XI

With the embargo matters were going so-so. Meyer replied to it by

convoking the employers to a meeting with a view to establishing an

employers’ union, which would refuse employment to the members of the

trade union. Then the matter would have been settled at one blow.

However, things did not go so far as that. The small employers were

afraid the journeymen would set up for themselves and compete against

them. And instinctively they feared the big employers more than the

journeymen, and were shy of entering the Union with them. The inner

tendency of the industrial movement was to concentrate everything in a

few hands, and to ruin the small business. The small employers had yet

another crow to pluck with Meyer, who had extended his business at the

expense of their own.

Through Master Beck, Pelle learned what was taking place among the

employers. Meyer had demanded that Beck should discharge Pelle, but

Beck would not submit to him.

“I can’t really complain of you,” he said. “Your trades-unionism I

don’t like—you would do better to leave it alone. But with your work I

am very well satisfied. I have always endeavored to render justice to

all parties. But if you can knock Meyer’s feet from under him, we small

employers will be very grateful to your Union, for he’s freezing us

out.”

To knock his feet from under him—that wasn’t an easy thing to do. On

the contrary, he was driving the weaker brethren out of the Union, and

had always enough workers—partly Swedes, with whom he had a written

contract, and whom he had to pay high wages. The system of home

employment made it impossible to get to grips with him. Pelle and the

president of the Union carefully picketed the warehouse about the time

when the work was delivered, in order to discover who was working for

him. And they succeeded in snatching a few workers away from him and in

bringing them to reason, or else their names were published in _The

Working Man_. But then the journeymen sent their wives or children with

the work—and there was really nothing that could be done. It cost Meyer

large sums of money to keep his business going, but the Union suffered

more. It had not as yet sufficient authority, and the large employers

stood by Meyer and would not employ members of the Union as long as the

embargo lasted. So it was finally raised.

That was a defeat; but Pelle had learned something, none the less! The

victory was to the strong, and their organization was not as yet

sufficient. They must talk and agitate, and hold meetings! The tendency

to embrace the new ideas certainly inclined the men to organize

themselves, but their sense of honor was as yet undeveloped. The

slightest mishap dispersed them.

Pelle did not lose heart; he must begin all over again, that was all.

On the morning after the defeat was an accomplished fact he was up

early. His resolution to go ahead with redoubled energies, he had, so

to speak, slept into him, so that it pervaded his body and put energy

and decision into his hammer-strokes.

He whistled as the work progressed rapidly under his hands. The window

stood open so that the night air might escape; hoar frost lay on the

roofs, and the stars twinkled overhead in the cold heavens. But Pelle

was not cold! He had just awakened the “Family” and could hear them

moving about in their room. People were beginning to tumble out into

the gangway, still drunken with sleep. Pelle was whistling a march. On

the previous evening he had sent off the last instalment of his debt to

Sort, and at the same time had written definitely to Father Lasse that

he was to come. And now the day was dawning!

Marie came and reached him his coffee through the door. “Good morning!”

she cried merrily, through the crack of the door. “We’re going to have

fine weather to-day, Pelle!” She was not quite dressed yet and would

not let herself be seen. The boys nodded good morning as they ran out.

Karl had his coat and waistcoat under his arm. These articles of

clothing he always used to put on as he ran down the stairs.

When it was daylight Marie came in to set the room in order. She

conversed with him as she scrubbed.

“Look here, Marie!” cried Pelle suddenly. “Ellen came here yesterday

and asked you to bring me a message when I came home. You didn’t do

it.”

Marie’s face became set, but she did not reply.

“It was only by pure chance that I met her yesterday, otherwise we

should have missed one another.”

“Then I must have forgotten it,” said Marie morosely.

“Why, of course you forgot it. But that’s the second time this week.

You must be in love!” he added, smiling.

Marie turned her back on him. “I’ve got nothing to do with her—I don’t

owe her anything!” suddenly she cried defiantly. “And I’m not going to

clean your room any longer, either—let her do it—so there!” She seized

her pail and scrubbing-brush and ran into her own room. After a time he

heard her voice from within the room; at first he thought she was

singing a tune to herself, but then he heard sobs.

He hurried into the room; she was lying on the bed, weeping, biting the

pillow and striking at it angrily with her roughened hands. Her thin

body burned as if with fever.

“You are ill, Marie dear,” said Pelle anxiously, laying his hand on her

forehead. “You ought to go to bed and take something to make you sweat.

I’ll warm it up for you.”

She was really ill; her eyes were dry and burning, and her hands were

cold and clammy. But she would agree to nothing. “Go away!” she said

angrily, “and attend to your own work! Leave me alone!” She had turned

her back on him and nudged him away defiantly with her shoulder. “You’d

best go in and cuddle Ellen!” she cried suddenly, with a malicious

laugh.

“Why are you like this, Marie?” said Pelle, distressed. “You are quite

naughty!”

She buried her face in the bed and would neither look at him nor answer

him. So he went back to his work.

After a time she came into his room again and resumed her work of

cleaning. She banged the things about; pulling down some work of his

that he had set to dry by the stove, and giving him a malicious

sidelong look. Then a cup containing paste fell to the ground and was

broken. “She did that on purpose,” he thought unhappily, and he put the

paste into an empty box. She stood watching him with a piercing,

malicious gaze.

He turned to his work again, and made as though nothing had happened.

Suddenly he felt her thin arms about his neck. “Forgive me!” she said,

weeping, and she hid her face against his shoulder.

“Come, come, nothing very dreadful has happened! The silly old cup!” he

said consolingly, as he stroked her head. “You couldn’t help it!”

But at that she broke down altogether, and it seemed as though her

crying would destroy her meager body. “Yes, I did it on purpose!” she

bellowed. “And I threw down the boots on purpose, and yesterday I

didn’t give you the message on purpose. I would have liked to hurt you

still more, I’m so bad, bad, bad! Why doesn’t some one give me a good

beating? If you’d only once be properly angry with me!”

She was quite beside herself and did not know what she was saying.

“Now listen to me at once—you’ve got to be sensible!” said Pelle

decidedly, “for this sort of thing is not amusing. I was pleased to

think I was going to be at home to-day, so as to work beside you, and

then you go and have an attack just like a fine lady!”

She overcame her weeping by a tremendous effort, and went back to her

room, gently sobbing. She returned at once with a cracked cup for the

paste and a small tin box with a slit in the lid. This was her money-

box.

“Take it,” she said, pushing the box onto his lap. “Then you can buy

yourself lasts and needn’t go asking the small employers for work.

There’s work enough here in the ‘Ark.’”

“But, Marie—that’s your rent!” said Pelle, aghast.

“What does that matter? I can easily get the money together again by

the first.”

Oh, she could easily do that! Pelle laughed, a bewildered laugh. How

cheerfully she threw her money about, the money that cost her thirty

days of painful thought and saving, in order to have it ready each

month!

“What do you think Peter and Karl would say to your chucking your money

about like that? Put the box away again safely—and be quick about it!”

“Oh, take it!” she cried persistently, thrusting the box upon him

again. “Yes—or I’ll throw it out of the window!” She quickly opened one

of the sashes. Pelle stood up.

“It’s true I still owe you for the last washing,” he said, offering to

put a krone in the box.

“A good thing you reminded me.” She stared at him with an impenetrable

expression and ran back to her room.

In there she moved about singing in her harsh voice. After a while she

went out to make some purchases clad in a gray shawl, with her house-

wife’s basket on her arm. He could follow her individual step, which

was light as a child’s, and yet sounded so old—right to the end of the

tunnel. Then he went into the children’s room and pulled out the third

drawer in the chest of drawers. There she always hid her money-box,

wrapped up in her linen. He still possessed two kroner, which he

inserted in the box.

He used always to pay her in this way. When she counted out her money

and found there was too much, she believed the good God had put the

money in her box, and would come jubilantly into his room to tell him

about it. The child believed blindly in Fortune, and accepted the money

as a sign of election; and for her this money was something quite

different to that which she herself had saved.

About noon she came to invite him into her room. “There’s fried

herring, Pelle, so you can’t possibly say no,” she said persuasively,

“for no Bornholmer could! Then you needn’t go and buy that stuffy food

from the hawker, and throw away five and twenty öre.” She had bought

half a score of the fish, and had kept back five for her brothers when

they came home. “And there’s coffee after,” she said. She had set out

everything delightfully, with a clean napkin at one end of the table.

The factory girl’s little Paul came in and was given a mouthful of

food. Then he ran out into the gangway again and tumbled about there,

for the little fellow was never a moment still from the moment his

mother let him out in the morning; there was so much to make up for

after his long imprisonment. From the little idiot whom his mother had

to tie to the stove because he had water on the brain and wanted to

throw himself out of the window, he had become a regular vagabond.

Every moment he would thrust his head in at the door and look at Pelle;

and he would often come right in, put his hand on Pelle’s knee, and

say, “You’s my father!” Then he would rush off again. Marie helped him

in all his infantile necessities—he always appealed to her!

After she had washed up, she sat by Pelle with her mending, chattering

away concerning her household cares. “I shall soon have to get jackets

for the boys—it’s awful what they need now they’re grown up. I peep in

at the second-hand clothes shop every day. And you must have a new

blouse, too, Pelle; that one will soon be done for; and then you’ve

none to go to the wash. If you’ll buy the stuff, I’ll soon make it up

for you—I can sew! I made my best blouse myself—Hanne helped me with

it! Why, really, don’t you go to see Hanne any longer?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Hanne has grown so peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard

now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the

window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go

round and round her and sing! ‘We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to

Hanne, we all turn round before her!’ And then we bowed and curtsied

and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought

to have taken Hanne.”

“But you didn’t like it when I took Ellen. Why should I have taken

Hanne?”

“Oh, I don’t know … Hanne….” Marie stopped, listened, and suddenly

wrenched the window open.

Down in the “Ark” a door slammed, and a long hooting sound rose up from

below, sounding just like a husky scream from the crazy Vinslev’s flute

or like the wind in the long corridors. Like a strange, disconnected

snatch of melody, the sound floated about below, trickling up along the

wooden walls, and breaking out into the daylight with a note of

ecstasy: “Hanne’s with child! The Fairy Princess is going to be

confined!”

Marie went down the stairs like a flash. The half-grown girls were

shrieking and running together in the court below; the women on the

galleries were murmuring to others above and below. Not that this was

in itself anything novel; but in this case it was Hanne herself, the

immaculate, whom as yet no tongue had dared to besmirch. And even now

they dared hardly speak of it openly; it had come as such a shock. In a

certain sense they had all entered into her exaltation, and with her

had waited for the fairy-tale to come true; as quite a child she had

been elected to represent the incomprehensible; and now she was merely

going to have a child! It really was like a miracle just at first; it

was such a surprise to them all!

Marie came back with dragging steps and with an expression of horror

and astonishment. Down in the court the grimy-nosed little brats were

screeching, as they wheeled hand in hand round the sewer-grating—it was

splendid for dancing round—

“Bro-bro-brille-brid

Hanne’s doin’ to have a tid!”

They couldn’t speak plainly yet.

And there was “Grete with the baby,” the mad-woman, tearing her cellar-

window open, leaning out of it backward, with her doll on her arm, and

yelling up through the well, so that it echoed loud and shrill: “The

Fairy Princess has got a child, and Pelle’s its father!”

Pelle bent over his work in silence. Fortunately he was not the king’s

son in disguise in this case! But he wasn’t going to wrangle with

women.

Hanne’s mother came storming out onto her gallery. “That’s a shameless

lie!” she cried. “Pelle’s name ain’t going to be dragged into this—the

other may be who he likes!”

Overhead the hearse-driver came staggering out onto his gallery. “The

princess there has run a beam into her body,” he rumbled, in his good-

natured bass. “What a pity I’m not a midwife! They’ve got hold of the

wrong end of it!”

“Clear off into your hole and hold your tongue, you body-snatcher!”

cried Madam Johnsen, spitting with rage. “You’ve got to stick your

brandy-nose into everything!”

He stood there, half drunk, leaning over the rail, babbling, teasing,

without returning Madam Johnsen’s vituperation. But then little Marie

flung up a window and came to her assistance, and up from her platform

Ferdinand’s mother emerged. “How many hams did you buy last month?

Fetch out your bear hams, then, and show us them! He kills a bear for

every corpse, the drunkard!” From all sides they fell upon him. He

could do nothing against them, and contented himself with opening his

eyes and his mouth and giving vent to a “Ba-a-a!” Then his red-haired

wife came out and hailed him in.