The workshop stood over an entry which opened off the street. People
came and went along this entry: Madame Rasmussen and old Captain
Elleby; the old maid-servant of a Comptroller, an aged pensioner who
wore a white cap, drew her money from the Court, and expended it here,
and a feeble, gouty old sailor who had bidden the sea farewell. Out in
the street, on the sharp-edged cobble-stones, the sparrows were
clamoring loudly, lying there with puffed-out feathers, feasting among
the horse-droppings, tugging at them and scattering them about to the
accompaniment of a storm of chirping and scolding.
Everything overlooking the yard stood open. In the workshop all four
windows were opened wide, and the green light sifted into the room and
fell on the faces of those present. But that was no help. Not a breath
of wind was blowing; moreover, Pelle’s heat came from within. He was
sweating with sheer anxiety.
For the rest, he pulled industriously at his cobbler’s wax, unless,
indeed, something outside captured his harassed mind, so that it
wandered out into the sunshine.
Everything out there was splashed with vivid sunlight; seen from the
stuffy workshop the light was like a golden river, streaming down
between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down
to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air,
followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and
a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in
the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was
something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, or
perhaps a festival.
“Are you asleep, booby?” asked the journeyman sharply. Pelle shrank
into his shell and continued to work at the wax; he kneaded away at it,
holding it in hot water.
Inside the court, at the baker’s—the baker was the old master’s
brother—they were hoisting sacks of meal. The windlass squeaked
horribly, and in between the squeaking one could hear Master Jörgen
Kofod, in a high falsetto, disputing with his son. “You’re a noodle, a
pitiful simpleton—whatever will become of you? Do you think we’ve
nothing more to do than to go running out to prayer-meetings on a
working day? Perhaps that will get us our daily bread? Now you just
stay here, or, God’s mercy, I’ll break every bone in your body!” Then
the wife chimed in, and then of a sudden all was silent. And after a
while the son stole like a phantom along the wall of the opposite
house, a hymn-book in his hand. He was not unlike Howling Peter. He
squeezed himself against the wall, and his knees gave under him if any
one looked sharply at him. He was twenty-five years old, and he took
beatings from his father without a murmur. But when matters of religion
were in question he defied public opinion, the stick, and his father’s
anger.
“Are you asleep, booby? I shall really have to come over and teach you
to hurry!”
For a time no one spoke in the workshop—the journeyman was silent, so
the others had to hold their tongues. Each bent over his work, and
Pelle pulled the pitch out to as great a length as possible, kneaded
some grease into it, and pulled again. Outside, in the sunshine, some
street urchins were playing, running to and fro. When they saw Pelle,
they held their clenched fist under their noses, nodded to him in a
provocative manner, and sang—
“The cobbler has a pitchy nose,
The more he wipes it the blacker it grows!”
Pelle pretended not to see them, but he secretly ticked them all off in
his mind. It was his sincere intention to wipe them all off the face of
the earth.
Suddenly they all ran into the street, where a tremendous, monotonous
voice lifted itself and flowed abroad. This was the crazy watchmaker;
he was standing on his high steps, crying damnation on the world at
large.
Pelle knew perfectly well that the man was crazy, and in the words
which he so ponderously hurled at the town there was not the slightest
meaning. But they sounded wonderfully fine notwithstanding, and the
“ordeal by wax” was hanging over him like a sort of last judgment.
Involuntarily, he began to turn cold at the sound of this warning
voice, which uttered such solemn words and had so little meaning, just
as he did at the strong language in the Bible. It was just the voice
that frightened him; it was such a terrible voice, such a voice as one
might hear speaking out of the clouds; the sort of voice, in short,
that made the knees of Moses and Paul give under them; a portentous
voice, such as Pelle himself used to hear coming out of the darkness at
Stone Farm when a quarrel was going on.
Only the knee-strap of little Nikas, the journeyman, kept him from
jumping up then and there and throwing himself down like Paul. This
knee-strap was a piece of undeniable reality in the midst of all his
imaginings; in two months it had taught him never quite to forget who
and where he was. He pulled himself together, and satisfied himself
that all his miseries arose from his labors over this wretched
cobbler’s wax; besides, there was such a temptation to compare his
puddle of cobbler’s wax with the hell in which he was told he would be
tormented. But then he heard the cheerful voice of the young shoemaker
in the yard outside, and the whole trouble disappeared. The “ordeal by
wax” could not really be so terrible, since all the others had
undergone it—he had certainly seen tougher fellows than these in his
lifetime!
Jens sat down and ducked his head, as though he was expecting a box on
the ears;—that was the curse of the house which continually hung over
him. He was so slow at his work that already Pelle could overtake him;
there was something inside him that seemed to hamper his movements like
a sort of spell. But Peter and Emil were smart fellows—only they were
always wanting to thrash him.
Among the apple trees in the yard it was early summer, and close under
the workshop windows the pig stood smacking at his food. This sound was
like a warm breeze that blew over Pelle’s heart. Since the day when
Klaus Hermann had shaken the squeaking little porker out of his sack,
Pelle had begun to take root. It had squealed at first in a most
desolate manner, and something of Pelle’s own feeling of loneliness was
taken away from him by its cries. Now it complained simply because it
was badly fed, and it made Pelle quite furious to see the nasty trash
that was thrown to it—a young pig must eat well, that is half the
battle. They ought not to go running out every few minute to throw
something or other to the pig; when once the heat really set in it
would get acidity of the stomach. But there was no sense in these town
folk.
“Are you really asleep, booby? Why, you are snoring, deuce take me!”
The young master came limping in, took a drink, and buried himself in
his book. As he read he whistled softly in time with the hammer-
strokes of the others. Little Nikas began to whistle too, and the two
older apprentices who were beating leather began to strike in time with
the whistling, and they even kept double time, so that everything went
like greased lightning. The journeyman’s trills and quavers became more
and more extraordinary, in order to catch up with the blows—the blows
and the whistling seemed to be chasing one another—and Master Andres
raised his head from his book to listen. He sat there staring into the
far distance, as though the shadowy pictures evoked by his reading were
hovering before his eyes. Then, with a start, he was present and among
them all, his eyes running over them with a waggish expression; and
then he stood up, placing his stick so that it supported his diseased
hip. The master’s hands danced loosely in the air, his head and his
whole figure jerking crazily under the compulsion of the rhythm.
_Swoop!_—and the dancing hands fell upon the cutting-out knife, and the
master fingered the notes on the sharp edge, his head on one side and
his eyes closed—his whole appearance that of one absorbed in intent
inward listening. But then suddenly his face beamed with felicity, his
whole figure contracted in a frenzy of delight, one foot clutched at
the air as though bewitched, as though he were playing a harp with his
toes—Master Andres was all at once a musical idiot and a musical clown.
And _smack!_ the knife flew to the ground and he had the great tin
cover in his hand— _chin-da-da-da chin-da-da-da!_ Suddenly by a stroke
of magic the flute had turned into a drum and cymbals!
Pelle was doubled up with laughter: then he looked in alarm at the
knee-strap and again burst out laughing; but no one took any notice of
him. The master’s fingers and wrist were dancing a sort of devil’s
dance on the tin cover, and all of a sudden his elbows too were called
into requisition, so that the cover banged against the master’s left
knee, bounced off again and quick as lightning struck against his
wooden heel, which stuck out behind him; then against Pelle’s head, and
round about it went, striking the most improbable objects, _dum, dum,
dum_, as though in wild, demoniacal obedience to the flute-like tones
of the journeyman. There was no holding back. Emil, the oldest
apprentice, began boldly to whistle too, cautiously at first, and then,
as no one smacked his head, more forcefully. Then the next apprentice,
Jens—the music-devil, as he was called, because anything would produce
a note between his fingers—plucked so cleverly at his waxed-end that it
straightway began to give out a buzzing undertone, rising and falling
through two or three notes, as though an educated bumble-bee had been
leading the whole orchestra. Out of doors the birds came hopping on to
the apple-boughs; they twisted their heads inquisitively to one side,
frantically fluffed out their feathers, and then they too joined in
this orgy of jubilation, which was caused merely by a scrap of bright
blue sky. But then the young master had an attack of coughing, and the
whole business came to an end.
Pelle worked away at his cobbler’s wax, kneading the pitch and mixing
grease with it. When the black lump was on the point of stiffening, he
had to plunge both hands into hot water, so that he got hangnails. Old
Jeppe came tripping in from the yard, and Master Andres quickly laid
the cutting-board over his book and diligently stropped his knife.
“That’s right!” said Jeppe; “warm the wax, then it binds all the
better.”
Pelle had rolled the wax into balls, and had put them in the
soaking-tub, and now stood silent; for he had not the courage of his
own accord to say, “I am ready.” The others had magnified the “ordeal
by wax” into something positively terrible; all sorts of terrors lurked
in the mystery that was now awaiting him; and if he himself had not
known that he was a smart fellow—why—yes, he would have left them all
in the lurch. But now he meant to submit to it, however bad it might
be; he only wanted time to swallow first. Then at last he would have
succeeded in shaking off the peasant, and the handicraft would be open
to him, with its song and its wandering life and its smart journeyman’s
clothes. The workshop here was no better than a stuffy hole where one
sat and slaved over smelly greasy boots, but he saw that one must go
through with it in order to reach the great world, where journeymen
wore patent-leather shoes on workdays and made footwear fit for kings.
The little town had given Pelle a preliminary foreboding that the world
was almost incredibly great, and this foreboding filled him with
impatience. He meant to conquer it all!
“Now I am ready!” he said resolutely; now he would decide whether he
and the handicraft were made for one another.
“Then you can pull a waxed end—but make it as long as a bad year!” said
the journeyman.
The old master was all on fire at the idea. He went over and watched
Pelle closely, his tongue hanging out of his mouth; he felt quite young
again, and began to descant upon his own apprenticeship in Copenhagen,
sixty years ago. Those were times! The apprentices didn’t lie in bed
and snore in those days till six o’clock in the morning, and throw down
their work on the very stroke of eight, simply to go out and run about.
No; up they got at four, and stuck at it as long as there was work to
do. Then fellows _could_ work—and then they still learned something;
they were told things just once, and then—the knee-strap! Then, too,
the manual crafts still enjoyed some reputation; even the kings had to
learn a handicraft. It was very different to the present, with its
bungling and cheap retailing and pinching and paring everywhere.
The apprentices winked at one another. Master Andres and the journeyman
were silent. You might as well quarrel with the sewing-machine because
it purred. Jeppe was allowed to spin his yarn alone.
“Are you waxing it well?” said little Nikas. “It’s for pigskin.”
The others laughed, but Pelle rubbed the thread with a feeling as
though he were building his own scaffold.
“Now I am ready!” he said, in a low voice.
The largest pair of men’s lasts was taken down from the shelf, and
these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down to
the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood there
staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend over as
far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice, laid the
waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now, with the
exception of the young master; he took no part in this diversion.
“Pull, then!” ordered the journeyman, who was directing the solemn
business. “Pull them along till they’re right under your feet!”
Pelle pulled, and the heavy lasts joggled over the pavement, but he
paused with a sigh; the waxed-end was slipping over his warm neck. He
stood there stamping, like an animal which stamps its feet on the
ground, without knowing why; he lifted them cautiously and looked at
them in torment.
“Pull, pull!” ordered Jeppe. “You must keep the thing moving or it
sticks!” But it was too late; the wax had hardened in the hairs of his
nape—Father Lasse used to call them his “luck curls,” and prophesied a
great future for him on their account—and there he stood, and could not
remove the waxed-end, however hard he tried. He made droll grimaces,
the pain was so bad, and the saliva ran out of his mouth.
“Huh! He can’t even manage a pair of lasts!” said Jeppe jeeringly.
“He’d better go back to the land again and wash down the cows’
behinds!”
Then Pelle, boiling with rage, gave a jerk, closing his eyes and
writhing as he loosed himself. Something sticky and slippery slipped
through his fingers with the waxed-end; it was bloody hair, and across
his neck the thread had bitten its way in a gutter of lymph and molten
wax. But Pelle no longer felt the pain, his head was boiling so, and he
felt a vague but tremendous longing to pick up a hammer and strike them
all to the ground, and then to run through the street, banging at the
skulls of all he met. But then the journeyman took the lasts off him,
and the pain came back to him, and his whole miserable plight. He heard
Jeppe’s squeaky voice, and looked at the young master, who sat there
submissively, without having the courage to express his opinion, and
all at once he felt terribly sorry for himself.
“That was right,” buzzed old Jeppe, “a shoemaker mustn’t be afraid to
wax his hide a little. What? I believe it has actually brought the
water to his eyes! No, when I was apprentice we had a real ordeal; we
had to pass the waxed-end twice round our necks before we were allowed
to pull. Our heads used to hang by a thread and dangle when we were
done. Yes, those were times!”
Pelle stood there shuffling, in order to fight down his tears; but he
had to snigger with mischievous delight at the idea of Jeppe’s dangling
head.
“Then we must see whether he can stand a buzzing head,” said the
journeyman, getting ready to strike him.
“No, you can wait until he deserves it,” said Master Andres hastily.
“You will soon find an occasion.”
“Well, he’s done with the wax,” said Jeppe, “but the question is, can
he sit? Because there are some who never learn the art of sitting.”
“That must be tested, too, before we can declare him to be useful,”
said little Nikas, in deadly earnest.
“Are you done with your tomfoolery now?” said Master Andres angrily,
and he went his way.
But Jeppe was altogether in his element; his head was full of the
memories of his boyhood, a whole train of devilish tricks, which
completed the ordination. “Then we used to brand them indelibly with
their special branch, and they never took to their heels, but they
considered it a great honor as long as they drew breath. But now these
are weakly times and full of pretences; the one can’t do this and the
other can’t do that; and there’s leather colic and sore behinds and God
knows what. Every other day they come with certificates that they’re
suffering from boils from sitting down, and then you can begin all over
again. No, in my time we behaved very different—the booby got held
naked over a three-legged stool and a couple of men used to go at him
with knee-straps! That was leather on leather, and like that they
learned, damn and blast it all! how to put up with sitting on a stool!”
The journeyman made a sign.
“Now, is the seat of the stool ready consecrated, and prayed over? Yes,
then you can go over there and sit down.”
Pelle went stupidly across the room and sat down—it was all the same to
him. But he leaped into the air with a yell of pain, looked
malevolently about him, and in a moment he had a hammer in his hand.
But he dropped it again, and now he cried—wept buckets of tears.
“What the devil are you doing to him now?”
The young master came out of the cutting-out room. “What dirty tricks
are you hatching now?” He ran his hand over the seat of the stool; it
was studded with broken awl-points. “You are barbarous devils; any one
would think he was among a lot of savages!”
“What a weakling!” sneered Jeppe. “In these days a man can’t take a boy
as apprentice and inoculate him a bit against boils! One ought to
anoint the boobies back and front with honey, perhaps, like the kings
of Israel? But you are a freethinker!”
“You get out of this, father!” shouted Master Andres, quite beside
himself. “You get out of this, father!” He trembled, and his face was
quite gray. And then he pushed the old man out of the room before he
had struck Pelle on the shoulder and received him properly into the
handicraft.
Pelle sat there and reflected. He was altogether disillusioned. All the
covert allusions had evoked something terrifying, but at the same time
impressive. In his imagination the ordeal had grown into something that
constituted the great barrier of his life, so that one passed over to
the other side as quite a different being; it was something after the
fashion of the mysterious circumcision in the Bible, a consecration to
new things. And now the whole thing was just a spitefully devised
torture!
The young master threw him a pair of children’s shoes, which had to be
soled. So he was admitted to that department, and need no longer submit
to preparing waxed-ends for the others! But the fact did not give him
any pleasure. He sat there struggling with something irrational that
seemed to keep on rising deep within him; when no one was looking he
licked his fingers and drew them over his neck. He seemed to himself
like a half-stupefied cat which had freed itself from the snare and sat
there drying its fur.
Out of doors, under the apple-trees, the sunlight lay green and golden,
and a long way off, in the skipper’s garden, three brightly dressed
girls were walking and playing; they seemed to Pelle like beings out of
another world. “Fortune’s children on the sunbright shore,” as the song
had it. From time to time a rat made its appearance behind the pigsty,
and went clattering over the great heap of broken glass that lay there.
The pig stood there gobbling down its spoiled potatoes with that
despairing noise that put an end to all Pelle’s proud dreams of the
future, while it filled him with longing—oh, such a mad longing!
And everything that possibly could do so made its assault upon him at
this moment when he was feeling particularly victorious; the miseries
of his probation here in the workshop, the street urchins, the
apprentices, who would not accept him as one of themselves, and all the
sharp edges and corners which he was continually running up against in
this unfamiliar world. And then the smelly workshop itself, where never
a ray of sunlight entered. And no one here seemed to respect anything.
When the master was not present, little Nikas would sometimes indulge
in tittle-tattle with the older apprentices. Remarks were made at such
times which opened new spheres of thought to Pelle, and he had to ask
questions; or they would talk of the country, which Pelle knew better
than all of them put together, and he would chime in with some
correction. _Smack!_ came a box on his ears that would send him rolling
into the corner; he was to hold his tongue until he was spoken to. But
Pelle, who was all eyes and ears, and had been accustomed to discuss
everything in heaven or earth with Father Lasse, could not learn to
hold his tongue.
Each exacted with a strong hand his quantum of respect, from the
apprentices to the old master, who was nearly bursting with
professional pride in his handicraft; only Pelle had no claim to any
respect whatever, but must pay tribute to all. The young master was the
only one who did not press like a yoke on the youngster’s neck.
Easygoing as he was, he would disregard the journeyman and the rest,
and at times he would plump himself down beside Pelle, who sat there
feeling dreadfully small.
Outside, when the sun was shining through the trees in a particular
way, and a peculiar note came into the twittering of the birds, Pelle
knew it was about the time when the cows began to get on their feet
after their midday chewing of the cud. And then a youngster would come
out from among the little fir-trees, lustily cracking his whip; he was
the general of the whole lot—Pelle, the youngster—who had no one set
over him. And the figure that came stumbling across the arable yonder,
in order to drive the cows home—why, that was Lasse!
Father Lasse!
He did not know why, but it wrung a sob from him; it took him so
unawares. “Hold your row!” cried the journeyman threateningly. Pelle
was greatly concerned; he had not once made the attempt to go over and
see Lasse.
The young master came to get something off the shelf above his head,
and leaned confidentially on Pelle’s shoulder, his weak leg hanging
free and dangling. He stood there loitering for a time, staring at the
sky outside, and this warm hand on Pelle’s shoulder quieted him.
But there could be no talk of enjoyment when he thought where good
Father Lasse was. He had not seen his father since that sunny morning
when he himself had gone away and left the old man to his loneliness.
He had not heard of him; he had scarcely given a thought to him. He had
to get through the day with a whole skin, and to adapt himself to the
new life; a whole new world was before him, in which he had to find his
feet. Pelle had simply had no time; the town had swallowed him.
But at this moment his conduct confronted him as the worst example of
unfaithfulness the world had ever known. And his neck continued to hurt
him—he must go somewhere or other where no one would look at him. He
made a pretence of having to do something in the yard outside; he went
behind the washhouse, and he crouched down by the woodpile beside the
well.
There he lay, shrinking into himself, in the blackest despair at having
left Father Lasse so shamelessly in the lurch, just for the sake of all
these new strange surroundings. Yes, and then, when they used to work
together, he had been neither as good nor as heedful as he should have
been. It was really Lasse who, old as he was, had sacrificed himself
for Pelle, in order to lighten his work and take the worst of the
burden off him, although Pelle had the younger shoulders. And he had
been a little hard at times, as over that business between his father
and Madame Olsen; and he had not always been very patient with his
good-humored elderly tittle-tattle, although if he could hear it now he
would give his life to listen. He could remember only too plainly
occasions when he had snapped at Lasse, so unkindly that Lasse had
given a sigh and made off; for Lasse never snapped back—he was only
silent and very sad.
But how dreadful that was! Pelle threw all his high-and-mighty airs to
the winds and gave himself up to despair. What was he doing here, with
Father Lasse wandering among strangers, and perhaps unable to find
shelter? There was nothing with which he could console himself, no
evasion or excuse was possible; Pelle howled at the thought of his
faithlessness. And as he lay there despairing, worrying over the whole
business and crying himself into a state of exhaustion, quite a manful
resolve began to form within him; he must give up everything of his
own—the future, and the great world, and all, and devote his days to
making the old man’s life happy. He must go back to Stone Farm! He
forgot that he was only a child who could just earn his own keep. To
protect the infirm old man at every point and make his life easy—that
was just what he wanted. And Pelle was by no means disposed to doubt
that he could do it. In the midst of his childish collapse he took upon
himself all the duties of a strong man.
As he lay there, woe-begone, playing with a couple of bits of firewood,
the elder-boughs behind the well parted, and a pair of big eyes stared
at him wonderingly. It was only Manna.
“Did they beat you—or why are you crying?” she asked earnestly.
Pelle turned his face away.
Manna shook her hair back and looked at him fixedly. “Did they beat
you? What? If they did, I shall go in and scold them hard!”
“What is it to you?”
“People who don’t answer aren’t well-behaved.”
“Oh, hold your row!”
Then he was left in peace; over at the back of the garden Manna and her
two younger sisters were scrambling about the trellis, hanging on it
and gazing steadfastly across the yard at him. But that was nothing to
him; he wanted to know nothing about them; he didn’t want petticoats to
pity him or intercede for him. They were saucy jades, even if their
father had sailed on the wide ocean and earned a lot of money. If he
had them here they would get the stick from him! Now he must content
himself with putting out his tongue at them.
He heard their horrified outcry—but what then? He didn’t want to go
scrambling about with them any more, or to play with the great
conch-shells and lumps of coral in their garden! He would go back to
the land and look after his old father! Afterward, when that was done,
he would go out into the world himself, and bring such things home with
him—whole shiploads of them!
They were calling him from the workshop window. “Where in the world has
that little blighter got to?” he heard them say. He started, shrinking;
he had quite forgotten that he was serving his apprenticeship. He got
on his feet and ran quickly indoors.
Pelle had soon tidied up after leaving off work. The others had run out
in search of amusement; he was alone upstairs in the garret. He put his
worldly possessions into his sack. There was a whole collection of
wonderful things—tin steamboats, railway-trains, and horses that were
hollow inside—as much of the irresistible wonders of the town as he had
been able to obtain for five white krone pieces. They went in among the
washing, so that they should not get damaged, and then he threw the bag
out of the gable-window into the little alley. Now the question was how
he himself should slip through the kitchen without arousing the
suspicions of Jeppe’s old woman; she had eyes like a witch, and Pelle
had a feeling that every one who saw him would know what he was about.
But he went. He controlled himself, and sauntered along, so that the
people should think he was taking washing to the laundrywoman; but he
could only keep it up as far as the first turning; then he started off
as fast as he could go. He was homesick. A few street-boys yelled and
threw stones after him, but that didn’t matter, so long as he only got
away; he was insensible to everything but the remorse and homesickness
that filled his heart.
It was past midnight when he at last reached the outbuildings of Stone
Farm. He was breathless, and had a stitch in his side. He leaned
against the ruined forge, and closed his eyes, the better to recover
himself. As soon as he had recovered his breath, he entered the cowshed
from the back and made for the herdsman’s room. The floor of the
cowshed felt familiar to his feet, and now he came in the darkness to
the place where the big bull lay. He breathed in the scent of the
creature’s body and blew it out again—ah, didn’t he remember it! But
the scent of the cowherd’s room was strange to him. “Father Lasse is
neglecting himself,” he thought, and he pulled the feather-bed from
under the sleeper’s head. A strange voice began to upbraid him. “Then
isn’t this Lasse?” said Pelle. His knees were shaking under him.
“Lasse?” cried the new cowherd, as he sat upright. “Do you say Lasse?
Have you come to fetch that child of God, Mr. Devil? They’ve been here
already from Hell and taken him with them—in the living body they’ve
taken him there with them—he was too good for this world, d’ye see? Old
Satan was here himself in the form of a woman and took him away. You’d
better go there and look for him. Go straight on till you come to the
devil’s great-grandmother, and then you’ve only got to ask your way to
the hairy one.”
Pelle stood for a while in the yard below and considered. So Father
Lasse had gone away! And wanted to marry, or was perhaps already
married. And to Karna, of course. He stood bolt-upright, sunk in
intimate memories. The great farm lay hushed in moonlight, in deepest
slumber, and all about him rose memories from their sleep, speaking to
him caressingly, with a voice like that contented purring, remembered
from childhood, when the little kittens used to sleep upon his pillow,
and he would lay his cheek against their soft, quivering bodies.
Pelle’s memory had deep roots. Once, at Uncle Kalle’s, he had laid
himself in the big twins’ cradle and had let the other children rock
him—he was then fully nine years old—and as they rocked him a while the
surroundings began to take hold of him, and he saw a smoky, raftered
ceiling, which did not belong to Kalle’s house, swaying high over his
head, and he had a feeling that a muffled-up old woman, wrapped in a
shawl, sat like a shadow at the head of the cradle, and rocked it with
her foot. The cradle jolted with the over-vigorous rocking, and every
time the rocking foot slipped from the footboard it struck on the floor
with the sound of a sprung wooden shoe. Pelle jumped up—“she bumped
so,” he said, bewildered. “What? No, you certainly dreamed that!” Kalle
looked, smiling, under the rockers. “Bumped!” said Lasse. “That ought
to suit you first-rate! At one time, when you were little, you couldn’t
sleep if the cradle didn’t bump, so we had to make the rockers all
uneven. It was almost impossible to rock it. Bengta cracked many a good
wooden shoe in trying to give you your fancy.”
The farmyard here was like a great cradle, which swayed and swayed in
the uncertain moonlight, and now that Pelle had once quite surrendered
himself to the past, there was no end to the memories of childhood that
rose within him. His whole existence passed before him, swaying above
his head as before, and the earth itself seemed like a dark speck in
the abysm of space.
And then the crying broke out from the house—big with destiny, to be
heard all over the place, so that Kongstrup slunk away shamefaced, and
the other grew angry and ungovernable. … And Lasse … yes, where was
Father Lasse?
With one leap, Pelle was in the brew-house, knocking on the door of the
maid’s room.
“Is that you, Anders?” whispered a voice from within, and then the door
opened, and a pair of arms fastened themselves about him and drew him
in. Pelle felt about him, and his hands sank into a naked bosom—why, it
was yellow-haired Marie!
“Is Karna still here?” he asked. “Can’t I speak to Karna a moment?”
They were glad to see him again; and yellow-haired Marie patted his
cheeks quite affectionately, and just before that she kissed him too.
Karna could scarcely recover from her surprise; he had acquired such a
townsman’s air. “And now you are a shoemaker too, in the biggest
workshop in the town! Yes, we’ve heard; Butcher Jensen heard about it
on the market. And you have grown tall and townified. You do hold
yourself well!” Karna was dressing herself.
“Where is Father Lasse?” said Pelle; he had a lump in his throat only
from speaking of him.
“Give me time, and I’ll come out with you. How fine you dress now! I
should hardly have known you. Would you, Marie?”
“He’s a darling boy—he always was,” said Marie, and she pushed at him
with her arched foot—she was now in bed again.
“It’s the same suit as I always had,” said Pelle.
“Yes, yes; but then you held yourself different—there in town they all
look like lords. Well, shall we go?”
Pelle said good-by to Marie affectionately; it occurred to him that he
had much to thank her for. She looked at him in a very odd way, and
tried to draw his hand under the coverlet.
“What’s the matter with father?” said Pelle impatiently, as soon as
they were outside.
Well, Lasse had taken to his heels too! He couldn’t stand it when Pelle
had gone. And the work was too heavy for one. Where he was just at the
moment Karna could not say. “He’s now here, now there, considering
farms and houses,” she said proudly. “Some fine day he’ll be able to
take you in on his visit to town.”
“And how are things going here?” inquired Pelle.
“Well, Erik has got his speech back and is beginning to be a man
again—he can make himself understood. And Kongstrup and his wife, they
drink one against the other.”
“They drink together, do they, like the wooden shoemaker and his old
woman?”
“Yes, and so much that they often lie in the room upstairs soaking, and
can’t see one another for the drink, they’re that foggy. Everything
goes crooked here, as you may suppose, with no master. ‘Masterless,
defenceless,’ as the old proverb says. But what can you say about
it—they haven’t anything else in common! But it’s all the same to me—as
soon as Lasse finds something I’m off!”
Pelle could well believe that, and had nothing to say against it. Karna
looked at him from head to foot in surprise as they walked on. “They
feed you devilish well in the town there, don’t they?”
“Yes—vinegary soup and rotten greaves. We were much better fed here.”
She would not believe it—it sounded too foolish. “But where are all the
things they have in the shop windows—all the meats and cakes and sweet
things? What becomes of all them?”
“That I don’t know,” said Pelle grumpily; he himself had racked his
brains over this very question. “I get all I can eat, but washing and
clothes I have to see to myself.”
Karna could scarcely conceal her amazement; she had supposed that Pelle
had been, so to speak, caught up to Heaven while yet living. “But how
do you manage?” she said anxiously. “You must find that difficult. Yes,
yes, directly we set out feet under our own table we’ll help you all we
can.”
They parted up on the high-road, and Pelle, tired and defeated, set out
on his way back. It was broad daylight when he got back, and he crawled
into bed without any one noticing anything of his attempted flight.