PELLE THE CONQUEROR
PART II. - APPRENTICESHIP
BY MARTIN ANDERSON NEXO
TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH
By Bernard Miall.
II. APPRENTICESHIP
I
On that windy May-morning when Pelle tumbled out of the nest, it so
happened that old Klaus Hermann was clattering into town with his
manure-cart, in order to fetch a load of dung. And this trifling
circumstance decided the boy's position in life. There was no more
pother than this about the question: What was Pelle to be?
He had never put that question to himself. He had simply gone onward
at hazard, as the meaning of the radiant world unfolded itself. As to
what he should make of himself when he was really out in the world
- well, the matter was so incomprehensible that it was mere folly to
think about it. So he just went on.
Now he had reached the further end of the ridge. He lay down in the
ditch to recover his breath after his long walk; he was tired and
hungry, but in excellent spirits. Down there at his feet, only half
a mile distant, lay the town. There was a cheerful glitter about it;
from its hundreds of fireplaces the smoke of midday fires curled
upward into the blue sky, and the red roofs laughed roguishly into
the beaming face of the day. Pelle immediately began to count the
houses; not wishing to exaggerate, he had estimated them at a million
only, and already he was well into the first hundred.
But in the midst of his counting he jumped up. What did the people
down there get for dinner? They must surely live well there! And was
it polite to go on eating until one was quite full, or should one lay
down one's spoon when one had only half finished, like the landowners
when they attended a dinner? For one who was always hungry this was
a very important question.
There was a great deal of traffic on the high-road. People were
coming and going; some had their boxes behind them in a cart, and
others carried their sole worldly possessions in a bag slung over
their shoulders, just as he did. Pelle knew some of these people,
and nodded to them benevolently; he knew something about all of them.
There were people who were going to the town - his town - and some were
going farther, far over the sea, to America, or even farther still,
to serve the King there; one could see that by their equipment and
the frozen look on their faces. Others were merely going into the
town to make a hole in their wages, and to celebrate May-day. These
came along the road in whole parties, humming or whistling, with
empty hands and overflowing spirits. But the most interesting people
were those who had put their boxes on a wheelbarrow, or were carrying
them by both handles. These had flushed faces, and were feverish in
their movements; they were people who had torn themselves away from
their own country-side, and their accustomed way of life, and had
chosen the town, as he himself had done.
There was one man, a cottager, with a little green chest on his
wheelbarrow; this latter was broad in the beam, and it was neatly
adorned with flowers painted by his own hand. Beside him walked his
daughter; her cheeks were red, and her eyes were gazing into the
unknown future. The father was speaking to her, but she did not look
as though she heard him. "Yes - now you must take it on you to look
out for yourself; you must think about it, and not throw yourself
away. The town is quite a good place for those who go right ahead
and think of their own advantage, but it thinks nothing of who gets
trodden underfoot. So don't be too trusting, for the people there
are wonderful clever in all sorts of tricks to take you in and trip
you up. At the same time you want to be soft-spoken and friendly."
She did not reply to this; she was apparently more taken up with
the problem of putting down her feet in their new shoes so that the
heels should not turn over.
There was a stream of people coming up from the town too. All the
forenoon Pelle had been meeting Swedes who had come that morning
in the steamer, and were now looking for a job on the land. There
were old folk, worn out with labor, and little children; there were
maidens as pretty as yellow-haired Marie, and young laborers who had
the strength of the whole world in their loins and muscles. And this
current of life was setting hither to fill up the gaps left by the
swarms that were going away - but that did not concern Pelle. For
seven years ago he had felt everything that made their faces look
so troubled now; what they were just entering upon he had already
put behind him. So there was no good in looking back.
Presently the old man from Neuendorf came along the road. He was got
up quite like an American, with a portmanteau and a silk neckerchief,
and the inside pockets of his open coat were stuffed full of papers.
At last he had made up his mind, and was going out to his betrothed,
who had already been three years away.
"Hullo!" cried Pelle, "so you are going away?"
The man came over to Pelle and set his portmanteau down by the side
of the ditch.
"Well, yes; it's time to be going," he said. "Laura won't wait for
me any longer. So the old people must see how they can get along
without a son; I've done everything for them now for three years.
Provided they can manage all by themselves - "
"They can do that all right," said Pelle, with an experienced air.
"And they had to get help formerly. There is no future for young
people at home." He had heard his elders say this. He struck at the
grass with his stick, assuming a superior air.
"No," said the other, "and Laura refuses to be a cottager's wife.
Well, good-bye!" He held out his hand to Pelle and tried to smile,
but his features had it their own way; nothing but a rather twisted
expression came over them. He stood there a minute, looking at his
boots, his thumb groping over his face as though he wanted to wipe
the tormented look away; then he picked up his portmanteau and went.
He was evidently not very comfortable.
"I'll willingly take over the ticket and the bride," shouted Pelle
merrily. He felt in the deuce of a good humor.
Everybody to-day was treading the road along which Pelle's own young
blood had called him - every young fellow with a little pluck, every
good-looking wench. Not for a moment was the road free of traffic;
it was like a vast exodus, an army of people escaping from places
where everyone had the feeling that he was condemned to live and die
on the very spot where he was born; an army of people who had chosen
the excitement of the unknown. Those little brick houses which lay
scattered over the green, or stood drawn up in two straight rows
where the high-road ran into the town - those were the cottages of
the peasant folk who had renounced the outdoor life, and dressed
themselves in townified clothes, and had then adventured hither;
and down on the sea-front the houses stood all squeezed and heaped
together round the church, so close that there looked to be no room
between them; there were the crowds who had gone wandering, driven
far afield by the longing in their hearts - and then the sea had set
a limit to their journey.
Pelle had no intention of allowing anything whatever to set a
limit to his journeying. Perhaps, if he had no luck in the town,
he would go to sea. And then one day he would come to some coast
that interested him, and he would land, and go to the gold-diggings.
Over there the girls went mother-naked, with nothing but some blue
tattoo-work to hide their shame; but Pelle had his girl sitting at
home, true to him, waiting for his return. She was more beautiful
even than Bodil and yellow-haired Marie put together, and whole
crowds followed her footsteps, but she sat at home and was faithful,
and she would sing the old love-song:
"I had a lad, but he went away
All over the false, false sea,
Three years they are gone, and now to-day
He writes no more to me!"
And while she sang the letter came to the door. But out of every
letter that his father Lasse received fell ten-kroner banknotes,
and one day a letter came with steamer-tickets for the two of them.
The song would not serve him any further, for in the song they
perished during the voyage, and the poor young man spent the rest
of his days on the sea-shore, gazing, through the shadow of insanity,
upon every rising sail. She and Lasse arrived safely - after all sorts
of difficulties, that went without saying - and Pelle stood on the
shore and welcomed them. He had dressed himself up like a savage,
and he carried on as though he meant to eat them before he made
himself known.
_Houp la!_ Pelle jumped to his feet. Up the road there was
a rattling and a clanking as though a thousand scythes were clashing
together: an old cart with loose plank sides came slowly jolting
along, drawn by the two most miserable moorland horses he had ever
seen. On the driver's seat was an old peasant, who was bobbing about
as though he would every moment fall in pieces, like all the rest
of his equipment. Pelle did not at first feel sure whether it was
the cart itself or the two bags of bones between the shafts that
made such a frightful din whenever they moved, but as the vehicle
at last drew level with him, and the old peasant drew up, he could
not resist the invitation to get up and have a lift. His shoulders
were still aching from carrying his sack.
"So you are going to town, after all?" said old Klaus, pointing
to his goods and chattels.
To town, yes indeed! Something seemed to grip hold of Pelle's
bursting heart, and before he was aware of it he had delivered
himself and his whole future into the old peasant's hands.
"Yes, yes - yes indeed - why, naturally!" said Klaus, nodding as Pelle
came forward. "Yes, of course! A man can't do less. And what's your
idea about what you are going to be in the long run - councillor or
king?" He looked up slowly. "Yes, goin' to town; well, well, they
all, take the road they feel something calling them to take....
Directly a young greyhound feels the marrow in his bones, or has got
a shilling in his pocket, he's got to go to town and leave it there.
And what do you think conies back out the town? Just manure and
nothing else! What else have I ever in my life been able to pick up
there? And now I'm sixty-five. But what's the good of talking? No
more than if a man was to stick his tail out and blow against a gale.
It comes over them just like the May-gripes takes the young calves -
heigh-ho! and away they go, goin' to do something big. Afterward,
then old Klaus Hermann can come and clean up after them! They've no
situation there, and no kinsfolk what could put them up - but they
always expect something big. Why, down in the town there are beds
made up in the streets, and the gutters are running over with food
and money! But what do you mean to do? Let's hear it now."
Pelle turned crimson. He had not yet succeeded in making a beginning,
and already he had been caught behaving like a blockhead.
"Well, well, well," said Klaus, in a good-humored tone, "you are no
bigger fool than all the rest. But if you'll take my advice, you'll
go to shoemaker Jeppe Kofod as apprentice; I am going straight to
his place to fetch manure, and I know he's looking for an apprentice.
Then you needn't go floundering about uncertain-like, and you can
drive right up to the door like the quality."
Pelle winced all over. Never in his life had it entered his head
that he could ever become a shoemaker. Even back there on the land,
where people looked up to the handicrafts, they used always to say,
if a boy had not turned out quite right: "Well, we can always make
a cobbler or a tailor of him!" But Pelle was no cripple, that he
must lead a sedentary life indoors in order to get on at all; he was
strong and well-made. What he would be - well, that certainly lay in
the hands of fortune; but he felt very strongly that it ought to be
something active, something that needed courage and energy. And in
any case he was quite sure as to what he did not want to be. But as
they jolted through the town, and Pelle - so as to be beforehand with
the great world - kept on taking off his cap to everybody, although
no one returned his greeting, his spirits began to sink, and a sense
of his own insignificance possessed him. The miserable cart, at
which all the little town boys laughed and pointed with their
fingers, had a great deal to do with this feeling.
"Take off your cap to a pack like that!" grumbled Klaus; "why,
only look how puffed up they behave, and yet everything they've got
they've stolen from us others. Or what do you suppose - can you see
if they've got their summer seeds in the earth yet?" And he glared
contemptuously down the street.
No, there was nothing growing on the stone pavements, and all these
little houses, which stood so close that now and then they seemed
to Pelle as if they must be squeezed out of the row - these gradually
took his breath away. Here were thousands and thousands of people,
if that made any difference; and all his blind confidence wavered
at the question: where did all their food come from? For here he was
once more at home in his needy, familiar world, where no amount of
smoke will enable one to buy a pair of socks. All at once he felt
thoroughly humble, and he decided that it would be all he could
do here to hold his own, and find his daily bread among all these
stones, for here people did not raise it naturally from the soil,
but got it - well, how _did_ they get it?
The streets were full of servants. The girls stood about in groups,
their arms round one another's waists, staring with burning eyes
at the cotton-stuffs displayed in the shops; they rocked themselves
gently to and fro as though they were dreaming. A 'prentice boy of
about Pelle's age, with a red, spotty face, was walking down the
middle of the street, eating a great wheaten roll which he held
with both hands; his ears were full of scabs and his hands swollen
with the cold. Farm laborers went by, carrying red bundles in their
hands, their overcoats flapping against their calves; they would
stop suddenly at a turning, look cautiously round, and then hurry
down a side street. In front of the shops the salesmen were walking
up and down, bareheaded, and if any one stopped in front of their
windows they would beg them, in the politest manner, to step nearer,
and would secretly wink at one another across the street.
"The shopkeepers have arranged their things very neatly to-day,"
said Pelle.
Klaus nodded. "Yes, yes; to-day they've brought out everything they
couldn't get rid of sooner. To-day the block-heads have come to
market - the easy purses. Those" - and he pointed to a side street,
"those are the publicans. They are looking this way so longingly,
but the procession don't come as far as them. But you wait till
this evening, and then take a turn along here, and ask the different
people how much they've got left of their year's wages. Yes, the
town's a fine place - the very deuce of a fine place!" And he spat
disgustedly.
Pelle had quite lost all his blind courage. He saw not a single
person doing anything by which he himself might earn his bread. And
gladly as he would have belonged to this new world, yet he could not
venture into anything where, perhaps without knowing it, he would be
an associate of people who would tear the rags off his old comrades'
backs. All the courage had gone out of him, and with a miserable
feeling that even his only riches, his hands, were here useless,
he sat irresolute, and allowed himself to be driven, rattling and
jangling, to Master Jeppe Kofod's workshop.
II
The workshop stood over an entry which opened off the street. People
came and went along this entry: Madame Rasmussen and old Captain
Elleby; the old maid-servant of a Comptroller, an aged pensioner
who wore a white cap, drew her money from the Court, and expended
it here, and a feeble, gouty old sailor who had bidden the sea
farewell. Out in the street, on the sharp-edged cobble-stones, the
sparrows were clamoring loudly, lying there with puffed-out feathers,
feasting among the horse-droppings, tugging at them and scattering
them about to the accompaniment of a storm of chirping and
scolding.
Everything overlooking the yard stood open. In the workshop all four
windows were opened wide, and the green light sifted into the room
and fell on the faces of those present. But that was no help. Not a
breath of wind was blowing; moreover, Pelle's heat came from within.
He was sweating with sheer anxiety.
For the rest, he pulled industriously at his cobbler's wax, unless,
indeed, something outside captured his harassed mind, so that it
wandered out into the sunshine.
Everything out there was splashed with vivid sunlight; seen from the
stuffy workshop the light was like a golden river, streaming down
between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction,
down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air,
followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats,
and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied,
gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though
there was something there which attracted them all - doubtless an
accident, or perhaps a festival.
"Are you asleep, booby?" asked the journeyman sharply. Pelle shrank
into his shell and continued to work at the wax; he kneaded away at
it, holding it in hot water.
Inside the court, at the baker's - the baker was the old master's
brother - they were hoisting sacks of meal. The windlass squeaked
horribly, and in between the squeaking one could hear Master Jorgen
Kofod, in a high falsetto, disputing with his son. "You're a noodle,
a pitiful simpleton - whatever will become of you? Do you think we've
nothing more to do than to go running out to prayer-meetings on a
working day? Perhaps that will get us our daily bread? Now you just
stay here, or, God's mercy, I'll break every bone in your body!"
Then the wife chimed in, and then of a sudden all was silent. And
after a while the son stole like a phantom along the wall of the
opposite house, a hymn-book in his hand. He was not unlike Howling
Peter. He squeezed himself against the wall, and his knees gave
under him if any one looked sharply at him. He was twenty-five years
old, and he took beatings from his father without a murmur. But when
matters of religion were in question he defied public opinion, the
stick, and his father's anger.
"Are you asleep, booby? I shall really have to come over and teach
you to hurry!"
For a time no one spoke in the workshop - the journeyman was silent,
so the others had to hold their tongues. Each bent over his work,
and Pelle pulled the pitch out to as great a length as possible,
kneaded some grease into it, and pulled again. Outside, in the
sunshine, some street urchins were playing, running to and fro. When
they saw Pelle, they held their clenched fist under their noses,
nodded to him in a provocative manner, and sang -
"The cobbler has a pitchy nose,
The more he wipes it the blacker it grows!"
Pelle pretended not to see them, but he secretly ticked them all
off in his mind. It was his sincere intention to wipe them all off
the face of the earth.
Suddenly they all ran into the street, where a tremendous,
monotonous voice lifted itself and flowed abroad. This was the crazy
watchmaker; he was standing on his high steps, crying damnation on
the world at large.
Pelle knew perfectly well that the man was crazy, and in the words
which he so ponderously hurled at the town there was not the
slightest meaning. But they sounded wonderfully fine notwithstanding,
and the "ordeal by wax" was hanging over him like a sort of last
judgment. Involuntarily, he began to turn cold at the sound of this
warning voice, which uttered such solemn words and had so little
meaning, just as he did at the strong language in the Bible. It was
just the voice that frightened him; it was such a terrible voice,
such a voice as one might hear speaking out of the clouds; the sort
of voice, in short, that made the knees of Moses and Paul give under
them; a portentous voice, such as Pelle himself used to hear coming
out of the darkness at Stone Farm when a quarrel was going on.
Only the knee-strap of little Nikas, the journeyman, kept him from
jumping up then and there and throwing himself down like Paul. This
knee-strap was a piece of undeniable reality in the midst of all his
imaginings; in two months it had taught him never quite to forget
who and where he was. He pulled himself together, and satisfied
himself that all his miseries arose from his labors over this
wretched cobbler's wax; besides, there was such a temptation to
compare his puddle of cobbler's wax with the hell in which he was
told he would be tormented. But then he heard the cheerful voice
of the young shoemaker in the yard outside, and the whole trouble
disappeared. The "ordeal by wax" could not really be so terrible,
since all the others had undergone it - he had certainly seen tougher
fellows than these in his lifetime!
Jens sat down and ducked his head, as though he was expecting a box
on the ears; - that was the curse of the house which continually
hung over him. He was so slow at his work that already Pelle could
overtake him; there was something inside him that seemed to hamper
his movements like a sort of spell. But Peter and Emil were smart
fellows - only they were always wanting to thrash him.
Among the apple trees in the yard it was early summer, and close
under the workshop windows the pig stood smacking at his food. This
sound was like a warm breeze that blew over Pelle's heart. Since the
day when Klaus Hermann had shaken the squeaking little porker out
of his sack, Pelle had begun to take root. It had squealed at first
in a most desolate manner, and something of Pelle's own feeling of
loneliness was taken away from him by its cries. Now it complained
simply because it was badly fed, and it made Pelle quite furious to
see the nasty trash that was thrown to it - a young pig must eat well,
that is half the battle. They ought not to go running out every few
minute to throw something or other to the pig; when once the heat
really set in it would get acidity of the stomach. But there was no
sense in these town folk.
"Are you really asleep, booby? Why, you are snoring, deuce take me!"
The young master came limping in, took a drink, and buried himself
in his book. As he read he whistled softly in time with the hammer-
strokes of the others. Little Nikas began to whistle too, and the
two older apprentices who were beating leather began to strike in
time with the whistling, and they even kept double time, so that
everything went like greased lightning. The journeyman's trills and
quavers became more and more extraordinary, in order to catch up
with the blows - the blows and the whistling seemed to be chasing one
another - and Master Andres raised his head from his book to listen.
He sat there staring into the far distance, as though the shadowy
pictures evoked by his reading were hovering before his eyes. Then,
with a start, he was present and among them all, his eyes running
over them with a waggish expression; and then he stood up, placing
his stick so that it supported his diseased hip. The master's hands
danced loosely in the air, his head and his whole figure jerking
crazily under the compulsion of the rhythm.
_Swoop!_ - and the dancing hands fell upon the cutting-out
knife, and the master fingered the notes on the sharp edge, his head
on one side and his eyes closed - his whole appearance that of one
absorbed in intent inward listening. But then suddenly his face
beamed with felicity, his whole figure contracted in a frenzy of
delight, one foot clutched at the air as though bewitched, as though
he were playing a harp with his toes - Master Andres was all at once
a musical idiot and a musical clown. And _smack!_ the knife
flew to the ground and he had the great tin cover in his hand -
_chin-da-da-da chin-da-da-da!_ Suddenly by a stroke of magic
the flute had turned into a drum and cymbals!
Pelle was doubled up with laughter: then he looked in alarm at the
knee-strap and again burst out laughing; but no one took any notice
of him. The master's fingers and wrist were dancing a sort of
devil's dance on the tin cover, and all of a sudden his elbows too
were called into requisition, so that the cover banged against the
master's left knee, bounced off again and quick as lightning struck
against his wooden heel, which stuck out behind him; then against
Pelle's head, and round about it went, striking the most improbable
objects, _dum, dum, dum_, as though in wild, demoniacal
obedience to the flute-like tones of the journeyman. There was no
holding back. Emil, the oldest apprentice, began boldly to whistle
too, cautiously at first, and then, as no one smacked his head,
more forcefully. Then the next apprentice, Jens - the music-devil,
as he was called, because anything would produce a note between his
fingers - plucked so cleverly at his waxed-end that it straightway
began to give out a buzzing undertone, rising and falling through
two or three notes, as though an educated bumble-bee had been
leading the whole orchestra. Out of doors the birds came hopping on
to the apple-boughs; they twisted their heads inquisitively to one
side, frantically fluffed out their feathers, and then they too
joined in this orgy of jubilation, which was caused merely by a
scrap of bright blue sky. But then the young master had an attack
of coughing, and the whole business came to an end.
Pelle worked away at his cobbler's wax, kneading the pitch and
mixing grease with it. When the black lump was on the point of
stiffening, he had to plunge both hands into hot water, so that he
got hangnails. Old Jeppe came tripping in from the yard, and Master
Andres quickly laid the cutting-board over his book and diligently
stropped his knife.
"That's right!" said Jeppe; "warm the wax, then it binds all
the better."
Pelle had rolled the wax into balls, and had put them in the
soaking-tub, and now stood silent; for he had not the courage
of his own accord to say, "I am ready." The others had magnified
the "ordeal by wax" into something positively terrible; all sorts
of terrors lurked in the mystery that was now awaiting him; and if
he himself had not known that he was a smart fellow - why - yes, he
would have left them all in the lurch. But now he meant to submit to
it, however bad it might be; he only wanted time to swallow first.
Then at last he would have succeeded in shaking off the peasant, and
the handicraft would be open to him, with its song and its wandering
life and its smart journeyman's clothes. The workshop here was no
better than a stuffy hole where one sat and slaved over smelly
greasy boots, but he saw that one must go through with it in order
to reach the great world, where journeymen wore patent-leather shoes
on workdays and made footwear fit for kings. The little town had
given Pelle a preliminary foreboding that the world was almost
incredibly great, and this foreboding filled him with impatience.
He meant to conquer it all!
"Now I am ready!" he said resolutely; now he would decide whether
he and the handicraft were made for one another.
"Then you can pull a waxed end - but make it as long as a bad year!"
said the journeyman.
The old master was all on fire at the idea. He went over and watched
Pelle closely, his tongue hanging out of his mouth; he felt quite
young again, and began to descant upon his own apprenticeship in
Copenhagen, sixty years ago. Those were times! The apprentices
didn't lie in bed and snore in those days till six o'clock in the
morning, and throw down their work on the very stroke of eight,
simply to go out and run about. No; up they got at four, and stuck
at it as long as there was work to do. Then fellows _could_
work - and then they still learned something; they were told things
just once, and then - the knee-strap! Then, too, the manual crafts
still enjoyed some reputation; even the kings had to learn a
handicraft. It was very different to the present, with its bungling
and cheap retailing and pinching and paring everywhere.
The apprentices winked at one another. Master Andres and the
journeyman were silent. You might as well quarrel with the
sewing-machine because it purred. Jeppe was allowed to spin his
yarn alone.
"Are you waxing it well?" said little Nikas. "It's for pigskin."
The others laughed, but Pelle rubbed the thread with a feeling as
though he were building his own scaffold.
"Now I am ready!" he said, in a low voice.
The largest pair of men's lasts was taken down from the shelf, and
these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down
to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood
there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend
over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice,
laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now,
with the exception of the young master; he took no part in this
diversion.
"Pull, then!" ordered the journeyman, who was directing the solemn
business. "Pull them along till they're right under your feet!"
Pelle pulled, and the heavy lasts joggled over the pavement, but he
paused with a sigh; the waxed-end was slipping over his warm neck.
He stood there stamping, like an animal which stamps its feet on the
ground, without knowing why; he lifted them cautiously and looked at
them in torment.
"Pull, pull!" ordered Jeppe. "You must keep the thing moving or it
sticks!" But it was too late; the wax had hardened in the hairs of
his nape - Father Lasse used to call them his "luck curls," and
prophesied a great future for him on their account - and there he
stood, and could not remove the waxed-end, however hard he tried.
He made droll grimaces, the pain was so bad, and the saliva ran
out of his mouth.
"Huh! He can't even manage a pair of lasts!" said Jeppe jeeringly.
"He'd better go back to the land again and wash down the cows'
behinds!"
Then Pelle, boiling with rage, gave a jerk, closing his eyes and
writhing as he loosed himself. Something sticky and slippery slipped
through his fingers with the waxed-end; it was bloody hair, and
across his neck the thread had bitten its way in a gutter of lymph
and molten wax. But Pelle no longer felt the pain, his head was
boiling so, and he felt a vague but tremendous longing to pick up
a hammer and strike them all to the ground, and then to run through
the street, banging at the skulls of all he met. But then the
journeyman took the lasts off him, and the pain came back to him,
and his whole miserable plight. He heard Jeppe's squeaky voice,
and looked at the young master, who sat there submissively, without
having the courage to express his opinion, and all at once he felt
terribly sorry for himself.
"That was right," buzzed old Jeppe, "a shoemaker mustn't be afraid
to wax his hide a little. What? I believe it has actually brought
the water to his eyes! No, when I was apprentice we had a real
ordeal; we had to pass the waxed-end twice round our necks before we
were allowed to pull. Our heads used to hang by a thread and dangle
when we were done. Yes, those were times!"
Pelle stood there shuffling, in order to fight down his tears; but
he had to snigger with mischievous delight at the idea of Jeppe's
dangling head.
"Then we must see whether he can stand a buzzing head," said the
journeyman, getting ready to strike him.
"No, you can wait until he deserves it," said Master Andres hastily.
"You will soon find an occasion."
"Well, he's done with the wax," said Jeppe, "but the question is,
can he sit? Because there are some who never learn the art of
sitting."
"That must be tested, too, before we can declare him to be useful,"
said little Nikas, in deadly earnest.
"Are you done with your tomfoolery now?" said Master Andres angrily,
and he went his way.
But Jeppe was altogether in his element; his head was full of the
memories of his boyhood, a whole train of devilish tricks, which
completed the ordination. "Then we used to brand them indelibly
with their special branch, and they never took to their heels, but
they considered it a great honor as long as they drew breath. But
now these are weakly times and full of pretences; the one can't
do this and the other can't do that; and there's leather colic and
sore behinds and God knows what. Every other day they come with
certificates that they're suffering from boils from sitting down,
and then you can begin all over again. No, in my time we behaved
very different - the booby got held naked over a three-legged stool
and a couple of men used to go at him with knee-straps! That was
leather on leather, and like that they learned, damn and blast it
all! how to put up with sitting on a stool!"
The journeyman made a sign.
"Now, is the seat of the stool ready consecrated, and prayed over?
Yes, then you can go over there and sit down."
Pelle went stupidly across the room and sat down - it was all the
same to him. But he leaped into the air with a yell of pain, looked
malevolently about him, and in a moment he had a hammer in his hand.
But he dropped it again, and now he cried - wept buckets of tears.
"What the devil are you doing to him now?"
The young master came out of the cutting-out room. "What dirty
tricks are you hatching now?" He ran his hand over the seat of the
stool; it was studded with broken awl-points. "You are barbarous
devils; any one would think he was among a lot of savages!"
"What a weakling!" sneered Jeppe. "In these days a man can't take
a boy as apprentice and inoculate him a bit against boils! One ought
to anoint the boobies back and front with honey, perhaps, like the
kings of Israel? But you are a freethinker!"
"You get out of this, father!" shouted Master Andres, quite beside
himself. "You get out of this, father!" He trembled, and his face
was quite gray. And then he pushed the old man out of the room
before he had struck Pelle on the shoulder and received him properly
into the handicraft.
Pelle sat there and reflected. He was altogether disillusioned. All
the covert allusions had evoked something terrifying, but at the
same time impressive. In his imagination the ordeal had grown into
something that constituted the great barrier of his life, so that
one passed over to the other side as quite a different being; it
was something after the fashion of the mysterious circumcision in
the Bible, a consecration to new things. And now the whole thing
was just a spitefully devised torture!
The young master threw him a pair of children's shoes, which had to
be soled. So he was admitted to that department, and need no longer
submit to preparing waxed-ends for the others! But the fact did
not give him any pleasure. He sat there struggling with something
irrational that seemed to keep on rising deep within him; when no
one was looking he licked his fingers and drew them over his neck.
He seemed to himself like a half-stupefied cat which had freed
itself from the snare and sat there drying its fur.
Out of doors, under the apple-trees, the sunlight lay green and
golden, and a long way off, in the skipper's garden, three brightly
dressed girls were walking and playing; they seemed to Pelle like
beings out of another world. "Fortune's children on the sunbright
shore," as the song had it. From time to time a rat made its
appearance behind the pigsty, and went clattering over the great
heap of broken glass that lay there. The pig stood there gobbling
down its spoiled potatoes with that despairing noise that put an end
to all Pelle's proud dreams of the future, while it filled him with
longing - oh, such a mad longing!
And everything that possibly could do so made its assault upon him
at this moment when he was feeling particularly victorious; the
miseries of his probation here in the workshop, the street urchins,
the apprentices, who would not accept him as one of themselves, and
all the sharp edges and corners which he was continually running
up against in this unfamiliar world. And then the smelly workshop
itself, where never a ray of sunlight entered. And no one here
seemed to respect anything.
When the master was not present, little Nikas would sometimes
indulge in tittle-tattle with the older apprentices. Remarks were
made at such times which opened new spheres of thought to Pelle, and
he had to ask questions; or they would talk of the country, which
Pelle knew better than all of them put together, and he would chime
in with some correction. _Smack!_ came a box on his ears that
would send him rolling into the corner; he was to hold his tongue
until he was spoken to. But Pelle, who was all eyes and ears, and
had been accustomed to discuss everything in heaven or earth with
Father Lasse, could not learn to hold his tongue.
Each exacted with a strong hand his quantum of respect, from
the apprentices to the old master, who was nearly bursting with
professional pride in his handicraft; only Pelle had no claim to any
respect whatever, but must pay tribute to all. The young master was
the only one who did not press like a yoke on the youngster's neck.
Easygoing as he was, he would disregard the journeyman and the rest,
and at times he would plump himself down beside Pelle, who sat there
feeling dreadfully small.
Outside, when the sun was shining through the trees in a particular
way, and a peculiar note came into the twittering of the birds,
Pelle knew it was about the time when the cows began to get on their
feet after their midday chewing of the cud. And then a youngster
would come out from among the little fir-trees, lustily cracking his
whip; he was the general of the whole lot - Pelle, the youngster - who
had no one set over him. And the figure that came stumbling across
the arable yonder, in order to drive the cows home - why, that was
Lasse!
Father Lasse!
He did not know why, but it wrung a sob from him; it took him so
unawares. "Hold your row!" cried the journeyman threateningly. Pelle
was greatly concerned; he had not once made the attempt to go over
and see Lasse.
The young master came to get something off the shelf above his head,
and leaned confidentially on Pelle's shoulder, his weak leg hanging
free and dangling. He stood there loitering for a time, staring at
the sky outside, and this warm hand on Pelle's shoulder quieted him.
But there could be no talk of enjoyment when he thought where
good Father Lasse was. He had not seen his father since that sunny
morning when he himself had gone away and left the old man to his
loneliness. He had not heard of him; he had scarcely given a thought
to him. He had to get through the day with a whole skin, and to
adapt himself to the new life; a whole new world was before him,
in which he had to find his feet. Pelle had simply had no time;
the town had swallowed him.
But at this moment his conduct confronted him as the worst example
of unfaithfulness the world had ever known. And his neck continued
to hurt him - he must go somewhere or other where no one would look
at him. He made a pretence of having to do something in the yard
outside; he went behind the washhouse, and he crouched down by the
woodpile beside the well.