Chapter I: Boyhood (8)

But Erik lay quite still and looked at his enemy with watchful eye. “You may hit me, if you like. There is such a thing as a magistrate in the country,” he said, with irritating calm. The bailiff’s muscles burned, but he was obliged to let the man go for fear of being summoned. “Then remember another time not to be fractious!” he said, letting go his hold, “or I’ll show you that there is a magistrate.”

“When Lasse comes, send him up to me with the gin!” he said to the men as he passed through the barn.

“The devil we will!” said Mons, in an undertone.

Pelle had gone to meet his father. The old man had tasted the purchase, and was in good spirits. “There were seven men in the boat, and they were all called Ole except one, and he was called Ole Olsen!” he said solemnly, when he saw the boy. “Yes, wasn’t it a strange thing, Pelle, boy, that they should every one of them be called Ole—except the one, of course; for his name was Ole Olsen.” Then he laughed, and nudged the boy mysteriously; and Pelle laughed too, for he liked to see his father in good spirits.

The men came up to them, and took the bottles from the herdsman. “He’s been tasting it!” said Anders, holding the bottle up to the light. “Oh, the old drunkard! He’s had a taste at the bottles.”

“No, the bottles must leak at the bottom!” said Lasse, whom the dram had made quite bold. “For I’ve done nothing but just smell. You’ve got to make sure, you know, that you get the genuine thing and not just water.”

They moved on down the enclosure, Gustav going in front and playing on his concertina. A kind of excited merriment reigned over the party. First one and then another would leap into the air as they went; they uttered short, shrill cries and disconnected oaths at random. The consciousness of the full bottles, Saturday evening with the day of rest in prospect, and above all the row with the bailiff, had roused their tempers.

They settled down below the cow-stable, in the grass close to the pond. The sun had long since gone down, but the evening sky was bright, and cast a flaming light upon their faces turned westward; while the white farms inland looked dazzling in the twilight.

Now the girls came sauntering over the grass, with their hands under their aprons, looking like silhouettes against the brilliant sky. They were humming a soft folk-song, and one by one sank on to the grass beside the men; the evening twilight was in their hearts, and made their figures and voices as soft as a caress. But the men’s mood was not a gentle one, and they preferred the bottle.

Gustav walked about extemporizing on his concertina. He was looking for a place to sit down, and at last threw himself into Karna’s lap, and began to play a dance. Erik was the first upon his feet. He led on account of his difference with the bailiff, and pulled Bengta up from the grass with a jerk. They danced a Swedish polka, and always at a certain place in the melody, he tossed her up into the air with a shout. She shrieked every time, and her heavy skirts stood out round her like the tail of a turkey-cock, so that every one could see how long it was till Sunday.

In the middle of a whirl he let go of her, so that she stumbled over the grass and fell. The bailiff’s window was visible from where they sat, and a light patch had appeared at it. “He’s staring! Lord, how he’s staring! I say, can you see this?” Erik called out, holding up a gin-bottle. Then, as he drank: “Your health! Old Nick’s health! He smells, the pig! Bah!” The others laughed, and the face at the window disappeared.

In between the dances they played, drank, and wrestled. Their actions became more and more wild, they uttered sudden yells that made the girls scream, threw themselves flat upon the ground in the middle of a dance, groaned as if they were dying, and sprang up again suddenly with wild gestures and kicked the legs of those nearest to them. Once or twice the bailiff sent the pupil to tell them to be quiet, but that only made the noise worse. “Tell him to go his own dog’s errands!” Erik shouted after the pupil.

Lasse nudged Pelle and they gradually drew farther and farther away. “We’d better go to bed now,” Lasse said, when they had slipped away unnoticed. “One never knows what this may lead to. They all of them see red; I should think they’ll soon begin to dance the dance of blood. Ah me, if I’d been young I wouldn’t have stolen away like a thief; I’d have stayed and taken whatever might have come. There was a time when Lasse could put both hands on the ground and kick his man in the face with the heels of his boots so that he went down like a blade of grass; but that time’s gone, and it’s wisest to take care of one’s self. This may end in the police and much more, not to mention the bailiff. They’ve been irritating him all the summer with that Erik at their head; but if once he gets downright angry, Erik may go home to his mother.”

Pelle wanted to stay up for a little and look at them. “If I creep along behind the fence and lie down—oh, do let me, father!” he begged.

“Eh, what a silly idea! They might treat you badly if they got hold of you. They’re in the very worst of moods. Well, you must take the consequences, and for goodness’ sake take care they don’t see you!”

So Lasse went to bed, but Pelle crawled along on the ground behind the fence until he came close up to them and could see everything.

Gustav was still sitting on Karna’s open lap and playing, and she was holding him fast in her arms. But Anders had put his arm around Bodil’s waist. Gustav discovered it, and with an oath flung away his concertina, sending it rolling over the grass, and sprang up. The others threw themselves down in a circle on the grass, breathing hard. They expected something.

Gustav was like a savage dancing a war-dance. His mouth was open and his eyes bright and staring. He was the only man on the grass, and jumped up and down like a ball, hopped upon his heels, and kicked up his legs alternately to the height of his head, uttering a shrill cry with each kick. Then he shot up into the air, turning round as he did so, and came down on one heel and went on turning round like a top, making himself smaller and smaller as he turned, and then exploded in a leap and landed in the lap of Bodil, who threw her arms about him in delight.

In an instant Anders had both hands on his shoulders from behind, set his feet against his back, and sent him rolling over the grass. It all happened without a pause, and Gustav himself gave impetus to his course, rolling along in jolts like an uneven ball. But suddenly he stopped and rose to his feet with a bound, stared straight in front of him, turned round with a jerk, and moved slowly toward Anders. Anders rose quickly, pushed his cap on one side, clicked with his tongue, and advanced. Bodil spread herself out more comfortably on the ground, and looked proudly round the circle, eagerly noting the envy of the others.

The two antagonists stood face to face, feeling their way to a good grasp. They stroked one another affectionately, pinched one another in the side, and made little jesting remarks.

“My goodness me, how fat you are, brother!” This was Anders.

“And what breasts you’ve got! You might quite well be a woman,” answered Gustav, feeling Anders’ chest. “Eeh, how soft you are!” Scorn gleamed in their faces, but their eyes followed every movement of their opponent. Each of them expected a sudden attack from the other.

The others lay stretched around them on the grass, and called out impatiently: “Have done with that and look sharp about it!”

The two men continued to stand and play as if they were afraid to really set to, or were spinning the thing out for its still greater enjoyment. But suddenly Gustav had seized Anders by the collar, thrown himself backward and flung Anders over his head. It was done so quickly that Anders got no hold of Gustav; but in swinging round he got a firm grasp of Gustav’s hair, and they both fell on their backs with their heads together and their bodies stretched in opposite directions.

Anders had fallen heavily, and lay half unconscious, but without loosening his hold on Gustav’s hair. Gustav twisted round and tried to get upon his feet, but could not free his head. Then he wriggled back into this position again as quickly as a cat, turned a backward somersault over his antagonist, and fell down upon him with his face toward the other’s. Anders tried to raise his feet to receive him, but was too late.

Anders threw himself about in violent jerks, lay still and strained again with sudden strength to turn Gustav off, but Gustav held on. He let himself fall heavily upon his adversary, and sticking out his legs and arms to support him on the ground, raised himself suddenly and sat down again, catching Anders in the wind. All the time the thoughts of both were directed toward getting out their knives, and Anders, who had now fully recovered his senses, remembered distinctly that he had not got his. “Ah!” he said aloud. “What a fool I am!”

“You’re whining, are you?” said Gustav, bending his face him. “Do you want to ask for mercy?”

At that moment Anders felt Gustav’s knife pressing against his thigh, and in an instant had his hand down there and wrenched it free. Gustav tried to take it from him, but gave up the attempt for fear of being thrown off. He then confined himself to taking possession of one of Anders’ hands, so that he could not open the knife, and began sitting upon him in the region of his stomach.

Anders lay in half surrender, and bore the blows without trying to defend himself, only gasping at each one. With his left hand he was working eagerly to get the knife opened against the ground, and suddenly plunged it into Gustav just as the latter had risen to let himself fall heavily upon his opponent’s body.

Gustav seized Anders by the wrist, his face distorted. “What the devil are you up to now, you swine?” he said, spitting down into Anders’ face. “He’s trying to sneak out by the back door!” he said, looking round the circle with a face wrinkled like that of a young bull.

They fought desperately for the knife, using hands and teeth and head; and when Gustav found that he could not get possession of the weapon, he set to work so to guide Anders’ hand that he should plunge it into his own body. He succeeded, but the blow was not straight, and the blade closed upon Anders’ fingers, making him throw the knife from him with an oath.

Meanwhile Erik was growing angry at no longer being the hero of the evening. “Will you soon be finished, you two cockerels, or must I have a bite too?” he said, trying to separate them. They took firm hold of one another, but then Erik grew angry, and did something for which he was ever after renowned. He took hold of them and set them both upon their feet.

Gustav looked as if he were going to throw himself into the battle again, and a sullen expression overspread his face; but then he began to sway like a tree chopped at the roots, and sank to the ground. Bodil was the first to come to his assistance. With a cry she ran to him and threw her arms about him.

He was carried in and laid upon his bed, Karl Johan poured spirit into the deep cut to clean it, and held it together while Bodil basted it with needle and thread from one of the men’s lockers. Then they dispersed, in pairs, as friendship permitted, Bodil, however, remaining with Gustav. She was true to him after all.

Thus the summer passed, in continued war and friction with the bailiff, to whom, however, they dared do nothing when it came to the point. Then the disease struck inward, and they set upon one another. “It must come out somewhere,” said Lasse, who did not like this state of things, and vowed he would leave as soon as anything else offered, even if they had to run away from wages and clothes and everything.

“They’re discontented with their wages, their working-hours are too long, and the food isn’t good enough; they pitch it about and waste it until it makes one ill to see them, for anyhow it’s God’s gift, even if it might be better. And Erik’s at the bottom of it all! He’s forever boasting and bragging and stirring up the others the whole day long. But as soon as the bailiff is over him, he daren’t do anything any more than the others; so they all creep into their holes. Father Lasse is not such a cowardly wind-bag as any of them, old though he is.

“I suppose a good conscience is the best support. If you have it and have done your duty, you can look both the bailiff and the farmer —and God the Father, too—in the face. For you must always remember, laddie, not to set yourself up against those that are placed over you. Some of us have to be servants and others masters; how would everything go on if we who work didn’t do our duty? You can’t expect the gentlefolk to scrape up the dung in the cow-stable.”

All this Lasse expounded after they had gone to bed, but Pelle had something better to do than to listen to it. He was sound asleep and dreaming that he was Erik himself, and was thrashing the bailiff with a big stick.

XIV

In Pelle’s time, pickled herring was the Bornholmer’s most important article of food. It was the regular breakfast dish in all classes of society, and in the lower classes it predominated at the supper- table too—and sometimes appeared at dinner in a slightly altered form. “It’s a bad place for food,” people would say derisively of such-and-such a farm. “You only get herring there twenty-one times a week.”

When the elder was in flower, well-regulated people brought out their salt-boxes, according to old custom, and began to look out to sea; the herring is fattest then. From the sloping land, which nearly everywhere has a glimpse of the sea, people gazed out in the early summer mornings for the homeward-coming boats. The weather and the way the boats lay in the water were omens regarding the winter food. Then the report would come wandering up over the island, of large hauls and good bargains. The farmers drove to the town or the fishing-village with their largest wagons, and the herring-man worked his way up through the country from cottage to cottage with his horse, which was such a wretched animal that any one would have been legally justified in putting a bullet through its head.

In the morning, when Pelle opened the stable doors to the field, the mist lay in every hollow like a pale gray lake, and on the high land, where the smoke rose briskly from houses and farms, he saw men and women coming round the gable-ends, half-dressed, or in shirt or chemise only, gazing out to sea. He himself ran round the out-houses and peered out toward the sea which lay as white as silver and took its colors from the day. The red sails were hanging motionless, and looked like splashes of blood in the brightness of day; the boats lay deep in the water, and were slowly making their way homeward in response to the beat of the oars, dragging themselves along like cows that are near their time for bearing.

But all this had nothing to do with him and his. Stone Farm, like the poor of the parish, did not buy its herring until after the autumn, when it was as dry as sticks and cost almost nothing. At that time of year, herring was generally plentiful, and was sold for from twopence to twopence-halfpenny the fourscore as long as the demand continued. After that it was sold by the cartload as food for the pigs, or went on to the dungheap.

One Sunday morning late in the autumn, a messenger came running from the town to Stone Farm to say that now herring was to be had. The bailiff came down into the servants’ room while they were at breakfast, and gave orders that all the working teams were to be harnessed. “Then you’ll have to come too!” said Karl Johan to the two quarry drivers, who were married and lived up near the quarry, but came down for meals.

“No, our horses shan’t come out of the stable for that!” said the drivers. “They and we drive only stone and nothing else.” They sat for a little while and indulged in sarcasms at the expense of certain people who had not even Sunday at their own disposal, and one of them, as he stretched himself in a particularly irritating way, said: “Well, I think I’ll go home and have a nap. It’s nice to be one’s own master once a week, at any rate.” So they went home to wife and children, and kept Sunday holiday.

For a little while the men went about complaining; that was the regular thing. In itself they had no objection to make to the expedition, for it would naturally be something of a festivity. There were taverns enough in the town, and they would take care to arrange about that herring so that they did not get home much before evening. If the worst came to the worst, Erik could damage his cart in driving, and then they would be obliged to stay in town while it was being mended.

They stood out in the stable, and turned their purses inside out —big, solid, leather purses with steel locks that could only be opened by pressure on a secret mechanism; but they were empty.

“The deuce!” said Mons, peering disappointedly into his purse. “Not so much as the smell of a one-öre! There must be a leak!” He examined the seams, held it close up to his eyes, and at last put his ear to it. “Upon my word, I seem to hear a two-krone talking to itself. It must be witchcraft!” He sighed and put his purse into his pocket.

“You, you poor devil!” said Anders. “Have you ever spoken to a two-krone? No, I’m the man for you!” He hauled out a large purse. “I’ve still got the ten-krone that the bailiff cheated me out of on May Day, but I haven’t the heart to use it; I’m going to keep it until I grow old.” He put his hand into the empty purse and pretended to take something out and show it. The others laughed and joked, and all were in good spirits with the thought of the trip to town.

“But Erik’s sure to have some money at the bottom of his chest!” said one. “He works for good wages and has a rich aunt down below.”

“No, indeed!” whined Erik. “Why, I have to pay for half a score of young brats who can’t father themselves upon any one else. But Karl Johan must get it, or what’s the good of being head man?”

“That’s no use,” said Karl Johan doubtfully. “If I ask the bailiff for an advance now when we’re going to town, he’ll say ‘no’ straight out. I wonder whether the girls haven’t wages lying by.”

They were just coming up from the cow-stable with their milk-pails.

“I say, girls,” Erik called out to them. “Can’t one of you lend us ten krones? She shall have twins for it next Easter; the sow farrows then anyhow.”

“You’re a nice one to make promises!” said Bengta, standing still, and they all set down their milk-pails and talked it over. “I wonder whether Bodil hasn’t?” said Karna. “No,” answered Maria, “for she sent the ten krones she had by her to her mother the other day.”

Mons dashed his cap to the floor and gave a leap. “I’ll go up to the Old Gentleman himself,” he said.

“Then you’ll come head first down the stairs, you may be sure!”

“The deuce I will, with my old mother lying seriously ill in the town, without a copper to pay for doctor or medicine! I’m as good a child as Bodil, I hope.” He turned and went toward the stone steps, and the others stood and watched him from the stable-door, until the bailiff came and they had to busy themselves with the carts. Gustav walked about in his Sunday clothes with a bundle under his arm, and looked on.

“Why don’t you get to work?” asked the bailiff. “Get your horses put in.”

“You said yourself I might be free to-day,” said Gustav, making a grimace. He was going out with Bodil.

“Ah, so I did! But that’ll be one cart less. You must have a holiday another day instead.”

“I can’t do that.”

“What the de—— And why not, may I ask?”

“Well, because you gave me a holiday to-day.”

“Yes; but, confound it, man, when I now tell you you can take another day instead!”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“But why not, man? Is there anything pressing you want to do?”

“No, but I have been given a holiday to-day.” It looked as if Gustav were grinning slyly, but it was only that he was turning the quid in his mouth. The bailiff stamped with anger.

“But I can go altogether if you don’t care to see me,” said Gustav gently.

The bailiff did not hear, but turned quickly. Experience had taught him to be deaf to that kind of offer in the busy season. He looked up at his window as if he had suddenly thought of something, and sprang up the stairs. They could manage him when they touched upon that theme, but his turn came in the winter, and then they had to keep silence and put up with things, so as to keep a roof over their heads during the slack time.

Gustav went on strutting about with his bundle, without putting his hand to anything. The others laughed at him encouragingly.

The bailiff came down again and went up to him. “Then put in the horses before you go,” he said shortly, “and I’ll drive yours.”

An angry growl passed from man to man. “We’re to have the dog with us!” they said in undertones to one another, and then, so that the bailiff should hear: “Where’s the dog? We’re to have the dog with us.”

Matters were not improved by Mons coming down the steps with a beautifully pious expression, and holding a ten-krone note over his chest. “It’s all one now,” said Erik; “for we’ve got to have the dog with us!” Mons’ face underwent a sudden change, and he began to swear. They pulled the carts about without getting anything done, and their eyes gleamed with anger.

The bailiff came out upon the steps with his overcoat on. “Look sharp about getting the horses in!” he thundered.

The men of Stone Farm were just as strict about their order of precedence as the real inhabitants of the island, and it was just as complicated. The head man sat at the top of the table and helped himself first, he went first in mowing and reaping, and had the first girl to lay the load when the hay was taken in; he was the first man up, and went first when they set out for the fields, and no one might throw down his tools until he had done so. After him came the second man, the third, and so on, and lastly the day- laborers. When no great personal preference interfered, the head man was as a matter of course the sweetheart of the head girl, and so on downwards; and if one of them left, his successor took over the relation: it was a question of equilibrium. In this, however, the order of precedence was often broken, but never in the matter of the horses. Gustav’s horses were the poorest, and no power in the world would have induced the head man or Erik to drive them, let alone the farmer himself.

The bailiff knew it, and saw how the men were enjoying themselves when Gustav’s nags were put in. He concealed his irritation, but when they exultantly placed Gustav’s cart hindmost in the row, it was too much for him, and he ordered it to be driven in front of the others.

“My horses aren’t accustomed to go behind the tail-pullers!” said Karl Johan, throwing down his reins. It was the nickname for the last in the row. The others stood trying not to smile, and the bailiff was almost boiling over.

“If you’re so bent upon being first, be it by all means,” he said quietly. “I can very well drive behind you.”

“No, my horses come after the head man’s, not after the tail-puller’s,” said Erik.

This was really a term of abuse in the way in which they used it, one after the other, with covert glances. If he was going to put up with this from the whole row, his position on the farm would be untenable.

“Yes, and mine go behind Erik’s,” began Anders now, “not after— after Gustav’s,” he corrected himself quickly, for the bailiff had fixed his eyes upon him, and taken a step forward to knock him down.

The bailiff stood silent for a moment as if listening, the muscles of his arms quivering. Then he sprang into the cart.

“You’re all out of your senses to-day,” he said. “But now I’m going to drive first, and the man who dares to say a word against it shall have one between the eyes that will send him five days into next week!” So saying he swung out of the row, and Erik’s horses, which wanted to turn, received a cut from his whip that made them rear. Erik stormed at them.

The men went about crestfallen, and gave the bailiff time to get well ahead. “Well, I suppose we’d better see about starting now,” said Karl Johan at length, as he got into his wagon. The bailiff was already some way ahead; Gustav’s nags were doing their very best to-day, and seemed to like being in front. But Karl Johan’s horses were displeased, and hurried on; they did not approve of the new arrangement.

At the village shop they made a halt, and consoled themselves a little. When they started again, Karl Johan’s horses were refractory, and had to be quieted.

The report of the catch had spread through the country, and carts from other farms caught them up or crossed them on their way to the fishing-villages. Those who lived nearer the town were already on their way home with swaying loads. “Shall we meet in the town for a drink?” cried one man to Karl Johan as he passed. “I’m coming in for another load.”

“No, we’re driving for the master to-day!” answered Karl Johan, pointing to the bailiff in front.

“Yes, I see him. He’s driving a fine pair to-day! I thought it was King Lazarus!”

An acquaintance of Karl Johan’s came toward them with a swaying load of herring. He was the only man on one of the small farms. “So you’ve been to the town too for winter food,” said Karl Johan, reining in his horse.

“Yes, for the pigs!” answered the other. “It was laid in for the rest of us at the end of the summer. This isn’t food for men!” And he took up a herring between his fingers, and pretended to break it in two.

“No, I suppose not for such fine gentlemen,” answered Karl Johan snappishly. “Of course, you’re in such a high station that you eat at the same table as your master and mistress, I’ve heard.”

“Yes, that’s the regular custom at our place,” answered the other. “We know nothing about masters and dogs.” And he drove on. The words rankled with Karl Johan, he could not help drawing comparisons.

They had caught up the bailiff, and now the horses became unruly. They kept trying to pass and took every unlooked-for opportunity of pushing on, so that Karl Johan nearly drove his team into the back of the bailiff’s cart. At last he grew tired of holding them in, and gave them the rein, when they pushed out over the border of the ditch and on in front of Gustav’s team, danced about a little on the high-road, and then became quiet. Now it was Erik’s horses that were mad.

At the farm all the laborers’ wives had been called in for the afternoon, the young cattle were in the enclosure, and Pelle ran from cottage to cottage with the message. He was to help the women together with Lasse, and was delighted with this break in the daily routine; it was a whole holiday for him.

At dinner-time the men came home with their heavy loads of herring, which were turned out upon the stone paving round the pump in the upper yard. There had been no opportunity for them to enjoy themselves in the town, and they were in a bad temper. Only Mons, the ape, went about grinning all over his face. He had been up to his sick mother with the money for the doctor and medicine, and came back at the last minute with a bundle under his arm in the best of spirits. “That was a medicine!” he said over and over again, smacking his lips, “a mighty strong medicine.”

He had had a hard time with the bailiff before he got leave to go on his errand. The bailiff was a suspicious man, but it was difficult to hold out against Mons’ trembling voice when he urged that it would be too hard on a poor man to deny him the right to help his sick mother. “Besides, she lives close by here, and perhaps I shall never see her again in this life,” said Mons mournfully. “And then there’s the money that the master advanced me for it. Shall I go and throw it away on drink, while she’s lying there without enough to buy bread with?”

“Well, how was your mother?” asked the bailiff, when Mons came hurrying up at the last moment.

“Oh, she can’t last much longer!” said Mons, with a quiver in his voice. But he was beaming all over his face.

The others threw him angry glances while they unloaded the herring. They would have liked to thrash him for his infernal good luck. But they recovered when they got into their room and he undid the bundle. “That’s to you all from my sick mother!” he said, and drew forth a keg of spirits. “And I was to give you her best respects, and thank you for being so good to her little son.”

“Where did you go?” asked Erik.

“I sat in the tavern on the harbor hill all the time, so as to keep an eye on you; I couldn’t resist looking at you, you looked so delightfully thirsty. I wonder you didn’t lie down flat and drink out of the sea, every man Jack of you!”

In the afternoon the cottagers’ wives and the farm-girls sat round the great heaps of herring by the pump, and cleaned the fish. Lasse and Pelle pumped water to rinse them in, and cleaned out the big salt-barrels that the men rolled up from the cellar; and two of the elder women were entrusted with the task of mixing. The bailiff walked up and down by the front steps and smoked his pipe.

As a general rule, the herring-pickling came under the category of pleasant work, but to-day there was dissatisfaction all along the line. The women chattered freely as they worked, but their talk was not quite innocuous—it was all carefully aimed; the men had made them malicious. When they laughed, there was the sound of a hidden meaning in their laughter. The men had to be called out and given orders about every single thing that had to be done; they went about it sullenly, and then at once withdrew to their rooms. But when there they were all the gayer, and sang and enjoyed themselves.

“They’re doing themselves proud in there,” said Lasse, with a sigh to Pelle. “They’ve got a whole keg of spirits that Mons had hidden in his herring. They say it’s so extra uncommon good.” Lasse had not tasted it himself.

The two kept out of the wrangling; they felt themselves too weak. The girls had not had the courage to refuse the extra Sunday work, but they were not afraid to pass little remarks, and tittered at nothing, to make the bailiff think it was at him. They kept on asking in a loud voice what the time was, or stopped working to listen to the ever-increasing gaiety in the men’s rooms. Now and then a man was thrown out from there into the yard, and shuffled in again, shamefaced and grinning.

One by one the men came sauntering out. They had their caps on the back of their heads now, and their gaze was fixed. They took up a position in the lower yard, and hung over the fence, looking at the girls, every now and then bursting into a laugh and stopping suddenly, with a frightened glance at the bailiff.

The bailiff was walking up and down by the steps. He had laid aside his pipe and become calmer; and when the men came out, he was cracking a whip and exercising himself in self-restraint.

“If I liked I could bend him until both ends met!” he heard Erik say aloud in the middle of a conversation. The bailiff earnestly wished that Erik would make the attempt. His muscles were burning under this unsatisfied desire to let himself go; but his brain was reveling in visions of fights, he was grappling with the whole flock and going through all the details of the battle. He had gone through these battles so often, especially of late; he had thought out all the difficult situations, and there was not a place in all Stone Farm in which the things that would serve as weapons were not known to him.

“What’s the time?” asked one of the girls aloud for at least the twentieth time.

“A little longer than your chemise,” answered Erik promptly.

The girls laughed. “Oh, nonsense! Tell us what it really is!” exclaimed another.

“A quarter to the miller’s girl,” answered Anders.

“Oh, what fools you are! Can’t you answer properly? You, Karl Johan!”

“It’s short!” said Karl Johan gravely.

“No, seriously now, I’ll tell you what it is,” exclaimed Mons innocently, drawing a great “turnip” out of his pocket. “It’s—” he looked carefully at the watch, and moved his lips as if calculating. “The deuce!” he exclaimed, bringing down his hand in amazement on the fence. “Why, it’s exactly the same time as it was this time yesterday.”

The jest was an old one, but the women screamed with laughter; for Mons was the jester.

“Never mind about the time,” said the bailiff, coming up. “But try and get through your work.”

“No, time’s for tailors and shoemakers, not for honest people!” said Anders in an undertone.

The bailiff turned upon him as quick as a cat, and Anders’ arm darted up above his head bent as if to ward off a blow. The bailiff merely expectorated with a scornful smile, and began his pacing up and down afresh, and Anders stood there, red to the roots of his hair, and not knowing what to do with his eyes. He scratched the back of his head once or twice, but that could not explain away that strange movement of his arm. The others were laughing at him, so he hitched up his trousers and sauntered down toward the men’s rooms, while the women screamed with laughter, and the men laid their heads upon the fence and shook with merriment.

So the day passed, with endless ill-natured jesting and spitefulness. In the evening the men wandered out to indulge in horse-play on the high-road and annoy the passersby. Lasse and Pelle were tired, and went early to bed.

“Thank God we’ve got through this day!” said Lasse, when he had got into bed. “It’s been a regular bad day. It’s a miracle that no blood’s been shed; there was a time when the bailiff looked as if he might do anything. But Erik must know far he can venture.”

Next morning everything seemed to be forgotten. The men attended to the horses as usual, and at six o’clock went out into the field for a third mowing of clover. They looked blear-eyed, heavy and dull. The keg lay outside the stable-door empty; and as they went past they kicked it.

Pelle helped with the herring to-day too, but he no longer found it amusing. He was longing already to be out in the open with his cattle; and here he had to be at everybody’s beck and call. As often as he dared, he made some pretext for going outside the farm, for that helped to make the time pass.

Later in the morning, while the men were mowing the thin clover, Erik flung down his scythe so that it rebounded with a ringing sound from the swaths. The others stopped their work.

“What’s the matter with you, Erik?” asked Karl Johan. “Have you got a bee in your bonnet?”

Erik stood with his knife in his hand, feeling its edge, and neither heard nor saw. Then he turned up his face and frowned at the sky; his eyes seemed to have sunk into his head and become blind, and his lips stood out thick. He muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and started up toward the farm.

The others stood still and followed him with staring eyes; then one after another they threw down their scythes and moved away, only Karl Johan remaining where he was.

Pelle had just come out to the enclosure to see that none of the young cattle had broken their way out. When he saw the men coming up toward the farm in a straggling file like a herd of cattle on the move, he suspected something was wrong and ran in.

“The men are coming up as fast as they can, father!” he whispered.

“They’re surely not going to do it?” said Lasse, beginning to tremble.

The bailiff was carrying things from his room down to the pony- carriage; he was going to drive to the town. He had his arms full when Erik appeared at the big, open gate below, with distorted face and a large, broad-bladed knife in his hand. “Where the devil is he?” he said aloud, and circled round once with bent head, like an angry bull, and then walked up through the fence straight toward the bailiff. The latter started when he saw him and, through the gate, the others coming up full speed behind him. He measured the distance to the steps, but changed his mind, and advanced toward Erik, keeping behind the wagon and watching every movement that Erik made, while he tried to find a weapon. Erik followed him round the wagon, grinding his teeth and turning his eyes obliquely up at his opponent.

The bailiff went round and round the wagon and made half movements; he could not decide what to do. But then the others came up and blocked his way. His face turned white with fear, and he tore a whiffletree from the wagon, which with a push he sent rolling into the thick of them, so that they fell back in confusion. This made an open space between him and Erik, and Erik sprang quickly over the pole, with his knife ready to strike; but as he sprang, the whiffletree descended upon his head. The knife-thrust fell upon the bailiff’s shoulder, but it was feeble, and the knife just grazed his side as Erik sank to the ground. The others stood staring in bewilderment.

“Carry him down to the mangling-cellar!” cried the bailiff in a commanding tone, and the men dropped their knives and obeyed.

The battle had stirred Pelle’s blood into a tumult, and he was standing by the pump, jumping up and down. Lasse had to take a firm hold of him, for it looked as if he would throw himself into the fight. Then when the great strong Erik sank to the ground insensible from a blow on the head, he began to jump as if he had St. Vitus’s Dance. He jumped into the air with drooping head, and let himself fall heavily, all the time uttering short, shrill bursts of laughter. Lasse spoke to him angrily, thinking it was unnecessarily foolish behavior on his part; and then he picked him up and held him firmly in his hands, while the little fellow trembled all over his body in his efforts to free himself and go on with his jumping.

“What can be wrong with him?” said Lasse tearfully to the cottagers’ wives. “Oh dear, what shall I do?” He carried him down to their room in a sad state of mind, because the moon was waning, and it would never pass off!

Down in the mangling-cellar they were busy with Erik, pouring brandy into his mouth and bathing his head with vinegar. Kongstrup was not at home, but the mistress herself was down there, wringing her hands and cursing Stone Farm—her own childhood’s home! Stone Farm had become a hell with its murder and debauchery! she said, without caring that they were all standing round her and heard every word.

The bailiff had driven quickly off in the pony-carriage to fetch a doctor and to report what he had done in defence of his life. The women stood round the pump and gossiped, while the men and girls wandered about in confusion; there was no one to issue orders. But then the mistress came out on to the steps and looked at them for a little, and they all found something to do. Hers were piercing eyes! The old women shook themselves and went back to their work. It reminded them so pleasantly of old times, when the master of the Stone Farm of their youth rushed up with anger in his eyes when they were idling.

Down in their room, Lasse sat watching Pelle, who lay talking and laughing in delirium, so that his father hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry.

XV

“She must have had right on her side, for he never said a cross word when she started off with her complaints and reproaches, and them so loud that you could hear them right through the walls and down in the servants’ room and all over the farm. But it was stupid of her all the same, for she only drove him distracted and sent him away. And how will it go with a farm in the long run, when the farmer spends all his time on the high-roads because he can’t stay at home? It’s a poor sort of affection that drives the man away from his home.”

Lasse was standing in the stable on Sunday evening talking to the women about it while they milked. Pelle was there too, busy with his own affairs, but listening to what was said.

“But she wasn’t altogether stupid either,” said Thatcher Holm’s wife. “For instance when she had Fair Maria in to do housemaid’s work, so that he could have a pretty face to look at at home. She knew that if you have food at home you don’t go out for it. But of course it all led to nothing when she couldn’t leave off frightening him out of the house with her crying and her drinking.”

“I’m sure he drinks too!” said Pelle shortly.

“Yes, of course he gets drunk now and then,” said Lasse in a reproving tone. “But he’s a man, you see, and may have his reasons besides. But it’s ill when a woman takes to drinking.” Lasse was cross. The boy was beginning to have opinions of his own pretty well on everything, and was always joining in when grown people were talking.

“I maintain”—he went on, turning again to the women—“that he’d be a good husband, if only he wasn’t worried with crying and a bad conscience. Things go very well too when he’s away. He’s at home pretty well every day, and looks after things himself, so that the bailiff’s quite upset, for _he_ likes to be king of the castle. To all of us, the master’s like one of ourselves; he’s even forgotten the grudge he had against Gustav.”

“There can’t be very much to bear him a grudge for, unless it is that he’ll get a wife with money. They say Bodil’s saved more than a hundred krones from her two or three months as housemaid. Some people can—they get paid for what the rest of us have always had to do for nothing.” It was one of the old women who spoke.

“Well, we’ll just see whether he ever gets her for a wife. I doubt it myself. One oughtn’t to speak evil of one’s fellow-servant, but Bodil’s not a faithful girl. That matter with the master must go for what it was—as I once said to Gustav when he was raging about it; the master comes before his men! Bengta was a good wife to me in every way, but she too was very fond of laying herself out for the landlord at home. The greatest take first; that’s the way of the world! But Bodil’s never of the same mind for long together. Now she’s carrying on with the pupil, though he’s not sixteen yet, and takes presents from him. Gustav should get out of it in time; it always leads to misfortune when love gets into a person. We’ve got an example of that at the farm here.”

“I was talking to some one the other day who thought that the mistress hadn’t gone to Copenhagen at all, but was with relations in the south. She’s run away from him, you’ll see!”

“That’s the genteel thing to do nowadays, it seems!” said Lasse. “If only she’ll stay away! Things are much better as they are.”

An altogether different atmosphere seemed to fill Stone Farm. The dismal feeling was gone; no wailing tones came from the house and settled upon one like horse flies and black care. The change was most apparent in the farmer. He looked ten or twenty years younger, and joked good-humoredly like one freed from chains and fetters. He took an interest in the work of the farm, drove to the quarry two or three times a day in his gig, was present whenever a new piece of work was started, and would often throw off his coat and take a hand in it. Fair Maria laid his table and made his bed, and he was not afraid of showing his kindness for her. His good humor was infectious and made everything pleasanter.

But it could not be denied that Lasse had his own burden to bear. His anxiety to get married grew greater with the arrival of very cold weather as early as December; he longed to have his feet under his own table, and have a woman to himself who should be everything to him. He had not entirely given up thoughts of Karna yet, but he had promised Thatcher Holm’s wife ten krones down if she could find some one that would do for him.

He had really put the whole matter out of his head as an impossibility, and had passed into the land of old age; but what was the use of shutting yourself in, when you were all the time looking for doors through which to slip out again? Lasse looked out once more, and as usual it was Pelle who brought life and joy to the house.

Down in the outskirts of the fishing-village there lived a woman, whose husband had gone to sea and had not been heard of for a good many years. Two or three times on his way to and from school, Pelle had sought shelter from the weather in her porch, and they had gradually become good friends; he performed little services for her, and received a cup of hot coffee in return. When the cold was very bitter, she always called him in; and then she would tell him about the sea and about her good-for-nothing husband, who kept away and left her to toil for her living by mending nets for the fishermen. In return Pelle felt bound to tell her about Father Lasse, and Mother Bengta who lay at home in the churchyard at Tommelilla. The talk never came to much more, for she always returned to her husband who had gone away and left her a widow.

“I suppose he’s drowned,” Pelle would say.

“No, he isn’t, for I’ve had no warning,” she answered decidedly, always in the same words.

Pelle repeated it all to his father, who was very much interested. “Well, did you run in to Madam Olsen to-day?” was the first thing he said when the boy came in from school; and then Pelle had to tell him every detail several times over. It could never be too circumstantially told for Lasse.

“You’ve told her, I suppose, that Mother Bengta’s dead? Yes, of course you have! Well, what did she ask about me to-day? Does she know about the legacy?” (Lasse had recently had twenty-five krones left him by an uncle.) “You might very well let fall a word or two about that, so that she shouldn’t think we’re quite paupers.”

Pelle was the bearer of ambiguous messages backward and forward. From Lasse he took little things in return for her kindness to himself, such as embroidered handkerchiefs and a fine silk kerchief, the last remnants of Mother Bengta’s effects. It would be hard to lose them if this new chance failed, for then there would be no memories to fall back upon. But Lasse staked everything upon one card.

One day Pelle brought word that warning had come to Madam Olsen. She had been awakened in the night by a big black dog that stood gasping at the head of her bed. Its eyes shone in the darkness, and she heard the water dripping from its fur. She understood that it must be the ship’s dog with a message for her, and went to the window; and out in the moonlight on the sea she saw a ship sailing with all sail set. She stood high, and you could see the sea and sky right through her. Over the bulwark hung her husband and the others, and they were transparent; and the salt water was dripping from their hair and beards and running down the side of the ship.

In the evening Lasse put on his best clothes.

“Are we going out this evening?” asked Pelle in glad surprise.

“No—well, that’s to say I am, just a little errand. If any one asks after me, you must say that I’ve gone to the smith about a new nose-ring for the bull.”

“And mayn’t I go with you?” asked Pelle on the verge of tears.

“No, you must be good and stay at home for this once.” Lasse patted him on the head.

“Where are you going then?”

“I’m going—” Lasse was about to make up a lie about it, but had not the heart to do it. “You mustn’t ask me!” he said.

“Shall I know another day, then, without asking?”

“Yes, you shall, for certain—sure!”

Lasse went out, but came back again. Pelle was sitting on the edge of the bed, crying; it was the first time Father Lasse had gone out without taking him with him.

“Now you must be a good boy and go to bed,” he said gravely. “Or else I shall stay at home with you; but if I do, it may spoil things for us both.”

So Pelle thought better of it and began to undress; and at last Lasse got off.