Marie’s fate lay no longer like a heavy burden upon Pelle; time had
taken the bitterness out of it. He could recall without self-reproach
his life with her and her two brothers in the “Ark,” and often wondered
what had become of the latter. No one could give him any information
about them.
One day, during the midday rest, he went on his bicycle out to Morten
with a message from Ellen. In Morten’s sitting-room, a hunched-up
figure was sitting with its back to the window, staring down at the
floor. His clothes hung loosely upon him, and his thin hair was
colorless. He slowly raised a wasted face as he looked toward the door.
Pelle had already recognized him from his maimed right hand, which had
only the thumb and one joint of the forefinger. He no longer hid it
away, but let it lie upon his thin knee.
“Why, good-day, Peter!” exclaimed Pelle in surprise, holding out his
hand to take the other’s left hand. Peter drew the hand out of his
pocket and held it out. It was a dead, maimed lump with some small
protuberances like rudiments of knuckles, that Pelle found in his hand.
Peter looked into his face without moving a muscle of his own, and
there was only a little gleam in his eyes when Pelle started.
“What in the world are you starting for?” he said dryly. “I should
think any one might have known that a fellow couldn’t mind a
shearing-machine with one hand. I knew it just as well as everybody
else in the factory, and expected it every day; and at last I had to
shut my eyes. Confound it, I often thought, won’t there soon be an end
to it? And then one day there it was!”
Pelle shivered. “Didn’t you get any accident insurance?” he asked in
order to say something.
“Of course I did! The whole council gathered on account of my humble
self, and I was awarded three thousand krones (£170) as entirely
invalided. Well, the master possessed nothing and had never insured me,
so it never got beyond the paper. But anyhow it’s a great advance upon
the last time, isn’t it? Our party has accomplished something!” He
looked mockingly at Pelle. “You ought to give a cheer for paper
reforms!”
Peter was a messenger and a kind of secretary in a revolutionary
association for young men. He had taught himself to read and sat with
other young men studying anarchistic literature. The others took care
of him like brothers; but it was a marvel that he had not gone to the
dogs. He was nothing but skin and bone, and resembled a fanatic that is
almost consumed by his own fire. His intelligence had never been much
to boast of, but there were not many difficulties in the problem that
life had set him. He hated with a logic that was quite convincing. The
strong community had passed a sham law, which was not even liable for
the obligations that it admitted that it had with regard to him. He had
done with it now and belonged to the destructionists.
He had come up to Morten to ask him to give a reading at the Club.
“It’s not because we appreciate authors—you mustn’t imagine that,” he
said with a gloomy look. “They live upon us and enjoy a meaningless
respect for it. It’s only manual labor that deserves to be honored;
everything else sponges on us. I’m only telling you so that you shan’t
come imagining something different.”
“Thank you,” said Morten, smiling. “It’s always nice to know what
you’re valued at. And still you think you can make use of me?”
“Yes, you’re one of the comparatively better ones among those who work
to maintain the capitalists; but we’re agreed at the Club that you’re
not a real proletariat writer, you’re far too much elaborated. There
have never been proletariat writers; and it’s of no consequence either,
for entertainment shouldn’t be made out of misery. It’s very likely
you’ll hear all about that up there.”
“That’s all right. I’ll be sure to come,” answered Morten.
“And if you’ll write us a cantata for our anniversary festival—it’s the
day of the great Russian massacre—I’ll see that it’s accepted. But it
mustn’t be the usual hallelujah!”
“I’m glad I met you,” he said to Pelle with his unchanging expression
of gloom. “Have you seen anything of Karl?”
“No, where is he?” asked Pelle eagerly.
“He’s a swell now. He’s got a business in Adel Street; but he won’t
enjoy it long.”
“Why not? Is there anything wrong with his affairs?”
“Nothing more than that some day we’ll pull the whole thing down upon
all your heads. There’ll soon be quite a number of us. I say, you might
speak one evening in our association, and tell us something about your
prison life. I think it would interest them. We don’t generally have
outsiders, for we speak for ourselves; but I don’t think there’d be any
difficulty in getting you introduced.”
Pelle promised.
“He’s a devil-may-care fellow, isn’t he?” exclaimed Morten when he had
shut the door on Peter, “but he’s no fool. Did you notice that he never
asked for anything? They never do. When they’re hungry they go up to
the first person they meet and say: ‘Let me have something to eat!’
It’s all the same to them what’s put into their mouths so long as it’s
satisfying, and they never thank gratefully. Nothing affects them.
They’re men who put the thief above the beggar. I don’t dislike it
really; there’s a new tone in it. Perhaps our well-behaved ruminant’s
busy doing away with one stomach and making up the spare material into
teeth and claws.”
“If only they’d come forward and do work!” said Pelle. “Strong words
don’t accomplish much.”
“How’s it going with your peaceable revolution?” asked Morten with a
twinkle in his eye. “Do you see any progress in the work?”
“Oh, yes, it’s slow but sure. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I didn’t
think though that you were interested in it.”
“I think you’re on the right tack, Pelle,” answered Morten seriously.
“But let the young ones light the fire underneath, and it’ll go all the
quicker. That new eventualities crop up in this country is no
disadvantage; the governing body may very well be made aware that
there’s gunpowder under their seats. It’ll immensely strengthen their
sense of responsibility! Would you like to see Johanna? She’s been
wanting very much to see you. She’s ill again unfortunately.”
“Ellen sent me out to propose that she should come to stay with us in
the country. She thinks the child must be a great trouble to you and
cannot be properly looked after here either.”
“It’s very kind of your wife to think of it, but hasn’t she enough to
do already?”
“Oh, Ellen can manage a great deal,” said Pelle heartily. “You would be
giving her a pleasure.”
“Then I’ll say ‘Thank you’ for the offer,” exclaimed Morten. “It’ll be
a great relief to me, if only she can stand the moving. It isn’t that
she gives me any trouble now, for we get on capitally together. Johanna
is good and manageable, really a splendid character in spite of her
spoiling. You won’t have any difficulty with her. And I think it’ll be
good for her to be away from me here, and be somewhere where there’s a
woman to see to her—and children. She doesn’t get much attention here.”
They went in to her and found her asleep, her pale face covered with
large drops of moisture. “It’s exhaustion,” whispered Morten. “She’s
not got much strength yet.” Their presence made her sleep disturbed,
and she tossed from side to side and then, suddenly opening her eyes,
gazed about her with an expression of wild terror. In a moment she
recognized them and smiled; and raising herself a little she held out
both her hands to Pelle with a charming expression of childish
coquetry.
“Tell me about the house out there and Boy Comfort,” she said, making
room for him on the edge of the bed. “It’s so tiresome here, and Mr.
Morten’s so serious.” And she threw a glance of defiance at him.
“Is he?” said Pelle. “That must be because he writes books.”
“No, but I must keep up a little dignity,” said Morten, assuming a
funny, schoolmasterish expression. “This young lady’s beginning to be
saucy!”
Johanna lay and laughed to herself, her eyes travelling from one to the
other of them. “He ought to have a pair of spectacles, and then he’d be
like a real one,” she said. She spoke hardly above a whisper, it was
all she had strength for; but her voice was mischievous.
“You must come to us if he’s so bad,” said Pelle, “and then you can
play with the children and lie in the sunshine out in the garden. You
don’t know how lovely it is there now? Yes, I’m really in earnest,” he
continued, as she still smiled. “Ellen asked me to come and say so.”
She suddenly became grave and looked from the one to the other; then
looking down, and with her face turned away, she asked: “Will Morten be
there too?”
“No, Johanna, I must stay here, of course; but I’ll come out to see
you.”
“Every day?” Her face was turned to the wall, and she scratched the
paper with her nails.
“I shall come and see my little sweetheart just as often as I can,”
said Morten, stroking her hair.
The red blood suffused her neck in a sudden wave, and was imperceptibly
absorbed in the paleness of her skin, like a dying ember. Hanne’s blood
came and went in the same way for the merest trifle. Johanna had
inherited her mother’s bashfulness and unspeakable charm, and also her
capricious temper.
She lay with her back turned toward them and made no reply to their
persuasions. It was not easy to say whether she even heard them, until
suddenly she turned to Morten with an expression of hatred on her face.
“You don’t need to trouble,” she said, with glowing eyes; “you can
easily get rid of me!”
Morten only looked at her sorrowfully, but Pelle was angry. “You ought
to be ashamed of yourself for taking it like that,” he said. “Is that
all the thanks Morten gets for what he’s done? I must say you’re a
grateful child!”
Johanna took the scolding without moving a muscle of her face, but when
he ceased she quietly took his hand and laid it over her delicate, thin
face, which it quite covered. There she lay peeping out at him and
Morten between the large fingers, with a strangely resigned expression
that was meant to be roguish. “I know it was horrid of me,” she said
dully, moving Pelle’s middle finger backward and forward in front of
her eyes so that she squinted; “but I’ll do what you tell me.
Elle-Pelle, Morten-Porten—I can talk the P-language!” And she laughed
an embarrassed laugh.
“You don’t know how much better and happier you’ll be when you get out
to Pelle’s,” said Morten.
“I could easily get up and do the work of the house, so that you didn’t
need to have a woman,” she whispered, gazing at him passionately with
her big eyes. “I’m well enough now.”
“My dear child, that’s not what I mean at all! It’s for your sake.
Don’t you understand that?” said Morten earnestly, bending over her.
Johanna’s gaze wandered round hopelessly, as if she had given up all
thought of being understood any more.
“I don’t think we’ll move her against her will,” said Morten, as he
went down with Pelle. “She is so capricious in her moods. I think, too,
I should miss her, for she’s a good little soul. When she’s up she goes
creeping about and is often quite touching in her desire to make me
comfortable. And suddenly recollections of her former life awaken in
her and darken her mind; she’s still very mistrustful and afraid of
being burdensome. But she needs the companionship of women, some one to
whom she can talk confidentially. She has too much on her mind for a
child.”
“Couldn’t you both move out to us? You can have the two upstairs
rooms.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” exclaimed Morten. “May I have two or three
days to think it over? And my love to Ellen and the children!”