Chapter 17

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.”

“Yes, yes, but the tannery won’t swallow everything! We can afford to do some road-making.”

“No, we can’t!” Pelle declared decisively. “Remember we’ve also got to think of the supply associations, or else all our work is useless; the one thing leads to the other. There’s too much depending on what we’re doing, and we mustn’t hamper our undertaking with dead values that will drag it down. First the men and then the roads! The unemployed to-day must take care of themselves without our help.”

“You’re a little hard, I think,” said Brun, somewhat hurt at Pelle’s firmness, and drumming on the quilt with his fingers.

“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 passive 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 accumulation 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 ship, 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 canals. When his ship 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.