Pelle the Conqueror Part 140

"There's no box on the ears in the air, my boy," said Pelle, laughing.

"The game only begins to-day!"

La.s.se Frederik continued to hold his arm in the same position, and lay gazing indifferently out into the front room, as if he had no idea to what his father was referring; but his face was scarlet.

"Don't you even say good-morning to your father?" said Ellen, whereupon he sullenly extended his hand and then turned his face to the wall.

He was vexed at his behavior of the day before, and perhaps expected a blowing-up. On a nail above his head hung his blouse and cap.

"Is La.s.se Frederik a milk-boy?" asked Pelle.

"Yes," said Ellen, "and he's very good at it. The drivers praise him."

"Isn't he going to get up then, and go? I've met several milk-carts."

"No, for we're on strike just now," murmured the boy without turning round.

Pelle became quite interested. "What fellows you are! So you're on strike, are you? What's it for--is it wages?"

The boy had to explain, and gradually turned his face round, but did not look at his father.

Ellen stood in the doorway and listened to them smilingly. She looked frail. "La.s.se Frederik's the leader," she said gently.

"And he's lying here instead of being out on the watch for blacklegs?"

exclaimed Pelle quite irritably. "You're a nice leader!"

"Do you suppose any boy would be so mean as to be a blackleg?" said La.s.se Frederik. "No, indeed! But people fetch their own milk from the carts."

"Then you must get the drivers to join you."

"No, we don't belong to a real union, so they won't support us."

"Well then, make a union! Get up, boy, and don't lie there snoring when there's anything of this sort on! Do you imagine that anything in this world is to be got by sleeping?"

The boy did not move. He did not seem to think there was any reason for taking his father very seriously; but he met a reproachful look from Ellen, and he was out of bed and dressed in a trice. While they sat in the front room, drinking their coffee, Pelle gave him a few hints as to how he should proceed in the matter. He was greatly interested, and went thoroughly into the subject; it seemed to him as though it were only yesterday that he had occupied himself with the people. How many pleasant memories of the fight crowded into his mind! And now every child knew that the meanest thing on earth was to become a blackleg! How he had fought to make even intelligent fellow-workmen understand this!

It was quite comical to think that the strike--which filled the workmen with horror the first time he had employed it--was now a thing that children made use of. Time pa.s.sed with a fleet foot out here in the day; and if you wanted to keep pace you must look sharp!

When the boy had gone, Ellen came to Pelle and stroked his hair.

"Welcome home!" she said softly, and kissed his furrowed brow.

He pressed her hand. "Thank you for having a home for me," he answered, looking into her eyes; "for if you hadn't, I think I should have gone to the dogs."

"The boy has had his share in that, you know! He's worked well, or it might have gone badly with me many a time. You mustn't be angry with him, Pelle, even if he is a little sullen to you. You must remember how much he's gone through with the other boys. Sometimes he's come home quite disheartened."

"Because of me?" asked Pelle in a low voice.

"Yes, for he couldn't bear them to say anything about you. At one time he was always fighting, but now I think he's taught them to leave him alone; for he never gave in. But it may have left its marks on him."

She lingered by him; there was something she wanted to say to him, but she had a difficulty in beginning. "What is it?" he asked, in order to help her, his heart beating rapidly. He would have liked to get over this without speech.

She drew him gently into the bedroom and up to the little cot. "You haven't looked at Boy Comfort," she said.

He bent in embarra.s.sment over the little boy who lay and gazed at him with large, serious eyes. "You must give me a little time," he said.

"It's little Marie's boy," said Ellen, with a peculiar intonation.

He stood up quickly, and looked in bewilderment at her. It was a little while before he comprehended.

"Where is Marie?" he asked with difficulty.

"She's dead, Pelle," answered Ellen, and came to his aid by holding out her hand to him. "She died when the child was born."

A gray shadow pa.s.sed across Pelle's face.

III

The house in which Pelle and his wife lived--the "Palace," the inhabitants of the street called it--was an old, tumble-down, three-storied building with a mansard roof. Up the middle of the facade ran the remains of some fluted pilasters through the two upper stories, making a handsome frame to the small windows. The name "Palace" had not been given to the house entirely without reason; the old woman who kept the ironmonger's shop in the back building could remember that in her childhood it had been a general's country-house, and stood quite by itself. At that time the sh.o.r.e reached to where Isted Street now runs, and the fruit-gardens went right into Council House Square. Two ancient, worm-eaten apple-trees, relics of that period, were still standing squeezed in among the back buildings.

Since then the town had pushed the fruit-gardens a couple of miles farther back, and in the course of time side streets had been added to the bright neighborhood of Vesterbro--narrow, poor-men's streets, which sprang up round the scattered country-houses, and shut out the light; and poor people, artistes and street girls ousted the owners and turned the luxuriant summer resort into a motley district where booted poverty and shoeless intelligence met.

The "Palace" was the last relic of a vanished age. The remains of its former grandeur were still to be seen in the smoke-blackened stucco and deep windows of the attics; but the large rooms had been broken up into sets of one or two rooms for people of small means, half the wide landing being boarded off for coal-cellars.

From Pelle's little two-roomed flat, a door and a couple of steps led down into a large room which occupied the entire upper floor of the side building, and was not unlike the ruins of a former banqueting-hall. The heavy, smoke-blackened ceiling went right up under the span roof and had once been decorated; but most of the plaster had now fallen down, and the beams threatened to follow it.

The huge room had been utilized, in the course of time, both as a brewery and as a warehouse; but it still bore the stamp of its former splendor. The children of the property at any rate thought it was grand, and picked out the last remains of panelling for kindling-wood, and would sit calling to one another for hours from the high ledges above the brick pillars, upon which there had once stood busts of famous men.

Now and again a party of Russian or Polish emigrants hired the room and took possession of it for a few nights. They slept side by side upon the bare floor, each using his bundle for a pillow; and in the morning they would knock at the door of Ellen's room, and ask by gestures to be allowed to come to the water-tap. At first she was afraid of them and barricaded the door with her wardrobe cupboard; but the thought of Pelle in prison made her sympathetic and helpful. They were poor, needy beings, whom misery and misfortune had driven from their homes. They could not speak the language and knew nothing about the world; but they seemed, like birds of pa.s.sage, to find their way by instinct. In their blind flight it was at the "Palace" that they happened to alight for rest.

With this exception the great room lay unused. It went up through two stories, and could have been made into several small flats; but the owner of the property--an old peasant from Glostrup--was so miserly that he could not find it in his heart to spend money on it, notwithstanding the great advantage it would be to him. _Ellen_ had no objection to this! She dried her customers' washing there, and escaped all the coal-dust and dirt of the yard.

Chance, which so often takes the place of Providence in the case of poor people, had landed her and her children here when things had gone wrong with them in Chapel Road. Ellen had at last, after hard toil, got her boot-sewing into good working order and had two pupils to help her, when a long strike came and spoiled it all for her. She struggled against it as well as she could, but one day they came and carried her bits of furniture down into the street. It was the old story: Pelle had heard it several times before. There she stood with the children, mounting guard over her belongings until it grew dark. It was pouring with rain, and they did not know what to do. People stopped as they hurried by, asked a few questions and pa.s.sed on; one or two advised her to apply to the committee for housing the homeless. This, however, both Ellen and La.s.se Frederik were too proud to do. They took the little ones down to the mangling-woman in the cellar, and themselves remained on guard over their things, in the dull hope that something would happen, a hope of which experience never quite deprives the poor.

After they had stood there a long time something really did happen. Out of Norrebro Street came two men dashing along at a tremendous pace with a four-wheeled cart of the kind employed by the poor of Copenhagen when they move--preferably by night--from one place to another. One of the men was at the pole of the cart, while the other pushed behind and, when the pace was at its height, flung himself upon his stomach on the cart, putting on the brake with the toes of his boots upon the road so as to twist the cart into the gutter. Upon the empty cart sat a middle-aged woman, singing, with her feet dangling over the side; she was big and wore an enormous hat with large nodding flowers, of the kind designed to attract the male s.e.x. The party zig-zagged, shouting and singing, from one side of the street to the other, and each time the lady shrieked.

"_There's_ a removing cart!" said La.s.se Frederik, and as he spoke the vehicle pulled up in the gutter just in front of them.

"What are you doing, Thorvald?" said one of the men; then, staring straight into Ellen's face, "Have you hurt your eye?"

The woman had jumped down from the cart. "Oh, get out of the way, you a.s.s!" she said, pushing him aside. "Can't you see they've been turned out? Is it your husband that's chucked you out?" she asked, bending sympathetically over Ellen.

"No, the landlord's turned us out!" said La.s.se Frederik.

"What a funny little figure! And you've got nowhere to sleep to-night?

Here, Christian, take and load these things on the cart, and then they can stand under the gateway at home for the night. They'll be quite spoilt by the rain here."

"Yes," answered Christian, "the chair-legs have actually begun to take root!" The two men were in a boisterous humor.