Chapter 25

“It’s a good thing you came,” said Pelle, as they drove up to the church, and found themselves among so many people. Lasse had almost had to give up thought of coming, for the man who was going to look after the animals while he was away had to go off at the last moment for the veterinary surgeon; but Karna came and offered to water and give the midday feed, although neither could truthfully say that they had behaved as they ought to have done to her.

“Have you got that thing now?” whispered Lasse, when they were inside the church. Pelle felt in his pocket and nodded; the little round piece of lignum-vitae that was to carry him over the difficulties of the day lay there. “Then just answer loud and straight out,” whispered Lasse, as he slipped into a pew in the background.

Pelle did answer straight out, and to Lasse his voice sounded really well through the spacious church. And the parson did absolutely nothing to revenge himself, but treated Pelle exactly as he did the others. At the most solemn part of the ceremony, Lasse thought of Karna, and how touching her devotion was. He scolded himself in an undertone, and made a solemn vow. She should not sigh any longer in vain.

For a whole month indeed, Lasse’s thoughts had been occupied with Karna, now favorably, now unfavorably; but at this solemn moment when Pelle was just taking the great step into the future, and Lasse’s feelings were touched in so many ways, the thought of Karna’s devotion broke over him as something sad, like a song of slighted affection that at last, at last has justice done to it.

Lasse shook hands with Pelle. “Good luck and a blessing!” he said in a trembling voice. The wish also embraced his own vow and he had some difficulty in keeping silence respecting his determination, he was so moved. The words were heard on all sides, and Pelle went round and shook hands with his comrades. Then they drove home.

“It all went uncommonly well for you to-day,” said Lasse proudly; “and now you’re a man, you know.”

“Yes, now you must begin to look about for a sweetheart,” said Karl Johan. Pelle only laughed.

In the afternoon they had a holiday. Pelle had first to go up to his master and mistress to thank them for his clothes and receive their congratulations. Fru Kongstrup gave him red-currant wine and cake, and the farmer gave him a two-krone piece.

Then they went up to Kalle’s by the quarry. Pelle was to exhibit himself in his new clothes, and say good-bye to them; there was only a fortnight to May Day. Lasse was going to take the opportunity of secretly obtaining information concerning a house that was for sale on the heath.

XXIV

They still talked about it every day for the short time that was left. Lasse, who had always had the thought of leaving in his mind, and had only stayed on and on, year after year, because the boy’s welfare demanded it—was slow to move now that there was nothing to hold him back. He was unwilling to lose Pelle, and did all he could to keep him; but nothing would induce him to go out into the world again.

“Stay here!” he said persuasively, “and we’ll talk to the mistress and she’ll take you on for a proper wage. You’re both strong and handy, and she’s always looked upon you with a friendly eye.”

But Pelle would not take service with the farmer; it gave no position and no prospects. He wanted to be something great, but there was no possibility of that in the country; he would be following cows all his days. He would go to the town—perhaps still farther, across the sea to Copenhagen.

“You’d better come too,” he said, “and then we shall get rich all the quicker and be able to buy a big farm.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lasse, slowly nodding his head; “that’s one for me and two for yourself! But what the parson preaches doesn’t always come to pass. We might become penniless. Who knows what the future may bring?”

“Oh, I shall manage!” said Pelle, nodding confidently. “Do you mean to say I can’t turn my hand to anything I like?”

“And I didn’t give notice in time either,” said Lasse to excuse himself.

“Then run away!”

But Lasse would not do that. “No, I’ll stay and work toward getting something for myself about here,” he said, a little evasively. “It would be nice for you too, to have a home that you could visit now and then; and if you didn’t get on out there, it wouldn’t be bad to have something to fall back upon. You might fall ill, or something else might happen; the world’s not to be relied upon. You have to have a hard skin all over out there.”

Pelle did not answer. That about the home sounded nice enough, and he understood quite well that it was Karna’s person that weighed down the other end of the balance. Well, she’d put all his clothes in order for his going away, and she’d always been a good soul; he had nothing against that.

It would be hard to live apart from Father Lasse, but Pelle felt he must go. Away! The spring seemed to shout the word in his ears. He knew every rock in the landscape and every tree—yes, every twig on the trees as well; there was nothing more here that could fill his blue eyes and long ears, and satisfy his mind.

The day before May Day they packed Pelle’s things. Lasse knelt before the green chest; every article was carefully folded and remarked upon, before it was placed in the canvas bag that was to serve Pelle as a traveling-trunk.

“Now remember not to wear your stockings too long before you mend them!” said Lasse, putting mending wool on one side. “He who mends his things in time, is spared half the work and all the disgrace.”

“I shan’t forget that,” said Pelle quietly.

Lasse was holding a folded shirt in his hand. “The one you’ve got on’s just been washed,” he said reflectively. “But one can’t tell. Two shirts’ll almost be too little if you’re away, won’t they? You must take one of mine; I can always manage to get another by the time I want a change. And remember, you must never go longer than a fortnight! You who are young and healthy might easily get vermin, and be jeered at by the whole town; such a thing would never be tolerated in any one who wants to get on. At the worst you can do a little washing or yourself; you could go down to the shore in the evening, if that was all!”

“Do they wear wooden shoes in the town?” asked Pelle.

“Not people who want to get on! I think you’d better let me keep the wooden shoes and you take my boots instead; they always look nice even if they’re old. You’d better wear them when you go to-morrow, and save your good shoes.”

The new clothes were laid at the top of the bag, wrapped in an old blouse to keep them clean.

“Now I think we’ve got everything in,” said Lasse, with a searching glance into the green chest. There was not much left in it. “Very well, then we’ll tie it up in God’s name, and pray that, you may arrive safely—wherever you decide to go!” Lasse tied up the sack; he was anything but happy.

“You must say good-bye nicely to every one on the farm, so that they won’t have anything to scratch my eyes out for afterward,” said Lasse after a little. “And I should like you to thank Karna nicely for having put everything in such good order. It isn’t every one who’d have bothered.”

“Yes, I’ll do that,” said Pelle in a low voice. He did not seem to be able to speak out properly to-day.

Pelle was up and dressed at daybreak. Mist lay over the sea, and prophesied well for the day. He went about well scrubbed and combed, and looked at everything with wide-open eyes, and with his hands in his pockets. The blue clothes which he had gone to his confirmation- classes in, had been washed and newly mangled, and he still looked very well in them; and the tabs of the old leather boots, which were a relic of Lasse’s prosperous days, stuck out almost as much as his ears.

He had said his “Good-bye and thank-you for all your kindness!” to everybody on the farm—even Erik; and he had had a good meal of bacon. Now he was going about the stable, collecting himself, shaking the bull by the horns, and letting the calves suck his fingers; it was a sort of farewell too! The cows put their noses close up to him, and breathed a long, comfortable breath when he passed, and the bull playfully tossed its head at him. And close behind him went Lasse; he did not say very much but he always kept near the boy.

It was so good to be here, and the feeling sank gently over Pelle every time a cow licked herself, or the warm vapor rose from freshly- falling dung. Every sound was like a mother’s caress, and every thing was a familiar toy, with which a bright world could be built. Upon the posts all round there were pictures that he had cut upon them; Lasse had smeared them over with dirt again, in case the farmer should come and say that they were spoiling everything.

Pelle was not thinking, but went about in a dreamy state; it all sank so warmly and heavily into his child’s mind. He had taken out his knife, and took hold of the bull’s horn, as if he were going to carve something on it. “He won’t let you do that,” said Lasse, surprised. “Try one of the bullocks instead.”

But Pelle returned his knife to his pocket; he had not intended to do anything. He strolled along the foddering-passage without aim or object. Lasse came up and took his hand.

“You’d better stay here a little longer,” he said. “We’re so comfortable.”

But this put life into Pelle. He fixed his big, faithful eyes upon his father, and then went down to their room.

Lasse followed him. “In God’s name then, if it has to be!” he said huskily, and took hold of the sack to help Pelle get it onto his back.

Pelle held out his hand. “Good-bye and thank you, father—for all your kindness!” he added gently.

“Yes, yes; yes, yes!” said Lasse, shaking his head. It was all he was able to say.

He went out with Pelle past the out-houses, and there stopped, while Pelle went on along the dikes with his sack on his back, up toward the high-road. Two or three times he turned and nodded; Lasse, overcome, stood gazing, with his hand shading his eyes. He had never looked so old before.

Out in the fields they were driving the seed-harrow; Stone Farm was early with it this year. Kongstrup and his wife were strolling along arm-in-arm beside a ditch; every now and then they stopped and she pointed: they must have been talking about the crop. She leaned against him when they walked; she had really found rest in her affection now!

Now Lasse turned and went in. How forlorn he looked! Pelle felt a quick desire to throw down the sack and run back and say something nice to him; but before he could do so the impulse had disappeared upon the fresh morning breeze. His feet carried him on upon the straight way, away, away! Up on a ridge the bailiff was stepping out a field, and close behind him walked Erik, imitating him with foolish gestures.

On a level with the edge of the rocks, Pelle came to the wide high- road. Here, he knew, Stone Farm and its lands would be lost to sight, and he put down his sack. _There_ were the sand-banks by the sea, with every tree-top visible; _there_ was the fir-tree that the yellowhammer always built in; the stream ran milk-white after the heavy thaw, and the meadow was beginning to grow green. But the cairn was gone; good people had removed it secretly when Niels Köller was drowned and the girl was expected out of prison.

And the farm stood out clearly in the morning light, with its high white dwelling-house, the long range of barns, and all the out-houses. Every spot down there shone so familiarly toward him; the hardships he had suffered were forgotten, or only showed up the comforts in stronger relief.

Pelle’s childhood had been happy by virtue of everything; it had been a song mingled with weeping. Weeping falls into tones as well as joy, and heard from a distance it becomes a song. And as Pelle gazed down upon his childhood’s world, they were only pleasant memories that gleamed toward him through the bright air. Nothing else existed, or ever had done so.

He had seen enough of hardship and misfortune, but had come well out of everything; nothing had harmed him. With a child’s voracity he had found nourishment in it all; and now he stood here, healthy and strong—equipped with the Prophets, the Judges, the Apostles, the Ten Commandments and one hundred and twenty hymns! and turned an open, perspiring, victor’s brow toward the world.

Before him lay the land sloping richly toward the south, bounded by the sea. Far below stood two tall black chimneys against the sea as background, and still farther south lay the Town! Away from it ran the paths of the sea to Sweden and Copenhagen! This was the world— the great wide world itself!

Pelle became ravenously hungry at the sight of the great world, and the first thing he did was to sit down upon the ridge of the hill with a view both backward and forward, and eat all the food Karna had given him for the whole day. So his stomach would have nothing more to trouble about!

He rose refreshed, got the sack onto his back, and set off downward to conquer the world, pouring forth a song at the top of his voice into the bright air as he went:—

“A stranger I must wander Among the Englishmen; With African black negroes My lot it may be thrown. And then upon this earth there Are Portuguese found too, And every kind of nation Under heaven’s sky so blue.”

THE END

II. APPRENTICESHIP

I

On that windy May-day 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.