Pelle the Conqueror Part 40

"Her flame's burning clear to the end!" said La.s.se, when the door was shut. Pelle noticed how freely their voices rang again.

"Yes, she'll be herself to the very end; there's been extra good timber in her. The people about here don't like our not having the doctor to her. What do you think? Shall we go to the expense?"

"I don't suppose there's anything more the matter with her than that she can't live any longer," said La.s.se thoughtfully.

"No, and she herself won't hear of it. If he could only keep life in her a little while longer!"

"Yes, times are hard!" said La.s.se, and went round to look at the children. They were all asleep, and their room seemed heavy with their breathing. "The flock's getting much smaller."

"Yes; one or two fly away from the nest pretty well every year,"

answered Kalle, "and now I suppose we shan't have any more. It's an unfortunate figure we've stopped at--a horrid figure; but Maria's become deaf in that ear, and I can't do anything alone." Kalle had got back his roguish look.

"I'm sure we can do very well with what we've got," said Maria. "When we take Anna's too, it makes fourteen."

"Oh, yes, count the others too, and you'll get off all the easier!" said Kalle teasingly.

La.s.se was looking at Anna's child, which lay side by side with Kalle's thirteenth. "She looks healthier than her aunt," he said. "You'd scarcely think they were the same age. She's just as red as the other's pale."

"Yes, there is a difference," Kalle admitted, looking affectionately at the children. "It must be that Anna's has come from young people, while _our_ blood's beginning to get old. And then the ones that come the wrong side of the blanket always thrive best--like our Albert, for instance. He carries himself quite differently from the others. Did you know, by-the-by, that he's to get a s.h.i.+p of his own next spring?"

"No, surely not! Is he really going to be a captain?" said La.s.se, in the utmost astonishment.

"It's Kongstrup that's at the back of that--that's between ourselves, of course!"

"Does the father of Anna's child still pay what he's bound to?" asked La.s.se.

"Yes, he's honest enough! We get five krones a month for having the child, and that's a good help toward expenses."

Maria had placed a dram, bread and a saucer of dripping on the table, and invited them to take their places at it.

"You're holding out a long time at Stone Farm," said Kalle, when they were seated. "Are you going to stay there all your life?" he asked, with a mischievous wink.

"It's not such a simple matter to strike out into the deep!" said La.s.se evasively.

"Oh, we shall soon be hearing news from you, shan't we?" asked Maria.

La.s.se did not answer; he was struggling with a crust.

"Oh, but do cut off the crust if it's too much for your teeth!" said Maria. Every now and then she listened at her mother's door. "She's dropped off, after all, poor old soul!" she said.

Kalle pretended to discover the bottle for the first time. "What! Why, we've got gin on the table, too, and not one of us has smelt it!" he exclaimed, and filled their gla.s.ses for the third time. Then Maria corked the bottle. "Do you even grudge us our food?" he said, making great eyes at her--what a rogue he was! And Maria stared at him with eyes that were just as big, and said: "Yah! you want to fight, do you?"

It quite warmed La.s.se's heart to see their happiness.

"How's the farmer at Stone Farm? I suppose he's got over the worst now, hasn't he?" said Kalle.

"Well, I think he's as much a man as he'll ever be. A thing like that leaves its mark upon any one," answered La.s.se. Maria was smiling, and as soon as they looked at her, she looked away.

"Yes, you may grin!" said La.s.se; "but I think it's sad!" Upon which Maria had to go out into the kitchen to have her laugh out.

"That's what all the women do at the mere mention of his name," said Kalle. "It's a sad change. To-day red, to-morrow dead. Well, she's got her own way in one thing, and that is that she keeps him to herself--in a way. But to think that he can live with her after that!"

"They seem fonder of one another than they ever were before; he can't do without her for a single minute. But of course he wouldn't find any one else to love him now. What a queer sort of devilment love is! But we must see about getting home."

"Well, I'll send you word when she's to be buried," said Kalle, when they got outside the house.

"Yes, do! And if you should be in want of a ten-krone note for the funeral, let me know. Good-bye, then!"

XXII

Grandmother's funeral was still like a bright light behind everything that one thought and did. It was like certain kinds of food, that leave a pleasant taste in the mouth long after they have been eaten and done with. Kalle had certainly done everything to make it a festive day; there was an abundance of good things to eat and drink, and no end to his comical tricks. And, sly dog that he was, he had found an excuse for asking Madam Olsen; it was really a nice way of making the relation a legitimate one.

It gave La.s.se and Pelle enough to talk about for a whole month, and after the subject was quite talked out and laid on one side for other things, it remained in the background as a sense of well-being of which no one quite knew the origin.

But now spring was advancing, and with it came troubles--not the daily trifles that could be bad enough, but great troubles that darkened everything, even when one was not thinking about them. Pelle was to be confirmed at Easter, and La.s.se was at his wits' end to know how he was going to get him all that he would need--new clothes, new cap, new shoes! The boy often spoke about it; he must have been afraid of being put to shame before the others that day in church.

"It'll be all right," said La.s.se; but he himself saw no way at all out of the difficulty. At all the farms where the good old customs prevailed, the master and mistress provided it all; out here everything was so confoundedly new-fangled, with Prompt payments that slipped away between one's fingers. A hundred krones a year in wages seemed a tremendous amount when one thought of it all in one; but you only got them gradually, a few ores at a time, without your being able to put your finger anywhere and say: You got a good round sum there! "Yes, yes, it'll be all right!" said La.s.se aloud, when he had got himself entangled in absurd speculations; and Pelle had to be satisfied with this. There was only one way out of the difficulty--to borrow the money from Madam Olsen; and that La.s.se would have to come to in the end, loth as he was to do it. But Pelle must not know anything about it.

La.s.se refrained as long as he possibly could, hoping that something or other would turn up to free him from the necessity of so disgraceful a proceeding as borrowing from his sweetheart. But nothing happened, and time was pa.s.sing. One morning he cut the matter short; Pelle was just setting out for school. "Will you run in to Madam Olsen's and give her this?" he said, handing the boy a packet. "It's something she's promised to mend for us." Inside on the paper, was the large cross that announced La.s.se's coming in the evening.

From the hills Pelle saw that the ice had broken up in the night. It had filled the bay for nearly a month with a rough, compact ma.s.s, upon which you could play about as safely as on dry land. This was a new side of the sea, and Pelle had carefully felt his way forward with the tips of his wooden shoes, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the others. Afterward he learned to walk about freely on the ice without constantly s.h.i.+vering at the thought that the great fish of the sea were going about just under his wooden shoes, and perhaps were only waiting for him to drop through.

Every day he went out to the high rampart of pack-ice that formed the boundary about a mile out, where the open water moved round in the suns.h.i.+ne like a green eye. He went out because he would do what the others did, but he never felt safe on the sea.

Now it was all broken up, and the bay was full of heaving ice-floes that rubbed against one another with a crackling sound; and the pieces farthest out, carrying bits of the rampart, were already on their way out to sea. Pelle had performed many exploits out there, but was really quite pleased that it was now packing up and taking its departure, so that it would once more be no crime to stay on dry land.

Old Fris was sitting in his place. He never left it now during a lesson, however badly things might go down in the cla.s.s, but contented himself with beating on the desk with his cane. He was little more than a shadow of his former self, his head was always shaking, and his hands were often incapable of grasping an object. He still brought the newspaper with him, and opened it out at the beginning of the lesson, but he did not read. He would fall into a dream, sitting bolt upright, with his hands on the desk and his back against the wall. At such times the children could be as noisy as they liked, and he did not move; only a slight change in the expression of his eyes showed that he was alive at all.

It was quieter in school now. It was not worth while teasing the master, for he scarcely noticed it, and so the fun lost most of its attraction.

A kind of court of justice had gradually formed among the bigger boys; they determined the order of the school-lessons, and disobedience and disputes as to authority were respectively punished and settled in the playground--with fists and tips of wooden shoes. The instruction was given as before, by the cleverer scholars teaching what they knew to the others; there was rather more arithmetic and reading than in Fris's time, but on the other hand the hymns suffered.

It still sometimes happened that Fris woke up and interfered in the instruction. "Hymns!" he would cry in his feeble voice, and strike the desk from habit; and the children would put aside what they were doing to please the old man, and begin repeating some hymn or other, taking their revenge by going through one verse over and over again for a whole hour. It was the only real trick they played the old man, and the joke was all on their side, for Fris noticed nothing.

Fris had so often talked of resigning his post, but now he did not even think of that. He shuffled to and from school at the regular times, probably without even knowing he did it. The authorities really had not the heart to dismiss him. Except in the hymns, which came off with rather short measure, there was nothing to say against him as teacher; for no one had ever yet left his school without being able both to write his name and to read a printed book--if it were in the old type. The new-fas.h.i.+oned printing with Latin letters Fris did not teach, although he had studied Latin in his youth.

Fris himself probably did not feel the change, for he had ceased to feel both for himself and for others. None now brought their human sorrows to him, and found comfort in a sympathetic mind; his mind was not there to consult. It floated outside him, half detached, as it were, like a bird that is unwilling to leave its old nest to set out on a flight to the unknown. It must have been the fluttering mind that his eyes were always following when they dully gazed about into vacancy. But the young men who came home to winter in the village, and went to Fris as to an old friend, felt the change. For them there was now an empty place at home; they missed the old growler, who, though he hated them all in the lump at school, loved them all afterward, and was always ready with his ridiculous "He was my best boy!" about each and all of them, good and bad alike.

The children took their playtime early, and rushed out before Pelle had given the signal; and Fris trotted off as usual into the village, where he would be absent the customary two hours. The girls gathered in a flock to eat their dinners, and the boys dashed about the playground like birds let loose from a cage.

Pelle was quite angry at the insubordination, and pondered over a way of making himself respected; for to-day he had had the other big boys against him. He dashed over the playground like a circling gull, his body inclined and his arms stretched out like a pair of wings. Most of them made room for him, and those who did not move willingly were made to do so. His position was threatened, and he kept moving incessantly, as if to keep the question undecided until a possibility of striking presented itself.

This went on for some time; he knocked some over and hit out at others in his flight, while his offended sense of power grew. He wanted to make enemies of them all. They began to gather up by the gymnastic apparatus, and suddenly he had the whole pack upon him. He tried to rise and shake them off, flinging them hither and thither, but all in vain; down through the heap came their remorseless knuckles and made him grin with pain. He worked away indefatigably but without effect until he lost patience and resorted to less scrupulous tactics--thrusting his fingers into eyes, or attacking noses, windpipes, and any vulnerable part he could get at. That thinned them out, and he was able to rise and fling a last little fellow across the playground.

Pelle was well bruised and quite out of breath, but contented. They all stood by, gaping, and let him brush himself down; he was the victor. He went across to the girls with his torn blouse, and they put it together with pins and gave him sweets; and in return he fastened two of them together by their plaits, and they screamed and let him pull them about without being cross; it was all just as it should be.

But he was not quite secure after his victory. He could not, like Henry Boker in his time, walk right through the whole flock with his hands in his pockets directly after a battle, and look as if they did not exist.

He had to keep stealing glances at them while he strolled down to the beach, and tried with all his might to control his breathing; for next to crying, to be out of breath was the greatest disgrace that could happen to you.