Chapter II: Apprenticeship (2)

“Well, Erik has got his speech back and is beginning to be a man again—he can make himself understood. And Kongstrup and his wife, they drink one against the other.”

“They drink together, do they, like the wooden shoemaker and his old woman?”

“Yes, and so much that they often lie in the room upstairs soaking, and can’t see one another for the drink, they’re that foggy. Everything goes crooked here, as you may suppose, with no master. ‘Masterless, defenceless,’ as the old proverb says. But what can you say about it—they haven’t anything else in common! But it’s all the same to me—as soon as Lasse finds something I’m off!”

Pelle could well believe that, and had nothing to say against it. Karna looked at him from head to foot in surprise as they walked on. “They feed you devilish well in the town there, don’t they?”

“Yes—vinegary soup and rotten greaves. We were much better fed here.”

She would not believe it—it sounded too foolish. “But where are all the things they have in the shop windows—all the meats and cakes and sweet things? What becomes of all them?”

“That I don’t know,” said Pelle grumpily; he himself had racked his brains over this very question. “I get all I can eat, but washing and clothes I have to see to myself.”

Karna could scarcely conceal her amazement; she had supposed that Pelle had been, so to speak, caught up to Heaven while yet living. “But how do you manage?” she said anxiously. “You must find that difficult. Yes, yes, directly we set out feet under our own table we’ll help you all we can.”

They parted up on the high-road, and Pelle, tired and defeated, set out on his way back. It was broad daylight when he got back, and he crawled into bed without any one noticing anything of his attempted flight.

III

Little Nikas had washed the blacking from his face and had put on his best clothes; he wanted to go to the market with a bundle of washing, which the butcher from Aaker was to take home to his mother, and Pelle walked behind him, carrying the bundle. Little Nikas saluted many friendly maidservants in the houses of the neighborhood, and Pelle found it more amusing to walk beside him than to follow; two people who are together ought to walk abreast. But every time he walked beside the journeyman the latter pushed him into the gutter, and finally Pelle fell over a curbstone; then he gave it up.

Up the street the crazy watchmaker was standing on the edge of his high steps, swinging a weight; it was attached to the end of a long cord, and he followed the swinging of the pendulum with his fingers, as though he were timing the beats. This was very interesting, and Pelle feared it would escape the journeyman.

“The watchmaker’s making an experiment,” he said cheerfully.

“Stop your jaw!” said the journeyman sharply. Then it occurred to Pelle that he was not allowed to speak, so he closed his mouth tight.

He felt the bundle, in order to picture to himself what the contents were like. His eyes swept all the windows and the side streets, and every moment he carried his free hand to his mouth, as though he were yawning, and introduced a crumb of black bread, which he had picked up in the kitchen. His braces were broken, so he had continually to puff out his belly; there were hundreds of things to look at, and the coal-merchant’s dog to be kicked while, in all good faith, he snuffed at a curbstone.

A funeral procession came toward them, and the journeyman passed it with his head bared, so Pelle did the same. Eight at the back of the procession came Tailor Bjerregrav with his crutch; he always followed every funeral, and always walked light at the back because his method of progression called for plenty of room. He would stand still and look on the ground until the last of the other followers had gone a few steps in advance, then he would set his crutch in front of him, swing himself forward for a space, and then stand still again. Then he would swing forward again on his lame legs, and again stand still and watch the others, and again take a few paces, looking like a slowly wandering pair of compasses which was tracing the path followed by the procession.

But the funniest thing was that the tailor had forgotten to button up the flap of his black mourning-breeches, so that it hung over his knees like an apron. Pelle was not quite sure that the journeyman had noticed this.

“Bjerregrav has forgotten—”

“Hold your jaw.” Little Nikas made a movement backward, and Pelle ducked his head and pressed his hand tightly to his mouth.

Over in Staal Street there was a great uproar; an enormously fat woman was standing there quarrelling with two seamen. She was in her nightcap and petticoat, and Pelle knew her.

“That’s the Sow!” he began. “She’s a dreadful woman; up at Stone Farm——”

_Smack!_ Little Nikas gave him such a box on the ear that he had to sit down on the woodcarver’s steps. “One, two, three, four— that’s it; now come on!” He counted ten steps forward and set off again. “But God help you if you don’t keep your distance!”

Pelle kept his distance religiously, but he instantly discovered that little Nikas, like old Jeppe, had too large a posterior. That certainly came of sitting too much—and it twisted one’s loins. He protruded his own buttocks as far as he could, smoothed down a crease in his jacket over his hips, raised himself elegantly upon the balls of his feet and marched proudly forward, one hand thrust into the breast of his coat. If the journeyman scratched himself, Pelle did the same—and he swayed his body in the same buoyant manner; his cheeks were burning, but he was highly pleased with himself.

Directly he was his own master he went the round of the country butchers, questioning them, in the hope of hearing some news of Lasse, but no one could tell him anything. He went from cart to cart, asking his questions. “Lasse Karlson?” said one. “Ah, he was cowherd up at Stone Farm!” Then he called to another, asking him about Lasse —the old cowherd at Stone Farm—and he again called to a third, and they all gathered about the carts, in order to talk the matter over. There were men here who travelled all over the island[1] in order to buy cattle; they knew everything and everybody, but they could tell him nothing of Lasse. “Then he’s not in the island,” said one, very decidedly. “You must get another father, my lad!”

[1] Bornholm

Pelle did not feel inclined for chaff, so he slipped away. Besides, he must go back and get to work; the young master, who was busily going from cart to cart, ordering meat, had called to him. They hung together like the halves of a pea-pod when it was a question of keeping the apprentices on the curb, although otherwise they were jealous enough of one another.

Bjerregrav’s crutch stood behind the door, and he himself sat in stiff funereal state by the window; he held a folded white handkerchief in his folded hands, and was diligently mopping his eyes.

“Was he perhaps a relation of yours?” said the young master slyly.

“No; but it is so sad for those who are left—a wife and children. There is always some one to mourn and regret the dead. Man’s life is a strange thing, Andres.”

“Ah, and potatoes are bad this year, Bjerregrav!”

Neighbor Jörgen filled up the whole doorway. “Lord, here we have that blessed Bjerregrav!” he shouted; “and in state, too! What’s on to-day then—going courting, are you?”

“I’ve been following!” answered Bjerregrav, in a hushed voice.

The big baker made an involuntary movement; he did not like being unexpectedly reminded of death. “You, Bjerregrav, you ought to be a hearse-driver; then at least you wouldn’t work to no purpose!”

“It isn’t to no purpose when they are dead,” stammered Bjerregrav. “I am not so poor that I need much, and there is no one who stands near to me. No living person loses anything because I follow those who die. And then I know them all, and I’ve followed them all in thought since they were born,” he added apologetically.

“If only you got invited to the funeral feast and got something of all the good things they have to eat,” continued the baker, “I could understand it better.”

“The poor widow, who sits there with her four little ones and doesn’t know how she’s to feed them—to take food from her—no, I couldn’t do it! She’s had to borrow three hundred kroner so that her man could have a respectable funeral party.”

“That ought to be forbidden by law,” said Master Andres; “any one with little children hasn’t the right to throw away money on the dead.”

“She is giving her husband the last honors,” said Jeppe reprovingly. “That is the duty of every good wife.”

“Of course,” rejoined Master Andres. “God knows, something must be done. It’s like the performances on the other side of the earth, where the widow throws herself on the funeral pyre when the husband dies, and has to be burned to death.”

Baker Jörgen scratched his thighs and grimaced. “You are trying to get us to swallow one of your stinking lies, Andres. You’d never get a woman to do that, if I know anything of womankind.”

But Bjerregrav knew that the shoemaker was not lying, and fluttered his thin hands in the air, as though he were trying to keep something invisible from touching his body. “God be thanked that we came into the world on this island here,” he said, in a low voice. “Here only ordinary things happen, however wrongheaded they may be.”

“What puzzles me is where she got all that money!” said the baker.

“She’s borrowed it, of course,” said Bjerregrav, in a tone of voice that made it clear that he wanted to terminate the conversation.

Jeppe retorted contemptuously, “Who’s going to lend a poor mate’s widow three hundred kroner? He might as well throw it into the sea right away.”

But Baker Jörgen gave Bjerregrav a great smack on the back. “You’ve given her the money, it’s you has done it; nobody else would he such a silly sheep!” he said threateningly.

“You let me be!” stammered Bjerregrav. “I’ve done nothing to you! And she has had one happy day in the midst of all her sorrow.” His hands were trembling.

“You’re a goat!” said Jeppe shortly.

“What is Bjerregrav really thinking about when he stands like this looking down into the grave?” asked the young master, in order to divert the conversation.

“I am thinking: Now you are lying there, where you are better off than here,” said the old tailor simply.

“Yes, because Bjerregrav follows only poor people,” said Jeppe, rather contemptuously.

“I can’t help it, but I’m always thinking,” continued Master Andres; “just supposing it were all a take-in! Suppose he follows them and enjoys the whole thing—and then there’s nothing! That’s why I never like to see a funeral.”

“Ah, you see, that’s the question—supposing there’s nothing.” Baker Jörgen turned his thick body. “Here we go about imagining a whole lot of things; but what if it’s all just lies?”

“That’s the mind of an unbeliever!” said Jeppe, and stamped violently on the floor.

“God preserve my mind from unbelief!” retorted brother Jörgen, and he stroked his face gravely. “But a man can’t very well help thinking. And what does a man see round about him? Sickness and death and halleluiah! We live, and we live, I tell you, Brother Jeppe—and we live in order to live! But, good heavens! all the poor things that aren’t born yet!”

He sank into thought again, as was usual with him when he thought of Little Jörgen, who refused to come into the world and assume his name and likeness, and carry on after him…. There lay his belief; there was nothing to be done about it. And the others began to speak in hushed voices, in order not to disturb his memories.

Pelle, who concerned himself with everything in heaven and earth, had been absorbing every word that was spoken with his protruding ears, but when the conversation turned upon death he yawned. He himself had never been seriously ill, and since Mother Bengta died, death had never encroached upon his world. And that was lucky for him, as it would have been a case of all or nothing, for he had only Father Lasse. For Pelle the cruel hands of death hardly existed, and he could not understand how people could lay themselves down with their noses in the air; there was so much to observe here below—the town alone kept one busy.

On the very first evening he had run out to look for the other boys, just where the crowd was thickest. There was no use in waiting; Pelle was accustomed to take the bull by the horns, and he longed to be taken into favor.

“What sort of brat is that?” they said, flocking round him.

“I’m Pelle,” he said, standing confidently in the midst of the group, and looking at them all. “I have been at Stone Farm since I was eight, and that is the biggest farm in the north country.” He had put his hands in his pockets, and spat coolly in front of him, for that was nothing to what he had in reserve.

“Oh, so you’re a farmer chap, then!” said one, and the others laughed. Rud was among them.

“Yes,” said Pelle; “and I’ve done a bit of ploughing, and mowing fodder for the calves.”

They winked at one another. “Are you really a farmer chap?”

“Yes, truly,” replied Pelle, perplexed; they had spoken the word in a tone which he now remarked.

They all burst out laughing: “He confesses it himself. And he comes from the biggest farm in the country. Then he’s the biggest farmer in the country!”

“No, the farmer was called Kongstrup,” said Pelle emphatically. “I was only the herd-boy.”

They roared with laughter. “He doesn’t see it now! Why, Lord, that’s the biggest farmer’s lout!”

Pelle had not yet lost his head, for he had heavier ammunition, and now he was about to play a trump. “And there at the farm there was a man called Erik, who was so strong that he could thrash three men, but the bailiff was stronger still; and he gave Erik such a blow that he lost his senses.”

“Oh, indeed! How did he manage that? Can you hit a farmer chap so that he loses his senses? Who was it hit you like that?” The questions rained upon him.

Pelle pushed the boy who had asked the last question, and fixed his eyes upon his. But the rascal let fly at him again. “Take care of your best clothes,” he said, laughing. “Don’t crumple your cuffs!”

Pelle had put on a clean blue shirt, of which the neckband and wristbands had to serve as collar and cuffs. He knew well enough that he was clean and neat, and now they were being smart at his expense on that very account.

“And what sort of a pair of Elbe barges has he got on? Good Lord! Why, they’d fill half the harbor!” This was in reference to Kongstrup’s shoes. Pelle had debated with himself as to whether he should wear them on a week-day. “When did you celebrate hiring-day?” asked a third. This was in reference to his fat red cheeks.

Now he was ready to jump out of his skin, and cast his eyes around to see if there was nothing with which he could lay about him, for this would infallibly end in an attack upon the whole party. Pelle already had them all against him.

But just then a long, thin lad came forward. “Have you a pretty sister?” he asked.

“I have no sisters at all,” answered Pelle shortly.

“That’s a shame. Well, can you play hide-and-seek?”

Of course Pelle could!

“Well, then, play!” The thin boy pushed Pelle’s cap over his eyes, and turned him with his face against the plank fence. “Count to a hundred—and no cheating, I tell you!”

No, Pelle would not cheat—he would neither look nor count short— so much depended on this beginning. But he solemnly promised himself to use his legs to some purpose; they should all be caught, one after another! He finished his counting and took his cap from his eyes. No one was to be seen. “Say ‘peep’!” he cried; but no one answered. For half an hour Pelle searched among timbers and warehouses, and at last he slipped away home and to bed. But he dreamed, that night, that he caught them all, and they elected him as their leader for all future time.

The town did not meet him with open arms, into which he could fall, with his childlike confidence, and be carried up the ladder. Here, apparently, one did not talk about the heroic deeds which elsewhere gave a man foothold; here such things merely aroused scornful laughter. He tried it again and again, always with something new, but the answer was always the same—“Farmer!” His whole little person was overflowing with good-will, and he became deplorably dejected.

Pelle soon perceived that his whole store of ammunition was crumbling between his hands, and any respect he had won at home, on the farm or in the village, by his courage and good nature, went for nothing here. Here other qualities counted; there was a different jargon, the clothes were different, and people went about things in a different way. Everything he had valued was turned to ridicule, even down to his pretty cap with its ear-flaps and its ribbon adorned with representations of harvest implements. He had come to town so calmly confident in himself—to make the painful discovery that he was a laughable object! Every time he tried to make one of a party, he was pushed to one side; he had no right to speak to others; he must take the hindmost rank!

Nothing remained to him but to sound the retreat all along the line until he had reached the lowest place of all. And hard as this was for a smart youngster who was burning to set his mark on everything, Pelle did it, and confidently prepared to scramble up again. However sore his defeat, he always retained an obstinate feeling of his own worth, which no one could take away from him. He was persuaded that the trouble lay not with himself but with all sorts of things about him, and he set himself restlessly to find out the new values and to conduct a war of elimination against himself. After every defeat he took himself unweariedly to task, and the next evening he would go forth once more, enriched by so many experiences, and would suffer defeat at a new point. He wanted to conquer—but what must he not sacrifice first? He knew of nothing more splendid than to march resoundingly through the streets, his legs thrust into Lasse’s old boots—this was the essence of manliness. But he was man enough to abstain from so doing—for here such conduct would be regarded as boorish. It was harder for him to suppress his past; it was so inseparable from Father Lasse that he was obsessed by a sense of unfaithfulness. But there was no alternative; if he wanted to get on he must adapt himself in everything, in prejudices and opinions alike. But he promised himself to flout the lot of them so soon as he felt sufficiently high-spirited.

What distressed him most was the fact that his handicraft was so little regarded. However accomplished he might become, the cobbler was, and remained, a poor creature with a pitchy snout and a big behind! Personal performance counted for nothing; it was obvious that he must as soon as possible escape into some other walk of life.

But at least he was in the town, and as one of its inhabitants— there was no getting over that. And the town seemed still as great and as splendid, although it had lost the look of enchantment it once had, when Lasse and he had passed through it on their way to the country. Most of the people wore their Sunday clothes, and many sat still and earned lots of money, but no one knew how. All roads came hither, and the town swallowed everything: pigs and corn and men—everything sooner or later found its harbor here! The Sow lived here with Rud, who was now apprenticed to a painter, and the twins were here! And one day Pelle saw a tall boy leaning against a door and bellowing at the top of his voice, his arms over his face, while a couple of smaller boys were thrashing him; it was Howling Peter, who was cook’s boy on a vessel. Everything flowed into the town!

But Father Lasse—he was not here!

IV

There was something about the town that made it hard to go to bed and hard to get up. In the town there was no sunrise shining over the earth and waking everybody. The open face of morning could not be seen indoors. And the dying day poured no evening weariness into one’s limbs, driving them to repose; life seemed here to flow in the reverse direction, for here people grew lively at night!

About half-past six in the morning the master, who slept downstairs, would strike the ceiling with his stick. Pelle, whose business it was to reply, would mechanically sit up and strike the side of the bedstead with his clenched fist. Then, still sleeping, he would fall back again. After a while the process was repeated. But then the master grew impatient. “Devil take it! aren’t you going to get up to-day?” he would bellow. “Is this to end in my bringing you your coffee in bed?” Drunken with sleep, Pelle would tumble out of bed. “Get up, get up!” he would cry, shaking the others. Jens got nimbly on his feet; he always awoke with a cry of terror, guarding his head; but Emil and Peter, who were in the hobbledehoy stage, were terribly difficult to wake.

Pelle would hasten downstairs, and begin to set everything in order, filling the soaking-tub and laying a sand-heap by the window-bench for the master to spit into. He bothered no further about the others; he was in a morning temper himself. On the days when he had to settle right away into the cobbler’s hunch, without first running a few early errands or doing a few odd tasks, it took hours to thaw him.

He used to look round to see whether on the preceding evening he had made a chalk-mark in any conspicuous place; for then there must be something that he had to remember. Memory was not his strong point, hence this ingenious device. Then it was only a matter of not forgetting what the mark stood for; if he forgot, he was no better off than before.

When the workshop was tidy, he would hurry downstairs and run out for Madame, to fetch morning rolls “for themselves.” He himself was given a wheaten biscuit with his coffee, which he drank out in the kitchen, while the old woman went grumbling to and fro. She was dry as a mummy and moved about bent double, and when she was not using her hands she carried one forearm pressed against her midriff. She was discontented with everything, and was always talking of the grave. “My two eldest are overseas, in America and Australia; I shall never see them again. And here at home two menfolk go strutting about doing nothing and expecting to be waited on. Andres, poor fellow, isn’t strong, and Jeppe’s no use any longer; he can’t even keep himself warm in bed nowadays. But they know how to ask for things, that they do, and they let me go running all over the place without any help; I have to do everything myself. I shall truly thank God when at last I lie in my grave. What are you standing there for with your mouth and your eyes wide open? Get away with you!” Thereupon Pelle would finish his coffee—it was sweetened with brown sugar—out of doors, by the workshop window.

In the mornings, before the master appeared, there was no great eagerness to work; they were all sleepy still, looking forward to a long, dreary day. The journeyman did not encourage them to work; he had a difficulty in finding enough for himself. So they sat there wool-gathering, striking a few blows with the hammer now and then for appearance’s sake, and one or another would fall asleep again over the table. They all started when three blows were struck on the wall as a signal for Pelle.

“What are you doing? It seems to me you are very idle in there!” the master would say, staring suspiciously at Pelle. But Pelle had remarked what work each was supposed to have in hand, and would run over it all. “What day’s this—Thursday? Damnation take it! Tell that Jens he’s to put aside Manna’s uppers and begin on the pilot’s boots this moment—they were promised for last Monday.” The master would struggle miserably to get his breath: “Ah, I’ve had a bad night, Pelle, a horrible night; I was so hot, with such a ringing in my ears. New blood is so devilishly unruly; it’s all the time boiling in my head like soda-water. But it’s a good thing I’m making it, God knows; I used to be so soon done up. Do you believe in Hell? Heaven, now, that’s sheer nonsense; what happiness can we expect elsewhere if we can’t be properly happy here? But do you believe in Hell? I dreamed I’d spat up the last bit of my lungs and that I went to Hell. ‘What the devil d’you want here, Andres?’ they asked me; ‘your heart is still whole!’ And they wouldn’t have me. But what does that signify? I can’t breathe with my heart, so I’m dying. And what becomes of me then? Will you tell me that?

“There’s something that bids a man enter again into his mother’s womb; now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two sound legs, you’d see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I wouldn’t stay messing about here any longer…. Well, have you seen your navel yet to-day? Yes, you ragamuffin, you laugh; but I’m in earnest. It would pay you well if you always began the day by contemplating your navel.”

The master was half serious, half jesting. “Well, now, you can fetch me my port wine; it’s on the shelf, behind the box with the laces in it. I’m deadly cold.”

Pelle came back and announced that the bottle was empty. The master looked at him mildly.

“Then run along and get me another. I’ve no money—you must say— well, think it out for yourself; you’ve got a head.” The master looked at him with an expression which went to Pelle’s heart, so that he often felt like bursting into tears. Hitherto Pelle’s life had been spent on the straight highway; he did not understand this combination of wit and misery, roguishness and deadly affliction. But he felt something of the presence of the good God, and trembled inwardly; he would have died for the young master.

When the weather was wet it was difficult for the sick man to get about; the cold pulled him down. If he came into the workshop, freshly washed and with his hair still wet, he would go over to the cold stove, and stand there, stamping his feet. His cheeks had quite fallen in. “I’ve so little blood for the moment,” he said at such times, “but the new blood is on the way; it sings in my ears every night.” Then he would be silent a while. “There, by my soul, we’ve got a piece of lung again,” he said, and showed Pelle, who stood at the stove brushing shoes, a gelatinous lump. “But they grow again afterward!”

“The master will soon be in his thirtieth year,” said the journeyman; “then the dangerous time is over.”

“Yes, deuce take it—if only I can hang together so long—only another six months,” said the master eagerly, and he looked at Pelle, as though Pelle had it in his power to help him; “only another six months! Then the whole body renews itself—new lungs—everything new. But new legs, God knows, I shall never get.”

A peculiar, secret understanding grew up between Pelle and the master; it did not manifest itself in words, but in glances, in tones of the voice, and in the whole conduct of each. When Pelle stood behind him, it was as though even the master’s leather jacket emitted a feeling of warmth, and Pelle followed him with his eyes whenever and wherever he could, and the master’s behavior to Pelle was different from his behavior to the others.

When, on his return from running errands in the town, he came to the corner, he was delighted to see the young master standing in the doorway, tightly grasping his stick, with his lame leg in an easy position. He stood there, sweeping his eyes from side to side, gazing longingly into the distance. This was his place when he was not indoors, sitting over some book of adventure. But Pelle liked him to stand there, and as he slipped past he would hang his head shyly, for it often happened that the master would clutch his shoulder, so hard that it hurt, and shake him to and fro, and would say affectionately: “Oh, you limb of Satan!” This was the only endearment that life had vouchsafed Pelle, and he sunned himself in it.

Pelle could not understand the master, nor did he understand his sighs and groans. The master never went out, save as an exception, when he was feeling well; then he would hobble across to the beerhouse and make up a party, but as a rule his travels ended at the house door. There he would stand, looking about him a little, and then he would hobble indoors again, with that infectious good humor which transformed the dark workshop into a grove full of the twittering of birds. He had never been abroad, and he felt no craving to go; but in spite of this his mind and his speech roamed over the whole wide world, so that Pelle at times felt like falling sick from sheer longing. He demanded nothing more than health of the future, and adventures hovered all about him; one received the impression that happiness itself had fluttered to earth and settled upon him. Pelle idolized him, but did not understand him. The master, who at one moment would make sport of his lame leg and the next moment forget that he had one, or jest about his poverty as though he were flinging good gold pieces about him—this was a man Pelle could not fathom. He was no wiser when he secretly looked into the books which Master Andres read so breathlessly; he would have been content with a much more modest adventure than a journey to the North Pole or the center of the earth, if only he himself could have been of the party.

He had no opportunity to sit still and indulge in fancies. Every moment it was, “Pelle, run and do something or other!” Everything was purchased in small quantities, although it was obtained on credit. “Then it doesn’t run up so,” Jeppe used to say; it was all the same to Master Andres. The foreman’s young woman came running in; she absolutely must have her young lady’s shoes; they were promised for Monday. The master had quite forgotten them. “They are in hand now,” he said, undaunted. “To the devil with you, Jens!” And Jens had hastily thrust a pair of lasts into the shoes, while Master Andres went outside with the girl, and joked with her on the landing, in order to smooth her down. “Just a few nails, so that they’ll hang together,” said the master to Jens. And then, “Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs will carry you! Say we’ll send for them early to-morrow morning and finish them properly! But run as though the devil were at your heels!”

Pelle ran, and when he returned, just as he was slipping into his leather apron, he had to go out again. “Pelle, run out and borrow a few brass nails—then we needn’t buy any to-day. Go to Klausen—no, go to Blom, rather; you’ve been to Klausen already this morning.”

“Blom’s are angry about the screw-block!” said Pelle.

“Death and all the devils! We must see about putting it in repair and returning it; remember that, and take it with you to the smith’s. Well, what in the world shall we do?” The young master stared helplessly from one to another.

“Shoemaker Marker,” suggested little Nikas.

“We don’t borrow from Marker,” and the master wrinkled his forehead. “Marker’s a louse!” Marker had succeeded in stealing one of the oldest customers of the workshop.

“There isn’t salt to eat an egg!”

“Well, what _shall_ I do?” asked Pelle, somewhat impatiently.

The master sat for a while in silence. “Well, take it, then!” he cried, and threw a krone toward Pelle; “I have no peace from you so long as I’ve got a farthing in my pocket, you demon! Buy a packet and pay back Klausen and Blom what we’ve borrowed.”

“But then they’d see we’ve got a whole packet,” said Pelle.

“Besides, they owe us lots of other things that they’ve borrowed of us.” Pelle showed circumspection in his dealings.

“What a rogue!” said the master, and he settled himself to read. “Lord above us, what a gallows-bird!” He looked extremely contented.

And after a time it was once more, “Pelle, run out, etc.”

The day was largely passed in running errands, and Pelle was not one to curtail them; he had no liking for the smelly workshop and its wooden chairs. There was so much to be fetched and carried, and Pelle considered these errands to be his especial duty; when he had nothing else to do he roved about like a young puppy, and thrust his nose into everything. Already the town had no more secrets from him.

There was in Pelle an honorable streak which subdued the whole. But hitherto he had suffered only defeat; he had again and again sacrificed his qualities and accomplishments, without so far receiving anything in return. His timidity and distrust he had stripped from him indoors, where it was of importance that he should open his defences on all sides, and his solid qualities he was on the point of sacrificing on the altar of the town as boorish. But the less protection he possessed the more he gained in intrepidity, so he went about out-of-doors undauntedly—the town should be conquered. He was enticed out of the safe refuge of his shell, and might easily be gobbled up.

The town had lured him from the security of his lair, but in other matters he was the same good little fellow—most people would have seen no difference in him, except that he had grown taller. But Father Lasse would have wept tears of blood to see his boy as he now walked along the streets, full of uncertainty and uneasy imitativeness, wearing his best coat on a workday, and yet disorderly in his dress.

Yonder he goes, sauntering along with a pair of boots, his fingers thrust through the string of the parcel, whistling with an air of bravado. Now and again he makes a grimace and moves cautiously—when his trousers rub the sensitive spots of his body. He has had a bad day. In the morning he was passing a smithy, and allowed the splendid display of energy within, half in the firelight and half in the shadow, to detain him. The flames and the clanging of the metal, the whole lively uproar of real work, fascinated him, and he had to go in and ask whether there was an opening for an apprentice. He was not so stupid as to tell them where he came from, but when he got home, Jeppe had already been told of it! But that is soon forgotten, unless, indeed, his trousers rub against his sore places. Then he remembers it; remembers that in this world everything has to be paid for; there is no getting out of things; once one begins anything one has to eat one’s way through it, like the boy in the fairy-tale. And this discovery is, in the abstract, not so strikingly novel to Pelle.

He has, as always, chosen the longest way, rummaging about back yards and side streets, where there is a possibility of adventure; and all at once he is suddenly accosted by Albinus, who is now employed by a tradesman. Albinus is not amusing. He has no right to play and loiter about the warehouse in the aimless fashion that is possible out-of-doors; nor to devote himself to making a ladder stand straight up in the air while he climbs up it. Not a word can be got out of him, although Pelle does his best; so he picks up a handful of raisins and absconds.

Down at the harbor he boards a Swedish vessel, which has just arrived with a cargo of timber. “Have you anything for us to do?” he asks, holding one hand behind him, where his trousers have a hole in them.

“Klausen’s apprentice has just been here and got what there was,” replied the skipper.

“That’s a nuisance—you ought to have given it to us,” says Pelle. “Have you got a clay pipe?”

“Yes—just you come here!” The skipper reaches for a rope’s end, but Pelle escapes and runs ashore.

“Will you give me a thrashing now?” he cries, jeering.

“You shall have a clay pipe if you’ll run and get me half a krone’s worth of chewing ’bacca.”

“What will it cost?” asks Pelle, with an air of simplicity. The skipper reaches for his rope’s end again, but Pelle is off already.

“Five öre worth of chewing tobacco, the long kind,” he cries, before he gets to the door even. “But it must be the very best, because it’s for an invalid.” He throws the money on the counter and puts on a cheeky expression.

Old Skipper Lau rises by the aid of his two sticks and hands Pelle the twist; his jaws are working like a mill, and all his limbs are twisted with gout. “Is it for some one lying-in?” he asks slyly.

Pelle breaks off the stem of the clay pipe, lest it should stick out of his pocket, boards the salvage steamer, and disappears forward. After a time he reappears from under the cabin hatchway, with a gigantic pair of sea-boots and a scrap of chewing tobacco. Behind the deck-house he bites a huge mouthful off the brown Cavendish, and begins to chew courageously, which makes him feel tremendously manly. But near the furnace where the ship’s timbers are bent he has to unload his stomach; it seems as though all his inward parts are doing their very utmost to see how matters would be with them hanging out of his mouth. He drags himself along, sick as a cat, with thumping temples; but somewhere or other inside him a little feeling of satisfaction informs him that one has to undergo the most dreadful consequences in order to perform any really heroic deed.

In most respects the harbor, with its stacks of timber and its vessels on the slips, is just as fascinating as it was on the day when Pelle lay on the shavings and guarded Father Lasse’s sack. The black man with the barking hounds still leans from the roof of the harbor warehouse, but the inexplicable thing is that one could ever have been frightened of him. But Pelle is in a hurry.

He runs a few yards, but he must of necessity stop when he comes to the old quay. There the “strong man,” the “Great Power,” is trimming some blocks of granite. He is tanned a coppery brown with wind and sun, and his thick black hair is full of splinters of granite; he wears only a shirt and canvas trousers, and the shirt is open on his powerful breast; but it lies close on his back, and reveals the play of his muscles. Every time he strikes a blow the air whistles— _whew!_—and the walls and timber-stacks echo the sound. People come hurrying by, stop short at a certain distance, and stand there looking on. A little group stands there all the time, newcomers taking the place of those that move on, like spectators in front of a cage of lions. It is as though they expect something to happen— something that will stagger everybody and give the bystanders a good fright.

Pelle goes right up to the “Great Power.” The “strong man” is the father of Jens, the second youngest apprentice. “Good-day,” he says boldly, and stands right in the giant’s shadow. But the stonecutter pushes him to one side without looking to see who it is, and continues to hew at the granite: _whew! whew!_

“It is quite a long time now since he has properly used his strength,” says an old townsman. “Is he quieting down, d’you think?”

“He must have quieted down for good,” says another. “The town ought to see that he keeps quiet.” And they move on, and Pelle must move on, too—anywhere, where no one can see him.

“Cobbler, wobbler, groats in your gruel, Smack on your back goes the stick—how cruel!”

It is those accursed street-urchins. Pelle is by no means in a warlike humor; he pretends not to see them. But they come up close behind him and tread on his heels, and before he knows what is happening they are upon him. The first he knows about it is that he is lying in the gutter, on his back, with all three on top of him. He has fallen alongside of the curbstone and cannot move; he is faint, too, as a result of his indiscretion; the two biggest boys spread his arms wide open on the flagstones and press them down with all their might, while the third ventures to deal with his face. It is a carefully planned outrage, and all Pelle can do is to twist his head round under the blows—and for once he is thankful for his disgracefully fat cheeks.

Then, in his need, a dazzling apparition appears before him; standing in the doorway yonder is a white baker’s boy, who is royally amused. It is no other than Nilen, the wonderful little devil Nilen, of his schooldays, who was always fighting everybody like a terrier and always came out of it with a whole skin. Pelle shuts his eyes and blushes for himself, although he knows perfectly well that this is only an apparition.

But then a wonderful thing happens; the apparition leaps down into the gutter, slings the boys to one side, and helps him to his feet. Pelle recognizes the grip of those fingers—even in his schooldays they were like claws of iron.

And soon he is sitting behind the oven, on Nilen’s grimy bed. “So you’ve become a cobbler?” says Nilen, to begin with, compassionately, for he feels a deucedly smart fellow himself in his fine white clothes, with his bare arms crossed over his naked breast. Pelle feels remarkably comfortable; he has been given a slice of bread and cream, and he decides that the world is more interesting than ever. Nilen is chewing manfully, and spitting over the end of the bed.

“Do you chew?” asks Pelle, and hastens to offer him the leaf-tobacco.

“Yes, we all do; a fellow has to when he works all night.”

Pelle cannot understand how people can keep going day and night.

“All the bakers in Copenhagen do—so that the people can get fresh bread in the morning—and our master wants to introduce it here. But it isn’t every one can do it; the whole staff had to be reorganized. It’s worst about midnight, when everything is turning round. Then it comes over you so that you keep on looking at the time, and the very moment the clock strikes twelve we all hold our breath, and then no one can come in or go out any more. The master himself can’t stand the night shift; the ’baccy turns sour in his mouth and he has to lay it on the table. When he wakes up again he thinks it’s a raisin and sticks it in the dough. What’s the name of your girl?”

For a moment Pelle’s thoughts caress the three daughters of old Skipper Elleby—but no, none of them shall be immolated. No, he has no girl.

“Well, you get one, then you needn’t let them sit on you. I’m flirting a bit just now with the master’s daughter—fine girl, she is, quite developed already—you know! But we have to look out when the old man’s about!”

“Then are you going to marry her when you are a journeyman?” asks Pelle, with interest.

“And have a wife and kids on my back? You are a duffer, Pelle! No need to trouble about that! But a woman—well, that’s only for when a man’s bored. See?” He stretches himself, yawning.

Nilen has become quite a young man, but a little crude in his manner of expressing himself. He sits there and looks at Pelle with a curious expression in his eyes. “Cobbler’s patch!” he says contemptuously, and thrusts his tongue into his cheek so as to make it bulge. Pelle says nothing; he knows he cannot thrash Nilen.

Nilen has lit his pipe and is lying on his back in bed—with his muddy shoes on—chattering. “What’s your journeyman like? Ours is a conceited ass. The other day I had to fetch him a box on the ears, he was so saucy. I’ve learned the Copenhagen trick of doing it; it soon settles a man. Only you want to keep your head about it.” A deuce of a fellow, this Nilen, he is so grown up! Pelle feels smaller and smaller.

But suddenly Nilen jumps up in the greatest hurry. Out in the bakery a sharp voice is calling. “Out of the window—to the devil with you!” he yelps—“the journeyman!” And Pelle has to get through the window, and is so slow about it that his boots go whizzing past him. While he is jumping down he hears the well-known sound of a ringing box on the ear.

When Pelle returned from his wanderings he was tired and languid; the stuffy workshop did not seem alluring. He was dispirited, too; for the watchmaker’s clock told him that he had been three hours away. He could not believe it.

The young master stood at the front door, peeping out, still in his leather jacket and apron of green baize; he was whistling softly to himself, and looked like a grown fledgling that did not dare to let itself tumble out of the nest. A whole world of amazement lay in his inquiring eyes.

“Have you been to the harbor again, you young devil?” he asked, sinking his claws into Pelle.

“Yes.” Pelle was properly ashamed.

“Well, what’s going on there? What’s the news?”

So Pelle had to tell it all on the stairs; how there was a Swedish timber ship whose skipper’s wife was taken with childbirth out at sea, and how the cook had to deliver her; of a Russian vessel which had run into port with a mutiny on board; and anything else that might have happened. To-day there were only these boots. “They are from the salvage steamer—they want soling.”

“H’m!” The master looked at them indifferently. “Is the schooner _Andreas_ ready to sail?”

But that Pelle did not know.

“What sort of a sheep’s head have you got, then? Haven’t you any eyes in it? Well, well, go and get me three bottles of beer! Only stick them under your blouse so that father don’t see, you monster!” The master was quite good-tempered again.

Then Pelle got into his apron and buckled on the knee-strap. Everybody was bending over his work, and Master Andres was reading; no sound was to be heard but those produced by the workers, and now and again a word of reprimand from the journeyman.

Every second afternoon, about five o’clock, the workshop door would open slightly, and a naked, floury arm introduced the newspaper and laid it on the counter. This was the baker’s son, Sören, who never allowed himself to be seen; he moved about from choice like a thief in the night. If the master—as he occasionally did—seized him and pulled him into the workshop, he was like a scared faun strayed from his thickets; he would stand with hanging head, concealing his eyes, and no one could get a word from him; and when he saw an opportunity, he would slip away.

The arrival of the newspaper caused quite a small commotion in the workshop. When the master felt inclined, he would read aloud—of calves with two heads and four pairs of legs; of a pumpkin that weighed fifty pounds; of the fattest man in the world; of fatalities due to the careless handling of firearms, or of snakes in Martinique. The dazzling wonder of the whole world passed like a pageant, filling the dark workshop; the political news was ignored. If the master happened to be in one of his desperate humors, he would read the most damnable nonsense: of how the Atlantic Ocean had caught fire, so that the people were living on boiled codfish; or how the heavens had got torn over America, so that angels fell right on to somebody’s supper-tray. Things which one knew at once for lies—and blasphemous nonsense, too, which might at any time have got him into trouble. Rowing people was not in the master’s line, he was ill the moment there was any unpleasantness; but he had his own way of making himself respected. As he went on reading some one would discover that he was getting a wigging, and would give a jump, believing that all his failings were in the paper.

When the time drew near for leaving off work, a brisker note sounded in the workshop. The long working-day was coming to an end, and the day’s weariness and satiety were forgotten, and the mind looked forward—filling with thoughts of the sand-hills or the woods, wandering down a road that was bright with pleasure. Now and again a neighbor would step in, and while away the time with his gossip; something or other had happened, and Master Andres, who was so clever, must say what he thought about it. Sounds that had been confused during the day now entered the workshop, so that those within felt that they were participating in the life of the town; it was as though the walls had fallen.

About seven o’clock a peculiar sound was heard in the street without, approaching in very slowly _tempo;_ there was a dull thump and then two clacking sounds; and then came the thump again, like the tread of a huge padded foot, and once more the clack-clack. This was old Bjerregrav, swinging toward the workshop on his crutches; Bjerregrav, who moved more slowly than anybody, and got forward more quickly. If Master Andres happened to be in one of his bad humors, he would limp away, in order not to remain in the same room with a cripple; at other times he was glad to see Bjerregrav.

“Well, you are a rare bird, aren’t you?” he would cry, when Bjerregrav reached the landing and swung himself sideways through the door; and the old man would laugh—he had paid this visit daily now for many years. The master took no further notice of him, but went on reading; and Bjerregrav sank into his dumb pondering; his pale hands feeling one thing after another, as though the most everyday objects were unknown to him. He took hold of things just as a newborn child might have done; one had to smile at him and leave him to sit there, grubbing about like the child he really was. It was quite impossible to hold a continuous conversation with him; for even if he did actually make an observation it was sure to be quite beside the mark; Bjerregrav was given to remarking attributes which no one else noticed, or which no one would have dwelt upon.