Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

voyaging toward the land of the blessed? Or was this the end of the world itself, of which he had heard such dreadful things said, as far back as he could remember? Perhaps he was adrift on the last scrap of earth, and was the only person still living? It did not in the least surprise Pelle that he should be left where everybody else had perished; in this moment of despair he found it quite natural.

He stood breathlessly silent and listened to the infinite; and he heard the cudgel-like blows of his pulses. Still he listened, and now he heard something more: far away in the night that surged against his ears he heard the suggestion of a sound, the vibrating note of some living creature. Infinitely remote and faint though it was, yet Pelle was so aware of it that it thrilled him all through. It was a cow feeding on the chain; he could follow the sound of her neck scrubbing up and down against the post.

He ran down over the craggy declivity, fell, and was again on his feet and running forward; the mist had swallowed him unawares. Then he was down on arable that had once been woodland; then he trod on something that felt familiar as it brushed against his feet⁠—it was land that had once been ploughed but had now been recaptured by the heath. The sound grew louder, and changed to all those familiar sounds that one hears at night coming from an open cowshed; and now a decayed farmhouse showed through the mist. This could not of course be the farm Pelle was looking for⁠—Father Lasse had a proper farmhouse with four wings! But he went forward.

Out in the country people do not lock everything up as carefully as they do in town; so Pelle could walk right in. Directly he opened the door of the sitting-room he was filled with an uplifting joy. The most comfortable odor he had ever known struck upon his senses⁠—the foundation of everything fragrant⁠—the scent of Father Lasse! It was dark in the room, and the light of the night without could not make its way through the low window. He heard the deep breathing of persons asleep, and knew that they had not awakened⁠—the night was not nearly over yet. “Good evening!” he said.

A hand began to grope for the matches.

“Is anyone there?” said a drowsy woman’s voice.

“Good evening!” he cried again, and went forward into the room. “It’s Pelle!” He brought out the name in a singsong voice.

“So it’s you, boy!” Lasse’s voice quavered, and the hands could not manage the matches; but Pelle stepped toward the voice and clasped his wrist. “And how did you find your way here in the wilderness⁠—and at night, too? Yes, yes, I’ll get up!” he continued, and he tried, with a groan, to sit up.

“No, you stop there and let me get up,” said Karna, who lay against the wall⁠—she had kept silence while the menfolk were speaking. “He gets this lumbago, I can tell you!” she declared, jumping out of bed.

“Ay, I’ve been at it a bit too hard. Work comes easy when a man’s his own master⁠—it’s difficult to leave off. But it’ll be all right when once I’ve got things properly going. Work’s a good embrocation for the lumbago. And how goes it with you then? I was near believing you must be dead!”

So Pelle had to sit on the edge of the bed and tell about everything in town⁠—about the workshop, and the young master’s lame leg, and everything. But he said nothing of the disagreeable things; it was not for men to dwell upon such things.

“Then you’ve been getting on well in foreign parts!” said Lasse, delighted. “And do they think well of you?”

“Yes!” This came a trifle slowly. In the first place, respect was just particularly what he had not won⁠—but why trumpet forth his miseries? “The young master must like me⁠—he often chats with me, even over the journeyman’s head.”

“Now, think of that! I have often wondered, I can tell you, how you were getting on, and whether we shouldn’t soon have good news of you. But everything takes time, that we know. And as you see, I’m in a very different position.”

“Yes, you’ve become a landowner!” said Pelle, smiling.

“The deuce, yes, so I am!” Lasse laughed, too, but then he groaned piteously with the pain in his back. “In the daytime, when I’m working hard, I get along well enough, but as soon as I lie down, then it comes on directly. And it’s the devil of a pain⁠—as though the wheels of a heavy loaded wagon were going to and fro across your back, whatever name you like to give it. Well, well! It’s a fine thing, all the same, to be your own master! It’s funny how it takes me⁠—but dry bread tastes better to me at my own table than⁠—yes, by God, I can tell you, it tastes better than cake at any other body’s table! And then to be all alone on your own bit of land, and to be able to spit wherever you like to spit, without asking anybody’s leave! And the soil isn’t so bad; even if most of it has never been under cultivation, it has all been lying there storing up its power to produce since the beginning of the world. But about the people in the town⁠—are they agreeable?”

Oh, Pelle had nothing to complain about. “But when were you married?” he asked suddenly.

“Well, you see,” and Lasse began to stumble over his own words, although he had been prepared for the boy to ask this very question; “in a way we aren’t exactly married. That takes money, and the work here is getting forward.⁠ ⁠… But it’s our intention, I needn’t say, as soon as we have time and money.” It was honestly Lasse’s opinion that one could just as well dispense with the ceremony; at least until children