“Nothing there for me—that’s only for you land-lubbers,” said Per Kofod. “For look you now, they’re like so many little lambs whose ears you’ve got to tickle. And then it all comes back to you in the nights when you take the dog-watch alone; you’ve told her lies, or you promised to come back again when she undid her bodice…. And in the end there she is, planted, and goin’ to have a kid! It don’t do. A sailor ought to keep to the naughty girls.”
“But married women can be frisky sometimes,” said Pelle.
“That so, really? Once I wouldn’t have believed that any one could have kicked a good woman; but after all they strangle little children…. And they come and eat out of your hand if you give ’em a kind word—that’s the mischief of it…. D’you remember Howling Peter?”
“Yes, as you ask me, I remember him very well.”
“Well, his father was a sailor, too, and that’s just what he did…. And she was just such a girl, one who couldn’t say no, and believed everything a man told her. He was going to come back again—of course. ‘When you hear the trap-door of the loft rattle, that’ll be me,’ he told her. But the trap-door rattled several times, and he didn’t come. Then she hanged herself from the trap-door with a rope. Howling Peter came on to the parish. And you know how they all scorned him. Even the wenches thought they had the right to spit at him. He could do nothing but bellow. His mother had cried such a lot before he was born, d’ye see? Yes, and then he hanged himself too—twice he tried to do it. He’d inherited that! After that he had a worse time than ever; everybody thought it honorable to ill-use him and ask after the marks on his throat. No, not you; you were the only one who didn’t raise a hand to him. That’s why I’ve so often thought about you. ‘What has become of him?’ I used to ask myself. ‘God only knows where he’s got to!’” And he gazed at Pelle with a pair of eyes full of trust.
“No, that was due to Father Lasse,” said Pelle, and his tone was quite childlike. “He always said I must be good to you because you were in God’s keeping.”
“In God’s keeping, did he say?” repeated Per Kofod thoughtfully. “That was a curious thing to say. That’s a feeling I’ve never had. There was nothing in the whole world at that time that could have helped me to stand up for myself. I can scarcely understand how it is that I’m sitting here talking to you—I mean, that they didn’t torment the life out of my body.”
“Yes, you’ve altered very much. How does it really come about that you’re such a smart fellow now?”
“Why, such as I am now, that’s really my real nature. It has just waked up, that’s what I think. But I don’t understand really what was the matter with me then. I knew well enough I could knock you down if I had only wanted to. But I didn’t dare strike out, just out of sheer wretchedness. I saw so much that you others couldn’t see. Damn it all, I can’t make head nor tail of it! It must have been my mother’s dreadful misery that was still in my bones. A horror used to come over me—quite causeless—so that I had to bellow aloud; and then the farmers used to beat me. And every time I tried to get out of it all by hanging myself, they beat me worse than ever. The parish council decided I was to be beaten. Well, that’s why I don’t do it, Pelle—a sailor ought to keep to women that get paid for it, if they have anything to do with him—that is, if he can’t get married. There, you have my opinion.”
“You’ve had a very bad time,” said Pelle, and he took his hand. “But it’s a tremendous change that’s come over you!”