It was dawn on the first
of May, 1877. From the sea the mist came sweeping in, in a gray
trail that lay heavily on the water. Here and there there was a
movement in it; it seemed about to lift, but closed in again,
leaving only a strip of shore with two old boats lying keel
uppermost upon it. The prow of a third boat and a bit of breakwater
showed dimly in the mist a few paces off. At definite intervals a
smooth, gray wave came gliding out of the mist up over the rustling
shingle, and then withdrew again; it was as if some great animal
lay hidden out there in the fog, and lapped at the land.
A couple of hungry crows were
busy with a black, inflated object down there, probably the carcass
of a dog. Each time a wave glided in, they rose and hovered a few
feet up in the air with their legs extended straight down toward
their booty, as if held by some invisible attachment. When the
water retreated, they dropped down and buried their heads in the
carrion, but kept their wings spread, ready to rise before the next
advancing wave. This was repeated with the regularity of
clock-work.
A shout came vibrating in from
the harbor, and a little while after the heavy sound of oars
working over the edge of a boat. The sound grew more distant and at
last ceased; but then a bell began to ring—it must have been at the
end of the mole—and out of the distance, into which the beat of the
oars had disappeared, came the answering sound of a horn. They
continued to answer one another for a couple of minutes.
The town was invisible, but now
and then the silence there was broken by the iron tramp of a
quarryman upon the stone paving. For a long time the regular beat
of his footsteps could be heard, until it suddenly ceased as he
turned some corner or other. Then a door was opened, followed by
the sound of a loud morning yawn; and someone began to sweep the
pavement. Windows were opened here and there, out of which floated
various sounds to greet the gray day. A woman’s sharp voice was
heard scolding, then short, smart slaps and the crying of a child.
A shoemaker began beating leather, and as he worked fell to singing
a hymn—
“But One is worthy of our hymn, O
brothers:
The Lamb on Whom the sins of all
men lay.”
The tune was one of Mendelssohn’s
“Songs without Words.”
Upon the bench under the church
wall sat a boat’s crew with their gaze turned seaward. They were
leaning forward and smoking, with hands clasped between their
knees. All three wore ear-rings as a preventive of colds and other
evils, and all sat in exactly the same position, as if the one were
afraid of making himself in the very least different from the
others.
A traveller came sauntering down
from the hotel, and approached the fishermen. He had his
coat-collar turned up, and shivered in the chill morning air. “Is
anything the matter?” he asked civilly, raising his cap. His voice
sounded gruff.
One of the fishermen moved his
hand slightly in the direction of his head-gear. He was the head
man of the boat’s crew. The others gazed straight before them
without moving a muscle.
“I mean, as the bell’s ringing
and the pilot-boat’s out blowing her horn,” the traveller went on.
“Are they expecting a ship?”
“May be. You never can tell!”
answered the head man unapproachably.
The stranger looked as if he were
deeply insulted, but restrained himself. It was only their usual
secretiveness, their inveterate distrust of every one who did not
speak their dialect and look exactly like themselves. They sat
there inwardly uneasy in spite of their wooden exterior, stealing
glances at him when he was not looking, and wishing him at Jericho.
He felt tempted to tease them a little.
“Dear me! Perhaps it’s a secret?”
he said, laughing.
“Not that I know of,” answered
the fisherman cautiously.
“Well, of course I don’t expect
anything for nothing! And besides it wears out your
talking-apparatus to be continually opening and shutting it. How
much do you generally get?” He took out his purse; it was his
intention to insult them now.
The other fishermen threw stolen
glances at their leader. If only he did not run them aground!
The head man took his pipe out of
his mouth and turned to his companions: “No, as I was saying, there
are some folks that have nothing to do but go about and be clever.”
He warned them with his eyes, the expression of his face was
wooden. His companions nodded. They enjoyed the situation, as the
commercial traveller could see from their doltish looks.
He was enraged. Here he was,
being treated as if he were air and made fun of! “Confound you
fellows! Haven’t you even learnt as much as to give a civil answer
to a civil question?” he said angrily.
The fishermen looked backward and
forward at one another, taking mute counsel.
“No, but I tell you what it is!
She must come some time,” said the head man at last.
“What ‘she’?”
“The steamer, of course. And she
generally comes about this time. Now you’ve got it!”
“Naturally—of course! But isn’t
it a little unwise to speak so loud about it?” jeered the
traveller.
The fishermen had turned their
backs on him, and were scraping out their pipes.
“We’re not quite so free with our
speech here as some people, and yet we make our living,” said the
head man to the others. They growled their approval.
As the stranger wandered on down
the harbor hill, the fishermen looked after him with a feeling of
relief. “What a talker!” said one. “He wanted to show off a bit,
but you gave him what he won’t forget in a hurry.”
“Yes, I think it touched him on
the raw, all right,” answered the man, with pride. “It’s these fine
gentlemen you need to be most careful of.”
Half-way down the harbor hill, an
inn-keeper stood at his door yawning. The morning stroller repeated
his question to him, and received an immediate answer, the man
being a Copenhagener.
“Well, you see we’re expecting
the steamer from Ystad today, with a big cargo of slaves—cheap
Swedish laborers, that’s to say, who live on black bread and salt
herrings, and do the work of three. They ought to be flogged with
red-hot icicles, that sort, and the brutes of farmers, too! You
won’t take a little early morning glass of something, I
suppose?”
“No, thank you, I think not—so
early.”
“Very well, please
yourself.”
Down at the harbor a number of
farmers’ carts were already standing, and fresh ones arrived at
full gallop every minute. The newcomers guided their teams as far
to the front as possible, examined their neighbors’ horses with a
critical eye, and settled themselves into a half-doze, with their
fur collars turned up about their ears. Custom-house men in
uniform, and pilots, looking like monster penguins, wandered
restlessly about, peering out to sea and listening. Every moment
the bell at the end of the mole rang, and was answered by the
pilot-boat’s horn somewhere out in the fog over the sea, with a
long, dreary hoot, like the howl of some suffering animal.
“What was that noise?” asked a
farmer who had just come, catching up the reins in fear. His fear
communicated itself to his horses, and they stood trembling with
heads raised listening in the direction of the sea, with
questioning terror in their eyes.
“It was only the sea-serpent,”
answered a custom-house officer. “He always suffers from wind in
this foggy weather. He’s a wind-sucker, you see.” And the
custom-house men put their heads together and grinned.
Merry sailors dressed in blue
with white handkerchiefs round their necks went about patting the
horses, or pricking their nostrils with a straw to make them rear.
When the farmers woke up and scolded, they laughed with delight,
and sang—
“A sailor he must go
through
A deal more bad than good, good,
good!”
A big pilot, in an Iceland vest
and woollen gloves, was rushing anxiously about with a megaphone in
his hand, growling like an uneasy bear. Now and then he climbed up
on the molehead, put the megaphone to his mouth, and roared out
over the water: “Do—you—hear—any—thing?” The roar went on for a
long time out upon the long swells, up and down, leaving behind it
an oppressive silence, until it suddenly returned from the town
above, in the shape of a confused babble that made people
laugh.
“N-o-o!” was heard a little while
after in a thin and long-drawn-out cry from the sea; and again the
horn was heard, a long, hoarse sound that came rocking in on the
waves, and burst gurgling in the splash under the wharf and on the
slips.
The farmers were out of it all.
They dozed a little or sat flicking their whips to pass the time.
But every one else was in a state of suspense. A number of people
had gradually gathered about the harbor —fishermen, sailors waiting
to be hired, and master-artisans who were too restless to stay in
their workshop. They came down in their leather aprons, and began
at once to discuss the situation; they used nautical expressions,
most of them having been at sea in their youth. The coming of the
steamer was always an event that brought people to the harbor; but
to-day she had a great many people on board, and she was already an
hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high
pressure; but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a
feeling of dull oppression. Fog is the seaman’s worst enemy, and
there were many unpleasant possibilities. On the best supposition
the ship had gone inshore too far north or south, and now lay
somewhere out at sea hooting and heaving the lead, without daring
to move. One could imagine the captain storming and the sailors
hurrying here and there, lithe and agile as cats. Stop!—Half-speed
ahead! Stop!—Half-speed astern! The first engineer would be at the
engine himself, gray with nervous excitement. Down in the
engine-room, where they knew nothing at all, they would strain
their ears painfully for any sound, and all to no purpose. But up
on deck every man would be on the alert for his life; the helmsman
wet with the sweat of his anxiety to watch every movement of the
captain’s directing hand, and the look-out on the forecastle
peering and listening into the fog until he could hear his own
heart beat, while the suspense held every man on deck on
tenterhooks, and the fog-horn hooted its warning. But perhaps the
ship had already gone to the bottom!
Every one knew it all; every man
had in some way or other been through this overcharged suspense—as
cabin-boy, stoker, captain, cook—and felt something of it again
now. Only the farmers were unaffected by it; they dozed, woke up
with a jerk, and yawned audibly.
The seafarers and the peasants
always had a difficulty in keeping on peaceable terms with one
another; they were as different as land and sea. But to-day the
indifferent attitude of the peasants made the sea-folk eye them
with suppressed rage. The fat pilot had already had several
altercations with them for being in his way; and when one of them
laid himself open to criticism, he was down upon him in an instant.
It was an elderly farmer, who woke from his nap with a start, as
his head fell forward, and impatiently took out his watch and
looked at it.
“It’s getting rather late,” he
said. “The captain can’t find his stall to-day.”
“More likely he’s dropped into an
inn on the way!” said the pilot, his eyes gleaming with
malice.
“Very likely,” answered the
farmer, without for the moment realizing the nature of the paths of
the sea. His auditors laughed exultingly, and passed the mistake on
to their neighbors, and people crowded round the unfortunate man,
while some one cried: “How many inns are there between this and
Sweden?”
“Yes, it’s too easy to get hold
of liquids out there, that’s the worst of it,” the pilot went on.
“But for that any booby could manage a ship. He’s only got to keep
well to the right of Mads Hansen’s farm, and he’s got a straight
road before him. And the deuce of a fine road! Telegraph-wires and
ditches and a row of poplars on each side—just improved by the
local board. You’ve just got to wipe the porridge off your
mustache, kiss the old woman, and climb up on to the bridge, and
there you are! Has the engine been oiled, Hans? Right away, then,
off we go; hand me my best whip!” He imitated the peasants’ manner
of speech. “Be careful about the inns, Dad!” he added in a shrill
falsetto. There were peals of laughter, that had an evil sound in
the prevailing depression.
The farmer sat quite still under
the deluge, only lowering his head a little. When the laughter had
almost died away, he pointed at the pilot with his whip, and
remarked to the bystanders—
“That’s a wonderful clever kid
for his age! Whose father art thou, my boy?” he went on, turning to
the pilot.
This raised a laugh, and the
thick-necked pilot swelled with rage. He seized hold of the body of
the cart and shook it so that the farmer had a difficulty in
keeping his seat. “You miserable old clodhopper, you pig-breeder,
you dung-carter!” he roared. “What do you mean by coming here and
saying ‘thou’ to grown-up people and calling them ‘boy’? And giving
your opinions on navigation into the bargain! Eh! you lousy old
money-grubber! No, if you ever take off your greasy night-cap to
anybody but your parish clerk, then take it off to the captain who
can find his harbor in a fog like this. You can give him my kind
regards and say I said so.” And he let go of the cart so suddenly
that it swung over to the other side.
“I may as well take it off to
you, as the other doesn’t seem able to find us to-day,” said the
farmer with a grin, and took off his fur cap, disclosing a large
bald head.
“Cover up that great bald
pumpkin, or upon my word I’ll give it something!” cried the pilot,
blind with rage, and beginning to clamber up into the cart.
At that moment, like the thin
metallic voice of a telephone, there came faintly from the sea the
words: “We—hear—a—steam—whistle!”
The pilot ran off on to the
breakwater, hitting out as he passed at the farmer’s horse, and
making it rear. Men cleared a space round the mooring-posts, and
dragged up the gangways with frantic speed. Carts that had hay in
them, as if they were come to fetch cattle, began to move without
having anywhere to drive to. Everything was in motion. Labor-hirers
with red noses and cunning eyes, came hurrying down from the
sailors’ tavern where they had been keeping themselves warm.
Then as if a huge hand had been
laid upon the movement, everything suddenly stood still again, in
strained effort to hear. A far-off, tiny echo of a steam whistle
whined somewhere a long way off. Men stole together into groups and
stood motionless, listening and sending angry glances at the
restless carts. Was it real, or was it a creation of the heart-felt
wishes of so many?
Perhaps a warning to every one
that at that moment the ship had gone to the bottom? The sea always
sends word of its evil doings; when the bread-winner is taken his
family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on the windows that look
on to the sea—there are so many ways.
But now it sounded again, and
this time the sound come in little waves over the water, the same
vibrating, subdued whistle that long-tailed ducks make when they
rise; it seemed alive. The fog-horn answered it out in the fairway,
and the bell in at the mole-head; then the horn once more, and the
steam-whistle in the distance. So it went on, a guiding line of
sound being spun between the land and the indefinite gray out
there, backward and forward. Here on terra firma one could
distinctly feel how out there they were groping their way by the
sound. The hoarse whistle slowly increased in volume, sounding now
a little to the south, now to the north, but growing steadily
louder. Then other sounds made themselves heard, the heavy scraping
of iron against iron, the noise of the screw when it was reversed
or went on again.
The pilot-boat glided slowly out
of the fog, keeping to the middle of the fairway, and moving slowly
inward hooting incessantly. It towed by the sound an invisible
world behind it, in which hundreds of voices murmured thickly
amidst shouting and clanging, and tramping of feet—a world that
floated blindly in space close by. Then a shadow began to form in
the fog where no one had expected it, and the little steamer made
its appearance—looking enormous in the first moment of surprise—in
the middle of the harbor entrance.
At this the last remnants of
suspense burst and scattered, and every one had to do something or
other to work off the oppression. They seized the heads of the
farmers’ horses and pushed them back, clapped their hands,
attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while they stamped on the
stone paving.
“Good voyage?” asked a score of
voices at once.
“All well!” answered the captain
cheerfully.
And now he, too, has got rid of
his incubus, and rolls forth words of command; the propeller churns
up the water behind, hawsers fly through the air, and the steam
winch starts with a ringing metallic clang, while the vessel works
herself broadside in to the wharf.
Between the forecastle and the
bridge, in under the upper deck and the after, there is a swarm of
people, a curiously stupid swarm, like sheep that get up on to one
another’s backs and look foolish. “What a cargo of cattle!” cries
the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly on the
breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin caps,
old military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women’s
tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old,
wrinkled pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but want, and
expectancy, and a certain animal greed are visible in all of them.
The unfamiliarity of the moment brings a touch of stupidity into
them, as they press forward, or climb up to get a view over their
neighbors’ heads and stare open-mouthed at the land where the wages
are said to be so high, and the brandy so uncommonly strong. They
see the fat, fur-clad farmers and the men come down to engage
laborers.
They do not know what to do with
themselves, and are always getting in the way; and the sailors
chase them with oaths from side to side of the vessel, or throw
hatches and packages without warning at their feet. “Look out, you
Swedish devil!” cries a sailor who has to open the iron doors. The
Swede backs in bewilderment, but his hand involuntarily flies to
his pocket and fingers nervously his big pocket-knife.
The gangway is down, and the two
hundred and fifty passengers stream down it—stone-masons, navvies,
maid-servants, male and female day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen,
here and there a solitary little cowherd, and tailors in smart
clothes, who keep far away from the rest. There are young men
straighter and better built than any that the island produces, and
poor old men more worn with toil and want than they ever become
here. There are also faces among them that bear an expression of
malice, others sparkling with energy, and others disfigured with
great scars.
Most of them are in
working-clothes and only possess what they stand in. Here and there
is a man with some tool upon his shoulder—a shovel or a crowbar.
Those that have any luggage, get it turned inside out by the
custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in Sweden. Now and
then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has to put up with
the officers’ coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome
Sara from Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn she goes
home, and comes again every spring with a figure that at once makes
her the butt of their wit; but Sara, who generally has a quick
temper and a ready tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest
confusion: she has fourteen yards of cloth wrapped round her under
her dress.
The farmers are wide awake now.
Those who dare, leave their horses and go among the crowd; the
others choose their laborers with their eyes, and call them up.
Each one takes his man’s measure—width of chest, modest manner,
wretchedness; but they are afraid of the scarred and malicious
faces, and leave them to the bailiffs on the large farms. Offers
are made and conditions fixed, and every minute one or two Swedes
climb up into the hay in the back of some cart, and are driven
off.
A little on one side stood an
elderly, bent little man with a sack upon his back, holding a boy
of eight or nine by the hand; beside them lay a green chest. They
eagerly watched the proceedings, and each time a cart drove off
with some of their countrymen, the boy pulled impatiently at the
hand of the old man, who answered by a reassuring word. The old man
examined the farmers one by one with an anxious air, moving his
lips as he did so: he was thinking. His red, lashless eyes kept
watering with the prolonged staring, and he wiped them with the
mouth of the coarse dirty sack.
“Do you see that one there?” he
suddenly asked the boy, pointing to a fat little farmer with
apple-cheeks. “I should think he’d be kind to children. Shall we
try him, laddie?”
The boy nodded gravely, and they
made straight for the farmer. But when he had heard that they were
to go together, he would not take them; the boy was far too little
to earn his keep. And it was the same thing every time.
It was Lasse Karlsson from
Tommelilla in the Ystad district, and his son Pelle.
It was not altogether strange to
Lasse, for he had been on the island once before, about ten years
ago; but he had been younger then, in full vigor it might be said,
and had no little boy by the hand, from whom he would not be
separated for all the world; that was the difference. It was the
year that the cow had been drowned in the marl-pit, and Bengta was
preparing for her confinement. Things looked bad, but Lasse staked
his all on one cast, and used the couple of krones he got for the
hide of the cow to go to Bornholm. When he came back in the autumn,
there were three mouths to fill; but then he had a hundred krones
to meet the winter with.
At that time Lasse had been equal
to the situation, and he would still straighten his bowed shoulders
whenever he thought of that exploit. Afterward, whenever there were
short commons, he would talk of selling the whole affair and going
to Bornholm for good. But Bengta’s health failed after her late
child-bearing, and nothing came of it, until she died after eight
years of suffering, this very spring. Then Lasse sold their bit of
furniture, and made nearly a hundred krones on it; it went in
paying the expenses of the long illness, and the house and land
belonged to the landlord. A green chest, that had been part of
Bengta’s wedding outfit, was the only thing he kept. In it he
packed their belongings and a few little things of Bengta’s, and
sent it on in advance to the port with a horse-dealer who was
driving there. Some of the rubbish for which no one would bid he
stuffed into a sack, and with it on his back and the boy’s hand
clasped in his, he set out to walk to Ystad, where the steamer for
Rönne lay. The few coins he had would just pay their passage.
He had been so sure of himself on
the way, and had talked in loud tones to Pelle about the country
where the wages were so incomprehensibly high, and where in some
places you got meat or cheese to eat with your bread, and always
beer, so that the water-cart in the autumn did not come round for
the laborers, but only for the cattle. And—why, if you liked you
could drink gin like water, it was so cheap; but it was so strong
that it knocked you down at the third pull. They made it from real
grain, and not from diseased potatoes; and they drank it at every
meal. And laddie would never feel cold there, for they wore wool
next their skin, and not this poor linen that the wind blew right
through; and a laborer who kept himself could easily make his two
krones a day. That was something different from their master’s
miserable eighty öres and finding themselves in everything.
Pelle had heard the same thing
often before—from his father, from Ole and Anders, from Karna and a
hundred others who had been there. In the winter, when the air was
thick with frost and snow and the needs of the poor, there was
nothing else talked about in the little villages at home; and in
the minds of those who had not been on the island themselves, but
had only heard the tales about it, the ideas produced were as
fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the window-panes. Pelle was
perfectly well aware that even the poorest boys there always wore
their best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping with sugar on it as
often as they liked. There money lay like dirt by the roadside, and
the Bornholmers did not even take the trouble to stoop and pick it
up; but Pelle meant to pick it up, so that Father Lasse would have
to empty the odds and ends out of the sack and clear out the locked
compartment in the green chest to make room for it; and even that
would be hardly enough. If only they could begin! He shook his
father’s hand impatiently.
“Yes, yes,” said Lasse, almost in
tears. “You mustn’t be impatient.” He looked about him
irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of all this splendor, and
could not even find a humble situation for himself and the boy. He
could not understand it. Had the whole world changed since his
time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the last cart drove
off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly after it, and
then he and the boy together carried the green chest up to a wall,
and trudged hand in hand up toward the town.
Lasse’s lips moved as he walked;
he was thinking. In an ordinary way he thought best when he talked
out loud to himself, but to-day all his faculties were alert, and
it was enough only to move his lips.
As he trudged along, his mental
excuses became audible. “Confound it!” he exclaimed, as he jerked
the sack higher up his back. “It doesn’t do to take the first thing
that comes. Lasse’s responsible for two, and he knows what he
wants—so there! It isn’t the first time he’s been abroad! And the
best always comes last, you know, laddie.”
Pelle was not paying much
attention. He was already consoled, and his father’s words about
the best being in store for them, were to him only a feeble
expression for a great truth, namely, that the whole world would
become theirs, with all that it contained in the way of wonders. He
was already engaged in taking possession of it, open-mouthed.
He looked as if he would like to
swallow the harbor with all its ships and boats, and the great
stacks of timber, where it looked as if there would be holes. This
would be a fine place to play in, but there were no boys! He
wondered whether the boys were like those at home; he had seen none
yet. Perhaps they had quite a different way of fighting, but he
would manage all right if only they would come one at a time. There
was a big ship right up on land, and they were skinning it. So
ships have ribs, just like cows!
At the wooden shed in the middle
of the harbor square, Lasse put down the sack, and giving the boy a
piece of bread and telling him to stay and mind the sack, he went
farther up and disappeared. Pelle was very hungry, and holding the
bread with both hands he munched at it greedily.
When he had picked the last
crumbs off his jacket, he set himself to examine his surroundings.
That black stuff in that big pot was tar. He knew it quite well,
but had never seen so much at once. My word! If you fell into that
while it was boiling, it would be worse even than the brimstone pit
in hell. And there lay some enormous fish-hooks, just like those
that were hanging on thick iron chains from the ships’ nostrils. He
wondered whether there still lived giants who could fish with such
hooks. Strong John couldn’t manage them!
He satisfied himself with his own
eyes that the stacks of boards were really hollow, and that he
could easily get down to the bottom of them, if only he had not had
the sack to drag about. His father had said he was to mind the
sack, and he never let it out of his hands for a moment; as it was
too heavy to carry, he had to drag it after him from place to
place.
He discovered a little ship, only
just big enough for a man to lie down in, and full of holes bored
in the bottom and sides. He investigated the ship-builders’ big
grind-stone, which was nearly as tall as a man. There were bent
planks lying there, with nails in them as big as the parish
constable’s new tether-peg at home. And the thing that ship was
tethered to—wasn’t it a real cannon that they had planted?
Pelle saw everything, and
examined every single object in the appropriate manner, now only
spitting appraisingly upon it, now kicking it or scratching it with
his penknife. If he came across some strange wonder or other, that
he could not get into his little brain in any other way, he set
himself astride on it.
This was a new world altogether,
and Pelle was engaged in making it his own. Not a shred of it would
he leave. If he had had his playfellows from Tommelilla here, he
would have explained it all to them. My word, how they would stare!
But when he went home to Sweden again, he would tell them about it,
and then he hoped they would call him a liar.
He was sitting astride an
enormous mast that lay along the timber- yard upon some oak
trestles. He kicked his feet together under the mast, as he had
heard of knights doing in olden days under their horses, and
imagined himself seizing hold of a ring and lifting himself, horse
and all. He sat on horseback in the midst of his newly discovered
world, glowing with the pride of conquest, struck the horse’s loins
with the flat of his hand, and dug his heels into its sides, while
he shouted a song at the top of his voice. He had been obliged to
let go the sack to get up.
“Far away in Smaaland the little
imps were dancing
With ready-loaded pistol and
rifle-barrelled gun;
All the little devils they played
upon the fiddle,
But for the grand piano Old
Harry was the one.”
In the middle of his noisy joy,
he looked up, and immediately burst into a roar of terror and
dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On the top of the shed at the
place where his father had left him stood a black man and two
black, open-mouthed hell-hounds; the man leaned half out over the
ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was an old
figure-head, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come to
punish him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the hill.
A little way up he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn’t care
about the sack; and he wouldn’t get a thrashing if he did leave it
behind, for Father Lasse never beat him. And that horrid devil
would eat him up at the very least, if he ventured down there
again; he could distinctly see how red the nostrils shone, both the
devil’s and the dogs’.
But Pelle still hesitated. His
father was so careful of that sack, that he would be sure to be
sorry if he lost it—he might even cry as he did when he lost Mother
Bengta. For perhaps the first time, the boy was being subjected to
one of life’s serious tests, and stood—as so many had stood before
him—with the choice between sacrificing himself and sacrificing
others. His love for his father, boyish pride, the sense of duty
that is the social dower of the poor—the one thing with the
other—determined his choice. He stood the test, but not bravely; he
howled loudly the whole time, while, with his eyes fixed immovably
upon the Evil One and his hell-hounds, he crept back for the sack
and then dragged it after him at a quick run up the street.
No one is perhaps a hero until
the danger is over. But even then Pelle had no opportunity of
shuddering at his own courage; for no sooner was he out of the
reach of the black man, than his terror took a new form. What had
become of his father? He had said he would be back again directly!
Supposing he never came back at all! Perhaps he had gone away so as
to get rid of his little boy, who was only a trouble and made it
difficult for him to get a situation.
Pelle felt despairingly convinced
that it must be so, as, crying, he went off with the sack. The same
thing had happened to other children with whom he was well
acquainted; but they came to the pancake cottage and were quite
happy, and Pelle himself would be sure to—perhaps find the king and
be taken in there and have the little princes for his playmates,
and his own little palace to live in. But Father Lasse shouldn’t
have a thing, for now Pelle was angry and vindictive, although he
was crying just as unrestrainedly. He would let him stand and knock
at the door and beg to come in for three days, and only when he
began to cry—no, he would have to let him in at once, for to see
Father Lasse cry hurt him more than anything else in the world. But
he shouldn’t have a single one of the nails Pelle had filled his
pockets with down in the timber-yard; and when the king’s wife
brought them coffee in the morning before they were up——
But here both his tears and his
happy imaginings ceased, for out of a tavern at the top of the
street came Father Lasse’s own living self. He looked in excellent
spirits and held a bottle in his hand.
“Danish brandy, laddie!” he
cried, waving the bottle. “Hats off to the Danish brandy! But what
have you been crying for? Oh, you were afraid? And why were you
afraid? Isn’t your father’s name Lasse—Lasse Karlsson from
Kungstorp? And he’s not one to quarrel with; he hits hard, he does,
when he’s provoked. To come and frighten good little boys! They’d
better look out! Even if the whole wide world were full of naming
devils, Lasse’s here and you needn’t be afraid!”
During all this fierce talk he
was tenderly wiping the boy’s tear- stained cheeks and nose with
his rough hand, and taking the sack upon his back again. There was
something touchingly feeble about his stooping figure, as, boasting
and comforting, he trudged down again to the harbor holding the boy
by the hand. He tottered along in his big waterproof boots, the
tabs of which stuck out at the side and bore an astonishing
resemblance to Pelle’s ears; out of the gaping pockets of his old
winter coat protruded on one side his red pocket-handkerchief, on
the other the bottle. He had become a little looser in his
knee-joints now, and the sack threatened momentarily to get the
upper hand of him, pushing him forward and forcing him to go at a
trot down the hill. He looked decrepit, and perhaps his boastful
words helped to produce this effect; but his eyes beamed
confidently, and he smiled down at the boy, who ran along beside
him.
They drew near to the shed, and
Pelle turned cold with fear, for the black man was still standing
there. He went round to the other side of his father, and tried to
pull him out in a wide curve over the harbor square. “There he is
again,” he whimpered.
“So that’s what was after you, is
it?” said Lasse, laughing heartily; “and he’s made of wood, too!
Well, you really are the bravest laddie I ever knew! I should
almost think you might be sent out to fight a trussed chicken, if
you had a stick in your hand!” Lasse went on laughing, and shook
the boy goodnaturedly. But Pelle was ready to sink into the ground
with shame.
Down by the custom-house they met
a bailiff who had come too late for the steamer and had engaged no
laborers. He stopped his cart and asked Lasse if he was looking for
a place.
“Yes, we both want one,” answered
Lasse, briskly. “We want to be at the same farm—as the fox said to
the goose.”
The bailiff was a big, strong
man, and Pelle shuddered in admiration of his father who could dare
to speak to him so boldly.
But the great man laughed
good-humoredly. “Then I suppose he’s to be foreman?” he said,
flicking at Pelle with his whip.
“Yes, he certainly will be some
day,” said Lasse, with conviction.
“He’ll probably eat a few bushels
of salt first. Well, I’m in want of a herdsman, and will give you a
hundred krones for a year—although it’ll be confounded hard for you
to earn them from what I can see. There’ll always be a crust of
bread for the boy, but of course he’ll have to do what little he
can. You’re his grandfather, I suppose?”
“I’m his father—in the sight of
God and man,” answered Lasse, proudly.
“Oh, indeed! Then you must still
be fit for something, if you’ve come by him honestly. But climb up,
if you know what’s for your own good, for I haven’t time to stand
here. You won’t get such an offer every day.”
Pelle thought a hundred krones
was a fearful amount of money; Lasse, on the contrary, as the older
and more sensible, had a feeling that it was far too little. But,
though he was not aware of it yet, the experiences of the morning
had considerably dimmed the brightness of his outlook on life. On
the other hand, the dram had made him reckless and
generously-minded.
“All right then,” he said with a
wave of the hand. “But the master must understand that we won’t
have salt herring and porridge three times a day. We must have a
proper bedroom too—and be free on Sundays.” He lifted the sack and
the boy up into the cart, and then climbed up himself.
The bailiff laughed. “I see
you’ve been here before, old man. But I think we shall be able to
manage all that. You shall have roast pork stuffed with raisins and
rhubarb jelly with pepper on it, just as often as you like to open
your mouth.”
They drove down to the quay for
the chest, and then out toward the country again. Lasse, who
recognized one thing and another, explained it all in full to the
boy, taking a pull at the bottle between whiles; but the bailiff
must not see this. Pelle was cold and burrowed into the straw,
where he crept close up to his father.
“You take a mouthful,” whispered
Lasse, passing the bottle to him cautiously. “But take care that he
doesn’t see, for he’s a sly one. He’s a Jute.”
Pelle would not have a dram.
“What’s a Jute?” he asked in a whisper.
“A Jute? Good gracious me,
laddie, don’t you know that? It was the Jutes that crucified
Christ. That’s why they have to wander all over the world now, and
sell flannel and needles, and such-like; and they always cheat
wherever they go. Don’t you remember the one that cheated Mother
Bengta of her beautiful hair? Ah, no, that was before your time.
That was a Jute too. He came one day when I wasn’t at home, and
unpacked all his fine wares—combs and pins with blue glass heads,
and the finest head-kerchiefs. Women can’t resist such trash;
they’re like what we others are when some one holds a brandy-bottle
to our nose. Mother Bengta had no money, but that sly devil said he
would give her the finest handkerchief if she would let him cut off
just the end of her plait. And then he went and cut it off close up
to her head. My goodness, but she was like flint and steel when she
was angry! She chased him out of the house with a rake. But he took
the plait with him, and the handkerchief was rubbish, as might have
been expected. For the Jutes are cunning devils, who crucified——”
Lasse began at the beginning again.
Pelle did not pay much attention
to his father’s soft murmuring. It was something about Mother
Bengta, but she was dead now and lay in the black earth; she no
longer buttoned his under-vest down the back, or warmed his hands
when they were cold. So they put raisins into roast pork in this
country, did they? Money must be as common as dirt! There was none
lying about in the road, and the houses and farms were not so very
fine either. But the strangest thing was that the earth here was of
the same color as that at home, although it was a foreign country.
He had seen a map in Tommelilla, in which each country had a
different color. So that was a lie!
Lasse had long since talked
himself out, and slept with his head upon the boy’s back. He had
forgotten to hide the bottle.
Pelle was just going to push it
down into the straw when the bailiff —who as a matter of fact was
not a Jute, but a Zeelander—happened to turn round and caught sight
of it. He told the boy to throw it into the ditch.
By midday they reached their
destination. Lasse awoke as they drove on to the stone paving of
the large yard, and groped mechanically in the straw. But suddenly
he recollected where he was, and was sober in an instant. So this
was their new home, the only place they had to stay in and expect
anything of on this earth! And as he looked out over the big yard,
where the dinner-bell was just sounding and calling servants and
day-laborers out of all the doors, all his self-confidence
vanished. A despairing feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him, and
made his face tremble with impotent concern for his son.
His hands shook as he clambered
down from the wagon; he stood irresolute and at the mercy of all
the inquiring glances from the steps down to the basement of the
big house. They were talking about him and the boy, and laughing
already. In his confusion he determined to make as favorable a
first impression as possible, and began to take off his cap to each
one separately; and the boy stood beside him and did the same. They
were rather like the clowns at a fair, and the men round the
basement steps laughed aloud and bowed in imitation, and then began
to call to them; but the bailiff came out again to the cart, and
they quickly disappeared down the steps. From the house itself
there came a far-off, monotonous sound that never left off, and
insensibly added to their feeling of depression.
“Don’t stand there playing the
fool!” said the bailiff sharply. “Be off down to the others and get
something to eat! You’ll have plenty of time to show off your
monkey-tricks to them afterwards.”
At these encouraging words, the
old man took the boy’s hand and went across to the basement steps
with despair in his heart, mourning inwardly for Tommelilla and
Kungstorp. Pelle clung close to him in fear. The unknown had
suddenly become an evil monster in the imagination of both of
them.
Down in the basement passage the
strange, persistent sound was louder, and they both knew that it
was that of a woman weeping.