Pelle had placed his work-bench against the wall-space between the two
windows of the living-room. There was just room to squeeze past between
the edge of the bench and the round table which stood in the middle of
the room. Against the wall by the door stood an oak-stained sideboard,
which was Ellen’s pride, and exactly opposite this, on the opposing
wall, stood the chest of drawers of her girlhood, with a mirror above
it and a white embroidered cover on the top. On this chest of drawers
stood a polished wooden workbox, a few photographs, and various
knick-knacks; with its white cover it was like a little altar.
Pelle went to Master Beck’s only every other day; the rest of the time
he sat at home playing the little master. He had many acquaintances
hereabouts, really poor folks, who wore their boots until their
stockings appeared before they had them repaired; nevertheless, it was
possible to earn a day’s pay among them. He obtained work, too, from
Ellen’s family and their acquaintances. These were people of another
sort; even when things went badly with them they always kept up
appearances and even displayed a certain amount of luxury. They kept
their troubles to themselves.
He could have obtained plenty of journeyman work, but he preferred this
arrangement, which laid the foundation of a certain independence; there
was more chance of a future in it. And there was a peculiar feeling
about work done with his home as the background. When he lifted his
eyes from his work as he sat at home a fruitful warmth came into his
heart; things looked so familiar; they radiated comfort, as though they
had always belonged together. And when the morning sun shone into the
room everything wore a smile, and in the midst of it all Ellen moved
busily to and fro humming a tune. She felt a need always to be near
him, and rejoiced over every day which he spent at home. On those days
she hurried through her work in the kitchen as quickly as possible, and
then sat down to keep him company. He had to teach her how to make a
patch, and how to sew a sole on, and she helped him with his work.
“Now you are the master and I’m the journeyman!” she would say
delightedly. She brought him customers too; her ambition was to keep
him always at home. “I’ll help you all I can. And one fine day you’ll
have so much work you’ll have to take an apprentice—and then a
journeyman.” Then he would take her in his arms, and they worked in
emulation, and sang as they worked.
Pelle was perfectly happy, and had cast off all his cares and burdens.
This was his nest, where every stick and stone was worth more than all
else in the world besides. They had their work cut out to keep it
together and feed themselves a little daintily; and Pelle tackled his
work as joyfully as though he had at last found his true vocation. Now
and again a heavy wave came rolling up from the struggling masses,
making his heart beat violently, and then he would break out into fiery
speech; or his happiness would weave radiant pictures before his eyes,
and he would describe these to Ellen. She listened to him proudly, and
with her beloved eyes upon him he would venture upon stronger
expression and more vivid pictures, as was really natural to him. When
at last he was silent she would remain quietly gazing at him with those
dark eyes of hers that always seemed to be looking at something in him
of which he himself was unaware.
“What are you thinking of now?” Pelle would ask, for he would have
enjoyed an exposition of the ideas that filled his mind. There was no
one for him but Ellen, and he wanted to discuss the new ideas with her,
and to feel the wonderful happiness of sharing these too with her.
“I was thinking how red your lips are when you speak! They certainly
want to be kissed!” she replied, throwing her arms round his neck.
What happened round about her did not interest her; she could only
speak of their love and of what concerned herself. But the passionate
gaze of her eyes was like a deep background to their life. It had quite
a mysterious effect upon his mind; it was like a lure that called to
the unknown depths of his being. “The Pelle she sees must be different
to the one I know,” he thought happily. There must be something fine
and strong in him for her to cling to him so closely and suffer so when
parted from him only for a moment. When she had gazed at him long
enough she would press herself against him, confused, and hide her
face.
Without his remarking it, she directed his energies back to his own
calling. He could work for two when she sat at the bench facing him and
talked to him as she helped him. Pelle really found their little nest
quite comfortable, but Ellen’s mind was full of plans for improvement
and progress. His business was to support a respectable home with
dainty furniture and all sorts of other things; she was counting on
these already. This home, which to him was like a beloved face that one
cannot imagine other than it is, was to her only a temporary affair,
which would by degrees be replaced by something finer and better.
Behind her intimate gossip of every-day trivialities she concealed a
far-reaching ambition. He must do his utmost if he was to accomplish
all she expected of him!
Ellen by no means neglected her housekeeping, and nothing ever slipped
through her fingers. When Pelle was away at the workshop she turned the
whole place upside down, sweeping and scrubbing, and had always
something good on the table for him. In the evening she was waiting for
him at the door of the workshop. Then they would take a stroll along
the canal, and across the green rampart where the children played. “Oh,
Pelle, how I’ve longed for you to-day!” she would say haltingly. “Now,
I’ve got you, and yet I’ve still got quite a pain in my breasts; they
don’t know yet that you’re with me!”
“Shan’t we work a little this evening—just a quarter of an hour?” she
would say, when they had eaten, “so that you can become a master all
the sooner and make things more comfortable for yourself.” Pelle
perhaps would rather have taken a walk through the city with her, or
have gone somewhere where they could enjoy the sunset, but her dark
eyes fixed themselves upon him.
She was full of energy from top to toe, and it was all centered on him.
There was something in her nature that excluded the possibility of
selfishness. In relation to herself, everything was indifferent; she
only wanted to be with him—and to live for him. She was beneficent and
intact as virgin soil; Pelle had awakened love in her—and it took the
shape of a perpetual need of giving. He felt, humbly, that she brought
all she had and was to him as a gift, and all he did was done to repay
her generosity.
He had refused to undertake the direction of the labor organization.
His life together with Ellen and the maintenance of the newly
established household left him no time for any effectual efforts
outside his home. Ellen did not interfere in the matter; but when he
came home after spending the evening at a meeting he could see she had
been crying. So he stopped at home with her; it was weak of him, but he
did not see what else he could do. And he missed nothing; Ellen more
than made amends. She knew how to make their little home close itself
about him, how to turn it into a world of exuberant inner life. There
was no greater pleasure than to set themselves to achieve some
magnificent object—as, for instance, to buy a china flower-pot, which
could stand on the window-sill and contain an aspidistra. That meant a
week of saving, and when they had got it they would cross over to the
other side of the canal, arm in arm, and look up at the window in order
to see the effect. And then something else would be needed; a
perforating machine, an engraved nameplate for the door; every Saturday
meant some fresh acquisition.
_The Working Man_ lay unread. If Pelle laid down his work a moment in
order to glance at it, there was Ellen nipping his ear with her lips;
his free time belonged to her, and it was a glorious distraction in
work-time, to frolic as carelessly as a couple of puppies, far more
delightful than shouldering the burden of the servitude of the masses!
So the paper was given up; Ellen received the money every week for her
savings-bank. She had discovered a corner in Market Street where she
wanted to set up a shop and work-room with three or four assistants—
that was what she was saving for. Pelle wondered at her sagacity, for
that was a good neighborhood.
After their marriage they did not visit Ellen’s parents so often.
Stolpe found Pelle was cooling down, and used to tease him a little, in
order to make him answer the helm; but that angered Ellen, and resulted
in explosions—she would tolerate no criticism of Pelle. She went to see
them only when Pelle proposed it; she herself seemed to feel no desire
to see her family, but preferred staying at home. Often they pretended
they were not at home when “the family” knocked, in order to go out
alone, to the Zoological Gardens or to Lyngby.
They did not see much of Lasse. Ellen had invited him once for all to
eat his supper with them. But when he came home from work he was too
tired to change his clothes, and wash himself, and make himself tidy,
and Ellen was particular about her little home. He had a great respect
for her, but did not feel properly at home in her living-room.
He had taken Pelle’s old room, and was boarding with the three orphans.
They thought great things of him, and all their queer care for the big
foundling Pelle was now transferred to old Lasse. And here they fell on
better soil. Lasse was becoming a child again, and had felt the need of
a little pampering. With devout attention he would listen to Marie’s
little troubles, and the boy’s narrations of everything that they did
and saw. In return he told them the adventures of his boyhood, or
related his experiences in the stone-breaking yard, swaggering
suitably, in order not to be outdone. When Pelle came to fetch his
father the four of them would be sitting down to some childish game.
They would wrangle as to how the game should be played, for Lasse was
the most skilful. The old man would excuse himself.
“You mustn’t be angry, lad, because I neglect you—but I’m tired of an
evening and I go to bed early.”
“Then come on Sunday—and breakfast with us; afterward we go out.”
“No, I’ve something on for Sunday—an assignation,” said Lasse
roguishly, in order to obviate further questions. “Enjoy your youthful
happiness; it won’t last forever.”
He would never accept help. “I earn what I need for my food and a few
clothes; I don’t need much of either, and I am quite contented. And
you’ve enough to see to yourself,” was his constant answer.
Lasse was always gentle and amiable, and appeared contented, but there
was a curious veil over his eyes, as though some disappointment were
gnawing at his heart.
And Pelle knew well what it was—it had always been an understood thing
that Lasse should spend his old age at Pelle’s fireside. In his
childish dreams of the future, however various they might be, Father
Lasse was always at hand, enjoying a restful old age, in return for all
he had done for Pelle.
That was how it should be; at home in the country in every poor home a
gray-headed old man sat in the chimney-corner—for children among the
poor are the only comfort of age.
For the time being this could not be arranged; there was no room in
their two little rooms. Ellen was by no means lacking in heart; she
often thought of this or that for the old man’s comfort, but her
passionate love would permit of no third person to approach them too
closely. Such a thing had never entered her mind; and Pelle felt that
if he were to persuade her to take Father Lasse into their home, the
wonder of their life together would be killed. They lived so fully from
hour to hour; theirs was a sacred happiness, that must not be
sacrificed, but which itself demanded the sacrifice of all else. Their
relation was not the usual practical self-love, but love itself, which
seldom touches the every-day life of the poor, save that they hear it
in tragic and beautiful songs of unhappy lovers. But here, to them, had
come its very self—a shining wonder!
And now Ellen was going to bear a child. Her figure grew fuller and
softer. Toward all others she was cold and remote in her behavior; only
to Pelle she disclosed herself utterly. The slight reserve which had
always lurked somewhere within her, as though there was something that
he could not yet conquer, had disappeared. Her gaze was no longer fixed
and searching; but sought his own with quiet self-surrender. A tender
and wonderful harmony was visible in her, as though she had now come
into her own, and from day to day she grew more beautiful.
Pelle was filled with pride to see how luxuriantly she unfolded beneath
his caresses. He was conscious of a sense of inexhaustible liberality,
such as the earth had suddenly inspired in him at times in his
childhood; and an infinite tenderness filled his heart. There was an
alluring power in Ellen’s helplessness, so rich in promise as it was.
He would joyfully have sacrificed the whole world in order to serve her
and that which she so wonderfully bore within her.
He got up first in the morning, tidied the rooms, and made coffee
before he went to work. He was vexed if when he came home Ellen had
been sweeping or scrubbing. He made two of himself in order to spare
her, stinted himself of sleep, and was restlessly busy; his face had
assumed a fixed expression of happiness, which gave him almost a look
of stupidity. His thoughts never went beyond the four walls of his
home; Ellen’s blessed form entirely engrossed him.
The buying of new furniture was discontinued; in its place Ellen made
curious purchases of linen and flannel and material for
swaddling-bands, and mysterious conversations were continually taking
place between her and her mother, from which Pelle was excluded; and
when they went to see Ellen’s parents Madam Stolpe was always burrowing
in her chests of drawers, and giving Ellen little packages to be taken
home.
The time passed only too quickly. Exclusively as they had lived for
their own affairs, it seemed as if they could never get everything
finished. And one day it was as though the world was shattered about
their heads. Ellen lay in bed, turning from side to side and shrieking
as though an evil spirit had taken possession of her body. Pelle bent
over her with a helpless expression, while at the foot of the bed sat
Madam Blom; she sat there knitting and reading the papers as though
nothing whatever was amiss. “Shriek away, little woman,” she said from
time to time, when Ellen became silent; “that’s part of the business!”
Ellen looked at her spitefully and defiantly pressed her lips together,
but next moment she opened her mouth wide and roared wildly. A rope was
fastened to the foot of the bed, and she pulled on this while she
shrieked. Then she collapsed, exhausted. “You wicked, wicked boy,” she
whispered, with a faint smile. Pelle bent over her happily; but she
pushed him suddenly away; her beautiful body contorted itself, and the
dreadful struggle was raging again. But at last a feeble voice relieved
hers and filled the home with a new note. “Another mouth to fill,” said
Madam Blom, holding the new-born child in the air by one leg. It was a
boy.
Pelle went about blushing and quite bewildered, as though something had
happened to him that no one else had ever experienced. At first he took
Master Beck’s work home with him and looked after the child himself at
night. Every other moment he had to put down his work and run in to the
mother and child. “You are a wonderful woman, to give me such a child
for a kiss,” he said, beaming, “and a boy into the bargain! What a man
he’ll be!”
“So it’s a boy!” said the “family.” “Don’t quite lose your head!”
“That would be the last straw!” said Pelle gravely.
The feminine members of the family teased him because he looked after
the child. “What a man—perhaps he’d like to lie in child-bed, too!”
they jeered.
“I don’t doubt it,” growled Stolpe. “But he’s near becoming an idiot,
and that’s much more serious. And it pains me to say it, but that’s the
girl’s fault. And yet all her life she has only heard what is good and
proper. But women are like cats—there’s no depending on them.”
Pelle only laughed at their gibes. He was immeasurably happy.
And now Lasse managed to find his way to see them! He had scarcely
received the news of the event, when he made his appearance just as he
was. He was full of audaciously high spirits; he threw his cap on the
ground outside the door, and rushed into the bedroom as though some one
were trying to hold him back.
“Ach, the little creature! Did any one ever see such an angel!” he
cried, and he began to babble over the child until Ellen was quite rosy
with maternal pride.
His joy at becoming a grandfather knew no limits. “So it’s come at
last, it’s come at last!” he repeated, over and over again. “And I was
always afraid I should have to go to my grave without leaving a
representative behind me! Ach, what a plump little devil! He’s got
something to begin life on, he has! He’ll surely be an important
citizen, Pelle! Just look how plump and round he is! Perhaps a merchant
or a manufacturer or something of that sort! To see him in his power
and greatness—but that won’t be granted to Father Lasse.” He sighed.
“Yes, yes, here he is, and how he notices one already! Perhaps the
rascal’s wondering, who is this wrinkled old man standing there and
coming to see me in his old clothes? Yes, it’s Father Lasse, so look at
him well, he’s won his magnificence by fair means!”
Then he went up to Pelle and fumbled for his hand. “Well, I’ve hardly
dared to hope for this—and how fine he is, my boy! What are you going
to call him?” Lasse always ended with that question, looking anxiously
at his son as he asked it. His old head trembled a little now when
anything moved him.
“He’s to be called Lasse Frederik,” said Pelle one day, “after his two
grandfathers.”
This delighted the old man. He went off on a little carouse in honor of
the day.
And now he came almost every day. On Sunday mornings he made himself
scrupulously tidy, polishing his boots and brushing his clothes, so as
to make himself thoroughly presentable. As he went home from work he
would look in to ask whether little Lasse had slept well. He eulogized
Ellen for bringing such a bright, beautiful youngster into the world,
and she quite fell in love with the old man, on account of his delight
in the child.
She even trusted him to sit with the little one, and he was never so
pleased as when she wished to go out and sent for him accordingly.
So little Lasse succeeded, merely by his advent, in abolishing all
misunderstandings, and Pelle blessed him for it. He was the deuce of a
fellow already—one day he threw Lasse and Ellen right into one
another’s arms! Pelle followed step by step the little creature’s
entrance into the world; he noticed when first his glance showed a
watchful attention, and appeared to follow an object, and when first
his hand made a grab at something. “Hey, hey, just look! He wants his
share of things already!” he cried delightedly. It was Pelle’s fair
moustache the child was after—and didn’t he give it a tug!
The little hand gripped valiantly and was scarcely to be removed; there
were little dimples on the fingers and deep creases at the wrist. There
was any amount of strength in Ellen’s milk!
They saw nothing more of Morton. He had visited them at first, but
after a time ceased coming. They were so taken up with one another at
the time, and Ellen’s cool behavior had perhaps frightened him away. He
couldn’t know that that was her manner to everybody. Pelle could never
find an idle hour to look him up, but often regretted him. “Can you
understand what’s amiss with him?” he would ask Ellen wonderingly. “We
have so much in common, he and I. Shall I make short work of it and go
and look him up?”
Ellen made no answer to this; she only kissed him. She wanted to have
him quite to herself, and encompassed him with her love; her warm
breath made him feel faint with happiness. Her will pursued him and
surrounded him like a wall; he had a faint consciousness of the fact,
but made no attempt to bestir himself. He felt quite comfortable as he
was.
The child occasioned fresh expenses, and Ellen had all she could do;
there was little time left for her to help him. He had to obtain
suitable work, so that they might not suffer by the slack winter
season, but could sit cozily between their four walls. There was no
time for loafing about and thinking. It was an obvious truth, which
their daily life confirmed, that poor people have all they can do to
mind their own affairs. This was a fact which they had not at once
realized.
He no longer gave any thought to outside matters. It was really only
from old habit that, as he sat eating his breakfast in the workshop, he
would sometimes glance at the paper his sandwiches were wrapped in—part
of some back number of _The Working Man._ Or perhaps it would happen
that he felt something in the air, that passed him by, something in
which he had no part; and then he would raise his head with a listening
expression. But Ellen was familiar with the remoteness that came into
his eyes at such times, and she knew how to dispel it with a kiss.
One day he met Morten in the street. Pelle was delighted, but there was
a sceptical expression in Morten’s eyes. “Why don’t you ever come to
see me now?” asked Pelle. “I often long to see you, but I can’t well
get away from home.”
“I’ve found a sweetheart—which is quite an occupation.”
“Are you engaged?” said Pelle vivaciously. “Tell me something about
her!”
“Oh, there’s not much to tell,” said Morten, with a melancholy smile.
“She is so ragged and decayed that no one else would have her—that’s
why I took her.”
“That is truly just like you!” Pelle laughed. “But seriously, who is
the girl and where does she live?”
“Where does she live?” Morten stared at him for a moment
uncomprehendingly. “Yes, after all you’re right. If you know where
people live you know all about them. The police always ask that
question.”
Pelle did not know whether Morten was fooling him or whether he was
speaking in good faith; he could not understand him in the least
to-day. His pale face bore signs of suffering. There was a curious
glitter in his eyes. “One has to live somewhere in this winter cold.”
“Yes, you are right! And she lives on the Common, when the policeman
doesn’t drive her away. He’s the landlord of the unfortunate, you know!
There has been a census lately—well, did you observe what happened? It
was given out that everybody was to declare where he lodged on a
particular night. But were the census-papers distributed among the
homeless? No—all those who live in sheds and outhouses, or on the
Common, or in newly erected buildings, or in the disused manure-pits of
the livery stables—they have no home, and consequently were not counted
in the census. That was cleverly managed, you know; they simply don’t
exist! Otherwise there would be a very unpleasant item on the list—the
number of the homeless. Only one man in the city here knows what it is;
he’s a street missionary, and I’ve sometimes been out with him at
night; it’s horrifying, what we’ve seen! Everywhere, wherever there’s a
chink, they crowd into it in order to find shelter; they lie under the
iron staircases even, and freeze to death. We found one like that—an
old man—and called up a policeman; he stuck his red nose right in the
corpse’s mouth and said, ‘Dead of drink.’ And now that’s put down,
where really it ought to say, ‘Starved to death!’ It mustn’t be said
that any one really suffers need in this country, you understand. No
one freezes to death here who will only keep moving; no one starves
unless it’s his own fault. It must necessarily be so in one of the most
enlightened countries in the world; people have become too cultivated
to allow Want to stalk free about the streets; it would spoil their
enjoyment and disturb their night’s rest. And they must be kept at a
distance too; to do away with them would be too troublesome; but the
police are drilled to chase them back into their holes and corners. Go
down to the whaling quay and see what they bring ashore in a single day
at this time of the year—it isn’t far from your place. Accidents, of
course! The ground is so slippery, and people go too near the edge of
the quay. The other night a woman brought a child into the world in an
open doorway in North Bridge Street—in ten degrees of frost. People who
collected were indignant; it was unpardonable of her to go about in
such a condition— she ought to have stopped at home. It didn’t occur to
them that she had no home. Well then, she could have gone to the
police; they are obliged to take people in. On the other hand, as we
were putting her in the cab, she began to cry, in terror, ‘Not the
maternity hospital—not the maternity hospital!’ She had already been
there some time or other. She must have had some reason for preferring
the doorstep—just as the others preferred the canal to the workhouse.”
Morten continued, regardless of Pelle, as though he had to ease some
inward torment. Pelle listened astounded to this outburst of lacerating
anguish with a shamed feeling that he himself had a layer of fat round
his heart. As Morten spoke poverty once more assumed a peculiar,
horrible, living glimmer.
“Why do you tell me all this as if I belonged to the upper classes?” he
said. “I know all this as well as you do.”
“And we haven’t even a bad year,” Morten continued, “the circumstances
are as they always are at this time of year. Yesterday a poor man stole
a loaf from the counter and ran off with it; now he’ll be branded all
his life. ‘My God, that he should want to make himself a thief for so
little!’ said the master’s wife—it was a twopenny-ha’penny roll. It’s
not easy to grasp—branded for his whole life for a roll of bread!”
“He was starving,” said Pelle stupidly.
“Starving? Yes, of course he was starving! But to me it’s insanity, I
tell you—I can’t take it in; and every one else thinks it’s so easy to
understand. Why do I tell you this, you ask? You know it as well as I
do. No, but you don’t know it properly, or you’d have to rack your
brains till you were crazy over the frightful insanity of the fact that
these two words—bread and crime—can belong together! Isn’t it insane,
that the two ends should bend together and close in a ring about a
human life? That a man should steal bread of all things—bread, do you
understand? Bread ought not to be stolen. What does any man want with
thieving who eats enough? In the mornings, long before six o’clock, the
poor people gather outside our shop, and stand there in rows, in order
to be the first to get the stale bread that is sold at half-price. The
police make them stand in a row, just as they do outside the box-office
at the theater, and some come as early as four, and stand two hours in
the cold, in order to be sure of their place. But besides those who buy
there is always a crowd of people still poorer; they have no money to
buy with, but they stand there and stare as though it interested them
greatly to see the others getting their bread cheap. They stand there
waiting for a miracle in the shape of a slice of bread. One can see
that in the way their eyes follow every movement, with the same
desperate hope that you see in the eyes of the dogs when they stand
round the butcher’s cart and implore Heaven that the butcher may drop a
bit of meat. They don’t understand that no one will pity them. Not we
human beings—you should see their surprise when we give them
anything!—but chance, some accident. Good God, bread is so cheap, the
cheapest of all the important things in this world—and yet they can’t
for once have enough of it! This morning I slipped a loaf into an old
woman’s hand— she kissed it and wept for joy! Do you feel that that’s
endurable?” He stared at Pelle with madness lurking in his gaze.
“You do me an injustice if you think I don’t feel it too,” said Pelle
quietly. “But where is there a quick way out of this evil? We must be
patient and organize ourselves and trust to time. To seize on our
rights as they’ve done elsewhere won’t do for us.”
“No, that’s just it! They know it won’t do for us—that’s why justice
never goes forward. The people get only what’s due to them if the
leaders know that if the worst comes to the worst they can provide for
themselves.”
“I don’t believe that any good would come of a revolution,” said Pelle
emphatically. He felt the old longing to fight within him.
“You can’t understand about that unless you’ve felt it in yourself,”
replied Morten passionately. “Revolution is the voice of God, which
administers right and justice, and it cannot be disputed. If the poor
were to rise to see that justice was done it would be God’s judgment,
and it would not be overthrown. The age has surely the right to redeem
itself when it has fallen into arrears in respect of matters so
important; but it could do so only by a leap forward. But the people
don’t rise, they are like a damp powder! You must surely some time have
been in the cellar of the old iron merchant under the ‘Ark,’ and have
seen his store of rags and bones and old iron rubbish? They are mere
rakings of the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and
then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them.
And he buys the soldiers’ bread too, when they want to go on the spree,
and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the
poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man’s larder
—that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers
fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks about
forbidding it; but no one has compassion on the Copenhagen poor.”
Pelle shuddered. There was something demoniacal in Morten’s hideous
knowledge—he knew more of the “Ark” than Pelle himself. “Have you, too,
been down in that loathsome rubbish-store?” he asked, “or how do you
know all this?”
“No, I’ve not been there—but I can’t help knowing it—that’s my curse!
Ask me even whether they make soup out of the rotten bones they get
there. And not even the poison of the refuse-heap will inflame them;
they lap it up and long for more! I can’t bear it if nothing is going
to happen! Now you’ve pulled yourself out of the mire—and it’s the same
with everybody who has accomplished anything—one after another—either
because they are contented or because they are absorbed in their own
pitiful affairs. Those who are of any use slink away, and only the
needy are left.”
“I have never left you in the lurch,” said Pelle warmly. “You must
realize that I haven’t.”
“It isn’t to be wondered at that they get weary,” Morten continued.
“Even God loses patience with those who always let themselves be
trampled upon. Last night I dreamed I was one of the starving. I was
going up the street, grieving at my condition, and I ran up against
God. He was dressed like an old Cossack officer, and had a knout
hanging round his neck.
“‘Help me, dear God!’ I cried, and fell on my knees before him. ‘My
brothers won’t help me.’
“‘What ails you?’ he asked, ‘and who are you?’
“‘I am one of Thy chosen folk, one of the poor,’ I answered. ‘I am
starving!’
“‘You are starving and complain of your brothers, who have set forth
food for you in abundance?’ he said angrily, pointing to all the fine
shops. ‘You do not belong to my chosen people—away with you!’ And then
he lashed me over the back with his knout.”
Morten checked himself and spoke no more; it was as though he neither
saw nor heard; he had quite collapsed. Suddenly he turned away, without
saying good-bye.
Pelle went home; he was vexed by Morten’s violence, which was, he felt,
an attack upon himself. He knew this of himself—that he was not
faithless; and no one had any right to grudge him the happiness of
founding a family. He was quite indignant—for the first time for a long
time. That they should taunt him, who had done more for the cause than
most!—just because he looked after his own affairs for a time!
Something unruly was rising within him; he felt a sudden need to lay
about him; to fight a good stiff battle and shake the warm domesticity
out of his bones.
Down by the canal they were engaged cutting the ice in order to clear
the water. It was already spring tide, and the ice-cakes were drifting
toward the sea, but with unbelievable slowness. After all, that’s the
work for you, he told himself as he turned away. He was conscious of
that which lay beneath the surface, but he would not let it rise.
As soon as he was between four walls again he grew calmer. Ellen sat by
the stove busied with little Lasse, who lay sprawling on his belly in
her lap.
“Only look what a sweet little roly-poly he is! There isn’t a trace of
chafing anywhere!”