It was nothing for Pelle; if he were vanquished on one point, he rose
again on two others: he was invincible. And he had the child’s abundant
capacity for forgiving; had he not he would have hated all grown-up
people with the exception of Father Lasse. But disappointed he
certainly was.
It was not easy to say who had expected most—the boy, whose childish
imagination had built, unchecked, upon all that he had heard, or the
old man, who had once been here himself.
But Pelle managed to fill his own existence with interest, and was so
taken up on all sides that he only just had time to realize the
disappointment in passing. His world was supersensual like that of the
fakir; in the course of a few minutes a little seed could shoot up and
grow into a huge tree that overshadowed everything else. Cause never
answered to effect in it, and it was governed by another law of
gravitation: events always bore him up.
However hard reality might press upon him, he always emerged from the
tight place the richer in some way or other; and no danger could ever
become overwhelmingly great as long as Father Lasse stood reassuringly
over and behind everything.
But Lasse had failed him at the decisive moment more than once, and
every time he used him as a threat, he was only laughed at. The old
man’s omnipotence could not continue to exist side by side with his
increasing decrepitude; in the boy’s eyes it crumbled away from day to
day. Unwilling though he was, Pelle had to let go his providence, and
seek the means of protection in himself. It was rather early, but he
looked at circumstances in his own way. Distrust he had already
acquired—and timidity! He daily made clumsy attempts to get behind what
people said, and behind things. There was something more behind
everything! It often led to confusion, but occasionally the result was
conspicuously good.
There were some thrashings that you could run away from, because in the
meantime the anger would pass away, and other thrashings where it
answered best to shed as many tears as possible. Most people only beat
until the tears came, but the bailiff could not endure a blubberer, so
with him the thing was to set your teeth and make yourself hard. People
said you should speak the truth, but most thrashings could be avoided
by making up a white lie, if it was a good one and you took care of
your face. If you told the truth, they thrashed you at once.
With regard to thrashing, the question had a subjective side as well as
an objective one. He could beat Rud whenever he liked, but with bigger
boys it was better to have right on his side, as, for instance, when
his father was attacked. Then God helped him. This was a case in which
the boy put the omnipotence quite aside, and felt himself to be the old
man’s protector.
Lasse and Pelle were walking through life hand in hand, and yet each
was going his own way. Lasse felt it to be so. “We’ve each got hold of
an end,” he sometimes said to himself despondently, when the difference
was all too marked. “He’s rising, the laddie!”
This was best seen in the others. In the long run they had to like the
boy, it could not be otherwise. The men would sometimes give him
things, and the girls were thoroughly kind to him. He was in the
fairest period of budding youth; they would often take him on their
knees as he passed, and kiss him.
“Ah, he’ll be a lady’s man, he will!” Lasse would say. “He’s got that
from his father.” But they would laugh at that.
There was always laughter when Lasse wanted to join the elders. Last
time—yes, then he was good enough. It was always “Where’s Lasse?” when
gin was going round, or tricks were being played, or demonstrations
made. “Call Lasse Karlsson!” He had no need to push himself forward; it
was a matter of course that he was there. The girls were always on the
look-out for him, married man though he was, and he had fun with
them—all quite proper, of course, for Bengta was not good to quarrel
with if she heard anything.
But now! Yes—well, yes—he might fetch the gin for the others and do
their work for them when they had a holiday, without their doing
anything in exchange! “Lasse! Where’s Lasse? Can you feed the horses
for me this evening? Can you take my place at the chaff-cutting
to-morrow evening?”
There was a difference between then and now, and Lasse had found out
the reason for himself: he was getting old. The very discovery brought
further proof of its correctness, laid infirmity upon him, and removed
the tension from his mind, and what was left of it from his body. The
hardest blow of all was when he discovered that he was of no importance
to the girls, had no place at all in their thoughts of men. In Lasse’s
world there was no word that carried such weight as the word “man”; and
in the end it was the girls who decided whether you were one or not.
Lasse was not one; he was not dangerous! He was only a few poor relics
of a man, a comical remnant of some by-gone thing; they laughed at him
when he tried to pay them attention.
Their laughter crushed him, and he withdrew into his old-man’s world,
and despondently adapted himself to it. The only thing that kept life
in him was his concern for the boy, and he clung despairingly to his
position as his providence. There was little he could do for him, and
therefore he talked all the bigger; and when anything went against the
boy, he uttered still greater threats against the world than before. He
also felt that the boy was in process of making himself independent,
and fought a desperate battle to preserve the last appearance of power.
But Pelle could not afford to give support to his fancy, nor had he the
understanding to do it. He was growing fast, and had a use for all that
he possessed himself. Now that his father no longer stood behind to
shield him, he was like a small plant that has been moved out into the
open, and is fighting hard to comprehend the nature of its
surroundings, and adapt itself to them. For every root-fibre that felt
its way into the soil, there fell to the ground one of the tender
leaves, and two strong ones pushed forth. One after another the
feelings of the child’s defencelessness dropped and gave place to the
harder ones of the individual.
The boy was engaged in building himself up, in accordance with
invisible laws. He assumed an attitude toward his surroundings at all
points, but he did not imitate them. The farm men, for instance, were
not kind to the animals. They often lashed the horses only as a vent
for their ill-humor, and the girls were just the same to the smaller
animals and the dairy-cows. From these considerations, Pelle taught
himself sympathy. He could not bear cruelty to animals, and thrashed
Rud for the first time when the latter had one day robbed a bird’s
nest.
Pelle was like a kid that makes a plaything of everything. In his play
he took up, without suspecting it, many of the serious phenomena of
life, and gambolled with them in frolicsome bounds. He exercised his
small mind as he exercised his body, twisted himself into everything
and out of everything, imitated work and fun and shirking, and learned
how to puff himself up into a very devil of a fellow where his
surroundings were yielding, and to make himself almost invisible with
modesty when they were hard. He was training himself to be that little
Jack-of-all-trades, man.
And it became more and more difficult to catch him unprepared. The
first time he had to set about a thing in earnest, he was generally
handy at it; he was as difficult to take unawares as a cat.
It was summer again. The heat stood still and played over the ground,
sparkling, with indolent voluptuousness and soft movements like the
fish in the stream. Far inland it quivered above the rocks that bounded
the view, in a restless flicker of bluish white; below lay the fields
beneath the broiling sun, with the pollen from the rye drifting over
them like smoke. Up above the clover-field stood the cows of Stone Farm
in long rows, their heads hanging heavily down, and their tails
swinging regularly. Lasse was moving between their ranks, looking for
the mallet, and now and then gazing anxiously down towards the meadow
by the dunes, and beginning to count the young cattle and the bullocks.
Most of them were lying down, but a few of them were standing with
their heads close together, and munching with closed eyes. The boys
were nowhere to be seen.
Lasse stood wondering whether he should give Pelle a warning call;
there would he no end of a row if the bailiff were to come now. But
then the sound of voices came from among the young firs on the dunes, a
naked boy appeared, and then another. Their bodies were like golden
flashes in the air as they ran over the grass-wrack and across the
meadow, each with his cap held closed in his hand.
They sat down upon the edge of the stream with their feet in the water,
and carefully uncovered their captives; they were dragon-flies. As the
insects one by one crawled out at the narrow opening, the boys
decapitated them and laid them in a row on the grass. They had caught
nine, and nine times thirty-five—well, it would be more than three
krones. The stupendous amount made Pelle skeptical.
“Now isn’t that only a lie?” he said, and licked his shoulder where he
had been bitten by a mosquito. It was said that the chemist gave
thirty-five öres apiece for dragon-flies.
“A lie?” exclaimed Rud. “Yes, perhaps it is,” he went on meekly. “It
must be a lie, for anything like that always is. You might give me
yours too!”
But Pelle would not do that.
“Then give me your half-krone, and I’ll go to the town and sell them
for you. They cost thirty-five öres, for Karl says so, and his mother
washes the floor in the chemist’s shop.”
Pelle got up, not to fetch the half-krone—he would not part with that
for all the world—but to assure himself that it still lay in his
waistcoat pocket.
When he had gone a little way, Rud hastily lifted a piece of turf at
the edge of the stream, pushed something in under it, and jumped into
the water; and when Pelle came back with slow, ominous steps, he
climbed up the other side and set off at a run.
Pelle ran too, in short, quick leaps. He knew he was the quicker, and
the knowledge made him frolicsome. He flapped at his naked body as he
ran, as if he had no joints, swayed from side to side like a balloon,
pranced and stamped on the ground, and then darted on again. Then the
young firs closed round them again, only the movement of their tops
showing where the boys ran, farther and farther, until all was still.
In the meadow the cattle were munching with closed eyes and attentive
ears. The heat played over the ground, flickering, gasping, like a fish
in water. There was a heavy, stupefying humming in the air; the sound
came from everywhere and nowhere.
Down across the cornfields came a big, stout woman. She wore a skirt, a
chemise, and a handkerchief on her head, and she shaded her eyes with
her hand and looked about. She crossed the meadow obliquely, found
Pelle’s dinner-basket, took out its contents and put them in under her
chemise upon her bare, perspiring bosom, and then turned in the
direction of the sea.
There was a sudden break in the edge of the fir-plantation, and out
came Rud with Pelle hanging upon his back. Rud’s inordinately large
head hung forward and his knees gave way; his forehead, which receded
above the eyes and projected just below the line of the hair, was a
mass of bruises and scars, which became very visible now with his
exertions. Both the boys had marks all over their bodies from the
poison of the pine-needles. Pelle dropped on to the grass, and lay
there on his face, while Rud went slowly to fetch the half-krone, and
handed it reluctantly to its owner. He stooped like one vanquished, but
in his eye the thought of a new battle lay awaiting its opportunity.
Pelle gazed lovingly at the coin. He had had it now ever since April,
from the time when he was sent to buy birch-fat. He had purchased with
it everything that was desirable, and he had lost it twice: he loved
that piece of money. It made his fingers itch, his whole body; it was
always urging him on to spend it, now in one way and now in another.
Roll, roll! That was what it was longing to do; and it was because it
was round, Father Lasse said. But to become rich—that meant stopping
the money as it rolled. Oh, Pelle meant to be rich! And then he was
always itching to spend it—spend it in such a way that he got
everything for it, or something he could have all his life.
They sat upon the bank of the stream and wrangled in a small way. Rud
did his best to inspire awe, and bragged to create an impression. He
bent his fingers backward and moved his ears; he could move them
forward in a listening position like a horse. All this irritated Pelle
intensely.
Suddenly he stopped. “Won’t you give me the half-krone, then? You shall
have ten krones when I grow up.” Rud collected money—he was avaricious
already—and had a whole boxful of coins that he had stolen from his
mother.
Pelle considered a little. “No,” he said. “Because you’ll never grow
up; you’re a dwarf!” The tone of his voice was one of sheer envy.
“That’s what the Sow says too! But then I’ll show myself for money at
the fairs and on Midsummer Eve on the common. Then I shall get
frightfully rich.”
Pelle was inwardly troubled. Should he give him the whole fifty öres
for nothing at all? He had never heard of any one doing such a thing.
And perhaps some day, when Rud had become enormously rich, he would get
half of it. “Will you have it?” he asked, but regretted it instantly.
Rud stretched out his hand eagerly, but Pelle spat into it. “It can
wait until we’ve had our dinner anyhow,” he said, and went over to the
basket. For a little while they stood gazing into the empty basket.
“The Sow’s been here,” said Rud, putting out his tongue.
Pelle nodded. “She _is_ a beast!”
“A thief,” said Rud.
They took the sun’s measure. Rud declared that if you could see it when
you bent down and looked between your legs, then it was five o’clock.
Pelle began to put on his clothes.
Rud was circling about him. “I say!” he said suddenly. “If I may have
it, I’ll let you whip me with nettles.”
“On your bare body?” asked Pelle.
Rud nodded.
In a second Pelle was out of his trousers again, and running to a patch
of nettles. He pulled them up with the assistance of a dock-leak, as
many as he could hold, and came back again. Rud lay down, face
downwards, on a little mound, and the whipping began.
The agreement was a hundred strokes, but when Rud had received ten, he
got up and refused to have any more.
“Then you won’t get the money,” said Pelle. “Will you or won’t you?” He
was red with excitement and the exertion, and the perspiration already
stood in beads down his slender back, for he had worked with a will.
“Will you or won’t you? Seventy-five strokes then!” Pelle’s voice
quivered with eagerness, and he had to dilate his nostrils to get air
enough; his limbs began to tremble.
“No—only sixty—you hit so hard! And I must have the money first, or you
may cheat me.”
“I don’t cheat,” said Pelle gloomily. But Rud held to his point.
Pelle’s body writhed; he was like a ferret that has tasted blood. With
a jerk he threw the coin at Rud, and grumbling, pushed him down. He
wept inwardly because he had let him off forty strokes; but he made up
his mind to lay into him all the harder for it.
Then he beat, slowly and with all his might, while Rud burrowed with
his head in the grass and clasped the money tightly to keep up his
strength. There was hatred in every stroke that Pelle struck, and they
went like shocks through his playmate’s body, but he never uttered a
cry. No, there was no point in his crying, for the coin he held in his
hand took away the pain. But about Pelle’s body the air burnt like
fire, his arms began to give way with fatigue, and his inclination
diminished with every stroke. It was toil, nothing but hard toil. And
the money—the beautiful half-krone—was slipping farther and farther
away, and he would be poor once more; and Rud was not even crying! At
the forty-sixth stroke he turned his face and put out his tongue,
whereat Pelle burst into a roar, threw down the frayed nettle-stalks,
and ran away to the fir-plantation.
There he sat for the rest of the day under a dune, grieving over his
loss, while Rud lay under the bank of the stream, bathing his blistered
body with wet earth.
X
After all, Per Olsen was not the sort of man they had thought him. Now
that he had been set free in that way, the thing would have been for
him to have given a helping hand to that poor fellow, Long Ole; for
after all it was for his sake that Ole’s misfortune had come upon him.
But did he do it? No, he began to amuse himself. It was drinking and
dissipation and petticoats all the summer through; and now at Martinmas
he left and took work at the quarry, so as to be more his own master.
There was not sufficient liberty for him at Stone Farm. What good there
was left in him would find something to do up there.
Long Ole could not, of course, remain at Stone Farm, crippled as he
was. Through kindness on the part of the farmer, he was paid his
half-wage; that was more than he had any claim to, and enough at any
rate to take him home and let him try something or other. There were
many kinds of work that at a pinch could be performed with one hand;
and now while he had the money he ought to have got an iron hook; it
could be strapped to the wrist, and was not bad to hold tools with.
But Ole had grown weak and had great difficulty in making up his mind.
He continued to hang about the farm, notwithstanding all that the
bailiff did to get him away. At last they had to put his things out, to
the west of the farm; and there they lay most of the summer, while he
himself slept among the stacks, and begged food of the workers in the
fields. But this could not go on when the cold set in.
But then one day in the autumn, his things were gone. Johanna Pihl
—commonly called the Sow—had taken him in. She felt the cold, too, in
spite of her fat, and as the proverb says: It’s easier for two to keep
warm than one; but whatever was her reason for doing it, Long Ole might
thank his Maker for her. There was always bacon hanging in her chimney.
Lasse and Pelle looked forward to term-day with anxiety. What changes
would it bring this time for people? So much depended on that. Besides
the head man, they were to have new second and third men and some new
maids. They were always changing at Stone Farm when they could. Karna,
poor soul, was bound to stay, as she had set her mind upon youth, and
would absolutely be where Gustav was! Gustav stayed because Bodil
stayed, so unnaturally fond was he of that girl, although she was not
worth it. And Bodil herself knew well enough what she was doing! There
must be more in it than met the eye when a girl dressed, as she did, in
expensive, town-bought clothes.
Lasse and Pelle _remained_, simply because there was no other place in
the world for them to go to. All through the year they made plans for
making a change, but when the time for giving notice approached, Lasse
became quiet and let it go past.
Of late he had given no little thought to the subject of marrying
again. There was something God-forsaken about this solitary existence
for a man of his age; you became old and worn out before your time,
when you hadn’t a wife and a house. On the heath near Brother Kalle’s,
there was a house that he could have without paying anything down. He
often discussed it with Pelle, and the boy was ready for anything new.
It should be a wife who could look after everything and make the house
comfortable; and above all she must be a hard-working woman. It would
not come amiss either if she had a little of her own, but let that be
as it might, if only she was good-natured. Karna would have suited in
all respects, both Lasse and Pelle having always had a liking for her
ever since the day she freed Pelle from the pupil’s clutches; but it
was nothing to offer her as long as she was so set upon Gustav. They
must bide their time; perhaps she would come to her senses, or
something else might turn up.
“Then there’d be coffee in bed on Sunday mornings!” said Pelle, with
rapture.
“Yes, and perhaps we’d get a little horse, and invite Brother Kalle for
a drive now and then,” added Lasse solemnly.
At last it was really to be! In the evening Lasse and Pelle had been to
the shop and bought a slate and pencil, and Pelle was now standing at
the stable-door with a beating heart and the slate under his arm. It
was a frosty October morning, but the boy was quite hot after his wash.
He had on his best jacket, and his hair had been combed with water.
Lasse hovered about him, brushing him here and there with his sleeve,
and was even more nervous than the boy. Pelle had been born to poor
circumstances, had been christened, and had had to earn his bread from
the time he was a little boy—all exactly as he had done himself. So far
there was no difference to be seen; it might very well have been Lasse
himself over again, from the big ears and the “cow’s-lick” on the
forehead, to the way the boy walked and wore out the bottoms of his
trouser-legs. But this was something strikingly new. Neither Lasse nor
any of his family had ever gone to school; it was something new that
had come within the reach of his family, a blessing from Heaven that
had fallen upon the boy and himself. It felt like a push upward; the
impossible was within reach; what might not happen to a person who had
book-learning! You might become master of a workshop, a clerk, perhaps
even a schoolmaster.
“Now do take care of the slate, and see that you don’t break it!” he
said admonishingly. “And keep out of the way of the big boys until you
can hold your own with them. But if any of them simply won’t let you
alone, mind you manage to hit first! That takes the inclination out of
most of them, especially if you hit hard; he who hits first hits twice,
as the old proverb says. And then you must listen well, and keep in
mind all that your teacher says; and if anyone tries to entice you into
playing and larking behind his back, don’t do it. And remember that
you’ve got a pocket-handkerchief, and don’t use your fingers, for that
isn’t polite. If there’s no one to see you, you can save the
handkerchief, of course, and then it’ll last all the longer. And take
care of your nice jacket. And if the teacher’s lady invites you in to
coffee, you mustn’t take more than one piece of cake, mind.”
Lasse’s hands trembled while he talked.
“She’s sure not to do that,” said Pelle, with a superior air.
“Well, well, now go, so that you don’t get there too late—the very
first day, too. And if there’s some tool or other wanting, you must say
we’ll get it at once, for we aren’t altogether paupers!” And Lasse
slapped his pocket; but it did not make much noise, and Pelle knew
quite well that they had no money; they had got the slate and pencil on
credit.
Lasse stood looking after the boy as long as he was in sight, and then
went to his work of crushing oilcakes. He put them into a vessel to
soak, and poured water on them, all the while talking softly to
himself.
There was a knock at the outside stable-door, and Lasse went to open
it. It was Brother Kalle.
“Good-day, brother!” he said, with his cheerful smile. “Here comes his
Majesty from the quarries!” He waddled in upon his bow legs, and the
two exchanged hearty greetings. Lasse was delighted at the visit.
“What a pleasant time we had with you the other evening!” said Lasse,
taking his brother by the hand.
“That’s a long time ago now. But you must look in again one evening
soon. Grandmother looks upon both of you with a favorable eye!” Kalle’s
eyes twinkled mischievously.
“How is she, poor body? Has she at all got over the hurt to her eye?
Pelle came home the other day and told me that the children had been so
unfortunate as to put a stick into her eye. It quite upset me. You had
to have the doctor, too!”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that,” said Kalle. “I had moved
grandmother’s spinning-wheel myself one morning when I was putting her
room to rights, and then I forgot to put it back in its place. Then
when she was going to stoop down to pick up something from the floor,
the spindle went into her eye; of course she’s used to have everything
stand exactly in its place. So really the honor’s due to me.” He smiled
all over his face.
Lasse shook his head sympathetically. “And she got over it fairly
well?” he asked.
“No; it went altogether wrong, and she lost the sight of that eye.”
Lasse looked at him with disapproval.
Kalle caught himself up, apparently very much horrified. “Eh, what
nonsense I’m talking! She lost the _blindness_ of that eye, I ought to
have said. _Isn’t_ that all wrong, too? You put somebody’s eye out, and
she begins to see! Upon my word, I think I’ll set up as an eye-doctor
after this, for there’s not much difficulty in it.”
“What do you say? She’s begun to—? Now you’re too merry! You oughtn’t
to joke about everything.”
“Well, well, joking apart, as the prophet said when his wife scratched
him—she can really see with that eye now.”
Lasse looked suspiciously at him for a little while before he yielded.
“Why, it’s quite a miracle!” he then said.
“Yes, that’s what the doctor said. The point of the spindle had acted
as a kind of operation. But it might just as easily have taken the
other direction. Yes, we had the doctor to her three times; it was no
use being niggardly.” Kalle stood and tried to look important; he had
stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
“It cost a lot of money, I suppose?”
“That’s what I thought, too, and I wasn’t very happy when I asked the
doctor how much it would be. Twenty-five krones, he said, and it didn’t
sound anything more than when any of us ask for a piece of
bread-and-dripping. ‘Will the doctor be so kind as to wait a few days
so that I can get the cow properly sold?’ I asked. ‘What!’ he says, and
glares at me over his spectacles. ‘You don’t mean to sell the cow so as
to pay me? You mustn’t do that on any account; I’ll wait till times are
better.’ ‘We come off easily, even if we get rid of the cow,’ I said.
‘How so?’ he asks, as we go out to the carriage —it was the farmer of
Kaase Farm that was driving for me. So I told him that Maria and I had
been thinking of selling everything so that grandmother might go over
and be operated. He said nothing to that, but climbed up into the
carriage; but while I was standing like this, buttoning up his
foot-bag, he seizes me by the collar and says: ‘Do you know, you little
bow-legged creature!’ (Kalle imitated the doctor’s town speech),
‘You’re the best man I’ve ever met, and you don’t owe me a brass
farthing! For that matter, it was you yourself that performed the
operation.’ ‘Then I ought almost to have had the money,’ I said. Then
he laughed and gave me a box on the ears with his fur cap. He’s a fine
man, that doctor, and fearfully clever; they say that he has one kind
of mixture that he cures all kinds of illness with.”
They were sitting in the herdsman’s room upon the green chest, and
Lasse had brought out a little gin. “Drink, brother!” he said again and
again. “It takes something to keep out this October drizzle.”
“Many thanks, but you must drink! But I was going to say, you should
see grandmother! She goes round peeping at everything with her one eye;
if it’s only a button, she keeps on staring at it. So that’s what that
looks like, and that! She’s forgotten what the things look like, and
when she sees a thing, she goes to it to feel it afterward —to find out
what it is, she actually says. She would have nothing to do with us the
first few days; when she didn’t hear us talk or walk, she thought we
were strangers, even though she saw us there before her eyes.”
“And the little ones?” asked Lasse.
“Thank you, Anna’s is fat and well, but our own seems to have come to a
standstill. After all, it’s the young pigs you ought to breed with. By
the bye”—Kalle took out his purse—“while we’re at it, don’t let me
forget the ten krones I got from you for the christenings.”
Lasse pushed it away. “Never mind that,” he said. “You may have a lot
to go through yet. How many mouths are there now? Fourteen or fifteen,
I suppose?”
“Yes; but two take their mother’s milk, like the parson’s wife’s
chickens; so that’s all saved. And if things became difficult, one’s
surely man enough to wring a few pence out of one’s nose?” He seized
his nose and gave it a rapid twist, and held out his hand. A folded
ten-krone note lay in it.
Lasse laughed at the trick, but would not hear of taking the money; and
for a time it passed backward and forward between them. “Well, well!”
said Kalle at last, keeping the note; “thank you very much, then! And
good-bye, brother! I must be going.” Lasse went out with him, and sent
many greetings.
“We shall come and look you up very soon,” he called out after his
brother.
When after a little while he returned to his room, the note lay upon
the bed. Kalle must have seen his opportunity to put it there, conjurer
that he was. Lasse put it aside to give to Kalle’s wife, when an
occasion presented itself.
Long before the time, Lasse was on the lookout for Pelle. He found the
solitude wearisome, now that he was used to having the boy about him
from morning till night. At last he came, out of breath with running,
for he had longed to get home too.
Nothing either terrible or remarkable had happened at school. Pelle had
to give a circumstantial account, point by point, “Well, what can you
do?” the master had asked, taking him by the ear—quite kindly, of
course. “I can pull the mad bull to the water without Father Lasse
helping at all,” Pelle had answered, and then the whole class had
laughed.
“Yes, yes, but can you read?”
No, Pelle could not do that—“or else I shouldn’t have come here,” he
was on the point of adding. “It was a good thing you didn’t answer
that,” said Lasse; “but what more then?” Well, then Pelle was put upon
the lowest bench, and the boy next him was set to teach him his
letters.
“Do you know them, then?”
No, Pelle did not know them that day, but when a couple of weeks had
passed, he knew most of them, and wrote them with chalk on the posts.
He had not learned to write, but his hand could imitate anything he had
seen, and he drew the letters just as they stood in print in the
spelling-book.
Lasse went and looked at them during his work, and had them repeated to
him endlessly; but they would not stick properly. “What’s that one
there?” he was perpetually asking.
Pelle answered with a superior air: “That? Have you forgotten it
already? I knew that after I’d only seen it once! That’s M.”
“Yes, of course it is! I can’t think where my head is to-day. M, yes—of
course it’s M! Now what can that be used for, eh?”
“It’s the first letter in the word ‘empty,’ of course!” said Pelle
consequentially.
“Yes, of course! But you didn’t find that out for yourself; the master
told you.”
“No, I found it out by myself.”
“Did you, now? Well, you’ve become clever—if only you don’t become as
clever as seven fools.”
Lasse was out of spirits; but very soon he gave in, and fell into
whole-hearted admiration of his son. And the instruction was continued
while they worked. It was fortunate for Pelle that his father was so
slow, for he did not get on very fast himself, when once he had
mastered all that was capable of being picked up spontaneously by a
quick intelligence. The boy who had to teach him—Sloppy, he was
called—was the dunce of the class and had always been bottom until now
Pelle had come and taken his place.
Two weeks of school had greatly changed Pelle’s ideas on this subject.
On the first few days he arrived in a state of anxious expectation, and
all his courage forsook him as he crossed the threshold of the school.
For the first time in his life he felt that he was good for nothing.
Trembling with awe, he opened his perceptions to this new and
unfamiliar thing that was to unveil for him all the mysteries of the
world, if only he kept his ears open; and he did so. But there was no
awe-inspiring man, who looked at them affectionately through
gold-rimmed spectacles while he told them about the sun and the moon
and all the wonders of the world. Up and down the middle passage walked
a man in a dirty linen coat and with gray bristles projecting from his
nostrils. As he walked he swung the cane and smoked his pipe; or he sat
at the desk and read the newspaper. The children were noisy and
restless, and when the noise broke out into open conflict, the man
dashed down from his desk, and hit out indiscriminately with his cane.
And Pelle himself, well he was coupled—for good, it appeared—to a dirty
boy, covered with scrofulous sores, who pinched his arm every time he
read his b-a—ba, b-e—be wrong. The only variation was an hour’s daily
examination in the tedious observations in the class-book, and the
Saturday’s uncouth hymn-repeating.
For a time Pelle swallowed everything whole, and passed it on
faithfully to his father; but at last he tired of it. It was not his
nature to remain long passive to his surroundings, and one fine day he
had thrown aside all injunctions and intentions, and dived into the
midst of the fun.
After this he had less information to impart, but on the other hand
there were the thousands of knavish tricks to tell about. And father
Lasse shook his head and comprehended nothing; but he could not help
laughing.