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Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 4

M >> Martin Anderson Nexo >> Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 4



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PELLE THE CONQUEROR


PART IV.--DAYBREAK.



BY MARTIN ANDERSON NEXO




TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH
By Jessie Muir.



IV. DAYBREAK


I


Out in the middle of the open, fertile country, where the plough was
busy turning up the soil round the numerous cheerful little houses,
stood a gloomy building that on every side turned bare walls toward the
smiling world. No panes of glass caught the ruddy glow of the morning
and evening sun and threw back its quivering reflection; three rows of
barred apertures drank in all the light of day with insatiable avidity.
They were always gaping greedily, and seen against the background of
blue spring sky, looked like holes leading into the everlasting
darkness. In its heavy gloom the mass of masonry towered above the many
smiling homes, but their peaceable inhabitants did not seem to feel
oppressed. They ploughed their fields right up to the bare walls, and
wherever the building was visible, eyes were turned toward it with an
expression that told of the feeling of security that its strong walls
gave.

Like a landmark the huge building towered above everything else. It
might very well have been a temple raised to God's glory by a grateful
humanity, so imposing was it; but if so, it must have been in by-gone
ages, for no dwellings--even for the Almighty--are built nowadays in so
barbaric a style, as if the one object were to keep out light and air!
The massive walls were saturated with the dank darkness within, and the
centuries had weathered their surface and made on it luxuriant cultures
of fungus and mould, and yet they still seemed as if they could stand
for an eternity.

The building was no fortress, however, nor yet a temple whose dim
recesses were the abode of the unknown God. If you went up to the great,
heavy door, which was always closed you could read above the arch the
one word _Prison_ in large letters and below it a simple Latin
verse that with no little pretentiousness proclaimed:

"I am the threshold to all virtue and wisdom;
Justice flourishes solely for my sake."

One day in the middle of spring, the little door in the prison gate
opened, and a tall man stepped out and looked about him with eyes
blinking at the light which fell upon his ashen-white face. His step
faltered and he had to lean for support against the wall; he looked as
if he were about to go back again, but he drew a deep breath and went
out on to the open ground.

The spring breeze made a playful assault upon him, tried to ruffle his
prison-clipped, slightly gray hair, which had been curly and fair when
last it had done so, and penetrated gently to his bare body like a soft,
cool hand. "Welcome, Pelle!" said the sun, as it peeped into his
distended pupils in which the darkness of the prison-cell still lay
brooding. Not a muscle of his face moved, however; it was as though hewn
out of stone. Only the pupils of his eyes contracted so violently as to
be almost painful, but he continued to look earnestly before him.
Whenever he saw any one, he stopped and gazed eagerly, perhaps in the
hope that it was some one coming to meet him.

As he turned into the King's Road some one called to him. He turned
round in sudden, intense joy, but then his head dropped and he went on
without answering. It was only a tramp, who was standing half out of a
ditch in a field a little way off, beckoning to him. He came running
over the ploughed field, crying hoarsely: "Wait a little, can't you?
Here have I been waiting for company all day, so you might as well wait
a little!"

He was a broad-shouldered, rather puffy-looking fellow, with a flat back
and the nape of his neck broad and straight and running right up into
his cap without forming any projection for the back of his head, making
one involuntarily think of the scaffold. The bone of his nose had sunk
into his purple face, giving a bull-dog mixture of brutality and stupid
curiosity to its expression.

"How long have you been in?" he asked, as he joined him, breathless.
There was a malicious look in his eyes.

"I went in when Pontius Pilate was a little boy, so you can reckon it
out for yourself," said Pelle shortly.

"My goodness! That was a good spell! And what were you copped for?"

"Oh, there happened to be an empty place, so they took me and put me in
--so that it shouldn't stand empty, you know!"

The tramp scowled at him. "You're laying it on a little too thick! You
won't get any one to believe that!" he said uncertainly. Suddenly he put
himself in front of Pelle, and pushed his bull-like forehead close to
the other's face. "Now, I'll just tell you something, my boy!" he said.
"I don't want to touch any one the first day I'm out, but you'd better
take yourself and your confounded uppishness somewhere else; for I've
been lying here waiting for company all day."

"I didn't mean to offend any one," said Pelle absently. He looked as if
he had not come back to earth, and appeared to have no intention of
doing anything.

"Oh, didn't you! That's fortunate for you, or I might have taken a
color-print of your doleful face, however unwillingly. By the way,
mother said I was to give you her love."

"Are you Ferdinand?" asked Pelle, raising his head.

"Oh, don't pretend!" said Ferdinand. "Being in gaol seems to have made a
swell of you!"

"I didn't recognize you," said Pelle earnestly, suddenly recalled to the
world around him.

"Oh, all right--if you say so. It must be the fault of my nose. I got it
bashed in the evening after I'd buried mother. I was to give you her
love, by the way."

"Thank you!" said Pelle heartily. Old memories from the "Ark" filled his
mind and sent his blood coursing through his veins once more. "Is it
long since your mother died?" he asked sympathetically.

Ferdinand nodded. "It was a good thing, however," he said, "for now
there's no one I need go and have a bad conscience about. I'd made up my
mind that she deserved to have things comfortable in her old age, and I
was awfully careful; but all the same I was caught for a little robbery
and got eight months. That was just after you got in--but of course you
know that."

"No! How could I know it?"

"Well, I telegraphed it over to you. I was just opposite you, in Wing A,
and when I'd reckoned out your cell, I bespoke the whole line one
evening, and knocked a message through to you. But there was a
sanctimonious parson at the corner of your passage, one of those moral
folk--oh, you didn't even know that, then? Well, I'd always suspected
him of not passing my message on, though a chap like that's had an awful
lot of learning put into him. Then when I came out I said to myself that
there must be an end to all this, for mother'd taken it very much to
heart, and was failing. I managed to get into one of the streets where
honest thieves live, and went about as a colporteur, and it all went
very well. It would have been horribly mean if she'd died of hunger. And
we had a jolly good time for six months, but then she slipped away all
the same, and I can just tell you that I've never been in such low
spirits as the day they put her underground in the cemetery. Well, I
said to myself, there lies mother smelling the weeds from underneath, so
you can just as well give it all up, for there's nothing more to trouble
about now. And I went up to the office and asked for a settlement, and
they cheated me of fifty subscribers, the rogues!

"Of course I went to the police: I was stupid enough to do that at that
time. But they're all a lot of rogues together. They thought it wouldn't
do to believe a word that I said, and would have liked to put me in
prison at once; but for all they poked about they couldn't find a peg to
hang their hat upon. 'He's managing to hide it well this time, the sly
fellow!' they said, and let me go. But there soon was something, for I
settled the matter myself, and you may take your oath my employers
didn't get the best of the arrangement. You see there are two kinds of
people--poor people who are only honest when they let themselves be
robbed, and all the others. Why the devil should one go about like a
shorn sheep and not rob back! Some day of course there'll be a bust-up,
and then--'three years, prisoner!' I shall be in again before long."

"That depends upon yourself," said Pelle slowly.

"Oh, well, of course you can do _something_; but the police are
always getting sharper, and the man isn't born who won't fall into the
trap sooner or later."

"You should try and get some honest employment again. You've shown that
you can succeed."

Ferdinand whistled. "In such a paltry way as that! Many thanks for the
good advice! You'd like me to look after a bloated aristocrat's geese
and then sit on the steps and eat dry bread to the smell of the roast
bird, would you? No, thank you! And even if I did--what then? You may be
quite sure they'd keep a good watch on a fellow, if he tried an honest
job, and it wouldn't be two days before the shadow was there. 'What's
this about Ferdinand? I hear things are not all square with him. I'm
sorry, for he's really worked well; but he'd better look out for another
place.' That's what the decent ones would do; the others would simply
wait until his wages were due and take something off--because he'd been
in once. They could never be sure that he hadn't stolen something from
them, could they? and it's best to be careful! If you make a fuss,
you're called a thief to your face. I've tried it, let me tell you! And
now you can try it yourself. You'll be in again as soon as ever the
spring comes! The worst of it is that it gets more every time; a fellow
like me may get five years for stealing five krones (five shillings).
Isn't that a shame? So it's just as well to do something to make it
worth while. It wouldn't matter if you could only get a good hit at it
all. It's all one to me now that mother's dead. There's a child crying,
but it's not for me. There isn't a soul that would shed a tear if I had
to lay my head on the block. They'd come and stare, that's what they'd
do--and I should get properly into the papers!

"Wicked? Of course I'm wicked! Sometimes I feel like one great sore, and
would like to let them hear all about it. There's no such thing as
gentle hands. That's only a lie, so I owe nothing to anybody. Several
times while I've been in there I've made up my mind to kill the warder,
just so as to have a hit at something; for he hadn't done me any harm.
But then I thought after all it was stupid. I'd no objection to kick the
bucket; it would be a pleasant change anyhow to sitting in prison all
one's life. But then you'd want to do something first that would make a
stir. That's what I feel!"

They walked on at a good pace, their faces turned in the direction of
the smoky mist of the town far ahead, Ferdinand chewing his quid and
spitting incessantly. His hardened, bulldog face with its bloodshot eyes
was entirely without expression now that he was silent.

A peasant lad came toward them, singing at the top of his voice. He must
have been about twelve or fourteen years of age.

"What are you so happy about, boy?" asked Ferdinand, stopping him.

"I took a heifer into the town, and I got two krones (two shillings) for
the job," answered the boy, smiling all over his face.

"You must have been up early then," said Pelle.

"Yes, I left home at three last night. But now I've earned a day's
wages, and can take it easy the rest of the day!" answered the boy,
throwing the two-krone piece into the air and catching it again.

"Take care you don't lose it," said Ferdinand, following the coin with
covetous eyes.

The boy laughed merrily.

"Let's see whether it's a good one. They're a fearful lot of thieves on
the market in there."

The boy handed him the coin. "Ah, yes, it's one of those that you can
break in half and make two of," said Ferdinand, doing a few juggling
tricks with it. "I suppose I may keep one?" His expression had become
lively and he winked maliciously at Pelle as he stood playing with the
coin so that it appeared to be two. "There you are; that's yours," he
said, pressing the piece of money firmly into the boy's hand. "Take good
care of it, so that you don't get a scolding from your mother."

The boy opened his empty hand in wonderment. "Give me my two-krone!" he
said, smiling uncertainly.

"What the devil--I've given it you once!" said Ferdinand, pushing the
boy aside roughly and beginning to walk on.

The boy followed him and begged persistently for his money. Then he
began to cry.

"Give him his money!" said Pelle crossly. "It's not amusing now."

"Amusing?" exclaimed Ferdinand, stopping abruptly and gazing at him in
amazement. "Do you think I play for small sums? What do I care about the
boy! He may take himself off; I'm not his father."

Pelle looked at him a moment without comprehending; then he took a paper
containing a few silver coins out of his waistcoat pocket, and handed
the boy two krones. The boy stood motionless with amazement for a
moment, but then, seizing the money, he darted away as quickly as he
could go.

Ferdinand went on, growling to himself and blinking his eyes. Suddenly
he stopped and exclaimed: "I'll just tell you as a warning that if it
wasn't you, and because I don't want to have this day spoiled, I'd have
cracked your skull for you; for no one else would have played me that
trick. Do you understand?" And he stood still again and pushed his heavy
brow close to Pelle's face.

Quick as thought, Pelle seized him by his collar and trousers, and threw
him forcibly onto a heap of stones. "That's the second time to-day that
you've threatened to crack my skull," he said in fury, pounding
Ferdinand's head against the stones. For a few moments he held him down
firmly, but then released him and helped him to rise. Ferdinand was
crimson in the face, and stood swaying, ready to throw himself upon
Pelle, while his gaze wandered round in search of a weapon. Then he
hesitatingly drew the two-krone piece out of his pocket, and handed it
to Pelle in sign of subjection.

"You may keep it," said Pelle condescendingly.

Ferdinand quickly pocketed it again, and began to brush the mud off his
clothes. "The skilly in there doesn't seem to have weakened you much,"
he said, shaking himself good-naturedly as they went on. "You've still
got a confounded hard hand. But what I can't understand is why you
should be so sorry for a hobbledehoy like that. He can take care of
himself without us."

"Weren't you once sorry too for a little fellow when some one wanted to
take his money away from him?"

"Oh, that little fellow in the 'Ark' who was going to fetch the medicine
for his mother? That's such a long time ago!"

"You got into difficulties with the police for his sake! It was the
first time you were at odds with the authorities, I think."

"Well, the boy hadn't done anything; I saw that myself. So I hobbled the
copper that was going to run him in. His mother was ill--and my old 'un
was alive; and so I was a big idiot! You'll see you won't get far with
your weak pity. Do we owe any one anything, I should like to know?"

"Yes, _I_ do," said Pelle, suddenly raising his face toward the
light. "But I can't say you've much to thank any one for."

"What confounded nonsense!" exclaimed Ferdinand, staring at him. "Have
they been good to you, did you say? When they shut you up in prison too,
perhaps? You're pretending to be good, eh? You stop that! You'll have to
go farther into the country with it. So you think you deserved your
house-of-correction turn, while another was only suffering the blackest
injustice? Nonsense! They know well enough what they're doing when they
get hold of me, but they might very well have let you off. You got
together fifty thousand men, but what did you all do, I should like to
know? You didn't make as much disturbance as a mouse in a pair of lady's
unmentionables. Well-to-do people are far more afraid of me than of you
and all your fellows together. Injustice! Oh, shut up and don't slobber!
You give no quarter, and you don't ask any either: that's all. And by
the way, you might do me the favor to take back your two-krone. _I_
don't owe any one anything."

"Well, borrow it, then," said Pelle. "You can't go to town quite without
money."

"Do take it, won't you?" begged Ferdinand. "It isn't so easy for you to
get hold of any as for any one else, and it was a little too mean the
way I got it out of you. You've been saving it up in there, a halfpenny
a day, and perhaps gone without your quid, and I come and cheat you out
of it! No, confound it! And you gave mother a little into the bargain;
I'd almost forgotten it! Well, never mind the tin then! I know a place
where there's a good stroke of business to be done."

A little above Damhus Lake they turned into a side road that led
northward, in order to reach the town from the Nörrebro side. Far down
to the right a great cloud of smoke hung in the air. It was the
atmosphere of the city. As the east wind tore off fragments of it and
carried them out, Ferdinand lifted his bull-dog nose and sniffed the
air. "Wouldn't I like to be sitting in the 'Cupping-Glass' before a
horse-steak with onions!" he said.

By this time the afternoon was well advanced. They broke sticks out of a
hedge and went on steadily, following ditches and dikes as best they
could. The plough was being driven over the fields, backward and
forward, turning up the black earth, while crows and sea-birds fought in
the fresh furrows. The ploughmen put the reins round their waist each
time they came to the end of their line, threw the plough over and
brought it into position for a new furrow, and while they let their
horses take breath, gazed afar at the two strange spring wayfarers.
There was such a foreign air about their clothes that they must be two
of that kind of people that go on foot from land to land, they thought;
and they called after them scraps of foreign sentences to show they knew
something about them. Ah, yes! They were men who could look about them!
Perhaps by to-morrow those two would be in a foreign country again,
while other folk never left the place they were once in!

They passed a white house standing in stately seclusion among old trees,
a high hawthorn hedge screening the garden from the road. Ferdinand
threw a hasty glance over the gate. The blinds were all down! He began
to be restless, and a little farther on he suddenly slipped in behind a
hedge and refused to go any farther. "I don't care to show myself in
town empty-handed," he said. "And besides evening's the best time to go
in at full speed. Let's wait here until it's dark. I can smell silver in
that house we passed."

"Come on now and let those fancies alone," said Pelle earnestly. "A new
life begins from to-day. I'll manage to help you to get honest work!"

Ferdinand broke into laughter. "Good gracious me! You help others! You
haven't tried yet what it is to come home from prison! You'll find it
hard enough to get anywhere yourself, my good fellow. New life, ha, ha!
No; just you stay here and we'll do a little business together when it
gets dark. The house doesn't look quite squint-eyed. Then this evening
we can go to the 'Cupping-Glass' and have a jolly good spree, and act
the home-coming American. Besides it's not right to go home without
taking something for your family. Just you wait! You should see 'Laura
with the Arm' dance! She's my cupboard-love, you know. She can dance
blindfold upon a table full of beer-mugs without spilling a drop. There
might be a little kiss for you too.--Hang it!--you don't surely imagine
you'll be made welcome anywhere else, do you? I can tell you there's no
one who'll stand beckoning you home.--Very well, then go to the devil,
you fool, and remember me to your monthly nurse! When you're tired of
family life, you can ask for me at my address, the 'Cupping-Glass'." His
hoarse, hollow voice cut through the clear spring air as he shouted the
last words with his hand to his mouth.

Pelle went on quickly, as though anxious to leave something behind him.
He had had an insane hope of being received in some kind way or other
when he came out--comrades singing, perhaps, or a woman and two children
standing on the white highroad, waiting for him! And there had only been
Ferdinand to meet him! Well, it had been a damper, and now he shook off
the disappointment and set out at a good pace. The active movement set
his pulses beating. The sky had never before been so bright as it was
to-day; the sun shone right into his heart. There was a smiling greeting
in it all--in the wind that threw itself into his very arms, in the
fresh earth and in the running water in the ditches. Welcome back again,
Pelle!

How wide and fair the world looks when you've spent years within four
bare walls! Down in the south the clouds were like the breast of a great
bright bird, one of those that come a long way every year with summer in
the beat of their strong wings; and on all sides lay the open, white
roads, pointing onward with bright assurances.

For the fourth time he was setting out to conquer the world, and this
time it was in bitter earnest. There had always before proved to be
something more behind, but now he felt that what he should now set out
upon would be decisive; if he was victorious now, he would conquer
eternity. This time it must be either for weal or woe, and all that he
possessed he was now bringing into the field. He had never before been
so heavily equipped. Far off he could still make out the dome of the
prison, which stood there like a huge mill over the descent to the
nether world, and ground misery into crime in the name of humanity. It
sucked down every one who was exposed to life's uncertainty; he had
himself hung in the funnel and felt how its whirling drew him down.

But Pelle had been too well equipped. Hitherto he had successfully
converted everything into means of rising, and he took this in the same
way. His hair was no longer fair, but, on the other hand, his mind was
magically filled with a secret knowledge of the inner nature of things,
for he had sat at the root of all things, and by listening had drawn it
out of the solitude. He had been sitting moping in the dark mountain
like Prince Fortune, while Eternity sang to him of the great wonder. The
spirits of evil had carried him away into the mountains; that was all.
And now they had set him free again, believing that he had become a
troll like all his predecessors. But Pelle was not bewitched. He had
already consumed many things in his growth, and this was added to the
rest. What did a little confinement signify as compared with the slow
drip, drip, of centuries? Had he not been born with a caul, upon which
neither steel nor poison made any impression?

He sat down on an elevation, pulled off his cap, and let the cool breeze
play upon his forehead. It was full of rich promises; in its vernal
wandering over the earth it had gathered up all that could improve and
strengthen, and loaded him with it. Look around you, Pelle!

On all sides the soil was being prepared, the plough-teams nodded up the
gentle inclines and disappeared down the other side. A thin vapor rose
from the soil; it was the last of the cold evaporating in the declining
spring day. Some way down a few red cottages smilingly faced the sunset,
and still farther on lay the town with its eternal cloud of smoke
hanging over it.

What would his future be like down there? And how did matters stand? Had
the new made its way to the front, or would he once more have to submit
to an extortioner, get only the bare necessaries of life out of his
work, and see the rest disappear into some one else's pocket? A number
of new factories had grown up, and now formed quite a belt about the
city, with their hundreds of giant chimneys stretching up into the sky.
But something must be going on, since they were not smoking. Was it a
wages conflict?

He was now going to lay plans for his life, build it up again upon the
deep foundation that had been laid in his solitude; and yet he knew
absolutely nothing of the conditions down in the town! Well, he had
friends in thousands; the town was simply lying waiting to receive him
with open arms, more fond of him than ever because of all he had
suffered. With all his ignorance he had been able to lead them on a
little way; the development had chosen him as its blind instrument, and
it had been successful; but now he was going to lead them right into the
land, for now he felt the burden of life within him.

Hullo! if he wasn't building castles in the air just as in the old days,
and forgetting all that the prison cell had taught him so bitterly! The
others' good indeed! He had been busily concerned for the homes of
others, and had not even succeeded in building his own! What humbug!
Down there were three neglected beings who would bring accusations
against him, and what was the use of his sheltering himself behind the
welfare of the many? What was the good of receiving praise from tens of
thousands and being called benefactor by the whole world, if those three
whose welfare had been entrusted to him accused him of having failed
them? He had often enough tried to stifle their accusing voices, but in
there it was not possible to stifle anything into silence.

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