Part 27 (1/2)
”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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sure 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 ma.s.s 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.