Pelle fought against the decline of the business. A new apprentice had
been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do all the
delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and bought things
on credit; and he had to interview impatient customers, and endeavor to
pacify them. He got plenty of exercise, but he learned nothing
properly. “Just run down to the harbor,” the master used to say:
“Perhaps there will be some work to bring back!” But the master was
much more interested in the news which he brought thence.
Pelle would also go thither without having received any orders.
Everybody in the town must needs make for the harbor whenever he went
from home; it was the heart through which everything came and went,
money and dreams and desires and that which gratified them. Every man
had been to sea, and his best memories and his hardest battles belonged
to the sea. Dreams took the outward way; yonder lay the sea, and all
men’s thoughts were drawn to it; the thoughts of the young, who longed
to go forth and seek adventure, and of the old, who lived on their
memories. It was the song in all men’s hearts, and the God in the
inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of life’s surplus, the home of
all that was inexplicable and mystical. The sea had drunk the blood of
thousands, but its color knew no change; the riddle of life brooded in
its restless waters.
Destiny rose from the floor of the deep and with short shrift set her
mark upon a man; he might escape to the land, like Baker Jörgensen, who
went no more to sea when once the warning had come to him, or, like
Boatman Jensen, he might rise in his sleep and walk straight over the
vessel’s side. Down below, where the drowned dwelt, the ships sank to
bring them what they needed; and from time to time the bloodless
children of the sea rose to the shore, to play with the children that
were born on a Sunday, and to bring them death or happiness.
Over the sea, three times a week, came the steamer with news from
Copenhagen; and vessels all wrapped in ice, and others that had sprung
a heavy leak, or bore dead bodies on board; and great ships which came
from warm countries and had real negroes among their crews.
Down by the harbor stood the old men who had forsaken the sea, and now
all the long day through they stared out over the playground of their
manhood, until Death came for them. The sea had blown gout into their
limbs, had buffeted them until they were bent and bowed, and in the
winter nights one could hear them roar with the pain like wild beasts.
Down to the harbor drifted all the flotsam and jetsam of the land,
invalids and idle men and dying men, and busy folk raced round about
and up and down with fluttering coat-tails, in order to scent out
possible profits.
The young sported here continually; it was as though they encountered
the future when they played here by the open sea. Many never went
further, but many let themselves be caught and whirled away out into
the unknown. Of these was Nilen. When the ships were being fitted out
he could wait no longer. He sacrificed two years’ apprenticeship, and
ran away on board a vessel which was starting on a long voyage. Now he
was far away in the Trades, on the southern passage round America,
homeward bound with a cargo of redwood. And a few left with every
steamer. The girls were the most courageous when it came to cutting
themselves loose; they steamed away swiftly, and the young men followed
them in amorous blindness. And men fought their way outward in order to
seek something more profitable than could be found at home.
Pelle had experienced all this already: he had felt this same longing,
and had known the attractive force of the unknown. Up in the country
districts it was the dream of all poor people to fight their way to
town, and the boldest one day ventured thither, with burning cheeks,
while the old people spoke warningly of the immorality of cities. And
in the town here it was the dream of all to go to the capital, to
Copenhagen; there fortune and happiness were to be found! He who had
the courage hung one day over the ship’s rail, and waved farewell, with
an absent expression in his eyes, as though he had been playing a game
with high stakes; over there on the mainland he would have to be a
match with the best of them. But the old people shook their heads and
spoke at length of the temptations and immorality of the capital.
Now and again one came back and justified their wisdom. Then they would
run delightedly from door to door. “Didn’t we tell you so?” But many
came home at holiday seasons and were such swells that it was really
the limit! And this or that girl was so extremely stylish that people
had to ask the opinion of Wooden-leg Larsen about her.
The girls who got married over there—well, they were well provided for!
After an interval of many years they came back to their parents’ homes,
travelling on deck among the cattle, and giving the stewardess a few
pence to have them put in the newspaper as cabin-passengers. They were
fine enough as to their clothes, but their thin haggard faces told
another story. “There is certainly not enough to eat for all over
there!” said the old women.
But Pelle took no interest in those that came home again. All his
thoughts were with those who went away; his heart tugged painfully in
his breast, so powerful was his longing to be off. The sea, whether it
lay idle or seethed with anger, continually filled his head with the
humming of the world “over yonder,” with a vague, mysterious song of
happiness.
One day, as he was on his way to the harbor, he met old thatcher Holm
from Stone Farm. Holm was going about looking at the houses from top to
bottom; he was raising his feet quite high in the air from sheer
astonishment, and was chattering to himself. On his arm he carried a
basket loaded with bread and butter, brandy, and beer.
“Well, here’s some one at last!” he said, and offered his hand. “I’m
going round and wondering to myself where they all live, those that
come here day after day and year after year, and whether they’ve done
any good. Mother and I have often talked about it, that it would be
splendid to know how things have turned out for this one or that. And
this morning she said it would be best if I were to make a short job of
it before I quite forget how to find my way about the streets here, I
haven’t been here for ten years. Well, according to what I’ve seen so
far, mother and I needn’t regret we’ve stayed at home. Nothing grows
here except lamp-posts, and mother wouldn’t understand anything about
rearing them. Thatched roofs I’ve not seen here. Here in the town
they’d grudge a thatcher his bread. But I’ll see the harbor before I go
home.”
“Then we’ll go together,” said Pelle. He was glad to meet some one from
his home. The country round about Stone Farm was always for him the
home of his childhood. He gossiped with the old man and pointed out
various objects of interest.
“Yes, I’ve been once, twice, three times before this to the harbor,”
said Holm, “but I’ve never managed to see the steamer. They tell me
wonderful things of it; they say all our crops are taken to Copenhagen
in the steamer nowadays.”
“It’s lying here to-day,” said Pelle eagerly. “This evening it goes
out.”
Holm’s eyes beamed. “Then I shall be able to see the beggar! I’ve often
seen the smoke from the hill at home—drifting over the sea— and that
always gave me a lot to think about. They say it eats coals and is made
of iron.” He looked at Pelle uncertainly.
The great empty harbor basin, in which some hundreds of men were at
work, interested him greatly. Pelle pointed out the “Great Power,” who
was toiling like a madman and allowing himself to be saddled with the
heaviest work.
“So that is he!” cried Holm. “I knew his father; he was a man who
wanted to do things above the ordinary, but he never brought them off.
And how goes it with your father? Not any too well, as I’ve heard?”
Pelle had been home a little while before; nothing was going well
there, but as to that he was silent. “Karna isn’t very well,” he said.
“She tried to do too much; she’s strained herself lifting things.”
“They say he’ll have a difficult job to pull through. They have taken
too much on themselves,” Holm continued.
Pelle made no reply; and then the steamer absorbed their whole
attention. Talkative as he was, Holm quite forgot to wag his tongue.
The steamer was on the point of taking in cargo; the steam derricks
were busy at both hatches, squealing each time they swung round in
another direction. Holm became so light on his legs one might have
thought he was treading on needles; when the derrick swung round over
the quay and the chain came rattling down, he ran right back to the
granary. Pelle wanted to take him on board, but he would not hear of
it. “It looks a bad-tempered monster,” he said: “look how it sneezes
and fusses!”
On the quay, by the forward hold, the goods of a poverty-stricken
household lay all mixed together. A man stood there holding a mahogany
looking-glass, the only article of value, in his arms. His expression
was gloomy. By the manner in which he blew his nose—with his knuckles
instead of with his fingers—one could see that he had something
unaccustomed on hand. His eyes were fixed immovably on his miserable
household possessions, and they anxiously followed every breakable
article as it went its airy way into the vessel’s maw. His wife and
children were sitting on the quay-wall, eating out of a basket of
provisions. They had been sitting there for hours. The children were
tired and tearful; the mother was trying to console them, and to induce
them to sleep on the stone.
“Shan’t we start soon?” they asked continually, in complaining tones.
“Yes, the ship starts directly, but you must be very good or I shan’t
take you with me. And then you’ll come to the capital city, where they
eat white bread and always wear leather boots. The King himself lives
there, and they’ve got everything in the shops there.” She arranged her
shawl under their heads.
“But that’s Per Anker’s son from Blaaholt!” cried Holm, when he had
been standing a while on the quay and had caught sight of the man.
“What, are you leaving the country?”
“Yes, I’ve decided to do so,” said the man, in an undertone, passing
his hand over his face.
“And I thought you were doing so well! Didn’t you go to Ostland, and
didn’t you take over a hotel there?”
“Yes, they enticed me out there, and now I’ve lost everything there.”
“You ought to have considered—considering costs nothing but a little
trouble.”
“But they showed me false books, which showed a greater surplus than
there really was. Shipowner Monsen was behind the whole affair,
together with the brewer from the mainland, who had taken the hotel
over in payment of outstanding debts.”
“But how did big folks like that manage to smell you out?” Holm
scratched his head; he didn’t understand the whole affair.
“Oh, they’d heard of the ten thousand, of course, which I’d inherited
from my father. They throw their nets out for sums like that, and one
day they sent an agent to see me. Ten thousand was just enough for the
first instalment, and now they have taken the hotel over again. Out of
compassion, they let me keep this trash here.” He suddenly turned his
face away and wept; and then his wife came swiftly up to him.
Holm drew Pelle away. “They’d rather be rid of us,” he said quietly;
and he continued to discuss the man’s dismal misfortune, while they
strolled out along the mole. But Pelle was not listening to him. He had
caught sight of a little schooner which was cruising outside, and was
every moment growing more restless.
“I believe that’s the Iceland schooner!” he said at last. “So I must go
back.”
“Yes, run off,” said Holm, “and many thanks for your guidance, and give
my respects to Lasse and Karna.”
On the harbor hill Pelle met Master Jeppe, and farther on Drejer,
Klaussen, and Blom. The Iceland boat had kept them waiting for several
months; the news that she was in the roads quickly spread, and all the
shoemakers of the whole town were hurrying down to the harbor, in order
to hear whether good business had been done before the gangway was run
out.
“The Iceland boat is there now!” said the merchants and leather-
dealers, when they saw the shoemakers running by. “We must make haste
and make out our bills, for now the shoemakers will be having money.”
But the skipper had most of the boots and shoes still in his hold; he
returned with the terrifying news that no more boots and shoes could be
disposed of in Iceland. The winter industry had been of great
importance to the shoemakers.
“What does this mean?” asked Jeppe angrily. “You have been long enough
about it! Have you been trying to open another agency over there? In
others years you have managed to sell the whole lot.”
“I have done what I could,” replied the captain gloomily. “I offered
them to the dealers in big parcels, and then I lay there and carried on
a retail trade from the ship. Then I ran down the whole west coast; but
there is nothing to be done.”
“Well, well,” said Jeppe, “but do the Icelanders mean to go without
boots?”
“There’s the factories,” replied the captain.
“The factories, the factories!” Jeppe laughed disdainfully, but with a
touch of uncertainty. “You’ll tell me next that they can make shoes by
machinery—cut out and peg and sew and fix the treads and all? No, damn
it, that can only be done by human hands directed by human
intelligence. Shoemaking is work for men only. Perhaps I myself might
be replaced by a machine—by a few cog-wheels that go round and round!
Bah! A machine is dead, I know that, and it can’t think or adapt itself
to circumstances; you may have to shape the boot in a particular way
for a special foot, on account of tender toes, or—here I give the sole
a certain cut in the instep, so that it looks smart, or—well, one has
to be careful, or one cuts into the upper!”
“There are machines which make boots, and they make them cheaper than
you, too,” said the skipper brusquely.
“I should like to see them! Can you show me a boot that hasn’t been
made by human hands?” Jeppe laughed contemptuously. “No; there’s
something behind all this, by God! Some one is trying to play us a
trick!” The skipper went his way, offended.
Jeppe stuck to it that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of
a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He kept on returning to
it.
“They’ll be making human beings by machinery too, soon!” he exclaimed
angrily.
“No,” said Baker Jörgen; “there, I believe, the old method will
survive!”
One day the skipper came in at the workshop door, banged a pair of
shoes down on the window-bench, and went out again. They had been
bought in England, and belonged to the helmsman of a bark which had
just come into the harbor. The young master looked at them, turned them
over in his hands, and looked at them again. Then he called Jeppe. They
were sewn throughout—shoes for a grown man, yet sewn throughout!
Moreover, the factory stamp was under the sole.
In Jeppe’s opinion they were not worth a couple of shillings. But he
could not get over the fact that they were machine-made.
“Then we are superfluous,” he said, in a quavering voice. All his old
importance seemed to have fallen from him. “For if they can make the
one kind on a machine, they can make another. The handicraft is
condemned to death, and we shall all be without bread one fine day!
Well, I, thank God, have not many years before me.” It was the first
time that Jeppe had admitted that he owed his life to God.
Every time he came into the workshop he began to expatiate on the same
subject. He would stand there turning the hated shoes over between his
hands. Then he would criticize them. “We must take more pains next
winter.”
“Father forgets it’s all up with us now,” said the young master
wearily.
Then the old man would be silent and hobble out. But after a time he
would be back again, fingering the boots and shoes, in order to
discover defects in them. His thoughts were constantly directed upon
this new subject; no song of praise, no eulogy of his handicraft,
passed his lips nowadays. If the young master came to him and asked his
help in some difficult situation, he would refuse it; he felt no
further desire to triumph over youth with his ancient dexterity, but
shuffled about and shrank into himself. “And all that we have thought
so highly of—what’s to become of it?” he would ask. “For machines don’t
make masterpieces and medal work, so where will real good work come
in?”
The young master did not look so far ahead; he thought principally of
the money that was needed. “Devil take it, Pelle, how are we going to
pay every one, Pelle?” he would ask dejectedly. Little Nikas had to
look out for something else; their means would not allow them to keep a
journeyman. So Nikas decided to marry, and to set up as a master
shoemaker in the north. The shoemaker of the Baptist community had just
died, and he could get plenty of customers by joining the sect; he was
already attending their services. “But go to work carefully!” said
Jeppe. “Or matters will go awry!”
It was a bad shock to all of them. Klaussen went bankrupt and had to
find work on the new harbor. Blom ran away, deserting his wife and
children, and they had to go home to the house of her parents. In the
workshop matters had been getting worse for a long time. And now this
had happened, throwing a dazzling light upon the whole question. But
the young master refused to believe the worst. “I shall soon be well
again now,” he said. “And then you will just see how I’ll work up the
business!” He lay in bed more often now, and was susceptible to every
change in the weather. Pelle had to see to everything.
“Run and borrow something!” the master would say. And if Pelle returned
with a refusal, he would look at the boy with his wide, wondering eyes.
“They’ve got the souls of grocers!” he would cry. “Then we must peg
those soles!”
“That won’t answer with ladies’ patent-leather shoes!” replied Pelle
very positively.
“Damn and blast it all, it will answer! We’ll black the bottom with
cobbler’s wax.”
But when the black was trodden off, Jungfer Lund and the others called,
and were wroth. They were not accustomed to walk in pegged shoes. “It’s
a misunderstanding!” said the young master, the perspiration standing
in clear beads on his forehead. Or he would hide and leave it to Pelle.
When it was over, he would reach up to the shelf, panting with
exhaustion. “Can’t you do anything for me, Pelle?” he whispered.
One day Pelle plucked up courage and said it certainly wasn’t healthy
to take so much spirit; the master needed so much now.
“Healthy?” said the master; “no, good God, it isn’t healthy! But the
beasts demand it! In the beginning I couldn’t get the stuff down,
especially beer; but now I’ve accustomed myself to it. If I didn’t feed
them, they’d soon rush all over me and eat me up.”
“Do they swallow it, then?”
“I should think they do! As much as ever you like to give them. Or have
you ever seen me tipsy? I can’t get drunk; the tubercles take it all.
And for them it’s sheer poison. On the day when I am able to get drunk
again I shall thank God, for then the beasts will be dead and the
spirit will be able to attack me again. Then it’ll only be a question
of stopping it, otherwise it’ll play the deuce with my mind!”
Since the journeyman had left, the meals had become more meager than
ever. The masters had not had enough money in the spring to buy a pig.
So there was no one to consume the scraps. Now they had to eat them all
themselves. Master Andres was never at the table; he took scarcely any
nourishment nowadays; a piece of bread-and-butter now and again, that
was all. Breakfast, at half-past seven, they ate alone. It consisted of
salt herrings, bread and hog’s lard, and soup. The soup was made out of
all sorts of odds and ends of bread and porridge, with an addition of
thin beer. It was fermented and unpalatable. What was left over from
breakfast was put into a great crock which stood in one corner of the
kitchen, on the floor, and this was warmed up again the next morning,
with the addition of a little fresh beer. So it went on all the year
round. The contents were renewed only when some one kicked the crock so
that it broke. The boys confined themselves to the herrings and the
lard; the soup they did not use except to fish about in it. They made a
jest of it, throwing all sorts of objects into it, and finding them
again after half a year.
Jeppe was still lying in the alcove, asleep; his nightcap was hoved
awry over one eye. Even in his sleep he still had a comical expression
of self-importance. The room was thick with vapor; the old man had his
own way of getting air, breathing it in with a long snort and letting
it run rumbling through him. If it got too bad, the boys would make a
noise; then he would wake and scold them.
They were longing for food by dinner-time; the moment Jeppe called his
“Dinner!” at the door they threw everything down, ranged themselves
according to age, and tumbled in behind him. They held one another
tightly by the coat-tails, and made stupid grimaces. Jeppe was
enthroned at the head of the table, a little cap on his head, trying to
preserve seemly table-manners. No one might begin before him or
continue after he had finished. They snatched at their spoons, laid
them down again with a terrified glance at the old man, and nearly
exploded with suppressed laughter. “Yes, I’m very hungry to-day, but
there’s no need for you to remark it!” he would say warningly, once
they were in full swing. Pelle would wink at the others, and they would
go on eating, emptying one dish after another. “There’s no respect
nowadays!” roared Jeppe, striking on the table. But when he did this
discipline suddenly entered into them, and they all struck the table
after him in turn. Sometimes, when matters got too bad, Master Andres
had to find some reason for coming into the room.
The long working-hours, the bad food, and the foul air of the workshop
left their mark on Pelle. His attachment to Master Andres was
limitless; he could sit there till midnight and work without payment if
a promise had been made to finish some particular job. But otherwise he
was imperceptibly slipping into the general slackness, sharing the
others’ opinion of the day as something utterly abominable, which one
must somehow endeavor to get through. To work at half pressure was a
physical necessity; his rare movements wearied him, and he felt less
inclined to work than to brood. The semi-darkness of the sunless
workshop bleached his skin and filled him with unhealthy imaginations.
He did little work now on his own account; but he had learned to manage
with very little. Whenever he contrived to get hold of a ten-öre piece,
he bought a savings-stamp, so that in this way he was able to collect a
few shillings, until they had grown to quite a little sum. Now and
again, too, he got a little help from Lasse, but Lasse found it more
and more difficult to spare anything. Moreover, he had learned to
compose his mind by his work.