Pelle was bound to the “Family” by peculiar ties. The three orphans were the first to reach him a friendly helping hand when he stood in the open street three days after his landing, robbed of his last penny.
He had come over feeling important enough. He had not slept all night on his bench between decks among the cattle. Excitement had kept him awake; and he lay there making far-reaching plans concerning himself and his twenty-five kroner. He was up on deck by the first light of morning, gazing at the shore, where the great capital with its towers and factory-chimneys showed out of the mist. Above the city floated its misty light, which reddened in the morning sun, and gave a splendor to the prospect. And the passage between the forts and the naval harbor was sufficiently magnificent to impress him. The crowd on the landing-stage before the steamer laid alongside and the cabmen and porters began shouting and calling, was enough to stupefy him, but he had made up his mind beforehand that nothing should disconcert him. It would have been difficult enough in any case to disentangle himself from all this confusion.
And then Fortune herself was on his side. Down on the quay stood a thick-set, jovial man, who looked familiarly at Pelle; he did not shout and bawl, but merely said quietly, “Good-day, countryman,” and offered Pelle board and lodging for two kroner a day. It was good to find a countryman in all this bustle, and Pelle confidingly put himself in his hands. He was remarkably helpful; Pelle was by no means allowed to carry the green chest. “I’ll soon have that brought along!” said the man, and he answered everything with a jolly “I’ll soon arrange that; you just leave that to me!”
When three days had gone by, he presented Pelle with a circumstantial account, which amounted exactly to five and twenty kroner. It was a curious chance that Pelle had just that amount of money. He was not willing to be done out of it, but the boarding-house keeper, Elleby, called in a policeman from the street, and Pelle had to pay.
He was standing in the street with his green box, helpless and bewildered, not knowing what to be about. Then a little boy came whistling up to him and asked if he could not help him. “I can easily carry the box alone, to wherever you want it, but it will cost twenty- five öre and ten öre for the barrow. But if I just take one handle it will be only ten öre,” he said, and he looked Pelle over in a business- like manner. He did not seem to be more than nine or ten years old.
“But I don’t know where I shall go,” said Pelle, almost crying. “I’ve been turned out on the street and have nowhere where I can turn. I am quite a stranger here in the city and all my money has been taken from me.”
The youngster made a gesture in the air as though butting something with his head. “Yes, that’s a cursed business. You’ve fallen into the hands of the farmer-catchers, my lad. So you must come home with us—you can very well stay with us, if you don’t mind lying on the floor.”
“But what will your parents say if you go dragging me home?”
“I haven’t any parents, and Marie and Peter, they’ll say nothing. Just come with me, and, after all, you can get work with old Pipman. Where do you come from?”
“From Bornholm.”
“So did we! That’s to say, a long time ago, when we were quite children. Come along with me, countryman!” The boy laughed delightedly and seized one handle of the chest.
It was also, to be sure, a fellow-countryman who had robbed him; but none the less he went with the boy; it was not in Pelle’s nature to be distrustful.
So he had entered the “Ark,” under the protection of a child. The sister, a little older than the other two, found little Karl’s action entirely reasonable, and the three waifs, who had formerly been shy and retiring, quickly attached themselves to Pelle. They found him in the street and treated him like an elder comrade, who was a stranger, and needed protection. They afforded him his first glimpse of the great city, and they helped him to get work from Pipman.
On the day after the outing in the forest, Pelle moved over to the row of attics, into a room near the “Family,” which was standing empty just then. Marie helped him to get tidy and to bring his things along, and with an easier mind he shook himself free of his burdensome relations with Pipman. There was an end of his profit-sharing, and all the recriminations which were involved in it. Now he could enter into direct relations with the employers and look his comrades straight in the eyes. For various reasons it had been a humiliating time; but he had no feeling of resentment toward Pipman; he had learned more with him in a few months than during his whole apprenticeship at home.
He obtained a few necessary tools from an ironmonger, and bought a bench and a bed for ready money. From the master-shoemaker he obtained as a beginning some material for children’s shoes, which he made at odd times. His principal living he got from Master Beck in Market Street.
Beck was a man of the old school; his clientele consisted principally of night watchmen, pilots, and old seamen, who lived out in Kristianshavn. Although he was born and had grown up in Copenhagen, he was like a country shoemaker to look at, going about in canvas slippers which his daughter made for him, and in the mornings he smoked his long pipe at the house-door. He had old-fashioned views concerning handwork, and was delighted with Pelle, who could strain any piece of greased leather and was not afraid to strap a pair of old dubbin’d boots with it. Beck’s work could not well be given out to do at home, and Pelle willingly established himself in the workshop and was afraid of no work that came his way. But he would not accept bed and board from his master in the old-fashioned way.
From the very first day this change was an improvement. He worked heart and soul and began to put by something with which to pay off his debt to Sort. Now he saw the day in the distance when he should be able to send for Father Lasse.
In the morning, when the dwellers on the roof, drunken with sleep, tumbled out into the long gangway, in order to go to their work, before the quarter-to-six whistle sounded, Pelle already sat in his room hammering on his cobbler’s last. About seven o’clock he went to Beck’s workshop, if there was anything for him to do there. And he received orders too from the dwellers in the “Ark.”
In connection with this work he acquired an item of practical experience, an idea which was like a fruitful seed which lay germinating where it fell and continually produced fresh fruit. It was equivalent to an improvement in his circumstances to discover that he had shaken off one parasite; if only he could send the other after him and keep all his profits for himself!
That sounded quite fantastic, but Pelle had no desire to climb up to the heights only to fall flat on the earth again. He had obtained certain tangible experience, and he wanted to know how far it would take him. While he sat there working he pursued the question in and out among his thoughts, so that he could properly consider it.
Pipman was superfluous as a middleman; one could get a little work without the necessity of going to him and pouring a flask of brandy down his thirsty gullet. But was it any more reasonable that the shoes Pelle made should go to the customer by way of the Court shoemaker and yield him carriages and high living? Could not Pelle himself establish relations with his customers? And shake off Meyer as he had shaken off Pipman? Why, of course! It was said that the Court shoemaker paid taxes on a yearly income of thirty thousand kroner. “That ought to be evenly divided among all those who work for him!” thought Pelle, as he hammered away at his pegs. “Then Father Lasse wouldn’t need to stay at home a day longer, or drag himself through life so miserably.”
Here was something which he could take in hand with the feeling that he was setting himself a practical problem in economics—and one that apparently had nothing to do with his easy belief in luck. This idea was always lurking somewhere in secrecy, and held him upright through everything—although it did not afford him any definite assistance. A hardly earned instinct told him that it was only among poor people that this idea could be developed. This belief was his family inheritance, and he would retain it faithfully through all vicissitudes; as millions had done before him, always ready to cope with the unknown, until they reached the grave and resigned the inherited dream. There lay hope for himself in this, but if he miscarried, the hope itself would remain in spite of him. With Fortune there was no definite promise of tangible success for the individual, but only a general promise, which was maintained through hundreds of years of servitude with something of the long patience of eternity.
Pelle bore the whole endless wandering within himself: it lay deep in his heart, like a great and incomprehensible patience. In his world, capacity was often great enough, but resignation was always greater. It was thoroughly accustomed to see everything go to ruin and yet to go on hoping.
Often enough during the long march, hope had assumed tones like those of “David’s City with streets of gold,” or “Paradise,” or “The splendor of the Lord returns.” He himself had questioningly given ear; but never until now had the voice of hope sounded in a song that had to do with food and clothing, house and farm; so how was he to find his way?
He could only sit and meditate the problem as to how he should obtain, quickly and easily, a share in the good things of this world; presumptuously, and with an impatience for which he himself could not have accounted.
And round about him things were happening in the same way. An awakening shudder was passing through the masses. They no longer wandered on and on with blind and patient surrender, but turned this way and that in bewildered consultation. The miracle was no longer to be accomplished of itself when the time was fulfilled. For an evil power had seized upon their great hope, and pressed her knees together so that she could not bring forth; they themselves must help to bring happiness into the world!
The unshakable fatalism which hitherto had kept them on their difficult path was shattered; the masses would no longer allow themselves to be held down in stupid resignation. Men who all their lives had plodded their accustomed way to and from their work now stood still and asked unreasonable questions as to the aim of it all. Even the simple ventured to cast doubts upon the established order of things. Things were no longer thus because they must be; there was a painful cause of poverty. That was the beginning of the matter; and now they conceived a desire to master life; their fingers itched to be tearing down something that obstructed them—but what it was they did not know.
All this was rather like a whirlpool; all boundaries disappeared. Unfamiliar powers arose, and the most good-natured became suspicious or were frankly bewildered. People who had hitherto crawled like dogs in order to win their food were now filled with self-will, and preferred to be struck down rather than bow down of their own accord. Prudent folks who had worked all their lives in one place could no longer put up with the conditions, and went at a word. Their hard-won endurance was banished from their minds, and those who had quietly borne the whole burden on their shoulders were now becoming restive; they were as unwilling and unruly as a pregnant woman. It was as though they were acting under the inward compulsion of an invisible power, and were striving to break open the hard shell which lay over something new within them. One could perceive that painful striving in their bewildered gaze and in their sudden crazy grasp at the empty air.
There was something menacing in the very uncertainty which possessed the masses. It was as though they were listening for a word to sound out of the darkness. Swiftly they resolved to banish old custom and convention from their minds, in order to make room there. On every side men continually spoke of new things, and sought blindly to find their way to them; it was a matter of course that the time had come and the promised land was about to be opened to them. They went about in readiness to accomplish something—what, they did not know; they formed themselves into little groups; they conducted unfortunate strikes, quite at random. Others organized debating societies, and began in weighty speech to squabble about the new ideas—which none of them knew anything about. These were more particularly the young men. Many of them had come to the city in search of fortune, as had Pelle himself, and these were full of burning restlessness. There was something violent and feverish about them.
Such was the situation when Pelle entered the capital. It was chaotic; there was no definite plan by which they could reach their goal. The masses no longer supported one another, but were in a state of solution, bewildered and drifting about in the search for something that would weld them together. In the upper ranks of society people noted nothing but the insecurity of the position of the workers; people complained of their restlessness, a senseless restlessness which jeopardized revenue and aggravated foreign competition. A few thoughtful individuals saw the people as one great listening ear; new preachers were arising who wanted to lead the crowd by new ways to God. Pelle now and again allowed the stream to carry him into such quarters, but he did allow himself to be caught; it was only the old story over again; there was nothing in it. Nobody now was satisfied with directions how to reach heaven—the new prophets disappeared as quickly as they had arisen.
But in the midst of all this confusion there was one permanent center, one community, which had steadily increased during the years, and had fanatically endured the scorn and the persecution of those above and below, until it at last possessed several thousand of members. It stood fast in the maelstrom and obstinately affirmed that its doctrines were those of the future. And now the wind seemed to be filling its sails; it replied after its own fashion to the impatient demands for a heaven to be enjoyed here on earth and an attainable happiness.
Pelle had been captured by the new doctrines out by the Schleswig Stone, and had thrown himself, glowing and energetic, into the heart of the movement. He attended meetings and discussions, his ears on the alert to absorb anything really essential; for his practical nature called for something palpable whereupon his mind could get to work. Deep within his being was a mighty flux, like that of a river beneath its ice; and at times traces of it rose to the surface, and alarmed him. Yet he had no power to sound the retreat; and when he heard the complaint, in respect of the prevailing unrest, that it endangered the welfare of the nation, he was not able to grasp the connection.
“It’s preposterous that they should knock off work without any reason,” he once told Morten, when the baker’s driver had thrown up his place. “Like your driver, for example—he had no ground for complaint.”
“Perhaps he suddenly got a pain between the legs because his ancestor great-grandfather was once made to ride on a wooden horse—he came from the country,” said Morten solemnly.
Pelle looked at him quickly. He did not like Morten’s ambiguous manner of expressing himself. It made him feel insecure.
“Can’t you talk reasonably?” he said. “I can’t understand you.”
“No? And yet that’s quite reason enough—there have been lots of reasons since his great-grandfather’s days. What the devil—why should they want a reason referring to yesterday precisely? Don’t you realize that the worker, who has so long been working the treadmill in the belief that the movement was caused by somebody else, has suddenly discovered that it’s he that keeps the whole thing in motion? For that’s what is going on. The poor man is not merely a slave who treads the wheel, and had a handful of meal shoved down his gullet now and again to keep him from starving to death. He is on the point of discovering that he performs a higher service, look you! And now the movement is altering—it is continuing of itself! But that you probably can’t see,” he added, as he noted Pelle’s incredulous expression.
“No, for I’m not one of the big-bellies,” said Pelle, laughing, “and you’re no prophet, to prophesy such great things. And I have enough understanding to realize that if you want to make a row you must absolutely have something definite to make a fuss about, otherwise it won’t work. But that about the wooden horse isn’t good enough!”
“That’s just the point about lots of fusses,” Morten replied. “There’s no need to give a pretext for anything that everybody’s interested in.”
Pelle pondered further over all this while at work. But these deliberations did not proceed as in general; as a rule, such matters as were considered in his world of thought were fixed by the generations and referred principally to life and death. He had to set to work in a practical manner, and to return to his own significant experience.
Old Pipman was superfluous; that Pelle himself had proved. And there was really no reason why he should not shake off the Court shoemaker as well; the journeymen saw to the measuring and the cutting-out; indeed, they did the whole work. He was also really a parasite, who had placed himself at the head of them all, and was sucking up their profits. But then Morten was right with his unabashed assertion that the working-man carried on the whole business! Pelle hesitated a little over this conclusion; he cautiously verified the fact that it was in any case valid in his craft. There was some sense in winning back his own—but how?
His sound common-sense demanded something that would take the place of Meyer and the other big parasites. It wouldn’t do for every journeyman to sit down and botch away on his own account, like a little employer; he had seen that plainly enough in the little town at home; it was mere bungling.
So he set himself to work out a plan for a cooperative business. A number of craftsmen should band together, each should contribute his little capital, and a place of business would be selected. The work would be distributed according to the various capacities of the men, and they would choose one from their midst who would superintend the whole. In this way the problem could be solved—every man would receive the full profit of his work.
When he had thoroughly thought out his plan, he went to Morten.
“They’ve already put that into practice!” cried Morten, and he pulled out a book. “But it didn’t work particularly well. Where did you get the idea from?”
“I thought it out myself,” answered Pelle self-consciously.
Morten looked a trifle incredulous; then he consulted the book, and showed Pelle that his idea was described there—almost word for word—as a phase of the progressive movement. The book was a work on Socialism.
But Pelle did not lose heart on that account! He was proud to have hit on something that others had worked out before him—and learned people, too! He began to have confidence in his own ideas, and eagerly attended lectures and meetings. He had energy and courage, that he knew. He would try to make himself efficient, and then he would seek out those at the head of things, who were preparing the way, and would offer them his services.
Hitherto Fortune had always hovered before his eyes, obscurely, like a fairy-tale, as something that suddenly swooped down upon a man and lifted him to higher regions, while all those who were left behind gazed longingly after him—that was the worst of it! But now he perceived new paths, which for all those that were in need led on to fortune, just as the “Great Power” had fancied in the hour of his death. He did not quite understand where everything was to come from, but that was just the thing he must discover.
All this kept his mind in a state of new and unaccustomed activity. He was not used to thinking things out for himself, but had until now always adhered to the ideas which had been handed down from generation to generation as established—and he often found it difficult and wearisome. Then he would try to shelve the whole subject, in order to escape from it; but it always returned to him.
When he was tired, Hanne regained her influence over him, and then he went over to see her in the evenings. He knew very well that this would lead to nothing good. To picture for himself a future beside Hanne seemed impossible; for her only the moment existed. Her peculiar nature had a certain power over him—that was all. He often vowed to himself that he would not allow her to make a fool of him—but he always went over to see her again. He must try to conquer her—and then take the consequences.
One day, when work was over, he strolled across to see her. There was no one on the gallery, so he went into the little kitchen.
“Is that you, Pelle?” Hanne’s voice sounded from the living-room. “Come in, then!”
She had apparently been washing her body, and was now sitting in a white petticoat and chemise, and combing her beautiful hair. There was something of the princess about her; she took such care of her body, and knew how it should be done. The mirror stood before her, on the window- sill; from the little back room one could see, between the roofs and the mottled party-wall, the prison and the bridge and the canal that ran beneath it. Out beyond the Exchange the air was gray and streaked with the tackle of ships.
Pelle sat down heavily by the stove, his elbows on his knees, and gazed on the floor. He was greatly moved. If only the old woman would come! “I believe I’ll go out,” he thought, “and behave as though I were looking out for her.” But he remained sitting there. Against the wall was the double bed with its red-flowered counterpane, while the table stood by the opposite wall, with the chairs pushed under it. “She shouldn’t drive me too far,” he thought, “or perhaps it’ll end in my seizing her, and then she’ll have her fingers burnt!”
“Why don’t you talk to me, Pelle?” said Hanne.
He raised his head and looked at her in the mirror. She was holding the end of her plait in her mouth, and looked like a kitten biting its tail.
“Oh, what should I talk about?” he replied morosely.
“You are angry with me, but it isn’t fair of you—really, it isn’t fair! Is it my fault that I’m so terrified of poverty? Oh, how it does frighten me! It has always been like that ever since I was born, and you are poor too, Pelle, as poor as I am! What would become of us both? We know the whole story!”
“What will become of us?” said Pelle.
“That I don’t know, and it’s all the same to me—only it must be something I don’t know all about. Everything is so familiar if one is poor—one knows every stitch of one’s clothes by heart; one can watch them wearing out. If you’d only been a sailor, Pelle!”
“Have you seen him again?” asked Pelle.
Hanne laughingly shook her head. “No; but I believe something will happen—something splendid. Out there lies a great ship—I can see it from the window. It’s full of wonderful things, Pelle.”
“You are crazy!” said Pelle scornfully. “That’s a bark—bound for the coal quay. She comes from England with coals.”
“That may well be,” replied Hanne indifferently. “I don’t mind that. There’s something in me singing, ‘There lies the ship, and it has brought something for me from foreign parts.’ And you needn’t grudge me my happiness.”
But now her mother came in, and began to mimic her.
“Yes, out there lies the ship that has brought me something—out there lies the ship that has brought me something! Good God! Haven’t you had enough of listening to your own crazy nonsense? All through your childhood you’ve sat there and made up stories and looked out for the ship! We shall soon have had enough of it! And you let Pelle sit there and watch you uncovering your youth—aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Pelle’s so good, mother—and he’s my brother, too. He thinks nothing of it.”
“Thinks nothing of it? Yes, he does; he thinks how soft and white your bosom is! And he’s fit to cry inside of him because he mustn’t lay his head there. I, too, have known what it is to give joy, in my young days.”
Hanne blushed from her bosom upward. She threw a kerchief over her bosom and ran into the kitchen.
The mother looked after her.
“She’s got a skin as tender as that of a king’s daughter. Wouldn’t one think she was a cuckoo’s child? Her father couldn’t stand her. ‘You’ve betrayed me with some fine gentleman’—he used so often to say that. ‘We poor folks couldn’t bring a piece like that into the world!’ ‘As God lives, Johnsen,’ I used to say, ‘you and no other are the girl’s father.’ But he used to beat us—he wouldn’t believe me. He used to fly into a rage when he looked at the child, and he hated us both because she was so fine. So its no wonder that she had gone a bit queer in the head. You can believe she’s cost me tears of blood, Pelle. But you let her be, Pelle. I could wish you could get her, but it wouldn’t be best for you, and it isn’t good for you to have her playing with you. And if you got her after all, it would be even worse. A woman’s whims are poor capital for setting up house with.”
Pelle agreed with her in cold blood; he had allowed himself to he fooled, and was wasting his youth upon a path that led nowhere. But now there should be an end of it.
Hanne came back and looked at him, radiant, full of visions. “Will you take me for a walk, Pelle?” she asked him.
“Yes!” answered Pelle joyfully, and he threw all his good resolutions overboard.