The Great Hunger Part 11

"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 G.o.ds? 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-cla.s.s restaurant, with small tables covered with snow-white tablecloths, flowers in vases, napkins folded sugar-loaf shape, cut-gla.s.s bowls, and coloured wine-gla.s.ses. 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?"

* "Tutoyer," the mode of address of intimate friendship or relationship.

"Oh, yes!" said Peer, really touched now.

"We're both Holms, you know."

"Yes. So we are."

"And, after all, who knows that there mayn't be some sort of connection?

Come, now, don't look like that! I only want you to look on me as your good friend, and to come to me if ever there's anything I can do. We needn't live in each other's pockets, of course, when other people are by--but we must take in Klaus Brock along with us, don't you think?"

Peer felt a strong impulse to run away. Did the other know everything?

If so, why didn't he speak straight out?

As the two walked home in the clear light of the spring evening, Ferdinand took his companion's arm, and said: "I don't know if you've heard that I'm not on good terms with my people at home. But the very first time I saw you, I had a sort of feeling that we two belonged together. Somehow you seemed to remind me so of--well, to tell the truth, of my father. And he, let me tell you, was a gallant gentleman--"

Peer did not answer, and the matter went no farther then.

But the next few days were an exciting time for Peer. He could not quite make out how much Ferdinand knew, and nothing on earth would have induced him to say anything more himself. And the other asked no questions, but was just a first-rate comrade, behaving as if they had been friends for years. He did not even ask Peer any more about his childhood, and never again referred to his own family. Peer was always reminding himself to be on his guard, but could not help feeling glad all the same whenever they were to meet.

He was invited one evening, with Klaus, to a wine-party at Ferdinand's lodging, and found himself in a handsomely furnished room, with pictures on the walls, and photographs of his host's parents. There was one of his father as a young man, in uniform; another of his grandfather, who had been a Judge of the Supreme Court. "It's very good of you to be so interested in my people," said Ferdinand with a smile. Klaus Brock looked from one to the other, wondering to himself how things really stood between the two.

The summer vacation came round, and the students prepared to break up and go their various ways. Klaus was to go home. And one day Ferdinand came to Peer and said: "Look here, old man. I want you to do me a great favour. I'd arranged to go to the seaside this summer, but I've a chance of going up to the hills, too. Well, I can't be in two places at once--couldn't you take on one of them for me? Of course I'd pay all expenses." "No, thank you!" said Peer, with a laugh. But when Klaus Brock came just before leaving and said: "See here, Peer. Don't you think you and I might club together and put a marble slab over--Louise's grave?", Peer was touched, and clapped him on the shoulder. "What a good old fellow you are, Klaus," he said.

Later in the summer Peer set out alone on a tramp through the country, and whenever he saw a chance, he would go up to one of the farms and say: "Would you like to have a good map of the farm? It'll cost ten crowns and my lodging while I'm at it." It made a very pleasant holiday for him, and he came home with a little money in his pocket to boot.

His second year at the school was much like the first. He plodded along at his work. And now and then his two friends would come and drag him off for an evening's jollification. But after he had been racketing about with the others, singing and shouting through the sleeping town--and at last was alone and in his bed in the darkness, another and a very different life began for him, face to face with his innermost self. Where are you heading for, Peer? What are you aiming at in all your labours? And he would try to answer devoutly, as at evening prayers: Where? Why, of course, I am going to be a great engineer. And then? I will be one of the Sons of Prometheus, that head the revolt against the tyranny of Heaven. And then? I will help to raise the great ladder on which men can climb aloft--higher and higher, up towards the light, and the spirit, and mastery over nature. And then? Live happily, marry and have children, and a rich and beautiful home. And then? Oh, well, one fine day, of course, one must grow old and die. And then? And then? Aye, what then?

At these times he found a shadowy comfort in taking refuge in the world where Louise stood--playing, as he always saw her--and cradling himself on the smooth red billows of her music. But why was it that here most of all he felt that hunger for--for something more?

Ferdinand finished his College course, and went out, as he had said, into the great world, and Klaus went with him. And so throughout his third year Peer was mostly to be seen alone, always with books under his arm, and head bent forward.

Just as he was getting ready to go up for his final examination, a letter from Ferdinand arrived, written from Egypt. "Come over here, young fellow," he wrote. "We have got good billets at last with a big British firm--Brown Bros., of London--a firm that's building railways in Canada, bridges in India, harbour works in Argentina, and ca.n.a.ls and barrages here in Egypt. We can get you a nice little post as draughtsman to begin with, and I enclose funds for the pa.s.sage out. So come along."

But Peer did not go at once. He stayed on another year at the College, as a.s.sistant to the lecturer on mechanics, while himself going through the road and railway construction course, as his half-brother had done.

Some secret instinct urged him not to be left behind even in this.

As the year went on the letters from his two comrades became more and more pressing and tempting. "Out here," wrote Klaus, "the engineer is a missionary, proclaimer, not Jehovah, but the power and culture of Europe. You're bound to take a hand in that, my boy. There's work worthy of a great general waiting for you here."

At last, one autumn day, when the woods stood yellow all around the town, Peer drove away from his home with a big new travelling-trunk strapped to the driver's seat. He had been up to the churchyard before starting, with a little bunch of flowers for Louise's grave. Who could say if he would ever see it again?

At the station he stood for a moment looking back over the old city with its cathedral, and the ancient fortress, where the sentry was pacing back and forth against the skyline. Was this the end of his youth?

Louise--the room above the stables--the hospital, the lazarette, the College. . . . And there lay the fjord, and far out somewhere on the coast there stood no doubt a little grey fisher-hut, where a pock-marked goodwife and her bow-legged goodman had perhaps even now received the parcel of coffee and tobacco sent them as a parting gift.

And so Peer journeyed to the capital, and from there out into the wide world.

BOOK II

Chapter I

Some years had pa.s.sed--a good many years--and once more summer had come, and June. A pa.s.senger steamer, bound from Antwerp to Christiania, was ploughing her way one evening over a sea so motionlessly calm that it seemed a single vast mirror filled with a sky of grey and pink-tinged clouds. There were plenty of pa.s.sengers on board, and no one felt inclined for bed; it was so warm, so beautiful on deck. Some artists, on their way home from Paris or Munich, cast about for amus.e.m.e.nts to pa.s.s the time; some ordered wine, others had unearthed a concertina, and very soon, no one knew how, a dance was in full swing. "No, my dear," said one or two cautious mothers to their girls, "certainly not." But before long the mothers were dancing themselves. Then there was a doctor in spectacles, who stood up on a barrel and made a speech; and presently two of the artists caught hold of the grey-bearded captain and chaired him round the deck. The night was so clear, the skies so ruddily beautiful, the air so soft, and out here on the open sea all hearts were light and happy.

"Who's that wooden-faced beggar over there that's too high and mighty for a little fun?" asked Storaker the painter, of his friend the sculptor Praas.

"That fellow? Oh, he's the one that was so infernally instructive at dinner, when we were talking about Egyptian vases."