The Great Hunger Part 17

"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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 compa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 ap.r.o.n 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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!