Pelle the Conqueror Part 166

"Comrades!" he cried earnestly, "perhaps we who are here shall not live to see the new, but it's through us that it'll some day become reality.

Providence has stopped at us, and has appointed us to fight for it.

Is that not an honor? Look! we come right from the bottom of everything--entirely naked; the old doesn't hang about our clothes, for we haven't any; we can clothe ourselves in the new. The old G.o.d, with His thousands of priests as a defence against injustice, we do not know; the moral of war we have never understood--we who have always been its victims. We believe in the Good, because we know that without the victory of goodness there will be no future. Our mind is light and can receive the light; we will lift up our little country and show that it has a mission on the earth. We who are little ourselves will show how the little ones keep up and a.s.sert themselves by the principle of goodness. We wish no harm to any one, therefore the good is on our side.

Nothing can in the long run keep us down! And now go home! Your wives and children are perhaps anxious on your account."

They stood for a moment as though still listening, and then dispersed in silence.

When Pelle sprang down from the cart, Morten came up and held out his hand. "You are strong, Pelle!" he said quietly.

"Where have you come from?" exclaimed Pelle in glad surprise.

"I came by the steamer this afternoon, and went straight up to the works. Brun told me what had happened and that you were here. It must have been a threatening meeting! There was a detachment of police over there in one of the side streets. What was going on?"

"They'd planned some demonstration or other, and would in that case have met with harsh treatment, I suppose," said Pelle gravely.

"It was well you got them to change their minds. I've seen these demonstrations in the South, where the police and the soldiers ride over the miserable unemployed. It's a sad sight."

They walked up across the fields toward "Daybreak." "To think that you're home again!" said Pelle, with childlike delight. "You never wrote a word about coming."

"Well, I'd meant to stay away another couple of months. But one day I saw the birds of pa.s.sage flying northward across the Mediterranean, and I began to be so homesick. It was just as well I came too, for now I can see Brun before he goes."

"Oh, is he going away, after all? That's been settled very quickly. This morning he couldn't make up his mind."

"It's this about Peter. The old man's fallen off very much in the last six months. But let's walk quicker! I'm longing to see Ellen and the children. How's the baby?"

"He's a little fatty!" said Pelle proudly. "Nine pounds without his clothes! Isn't that splendid? He's a regular sunshine baby."

XXIII

It is spring once more in Denmark.

It has been coming for a long time. The lark came before the frost was out of the ground, and then the starling appeared. And one day the air seemed suddenly to have become high and light so that the eye could once more see far out; there was a peculiar broad airiness in the wind--the breath of spring. It rushed along with messages of young, manly strength, and people threw back their shoulders and took deep breaths.

"Ah! the south wind!" they said, and opened their minds in antic.i.p.ation.

There he comes riding across the sea from the south, in the middle of his youthful train. Never before has his coming been so glorious! Is he not like the sun himself? The sea glitters under golden hoofs, and the air is quivering with sunbeam-darts caught and thrown in the wild gallop over the waves. Heigh-ho! Who'll be the first to reach the Danish sh.o.r.e?

Like a broad wind the spring advances over islands and belts, embracing the whole in arrogant strength. He sings in the children's open mouths as in a sh.e.l.l, and is lavish of his airy freshness. Women's teeth grow whiter with his kiss, and vie with their eyes in brightness; their cheeks glow beneath his touch, though they remain cool--like sun-ripe fruit under the morning dew. Men's brains whirl once more, and expand into an airy vault, as large as heaven itself, giddy with expectancy.

From high up comes the sound of the pa.s.sage birds in flight; the air is dizzy with its own infinitude.

Bareheaded and with a sunny smile the spring advances like a young giant intoxicated with his own strength, stretches out his arms and wakens everything with his song. Nothing can resist him. He touches lightly the heart of the sleeping earth, calling merrily into her dull ears to awake. And deep down the roots of life begin to stir and wake, and send the sap circulating once more. Hedgehogs and field-mice emerge sleepily and begin to busy themselves in the hedges. From the darkness below old decayed matter ferments and bubbles up, and the stagnant water in the ditches begins to run toward the sea.

Men stand and gaze in amazement after the open-handed giant, until they feel the growth in themselves and can afford something. All that was impossible before has suddenly become possible, and more besides. The farmer has long since had his plough in the earth, and the sower straps his basket on: the land is to be clothed again.

The days lengthen and become warmer; it is delightful to watch them and know that they are going upward. One day Ellen opens wide the double doors out to the garden; it is like a release. But what a quant.i.ty of dirt the light reveals!

"We shall have to be busy now, Petra Dreyer!" says Ellen. The little deformed sewing-woman smiles with her sad eyes, and the two women begin to sweep floors and wash windows. Now and then a little girl comes in from the garden complaining that she is not allowed to play with Anna's big doll. Boy Comfort is in the fields from morning to night, helping Grandfather Stolpe to build the new workmen's houses. A fine help his is! When Ellen fetches him in to meals, he is so dirty that she nearly loses all patience.

"I wonder how Old Brun is!" says Ellen suddenly, in the middle of her work. "We haven't heard from him now for three days. It's quite sad to think he's so far away. I only hope they'll look after him properly."

Pelle is tremendously busy, and they do not see much of him. The Movement has taken up his idea now in earnest, and he is to have the management of it all, so that he has his hands full. "Have I got a husband or not?" says Ellen, when she gets hold of him now and again.

"It'll soon be better," he answers. "When once we've got the machinery properly started, it'll go by itself."

Morten is the only one who has not set seriously to work on anything, and in the midst of all the bustle has an incongruous effect. "He's thinking!" says Ellen, stopping in the middle of beating a carpet.

"Thank goodness we're not all authors!"

Pelle would like to draw him into the business. "There's so much to write and lecture about," he says, "and you could do all that so much better than I."

"Oh, no, I couldn't," says Morten. "Your work's growing in me too. I'm always thinking about it and have thought of giving a hand too, but I can't. If I ever contribute anything to your great work, it'll be in some other way."

"You're doing nothing with your book about the sun either," says Pelle anxiously.

"No, because whenever I set to work on it, it mixes up so strangely with your work, and I can't keep the ideas apart. At present I feel like a mole, digging blindly in the black earth under the mighty tree of life.

I dig and search, and am continually coming across the thick roots of the huge thing above the surface. I can't see them, but I can hear sounds from above there, and it hurts me not to be able to follow them into their strong connection up in the light."

One Sunday morning at the end of May they were sitting out in the garden. The cradle had been moved out into the sun, and Pelle and Ellen were sitting one on either side, talking over domestic matters. Ellen had so much to tell him when she had him to herself. The child lay staring up into the sky with its dark eyes that were the image of Ellen's. He was brown and chubby; any one could see that he had been conceived in sunshine and love.

La.s.se Frederik was sitting by the hedge painting a picture that Pelle was not to see until it was finished. He went to the drawing-school now, and was clever. He had a good eye for figures, and poor people especially he hit off in any position. He had a light hand, and in two or three lines could give what his father had had to work at carefully.

"You cheat!" Pelle often said, half resentfully. '"It won't bear looking closely at." He had to admit, however, that it was a good likeness.

"Well, can't I see the picture soon?" he called across. He was very curious.

"Yes, it's finished now," said La.s.se Frederik, coming up with it.

The picture represented a street in which stood a solitary milk-cart, and behind the cart lay a boy with bleeding head. "He fell asleep because he had to get up so early," La.s.se Frederik explained; "and then when the cart started he tumbled backward." The morning emptiness of the street was well done, but the blood was too brilliantly red.

"It's very unpleasant," said Ellen, with a shudder. "But it's true."

Morten came home from town with a big letter which he handed to Pelle, saying: "Here's news for you from Brun." Pelle went into the house to read it undisturbed, and a little while after came out again.

"Yes, important news this time," he said with some emotion. "Would you like to hear it?" he asked, sitting down.

"DEAR PELLE:

"I am sitting up in bed to write to you. I am poorly, and have been for some days; but I hope it is nothing serious. We all have to die some day, but I should like to start on the great voyage round the world from your home. I long to see 'Daybreak' and all of you, and I feel very lonely. If the business could do without you for a few days, I should be so glad if you would come down here. Then we could go home together, for I should not like to venture on the journey by myself.

"The sun is just going down, and sends its last rays in to me. It has been gray and gloomy all day, but now the sun has broken through the clouds, and kisses the earth and me, poor old man, too, in farewell. It makes me want to say something to you, Pelle, for my day was like this before I knew you--endlessly long and gray! When you are the last member of a dying family, you have to bear the gray existence of the others too.

"I have often thought how wonderful the hidden force of life is.

Intercourse with you has been like a lever to me, although I knew well that I should not accomplish anything more, and had no one to come after me. I feel, nevertheless, through you, in alliance with the future.

You are in the ascendant and must look upon me as something that is vanishing. But look how life makes us all live by using us each in his own way. Be strong in your faith in the future; with you lies the development. I wish with all my heart that I were an awakening proletary and stood in the dawn of day; but I am nevertheless glad because my eyes will be closed by the new in you.

"I have imagined that life was tiresome and dull and far too well known.

I had it arranged in my catalogues. And look how it renews itself! In my old age I have experienced its eternal youth. Formerly I had never cared about the country; in my mind it was a place where you waded either in dust or mud. The black earth appeared to me horrible rather than anything else; it was only a.s.sociated in my mind with the churchyard.