Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 2 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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"He isn't in his right mind!" cried the boy, but he was hurled back
with a bleeding face.

This was Morten, the brother of Jens the apprentice. He was so angry
that he was sobbing.

Then a tall man came forward out of the darkness, with a rolling
gait; he came forward muttering to himself. "Hurrah!" cried the
boys. "Here comes the 'Great Power.'" But the man did not hear; he
came to a standstill by the fighting group and stood there, still
muttering. His giant figure swayed to and fro above them. "Help him,
father!" cried Morten. The man laughed foolishly, and began slowly
to pull his coat off. "Help him, then!" bellowed the boy, quite
beside himself, shaking his father's arm. Jorgensen stretched out
his hand to pat the boy's cheek, when he saw the blood on his face.
"Knock them down!" cried the boy, like one possessed. Then a sudden
shock ran through the giant's body--somewhat as when a heavy load
is suddenly set in motion; he bowed himself a little, shook himself,
and began to throw the sailors aside. One after another they stood
still for a moment, feeling the place where he had seized them, and
then they set off running as hard as they could toward the harbor.

Jorgensen set the madman on his legs again and escorted him home.
Pelle and Morten followed them hand-in-hand. A peculiar feeling
of satisfaction thrilled Pelle through; he had seen strength
personified in action, and he had made a friend.

After that they were inseparable. Their friendship did not grow to
full strength; it overshadowed them suddenly, magically conjured out
of their hearts. In Morten's pale, handsome face there was something
indescribable that made Pelle's heart throb in his breast, and a
gentler note came into the voices of all who spoke to him. Pelle did
not clearly understand what there could be attractive about himself;
but he steeped himself in this friendship, which fell upon his
ravaged soul like a beneficent rain. Morten would come up into the
workshop as soon as work was over, or wait for Pelle at the corner.
They always ran when they were going to meet. If Pelle had to work
overtime, Morten did not go out, but sat in the workshop and amused
him. He was very fond of reading, and told Pelle about the contents
of many books.

Through Morten, Pelle drew nearer to Jens, and found that he had
many good qualities under his warped exterior. Jens had just that
broken, despondent manner which makes a child instinctively suspect
a miserable home. Pelle had at first supposed that Jens and Morten
must have been supported by the poor-box; he could not understand
how a boy could bear his father to be a giant of whom the whole
town went in terror. Jens seemed hard of hearing when any one spoke
to him. "He has had so many beatings," said Morten. "Father can't
endure him, because he is stupid." Clever he was not, but he could
produce the most wonderful melodies by whistling merely with his
lips, so that people would stand still and listen to him.

After his illness Pelle had a more delicate ear for everything. He
no longer let the waves pass over him, careless as a child, but sent
out tentacles--he was seeking for something. Everything had appeared
to him as simpler than it was, and his dream of fortune had been too
crudely conceived; it was easily shattered, and there was nothing
behind it for him to rest on. Now he felt that he must build a
better foundation, now he demanded nourishment from a wider radius,
and his soul was on the alert for wider ventures; he dropped his
anchors in unfamiliar seas. The goal of his desires receded into
the unknown; he now overcame his aversion from the great and
mysterious Beyond, where the outlines of the face of God lay hidden.
The God of Bible history and the sects had for Pelle been only a
man, equipped with a beard, and uprightness, and mercy, and all the
rest; he was not to be despised, but the "Great Power" was certainly
stronger. Hitherto Pelle had not felt the want of a God; he had only
obscurely felt his membership in that all-loving God who will arise
from the lowest and foulest and overshadow heaven; in that frenzied
dream of the poor, who see, in a thousand bitter privations, the
pilgrimage to the beloved land. But now he was seeking for that
which no words can express; now the words, "the millennium," had
a peculiar sound in his ears.

Anker, of course, was crazy, because the others said so; when they
laughed at him, Pelle laughed with them, but there was still
something in him that filled Pelle with remorse for having laughed
at him. Pelle himself would have liked to scramble money from the
top of his high steps if he had been rich; and if Anker talked
strangely, in curious phrases, of a time of happiness for all the
poor, why, Father Lasse's lamentations had dealt with the same
subject, as far back as he could remember. The foundation of the
boy's nature felt a touch of the same pious awe which had forbidden
Lasse and the others, out in the country, to laugh at the insane,
for God's finger had touched them, so that their souls wandered in
places to which no other could attain. Pelle felt the face of the
unknown God gazing at him out of the mist.

He had become another being since his illness; his movements were
more deliberate, and the features of his round childish face had
become more marked and prominent. Those two weeks of illness had
dislodged his cares, but they were imprinted on his character,
to which they lent a certain gravity. He still roamed about alone,
encompassing himself with solitude, and he observed the young master
in his own assiduous way. He had an impression that the master was
putting him to the proof, and this wounded him. He himself knew that
that which lay behind his illness would never be repeated, and he
writhed uneasily under suspicion.

One day he could bear it no longer. He took the ten kroner which
Lasse had given him so that he might buy a much-needed winter
overcoat, and went in to the master, who was in the cutting-out
room, and laid them on the table. The master looked at him with
a wondering expression, but there was a light in his eyes.

"What the devil is that?" he asked, drawling.

"That's master's money," said Pelle, with averted face.

Master Andres gazed at him with dreamy eyes, and then he seemed
to return, as though from another world, and Pelle all at once
understood what every one said--that the young master was going
to die. Then he burst into tears.

But the master himself could not understand.

"What the deuce. But that means nothing!" he cried, and he tossed
the ten kroner in the air. "Lord o' me! what a lot of money! Well,
you aren't poor!" He stood there, not knowing what to believe, his
hand resting on Pelle's shoulder.

"It's right," whispered Pelle. "I've reckoned it up exactly. And the
master mustn't suspect me--I'll never do it again."

Master Andres made a gesture of refusal with his hand, and wanted
to speak, but at that very moment he was attacked by a paroxysm of
coughing. "You young devil!" he groaned, and leaned heavily on Pelle;
his face was purple. Then came a fit of sickness, and the sweat
beaded his face. He stood there for a little, gasping for breath
while his strength returned, and then he slipped the money into
Pelle's hand and pushed him out of the room.

Pelle was greatly dejected. His uprightness was unrewarded, and what
had become of his vindication? He had been so glad to think that
he would shake himself free of all the disgrace. But late in the
afternoon the master called him into the cutting-out room. "Here,
Pelle," he said confidentially, "I want to renew my lottery ticket;
but I've no money. Can you lend me those ten kroner for a week?"
So it was all as it should be; his one object was to put the whole
disgrace away from him.

Jens and Morten helped him in that. There were three of them now;
and Pelle had a feeling that he had a whole army at his back. The
world had grown no smaller, no less attractive, by reason of the
endless humiliations of the year. And Pelle knew down to the ground
exactly where he stood, and that knowledge was bitter enough. Below
him lay the misty void, and the bubbles which now and again rose to
the surface and broke did not produce in him any feeling of mystical
wonder as to the depths. But he did not feel oppressed thereby; what
was, was so because it must be. And over him the other half of the
round world revolved in the mystery of the blue heavens, and again
and again he heard its joyous _Forward! On!_

IX

In his loneliness Pelle had often taken his way to the little house
by the cemetery, where Due lived in two little rooms. It was always
a sort of consolation to see familiar faces, but in other respects
he did not gain much by his visits; Due was pleasant enough, but
Anna thought of nothing but herself, and how she could best get on.
Due had a situation as coachman at a jobmaster's, and they seemed
to have a sufficiency.

"We have no intention of being satisfied with driving other people's
horses," Anna would say, "but you must crawl before you can walk."
She had no desire to return to the country.

"Out there there's no prospects for small people, who want something
more than groats in their belly and a few rags on their back. You
are respected about as much as the dirt you walk on, and there's no
talk of any future. I shall never regret that we've come away from
the country."

Due, on the contrary, was homesick. He was quite used to knowing
that there was a quarter of a mile between him and the nearest
neighbor, and here he could hear, through the flimsy walls, whether
his neighbors were kissing, fighting, or counting their money. "It
is so close here, and then I miss the earth; the pavements are so
hard."

"He misses the manure--he can't come treading it into the room,"
said Anna, in a superior way; "for that was the only thing there was
plenty of in the country. Here in the town too the children can get
on better; in the country poor children can't learn anything that'll
help them to amount to something; they've got to work for their
daily bread. It's bad to be poor in the country!"

"It's worse here in town," said Pelle bitterly, "for here only those
who dress finely amount to anything!"

"But there are all sorts of ways here by which a man can earn money,
and if one way doesn't answer, he can try another. Many a man has
come into town with his naked rump sticking out of his trousers, and
now he's looked up to! If a man's only got the will and the energy
--well, I've thought both the children ought to go to the municipal
school, when they are older; knowledge is never to be despised."

"Why not Marie as well?" asked Pelle.

"She? What? She's not fitted to learn anything. Besides, she's only
a girl."

Anna, like her brother Alfred, had set herself a lofty goal. Her
eyes were quite bright when she spoke of it, and it was evidently
her intention to follow it regardless of consequences. She was a
loud-voiced, capable woman with an authoritative manner; Due simply
sat by and smiled and kept his temper. But in his inmost heart,
according to report, he knew well enough what he wanted. He never
went to the public-house, but came straight home after work; and in
the evening he was never happier than when all three children were
scrambling over him. He made no distinction between his own two
youngsters and the six-year-old Marie, whom Anna had borne before
she married him.

Pelle was very fond of little Marie, who had thrived well enough so
long as her child-loving grandparents had had her, but now she was
thin and had stopped growing, and her eyes were too experienced.
She gazed at one like a poor housewife who is always fretted and
distressed, and Pelle was sorry for her. If her mother was harsh to
her, he always remembered that Christmastide evening when he first
visited his Uncle Kalle, and when Anna, weeping and abashed, had
crept into the house, soon to be a mother. Little Anna, with the
mind of a merry child, whom everybody liked. What had become of
her now?

One evening, as Morten was not at liberty, he ran thither. Just
as he was on the point of knocking, he heard Anna storming about
indoors; suddenly the door flew open and little Marie was thrown
out upon the footpath. The child was crying terribly.

"What's the matter, then?" asked Pelle, in his cheerful way.

"What's the matter? The matter is that the brat is saucy and won't
eat just because she doesn't get exactly the same as the others.
Here one has to slave and reckon and contrive--and for a bad girl
like that! Now she's punishing herself and won't eat. Is it anything
to her what the others have? Can she compare herself with them?
She's a bastard brat and always will be, however you like to dress
it up!"

"She can't help that!" said Pelle angrily.

"Can't help it! Perhaps I can help it? Is it my fault that she
didn't come into the world a farmer's daughter, but has to put up
with being a bastard? Yes, you may believe me, the neighbors' wives
tell me to my face she hasn't her father's eyes, and they look at
me as friendly as a lot of cats! Am I to be punished all my life,
perhaps, because I looked a bit higher, and let myself be led astray
in a way that didn't lead to anything? Ah, the little monster!" And
she clenched her fists and shook them in the direction from which
the child's crying could still be heard.

"Here one goes and wears oneself out to keep the house tidy and to
be respectable, and then no one will treat me as being as good as
themselves, just because once I was a bit careless!" She was quite
beside herself.

"If you aren't kind to little Marie, I shall tell Uncle Kalle,"
said Pelle warningly.

She spat contemptuously. "Then you can tell him. Yes, I wish to
God you'd do it! Then he'd come and take her away, and delighted
I should be!"

But now Due was heard stamping on the flags outside the door, and
they could hear him too consoling the child. He came in holding her
by the hand, and gave his wife a warning look, but said nothing.
"There, there--now all that's forgotten," he repeated, in order to
check the child's sobs, and he wiped away the grimy tears from her
cheeks with his great thumbs.

Anna brought him his food, sulkily enough, and out in the kitchen
she muttered to herself. Due, while he ate his supper of bacon
and black bread, stood the child between his knees and stared at
her with round eyes. "Rider!" she said, and smiled persuasively.
"Rider!" Due laid a cube of bacon on a piece of bread.

"There came a rider riding
On his white hoss, hoss, hoss, hoss!"

he sang, and he made the bread ride up to her mouth. "And then?"

"Then, _pop_ he rode in at the gate!" said the child, and
swallowed horse and rider.

While she ate she kept her eyes fixed upon him unwaveringly, with
that painful earnestness which was so sad to see. But sometimes it
happened that the rider rode right up to her mouth, and then, with
a jerk, turned about, and disappeared, at a frantic gallop, between
Due's white teeth. Then she smiled for a moment.

"There's really no sense shoving anything into her," said Anna, who
was bringing coffee in honor of the visitor. "She gets as much as
she can eat, and she's not hungry."

"She's hungry, all the same!" hummed Due.

"Then she's dainty--our poor food isn't good enough for her. She
takes after her father, I can tell you! And what's more, if she
isn't naughty now she soon will be when once she sees she's
backed up."

Due did not reply. "Are you quite well again now?" he asked,
turning to Pelle.

"What have you been doing to-day?" asked Anna, filling her husband's
long pipe.

"I had to drive a forest ranger from up yonder right across the
whole of the moor. I got a krone and a half for a tip."

"Give it to me, right away!"

Due passed her the money, and she put it into an old coffeepot.
"This evening you must take the bucket to the inspector's,"
she said.

Due stretched himself wearily. "I've been on the go since half-past
four this morning," he said.

"But I've promised it faithfully, so there's nothing else to be done.
And then I thought you'd see to the digging for them this autumn;
you can see when we've got the moonlight, and then there's Sundays.
If we don't get it some one else will--and they are good payers."

Due did not reply.

"In a year or two from now, I'm thinking, you'll have your own
horses and won't need to go scraping other people's daily bread
together," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, "Won't you
go right away and take the bucket? Then it's done. And I must have
some small firewood cut before you go to bed."

Due sat there wearily blinking. After eating, fatigue came over him.
He could hardly see out of his eyes, so sleepy was he. Marie handed
him his cap, and at last he got on his legs. He and Pelle went out
together.

The house in which Due lived lay far up the long street, which ran
steeply down to the sea. It was an old watercourse, and even now
when there was a violent shower the water ran down like a rushing
torrent between the poor cottages.

Down on the sea-road they met a group of men who were carrying
lanterns in their hands; they were armed with heavy sticks, and one
of them wore an old leather hat and carried a club studded with
spikes. This was the night-watch. They moved off, and behind them
all went the new policeman, Pihl, in his resplendent uniform. He
kept well behind the others, in order to show off his uniform, and
also to ensure that none of the watch took to their heels. They were
half drunk, and were taking their time; whenever they met any one
they stood still and related with much detail precisely why they had
taken the field. The "Great Power" was at his tricks again. He had
been refractory all day, and the provost had given the order to keep
an eye on him. And quite rightly, for in his cups he had met Ship-
owner Monsen, on Church Hill, and had fallen upon him with blows
and words of abuse: "So you take the widow's bread out of her mouth,
do you? You told her the _Three Sisters_ was damaged at sea,
and you took over her shares for next to nothing, did you? Out of
pure compassion, eh, you scoundrel? And there was nothing the matter
with the ship except that she had done only too well and made a big
profit, eh? So you did the poor widow a kindness, eh?" A scoundrel,
he called him and at every question he struck him a blow, so that he
rolled on the ground. "We are all witnesses, and now he must go to
prison. A poor stone-cutter oughtn't to go about playing the judge.
Come and help us catch him, Due--you are pretty strong!"

"It's nothing to do with me," said Due.

"You do best to keep your fingers out of it," said one of the men
derisively; "you might get to know the feel of his fist." And they
went on, laughing contemptuously.

"They won't be so pleased with their errand when they've done," said
Due, laughing. "That's why they've got a nice drop stowed away--
under their belts. To give them courage. The strong man's a swine,
but I'd rather not be the one he goes for."

"Suppose they don't get him at all!" said Pelle eagerly.

Due laughed. "They'll time it so that they are where he isn't. But
why don't he stick to his work and leave his fool's tricks alone? He
could have a good drink and sleep it off at home--he's only a poor
devil, he ought to leave it to the great people to drink themselves
silly!"

But Pelle took another view of the affair. The poor man of course
ought to go quietly along the street and take his hat off to
everybody; and if anybody greeted him in return he'd be quite proud,
and tell it to his wife as quite an event, as they were going to
bed. "The clerk raised his hat to me to-day--yes, that he did!" But
Stonecutter Jorgensen looked neither to right nor to left when he
was sober, and in his cups he trampled everybody underfoot.

Pelle by no means agreed with the pitiful opinions of the town. In
the country, whence he came, strength was regarded as everything,
and here was a man who could have taken strong Erik himself and put
him in his pocket. He roamed about in secret, furtively measuring
his wrists, and lifted objects which were much too heavy for him; he
would by no means have objected to be like the "Great Power," who,
as a single individual, kept the whole town in a state of breathless
excitement, whether he was in one of his raging moods or whether he
lay like one dead. The thought that he was the comrade of Jens and
Morten made him quite giddy, and he could not understand why they
bowed themselves so completely to the judgment of the town, as no
one could cast it in their teeth that they were on the parish, but
only that their father was a powerful fellow.

Jens shrank from continually hearing his father's name on all lips,
and avoided looking people in the eyes, but in Morten's open glance
he saw no trace of this nameless grief.

One evening, when matters were quite at their worst, they took Pelle
home with them. They lived in the east, by the great clay-pit, where
the refuse of the town was cast away. Their mother was busy warming
the supper in the oven, and in the chimney-corner sat a shrivelled
old grandmother, knitting. It was a poverty-stricken home.

"I really thought that was father," said the woman, shivering.
"Has any of you heard of him?"

The boys related what they had heard; some one had seen him here,
another there. "People are only too glad to keep us informed," said
Jens bitterly.

"Now it's the fourth evening that I've warmed up his supper to no
purpose," the mother continued. "Formerly he used to take care to
look in at home, however much they were after him--but he may come
yet."

She tried to smile hopefully, but suddenly threw her apron in front
of her eyes and burst into tears. Jens went about with hanging head,
not knowing what he ought to do; Morten put his arm behind the weary
back and spoke soothingly: "Come, come; it isn't worse than it has
often been!" And he stroked the projecting shoulder-blades.

"No, but I did feel so glad that it was over. A whole year almost
he never broke out, but took his food quietly when he came home from
work, and then crawled into bed. All that time he broke nothing; he
just slept and slept; at last I believed he had become weak-minded,
and I was glad for him, for he had peace from those terrible ideas.
I believed he had quieted down after all his disgraces, and would
take life as it came; as the rest of his comrades do. And now he's
broken out again as audacious as possible, and it's all begun over
again!" She wept desolately.

The old woman sat by the stove, her shifting glance wandering from
one to another; she was like a crafty bird of prey sitting in a cage.
Then her voice began, passionless and uninflected:

"You're a great donkey; now it's the fourth evening you've made
pancakes for your vagabond; you're always at him, kissing and
petting him! I wouldn't sweeten my husband's sleep if he had behaved
so scandalously to his wife and family; he could go to bed and
get up again hungry, and dry too, for all I cared; then he'd learn
manners at last. But there's no grit in you--that's the trouble;
you put up with all his sauciness."

"If I were to lay a stone in his way--why, who would be good to him,
if his poor head wanted to lie soft? Grandmother ought to know how
much he needs some one who believes in him. And there's nothing else
I can do for him."

"Yes, yes; work away and wear yourself out, so that there's always
something for the great fellow to smash if he has a mind to! But now
you go to bed and lie down; I'll wait up for Peter and give him his
food, if he comes; you must be half dead with weariness, you poor
worm."

"There's an old proverb says, 'A man's mother is the devil's pother,'
but it don't apply to you, grandmother," said the mother of the boys
mildly. "You always take my part, although there's no need. But now
you go to bed! It's far past your bed-time, and I'll look after
Peter. It's so easy to manage him if only he knows that you mean
well by him."

The old woman behaved as though she did not hear; she went on
knitting. The boys remembered that they had brought something with
them; a bag of coffee-beans, some sugar-candy, and a few rolls.

"You waste all your hard-earned shillings on me," said the mother
reproachfully, and put the water to boil for the coffee, while her
face beamed with gratitude.

"They've no young women to waste it on," said the old woman dryly.

"Grandmother's out of humor this evening," said Morten. He had taken
off the old woman's glasses and looked smilingly into her gray eyes.

"Out of humor--yes, that I am! But time passes, I tell you, and here
one sits on the edge of the grave, waiting for her own flesh and
blood to get on and do something wonderful, but nothing ever happens!
Energies are wasted--they run away like brook-water into the sea--
and the years are wasted too--or is it lies I'm telling you? All
want to be masters; no one wants to carry the sack; and one man
seizes hold of another and clambers over him just to reach an inch
higher. And there ought to be plenty in the house--but there's
poverty and filth in every corner. I should think the dear God will
soon have had enough of it all! Not an hour goes by but I curse
the day when I let myself be wheedled away from the country; there
a poor man's daily bread grows in the field, if he'll take it as it
comes. But here he must go with a shilling in his fist, if it's only
that he wants a scrap of cabbage for his soup. If you've money you
can have it; if you haven't, you can leave it. Yes, that's how it is!
But one must live in town in order to have the same luck as Peter!
Everything promised splendidly, and I, stupid old woman, have always
had a craving to see my own flesh and blood up at the top. And now
I sit here like a beggar-princess! Oh, it has been splendid--I'm
the mother of the biggest vagabond in town!"

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