The Great Hunger Part 4

"My dear boy--that is out of the question."

A shiver went through Peer. Had he done something wrong again?

"See here, my boy--have you considered that there may be others of that name in this same place?"

"Yes--but--"

"Wait a minute--and that you would occasion these--others--the deepest pain and distress if it should become known that--well, how matters stand. You see, I am treating you as a grown-up man--a gentleman. And I feel sure you would not wish to inflict a great sorrow--a crushing blow--upon a widow and her innocent children. There, there, my boy, there's nothing to cry about. Life, my young friend, life has troubles that must be faced. What is the name of the farm, or house, where you have lived up to now?"

"T--Troen."

"Troen--a very good name indeed. Then from to-day on you will call yourself Peer Troen."

"Y-yes, sir."

"And if any one should ask about your father, remember that you are bound in honour and conscience not to mention your benefactor's name."

"Y-yes."

"Well, then, as soon as you have made up your mind, come at once and let me know. We shall be great friends yet, you will see. You're sure you wouldn't like to try America? Well, well, come along out to the kitchen and see if we can find you some breakfast."

Peer found himself a moment after sitting on a chair in the kitchen, where there was such a good smell of coffee. "Bertha," said the schoolmaster coaxingly, "you'll find something good for breakfast for my young friend here, won't you?" He waved a farewell with his hand, took down his socks from a string above the stove, and disappeared through the door again.

Chapter IV

When a country boy in blue homespun, with a peaked cap on his blond head, goes wandering at random through the streets of a town, it is no particular concern of any one else. He moves along, gazing in at shop windows, hands deep in his pockets, whistling, looking at everything around him--or at nothing at all. And yet--perhaps in the head under that peaked cap it seems as if a whole little world had suddenly collapsed, and he may be whistling hard to keep from crying in the streets for people to see. He steps aside to avoid a cart, and runs into a man, who drops his cigar in the gutter. "Confounded country lout!"

says the man angrily, but pa.s.ses on and has forgotten boy and all the next moment. But a little farther on a big dog comes dashing out of a yard and unluckily upsets a fat old woman on the pavement, and the boy with the peaked cap, for all his troubles, cannot help doubling up and roaring with laughter.

That afternoon, Peer sat on one of the ramparts below the fortress, biting at a stalk of gra.s.s, and twirling the end in his fingers. Below him lay town and fjord in the mild October sunlight; the rumble of traffic, the noises from workshops and harbour, came up to him through the rust-brown luminous haze. There he sat, while the sentry on the wall above marched back and forth, with his rifle on his shoulder, left--right--left.

You may climb very high up indeed, and fall down very deep, and no such terrible harm done after all, as long as you don't absolutely break your neck. And gradually Peer began to realise that he was still alive, after all. It is a bad business when the world goes against you, even though you may have some one to turn to for advice and sympathy. But when all the people round you are utter strangers, there is nothing to be done but sit down and twirl a straw, and think things out a bit for yourself.

Peer's thoughts were of a thing in a long dressing-gown that had taken his bank book and locked it up and rattled the keys at him and said "Yah!" and deposed him from his bishopric and tried to sneeze and squeeze him into a trade, where he'd have to carry a pressing-iron all his life and be Peer Troen, Tailor. But he wouldn't have that. He sat there bracing himself up, and trying to gather together from somewhere a thing he had never had much need of before--to wit, a will of his own, something to set up against the whole wide world. What was he to do now?

He felt he would like to go back to Troen first of all, and talk things over with the old father and mother; they would be sorry for him there, and say "Poor boy," and pray for him--but after a day or two, he knew, they would begin to glance at him at meals, and remember that there was no one to pay for him now, and that times were hard. No, that was no refuge for him now. But what could he do, then? Clearly it was not such a simple matter to be all alone in the world.

A little later he found himself on a hillside by the Cathedral churchyard, sitting under the yellowing trees, and wondering dreamily where his father was to be buried. What a difference between him and that schoolmaster man! No preaching with him; no whining about what his boy might call himself or might not. Why must he go and die?

It was strange to think of that fine strong man, who had brushed his hair and beard so carefully with his silver-backed brush--to think that he was lying still in a coffin now, and would soon be covered up with earth.

People were coming up the hill now, and pa.s.sing in to the churchyard.

The men wore black clothes and tall shiny hats--but there were some officers too, with plumes and sashes. And then a regimental band--with its bra.s.s instruments. Peer slipped into the churchyard with the crowd, but kept apart from the rest, and took up his stand a little way off, beside a big monument. "It must be father's funeral," he thought to himself, and was broad awake at once.

This, he guessed, must be the Cadet School, that came marching in, and formed up in two lines from the mortuary chapel to the open grave.

The place was nearly full of people now; there were women holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and an elderly lady in black went into the chapel, on the arm of a tall man in uniform. "That must be father's wife," thought Peer, "and the young ladies there in black are--my half-sisters, and that young lieutenant--my half-brother." How strange it all was! A sound of singing came from the chapel. And a little later six sergeants came out, carrying a coffin all heaped with flowers.

"Present arms!" And the soldiers presented, and the band played a slow march and moved off in front of the coffin, between the two lines of soldiers. And then came a great following of mourners. The lady in black came out again, sobbing behind her handkerchief, and hardly able to follow, though she clung to the tall officer's arm. But in front of the pair, just behind the coffin itself, walked a tall man in splendid uniform, with gold epaulettes, plumed hat, and sword, bearing a cushion with two jewelled stars. And the long, long train of mourners moved slowly, gently on, and there--there by the grave, stood the priest, holding a spade.

Peer was anxious to hear what the priest would have to say about his father. Involuntarily he stole a little nearer, though he felt somehow that it would not do to come too close.

A hymn was sung at the graveside, the band accompanying. Peer took off his cap. He was too taken up to notice that one of the mourners was watching him intently, and presently left the group and came towards him. The man wore spectacles, and a shiny tall hat, and it was not until he began to sneeze that Peer recognised him. It was the schoolmaster, glaring at him now with a face so full of horror and fury that the spectacles almost seemed to be spitting fire.

"You--you--Are you mad?" he whispered in Peer's face, clenching his black gloved hands. "What are you doing here? Do you want to cause a catastrophe to-day of all days? Go--get away at once, do you hear me?

Go! For heaven's sake, get away from here before any one sees." Peer turned and fled, hearing behind him as he went a threatening "If ever you dare--again--," while the voices and the band, swelling higher in the hymn, seemed to strike him in the back and drive him on.

He was far down in the town before he could stop and pull himself together. One thing was clear--after this he could never face that schoolmaster again. All was lost. Could he even be sure that what he had done wasn't so frightfully wrong that he would have to go to prison for it?

Next day the Troen folk were sitting at their dinner when the eldest son looked out of the window and said: "There's Peer coming."

"Mercy on us!" cried the good-wife, as he came in. "What is the matter, Peer? Are you ill?"

Ah, it was good that night to creep in under the old familiar skin-rug once more. And the old mother sat on the bedside and talked to him of the Lord, by way of comfort. Peer clenched his hands under the clothes--somehow he thought now of the Lord as a sort of schoolmaster in a dressing-gown. Yet it was some comfort all the same to have the old soul sit there and talk to him.

Peer had much to put up with in the days that followed--much t.i.ttering and whispers of "Look! there goes the priest," as he went by. At table, he felt ashamed of every mouthful he took; he hunted for jobs as day-labourer on distant farms so as to earn a little to help pay for his keep. And when the winter came he would have to do as the others did--hire himself out, young and small as he was, for the Lofoten fishing.

But one day after church Klaus Brock drew him aside and got him to talk things over at length. First, Klaus told him that he himself was going away--he was to begin in one of the mechanical workshops in town, and go from there to the Technical College, to qualify for an engineer. And next he wanted to hear the whole truth about what had happened to Peer that day in town. For when people went slapping their thighs and sn.i.g.g.e.ring about the young would-be priest that had turned out a beggar, Klaus felt he would like to give the lot of them a darned good hammering.

So the two sixteen-year-old boys wandered up and down talking, and in the days to come Peer never forgot how his old accomplice in the shark-fishing had stood by him now. "Do like me," urged Klaus. "You're a bit of a smith already, man; go to the workshops, and read up in your spare time for the entrance exam to the Technical. Then three years at the College--the eighteen hundred crowns will cover that--and there you are, an engineer--and needn't even owe any one a halfpenny."

Peer shook his head; he was sure he would never dare to show his face before that schoolmaster again, much less ask for the money in the bank.

No; the whole thing was over and done with for him.

"But devil take it, man, surely you can see that this ape of a schoolmaster dare not keep you out of your money. Let me come with you; we'll go up and tackle him together, and then--then you'll see." And Klaus clenched his fists and thrust out one shoulder fiercely.

But when January came, there was Peer in oil-skins, in the foc's'le of a Lofoten fishing-smack, ploughing the long sea-road north to the fishing-grounds, in frost and snow-storms. All through that winter he lived the fisherman's life: on land, in one of the tiny fisher-booths where a five-man crew is packed like sardines in an air so thick you can cut it with a knife; at sea, where in a fair wind you stand half the day doing nothing and freezing stiff the while--and a foul wind means out oars, and row, row, row, over an endless plain of rolling icy combers; row, row, till one's hands are lumps of bleeding flesh. Peer lived through it all, thinking now and then, when he could think at all, how the grand gentlefolk had driven him out to this life because he was impertinent enough to exist. And when the fourteen weeks were past, and the Lofoten boats stood into the fjord again on a mild spring day, it was easy for Peer to reckon out his earnings, which were just nothing at all. He had had to borrow money for his outfit and food, and he would be lucky if his boy's share was enough to cover what he owed.

A few weeks later a boy stood by the yard gate of an engineering works in the town just as the bell was ringing and the men came streaming out, and asked for Klaus Brock.

"Hullo, Peer--that you? Been to Lofoten and made your fortune?"

The two boys stood a moment taking stock of one another: Klaus grimy-faced and in working-clothes--Peer weather-beaten and tanned by storm and spray.

The manager of the factory was Klaus's uncle, and the same afternoon his nephew came into the office with a new hand wanting to be taken on as apprentice. He had done some smithy work before, he said; and he was taken on forthwith, at a wage of twopence an hour.

"And what's your name?"

"Peer--er"--the rest stuck in his throat.

"Holm," put in Klaus.

"Peer Holm? Very well, that'll do."

The two boys went out with a feeling of having done something rather daring. And anyway, if trouble should come along, there would be two of them now to tackle it.

Chapter V