The Great Hunger Part 13

"And you and Klaus Brock--I suppose you've put your millions in his company?"

Peer smiled as he sat looking out over the garden. Lifting his gla.s.s, "Your good health," he said, for all answer.

"Have you been in America, too?" went on the other. "No, I suppose not!"

"America? Yes, a few years back, when I was with Brown Bros., they sent me over one time to buy plant. Nothing so surprising in that, is there?"

"No, no, of course not. I was only thinking--you went about there, I daresay, and saw all the wonderful things--the miracles of science they're always producing."

"My dear fellow, if you only knew how deadly sick I am of miracles of science! What I'm longing for is a country watermill that takes twenty-four hours to grind a sack of corn."

"What? What do you say?" Langberg bounced in his chair. "Ha-ha-ha!

You're the same old man, I can see."

"I'm perfectly serious," said Peer, lifting his gla.s.s towards the other.

"Come. Here's to our old days together!"

"Aye--thanks, a thousand thanks--to our old days together!--Ah, delicious! Well, then, I suppose you've fallen in love away down there in the land of the barbarians? Haven't you? Ha-ha-ha!"

"Do you call Egypt a land of barbarians?"

"Well, don't the fellahs still yoke their wives to their ploughs?"

"A fellah will sit all night long outside his hut and gaze up at the stars and give himself time to dream. And a merchant prince in Vienna will dictate business letters in his automobile as he's driving to the theatre, and write telegrams as he sits in the stalls. One fine day he'll be sitting in his private box with a telephone at one ear and listening to the opera with the other. That's what the miracles of science are doing for us. Awe-inspiring, isn't it?"

"And you talk like that--a man that's helped to harness the Nile, and has built railways through the desert?"

Peer shrugged his shoulders, and offered the other a cigar from his case. A waiter appeared with coffee.

"To help mankind to make quicker progress--is that nothing?"

"Lord! What I'd like to know is, where mankind are making for, that they're in such a hurry."

"That the Nile Barrage has doubled the production of corn in Egypt--created the possibilities of life for millions of human beings--is that nothing?"

"My good fellow, do you really think there aren't enough fools on this earth already? Have we too little wailing and misery and discontent and cla.s.s-hatred as it is? Why must we go about to double it?"

"But hang it all, man--what about European culture? Surely you felt yourself a sort of missionary of civilisation, where you have been."

"The spread of European civilisation in the East simply means that half a dozen big financiers in London or Paris take a fancy to a certain strip of Africa or Asia. They press a b.u.t.ton, and out come all the ministers and generals and missionaries and engineers with a bow: At your service, gentlemen!

"Culture! One wheel begets ten new ones. Brr-rrr! And the ten again another hundred. Brr-rr-rrr--more speed, more compet.i.tion--and all for what? For culture? No, my friend, for money. Missionary! I tell you, as long as Western Europe with all its wonders of modern science and its Christianity and its political reforms hasn't turned out a better type of humanity than the mean ruck of men we have now--we'd do best to stay at home and hold our counfounded jaw. Here's ourselves!" and Peer emptied his gla.s.s.

This was a sad hearing for poor Langberg. For he had been used to comfort himself in his daily round with the thought that even he, in his modest sphere, was doing his share in the great work of civilising the world.

At last he leaned back, watching the smoke from his cigar, and smiling a little.

"I remember a young fellow at the College," he said, "who used to talk a good deal about Prometheus, and the grand work of liberating humanity, by stealing new and ever new fire from Olympus."

"That was me--yes," said Peer with a laugh. "As a matter of fact, I was only quoting Ferdinand Holm."

"You don't believe in all that now?"

"It strikes me that fire and steel are rapidly turning men into beasts.

Machinery is killing more and more of what we call the G.o.dlike in us."

"But, good heavens, man! Surely a man can be a Christian even if . . ."

"Christian as much as you like. But don't you think it might soon be time we found something better to wors.h.i.+p than an ascetic on a cross?

Are we to keep on for ever singing Hallelujah because we've saved our own skins and yet can haggle ourselves into heaven? Is that religion?"

"No, no, perhaps not. But I don't know . . ."

"Neither do I. But it's all the same; for anyhow no such thing as religious feeling exists any longer. Machinery is killing our longings for eternity, too. Ask the good people in the great cities. They spend Christmas Eve playing tunes from The Dollar Princess on the gramophone."

Langberg sat for a while watching the other attentively. Peer sat smoking slowly; his face was flushed with the wine, but from time to time his eyes half-closed, and his thoughts seemed to be wandering in other fields than these.

"And what do you think of doing now you are home again?" asked his companion at last.

Peer opened his eyes. "Doing? Oh, I don't know. Look about me first of all. Then perhaps I may find a cottar's croft somewhere and settle down and marry a dairymaid. Here's luck!"

The gardens were full now of people in light summer dress, and in the luminous evening a constant ripple of laughter and gay voices came up to them. Peer looked curiously at the crowd, all strangers to him, and asked his companion the names of some of the people. Langberg pointed out one or two celebrities--a Cabinet Minister sitting near by, a famous explorer a little farther off. "But I don't know them personally," he added. "Can't afford society on that scale, of course."

"How beautiful it is here!" said Peer, looking out once more at the yellow s.h.i.+mmer of light above the fjord. "And how good it is to be home again!"

Chapter II

He sat in the train on his way up-country, and from the carriage window watched farms and meadows and tree-lined roads slide past. Where was he going? He did not know himself. Why should not a man start off at haphazard, and get out when the mood takes him? At last he was able to travel through his own country without having to think of half-pennies.

He could let the days pa.s.s over his head without care or trouble, and give himself good leisure to enjoy any beauty that came in his way.

There is Mjosen, the broad lake with the rich farmlands and long wooded ridges on either side. He had never been here before, yet it seemed as if something in him nodded a recognition to it all. Once more he sat drinking in the rich, fruitful landscape--the wooded hills, the fields and meadows seemed to spread themselves out over empty places in his mind.

But later in the day the landscape narrowed and they were in Gudbrandsdalen, where the sunburned farms are set on green slopes between the river and the mountains. Peer's head was full of pictures from abroad, from the desert sands with their scorched palm-trees to the ca.n.a.ls of Venice. But here--he nodded again. Here he was at home, though he had never seen the place before; just this it was which had been calling to him all through his long years of exile.

At last on a sudden he gathered up his traps and got out, without the least idea even of the name of the station. A meal at the hotel, a knapsack on his back, and hey!--there before him lies the road, up into the hills.

Alone? What matter, when there are endless things that greet him from every side with "Welcome home!" The road is steep, the air grows lighter, the homesteads smaller. At last the huts look like little matchboxes--from the valley, no doubt, it must seem as if the people up here were living among the clouds. But many and many a youth must have followed this road in the evenings, going up to court his Mari or his Kari at the saeter-hut, the same road and the same errand one generation after another. To Peer it seemed as if all those lads now bore him company--aye, as if he discovered in himself something of wanton youth that had managed to get free at last.

Puh! His coat must come off and his cap go into the knapsack. Now, as the valley sinks and sinks farther beneath him, the view across it widens farther and farther out over the uplands beyond. Brown hills and blue, ridges livid or mossy-grey in the setting sun, rising and falling wave behind wave, and beyond all a great snowfield, like a sea of white breakers foaming against the sky. But surely he had seen all this before?

Ah! now he knew; it was the Lofoten Sea over again--with its white foam-crested combers and long-drawn, heavy-breathing swell--a rolling ocean turned to rock. Peer halted a moment leaning on his stick, and his eyes half-closed. Could he not feel that same ocean-swell rising and sinking in his own being? Did not the same waves surge through the centuries, carrying the generations away with them upon great wanderings? And in daily life the wave rolls us along in the old familiar rhythm, and not one in ten thousand lifts his head above it to ask: whither and why! Even now just such a little wave has hold of him, taking him--whither and why? Well, the coming days might show; meanwhile, there beyond was the sea of stone rolling its eternal cadence under the endless sky.

He wiped his forehead and turned and went his way.

But what is that far off in the north-east? three sisters in white shawls, lifting their heads to heaven--that must be Rondane. And see how the evening sun is kindling the white peaks to purple and gold.