On Saturday afternoon Pelle was busily sweeping the street. It was
getting on for evening; in the little houses there was already a fire
in the grate; one could hear it crackling at Builder Rasmussen’s and
Swedish Anders’, and the smell of broiled herrings filled the street.
The women were preparing something extra good in order to wheedle their
husbands when they came home with the week’s wages. Then they ran
across to the huckster’s for schnaps and beer, leaving the door wide
open behind them; there was just half a minute to spare while the
herring was getting cooked on the one side! And now Pelle sniffed it
afar off—Madame Rasmussen was tattling away to the huckster, and a
voice screeched after her: “Madame Rasmussen! Your herring is burning!”
Now she came rushing back, turning her head confusedly from house to
house as she scampered across the street and into her house. The blue
smoke drifted down among the houses; the sun fell lower and filled the
street with gold-dust.
There were people sweeping all along the street; Baker Jörgen, the
washerwoman, and the Comptroller’s maid-servant. The heavy boughs of
the mulberry-tree across the road drooped over the wall and offered
their last ripe fruits to whomsoever would pick them. On the other side
of the wall the rich merchant Hans—he who married the nurse-maid—was
pottering about his garden. He never came out, and the rumor ran that
he was held a prisoner by his wife and her kin. But Pelle had leaned
his ear against the wall, and had heard a stammering old voice
repeating the same pet names, so that it sounded like one of those
love-songs that never come to an end; and when in the twilight he
slipped out of his attic window and climbed on to the ridge of the
roof, in order to take a look at the world, he had seen a tiny little
white-haired man walking down there in the garden, with his arm round
the waist of a woman younger than himself. They were like a couple of
young lovers, and they had to stop every other moment in order to
caress one another. The most monstrous things were said of him and his
money; of his fortune, that once upon a time was founded on a paper of
pins, and was now so great that some curse must rest upon it.
From the baker’s house the baker’s son came slinking hymn-book in hand.
He fled across to the shelter of the wall, and hurried off; old Jörgen
stood there gobbling with laughter as he watched him, his hands folded
over his broomstick.
“O Lord, is that a man?” he cried to Jeppe, who sat at his window,
shaving himself before the milk-can. “Just look how he puffs! Now he’ll
go in and beg God to forgive him for going courting!”
Jeppe came to the window to see and to silence him; one could hear
Brother Jörgen’s falsetto voice right down the street. “Has he been
courting? However did you get him to venture such a leap?” he asked
eagerly.
“Oh, it was while we were sitting at table. I had a tussle with my
melancholy madman—because I couldn’t help thinking of the little
Jörgen. God knows, I told myself, no little Jörgen has come to carry on
your name, and the boy’s a weakling, and you’ve no one else to build
on! It’s all very well going about with your nose in the air all the
days God gives you—everything will be swept away and be to no purpose.
And everything of that sort—you know how I get thinking when ideas like
that get the upper hand with me. I sat there and looked at the boy, and
angry I felt with him, that I did; and right opposite him there was
sitting a fine bit of womanhood, and he not looking at her. And with
that I struck my hand on the table, and I says, ‘Now, boy, just you
take Marie by the hand and ask her whether she’ll be your wife—I want
to make an end of the matter now and see what you’re good for!’ The boy
all shrivels up and holds out his hand, and Marie, it don’t come amiss
to her. ‘Yes, that I will!’ she says, and grips hold of him before he
has time to think what he’s doing. And we shall be having the marriage
soon.”
“If you can make a boot out of that leather!” said Jeppe.
“Oh, she’s a warm piece—look at the way she’s built. She’s thawing him
already. Women, they know the way—he won’t freeze in bed.”
Old Jörgen laughed contentedly, and went off to his work. “Yes, why,
she’d breathe life into the dead,” he announced to the street at large.
The others went out in their finest clothes, but Pelle did not care to
go. He had not been able to accomplish his constant resolution to keep
himself neat and clean, and this failure weighed upon him and abashed
him. And the holes in his stockings, which were now so big that they
could no longer be darned, were disgustingly apparent, with his skin
showing through them, so that he had a loathing for himself.
Now all the young people were going out. He could see the sea in the
opening at the end of the street; it was perfectly calm, and had
borrowed the colors of the sunset. They would be going to the harbor or
the dunes by the sea; there would be dancing on the grass, and perhaps
some would get to fighting about a girl. But he wasn’t going to be
driven out of the pack like a mangy dog; he didn’t care a hang for the
whole lot of them!
He threw off his apron and established himself on a beer-barrel which
stood outside before the gate. On the bench opposite sat the older
inhabitants of the street, puffing at their pipes and gossiping about
everything under the sun. Now the bells sounded the hour for leaving
off work. Madame Rasmussen was beating her child and reviling it in
time with her blows. Then suddenly all was silent; only the crying of
the child continued, like a feeble evening hymn. Old Jeppe was talking
about Malaga—“when I ran ashore at Malaga!”— but Baker Jörgen was still
lamenting his want of an heir, and sighing: “Yes, yes; if only one
could see into the future!” Then he suddenly began to talk about the
Mormons. “It might really be great fun to see, some time, what they
have to offer you,” he said.
“I thought you’d been a Mormon a long time, Uncle Jörgen,” said Master
Andres. The old man laughed.
“Well, well; one tries all sorts of things in one’s time,” he said, and
looked out at the sky.
Up the street stood the watchmaker, on his stone steps, his face turned
up to the zenith, while he shouted his senseless warnings: “The new
time! I ask you about the new time, O God the Father!” he repeated.
Two weary stevedores were going homeward. “He’ll drive all poverty out
of the world and give us all a new life—that’s the form his madness
takes,” said one of them, with a dreary laugh.
“Then he’s got the millennium on the brain?” said the other.
“No, he’s just snarling at the world,” said old Jörgen, behind them.
“We shall certainly get a change in the weather.”
“Things are bad with him just now, poor fellow,” said Bjerregrav,
shuddering. “It was about this time of the year that he lost his wits.”
An inner voice admonished Pelle: “Don’t sit there with your hands in
your lap, but go in and look after your clothes!” But he could not
bring himself to do so—the difficulties had become too insurmountable.
On the following day Manna and the others called him, but he could not
spring over the wall to join them; they had begun to turn up their
noses at him and regard him critically. He did not very well understand
it, but he had become an outcast, a creature who no longer cared about
washing himself properly. But what was the use? He could not go on
contending against the invincible! No one had warned him in time, and
now the town had captured him, and he had given up everything else. He
must shuffle through life as best he could.
No one had a thought for him! When washing was being done for his
employers it never occurred to Madam to wash anything of his, and he
was not the boy to come forward of himself. The washerwoman was more
considerate; when she could she would smuggle in some of Pelle’s dirty
linen, although it meant more work for her. But she was poor herself;
as for the rest, they only wanted to make use of him. There was no one
in town who cared sufficiently for his welfare to take the trouble even
to open his mouth to tell him the truth. This was a thought that made
him feel quite weak about the knees, although he was fifteen years old
and had courage to tackle a mad bull. More than anything else it was
his loneliness that weakened his powers of resistance. He was helpless
alone among all these people, a child, who had to look after himself as
best he could, and be prepared for attacks from every quarter.
He sat there, making no effort to dispel the misery that had come over
him, and was working its will with him, while with half an ear he
listened to the life around him. But suddenly he felt something in his
waistcoat pocket—money! He felt immensely relieved at once, but he did
not hurry; he slipped behind the gate and counted it. One and a half
kroner. He was on the point of regarding it as a gift from on high, as
something which the Almighty had in His great goodness placed there,
but then it occurred to him that this was his master’s money. It had
been given him the day before for repairs to a pair of ladies’ shoes,
and he had forgotten to pay it in, while the master, strangely enough,
had quite forgotten to ask for it.
Pelle stood with bent back by the well outside, scrubbing himself over
a bucket until his blood tingled. Then he put on his best clothes, drew
his shoes on to his naked feet, to avoid the painful feeling of the
ragged stockings, and buttoned his rubber collar—for the last time
innocent of any tie—to his shirt. Shortly afterward he was standing
outside a shop-window, contemplating some large neckties, which had
just been put upon the market, and could be worn with any one of four
faces outward; they filled the whole of the waistcoat, so that one did
not see the shirt. Now he would be disdained no longer! For a moment he
ran to and fro and breathed the air; then he got upon the scent, and
ran at a breathless gallop toward the sea-dunes, where the young folk
of the town played late into the summer night that lay over the wan
sea.
Of course, it was only a loan. Pelle had to sole a pair of shoes for a
baker’s apprentice who worked with Nilen; as soon as they were finished
he would repay the money. He could put the money under the cutting-out
board in his master’s room; the master would find it there, would gaze
at it with a droll expression, and say: “What the devil is this?” And
then he would knock on the wall, and would treat Pelle to a long
rigmarole about his magical gifts—and then he would ask him to run out
and fetch a half-bottle of port.
He did not receive the money for soling the shoes; half the sum he had
to pay out for leather, and the rest was a long time coming, for the
baker’s apprentice was a needy wretch. But he did not doubt his own
integrity; the master might be as sure of his money as if it had been
in the bank. Yet now and again he forgot to give up petty sums —if some
necessity or other was pressing him unexpectedly. They were, of course,
all loans—until the golden time came. And that was never far away.
One day he returned home as the young master was standing at the door,
staring at the driving clouds overhead. He gave Pelle’s shoulder a
familiar squeeze. “How was it they didn’t pay you for the shoes at the
Chamberlain’s yesterday?”
Pelle went crimson and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket. “I forgot
it,” he said in a low voice.
“Now, now!” The master shook him good-naturedly. “It’s not that I
mistrust you. But just to be methodical!”
Pelle’s heart pounded wildly in his body; he had just decided to use
the money to buy a pair of stockings, the very next time he went out
—and then what would have happened? And the master’s belief in him! And
all at once his offence showed itself to him in all its shameful
treachery; he felt as if he was on the point of being sick, so
disturbed was he. Until this moment he had preserved through everything
the feeling of his own worth, and now it was destroyed; there could not
be any one wickeder than he in all the world. In future no one could
trust him any more, and he could no longer look people straight in the
face; unless he went to the master at once and cast himself and his
shame unconditionally on his mercy. There was no other salvation, that
he knew.
But he was not certain that the master would conceive the matter in its
finer aspect, or that everything would turn out for the best; he had
given up believing in fairy-tales. Then he would simply be turned away,
or perhaps be sent to the courthouse, and it would be all up with him.
Pelle resolved to keep it to himself; and for many days he went about
suffering from a sense of his own wickedness. But then necessity
gripped him by the throat and brushed all else aside; and in order to
procure himself the most necessary things he was forced to resort to
the dangerous expedient of stating, when the master gave him money to
buy anything, that it was to be put down. And then one day it was all
up with him. The others were ready to pull down the house about his
ears; they threw his things out of the garret and called him a filthy
beast. Pelle wept; he was quite convinced that not he was the guilty
person, but Peter, who was always keeping company with the nastiest
women, but he could get no hearing. He hurried away, with the resolves
that he would never come back.
On the dunes he was captured by Emil and Peter, who had been sent out
after him by old Jeppe. He did not want to go back with them, but they
threw him down and dragged him back, one taking his head and one his
legs. People came to the door and laughed and asked questions, and the
other two gave their explanation of the matter, which was a terrible
disgrace for Pelle.
And then he fell ill. He lay under the tiled roof raving with fever;
they had thrown his bed into the loft. “What, isn’t he up yet?” said
Jeppe, astounded, when he came in to the workshop. “No? Well, he’ll
soon get up when he gets hungry.” It was no joke to take a sick
apprentice his meals in bed. But Pelle did not come down.
Once the young master threw all considerations overboard and took some
food up to him. “You’re making yourself ridiculous,” sneered Jeppe;
“you’ll never be able to manage people like that!” And Madam scolded.
But Master Andres whistled until he was out of hearing.
Poor Pelle lay there, in delirium; his little head was full of fancies,
more than it would hold. But now the reaction set in, and he lay there
stuffing himself with all that was brought him.
The young master sat upstairs a great deal and received enlightenment
on many points. It was not his nature to do anything energetically, but
he arranged that Pelle’s washing should be done in the house, and he
took care that Lasse should be sent for.