II

High up, out of Pipman’s garret, a young man stepped out onto the

platform. He stood there a moment turning his smiling face toward the

bright heavens overhead. Then he lowered his head and ran down the

break-neck stairs, without holding on by the rope. Under his arm he

carried something wrapped in a blue cloth.

“Just look at the clown! Laughing right into the face of the sun as

though there was no such thing as blindness!” said the women, thrusting

their heads out of window. “But then, of course, he’s from the country.

And now he’s going to deliver his work. Lord, how long is he going to

squat up there and earn bread for that sweater? The red’ll soon go from

his cheeks if he stops there much longer!” And they looked after him

anxiously.

The children down in the courtyard raised their heads when they heard

his steps above them.

“Have you got some nice leather for us to-day, Pelle?” they cried,

clutching at his legs.

He brought out of his pockets some little bits of patent-leather and

red imitation morocco.

“That’s from the Emperor’s new slippers,” he said, as he shared the

pieces among the children. Then the youngsters laughed until their

throats began to wheeze.

Pelle was just the same as of old, except that he was more upright and

elastic in his walk, and had grown a little fair moustache. His

protruding ears had withdrawn themselves a little, as though they were

no longer worked so hard. His blue eyes still accepted everything as

good coin, though they now had a faint expression that seemed to say

that all that happened was no longer to their liking. His “lucky curls”

still shone with a golden light.

The narrow streets lay always brooding in a dense, unbearable

atmosphere that never seemed to renew itself. The houses were grimy and

crazy; where a patch of sunlight touched a window there were stained

bed- clothes hung out to dry. Up one of the side streets was an

ambulance wagon, surrounded by women and children who were waiting

excitedly for the bearers to appear with their uneasy burden, and Pelle

joined them; he always had to take part in everything.

It was not quite the shortest way which he took. The capital was quite

a new world to him; nothing was the same as at home; here a hundred

different things would happen in the course of the day, and Pelle was

willing enough to begin all over again; and he still felt his old

longing to take part in it all and to assimilate it all.

In the narrow street leading down to the canal a thirteen-year-old girl

placed herself provocatively in his way. “Mother’s ill,” she said,

pointing up a dark flight of steps. “If you’ve got any money, come

along!” He was actually on the point of following her, when he

discovered that the old women who lived in the street were flattening

their noses against their windowpanes. “One has to be on one’s guard

here!” he told himself, at least for the hundredth time. The worst of

it was that it was so easy to forget the necessity.

He strolled along the canal-side. The old quay-wall, the apple-barges,

and the granaries with the high row of hatchways overhead and the

creaking pulleys right up in the gables awakened memories of home.

Sometimes, too, there were vessels from home lying here, with cargoes

of fish or pottery, and then he was able to get news. He wrote but

seldom. There was little success to be reported; just now he had to

make his way, and he still owed Sort for his passage-money.

But it would soon come…. Pelle hadn’t the least doubt as to the future.

The city was so monstrously large and incalculable; it seemed to have

undertaken the impossible; but there could be no doubt of such an

obvious matter of course as that he should make his way. Here wealth

was simply lying in great heaps, and the poor man too could win it if

only he grasped at it boldly enough. Fortune here was a golden bird,

which could be captured by a little adroitness; the endless chances

were like a fairy tale. And one day Pelle would catch the bird; when

and how he left confidingly to chance.

In one of the side streets which ran out of the Market Street there was

a crowd; a swarm of people filled the whole street in front of the

iron- foundry, shouting eagerly to the blackened iron-workers, who

stood grouped together by the gateway, looking at one another

irresolutely.

“What’s up here?” asked Pelle.

“This is up—that they can’t earn enough to live on,” said an old man.

“And the manufacturers won’t increase their pay. So they’ve taken to

some new-fangled fool’s trick which they say has been brought here from

abroad, where they seem to have done well with it. That’s to say, they

all suddenly chuck up their work and rush bareheaded into the street

and make a noise, and then back to work again, just like school

children in play-time. They’ve already been in and out two or three

times, and now half of them’s outside and the others are at work, and

the gate is locked. Nonsense! A lot that’s going to help their wages!

No; in my time we used to ask for them prettily, and we always got

something, too. But, anyhow, we’re only working-folks, and where’s it

going to come from? And now, what’s more, they’ve lost their whole

week’s wages!”

The workmen were at a loss as to what they should do; they stood there

gazing mechanically up at the windows of the counting-house, from which

all decisions were commonly issued. Now and again an impatient shudder

ran through the crowd, as it made threats toward the windows and

demanded what was owing it. “He won’t give us the wages that we’ve

honestly earned, the tyrant!” they cried. “A nice thing, truly, when

one’s got a wife and kids at home, and on a Saturday afternoon, too!

What a shark, to take the bread out of their mouths! Won’t the gracious

gentleman give us an answer—just his greeting, so that we can take it

home with us?—just his kind regards, or else they’ll have to go hungry

to bed!” And they laughed, a low, snarling laugh, spat on the pavement,

and once more turned their masterless faces up to the counting-house

windows.

Proposals were showered upon them, proposals of every kind; and they

were as wise as they were before. “What the devil are we to do if

there’s no one who can lead us?” they said dejectedly, and they stood

staring again. That was the only thing they knew how to do.

“Choose a few of your comrades and send them in to negotiate with the

manufacturer,” said a gentleman standing by.

“Hear, hear! Forward with Eriksen! He understands the deaf-and-dumb

alphabet!” they shouted. The stranger shrugged his shoulders and

departed.

A tall, powerful workman approached the group. “Have you got your

killer with you, Eriksen?” cried one, and Eriksen turned on the

staircase and exhibited his clenched fist.

“Look out!” they shouted at the windows. “Look out we don’t set fire to

the place!” Then all was suddenly silent, and the heavy house-door was

barred.

Pelle listened with open mouth. He did not know what they wanted, and

they hardly knew, themselves; none the less, there was a new note in

all this! These people didn’t beg for what they wanted; they preferred

to use their fists in order to get it, and they didn’t get drunk first,

like the strong man Eriksen and the rest at home. “This is the

capital!” he thought, and again he congratulated himself for having

come thither.

A squad of policemen came marching up. “Room there!” they cried, and

began to hustle the crowd in order to disperse it. The workmen would

not be driven away. “Not before we’ve got our wages!” they said, and

they pressed back to the gates again. “This is where we work, and we’re

going to have our rights, that we are!” Then the police began to drive

the onlookers away; at each onset they fell back a few steps,

hesitating, and then stood still, laughing. Pelle received a blow in

the back; he turned quickly round, stared for a moment into the red

face of a policeman, and went his way, muttering and feeling his back.

“Did he hit you?” asked an old woman. “Devil take him, the filthy lout!

He’s the son of the mangling-woman what lives in the house here, and

now he takes up the cudgels against his own people! Devil take him!”

“Move on!” ordered the policeman, winking, as he pushed her aside with

his body. She retired to her cellar, and stood there using her tongue

to such purpose that the saliva flew from her toothless mouth.

“Yes, you go about bullying old people who used to carry you in their

arms and put dry clouts on you when you didn’t know enough to ask…. Are

you going to use your truncheon on me, too? Wouldn’t you like to,

Fredrik? Take your orders from the great folks, and then come yelping

at us, because we aren’t fine enough for you!” She was shaking with

rage; her yellowish gray hair had become loosened and was tumbling

about her face; she was a perfect volcano.

The police marched across the Knippel Bridge, escorted by a swarm of

street urchins, who yelled and whistled between their fingers. From

time to time a policeman would turn round; then the whole swarm took to

its heels, but next moment it was there again. The police were nervous:

their fingers were opening and closing in their longing to strike out.

They looked like a party of criminals being escorted to the court-house

by the extreme youth of the town, and the people were laughing.

Pelle kept step on the pavement. He was in a wayward mood. Somewhere

within him he felt a violent impulse to give way to that absurd longing

to leap into the air and beat his head upon the pavement which was the

lingering result of his illness. But now it assumed the guise of

insolent strength. He saw quite plainly how big Eriksen ran roaring at

the bailiff, and how he was struck to the ground, and thereafter

wandered about an idiot. Then the “Great Power” rose up before him,

mighty in his strength, and was hurled to his death; they had all been

like dogs, ready to fall on him, and to fawn upon everything that smelt

of their superiors and the authorities. And he himself, Pelle, had had

a whipping at the court-house, and people had pointed the finger at

him, just as they pointed at the “Great Power.” “See, there he goes

loafing, the scum of humanity!” Yes, he had learned what righteousness

was, and what mischief it did. But now he had escaped from the old

excommunication, and had entered a new world, where respectable men

never turned to look after the police, but left such things to the

street urchins and old women. There was a great satisfaction in this;

and Pelle wanted to take part in this world; he longed to understand

it.

It was Saturday, and there was a crowd of journeymen and seamstresses

in the warehouse, who had come to deliver their work. The foreman went

round as usual, grumbling over the work, and before he paid for it he

would pull at it and crumple it so that it lost its shape, and then he

made the most infernal to-do because it was not good enough. Now and

again he would make a deduction from the week’s wages, averring that

the material was ruined; and he was especially hard on the women, who

stood there not daring to contradict him. People said he cheated all

the seamstresses who would not let him have his way with them.

Pelle stood there boiling with rage. “If he says one word to me, we

shall come to blows!” he thought. But the foreman took the work without

glancing at it—ah, yes, that was from Pipman!

But while he was paying for it a thick-set man came forward out of a

back room; this was the court shoemaker, Meyer himself. He had been a

poor young man with barely a seat to his breeches when he came to

Copenhagen from Germany as a wandering journeyman. He did not know much

about his craft, but he knew how to make others work for him! He did

not answer the respectful greetings of the workers, but stationed

himself before Pelle, his belly bumping against the counter, wheezing

loudly through his nose, and gazing at the young man.

“New man?” he asked, at length. “That’s Pipman’s assistant,” replied

the foreman, smiling. “Ah! Pipman—he knows the trick, eh? You do the

work and he takes the money and drinks it, eh?” The master shoemaker

laughed as at an excellent joke.

Pelle turned red. “I should like to be independent as soon as

possible,” he said.

“Yes, yes, you can talk it over with the foreman; but no unionists

here, mind that! We’ve no use for those folks.”

Pelle pressed his lips together and pushed the cloth wrapper into the

breast of his coat in silence. It was all he could do not to make some

retort; he couldn’t approve of that prohibition. He went out quickly

into Kobmager Street and turned out of the Coal Market into Hauser

Street, where, as he knew, the president of the struggling Shoemakers’

Union was living. He found a little cobbler occupying a dark cellar.

This must be the man he sought; so he ran down the steps. He had not

understood that the president of the Union would be found in such a

miserable dwelling-place.

Under the window sat a hollow-cheeked man bowed over his bench, in the

act of sewing a new sole on to a worn-out shoe. The legs of the

passers- by were just above his head. At the back of the room a woman

stood cooking something on the stove; she had a little child on her

arm, while two older children lay on the ground playing with some

lasts. It was frightfully hot and oppressive.

“Good day, comrade!” said Pelle. “Can I become a member of the Union?”

The man looked up, astonished. Something like a smile passed over his

mournful face.

“Can you indulge yourself so far?” he asked slowly. “It may prove a

costly pleasure. Who d’you work for, if I may ask?”

“For Meyer, in Kobmager Street.”

“Then you’ll be fired as soon as he gets to know of it!”

“I know that sure enough; all the same, I want to join the Union. He’s

not going to tell me what I can and what I can’t do. Besides, we’ll

soon settle with him.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But there’s too few of us. You’ll be

starved out of the Union as soon as you’ve joined.”

“We must see about getting a bit more numerous,” said Pelle cheerfully,

“and then one fine day we’ll shut up shop for him!”

A spark of life gleamed in the tired eyes of the president. “Yes, devil

take him, if we could only make him shut up shop!” he cried, shaking

his clenched fist in the air. “He tramples on all those hereabouts that

make money for him; it’s a shame that I should sit here now and have

come down to cobbling; and he keeps the whole miserable trade in

poverty! Ah, what a revenge, comrade!” The blood rushed into his hollow

cheeks until they burned, and then he began to cough. “Petersen!” said

the woman anxiously, supporting his back. “Petersen!” She sighed and

shook her head, while she helped him to struggle through his fit of

coughing. “When the talk’s about the Court shoemaker Petersen always

gets like one possessed,” she said, when he had overcome it. “He really

don’t know what he’s doing. No—if everybody would only be as clever as

Meyer and just look after his own business, then certain people would

be sitting there in good health and earning good money!”

“Hold your tongue!” said Petersen angrily. “You’re a woman—you know

nothing about the matter.” At which the woman went back to her cooking.

Petersen filled out a paper, and Pelle signed his name to it and paid

his subscription for a week. “And now you must try to break away from

that bloodsucker as soon as possible!” said Petersen earnestly. “A

respectable workman can’t put up with such things!”

“I was forced into it,” said Pelle. “And I learned nothing of this at

home. But now that’s over and done with.”

“Good, comrade! There’s my hand on it—and good luck to you! We must

work the cause up, and perhaps we shall succeed yet; I tell you, you’ve

given me back my courage! Now you persuade as many as you can, and

don’t miss the meetings; they’ll be announced in _The Working Man_.” He

shook Pelle’s hand eagerly. Pelle took a brisk walk out to the

northward. He felt pleased and in the best of spirits.

It was about the time when the workers are returning home; they drifted

along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little

after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here,

quite different from that of the “Ark.” The houses were new and

orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed

ways, and one could see at a glance what each one was.

This quarter was the home of socialism and the new ideas. Pelle often

strolled out thither on holidays in order to get a glimpse of these

things; what they were he didn’t know, and he hadn’t dared to thrust

himself forward, a stranger, as he still felt himself to be there; but

it all attracted him powerfully. However, to-day he forgot that he was

a stranger, and he went onward with a long, steady stride that took him

over the bridge and into North Bridge Street. Now he himself was a

trades unionist; he was like all these others, he could go straight up

to any one if he wished and shake him by the hand. There was a strong

and peculiar appeal about the bearing of these people, as though they

had been soldiers. Involuntarily he fell into step with them, and felt

himself stronger on that account, supported by a feeling of community.

He felt solemnly happy, as on his birthday; and he had a feeling as

though he must do something. The public houses were open, and the

workmen were entering them in little groups. But he had no desire to

sit there and pour spirits down his throat. One could do that sort of

thing when everything had gone to the dogs.

He stationed himself in front of a pastry cook’s window, eagerly

occupied in comparing the different kinds of cakes. He wanted to go

inside and expend five and twenty öre in celebration of the day. But

first of all the whole affair must be properly and methodically planned

out, so that he should not be disappointed afterward. He must, of

course, have something that he had never eaten before, and that was

just the difficult part. Many of the cakes were hollow inside too, and

the feast would have to serve as his evening meal.

It was by no means easy, and just as Pelle was on the point of solving

the difficulty he was startled out of the whole affair by a slap on the

shoulder. Behind him was Morten, smiling at him with that kindly smile

of his, as though nothing had gone wrong between them. Pelle was

ashamed of himself and could not find a word to say. He had been

unfaithful to his only friend; and it was not easy for him to account

for his behavior. But Morten didn’t want any explanations; he simply

shook Pelle by the hand. His pale face was shining with joy. It still

betrayed that trace of suffering which was so touching, and Pelle had

to surrender at discretion. “Well, to think we should meet here!” he

cried, and laughed good-naturedly.

Morten was working at the pastry cook’s, and had been out; now he was

going in to get some sleep before the night’s work. “But come in with

me; we can at least sit and talk for half an hour; and you shall have a

cake too.” He was just the same as in the old days.

They went in through the gate and up the back stairs; Morten went into

the shop and returned with five “Napoleons.” “You see I know your

taste,” he said laughing.

Morten’s room was right up under the roof; it was a kind of turret-room

with windows on both sides. One could look out over the endless mass of

roofs, which lay in rows, one behind the other, like the hotbeds in a

monstrous nursery garden. From the numberless flues and chimneys rose a

thin bluish smoke, which lay oppressively over all. Due south lay the

Kalvebod Strand, and further to the west the hill of Frederiksberg with

its castle rose above the mist. On the opposite side lay the Common,

and out beyond the chimneys of the limekilns glittered the Sound with

its many sails. “That’s something like a view, eh?” said Morten

proudly.

Pelle remained staring; he went from one window to another and said

nothing. This was the city, the capital, for which he and all other

poor men from the farthest corners of the land, had longed so

boundlessly; the Fortunate Land, where they were to win free of

poverty!

He had wandered through it in all directions, had marvelled at its

palaces and its treasures, and had found it to be great beyond all

expectation. Everything here was on the grand scale; what men built one

day they tore down again on the morrow, in order to build something

more sumptuous. So much was going on here, surely the poor man might

somehow make his fortune out of it all!

And yet he had had no true conception of the whole. Now for the first

time he saw the City! It lay there, a mighty whole, outspread at his

feet, with palaces, churches, and factory chimneys rising above the

mass of houses. Down in the street flowed a black, unending stream, a

stream of people continually renewed, as though from a mighty ocean

that could never be exhausted. They all had some object; one could not

see it, but really they were running along like ants, each bearing his

little burden to the mighty heap of precious things, which was gathered

together from all the ends of the earth.

“There are millions in all this!” said Pelle at last, drawing a deep

breath. “Yes,” said Morten standing beside him. “And it’s all put

together by human hands—by the hands of working people!”

Pelle started. That was a wonderful idea. But it was true enough, if

one thought about it.

“But now it has fallen into very different hands!” he exclaimed,

laughing. “Yes, they’ve got it away from us by trickery, just as one

wheedles a child out of a thing,” cried Morten morosely. “But there’s

no real efficiency in anything that children do—and the poor have never

been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to grow

up, look you, and one fine day they’ll ask for their own back.”

“It would go ill with us if we went and tried to take it for

ourselves,” said Pelle.

“Not if we were united about it—but we are only the many.”

Pelle listened; it had never occurred to him that the question of

organization was so stupendous. Men combined, sure enough, but it was

to secure better conditions in their trade.

“You are like your father!” he said. “He always had big ideas, and

wanted to get his rights. I was thinking about him a little while ago,

how he never let himself be trampled on. Then you used to be ashamed of

him; but….”

Morten hung his head. “I couldn’t bear the contempt of respectable

folks,” he said half under his breath. “I understood nothing beyond the

fact that he was destroying our home and bringing disgrace on us. And I

was horribly afraid, too, when he began to lay about him; I wake up

sometimes now quite wet and cold with sweat, when I’ve been dreaming of

my childhood. But now I’m proud that I’m the son of the ‘Great Power.’

I haven’t much strength myself; yet perhaps I’ll do something to

surprise the city folks after all.”

“And I too!”

Power! It was really extraordinary that Morten should be the son of the

giant stone-cutter, so quiet and delicate was he. He had not yet quite

recovered the strength of which Bodil had robbed him in his early

boyhood; it was as though that early abuse was still wasting him.

He had retained his girlish love of comfort. The room was nicely kept;

and there were actually flowers in a vase beneath the looking-glass.

Flowers, good Lord! “How did you get those?” asked Pelle.

“Bought them, of course!”

Pelle had to laugh. Was there another man in the world who would pay

money for flowers?

But he did not laugh at the books. There seemed to be a sort of

mysterious connection between them and Morten’s peculiar, still energy.

He had now a whole shelf full. Pelle took a few down and looked into

them.

“What sort of stuff is this, now?” he asked doubtfully. “It looks like

learning!”

“Those are books about us, and how the new conditions are coming, and

how we must make ready for them.”

“Ah, you’ve got the laugh of me,” said Pelle. “In a moment of

depression you’ve got your book-learning to help you along. But we

other chaps can just sit where we are and kick our heels.” Morten

turned to him hastily.

“That’s the usual complaint!” he cried irritably. “A man spits on his

own class and wants to get into another one. But that’s not the point

at stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are,

shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper

conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then

the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe

he’d get a chance of rising if it wasn’t that society needs him—wants

to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? ‘Now you can

see for yourself what a poor man can do if he likes!’ That’s what they

tell you. There’s no need to blame society.

“No, the masses themselves are to blame if they aren’t all rich men!

Good God! They just don’t want to be! So they treat you like a fool,

and you put up with it and baa after them! No, let them all together

demand that they shall receive enough for their work to live on

decently. I say a working man ought to get as much for his work as a

doctor or a barrister, and to be educated as well. That’s my Lord’s

Prayer!”

“Now I’ve set you off finely!” said Pelle good-naturedly. “And it’s

just the same as what your father was raving about when he lay dying in

the shed. He lay there delirious, and he believed the ordinary workman

had got pictures on the wall and a piano, just like the fine folks.”

“Did he say that?” cried Morten, and he raised his head. Then he fell

into thought. For he understood that longing. But Pelle sat there

brooding. Was this the “new time” all over again? Then there was really

some sense in banding people together—yes, and as many as possible.

“I don’t rightly understand it,” he said at last. “But to-day I joined

the trade union. I shan’t stand still and look on when there’s anything

big to be done.”

Morten nodded, faintly smiling. He was tired now, and hardly heard what

Pelle was saying. “I must go to bed now so that I can get up at one.

But where do you live? I’ll come and see you some time. How queer it is

that we should have run across one another here!”

“I live out in Kristianshavn—in the ‘Ark,’ if you know where that is!”

“That’s a queer sort of house to have tumbled into! I know the ‘Ark’

very well, it’s been so often described in the papers. There’s all

sorts of people live there!”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Pelle, half offended. “I like

the people well enough…. But it’s capital that we should have run into

one another’s arms like this! What bit of luck, eh? And I behaved like

a clown and kept out of your way? But that was when I was going to the

dogs, and hated everybody! But now nothing’s going to come between us

again, you may lay to that!”

“That’s good, but now be off with you,” replied Morten, smiling; he was

already half-undressed.

“I’m going, I’m going!” said Pelle, and he picked up his hat, and stood

for a moment gazing out over the city. “But it’s magnificent, what you

were saying about things just now!” he cried suddenly. “If I had the

strength of all us poor folks in me, I’d break out right away and

conquer the whole of it! If such a mass of wealth were shared out

there’d never be any poverty any more!” He stood there with his arms

uplifted, as though he held it all in his hands. Then he laughed

uproariously. He looked full of energy. Morten lay half asleep, staring

at him and saying nothing. And then he went.

Pipman scolded Pelle outrageously when at last he returned. “Curse it

all, what are you thinking of? To go strolling about and playing the

duke while such as we can sit here working our eyes out of our heads!

And we have to go thirsty too! Now don’t you dream of being insolent to

me, or there’ll be an end of the matter. I am excessively annoyed!”

He held out his hand in pathetic expostulation, although Pelle had no

intention of answering him. He no longer took Pipman seriously. “Devil

fry me, but a man must sit here and drink the clothes off his body

while a lout like you goes for a stroll!”

Pelle was standing there counting the week’s earnings when he suddenly

burst into a loud laugh as his glance fell upon Pipman. His blue naked

shanks, miserably shivering under his leather apron, looked so

enormously ridiculous when contrasted with the fully-dressed body and

the venerable beard.

“Yes, you grin!” said Pipman, laughing too. “But suppose it was you had

to take off your trousers in front of the old clothes’ man, and wanted

to get upstairs respectably! Those damned brats! ‘Pipman’s got D. T.,’

they yell. ‘Pipman’s got D. T. And God knows I haven’t got D. T., but I

haven’t got any trousers, and that’s just the trouble! And these

accursed open staircases! Olsen’s hired girl took the opportunity, and

you may be sure she saw all there was to see! You might lend me your

old bags!”

Pelle opened his green chest and took out his work-day trousers.

“You’d better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest

of yours,” said Pipman surlily. “After all, there might be a thief

here, near heaven as we are!”

Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up

again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the

platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound. A few

doves were flying there, catching the last red rays of the sun on their

white pinions, while down in the shaft the darkness lay like a hot

lilac mist. The hurdy-gurdy man had come home and was playing his

evening tune down there to the dancing children, while the inhabitants

of the “Ark” were gossiping and squabbling from gallery to gallery. Now

and again a faint vibrating note rose upward, and all fell silent. This

was the dwarf Vinslev, who sat playing his flute somewhere in his den

deep within the “Ark.” He always hid himself right away when he played,

for at such times he was like a sick animal, and sat quaking in his

lair. The notes of his flute were so sweet, as they came trickling out

of his hiding place, that they seemed like a song or a lament from

another world. And the restless creatures in the “Ark” must perforce be

silent and listen. Now Vinslev was in one of his gentle moods, and one

somehow felt better for hearing him. But at times, in his dark moods,

the devil seemed to enter into him, and breathed such music into his

crazy mind that all his hearers felt a panic terror. Then the decaying

timbers of the “Ark” seemed to expand and form a vast monstrous,

pitch-black forest, in which all terror lay lurking, and one must

strike out blindly in order to avoid being trampled on. The

hearse-driver in the fourth story, who at other times was so gentle in

his cups, would beat his wife shamefully, and the two lay about in

their den drinking and fighting in self-defence. And Vinslev’s devilish

flute was to blame when Johnsen vainly bewailed his miserable life and

ended it under the sewer-grating. But there was nothing to be said

about the matter; Vinslev played the flute, and Johnsen’s suicide was a

death like any other.

Now the devil was going about with a ring in his nose; Vinslev’s

playing was like a gentle breeze that played on people’s hearts, so

that they opened like flowers. This was his good time.

Pelle knew all this, although he had not long been here; but it was

nothing to him. For he wore the conqueror’s shirt of mail, such as

Father Lasse had dreamed of for him.

Down in the third story, on the built-out gallery, another sort of

magic was at work. A climbing pelargonium and some ivy had wound

themselves round the broken beams and met overhead, and there hung a

little red paper lantern, which cast a cheerful glow over it all.

It was as though the summer night had found a sanctuary in the heart of

this wilderness of stone. Under the lantern sat Madam Johnsen and her

daughter sewing; and Hanne’s face glowed like a rose in the night, and

every now and then she turned it up toward Pelle and smiled, and made

an impatient movement of her head. Then Pelle turned away a little, re-

crossed his leg, and leant over on the other side, restless as a horse

in blinkers.

Close behind him his neighbor, Madam Frandsen, was bustling about her

little kitchen. The door stood open on to the platform, and she

chattered incessantly, half to herself and half to Pelle, about her

gout, her dead husband, and her lout of a son. She needed to rest her

body, did this old woman. “My God, yes; and here I have to keep slaving

and getting his food ready for Ferdinand from morning to night and from

night to morning again. And he doesn’t even trouble himself to come

home to it. I can’t go looking into his wild ways; all I can do is to

sit here and worry and keep his meals warm. Now that’s a tasty little

bit; and he’ll soon come when he’s hungry, I tell myself. Ah, yes, our

young days, they’re soon gone. And you stand there and stare like a

baa-lamb and the girl down there is nodding at you fit to crick her

neck! Yes, the men are a queer race; they pretend they wouldn’t

dare—and yet who is it causes all the misfortunes?”

“She doesn’t want anything to do with me!” said Pelle grumpily; “she’s

just playing with me.”

“Yes, a girl goes on playing with a white mouse until she gets it! You

ought to be ashamed to stand there hanging your head! So young and

well- grown as you are too! You cut her tail-feathers off, and you’ll

get a good wife!” She nudged him in the side with her elbow.

Then at last Pelle made up his mind to go clattering down the stairs to

the third story, and along the gallery.

“Why have you been so stand-offish to-day?” said Madam Johnsen, making

room for him. “You know you are always very welcome. What are all these

preliminaries for?”

“Pelle is short-sighted; he can’t see as far as this,” said Hanne,

tossing her head. She sat there turning her head about; she gazed at

him smiling, her head thrown back and her mouth open. The light fell on

her white teeth.

“Shall we get fine weather to-morrow?” asked the mother.

Pelle thought they would; he gazed up at the little speck of sky in a

weather-wise manner. Hanne laughed.

“Are you a weather-prophet, Pelle? But you haven’t any corns!”

“Now stop your teasing, child!” said the mother, pretending to slap

her. “If it’s fine to-morrow we want to go into the woods. Will you

come with us?”

Pelle would be glad to go; but he hesitated slightly before answering.

“Come with us, Pelle,” said Hanne, and she laid her hand invitingly on

his shoulder. “And then you shall be my young man. It’s so tedious

going to the woods with the old lady; and then I want to be able to do

as I like.” She made a challenging movement with her head.

“Then we’ll go from the North Gate by omnibus; I don’t care a bit about

going by train.”

“From the North Gate? But it doesn’t exist any longer, mummy! But there

are still omnibuses running from the Triangle.”

“Well then, from the Triangle, you clever one! Can I help it if they go

pulling everything down? When I was a girl that North Gate was a

splendid place. From there you could get a view over the country where

my home was, and the summer nights were never so fine as on the wall.

One didn’t know what it was to feel the cold then. If one’s clothes

were thin one’s heart was young.”

Hanne went into the kitchen to make coffee. The door stood open. She

hummed at her task and now and again joined in the conversation. Then

she came out, serving Pelle with a cracked tea-tray. “But you look very

peculiar tonight!” She touched Pelle’s face and gazed at him

searchingly.

“I joined the trade union to-day,” answered Pelle; he still had the

feeling that of something unusual, and felt as though everybody must

notice something about him.

Hanne burst out laughing. “Is that where you got that black sign on

your forehead? Just look, mother, just look at him! The trade mark!”

She turned her head toward the old woman.

“Ah, the rogue!” said the old woman, laughing. “Now she’s smeared soot

over your face!” She wetted her apron with her tongue and began to rub

the soot away, Hanne standing behind him and holding his head in both

hands so that he should not move. “Thank your stars that Pelle’s a

good- natured fellow,” said the old woman, as she rubbed. “Or else he’d

take it in bad part!”

Pelle himself laughed shamefacedly.

The hearse-driver came up through the trap in the gallery and turned

round to mount to the fourth story. “Good evening!” he said, in his

deep bass voice, as he approached them; “and good digestion, too, I

ought to say!” He carried a great ham under his arm.

“Lord o’ my body!” whispered Madam Johnsen. “There he is again with his

ham; that means he’s wasted the whole week’s wages again. They’ve

always got more than enough ham and bacon up there, poor things, but

they’ve seldom got bread as well.”

Now one sound was heard in the “Ark,” now another. The crying of

children which drifted so mournfully out of the long corridors whenever

a door was opened turned to a feeble clucking every time some belated

mother came rushing home from work to clasp the little one to her

breast. And there was one that went on crying whether the mother was at

home or at work. Her milk had failed her.

From somewhere down in the cellars the sleepy tones of a cradle-song

rose up through the shaft; it was only “Grete with the child,” who was

singing her rag-doll asleep. The real mothers did not sing.

“She’s always bawling away,” said Hanne; “those who’ve got real

children haven’t got strength left to sing. But her brat doesn’t need

any food; and that makes a lot of difference when one is poor.”

“To-day she was washing and ironing the child’s things to make her fine

for to-morrow, when her father comes. He is a lieutenant,” said Hanne.

“Is he coming to-morrow, then?” asked Pelle naively.

Hanne laughed loudly. “She expects him every Sunday, but she has never

seen him yet!”

“Well, well, that’s hardly a thing to laugh about,” said the old woman.

“She’s happy in her delusions, and her pension keeps her from need.”