Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

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"Yes, you may grin!" said Lasse; "but I think it's sad!" Upon which
Maria had to go out into the kitchen to have her laugh out.

"That's what all the women do at the mere mention of his name," said
Kalle. "It's a sad change. To-day red, to-morrow dead. Well, she's
got her own way in one thing, and that is that she keeps him to
herself--in a way. But to think that he can live with her after
that!"

"They seem fonder of one another than they ever were before; he
can't do without her for a single minute. But of course he wouldn't
find any one else to love him now. What a queer sort of devilment
love is! But we must see about getting home."

"Well, I'll send you word when she's to be buried," said Kalle,
when they got outside the house.

"Yes, do! And if you should be in want of a ten-krone note for
the funeral, let me know. Good-bye, then!"

XXII

Grandmother's funeral was still like a bright light behind
everything that one thought and did. It was like certain kinds
of food, that leave a pleasant taste in the mouth long after they
have been eaten and done with. Kalle had certainly done everything
to make it a festive day; there was an abundance of good things to
eat and drink, and no end to his comical tricks. And, sly dog that
he was, he had found an excuse for asking Madam Olsen; it was really
a nice way of making the relation a legitimate one.

It gave Lasse and Pelle enough to talk about for a whole month,
and after the subject was quite talked out and laid on one side for
other things, it remained in the background as a sense of well-being
of which no one quite knew the origin.

But now spring was advancing, and with it came troubles--not the
daily trifles that could be bad enough, but great troubles that
darkened everything, even when one was not thinking about them.
Pelle was to be confirmed at Easter, and Lasse was at his wits' end
to know how he was going to get him all that he would need--new
clothes, new cap, new shoes! The boy often spoke about it; he must
have been afraid of being put to shame before the others that day
in church.

"It'll be all right," said Lasse; but he himself saw no way at all
out of the difficulty. At all the farms where the good old customs
prevailed, the master and mistress provided it all; out here
everything was so confoundedly new-fangled, with Prompt payments
that slipped away between one's fingers. A hundred krones a year
in wages seemed a tremendous amount when one thought of it all in
one; but you only got them gradually, a few ores at a time, without
your being able to put your finger anywhere and say: You got a good
round sum there! "Yes, yes, it'll be all right!" said Lasse aloud,
when he had got himself entangled in absurd speculations; and Pelle
had to be satisfied with this. There was only one way out of the
difficulty--to borrow the money from Madam Olsen; and that Lasse
would have to come to in the end, loth as he was to do it. But Pelle
must not know anything about it.

Lasse refrained as long as he possibly could, hoping that something
or other would turn up to free him from the necessity of so
disgraceful a proceeding as borrowing from his sweetheart. But
nothing happened, and time was passing. One morning he cut the matter
short; Pelle was just setting out for school. "Will you run in to
Madam Olsen's and give her this?" he said, handing the boy a packet.
"It's something she's promised to mend for us." Inside on the paper,
was the large cross that announced Lasse's coming in the evening.

From the hills Pelle saw that the ice had broken up in the night.
It had filled the bay for nearly a month with a rough, compact mass,
upon which you could play about as safely as on dry land. This was
a new side of the sea, and Pelle had carefully felt his way forward
with the tips of his wooden shoes, to the great amusement of the
others. Afterward he learned to walk about freely on the ice without
constantly shivering at the thought that the great fish of the sea
were going about just under his wooden shoes, and perhaps were only
waiting for him to drop through. Every day he went out to the high
rampart of pack-ice that formed the boundary about a mile out, where
the open water moved round in the sunshine like a green eye. He went
out because he would do what the others did, but he never felt safe
on the sea.

Now it was all broken up, and the bay was full of heaving ice-floes
that rubbed against one another with a crackling sound; and the
pieces farthest out, carrying bits of the rampart, were already on
their way out to sea. Pelle had performed many exploits out there,
but was really quite pleased that it was now packing up and taking
its departure, so that it would once more be no crime to stay on dry
land.

Old Fris was sitting in his place. He never left it now during a
lesson, however badly things might go down in the class, but contented
himself with beating on the desk with his cane. He was little more
than a shadow of his former self, his head was always shaking, and
his hands were often incapable of grasping an object. He still brought
the newspaper with him, and opened it out at the beginning of the
lesson, but he did not read. He would fall into a dream, sitting bolt
upright, with his hands on the desk and his back against the wall.
At such times the children could be as noisy as they liked, and he
did not move; only a slight change in the expression of his eyes
showed that he was alive at all.

It was quieter in school now. It was not worth while teasing the
master, for he scarcely noticed it, and so the fun lost most of its
attraction. A kind of court of justice had gradually formed among the
bigger boys; they determined the order of the school-lessons, and
disobedience and disputes as to authority were respectively punished
and settled in the playground--with fists and tips of wooden shoes.
The instruction was given as before, by the cleverer scholars teaching
what they knew to the others; there was rather more arithmetic and
reading than in Fris's time, but on the other hand the hymns suffered.

It still sometimes happened that Fris woke up and interfered in the
instruction. "Hymns!" he would cry in his feeble voice, and strike
the desk from habit; and the children would put aside what they were
doing to please the old man, and begin repeating some hymn or other,
taking their revenge by going through one verse over and over again
for a whole hour. It was the only real trick they played the old man,
and the joke was all on their side, for Fris noticed nothing.

Fris had so often talked of resigning his post, but now he did not
even think of that. He shuffled to and from school at the regular
times, probably without even knowing he did it. The authorities
really had not the heart to dismiss him. Except in the hymns, which
came off with rather short measure, there was nothing to say against
him as teacher; for no one had ever yet left his school without being
able both to write his name and to read a printed book--if it were in
the old type. The new-fashioned printing with Latin letters Fris did
not teach, although he had studied Latin in his youth.

Fris himself probably did not feel the change, for he had ceased to
feel both for himself and for others. None now brought their human
sorrows to him, and found comfort in a sympathetic mind; his mind
was not there to consult. It floated outside him, half detached, as
it were, like a bird that is unwilling to leave its old nest to set
out on a flight to the unknown. It must have been the fluttering mind
that his eyes were always following when they dully gazed about into
vacancy. But the young men who came home to winter in the village,
and went to Fris as to an old friend, felt the change. For them there
was now an empty place at home; they missed the old growler, who,
though he hated them all in the lump at school, loved them all
afterward, and was always ready with his ridiculous "He was my best
boy!" about each and all of them, good and bad alike.

The children took their playtime early, and rushed out before Pelle
had given the signal; and Fris trotted off as usual into the village,
where he would be absent the customary two hours. The girls gathered
in a flock to eat their dinners, and the boys dashed about the
playground like birds let loose from a cage.

Pelle was quite angry at the insubordination, and pondered over a
way of making himself respected; for to-day he had had the other big
boys against him. He dashed over the playground like a circling gull,
his body inclined and his arms stretched out like a pair of wings.
Most of them made room for him, and those who did not move willingly
were made to do so. His position was threatened, and he kept moving
incessantly, as if to keep the question undecided until a possibility
of striking presented itself.

This went on for some time; he knocked some over and hit out at
others in his flight, while his offended sense of power grew. He
wanted to make enemies of them all. They began to gather up by the
gymnastic apparatus, and suddenly he had the whole pack upon him. He
tried to rise and shake them off, flinging them hither and thither,
but all in vain; down through the heap came their remorseless
knuckles and made him grin with pain. He worked away indefatigably
but without effect until he lost patience and resorted to less
scrupulous tactics--thrusting his fingers into eyes, or attacking
noses, windpipes, and any vulnerable part he could get at. That
thinned them out, and he was able to rise and fling a last little
fellow across the playground.

Pelle was well bruised and quite out of breath, but contented. They
all stood by, gaping, and let him brush himself down; he was the
victor. He went across to the girls with his torn blouse, and they
put it together with pins and gave him sweets; and in return he
fastened two of them together by their plaits, and they screamed
and let him pull them about without being cross; it was all just
as it should be.

But he was not quite secure after his victory. He could not, like
Henry Boker in his time, walk right through the whole flock with
his hands in his pockets directly after a battle, and look as if
they did not exist. He had to keep stealing glances at them while he
strolled down to the beach, and tried with all his might to control
his breathing; for next to crying, to be out of breath was the
greatest disgrace that could happen to you.

Pelle walked along the beach, regretting that he had not leaped upon
them again at once while the flush of victory was still upon him: it
was too late now. If he had, it might perhaps have been said of him
too that he could lick all the rest of the class together; and now
he must be content with being the strongest boy in the school.

A wild war-whoop from the school made him start. The whole swarm of
boys was coming round the end of the house with sticks and pieces
of wood in their hands. Pelle knew what was at stake if he gave way,
and therefore forced himself to stand quietly waiting although his
legs twitched. But suddenly they made a wild rush at him, and with a
spring he turned to fly. There lay the sea barring his way, closely
packed with heaving ice. He ran out on to an ice-floe, leaped from
it to the next, which was not large enough to bear him--had to go on.

The idea of flight possessed him and made the fear of what lay
behind overpoweringly great. The lumps of ice gave way beneath him,
and he had to leap from piece to piece; his feet moved as fast as
fingers over the notes of a piano. He just noticed enough to take
the direction toward the harbor breakwater. The others stood gaping
on the beach while Pelle danced upon the water like a stone making
ducks and drakes. The pieces of ice bobbed under as soon as he
touched them, or turned up on edge; but Pelle came and slid by with
a touch, flung himself to one side with lightning rapidity, and
changed his aim in the middle of a leap like a cat. It was like
a dance on red-hot iron, so quickly did he pick up his feet, and
spring from one place to another. The water spurted up from the
pieces of ice as he touched them, and behind him stretched a crooked
track of disturbed ice and water right back to the place where the
boys stood and held their breath. There was nobody like Pelle, not
one of them could do what he had done there! When with a final leap
he threw himself upon the breakwater, they cheered him. Pelle had
triumphed in his flight!

He lay upon the breakwater, exhausted and gasping for breath,
and gazed without interest at a brig that had cast anchor off the
village. A boat was rowing in--perhaps with a sick man to be put in
quarantine. The weather-beaten look of the vessel told of her having
been out on a winter voyage, in ice and heavy seas.

Fishermen came down from the cottages and strolled out to the place
where the boat would come in, and all the school-children followed.
In the stern of the boat sat an elderly, weather-beaten man with a
fringe of beard round his face; he was dressed in blue, and in front
of him stood a sea-chest. "Why, it's Boatswain Olsen!" Pelle heard
one fisherman say. Then the man stepped ashore, and shook hands with
them all; and the fisherman and the school-children closed round him
in a dense circle.

Pelle made his way up, creeping along behind boats and sheds; and
as soon as he was hidden by the school-building, he set off running
straight across the fields to Stone Farm. His vexation burnt his
throat, and a feeling of shame made him keep far away from houses
and people. The parcel that he had had no opportunity of delivering
in the morning was like a clear proof to everybody of his shame, and
he threw it into a marl-pit as he ran.

He would not go through the farm, but thundered on the outside
door to the stable. "Have you come home already?" exclaimed Lasse,
pleased.

"Now--now Madam Olsen's husband's come home!" panted Pelle, and went
past his father without looking at him.

To Lasse it was as if the world had burst and the falling fragments
were piercing into his flesh. Everything was failing him. He moved
about trembling and unable to grasp anything; he could not talk,
everything in him seemed to have come to a standstill. He had picked
up a piece of rope, and was going backward and forward, backward and
forward, looking up.

Then Pelle went up to him. "What are you going to do with that?"
he asked harshly.

Lasse let the rope fall from his hand and began to complain of the
sadness and poverty of existence. One feather fell off here, and
another there, until at last you stood trampling in the mud like
a featherless bird--old and worn-out and robbed of every hope of a
happy old age. He went on complaining in this way in an undertone,
and it eased him.

Pelle made no response. He only thought of the wrong and the shame
that had come upon them, and found no relief.

Next morning he took his dinner and went off as usual, but when
he was halfway to school he lay down under a thorn. There he lay,
fuming and half-frozen, until it was about the time when school
would be over, when he went home. This he did for several days.
Toward his father he was silent, almost angry. Lasse went about
lamenting, and Pelle had enough with his own trouble; each moved
in his own world, and there was no bridge between; neither of them
had a kind word to say to the other.

But one day when Pelle came stealing home in this way, Lasse
received him with a radiant face and weak knees. "What on earth's
the good of fretting?" he said, screwing up his face and turning
his blinking eyes upon Pelle--for the first time since the bad news
had come. "Look here at the new sweetheart I've found! Kiss her,
laddie!" And Lasse drew from the straw a bottle of gin, and held
it out toward him.

Pelle pushed it angrily from him.

"Oh, you're too grand, are you?" exclaimed Lasse. "Well, well, it
would be a sin and a shame to waste good things upon you." He put
the bottle to his lips and threw back his head.

"Father, you shan't do that!" exclaimed Pelle, bursting into tears
and shaking his father's arm so that the liquid splashed out.

"Ho-ho!" said Lasse in astonishment, wiping his mouth with the back
of his hand. "She's uncommonly lively, ho-ho!" He grasped the bottle
with both hands and held it firmly, as if it had tried to get away
from him. "So you're obstreperous, are you?" Then his eye fell upon
Pelle. "And you're crying! Has any one hurt you? Don't you know
that your father's called Lasse--Lasse Karlsson from Kungstorp? You
needn't he afraid, for Lasse's here, and he'll make the whole world
answer for it."

Pelle saw that his father was quickly becoming more fuddled, and
ought to be put to bed for fear some one should come and find him
lying there. "Come now, father!" he begged.

"Yes, I'll go now. I'll make him pay for it, if it's old Beelzebub
himself! You needn't cry!" Lasse was making for the yard.

Pelle stood in front of him. "Now you must come with me, father!
There's no one to make pay for anything."

"Isn't there? And yet you're crying! But the farmer shall answer
to me for all these years. Yes, my fine landed gentleman, with your
nose turned up at every one!"

This made Pelle afraid. "But father, father!" he cried. "Don't go up
there! He'll be in such a rage, he'll turn us out! Remember you're
drunk!"

"Yes, of course I'm drunk, but there's no harm in me." He stood
fumbling with the hook that fastened the lower half of the door.

It was wrong to lay a hand upon one's own father, but now Pelle
was compelled to set aside all such scruples. He took a firm hold
of the old man's collar. "Now you come with me!" he said, and drew
him along toward their room.

Lasse laughed and hiccupped and struggled; clutched hold of
everything that he could lay hands on--the posts and the animals'
tails--while Pelle dragged him along. He had hold of him behind,
and was half carrying him. In the doorway they stuck fast, as the
old man held on with both hands; and Pelle had to leave go of him
and knock his arms away so that he fell, and then drag him along
and on to the bed.

Lasse laughed foolishly all the time, as if it were a game. Once
or twice when Pelle's back was turned, he tried to get up; his eyes
had almost disappeared, but there was a cunning expression about
his mouth, and he was like a naughty child. Suddenly he fell back
in a heavy sleep.

The next day was a school holiday, so there was no need for Pelle
to hide himself. Lasse was ashamed and crept about with an air of
humility. He must have had quite a clear idea of what had happened
the day before, for suddenly he touched Pelle's arm. "You're like
Noah's good son, that covered up his father's shame!" he said;
"but Lasse's a beast. It's been a hard blow on me, as you may well
believe! But I know quite well that it doesn't mend matters to drink
one's self silly. It's a badly buried trouble that one has to lay
with gin; and what's hidden in the snow comes up in the thaw, as
the saying is."

Pelle made no answer.

"How do people take it?" asked Lasse cautiously. He had now got so
far as to have a thought for the shameful side of the matter.
"I don't think they know about it yet here on the farm; but what
do they say outside?"

"How should I know?" answered Pelle sulkily.

"Then you've heard nothing?"

"Do you suppose I'll go to school to be jeered at by them all?"
Pelle was almost crying again.

"Then you've been wandering about and let your father believe that
you'd gone to school? That wasn't right of you, but I won't find
fault with you, considering all the disgrace I've brought upon you.
But suppose you get into trouble for playing truant, even if you
don't deserve it? Misfortunes go hand in hand, and evils multiply
like lice in a fur coat. We must think what we're about, we two;
we mustn't let things go all to pieces!"

Lasse walked quickly into their room and returned with the bottle,
took out the cork, and let the gin run slowly out into the gutter.
Pelle looked wonderingly at him. "God forgive me for abusing his
gifts!" said Lasse; "but it's a bad tempter to have at hand when
you've a sore heart. And now if I give you my word that you shall
never again see me as I was yesterday, won't you have a try at
school again to-morrow, and try and get over it gradually? We might
get into trouble with the magistrate himself if you keep on staying
away; for there's a heavy punishment for that sort of thing in this
country."

Pelle promised and kept his word; but he was prepared for the worst,
and secretly slipped a knuckle-duster into his pocket that Erik had
used in his palmy days when he went to open-air fetes and other
places where one had to strike a blow for one's girl. It was not
required, however, for the boys were entirely taken up with a ship
that had had to be run aground to prevent her sinking, and now lay
discharging her cargo of wheat into the boats of the village. The
wheat already lay in the harbor in great piles, wet and swollen with
the salt water.

And a few days later, when this had become stale, something happened
which put a stop forever to Pelle's school attendance. The children
were busy at arithmetic, chattering and clattering with their
slates, and Fris was sitting as usual in his place, with his head
against the wall and his hands resting on the desk. His dim eyes
were somewhere out in space, and not a movement betrayed that he
was alive. It was his usual position, and he had sat thus ever
since playtime.

The children grew restless; it was nearly time for them to go home.
A farmer's son who had a watch, held it up so that Pelle could see
it, and said "Two" aloud. They noisily put away their slates and
began to fight; but Fris, who generally awoke at this noise of
departure, did not stir. Then they tramped out, and in passing, one
of the girls out of mischief stroked the master's hand. She started
back in fear. "He's quite cold!" she said, shuddering and drawing
back behind the others.

They stood in a semicircle round the desk, and tried to see into
Fris's half-closed eyes; and then Pelle went up the two steps and
laid his hand upon his master's shoulder. "We're going home," he
said, in an unnatural voice. Fris's arm dropped stiffly down from
the desk, and Pelle had to support his body. "He's dead!" the words
passed like a shiver over the children's lips.

Fris was dead--dead at his post, as the honest folks of the parish
expressed it. Pelle had finished his schooling for good, and could
breathe freely.

He helped his father at home, and they were happy together and drew
together again now that there was no third person to stand between
them. The gibes from the others on the farm were not worth taking
notice of; Lasse had been a long time on the farm, and knew too much
about each of them, so that he could talk back. He sunned himself
in Pelle's gently childlike nature, and kept up a continual chatter.
One thing he was always coming back to. "I ought to be glad I had
you, for if you hadn't held back that time when I was bent upon
moving down to Madam Olsen's, we should have been in the wrong box.
I should think he'd have killed us in his anger. You were my good
angel as you always have been."

Lasse's words had the pleasant effect of caresses on Pelle; he was
happy in it all, and was more of a child than his years would have
indicated.

But one Saturday he came home from the parson's altogether changed.
He was as slow about everything as a dead herring, and did not go
across to his dinner, but came straight in through the outer door,
and threw himself face downward upon a bundle of hay.

"What's the matter now?" asked Lasse, coming up to him. "Has any
one been unkind to you?"

Pelle did not answer, but lay plucking at the hay. Lasse was going
to turn his face up to him, but Pelle buried it in the hay. "Won't
you trust your own father? You know I've no other wish in the world
but for your good!" Lasse's voice was sad.

"I'm to be turned out of the confirmation-class," Pelle managed to
say, and then burrowed into the hay to keep back his tears.

"Oh, no, surely not!" Lasse began to tremble. "Whatever have you
done?"

"I've half killed the parson's son."

"Oh, that's about the worst thing you could have done--lift your
hand against the parson's son! I'm sure he must have deserved it,
but--still you shouldn't have done it. Unless he's accused you of
thieving, for no honest man need stand that from any one, not even
the king himself."

"He--he called you Madam Olsen's concubine." Pelle had some
difficulty in getting this out.

Lasse's mouth grew hard and he clenched his fists. "Oh, he did! Oh,
did he! If I had him here, I'd kick his guts out, the young monkey!
I hope you gave him something he'll remember for a long time?"

"Oh, no, it wasn't very much, for he wouldn't stand up to me--he
threw himself down and screamed. And then the parson came!"

For a little while Lasse's face was disfigured with rage, and he
kept uttering threats. Then he turned to Pelle. "And they've turned
you out? Only because you stood up for your old father! I'm always
to bring misfortune upon you, though I'm only thinking of your good!
But what shall we do now?"