The Great Hunger Part 18

"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 pa.s.sed out into the old neglected garden with its gra.s.s-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 pa.s.sed 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.

Chapter V

A little s.h.a.ggy, 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."