Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

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From the baker's house the baker's son came slinking hymn-book in
hand. He fled across to the shelter of the wall, and hurried off;
old Jorgen stood there gobbling with laughter as he watched him,
his hands folded over his broomstick.

"O Lord, is that a man?" he cried to Jeppe, who sat at his window,
shaving himself before the milk-can. "Just look how he puffs! Now
he'll go in and beg God to forgive him for going courting!"

Jeppe came to the window to see and to silence him; one could hear
Brother Jorgen's falsetto voice right down the street. "Has he been
courting? However did you get him to venture such a leap?" he asked
eagerly.

"Oh, it was while we were sitting at table. I had a tussle with my
melancholy madman--because I couldn't help thinking of the little
Jorgen. God knows, I told myself, no little Jorgen has come to carry
on your name, and the boy's a weakling, and you've no one else to
build on! It's all very well going about with your nose in the air
all the days God gives you--everything will be swept away and be to
no purpose. And everything of that sort--you know how I get thinking
when ideas like that get the upper hand with me. I sat there and
looked at the boy, and angry I felt with him, that I did; and right
opposite him there was sitting a fine bit of womanhood, and he not
looking at her. And with that I struck my hand on the table, and I
says, 'Now, boy, just you take Marie by the hand and ask her whether
she'll be your wife--I want to make an end of the matter now and see
what you're good for!' The boy all shrivels up and holds out his
hand, and Marie, it don't come amiss to her. 'Yes, that I will!'
she says, and grips hold of him before he has time to think what
he's doing. And we shall be having the marriage soon."

"If you can make a boot out of that leather!" said Jeppe.

"Oh, she's a warm piece--look at the way she's built. She's thawing
him already. Women, they know the way--he won't freeze in bed."

Old Jorgen laughed contentedly, and went off to his work. "Yes, why,
she'd breathe life into the dead," he announced to the street at
large.

The others went out in their finest clothes, but Pelle did not care
to go. He had not been able to accomplish his constant resolution to
keep himself neat and clean, and this failure weighed upon him and
abashed him. And the holes in his stockings, which were now so big
that they could no longer be darned, were disgustingly apparent,
with his skin showing through them, so that he had a loathing for
himself.

Now all the young people were going out. He could see the sea in
the opening at the end of the street; it was perfectly calm, and had
borrowed the colors of the sunset. They would be going to the harbor
or the dunes by the sea; there would be dancing on the grass, and
perhaps some would get to fighting about a girl. But he wasn't going
to be driven out of the pack like a mangy dog; he didn't care a hang
for the whole lot of them!

He threw off his apron and established himself on a beer-barrel
which stood outside before the gate. On the bench opposite sat
the older inhabitants of the street, puffing at their pipes and
gossiping about everything under the sun. Now the bells sounded the
hour for leaving off work. Madame Rasmussen was beating her child
and reviling it in time with her blows. Then suddenly all was silent;
only the crying of the child continued, like a feeble evening hymn.
Old Jeppe was talking about Malaga--"when I ran ashore at Malaga!"--
but Baker Jorgen was still lamenting his want of an heir, and
sighing: "Yes, yes; if only one could see into the future!" Then he
suddenly began to talk about the Mormons. "It might really be great
fun to see, some time, what they have to offer you," he said.

"I thought you'd been a Mormon a long time, Uncle Jorgen," said
Master Andres. The old man laughed.

"Well, well; one tries all sorts of things in one's time," he said,
and looked out at the sky.

Up the street stood the watchmaker, on his stone steps, his face
turned up to the zenith, while he shouted his senseless warnings:
"The new time! I ask you about the new time, O God the Father!"
he repeated.

Two weary stevedores were going homeward. "He'll drive all poverty
out of the world and give us all a new life--that's the form his
madness takes," said one of them, with a dreary laugh.

"Then he's got the millennium on the brain?" said the other.

"No, he's just snarling at the world," said old Jorgen, behind
them. "We shall certainly get a change in the weather."

"Things are bad with him just now, poor fellow," said Bjerregrav,
shuddering. "It was about this time of the year that he lost his
wits."

An inner voice admonished Pelle: "Don't sit there with your hands
in your lap, but go in and look after your clothes!" But he could
not bring himself to do so--the difficulties had become too
insurmountable. On the following day Manna and the others called
him, but he could not spring over the wall to join them; they had
begun to turn up their noses at him and regard him critically.
He did not very well understand it, but he had become an outcast,
a creature who no longer cared about washing himself properly.
But what was the use? He could not go on contending against the
invincible! No one had warned him in time, and now the town had
captured him, and he had given up everything else. He must shuffle
through life as best he could.

No one had a thought for him! When washing was being done for his
employers it never occurred to Madam to wash anything of his, and he
was not the boy to come forward of himself. The washerwoman was more
considerate; when she could she would smuggle in some of Pelle's
dirty linen, although it meant more work for her. But she was poor
herself; as for the rest, they only wanted to make use of him. There
was no one in town who cared sufficiently for his welfare to take
the trouble even to open his mouth to tell him the truth. This was
a thought that made him feel quite weak about the knees, although
he was fifteen years old and had courage to tackle a mad bull. More
than anything else it was his loneliness that weakened his powers of
resistance. He was helpless alone among all these people, a child,
who had to look after himself as best he could, and be prepared for
attacks from every quarter.

He sat there, making no effort to dispel the misery that had come
over him, and was working its will with him, while with half an ear
he listened to the life around him. But suddenly he felt something
in his waistcoat pocket--money! He felt immensely relieved at once,
but he did not hurry; he slipped behind the gate and counted it.
One and a half kroner. He was on the point of regarding it as a
gift from on high, as something which the Almighty had in His great
goodness placed there, but then it occurred to him that this was his
master's money. It had been given him the day before for repairs to
a pair of ladies' shoes, and he had forgotten to pay it in, while
the master, strangely enough, had quite forgotten to ask for it.

Pelle stood with bent back by the well outside, scrubbing himself
over a bucket until his blood tingled. Then he put on his best
clothes, drew his shoes on to his naked feet, to avoid the painful
feeling of the ragged stockings, and buttoned his rubber collar--for
the last time innocent of any tie--to his shirt. Shortly afterward
he was standing outside a shop-window, contemplating some large
neckties, which had just been put upon the market, and could be worn
with any one of four faces outward; they filled the whole of the
waistcoat, so that one did not see the shirt. Now he would be
disdained no longer! For a moment he ran to and fro and breathed
the air; then he got upon the scent, and ran at a breathless gallop
toward the sea-dunes, where the young folk of the town played late
into the summer night that lay over the wan sea.

Of course, it was only a loan. Pelle had to sole a pair of shoes
for a baker's apprentice who worked with Nilen; as soon as they were
finished he would repay the money. He could put the money under the
cutting-out board in his master's room; the master would find it
there, would gaze at it with a droll expression, and say: "What the
devil is this?" And then he would knock on the wall, and would treat
Pelle to a long rigmarole about his magical gifts--and then he would
ask him to run out and fetch a half-bottle of port.

He did not receive the money for soling the shoes; half the sum he
had to pay out for leather, and the rest was a long time coming, for
the baker's apprentice was a needy wretch. But he did not doubt his
own integrity; the master might be as sure of his money as if it had
been in the bank. Yet now and again he forgot to give up petty sums
--if some necessity or other was pressing him unexpectedly. They
were, of course, all loans--until the golden time came. And that
was never far away.

One day he returned home as the young master was standing at the
door, staring at the driving clouds overhead. He gave Pelle's
shoulder a familiar squeeze. "How was it they didn't pay you for
the shoes at the Chamberlain's yesterday?"

Pelle went crimson and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket.
"I forgot it," he said in a low voice.

"Now, now!" The master shook him good-naturedly. "It's not that
I mistrust you. But just to be methodical!"

Pelle's heart pounded wildly in his body; he had just decided to use
the money to buy a pair of stockings, the very next time he went out
--and then what would have happened? And the master's belief in him!
And all at once his offence showed itself to him in all its shameful
treachery; he felt as if he was on the point of being sick, so
disturbed was he. Until this moment he had preserved through
everything the feeling of his own worth, and now it was destroyed;
there could not be any one wickeder than he in all the world. In
future no one could trust him any more, and he could no longer look
people straight in the face; unless he went to the master at once
and cast himself and his shame unconditionally on his mercy. There
was no other salvation, that he knew.

But he was not certain that the master would conceive the matter
in its finer aspect, or that everything would turn out for the best;
he had given up believing in fairy-tales. Then he would simply be
turned away, or perhaps be sent to the courthouse, and it would be
all up with him.

Pelle resolved to keep it to himself; and for many days he went
about suffering from a sense of his own wickedness. But then
necessity gripped him by the throat and brushed all else aside; and
in order to procure himself the most necessary things he was forced
to resort to the dangerous expedient of stating; when the master
gave him money to buy anything, that it was to be put down. And then
one day it was all up with him. The others were ready to pull down
the house about his ears; they threw his things out of the garret
and called him a filthy, beast. Pelle wept; he was quite convinced
that not he was the guilty person, but Peter, who was always keeping
company with the nastiest women, but he could get no hearing. He
hurried away, with the resolves that he would never come back.

On the dunes he was captured by Emil and Peter, who had been sent
out after him by old Jeppe. He did not want to go back with them,
but they threw him down and dragged him back, one taking his head
and one his legs. People came to the door and laughed and asked
questions, and the other two gave their explanation of the matter,
which was a terrible disgrace for Pelle.

And then he fell ill. He lay under the tiled roof raving with fever;
they had thrown his bed into the loft. "What, isn't he up yet?" said
Jeppe, astounded, when he came in to the workshop. "No? Well, he'll
soon get up when he gets hungry." It was no joke to take a sick
apprentice his meals in bed. But Pelle did not come down.

Once the young master threw all considerations overboard and took
some food up to him. "You're making yourself ridiculous," sneered
Jeppe; "you'll never be able to manage people like that!" And Madam
scolded. But Master Andres whistled until he was out of hearing.

Poor Pelle lay there, in delirium; his little head was full of
fancies, more than it would hold. But now the reaction set in, and
he lay there stuffing himself with all that was brought him.

The young master sat upstairs a great deal and received enlightenment
on many points. It was not his nature to do anything energetically,
but he arranged that Pelle's washing should be done in the house,
and he took care that Lasse should be sent for.

VIII

Jeppe was related to about half the island, but he was not greatly
interested in disentangling his relationship. He could easily go
right back to the founder of the family, and trace the generations
through two centuries, and follow the several branches of the family
from country to town and over the sea and back again, and show that
Andres and the judge must be cousins twice removed. But if any
insignificant person asked him: "How was it, then--weren't my father
and you first cousins?" he would answer brusquely, "Maybe, but the
soup grows too thin after a time. This relationship!"

"Then you and I, good Lord! are second cousins, and you are related
to the judge as well," Master Andres would say. He did not grudge
people any pleasure they could derive from the facts of relationship.
Poor people regarded him gratefully--they said he had kind eyes; it
was a shame that he should not be allowed to live.

Jeppe was the oldest employer in the town, and among the shoemakers
his workshop was the biggest. He was able, too, or rather he had
been, and he still possessed the manual skill peculiar to the old
days. When it came to a ticklish job he would willingly show them
how to get on with it, or plan some contrivance to assist them.
Elastic-sided boots and lace-up boots had superseded the old
footwear, but honest skill still meant an honest reputation. And
if some old fellow wanted a pair of Wellingtons or Bluchers of
leather waterproofed with grease, instead of by some new-fangled
devilry, he must needs go to Jeppe--no one else could shape an
instep as he could. And when it came to handling the heavy dressed
leathers for sea-boots there was no one like Jeppe. He was obstinate,
and rigidly opposed to everything new, where everybody else was led
away by novelty. In this he was peculiarly the representative of
the old days, and people respected him as such.

The apprentices alone did not respect him. They did everything they
could to vex him and to retaliate on him for being such a severe
task-master. They all laid themselves out to mystify him, speaking
of the most matter-of-fact things in dark and covert hints, in order
to make old Jeppe suspicious, and if he spied upon them and caught
them at something which proved to be nothing at all they had a great
day of it.

"What does this mean? Where are you going without permission?" asked
Jeppe, if one of them got up to go into the court; he was always
forgetting that times had altered. They did not answer, and then he
would fly into a passion. "I'll have you show me respect!" he would
cry, stamping on the floor until the dust eddied round him. Master
Andres would slowly raise his head. "What's the matter with you this
time, father?" he would ask wearily. Then Jeppe would break out into
fulminations against the new times.

If Master Andres and the journeyman were not present, the
apprentices amused themselves by making the old man lose his temper;
and this was not difficult, as he saw hostility in everything.
Then he would snatch up a knee-strap and begin to rain blows upon
the sinner. At the same time he would make the most extraordinary
grimaces and give vent to a singular gurgling sound. "There, take
that, although it grieves me to use harsh measures!" he would mew.
"And that, too--and that! You've got to go through with it, if you
want to enter the craft!" Then he would give the lad something that
faintly resembled a kick, and would stand there struggling for
breath. "You're a troublesome youngster--you'll allow that?" "Yes,
my mother used to break a broomstick over my head every other day!"
replied Peter, the rogue, snorting. "There, you see you are! But it
may all turn out for the best even now. The foundation's not so bad!"
Jeppe doddered to and fro, his hands behind his back. The rest of
the day he was inclined to solemnity, and did his best to obliterate
all remembrance of the punishment. "It was only for your own good!"
he would say, in a propitiatory tone.

Jeppe was first cousin to the crazy Anker, but he preferred not to
lay claim to the fact; the man could not help being mad, but he made
his living, disgracefully enough, by selling sand in the streets--a
specialist in his way. Day by day one saw Anker's long, thin figure
in the streets, with a sackful of sand slung over his sloping
shoulders; he wore a suit of blue twill and white woollen stockings,
and his face was death-like. He was quite fleshless. "That comes of
all his digging," people said. "Look at his assistant!"

He never appeared in the workshop with his sack of sand; he was
afraid of Jeppe, who was now the oldest member of the family.
Elsewhere he went in and out everywhere with his clattering wooden
shoes; and people bought of him, as they must have sand for their
floors, and his was as good as any other. He needed next to nothing
for his livelihood; people maintained that he never ate anything,
but lived on his own vitals. With the money he received he bought
materials for the "New Time," and what was left he threw away,
in his more exalted moments, from the top of his high stairs. The
street-urchins always came running up when the word went round that
the madness about the "new time" was attacking him.

He and Bjerregrav had been friends as boys. Formerly they had been
inseparable, and neither of them was willing to do his duty and
marry, although each was in a position to keep a wife and children.
At an age when others were thinking about how to find favor with
the womenfolk, these two were running about with their heads full of
rubbish which enraged people. At that time a dangerous revolutionist
was living with Bjerregrav's brother; he had spent many years on
Christianso, but then the Government had sent him to spend the rest
of his term of captivity on Bornholm. Dampe was his name; Jeppe
had known him when an apprentice in Copenhagen; and his ambition was
to overthrow God and king. This ambition of his did not profit him
greatly; he was cast down like a second Lucifer, and only kept his
head on his shoulders by virtue of an act of mercy. The two young
people regarded him as then justification, and he turned their heads
with his venomous talk, so that they began to ponder over things
which common folk do better to leave alone. Bjerregrav came through
this phase with a whole skin, but Anker paid the penalty by losing
his wits. Although they both had a comfortable competence, they
pondered above all things over the question of poverty--as though
there was anything particular to be discovered about that!

All this was many years ago; it was about the time when the
craze for freedom had broken out in the surrounding nations with
fratricide and rebellion. Matters were not so bad on the island, for
neither Anker nor Bjerregrav was particularly warlike; yet everybody
could see that the town was not behind the rest of the world. Here
the vanity of the town was quite in agreement with Master Jeppe,
but for the rest he roundly condemned the whole movement. He always
looked ready to fall upon Bjerregrav tooth and nail if the
conversation turned on Anker's misfortune.

"Dampe!" said Jeppe scornfully, "he has turned both your heads!"

"That's a lie!" stammered Bjerregrav. "Anker went wrong later
than that--after King Frederick granted us liberty. And it's only
that I'm not very capable; I have my wits, thank God!" Bjerregrav
solemnly raised the fingers of his right hand to his lips, a gesture
which had all the appearance of a surviving vestige of the sign of
the cross.

"You and your wits!" hissed Jeppe contemptuously. "You, who throw
your money away over the first tramp you meet! And you defend an
abominable agitator, who never goes out by daylight like other
people, but goes gallivanting about at night!"

"Yes, because he's ashamed of humanity; he wants to make the world
more beautiful!" Bjerregrav blushed with embarrassment when he had
said this.

But Jeppe was beside himself with contempt. "So gaol-birds are
ashamed of honest people! So that's why he takes his walks at night!
Well, the world would of course be a more beautiful place if it were
filled with people like you and Dampe!"

The pitiful thing about Anker was that he was such a good craftsman.
He had inherited the watchmaker's trade from his father and
grandfather, and his Bornholm striking-clocks were known all over
the world; orders came to him from Funen as well as from the capital.
But when the Constitution was granted he behaved like a child--as
though people had not always been free on Bornholm! Now, he said,
the new time had begun, and in its honor he intended, in his insane
rejoicing, to make an ingenious clock which should show the moon and
the date and the month and year. Being an excellent craftsman, he
completed it successfully, but then it entered his head that the
clock ought to show the weather as well. Like so many whom God had
endowed with His gifts, he ventured too far and sought to rival God
Himself. But here the brakes were clapped on, and the whole project
was nearly derailed. For a long time he took it greatly to heart,
but when the work was completed he rejoiced. He was offered a large
price for his masterpiece, and Jeppe bade him close with the offer,
but he answered crazily--for he was now definitely insane--"This
cannot be bought with money. Everything I made formerly had its
value in money, but not this. Can any one buy _me_?"

For a long time he was in a dilemma as to what he should do with
his work, but then one day he came to Jeppe, saying: "Now I know;
the best ought to have the clock. I shall send it to the King. He
has given us the new time, and this clock will tell the new time."
Anker sent the clock away, and after some time he received two
hundred thalers, paid him through the Treasury.

This was a large sum of money, but Anker was not satisfied; he had
expected a letter of thanks from the King's own hand. He behaved
very oddly about this, and everything went wrong with him; over and
over again trouble built its nest with him. The money he gave to
the poor, and he lamented that the new time had not yet arrived. So
he sank even deeper into his madness, and however hard Jeppe scolded
him and lectured him it did no good. Finally he went so far as to
fancy that he was appointed to create the new time, and then he
became cheerful once more.

Three or four families of the town--very poor people, so demoralized
that the sects would have nothing to do with them--gathered around
Anker, and heard the voice of God in his message. "_They_ lose
nothing by sitting under a crazy man," saw Jeppe scornfully. Anker
himself paid no attention to them, but went his own way. Presently
he was a king's son in disguise, and was betrothed to the eldest
daughter of the King--and the new time was coming. Or when his mood
was quieter, he would sit and work at an infallible clock which
would not show the time; it would _be_ the time--the new time
itself.

He went to and fro in the workshop, in order to let Master Andres
see the progress of his invention; he had conceived a blind
affection for the young master. Every year, about the first of
January, Master Andres had to write a letter for him, a love-letter
to the king's daughter, and had also to take it upon him to despatch
it to the proper quarter; and from time to time Anker would run in
to ask whether an answer had yet arrived; and at the New Year a
fresh love-letter was sent off. Master Andres had them all put away.

One evening--it was nearly time to knock off--there was a thundering
knock on the workshop door, and the sound of some one humming a
march drifted in from the entry. "Can you not open?" cried a solemn
voice: "the Prince is here!"

"Pelle, open the door quick!" said the master. Pelle flung the door
wide open, and Anker marched in. He wore a paper hat with a waving
plume, and epaulettes made out of paper frills; his face was beaming,
and he stood there with his hand to his hat as he allowed the march
to die away. The young master rose gaily and shouldered arms with
his stick.

"Your Majesty," he said, "how goes it with the new time?"

"Not at all well!" replied Anker, becoming serious. "The pendulums
that should keep the whole in motion are failing me." He stood still,
gazing at the door; his brain was working mysteriously.

"Ought they to be made of gold?" The master's eyes were twinkling,
but he was earnestness personified.