As soon as it was possible to get at the ground, the work of excavating
for the foundations of the new workmen’s houses was begun with full
vigor. Brun took a great interest in the work, and watched it out in
the cold from morning till evening. He wore an extra great-coat, and
woollen gloves outside his fur-lined ones. Ellen had knitted him a
large scarf, which he was to wrap round his mouth. She kept an eye on
him from the windows, and had to fetch him in every now and then to
thaw him. It was quite impossible, however, to keep him in; he was far
too eager for the work to progress. When the frost stopped it, he still
wandered about out there, fidgety and in low spirits.
On weekdays Pelle was never at home in daylight, but on Sunday he had
to go out with him and see what had been done, as soon as day dawned.
The old man came and knocked at Pelle’s door. “Well, Pelle!” he said.
“Will you soon be out of bed?”
“He must really be allowed to lie there while he has his coffee!” cried
Ellen from the kitchen.
Brun ran once round the house to pass the time. He was not happy until
he had shown it all to Pelle and got him to approve of the alterations.
This was where he had thought the road should go. And there, where the
roads crossed, a little park with statuary would look nice. New ideas
were always springing up. The librarian’s imagination conjured up a
whole town from the bare fields, with free schools and theaters and
comfortable dwellings for the aged. “We must have a supply association
and a school at once,” he said; “and by degrees, as our numbers
increase, we shall get all the rest. A poor-house and a prison are the
only things I don’t think we shall have any use for.”
They would spend the whole morning out there, walking about and laying
plans. Ellen had to fetch them in when dinner-time came. She generally
found them standing over some hole in earnest conversation—just an
ordinary, square hole in the earth, with mud or ice at the bottom. Such
holes were always dug for houses; but these two talked about them as if
they were the beginning of an entirely new earth!
Brun missed Pelle during the day, and watched for him quite as eagerly
as Ellen when the time came for him to return from work. “I shall soon
be quite jealous of him,” said Ellen, as she drew Pelle into the
kitchen to give him her evening greeting in private. “If he could he’d
take you quite away from me.”
When Pelle had been giving a lecture, he generally came home after Brun
had gone to rest, and in the morning when he left home the old man was
not up. Brun never went to town. He laid the blame on the weather, but
in reality he did not know what he would do with himself in there. But
if a couple of days passed without his seeing Pelle, he became
restless, lost interest in the excavating, and wandered about feebly
without doing anything. Then he would suddenly put on his boots, excuse
himself with some pressing errand, and set off over the fields toward
the tram, while Ellen stood at the window watching him with a tender
smile. She knew what was drawing him!
One would have thought there were ties of blood between these two, so
dependent were they on one another. “How’s the old man?” was Pelle’s
first question on entering; and Brun could not have followed Pelle’s
movements with tenderer admiration in his old days if he had been his
father. While Pelle was away the old man went about as if he were
always looking for something.
Ellen did not like his being out among the navvies in all kinds of
weather. In the evening the warmth of the room affected his lungs and
made him cough badly.
“It’ll end in a regular cold,” she said. She wanted him to stay in bed
for a few days and try to get rid of the cold before it took a firm
hold.
It was a constant subject of argument between them, but Ellen did not
give in until she got her way. When once he had made this concession to
the cold, it came on in earnest. The warmth of bed thawed the cold out
of his body and made both eyes and nose run.
“It’s a good thing we got you to bed in time,” said Ellen. “And now you
won’t be allowed up until the worst cold weather is over, even if I
have to hide your clothes.” She tended him like a child and made “camel
tea” for him from flowers that she had gathered and dried in the
summer.
When once he had gone to bed he quite liked it and took delight in
being waited on, discovering a need of all kinds of things, so as to
receive them from Ellen’s hands.
“Now you’re making yourself out worse than you are!” she said, laughing
at him.
Brun laughed too. “You see, I’ve never been petted before,” he said.
“From the time I was born, my parents hired people to look after me;
that’s why I’m so shrivelled up. I’ve had to buy everything. Well,
there’s a certain amount of justice in the fact that money kills
affection, or else you’d both eat your cake and have it.”
“Yes, it’s a good thing the best can’t be had for money,” said Ellen,
tucking the clothes about his feet. He was propped up with pillows, so
that he could lie there and work. He had a map of the Hill Farm land
beside him, and was making plans for a systematic laying out of the
ground for building. He wrote down his ideas about it in a book that
was to be appended to the plans. He worked from sunrise until the
middle of the day, and during that time it was all that Ellen could do
to keep the children away from him; Boy Comfort was on his way up to
the old man every few minutes.
In the afternoon, when she had finished in the kitchen, she took the
children up for an hour. They were given a picture-book and were placed
at Brun’s large writing-table, while Ellen seated herself by the window
with her knitting and talked to the old man. From her seat she could
follow the work out on the field, and had to give him a full
description of how far they had got with each plot.
There were always several hundred men out there standing watching the
work—a shivering crowd that never diminished. They were unemployed who
had heard that something was going on out here, and long before the
dawn of day they were standing there in the hope of coming in for
something. All day they streamed in and out, an endless chain of sad
men. They resembled prisoners condemned hopelessly to tread a huge
wheel; there was a broad track across the fields where they went.
Brun was troubled by the thought of these thousands of men who came all
this way to look for a day’s work and had to go back with a refusal.
“We can’t take more men on than there are already,” he said to Pelle,
“or they’ll only get in one another’s way. But perhaps we could begin
to carry out some of our plans for the future. Can’t we begin to make
roads and such like, so that these men can get something to do?”
No, Pelle dared not agree to that.
“In the spring we shall want capital to start the tanners with a
cooperative tannery,” he said. “It’ll be agreed on in their Union at an
early date, on the presupposition that we contribute money; and I
consider it very important to get it started. Our opponents find fault
with us for getting our materials from abroad. It’s untenable in the
long run, and must come to an end now. As it is, the factory’s hanging
in the air; they can cut us off from the supply of materials, and then
we’re done. But if we only have our own tannery, the one business can
be carried out thoroughly and can’t be smashed up, and then we’re ready
to meet a lock-out in the trade.”
“The hides!” interpolated Brun.
“There we come to agriculture. That’s already arranged coöperatively,
and will certainly not be used against us. We must anyhow join in there
as soon as ever we get started—buy cattle and kill, ourselves, so that
besides the hides we provide ourselves with good, cheap meat.”
“Yes, yes, but the tannery won’t swallow everything! We can afford to
do some road-making.”
“No, we can’t!” Pelle declared decisively. “Remember we’ve also got to
think of the supply associations, or else all our work is useless; the
one thing leads to the other. There’s too much depending on what we’re
doing, and we mustn’t hamper our undertaking with dead values that will
drag it down. First the men and then the roads! The unemployed to-day
must take care of themselves without our help.”
“You’re a little hard, I think,” said Brun, somewhat hurt at Pelle’s
firmness, and drumming on the quilt with his fingers.
“It’s not the first time that I’ve been blamed for it in this
connection,” answered Pelle gravely; “but I must put up with it.”
The old man held out his hand. “I beg your pardon! It wasn’t my
intention to find fault with you because you don’t act thoughtlessly.
Of course we mustn’t give up the victory out of sympathy with those who
fight. It was only a momentary weakness, but a weakness that might
spoil everything—that I must admit! But it’s not so easy to be a
passive spectator of these topsy-turvy conditions. It’s affirmed that
the workmen prefer to receive a starvation allowance to doing any work;
and judging by what they’ve hitherto got out of their work it’s easy to
understand that it’s true. But during the month that the excavations
here have been going on, at least a thousand unemployed have come every
day ready to turn to; and we pay them for refraining from doing
anything! They can at a pinch receive support, but at no price obtain
work. It’s as insane as it’s possible to be! You feel you’d like to
give the machinery a little push and set it going again.”
“It wants a good big push,” said Pelle. “They’re not trifles that are
in the way.”
“They look absurdly small, at any rate. The workmen are not in want
because they’re out of work, as our social economists want us to
believe; but they’re out of work because they’re in want. What a
putting of the cart before the horse! The procession of the unemployed
is a disgrace to the community; what a waste—also from a purely
mercantile point of view—while the country and the nation are
neglected! If a private business were conducted on such principles, it
would be doomed from the very first.”
“If the pitiable condition arose only from a wrong grasp of things, it
would be easily corrected,” said Pelle; “but the people who settle the
whole thing can’t at any rate be charged with a lack of mercantile
perception. It would be a good thing if they had the rest in as good
order! Believe me, not a sparrow falls to the ground unless it is to
the advantage of the money-power; if it paid, in a mercantile sense, to
have country and people in perfect order, it would take good care that
they were so. But it simply can’t be done; the welfare of the many and
the accumulation of property by the few are irreconcilable
contradictions. I think there is a wonderful balance in humanity, so
that at any time it can produce exactly enough to satisfy all its
requirements; and when one claims too much, others let go. It’s on that
understanding indeed that we want to remove the others and take over
the management.”
“Yes, yes! I didn’t mean that I wanted to protect the existing state of
affairs. Let those who make the venture take the responsibility. But
I’ve been wondering whether _we_ couldn’t find a way to gather up all
this waste so that it should benefit the cooperative works?”
“How could we? We _can’t_ afford to give occupation to the unemployed.”
“Not for wages! But both the Movement and the community have begun to
support them, and what would be more natural than that one required
work of them in return? Only, remember, letting it benefit them!”
“You mean that, for instance, unemployed bricklayers and carpenters
should build houses for the workmen?” asked Pelle, with animation.
“Yes, as an instance. But the houses should be ensured against private
speculation, in the same way as those we’re building, and always belong
to the workmen. As _we_ can’t be suspected of trying to make profits,
we should be suitable people for its management, and it would help on
the cooperative company. In that way the refuse of former times would
fertilize the new seed.”
Pelle sat lost in thought, and the old man lay and looked at him in
suspense. “Well, are you asleep?” he asked at last impatiently.
“It’s a fine idea,” said Pelle, raising his head. “I think we should
get the organizations on our side; they’re already beginning to be
interested in cooperation. When the committee sits, I’ll lay your plan
before them. I’m not so sure of the community, however, Brun! They have
occasional use for the great hunger-reserve, so they’ll go on just
keeping life in it; if they hadn’t, it would soon be allowed to die of
hunger. I don’t think they’ll agree to have it employed, so to speak,
against themselves.”
“You’re an incorrigible pessimist!” said Brun a little irritably.
“Yes, as regards the old state of things,” answered Pelle, with a
smile.
Thus they would discuss the possibilities for the fixture in connection
with the events of the day when Pelle sat beside the old man in the
evening, both of them engrossed in the subject. Sometimes the old man
felt that he ran off the lines. “It’s the blood,” he said despondently.
“I’m not, after all, quite one of you. It’s so long since one of my
family worked with his hands that I’ve forgotten it.”
During this time he often touched upon his past, and every evening had
something to tell about himself. It was as though he were determined to
find a law that would place him by Pelle’s side.
Brun belonged to an old family that could be traced back several
hundred years to the captain of a ship, who traded with the Tranquebar
coast. The founder of the family, who was also a whaler and a pirate,
lived in a house on one of the Kristianshavn canals. When his ship was
at home, she lay to at the wharf just outside his street-door. The
Bruns’ house descended from father to son, and was gradually enlarged
until it became quite a mansion. In the course of four generations it
had become one of the largest trading-houses of the capital. At the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, most of
the members of the family had gone over into the world of stockbrokers
and bankers, and thence the changes went still further. Brun’s father,
the well-known Kornelius Brun, stuck to the old business, his brothers
making over their share to him and entering the diplomatic service, one
of them receiving a high Court appointment.
Kornelius Brun felt it his duty to carry on the old business, and in
order to keep on a level with his brothers as regarded rank, he married
a lady of noble birth from Funen, of a very old family heavily burdened
with debt. She bore him three children, all of whom—as he himself said
—were failures. The first child was a deaf mute with very small
intellectual powers. It fortunately died before it attained to man’s
estate. Number two was very intelligent and endowed with every talent,
but even as a boy exhibited perverse tendencies. He was very handsome,
had soft, dark hair, and a delicate, womanish complexion. His mother
dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful,
but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his
fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The
announcement of the death gave a stroke as the cause; but the truth was
that rumors had begun to circulate of a scandal in which he was
implicated together with some persons of high standing. It was at the
end of the seventies, at the time when the lower class movement began
to gather way. An energetic investigation was demanded from below, and
it was considered inadvisable to hush the story up altogether, for fear
of giving support to the assertion of the rottenness and onesidedness
of the existing conditions. When an investigation became imminent, and
it was evident that Brun would be offered up upon the altar of the
multitude in order to shield those who stood higher, Kornelius Brun put
a pistol into his son’s hand—or shot him; the librarian was unable to
say which.
“Those were two of the fruits upon the decaying family tree,” said Brun
bitterly, “and it can’t be denied that they were rather worm-eaten. The
third was myself. I came fifteen years after my youngest brother. By
that time my parents had had enough of their progeny; at any rate, I
was considered from the beginning to be a hopeless failure, even before
I had had an opportunity of showing anything at all. Perhaps they felt
instinctively that I should take a wrong direction too. In me too the
disintegrating forces predominated; I was greatly deficient, for
instance, in family feeling. I remember when still quite little hearing
my mother complain of my plebeian tendencies; I always kept with the
servants, and took their part against my parents. My family looked more
askance at me for upholding the rights of our inferiors than they had
done at the idiot who tore everything to pieces, or the spendthrift who
made scandals and got into debt. And I dare say with good reason!
Mother gave me plenty of money to amuse myself with, probably to
counteract my plebeian tendencies; but I had soon done with the
pleasures and devoted myself to study. Things of the day did not
interest me, but even as a boy I had a remarkable desire to look back;
I devoted myself especially to history and its philosophy. Father was
right when he derided me and called it going into a monastery; at an
age when other young men are lovers, I could not find any woman that
interested me, while almost any book tempted me to a closer
acquaintance. For a long time he hoped that I would think better of it
and take over the business, and when I definitely chose study, it came
to a quarrel between us. ‘When the business comes to an end, there’s an
end of the family!’ he said, and sold the whole concern. He had been a
widower then for several years, and had only me; but during the five
years that he lived after selling the business we didn’t see one
another. He hated me because I didn’t take it over, but what could I
have done with it? I possessed none of the qualities necessary for the
carrying on of business in our day, and should only have ruined the
whole thing. From the time I was thirty, my time has been passed among
bookshelves, and I’ve registered the lives and doings of others. It’s
only now that I’ve come out into the daylight and am beginning to live
my own life; and now it’ll soon be ended!”
“It’s only now that life’s beginning to be worth living,” said Pelle,
“so you’ve come out just at the right time.”
“Ah, no!” said Brun despondently. “I’m not in the ascendant! I meet
young men and my mind inclines to them; but it’s like evening and
morning meeting in the same glow during the light nights. I’ve only got
my share in the new because the old must bend to it, so that the ring
may be completed. You go in where I go out.”
“It must have been a melancholy existence to be always among books,
books, without a creature that cared for you,” put in Ellen. “Why
didn’t you marry? Surely we women aren’t so terrible that there
mightn’t have been _one_ that you liked?”
“No, you’d think not, but it’s true nevertheless,” answered Brun, with
a smile. “The antipathy was mutual too; it’s always like that. I
suppose it wasn’t intended that an old fellow like me should put
children into the world! It’s not nice, though, to be the end of
something.”
Ellen laughed. “Yes, but you haven’t always been old!”
“Yes, I have really; I was born old. I’m only now beginning to feel
young. And who knows?” he exclaimed with grim humor. “I may play
Providence a trick and make my appearance some day with a little wife
on my arm.”
“Brun’s indulging in fancies,” said Pelle, as they went down to bed.
“But I suppose they’ll go when he’s about again.”
“He’s not had much of a time, poor old soul!” said Ellen, going closer
to Pelle. “It’s a shame that there are people who get no share in all
the love there is—just as great a shame as what you’re working against,
I think!”
“Yes, but we can’t put that straight!” exclaimed Pelle, laughing.