Marie met him anxiously. “Can you understand what has happened to Peter? He never came home last night!” she said, in distress. “Lots of boys roam about the streets all night, but Peter has never been like that, and I kept his supper warm till midnight. I thought perhaps he’d got into bad company.”
Pelle showed her The Working Man. In a little while the inmates of the “Ark” would see the report and come rushing up with it. It was better that he should prepare her beforehand. “But it’s by no means certain,” he said, to cheer her. “Perhaps it isn’t he at all.”
Marie burst into tears. “Yes, of course it is! I’ve so often gone about worrying when he’s been telling me about those sharp knives always sliding between their fingers. And they can’t take proper care of themselves; they must work quickly or they get the sack. Oh, poor dear Peter!” She had sunk into her chair and now sat rocking to and fro with her apron to her eyes, like an unhappy mother.
“Now be grown-up and sensible,” said Pelle, laying his hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps it’s not so bad after all; the papers always exaggerate. Now I’ll run out and see if I can trace him.”
“Go to the factory first, then,” said Marie, jumping to her feet, “for, of course, they’ll know best. But you mustn’t in any case say where we live—do you hear? Remember, we’ve not been to school, and he hasn’t been notified to the pastor for confirmation. We could be punished if they found that out.”
“I’ll take good care,” said Pelle, and he hurried away.
At the factory he received the information that Peter was lying in hospital. He ran thither, and arrived just at the time for visitors. Peter was sitting upright in bed, his hand in a sling; this gave him a curiously crippled appearance. And on the boy’s face affliction had already left those deep, ineradicable traces which so dismally distinguish the invalided worker. The terrible burden of the consequences of mutilation could already be read in his pondering, childish gaze.
He cheered up when he saw Pelle, made an involuntary movement with his right hand, and then, remembering, held out his left. “There—I must give you my left fist now,” he said, with a dismal smile. “That’ll seem queer to me for a bit. If I can do anything at all. Otherwise”—he made a threatening movement of the head—“I tell you this—I’ll never be a burden to Marie and Karl all my life. Take my word for it, I shall be able to work again.”
“We shall soon find something for you,” said Pelle, “and there are kind people, too. Perhaps some one will help you so that you can study.” He himself did not know just where that idea came from; he certainly had never seen such a case. The magical dreams of his childhood had been responsible for a whole class of ideas, which were nourished by the anecdotes of poor boys in the reading-books. He was confronted by the impossible, and quite simply he reached out after the impossible.
Peter had no reading-books at his back. “Kind people!” he cried scornfully—“they never have anything themselves, and I can’t even read —how should I learn how to study? Karl can read; he taught himself from the signs in the streets while he was running his errands; and he can write as well. And Hanne has taught Marie a little. But all my life I’ve only been in the factory.” He stared bitterly into space; it was melancholy to see how changed his face was—it had quite fallen in.