Grandmother’s funeral was still like a bright light behind everything
that one thought and did. It was like certain kinds of food, that leave
a pleasant taste in the mouth long after they have been eaten and done
with. Kalle had certainly done everything to make it a festive day;
there was an abundance of good things to eat and drink, and no end to
his comical tricks. And, sly dog that he was, he had found an excuse
for asking Madam Olsen; it was really a nice way of making the relation
a legitimate one.
It gave Lasse and Pelle enough to talk about for a whole month, and
after the subject was quite talked out and laid on one side for other
things, it remained in the background as a sense of well-being of which
no one quite knew the origin.
But now spring was advancing, and with it came troubles—not the daily
trifles that could be bad enough, but great troubles that darkened
everything, even when one was not thinking about them. Pelle was to be
confirmed at Easter, and Lasse was at his wits’ end to know how he was
going to get him all that he would need—new clothes, new cap, new
shoes! The boy often spoke about it; he must have been afraid of being
put to shame before the others that day in church.
“It’ll be all right,” said Lasse; but he himself saw no way at all out
of the difficulty. At all the farms where the good old customs
prevailed, the master and mistress provided it all; out here everything
was so confoundedly new-fangled, with prompt payments that slipped away
between one’s fingers. A hundred krones a year in wages seemed a
tremendous amount when one thought of it all in one; but you only got
them gradually, a few öres at a time, without your being able to put
your finger anywhere and say: You got a good round sum there! “Yes,
yes, it’ll be all right!” said Lasse aloud, when he had got himself
entangled in absurd speculations; and Pelle had to be satisfied with
this. There was only one way out of the difficulty—to borrow the money
from Madam Olsen; and that Lasse would have to come to in the end, loth
as he was to do it. But Pelle must not know anything about it.
Lasse refrained as long as he possibly could, hoping that something or
other would turn up to free him from the necessity of so disgraceful a
proceeding as borrowing from his sweetheart. But nothing happened, and
time was passing. One morning he cut the matter short; Pelle was just
setting out for school. “Will you run in to Madam Olsen’s and give her
this?” he said, handing the boy a packet. “It’s something she’s
promised to mend for us.” Inside on the paper, was the large cross that
announced Lasse’s coming in the evening.
From the hills Pelle saw that the ice had broken up in the night. It
had filled the bay for nearly a month with a rough, compact mass, upon
which you could play about as safely as on dry land. This was a new
side of the sea, and Pelle had carefully felt his way forward with the
tips of his wooden shoes, to the great amusement of the others.
Afterward he learned to walk about freely on the ice without constantly
shivering at the thought that the great fish of the sea were going
about just under his wooden shoes, and perhaps were only waiting for
him to drop through. Every day he went out to the high rampart of
pack-ice that formed the boundary about a mile out, where the open
water moved round in the sunshine like a green eye. He went out because
he would do what the others did, but he never felt safe on the sea.
Now it was all broken up, and the bay was full of heaving ice-floes
that rubbed against one another with a crackling sound; and the pieces
farthest out, carrying bits of the rampart, were already on their way
out to sea. Pelle had performed many exploits out there, but was really
quite pleased that it was now packing up and taking its departure, so
that it would once more be no crime to stay on dry land.
Old Fris was sitting in his place. He never left it now during a
lesson, however badly things might go down in the class, but contented
himself with beating on the desk with his cane. He was little more than
a shadow of his former self, his head was always shaking, and his hands
were often incapable of grasping an object. He still brought the
newspaper with him, and opened it out at the beginning of the lesson,
but he did not read. He would fall into a dream, sitting bolt upright,
with his hands on the desk and his back against the wall. At such times
the children could be as noisy as they liked, and he did not move; only
a slight change in the expression of his eyes showed that he was alive
at all.
It was quieter in school now. It was not worth while teasing the
master, for he scarcely noticed it, and so the fun lost most of its
attraction. A kind of court of justice had gradually formed among the
bigger boys; they determined the order of the school-lessons, and
disobedience and disputes as to authority were respectively punished
and settled in the playground—with fists and tips of wooden shoes. The
instruction was given as before, by the cleverer scholars teaching what
they knew to the others; there was rather more arithmetic and reading
than in Fris’s time, but on the other hand the hymns suffered.
It still sometimes happened that Fris woke up and interfered in the
instruction. “Hymns!” he would cry in his feeble voice, and strike the
desk from habit; and the children would put aside what they were doing
to please the old man, and begin repeating some hymn or other, taking
their revenge by going through one verse over and over again for a
whole hour. It was the only real trick they played the old man, and the
joke was all on their side, for Fris noticed nothing.
Fris had so often talked of resigning his post, but now he did not even
think of that. He shuffled to and from school at the regular times,
probably without even knowing he did it. The authorities really had not
the heart to dismiss him. Except in the hymns, which came off with
rather short measure, there was nothing to say against him as teacher;
for no one had ever yet left his school without being able both to
write his name and to read a printed book—if it were in the old type.
The new-fashioned printing with Latin letters Fris did not teach,
although he had studied Latin in his youth.
Fris himself probably did not feel the change, for he had ceased to
feel both for himself and for others. None now brought their human
sorrows to him, and found comfort in a sympathetic mind; his mind was
not there to consult. It floated outside him, half detached, as it
were, like a bird that is unwilling to leave its old nest to set out on
a flight to the unknown. It must have been the fluttering mind that his
eyes were always following when they dully gazed about into vacancy.
But the young men who came home to winter in the village, and went to
Fris as to an old friend, felt the change. For them there was now an
empty place at home; they missed the old growler, who, though he hated
them all in the lump at school, loved them all afterward, and was
always ready with his ridiculous “He was my best boy!” about each and
all of them, good and bad alike.
The children took their playtime early, and rushed out before Pelle had
given the signal; and Fris trotted off as usual into the village, where
he would be absent the customary two hours. The girls gathered in a
flock to eat their dinners, and the boys dashed about the playground
like birds let loose from a cage.
Pelle was quite angry at the insubordination, and pondered over a way
of making himself respected; for to-day he had had the other big boys
against him. He dashed over the playground like a circling gull, his
body inclined and his arms stretched out like a pair of wings. Most of
them made room for him, and those who did not move willingly were made
to do so. His position was threatened, and he kept moving incessantly,
as if to keep the question undecided until a possibility of striking
presented itself.
This went on for some time; he knocked some over and hit out at others
in his flight, while his offended sense of power grew. He wanted to
make enemies of them all. They began to gather up by the gymnastic
apparatus, and suddenly he had the whole pack upon him. He tried to
rise and shake them off, flinging them hither and thither, but all in
vain; down through the heap came their remorseless knuckles and made
him grin with pain. He worked away indefatigably but without effect
until he lost patience and resorted to less scrupulous
tactics—thrusting his fingers into eyes, or attacking noses, windpipes,
and any vulnerable part he could get at. That thinned them out, and he
was able to rise and fling a last little fellow across the playground.
Pelle was well bruised and quite out of breath, but contented. They all
stood by, gaping, and let him brush himself down; he was the victor. He
went across to the girls with his torn blouse, and they put it together
with pins and gave him sweets; and in return he fastened two of them
together by their plaits, and they screamed and let him pull them about
without being cross; it was all just as it should be.
But he was not quite secure after his victory. He could not, like Henry
Boker in his time, walk right through the whole flock with his hands in
his pockets directly after a battle, and look as if they did not exist.
He had to keep stealing glances at them while he strolled down to the
beach, and tried with all his might to control his breathing; for next
to crying, to be out of breath was the greatest disgrace that could
happen to you.
Pelle walked along the beach, regretting that he had not leaped upon
them again at once while the flush of victory was still upon him: it
was too late now. If he had, it might perhaps have been said of him too
that he could lick all the rest of the class together; and now he must
be content with being the strongest boy in the school.
A wild war-whoop from the school made him start. The whole swarm of
boys was coming round the end of the house with sticks and pieces of
wood in their hands. Pelle knew what was at stake if he gave way, and
therefore forced himself to stand quietly waiting although his legs
twitched. But suddenly they made a wild rush at him, and with a spring
he turned to fly. There lay the sea barring his way, closely packed
with heaving ice. He ran out on to an ice-floe, leaped from it to the
next, which was not large enough to bear him—had to go on.
The idea of flight possessed him and made the fear of what lay behind
overpoweringly great. The lumps of ice gave way beneath him, and he had
to leap from piece to piece; his feet moved as fast as fingers over the
notes of a piano. He just noticed enough to take the direction toward
the harbor breakwater. The others stood gaping on the beach while Pelle
danced upon the water like a stone making ducks and drakes. The pieces
of ice bobbed under as soon as he touched them, or turned up on edge;
but Pelle came and slid by with a touch, flung himself to one side with
lightning rapidity, and changed his aim in the middle of a leap like a
cat. It was like a dance on red-hot iron, so quickly did he pick up his
feet, and spring from one place to another. The water spurted up from
the pieces of ice as he touched them, and behind him stretched a
crooked track of disturbed ice and water right back to the place where
the boys stood and held their breath. There was nobody like Pelle, not
one of them could do what he had done there! When with a final leap he
threw himself upon the breakwater, they cheered him. Pelle had
triumphed in his flight!
He lay upon the breakwater, exhausted and gasping for breath, and gazed
without interest at a brig that had cast anchor off the village. A boat
was rowing in—perhaps with a sick man to be put in quarantine. The
weather-beaten look of the vessel told of her having been out on a
winter voyage, in ice and heavy seas.
Fishermen came down from the cottages and strolled out to the place
where the boat would come in, and all the school-children followed. In
the stern of the boat sat an elderly, weather-beaten man with a fringe
of beard round his face; he was dressed in blue, and in front of him
stood a sea-chest. “Why, it’s Boatswain Olsen!” Pelle heard one
fisherman say. Then the man stepped ashore, and shook hands with them
all; and the fisherman and the school-children closed round him in a
dense circle.
Pelle made his way up, creeping along behind boats and sheds; and as
soon as he was hidden by the school-building, he set off running
straight across the fields to Stone Farm. His vexation burnt his
throat, and a feeling of shame made him keep far away from houses and
people. The parcel that he had had no opportunity of delivering in the
morning was like a clear proof to everybody of his shame, and he threw
it into a marl-pit as he ran.
He would not go through the farm, but thundered on the outside door to
the stable. “Have you come home already?” exclaimed Lasse, pleased.
“Now—now Madam Olsen’s husband’s come home!” panted Pelle, and went
past his father without looking at him.
To Lasse it was as if the world had burst and the falling fragments
were piercing into his flesh. Everything was failing him. He moved
about trembling and unable to grasp anything; he could not talk,
everything in him seemed to have come to a standstill. He had picked up
a piece of rope, and was going backward and forward, backward and
forward, looking up.
Then Pelle went up to him. “What are you going to do with that?” he
asked harshly.
Lasse let the rope fall from his hand and began to complain of the
sadness and poverty of existence. One feather fell off here, and
another there, until at last you stood trampling in the mud like a
featherless bird—old and worn-out and robbed of every hope of a happy
old age. He went on complaining in this way in an undertone, and it
eased him.
Pelle made no response. He only thought of the wrong and the shame that
had come upon them, and found no relief.
Next morning he took his dinner and went off as usual, but when he was
halfway to school he lay down under a thorn. There he lay, fuming and
half-frozen, until it was about the time when school would be over,
when he went home. This he did for several days. Toward his father he
was silent, almost angry. Lasse went about lamenting, and Pelle had
enough with his own trouble; each moved in his own world, and there was
no bridge between; neither of them had a kind word to say to the other.
But one day when Pelle came stealing home in this way, Lasse received
him with a radiant face and weak knees. “What on earth’s the good of
fretting?” he said, screwing up his face and turning his blinking eyes
upon Pelle—for the first time since the bad news had come. “Look here
at the new sweetheart I’ve found! Kiss her, laddie!” And Lasse drew
from the straw a bottle of gin, and held it out toward him.
Pelle pushed it angrily from him.
“Oh, you’re too grand, are you?” exclaimed Lasse. “Well, well, it would
be a sin and a shame to waste good things upon you.” He put the bottle
to his lips and threw back his head.
“Father, you shan’t do that!” exclaimed Pelle, bursting into tears and
shaking his father’s arm so that the liquid splashed out.
“Ho-ho!” said Lasse in astonishment, wiping his mouth with the back of
his hand. “She’s uncommonly lively, ho-ho!” He grasped the bottle with
both hands and held it firmly, as if it had tried to get away from him.
“So you’re obstreperous, are you?” Then his eye fell upon Pelle. “And
you’re crying! Has any one hurt you? Don’t you know that your father’s
called Lasse—Lasse Karlsson from Kungstorp? You needn’t he afraid, for
Lasse’s here, and he’ll make the whole world answer for it.”
Pelle saw that his father was quickly becoming more fuddled, and ought
to be put to bed for fear some one should come and find him lying
there. “Come now, father!” he begged.
“Yes, I’ll go now. I’ll make him pay for it, if it’s old Beelzebub
himself! You needn’t cry!” Lasse was making for the yard.
Pelle stood in front of him. “Now you must come with me, father!
There’s no one to make pay for anything.”
“Isn’t there? And yet you’re crying! But the farmer shall answer to me
for all these years. Yes, my fine landed gentleman, with your nose
turned up at every one!”
This made Pelle afraid. “But father, father!” he cried. “Don’t go up
there! He’ll be in such a rage, he’ll turn us out! Remember you’re
drunk!”
“Yes, of course I’m drunk, but there’s no harm in me.” He stood
fumbling with the hook that fastened the lower half of the door.
It was wrong to lay a hand upon one’s own father, but now Pelle was
compelled to set aside all such scruples. He took a firm hold of the
old man’s collar. “Now you come with me!” he said, and drew him along
toward their room.
Lasse laughed and hiccupped and struggled; clutched hold of everything
that he could lay hands on—the posts and the animals’ tails—while Pelle
dragged him along. He had hold of him behind, and was half carrying
him. In the doorway they stuck fast, as the old man held on with both
hands; and Pelle had to leave go of him and knock his arms away so that
he fell, and then drag him along and on to the bed.
Lasse laughed foolishly all the time, as if it were a game. Once or
twice when Pelle’s back was turned, he tried to get up; his eyes had
almost disappeared, but there was a cunning expression about his mouth,
and he was like a naughty child. Suddenly he fell back in a heavy
sleep.
The next day was a school holiday, so there was no need for Pelle to
hide himself. Lasse was ashamed and crept about with an air of
humility. He must have had quite a clear idea of what had happened the
day before, for suddenly he touched Pelle’s arm. “You’re like Noah’s
good son, that covered up his father’s shame!” he said; “but Lasse’s a
beast. It’s been a hard blow on me, as you may well believe! But I know
quite well that it doesn’t mend matters to drink one’s self silly. It’s
a badly buried trouble that one has to lay with gin; and what’s hidden
in the snow comes up in the thaw, as the saying is.”
Pelle made no answer.
“How do people take it?” asked Lasse cautiously. He had now got so far
as to have a thought for the shameful side of the matter. “I don’t
think they know about it yet here on the farm; but what do they say
outside?”
“How should I know?” answered Pelle sulkily.
“Then you’ve heard nothing?”
“Do you suppose I’ll go to school to be jeered at by them all?” Pelle
was almost crying again.
“Then you’ve been wandering about and let your father believe that
you’d gone to school? That wasn’t right of you, but I won’t find fault
with you, considering all the disgrace I’ve brought upon you. But
suppose you get into trouble for playing truant, even if you don’t
deserve it? Misfortunes go hand in hand, and evils multiply like lice
in a fur coat. We must think what we’re about, we two; we mustn’t let
things go all to pieces!”
Lasse walked quickly into their room and returned with the bottle, took
out the cork, and let the gin run slowly out into the gutter. Pelle
looked wonderingly at him. “God forgive me for abusing his gifts!” said
Lasse; “but it’s a bad tempter to have at hand when you’ve a sore
heart. And now if I give you my word that you shall never again see me
as I was yesterday, won’t you have a try at school again to-morrow, and
try and get over it gradually? We might get into trouble with the
magistrate himself if you keep on staying away; for there’s a heavy
punishment for that sort of thing in this country.”
Pelle promised and kept his word; but he was prepared for the worst,
and secretly slipped a knuckle-duster into his pocket that Erik had
used in his palmy days when he went to open-air fetes and other places
where one had to strike a blow for one’s girl. It was not required,
however, for the boys were entirely taken up with a ship that had had
to be run aground to prevent her sinking, and now lay discharging her
cargo of wheat into the boats of the village. The wheat already lay in
the harbor in great piles, wet and swollen with the salt water.
And a few days later, when this had become stale, something happened
which put a stop forever to Pelle’s school attendance. The children
were busy at arithmetic, chattering and clattering with their slates,
and Fris was sitting as usual in his place, with his head against the
wall and his hands resting on the desk. His dim eyes were somewhere out
in space, and not a movement betrayed that he was alive. It was his
usual position, and he had sat thus ever since playtime.
The children grew restless; it was nearly time for them to go home. A
farmer’s son who had a watch, held it up so that Pelle could see it,
and said “Two” aloud. They noisily put away their slates and began to
fight; but Fris, who generally awoke at this noise of departure, did
not stir. Then they tramped out, and in passing, one of the girls out
of mischief stroked the master’s hand. She started back in fear. “He’s
quite cold!” she said, shuddering and drawing back behind the others.
They stood in a semicircle round the desk, and tried to see into Fris’s
half-closed eyes; and then Pelle went up the two steps and laid his
hand upon his master’s shoulder. “We’re going home,” he said, in an
unnatural voice. Fris’s arm dropped stiffly down from the desk, and
Pelle had to support his body. “He’s dead!” the words passed like a
shiver over the children’s lips.
Fris was dead—dead at his post, as the honest folks of the parish
expressed it. Pelle had finished his schooling for good, and could
breathe freely.
He helped his father at home, and they were happy together and drew
together again now that there was no third person to stand between
them. The gibes from the others on the farm were not worth taking
notice of; Lasse had been a long time on the farm, and knew too much
about each of them, so that he could talk back. He sunned himself in
Pelle’s gently childlike nature, and kept up a continual chatter. One
thing he was always coming back to. “I ought to be glad I had you, for
if you hadn’t held back that time when I was bent upon moving down to
Madam Olsen’s, we should have been in the wrong box. I should think
he’d have killed us in his anger. You were my good angel as you always
have been.”
Lasse’s words had the pleasant effect of caresses on Pelle; he was
happy in it all, and was more of a child than his years would have
indicated.
But one Saturday he came home from the parson’s altogether changed. He
was as slow about everything as a dead herring, and did not go across
to his dinner, but came straight in through the outer door, and threw
himself face downward upon a bundle of hay.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Lasse, coming up to him. “Has any one
been unkind to you?”
Pelle did not answer, but lay plucking at the hay. Lasse was going to
turn his face up to him, but Pelle buried it in the hay. “Won’t you
trust your own father? You know I’ve no other wish in the world but for
your good!” Lasse’s voice was sad.
“I’m to be turned out of the confirmation-class,” Pelle managed to say,
and then burrowed into the hay to keep back his tears.
“Oh, no, surely not!” Lasse began to tremble. “Whatever have you done?”
“I’ve half killed the parson’s son.”
“Oh, that’s about the worst thing you could have done—lift your hand
against the parson’s son! I’m sure he must have deserved it, but—still
you shouldn’t have done it. Unless he’s accused you of thieving, for no
honest man need stand that from any one, not even the king himself.”
“He—he called you Madam Olsen’s concubine.” Pelle had some difficulty
in getting this out.
Lasse’s mouth grew hard and he clenched his fists. “Oh, he did! Oh, did
he! If I had him here, I’d kick his guts out, the young monkey! I hope
you gave him something he’ll remember for a long time?”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t very much, for he wouldn’t stand up to me—he threw
himself down and screamed. And then the parson came!”
For a little while Lasse’s face was disfigured with rage, and he kept
uttering threats. Then he turned to Pelle. “And they’ve turned you out?
Only because you stood up for your old father! I’m always to bring
misfortune upon you, though I’m only thinking of your good! But what
shall we do now?”
“I won’t stay here any longer,” said Pelle decidedly.
“No, let’s get away from here; nothing has ever grown on this farm for
us two but wormwood. Perhaps there are new, happy days waiting for us
out there; and there are parsons everywhere. If we two work together at
some good work out there, we shall earn a peck of money. Then one day
we’ll go up to a parson, and throw down half a hundred krones in front
of his face, and it ’u’d be funny if he didn’t confirm you on the
spot—and perhaps let himself be kicked into the bargain. Those kind of
folk are very fond of money.”
Lasse had grown more erect in his anger, and had a keen look in his
eyes. He walked quickly along the foddering passage, and threw the
things about carelessly, for Pelle’s adventurous proposal had infected
him with youth. In the intervals of their work, they collected all
their little things and packed the green chest. “What a surprise it’ll
be to-morrow morning when they come here and find the nest empty!” said
Pelle gaily. Lasse chuckled.
Their plan was to take shelter with Kalle for a day or two, while they
took a survey of what the world offered. When everything was done in
the evening, they took the green chest between them, and stole out
through the outside door into the field. The chest was heavy, and the
darkness did not make walking easier. They moved on a little way,
changed hands, and rested. “We’ve got the night before us!” said Lasse
cheerfully.
He was quite animated, and while they sat resting upon the chest talked
about everything that awaited them. When he came to a standstill Pelle
began. Neither of them had made any distinct plans for their future;
they simply expected a fairy-story itself with its inconceivable
surprises. All the definite possibilities that they were capable of
picturing to themselves fell so far short of that which must come, that
they left it alone and abandoned themselves to what lay beyond their
powers of foresight.
Lasse was not sure-footed in the dark, and had more and more frequently
to put down his burden. He grew weary and breathless, and the cheerful
words died away upon his lips. “Ah, how heavy it is!” he sighed. “What
a lot of rubbish you do scrape together in the course of time!” Then he
sat down upon the chest, quite out of breath. He could do no more. “If
only we’d had something to pick us up a little!” he said faintly. “And
it’s so dark and gloomy to-night.”
“Help me to get it on my back,” said Pelle, “and I’ll carry it a little
way.”
Lasse would not at first, but gave in, and they went on again, he
running on in front and giving warning of ditches and walls. “Suppose
Brother Kalle can’t take us in!” he said suddenly.
“He’s sure to be able to. There’s grandmother’s bed; that’s big enough
for two.”
“But suppose we can’t get anything to do, then we shall be a burden on
him.”
“Oh, we shall get something to do. There’s a scarcity of laborers
everywhere.”
“Yes, they’ll jump at you, but I’m really too old to offer myself out.”
Lasse had lost all hope, and was undermining Pelle’s too.
“I can’t do any more!” said Pelle, letting the chest down. They stood
with arms hanging, and stared into the darkness at nothing particular.
Lasse showed no desire to take hold again, and Pelle was now tired out.
The night lay dark around them, and its all- enveloping loneliness made
it seem as if they two were floating alone in space.
“Well, we ought to be getting on,” exclaimed Pelle, taking a handle of
the chest; but as Lasse did not move, he dropped it and sat down. They
sat back to back, and neither could find the right words to utter, and
the distance between them seemed to increase. Lasse shivered with the
night cold. “If only we were at home in our good bed!” he sighed.
Pelle was almost wishing he had been alone, for then he would have gone
on to the end. The old man was just as heavy to drag along as the
chest.
“Do you know I think I’ll go back again!” said Lasse at last in
crestfallen tone. “I’m afraid I’m not able to tread uncertain paths.
And you’ll never be confirmed if we go on like this! Suppose we go back
and get Kongstrup to put in a good word for us with the parson.” Lasse
stood and held one handle of the chest.
Pelle sat on as if he had not heard, and then he silently took hold,
and they toiled along on their weary way homeward across the fields.
Every other minute Pelle was tired and had to rest; now that they were
going home, Lasse was the more enduring. “I think I could carry it a
little way alone, if you’d help me up with it,” he said; but Pelle
would not hear of it.
“Pee-u-ah!” sighed Lasse with pleasure when they once more stood in the
warmth of the cow-stable and heard the animals breathing in indolent
well-being—“it’s comfortable here. It’s just like coming into one’s old
home. I think I should know this stable again by the air, if they led
me into it blindfold anywhere in the world.”
And now they were home again, Pelle too could not help thinking that it
really was pleasant.