Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 4 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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He took Ellen's unspoken mistrust of his projects quietly. He felt
himself to be greater than she in this; she could not reach up to the
level of his head!

VI

Pelle was awake as early as four o'clock, although he had gone to bed
late. He slept lightly at this time, when the summer night lay lightly
upon his eyelids. He stole out into the kitchen and washed himself under
the tap, and then went down to his work. The gray spirit of the night
was still visible down in the street, but a tinge of red was appearing
above the roofs. "The sun's rising now over the country," he thought,
recalling the mornings of his childhood, the fields with their sheen of
silvery dew, and the sun suddenly coming and changing them into
thousands of sparkling diamond drops. Ah, if one could once more run
bare-footed, if a little shrinkingly, out into the dewy grass, and shout
a greeting to the dawning day: "Get up, Sun! Pelle is here already!"
The night-watchman came slowly past the open window on his way home. "Up
already?" he exclaimed in a voice hoarse with the night air, as he
nodded down to Pelle. "Well, it's the early bird that catches the worm!
You'll be rich one of these days, shoemaker!" Pelle laughed; he
_was_ rich!

He thought of his wife and children while he worked. It was nice to
think of them sleeping so securely while he sat here at work; it
emphasized the fact that he was their bread-winner. With every blow of
his hammer the home grew, so he hammered away cheerfully. They were
poor, but that was nothing in comparison with the fact that if he were
taken away now, things would go to pieces. He was the children's
Providence; it was always "Father's going to," or "Father said so." In
their eyes he was infallible. Ellen too began to come to him with her
troubles; she no longer kept them to herself, but recognized that he had
the broader back.

It was all so undeserved--as if good spirits were working for him.
Shameful though it was that the wife should work to help to keep the
family, he had not been able to exempt her from it. And what had he done
for the children? It was not easy to build everything up at once from a
bare foundation, and he was sometimes tempted to leave something alone
so as to accomplish the rest the more quickly. As it was now, he was
really nothing! Neither the old Pelle nor the new, but something
indeterminate, in process of formation, something that was greatly in
need of indulgence! A removing van full of furniture on its way to a new
dwelling.

He often enough had occasion to feel this from outside; both old enemies
and old friends looked upon him as a man who had gone very much down in
the world. Their look said: "Is that really all that remains of that
stalwart fellow we once knew?" His own people, on the other hand, were
lenient in their judgment. "Father hasn't got time," Sister would say in
explanation to herself when she was playing about down in his work-room
--"but he will have some day!" And then she would picture to herself all
the delightful things that would happen then. It affected Pelle
strangely; he would try to get through this as quickly as possible.

It was a dark and pathless continent into which he had ventured, but he
was now beginning to find his way in it. There were ridges of hills that
constantly repeated themselves, and a mountain-top here and there that
was reached every time he emerged from the thicket. It was good to
travel there. Perhaps it was the land he and the others had looked for.
When he had got through, he would show it to them.

Pelle had a good memory, and remembered all that he read. He could quote
much of it verbatim, and in the morning, before the street had wakened,
he used to go through it all in his mind while he worked. It surprised
him to find how little history concerned itself with his people; it was
only in quite recent times that they had been included. Well, that did
not trouble him! The Movement _was_ really something new, and not
one of history's everlasting repetitions. He now wanted to see its idea
in print, and one day found him sitting with a strange solemnity in the
library with Marx and Henry George in front of him. Pelle knew something
about this subject too, but this was nevertheless like drawing up a net
from the deep; a brilliant world of wonders came up with it. There were
incontrovertible logical proofs that he had a right apprehension, though
it had been arrived at blindly. The land of fortune was big enough for
all; the greater the number that entered it, the larger did it become.
He felt a desire to hit out again and strike a fresh blow for happiness!

Suddenly an avalanche seemed to fall from the top to the bottom of the
house, a brief, all-pervading storm that brought him back to his home.
It was only Lasse Frederik ushering in the day; he took a flight at each
leap, called a greeting down to his father, and dashed off to his work,
buttoning the last button of his braces as he ran. A little later Ellen
came down with coffee.

"Why didn't you call me when you got up?" she said sulkily. "It's not
good to sit working so long without having had something to eat."

Pelle laughed and kissed her good-morning. "Fine ladies don't get up
until long after their husbands," he said teasingly.

But Ellen would not be put off with a jest. A proper wife would be up
before her husband and have something ready for him. "I _will_ have
you call me!" she said decidedly, her cheeks very red. It suited her to
get roused now and then.

While he drank his coffee, she sat and talked to him about her affairs,
and they discussed the plans for the day, after which she went upstairs
to help the children to dress.

Later in the morning Pelle laid aside his work, dressed himself and went
out to deliver it. While he was out he would go into the Library and
look up something in the large dictionaries.

The street lived its own quiet life here close up to the greater
thoroughfares--the same life day after day. The fat second-hand dealer
from Jutland was standing as usual at his door, smoking his wooden pipe.
"Good-morning, shoemaker!" he cried. A yellow, oblique-eyed oriental in
slippers and long black caftan was balancing himself carelessly on the
steps of the basement milk-shop with a bowl of cream in one hand and a
loaf of bread in the other. Above on the pavement two boys were playing
hopscotch, just below the large red lamp which all night long advertised
its "corn-operator" right up to the main thoroughfare. Two girls in
cycling costume came out of a gateway with their machines; they were
going to the woods. "Good-day, Pelle! How is Ellen's business getting
on?" they asked familiarly. They were girls for whom she had washed.

Pelle was fond of this busy part of the town where new shops with large
plate-glass windows stood side by side with low-roofed cottages where
retail business was carried on behind ordinary windows with wallflowers
and dahlias in them as they might be in any provincial town. A string
was stretched above the flower-pots, with a paper of safety-pins or a
bundle of shoelaces hanging from it. There were poor people enough here,
but life did not run in such hard grooves as out at Norrebro. People
took existence more easily; he thought them less honorable, but also
less self-righteous. They seemed to be endowed with a more cheerful
temperament, did not go so steadily and methodically to and from their
fixed work, but, on the other hand, had several ways of making a living.

There was everywhere a feeling of breaking up, which corresponded well
with Pelle's own condition; the uncertainty of life enveloped everything
in a peculiarly tense atmosphere. Poverty did not come marching in close
columns of workmen; its clothing was plentiful and varied; it might
appear in the last woollen material from the big houses of old
Copenhagen, or in gold-rimmed spectacles and high hat. Pelle thought he
knew all the trades, but here there were hundreds of businesses that
could not be organized; every day he discovered new and remarkable
trades. He remembered how difficult it had been to organize out here;
life was too incalculable.

There was room here for everything; next door to one another lived
people whom the Movement had not yet gathered in, and people who had
been pushed up out of it in obstinate defiance. There was room here for
him too; the shadow he had dreaded did not follow him. The people had
seen too much of life to interfere in one another's affairs; respectable
citizenship had not been able to take possession of the poor man. There
was something of the "Ark" about this part of the town, only not its
hopelessness; on the contrary, all possibilities were to be found here.
The poor man had conquered this ground from the rich citizens, and it
seemed as if the development had got its direction from them. Here it
was the proletariat whose varied nature forced its way upward, and
leavened--so to speak--the whole. In the long side streets, which were
full of second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers, existence had not resolved
itself into its various constituents. Girls and gamblers were next-door
neighbors to old, peaceable townsfolk, who lived soberly on the interest
of their money, and went to church every Sunday with their hymn-books in
their hands. The ironmonger had gold watches and antique articles among
the lumber in his cellar.

Pelle went along Vesterbro Street. The summer holidays were just over,
and the pavement on the Figaro side was crowded with sunburnt people--
business-men, students and college girls--who were conspicuous in the
throng by their high spirits. They had just returned to town, and still
had the scent of fresh breeze and shore about them: it was almost as
good as a walk in the country. And if he wanted to go farther out into
the world, he could do that too; there were figures enough in the
Vesterbro neighborhood to arrest his fancy and carry him forth. It was
like a quay on which people from all parts of the world had agreed to
meet--artists, seamen and international agents. Strange women came
sailing through the crowd, large, exotic, like hot-house fruits; Pelle
recognized them from the picture of the second-hand dealer's daughter in
the "Ark," and knew that they belonged to the international nursing
corps. They wore striped costumes, and their thick, fair hair emitted a
perfume of foreign lands, of many ports and routes, like the interior of
steamers; and their strong, placid faces were big with massage. They
floated majestically down the current like full-rigged vessels. In their
wake followed some energetic little beings who also belonged to the
show, and had decked themselves out to look like children, with puffed
sleeves, short skirts, and hair tied up with ribbons. Feeble old men,
whom the sun had enticed out, stood in silent wonder, following the
lovely children with their eyes.

Pelle felt a peculiar pleasure in being carried along with this stream
which flowed like life itself, broad and calm. The world was greater
than he had thought, and he took no side for or against anything, but
merely wondered over its variety.

* * * * *

He came home from the library at two, with a large volume of statistics
under his arm. Ellen received him with red eyes.

"Have your lodgers been making things unpleasant for you again?" he
asked, looking into her face. She turned her head away.

"Did you get the money for your work?" she asked instead of answering.

"No, the man wasn't in the shop himself. They're coming here to pay."

"Then we haven't got a farthing, and I've got no dinner for you!" She
tried to smile as she spoke, but her heavy eyelids quivered.

"Is that all?" said Pelle, putting his arm round her. "Why didn't you
make me some porridge? I should have liked a good plateful of that."

"I have made it, but you'll get hardly anything else, and that's no food
for a man."

He took her round the waist with both hands, lifted her up and put her
carefully down upon the kitchen table. "That's porridge, my dear!" he
said merrily. "I can hardly walk, I'm so strong!"

But there was no smile to be coaxed out of Ellen; something had happened
that she did not want to tell him. At last he got out of her that the
two musical clowns had gone off without paying. They had spoiled her
good bed-clothes by lying in them with their clothes on, and had made
them so filthy that nothing could be done with them. She was unwilling
to tell Pelle, because he had once advised her against it; but all at
once she gave in completely. "You mustn't laugh at me!" she sobbed,
hiding her face on his shoulder.

Pelle attempted to comfort her, but it was not so easily done. It was
not the one misfortune but the whole fiasco that had upset her so; she
had promised herself so much from her great plan. "It isn't all lost
yet," he said to comfort her. "We'll just keep on and you'll see it'll
be all right."

Ellen was not to be hoodwinked, however. "You know you don't mean it,"
she said angrily. "You only say it because of me! And the second-hand
dealer sent up word this morning that if he didn't soon get the rest of
his money, he'd take all the furniture back again."

"Then let him take it, and that'll be an end of the matter."

"But then we shall lose all that we've paid!" she exclaimed quickly,
drying her eyes.

Pelle shrugged his shoulders. "That can't be helped."

"Wouldn't it be better to get the things sold little by little? We only
owe a third on them."

"We can't do that; it's punishable. We've got a contract for the hire of
the furniture, and as long as we owe a farthing on it, it's his. But
we're well and strong all of us; what does it matter?"

"That's true enough," answered Ellen, trying to smile, "but the stronger
we are, the more food we need."

A girl came running up with a pair of boots that were to be soled as
quickly as possible. They were "Queen Theresa's," and she was going to
wear them in the evening. "That'll bring us in a few pence!" said Ellen,
brightening. "I'll help you to get them done quickly."

They seated themselves one on each side of the counter, and set to work.
It reminded them of the early days of their married life. Now and then
they stopped to laugh, when Ellen had forgotten some knack. In an hour
and a half the boots were ready, and Pelle went himself with them to
make sure of the money.

"You'll most likely find her in the tavern," said Ellen. "The artistes
generally have their dinner at this hour, and she's probably there."

It was a busy time in the artistes' restaurant. At the small tables sat
bony, close-cropped men of a peculiar rubicund type, having dinner with
some girl or other from the neighborhood. They were acrobats, clowns,
and wrestlers, people of a homogeneous type, dressed in loud checks,
with enormous cuffs and boots with almost armor-plated toes. They chewed
well and looked up stupidly at the call of the girls; they wore a hard,
brutal mask for a face, and big diamond rings on their fingers. Some of
them had such a powerful lower jaw that they looked as if they had
developed it for the purpose of taking blows in a boxing-match. In the
adjoining room some elegant young men were playing billiards while they
secretly kept an eye on what was going on at the tables. They had curls
on their forehead, and patent leather shoes.

"Queen Theresa" was not there, so Pelle went to Dannebrog Street, where
she lived, but found she was not at home. He had to hand in the boots to
a neighbor, and go back empty-handed.

Well, it was no more than might have been expected. When you needed a
thing most, chance played with you as a cat played with a mouse. Pelle
was not nearly so cheerful as he appeared to be when he faced Ellen. The
reality was beginning to affect him. He went out to Morten, but without
any faith in the result; Morten had many uses for what he earned.

"You've just come at the right moment!" said Morten, waving two notes in
the air. "I've just had twenty krones (a guinea) sent me from _The
Working Man_, and we can divide them. It's the first money I've got
from that quarter, so of course I've spat upon it three times."

"Then they've found their way to you, after all!" exclaimed Pelle
joyfully.

Morten laughed. "I got tired of seeing my work repeated in their paper,"
he said, "when they'll have nothing to do with me up there; and I went
up to them and drew their attention to the paragraph about piracy. You
should have seen their expression! Goodness knows it's not pleasant to
have to earn your bread on wretchedness, so to speak, but it's still
more painful when afterward you have to beg for your hard-earned pence.
You mustn't think I should do it either under other circumstances; I'd
sooner starve; but at any rate I won't be sweated, by my own side! It's
a long time since you were here."

"I've been so busy. How's Johanna?" The last words were spoken in a
whisper.

"Not well just now; she's keeping her bed. She's always asking after
you."

"I've been very busy lately, and unfortunately I can't find out anything
about her. Is she just as cross?"

"When she's in a bad temper she lets me understand that she could easily
help to put us on the right track if she wanted to. I think it amuses
her to see us fooled."

"A child can't be so knowing!"

"Don't be so sure of that! Remember she's not a child; her experiences
have been too terrible. I have an idea that she hates me and only
meditates on the mischief she can do me. You can't imagine how spiteful
she can be; it's as though the exhalations from down there had turned to
poison in her. If any one comes here that she notices I like, she
reviles them as soon as they're gone, says some poisonous thing about
them in order to wound me. You're the only one she spares, so I think
there must be some secret link between you. Try to press her on the
subject once more."

They went in to her. As the door opened she slipped hastily down beneath
the clothes--she had been listening at the door--and pretended to be
asleep. Morten went back to his work and closed the door after him.

"Well, Johanna," said Pelle, seating himself on the edge of the bed.
"I've got a message for you. Can you guess who it's from?"

"From grandmother!" she exclaimed, sitting up eagerly; but the next
moment she was ashamed at having been outwitted, and crept down under
the clothes, where she lay with compressed lips, and stole distrustful
glances at Pelle. There was something in the glance and the carriage of
her head that awakened dormant memories in him, but he could not fix
them.

"No, not grandmother," he said. "By-the-bye, where is she now? I should
like to speak to her. Couldn't you go out to her with me when you get
well?"

She looked at him with sparkling eyes and a mocking expression. "Don't
you wish you may get it!" she answered.

"Tell me where she lives, Johanna," Pelle went on, taking her thin hand
in his, "there's a good girl!"

"Oh, yes, at night!"

Pelle frowned. "You must be very heartless, when you can leave your old
grandmother and not even like others to help her. I'm certain she's in
want somewhere or other."

Johanna looked at him angrily. "I whipped her too," she exclaimed
malignantly, and then burst into a laugh at Pelle's expression. "No, I
didn't really," she said reassuringly. "I only took away her stick and
hid her spectacles so that she couldn't go out and fetch the cream. So
she was obliged to send me, and I drank up all the cream and put water
in the can. She couldn't see it, so she scolded the milk people because
they cheated."

"You're making all this up, I think," said Pelle uncertainly.

"I picked the crumb out of the loaf too, and let her eat the crust,"
Johanna continued with a nod.

"Now stop that," said Pelle, stroking her damp forehead. "I know quite
well that I've offended you."

She pushed away his hand angrily. "Do you know what I wish?" she said
suddenly. "I wish you were my father."

"Would you like me to be?"

"Yes, for when you became quite poor and ill, I'd treat you just as well
as I've treated grandmother." She laughed a harsh laugh.

"I'm certain you've only been kind to grandmother," said Pelle gravely.

She looked hard at him to see whether he meant this too, and then turned
her face to the wall. He could see from the curve of her body that she
was struggling to keep back her tears, and he tried to turn her round to
him; but she stiffened herself.

"I won't live with grandmother!" she whispered emphatically, "I won't!"

"And yet you're fond of her!"

"No, I'm not! I can't bear her! She told the woman next door that I was
only in the way! It was that confounded child's fault that she couldn't
get into the Home, she said; I heard her myself! And yet I went about
and begged all the food for her. But then I left her!" She jerked the
sentences out in a voice that was quite hoarse, and crumpled the sheet
up in her hands.

"But do tell me where she is!" said Pelle earnestly. "I promise you you
shan't go to her if you don't want to."

The child kept a stubborn silence. She did not believe in promises.

"Well, then, I must go to the police to find her, but I don't want to do
that."

"No, because you've been in prison!" she exclaimed, with a short laugh.

A pained expression passed over Pelle's face. "Do you think that's so
funny?" he said, winking his eyes fast. "I'm sure grandmother didn't
laugh at it."

Johanna turned half round. "No, she cried!" she said. "There was no one
to give us food then, and so she cried."

It began to dawn upon him who she was. "What became of you two that day
on the common? We were going to have dinner together," he said.

"When you were taken up? Oh, we couldn't find you, so we just went
home." Her face was now quite uncovered, and she lay looking at him with
her large gray eyes. It was Hanne's look; behind it was the same
wondering over life, but here was added to it a terrible knowledge.
Suddenly her face changed; she discovered that she had been outwitted,
and glared at him.

"Is it true that you and mother were once sweethearts?" she suddenly
asked mischievously.

Pelle's face flushed. The question had taken him by surprise. "I'll tell
you everything about your mother if you'll tell me what you know," he
said, looking straight at her.

"What is it you want to know?" she asked in a cross-questioning tone.
"Are you going to write about me in the papers?"

"My dear child, we must find your grandmother! She may be starving."

"I think she's at the 'Generality,'" said the child quietly. "I went
there on Thursday when the old things had leave to go out and beg for a
little coffee; and one day I saw her."

"Didn't you go up to her then?"

"No; I was tired of listening to her lamentations!"

Johanna was no longer stiff and defiant. She lay with her face turned
away and answered--a little sullenly--Pelle's questions, while she
played nervously with his fingers. Her brief answers made up for him one
connected, sad story.

Widow Johnsen was not worth much when once the "Ark" was burnt down. She
felt old and helpless everywhere else, and when Pelle went to prison,
she collapsed entirely. She and the little girl suffered want, and when
Johanna felt herself in the way, she ran away to a place where she could
be comfortable. Her grandmother had also been in her way. She had her
mother's whimsical, dreamy nature, and now she gave up everything and
ran away to meet the wonderful. An older playfellow seduced her and took
her out to the boys of the timber-yard. There she was left to take care
of herself, often slept out in the open, and stole now and then, but
soon learned to earn money for herself. When it became cold she went as
scullery-maid to the inns or maid-of-all-work to the women in Dannebrog
Street. Strange to say, she always eluded the police. At first there
were two or three times when she started to return to her grandmother,
but went no farther than the stairs; she was afraid of being punished,
and could not endure the thought of having to listen to the old lady's
complaints. Later on she became accustomed to her new way of living, and
no longer felt any desire to leave it, probably because she had begun to
take strong drink. Now and again, however, she stole in to the Home and
caught a glimpse of her grandmother. She could not explain why she did
it, and firmly maintained that she could not endure her. The old woman's
unreasonable complaint that she was an encumbrance to her had eaten
deeply into the child's mind. During the last year she had been a
waitress for some time at a sailors' tavern down in Nyhavn with an
innkeeper Elleby, the confidence-man who had fleeced Pelle on his first
arrival in the city. It was Elleby's custom to adopt young girls so as
to evade the law and have women-servants for his sailors; and they
generally died in the course of a year or two: he always wore a crape
band round his sleeve. Johanna was also to have been adopted, but ran
away in time.

She slowly confessed it all to Pelle, coarse and horrible as it was,
with the instinctive confidence that the inhabitants of the "Ark" had
placed in him, and which had been inherited by her from her mother and
grandmother. What an abyss of horrors! And he had been thinking that
there was no hurry, that life was richer than that! But the children,
the children! Were they to wait too, while he surveyed the varied forms
of existence--wait and go to ruin? Was there on the whole any need of
knowledge and comprehensiveness of survey in order to fight for juster
conditions? Was anything necessary beyond the state of being good? While
he sat and read books, children were perhaps being trodden down by
thousands. Did this also belong to life and require caution? For the
first time he doubted himself.

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