Part 5 (2/2)

”Oh, of course you know all about it. You always do.”

”I'll take you along one day to the Art Gallery,” said Klaus. ”Then you can see what a real painting looks like. What's that you've got there--English reader?”

”Yes,” put in Peer eagerly; ”hear me say a poem.” And before Klaus could protest, he had begun to recite.

When he had finished, Klaus sat for a while in silence, chewing his quid. ”H'm!” he said at last, ”if our last teacher, Froken Zebbelin, could have heard that English of yours, we'd have had to send for a nurse for her, hanged if we wouldn't!”

This was too much. Peer flung the book against the wall and told the other to clear out to the devil. When Klaus at last managed to get a word in, he said:

”If you are to pa.s.s your entrance at the Technical you'll have to have lessons--surely you can see that. You must get hold of a teacher.”

”Easy for you to talk about teachers! Let me tell you my pay is twopence an hour.”

”I'll find you one who can take you twice a week or so in languages and history and mathematics. I daresay some broken-down sot of a student would take you on for sevenpence a lesson. You could run to that, surely?”

Peer was quiet now and a little pensive. ”Well, if I give up b.u.t.ter, and drink water instead of coffee--”

Klaus laughed, but his eyes were moist. Hard luck that he couldn't offer to lend his comrade a few s.h.i.+llings--but it wouldn't do.

So the summer pa.s.sed. On Sundays Peer would watch the young folks setting out in the morning for the country, to spend the whole day wandering in the fields and woods, while he sat indoors over his books.

And in the evening he would stick his head out of his two-paned window that looked on to the street, and would see the lads and girls coming back, flushed and noisy, with flowers and green boughs in their hats, crazy with suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air. And still he must sit and read on.

But in the autumn, when the long nights set in, he would go for a walk through the streets before going to bed, as often as not up to the white wooden house where the manager lived. This was Klaus's home. Lights in the windows, and often music; the happy people that lived here knew and could do all sorts of things that could never be learned from books. No mistake: he had a goodish way to go--a long, long way. But get there he would.

One day Klaus happened to mention, quite casually, where Colonel Holm's widow lived, and late one evening Peer made his way out there, and cautiously approached the house. It was in River Street, almost hidden in a cl.u.s.ter of great trees, and Peer stood there, leaning against the garden fence, trembling with some obscure emotion. The long rows of windows on both floors were lighted up; he could hear youthful laughter within, and then a young girl's voice singing--doubtless they were having a party. Peer turned up his collar against the wind, and tramped back through the town to his lodging above the carter's stable.

For the lonely working boy Sat.u.r.day evening is a sort of festival. He treats himself to an extra wash, gets out his clean underclothes from his chest, and changes. And the smell of the newly-washed underclothing calls up keenly the thought of a pock-marked old woman who sewed and patched it all, and laid it away so neatly folded. He puts it on carefully, feeling almost as if it were Sunday already.

Now and again, when a Sunday seemed too long, Peer would drift into the nearest church. What the parson said was all very good, no doubt, but Peer did not listen; for him there were only the hymns, the organ, the lofty vaulted roof, the coloured windows. Here, too, the faces of the people looked otherwise than in the street without; touched, as it were, by some reflection from all that their thoughts aspired to reach. And it was so homelike here. Peer even felt a sort of kins.h.i.+p with them all, though every soul there was a total stranger.

But at last one day, to his surprise, in the middle of a hymn, a voice within him whispered suddenly: ”You should write to your sister. She's as much alone in the world as you are.”

And one evening Peer sat down and wrote. He took quite a lordly tone, saying that if she wanted help in any way, she need only let him know.

And if she would care to move in to town, she could come and live with him. After which he remained, her affectionate brother, Peer Holm, engineer apprentice.

A few days later there came a letter addressed in a fine slanting hand.

Louise had just been confirmed. The farmer she was with wished to keep her on as dairymaid through the winter, but she was afraid the work would be too heavy for her. So she was coming in to town by the boat arriving on Sunday evening. With kind regards, his sister, Louise Hagen.

Peer was rather startled. He seemed to have taken a good deal on his shoulders.

On Sunday evening he put on his blue suit and stiff felt hat, and walked down to the quay. For the first time in his life he had some one else to look after--he was to be a father and benefactor from now on to some one worse off than himself. This was something new. The thought came back to him of the jolly gentleman who had come driving down one day to Troen to look after his little son. Yes, that was the way to do things; that was the sort of man he would be. And involuntarily he fell into something of his father's look and step, his smile, his lavish, careless air. ”Well, well--well, well--well, well,” he seemed saying to himself. He might almost, in his fancy, have had a neat iron-grey beard on his chin.

The little green steamboat rounded the point and lay in to the quay, the gangways were run out, porters jumped aboard, and all the pa.s.sengers came bundling ash.o.r.e. Peer wondered how he was to know her, this sister whom he had never seen.

The crowd on deck soon thinned, and people began moving off from the quay into the town.

Then Peer was aware of a young peasant-girl, with a box in one hand and a violin-case in the other. She wore a grey dress, with a black kerchief over her fair hair; her face was pale, and finely cut. It was his mother's face; his mother as a girl of sixteen. Now she was looking about her, and now her eyes rested on him, half afraid, half inquiring.

”Is it you, Louise?”

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