The Great Hunger Part 34

PEER DALESMAN.

Chapter IV

Christmas was near, the days were all grey twilight, and there was a frost that set the wall-timbers cracking. The children went about blue with cold. When Merle scrubbed the floors, they turned into small skating-rinks, though there might be a big fire in the stove. Peer waded and waded through deep snow to the well for water, and his beard hung like a wreath of icicles about his face.

Aye, this was a winter.

Old Raastad's two daughters were in the dairy making whey-cheese. The door was flung open, there was a rush of frosty air, and Peer stood there blinking his eyes.

"Huh! what smokers you two are!"

"Are we now?" And the red-haired one and the fair-haired one both giggled, and they looked at each other and nodded. This queer townsman-lodger of theirs never came near them that he didn't crack jokes.

"By the way, Else, I dreamed last night that we were going to be married."

Both the girls shrieked with delight at this.

"And Mari, you were married to the bailiff."

"Oh my! That old creature down at Moen?"

"He was much older. Ninety years old he was."

"Uf!--you're always at your nonsense," said the red-haired girl, stirring away at her huge, steaming cauldron.

Peer went out again. The girls were hardly out of their teens, and yet their faces seemed set already and stiff with earnestness. And whenever Peer had managed to set them laughing unawares, they seemed frightened the next minute at having been betrayed into doing something there was no profit in.

Peer strode about in the crackling snow with his fur cap drawn down over his ears. Jotunheim itself lay there up north, breathing an icy-blue cold out over the world.

And he? Was he to go on like this, growing hunchbacked under a burden that weighed and bowed him down continually? Why the devil could he not shake it off, break away from it, and kick out bravely at his evil fate?

"Peer," asked Merle, standing in the kitchen, "what did you think of giving the children for a Christmas present?"

"Oh, a palace each, and a horse to ride, of course. When you've more money than you know what to do with, the devil take economy. And what about you, my girl? Any objection to a couple of thousand crowns' worth of furs?"

"No, but seriously. The children haven't any ski--nor a hand-sleigh."

"Well, have you the money to buy them? I haven't."

"Suppose you tried making them yourself?"

"Ski?" Peer turned over the notion, whistling. "Well, why not? And a sleigh? We might manage that. But what about little Asta?--she's too little for that sort of thing."

"She hasn't any bed for her doll."

Peer whistled again. "There's something in that. That's an idea. I'm not so handless yet that I couldn't--"

He was soon hard at it. There were tools and a joiner's bench in an outhouse, and there he worked. He grew easily tired; his feet tried constantly to take him to the door, but he forced himself to go on. Is there anything in the notion that a man can get well by simply willing it? I will, will, will. The thought of others besides himself began to get the upper hand of those birds of prey ravening in his head. Presents for the children, presents that father had made himself--the picture made light and warmth in his mind. Drive ahead then.

When it came to making the iron ribbons for the sleigh runners he had to go across to the smithy; and there stood a cottar at work roughing horseshoes. Red glowing iron once more, and steel. The clang of hammer on anvil seemed to tear his ears; yet it drew him on too. It was long since last he heard that sound. And there were memories.

"Want this welded, Jens? Where's the borax? Look here, this is the way of it."

"Might ha' been born and bred a smith," said Jens, as he watched the deft and easy hammer-strokes.

Christmas Eve came, and the grey farm-pony dragged up a big wooden case to the door. Peer opened it and carried in the things--a whole heap of good things for Christmas from the Ringeby relations.

He bit his lips when he saw all the bags piled up on the kitchen table.

There had been a time not long ago when Merle and he had loaded up a sledge at the Loreng storehouse and driven off with Christmas gifts to all the poor folk round. It was part of the season's fun for them. And now--now they must even be glad to receive presents themselves.

"Merle--have WE nothing we can give away this year?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"A poor man's Christmas it'll be with a vengeance--if we're only to take presents, and haven't the least little thing to give away."

Merle sighed. "We must hope it won't happen to us again," she said.

"I won't have it happen to us now," he said, pacing up and down.

"There's that poor devil of a joiner down at Moen, with consumption. I'm going down there with a bit of a parcel to chuck in at his door, if I have to take your shift and the shirt off my back. You know yourself it won't be any Christmas at all, if we don't do something."

"Well--if you like. I'll see if we can't find something among the children's clothes that they can do without."

The end of it was that Merle levied toll on all the parcels from home, both rice and raisins and cakes, and made up little packets of them to send round by him. That was Merle's way; let her alone and she would hit upon something.

The snow creaked and crackled underfoot as Peer went off on his errand.

A starry sky and a biting wind, and light upon light from the windows of the farms scattered over the dark hillsides. High above all, against the sky, there was one little gleam that might be a cottage window, or might be a star.

Peer was flushed and freshened up when he came back into the warmth of the room. And a chorus of joyful shouts was raised when Merle announced to the children: "Father's going to bath you all to-night."

The sawed-off end of a barrel was the bathing-tub, and Peer stood in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, holding the naked little bodies as they sprawled about in the steaming water.

Mother was busy with something or other in the sitting-room. But it was a great secret, and the children were very mysterious about it. "No, no, you mustn't go in," they said to little Asta, who went whimpering for her mother to the door.

And later in the evening, when the Christmas-tree was lit up, and the windows shone white with frost, there were great doings all about the sitting room floor. Louise got her ski on and immediately fell on her face; Lorentz, astride of the new sleigh, was shouting "Hi, hi!--clear the course there!", and over in a corner sat little Asta, busy putting her baby to bed and singing it to sleep.

Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled.

"What did I tell you?" said Merle.

Slowly, with torturing slowness, the leaden-grey winter days creep by.

For two hours in the middle of the day there is pale twilight--for two hours--then darkness again. Through the long nights the north wind howls funeral dirges--hu-u-u-u--and piles up the snow into great drifts across the road, deep enough, almost, to smother a sleigh and its driver. The days and nights come and go, monotonous, unchanged; the same icy grey daylight, and never a human soul to speak to. Across the valley a great solid mountain wall hems you in, and you gaze at it till it nearly drives you mad. If only one could bore a hole through it, and steal a glimpse of the world beyond, or could climb up to the topmost ridge and for a moment look far round to a wide horizon, and breathe freely once more.

At last one day the grey veil lifts a little. A strip of blue sky appears--and hearts grow lighter at the sight. The snow peaks to the south turn golden. What? Is it actually the sun? And day by day now a belt of gold grows broader, comes lower and lower on the hillside, till the highest-lying farms are steeped in it and glow red. And at last one day the red flame reaches the Courthouse, and shines in across the floor of the room where Merle is sitting by the window patching the seat of a tiny pair of trousers.