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

always reminded of Father Lasse; he too had never learned to put on armor, but had always remained the same loyal, simple soul, unaffected by his hard experience.

The big baker had fallen foul of him as usual. Contact with this childlike, thin-skinned creature, who let his very heart burn itself out in a clasp of his hand, always made him brutal. “Now, Bjerregrav, have you tried it⁠—you know what⁠—since we last saw you?”

Bjerregrav turned crimson. “I am content with the experience which the dear God has chosen for me,” he answered, with blinking eyes.

“Would you believe it, he is over seventy and doesn’t know yet how a woman is made!”

“Because, after all I find it suits me best to live alone, and then there’s my club foot.”

“So he goes about asking questions about everything, things such as every child knows about,” said Jeppe, in a superior tone. “Bjerregrav has never rubbed off his childish innocence.”

Yet as he was going home, and Pelle was helping him over the gutter, he was still in his mood of everlasting wonder.

“What star is that?” he said; “it has quite a different light to the others. It looks so red to me⁠—if only we don’t have a severe winter, with the soil frozen and dear fuel for all the poor people.” Bjerregrav sighed.

“You mustn’t look at the moon so much. Skipper Andersen came by his accident simply because he slept on deck and the moon shone right in his face; now he has gone crazy!”

Yesterday evening just the same as always⁠—and now dead! And no one had known or guessed, so that they might have been a little kinder to him just at the last! He died in his bed, with his mind full of their last disdainful words, and now they could never go to him and say: “Don’t take any notice of it, Bjerregrav; we didn’t mean to be unkind.” Perhaps their behavior had embittered his last hours. At all events, there stood Jeppe and Brother Jörgen, and they could not look one another in the face; an immovable burden weighed upon them.

And it meant a void⁠—as when the clock in a room stops ticking. The faithful sound of his crutch no longer approached the workshop about six o’clock. The young master grew restless about that time; he could not get used to the idea of Bjerregrav’s absence.

“Death is a hateful thing,” he would say, when the truth came over him; “it is horribly repugnant. Why must one go away from here without leaving the least part of one behind? Now I listen for Bjerregrav’s crutch, and there’s a void in my ears, and after a time there won’t be even that. Then he will be forgotten, and perhaps more besides, who will have followed him, and so it goes on forever. Is there anything reasonable about it all, Pelle? They talk about Heaven, but what should I care about sitting on a damp cloud and singing ‘Hallelujah’? I’d much rather go about down here and get myself a drink⁠—especially if I had a sound leg!”

The apprentices accompanied him to the grave. Jeppe wished them to do so, as a sort of atonement. Jeppe himself and Baker Jörgen, in tall hats, walked just behind the coffin. Otherwise only a few poor women and children followed, who had joined the procession out of curiosity. Coachman Due drove the hearse. He had now bought a pair of horses, and this was his first good job.

Otherwise life flowed onward, sluggish and monotonous. Winter had come again, with its commercial stagnation, and the Iceland trade was ruined. The shoemakers did no more work by artificial light; there was so little to do that it would not repay the cost of the petroleum; so the hanging lamp was put on one side and the old tin lamp was brought out again. That was good enough to sit round and to gossip by. The neighbors would come into the twilight of the workshop; if Master Andres was not there, they would slip out again, or they would sit idly there until Jeppe said it was bedtime. Pelle had begun to occupy himself with carving once more; he got as close to the lamp as possible, listening to the conversation while he worked upon a button which was to be carved like a twenty-five-öre piece. Morten was to have it for a tiepin.

The conversation turned upon the weather, and how fortunate it was that the frost had not yet come to stop the great harbor works. Then it touched upon the “Great Power,” and from him it glanced at the crazy Anker, and poverty, and discontent. The Social Democrats “over yonder” had for a long time been occupying the public mind. All the summer through disquieting rumors had crossed the water; it was quite plain that they were increasing their power and their numbers⁠—but what were they actually aiming at? In any case, it was nothing good. “They must be the very poorest who are revolting,” said Wooden-leg Larsen. “So their numbers must be very great!” It was as though one heard the roaring of something or other out on the horizon, but did not know what was going on there. The echo of the upheaval of the lower classes was quite distorted by the time it reached the island; people understood just so much, that the lowest classes wanted to turn God’s appointed order upside down and to get to the top themselves, and involuntarily their glance fell covertly on the poor in the town. But these were going about in their customary half-slumber, working when there was work to be had and contenting themselves with that. “That would be the last straw,” said Jeppe, “here, where we have such a well-organized poor-relief!”

Baker Jörgen was the most eager⁠—every day he came with news of some kind to discuss. Now they had threatened the life of the King himself! And now the troops were called out.

“The troops!” The young master