Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 4 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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"You'll be satisfied on your own account too, soon," she said. "It's
fortunate for us that he can't be bothered to look after things
himself."

"He's taken up with politics," answered Pelle absently. "At present he's
thinking of getting into the Town Council by the help of the working-
men's votes."

"Then it's very wise of him to take you," Ellen exclaimed vivaciously.
"You understand these matters and can help him. If we save, we may
perhaps have so much over that we could buy the business from him some
day."

She looked happy, and treated him to a little petting, now in one way
and now in another. Her joy increased her beauty, and when he looked at
her it was impossible for him to regret anything. She had sacrificed
everything for him, and he could do nothing without considering her. He
must see her perfectly happy once more, let it cost what it might, for
he owed her everything. How beautiful she was in her unaffectedness! She
still had a fondness for dressing in black, and with her dark hair about
her pale face, she resembled one of those Sisters who have suffered much
and do everything out of compassion.

It struck him that he had never heard her really laugh; she only smiled.
He had not awakened the strongest feeling in her yet, he had not
succeeded in making her happy; and therefore, though she had shared his
bed and board, she had kept the most beautiful part to herself, like an
unapproachable virgin. But now her cheeks glowed with happy expectation,
and her eyes rested upon him eagerly; he no longer represented for her
the everyday dullness, he was the fairy-story that might take her by
surprise when the need was greatest. He felt he could hardly pay too
dearly for this change. Women were not made for adversity and solitude;
they were flowers that only opened fully when happiness kissed them.
Ellen might shift the responsibility over onto his shoulders.

The next day he dressed himself carefully to go out and make the final
agreement with the manufacturer. Ellen helped him to button his collar,
and brushed his coat, talking, as she did so, with the lightheartedness
of a bird, of the future. "What are we going to do now? We must try and
get rid of this flat and move out to that end of the town," she said,
"or else you'll have too far to walk."

"I forgot to tell you that we shall live out there," said Pelle. "He has
three stairs with one-roomed apartments, and we're to be the vice-
landlord of them. He can't manage the tenants himself." Pelle had not
forgotten it, but had not been able to bring himself to tell her that he
was to be watch-dog.

Ellen looked at him in petrified astonishment. "Does that go with the
post?" she gasped.

Pelle nodded.

"You mustn't do it!" she cried, suddenly seizing him by the arms. "Do
you hear, Pelle? You mustn't do it!" She was greatly disturbed and gazed
beseechingly at him. "I don't understand you at all."

He looked at her in bewilderment and murmured something in self-defence.

"Don't you see that he only wants to make use of you?" she continued
excitedly. "It's a Judas post he's offered you, but we won't earn our
bread by turning poor people into the street. I've seen my own bits of
furniture lying in the gutter. Oh, if you'd gone there!" She gazed
shudderingly straight before her.

"I can't understand what you can have been thinking about--you who are
generally so sensible," she said when she had once more calmed down,
looking reproachfully at him; but the next instant she understood it
all, and sank down weeping.

"Oh, Pelle, Pelle!" she exclaimed, and hid her face.

VIII

Pelle read no more and no longer went to the library. He had enough to
do to keep things going. There was no question now of trying to get a
place; winter was at the door, and the army of the unemployed grew
larger every day. He stayed at home, worked when there was anything to
do, and for the rest minded the children for Ellen while she washed. He
talked to Lasse Frederik as he would to a comrade, but it was nice to
have to look after the little ones too. They were grateful for it, and
he discovered that it gave him much pleasure. Boy Comfort he was very
fond of now, his only sorrow being that the boy could not talk yet. His
dumbness was always a silent accusation.

"Why don't you bring books home?" Ellen would say when she came up from
the wash-house to look after them, with her arms bare and tiny drops in
her hair from the steam down there. "You've plenty of time now."

No, what did he want with books? They did perhaps widen his horizon a
little, but what lay behind it became so very much greater again; and he
himself only grew smaller by reading. It was impossible in any case to
obtain any reassuring view of the whole. The world followed its own
crooked course in defiance of all wisdom. There was little pleasure in
absorbing knowledge about things that one could not remedy; poor people
had better be dull.

He and Morten had just been to Madam Johnsen's funeral. She had not
succeeded in seeing Jutland. Out of a whole life of toil there had never
been ten krones (10s.) over for a ticket home; and the trains ran day
after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality they
whirled away from station to station. Heaven knows how many thousand
empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the years in which
the old woman longed to see her home! And if she had trudged to the
railway-station and got into the train, remorseless hands would have
removed her at the first station. What had she to do with Jutland? She
longed to go there, it was true, but she had no money!

Was it malice or heartless indifference? A more fiendish sport can at
any rate hardly be imagined than this running with empty places. It was
they that made the journey so terribly vivid--as though the devil
himself were harnessed to the train and, panting with wantonness,
dragging it along through the country to places that people were longing
to see. It must be dreadful to be the guard and call the names of the
stations in to those seats for the people left behind!

And Sister walked about the floor so pale and thin! There was no
strength in her fair hair, and when she was excited, her breath whistled
in her windpipe with that painful sound that was practically inseparable
from the children of the poor neighborhoods. It was always the vitiated
air of the back-yards that had something to say now--depressing, like
almost everything his understanding mastered. All she wanted was
sunshine, and all the summer it had been poured down in open-handed
generosity, only it went over the heads of poor people like everything
else. It had been a splendid year for strawberries, but the large
gardeners had decided to let half of them rot on their stalks in order
to keep up the prices and save the money spent on picking them. And here
were the children hungering for fruit, and ailing for want of it! Why?
No, there was no possible answer to be given to that question.

And again--everywhere the same! Whenever he thought of some social
institution or other, the same melancholy spectacle presented itself--an
enormous rolling stock, only meant for a few, and to a great extent
running empty; and from the empty places accusing eyes gazed out, sick
and sad with hunger and want and disappointed hope. If one had once seen
them, it was impossible to close one's eyes to them again.

Sometimes his imagination took another direction, and he found himself
planning, for instance, kingdoms in which trains were used according to
the need for them, and not according to the purse, where the food was
eaten by those who were hungry, and the only poor people were those who
grudged others things.

But he pulled himself up there; it was too idiotic! A voice from the
unseen had called him and his out into the day, and then nothing had
happened! It had only been to fool them.

Brun often came down to see him. The old librarian missed his young
friend.

"Why do you never come in to us now?" he asked.

"What should I do there?" answered Pelle shortly. "The poor man has no
use for knowledge; he's everlastingly damned."

He had broken with all that and did not care either about the
librarian's visits. It was best for every one to look after himself; the
great were no company for such as he. He made no attempt to conceal his
ill humor, but Brun took no notice. The latter had moved out into
Frederiksberg Avenue in October, and dropped in almost every afternoon
on his way home from the library. The children took care to be down
there at that time, for he always brought something for them.

Neither Pelle nor Ellen demanded much of life now. They had settled down
in resignation side by side like a pair of carthorses that were
accustomed to share manger and toil. It would have been a great thing
now to have done with that confounded loan, so that they need not go
about with their lives in their hands continually; but even that was
requiring too much! All that could be scraped together went every month
to the money-lender, and they were no nearer the end. On the one hundred
and eighty krones (L10) that Pelle had received they had now in all paid
off one hundred and twenty (L7), and yet they still owed two hundred and
forty (more than L13). It was the "punishment interest" that made it
mount up whenever they came only a day or two too late with the
instalments or whatever it might be. In any case it was an endless screw
that would go on all their life pumping out whatever they could scrape
together into the money-lender's pocket.

But now Pelle meant to put an end to this. He had not paid the last
instalment and meant to pay no more, but let things go as they liked.
"You ought to borrow of Herr Brun and pay off that money-lender," said
Ellen, "or else he'll only come down on us and take our furniture." But
Pelle was obstinate and would not listen to reason. The consciousness
that a parasite had fastened upon him and sucked him dry in spite of all
his resistance, made him angry. He would like to see them touching his
things!

When the money-lender came to fetch his instalment, Pelle shut the door
in his face. For the rest he took everything with the calmness of
resignation; but when the subject cropped up, he fired up and did not
know what he said. Ellen had to keep silence and let his mood work
itself out.

One afternoon he sat working at the basement window. The librarian was
sitting on the chair by the door, with a child on each knee, feeding
them with dates. Pelle was taking no notice, but bent over his work with
the expression of a madman who is afraid of being spoken to. His work
did not interest him as it had formerly done, and progressed slowly; a
disturbing element had entered, and whenever he could not instantly find
a tool, he grew angry and threw the things about.

Brun sat watching him anxiously, though apparently taken up with the
children. A pitying expression would have made Pelle furious. Brun
guessed that there was some money trouble, but dared not offer his
assistance; every time he tried to begin a conversation Pelle repelled
him with a cunning look which said: "You're seeking for an opportunity
to come with your money, but you won't get it!" Something or other had
gone wrong with him, but it would all come right in the end.

A cab stopped outside the door, and three men stepped out and went into
the house. A little while after Ellen burst into the workshop. "Pelle!"
she cried, without noticing Brun, "they've come to take away our
things!" She broke into a fit of weeping, and seeing their mother
crying, the children began to cry too.

Pelle rose and seized a hammer. "I'll soon get _them_ out!" he said
between his teeth in a low tone as he moved toward the door. He did not
hurry, but went with lowered head, not looking at any one.

Brun seized him by the arm and stopped him.

"You forget that there's something called Prison!" he said with peculiar
emphasis.

Pelle gazed at him in astonishment, and for a moment it looked as if he
were going to strike the old man; then the hammer dropped from his hand
and he broke down.

IX

Now and then a comrade from the good old days would come up and want
Pelle to go with him to a meeting. Old fighting memories wakened within
him. Perhaps it was there the whole point lay. He threw off his leather
apron and went. Ellen's eyes followed him to the door, wondering that he
could still wish to have anything to do with that after what _he_
had got out of it.

But it was not there after all! He remembered the tremendous ferment in
men's minds during the Movement, and it seemed to him that the
excitement had died down. People only came forward before the elections,
otherwise they went about their own business as if there had never been
any rallying idea. They were all organized, but there was nothing new
and strong in that fact; they were born--so to speak--in organization,
and connected nothing great and elevating with it. His old associates
had cooled down remarkably; they must have discovered that success was
neither so romantic nor so easy as they had thought. They had no longer
simply to open the gate into the land of success and stream through it;
there was a long and difficult road before that. So they each arranged
his own matters, and disposed of the doubtful future for small present
advantages which were immediately swallowed up by the existing
conditions.

The Movement had not reached to the bottom. There was an accusation
against himself in this fact; it had not been designed with sufficient
breadth. Even at that time it had passed over the heads of the
inhabitants of the "Ark," and now a large proletariat was left with
their own expectations of the future. The good old class of the common
people had split up into a class of petty tradesmen--who seemed to be
occupied solely in establishing themselves--and this proletariat.

But there was nothing new in this. One stratum moved up and revealed a
new one below; it had always been thus in history. Was it then
everlastingly determined that at the bottom of existence there should
always be the same innumerable crowd of those who were thrust down, who
bore the burden of the whole, the great hunger reserve? Was it only
possible to be happy when one knew how to push the difficulties down,
just as one might push the folds of a material until at last they were
heaped up in one place? It was the old question over again. Formerly he
had had his clear faith with which to beat down doubt, but now he could
not be content with a blind hope; he required to be shown an expedient.
If the Movement had failed through having been begun crookedly, the
causes with which one had to do were practical causes, and it was
possible to do the whole thing over again.

There were also others engaged in taking the whole thing up from the
bottom, and through Peter Dreyer he came into contact with young men of
an entirely new type. They had emerged from the Movement, shot up
surprisingly out of its sediment, and now made new ambitious claims upon
life. By unknown paths they had reached the same point as he himself had
done, and demanded first and foremost to be human beings. The sacredness
of the ego filled them, and made them rebel at all yokes; they began
from within by shaking them off, did not smoke or drink, would be slaves
to nothing. They kept out of the Movement and had their own places of
meeting out about the South Boulevard, where they read and discussed new
social forms. They were intelligent, well-paid working-men, who
persistently shared the conditions of the proletariat; fanatics who gave
away their week's wages if they met a man who was poorer than
themselves; hot-headed enthusiasts who awaited revolution. Several of
them had been in prison for agitating against the social order. There
were also country people among them--sons of the men who stood in the
ditches and peat-pits out there. "The little man's children," Morten
called them.

These were the offspring of those who had made the Movement; that was
how it should go on. By being contented they kept themselves free from
the ensnaring expedients of capitalism, they despised the petty
tradesman's inclination for comfort, and were always ready for action.
In them the departure was at any rate a fact!

They wanted to get hold of Pelle. "Come over to us!" Peter Dreyer often
said.

Pelle, however, was not easily enticed out; he had his home where he hid
himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for this
little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in securing
it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one little
home above water; a benefactor was needed for that! It was not the time
to tend jealously one's own honor when wife and children would be the
sufferers; and now that it was all arranged he felt deeply grateful to
the old librarian. It was nevertheless a disgraceful fact which did not
encourage him to have anything to do with the affairs of others.

The violent language used by the young men frightened him too. He had
rebelled against the old conditions just as they had done, but he met
with different experiences. From the time he could crawl he had
struggled to accommodate himself to the great connection of things; even
the life of the prison had not placed him outside it, but had only
united him the more closely with the whole. He had no inclination to cut
the knot, but demanded that it should be untied.

"You're no good," said Morten and the others when they tried to rouse
him, "for you can't hate." No, the cold in his mind was like the night-
frost; it melted at the first sunbeam. When he looked back there were
redeeming ties that held the whole together in spite of all the evil;
and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the
other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again
and refused to be roused by the others' impatience; but he looked as if
he had an eternity in which to unravel his affairs.

Sister was often down with him and filled the workshop with her chatter.
At about eight, when it began to grow light, he heard her staggering
step on the stair, and she remained with him until Ellen took her up in
the evening by main force to put her to bed. She dragged all the tools
together and piled them up in front of Pelle on the bench so that he
could hardly move, and called it helping. Then she rested, standing with
her hands upon the edge of the bench and talking to him. "Sister's
clever!" she said appreciatively, pointing with satisfaction to her
work. "Big girl!" And if he did not answer she repeated it and did not
leave off until he had praised her.

"Yes, you're very clever!" he said, "but can you put the things back in
their places?"

The child shook her head. "Sister's tired," she declared with decision,
and immediately after brought another tool and pushed it slowly up onto
the heap while she kept her eyes upon his face to see whether she might
do it. "Sister's helping!" she repeated in explanation; but Pelle
pretended not to hear.

For a time she was quiet, but then came to him with her pinafore full of
old boots and shoes that she had pulled out from behind the stove. He
tried to look stern, but had to bend down over his work. It made the
little girl feel uncertain. She emptied her pinafore onto the platform,
and sitting on her heels with her hands on her little knees, she tried
to see what his expression was. It was not satisfactory, so she got up
and, putting her hands on his knee, said, with an ingratiating look into
his face: "You're so clever, father! You can do everything! You're the
cleverest in the whole world!" And after a little pause--"We're both
clever, aren't we, father?"

"Oh, that's it, is it!" exclaimed Pelle. "One of us is very conceited at
any rate!"

"It's not me!" answered the child confidently, shaking her head.

"You seem to be very happy together," said Ellen when she came down with
Boy Comfort on her arm to fetch Anna. The child did not want to go up
with her, and pushed round into the corner behind Pelle's chair; and Boy
Comfort struggled to be put down onto the floor to play with the lasts.
"Well, then," said Ellen, sitting down, "we'll all stay here together."

She looked quiet and resigned; her defeat had told upon her. She no
longer spoke of the future, but was glad that they had escaped from the
clutches of the money-lender; the thought of it filled her with a quiet
but not altogether unspoiled happiness. She no longer dreamed of
anything better, but was grateful for what she possessed; and it seemed
to Pelle that something had died within her together with the
dissatisfaction. It was as though she had at last given everything she
had; her resignation to the gray everyday life made her dull and
ordinary. "She needs sunshine," he thought.

And again his thoughts wandered in their search for a way out into the
future--his one idea--in the same track that they had followed a hundred
times before. He did not even enter it fully, but merely recognized that
the problem was being worn threadbare. In his trade there was no
compromise; there was only room for extortioners and extortionized, and
he was not suited for either part. When he took up other possibilities,
however, his thoughts returned of themselves to his work, like a roving
dog that always comes back and snuffs at the same scent. There was
something in him that with fatalistic obstinacy made him one with his
trade, in spite of its hopelessness; he had staked everything there, and
there the question should be solved. Behind the fatalism of the common
people lies the recognition that there is plan and perspective in their
life too; such and such a thing is so because it must be so. And this
recognition Pelle had no reason to do away with.

He grew confused with the continual dwelling of his thoughts on the same
subject, but it seemed to possess him, was with him while he slept, and
seized him as soon as he awoke. There was an old dream that persistently
haunted him at this time--a forgotten youthful idea from his earliest
participation in the rising, the plan for a common workshop that would
make the court shoemaker superfluous. The plan had been laid aside at
the time as impossible, but now he took it up again and went over it
step by step. He could easily find some capable, reliable fellow-workmen
who would stand by him through thick and thin with regard to work and
profits; and there would be no difficulty about discipline, for during
the past years the workmen had learned to subordinate themselves to
their own people. Here was a way for the small man to assert himself
within his trade and join the development; what one was not able to do
could be done by several joining together, namely, turn the modern
technics to account and divide the work into sections. He arranged it
all most carefully, and went over it again and again to make sure that
every detail was correct. When he slept he dreamed of his system of
profit-sharing, and then it was a fact. He stood working in a bright
room among comrades; there was no master and no servant, the machinery
whirred, and the workmen sang and whistled while they minded it. Their
hours of labor were short, and they all had happy homes waiting for
them.

It was hard to wake up and know the reality. Alas! all the cleverest and
most industrious hands in the world had no influence in their several
trades--could not so much as sew a single stitch--until capital started
them. If that refused its support, they could do nothing at all, but
were cut off, as it were, at once.

Machinery cost money. Pelle could get the latter from Brun, the old man
having often enough offered him capital to start something or other; but
he already owed him money, and capital might run his undertaking down.
It was at its post, and allowed no activity of that kind beside it. He
was seized with uncertainty; he dared not venture the stakes.

The old philosopher came almost daily. Pelle had become a part of his
life, and he watched his young friend's condition with anxiety. Was it
the prison life--or was it perhaps the books--that had transformed this
young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into a
hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was of
doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been the
old man's hope that it would have developed greater energy through being
replanted in fresh, untouched soil, and he tried to rouse Pelle out of
his lethargy.

Pelle gave an impatient jerk. They were poking him up on all sides,
wanting him to come to a decision, and he could not see his way to it.
Of course he was half asleep; he knew it himself. He felt that he wanted
rest; his entity was working for him out there in the uncertainty.

"I don't know anything," he said, half irritated, "so what can be the
use? I thought books would lead me to a place from which I could bring
everything together; but now I'm all abroad. I know too much to dash on
blindly, and too little to find the pivot on which the whole thing
turns. It doesn't matter what I touch, it resolves itself into something
_for_ and something _against_." He laughed in desperation.

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