One of Life's Slaves Part 11

Nikolai made a movement as if he were bringing down a hammer on the hillside. "Indeed!"

"Last Sat.u.r.day in the office, when he had reckoned a _krone_ too much in the pa.s.s-book, he said I could keep it and spend it on cakes."

"Ha! ha! Did he say that? Wonderful, how kind he is!" Nikolai said this with something that was meant for laughter. "The cook is very kind, too, when she feeds the goose so as to get hold of it!"

He stood with one arm round the gate-post, looking at her; she had grown so pretty and elegant, and almost taller since he had seen her last. "A young girl who doesn't even know that she is pretty."

Silla pouted; her whole expression was one of supercilious disavowal.

"If they offer her a cake, or a handkerchief, or a little fun, she stretches out her neck and runs up. I should think you might understand that, Silla, from all you see round you! How many of them, I should like to know, will ever come to be the wife of an honest working-man? They manage to dance a few times, and then it's all over. And they wanted to be just as kind to you now, Silla! That Veyergang is on the watch for you! If I'm not on the watch for him----" He suddenly looked pale and ugly.

"What are you thinking of, Nikolai? Don't go on like that!"

"You may well say what was I thinking of, to stand there grinding and filing away the whole month at my probation work, and then let you go up there among that pack of wolves. But I was born like that--that everything should go wrong with me!"

Silla stood, as she always did when Nikolai put on this tone, downcast and dispirited, her slender figure bending forwards, and her eyes on the ground.

"We two, Silla," he continued at length, with a shake as if of resolution, but his voice trembled--"we two have been, as it were, brought up together. And with things as they were, if they could make me go wrong, it would have been still easier for you to be twisted by them, for I was strong, you see; but you were weak, and had always to creep like a cat among lies and difficulties. And so--so--I thought that we two--who have always stood by one another--and I haven't had anyone else I could trust, as you know, Silla, and neither have you--that we should join hands. And if you're of the same mind, then----"

He had clasped his broad hands round the gate-post, and was squeezing it with all the strength of his square-set figure, while he waited for her answer. He gazed at her bent head, but she did not look up; and he drew a deep breath, for he felt that he must go on.

"And now I've got together a little money, and not bought anything, and have filed and filed away at my probation work; because when I become journeyman, and another year has pa.s.sed, and I've laid by a little, then--then it might be that you could get away from the factory dirt and the ordering at home both at once, and be a real smith's wife, Silla.

You've never had any one to take care of you as I've done, you know; and you don't know how good I'll be to you! For a fellow who hasn't had either father or mother, and since I was up at the police-station I haven't had many companions either--" But here his emotion overpowered him.

"Such an uncommonly pretty smith's wife you would make, Silla! If any one has eyes for a smith, it's you; they are like sparks in the fire!

And then to come home and see only the top of your pretty little black head at the room door! In spite of having always been treated like a dog, and worse than that--like a thief, it would all be nothing at all, if that was how it could end. One's own room with a lock on the door and the chest, that would be something better than being dragged round a dancing-hall, Silla, by fine fellows and sailors."

The last words, which were uttered in warm excitement, would have been better left unsaid; for, from standing melted and overcome, with tears in her eyes, she suddenly fired up against the accusation.

"Do you want to deny me a little pleasure, too, Nikolai? I'm not to see any one, not to go anywhere. Oh no! I'm to be a girl who has never danced, a regular queer bird, that's first been kept in a cage by her mother, and then by----" her voice quivered, and she began to cry. "Is that what you call being kind to me, Nikolai? You must be trying to make me afraid of you, too!"

"Afraid of me?--of me, Silla?"

"Don't they all look upon me as a baby that's tied to her mother's ap.r.o.n-strings? And now you come and want to help her, Nikolai. That's right! That's right! Only keep me in! Oh yes, you and mother! It's only a question of who gets the power over me. But you'd better take care, Nikolai!"

She began to cry bitterly in impotent rage.

"Oh, well, cry away! I won't say anything. You've got some one else to comfort you for a little while," he added moodily.

She suddenly sprang up, went up to him, and laid her arm confidingly on his shoulder.

"Don't you _know_ that I'll be your wife, Nikolai?" she said, looking full and ardently into his eyes; there were still tears on her dark, freckled face.

"Well, if you will, Silla, you shall see who can work."

"But mother, Nikolai! Oh, I'm so frightened--so frightened only that she'll get to know that we sometimes meet. She looks at me so hard every time I've been an errand, and I've always been gone so long. But when I sit darning and patching of an evening, I sometimes imagine that you come in so fine and rich, and that you own the whole of Haegberg's smithy, so that mother has to give in."

"No, do you think about that, Silla? Then I will come. She'll have to give in like smoke, if I come only with my credentials, and my honest trade as well."

What was it that had happened that light, hazy, summer evening, when the waterfall thundered out beneath the bridge, when the trees seemed to swell with new budding leaves, and the sun glittered on the windows here and there? Was he intoxicated, or was it the evening that had taken an extra Midsummer carouse? The last he saw of Silla was that she hurried homewards with her can, and that she had looked round at him, as she turned into the road among the houses.

The world was right enough after all. When he reckoned it up properly, it was not at all so unreasonable, even if the lock did sometimes get out of order; and then--well, then one had to be both strong and neat-handed to get it open again.

No, it was right enough. You only see that when you get inside, and so there must be police and masters and order in everything, so that it can lock.

Nikolai stood riveting and meditating down in the smithy. He had now got his journeyman's credentials, and everything was rose-colour. The fact that he and the world were becoming reconciled showed in s.h.i.+ning characters over the whole of his broad face. His short, strong figure moved with a newly-acquired, quick confidence at his work.

He worked now for journeyman's wages, and could save up a nice little sum each week. One fortunate circ.u.mstance in the case was that he never dared make Silla a present of anything, neither handkerchiefs nor anything else, because of Mrs. Holman. A penny saved is a penny gained, and she should have it all in good time.

On Sat.u.r.day evenings, as soon as he had had a little wash in the cooling-water, he took his way up towards the manufacturing part of the town. He carried his hammer and pincers, and an iron plate or a lock in his hand; he must look as if he were engaged in his lawful work. And then came the chance whether on his way up or down he caught a glimpse of Silla.

It was quite a chance, and it sometimes happened that he just met Mrs.

Holman instead. He must put up with that; at any rate, he looked right into the street there, in the cl.u.s.ter of houses where Silla walked several times a day. But what he found more difficult to put up with was, that on those occasions when he was fortunate, she was walking arm-in-arm with two or three other factory-girls, so that he scarcely got more than the one glimpse and short nod from her before they turned in now here, now there.

What did she want to go loitering about in the evening with those dissipated girls for? Was that the sort of thing for Silla? She was neither old enough nor wise enough to understand what she was getting mixed up in, and what a fine gentleman meant who nodded to her--for the sake of her pretty eyes. Amuse themselves? Yes, go round in the mill, until they come out crushed and ground!

No! She must come out of this.

And so he must work away with his file, and add one week's earnings to another, until he had made the silver hook large enough to draw her to him.

Yes, once she was with him!--he forgot himself in thoughts about house-rent and wedding outlay.

CHAPTER VIII

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

Some time after Nikolai had got his credentials, he was pleasantly surprised by a visitor--he could hardly believe his own eyes--none other than his mother, who was watching for him one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, outside the bas.e.m.e.nt where he dined.

She had heard that he had become a journeyman, and could not rest until she got a lift on one of the plank-loads which was going in to town, and paid him a visit. She was so glad. If he knew how many sighs she had heaved for his sake, and how many bitter tears she had shed--the big, handsome, half peasant-clad woman was red in the face, and wept and dried her eyes incessantly on her folded pocket-handkerchief, while she gave expression to her emotion and joy over the way in which everything had turned out, as if by special guidance.

She had been so unfortunate for a long time; but now that she had got her son again, everything looked different for her. Oh, how big and broad and fine he had grown--a regular smith! He had a frock-coat now for Sundays, hadn't he? And he must have a hat, too. He must let her advise him; she knew all about it from what she had seen in the world.

It was with quite strange, at first almost mixed, feelings that Nikolai thus suddenly saw a mother fall down to him--some day a father might come tumbling down too!

It was so many years since he had thought of her, and the picture he really had of her was buried in the bitter salt slough of tears in the depths of his recollections, which he was far from being in the mood to stir up. There were things within him, which he avoided from an instinctive feeling of safety in the whole of his new, happy existence; but such a thing as finding his mother again must surely belong to the happiness of the new Nikolai, the journeyman smith! Yes, of course, he was fond of her, and it was immensely affecting.

And while he walked beside her, and was glad too, and kind and obliging, and gave up his Sat.u.r.day afternoon with half a day's pay, he had, without exactly intending it, spent on a present--an exceedingly large, gay, flowered silk handkerchief--as much as it had taken him a fortnight to sc.r.a.pe together; and, besides that, had paid for some fine bread and a ham, which she had to take back with her, and of which she even tried a few goodly slices down in the town by way of afternoon refreshment.

She had an appet.i.te, and she could not be very much accustomed to economising either;--this was about the sum of the happy, filial comments that Nikolai made to himself after the meeting. In addition to this, he felt himself unexpectedly lightened of a good deal of money; and it was in a rather dispirited mood that he went up in the evening in the hope of seeing Silla, and telling her of his new happiness.

The whole of that side of the town up under the hill already lay in shadow, and in the oppressively warm evening, labourers were walking with their coats over their shoulders, while sounds of life and noise rose here and there from the shops in the manufacturing district below.

Nikolai had traversed in vain the district surrounding the Valsets'

cottage, keeping constant watch at the same time down the broad high-road, which went past the gate, and the footpath that crept straight across the field down behind it. Silla was not to be seen. A girl went with a bucket from the cowshed into the pent-house. She looked up towards him and laughed, and the consequence was that Nikolai continued his way towards the factory without once turning round. They must be able to see through the walls in there! And they had already begun to wonder at his coming there so often.