Pelle the Conqueror Part 101

After she had washed up, she sat by Pelle with her mending, chattering away concerning her household cares. "I shall soon have to get jackets for the boys--it's awful what they need now they're grown up. I peep in at the second-hand clothes shop every day. And you must have a new blouse, too, Pelle; that one will soon be done for; and then you've none to go to the wash. If you'll buy the stuff, I'll soon make it up for you--I can sew! I made my best blouse myself--Hanne helped me with it!

Why, really, don't you go to see Hanne any longer?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Hanne has grown so peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to have taken Hanne."

"But you didn't like it when I took Ellen. Why should I have taken Hanne?"

"Oh, I don't know ... Hanne...." Marie stopped, listened, and suddenly wrenched the window open.

Down in the "Ark" a door slammed, and a long hooting sound rose up from below, sounding just like a husky scream from the crazy Vinslev's flute or like the wind in the long corridors. Like a strange, disconnected s.n.a.t.c.h of melody, the sound floated about below, trickling up along the wooden walls, and breaking out into the daylight with a note of ecstasy: "Hanne's with child! The Fairy Princess is going to be confined!"

Marie went down the stairs like a flash. The half-grown girls were shrieking and running together in the court below; the women on the galleries were murmuring to others above and below. Not that this was in itself anything novel; but in this case it was Hanne herself, the immaculate, whom as yet no tongue had dared to besmirch. And even now they dared hardly speak of it openly; it had come as such a shock. In a certain sense they had all entered into her exaltation, and with her had waited for the fairy-tale to come true; as quite a child she had been elected to represent the incomprehensible; and now she was merely going to have a child! It really was like a miracle just at first; it was such a surprise to them all!

Marie came back with dragging steps and with an expression of horror and astonishment. Down in the court the grimy-nosed little brats were screeching, as they wheeled hand in hand round the sewer-grating--it was splendid for dancing round--

"Bro-bro-brille-brid Hanne's doin' to have a tid!"

They couldn't speak plainly yet.

And there was "Grete with the baby," the mad-woman, tearing her cellar-window open, leaning out of it backward, with her doll on her arm, and yelling up through the well, so that it echoed loud and shrill: "The Fairy Princess has got a child, and Pelle's its father!"

Pelle bent over his work in silence. Fortunately he was not the king's son in disguise in this case! But he wasn't going to wrangle with women.

Hanne's mother came storming out onto her gallery. "That's a shameless lie!" she cried. "Pelle's name ain't going to be dragged into this--the other may be who he likes!"

Overhead the hea.r.s.e-driver came staggering out onto his gallery.

"The princess there has run a beam into her body," he rumbled, in his good-natured ba.s.s. "What a pity I'm not a midwife! They've got hold of the wrong end of it!"

"Clear off into your hole and hold your tongue, you body-s.n.a.t.c.her!"

cried Madam Johnsen, spitting with rage. "You've got to stick your brandy-nose into everything!"

He stood there, half drunk, leaning over the rail, babbling, teasing, without returning Madam Johnsen's vituperation. But then little Marie flung up a window and came to her a.s.sistance, and up from her platform Ferdinand's mother emerged. "How many hams did you buy last month? Fetch out your bear hams, then, and show us them! He kills a bear for every corpse, the drunkard!" From all sides they fell upon him. He could do nothing against them, and contented himself with opening his eyes and his mouth and giving vent to a "Ba-a-a!" Then his red-haired wife came out and hailed him in.

XII

From the moment when the gray morning broke there was audible a peculiar note in the buzzing of the "Ark," a hoa.r.s.e excitement, which thrust all care aside. Down the long corridors there was a sound of weeping and scrubbing; while the galleries and the dark wooden stair-cases were sluiced with water. "Look out there!" called somebody every moment from somewhere, and then it was a question of escaping the downward-streaming flood. During the whole morning the water poured from one gallery to another, as over a mill-race.

But now the "Ark" stood freezing in its own cleanliness, with an expression that seemed to say the old warren didn't know itself.

Here and there a curtain or a bit of furniture had disappeared from a window--it had found its way to the p.a.w.n shop in honor of the day. What was lacking in that way was made up for by the expectation and festive delight on the faces of the inmates.

Little fir-trees peeped out of the cellar entries in the City Ward, and in the market-place they stood like a whole forest along the wall of the prison. In the windows of the bas.e.m.e.nt-shops hung hearts and colored candles, and the grocer at the corner had a great Christmas goblin in his window--it was made of red and gray wool-work and had a whole cat's skin for its beard.

On the stairs of the "Ark" the children lay about cleaning knives and forks with sand sprinkled on the steps.

Pelle sat over his work and listened in secret. His appearance usually had a quieting effect on these crazy outbursts of the "Ark," but he did not want to mix himself up with this affair. And he had never even dreamed that Hanne's mother could be like this! She was like a fury, turning her head, quick as lightning, now to one side, now to the other, and listening to every sound, ready to break out again!

Ah, she was protecting her child now that it was too late! She was like a spitting cat.

"The youngest of all the lordlin's,"

sang the children down in the court. That was Hanne's song. Madam Johnsen stood there as though she would like to swoop down on their heads. Suddenly she flung her ap.r.o.n over her face and ran indoors, sobbing.

"Ah!" they said, and they slapped their bellies every time an odor of something cooking streamed out into the court. Every few minutes they had to run out and buy five or ten ore worth of something or other; there was no end to the things that were needed in preparation for Christmas Eve. "We're having lovely red beetroot!" said one little child, singing, making a song of it--"We're having lovely red beetroot, aha, aha, aha!" And they swayed their little bodies to and fro as they scoured.

"Frederik!" a sharp voice cried from one of the corridors. "Run and get a score of firewood and a white roll--a ten-ore one. But look out the grocer counts the score properly and don't pick out the crumb!"

Madam Olsen with the warm wall was frying pork. She couldn't pull her range out onto the gallery, but she did let the pork burn so that the whole courtyard was filled with bluish smoke. "Madam Olsen! Your pork is burning!" cried a dozen women at once.

"That's because the frying-pan's too small!" replied Frau Olsen, thrusting her red head out through the bal.u.s.ters. "What's a poor devil to do when her frying-pan's too small?" And Madam Olsen's frying-pan was the biggest in the whole "Ark"!

Shortly before the twilight fell Pelle came home from the workshop.

He saw the streets and the people with strange eyes that diffused a radiance over all things; it was the Christmas spirit in his heart. But why? he asked himself involuntarily. Nothing in particular was in store for him. To-day he would have to work longer than usual, and he would not be able to spend the evening with Ellen, for she had to be busy in her kitchen, making things jolly for others. Why, then, did this feeling possess him? It was not a memory; so far as he could look back he had never taken part in a genuine cheerful Christmas Eve, but had been forced to content himself with the current reports of such festivities.

And all the other poor folks whom he met were in the same mood as he himself. The hard questioning look had gone from their faces; they were smiling to themselves as they went. To-day there was nothing of that wan, heavy depression which commonly broods over the lower cla.s.ses like the foreboding of disaster; they could not have looked more cheerful had all their hopes been fulfilled! A woman with a feather-bed in her arms pa.s.sed him and disappeared into the p.a.w.n-shop; and she looked extremely well pleased. Were they really so cheerful just because they were going to have a bit of a feast, while to do so they were making a succession of lean days yet leaner? No, they were going to keep festival because the Christmas spirit prevailed in their hearts, because they must keep holiday, however dearly it might cost them!

It was on this night to be sure that Christ was born. Were the people so kind and cheerful on that account?

Pelle still knew by heart most of the Bible texts of his school-days.

They had remained stowed away somewhere in his mind, without burdening him or taking up any room, and now and again they reappeared and helped to build up his knowledge of mankind. But of Christ Himself he had formed his own private picture, from the day when as a boy he first stumbled upon the command given to the rich: to sell all that they had and to give to the starving. But they took precious good care not to do so; they took the great friend of the poor man and hanged him on high!

He achieved no more than this, that He became a promise to the poor; but perhaps it was this promise that, after two thousand years, they were now so solemnly celebrating!

They had so long been silent, holding themselves in readiness, like the wise virgins in the Bible, and now at last it was coming! Now at last they were beginning to proclaim the great Gospel of the Poor--it was a goodly motive for all this Christmas joy! Why did they not a.s.semble the mult.i.tudes on the night of Christ's birth and announce the Gospel to them? Then they would all understand the Cause and would join it then and there! There was a whirl of new living thoughts in Pelle's head. He had not hitherto known that that in which he was partic.i.p.ating was so great a thing. He felt that he was serving the Highest.

He stood a while in the market-place, silently considering the Christmas-trees--they led his thoughts back to the pasture on which he had herded the cows, and the little wood of firs. It pleased him to buy a tree, and to take the children by surprise; the previous evening they had sat together cutting out Christmas-tree decorations, and Karl had fastened four fir-tree boughs together to make a Christmas-tree.

At the grocer's he bought some sweets and Christmas candles. The grocer was going about on tip-toe in honor of the day, and was serving the dirty little urchins with ceremonious bows. He was "throwing things in,"

and had quite forgotten his customary, "Here, you, don't forget that you still owe for two lots of tea and a quarter of coffee!" But he was cheating with the scales as usual.

Marie was going about with rolled-up sleeves, and was very busy. But she dropped her work and came running when she saw the tree. "It won't stand here yet, Pelle," she cried, "it will have to be cut shorter. It will have to be cut still shorter even now! Oh, how pretty it is! No, at the end there--at the end! We had a Christmas-tree at home; father went out himself and cut it down on the cliffs; and we children went with him.

But this one is much finer!" Then she ran out into the gangway, in order to tell the news, but it suddenly occurred to her that the boys had not come home yet, so she rushed in to Pelle once more.

Pelle sat down to his work. From time to time he lifted his head and looked out. The seamstress, who had just moved into Pipman's old den, and who was working away at her snoring machine, looked longingly at him. Of course she must be lonely; perhaps there was nowhere where she could spend the evening.

Old Madam Frandsen came out on her platform and shuffled down the steep stairs in her cloth slippers. The rope slipped through her trembling hands. She had a little basket on her arm and a purse in her hand--she too looked so lonely, the poor old worm! She had now heard nothing of her son for three months. Madam Olsen called out to her and invited her in, but the old woman shook her head. On the way back she looked in on Pelle.

"He's coming this evening," she whispered delightedly. "I've been buying brandy and beefsteak for him, because he's coming this evening!"

"Well, don't be disappointed, Madam Frandsen," said Pelle, "but he daren't venture here any more. Come over to us instead and keep Christmas with us."

She nodded confidently. "He'll come tonight. On Christmas Eve he has always slept in mother's bed, ever since he could crawl, and he can't do without it, not if I know my Ferdinand!" She had already made up a bed for herself on the chairs, so certain was she.

The police evidently thought as she did, for down in the court strange footsteps were heard. It was just about twilight, when so many were coming and going unremarked. But at these steps a female head popped back over the bal.u.s.trade, a sharp cry was heard, and at the same moment every gallery was filled with women and children. They hung over the rails and made an ear-splitting din, so that the whole deep, narrow shaft was filled with an unendurable uproar. It sounded as though a hurricane came raging down through the shaft, sweeping with it a hailstorm of roofing-slates. The policeman leaped back into the tunnel-entry, stupefied. He stood there a moment recovering himself before he withdrew. Upstairs, in the galleries, they leaned on the rails and recovered their breath, exhausted by the terrific eruption; and then fell to chattering like a flock of small birds that have been chasing a flying hawk.

"Merry Christmas!" was now shouted from gallery to gallery. "Thanks, the same to you!" And the children shouted to one another, "A jolly feast and all the best!" "A dainty feast for man and beast!"