Part 49 (2/2)
Thereupon Pelle would finish his coffee--it was sweetened with brown sugar--out of doors, by the workshop window.
In the mornings, before the master appeared, there was no great eagerness to work; they were all sleepy still, looking forward to a long, dreary day. The journeyman did not encourage them to work; he had a difficulty in finding enough for himself. So they sat there wool-gathering, striking a few blows with the hammer now and then for appearance's sake, and one or another would fall asleep again over the table. They all started when three blows were struck on the wall as a signal for Pelle.
”What are you doing? It seems to me you are very idle in there!” the master would say, staring suspiciously at Pelle. But Pelle had remarked what work each was supposed to have in hand, and would run over it all.
”What day's this--Thursday? d.a.m.nation take it! Tell that Jens he's to put aside Manna's uppers and begin on the pilot's boots this moment--they were promised for last Monday.” The master would struggle miserably to get his breath: ”Ah, I've had a bad night, Pelle, a horrible night; I was so hot, with such a ringing in my ears. New blood is so devilishly unruly; it's all the time boiling in my head like soda-water. But it's a good thing I'm making it, G.o.d knows; I used to be so soon done up. Do you believe in h.e.l.l? Heaven, now, that's sheer nonsense; what happiness can we expect elsewhere if we can't be properly happy here? But do you believe in h.e.l.l? I dreamed I'd spat up the last bit of my lungs and that I went to h.e.l.l. 'What the devil d'you want here, Andres?' they asked me; 'your heart is still whole!' And they wouldn't have me. But what does that signify? I can't breathe with my heart, so I'm dying. And what becomes of me then? Will you tell me that?
”There's something that bids a man enter again into his mother's womb; now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two sound legs, you'd see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I wouldn't stay messing about here any longer.... Well, have you seen your navel yet to-day? Yes, you ragam.u.f.fin, you laugh; but I'm in earnest.
It would pay you well if you always began the day by contemplating your navel.”
The master was half serious, half jesting. ”Well, now, you can fetch me my port wine; it's on the shelf, behind the box with the laces in it.
I'm deadly cold.”
Pelle came back and announced that the bottle was empty. The master looked at him mildly.
”Then run along and get me another. I've no money--you must say--well, think it out for yourself; you've got a head.” The master looked at him with an expression which went to Pelle's heart, so that he often felt like bursting into tears. Hitherto Pelle's life had been spent on the straight highway; he did not understand this combination of wit and misery, roguishness and deadly affliction. But he felt something of the presence of the good G.o.d, and trembled inwardly; he would have died for the young master.
When the weather was wet it was difficult for the sick man to get about; the cold pulled him down. If he came into the workshop, freshly washed and with his hair still wet, he would go over to the cold stove, and stand there, stamping his feet. His cheeks had quite fallen in. ”I've so little blood for the moment,” he said at such times, ”but the new blood is on the way; it sings in my ears every night.” Then he would be silent a while. ”There, by my soul, we've got a piece of lung again,” he said, and showed Pelle, who stood at the stove brus.h.i.+ng shoes, a gelatinous lump. ”But they grow again afterward!”
”The master will soon be in his thirtieth year,” said the journeyman; ”then the dangerous time is over.”
”Yes, deuce take it--if only I can hang together so long--only another six months,” said the master eagerly, and he looked at Pelle, as though Pelle had it in his power to help him; ”only another six months! Then the whole body renews itself--new lungs--everything new. But new legs, G.o.d knows, I shall never get.”
A peculiar, secret understanding grew up between Pelle and the master; it did not manifest itself in words, but in glances, in tones of the voice, and in the whole conduct of each. When Pelle stood behind him, it was as though even the master's leather jacket emitted a feeling of warmth, and Pelle followed him with his eyes whenever and wherever he could, and the master's behavior to Pelle was different from his behavior to the others.
When, on his return from running errands in the town, he came to the corner, he was delighted to see the young master standing in the doorway, tightly grasping his stick, with his lame leg in an easy position. He stood there, sweeping his eyes from side to side, gazing longingly into the distance. This was his place when he was not indoors, sitting over some book of adventure. But Pelle liked him to stand there, and as he slipped past he would hang his head shyly, for it often happened that the master would clutch his shoulder, so hard that it hurt, and shake him to and fro, and would say affectionately: ”Oh, you limb of Satan!” This was the only endearment that life had vouchsafed Pelle, and he sunned himself in it.
Pelle could not understand the master, nor did he understand his sighs and groans. The master never went out, save as an exception, when he was feeling well; then he would hobble across to the beerhouse and make up a party, but as a rule his travels ended at the house door. There he would stand, looking about him a little, and then he would hobble indoors again, with that infectious good humor which transformed the dark workshop into a grove full of the twittering of birds. He had never been abroad, and he felt no craving to go; but in spite of this his mind and his speech roamed over the whole wide world, so that Pelle at times felt like falling sick from sheer longing. He demanded nothing more than health of the future, and adventures hovered all about him; one received the impression that happiness itself had fluttered to earth and settled upon him. Pelle idolized him, but did not understand him. The master, who at one moment would make sport of his lame leg and the next moment forget that he had one, or jest about his poverty as though he were flinging good gold pieces about him--this was a man Pelle could not fathom. He was no wiser when he secretly looked into the books which Master Andres read so breathlessly; he would have been content with a much more modest adventure than a journey to the North Pole or the center of the earth, if only he himself could have been of the party.
He had no opportunity to sit still and indulge in fancies. Every moment it was, ”Pelle, run and do something or other!” Everything was purchased in small quant.i.ties, although it was obtained on credit. ”Then it doesn't run up so,” Jeppe used to say; it was all the same to Master Andres. The foreman's young woman came running in; she absolutely must have her young lady's shoes; they were promised for Monday. The master had quite forgotten them. ”They are in hand now,” he said, undaunted.
”To the devil with you, Jens!” And Jens had hastily thrust a pair of lasts into the shoes, while Master Andres went outside with the girl, and joked with her on the landing, in order to smooth her down. ”Just a few nails, so that they'll hang together,” said the master to Jens.
And then, ”Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs will carry you! Say we'll send for them early to-morrow morning and finish them properly!
But run as though the devil were at your heels!”
Pelle ran, and when he returned, just as he was slipping into his leather ap.r.o.n, he had to go out again. ”Pelle, run out and borrow a few bra.s.s nails--then we needn't buy any to-day. Go to Klausen--no, go to Blom, rather; you've been to Klausen already this morning.”
”Blom's are angry about the screw-block!” said Pelle.
”Death and all the devils! We must see about putting it in repair and returning it; remember that, and take it with you to the smith's. Well, what in the world shall we do?” The young master stared helplessly from one to another.
”Shoemaker Marker,” suggested little Nikas.
”We don't borrow from Marker,” and the master wrinkled his forehead.
”Marker's a louse!” Marker had succeeded in stealing one of the oldest customers of the workshop.
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