Peer stood on the quay waving farewell to his old comrades as the steamer ploughed through the water, drawing after it a fan-shaped trail of little waves.

And when he came home, he walked about the place, looking at farms and woods, at Merle and the children, with eyes that seemed to her strange and new.

Next night he stayed up once more alone, pacing to and fro in the great hall, and looking out of the windows into the dark.

Was he ravelling out his life into golden threads that vanished and were forgotten?

Was he content to be fuel instead of light?

What was he seeking? Happiness? And beyond it? As a boy he had called it the anthem, the universal hymn. What was it now? God? But he would hardly find Him in idleness.

You have drawn such nourishment as you could from joy in your home, from your marriage, your fatherhood, nature, and the fellowmen around you here. There are unused faculties in you that hunger for exercise; that long to be set free to work, to strive, to act.

You should take up the barrage on the Besna, Peer. But could you get the contract? If you once buckle-to in earnest, no one is likely to beat you—you'll get it, sure enough. But do you really want it?

Are you not working away at a mowing-machine as it is? Better own up that you can't get on without your old craft, after all—that you must for ever be messing and meddling with steel and fire. You can't help yourself.

All the things your eyes have been fixed on in these last years have been only golden visions in a mist. The steel has its own will. The steel is beginning to wake in you—singing—singing—bent on pressing onward. You have no choice.

The world-will goes on its way. Go with it or be cast overboard as useless.

And still Peer walked up and down, up and down.

Next morning he set off for the capital. Merle watched the carriage as it drove away, and thought to herself: "He was right. Something new is beginning."



Chapter IX

There came a card from Peer, with a brief message: "Off to inspect the ground." A fortnight later he came home, loaded with maps and plans. "Of course I'm late for the fair, as usual," he said. "But wait a bit."

He locked himself into his room. At last Merle knew what it was like to have him at work. She could hear him in the mornings, walking up and down and whistling. Then silence—he would be standing over his table, busy with notes and figures. Then steps again. Now he was singing—and this was a novelty to himself. It was as if he carried in him a store of happiness, a treasure laid by of love, and the beauty of nature, and happy hours, and now it found its way out in song. Why should he not sing over the plans for a great barrage? Mathematics are dry work enough, but at times they can be as living visions, soaring up into the light. Peer sang louder. Then silence again. Merle never knew now when he stopped work and came to bed. She would fall asleep to the sound of his singing in his own room, and when she woke he would already be tramping up and down again in there; and to her his steps seemed like the imperious tread of a great commander. He was alight with new visions, new themes, and his voice had a lordly ring. Merle looked at him through half-closed eyes with a lingering glance. Once more he was new to her: she had never seen him like this.

At last the work was finished, and he sent in his tender. And now he was more restless than ever. For a week he waited for an answer, tramping in and out of the place, going off for rides on Bijou, and coming back with his horse dripping with sweat. An impatient man cannot possibly ride at any pace but a gallop. The days passed; Peer was sleepless, and ate nothing. More days passed. At last he came bursting into the nursery one morning: "Trunk call, Merle; summons to a meeting of the Company Directors. Quick's the word. Come and help me pack—sharp." And in no time he was off again to the city.

Now it was Merle's turn to walk up and down in suspense. It mattered little to her in itself whether he got the work or not, but she was keenly anxious that he should win.

A couple of days later a telegram came: "Hurrah, wife!" And Merle danced round the room, waving the telegram above her head.

The next day he was back home again and tramping up and down the room. "What do you think your father will say to it, Merle—ha!"

"Father? Say to what?"

"When I ask him to be my surety for a couple of hundred thousand crowns?"

"Is father to be in it, too?" Merle looked at him open-eyed.

"Oh, if he doesn't want to, we'll let him off. But at any rate I'll ask him first. Goodbye." And Peer drove off into town.

In Lorentz Uthoug's big house you had to pass through the hardware shop to get to his office, which lay behind. Peer knocked at the door, with a portfolio under his arm. Herr Uthoug had just lit the gas, and was on the point of sitting down at his American roll-top desk, when Peer entered. The grey-bearded head with the close thick hair turned towards him, darkened by the shadow from the green shade of the burner.

"You, is it?" said he. "Sit down. You've been to Christiania, I hear. And what are you busy with now?"

They sat down opposite each other. Peer explained, calmly and with confidence.

"And what does the thing amount to?" asked Uthoug, his face coming out of the shadow and looking at Peer in the full light.

"Two million four hundred thousand."

The old man laid his hairy hands on the desk and rose to his feet, staring at the other and breathing deeply. The sum half-stunned him. Beside it he himself and his work seemed like dust in the balance. Where were all his plans and achievements now, his greatness, his position, his authority in the town? Compared with amounts like this, what were the paltry sums he had been used to handle?

"I—I didn't quite catch—" he stammered. "Did you say two millions?"

"Yes. I daresay it seems a trifle to you," said Peer. "Indeed, I've handled contracts myself that ran to fifty million francs."

"What? How much did you say?" Uthoug began to move restlessly about the room. He clutched his hair, and gazed at Peer as if doubting whether he was quite sober.

At the same time he felt it would never do to let himself be so easily thrown off his balance. He tried to pull himself together.

"And what do you make out of it?" he asked.

"A couple of hundred thousand, I hope."

"Oh!" A profit on this scale again rather startled the old man. No, he was nothing; he never had been anything in this world!

"How do you know that you will make so much?"

"I've calculated it all out."

"But if—but how can you be sure of it? Suppose you've got your figures wrong?" His head was thrust forward again into the full light.

"I'm in the habit of getting my figures right," said Peer.

When he broached the question of security, the old man was in the act of moving away from him across the room. But he stopped short, and looked back over his shoulder.

"What? Security? You want me to stand security for two million crowns?"

"No; the Company asks for a guarantee for four hundred thousand."

After a pause the old man said: "I see. Yes, I see. But—but I'm not worth as much as that altogether."

"I can put in three hundred thousand of the four myself, in shares. And then, of course, I have the Loreng property, and the works. But put it at a round figure—will you guarantee a hundred thousand?"

There was another pause, and then the reply came from the far end of the room to which Uthoug had drifted: "Even that's a big sum."

"Of course if you would rather not, I could make other arrangements. My two friends, who have just been here—" He rose and began to gather up his papers.

"No, no; you mustn't be in such a hurry. Why, you come down on a man like an avalanche. You must give me time to think it over—till to-morrow at least. And the papers—at any rate, I must have a look at them."

Uthoug passed a restless and troubled night. The solid ground seemed to have failed him; his mind could find no firm foothold. His son-in-law must be a great man—he should be the last to doubt it. But a hundred thousand—to be ventured, not in landed property, or a big trade deal, but on the success of a piece of construction work. This was something new. It seemed fantastic—suited to the great world outside perhaps, or the future. Had he courage enough to stand in? Who could tell what accidents, what disasters might not happen? No! He shook his head. He could not. He dared not. But—the thing tempted him. He had always wanted to be something more than a whale among the minnows. Should he risk it? Should he not? It meant staking his whole fortune, his position, everything, upon the outcome of a piece of engineering that he understood nothing whatever about. It was sheer speculation; it was gambling. No, he must say: No. Then he was only a whale among the minnows, after all. No, he must say: Yes. Good God! He clenched his hands together; they were clammy with sweat, and his brain was in a whirl. It was a trial, a temptation. He felt an impulse to pray. But what good could that do—since he had himself abolished God.

Next day Merle and Peer were rung up by telephone and asked to come in to dinner with the old folks.

But when they were all sitting at table, they found it impossible to keep the conversation going. Everyone seemed shy of beginning on the subject they were all thinking about. The old man's face was grey with want of sleep; his wife looked from one to the other through her spectacles. Peer was calm and smiling.

At last, when the claret came round, Fru Uthoug lifted her glass and drank to Peer. "Good fortune!" she said. "We won't be the ones to stand in your way. Since you think it is all right, of course it is. And we all hope it will turn out well for you, Peer."

Merle looked at her parents; she had sat through the meal anxious and troubled, and now the tears rose into her eyes.

"Thanks," said Peer, lifting his glass and drinking to his host and hostess. "Thanks," he repeated, bowing to old Uthoug. The matter was arranged. Evidently the two old folks had talked it over together and come to an agreement.

It was settled, but all four felt as if the solid ground were rocking a little under their feet. All their future, their fate, seemed staked upon a throw.

A couple of days later, a day of mild October sunshine, Peer happened to go into the town, and, catching sight of his mother-in-law at the window, he went off and bought some flowers, and took them up to her.

She was sitting looking out at the yellow sky in the west, and she hardly turned her head as she took the flowers. "Thanks, Peer," she said, and continued gazing out at the sky.

"What are you thinking of, dear mother?" asked Peer.

"Ah! it isn't a good thing always to tell our thoughts," she said, and she turned her spectacled eyes so as to look out over the lake.

"I hope it was something pleasant?"

"I was thinking of you, Peer. Of you and Merle."

"It is good of you to think of us."

"You see, Peer, there is trouble coming for you. A great deal of trouble." She nodded her head towards the yellow sky in the west.

"Trouble? Why? Why should trouble come to us?"

"Because you are happy, Peer."

"What? Because I am—?"

"Because all things blossom and flourish about you. Be sure that there are unseen powers enough that grudge you your happiness."

Peer smiled. "You think so?" he asked.

"I know it," she answered with a sigh, gazing out into the distance. "You have made enemies of late amongst all those envious shadows that none can see. But they are all around us. I see them every day; I have learned to know them, in all these years. I have fought with them. And it is well for Merle that she has learned to sing in a house so full of shadows. God grant she may be able to sing them away from you too."

When Peer left the house he felt as if little shudders of cold were passing down his back. "Pooh!" he exclaimed as he reached the street. "She is not right in her head." And he hurried to his carriole and drove off home.

"Old Rode will be pleased, anyhow," he thought. "He'll be his own master in the workshop now—the dream of his life. Well, everyone for himself. And the bailiff will have things all his own way at Loreng for a year or two. Well, well! Come up, Brownie!"



Chapter X

"Peer, you're surely not going away just now? Oh, Peer, you mustn't. You won't leave me alone, Peer!"

"Merle, dear, now do be sensible. No, no—do let go, dear." He tried to disengage her hands that were clasped behind his neck.

"Peer, you have never been like this before. Don't you care for me any more—or the children?"

"Merle, dearest, you don't imagine that I like going. But you surely don't want me to have another big breach this year. It would be sheer ruin, I do assure you. Come, come now; let me go."

But she held him fast. "And what happens to those dams up there is more to you now than what becomes of me!"

"You will be all right, dear. The doctor and the nurse have promised to be on the spot the moment you send word. And you managed so well before. . . . I simply cannot stay now, Merle. There's too much at stake. There, there, goodbye! Be sure you telegraph—" He kissed her over the eyes, put her gently down into a chair, and hurried out of the room, feeling her terrified glance follow him as he went.

The April sun had cleared away the snow from the lowlands, but when Peer stepped out of the train up in Espedal he found himself back in winter—farms and fields still covered, and ridges and peaks deep in white dazzling snow. And soon he was sitting wrapped in his furs, driving a miserable dun pony up a side-valley that led out on to the uplands.

The road was a narrow track through the snow, yellow with horse-dung, and a mass of holes and ruts, worn by his own teams that had hauled their heavy loads of cement this way all through that winter and the last, up to the plateau and across the frozen lakes to Besna.

The steel will on. The steel cares nothing for human beings. Merle must come through it alone.

When a healthy, happy man is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks into an easy gallop.

This was not the work he had once dreamed of finding. Now, as before, his hunger for eternal things seemed ever at the side of his accomplishment, asking continually: Whither? Why? and What then?

But by degrees the difficulties had multiplied and mounted, till at last his whole mind was taken up by the one thought—to put it through. Good or bad in itself—he must make a success of it. He had undertaken it, and he must see it through. He must not be beaten.

And so he fought on. It was merely a trial of strength; a fight with material difficulties. Aye, but was that all it was? Were there not times when he felt himself struggling with something greater, something worse? A new motive force seemed to have come into his life—misfortune. A power outside his own will had begun to play tricks with him.

Your calculations may be sound, correct in every detail, and yet things may go altogether wrong.

Who could include in his calculations the chance that a perfectly sober engineer will get drunk one day and give orders so crazy that it costs tens of thousands to repair the damage? Who could foresee that against all probability a big vein of water would be tapped in tunnelling, and would burst out, flooding the workings and overwhelming the workmen—so that the next day a train of unpainted deal coffins goes winding out over the frozen lakes?

More than once there had been remarks and questions in the newspapers: "Another disaster at the Besna Falls. Who is to blame?"

It was because he himself was away on a business journey and Falkman had neglected to take elementary precautions that the big rock-fall occurred in the tunnel, killing four men, and destroying the new Belgian rock-drill, that had cost a good hundred thousand, before it had begun to work. This sort of thing was not faulty calculation—it was malicious fate.

"Come up, boy! We must get there to-night. The flood mustn't have a chance this year to lay the blame on me because I wasn't on the spot."

And then, to cap the other misfortunes, his chief contractor for material had gone bankrupt, and now prices had risen far above the rates he had allowed for—adding fresh thousands to the extra expenditure.

But he would put the thing through, even if he lost money by it. His envious rivals who had lately begun to run down his projects in the technical papers—he would make them look foolish yet.

And then?

Well, it may be that the Promethean spirit is preparing a settling day for the universe somewhere out in infinity. But what concern is that of mine? What about my own immortal soul?

Silence—push on, push on. There may be a snowstorm any minute. Come up—get along, you scarecrow.

The dun struggles on to the end of a twelve-mile stage, and then the valley ends and the full blast from the plateau meets them. Here lies the posting station, the last farm in the valley. He swings into the yard and is soon sitting in the room over a cup of coffee and a pipe.

Merle? How are things with Merle now?

Ah! here comes his own horse, the big black stallion from Gudbrandsdal. This beast's trot is a different thing from the poor dun's—the sleigh flies up to the door. And in a moment Peer is sitting in it again in his furs.

Ah! what a relief to have a fresh horse, and one that makes light of the load behind him. Away he goes at a brisk trot, with lifted head and bells jingling, over the frozen lakes. Here and there on the hillslopes a grey hut or two show out—saeters, which have lain there unchanged for perhaps a couple of thousand years. But a new time is coming. The saeter-horns will be heard no longer, and the song of the turbines will rise in their place.

An icy wind is blowing; the horse throws up its head and snorts. Big snowflakes come driving on the wind, and soon a regular snowstorm is raging, lashing the traveller's face till he gasps. First the horse's mane and tail grow white with snow, then its whole body. The drifts grow bigger, the black has to make great bounds to clear them. Bravo, old boy! we must get there before dark. There are brushwood brooms set out across the ice to mark the way, but who could keep them in sight in a driving smother like this? Peer's own face is plastered white now, and he feels stunned and dazed under the lash of the snow.

He has worked under the burning suns of Egypt—and now here. But the steel will on. The wave rolls on its way over all the world.

If this snow should turn to rain now, it will mean a flood. And then the men will have to turn out to-night and work to save the dams.

One more disaster, and he would hardly be able to finish within the contract time. And that once exceeded, each day's delay means a penalty of a thousand crowns.

It is getting darker.

At last there is nothing to be seen on the way but a shapeless mass of snow struggling with bowed head against the storm, wading deep in the loose drifts, wading seemingly at haphazard—and trailing after it an indefinable bundle of white—dead white. Behind, a human being drags along, holding on for dear life to the rings on the sleigh. It is the post-boy from the last stage.

At last they were groping their way in the darkness towards the shore, where the electric lights of the station showed faintly through the snow-fog. And hardly had Peer got out of the sleigh before the snow stopped suddenly, and the dazzling electric suns shone over the place, with the workmen's barracks, the assistants' quarters, the offices, and his own little plank-built house. Two of the engineers came out to meet him, and saluted respectfully.

"Well, how is everything getting on?"

The greybeard answered: "The men have struck work to-day."

"Struck? What for?"

"They want us to take back the machinist that was dismissed the other day for drunkenness."

Peer shook the snow from his fur coat, took his bag, and walked over to the building, the others following. "Then we'll have to take him back," he said. "We can't afford a strike now."

A couple of days later Peer was lying in bed, when the post-bag was brought in. He shook the letters out over the coverlet, and caught sight of one from Klaus Brook.

What was this? Why did his hand tremble as he took it up? Of course it was only one of Klaus's ordinary friendly letters.

DEAR FRIEND,—This is a hard letter to write. But I do hope you have taken my advice and got some of your money at any rate over to Norway. Well, to be as brief as possible! Ferdinand Holm has decamped, or is in prison, or possibly worse—you know well enough it's no good asking questions in a country like this when a big man suddenly disappears. He had made enemies in the highest places; he was playing a dangerous game—and this is the end of it.

You know what it means when a business goes into liquidation out here, and no strong man on the spot to look after things. We Europeans can whistle for our share.

You'll take it coolly, I know. I've lost every penny I had—but you've still got your place over there and the workshops. And you're the sort of fellow to make twice as much next time, or I don't know you. I hope the Besna barrage is to be a success.

Yours ever,

KLAUS BROCK.

P.S.—Of course you'll understand that now my friend has been thrown overboard it will very likely be my turn next. But I can't leave now—to try would rouse suspicion at once. We foreigners have some difficult balancing to do, to escape a fall. Well, if by chance you don't hear from me again, you'll know something has happened!

Outside, the water was streaming down the channels into the fall. Peer lay still for a while, only one knee moving up and down beneath the clothes. He thought of his two friends. And he thought that he was now a poor man—and that the greater part of the burden of the security would fall now on old Lorentz D. Uthoug.

Clearly, Fate has other business on hand than making things easy for you, Peer. You must fight your fight out single-handed.



Chapter XI

One evening in the late autumn Merle was sitting at home waiting for her husband. He had been away for several weeks, so it was only natural that she should make a little festivity of his return. The lamps were lit in all the rooms, wood fires were crackling in all the stoves, the cook was busy with his favourite dishes, and little Louise, now five years old, had on her blue velvet frock. She was sitting on the floor, nursing two dolls, and chattering to them. "Mind you're a good girl now, Josephine. Your grandpa will be here directly." Merle looked in through the kitchen door: "Have you brought up the claret, Bertha? That's right. You'd better put it near the stove to warm." Then she went round all the rooms again. The two youngest children were in bed—was there anything more to be done?

It would be an hour at least before he could be here, yet she could not help listening all the time for the sound of wheels. But she had not finished yet. She hurried up to the bathroom, turned on the hot water, undressed, and put on an oilskin cap to keep her hair dry, and soon she was splashing about with soap and sponge. Why not make herself as attractive as she could, even if things did look dark for them just now?

A little stream of talk went on in her brain. Strange that one's body could be so great a pleasure to another. Here he kissed you—and here—and here—and often he seemed beside himself with joy. And do you remember—that time? You held back and were cold often—perhaps too often—is it too late now? Ah! he has other things to think of now. The time is gone by when you could be comfort enough to him in all troubles. But is it quite gone by? Oh yes; last time he came home, he hardly seemed to notice that we had a new little girl, that he had never seen before. Well, no doubt it must be so. He did not complain, and he was calm and quiet, but his mind was full of a whole world of serious things, a world where there was no room for wife and children. Will it be the same this evening again? Will he notice that you have dressed so carefully to please him? Will it be a joy to him any more to feel his arms around you?

She stood in front of the big, white-framed mirror, and looked critically at herself. No, she was no longer young as she had been. The red in her cheeks had faded a little these last few years, and there were one or two wrinkles that could not be hidden. But her eyebrows—he had loved to kiss them once—they were surely much as before. And involuntarily she bent towards the glass, and stroked the dark growth above her eyes as if it were his hand caressing her.

She came down at last, dressed in a loose blue dress with a broad lace collar and blond lace in the wide sleeves. And not to seem too much dressed, she had put on a red-flowered apron to give herself a housewifely look.

It was past seven now. Louise came whimpering to her, and Merle sank down in a chair by the window, and took the child on her lap, and waited.

The sound of wheels in the night may mean the approach of fate itself. Some decision, some final word that casts us down in a moment from wealth to ruin—who knows? Peer had been to England now, trying to come to some arrangement with the Company. Sh!—was that not wheels? She rose, trembling, and listened.

No, it had passed on.

It was eight o'clock now, time for Louise to go to bed; and Merle began undressing her. Soon the child was lying in her little white bed, with a doll on either side. "Give Papa a tiss," she babbled, "and give him my love. And Mama, do you think he'll let me come into his bed for a bit tomorrow morning?"

"Oh yes, I'm sure he will. And now lie down and go to sleep, there's a good girl."

Merle sat down again in the room and waited. But at last she rose, put on a cloak and went out.

The town lay down there in the autumn darkness under a milk-white mist of light. And over the black hills all around rose a world of stars. Somewhere out there was Peer, far out maybe upon some country road, the horse plodding on through the dark at its own will, its master sitting with bowed head, brooding.

"Help us, Thou above—and help him most, he has had so much adversity in these last days."

But the starry vault seems icy cold—it has heard the prayers of millions and millions before—the hearts of men are nothing to the universe.

Merle drooped her head and went in again to the house.

It was midnight when Peer drove up the hill towards his home. The sight of the great house with its brilliantly lighted windows jarred so cruelly on his wearied mind that he involuntarily gave the horse a cut with his whip.

He flung the reins to the stable-boy who had come out with a lantern, and walked up the steps, moving almost with a feeling of awe in this great house, as if it already belonged to someone else.

He opened the door of the drawing-room—no one there, but light, light and comfort. He passed through into the next room, and there sat Merle, alone, in an armchair, with her head resting on the arm, asleep.

Had she been waiting so long?

A wave of warmth passed through him; he stood still, looking at her; and presently her bowed figure slowly straightened; her pale face relaxed into a smile. Without waking her, he went on into the nursery, where the lights were still burning. But here the lights shone only on three little ones, lying in their clean night-clothes, asleep.

He went back to the dining-room; more lights, and a table laid for two, a snowy cloth and flowers, and a single carnation stuck into his napkin—that must be from Louise—little Louise.

At last Merle was awakened by the touch of his hand on her shoulder.

"Oh, are you there?"

"Good-evening, Merle!" They embraced, and he kissed her forehead. But she could see that his mind was busy with other things.

They sat down to table, and began their meal. She could read the expression of his face, his voice, his calm air—she knew they meant bad news.

But she would not question him. She would only try to show him that all things else could be endured, if only they two loved each other.

But the time had passed when an unexpected caress from her was enough to send him wild with joy. She sat there now trembling inwardly with suspense, wondering if he would notice her—if he could find any comfort in having her with him, still young and with something of her beauty left.

He looked over to her with a far-away smile. "Merle," he asked, "what do you think your father is worth altogether?" The words came like a quiet order from a captain standing on the bridge, while his ship goes down.

"Oh, Peer, don't think about all that to-night. Welcome home!" And she smiled and took his hand.

"Thanks," he said, and pressed her fingers; but his thoughts were still far off. And he went on eating without knowing what he ate.

"And what do you think? Louise has begun the violin. You've no idea how the little thing takes to it."

"Oh?"

"And Asta's got another tooth—she had a wretched time, poor thing, while it was coming through."

It was as if she were drawing the children up to him, to show him that at least he still had them.

He looked at her for a moment. "Merle, you ought never to have married me. It would have been better for you and for your people too."

"Oh, nonsense, Peer—you know you'll be able to make it all right again."

They went up to bed, and undressed slowly. "He hasn't noticed me yet," thought Merle.

And she laughed a little, and said, "I was sitting thinking this evening of the first day we met. I suppose you never think of it now?"

He turned round, half undressed, and looked at her. Her lively tone fell strangely on his ears. "She does not ask how I have got on, or how things are going," he thought. But as he went on looking at her he began at last to see through her smile to the anxious heart beneath.

Ah, yes; he remembered well that far-off summer when life had been a holiday in the hills, and a girl making coffee over a fire had smiled at him for the first time. And he remembered the first sun-red night of his love on the shining lake-mirror, when his heart was filled with the rush of a great anthem to heaven and earth.

She stood there still. He had her yet. But for the first time in their lives she came to him now humbly, begging him to make the best of her as she was.

An unspeakable warmth began to flow through his heavy heart. But he did not rush to embrace her and whirl her off in a storm of passionate delight. He stood still, staring before him, and, drawing himself up, swore to himself with fast-closed lips that he would, he WOULD trample a way through, and save things for them both, even yet.

The lights were put out, and soon they lay in their separate beds, breathing heavily in the dark. Peer stretched himself out, with his face up, thinking, with closed eyes. He was hunting in the dark for some way to save his dear ones. And Merle lay so long waiting for one caress from him that at last she had to draw out her handkerchief and press it over her eyes, while her body shook with a noiseless sobbing.



Chapter XII

Old Lorentz D. Uthoug rarely visited his rich sister at Bruseth, but to-day he had taken his weary way up there, and the two masterful old folks sat now facing each other.

"So you've managed to find your way up here?" said Aunt Marit, throwing out her ample bosom and rubbing her knees like a man.

"Why, yes—I thought I'd like to see how you were getting on," said Uthoug, squaring his broad shoulders.

"Quite well, thanks. Having no son-in-law, I'm not likely to go bankrupt, I daresay."

"I'm not bankrupt, either," said old Uthoug, fixing his red eyes on her face.

"Perhaps not. But what about him?"

"Neither is he. He'll be a rich man before very long."

"He!—rich! Did you say rich?"

"Before a year's out," answered the old man calmly. "But you'll have to help."

"I!" Aunt Marit shifted her chair backwards, gaping. "I, did you say? Ha-ha-ha! Just tell me, how many hundreds of thousands did he lose over that ditch or drain or whatever it was?"

"He was six months behind time in finishing it, I know. But the Company agreed to halve the forfeit for delay when they'd seen what a masterpiece the work was."

"Ah, yes—and what about the contractors, whom he couldn't pay, I hear?"

"He's paid them all in full now. The Bank arranged things."

"I see. After you and he had mortaged every stick and rag you had in the world. Yes, indeed—you deserve a good whipping, the pair of you!"

Uthoug stroked his beard. "From a financial point of view the thing wasn't a success for him, I'll admit. But I can show you here what the engineering people say about it in the technical papers. Here's an article with pictures of him and of the barrage."

"Well! he'd better keep his family on pictures in the papers then," said the widow, paying no attention to the paper he offered.

"He'll soon be on top again," said her brother, putting the papers back in his pocket. He sat there in front of her quite unruffled. He would let people see that he was not the man to be crushed by a reverse; that there were other things he valued more than money.

"Soon be on top?" repeated Aunt Marit. "Has he got round you again with some nonsense?"

"He's invented a new mowing machine. It's nearly finished. And the experts say it will be worth a million."

"Ho! and you want to come over me with a tale like that?" The widow shifted her chair a little farther back.

"You must help us to carry on through this year—both of us. If you will stand security for thirty thousand, the bank . . ."

Aunt Marit of Bruseth slapped her knees emphatically. "I'll do nothing of the sort!"

"For twenty thousand, then?"

"Not for twenty pence!"

Lorentz Uthoug fixed his gaze on his sister's face; his red eyes began to glow.

"You'll have to do it, Marit," he said calmly. He took a pipe from his pocket and set to work to fill and light it.

The two sat for a while looking at each other, each on the alert for fear the other's will should prove the stronger. They looked at each other so long that at last both smiled involuntarily.

"I suppose you've taken to going to church with your wife now?" asked the widow at last, her eyes blinking derision.

"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 passed, 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-grass.

The horses pricked 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 grass 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 competition 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 grass is wet, it sticks between the steel fingers above the shears and accumulates 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.

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 competitors 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 arsenic. 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 masses 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 demigod, 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. God? 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 pass 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 God'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 snatching any scraps 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 passed 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 passage, 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 passing 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.

Merle, as she went out and in, was thinking perhaps of the same thing, but her head was full of so much else—getting things in order and the household set going. Food had to be bought from the local shop; and how many litres of milk would she require in the morning? Where could she get eggs? She must go across at once to the Raastads' and ask. So the pale woman in the dark dress walked slowly with bowed head across the courtyard. But when she stopped to speak to people about the place, they would forget their manners and stare at her, she smiled so strangely.

"Father, there's a box of starlings on the wall here," said Louise as she lay in bed with her arms round Peer's neck saying good-night. "And there's a swallow's nest under the eaves too."

"Oh, yes, we'll have great fun at Raastad—just you wait and see."

Soon Merle and Peer too lay in their strange beds, looking out at the luminous summer night.

They were shipwrecked people washed ashore here. But it was not so clear that they were saved.

Peer turned restlessly from side to side. He was so worn to skin and bone that his nerves seemed laid bare, and he could not rest in any position. Also there were three hundred wheels whirring in his head, and striking out sparks that flew up and turned to visions.

Rest? why had he never been content to rest in the days when all went well?

He had made his mark at the First Cataract, yes, and had made big sums of money out of his new pump; but all the time there were the gnawing questions: Why? and whither? and what then? He had been Chief Engineer and had built a railway, and could have had commissions to build more railways—but again the questions: Why? and what then? Home, then, home and strike root in his native land—well, and had that brought him rest? What was it that drove him away again? The steel, the steel and the fire.

Ah! that day when he had stepped down from the mowing machine and had been ensnared by the idea of improving it. Why had he ever taken it up? Did he need money? No. Or was the work at a standstill? No. But the steel would on; it had need of a man; it had taken him by the throat and said, "You shall!"

Happiness? Rest? Ah no! For, you see, a stored-up mass of knowledge and experience turns one fine day into an army of evil powers, that lash you on and on, unceasingly. You may stumble, you may fall—what does it matter? The steel squeezes one man dry, and then grips the next. The flame of the world has need of fuel—bow thy head, Man, and leap into the fire.

To-day you prosper—to-morrow you are cast down into a hell on earth. What matter? You are fuel for the fire.

But I will not, I will not be swallowed up in the flame of the world, even though it be the only godhead in the universe. I will tear myself loose, be something in and for myself. I will have an immortal soul. The world-transformation that progress may have wrought a thousand years hence—what is it to me?

Your soul? Just think of all your noble feelings towards that true-born half-brother of yours—ha-ha-ha! Shakespeare was wrong. It's the bastard that gets cheated.

"Dearest Peer, do, for God's sake, try to get to sleep."

"Oh yes. I'll get to sleep all right. But it's so hot." He threw off the clothes and lay breathing heavily.

"I'm sure you're lying thinking and brooding over things. Can't you do what the Swedish doctor told you—just try to think that everything is dark all round you."

Peer turns round, and everything around him is dark. But in the heart of that darkness waves arise, waves of melody, rolling nearer, nearer. It is the sound of a hymn—it is Louise standing playing, his sister Louise. And what peace—O God, what peace and rest!

But soon Louise fades away, she fades away, and vanishes like a flame blown out. And there comes a roaring noise, nearer and nearer, grinding, crashing, rattling—and he knows now what it is only too well: it is the song of the steel.

The roar of steel from ships and from railway-trains, with their pairs of yellow evil eyes, rushing on, full of human captives, whither? Faster, faster—driven by competition, by the steel demon that hunts men on without rest or respite—that hurries on the pulse of the world to fever, to hallucination, to madness.

Crashing of steel girders falling, the hum of wheels, the clash of cranes and winches and chains, the clang of steam-hammers at work—all are in that roar. The fire flares up with hellish eyes in every dark corner, and men swarm around in the red glow like evil angels. They are the slaves of steel and fire, lashed onwards, never resting.

Is this the spirit of Prometheus? Look, the will of steel is flinging men up into the air now. It is conquering the heavens. Why? That it may rush the faster. It craves for yet more speed, quicker, quicker, dizzier yet, hurrying—wherefore?—whither? Alas! it knows not itself.

Are the children of the earth grown so homeless? Do they fear to take a moment's rest? Do they dread to look inward and see their own emptiness? Are they longing for something they have lost—some hymn, some harmony, some God?

God? They find a bloodthirsty Jehovah, and an ascetic on the cross. What gods are these for modern men? Religious history, not religion.

"Peer," says Merle again, "for God's sake try to sleep."

"Merle, do you think I shall get well here?"

"Why, don't you feel already how splendid the air is? Of course you'll get well."

He twined his fingers into hers, and at last the sound of Louise's hymn came to him once more, lifting and rocking him gently till his eyes closed.



Chapter II

A little road winds in among the woods, two wheel-tracks only, with a carpet of brown pine-needles between; but there are trees and the sky, quiet and peace, so that it's a real blessing to walk there. It rises and falls so gently, that no one need get out of breath; indeed, it seems to go along with one all the time, in mere friendliness, whispering: "Take it easy. Take your time. Have a good rest here." And so on it goes, winding in among the tree-trunks, slender and supple as a young girl.

Peer walked here every day. He would stop and look up into the tops of the fir trees, and walk on again; then sit down for a moment on a mossy stone; but only for a moment—always he was up again soon and moving on, though he had nowhere to go. But at least there was peace here. He would linger watching an insect as it crept along a fir branch, or listening to the murmur of the river in the valley far below, or breathing in the health-giving scent of the resin, thick in the warm air.

This present life of his was one way of living. As he lay, after a sleepless night, watching the window grow lighter with the dawn, he would think: Yet another new day—and nothing that I can do in it.

And yet he had to get up, and dress, and go down and eat. His bread had a slightly bitter taste to him—it tasted of charity and dependence, of the rich widow at Bruseth and the agent for English tweeds. And he must remember to eat slowly, to masticate each mouthful carefully, to rest after meals, and above all not to think—not to think of anything in the wide world. Afterwards, he could go out and in like other people, only that all his movements and actions were useless and meaningless in themselves; they were done only for the sake of health, or to keep thoughts away, or to make the time go by.

How had this come to pass? He found it still impossible to grasp how such senseless things can happen and no Providence interfere to set them right. Why should he have been so suddenly doomed to destruction? Days, weeks and months of his best manhood oozing away into empty nothingness—why? Sleeplessness and tortured nerves drove him to do things that his will disowned; he would storm at his wife and children if a heel so much as scraped on the floor, and the remorse that followed, sometimes ending in childish tears, did no good, for the next time the same thing, or worse, would happen again. This was the burden of his days. This was the life he was doomed to live.

But up here on the little forest track he harms no one; and no racking noises come thrusting sharp knives into his spine. Here is a great peace; a peace that does a man good. Down on the grassy slope below stands a tumble-down grey barn; it reminds him of an old worn-out horse, lifting its head from grazing to gaze at you—a lonely forsaken creature it seems—to-morrow it will sink to the ground and rise no more—yet IT takes its lot calmly and patiently.

Ugh! how far he has got from Raastad. A cold sweat breaks out over his body for fear he may not have strength to walk back again uphill. Well, pull yourself together. Rest a little. And he lies down on his back in a field of clover, and stares up at the sky.

A stream of clean air, fresh from the snow, flows all day long down the valley; as if Jotunheim itself, where it lies in there beneath the sky, were breathing in easy well-being. Peer fills his lungs again and again with long deep draughts, drinking in the air like a saving potion. "Help me then, oh air, light, solitude! help me that I may be whole once more and fit to work, for this is the one and only religion left me to cling to."

High above, over the two mountain ranges, a blue flood stands immovable, and in its depths eternal rest is brooding. But is there a will there too, that is concerned with men on earth? You do not believe in it, and yet a little prayer mounts up to it as well! Help me—thou too. Who? Thou that hearest. If Thou care at all for the miserable things called men that crawl upon the earth—help me! If I once prayed for a great work that could stay my hunger for things eternal, I repent me now and confess that it was pride and vanity. Make me a slave, toiling at servile tasks for food, so that Merle and the children be not taken from me. Hearest Thou?

Does anyone in heaven find comfort in seeing men tortured by blind fortune? Are my wife and my children slaves of an unmeaning chance—and yet can smile and laugh? Answer me, if Thou hearest—Thou of the many names.

A grasshopper is shrilling in the grass about him. Suddenly he starts up sitting. A railway-train goes screaming past below.

And so the days go on.

Each morning Merle would steal a glance at her husband's face, to see if he had slept; if his eyes were dull, or inflamed, or calm. Surely he must be better soon! Surely their stay here must do him good. She too had lost faith in medicines, but this air, the country life, the solitude—rest, rest—surely there must soon be some sign that these were helping him.

Many a time she rose in the morning without having closed her eyes all night. But there were the children to look after, the house to see to, and she had made up her mind to get on without a maid if she possibly could.

"What has taken you over to the farm so much lately?" she asked one day. "You have been sitting over there with old Raastad for hours together."

"I—I go over to amuse myself and pass the time," he said.

"Do you talk politics?"

"No—we play cards. Why do you look at me like that?"

"You never cared for cards before."

"No; but what the devil am I to do? I can't read, because of these cursed eyes of mine—and the hammering in my head. . . . And I've counted all the farms up and down the valley now. There are fifty in all. And on the farm here there are just twenty-one houses, big and little. What the devil am I to take to next?"

Merle sighed. "It is hard," she said. "But couldn't you wait till the evening to play cards—till the children are in bed—then I could play with you. That would be better."

"Thank you very much. But what about the rest of the day? Do you know what it's like to go about from dawn to dark feeling that every minute is wasted, and wasted for nothing? No, you can't know it. What am I to do with myself all through one of these endless, deadly days? Drink myself drunk?"

"Couldn't you try cutting firewood for a little?"

"Firewood?" He whistled softly. "Well, that's an idea. Ye—yes. Let's try chopping firewood for a change."

Thud, thud, thud!

But as he straightened his back for a breathing-space, the whirr, whirr of Raastad's mowing machine came to him from the hill-slope near by where it was working, and he clenched his teeth as if they ached. He was driving a mowing machine of his own invention, and it was raining continually, and the grass kept sticking, sticking—and how to put it right—put it right? It was as if blows were falling on festering wounds in his head, making him dance with pain. Thud, thud, thud!—anything to drown the whirr of that machine.

But a man may use an axe with his hands, and yet have idiotic fancies all the time bubbling and seething in his head. The power to hold in check the vagaries of imagination may be gone. From all sides they come creeping out in swarms, they swoop down on him like birds of prey—as if in revenge for having been driven away so often before—they cry: here we are! He stood once more as an apprentice in the mechanical works, riveting the plates of a gigantic boiler with a compressed-air tube—cling, clang! The wailing clang of the boiler went out over the whole town. And now that same boiler is set up inside his head—cling-clang—ugh! A cold sweat breaks out upon his body; he throws down the axe; he must go—must fly, escape somewhere—where, he cannot tell. Faces that he hates to think of peer out at him from every corner, yapping out: "Heh!—what did we say? To-day a beggar—to-morrow a madman in a cell."

But it may happen, too, that help comes in the night. Things come back to a man that it is good to remember. That time—and that other. . . . A woman there—and the one you met in such a place. There is a picture in the Louvre, by Veronese: a young Venetian woman steps out upon the marble stairway of a palace holding a golden-haired boy by the hand; she is dressed in black velvet, she glows with youth and happiness. A lovers' meeting in her garden? The first kiss! Moonlight and mandolins!

A shudder of pleasure passes through his weary body. Bright recollections and impressions flock towards him like spirits of light—he can hear the rushing sound of their wings—he calls to them for aid, and they encircle him round; they struggle with the spirits of darkness for his soul. He has known much brightness, much beauty in his life—surely the bright angels are the stronger and must conquer. Ah! why had he not lived royally, amidst women and flowers and wine?

One morning as he was getting up, he said: "Merle, I must and will hit upon something that'll send me to bed thoroughly tired out."

"Yes dear," she answered. "Do try."

"I'll try wheeling stones to begin with," he said. "The devil's in it if a day at that doesn't make a man sleep."

So that day and for many days he wheeled stones from some newly broken land on the hillside down to a dyke that ran along the road.

Calm, golden autumn days; one farm above another rising up towards the crest of the range, all set in ripe yellow fields. One little cottage stands right on the crest against the sky itself, and it, too, has its tiny patch of yellow corn. And an eagle sails slowly across the deep valley from peak to peak.

People passing by stared at Peer as he went about bare-headed, in his shirt-sleeves, wheeling stones. "Aye, gentlefolks have queer notions," they would say, shaking their heads.

"That's it—keep at it," a dry, hacking voice kept going in Peer's head. "It is idiocy, but you are doomed to it. Shove hard with those skinny legs of yours; many a jade before you has had to do the same. You've got to get some sleep tonight. Only ten months left now; and then we shall have Lucifer turning up at the cross-roads once more. Poor Merle—she's beginning to grow grey. And the poor little children—dreaming of father beating them, maybe, they cry out so often in their sleep. Off now, trundle away. Now over with that load; and back for another.

"You, that once looked down on the soulless toil for bread, you have sunk now to something far more miserable. You are dragging at a load of sheer stupidity. You are a galley-slave, with calamity for your task-master. As you move the chains rattle. And that is your day."

He straightens himself up, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and begins heaving up stones into his barrow again.

How long must it last, this life in manacles? Do you remember Job? Job? Aye, doubtless Jehovah was sitting at some jovial feast when he conceived that fantasy of a drunken brain, to let Satan loose upon a happy man. Job? His seven sons and daughters, and his cattle, and his calves were restored unto him, but we read nothing of any compensation made him for the jest itself. He was made to play court fool, with his boils and his tortures and his misery, and the gods had their bit of sport gratis. Job had his actual outlay in cattle and offspring refunded, and that was all. Ha-ha!

Prometheus! Is it you after all that are the friend of man among the gods? Have you indeed the power to free us all some day? When will you come, then, to raise the great revolt?

Come, come—up with the barrow again—you see it is full.

"Father, it's dinner-time. Come along home," cries little Louise, racing down the hill with her yellow plaits flying about her ears. But she stops cautiously a little distance off—there is no knowing what sort of temper father may be in.

"Thanks, little monkey. Got anything good for dinner to-day?"

"Aha! that's a secret," said the girl in a teasing voice; she was beaming now, with delight at finding him approachable. "Catch me, father! I can run quicker than you can!"

"I'm afraid I'm too tired just now, my little girl."

"Oh, poor papa! are you tired?" And she came up and took him by the hand. Then she slipped her arm into his—it was just as good fun to walk up the hill on her father's arm like a grown-up young lady.

Then came the frosts. And one morning the hilltops were turned into leaden grey clouds from which the snow came sweeping down. Merle stood at the window, her face grey in the clammy light. She looked down the valley to where the mountains closed it in; it seemed still narrower than before; one's breath came heavily, and one's mind seemed stifled under cold damp wrappings.

Ugh! Better go out into the kitchen and set to work again—work—work and forget.

Then one day there came a letter telling her that her mother was dead.



Chapter III

DEAR KLAUS BROCK,—

Legendary being! Cast down from Khedivial heights one day and up again on high with Kitchener the next. But, in Heaven's name, what has taken you to the Soudan? What made you go and risk your life at Omdurman? The same old desperation, I suppose, that you're always complaining about. And why, of all things, plant yourself away in an outpost on the edge of the wilderness, to lie awake at nights nursing suicidal thoughts over Schopenhauer? You have lived without principles, you say. And wasted your youth. And are homeless now all round, with no morals, no country, no religion. But will you make all this better by making things much worse?

You've no reason to envy me my country life, by the way, and there's no sense in your going about longing for the little church of your childhood, with its Moses and hymns and God. Well, longing does no harm, perhaps, but don't ever try to find it. The fact is, old fellow, that such things are not to be found any more.

I take it that religion had the same power on you in your childhood as it had with me. We were wild young scamps, both of us, but we liked going to church, not for the sake of the sermons, but to bow our heads when the hymn arose and join in singing it. When the waves of the organ-music rolled through the church, it seemed—to me at least—as if something were set swelling in my own soul, bearing me away to lands and kingdoms where all at last was as it should be. And when we went out into the world we went with some echo of the hymn in our hearts, and we might curse Jehovah, but in a corner of our minds the hymn lived on as a craving, a hunger for some world-harmony. All through the busy day we might bear our part in the roaring song of the steel, but in the evenings, on our lonely couch, another power would come forth in our minds, the hunger for the infinite, the longing to be cradled and borne up on the waves of eternity, whose way is past all finding out.

Never believe, though, that you'll find the church of your childhood now in any of our country places. We have electric light now everywhere, telephones, separators, labour unions and political meetings, but the church stands empty. I have been there. The organ wails as if it had the toothache, the precentor sneezes out a hymn, the congregation does not lift the roof off with its voice, for the very good reason that there is no congregation there. And the priest, poor devil, stands up in his pulpit with his black moustache and pince-nez; he is an officer in the army reserve, and he reads out his highly rational remarks from a manuscript. But his face says all the time—"You two paupers down there that make up my congregation, you don't believe a word I am saying; but never mind, I don't believe it either." It's a tragic business when people have outgrown their own conception of the divine. And we—we are certainly better than Jehovah. The dogma of the atonement, based on original sin and the bloodthirstiness of God, is revolting to us; we shrug our shoulders, and turn away with a smile, or in disgust. We are not angels yet, but we are too good to worship such a God as that.

There is some excuse for the priest, of course. He must preach of some God. And he has no other.

Altogether, it's hardly surprising that even ignorant peasants shake their heads and give the church a wide berth. What do they do on Sundays, then? My dear fellow, they have no Sunday. They sit nodding their heads over a long table, waiting for the day to pass. They remind one of plough horses, that have filled their bellies, and stand snoring softly, because there's no work today.

The great evolutionary scheme, with its wonders of steel and miracles of science, goes marching on victoriously, I grant you, changing the face of the world, hurrying its pulse to a more and more feverish beat. But what good will it do the peasant to be able to fly through the air on his wheelbarrow, while no temple, no holy day, is left him any more on earth? What errand can he have up among the clouds, while yet no heaven arches above his soul?

This is the burning question with all of us, with you in the desert as with us up here under the Pole. To me it seems that we need One who will make our religion new—not merely a new prophet, but a new God.

You ask about my health—well, I fancy it's too early yet to speak about it. But so much I will say: If you should ever be in pain and suffering, take it out on yourself—not on others.

Greetings from us all.

Yours,

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.

What life and cheer it brings with it!

"Mother—here's the sun," cries Louise joyfully from the doorway.

"Yes, child, I see it."

But Louise has only looked in for a moment to beg some cake for Lorentz and herself, and be off again on her ski to the hill-slopes. "Thank you, mother—you're a darling!" And with a slice in each hand she dashes out, glowing with health and the cold air.