From the market-place they saw a pathway that wound up the hill. Along it grew young cherry-trees which formed vaulted arches with their white tops. The arch was light and floating, and the branches absurdly slender, altogether weak, delicate and youthful.
The cherry-tree path attracted the eyes of the men against their will. What an unpractical hole it was, where people planted cherry trees, where any one could take the cherries. The three Petters had considered it before as a nest of iniquity, full of cruelty and tyranny. Now they began to laugh at it, and even to despise it a little.
But the fourth one of the company did not laugh. His longing for revenge was seething ever more fiercely, for he felt that this was the town where he ought to have lived and labored. It was his lost paradise. And without paying any attention to the others he walked quickly up the street.
They followed him; and when they saw that there was only one street, and when they saw only flowers, and more flowers the whole length of it, their scorn and their good humor increased. It was perhaps the first time in their lives that they had ever noticed flowers, but here they could not help it, for the clusters of lilac blossoms brushed off their caps and the petals of cherry-blossoms rained down over them.
"What kind of people do you suppose live in this town?" said
Long-Petter, musingly.
"Bees," answered Cobbler-Petter, who had received his name because he had once lived in the same house as a shoemaker.
Of course, little by little, they perceived a few people. In the windows, behind shining panes and white curtains, appeared young, pretty faces, and they saw children playing on the terraces. But no noise disturbed the silence. It seemed to them as if the trump of the Day of Doom itself would not be able to wake this town. What could they do with themselves in such a town!
They went into a shop and bought some beer. There they asked several questions of the shopman in a terrible voice. They asked if the fire-brigade had their engines in order, and wondered if there were clappers in the church bells, if there should happen to be an alarm.
They drank their beer in the street and threw the bottles away. One, two, three, all the bottles at the same corner, thunder and crash, and the splinters flew about their ears.
They heard steps behind them, real steps; voices, loud, distinct voices; laughter, much laughter, and, moreover, a rattling as if of metal. They were appalled, and drew back into a doorway. It sounded like a whole company.
It was one, too, but of young girls. All the maids of the town were going out in a body to the pastures to milk.
It made the deepest impression on these city men, these citizens of the world. The maids of the town with milk-pails! It was almost touching!
They suddenly jumped out of their doorway and cried "Boo!"
The whole troop of girls scattered instantly. They screamed and ran. Their skirts fluttered; their head cloths loosened; their milk-pails rolled about the street.
And at the same time, along the whole street, was heard a deafening sound of gates and doors slammed to, of hooks and bolts and locks.
Farther down the street stood a big linden tree, and under it sat an old woman by a table with candies and cakes. She did not move; she did not look round; 9111' only sat still. She was not asleep either.
"She is made of wood," said Cobbler-Petter,
"No, of clay," said Rulle-Petter.
They walked abreast, all three. Just in front of the old woman they began to reel. They staggered against her table. And the old woman began to scold.
"Neither of wood nor of clay," they said—"venom, only venom."
During all this time Petter Nord had not spoken to them, but now, at last, they were directly in front of Halfvorson's shop, and there he was waiting for them.
"This is undeniably, my affair," he said proudly, and pointed at the shop. "I wish to go in alone and attend to it. If I do not succeed, then you may try."
They nodded. "Go ahead, Petter Nord! We will wait outside."
Petter Nord went in, found a young man alone in the shop, and asked about Halfvorson. He heard that the latter had gone away. He had quite a talk with the clerk, and obtained a good deal of information about his master.
Halfvorson had never been accused of illicit trade. How he had behaved towards Petter Nord every one knew, but no one spoke of that affair any more. Halfvorson had risen in the world, and now he was not at all dangerous. He was not inhuman to his debtors, and had ceased to spy on his shop-boys. The last few years he had devoted himself to gardening. He had laid out a garden around his house in the town, and a kitchen garden near the customhouse. He worked so eagerly in his gardens that he scarcely thought of amassing money.
Petter Nord felt a stab in his heart. Of course the man was good. He had remained in paradise. Of course any one was good who lived there.
Edith Halfvorson was still with her uncle, but she had been ill for a while. Her lungs were weak, ever since an attack of pneumonia in the winter.
While Petter Nord was listening to all this, and more too, the three men stood outside and waited.
In Halfvorson's shadeless garden a bower of birch had been arranged so that Edith might lie there in the beautiful, warm spring days. She regained her strength slowly, but her life was no longer in danger.
Some people make one feel that they are not able to live. At their first illness they lie down and die. Halfvorson's niece was long since weary of everything, of the office, of the dim little shop, of money-getting. When she was seventeen years old, she had the incentive of winning friends and acquaintances. Then she undertook to try to keep Halfvorson in the path of virtue, but now everything was accomplished. She saw no prospect of escaping from the monotony of her life. She might as well die.
She was of an elastic nature, like a steel spring: a bundle of nerves and vivacity, when anything troubled or tormented her. How she had worked with strategy and artifice, with womanly goodness and womanly daring, before she had reached the point with her uncle when she was sure that there was no longer danger of any Petter Nord affairs! But now that he was tamed and subdued, she had nothing to interest her. Yes, and yet she would not die! She lay and thought of what she would do when she was well again.
Suddenly she started up, hearing some one say in a very loud voice that he alone wished to settle with Halvorson. And then another voice answered: "Go ahead, Petter Nord!"
Petter Nord was the most terrible, the most fatal name in the world. It meant a revival of all the old troubles. Edith rose with trembling limbs, and just then three dreadful creatures came around the corner and stopped to stare at her. There was only a low rail and a thin hedge between her and the street.
Edith was alone. The maids had gone to milk, and Halfvorson was working in his garden by the custom-house, although he had told the shop-boy to nay that he had gone away, for he was ashamed of his passion for gardening. Edith was terribly frightened at the three men as well as at the one who had gone into the shop. She was sure that they wished to do her harm. So she turned and ran up the mountain by the steep, slippery path and the narrow, rotten wooden steps which led from terrace to terrace.
The strange men thought it too delightfully funny that she ran from them. They could not resist pretending that they wished to catch her. One of them climbed up on the railing, and all three shouted with a terrible voice.
Edith ran as one runs in dreams, panting, falling, terrified to death, with a horrible feeling