Jeppe was related to about half the island, but he was not greatly
interested in disentangling his relationship. He could easily go right
back to the founder of the family, and trace the generations through
two centuries, and follow the several branches of the family from
country to town and over the sea and back again, and show that Andres
and the judge must be cousins twice removed. But if any insignificant
person asked him: “How was it, then—weren’t my father and you first
cousins?” he would answer brusquely, “Maybe, but the soup grows too
thin after a time. This relationship!”
“Then you and I, good Lord! are second cousins, and you are related to
the judge as well,” Master Andres would say. He did not grudge people
any pleasure they could derive from the facts of relationship. Poor
people regarded him gratefully—they said he had kind eyes; it was a
shame that he should not be allowed to live.
Jeppe was the oldest employer in the town, and among the shoemakers his
workshop was the biggest. He was able, too, or rather he had been, and
he still possessed the manual skill peculiar to the old days. When it
came to a ticklish job he would willingly show them how to get on with
it, or plan some contrivance to assist them. Elastic-sided boots and
lace-up boots had superseded the old footwear, but honest skill still
meant an honest reputation. And if some old fellow wanted a pair of
Wellingtons or Bluchers of leather waterproofed with grease, instead of
by some new-fangled devilry, he must needs go to Jeppe—no one else
could shape an instep as he could. And when it came to handling the
heavy dressed leathers for sea-boots there was no one like Jeppe. He
was obstinate, and rigidly opposed to everything new, where everybody
else was led away by novelty. In this he was peculiarly the
representative of the old days, and people respected him as such.
The apprentices alone did not respect him. They did everything they
could to vex him and to retaliate on him for being such a severe
task-master. They all laid themselves out to mystify him, speaking of
the most matter-of-fact things in dark and covert hints, in order to
make old Jeppe suspicious, and if he spied upon them and caught them at
something which proved to be nothing at all they had a great day of it.
“What does this mean? Where are you going without permission?” asked
Jeppe, if one of them got up to go into the court; he was always
forgetting that times had altered. They did not answer, and then he
would fly into a passion. “I’ll have you show me respect!” he would
cry, stamping on the floor until the dust eddied round him. Master
Andres would slowly raise his head. “What’s the matter with you this
time, father?” he would ask wearily. Then Jeppe would break out into
fulminations against the new times.
If Master Andres and the journeyman were not present, the apprentices
amused themselves by making the old man lose his temper; and this was
not difficult, as he saw hostility in everything. Then he would snatch
up a knee-strap and begin to rain blows upon the sinner. At the same
time he would make the most extraordinary grimaces and give vent to a
singular gurgling sound. “There, take that, although it grieves me to
use harsh measures!” he would mew. “And that, too—and that! You’ve got
to go through with it, if you want to enter the craft!” Then he would
give the lad something that faintly resembled a kick, and would stand
there struggling for breath. “You’re a troublesome youngster—you’ll
allow that?” “Yes, my mother used to break a broomstick over my head
every other day!” replied Peter, the rogue, snorting. “There, you see
you are! But it may all turn out for the best even now. The
foundation’s not so bad!” Jeppe doddered to and fro, his hands behind
his back. The rest of the day he was inclined to solemnity, and did his
best to obliterate all remembrance of the punishment. “It was only for
your own good!” he would say, in a propitiatory tone.
Jeppe was first cousin to the crazy Anker, but he preferred not to lay
claim to the fact; the man could not help being mad, but he made his
living, disgracefully enough, by selling sand in the streets—a
specialist in his way. Day by day one saw Anker’s long, thin figure in
the streets, with a sackful of sand slung over his sloping shoulders;
he wore a suit of blue twill and white woollen stockings, and his face
was death-like. He was quite fleshless. “That comes of all his
digging,” people said. “Look at his assistant!”
He never appeared in the workshop with his sack of sand; he was afraid
of Jeppe, who was now the oldest member of the family. Elsewhere he
went in and out everywhere with his clattering wooden shoes; and people
bought of him, as they must have sand for their floors, and his was as
good as any other. He needed next to nothing for his livelihood; people
maintained that he never ate anything, but lived on his own vitals.
With the money he received he bought materials for the “New Time,” and
what was left he threw away, in his more exalted moments, from the top
of his high stairs. The street-urchins always came running up when the
word went round that the madness about the “new time” was attacking
him.
He and Bjerregrav had been friends as boys. Formerly they had been
inseparable, and neither of them was willing to do his duty and marry,
although each was in a position to keep a wife and children. At an age
when others were thinking about how to find favor with the womenfolk,
these two were running about with their heads full of rubbish which
enraged people. At that time a dangerous revolutionist was living with
Bjerregrav’s brother; he had spent many years on Christiansö, but then
the Government had sent him to spend the rest of his term of captivity
on Bornholm. Dampe was his name; Jeppe had known him when an apprentice
in Copenhagen; and his ambition was to overthrow God and king. This
ambition of his did not profit him greatly; he was cast down like a
second Lucifer, and only kept his head on his shoulders by virtue of an
act of mercy. The two young people regarded him as then justification,
and he turned their heads with his venomous talk, so that they began to
ponder over things which common folk do better to leave alone.
Bjerregrav came through this phase with a whole skin, but Anker paid
the penalty by losing his wits. Although they both had a comfortable
competence, they pondered above all things over the question of
poverty—as though there was anything particular to be discovered about
that!
All this was many years ago; it was about the time when the craze for
freedom had broken out in the surrounding nations with fratricide and
rebellion. Matters were not so bad on the island, for neither Anker nor
Bjerregrav was particularly warlike; yet everybody could see that the
town was not behind the rest of the world. Here the vanity of the town
was quite in agreement with Master Jeppe, but for the rest he roundly
condemned the whole movement. He always looked ready to fall upon
Bjerregrav tooth and nail if the conversation turned on Anker’s
misfortune.
“Dampe!” said Jeppe scornfully, “he has turned both your heads!”
“That’s a lie!” stammered Bjerregrav. “Anker went wrong later than
that—after King Frederick granted us liberty. And it’s only that I’m
not very capable; I have my wits, thank God!” Bjerregrav solemnly
raised the fingers of his right hand to his lips, a gesture which had
all the appearance of a surviving vestige of the sign of the cross.
“You and your wits!” hissed Jeppe contemptuously. “You, who throw your
money away over the first tramp you meet! And you defend an abominable
agitator, who never goes out by daylight like other people, but goes
gallivanting about at night!”
“Yes, because he’s ashamed of humanity; he wants to make the world more
beautiful!” Bjerregrav blushed with embarrassment when he had said
this.
But Jeppe was beside himself with contempt. “So gaol-birds are ashamed
of honest people! So that’s why he takes his walks at night! Well, the
world would of course be a more beautiful place if it were filled with
people like you and Dampe!”
The pitiful thing about Anker was that he was such a good craftsman. He
had inherited the watchmaker’s trade from his father and grandfather,
and his Bornholm striking-clocks were known all over the world; orders
came to him from Funen as well as from the capital. But when the
Constitution was granted he behaved like a child—as though people had
not always been free on Bornholm! Now, he said, the new time had begun,
and in its honor he intended, in his insane rejoicing, to make an
ingenious clock which should show the moon and the date and the month
and year. Being an excellent craftsman, he completed it successfully,
but then it entered his head that the clock ought to show the weather
as well. Like so many whom God had endowed with His gifts, he ventured
too far and sought to rival God Himself. But here the brakes were
clapped on, and the whole project was nearly derailed. For a long time
he took it greatly to heart, but when the work was completed he
rejoiced. He was offered a large price for his masterpiece, and Jeppe
bade him close with the offer, but he answered crazily—for he was now
definitely insane—“This cannot be bought with money. Everything I made
formerly had its value in money, but not this. Can any one buy _me_?”
For a long time he was in a dilemma as to what he should do with his
work, but then one day he came to Jeppe, saying: “Now I know; the best
ought to have the clock. I shall send it to the King. He has given us
the new time, and this clock will tell the new time.” Anker sent the
clock away, and after some time he received two hundred thalers, paid
him through the Treasury.
This was a large sum of money, but Anker was not satisfied; he had
expected a letter of thanks from the King’s own hand. He behaved very
oddly about this, and everything went wrong with him; over and over
again trouble built its nest with him. The money he gave to the poor,
and he lamented that the new time had not yet arrived. So he sank even
deeper into his madness, and however hard Jeppe scolded him and
lectured him it did no good. Finally he went so far as to fancy that he
was appointed to create the new time, and then he became cheerful once
more.
Three or four families of the town—very poor people, so demoralized
that the sects would have nothing to do with them—gathered around
Anker, and heard the voice of God in his message. “_They_ lose nothing
by sitting under a crazy man,” saw Jeppe scornfully. Anker himself paid
no attention to them, but went his own way. Presently he was a king’s
son in disguise, and was betrothed to the eldest daughter of the
King—and the new time was coming. Or when his mood was quieter, he
would sit and work at an infallible clock which would not show the
time; it would _be_ the time—the new time itself.
He went to and fro in the workshop, in order to let Master Andres see
the progress of his invention; he had conceived a blind affection for
the young master. Every year, about the first of January, Master Andres
had to write a letter for him, a love-letter to the king’s daughter,
and had also to take it upon him to despatch it to the proper quarter;
and from time to time Anker would run in to ask whether an answer had
yet arrived; and at the New Year a fresh love-letter was sent off.
Master Andres had them all put away.
One evening—it was nearly time to knock off—there was a thundering
knock on the workshop door, and the sound of some one humming a march
drifted in from the entry. “Can you not open?” cried a solemn voice:
“the Prince is here!”
“Pelle, open the door quick!” said the master. Pelle flung the door
wide open, and Anker marched in. He wore a paper hat with a waving
plume, and epaulettes made out of paper frills; his face was beaming,
and he stood there with his hand to his hat as he allowed the march to
die away. The young master rose gaily and shouldered arms with his
stick.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “how goes it with the new time?”
“Not at all well!” replied Anker, becoming serious. “The pendulums that
should keep the whole in motion are failing me.” He stood still, gazing
at the door; his brain was working mysteriously.
“Ought they to be made of gold?” The master’s eyes were twinkling, but
he was earnestness personified.
“They ought to be made of eternity,” said Anker unwillingly, “and first
it has got to be invented.”
For a long time he stood there, staring in front of him with his gray,
empty eyes, without speaking a word. He did not move; only his temples
went on working as though some worm was gnawing at them and seeking its
way out.
Suddenly it became uncomfortable; his silence was sometimes like a
living darkness that surrounded those about him. Pelle sat there with
palpitating heart.
Then the lunatic came forward and bent over the young master’s ear.
“Has an answer come from the king?” he asked, in a penetrating whisper.
“No, not yet; but I expect it every day. You can be quite easy,” the
master whispered back. Anker stood for a few moments in silence; he
looked as though he must be meditating, but after his own fashion. Then
he turned round and marched out of the workshop.
“Go after him and see he gets home all right,” said the young master.
His voice sounded mournful now. Pelle followed the clockmaker up the
street.
It was a Saturday evening, and the workers were on their way homeward
from the great quarries and the potteries which lay about half a mile
beyond the town. They passed in large groups, their dinner-boxes on
their back, with a beer-bottle hung in front as a counter-weight. Their
sticks struck loudly on the flagstones, and the iron heel-pieces of
their wooden shoes struck out sparks as they passed. Pelle knew that
weary homecoming; it was as though weariness in person had invaded the
town. And he knew the sound of this taciturn procession; the snarling
sound when this man or that made an unexpected and involuntary movement
with his stiffened limbs, and was forced to groan with the pain of it.
But to-night they gave him a different impression, and something like a
smile broke through the encrusted stone-dust on their faces; it was the
reflection of the bright new kroner that lay in their pockets after the
exhausting labor of the week. Some of them had to visit the post-office
to renew their lottery tickets or to ask for a postponement, and here
and there one was about to enter a tavern, but at the last moment would
be captured by his wife, leading a child by the hand.
Anker stood motionless on the sidewalk, his face turned toward the
passing workers. He had bared his head, and the great plume of his hat
drooped to the ground behind him; he looked agitated, as though
something were fermenting within him, which could not find utterance,
save in an odd, unintelligible noise. The workers shook their heads
sadly as they trudged onward; one solitary young fellow threw him a
playful remark. “Keep your hat on—it’s not a funeral!” he cried. A few
foreign seamen came strolling over the hill from the harbor; they came
zigzagging down the street, peeping in at all the street doors, and
laughing immoderately as they did so. One of them made straight for
Anker with outstretched arms, knocked off his hat, and went on with his
arm in the air as though nothing had happened. Suddenly he wheeled
about. “What, are you giving yourself airs?” he cried, and therewith he
attacked the lunatic, who timidly set about resisting him. Then another
sailor ran up and struck Anker behind the knees, so that he fell. He
lay on the ground shouting and kicking with fright, and the whole party
flung itself upon him.
The boys scattered in all directions, in order to gather stones and
come to Anker’s assistance. Pelle stood still, his body jerking
convulsively, as though the old sickness were about to attack him. Once
he sprang forward toward Anker, but something within him told him that
sickness had deprived him of his blind courage.
There was one pale, slender youth who was not afraid. He went right
among the sailors, in order to drag them off the lunatic, who was
becoming quite frantic under their treatment of him.
“He isn’t in his right mind!” cried the boy, but he was hurled back
with a bleeding face.
This was Morten, the brother of Jens the apprentice. He was so angry
that he was sobbing.
Then a tall man came forward out of the darkness, with a rolling gait;
he came forward muttering to himself. “Hurrah!” cried the boys. “Here
comes the ‘Great Power.’” But the man did not hear; he came to a
standstill by the fighting group and stood there, still muttering. His
giant figure swayed to and fro above them. “Help him, father!” cried
Morten. The man laughed foolishly, and began slowly to pull his coat
off. “Help him, then!” bellowed the boy, quite beside himself, shaking
his father’s arm. Jörgensen stretched out his hand to pat the boy’s
cheek, when he saw the blood on his face. “Knock them down!” cried the
boy, like one possessed. Then a sudden shock ran through the giant’s
body—somewhat as when a heavy load is suddenly set in motion; he bowed
himself a little, shook himself, and began to throw the sailors aside.
One after another they stood still for a moment, feeling the place
where he had seized them, and then they set off running as hard as they
could toward the harbor.
Jörgensen set the madman on his legs again and escorted him home. Pelle
and Morten followed them hand-in-hand. A peculiar feeling of
satisfaction thrilled Pelle through; he had seen strength personified
in action, and he had made a friend.
After that they were inseparable. Their friendship did not grow to full
strength; it overshadowed them suddenly, magically conjured out of
their hearts. In Morten’s pale, handsome face there was something
indescribable that made Pelle’s heart throb in his breast, and a
gentler note came into the voices of all who spoke to him. Pelle did
not clearly understand what there could be attractive about himself;
but he steeped himself in this friendship, which fell upon his ravaged
soul like a beneficent rain. Morten would come up into the workshop as
soon as work was over, or wait for Pelle at the corner. They always ran
when they were going to meet. If Pelle had to work overtime, Morten did
not go out, but sat in the workshop and amused him. He was very fond of
reading, and told Pelle about the contents of many books.
Through Morten, Pelle drew nearer to Jens, and found that he had many
good qualities under his warped exterior. Jens had just that broken,
despondent manner which makes a child instinctively suspect a miserable
home. Pelle had at first supposed that Jens and Morten must have been
supported by the poor-box; he could not understand how a boy could bear
his father to be a giant of whom the whole town went in terror. Jens
seemed hard of hearing when any one spoke to him. “He has had so many
beatings,” said Morten. “Father can’t endure him, because he is
stupid.” Clever he was not, but he could produce the most wonderful
melodies by whistling merely with his lips, so that people would stand
still and listen to him.
After his illness Pelle had a more delicate ear for everything. He no
longer let the waves pass over him, careless as a child, but sent out
tentacles—he was seeking for something. Everything had appeared to him
as simpler than it was, and his dream of fortune had been too crudely
conceived; it was easily shattered, and there was nothing behind it for
him to rest on. Now he felt that he must build a better foundation, now
he demanded nourishment from a wider radius, and his soul was on the
alert for wider ventures; he dropped his anchors in unfamiliar seas.
The goal of his desires receded into the unknown; he now overcame his
aversion from the great and mysterious Beyond, where the outlines of
the face of God lay hidden. The God of Bible history and the sects had
for Pelle been only a man, equipped with a beard, and uprightness, and
mercy, and all the rest; he was not to be despised, but the “Great
Power” was certainly stronger. Hitherto Pelle had not felt the want of
a God; he had only obscurely felt his membership in that all-loving God
who will arise from the lowest and foulest and overshadow heaven; in
that frenzied dream of the poor, who see, in a thousand bitter
privations, the pilgrimage to the beloved land. But now he was seeking
for that which no words can express; now the words, “the millennium,”
had a peculiar sound in his ears.
Anker, of course, was crazy, because the others said so; when they
laughed at him, Pelle laughed with them, but there was still something
in him that filled Pelle with remorse for having laughed at him. Pelle
himself would have liked to scramble money from the top of his high
steps if he had been rich; and if Anker talked strangely, in curious
phrases, of a time of happiness for all the poor, why, Father Lasse’s
lamentations had dealt with the same subject, as far back as he could
remember. The foundation of the boy’s nature felt a touch of the same
pious awe which had forbidden Lasse and the others, out in the country,
to laugh at the insane, for God’s finger had touched them, so that
their souls wandered in places to which no other could attain. Pelle
felt the face of the unknown God gazing at him out of the mist.
He had become another being since his illness; his movements were more
deliberate, and the features of his round childish face had become more
marked and prominent. Those two weeks of illness had dislodged his
cares, but they were imprinted on his character, to which they lent a
certain gravity. He still roamed about alone, encompassing himself with
solitude, and he observed the young master in his own assiduous way. He
had an impression that the master was putting him to the proof, and
this wounded him. He himself knew that that which lay behind his
illness would never be repeated, and he writhed uneasily under
suspicion.
One day he could bear it no longer. He took the ten kroner which Lasse
had given him so that he might buy a much-needed winter overcoat, and
went in to the master, who was in the cutting-out room, and laid them
on the table. The master looked at him with a wondering expression, but
there was a light in his eyes.
“What the devil is that?” he asked, drawling.
“That’s master’s money,” said Pelle, with averted face.
Master Andres gazed at him with dreamy eyes, and then he seemed to
return, as though from another world, and Pelle all at once understood
what every one said—that the young master was going to die. Then he
burst into tears.
But the master himself could not understand.
“What the deuce. But that means nothing!” he cried, and he tossed the
ten kroner in the air. “Lord o’ me! what a lot of money! Well, you
aren’t poor!” He stood there, not knowing what to believe, his hand
resting on Pelle’s shoulder.
“It’s right,” whispered Pelle. “I’ve reckoned it up exactly. And the
master mustn’t suspect me—I’ll never do it again.”
Master Andres made a gesture of refusal with his hand, and wanted to
speak, but at that very moment he was attacked by a paroxysm of
coughing. “You young devil!” he groaned, and leaned heavily on Pelle;
his face was purple. Then came a fit of sickness, and the sweat beaded
his face. He stood there for a little, gasping for breath while his
strength returned, and then he slipped the money into Pelle’s hand and
pushed him out of the room.
Pelle was greatly dejected. His uprightness was unrewarded, and what
had become of his vindication? He had been so glad to think that he
would shake himself free of all the disgrace. But late in the afternoon
the master called him into the cutting-out room. “Here, Pelle,” he said
confidentially, “I want to renew my lottery ticket; but I’ve no money.
Can you lend me those ten kroner for a week?” So it was all as it
should be; his one object was to put the whole disgrace away from him.
Jens and Morten helped him in that. There were three of them now; and
Pelle had a feeling that he had a whole army at his back. The world had
grown no smaller, no less attractive, by reason of the endless
humiliations of the year. And Pelle knew down to the ground exactly
where he stood, and that knowledge was bitter enough. Below him lay the
misty void, and the bubbles which now and again rose to the surface and
broke did not produce in him any feeling of mystical wonder as to the
depths. But he did not feel oppressed thereby; what was, was so because
it must be. And over him the other half of the round world revolved in
the mystery of the blue heavens, and again and again he heard its
joyous _Forward! On!_