Pelle the Conqueror Part 109

"So it's a boy!" said the "family." "Don't quite lose your head!"

"That would be the last straw!" said Pelle gravely.

The feminine members of the family teased him because he looked after the child. "What a man--perhaps he'd like to lie in child-bed, too!"

they jeered.

"I don't doubt it," growled Stolpe. "But he's near becoming an idiot, and that's much more serious. And it pains me to say it, but that's the girl's fault. And yet all her life she has only heard what is good and proper. But women are like cats--there's no depending on them."

Pelle only laughed at their gibes. He was immeasurably happy.

And now La.s.se managed to find his way to see them! He had scarcely received the news of the event, when he made his appearance just as he was. He was full of audaciously high spirits; he threw his cap on the ground outside the door, and rushed into the bedroom as though some one were trying to hold him back.

"Ach, the little creature! Did any one ever see such an angel!" he cried, and he began to babble over the child until Ellen was quite rosy with maternal pride.

His joy at becoming a grandfather knew no limits. "So it's come at last, it's come at last!" he repeated, over and over again. "And I was always afraid I should have to go to my grave without leaving a representative behind me! Ach, what a plump little devil! He's got something to begin life on, he has! He'll surely be an important citizen, Pelle! Just look how plump and round he is! Perhaps a merchant or a manufacturer or something of that sort! To see him in his power and greatness--but that won't be granted to Father La.s.se." He sighed. "Yes, yes, here he is, and how he notices one already! Perhaps the rascal's wondering, who is this wrinkled old man standing there and coming to see me in his old clothes?

Yes, it's Father La.s.se, so look at him well, he's won his magnificence by fair means!"

Then he went up to Pelle and fumbled for his hand. "Well, I've hardly dared to hope for this--and how fine he is, my boy! What are you going to call him?" La.s.se always ended with that question, looking anxiously at his son as he asked it. His old head trembled a little now when anything moved him.

"He's to be called La.s.se Frederik," said Pelle one day, "after his two grandfathers."

This delighted the old man. He went off on a little carouse in honor of the day.

And now he came almost every day. On Sunday mornings he made himself scrupulously tidy, polishing his boots and brushing his clothes, so as to make himself thoroughly presentable. As he went home from work he would look in to ask whether little La.s.se had slept well. He eulogized Ellen for bringing such a bright, beautiful youngster into the world, and she quite fell in love with the old man, on account of his delight in the child.

She even trusted him to sit with the little one, and he was never so pleased as when she wished to go out and sent for him accordingly.

So little La.s.se succeeded, merely by his advent, in abolishing all misunderstandings, and Pelle blessed him for it. He was the deuce of a fellow already--one day he threw La.s.se and Ellen right into one another's arms! Pelle followed step by step the little creature's entrance into the world; he noticed when first his glance showed a watchful attention, and appeared to follow an object, and when first his hand made a grab at something. "Hey, hey, just look! He wants his share of things already!" he cried delightedly. It was Pelle's fair moustache the child was after--and didn't he give it a tug!

The little hand gripped valiantly and was scarcely to be removed; there were little dimples on the fingers and deep creases at the wrist. There was any amount of strength in Ellen's milk!

They saw nothing more of Morton. He had visited them at first, but after a time ceased coming. They were so taken up with one another at the time, and Ellen's cool behavior had perhaps frightened him away. He couldn't know that that was her manner to everybody. Pelle could never find an idle hour to look him up, but often regretted him. "Can you understand what's amiss with him?" he would ask Ellen wonderingly. "We have so much in common, he and I. Shall I make short work of it and go and look him up?"

Ellen made no answer to this; she only kissed him. She wanted to have him quite to herself, and encompa.s.sed him with her love; her warm breath made him feel faint with happiness. Her will pursued him and surrounded him like a wall; he had a faint consciousness of the fact, but made no attempt to bestir himself. He felt quite comfortable as he was.

The child occasioned fresh expenses, and Ellen had all she could do; there was little time left for her to help him. He had to obtain suitable work, so that they might not suffer by the slack winter season, but could sit cozily between their four walls. There was no time for loafing about and thinking. It was an obvious truth, which their daily life confirmed, that poor people have all they can do to mind their own affairs. This was a fact which they had not at once realized.

He no longer gave any thought to outside matters. It was really only from old habit that, as he sat eating his breakfast in the workshop, he would sometimes glance at the paper his sandwiches were wrapped in--part of some back number of _The Working Man._ Or perhaps it would happen that he felt something in the air, that pa.s.sed him by, something in which he had no part; and then he would raise his head with a listening expression. But Ellen was familiar with the remoteness that came into his eyes at such times, and she knew how to dispel it with a kiss.

One day he met Morten in the street. Pelle was delighted, but there was a sceptical expression in Morten's eyes. "Why don't you ever come to see me now?" asked Pelle. "I often long to see you, but I can't well get away from home."

"I've found a sweetheart--which is quite an occupation."

"Are you engaged?" said Pelle vivaciously. "Tell me something about her!"

"Oh, there's not much to tell," said Morten, with a melancholy smile.

"She is so ragged and decayed that no one else would have her--that's why I took her."

"That is truly just like you!" Pelle laughed. "But seriously, who is the girl and where does she live?"

"Where does she live?" Morten stared at him for a moment uncomprehendingly. "Yes, after all you're right. If you know where people live you know all about them. The police always ask that question."

Pelle did not know whether Morten was fooling him or whether he was speaking in good faith; he could not understand him in the least to-day.

His pale face bore signs of suffering. There was a curious glitter in his eyes. "One has to live somewhere in this winter cold."

"Yes, you are right! And she lives on the Common, when the policeman doesn't drive her away. He's the landlord of the unfortunate, you know!

There has been a census lately--well, did you observe what happened?

It was given out that everybody was to declare where he lodged on a particular night. But were the census-papers distributed among the homeless? No--all those who live in sheds and outhouses, or on the Common, or in newly erected buildings, or in the disused manure-pits of the livery stables--they have no home, and consequently were not counted in the census. That was cleverly managed, you know; they simply don't exist! Otherwise there would be a very unpleasant item on the list--the number of the homeless. Only one man in the city here knows what it is; he's a street missionary, and I've sometimes been out with him at night; it's horrifying, what we've seen! Everywhere, wherever there's a c.h.i.n.k, they crowd into it in order to find shelter; they lie under the iron staircases even, and freeze to death. We found one like that--an old man--and called up a policeman; he stuck his red nose right in the corpse's mouth and said, 'Dead of drink.' And now that's put down, where really it ought to say, 'Starved to death!' It mustn't be said that any one really suffers need in this country, you understand. No one freezes to death here who will only keep moving; no one starves unless it's his own fault. It must necessarily be so in one of the most enlightened countries in the world; people have become too cultivated to allow Want to stalk free about the streets; it would spoil their enjoyment and disturb their night's rest. And they must be kept at a distance too; to do away with them would be too troublesome; but the police are drilled to chase them back into their holes and corners. Go down to the whaling quay and see what they bring ash.o.r.e in a single day at this time of the year--it isn't far from your place. Accidents, of course! The ground is so slippery, and people go too near the edge of the quay. The other night a woman brought a child into the world in an open doorway in North Bridge Street--in ten degrees of frost. People who collected were indignant; it was unpardonable of her to go about in such a condition--she ought to have stopped at home. It didn't occur to them that she had no home. Well then, she could have gone to the police; they are obliged to take people in. On the other hand, as we were putting her in the cab, she began to cry, in terror, 'Not the maternity hospital--not the maternity hospital!' She had already been there some time or other. She must have had some reason for preferring the doorstep--just as the others preferred the ca.n.a.l to the workhouse."

Morten continued, regardless of Pelle, as though he had to ease some inward torment. Pelle listened astounded to this outburst of lacerating anguish with a shamed feeling that he himself had a layer of fat round his heart. As Morten spoke poverty once more a.s.sumed a peculiar, horrible, living glimmer.

"Why do you tell me all this as if I belonged to the upper cla.s.ses?" he said. "I know all this as well as you do."

"And we haven't even a bad year," Morten continued, "the circ.u.mstances are as they always are at this time of year. Yesterday a poor man stole a loaf from the counter and ran off with it; now he'll be branded all his life. 'My G.o.d, that he should want to make himself a thief for so little!' said the master's wife--it was a twopenny-ha'penny roll. It's not easy to grasp--branded for his whole life for a roll of bread!"

"He was starving," said Pelle stupidly.

"Starving? Yes, of course he was starving! But to me it's insanity, I tell you--I can't take it in; and every one else thinks it's so easy to understand. Why do I tell you this, you ask? You know it as well as I do. No, but you don't know it properly, or you'd have to rack your brains till you were crazy over the frightful insanity of the fact that these two words--bread and crime--can belong together! Isn't it insane, that the two ends should bend together and close in a ring about a human life? That a man should steal bread of all things--bread, do you understand? Bread ought not to be stolen. What does any man want with thieving who eats enough? In the mornings, long before six o'clock, the poor people gather outside our shop, and stand there in rows, in order to be the first to get the stale bread that is sold at half-price. The police make them stand in a row, just as they do outside the box-office at the theater, and some come as early as four, and stand two hours in the cold, in order to be sure of their place. But besides those who buy there is always a crowd of people still poorer; they have no money to buy with, but they stand there and stare as though it interested them greatly to see the others getting their bread cheap. They stand there waiting for a miracle in the shape of a slice of bread. One can see that in the way their eyes follow every movement, with the same desperate hope that you see in the eyes of the dogs when they stand round the butcher's cart and implore Heaven that the butcher may drop a bit of meat. They don't understand that no one will pity them. Not we human beings--you should see their surprise when we give them anything!--but chance, some accident. Good G.o.d, bread is so cheap, the cheapest of all the important things in this world--and yet they can't for once have enough of it! This morning I slipped a loaf into an old woman's hand--she kissed it and wept for joy! Do you feel that that's endurable?" He stared at Pelle with madness lurking in his gaze.

"You do me an injustice if you think I don't feel it too," said Pelle quietly. "But where is there a quick way out of this evil? We must be patient and organize ourselves and trust to time. To seize on our rights as they've done elsewhere won't do for us."

"No, that's just it! They know it won't do for us--that's why justice never goes forward. The people get only what's due to them if the leaders know that if the worst comes to the worst they can provide for themselves."

"I don't believe that any good would come of a revolution," said Pelle emphatically. He felt the old longing to fight within him.

"You can't understand about that unless you've felt it in yourself,"

replied Morten pa.s.sionately. "Revolution is the voice of G.o.d, which administers right and justice, and it cannot be disputed. If the poor were to rise to see that justice was done it would be G.o.d's judgment, and it would not be overthrown. The age has surely the right to redeem itself when it has fallen into arrears in respect of matters so important; but it could do so only by a leap forward. But the people don't rise, they are like a damp powder! You must surely some time have been in the cellar of the old iron merchant under the 'Ark,' and have seen his store of rags and bones and old iron rubbish? They are mere rakings of the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them.

And he buys the soldiers' bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man's larder--that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks about forbidding it; but no one has compa.s.sion on the Copenhagen poor."

Pelle shuddered. There was something demoniacal in Morten's hideous knowledge--he knew more of the "Ark" than Pelle himself. "Have you, too, been down in that loathsome rubbish-store?" he asked, "or how do you know all this?"

"No, I've not been there--but I can't help knowing it--that's my curse!

Ask me even whether they make soup out of the rotten bones they get there. And not even the poison of the refuse-heap will inflame them; they lap it up and long for more! I can't bear it if nothing is going to happen! Now you've pulled yourself out of the mire--and it's the same with everybody who has accomplished anything--one after another--either because they are contented or because they are absorbed in their own pitiful affairs. Those who are of any use slink away, and only the needy are left."

"I have never left you in the lurch," said Pelle warmly. "You must realize that I haven't."

"It isn't to be wondered at that they get weary," Morten continued.

"Even G.o.d loses patience with those who always let themselves be trampled upon. Last night I dreamed I was one of the starving. I was going up the street, grieving at my condition, and I ran up against G.o.d. He was dressed like an old Cossack officer, and had a knout hanging round his neck.

"'Help me, dear G.o.d!' I cried, and fell on my knees before him. 'My brothers won't help me.'

"'What ails you?' he asked, 'and who are you?'

"'I am one of Thy chosen folk, one of the poor,' I answered. 'I am starving!'

"'You are starving and complain of your brothers, who have set forth food for you in abundance?' he said angrily, pointing to all the fine shops. 'You do not belong to my chosen people--away with you!' And then he lashed me over the back with his knout."

Morten checked himself and spoke no more; it was as though he neither saw nor heard; he had quite collapsed. Suddenly he turned away, without saying good-bye.