“Sh! The mistress’ll hear.”
It was no less a person than the master of Loreng himself whose proceedings struck them as so comic.
Peer it was, wandering about in the great neglected garden, with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and his cap on the back of his head, stopping here and there, and moving on again as the fancy took him. Sometimes he would hum a snatch of a song, and again fall to whistling; here he would pick up a twig and look at it, or again it might be a bird, or perhaps an old neglected apple-tree that seemed worth stopping to talk to. The best of it was that these were his own lands and his own woods that lay there in the rusty October sunshine. Was all that nothing? And the hill over on the farther shore, standing on its head in the dark lake-mirror, clothed in a whole world of colour—yellow leaves and green leaves, and light red and dark red, and golden and blood-red patches, with the dark green of the pines between. His eyes had all this to rest on. Did he really live here? What abundant fruitfulness all around him! What a sky, so wide, so golden that it seemed to ring again. The potato-stalks lay uprooted, scattered on the fields; the corn was safely housed. And here he stood. He seemed again to be drawing in nourishment from all he saw, drinking it greedily. The empty places in his mind were filled; the sight of the rich soft landscape worked on his being, giving it something of its own abundant fruitfulness, its own wide repose.
And—what next?
“What next?” he mimicked in his thoughts, and started again tramping up and down the garden paths. What next—what next? Could he not afford now to take his time—to rest a little? Every man must have an end in view—must strive to reach this goal or that. And what was his object now? What was it he had so toiled for, from those hard years in the loft above the stable even until now? What was it? Often it seemed as if everything were going smoothly, going of itself; as if one day, surely, he would find his part in a great, happy world-harmony. But had he not already found it? What more would he have? Of course he had found it.
But is this all, then? What is there behind and beyond? Hush! have done with questioning. Look at the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace and rest.
He hurried up to the house, and in—it might help matters if he could take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.
Merle was in the pantry, with a big apron on, ranging jars of preserves on the shelves.
“Here, dearest little wife,” cried Peer, throwing his arms about her, “what do you say to a little run?”
“Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad about? Uf! my hair! you’ll make it come down.”