As evening fell, he saw a multitude of lights spread out on every side far ahead in the darkness. And next, with his little wooden chest on his shoulder, he was finding his way up through the streets by the quay to a lodging-house for country folk, which he knew from former visits, when he had come to the town with the Lofoten boats.
Next morning, clad in his country homespun, he marched up along River Street, over the bridge, and up the hill to the villa quarter, where he had to ask the way. At last he arrived outside a white-painted wooden house standing back in a garden. Here was the place—the place where his fate was to be decided. After the country fashion he walked in at the kitchen door.
A stout servant maid in a big white apron was rattling the rings of the kitchen range into place; there was a pleasing smell of coffee and good things to eat. Suddenly a door opened, and a figure in a dressing-gown appeared—a tall red-haired man with gold spectacles astride on a long red nose, his thick hair and scrubby little moustaches touched with grey. He gasped once or twice and then started sneezing—hoc-hoc-put-putsch!—wiped his nose with a large pocket-handkerchief, and grumbled out: “Ugh!—this wretched cold—can’t get rid of it. How about my socks, Bertha, my good girl; do you think they are quite dry now?”
“I’ve had them hung up ever since I lit the fire this morning,” said the girl, tossing her head.
“But who is this young gentleman, may I ask?” The gold spectacles were turned full on Peer, who rose and bowed.
“Said he wanted to speak to you, sir,” put in the maid.
“Ah. From the country, I see. Have you anything to sell, my lad?”
“No,” said Peer. He had had a letter. . . .
The red head seemed positively frightened at this—and the dressing-gown faltered backwards, as if to find support. He cast a hurried glance at the girl, and then beckoned with a long fore-finger to Peer. “Yes, yes, perfectly so. Be so good as to come this way, my lad.”
Peer found himself in a room with rows of books all round the walls, and a big writing-table in the centre. “Sit down, my boy.” The schoolmaster went and picked out a long pipe, and filled it, clearing his throat nervously, with an occasional glance at the boy. “H’m—so this is you. This is Peer—h’m.” He lit his pipe and puffed a little, found himself again obliged to sneeze—but at last settled down in a chair at the writing-table, stretched out his long legs, and puffed away again.
“So that’s what you look like?” With a quick movement he reached for a photograph in a frame. Peer caught a glimpse of his father in uniform. The schoolmaster lifted his spectacles, stared at the picture, then let down his spectacles again and fell to scrutinising Peer’s face. There was a silence for a while, and then he said: “Ah, indeed—I see—h’m.” Then turning to Peer:
“Well, my lad, it was very sudden—your benefactor’s end—most unexpected. He is to be buried to-day.”
“Benefactor?” thought Peer. “Why doesn’t he say ‘your father’?”
The schoolmaster was gazing at the window. “He informed me some time ago of—h’m—of all the—all the benefits he had conferred on you—h’m! And he begged me to keep an eye on you myself in case anything happened to him. And now”—the spectacles swung round towards Peer—“now you are starting out in life by yourself, hey?”
“Yes,” said Peer, shifting a little in his seat.
“You will have to decide now what walk in life you are to—er—devote yourself to.”
“Yes,” said Peer again, sitting up straighter.
“You would perhaps like to be a fisherman—like the good people you’ve been brought up among?”
“No.” Peer shook his head disdainfully. Was this man trying to make a fool of him?
“Some trade, then, perhaps?”
“No!”
“Oh, then I suppose it’s to be America. Well, you will easily find company to go with. Such numbers are going nowadays—I am sorry to say. . . .”
Peer pulled himself together. “Oh, no, not that at all.” Better get it out at once. “I wish to be a priest,” he said, speaking with a careful town accent.
The schoolmaster rose from his seat, holding his long pipe up in the air in one hand, and pressing his ear forward with the other, as though to hear better. “What?—what did you say?”
“A priest,” repeated Peer, but he moved behind his chair as he spoke, for it looked as if the schoolmaster might fling the pipe at his head.
But suddenly the red face broke into a smile, exposing such an array of greenish teeth as Peer had never seen before. Then he said in a sort of singsong, nodding: “A priest? Oh, indeed! Quite a small matter!” He rose and wandered once or twice up and down the room, then stopped, nodded, and said in a fatherly tone—to one of the bookshelves: “H’m—really—really—we’re a little ambitious, are we not?”
He turned on Peer suddenly. “Look here, my young friend—don’t you think your benefactor has been quite generous enough to you already?”
“Yes, indeed he has,” said Peer, his voice beginning to tremble a little.
“There are thousands of boys in your position who are thrown out in the world after confirmation and left to shift for themselves, without a soul to lend them a helping hand.”
“Yes,” gasped Peer, looking round involuntarily towards the door.
“I can’t understand—who can have put these wild ideas into your head?”
With an effort Peer managed to get out: “It’s always been what I wanted. And he—father—”
“Who? Father—? Do you mean your benefactor?”
“Well, he was my father, wasn’t he?” burst out Peer.
The schoolmaster tottered back and sank into a chair, staring at Peer as if he thought him a quite hopeless subject. At last he recovered so far as to say: “Look here, my lad, don’t you think you might be content to call him—now and for the future—just your benefactor? Don’t you think he deserves it?”
“Oh, yes,” whispered Peer, almost in tears.
“You are thinking, of course—you and those who have put all this nonsense into your head—of the money which he—h’m—”
“Yes—isn’t there a savings bank account—?”
“Aha! There we are! Yes, indeed. There is a savings bank account—in my care.” He rose, and hunted out from a drawer a small green-covered book. Peer could not take his eyes from it. “Here it is. The sum entered here to your account amounts to eighteen hundred crowns.”
Crash! Peer felt as if he had fallen through the floor into the cellarage. All his dreams vanished into thin air—the million crowns—priest and bishop—Christiania—and all the rest.
“On the day when you are in a fair way to set up independently as an artisan, a farmer, or a fisherman—and when you seem to me, to the best of my judgment, to deserve such help—then and not till then I place this book at your disposal. Do you understand what I say?”
“Yes.”
“I am perfectly sure that I am in full agreement with the wishes of the donor in deciding that the money must remain untouched in my safe keeping until then.”
“Yes,” whispered Peer.
“What?—are you crying?”
“N-no. Good-morning—”
“No, pray don’t go yet. Sit down. There are one or two things we must get settled at once. First of all—you must trust me, my good boy. Do you believe that I wish you well, or do you not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it is agreed that all these fancies about going to college and so forth must be driven out of your head once for all?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“You can see yourself that, even supposing you had the mental qualifications, such a sum, generous as it is in itself, would not suffice to carry you far.”
“No-no, sir.”
“On the other hand, if you wish it, I will gladly arrange to get you an apprentice’s place with a good handicraftsman here. You would have free board there, and—well, if you should want clothes the first year or so, I dare say we could manage that. You will be better without pocket-money to fling about until you can earn it for yourself.”
Peer sighed, and drooped as he stood. When he saw the green-backed book locked into its drawer again, and heard the keys rattle as they went back into a pocket under the dressing-gown, he felt as if some one were pointing a jeering finger at him, and saying, “Yah!”
“Then there’s another thing. About your name. What name have you thought of taking, my lad—surname, I mean?”
“My name is Peer Holm!” said the boy, instinctively drawing himself up as he had done when the bishop had patted his head at the confirmation and asked his name.
The schoolmaster pursed up his lips, took off his spectacles and wiped them, put them on again, and turned to the bookshelves with a sigh. “Ah, indeed!—yes—yes—I almost thought as much.”
Then he came forward and laid a hand kindly on Peer’s shoulder.
“My dear boy—that is out of the question.”
A shiver went through Peer. Had he done something wrong again?
“See here, my boy—have you considered that there may be others of that name in this same place?”
“Yes—but—”
“Wait a minute—and that you would occasion these—others—the deepest pain and distress if it should become known that—well, how matters stand. You see, I am treating you as a grown-up man—a gentleman. And I feel sure you would not wish to inflict a great sorrow—a crushing blow—upon a widow and her innocent children. There, there, my boy, there’s nothing to cry about. Life, my young friend, life has troubles that must be faced. What is the name of the farm, or house, where you have lived up to now?”
“T—Troen.”
“Troen—a very good name indeed. Then from to-day on you will call yourself Peer Troen.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“And if any one should ask about your father, remember that you are bound in honour and conscience not to mention your benefactor’s name.”
“Y-yes.”
“Well, then, as soon as you have made up your mind, come at once and let me know. We shall be great friends yet, you will see. You’re sure you wouldn’t like to try America? Well, well, come along out to the kitchen and see if we can find you some breakfast.”
Peer found himself a moment after sitting on a chair in the kitchen, where there was such a good smell of coffee. “Bertha,” said the schoolmaster coaxingly, “you’ll find something good for breakfast for my young friend here, won’t you?” He waved a farewell with his hand, took down his socks from a string above the stove, and disappeared through the door again.
When a country boy in blue homespun, with a peaked cap on his blond head, goes wandering at random through the streets of a town, it is no particular concern of any one else. He moves along, gazing in at shop windows, hands deep in his pockets, whistling, looking at everything around him—or at nothing at all. And yet—perhaps in the head under that peaked cap it seems as if a whole little world had suddenly collapsed, and he may be whistling hard to keep from crying in the streets for people to see. He steps aside to avoid a cart, and runs into a man, who drops his cigar in the gutter. “Confounded country lout!” says the man angrily, but passes on and has forgotten boy and all the next moment. But a little farther on a big dog comes dashing out of a yard and unluckily upsets a fat old woman on the pavement, and the boy with the peaked cap, for all his troubles, cannot help doubling up and roaring with laughter.
That afternoon, Peer sat on one of the ramparts below the fortress, biting at a stalk of grass, and twirling the end in his fingers. Below him lay town and fjord in the mild October sunlight; the rumble of traffic, the noises from workshops and harbour, came up to him through the rust-brown luminous haze. There he sat, while the sentry on the wall above marched back and forth, with his rifle on his shoulder, left—right—left.
You may climb very high up indeed, and fall down very deep, and no such terrible harm done after all, as long as you don’t absolutely break your neck. And gradually Peer began to realise that he was still alive, after all. It is a bad business when the world goes against you, even though you may have some one to turn to for advice and sympathy. But when all the people round you are utter strangers, there is nothing to be done but sit down and twirl a straw, and think things out a bit for yourself. Peer’s thoughts were of a thing in a long dressing-gown that had taken his bank book and locked it up and rattled the keys at him and said “Yah!” and deposed him from his bishopric and tried to sneeze and squeeze him into a trade, where he’d have to carry a pressing-iron all his life and be Peer Troen, Tailor. But he wouldn’t have that. He sat there bracing himself up, and trying to gather together from somewhere a thing he had never had much need of before—to wit, a will of his own, something to set up against the whole wide world. What was he to do now? He felt he would like to go back to Troen first of all, and talk things over with the old father and mother; they would be sorry for him there, and say “Poor boy,” and pray for him—but after a day or two, he knew, they would begin to glance at him at meals, and remember that there was no one to pay for him now, and that times were hard. No, that was no refuge for him now. But what could he do, then? Clearly it was not such a simple matter to be all alone in the world.
A little later he found himself on a hillside by the Cathedral churchyard, sitting under the yellowing trees, and wondering dreamily where his father was to be buried. What a difference between him and that schoolmaster man! No preaching with him; no whining about what his boy might call himself or might not. Why must he go and die?
It was strange to think of that fine strong man, who had brushed his hair and beard so carefully with his silver-backed brush—to think that he was lying still in a coffin now, and would soon be covered up with earth.
People were coming up the hill now, and passing in to the churchyard. The men wore black clothes and tall shiny hats—but there were some officers too, with plumes and sashes. And then a regimental band—with its brass instruments. Peer slipped into the churchyard with the crowd, but kept apart from the rest, and took up his stand a little way off, beside a big monument. “It must be father’s funeral,” he thought to himself, and was broad awake at once.
This, he guessed, must be the Cadet School, that came marching in, and formed up in two lines from the mortuary chapel to the open grave. The place was nearly full of people now; there were women holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and an elderly lady in black went into the chapel, on the arm of a tall man in uniform. “That must be father’s wife,” thought Peer, “and the young ladies there in black are—my half-sisters, and that young lieutenant—my half-brother.” How strange it all was! A sound of singing came from the chapel. And a little later six sergeants came out, carrying a coffin all heaped with flowers. “Present arms!” And the soldiers presented, and the band played a slow march and moved off in front of the coffin, between the two lines of soldiers. And then came a great following of mourners. The lady in black came out again, sobbing behind her handkerchief, and hardly able to follow, though she clung to the tall officer’s arm. But in front of the pair, just behind the coffin itself, walked a tall man in splendid uniform, with gold epaulettes, plumed hat, and sword, bearing a cushion with two jewelled stars. And the long, long train of mourners moved slowly, gently on, and there—there by the grave, stood the priest, holding a spade.
Peer was anxious to hear what the priest would have to say about his father. Involuntarily he stole a little nearer, though he felt somehow that it would not do to come too close.
A hymn was sung at the graveside, the band accompanying. Peer took off his cap. He was too taken up to notice that one of the mourners was watching him intently, and presently left the group and came towards him. The man wore spectacles, and a shiny tall hat, and it was not until he began to sneeze that Peer recognised him. It was the schoolmaster, glaring at him now with a face so full of horror and fury that the spectacles almost seemed to be spitting fire.
“You—you—Are you mad?” he whispered in Peer’s face, clenching his black gloved hands. “What are you doing here? Do you want to cause a catastrophe to-day of all days? Go—get away at once, do you hear me? Go! For heaven’s sake, get away from here before any one sees.” Peer turned and fled, hearing behind him as he went a threatening “If ever you dare—again—,” while the voices and the band, swelling higher in the hymn, seemed to strike him in the back and drive him on.
He was far down in the town before he could stop and pull himself together. One thing was clear—after this he could never face that schoolmaster again. All was lost. Could he even be sure that what he had done wasn’t so frightfully wrong that he would have to go to prison for it?
Next day the Troen folk were sitting at their dinner when the eldest son looked out of the window and said: “There’s Peer coming.”
“Mercy on us!” cried the good-wife, as he came in. “What is the matter, Peer? Are you ill?”
Ah, it was good that night to creep in under the old familiar skin-rug once more. And the old mother sat on the bedside and talked to him of the Lord, by way of comfort. Peer clenched his hands under the clothes—somehow he thought now of the Lord as a sort of schoolmaster in a dressing-gown. Yet it was some comfort all the same to have the old soul sit there and talk to him.
Peer had much to put up with in the days that followed—much tittering and whispers of “Look! there goes the priest,” as he went by. At table, he felt ashamed of every mouthful he took; he hunted for jobs as day-labourer on distant farms so as to earn a little to help pay for his keep. And when the winter came he would have to do as the others did—hire himself out, young and small as he was, for the Lofoten fishing.
But one day after church Klaus Brock drew him aside and got him to talk things over at length. First, Klaus told him that he himself was going away—he was to begin in one of the mechanical workshops in town, and go from there to the Technical College, to qualify for an engineer. And next he wanted to hear the whole truth about what had happened to Peer that day in town. For when people went slapping their thighs and sniggering about the young would-be priest that had turned out a beggar, Klaus felt he would like to give the lot of them a darned good hammering.
So the two sixteen-year-old boys wandered up and down talking, and in the days to come Peer never forgot how his old accomplice in the shark-fishing had stood by him now. “Do like me,” urged Klaus. “You’re a bit of a smith already, man; go to the workshops, and read up in your spare time for the entrance exam to the Technical. Then three years at the College—the eighteen hundred crowns will cover that—and there you are, an engineer—and needn’t even owe any one a halfpenny.”
Peer shook his head; he was sure he would never dare to show his face before that schoolmaster again, much less ask for the money in the bank. No; the whole thing was over and done with for him.
“But devil take it, man, surely you can see that this ape of a schoolmaster dare not keep you out of your money. Let me come with you; we’ll go up and tackle him together, and then—then you’ll see.” And Klaus clenched his fists and thrust out one shoulder fiercely.
But when January came, there was Peer in oil-skins, in the foc’s’le of a Lofoten fishing-smack, ploughing the long sea-road north to the fishing-grounds, in frost and snow-storms. All through that winter he lived the fisherman’s life: on land, in one of the tiny fisher-booths where a five-man crew is packed like sardines in an air so thick you can cut it with a knife; at sea, where in a fair wind you stand half the day doing nothing and freezing stiff the while—and a foul wind means out oars, and row, row, row, over an endless plain of rolling icy combers; row, row, till one’s hands are lumps of bleeding flesh. Peer lived through it all, thinking now and then, when he could think at all, how the grand gentlefolk had driven him out to this life because he was impertinent enough to exist. And when the fourteen weeks were past, and the Lofoten boats stood into the fjord again on a mild spring day, it was easy for Peer to reckon out his earnings, which were just nothing at all. He had had to borrow money for his outfit and food, and he would be lucky if his boy’s share was enough to cover what he owed.
A few weeks later a boy stood by the yard gate of an engineering works in the town just as the bell was ringing and the men came streaming out, and asked for Klaus Brock.
“Hullo, Peer—that you? Been to Lofoten and made your fortune?”
The two boys stood a moment taking stock of one another: Klaus grimy-faced and in working-clothes—Peer weather-beaten and tanned by storm and spray.
The manager of the factory was Klaus’s uncle, and the same afternoon his nephew came into the office with a new hand wanting to be taken on as apprentice. He had done some smithy work before, he said; and he was taken on forthwith, at a wage of twopence an hour.
“And what’s your name?”
“Peer—er”—the rest stuck in his throat.
“Holm,” put in Klaus.
“Peer Holm? Very well, that’ll do.”
The two boys went out with a feeling of having done something rather daring. And anyway, if trouble should come along, there would be two of them now to tackle it.
In a narrow alley off Sea Street lived Gorseth the job-master, with a household consisting of a lean and skinny wife, two half-starved horses, and a few ramshackle flies and sledges. The job-master himself was a hulking toper with red nose and beery-yellow eyes, who spent his nights in drinking and got home in the small hours of the morning when his wife was just about getting up. All through the morning she went about the place scolding and storming at him for a drunken ne’er-do-well, while Gorseth himself lay comfortably snoring.
When Peer arrived on the scene with his box on his shoulder, Gorseth was on his knees in the yard, greasing a pair of leather carriage-aprons, while his wife, sunken-lipped and fierce-eyed, stood in the kitchen doorway, abusing him for a profligate, a swine, and the scum of the earth. Gorseth lay there on all-fours, with the sun shining on his bald head, smearing on the grease; but every now and then he would lift his head and snarl out, “Hold your jaw, you damned old jade!”
“Haven’t you a room to let?” Peer asked.
A beery nose was turned towards him, and the man dragged himself up and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Right you are,” said he, and led the way across the yard, up some stairs, and into a little room with two panes of glass looking on to the street and a half-window on the yard. The room had a bed with sheets, a couple of chairs, and a table in front of the half-window. Six and six a month. Agreed. Peer took it on the spot, paid down the first month’s rent, and having got rid of the man sat down on his chest and looked about him. Many people have never a roof to their heads, but here was he, Peer, with a home of his own. Outside in the yard the woman had begun yelping her abuse again, the horses in the stable beneath were stamping and whinnying, but Peer had lodged in fisher-booths and peasants’ quarters and was not too particular. Here he was for the first time in a place of his own, and within its walls was master of the house and his own master.
Food was the next thing. He went out and bought in supplies, stocking his chest with plain country fare. At dinner time he sat on the lid, as fishermen do, and made a good solid meal of flat bannocks and cold bacon.
And now he fell-to at his new work. There was no question of whether it was what he wanted or not; here was a chance of getting up in the world, and that without having to beg any one’s leave. He meant to get on. And it was not long before his dreams began to take a new shape from his new life. He stood at the bottom of a ladder, a blacksmith’s boy—but up at the top sat a mighty Chief Engineer, with gold spectacles and white waistcoat. That was where he would be one day. And if any schoolmaster came along and tried to keep him back this time—well, just let him try it. They had turned him out of a churchyard once—he would have his revenge for that some day. It might take him years and years to do it, but one fine day he would be as good as the best of them, and would pay them back in full.
In the misty mornings, as he tramped in to his work, dinner-pail in hand, his footsteps on the plank bridge seemed hammering out with concentrated will: “To-day I shall learn something new—new—new!”
The great works down at the harbour—shipyard, foundry, and machine shops—were a whole city in themselves. And into this world of fire and smoke and glowing iron, steam-hammers, racing wheels, and bustle and noise, he was thrusting his way, intent upon one thing, to learn and learn and ever learn. There were plenty of those by him who were content to know their way about the little corner where they stood—but they would never get any farther. They would end their days broken-down workmen—HE would carve his way through till he stood among the masters. He had first to put in some months’ work in the smithy, then he would be passed on to the machine shops, then to work with the carpenters and painters, and finally in the shipyard. The whole thing would take a couple of years. But the works and all therein were already a kind of new Bible to him; a book of books, which he must learn by heart. Only wait!
And what a place it was for new adventures! Many times a day he would find himself gazing at some new wonder; sheer miracle and revelation—yet withal no creation of God’s grace, but an invention of men. Press a button, and behold, a miracle springs to life. He would stare at the things, and the strain of understanding them would sometimes keep him awake at night. There was something behind this, something that must be—spirit, even though it did not come from God. These engineers were priests of a sort, albeit they did not preach nor pray. It was a new world.
One day he was put to riveting work on an enormous boiler, and for the first time found himself working with a power that was not the power of his own hands. It was a tube, full of compressed air, that drove home the rivets in quick succession with a clashing wail from the boiler that sounded all over the town. Peer’s head and ears ached with the noise, but he smiled all the same. He was used to toil himself, in weariness of body; now he stood here master, was mind and soul and directing will. He felt it now for the first time, and it sent a thrill of triumph through every nerve of his body.
But all through the long evenings he sat alone, reading, reading, and heard the horses stamping in the stable below. And when he crept into bed, well after midnight, there was only one thing that troubled him—his utter loneliness. Klaus Brock lived with his uncle, in a fine house, and went to parties. And he lay here all by himself. If he were to die that very night, there would be hardly a soul to care. So utterly alone he was—in a strange and indifferent world.
Sometimes it helped him a little to think of the old mother at Troen, or of the church at home, where the vaulted roof had soared so high over the swelling organ-notes, and all the faces had looked so beautiful. But the evening prayer was no longer what it had been for him. There was no grey-haired bishop any more sitting at the top of the ladder he was to climb. The Chief Engineer that was there now had nothing to do with Our Lord, or with life in the world to come. He would never come so far now that he could go down into the place of torment where his mother lay, and bring her up with him, up to salvation. And whatever power and might he gained, he could never stand in autumn evenings and lift up his finger and make all the stars break into song.
Something was past and gone for Peer. It was as if he were rowing away from a coast where red clouds hung in the sky and dream-visions filled the air—rowing farther and farther away, towards something quite new. A power stronger than himself had willed it so.
One Sunday, as he sat reading, the door opened, and Klaus Brock entered whistling, with his cap on the back of his head.
“Hullo, old boy! So this is where you live?”
“Yes, it is—and that’s a chair over there.”
But Klaus remained standing, with his hands in his pockets and his cap on, staring about the room. “Well, I’m blest!” he said at last. “If he hasn’t stuck up a photograph of himself on his table!”
“Well, did you never see one before? Don’t you know everybody has them?”
“Not their own photos, you ass! If anybody sees that, you’ll never hear the last of it.”
Peer took up the photograph and flung it under the bed. “Well, it was a rubbishy thing,” he muttered. Evidently he had made a mistake. “But what about this?”—pointing to a coloured picture he had nailed up on the wall.
Klaus put on his most manly air and bit off a piece of tobacco plug. “Ah! that!” he said, trying not to laugh too soon.
“Yes; it’s a fine painting, isn’t it? I got it for fourpence.”
“Painting! Ha-ha! that’s good! Why, you silly cow, can’t you see it’s only an oleograph?”
“Oh, of course you know all about it. You always do.”
“I’ll take you along one day to the Art Gallery,” said Klaus. “Then you can see what a real painting looks like. What’s that you’ve got there—English reader?”
“Yes,” put in Peer eagerly; “hear me say a poem.” And before Klaus could protest, he had begun to recite.
When he had finished, Klaus sat for a while in silence, chewing his quid. “H’m!” he said at last, “if our last teacher, Froken Zebbelin, could have heard that English of yours, we’d have had to send for a nurse for her, hanged if we wouldn’t!”
This was too much. Peer flung the book against the wall and told the other to clear out to the devil. When Klaus at last managed to get a word in, he said:
“If you are to pass your entrance at the Technical you’ll have to have lessons—surely you can see that. You must get hold of a teacher.”
“Easy for you to talk about teachers! Let me tell you my pay is twopence an hour.”
“I’ll find you one who can take you twice a week or so in languages and history and mathematics. I daresay some broken-down sot of a student would take you on for sevenpence a lesson. You could run to that, surely?”
Peer was quiet now and a little pensive. “Well, if I give up butter, and drink water instead of coffee—”
Klaus laughed, but his eyes were moist. Hard luck that he couldn’t offer to lend his comrade a few shillings—but it wouldn’t do.
So the summer passed. On Sundays Peer would watch the young folks setting out in the morning for the country, to spend the whole day wandering in the fields and woods, while he sat indoors over his books. And in the evening he would stick his head out of his two-paned window that looked on to the street, and would see the lads and girls coming back, flushed and noisy, with flowers and green boughs in their hats, crazy with sunshine and fresh air. And still he must sit and read on. But in the autumn, when the long nights set in, he would go for a walk through the streets before going to bed, as often as not up to the white wooden house where the manager lived. This was Klaus’s home. Lights in the windows, and often music; the happy people that lived here knew and could do all sorts of things that could never be learned from books. No mistake: he had a goodish way to go—a long, long way. But get there he would.
One day Klaus happened to mention, quite casually, where Colonel Holm’s widow lived, and late one evening Peer made his way out there, and cautiously approached the house. It was in River Street, almost hidden in a cluster of great trees, and Peer stood there, leaning against the garden fence, trembling with some obscure emotion. The long rows of windows on both floors were lighted up; he could hear youthful laughter within, and then a young girl’s voice singing—doubtless they were having a party. Peer turned up his collar against the wind, and tramped back through the town to his lodging above the carter’s stable.
For the lonely working boy Saturday evening is a sort of festival. He treats himself to an extra wash, gets out his clean underclothes from his chest, and changes. And the smell of the newly-washed underclothing calls up keenly the thought of a pock-marked old woman who sewed and patched it all, and laid it away so neatly folded. He puts it on carefully, feeling almost as if it were Sunday already.
Now and again, when a Sunday seemed too long, Peer would drift into the nearest church. What the parson said was all very good, no doubt, but Peer did not listen; for him there were only the hymns, the organ, the lofty vaulted roof, the coloured windows. Here, too, the faces of the people looked otherwise than in the street without; touched, as it were, by some reflection from all that their thoughts aspired to reach. And it was so homelike here. Peer even felt a sort of kinship with them all, though every soul there was a total stranger.
But at last one day, to his surprise, in the middle of a hymn, a voice within him whispered suddenly: “You should write to your sister. She’s as much alone in the world as you are.”
And one evening Peer sat down and wrote. He took quite a lordly tone, saying that if she wanted help in any way, she need only let him know. And if she would care to move in to town, she could come and live with him. After which he remained, her affectionate brother, Peer Holm, engineer apprentice.
A few days later there came a letter addressed in a fine slanting hand. Louise had just been confirmed. The farmer she was with wished to keep her on as dairymaid through the winter, but she was afraid the work would be too heavy for her. So she was coming in to town by the boat arriving on Sunday evening. With kind regards, his sister, Louise Hagen.
Peer was rather startled. He seemed to have taken a good deal on his shoulders.
On Sunday evening he put on his blue suit and stiff felt hat, and walked down to the quay. For the first time in his life he had some one else to look after—he was to be a father and benefactor from now on to some one worse off than himself. This was something new. The thought came back to him of the jolly gentleman who had come driving down one day to Troen to look after his little son. Yes, that was the way to do things; that was the sort of man he would be. And involuntarily he fell into something of his father’s look and step, his smile, his lavish, careless air. “Well, well—well, well—well, well,” he seemed saying to himself. He might almost, in his fancy, have had a neat iron-grey beard on his chin.
The little green steamboat rounded the point and lay in to the quay, the gangways were run out, porters jumped aboard, and all the passengers came bundling ashore. Peer wondered how he was to know her, this sister whom he had never seen.
The crowd on deck soon thinned, and people began moving off from the quay into the town.
Then Peer was aware of a young peasant-girl, with a box in one hand and a violin-case in the other. She wore a grey dress, with a black kerchief over her fair hair; her face was pale, and finely cut. It was his mother’s face; his mother as a girl of sixteen. Now she was looking about her, and now her eyes rested on him, half afraid, half inquiring.
“Is it you, Louise?”
“Is that you, Peer?”
They stood for a moment, smiling and measuring each other with their eyes, and then shook hands.
Together they carried the box up through the town, and Peer was so much of a townsman already that he felt a little ashamed to find himself walking through the streets, holding one end of a trunk, with a peasant-girl at the other. And what a clatter her thick shoes made on the pavement! But all the time he was ashamed to feel ashamed. Those blue arch eyes of hers, constantly glancing up at him, what were they saying? “Yes, I have come,” they said—“and I’ve no one but you in all the world—and here I am,” they kept on saying.
“Can you play that?” he asked, with a glance at her violin-case.
“Oh well; my playing’s only nonsense,” she laughed. And she told how the old sexton she had been living with last had not been able to afford a new dress for her confirmation, and had given her the violin instead.
“Then didn’t you have a new dress to be confirmed in?”
“No.”
“But wasn’t it—didn’t you feel horrible, with the other girls standing by you all dressed up fine?”
She shut her eyes for a moment. “Oh, yes—it WAS horrid,” she said.
A little farther on she asked: “Were you boarded out at a lot of places?”
“Five, I think.”
“Pooh—why, that’s nothing. I was at nine, I was.” The girl was smiling again.
When they came up to his room she stood for a moment looking round the place. It was hardly what she had expected to find. And she had not been in town lodgings before, and her nose wrinkled up a little as she smelt the close air. It seemed so stuffy, and so dark.
“We’ll light the lamp,” he said.
Presently she laughed a little shyly, and asked where she was to sleep.
“Lord bless us, you may well ask!” Peer scratched his head. “There’s only one bed, you see.” At that they both burst out laughing.
“The one of us’ll have to sleep on the floor,” suggested the girl.
“Right. The very thing,” said he, delighted. “I’ve two pillows; you can have one. And two rugs—anyway, you won’t be cold.”
“And then I can put on my other dress over,” she said. “And maybe you’ll have an old overcoat—”
“Splendid! So we needn’t bother any more about that.”
“But where do you get your food from?” She evidently meant to have everything cleared up at once.
Peer felt rather ashamed that he hadn’t money enough to invite her to a meal at an eating-house then and there. But he had to pay his teacher’s fees the next day; and his store-box wanted refilling too.
“I boil the coffee on the stove there overnight,” he said, “so that it’s all ready in the morning. And the dry food I keep in that box there. We’ll see about some supper now.” He opened the box, fished out a loaf and some butter, and put the kettle on the stove. She helped him to clear the papers off the table, and spread the feast on it. There was only one knife, but it was really much better fun that way than if he had had two. And soon they were seated on their chairs—they had a chair each—having their first meal in their own home, he and she together.
It was settled that Louise should sleep on the floor, and they both laughed a great deal as he tucked her in carefully so that she shouldn’t feel cold. It was not till afterwards, when the lamp was out, that they noticed that the autumn gales had set in, and there was a loud north-wester howling over the housetops. And there they lay, chatting to each other in the dark, before falling asleep.
It seemed a strange and new thing to Peer, this really having a relation of his own—and a girl, too—a young woman. There she lay on the floor near by him, and from now on he was responsible for what was to become of her in the world. How should he put that job through?
He could hear her turning over. The floor was hard, very likely.
“Louise?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see mother?”
“No.”
“Or your father?”
“My father?” She gave a little laugh.
“Yes, haven’t you ever seen him either?”
“Why, how should I, silly? Who says that mother knew herself who it was?”
There was a pause. Then Peer brought out, rather awkwardly: “We’re all alone, then—you and I.”
“Yes—we are that.”
“Louise! What are you thinking of taking to now?”
“What are you?”
So Peer told her all his plans. She said nothing for a little while—no doubt she was lying thinking of the grand things he had before him.
At last she spoke. “Do you think—does it cost very much to learn to be a midwife?”
“A midwife—is that what you want to be, girl?” Peer couldn’t help laughing. So this was what she had been planning in these days—since he had offered to help her on in the world.
“Do you think my hands are too big?” she ventured presently—he could just hear the whisper.
Peer felt a pang of pity. He had noticed already how ill the red swollen hands matched her pale clear-cut face, and he knew that in the country, when any one has small, fine hands, people call them “midwife’s hands.”
“We’ll manage it somehow, I daresay,” said Peer, turning round to the wall. He had heard that it cost several hundred crowns to go through the course at the midwifery school. It would be years before he could get together anything like that sum. Poor girl, it looked as if she would have a long time to wait.
After that they fell silent. The north-wester roared over the housetops, and presently brother and sister were asleep.
When Peer awoke the next morning, Louise was about already, making coffee over the little stove. Then she opened her box, took out a yellow petticoat and hung it on a nail, placed a pair of new shoes against the wall, lifted out some under-linen and woollen stockings, looked at them, and put them back again. The little box held all her worldly goods.
As Peer was getting up: “Gracious mercy!” she cried suddenly, “what is that awful noise down in the yard?”
“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about,” said Peer. “It’s only the job-master and his wife. They carry on like that every blessed morning; you’ll soon get used to it.”
Soon they were seated once more at the little table, drinking coffee and laughing and looking at each other. Louise had found time to do her hair—the two fair plaits hung down over her shoulders.
It was time for Peer to be off, and, warning the girl not to go too far from home and get lost, he ran down the stairs.
At the works he met Klaus Brock, and told him that his sister had come to town.
“But what are you going to do with her?” asked Klaus.
“Oh, she’ll stay with me for the present.”
“Stay with you? But you’ve only got one room and one bed, man!”
“Well—she can sleep on the floor.”
“She? Your sister? She’s to sleep on the floor—and you in the bed!” gasped Klaus.
Peer saw he had made a mistake again. “Of course I was only fooling,” he hastened to say. “Of course it’s Louise that’s to have the bed.”
When he came home he found she had borrowed a frying-pan from the carter’s wife, and had fried some bacon and boiled potatoes; so that they sat down to a dinner fit for a prince.
But when the girl’s eyes fell on the coloured print on the wall, and she asked if it was a painting, Peer became very grand at once. “That—a painting? Why, that’s only an oleograph, silly! No, I’ll take you along to the Art Gallery one day, and show you what real paintings are like.” And he sat drumming with his fingers on the table, and saying: “Well, well—well, well, well!”
They agreed that Louise had better look out at once for some work to help things along. And at the first eating-house they tried, she was taken on at once in the kitchen to wash the floor and peel potatoes.
When bedtime came he insisted on Louise taking the bed. “Of course all that was only a joke last night,” he explained. “Here in town women always have the best of everything—that’s what’s called manners.” As he stretched himself on the hard floor, he had a strange new feeling. The narrow little garret seemed to have widened out now that he had to find room in it for a guest. There was something not unpleasant even in lying on the hard floor, since he had chosen to do it for some one else’s sake.
After the lamp was out he lay for a while, listening to her breathing. Then at last:
“Louise.”
“Yes?”
“Is your father—was his name Hagen?”
“Yes. It says so on the certificate.”
“Then you’re Froken Hagen. Sounds quite fine, doesn’t it?”
“Uf! Now you’re making fun of me.”
“And when you’re a midwife, Froken Hagen might quite well marry a doctor, you know.”
“Silly! There’s no chance—with hands like mine.”
“Do you think your hands are too big for you to marry a doctor?”
“Uf! you ARE a crazy thing. Ha-ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha!”
They both snuggled down under the clothes, with the sense of ease and peace that comes from sharing a room with a good friend in a happy humour.
“Well, good-night, Louise.”
“Good-night, Peer.”