Part 101 (1/2)
After she had washed up, she sat by Pelle with her mending, chattering away concerning her household cares. ”I shall soon have to get jackets for the boys--it's awful what they need now they're grown up. I peep in at the second-hand clothes shop every day. And you must have a new blouse, too, Pelle; that one will soon be done for; and then you've none to go to the wash. If you'll buy the stuff, I'll soon make it up for you--I can sew! I made my best blouse myself--Hanne helped me with it!
Why, really, don't you go to see Hanne any longer?”
”Oh, I don't know.”
”Hanne has grown so peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to have taken Hanne.”
”But you didn't like it when I took Ellen. Why should I have taken Hanne?”
”Oh, I don't know ... Hanne....” Marie stopped, listened, and suddenly wrenched the window open.
Down in the ”Ark” a door slammed, and a long hooting sound rose up from below, sounding just like a husky scream from the crazy Vinslev's flute or like the wind in the long corridors. Like a strange, disconnected s.n.a.t.c.h of melody, the sound floated about below, trickling up along the wooden walls, and breaking out into the daylight with a note of ecstasy: ”Hanne's with child! The Fairy Princess is going to be confined!”
Marie went down the stairs like a flash. The half-grown girls were shrieking and running together in the court below; the women on the galleries were murmuring to others above and below. Not that this was in itself anything novel; but in this case it was Hanne herself, the immaculate, whom as yet no tongue had dared to besmirch. And even now they dared hardly speak of it openly; it had come as such a shock. In a certain sense they had all entered into her exaltation, and with her had waited for the fairy-tale to come true; as quite a child she had been elected to represent the incomprehensible; and now she was merely going to have a child! It really was like a miracle just at first; it was such a surprise to them all!
Marie came back with dragging steps and with an expression of horror and astonishment. Down in the court the grimy-nosed little brats were screeching, as they wheeled hand in hand round the sewer-grating--it was splendid for dancing round--
”Bro-bro-brille-brid Hanne's doin' to have a tid!”
They couldn't speak plainly yet.
And there was ”Grete with the baby,” the mad-woman, tearing her cellar-window open, leaning out of it backward, with her doll on her arm, and yelling up through the well, so that it echoed loud and shrill: ”The Fairy Princess has got a child, and Pelle's its father!”
Pelle bent over his work in silence. Fortunately he was not the king's son in disguise in this case! But he wasn't going to wrangle with women.
Hanne's mother came storming out onto her gallery. ”That's a shameless lie!” she cried. ”Pelle's name ain't going to be dragged into this--the other may be who he likes!”
Overhead the hea.r.s.e-driver came staggering out onto his gallery.
”The princess there has run a beam into her body,” he rumbled, in his good-natured ba.s.s. ”What a pity I'm not a midwife! They've got hold of the wrong end of it!”
”Clear off into your hole and hold your tongue, you body-s.n.a.t.c.her!”
cried Madam Johnsen, spitting with rage. ”You've got to stick your brandy-nose into everything!”
He stood there, half drunk, leaning over the rail, babbling, teasing, without returning Madam Johnsen's vituperation. But then little Marie flung up a window and came to her a.s.sistance, and up from her platform Ferdinand's mother emerged. ”How many hams did you buy last month? Fetch out your bear hams, then, and show us them! He kills a bear for every corpse, the drunkard!” From all sides they fell upon him. He could do nothing against them, and contented himself with opening his eyes and his mouth and giving vent to a ”Ba-a-a!” Then his red-haired wife came out and hailed him in.
XII
From the moment when the gray morning broke there was audible a peculiar note in the buzzing of the ”Ark,” a hoa.r.s.e excitement, which thrust all care aside. Down the long corridors there was a sound of weeping and scrubbing; while the galleries and the dark wooden stair-cases were sluiced with water. ”Look out there!” called somebody every moment from somewhere, and then it was a question of escaping the downward-streaming flood. During the whole morning the water poured from one gallery to another, as over a mill-race.
But now the ”Ark” stood freezing in its own cleanliness, with an expression that seemed to say the old warren didn't know itself.
Here and there a curtain or a bit of furniture had disappeared from a window--it had found its way to the p.a.w.n shop in honor of the day. What was lacking in that way was made up for by the expectation and festive delight on the faces of the inmates.
Little fir-trees peeped out of the cellar entries in the City Ward, and in the market-place they stood like a whole forest along the wall of the prison. In the windows of the bas.e.m.e.nt-shops hung hearts and colored candles, and the grocer at the corner had a great Christmas goblin in his window--it was made of red and gray wool-work and had a whole cat's skin for its beard.
On the stairs of the ”Ark” the children lay about cleaning knives and forks with sand sprinkled on the steps.
Pelle sat over his work and listened in secret. His appearance usually had a quieting effect on these crazy outbursts of the ”Ark,” but he did not want to mix himself up with this affair. And he had never even dreamed that Hanne's mother could be like this! She was like a fury, turning her head, quick as lightning, now to one side, now to the other, and listening to every sound, ready to break out again!
Ah, she was protecting her child now that it was too late! She was like a spitting cat.