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

would only come out! And then one goes to bed and says, Praise God, the day is done⁠—and another day, and another. And they stand there and stare⁠—and wait; but let them wait; nothing happens, for now the ‘Great Power’ has got control of himself! And then all at once it’s there behind! Hit away! Eight in the thick of the heap! Send them all to hell, the scoundrels! ’Cause a man must drink, in order to keep his energies in check.⁠ ⁠… Well, and there she sits! Can one of you lend me a krone?”

“Not I!” said Jens.

“No, not you⁠—he’d be a pretty duffer who’d expect anything from you! Haven’t I always said ‘he takes after the wrong side’? He’s like his mother. He’s got a heart, but he’s incapable. What can you really do, Jens? Do you get fine clothes from your master, and does he treat you like a son, and will you finish up by taking over the business as his son-in-law? And why not? if I may ask the question. Your father is as much respected as Morten’s.”

“Morten won’t be a son-in-law, either, if his master has no daughter,” Jens muttered.

“No. But he might have had a daughter, hey? But there we’ve got an answer. You don’t reflect. Morten, he’s got something there!” He touched his forehead.

“Then you shouldn’t have hit me on the head,” retorted Jens sulkily.

“On the head⁠—well! But the understanding has its seat in the head. That’s where one ought to hammer it in. For what use would it be, I ask you, supposing you commit some stupidity with your head and I smack you on the behind? You don’t need any understanding there? But it has helped⁠—you’ve grown much smarter. That was no fool’s answer you gave me just now: ‘Then you shouldn’t have hit me on the head!’ ” He nodded in acknowledgment. “No, but here is a head that can give them some trouble⁠—there are knots of sense in this wood, hey?” And the three boys had to feel the top of his head.

He stood there like a swaying tree, and listened with a changing expression to the less frequent sobs of his wife; she was now sitting by the fire, just facing the door. “She does nothing but cry,” he said compassionately; “that’s a way the women have of amusing themselves nowadays. Life has been hard on us, and she couldn’t stand hardships, poor thing! For example, if I were to say now that I’d like to smash the stove”⁠—and here he seized a heavy chair and waved it about in the air⁠—“then she begins to cry. She cries about everything. But if I get on I shall take another wife⁠—one who can make a bit of a show. Because this is nonsense. Can she receive her guests and make fine conversation? Pah! What the devil is the use of my working and pulling us all out of the mud? But now I’m going out again⁠—God knows, it ain’t amusing here!”

His wife hurried across to him. “Ah, don’t go out, Peter⁠—stay here, do!” she begged.

“Am I to hang about here listening to you maundering on?” he asked sulkily, shrugging his shoulders. He was like a great, good-natured boy who gives himself airs.

“I won’t maunder⁠—I’m ever so jolly⁠—if only you’ll stay!” she cried, and she smiled through her tears. “Look at me⁠—don’t you see how glad I am? Stay with me, do, ‘Great Power!’ ” She breathed warmly into his ear; she had shaken off her cares and pulled herself together, and was now really pretty with her glowing face.

The “Great Power” looked at her affectionately; he laughed stupidly, as though he was tickled, and allowed himself to be pulled about; he imitated her whisper to the empty air, and was overflowing with good humor. Then he slyly approached his mouth to her ear, and as she listened he trumpeted loudly, so that she started back with a little cry. “Do stay, you great baby!” she said, laughing. “I won’t let you go; I can hold you!” But he shook her off, laughing, and ran out bareheaded.

For a moment it looked as though she would run after him, but then her hands fell, and she drooped her head. “Let him run off,” she said wearily; “now things must go as they will. There’s nothing to be done; I’ve never seen him so drunk. Yes, you look at me, but you must remember that he carries his drink differently to everyone else⁠—he is quite by himself in everything!” She said this with a certain air of pride. “And he has punished the shipowner⁠—and even the judge daren’t touch him. The good God Himself can’t be more upright than he is.”

X

Now the dark evenings had come when the lamp had to be lit early for the workers. The journeyman left while it was still twilight; there was little for him to do. In November the eldest apprentice had served his time. He was made to sit all alone in the master’s room, and there he stayed for a whole week, working on his journeyman’s task⁠—a pair of sea-boots. No one was allowed to go in to him, and the whole affair was extremely exciting. When the boots were ready and had been inspected by some of the master-shoemakers, they were filled to the top with water and suspended in the garret; there they hung for a few days, in order to show that they were watertight. Then Emil was solemnly appointed a journeyman, and had to treat the whole workshop. He drank brotherhood with little Nikas, and in the evening he went out and treated the other journeymen⁠—and came home drunk as a lord. Everything passed off just as it should.

On the following day Jeppe came into the workshop. “Well, Emil, now you’re a journeyman. What do you think of it? Do you mean to travel? It does a freshly baked journeyman good to go out into the world and