Pelle the Conqueror Part 19

But Ole had grown weak and had great difficulty in making up his mind.

He continued to hang about the farm, notwithstanding all that the bailiff did to get him away. At last they had to put his things out, to the west of the farm; and there they lay most of the summer, while he himself slept among the stacks, and begged food of the workers in the fields. But this could not go on when the cold set in.

But then one day in the autumn, his things were gone. Johanna Pihl--commonly called the Sow--had taken him in. She felt the cold, too, in spite of her fat, and as the proverb says: It's easier for two to keep warm than one; but whatever was her reason for doing it, Long Ole might thank his Maker for her. There was always bacon hanging in her chimney.

La.s.se and Pelle looked forward to term-day with anxiety. What changes would it bring this time for people? So much depended on that. Besides the head man, they were to have new second and third men and some new maids. They were always changing at Stone Farm when they could. Karna, poor soul, was bound to stay, as she had set her mind upon youth, and would absolutely be where Gustav was! Gustav stayed because Bodil stayed, so unnaturally fond was he of that girl, although she was not worth it. And Bodil herself knew well enough what she was doing! There must be more in it than met the eye when a girl dressed, as she did, in expensive, town-bought clothes.

La.s.se and Pelle _remained_, simply because there was no other place in the world for them to go to. All through the year they made plans for making a change, but when the time for giving notice approached, La.s.se became quiet and let it go past.

Of late he had given no little thought to the subject of marrying again.

There was something G.o.d-forsaken about this solitary existence for a man of his age; you became old and worn out before your time, when you hadn't a wife and a house. On the heath near Brother Kalle's, there was a house that he could have without paying anything down. He often discussed it with Pelle, and the boy was ready for anything new.

It should be a wife who could look after everything and make the house comfortable; and above all she must be a hard-working woman. It would not come amiss either if she had a little of her own, but let that be as it might, if only she was good-natured. Karna would have suited in all respects, both La.s.se and Pelle having always had a liking for her ever since the day she freed Pelle from the pupil's clutches; but it was nothing to offer her as long as she was so set upon Gustav. They must bide their time; perhaps she would come to her senses, or something else might turn up.

"Then there'd be coffee in bed on Sunday mornings!" said Pelle, with rapture.

"Yes, and perhaps we'd get a little horse, and invite Brother Kalle for a drive now and then," added La.s.se solemnly.

At last it was really to be! In the evening La.s.se and Pelle had been to the shop and bought a slate and pencil, and Pelle was now standing at the stable-door with a beating heart and the slate under his arm. It was a frosty October morning, but the boy was quite hot after his wash. He had on his best jacket, and his hair had been combed with water.

La.s.se hovered about him, brus.h.i.+ng him here and there with his sleeve, and was even more nervous than the boy. Pelle had been born to poor circ.u.mstances, had been christened, and had had to earn his bread from the time he was a little boy--all exactly as he had done himself. So far there was no difference to be seen; it might very well have been La.s.se himself over again, from the big ears and the "cow's-lick" on the forehead, to the way the boy walked and wore out the bottoms of his trouser-legs. But this was something strikingly new. Neither La.s.se nor any of his family had ever gone to school; it was something new that had come within the reach of his family, a blessing from Heaven that had fallen upon the boy and himself. It felt like a push upward; the impossible was within reach; what might not happen to a person who had book-learning! You might become master of a workshop, a clerk, perhaps even a schoolmaster.

"Now do take care of the slate, and see that you don't break it!" he said admonis.h.i.+ngly. "And keep out of the way of the big boys until you can hold your own with them. But if any of them simply won't let you alone, mind you manage to hit first! That takes the inclination out of most of them, especially if you hit hard; he who hits first hits twice, as the old proverb says. And then you must listen well, and keep in mind all that your teacher says; and if anyone tries to entice you into playing and larking behind his back, don't do it. And remember that you've got a pocket-handkerchief, and don't use your fingers, for that isn't polite. If there's no one to see you, you can save the handkerchief, of course, and then it'll last all the longer. And take care of your nice jacket. And if the teacher's lady invites you in to coffee, you mustn't take more than one piece of cake, mind."

La.s.se's hands trembled while he talked.

"She's sure not to do that," said Pelle, with a superior air.

"Well, well, now go, so that you don't get there too late--the very first day, too. And if there's some tool or other wanting, you must say we'll get it at once, for we aren't altogether paupers!" And La.s.se slapped his pocket; but it did not make much noise, and Pelle knew quite well that they had no money; they had got the slate and pencil on credit.

La.s.se stood looking after the boy as long as he was in sight, and then went to his work of crus.h.i.+ng oilcakes. He put them into a vessel to soak, and poured water on them, all the while talking softly to himself.

There was a knock at the outside stable-door, and La.s.se went to open it.

It was Brother Kalle.

"Good-day, brother!" he said, with his cheerful smile. "Here comes his Majesty from the quarries!" He waddled in upon his bow legs, and the two exchanged hearty greetings. La.s.se was delighted at the visit.

"What a pleasant time we had with you the other evening!" said La.s.se, taking his brother by the hand.

"That's a long time ago now. But you must look in again one evening soon. Grandmother looks upon both of you with a favorable eye!" Kalle's eyes twinkled mischievously.

"How is she, poor body? Has she at all got over the hurt to her eye?

Pelle came home the other day and told me that the children had been so unfortunate as to put a stick into her eye. It quite upset me. You had to have the doctor, too!"

"Well, it wasn't quite like that," said Kalle. "I had moved grandmother's spinning-wheel myself one morning when I was putting her room to rights, and then I forgot to put it back in its place. Then when she was going to stoop down to pick up something from the floor, the spindle went into her eye; of course she's used to have everything stand exactly in its place. So really the honor's due to me." He smiled all over his face.

La.s.se shook his head sympathetically. "And she got over it fairly well?"

he asked.

"No; it went altogether wrong, and she lost the sight of that eye."

La.s.se looked at him with disapproval.

Kalle caught himself up, apparently very much horrified. "Eh, what nonsense I'm talking! She lost the _blindness_ of that eye, I ought to have said. _Isn't_ that all wrong, too? You put somebody's eye out, and she begins to see! Upon my word, I think I'll set up as an eye-doctor after this, for there's not much difficulty in it."

"What do you say? She's begun to--? Now you're too merry! You oughtn't to joke about everything."

"Well, well, joking apart, as the prophet said when his wife scratched him--she can really see with that eye now."

La.s.se looked suspiciously at him for a little while before he yielded.

"Why, it's quite a miracle!" he then said.

"Yes, that's what the doctor said. The point of the spindle had acted as a kind of operation. But it might just as easily have taken the other direction. Yes, we had the doctor to her three times; it was no use being n.i.g.g.ardly." Kalle stood and tried to look important; he had stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.

"It cost a lot of money, I suppose?"

"That's what I thought, too, and I wasn't very happy when I asked the doctor how much it would be. Twenty-five krones, he said, and it didn't sound anything more than when any of us ask for a piece of bread-and-dripping. 'Will the doctor be so kind as to wait a few days so that I can get the cow property sold?' I asked. 'What!' he says, and glares at me over his spectacles. 'You don't mean to sell the cow so as to pay me? You mustn't do that on any account; I'll wait till times are better.' 'We come off easily, even if we get rid of the cow,' I said.

'How so?' he asks, as we go out to the carriage--it was the farmer of Kaase Farm that was driving for me. So I told him that Maria and I had been thinking of selling everything so that grandmother might go over and be operated. He said nothing to that, but climbed up into the carriage; but while I was standing like this, b.u.t.toning up his foot-bag, he seizes me by the collar and says: 'Do you know, you little bow-legged creature!' (Kalle imitated the doctor's town speech), 'You're the best man I've ever met, and you don't owe me a bra.s.s farthing! For that matter, it was you yourself that performed the operation.' 'Then I ought almost to have had the money,' I said. Then he laughed and gave me a box on the ears with his fur cap. He's a fine man, that doctor, and fearfully clever; they say that he has one kind of mixture that he cures all kinds of illness with."

They were sitting in the herdsman's room upon the green chest, and La.s.se had brought out a little gin. "Drink, brother!" he said again and again.

"It takes something to keep out this October drizzle."

"Many thanks, but you must drink! But I was going to say, you should see grandmother! She goes round peeping at everything with her one eye; if it's only a b.u.t.ton, she keeps on staring at it. So that's what that looks like, and that! She's forgotten what the things look like, and when she sees a thing, she goes to it to feel it afterward--to find out what it is, she actually says. She would have nothing to do with us the first few days; when she didn't hear us talk or walk, she thought we were strangers, even though she saw us there before her eyes."

"And the little ones?" asked La.s.se.

"Thank you, Anna's is fat and well, but our own seems to have come to a standstill. After all, it's the young pigs you ought to breed with. By the bye"--Kalle took out his purse--"while we're at it, don't let me forget the ten krones I got from you for the christenings."

La.s.se pushed it away. "Never mind that," he said. "You may have a lot to go through yet. How many mouths are there now? Fourteen or fifteen, I suppose?"

"Yes; but two take their mother's milk, like the parson's wife's chickens; so that's all saved. And if things became difficult, one's surely man enough to wring a few pence out of one's nose?" He seized his nose and gave it a rapid twist, and held out his hand. A folded ten-krone note lay in it.

La.s.se laughed at the trick, but would not hear of taking the money; and for a time it pa.s.sed backward and forward between them. "Well, well!"

said Kalle at last, keeping the note; "thank you very much, then! And good-bye, brother! I must be going." La.s.se went out with him, and sent many greetings.

"We shall come and look you up very soon," he called out after his brother.

When after a little while he returned to his room, the note lay upon the bed. Kalle must have seen his opportunity to put it there, conjurer that he was. La.s.se put it aside to give to Kalle's wife, when an occasion presented itself.

Long before the time, La.s.se was on the lookout for Pelle. He found the solitude wearisome, now that he was used to having the boy about him from morning till night. At last he came, out of breath with running, for he had longed to get home too.

Nothing either terrible or remarkable had happened at school. Pelle had to give a circ.u.mstantial account, point by point, "Well, what can you do?" the master had asked, taking him by the ear--quite kindly, of course. "I can pull the mad bull to the water without Father La.s.se helping at all," Pelle had answered, and then the whole cla.s.s had laughed.

"Yes, yes, but can you read?"

No, Pelle could not do that--"or else I shouldn't have come here,"

he was on the point of adding. "It was a good thing you didn't answer that," said La.s.se; "but what more then?" Well, then Pelle was put upon the lowest bench, and the boy next him was set to teach him his letters.

"Do you know them, then?"