One of Life's Slaves Part 6

Whether his proposition was meant seriously or not, it did not gain a hearing with her. She sat hopeless and despairing on a log while the big tears ran down her cheeks.

The seventeen-year-old workshop apprentice stood thoughtfully, with his flat cap pushed back over his rough hair, blackened by the week's work.

He was gazing intently into an old rotten hole in the log. The hole became more and more rotten, more and more hollow, more and more empty while his busy thoughts were trying to find an expedient. But none came.

Fully aware of her fate, Silla rose, took her basket, and started homewards with her eyes fixed on the ground. She was going to the scaffold. Nikolai accompanied her as far as he dared, reiterating in different ways: "Don't be afraid, Silla, they can't kill you!"

Something like a low wail said that she heard him.

When she disappeared round the corner, he made a short cut which only he and one or two old yard cats knew of; and from the h.o.a.rding at the bottom of the square he saw her go, with bent head and the same quiet step, without stopping, down the cellar stairs.

When it was dark, he stood outside the window and listened. He heard her still sobbing quietly, after the storm that had pa.s.sed over her.

Mrs. Holman had examined and cross-examined, and at last extracted from Silla the confession that she had been with Nikolai. That she, Mrs.

Holman's daughter, in spite of all prohibitions, sought the society of that misled prodigal, who had rewarded her with such ingrat.i.tude, was enough to bring her to her grave. And no one would persuade her either that Holman's hardly-earned week's wages could vanish like steam from a kettle. A half-starved apprentice-boy, walking beside a well-filled pocket--any one could understand what the result of that would be.

Master Nikolai had only carefully and craftily watched his time, when he knew that Silla had her father's money in her pocket, to get it shuffled into his own.

Matters were not improved by Silla in her obstinacy declaring that he had not so much as seen the money--as if Nikolai would take a farthing from _her_!

This last remark sealed his fate--there should be no concealment of his conduct on Mrs. Holman's part.

There was a commotion in the forge-yard, when the nest day a police-officer came and arrested Nikolai. He was to be taken to the police-station for having defrauded a young girl on Sat.u.r.day evening of the whole of her father's week's wages.

But when they were gone, Anders Berg swore, as he brought the sledge-hammer down on the anvil, that that Nikolai had never done. The others--Jan Peter, and Katrinus, and Bernt Johan Jakobsen and Petter Evensen--they thought nothing; but to bring the police into a respectable work-yard! He had better get work in some other place after this!

For the first moment Nikolai had only one sensation--the paralysing fear by which a first acquaintance with the police is always accompanied. The feeling that he had a good conscience did indeed leap up within him, but only to die away again immediately. He had so often had that, and it had always proved to be too thin a sheet of ice to stand upon in the hour of trial. That kind of self-esteem was a plant which had too often been trodden under Mrs. Holman's heel to be able to bloom now as a fragrant, full-blown flower within him.

The outcome of his reflections was a sudden twist and a violent jerk, by which he hoped to escape from his inconvenient companion, the sole result, however, being that he immediately had a constable at each arm.

When brought up for examination before the police superintendent, a dark, unwilling defiance glowed in his face, and the sharp glance--too sharp for a lad of his age--did not prepossess any one in his favour.

Silla? He had not been with any Silla on Sat.u.r.day.

It would never occur to him to betray her, and it was only when he was confronted with her and her mother, and heard that she had confessed, that he admitted it.

Silla continued to maintain, in a voice choked with tears, that he had not taken the money, but this proved nothing either for or against him.

On the other hand what had more weight were the facts that had been elucidated on ransacking and examining the room in which he lodged--he lived in a garret at glazier Olsen's with three other apprentices--for they all agreed in saying that on the Sat.u.r.day in question he had come home late, after they were asleep, and had gone out again very early on the Sunday morning.

The a.s.sertion of the accused that this was to renew the search for the lost money down by the yard did not seem very credible. But it was impossible to get any nearer to him.

A hardened young rascal. This was his foster-mother's testimony too.

Nikolai stood with his cap in his hand, looking down at the floor. He had a habit of drawing the skin of his forehead up and down when he was meditating. In the broad, young face with the large features, the grey eyes into which there sometimes came a peculiar look, and the c.o.c.k's comb, of a tinge between zinc and copper, the police inspector's penetrating and--after many year's practice--not easily deceived eye saw the marks of one who would probably in the future often give occupation to the police.

"In order to exclude the possibility of conferences with the other apprentices in his room," he dictated for the record, "considering that the accused has manifested _mala fides_ by an attempt to escape, as well as by his untruthful conduct and denials under examination, he will, for the present, be placed under arrest."

As the words of the order were read out, there were a few involuntary contractions of the muscles in Nikolai's face, which was damp with perspiration; there quivered in it the poor man's curse, at never having a way of escape; a false step, and he is caught, a lost dollar, and he comes before the court.

After another examination Nikolai was acquitted for want of evidence.

The morning when the prison door closed behind him, he slunk down the street with a feeling that all the windows on both sides were looking at him; it was anything but the gait of one who can let his honesty's sun s.h.i.+ne once more.

Down at his lodging at Mrs. Olsen's he found his few things put ready in the cupboard under the stairs to be fetched away, and a message was left that his place in the garret was occupied by some one else.

He did not ask why. Mrs. Olsen's silence hurt him more than if she had cried aloud about people who drew on her "an examination and search of the house, and other disturbances."

And then he had to go down and show himself at the forge again--to Haegberg the master, and Anders Berg, and the journeymen, and all the apprentices.

It was with uncertain steps and stopping time after time. What did Anders Berg think, he wondered.

In a fit of despondency he half turned. But he must do it. So he held up his head and began to whistle. But as he neared the coal-begrimed wooden palings of the work-yard the whistling ceased, and he was in a cold perspiration when he entered the gate.

Without saying a word he went to the coal-bin and began to lift some bars of pig-iron which had to be moved aside. While he did so, no one either greeted or spoke to him.

Anders Berg had an iron in the furnace, and it was not until he and another man had finished hammering it out, that he came up to Nikolai and said:

"I was sure you would come back again. Here's some work for you; you can file these three keys."

Whereupon Nikolai was placed at one of the vices, and was soon busily at work with both coa.r.s.e and fine files.

Anders Berg's words had done him such good, had placed him at once as it were on his feet before the whole workshop, and in his heart he made a vow of friends.h.i.+p and devotion to Anders Berg for ever.

There were showers of sparks and a ringing from the sledge-hammers in the large smithy, and sharp blows of hammers, while the files shrieked and whistled and set one's teeth on edge. The work went on and Nikolai thought he had never known until to-day how splendid it was to be a smith. He might as well do the key-bit with the fine file at once, while the key was on that side of the vice; and he filed the notch as neatly and smoothly as if it had been intended for a chest of drawers, and not a great pipeless key for a wooden gate.

Now came the handle. He worked away with the coa.r.s.e file, until he could scarcely hear the sledge-hammer for its shrieking.

At the anvil stood a man making clincher nails, while one of the apprentices pulled the bellows and occasionally gathered the nails together. They were talking and laughing, and now and again some loud exclamation penetrated to Nikolai. It was only when the boy made a grimace at him, that it occurred to Nikolai that he was the subject of the conversation, and instantly the large file became quite light in his hand, and he had suddenly eyes and ears only for what was going on around him.

They were standing talking and nodding over there by the vices; Jan Peter ran and repeated what this one said and what the other one said.

It was easy to see what the meaning of it all was, and that he now stood there like any show animal; no, like something much worse--like one who was capable of going to the pockets of any one of them!

There was not one of the apprentices who would share his night's lodging with him now. He could see that.

He stood straining his ears, with a feeling that they were killing him in all the work-yards round--they were filing him down at the vices, hammering him flat with the small hammers, and crus.h.i.+ng him with the sledge-hammers. He guessed and understood glances and looks.

"Well, you know, Matthias," he heard from away there by the nails which the man was now gathering into his ap.r.o.n, "there are many easier trades than standing in a smithy: make a good pick out of your fists, lad!"

"He-he-he!" laughed the boy addressed.

"Or make yourself pincers that you can get down into skirt-pockets with--all the la.s.sies in the town, lad, that have any pence."

Nikolai heard every word and the hoa.r.s.e laughter that followed; he was very pale.

Coa.r.s.e merriment shone in the man's sooty face, and, as their eyes met, he made a contemptuous grimace.

Soon after he came past with his ap.r.o.n full of nails. Their eyes met again; the scornful ones grew more scornful; Nikolai seemed to see them in a haze, and then the journeyman received a blow full in the face which laid him on his back, scattering the nails as he fell.

There was a short pause of surprise before they all rushed upon him.