AN INTERRUPTED CELEBRATION
My, how well I remember the day that we almost killed the dean's wife!
That sounds queer; but it really was a live dean's wife that we really
came within a hair's breadth of killing. And that, while we were just
playing and celebrating the Seventeenth of May--the day when Norway
adopted her own constitution, you know.
Now you shall hear how it happened.
Right behind our old house we have a whole big breezy hill. If any of
you live down on the coast, you will know how beautiful it is and what
fun one can have up on such a hill. If you have only seen it as you went
by on the steamer, you would never imagine how lovely it is up on bare
gray hills that look out towards the sea. Little soil, but lots of
sunshine; wherever there is a tiny crevice, fine long blades of grass,
buttercups, and yellow broom will immediately start up. Wild rose bushes
and juniper cling to the hillside here and there, and then the heather
away up on the top;--all over the whole flat top nothing but purple
heather. Above is the clear blue sky; and out there the sea in a great
wide circle--nothing to shut off the view; oh, it is glorious!
This has really nothing to do with the dean's wife, but I only wanted to
explain what it was like up there on the hill. For it was up there that
Nils Trap, Ezekiel, Peter, Karsten, Mina, Massa, and I played, many a
pleasant day.
Right at our yard the hill begins to be steeper; first comes a little
walled-in garden, then terraces and cliffs, big rocks and little rocks,
then down a steep precipice, and then up a few steps again where you
have to use hands and feet both, and grab hold of the heather and
juniper if you want to go farther up.
About half-way up the hill there is a great big rock jutting out, which
you can only climb on one side, and that with the greatest difficulty.
This is our fort. Here we have both batteries and bastions, a room for
bullets and cannon-balls, a room for powder, and a dungeon. From up
there we have the most splendid view down over the town with its low
gaily painted wooden houses, and the small leafy linden-trees that creep
up through the streets. From our fort people down there look just like
darning-needles; from the very top of the hill they look like a swarming
mass of little pins.
I remember distinctly that particular Seventeenth of May; the spring had
come so early that we already had fine young birch leaves and clear mild
air. For several days we had been talking about a feast that we wanted
to have in the dungeon, for there we should be wholly out of sight.
There was to be a salute, speeches and songs. Peter and Karsten were
always the gunners. With much trouble we had carried big stones up to
the fort; these we threw with all our might down again over the
precipice. This was our way of giving a salute; it made no little
racket, you may be sure! The boys were to provide something to drink,
and we the cake and glasses. We were never allowed to take any glasses
up on the hill, except old goblets with the feet broken off. I thought
then it was terribly stingy of Mother not to let us have proper glasses.
Ezekiel made the speech in honor of the day. I can still see his thin
white fingers round the broken glass while he spouted and speechified
about "our young freedom crowns this day of liberty with flowers." I had
lately read the whole speech in an old children's paper, and of course
had to confide this fact to Mina; the others wanted to know what we were
laughing about, and at last all the listeners were laughing and
whispering to each other; but Ezekiel stuck to it. After the speech four
stones were thrown down. Karsten was beaming. "Oh, oh, what a crash!" he
kept saying.
After that Ezekiel made a speech in honor of Sweden; at the end of the
speech he suggested that we should sing:
"See yonder by the Baltic's salt waves,"
but as none of us knew the tune, and Ezekiel himself hadn't a speck of
music in him, the song wouldn't go. For it didn't help us at all for him
to insist that he heard the tune plainly in his head. Then Nils Trap
made a speech in honor of the ladies; I remember how I admired the few
telling words: "A cheer and four shots for the ladies!" Not a bit more!
I thought that sounded so awfully manlike.
Peter rushed off to the top of the fort to fire off the shots, Karsten
after him, his hair standing on end. The stones went crashing over--the
next moment we heard a doleful shriek from below. Peter came rushing
down to the dungeon, ashy-gray under his freckles, crying:
"Oh, Mother--Mother----"
We all dashed up instantly. Down below the fort, just at the foot of the
precipice, stood the dean's little crooked wife, with a purple kerchief
over her head and one slender hand held up in the air. The stone, which
had been fired off in honor of the ladies, lay less than two feet from
her!
Even to this day I am sorry that I didn't run to her at once and go back
with her down the hill. That didn't occur to any of us, I think. When we
found that she hadn't been hit, but was only terribly frightened at
seeing the great stone in the air right over her, we almost thought, up
there in the fort, that it was rather unseemly of the dean's wife to
scream out so.
She crept down the hill alone; she had just gone up to see to a white
bed-spread that was hanging on a bush to dry.
Our festive mood was gone, however,--shocked out of us, as it were.
Karsten struck into the air with clenched fists, as he always does when
he is excited. It wasn't so very dangerous, he protested; for if _he_
had been the dean's wife, of course he would have seen what direction
the stone was taking in the air, and if it went that way, why then he
would have jumped to one side--like this--and if the stone went the
other way, why then you could just jump to the other side. Besides, if
the dean's wife had been, as she ought to have been, as strong as Nils
Heia, for instance, then she might have stood perfectly still, fixed her
eyes on the stone, held her hands to catch it, and tossed it away. Yes,
wouldn't Nils Heia have done it that way? Wouldn't he be strong enough
for that?
But very soon the horror of it came over me; just think, if Peter had
killed his own mother! I remember clearly that I wouldn't have anything
more either to eat or drink, and Nils Trap teased me, and said I had
grown quite white around the nose with fright.
As we sat there looking at each other and not able to get started on
anything again, suddenly we heard a voice:
"Peter."
"That's Father," said Peter, and crouched away down so that he couldn't
possibly be seen from below.
"Hush--sh--keep still--hush!" We lay in a heap, frightened and silent.
"Peter," came again from below. "Come down this instant. I know you are
up there."
"Hush--just keep still, not a sound."
Dead silence.
"Well, if you don't come at once----" The dean was furious; we could
hear that in his voice.
"I've got to go," said Peter, standing up. "I've got to--I've got
to----" He scrambled out; the rest of us just stuck our heads up to see
what would happen.
There stood the dean with no hat, just in his wig, and furiously angry.
It was no fun to be Peter now. He was everlastingly slow about
clambering down. The dean scolded up towards our six heads, sticking out
of the dungeon:
"Yes, just try such a thing again--just try it--your backs shall suffer
for it--big boys and girls as you are--killing people with stones!"
"Yes, but we didn't kill anybody," called Karsten.
I was perfectly appalled at Karsten's daring to call out such a thing to
the dean, who, however, paid not the least attention; Peter had at last
come within his reach, so he had something else to do.
First a box on one ear: "I'll teach you,"--then a box on the other ear:
"almost killing your own mother"--and he kept on hitting. But only
think; although I felt so terribly sorry for Peter, so sorry that I
believe I should have been glad to take the blows in his place--I was as
much to blame as he--yet there was something so fearfully exciting in
watching Peter and the dean down there, that I almost felt disappointed
when the dean took Peter by his left ear and dragged him away. The boys
had lately made a little path down the hill and to the back gate of the
dean's garden. It was lucky for Peter that there was some sort of a
beaten track, now that he was being led along it by the ear.
"You can depend upon it that Peter will get a thrashing," said Karsten,
who also felt the excitement of the moment. "But if it were I"--he grew
very earnest--"I'd throw myself on my back and stretch my legs up in
the air and kick so that nobody could come near me. He shouldn't beat
me, no indeed, he'd soon find that out."
It was all over with the celebration. Ezekiel proposed that we should
finish up the refreshments--we divided the cake equally--and then we
clambered down; but we took the path to our garden, not to the dean's.
We only whispered, we didn't speak a single loud word, till we got down.
We got a scolding, a thorough scolding, from the dean, but Mother cried
when she heard what a calamity we had nearly brought about. And I minded
Mother's tears much more than I did the dean's scolding.
Afterwards, when we asked Peter what had happened to him, he didn't
answer, but just smiled feebly.
Yes, that is the way our Seventeenth of May celebration was
interrupted!
[Illustration: The dean took Peter by the left ear and dragged him
away.--_Page 39._]