Now and then a comrade from the good old days would come up and want
Pelle to go with him to a meeting. Old fighting memories wakened within
him. Perhaps it was there the whole point lay. He threw off his leather
apron and went. Ellen’s eyes followed him to the door, wondering that
he could still wish to have anything to do with that after what _he_
had got out of it.
But it was not there after all! He remembered the tremendous ferment in
men’s minds during the Movement, and it seemed to him that the
excitement had died down. People only came forward before the
elections, otherwise they went about their own business as if there had
never been any rallying idea. They were all organized, but there was
nothing new and strong in that fact; they were born—so to speak—in
organization, and connected nothing great and elevating with it. His
old associates had cooled down remarkably; they must have discovered
that success was neither so romantic nor so easy as they had thought.
They had no longer simply to open the gate into the land of success and
stream through it; there was a long and difficult road before that. So
they each arranged his own matters, and disposed of the doubtful future
for small present advantages which were immediately swallowed up by the
existing conditions.
The Movement had not reached to the bottom. There was an accusation
against himself in this fact; it had not been designed with sufficient
breadth. Even at that time it had passed over the heads of the
inhabitants of the “Ark,” and now a large proletariat was left with
their own expectations of the future. The good old class of the common
people had split up into a class of petty tradesmen—who seemed to be
occupied solely in establishing themselves—and this proletariat.
But there was nothing new in this. One stratum moved up and revealed a
new one below; it had always been thus in history. Was it then
everlastingly determined that at the bottom of existence there should
always be the same innumerable crowd of those who were thrust down, who
bore the burden of the whole, the great hunger reserve? Was it only
possible to be happy when one knew how to push the difficulties down,
just as one might push the folds of a material until at last they were
heaped up in one place? It was the old question over again. Formerly he
had had his clear faith with which to beat down doubt, but now he could
not be content with a blind hope; he required to be shown an expedient.
If the Movement had failed through having been begun crookedly, the
causes with which one had to do were practical causes, and it was
possible to do the whole thing over again.
There were also others engaged in taking the whole thing up from the
bottom, and through Peter Dreyer he came into contact with young men of
an entirely new type. They had emerged from the Movement, shot up
surprisingly out of its sediment, and now made new ambitious claims
upon life. By unknown paths they had reached the same point as he
himself had done, and demanded first and foremost to be human beings.
The sacredness of the ego filled them, and made them rebel at all
yokes; they began from within by shaking them off, did not smoke or
drink, would be slaves to nothing. They kept out of the Movement and
had their own places of meeting out about the South Boulevard, where
they read and discussed new social forms. They were intelligent,
well-paid working-men, who persistently shared the conditions of the
proletariat; fanatics who gave away their week’s wages if they met a
man who was poorer than themselves; hot-headed enthusiasts who awaited
revolution. Several of them had been in prison for agitating against
the social order. There were also country people among them—sons of the
men who stood in the ditches and peat-pits out there. “The little man’s
children,” Morten called them.
These were the offspring of those who had made the Movement; that was
how it should go on. By being contented they kept themselves free from
the ensnaring expedients of capitalism, they despised the petty
tradesman’s inclination for comfort, and were always ready for action.
In them the departure was at any rate a fact!
They wanted to get hold of Pelle. “Come over to us!” Peter Dreyer often
said.
Pelle, however, was not easily enticed out; he had his home where he
hid himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for
this little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in
securing it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one
little home above water; a benefactor was needed for that! It was not
the time to tend jealously one’s own honor when wife and children would
be the sufferers; and now that it was all arranged he felt deeply
grateful to the old librarian. It was nevertheless a disgraceful fact
which did not encourage him to have anything to do with the affairs of
others.
The violent language used by the young men frightened him too. He had
rebelled against the old conditions just as they had done, but he met
with different experiences. From the time he could crawl he had
struggled to accommodate himself to the great connection of things;
even the life of the prison had not placed him outside it, but had only
united him the more closely with the whole. He had no inclination to
cut the knot, but demanded that it should be untied.
“You’re no good,” said Morten and the others when they tried to rouse
him, “for you can’t hate.” No, the cold in his mind was like the night-
frost; it melted at the first sunbeam. When he looked back there were
redeeming ties that held the whole together in spite of all the evil;
and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the
other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking
again and refused to be roused by the others’ impatience; but he looked
as if he had an eternity in which to unravel his affairs.
Sister was often down with him and filled the workshop with her
chatter. At about eight, when it began to grow light, he heard her
staggering step on the stair, and she remained with him until Ellen
took her up in the evening by main force to put her to bed. She dragged
all the tools together and piled them up in front of Pelle on the bench
so that he could hardly move, and called it helping. Then she rested,
standing with her hands upon the edge of the bench and talking to him.
“Sister’s clever!” she said appreciatively, pointing with satisfaction
to her work. “Big girl!” And if he did not answer she repeated it and
did not leave off until he had praised her.
“Yes, you’re very clever!” he said, “but can you put the things back in
their places?”
The child shook her head. “Sister’s tired,” she declared with decision,
and immediately after brought another tool and pushed it slowly up onto
the heap while she kept her eyes upon his face to see whether she might
do it. “Sister’s helping!” she repeated in explanation; but Pelle
pretended not to hear.
For a time she was quiet, but then came to him with her pinafore full
of old boots and shoes that she had pulled out from behind the stove.
He tried to look stern, but had to bend down over his work. It made the
little girl feel uncertain. She emptied her pinafore onto the platform,
and sitting on her heels with her hands on her little knees, she tried
to see what his expression was. It was not satisfactory, so she got up
and, putting her hands on his knee, said, with an ingratiating look
into his face: “You’re so clever, father! You can do everything! You’re
the cleverest in the whole world!” And after a little pause—“We’re both
clever, aren’t we, father?”
“Oh, that’s it, is it!” exclaimed Pelle. “One of us is very conceited
at any rate!”
“It’s not me!” answered the child confidently, shaking her head.
“You seem to be very happy together,” said Ellen when she came down
with Boy Comfort on her arm to fetch Anna. The child did not want to go
up with her, and pushed round into the corner behind Pelle’s chair; and
Boy Comfort struggled to be put down onto the floor to play with the
lasts. “Well, then,” said Ellen, sitting down, “we’ll all stay here
together.”
She looked quiet and resigned; her defeat had told upon her. She no
longer spoke of the future, but was glad that they had escaped from the
clutches of the money-lender; the thought of it filled her with a quiet
but not altogether unspoiled happiness. She no longer dreamed of
anything better, but was grateful for what she possessed; and it seemed
to Pelle that something had died within her together with the
dissatisfaction. It was as though she had at last given everything she
had; her resignation to the gray everyday life made her dull and
ordinary. “She needs sunshine,” he thought.
And again his thoughts wandered in their search for a way out into the
future—his one idea—in the same track that they had followed a hundred
times before. He did not even enter it fully, but merely recognized
that the problem was being worn threadbare. In his trade there was no
compromise; there was only room for extortioners and extortionized, and
he was not suited for either part. When he took up other possibilities,
however, his thoughts returned of themselves to his work, like a roving
dog that always comes back and snuffs at the same scent. There was
something in him that with fatalistic obstinacy made him one with his
trade, in spite of its hopelessness; he had staked everything there,
and there the question should be solved. Behind the fatalism of the
common people lies the recognition that there is plan and perspective
in their life too; such and such a thing is so because it must be so.
And this recognition Pelle had no reason to do away with.
He grew confused with the continual dwelling of his thoughts on the
same subject, but it seemed to possess him, was with him while he
slept, and seized him as soon as he awoke. There was an old dream that
persistently haunted him at this time—a forgotten youthful idea from
his earliest participation in the rising, the plan for a common
workshop that would make the court shoemaker superfluous. The plan had
been laid aside at the time as impossible, but now he took it up again
and went over it step by step. He could easily find some capable,
reliable fellow-workmen who would stand by him through thick and thin
with regard to work and profits; and there would be no difficulty about
discipline, for during the past years the workmen had learned to
subordinate themselves to their own people. Here was a way for the
small man to assert himself within his trade and join the development;
what one was not able to do could be done by several joining together,
namely, turn the modern technics to account and divide the work into
sections. He arranged it all most carefully, and went over it again and
again to make sure that every detail was correct. When he slept he
dreamed of his system of profit-sharing, and then it was a fact. He
stood working in a bright room among comrades; there was no master and
no servant, the machinery whirred, and the workmen sang and whistled
while they minded it. Their hours of labor were short, and they all had
happy homes waiting for them.
It was hard to wake up and know the reality. Alas! all the cleverest
and most industrious hands in the world had no influence in their
several trades—could not so much as sew a single stitch—until capital
started them. If that refused its support, they could do nothing at
all, but were cut off, as it were, at once.
Machinery cost money. Pelle could get the latter from Brun, the old man
having often enough offered him capital to start something or other;
but he already owed him money, and capital might run his undertaking
down. It was at its post, and allowed no activity of that kind beside
it. He was seized with uncertainty; he dared not venture the stakes.
The old philosopher came almost daily. Pelle had become a part of his
life, and he watched his young friend’s condition with anxiety. Was it
the prison life—or was it perhaps the books—that had transformed this
young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into
a hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was
of doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been
the old man’s hope that it would have developed greater energy through
being replanted in fresh, untouched soil, and he tried to rouse Pelle
out of his lethargy.
Pelle gave an impatient jerk. They were poking him up on all sides,
wanting him to come to a decision, and he could not see his way to it.
Of course he was half asleep; he knew it himself. He felt that he
wanted rest; his entity was working for him out there in the
uncertainty.
“I don’t know anything,” he said, half irritated, “so what can be the
use? I thought books would lead me to a place from which I could bring
everything together; but now I’m all abroad. I know too much to dash on
blindly, and too little to find the pivot on which the whole thing
turns. It doesn’t matter what I touch, it resolves itself into
something _for_ and something _against_.” He laughed in desperation.
One day Brun brought him a book. “This book,” he said with a peculiar
smile, “has satisfied many who were seeking for the truth. Let’s see
whether it can satisfy you too!” It was Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”
Pelle read as in a mist. The point lay here—the whole thing powerfully
put into one sentence! His brain was in a ferment, he could not lay the
book down, but went on reading all night, bewitched and horrified at
this merciless view. When Ellen in surprise came down with his morning
coffee, he had finished the book. He made no reply to her gentle
reproaches, but drank the coffee in silence, put on his hat and went
out into the deserted streets to cool his burning brow.
It was very early and the working-men had not yet turned out; at the
morning coffee-rooms the shutters were just being taken down; warmly-
clad tram-men were tramping through the streets in their wooden-soled
boots; slipshod, tired women ran stumbling along to their early jobs,
shivering with cold and weary of life, weary before they had begun
their day. Here and there a belated woman toiled along the street
carrying a clothes-basket, a mother taking her baby to the crêche
before she went to her work.
Suddenly the feeling of rebellion came over Pelle, hot, almost
suffocating him. This cruelly cold doctrine of the right of the strong,
which gave him the choice between becoming brutal or going to the dogs—
this was the key to an understanding of life? It pronounced a sentence
of death upon him and his fellows, upon the entire world of the poor.
From this point of view, the existing conditions were the only ones
possible—they were simply ideal; the sweater and the money-lender, whom
he hated, were in the most harmonious agreement with the fundamental
laws of life! And the terrible thing was that from this standpoint the
social fabric was clearly illuminated: he could not deny it. He who
best learned to accommodate himself to the existing state of things,
conquered; no matter how vile the existing state of things might be.
The book threw at once a dazzling light upon society, but where was his
own class in this doctrine—all the poor? They were not taken into
account! Society was thus in reality only those in possession, and here
he had their religion, the moral support for the uncompromising
utilization. It had always been difficult to understand how men could
misuse others; but here it was a sacred duty to give stones for bread.
The greatest oppressor was in reality nearest to life’s holy, maternal
heart; for he was appointed to carry on the development.
The poor had no share in this doctrine. When a bad workman was in
difficulties, the others did not press him until he had to go down, not
even when he himself was to blame for his lack of means. The poor did
not let the weak fall, but took him under their wing. They placed
themselves outside the pale of the law and gave themselves no chance;
the race could not be won with a wounded comrade on one’s back. But in
this fact there lay the admission that they did not belong to the
existing order of things, but had the right to demand their own time of
happiness. A new age must come, in which all that was needed in order
that they might share in it—kindness of heart, solidarity—was
predominant. Thus even the great union he had helped to effect pointed
in the right direction. It had been the opposite of one against all—it
had built upon the law of reciprocity.
And the poor man was not a miserable wretch, condemned by the
development to be ruined, a visionary, who, as a consequence of an
empty stomach, dreamed of a Utopia. Pelle had passed his childhood in
the country and gone about with the rest of creation in all kinds of
weather. He had seen the small singing-birds throw themselves in whole
clouds at the hawk when it had seized one of their number, and pursue
it until it dropped its prey in confusion. When he caught an ant in a
split straw, the other ants flocked to the straw and gnawed their
comrade out: they could not be frightened away. If he touched them,
they squirted their poison against his hand and went on working. Their
courage amused him, the sprinklings of poison were so tiny that he
could not see them; but if he quickly raised his hand to his nose, he
detected a sharp acid smell. Why did they not leave their comrade in
his dilemma, when there were so many of them and they were so busy?
They did not even stop to have a meal until they had liberated him.
The poor man must stick to the union idea; he had got hold of the right
thing this time! And now all at once Pelle knew which way they ought to
go. If they were outside the existing conditions and their laws, why
not arrange their own world upon the laws that were theirs? Through the
organizations they had been educated in self-government; it was about
time that they took charge of their own existence.
The young revolutionaries kept clear of the power of money by going
without things, but that was not the way. Capital always preached
contentment to the poor; he would go the other way, and conquer
production by a great flanking movement.
He was not afraid now of using the librarian’s money. All doubt had
been chased away. He was perfectly clear and saw in broad outlines a
world- wide, peaceful revolution which was to subvert all existing
values. Pelle knew that poverty is not confined to any country. He had
once before brought forward an invincible idea. His system of
profit-sharing must be the starting-point for a world-fight between
Labor and Capital!
X
Two days later Pelle and the librarian went to Frederiksberg Street to
look at a business that was to be disposed of. It was a small matter of
half a score of workmen, with an electrical workshop in the basement
and a shop above. The whole could be had by taking over the stock and
machinery at a valuation. The rent was rather high, but with that
exception the conditions were favorable.
“I think we’ll arrange that the purchase and working capital shall bear
interest and be sunk like a four per cent. credit-association loan,”
said Brun.
“It’s cheap money,” answered Pelle. “A good result won’t say much about
the circumstances when we haven’t got the same conditions as other
businesses.”
“Not so very cheap. At that price you can get as many as you want on
good security; and I suppose the workman ought to be regarded as the
best security in an undertaking that’s built upon labor,” said the old
man, smiling. “There’ll be a big fall in discount when you come into
power, Pelle! But the bare capital costs no more now either, when there
are no parasites at it; and it’s just parasites that we’re going to
fight.”
Pelle had no objection to the cheap money; there were still plenty of
difficulties to overcome. If they got on, it would not be long before
private speculation declared war on him.
They agreed that they would have nothing to do with agents and
branches; the business was to rest entirely upon itself and communicate
directly with the consumers. What was made in the workshop should
merely cover the expenses of the shop above, the rest of the surplus
being divided among the workmen.
“According to what rules?” asked Brun, with a searching glance at
Pelle.
“Equal!” he answered without hesitation. “We won’t have anything to do
with agreements. We made a great mistake, when we began the Movement,
in giving in to the agreement system instead of doing away with it
altogether. It has increased the inequality. Every one that works has a
right to live.”
“Do you think the capable workman will submit to sharing equally with
those that are less capable?” asked Brun doubtfully.
“He must learn to!” said Pelle firmly. “How could he otherwise maintain
that all work is of equal value?”
“Is that your own opinion?”
“Most decidedly. I see no reason, for instance, for making any
difference between a doctor and a sewer-cleaner. It’s impossible to say
which of them is of the greater use in matters of health; the point is
that each shall do what he can.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Brun. “Capital!” The old philosopher was in the
best of spirits. Pelle had considered him awkward and unpractical, and
was astonished to find that his views on many points were so practical.
“It’s because this is something new,” said the old man, rubbing his
hands. “I’d done with the old before I came into the world; there was
nothing that stimulated me; I was said to be degenerated. Yes, indeed!
All the same, the old bookworm’s going to show his ancestors that
there’s vigorous blood flowing in his veins too. We two have found the
place from which the world can be rocked, my dear Pelle; I think we’ve
found it! And now we’ll set to work.”
There was enough to do indeed, but they were realities now, and Pelle
had a pleasant feeling of once more having his feet upon the ground.
This was something different from riding alone through space upon his
own thought, always in danger of falling down; here he opened up his
road, so to speak, with his hands.
It had been arranged that the present owner of the business should
carry it on a little longer, while Pelle made himself at home in it
all, learned to understand the machinery, and took lessons in
book-keeping. He was always busy, used his day and at night slept like
a log. His brain was no longer in a perpetual ferment like a caldron,
for sleep put out the fire beneath it.
The essential thing was that they should be a party that could entirely
rely upon one another, and Pelle unhesitatingly discharged those of his
comrades who were not suited for work under new forms, and admitted
others.
The first man he applied to was Peter Dreyer. Ellen advised him not to
do so. “You know he’s on bad terms with the police,” she said. “You may
have difficulties enough without that.” But Pelle needed some one
beside him who was able to look at things from a new point of view, and
quite understood what was essential; egoists were of no good, and this
must be the very thing for a man who had grown restive at the old state
of things.
Pelle had come home from his book-keeping course to have his dinner.
Ellen was out with Boy Comfort, but she had left the meal ready for
him. It was more convenient to eat it in the kitchen, so he sat upon
the kitchen table, reading a book on the keeping of accounts while he
ate.
In the front room sat Lasse Frederik, learning his lessons with fingers
in both ears in order to shut out the world completely. This was not so
easy, however, for Sister had a loose tooth, and his fingers were
itching to get at it. Every other minute he broke off his reading to
offer her something or other for leave to pull it out; but the little
girl always made the same answer: “No, father’s going to.”
He then gave up setting about it honorably, and tried to take her
unawares; and at last he persuaded her to let him tie a piece of cotton
round the tooth and fasten it to the doorhandle. “There! Now we’ve only
got to burn through the cotton,” he said, lighting a piece of candle,
“or else father’ll never be able to get the tooth out. It loosens it
tremendously!” He talked on about all kinds of things to divert her
attention, like a conjuror, and then suddenly brought the candle close
to her nose, so that she quickly drew back. “Look, here’s the tooth!”
he cried triumphantly, showing it to Sister, who, however, screamed at
the top of her voice.
Pelle heard it all, but quietly went on eating. They would have to make
it up by themselves. It was not long before Lasse Frederik was applying
a plaster to his exploit; he talked to her and gave her her toys to put
her into good humor again. When Pelle went in, they were both lying on
the floor with their heads under the bed. They had thrown the tooth
right into the wall, and were shouting together:
“Mouse, mouse!
Give me a gold tooth
Instead of a bone tooth!”
“Are you going to do anything now, father?” asked Sister, running up to
him.
Yes, he had several things to do.
“You’re always so busy,” she said sulkily. “Are you going to keep on
all your life?”
Pelle’s conscience smote him. “No, I’m not very busy,” he said quickly.
“I can stay with you for a little. What shall we do?”
Little Anna brought her large rag doll, and began to drag chairs into
position.
“No, that’s so stupid!” said Lasse Frederik. “Tell us about the time
you minded the cows, father! About the big mad bull!” And Pelle told
them stories of his childhood—about the bull and Father Lasse, the
farmer of Stone Farm and Uncle Kalle with his thirteen children and his
happy disposition. The big farm, the country life, the stone-quarry and
the sea—they all made up a fairy-story for the two children of the
pavement; the boy Pelle’s battle with the great oxen for the supremacy,
his wonderful capture of the twenty-five-öre piece—each incident was
more exciting than the one before it. Most exciting of all was the
story of the giant Eric, who became an idiot from a blow. “That was in
those days,” said Pelle, nodding; “it wouldn’t happen like that now.”
“What a lot you have seen!” said Ellen, who had come home while they
were talking, and was sitting knitting. “I can hardly understand how
you managed—a little fellow like that! How I should like to have seen
you!”
“Father’s big!” exclaimed Sister appreciatively. Lasse Frederik was a
little more reserved. It was so tiresome always to be outdone, and he
would like to have found room for a parenthesis about his own exploits.
“I say, there’s a big load of corn in the cabman’s gateway,” he said,
to show that he too understood country life.
“That’s not corn,” said Pelle; “it’s hay—clover hay. Don’t you even
know what corn’s like?”
“We call it corn,” answered the boy confidently, “and it is corn too,
for it has those tassels at the ends.”
“The ears, you mean! But those are on coarse grass too, and, besides,
corn is descended from grass. Haven’t you ever really been into the
country?”
“We were once going, and meant to stay a whole week, but it went wrong
with mother’s work. I’ve been right out to the Zoological Gardens,
though.”
Pelle suddenly realized how much the children must lose by living their
life in the city. “I wonder if we shouldn’t think about moving out of
town,” he said that evening when he and Ellen were alone.
“If you think so,” Ellen answered. She herself had no desire to move
into the country, indeed she had an instinctive horror of it as a place
to live in. She did not understand it from the point of view of the
children either; there were so many children who got on capitally in
town, and he surely did not want them to become stupid peasants! If he
thought so, however, she supposed it was right; he was generally right.
Then it was certainly time they gave notice; there was not much more
than a month to April removing-day.
On Sundays they packed the perambulator and made excursions into the
surrounding country, just as in the old days when Lasse Frederik was
the only child and sat in his carriage like a little crown-prince. Now
he wheeled the carriage in which Boy Comfort sat in state; and when
Sister grew tired she was placed upon the apron with her legs hanging
down. They went in a different direction each time, and came to places
that even Lasse Frederik did not know. Close in to the back of the town
lay nice old orchards, and in the midst of them a low straw-thatched
building, which had evidently once been the dwelling-house on a farm.
They came upon it quite by chance from a side-road, and discovered that
the town was busy building barracks beyond this little idyll too, and
shutting it in. When the sun shone they sat down on a bank and ate
their dinner; Pelle and Lasse Frederik vied with one another in
performing feats of strength on the withered grass; and Ellen hunted
for winter boughs to decorate the house with.
On one of their excursions they crossed a boggy piece of ground on
which grew willow copse; behind it rose cultivated land. They followed
the field roads with no definite aim, and chanced upon an uninhabited,
somewhat dilapidated house, which stood in the middle of the rising
ground with a view over Copenhagen, and surrounded by a large,
overgrown garden. On an old, rotten board stood the words “To let,” but
nothing was said as to where application was to be made.
“That’s just the sort of house you’d like,” said Ellen, for Pelle had
stopped.
“It would be nice to see the inside,” he said. “I expect the key’s to
be got at the farm up there.”
Lasse Frederik ran up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in
at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back
accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who
wore a stand-up collar and was smoking a cigar.
The house belonged to the hill farm, and had been built for the parents
of the present owner. The old people had had the odd idea of calling it
“Daybreak,” and the name was painted in large letters on the east
gable. The house had stood empty since they died some years ago, and
looked strangely lifeless; the window-panes were broken and looked like
dead eyes, and the floors were covered with filth.
“No, I don’t like it!” said Ellen.
Pelle showed her, however, that the house was good enough, the doors
and windows fitted well, and the whole needed only to be overhauled.
There were four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, and some rooms
above, one of these being a large attic facing south. The garden was
more than an acre in extent, and in the yard was an out-house fitted up
for fowls and rabbits, the rent was four hundred krones (£22).
Pelle and Lasse Frederik went all over it again and again, and made the
most wonderful discoveries; but when Pelle heard, the price, he grew
serious. “Then we may as well give it up,” he said.
Ellen did not answer, but on the way home she reckoned it out to
herself; she could see how disappointed he was. “It’ll be fifteen
krones (17 s.) more a month than we now pay,” she suddenly exclaimed.
“But supposing we could get something out of the garden, and kept
fowls! Perhaps, too, we might let the upper floor furnished.”
Pelle looked gratefully at her. “I’ll undertake to get several hundred
krones’ worth out of the garden,” he said.
They were tired out when they got home, for after all it was a long way
out. “It’s far away from everything,” said Ellen. “You’d have to try to
buy a second-hand bicycle.” Pelle suddenly understood from the tone of
her voice that she herself would be lonely out there.
“We’d better put it out of our thoughts,” he said, “and look for a
three-roomed flat in town. The other is unpractical after all.”
When he returned from his work the following evening, Ellen had a
surprise for him. “I’ve been out and taken the house,” she said. “It’s
not so far from the tram after all, and we get it for three hundred
krones (£16 10s.) the first year. The man promised to put it all into
good order by removing-day. Aren’t you glad?”
“Yes, if only you’ll be happy there,” said Pelle, putting his arms
round her.
The children were delighted. They were to live out there in the bright
world into which they had peeped, as a rule, only on very festive
occasions—to wander about there every day, and always eat the food they
brought with them in the open air.
A week later they moved out. Pelle did not think they could afford to
hire men to do the removing. He borrowed a four-wheeled hand-cart—the
same that had carried Ellen’s furniture from Chapel Road—and in the
course of Saturday evening and Sunday morning he and Lasse Frederik
took out the things. “Queen Theresa” gave Ellen a helping hand with the
packing. The last load was done very quickly, as they had to be out of
the town before church-time. They half ran with it, Boy Comfort having
been placed in a tub on the top of the load. Behind came Ellen with
little Anna, and last of all fat “Queen Theresa” with some pot plants
that had to be taken with special care. It was quite a procession.
They were in a tremendous bustle all day. The cleaning had been very
badly done and Ellen and “Queen Theresa” had to do it all over again.
Well, it was only what they might have expected! When you moved you
always had to clean two flats, the one you left and the one you went
into. There had not been much done in the way of repairs either, but
that too was what one was accustomed to. Landlords were the same all
the world over. There was little use in making a fuss; they were there,
and the agreement was signed. Pelle would have to see to it by degrees.
By evening the house was so far in order that it could be slept in.
“Now we’ll stop for to-day,” said Ellen. “We mustn’t forget that it’s
Sunday.” They carried chairs out into the garden and had their supper
there, Pelle having laid an old door upon a barrel for a table. Every
time “Queen Theresa” leaned forward with her elbows on the table, the
whole thing threatened to upset, and then she screamed. She was a
pastor’s daughter, and her surroundings now made her melancholy. “I
haven’t sat like this and had supper out of doors since I ran away from
home as a fifteen-year-old girl,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Poor soul!” said Ellen, when they had gone with her along the road to
the tram. “She’s certainly gone through a good deal. She’s got no one
to care about her except us.”
“Is she really a pastor’s daughter?” asked Pelle. “Women of that kind
always pretend to be somebody of a better class who has been
unfortunate.”
“Oh, yes, it’s true enough. She ran away from home because she couldn’t
stand it. She wasn’t allowed to laugh, but had to be always praying and
thinking about God. Her parents have cursed her.”
They went for a little walk behind the farm to see the evening sky.
Ellen was very talkative, and already had a thousand plans in her head.
She was going to plant a great many fruit-bushes and make a kitchen-
garden; and they would keep a number of fowls and rabbits. Next summer
she would have early vegetables that could be sold in town.
Pelle was only half attending as he walked beside her and gazed at the
glowing evening sky, which, with its long fiery lines, resembled a
distant prairie-fire. There was quiet happiness within him and around
him. He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of
many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There
was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his
feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life.
Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.
“You’re so silent!” said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him
upon the dike.
“I feel as if you had just become my bride,” he said, taking her into
his arms.