Pelle the Conqueror Part 84

"Yes, yes, you can talk it over with the foreman; but no unionists here, mind that! We've no use for those folks."

Pelle pressed his lips together and pushed the cloth wrapper into the breast of his coat in silence. It was all he could do not to make some retort; he couldn't approve of that prohibition. He went out quickly into Kobmager Street and turned out of the Coal Market into Hauser Street, where, as he knew, the president of the struggling Shoemakers'

Union was living. He found a little cobbler occupying a dark cellar.

This must be the man he sought; so he ran down the steps. He had not understood that the president of the Union would be found in such a miserable dwelling-place.

Under the window sat a hollow-cheeked man bowed over his bench, in the act of sewing a new sole on to a worn-out shoe. The legs of the pa.s.sers-by were just above his head. At the back of the room a woman stood cooking something on the stove; she had a little child on her arm, while two older children lay on the ground playing with some lasts. It was frightfully hot and oppressive.

"Good day, comrade!" said Pelle. "Can I become a member of the Union?"

The man looked up, astonished. Something like a smile pa.s.sed over his mournful face.

"Can you indulge yourself so far?" he asked slowly. "It may prove a costly pleasure. Who d'you work for, if I may ask?"

"For Meyer, in Kobmager Street."

"Then you'll be fired as soon as he gets to know of it!"

"I know that sure enough; all the same, I want to join the Union. He's not going to tell me what I can and what I can't do. Besides, we'll soon settle with him."

"That's what I thought, too. But there's too few of us. You'll be starved out of the Union as soon as you've joined."

"We must see about getting a bit more numerous," said Pelle cheerfully, "and then one fine day we'll shut up shop for him!"

A spark of life gleamed in the tired eyes of the president. "Yes, devil take him, if we could only make him shut up shop!" he cried, shaking his clenched fist in the air. "He tramples on all those hereabouts that make money for him; it's a shame that I should sit here now and have come down to cobbling; and he keeps the whole miserable trade in poverty! Ah, what a revenge, comrade!" The blood rushed into his hollow cheeks until they burned, and then he began to cough. "Petersen!" said the woman anxiously, supporting his back. "Petersen!" She sighed and shook her head, while she helped him to struggle through his fit of coughing.

"When the talk's about the Court shoemaker Petersen always gets like one possessed," she said, when he had overcome it. "He really don't know what he's doing. No--if everybody would only be as clever as Meyer and just look after his own business, then certain people would be sitting there in good health and earning good money!"

"Hold your tongue!" said Petersen angrily. "You're a woman--you know nothing about the matter." At which the woman went back to her cooking.

Petersen filled out a paper, and Pelle signed his name to it and paid his subscription for a week. "And now you must try to break away from that bloodsucker as soon as possible!" said Petersen earnestly. "A respectable workman can't put up with such things!"

"I was forced into it," said Pelle. "And I learned nothing of this at home. But now that's over and done with."

"Good, comrade! There's my hand on it--and good luck to you! We must work the cause up, and perhaps we shall succeed yet; I tell you, you've given me back my courage! Now you persuade as many as you can, and don't miss the meetings; they'll be announced in _The Working Man_." He shook Pelle's hand eagerly. Pelle took a brisk walk out to the northward. He felt pleased and in the best of spirits.

It was about the time when the workers are returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the "Ark." The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a glance what each one was.

This quarter was the home of socialism and the new ideas. Pelle often strolled out thither on holidays in order to get a glimpse of these things; what they were he didn't know, and he hadn't dared to thrust himself forward, a stranger, as he still felt himself to be there; but it all attracted him powerfully. However, to-day he forgot that he was a stranger, and he went onward with a long, steady stride that took him over the bridge and into North Bridge Street. Now he himself was a trades unionist; he was like all these others, he could go straight up to any one if he wished and shake him by the hand. There was a strong and peculiar appeal about the bearing of these people, as though they had been soldiers. Involuntarily he fell into step with them, and felt himself stronger on that account, supported by a feeling of community.

He felt solemnly happy, as on his birthday; and he had a feeling as though he must do something. The public houses were open, and the workmen were entering them in little groups. But he had no desire to sit there and pour spirits down his throat. One could do that sort of thing when everything had gone to the dogs.

He stationed himself in front of a pastry cook's window, eagerly occupied in comparing the different kinds of cakes. He wanted to go inside and expend five and twenty ore in celebration of the day. But first of all the whole affair must be properly and methodically planned out, so that he should not be disappointed afterward. He must, of course, have something that he had never eaten before, and that was just the difficult part. Many of the cakes were hollow inside too, and the feast would have to serve as his evening meal.

It was by no means easy, and just as Pelle was on the point of solving the difficulty he was startled out of the whole affair by a slap on the shoulder. Behind him was Morten, smiling at him with that kindly smile of his, as though nothing had gone wrong between them. Pelle was ashamed of himself and could not find a word to say. He had been unfaithful to his only friend; and it was not easy for him to account for his behavior. But Morten didn't want any explanations; he simply shook Pelle by the hand. His pale face was s.h.i.+ning with joy. It still betrayed that trace of suffering which was so touching, and Pelle had to surrender at discretion. "Well, to think we should meet here!" he cried, and laughed good-naturedly.

Morten was working at the pastry cook's, and had been out; now he was going in to get some sleep before the night's work. "But come in with me; we can at least sit and talk for half an hour; and you shall have a cake too." He was just the same as in the old days.

They went in through the gate and up the back stairs; Morten went into the shop and returned with five "Napoleons." "You see I know your taste," he said laughing. Morten's room was right up under the roof; it was a kind of turret-room with windows on both sides. One could look out over the endless ma.s.s of roofs, which lay in rows, one behind the other, like the hotbeds in a monstrous nursery garden. From the numberless flues and chimneys rose a thin bluish smoke, which lay oppressively over all. Due south lay the Kalvebod Strand, and further to the west the hill of Frederiksberg with its castle rose above the mist. On the opposite side lay the Common, and out beyond the chimneys of the limekilns glittered the Sound with its many sails. "That's something like a view, eh?" said Morten proudly.

Pelle remained staring; he went from one window to another and said nothing. This was the city, the capital, for which he and all other poor men from the farthest corners of the land, had longed so boundlessly; the Fortunate Land, where they were to win free of poverty!

He had wandered through it in all directions, had marvelled at its palaces and its treasures, and had found it to be great beyond all expectation. Everything here was on the grand scale; what men built one day they tore down again on the morrow, in order to build something more sumptuous. So much was going on here, surely the poor man might somehow make his fortune out of it all!

And yet he had had no true conception of the whole. Now for the first time he saw the City! It lay there, a mighty whole, outspread at his feet, with palaces, churches, and factory chimneys rising above the ma.s.s of houses. Down in the street flowed a black, unending stream, a stream of people continually renewed, as though from a mighty ocean that could never be exhausted. They all had some object; one could not see it, but really they were running along like ants, each bearing his little burden to the mighty heap of precious things, which was gathered together from all the ends of the earth.

"There are millions in all this!" said Pelle at last, drawing a deep breath. "Yes," said Morten standing beside him. "And it's all put together by human hands--by the hands of working people!"

Pelle started. That was a wonderful idea. But it was true enough, if one thought about it.

"But now it has fallen into very different hands!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Yes, they've got it away from us by trickery, just as one wheedles a child out of a thing," cried Morten morosely. "But there's no real efficiency in anything that children do--and the poor have never been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to grow up, look you, and one fine day they'll ask for their own back."

"It would go ill with us if we went and tried to take it for ourselves,"

said Pelle.

"Not if we were united about it--but we are only the many."

Pelle listened; it had never occurred to him that the question of organization was so stupendous. Men combined, sure enough, but it was to secure better conditions in their trade.

"You are like your father!" he said. "He always had big ideas, and wanted to get his rights. I was thinking about him a little while ago, how he never let himself be trampled on. Then you used to be ashamed of him; but...."

Morten hung his head. "I couldn't bear the contempt of respectable folks," he said half under his breath. "I understood nothing beyond the fact that he was destroying our home and bringing disgrace on us. And I was horribly afraid, too, when he began to lay about him; I wake up sometimes now quite wet and cold with sweat, when I've been dreaming of my childhood. But now I'm proud that I'm the son of the 'Great Power.' I haven't much strength myself; yet perhaps I'll do something to surprise the city folks after all.'"

"And I too!"

Power! It was really extraordinary that Morten should be the son of the giant stone-cutter, so quiet and delicate was he. He had not yet quite recovered the strength of which Bodil had robbed him in his early boyhood; it was as though that early abuse was still wasting him.

He had retained his girlish love of comfort. The room was nicely kept; and there were actually flowers in a vase beneath the looking-gla.s.s.

Flowers, good Lord! "How did you get those?" asked Pelle.

"Bought them, of course!"

Pelle had to laugh. Was there another man in the world who would pay money for flowers?

But he did not laugh at the books. There seemed to be a sort of mysterious connection between them and Morten's peculiar, still energy.

He had now a whole shelf full. Pelle took a few down and looked into them.

"What sort of stuff is this, now?" he asked doubtfully. "It looks like learning!"

"Those are books about us, and how the new conditions are coming, and how we must make ready for them."

"Ah, you've got the laugh of me," said Pelle. "In a moment of depression you've got your book-learning to help you along. But we other chaps can just sit where we are and kick our heels." Morten turned to him hastily.

"That's the usual complaint!" he cried irritably. "A man spits on his own cla.s.s and wants to get into another one. But that's not the point at stake, d.a.m.n it all! We want to stay precisely where we are, shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe he'd get a chance of rising if it wasn't that society needs him--wants to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? 'Now you can see for yourself what a poor man can do if he likes!' That's what they tell you.

There's no need to blame society.

"No, the ma.s.ses themselves are to blame if they aren't all rich men!

Good G.o.d! They just don't want to be! So they treat you like a fool, and you put up with it and baa after them! No, let them all together demand that they shall receive enough for their work to live on decently. I say a working man ought to get as much for his work as a doctor or a barrister, and to be educated as well. That's my Lord's Prayer!"

"Now I've set you off finely!" said Pelle good-naturedly. "And it's just the same as what your father was raving about when he lay dying in the shed. He lay there delirious, and he believed the ordinary workman had got pictures on the wall and a piano, just like the fine folks."

"Did he say that?" cried Morten, and he raised his head. Then he fell into thought. For he understood that longing. But Pelle sat there brooding. Was this the "new time" all over again? Then there was really some sense in banding people together--yes, and as many as possible.