That was a dangerous corner, where the wide street leading to the grammar school crossed the narrow one that led to the board school; and, on the days when the afternoon hours for the latter began just when the grammar school's long morning was over, it might happen that the free, exuberant spirits of those who were leaving school came into collision with the heavier and more bitter mood of those who were on their way to it.
Ludvig Veyergang, with his sealskin satchel on his back, had already travelled this road for several years. He had been nicknamed the Ostrich, because of his little head with the bird-like nose, his long bare neck, and the way he walked. When he met Nikolai, he pretended not to know him, and Nikolai whistled and clattered with his shoes on the pavement.
The board school's new slide ran along the gutter a good way out into the grammar school street. It was the product of the joint work of many for a whole week, and fate willed that Nikolai, at the head of a string of comrades, should come full speed down it, hallooing and shouting, just as Ludvig Veyergang and a few others came round the corner. Young Veyergang received a push that made him drop his pencil-case; and pens, lead and slate pencils lay strewn over the ground.
"Pick them up, you beggar!" he cried to Nikolai, for it was he who had knocked up against him. "I shall tell about you at home, you may be pretty sure. Pick them up, or—"
A kick sent a few loose lumps of snow in answer.
"You shall be made to bend soon enough, if that's what you want. Father shall be told, this very day, that you are the leader of the street cads in the town; and if no one else will tell your mother about it, I'll tell her myself, however much she cries!"
"Do you want to have your ostrich-beak pulled?"
"You'd better try it on! Perhaps you don't know that we pay for you at the blockmaker's. But I'll take care that you get thrashed until you beg my pardon: a fellow who doesn't even know who his father is, and his mother only wishes he had never been born!"
The last words were hardly out of his mouth when Nikolai sprang upon him with both fists like a pair of sledge-hammers, and for a few blissful seconds hammered out every trace of difference in birth and position. Now he should feel "both his father and his mother!"
It was one of the board school's memorable and famous days, when the wine was tapped from Ludvig Veyergang's nose in the snow; and even the next day at dinner-time, two or three school classes of interested spectators were searching for traces of red spots in the snow by the lamp-post.
But, though he enjoyed great honour and admiration during the whole afternoon at school, Nikolai knew that at home he would meet with an utterly different interpretation of the event, news of which the Holmans must already have received, surely and promptly, from the Veyergangs.
As he neared home, he went slower and slower. The thought of what might await him, made his feet grow heavier and heavier, and when he had separated from his last companion, he suddenly stopped and turned down by the chandler's, where the street led away from, and not towards his home.
It was now the third night Nikolai had been away, explained Mrs. Holman to the policeman outside; and it was not much wonder if he expected the reward he deserved, and felt his back smart. Lay hands on better people's children! And the son of Consul Veyergang, his own benefactor, too!
But where could he be? He could not possibly be in the timber-yard now, at this time of year.
His stronghold was not easy to hit upon either, for it was something very like looking in her own pocket. In common with other evil-doers, Nikolai was driven by an irresistible desire—like moths that flutter round a candle—to hide himself as near as possible to the place of his fear and dread, where Mrs. Holman was, and where he could catch a glimpse of Silla.
Holman lay at night and felt, through his intoxication, that things were going wrong with Nikolai. He heard it dripping and dripping in the thaw outside—splash, splash! The sound came in a monotonous chant: Ni-ko-lai, Ni-ko-lai.
He would ruin his health out there!
With sudden energy he sat up in bed. Where else would Nikolai be than under the old carriage hood that stood in the loft over the coach-house, mouldy and dropping to pieces with its opening towards the wall?
It was in the light of this idea that he rushed out.
Nikolai never felt the blockmaker's hand; he still slept on happily, as it lifted him up by the coat collar.
It was only when he stood erect on both feet that he grasped the situation, and threw himself down again, kicking and screaming. He would not go home, they might kill him first, or take off his head!
The heels of his boots made it evident both to sight and feeling that he meant it: he was utterly beside himself.
Only let Holman get him inside the door, and the strap should dance! Holman had worked himself up into a state of excitement.
Mrs. Holman was waiting in the doorway with a candle. By its light she saw an ashy pale face, with eyes staring at her, and at the same time heard the words: "You won't get me in! If I was born in the street, I can live in the street!" She caught a glance from the sharp, defiant grey eyes—then out of the blockmaker's hands, out of the gate, and he was gone!
The blows on Ludvig's nose had gone to Barbara's heart. But when she heard that Nikolai had run away from the Holmans' and that there was some talk of getting him into an institute for morally depraved children, there was crying and weeping. She had had shame enough with the boy, and this she could not survive! Her mistress must prevent it. She was conscious of having done her duty and more than her duty all these years that she had been Ludvig and Lizzie's nurse, but she could not put up with this! Her mistress must prevent it, or she did not know what she might do, or what might happen: she felt quite capable of leaving them.
Barbara sat sighing and weeping in the nursery, until the children were almost afraid to go in.
Such attacks generally lasted, at the most, one day; but this one had now been going on for three, and was disturbing the comfort of the house. Then Mrs. Veyergang got one of her headaches, and was going to have an afternoon nap, her accustomed cure, during which everything must be kept perfectly quiet around her.
It was Barbara who generally guarded her slumbers by going hushing and quieting right out into the kitchen, and keeping watch at the door into the passage. But now she only sat in her room sobbing.
It did surprise her a little that her mistress lay so quiet all the time without calling her. On the other hand, she rather enjoyed the sentence she was carrying out. Her mistress should know what opposing her meant, even if it were to last the whole week.
It grew dark, and still her mistress lay there. She lay until the Consul came driving home towards evening; and she did not even ring for lights when she got up.
It was with a shawl about her head and a face red with weeping, that Mrs. Veyergang received her husband that evening; she was in a violently excited state of mind, and her voice quite trembled.
She wanted nothing less than that he should give Barbara warning.
A tyranny existed in the house that was quite unparalleled—had existed for several years—and if she had put up with it without complaining—her husband knew that she had never complained—it was for the children's sake. But it was really unnecessary now, and "it may be just as well to seize the opportunity; she has become far, far too overbearing in the house!"
It was a matter of course that the warning was given in the most appreciative and considerate, although firmly decisive manner. The whole circle of Mrs. Veyergang's acquaintance agreed that they had all expected that the Veyergangs would really one day part with that pampered creature!
The only person who was thoroughly astonished and quite stunned, as if by a thunder-clap, was Barbara herself; and for a long time she could not understand that she, the Veyergangs' Barbara, had actually received warning to leave Ludvig and Lizzie and the house where she had been so indispensable.
She went about with a solemn, injured air, and expected that a change of decision would some day take place. Then she became humble to her mistress, and wept before the children.
But there was always only the same kindness, which ever clenched the dismissal more firmly.
And now her mistress began to talk about a substantial acknowledgement of her services with which the Consul would present her on her departure.
In indignation Barbara tied the strings of her best bonnet beneath her chin, and with offended dignity requested permission to go into town.
Her mistress was to know the meaning of this when she returned later in the day. It was nothing less than that it was her fixed, resolute purpose to offer herself to others who would appreciate her better than the Veyergangs did.
She directed her wrathful steps straight to Scheele, the magistrate's house: they had four children, and were looking for a nurse. They were the Consul's most intimate friends, where she would only need to present herself, and they would jump at the opportunity. How often the magistrate's wife had praised her management, and talked condescendingly to her, when they had dined at the Veyergangs on Sundays! She had more than once thought Mrs. Veyergang fortunate in having such a treasure in the house, and sighed over her own inability to find just such another.
But—how unfortunate it was—Mrs. Scheele was extremely sorry—they had just engaged another nurse!
"Fancy!" exclaimed Mrs. Scheele, when her husband came down from his office, "there is a revolution at the Veyergangs', and that high and mighty Nurse Barbara has got her dismissal. She has been here and offered herself to us. I wouldn't have that pampered creature at any price!"
Barbara walked a long way that day and to the best houses. On a large sheet of paper, folded in three, she had the Consul-General's long and excellent testimonial to exhibit; moreover she was fully conscious of the extent to which she was known. But though she stood so large and erect and smart at the door, and comported herself so well, there was no one who could make any use of her!
And late in the evening, later than was needful, as she did not wish to show herself, she came home again, disappointed and weary.
It really seemed as if all the celebrity she had acquired during all these years, all her fidelity, all her prestige as nurse at the Veyergangs, was to vanish at one stroke into thin air!
Deeply hurt as she was after her unlucky expedition, it was remarkable that no one in the house asked her how she had got on—though there were plenty of mischievous glances from her fellow-servants, whose standing with their mistress had depended for so many years upon her. And whenever she tried to broach the subject with Mrs. Veyergang, the latter always turned the conversation—indeed, once she even dismissed the subject, saying that Barbara must know that she never meddled with such things.
But the kindness increased as the day of her departure approached. Barbara began to perceive how this screw of kindness, that turned so gently, was screwing her farther and farther out of the house. The Consul had Nikolai placed on trial as apprentice in a smithy down by the crane, and from Mrs. Veyergang she received one thing after another, as remembrances. But when, one day, the Consul—very thoughtfully—made her a present of one of his old travelling trunks, she let her large, heavy person sink down upon its lid, completely overwhelmed. She could not bring herself to think, had never believed, that the day would come when she must part from her mistress and Ludvig and Lizzie—it would kill her!
This was a direct appeal to the Consul himself, but the answer was not exactly as Barbara wished. He patted her on the shoulder, saying:
"I'm glad, my dear Barbara, that you feel that you have been well off."
When she went into the Consul's office for a settlement and to receive her savings-bank book—the amount it contained was a hundred and fourteen specie-dollars, a result, the Consul said, with which she ought to be thoroughly satisfied, when she considered the great expense she had been put to with Nikolai—she declared her intention of resting for a time before she went out to service again, and had made arrangements to lodge with a farmer out in the country: she had now been toiling for others for fourteen years!
The last evening, which she had dreaded so, went more easily than she had expected. The Consul and his wife were invited to the Willocks' country-house in the afternoon with the children, so the farewell could only be a short one, before they got into the carriage.
She was left standing with the feeling of Lizzie's soft fur, which she had stroked, in her fingers.
Holman made his usual turn into Selvig's public-house every evening to brace himself for his return home. When the ale-bottle had been emptied, and a proper number of drams consumed, his at first hurried, restless look was stiffened into a dull, staring, fixed mask. It was the crust about his heart, far within the unconscious, degraded man, who enjoyed his daily hour of oblivion to that life-struggle which he had taken upon himself when he chose to unite his lot inseparably with that of his duty-breathing wife, that life-struggle in which he continually declared "pass," and turned aside. When he sat there silently staring over his glass, it was felt that he was brooding over something, possibly only the number of drams he had drunk, possibly his bill, possibly, too, a remote world of thought, where, like a philosopher, he gazed silently down into unfathomable depths. Or possibly he was musing in silent resignation upon the problem of matrimony, and the strange law of consequence which had set him down here in the public-house.
But regularity in all things, said Holman, and when the clock struck eight, with his tools in his hand and his head bent, he turned his faltering steps homewards.
On Saturday evenings, when work was over at the workshop, a tall, active young girl, with large wrists, thin arms and a stooping figure, would often come down to fetch him. She had a basket, and a piece of paper on which was written what she was to buy with the week's wages.
The two would then go up the street together, walking slower and slower as they went. Time after time he would stop, and look thoughtfully about him with one hand in his pocket, and an occasionally ejaculated "H'm, h'm!"—until they arrived at Mrs. Selvig's steps and green door, when he would suddenly declare that he had some "things" lying in there: he would be out again directly.
Silla knew by experience what "directly" meant, and meanwhile went her own way over the yards.
Through the lovely August evening, one troop of workmen after another came over the bridge near the mouth of the river, several of them with the same sort of escort as her father, of wife or child. It was so usual and its meaning so self-evident, that no one ever gave it a thought.
While the different gates and yards were emitting their streams of workmen, Silla had approached one of the narrow passages with which the loading places are furrowed. On each side was a wooden hoarding, and there were stacks of timber within. The irregularly cut up, black muddy roadway led into a forge and implement yard.
Just at the corner lay a heap of rubbish, full of broken bottles and pottery. She stood there with her basket, every now and then taking a step backwards, up the heap, to make room for passers-by. In this way she gained the top of the heap, and could see over the hoarding into the yard.
They were still busy receiving wages in there in a crowd round a little shed which did duty as an office.
With outstretched neck, and her two shining dark eyes turned almost like a bird's, she stood and looked eagerly in. There was no mistake about her object.
"Well, lass! are you looking for your sweetheart?" said a voice below.
But, as she at that moment caught sight of Nikolai, and he signalled to her, she took no notice of the voice, and waved her basket vigorously.
He came out down the passage, unwashed and sooty, straight from his work.
"He's gone now!"
"Who?"
"He had red hair, and had on blue braces and a sailmaker's cap. I think it was the man from Grönlien they call Ottersnake; and he accused me of standing here and looking for my sweetheart!"
"I'll sweetheart him! If I only get hold of him, I'll hammer him into nails! And then I'll pull his red hair to oakum, so that his father will only need to put it into the pitch-kettle!"
He looked about; but as the Ottersnake, who was doomed to so cruel and terrible a fate, was nowhere to be seen, his wrath suddenly subsided, and with an upward movement of the head, he proposed:
"Baker Ring's, Silla?"
He had his week's wages in his pocket, so they made a short cut through two or three muddy back yards, which had planks laid down across the worst places, up to the baker's shop.
Oh, how they bought, and how they did eat!
There were some specially delicious expensive cakes with jam inside. And it was the two collars, that he had thought of buying for himself next week, that they ate up!
With a great feeling of his own importance Nikolai related how he had now forged six large iron hooks with links to them; and she must not imagine that they wanted nothing but hammering—no, they had to be hammered out and beaten and bent at the right time! Down there they only made stakes and picks and tires; but he meant to be either a locksmith or a brazier.
This did not interest Silla very much; she wanted to hear about the picnic on Sunday, when he had gone to the woods with the journeymen. It must have been awfully jolly! And didn't they dance too?
"I should just think they did. Anders Berg is a capital fellow; he's going to set up for himself in Svelvig soon, and get married."
"And were the others engaged, too?"
"Pshaw!"
"Well?"
"Pooh!"
"What's the matter with you? Can't you tell me?"
"Why, it's nothing—only nonsense! There's not one of them that'll make a smith's wife—creatures that have larks now with one fellow and now with another?"
"And did you dance?"
"Oh, the 'prentices have only to run after beer; but when I'm a journeyman—but, Silla, the time—we must hurry!" he broke off suddenly.
"Oh, it's not late yet. One more nice one with jam—do go in and buy it! Oh, do, Nikolai!" she begged, and as he ran in to get what she wanted, she called after him:
"And some sweets to eat on the way home—some of those at four for a halfpenny."
"Can't you eat it as you go along, Silla?" he urged, when he came out again; "you must make haste! Just think if she heard at home that you had been with me."
"Pooh, there's no hurry," and she leaned against the wall, and regaled herself—"for you see," she mumbled, "father won't be out of Mrs. Selvig's yet a-while, and I'll say first of all that that has kept me: I can reckon at least half an hour for that. And then to mother I have the excuse that it's Saturday evening, and there were so many people in the shop that I could hardly get to the counter. And when I won't have any supper, you know, I'll only say I've got such a headache with standing and waiting in the shop: it was so stifling in there. I think mother's nose would be very fine, if she could guess that I had met you. Well, what are you looking so solemn about?"
"She at home"—he never named her mother in any other fashion—"forces you into lies every single day; no one has a right to speak the truth but her!"
"Oh!" she tossed her head impatiently; she had heard this so often.
"She eats up all the honesty in the room by herself, you know, for it's quite impossible to act honestly by her, for very terror. She keeps discipline, and much or little, it's all the same. Any one who wants to speak the truth without using his fists to back it up will get thrashed as I did! It doesn't matter for me; but when I think of you going home and making up all those lies again, and that you are so frightened, and haven't the strength to stand against them, Silla!"
She tried to laugh and make light of it; but her face fell sadly. She could not bear this unpleasant subject, for she was obliged to tell lies, however angry he might be.
And then she suddenly began to hurry.
"No, no, we must go home, Nikolai. I daren't stand here any longer."
Nikolai was starting off, but stopped suddenly at sight of Silla's dismayed countenance. She had turned her pocket inside out, and stood holding it while she gazed and searched on the ground round her. Then, in feverish haste, she unfastened her bodice, and searched there.
"The money! Oh, the money, Nikolai!" she cried anxiously, and went on shaking her skirt and looking about her, almost beside herself. "The silver was wrapped up in the two dollar notes, just as father gave them to me, and I put them into my pocket at once."
"What shall I do, Nikolai?" She began to cry, but all at once, with a sudden thought, she flew to the basket. But it was not there.
They searched and searched.
Of course it must be at the corner by the rubbish-heap, for she had stood there and waved her basket. It would be lying among the broken bottles.
The pale, thin rim of the autumn moon had risen over the yards while they were searching there step by step, Silla every now and then uttering a despondent, monotonous "Suppose I don't find it!" and Nikolai plunging his arm up to the elbow into puddles in which the roll of money might have fallen.
They had been by the bridge, they had searched the rubbish-heap, they had looked up and down and everywhere; it was not to be found.
It was beginning to be late, and Mrs. Holman was waiting at home. She would be really waiting now.
Silla began to cry.
Nikolai had only asked her once or twice to be quiet, and he would find the money. Now he suddenly said:
"I should like to give you another good feed of cakes to-day, and then throw myself into the sea with you, Silla. It would be no lie that we lay there."
Whether his proposition was meant seriously or not, it did not gain a hearing with her. She sat hopeless and despairing on a log while the big tears ran down her cheeks.
The seventeen-year-old workshop apprentice stood thoughtfully, with his flat cap pushed back over his rough hair, blackened by the week's work. He was gazing intently into an old rotten hole in the log. The hole became more and more rotten, more and more hollow, more and more empty while his busy thoughts were trying to find an expedient. But none came.
Fully aware of her fate, Silla rose, took her basket, and started homewards with her eyes fixed on the ground. She was going to the scaffold. Nikolai accompanied her as far as he dared, reiterating in different ways: "Don't be afraid, Silla, they can't kill you!"
Something like a low wail said that she heard him.
When she disappeared round the corner, he made a short cut which only he and one or two old yard cats knew of; and from the hoarding at the bottom of the square he saw her go, with bent head and the same quiet step, without stopping, down the cellar stairs.
When it was dark, he stood outside the window and listened. He heard her still sobbing quietly, after the storm that had passed over her.
Mrs. Holman had examined and cross-examined, and at last extracted from Silla the confession that she had been with Nikolai. That she, Mrs. Holman's daughter, in spite of all prohibitions, sought the society of that misled prodigal, who had rewarded her with such ingratitude, was enough to bring her to her grave. And no one would persuade her either that Holman's hardly-earned week's wages could vanish like steam from a kettle. A half-starved apprentice-boy, walking beside a well-filled pocket—any one could understand what the result of that would be. Master Nikolai had only carefully and craftily watched his time, when he knew that Silla had her father's money in her pocket, to get it shuffled into his own.
Matters were not improved by Silla in her obstinacy declaring that he had not so much as seen the money—as if Nikolai would take a farthing from her!
This last remark sealed his fate—there should be no concealment of his conduct on Mrs. Holman's part.
There was a commotion in the forge-yard, when the nest day a police-officer came and arrested Nikolai. He was to be taken to the police-station for having defrauded a young girl on Saturday evening of the whole of her father's week's wages.
But when they were gone, Anders Berg swore, as he brought the sledge-hammer down on the anvil, that that Nikolai had never done. The others—Jan Peter, and Katrinus, and Bernt Johan Jakobsen and Petter Evensen—they thought nothing; but to bring the police into a respectable work-yard! He had better get work in some other place after this!
For the first moment Nikolai had only one sensation—the paralysing fear by which a first acquaintance with the police is always accompanied. The feeling that he had a good conscience did indeed leap up within him, but only to die away again immediately. He had so often had that, and it had always proved to be too thin a sheet of ice to stand upon in the hour of trial. That kind of self-esteem was a plant which had too often been trodden under Mrs. Holman's heel to be able to bloom now as a fragrant, full-blown flower within him.
The outcome of his reflections was a sudden twist and a violent jerk, by which he hoped to escape from his inconvenient companion, the sole result, however, being that he immediately had a constable at each arm.
When brought up for examination before the police superintendent, a dark, unwilling defiance glowed in his face, and the sharp glance—too sharp for a lad of his age—did not prepossess any one in his favour.
Silla? He had not been with any Silla on Saturday.
It would never occur to him to betray her, and it was only when he was confronted with her and her mother, and heard that she had confessed, that he admitted it.
Silla continued to maintain, in a voice choked with tears, that he had not taken the money, but this proved nothing either for or against him. On the other hand what had more weight were the facts that had been elucidated on ransacking and examining the room in which he lodged—he lived in a garret at glazier Olsen's with three other apprentices—for they all agreed in saying that on the Saturday in question he had come home late, after they were asleep, and had gone out again very early on the Sunday morning.
The assertion of the accused that this was to renew the search for the lost money down by the yard did not seem very credible. But it was impossible to get any nearer to him.
A hardened young rascal. This was his foster-mother's testimony too.
Nikolai stood with his cap in his hand, looking down at the floor. He had a habit of drawing the skin of his forehead up and down when he was meditating. In the broad, young face with the large features, the grey eyes into which there sometimes came a peculiar look, and the cock's comb, of a tinge between zinc and copper, the police inspector's penetrating and—after many year's practice—not easily deceived eye saw the marks of one who would probably in the future often give occupation to the police.
"In order to exclude the possibility of conferences with the other apprentices in his room," he dictated for the record, "considering that the accused has manifested mala fides by an attempt to escape, as well as by his untruthful conduct and denials under examination, he will, for the present, be placed under arrest."
As the words of the order were read out, there were a few involuntary contractions of the muscles in Nikolai's face, which was damp with perspiration; there quivered in it the poor man's curse, at never having a way of escape; a false step, and he is caught, a lost dollar, and he comes before the court.
After another examination Nikolai was acquitted for want of evidence.
The morning when the prison door closed behind him, he slunk down the street with a feeling that all the windows on both sides were looking at him; it was anything but the gait of one who can let his honesty's sun shine once more.
Down at his lodging at Mrs. Olsen's he found his few things put ready in the cupboard under the stairs to be fetched away, and a message was left that his place in the garret was occupied by some one else.
He did not ask why. Mrs. Olsen's silence hurt him more than if she had cried aloud about people who drew on her "an examination and search of the house, and other disturbances."
And then he had to go down and show himself at the forge again—to Hægberg the master, and Anders Berg, and the journeymen, and all the apprentices.
It was with uncertain steps and stopping time after time. What did Anders Berg think, he wondered.
In a fit of despondency he half turned. But he must do it. So he held up his head and began to whistle. But as he neared the coal-begrimed wooden palings of the work-yard the whistling ceased, and he was in a cold perspiration when he entered the gate.
Without saying a word he went to the coal-bin and began to lift some bars of pig-iron which had to be moved aside. While he did so, no one either greeted or spoke to him.
Anders Berg had an iron in the furnace, and it was not until he and another man had finished hammering it out, that he came up to Nikolai and said:
"I was sure you would come back again. Here's some work for you; you can file these three keys."
Whereupon Nikolai was placed at one of the vices, and was soon busily at work with both coarse and fine files.
Anders Berg's words had done him such good, had placed him at once as it were on his feet before the whole workshop, and in his heart he made a vow of friendship and devotion to Anders Berg for ever.
There were showers of sparks and a ringing from the sledge-hammers in the large smithy, and sharp blows of hammers, while the files shrieked and whistled and set one's teeth on edge. The work went on and Nikolai thought he had never known until to-day how splendid it was to be a smith. He might as well do the key-bit with the fine file at once, while the key was on that side of the vice; and he filed the notch as neatly and smoothly as if it had been intended for a chest of drawers, and not a great pipeless key for a wooden gate.
Now came the handle. He worked away with the coarse file, until he could scarcely hear the sledge-hammer for its shrieking.
At the anvil stood a man making clincher nails, while one of the apprentices pulled the bellows and occasionally gathered the nails together. They were talking and laughing, and now and again some loud exclamation penetrated to Nikolai. It was only when the boy made a grimace at him, that it occurred to Nikolai that he was the subject of the conversation, and instantly the large file became quite light in his hand, and he had suddenly eyes and ears only for what was going on around him.
They were standing talking and nodding over there by the vices; Jan Peter ran and repeated what this one said and what the other one said. It was easy to see what the meaning of it all was, and that he now stood there like any show animal; no, like something much worse—like one who was capable of going to the pockets of any one of them!
There was not one of the apprentices who would share his night's lodging with him now. He could see that.
He stood straining his ears, with a feeling that they were killing him in all the work-yards round—they were filing him down at the vices, hammering him flat with the small hammers, and crushing him with the sledge-hammers. He guessed and understood glances and looks.
"Well, you know, Matthias," he heard from away there by the nails which the man was now gathering into his apron, "there are many easier trades than standing in a smithy: make a good pick out of your fists, lad!"
"He-he-he!" laughed the boy addressed.
"Or make yourself pincers that you can get down into skirt-pockets with—all the lassies in the town, lad, that have any pence."
Nikolai heard every word and the hoarse laughter that followed; he was very pale.
Coarse merriment shone in the man's sooty face, and, as their eyes met, he made a contemptuous grimace.
Soon after he came past with his apron full of nails. Their eyes met again; the scornful ones grew more scornful; Nikolai seemed to see them in a haze, and then the journeyman received a blow full in the face which laid him on his back, scattering the nails as he fell.
There was a short pause of surprise before they all rushed upon him.
But Nikolai swung the big file about him like a madman. He felt with frenzied pleasure, how he would strike—strike down the whole smithy one by one until justice was done him. Wait a little, he had only begun yet—a hammer was lying on the block.
But the men in the smithy did not wait, and the next moment it was he who lay on his back, his eyes blinded by blue and yellow sparks, and as many of his adversaries around and upon him as there was room for; he should be held fast and sent about his business now—he had used a weapon!
He felt a powerful grasp on his coat collar, a grasp that included the skin, felt himself dragged up and, without a pause, half carried, half flung, out of the smithy door.
It was Anders Berg, who had exerted his power to rescue him, and who—still only slightly relaxing his hold—led him out of the gate.
It was his farewell to the smithy.
"I'll just tell you something," exclaimed Anders Berg later, when the commotion had subsided; he was still red in the face and spoke loudly, while he hammered cold.
"There's come a wrong bend in Nikolai; but it isn't his fault!"
The hammer rang on the iron.
Nikolai did not take a lodging anywhere that evening; he was too bruised and dirty for that, his clothes too torn and ragged, and, more than anything else, he felt too sore to meet people now that he had left the smithy in such a way.
When night fell, he had once more taken up his familiar quarters in one of the stacks of planks down at the timber-yard. There, in one of the deep square spaces he lay and looked up at the stars and thought how entertaining the world had become!
Nikolai was out of work, that was very certain.
It never entered his head to present himself at any other smithy: they all knew each other too well for that. And even at barge-builder Hansen's, where he got a lodging up in the tool-loft, and his food on the days when he got a chance of doing something useful, they wanted to know now why he had left his trade. As if that were any business of theirs!
So Nikolai suddenly disappeared.
On the quay, the harbour and the steamers, a fellow with his hands could surely get on just as well as any other.
It was with fresh and dauntless courage, though with a stomach not overladen with food during the last few days, that he went down there.
He was received with a certain appreciative admiration. He found that it was a well-known fact that he had had an encounter with the police, and had been sufficiently dexterous to get off without their being able to fix anything upon him; the news of such an exploit travels like wild-fire in that world, and spreads a halo around its subject.
And as long as he was supposed to be only an idler, or an apprentice who was airing himself and taking a day or two's holiday from the smithy, the shareholders in the different businesses down there were both agreeable and talkative. But when—and that not once only—he suddenly turned to, and darted over the landing-stage from the steamer with a large trunk on his back and a traveller at his heels, past the cabs up to the hotel, they quite changed their tone. Had he a badge? Or did he think perhaps, that it would do to take other people's business? They knew very well what sort of a fellow he was!
He was well aware that he could not get a badge, so he must get along as he best could by working and toiling and fighting for an empty stomach, and make his way by threats and with his fists, and—when it was a case of being entrusted with a burden, or getting first hold of a trunk—by being deaf, stone-deaf, to everything they might think of calling out about him.
There were ten men to every job requiring one, and, as it were, a wall or circle drawn round every road to earning something. Some small jobs he might now and then chance to be alone in—when the lock of a door had slipped, or the door came off its hinges, or some kind of smithcraft was required at a moment's notice. But he gained no more than a bare subsistence, often only a dram or two by way of thanks.
And now that it had been such a long winter, he was both hungry and cold. The nights especially were so long. He often took spirits for his supper to get them to pass. And then he had to think over what he would try his hand at the next day—cutting the ice, work on the quay, clearing away snow or carrying planks in the yard.
Thinly-clad and with no overcoat, and rather red with the cold, he clattered down in a coat that was in holes at the elbows, and his old scarf that had taken its hue from the smithy, pulled high up about his ears. It was not difficult to see in him the smith's apprentice. Whenever he met any of Hægberg's men, he burst into a scornful laugh. Did they think, perhaps, that he was slovenly clad? It was just as he was now, that he wanted to be. He wanted to be free and have neither master nor journeyman nor any one over him, and to care for nobody.
If the forge-yard was one point that he preferred to keep away from, there were also other places in the town that he made a round to avoid—namely, that part of the quay where the blockmaker's workshop lay, and the Holmans' house up in the square.
Whatever the reason might be, he had no wish to meet Silla.
The last time he had spoken to her—the day after he had left the smithy—he noticed that she was looking about in a frightened way the whole time, and wanted him to stand first in one place and then in another. It could not be fear of any one at home, and then it suddenly dawned upon him that she was ashamed that people should see her standing and talking to him, so with a "Good-bye, Silla!" he darted from her.
Afterwards he thoroughly enjoyed seeing her look so unhappy and so eager to show him that she did not care what people thought. What did she care about him, when he had nothing to treat her with? It was not fit for her to stand talking to a fellow like him.
There is a splendid friend and ally for every one who has thin, ragged clothes, and that is the sun. He distributes overcoats in the shape of warm, sunny walls, brings life and movement with him, and then there need no longer be any uncertainty about a midday-meal.
Nikolai had had work on the quay the whole morning, and was now standing, in the midday rest, baking himself against the sunny wall, and yawning.
He stopped in the middle of a yawn. That slight figure in the faded cotton dress, that was running with her body bent forwards, and a handkerchief over the little, dark head, to keep off the sun—it was no other than Silla!
She was darting along among the baskets and traffic on the fish-quay; there was a searching haste in her like that of a frightened corn-crake, that turns its head now to one side now to the other as it runs. She had caught sight of him, and now she began calling:
"Nikolai! Nikolai!
"Nikolai!"—she almost choked in her hurry to speak—"Nikolai, just think! Mother, when she was unpicking my old blue dress to-day, she found the money in the lining, inside the lining, both the notes, and the silver too. I ran down to tell you directly I had taken father's dinner to the workshop. And now I'm going to the smithy, and they shall hear what they have done to you. Could you believe it! Inside the lining! I am so awfully, awfully glad"—and her eyes did look almost wild—You can't think what a grave face mother put on!"
"Just tell them at home that it's all the same to me!" said he bitterly and unmelted. But she did not notice it; she wanted to go to the smithy, and away she went.
He had no objection. But now that Anders Berg had set up for himself in Svelvig, there was no one there he cared about, to hear it. For he was a free man now!
He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, gazing over the edge of the quay at a sunken sugar-loaf, which a crowd of small boys, amid noise and clamour, were labouring to get up. It lay already half melted on the green bottom, on which the sun drew wavy lines.
Silla might try all she could to get him into the smithy. Since they had tacked the word thief on to him, he had got soaked through with salt water, just like the sugar-loaf. And besides, to stand there and slave, when he could be his own——
"Hi, you boys! I'll show you how to get the sugar-loaf up, but you will have to eat it yourselves."
The public-house—the one at Mrs. Selvig's, with the green door and white window frames, farthest down the street—had seen Holman's quiet, subdued, stooping figure come and go for many years. His grasp on the door-handle was just as precise, his walk up to the brown counter after having laid down his tools, exactly the same, though his face had a little more colour in it. He had a certain reputation there, which had allowed of his "chalking up" for several years past, and there was a regular proportion of his account, about which his inexorably correct wife had not the faintest idea—"for Holman had his weekly pocket-money."
And as usual on Saturday evenings, Silla was walking about outside with the basket, waiting for him.
She was really quite nicely dressed in her cotton gown with a little white handkerchief tied round her neck; but clothes did not seem to set her off. The slight, overgrown figure seemed to show through everywhere.
She made a quick turn, when she thought she caught a glimpse of Nikolai at the bottom of the street. She had fancied the same thing last Saturday evening. She had not really spoken to him since early in the summer, when he got so angry because she wanted him to go into the smithy again.
She went quickly down the street—she was quite certain that it was he!
She hurried on farther, down to the bridge; but it was the same as last time—he was not to be seen. So she turned back again, disappointed, keeping constant watch on Mrs. Selvig's green door. She knew her father would appear as the clock struck eight.
She went up towards it and down again: she began to grow impatient. It must be past the time. They were beginning to shut the shops here and there, and if she was to get anything bought this evening, it would be impossible to wait any longer.
She must really go up and see whether her father were sitting there still—whether he had not perhaps gone when she was down at the bridge: he never mistook the time.
She had gone up the street as far as the place where the stone pavement began, when she saw the green door open and slam quickly to again, as a bare-headed, half-dressed servant-girl ran out. Immediately after, a man came out in similar haste, and through the door which he left standing open behind him, a number of people, with and without hats, streamed out on to the steps.
Something was the matter!
Now a window was also opened, or rather hammered open, so that the pane clashed down on to the pavement.
Probably some drunken man or other, who could not stand any longer—it was Saturday evening, you know—and who was making a row, and must be taken by the police.
She had often seen such sights before, and was quite accustomed to them. She was not anxious about her father either: he never interfered in such matters.
But why did he not come out? Every one else had come out.
A faint, slanting gleam of evening light had fallen in through the empty square of window. Her father generally sat at the table just inside; he always kept the same place. And she went up and peered in between the flower-pots,—some half-stifled, dirty geraniums and hydrangeas, saturated with public-house effluvia.
Who was that—that man who was lying on the dirty counter, with his necktie and shirt unfastened and one arm hanging down—was it her father?
"If only some one had a lancet!—he moved just now—a lancet!"
What more they said on the steps she did not notice, except that some wanted to deny her entrance, and others again said that she was Holman's daughter.
She awoke, as if after a fall from a great height during which she had lost consciousness, to find herself sitting by the counter supporting her father's head. She thought she remembered clinging to his neck and begging him to answer her: but there was no rattling in his throat now.
They had placed an old, worn sofa-pillow and the seat of a chair under his head. Behind stood quart and pint measures, dram-glasses, tin funnels and beer-bottles pushed right up to the wall to make room. His wide-open eyes stared up at the once white-washed beams of the ceiling, and one side of his face was drawn up into a grin, which made him look as if he were unspeakably disgusted with the dirty ceiling.
A big man sat at the door. Silla knew him: he was the public-house bear, as he was called; he who turned people out for Mrs. Selvig. He was sitting silent on the bench.
There was perfect stillness in the room; she heard only the drip from the tap of the brandy-cask down into the dish beneath, and saw, through the half-open door to the inner room, Mrs. Selvig and her two daughters bustling about on tiptoe.
A young man in spectacles entered. He asked a few rapid questions, while he opened a case of instruments on the counter at the feet of the prostrate figure. He listened at its chest with the stethoscope and without it, and shook his head, pulled out a lancet, and pushed the shirt sleeve up the hanging arm.
"Hold the sleeve, so that it doesn't slip down!" he said with a glance up at Silla; he took her to be a member of the household.
The lancet pierced and pierced again. The ashen grey face of the girl looked into his, as if she would beg him for only one drop of that which was the life.
There came out something like a thick, dark syrup.
He listened again, felt again; one more trial with the lancet, and it was with an air of superiority, and a mouth drawn up like his professor's, that the young bachelor of medicine turned to those assembled and pronounced his concise verdict:
"Stone dead! The man's stone dead!—from drink!"
His words were followed by a cry from Silla, who threw herself upon her father.
"Is that his daughter?" asked the young doctor. He carefully wiped his lancet at the light, and put his instruments together preparatory to going, but gazed at the same time over his spectacles at her. Heedless of everything, she cried incessantly over the body.
"You aren't dead, are you, father? Father!"
It was a wild sorrow, without consideration or bashfulness, and the young doctor felt that he was witnessing an unpleasant scene from life in the outskirts of the town. He had done his duty and hastened out.
A twenty-year-old workshop apprentice, pale and overcome, was standing behind Silla, trying to recall her to herself. He took her by the shoulder, and whispered repeatedly, as loudly as respect for the dead would allow:
"Silla! Silla! don't you hear? It's me—Nikolai!"
And he tried in vain two or three times to lift her up from the body.
Meanwhile a policeman stood and examined Mrs. Selvig and the girls. He made notes, and took down the particulars of the death.
Just finished his usual quantity, a bottle of ale and four drams. The girl at the bar saw him quickly stretch out his hand—had the impression that he wanted another dram—and when he slowly sank down from his chair, supposed that he was drunk. Used never to be so drunk that he could not walk or stand, at any rate by supporting himself or holding on to convenient, firm things.
This last piece of evidence was deposed to by several of the regular customers, or as they were described in the police report—"Several of the regular visitors to the refreshment-room, whose testimony may be considered as thoroughly reliable."
Several of these silent, somewhat tottering, figures who had been thus aroused from their dull, Saturday evening drowsiness, had already disappeared from the scene. Bottles and glasses remained standing with their contents.
"Might there not possibly be some other direct or indirect cause?"
It was at first hesitatingly that Mrs. Selvig could think of anything of the sort.
Unwilling as she was to go to extremes with an old, regular customer, she yet had been obliged this evening to give him to understand that whatever he required in future must be paid for in cash. His bill had now, after all the years he had enjoyed credit in the tap-room, grown so enormous, that she, a widow with two daughters, could no longer feel justified in letting it run on. During all the years he had frequented her house, she had faithfully kept her word never to send a bill home to his house. But a bill cannot lie for ever on the threshold, as the police know. That is the way of the world: it is the same for one as it is for the other—so it must just be got by a distress warrant. That was what she had said to him, unwilling though she had been to do so, and so unpleasant, she could truthfully say, as it was to disturb such a quiet, decent man.
It was high time to rid the bar of its encumbrance. The public-house bear had hunted up a hand-barrow, but had to get a couple more men to help carry. And they must have a proper contrivance with a cloth over, so that the whole thing would look like a hospital stretcher—a dead man with nothing but a tablecloth over him would make too great a commotion out in the street!
It was something of this kind that Mrs. Selvig and her daughters were busy looking out and putting together, out of some green bed-hangings. One's good name is dear to every one, and Mrs. Selvig felt that what had just taken place was a blow to the house.
It was now nearly dark in the tap-room. Holman's dark figure had been moved on to the stretcher, which stood on the floor ready to be lifted, and a message had been sent to Mrs. Holman.
Perhaps they delayed purposely; a little later in the evening when it was darker, and an undesirable sensation in the street would be avoided.
Silla's face was stiff with crying. There was no one in the room but her and Nikolai.
He stood by the counter, and she was sitting with her back to the window; there was no sound but the humming of a gnat in the half-darkness up under the curtain.
At last he broke the silence.
"He was kind, both to you and to me, as often as he dared be, you know."
Silla did not answer.
"He always dreaded going home at night so, you know. He'll be spared that now, and setting his foot inside this public-house again, too!"
"Father! Father!" broke from Silla, followed by a fit of violent sobbing.
"Listen, Silla!" he said, interrupted by the repressed weight on his own breast. "If you have no father, you have some one here who will take care of you, and knows what it is—I have never had any father either, nor ever seen any. And I will be a smith, as there won't be any more block-making for you now. I only wanted to tell you, so that you can remember it afterwards," he added softly—it did not look as if Silla were listening to him.
"And this evening I'll follow you right to the corner, and I'll stand there until everything is in, and I shall be outside to-night; so you know it, if anything is wanted."
"Yes, stay outside, Nikolai!" she whispered.
The public-house bear and the two bearers came in. They lifted the stretcher out through the door, and, with a little difficulty at the turn, down the steps, where a few spectators stood.
And so they went up the street—the dead with the two bearers and the public-house bear in front, and Silla and Nikolai behind.
At the place where they were to part, he pressed the basket, which she had forgotten, into her hand, and then stood looking after them.