So things went on till winter was far spent. Now that Louise, too, was a wage-earner, and could help with the expenses, they could dine luxuriously at an eating-house every day, if they pleased, on meat-cakes at fourpence a portion. They managed to get a bed for Peer that could be folded up during the day, and soon learned, too, that good manners required they should hang up Louise’s big woollen shawl between them as a modest screen while they were dressing and undressing. And Louise began to drop her country speech and talk city-fashion like her brother.
One thought often came to Peer as he lay awake. “The girl is the very image of mother, that’s certain—what if she were to go the same way? Well, no, that she shall not. You’re surely man enough to see to that. Nothing of that sort shall happen, my dear Froken Hagen.”
They saw but little of each other during the day, though, for they were apart from early in the morning till he came home in the evening. And when he lectured her, and warned her to be careful and take no notice of men who tried to speak to her, Louise only laughed. When Klaus Brock came up one day to visit them, and made great play with his eyes while he talked to her, Peer felt much inclined to take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him downstairs.
When Christmas-time was near they would wander in the long evenings through the streets and look in at the dazzlingly lit shop-windows, with their tempting, glittering show of gold and finery. Louise kept asking continually how much he thought this thing or that cost—that lace, or the cloak, or the stockings, or those gold brooches. “Wait till you marry that doctor,” Peer would say, “then you can buy all those things.” So far neither of them had an overcoat, but Peer turned up his coat-collar when he felt cold, and Louise made the most of her thick woollen dress and a pair of good country gloves that kept her quite warm. And she had adventured on a hat now, in place of her kerchief, and couldn’t help glancing round, thinking people must notice how fine she was.
On Christmas Eve he carried up buckets of water from the yard, and she had a great scrubbing-out of the whole room. And then they in their turn had a good wash, helping each other in country fashion to scrub shoulders and back.
Peer was enough of a townsman now to have laid in a few little presents to give his sister; but the girl, who had not been used to such doings, had nothing for him, and wept a good deal when she realised it. They ate cakes from the confectioner’s with syrup over them, and drank chocolate, and then Louise played a hymn-tune, in her best style, on her violin, and Peer read the Christmas lessons from the prayer-book—it was all just like what they used to do at Troen on Christmas Eve. And that night, after the lamp was put out, they lay awake talking over plans for the future. They promised each other that when they had got well on in the world, he in his line and she in hers, they would manage to live near each other, so that their children could play together and grow up good friends. Didn’t she think that was a good idea? Yes, indeed she did. And did he really mean it? Yes, of course he meant it, really.
But later on in the winter, when she sat at home in the evenings waiting for him—he often worked overtime—she was sometimes almost afraid. There was his step on the stairs! If it was hurried and eager she would tremble a little. For the moment he was inside the door he would burst out: “Hurrah, my girl! I’ve learnt something new to-day, I tell you!” “Have you, Peer?” And then out would pour a torrent of talk about motors and power and pressures and cylinders and cranes and screws, and such-like. She would sit and listen and smile, but of course understood not a word of it all, and as soon as Peer discovered this he would get perfectly furious, and call her a little blockhead.
Then there were the long evenings when he sat at home reading, by himself or with his teacher and she had to sit so desperately still that she hardly dared take a stitch with her needle. But one day he took it into his head that his sister ought to be studying too; so he set her a piece of history to learn by the next evening. But time to learn it—where was that to come from? And then he started her writing to his dictation, to improve her spelling—and all the time she kept dropping off to sleep. She had washed so many floors and peeled so many potatoes in the daytime that now her body felt like lead.
“Look here, my fine girl!” he would storm at her, raging up and down the room, “if you think you can get on in the world without education, you’re most infernally mistaken.” He succeeded in reducing her to tears—but it wasn’t long before her head had fallen forward on the table again and she was fast asleep. So he realised there was nothing for it but to help her to bed—as quietly as possible, so as not to wake her up.
Some way on in the spring Peer fell sick. When the doctor came, he looked round the room, sniffed, and frowned. “Do you call this a place for human beings to live in?” he asked Louise, who had taken the day off. “How can you expect to keep well?”
He examined Peer, who lay coughing, his face a burning red. “Yes, yes—just as I expected. Inflammation of the lungs.” He glanced round the room once more. “Better get him off to the hospital at once,” he said.
Louise sat there in terror at the idea that Peer was to be taken away. And then, as the doctor was going, he looked at her more closely, and said: “You’d do well to be a bit careful yourself, my good girl. You look as if you wanted a change to a decent room, with a little more light and air, pretty badly. Good-morning.”
Soon after he was gone the hospital ambulance arrived. Peer was carried down the stairs on a stretcher, and the green-painted box on wheels opened its door and swallowed him up; and they would not even let her go with him. All through the evening she sat in their room alone, sobbing.
The hospital was one of the good old-fashioned kind that people don’t come near if they can help it, because the walls seem to reek of the discomfort and wretchedness that reign inside. The general wards—where the poor folks went—were always so overcrowded that patients with all sorts of different diseases had to be packed into the same rooms, and often infected each other. When an operation was to be performed, things were managed in the most cheerfully casual way: the patient was laid on a stretcher and carried across the open yard, often in the depth of winter, and as he was always covered up with a rug, the others usually thought he was being taken off to the dead-house.
When Peer opened his eyes, he was aware of a man in a white blouse standing by the foot of his bed. “Why, I believe he’s coming-to,” said the man, who seemed to be a doctor. Peer found out afterwards from a nurse that he had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.
He lay there, day after day, conscious of nothing but the stabbing of a red-hot iron boring through his chest and cutting off his breathing. Some one would come every now and then and pour port wine and naphtha into his mouth; and morning and evening he was washed carefully with warm water by gentle hands. But little by little the room grew lighter, and his gruel began to have some taste. And at last he began to distinguish the people in the beds near by, and to chat with them.
On his right lay a black-haired, yellow-faced dock labourer with a broken nose. His disease, whatever it might be, was clearly different from Peer’s. He plagued the nurse with foul-mouthed complaints of the food, swearing he would report about it. On the other side lay an emaciated cobbler with a soft brown beard like the Christ pictures, and cheeks glowing with fever. He was dying of cancer. At right angles with him lay a man with the face and figure of a prophet—a Moses—all bushy white hair and beard; he was in the last stage of consumption, and his cough was like a riveting machine. “Huh!” he would groan, “if only I could get across to Germany there’d be a chance for me yet.” Beside him was a fellow with short beard and piercing eyes, who was a little off his head, and imagined himself a corporal of the Guards. Often at night the others would be wakened by his springing upright in bed and calling out: “Attention!”
One man lay moaning and groaning all the time, turning from side to side of a body covered with sores. But one day he managed to swallow some of the alcohol they used as lotion, and after that lay singing and weeping alternately. And there was a red-bearded man with glasses, a commercial traveller; he had put a bullet into his head, but the doctors had managed to get it out again, and now he lay and praised the Lord for his miraculous deliverance.
It was strange to Peer to lie awake at night in this great room in the dim light of the night-lamp; it seemed as if beings from the land of the dead were stirring in those beds round about him. But in the daytime, when friends and relations of the patients came a-visiting, Peer could hardly keep from crying. The cobbler had a wife and a little girl who came and sat beside him, gazing at him as if they could never let him go. The prophet, too, had a wife, who wept inconsolably—and all the rest seemed to have some one or other to care for them. But where was Louise—why did Louise never come?
The man on the right had a sister, who came sweeping in, gorgeous in her trailing soiled silk dress. Her shoes were down at heel, but her hat was a wonder, with enormous plumes. “Hallo, Ugly! how goes it?” she said; and sat down and crossed her legs. Then the pair would talk mysteriously of people with strange names: “The Flea,” “Cockroach,” “The Galliot,” “King Ring,” and the like, evidently friends of theirs. One day she managed to bring in a small bottle of brandy, a present from “The Hedgehog,” and smuggle it under the bedclothes. As soon as she had gone, and the coast was clear, Peer’s neighbour drew out the bottle, managed to work the cork out, and offered him a drink. “Here’s luck, sonny; do you good.” No—Peer would rather not. Then followed a gurgling sound from the docker’s bed, and soon he too was lying singing at the top of his voice.
At last one day Louise came. She was wearing her neat hat, and had a little bundle in her hand, and as she came in, looking round the room, the close air of the sick-ward seemed to turn her a little faint. But then she caught sight of Peer, and smiled, and came cautiously to him, holding out her hand. She was astonished to find him so changed. But as she sat down by his pillow she was still smiling, though her eyes were full of tears.
“So you’ve come at last, then?” said Peer.
“They wouldn’t let me in before,” she said with a sob. And then Peer learned that she had come there every single day, but only to be told that he was too ill to see visitors.
The man with the broken nose craned his head forward to get a better view of the modest young girl. And meanwhile she was pulling out of the bundle the offering she had brought—a bottle of lemonade and some oranges.
But it was a day or two later that something happened which Peer was often to remember in the days to come.
He had been dozing through the afternoon, and when he woke the lamp was lit, and a dull yellow half-light lay over the ward. The others seemed to be sleeping; all was very quiet, only the man with the sores was whimpering softly. Then the door opened, and Peer saw Louise glide in, softly and cautiously, with her violin-case under her arm. She did not come over to where her brother lay, but stood in the middle of the ward, and, taking out her violin, began to play the Easter hymn: “The mighty host in white array.” *
* “Den store hvide Flok vi se.”
The man with the sores ceased whimpering; the patients in the beds round about opened their eyes. The docker with the broken nose sat up in bed, and the cobbler, roused from his feverish dream, lifted himself on his elbow and whispered: “It is the Redeemer. I knew Thou wouldst come.” Then there was silence. Louise stood there with eyes fixed on her violin, playing her simple best. The consumptive raised his head and forgot to cough; the corporal slowly stiffened his body to attention; the commercial traveller folded his hands and stared before him. The simple tones of the hymn seemed to be giving new life to all these unfortunates; the light of it was in their faces. But to Peer, watching his sister as she stood there in the half-light, it seemed as if she grew to be one with the hymn itself, and that wings to soar were given her.
When she had finished, she came softly over to his bed, stroked his forehead with her swollen hand, then glided out and disappeared as silently as she had come.
For a long time all was silent in the dismal ward, until at last the dying cobbler murmured: “I thank Thee. I knew—I knew Thou wert not far away.”
When Peer left the hospital, the doctor said he had better not begin work again at once; he should take a holiday in the country and pick up his strength. “Easy enough for you to talk,” thought Peer, and a couple of days later he was at the workshop again.
But his ways with his sister were more considerate than before, and he searched about until he had found her a place as seamstress, and saved her from her heavy floor-scrubbing.
And soon Louise began to notice with delight that her hands were much less red and swollen than they had been; they were actually getting soft and pretty by degrees.
Next winter she sat at home in the evenings while he read, and made herself a dress and cloak and trimmed a new hat, so that Peer soon had quite an elegant young lady to walk out with. But when men turned round to look at her as she passed, he would scowl and clench his fists. At last one day this was too much for Louise, and she rebelled. “Now, Peer, I tell you plainly I won’t go out with you if you go on like that.”
“All right, my girl,” he growled. “I’ll look after you, though, never fear. We’re not going to have mother’s story over again with you.”
“Well, but, after all, I’m a grown-up-girl, and you can’t prevent people looking at me, idiot!”
Klaus Brock had been entered at the Technical College that autumn, and went about now with the College badge in his cap, and sported a walking-stick and a cigarette. He had grown into a big, broad-shouldered fellow, and walked with a little swing in his step; a thick shock of black hair fell over his forehead, and he had a way of looking about him as if to say: “Anything the matter? All right, I’m ready!”
One evening he came in and asked Louise to go with him to the theatre. The young girl blushed red with joy, and Peer could not refuse; but he was waiting for them outside the yard gate when they came back. On a Sunday soon after Klaus was there again, asking her to come out for a drive. This time she did not even look to Peer for leave, but said “yes” at once. “Just you wait,” said Peer to himself. And when she came back that evening he read her a terrific lecture.
Soon he could not help seeing that the girl was going about with half-shut eyes, dreaming dreams of which she would never speak to him. And as the days went on her hands grew whiter, and she moved more lightly, as if to the rhythm of unheard music. Always as she went about the room on her household tasks she was crooning some song; it seemed that there was some joy in her soul that must find an outlet.
One Saturday in the late spring she had just come home, and was getting the supper, when Peer came tramping in, dressed in his best and carrying a parcel.
“Hi, girl! Here you are! We’re going to have a rare old feast to-night.”
“Why—what is it all about?”
“I’ve passed my entrance exam for the Technical—hurrah! Next autumn—next autumn—I’ll be a student!”
“Oh, splendid! I AM so glad!” And she dried her hand and grasped his.
“Here you are—sausages, anchovies—and here’s a bottle of brandy—the first I ever bought in my life. Klaus is coming up later on to have a glass of toddy. And here’s cheese. We’ll make things hum to-night.”
Klaus came, and the two youths drank toddy and smoked and made speeches, and Louise played patriotic songs on her violin, and Klaus gazed at her and asked for “more—more.”
When he left, Peer went with him, and as the two walked down the street, Klaus took his friend’s arm, and pointed to the pale moon riding high above the fjord, and vowed never to give him up, till he stood at the very top of the tree—never, never! Besides, he was a Socialist now, he said, and meant to raise a revolt against all class distinctions. And Louise—Louise was the most glorious girl in all the world—and now—and now—Peer might just as well know it sooner as later—they were as good as engaged to be married, he and Louise.
Peer pushed him away, and stood staring at him. “Go home now, and go to bed,” he said.
“Ha! You think I’m not man enough to defy my people—to defy the whole world!”
“Good-night,” said Peer.
Next morning, as Louise lay in bed—she had asked to have her breakfast there for once in a way—she suddenly began to laugh. “What ARE you about now?” she asked teasingly.
“Shaving,” said Peer, beginning operations.
“Shaving! Are you so desperate to be grand to-day that you must scrape all your skin off? You know there’s nothing else to shave.”
“You hold your tongue. Little do you know what I’ve got in front of me to-day.”
“What can it be? You’re not going courting an old widow with twelve children, are you?”
“If you want to know, I’m going to that schoolmaster fellow, and going to wring my savings-bank book out of him.”
Louise sat up at this. “My great goodness!” she said.
Yes; he had been working himself up to this for a year or more, and now he was going to do it. To-day he would show what he was made of—whether he was a snivelling child, or a man that could stand up to any dressing-gown in the world. He was shaving for the first time—quite true. And the reason was that it was no ordinary day, but a great occasion.
His toilet over, he put on his best hat with a flourish, and set out.
Louise stayed at home all the morning, waiting for his return. And at last she heard him on the stairs.
“Puh!” he said, and stood still in the middle of the room.
“Well? Did you get it?”
He laughed, wiped his forehead, and drew a green-covered book from his coat-pocket. “Here we are, my girl—there’s fifty crowns a month for three years. It’s going to be a bit of a pinch, with fees and books, and living and clothes into the bargain. But we’ll do it. Father was one of the right sort, I don’t care what they say.”
“But how did you manage it? What did the schoolmaster say?”
“‘Do you suppose that you—you with your antecedents—could ever pass into the Technical College?’ he said. And I told him I HAD passed. ‘Good heavens! How could you possibly qualify?’ and he shifted his glasses down his nose. And then: ‘Oh, no! it’s no good coming here with tales of that sort, my lad.’ Well, then I showed him the certificate, and he got much meeker. ‘Really!’ he said, and ‘Dear me!’ and all that. But I say, Louise—there’s another Holm entered for the autumn term.”
“Peer, you don’t mean—your half-brother?”
“And old Dressing-gown said it would never do—never! But I said it seemed to me there must be room in the world for me as well, and I’d like that bank book now, I said. ‘You seem to fancy you have some legal right to it,’ he said, and got perfectly furious. Then I hinted that I’d rather ask a lawyer about it and make sure, and at that he regularly boiled with rage and waved his arms all about. But he gave in pretty soon all the same—said he washed his hands of the whole thing. ‘And besides,’ he said, ‘your name’s Troen, you know—Peer Troen.’ Ho-ho-ho—Peer Troen! Wouldn’t he like it! Tra-la-la-la!—I say, let’s go out and get a little fresh air.”
Peer said nothing then or after about Klaus Brock, and Klaus himself was going off home for the summer holidays. As the summer wore on the town lay baking in the heat, reeking of drains, and the air from the stable came up to the couple in the garret so heavy and foul that they were sometimes nearly stifled.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Peer one day, “we really must spend a few shillings more on house rent and get a decent place to live in.”
And Louise agreed. For till the time came for him to join the College in the autumn, Peer was obliged to stick to the workshops; he could not afford a holiday just now.
One morning he was just starting with a working gang down to Stenkjaer to repair some damage in the engine-room of a big Russian grain boat, when Louise came and asked him to look at her throat. “It hurts so here,” she said.
Peer took a spoon and pressed down her tongue, but could not see anything wrong. “Better go and see the doctor, and make sure,” he said.
But the girl made light of it. “Oh, nonsense!” she said; “it’s not worth troubling about.”
Peer was away for over a week, sleeping on board with the rest. When he came back, he hurried home, suddenly thinking of Louise and her sore throat. He found the job-master greasing the wheels of a carriage, while his wife leaned out of a window scolding at him. “Your sister,” repeated the carter, turning round his face with its great red lump of nose—“she’s gone to hospital—diphtheria hospital—she has. Doctor was here over a week ago and took her off. They’ve been here since poking round and asking who she was and where she belonged—well, we didn’t know. And asking where you were, too—and we didn’t know either. She was real bad, if you ask me—”
Peer hastened off. It was a hot day, and the air was close and heavy. On he went—all down the whole length of Sea Street, through the fishermen’s quarter, and a good way further out round the bay. And then he saw a cart coming towards him, an ordinary work-cart, with a coffin on it. The driver sat on the cart, and another man walked behind, hat in hand. Peer ran on, and at last came in sight of the long yellow building at the far end of the bay. He remembered all the horrible stories he had heard about the treatment of diphtheria patients—how their throats had to be cut open to give them air, or something burned out of them with red-hot irons—oh! When at last he had reached the high fence and rung the bell, he stood breathless and dripping with sweat, leaning against the gate.
There was a sound of steps within, a key was turned, and a porter with a red moustache and freckles about his hard blue eyes thrust out his head.
“What d’you want to go ringing like that for?”
“Froken Hagen—Louise Hagen—is she better? How—how is she?”
“Lou—Louise Hagen? A girl called Louise Hagen? Is it her you’ve come to ask about?”
“Yes. She’s my sister. Tell me—or—let me in to see her.”
“Wait a bit. You don’t mean a girl that was brought in here about a week ago?”
“Yes, yes—but let me in.”
“We’ve had no end of bother and trouble about that girl, trying to find out where she came from, and if she had people here. But, of course, this weather, we couldn’t possibly keep her any longer. Didn’t you meet a coffin on a cart as you came along?”
“What—what—you don’t mean—?”
“Well, you should have come before, you know. She did ask a lot for some one called Peer. And she got the matron to write somewhere—wasn’t it to Levanger? Were you the fellow she was asking for? So you came at last! Oh, well—she died four or five days ago. And they’re just gone now to bury her, in St. Mary’s Churchyard.”
Peer turned round and looked out over the bay at the town, that lay sunlit and smoke-wreathed beyond. Towards the town he began to walk, but his step grew quicker and quicker, and at last he took off his cap and ran, panting and sobbing as he went. Have I been drinking? was the thought that whirled through his brain, or why can’t I wake? What is it? What is it? And still he ran. There was no cart in sight as yet; the little streets of the fisher-quarter were all twists and turns. At last he reached Sea Street once more, and there—there far ahead was the slow-moving cart. Almost at once it turned off to the right and disappeared, and when Peer reached the turning, it was not to be seen. Still he ran on at haphazard. There seemed to be other people in the streets—children flying red balloons, women with baskets, men with straw hats and walking-sticks. But Peer marked his line, and ran forward, thrusting people aside, upsetting those in his way, and dashing on again. In King Street he came in sight of the cart once more, nearer this time. The man walking behind it with his hat in his hand had red curling hair, and walked with a curtsying gait, giving at the knees and turning out his toes. No doubt he made his living as mourner at funerals to which no other mourners came. As the cart turned into the churchyard Peer came up with it, and tried to follow at a walk, but stumbled and could hardly keep his feet. The man behind the cart looked at him. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. The driver looked round, but drove on again at once.
The cart stopped, and Peer stood by, leaning against a tree for support. A third man came up—he seemed to be the gravedigger—and he heard the three discussing how long they might have to wait for the parson. “The time’s just about up, isn’t it?” said the driver, taking out his watch. “Ay, the clerk said he’d be here by now,” agreed the gravedigger, and blew his nose.
Soon the priest came in sight, wearing his black robe and white ruff; there were doubtless to be other funerals that day. Peer sank down on a bench and looked stupidly on while the coffin was lifted from the cart, carried to the grave, and lowered down. A man with spectacles and a red nose came up with a hymn-book, and sang something over the grave. The priest lifted the spade—and at the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on Louise’s coffin, Peer started as if struck, and all but fell from his seat.
When he looked up again, the place was deserted. The bell was ringing, and a crowd was collecting in another part of the churchyard. Peer sat where he was, quite still.
In the evening, when the gravedigger came to lock the gates, he had to take the young man by the shoulder and shake him to his senses. “Locking-up time,” he said. “You must go now.”
Peer rose and tried to walk, and by and by he was stumbling blindly out through the gate and down the street. And after a time he found himself climbing a flight of stairs above a stable-yard. Once in his room, he flung himself down on the bed as he was, and lay there still.
The close heat of the day had broken in a downpour of rain, which drummed upon the roof above his head, and poured in torrents through the gutters. Instinctively Peer started up: Louise was out in the rain—she would need her cloak. He was on his feet in a moment, as if to find it—then he stopped short, and sank slowly back upon the bed.
He drew up his feet under him, and buried his head in his arms. His brain was full of changing, hurrying visions, of storm and death, of human beings helpless in a universe coldly and indifferently ruled by a will that knows no pity.
Then for the first time it was as if he lifted up his head against Heaven itself and cried: “There is no sense in all this. I will not bear it.”
Later in the night, when he found himself mechanically folding his hands for the evening prayer he had learnt to say as a child, he suddenly burst out laughing, and clenched his fists, and cried aloud: “No, no, no—never—never again.”
Once more it came to him that there was something in God like the schoolmaster—He took the side of those who were well off already. “Yes, they who have parents and home and brothers and sisters and worldly goods—them I protect and care for. But here’s a boy alone in the world, struggling and fighting his way on as best he can—from him I will take the only thing he has. That boy is nothing to any one. Let him be punished because he is poor, and cast down to the earth, for there is none to care for him. That boy is nothing to any one—nothing.” Oh, oh, oh!—he clenched his fists and beat them against the wall.
His whole little world was broken to pieces. Either God did not exist at all, or He was cold and pitiless—one way of it was as bad as the other. The heavenly country dissolved into cloud and melted away, and above was nothing but empty space. No more folding of your hands, like a fool! Walk on the earth, and lift up your head, and defy Heaven and fate, as you defied the schoolmaster. Your mother has no need of you to save her—she is not anywhere any more. She is dead—dead and turned to clay; and more than that there is not, for her or for you or any other being in this world.
Still he lay there. He would fain have slept, but seemed instead to sink into a vague far-away twilight that rocked him—rocked him on its dark and golden waves. And now he heard a sound—what was it? A violin. “The mighty host in white array.” Louise—is it you—and playing? He could see her now, out there in the twilight. How pale she was! But still she played. And now he understood what that twilight was.
It was a world beyond the consciousness of daily life—and that world belonged to him. “Peer, let me stay here.” And something in him answered: “Yes, you shall stay, Louise. Even though there is no God and no immortality, you shall stay here.” And then she smiled. And still she played. And it was as though he were building a little vaulted chapel for her in defiance of Heaven and of God—as though he were ringing out with his own hands a great eternal chime for her sake. What was happening to him? There was none to comfort him, yet it ended, as he lay there, with his pouring out something of his innermost being, as an offering to all that lives, to the earth and the stars, until all seemed rocking, rocking with him on the stately waves of the psalm. He lay there with fast-closed eyes, stretching out his hands as though afraid to wake, and find it all nothing but a beautiful dream.
The two-o’clock bell at the Technical College had just begun to ring, and a stream of students appeared out of the long straggling buildings and poured through the gate, breaking up then into little knots and groups that went their several ways into the town.
It was a motley crowd of young men of all ages from seventeen to thirty or more. Students of the everlasting type, sent here by their parents as a last resource, for—“he can always be an engineer”; young sparks who paid more attention to their toilet than their books, and hoped to “get through somehow” without troubling to work; and stiff youths of soldierly bearing, who had been ploughed for the Army, but who likewise could “always be engineers.” There were peasant-lads who had crammed themselves through their Intermediate at a spurt, and now wore the College cap above their rough grey homespun, and dreamed of getting through in no time, and turning into great men with starched cuffs and pince-nez. There were pale young enthusiasts, too, who would probably end as actors; and there were also quondam actors, killed by the critics, but still sufficiently alive, it seemed, “to be engineers.” And as the young fellows hurried on their gay and careless way through the town, an older man here and there might look round after them with a smile of some sadness. It was easy to say what fate awaited most of them. College ended, they would be scattered like birds of passage throughout the wide world, some to fall by sunstroke in Africa, or be murdered by natives in China, others to become mining kings in the mountains of Peru, or heads of great factories in Siberia, thousands of miles from home and friends. The whole planet was their home. Only a few of them—not always the shining lights—would stay at home, with a post on the State railways, to sit in an office and watch their salaries mount by increments of L12 every fifth year.
“That’s a devil of a fellow, that brother of yours that’s here,” said Klaus Brock to Peer one day, as they were walking into town together with their books under their arms.
“Now, look here, Klaus, once for all, be good enough to stop calling him my brother. And another thing—you’re never to say a word to any one about my father having been anything but a farmer. My name’s Holm, and I’m called so after my father’s farm. Just remember that, will you?”
“Oh, all right. Don’t excite yourself.”
“Do you suppose I’d give that coxcomb the triumph of thinking I want to make up to him?”
“No, no, of course not.” Klaus shrugged his shoulders and walked on, whistling.
“Or that I want to make trouble for that fine family of his? No, I may find a way to take it out of him some day, but it won’t be that way.”
“Well, but, damn it, man! you can surely stand hearing what people say about him.” And Klaus went on to tell his story. Ferdinand Holm, it seemed, was the despair of his family. He had thrown up his studies at the Military Academy, because he thought soldiers and soldiering ridiculous. Then he had made a short experiment with theology, but found that worse still; and finally, having discovered that engineering was at any rate an honest trade, he had come to anchor at the Technical College. “What do you say to that?” asked Klaus.
“I don’t see anything so remarkable about it.”
“Wait a bit, the cream of the story’s to come. A few weeks ago he thrashed a policeman in the street—said he’d insulted a child, or something. There was a fearful scandal—arrest, the police-court, fine, and so forth. And last winter what must he do but get engaged, formally and publicly engaged, to one of his mother’s maids. And when his mother sent the girl off behind his back, he raised the standard of revolt and left home altogether. And now he does nothing but breathe fire and slaughter against the upper classes and all their works. What do you say to that?”
“My good man, what the deuce has all this got to do with me?”
“Well, I think it’s confoundedly plucky of him, anyhow,” said Klaus. “And for my part I shall get to know him if I can. He’s read an awful lot, they say, and has a damned clever head on his shoulders.”
On his very first day at the College, Peer had learned who Ferdinand Holm was, and had studied him with interest. He was a tall, straight-built fellow with reddish-blond hair and freckled face, and wore a dark tortoiseshell pince-nez. He did not wear the usual College cap, but a stiff grey felt hat, and he looked about four or five and twenty.
“Wait!” thought Peer to himself—“wait, my fine fellow! Yes, you were there, no doubt, when they turned me out of the churchyard that day. But all that won’t help you here. You may have got the start of me at first, and learned this, that, and the other, but—you just wait.”
But one morning, out in the quadrangle, he noticed that Ferdinand Holm in his turn was looking at him, in fact was putting his glasses straight to get a better view of him—and Peer turned round at once and walked away.
Ferdinand, however, had been put into a higher class almost at once, on the strength of his matriculation. Also he was going in for a different branch of the work—roads and railway construction—so that it was only in the quadrangle and the passages that the two ever met.
But one afternoon, soon after Christmas, Peer was standing at work in the big designing-room, when he heard steps behind him, and, turning round, saw Klaus Brock and—Ferdinand Holm.
“I wanted to make your acquaintance,” said Holm, and when Klaus had introduced them, he held out a large white hand with a red seal-ring on the first finger. “We’re namesakes, I understand, and Brock here tells me you take your name from a country place called Holm.”
“Yes. My father was a plain country farmer,” said Peer, and at once felt annoyed with himself for the ring of humility the words seemed to have.
“Well, the best is good enough,” said the other with a smile. “I say, though, has the first-term class gone as far as this in projection drawing? Excuse my asking. You see, we had a good deal of this sort of thing at the Military Academy, so that I know a little about it.”
Thought Peer: “Oh, you’d like to give me a little good advice, would you, if you dared?” Aloud he said: “No, the drawing was on the blackboard—the senior class left it there—and I thought I’d like to see what I could make out of it.”
The other sent him a sidelong glance. Then he nodded, said, “Good-bye—hope we shall meet again,” and walked off, his boots creaking slightly as he went. His easy manners, his gait, the tone of his voice, all seemed to irritate and humiliate Peer. Never mind—just let him wait!
Days passed, and weeks. Peer soon found another object to work for than getting the better of Ferdinand Holm. Louise’s dresses hung still untouched in his room, her shoes stood under the bed; it still seemed to him that some day she must open the door and walk in. And when he lay there alone at night, the riddle was always with him: Where is she now?—why should she have died?—would he never meet her again? He saw her always as she had stood that day playing to the sick folks in the hospital ward. But now she was dressed in white. And it seemed quite natural now that she had wings. He heard her music too—it cradled and rocked him. And all this came to be a little world apart, where he could take refuge for Sunday peace and devotion. It had nothing to do with faith or religion, but it was there. And sometimes in the midst of his work in the daytime he would divine, as in a quite separate consciousness, the tones of a fiddle-bow drawn across the strings, like reddish waves coming to him from far off, filling him with harmony, till he smiled without knowing it.
Often, though, a sort of hunger would come upon him to let his being unfold in a great wide wave of organ music in the church. But to church he never went any more. He would stride by a church door with a kind of defiance. It might indeed be an Almighty Will that had taken Louise from him, but if so he did not mean to give thanks to such a Will or bow down before it. It was as though he had in view a coming reckoning—his reckoning with something far out in eternity—and he must see to it that when that time came he could feel free—free.
On Sunday mornings, when the church bells began to ring, he would turn hastily to his books, as if to find peace in them. Knowledge—knowledge—could it stay his hunger for the music of the hymn? When he had first started work at the shops, he had often and often stood wide-eyed before some miracle—now he was gathering the power to work miracles himself. And so he read and read, and drank in all that he could draw from teacher or book, and thought and thought things out for himself. Fixed lessons and set tasks were all well enough, but Peer was for ever looking farther; for him there were questions and more questions, riddles and new riddles—always new, always farther and farther on, towards the unknown. He had made as yet but one step forward in physics, mathematics, chemistry; he divined that there were worlds still before him, and he must hasten on, on, on. Would the day ever come when he should reach the end? What is knowledge? What use do men make of all that they have learned? Look at the teachers, who knew so much—were they greater, richer, brighter beings than the rest? Could much study bring a man so far that some night he could lift up a finger and make the stars themselves break into song? Best drive ahead, at any rate. But, again, could knowledge lead on to that ecstasy of the Sunday psalm, that makes all riddles clear, that bears a man upwards in nameless happiness, in which his soul expands till it can enfold the infinite spaces? Well, at any rate the best thing was to drive ahead, drive ahead both early and late.
One day that spring, when the trees in the city avenues were beginning to bud, Klaus Brock and Ferdinand Holm were sitting in a cafe in North Street. “There goes your friend,” said Ferdinand; and looking from the window they saw Peer Holm passing the post-office on the other side of the road. His clothes were shabby, his shoes had not been cleaned, he walked slowly, his fair head with its College cap bent forward, but seemed nevertheless to notice all that was going on in the street.
“Wonder what he’s going pondering over now,” said Klaus.
“Look there—I suppose that’s a type of carriage he’s never seen before. Why, he has got the driver to stop—”
“I wouldn’t mind betting he’ll crawl in between the wheels to find out whatever he’s after,” laughed Klaus, drawing back from the window so as not to be seen.
“He looks pale and fagged out,” said Ferdinand, shifting his glasses. “I suppose his people aren’t very well off?”
Klaus opened his eyes and looked at the other. “He’s not overburdened with cash, I fancy.”
They drank off their beer, and sat smoking and talking of other things, until Ferdinand remarked casually: “By the way—about your friend—are his parents still alive?”
Klaus was by no means anxious to go into Peer’s family affairs, and answered briefly—No, he thought not.
“I’m afraid I’m boring you with questions, but the fact is the fellow interests me rather. There is something in his face, something—arresting. Even the way he walks—where is it I’ve seen some one walk like that before? And he works like a steam-engine, I hear?”
“Works!” repeated Klaus. “He’ll ruin his health before long, the way he goes on grinding. I believe he’s got an idea that by much learning he can learn at last to—Ha-ha-ha!”
“To do what?”
“Why—to understand God!”
Ferdinand was staring out of the window. “Funny enough,” he said.
“I ran across him last Sunday, up among the hills. He was out studying geology, if you please. And if there’s a lecture anywhere about anything—whether it’s astronomy or a French poet—you can safely swear he’ll be sitting there, taking notes. You can’t compete with a fellow like that! He’ll run across a new name somewhere—Aristotle, for instance. It’s something new, and off he must go to the library to look it up. And then he’ll lie awake for nights after, stuffing his head with translations from the Greek. How the deuce can any one keep up with a man who goes at things that way? There’s one thing, though, that he knows nothing about.”
“And that is?”
“Well, wine and women, we’ll say—and fun in general. One thing he isn’t, by Jove!—and that’s YOUNG.”
“Perhaps he’s not been able to afford that sort of thing,” said Ferdinand, with something like a sigh.
The two sat on for some time, and every now and then, when Klaus was off his guard, Ferdinand would slip in another little question about Peer. And by the time they had finished their second glass, Klaus had admitted that people said Peer’s mother had been a—well—no better than she should be.
“And what about his father?” Ferdinand let fall casually.
Klaus flushed uncomfortably at this. “Nobody—no—nobody knows much about him,” he stammered. “I’d tell you if I knew, hanged if I wouldn’t. No one has an idea who it was. He—he’s very likely in America.”
“You’re always mighty mysterious when you get on the subject of his family, I’ve noticed,” said Ferdinand with a laugh. But Klaus thought his companion looked a little pale.
A few days later Peer was sitting alone in his room above the stables, when he heard a step on the stairs, the door opened, and Ferdinand Holm walked in.
Peer rose involuntarily and grasped at the back of his chair as if to steady himself. If this young coxcomb had come—from the schoolmaster, for instance—or to take away his name—why, he’d just throw him downstairs, that was all.
“I thought I’d like to look you up, and see where you lived,” began the visitor, laying down his hat and taking a seat. “I’ve taken you unawares, I see. Sorry to disturb you. But the fact is there’s something I wanted to speak to you about.”
“Oh, is there?” and Peer sat down as far as conveniently possible from the other.
“I’ve noticed, even in the few times we’ve happened to meet, that you don’t like me. Well, you know, that’s a thing I’m not going to put up with.”
“What do you mean?” asked Peer, hardly knowing whether to laugh or not.
“I want to be friends with you, that’s all. You probably know a good deal more about me than I do about you, but that need not matter. Hullo—do you always drum with your fingers on the table like that? Ha-ha-ha! Why, that was a habit of my father’s, too.”
Peer stared at the other in silence. But his fingers stopped drumming.
“I rather envy you, you know, living as you do. When you come to be a millionaire, you’ll have an effective background for your millions. And then, you must know a great deal more about life than we do; and the knowledge that comes out of books must have quite another spiritual value for you than for the rest of us, who’ve been stuffed mechanically with ‘lessons’ and ‘education’ and so forth since we were kids. And now you’re going in for engineering?”
“Yes,” said Peer. His face added pretty clearly, “And what concern is it of yours?”
“Well, it does seem to me that the modern technician is a priest in his way—or no, perhaps I should rather call him a descendant of old Prometheus. Quite a respectable ancestry, too, don’t you think? But has it ever struck you that with every victory over nature won by the human spirit, a fragment of their omnipotence is wrested from the hands of the gods? I always feel as if we were using fire and steel, mechanical energy and human thought, as weapons of revolt against the Heavenly tyranny. The day will come when we shall no longer need to pray. The hour will strike when the Heavenly potentates will be forced to capitulate, and in their turn bend the knee to us. What do you think yourself? Jehovah doesn’t like engineers—that’s MY opinion.”
“Sounds very well,” said Peer briefly. But he had to admit to himself that the other had put into words something that had been struggling for expression in his own mind.
“Of course for the present we two must be content with smaller things,” Ferdinand went on. “And I don’t mind admitting that laying out a bit of road, or a bit of railway, or bridging a ditch or so, isn’t work that appeals to me tremendously. But if a man can get out into the wide world, there are things enough to be done that give him plenty of chance to develop what’s in him—if there happens to be anything. I used to envy the great soldiers, who went about to the ends of the earth, conquering wild tribes and founding empires, organising and civilising where they went. But in our day an engineer can find big jobs too, once he gets out in the world—draining thousands of square miles of swamp, or regulating the Nile, or linking two oceans together. That’s the sort of thing I’m going to take a hand in some day. As soon as I’ve finished here, I’m off. And we’ll leave it to the engineers to come, say in a couple of hundred years or so, to start in arranging tourist routes between the stars. Do you mind my smoking?”
“No, please do,” said Peer. “But I’m sorry I haven’t—”
“I have—thanks all the same.” Ferdinand took out his cigar-case, and when Peer had declined the offered cigar, lit one himself.
“Look here,” he said, “won’t you come out and have dinner with me somewhere?”
Peer started at his visitor. What did all this mean?
“I’m a regular Spartan, as a rule, but they’ve just finished dividing up my father’s estate, so I’m in funds for the moment, and why shouldn’t we have a little dinner to celebrate? If you want to change, I can wait outside—but come just as you are, of course, if you prefer.”
Peer was more and more perplexed. Was there something behind all this? Or was the fellow simply an astonishingly good sort? Giving it up at last, he changed his collar and put on his best suit and went.
For the first time in his life he found himself in a first-class restaurant, with small tables covered with snow-white tablecloths, flowers in vases, napkins folded sugar-loaf shape, cut-glass bowls, and coloured wine-glasses. Ferdinand seemed thoroughly at home, and treated his companion with a friendly politeness. And during the meal he managed to make the talk turn most of the time on Peer’s childhood and early days.
When they had come to the coffee and cigars, Ferdinand leaned across the table towards him, and said: “Look here, don’t you think we two ought to say thee and thou* to each other?”