Pelle was like a man returning home after years of exile, and trying to
bring himself into personal relations with everything; the act of
oblivion was in force only up to the threshold; the real thing he had
to see to himself. The land he had tilled was in other hands, he no
longer had any right to it; but it was he who had planted, and he must
know how it had been tended and how it had thriven.
The great advance had taken on a political character. The Movement had
in the meantime let the demand of the poorest of the people for bread
drop, and thrown them over as one would throw over ballast in order to
rise more quickly. The institutions themselves would be won, and then
they would of course come back to the starting-point and begin again
quite differently. It might be rather convenient to turn out those who
most hindered the advance, but would it lead to victory? It was upon
them indeed that everything turned! Pelle had thoroughly learned the
lesson, that he who thinks he will outwit others is outwitted himself.
He had no faith in those who would climb the fence where it was lowest.
The new tactics dated from the victorious result of the great conflict.
He had himself led the crowds in triumph through the capital, and if he
had not been taken he would probably now be sitting in parliament as
one of the labor members and symbolizing his promotion to citizenship.
But now he was out of it all, and had to choose his attitude toward the
existing state of things; he had belonged to the world of outcasts and
had stood face to face with the irreconcilable. He was not sure that
the poor man was to be raised by an extension of the existing social
ethics. He himself was still an outlaw, and would probably never be
anything else. It was hard to stoop to enter the doorway through which
you had once been thrown out, and it was hard to get in. He did not
intend to take any steps toward gaining admission to the company of
respectable men; he was strong enough to stand alone now.
Perhaps Ellen expected something in that way as reparation for all the
wrong she had suffered. She must have patience! Pelle had promised
himself that he would make her and the children happy, and he persuaded
himself that this would be best attained by following his own impulses.
He was not exactly happy. Pecuniarily things were in a bad way, and
notwithstanding all his planning, the future continued to look
uncertain. He needed to be the man, the breadwinner, so that Ellen
could come to him for safety and shelter, take her food with an
untroubled mind from his hand, and yield herself to him unresistingly.
He was not their god; that was where the defect lay. This was
noticeable at any rate in Lasse Frederik. There was good stuff in the
boy, although it had a tang of the street. He was an energetic fellow,
bright and pushing, keenly alert with regard to everything in the way
of business. Pelle saw in him the image of himself, and was only proud
of him; but the boy did not look upon him with unconditional reliance
in return. He was quick and willing, but nothing more; his attitude was
one of trial, as if he wanted to see how things would turn out before
he recognized the paternal relationship.
Pelle suffered under this impalpable distrust, which classed him with
the “new fathers” of certain children; and he had a feeling that was at
the same time painful and ridiculous, that he was on trial. In olden
days the matter might have been settled by a good thrashing, but now
things had to be arranged so that they would be lasting; he could no
longer buy cheaply. When helping Lasse Frederik in organizing the milk-
boys, he pocketed his pride and introduced features from the great
conflict in order to show that he was good for something too. He could
see from the boy’s expression that he did not believe much of it, and
intended to investigate the matter more closely. It wounded his
sensitive mind and drove him into himself.
One day, however, when he was sitting at his work, Lasse Frederik
rushed in. “Father, tell me what you did to get the men that were
locked into the factory out!” he cried breathlessly.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I did,” said Pelle reproachfully.
“Yes, I would; for they called you the ‘Lightning!’” exclaimed the boy
in tones of admiration. “And they had to put you in prison so as to get
rid of you. The milk-driver told me all about it!”
From that day they were friends. At one stroke Pelle had become the
hero of the boy’s existence. He had shaved off his beard, had blackened
his face, and had gone right into the camp of his opponents, and
nothing could have been finer. He positively had to defend himself from
being turned into a regular robber-captain with a wide-awake hat and
top- boots! Lasse Frederik had a lively imagination!
Pelle had needed this victory. He must have his own people safely at
his back first of all, and then have a thorough settlement of the past.
But this was not easy, for little Boy Comfort staggered about
everywhere, warped himself toward him from one piece of furniture to
another with his serious eyes fixed steadily upon him, and crawled the
last part of the way. Whenever he was set down, he instantly steered
for Pelle; he would come crawling in right from the kitchen, and would
not stop until he stood on his feet by Pelle’s leg, looking up at him.
“See how fond he is of you already!” said Ellen tenderly, as she put
him down in the middle of the floor to try him. “Take him up!” Pelle
obeyed mechanically; he had no personal feeling for this child; it was
indeed no child, but the accusation of a grown-up person that came
crawling toward him. And there stood Ellen with as tender an expression
as if it were her own baby! Pelle could not understand how it was that
she did not despise him; he was ashamed whenever he thought of his
struggle to reconcile himself to this “little cuckoo.” It was a good
thing he had said so little!
His inability to be as naturally kind to the child as she was tormented
him; and when, on Saturday evening, she had bathed Boy Comfort and then
sat with him on her lap, putting on his clean clothes, Pelle was
overwhelmed with self-accusation. He had thoughtlessly trodden little
Marie of the “Ark” underfoot, and she whom he had cast off when she
most needed him, in return passed her beneficent hand over his
wrong-doing. As though she were aware of his gloomy thoughts, she went
to him and placed the warm, naked child in his arms, saying with a
gentle smile: “Isn’t he a darling?” Her heart was so large that he was
almost afraid; she really took more interest in this child than in her
own.
“I’m his mother, of course!” she said naturally. “You don’t suppose he
can do without a real mother, do you?”
Marie’s fate lay like a shadow over Pelle’s mind. He had to talk to
Ellen about it in order to try to dispel it, but she did not see the
fateful connection; she looked upon it as something that had to be.
“You were so hunted and persecuted,” she said quietly, “and you had no
one to look to. So it had to happen like that. Marie told me all about
it. It was no one’s fault that she was not strong enough to bear
children. The doctor said there was a defect in her frame; she had an
internal deformity.” Alas! Ellen did not know how much a human being
should be able to help, and she herself took much more upon her than
she need.
There was, nevertheless, something soothing in these sober facts,
although they told him nothing about the real thing. It is impossible
to bear for long the burden of the irreparable, and Pelle was glad that
Ellen dwelt so constantly and naturally on Marie’s fate; it brought it
within the range of ordinary things for him too. Marie had come to her
when she could no longer hide her condition, and Ellen had taken her in
and kept her until she went to the lying-in hospital. Marie knew quite
well that she was going to die—she could feel it, as it were—and would
sit and talk about it while she helped Ellen with her boot-sewing. She
arranged everything as sensibly as an experienced mother.
“How old-fashioned she was, and yet so child-like!” Ellen would exclaim
with emotion.
Pelle could not help thinking of his life in the “Ark” when little
Marie kept house for him and her two brothers—a careful housekeeper of
eleven years! She was deformed and yet had abundant possibilities
within her; she resembled poverty itself. Infected by his young
strength, she had shot up and unfolded into a fair maiden, at whom the
young dandies turned to look when she went along the street to make her
purchases. He had been anxious about her, alone and unprotected as she
was; and yet it was he himself who had become the plunderer of the
poor, defenceless girl. Why had he not carried his cross alone, instead
of accepting the love of a being who gave herself to him in gratitude
for his gift to her of the joy of life? Why had he been obliged, in a
difficult moment, to take his gift back? Boy Comfort she had called her
boy in her innocent goodness of heart, in order that Pelle should be
really fond of him; but it was a dearly-bought Comfort that cost the
life of another! For Pelle the child was almost an accusation.
There was much to settle up and some things that could not be arranged!
Pelle sometimes found it burdensome enough to be responsible for
himself.
About this time Morten was often in his thoughts. “Morten has
disappointed me at any rate,” he thought; “he could not bear my
prosperity!” This was a point on which Pelle had right upon his side!
Morten must come to him if they were to have anything more to do with
one another. Pelle bore no malice, but it was reasonable and just that
the one who was on the top should first hold out his hand.
In this way he thought he had obtained rest from that question in any
case, but it returned. He had taken the responsibility upon himself
now, and was going to begin by sacrificing his only friend on a
question of etiquette! He would have to go to him and hold out a hand
of reconciliation!
This at last seemed to be a noble thought!
But Pelle was not allowed to feel satisfied with himself in this
either. He was a prey to the same tormenting unrest that he had
suffered in his cell, when he stole away from his work and sat reading
secretly—he felt as if there were always an eye at the peephole, which
saw everything that he did. He would have to go into the question once
more.
That unselfish Morten envious? It was true he had not celebrated
Pelle’s victory with a flourish of trumpets, but had preferred to be
his conscience! That was really at the bottom of it. He had intoxicated
himself in the noise, and wanted to find something with which to drown
Morten’s quiet warning voice, and the accusation was not far to seek—
_envy!_ It was he himself, in fact, who had been the one to disappoint.
One day he hunted him up. Morten’s dwelling was not difficult to find
out; he had acquired a name as an author, and was often mentioned in
the papers in connection with the lower classes. He lived on the South
Boulevard, up in an attic as usual, with a view over Kalvebod Strand
and Amager.
“Why, is that you?” he said, taking Pelle’s hands in his and gazing
into his stern, furrowed face until the tears filled his eyes. “I say,
how you have changed!” he whispered half tearfully, and led him into
his room.
“I suppose I have,” Pelle answered gloomily. “I’ve had good reason to,
anyhow. And how have you been? Are you married?”
“No, I’m as solitary as ever. The one I want still doesn’t care about
me, and the others _I_ don’t want. I thought you’d thrown me over too,
but you’ve come after all.”
“I had too much prosperity, and that makes you self-important.”
“Oh, well, it does. But in prison—why did you send my letters back? It
was almost too hard.”
Pelle looked up in astonishment. “It would never have occurred to the
prisoner that he could hurt anybody, so you do me an injustice there,”
he said. “It was myself I wanted to punish!”
“You’ve been ill then, Pelle!”
“Yes, ill! You should only know what one gets like when they stifle
your right to be a human being and shut you in between four bare walls.
At one time I hated blindly the whole world; my brain reeled with
trying to find out a really crushing revenge, and when I couldn’t hit
others I helped to carry out the punishment upon myself. There was
always a satisfaction in feeling that the more I suffered, the greater
devils did it make the others appear. And I really did get a hit at
them; they hated with all their hearts having to give me a transfer.”
“Wasn’t there any one there who could speak a comforting word—the
chaplain, the teachers?”
Pelle smiled a bitter smile. “Oh, yes, the lash! The jailer couldn’t
keep me under discipline; I was what they call a difficult prisoner. It
wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I had quite lost my balance. You
might just as well expect a man to walk steadily when everything is
whirling round him. They saw, I suppose, that I couldn’t come right by
myself, so one day they tied me to a post, pulled my shirt up over my
head and gave me a thrashing. It sounds strange, but that did it; the
manner of procedure was so brutal that everything in me was struck
dumb. When such a thing as _that_ could happen, there was nothing more
to protest against. They put a wet sheet round me and I was lifted onto
my pallet, so that was all right. For a week I had to lie on my face
and couldn’t move for the pain; the slightest movement made me growl
like an animal. The strokes had gone right through me and could be
counted on my chest; and there I lay like a lump of lead, struck down
to the earth in open- mouthed astonishment. ‘This is what they do to
human beings!’ I groaned inwardly; ‘this is what they do to human
beings!’ I could no longer comprehend anything.”
Pelle’s face had become ashen gray; all the blood had left it, and the
bones stood out sharply as in a dead face. He gulped two or three times
to obtain control over his voice.
“I wonder if you understand what it means to get a thrashing!” he said
hoarsely. “Fire’s nothing; I’d rather be burnt alive than have it
again. The fellow doesn’t beat; he’s not the least angry; nobody’s
angry with you; they’re all so seriously grieved on your account. He
places the strokes carefully down over your back as if he were weighing
out food, almost as if he were fondling you. But your lungs gasp at
each stroke and your heart beats wildly; it’s as if a thousand pincers
were tearing all your fibers and nerves apart at once. My very entrails
contracted in terror, and seemed ready to escape through my throat
every time the lash fell. My lungs still burn when I think of it, and
my heart will suddenly contract as if it would send the blood out
through my throat. Do you know what the devilish part of corporal
punishment is? It’s not the bodily pain that they inflict upon the
culprit; it’s his inner man they thrash—his soul. While I lay there
brooding over my mutilated spirit, left to lick my wounds like a
wounded animal, I realized that I had been in an encounter with the
evil conscience of Society, the victim of their hatred of those who
suffer.”
“Do you remember what gave occasion to the punishment?” Morten asked,
as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“It was some little thing or other—I think I called out. The solitude
and the terrible silence got upon my nerves, and I suppose I shouted to
make a little life in the horrible emptiness. I don’t remember very
clearly, but I think that was my crime.”
“You’d have been the better anyhow for a kind word from a friend.”
Morten was still thinking of his despised letters.
“Yes, but the atmosphere of a cell is not suited for friendly relations
with the outside world. You get to hate all who are at liberty—those
who mean well by you too—and you chop off even the little bit of branch
you’re sitting on. Perhaps I should never have got into touch with life
again if it hadn’t been for the mice in my cell. I used to put crumbs
of bread down the grating for them, and when I lay there half dead and
brooding, they ran squeaking over my hand. It was a caress anyhow, even
if it wasn’t from fellow-men.”
Morten lived in a small two-roomed flat in the attics. While they sat
talking, a sound came now and then from the other room, and each time a
nervous look came into Morten’s face, and he glanced in annoyance at
the closed door. Gradually he became quite restless and his attention
was fixed on these sounds. Pelle wondered at it, but asked no
questions.
Suddenly there came the sound of a chair being overturned. Morten rose
quickly and went in, shutting the door carefully behind him. Pelle
heard low voices—Morten’s admonishing, and a thin, refractory, girlish
voice. “He’s got a girl hidden in there,” thought Pelle. “I’d better be
off.”
He rose and looked out of the large attic window. How everything had
changed since he first came to the capital and looked out over it from
Morten’s old lodging! In those days he had had dreams of conquering it,
and had carried out his plan too; and now he could begin from the
beginning! An entirely new city lay spread out beneath him. Where he
had once run about among wharves and coal-bunkers, there now stood a
row of palatial buildings with a fine boulevard. And everything outside
was new; a large working-men’s district had sprung up where there had
once been timber-yards or water. Below him engines were drawing rows of
trucks filled with ballast across the site for the new goods-station
yard; and on the opposite side of the harbor a new residential and
business quarter had grown up on the Iceland Quay. And behind it all
lay the water and the green land of Amager. Morten had had the sense to
select a high branch for himself like the nightingales.
He had got together a good number of books again, and on his writing-
table stood photographs of well-known men with autograph inscriptions.
To all appearances he seemed to make his way in the world of books.
Pelle took down some of Morten’s own works, and turned over their
leaves with interest. He seemed to hear Morten’s earnest voice behind
the printed words. He would begin to read him now!
Morten came in. “You’re not going, are you?” he asked, drawing his hand
across his forehead. “Do stay a little while and we’ll have a good
talk. You can’t think how I’ve missed you!” He looked tired.
“I’m looking forward tremendously to reading your books,” said Pelle
enthusiastically. “What a lot you’ve written! You haven’t given that
up.”
“Perhaps solitude’s taught you too to like books,” said Morten, looking
at him. “If so, you’ve made some good friends in there, Pelle. All that
there isn’t worth much; it’s only preliminary work. It’s a new world
ours, you must remember.”
“I don’t think _The Working Man_ cares much about you.”
“No, not much,” answered Morten slowly.
“They say you only write in the upper-class papers.”
“If I didn’t I should starve. _They_ don’t grudge me my food, at any
rate! Our own press still has no use for skirmishers, but only for men
who march to order!”
“And it’s very difficult for you to subordinate yourself to any one,”
said Pelle, smiling.
“I have a responsibility to those above me,” answered Morten proudly.
“If I give the blind man eyes to see into the future, I can’t let
myself be led by him. Now and then _The Working Man_ gets hold of one
of my contributions to the upper-class press: that’s all the connection
I have with my own side. My food I have to get from the other side of
the boundary, and lay my eggs there: they’re pretty hard conditions.
You can’t think how often I’ve worried over not being able to speak to
my own people except in roundabout ways. Well, it doesn’t matter! I can
afford to wait. There’s no way of avoiding the son of my father, and in
the meantime I’m doing work among the upper classes. I bring the misery
into the life of the happily-situated, and disturb their quiet
enjoyment. The upper classes must be prepared for the revolution too.”
“Can they stand your representations?” asked Pelle, in surprise.
“Yes, the upper classes are just as tolerant as the common people were
before they rose: it’s an outcome of culture. Sometimes they’re almost
too tolerant; you can’t quite vouch for their words. When there’s
something they don’t like, they always get out of it by looking at it
from an artistic point of view.”
“How do you mean?”
“As a display, as if you were acting for their entertainment. ‘It’s
splendidly done,’ they say, when you’ve laid bare a little of the
boundless misery. ‘It’s quite Russian. Of course it’s not real at all,
at any rate not here at home.’ But you always make a mark on some one
or other, and little by little the food after all becomes bitter to
their taste, I think. Perhaps some day I shall be lucky enough to write
in such a way about the poor that no one can leave them out. But you
yourself—what’s your attitude toward matters? Are you disappointed?”
“Yes, to some extent. In prison, in my great need, I left the
fulfilment of the time of prosperity to you others. All the same, a
great change has taken place.”
“And you’re pleased with it?”
“Everything has become dearer,” said Pelle slowly, “and unemployment
seems on the way to become permanent.”
Morten nodded. “That’s the answer capital gives,” he said. “It
multiplies every rise in wages by two, and puts it back on the workmen
again. The poor man can’t stand very many victories of that kind.”
“Almost the worst thing about it is the development of snobbery. It
seems to me that our good working classes are being split up into two—
the higher professions, which will be taken up into the upper classes;
and the proletariat, which will be left behind. The whole thing has
been planned on too small a scale for it to get very far.”
“You’ve been out and seen something of the world, Pelle,” said Morten
significantly. “You must teach others now.”
“I don’t understand myself,” answered Pelle evasively, “and I’ve been
in prison. But what about you?”
“I’m no good as a rallier; you’ve seen that yourself. They don’t care
about me. I’m too far in advance of the great body of them, and have no
actual connection—you know I’m really terribly lonely! Perhaps, though,
I’m destined to reach the heights before you others, and if I do I’ll
try to light a beacon up there for you.”
Morten sat silent for a little while, and then suddenly lifted his
head.
“But you _must_, Pelle!” he said. “You say you’re not the right man,
but there’s simply no one but you. Have you forgotten that you fired
the Movement, that you were its simple faith? They one and all believed
in you blindly like children, and were capable of nothing when you gave
up. Why, it’s not you, but the others—the whole Movement— who’ve been
imprisoned! How glad I am that you’ve come back full of the strength
gained there! You were smaller than you are now, Pelle, and even then
something happened; now you may be successful even in great things.”
Pelle sat and listened in the deepening twilight, wondering with a
pleased embarrassment. It was Morten who was nominating him—the severe,
incorruptible Morten, who had always before been after him like his
evil conscience.
“No, I’m going to be careful now,” he said, “and it’s your own fault,
Morten. You’ve gone and pricked my soul, and I’m awake now; I shan’t go
at anything blindly again. I have a feeling that what we two are
joining in is the greatest thing the world has ever seen. It reaches
further into the future than I can see, and so I’m working on myself. I
study the books now—I got into the way of that in prison—and I must try
to get a view out over the world. Something strange too has happened to
me: I understand now what you meant when you said that man was holy!
I’m no longer satisfied with being a small part of the whole, but think
I must try to become a whole world by myself. It sounds foolish, but I
feel as if I were in one of the scales and the rest of the world in the
other; and until I can send the other scale up, I can’t think of
putting myself at the head of the multitude.”
Evening had closed in before they were aware of it. The electric light
from the railway-station yard threw its gleam upon the ceiling of the
attic room and was reflected thence onto the two men who sat leaning
forward in the half-darkness, talking quietly. Neither of them noticed
that the door to the other room had opened, and a tall, thin girl stood
on the threshold gazing at them with dilated pupils. She was in her
chemise only, and it had slipped from one thin shoulder; and her feet
were bare. The chemise reached only to her knees, leaving exposed a
pair of sadly emaciated legs. A wheezing sound accompanied her
breathing.
Pelle had raised his head to say something, but was silent at sight of
the lean, white figure, which stood looking at him with great eyes that
seemed to draw the darkness into them. The meeting with Morten had put
him into an expectant frame of mind. He still had the call sounding in
his ears, and gazed in amazement at the ghostly apparition. The
delicate lines, spoiled by want, the expression of childlike terror of
the dark— all this twofold picture of wanness stamped with the stamp of
death, and of an unfulfilled promise of beauty—was it not the ghost of
poverty, of wrong and oppression, a tortured apparition sent to
admonish him? Was his brain failing? Were the horrible visions of the
darkness of his cell returning? “Morten!” he whispered, touching his
arm.
Morten sprang up. “Why, Johanna! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” he
exclaimed reproachfully. He tried to make the girl go back into the
other room, and to close the door; but she pushed past him out into the
room.
“I _will_ see him!” she cried excitedly. “If you don’t let me, I shall
run away! He’s hidden my clothes,” she said to Pelle, gazing at him
with her sunken eyes. “But I can easily run away in my chemise. I don’t
care!” Her voice was rough and coarse from the damp air of the back
yards.
“Now go back to bed, Johanna!” said Morten more gently. “Remember what
the doctor said. You’ll catch cold and it’ll all be wasted.”
“What do I care!” she answered, breaking into a coarse laugh. “You
needn’t waste anything on me; I’ve had no children by you.” She was
trembling with cold, but remained obstinately standing, and answered
Morten’s remonstrances with a torrent of abusive epithets. At last he
gave it up and sat down wearily. The two men sat and looked at her in
silence.
The child was evidently uncomfortable at the cessation of resistance,
and became confused beneath their silent gaze. She tossed her head and
looked defiantly from the one to the other, her eyes glowing with an
unnatural brightness. Suddenly she sank upon the floor and began to
cry.
“_This_ won’t do,” said Pelle gravely.
“I can’t manage her,” answered Morten hopelessly, “but you are strong
enough.”
Pelle stooped and took her up in his arms. She kicked and bit him.
“She’s got a fit,” he said to Morten. “We must take her out to the
pump.” She instantly became quiet and let him carry her to bed. The
fever was raging in her, and he noticed how her body was racked with
every breath she drew; it sounded like a leaky pump.
When Morten, with a few kind words, covered her up, she began to weep
convulsively, but turned her face to the wall and stuffed the quilt
into her mouth in order to hide it. She gradually became quieter and at
last fell asleep; and the two men stole out of the room and closed the
door after them.
Morten looked tired out, for he was still not strong. “I’ve let myself
in for something that I’m not equal to,” he said despondently.
“Who is the poor child?” asked Pelle softly.
“I don’t know. She came to me this spring, almost dead drunk and in a
fearful state; and the next day she regretted it and went off, but I
got hold of her again. She’s one of those poor creatures who have no
other home than the big timber-yards, and there she’s made a living by
going from one to another of the bigger lads. I can get nothing out of
her, but I’ve found out in other ways that she’s lived among
timber-stacks and in cellars for at least two years. The boys enticed
dissolute men out there and sold her, taking most of the money
themselves and giving her spirits to encourage her. From what I can
make out there are whole organized bands which supply the dissolute men
of the city with boys and girls. It makes one sick to think of it! The
child must be an orphan, but won’t, as I said, tell me anything. Once
or twice I’ve heard her talk in her sleep of her grandmother; but when
I’ve referred to it, she sulks and won’t speak.”
“Does she drink?” asked Pelle.
Morten nodded. “I’ve had some bad times with her on that account,” he
said. “She shows incredible ingenuity when it’s a case of getting hold
of liquor. At first she couldn’t eat hot food at all, she was in such a
state. She’s altogether fearfully shattered in soul and body, and
causes me much trouble.”
“Why don’t you get her into some home?”
“Our public institutions for the care of children are not calculated to
foster life in a down-trodden plant, and you’ll not succeed with
Johanna by punishment and treatment like any ordinary child. At times
she’s quite abnormally defiant and unmanageable, and makes me
altogether despair; and then when I’m not looking, she lies and cries
over herself. There’s much good in her in spite of everything, but she
can’t let it come out. I’ve tried getting her into a private family,
where I knew they would be kind to her; but not many days had passed
before they came and said she’d run away. For a couple of weeks she
wandered about, and then came back again to me. Late one evening when I
came home, I found her sitting wet and shivering in the dark corner
outside my door. I was quite touched, but she was angry because I saw
her, and bit and kicked as she did just now. I had to carry her in by
force. Her unhappy circumstances have thrown her quite off her balance,
and I at any rate can’t make her out. So that’s how matters stand. I
sleep on the sofa in here, but of course a bachelor’s quarters are not
exactly arranged for this. There’s a lot of gossip too among the other
lodgers.”
“Does that trouble you?” asked Pelle in surprise.
“No, but the child, you see—she’s terribly alive to that sort of thing.
And then she doesn’t comprehend the circumstances herself. She’s only
about eleven or twelve, and yet she’s already accustomed to pay for
every kindness with her weak body. Can’t you imagine how dreadful it is
to look into her wondering eyes? The doctor says she’s been injured
internally and is probably tuberculous too; he thinks she’ll never get
right. And her soul! What an abyss for a child! For even one child to
have such a fate is too much, and how many there are in the hell in
which we live!”
They were both silent for a little while, and then Morten rose. “You
mustn’t mind if I ask you to go,” he said, “but I must get to work;
there’s something I’ve got to finish this evening. You won’t mind, will
you? Come and see me again as soon as you can, and thanks for coming
this time!” he said as he pressed Pelle’s hand.
“I’d like you to keep your eyes open,” he said as he followed him to
the door. “Perhaps you could help me to find out the history of the
poor thing. You know a lot of poor people, and must have come in some
way or other into her life, for I can see it in her. Didn’t you notice
how eager she was to have a look at you? Try to find out about it, will
you?”
Pelle promised, but it was more easily said than done. When his
thoughts searched the wide world of poverty to which he had drawn so
close during the great lock-out, he realized that there were hundreds
of children who might have suffered Johanna’s fate.
V
Pelle had got out his old tools and started as shoemaker to the
dwellers in his street. He no longer went about seeking for employment,
and to Ellen it appeared as if he had given up all hope of getting any.
But he was only waiting and arming himself: he was as sanguine as ever.
The promise of the inconceivable was still unfulfilled in his mind.
There was no room for him up in the small flat with Ellen doing her
washing there, so he took a room in the high basement, and hung up a
large placard in the window, on which he wrote with shoemaker’s ink,
“Come to me with your shoes, and we will help one another to stand on
our feet.” When Lasse Frederik was not at work or at school, he was
generally to be found downstairs with his father. He was a clever
fellow and could give a hand in many ways. While they worked they
talked about all sorts of things, and the boy related his experiences
to his father.
He was changing very rapidly and talked sensibly about everything.
Pelle was afraid he was getting too little out of his childhood.
“Aren’t you going up to play with them?” he asked, when the boys of the
neighborhood rushed shouting past the basement window; but Lasse
Frederik shook his head. He had played at being everything, from a
criminal to a king, so there was nothing more to be had in that
direction. He wanted something real now, and in the meantime had dreams
of going to sea.
Although they all three worked, they could only just make ends meet;
there was never anything over for extras. This was a sorrow to Ellen
especially; Pelle did not seem to think much about it. If they only put
something eatable before him, he was contented and did not mind what it
was.
It was Ellen’s dream that they should still, by toiling early and late,
be able to work themselves up into another stratum; but Pelle was angry
when she worked on after the time for leaving off. He would rather they
were a little poor, if only they could afford to be human beings. Ellen
did not understand it, but she saw that his mind was turned in another
direction; he who had hitherto always fallen asleep over books would
now become so absorbed in them that he did not hear the children
playing round him. She had actually to rouse him when there was
anything she wanted; and she began to fear this new power which had
come in place of the old. It seemed like a curse that something should
always work upon him to take him beyond her. And she dared not oppose
it; she had bitter experience from former times.
“What are you looking for in those books?” she asked, sitting down
beside him. Pelle looked up absently. His thoughts were in far-off
regions where she had never been. What was he looking for? He tried to
tell her, but could not explain it. “I’m looking for myself!” he said
suddenly, striking boldly through everything. Ellen gazed at him,
wondering and disappointed.
But she tried again. This time nothing should come between them and
destroy her world. She no longer directly opposed anything; she meant
to _go with him_ and be where he was. “Tell me what you are doing and
let me take part in it,” she said.
Pelle had been prepared to some extent to go into this by himself, and
was glad to meet with a desire for development in her too. For the
present the intellectual world resembled more or less a wilderness, and
it was good to have a companion with him in traversing it.
He explained to her the thoughts that occupied him, and discussed them
with her; and Ellen observed wonderingly that it was all about things
that did not concern their own little well-being. She took great pains
to comprehend this flight away from the things that mattered most; it
was like children who always wanted what they ought not to have.
In the evening, when Boy Comfort and Sister had been put to bed, Pelle
would take a book and read aloud. Ellen was occupied with some mending
or other, and Lasse Frederik, his ears standing out from his head, hung
over a chair-back with his eyes fixed upon his father. Although he did
not understand the half of it, he followed it attentively until Nature
asserted herself, and he fell asleep.
Ellen understood this very well, for she had great difficulty herself
in keeping her eyes open. They were not stories that Pelle read.
Sometimes he would stop to write something down or to discuss some
question or other. He would have the most extraordinary ideas, and see
a connection between things that seemed to Ellen to be as far apart as
the poles; she could not help thinking that he might very well have
studied to be a pastor. It suited him, however; his eyes became quite
black when he was explaining some subject that he was thoroughly
interested in, and his lips assumed an expression that made her long to
kiss them. She had to confess to herself that in any case it was a very
harmless evening occupation, and was glad that what was interesting him
this time kept him at home at any rate.
One day Pelle became aware that she was not following him. She did not
even believe in what he was doing; she had never believed in him
blindly. “She’s never really loved me either: that’s why!” he thought
despondently. Perhaps that explained why she took Boy Comfort as calmly
as if he were her own child: she was not jealous! Pelle would willingly
have submitted to a shower of reproaches if afterward she had given him
a kiss wetted with hot tears; but Ellen was never thrown off her
balance.
Happy though they were, he noticed that she, to a certain extent,
reckoned without him, as if he had a weakness of which it was always
well to take account. Her earlier experiences had left their mark upon
her.
Ellen had been making plans with regard to the old room and the two
small ante-rooms at the end of it. She was tired of washing; it paid
wretchedly and gave a great deal of work, and she received very little
consideration. She now wanted to let lodgings to artistes. She knew of
more than one woman in their street who made a nice living by taking in
artistes. “If I’d only got a couple of hundred krones (10 or 11 pounds)
to start it with, I’m sure I should make it pay,” she said. “And then
you’d have more time and quiet for reading your books,” she added
coaxingly.
Pelle was against the plan. The better class of artistes took rooms at
the artiste hotels, and the people _they_ might expect to get had not
much to pay with. He had seen a good deal of them from his basement
window, and had mended shoes for some of them: they were rather a
soleless tribe. She said no more about it, but he could see that she
was not convinced. She only dropped the subject because he was against
it and it was he who would have to procure the money.
He could not bear to think this; he had become cautious about deciding
for others. The money might be obtained, if in no other way, by giving
security in his furniture and tools. If the plan did not succeed, it
would be certain ruin; but perhaps Ellen thought him a wet blanket.
One day he threw down his leather apron and went out to raise the
money. It was late when he came home, and Ellen was standing at the
door waiting for him with a face of anxiety.
“Here’s the money, my dear! What’ll you give me for it?” he said gaily,
and counted out into her hand a hundred and eighty krones (£10) in
notes. Ellen gazed in surprise at the money; she had never held so
large a sum in her hands before.
“Wherever did you get all that money from?” she asked at last.
“Well, I’ve trudged all day from place to place,” said Pelle
cheerfully, “and at last I was directed to a man in Blaagaard Street.
He gave me two hundred krones (£11) on the furniture.”
“But there’s only one hundred and eighty (£10) here!”
“Oh, well, he took off twenty krones (£1 2_s_.). The loan’s to be
repaid in instalments of twenty krones (£1 2_s_.) a month for fifteen
months. I had to sign a statement that I had borrowed three hundred
krones (£16 10_s_.), but then we shan’t have to pay any interest.”
Ellen stared at him in amazement. “Three hundred krones, and we’ve only
got a hundred and eighty, Pelle!” But she suddenly threw her arms round
his neck and kissed him passionately. “Thank you!” she whispered. He
felt quite dazed; it was not like her to be so vehement.
She had plenty to do, after hiring the room, in putting it in order.
The loose beams had to be fixed up, and the walls plastered and
whitewashed a little. The old peasant was willing enough to let it, but
he would not hear of going to any expense. Ellen at last succeeded,
however, in getting him to agree to pay half the repairs on condition
that she took the room for a year and payed the rent in advance. “We
can get my brother Frederik to do some of the repairs on Sunday
morning,” she said to Pelle, “and then perhaps we shall get it done for
nothing.” She was altogether very energetic.
There was need for it too. The rent swallowed up the hundred krones (£5
10_s_.), and then there were all the things that had to be got. She
bought a quantity of cheap print, and hung it up so as to divide one
side of the room into a number of small compartments each provided with
a second-hand bed and hay mattress, and a washing-stand. “Artistes are
not so particular,” she said, “and I’m sure they’ll be glad to have the
room to practise in.” Finally there were the two little anterooms,
which were to be furnished a little better for more particular
artistes. There was not nearly enough money, and some of the things had
to be taken on credit.
At last it was all ready to receive the guests. It looked quite smart
for the amount spent on it, and Pelle could not but admire her
cleverness in making a little go a long way. The only thing now left to
do was to catch the birds, but here Ellen’s practical sense ceased to
act; she had no idea how to proceed. “We must advertise,” she said, and
counted up her remaining pence.
Pelle laughed at her. A lot of good it would be to advertise for people
who were goodness knows where on railways and steamers! “What shall we
do then?” she said, looking anxiously to him for help. After all, he
was the man for it all.
Well, first of all there must be a German placard down on the street-
door, and then they must make the rooms known. Pelle had studied both
German and English in the prison, and he made up the placard himself.
He had cards printed, and left them in the artistes’ tavern at the
corner of Vesterbro Street, went there himself two or three times after
midnight when the artistes gathered there when their work was finished,
and stationed himself at the stage-entrances of the music-halls. He
soon came to look upon it as a task to be performed, like everything
with which he occupied himself; and this _should_ succeed!
Ellen looked on wondering and helpless. She had all at once grown
frightened, and followed each of his movements with anxious attention.
Soon, however, things began to move. The girls whose washing Ellen had
done took an interest in the undertaking, and sent lodgers to her; and
Lasse Frederik, who had the run of the circus stables, often returned
with some Russian groom or other who did a turn as a rustic dancer or a
Cossack horseman. Sometimes there lived with her people from the other
side of the world where they walk with their heads down—fakirs and
magicians from India and Japan, snake-charmers from Tetuan, people with
shaven heads or a long black pigtail, with oblique, sorrowful eyes,
loose hips and skin that resembled the greenish leather that Pelle used
for ladies’ boots. Sister was afraid of them, but it was the time of
his life to Lasse Frederik. There were fat Tyrolese girls, who came
three by three; they jodeled at the music-halls, and looked dreadful
all day, much to Ellen’s despair. Now and then a whole company would
come, and then trapezes and rings creaked in the great room, Spanish
dancers went through their steps, and jugglers practised new feats.
They were all people who should preferably not be seen off the stage.
Ellen often went to the circus and music-halls now, but could never
quite believe that the performers were the same men and women who went
about at home looking like scarecrows. Most of them required nothing
except that the lodging should be cheap; they boarded themselves, and
goodness knows what they lived on. Some of them simply lighted a fire
on a sheet of iron on the floor and made a mixture of rice or something
of the sort. They could not eat Danish food, Pelle said. Sometimes they
went away without paying, and occasionally took something with them;
and they often broke things. There was no fortune to be made out of
them, but in the meantime Ellen was satisfied as long as she could keep
it going, so that it paid the rent and instalments on the loan and left
her a little for her trouble. It was her intention to weed out the more
worthless subjects, and raise the whole tone of the business when it
had got into good order.
“You really might refuse the worst work now, and save yourself a
little,” she said to Pelle when he was sitting over some worn-out
factory shoes that had neither sole nor upper. Most boots and shoes had
done service somewhere else before they reached this neighborhood; and
when they came to Pelle there was not much left of them. “Say no to
it!” said Ellen. “It’s far too hardly earned for you! And we shall get
on now without having to take everything.” In the kindness of her heart
she wanted him to be able to read his books, since he had a weakness
for them. Her intention was good, but Pelle had no thought of becoming
an aesthetic idler, who let his wife keep him while he posed as a
learned man. There were enough of them in the neighborhood, and the
inhabitants looked up to them; but they were not interesting. They were
more or less another form of drunkard.
To Pelle books were a new power, grown slowly out of his sojourn in
prison. He had sat there alone with his work, thrown on himself for
occupation, and he had examined himself in every detail. It was like
having companionship when he brought to light anything new and strange
in himself; and one day he chanced upon the mistiness of his own being,
and discovered that it consisted of experience that others had gone
through before him. The Bible, which always lay on the prisoner’s table
for company, helped him; its words had the sound of a well-known voice
that reminded him strongly of Father Lasse’s in his childhood. From the
Bible he went on further and discovered that the serious books were men
who sat in solitude like himself, and spoke out.
Was solitude so dreadful then when you had such company? Pelle was no
longer able to comprehend his own fear of it. As a child he had been a
creature in the widest sense, and found companionship in everything; he
could converse with trees, animals, and stones. Those fibers had
withered, and no longer conveyed nourishment; but then he became one
with the masses, and thought and felt exactly as they did. That was
crumbling away too now; he was being isolated distinctly, bit by bit,
and he was interested in discovering a plan in it. He had made Nature
subject to him even as a child, and had afterward won the masses! It
was solitude now that had to be taken, and he himself was going about
in the midst of it, large and wonderful! It was already leaving
indelible traces in his mind, although he had seen nothing of it yet.
He felt strangely excited, very much as he had felt when, in his
childhood, he arrived in Bornholm with his father and could see
nothing, but heard the movement of thronging life behind the mist. A
new and unknown world, full of wonders and throbbing with anticipation,
would meet him in there.
Pelle’s action was not due to his own volition. He might as well try to
lift himself up by his hair as determine that now he would be a human
being by himself. It was an awakening of new powers. He no longer let
sunshine and rain pass unnoticed over his head. A strange thing
happened to him—he looked wonderingly at everything that he had
formerly passed by as commonplace, and saw it all in a new, brilliant
light. He had to go all over it from the beginning, look at every
detail. How wonderfully everything was connected, sorrow and joy and
apparent trifles, to make him, Pelle, who had ruled over hundreds of
thousands and yet had to go to prison in order to feel himself rich!
Something had been ignited in him that could never be extinguished, a
sacred fire to which everything must bear fuel, whether it would or
not. He could not be conquered now; he drew strength from infinity
itself.
The bare cell—three paces one way and six the other—with its tiny
window and the mysterious peephole in the door which was like a
watchful eye upon one always, how much it had held! It had always been
the lot of the poor man to create worlds out of the void, beautiful
mirages which suddenly broke and threw him back even poorer and more
desolate. But this lasted. All the threads of life seemed to be joined
together in the bare cell. It was like the dark, underground place in
large buildings where the machinery is kept that admits and excludes
light and heat to the whole block. There he discovered how rich and
varied life is.
Pelle went about in a peculiarly elevated frame of mind. He felt that
something greater and finer than himself had taken up its abode within
him and would grow on to perfection there.
It was a new being that yet was himself; it remained there and drew
nourishment from everything that he did. He went about circumspectly
and quietly, with an introspective expression as though he were
weighing everything: there was so much that was not permissible because
it might injure _it_! There were always two of them now—Pelle and this
wonderful, invisible ego, which lay securely and weightily within him
like a living thing, with its roots in the darkness.
Pelle’s relations to books were deeply grounded: he had to find out
what the world meant now. He was a little distrustful of works of
fiction; you got at their subject-matter too easily, and that could not
be right. They were made up, too! He needed real stuff, facts. There
were great spaces in his brain that longed to be filled with a tangible
knowledge of things. His favorite reading was historical works,
especially social history; and at present he read everything that came
in his way, raw and unsweetened; it would have to sort itself out. It
was a longing that had never been satisfied, and now seemed insatiable.
He minded his work punctiliously, however. He had made it a principle
never to touch a book as long as any work lay waiting unfinished on the
floor. In prison he had dreamt of a reasonable working-day of—for
instance—eight hours, so that he would have time and strength to occupy
himself with intellectual matters; but now he took it off his night’s
sleep instead. This was at any rate a field out of which they need not
try to keep him; he would have his share in the knowledge of the times.
He felt it was a weapon. The poor man had long enough retired willingly
into the corner for want of enlightenment, and whenever he put out his
head he was laughed back again. Why did he not simply wrest the
prerogative from the upper classes? It cost only toil, and in that coin
he was accustomed to pay! He was scarcely deficient in ability; as far
as Pelle could see at present, almost all the pioneers of the new state
of things came from the lower classes.
He discovered with pleasure that his inward searching did not carry him
away from the world, for far in there he came out again into the light—
the light itself! He followed the secret laws for his own inward being,
and found himself once more deep in the question of the welfare of the
multitude. His practical sense required this confirmation of the
conditions. There were also outward results. Even now history could no
longer be used to light him and his ideas home; he knew too much. And
his vision grew from day to day, and embraced an ever-widening horizon.
Some day he would simply take the magic word from the trolls and wake
the giant with it!
He worked hard and was as a rule full of confidence. When the last of
the artistes came home from their _café_, he was often sitting working
by the light of his shoemaker’s lamp. They would stop before the open
basement window and have a chat with him in their broken Danish. His
domestic circumstances were somewhat straitened; the instalments in
repayment of the loan, and the debt on the furniture still swallowed
all that they were able to scrape together, and Pelle had no prospect
of getting better work. But work is the bearer of faith, and he felt
sure that a way would open out if only he kept on with it unweariedly.
He took Ellen’s unspoken mistrust of his projects quietly. He felt
himself to be greater than she in this; she could not reach up to the
level of his head!