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Pelle the Conqueror, Complete

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XVI

Things were not going well in the brothers' home. Jorgensen had done
nothing with his plans. He was the only person who had not known
that such would be the case. The people knew, too, on very good
authority, that the engineer had offered him a hundred kroner for
them, and as he would not take them, but demanded a share in the
undertaking and the honor of executing it, he was shown to the door.

He had never before taken anything so quietly. He did not burst out
roaring with violent words; he simply betook himself to his usual
day-laborer's work in the harbor, like any other worker. He did not
mention his defeat, and allowed no one else to do so. He treated
his wife as though she did not exist. But she had to watch him wrap
himself up in silence, without knowing what was going on in his mind.
She had a foreboding of something terrible, and spoke of her trouble
to the boys. He made no scenes, although now and again he got drunk;
he ate in silence and went to bed. When he was not working, he slept.

But as he himself had so far revealed his plans that they were
known to all, it was all up with his work. The engineer had taken
from Jorgensen's plans as much as he could use--every one could see
that--and now the "Great Power" stood with his mouth empty, simply
because he had put more in his spoon than his mouth would hold. Most
people were far from envying his position, and they took plenty of
time to talk about it; the town was quite accustomed to neglect its
own affairs in order to throw its whole weight on his obstinate back.
But now he was down in the dust all had been to the harbor to watch
the "Great Power" working there--to see him, as a common laborer,
carting the earth for his own wonderful scheme. They marvelled
only that he took it all so quietly; it was to some extent a
disappointment that he did not flinch under the weight of his
burden and break out into impotent raving.

He contented himself with drinking; but that he did thoroughly. He
went about it as it were in the midst of a cloud of alcoholic vapor,
and worked only just enough to enable him to go on drinking. "He has
never yet been like this," said his wife, weeping. "He doesn't storm
and rage, but he is angry all the time so that one can't bear him
at home any longer. He breaks everything in his anger, and he scolds
poor Karen so that it's wretched. He has no regard for anybody,
only for his old mother, and God knows how long that will last. He
doesn't work, he only drinks. He steals my hard-earned money out of
my dress-pocket and buys brandy with it. He has no shame left in him,
although he always used to be so honorable in his way of life. And
he can't stand his boozing as he used to; he's always falling about
and staggering. Lately he came home all bloody--he'd knocked a hole
in his head. What have we ever done to the dear God that he should
punish us like this?"

The old woman said nothing, but let her glance sweep from one to
the other, and thought her own thoughts.

So it went on, week after week. The boys became weary of listening
to their mother's complaints, and kept away from home.

One day, when Karen had been sent on an errand for her mother, she
did not return. Neither had she returned on the following day. Pelle
heard of it down at the boat-harbor, where she had last been seen.
They were dragging the water with nets in the hope of finding her,
but no one dared tell Jorgensen. On the following afternoon they
brought her to the workshop; Pelle knew what it was when he heard
the many heavy footsteps out in the street. She lay on a stretcher,
and two men carried her; before her the autumn wind whirled the
first falling leaves, and her thin arms were hanging down to the
pavement, as though she sought to find a hold there. Her disordered
hair was hanging, too, and the water was dripping from her. Behind
the stretcher came the "Great Power." He was drunk. He held one hand
before his eyes, and murmured as though in thought, and at every
moment he raised his forefinger in the air. "She has found peace,"
he said thickly, trying to look intelligent.

"Peace--the higher it is----" He could not find the word he wanted.

Jens and Pelle replaced the men at the stretcher, and bore it home.
They were afraid of what was before them. But the mother stood at
the door and received them silently, as though she had expected them;
she was merely pale. "She couldn't bear it!" she whispered to them,
and she kneeled down beside the child.

She laid her head on the little crippled body, and whispered
indistinctly; now and again she pressed the child's fingers into
her mouth, in order to stifle her sobs. "And you were to have run
an errand for mother," she said, and she shook her head, smilingly.
"You are a nice sort of girl to me--not to be able to buy me two
skeins of thread; and the money I gave you for it--have you thrown
it away?" Her words came between smiles and sobs, and they sounded
like a slow lament. "Did you throw the money away? It doesn't matter
--it wasn't your fault. Dear child, dear little one!" Then her
strength gave way. Her firmly closed mouth broke open, and closed
again, and so she went on, her head rocking to and fro, while her
hands felt eagerly in the child's pocket. "Didn't you run that
errand for mother?" she moaned. She felt, in the midst of her grief,
the need of some sort of corroboration, even if it referred to
something quite indifferent. And she felt in the child's purse.
There lay a few ore and a scrap of paper.

Then she suddenly stood up. Her face was terribly hard as she turned
to her husband, who stood against the wall, swaying to and fro.
"Peter!" she cried in agony, "Peter! Don't you know what you have
done? 'Forgive me, mother,' it says here, and she has taken four
ore of the thirteen to buy sugar-candy. Look here, her hand is still
quite sticky." She opened the clenched hand, which was closed upon
a scrap of sticky paper. "Ah, the poor persecuted child! She wanted
to sweeten her existence with four ore worth of sugar-candy, and then
into the water! A child has so much pleasure at home here! 'Forgive
me, mother!' she says, as though she had done something wrong. And
everything she did was wrong; so she had to go away. Karen! Karen!
I'm not angry with you--you were very welcome--what do they signify,
those few ore! I didn't mean it like that when I reproached you for
hanging about at home! But I didn't know what to do--we had nothing
to eat. And he spent the little money there was!" She turned her
face from the body to the father and pointed to him. It was the
first time that the wife of the "Great Power" had ever turned upon
him accusingly. But he did not understand her. "She has found peace,"
he murmured, and attempted to pull himself up a little; "the peace
of--" But here the old woman rose in the chimney-corner--until this
moment she had not moved. "Be silent!" she said harshly, setting
her stick at his breast, "or your old mother will curse the day when
she brought you into the world." Wondering, he stared at her; and
a light seemed to shine through the mist as he gazed. For a time he
still stood there, unable to tear his eyes from the body. He looked
as though he wished to throw himself down beside his wife, who once
more lay bowed above the bier, whispering. Then, with hanging head,
he went upstairs and lay down.




XVII

It was after working hours when Pelle went homeward; but he did not
feel inclined to run down to the harbor or to bathe. The image of
the drowned child continued to follow him, and for the first time
Death had met him with its mysterious "Why?". He found no answer,
and gradually he forgot it for other things. But the mystery itself
continued to brood within him, and made him afraid without any
sort of reason, so that he encountered the twilight even with
a foreboding of evil. The secret powers which exhale from heaven
and earth when light and darkness meet clutched at him with their
enigmatical unrest, and he turned unquietly from one thing to
another, although he must be everywhere in order to cope with this
inconceivable Something that stood, threatening, behind everything.
For the first time he felt, rid of all disguise, the unmercifulness
which was imminent in this or that transgression of his. Never
before had Life itself pressed upon him with its heavy burden.

It seemed to Pelle that something called him, but he could not
clearly discover whence the call came. He crept from his window on
to the roof and thence to the gable-end; perhaps it was the world
that called. The hundreds of tile-covered roofs of the town lay
before him, absorbing the crimson of the evening sky, and a blue
smoke was rising. And voices rose out of the warm darkness that lay
between the houses. He heard, too, the crazy Anker's cry; and this
eternal prophecy of things irrational sounded like the complaint of
a wild beast. The sea down yonder and the heavy pine-woods that lay
to the north and the south--these had long been familiar to him.

But there was a singing in his ears, and out of the far distance,
and something or some one stood behind him, whose warm breath struck
upon his neck. He turned slowly about. He was no longer afraid in
the darkness, and he knew beforehand that nothing was there. But
his lucid mind had been invaded by the twilight, with its mysterious
train of beings which none of the senses can confirm.

He went down into the courtyard and strolled about. Everywhere
prevailed the same profound repose. Peers, the cat, was sitting on
the rain-water butt, mewing peevishly at a sparrow which had perched
upon the clothes-line. The young master was in his room, coughing;
he had already gone to bed. Pelle bent over the edge of the well and
gazed vacantly over the gardens. He was hot and dizzy, but a cool
draught rose from the well and soothingly caressed his head. The
bats were gliding through the air like spirits, passing so close
to his face that he felt the wind of their flight, and turning about
with a tiny clapping sound. He felt a most painful desire to cry.

Among the tall currant-bushes yonder something moved, and
Sjermanna's head made its appearance. She was moving cautiously and
peering before her. When she saw Pelle she came quickly forward.

"Good evening!" she whispered.

"Good evening!" he answered aloud, delighted to return to human
society.

"Hush! You mustn't shout!" she said peremptorily.

"Why not?" Pelle himself was whispering now. He was feeling quite
concerned. "Because you mustn't! Donkey! Come, I'll show you
something. No, nearer still!"

Pelle pushed his head forward through the tall elder-bush, and
suddenly she put her two hands about his head and kissed him
violently and pushed him back. He tried gropingly to take hold of
her, but she stood there laughing at him. Her face glowed in the
darkness. "You haven't heard anything about it!" she whispered.
"Come, I'll tell you!"

Now he was smiling all over his face. He pushed his way eagerly into
the elder-bush. But at the same moment he felt her clenched fist
strike his face. She laughed crazily, but he stood fixed in the
same position, as though stunned, his mouth held forward as if still
awaiting a kiss. "Why do you hit me?" he asked, gazing at her
brokenly.

"Because I can't endure you! You're a perfect oaf, and so ugly and
so common!"

"I have never done anything to you!"

"No? Anyhow, you richly deserved it! What did you want to kiss me
for?"

Pelle stood there helplessly stammering. The whole world of his
experience collapsed under him. "But I didn't!" he at last brought
out; he looked extraordinarily foolish. Manna aped his expression.
"Ugh! Bugh! Take care, or you'll freeze to the ground and turn into
a lamp-post! There's nothing on the hedge here that will throw light
on your understanding!"

With a leap Pelle was over the hedge. Manna took him hastily by the
hand and drew him through the bushes. "Aina and Dolores will be here
directly. Then we'll play," she declared.

"I thought they couldn't come out in the evenings any more," said
Pelle, obediently allowing her to lead him. She made no reply, but
looked about her as though she wanted to treat him to something as
in the old days. In her need she stripped a handful of leaves off
the currant-boughs, and stuffed them into his mouth. "There, take
that and hold your mouth!" She was quite the old Manna once more,
and Pelle laughed.

They had come to the summer-house. Manna cooled his swollen cheeks
with wet earth while they waited.

"Did it hurt you much?" she asked sympathetically, putting her arm
about his shoulder.

"It's nothing. What's a box on the ear?" he said manfully.

"I didn't mean it--you know that. Did _that_ hurt you very
much?"

Pelle gazed at her sadly. She looked at him inquisitively. "Was
it here?" she said, letting her hand slide down his back. He rose
silently, in order to go, but she seized him by the wrist. "Forgive
me," she whispered.

"Aren't the others coming soon?" asked Pelle harshly. He proposed
to be angry with her, as in the old days.

"No! They aren't coming at all! I've deceived you. I wanted to talk
to you!" Manna was gasping for breath.

"I thought you didn't want to have anything more to do with me?"

"Well, I don't! I only want--" She could not find words, and stamped
angrily on the ground. Then she said slowly and solemnly, with the
earnestness of a child: "Do you know what I believe? I believe--I
love you!"

"Then we can get married when we are old enough!" said Pelle
joyfully.

She looked at him for a moment with a measuring glance. The
town-hall and the flogging! thought Pelle. He was quite resolved
that he would do the beating now; but here she laughed at him.
"What a glorious booby you are!" she said, and as though deep in
thought, she let a handful of wet earth run down his neck.

Pelle thought for a moment of revenge; then, as though in sport,
he thrust his hand into her bosom. She fell back weakly, groping
submissively with her hands; a new knowledge arose in him, and
impelled him to embrace her violently.

She looked at him in amazement, and tried gently to push his hand
away. But it was too late. The boy had broken down her defences.

As Pelle went back into the house he was overwhelmed, but not happy.
His heart hammered wildly, and a chaos reigned in his brain. Quite
instinctively he trod very softly. For a long time he lay tossing
to and fro without being able to sleep. His mind had resolved the
enigma, and now he discovered the living blood in himself. It sang
its sufferings in his ear; it welled into his cheeks and his heart;
it murmured everywhere in numberless pulses, so that his whole body
thrilled. Mighty and full of mystery, it surged through him like an
inundation, filling him with a warm, deep astonishment. Never before
had he known all this!

In the time that followed his blood was his secret confidant
in everything; he felt it like a caress when it filled his limbs,
causing a feeling of distension in wrists and throat. He had his
secret now, and his face never betrayed the fact that he had ever
known Sjermanna. His radiant days had all at once changed into
radiant nights. He was still enough of a child to long for the old
days, with their games in the broad light of day; but something
impelled him to look forward, listening, and his questing soul
bowed itself before the mysteries of life. The night had made
him accomplice in her mysteries. With Manna he never spoke again.
She never came into the garden, and if he met her she turned into
another street. A rosy flame lay continually over her face, as
though it had burned its way in. Soon afterward she went to a farm
in Ostland, where an uncle of hers lived.

But Pelle felt nothing and was in no way dejected. He went about as
though in a half-slumber; everything was blurred and veiled before
his spiritual vision. He was quite bewildered by all that was going
on within him. Something was hammering and laboring in every part
and corner of him. Ideas which were too fragile were broken down
and built up more strongly, so that they should bear the weight of
the man in him. His limbs grew harder; his muscles became like steel,
and he was conscious of a general feeling of breadth across his
back, and of unapplied strength. At times he awakened out of his
half-slumber into a brief amazement, when he felt himself, in one
particular or another, to have become a man; as when one day he
heard his own voice. It had gained a deep resonance, which was quite
foreign to his ear, and forced him to listen as though it had been
another that spoke.




XVIII

Pelle fought against the decline of the business. A new apprentice
had been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do
all the delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and
bought things on credit; and he had to interview impatient customers,
and endeavor to pacify them. He got plenty of exercise, but he
learned nothing properly. "Just run down to the harbor," the master
used to say: "Perhaps there will be some work to bring back!" But
the master was much more interested in the news which he brought
thence.

Pelle would also go thither without having received any orders.
Everybody in the town must needs make for the harbor whenever he
went from home; it was the heart through which everything came and
went, money and dreams and desires and that which gratified them.
Every man had been to sea, and his best memories and his hardest
battles belonged to the sea. Dreams took the outward way; yonder
lay the sea, and all men's thoughts were drawn to it; the thoughts
of the young, who longed to go forth and seek adventure, and of
the old, who lived on their memories. It was the song in all men's
hearts, and the God in the inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of
life's surplus, the home of all that was inexplicable and mystical.
The sea had drunk the blood of thousands, but its color knew no
change; the riddle of life brooded in its restless waters.

Destiny rose from the floor of the deep and with short shrift
set her mark upon a man; he might escape to the land, like Baker
Jorgensen, who went no more to sea when once the warning had come
to him, or, like Boatman Jensen, he might rise in his sleep and walk
straight over the vessel's side. Down below, where the drowned dwelt,
the ships sank to bring them what they needed; and from time to time
the bloodless children of the sea rose to the shore, to play with
the children that were born on a Sunday, and to bring them death
or happiness.

Over the sea, three times a week, came the steamer with news from
Copenhagen; and vessels all wrapped in ice, and others that had
sprung a heavy leak, or bore dead bodies on board; and great ships
which came from warm countries and had real negroes among their
crews.

Down by the harbor stood the old men who had forsaken the sea, and
now all the long day through they stared out over the playground
of their manhood, until Death came for them. The sea had blown gout
into their limbs, had buffeted them until they were bent and bowed,
and in the winter nights one could hear them roar with the pain like
wild beasts. Down to the harbor drifted all the flotsam and jetsam
of the land, invalids and idle men and dying men, and busy folk
raced round about and up and down with fluttering coat-tails,
in order to scent out possible profits.

The young sported here continually; it was as though they
encountered the future when they played here by the open sea. Many
never went further, but many let themselves be caught and whirled
away out into the unknown. Of these was Nilen. When the ships were
being fitted out he could wait no longer. He sacrificed two years'
apprenticeship, and ran away on board a vessel which was starting
on a long voyage. Now he was far away in the Trades, on the southern
passage round America, homeward bound with a cargo of redwood. And
a few left with every steamer. The girls were the most courageous
when it came to cutting themselves loose; they steamed away swiftly,
and the young men followed them in amorous blindness. And men fought
their way outward in order to seek something more profitable than
could be found at home.

Pelle had experienced all this already: he had felt this same
longing, and had known the attractive force of the unknown. Up
in the country districts it was the dream of all poor people to
fight their way to town, and the boldest one day ventured thither,
with burning cheeks, while the old people spoke warningly of the
immorality of cities. And in the town here it was the dream of all
to go to the capital, to Copenhagen; there fortune and happiness
were to be found! He who had the courage hung one day over the
ship's rail, and waved farewell, with an absent expression in his
eyes, as though he had been playing a game with high stakes; over
there on the mainland he would have to be a match with the best
of them. But the old people shook their heads and spoke at length
of the temptations and immorality of the capital.

Now and again one came back and justified their wisdom. Then they
would run delightedly from door to door. "Didn't we tell you so?"
But many came home at holiday seasons and were such swells that it
was really the limit! And this or that girl was so extremely stylish
that people had to ask the opinion of Wooden-leg Larsen about her.

The girls who got married over there--well, they were well provided
for! After an interval of many years they came back to their
parents' homes, travelling on deck among the cattle, and giving
the stewardess a few pence to have them put in the newspaper as
cabin-passengers. They were fine enough as to their clothes, but
their thin haggard faces told another story. "There is certainly
not enough to eat for all over there!" said the old women.

But Pelle took no interest in those that came home again. All his
thoughts were with those who went away; his heart tugged painfully
in his breast, so powerful was his longing to be off. The sea,
whether it lay idle or seethed with anger, continually filled his
head with the humming of the world "over yonder," with a vague,
mysterious song of happiness.

One day, as he was on his way to the harbor, he met old thatcher
Holm from Stone Farm. Holm was going about looking at the houses
from top to bottom; he was raising his feet quite high in the air
from sheer astonishment, and was chattering to himself. On his arm
he carried a basket loaded with bread and butter, brandy, and beer.

"Well, here's some one at last!" he said, and offered his hand.
"I'm going round and wondering to myself where they all live,
those that come here day after day and year after year, and whether
they've done any good. Mother and I have often talked about it, that
it would be splendid to know how things have turned out for this
one or that. And this morning she said it would be best if I were
to make a short job of it before I quite forget how to find my way
about the streets here, I haven't been here for ten years. Well,
according to what I've seen so far, mother and I needn't regret
we've stayed at home. Nothing grows here except lamp-posts, and
mother wouldn't understand anything about rearing them. Thatched
roofs I've not seen here. Here in the town they'd grudge a thatcher
his bread. But I'll see the harbor before I go home."

"Then we'll go together," said Pelle. He was glad to meet some one
from his home. The country round about Stone Farm was always for him
the home of his childhood. He gossiped with the old man and pointed
out various objects of interest.

"Yes, I've been once, twice, three times before this to the harbor,"
said Holm, "but I've never managed to see the steamer. They tell
me wonderful things of it; they say all our crops are taken to
Copenhagen in the steamer nowadays."

"It's lying here to-day," said Pelle eagerly. "This evening
it goes out."

Holm's eyes beamed. "Then I shall be able to see the beggar! I've
often seen the smoke from the hill at home--drifting over the sea--
and that always gave me a lot to think about. They say it eats coals
and is made of iron." He looked at Pelle uncertainly.

The great empty harbor basin, in which some hundreds of men were at
work, interested him greatly. Pelle pointed out the "Great Power,"
who was toiling like a madman and allowing himself to be saddled
with the heaviest work.

"So that is he!" cried Holm. "I knew his father; he was a man who
wanted to do things above the ordinary, but he never brought them
off. And how goes it with your father? Not any too well, as I've
heard?"

Pelle had been home a little while before; nothing was going well
there, but as to that he was silent. "Karna isn't very well," he
said. "She tried to do too much; she's strained herself lifting
things."

"They say he'll have a difficult job to pull through. They have
taken too much on themselves," Holm continued.

Pelle made no reply; and then the steamer absorbed their whole
attention. Talkative as he was, Holm quite forgot to wag his
tongue.

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