Pelle the Conqueror Part 123

When the heat of battle rose to Pelle's head, there was no one with whom he would rather have shared his opinions and his plans of campaign.

In other directions she had urged him on, and he had felt this as a confirmation and augmentation of his own being; but now she was silent.

She had him and her home and the children, and all else besides was nothing to her. She had shared the privations of the winter with him and had done so cheerfully; they were undeserved. But now he could get work whenever he wished. She had resumed her dumb opposition, and this had an oppressive effect upon him; it took something from the joy of battle.

When he reached home and related what had been said and done during the day, he addressed himself to La.s.se. She moved about the home immersed in her own cares, as though she were dumb; and she would suddenly interrupt his conversation with the statement that this or that was lacking. So he weaned himself from his communicative habits, and carried on all his work away from home. If there was writing to be done, or if he had negotiations to accomplish, he selected some tavern where he would be free of her constraining presence. He avoided telling her of his post of confidence, and although she could not help hearing about it when away from home she behaved as if she knew nothing. For her he was still merely Pelle the working-man, who shirked supporting his wife and children. This obstinate att.i.tude pained him; and the bitterness of his home life made him throw himself with greater energy into the struggle.

He became a hard and dangerous opponent.

La.s.se used to gaze at them unhappily. He would willingly have intervened, but he did not know how to set about it; and he felt himself superfluous. Every day he donned his old clothes and went out in order to offer his services as casual laborer, but there were plenty of idle hands younger than his. And he was afraid of obtaining employment that might take the bread out of other folks' mouths. He could not understand the campaign, and he found it difficult to understand what was forbidden ground; but for Pelle he felt an unconditional respect. If the lad said this or the other, then it was right; even if one had to go hungry for it--the lad was appointed to some special end.

One day he silently left the house; Pelle scarcely noticed it, so absorbed was he. "He must have gone back to the old clothes woman at the 'Ark,'" he thought; "it's by no means amusing here."

Pelle had charge of the external part of the campaign; he knew nothing of bookkeeping or administration, but simply threw himself into the fight. Even as a child of eight he had been faced with the problem of mastering life by his own means, and he had accomplished it, and this he profited by now. He enjoyed the confidence of the ma.s.ses; his speech sounded natural to them, so that they believed in him even when they did not understand him. If there was any one who did not wish to follow where Pelle led, he had to go just the same; there was no time just now for lengthy argument; where civil words didn't answer he took more energetic means.

The campaign consisted in the first place of the federation of the ma.s.ses, and Pelle was continually away from home; wherever anything was afoot, there he put in an appearance. He had inaugurated a huge parade, every morning all the locked-out workers reported themselves at various stations in the city, and there the roll was called, every worker being entered according to his Union. By means of this vast daily roll-call of nearly forty thousand men it was possible to discover which of them had deserted in order to act as strike-breakers. A few were always absent, and those who had a good excuse had to establish it in order to draw their strike-pay. Pelle was now here, now there, and always unexpected, acting on impulse as he did. "Lightning Pelle," they called him, on account of the suddenness of his movements. His actions were not based upon long deliberations; nevertheless, he had a radical comprehension of the entire movement; one thing grew out of another, naturally, until the whole was more than any conscious intelligence could comprehend. And Pelle grew with it, and by virtue of his impulsiveness was a summary of it all.

There was plenty to be done; at the roll-call all those who failed to attend had to be entered, and those who knew anything about them must give information. This man had gone abroad; that one had gone into the country, to look for work; so far, so good. If any fell away and acted as strike-breaker, instructions were immediately given for his punishment. In this way Pelle kept the ranks closed. There were many weak elements among them--degenerate, ignorant fellows who didn't understand the importance of the movement, but a strong controlling hand and unfailing justice made it a serious matter for them to break away.

At the outset he had organized with Stolpe's a.s.sistance a large body of the best workers as pickets or watchmen. These were zealous, fanatical members of the various trades, who had taken part in the organization of their own professional organization, and knew every individual member thereof. They stationed themselves early in the morning in the neighborhood of the various places of employment, marking those who went to work there and doing their best to prevent them. They were in constant conflict with the police, who put every possible obstacle in their way.

Morten he met repeatedly. Privation had called him out of his retirement. He did not believe that the campaign would lead to better conditions, and on that account he took no part in it. But want he knew as did no other; his insight in that direction was mysteriously keen.

The distribution of relief in the form of provisions could not have been entrusted to better hands. He superintended the whole business of distribution, but what he liked best was to stand, knife in hand, cutting up pork for the families of locked-out workers. The portions were strictly weighed; none the less, the women always thronged about him. There was a blessing in that faint smile of his--they felt sure his portions were the biggest!

Morten and Pelle were in disagreement on almost every point. Even now, when everything depended on a strict cohesion, Morten could never be trusted to behave with severity. "Remember, they aren't of age yet," he would say continually. And it could not be gainsaid that there were many to whom the conflict was unintelligible--they understood nothing of it, although otherwise they were thoughtful and intelligent enough. These were mostly people who had come in from the provinces at a somewhat advanced age; indeed some had been small employers there. For them trades unionism was a sort of lynch law, and they profited by the strike in all simplicity in order to obtain well-paid employment. When they were reviled as strikebreakers or "gentlemen," they laughed like little children who are threatened with a revolver. Slow-witted as they were, in this respect, they took the consequences to heart, although they could not see the reason for them. These must be compelled to obey.

The iron industry was doing its utmost to keep going, as a trade which must fulfill its contracted engagements, under penalty of seeing the business fall into foreign hands. This industry had if possible to be disabled. The pickets were at work, and _The Working Man_ published the names and addresses of the strike-breakers. When these left the factory they encountered a crowd of people who treated them with scorn and contempt; they had to be escorted by the police. But the resentment aroused by their treachery followed them home even to the barracks they lived in. The wives and children of the locked-out workers resumed the battle and carried on hostilities against the families of the strike-breakers, so that they had to move. One saw them of a night, with all their possessions on a handcart, trudging away to seek a new home under cover of the darkness. But the day revealed them, and again they were fugitives, until the police took them in hand and found lodging for them.

One day a large factory by the North Bridge resumed operations with the help of foreign labor and strike-breakers. Pelle set to work to prepare a warm reception for the workers when they went homeward, but in the course of the day a policeman who was friendly to the workers tipped him the wink that two hundred police would be concealed in a neighboring school, ready for the workers' departure.

In the afternoon people began to collect--unemployed workers, poor women, and children. They came early, for it well might be that the workers would be released an hour before their time, in order to avoid a clash, and they were missing nothing by waiting there. Finally several thousand people stood before the gates of the factory, and the police were moving to and fro through the crowd, which stood many men deep, but they had to give up the effort to drive them asunder. The street urchins began to make an uproar, and to egg the watchers on. They felt the need of warming themselves a little, so they gradually began to bait the police.

"Hullo, there!" suddenly shouted a mighty voice. "In the school over there are two hundred police, waiting for us to make a disturbance, so that they can come and use their truncheons on us. Hadn't we better leave them where they are? I think it's quite as well they should go back to school for a time!" "Hurrah!" they cried. "Hurrah! Long live 'Lightning'!" A movement went through the crowd. "That's Pelle!" The whisper pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, and the women stood on tiptoe to see him.

Pelle and Stolpe were standing against a wall, surrounded by a few dozen pickets. The police went up to them and reprimanded them. They had orders to hinder the picketing, but they had no desire to meddle with Pelle. They lived in the workers' quarter, were at home there, and a word from him would make the city impossible for them.

The usual time for stopping work came round, but the workers were not released from the factory. The crowd used its wits to keep itself warm; punning remarks concerning strike-breakers and capitalists buzzed through the air. But suddenly an alarm ran through the crowd. The street urchins, who are always the first to know everything, were whistling between their fingers and running down the side streets. Then the crowd began to move, and the police followed at a quick march, keeping to the middle of the street. The factory had discharged the workers by a back door. They were moving down Guldberg Street by now, disheartened and with never a glance behind them, while a whole escort of police accompanied them. They were soon overtaken and brought home to the accompaniment of a sinister concert, which now and again was interrupted by cries of, "Three cheers for the gentlemen!"

The pickets walked in a long file, close to the procession, zealously occupied in noting each individual worker, while Pelle moved in the midst of the crowd, endeavoring to prevent over-hasty action. There was need to be careful. Several men were still in prison because during the winter they had come to blows with the strike-breakers, and the police had received stringent orders from the authorities. The press of the propertied cla.s.ses was daily calling for stricter measures, demanding that every meeting in the streets, and especially before the gates of a factory, should be broken up by the police.

Now and then a strike-breaker parted from the squad and ran into the door of his dwelling, followed by a long whistle.

Among the workers was a solitary, elderly man, still powerful, whom Pelle recognized. He kept at the extreme edge of the police, walking heavily, with bowed head, along the pavement close to the houses. His hair was quite gray, and his gait was almost crippled. This was Mason Hansen, Stolpe's old comrade and fellow-unionist, whom Pelle had interviewed in the winter, in the hope of persuading him to refrain from strikebreaking.

"It's going badly with him," thought Pelle, involuntarily keeping his eyes on him. The results of strike-breaking had dealt hardly with him.

By St. Hans Street he turned the corner, winking at the policeman who was about to follow him, and went down the street alone, looking neither to right nor left, embarra.s.sed, and with hanging head. Every time a child cried aloud, he started. Then he stood as though riveted to the ground, for in front of his door a heap of poverty-stricken household goods lay in the gutter. A crowd of gaping children stood round the heap, and in the midst of the group stood a youngish woman, with four children, who were keeping tearful watch over the heap of trash. The man pressed through the crowd and exchanged a few words with the woman, then clenched his fists and shook them threateningly at the tenement house.

Pelle went up to him. "Things aren't going well with you, comrade," he said, laying his hand on the other's shoulder. "And you are much too good for what you are doing. You had better come with me and re-enter the organization."

The man slowly turned his head. "Oh, it's you!" he said, shaking Pelle's hand away with a jerk. "And you seem as cool and impudent as ever.

Poverty hasn't dealt hardly with you! It's not at all a bad business, growing fat on the pence of the workers, eh?"

Pelle grew crimson with anger, but he controlled himself. "Your insults don't hurt me," he said. "I have gone hungry for the Cause while you have been playing the turncoat. But that will be forgotten if you'll come with me."

The man laughed bitterly, pointing at the tenement-house. "You'd better go and give them a medal. Three months now they've tormented me and made h.e.l.l hot for my wife and children, in order to drive us away. And as that didn't answer, they went to the landlord and forced him to give me notice. But Hansen is obstinate--he wouldn't be shown the door. So now they've got the bailiffs to turn me out, see?" He gave a hollow laugh.

"But these few sticks, why, we can soon carry them up again, d.a.m.n it all! Shall we begin, mother?"

"I'll willingly speak to the landlord. Remember, you are an old unionist."

"An old--yes, I was in it from the very beginning." The man drew himself proudly erect. "But for all that I don't let my wife and children starve. So you want to go begging favors for me, eh? You be gone--at once, will you? Be off, to the devil, or I'll beat you to a jelly with this!" He seized a table-leg; his eyes were quite blood-shot. His young wife went up to him and took his hand. "Hansen!" she said quietly. He let his weapon fall. Pelle felt the woman's pleading eyes upon him, and went.

x.x.xI

When Pelle, tired to death, made his way homeward in the evening, he had lost the feeling of invincibility and his thoughts turned to Ellen.

In the daytime he felt neither hesitation nor certainty. When he set to work it was always with thousands behind him. He felt the great body of workers at his back, whether he was fighting in the open or waiting with close-b.u.t.toned coat to deal with the leaders of the opposing camp. But when he went home to Ellen he had only himself to rely on for support.

And he could not get near her. Strongly as he was drawn by the life away from home, she still held the secret of his life in her hands. She was strong and would not be swept aside. He was forced to ponder over her nature and to search for a solution.

Pelle had to deal with countless numbers of families, and what he saw was not always edifying. Home was a conception which was only now forcing its way downward from the middle cla.s.ses. Even in periods of normal employment the workers earned little enough when it came to providing a decent family life, and the women knew nothing of making a comfortable home. The man might be tidy and well-dressed when one met him out of doors, but if you went to his home it was always the same thing; a dark, grimy den and a worn-out wife, who moved about scolding amidst a swarm of children. Wages were enough for one only to live in comfort. The man represented the household out of doors. He must take sandwiches to his work, and he must have something decent too when he got home. The others managed with a little bread and coffee; it was of no use to talk of regular family meals. And the man must have clothes; he was the visible portion of the household, and he supported it. It was of no use to look for anything further in the way of ideas from these women; they saw nothing but unemployment and the want at home, and when the husband showed himself they drove him out of the house with their scolding ways. "You go out and meddle with everything you can think of that doesn't concern us--politics and big talk--instead of doing your work properly and leaving the fools to squabble among themselves!" The result was that they did their work for the organization in the taverns.

Many of them held positions of confidence, and Pelle went to the taverns to confer with them. They were dejected, when they arrived, and had before all else to be thawed out.

There Pelle came to them, with his brilliant hopes. When they lamented in their dejection, he promised great things of the future. "Our wives will soon see that we are in the right. The day will soon come when we shall be able to go home with a proper week's wages, that will be enough for the whole family."

"And suppose it doesn't come off?" they would say.

"It will come off--if only we hold out!" he cried, smiting the table.

Yes, he might well see the bright side of things. He had a wife who came from a long-established home, who kept things clean and tidy for him, and knew how to make much do the work of little; the daughter of an old unionist who had grown up in the midst of the movement--a wife who saw her husband's doings with understanding eyes; yes, he might well smile!

As to the last, Pelle was silent.

In this particular she had accepted neither inheritance nor teaching; she was as she was, and she would never be different, whatever might pa.s.s over her head. Pelle was sacrificing wife and children to a fixed idea, in order not to leave a few indifferent comrades in the lurch!

That, and the strike, and the severe condemnation of those who would not keep step, was, and remained, for her, so much tavern nonsense. It was something the workers had got into their heads as a result of talking when they were not precisely sober.

That was what it was, and it filled her heart with pain and mortification that she and hers should be set aside for people who were nothing to them. And this pain made her beautiful, and justified her in her own eyes.

She did not complain in words, and she was always careful to set before Pelle whatever the house could provide. He always found everything in order, and he understood what efforts it must cost her--considering the smallness of the means which she had at her disposal. There was no weak point in her defences; and this made the position still more oppressive; he could not evoke an explosion, a ventilation of her grievances; it was impossible to quarrel with her and make friends again.

Often he wished that Ellen would become neglectful, like so many others.

But she was always attentive; the more the circ.u.mstances enabled her to condemn him, the more correctly did she behave.

If only he could have explained her lack of comprehension by supposing that her mind was barren and self-seeking! But in his eyes she had always been quite simple and single-minded, and yet her nature was to him a continual enigma! It was true she was not excessively benevolent or sympathetic where others were concerned; but on the other hand she asked nothing for herself--her thoughts were all for him and the children. He must admit that she had, without a thought, sacrificed everything to him--her home, her whole world--and that she had a right to ask something in return.

And she was still unchangeably the same. She was indifferent where she herself was concerned, if only Pelle and the children had something she was contented; she herself needed so little, yet she seemed to take enough when he watched her eating. Pelle often wondered that she retained her healthy appearance, although the food she ate was so inferior. Perhaps she helped herself in secret--but he drove the thought away, and was ashamed. She was always completely indifferent as to what she ate; she did not notice what it was, but served him and the children with the best of it--especially himself--yet she seemed to thrive. Yes, even now she gave the best to him. It was as though she was fulfilling some deep-rooted law of her nature, which was independent of their relations to one another. In this nothing could alter her habits.

She might have been compared to a great beautiful b.i.t.c.h that lies attentively marking the appet.i.te of her young, although none can tell, from her deliberate quiet, that her own bowels are twisted with hunger.

If they left anything, she noticed it. "I have eaten," she would say, so quietly that she succeeded as a rule in deceiving them. Yes, it made him feel desperate to think about it; the more he thought of it the more unendurable it was. She was sacrificing herself for him, yet she must condemn all his doings! She knew how to defy starvation far better than he--and she did not understand why they must go hungry!