IV

There was something about the town that made it hard to go to bed and

hard to get up. In the town there was no sunrise shining over the earth

and waking everybody. The open face of morning could not be seen

indoors. And the dying day poured no evening weariness into one’s

limbs, driving them to repose; life seemed here to flow in the reverse

direction, for here people grew lively at night!

About half-past six in the morning the master, who slept downstairs,

would strike the ceiling with his stick. Pelle, whose business it was

to reply, would mechanically sit up and strike the side of the bedstead

with his clenched fist. Then, still sleeping, he would fall back again.

After a while the process was repeated. But then the master grew

impatient. “Devil take it! aren’t you going to get up to-day?” he would

bellow. “Is this to end in my bringing you your coffee in bed?” Drunken

with sleep, Pelle would tumble out of bed. “Get up, get up!” he would

cry, shaking the others. Jens got nimbly on his feet; he always awoke

with a cry of terror, guarding his head; but Emil and Peter, who were

in the hobbledehoy stage, were terribly difficult to wake.

Pelle would hasten downstairs, and begin to set everything in order,

filling the soaking-tub and laying a sand-heap by the window-bench for

the master to spit into. He bothered no further about the others; he

was in a morning temper himself. On the days when he had to settle

right away into the cobbler’s hunch, without first running a few early

errands or doing a few odd tasks, it took hours to thaw him.

He used to look round to see whether on the preceding evening he had

made a chalk-mark in any conspicuous place; for then there must be

something that he had to remember. Memory was not his strong point,

hence this ingenious device. Then it was only a matter of not

forgetting what the mark stood for; if he forgot, he was no better off

than before.

When the workshop was tidy, he would hurry downstairs and run out for

Madame, to fetch morning rolls “for themselves.” He himself was given a

wheaten biscuit with his coffee, which he drank out in the kitchen,

while the old woman went grumbling to and fro. She was dry as a mummy

and moved about bent double, and when she was not using her hands she

carried one forearm pressed against her midriff. She was discontented

with everything, and was always talking of the grave. “My two eldest

are overseas, in America and Australia; I shall never see them again.

And here at home two menfolk go strutting about doing nothing and

expecting to be waited on. Andres, poor fellow, isn’t strong, and

Jeppe’s no use any longer; he can’t even keep himself warm in bed

nowadays. But they know how to ask for things, that they do, and they

let me go running all over the place without any help; I have to do

everything myself. I shall truly thank God when at last I lie in my

grave. What are you standing there for with your mouth and your eyes

wide open? Get away with you!” Thereupon Pelle would finish his

coffee—it was sweetened with brown sugar—out of doors, by the workshop

window.

In the mornings, before the master appeared, there was no great

eagerness to work; they were all sleepy still, looking forward to a

long, dreary day. The journeyman did not encourage them to work; he had

a difficulty in finding enough for himself. So they sat there

wool-gathering, striking a few blows with the hammer now and then for

appearance’s sake, and one or another would fall asleep again over the

table. They all started when three blows were struck on the wall as a

signal for Pelle.

“What are you doing? It seems to me you are very idle in there!” the

master would say, staring suspiciously at Pelle. But Pelle had remarked

what work each was supposed to have in hand, and would run over it all.

“What day’s this—Thursday? Damnation take it! Tell that Jens he’s to

put aside Manna’s uppers and begin on the pilot’s boots this

moment—they were promised for last Monday.” The master would struggle

miserably to get his breath: “Ah, I’ve had a bad night, Pelle, a

horrible night; I was so hot, with such a ringing in my ears. New blood

is so devilishly unruly; it’s all the time boiling in my head like

soda-water. But it’s a good thing I’m making it, God knows; I used to

be so soon done up. Do you believe in Hell? Heaven, now, that’s sheer

nonsense; what happiness can we expect elsewhere if we can’t be

properly happy here? But do you believe in Hell? I dreamed I’d spat up

the last bit of my lungs and that I went to Hell. ‘What the devil d’you

want here, Andres?’ they asked me; ‘your heart is still whole!’ And

they wouldn’t have me. But what does that signify? I can’t breathe with

my heart, so I’m dying. And what becomes of me then? Will you tell me

that?

“There’s something that bids a man enter again into his mother’s womb;

now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two

sound legs, you’d see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I

wouldn’t stay messing about here any longer…. Well, have you seen your

navel yet to-day? Yes, you ragamuffin, you laugh; but I’m in earnest.

It would pay you well if you always began the day by contemplating your

navel.”

The master was half serious, half jesting. “Well, now, you can fetch me

my port wine; it’s on the shelf, behind the box with the laces in it.

I’m deadly cold.”

Pelle came back and announced that the bottle was empty. The master

looked at him mildly.

“Then run along and get me another. I’ve no money—you must say— well,

think it out for yourself; you’ve got a head.” The master looked at him

with an expression which went to Pelle’s heart, so that he often felt

like bursting into tears. Hitherto Pelle’s life had been spent on the

straight highway; he did not understand this combination of wit and

misery, roguishness and deadly affliction. But he felt something of the

presence of the good God, and trembled inwardly; he would have died for

the young master.

When the weather was wet it was difficult for the sick man to get

about; the cold pulled him down. If he came into the workshop, freshly

washed and with his hair still wet, he would go over to the cold stove,

and stand there, stamping his feet. His cheeks had quite fallen in.

“I’ve so little blood for the moment,” he said at such times, “but the

new blood is on the way; it sings in my ears every night.” Then he

would be silent a while. “There, by my soul, we’ve got a piece of lung

again,” he said, and showed Pelle, who stood at the stove brushing

shoes, a gelatinous lump. “But they grow again afterward!”

“The master will soon be in his thirtieth year,” said the journeyman;

“then the dangerous time is over.”

“Yes, deuce take it—if only I can hang together so long—only another

six months,” said the master eagerly, and he looked at Pelle, as though

Pelle had it in his power to help him; “only another six months! Then

the whole body renews itself—new lungs—everything new. But new legs,

God knows, I shall never get.”

A peculiar, secret understanding grew up between Pelle and the master;

it did not manifest itself in words, but in glances, in tones of the

voice, and in the whole conduct of each. When Pelle stood behind him,

it was as though even the master’s leather jacket emitted a feeling of

warmth, and Pelle followed him with his eyes whenever and wherever he

could, and the master’s behavior to Pelle was different from his

behavior to the others.

When, on his return from running errands in the town, he came to the

corner, he was delighted to see the young master standing in the

doorway, tightly grasping his stick, with his lame leg in an easy

position. He stood there, sweeping his eyes from side to side, gazing

longingly into the distance. This was his place when he was not

indoors, sitting over some book of adventure. But Pelle liked him to

stand there, and as he slipped past he would hang his head shyly, for

it often happened that the master would clutch his shoulder, so hard

that it hurt, and shake him to and fro, and would say affectionately:

“Oh, you limb of Satan!” This was the only endearment that life had

vouchsafed Pelle, and he sunned himself in it.

Pelle could not understand the master, nor did he understand his sighs

and groans. The master never went out, save as an exception, when he

was feeling well; then he would hobble across to the beerhouse and make

up a party, but as a rule his travels ended at the house door. There he

would stand, looking about him a little, and then he would hobble

indoors again, with that infectious good humor which transformed the

dark workshop into a grove full of the twittering of birds. He had

never been abroad, and he felt no craving to go; but in spite of this

his mind and his speech roamed over the whole wide world, so that Pelle

at times felt like falling sick from sheer longing. He demanded nothing

more than health of the future, and adventures hovered all about him;

one received the impression that happiness itself had fluttered to

earth and settled upon him. Pelle idolized him, but did not understand

him. The master, who at one moment would make sport of his lame leg and

the next moment forget that he had one, or jest about his poverty as

though he were flinging good gold pieces about him—this was a man Pelle

could not fathom. He was no wiser when he secretly looked into the

books which Master Andres read so breathlessly; he would have been

content with a much more modest adventure than a journey to the North

Pole or the center of the earth, if only he himself could have been of

the party.

He had no opportunity to sit still and indulge in fancies. Every moment

it was, “Pelle, run and do something or other!” Everything was

purchased in small quantities, although it was obtained on credit.

“Then it doesn’t run up so,” Jeppe used to say; it was all the same to

Master Andres. The foreman’s young woman came running in; she

absolutely must have her young lady’s shoes; they were promised for

Monday. The master had quite forgotten them. “They are in hand now,” he

said, undaunted. “To the devil with you, Jens!” And Jens had hastily

thrust a pair of lasts into the shoes, while Master Andres went outside

with the girl, and joked with her on the landing, in order to smooth

her down. “Just a few nails, so that they’ll hang together,” said the

master to Jens. And then, “Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs

will carry you! Say we’ll send for them early to-morrow morning and

finish them properly! But run as though the devil were at your heels!”

Pelle ran, and when he returned, just as he was slipping into his

leather apron, he had to go out again. “Pelle, run out and borrow a few

brass nails—then we needn’t buy any to-day. Go to Klausen—no, go to

Blom, rather; you’ve been to Klausen already this morning.”

“Blom’s are angry about the screw-block!” said Pelle.

“Death and all the devils! We must see about putting it in repair and

returning it; remember that, and take it with you to the smith’s. Well,

what in the world shall we do?” The young master stared helplessly from

one to another.

“Shoemaker Marker,” suggested little Nikas.

“We don’t borrow from Marker,” and the master wrinkled his forehead.

“Marker’s a louse!” Marker had succeeded in stealing one of the oldest

customers of the workshop.

“There isn’t salt to eat an egg!”

“Well, what _shall_ I do?” asked Pelle, somewhat impatiently.

The master sat for a while in silence. “Well, take it, then!” he cried,

and threw a krone toward Pelle; “I have no peace from you so long as

I’ve got a farthing in my pocket, you demon! Buy a packet and pay back

Klausen and Blom what we’ve borrowed.”

“But then they’d see we’ve got a whole packet,” said Pelle.

“Besides, they owe us lots of other things that they’ve borrowed of

us.” Pelle showed circumspection in his dealings.

“What a rogue!” said the master, and he settled himself to read. “Lord

above us, what a gallows-bird!” He looked extremely contented.

And after a time it was once more, “Pelle, run out, etc.”

The day was largely passed in running errands, and Pelle was not one to

curtail them; he had no liking for the smelly workshop and its wooden

chairs. There was so much to be fetched and carried, and Pelle

considered these errands to be his especial duty; when he had nothing

else to do he roved about like a young puppy, and thrust his nose into

everything. Already the town had no more secrets from him.

There was in Pelle an honorable streak which subdued the whole. But

hitherto he had suffered only defeat; he had again and again sacrificed

his qualities and accomplishments, without so far receiving anything in

return. His timidity and distrust he had stripped from him indoors,

where it was of importance that he should open his defences on all

sides, and his solid qualities he was on the point of sacrificing on

the altar of the town as boorish. But the less protection he possessed

the more he gained in intrepidity, so he went about out-of-doors

undauntedly—the town should be conquered. He was enticed out of the

safe refuge of his shell, and might easily be gobbled up.

The town had lured him from the security of his lair, but in other

matters he was the same good little fellow—most people would have seen

no difference in him, except that he had grown taller. But Father Lasse

would have wept tears of blood to see his boy as he now walked along

the streets, full of uncertainty and uneasy imitativeness, wearing his

best coat on a workday, and yet disorderly in his dress.

Yonder he goes, sauntering along with a pair of boots, his fingers

thrust through the string of the parcel, whistling with an air of

bravado. Now and again he makes a grimace and moves cautiously—when his

trousers rub the sensitive spots of his body. He has had a bad day. In

the morning he was passing a smithy, and allowed the splendid display

of energy within, half in the firelight and half in the shadow, to

detain him. The flames and the clanging of the metal, the whole lively

uproar of real work, fascinated him, and he had to go in and ask

whether there was an opening for an apprentice. He was not so stupid as

to tell them where he came from, but when he got home, Jeppe had

already been told of it! But that is soon forgotten, unless, indeed,

his trousers rub against his sore places. Then he remembers it;

remembers that in this world everything has to be paid for; there is no

getting out of things; once one begins anything one has to eat one’s

way through it, like the boy in the fairy-tale. And this discovery is,

in the abstract, not so strikingly novel to Pelle.

He has, as always, chosen the longest way, rummaging about back yards

and side streets, where there is a possibility of adventure; and all at

once he is suddenly accosted by Albinus, who is now employed by a

tradesman. Albinus is not amusing. He has no right to play and loiter

about the warehouse in the aimless fashion that is possible

out-of-doors; nor to devote himself to making a ladder stand straight

up in the air while he climbs up it. Not a word can be got out of him,

although Pelle does his best; so he picks up a handful of raisins and

absconds.

Down at the harbor he boards a Swedish vessel, which has just arrived

with a cargo of timber. “Have you anything for us to do?” he asks,

holding one hand behind him, where his trousers have a hole in them.

“Klausen’s apprentice has just been here and got what there was,”

replied the skipper.

“That’s a nuisance—you ought to have given it to us,” says Pelle. “Have

you got a clay pipe?”

“Yes—just you come here!” The skipper reaches for a rope’s end, but

Pelle escapes and runs ashore.

“Will you give me a thrashing now?” he cries, jeering.

“You shall have a clay pipe if you’ll run and get me half a krone’s

worth of chewing ’bacca.”

“What will it cost?” asks Pelle, with an air of simplicity. The skipper

reaches for his rope’s end again, but Pelle is off already.

“Five öre worth of chewing tobacco, the long kind,” he cries, before he

gets to the door even. “But it must be the very best, because it’s for

an invalid.” He throws the money on the counter and puts on a cheeky

expression.

Old Skipper Lau rises by the aid of his two sticks and hands Pelle the

twist; his jaws are working like a mill, and all his limbs are twisted

with gout. “Is it for some one lying-in?” he asks slyly.

Pelle breaks off the stem of the clay pipe, lest it should stick out of

his pocket, boards the salvage steamer, and disappears forward. After a

time he reappears from under the cabin hatchway, with a gigantic pair

of sea-boots and a scrap of chewing tobacco. Behind the deck-house he

bites a huge mouthful off the brown Cavendish, and begins to chew

courageously, which makes him feel tremendously manly. But near the

furnace where the ship’s timbers are bent he has to unload his stomach;

it seems as though all his inward parts are doing their very utmost to

see how matters would be with them hanging out of his mouth. He drags

himself along, sick as a cat, with thumping temples; but somewhere or

other inside him a little feeling of satisfaction informs him that one

has to undergo the most dreadful consequences in order to perform any

really heroic deed.

In most respects the harbor, with its stacks of timber and its vessels

on the slips, is just as fascinating as it was on the day when Pelle

lay on the shavings and guarded Father Lasse’s sack. The black man with

the barking hounds still leans from the roof of the harbor warehouse,

but the inexplicable thing is that one could ever have been frightened

of him. But Pelle is in a hurry.

He runs a few yards, but he must of necessity stop when he comes to the

old quay. There the “strong man,” the “Great Power,” is trimming some

blocks of granite. He is tanned a coppery brown with wind and sun, and

his thick black hair is full of splinters of granite; he wears only a

shirt and canvas trousers, and the shirt is open on his powerful

breast; but it lies close on his back, and reveals the play of his

muscles. Every time he strikes a blow the air whistles— _whew!_—and the

walls and timber-stacks echo the sound. People come hurrying by, stop

short at a certain distance, and stand there looking on. A little group

stands there all the time, newcomers taking the place of those that

move on, like spectators in front of a cage of lions. It is as though

they expect something to happen— something that will stagger everybody

and give the bystanders a good fright.

Pelle goes right up to the “Great Power.” The “strong man” is the

father of Jens, the second youngest apprentice. “Good-day,” he says

boldly, and stands right in the giant’s shadow. But the stonecutter

pushes him to one side without looking to see who it is, and continues

to hew at the granite: _whew! whew!_

“It is quite a long time now since he has properly used his strength,”

says an old townsman. “Is he quieting down, d’you think?”

“He must have quieted down for good,” says another. “The town ought to

see that he keeps quiet.” And they move on, and Pelle must move on,

too—anywhere, where no one can see him.

“Cobbler, wobbler, groats in your gruel,

Smack on your back goes the stick—how cruel!”

It is those accursed street-urchins. Pelle is by no means in a warlike

humor; he pretends not to see them. But they come up close behind him

and tread on his heels, and before he knows what is happening they are

upon him. The first he knows about it is that he is lying in the

gutter, on his back, with all three on top of him. He has fallen

alongside of the curbstone and cannot move; he is faint, too, as a

result of his indiscretion; the two biggest boys spread his arms wide

open on the flagstones and press them down with all their might, while

the third ventures to deal with his face. It is a carefully planned

outrage, and all Pelle can do is to twist his head round under the

blows—and for once he is thankful for his disgracefully fat cheeks.

Then, in his need, a dazzling apparition appears before him; standing

in the doorway yonder is a white baker’s boy, who is royally amused. It

is no other than Nilen, the wonderful little devil Nilen, of his

schooldays, who was always fighting everybody like a terrier and always

came out of it with a whole skin. Pelle shuts his eyes and blushes for

himself, although he knows perfectly well that this is only an

apparition.

But then a wonderful thing happens; the apparition leaps down into the

gutter, slings the boys to one side, and helps him to his feet. Pelle

recognizes the grip of those fingers—even in his schooldays they were

like claws of iron.

And soon he is sitting behind the oven, on Nilen’s grimy bed. “So

you’ve become a cobbler?” says Nilen, to begin with, compassionately,

for he feels a deucedly smart fellow himself in his fine white clothes,

with his bare arms crossed over his naked breast. Pelle feels

remarkably comfortable; he has been given a slice of bread and cream,

and he decides that the world is more interesting than ever. Nilen is

chewing manfully, and spitting over the end of the bed.

“Do you chew?” asks Pelle, and hastens to offer him the leaf-tobacco.

“Yes, we all do; a fellow has to when he works all night.”

Pelle cannot understand how people can keep going day and night.

“All the bakers in Copenhagen do—so that the people can get fresh bread

in the morning—and our master wants to introduce it here. But it isn’t

every one can do it; the whole staff had to be reorganized. It’s worst

about midnight, when everything is turning round. Then it comes over

you so that you keep on looking at the time, and the very moment the

clock strikes twelve we all hold our breath, and then no one can come

in or go out any more. The master himself can’t stand the night shift;

the ’baccy turns sour in his mouth and he has to lay it on the table.

When he wakes up again he thinks it’s a raisin and sticks it in the

dough. What’s the name of your girl?”

For a moment Pelle’s thoughts caress the three daughters of old Skipper

Elleby—but no, none of them shall be immolated. No, he has no girl.

“Well, you get one, then you needn’t let them sit on you. I’m flirting

a bit just now with the master’s daughter—fine girl, she is, quite

developed already—you know! But we have to look out when the old man’s

about!”

“Then are you going to marry her when you are a journeyman?” asks

Pelle, with interest.

“And have a wife and kids on my back? You are a duffer, Pelle! No need

to trouble about that! But a woman—well, that’s only for when a man’s

bored. See?” He stretches himself, yawning.

Nilen has become quite a young man, but a little crude in his manner of

expressing himself. He sits there and looks at Pelle with a curious

expression in his eyes. “Cobbler’s patch!” he says contemptuously, and

thrusts his tongue into his cheek so as to make it bulge. Pelle says

nothing; he knows he cannot thrash Nilen.

Nilen has lit his pipe and is lying on his back in bed—with his muddy

shoes on—chattering. “What’s your journeyman like? Ours is a conceited

ass. The other day I had to fetch him a box on the ears, he was so

saucy. I’ve learned the Copenhagen trick of doing it; it soon settles a

man. Only you want to keep your head about it.” A deuce of a fellow,

this Nilen, he is so grown up! Pelle feels smaller and smaller.

But suddenly Nilen jumps up in the greatest hurry. Out in the bakery a

sharp voice is calling. “Out of the window—to the devil with you!” he

yelps—“the journeyman!” And Pelle has to get through the window, and is

so slow about it that his boots go whizzing past him. While he is

jumping down he hears the well-known sound of a ringing box on the ear.

When Pelle returned from his wanderings he was tired and languid; the

stuffy workshop did not seem alluring. He was dispirited, too; for the

watchmaker’s clock told him that he had been three hours away. He could

not believe it.

The young master stood at the front door, peeping out, still in his

leather jacket and apron of green baize; he was whistling softly to

himself, and looked like a grown fledgling that did not dare to let

itself tumble out of the nest. A whole world of amazement lay in his

inquiring eyes.

“Have you been to the harbor again, you young devil?” he asked, sinking

his claws into Pelle.

“Yes.” Pelle was properly ashamed.

“Well, what’s going on there? What’s the news?”

So Pelle had to tell it all on the stairs; how there was a Swedish

timber ship whose skipper’s wife was taken with childbirth out at sea,

and how the cook had to deliver her; of a Russian vessel which had run

into port with a mutiny on board; and anything else that might have

happened. To-day there were only these boots. “They are from the

salvage steamer—they want soling.”

“H’m!” The master looked at them indifferently. “Is the schooner

_Andreas_ ready to sail?”

But that Pelle did not know.

“What sort of a sheep’s head have you got, then? Haven’t you any eyes

in it? Well, well, go and get me three bottles of beer! Only stick them

under your blouse so that father don’t see, you monster!” The master

was quite good-tempered again.

Then Pelle got into his apron and buckled on the knee-strap. Everybody

was bending over his work, and Master Andres was reading; no sound was

to be heard but those produced by the workers, and now and again a word

of reprimand from the journeyman.

Every second afternoon, about five o’clock, the workshop door would

open slightly, and a naked, floury arm introduced the newspaper and

laid it on the counter. This was the baker’s son, Sören, who never

allowed himself to be seen; he moved about from choice like a thief in

the night. If the master—as he occasionally did—seized him and pulled

him into the workshop, he was like a scared faun strayed from his

thickets; he would stand with hanging head, concealing his eyes, and no

one could get a word from him; and when he saw an opportunity, he would

slip away.

The arrival of the newspaper caused quite a small commotion in the

workshop. When the master felt inclined, he would read aloud—of calves

with two heads and four pairs of legs; of a pumpkin that weighed fifty

pounds; of the fattest man in the world; of fatalities due to the

careless handling of firearms, or of snakes in Martinique. The dazzling

wonder of the whole world passed like a pageant, filling the dark

workshop; the political news was ignored. If the master happened to be

in one of his desperate humors, he would read the most damnable

nonsense: of how the Atlantic Ocean had caught fire, so that the people

were living on boiled codfish; or how the heavens had got torn over

America, so that angels fell right on to somebody’s supper-tray. Things

which one knew at once for lies—and blasphemous nonsense, too, which

might at any time have got him into trouble. Rowing people was not in

the master’s line, he was ill the moment there was any unpleasantness;

but he had his own way of making himself respected. As he went on

reading some one would discover that he was getting a wigging, and

would give a jump, believing that all his failings were in the paper.

When the time drew near for leaving off work, a brisker note sounded in

the workshop. The long working-day was coming to an end, and the day’s

weariness and satiety were forgotten, and the mind looked

forward—filling with thoughts of the sand-hills or the woods, wandering

down a road that was bright with pleasure. Now and again a neighbor

would step in, and while away the time with his gossip; something or

other had happened, and Master Andres, who was so clever, must say what

he thought about it. Sounds that had been confused during the day now

entered the workshop, so that those within felt that they were

participating in the life of the town; it was as though the walls had

fallen.

About seven o’clock a peculiar sound was heard in the street without,

approaching in very slowly _tempo;_ there was a dull thump and then two

clacking sounds; and then came the thump again, like the tread of a

huge padded foot, and once more the clack-clack. This was old

Bjerregrav, swinging toward the workshop on his crutches; Bjerregrav,

who moved more slowly than anybody, and got forward more quickly. If

Master Andres happened to be in one of his bad humors, he would limp

away, in order not to remain in the same room with a cripple; at other

times he was glad to see Bjerregrav.

“Well, you are a rare bird, aren’t you?” he would cry, when Bjerregrav

reached the landing and swung himself sideways through the door; and

the old man would laugh—he had paid this visit daily now for many

years. The master took no further notice of him, but went on reading;

and Bjerregrav sank into his dumb pondering; his pale hands feeling one

thing after another, as though the most everyday objects were unknown

to him. He took hold of things just as a newborn child might have done;

one had to smile at him and leave him to sit there, grubbing about like

the child he really was. It was quite impossible to hold a continuous

conversation with him; for even if he did actually make an observation

it was sure to be quite beside the mark; Bjerregrav was given to

remarking attributes which no one else noticed, or which no one would

have dwelt upon.

When he sat thus, pondering over and fingering some perfectly familiar

object, people used to say, “Now Bjerregrav’s questioning fit is coming

on!” For Bjerregrav was an inquirer; he would ask questions about the

wind and the weather, and even the food that he ate. He would ask

questions about the most laughable subjects— things that were

self-evident to any one else—why a stone was hard, or why water

extinguished fire. People did not answer him, but shrugged their

shoulders compassionately. “He is quite all there,” they would say;

“his head’s all right. But he takes everything the wrong way round!”

The young master looked up from his book. “Now, shall I inherit

Bjerregrav’s money?” he asked mischievously.

“No—you’ve always been good to me; I don’t want to cause you any

misfortune.”

“Worse things than that might befall me, don’t you think?”

“No, for you’ve got a fair competence. No one has a right to more, so

long as the many suffer need.”

“Certain people have money in the bank themselves,” said Master Andres

allusively.

“No, that’s all over,” answered the old man cheerfully. “I’m now

exactly as rich as you.”

“The devil! Have you run through the lot?” The young master turned

round on his chair.

“You and your ‘run through it all’! You always sit over me like a judge

and accuse me of things! I’m not conscious of having done anything

wrong; but it’s true that the need gets worse every winter. It’s a

burden to have money, Andres, when men are hungry all about you; and if

you help them then you learn afterward that you’ve done the man injury;

they say it themselves, so it must be true. But now I’ve given the

money to the Charity Organization Society, so now it will go to the

right people.”

“Five thousand kroner!” said the master, musing. “Then there ought to

be great rejoicing among the poor this winter.”

“Well, they won’t get it direct in food and firing,” said Bjerregrav,

“but it will come to them just as well in other ways. For when I’d made

my offer to the Society, Shipowner Monsen—you know him—came to me, and

begged me to lend him the money at one year. He would have gone

bankrupt if he hadn’t had it, and it was terrible to think of all the

poor people who would have gone without bread if that great business of

his had come to a standstill. Now the responsibility falls on me. But

the money is safe enough, and in that way it does the poor twice as

much good.”

Master Andres shook his head. “Suppose Bjerregrav has just sat himself

down in the nettles?”

“Why? But what else could I have done?” said the old man uneasily.

“The devil knows it won’t be long before he’s bankrupt. He’s a frothy

old rogue,” murmured the master. “Has Bjerregrav got a note of hand?”

The old man nodded; he was quite proud of himself.

“And interest? Five per cent.?”

“No, no interest. For money to stand out and receive interest—I don’t

like that. It has to suck the interest somewhere or other, and of

course it’s from the poor. Interest is blood-money, Andres —and it’s a

new-fangled contrivance, too. When I was young we knew nothing about

getting interest on our money.”

“Yes, yes:

‘Who gives to other folks his bread

And after suffers in their stead,

Why club him, club him, club him dead!’”

said the master, and went on reading.

Bjerregrav sat there sunk in his own thoughts. Suddenly he looked up.

“Can you, who are so well read, tell me what keeps the moon from

falling? I lay overnight puzzling over it, so as I couldn’t sleep. She

wanders and wanders through the sky, and you can see plainly there’s

nothing but air under her.”

“The devil may know,” said Master Andres thoughtfully. “She must have

strength of her own, so that she holds herself up.”

“I’ve thought that myself—for obligation isn’t enough. Now we can do

that—we walk and walk where we are put down, but then we’ve the earth

under us to support us. And you are always studying, aren’t you? I

suppose you have read nearly all the books in the world?” Bjerregrav

took the master’s book and felt it thoroughly. “That’s a good book,” he

said, striking his knuckles against the cover and holding the book to

his ear; “good material, that. Is it a lying story or a history book?”

“It’s a travel book. They go up to the North Pole, and they get frozen

in, and they don’t know if they’ll ever get home alive again.”

“But that’s terrible—that people should risk their lives so. I’ve often

thought about that—what it’s like at the end of the world—but to go and

find out—no, I should never have had the courage. Never to get home

again!” Bjerregrav, with an afflicted expression, looked first at one,

then at another.

“And they get frost-bite in their feet—and their toes have to be

amputated—in some cases, the whole foot.”

“No, be quiet! So they lose their health, poor fellows!—I don’t want to

hear any more!” The old man sat rocking himself to and fro, as though

he felt unwell. But a few moments later he asked inquisitively: “Did

the king send them up there to make war?”

“No; they went to look for the Garden of Eden. One of the people who

investigate writings has discovered that it is said to lie behind the

ice,” declared the master solemnly.

“The Garden of Eden—or they call it Paradise, too—but that lies where

the two rivers fall into a third, in the East! That is quite plainly

written. Consequently what you read there is false teaching.”

“It’s at the North Pole, God’s truth it is!” said the master, who was

inclined to be a free-thinker; “God’s truth, I tell you! The other’s

just a silly superstition.”

Bjerregrav maintained an angry silence. He sat for some time bending

low in his chair, his eyes roaming anywhere so that they did not meet

another’s. “Yes, yes,” he said, in a low voice; “everybody thinks

something new in order to make himself remarkable, but no one can alter

the grave.”

Master Andres wriggled impatiently to and fro; he could change his mood

like a woman. Bjerregrav’s presence began to distress him. “Now, I’ve

learned to conjure up spirits; will Bjerregrav make the experiment?” he

said suddenly.

“No, not at any price!” said the old man, smiling uneasily.

But the master pointed, with two fingers, at his blinking eyes, and

gazed at him, while he uttered the conjuration.

“In the name of the Blood, in the name of the Sap, in the name of all

the Humors of the Body, the good and the bad alike, and in the name of

the Ocean,” he murmured, crouching like a tom-cat.

“Stop it, I tell you! Stop it! I won’t have it!” Bjerregrav was hanging

helplessly between his crutches, swinging to and fro, with an eye to

the door, but he could not wrest himself away from the enchantment.

Then, desperately, he struck down the master’s conjuring hand, and

profited by the interruption of the incantation to slip away.

The master sat there blowing upon his hand. “He struck out properly,”

he said, in surprise, turning his reddened hand with the palm inward.

Little Nikas did not respond. He was not superstitious, but he did not

like to hear ridicule cast upon the reality of things.

“What shall I do?” asked Peter.

“Are mate Jensen’s boots ready?” The master looked at the clock. “Then

you can nibble your shin-bones.”

It was time to stop work. The master took his stick and hat and limped

over to the beer-house to play a game of billiards; the journeyman

dressed and went out; the older apprentices washed their necks in the

soaking-tub. Presently they too would go out and have a proper time of

it.

Pelle gazed after them. He too experienced a desperate need to shake

off the oppressive day, and to escape out of doors, but his stockings

were nothing but holes, and his working-blouse had to be washed so that

it should be dry by the following morning. Yes, and his shirt—and he

blushed up to his ears—was it a fortnight he had worn it, or was this

the fourth week? The time had slipped past so…. He had meant to defer

the disagreeable business of washing only for a few days—and now it had

mounted up to fourteen! His body had a horrible crawling feeling; was

his punishment come upon him because he had turned a deaf ear to the

voice of conscience, and had ignored Father Lasse’s warning, that

disgrace awaited those who did not keep themselves clean?

No, thank God! But Pelle had received a thorough fright, and his ears

were still burning as he scrubbed his shirt and blouse downstairs in

the yard. It would be well to take it as a timely warning from on high!

And then blouse and shirt were hanging on the fence, spreading

themselves abroad as though they wanted to hug the heavens for joy in

their cleanliness. But Pelle sat dejectedly upstairs, at the window of

the apprentices’ garret, one leg outside, so that part of him at least

was in the open air. The skillful darning which his father had taught

him was not put into practice here; the holes were simply cobbled

together, so that Father Lasse would have sunk into the earth for

shame. Gradually he crept right out on to the roof; below, in the

skipper’s garden, the three girls were wandering idly, looking over

toward the workshop, and evidently feeling bored.

Then they caught sight of him, and at once became different beings.

Manna came toward him, thrust her body impatiently against the stone

wall, and motioned to him with her lips. She threw her head back

imperiously, and stamped with her feet—but without making a sound. The

other two were bent double with suppressed laughter.

Pelle understood perfectly what this silent speech intended, but for a

time he courageously stood his ground. At last, however, he could

endure it no longer; he threw everything aside and next moment was with

the girls.

All Pelle’s dreams and unuttered longings hovered over those places

where men disported themselves. To him nothing was more ridiculous than

to run after petticoats. Women, for Pelle, were really rather

contemptible; they had no strength, and very little intelligence;

indeed, they understood nothing but the art of making themselves

ornamental. But Manna and her sisters were something apart; he was

still enough of a child to play, and they were excellent playmates.

Manna—the wild cat—was afraid of nothing; with her short skirts and her

pigtail and her skipping movements she reminded him of a frolicsome,

inquisitive young bird—Skip! out of the thicket and back again! She

could climb like a boy, and could carry Pelle all round the garden on

her back; it was really an oversight that she should have to wear

skirts. Her clothes wouldn’t keep on her, and she was always tumbling

into the workshop, having torn something or other off her shoes. Then

she would turn everything upside down, take the master’s stick away, so

that he could not move, and would even get her fingers among the

journeyman’s American tools.

She was on good terms with Pelle the very first day.

“Whose new boy are you?” she asked him, smacking him on the back. And

Pelle laughed, and returned her look frankly, with that immediate

comprehension which is the secret of our early years. There was no

trace of embarrassment between them; they had always known one another,

and could at any time resume their play just where they had left off.

In the evening Pelle used to station himself by the garden wall and

wait for her; then in a moment he was over and in the middle of some

game.

Manna was no ordinary cry-baby; not one who seeks to escape the

consequences of her action by a display of tears. If she let herself in

for a scuffle, she never sued for mercy, however hardly it went with

her. But Pelle was to a certain extent restrained by the fact of her

petticoats. And she, on one occasion, did not deny that she wished she

could only be a little stronger!

But she had courage, and Pelle, like a good comrade, gave as good as he

got, except in the workshop, where she bullied him. If she assailed him

from behind, dropping something down his neck or pushing him off his

wooden stool, he restrained himself, and was merely thankful that his

bones were still unbroken.

All his best hours were spent in the skipper’s garden, and this garden

was a wonderful place, which might well hold his senses captive. The

girls had strange outlandish names, which their father had brought home

with him on his long voyages: Aina, Dolores, and Sjermanna! They wore

heavy beads of red coral round their necks and in their ears. And about

the garden lay gigantic conch-shells, in which one could hear the

surging of the ocean, and tortoise-shells as big as a fifteen-pound

loaf, and whole great lumps of coral.

All these things were new to Pelle, but he would not allow them to

confound him; he enrolled them as quickly as possible among the things

that were matters of course, and reserved himself the right to

encounter, at any moment, something finer and more remarkable.

But on some evenings he would disappoint the girls, and would stroll

about the town where he could see real life—or go down to the dunes or

the harbor. Then they would stand dejectedly at the garden wall, bored

and quarrelsome. But on Sundays, as soon as he had finished in the

workshop, he would faithfully appear, and they would spin out their

games, conscious of a long day in front of them. They played games

innumerable, and Pelle was the center of them all; he could turn

himself to anything; he became everything in turn—lawful husband,

cannibal, or slave. He was like a tame bear in their hands; they would

ride on him, trample all over him, and at times they would all three

fall upon him and “murder” him. And he had to lie still, and allow them

to bury his body and conceal all traces of it. The reality of the

affair was enhanced by the fact that he was really covered with

earth—all but his face, which was left bare only from necessity—they

contented themselves with covering that with withered leaves. When he

cried afterward over the state of his fine confirmation clothes, they

brushed him with solicitous hands, and when he could scarcely be

comforted they all three kissed him. With them he was always referred

to as “Manna’s husband.”

So Pelle’s days went by. He had a certain grim humor rather than a

cheerful mind; he felt gloomy, and as though things were going badly

with him; and he had no one to lean upon. But he continued his campaign

against the town, undaunted; he thought of it night and day, and fought

it in his sleep.

“If you’re ever in a difficulty, you’ve always Alfred and Albinus to

help you out,” Uncle Kalle had said, when Pelle was bidding him

good-bye; and he did not fail to look them up. But the twins were

to-day the same slippery, evasive customers as they were among the

pastures; they ventured their skins neither for themselves nor for

anybody else.

In other respects they had considerably improved. They had come hither

from the country in order to better their positions, and to that end

had accepted situations which would serve them until they had saved

sufficient to allow them to commence a more distinguished career.

Albinus had advanced no further, as he had no inclination to any

handicraft. He was a good-tempered youth, who was willing to give up

everything else if only he could practise his acrobatic feats. He

always went about balancing something or other, taking pains to put all

sorts of objects to the most impossible uses. He had no respect for the

order of nature; he would twist his limbs into all imaginable

positions, and if he threw anything into the air he expected it to stay

there while he did something else. “Things must be broken in as well as

animals,” he would say, and persevere indefatigably. Pelle laughed; he

liked him, but he did not count on him any further.

Alfred had struck out in quite another direction. He no longer indulged

in hand-springs, but walked decorously on his legs, had always much ado

to pull down and straighten his collar and cuffs, and was in continual

anxiety as to his clothes. He was now apprentice to a painter, but had

a parting in his hair like a counter-jumper, and bought all sorts of

things at the chemist’s, which he smeared on his hair. If Pelle ran

across him in the street, Alfred always made some excuse to shake him

off; he preferred to associate with tradesmen’s apprentices, and was

continually greeting acquaintances right and left—people who were in a

better position than himself. Alfred put on airs of importance which

made Pelle long one fine day to cudgel him soundly.

The twins resembled one another in this—no one need look to them for

assistance of any kind. They laughed comfortably at the very idea, and

if any one made fun of Pelle they joined in the laughter.

It was not easy to get on. He had quite shaken off the farm-boy; it was

his poverty that gave him trouble now. He had recklessly bound himself

as apprentice for board and lodging; he had a few clothes on his body,

and he had not thought other requisites necessary for one who did not

stroll up and down and gad about with girls. But the town demanded that

he should rig himself out. Sunday clothes were here not a bit too good

for weekdays. He ought to see about getting himself a rubber

collar—which had the advantage that one could wash it oneself; cuffs he

regarded as a further desideratum. But that needed money, and the

mighty sum of five kroner, with which he had set out to conquer the

world, or, at the worst, to buy it—well, the town had enticed it out of

his pocket before he was aware of it.

Hitherto Father Lasse had taken all very difficult matters upon

himself; but now Pelle stood alone, and had only himself to rely on.

Now he stood face to face with life, and he struggled courageously

forward, like the excellent boy he was. But at times he broke down. And

this struggle was a drag upon all his boyish doings and strivings.

In the workshop he made himself useful and tried to stand well with

everybody. He won over little Nikas by drawing a somewhat extravagant

representation of his betrothed from a photograph. The face would not

come out quite right; it looked as though some one had trodden on it;

but the clothes and the brooch at the throat were capital. The picture

hung for a week in the workshop, and brought Pelle a wonderful piece of

luck: Carlsen, who ran errands for the stone-workers, ordered two large

pictures, one of himself and one of his wife, at the rate of

twenty-five öre apiece. “But you must show a few curls in my hair,” he

said, “for my mother’s always wished I had curls.”

Pelle could not promise the pictures in less than two months’ time; it

was tedious work if they were to be accurate.

“Well, well; we can’t spare the money sooner. This month there’s the

lottery, and next month the rent to pay.” Pelle could very well

appreciate that, for Carlsen earned eight kroner a week and had nine

children. But he felt that he could not well reduce the price. Truly,

people weren’t rolling in money here! And when for once he actually had

a shilling in hand, then it was sure to take to its heels under his

very nose, directly he began to rack his brains to decide how it could

most usefully be applied: on one such occasion, for example, he had

seen, in a huckster’s window, a pipe in the form of a boot-leg, which

was quite irresistible.

When the three girls called to him over the garden wall his childhood

found companionship, and he forgot his cares and struggles. He was

rather shy of anybody seeing him when he slipped across; he felt that

his intercourse with the children was not to his credit; moreover, they

were only “petticoats.” But he felt that he was lucky to be there,

where there were curious things which were useful to play with—Chinese

cups and saucers, and weapons from the South Sea Islands. Manna had a

necklace of white teeth, sharp and irregular, strung together in a

haphazard way, which she maintained were human teeth, and she had the

courage to wear them round her bare neck. And the garden was full of

wonderful plants; there were maize, and tobacco, and all sorts of other

plants, which were said, in some parts of the world, to grow as thick

as corn does at home.

They were finer of skin than other folk, and they were fragrant of the

strange places of the world. And he played with them, and they regarded

him with wonder and mended his clothes when he tore them; they made him

the center of all their games—even when he was not present. There was a

secret satisfaction in this—although he accepted it as a matter of

course, it was a portion of all that fate and good fortune had reserved

for him, a slight advance payment from the infinite fairy-tale of life.

He longed to rule over them absolutely, and if they were obstinate he

lectured them angrily, so that they suddenly gave in to him. He knew

well enough that every proper man makes his wife behave submissively.

So passed the early summer; time was moving onward. The townsfolk had

already, at Whitsuntide, provided themselves with what they needed for

the summer, and out in the country people had other things to think

about than trapesing into town with work for the artisans; the coming

harvest occupied all their thoughts. Even in the poorest quarters,

where no work was done for the peasants, one realized how utterly

dependent the little town was upon the country. It was as though the

town had in a moment forgotten its superiority; the manual workers no

longer looked down on the peasants; they looked longingly toward the

fields, spoke of the weather and the prospects of harvest, and had

forgotten all their urban interests. If by exception a farmer’s cart

came through the streets, people ran to the window to look after it.

And as the harvest stood almost at their doors, it seemed as though old

memories were calling to them, and they raised their heads to listen;

those who could gave up their town life and went into the country to

help in the work of harvest. Both the journeyman and the two

apprentices had left the workshop; Jens and Pelle could comfortably

manage the work.

Pelle saw nothing of this stagnant mood; he was occupied on all sides

in keeping a whole skin and getting the utmost out of life; there were

thousands of impressions of good and evil which had to be assimilated,

and which made a balanced whole—that remarkable thing, the town, of

which Pelle never knew whether he felt inclined to bless it or curse

it,—or it always held him in suspense.

And amidst all his activities, Lasse’s face rose up before him and made

him feel lonely in the midst of the bustle. Wherever could Father Lasse

be? Would he ever hear of him again? Every day he had expected, in

reliance on Karna’s word, to see him blundering in at the door, and

when anybody fumbled at the door-knocker he felt quite certain it was

Lasse. It became a silent grief in the boy’s mind, a note that sounded

through all that he undertook.

V

One Sunday evening, as Pelle was running down East Street, a cart

loaded with household goods came jolting in from the country. Pelle was

in a great hurry, but was obliged to look at it. The driver sat in

front, below the load, almost between the horses; he was tall and had

ruddy cheeks, and was monstrously wrapped up, in spite of the heat.

“Hallo!” Why, it was the worthy Due, Kalle’s son-in-law; and above him,

in the midst of all the lumber, sat Anna and the children, swaying to

and fro with the motion of the cart. “Hullo!” Pelle waved his cap, and

with one spring he had his foot on the shaft and was sitting next to

Due, who was laughing all over his face at the encounter.

“Yes, we’ve had enough of the farming country, and now we’ve come to

see if things aren’t better here in town,” said Due, in his quiet

manner. “And here you are, running about just like you did at home!”

There was amazement in his voice.

Anna came crawling over the load, and smiled down upon him.

“Have you news of Father Lasse?” Pelle asked her. This was always his

question when he met an acquaintance.

“Yes, that we have—he’s just going to buy a farm up on the heath. Now,

you devil, are you goin’ to behave?” Anna crawled backward, and a child

began to cry. Then she reappeared. “Yes, and we were to remember father

to you, and mother, and all the rest.”

But Pelle had no thoughts to spare for Uncle Kalle.

“Is it up by Stone Farm?” he asked.

“No—farther to the east, by the Witch’s Cell,” said Due. “It is a big

piece of land, but it’s not much more than stone. So long as he doesn’t

ruin himself over it—two have gone smash there before him. He’s

arranged it together with Karna.”

“Uncle Lasse will know what he’s about,” said Anna. “Karna has found

the money for it; she has something saved.”

Pelle couldn’t sit still; his heart leaped in his body at this news. No

more uncertainty—no more horrible possibilities: he had his father once

more! And the dream of Lasse’s life was about to be fulfilled: he could

now put his feet under his own table. He had become a landowner into

the bargain, if one didn’t use the term too precisely; and Pelle

himself—why, he was a landowner’s son!

By nine o’clock in the evening he had finished everything, and was able

to get off; his blood was pulsing with excitement…. Would there be

horses? Why, of course; but would there be laborers, too? Had Father

Lasse become one of those farmers who pay wages on a quarter-day, and

come into town on a Sunday afternoon, their fur-lined collars up to

their ears? Pelle could see the men quite plainly going up the stairs,

one after another, taking off their wooden shoes and knocking on the

door of the office—yes, they wanted to see about an advance on their

wages. And Lasse scratched the back of his head, looked at them

thoughtfully, and said: “Not on any account, you’d only waste it on

drink.” But he gave it to them finally, for all that. “One is much too

good-natured,” he said to Pelle….

For Pelle had bidden farewell to cobbling, and was living at home as a

landowner’s son. Really, Pelle managed the whole business—only it

wouldn’t do to say so. And at the Christmas feast he danced with the

buxom farmer’s daughters. There was whispering in the corners when

Pelle made his appearance; but he went straight across the room and

invited the Pastor’s daughter to a dance, so that she lost her breath,

and more besides, and begged him on the spot to marry her….

He hurried onward, still dreaming; longing drew him onward, and before

he knew it he had travelled some miles along the high-road. The road he

now turned into led him by pine woods and heath-covered hills; the

houses he passed were poorer, and the distance from one to another was

increasing.

Pelle took a turning a little farther on, which, to the best of his

knowledge, led in the required direction, and hurried forward with

awakened senses. The landscape was only half revealed by the summer

night, but it was all as familiar as the mends in the back of Father

Lasse’s waistcoat, although he had never been here before. The

poverty-stricken landscape spoke to him as with a mother’s voice. Among

these clay-daubed huts, the homes of poor cultivators who waged war

upon the rocky ground surrounding their handful of soil, he felt safe

as he had never felt before. All this had been his through many

generations, down to the rags thrust into the broken window-panes and

the lumber piled upon the thatch to secure it. Here was nothing for any

one to rack his brains over, as elsewhere in the world; here a man

could lie down at peace and rest. Yet it was not for him to till the

ground and to dwell amid all these things. For he had outgrown them, as

he had outgrown the shelter of his mother’s skirts.

The lane gradually became a deep cart-track, which meandered between

rocks and moorland. Pelle knew that he ought to keep to the east, but

the track went now to the south, now to the north. He soon had enough

of it, noted his direction exactly, and struck off obliquely. But it

was difficult to make his way; the moonlight deceived his eyes so that

he stumbled and sank into hollows, while the heather and the juniper

reached as high as his waist, and hampered every movement. And then he

turned obstinate, and would not turn back to the cart-track, but

labored forward, so that he was soon steaming with heat; clambering

over slanting ridges of rock, which were slippery with the dewfall on

the moss, and letting himself tumble at hazard over the ledges. A

little too late he felt a depth below him; it was as though a cold wave

washed through his heart, and he clutched wildly at the air for some

support. “Father Lasse!” he cried woefully; and at the same moment he

was caught by brambles, and sank slowly down through their interwoven

runners, which struck their myriad claws into him and reluctantly let

him pass, until he was cautiously deposited, deep down among the sharp

stones at the bottom of a ravine, shuddering and thanking his stars for

all the thorns that had mercifully flayed his hide in order that he

should not split his skull. Then he must needs grope forward, through

the darkness and running water, until he found a tree and was able to

climb to the surface.

Now he had lost his bearings, and when that became clear he lost his

head as well. Nothing was left of the confident Pelle of a while ago;

he ran blindly forward, in order to reach the summit of the hill. And

as he was hastening upward, so that he might take note of the crags

that lay about him, the ground rose and closed above him with a

frightful clamor, and the air turned black and full of noises, and he

could not see his hand before his eyes. It was like a stupendous

explosion—as though released by his cheerful stamping over the rocks,

the earth was hurled into the sky and dissolved in darkness, and the

darkness itself cried aloud with terror and eddied round him. His heart

pounded in his breast and robbed him of his last remnant of

understanding; he jumped for sheer unbridled terror and bellowed like a

maniac. The black mass drove over his head, so that he was forced to

duck, and gleaming rifts showed and disappeared; and the darkness

surged like the ocean and cried continually aloud with a hellish chaos

of sounds. Then it suddenly swung to one side, drifted northward, and

descended. And Pelle understood that he had stumbled upon a rookery.

He found himself behind a great rock. How he got there he did not know;

but he knew that he was a terrible duffer. How easily he could have

brought confusion on the fifty-odd crows by tossing a few stones into

the air!

He went along the slope, very valiant in his resolve, but with shaking

knees. In the far distance a fox sat upon a cliff and howled insanely

at the moon, and far to the north and the south lay a transient glimmer

of sea. Up here subterranean creatures had their home; when one trod

upon the rock it sounded hollow.

In the southern opening the sea lay silver in the moonlight, but as

Pelle looked again it disappeared, and the low-lying plain was drowned

in white. In every direction the land was disappearing; Pelle watched

in amazement while the sea slowly rose and filled every hollow. Then it

closed above the lesser hills; one by one it swallowed them, and then

it took the long ridge of hills to the east, until only the crests of

the pine-trees lifted themselves above it; but Pelle did not as yet

give himself up for lost; for behind all his anxiety lay a confused

conception of Mount Ararat, which kept up his courage. But then it

became so dreadfully cold that Pelle’s breeches seemed to stick to his

body. “That’s the water,” he thought, and he looked round in alarm; the

rock had become a little island, and he and it were floating on the

ocean.

Pelle was a sturdy little realist, who had already had all manner of

experiences. But now the fear had at last curdled his blood, and he

accepted the supernatural without a protest. The world had evidently

perished, and he himself was drifting—drifting out into space, and

space was terribly cold. Father Lasse, and the workshop, Manna and the

young master’s shining eyes—here was an end of them all. He did not

mourn them; he simply felt terribly lonely. What would be the end of it

all—or was this perhaps death? Had he perhaps fallen dead a little

while ago, when he tumbled over the precipice? And was he now voyaging

toward the land of the blessed? Or was this the end of the world

itself, of which he had heard such dreadful things said, as far back as

he could remember? Perhaps he was adrift on the last scrap of earth,

and was the only person still living? It did not in the least surprise

Pelle that he should be left where everybody else had perished; in this

moment of despair he found it quite natural.

He stood breathlessly silent and listened to the infinite; and he heard

the cudgel-like blows of his pulses. Still he listened, and now he

heard something more: far away in the night that surged against his

ears he heard the suggestion of a sound, the vibrating note of some

living creature. Infinitely remote and faint though it was, yet Pelle

was so aware of it that it thrilled him all through. It was a cow

feeding on the chain; he could follow the sound of her neck scrubbing

up and down against the post.

He ran down over the craggy declivity, fell, and was again on his feet

and running forward; the mist had swallowed him unawares. Then he was

down on arable that had once been woodland; then he trod on something

that felt familiar as it brushed against his feet—it was land that had

once been ploughed but had now been recaptured by the heath. The sound

grew louder, and changed to all those familiar sounds that one hears at

night coming from an open cowshed; and now a decayed farmhouse showed

through the mist. This could not of course be the farm Pelle was

looking for—Father Lasse had a proper farmhouse with four wings! But he

went forward.

Out in the country people do not lock everything up as carefully as

they do in town; so Pelle could walk right in. Directly he opened the

door of the sitting-room he was filled with an uplifting joy. The most

comfortable odor he had ever known struck upon his senses —the

foundation of everything fragrant—the scent of Father Lasse! It was

dark in the room, and the light of the night without could not make its

way through the low window. He heard the deep breathing of persons

asleep, and knew that they had not awakened—the night was not nearly

over yet. “Good-evening!” he said.

A hand began to grope for the matches.

“Is any one there?” said a drowsy woman’s voice.

“Good-evening!” he cried again, and went forward into the room. “It’s

Pelle!” He brought out the name in a singsong voice.

“So it’s you, boy!” Lasse’s voice quavered, and the hands could not

manage the matches; but Pelle stepped toward the voice and clasped his

wrist. “And how did you find your way here in the wilderness— and at

night, too? Yes, yes, I’ll get up!” he continued, and he tried, with a

groan, to sit up.

“No, you stop there and let me get up,” said Karna, who lay against the

wall—she had kept silence while the men-folk were speaking. “He gets

this lumbago, I can tell you!” she declared, jumping out of bed.

“Ay, I’ve been at it a bit too hard. Work comes easy when a man’s his

own master—it’s difficult to leave off. But it’ll be all right when

once I’ve got things properly going. Work’s a good embrocation for the

lumbago. And how goes it with you then? I was near believing you must

be dead!”

So Pelle had to sit on the edge of the bed and tell about everything in

town—about the workshop, and the young master’s lame leg, and

everything. But he said nothing of the disagreeable things; it was not

for men to dwell upon such things.

“Then you’ve been getting on well in foreign parts!” said Lasse,

delighted. “And do they think well of you?”

“Yes!” This came a trifle slowly. In the first place, respect was just

particularly what he had not won—but why trumpet forth his miseries?

“The young master must like me—he often chats with me, even over the

journeyman’s head.”

“Now, think of that! I have often wondered, I can tell you, how you

were getting on, and whether we shouldn’t soon have good news of you.

But everything takes time, that we know. And as you see, I’m in a very

different position.”

“Yes, you’ve become a landowner!” said Pelle, smiling.

“The deuce, yes, so I am!” Lasse laughed, too, but then he groaned

piteously with the pain in his back. “In the daytime, when I’m working

hard, I get along well enough, but as soon as I lie down, then it comes

on directly. And it’s the devil of a pain—as though the wheels of a

heavy loaded wagon were going to and fro across your back, whatever

name you like to give it. Well, well! It’s a fine thing, all the same,

to be your own master! It’s funny how it takes me—but dry bread tastes

better to me at my own table than—yes, by God, I can tell you, it

tastes better than cake at any other body’s table! And then to be all

alone on your own bit of land, and to be able to spit wherever you like

to spit, without asking anybody’s leave! And the soil isn’t so bad;

even if most of it has never been under cultivation, it has all been

lying there storing up its power to produce since the beginning of the

world. But about the people in the town—are they agreeable?”

Oh, Pelle had nothing to complain about. “But when were you married?”

he asked suddenly.

“Well, you see,” and Lasse began to stumble over his own words,

although he had been prepared for the boy to ask this very question;

“in a way we aren’t exactly married. That takes money, and the work

here is getting forward…. But it’s our intention, I needn’t say, as

soon as we have time and money.” It was honestly Lasse’s opinion that

one could just as well dispense with the ceremony; at least until

children came, and demanded an honorable birth. But he could see that

Pelle did not relish the idea; he was still the same pedantic little

chap the moment a point of honor was in question. “As soon as we’ve got

the harvest under shelter we’ll invite people to a grand feast,” he

said resolutely.

Pelle nodded eagerly. Now he was a landowner’s son, and he could make

the shabby-genteel boys of the town envious of him. But they mustn’t be

able to throw it in his face that his father was “living with a woman!”

Now Karna came in with some food. She looked at the boy with much

affection. “Now, fall to, and don’t despise our poor table, my son,”

she said, and gave his arm a friendly pat. Pelle fell to with a good

appetite. Lasse hung half out of the alcove, delighted.

“You haven’t lost your appetite down there,” he said. “Do you get

anything decent to eat? Karna thought the food wasn’t any too good.”

“It’s passable!” said Pelle obstinately. He repented of having betrayed

himself to Karna that evening, when he was so depressed.

The desire to eat awoke in Lasse, so that little by little he crept out

of the alcove. “You are sitting alone there,” he said, and sat down at

the table in his nightcap and pants. He was wearing a knitted nightcap,

one end of which fell loosely over his ear. He looked like a genuine

old farmer, one that had money in his mattress. And Karna, who was

moving to and fro while the menfolk ate, had a round, comfortable

figure, and was carrying a big bread-knife in her hand. She inspired

confidence, and she too looked a regular farmer’s wife.

A place was found for Pelle on the bed. He extinguished the tallow dip

before he undressed, and thrust his underclothing under the pillow.

He woke late; the sun had already left the eastern heavens. The most

delicious smell of coffee filled the room. Pelle started up hastily, in

order to dress himself before Karna could come in and espy his

condition; he felt under the pillow—and his shirt was no longer there!

And his stockings lay on a stool, and they had been darned!

When Karna came in he lay motionless, in obstinate silence; he did not

reply to her morning salutation, and kept his eyes turned toward the

alcove. She ought not to have gone rummaging among his things!

“I’ve taken your shirt and washed it,” she said serenely, “but you can

have it again this evening. After all, you can wear this until then.”

She laid one of Lasse’s shirts on the coverlet.

Pelle lay there for a time as though he had not heard Karna. Then he

sat up, feeling very cross and got into the shirt. “No, stay there

until you’ve drunk your coffee,” she said as he attempted to get up,

and she placed a stool by him. And so Pelle had his coffee in bed, as

he had dreamed it was to happen when Father Lasse remarried; and he

could not go on feeling angry. But he was still burning with shame, and

that made him taciturn.

During the morning Lasse and Pelle went out and inspected the property.

“It’ll be best if we go round it first; then you will see plainly where

the boundary lies,” said Lasse, who knew that the dimensions of the

place would be a surprise to Pelle. They wandered through heather and

brambles and thorns, striking across the moorland and skirting

precipitous slopes. It was several hours before they had finished their

round.

“It’s an awfully large holding,” Pelle said again and again.

And Lasse answered proudly. “Yes, there’s nearly seventy acres here—if

only it were all tilled!”

It was virgin soil, but it was overrun with heather and juniper- scrub,

through which brambles and honeysuckle twined their way. Halfway up a

perpendicular wall of rock hung the ash and the wild cherry, gripping

the bare cliff with roots that looked like crippled hands. Crab-apple

trees, sloe-bushes and wild rose-briars made an impenetrable jungle,

which already bore traces of Lasse’s exertions. And in the midst of

this luxuriant growth the rocky subsoil protruded its grim features, or

came so near the surface that the sun had scorched the roots of the

herbage.

“That’s a proper little Paradise,” said Lasse; “you can scarcely set

foot in it without treading on the berries. But it’s got to be turned

into arable if one is to live here.”

“Isn’t the soil rather middling?” said Pelle.

“Middling—when all that can grow and flourish there?” Lasse pointed to

where birch and aspen stood waving their shining foliage to and fro in

the breeze. “No, but it’ll be a damned rough bit of work to get it

ready for ploughing; I’m sorry now that you aren’t at home.”

Lasse had several times made this allusion, but Pelle was deaf to it.

All this was not what he had imagined; he felt no desire to play the

landowner’s son at home in the way Lasse had in mind.

“It’ll be trouble enough here to manage about your daily bread,” he

said, with remarkable precocity.

“Oh, it won’t be so difficult to earn our daily bread, even if we can’t

hold a feast every day,” said Lasse, affronted. “And here at any rate a

man can straighten his back without having a bailiff come yapping round

him. Even if I were to work myself to death here, at least I’ve done

with slavery. And you must not forget the pleasure of seeing the soil

coming under one’s hands, day after day, and yielding something instead

of lying there useless. That is indeed the finest task a man can

perform—to till the earth and make it fruitful—I can think of none

better! But you—have you lost the farmer’s instinct in town?”

Pelle did not reply. Although there might be something fine and

splendid in working oneself to death over a bit of land, just so that

something different might grow there, he himself was glad that he did

not possess this farmer’s instinct.

“My father, and his father, and all of our family I have ever known,

we’ve all had something in us so that we’ve been driven to improve the

soil, without thinking of our own comfort. But it certainly never

entered the mind of one of us that we should ever hear it ill spoken

of—and by one of our own people too!” Lasse spoke with his face turned

away—as did the Almighty when He was wroth with His people; and Pelle

felt as though he were a hateful renegade, as bad as bad could be. But

nevertheless he would not give in.

“I should be no use at all here,” he said apologetically, gazing in the

direction of the sea. “I don’t believe in it.”

“No, you’ve cut yourself loose from it all, you have!” retorted Lasse

bitterly. “But you’ll repent it some day, in the long run. Life among

the strangers there isn’t all splendor and enjoyment.”

Pelle did not answer; he felt at that moment too much of a man to bandy

words. He contained himself, and they went onward in silence.

“Well, of course, it isn’t an estate,” said Lasse suddenly, in order to

take the sting out of further criticism. Pelle was still silent.

Round the house the land was cultivated, and all round the cultivated

land the luxuriant heather revealed disappearing traces of cultivation,

and obliterated furrows.

“This was a cornfield once,” said Pelle.

“Well, to think of your seeing that right off!” exclaimed Lasse, half

sarcastically, half in real admiration. “The deuce of an eye you’ve

got, you truly have! I should certainly have noticed nothing particular

about the heath—if I had not known. Yes, that has been under

cultivation, but the heath has won it back again! That was under my

predecessor, who took in more than he could work, so that it ruined

him. But you can see now that something can be done with the land!”

Lasse pointed to a patch of rye, and Pelle was obliged to recognize

that it looked very well. But through the whole length of the field ran

high ridges of broken stone, which told him what a terrible labor this

soil demanded before it could be brought under cultivation. Beyond the

rye lay newly-broken soil, which looked like a dammed-up ice-field; the

plough had been driven through mere patches of soil. Pelle looked at it

all, and it made him sad to think of his father.

Lasse himself was undismayed.

“As it is, it needs two to hold the plough. Karna is very strong, but

even so it’s as though one’s arms would be torn from one’s body every

time the plough strikes. And most of it has to be broken up with pick

and drill—and now and again it takes a bit of a sneeze. I use dynamite;

it’s more powerful than powder, and it bites down into the ground

better,” he said proudly.

“How much is under cultivation here?” asked Pelle.

“With meadow and garden, almost fourteen acres; but it will be more

before the year is out.”

“And two families have been ruined already by those fourteen acres,”

said Karna, who had come out to call them in to dinner.

“Yes, yes; God be merciful to them—and now we get the fruit of their

labors! The parish won’t take the farm away again—not from us,” he

said. Lasse spoke in a tone full of self-reliance. Pelle had never seen

him stand so upright.

“I can never feel quite easy about it,” said Karna; “it’s as though one

were ploughing up churchyard soil. The first who was turned out by the

parish hanged himself, so they say.”

“Yes, he had a hut on the heath there—where you see the elder-trees

—but it’s fallen to pieces since then. I’m so glad it didn’t happen in

the house.” Lasse shuddered uncomfortably. “People say he haunts the

place when any misfortune is in store for those that come after him.”

“Then the house was built later?” asked Pelle, astonished, for it had

such a tumble-down appearance.

“Yes, my predecessor built that. He got the land from the parish free

for twenty years, provided he built a house and tilled a tonde of land

a year. Those were not such bad conditions. Only he took in too much at

a time; he was one of those people who rake away fiercely all the

morning and have tired themselves out before midday. But he built the

house well”—and Lasse kicked the thin mud-daubed wall—“and the

timber-work is good. I think I shall break a lot of stone when the

winter comes; the stone must be got out of the way, and it isn’t so bad

to earn a few hundred kroner. And in two or three years we will make

the old house into a barn and build ourselves a new house—eh, Karna?

With a cellar underneath and high steps outside, like they have at

Stone Farm. It could be of unhewn granite, and I can manage the walls

myself.”

Karna beamed with joy, but Pelle could not enter into their mood. He

was disillusioned; the descent from his dream to this naked reality was

too great. And a feeling rose within him of dull resentment against

this endless labor, which, inexperienced though he was, was yet part of

his very being by virtue of the lives of ten, nay, twenty generations.

He himself had not waged the hard-fought war against the soil, but he

had as a matter of course understood everything that had to do with

tilling the soil ever since he could crawl, and his hands had an inborn

aptitude for spade and rake and plough. But he had not inherited his

father’s joy in the soil; his thoughts had struck out in a new

direction. Yet this endless bondage to the soil lay rooted in him, like

a hatred, which gave him a survey unknown to his father. He was

reasonable; he did not lose his head at the sight of seventy acres of

land, but asked what they contained. He himself was not aware of it,

but his whole being was quick with hostility toward the idea of

spending one’s strength in this useless labor; and his point of view

was as experienced as though he had been Lasse’s father.

“Wouldn’t you have done better to buy a cottage-holding with twelve or

fourteen acres of land, and that in a good state of cultivation?” he

asked.

Lasse turned on him impatiently. “Yes, and then a man might stint and

save all his life, and never get beyond cutting off his fly to mend his

seat; he’d most likely spend twice what he made! What the deuce! I

might as well have stayed where I was. Here, it’s true, I do work

harder and I have to use my brains more, but then there’s a future

before me. When I’ve once got the place under cultivation this will be

a farm to hold its own with any of them!” Lasse gazed proudly over his

holding; in his mind’s eye it was waving with grain and full of prime

cattle.

“It would carry six horses and a score or two of cows easily,” he said

aloud. “That would bring in a nice income! What do you think, Karna?”

“I think the dinner will be cold,” said Karna, laughing. She was

perfectly happy.

At dinner Lasse proposed that Pelle should send his clothes to be

washed and mended at home. “You’ve certainly got enough to do without

that,” he said indulgently. “Butcher Jensen goes to market every

Saturday; he’d take it for you and put it down by the church, and it

would be odd if on a Sunday no one from the heath went to church, who

could bring the bundle back to us.”

But Pelle suddenly turned stubborn and made no reply.

“I just thought it would be too much for you to wash and mend for

yourself,” said Lasse patiently. “In town one must have other things to

think about, and then it isn’t really proper work for a man!”

“I’ll do it myself all right,” murmured Pelle ungraciously.

Now he would show them that he could keep himself decent. It was partly

in order to revenge himself for his own neglect that he refused the

offer.

“Yes, yes,” said Lasse meekly; “I just asked you. I hope you won’t take

it amiss.”

However strong Karna might be, and however willing to help in

everything, Lasse did greatly feel the need of a man to work with him.

Work of a kind that needed two had accumulated, and Pelle did not spare

himself. The greater part of the day was spent in heaving great stones

out of the soil and dragging them away; Lasse had knocked a sledge

together, and the two moorland horses were harnessed up to it.

“Yes, you mustn’t look at them too closely,” said Lasse, as he stroked

the two scarecrows caressingly. “Just wait until a few months have gone

by, and then you’ll see! But they’ve plenty of spirit now.”

There was much to be done, and the sweat was soon pouring down their

faces; but they were both in good spirits. Lasse was surprised at the

boy’s strength—with two or three such lads he could turn the whole

wilderness over. Once again he sighed that Pelle was not living at

home; but to this Pelle still turned a deaf ear. And before they were

aware of it Karna had come out again and was calling them to supper.

“I think we’ll harness the horses and drive Pelle halfway to town— as a

reward for the work he’s done,” said Lasse gaily. “And we’ve both

earned a drive.” So the two screws were put into the cart.

It was amusing to watch Lasse; he was a notable driver, and one could

not but be almost persuaded that he had a pair of blood horses in front

of him. When they met any one he would cautiously gather up the reins

in order to be prepared lest the horses should shy—“they might so

easily bolt,” he said solemnly. And when he succeeded in inducing them

to trot he was delighted. “They take some holding,” he would say, and

to look at him you would have thought they called for a strong pair of

wrists. “Damn it all, I believe I shall have to put the curb on them!”

And he set both his feet against the dashboard, and sawed the reins to

and fro.

When half the distance was covered Father Lasse wanted to drive just a

little further, and again a little further still—oh, well, then, they

might as well drive right up to the house! He had quite forgotten that

the following day would be a day of hard labor both for himself and for

the horses. But at last Pelle jumped out.

“Shan’t we arrange that about your washing?” asked Lasse.

“No!” Pelle turned his face away—surely they might stop asking him

that!

“Well, well, take care of yourself, and thanks for your help. You’ll

come again as soon as you can?”

Pelle smiled at them, but said nothing; he dared not open his mouth,

for fear of the unmanly lump that had risen in his throat. Silently he

held out his hand and ran toward the town.