Part 144 (2/2)

He minded his work punctiliously, however. He had made it a principle never to touch a book as long as any work lay waiting unfinished on the floor. In prison he had dreamt of a reasonable working-day of--for instance--eight hours, so that he would have time and strength to occupy himself with intellectual matters; but now he took it off his night's sleep instead. This was at any rate a field out of which they need not try to keep him; he would have his share in the knowledge of the times.

He felt it was a weapon. The poor man had long enough retired willingly into the corner for want of enlightenment, and whenever he put out his head he was laughed back again. Why did he not simply wrest the prerogative from the upper cla.s.ses? It cost only toil, and in that coin he was accustomed to pay! He was scarcely deficient in ability; as far as Pelle could see at present, almost all the pioneers of the new state of things came from the lower cla.s.ses.

He discovered with pleasure that his inward searching did not carry him away from the world, for far in there he came out again into the light--the light itself! He followed the secret laws for his own inward being, and found himself once more deep in the question of the welfare of the mult.i.tude. His practical sense required this confirmation of the conditions. There were also outward results. Even now history could no longer be used to light him and his ideas home; he knew too much. And his vision grew from day to day, and embraced an ever-widening horizon.

Some day he would simply take the magic word from the trolls and wake the giant with it!

He worked hard and was as a rule full of confidence. When the last of the artistes came home from their _cafe_, he was often sitting working by the light of his shoemaker's lamp. They would stop before the open bas.e.m.e.nt window and have a chat with him in their broken Danish. His domestic circ.u.mstances were somewhat straitened; the instalments in repayment of the loan, and the debt on the furniture still swallowed all that they were able to sc.r.a.pe together, and Pelle had no prospect of getting better work. But work is the bearer of faith, and he felt sure that a way would open out if only he kept on with it unweariedly.

He took Ellen's unspoken mistrust of his projects quietly. He felt himself to be greater than she in this; she could not reach up to the level of his head!

VI

Pelle was awake as early as four o'clock, although he had gone to bed late. He slept lightly at this time, when the summer night lay lightly upon his eyelids. He stole out into the kitchen and washed himself under the tap, and then went down to his work. The gray spirit of the night was still visible down in the street, but a tinge of red was appearing above the roofs. ”The sun's rising now over the country,” he thought, recalling the mornings of his childhood, the fields with their sheen of silvery dew, and the sun suddenly coming and changing them into thousands of sparkling diamond drops. Ah, if one could once more run bare-footed, if a little shrinkingly, out into the dewy gra.s.s, and shout a greeting to the dawning day: ”Get up, Sun! Pelle is here already!”

The night-watchman came slowly past the open window on his way home.

”Up already?” he exclaimed in a voice hoa.r.s.e with the night air, as he nodded down to Pelle. ”Well, it's the early bird that catches the worm!

You'll be rich one of these days, shoemaker!” Pelle laughed; he _was_ rich!

He thought of his wife and children while he worked. It was nice to think of them sleeping so securely while he sat here at work; it emphasized the fact that he was their bread-winner. With every blow of his hammer the home grew, so he hammered away cheerfully. They were poor, but that was nothing in comparison with the fact that if he were taken away now, things would go to pieces. He was the children's Providence; it was always ”Father's going to,” or ”Father said so.” In their eyes he was infallible. Ellen too began to come to him with her troubles; she no longer kept them to herself, but recognized that he had the broader back.

It was all so undeserved--as if good spirits were working for him.

Shameful though it was that the wife should work to help to keep the family, he had not been able to exempt her from it. And what had he done for the children? It was not easy to build everything up at once from a bare foundation, and he was sometimes tempted to leave something alone so as to accomplish the rest the more quickly. As it was now, he was really nothing! Neither the old Pelle nor the new, but something indeterminate, in process of formation, something that was greatly in need of indulgence! A removing van full of furniture on its way to a new dwelling.

He often enough had occasion to feel this from outside; both old enemies and old friends looked upon him as a man who had gone very much down in the world. Their look said: ”Is that really all that remains of that stalwart fellow we once knew?” His own people, on the other hand, were lenient in their judgment. ”Father hasn't got time,” Sister would say in explanation to herself when she was playing about down in his work-room--”but he will have some day!” And then she would picture to herself all the delightful things that would happen then. It affected Pelle strangely; he would try to get through this as quickly as possible.

It was a dark and pathless continent into which he had ventured, but he was now beginning to find his way in it. There were ridges of hills that constantly repeated themselves, and a mountain-top here and there that was reached every time he emerged from the thicket. It was good to travel there. Perhaps it was the land he and the others had looked for.

When he had got through, he would show it to them.

Pelle had a good memory, and remembered all that he read. He could quote much of it verbatim, and in the morning, before the street had wakened, he used to go through it all in his mind while he worked. It surprised him to find how little history concerned itself with his people; it was only in quite recent times that they had been included. Well, that did not trouble him! The Movement _was_ really something new, and not one of history's everlasting repet.i.tions. He now wanted to see its idea in print, and one day found him sitting with a strange solemnity in the library with Marx and Henry George in front of him. Pelle knew something about this subject too, but this was nevertheless like drawing up a net from the deep; a brilliant world of wonders came up with it. There were incontrovertible logical proofs that he had a right apprehension, though it had been arrived at blindly. The land of fortune was big enough for all; the greater the number that entered it, the larger did it become.

He felt a desire to hit out again and strike a fresh blow for happiness!

Suddenly an avalanche seemed to fall from the top to the bottom of the house, a brief, all-pervading storm that brought him back to his home.

It was only La.s.se Frederik ushering in the day; he took a flight at each leap, called a greeting down to his father, and dashed off to his work, b.u.t.toning the last b.u.t.ton of his braces as he ran. A little later Ellen came down with coffee.

”Why didn't you call me when you got up?” she said sulkily. ”It's not good to sit working so long without having had something to eat.”

Pelle laughed and kissed her good-morning. ”Fine ladies don't get up until long after their husbands,” he said teasingly.

But Ellen would not be put off with a jest. A proper wife would be up before her husband and have something ready for him. ”I _will_ have you call me!” she said decidedly, her cheeks very red. It suited her to get roused now and then.

While he drank his coffee, she sat and talked to him about her affairs, and they discussed the plans for the day, after which she went upstairs to help the children to dress.

Later in the morning Pelle laid aside his work, dressed himself and went out to deliver it. While he was out he would go into the Library and look up something in the large dictionaries.

The street lived its own quiet life here close up to the greater thoroughfares--the same life day after day. The fat second-hand dealer from Jutland was standing as usual at his door, smoking his wooden pipe.

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