Pelle had a quick pulse and much energy, and there was always something
that he was attempting to overtake in his restless onward rush—if
nothing else, then time itself. Now the rye was all in, now the last
stack disappeared from the field, the shadows grew longer every day.
But one evening the darkness surprised him before his bedtime, and this
made him serious. He no longer hastened on the time, but tried to hold
it back by many small sun-signs.
One day the men’s midday rest was taken off. They harnessed the horses
again as soon as they had eaten their dinner, and the chaff-cutting was
put off until the evening. The horse-way lay on the outer side of the
stable, and none of the men cared to tramp round out there in the dark,
driving for the chaff-cutter, so Pelle had to do it. Lasse protested
and threatened to go to the farmer, but it was of no use; every evening
Pelle had to be out there for a couple of hours. They were his nicest
hours that they took from him, the hours when he and Father Lasse
pottered about in the stable, and talked themselves happily through all
the day’s troubles into a common bright future; and Pelle cried. When
the moon chased the clouds away and he could see everything round him
distinctly, he allowed his tears to run freely; but on dark evenings he
was quiet and held his breath. Sometimes when it rained it was so dark
that the farm and everything disappeared; and then he saw hundreds of
beings that at other times the light hid. They appeared out of the
darkness, terribly big, or came sliding up to him upon their bellies.
He grew rigid as he gazed, and could not take his eyes from them. He
sought shelter under the wall, and encouraged the horse from there; and
one evening he ran in. They chased him out again, and he submitted to
be chased, for when it came to the point he was more afraid of the men
inside than of the beings outside. But one pitch-dark evening he was in
an unusually bad way, and when he discovered that the horse, his only
comfort, was also afraid, he dropped everything and ran in for the
second time. Threats were powerless to make him go out again, and blows
equally so, and one of the men took him up and carried him out; but
then Pelle forgot everything, and screamed till the house shook.
While they were struggling with him, the farmer came out. He was very
angry when he heard what was the matter, and blew the foreman up sky
high. Then he took Pelle by the hand, and went down with him to the
cow-stable. “A man like you to be afraid of a little dark!” he said
jokingly. “You must try to get the better of that. But if the men harm
you, just you come to me.”
The plough went up and down the fields all day long, and made the earth
dark in color, the foliage became variegated, and there was often
sleet. The coats of the cattle grew thicker, their hair grew long and
stood up on their backs. Pelle had much to put up with, and existence
as a whole became a shade more serious. His clothing did not become
thicker and warmer with the cold weather like that of the cattle; but
he could crack his whip so that it sounded, in the most successful
attempts, like little shots; he could thrash Rud when there was no
unfairness, and jump across the stream at its narrowest part. All that
brought warmth to the body.
The flock now grazed all over the farm-lands, wherever the cows had
been tethered; the dairy-cows being now indoors; or they went inland on
the fens, where all the farms had each a piece of grass-land. Here
Pelle made acquaintance with herd-boys from the other farms, and looked
into quite another world that was not ruled by bailiff and farm-pupil
and thrashings, but where all ate at the same table, and the mistress
herself sat and spun wool for the herd-boys’ stockings. But he could
never get in there, for they did not take Swedes at the small farms,
nor would the people of the island take service together with them. He
was sorry for this.
As soon as the autumn ploughing was started up on the fields, the boys,
according to old custom, took down the boundary-fences and let all the
animals graze together. The first few days it gave them more to do, for
the animals fought until they got to know one another. They were never
wholly mingled; they always grazed in patches, each farm’s flock by
itself. The dinner-baskets were also put together, and one boy was
appointed in turn to mind the whole herd. The other boys played at
robbers up among the rocks, or ran about in the woods or on the shore.
When it was really cold they lighted bonfires, or built fireplaces of
flat stones, where they roasted apples and eggs which they stole from
the farms.
It was a glorious life, and Pelle was happy. It was true he was the
smallest of them all, and his being a Swede was a drawback to him. In
the midst of their play, the others would sometimes begin to mimic his
way of talking, and when he grew angry asked why he did not draw his
knife. But on the other hand he was from the biggest farm, and was the
only one that had bullocks in his herd; he was not behind them in
physical accomplishments, and none of them could carve as he could. And
it was his intention, when he grew big, to thrash them all.
In the meantime he had to accommodate himself to circumstances,
ingratiate himself with the big ones, wherever he discovered there was
a flaw in their relations to one another, and be obliging. He had to
take his turn oftener than the others, and came off badly at mealtimes.
He submitted to it as something unavoidable, and directed all his
efforts toward getting the best that it was possible to get out of the
circumstances; but he promised himself, as has been said, the fullest
reparation when he grew big.
Once or twice it became too hot for him, and he left the community and
kept by himself; but he soon returned to the others again. His little
body was bursting with courage to live the life, and would not let him
shirk it; he must take his chance—eat his way through.
One day there came two new boys, who herded cattle from two farms on
the other side of the stone-quarry. They were twins, and their names
were Alfred and Albinus. They were tall, thin lads, who looked as if
they might have been half-starved when they were little; their skin had
a bluish tinge, and stood the cold badly. They were quick and active,
they could overtake the quickest calf, they could walk on their hands
and smoke at the same time, and not only vault but really jump
obstacles. They were not much good at fighting; they were lacking in
courage, and their ability forsook them in an emergency.
There was something comical about the two brothers. “Here are the
twins, the twelvins!” cried the whole flock in greeting, the first
morning they appeared. “Well, how many times have you had a baby in
your house since last year?” They belonged to a family of twelve, and
among these there had twice been twins, and this of itself was an
inexhaustible source of raillery; and moreover they were half Swedish.
They shared the disadvantage with Pelle.
But nothing seemed to have any effect upon them; they grinned at
everything, and gave themselves away still more. From all he saw and
heard, Pelle could understand that there was something ridiculous about
their home in the eyes of the parish; but they did not mind that. It
was the fecundity of their parents that was the special subject of
derision, and the two boys quite happily exposed them to ridicule, and
would tell all about the most private home matters. One day when the
flock had been most persistent in calling “Twelvins!” they said,
grinning, that their mother would soon be having a thirteenth. They
were incapable of being wounded.
Every time they exposed their parents to ridicule, it hurt Pelle, for
his own feelings on this point were the most sacred that he had. Try as
he would, he could not understand them; he had to go to his father with
the matter one evening.
“So they mock and make fun of their own parents?” said Lasse. “Then
they’ll never prosper in this world, for you’re to honor your father
and mother. Good parents who have brought them into the world with
pain, and must toil hard, perhaps hunger and put up with much
themselves, to get food and clothing for them! Oh, it’s a shame! And
you say their surname is Karlsson like ours, and that they live on the
heath behind the stone-quarry? Then they must be brother Kalle’s sons!
Why, bless my soul, if I don’t believe that’s it! You ask them tomorrow
if their father hasn’t a notch in his right ear! I did it myself with a
piece of a horse-shoe when we were little boys one day I was in a rage
with him because he made fun of me before the others. He was just the
same as those two, but he didn’t mean anything by it, there was nothing
ill-natured about him.”
The boys’ father _had_ a notch in his right ear. Pelle and they were
thus cousins; and the way that both they and their parents were made
fun of was a matter for both laughter and tears. In a way, Father Lasse
too came in for a share of the ridicule, and that thought was hardly to
be endured.
The other boys quickly discovered Pelle’s vulnerable point, and used it
for their own advantage; and Pelle had to give way and put up with
things in order to keep his father out of their conversation. He did
not always succeed, however. When they were in the mood, they said
quite absurd things about one another’s homes. They were not intended
to be taken for more than they were worth, but Pelle did not understand
jokes on that head. One day one of the biggest boys said to him: “Do
you know, your father was the cause of his own mother’s having a
child!” Pelle did not understand the play of words in this coarse joke,
but he heard the laughter of the others, and becoming blind with rage,
he flew at the big boy, and kicked him so hard in the stomach, that he
had to keep his bed for several days.
During those days, Pelle went about in fear and trembling. He dared not
tell his father what had happened, for then he would be obliged to
repeat the boy’s ugly accusation, too; so he went about in dread of the
fatal consequences. The other boys had withdrawn themselves from him,
so as not to share the blame if anything came of it; the boy was a
farmer’s son—the only one in the company—and they had visions of the
magistrate at the back of the affair, and perhaps a caning at the
town-hall. So Pelle went by himself with his cattle, and had plenty of
time to think about the event, which, by the force of his lively
imagination, grew larger and larger in its consequences, until at last
it almost suffocated him with terror. Every cart he saw driving along
the high-road sent a thrill through him; and if it turned up toward
Stone Farm, he could distinctly see the policemen—three of them—with
large handcuffs, just as they had come to fetch Erik Erikson for
ill-treating his wife. He hardly dared drive the cattle home in the
evening.
One morning the boy came herding over there with his cattle, and there
was a grown-up man with him, whom, from his clothes and everything else
about him, Pelle judged to be a farmer—was it the boy’s father? They
stood over there for a little while, talking to the herd-boys, and then
came across toward him, with the whole pack at their heels, the father
holding his son by the hand.
The perspiration started from every pore of Pelle’s body; his fear
prompted him to run away, but he stood his ground. Together the father
and son made a movement with their hand, and Pelle raised both elbows
to ward off a double box-on-the-ears.
But they only extended their hands. “I beg your pardon,” said the boy,
taking one of Pelle’s hands; “I beg your pardon,” repeated the father,
clasping his other hand in his. Pelle stood in bewilderment, looking
from one to the other. At first he thought that the man was the same as
the one sent by God; but it was only his eyes—those strange eyes. Then
he suddenly burst into tears and forgot all else in the relief they
brought from the terrible anxiety. The two spoke a few kind words to
him, and quietly went away to let him be alone.
After this Pelle and Peter Kure became friends, and when Pelle learnt
to know him better, he discovered that sometimes the boy had a little
of the same look in his eyes as his father, and the young fisherman,
and the man that was sent by God. The remarkable course that the event
had taken occupied his mind for a long time. One day a chance
comparison of his experiences brought him to the discovery of the
connection between this mysterious expression in their eyes and their
remarkable actions; the people who had looked at him with those eyes
had all three done unexpected things. And another day it dawned upon
him that these people were _religious_; the boys had quarrelled with
Peter Kure that day, and had used the word as a term of abuse against
his parents.
There was one thing that was apparent, and outweighed everything, even
his victory. He had entered the lists with a boy who was bigger and
stronger than he, and had held his own, because for the first time in
his life he had struck out recklessly. If you wanted to fight, you had
to kick wherever it hurt most. If you only did that, and had justice on
your side, you might fight anybody, even a farmer’s son. These were two
satisfactory discoveries, which for the present nothing could disturb.
Then he had defended his father; that was something quite new and
important in his life. He required more space now.
At Michaelmas, the cattle were taken in, and the last of the day-
laborers left. During the summer, several changes had been made among
the regular servants at the farm, but now, at term-day, none were
changed; it was not the habit of Stone Farm to change servants at the
regular term-times.
So Pelle again helped his father with the foddering indoors. By rights
he should have begun to go to school, and a mild representation of this
fact was made to the farmer by the school authorities; but the boy was
very useful at home, as the care of the cattle was too much for one
man; and nothing more was heard about the matter. Pelle was glad it was
put off. He had thought much about school in the course of the summer,
and had invested it with so much that was unfamiliar and great that he
was now quite afraid of it.