Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

M >> Martin Anderson Nexo >> Pelle the Conqueror, Complete

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92

"That won't do for me," he replied.

"You must naturally consider my offer," said Meyer, rising. "Shall we
say three days?"

When the Court shoemaker had gone, Ellen came slowly back and laid her
arm round Pelle's shoulders. "What a clever, capable man you are, then!"
she said, in a low voice, playing with his hair; there was something
apologetic in her manner. She said nothing to call attention to the
offer, but she began to sing at her work. It was a long time since Pelle
had heard her sing; and the song was to him like a radiant assurance
that this time he would be the victor.

XX

Pelle continued the struggle indefatigably, contending with opposing
circumstances and with disloyalty, but always returning more boldly to
the charge. Many times in the course of the conflict he found himself
back at the same place; Meyer obtained a new lot of workers from abroad,
and he had to begin all over again; he had to work on them until they
went away again, or to make their position among their housemates so
impossible that they resigned. The later winter was hard and came to
Meyer's assistance. He paid his workers well now, and had brought
together a crowd of non-union hands; for a time it looked as though he
would get his business going again. But Pelle had left the non-unionists
alone only through lack of time; now he began to seek them out, and he
spoke with more authority than before. Already people were remarking on
his strength of will; and most of them surrendered beforehand. "The
devil couldn't stand up against him!" they said. He never wavered in his
faith in an ultimate victory, but went straight ahead; he did not
philosophize about the other aspect of the result, but devoted all his
energies to achieving it. He was actuated by sheer robust energy, and it
led him the shortest way. The members of the Union followed him
willingly, and willingly accepted the privations involved in the
emptying of the workshops. He possessed their confidence, and they found
that it was, after all, glorious sport to turn the tables, when for once
in a way they could bring the grievance home to its point of departure!
They knew by bitter experience what it was to run about to no purpose,
to beg for work, and to beg for their wages, and to haggle over them--in
short, to be the underdog. It was amusing to reverse the roles. Now the
mouse was playing with the cat and having a rattling good time of it--
although the claws did get home now and again! Pelle felt their
confidence, the trust of one and all, in the readiness with which they
followed him, as though he were only the expression of their own
convictions. And when he stood up at the general meetings or
conferences, in order to make a report or to conduct an agitation, and
the applause of his comrades fell upon his ears, he felt an influx of
sheer power. He was like the ram of a ship; the weight of the whole was
behind him. He began to feel that he was the expression of something
great; that there was a purpose within him.

The Pelle who dealt so quietly and cleverly with Meyer and achieved
precisely what he willed was not the usual Pelle. A greater nature was
working within him, with more responsibility, according to his old
presentiment. He tested himself, in order to assimilate this as a
conviction, and he felt that there was virtue in the idea.

This higher nature stood in mystical connection with so much in his
life; far back into his childhood he could trace it, as an abundant
promise. So many had involuntarily expected something from him; he had
listened to them with wonder, but now their expectation was proving
prophetic.

He paid strict attention to his words in his personal relations, now
that their illimitable importance had been revealed to him. But in his
agitator's work the strongest words came to him most naturally; came
like an echo out of the illimitable void that lay behind him. He busied
himself with his personality. All that had hitherto had free and
careless play must now be circumscribed and made to serve an end. He
examined his relations with Ellen, was indulgent to her, and took pains
to understand her demand for happiness. He was kind and gentle to her,
but inflexible in his resolve.

He had no conscientious scruples in respect of the Court shoemaker.
Meyer had in all respects misused his omnipotence long enough; owing to
his huge business he had made conditions and ruled them; and the evil of
those conditions must be brought home to him. It was now summer and a
good time for the workers, and his business was rapidly failing. Pelle
foresaw his fall, and felt himself to be a righteous avenger.

The year-long conflict absorbed his whole mind. He was always on his
feet; came rushing home to the work that lay there waiting for him,
threw it aside like a maniac, and hurried off again. He did not see much
of Ellen and little Lasse these days; they lived their own life without
him.

He dared not rest on what he had accomplished, now that the cohesion of
the Union was so powerful. He was always seeking means to strengthen and
to undermine; he did not wish to fall a sacrifice to the unforeseen. His
indefatigability infected his comrades, they became more eager the
longer the struggle lasted. The conflict was magnified by the sacrifice
it demanded, and by the strength of the opposition; Meyer gradually
became a colossus whom all must stake their welfare to hew down.
Families were ruined thereby, but the more sacrifice the struggle
demanded the more recklessly they struggled on. And they were full of
jubilation on the day when the colossus fell, and buried some of them in
his fall!

Pelle was the undisputed victor. The journeyman-cobbler had laid low the
biggest employer in the trade. They did not ask what the victory had
cost, but carried his name in triumph. They cheered when they caught
sight of him or when his name was mentioned. Formerly this would have
turned his head, but now he regarded his success as entirely natural--as
the expression of a higher power!

A few days later he summoned a general meeting of the Union, laid before
them the draft of a new tariff which was adapted to the times, and
proposed that they should at once begin the fight for its adoption. "We
could never have a better opportunity," he said. "Now they have seen
what we can do! With the tariff question we struck down Meyer! We must
strike the iron while it is hot!"

He reckoned that his comrades were just in the mood for battle, despite
all the privations that the struggle had entailed, and he was not
mistaken. His proposal was unanimously accepted.

But there was no fight for better wages. Meyer was now making the rounds
of the employers' establishments with the sample-box of one of the
leather firms. The sight of this once so mighty man had a stimulating
effect. The masters' Union appointed a few employers with whom the
workers' Union could discuss the question of the tariff.

XXI

It often happened that Pelle would look back with longing on his quiet
home-life with Ellen and the child, and he felt dejectedly that they
lived in a happier world, and were on the point of accustoming
themselves to live without him. "When once you have got this out of hand
you can live really comfortably with them again," he thought.

But one thing inevitably followed on another, and one question arose
from the solution of another, and the poor man's world unfolded itself
like the development of a story. The fame of his skill as organizer
spread itself abroad; everywhere men were at work with the idea of
closing up the ranks, and many began to look toward him with expectant
eyes.

Frequently workers came to him begging him to help them to form an
organization--no one had such a turn for the work as he. Then they
called a meeting together, and Pelle explained the process to them.
There was a certain amount of fancifulness and emphasis in his speech,
but they understood him very well. "He talks so as to make your ears
itch," they told one another. He was the man they trusted, and he
initiated them into the practical side of the matter.

"But you must sacrifice your wages--so that you can start a fund," he
told them continually; "without money nothing can be done. Remember,
it's capital itself we are fighting against!"

"Will it be any use to understand boxing when the fight comes on?" asked
a simple-minded workman one day.

"Yes--cash-boxing!" retorted Pelle swiftly. They laughed, and turned
their pitiful pockets inside out. They gazed a moment at the money
before they gave it away. "Oh, well, it's of no consequence," they said.

"The day will soon come when it will be of consequence--if we only hang
together," said Pelle confidently.

It was the dripping they had scraped off their bread--he knew that well,
but there was no help for it! In these days he was no better situated
than they were.

His activities were leading him abroad, in wider and wider circles,
until he found himself at length in the very midst of the masses. Their
number did not astonish him; he had always really been conscious of
that. And he grew by this contact, and measured himself and the movement
by an ever-increasing standard.

At this time he underwent a noticeable change in his outer man. In his
forehead were always those deep creases which in young men speak of a
gloomy childhood; they were the only bitter token of that which he had
taken upon himself, and reminded one of a clouded sky. Otherwise he
looked fresh and healthy enough; his hard life was not undermining his
strength; he thrived on the sense of community, and was almost always
cheerful. His cheeks grew round as those of a cornet-player, and his
distended nostrils spoke of his fiery zeal; he needed much air, and
always wore his clothes open upon his chest. His carriage was upright
and elastic; his whole appearance was arresting, challenging. When he
spoke at meetings there was energy in his words; he grew deeply flushed,
and wet with perspiration. Something of this flush remained in his face
and neck, and there was always a feeling of heat in his body. When he
strode forward he looked like a trumpeter at the head of a column.

The many--that was his element. There were many who were to be brought
under one hat. Yet most of them lacked a clear understanding; old
suspicions suddenly came to light; and many doubts were abroad among the
masses. Some believed blindly; others said, "It's all one whether this
party or that does the plucking of us!" Nothing of palpable importance
occurred, such as to catch the eye; but they came to trust in his
personality as the blind man trusts his leader, and they were forever
demanding to hear his voice. Pelle became their darling speaker. He felt
that their blind confidence bore him up, and for them he gazed far over
the hubbub and confusion. He had always been a familiar of Fortune; now
he saw it plainly, far out along the route of march, and inflamed them
all with his enthusiasm.

One evening he was summoned to rouse a calling that was in low water. It
was the dustmen who applied to him. In order to stimulate their self-
consciousness he showed them what a vast power they possessed in their
despised activity. He imagined, as an example, that they refused to
work, and painted, with much humor, the results which their action would
have for the world of rich people. This had a tremendous effect on the
meeting. The men stared at one another as if they had just discovered
themselves, and then sat laughing like one man. To follow up his effect,
he showed how one kind of work depends on another, and imagined one
calling to support another, until a general strike had laid its
paralyzing hand on the city. What a fantastic picture it was! Pelle knew
nothing of the theory of the labor movement, but his energy and
enthusiasm lifted the veil from the remotest consequences. Stimulated
and startled by the terrible power which lay in their hands, the dustmen
went home.

There was something in all this that did not satisfy him; it was in his
nature to create, not to destroy. But if only the poor would, they could
make society all over again--so Morten had one day said, and the words
had never ceased to haunt Pelle's mind. But he could not endure the idea
of violent revolution; and now he had found a good way out of his
difficulty. He felt convinced that cohesion was irresistible, and that
life would undergo a peaceful change.

He had welded his own Union together so that the members hung together
through thick and thin. He had accomplished something there, but if a
real result were to be achieved the Unions here must work in conjunction
with those of all the cities in the country, and that was being done to
a certain small extent, in his own trade as well as in others. But all
these federations of local Unions must be combined in a mighty whole, so
that the whole country would be of one single mind. In other countries
matters were progressing as here, so why not summon all countries to one
vast work of cooperation?

Before Pelle was aware, he had included the whole world in his
solidarity. He knew now that poverty is international. And he was
convinced that the poor man felt alike all the world over.

The greatness of this idea did not go to his head. It had evolved
naturally on the lines of his own organization--it was just like the
idea at the base of the latter. But he continued to play with it until
it assumed a definite form. Then he went with his plan to his father-in-
law, who was a member of the party executive, and through him was
invited to lay the matter before the Central Committee.

Pelle was a practised speaker by now, but he was feverishly excited when
he stood in the presence of the actual heart of the labor movement. His
words delighted the many, but would he succeed in winning over these
tried and experienced men, the leaders who stood behind the whole
movement, while quietly going about their own business? He felt that
this was the most significant day in his life.

These were men with quieter temperaments than his own. They sat there
immovable, listening with half-closed eyes; his big words brought the
faintest smile to their lips--they had long got over that sort of thing!
They were artisans and craftsmen who worked hard all day for a living,
as did he himself, but several of them had given themselves a
considerable education; they must be regarded as scholarly persons. In
the evening and on Sundays they worked for the Cause, devising political
schemes and devoting themselves to keeping accounts and the ever-
increasing work of administration. They were awkward at these
unaccustomed tasks, which had hitherto been reserved by quite a
different class of society, and had had to grow accustomed thereto;
their heads were gray and wrinkled.

Pelle felt that he was still only at the beginning. These men gave him
the impression of a great secret council; outside they looked like any
one else, but here at the green table they sat creating the vast
organization into which he merely drove the masses. Here high politics
came into play. There was something impious in this--as though one saw
ants making plans to overturn a mountain; and he must do the same if he
wanted to accomplish anything! But here something more than big words
was needed! He involuntarily moderated his tone and did his best to
speak in a dry, professional manner.

He received no applause when he had finished; the men sat there gazing
in front of them with a slightly pondering expression. The silence and
the great empty room had the effect of making him feel dizzy. All his
faculties were directed outward, drawing strength from the echo from
without of the many who had shaped him. But at this decisive moment they
were silent, leaving him in suspense, without any kind of support. Was
the whole stupendous plan of federation a piece of madness, and was he a
fool to propound it? No one replied. The leaders quietly asked him the
details of his plan, and undertook to consider it.

Pelle left in a state of dreadful suspense. He felt that he had touched
upon something on which a great decision depended, and he wanted
corroboration of the fact that he had set about the matter rightly. In
this moment of need he turned to himself. It was not his way to ask
questions of his inner self, but now no other could answer him. He must
look to himself for recognition.

This was the first time that Pelle had sought refuge in his own ego, or
learned to fall back upon it in critical moments. But solitude did not
suit him and he sought it only under the compulsion of necessity. His
heart beat uncontrollably within him when he learned that his plan was
approved. A committee was appointed to put it into execution, and Pelle
was on the committee.

At one stroke the National Federation made a single army of the many
divisions, and was effective merely by the attractive virtue of its
mass. It became a heavy and fatiguing task to organize the swarms that
came streaming in, as water rushes to the sea, by virtue of a natural
law. It needed the talent of a great general to marshal them for a
conclusive battle and to lead them into the line of fire.

Pelle was naturally placed in the front ranks of the organization; his
work was properly that of the pioneer and agitator; no one possessed the
ear of the crowd as he did. He had received regular employment from one
of the larger employers, which amounted to a recognition of the
organization, and the increased rate of wages meant that he earned a
moderate income. He did not object to the fact that the work had to be
done away from home. Life at home had lost its radiance. Ellen was
loving enough, but she had always some purpose in view--and he would not
allow himself to be tied!

When he went home--and as a rule he managed to include a meal--it was
only to make himself ready and to rush out again--to general or
committee meetings. Father Lasse was there as a rule in the evenings,
and he gazed longingly after Pelle when the latter left his wife and
child; he did not understand it, but he did not venture to say anything
--he felt a great respect for the lad's undertakings. Ellen and the old
man had discovered one another; they were like a pair of horses in
harness; there was a great consolation in that.

Pelle went forward in a sort of intoxication of power, produced by the
sense of the multiplying hosts. He was like an embodiment of those
hosts, and he heard their step echoing in his own; it was natural that
the situation should assume large dimensions. He was a product of an
ancient culture, but a culture that had always dwelt in the shadow, and
was based on stern and narrow tenets, each of which summed up a lifetime
of bitter experience. The need of light and sunshine, continually
suppressed, had been accumulating, through illimitable years, until it
had resulted in a monstrous tension. Now it had exploded, and was
mounting dizzily upward. His mind was reeling in the heights, in a
blinding cloud of light!

But fundamentally he was still the sturdy realist and stood with his
feet on the earth! The generations beneath him had been disciplined by
the cold, and had learned to content themselves with bare necessities; a
lesson which they handed down to him, simply and directly, with no
inheritance of frivolity. In his world, cause and effect were in a
direct line; an obtrusive odor did not translate itself into a spectral
chattering of the teeth. The result was in a direct line with the cause
--but their relation was often that of the match and the bonfire. Herein
lay the strength of his imagination; this was why he could encompass all
things with so simple a preparation.

He was not afraid to consider the fate of the masses; when he could not
see ahead, his old fatalism came to his help. His words flamed high
despite himself and kept the hope alive in many who did not themselves
understand the meaning of the whole movement, but saw that its adherents
grew ever more numerous, and that in other respects they were just as
well off. Where he himself could not see he was like a lens that
collects the half-darkness and gives it out again as a beam of light.

Morten he preferred to avoid. Pelle had gradually absorbed all the
theories of the labor movement, and they comfortably filled his mind.
And how could one accomplish more than by remaining in harmony with the
whole? Morten had an unfruitful tendency to undermine the certainty of
one's mind; he always brought forth his words from his inner
consciousness, from places where no one else had ever been, and he
delivered them as though they had been God's voice in the Bible, which
always made people pause in their designs. Pelle respected his peculiar
nature, which never marched with the crowd, and avoided him.

But his thoughts often returned to him. Morten had first thrown a light
upon chaos--upon the knowledge of Pelle's world, the poor man's world;
and when he was confronted by any decisive question he involuntarily
asked himself how Morten would have dealt with it.

At times they met at meetings called together by the workers themselves,
and at which they both collaborated. Morten had no respect for the
existing laws and little for the new. He did not play a very zealous
part in the work of party organization, and was rather held at arm's
length by the leaders. But his relations with the man in the street were
of the closest. He worked independently; there was scarcely his match in
individual cases of need or injustice; and he was always laboring to
make people think for themselves.

And they loved him. They looked up to Pelle and the rest, and made way
for them with shining eyes; but they smilingly put themselves in
Morten's way. They wanted to press his hand--he could scarcely make his
way to the speaker's platform. His pale face filled them with joy--women
and children hung on to him. When he passed through the streets of the
poor quarters in his simple clothes, the women smiled at him. "That's
him, the master-journeyman, who is so good and so book-learned," they
would say. "And now he has sold all his books in order to help a poor
child!" And they gave their own children a little push, and the children
went up to him and held out their hands and followed him right to the
end of the street.

XXII

When Pelle went now and again to the "Ark," to see his brothers and
sister, the news of his visit spread quickly through the building.
"Pelle is here!" sounded from gallery to gallery, and they hurried up
the stairs in order to nod to him and to seek to entice him to swallow a
cup of coffee. Old Madam Frandsen had moved; she disappeared when
Ferdinand came out of prison--no one knew whither. Otherwise there were
no changes. A few factory women left by night on account of their rent,
and others had taken their places. And from time to time some one
completed his term, and was carried out of the dark corridors and borne
away on the dead-cart--as always. But in the "Ark" there was no change
to be observed.

It happened one day that he went over to call on Widow Johnsen. She
looked very melancholy sitting there as she turned her old soldiers'
trousers and attended to Hanne's child, which promised to be a fine
girl. She had aged; she was always sitting at home and scolding the
child; when Pelle visited her he brought a breath of fresh air into her
joyless existence. Then she recalled the excursion to the forest, and
the cozy evenings under the hanging lantern, and sighed. Hanne never
looked at Pelle. When she came running home from the factory, she had no
eyes for anything but her little girl, who threw herself upon her mother
and immediately wanted to play. For the remainder of the day the child
was close under her eyes, and Hanne had to hold her hand as she moved
about, and play with her and the doll.

"Far up the mountain did I climb,"

sang Hanne, and the child sang with her--she could sing already! Hanne's
clear, quiet eyes rested on the child, and her expression was as joyful
as though fortune had really come to her. She was like a young widow who
has lived her share of life, and in the "Ark" every one addressed her as
Widow Hanne. This was a mark of respect paid to her character; they
threw a widow's veil over her fate because she bore it so finely. She
had expected so much, and now she centered everything in her child, as
though the Stranger could have brought her no more valuable present.

Peter's misfortune had struck the little home a serious blow. They had
always only just kept their heads above water; and now he earned less
than ever with his crippled hand. Karl wanted to get on in the world,
and was attending confirmation classes, which cost money and clothes.
They had made up for Peter's loss of earning power by giving up Father
Lasse's room and moving his bed into their own room. But all three were
growing, and needed food and clothing.

Peter's character had taken on a little kink; he was no longer so
cheerful over his work, and he often played the truant, loafing about
the streets instead of going to the factory. Sometimes he could not be
got out of bed in the morning; he crept under the bedclothes and hid
himself. "I can't work with my bad hand," he would say, crying, when
Marie wanted to drag him out; "every moment the knives are quite close
to it and nearly chop it off."