No, Pelle never told Ellen anything now. She had frozen his speech. She
was like the winter sun; the side that was turned away from her
received no share of her warmth. Pelle made no claims on her now; he
had long ago satisfied himself that she could not respond to the
strongest side of his nature, and he had accustomed himself to the idea
of waging his fight alone. This had made him harder, but also more of a
man.
At home the children were ailing—they did not receive proper care, and
the little girl was restless, especially during the night. The
complaining and coughing of the children made the home uncomfortable.
Ellen was dumb; like an avenging fate she went about her business and
cared for the children. Her expressive glance never encountered his;
although he often felt that her eyes were resting on him. She had grown
thin of late, which lent her beauty, a fanatical glow, and a touch of
malice. There were times when he would have given his life for an
honest, burning kiss as a token of this woman’s love.
He understood her less and less, and was often filled with inexplicable
anxiety concerning her. She suffered terribly through the condition of
the children; and when she quieted them, with a bleeding heart, her
voice had a fateful sound that made him shudder. Sometimes he was
driven home by the idea that she might have made away with herself and
the children.
One day, when he had hurried home with this impression in his mind, she
met him smiling and laid on the table five and twenty kroner.
“What’s that?” asked Pelle, in amazement.
“I’ve won that in the lottery!” she said.
So that was why her behavior had been so peculiarly mysterious during
the last few days—as though there had been something which he must not
on any account get to know. She had ventured her last shilling and was
afraid he would find it out!
“But where did you get the money?” he asked.
“I borrowed it from my old friend, Anna—we went in for it together. Now
we can have the doctor and medicine for the children, and we ourselves
can have anything we want,” she said.
This money worked a transformation in Ellen, and their relations were
once more warmly affectionate. Ellen was more lovingly tender in her
behavior than ever before, and was continually spoiling him. Something
had come over her that was quite new; her manner showed a sort of
contrition, which made her gentle and loving, and bound Pelle to his
home with the bonds of ardent desire. Now once more he hurried home. He
took her manner to be an apology for her harsh judgment of him; for
here, too, she was different, and began to interest herself in his work
for the Cause, inciting him, by all sorts of allusions, to continue it.
It was evident that in spite of her apparent coldness she had kept
herself well informed concerning it. Her manner underwent a most
extraordinary transformation. She, the hard, confident Ellen, became
mild and uncertain in her manner. She no longer kept sourly out of
things, and had learned to bow her head good-naturedly. She was no
longer so self-righteous.
One day, toward evening, Pelle was sitting at home before the looking-
glass, and shaving himself; he had cut off the whole of his fine big
moustache and was now shaving off the last traces of it. Ellen was
amused to see how his face was altered. “I can scarcely recognize you!”
she said. He had thought she would have opposed its removal, and have
put his moustache before the Cause; but she was pleasant about the
whole matter. He could not at all understand this alteration in her.
When he had finished he stood up and went over to Young Lasse, but the
child cried out in terror. Then he put on his old working-clothes, made
his face and head black, and made his way to the machine-works.
The factory was in full swing now; they were working alternate shifts,
day and night, with the help of interned strike-breakers, the “locked-
in” workers, as the popular wit called them.
The iron-masters had followed up their victory and had managed to set
yet another industry in motion again. If this sort of thing went much
further the entire iron industry would one day be operated without the
locked-out workers, who could stand outside and look on. But now a blow
was about to be struck! Pelle’s heart was full of warmth and joy as he
left home, and he felt equal for anything.
He slipped through the pickets unnoticed, and succeeded in reaching the
door of the factory. “They’re asleep—the devils!” he thought angrily,
and was very near spoiling the whole thing by administering a
reprimand. He knocked softly on the door and was admitted. The
doorkeeper took him to the foreman, who was fortunately a German.
Pelle was given employment in the foundry, with very good wages. He was
also promised that he should receive a bonus of twenty-five kroner when
he had been there a certain time. “That’s the Judas money,” said the
foreman, grinning. “And then as soon as the lock-out is over you’ll of
course be placed in the forefront of the workers. Now you are quite
clear about this—that you can’t get out of here until then. If you want
to send something to your wife, we’ll see to that.”
He was shown to a corner where a sack full of straw lay on the floor;
this was his dwelling-place and his refuge for the night.
In the factory the work went on as best it might. The men rushed at
their work as in a frolic, drifted away again, lounged about the works,
or stood here and there in groups, doing as they chose. The foremen did
not dare to speak to them; if they made a friendly remark they were met
with insults. The workers were taking advantage of the fact that they
were indispensable; their behavior was sheer tyranny, and they were
continually harping on the fact that they would just as soon go as
stay. These words made them the masters of the situation.
They were paid big wages and received abundance to eat and to drink.
And the working day or shift was shorter than usual. They did not
understand the real significance of this change of life, but went about
playing the bally. But there was a peculiar hesitation visible in their
faces, as though they were not quite sure of one another. The native
workers, who were in the minority, kept to themselves—as though they
felt an inward contempt for those fellows who had travelled so far to
fish in the troubled waters of their distress.
They were working three shifts, each of eight hours’ duration.
“Oho!” thought Pelle, “why, this, good God, is the eight-hours’ day!
This is surely the State of the future!” At the very moment of his
arrival one shift was completed, and the men immediately proceeded to
make the most infernal uproar, hammering on metal and shouting for food
and brandy. A huge cauldron full of beef and potatoes was dragged in.
Pelle was told off to join a mess of ten men.
“Eat, matey!” they said. “Hungry, ain’t you? How long had you been out
of work before you gave in?”
“Three months,” said Pelle.
“Then you must be peckish. Here with the beef! More beef here!” they
cried, to the cook’s mate. “You can keep the potatoes and welcome!
We’ve eaten enough potatoes all our lives!”—“This is Tom Tiddler’s
land, with butter sauce into the bargain! This is how we’ve always said
it ought to be—good wages and little to do, lots to eat and brandy to
drink! Now you can see it was a good thing we held out till it came to
this—now we get our reward! Your health! Here, damme, what’s your name,
you there?”
“Karlsen,” said Pelle.
“Here’s to you, Karlsen! Well, and how are things looking outside? Have
you seen my wife lately? She’s easy to recognize—she’s a woman with
seven children with nothing inside their ribs! Well, how goes it with
the strikers?”
After eating they sat about playing cards, and drinking, or they loafed
about and began to quarrel; they were a sharp-tongued crew; they went
about actuated by a malicious longing to sting one another. “Come and
have a game with us, mate—and have a drink!” they cried to Pelle. “Damn
it all, how else should a man kill the time in this infernal place?
Sixteen hours’ sleep a day—no, that’s more than a chap can do with!”
There was a deafening uproar, as though the place had been a vast
tavern, with men shouting and abusing one another; each contributed to
the din as though he wanted to drown it by his own voice. They were
able to buy drink in the factory, and they drank what they earned.
“That’s their conscience,” thought Pelle. “At heart they are good
comrades.” There seemed to be some hope of success for his audacious
maneuver. A group of Germans took no part in the orgy, but had set up a
separate colony in the remotest corner of the hall. They were there to
make money!
In one of the groups a dispute broke out between the players; they were
reviling one another in no measured language, and their terms of abuse
culminated in the term “strike-breaker.” This made them perfectly
furious. It was as though an abscess had broken; all their bottled-up
shame and anger concerning their infamous position burst forth. They
began to use knives and tools on one another. The police, who kept
watch on the factory day and night, were called in, and restored
tranquillity. A wounded smith was bandaged in the office, but no arrest
was made. Then a sudden slackness overcame them.
They constantly crowded round Pelle. He was a new man; he came from
outside. “How are things going out there?” was the constant question.
“Things are going very well out there. It’s a worse lookout for us in
here,” said Pelle.
“Going very well, are they? We’ve been told they are near giving in.”
“Who told you that?”
“The bosses of the factory here.”
“Then they were fooling you, in order to keep you here.”
“That’s a lie! And what d’you mean by saying it’s a worse look-out for
us? Out with it, now!”
“We shall never get regular work again. The comrades are winning—and
when they begin work again they’ll demand that we others shall be
locked out.”
“The devil—and they’ve promised us the best positions!” cried a great
smith. “But you’re a liar! That you are! And why did you come here if
they are nearly winning outside? Answer me, damn it all! A man doesn’t
come slinking into this hell unless he’s compelled!”
“To leave his comrades in the lurch, you might add,” replied Pelle
harshly. “I wanted to see how it feels to strike the bread away from
the mouths of the starving.”
“That’s a lie! No one would be so wicked! You are making fools of us,
you devil!”
“Give him a thrashing,” said another. “He’s playing a crooked game. Are
you a spy, or what do you want here? Do you belong to those idiots
outside?”
It had been Pelle’s plan to put a good face on a crooked job, and
cautiously to feel his way; but now he grew angry.
“You had better think what you’re doing before you call honorable men
idiots,” he retorted violently. “Do you know what you are? Swine! You
lie there eating your fill and pouring the drink down your throats and
living easy on the need of your comrades! Swine, that you are—Judases,
who have sold a good cause for dirty money! How much did you get? Five
and twenty kroner, eh? And out there they are loyally starving, so that
all of us—yes, you too—can live a little more like human beings in the
future!”
“You hold your jaw!” said the big smith. “You’ve no wife and children—
you can easily talk!”
“Aren’t you the fellow who lives in Jaegersborg Street?” Pelle
demanded. “Perhaps you are sending what you earn to your wife and
children? Then why are they in want? Yesterday they were turned out of
doors; the organization took them in and found a roof to go over their
heads— although they were a strike-breaker’s family!” Pelle himself had
made this possible.
“Send—damn and blast it all—I’ll send them something! But if one lives
this hell of a life in here the bit of money one earns all goes in rot-
gut! And now you’re going to get a thrashing!” The smith turned up his
shirt-sleeves so that his mighty muscles were revealed. He was no
longer reasonable, but glared at Pelle like an angry bull.
“Wait a bit,” said an older man, stepping up to Pelle. “I think I’ve
seen you before. What is your real name, if I may make bold to ask?”
“My name? You are welcome to know it. I am Pelle.”
This name produced an effect like that of an explosion. They were
dazzled. The smith’s arms fell slack; he turned his head aside in
shame. Pelle was among them! They had left him in the lurch, had turned
their backs on him, and now he stood there laughing at them, not the
least bit angry with them. What was more, he had called them comrades;
so he did not despise them! “Pelle is here!” they said quietly; further
and further spread the news, and their tongues dwelt curiously on his
name. A murmur ran through the shops. “What the devil—has Pelle come?”
they cried, stumbling to their legs.
Pelle had leaped onto a great anvil. “Silence!” he cried, in a voice of
thunder; “silence!” And there was silence in the great building. The
men could hear their own deep breathing.
The foremen came rushing up and attempted to drag him down. “You can’t
make speeches here!” they cried.
“Let him speak!” said the big smith threateningly. “You aren’t big
enough to stop his mouth, not by a long chalk!” He seized a hammer and
stationed himself at the foot of the anvil.
“Comrades!” Pelle began, in an easy tone, “I have been sent here to you
with greetings from those outside there—from the comrades who used to
stand next to you at work, from your friends and fellow-unionists.
Where are our old comrades?—they are asking. We have fought so many
battles by their side, we have shared good and evil with them—are we to
enter into the new conditions without them? And your wives and children
are asking after you! Outside there it is the spring! They don’t
understand why they can’t pack the picnic basket and go out into the
forest with father!”
“No, there’s no picnic basket!” said a heavy voice.
“There are fifty thousand men accepting the situation without
grumbling,” Pelle earnestly replied. “And they are asking after you—
they don’t understand why you demand more than they do. Have you done
more for the movement than they have?—they ask. Or are you a lot of
dukes, that you can’t quietly stand by the rank and file? And now it’s
the spring out there!” he cried once more. “The poor man’s winter is
past, and the bright day is coming for him! And here you go over to the
wrong side and walk into prison! Do you know what the locked-out
workers call you? They call you the locked-in workers!”
There were a few suppressed smiles at this. “That’s a dam’ good smack!”
they told, one another. “He made that up himself!”
“They have other names for us as well!” cried a voice defiantly.
“Yes, they have,” said Pelle vigorously. “But that’s because they are
hungry. People get unreasonable then, you know very well—and they
grudge other folks their food!”
They thronged about him, pressing closer and closer. His words were
scorching them, yet were doing them good. No one could hit out like
Pelle, and yet at the same time make them feel that they were decent
fellows after all. The foreign workers stood round about them, eagerly
listening, in order that they, too, might catch a little of what was
said.
Pelle had suddenly plunged into the subject of the famine, laying bare
the year-long, endless despair of their families, so that they all saw
what the others had suffered—saw really for the first time. They were
amazed that they could have endured so much, but they knew that it was
so; they nodded continually, in agreement; it was all literally true.
It was Pelle’s own desperate struggle that was speaking through him
now, but the refrain of suffering ran through it all. He stood before
them radiant and confident of victory, towering indomitably over them
all.
Gradually his words became keen and vigorous. He reproached them with
their disloyalty; he reminded them how dearly and bitterly they had
bought the power of cohesion, and in brief, striking phrases he
awakened the inspiriting rhythm of the Cause, that lay slumbering in
every heart. It was the old, beloved music, the well-known melody of
the home and labor. Pelle sounded it with a new accent. Like all those
that forsake their country, they had forgotten the voice of their
mother—that was why they could not find their way home; but now she was
calling them, calling them back to the old dream of a Land of Fortune!
He could see it in their faces, and with a leap he was at them: “Do you
know of anything more infamous than to sell your mother-country? That
is what you have done—before ever you set foot in it—you have sold it,
with your brothers, your wives, and your children! You have foresworn
your religion—your faith in the great Cause! You have disobeyed orders,
and have sold yourselves for a miserable Judas-price and a keg of
brandy!”
He stood with his left hand on the big smith’s shoulder, his right hand
he clenched and held out toward them. In that hand he was holding them;
he felt that so strongly that he did not dare to let it sink, but
continued to hold it outstretched. A murmuring wave passed through the
ranks, reaching even to the foreign workers. They were infected by the
emotion of the others, and followed the proceedings with tense
attention, although they did not understand much of the language. At
each sally they nodded and nudged one another, until now they stood
there motionless, with expectant faces; they, too, were under the spell
of his words. This was solidarity, the mighty, earth-encircling power!
Pelle recognized the look of wonder on their faces; a cold shudder ran
up and down his spine. He held them all in his hand, and now the blow
was to be struck before they had time to think matters over. Now!
“Comrades!” he cried loudly. “I told those outside that you were
honorable men, who had been led into the devil’s kitchen by want, and
in a moment of misunderstanding. And I am going in to fetch your
friends and comrades out, I said. They are longing to come out to you
again, to come out into the spring! Did I lie when I spoke well of
you?”
“No, that you didn’t!” they replied, with one voice. “Three cheers for
Pelle! Three cheers for ‘Lightning’!”
“Come along, then!” Swiftly he leaped down from the anvil and marched
through the workshop, roaring out the Socialist marching-song. They
followed him without a moment’s consideration, without regret or
remorse; the rhythm of the march had seized them; it was as though the
warm spring wind were blowing them out into the freedom of Nature. The
door was unlocked, the officials of the factory were pushed aside.
Singing in a booming rhythm that seemed to revenge itself for the long
days of confinement, they marched out into North Bridge Street, with
Pelle at their head, and turned into the Labor Building.