Part 15 (1/2)

”This is Herr Holm, engineer and Egyptian,” said Merle, ”and this is father.”

”I hear we are neighbours,” said Uthoug. ”We're just going to have tea, so if you have nothing better to do, perhaps you will join us.”

Outside the cottage stood a grey-haired lady with a pale face, wearing spectacles. She had a thick white woollen shawl over her shoulders, but even so she seemed to feel cold. ”Welcome,” she said, and Peer thought there was a tremor in her voice.

There were two small low rooms with an open fireplace in the one, and in it there stood a table ready laid. But from the moment Merle entered the house, she took command of everything, and whisked in and out. Soon there was the sound of fish cooking in the kitchen, and a moment later she came in with a plate full of lettuce, and said: ”Mr. Egyptian--you can make us an Arabian salad, can't you?”

Peer was delighted. ”I should think so,” he said.

”You'll find salt and pepper and vinegar and oil on the table there, and that's all we possess in the way of condiments. But it must be a real Arabian salad all the same, if you please!” And out she went again, while Peer busied himself with the salad.

”I hope you will excuse my daughter,” said Fru Uthoug, turning her pale face towards him and looking through her spectacles. ”She is not really so wild as she seems.”

Uthoug himself walked up and down the room, chatting to Peer and asking a great many questions about conditions in Egypt. He knew something about the Mahdi, and General Gordon, and Khartoum, and the strained relations between the Khedive and the Sultan. He was evidently a diligent reader of the newspapers, and Peer gathered that he was a Radical, and a man of some weight in his party. And he looked as if there was plenty of fire smouldering under his reddish eyelids: ”A bad man to fall out with,” thought Peer.

They sat down to supper, and Peer noticed that Fru Uthoug grew less pale and anxious as her daughter laughed and joked and chattered. There even came a slight glow at last into the faded cheeks; the eyes behind the spectacles seemed to s.h.i.+ne with a light borrowed from her daughter's.

But her husband seemed not to notice anything, and tried all the time to go on talking about the Mahdi and the Khedive and the Sultan.

So for the first time for many years Peer sat down to table in a Norwegian home--and how good it was! Would he ever have a home of his own, he wondered.

After the meal, a mandolin was brought out, and they sat round the fire in the great fireplace and had some music. Until at last Merle rose and said: ”Now, mother, it's time you went to bed.”

”Yes, dear,” came the answer submissively, and Fru Uthoug said good-night, and Merle led her off.

Peer had risen to take leave, when Merle came in again. ”Why,” she said, ”you're surely not going off before you've rowed Thea home?”

”Oh, Merle, please . . .” put in the other.

But when the two had taken their places in the boat and were just about to start up the lake, Merle came running down and said she might just as well come too.

Half an hour later, having seen the young girl safely ash.o.r.e at her father's place, Merle and Peer were alone, rowing back through the still night over the waters of the lake, golden in the light and dark blue in the shadows. Merle leaned back in the stern, silent, trailing a small branch along the surface of the water behind. After a while Peer laid in his oars and let the boat drift.

”How beautiful it is!” he said.

The girl lifted her head and looked round. ”Yes,” she answered, and Peer fancied her voice had taken a new tone.

It was past midnight. Heights and woods and saeters lay lifeless in the soft suffused reddish light. The lake-trout were not rising any more, but now and again the screech of a c.o.c.k-ptarmigan could be heard among the withies.

”What made you come just here for your holiday, I wonder,” she asked suddenly.

”I leave everything to chance, Froken Uthoug. It just happened so. It's all so homelike here, wherever one goes. And it is so wonderful to be home in Norway again.”

”But haven't you been to see your people--your father and mother--since you came home?”

”I--! Do you suppose I have a father and mother?”

”But near relations--surely you must have a brother or sister somewhere in the world?”

”Ah, if one only had! Though, after all, one can get on without.”

She looked at him searchingly, as if trying to see whether he spoke in earnest. Then she said: