Pelle the Conqueror Part 85

"I don't rightly understand it," he said at last. "But to-day I joined the trade union. I shan't stand still and look on when there's anything big to be done."

Morten nodded, faintly smiling. He was tired now, and hardly heard what Pelle was saying. "I must go to bed now so that I can get up at one. But where do you live? I'll come and see you some time. How queer it is that we should have run across one another here!"

"I live out in Kristianshavn--in the 'Ark,' if you know where that is!"

"That's a queer sort of house to have tumbled into! I know the 'Ark'

very well, it's been so often described in the papers. There's all sorts of people live there!"

"I don't know anything about that," said Pelle, half offended. "I like the people well enough.... But it's capital that we should have run into one another's arms like this! What bit of luck, eh? And I behaved like a clown and kept out of your way? But that was when I was going to the dogs, and hated everybody! But now nothing's going to come between us again, you may lay to that!"

"That's good, but now be off with you," replied Morten, smiling; he was already half-undressed.

"I'm going, I'm going!" said Pelle, and he picked up his hat, and stood for a moment gazing out over the city. "But it's magnificent, what you were saying about things just now!" he cried suddenly. "If I had the strength of all us poor folks in me, I'd break out right away and conquer the whole of it! If such a ma.s.s of wealth were shared out there'd never be any poverty any more!" He stood there with his arms uplifted, as though he held it all in his hands. Then he laughed uproariously. He looked full of energy. Morten lay half asleep, staring at him and saying nothing. And then he went.

Pipman scolded Pelle outrageously when at last he returned. "Curse it all, what are you thinking of? To go strolling about and playing the duke while such as we can sit here working our eyes out of our heads!

And we have to go thirsty too! Now don't you dream of being insolent to me, or there'll be an end of the matter. I am excessively annoyed!"

He held out his hand in pathetic expostulation, although Pelle had no intention of answering him. He no longer took Pipman seriously. "Devil fry me, but a man must sit here and drink the clothes off his body while a lout like you goes for a stroll!"

Pelle was standing there counting the week's earnings when he suddenly burst into a loud laugh as his glance fell upon Pipman. His blue naked shanks, miserably shivering under his leather ap.r.o.n, looked so enormously ridiculous when contrasted with the fully-dressed body and the venerable beard.

"Yes, you grin!" said Pipman, laughing too. "But suppose it was you had to take off your trousers in front of the old clothes' man, and wanted to get upstairs respectably! Those d.a.m.ned brats! 'Pipman's got D. T.,'

they yell. 'Pipman's got D. T. And G.o.d knows I haven't got D. T., but I haven't got any trousers, and that's just the trouble! And these accursed open staircases! Olsen's hired girl took the opportunity, and you may be sure she saw all there was to see! You might lend me your old bags!"

Pelle opened his green chest and took out his work-day trousers.

"You'd better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest of yours," said Pipman surlily. "After all, there might be a thief here, near heaven as we are!"

Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound. A few doves were flying there, catching the last red rays of the sun on their white pinions, while down in the shaft the darkness lay like a hot lilac mist. The hurdy-gurdy man had come home and was playing his evening tune down there to the dancing children, while the inhabitants of the "Ark"

were gossiping and squabbling from gallery to gallery. Now and again a faint vibrating note rose upward, and all fell silent. This was the dwarf Vinslev, who sat playing his flute somewhere in his den deep within the "Ark." He always hid himself right away when he played, for at such times he was like a sick animal, and sat quaking in his lair.

The notes of his flute were so sweet, as they came trickling out of his hiding place, that they seemed like a song or a lament from another world. And the restless creatures in the "Ark" must perforce be silent and listen. Now Vinslev was in one of his gentle moods, and one somehow felt better for hearing him. But at times, in his dark moods, the devil seemed to enter into him, and breathed such music into his crazy mind that all his hearers felt a panic terror. Then the decaying timbers of the "Ark" seemed to expand and form a vast monstrous, pitch-black forest, in which all terror lay lurking, and one must strike out blindly in order to avoid being trampled on. The hea.r.s.e-driver in the fourth story, who at other times was so gentle in his cups, would beat his wife shamefully, and the two lay about in their den drinking and fighting in self-defence. And Vinslev's devilish flute was to blame when Johnsen vainly bewailed his miserable life and ended it under the sewer-grating.

But there was nothing to be said about the matter; Vinslev played the flute, and Johnsen's suicide was a death like any other.

Now the devil was going about with a ring in his nose; Vinslev's playing was like a gentle breeze that played on people's hearts, so that they opened like flowers. This was his good time.

Pelle knew all this, although he had not long been here; but it was nothing to him. For he wore the conqueror's shirt of mail, such as Father La.s.se had dreamed of for him.

Down in the third story, on the built-out gallery, another sort of magic was at work. A climbing pelargonium and some ivy had wound themselves round the broken beams and met overhead, and there hung a little red paper lantern, which cast a cheerful glow over it all.

It was as though the summer night had found a sanctuary in the heart of this wilderness of stone. Under the lantern sat Madam Johnsen and her daughter sewing; and Hanne's face glowed like a rose in the night, and every now and then she turned it up toward Pelle and smiled, and made an impatient movement of her head. Then Pelle turned away a little, re-crossed his leg, and leant over on the other side, restless as a horse in blinkers.

Close behind him his neighbor, Madam Frandsen, was bustling about her little kitchen. The door stood open on to the platform, and she chattered incessantly, half to herself and half to Pelle, about her gout, her dead husband, and her lout of a son. She needed to rest her body, did this old woman. "My G.o.d, yes; and here I have to keep slaving and getting his food ready for Ferdinand from morning to night and from night to morning again. And he doesn't even trouble himself to come home to it. I can't go looking into his wild ways; all I can do is to sit here and worry and keep his meals warm. Now that's a tasty little bit; and he'll soon come when he's hungry, I tell myself. Ah, yes, our young days, they're soon gone. And you stand there and stare like a baa-lamb and the girl down there is nodding at you fit to crick her neck! Yes, the men are a queer race; they pretend they wouldn't dare--and yet who is it causes all the misfortunes?"

"She doesn't want anything to do with me!" said Pelle grumpily; "she's just playing with me."

"Yes, a girl goes on playing with a white mouse until she gets it!

You ought to be ashamed to stand there hanging your head! So young and well-grown as you are too! You cut her tail-feathers off, and you'll get a good wife!" She nudged him in the side with her elbow.

Then at last Pelle made up his mind to go clattering down the stairs to the third story, and along the gallery.

"Why have you been so stand-offish to-day?" said Madam Johnsen, making room for him. "You know you are always very welcome. What are all these preliminaries for?"

"Pelle is short-sighted; he can't see as far as this," said Hanne, tossing her head. She sat there turning her head about; she gazed at him smiling, her head thrown back and her mouth open. The light fell on her white teeth.

"Shall we get fine weather to-morrow?" asked the mother.

Pelle thought they would; he gazed up at the little speck of sky in a weather-wise manner. Hanne laughed.

"Are you a weather-prophet, Pelle? But you haven't any corns!"

"Now stop your teasing, child!" said the mother, pretending to slap her.

"If it's fine to-morrow we want to go into the woods. Will you come with us?"

Pelle would be glad to go; but he hesitated slightly before answering.

"Come with us, Pelle," said Hanne, and she laid her hand invitingly on his shoulder. "And then you shall be my young man. It's so tedious going to the woods with the old lady; and then I want to be able to do as I like." She made a challenging movement with her head.

"Then we'll go from the North Gate by omnibus; I don't care a bit about going by train."

"From the North Gate? But it doesn't exist any longer, mummy! But there are still omnibuses running from the Triangle."

"Well then, from the Triangle, you clever one! Can I help it if they go pulling everything down? When I was a girl that North Gate was a splendid place. From there you could get a view over the country where my home was, and the summer nights were never so fine as on the wall.

One didn't know what it was to feel the cold then. If one's clothes were thin one's heart was young."

Hanne went into the kitchen to make coffee. The door stood open. She hummed at her task and now and again joined in the conversation. Then she came out, serving Pelle with a cracked tea-tray. "But you look very peculiar tonight!" She touched Pelle's face and gazed at him searchingly.

"I joined the trade union to-day," answered Pelle; he still had the feeling that of something unusual, and felt as though everybody must notice something about him.

Hanne burst out laughing. "Is that where you got that black sign on your forehead? Just look, mother, just look at him! The trade mark!" She turned her head toward the old woman.

"Ah, the rogue!" said the old woman, laughing. "Now she's smeared soot over your face!" She wetted her ap.r.o.n with her tongue and began to rub the soot away, Hanne standing behind him and holding his head in both hands so that he should not move. "Thank your stars that Pelle's a good-natured fellow," said the old woman, as she rubbed. "Or else he'd take it in bad part!"

Pelle himself laughed shamefacedly.

The hea.r.s.e-driver came up through the trap in the gallery and turned round to mount to the fourth story. "Good evening!" he said, in his deep ba.s.s voice, as he approached them; "and good digestion, too, I ought to say!" He carried a great ham under his arm.

"Lord o' my body!" whispered Madam Johnsen. "There he is again with his ham; that means he's wasted the whole week's wages again. They've always got more than enough ham and bacon up there, poor things, but they've seldom got bread as well."

Now one sound was heard in the "Ark," now another. The crying of children which drifted so mournfully out of the long corridors whenever a door was opened turned to a feeble clucking every time some belated mother came rushing home from work to clasp the little one to her breast. And there was one that went on crying whether the mother was at home or at work. Her milk had failed her.

From somewhere down in the cellars the sleepy tones of a cradle-song rose up through the shaft; it was only "Grete with the child," who was singing her rag-doll asleep. The real mothers did not sing.

"She's always bawling away," said Hanne; "those who've got real children haven't got strength left to sing. But her brat doesn't need any food; and that makes a lot of difference when one is poor."

"To-day she was washing and ironing the child's things to make her fine for to-morrow, when her father comes. He is a lieutenant," said Hanne.

"Is he coming to-morrow, then?" asked Pelle naively.