The Great Hunger | Page 7

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.