The Great Hunger Part 12

"So it is, by Jove! Schoolmaster abroad, I should think. When we got on to Athens and Greek sculpture he condescended to set us right about that, too."

"I heard him this morning holding forth to the doctor on a.s.syriology. No wonder he doesn't dance!"

The pa.s.senger they were speaking of was a man of middle height, between thirty and forty apparently, who lay stretched in a deck-chair a little way off. He was dressed in grey throughout, from his travelling-cap to the spats above his brown shoes. His face was sallow, and the short brown beard was flecked with grey. But his eyes had gay little gleams in them as they followed the dancers. It was Peer Holm.

As he sat there watching, it annoyed him to feel that he could not let himself go like the others. But it was so long since he had mixed with his own countrymen, that he felt insecure of his footing and almost like a foreigner among them. Besides, in a few hours now they should sight the skerries on the Norwegian coast; and the thought awoke in him a strange excitement--it was a moment he had dreamed of many and many a time out there in the wide world.

After a while stillness fell on the decks around him, and he too went below, but lay down in his cabin without undressing. He thought of the time when he had pa.s.sed that way on the outward voyage, poor and unknown, and had watched the last island of his native land sink below the sea-rim. Much had happened since then--and now that he had at last come home, what life awaited him there?

A little after two in the morning he came on deck again, but stood still in astonishment at finding that the vessel was now boring her way through a thick woolly fog. The devil! thought he, beginning to tramp up and down the deck impatiently. It seemed that his great moment was to be lost--spoiled for him! But suddenly he stopped by the railing, and stood gazing out into the east.

What was that? Far out in the depths of the woolly fog a glowing spot appeared; the grey ma.s.s around grew alive, began to move, to redden, to thin out as if it were streaming up in flames. Ah! now he knew! It was the globe of the sun, rising out of the sea. On board, every point where the night's moisture had lodged began to shine in gold. Each moment it grew clearer and lighter, and the eye reached farther. And before he could take in what was happening, the grey darkness had rolled itself up into mounds, into mountains, that grew buoyant and floated aloft and melted away. And there, all revealed, lay the fresh bright morning, with a clear sun-filled sky over the blue sea.

It was time now to get out his field-gla.s.ses. For a long time he stood motionless, gazing intently through them.

There! Was it his fancy? No, there far ahead he can see clearly now a darker strip between sky and sea. It's the first skerry. It is Norway, at last!

Peer felt a sudden catch in his breath; he could hardly stand still, but he stopped again and again in his walk to look once more at the far-off strip of grey. And now there were seabirds too, with long necks and swiftly-beating wings. Welcome home!

And now the steamer is ploughing in among the skerries, and a world of rocks and islets unfolds on every side. There is the first red fisher-hut. And then the entrance to Christiansand, between wooded hills and islands, where white cottages shine out, each with its patch of green gra.s.sland and its flagstaff before it.

Peer watched it all, drinking it in like nourishment. How good it all tasted--he felt it would be long before he had drunk his fill.

Then came the voyage up along the coast, all through a day of brilliant sunshine and a luminous night. He saw the blue sounds with swarms of white gulls hovering above them, the little coast-towns with their long white-painted wooden houses, and flowers in the windows. He had never pa.s.sed this way before, and yet something in him seemed to nod and say: "I know myself again here." All the way up the Christiania Fjord there was the scent of leaves and meadows; big farms stood by the sh.o.r.e shining in the sun. This was what a great farm looked like. He nodded again. So warm and fruitful it all seemed, and dear to him as home--though he knew that, after all, he would be little better than a tourist in his own country. There was no one waiting for him, no one to take him in. Still, some day things might be very different.

As the ship drew alongside the quay at Christiania, the other pa.s.sengers lined the rail, friends and relations came aboard, there were tears and laughter and kisses and embraces. Peer lifted his hat as he pa.s.sed down the gangway, but no one had time to notice him just now. And when he had found a hotel porter to look after his luggage, he walked up alone through the town, as if he were a stranger.

The light nights made it difficult to sleep--he had actually forgotten that it was light all night long. And this was a capital city--yet so touchingly small, it seemed but a few steps wherever he went. These were his countrymen, but he knew no one among them; there was no one to greet him. Still, he thought again, some day all this might be very different.

At last, one day as he stood looking at the window of a bookseller's shop, he heard a voice behind him: "Why, bless me! surely it's Peer Holm!" It was one of his fellow-students at the Technical College, Reidar Langberg, pale and thin now as ever. He had been a shining light at the College, but now--now he looked shabby, worn and aged.

"I hardly knew you again," said Peer, grasping the other's hand.

"And you're a millionaire, so they say--and famous, out in the big world?"

"Not quite so bad as that, old fellow. But what about you?"

"I? Oh, don't talk about me." And as they walked down the street together, Langberg poured out his tale, of how times were desperately bad, and conditions at home here simply strangled a man. He had started ten or twelve years ago as a draughtsman in the offices of the State Railways, and was still there, with a growing family--and "such pay--such pay, my dear fellow!" He threw up his eyes and clasped his hands despairingly.

"Look here," said Peer, interrupting him. "Where is the best place in Christiania to go and have a good time in the evening?"

"Well, St. Hans Hill, for instance. There's music there."

"Right--will you come and dine with me there, to-night--shall we say eight o'clock?"

"Thanks. I should think I would!"

Peer arrived in good time, and engaged a table on a verandah. Langberg made his appearance shortly after, dressed in his well-saved Sunday best--faded frock-coat, light trousers bagged at the knees, and a straw hat yellow with age.

"It's a pleasure to have someone to talk to again," said Peer. "For the last year or so I've been knocking about pretty much by myself."

"Is it as long as that since you left Egypt?"

"Yes; longer. I've been in Abyssinia since then."

"Oh, of course, I remember now. It was in the papers. Building a railway for King Menelik, weren't you?"

"Oh, yes. But the last eighteen months or so I've been idling--running about to theatres and museums and so forth. I began at Athens and finished up with London. I remember one day sitting on the steps of the Parthenon declaiming the Antigone--and a moment with some meaning in it seemed to have come at last."

"But, dash it, man, you're surely not comparing such trifles with a thing like the great Nile Barrage? You were on that for some years, weren't you? Do let's hear something about that. Up by the first cataract, wasn't it? And hadn't you enormous quarries there on the spot?

You see, even sitting at home here, I haven't quite lost touch. But you--good Lord! what things you must have seen! Fancy living at--what was the name of the town again?"

"a.s.suan," answered Peer indifferently, looking out over the gardens, where more and more visitors kept arriving.

"They say the barrage is as great a miracle as the Pyramids. How many sluice-gates are there again--a hundred and . . . ?"

"Two hundred and sixteen," said Peer. "Look!" he broke off. "Do you know those girls over there?" He nodded towards a party of girls in light dresses who were sitting down at a table close by.

Langberg shook his head. He was greedy for news from the great world without, which he had never had the luck to see.

"I've often wondered," he went on, "how you managed to come to the front so in that sort of work--railways and barrages, and so forth--when, your original line was mechanical engineering. Of course you did do an extra year on the roads and railway side; but . . ."

Oh, this shining light of the schools!

"What do you say to a gla.s.s of champagne?" said Peer. "How do you like it? Sweet or dry?"

"Why, is there any difference? I really didn't know. But when one's a millionaire, of course . . ."

"I'm not a millionaire," said Peer with a smile, and beckoned to a waiter.

"Oh! I heard you were. Didn't you invent a new motor-pump that drove all the other types out of the field? And besides--that Abyssinian railway.

Oh well, well!" he sighed, "it's a good thing somebody's lucky. The rest of us shouldn't complain. But how about the other two--Klaus Brock and Ferdinand Holm? What are they doing now?"

"Klaus is looking after the Khedive's estates at Edfina. Agriculture by steam power; his own railway lines to bring in the produce, and so on. Yes, Klaus has ended up in a nice little place of his own. His district's bigger than the kingdom of Denmark."

"Good heavens!" Langberg nearly fell off his chair. "And Ferdinand Holm; what about him?"

"Oh, he's got bigger things on hand. Went nosing about the Libyan desert, and found that considerable tracts of it have water-veins only a few yards beneath the surface. If so, of course, it's only a question of proper plant to turn an enormous area into a paradise for corn-growing."

"Good gracious! What a discovery!" gasped the other, almost breathless now.

Peer looked out over the fjord, and went on: "Last year he managed at last to get the Khedive interested, and they've started a joint-stock company now, with a capital of some millions. Ferdinand is chief engineer."

"And what's his salary? As much as fifty thousand crowns?"

"His pay is two hundred thousand francs a year," said Peer, not without some fear that his companion might faint. "Yes, he's an able fellow, is Ferdinand."

It took Langberg some time to get his breath again. At last he asked, with a sidelong glance: