"Thou righteous G.o.d!" cried Bjerregrav, "such a thing I have never heard. Now does that come from all the ships that have gone down? Yes, the sea--that, curse it, is the greatest power!"
"It"s ten o"clock," said Jeppe. "And the lamp is going out--that devil"s contrivance!" They broke up hastily, and Pelle turned the lamp out.
But long after he had laid his head on his pillow everything was going round inside it. He had swallowed everything, and imaginary pictures thronged in his brain like young birds in an over-full nest, pushing and wriggling to find a place wherein to rest. The sea was strong; now in the wintertime the surging of the billows against the cliffs was continually in his ear. Pelle was not sure whether it would stand aside for him! He had an unconscious reluctance to set himself limits, and as for the power about which they had all been disputing, it certainly had its seat in Pelle himself, like a vague consciousness that he was, despite all his defeats, invincible.
At times this feeling manifested itself visibly and helped him through the day. One afternoon they were sitting and working, after having swallowed their food in five minutes, as their custom was; the journeyman was the only one who did not grudge himself a brief mid-day rest, and he sat reading the newspaper. Suddenly he raised his head and looked wonderingly at Pelle. "Now what"s this? La.s.se Karlson--isn"t that your father?"
"Yes," answered Pelle, with a paralyzed tongue, and the blood rushed to his cheeks. Was Father La.s.se in the news? Not among the accidents? He must have made himself remarkable in one way or another through his farming! Pelle was nearly choking with excitement, but he did not venture to ask, and Little Nikas simply sat there and looked secretive.
He had a.s.sumed the expression peculiar to the young master.
But then he read aloud: "Lost! A louse with three tails has escaped, and may be left, in return for a good tip, with the landowner La.s.se Karlson, Heath Farm. Broken black bread may also be brought there."
The others burst into a shout of laughter, but Pelle turned an ashen gray. With a leap he was across the table and had pulled little Nikas to the ground underneath him; there he lay, squeezing the man"s throat with his fingers, trying to throttle him, until he was overpowered. Emil and Peter had to hold him while the knee-strap put in its work.
And yet he was proud of the occurrence; what did a miserable thrashing signify as against the feat of throwing the journeyman to the ground and overcoming the slavish respect he had felt for him! Let them dare to get at him again with their lying allusions, or to make sport of Father La.s.se! Pelle was not inclined to adopt circuitous methods.
And the circ.u.mstances justified him. After this he received more consideration; no one felt anxious to bring Pelle and his cobbler"s tools on top of him, even although the boy could be thrashed afterward.
XI
The skipper"s garden was a desert. Trees and bushes were leafless; from the workshop window one could look right through them, and over other gardens beyond, and as far as the backs of the houses in East Street.
There were no more games in the garden; the paths were buried in ice and melting snow, and the blocks of coral, and the great conch-sh.e.l.ls which, with their rosy mouths and fish-like teeth, had sung so wonderfully of the great ocean, had been taken in on account of the frost.
Manna he saw often enough. She used to come tumbling into the workshop with her school satchel or her skates; a b.u.t.ton had got torn off, or a heel had been wrenched loose by a skate. A fresh breeze hovered about her hair and cheeks, and the cold made her face glow. "There is blood!"
the young master would say, looking at her delightedly; he laughed and jested when she came in. But Manna would hold on to Pelle"s shoulder and throw her foot into his lap, so that he could b.u.t.ton her boots.
Sometimes she would pinch him secretly and look angry--she was jealous of Morten. But Pelle did not understand; Morten"s gentle, capable mind had entirely subjugated him and a.s.sumed the direction of their relations. Pelle was miserable if Morten was not there when he had an hour to spare. Then he would run, with his heart in his mouth, to find him; everything else was indifferent to him.
One Sunday morning, as he was sweeping the snow in the yard, the girls were in their garden; they were making a snowman.
"Hey, Pelle!" they cried, and they clapped their mittens; "come over here! You can help us to build a snow-house. We"ll wall up the door and light some Christmas-tree candles: we"ve got some ends. Oh, do come!"
"Then Morten must come too--he"ll be here directly!"
Manna turned up her nose. "No, we don"t want Morten here!"
"Why not? He"s so jolly!" said Pelle, wounded.
"Yes, but his father is so dreadful--everybody is afraid of him. And then he"s been in prison."
"Yes, for beating some one--that"s nothing so dreadful! My father was too, when he was a young man. That"s no disgrace, for it isn"t for stealing."
But Manna looked at him with an expression exactly like Jeppe"s when he was criticizing somebody from his standpoint as a respectable citizen.
"But, Pelle, aren"t you ashamed of it? That"s how only the very poorest people think--those who haven"t any feelings of shame!"
Pelle blushed for his vulgar way of looking at things. "It"s no fault of Morten"s that his father"s like that!" he retorted lamely.
"No, we won"t have Morten here. And mother won"t let us. She says perhaps we can play with you, but not with anybody else. We belong to a very good family," she said, in explanation.
"My father has a great farm--it"s worth quite as much as a rotten barge," said Pelle angrily.
"Father"s ship isn"t rotten!" rejoined Manna, affronted. "It"s the best in the harbor here, and it has three masts!"
"All the same, you"re nothing but a mean hussy!" Pelle spat over the hedge.
"Yes, and you"re a Swede!" Manna blinked her eyes triumphantly, while Dolores and Aina stood behind her and put out their tongues.
Pelle felt strongly inclined to jump over the garden wall and beat them; but just then Jeppe"s old woman began scolding from the kitchen, and he went on with his work.
Now, after Christmas, there was nothing at all to do. People were wearing out their old boots, or they went about in wooden shoes. Little Nikas was seldom in the workshop; he came in at meal-times and went away again, and he was always wearing his best clothes. "He earns his daily bread easily," said Jeppe. Over on the mainland they didn"t feed their people through the winter; the moment there was no more work, they kicked them out.
In the daytime Pelle was often sent on a round through the harbor in order to visit the shipping. He would find the masters standing about there in their leather ap.r.o.ns, talking about nautical affairs; or they would gather before their doors, to gossip, and each, from sheer habit, would carry some tool or other in his hand.
And the wolf was at the door. The "Saints" held daily meetings, and the people had time enough to attend them. Winter proved how insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here people made themselves as small and ate as little as possible, in order to win through the slack season.
In the workshops the apprentices sat working at cheap boots and shoes for stock; every spring the shoemakers would charter a ship in common and send a cargo to Iceland. This helped them on a little. "Fire away!"
the master would repeat, over and over again; "make haste--we don"t get much for it!"
The slack season gave rise to many serious questions. Many of the workers were near to dest.i.tution, and it was said that the organized charities would find it very difficult to give a.s.sistance to all who applied for it. They were busy everywhere, to their full capacity. "And I"ve heard it"s nothing here to what it is on the mainland," said Baker Jorgen. "There the unemployed are numbered in tens of thousands."
"How can they live, all those thousands of poor people, if the unemployment is so great?" asked Bjerregrav. "The need is bad enough here in town, where every employer provides his people with their daily bread."
"Here no one starves unless he wants to," said Jeppe. "We have a well-organized system of relief."
"You"re certainly becoming a Social Democrat, Jeppe," said Baker Jorgen; "you want to put everything on to the organized charities!"
Wooden-leg La.r.s.en laughed; that was a new interpretation.
"Well, what do they really want? For they are not freemasons. They say they are raising their heads again over on the mainland."
"Well, that, of course, is a thing that comes and goes with unemployment," said Jeppe. "The people must do something. Last winter a son of the sailmaker"s came home--well, he was one of them in secret.
But the old folks would never admit it, and he himself was so clever that he got out of it somehow."
"If he"d been a son of mine he would have got the stick," said Jorgen.
"Aren"t they the sort of people who are making ready for the millennium?
We"ve got a few of their sort here," said Bjerregrav diffidently.
"D"you mean the poor devils who believe in the watchmaker and his "new time"? Yes, that may well be," said Jeppe contemptuously. "I have heard they are quite wicked enough for that. I"m inclined to think they are the Antichrist the Bible foretells."
"Ah, but what do they really want?" asked Baker Jorgen. "What is their madness really driving at?"
"What do they want?" Wooden-leg La.r.s.en pulled himself together.
"I"ve knocked up against a lot of people, I have, and as far as I can understand it they want to get justice; they want to take the right of coining money away from the Crown and give it to everybody. And they want to overthrow everything, that is quite certain."