Part 33 (1/2)

”Do you talk politics?”

”No--we play cards. Why do you look at me like that?”

”You never cared for cards before.”

”No; but what the devil am I to do? I can't read, because of these cursed eyes of mine--and the hammering in my head. . . . And I've counted all the farms up and down the valley now. There are fifty in all. And on the farm here there are just twenty-one houses, big and little. What the devil am I to take to next?”

Merle sighed. ”It is hard,” she said. ”But couldn't you wait till the evening to play cards--till the children are in bed--then I could play with you. That would be better.”

”Thank you very much. But what about the rest of the day? Do you know what it's like to go about from dawn to dark feeling that every minute is wasted, and wasted for nothing? No, you can't know it. What am I to do with myself all through one of these endless, deadly days? Drink myself drunk?”

”Couldn't you try cutting firewood for a little?”

”Firewood?” He whistled softly. ”Well, that's an idea. Ye--yes. Let's try chopping firewood for a change.”

Thud, thud, thud!

But as he straightened his back for a breathing-s.p.a.ce, the whirr, whirr of Raastad's mowing machine came to him from the hill-slope near by where it was working, and he clenched his teeth as if they ached. He was driving a mowing machine of his own invention, and it was raining continually, and the gra.s.s kept sticking, sticking--and how to put it right--put it right? It was as if blows were falling on festering wounds in his head, making him dance with pain. Thud, thud, thud!--anything to drown the whirr of that machine.

But a man may use an axe with his hands, and yet have idiotic fancies all the time bubbling and seething in his head. The power to hold in check the vagaries of imagination may be gone. From all sides they come creeping out in swarms, they swoop down on him like birds of prey--as if in revenge for having been driven away so often before--they cry: here we are! He stood once more as an apprentice in the mechanical works, riveting the plates of a gigantic boiler with a compressed-air tube--cling, clang! The wailing clang of the boiler went out over the whole town. And now that same boiler is set up inside his head--cling-clang--ugh! A cold sweat breaks out upon his body; he throws down the axe; he must go--must fly, escape somewhere--where, he cannot tell. Faces that he hates to think of peer out at him from every corner, yapping out: ”Heh!--what did we say? To-day a beggar--to-morrow a madman in a cell.”

But it may happen, too, that help comes in the night. Things come back to a man that it is good to remember. That time--and that other. . . . A woman there--and the one you met in such a place. There is a picture in the Louvre, by Veronese: a young Venetian woman steps out upon the marble stairway of a palace holding a golden-haired boy by the hand; she is dressed in black velvet, she glows with youth and happiness. A lovers' meeting in her garden? The first kiss! Moonlight and mandolins!

A shudder of pleasure pa.s.ses through his weary body. Bright recollections and impressions flock towards him like spirits of light--he can hear the rus.h.i.+ng sound of their wings--he calls to them for aid, and they encircle him round; they struggle with the spirits of darkness for his soul. He has known much brightness, much beauty in his life--surely the bright angels are the stronger and must conquer. Ah!

why had he not lived royally, amidst women and flowers and wine?

One morning as he was getting up, he said: ”Merle, I must and will hit upon something that'll send me to bed thoroughly tired out.”

”Yes dear,” she answered. ”Do try.”

”I'll try wheeling stones to begin with,” he said. ”The devil's in it if a day at that doesn't make a man sleep.”

So that day and for many days he wheeled stones from some newly broken land on the hillside down to a d.y.k.e that ran along the road.

Calm, golden autumn days; one farm above another rising up towards the crest of the range, all set in ripe yellow fields. One little cottage stands right on the crest against the sky itself, and it, too, has its tiny patch of yellow corn. And an eagle sails slowly across the deep valley from peak to peak.

People pa.s.sing by stared at Peer as he went about bare-headed, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, wheeling stones. ”Aye, gentlefolks have queer notions,”

they would say, shaking their heads.

”That's it--keep at it,” a dry, hacking voice kept going in Peer's head.

”It is idiocy, but you are doomed to it. Shove hard with those skinny legs of yours; many a jade before you has had to do the same. You've got to get some sleep tonight. Only ten months left now; and then we shall have Lucifer turning up at the cross-roads once more. Poor Merle--she's beginning to grow grey. And the poor little children--dreaming of father beating them, maybe, they cry out so often in their sleep. Off now, trundle away. Now over with that load; and back for another.

”You, that once looked down on the soulless toil for bread, you have sunk now to something far more miserable. You are dragging at a load of sheer stupidity. You are a galley-slave, with calamity for your task-master. As you move the chains rattle. And that is your day.”

He straightens himself up, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and begins heaving up stones into his barrow again.

How long must it last, this life in manacles? Do you remember Job?