Part 68 (1/2)
”Yes, yes!” replied Master Andres quietly; ”for your own sake as well.
And I believe you ought to be getting ready now.”
Pelle slunk away; it was not his intention to apologize, and he had plenty of time. He walked as though asleep; everything was dead within him. His thoughts were busy with all sorts of indifferent matters, as though he sought to delay something by chattering; Crazy Anker went by with his bag of sand on his back, his thin legs wobbling under him. ”I will help him to carry it,” thought Pelle dejectedly, as he went onward; ”I will help him to carry it.”
Alfred came strolling down the street; he was carrying his best walking-stick and was wearing gloves, although it was in the midst of working hours. ”If he sees me now he'll turn down the corner by the coal-merchant's,” thought Pelle bitterly. ”Oughtn't I to ask him to say a good word for me? He is such an important person! And he still owes me money for soling a pair of boots.”
But Alfred made straight for him. ”Have you seen anything of Albinus? He has disappeared!” he said; and his pretty face seemed somehow unusually moved. He stood there chewing at his moustache, just as fine folk do when they are musing over something.
”I've got to go to the town hall,” said Pelle.
”Yes, I know--you've got to be flogged. But don't you know anything of Albinus?” Alfred had drawn him into the coal-merchant's doorway, in order not to be seen in his company.
”Yes, Albinus, Albinus--” Something was dawning in Pelle's mind. ”Wait a minute--he--he--I'm sure he has run away with the circus. At least, I believe he has!” Whereat Alfred turned about and ran--ran in his best clothes!
Of course Albinus had run away with the circus. Pelle could understand the whole affair perfectly well. The evening before he had slipped on board Ole Hansen's yacht, which during the night was to have taken the trick-rider across to Sweden, and now he would live a glorious life and do what he liked. To run away--that was the only clear opening in life.
Before Pelle knew it, he was down by the harbor, staring at a s.h.i.+p which was on the point of sailing. He followed up his inspiration, and went about inquiring after a vacancy on board some vessel, but there was none.
He sat down by the waterside, and played with a chip of wood. It represented a three-master, and Pelle gave it a cargo; but every time it should have gone to sea it canted over, and he had to begin the loading all over again. All round him carpenters and stone-cutters were working on the preparations for the new harbor; and behind them, a little apart, stood the ”Great Power,” at work, while, as usual, a handful of people were loitering near him; they stood there staring, in uneasy expectation that something would happen. Pelle himself had a feeling of something ominous as he sat there and plashed in the water to drive his s.h.i.+p out to sea; he would have accepted it as a manifestation of the most sacred principle of life had Jorgensen begun to rage before his eyes.
But the stone-cutter only laid down his hammer, in order to take his brandy-bottle from under the stone and swallow a mouthful; with that exception, he stood there bowed over the granite as peacefully as though there were no other powers in the world save it and him. He did not see the onlookers who watched him in gaping expectation, their feet full of agility, ready to take to flight at his slightest movement.
He struck so that the air moaned, and when he raised himself again his glance swept over them. Gradually Pelle had concentrated all his expectations upon this one man, who endured the hatred of the town without moving an eyelash, and was a haunting presence in every mind.
In the boy's imagination he was like a loaded mine; one stood there not knowing whether or not it was ignited, and in a moment the whole might leap into the air. He was a volcano, and the town existed from day to day by his mercy. And from time to time Pelle allowed him to shake himself a little--just enough to make the town rock.
But now, moreover, there was a secret between them; the ”Great Power”
had been punished too for beating the rich folks. Pelle was not slow in deducing the consequences--was there not already a townsman standing and watching him at play? He too was the terror of the people. Perhaps he would join himself to the ”Great Power”; there would be little left of the town then! In the daytime they would lie hidden among the cliffs, but at night they came down and plundered the town.
They fell upon all who had earned their living as bloodsuckers; people hid themselves in their cellars and garrets when they heard that Pelle and the ”Great Power” were on the march. They hanged the rich s.h.i.+powner Monsen to the church steeple, and he dangled there a terror and a warning to all. But the poor folk came to them as trustingly as lambs and ate out of their hands. They received all they desired; so poverty was banished from the world, and Pelle could proceed upon his radiant, onward way without a feeling of betrayal.
His glance fell upon the clock on the harbor guard-house; it was nearly three. He sprang up and looked irresolutely about him; he gazed out over the sea and down into the deep water of the harbor, looking for help.
Manna and her sisters--they would disdainfully turn their backs upon the dishonored Pelle; they would no longer look at him. And the people would point their fingers at him, or merely look at him, and think: ”Ha, there goes the boy who was flogged at the town hall!” Wherever he went in the world it would follow him like a shadow, that he had been flogged as a child; such a thing clings visibly to a man. He knew men and maids and old white-headed men who had come to Stone Farm from places where no one else had ever been. They might come as absolute strangers, but there was something in their past which in spite of all rose up behind them and went whispering from mouth to mouth.
He roamed about, desperately in his helplessness, and in the course of his wanderings came to stone-cutter Jorgensen.
”Well,” said the ”Great Power,” as he laid down his hammer, ”you've quarrelled nicely with the big townsfolk! Do you think you can keep a stiff upper-lip?” Then he reached for his hammer again. But Pelle took his bearings and ran despondently to the town-hall.
XIV
The punishment itself was nothing. It was almost laughable, those few strokes, laid on through his trousers, by the stick of the old gaoler; Pelle had known worse thras.h.i.+ngs. But he was branded, an outcast from the society even of the very poorest; he read as much into the compa.s.sion of the people to whom he carried boots and shoes. ”Good Lord, this miserable b.o.o.by! Has it gone as far as that with him!” This was what he read in their eyes. Everybody would always stare at him now, and when he went down the street he saw faces in the ”spy” mirrors fixed outside the windows. ”There goes that shoemaker boy!”
The young master was the only one who treated him precisely as before; and Pelle repaid him for that with the most limitless devotion. He bought on credit for him and saved him from blows where only he could.
If the young master in his easy-going way had promised to have something completed and had then forgotten it, Pelle would sit in his place and work overtime on it. ”What's it matter to us?” Jens used to say. But Pelle would not have the customers coming to scold Master Andres, nor would he allow him to suffer the want of anything that would keep him on his feet.
He became more intimate than ever with Jens and Morten; they all suffered from the same disgrace; and he often accompanied them home, although no pleasure awaited them in their miserable cottage. They were among the very poorest, although the whole household worked. It was all of no avail.
”Nothing's any use,” the ”Great Power” himself would say when he was disposed to talk; ”poverty is like a sieve: everything goes straight through it, and if we stop one hole, it's running through ten others at the same time. They say I'm a swine, and why shouldn't I be? I can do the work of three men--yes, but do I get the wages of three? I get my day's wages and the rest goes into the pockets of those who employ me.
Even if I wanted to keep myself decent, what should we gain by it? Can a family get decent lodging and decent food and decent clothing for nine kroner a week? Will the means of a laborer allow him to live anywhere but by the refuse-heaps, where only the pigs used to be kept? Why should I be housed like a pig and live like a pig and yet be no pig--is there any sense in that? My wife and children have to work as well as me, and how can things be decent with us when wife and children have to go out and make things decent for other people? No, look here! A peg of brandy, that makes everything seem decent, and if that doesn't do it, why, then, a bottle!” So he would sit talking, when he had been drinking a little, but otherwise he was usually silent.