Pelle the Conqueror Part 163

"It's not the first time that I've been blamed for it in this connection," answered Pelle gravely; "but I must put up with it."

The old man held out his hand. "I beg your pardon! It wasn't my intention to find fault with you because you don't act thoughtlessly.

Of course we mustn't give up the victory out of sympathy with those who fight. It was only a momentary weakness, but a weakness that might spoil everything--that I must admit! But it's not so easy to be a pa.s.sive spectator of these topsy-turvy conditions. It's affirmed that the workmen prefer to receive a starvation allowance to doing any work; and judging by what they've hitherto got out of their work it's easy to understand that it's true. But during the month that the excavations here have been going on, at least a thousand unemployed have come every day ready to turn to; and we pay them for refraining from doing anything! They can at a pinch receive support, but at no price obtain work. It's as insane as it's possible to be! You feel you'd like to give the machinery a little push and set it going again."

"It wants a good big push," said Pelle. "They're not trifles that are in the way."

"They look absurdly small, at any rate. The workmen are not in want because they're out of work, as our social economists want us to believe; but they're out of work because they're in want. What a putting of the cart before the horse! The procession of the unemployed is a disgrace to the community; what a waste--also from a purely mercantile point of view--while the country and the nation are neglected! If a private business were conducted on such principles, it would be doomed from the very first."

"If the pitiable condition arose only from a wrong grasp of things, it would be easily corrected," said Pelle; "but the people who settle the whole thing can't at any rate be charged with a lack of mercantile perception. It would be a good thing if they had the rest in as good order! Believe me, not a sparrow falls to the ground unless it is to the advantage of the money-power; if it paid, in a mercantile sense, to have country and people in perfect order, it would take good care that they were so. But it simply can't be done; the welfare of the many and the acc.u.mulation of property by the few are irreconcilable contradictions.

I think there is a wonderful balance in humanity, so that at any time it can produce exactly enough to satisfy all its requirements; and when one claims too much, others let go. It's on that understanding indeed that we want to remove the others and take over the management."

"Yes, yes! I didn't mean that I wanted to protect the existing state of affairs. Let those who make the venture take the responsibility. But I've been wondering whether _we_ couldn't find a way to gather up all this waste so that it should benefit the cooperative works?"

"How could we? We _can't_ afford to give occupation to the unemployed."

"Not for wages! But both the Movement and the community have begun to support them, and what would be more natural than that one required work of them in return? Only, remember, letting it benefit them!"

"You mean that, for instance, unemployed bricklayers and carpenters should build houses for the workmen?" asked Pelle, with animation.

"Yes, as an instance. But the houses should be ensured against private speculation, in the same way as those we're building, and always belong to the workmen. As _we_ can't be suspected of trying to make profits, we should be suitable people for its management, and it would help on the cooperative company. In that way the refuse of former times would fertilize the new seed."

Pelle sat lost in thought, and the old man lay and looked at him in suspense. "Well, are you asleep?" he asked at last impatiently.

"It's a fine idea," said Pelle, raising his head. "I think we should get the organizations on our side; they're already beginning to be interested in cooperation. When the committee sits, I'll lay your plan before them. I'm not so sure of the community, however, Brun! They have occasional use for the great hunger-reserve, so they'll go on just keeping life in it; if they hadn't, it would soon be allowed to die of hunger. I don't think they'll agree to have it employed, so to speak, against themselves."

"You're an incorrigible pessimist!" said Brun a little irritably.

"Yes, as regards the old state of things," answered Pelle, with a smile.

Thus they would discuss the possibilities for the fixture in connection with the events of the day when Pelle sat beside the old man in the evening, both of them engrossed in the subject. Sometimes the old man felt that he ran off the lines. "It's the blood," he said despondently.

"I'm not, after all, quite one of you. It's so long since one of my family worked with his hands that I've forgotten it."

During this time he often touched upon his past, and every evening had something to tell about himself. It was as though he were determined to find a law that would place him by Pelle's side.

Brun belonged to an old family that could be traced back several hundred years to the captain of a s.h.i.+p, who traded with the Tranquebar coast.

The founder of the family, who was also a whaler and a pirate, lived in a house on one of the Kristianshavn ca.n.a.ls. When his s.h.i.+p was at home, she lay to at the wharf just outside his street-door. The Bruns' house descended from father to son, and was gradually enlarged until it became quite a mansion. In the course of four generations it had become one of the largest trading-houses of the capital. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, most of the members of the family had gone over into the world of stockbrokers and bankers, and thence the changes went still further. Brun's father, the well-known Kornelius Brun, stuck to the old business, his brothers making over their share to him and entering the diplomatic service, one of them receiving a high Court appointment.

Kornelius Brun felt it his duty to carry on the old business, and in order to keep on a level with his brothers as regarded rank, he married a lady of n.o.ble birth from Funen, of a very old family heavily burdened with debt. She bore him three children, all of whom--as he himself said--were failures. The first child was a deaf mute with very small intellectual powers. It fortunately died before it attained to man's estate. Number two was very intelligent and endowed with every talent, but even as a boy exhibited perverse tendencies. He was very handsome, had soft, dark hair, and a delicate, womanish complexion. His mother dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful, but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The announcement of the death gave a stroke as the cause; but the truth was that rumors had begun to circulate of a scandal in which he was implicated together with some persons of high standing. It was at the end of the seventies, at the time when the lower cla.s.s movement began to gather way. An energetic investigation was demanded from below, and it was considered inadvisable to hush the story up altogether, for fear of giving support to the a.s.sertion of the rottenness and onesidedness of the existing conditions. When an investigation became imminent, and it was evident that Brun would be offered up upon the altar of the mult.i.tude in order to s.h.i.+eld those who stood higher, Kornelius Brun put a pistol into his son's hand--or shot him; the librarian was unable to say which.

"Those were two of the fruits upon the decaying family tree," said Brun bitterly, "and it can't be denied that they were rather worm-eaten. The third was myself. I came fifteen years after my youngest brother. By that time my parents had had enough of their progeny; at any rate, I was considered from the beginning to be a hopeless failure, even before I had had an opportunity of showing anything at all. Perhaps they felt instinctively that I should take a wrong direction too. In me too the disintegrating forces predominated; I was greatly deficient, for instance, in family feeling. I remember when still quite little hearing my mother complain of my plebeian tendencies; I always kept with the servants, and took their part against my parents. My family looked more askance at me for upholding the rights of our inferiors than they had done at the idiot who tore everything to pieces, or the spendthrift who made scandals and got into debt. And I dare say with good reason! Mother gave me plenty of money to amuse myself with, probably to counteract my plebeian tendencies; but I had soon done with the pleasures and devoted myself to study. Things of the day did not interest me, but even as a boy I had a remarkable desire to look back; I devoted myself especially to history and its philosophy. Father was right when he derided me and called it going into a monastery; at an age when other young men are lovers, I could not find any woman that interested me, while almost any book tempted me to a closer acquaintance. For a long time he hoped that I would think better of it and take over the business, and when I definitely chose study, it came to a quarrel between us. 'When the business comes to an end, there's an end of the family!' he said, and sold the whole concern. He had been a widower then for several years, and had only me; but during the five years that he lived after selling the business we didn't see one another. He hated me because I didn't take it over, but what could I have done with it? I possessed none of the qualities necessary for the carrying on of business in our day, and should only have ruined the whole thing. From the time I was thirty, my time has been pa.s.sed among bookshelves, and I've registered the lives and doings of others. It's only now that I've come out into the daylight and am beginning to live my own life; and now it'll soon be ended!"

"It's only now that life's beginning to be worth living," said Pelle, "so you've come out just at the right time."

"Ah, no!" said Brun despondently. "I'm not in the ascendant! I meet young men and my mind inclines to them; but it's like evening and morning meeting in the same glow during the light nights. I've only got my share in the new because the old must bend to it, so that the ring may be completed. You go in where I go out."

"It must have been a melancholy existence to be always among books, books, without a creature that cared for you," put in Ellen. "Why didn't you marry? Surely we women aren't so terrible that there mightn't have been _one_ that you liked?"

"No, you'd think not, but it's true nevertheless," answered Brun, with a smile. "The antipathy was mutual too; it's always like that. I suppose it wasn't intended that an old fellow like me should put children into the world! It's not nice, though, to be the end of something."

Ellen laughed. "Yes, but you haven't always been old!"

"Yes, I have really; I was born old. I'm only now beginning to feel young. And who knows?" he exclaimed with grim humor. "I may play Providence a trick and make my appearance some day with a little wife on my arm."

"Brun's indulging in fancies," said Pelle, as they went down to bed.

"But I suppose they'll go when he's about again."

"He's not had much of a time, poor old soul!" said Ellen, going closer to Pelle. "It's a shame that there are people who get no share in all the love there is--just as great a shame as what you're working against, I think!"

"Yes, but we can't put that straight!" exclaimed Pelle, laughing.

XXI

In the garden at "Daybreak" the snow was disappearing from day to day.

First it went away nearest the house, and gave place to a little forest of snowdrops and crocuses. The hyacinths in the gra.s.s began to break through the earth, coming up like a row of knuckles that first knocked at the door.

The children were always out watching the progress made. They could not understand how the delicate crocus could push straight up out of the frozen ground without freezing to death, but died when it came into the warm room. Every day they wrapped some snowdrops in paper and laid them on Brun's table--they were "snowdrop-letters"--and then hovered about in ungovernable excitement until he came in from the fields, when they met him with an air of mystery, and did all they could to entice him upstairs.

Out in the fields they were nearly finished with the excavations, and were only waiting for the winter water to sink in order to cart up gravel and stone and begin the foundations; the ground was too soft as yet.

Old Brun was not so active now after his confinement to bed; although there was not much the matter with him, it had weakened him. He allowed Pelle a free hand with the works, and said Yea and Amen to everything he proposed. "I can't keep it all in my head," he would say when Pelle came to suggest some alteration; "but just do as you like, my son, and it's sure to be right." There were not enough palpable happenings down there to keep his mind aglow, and he was too old to hear it grow and draw strength from that. His faith, however, merely s.h.i.+fted from the Cause over to Pelle; he saw him alive before him, and could lean upon his youthful vigor.

He had given up his work on the plans. He could not keep at it, and contented himself with going the round of the fields two or three times a day and watching the men. The sudden flame of energy that Pelle's youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. He no longer measured himself by Pelle, and was not jealous of his taking the lead in anything, but simply admired him and kept carefully within the circle of those for whom Pelle acted providence. Ellen treated him like a big child who needed a great deal of care, and the children of course looked upon him as their equal.

When he went his round of the fields, he generally had Boy Comfort by the hand; the two could both keep pace with one another and converse together. There was one thing that interested them both and kept them in great excitement. The stork was expected every day back at the Hill Farm, and when it came it would bring a baby to Mother Ellen. The expectation was not an unmixed pleasure. The stork always bit the mother in the leg when he came with a baby for her. Boy Comfort's own mother died of the bite; he was wise enough to know that now. The little fellow looked upon Ellen as his mother, and went about in a serious, almost depressed, mood. He did not talk to the other children of his anxiety, for fear they would make fun of him; but when he and the old man walked together in the fields they discussed the matter, and Brun, as the older and wiser, came to the conclusion that there was no danger. All the same, they always kept near the house so as to be at hand.

One day Pelle stayed at home from work, and Ellen did not get up as usual. "I'm going to lie here and wait for the stork," she said to Boy Comfort. "Go out and watch for it." The little boy took a stick, and he and Brun tramped round the house; and when they heard Ellen cry out, they squeezed one another's hands. It was such a disturbed day, it was impossible to keep anything going straight; now a carriage drove up to the door with a fat woman in it, now it was La.s.se Frederik who leaped upon his bicycle and raced down the field-path, standing on the pedals.

Before Boy Comfort had any idea of it, the stork had been there, and Ellen was lying with a baby boy on her arm. He and Brun went in together to congratulate her, and they were both equally astonished. The old man had to be allowed to touch the baby's cheek.

"He's still so ugly," said Ellen, with a shy smile, as she lifted the corner of the shawl from the baby's head. Then she had to be left quiet, and Brun took Boy Comfort upstairs with him.

Pelle sat on the edge of the bed, holding Ellen's hand, which in a few hours had become white and thin. "Now we must send for 'Queen Theresa,'"

she said.

"Shan't we send for your mother too?" asked Pelle, who had often proposed that they should take the matter into their own hands, and go and see the old people. He did not like keeping up old quarrels.

Ellen shook her head. "They must come of their own accord," she said decidedly. She did not mind for herself, but they had looked down upon Pelle, so it was not more than fair that they should come and make it up.

"But I _have_ sent for them," said Pelle. "That was what La.s.se Frederik went about. You mustn't have a baby without help from your mother."

In less than a couple of hours Madam Stolpe had arrived. She was much moved, and to hide it she began turning the house inside out for clean cloths and binders, scolding all the time. A nice time, indeed, to send for anybody, when it was all over!

Father Stolpe was harder. He was not one to come directly he was whistled for! But two or three evenings after the baby had arrived, Pelle ran up against him hanging about a little below the house. Well, he was waiting for mother, to take her home, and it didn't concern anybody else, he supposed. He pretended to be very determined, but it was comparatively easy to persuade him to come in; and once in, it was not long before Ellen had thawed him. She had, as usual, her own manner of procedure.

"Let me tell you, father, that it's not me that sent for you, but Pelle; and if you don't give him your hand and say you've done him an injustice, we shall never be good friends again!"