The Great Hunger Part 30

"If I put my trust in the Lord," he said, "I might just sit down and pray and let things go to ruin. As it is, I've more faith in human works, and that's why I'm here now."

The answer pleased her. The widow at Bruseth was no churchgoer herself.

She thought the Lord had made a bad mistake in not giving her any children.

"Will you have some coffee?" she asked, rising from her seat.

"Now you're talking sense," said her brother, and his eyes twinkled. He knew his sister and her ways. And now he lit his pipe and leaned back comfortably in his chair.

Chapter XIII

Once more Peer stood in his workroom down at the foundry, wrestling with fire and steel.

A working drawing is a useful thing; an idea in one's head is all very well. But the men he employed to turn his plans into tangible models worked slowly; why not use his own hands for what had to be done?

When the workmen arrived at the foundry in the morning there was hammering going on already in the little room. And when they left in the evening, the master had not stopped working yet. When the good citizens of Ringeby went to bed, they would look out of their windows and see his light still burning.

Peer had had plenty to tire him out even before he began work here. But in the old days no one had ever asked if he felt strong enough to do this or that. And he never asked himself. Now, as before, it was a question of getting something done, at any cost. And never before had there been so much at stake.

The wooden model of the new machine is finished already, and the castings put together. The whole thing looks simple enough, and yet--what a distance from the first rough implement to this thing, which seems almost to live--a thing with a brain of metal at least. Have not these wheels and axles had their parents and ancestors--their pedigree stretching back into the past? The steel has brought forth, and its descendants again in turn, advancing always toward something finer, stronger, more efficient. And here is the last stage reached by human invention in this particular work up to now--yet, after all, is it good enough? An invention successful enough to bring money in to the inventor--that is not all. It must be more; it must be a world-success, a thing to make its way across the prairies, across the enormous plains of India and Egypt--that is what is needed. Sleep? rest? food? What are such things when so much is at stake!

There was no longer that questioning in his ear: Why? Whither? What then? Useless to ponder on these things. His horizon was narrowed down to include nothing beyond this one problem. Once he had dreamed of a work allied to his dreams of eternity. This, certainly, was not it. What does the gain amount to, after all, when humanity has one more machine added to it? Does it kindle a single ray of dawn the more in a human soul?

Yet this work, such as it was, had now become his all. It must and should be all. He was fast bound to it.

When he looked up at the window, there seemed to be faces at each pane staring in. "What? Not finished yet?" they seemed to say. "Think what it means if you fail!" Merle's face, and the children's: "Must we be driven from Loreng, out into the cold?" The faces of old Uthoug and his wife: "Was it for this you came into an honourable family? To bring it to ruin?" And behind them, swarming, all the town. All knew what was at stake, and why he was toiling so. All stared at him, waiting. The Bank Manager was there too--waiting, like the rest.

One can seize one's neck in iron pincers, and say: You shall! Tired?

difficulties? time too short?--all that doesn't exist. You shall!

Is this thing or that impossible? Well, make it possible. It is your business to make it possible.

He spent but little time at home now; a sofa in the workshop was his bed. Often Merle would come in with food for him, and seeing how pale and grey and worn out he was, she did not dare to question him. She tried to jest instead. She had trained herself long ago to be gay in a house where shadows had to be driven off with laughter.

But one day, as she was leaving, he held her back, and looked at her with a strange smile.

"Well, dear?" she said, with a questioning look.

He stood looking at her as before, with the same far-off smile. He was looking through her into the little world she stood for. This home, this family that he, a homeless man, had won through her, was it all to go down in shipwreck?

Then he kissed her eyes and let her go.

And as her footsteps died away, he stood a moment, moved by a sudden desire to turn to some Power above him with a prayer that he might succeed in this work. But there was no such Power. And in the end his eyes turned once more to the iron, the fire, his tools, and his own hands, and it was as though he sighed out a prayer to these: "Help me--help me, that I may save my wife and children's happiness."

Sleep? rest? weariness? He had only a year's grace. The bank would only wait a year.

Winter and spring pa.s.sed, and one day in July he came home and rushed in upon Merle crying, "To-morrow, Merle! They will be here to-morrow!"

"Who?"

"The people to look at the machine. We're going to try it to-morrow."

"Oh, Peer!" she said breathlessly, gazing at him.

"It's a good thing that I had connections abroad," he went on. "There's one man coming from an English firm, and another from America. It ought to be a big business."

The morrow came. Merle stood looking after her husband as he drove off, his hat on the back of his head, through the haze that followed the night's rain. But there was no time to stand trembling; they were to have the strangers to dinner, and she must see to it.

Out in the field the machine stood ready, a slender, newly painted thing. A boy was harnessing the horses.

Two men in soft hats and light overcoats came up; it was old Uthoug, and the Bank Manager. They stopped and looked round, leaning on their sticks; the results of the day were not a matter of entire indifference to these two gentlemen. Ah! here was the big carriage from Loreng, with the two strangers and Peer himself, who had been down to fetch them from the hotel.

He was a little pale as he took the reins and climbed to his seat on the machine, to drive it himself through the meadow of high, thick timothy-gra.s.s.

The horses p.r.i.c.ked up their ears and tried to break into a gallop, the noise of the machine behind them startling them as usual at first, but they soon settled down to a steady pace, and the steel arm bearing the shears swept a broad swath through the meadow, where the gra.s.s stood shining after the rain.

The two strangers walked slowly in the rear, bending down now and again to look at the stubble, and see if the shears cut clean. The tall man with the heavy beard and pince-nez was the agent for John Fowler of Leeds; the little clean-shaven one with the Jewish nose represented Harrow & Co. of Philadelphia.

Now and again they called to Peer to stop, while they investigated some part of the machine.

They asked him then to try it on different ground; on an uneven slope, over little tussocks; and at last the agent for Fowler's would have it that it should be tried on a patch of stony ground. But that would spoil the shears? Very likely, but Fowler's would like to know exactly how the shears were affected by stones on the ground.

At last the trials were over, and the visitors nodded thoughtfully to each other. Evidently they had come on something new here. There were possibilities in the thing that might drive most other types out of the field, even in the intense compet.i.tion that rages all round the world in agricultural machinery.

Peer read the expression in their eyes--these cold-blooded specialists had seen the vision; they had seen gold.

But all the same there was a hitch--a little hitch.

Dinner was over, the visitors had left, and Merle and Peer were alone.

She lifted her eyes to his inquiringly.

"It went off well then?" she asked.

"Yes. But there is just one little thing to put right."

"Still something to put right--after you have worked so hard all these months?" She sat down, and her hands dropped into her lap.

"It's only a small detail," he said eagerly, pacing up and down. "When the gra.s.s is wet, it sticks between the steel fingers above the shears and acc.u.mulates there and gets in the way. It's the devil and all that I never thought of testing it myself in wet weather. But once I've got that right, my girl, the thing will be a world-success."

Once more the machine was set up in his workshop, and he walked around it, watching, spying, thinking, racking his brain to find the little device that should make all well. All else was finished, all was right, but he still lacked the single happy thought, the flash of inspiration--that given, a moment's work would be enough to give this thing of steel life, and wings with which to fly out over the wide world.

It might come at any moment, that happy thought. And he tramped round and round his machine, clenching his fists in desperation because it was so slow in coming.

The last touch only, the dot upon an i, was wanting. A slight change in the shape or position of the fingers, or the length of the shears--what was it he wanted? How could he sleep that night?

He felt that he stood face to face with a difficulty that could have been easily solved had he come fresh to the work, but that his tortured brain was too worn out to overcome.