Pelle the Conqueror Part 143

"I'm no good as a rallier; you've seen that yourself. They don't care about me. I'm too far in advance of the great body of them, and have no actual connection--you know I'm really terribly lonely! Perhaps, though, I'm destined to reach the heights before you others, and if I do I'll try to light a beacon up there for you."

Morten sat silent for a little while, and then suddenly lifted his head.

"But you _must_, Pelle!" he said. "You say you're not the right man, but there's simply no one but you. Have you forgotten that you fired the Movement, that you were its simple faith? They one and all believed in you blindly like children, and were capable of nothing when you gave up. Why, it's not you, but the others--the whole Movement--who've been imprisoned! How glad I am that you've come back full of the strength gained there! You were smaller than you are now, Pelle, and even then something happened; now you may be successful even in great things."

Pelle sat and listened in the deepening twilight, wondering with a pleased embarra.s.sment. It was Morten who was nominating him--the severe, incorruptible Morten, who had always before been after him like his evil conscience.

"No, I'm going to be careful now," he said, "and it's your own fault, Morten. You've gone and p.r.i.c.ked my soul, and I'm awake now; I shan't go at anything blindly again. I have a feeling that what we two are joining in is the greatest thing the world has ever seen. It reaches further into the future than I can see, and so I'm working on myself. I study the books now--I got into the way of that in prison--and I must try to get a view out over the world. Something strange too has happened to me: I understand now what you meant when you said that man was holy! I'm no longer satisfied with being a small part of the whole, but think I must try to become a whole world by myself. It sounds foolish, but I feel as if I were in one of the scales and the rest of the world in the other; and until I can send the other scale up, I can't think of putting myself at the head of the mult.i.tude."

Evening had closed in before they were aware of it. The electric light from the railway-station yard threw its gleam upon the ceiling of the attic room and was reflected thence onto the two men who sat leaning forward in the half-darkness, talking quietly. Neither of them noticed that the door to the other room had opened, and a tall, thin girl stood on the threshold gazing at them with dilated pupils. She was in her chemise only, and it had slipped from one thin shoulder; and her feet were bare. The chemise reached only to her knees, leaving exposed a pair of sadly emaciated legs. A wheezing sound accompanied her breathing.

Pelle had raised his head to say something, but was silent at sight of the lean, white figure, which stood looking at him with great eyes that seemed to draw the darkness into them. The meeting with Morten had put him into an expectant frame of mind. He still had the call sounding in his ears, and gazed in amazement at the ghostly apparition. The delicate lines, spoiled by want, the expression of childlike terror of the dark--all this twofold picture of wanness stamped with the stamp of death, and of an unfulfilled promise of beauty--was it not the ghost of poverty, of wrong and oppression, a tortured apparition sent to admonish him? Was his brain failing? Were the horrible visions of the darkness of his cell returning? "Morten!" he whispered, touching his arm.

Morten sprang up. "Why, Johanna! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" he exclaimed reproachfully. He tried to make the girl go back into the other room, and to close the door; but she pushed past him out into the room.

"I _will_ see him!" she cried excitedly. "If you don't let me, I shall run away! He's hidden my clothes," she said to Pelle, gazing at him with her sunken eyes. "But I can easily run away in my chemise. I don't care!" Her voice was rough and coa.r.s.e from the damp air of the back yards.

"Now go back to bed, Johanna!" said Morten more gently.

"Remember what the doctor said. You'll catch cold and it'll all be wasted."

"What do I care!" she answered, breaking into a coa.r.s.e laugh. "You needn't waste anything on me; I've had no children by you." She was trembling with cold, but remained obstinately standing, and answered Morten's remonstrances with a torrent of abusive epithets. At last he gave it up and sat down wearily. The two men sat and looked at her in silence.

The child was evidently uncomfortable at the cessation of resistance, and became confused beneath their silent gaze. She tossed her head and looked defiantly from the one to the other, her eyes glowing with an unnatural brightness. Suddenly she sank upon the floor and began to cry.

"_This_ won't do," said Pelle gravely.

"I can't manage her," answered Morten hopelessly, "but you are strong enough."

Pelle stooped and took her up in his arms. She kicked and bit him.

"She's got a fit," he said to Morten. "We must take her out to the pump." She instantly became quiet and let him carry her to bed. The fever was raging in her, and he noticed how her body was racked with every breath she drew; it sounded like a leaky pump.

When Morten, with a few kind words, covered her up, she began to weep convulsively, but turned her face to the wall and stuffed the quilt into her mouth in order to hide it. She gradually became quieter and at last fell asleep; and the two men stole out of the room and closed the door after them.

Morten looked tired out, for he was still not strong. "I've let myself in for something that I'm not equal to," he said despondently.

"Who is the poor child?" asked Pelle softly.

"I don't know. She came to me this spring, almost dead drunk and in a fearful state; and the next day she regretted it and went off, but I got hold of her again. She's one of those poor creatures who have no other home than the big timber-yards, and there she's made a living by going from one to another of the bigger lads. I can get nothing out of her, but I've found out in other ways that she's lived among timber-stacks and in cellars for at least two years. The boys enticed dissolute men out there and sold her, taking most of the money themselves and giving her spirits to encourage her. From what I can make out there are whole organized bands which supply the dissolute men of the city with boys and girls. It makes one sick to think of it! The child must be an orphan, but won't, as I said, tell me anything. Once or twice I've heard her talk in her sleep of her grandmother; but when I've referred to it, she sulks and won't speak."

"Does she drink?" asked Pelle.

Morten nodded. "I've had some bad times with her on that account," he said. "She shows incredible ingenuity when it's a case of getting hold of liquor. At first she couldn't eat hot food at all, she was in such a state. She's altogether fearfully shattered in soul and body, and causes me much trouble."

"Why don't you get her into some home?"

"Our public inst.i.tutions for the care of children are not calculated to foster life in a down-trodden plant, and you'll not succeed with Johanna by punishment and treatment like any ordinary child. At times she's quite abnormally defiant and unmanageable, and makes me altogether despair; and then when I'm not looking, she lies and cries over herself.

There's much good in her in spite of everything, but she can't let it come out. I've tried getting her into a private family, where I knew they would be kind to her; but not many days had pa.s.sed before they came and said she'd run away. For a couple of weeks she wandered about, and then came back again to me. Late one evening when I came home, I found her sitting wet and shivering in the dark corner outside my door. I was quite touched, but she was angry because I saw her, and bit and kicked as she did just now. I had to carry her in by force. Her unhappy circ.u.mstances have thrown her quite off her balance, and I at any rate can't make her out. So that's how matters stand. I sleep on the sofa in here, but of course a bachelor's quarters are not exactly arranged for this. There's a lot of gossip too among the other lodgers."

"Does that trouble you?" asked Pelle in surprise.

"No, but the child, you see--she's terribly alive to that sort of thing.

And then she doesn't comprehend the circ.u.mstances herself. She's only about eleven or twelve, and yet she's already accustomed to pay for every kindness with her weak body. Can't you imagine how dreadful it is to look into her wondering eyes? The doctor says she's been injured internally and is probably tuberculous too; he thinks she'll never get right. And her soul! What an abyss for a child! For even one child to have such a fate is too much, and how many there are in the h.e.l.l in which we live!"

They were both silent for a little while, and then Morten rose. "You mustn't mind if I ask you to go," he said, "but I must get to work; there's something I've got to finish this evening. You won't mind, will you? Come and see me again as soon as you can, and thanks for coming this time!" he said as he pressed Pelle's hand.

"I'd like you to keep your eyes open," he said as he followed him to the door. "Perhaps you could help me to find out the history of the poor thing. You know a lot of poor people, and must have come in some way or other into her life, for I can see it in her. Didn't you notice how eager she was to have a look at you? Try to find out about it, will you?"

Pelle promised, but it was more easily said than done. When his thoughts searched the wide world of poverty to which he had drawn so close during the great lock-out, he realized that there were hundreds of children who might have suffered Johanna's fate.

V

Pelle had got out his old tools and started as shoemaker to the dwellers in his street. He no longer went about seeking for employment, and to Ellen it appeared as if he had given up all hope of getting any. But he was only waiting and arming himself: he was as sanguine as ever. The promise of the inconceivable was still unfulfilled in his mind.

There was no room for him up in the small flat with Ellen doing her washing there, so he took a room in the high bas.e.m.e.nt, and hung up a large placard in the window, on which he wrote with shoemaker's ink, "Come to me with your shoes, and we will help one another to stand on our feet." When La.s.se Frederik was not at work or at school, he was generally to be found downstairs with his father. He was a clever fellow and could give a hand in many ways. While they worked they talked about all sorts of things, and the boy related his experiences to his father.

He was changing very rapidly and talked sensibly about everything. Pelle was afraid he was getting too little out of his childhood. "Aren't you going up to play with them?" he asked, when the boys of the neighborhood rushed shouting past the bas.e.m.e.nt window; but La.s.se Frederik shook his head. He had played at being everything, from a criminal to a king, so there was nothing more to be had in that direction. He wanted something real now, and in the meantime had dreams of going to sea.

Although they all three worked, they could only just make ends meet; there was never anything over for extras. This was a sorrow to Ellen especially; Pelle did not seem to think much about it. If they only put something eatable before him, he was contented and did not mind what it was.

It was Ellen's dream that they should still, by toiling early and late, be able to work themselves up into another stratum; but Pelle was angry when she worked on after the time for leaving off. He would rather they were a little poor, if only they could afford to be human beings. Ellen did not understand it, but she saw that his mind was turned in another direction; he who had hitherto always fallen asleep over books would now become so absorbed in them that he did not hear the children playing round him. She had actually to rouse him when there was anything she wanted; and she began to fear this new power which had come in place of the old. It seemed like a curse that something should always work upon him to take him beyond her. And she dared not oppose it; she had bitter experience from former times.

"What are you looking for in those books?" she asked, sitting down beside him. Pelle looked up absently. His thoughts were in far-off regions where she had never been. What was he looking for? He tried to tell her, but could not explain it. "I'm looking for myself!" he said suddenly, striking boldly through everything. Ellen gazed at him, wondering and disappointed.

But she tried again. This time nothing should come between them and destroy her world. She no longer directly opposed anything; she meant to _go with him_ and be where he was. "Tell me what you are doing and let me take part in it," she said.

Pelle had been prepared to some extent to go into this by himself, and was glad to meet with a desire for development in her too. For the present the intellectual world resembled more or less a wilderness, and it was good to have a companion with him in traversing it.

He explained to her the thoughts that occupied him, and discussed them with her; and Ellen observed wonderingly that it was all about things that did not concern their own little well-being. She took great pains to comprehend this flight away from the things that mattered most; it was like children who always wanted what they ought not to have.

In the evening, when Boy Comfort and Sister had been put to bed, Pelle would take a book and read aloud. Ellen was occupied with some mending or other, and La.s.se Frederik, his ears standing out from his head, hung over a chair-back with his eyes fixed upon his father. Although he did not understand the half of it, he followed it attentively until Nature a.s.serted herself, and he fell asleep.

Ellen understood this very well, for she had great difficulty herself in keeping her eyes open. They were not stories that Pelle read. Sometimes he would stop to write something down or to discuss some question or other. He would have the most extraordinary ideas, and see a connection between things that seemed to Ellen to be as far apart as the poles; she could not help thinking that he might very well have studied to be a pastor. It suited him, however; his eyes became quite black when he was explaining some subject that he was thoroughly interested in, and his lips a.s.sumed an expression that made her long to kiss them. She had to confess to herself that in any case it was a very harmless evening occupation, and was glad that what was interesting him this time kept him at home at any rate.

One day Pelle became aware that she was not following him. She did not even believe in what he was doing; she had never believed in him blindly. "She's never really loved me either: that's why!" he thought despondently. Perhaps that explained why she took Boy Comfort as calmly as if he were her own child: she was not jealous! Pelle would willingly have submitted to a shower of reproaches if afterward she had given him a kiss wetted with hot tears; but Ellen was never thrown off her balance.

Happy though they were, he noticed that she, to a certain extent, reckoned without him, as if he had a weakness of which it was always well to take account. Her earlier experiences had left their mark upon her.

Ellen had been making plans with regard to the old room and the two small ante-rooms at the end of it. She was tired of washing; it paid wretchedly and gave a great deal of work, and she received very little consideration. She now wanted to let lodgings to artistes. She knew of more than one woman in their street who made a nice living by taking in artistes. "If I'd only got a couple of hundred krones (10 or 11 pounds) to start it with, I'm sure I should make it pay," she said. "And then you'd have more time and quiet for reading your books," she added coaxingly.

Pelle was against the plan. The better cla.s.s of artistes took rooms at the artiste hotels, and the people _they_ might expect to get had not much to pay with. He had seen a good deal of them from his bas.e.m.e.nt window, and had mended shoes for some of them: they were rather a soleless tribe. She said no more about it, but he could see that she was not convinced. She only dropped the subject because he was against it and it was he who would have to procure the money.