Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 8

money and numbers. I was well up in the multiplication table and was constantly wrestling with large numbers, but they did not correspond to any actual conception in my mind. When I reckoned up what one number of several digits came to multiplied by another of much about the same value, I had not the least idea whether Father or Grandfather had so many Rigsdaler, or less, or more. There was only one of the uncles who took an interest in my gift for multiplication, and that was my stout, rich uncle with the crooked mouth, of whom it was said that he owned a million, and who was always thinking of figures. He was hardly at the door of Mother's drawing-room before he called out: "If you are a sharp boy and can tell me what 27,374 times 580,208 are, you shall have four skilling;" and quickly slate and pencil appeared and the sum was finished in a moment and the four skilling pocketed. [Footnote: Four skilling would be a sum equal to 1-1/2d. English money.]
I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values. All the same, it would be a terrible thing to destroy such a value as 90 Rigsdaler seemed to be. But might it not be that Jens only said so? He surely could not see from the rope whether it had been pulled or not.
So I did it again, and one day when Jens began questioning me sternly could not deny my guilt. "I saw it," said Jens; "the rope is nearly cut in two, and now you will catch it, now the policeman will come and fetch you."
For weeks after that I did not have one easy hour. Wherever I went, or whatever I did, the fear of the police followed me. I dared not speak to anyone of what I had done and of what was awaiting me. I was too much ashamed, and I noticed, too, that my parents knew nothing. But if a door opened suddenly I would look anxiously at the incomer. When I was walking with the nurse and my little brother I looked all round on every side, and frequently peeped behind me, to see whether the police were after me. Even when I lay in my bed, shut in on all four sides by its trellis-work, the dread of the police was upon me still.
There was only one person to whom I dared mention it, and that was Jens. When a few weeks had gone by I tried to get an answer out of him. Then I perceived that Jens did not even know what I was talking about. Jens had evidently forgotten all about it. Jens had been making fun of me. If my relief was immense, my indignation was no less. So much torture for nothing at all! Older people, who had noticed how the word "police" was to me an epitome of all that was terrible, sometimes made use of it as an explanation of things that they thought were above my comprehension.
When I was six years old I heard the word "war" for the first time. I did not know what it was, and asked. "It means," said one of my aunts, "that the Germans have put police in Schleswig and forbidden the Danes to go there, and that they will beat them if they stay there." That I could understand, but afterwards I heard them talking about soldiers. "Are there soldiers as well?" I asked. "Police and soldiers," was the answer. But that confused me altogether, for the two things belonged in my mind to wholly different categories. Soldiers were beautiful, gay- coloured men with shakos, who kept guard and marched in step to the sound of drums and fifes and music, till you longed to go with them. That was why soldiers were copied in tin and you got them on your birthday in boxes. But police went by themselves, without music, without beautiful colours on their uniforms, looked stern and threatening, and had a stick in their hands. Nobody dreamt of copying them in tin. I was very much annoyed to find out, as I soon did, that I had been misled by the explanation and that it was a question of soldiers only.
Not a month had passed before I began to follow eagerly, when the grown- up people read aloud from the farthing newspaper sheets about the battles at Bov, Nybb?l, etc. The Danes always won. At bottom, war was a cheerful thing.
Then one day an unexpected and overwhelming thing happened. Mother was sitting with her work on the little raised platform in the drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little compartments, in which, under the loose mahogany lid,