The Great Hunger Part 9

"But how did you manage it? What did the schoolmaster say?"

"'Do you suppose that you--you with your antecedents--could ever pa.s.s into the Technical College?' he said. And I told him I HAD pa.s.sed. 'Good heavens! How could you possibly qualify?' and he s.h.i.+fted his gla.s.ses down his nose. And then: 'Oh, no! it's no good coming here with tales of that sort, my lad.' Well, then I showed him the certificate, and he got much meeker. 'Really!' he said, and 'Dear me!' and all that. But I say, Louise--there's another Holm entered for the autumn term."

"Peer, you don't mean--your half-brother?"

"And old Dressing-gown said it would never do--never! But I said it seemed to me there must be room in the world for me as well, and I'd like that bank book now, I said. 'You seem to fancy you have some legal right to it,' he said, and got perfectly furious. Then I hinted that I'd rather ask a lawyer about it and make sure, and at that he regularly boiled with rage and waved his arms all about. But he gave in pretty soon all the same--said he washed his hands of the whole thing.

'And besides,' he said, 'your name's Troen, you know--Peer Troen.'

Ho-ho-ho--Peer Troen! Wouldn't he like it! Tra-la-la-la!--I say, let's go out and get a little fresh air."

Peer said nothing then or after about Klaus Brock, and Klaus himself was going off home for the summer holidays. As the summer wore on the town lay baking in the heat, reeking of drains, and the air from the stable came up to the couple in the garret so heavy and foul that they were sometimes nearly stifled.

"I'll tell you what," said Peer one day, "we really must spend a few s.h.i.+llings more on house rent and get a decent place to live in."

And Louise agreed. For till the time came for him to join the College in the autumn, Peer was obliged to stick to the workshops; he could not afford a holiday just now.

One morning he was just starting with a working gang down to Stenkjaer to repair some damage in the engine-room of a big Russian grain boat, when Louise came and asked him to look at her throat. "It hurts so here," she said.

Peer took a spoon and pressed down her tongue, but could not see anything wrong. "Better go and see the doctor, and make sure," he said.

But the girl made light of it. "Oh, nonsense!" she said; "it's not worth troubling about."

Peer was away for over a week, sleeping on board with the rest. When he came back, he hurried home, suddenly thinking of Louise and her sore throat. He found the job-master greasing the wheels of a carriage, while his wife leaned out of a window scolding at him. "Your sister,"

repeated the carter, turning round his face with its great red lump of nose--"she's gone to hospital--diphtheria hospital--she has. Doctor was here over a week ago and took her off. They've been here since poking round and asking who she was and where she belonged--well, we didn't know. And asking where you were, too--and we didn't know either. She was real bad, if you ask me--"

Peer hastened off. It was a hot day, and the air was close and heavy.

On he went--all down the whole length of Sea Street, through the fishermen's quarter, and a good way further out round the bay. And then he saw a cart coming towards him, an ordinary work-cart, with a coffin on it. The driver sat on the cart, and another man walked behind, hat in hand. Peer ran on, and at last came in sight of the long yellow building at the far end of the bay. He remembered all the horrible stories he had heard about the treatment of diphtheria patients--how their throats had to be cut open to give them air, or something burned out of them with red-hot irons--oh! When at last he had reached the high fence and rung the bell, he stood breathless and dripping with sweat, leaning against the gate.

There was a sound of steps within, a key was turned, and a porter with a red moustache and freckles about his hard blue eyes thrust out his head.

"What d'you want to go ringing like that for?"

"Froken Hagen--Louise Hagen--is she better? How--how is she?"

"Lou--Louise Hagen? A girl called Louise Hagen? Is it her you've come to ask about?"

"Yes. She's my sister. Tell me--or--let me in to see her."

"Wait a bit. You don't mean a girl that was brought in here about a week ago?"

"Yes, yes--but let me in."

"We've had no end of bother and trouble about that girl, trying to find out where she came from, and if she had people here. But, of course, this weather, we couldn't possibly keep her any longer. Didn't you meet a coffin on a cart as you came along?"

"What--what--you don't mean--?"

"Well, you should have come before, you know. She did ask a lot for some one called Peer. And she got the matron to write somewhere--wasn't it to Levanger? Were you the fellow she was asking for? So you came at last!

Oh, well--she died four or five days ago. And they're just gone now to bury her, in St. Mary's Churchyard."

Peer turned round and looked out over the bay at the town, that lay sunlit and smoke-wreathed beyond. Towards the town he began to walk, but his step grew quicker and quicker, and at last he took off his cap and ran, panting and sobbing as he went. Have I been drinking? was the thought that whirled through his brain, or why can't I wake? What is it? What is it? And still he ran. There was no cart in sight as yet; the little streets of the fisher-quarter were all twists and turns. At last he reached Sea Street once more, and there--there far ahead was the slow-moving cart. Almost at once it turned off to the right and disappeared, and when Peer reached the turning, it was not to be seen.

Still he ran on at haphazard. There seemed to be other people in the streets--children flying red balloons, women with baskets, men with straw hats and walking-sticks. But Peer marked his line, and ran forward, thrusting people aside, upsetting those in his way, and das.h.i.+ng on again. In King Street he came in sight of the cart once more, nearer this time. The man walking behind it with his hat in his hand had red curling hair, and walked with a curtsying gait, giving at the knees and turning out his toes. No doubt he made his living as mourner at funerals to which no other mourners came. As the cart turned into the churchyard Peer came up with it, and tried to follow at a walk, but stumbled and could hardly keep his feet. The man behind the cart looked at him.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked. The driver looked round, but drove on again at once.

The cart stopped, and Peer stood by, leaning against a tree for support.

A third man came up--he seemed to be the gravedigger--and he heard the three discussing how long they might have to wait for the parson. "The time's just about up, isn't it?" said the driver, taking out his watch.

"Ay, the clerk said he'd be here by now," agreed the gravedigger, and blew his nose.

Soon the priest came in sight, wearing his black robe and white ruff; there were doubtless to be other funerals that day. Peer sank down on a bench and looked stupidly on while the coffin was lifted from the cart, carried to the grave, and lowered down. A man with spectacles and a red nose came up with a hymn-book, and sang something over the grave. The priest lifted the spade--and at the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on Louise's coffin, Peer started as if struck, and all but fell from his seat.

When he looked up again, the place was deserted. The bell was ringing, and a crowd was collecting in another part of the churchyard. Peer sat where he was, quite still.

In the evening, when the gravedigger came to lock the gates, he had to take the young man by the shoulder and shake him to his senses.

"Locking-up time," he said. "You must go now."

Peer rose and tried to walk, and by and by he was stumbling blindly out through the gate and down the street. And after a time he found himself climbing a flight of stairs above a stable-yard. Once in his room, he flung himself down on the bed as he was, and lay there still.

The close heat of the day had broken in a downpour of rain, which drummed upon the roof above his head, and poured in torrents through the gutters. Instinctively Peer started up: Louise was out in the rain--she would need her cloak. He was on his feet in a moment, as if to find it--then he stopped short, and sank slowly back upon the bed.

He drew up his feet under him, and buried his head in his arms. His brain was full of changing, hurrying visions, of storm and death, of human beings helpless in a universe coldly and indifferently ruled by a will that knows no pity.

Then for the first time it was as if he lifted up his head against Heaven itself and cried: "There is no sense in all this. I will not bear it."

Later in the night, when he found himself mechanically folding his hands for the evening prayer he had learnt to say as a child, he suddenly burst out laughing, and clenched his fists, and cried aloud: "No, no, no--never--never again."

Once more it came to him that there was something in G.o.d like the schoolmaster--He took the side of those who were well off already. "Yes, they who have parents and home and brothers and sisters and worldly goods--them I protect and care for. But here's a boy alone in the world, struggling and fighting his way on as best he can--from him I will take the only thing he has. That boy is nothing to any one. Let him be punished because he is poor, and cast down to the earth, for there is none to care for him. That boy is nothing to any one--nothing." Oh, oh, oh!--he clenched his fists and beat them against the wall.

His whole little world was broken to pieces. Either G.o.d did not exist at all, or He was cold and pitiless--one way of it was as bad as the other.

The heavenly country dissolved into cloud and melted away, and above was nothing but empty s.p.a.ce. No more folding of your hands, like a fool!

Walk on the earth, and lift up your head, and defy Heaven and fate, as you defied the schoolmaster. Your mother has no need of you to save her--she is not anywhere any more. She is dead--dead and turned to clay; and more than that there is not, for her or for you or any other being in this world.

Still he lay there. He would fain have slept, but seemed instead to sink into a vague far-away twilight that rocked him--rocked him on its dark and golden waves. And now he heard a sound--what was it? A violin. "The mighty host in white array." Louise--is it you--and playing? He could see her now, out there in the twilight. How pale she was! But still she played. And now he understood what that twilight was.

It was a world beyond the consciousness of daily life--and that world belonged to him. "Peer, let me stay here." And something in him answered: "Yes, you shall stay, Louise. Even though there is no G.o.d and no immortality, you shall stay here." And then she smiled. And still she played. And it was as though he were building a little vaulted chapel for her in defiance of Heaven and of G.o.d--as though he were ringing out with his own hands a great eternal chime for her sake. What was happening to him? There was none to comfort him, yet it ended, as he lay there, with his pouring out something of his innermost being, as an offering to all that lives, to the earth and the stars, until all seemed rocking, rocking with him on the stately waves of the psalm. He lay there with fast-closed eyes, stretching out his hands as though afraid to wake, and find it all nothing but a beautiful dream.

Chapter VII

The two-o'clock bell at the Technical College had just begun to ring, and a stream of students appeared out of the long straggling buildings and poured through the gate, breaking up then into little knots and groups that went their several ways into the town.

It was a motley crowd of young men of all ages from seventeen to thirty or more. Students of the everlasting type, sent here by their parents as a last resource, for--"he can always be an engineer"; young sparks who paid more attention to their toilet than their books, and hoped to "get through somehow" without troubling to work; and stiff youths of soldierly bearing, who had been ploughed for the Army, but who likewise could "always be engineers." There were peasant-lads who had crammed themselves through their Intermediate at a spurt, and now wore the College cap above their rough grey homespun, and dreamed of getting through in no time, and turning into great men with starched cuffs and pince-nez. There were pale young enthusiasts, too, who would probably end as actors; and there were also quondam actors, killed by the critics, but still sufficiently alive, it seemed, "to be engineers." And as the young fellows hurried on their gay and careless way through the town, an older man here and there might look round after them with a smile of some sadness. It was easy to say what fate awaited most of them. College ended, they would be scattered like birds of pa.s.sage throughout the wide world, some to fall by sunstroke in Africa, or be murdered by natives in China, others to become mining kings in the mountains of Peru, or heads of great factories in Siberia, thousands of miles from home and friends. The whole planet was their home. Only a few of them--not always the s.h.i.+ning lights--would stay at home, with a post on the State railways, to sit in an office and watch their salaries mount by increments of L12 every fifth year.

"That's a devil of a fellow, that brother of yours that's here," said Klaus Brock to Peer one day, as they were walking into town together with their books under their arms.

"Now, look here, Klaus, once for all, be good enough to stop calling him my brother. And another thing--you're never to say a word to any one about my father having been anything but a farmer. My name's Holm, and I'm called so after my father's farm. Just remember that, will you?"

"Oh, all right. Don't excite yourself."

"Do you suppose I'd give that c.o.xcomb the triumph of thinking I want to make up to him?"