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

farms caught them up or crossed them on their way to the fishing-villages. Those who lived nearer the town were already on their way home with swaying loads. “Shall we meet in the town for a drink?” cried one man to Karl Johan as he passed. “I’m coming in for another load.”

“No, we’re driving for the master today!” answered Karl Johan, pointing to the bailiff in front.

“Yes, I see him. He’s driving a fine pair today! I thought it was King Lazarus!”

An acquaintance of Karl Johan’s came toward them with a swaying load of herring. He was the only man on one of the small farms. “So you’ve been to the town too for winter food,” said Karl Johan, reining in his horse.

“Yes, for the pigs!” answered the other. “It was laid in for the rest of us at the end of the summer. This isn’t food for men!” And he took up a herring between his fingers, and pretended to break it in two.

“No, I suppose not for such fine gentlemen,” answered Karl Johan snappishly. “Of course, you’re in such a high station that you eat at the same table as your master and mistress, I’ve heard.”

“Yes, that’s the regular custom at our place,” answered the other. “We know nothing about masters and dogs.” And he drove on. The words rankled with Karl Johan, he could not help drawing comparisons.

They had caught up the bailiff, and now the horses became unruly. They kept trying to pass and took every unlooked-for opportunity of pushing on, so that Karl Johan nearly drove his team into the back of the bailiff’s cart. At last he grew tired of holding them in, and gave them the rein, when they pushed out over the border of the ditch and on in front of Gustav’s team, danced about a little on the highroad, and then became quiet. Now it was Erik’s horses that were mad.

At the farm all the laborers’ wives had been called in for the afternoon, the young cattle were in the enclosure, and Pelle ran from cottage to cottage with the message. He was to help the women together with Lasse, and was delighted with this break in the daily routine; it was a whole holiday for him.

At dinnertime the men came home with their heavy loads of herring, which were turned out upon the stone paving round the pump in the upper yard. There had been no opportunity for them to enjoy themselves in the town, and they were in a bad temper. Only Mons, the ape, went about grinning all over his face. He had been up to his sick mother with the money for the doctor and medicine, and came back at the last minute with a bundle under his arm in the best of spirits. “That was a medicine!” he said over and over again, smacking his lips, “a mighty strong medicine.”

He had had a hard time with the bailiff before he got leave to go on his errand. The bailiff was a suspicious man, but it was difficult to hold out against Mons’ trembling voice when he urged that it would be too hard on a poor man to deny him the right to help his sick mother. “Besides, she lives close by here, and perhaps I shall never see her again in this life,” said Mons mournfully. “And then there’s the money that the master advanced me for it. Shall I go and throw it away on drink, while she’s lying there without enough to buy bread with?”

“Well, how was your mother?” asked the bailiff, when Mons came hurrying up at the last moment.

“Oh, she can’t last much longer!” said Mons, with a quiver in his voice. But he was beaming all over his face.

The others threw him angry glances while they unloaded the herring. They would have liked to thrash him for his infernal good luck. But they recovered when they got into their room and he undid the bundle. “That’s to you all from my sick mother!” he said, and drew forth a keg of spirits. “And I was to give you her best respects, and thank you for being so good to her little son.”

“Where did you go?” asked Erik.

“I sat in the tavern on the harbor hill all the time, so as to keep an eye on you; I couldn’t resist looking at you, you looked so delightfully thirsty. I wonder you didn’t lie down flat and drink out of the sea, every man Jack of you!”

In the afternoon the cottagers’ wives and the farm-girls sat round the great heaps of herring by the pump, and cleaned the fish. Lasse and Pelle pumped water to rinse them in, and cleaned out the big salt-barrels that the men rolled up from the cellar; and two of the elder women were entrusted with the task of mixing. The bailiff walked up and down by the front steps and smoked his pipe.

As a general rule, the herring-pickling came under the category of pleasant work, but today there was dissatisfaction all along the line. The women chattered freely as they worked, but their talk was not quite innocuous⁠—it was all carefully aimed; the men had made them malicious. When they laughed, there was the sound of a hidden meaning in their laughter. The men had to be called out and given orders about every single thing that had to be done; they went about it sullenly, and then at once withdrew to their rooms. But when there they were all the gayer, and sang and enjoyed themselves.

“They’re doing themselves proud in there,” said Lasse, with a sigh to Pelle. “They’ve got a whole keg of spirits that Mons had hidden in his herring. They say it’s so extra uncommon good.” Lasse had not tasted it himself.

The two kept out of the wrangling; they felt themselves too weak. The girls had not had the courage to refuse the extra Sunday work, but they were not afraid to