Pelle fought against the decline of the business. A new apprentice had been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do all the delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and bought things on credit; and he had to interview impatient customers, and endeavor to pacify them. He got plenty of exercise, but he learned nothing properly. “Just run down to the harbor,” the master used to say: “Perhaps there will be some work to bring back!” But the master was much more interested in the news which he brought thence.
Pelle would also go thither without having received any orders. Everybody in the town must needs make for the harbor whenever he went from home; it was the heart through which everything came and went, money and dreams and desires and that which gratified them. Every man had been to sea, and his best memories and his hardest battles belonged to the sea. Dreams took the outward way; yonder lay the sea, and all men’s thoughts were drawn to it; the thoughts of the young, who longed to go forth and seek adventure, and of the old, who lived on their memories. It was the song in all men’s hearts, and the God in the inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of life’s surplus, the home of all that was inexplicable and mystical. The sea had drunk the blood of thousands, but its color knew no change; the riddle of life brooded in its restless waters.
Destiny rose from the floor of the deep and with short shrift set her mark upon a man; he might escape to the land, like Baker Jörgensen, who went no more to sea when once the warning had come to him, or, like Boatman Jensen, he might rise in his sleep and walk straight over the vessel’s side. Down below, where the drowned dwelt, the ships sank to bring them what they needed; and from time to time the bloodless children of the sea rose to the shore, to play with the children that were born on a Sunday, and to bring them death or happiness.
Over the sea, three times a week, came the steamer with news from Copenhagen; and vessels all wrapped in ice, and others that had sprung a heavy leak, or bore dead bodies on board; and great ships which came from warm countries and had real negroes among their crews.
Down by the harbor stood the old men who had forsaken the sea, and now all the long day through they stared out over the playground of their manhood, until Death came for them. The sea had blown gout into their limbs, had buffeted them until they were bent and bowed, and in the winter nights one could hear them roar with the pain like wild beasts. Down to the harbor drifted all the flotsam and jetsam of the land, invalids and idle men and dying men, and busy folk raced round about and up and down with fluttering coat-tails, in order to scent out possible profits.
The young sported here continually; it was as though they encountered the future when they played here by the open sea. Many never went further, but many let themselves be caught and whirled away out into the unknown. Of these was Nilen. When the ships were being fitted out he could wait no longer. He sacrificed two years’ apprenticeship, and ran away on board a vessel which was starting on a long voyage. Now he was far away in the Trades, on the southern passage round America, homeward bound with a cargo of redwood. And a few left with every steamer. The girls were the most courageous when it came to cutting themselves loose; they steamed away swiftly, and the young men followed them in amorous blindness. And men fought their way outward in order to seek something more profitable than could be found at home.
Pelle had experienced all this already: he had felt this same longing, and had known the attractive force of the unknown. Up in the country districts it was the dream of all poor people to fight their way to town, and the boldest one day ventured thither, with burning cheeks, while the old people spoke warningly of the immorality of cities. And in the town here it was the dream of all to go to the capital, to Copenhagen; there fortune and happiness were to be found! He who had the courage hung one day over the ship’s rail, and waved farewell, with an absent expression in his eyes, as though he had been playing a game with high stakes; over there on the mainland he would have to be a match with the best of them. But the old people shook their heads and spoke at length of the temptations and immorality of the capital.
Now and again one came back and justified their wisdom. Then they would run delightedly from door to door. “Didn’t we tell you so?” But many came home at holiday seasons and were such swells that it was really the limit! And this or that girl was so extremely stylish that people had to ask the opinion of Wooden-leg Larsen about her.
The girls who got married over there—well, they were well provided for! After an interval of many years they came back to their parents’ homes, travelling on deck among the cattle, and giving the stewardess a few pence to have them put in the newspaper as cabin-passengers. They were fine enough as to their clothes, but their thin haggard faces told another story. “There is certainly not enough to eat for all over there!” said the old women.
But Pelle took no interest in those that came home again. All his thoughts were with those who went away; his heart tugged painfully in his breast, so powerful was his longing to be off. The sea, whether it lay idle or seethed with anger, continually filled his head with the humming of the world “over yonder,” with a vague, mysterious song of happiness.
One day, as he was on his way to the harbor, he met old thatcher Holm from Stone Farm. Holm was going about looking at the houses from top to bottom; he was raising his feet quite high in the air from sheer astonishment, and was chattering to himself. On his arm he carried a basket loaded with bread and butter, brandy, and beer.
“Well, here’s some one at last!” he said, and offered his hand. “I’m going round and wondering to myself where they all live, those that come here day after day and year after year, and whether they’ve done any good. Mother and I have often talked about it, that it would be splendid to know how things have turned out for this one or that. And this morning she said it would be best if I were to make a short job of it before I quite forget how to find my way about the streets here, I haven’t been here for ten years. Well, according to what I’ve seen so far, mother and I needn’t regret we’ve stayed at home. Nothing grows here except lamp-posts, and mother wouldn’t understand anything about rearing them. Thatched roofs I’ve not seen here. Here in the town they’d grudge a thatcher his bread. But I’ll see the harbor before I go home.”
“Then we’ll go together,” said Pelle. He was glad to meet some one from his home. The country round about Stone Farm was always for him the home of his childhood. He gossiped with the old man and pointed out various objects of interest.
“Yes, I’ve been once, twice, three times before this to the harbor,” said Holm, “but I’ve never managed to see the steamer. They tell me wonderful things of it; they say all our crops are taken to Copenhagen in the steamer nowadays.”
“It’s lying here to-day,” said Pelle eagerly. “This evening it goes out.”
Holm’s eyes beamed. “Then I shall be able to see the beggar! I’ve often seen the smoke from the hill at home—drifting over the sea— and that always gave me a lot to think about. They say it eats coals and is made of iron.” He looked at Pelle uncertainly.
The great empty harbor basin, in which some hundreds of men were at work, interested him greatly. Pelle pointed out the “Great Power,” who was toiling like a madman and allowing himself to be saddled with the heaviest work.
“So that is he!” cried Holm. “I knew his father; he was a man who wanted to do things above the ordinary, but he never brought them off. And how goes it with your father? Not any too well, as I’ve heard?”
Pelle had been home a little while before; nothing was going well there, but as to that he was silent. “Karna isn’t very well,” he said. “She tried to do too much; she’s strained herself lifting things.”
“They say he’ll have a difficult job to pull through. They have taken too much on themselves,” Holm continued.
Pelle made no reply; and then the steamer absorbed their whole attention. Talkative as he was, Holm quite forgot to wag his tongue.
The steamer was on the point of taking in cargo; the steam derricks were busy at both hatches, squealing each time they swung round in another direction. Holm became so light on his legs one might have thought he was treading on needles; when the derrick swung round over the quay and the chain came rattling down, he ran right back to the granary. Pelle wanted to take him on board, but he would not hear of it. “It looks a bad-tempered monster,” he said: “look how it sneezes and fusses!”
On the quay, by the forward hold, the goods of a poverty-stricken household lay all mixed together. A man stood there holding a mahogany looking-glass, the only article of value, in his arms. His expression was gloomy. By the manner in which he blew his nose—with his knuckles instead of with his fingers—one could see that he had something unaccustomed on hand. His eyes were fixed immovably on his miserable household possessions, and they anxiously followed every breakable article as it went its airy way into the vessel’s maw. His wife and children were sitting on the quay-wall, eating out of a basket of provisions. They had been sitting there for hours. The children were tired and tearful; the mother was trying to console them, and to induce them to sleep on the stone.
“Shan’t we start soon?” they asked continually, in complaining tones.
“Yes, the ship starts directly, but you must be very good or I shan’t take you with me. And then you’ll come to the capital city, where they eat white bread and always wear leather boots. The King himself lives there, and they’ve got everything in the shops there.” She arranged her shawl under their heads.
“But that’s Per Anker’s son from Blaaholt!” cried Holm, when he had been standing a while on the quay and had caught sight of the man. “What, are you leaving the country?”
“Yes, I’ve decided to do so,” said the man, in an undertone, passing his hand over his face.
“And I thought you were doing so well! Didn’t you go to Ostland, and didn’t you take over a hotel there?”
“Yes, they enticed me out there, and now I’ve lost everything there.”
“You ought to have considered—considering costs nothing but a little trouble.”
“But they showed me false books, which showed a greater surplus than there really was. Shipowner Monsen was behind the whole affair, together with the brewer from the mainland, who had taken the hotel over in payment of outstanding debts.”
“But how did big folks like that manage to smell you out?” Holm scratched his head; he didn’t understand the whole affair.
“Oh, they’d heard of the ten thousand, of course, which I’d inherited from my father. They throw their nets out for sums like that, and one day they sent an agent to see me. Ten thousand was just enough for the first instalment, and now they have taken the hotel over again. Out of compassion, they let me keep this trash here.” He suddenly turned his face away and wept; and then his wife came swiftly up to him.
Holm drew Pelle away. “They’d rather be rid of us,” he said quietly; and he continued to discuss the man’s dismal misfortune, while they strolled out along the mole. But Pelle was not listening to him. He had caught sight of a little schooner which was cruising outside, and was every moment growing more restless.
“I believe that’s the Iceland schooner!” he said at last. “So I must go back.”
“Yes, run off,” said Holm, “and many thanks for your guidance, and give my respects to Lasse and Karna.”
On the harbor hill Pelle met Master Jeppe, and farther on Drejer, Klaussen, and Blom. The Iceland boat had kept them waiting for several months; the news that she was in the roads quickly spread, and all the shoemakers of the whole town were hurrying down to the harbor, in order to hear whether good business had been done before the gangway was run out.
“The Iceland boat is there now!” said the merchants and leather- dealers, when they saw the shoemakers running by. “We must make haste and make out our bills, for now the shoemakers will be having money.”
But the skipper had most of the boots and shoes still in his hold; he returned with the terrifying news that no more boots and shoes could be disposed of in Iceland. The winter industry had been of great importance to the shoemakers.
“What does this mean?” asked Jeppe angrily. “You have been long enough about it! Have you been trying to open another agency over there? In others years you have managed to sell the whole lot.”
“I have done what I could,” replied the captain gloomily. “I offered them to the dealers in big parcels, and then I lay there and carried on a retail trade from the ship. Then I ran down the whole west coast; but there is nothing to be done.”
“Well, well,” said Jeppe, “but do the Icelanders mean to go without boots?”
“There’s the factories,” replied the captain.
“The factories, the factories!” Jeppe laughed disdainfully, but with a touch of uncertainty. “You’ll tell me next that they can make shoes by machinery—cut out and peg and sew and fix the treads and all? No, damn it, that can only be done by human hands directed by human intelligence. Shoemaking is work for men only. Perhaps I myself might be replaced by a machine—by a few cog-wheels that go round and round! Bah! A machine is dead, I know that, and it can’t think or adapt itself to circumstances; you may have to shape the boot in a particular way for a special foot, on account of tender toes, or—here I give the sole a certain cut in the instep, so that it looks smart, or—well, one has to be careful, or one cuts into the upper!”
“There are machines which make boots, and they make them cheaper than you, too,” said the skipper brusquely.
“I should like to see them! Can you show me a boot that hasn’t been made by human hands?” Jeppe laughed contemptuously. “No; there’s something behind all this, by God! Some one is trying to play us a trick!” The skipper went his way, offended.
Jeppe stuck to it that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He kept on returning to it.
“They’ll be making human beings by machinery too, soon!” he exclaimed angrily.
“No,” said Baker Jörgen; “there, I believe, the old method will survive!”
One day the skipper came in at the workshop door, banged a pair of shoes down on the window-bench, and went out again. They had been bought in England, and belonged to the helmsman of a bark which had just come into the harbor. The young master looked at them, turned them over in his hands, and looked at them again. Then he called Jeppe. They were sewn throughout—shoes for a grown man, yet sewn throughout! Moreover, the factory stamp was under the sole.
In Jeppe’s opinion they were not worth a couple of shillings. But he could not get over the fact that they were machine-made.
“Then we are superfluous,” he said, in a quavering voice. All his old importance seemed to have fallen from him. “For if they can make the one kind on a machine, they can make another. The handicraft is condemned to death, and we shall all be without bread one fine day! Well, I, thank God, have not many years before me.” It was the first time that Jeppe had admitted that he owed his life to God.
Every time he came into the workshop he began to expatiate on the same subject. He would stand there turning the hated shoes over between his hands. Then he would criticize them. “We must take more pains next winter.”
“Father forgets it’s all up with us now,” said the young master wearily.
Then the old man would be silent and hobble out. But after a time he would be back again, fingering the boots and shoes, in order to discover defects in them. His thoughts were constantly directed upon this new subject; no song of praise, no eulogy of his handicraft, passed his lips nowadays. If the young master came to him and asked his help in some difficult situation, he would refuse it; he felt no further desire to triumph over youth with his ancient dexterity, but shuffled about and shrank into himself. “And all that we have thought so highly of—what’s to become of it?” he would ask. “For machines don’t make masterpieces and medal work, so where will real good work come in?”
The young master did not look so far ahead; he thought principally of the money that was needed. “Devil take it, Pelle, how are we going to pay every one, Pelle?” he would ask dejectedly. Little Nikas had to look out for something else; their means would not allow them to keep a journeyman. So Nikas decided to marry, and to set up as a master shoemaker in the north. The shoemaker of the Baptist community had just died, and he could get plenty of customers by joining the sect; he was already attending their services. “But go to work carefully!” said Jeppe. “Or matters will go awry!”
It was a bad shock to all of them. Klaussen went bankrupt and had to find work on the new harbor. Blom ran away, deserting his wife and children, and they had to go home to the house of her parents. In the workshop matters had been getting worse for a long time. And now this had happened, throwing a dazzling light upon the whole question. But the young master refused to believe the worst. “I shall soon be well again now,” he said. “And then you will just see how I’ll work up the business!” He lay in bed more often now, and was susceptible to every change in the weather. Pelle had to see to everything.
“Run and borrow something!” the master would say. And if Pelle returned with a refusal, he would look at the boy with his wide, wondering eyes. “They’ve got the souls of grocers!” he would cry. “Then we must peg those soles!”
“That won’t answer with ladies’ patent-leather shoes!” replied Pelle very positively.
“Damn and blast it all, it will answer! We’ll black the bottom with cobbler’s wax.”
But when the black was trodden off, Jungfer Lund and the others called, and were wroth. They were not accustomed to walk in pegged shoes. “It’s a misunderstanding!” said the young master, the perspiration standing in clear beads on his forehead. Or he would hide and leave it to Pelle. When it was over, he would reach up to the shelf, panting with exhaustion. “Can’t you do anything for me, Pelle?” he whispered.
One day Pelle plucked up courage and said it certainly wasn’t healthy to take so much spirit; the master needed so much now.
“Healthy?” said the master; “no, good God, it isn’t healthy! But the beasts demand it! In the beginning I couldn’t get the stuff down, especially beer; but now I’ve accustomed myself to it. If I didn’t feed them, they’d soon rush all over me and eat me up.”
“Do they swallow it, then?”
“I should think they do! As much as ever you like to give them. Or have you ever seen me tipsy? I can’t get drunk; the tubercles take it all. And for them it’s sheer poison. On the day when I am able to get drunk again I shall thank God, for then the beasts will be dead and the spirit will be able to attack me again. Then it’ll only be a question of stopping it, otherwise it’ll play the deuce with my mind!”
Since the journeyman had left, the meals had become more meager than ever. The masters had not had enough money in the spring to buy a pig. So there was no one to consume the scraps. Now they had to eat them all themselves. Master Andres was never at the table; he took scarcely any nourishment nowadays; a piece of bread-and-butter now and again, that was all. Breakfast, at half-past seven, they ate alone. It consisted of salt herrings, bread and hog’s lard, and soup. The soup was made out of all sorts of odds and ends of bread and porridge, with an addition of thin beer. It was fermented and unpalatable. What was left over from breakfast was put into a great crock which stood in one corner of the kitchen, on the floor, and this was warmed up again the next morning, with the addition of a little fresh beer. So it went on all the year round. The contents were renewed only when some one kicked the crock so that it broke. The boys confined themselves to the herrings and the lard; the soup they did not use except to fish about in it. They made a jest of it, throwing all sorts of objects into it, and finding them again after half a year.
Jeppe was still lying in the alcove, asleep; his nightcap was hoved awry over one eye. Even in his sleep he still had a comical expression of self-importance. The room was thick with vapor; the old man had his own way of getting air, breathing it in with a long snort and letting it run rumbling through him. If it got too bad, the boys would make a noise; then he would wake and scold them.
They were longing for food by dinner-time; the moment Jeppe called his “Dinner!” at the door they threw everything down, ranged themselves according to age, and tumbled in behind him. They held one another tightly by the coat-tails, and made stupid grimaces. Jeppe was enthroned at the head of the table, a little cap on his head, trying to preserve seemly table-manners. No one might begin before him or continue after he had finished. They snatched at their spoons, laid them down again with a terrified glance at the old man, and nearly exploded with suppressed laughter. “Yes, I’m very hungry to-day, but there’s no need for you to remark it!” he would say warningly, once they were in full swing. Pelle would wink at the others, and they would go on eating, emptying one dish after another. “There’s no respect nowadays!” roared Jeppe, striking on the table. But when he did this discipline suddenly entered into them, and they all struck the table after him in turn. Sometimes, when matters got too bad, Master Andres had to find some reason for coming into the room.
The long working-hours, the bad food, and the foul air of the workshop left their mark on Pelle. His attachment to Master Andres was limitless; he could sit there till midnight and work without payment if a promise had been made to finish some particular job. But otherwise he was imperceptibly slipping into the general slackness, sharing the others’ opinion of the day as something utterly abominable, which one must somehow endeavor to get through. To work at half pressure was a physical necessity; his rare movements wearied him, and he felt less inclined to work than to brood. The semi-darkness of the sunless workshop bleached his skin and filled him with unhealthy imaginations.
He did little work now on his own account; but he had learned to manage with very little. Whenever he contrived to get hold of a ten-öre piece, he bought a savings-stamp, so that in this way he was able to collect a few shillings, until they had grown to quite a little sum. Now and again, too, he got a little help from Lasse, but Lasse found it more and more difficult to spare anything. Moreover, he had learned to compose his mind by his work.