The Great Hunger Part 20

"Everything must have a beginning," said Peer.

Merle glanced at him. But they were both dressed to go out when the chestnut came dancing up before the door with the gig. The white hoofs pawed impatiently, the head was high in the air, and the eyes flashed fire--he wasn't used to having shafts pressing on his sides and wheels rumbling just behind him. Peer lit a cigar.

"You're not going to smoke?" Merle burst out.

"Just to show him I'm not excited," said Peer. No sooner had they taken their seats in the gig than the beast began to snort and rear, but the long lash flicked out over its neck, and a minute later they were tearing off in a cloud of dust towards the town.

Winter came--and a real winter it was. Peer moved about from one window to another, calling all the time to Merle to come and look. He had been away so long--the winter of Eastern Norway was all new to him.

Look--look! A world of white--a frozen white tranquillity--woods, plains, lakes all in white, a fairy-tale in sunlight, a dreamland at night under the great bright moon. There was a ringing of sleigh-bells out on the lake, and up in the snow-powdered forest; the frost stood thick on the horses' manes and the men's beards were hung with icicles.

And in the middle of the night loud reports of splitting ice would come from the lake--sounds to make one sit up in bed with a start.

Driving's worth while in weather like this--come, Merle. The new stallion from Gudbrandsdal wants breaking in--we'll take him. Hallo! and away they go in their furs, swinging out over the frozen lake, whirling on to the bare gla.s.sy ice, where they skid and come near capsizing, and Merle screams--but they get on to snow, and hoofs and runners grip again. None of your galloping--trot now, trot! And Peer cracks his whip.

The black, long-maned Gudbrandsdaler lifts his head and trots out. And the evening comes, and under the wide and starry sky they dash up again to Loreng--Loreng that lies there lighting them home with its long rows of glowing windows. A glorious day, wife!

Or they would go out on ski over the hills to the woodmen's huts in the forest, and make a blazing fire in the big chimney and drink steaming coffee. Then home again through one of those pale winter evenings with a violet twilight over woods and fields and lake, over white snow and blue. Far away on the brown hillside in the west stands a farmhouse, with all its windows flaming with the reflection from a golden cloud.

Here they come rushing, the wind of their pa.s.sing shaking the snow from the pines; on, on, over deep-rutted woodcutters' roads, over stumps and stones--falling, bruising themselves, burying their faces deep in the snow, but dragging themselves up again, smiling to each other and rushing on again. Then, reaching home red and dripping, they lean the ski up against the wall, and stamp the snow off their boots.

"Merle," said Peer, picking the ice from his beard, "we must have a bottle of Burgundy at dinner to-night."

"Yes--and shall we ring up and ask someone to come over?"

"Someone--from outside? Can't we two have a little jollification all to ourselves?"

"Yes, yes, of course, if you like."

A shower-bath--a change of underclothes--how delicious! And--an idea!

He'll appear at dinner in evening dress, just for a surprise. But as he entered the room he stopped short. For there stood Merle herself in evening dress--a dress of dark red velvet, with his locket round her neck and the big plaits of hair rolled into a generous knot low on her neck. Flowers on the table--the wine set to warm--the finest gla.s.s, the best silver--ptarmigan--how splendid! They lift their gla.s.ses filled with the red wine and drink to each other.

The frozen winter landscape still lingered in their thoughts, but the sun had warmed their souls; they laughed and jested, held each other's hands long, and sat smiling at each other in long silences.

"A glorious day to-day, Merle. And to-morrow we die."

"What do you say!--to-morrow!"

"Or fifty years hence. It comes to the same thing." He pressed her hand and his eyes half closed.

"But this evening we're together--and what could we want more?"

Then he fell to talking of his Egyptian experiences. He had once spent a month's holiday in visiting ruined cities with Maspero, the great Maspero himself, going with him to Luxor, to Karnak, with its great avenues of sphinxes, to El Amarna and Shubra. They had looked on ancient cities of temples and king's mausoleums, where men thousands of years dead lay as if lost in thought, with eyes wide open, ready at any moment to rise and call out: Slave, is the bath ready? There in the middle of a cornfield rises an obelisk. You ask what it is--it is all that is left of a royal city. There, too, a hundred thousand years ago maybe, young couples have sat together, drinking to each other in wine, revelling in all the delights of love--and where are they now? Aye, where are they, can you tell me?

"When that journey was over, Merle, I began to think that it was not mere slime of the Nile that fertilised the fields; it was the mouldered bodies of the dead. I rode over dust that had been human fingers, lips that had clung in kisses. Millions and millions of men and women have lived on those river-banks, and what has become of them now? Geology.

And I thought of the millions of prayers wailed out there to the sun and stars, to stone idols in the temples, to crocodiles and snakes and the river itself, the sacred river. And the air, Merle--the air received them, and vibrated for a second--and that was all. And even so our prayers go up, to this very day. We press our warm lips to a cold stone, and think to leave an impression. Skaal!"

But Merle did not touch her gla.s.s; she sat still, with her eyes on the yellow lampshade. She had not yet given up all her dreams of going forth and conquering the world with her music--and he sat there rolling out eternity itself before her, while he and she herself, her parents, all, all became as chaff blown before the wind and vanished.

"What, won't you drink with me? Well, well--then I must pledge you by myself. Skaal!"

And being well started on his travellers' tales he went on with them, but now in a more cheerful vein, so that she found it possible to smile.

He told of the great lake-swamps, with their legions of birds, ibis, pelicans, swans, flamingos, herons, and storks--a world of long beaks and curved b.r.e.a.s.t.s and stilt-like legs and shrieking and beating of wings. Most wonderful of all it was to stand and watch and be left behind when the birds of pa.s.sage flew northward in their thousands in the spring. My love to Norway, he would say, as they pa.s.sed. And in the autumn to see them return, grey goose, starling, wagtail, and all the rest. "How goes it now at home?" he would think--and "Next time I'll go with you," he would promise himself year after year.

"And here I am at last! Skaal!"

"Welcome home," said Merle, lifting her gla.s.s with a smile.

He rang the bell. "What do you want?" her eyes asked.

"Champagne," said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.

"Are you crazy, Peer?"

He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: "Now, gentlemen, here's a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win his spurs--who's ready?" And half a score of voices answered "I." "Well, here's the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion and have a railway--couple of hundred miles of it--what do you say to that?" "Splendid," we cried in chorus. "Well, but we've got to compete with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans--and we've got to win." "Of course"--a louder chorus still. "Now, I'm going to take two men and give them a free hand. They'll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and the financial side--and a project that's better and cheaper than the opposition ones. Eight months' work for a good man, but I must have it done in four. Take along a.s.sistants and equipment--all you need--and a thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get the job."

"Peer--were you sent?" Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.

"I--and one other."

"Who was that?"

"His name was Ferdinand Holm."

Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!

"And what came of it?" she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the lamp.

Peer flung away his cigarette. "First an expedition up the Nile, then a caravan journey, camels and mules and a.s.sistants and provisions and instruments and tents and quinine--heaps of quinine. Have you any idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything had to be planned and estimated at top speed--material, labour, time, cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting and erecting--but even then it would be no good if the Germans could come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it's true--but then there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And sunstroke--yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed out by the rain. I lost my best a.s.sistant by snakebite. But such things didn't count as hindrances, they couldn't be allowed to delay the work.

If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a couple of months a blacksmith's hammer started thumping in the back of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night, little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When I looked in the gla.s.s, my eyes were just two red b.a.l.l.s in my head. But when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief's office."

"And--and Ferdinand Holm?"

"Had got in the day before."

Merle shifted a little in her seat. "And so--he won?"

Peer lit another cigarette. "No," he said--the cigarette seemed to draw rather badly--"I won. And that's how I came to be building railways in Abyssinia."

"Here's the champagne," said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the gla.s.ses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him from head to foot.

"I feel like playing to-night," she said.

It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old longings.

Peer sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands, listening. And there she stood, at the music-stand, in her red dress, flushed and warm, and shining in the yellow lamplight, playing.

Then suddenly the thought of her mother came to her, and she went to the telephone. "Mother--are you there, mother? Oh, we've had such a glorious day." And the girl ran on, as if trying to light up her mother's heart with some rays of the happiness her own happy day had brought her.

A little later Peer lay in bed, while Merle flitted about the room, lingering over her toilet.

He watched her as she stood in her long white gown before the toilet-table with the little green-shaded lamps, doing her hair for the night in a long plait. Neither of them spoke. He could see her face in the gla.s.s, and saw that her eyes were watching him, with a soft, mysterious glance--the scent of her hair seemed to fill the place with youth.