Then something new and unheard of plumped down into the little cottage by the fjord.
There came a registered letter with great dabs of sealing-wax all over it, and a handwriting so gentlemanly as to be almost unreadable. Every one crowded round the eldest son to see it opened—and out fell five ten-crown notes. “Mercy on us!” they cried in amazement, and “Can it be for us?” The next thing was to puzzle out what was written in the letter. And who should that turn out to be from but—no other than Peer’s father, though he did not say it in so many words. “Be good to the boy,” the letter said. “You will receive fifty crowns from me every half-year. See that he gets plenty to eat and goes dry and well shod. Faithfully your, P. Holm, Captain.”
“Why, Peer—he’s—he’s—Your father’s a captain, an officer,” stammered the eldest girl, and fell back a step to stare at the boy.
“And we’re to get twice as much for him as before,” said the son, holding the notes fast and gazing up at the ceiling, as if he were informing Heaven of the fact.
But the old wife was thinking of something else as she folded her hands in thankfulness—now she needn’t lose the boy.
“Properly fed!” No need to fear for that. Peer had treacle with his porridge that very day, though it was only a week-day. And the eldest son gave him a pair of stockings, and made him sit down and put them on then and there; and the same night, when he went to bed, the eldest girl came and tucked him up in a new skin-rug, not quite so hairless as the old one. His father a captain! It seemed too wonderful to be true.
From that day times were changed for Peer. People looked at him with very different eyes. No one said “Poor boy” of him now. The other boys left off calling him bad names; the grown-ups said he had a future before him. “You’ll see,” they would say, “that father of yours will get you on; you’ll be a parson yet, ay, maybe a bishop, too.” At Christmas, there came a ten-crown note all for himself, to do just as he liked with. Peer changed it into silver, so that his purse was near bursting with prosperity. No wonder he began to go about with his nose in the air, and play the little prince and chieftain among the boys. Even Klaus Brock, the doctor’s son, made up to him, and taught him to play cards. But—“You surely don’t mean to go and be a parson,” he would say.
For all this, no one could say that Peer was too proud to help with the fishing, or make himself useful in the smithy. But when the sparks flew showering from the glowing iron, he could not help seeing visions of his own—visions that flew out into the future. Aye, he WOULD be a priest. He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far that he could go down into that place of torment where his mother lay, and bring her up again, up to salvation. And when, in autumn evenings, he stood outside his palace, a white-haired bishop, he would lift up his finger, and all the stars should break into song.
Clang, clang, sang the anvil under the hammer’s beat.
In the still summer evenings a troop of boys go climbing up the naked slopes towards the high wooded ranges to fetch home the cows for the milking. The higher they climb, the farther and farther their sight can travel out over the sea. And an hour or two later, as the sun goes down, here comes a long string of red-flanked cattle trailing down, with a faint jangle of bells, over the far-off ridges. The boys halloo them on—“Ohoo-oo-oo!”—and swing their ringed rowan staves, and spit red juice of the alder bark that they are chewing as men chew tobacco. Far below them they see the farm lands, grey in shadow, and, beyond, the waters of the fjord, yellow in the evening light, a mirror where red clouds and white sails and hills of liquid blue are shining. And away out on the farthest headland, the lonely star of the coast light over the grey sea.