Part 55 (1/2)
One day, as he was pa.s.sing the miserable hovels which lay out by the northern dunes, a poor young woman came to her door and called to him; she held the remains of a pair of elastic-sided boots in her hand.
”Oh, shoemaker's boy, do be so kind as to mend these a bit for me!” she pleaded. ”Just sew them up anyhow, so that they'll stick on my feet for half the evening. The stone-masons are giving their feast, and I do so want to go to it!” Pelle examined the boots; there was not much to be done for them, nevertheless he took them, and mended them in his own time. He learned from Jens that the woman was the widow of a stone-cutter, who was killed by an explosion shortly after their marriage. The boots looked quite decent when he returned them.
”Well, I've no money, but I do offer you many, many thanks!” she said, looking delightedly at the boots; ”and how nice you've made them look!
G.o.d bless you for it.”
”Thanks killed the blacksmith's cat,” said Pelle smiling. Her pleasure was contagious.
”Yes, and G.o.d's blessing falls where two poor people share their bed,”
the young woman rejoined jestingly. ”Still, I wish you everything good as payment--now I can dance after all!”
Pelle was quite pleased with himself as he made off. But few doors farther on another poor woman accosted him; she had evidently heard of the success of the first, and there she stood holding a dirty pair of children's boots, which she earnestly begged him to mend. He took the boots and repaired them although it left him still poorer; he knew too well what need was to refuse. This was the first time that any one in the town had regarded him as an equal, and recognized him at the first glance as a fellow-creature. Pelle pondered over this; he did not know that poverty is cosmopolitan.
When he went out after the day's work he took a back seat; he went about with the poorest boys and behaved as un.o.btrusively as possible. But sometimes a desperate mood came over him, and at times he would make himself conspicuous by behavior that would have made old La.s.se weep; as, for example, when he defiantly sat upon a freshly-tarred bollard. He became thereby the hero of the evening; but as soon as he was alone he went behind a fence and let down his breeches in order to ascertain the extent of the damage. He had been running his errands that day in the best clothes he possessed. This was no joke. La.s.se had deeply imbued him with his own moderation, and had taught him to treat his things carefully, so that it seemed to Pelle almost a pious duty. But Pelle felt himself forsaken by all the G.o.ds, and now he defied them.
The poor women in the streets were the only people who had eyes for him.
”Now look at the b.o.o.by, wearing his confirmation jacket on a weekday!”
they would say, and call him over in order to give him a lecture, which as a rule ended in an offer to repair the damage. But it was all one to Pelle; if he ran about out-of-doors in his best clothes he was only doing as the town did. At all events he had a s.h.i.+rt on, even if it was rather big! And the barber's a.s.sistant himself, who looked most important in tail-coat and top-hat, and was the ideal of every apprentice, did not always wear a s.h.i.+rt; Pelle had once noticed that fact as the youth was swinging some ladies. Up in the country, where a man was appraised according to the number of his s.h.i.+rts, such a thing would have been impossible. But here in town people did not regard such matters so strictly.
He was no longer beside himself with astonishment at the number of people--respectable folk for the most part--who had no abiding place anywhere, but all through the year drifted in the most casual manner from one spot to another. Yet the men looked contented, had wives and children, went out on Sundays, and amused themselves; and after all why should one behave as if the world was coming to an end because one hadn't a barrel of salt pork or a clamp of potatoes to see one through the winter? Recklessness was finally Pelle's refuge too; when all the lights seemed to have gone out of the future it helped him to take up the fairy-tale of life anew, and lent a glamor to naked poverty.
Imagination entered even into starvation: are you or are you not going to die of it?
Pelle was poor enough for everything to be still before him, and he possessed the poor man's alert imagination; the great world and the romance of life were the motives that drew him through the void, that peculiar music of life which is never silent, but murmurs to the reckless and the careful alike. Of the world he knew well enough that it was something incomprehensibly vast--something that was always receding; yet in eighty days one could travel right round it, to the place where men walk about with their heads downward, and back again, and experience all its wonders. He himself had set out into this incomprehensible world, and here he was, stranded in this little town, where there was never a crumb to feed a hungry imagination; nothing but a teeming confusion of petty cares. One felt the cold breath of the outer winds, and the dizziness of great s.p.a.ces; when the little newspaper came the small tradesmen and employers would run eagerly across the street, their spectacles on their noses, and would speak, with gestures of amazement, of the things that happened outside. ”China,” they would say; ”America!”
and fancy that they themselves made part of the bustling world. But Pelle used to wish most ardently that something great and wonderful might wander thither and settle down among them just for once! He would have been quite contented with a little volcano underfoot, so that the houses would begin to sway and bob to one another; or a trifling inundation, so that s.h.i.+ps would ride over the town, and have to moor themselves to the weather-c.o.c.k on the church steeple. He had an irrational longing that something of this kind should happen, something to drive the blood from his heart and make his hair stand on end. But now he had enough to contend against apart from matters of this sort; the world must look after itself until times were better.
It was more difficult to renounce the old fairy-tales, for poverty itself had sung them into his heart, and they spoke to him with Father La.s.se's quivering voice. ”A rich child often lies in a poor mother's lap,” his father used to say, when he prophesied concerning his son's future, and the saying sank deep into the boy's mind, like the refrain of a song. But he had learned this much, that there were no elephants here, on whose necks a plucky youngster could ride astraddle, in order to ride down the tiger which was on the point of tearing the King of the Himalayas to pieces so that he would of course receive the king's daughter and half his kingdom as a reward for his heroic deed. Pelle often loitered about the harbor, but no beautifully dressed little girl ever fell into the water, so that he might rescue her, and then, when he was grown up, make her his wife. And if such a thing did really happen he knew now that his elders would cheat him out of any tip he might receive. And he had quite given up looking for the golden coach which was to run over him, so that the two terrified ladies, who would be dressed in mourning, would take him into their carriage and carry him off to their six-storied castle! Of course, they would adopt him permanently in place of the son which they had just lost, and who, curiously enough, was exactly the same age as himself. No, there were no golden coaches here!
Out in the great world the poorest boy had the most wonderful prospects; all the great men the books had ever heard of had been poor lads like himself, who had reached their high estate through good fortune and their own valor. But all the men in town who possessed anything had attained their wealth by wearily plodding forward and sucking the blood of the poor. They were always sitting and brooding over their money, and they threw nothing away for a lucky fellow to pick up; and they left nothing lying about, lest some poor lad should come and take it. Not one of them considered it beneath him to pick up an old trouser-b.u.t.ton off the pavement, and carry it home.
One evening Pelle was running out to fetch half a pound of canister tobacco for Jeppe. In front of the coal-merchant's house the big dog, as always, made for his legs, and he lost the twenty-five-ore piece. While he was looking for it, an elderly man came up to him. Pelle knew him very well; he was Monsen the s.h.i.+powner, the richest man in the town.
”Have you lost something, my lad?” he asked, and began to a.s.sist in the search.
”Now he will question me,” thought Pelle. ”And then I shall answer him boldly, and then he will look at me attentively and say--”
Pelle was always hoping for some mysterious adventure, such as happens to an able lad and raises him to fortune.
But the s.h.i.+powner did nothing he was expected to do. He merely searched eagerly, and inquired: ”Where were you walking? Here, weren't you? Are you quite certain of that?”
”In any case he'll give me another twenty-five ore,” thought Pelle.
”Extraordinary--how eager he is!” Pelle did not really want to go on searching, but he could not very well leave off before the other.
”Well, well!” said the s.h.i.+powner at last, ”you may as well whistle for those twenty-five ore. But what a b.o.o.by you are!” And he moved on, and Pelle looked after him for a long while before putting his hand into his own pocket.
Later, as he was returning that way, he saw a man bowed over the flagstones, striking matches as he searched. It was Monsen. The sight tickled Pelle tremendously. ”Have you lost anything?” he asked mischievously, standing on the alert, lest he should get a box on the ear. ”Yes, yes; twenty-five ore;” groaned the s.h.i.+powner. ”Can't you help me to find it, my boy?”
Well, he had long understood that Monsen was the richest man in the town, and that he had become so by provisioning s.h.i.+ps with spoiled foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily insured.