Pelle the Conqueror Part 162

"Now I think you should leave off work for to-day," said Pelle.

"Then I shouldn't be ready in time," answered Ellen, moving her knitting-needles more swiftly.

"Send it to a machine-knitter. You don't even earn your bread anyhow with that handicraft; and there must be a time for work and a time for rest, or else you'd not be a human being."

"Mother can make three ore (nearly a halfpenny) an hour by knitting,"

said La.s.se Frederik, who had made a careful calculation.

What did it matter? Ellen did not think she neglected anything else in doing it.

"It is stupid though!" exclaimed La.s.se Frederik suddenly. "Why doesn't wool grow on one's legs? Then you'd have none of the bother of shearing the wool off sheep, carding it, spinning it, and knitting stockings."

"Oh, what nonsense you're talking!" said Ellen, laughing.

"Well, men were hairy once," La.s.se Frederik continued. "It was a great pity that they didn't go on being it!"

Pelle did not think it such a pity, for it meant that they had taken over the care of themselves. Animals were born fully equipped. Even water-haters like cats and hens were born with the power of swimming; but men had to acquire whatever they had a use for. Nature did not equip them, because they had become responsible for themselves; they were the lords of creation.

"But then the poor ought to be hairy all over their bodies," Ellen objected. "Why doesn't Nature take as much care of the poor as of the animals? They can't do it themselves."

"Yes, but that's just what they _can_ do!" said Pelle, "for it's they who produce most things. Perhaps you think it's money that cultivates the land, or weaves materials, or drags coal out of the earth? It had to leave that alone; all the capital in the world can't so much as pick up a pin from the ground if there are no hands that it can pay to do it.

If the poor were born hairy, it would simply stamp him as an inferior being. Isn't it a wonder that Nature obstinately lets the poor men's children be born just as naked as the king's, in spite of all that we've gone through of want and hardship? If you exchange the prince's and the beggar's new-born babies, no one can say which is which. It's as if Providence was never tired of holding our stamp of n.o.bility up before us."

"Do you really think then that the world can be transformed?" said Ellen, looking affectionately at him. It seemed so wonderful that this Pelle, whom she could take in her arms, occupied himself with such great matters. And Pelle looked back at her affectionately and wonderingly.

She was the same to-day as on the day he first got to know her, perhaps as the day the world was created! She put nothing out on usury, but had been born with all she had. The world could indeed be transformed, but she would always remain as she was.

The post brought a letter from Morten. He was staying at present in Sicily, and thought of travelling along the north coast of Africa to the south of Spain. "And I may make an excursion in to the borders of the Desert, and try what riding on a camel is like," he wrote. He was well and in good spirits. It was strange to think that he was writing with open doors, while here they were struggling with the cold. He drank wine at every meal just as you drank pale ale here at home; and he wrote that the olive and orange harvests were just over.

"It must be lovely to be in such a place just for once!" said Ellen, with a sigh.

"When the new conditions gain a footing, it'll no longer be among unattainable things for the working-man," Pelle answered.

Brun now came down, having at last finished his work. "Ah, it's good to be at home!" he said, shaking himself; "it's a stormy night."

"Here's a letter from Morten," said Pelle, handing it to him.

The old man put on his spectacles.

XX

As soon as it was possible to get at the ground, the work of excavating for the foundations of the new workmen's houses was begun with full vigor. Brun took a great interest in the work, and watched it out in the cold from morning till evening. He wore an extra great-coat, and woollen gloves outside his fur-lined ones. Ellen had knitted him a large scarf, which he was to wrap round his mouth. She kept an eye on him from the windows, and had to fetch him in every now and then to thaw him. It was quite impossible, however, to keep him in; he was far too eager for the work to progress. When the frost stopped it, he still wandered about out there, fidgety and in low spirits.

On weekdays Pelle was never at home in daylight, but on Sunday he had to go out with him and see what had been done, as soon as day dawned. The old man came and knocked at Pelle's door. "Well, Pelle!" he said. "Will you soon be out of bed?"

"He must really be allowed to lie there while he has his coffee!" cried Ellen from the kitchen.

Brun ran once round the house to pa.s.s the time. He was not happy until he had shown it all to Pelle and got him to approve of the alterations.

This was where he had thought the road should go. And there, where the roads crossed, a little park with statuary would look nice. New ideas were always springing up. The librarian's imagination conjured up a whole town from the bare fields, with free schools and theaters and comfortable dwellings for the aged. "We must have a supply a.s.sociation and a school at once," he said; "and by degrees, as our numbers increase, we shall get all the rest. A poor-house and a prison are the only things I don't think we shall have any use for."

They would spend the whole morning out there, walking about and laying plans. Ellen had to fetch them in when dinner-time came. She generally found them standing over some hole in earnest conversation--just an ordinary, square hole in the earth, with mud or ice at the bottom. Such holes were always dug for houses; but these two talked about them as if they were the beginning of an entirely new earth!

Brun missed Pelle during the day, and watched for him quite as eagerly as Ellen when the time came for him to return from work. "I shall soon be quite jealous of him," said Ellen, as she drew Pelle into the kitchen to give him her evening greeting in private. "If he could he'd take you quite away from me."

When Pelle had been giving a lecture, he generally came home after Brun had gone to rest, and in the morning when he left home the old man was not up. Brun never went to town. He laid the blame on the weather, but in reality he did not know what he would do with himself in there. But if a couple of days pa.s.sed without his seeing Pelle, he became restless, lost interest in the excavating, and wandered about feebly without doing anything. Then he would suddenly put on his boots, excuse himself with some pressing errand, and set off over the fields toward the tram, while Ellen stood at the window watching him with a tender smile. She knew what was drawing him!

One would have thought there were ties of blood between these two, so dependent were they on one another. "How's the old man?" was Pelle's first question on entering; and Brun could not have followed Pelle's movements with tenderer admiration in his old days if he had been his father. While Pelle was away the old man went about as if he were always looking for something.

Ellen did not like his being out among the navvies in all kinds of weather. In the evening the warmth of the room affected his lungs and made him cough badly.

"It'll end in a regular cold," she said. She wanted him to stay in bed for a few days and try to get rid of the cold before it took a firm hold.

It was a constant subject of argument between them, but Ellen did not give in until she got her way. When once he had made this concession to the cold, it came on in earnest. The warmth of bed thawed the cold out of his body and made both eyes and nose run.

"It's a good thing we got you to bed in time," said Ellen. "And now you won't be allowed up until the worst cold weather is over, even if I have to hide your clothes." She tended him like a child and made "camel tea"

for him from flowers that she had gathered and dried in the summer.

When once he had gone to bed he quite liked it and took delight in being waited on, discovering a need of all kinds of things, so as to receive them from Ellen's hands.

"Now you're making yourself out worse than you are!" she said, laughing at him.

Brun laughed too. "You see, I've never been petted before," he said.

"From the time I was born, my parents hired people to look after me; that's why I'm so shrivelled up. I've had to buy everything. Well, there's a certain amount of justice in the fact that money kills affection, or else you'd both eat your cake and have it."

"Yes, it's a good thing the best can't be had for money," said Ellen, tucking the clothes about his feet. He was propped up with pillows, so that he could lie there and work. He had a map of the Hill Farm land beside him, and was making plans for a systematic laying out of the ground for building. He wrote down his ideas about it in a book that was to be appended to the plans. He worked from sunrise until the middle of the day, and during that time it was all that Ellen could do to keep the children away from him; Boy Comfort was on his way up to the old man every few minutes.

In the afternoon, when she had finished in the kitchen, she took the children up for an hour. They were given a picture-book and were placed at Brun's large writing-table, while Ellen seated herself by the window with her knitting and talked to the old man. From her seat she could follow the work out on the field, and had to give him a full description of how far they had got with each plot.

There were always several hundred men out there standing watching the work--a shivering crowd that never diminished. They were unemployed who had heard that something was going on out here, and long before the dawn of day they were standing there in the hope of coming in for something.

All day they streamed in and out, an endless chain of sad men. They resembled prisoners condemned hopelessly to tread a huge wheel; there was a broad track across the fields where they went.

Brun was troubled by the thought of these thousands of men who came all this way to look for a day's work and had to go back with a refusal. "We can't take more men on than there are already," he said to Pelle, "or they'll only get in one another's way. But perhaps we could begin to carry out some of our plans for the future. Can't we begin to make roads and such like, so that these men can get something to do?"

No, Pelle dared not agree to that.

"In the spring we shall want capital to start the tanners with a cooperative tannery," he said. "It'll be agreed on in their Union at an early date, on the presupposition that we contribute money; and I consider it very important to get it started. Our opponents find fault with us for getting our materials from abroad. It's untenable in the long run, and must come to an end now. As it is, the factory's hanging in the air; they can cut us off from the supply of materials, and then we're done. But if we only have our own tannery, the one business can be carried out thoroughly and can't be smashed up, and then we're ready to meet a lock-out in the trade."

"The hides!" interpolated Brun.

"There we come to agriculture. That's already arranged cooperatively, and will certainly not be used against us. We must anyhow join in there as soon as ever we get started--buy cattle and kill, ourselves, so that besides the hides we provide ourselves with good, cheap meat."

"Yes, yes, but the tannery won't swallow everything! We can afford to do some road-making."

"No, we can't!" Pelle declared decisively. "Remember we've also got to think of the supply a.s.sociations, or else all our work is useless; the one thing leads to the other. There's too much depending on what we're doing, and we mustn't hamper our undertaking with dead values that will drag it down. First the men and then the roads! The unemployed to-day must take care of themselves without our help."

"You're a little hard, I think," said Brun, somewhat hurt at Pelle's firmness, and drumming on the quilt with his fingers.