The Great Hunger Part 19

It was no less a person than the master of Loreng himself whose proceedings struck them as so comic.

Peer it was, wandering about in the great neglected garden, with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and his cap on the back of his head, stopping here and there, and moving on again as the fancy took him. Sometimes he would hum a s.n.a.t.c.h of a song, and again fall to whistling; here he would pick up a twig and look at it, or again it might be a bird, or perhaps an old neglected apple-tree that seemed worth stopping to talk to. The best of it was that these were his own lands and his own woods that lay there in the rusty October sunshine.

Was all that nothing? And the hill over on the farther sh.o.r.e, standing on its head in the dark lake-mirror, clothed in a whole world of colour--yellow leaves and green leaves, and light red and dark red, and golden and blood-red patches, with the dark green of the pines between.

His eyes had all this to rest on. Did he really live here? What abundant fruitfulness all around him! What a sky, so wide, so golden that it seemed to ring again. The potato-stalks lay uprooted, scattered on the fields; the corn was safely housed. And here he stood. He seemed again to be drawing in nourishment from all he saw, drinking it greedily.

The empty places in his mind were filled; the sight of the rich soft landscape worked on his being, giving it something of its own abundant fruitfulness, its own wide repose.

And--what next?

"What next?" he mimicked in his thoughts, and started again tramping up and down the garden paths. What next--what next? Could he not afford now to take his time--to rest a little? Every man must have an end in view--must strive to reach this goal or that. And what was his object now? What was it he had so toiled for, from those hard years in the loft above the stable even until now? What was it? Often it seemed as if everything were going smoothly, going of itself; as if one day, surely, he would find his part in a great, happy world-harmony. But had he not already found it? What more would he have? Of course he had found it.

But is this all, then? What is there behind and beyond? Hush! have done with questioning. Look at the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace and rest.

He hurried up to the house, and in--it might help matters if he could take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.

Merle was in the pantry, with a big ap.r.o.n on, ranging jars of preserves on the shelves.

"Here, dearest little wife," cried Peer, throwing his arms about her, "what do you say to a little run?"

"Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad about? Uf! my hair! you'll make it come down."

Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake.

"There, dearest! Isn't it lovely here?"

"Peer, you've asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came."

"Yes, and you never answer. And you've never once yet run and thrown your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it's never yet come to pa.s.s that you've given me a single kiss of your own accord."

"I should think not, when you steal such a lot." And she pushed him aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. "I must go in and see mother again to-day," she said as she went.

"Huit! Of course!" He paced up and down the room, his step growing more and more impatient. "In to mother--in to mother! Always and everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!" and he began to whistle.

Merle put her head in at the door. "Peer--have you such a terrible lot of spare time?"

"Well, yes and no. I'm busy enough looking about in every corner here for something or another. But I can't find it, and I don't even know exactly what it is. Oh well, yes--I have plenty of time to spare."

"But what about the farm?"

"Well, there's the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I to do--poke around making improvements?"

"But what about the machine-shop?"

"Don't I go in twice a day--cycle over to see how things are going? But with Rode for manager--that excellent and high-principled engineer--"

"Surely you could help him in some way?"

"He's got to go on running along the line of rails he's used to--nothing else for it, my darling. And four or five thousand crowns a year, net profit--why, it's magnificent!"

"But couldn't you extend the business?"

He raised his eyebrows, and his mouth pursed itself up.

"Extend--did you say extend? Extend a--a doll's house!"

"Oh, Peer, you shouldn't laugh at it--a thing that father took so much pains to set going!"

"And YOU shouldn't go worrying me to get to work again in earnest, Merle. You shouldn't really. One of these days I might discover that there's no way to be happy in the world but to drag a plough and look straight ahead and forget that there's anything else in existence. It may come to that one day--but give me a little breathing-s.p.a.ce first, and you love me. Well, good-bye for a while."

Merle, busying herself again in her pantry, glanced out of the window and saw him disappear into the stables. At first she had gone with him when he wandered about like this, touching and feeling all his possessions. In the cattle-stalls, it might be, stroking and patting, getting himself covered with hairs, and chattering away in childish glee. "Look, Merle--this cow is mine, child! Dagros her name is--and she's mine. We have forty of them--and they're all mine. And that nag there--what a sight he is! We have eight of them. They're mine. Yours too, of course. But you don't care a bit about it. You haven't even hugged any of them yet. But when a man's been as poor as I've been--and suddenly wakened up one day and found he owned all this--No, wait a minute, Merle--come and kiss old Brownie." She knew the ritual now--he could go over it all again and again, and each time with the same happy wonder. Was it odious of her that she was beginning to find it a little comic? And how did it come about that often, when she might be filled with the deepest longing for him, and he burst in upon her boisterously, hungry for her caresses, she would grow suddenly cold, and put him aside? What was the matter? Why did she behave like this?

Perhaps it was because he was so much the stronger, so overwhelming in his effect on her that she had to keep a tight hold on herself to avoid being swept clean away and losing her ident.i.ty. At one moment they might be sitting in the lamplight, chatting easily together, and so near in heart and mind; and the next it would be over--he would suddenly have started up and be pacing up and down the room, delivering a sort of lecture. Merle--isn't it marvellous, the spiritual life of plants? And then would come a torrent of talk about strange plant-growths in the north and in the south, plants whose names she had never even heard--their struggle for existence, their loves and longings, their heroism in disease, the divine marvel of their death. Their inventions, their wisdom, aye, their religious sense--is it not marvellous, Merle?

From this it was only a step to the earth's strata, fossils, crystals--a fresh lecture. And finally he would sum up the whole into one great harmony of development, from the primary cell-life to the laws of gravitation that rule the courses of the stars. Was it not marvellous?

One common rhythm beating through the universe--a symphony of worlds!--And then he must have a kiss!

But she could only draw back and put him gently aside. It was as if he came with all his stored-up knowledge--his lore of plants and fossils, crystals and stars--and poured it all out in a caress. She could almost have cried out for help. And after hurrying her through the wonders of the universe in this fashion, he would suddenly catch her up in his arms, and whirl her off in a pa.s.sionate intoxication of the senses till she woke at last like a castaway on an island, hardly knowing where or what she was. She laughed, but she could have found it in her heart to weep. Could this be love? In this strong man, whose life till now had been all study and work, the stored-up feeling burst vehemently forth, now that it had found an outlet. But why did it leave her so cold?

When Peer came in from the stables, humming a tune, he found her in the sitting-room, dressed in a dark woollen dress with a red ribbon round her throat.

He stopped short: "By Jove--how that suits you, Merle!"

She let her eyes linger on him for a moment, and then came up and threw her arms round his neck.

"Did he have to go to the stables all alone today?"

"Yes; I've been having a chat with the young colt."

"Am I unkind to you, Peer?"

"You?--you!"

"Not even if I ask you to drive me in to see mother?"

"Why, that's the very thing. The new horse I bought yesterday from Captain Myhre should be here any minute--I'm just waiting for it."

"A new horse--to ride?"

"Yes. Hang it--I must get some riding. I had to handle Arab horses for years. But we'll try this one in the gig first."

Merle was still standing with her arms round his neck, and now she pressed her warm rich lips to his, close and closer. It was at such moments that she loved him--when he stood trembling with a joy unexpected, that took him unawares. She too trembled, with a blissful thrill through soul and body; for once and at last it was she who gave.

"Ah!" he breathed at last, pale with emotion. "I--I'd be glad to die like that."

A little later they stood on the balcony looking over the courtyard, when a bearded farm-hand came up with a big light-maned chestnut horse prancing in a halter. The beast stood still in the middle of the yard, flung up its head, and neighed, and the horses in the stable neighed in answer.

"Oh, what a beauty!" exclaimed Merle, clapping her hands.

"Put him into the gig," called Peer to the stable-boy who had come out to take the horse.

The man touched his cap. "Horse has never been driven before, sir, I was to say."