"You would not find a living being to agree with you."
"Except yourself. And that is all I want. The infection is really only a side matter. It can come this way or that way. We can't safeguard him, come what may.."
"But are we to send him straight to where it is?"
"We're not doing that; it's not we who are doing that."
She is very much excited. I put my arm round her waist and we walk up and down the room together:
"Darling, today our little boy may meet with a great misfortune. He may receive a shock from which he will never recover.."
"That is true," she says.
"If he doesn't keep his promise, the misfortune has occurred. It would already be a misfortune if he could ever think that it was possible for him to break it, if it appeared to him that there was anything great or remarkable about keeping it."
"Yes, but."
"Darling, the world is full of careful persons. One step more and they become mere paltry people. Shall we turn that into a likely thing, into a virtue, for our little boy? His promise was stupid: let that pass.."
"He is so little."
"Yes, that he is; and God be praised for it! Think what good luck it is that he did not know the danger, when he made his promise, that he does not understand it now, when he is keeping it. What a lucky beggar! He is learning to keep his word, just as he has learnt to be clean. By the time that he is big enough to know his danger, it will be an indispensable habit with him. And he gains all that at the risk of a little scarlatina."
She lays her head on my shoulder and says nothing more.
That afternoon, she takes our little boy by the hand and goes up with him to Einar. They stand on the threshold of his room, bid him good-day and ask him how he is.
Einar is not at all well and does not look up and does not answer.
But that does not matter in the least.
VII
My little boy is given a cent by Petrine with instructions to go to the baker's and buy some biscuits.
By that which fools call an accident, but which is really a divine miracle, if miracles there be, I overhear this instruction. Then I stand at my window and see him cross the street in his slow way and with bent head; only, he goes slower than usual and with his head bent more deeply between his small shoulders.
He stands long outside the baker's window, where there is a confused heap of lollipops and chocolates and sugar-sticks and other things created for a small boy's delight. Then he lifts his young hand, opens the door, disappears and presently returns with a great paper bag, eating with all his might.
And I, who, Heaven be praised, have myself been a thief in my time, run all over the house and give my orders.
My little boy enters the kitchen.
"Put the biscuits on the table," says Petrine.
He stands still for a moment and looks at her and at the table and at the floor. Then he goes silently to his mother.
"You're quite a big boy now, that you can buy biscuits for Petrine," says she, without looking up from her work.
His face is very long, but he says nothing. He comes quietly in to me and sits down on the edge of a chair.
"You have been over the way, at the baker's."
He comes up to me, where I am sitting and reading, and presses himself against me. I do not look at him, but I can perceive what is going on inside him.
"What did you buy at the baker's?"
"Lollipops."
"Well, I never! What fun! Why, you had some lollipops this morning. Who gave you the money this time?"
"Petrine."
"Really! Well, Petrine is certainly very fond of you. Do you remember the lovely ball she gave you on your birthday?"
"Father, Petrine told me to buy a cent's worth of biscuits."
"Oh, dear!"
It is very quiet in the room. My little boy cries bitterly and I look anxiously before me, stroking his hair the while.
"Now you have fooled Petrine badly. She wants those biscuits, of course, for her cooking. She thinks they're on the kitchen-table and, when she goes to look, she won't find any. Mother gave her a cent for biscuits. Petrine gave you a cent for biscuits and you go and spend it on lollipops. What are we to do?"
He looks at me in despair, holds me tight, says a thousand things without speaking a word.
"If only we had a cent," I say. "Then you could rush over the way and fetch the biscuits."
"Father.." His eyes open very wide and he speaks so softly that I can hardly hear him. "There is a cent on mother's writing-table."
"Is there?" I cry with delight. But, at the same moment, I shake my head and my face is overcast again. "That is no use to us, my little boy. That cent belongs to mother. The other was Petrine's. People are so terribly fond of their money and get so angry when you take it from them. I can understand that, for you can buy such an awful lot of things with money. You can get biscuits and lollipops and clothes and toys and half the things in the world. And it is not so easy either to make money. Most people have to drudge all day long to earn as much as they want. So it is no wonder that they get angry when you take it. Especially when it is only for lollipops. Now Petrine.. she has to spend the whole day cleaning rooms and cooking dinner and washing up before she gets her wages. And out of that she has to buy clothes and shoes.. and you know that she has a little girl whom she has to pay for at Madam Olsen's. She must certainly have saved very cleverly before she managed to buy you that ball."
We walk up and down the room, hand in hand. He keeps on falling over his legs, for he can't take his eyes from my face.
"Father.. haven't you got a cent?"
I shake my head and give him my purse:
"Look for yourself," I say. "There's not a cent in it. I spent the last this morning."
We walk up and down. We sit down and get up and walk about again. We are very gloomy. We are bowed down with sorrow and look at each other in great perplexity.
"There might be one hidden away in a drawer somewhere," I say.
We fly to the drawers.
We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if only we find a cent..
Hurrah!
We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it.. we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh through our tears.
"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way.. through my door. Then run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we won't tell anybody."
He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and call to him:
"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say.
"Yes," he answers, earnestly.
And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like drumsticks across to the baker's.
From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it. And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of forgiveness in his cap.
The mother of my little boy and I sit until late at night talking about money, which seems to us the most difficult matter of all.
For our little boy must learn to know the power of money and the glamour of money and the joy of money. He must earn much money and spend much money..
Yet there were two people, yesterday, who killed a man to rob him of four dollars and thirty-seven cents..
VIII
It has been decreed in the privy council that my little boy shall have a weekly income of one cent. Every Sunday morning, that sum shall be paid to him, free of income-tax, out of the treasury and he has leave to dispose of it entirely at his own pleasure.
He receives this announcement with composure and sits apart for a while and ponders on it.
"Every Sunday?" he asks.
"Every Sunday."
"All the time till the summer holidays?"
"All the time till the summer holidays."
In the summer holidays, he is to go to the country, to stay with his godmother, in whose house he was pleased to allow himself to be born. The summer holidays are, consequently, the limits of his calculation of time: beyond them lies, for the moment, his Nirvana.
And we employ this restricted horizon of ours to further our true happiness.
That is to say, we calculate, with the aid of the almanac, that, if everything goes as heretofore, there will be fifteen Sundays before the summer holidays. We arrange a drawer with fifteen compartments and in each compartment we put one cent. Thus we know exactly what we have and are able at any time to survey our financial status.
And, when he sees that great lot of cents lying there, my little boy's breast is filled with mad delight. He feels endlessly rich, safe for a long time. The courtyard rings with his bragging, with all that he is going to do with his money. His special favourites are invited to come up and view his treasure.
The first Sunday passes in a normal fashion, as was to be expected.
He takes his cent and turns it straightway into a stick of chocolate of the best sort, with almonds on it and sugar, in short, an ideal stick in every way. The whole performance is over in five minutes: by that time, the stick of chocolate is gone, with the sole exception of a remnant in the corners of our mouth, which our ruthless mother wipes away, and a stain on our collar, which annoys us.
He sits by me, with a vacant little face, and swings his legs. I open the drawer and look at the empty space and at the fourteen others:
"So that's gone," I say.
My accent betrays a certain melancholy, which finds an echo in his breast. But he does not deliver himself of it at once.
"Father.. is it long till next Sunday?"
"Very long, my boy; ever so many days."
We sit a little, steeped in our own thoughts. Then I say, pensively:
"Now, if you had bought a top, you would perhaps have had more pleasure out of it. I know a place where there is a lovely top: red, with a green ring round it. It is just over the way, in the toy-shop. I saw it yesterday. I should be greatly mistaken if the toy-man was not willing to sell it for a cent. And you've got a whip, you know."
We go over the way and look at the top in the shop-window. It is really a splendid top.
"The shop's shut," says my little boy, despondently.
I look at him with surprise:
"Yes, but what does that matter to us? Anyway, we can't buy the top before next Sunday. You see, you've spent your cent on chocolate. Give me your handkerchief: there's still a bit on your cheek."
There is no more to be said. Crestfallen and pensively, we go home. We sit a long time at the dining-room window, from which we can see the window of the shop.
During the course of the week, we look at the top daily, for it does not do to let one's love grow cold. One might so easily forget it. And the top shines always more seductively. We go in and make sure that the price is really in keeping with our means. We make the shop-keeper take a solemn oath to keep the top for us till Sunday morning, even if boys should come and bid him much higher sums for it.
On Sunday morning, we are on the spot before nine o'clock and acquire our treasure with trembling hands. And we play with it all day and sleep with it at night, until, on Wednesday morning, it disappears without a trace, after the nasty manner which tops have.
When the turn comes of the next cent, something remarkable happens.
There is a boy in the courtyard who has a skipping-rope and my little boy, therefore, wants to have a skipping-rope too. But this is a difficult matter. Careful enquiries establish the fact that a skipping-rope of the sort used by the upper classes is nowhere to be obtained for less than five cents.
The business is discussed as early as Saturday:
"It's the simplest thing in the world," I say. "You must not spend your cent tomorrow. Next Sunday you must do the same and the next and the next. On the Sunday after that, you will have saved your five cents and can buy your skipping-rope at once."
"When shall I get my skipping-rope then?"
"In five Sundays from now."
He says nothing, but I can see that he does not think my idea very brilliant. In the course of the day, he derives, from sources unknown to me, an acquaintance with financial circumstances which he serves up to me on Sunday morning in the following words:
"Father, you must lend me five cents for the skipping-rope. If you will lend me five cents for the skipping-rope, I'll give you forty cents back.."
He stands close to me, very red in the face and quite confused. I perceive that he is ripe for falling into the claws of the usurers:
"I don't do that sort of business, my boy," I say. "It wouldn't do you any good either. And you're not even in a position to do it, for you have only thirteen cents, as you know."
He collapses like one whose last hope is gone.
"Let us just see," I say.
And we go to our drawer and stare at it long and deeply.
"We might perhaps manage it this way, that I give you five cents now. And then I should have your cent and the next four cents.."
He interrupts me with a loud shout. I take out my purse, give him five cents and take one cent out of the drawer:
"That won't be pleasant next Sunday," I say, "and the next and the next and the next.."
But the thoughtless youth is gone.
Of course, the instalments of his debt are paid off with great ceremony. He is always on the spot himself when the drawer is opened and sees how the requisite cent is removed and finds its way into my pocket instead of his.