CHAPTER I

LONELINESS

At fifteen Konrad Kurt had left his home; he could no longer bear to witness the cruelty with which his mother was treated; for domestic tyranny was an heirloom in the Kurt family. He crossed over to Hull, and made his home for some time with an uncle, but was eventually sent, at his expense, to live in the country. The boy's nervous system had been pronounced by a doctor to be far from strong, and if he were to be made any thing of, he must live as much as possible in the open air; it was therefore suggested that he might be brought up as a gardener. Now gardening chanced to be a perfect _gourmandise_ in the Kurt family, so that the lad eventually adopted it as his profession.

When, on his father's death, he returned home to see after his own interests, and to take care of his poor mother, he found but little else to take care of, his worthy father having sold all the clearing rights of his last woods, his remaining shares in some ships, and finally the tile works, sinking the whole of the proceeds in an annuity. In a word, he had the houses, the gardens, and a field or two; all the rest Kurt had, as they say, "eaten bare" all round him. His son, he considered, must follow his example. He might easily begin by selling the field nearest to the town; with the lower garden, it presented a splendid site for building. Konrad Kurt, on the other hand, was quite of opinion that enough of "The Estate" had been sold already. He therefore instead raised a loan, drained the gardens and fields, put the houses so far into repair, that they would not actually fall to ruin, and enlarged the forcing-house, adding another to it at a later time. In short, he showed that it was possible to live on his inheritance, and manage a garden, in such a way as to make it pay, an idea which was then new in that part of the world.

At first he expended almost all he earned, but by-and-by things improved. A single room served him for sleeping, eating, and writing; the first room on the left side of the hall, which had been occupied by the first Kurt, and by all the different possessors of "The Estate." The room within it, which had been formerly used as a bedroom, was given by Kurt to his mother, who, poor woman, was now happier than she had ever been her in life before. All household work was done in the kitchen, on the other side of the wide hall, which, running through the whole house, divided it in two. The rest of the main building remained empty. In the autumn Kurt covered the floors of the different rooms with such portions of his produce as needed drying.

He was an impetuous man, taciturn at times, and stormy at others, but a good man at the bottom. His servants and workmen stood by him, and he stood by them. The sailors and fisher men living up on the mountain also received a great deal of kindness from him; he gave them seeds, and taught them how to cultivate their gardens, and utilise the produce. In the course of many years, the refuse from their houses had caused so great an accumulation round them, that enough soil had been formed to enable any one to have a strip of garden who chose to give the labour to it, besides which, they could carry away as much mould as they wished for from "The Estate" to mix with it. Never had the folk on the hill imagined that they would come to carrying earth from down below, that they would ever get time for, or find any fun in, such an occupation. Every Sunday throughout the spring and summer, Kurt went up to the mountain and helped them, a custom which he kept up through his whole life, but these were almost the only occasions on which he was ever seen beyond his gardens, house, and cellars.

He was up and out every morning in spring and summer by four o'clock, and as soon as it was light during the autumn and winter months. His summer costume consisted of a pair of fustian trousers, a whitey-grey linen coat, a green apron reaching down to his feet, and a cap with a wide peak. The same trousers and long apron were worn during the winter, with the addition of a tightly buttoned seaman's pea-jacket, and a fur cap with a wide brim always turned down in such a way that the loose flaps were constantly brushing against his face. He had never been seen dressed in any other way, excepting on Sundays, when he shaved, wore a starched shirt, and laid aside his apron. He had not inherited the broad defiant forehead of the Kurts. His was a fairly high one, and noticeable for its excessive whiteness; all the more so, perhaps, from the rest of his face being very weather-beaten. He had the eager, wild eyes of his ancestors; his face was somewhat longer, thin, and with rather a wide nose.

Housewives and children soon learned that it was better to go up to "The Estate" and deal with Kurt himself, stern and even passionate though he was, than to go to the shop on the market-place, for he was in reality very easy to manage, and excessively fond of children; they had to be careful, however, not to be too long in making a choice, and never to attempt to bargain.

He often seemed, when he was standing there, to be pondering some serious matter in an absent-minded way, and would then collect himself with a hasty "Ta, ta, ta, ta," ending with a long, deep "Ta-a-a!"

Everything prospered with him, his cows and garden paying him better and better. But after a few years a rumour began to spread that, since his mother's death, he spent every evening by himself getting drunk on whisky toddy. As he went regularly to bed at half-past nine, any one who wished to ascertain if this were the case, must go up there before that time. One or two people did so, and found that it was but too true; by half-past eight he was thoroughly drunk, crying, and unable to speak distinctly.

At last this came to the ears of "old" Pastor Green. He was always, as a young man, called "old," a frightful accident having completely bleached his hair.

Pastor Green was one of the first men in Norway who came forward to combat intemperance, and who gave up their lives to the work. It was his axiom that it is useless to preach against drunkenness otherwise than by facts and actions, and that it is quite hopeless to expect to convert the individual drunkard, without knowing what cause has driven him to drink. There always is one, and if drinking is not hereditary, or become a long-established habit, it is to the removal of the cause that you must look for its cure.

Green paid a visit to Konrad Kurt, and chatted with him, until he drew from him, that while he was living in England, he had had an intrigue with the wife of the gardener, to whom he had been apprenticed, and that she had had a child by him. She had died just at the same time as his mother.

He had been madly in love with her, he said; yes, it had been a terrible thing to deceive her husband. "But--there really was no help for it"--and he began to cry. Then their boy, "Ah! there never was such a merry child born before." And, in his yearning for him, the tipsy man cried, and upbraided himself with wild oaths.

Green endeavoured to induce him to ask pardon from the gardener, and bring the boy home, but Kurt had not the courage for the effort, so that there was nothing for it but for Green to use what other means he could.

Accordingly, one summer evening, he walked up to "The Estate," accompanied by a tall, dark haired boy of twelve, and asked for Kurt, who was still at work in the garden. It was a sight to see how Kurt, as he got up out of the hot-bed where he had been digging, rubbing the earth from his hands, suddenly stopped short, and stared at Green from under the wide peak of his cap; then turned his gaze to the dark-haired boy, and back again to Green.

At last he recognised the eager, wild eyes, larger than his by-the-way, the long, rather wide nose, and the thin face, so like his own. Unconsciously he exclaimed in English: "I beg pardon--but this lad----" He could go no further, and Green was obliged to finish for him: "Yes, this was indeed his son."

That evening Kurt forgot to get out the whisky bottle, and when he did next produce it, the boy seized hold of it and flung it out of the window against a stone--a really capital shot. Glass, sugar-basin, and spoon went the same way; capitally thrown they certainly were. Pastor Green had begged the boy to watch when his father took out the bottle, and try to get it away from him, and it was in this fashion that the youngster carried out his instructions. His father stood for a few minutes staring at him, till at last he broke out into an irresistible peal of laughter.