Part 58 (1/2)

In his loneliness Pelle had often taken his way to the little house by the cemetery, where Due lived in two little rooms. It was always a sort of consolation to see familiar faces, but in other respects he did not gain much by his visits; Due was pleasant enough, but Anna thought of nothing but herself, and how she could best get on. Due had a situation as coachman at a jobmaster's, and they seemed to have a sufficiency.

”We have no intention of being satisfied with driving other people's horses,” Anna would say, ”but you must crawl before you can walk.” She had no desire to return to the country.

”Out there there's no prospects for small people, who want something more than groats in their belly and a few rags on their back. You are respected about as much as the dirt you walk on, and there's no talk of any future. I shall never regret that we've come away from the country.”

Due, on the contrary, was homesick. He was quite used to knowing that there was a quarter of a mile between him and the nearest neighbor, and here he could hear, through the flimsy walls, whether his neighbors were kissing, fighting, or counting their money. ”It is so close here, and then I miss the earth; the pavements are so hard.”

”He misses the manure--he can't come treading it into the room,” said Anna, in a superior way; ”for that was the only thing there was plenty of in the country. Here in the town too the children can get on better; in the country poor children can't learn anything that'll help them to amount to something; they've got to work for their daily bread. It's bad to be poor in the country!”

”It's worse here in town,” said Pelle bitterly, ”for here only those who dress finely amount to anything!”

”But there are all sorts of ways here by which a man can earn money, and if one way doesn't answer, he can try another. Many a man has come into town with his naked rump sticking out of his trousers, and now he's looked up to! If a man's only got the will and the energy--well, I've thought both the children ought to go to the munic.i.p.al school, when they are older; knowledge is never to be despised.”

”Why not Marie as well?” asked Pelle.

”She? What? She's not fitted to learn anything. Besides, she's only a girl.”

Anna, like her brother Alfred, had set herself a lofty goal. Her eyes were quite bright when she spoke of it, and it was evidently her intention to follow it regardless of consequences. She was a loud-voiced, capable woman with an authoritative manner; Due simply sat by and smiled and kept his temper. But in his inmost heart, according to report, he knew well enough what he wanted. He never went to the public-house, but came straight home after work; and in the evening he was never happier than when all three children were scrambling over him. He made no distinction between his own two youngsters and the six-year-old Marie, whom Anna had borne before she married him.

Pelle was very fond of little Marie, who had thrived well enough so long as her child-loving grandparents had had her, but now she was thin and had stopped growing, and her eyes were too experienced. She gazed at one like a poor housewife who is always fretted and distressed, and Pelle was sorry for her. If her mother was harsh to her, he always remembered that Christmastide evening when he first visited his Uncle Kalle, and when Anna, weeping and abashed, had crept into the house, soon to be a mother. Little Anna, with the mind of a merry child, whom everybody liked. What had become of her now?

One evening, as Morten was not at liberty, he ran thither. Just as he was on the point of knocking, he heard Anna storming about indoors; suddenly the door flew open and little Marie was thrown out upon the footpath. The child was crying terribly.

”What's the matter, then?” asked Pelle, in his cheerful way.

”What's the matter? The matter is that the brat is saucy and won't eat just because she doesn't get exactly the same as the others. Here one has to slave and reckon and contrive--and for a bad girl like that! Now she's punis.h.i.+ng herself and won't eat. Is it anything to her what the others have? Can she compare herself with them? She's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d brat and always will be, however you like to dress it up!”

”She can't help that!” said Pelle angrily.

”Can't help it! Perhaps I can help it? Is it my fault that she didn't come into the world a farmer's daughter, but has to put up with being a b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Yes, you may believe me, the neighbors' wives tell me to my face she hasn't her father's eyes, and they look at me as friendly as a lot of cats! Am I to be punished all my life, perhaps, because I looked a bit higher, and let myself be led astray in a way that didn't lead to anything? Ah, the little monster!” And she clenched her fists and shook them in the direction from which the child's crying could still be heard.

”Here one goes and wears oneself out to keep the house tidy and to be respectable, and then no one will treat me as being as good as themselves, just because once I was a bit careless!” She was quite beside herself.

”If you aren't kind to little Marie, I shall tell Uncle Kalle,” said Pelle warningly.

She spat contemptuously. ”Then you can tell him. Yes, I wish to G.o.d you'd do it! Then he'd come and take her away, and delighted I should be!”

But now Due was heard stamping on the flags outside the door, and they could hear him too consoling the child. He came in holding her by the hand, and gave his wife a warning look, but said nothing. ”There, there--now all that's forgotten,” he repeated, in order to check the child's sobs, and he wiped away the grimy tears from her cheeks with his great thumbs.

Anna brought him his food, sulkily enough, and out in the kitchen she muttered to herself. Due, while he ate his supper of bacon and black bread, stood the child between his knees and stared at her with round eyes. ”Rider!” she said, and smiled persuasively. ”Rider!” Due laid a cube of bacon on a piece of bread.

”There came a rider riding On his white hoss, hoss, hoss, hoss!”

he sang, and he made the bread ride up to her mouth. ”And then?”

”Then, _pop_ he rode in at the gate!” said the child, and swallowed horse and rider.

While she ate she kept her eyes fixed upon him unwaveringly, with that painful earnestness which was so sad to see. But sometimes it happened that the rider rode right up to her mouth, and then, with a jerk, turned about, and disappeared, at a frantic gallop, between Due's white teeth.

Then she smiled for a moment.