Pelle the Conqueror Part 64

La.s.se was uneasy. It wasn't that he didn't want to go; but the whole thing was so unaccustomed. However, it was arranged that he should sleep the night at Due's, and in the evening they both went to the theater.

"Is it here?" asked La.s.se, astounded. They had come to a great building like a barn, before which a number of people were standing. But it was fine inside. They sat right up at the top, at the back, where the seats were arranged like the side of a hill, and they had a view over the whole theater. Down below, right in front, sat some ladies who, so far as La.s.se could see, were naked. "I suppose those are the performers?" he inquired.

Pelle laughed. "No, those are the grandest ladies in the town--the doctor's wife, the burgomaster's lady, and the inspector's wife, and such like."

"What, they are so grand that they haven't enough clothes to wear!"

cried La.s.se. "With us we call that poverty! But where are the players, then?"

"They are the other side of the curtain."

"Then have they begun already?"

"No, you can see they haven't--the curtain has to go up first."

There was a hole in the curtain, and a finger came through it, and began to turn from side to side, pointing at the spectators. La.s.se laughed.

"That's devilish funny!" he cried, slapping his thighs, as the finger continued to point.

"It hasn't begun yet," said Pelle.

"Is that so?" This damped La.s.se's spirits a little.

But then the big crown-light began suddenly to run up through a hole in the ceiling; up in the loft some boys were kneeling round the hole, and as the light came up they blew out the lamps. Then the curtain went up, and there was a great brightly-lit hall, in which a number of pretty young girls were moving about, dressed in the most wonderful costumes--and they were speaking! La.s.se was quite astonished to find that he could understand what they said; the whole thing seemed so strange and foreign to him; it was like a peep into dreamland. But there was one maiden who sat there all alone at her spinning wheel, and she was the fairest of them all.

"That's surely a fine lady?" asked La.s.se.

But Pelle whispered that she was only a poor forest maiden, whom the lord of the castle had robbed, and now he wanted to force her to be his sweetheart. All the others were making a tremendous lot of her, combing her golden hair and kneeling before her; but she only looked unhappier than before. And sometimes her sadness was more than she could bear; then she opened her beautiful mouth and her wounded heart bled in song, which affected La.s.se so that he had to fetch a long sighing breath.

Then a tall man with a huge red beard came stamping into the hall. La.s.se saw that he was dressed like a man who has been keeping Carnival.

"That's the one we made the fine boots for," whispered Pelle: "the lord of the castle, who wants to seduce her."

"An ugly devil he looks too!" said La.s.se, and spat. "The master at Stone Farm is a child of G.o.d compared with him!" Pelle signed to him to be quiet.

The lord of the castle drove all the other women away, and then began to tramp stormily to and fro, eyeing the forest maiden and showing the whites of his eyes. "Well, have you at last decided?" he roared, and snorted like a mad bull. And suddenly he sprang at her as if to take her by force.

"Ha! Touch me not!" she cried, "or by the living G.o.d, I will plunge this dagger into my heart! You believe you can buy my innocence because I am poor, but the honor of the poor is not to be bought with gold!"

"That's a true word!" said La.s.se loudly.

But the lord of the castle gave a malicious laugh, and tugged at his red beard. He rolled his r's dreadfully.

"Is my offer not enough for you? Come, stay this night with me and you shall receive a farm with ten head of cattle, so that to-morrow you can stand at the altar with your huntsman!"

"Hold your tongue, you wh.o.r.emonger!" said La.s.se angrily.

Those round about him tried to calm him; one or another nudged him in the ribs. "Well, can't a man speak any longer?" La.s.se turned crossly to Pelle. "I'm no clergyman, but if the girl doesn't want to, let him leave her alone; at any rate he shan't slake his l.u.s.t publicly in the presence of hundreds of people with impunity! A swine like that!" La.s.se was speaking loudly, and it seemed as though his words had had their effect on the lord of the castle. He stood there awhile staring in front of him, and then called a man, and bade him lead the maiden back to the forest.

La.s.se breathed easily again as the curtain fell and the boys overhead by the hole in the ceiling relit the lamps and let them down again. "So far she's got out of it all right," he told Pelle, "but I don't trust the lord--he's a scoundrel!" He was perspiring freely, and did not look entirely satisfied.

The next scene which was conjured up on the stage was a forest. It was wonderfully fine, with pelargoniums blooming on the ground, and a spring which was flowing out of something green. "That is a covered beer-barrel!" said Pelle, and now La.s.se too could see the tap, but it was wonderfully natural. Right in the background one could see the lord's castle on a cliff, and in the foreground lay a fallen tree-trunk; two green-clad huntsmen sat astride of it, concocting their evil schemes. La.s.se nodded--he knew something of the wickedness of the world.

Now they heard a sound, and crouched down behind the tree-trunk, each with a knife in his hand. For a moment all was silent; then came the forest maiden and her huntsman, wandering all unawares down the forest path. By the spring they took a clinging and affectionate farewell; then the man came forward, hurrying to his certain death.

This was too much. La.s.se stood up. "Look out!" he cried in a choking voice: "look out!" Those behind him pulled his coat and scolded him.

"No, devil take you all, I won't hold my tongue!" he cried, and laid about him. And then he leaned forward again: "Look where you're going, d'you hear! Your life is at stake! They're hiding behind the fallen tree!"

The huntsman stood where he was and stared up, and the two a.s.sa.s.sins had risen to their feet and were staring, and the actors and actresses came through from the wings and gazed upward over the auditorium. La.s.se saw that the man was saved, but now he had to suffer for his services; the manager wanted to throw him out. "I can perfectly well go by myself," he said. "An honorable man is one too many in this company!" In the street below he talked aloud to himself; he was in a blazing temper.

"It was only a play," said Pelle dejectedly. In his heart he was ashamed of his father.

"You needn't try to teach me about that! I know very well that it all happened long ago and that I can do nothing to alter it, not if I was to stand on my head. But that such low doings should be brought to life again! If the others had felt as I did we should have taken the lord and thrashed him to death, even if it did come a hundred years too late!"

"Why--but that was Actor West, who comes to our workshop every day."

"Is that so? Actor West, eh? Then you are Actor Codfish, to let yourself be imposed on like that! I have met people before now who had the gift of falling asleep and conjuring up long dead people in their place--but not so real as here, you understand. If you had been behind the curtain you would have seen West lying there like dead, while he, the other one--the Devil--was carrying on and ordering everybody about. It's a gift I'd rather not have; a dangerous game! If the others forget the word of command that brings him back into the body it would be all up with him, and the other would take his place."

"But that is all superst.i.tion! When I know it's West in a play--why, I recognized him at once!"

"Oh, of course! You are always the cleverer! You'd like a dispute with the devil himself every day! So it was only a show? When he was rolling the whites of his eyes in his frantic l.u.s.t! You believe me--if she hadn't had that knife he would have fallen on her and satisfied his desire in front of everybody! Because if you conjure up long bygone times the action has to have its way, however many there are to see.

But that they should do it for money--for money--ugh! And now I'm going home!" La.s.se would say nothing more, but had the horses harnessed.

"You had best not go there again," he said at parting. "But if it has got hold of you already, at least put a knife in your pocket. Yes, and we'll send you your washing by Butcher Jensen, one Sat.u.r.day, soon."

Pelle went to the theater as before; he had a shrewd idea that it was only a play, but there _was_ something mysterious about it; people must have a supernatural gift who evening after evening could so entirely alter their appearance and so completely enter into the people they represented. Pelle thought he would like to become an actor if he could only climb high enough.

The players created a considerable excitement when they strolled through the streets with their napping clothes and queer head-gear; people ran to their windows to see them, the old folk peeping over their shoulders.

The town was as though transformed as long as they were in it.

Every mind had taken a perverse direction. The girls cried out in their sleep and dreamed of abductions; they even left their windows a little open; and every young fellow was ready to run away with the players.

Those who were not theater-mad attended religious meetings in order to combat the evil.

And one day the players disappeared--as they had come--and left a cloud of debts behind them. "Devil's trash!" said the master with his despondent expression. "They've tricked us! But, all the same, they were fine fellows in their way, and they had seen the world!"

But after these happenings he could by no means get warm again. He crawled into bed and spent the best part of the month lying there.

XII

It can be very cozy on those winter evenings when everybody sits at home in the workshop and pa.s.ses the time by doing nothing, because it is so dark and cold out of doors, and one has nowhere to go to. To stand about by the skating-ponds and to look on, frozen, while others go swinging past--well, Pelle has had enough of it; and as for strolling up the street toward the north, and then turning about and returning toward the south, and turning yet again, up and down the selfsame street--well, there is nothing in it unless one has good warm clothes and a girl whose waist one can hold. And Morten too is no fresh-air disciple; he is freezing, and wants to sit in the warmth.

So they slink into the workshop as soon as it begins to grow dark, and they take out the key and hang it on the nail in the entry, in order to deceive Jeppe, and then they secretly make a fire in the stove, placing a screen in front of it, so that Jeppe shall not see the light from it when he makes his rounds past the workshop windows. They crouch together on the ledge at the bottom of the stove, each with an arm round the other's shoulder, and Morten tells Pelle about the books he has read.

"Why do you do nothing but read those stupid books?" asks Pelle, when he has listened for a time.

"Because I want to know something about life and about the world,"

answers Morten, out of the darkness.