The Great Hunger Part 31

But when an Arab horse is ready to drop with fatigue, then is the time when it breaks into a gallop.

He could not wait. There were the faces at the window again, staring and asking: "Not finished yet?" Merle, the children, Uthoug and his wife, the Bank Manager. And there were his compet.i.tors the world over. To-day he was a length ahead of them, but by to-morrow he might be left behind.

Wait? Rest? No!

It was autumn now, and sleepless nights drove him to a doctor, who prescribed cold baths, perfect quiet, sleeping draughts, iron and a.r.s.enic. Ah, yes. Peer could swallow all the prescriptions--the one thing he could not do was rest or sleep.

He would sit late into the night, prostrate with exhaustion, watching the dying embers of the forge, the steel, the tools. And innumerable sparks would begin to fly before his eyes, and ma.s.ses of molten iron to creep about like living things over walls and floor.--And over by the forge was something more defined, a misty shape, that grew in size and clearness and stood at last a bearded, naked demiG.o.d, with fire in one hand and sledgehammer in the other.

"What? Who is that?"

"Man, do you not know me?"

"Who are you, I ask?"

"I have a thing to tell you: it is vain for you to seek for any other faith than faith in the evolution of the universe. It will do no good to pray. You may dream yourself away from the steel and the fire, but you must offer yourself up to them at last. You are bound fast to these things. Outside them your soul is nothing. G.o.d? happiness? yourself?

eternal life for you? All these are nothing. The will of the world rolls on towards its eternal goal, and the individual is but fuel for the fire."

Peer would spring up, believing for a moment that someone was really there. But there was nothing, only the empty air.

Now and again he would go home to Loreng, but everything there seemed to pa.s.s in a mist. He could see that Merle's eyes were red, though she sang cheerily as she went about the house. It seemed to him that she had begged him to go to bed and rest, and he had gone to bed. It would be delicious to sleep. But in the middle of the night it was borne in upon him that the fault lay in the shape of the shears after all, and then there was no stopping him from getting up and hurrying in to the workshop. Winter has come round again, and he fights his way in through a snow-storm. And in the quiet night he lights his lamp, kindles the forge fire, screws off the blades of the shears once more. But when he has altered them and fixed them in place again, he knows at once that the defect was not in them after all.

Coffee is a good thing for keeping the brain clear. He took to making it in the workshop for himself--and at night especially a few cups did him good. They were so satisfying too, that he felt no desire for food. And when he came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to make each separate part of the machine over again anew, coffee was great help, keeping him awake through many a long night.

It began to dawn upon him that Merle and his father-in-law and the Bank Manager had taken to lurking about the place night and day, watching and spying to see if the work were not nearly done. Why in the devil's name could they not leave him in peace--just one week more? In any case, the machine could not be tried before next summer. At times the workers at the foundry would be startled by their master suddenly rushing out from his inner room and crying fiercely: "No one is to come in here. I WILL be left in peace!"

And when he had gone in again, they would look at each other and shake their heads.

One morning Merle came down and walked through the outer shops, and knocked at the door of her husband's room. There was no answer; and she opened the door and went in.

A moment after, the workmen heard a woman's shriek, and when they ran in she was bending over her husband, who was seated on the floor, staring up at her with blank, uncomprehending eyes.

"Peer," she cried, shaking his shoulder--"Peer, do you hear? Oh, for G.o.d's sake--what is it, my darling--"

One April day there was a stir in the little town of Ringeby, and a stream of people, all in their best clothes (though it was only Wednesday), was moving out along the fjord road to Loreng. There were the two editors, who had just settled one of their everlasting disputes, and the two lawyers, each still intent on s.n.a.t.c.hing any sc.r.a.ps of business that offered; there were tradesmen and artisans; and nearly everyone was wearing a long overcoat and a grey felt hat. But the tanner had put on a high silk hat, so as to look a little taller.

Where the road left the wood most of them stopped for a moment to look up at Loreng. The great white house seemed to have set itself high on its hill to look out far and wide over the lake and the country round.

And men talked of the great doings, the feasting and magnificence, the great house had seen in days gone by, from the time when the place had been a Governor's residence until a few years back, when Engineer Holm was in his glory.

But to-day the place was up to auction, with stock and furniture, and people had walked or driven over from far around. For the bank management felt they would not be justified in giving any longer grace, now that Peer Holm was lying sick in hospital, and no doctor would undertake to say whether he would ever be fit to work again.

The courtyard was soon crowded. Inside, in the great hall, the auctioneer was beginning to put up the lots already, but most people hung back a little, as if they felt a reluctance to go in. For the air in there seemed charged with lingering memories of splendour and hospitality, from the days when cavaliers with ruffles and golden spurs had done homage there to ladies in sweeping silk robes--down to the last gay banquets to which the famous engineer from Egypt had loved to gather all the gentry round in the days of his prosperity.

Most of the people stood on the steps and in the entrance-hall. And now and again they would catch a glimpse of a pale woman, dressed in black, with thick dark eyebrows, crossing the courtyard to a servant's house or a storehouse to give some order for moving the things. It was Merle, now mistress here no longer.

Old Lorentz D. Uthoug met his sister, the mighty lady of Bruseth, on the steps. She looked at him, and there was a gleam of derision in her narrowed eyes. But he drew himself up, and said as he pa.s.sed her, "You've nothing to be afraid of. I've settled things so that I'm not bankrupt yet. And you shall have your share--in full."

And he strode in, a broad-shouldered, upright figure, looking calmly at all men, that all might see he was not the man to be crushed by a reverse.

Late in the day the chestnut, Bijou, was put up for sale. He was led across the courtyard in a halter, and as he came he stopped for a moment, and threw up his head, and neighed, and from the stables the other horses neighed in answer. Was it a farewell? Did he remember the day, years ago, when he had come there first, dancing on his white-stockinged feet, full of youth and strength?

But by the woodshed there stood as usual a little grey old man, busy sawing and chopping, as if nothing at all was the matter. One master left, another took his place; one needed firewood, it seemed to him, as much as the other. And if they came and gave him notice--why, thank the Lord, he was stone deaf. Thud, thud, the sound of the axe went on.

A young man came driving up the hill, a florid-faced young man, with very blue eyes. He took off his overcoat in the pa.s.sage, revealing a long black frock coat beneath and a large-patterned waistcoat. It was Uthoug junior, general agent for English tweeds. He had taken no part in his brother-in-law's business affairs, and so he was able to help his father in this crisis.

But the auction at Loreng went on for several days.

BOOK III

Chapter I

Once more a deep valley, with sun-steeped farms on the hillsides between the river and the mountain-range behind.

One day about midsummer it was old Raastad himself that came down to meet the train, driving a spring-cart, with a waggon following behind.

Was he expecting visitors? the people at the station asked him. "Maybe I am," said old Raastad, stroking his heavy beard, and he limped about looking to his horses. Was it the folk who had taken the Court-house?

"Ay, it's likely them," said the old man.

The train came in, and a pale man, with grey hair and beard, and blue spectacles, stepped out, and he had a wife and three children with him.

"Paul Raastad?" inquired the stranger. "Ay, that's me," said the old man. The stranger looked up at the great mountains to the north, rising dizzily into the sky. "The air ought to be good here," said he. "Ay, the air's good enough, by all accounts," said Raastad, and began loading up the carts.

They drove off up the hill road. The man and his wife sat in the spring-cart, the woman with a child in her lap, but a boy and a girl were seated on the load in the baggage-waggon behind Raastad. "Can we see the farm from here?" asked the woman, turning her head. "There,"

said the old man, pointing. And looking, they saw a big farmstead high up on a sunny hill-slope, close under the crest, and near by a long low house with a steep slate roof, the sort of place where the district officers used to live in old days. "Is that the house we are to live in?" she asked again. "Ay, that's it, right enough," said old Raastad, and chirruped to his horses.

The woman looked long at the farm and sighed. So this was to be their new home. They were to live here, far from all their friends. And would it give him back his health, after all the doctors' medicines had failed?

A Lapland dog met them at the gate and barked at them; a couple of pigs came down the road, stopped and studied the new arrivals with profound attention, then wheeled suddenly and galloped off among the houses.

The farmer's wife herself was waiting outside the Court-house, a tall wrinkled woman with a black cap on her head. "Welcome," she said, offering a rough and bony hand.

The house was one of large low-ceiled rooms, with big stoves that would need a deal of firewood in winter. The furniture was a mixture of every possible sort and style: a mahogany sofa, cupboards with painted roses on the panels, chairs covered with "Old Norse" carving, and on the walls appalling pictures of foreign royal families and of the Crucifixion.

"Good Heavens!" said Merle, as they went round the rooms alone: "how shall we ever get used to all this?"

But just then Louise came rushing in, breathless with news.

"Mother--father--there are goats here!" And little Lorentz came toddling in after her: "Goats, mother," he cried, stumbling over the doorstep.

The old house had stood empty and dead for years. Now it seemed to have wakened up again. Footsteps went in and out, and the stairs creaked once more under the tread of feet, small, pattering, exploring feet, and big feet going about on grown-up errands. There was movement in every corner: a rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen; fires blazed up, and smoke began to rise from the chimney; people pa.s.sing by outside looked up at it and saw that the dead old house had come to life again.

Peer was weak still after his illness, but he could help a little with the unpacking. It took very little, though, to make him out of breath and giddy, and there was a sledge-hammer continually thumping somewhere in the back of his head. Suppose--suppose, after all, the change here does you no good? You are at the last stage. You've managed to borrow the money to keep you all here for a year. And then? Your wife and children? Hush!--better not think of that. Not that; think of anything else, only not that.

Clothes to be carried upstairs. Yes, yes--and to think it was all to end in your living on other people's charity. Even that can't go on long. If you should be no better next summer--or two years hence?--what then?

For yourself--yes, there's always one way out for you. But Merle and the children? Hush, don't think of it! Once it was your whole duty to finish a certain piece of work in a certain time. Now it is your duty to get well again, to be as strong as a horse by next year. It is your duty. If only the sledge-hammer would stop, that cursed sledge-hammer in the back of your head.