It was Sunday, and Pelle felt a longing for something unaccustomed. At
first he went out to see Jens, but the young couple had had a dispute
and had come to blows. The girl had let the frying-pan containing the
dinner fall into the fire, and Jens had given her a box on the ears.
She was still white and poorly after her miscarriage. Now they were
sitting each in a corner, sulking like children. They were both
penitent, but neither would say the first word. Pelle succeeded in
reconciling them, and they wanted him to stay for dinner. “We’ve still
got potatoes and salt, and I can borrow a drop of brandy from a
neighbor!” But Pelle went; he could not watch them hanging on one
another’s necks, half weeping, and kissing and babbling, and eternally
asking pardon of one another.
So he went out to Due’s. They had removed to an old merchant’s house
where there was room for Due’s horses. They seemed to be getting on
well. It was said that the old consul took an interest in them and
helped them on. Pelle never went into the house, but looked up Due in
the stable, and if he was not at home Pelle would go away again. Anna
did not treat him as though he was welcome. Due himself greeted him
cordially. If he had no rounds to make he used to hang about the stable
and potter round the horses; he did not care about being in the house.
Pelle gave him a hand, cutting chaff for him, or helping in anything
that came to hand, and then they would go into the house together. Due
was at once another man if he had Pelle behind him; he was more decided
in his behavior. Anna was gradually and increasingly getting the upper
hand over him.
She was just as decided as ever, and kept the house in good order. She
no longer had little Marie with her. She dressed her own two children
well, and sent them to a school for young children, and she paid for
their attendance. She was delightful to look at, and understood how to
dress herself, but she would hear nothing good of any one else. Pelle
was not smart enough for her; she turned up her nose at his every-day
clothes, and in order to make him feel uncomfortable she was always
talking about Alfred’s engagement to Merchant Lau’s daughter. This was
a fine match for him. “_He_ doesn’t loaf about and sleep his time away,
and sniff at other people’s doors in order to get their plate of food,”
she said. Pelle only laughed; nothing made any particular impression on
him nowadays. The children ran about, wearying themselves in their fine
clothes —they must not play with the poor children out-of-doors, and
must not make themselves dirty. “Oh, play with us for a bit, Uncle
Pelle!” they would say, hanging on to him. “Aren’t you our uncle too?
Mother says you aren’t our uncle. She’s always wanting us to call the
consul uncle, but we just run away. His nose is so horribly red.”
“Does the consul come to see you, then?” asked Pelle.
“Yes, he often comes—he’s here now!”
Pelle peeped into the yard. The pretty wagon had been taken out.
“Father’s gone out,” said the children. Then he slipped home again. He
stole a scrap of bread and a drop of brandy from Ström, who was not at
home, and threw himself on his bed. As the darkness came on he strolled
out and lounged, freezing, about the street corners. He had a vague
desire to do something. Well-dressed people were promenading up and
down the street, and many of his acquaintances were there, taking their
girls for a walk; he avoided having to greet them, and to listen to
whispered remarks and laughter at his expense. Lethargic as he was, he
still had the acute sense of hearing that dated from the time of his
disgrace at the town hall. People enjoyed finding something to say when
he passed them; their laughter still had the effect of making his knees
begin to jerk with a nervous movement, like the quickly-suppressed
commencement of a flight.
He slipped into a side-street; he had buttoned his thin jacket tightly
about him, and turned up his collar. In the half-darkness of the
doorways stood young men and girls, in familiar, whispered
conversation. Warmth radiated from the girls, and their bibbed aprons
shone in the darkness. Pelle crept along in the cold, and knew less
than ever what to do with himself; he ranged about to find a sweetheart
for himself.
In the market he met Alfred, arm-in-arm with Lau’s daughter. He carried
a smart walking-stick, and wore brown gloves and a tall hat. “The
scamp—he still owes me two and a half kroner, and I shall never get it
out of him!” thought Pelle, and for a moment he felt a real desire to
spring upon him and to roll all his finery in the mud. Alfred turned
his head the other way. “He only knows me when he wants to do something
and has no money!” said Pelle bitterly.
He ran down the street at a jog-trot, in order to keep himself warm,
turning his eyes toward the windows. The bookbinder and his wife were
sitting at home, singing pious songs. The man drank when at home; that
one could see plainly on the blind. At the wool-merchant’s they were
having supper.
Farther on, at the Sow’s, there was life, as always. A mist of tobacco
smoke and a great deal of noise were escaping through the open window.
The Sow kept a house for idle seamen, and made a great deal of money.
Pelle had often been invited to visit her, but had always considered
himself too good; moreover, he could not bear Rud. But this evening he
seized greedily upon the memory of this invitation, and went in.
Perhaps a mouthful of food would come his way.
At a round table sat a few tipsy seamen, shouting at one another, and
making a deafening row. The Sow sat on a young fellow’s knee; she lay
half over the table and dabbled her fingers in a puddle of spilt beer;
from time to time she shouted right in the face of those who were
making the most noise. The last few years had not reduced her
circumference.
“Now look at that! Is that you, Pelle?” she said, and she stood up to
give him her hand. She was not quite sober, and had some difficulty in
taking his. “That’s nice of you to come, now—I really thought we
weren’t good enough for you! Now, sit down and have a drop; it won’t
cost you anything.” She motioned to him to take a seat.
The sailors were out of humor; they sat staring sleepily at Pelle.
Their heavy heads wagged helplessly. “That’s surely a new customer?”
asked one, and the others laughed.
The Sow laughed too, but all at once became serious. “Then you can
leave him out of your games, for he’s far too good to be dragged into
anything; one knows what you are!” She sank into a chair next to Pelle,
and sat looking at him, while she rubbed her own greasy countenance.
“How tall and fine you’ve grown—but you aren’t well-off for clothes!
And you don’t look to be overfed…. Ah, I’ve known you from the time
when you and your father came into the country; a little fellow you
were then, and Lasse brought me my mother’s hymn-book!” She was
suddenly silent, and her eyes filled with tears.
One of the sailors whispered to the rest, and they began to laugh.
“Stop laughing, you swine!” she cried angrily, and she crossed over to
them. “You aren’t going to play any of your nonsense with him—he comes
like a memory of the times when I was respectable, too. His father is
the only creature living who can prove that I was once a pretty,
innocent little maid, who got into bad company. He’s had me on his lap
and sung lullabies to me.” She looked about her defiantly, and her red
face quivered.
“Didn’t you weigh as much then as you do now?” asked one of the men,
and embraced her.
“Don’t play the fool with the little thing!” cried another. “Don’t you
see she’s crying? Take her on your lap and sing her a lullaby— then
she’ll believe you are Lasse-Basse!”
Raging, she snatched up a bottle. “Will you hold your tongue with your
jeering? Or you’ll get this on the head!” Her greasy features seemed to
run together in her excitement.
They let her be, and she sat there sobbing, her hands before her face.
“Is your father still alive?” she asked. “Then give him my
respects—just say the Sow sends her respects—you can safely call me the
Sow!—and tell him he’s the only person in the world I have to thank for
anything. He thought well of me, and he brought me the news of mother’s
death.”
Pelle sat there listening with constraint to her tearful speech, with
an empty smile. He had knives in his bowels, he was so empty, and the
beer was going to his head. He remembered all the details of Stone
Farm, where he had first seen and heard the Sow, just as Father Lasse
had recalled her home and her childhood to her. But he did not connect
any further ideas with that meeting; it was a long time ago, and—”isn’t
she going to give me anything to eat?” he thought, and listened
unsympathetically to her heavy breathing.
The sailors sat looking at her constrainedly; a solemn silence lay on
their mist-wreathed faces; they were like drunken men standing about a
grave. “Give over washing the decks now—and get us something to drink!”
an old fellow said suddenly. “Each of us knows what it is to have times
of childish innocence come back to him, and I say it’s a jolly fine
thing when they will peep through the door at old devils like us! But
let the water stop overboard now, I say! The more one scours an old
barge the more damage comes to light! So, give us something to drink
now, and then the cards, ma’am!”
She stood up and gave them what they asked for; she had mastered her
emotion, but her legs were still heavy.
“That’s right—and then we’ve got a sort of idea that to-day is Sunday!
Show us your skill, ma’am, quick!”
“But that costs a krone, you know!” she said, laughing.
They collected the money and she went behind the bar and undressed. She
reappeared in her chemise, with a burning candle in her hand….
Pelle slipped out. He was quite dizzy with hunger and a dull feeling of
shame. He strolled on at random, not knowing what he did. He had only
one feeling—that everything in the world was indifferent to him,
whatever happened—whether he went on living in laborious honesty, or
defiled himself with drinking, or perished—it was all one to him! What
was the good of it all? No one cared what happened to him—not even he
himself. Not a human soul would miss him if he went to the dogs—but
yes, there was Lasse, Father Lasse! But as for going home now and
allowing them to see him in all his wretchedness —when they had
expected such unreasonable things of him—no, he could not do it! The
last remnants of shame protested against it. And to work—what at? His
dream was dead. He stood there with a vague feeling that he had come to
the very edge of the abyss, which is so ominous to those in the depths.
Year in, year out, he had kept himself by his never-flagging exertions,
and with the demented idea that he was mounting upward. And now he
stood very near the lowest depth of life—the very bottom. And he was so
tired. Why not let himself sink yet a little further; why not let
destiny run its course? There would be a seductive repose in the acts,
after his crazy struggle against the superior powers.
The sound of a hymn aroused him slightly. He had come down a
side-street, and right in front of him stood a wide, lofty building,
with the gable facing the street and a cross on the point of the gable.
Hundreds of voices had sought, in the course of the years, to entice
him hither; but in his arrogance he had had no use for spiritual
things. What was there here for a smart youngster? And now he was
stranded outside! And now he felt a longing for a little care, and he
had a feeling that a hand had led him hither.
The hall was quite filled with poor families. They were packed
amazingly close together on the benches, each family by itself; the
men, as a rule, were asleep, and the women had all they could do to
quiet their children, and to make them sit politely with their legs
sticking out in front of them. These were people who had come to enjoy
a little light and warmth, free of cost, in the midst of their desolate
lives; on Sundays, at least, they thought, they could ask for a little
of these things. They were the very poorest of the poor, and they
sought refuge here, where they would not be persecuted, and where they
were promised their part in the millennium. Pelle knew them all, both
those whom he had seen before and those others, who wore the same
expression, as of people drowned in the ocean of life. He soon found
himself cozily settled among all these dishevelled nestlings, whom the
pitiless wind had driven oversea, and who were now washed ashore by the
waves.
A tall man with a full beard and a pair of good child-like eyes stood
up among the benches, beating the time of a hymn—he was Dam, the smith.
He led the singing, and as he stood there he bent his knees in time,
and they all sang with him, with tremulous voices, each in his own key,
of that which had passed over them. The notes forced their way through
the parched, worn throats, cowering, as though afraid, now that they
had flown into the light. Hesitatingly they unfurled their fragile,
gauzy wings, and floated out into the room, up from the quivering lips.
And under the roof they met with their hundreds of sisters, and their
defilement fell from them. They became a jubilation, loud and splendid,
over some unknown treasure, over the kingdom of happiness, that was
close at hand. To Pelle it seemed that the air must be full of
butterflies winged with sunshine:
“O blessed, blessed shall we be
When we, from care and mis’ry free,
The splendor of Thy kingdom see,
And with our Saviour come to Thee!”
“Mother, I’m hungry!” said a child’s voice, as the hymn was followed by
silence. The mother, herself emaciated, silenced the child with a
shocked expression, and looked wonderingly about her. What a stupid
idea of the child’s! “You’ve just had your food!” she said loudly, as
though she had been comfortably off. But the child went on crying:
“Mother, I’m so hungry!”
Then Baker Jörgen’s Sören came by, and gave the child a roll. He had a
whole basket full of bread. “Are there any more children who are
hungry?” he asked aloud. He looked easily in people’s faces, and was
quite another creature to what he was at home; here no one laughed at
him, and no one whispered that he was the brother of his own son.
An old white-bearded man mounted the pulpit at the back of the hall.
“That’s him,” was whispered in every direction, and they all hastened
to clear their throats by coughing, and to induce the children to empty
their mouths of food. He took the cry of the little one as his text:
“Mother, I am so hungry!” That was the voice of the world—that great,
terrible cry—put into the mouth of a child. He saw no one there who had
not writhed at the sound of that cry on the lips of his own flesh and
blood—no one who, lest he should hear it again, had not sought to
secure bread during his lifetime—no one who had not been beaten back.
But they did not see God’s hand when that hand, in its loving-kindness,
changed that mere hunger for bread into a hunger for happiness. They
were the poor, and the poor are God’s chosen people. For that reason
they must wander in the desert, and must blindly ask: “Where is the
Promised Land?” But the gleam of which the faithful followed was not
earthly happiness! God himself led them to and fro until their hunger
was purged and became the true hunger—the hunger of the soul for
eternal happiness!
They did not understand much of what he said; but his words set free
something within them, so that they engaged in lively conversation over
everyday things. But suddenly the buzz of conversation was silenced; a
little hunchbacked man had clambered up on a bench and was looking them
over with glittering eyes. This was Sort, the traveling shoemaker from
the outer suburb.
“We want to be glad and merry,” he said, assuming a droll expression;
“God’s children are always glad, however much evil they have to fight
against, and they can meet with no misfortune—God is Joy!” He began to
laugh, as boisterously as a child, and they all laughed with him; one
infected the next. They could not control themselves; it was as though
an immense merriment had overwhelmed them all. The little children
looked at the grown-ups and laughed, till their little throats began to
cough with laughing. “He’s a proper clown!” said the men to their
wives, their own faces broad with laughter, “but he’s got a good
heart!”
On the bench next to Pelle sat a silent family, a man and wife and
three children, who breathed politely through their raw little noses.
The parents were little people, and there was a kind of inward deftness
about them, as though they were continually striving to make themselves
yet smaller. Pelle knew them a little, and entered into conversation
with them. The man was a clay-worker, and they lived in one of the
miserable huts near the “Great Power’s” home.
“Yes, that is true—that about happiness,” said the wife. “Once we too
used to dream of getting on in the world a little, so that we might be
sure of our livelihood; and we scraped a little money together, that
some good people lent us, and we set up in a little shop, and I kept it
while father went to work. But it wouldn’t answer; no one supported us,
and we got poorer goods because we were poor, and who cares about
dealing with very poor people? We had to give it up, and we were deeply
in debt, and we’re still having to pay it off—fifty öre every week, and
there we shall be as long as we live, for the interest is always
mounting up. But we are honorable people, thank God!” she concluded.
The man took no part in the conversation.
Her last remark was perhaps evoked by a man who had quietly entered the
hall, and was now crouching on a bench in the background; for he was
not an honorable man. He had lived on a convict’s bread and water; he
was “Thieving Jacob,” who about ten years earlier had smashed in the
window of Master Jeppe’s best room and had stolen a pair of
patent-leather shoes for his wife. He had heard of a rich man who had
given his betrothed such a pair of shoes, and he wanted to see what it
was like, just for once, to give a really fine present—a present worth
as much as one would earn in two weeks. This he had explained before
the court. “Numbskull!” said Jeppe always, when the conversation
touched upon Jacob; “for such a miserable louse suddenly to get a
swollen head, to want to make big presents! And if it had been for his
young woman even—but for his wife! No, he paid the penalty to the very
last day—in spite of Andres.”
Yes, he certainly had to pay the penalty! Even here no one would sit
next to him! Pelle looked at him and wondered that his own offence
should be so little regarded. The remembrance of it now only lay in
people’s eyes when they spoke to him. But at this moment Smith Dam went
and sat next to Thieving Jacob, and they sat hand-in-hand and
whispered.
And over yonder sat some one who nodded to Pelle—in such a friendly
manner; it was the woman of the dancing-shoes; her young man had left
her, and now she was stranded here—her dancing days were over. Yet she
was grateful to Pelle; the sight of him had recalled delightful
memories; one could see that by the expression of her eyes and mouth.
Pelle’s own temper was softened as he sat there. Something melted
within him; a quiet and humble feeling of happiness came over him.
There was still one human being who believed herself in Pelle’s debt,
although everything had gone wrong for her.
As the meeting was breaking up, at half-past nine, she was standing in
the street, in conversation with another woman. She came up to Pelle,
giving him her hand. “Shall we walk a little way together?” she asked
him. She evidently knew of his circumstances; he read compassion in her
glance. “Come with me,” she said, as their ways parted. “I have a scrap
of sausage that’s got to be eaten. And we are both of us lonely.”
Hesitatingly he went with her, a little hostile, for the occasion was
new and unfamiliar. But once he was seated in her little room he felt
thoroughly at ease. Her white, dainty bed stood against the wall. She
went to and fro about the room, cooking the sausage at the stove, while
she opened her heart to him, unabashed.
It isn’t everybody would take things so easily! thought Pelle, and he
watched her moving figure quite happily.
They had a cheerful meal, and Pelle wanted to embrace her in his
gratitude, but she pushed his hands away. “You can keep that for
another time!” she said, laughing. “I’m a poor old widow, and you are
nothing but a child. If you want to give me pleasure, why, just settle
down and come to yourself again. It isn’t right that you should be just
loafing about and idling, and you so young and such a nice boy. And now
go home, for I must get up early to-morrow and go to my work.”
Pelle visited her almost every evening. She had a disagreeable habit of
shaking him out of his slumber, but her simple and unchanging manner of
accepting and enduring everything was invigorating. Now and again she
found a little work for him, and was always delighted when she could
share her poor meal with him. “Any one like myself feels a need of
seeing a man-body at the table-end once in a while,” she said. “But
hands off—you don’t owe me anything!”
She criticized his clothes. “They’ll all fall off your body soon— why
don’t you put on something else and let me see to them?”
“I have nothing but these,” said Pelle, ashamed.
On Saturday evening he had to take off his rags, and creep, mother-
naked, into her bed. She would take no refusal, and she took shirt and
all, and put them into a bucket of water. It took her half the night to
clean everything. Pelle lay in bed watching her, the coverlet up to his
chin. He felt very strange. As for her, she hung the whole wash to dry
over the stove, and made herself a bed on a couple of chairs. When he
woke up in the middle of the morning she was sitting by the window
mending his clothes.
“But what sort of a night did you have?” asked Pelle, a trifle
concerned.
“Excellent! Do you know what I’ve thought of this morning? You ought to
give up your room and stay here until you are on your feet again
—you’ve had a good rest—for once,” she smiled teasingly. “That room is
an unnecessary expense. As you see, there’s room here for two.”
But Pelle would not agree. He would not hear of being supported by a
woman. “Then people will believe that there’s something wrong between
us—and make a scandal of it,” he said.
“Let them then!” she answered, with her gay laugh. “If I’ve a good
conscience it’s indifferent to me what others think.” While she was
talking she was working diligently at his linen, and she threw one
article after another at his head. Then she ironed his suit. “Now
you’re quite a swell again!” she said, when he stood up dressed once
more, and she looked at him affectionately. “It’s as though you had
become a new creature. If I were only ten or fifteen years younger I’d
be glad to go down the street on your arm. But you shall give me a
kiss—I’ve put you to rights again, as if you were my own child.” She
kissed him heartily and turned about to the stove.
“And now I’ve got no better advice than that we have some cold dinner
together and then go our ways,” she said, with her back still turned.
“All my firing has been used overnight to dry your things, and you
can’t stay here in the cold. I think I can pay a visit somewhere or
other, and so the day will pass; and you can find some corner to put
yourself in.’
“It’s all the same to me where I am,” said Pelle indifferently.
She looked at him with a peculiar smile. “Are you really always going
to be a loafer?” she said. “You men are extraordinary creatures! If
anything at all goes wrong with you, you must start drinking right
away, or plunge yourself into unhappiness in some other way—you are no
better than babies! We must work quietly on, however things go with
us!” She stood there hesitating in her hat and cloak. “Here’s
five-and-twenty öre,” she said; “that’s just for a cup of coffee to
warm you!”
Pelle would not accept it. “What do I want with your money?” he said.
“Keep it yourself!”
“Take it, do! I know it’s only a little, but I have no more, and
there’s no need for us to be ashamed of being helped by one another.”
She put the coin in his jacket pocket and hurried off.
Pelle strolled out to the woods. He did not feel inclined to go home,
to resume the aimless battle with Ström. He wandered along the deserted
paths, and experienced a feeble sense of well-being when he noticed
that the spring was really coming. The snow was still lying beneath the
old moss-gray pinetrees, but the toadstools were already thrusting
their heads up through the pine-needles, and one had a feeling, when
walking over the ground, as though one trod upon rising dough.
He found himself pondering over his own affairs, and all of a sudden he
awoke out of his half-slumber. Something had just occurred to him,
something cozy and intimate—why, yes, it was the thought that he might
go to Marie and set up for himself, like Jens and his girl. He could
get hold of a few lasts and sit at home and work … he could scrape
along for a bit, until better times came. She earned something too, and
she was generous.
But when he thought over the matter seriously it assumed a less
pleasant aspect. He had already sufficiently abused her poverty and her
goodness of heart. He had taken her last scrap of firing, so that she
was now forced to go out in order to get a little warmth and some
supper. The idea oppressed him. Now that his eyes were opened he could
not escape this feeling of shame. It went home and to bed with him, and
behind all her goodness he felt her contempt for him, because he did
not overcome his misery by means of work, like a respectable fellow.
On the following morning he was up early, and applied for work down at
the harbor. He did not see the necessity of work in the abstract, but
he would not be indebted to a woman. On Sunday evening he would repay
her outlay over him and his clothes.