The house in which Pelle and his wife lived—the “Palace,” the
inhabitants of the street called it—was an old, tumble-down, three-
storied building with a mansard roof. Up the middle of the façade ran
the remains of some fluted pilasters through the two upper stories,
making a handsome frame to the small windows. The name “Palace” had not
been given to the house entirely without reason; the old woman who kept
the ironmonger’s shop in the back building could remember that in her
childhood it had been a general’s country-house, and stood quite by
itself. At that time the shore reached to where Isted Street now runs,
and the fruit-gardens went right into Council House Square. Two
ancient, worm-eaten apple-trees, relics of that period, were still
standing squeezed in among the back buildings.
Since then the town had pushed the fruit-gardens a couple of miles
farther back, and in the course of time side streets had been added to
the bright neighborhood of Vesterbro—narrow, poor-men’s streets, which
sprang up round the scattered country-houses, and shut out the light;
and poor people, artistes and street girls ousted the owners and turned
the luxuriant summer resort into a motley district where booted poverty
and shoeless intelligence met.
The “Palace” was the last relic of a vanished age. The remains of its
former grandeur were still to be seen in the smoke-blackened stucco and
deep windows of the attics; but the large rooms had been broken up into
sets of one or two rooms for people of small means, half the wide
landing being boarded off for coal-cellars.
From Pelle’s little two-roomed flat, a door and a couple of steps led
down into a large room which occupied the entire upper floor of the
side building, and was not unlike the ruins of a former
banqueting-hall. The heavy, smoke-blackened ceiling went right up under
the span roof and had once been decorated; but most of the plaster had
now fallen down, and the beams threatened to follow it.
The huge room had been utilized, in the course of time, both as a
brewery and as a warehouse; but it still bore the stamp of its former
splendor. The children of the property at any rate thought it was
grand, and picked out the last remains of panelling for kindling-wood,
and would sit calling to one another for hours from the high ledges
above the brick pillars, upon which there had once stood busts of
famous men.
Now and again a party of Russian or Polish emigrants hired the room and
took possession of it for a few nights. They slept side by side upon
the bare floor, each using his bundle for a pillow; and in the morning
they would knock at the door of Ellen’s room, and ask by gestures to be
allowed to come to the water-tap. At first she was afraid of them and
barricaded the door with her wardrobe cupboard; but the thought of
Pelle in prison made her sympathetic and helpful. They were poor, needy
beings, whom misery and misfortune had driven from their homes. They
could not speak the language and knew nothing about the world; but they
seemed, like birds of passage, to find their way by instinct. In their
blind flight it was at the “Palace” that they happened to alight for
rest.
With this exception the great room lay unused. It went up through two
stories, and could have been made into several small flats; but the
owner of the property—an old peasant from Glostrup—was so miserly that
he could not find it in his heart to spend money on it, notwithstanding
the great advantage it would be to him. _Ellen_ had no objection to
this! She dried her customers’ washing there, and escaped all the coal-
dust and dirt of the yard.
Chance, which so often takes the place of Providence in the case of
poor people, had landed her and her children here when things had gone
wrong with them in Chapel Road. Ellen had at last, after hard toil, got
her boot-sewing into good working order and had two pupils to help her,
when a long strike came and spoiled it all for her. She struggled
against it as well as she could, but one day they came and carried her
bits of furniture down into the street. It was the old story: Pelle had
heard it several times before. There she stood with the children,
mounting guard over her belongings until it grew dark. It was pouring
with rain, and they did not know what to do. People stopped as they
hurried by, asked a few questions and passed on; one or two advised her
to apply to the committee for housing the homeless. This, however, both
Ellen and Lasse Frederik were too proud to do. They took the little
ones down to the mangling-woman in the cellar, and themselves remained
on guard over their things, in the dull hope that something would
happen, a hope of which experience never quite deprives the poor.
After they had stood there a long time something really did happen. Out
of Nörrebro Street came two men dashing along at a tremendous pace with
a four-wheeled cart of the kind employed by the poor of Copenhagen when
they move—preferably by night—from one place to another. One of the men
was at the pole of the cart, while the other pushed behind and, when
the pace was at its height, flung himself upon his stomach on the cart,
putting on the brake with the toes of his boots upon the road so as to
twist the cart into the gutter. Upon the empty cart sat a middle-aged
woman, singing, with her feet dangling over the side; she was big and
wore an enormous hat with large nodding flowers, of the kind designed
to attract the male sex. The party zig-zagged, shouting and singing,
from one side of the street to the other, and each time the lady
shrieked.
“_There’s_ a removing cart!” said Lasse Frederik, and as he spoke the
vehicle pulled up in the gutter just in front of them.
“What are you doing, Thorvald?” said one of the men; then, staring
straight into Ellen’s face, “Have you hurt your eye?”
The woman had jumped down from the cart. “Oh, get out of the way, you
ass!” she said, pushing him aside. “Can’t you see they’ve been turned
out? Is it your husband that’s chucked you out?” she asked, bending
sympathetically over Ellen.
“No, the landlord’s turned us out!” said Lasse Frederik.
“What a funny little figure! And you’ve got nowhere to sleep to-night?
Here, Christian, take and load these things on the cart, and then they
can stand under the gateway at home for the night. They’ll be quite
spoilt by the rain here.”
“Yes,” answered Christian, “the chair-legs have actually begun to take
root!” The two men were in a boisterous humor.
“Now you can just come along with me,” said the woman, when the things
were piled upon the cart, “and I’ll find you a place to sleep in. And
then to-morrow Providence’ll perhaps be at home himself!”
“She’s a street-woman,” whispered Lasse Frederik again and again,
pulling Ellen’s dress; but Ellen did not care now, if only she could
avoid having to accept poor relief. She no longer held her head so
high.
It was “Queen Theresa” herself they had met, and in a sense this
meeting had made their fortune. She helped Ellen to find her little
flat, and got her washing to do for the girls of the neighborhood. It
was not very much, though the girls of Vesterbro went in for fine
clothes as far as they could; but it afforded her at any rate a
livelihood.
Pelle did not like Ellen going on with all this dirty work; he wanted
to be the one to provide for the family. Ellen moreover had had her
turn, and she looked tired and as if she needed to live a more
comfortable life. It was as though she fell away now that he was there
and able once more to assume the responsibility; but she would not hear
of giving up the washing. “It’s never worth while to throw away the
dirty water until you’ve got the clean!” she said.
Every morning he set out furnished with a brand-new trades-union book,
and went from workshop to workshop. Times were bad for his branch of
trade; many of his old fellow-workmen had been forced to take up other
occupations—he met them again as conductors, lamplighters, etc.;
machinery had made them unnecessary, they said. It was the effect of
the great lock-out; it had killed the little independent businesses
that had formerly worked with one or two men, and put wind into the
sails of large industries. The few who could manage it had procured
machines and become manufacturers; the rest were crowded out and sat in
out-of-the- way basements doing repairs. To set to work again, on the
old conditions was what had been farthest from Pelle’s thoughts; and he
now went about and offered to become an apprentice again in order to
serve his new master, the machinery, and was ready to be utilized to
the utmost. But the manufacturers had no use for him; they still
remembered him too well. “You’ve been too long away from the work,”
said one and another of them meaningly.
Well, that was only tit for tat; but he felt bitterly how even his past
rose up against him. He had fought and sacrificed everything to improve
the conditions in his branch; and the machines were the discouraging
answer that the development gave to him and his fellows.
He was not alone in his vain search in this bright springtime. A number
of other branches had had the same fate as his own. Every new day that
dawned brought him into a stream of men who seemed to be condemned to
wear out the pavement in their hopeless search for work—people who had
been pushed out by the machines and could not get in again. “There must
be something wrong with them,” Pelle thought while he stood and
listened to always the same story of how they had suddenly been
dropped, and saw the rest of the train steaming away. It must have been
their own fault that they were not coupled on to a new one; perhaps
they were lazy or drunkards. But after a time he saw good, tried men
standing in the row, and offering their powers morning after morning
without result; and he began to realize with a chill fear that times
were changing.
He would certainly have managed to make both ends meet if there had
been anything to be got. The prices were all right; their only defect
was that they were not eatable. Altogether it seemed as if a change for
the worse had overtaken the artisan; and to make it still more serious
the large businesses stood in the way of his establishing himself and
becoming independent. There was not even a back door left open now!
Pelle might just as well put that out of his head first as last; to
become a master now required capital and credit. The best thing that
the future held was an endless and aimless tramp to and from the
factory.
At one stroke he was planted in the middle of the old question again;
all the circumstances passed before him, and it was useless to close
his eyes. He was willing enough to mind his own affairs and did not
seek for anything; but the one thing was a consequence of the other,
and whether he wished it or not, it united in a general view of the
conditions.
The union had stood the test outwardly. The workmen were well organized
and had vindicated their right to negotiate; their corporations could
no longer be disregarded. Wages were also to some extent higher, and
the feeling for the home had grown in the workmen themselves, many of
them having removed from their basements into new two- or three-roomed
flats, and bought good furniture. They demanded more from life, but
everything had become dearer, and they still lived from hand to mouth.
He could see that the social development had not kept pace with the
mechanical; the machines wedged themselves quietly but inexorably in
between the workmen and the work, and threw more and more men out of
employment. The hours of labor were not greatly shortened. Society did
not seem to care to protect the workers, but it interested itself more
in disabled workmen than before, and provision for the poor was well
organized. Pelle could not discover _any_ law that had a regulating
effect, but found a whole number of laws that plastered up the existing
conditions. A great deal of help was given, always just on the borders
of starvation; and more and more men had to apply for it. It did not
rob them of their rights as citizens, but made them a kind of
politically _kept_ proletariat.
It was thus that the world of adventure which Pelle had helped to
conquer appeared now when he returned and looked at it with new eyes.
The world had not been created anew, and the Movement did not seem to
have produced anything strong and humanly supporting. It seemed as if
the workmen would quietly allow themselves to be left out of the game,
if only they received money for doing nothing! What had become of their
former pride? They must have acquired the morals of citizens, since
they willingly agreed to accept a pension for rights surrendered. They
were not deficient in power; they could make the whole world wither and
die without shedding a drop of blood, only by holding together. It was
a sense of responsibility that they lacked; they had lost the
fundamental idea of the Movement.
Pelle looked at the question from all sides while he trudged up and
down in his vain search. The prospect obtruded itself upon him, and
there were forces at work, both within and without, trying to push him
into the Movement and into the front rank among the leaders, but he
repelled the idea: he was going to work for his home now.
He managed to obtain some repairs for the neighbors, and also helped
Ellen to hang up clothes and turn the mangle. One must pocket one’s
pride and be glad _she_ had something. She was glad of his help, but
did not want any one to see him doing this woman’s work.
“It’s not work for a man,” she said, looking at him with eyes which
said how pleased she was to have his company.
They liked being together, enjoyed it in their own quiet way without
many words. Much had happened, but neither Pelle nor Ellen were in a
hurry. Neither of them had a facility in speaking, but they found their
way to an understanding through the pauses, and drew nearer to one
another in the silences. Each knew what the other had suffered without
requiring to have it told: time had been at work on them both.
There was no storm in their new companionship. The days passed quietly,
made sad by the years that had gone by. In Ellen’s mind was neither
jubilation nor reproach. She was cautious with regard to him—almost as
shy as the first time they met; behind all her goodness and care lay
the same touch of maidenly reserve as at that time. She received his
caresses silently, she herself giving chiefly by being something for
him. He noticed how every little homely action she did for him grew out
of her like a motherly caress and took him into her heart. He was
grateful for it, but it was not that of which he stood most in need.
When they sat together in the twilight and the children played upon the
floor, she was generally silent, stealing glances at him now and then;
but as soon as he noticed these, the depth of her expression vanished.
Was she again searching for his inner being as she had done in their
earliest time together? It was as though she were calling to something
within him, but would not reveal herself. It was thus that mother might
sit and gaze searchingly into her child’s future. Did she not love him
then? She had given him all that she possessed, borne him children, and
had faithfully waited for him when all the rest of the world had cast
him off; and yet he was not sure that she had ever loved him.
Pelle had never met with love in the form of something unmanageable;
the Movement had absorbed the surplus of his youth. But now he had been
born anew together with the spring, and felt it suddenly as an inward
power. He and Ellen would begin now, for now she was everything! Life
had taught him seriousness, and it was well. He was horrified at the
thoughtless way in which he had taken Ellen and made her a mother
without first making her a bride. Her woman’s heart must be
immeasurably large since she had not gone to pieces in consequence, but
still stood as unmoved as ever, waiting for him to win her. She had got
through it by being a mother.
Would he ever win her? Was she really waiting still, or was she
contented with things as they were?
His love for her was so strong that everything about her was
transfigured, and he was happy in the knowledge that she was his fate.
Merely a ribbon or a worn check cotton apron—any little thing that
belonged to her—acquired a wonderfully warm hue, and filled his mind
with sweetness. A glance or a touch made him dizzy with happiness, and
his heart went out to her in waves of ardent longing. It awoke no
response; she smiled gently and pressed his hand. She was fond of him
and refused him nothing, but he nevertheless felt that she kept her
innermost self hidden from him. When he tried to see in, he found it
closed by a barrier of kindness.