Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 2 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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His entrance put life into all. "Here's a playboy for us! Welcome
home! Has it been a good summer?"

Jeppe picked up the five boots for the right foot, one after another,
turned back the uppers, and held heels and soles in a straight line
before his eyes. "A bungler has had these in hand," he growled, and
then he set to work on the casing for the wooden leg. "Well, did the
layer of felt answer?" Larsen suffered from cold in his amputated
foot.

"Yes; I've not had cold feet any more."

"Cold feet!" The baker struck himself on the loins and laughed.

"Yes, you can say what you like, but every time my wooden leg gets
wet I get a cold in the head!"

"That's the very deuce!" cried Jorgen, and his great body rolled
like a hippopotamus. "A funny thing, that!"

"There are many funny things in the world," stammered Bjerregrav.
"When my brother died, my watch stopped at that very moment--it
was he who gave it me."

Wooden-leg Larsen had been through the whole kingdom with his
barrel-organ, and had to tell them all about it; of the railway-
trains which travelled so fast that the landscape turned round on
its own axis, and of the great shops and places of amusement in
the capital.

"It must be as it will," said Master Andres. "But in the summer
I shall go to the capital and work there!"

"In Jutland--that's where they have so many wrecks!" said the baker.
"They say everything is sand there! I've heard that the country is
shifting under their feet--moving away toward the east. Is it true
that they have a post there that a man must scratch himself against
before he can sit down?"

"My sister has a son who has married a Jutland woman and settled
down there," said Bjerregrav. "Have you seen anything of them?"

The baker laughed. "Tailors are so big--they've got the whole world
in their waistcoat pocket. Well, and Funen? Have you been there,
too? That's where the women have such a pleasant disposition. I've
lain before Svendborg and taken in water, but there was no time to
go ashore." This remark sounded like a sigh.

"Can you stand it, wandering so much?" asked Bjerregrav anxiously.

Wooden-leg Larsen looked contemptuously at Bjerregrav's congenital
club-foot--he had received his own injury at Heligoland, at the
hands of an honorable bullet. "If one's sound of limb," he said,
spitting on the floor by the window.

Then the others had to relate what had happened in town during the
course of the summer; of the Finnish barque which had stranded in
the north, and how the "Great Power" had broken out again. "Now he's
sitting in the dumps under lock and key."

Bjerregrav took exception to the name they gave him; he called it
blasphemy, on the ground that the Bible said that power and might
belonged to God alone.

Wooden-leg Larsen said that the word, as they had used it, had
nothing to do with God; it was an earthly thing; across the water
people used it to drive machinery, instead of horses.

"I should think woman is the greatest power," said Baker Jorgen,
"for women rule the world, God knows they do! And God protect us
if they are once let loose on us! But what do you think, Andres,
you who are so book-learned?"

"The sun is the greatest power," said Master Andres. "It rules over
all life, and science has discovered that all strength and force
come from the sun. When it falls into the sea and cools, then the
whole world will become a lump of ice."

"Then the sea is the greatest power!" cried Jeppe triumphantly.
"Or do you know of anything else that tears everything down and
washes it away? And from the sea we get everything back again.
Once when I went to Malaga----"

"Yes, that really is true," said Bjerregrav, "for most people get
their living from the sea, and many their death. And the rich people
we have get all their money from the sea."

Jeppe drew himself up proudly and his glasses began to glitter.
"The sea can bear what it likes, stone or iron, although it is soft
itself! The heaviest loads can travel on its back. And then all at
once it swallows everything down. I have seen ships which sailed
right into the weather and disappeared when their time came."

"I should very much like to know whether the different countries
float on the water, or whether they stand firm on the bottom of
the sea. Don't you know that, Andres?" asked Bjerregrav.

Master Andres thought they stood on the bottom of the sea, far below
the surface; but Uncle Jorgen said: "Nay! Big as the sea is!"

"Yes, it's big, for I've been over the whole island," said
Bjerregrav self-consciously; "but I never got anywhere where I
couldn't see the sea. Every parish in all Bornholm borders on the
sea. But it has no power over the farmers and peasants--they belong
to the land, don't they?"

"The sea has power over all of us," said Larsen. "Some it refuses;
they go to sea for years and years, but then in their old age they
suffer from sea-sickness, and then they are warned. That is why
Skipper Andersen came on shore. And others it attracts, from right
away up in the country! I have been to sea with such people--they
had spent their whole lives up on the island, and had seen the sea,
but had never been down to the shore. And then one day the devil
collared them and they left the plough and ran down to the sea
and hired themselves out. And they weren't the worse seamen."

"Yes," said Baker Jorgen, "and all of us here have been to sea,
and Bornholmers sail on all the seas, as far as a ship can go. And
I have met people who had never been on the sea, and yet they were
as though it was their home. When I sailed the brig _Clara_
for Skipper Andersen, I had such a lad on board as ordinary seaman.
He had never bathed in the sea; but one day, as we were lying at
anchor, and the others were swimming around, he jumped into the
water too--now this is God's truth--as though he were tumbling into
his mother's arms; he thought that swimming came of its own accord.
He went straight to the bottom, and was half dead before we fished
him up again."

"The devil may understand the sea!" cried Master Andres breathlessly.
"It is curved like an arch everywhere, and it can get up on its hind
legs and stand like a wall, although it's a fluid! And I have read
in a book that there is so much silver in the sea that every man in
the whole world might be rich."

"Thou righteous God!" cried Bjerregrav, "such a thing I have never
heard. Now does that come from all the ships that have gone down?
Yes, the sea--that, curse it, is the greatest power!"

"It's ten o'clock," said Jeppe. "And the lamp is going out--that
devil's contrivance!" They broke up hastily, and Pelle turned the
lamp out.

But long after he had laid his head on his pillow everything was
going round inside it. He had swallowed everything, and imaginary
pictures thronged in his brain like young birds in an over-full nest,
pushing and wriggling to find a place wherein to rest. The sea was
strong; now in the wintertime the surging of the billows against the
cliffs was continually in his ear. Pelle was not sure whether it
would stand aside for him! He had an unconscious reluctance to set
himself limits, and as for the power about which they had all been
disputing, it certainly had its seat in Pelle himself, like a vague
consciousness that he was, despite all his defeats, invincible.

At times this feeling manifested itself visibly and helped him
through the day. One afternoon they were sitting and working, after
having swallowed their food in five minutes, as their custom was;
the journeyman was the only one who did not grudge himself a brief
mid-day rest, and he sat reading the newspaper. Suddenly he raised
his head and looked wonderingly at Pelle. "Now what's this? Lasse
Karlson--isn't that your father?"

"Yes," answered Pelle, with a paralyzed tongue, and the blood rushed
to his cheeks. Was Father Lasse in the news? Not among the accidents?
He must have made himself remarkable in one way or another through
his farming! Pelle was nearly choking with excitement, but he did
not venture to ask, and Little Nikas simply sat there and looked
secretive. He had assumed the expression peculiar to the young
master.

But then he read aloud: "Lost! A louse with three tails has escaped,
and may be left, in return for a good tip, with the landowner Lasse
Karlson, Heath Farm. Broken black bread may also be brought there."

The others burst into a shout of laughter, but Pelle turned an ashen
gray. With a leap he was across the table and had pulled little
Nikas to the ground underneath him; there he lay, squeezing the
man's throat with his fingers, trying to throttle him, until he was
overpowered. Emil and Peter had to hold him while the knee-strap put
in its work.

And yet he was proud of the occurrence; what did a miserable
thrashing signify as against the feat of throwing the journeyman
to the ground and overcoming the slavish respect he had felt for
him! Let them dare to get at him again with their lying allusions,
or to make sport of Father Lasse! Pelle was not inclined to adopt
circuitous methods.

And the circumstances justified him. After this he received more
consideration; no one felt anxious to bring Pelle and his cobbler's
tools on top of him, even although the boy could be thrashed
afterward.

XI

The skipper's garden was a desert. Trees and bushes were leafless;
from the workshop window one could look right through them, and
over other gardens beyond, and as far as the backs of the houses
in East Street. There were no more games in the garden; the paths
were buried in ice and melting snow, and the blocks of coral, and
the great conch-shells which, with their rosy mouths and fish-like
teeth, had sung so wonderfully of the great ocean, had been taken
in on account of the frost.

Manna he saw often enough. She used to come tumbling into the
workshop with her school satchel or her skates; a button had got
torn off, or a heel had been wrenched loose by a skate. A fresh
breeze hovered about her hair and cheeks, and the cold made her
face glow. "There is blood!" the young master would say, looking
at her delightedly; he laughed and jested when she came in. But
Manna would hold on to Pelle's shoulder and throw her foot into his
lap, so that he could button her boots. Sometimes she would pinch
him secretly and look angry--she was jealous of Morten. But Pelle
did not understand; Morten's gentle, capable mind had entirely
subjugated him and assumed the direction of their relations. Pelle
was miserable if Morten was not there when he had an hour to spare.
Then he would run, with his heart in his mouth, to find him;
everything else was indifferent to him.

One Sunday morning, as he was sweeping the snow in the yard, the
girls were in their garden; they were making a snowman.

"Hey, Pelle!" they cried, and they clapped their mittens; "come over
here! You can help us to build a snow-house. We'll wall up the door
and light some Christmas-tree candles: we've got some ends. Oh, do
come!"

"Then Morten must come too--he'll be here directly!"

Manna turned up her nose. "No, we don't want Morten here!"

"Why not? He's so jolly!" said Pelle, wounded.

"Yes, but his father is so dreadful--everybody is afraid of him.
And then he's been in prison."

"Yes, for beating some one--that's nothing so dreadful! My father
was too, when he was a young man. That's no disgrace, for it isn't
for stealing."

But Manna looked at him with an expression exactly like Jeppe's when
he was criticizing somebody from his standpoint as a respectable
citizen.

"But, Pelle, aren't you ashamed of it? That's how only the very
poorest people think--those who haven't any feelings of shame!"

Pelle blushed for his vulgar way of looking at things. "It's no
fault of Morten's that his father's like that!" he retorted lamely.

"No, we won't have Morten here. And mother won't let us. She says
perhaps we can play with you, but not with anybody else. We belong
to a very good family," she said, in explanation.

"My father has a great farm--it's worth quite as much as a rotten
barge," said Pelle angrily.

"Father's ship isn't rotten!" rejoined Manna, affronted. "It's the
best in the harbor here, and it has three masts!"

"All the same, you're nothing but a mean hussy!" Pelle spat over
the hedge.

"Yes, and you're a Swede!" Manna blinked her eyes triumphantly,
while Dolores and Aina stood behind her and put out their tongues.

Pelle felt strongly inclined to jump over the garden wall and
beat them; but just then Jeppe's old woman began scolding from
the kitchen, and he went on with his work.

Now, after Christmas, there was nothing at all to do. People were
wearing out their old boots, or they went about in wooden shoes.
Little Nikas was seldom in the workshop; he came in at meal-times
and went away again, and he was always wearing his best clothes.
"He earns his daily bread easily," said Jeppe. Over on the mainland
they didn't feed their people through the winter; the moment there
was no more work, they kicked them out.

In the daytime Pelle was often sent on a round through the harbor
in order to visit the shipping. He would find the masters standing
about there in their leather aprons, talking about nautical affairs;
or they would gather before their doors, to gossip, and each, from
sheer habit, would carry some tool or other in his hand.

And the wolf was at the door. The "Saints" held daily meetings,
and the people had time enough to attend them. Winter proved how
insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it
was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy
himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here
people made themselves as small and ate as little as possible, in
order to win through the slack season.

In the workshops the apprentices sat working at cheap boots and
shoes for stock; every spring the shoemakers would charter a ship
in common and send a cargo to Iceland. This helped them on a little.
"Fire away!" the master would repeat, over and over again; "make
haste--we don't get much for it!"

The slack season gave rise to many serious questions. Many of the
workers were near to destitution, and it was said that the organized
charities would find it very difficult to give assistance to all who
applied for it. They were busy everywhere, to their full capacity.
"And I've heard it's nothing here to what it is on the mainland,"
said Baker Jorgen. "There the unemployed are numbered in tens of
thousands."

"How can they live, all those thousands of poor people, if the
unemployment is so great?" asked Bjerregrav. "The need is bad enough
here in town, where every employer provides his people with their
daily bread."

"Here no one starves unless he wants to," said Jeppe. "We have
a well-organized system of relief."

"You're certainly becoming a Social Democrat, Jeppe," said Baker
Jorgen; "you want to put everything on to the organized charities!"

Wooden-leg Larsen laughed; that was a new interpretation.

"Well, what do they really want? For they are not freemasons. They
say they are raising their heads again over on the mainland."

"Well, that, of course, is a thing that comes and goes with
unemployment," said Jeppe. "The people must do something. Last
winter a son of the sailmaker's came home--well, he was one of them
in secret. But the old folks would never admit it, and he himself
was so clever that he got out of it somehow."

"If he'd been a son of mine he would have got the stick," said
Jorgen.

"Aren't they the sort of people who are making ready for the
millennium? We've got a few of their sort here," said Bjerregrav
diffidently.

"D'you mean the poor devils who believe in the watchmaker and his
'new time'? Yes, that may well be," said Jeppe contemptuously.
"I have heard they are quite wicked enough for that. I'm inclined
to think they are the Antichrist the Bible foretells."

"Ah, but what do they really want?" asked Baker Jorgen. "What is
their madness really driving at?"

"What do they want?" Wooden-leg Larsen pulled himself together.
"I've knocked up against a lot of people, I have, and as far as I
can understand it they want to get justice; they want to take the
right of coining money away from the Crown and give it to everybody.
And they want to overthrow everything, that is quite certain."

"Well," said Master Andres, "what they want, I believe, is perfectly
right, only they'll never get it. I know a little about it, on
account of Garibaldi."

"But what _do_ they want, then, if they don't want to overthrow
the whole world?"

"What do they want? Well, what do they want? That everybody should
have exactly the same?" Master Andres was uncertain.

"Then the ship's boy would have as much as the captain! No, it would
be the devil and all!" Baker Jorgen smacked his thigh and laughed.

"And they want to abolish the king," said Wooden-leg Larsen eagerly.

"Who the devil would reign over us then? The Germans would soon come
hurrying over! That's a most wicked thing, that Danish people should
want to hand over their country to the enemy! All I wonder is that
they don't shoot them down without trial! They'd never be admitted
to Bornholm."

"That we don't really know!" The young master smiled.

"To the devil with them--we'd all go down to the shore and shoot
them: they should never land alive!"

"They are just a miserable rabble, the lot of them," said Jeppe.
"I should very much like to know whether there is a decent citizen
among them."

"Naturally, it's always the poor who complain of poverty," said
Bjerregrav. "So the thing never comes to an end."

Baker Jorgen was the only one of them who had anything to do. Things
would have to be bad indeed before the people stopped buying his
black bread. He even had more to do than usual; the more people
abstained from meat and cheese, the more bread they ate. He often
hired Jeppe's apprentices so that they might help him in the
kneading.

But he was not in a happy frame of mind. He was always shouting his
abuse of Soren through the open doors, because the latter would not
go near his buxom young wife. Old Jorgen had taken him and put him
into bed with her with his own hands, but Soren had got out of the
business by crying and trembling like a new-born calf.

"D'you think he's perhaps bewitched?" asked Master Andres.

"She's young and pretty, and there's not the least fault to be found
with her--and we've fed him with eggs right through the winter. She
goes about hanging her head, she gets no attention from him. 'Marie!
Soren!' I cry, just to put a little life into them--he ought to be
the sort of devil I was, I can tell you! She laughs and blushes, but
Soren, he simply sneaks off. It's really a shame--so dainty as she
is too, in every way. Ah, it ought to have been in my young days,
I can tell you!"

"You are still young enough, Uncle Jorgen!" laughed Master Andres.

"Well, a man could almost bring himself to it--when he considers
what a dreadful injustice is going on under his own eyes. For, look
you, Andres, I've been a dirty beast about all that sort of thing,
but I've been a jolly fellow too; people were always glad to be on
board with me. And I've had strength for a booze, and a girl; and
for hard work in bad weather. The life I've led--it hasn't been
bad; I'd live it all over again the same. But Soren--what sort of
a strayed weakling is he? He can't find his own way about! Now, if
only you would have a chat with him--you've got some influence over
him."

"I'll willingly try."

"Thanks; but look here, I owe you money." Jorgen took ten kroner
and laid them on the table as he was going.

"Pelle, you devil's imp, can you run an errand for me?" The young
master limped into the cutting-out room, Pelle following on his
heels.

A hundred times a day the master would run to the front door, but he
hurried back again directly; he could not stand the cold. His eyes
were full of dreams of other countries, whose climates were kinder,
and he spoke of his two brothers, of whom one was lost in South
America--perhaps murdered. But the other was in Australia, herding
sheep. He earned more at that than the town magistrate received as
salary, and was the cleverest boxer in the neighborhood. Here the
master made his bloodless hands circle one round the other, and let
them fall clenched upon Pelle's back. "That," he said, in a superior
tone, "is what they call boxing. Brother Martin can cripple a man
with one blow. He is paid for it, the devil!" The master shuddered.
His brother had on several occasions offered to send him his
steamer-ticket, but there was that damned leg. "Tell me what
I should do over there, eh, Pelle?"

Pelle had to bring books from the lending library every day,
and he soon learned which writers were the most exciting. He also
attempted to read himself, but he could not get on with it; it was
more amusing to stand about by the skating-pond and freeze and watch
the others gliding over the ice. But he got Morten to tell him of
exciting books, and these he brought home for the master; such was
the "Flying Dutchman." "That's a work of poetry, Lord alive!" said
the master, and he related its contents to Bjerregrav, who took them
all for reality.

"You should have played some part in the great world, Andres--I for
my part do best to stay at home here. But you could have managed
it--I'm sure of it."

"The great world!" said the master scornfully. No, he didn't take
much stock in the world--it wasn't big enough. "If I were to travel,
I should like to look for the way into the interior of the earth--
they say there's a way into it in Iceland. Or it would be glorious
to make a voyage to the moon; but that will always be just a story."

At the beginning of the new year the crazy Anker came to the young
master and dictated a love-letter to the eldest daughter of the
king. "This year he will surely answer," he said thoughtfully.
"Time is passing, and fortune disappears, and there are few that
have their share of it; we need the new time very badly."

"Yes, we certainly do," said Master Andres. "But if such a
misfortune should happen that the king should refuse, why, you
are man enough to manage the matter yourself, Anker!"

It was a slack season, and, just as it was at its very worst,
shoemaker Bohn returned and opened a shop on the marketplace. He
had spent a year on the mainland and had learned all sorts of modern
humbug. There was only one pair of boots in his window, and those
were his own Sunday boots. Every Monday they were put out and
exhibited again, so that there should be something to look at.

If he himself was in the shop, talking to the people, his wife
would sit in the living-room behind and hammer on a boot, so that
it sounded as though there were men in the workshop.

But at Shrovetide Jeppe received some orders. Master Andres came
home quite cheerfully one day from Bjerhansen's cellar; there he
had made the acquaintance of some of the actors of a troupe which
had just arrived. "They are fellows, too!" he said, stroking his
cheeks. "They travel continually from one place to another and give
performances--they get to see the world!" He could not sit quiet.

The next morning they came rioting into the workshop, filling the
place with their deafening gabble. "Soles and heels!" "Heels that
won't come off!" "A bit of heel-work and two on the snout!" So they
went on, bringing great armfuls of boots from under their cloaks,
or fishing them out of bottomless pockets, and throwing them in
heaps on the window-bench, each with his droll remarks. Boots and
shoes they called "understandings"; they turned and twisted every
word, tossing it like a ball from mouth to mouth, until not a trace
of sense was left in it.

The apprentices forgot everything, and could scarcely contain
themselves for laughing, and the young master overflowed with wit--
he was equal to the best of them. Now one saw that he really might
have luck with the women: there was no boasting or lying about it.
The young actress with the hair like the lightest flax could not
keep her eyes off him, although she evidently had all the others
at her petticoat-tails; she made signs to her companions that they
should admire the master's splendid big mustache. The master had
forgotten his lame leg and thrown his stick away; he was on his
knees, taking the actress's measure for a pair of high boots with
patent tops and concertina-like folds in the legs. She had a hole
in the heel of her stocking, but she only laughed over it; one of
the actors cried "Poached egg!" and then they laughed uproariously.

Old Jeppe came tumbling into the room, attracted by the merriment.
The blonde lady called him "Grandfather," and wanted to dance with
him, and Jeppe forgot his dignity and laughed with the rest. "Yes,
it's to us they come when they want to have something good," he said
proudly. "And I learned my trade in Copenhagen, and I used to carry
boots and shoes to more than one play-actor there. We had to work
for the whole theater; Jungfer Patges, who became so famous later
on, got her first dancing shoes from us."

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