Pelle the Conqueror Part 151

On Sundays they packed the perambulator and made excursions into the surrounding country, just as in the old days when La.s.se Frederik was the only child and sat in his carriage like a little crown-prince. Now he wheeled the carriage in which Boy Comfort sat in state; and when Sister grew tired she was placed upon the ap.r.o.n with her legs hanging down.

They went in a different direction each time, and came to places that even La.s.se Frederik did not know. Close in to the back of the town lay nice old orchards, and in the midst of them a low straw-thatched building, which had evidently once been the dwelling-house on a farm.

They came upon it quite by chance from a side-road, and discovered that the town was busy building barracks beyond this little idyll too, and shutting it in. When the sun shone they sat down on a bank and ate their dinner; Pelle and La.s.se Frederik vied with one another in performing feats of strength on the withered gra.s.s; and Ellen hunted for winter boughs to decorate the house with.

On one of their excursions they crossed a boggy piece of ground on which grew willow copse; behind it rose cultivated land. They followed the field roads with no definite aim, and chanced upon an uninhabited, somewhat dilapidated house, which stood in the middle of the rising ground with a view over Copenhagen, and surrounded by a large, overgrown garden. On an old, rotten board stood the words "To let," but nothing was said as to where application was to be made.

"That's just the sort of house you'd like," said Ellen, for Pelle had stopped.

"It would be nice to see the inside," he said. "I expect the key's to be got at the farm up there."

La.s.se Frederik ran up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who wore a stand-up collar and was smoking a cigar.

The house belonged to the hill farm, and had been built for the parents of the present owner. The old people had had the odd idea of calling it "Daybreak," and the name was painted in large letters on the east gable.

The house had stood empty since they died some years ago, and looked strangely lifeless; the window-panes were broken and looked like dead eyes, and the floors were covered with filth.

"No, I don't like it!" said Ellen.

Pelle showed her, however, that the house was good enough, the doors and windows fitted well, and the whole needed only to be overhauled. There were four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, and some rooms above, one of these being a large attic facing south. The garden was more than an acre in extent, and in the yard was an out-house fitted up for fowls and rabbits, the rent was four hundred krones (22).

Pelle and La.s.se Frederik went all over it again and again, and made the most wonderful discoveries; but when Pelle heard, the price, he grew serious. "Then we may as well give it up," he said.

Ellen did not answer, but on the way home she reckoned it out to herself; she could see how disappointed he was. "It'll be fifteen krones (17 s.) more a month than we now pay," she suddenly exclaimed. "But supposing we could get something out of the garden, and kept fowls!

Perhaps, too, we might let the upper floor furnished."

Pelle looked gratefully at her. "I'll undertake to get several hundred krones' worth out of the garden," he said.

They were tired out when they got home, for after all it was a long way out. "It's far away from everything," said Ellen. "You'd have to try to buy a second-hand bicycle." Pelle suddenly understood from the tone of her voice that she herself would be lonely out there.

"We'd better put it out of our thoughts," he said, "and look for a three-roomed flat in town. The other is unpractical after all."

When he returned from his work the following evening, Ellen had a surprise for him. "I've been out and taken the house," she said. "It's not so far from the tram after all, and we get it for three hundred krones (16 10s.) the first year. The man promised to put it all into good order by removing-day. Aren't you glad?"

"Yes, if only you'll be happy there," said Pelle, putting his arms round her.

The children were delighted. They were to live out there in the bright world into which they had peeped, as a rule, only on very festive occasions--to wander about there every day, and always eat the food they brought with them in the open air.

A week later they moved out. Pelle did not think they could afford to hire men to do the removing. He borrowed a four-wheeled hand-cart--the same that had carried Ellen's furniture from Chapel Road--and in the course of Sat.u.r.day evening and Sunday morning he and La.s.se Frederik took out the things. "Queen Theresa" gave Ellen a helping hand with the packing. The last load was done very quickly, as they had to be out of the town before church-time. They half ran with it, Boy Comfort having been placed in a tub on the top of the load. Behind came Ellen with little Anna, and last of all fat "Queen Theresa" with some pot plants that had to be taken with special care. It was quite a procession.

They were in a tremendous bustle all day. The cleaning had been very badly done and Ellen and "Queen Theresa" had to do it all over again.

Well, it was only what they might have expected! When you moved you always had to clean two flats, the one you left and the one you went into. There had not been much done in the way of repairs either, but that too was what one was accustomed to. Landlords were the same all the world over. There was little use in making a fuss; they were there, and the agreement was signed. Pelle would have to see to it by degrees.

By evening the house was so far in order that it could be slept in.

"Now we'll stop for to-day," said Ellen. "We mustn't forget that it's Sunday." They carried chairs out into the garden and had their supper there, Pelle having laid an old door upon a barrel for a table. Every time "Queen Theresa" leaned forward with her elbows on the table, the whole thing threatened to upset, and then she screamed. She was a pastor's daughter, and her surroundings now made her melancholy. "I haven't sat like this and had supper out of doors since I ran away from home as a fifteen-year-old girl," she said, wiping her eyes.

"Poor soul!" said Ellen, when they had gone with her along the road to the tram. "She's certainly gone through a good deal. She's got no one to care about her except us."

"Is she really a pastor's daughter?" asked Pelle. "Women of that kind always pretend to be somebody of a better cla.s.s who has been unfortunate."

"Oh, yes, it's true enough. She ran away from home because she couldn't stand it. She wasn't allowed to laugh, but had to be always praying and thinking about G.o.d. Her parents have cursed her."

They went for a little walk behind the farm to see the evening sky.

Ellen was very talkative, and already had a thousand plans in her head. She was going to plant a great many fruit-bushes and make a kitchen-garden; and they would keep a number of fowls and rabbits. Next summer she would have early vegetables that could be sold in town.

Pelle was only half attending as he walked beside her and gazed at the glowing evening sky, which, with its long fiery lines, resembled a distant prairie-fire. There was quiet happiness within him and around him. He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life.

Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.

"You're so silent!" said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him upon the dike.

"I feel as if you had just become my bride," he said, taking her into his arms.

XI

Brun came in every morning before he went to the library to see how the work was progressing; he was greatly interested in it, and began to look younger. He was always urging Pelle on, and suggesting plans for extensions. "If money's wanted, just let me know," he said. He longed to see the effect of this new system, and was always asking Pelle whether he noticed anything. When he heard that the boot and shoe manufacturers had held a meeting to decide what should be their att.i.tude to the undertaking, he laughed and wanted to turn on more steam, quite indifferent to what it might cost. The old philosopher had become as impatient as a child; an interest had come into his old-man's existence, and he was afraid of not getting the whole of it. "It's all very well for you to take your time," he said, "but remember that I'm old and sickly into the bargain."

He treated Pelle as a son, and generally said "thou" to him.

Pelle held back. So much depended upon the success of this venture, and he watched it anxiously; it was as though he had been chosen to question the future. Within the Movement his undertaking was followed with attention; the working-men's papers wrote about it, but awaited results.

There were opinions for and against.

He wanted to give a good answer, and decided on his measures with much care; he immediately dismissed such workmen as were not suited to the plan. It made bad blood, but there was no help for that. He was busy everywhere, and where he could not go himself, La.s.se Frederik went, for the boy had given up his other occupations and helped in the shop and ran errands. Ellen wanted to help too. "We can keep a servant, and then I'll learn book-keeping and keep the accounts and mind the shop."

Pelle would not agree to this, however. He was not going to have her working for their maintenance any more. A woman's place was with her children!

"Nowadays the women take part in all kinds of work," Ellen urged.

It did not matter; he had his own opinion on the subject. It was enough that the men should do the producing. Would she have them stand on the pavement and watch the women doing the work? It was very possible it did not sound liberal-minded, but he did not care. Women were like beautiful flowers, whatever people said about their being man's equal. They wore their happiness off when they had to work for their living; he had seen enough to know that.

She did not like standing and looking on while the two men were so busy, so she attacked the garden, and sowed herbs and planted cabbage in the beds that lay like thick down quilts upon the earth; and when it happened that things came up, she was happy. She had bought a gardening book, and puzzled her head about the various kinds and their treatment.

Pelle came to her a.s.sistance after working hours, and everything that he handled flourished. This made Ellen a little angry. She did exactly what he did, but it was just as if the plants made a difference between them.

"I've got the countryman's hand," he said, laughing.

All Sunday they were busy. The whole family was in the garden, La.s.se Frederik digging, Pelle pruning the espalier round the garden door, and Ellen tying it up. The children were trying to help everybody and were mostly a hindrance. One or other of them was always doing something wrong, treading on the beds or pulling up the plants. How extraordinarily stupid they were! Regular town children! They could not even understand when they were told! Pelle could not comprehend it, and sometimes nearly lost patience.

One day when little Anna came to him unsuspectingly to show him a flowering branch of an apple-tree which she had broken off, he was angry and took her roughly by the arm; but when he saw the frightened expression in her face, he remembered the man with the strange eyes, who had taught him in his childhood to manage the cattle without using anything but his hands, and he was ashamed of himself. He took the little ones by the hand, went round the garden with them and told them about the trees and bushes, which were alive just like themselves, and only wanted to do all they could for the two children. The branches were their arms and legs, so they could imagine how dreadful it was to pull them off. Sister turned pale and said nothing, but Boy Comfort, who at last had decided, to open his mouth and had become quite a chatterbox, jabbered away and stuck out his little stomach like a drummer. He was a st.u.r.dy little fellow, and Ellen's eyes followed him proudly as he went round the garden.

The knowledge that everything was alive had a remarkable effect upon the two children. They always went about hand in hand, and kept carefully to the paths. All round them the earth was breaking and curious things coming up out of it. The beans had a bucket turned over them to protect them, and the lettuces put up folded hands as if they were praying for fine weather. Every morning when the children made their round of the garden, new things had come up. "'Oook, 'ook!" exclaimed Boy Comfort, pointing to the beds. They stood at a safe distance and talked to one another about the new wonders, bending over with their hands upon their backs as if afraid that the new thing would s.n.a.t.c.h at their fingers.

Sometimes Boy Comfort's chubby hand would come out involuntarily and want to take hold of things; but he withdrew it in alarm as if he had burnt himself, saying "Ow!" and then the two children would run as fast as they could up to the house.

For them the garden was a wonder-world full of delights--and full of terrors. They soon became familiar with the plants in their own way, and entered into a kind of mystic companionship with them, met them in a friendly way and exchanged opinions--like beings from different worlds, meeting on the threshold. There was always something mysterious about their new friends, which kept them at a distance; they did not give much information about themselves. When they were asked: "Who called you?"

they answered quickly: "Mother Ellen!" But if they were asked what it looked like down in the earth, they made no answer whatever. The garden continued to be an inexhaustible world to the children, no matter how much they trotted about in it. Every day they went on new journeys of discovery in under elder and thorn bushes; there were even places which they had not yet got at, and others into which they did not venture at all. They went near to them many times in the course of the day, and peeped over the gooseberry bushes into the horrible darkness that sat in there like an evil being and had no name. Out in the brilliant sunshine on the path they stood and challenged it, Sister spitting until her chin and pinafore were wet, and Boy Comfort laboriously picking up stones and throwing them in. He was so fat that he could not bend down, but had to squat on his heels whenever he wanted to pick up anything. And then suddenly they would rush away to the house in a panic of fear.

It was not necessary to be a child to follow the life in the garden.

A wonderful power of growing filled everything, and in the night it crackled and rustled out in the moonlight, branches stretched themselves in fresh growths, the sap broke through the old bark in the form of flowers and new "eyes." It was as though Pelle and Ellen's happy zeal had been infectious; the half-stifled fruit-trees that had not borne for many years revived and answered the gay voices by blossoming luxuriantly. It was a race between human beings and plants as to who should accomplish the most, and between the plants themselves as to which could make the best show. "The spring is lavishing its flowers and green things upon us," said Pelle. He had never seen a nest that was so beautiful as his; he had at last made a home.

It was pleasant here. Virginia creeper and purple clematis covered the whole front of the house and hung down before the garden door, where Ellen liked to sit with her work, keeping an eye on the little ones playing on the gra.s.s, where she liked best to sit with Pelle on Sundays, when the Copenhagen families came wandering past on their little country excursions. They often stopped outside the hedge and exclaimed: "Oh, what a lovely home!"