that so absorbed him. He was excited enough as it was. And now when he was irritable and angry with the children, she did not even look at him reproachfully. They must bear it, both she and the children—it would soon be all over now.
In the clear moonlight nights, when the children were in bed, the two would sometimes be seen wandering about together. They went with their arms about each other’s waists, talking loudly, laughing a great deal, and sometimes singing. People going by on the road would hear the laughter and singing, and think to themselves: It’s either someone that’s been drinking, or else that couple from the Court-house.
The spring drew on and the days grew lighter.
But at the Hamar Agricultural Exhibition, where the machine was tried, an American competitor was found to be just a little better. Everyone thought it a queer business; for even if the idea hadn’t been directly stolen from Peer, there could be no doubt that his machine had suggested it. The principles adopted were the same in both cases, but in the American machine there was just enough improvement in carrying them out to make it doubtful whether it would be any use going to law over the patent rights. And besides—it’s no light matter for a man with no money at his back to go to law with a rich American firm.
In the mighty race, with competitors the wide world over, to produce the best machine, Peer had been on the very point of winning. Another man had climbed upon his chariot, and then, at the last moment, jumped a few feet ahead, and had thereby won the prize.
So that the achievement in itself be good, the world does not inquire too curiously whether it was honestly achieved.
And there is no use starting a joint-stock company to exploit a new machine when there is a better machine in the field.
The steel had seized on Peer, and used him as a springboard. But the reward was destined for another.