Pelle the Conqueror Part 22

"Be off with you!" they shouted again, picking up stones in a menacing way. "Be off to the other b.u.mpkins, will you!" They came up and hit at him. "What are you standing there and staring into the water for? You might turn giddy and fall in head first! Be off to the other yokels, will you! Blue-bag!"

Pelle turned literally giddy, with the strength of the determination that seized upon his little brain. "I'm no more a blue-bag than you are!" he said. "Why, you wouldn't even dare to jump into the water!"

"Just listen to him! He thinks you jump into the water for fun in the middle of winter, and get cramp!"

Pelle just heard their exultant laughter as he sprang off the breakwater, and the water, thick with ground-up ice, closed above his head. The top of his head appeared again, he made two or three strokes with his arms like a dog, and sank.

The boys ran in confusion up and down and shouted, and one of them got hold of a boat-hook. Then Henry Bodker came running up, sprang in head first without stopping, and disappeared, while a piece of ice that he had struck with his forehead made ducks and drakes over the water. Twice his head appeared above the ice-filled water, to s.n.a.t.c.h a breath of air, and then he came up with Pelle. They got him hoisted up on to the breakwater, and Henry set to work to give him a good thrashing.

Pelle had lost consciousness, but the thrashing had the effect of bringing him to. He suddenly opened his eyes, was on his legs in a trice, and darted away like a sandpiper.

"Run home!" the boys roared after him. "Run as hard as ever you can, or you'll be ill! Only tell your father you fell in!" And Pelle ran.

He needed no persuasion. When he reached Stone Farm, his clothes were frozen quite stiff, and his trousers could stand alone when he got out of them; but he himself was as warm as a toast.

He would not lie to his father, but told him just what had happened.

La.s.se was angry, angrier than the boy had ever seen him before.

La.s.se knew how to treat a horse to keep it from catching cold, and began to rub Pelle's naked body with a wisp of straw, while the boy lay on the bed, tossing about under the rough handling. His father took no notice of his groans, but scolded him. "You mad little devil, to jump straight into the sea in the middle of winter like a lovesick woman! You ought to have a whipping, that's what you ought to have--a good sound whipping!

But I'll let you off this time if you'll go to sleep and try to sweat so that we can get that nasty salt water out of your body. I wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing to bleed you."

Pelle did not want to be bled; he was very comfortable lying there, now that he had been sick. But his thoughts were very serious. "Supposing I'd been drowned!" he said solemnly.

"If you had, I'd have thrashed you to within an inch of your life," said La.s.se angrily.

Pelle laughed.

"Oh, you may laugh, you word-catcher!" snapped La.s.se. "But it's no joke being father to a little ne'er-do-weel of a cub like you!" Saying which he went angrily out into the stable. He kept on listening, however, and coming up to peep in and see whether fever or any other devilry had come of it.

But Pelle slept quietly with his head under the quilt, and dreamed that he was no less a person than Henry Bodker.

Pelle did not learn to read much that winter, but he learned twenty and odd hymns by heart only by using his ears, and he got the name Blue-bag, as applied to himself, completely banished. He had gained ground, and strengthened his position by several bold strokes; and the school began to take account of him as a brave boy. And Henry, who as a rule took no notice of anybody, took him several times under his wing.

Now and then he had a bad conscience, especially when his father in his newly-awakened thirst for knowledge, came to him for the solution of some problem or other, and he was at a loss for an answer.

"But it's you who ought to have the learning," La.s.se would then say reproachfully.

As the winter drew to an end, and the examination approached, Pelle became nervous. Many uncomfortable reports were current of the severity of the examination among the boys--of putting into lower cla.s.ses and complete dismissal from the school.

Pelle had the misfortune not to be heard independently in a single hymn.

He had to give an account of the Fall. The theft of the apple was easy to get through, but the curse--! "And G.o.d said unto the serpent: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, upon thy belly shalt thou go, upon thy belly shalt thou go!" He could get no further.

"Does it still do that, then?" asked the clergyman kindly.

"Yes--for it has no limbs."

"And can you explain to me what a limb is?" The priest was known to be the best examiner on the island; he could begin in a gutter and end in heaven, people said.

"A limb is--is a hand."

"Yes, that is one. But can't you tell me something that distinguishes all limbs from other parts of the body? A limb is--well?--a?--a part of the body that can move by itself, for instance? Well!"

"The ears!" said Pelle, perhaps because his own were burning.

"O-oh? Can you move your ears, then?"

"Yes." By dint of great perseverance, Pelle had acquired that art in the course of the previous summer, so as not to be outdone by Rud.

"Then, upon my word, I should like to see it!" exclaimed the clergyman.

So Pelle worked his ears industriously backward and forward, and the priest and the school committee and the parents all laughed. Pelle got "excellent" in religion.

"So it was your ears after all that saved you," said La.s.se, delighted.

"Didn't I tell you to use your ears well? Highest marks in religion only for moving your ears! Why, I should think you might become a parson if you liked!"

And he went on for a long time. But wasn't he the devil of a laddie to be able to answer like that!

XII

"Come, cubby, cubby, cubby! Come on, you silly little chicken, there's nothing to be afraid of!" Pelle was enticing his favorite calf with a wisp of green corn; but it was not quite sure of him to-day, for it had had a beating for bad behavior.

Pelle felt very much like a father whose child gives him sorrow and compels him to use severe measures. And now this misunderstanding--that the calf would have nothing to do with him, although it was for its own good that he had beaten it! But there was no help for it, and as long as Pelle had them to mind, he intended to be obeyed.

At last it let him come close up to it, so that he could stroke it. It stood still for a little and was sulky, but yielded at last, ate the green food and snuffed in his face by way of thanks.

"Will you be good, then?" said Pelle, shaking it by its stumps of horns.

"Will you, eh?" It tossed its head mischievously. "Very well, then you shan't carry my coat to-day."

The strange thing about this calf was that the first day it was let out, it would not stir, and at last the boy left it behind for La.s.se to take in again. But no sooner was it behind him than it followed of its own accord, with its forehead close to his back; and always after that it walked behind him when they went out and came home, and it carried his overcoat on its back when it looked as if there would be rain.

Pelle's years were few in number, but to his animals he was a grown man.

Formerly he had only been able to make them respect him sufficiently to obey him at close quarters; but this year he could hit a cow at a distance of a hundred paces with a stone, and that gave him power over the animals at a distance, especially when he thought of calling out the animal's name as he hit it. In this way they realized that the pain came from him, and learned to obey the mere call.

For punishment to be effectual, it must follow immediately upon the misdeed. There was therefore no longer any such thing as lying in wait for an animal that had offended, and coming up behind it when later on it was grazing peacefully. That only caused confusion. To run an animal until it was tired out, hanging on to its tail and beating it all round the meadow only to revenge one's self, was also stupid; it made the whole flock restless and difficult to manage for the rest of the day.

Pelle weighed the end and the means against one another; he learned to quench his thirst for revenge with good practical reasons.

Pelle was a boy, and he was not an idle one. All day, from five in the morning until nine at night, he was busy with something or other, often most useless things. For hours he practiced walking on his hands, turning a somersault, and jumping the stream; he was always in motion.

Hour after hour he would run unflaggingly round in a circle on the gra.s.s, like a tethered foal, leaning toward the center as he ran, so that his hand could pluck the gra.s.s, kicking up behind, and neighing and snorting. He was pouring forth energy from morning till night with open-handed profusion.

But minding the cattle was _work_, and here he husbanded his energy.

Every step that could be saved here was like capital acquired; and Pelle took careful notice of everything, and was always improving his methods.

He learned that punishment worked best when it only hung as a threat; for much beating made an animal callous. He also learned to see when it was absolutely necessary to interfere. If this could not be done in the very act, he controlled himself and endeavored upon the strength of his experience to bring about exactly the same situation once more, and then to be prepared. The little fellow, unknown to himself, was always engaged in adding cubits unto his stature.

He had obtained good results. The driving out and home again no longer gave him any difficulty; he had succeeded for a whole week in driving the flock along a narrow field road, with growing corn on both sides, without their having bitten off so much as a blade. And there was the still greater task of keeping them under control on a hot, close day--to hedge them in in full gallop, so that they stood in the middle of the meadow stamping on the ground with uplifted tails, in fear of the gad-flies. If he wanted to, he could make them tear home to the stable in wild flight, with their tails in the air, on the coldest October day, only by lying down in the gra.s.s and imitating the hum of gad-flies. But that was a tremendous secret, that even Father La.s.se knew nothing about.