Chapter 93

The train started. Pelle felt his heart contract as he stood and gazed after it, feeling as though it were taking part of him with it. It had always been a dream of his to go out and see a little of the world; ever since “Garibaldi” had appeared in the little workshop at home in the provincial town he had looked forward to it. Now Morten was going, but he himself would never get away; he must be content with the “journey abroad” he had had. For a moment Pelle stood looking along the lines where the train had disappeared, with his thoughts far away in melancholy dreams; then he woke up and discovered that without intending it he had been feeling his home a clog upon his feet. And there were Ellen and the children at home watching for his coming, while he stood here and dreamed himself away from them! They would do nothing until he came, for Sunday was his day, the only day they really had him. He hurried out and jumped onto a tram.

As he leaped over the ditch into the field at the tramway terminus, he caught sight of Brun a little farther along the path. The old librarian was toiling up the hill, his asthma making him pause every now and then. “He’s on his way to us!” said Pelle to himself, touched at the thought; it had not struck him before how toilsome this walk over ploughed fields and along bad roads must be for the old man; and yet he did it several times in the week to come out and see them.

“Well, here I am again!” said Brun. “I only hope you’re not getting tired of me.”

“There’s no danger of that!” answered Pelle, taking his arm to help him up the hill. “The children are quite silly about you!”

“Yes, the children—I’m safe enough with them, and with you too, Pelle; but your wife makes me a little uncertain.”

“Ellen’s rather reserved, but it’s only her manner; she’s very fond of you,” said Pelle warmly. “Any one who takes the children on his knee wins Ellen’s heart.”

“Do you really think so? I’ve always despised woman because she lacks personality—until I got to know your wife. She’s an exceptional wife you’ve got, Pelle; hers is a strong nature, so strong that she makes me uncertain. Couldn’t you get her to leave off calling me Mr. Brun?”

“I’ll tell her,” said Pelle, laughing; “but I’m not sure it’ll be of any use.”

“This _Mr. Brun_ is beginning to be an intolerable person, let me tell you; and in your house I should like to get away from him. Just imagine what it means to be burdened all your life with a gentleman like that, who doesn’t stand in close relationship to anybody at all. Others are called ‘Father,’ ‘Grandfather’—something or other human; but all conditions of life dispose of me with a ‘Mr. Brun’! ‘Thank you, Mr. Brun!’ ‘Many thanks, Mr. Brun!’” The old man had worked himself up, and made the name a caricature.

“These are bad roads out here,” he said suddenly, stopping to take breath. “It’s incomprehensible that these fields should be allowed to lie here just outside the town—that speculation hasn’t got hold of them.”

“I suppose it’s because of the boggy ground down there,” said Pelle. “They’ve begun to fill it in, however, at the north end, I see.”

Brun peered in that direction with some interest, but gave it up, shaking his head.

“No, I can’t see so far without glasses; that’s another of the blessings bestowed by books. Yes, it is! Old people in the country only make use of spectacles when they want to look at a book, but I have to resort to them when I want to find my way about the world: that makes a great difference. It’s the fault of the streets and those stupid books that I’m shortsighted; you don’t get any outlook if you don’t live in the country. The town shuts up all your senses, and the books take you away from life; so I’m thinking of moving out too.”

“Is that wise now just before the winter? It wouldn’t do for you to go in and out in all kinds of weather.”

“Then I’ll give up the library,” answered Brun. “I shan’t miss it much; I’ve spent enough of my life there. Fancy, Pelle! it occurred to me last night that I’d helped to catalogue most of the literature of the world, but haven’t even seen a baby dressed! What right have people like me to have an opinion?”

“I can’t understand that,” said Pelle. “Books have given me so much help.”

“Yes, because you had the real thing. If I were young, I would go out and set to work with my hands. I’ve missed more through never having worked with my body till I was hot and tired, than you have through not knowing the great classic writers. I’m discovering my own poverty, Pelle; and I would willingly exchange everything for a place as grandfather by a cozy fireside.”

The children came running across the field. “Have you got anything for us to-day?” they cried from a long distance.

“Yes, but not until we get into the warmth. I daren’t unbutton my coat out here because of my cough.”

“Well, but you walk so slowly,” said Boy Comfort. “Is it because you’re so old?”

“Yes, that’s it,” answered the old man, laughing. “You must exercise a little patience.”

Patience, however, was a thing of which the children possessed little, and they seized hold of his coat and pulled him along. He was quite out of breath when they reached the house.

Ellen looked severely at the children, but said nothing. She helped Brun off with his coat and neckerchief, and after seeing him comfortably seated in the sitting-room, went out into the kitchen. Pelle guessed there was something she wanted to say to him, and followed her.

“Pelle,” she said gravely, “the children are much too free with Mr. Brun. I can’t think how you can let them do it.”

“Well, but he likes it, Ellen, or of course I should stop them. It’s just what he likes. And do you know what I think he would like still better? If you would ask him to live with us.”

“That I’ll never do!” declared Ellen decidedly. “It would look so extraordinary of me.”

“But if he wants a home, and likes us? He’s got no friends but us.”

No—no, Ellen could not understand that all the same, with the little they had to offer. And Brun, who could afford to pay for all the comforts that could be had for money! “If he came, I should have to have new table-linen at any rate, and good carpets on the floors, and lots of other things.”

“You can have them too,” said Pelle. “Of course we’ll have everything as nice as we can, though Brun’s quite as easily pleased as we are.”

That might be so, but Ellen was the mistress of the house, and there were things she could not let go. “If Mr. Brun would like to live with us, he shall be made comfortable,” she said; “but it’s funny he doesn’t propose it himself, for he can do it much better than we can.”

“No, it must come from us—from _you,_ Ellen. He’s a little afraid of you.”

“Of me?” exclaimed Ellen, in dismay. “And I who would—why, there’s no one I’d sooner be kind to! Then I’ll say it, Pelle, but not just now.” She put up her hands to her face, which was glowing with pleasure and confusion at the thought that her little home was worth so much.

Pelle went back to the sitting-room. Brun was sitting on the sofa with Boy Comfort on his knee. “He’s a regular little urchin!” he said. “But he’s not at all like his mother. He’s got your features all through.”

“Ellen isn’t his mother,” said Pelle, in a low voice.

“Oh, isn’t she! It’s funny that he should have those three wrinkles in his forehead like you; they’re like the wave-lines in the countenance of Denmark. You both look as if you were always angry.”

“So we were at that time,” said Pelle.

“Talking of anger”—Brun went on—“I applied to the police authorities yesterday, and got them to promise to give up their persecution of Peter Dreyer, on condition that he ceases his agitation among the soldiers.”

“We shall never get him to agree to that; it would be the same thing as requiring him to swear away his rights as a man. He has taught himself, by a great effort, to use parliamentary expressions, and nobody’ll ever get him to do more. In the matter of the Cause itself he’ll never yield, and there I agree with him. If you mayn’t even fight the existing conditions with spiritual weapons, there’ll be an end of everything.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Brun, “only I’m sorry for him. The police keep him in a perpetual state of inflammation. He can’t have any pleasure in life.”

XVI

Pelle was always hoping that Peter Dreyer would acquire a calmer view of life. It was his intention to start a cooperative business in the course of the spring at Aarhus too, and Peter was appointed to start it. But his spirit seemed incurable; every time he calmed down a little, conditions roused him to antagonism again. This time it was the increase of unemployment that touched him.

The senseless persecution, moreover, kept him in a state of perpetual irritation. Even when he was left alone, as now, he had the feeling that they were wondering how they could get him to blunder—apparently closed their eyes in order to come down upon him with all the more force. He never knew whether he was bought or sold.

The business was now so large that they had to move the actual factory into the back building, and take the whole of the basement for the repairing workshop. Peter Dreyer managed this workshop, and there was no fault to find with his management; he was energetic and vigilant. He was not capable, however, of managing work on a large scale, for his mind was in constant oscillation. In spite of his abilities he was burning to no purpose.

“He might drop his agitation and take up something more useful,” said Brun, one evening when he and Pelle sat discussing the matter. “Nothing’s accomplished by violence anyhow! And he’s only running his head against a brick wall himself!”

“You didn’t think so some time ago,” said Pelle. It was Brun’s pamphlets on the rights of the individual that had first roused Peter Dreyer’s attention.

“No, I know that. I once thought that the whole thing must be smashed to pieces in order that a new world might arise out of chaos. I didn’t know you, and I didn’t think my own class too good to be tossed aside; they were only hindering the development. But you’ve converted me. I was a little too quick to condemn your slowness; you have more connectedness in you than I. Our little business in there has proved to me that the common people are wise to admit their heritage from and debt to the upper class. I’m sorry to see Peter running off the track; he’s one of your more talented men. Couldn’t we get him out here? He could have one of my rooms. I think he needs a few more comforts.”

“You’d better propose it to him yourself,” said Pelle.

The next day Brun went into town with Pelle and proposed it, but Peter Dreyer declined with thanks. “I’ve no right to your comforts as long as there are twenty thousand men that have neither food nor firing,” he said, dismissing the subject. “But you’re an anarchist, of course,” he added scornfully, “and a millionaire, from what I hear; so the unemployed have nothing to fear!” He had been disappointed on becoming personally acquainted with the old philosopher, and never disguised his ill-will.

“I think you know that I _have_ already placed my fortune at the disposal of the poor,” said Brun, in an offended tone, “and my manner of doing so will, I hope, some day justify itself. If I were to divide what I possess to-day among the unemployed, it would have evaporated like dew by to-morrow, so tremendous, unfortunately, is the want now.”

Peter Dreyer shrugged his shoulders. The more reason was there, he thought, to help.

“Would you have us sacrifice our great plan of making all want unnecessary, for one meal of food to the needy?” asked Pelle.

Yes, Peter saw only the want of to-day; it was such a terrible reality to him that the future must take care of itself.

A change had taken place in him, and he seemed quite to have given up the development.

“He sees too much,” said Pelle to Brun, “and now his heart has dominated his reason. We’d better leave him alone; we shan’t in any case get him to admit anything, and we only irritate him. It’s impossible to live with all that he always has before his eyes, and yet keep your head clear; you must either shut your eyes and harden yourself, or let yourself be broken to pieces.”

Peter Dreyer’s heart was the obstruction. He often had to stop in the middle of his work and gasp for breath. “I’m suffocated!” he would say.

There were many like him. The ever-increasing unemployment began to spread panic in men’s minds. It was no longer only the young, hot-headed men who lost patience. Out of the great compact mass of organization, in which it had hitherto been impossible to distinguish the individual beings, simple-minded men suddenly emerged and made themselves ridiculous by bearing the truth of the age upon their lips. Poor people, who understood nothing of the laws of life, nevertheless awakened, disappointed, out of the drowsiness into which the rhythm had lulled them, and stirred impatiently. Nothing happened except that one picked trade after another left them to become middle-class.

The Movement had hitherto been the fixed point of departure; from it came everything that was of any importance, and the light fell from it over the day. But now suddenly a germ was developed in the simplest of them, and they put a note of interrogation after the party-cry. To everything the answer was: When the Movement is victorious, things will be otherwise. But how could they be otherwise when no change had taken place even now when they had the power? A little improvement, perhaps, but no change. It had become the regular refrain, whenever a woman gave birth to a child in secret, or a man stole, or beat his wife:—It is a consequence of the system! Up and vote, comrades! But now it was beginning to sound idiotic in their ears. They were voting, confound it, with all their might, but all the same everything was becoming dearer! Goodness knows they were law-abiding enough. They were positively perspiring with parliamentarianism, and would soon be doing nothing but getting mandates. And what then? Did any one doubt that the poor man was in the majority—an overwhelming majority? What was all this nonsense then that the majority were to gain? No, those who had the power would take good care to keep it; so they might win whatever stupid mandates they liked!

Men had too much respect for the existing conditions, and so they were always being fooled by them. It was all very well with all this lawfulness, but you didn’t only go gradually from the one to the other! How else was it that nothing of the new happened? The fact was that every single step toward the new was instantly swallowed up by the existing condition of things, and turned to fat on its ribs. Capital grew fat, confound it, no matter what you did with it; it was like a cat, which always falls upon its feet. Each time the workmen obtained by force a small rise in their wages, the employers multiplied it by two and put it onto the goods; that was why they were beginning to be so accommodating with regard to certain wage-demands. Those who were rather well off, capital enticed over to its side, leaving the others behind as a shabby proletariat. It might be that the Movement had done a good piece of work, but you wanted confounded good eyes to see it.

Thus voices were raised. At first it was only whiners about whom nobody needed to trouble—frequenters of public-houses, who sat and grumbled in their cups; but gradually it became talk that passed from mouth to mouth; the specter of unemployment haunted every home and made men think over matters once more on their own account; no one could know when his turn would come to sweep the pavement.

Pelle had no difficulty in catching the tone of all this; it was his own settlement with the advance on coming out of prison that was now about to become every one’s. But now he was another man! He was no longer sure that the Movement had been so useless. It had not done anything that marked a boundary, but it had kept the apparatus going and strengthened it. It had carried the masses over a dead period, even if only by letting them go in a circle. And now the idea was ready to take them again. Perhaps it was a good thing that there had not been too great progress, or they would probably never have wakened again. They might very well starve a little longer, until they could establish themselves in their own world; fat slaves soon lost sight of liberty.

Behind the discontented fussing Pelle could hear the new. It expressed itself in remarkable ways. A party of workmen—more than two hundred— who were employed on a large excavation work, were thrown out of work by the bankruptcy of the contractor. A new contractor took over the work, but the men made it a condition for beginning work again that he should pay them the wages that were due to them, and also for the time they were unemployed. “We have no share in the cake,” they said, “so you must take the risk too!” They made the one employer responsible for the other! And capriciously refused good work at a time when thousands were unemployed! Public opinion almost lost its head, and even their own press held aloof from them; but they obstinately kept to their determination, and joined the crowd of unemployed until their unreasonable demand was submitted to.

Pelle heard a new tone here. For the first time the lower class made capital responsible for its sins, without any petty distinction between Tom, Dick, and Harry. There was beginning to be perspective in the feeling of solidarity.

The great weariness occasioned by wandering in a spiritual desert came once more to the surface. He had experienced the same thing once before, when the Movement was raised; but oddly enough the breaking out came that time from the bottom of everything. It began with blind attacks on parliamentarianism, the suffrage, and the paroles; there was in it an unconscious rebellion against restraint and treatment in the mass. By an incomprehensible process of renewal, the mass began to resolve itself into individuals, who, in the midst of the bad times, set about an inquiry after the ego and the laws for its satisfaction. They came from the very bottom, and demanded that their shabby, ragged person should be respected.

Where did they come from? It was a complete mystery! Did it not sound foolish that the poor man, after a century’s life in rags and discomfort, which ended in his entire effacement in collectivism, should now make his appearance with the strongest claim of all, and demand his soul back?

Pelle recognized the impatience of the young men in this commotion. It was not for nothing that Peter Dreyer was the moving spirit at the meetings of the unemployed. Peter wanted him to come and speak, and he went with him two or three times, as he wanted to find out the relation of these people to his idea; but he remained in the background and could not be persuaded to mount the platform. He had nothing to do with these confused crowds, who turned all his ideas upside down. In any case he could not give them food to-day, and he had grown out of the use of strong language.

“Go up and say something nice to them! Don’t you see how starved they are?” said Peter Dreyer, one evening. “They still have confidence in you from old days. But don’t preach coöperation; you don’t feed hungry men with music of the future.”

“Do you give them food then?” asked Pelle.

“No, I can’t do that, but I give them a vent for their grievances, and get them to rise and protest. It’s something at any rate, that they no longer keep silence and submit.”

“And if to-morrow they get something to eat, the whole turmoil’s forgotten; but they’re no further on than they were. Isn’t it a matter of indifference whether they suffer want today, as compared with the question whether they will do so eternally?”

“If you can put the responsibility upon those poor creatures, you must be a hard-hearted brute!” said Peter angrily.

Well, it was necessary now to harden one’s heart, for nothing would be accomplished with sympathy only! The man with eyes that watered would not do for a driver through the darkness.

It was a dull time, and men were glad when they could keep their situations. There was no question of new undertakings before the spring. But Pelle worked hard to gain adherents to his idea. He had started a discussion in the labor party press, and gave lectures. He chose the quiet trade unions, disdained all agitation eloquence, and put forward his idea with the clearness of an expert, building it up from his own experience until, without any fuss, by the mere power of the facts, it embraced the world. It was the slow ones he wanted to get hold of, those who had been the firm nucleus of the Movement through all these years, and steadfastly continued to walk in the old foot-prints, although they led nowhere. It was the picked troops from the great conflict that must first of all be called upon! He knew that if he got them to go into fire for his idea with their unyielding discipline, much would be gained.

It was high time for a new idea to come and take them on; they had grown weary of this perpetual goose-step; the Movement was running away from them. But now he had come with an idea of which they would never grow weary, and which would carry them right through. No one would be able to say that he could not understand it, for it was the simple idea of the home carried out so as to include everything. Ellen had taught it to him, and if they did not know it themselves, they must go home to their wives and learn it. _They_ did not brood over the question as to which of the family paid least or ate most, but gave to each one according to his needs, and took the will for the deed. The world would be like a good, loving home, where no one oppressed the other—nothing more complicated than that.

Pelle was at work early and late. Scarcely a day passed on which he did not give a lecture or write about his coöperation idea. He was frequently summoned into the provinces to speak. People wanted to see and hear the remarkable manufacturer who earned no more than his work- people.

In these journeys he came to know the country, and saw that much of his idea had been anticipated out there. The peasant, who stiffened with horror at the word “socialist,” put the ideas of the Movement into practice on a large scale. He had arranged matters on the coöperative system, and had knitted the country into supply associations.

“We must join on there when we get our business into better order,” said Pelle to Brun.

“Yes, if the farmers will work with us,” said Brun doubtfully. “They’re conservative, you know.”

This was now almost revolutionary. As far as Pelle could see, there would soon be no place as big as his thumb-nail for capital to feed upon out there. The farmers went about things so quickly! Pelle came of peasant stock himself, and did not doubt that he would be able to get in touch with the country when the time came.

The development was preparing on several sides; they would not break with that if they wanted to attain anything.

It was like a fixed law relating to growth in existence, an inviolable divine idea running through it all. It was now leading him and his fellows into the fire, and when they advanced, no one must stay behind. No class of the community had yet advanced with so bright and great a call; they were going to put an end forever to the infamy of human genius sitting and weighing the spheres in space, but forgetting to weigh the bread justly.