If Silla had not come like a wedge between the bark and the wood, how comfortably and free from care Barbara could have lived now. She had no one but Silla to thank that she was now deprived of all the help she might and—it was her firm conviction—ought to have had in her son Nikolai, with the regular earnings he might have put, every single week, into the till; which, for some reason or other, never would exhibit the amount it ought to have done.
It was not improbable that Barbara, after the fashion of country people, forgot to take into account the articles that went towards the nourishment of her own weighty person. On the other hand her ever ready hospitality with the coffee-pot was not without its savour of trade-policy—what she gave away was only to be looked upon as seed which would bring forth a hundredfold in the shape of customers.
Barbara's room was thus becoming the meetingplace for all the gossiping forces of the neighbourhood.
The posts in the fences had snow hats on, and snow-drifts lay by the roadside and on the fields.
One afternoon, when the sledges were creaking outside in the cold, and the door too, whenever anybody came in, Mother Taraldsen, who cupped people and applied leeches, and tall Mother Bækken were sitting and enjoying a cup of steaming hot coffee with loaf-sugar.
Mother Taraldsen was holding forth on the subject of bad liquids and ruined times, and how every trade was going down-hill, while Mother Bækken, getting more and more full of objections, put her head on one side, and stirred up her cup.
"I can remember a little of the old times too, and I don't know if they were any better, though every one is welcome to have his opinion, of course," here the long, yellow face with the eyes blinking with their own meaning, was laid almost across the cup; "but the day has grown longer for workmen now. Just think how they sat in the dark in the farms and cottages with pine-torches in the fireplace to cut and spin by; and there lay the lads the whole long winter through, and idled and yawned in their beds from three or four in the afternoon until they had to go out with a lantern and see to the horses for the night. But paraffine has got them out of their beds. It's as if we had the sun the whole winter now, and people can see to earn a few pence."
"Yes, but everything hasn't got right in that way either, when they sit and play cards and gamble and drink at the public-houses."
"That's not oil, that's gas! But that's good for something, too, both in the street lamps and up in the factory."
"And for drunkenness and dancing and wickedness."
Mother Bækken made a bend down to her cup with the side of her cheek and her chin, and up again in order to contradict in her most ingenious manner. But just then Anne Graves came in to the counter—it was she who kept the churchyard in order—and then one must be careful what one says.
Thank you kindly! She had no objection to a warm cup of coffee in this cold. She had had a busy day to-day with the big funeral; they must have heard all the ringing at dinner-time. He was an excellent man. She enlarged, by the plundering of diverse fragments of the funeral sermon, upon his worth and importance as a man and a citizen of the town. There had been speeches and such countless black hats and flowers, that the coffin was quite hidden. Yes, that was the third they had taken in since the New Year, she uttered with a sigh.
"You never know what sort of people you have among you, until they are dead," remarked Mother Bækken. "If he had been the poor man's friend, they could have sung and trumpeted a little about it while he lived. Perhaps that's turned the wrong way, but—" she slowly, and with increasing expression, bent her face over her cup.
Mother Bækken must always have her own interpretations, so Mother Taraldsen discreetly warded off a disturbance of the peace by striking into the very middle of the manufacturing part of the town. She had come up the streets yesterday evening with a covered cup containing leeches, and you might really think that if, all that long way up from the chemist's, you had escaped rogues and robbers, you ought to go free up here. But there came those great, grown-up girls, flying one after another along a slide down the street, screaming and shouting, so that it was enough to knock people down. So she had dropped the cup with all five leeches in it, and if it had not been moonlight so that she could see to pick them up again on the snow, she would have lost every single one. It was that Josefa and Gunda and Kalla down the street, and that long Silla—she came along like a ghost. Ah, Mrs. Holman, who is so particular, should see what sort of a daughter she has, when it gets dark.
Barbara nodded to herself, and thought that Nikolai should just hear what people said.
"I must really go out and look at them one evening, yes indeed. Well, that about the leeches I disapprove of entirely and altogether, I must confess. But young blood must have movement in some way, and may I ask,"—here Mother Bækken laid one fore-finger upon the other—"have they any way of amusing themselves, if they must not dance, and not slide, and not toboggan?"
But now Mother Taraldsen grew angry.
"If it's proper for respectable young girls to tear about and make a row, it must be the new fashion that Mother Bækken's preaching about. If you kept a careful watch at the corners, you might perhaps see that there were those who were out to meet the flock of geese."
"Then it would be better if you came down on them instead of the poor girls," replied Mother Bækken obstinately; "a man like that clerk down at the contractor's, and him at the Stores, and then that fine clerk, that Veyergang up at the factory and his friends."
Barbara was standing at the counter with a customer.
Nobody must say anything against her Ludvig. She knew him; she had been with him day and night for fourteen years. If she only had a halfpenny for every time he had cried and screamed for Barbara!
She would have enlarged upon the subject, if it had not been for the man at her back who was calling out for his soft soap.
So cup-and-leech-Mother Taraldsen went on, saying that the girls stood poking their heads out of every single gate the whole way up the street; she saw it so well when she came home from applying leeches of an evening.
She and Anne Graves then began to review the young people more closely. There were some they would not even mention, and some they named with all sorts of interesting doubts and opinions, and lastly some they only stopped to wonder that they had nothing whatever to say either about or against.
As to Barbara, she noticed carefully what was said about Silla, and made up her mind that Nikolai should be warned; he should at any rate know what he was doing when he went and took that girl.
And neither was it with a diminishing-glass she let him see it, as time after time she referred to all the dangers the young factory-girls up there were exposed to. She had sufficient instinct not to mention Silla, so that he should not think she was speaking against her. But every time she touched upon it, she saw well, that it went into Nikolai, and had fully the effect she wished.
Barbara had made some of these remarks this evening too, and Nikolai was sitting gloomily listening to the noise outside.
One party after another was flying past down the high-road on sledges, like shadows in the moonlight, with shouts and cries—half-grown lads and lassies, and now and then a party of fine people from the town below. One tall lad, with the rope over his shoulder and his heels digging into the hillside, was dragging a wood-sledge up, with a heavy load of girls upon it.
Nikolai could not help keeping watch through the kitchen window, and left his mother, who sat inside by the paraffins lamp, without any answer.
They were Kristofa and Kalla, those two who were standing there in the street talking, while they slid backwards and forwards the whole time on a little bit of ice. They were waiting for somebody—Silla perhaps; they were standing close by her street. It was a question which of them would dare to venture in and be so bold as to ask Mrs. Holman with many "dear, kind, goods" if she would allow Silla to go over to her for a little while this evening—always untruthfulness and disorder!
There was another sledge party with fine hats and glowing cigars standing laughing just outside.
Barbara stopped her knitting-pins to listen.
"We have this noise every evening till quite late," she remarked, "as long as the moon shines on the road."
He turned hot all over. If Silla were to get into this, then he might as well lay both himself and his hammer down.
Yes, there she was looking about at the corner for her two friends.
"Good evening, old lady," said he, suddenly coming out of the door.
"Is that you, Nikolai?" exclaimed Silla, in surprise. "Have you seen anything of Kristofa and Kalla? I did so want to speak to them! Haven't you? Do you know how I got out? I was only going to get the cat in for the night. I chased it out myself, and hid it so nicely under the wooden tub out in the shed. If only it doesn't mew."
She looked round again eagerly, while the elongated shadow across the snow imitated her slender figure and swaying movements.
"Oh, and they promised to wait for me!"
"Well, I suppose they've only gone."
"Only? They thought I was going out with them this evening, and if they haven't been here already, they may perhaps stand and wait, for I must go in, you see, or else I shall have mother coming out into the street after me. Listen, Nik! If you were nice "—she took hold of his jacket, and pushed him backwards and forwards—"you would find them and tell them—can you tell them properly?—that I must be good and stay at home this evening, but hurrah for a holiday to-morrow and the day after! Say that mother will be washing at the Antonisens' the whole of the end of the week, and they'll quite understand it. But be sure you find them, Nikolai, so that they won't blame me."
Nikolai was not insensible to her amiability, nor yet to her liveliness and prettiness; but it had just the opposite effect. While she stood pulling his jacket, he heard the voices on the high-road all the time.
"That's it, that's it! You want to get quite free now, Silla. Well, just let them drag you out among them! But that a respectable girl will let herself be drawn into such goings on!" he added, out of humour.
"A respectable girl? Respectable girl! May I ask what sort of fun she is to have then? I really wonder, Nikolai, that you didn't find a respectable girl for yourself who would walk with her back like a poker, and her arms under her shawl, and who only lets herself slide by accident as it were, when she comes to a slide—daren't even look out of the corner of her eye at a hand-sledge, because she's so well-behaved! It was a respectable one like that you ought to have had. And then, when you were standing hammering all day in the smithy, and she was deep in her work standing on all fours with her head behind the wash-tub at home, I suppose that would be as you would like to have it. But I can tell you, Nikolai, that if there isn't to be any fun in this world, then good-bye and be rid of it. I've had to sit shut up long enough at home."
He shook his head. "If only there weren't all those wolves howling away there on the road. But you see, they want to amuse themselves too; and—and the insignificant ones have to take care of what they have, it seems to me—and if you're of the same mind, Silla, we'll go in to your mother at once—this very moment." He took her by the hand to carry out his intention.
"You must be mad, Nikolai," she exclaimed in terror; the resolution was as terrible as it was unexpected. "No, no, let it be," she begged in an eager whisper. "Think of mother! Have you quite forgotten what mother is like? It will be time enough when we've got something to marry on."
"Time enough? No, it's not time enough for me, Silla. I must try and get it said now."
"And what will happen to me at home afterwards? And you're not dressed for it either, this evening."
"Oh, don't be afraid, Mr. Nikolai. I may as well see with my own eyes how highly my daughter condescends to respect her mother who is left a poor defenceless widow."
It was Mrs. Holman's own voice; she was standing in the gateway, looking preternaturally large.
"I thought I had gone through the worst that could be, when Holman died, and that I should be spared the pain of catching my own flesh and blood out, without leave, in conversation in the street, in the middle of the snow. Neither should I have thought that that person would ever presume to come so near my house. Just you come in with me, Silla. Come in, do you hear—at once!"
If any one could have gathered up the component parts of Mrs. Holman's last screaming treble, he would have found a wealth of emotions: injured motherly dignity, wrath, contempt, hatred, and something heavy, which was meant to have a crushing effect, and really did almost make Silla fall on her knees; she stood there without moving.
Nikolai had become a little hardened, however, since the old days; he knew now that there were others of whom he was more afraid than he was of Mrs. Holman. He was not affected by her.
"I must ask to be allowed to come in, however, ma'am, for I didn't come here this evening to stand out in the snow. It is to you yourself I want to speak."
"Perhaps it's no longer than can be said here where we stand," answered Mrs. Holman, rudely. "Come here, Silla!"
"Oh no, it's not very long; but then I must explain one or two things that belong to it."
As Mrs. Holman still continued to bar the gateway and only beckoned again to her daughter, Silla, in her despair and terror, suddenly made her choice. There was nothing for it but to shut her eyes and stand by Nikolai, and she took his arm boldly.
"Yes, ma'am, that's it, as you see. We hold together as we have done ever since we were little. And I came this evening to ask for her, and to ask if we could have the benefit of your leave and consent. For with my credentials and good wages, and when I never drink and—"
Silla now acted with the courage of despair; she pushed Nikolai so that they all three—Mrs. Holman yielding half involuntarily—came through the gate and from thence into the room where the battle was then fought.
While Silla sat with her hands before her face on a chair in the dark and Nikolai, with quiet persistency continued to plead his case, and make as manifest as possible how he now had a prospect of becoming foreman and could provide for Silla, Mrs. Holman assumed a mightily offended, repellant attitude. She employed her whole power; she bridled, and she was wrathful, and she exhibited the most extreme astonishment. It almost looked as if he thought he could really take her daughter from her, whether she said yes or no. What was there left for an elderly woman to live on, when her husband was dead, and her daughter who could keep her, refused, because she thought of marrying a smith who could not so much as show that he had a wedded father?
She was on the point of rising in defence to the death of her maternal rights, when a light suddenly dawned upon her. Her eyes began to gaze into a perspective of the future. If Nikolai ever came to justify the great words and promises he was now making, she might, in case of the worst, when the time came, claim an asylum with them.
This thought, however, did not prevent her from selling every concession, with deep sighs, as dearly as possible.
She must say she had thought of something quite different for Silla. And, however it might be, she would not hear of any gadding about or sweet-hearting until Nikolai could show as much ready money as Holman had done.
He had had a hundred dollars and his good wages, and when Nikolai could lay as much money on the table in front of her eyes, it would be time to talk about it.
A hundred dollars—that was something decided at last. He held her in a vice with that.
That was the feeling which filled him when, a little while after, he sprang right across the snowdrift to shorten the way, and knocked at Barbara's door. He must have some one to tell it to—that Mrs. Holman had acquiesced in Silla's having in this way promised herself to him.
It was exactly the same view of her well-considered advantage that occurred to Barbara while she lay that night collecting herself after the news. She raised her large person up in bed under the influence of the brilliant idea:
Why, then, she could live with Nikolai!
This grocery business was completely eating her up—it did not enter her head that she was eating it up.
She suddenly felt quite clear as to her whole position; how it would be best both for her and Nikolai that she should give up the shop in time, and how instead she could be of unspeakable use in helping the totally inexperienced Silla to manage the house, and perhaps earn a few pence at other houses. And she had never heard but that a son was bound to provide for his mother.
The following Sunday Mrs. Holman drank coffee at Barbara's; but as Mrs. Holman was silent about what had taken place, Barbara was silent too. Only once she led the conversation up to her son Nikolai, and thought that possibly in the autumn, when the room next door was empty, he might move into it. It would not be too much, when it was remembered how they had always been separated.
Why Mrs. Holman at that moment became thoughtful, pursed up her mouth and said: "Thank you," she would not have any more coffee! and somewhat unexpectedly shortened her visit, shall be left untold. It can only be stated, that from that moment, a silent contest began between them under water—under the most friendly form, it must be added, for Mrs. Holman's sake if for nothing else.
The coffee visits continued, if possible, with greater frequency, and Barbara as well as Mrs. Holman discussed and talked over every possible subject, except the one that lay nearest to their hearts—their own personal plans in connection with Nikolai and Silla. On that point they watched each other in diplomatic silence, like two chess-players of whom the one dare not move until he has seen through the other one's intention; Mrs. Holman, in the middle of some strictly reserved opinion, taking in everything with her precise, little face and cold grey eyes, and seeing it all clear and small as if through the bottom of a tumbler; and Barbara, round, hospitable, large and fat, with great, overflowing features, and generally talking about her time at the Consul's.
But during all this, there was one thing upon which each of them became always more and more decided—if she could not live with them herself, she would at any rate put a stop to the other coming and filling up the house.
The two future mothers-in-law were each occupied to the best of their ability in making it impossible for the other; but of this quietly calculated conflict which was going on in the ground far below them, Nikolai and Silla had no suspicion.
Since Mrs. Holman had seen what Silla could busy herself with—she was quite struck with amazement at her own blindness—she had become far more strictly attentive, and also much more on the lookout and watch against Nikolai.
The fruits of idleness had unfortunately revealed themselves, and there was no other remedy for them than to watch conscientiously and see that Silla worked. She must really set about something that there was some use and help in, all through the long light spring evenings, and not just run for the milk, or out when any one came and asked if she might.
Nikolai soon found that the situation was far from being improved after he was acknowledged in the quality of wooer. But notwithstanding that he saw no more of her than a short glimpse now and then, a great step in advance had actually been made. He had now only to work hard, and that he did manfully; the hammer worked, in his hands, as if by steam.
In some ways, too, he was re-assured, for if Mrs. Holman watched against him so carefully, this same watchfulness was a security against others, too. It was well to know that she was no longer to be found up there among those giddy girls in the evening. A cold shiver ran down his back when he one day met young Veyergang coming out of his mother's. He only looked indifferently at Nikolai with half-closed eyes, when they met in the doorway, as if he did not quite remember him, and then asked Barbara over his shoulder, with a nod at Nikolai: "Is that the fellow?" and went out:
"What's he been doing here, mother?"
"Nothing."
"Have you been borrowing money of him?" he continued sharply.
"Of course not. Not a penny, though I do need it so badly."
"What was he talking about?"
"He wanted to light his cigar, as he so often does when he goes down this way. Surely that can't do you any harm! And it wouldn't be much good forbidding him to do it either, I should think—either for me or for you!" She added the last words red with anger.
"No, I certainly can't forbid him, mother. But remember, if you borrow of him, everything is at an end between us!"
"Oh, Nikolai, you are so quick-tempered. No, of course not; I shouldn't think of borrowing!" As she spoke she turned round and pushed something she had in her hand into her bosom. "No, of course not!"
"I could hear he had been talking about me."
"No, indeed, how could you think so?"
"Yes he was, mother," he persisted, gloomily.
"About you? Oh, well, I was telling him a little about how hard you were working now to get together those few shillings for Mrs. Holman." Barbara talked rather confusedly.
"And perhaps about Silla, too?" he asked searchingly.
"Oh, no! he knew all about that before. I'm not the only one who knows about it in this gossiping place, and, upon my honour, Nikolai, it didn't come from me—not to-day," she added.
"I wouldn't have minded if you had said it then; it would be a good thing for that fellow to know that she is an engaged girl."
"Isn't that just what I said? Only he didn't believe it."
"No, I dare say not!" Nikolai stood at the window reflecting. This visit of Veyergang's!
He had enough noise and worry just now down at the smithy. It was just a question whether he should not be made a foreman. Old Mrs. Ellingsen had sent for him several times on this account, and it looked as if it were almost settled.
Things had been in this condition for some time; there was no great need of hurry in coming to a determination, as the situation was not to be filled until the autumn.
Lately, however, it had seemed to Nikolai that Mrs. Ellingsen was behaving rather strangely. He noticed, too, that they were talking and making a great deal of fuss in the smithy; but it did not strike him that it might be Mrs. Ellingsen's intention to draw back, until one day when one of the men remarked scornfully that he did not suppose there was any one in the smithy who would think of supplanting Olaves. If any one did, he would have to look out for himself, for they would all stick to Olaves.
Nikolai knew well that they frowned at him because he was always hard at work, saved up his pence, and firmly refused to join the others in a glass of beer or a dram.
He was without a companion. And now, when this foreman's question hung in the balance, he noticed that the whole of his past life was stirred and dug up again till it was as thick as the grounds in a coffee-cup—from the old police and fighting story right back to his childhood's days among the timber-stacks.
These old stories were Nikolai's smarting wounds. He was always thinking they were forgotten, and they were always coming up again, and now it was insupportable suffering. He endeavoured not to betray it by a look; but he was by no means in a good temper as he stood there.
The sooner he got to know from Mrs. Ellingsen how it was to end the better; and Nikolai was soon standing with his cap in his hand in her room, to ask what he might depend upon.
It took a long time, with many "h'ms" and "ha's" before she managed to get her spectacles off and the wires put properly into her hair again. Then at last it came out with some hesitation. She meant no offence; she knew he was a good smith enough; but there were so many who knew Olaves to be such an honest, good fellow, and she was an old woman who needed some one whom she could thoroughly trust—no offence meant to Nikolai—but she must consider the matter.
That was the answer he received, and with it his prospects, that he had counted upon and shown to Mrs. Holman when he asked for Silla's hand, were destroyed.
The next day when he came into the smithy they all smiled and tittered. They knew he had been to Mrs. Ellingsen and had got his answer. But if they thought they could tease or frighten him into giving it up, they were very much mistaken.
Olaves behaved as if nothing was the matter, and even civilly offered a helping-hand in breaking the bar-iron.
Nikolai only turned his back on him.
"I never meddle with any other man's work, and I don't advise any one to worm himself into my affairs," he said, "unless he wants a dressing that will make his back as hot as that red iron there!" he added, with a glance at Olaves.
There was a general silence.
But at dinner-time there was a great deal of talking and fuss about this affair. Every one had heard how Nikolai had threatened Olaves, and Olaves, as a precaution, found witnesses for his words.
"He looked as if he could use the sledge-hammer to something besides forging bolts, that fellow, if he could do it without witnesses!"
They might talk as much as they liked for all that Nikolai cared; he did his work, and never heard that Hægberg had anything to complain of. He was prepared for a disappointment now.
There was one thing, though, that he would do before he gave in—go straight to Hægberg and speak out, and then the master could give his testimony as to which he wanted, if Mrs. Ellingsen asked him.
The final answer from Mrs. Ellingsen was delayed week after week: at last it was two months.
What could the old woman mean? The whole smithy wondered—she must have a foreman by the autumn.
At last, one morning it appeared in the shape of a message.
It was drawing on towards evening one broiling hot summer day. In both floors of the grey wooden house in which Mrs. Holman lived, the small-paned windows stood open, drinking in the slight coolness there was in the air, while the dwellers within went about their occupations more or less lightly clothed. A faint breath only now and again stirred the half transparent curtains, or the white clothes hanging on lines across the yard.
At the window on the ground floor just above the entrance to the cellar, stood a slender, dark-eyed young girl with turned-up sleeves, busy at the water tap under which she had a wash-tub full of clothes. Her head could be seen now above, now below the short blind, cooled and refreshed by the cold rush of water.
Suddenly she stopped in surprise.
Nikolai entered with his flat cap pushed triumphantly on one side.
"The world's right enough, I can tell you, Silla. The only thing is to see that everything is properly in order from the very beginning. He who hasn't got a father, must be his own father, you know!"
"But Nikolai! Did you know mother was out?"
"Pooh! What is there that I don't know! My mother told me just now that it was one of the washing days at Antonisens. But you see, Silla, it's beginning to get late, and—if you'd like to know—I've been invited to-day to be foreman at Mrs. Ellingsen's. That'll be only ten dollars a month more!"
"Foreman? Is it true, Nikolai?" She retreated from the wash-tub, looking doubtfully at him. "Come here with your smutty face!" she said, hastily pulling the clothes out of the tub. "You are so awfully black! Foreman, did you say? No, is it really true? Oh, you must put up with a little splashing; I can't see the foreman for coal-soot! Then Mrs. Ellingsen didn't ask Olaves first?"
"No, she didn't."
"And no one put out their tongue or made Mrs. Ellingsen afraid of you, as they did before?"
"Oh, Hægberg must have let her know that he hadn't taken any harm from me."
"If only they don't begin again and do what they can. For your getting in front of them stings and chafes and torments every one of them, ever since that time when you had to do those wheel pivots over again for Olaves. And then they dig up all the old stories they can find."
"Oh no! The world's right enough, I tell you, and Mrs. Ellingsen must take the smith who works her smithy best. Besides it's as fixed as a vice, and the contract signed this morning. And it's pretty badly needed, for the money that mother borrowed last, it—it—whu!"—he whistled—"has gone the same way as the rest. It disappears like smoke with her. It seems to me she trades backwards instead of forwards, and that the profits go the wrong way."
"Now you're so nice and clean, that you shine. That way with your hair or else the cock's-comb will stand up too much."
"I rushed straight out of the smithy, you see, to come up here and cram it into you. I went in to mother first, and then I promised her to go down and buy some mackerel for supper. Two smacks have come in to-day, they say."
Silla's face showed that this was a great piece of news. They were both natives of the town, and the arrival of the mackerel brought with it a number of pleasant recollections and pictures from the time when they lived in the square down by the wharves.
She looked a little undecided.
"What if I put on my shawl and went with you!" she exclaimed. "Wait for me down below, Nikolai, so that we don't go together in the street up here!"
It was a proposal that it was not easy to resist, she was so eager about it. And then he had been made foreman to-day!
She was not long in putting on her blue-striped dress and a shawl over her head and following him.
They hastened down together; she chattering gaily as in the old days when they had stolen out, he quite taken up with looking at and listening to her. They walked in the middle of the road, anything but carefully; clouds of dust arose at every step, but Nikolai only saw Silla, dark-eyed, warm and gay in the middle of it all.
Down in the town that warm summer evening, the streets were unusually busy about the fish-place. There was evidently something that occasioned more life and movement than usual. The bridge was full of people hanging over the railings and looking down at all those who were pushing their way forwards amid noise, shouts and cries to get a mackerel for their supper.
This greenish-blue, shining fish, so round and strong and quick, sea-built for lightning speed, its head formed for cleaving the water, and an elastic arrow-feather as the termination to an almost dangerously slender tail—it had already been glittering for two days on the stalls in the fish-market.
Even as late as yesterday morning it was a rarity, and only for the tables of the wealthier, but later in the afternoon another smack came in,—there had been a large haul out by the Hval Islands—and to-day two more loaded vessels, so that the market was over-stocked.
Yes, indeed, the mackerel had come—that is to say, the mackerel that the working-man can buy. It was to be had now for two-pence or two-pence halfpenny apiece, both on the fish-market and up the river here. The women, who speculated, carried them in baskets up to all the most out-of-the-way parts of the town.
It found its way now everywhere, where there was only a hole for it to slip into, a kettle or a pan for it to be boiled or fried in—into all the galleys in the harbour, from the large, superior steamship or full-rigged vessel, down to the cooking-stoves on the timber sloops and the little decked barges, where people were resting, and broiling it in the summer evening, into all the back blocks and small streets from the cellars to the garrets. Workmen and small tradesmen, husbands and wives were going that sultry evening with one, two, or three in their hand, according to the number of mouths there were at home. There was a smell of fried and broiled mackerel over whole quarters of the town.
It must be sold, it was so confoundedly hot!
"Yes, indeed, it is a blessed warmth," answered deaf Mother Andersen, "that sends all this mackerel over the town."
This fish has had a prejudice to overcome, although in all modesty it has solicited nothing but the favour of being allowed to escape being eaten. It has the reputation of being the cannibal of the North Sea—in plain words, a man-eater, and that the dark part of its flesh comes from drowned sailors.
Nikolai and Silla were also down at the boats to seize their share of the glory of the evening. Silla had not lived near the wharves in her childhood for nothing, and to pick out the best fish from under the very nose of the old women, was an easy matter for her. She stood eagerly bargaining and stretching out over the boat.
"Thanks very much, mother, but you won't fool me into taking that sunburnt mackerel skin! Take some of those that are lying behind there under the thwart—those two—yes, just those."
She weighed them in her hand to see if they were firm and stiff.
Nikolai's hand was already in his pocket; but Silla threw the mackerel contemptuously into the boat again.
"Why, they're as old as the hills! Eyes as dead as horn!"
"Those beautiful—"
"Be quiet, Nikolai! If we are to be satisfied with these for supper, mother, you'll have to take off a farthing or two."
In the end they went for two-pence a piece.
"What a fine trader you are, Nikolai!" she said to tease him, on the way home. "But do you see how big and fresh they are?"
Barbara was standing on the steps, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking to see if Nikolai were not soon coming with the fish.
The person she did see coming quietly and sedately up the road was Silla, and she chatted with her from the steps until Nikolai also at last appeared with the two mackerel.
Of course Silla must come in and see how they tasted; there was no question of Barbara's honour and superabundant hospitality putting up with anything else.
In there on Barbara's cooking-stove the mackerel hissed and broiled that light evening. The peculiar, rather pungent smell of frying grew stronger and more appetising as it went on.
Then the pieces had to be turned with fresh fat in the pan—fresh hissing!
The scent floated out through the open window, and far into the street.
Barbara was big and slow in turning, while Silla, quick and ready, put now one thing, now another into her hands, and hurried away, and was over the fish both with her face and her opinions, long before Barbara could collect herself.
Nikolai's broad, pleased face followed the whole of the frying process with deeply interested attention.
"That mackerel's the right sort of fellow for frying!"
And then at last to take the pieces straight from the pan on to the bread!
The evening breeze began to blow cool between the warm house walls. The three who sat there enjoying the mackerel, felt as if it were a festive night.
And foreman too!
Confined as she was, and made to work through the long evenings, while her mother watched her like an eagle, Silla's only chance of indemnifying herself was up at the factory.
She went about there with a suppressed longing and eager interest, her eyes sparkling, in the midst of all the chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals—Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened. In this way she could live their life at second hand.
It was of course Kristofa who knew how to put everything in a captivating, magic light. A little walk, a possible engagement, an evening at a dance, everything was moulded by her busy imaginative power into events that never wanted a hero, that interesting, mystic being, who was seen, now with a cigar, now without one, who sometimes pretended he did not know them, sometimes nodded, or only smiled. The person in question might be some town gentleman or other, or some one from one of the offices up there, who often had not the faintest suspicion that his coming and going was seen in Bengal illumination, or that it caused such a flutter in their hearts; though this did not preclude others from both suspecting and taking advantage of it.
These, through Kristofa's habit of spinning, grew into little romances, which Silla took in with wide-open eyes, and afterwards continued at home.
Silla herself had a little romance which she kept to herself: she would not dare to tell it to Nikolai.
She had to take care, when she went at dinner-time to buy anything for her mother at Barbara's, that Veyergang had not gone in there on his way down to light his cigar.
The last time she had met him there, he laughed and asked whether the black-eyed maid wanted to run away from him? He was not so very terrible! She had completely vanished lately. He had heard that her mother kept her in a cage for the sake of a dangerous smith—was that true? When a young girl had two such black eyes, she ought not to hide them away.
And yet it was not altogether a warlike condition; but he knew very well that she watched and waited, however long it might be, until he had left the shop.
All this was like a ray of sunlight through the high, barred paling.
In other respects, one day passed like another, from the hum of the factory into the work at home, and Mrs. Holman was quite satisfied with the help she really must say she had of Silla this summer. That her daughter grew more large-eyed, pale and thin, it was not in her nature to attach much importance to; it only showed that Silla was not accustomed to systematic work.
On the rare occasions when Nikolai had an opportunity of speaking to her, Silla complained sadly.
She talked herself into such exasperation that she cried over everything that the others—all the others—had leave to do, and only she had not. To begin with, in her childhood, and all the time she was growing up, she had been bottled up in that cellar in the square, and now, when she was grown up, she had got into a regular workhouse!
After having thought gloomily and sadly over this for a time, her reflections took another course, and she began to anticipate impetuously how they would amuse themselves, she and Nikolai, when once she got away from home. She would have fun like all other young people, even if they had to give a dance in their own room. And go out in a boat in the evening and row and fish, and on Sundays take their dinner out into the woods, and shout so loud that the hills would ring again.
She was almost wild, and her eyes burned with all the pressure and work that was put upon her.
When she did not get excited with talking, she looked depressed—more so every time, Nikolai thought. Her face seemed to him to wear such a plaintive expression.
There was nothing to be done but to set his teeth and hammer away, and hope for release by the winter.
Georgina Korneliussen in the next house but one, who sewed uppers for the shoemaker—she was such a nice, quiet girl. Silla should make friends with her, Mrs. Holman thought; it began to dawn upon her that there are limits to being trained in one's duty. On Sundays they might take it in turns to visit one another, for then they would be under surveillance in both places. And Mrs. Holman even allowed Silla one Sunday to go for a walk with Georgina down in the town. Young people must have a little pleasure now and then.
Silla had looked forward all the week to this Sunday with the passionate impatience of a bird that is to be let out of its cage, and the morning rose on great expectations of what the day would bring with it.
It seemed as if the soup with swedes in it would never be ready, so that they could have dinner. And afterwards there was endless waiting for Georgina, who could not finish adorning herself.
At last she came out, tightly laced, and with a strip of crochet in the neck of her dress. What sort of oil or fatty substance she had plastered down her hair with may be left unsaid; but Silla in her brown straw hat and a plain white collar, felt for a moment insignificant beside her. But she quickly took her friend's arm; now they were off to amuse themselves!
Down to the town they went, Silla impatiently champing the bit in her desire to get there in time to take part in the day's pleasures.
In the streets and the park at this respectable time in the afternoon, crowds of people clad in their best were strolling up and down looking at one another, and for a long time Silla and Georgina had enough to do in directing one another's attention to the finest and most fashionable dresses, and especially the long white flowing scarfs wound under the chin and thrown over the shoulder. These, and white straw hats with light blue or pink ribbons and roses, were the objects of their vehement admiration.
They went up and down, lost sight of and met again the same dresses, and the same stiff quiet Sunday faces.
This was repeated until it became wearisome, and Silla proposed that they should go somewhere else, which, under Georgina's guidance, led to a walk round the fortress.
Nature was not their object; and they only met one or two tired, bored individuals who evidently did not know what to do with themselves on Sunday afternoon: now and then they stopped and looked up at the trees.
A sentry called his long-drawn "Relieve guard!" It sounded like a mighty yawn in the afternoon. Out on the calm, shining fjord lay boats and vessels drifting in the breathless heat.
There was nothing here, so they made their way down to the harbour.
Here, too, was emptiness and Sunday desolation, the vessels seemed to have died out.
Another cruise up the street.
On the market-place stood some unemployed forces, who had found a Sunday amusement in exchanging watches,[5] while the bells of the church behind them were ringing in the congregation to evening service.
[Footnote 5: In Norway this is a pastime often resorted to by men on holidays, when time hangs heavy on their hands. I have seen even old men deeply absorbed in the examination of each other's watches, with a view to their exchange.—Trans.]
Tired, wearied, and thirsty, they continued their walk up the street until they came into the motley stream of people who were wending their way down to the piers, where the steamers were constantly coming in and going out with passengers from and to the islands.
Here a difference of opinion arose.
Georgina thought there were so many people, and perhaps it was not proper to go by the steamer, as it was beginning to grow late.
But Silla thought that they had swallowed dust in the streets long enough, and that they must make use of the little time they had. Was Georgina going home satisfied with the pleasure she had already had?
It was cool and airy sitting in the wind in the front of the boat and resting themselves after the fruitless roaming in the heat.
They went on shore from the crowded steamboat to the island, where the people gradually dispersed along the various shady walks.
Close to the way up from the pier, and commanding a view of the bay, stood the great place of amusement, with all its gates invitingly open, and the sound of dance-music floating out. Within was life and merriment.
Silla stopped to look in and listen to the music, but Georgina, highly scandalised, pulled her on.
Was that the place for a respectable girl to stop?
Silla followed slowly; there was inspiriting dance-music brightening all the path within the wooden paling, and she drank it in with both ears, while the rhythm rocked in her veins.
A little higher up, where the path turned off, she stopped again; she could not leave the music, and scandalised Georgina by going right up to the paling and trying to see in.
Georgina would leave her that very minute! She ought to have so much respect for herself as not to stand there! She had, at any rate, and cared too much for her good name even to want to listen to such a noise, and would go a long way round to avoid it.
She was extremely indignant.
Silla could really not comprehend how it could take the gloss off either of them if they stood there a little and listened; nor yet what they had come out for. Just where there was a little life and gaiety they were to shut their eyes and put their fingers in their ears. But where it was so "nice and proper" it had not been particularly amusing; and she would give her a new sixpence if Georgina could tell her of a "proper" amusement when they had a holiday: they had been searching for one now both long and carefully.
She sauntered on.
According to Georgina, there was still nice time before the evening traffic to the place of amusement began, and they spent it in diverse walks in the roads, though never so far that they could not keep an eye on the steamers and be standing in good time among the crowd that was thronging the pier.
Tired, cross and footsore, they at last reached home late in the evening, where Silla, in the middle of the account she was giving her mother of all the places they had been to, fell asleep in her chair.
The music was running in her head, and she dreamt she was at a ball.
There was a pleasant crackling in the stove at Barbara's in the chilly autumn days, when people who could not afford it so well were loth to begin fires.
It was, therefore, very comfortable to stand about at her counter talking, and still more so for the chosen few who were fortunate enough to be invited to partake of a cup of coffee.
But of late Barbara had not been nearly so even-tempered as formerly. She suffered from changeableness of spirits, was sometimes unnaturally stingy, so that it looked as if she wanted to count the groats or the coffee-beans, at other times in a different mood, open-handed and liberal to both guests and customers.
Whatever the reason might be, it was certain that now and then in quiet moments she would fall into a brown study. The bill for sugar, meal, flour and coffee had come in again.
The till was anything but prepared for such an achievement; it groaned and rattled whatever time in the day she pulled it out or pushed it in.
Time, however, went on inexorably, notwithstanding that the stove roared so cheerfully as if nothing were the matter.
And it had now gone so far that the day after to-morrow was the day for payment.
Barbara was in a—for her—most unnatural state of excitement. In the hope of obtaining a very last, further postponement, she had this afternoon carried out her long contemplated attack on the salesman down in his office, but had met with a decided refusal. If she did not pay now, after all she had promised, then—well, then, after the answer she received, it looked as if the wheel would suddenly come to a standstill.
It was this that Barbara, going feverishly in and out, with her best bonnet still loosely tied upon her head, was explaining to Nikolai, who was sitting in the kitchen.
Nikolai's face did not look as if he saw any help for it. On the contrary, he sat bending forward with compressed lips, looking down at the floor and twirling his thumbs. His hair as well as the position of his shoulders and his whole expression looked combative.
Barbara sat down by the cooking-stove; she drew a heavy breath, and sighed out of an oppressed breast.
It would come to an execution as sure as she lived—and it was for thirty-eight dollars!
Nikolai knew well what she was coming to, and that she was only waiting for him to give her a word that she could hang on to; but this money that he had scraped together was held much faster. He knew what he wanted, and this trade was only going farther and farther backwards, in any case.
Barbara groaned. She might as well go into the black ground at once.
Nikolai only snapped his fingers and looked down, doubly decided, at the crack in the floor.
When the pause had become unbearable any longer, and she saw clearly that no answer was coming, she began to cry softly.
She had thought, she sobbed, that when she had a son who was a smith's foreman, she would not stand quite helpless in the world.
"You know, mother, how badly I am in want of money myself."
Again an obstinate silence, with continued sobbing and drying of eyes on Barbara's side.
"It might be as well to consider whether the shop really paid?" suggested Nikolai at last cautiously.
"Would he like her to give up like a cow to be slaughtered before Christmas," she exclaimed angrily—"and no more money than that was!"
"I only meant it would be better to stop in time."
But these words had the effect of fire on gunpowder. She got up, as red as a tile. Just so! Now he wanted her to close!
She rushed—in a manner somewhat recalling the useful animal just mentioned by herself, when it is trying to get loose—into the shop and back again.
If Nikolai thought that she would give up and go bankrupt to be jeered at by everybody, when she only needed to go down and borrow that little of Ludvig, he was very much mistaken.
Barbara was quite flushed.
She would not let herself be ruined a second time for Nikolai's sake. It was quite enough that he had injured her welfare once before in this world. Yes, he need not sit and look at her with open mouth. What else was she turned out of the Veyergangs' house for, where she had been so important, if it was not because Nikolai had lifted his hand against the Consul-General's Ludvig. Oh yes, he might wonder as much as he liked, but that was why she had been driven out helpless into the world, from comfortable circumstances. And then when an opportunity came for Nikolai to support her a little, he had some one else to spend his money upon.
But the most vexatious part of it was that Nikolai also wanted to forbid her to apply to one who was as good as her own child, when there was the necessity for it.
She would pay no attention to that however. If he would not help her, he must put up with her going to one who could, now that it was a question of closing the shop and the whole business.
No, she swore she would not go bankrupt. And she struck the table so that the coppers danced in the drawer.
It was a good thing that it was this week, for next week he was going abroad for two or three months; he had said so himself yesterday, so that both she and Silla heard it.
Nikolai sat quite pale. His mouth moved as if it were trembling, and he wiped his forehead once or twice with his sleeve.
He looked slowly up at his mother; it was as if he were afraid of getting to hate her.
"You shall have the money."
He felt he was on the point of bursting into tears, and must get away to have his rage out.
It was another postponement for him and Silla until the spring. And where was the end of it to be?
His hand shook and fumbled with the door-handle.
This fresh piece of information, which his mother had so unexpectedly given Nikolai, that it was he who had destroyed her well-being, was like yet another stone weighing him down.
It crushed him like a moral defeat. He could not rid himself of the thought that there was something in it. He felt his courage was weakened, and he went about disheartened.
He had lost another quarter as to his prospects of getting married, and if his mother required or rather claimed money from him again for her down-hill trade, what could he do?
It was like work without hope, and despondency began to take hold of him.
When he put his shillings away in the tin box on Saturday, it was with bitter thoughts. At any moment his mother might come and swallow the whole of it—as she, of course, had a right to do, since he in his time had wasted all hers.
He had always thought that when it came to the point, it was he who had a reckoning to demand of his mother, because she had brought him into the world without being able to give him a father, and then let him go.
But now it seemed to be just the other way. His mother, with her all-consuming business, was the great, lawful gulf for all his happiness.
He began to be weary of it all.
Amid all this there sometimes dawned and smouldered a faint glow of rebellion within him, although, in his honest endeavour to come to the bottom of the truth, it was some time before it blazed up.
Should he let Silla go, too, into this same gulf?
The answer blazed up clearly, so that the flames shone and flickered:
"Not while there was a rag left of what was called Nikolai!"
And with reference to his mother, and his having perhaps brought misfortune upon her, should he not have hit out, but just let himself be insulted and trampled upon, as he was going to be again now? His mother, tall and big, would just squeeze them to death with that shop, both he and Silla. They were not even to have leave or the right to sigh.
But he would not have that.
He had thrashed Veyergang, and only repented that he had not hit harder. As he had come into the world, he would be a human being, even if he were to have his head cut off for it afterwards.
The shop up there should not be fattened with another penny out of the tin box. If his mother ever came to want for food, she would always find a place in his room; but that she should put a stop to his ever getting a room of his own—no, thank you!
He was like another man when he had at last made this clear to himself. Yes, his name was Nikolai, and he was foreman at Mrs. Ellingsen's.