I
It was dawn on the first of May, 1877. From the sea the mist came
sweeping in, in a gray trail that lay heavily on the water. Here and
there there was a movement in it; it seemed about to lift, but closed
in again, leaving only a strip of shore with two old boats lying keel
uppermost upon it. The prow of a third boat and a bit of breakwater
showed dimly in the mist a few paces off. At definite intervals a
smooth, gray wave came gliding out of the mist up over the rustling
shingle, and then withdrew again; it was as if some great animal lay
hidden out there in the fog, and lapped at the land.
A couple of hungry crows were busy with a black, inflated object down
there, probably the carcass of a dog. Each time a wave glided in, they
rose and hovered a few feet up in the air with their legs extended
straight down toward their booty, as if held by some invisible
attachment. When the water retreated, they dropped down and buried
their heads in the carrion, but kept their wings spread, ready to rise
before the next advancing wave. This was repeated with the regularity
of clock-work.
A shout came vibrating in from the harbor, and a little while after the
heavy sound of oars working over the edge of a boat. The sound grew
more distant and at last ceased; but then a bell began to ring—it must
have been at the end of the mole—and out of the distance, into which
the beat of the oars had disappeared, came the answering sound of a
horn. They continued to answer one another for a couple of minutes.
The town was invisible, but now and then the silence there was broken
by the iron tramp of a quarryman upon the stone paving. For a long time
the regular beat of his footsteps could be heard, until it suddenly
ceased as he turned some corner or other. Then a door was opened,
followed by the sound of a loud morning yawn; and someone began to
sweep the pavement. Windows were opened here and there, out of which
floated various sounds to greet the gray day. A woman’s sharp voice was
heard scolding, then short, smart slaps and the crying of a child. A
shoemaker began beating leather, and as he worked fell to singing a
hymn—
“But One is worthy of our hymn, O brothers:
The Lamb on Whom the sins of all men lay.”
The tune was one of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words.”
Upon the bench under the church wall sat a boat’s crew with their gaze
turned seaward. They were leaning forward and smoking, with hands
clasped between their knees. All three wore ear-rings as a preventive
of colds and other evils, and all sat in exactly the same position, as
if the one were afraid of making himself in the very least different
from the others.
A traveller came sauntering down from the hotel, and approached the
fishermen. He had his coat-collar turned up, and shivered in the chill
morning air. “Is anything the matter?” he asked civilly, raising his
cap. His voice sounded gruff.
One of the fishermen moved his hand slightly in the direction of his
head-gear. He was the head man of the boat’s crew. The others gazed
straight before them without moving a muscle.
“I mean, as the bell’s ringing and the pilot-boat’s out blowing her
horn,” the traveller went on. “Are they expecting a ship?”
“May be. You never can tell!” answered the head man unapproachably.
The stranger looked as if he were deeply insulted, but restrained
himself. It was only their usual secretiveness, their inveterate
distrust of every one who did not speak their dialect and look exactly
like themselves. They sat there inwardly uneasy in spite of their
wooden exterior, stealing glances at him when he was not looking, and
wishing him at Jericho. He felt tempted to tease them a little.
“Dear me! Perhaps it’s a secret?” he said, laughing.
“Not that I know of,” answered the fisherman cautiously.
“Well, of course I don’t expect anything for nothing! And besides it
wears out your talking-apparatus to be continually opening and shutting
it. How much do you generally get?” He took out his purse; it was his
intention to insult them now.
The other fishermen threw stolen glances at their leader. If only he
did not run them aground!
The head man took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to his
companions: “No, as I was saying, there are some folks that have
nothing to do but go about and be clever.” He warned them with his
eyes, the expression of his face was wooden. His companions nodded.
They enjoyed the situation, as the commercial traveller could see from
their doltish looks.
He was enraged. Here he was, being treated as if he were air and made
fun of! “Confound you fellows! Haven’t you even learnt as much as to
give a civil answer to a civil question?” he said angrily.
The fishermen looked backward and forward at one another, taking mute
counsel.
“No, but I tell you what it is! She must come some time,” said the head
man at last.
“What ‘she’?”
“The steamer, of course. And she generally comes about this time. Now
you’ve got it!”
“Naturally—of course! But isn’t it a little unwise to speak so loud
about it?” jeered the traveller.
The fishermen had turned their backs on him, and were scraping out
their pipes.
“We’re not quite so free with our speech here as some people, and yet
we make our living,” said the head man to the others. They growled
their approval.
As the stranger wandered on down the harbor hill, the fishermen looked
after him with a feeling of relief. “What a talker!” said one. “He
wanted to show off a bit, but you gave him what he won’t forget in a
hurry.”
“Yes, I think it touched him on the raw, all right,” answered the man,
with pride. “It’s these fine gentlemen you need to be most careful of.”
Half-way down the harbor hill, an inn-keeper stood at his door yawning.
The morning stroller repeated his question to him, and received an
immediate answer, the man being a Copenhagener.
“Well, you see we’re expecting the steamer from Ystad today, with a big
cargo of slaves—cheap Swedish laborers, that’s to say, who live on
black bread and salt herrings, and do the work of three. They ought to
be flogged with red-hot icicles, that sort, and the brutes of farmers,
too! You won’t take a little early morning glass of something, I
suppose?”
“No, thank you, I think not—so early.”
“Very well, please yourself.”
Down at the harbor a number of farmers’ carts were already standing,
and fresh ones arrived at full gallop every minute. The newcomers
guided their teams as far to the front as possible, examined their
neighbors’ horses with a critical eye, and settled themselves into a
half-doze, with their fur collars turned up about their ears.
Custom-house men in uniform, and pilots, looking like monster penguins,
wandered restlessly about, peering out to sea and listening. Every
moment the bell at the end of the mole rang, and was answered by the
pilot-boat’s horn somewhere out in the fog over the sea, with a long,
dreary hoot, like the howl of some suffering animal.
“What was that noise?” asked a farmer who had just come, catching up
the reins in fear. His fear communicated itself to his horses, and they
stood trembling with heads raised listening in the direction of the
sea, with questioning terror in their eyes.
“It was only the sea-serpent,” answered a custom-house officer. “He
always suffers from wind in this foggy weather. He’s a wind-sucker, you
see.” And the custom-house men put their heads together and grinned.
Merry sailors dressed in blue with white handkerchiefs round their
necks went about patting the horses, or pricking their nostrils with a
straw to make them rear. When the farmers woke up and scolded, they
laughed with delight, and sang—
“A sailor he must go through
A deal more bad than good, good, good!”
A big pilot, in an Iceland vest and woollen gloves, was rushing
anxiously about with a megaphone in his hand, growling like an uneasy
bear. Now and then he climbed up on the molehead, put the megaphone to
his mouth, and roared out over the water: “Do—you—hear—any—thing?” The
roar went on for a long time out upon the long swells, up and down,
leaving behind it an oppressive silence, until it suddenly returned
from the town above, in the shape of a confused babble that made people
laugh.
“N-o-o!” was heard a little while after in a thin and long-drawn-out
cry from the sea; and again the horn was heard, a long, hoarse sound
that came rocking in on the waves, and burst gurgling in the splash
under the wharf and on the slips.
The farmers were out of it all. They dozed a little or sat flicking
their whips to pass the time. But every one else was in a state of
suspense. A number of people had gradually gathered about the harbor
—fishermen, sailors waiting to be hired, and master-artisans who were
too restless to stay in their workshop. They came down in their leather
aprons, and began at once to discuss the situation; they used nautical
expressions, most of them having been at sea in their youth. The coming
of the steamer was always an event that brought people to the harbor;
but to-day she had a great many people on board, and she was already an
hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high pressure;
but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a feeling of dull
oppression. Fog is the seaman’s worst enemy, and there were many
unpleasant possibilities. On the best supposition the ship had gone
inshore too far north or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea
hooting and heaving the lead, without daring to move. One could imagine
the captain storming and the sailors hurrying here and there, lithe and
agile as cats. Stop!—Half-speed ahead! Stop!—Half-speed astern! The
first engineer would be at the engine himself, gray with nervous
excitement. Down in the engine-room, where they knew nothing at all,
they would strain their ears painfully for any sound, and all to no
purpose. But up on deck every man would be on the alert for his life;
the helmsman wet with the sweat of his anxiety to watch every movement
of the captain’s directing hand, and the look-out on the forecastle
peering and listening into the fog until he could hear his own heart
beat, while the suspense held every man on deck on tenterhooks, and the
fog-horn hooted its warning. But perhaps the ship had already gone to
the bottom!
Every one knew it all; every man had in some way or other been through
this overcharged suspense—as cabin-boy, stoker, captain, cook—and felt
something of it again now. Only the farmers were unaffected by it; they
dozed, woke up with a jerk, and yawned audibly.
The seafarers and the peasants always had a difficulty in keeping on
peaceable terms with one another; they were as different as land and
sea. But to-day the indifferent attitude of the peasants made the
sea-folk eye them with suppressed rage. The fat pilot had already had
several altercations with them for being in his way; and when one of
them laid himself open to criticism, he was down upon him in an
instant. It was an elderly farmer, who woke from his nap with a start,
as his head fell forward, and impatiently took out his watch and looked
at it.
“It’s getting rather late,” he said. “The captain can’t find his stall
to-day.”
“More likely he’s dropped into an inn on the way!” said the pilot, his
eyes gleaming with malice.
“Very likely,” answered the farmer, without for the moment realizing
the nature of the paths of the sea. His auditors laughed exultingly,
and passed the mistake on to their neighbors, and people crowded round
the unfortunate man, while some one cried: “How many inns are there
between this and Sweden?”
“Yes, it’s too easy to get hold of liquids out there, that’s the worst
of it,” the pilot went on. “But for that any booby could manage a ship.
He’s only got to keep well to the right of Mads Hansen’s farm, and he’s
got a straight road before him. And the deuce of a fine road!
Telegraph-wires and ditches and a row of poplars on each side—just
improved by the local board. You’ve just got to wipe the porridge off
your mustache, kiss the old woman, and climb up on to the bridge, and
there you are! Has the engine been oiled, Hans? Right away, then, off
we go; hand me my best whip!” He imitated the peasants’ manner of
speech. “Be careful about the inns, Dad!” he added in a shrill
falsetto. There were peals of laughter, that had an evil sound in the
prevailing depression.
The farmer sat quite still under the deluge, only lowering his head a
little. When the laughter had almost died away, he pointed at the pilot
with his whip, and remarked to the bystanders—
“That’s a wonderful clever kid for his age! Whose father art thou, my
boy?” he went on, turning to the pilot.
This raised a laugh, and the thick-necked pilot swelled with rage. He
seized hold of the body of the cart and shook it so that the farmer had
a difficulty in keeping his seat. “You miserable old clodhopper, you
pig-breeder, you dung-carter!” he roared. “What do you mean by coming
here and saying ‘thou’ to grown-up people and calling them ‘boy’? And
giving your opinions on navigation into the bargain! Eh! you lousy old
money-grubber! No, if you ever take off your greasy night-cap to
anybody but your parish clerk, then take it off to the captain who can
find his harbor in a fog like this. You can give him my kind regards
and say I said so.” And he let go of the cart so suddenly that it swung
over to the other side.
“I may as well take it off to you, as the other doesn’t seem able to
find us to-day,” said the farmer with a grin, and took off his fur cap,
disclosing a large bald head.
“Cover up that great bald pumpkin, or upon my word I’ll give it
something!” cried the pilot, blind with rage, and beginning to clamber
up into the cart.
At that moment, like the thin metallic voice of a telephone, there came
faintly from the sea the words: “We—hear—a—steam—whistle!”
The pilot ran off on to the breakwater, hitting out as he passed at the
farmer’s horse, and making it rear. Men cleared a space round the
mooring-posts, and dragged up the gangways with frantic speed. Carts
that had hay in them, as if they were come to fetch cattle, began to
move without having anywhere to drive to. Everything was in motion.
Labor-hirers with red noses and cunning eyes, came hurrying down from
the sailors’ tavern where they had been keeping themselves warm.
Then as if a huge hand had been laid upon the movement, everything
suddenly stood still again, in strained effort to hear. A far-off, tiny
echo of a steam whistle whined somewhere a long way off. Men stole
together into groups and stood motionless, listening and sending angry
glances at the restless carts. Was it real, or was it a creation of the
heart-felt wishes of so many?
Perhaps a warning to every one that at that moment the ship had gone to
the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the
bread-winner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on
the windows that look on to the sea—there are so many ways.
But now it sounded again, and this time the sound come in little waves
over the water, the same vibrating, subdued whistle that long-tailed
ducks make when they rise; it seemed alive. The fog-horn answered it
out in the fairway, and the bell in at the mole-head; then the horn
once more, and the steam-whistle in the distance. So it went on, a
guiding line of sound being spun between the land and the indefinite
gray out there, backward and forward. Here on terra firma one could
distinctly feel how out there they were groping their way by the sound.
The hoarse whistle slowly increased in volume, sounding now a little to
the south, now to the north, but growing steadily louder. Then other
sounds made themselves heard, the heavy scraping of iron against iron,
the noise of the screw when it was reversed or went on again.
The pilot-boat glided slowly out of the fog, keeping to the middle of
the fairway, and moving slowly inward hooting incessantly. It towed by
the sound an invisible world behind it, in which hundreds of voices
murmured thickly amidst shouting and clanging, and tramping of feet—a
world that floated blindly in space close by. Then a shadow began to
form in the fog where no one had expected it, and the little steamer
made its appearance—looking enormous in the first moment of surprise—in
the middle of the harbor entrance.
At this the last remnants of suspense burst and scattered, and every
one had to do something or other to work off the oppression. They
seized the heads of the farmers’ horses and pushed them back, clapped
their hands, attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while they
stamped on the stone paving.
“Good voyage?” asked a score of voices at once.
“All well!” answered the captain cheerfully.
And now he, too, has got rid of his incubus, and rolls forth words of
command; the propeller churns up the water behind, hawsers fly through
the air, and the steam winch starts with a ringing metallic clang,
while the vessel works herself broadside in to the wharf.
Between the forecastle and the bridge, in under the upper deck and the
after, there is a swarm of people, a curiously stupid swarm, like sheep
that get up on to one another’s backs and look foolish. “What a cargo
of cattle!” cries the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly
on the breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin
caps, old military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women’s
tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old, wrinkled
pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but want, and expectancy, and a
certain animal greed are visible in all of them. The unfamiliarity of
the moment brings a touch of stupidity into them, as they press
forward, or climb up to get a view over their neighbors’ heads and
stare open-mouthed at the land where the wages are said to be so high,
and the brandy so uncommonly strong. They see the fat, fur-clad farmers
and the men come down to engage laborers.
They do not know what to do with themselves, and are always getting in
the way; and the sailors chase them with oaths from side to side of the
vessel, or throw hatches and packages without warning at their feet.
“Look out, you Swedish devil!” cries a sailor who has to open the iron
doors. The Swede backs in bewilderment, but his hand involuntarily
flies to his pocket and fingers nervously his big pocket-knife.
The gangway is down, and the two hundred and fifty passengers stream
down it—stone-masons, navvies, maid-servants, male and female
day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen, here and there a solitary little
cowherd, and tailors in smart clothes, who keep far away from the rest.
There are young men straighter and better built than any that the
island produces, and poor old men more worn with toil and want than
they ever become here. There are also faces among them that bear an
expression of malice, others sparkling with energy, and others
disfigured with great scars.
Most of them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand
in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder—a shovel
or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned inside out by
the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in Sweden. Now and
then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has to put up with the
officers’ coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome Sara from
Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn she goes home, and comes
again every spring with a figure that at once makes her the butt of
their wit; but Sara, who generally has a quick temper and a ready
tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest confusion: she has fourteen
yards of cloth wrapped round her under her dress.
The farmers are wide awake now. Those who dare, leave their horses and
go among the crowd; the others choose their laborers with their eyes,
and call them up. Each one takes his man’s measure—width of chest,
modest manner, wretchedness; but they are afraid of the scarred and
malicious faces, and leave them to the bailiffs on the large farms.
Offers are made and conditions fixed, and every minute one or two
Swedes climb up into the hay in the back of some cart, and are driven
off.
A little on one side stood an elderly, bent little man with a sack upon
his back, holding a boy of eight or nine by the hand; beside them lay a
green chest. They eagerly watched the proceedings, and each time a cart
drove off with some of their countrymen, the boy pulled impatiently at
the hand of the old man, who answered by a reassuring word. The old man
examined the farmers one by one with an anxious air, moving his lips as
he did so: he was thinking. His red, lashless eyes kept watering with
the prolonged staring, and he wiped them with the mouth of the coarse
dirty sack.
“Do you see that one there?” he suddenly asked the boy, pointing to a
fat little farmer with apple-cheeks. “I should think he’d be kind to
children. Shall we try him, laddie?”
The boy nodded gravely, and they made straight for the farmer. But when
he had heard that they were to go together, he would not take them; the
boy was far too little to earn his keep. And it was the same thing
every time.
It was Lasse Karlsson from Tommelilla in the Ystad district, and his
son Pelle.
It was not altogether strange to Lasse, for he had been on the island
once before, about ten years ago; but he had been younger then, in full
vigor it might be said, and had no little boy by the hand, from whom he
would not be separated for all the world; that was the difference. It
was the year that the cow had been drowned in the marl-pit, and Bengta
was preparing for her confinement. Things looked bad, but Lasse staked
his all on one cast, and used the couple of krones he got for the hide
of the cow to go to Bornholm. When he came back in the autumn, there
were three mouths to fill; but then he had a hundred krones to meet the
winter with.
At that time Lasse had been equal to the situation, and he would still
straighten his bowed shoulders whenever he thought of that exploit.
Afterward, whenever there were short commons, he would talk of selling
the whole affair and going to Bornholm for good. But Bengta’s health
failed after her late child-bearing, and nothing came of it, until she
died after eight years of suffering, this very spring. Then Lasse sold
their bit of furniture, and made nearly a hundred krones on it; it went
in paying the expenses of the long illness, and the house and land
belonged to the landlord. A green chest, that had been part of Bengta’s
wedding outfit, was the only thing he kept. In it he packed their
belongings and a few little things of Bengta’s, and sent it on in
advance to the port with a horse-dealer who was driving there. Some of
the rubbish for which no one would bid he stuffed into a sack, and with
it on his back and the boy’s hand clasped in his, he set out to walk to
Ystad, where the steamer for Rönne lay. The few coins he had would just
pay their passage.
He had been so sure of himself on the way, and had talked in loud tones
to Pelle about the country where the wages were so incomprehensibly
high, and where in some places you got meat or cheese to eat with your
bread, and always beer, so that the water-cart in the autumn did not
come round for the laborers, but only for the cattle. And—why, if you
liked you could drink gin like water, it was so cheap; but it was so
strong that it knocked you down at the third pull. They made it from
real grain, and not from diseased potatoes; and they drank it at every
meal. And laddie would never feel cold there, for they wore wool next
their skin, and not this poor linen that the wind blew right through;
and a laborer who kept himself could easily make his two krones a day.
That was something different from their master’s miserable eighty öres
and finding themselves in everything.
Pelle had heard the same thing often before—from his father, from Ole
and Anders, from Karna and a hundred others who had been there. In the
winter, when the air was thick with frost and snow and the needs of the
poor, there was nothing else talked about in the little villages at
home; and in the minds of those who had not been on the island
themselves, but had only heard the tales about it, the ideas produced
were as fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the window-panes. Pelle was
perfectly well aware that even the poorest boys there always wore their
best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping with sugar on it as often as
they liked. There money lay like dirt by the roadside, and the
Bornholmers did not even take the trouble to stoop and pick it up; but
Pelle meant to pick it up, so that Father Lasse would have to empty the
odds and ends out of the sack and clear out the locked compartment in
the green chest to make room for it; and even that would be hardly
enough. If only they could begin! He shook his father’s hand
impatiently.
“Yes, yes,” said Lasse, almost in tears. “You mustn’t be impatient.” He
looked about him irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of all this
splendor, and could not even find a humble situation for himself and
the boy. He could not understand it. Had the whole world changed since
his time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the last cart drove
off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly after it, and then
he and the boy together carried the green chest up to a wall, and
trudged hand in hand up toward the town.
Lasse’s lips moved as he walked; he was thinking. In an ordinary way he
thought best when he talked out loud to himself, but to-day all his
faculties were alert, and it was enough only to move his lips.
As he trudged along, his mental excuses became audible. “Confound it!”
he exclaimed, as he jerked the sack higher up his back. “It doesn’t do
to take the first thing that comes. Lasse’s responsible for two, and he
knows what he wants—so there! It isn’t the first time he’s been abroad!
And the best always comes last, you know, laddie.”
Pelle was not paying much attention. He was already consoled, and his
father’s words about the best being in store for them, were to him only
a feeble expression for a great truth, namely, that the whole world
would become theirs, with all that it contained in the way of wonders.
He was already engaged in taking possession of it, open-mouthed.
He looked as if he would like to swallow the harbor with all its ships
and boats, and the great stacks of timber, where it looked as if there
would be holes. This would be a fine place to play in, but there were
no boys! He wondered whether the boys were like those at home; he had
seen none yet. Perhaps they had quite a different way of fighting, but
he would manage all right if only they would come one at a time. There
was a big ship right up on land, and they were skinning it. So ships
have ribs, just like cows!
At the wooden shed in the middle of the harbor square, Lasse put down
the sack, and giving the boy a piece of bread and telling him to stay
and mind the sack, he went farther up and disappeared. Pelle was very
hungry, and holding the bread with both hands he munched at it
greedily.
When he had picked the last crumbs off his jacket, he set himself to
examine his surroundings. That black stuff in that big pot was tar. He
knew it quite well, but had never seen so much at once. My word! If you
fell into that while it was boiling, it would be worse even than the
brimstone pit in hell. And there lay some enormous fish-hooks, just
like those that were hanging on thick iron chains from the ships’
nostrils. He wondered whether there still lived giants who could fish
with such hooks. Strong John couldn’t manage them!
He satisfied himself with his own eyes that the stacks of boards were
really hollow, and that he could easily get down to the bottom of them,
if only he had not had the sack to drag about. His father had said he
was to mind the sack, and he never let it out of his hands for a
moment; as it was too heavy to carry, he had to drag it after him from
place to place.
He discovered a little ship, only just big enough for a man to lie down
in, and full of holes bored in the bottom and sides. He investigated
the ship-builders’ big grind-stone, which was nearly as tall as a man.
There were bent planks lying there, with nails in them as big as the
parish constable’s new tether-peg at home. And the thing that ship was
tethered to—wasn’t it a real cannon that they had planted?
Pelle saw everything, and examined every single object in the
appropriate manner, now only spitting appraisingly upon it, now kicking
it or scratching it with his penknife. If he came across some strange
wonder or other, that he could not get into his little brain in any
other way, he set himself astride on it.
This was a new world altogether, and Pelle was engaged in making it his
own. Not a shred of it would he leave. If he had had his playfellows
from Tommelilla here, he would have explained it all to them. My word,
how they would stare! But when he went home to Sweden again, he would
tell them about it, and then he hoped they would call him a liar.
He was sitting astride an enormous mast that lay along the timber- yard
upon some oak trestles. He kicked his feet together under the mast, as
he had heard of knights doing in olden days under their horses, and
imagined himself seizing hold of a ring and lifting himself, horse and
all. He sat on horseback in the midst of his newly discovered world,
glowing with the pride of conquest, struck the horse’s loins with the
flat of his hand, and dug his heels into its sides, while he shouted a
song at the top of his voice. He had been obliged to let go the sack to
get up.
“Far away in Smaaland the little imps were dancing
With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun;
All the little devils they played upon the fiddle,
But for the grand piano Old Harry was the one.”
In the middle of his noisy joy, he looked up, and immediately burst
into a roar of terror and dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On the
top of the shed at the place where his father had left him stood a
black man and two black, open-mouthed hell-hounds; the man leaned half
out over the ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was an old
figure-head, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come to punish
him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the hill. A little
way up he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn’t care about the
sack; and he wouldn’t get a thrashing if he did leave it behind, for
Father Lasse never beat him. And that horrid devil would eat him up at
the very least, if he ventured down there again; he could distinctly
see how red the nostrils shone, both the devil’s and the dogs’.
But Pelle still hesitated. His father was so careful of that sack, that
he would be sure to be sorry if he lost it—he might even cry as he did
when he lost Mother Bengta. For perhaps the first time, the boy was
being subjected to one of life’s serious tests, and stood—as so many
had stood before him—with the choice between sacrificing himself and
sacrificing others. His love for his father, boyish pride, the sense of
duty that is the social dower of the poor—the one thing with the
other—determined his choice. He stood the test, but not bravely; he
howled loudly the whole time, while, with his eyes fixed immovably upon
the Evil One and his hell-hounds, he crept back for the sack and then
dragged it after him at a quick run up the street.
No one is perhaps a hero until the danger is over. But even then Pelle
had no opportunity of shuddering at his own courage; for no sooner was
he out of the reach of the black man, than his terror took a new form.
What had become of his father? He had said he would be back again
directly! Supposing he never came back at all! Perhaps he had gone away
so as to get rid of his little boy, who was only a trouble and made it
difficult for him to get a situation.
Pelle felt despairingly convinced that it must be so, as, crying, he
went off with the sack. The same thing had happened to other children
with whom he was well acquainted; but they came to the pancake cottage
and were quite happy, and Pelle himself would be sure to—perhaps find
the king and be taken in there and have the little princes for his
playmates, and his own little palace to live in. But Father Lasse
shouldn’t have a thing, for now Pelle was angry and vindictive,
although he was crying just as unrestrainedly. He would let him stand
and knock at the door and beg to come in for three days, and only when
he began to cry—no, he would have to let him in at once, for to see
Father Lasse cry hurt him more than anything else in the world. But he
shouldn’t have a single one of the nails Pelle had filled his pockets
with down in the timber-yard; and when the king’s wife brought them
coffee in the morning before they were up——
But here both his tears and his happy imaginings ceased, for out of a
tavern at the top of the street came Father Lasse’s own living self. He
looked in excellent spirits and held a bottle in his hand.
“Danish brandy, laddie!” he cried, waving the bottle. “Hats off to the
Danish brandy! But what have you been crying for? Oh, you were afraid?
And why were you afraid? Isn’t your father’s name Lasse—Lasse Karlsson
from Kungstorp? And he’s not one to quarrel with; he hits hard, he
does, when he’s provoked. To come and frighten good little boys! They’d
better look out! Even if the whole wide world were full of naming
devils, Lasse’s here and you needn’t be afraid!”
During all this fierce talk he was tenderly wiping the boy’s tear-
stained cheeks and nose with his rough hand, and taking the sack upon
his back again. There was something touchingly feeble about his
stooping figure, as, boasting and comforting, he trudged down again to
the harbor holding the boy by the hand. He tottered along in his big
waterproof boots, the tabs of which stuck out at the side and bore an
astonishing resemblance to Pelle’s ears; out of the gaping pockets of
his old winter coat protruded on one side his red pocket-handkerchief,
on the other the bottle. He had become a little looser in his
knee-joints now, and the sack threatened momentarily to get the upper
hand of him, pushing him forward and forcing him to go at a trot down
the hill. He looked decrepit, and perhaps his boastful words helped to
produce this effect; but his eyes beamed confidently, and he smiled
down at the boy, who ran along beside him.
They drew near to the shed, and Pelle turned cold with fear, for the
black man was still standing there. He went round to the other side of
his father, and tried to pull him out in a wide curve over the harbor
square. “There he is again,” he whimpered.
“So that’s what was after you, is it?” said Lasse, laughing heartily;
“and he’s made of wood, too! Well, you really are the bravest laddie I
ever knew! I should almost think you might be sent out to fight a
trussed chicken, if you had a stick in your hand!” Lasse went on
laughing, and shook the boy goodnaturedly. But Pelle was ready to sink
into the ground with shame.
Down by the custom-house they met a bailiff who had come too late for
the steamer and had engaged no laborers. He stopped his cart and asked
Lasse if he was looking for a place.
“Yes, we both want one,” answered Lasse, briskly. “We want to be at the
same farm—as the fox said to the goose.”
The bailiff was a big, strong man, and Pelle shuddered in admiration of
his father who could dare to speak to him so boldly.
But the great man laughed good-humoredly. “Then I suppose he’s to be
foreman?” he said, flicking at Pelle with his whip.
“Yes, he certainly will be some day,” said Lasse, with conviction.
“He’ll probably eat a few bushels of salt first. Well, I’m in want of a
herdsman, and will give you a hundred krones for a year—although it’ll
be confounded hard for you to earn them from what I can see. There’ll
always be a crust of bread for the boy, but of course he’ll have to do
what little he can. You’re his grandfather, I suppose?”
“I’m his father—in the sight of God and man,” answered Lasse, proudly.
“Oh, indeed! Then you must still be fit for something, if you’ve come
by him honestly. But climb up, if you know what’s for your own good,
for I haven’t time to stand here. You won’t get such an offer every
day.”
Pelle thought a hundred krones was a fearful amount of money; Lasse, on
the contrary, as the older and more sensible, had a feeling that it was
far too little. But, though he was not aware of it yet, the experiences
of the morning had considerably dimmed the brightness of his outlook on
life. On the other hand, the dram had made him reckless and
generously-minded.
“All right then,” he said with a wave of the hand. “But the master must
understand that we won’t have salt herring and porridge three times a
day. We must have a proper bedroom too—and be free on Sundays.” He
lifted the sack and the boy up into the cart, and then climbed up
himself.
The bailiff laughed. “I see you’ve been here before, old man. But I
think we shall be able to manage all that. You shall have roast pork
stuffed with raisins and rhubarb jelly with pepper on it, just as often
as you like to open your mouth.”
They drove down to the quay for the chest, and then out toward the
country again. Lasse, who recognized one thing and another, explained
it all in full to the boy, taking a pull at the bottle between whiles;
but the bailiff must not see this. Pelle was cold and burrowed into the
straw, where he crept close up to his father.
“You take a mouthful,” whispered Lasse, passing the bottle to him
cautiously. “But take care that he doesn’t see, for he’s a sly one.
He’s a Jute.”
Pelle would not have a dram. “What’s a Jute?” he asked in a whisper.
“A Jute? Good gracious me, laddie, don’t you know that? It was the
Jutes that crucified Christ. That’s why they have to wander all over
the world now, and sell flannel and needles, and such-like; and they
always cheat wherever they go. Don’t you remember the one that cheated
Mother Bengta of her beautiful hair? Ah, no, that was before your time.
That was a Jute too. He came one day when I wasn’t at home, and
unpacked all his fine wares—combs and pins with blue glass heads, and
the finest head-kerchiefs. Women can’t resist such trash; they’re like
what we others are when some one holds a brandy-bottle to our nose.
Mother Bengta had no money, but that sly devil said he would give her
the finest handkerchief if she would let him cut off just the end of
her plait. And then he went and cut it off close up to her head. My
goodness, but she was like flint and steel when she was angry! She
chased him out of the house with a rake. But he took the plait with
him, and the handkerchief was rubbish, as might have been expected. For
the Jutes are cunning devils, who crucified——” Lasse began at the
beginning again.
Pelle did not pay much attention to his father’s soft murmuring. It was
something about Mother Bengta, but she was dead now and lay in the
black earth; she no longer buttoned his under-vest down the back, or
warmed his hands when they were cold. So they put raisins into roast
pork in this country, did they? Money must be as common as dirt! There
was none lying about in the road, and the houses and farms were not so
very fine either. But the strangest thing was that the earth here was
of the same color as that at home, although it was a foreign country.
He had seen a map in Tommelilla, in which each country had a different
color. So that was a lie!
Lasse had long since talked himself out, and slept with his head upon
the boy’s back. He had forgotten to hide the bottle.
Pelle was just going to push it down into the straw when the bailiff
—who as a matter of fact was not a Jute, but a Zeelander—happened to
turn round and caught sight of it. He told the boy to throw it into the
ditch.
By midday they reached their destination. Lasse awoke as they drove on
to the stone paving of the large yard, and groped mechanically in the
straw. But suddenly he recollected where he was, and was sober in an
instant. So this was their new home, the only place they had to stay in
and expect anything of on this earth! And as he looked out over the big
yard, where the dinner-bell was just sounding and calling servants and
day-laborers out of all the doors, all his self-confidence vanished. A
despairing feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him, and made his face
tremble with impotent concern for his son.
His hands shook as he clambered down from the wagon; he stood
irresolute and at the mercy of all the inquiring glances from the steps
down to the basement of the big house. They were talking about him and
the boy, and laughing already. In his confusion he determined to make
as favorable a first impression as possible, and began to take off his
cap to each one separately; and the boy stood beside him and did the
same. They were rather like the clowns at a fair, and the men round the
basement steps laughed aloud and bowed in imitation, and then began to
call to them; but the bailiff came out again to the cart, and they
quickly disappeared down the steps. From the house itself there came a
far-off, monotonous sound that never left off, and insensibly added to
their feeling of depression.
“Don’t stand there playing the fool!” said the bailiff sharply. “Be off
down to the others and get something to eat! You’ll have plenty of time
to show off your monkey-tricks to them afterwards.”
At these encouraging words, the old man took the boy’s hand and went
across to the basement steps with despair in his heart, mourning
inwardly for Tommelilla and Kungstorp. Pelle clung close to him in
fear. The unknown had suddenly become an evil monster in the
imagination of both of them.
Down in the basement passage the strange, persistent sound was louder,
and they both knew that it was that of a woman weeping.