Chapter 95

“The cooperative company. It’s to be so arranged that the houses can’t be made over to others, nor encumbered with fresh loan. Our cooperative enterprises must avoid all form of speculation, thereby limiting the field for capital. The whole thing should be self-supporting and be able to do away with private property within its boundaries. You see it’s your own idea of a community within the community that I’m building upon. At present it’s not easy to find a juridical form under which the whole thing can work itself, but in the meantime you and I will manage it, and Morten if he will join us. I expect he’ll come home with renewed strength.”

“And when is this plan to be realized? Will it be in the near future?”

“This very winter, I had thought; and in this way we should also be able to do a little for the great unemployment. Thirty houses! It would be a beginning anyhow. And behind it lies the whole world, Pelle!”

“Shall you make the occupation of the houses obligatory for our workmen?”

“Yes, cooperation makes it an obligation. You can’t be half outside and half inside! Well, what do you think of it?”

“It’s a strong plan,” said Pelle. “We shall build our own town here on the hill.”

The old man’s face shone with delight. “There’s something in me after all, eh? There’s old business-blood in my veins too. My forefathers built a world for themselves, and why should I do less than they? I ought to have been younger, Pelle!”

They walked round the hill and came to the farm from the other side. “The whole piece wouldn’t really be too large if we’re to have room to extend ourselves,” said Pelle, who was not afraid of a large outlay when it was a question of a great plan.

“I was thinking the same thing,” answered Bran. “How much is there here? A couple of hundred acres? There’ll be room for a thousand families if each of them is to have a fair-sized piece of land.”

They then went in and took the whole for a quarter of a million (£14,000).

“But Ellen!” exclaimed Pelle, when they were on their way home again. “How are we going to come to terms with her?”

“Bless my soul! Why, it was her business we went upon! And now we’ve done business for ourselves! Well, I suppose she’ll give in when she hears what’s been done.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Pelle, laughing. “Perhaps when you tackle her.”

“Well, did you get the house?” asked Ellen, from the house door, where she was standing to receive them.

“Yes, we got much more,” said Brun airily. “We bought the whole concern.”

“Is that a fact, Pelle?”

Pelle nodded.

“What about my house then?” she asked slowly.

“Well, we bought that together with all the rest,” said Brun. “But as far as that goes it can easily be separated from the rest, only it’s rather soon to break up the cooperation before it’s started.” He waited a little, expecting that Ellen would say something, and when she continued silent he went on, rather shortly: “Well, then there’s nothing more to be said about that? Fair play’s a jewel, and to-morrow I’ll make arrangements for the conveyance of the house to you for the fifteen thousand (£850). And then we must give up the whole concern, Pelle. It won’t do for the man at the head of it to live on his private property; so that plan’s come to nothing!”

“Unless Ellen and I live in separate houses,” said Pelle slyly. “I might build just the other side of the boundary, and then we could nod to one another at any rate.”

Ellen looked at him gravely. “I only think it’s rather strange that you settle my affairs without asking me first,” she said at length.

“Yes, it was inconsiderate of us,” answered Brun, “and we hope you’ll forget all about it. You’ll give up the house then?”

“I’m pretty well obliged to when Pelle threatens to move out,” Ellen answered with a smile. “But I’m sorry about it. I’m certain that in a short time there’d have been money to make over it.”

“It’ll be nice, won’t it, if the women are going to move into our forsaken snail-shells?” said Brun half seriously.

“Ellen’s always been an incorrigible capitalist,” Pelle put in.

“It’s only that I’ve never had so much money that I shouldn’t know what it was worth,” answered Ellen, with ready wit.

Old Brun laughed. “That was one for Mr. Brun!” he said. “But since you’ve such a desire for land-speculation, Mistress Ellen, I’ve got a suggestion to make. On the ground we’ve bought there’s a piece of meadow that lies halfway in to town, by the bog. We’ll give you that. It’s not worth anything at present, and will have to be filled in to be of any value; but it won’t be very long before the town is out there wanting more room.”

Ellen had no objection to that. “But then,” she said, “I must be allowed to do what I like with what comes out of it.”

XIX

The sun held out well that year. Remnants of summer continued to hang in the air right into December. Every time they had bad weather Ellen said, “Now it’ll be winter, I’m sure!” But the sun put it aside once more; it went far down in the south and looked straight into the whole sitting- room, as if it were going to count the pictures.

The large yellow Gloire de Dijon went on flowering, and every day Ellen brought in a large, heavy bunch of roses and red leaves. She was heavy herself, and the fresh cold nipped her nose—which was growing sharper— and reddened her cheeks. One day she brought a large bunch to Pelle, and asked him: “How much money am I going to get to keep Christmas with?”

It was true! The year was almost ended!

After the new year winter began in earnest. It began with much snow and frost, and made it a difficult matter to keep in communication with the outside world, while indoors people drew all the closer to one another. Anna should really have been going to school now, but she suffered a good deal from the cold and was altogether not very strong, so Pelle and Ellen dared not expose her to the long wading through the snow, and taught her themselves.

Ellen had become a little lazy about walking, and seldom went into town; the two men made the purchases for her in the evening on their way home. It was a dull time, and no work was done by artificial light, so they were home early. Ellen had changed the dinner-hour to five, so that they could all have it together. After dinner Brun generally went upstairs to work for another couple of hours. He was busy working out projects for the building on the Hill Farm land, and gave himself no rest. Pelle’s wealth of ideas and energy infected him, and his plans grew and assumed ever-increasing dimensions. He gave no consideration to his weak frame, but rose early and worked all day at the affairs of the coöperative works. He seemed to be vying with Pelle’s youth, and to be in constant fear that something would come up behind him and interrupt his work.

The other members of the family gathered round the lamp, each with some occupation. Boy Comfort had his toy-table put up and was hammering indefatigably with his little wooden mallet upon a piece of stuff that Ellen had put between to prevent his marking the table. He was a sturdy little fellow, and the fat lay in creases round his wrists. The wrinkles on his forehead gave him a funny look when one did not recall the fact that he had cost his mother her life. He looked as if he knew it himself, he was so serious. He had leave to sit up for a little while with the others, but he went to bed at six.

Lasse Frederik generally drew when he was finished with his lessons. He had a turn for it, and Pelle, wondering, saw his own gift, out of which nothing had ever come but the prison, repeated in the boy in an improved form. He showed him the way to proceed, and held the pencil once more in his own hand. His chief occupation, however, was teaching little Anna, and telling her anything that might occur to him. She was especially fond of hearing about animals, and Pelle had plenty of reminiscences of his herding-time from which to draw.

“Have animals really intelligence?” asked Ellen, in surprise. “You really believe that they think about things just as we do?”

It was nothing new to Sister; she talked every day to the fowls and rabbits, and knew how wise they were.

“I wonder if flowers can think too,” said Lasse Frederik. He was busy drawing a flower from memory, and it _would_ look like a face: hence the remark.

Pelle thought they could.

“No, no, Pelle!” said Ellen. “You’re going too far now! It’s only us people who can think.”

“They can feel at any rate, and that’s thinking in a way, I suppose, only with the heart. They notice at once if you’re fond of them; if you aren’t they don’t thrive.”

“Yes, I do believe that, for if you’re fond of them you take good care of them,” said the incorrigible Ellen.

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Pelle, looking at her teasingly. “You’re very fond of your balsam, but a gardener would be sure to tell you that you treat it like a cabbage. And look how industriously it flowers all the same. They answer kind thoughts with gratitude, and that’s a nice way of thinking. Intelligence isn’t perhaps worth as much as we human beings imagine it to be. You yourself think with your heart, little mother.” It was his pet name for her just now.

After a little interlude such as this, they went on with their work. Pelle had to tell Sister all about the animals in her alphabet-book— about the useful cow and the hare that licked the dew off the clover and leaped up under the very nose of the cowherd. In the winter it went into the garden, gnawed the bark off the young trees and ate the farmer’s wife’s cabbage. “Yes, I must acknowledge that,” Ellen interposed, and then they all laughed, for puss had just eaten her kail.

Then the child suddenly left the subject, and wanted to know whether there had always, always been a Copenhagen. Pelle came to a standstill for a moment, but by a happy inspiration dug Bishop Absalom out of his memory. He took the opportunity of telling them that the capital had a population of half a million.

“Have you counted them, father?” exclaimed Sister, in perplexity, taking hold of his sleeve.

“Why, of course father hasn’t, you little donkey!” said Lasse Frederik. “One might be born while he was counting!”

Then they were at the cock again, which both began and ended the book. He stood and crowed so proudly and never slept. He was a regular prig, but when Sister was diligent he put a one-öre piece among the leaves. But the hens laid eggs, and it was evident that they were the same as the flowers; for when you were kind to them and treated them as if they belonged to the family, they were industrious in laying, but if you built a model house for them and treated them according to all established rules, they did not even earn as much as would pay for their food. At Uncle Kalle’s there was a hen that came into the room among all the children and laid its egg under the bed every single day all through the winter, when no other hens were laying. Then the farmer of Stone Farm bought it to make something by it. He gave twenty kroner (a guinea) for it and thought he had got a gold mine; but no sooner did it come to Stone Farm than it left off laying winter eggs, for there it was not one of the family, but was only a hen that they wanted to make money out of.

“Mother’s balsam flowers all the winter,” said Sister, looking fondly at the plant.

“Yes, that’s because it sees how industrious we all are,” said Lasse Frederik mischievously.

“Will you be quiet!” said Pelle, hitting out at him.

Ellen sat knitting some tiny socks. Her glance moved lingeringly from one to another of them, and she smiled indulgently at their chatter. They were just a lot of children!

“Mother, may I have those for my doll?” asked Anna, taking up the finished sock.

“No, little sister’s to have them when she comes.”

“If it _is_ a girl,” put in Lasse Frederik.

“When’s little sister coming?”

“In the spring when the stork comes back to the farm; he’ll bring her with him.”

“Pooh! The stork!” said Lasse Frederik contemptuously. “What a pack of nonsense!”

Sister too was wiser than that. When the weather was fine she fetched milk from the farm, and had learned a few things there.

“Now you must go to bed, my child,” said Ellen, rising. “I can see you’re tired.” When she had helped the child into bed she came back and sat down again with her knitting.

“Now I think you should leave off work for to-day,” said Pelle.

“Then I shouldn’t be ready in time,” answered Ellen, moving her knitting-needles more swiftly.

“Send it to a machine-knitter. You don’t even earn your bread anyhow with that handicraft; and there must be a time for work and a time for rest, or else you’d not be a human being.”

“Mother can make three öre (nearly a halfpenny) an hour by knitting,” said Lasse Frederik, who had made a careful calculation.

What did it matter? Ellen did not think she neglected anything else in doing it.

“It is stupid though!” exclaimed Lasse Frederik suddenly. “Why doesn’t wool grow on one’s legs? Then you’d have none of the bother of shearing the wool off sheep, carding it, spinning it, and knitting stockings.”

“Oh, what nonsense you’re talking!” said Ellen, laughing.

“Well, men were hairy once,” Lasse Frederik continued. “It was a great pity that they didn’t go on being it!”

Pelle did not think it such a pity, for it meant that they had taken over the care of themselves. Animals were born fully equipped. Even water-haters like cats and hens were born with the power of swimming; but men had to acquire whatever they had a use for. Nature did not equip them, because they had become responsible for themselves; they were the lords of creation.

“But then the poor ought to be hairy all over their bodies,” Ellen objected. “Why doesn’t Nature take as much care of the poor as of the animals? They can’t do it themselves.”

“Yes, but that’s just what they _can_ do!” said Pelle, “for it’s they who produce most things. Perhaps you think it’s money that cultivates the land, or weaves materials, or drags coal out of the earth? It had to leave that alone; all the capital in the world can’t so much as pick up a pin from the ground if there are no hands that it can pay to do it. If the poor were born hairy, it would simply stamp him as an inferior being. Isn’t it a wonder that Nature obstinately lets the poor men’s children be born just as naked as the king’s, in spite of all that we’ve gone through of want and hardship? If you exchange the prince’s and the beggar’s new-born babies, no one can say which is which. It’s as if Providence was never tired of holding our stamp of nobility up before us.”

“Do you really think then that the world can be transformed?” said Ellen, looking affectionately at him. It seemed so wonderful that this Pelle, whom she could take in her arms, occupied himself with such great matters. And Pelle looked back at her affectionately and wonderingly. She was the same to-day as on the day he first got to know her, perhaps as the day the world was created! She put nothing out on usury, but had been born with all she had. The world could indeed be transformed, but she would always remain as she was.

The post brought a letter from Morten. He was staying at present in Sicily, and thought of travelling along the north coast of Africa to the south of Spain. “And I may make an excursion in to the borders of the Desert, and try what riding on a camel is like,” he wrote. He was well and in good spirits. It was strange to think that he was writing with open doors, while here they were struggling with the cold. He drank wine at every meal just as you drank pale ale here at home; and he wrote that the olive and orange harvests were just over.

“It must be lovely to be in such a place just for once!” said Ellen, with a sigh.

“When the new conditions gain a footing, it’ll no longer be among unattainable things for the working-man,” Pelle answered.

Brun now came down, having at last finished his work. “Ah, it’s good to be at home!” he said, shaking himself; “it’s a stormy night.”

“Here’s a letter from Morten,” said Pelle, handing it to him.

The old man put on his spectacles.

XX

As soon as it was possible to get at the ground, the work of excavating for the foundations of the new workmen’s houses was begun with full vigor. Brun took a great interest in the work, and watched it out in the cold from morning till evening. He wore an extra great-coat, and woollen gloves outside his fur-lined ones. Ellen had knitted him a large scarf, which he was to wrap round his mouth. She kept an eye on him from the windows, and had to fetch him in every now and then to thaw him. It was quite impossible, however, to keep him in; he was far too eager for the work to progress. When the frost stopped it, he still wandered about out there, fidgety and in low spirits.

On weekdays Pelle was never at home in daylight, but on Sunday he had to go out with him and see what had been done, as soon as day dawned. The old man came and knocked at Pelle’s door. “Well, Pelle!” he said. “Will you soon be out of bed?”

“He must really be allowed to lie there while he has his coffee!” cried Ellen from the kitchen.

Brun ran once round the house to pass the time. He was not happy until he had shown it all to Pelle and got him to approve of the alterations. This was where he had thought the road should go. And there, where the roads crossed, a little park with statuary would look nice. New ideas were always springing up. The librarian’s imagination conjured up a whole town from the bare fields, with free schools and theaters and comfortable dwellings for the aged. “We must have a supply association and a school at once,” he said; “and by degrees, as our numbers increase, we shall get all the rest. A poor-house and a prison are the only things I don’t think we shall have any use for.”

They would spend the whole morning out there, walking about and laying plans. Ellen had to fetch them in when dinner-time came. She generally found them standing over some hole in earnest conversation—just an ordinary, square hole in the earth, with mud or ice at the bottom. Such holes were always dug for houses; but these two talked about them as if they were the beginning of an entirely new earth!

Brun missed Pelle during the day, and watched for him quite as eagerly as Ellen when the time came for him to return from work. “I shall soon be quite jealous of him,” said Ellen, as she drew Pelle into the kitchen to give him her evening greeting in private. “If he could he’d take you quite away from me.”

When Pelle had been giving a lecture, he generally came home after Brun had gone to rest, and in the morning when he left home the old man was not up. Brun never went to town. He laid the blame on the weather, but in reality he did not know what he would do with himself in there. But if a couple of days passed without his seeing Pelle, he became restless, lost interest in the excavating, and wandered about feebly without doing anything. Then he would suddenly put on his boots, excuse himself with some pressing errand, and set off over the fields toward the tram, while Ellen stood at the window watching him with a tender smile. She knew what was drawing him!

One would have thought there were ties of blood between these two, so dependent were they on one another. “How’s the old man?” was Pelle’s first question on entering; and Brun could not have followed Pelle’s movements with tenderer admiration in his old days if he had been his father. While Pelle was away the old man went about as if he were always looking for something.

Ellen did not like his being out among the navvies in all kinds of weather. In the evening the warmth of the room affected his lungs and made him cough badly.

“It’ll end in a regular cold,” she said. She wanted him to stay in bed for a few days and try to get rid of the cold before it took a firm hold.

It was a constant subject of argument between them, but Ellen did not give in until she got her way. When once he had made this concession to the cold, it came on in earnest. The warmth of bed thawed the cold out of his body and made both eyes and nose run.

“It’s a good thing we got you to bed in time,” said Ellen. “And now you won’t be allowed up until the worst cold weather is over, even if I have to hide your clothes.” She tended him like a child and made “camel tea” for him from flowers that she had gathered and dried in the summer.

When once he had gone to bed he quite liked it and took delight in being waited on, discovering a need of all kinds of things, so as to receive them from Ellen’s hands.

“Now you’re making yourself out worse than you are!” she said, laughing at him.

Brun laughed too. “You see, I’ve never been petted before,” he said. “From the time I was born, my parents hired people to look after me; that’s why I’m so shrivelled up. I’ve had to buy everything. Well, there’s a certain amount of justice in the fact that money kills affection, or else you’d both eat your cake and have it.”

“Yes, it’s a good thing the best can’t be had for money,” said Ellen, tucking the clothes about his feet. He was propped up with pillows, so that he could lie there and work. He had a map of the Hill Farm land beside him, and was making plans for a systematic laying out of the ground for building. He wrote down his ideas about it in a book that was to be appended to the plans. He worked from sunrise until the middle of the day, and during that time it was all that Ellen could do to keep the children away from him; Boy Comfort was on his way up to the old man every few minutes.

In the afternoon, when she had finished in the kitchen, she took the children up for an hour. They were given a picture-book and were placed at Brun’s large writing-table, while Ellen seated herself by the window with her knitting and talked to the old man. From her seat she could follow the work out on the field, and had to give him a full description of how far they had got with each plot.

There were always several hundred men out there standing watching the work—a shivering crowd that never diminished. They were unemployed who had heard that something was going on out here, and long before the dawn of day they were standing there in the hope of coming in for something. All day they streamed in and out, an endless chain of sad men. They resembled prisoners condemned hopelessly to tread a huge wheel; there was a broad track across the fields where they went.

Brun was troubled by the thought of these thousands of men who came all this way to look for a day’s work and had to go back with a refusal. “We can’t take more men on than there are already,” he said to Pelle, “or they’ll only get in one another’s way. But perhaps we could begin to carry out some of our plans for the future. Can’t we begin to make roads and such like, so that these men can get something to do?”

No, Pelle dared not agree to that.

“In the spring we shall want capital to start the tanners with a cooperative tannery,” he said. “It’ll be agreed on in their Union at an early date, on the presupposition that we contribute money; and I consider it very important to get it started. Our opponents find fault with us for getting our materials from abroad. It’s untenable in the long run, and must come to an end now. As it is, the factory’s hanging in the air; they can cut us off from the supply of materials, and then we’re done. But if we only have our own tannery, the one business can be carried out thoroughly and can’t be smashed up, and then we’re ready to meet a lock-out in the trade.”

“The hides!” interpolated Brun.

“There we come to agriculture. That’s already arranged coöperatively, and will certainly not be used against us. We must anyhow join in there as soon as ever we get started—buy cattle and kill, ourselves, so that besides the hides we provide ourselves with good, cheap meat.”