by Jonas Lie
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 today 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!
CHAPTER V
AMONG THE UNEMPLOYED
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 today, 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!