Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

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So he went out to Due's. They had removed to an old merchant's house
where there was room for Due's horses. They seemed to be getting on
well. It was said that the old consul took an interest in them and
helped them on. Pelle never went into the house, but looked up Due
in the stable, and if he was not at home Pelle would go away again.
Anna did not treat him as though he was welcome. Due himself greeted
him cordially. If he had no rounds to make he used to hang about the
stable and potter round the horses; he did not care about being in
the house. Pelle gave him a hand, cutting chaff for him, or helping
in anything that came to hand, and then they would go into the house
together. Due was at once another man if he had Pelle behind him;
he was more decided in his behavior. Anna was gradually and
increasingly getting the upper hand over him.

She was just as decided as ever, and kept the house in good order.
She no longer had little Marie with her. She dressed her own two
children well, and sent them to a school for young children, and
she paid for their attendance. She was delightful to look at, and
understood how to dress herself, but she would hear nothing good
of any one else. Pelle was not smart enough for her; she turned up
her nose at his every-day clothes, and in order to make him feel
uncomfortable she was always talking about Alfred's engagement to
Merchant Lau's daughter. This was a fine match for him. "_He_
doesn't loaf about and sleep his time away, and sniff at other
people's doors in order to get their plate of food," she said. Pelle
only laughed; nothing made any particular impression on him nowadays.
The children ran about, wearying themselves in their fine clothes
--they must not play with the poor children out-of-doors, and must
not make themselves dirty. "Oh, play with us for a bit, Uncle Pelle!"
they would say, hanging on to him. "Aren't you our uncle too? Mother
says you aren't our uncle. She's always wanting us to call the
consul uncle, but we just run away. His nose is so horribly red."

"Does the consul come to see you, then?" asked Pelle.

"Yes, he often comes--he's here now!"

Pelle peeped into the yard. The pretty wagon had been taken out.
"Father's gone out," said the children. Then he slipped home again.
He stole a scrap of bread and a drop of brandy from Strom, who was
not at home, and threw himself on his bed. As the darkness came on
he strolled out and lounged, freezing, about the street corners.
He had a vague desire to do something. Well-dressed people were
promenading up and down the street, and many of his acquaintances
were there, taking their girls for a walk; he avoided having to
greet them, and to listen to whispered remarks and laughter at
his expense. Lethargic as he was, he still had the acute sense of
hearing that dated from the time of his disgrace at the town hall.
People enjoyed finding something to say when he passed them; their
laughter still had the effect of making his knees begin to jerk
with a nervous movement, like the quickly-suppressed commencement
of a flight.

He slipped into a side-street; he had buttoned his thin jacket
tightly about him, and turned up his collar. In the half-darkness
of the doorways stood young men and girls, in familiar, whispered
conversation. Warmth radiated from the girls, and their bibbed
aprons shone in the darkness. Pelle crept along in the cold, and
knew less than ever what to do with himself; he ranged about to
find a sweetheart for himself.

In the market he met Alfred, arm-in-arm with Lau's daughter. He
carried a smart walking-stick, and wore brown gloves and a tall
hat. "The scamp--he still owes me two and a half kroner, and I shall
never get it out of him!" thought Pelle, and for a moment he felt
a real desire to spring upon him and to roll all his finery in the
mud. Alfred turned his head the other way. "He only knows me when
he wants to do something and has no money!" said Pelle bitterly.

He ran down the street at a jog-trot, in order to keep himself
warm, turning his eyes toward the windows. The bookbinder and
his wife were sitting at home, singing pious songs. The man drank
when at home; that one could see plainly on the blind. At the
wool-merchant's they were having supper.

Farther on, at the Sow's, there was life, as always. A mist of
tobacco smoke and a great deal of noise were escaping through the
open window. The Sow kept a house for idle seamen, and made a great
deal of money. Pelle had often been invited to visit her, but had
always considered himself too good; moreover, he could not bear
Rud. But this evening he seized greedily upon the memory of this
invitation, and went in. Perhaps a mouthful of food would come
his way.

At a round table sat a few tipsy seamen, shouting at one another,
and making a deafening row. The Sow sat on a young fellow's knee;
she lay half over the table and dabbled her fingers in a puddle of
spilt beer; from time to time she shouted right in the face of those
who were making the most noise. The last few years had not reduced
her circumference.

"Now look at that! Is that you, Pelle?" she said, and she stood
up to give him her hand. She was not quite sober, and had some
difficulty in taking his. "That's nice of you to come, now--I really
thought we weren't good enough for you! Now, sit down and have
a drop; it won't cost you anything." She motioned to him to take
a seat.

The sailors were out of humor; they sat staring sleepily at Pelle.
Their heavy heads wagged helplessly. "That's surely a new customer?"
asked one, and the others laughed.

The Sow laughed too, but all at once became serious. "Then you can
leave him out of your games, for he's far too good to be dragged
into anything; one knows what you are!" She sank into a chair next
to Pelle, and sat looking at him, while she rubbed her own greasy
countenance. "How tall and fine you've grown--but you aren't
well-off for clothes! And you don't look to be overfed.... Ah,
I've known you from the time when you and your father came into
the country; a little fellow you were then, and Lasse brought me my
mother's hymn-book!" She was suddenly silent, and her eyes filled
with tears.

One of the sailors whispered to the rest, and they began to laugh.

"Stop laughing, you swine!" she cried angrily, and she crossed over
to them. "You aren't going to play any of your nonsense with him--he
comes like a memory of the times when I was respectable, too. His
father is the only creature living who can prove that I was once a
pretty, innocent little maid, who got into bad company. He's had me
on his lap and sung lullabies to me." She looked about her defiantly,
and her red face quivered.

"Didn't you weigh as much then as you do now?" asked one of the men,
and embraced her.

"Don't play the fool with the little thing!" cried another. "Don't
you see she's crying? Take her on your lap and sing her a lullaby--
then she'll believe you are Lasse-Basse!"

Raging, she snatched up a bottle. "Will you hold your tongue with
your jeering? Or you'll get this on the head!" Her greasy features
seemed to run together in her excitement.

They let her be, and she sat there sobbing, her hands before her
face. "Is your father still alive?" she asked. "Then give him my
respects--just say the Sow sends her respects--you can safely call
me the Sow!--and tell him he's the only person in the world I have
to thank for anything. He thought well of me, and he brought me the
news of mother's death."

Pelle sat there listening with constraint to her tearful speech,
with an empty smile. He had knives in his bowels, he was so empty,
and the beer was going to his head. He remembered all the details
of Stone Farm, where he had first seen and heard the Sow, just as
Father Lasse had recalled her home and her childhood to her. But he
did not connect any further ideas with that meeting; it was a long
time ago, and--"isn't she going to give me anything to eat?" he
thought, and listened unsympathetically to her heavy breathing.

The sailors sat looking at her constrainedly; a solemn silence lay
on their mist-wreathed faces; they were like drunken men standing
about a grave. "Give over washing the decks now--and get us
something to drink!" an old fellow said suddenly. "Each of us knows
what it is to have times of childish innocence come back to him,
and I say it's a jolly fine thing when they will peep through the
door at old devils like us! But let the water stop overboard now,
I say! The more one scours an old barge the more damage comes to
light! So, give us something to drink now, and then the cards,
ma'am!"

She stood up and gave them what they asked for; she had mastered
her emotion, but her legs were still heavy.

"That's right--and then we've got a sort of idea that to-day is
Sunday! Show us your skill, ma'am, quick!"

"But that costs a krone, you know!" she said, laughing.

They collected the money and she went behind the bar and undressed.
She reappeared in her chemise, with a burning candle in her hand....

Pelle slipped out. He was quite dizzy with hunger and a dull feeling
of shame. He strolled on at random, not knowing what he did. He had
only one feeling--that everything in the world was indifferent to
him, whatever happened--whether he went on living in laborious
honesty, or defiled himself with drinking, or perished--it was all
one to him! What was the good of it all? No one cared what happened
to him--not even he himself. Not a human soul would miss him if he
went to the dogs--but yes, there was Lasse, Father Lasse! But as for
going home now and allowing them to see him in all his wretchedness
--when they had expected such unreasonable things of him--no, he
could not do it! The last remnants of shame protested against it.
And to work--what at? His dream was dead. He stood there with a
vague feeling that he had come to the very edge of the abyss, which
is so ominous to those in the depths.

Year in, year out, he had kept himself by his never-flagging
exertions, and with the demented idea that he was mounting upward.
And now he stood very near the lowest depth of life--the very bottom.
And he was so tired. Why not let himself sink yet a little further;
why not let destiny run its course? There would be a seductive
repose in the acts, after his crazy struggle against the superior
powers.

The sound of a hymn aroused him slightly. He had come down a
side-street, and right in front of him stood a wide, lofty building,
with the gable facing the street and a cross on the point of the
gable. Hundreds of voices had sought, in the course of the years,
to entice him hither; but in his arrogance he had had no use for
spiritual things. What was there here for a smart youngster? And now
he was stranded outside! And now he felt a longing for a little care,
and he had a feeling that a hand had led him hither.

The hall was quite filled with poor families. They were packed
amazingly close together on the benches, each family by itself; the
men, as a rule, were asleep, and the women had all they could do to
quiet their children, and to make them sit politely with their legs
sticking out in front of them. These were people who had come to
enjoy a little light and warmth, free of cost, in the midst of their
desolate lives; on Sundays, at least, they thought, they could ask
for a little of these things. They were the very poorest of the poor,
and they sought refuge here, where they would not be persecuted, and
where they were promised their part in the millennium. Pelle knew
them all, both those whom he had seen before and those others, who
wore the same expression, as of people drowned in the ocean of life.
He soon found himself cozily settled among all these dishevelled
nestlings, whom the pitiless wind had driven oversea, and who were
now washed ashore by the waves.

A tall man with a full beard and a pair of good child-like eyes
stood up among the benches, beating the time of a hymn--he was Dam,
the smith. He led the singing, and as he stood there he bent his
knees in time, and they all sang with him, with tremulous voices,
each in his own key, of that which had passed over them. The notes
forced their way through the parched, worn throats, cowering, as
though afraid, now that they had flown into the light. Hesitatingly
they unfurled their fragile, gauzy wings, and floated out into the
room, up from the quivering lips. And under the roof they met with
their hundreds of sisters, and their defilement fell from them. They
became a jubilation, loud and splendid, over some unknown treasure,
over the kingdom of happiness, that was close at hand. To Pelle
it seemed that the air must be full of butterflies winged with
sunshine:

"O blessed, blessed shall we be
When we, from care and mis'ry free,
The splendor of Thy kingdom see,
And with our Saviour come to Thee!"

"Mother, I'm hungry!" said a child's voice, as the hymn was followed
by silence. The mother, herself emaciated, silenced the child with a
shocked expression, and looked wonderingly about her. What a stupid
idea of the child's! "You've just had your food!" she said loudly,
as though she had been comfortably off. But the child went on
crying: "Mother, I'm so hungry!"

Then Baker Jorgen's Soren came by, and gave the child a roll. He had
a whole basket full of bread. "Are there any more children who are
hungry?" he asked aloud. He looked easily in people's faces, and was
quite another creature to what he was at home; here no one laughed
at him, and no one whispered that he was the brother of his own son.

An old white-bearded man mounted the pulpit at the back of the
hall. "That's him," was whispered in every direction, and they
all hastened to clear their throats by coughing, and to induce
the children to empty their mouths of food. He took the cry of
the little one as his text: "Mother, I am so hungry!" That was the
voice of the world--that great, terrible cry--put into the mouth of
a child. He saw no one there who had not writhed at the sound of
that cry on the lips of his own flesh and blood--no one who, lest
he should hear it again, had not sought to secure bread during his
lifetime--no one who had not been beaten back. But they did not see
God's hand when that hand, in its loving-kindness, changed that mere
hunger for bread into a hunger for happiness. They were the poor,
and the poor are God's chosen people. For that reason they must
wander in the desert, and must blindly ask: "Where is the Promised
Land?" But the gleam of which the faithful followed was not earthly
happiness! God himself led them to and fro until their hunger was
purged and became the true hunger--the hunger of the soul for
eternal happiness!

They did not understand much of what he said; but his words set free
something within them, so that they engaged in lively conversation
over everyday things. But suddenly the buzz of conversation was
silenced; a little hunchbacked man had clambered up on a bench and
was looking them over with glittering eyes. This was Sort, the
traveling shoemaker from the outer suburb.

"We want to be glad and merry," he said, assuming a droll
expression; "God's children are always glad, however much evil they
have to fight against, and they can meet with no misfortune--God is
Joy!" He began to laugh, as boisterously as a child, and they all
laughed with him; one infected the next. They could not control
themselves; it was as though an immense merriment had overwhelmed
them all. The little children looked at the grown-ups and laughed,
till their little throats began to cough with laughing. "He's a
proper clown!" said the men to their wives, their own faces broad
with laughter, "but he's got a good heart!"

On the bench next to Pelle sat a silent family, a man and wife and
three children, who breathed politely through their raw little noses.
The parents were little people, and there was a kind of inward
deftness about them, as though they were continually striving to
make themselves yet smaller. Pelle knew them a little, and entered
into conversation with them. The man was a clay-worker, and they
lived in one of the miserable huts near the "Great Power's" home.

"Yes, that is true--that about happiness," said the wife. "Once we
too used to dream of getting on in the world a little, so that we
might be sure of our livelihood; and we scraped a little money
together, that some good people lent us, and we set up in a little
shop, and I kept it while father went to work. But it wouldn't
answer; no one supported us, and we got poorer goods because we were
poor, and who cares about dealing with very poor people? We had to
give it up, and we were deeply in debt, and we're still having to
pay it off--fifty ore every week, and there we shall be as long
as we live, for the interest is always mounting up. But we are
honorable people, thank God!" she concluded. The man took no part
in the conversation.

Her last remark was perhaps evoked by a man who had quietly entered
the hall, and was now crouching on a bench in the background; for
he was not an honorable man. He had lived on a convict's bread and
water; he was "Thieving Jacob," who about ten years earlier had
smashed in the window of Master Jeppe's best room and had stolen
a pair of patent-leather shoes for his wife. He had heard of a rich
man who had given his betrothed such a pair of shoes, and he wanted
to see what it was like, just for once, to give a really fine
present--a present worth as much as one would earn in two weeks.
This he had explained before the court. "Numbskull!" said Jeppe
always, when the conversation touched upon Jacob; "for such a
miserable louse suddenly to get a swollen head, to want to make big
presents! And if it had been for his young woman even--but for his
wife! No, he paid the penalty to the very last day--in spite of
Andres."

Yes, he certainly had to pay the penalty! Even here no one would sit
next to him! Pelle looked at him and wondered that his own offence
should be so little regarded. The remembrance of it now only lay in
people's eyes when they spoke to him. But at this moment Smith Dam
went and sat next to Thieving Jacob, and they sat hand-in-hand and
whispered.

And over yonder sat some one who nodded to Pelle--in such a friendly
manner; it was the woman of the dancing-shoes; her young man had
left her, and now she was stranded here--her dancing days were
over. Yet she was grateful to Pelle; the sight of him had recalled
delightful memories; one could see that by the expression of her
eyes and mouth.

Pelle's own temper was softened as he sat there. Something melted
within him; a quiet and humble feeling of happiness came over him.
There was still one human being who believed herself in Pelle's
debt, although everything had gone wrong for her.

As the meeting was breaking up, at half-past nine, she was standing
in the street, in conversation with another woman. She came up to
Pelle, giving him her hand. "Shall we walk a little way together?"
she asked him. She evidently knew of his circumstances; he read
compassion in her glance. "Come with me," she said, as their ways
parted. "I have a scrap of sausage that's got to be eaten. And we
are both of us lonely."

Hesitatingly he went with her, a little hostile, for the occasion
was new and unfamiliar. But once he was seated in her little room
he felt thoroughly at ease. Her white, dainty bed stood against
the wall. She went to and fro about the room, cooking the sausage
at the stove, while she opened her heart to him, unabashed.

It isn't everybody would take things so easily! thought Pelle,
and he watched her moving figure quite happily.

They had a cheerful meal, and Pelle wanted to embrace her in his
gratitude, but she pushed his hands away. "You can keep that for
another time!" she said, laughing. "I'm a poor old widow, and you
are nothing but a child. If you want to give me pleasure, why, just
settle down and come to yourself again. It isn't right that you
should be just loafing about and idling, and you so young and such
a nice boy. And now go home, for I must get up early to-morrow and
go to my work."

Pelle visited her almost every evening. She had a disagreeable habit
of shaking him out of his slumber, but her simple and unchanging
manner of accepting and enduring everything was invigorating. Now
and again she found a little work for him, and was always delighted
when she could share her poor meal with him. "Any one like myself
feels a need of seeing a man-body at the table-end once in a while,"
she said. "But hands off--you don't owe me anything!"

She criticized his clothes. "They'll all fall off your body soon--
why don't you put on something else and let me see to them?"

"I have nothing but these," said Pelle, ashamed.

On Saturday evening he had to take off his rags, and creep, mother-
naked, into her bed. She would take no refusal, and she took shirt
and all, and put them into a bucket of water. It took her half
the night to clean everything. Pelle lay in bed watching her, the
coverlet up to his chin. He felt very strange. As for her, she hung
the whole wash to dry over the stove, and made herself a bed on a
couple of chairs. When he woke up in the middle of the morning she
was sitting by the window mending his clothes.

"But what sort of a night did you have?" asked Pelle, a trifle
concerned.

"Excellent! Do you know what I've thought of this morning? You ought
to give up your room and stay here until you are on your feet again
--you've had a good rest--for once," she smiled teasingly. "That
room is an unnecessary expense. As you see, there's room here for
two."

But Pelle would not agree. He would not hear of being supported
by a woman. "Then people will believe that there's something wrong
between us--and make a scandal of it," he said.

"Let them then!" she answered, with her gay laugh. "If I've a good
conscience it's indifferent to me what others think." While she was
talking she was working diligently at his linen, and she threw one
article after another at his head. Then she ironed his suit. "Now
you're quite a swell again!" she said, when he stood up dressed once
more, and she looked at him affectionately. "It's as though you had
become a new creature. If I were only ten or fifteen years younger
I'd be glad to go down the street on your arm. But you shall give me
a kiss--I've put you to rights again, as if you were my own child."
She kissed him heartily and turned about to the stove.

"And now I've got no better advice than that we have some cold
dinner together and then go our ways," she said, with her back still
turned. "All my firing has been used overnight to dry your things,
and you can't stay here in the cold. I think I can pay a visit
somewhere or other, and so the day will pass; and you can find
some corner to put yourself in.'

"It's all the same to me where I am," said Pelle indifferently.

She looked at him with a peculiar smile. "Are you really always
going to be a loafer?" she said. "You men are extraordinary
creatures! If anything at all goes wrong with you, you must start
drinking right away, or plunge yourself into unhappiness in some
other way--you are no better than babies! We must work quietly on,
however things go with us!" She stood there hesitating in her hat
and cloak. "Here's five-and-twenty ore," she said; "that's just
for a cup of coffee to warm you!"

Pelle would not accept it. "What do I want with your money?" he
said. "Keep it yourself!"

"Take it, do! I know it's only a little, but I have no more,
and there's no need for us to be ashamed of being helped by one
another." She put the coin in his jacket pocket and hurried off.

Pelle strolled out to the woods. He did not feel inclined to go
home, to resume the aimless battle with Strom. He wandered along
the deserted paths, and experienced a feeble sense of well-being
when he noticed that the spring was really coming. The snow was
still lying beneath the old moss-gray pinetrees, but the toadstools
were already thrusting their heads up through the pine-needles, and
one had a feeling, when walking over the ground, as though one trod
upon rising dough.

He found himself pondering over his own affairs, and all of a sudden
he awoke out of his half-slumber. Something had just occurred to
him, something cozy and intimate--why, yes, it was the thought that
he might go to Marie and set up for himself, like Jens and his girl.
He could get hold of a few lasts and sit at home and work ... he
could scrape along for a bit, until better times came. She earned
something too, and she was generous.

But when he thought over the matter seriously it assumed a less
pleasant aspect. He had already sufficiently abused her poverty and
her goodness of heart. He had taken her last scrap of firing, so
that she was now forced to go out in order to get a little warmth
and some supper. The idea oppressed him. Now that his eyes were
opened he could not escape this feeling of shame. It went home and
to bed with him, and behind all her goodness he felt her contempt
for him, because he did not overcome his misery by means of work,
like a respectable fellow.