Ringeby lay on the shore of a great lake; and was one of those busy commercial towns which have sprung up in the last fifty years from a nucleus consisting of a saw-mill and a flour-mill by the side of a waterfall. Now quite a number of modern factories had spread upwards along the river, and the place was a town with some four thousand inhabitants, with a church of its own, a monster of a school building, and numbers of yellow workmen’s dwellings scattered about at random in every direction. Otherwise Ringeby was much like any other little town. There were two lawyers, who fought for scraps of legal business, and the editors of two local papers, who were constantly at loggerheads before the Conciliation Board. There was a temperance lodge and Workers’ Union and a chapel and a picture palace. And every Sunday afternoon the good citizens of Ringeby walked out along the fjord, with their wives on their arms. On these occasions most of the men wore frock coats and grey felt hats; but Enebak, the tanner, being hunchbacked, preferred a tall silk hat, as better suited to eke out his height.
On Saturday evenings, when twilight began to fall, the younger men would meet at the corner outside Hammer’s store, to discuss the events of the week.
“Have you heard the latest news?” asked Lovli, the bank cashier, of his friend the telegraphist, who came up.
“News? Do you tell me that there’s ever any news in this accursed hole?”
“Merle Uthoug has come back from the mountains—engaged to be married.”
“The devil she is! What does the old man say to that?”
“Oh, well, the old man will want an engineer if he’s to get the new timber-mills into his clutches.”
“Is the man an engineer?”
“From Egypt. A Muhammadan, I daresay. Brown as a coffee-berry, and rolling in money.”
“Do you hear that, Froken Bull? Stop a minute, here’s some news for you.”
The girl addressed turned aside and joined them. “Oh, the same piece of news that’s all over the town, I suppose. Well, I can tell you, he’s most tremendously nice.”
“Sh!” whispered the telegraphist. Peer Holm was just coming out of the Grand Hotel, dressed in a grey suit, and with a dark coat over his arm. He was trying to get a newly-lit cigar to draw, as he walked with a light elastic step past the group at the corner. A little farther up the street he encountered Merle, and took her arm, and the two walked off together, the young people at the corner watching them as they went.
“And when is it to be?” asked the telegraphist.
“He wanted to be married immediately, I believe,” said Froken Bull, “but I suppose they’ll have to wait till the banns are called, like other people.”
Lorentz D. Uthoug’s long, yellow-painted wooden house stood facing the market square; the office and the big ironmonger’s shop were on the ground floor, and the family lived in the upper storeys. “That’s where he lives,” people would say. Or “There he goes,” as the broad, grey-bearded man passed down the street. Was he such a big man, then? He could hardly be called really rich, though he had a saw-mill and a machine-shop and a flour-mill, and owned a country place some way out of the town. But there was something of the chieftain, something of the prophet, about him. He hated priests. He read deep philosophical works, forbade his family to go to church, and had been visited by Bjornson himself. It was good to have him on your side; to have him against you was fatal—you might just as well clear out of the town altogether. He had a finger in everything that went on; it was as if he owned the whole town. He had been known to meet a youth he had never spoken to before in the street and accost him with a peremptory “Understand me, young man; you will marry that girl.” Yet for all this, Lorentz Uthoug was not altogether content. True, he was head and shoulders above all the Ringeby folks, but what he really wanted was to be the biggest man in a place a hundred times as large.
And now that he had found a son-in-law, he seemed as it were to be walking quietly round this stranger from the great world, taking his measure, and asking in his thoughts: “Who are you at bottom? What have you seen? What have you read? Are you progressive or reactionary? Have you any proper respect for what I have accomplished here, or are you going about laughing in your sleeve and calling me a whale among the minnows?”
Every morning when Peer woke in his room at the hotel he rubbed his eyes. On the table beside his bed stood a photograph of a young girl. What? Is it really you, Peer, that have found someone to stand close to you at last? Someone in the world who cares about you. When you have a cold, there’ll be people to come round and be anxious about you, and ask how you are getting on. And this to happen to you!
He dined at the Uthougs’ every day, and there were always flowers beside his plate. Often there would be some little surprise—a silver spoon or fork, or a napkin-ring with his initials on. It was like gathering the first straws to make his new nest. And the pale woman with the spectacles looked kindly at him, as if to say: “You are taking her from me, but I forgive you.”
One day he was sitting in the hotel, reading, when Merle came in.
“Will you come for a walk?” she asked.
“Good idea. Where shall we go to-day?”
“Well, we haven’t been to see Aunt Marit at Bruseth yet. We really ought to go, you know. I’ll take you there to-day.”
Peer found these ceremonial visits to his new relatives quite amusing; he went round, as it were, collecting uncles and aunts. And to-day there was a new one. Well, why not?
“But—my dear girl, have you been crying?” he asked suddenly, taking her head in his hands.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Come—let’s go now.” And she thrust him gently away as he tried to kiss her. But the next moment she dropped into a chair, and sat looking thoughtfully at him through half-closed eyes, nodding her head very slightly. She seemed to be asking herself: “Who is this man? What is this I am taking on me? A fortnight ago he was an utter stranger—”
She passed her hand across her brow. “It’s mother—you know,” she said.
“Is anything special wrong to-day?”
“She’s so afraid you’re going to carry me off into the wide world at a moment’s notice.”
“But I’ve told her we’re going to live here for the present.”
The girl drew up one side of her mouth in a smile, and her eyelids almost closed. “And what about me, then? After living here all these years crazy to get out into the world?”
“And I, who am crazy to stay at home!” said Peer with a laugh. “How delicious it will be to have a house and a family at last—and peace and quiet!”
“But what about me?”
“You’ll be there, too. I’ll let you live with me.”
“Oh! how stupid you are to-day. If you only knew what it means, to throw away the best years of one’s youth in a hole like this! And besides—I could have done something worth while in music—”
“Why, then, let’s go abroad, by all means,” said Peer, wrinkling up his forehead as if to laugh.
“Oh, nonsense! you know it’s quite impossible to go off and leave mother now. But you certainly came at a very critical time. For anyway I was longing and longing just then for someone to come and carry me off.”
“Aha! so I was only a sort of ticket for the tour.” He stepped over and pinched her nose.
“Oh! you’d better be careful. I haven’t really promised yet to have you, you know.”
“Haven’t promised? When you practically asked me yourself.”
She clapped her hands together. “Why, what shameless impudence! After my saying No, No, No, for days together. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t—I said it ever so many times. And you said it didn’t matter—for YOU WOULD. Yes, you took me most unfairly off my guard; but now look out for yourself.”
The next moment she flung her arms round his neck. But when he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away again. “No,” she said, “you mustn’t think I did it for that!”
Soon they were walking arm-in-arm along the country road, on their way to Aunt Marit at Bruseth. It was September, and all about the wooded hills stood yellow, and the cornfields were golden and the rowan berries blood-red. But there was still summer in the air.
“Ugh! how impossibly fast you walk,” exclaimed Merle, stopping out of breath.
And when they came to a gate they sat down in the grass by the wayside. Below them was the town, with its many roofs and chimneys standing out against the shining lake, that lay framed in broad stretches of farm and field.
“Do you know how it came about that mother is—as she is?” asked Merle suddenly.
“No. I didn’t like to ask you about it.”
She drew a stalk of grass between her lips.
“Well, you see—mother’s father was a clergyman. And when—when father forbade her to go to church, she obeyed him. But she couldn’t sleep after that. She felt—as if she had sold her soul.”
“And what did your father say to that?”
“Said it was hysteria. But, hysteria or not, mother couldn’t sleep. And at last they had to take her away to a home.”
“Poor soul!” said Peer, taking the girl’s hand.
“And when she came back from there she was so changed, one would hardly have known her. And father gave way a little—more than he ever used to do—and said: ‘Well, well, I suppose you must go to church if you wish, but you mustn’t mind if I don’t go with you.’ And so one Sunday she took my hand and we went together, but as we reached the church door, and heard the organ playing inside, she turned back. ‘No—it’s too late now,’ she said. ‘It’s too late, Merle.’ And she has never been since.”
“And she has always been—strange—since then?”
Merle sighed. “The worst of it is she sees so many evil things compassing her about. She says the only thing to do is to laugh them away. But she can’t laugh herself. And so I have to. But when I go away from her—oh! I can’t bear to think of it.”
She hid her face against his shoulder, and he began stroking her hair.
“Tell me, Peer”—she looked up with her one-sided smile—“who is right—mother or father?”
“Have you been trying to puzzle that out?”
“Yes. But it’s so hopeless—so impossible to come to any sort of certainty. What do you think? Tell me what you think, Peer.”
They sat there alone in the golden autumn day, her head pressed against his shoulder. Why should he play the superior person and try to put her off with vague phrases?
“Dear Merle, I know, of course, no more than you do. There was a time when I saw God standing with a rod in one hand and a sugar-cake in the other—just punishment and rewards to all eternity. Then I thrust Him from me, because He seemed to me so unjust—and at last He vanished, melting into the solar systems on high, and all the infinitesimal growths here on the earth below. What was my life, what were my dreams, my joy or sorrow, to these? Where was I making for? Ever and always there was something in me saying: He IS! But where? Somewhere beyond and behind the things you know—it is there He is. And so I determined to know more things, more and more and more—and what wiser was I? A steam-hammer crushes my skull one day—and what has become of my part in progress and culture and science? Am I as much of an accident as a fly on an ant? Do I mean no more? Do I vanish and leave as little trace? Answer me that, little Merle—what do YOU think?”
The girl sat motionless, breathing softly, with closed eyes. Then she began to smile—and her lips were full and red, and at last they shaped themselves to a kiss.
Bruseth was a large farm lying high above the town, with its garden and avenues and long verandahs round the white dwelling-house. And what a view out over the lake and the country far around! The two stood for a moment at the gate, looking back.
Merle’s aunt—her father’s sister—was a widow, rich and a notable manager, but capricious to a degree, capable of being generous one day and grasping the next. It was the sorrow of her life that she had no children of her own, but she had not yet decided who was to be her heir.
She came sailing into the room where the two young people were waiting, and Peer saw her coming towards them, a tall, full-bosomed woman with grey hair and florid colour. Oho! here’s an aunt for you with a vengeance, he thought. She pulled off a blue apron she was wearing and appeared dressed in a black woollen gown, with a gold chain about her neck and long gold earrings.
“So you thought you’d come over at last,” she said. “Actually remembered my existence, after all, did you, Merle?” She turned towards Peer, and stood examining him, with her hands on her hips. “So that’s what you look like, is it, Peer? And you’re the man that was to catch Merle? Well, you see I call you Peer at once, even though you HAVE come all the way from—Arabia, is it? Sit down, sit down.”
Wine was brought in, and Aunt Marit of Bruseth lifted a congratulatory glass toward the pair with the following words:
“You’ll fight, of course. But don’t overdo it, that’s all. And mark my words, Peer Holm, if you aren’t good to her, I’ll come round one fine day and warm your ears for you. Your healths, children!”
The two went homewards arm-in-arm, dancing down the hillsides, and singing gaily as they went. But suddenly, when they were still some way from the town, Merle stopped and pointed. “There,” she whispered—“there’s mother!”
A solitary woman was walking slowly in the twilight over a wide field of stubble, looking around her. It was as if she were lingering here to search out the meaning of something—of many things. From time to time she would glance up at the sky, or at the town below, or at people passing on the road, and then she would nod her head. How infinitely far off she seemed, how utterly a stranger to all the noisy doings of men! What was she seeing now? What were her thoughts?
“Let us go on,” whispered Merle, drawing him with her. And the young girl suddenly began to sing, loudly, as if in an overflow of spirits; and Peer guessed that it was for her mother’s sake. Perhaps the lonely woman stood there now in the twilight smiling after them.
One Sunday morning Merle drove up to the hotel in a light cart with a big brown horse; Peer came out and climbed in, leaving the reins to her. They were going out along the fjord to look at her father’s big estate which in olden days had been the County Governors’ official residence.
It is the end of September. The sun is still warm, but the waters of the lake are grey and all the fields are reaped. Here and there a strip of yellowing potato-stalks lies waiting to be dug up. Up on the hillsides horses tethered for grazing stand nodding their heads slowly, as if they knew that it was Sunday. And a faint mist left by the damps of the night floats about here and there over the broad landscape.
They passed through a wood, and came on the other side to an avenue of old ash trees, that turned up from the road and ran uphill to a big house where a flag was flying. The great white dwelling-house stood high, as if to look out far over the world; the red farm-buildings enclosed the wide courtyard on three sides, and below were gardens and broad lands, sloping down towards the lake. Something like an estate!
“What’s the name of that place?” cried Peer, gazing at it.
“Loreng.”
“And who owns it?”
“Don’t know,” answered the girl, cracking her whip.
Next moment the horse turned in to the avenue, and Peer caught involuntarily at the reins. “Hei! Brownie—where are you going?” he cried.
“Why not go up and have a look?” said Merle.
“But we were going out to look at your father’s place.”
“Well, that is father’s place.”
Peer stared at her face and let go the reins. “What? What? You don’t mean to say your father owns that place there?”
A few minutes later they were strolling through the great, low-ceiled rooms. The whole house was empty now, the farm-bailiff living in the servants’ quarters. Peer grew more and more enthusiastic. Here, in these great rooms, there had been festive gatherings enough in the days of the old Governors, where cavaliers in uniform or with elegant shirt-frills and golden spurs had kissed the hands of ladies in sweeping silk robes. Old mahogany, pot-pourri, convivial song, wit, grace—Peer saw it all in his mind’s eye, and again and again he had to give vent to his feelings by seizing Merle and embracing her.
“Oh, but look here, Merle—you know, this is a fairy-tale.”
They passed out into the old neglected garden with its grass-grown paths and well-filled carp-ponds and tumble-down pavilions. Peer rushed about it in all directions. Here, too, there had been fetes, with coloured lamps festooned around, and couples whispering in the shade of every bush. “Merle, did you say your father was going to sell all this to the State?”
“Yes, that’s what it will come to, I expect,” she answered. “The place doesn’t pay, he says, when he can’t live here himself to look after it.”
“But what use can the State make of it?”
“Oh, a Home for Imbeciles, I believe.”
“Good Lord! I might have guessed it! An idiot asylum—to be sure.” He tramped about, fairly jumping with excitement. “Merle, look here—will you come and live here?”
She threw back her head and looked at him. “I ask you, Merle. Will you come and live here?”
“Do you want me to answer this moment, on the spot?”
“Yes. For I want to buy it this moment, on the spot.”
“Well, aren’t you—”
“Look, Merle, just look at it all. That long balcony there, with the doric columns—nothing shoddy about that—it’s the real thing. Empire. I know something about it.”
“But it’ll cost a great deal, Peer.” There was some reluctance in her voice. Was she thinking of her violin? Was she loth to take root too firmly?
“A great deal?” he said. “What did your father give for it?”
“The place was sold by auction, and he got it cheap. Fifty thousand crowns, I think it was.”
Peer strode off towards the house again. “We’ll buy it. It’s the very place to make into a home. . . . Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, cottars—ah! it’ll be grand.”
Merle followed him more slowly. “But, Peer, remember you’ve just taken over father’s machine-shops in town.”
“Pooh!” said Peer scornfully. “Do you think I can’t manage to run that village smithy and live here too! Come along, Merle.” And he took her hand and drew her into the house again.
It was useless to try to resist. He dragged her from room to room, furnishing as he went along. “This room here is the dining-room—and that’s the big reception-room; this will be the study—that’s a boudoir for you. . . . Come now; to-morrow we’ll go into Christiania and buy the furniture.”
Merle gasped for breath. He had got so far by this time that the furnishing was complete and they were installed. They had a governess already, and he was giving parties too. Here was the ballroom. He slipped an arm round her waist and danced round the room with her, till she was carried away by his enthusiasm, and stood flushed and beaming, while all she had dreamed of finding some day out in the wide world seemed suddenly to unfold around her here in these empty rooms. Was this really to be her home? She stopped to take breath and to look around her.
Late that evening Peer sat at the hotel with a note-book, working the thing out. He had bought Loreng; his father-in-law had been reasonable, and had let him have the place, lands and woods and all, for the ridiculous price he had paid himself. There was a mortgage of thirty thousand crowns on the estate. Well, that might stand as it was, for the bulk of Peer’s money was tied up in Ferdinand Holm’s company.
A few days after he carried Merle off to the capital, leaving the carpenters and painters hard at work at Loreng.
One day he was sitting alone at the hotel in Christiania—Merle was out shopping—when there was a very discreet knock at the door.
“Come in,” called Peer. And in walked a middle-sized man, of thirty or more, dressed in a black frock-coat with a large-patterned vest, and his dark hair carefully combed over a bald patch on the crown. He had a red, cheery face; his eyes were of the brightest blue, and the whole man breathed and shone with good humour.
“I am Uthoug junior,” said the new-comer, with a bow and a laugh.
“Oh—that’s capital.”
“Just come across from Manchester—beastly voyage. Thanks, thanks—I’ll find a seat.” He sat down, and flung one striped trouser-leg over the other.
Peer sent for some wine, and in half an hour the two were firm allies. Uthoug junior’s life-story to date was quickly told. He had run away from home because his father had refused to let him go on the stage—had found on trial that in these days there weren’t enough theatres to go round—then had set up in business for himself, and now had a general agency for the sale of English tweeds. “Freedom, freedom,” was his idea; “lots of elbow-room—room to turn about in—without with your leave or by your leave to father or anyone! Your health!”
A week later the street outside Lorentz D. Uthoug’s house in Ringeby was densely crowded with people, all gazing up at the long rows of lighted windows. There was feasting to-night in the great man’s house. About midnight a carriage drove up to the door. “That’s the bridegroom’s,” whispered a bystander. “He got those horses from Denmark!”
The street door opened, and a white figure, thickly cloaked, appeared on the steps. “The bride!” whispered the crowd. Then a slender man in a dark overcoat and silk hat. “The bridegroom!” And as the pair passed out, “Hip-hip-hip—” went the voice of the general agent for English tweeds, and the hurrahs came with a will.
The carriage moved off, and Peer sat, with his arm round his bride, driving his horses at a sharp trot out along the fjord. Out towards his home, towards his palace, towards a new and untried future.
A little shaggy, grey-bearded old man stood chopping and sawing in the wood-shed at Loreng. He had been there longer than anyone could remember. One master left, another took his place—what was that to the little man? Didn’t the one need firewood—and didn’t the other need firewood just the same? In the evening he crept up to his den in the loft of the servants’ wing; at meal-times he sat himself down in the last seat at the kitchen-table, and it seemed to him that there was always food to be had. Nowadays the master’s name was Holm—an engineer he was—and the little man blinked at him with his eyes, and went on chopping in the shed. If they came and told him he was not wanted and must go—why, thank heaven, he was stone deaf, as everyone knew. Thud, thud, went his axe in the shed; and the others about the place were so used to it that they heeded it no more than the ticking of a clock upon the wall.
In the kitchen of the big house two girls stood by the window peeping out into the garden and giggling.
“There he is again,” said Laura. “Sh! don’t laugh so loud. There! now he’s stopping again!”
“He’s whistling to a bird,” said Oliana. “Or talking to himself perhaps. Do you think he’s quite right in his head?”
“Sh! The mistress’ll hear.”
It was no less a person than the master of Loreng himself whose proceedings struck them as so comic.
Peer it was, wandering about in the great neglected garden, with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and his cap on the back of his head, stopping here and there, and moving on again as the fancy took him. Sometimes he would hum a snatch of a song, and again fall to whistling; here he would pick up a twig and look at it, or again it might be a bird, or perhaps an old neglected apple-tree that seemed worth stopping to talk to. The best of it was that these were his own lands and his own woods that lay there in the rusty October sunshine. Was all that nothing? And the hill over on the farther shore, standing on its head in the dark lake-mirror, clothed in a whole world of colour—yellow leaves and green leaves, and light red and dark red, and golden and blood-red patches, with the dark green of the pines between. His eyes had all this to rest on. Did he really live here? What abundant fruitfulness all around him! What a sky, so wide, so golden that it seemed to ring again. The potato-stalks lay uprooted, scattered on the fields; the corn was safely housed. And here he stood. He seemed again to be drawing in nourishment from all he saw, drinking it greedily. The empty places in his mind were filled; the sight of the rich soft landscape worked on his being, giving it something of its own abundant fruitfulness, its own wide repose.
And—what next?
“What next?” he mimicked in his thoughts, and started again tramping up and down the garden paths. What next—what next? Could he not afford now to take his time—to rest a little? Every man must have an end in view—must strive to reach this goal or that. And what was his object now? What was it he had so toiled for, from those hard years in the loft above the stable even until now? What was it? Often it seemed as if everything were going smoothly, going of itself; as if one day, surely, he would find his part in a great, happy world-harmony. But had he not already found it? What more would he have? Of course he had found it.
But is this all, then? What is there behind and beyond? Hush! have done with questioning. Look at the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace and rest.
He hurried up to the house, and in—it might help matters if he could take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.
Merle was in the pantry, with a big apron on, ranging jars of preserves on the shelves.
“Here, dearest little wife,” cried Peer, throwing his arms about her, “what do you say to a little run?”
“Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad about? Uf! my hair! you’ll make it come down.”
Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake. “There, dearest! Isn’t it lovely here?”
“Peer, you’ve asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came.”
“Yes, and you never answer. And you’ve never once yet run and thrown your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it’s never yet come to pass that you’ve given me a single kiss of your own accord.”
“I should think not, when you steal such a lot.” And she pushed him aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. “I must go in and see mother again to-day,” she said as she went.
“Huit! Of course!” He paced up and down the room, his step growing more and more impatient. “In to mother—in to mother! Always and everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!” and he began to whistle.
Merle put her head in at the door. “Peer—have you such a terrible lot of spare time?”
“Well, yes and no. I’m busy enough looking about in every corner here for something or another. But I can’t find it, and I don’t even know exactly what it is. Oh well, yes—I have plenty of time to spare.”
“But what about the farm?”
“Well, there’s the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I to do—poke around making improvements?”
“But what about the machine-shop?”
“Don’t I go in twice a day—cycle over to see how things are going? But with Rode for manager—that excellent and high-principled engineer—”
“Surely you could help him in some way?”
“He’s got to go on running along the line of rails he’s used to—nothing else for it, my darling. And four or five thousand crowns a year, net profit—why, it’s magnificent!”
“But couldn’t you extend the business?”
He raised his eyebrows, and his mouth pursed itself up.
“Extend—did you say extend? Extend a—a doll’s house!”
“Oh, Peer, you shouldn’t laugh at it—a thing that father took so much pains to set going!”
“And YOU shouldn’t go worrying me to get to work again in earnest, Merle. You shouldn’t really. One of these days I might discover that there’s no way to be happy in the world but to drag a plough and look straight ahead and forget that there’s anything else in existence. It may come to that one day—but give me a little breathing-space first, and you love me. Well, good-bye for a while.”
Merle, busying herself again in her pantry, glanced out of the window and saw him disappear into the stables. At first she had gone with him when he wandered about like this, touching and feeling all his possessions. In the cattle-stalls, it might be, stroking and patting, getting himself covered with hairs, and chattering away in childish glee. “Look, Merle—this cow is mine, child! Dagros her name is—and she’s mine. We have forty of them—and they’re all mine. And that nag there—what a sight he is! We have eight of them. They’re mine. Yours too, of course. But you don’t care a bit about it. You haven’t even hugged any of them yet. But when a man’s been as poor as I’ve been—and suddenly wakened up one day and found he owned all this—No, wait a minute, Merle—come and kiss old Brownie.” She knew the ritual now—he could go over it all again and again, and each time with the same happy wonder. Was it odious of her that she was beginning to find it a little comic? And how did it come about that often, when she might be filled with the deepest longing for him, and he burst in upon her boisterously, hungry for her caresses, she would grow suddenly cold, and put him aside? What was the matter? Why did she behave like this?
Perhaps it was because he was so much the stronger, so overwhelming in his effect on her that she had to keep a tight hold on herself to avoid being swept clean away and losing her identity. At one moment they might be sitting in the lamplight, chatting easily together, and so near in heart and mind; and the next it would be over—he would suddenly have started up and be pacing up and down the room, delivering a sort of lecture. Merle—isn’t it marvellous, the spiritual life of plants? And then would come a torrent of talk about strange plant-growths in the north and in the south, plants whose names she had never even heard—their struggle for existence, their loves and longings, their heroism in disease, the divine marvel of their death. Their inventions, their wisdom, aye, their religious sense—is it not marvellous, Merle? From this it was only a step to the earth’s strata, fossils, crystals—a fresh lecture. And finally he would sum up the whole into one great harmony of development, from the primary cell-life to the laws of gravitation that rule the courses of the stars. Was it not marvellous? One common rhythm beating through the universe—a symphony of worlds!—And then he must have a kiss!
But she could only draw back and put him gently aside. It was as if he came with all his stored-up knowledge—his lore of plants and fossils, crystals and stars—and poured it all out in a caress. She could almost have cried out for help. And after hurrying her through the wonders of the universe in this fashion, he would suddenly catch her up in his arms, and whirl her off in a passionate intoxication of the senses till she woke at last like a castaway on an island, hardly knowing where or what she was. She laughed, but she could have found it in her heart to weep. Could this be love? In this strong man, whose life till now had been all study and work, the stored-up feeling burst vehemently forth, now that it had found an outlet. But why did it leave her so cold?
When Peer came in from the stables, humming a tune, he found her in the sitting-room, dressed in a dark woollen dress with a red ribbon round her throat.
He stopped short: “By Jove—how that suits you, Merle!”
She let her eyes linger on him for a moment, and then came up and threw her arms round his neck.
“Did he have to go to the stables all alone today?”
“Yes; I’ve been having a chat with the young colt.”
“Am I unkind to you, Peer?”
“You?—you!”
“Not even if I ask you to drive me in to see mother?”
“Why, that’s the very thing. The new horse I bought yesterday from Captain Myhre should be here any minute—I’m just waiting for it.”
“A new horse—to ride?”
“Yes. Hang it—I must get some riding. I had to handle Arab horses for years. But we’ll try this one in the gig first.”
Merle was still standing with her arms round his neck, and now she pressed her warm rich lips to his, close and closer. It was at such moments that she loved him—when he stood trembling with a joy unexpected, that took him unawares. She too trembled, with a blissful thrill through soul and body; for once and at last it was she who gave.
“Ah!” he breathed at last, pale with emotion. “I—I’d be glad to die like that.”
A little later they stood on the balcony looking over the courtyard, when a bearded farm-hand came up with a big light-maned chestnut horse prancing in a halter. The beast stood still in the middle of the yard, flung up its head, and neighed, and the horses in the stable neighed in answer.
“Oh, what a beauty!” exclaimed Merle, clapping her hands.
“Put him into the gig,” called Peer to the stable-boy who had come out to take the horse.
The man touched his cap. “Horse has never been driven before, sir, I was to say.”
“Everything must have a beginning,” said Peer.
Merle glanced at him. But they were both dressed to go out when the chestnut came dancing up before the door with the gig. The white hoofs pawed impatiently, the head was high in the air, and the eyes flashed fire—he wasn’t used to having shafts pressing on his sides and wheels rumbling just behind him. Peer lit a cigar.
“You’re not going to smoke?” Merle burst out.
“Just to show him I’m not excited,” said Peer. No sooner had they taken their seats in the gig than the beast began to snort and rear, but the long lash flicked out over its neck, and a minute later they were tearing off in a cloud of dust towards the town.
Winter came—and a real winter it was. Peer moved about from one window to another, calling all the time to Merle to come and look. He had been away so long—the winter of Eastern Norway was all new to him. Look—look! A world of white—a frozen white tranquillity—woods, plains, lakes all in white, a fairy-tale in sunlight, a dreamland at night under the great bright moon. There was a ringing of sleigh-bells out on the lake, and up in the snow-powdered forest; the frost stood thick on the horses’ manes and the men’s beards were hung with icicles. And in the middle of the night loud reports of splitting ice would come from the lake—sounds to make one sit up in bed with a start.
Driving’s worth while in weather like this—come, Merle. The new stallion from Gudbrandsdal wants breaking in—we’ll take him. Hallo! and away they go in their furs, swinging out over the frozen lake, whirling on to the bare glassy ice, where they skid and come near capsizing, and Merle screams—but they get on to snow, and hoofs and runners grip again. None of your galloping—trot now, trot! And Peer cracks his whip. The black, long-maned Gudbrandsdaler lifts his head and trots out. And the evening comes, and under the wide and starry sky they dash up again to Loreng—Loreng that lies there lighting them home with its long rows of glowing windows. A glorious day, wife!
Or they would go out on ski over the hills to the woodmen’s huts in the forest, and make a blazing fire in the big chimney and drink steaming coffee. Then home again through one of those pale winter evenings with a violet twilight over woods and fields and lake, over white snow and blue. Far away on the brown hillside in the west stands a farmhouse, with all its windows flaming with the reflection from a golden cloud. Here they come rushing, the wind of their passing shaking the snow from the pines; on, on, over deep-rutted woodcutters’ roads, over stumps and stones—falling, bruising themselves, burying their faces deep in the snow, but dragging themselves up again, smiling to each other and rushing on again. Then, reaching home red and dripping, they lean the ski up against the wall, and stamp the snow off their boots.
“Merle,” said Peer, picking the ice from his beard, “we must have a bottle of Burgundy at dinner to-night.”
“Yes—and shall we ring up and ask someone to come over?”
“Someone—from outside? Can’t we two have a little jollification all to ourselves?”
“Yes, yes, of course, if you like.”
A shower-bath—a change of underclothes—how delicious! And—an idea! He’ll appear at dinner in evening dress, just for a surprise. But as he entered the room he stopped short. For there stood Merle herself in evening dress—a dress of dark red velvet, with his locket round her neck and the big plaits of hair rolled into a generous knot low on her neck. Flowers on the table—the wine set to warm—the finest glass, the best silver—ptarmigan—how splendid! They lift their glasses filled with the red wine and drink to each other.
The frozen winter landscape still lingered in their thoughts, but the sun had warmed their souls; they laughed and jested, held each other’s hands long, and sat smiling at each other in long silences.
“A glorious day to-day, Merle. And to-morrow we die.”
“What do you say!—to-morrow!”
“Or fifty years hence. It comes to the same thing.” He pressed her hand and his eyes half closed.
“But this evening we’re together—and what could we want more?”
Then he fell to talking of his Egyptian experiences. He had once spent a month’s holiday in visiting ruined cities with Maspero, the great Maspero himself, going with him to Luxor, to Karnak, with its great avenues of sphinxes, to El Amarna and Shubra. They had looked on ancient cities of temples and king’s mausoleums, where men thousands of years dead lay as if lost in thought, with eyes wide open, ready at any moment to rise and call out: Slave, is the bath ready? There in the middle of a cornfield rises an obelisk. You ask what it is—it is all that is left of a royal city. There, too, a hundred thousand years ago maybe, young couples have sat together, drinking to each other in wine, revelling in all the delights of love—and where are they now? Aye, where are they, can you tell me?
“When that journey was over, Merle, I began to think that it was not mere slime of the Nile that fertilised the fields; it was the mouldered bodies of the dead. I rode over dust that had been human fingers, lips that had clung in kisses. Millions and millions of men and women have lived on those river-banks, and what has become of them now? Geology. And I thought of the millions of prayers wailed out there to the sun and stars, to stone idols in the temples, to crocodiles and snakes and the river itself, the sacred river. And the air, Merle—the air received them, and vibrated for a second—and that was all. And even so our prayers go up, to this very day. We press our warm lips to a cold stone, and think to leave an impression. Skaal!”
But Merle did not touch her glass; she sat still, with her eyes on the yellow lampshade. She had not yet given up all her dreams of going forth and conquering the world with her music—and he sat there rolling out eternity itself before her, while he and she herself, her parents, all, all became as chaff blown before the wind and vanished.
“What, won’t you drink with me? Well, well—then I must pledge you by myself. Skaal!”
And being well started on his travellers’ tales he went on with them, but now in a more cheerful vein, so that she found it possible to smile. He told of the great lake-swamps, with their legions of birds, ibis, pelicans, swans, flamingos, herons, and storks—a world of long beaks and curved breasts and stilt-like legs and shrieking and beating of wings. Most wonderful of all it was to stand and watch and be left behind when the birds of passage flew northward in their thousands in the spring. My love to Norway, he would say, as they passed. And in the autumn to see them return, grey goose, starling, wagtail, and all the rest. “How goes it now at home?” he would think—and “Next time I’ll go with you,” he would promise himself year after year.
“And here I am at last! Skaal!”
“Welcome home,” said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.
He rang the bell. “What do you want?” her eyes asked.
“Champagne,” said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.
“Are you crazy, Peer?”
He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: “Now, gentlemen, here’s a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win his spurs—who’s ready?” And half a score of voices answered “I.” “Well, here’s the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion and have a railway—couple of hundred miles of it—what do you say to that?” “Splendid,” we cried in chorus. “Well, but we’ve got to compete with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans—and we’ve got to win.” “Of course”—a louder chorus still. “Now, I’m going to take two men and give them a free hand. They’ll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and the financial side—and a project that’s better and cheaper than the opposition ones. Eight months’ work for a good man, but I must have it done in four. Take along assistants and equipment—all you need—and a thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get the job.”
“Peer—were you sent?” Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.
“I—and one other.”
“Who was that?”
“His name was Ferdinand Holm.”
Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!
“And what came of it?” she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the lamp.
Peer flung away his cigarette. “First an expedition up the Nile, then a caravan journey, camels and mules and assistants and provisions and instruments and tents and quinine—heaps of quinine. Have you any idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything had to be planned and estimated at top speed—material, labour, time, cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting and erecting—but even then it would be no good if the Germans could come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it’s true—but then there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And sunstroke—yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed out by the rain. I lost my best assistant by snakebite. But such things didn’t count as hindrances, they couldn’t be allowed to delay the work. If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a couple of months a blacksmith’s hammer started thumping in the back of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night, little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When I looked in the glass, my eyes were just two red balls in my head. But when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief’s office.”
“And—and Ferdinand Holm?”
“Had got in the day before.”
Merle shifted a little in her seat. “And so—he won?”
Peer lit another cigarette. “No,” he said—the cigarette seemed to draw rather badly—“I won. And that’s how I came to be building railways in Abyssinia.”
“Here’s the champagne,” said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the glasses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him from head to foot.
“I feel like playing to-night,” she said.
It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old longings.
Peer sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands, listening. And there she stood, at the music-stand, in her red dress, flushed and warm, and shining in the yellow lamplight, playing.
Then suddenly the thought of her mother came to her, and she went to the telephone. “Mother—are you there, mother? Oh, we’ve had such a glorious day.” And the girl ran on, as if trying to light up her mother’s heart with some rays of the happiness her own happy day had brought her.
A little later Peer lay in bed, while Merle flitted about the room, lingering over her toilet.
He watched her as she stood in her long white gown before the toilet-table with the little green-shaded lamps, doing her hair for the night in a long plait. Neither of them spoke. He could see her face in the glass, and saw that her eyes were watching him, with a soft, mysterious glance—the scent of her hair seemed to fill the place with youth.
She turned round towards him and smiled. And he lay still, beckoning her towards him with shining eyes. All that had passed that evening—their outing, and the homeward journey in the violet dusk, their little feast, and his story, the wine—all had turned to love in their hearts, and shone out now in their smile.
It may be that some touch of the cold breath of the eternities was still in their minds, the remembrance of the millions on millions that die, the flight of the aeons towards endless darkness; yet in spite of all, the minutes now to come, their warm embrace, held a whole world of bliss, that out-weighed all, and made Peer, as he lay there, long to send out a hymn of praise into the universe, because it was so wonderful to live.
He began to understand why she lingered and took so long. It was a sign that she wanted to surprise him, that her heart was kind. And her light breathing seemed even now to fill the room with love.
Outside in the night the lake-ice, splitting into new crevices, sent up loud reports; and the winter sky above the roof that sheltered them was lit with all its stars.