Read Ebook: The Great Hunger by Bojer Johan Archer Charles Translator Worster W J Alexander William John Alexander Translator

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Ebook has 1740 lines and 74576 words, and 35 pages

His childhood was passed among folk who counted it sinful to smile, and whose minds were gloomy as the grey sea-fog with poverty, psalm-singing, and the fear of hell.

One day, coming home from his work at the peat bog, he found the elders snuffling and sighing over their afternoon meal. Peer wiped the sweat from his forehead, and asked what was the matter.

The eldest son shoved a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, wiped his eyes, swallowed, and said: "Poor Peer!"

"Aye, poor little chap," sighed the old man, thrusting his horn spoon into a crack in the wall that served as a rack.

"Neither father nor mother now," whimpered the eldest daughter, looking over to the window.

"Mother? Is she--"

"Ay, dearie, yes," sighed the old woman. "She's gone for sure--gone to meet her Judge."

Later, as the day went on, Peer tried to cry too. The worst thing of all was that every one in the house seemed so perfectly certain where his mother had gone to. And to heaven it certainly was not. But how could they be so sure about it?

Peer had seen her only once, one summer's day when she had come out to see the place. She wore a light dress and a big straw hat, and he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful before. She made no secret of it among the neighbours that Peer was not her only child; there was a little girl, too, named Louise, who was with some folks away up in the inland parishes. She was in high spirits, and told risky stories and sang songs by no means sacred. The old people shook their heads over her--the younger ones watched her with sidelong glances. And when she left, she kissed Peer, and turned round more than once to look back at him, flushed under her big hat, and smiling; and it seemed to Peer that she must surely be the loveliest creature in all the world.

But now--now she had gone to a place where the ungodly dwell in such frightful torment, and no hope of salvation for her through all eternity--and Peer all the while could only think of her in a light dress and a big straw hat, all song and happy laughter.

Then came the question: Who was to pay for the boy now? True, his baptismal certificate said that he had a father--his name was Holm, and he lived in Christiania--but, from what the mother had said, it was understood that he had disappeared long ago. What was to be done with the boy?

Never till now had Peer rightly understood that he was a stranger here, for all that he called the old couple father and mother.

He lay awake night after night up in the loft, listening to the talk about him going on in the room below--the good-wife crying and saying: "No, no!", the others saying how hard the times were, and that Peer was quite old enough now to be put to service as a goat-herd on some up-country farm.

Then Peer would draw the skin-rug up over his head. But often, when one of the elders chanced to be awake at night, he could hear some one in the loft sobbing in his sleep. In the daytime he took up as little room as he could at the table, and ate as little as humanly possible; but every morning he woke up in fear that to-day--to-day he would have to bid the old foster-mother farewell and go out among strangers.

Then something new and unheard of plumped down into the little cottage by the fjord.

There came a registered letter with great dabs of sealing-wax all over it, and a handwriting so gentlemanly as to be almost unreadable. Every one crowded round the eldest son to see it opened--and out fell five ten-crown notes. "Mercy on us!" they cried in amazement, and "Can it be for us?" The next thing was to puzzle out what was written in the letter. And who should that turn out to be from but--no other than Peer's father, though he did not say it in so many words. "Be good to the boy," the letter said. "You will receive fifty crowns from me every half-year. See that he gets plenty to eat and goes dry and well shod. Faithfully your, P. Holm, Captain."

"Why, Peer--he's--he's--Your father's a captain, an officer," stammered the eldest girl, and fell back a step to stare at the boy.

"And we're to get twice as much for him as before," said the son, holding the notes fast and gazing up at the ceiling, as if he were informing Heaven of the fact.

But the old wife was thinking of something else as she folded her hands in thankfulness--now she needn't lose the boy.

"Properly fed!" No need to fear for that. Peer had treacle with his porridge that very day, though it was only a week-day. And the eldest son gave him a pair of stockings, and made him sit down and put them on then and there; and the same night, when he went to bed, the eldest girl came and tucked him up in a new skin-rug, not quite so hairless as the old one. His father a captain! It seemed too wonderful to be true.

From that day times were changed for Peer. People looked at him with very different eyes. No one said "Poor boy" of him now. The other boys left off calling him bad names; the grown-ups said he had a future before him. "You'll see," they would say, "that father of yours will get you on; you'll be a parson yet, ay, maybe a bishop, too." At Christmas, there came a ten-crown note all for himself, to do just as he liked with. Peer changed it into silver, so that his purse was near bursting with prosperity. No wonder he began to go about with his nose in the air, and play the little prince and chieftain among the boys. Even Klaus Brock, the doctor's son, made up to him, and taught him to play cards. But--"You surely don't mean to go and be a parson," he would say.

For all this, no one could say that Peer was too proud to help with the fishing, or make himself useful in the smithy. But when the sparks flew showering from the glowing iron, he could not help seeing visions of his own--visions that flew out into the future. Aye, he WOULD be a priest. He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far that he could go down into that place of torment where his mother lay, and bring her up again, up to salvation. And when, in autumn evenings, he stood outside his palace, a white-haired bishop, he would lift up his finger, and all the stars should break into song.

Clang, clang, sang the anvil under the hammer's beat.

In the still summer evenings a troop of boys go climbing up the naked slopes towards the high wooded ranges to fetch home the cows for the milking. The higher they climb, the farther and farther their sight can travel out over the sea. And an hour or two later, as the sun goes down, here comes a long string of red-flanked cattle trailing down, with a faint jangle of bells, over the far-off ridges. The boys halloo them on--"Ohoo-oo-oo!"--and swing their ringed rowan staves, and spit red juice of the alder bark that they are chewing as men chew tobacco. Far below them they see the farm lands, grey in shadow, and, beyond, the waters of the fjord, yellow in the evening light, a mirror where red clouds and white sails and hills of liquid blue are shining. And away out on the farthest headland, the lonely star of the coast light over the grey sea.

On such an evening Peer came down from the hills just in time to see a gentleman in a carriole turn off from the highway and take the by-road down towards Troen. The horse balked suddenly at a small bridge, and when the driver reined him in and gave him a cut with his whip, the beast reared, swung about, and sent the cart fairly dancing round on its high wheels. "Oh, well, then, I'll have to walk," cried the gentleman angrily, and, flinging the reins to the lad behind him, he jumped down. Just at this moment Peer came up.

"Here, boy," began the traveller, "just take this bag, will you? And--" He broke off suddenly, took a step backward, and looked hard at the boy. "What--surely it can't be--Is it you, Peer?"

"Ye-es," said Peer, gaping a little, and took off his cap.

"Well, now, that's funny. My name is Holm. Well, well--well, well!"

The lad in the cart had driven off, and the gentleman from the city and the pale country boy with the patched trousers stood looking at each other.

The newcomer was a man of fifty or so, but still straight and active, though his hair and close-trimmed beard were sprinkled with grey. His eyes twinkled gaily under the brim of his black felt hat; his long overcoat was open, showing a gold chain across his waistcoat. With a pair of gloves and an umbrella in one hand, a light travelling bag in the other, and his beautifully polished shoes--a grand gentleman, thought Peer, if ever there was one. And this was his father!

"So that's how you look, my boy? Not very big for your age--nearly sixteen now, aren't you? Do they give you enough to eat?"

"Yes," said Peer, with conviction.

The pair walked down together, towards the grey cottage by the fjord. Suddenly the man stopped, and looked at it through half-shut eyes.

"Is that where you've been living all these years?"

"Yes."

"In that little hut there?"

"Yes. That's the place--Troen they call it."

"Why, that wall there bulges so, I should think the whole affair would collapse soon."

Peer tried to laugh at this, but felt something like a lump in his throat. It hurt to hear fine folks talk like that of father and mother's little house.

There was a great flurry when the strange gentleman appeared in the doorway. The old wife was kneading away at the dough for a cake, the front of her all white with flour; the old man sat with his spectacles on, patching a shoe, and the two girls sprang up from their spinning wheels. "Well, here I am. My name's Holm," said the traveller, looking round and smiling. "Mercy on us! the Captain his own self," murmured the old woman, wiping her hands on her skirt.

And then a little packet was produced. "Hi, Peer, come and look; here's something for you." And the "something" was nothing less than a real silver watch--and Peer was quite unhappy for the moment because he couldn't dash off at once and show it to all the other boys. "There's a father for you," said the old wife, clapping her hands, and almost in tears. But the visitor patted her on the shoulder. "Father? father? H'm--that's not a thing any one can be so sure about. Hahaha!" And "hahaha" echoed the old man, still sitting with the awl in his hand. This was the sort of joke he could appreciate.

Then the visitor went out and strolled about the place, with his hands under his coat tails, and looked at the sky, and the fjord, and murmured, "Well, well--well, well," and Peer followed him about all the while, and gazed at him as he might have gazed at a star. He was to sleep in a neighbour's house, where there was a room that had a bed with sheets on it, and Peer went across with him and carried his bag. It was Martin Bruvold's parents who were to house the traveller, and people stood round staring at the place. Martin himself was waiting outside. "This a friend of yours, Peer? Here, then, my boy, here's something to buy a big farm with." This time it was a five-crown note, and Martin stood fingering it, hardly able to believe his eyes. Peer's father was something like a father.

It was a fine thing, too, to see a grand gentleman undress. "I'll have things like that some day," thought Peer, watching each new wonder that came out of the bag. There was a silver-backed brush, that he brushed his hair and beard with, walking up and down in his underclothes and humming to himself. And then there was another shirt, with red stripes round the collar, just to wear in bed. Peer nodded to himself, taking it all in. And when the stranger was in bed he took out a flask with a silver cork, that screwed off and turned into a cup, and had a dram for a nightcap; and then he reached for a long pipe with a beaded cord, and when it was drawing well he stretched himself out comfortably and smiled at Peer.

"Well, now, my boy--are you getting on well at school?"

Peer put his hands behind him and set one foot forward. "Yes--he says so--teacher does."

"How much is twelve times twelve?"

That was a stumper! Peer hadn't got beyond ten times ten.

"Do they teach you gymnastics at the school?"

"Gym--? What's that?"

"Jumping and vaulting and climbing ropes and drilling in squads--what?"

"But isn't it--isn't that wicked?"

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