Pelle the Conqueror Part 104

However did anybody hit on the idea of packing folks away like this, one on top of another, like herrings in a barrel? And at home on Bornholm there were whole stretches of country where no one lived at all! He did not venture to approach the window, but prudently stood a little way back in the room, looking out over the roofs. There, too, was a crazy arrangement! One could count the ears in a cornfield as easily as the houses over here!

Pelle called Marie, who had discreetly remained in her own room. "This is my foster-mother," he said, with his arm round her shoulders. "And that is Father La.s.se, whom you are fond of already, so you always say.

Now can you get us some breakfast?" He gave her money.

"She's a good girl, that she is," said La.s.se, feeling in his sack. "She shall have a present. There's a red apple," he said to Marie, when she returned; "you must eat it, and then you'll be my sweetheart." Marie smiled gravely and looked at Pelle.

They borrowed the old clothes dealer's handcart and went across to the apple barges to fetch La.s.se's belongings. He had sold most of them in order not to bring too great a load to the city. But he had retained a bedstead with bedding, and all sorts of other things. "And then I have still to give you greetings from Sort and Marie Nielsen," he said.

Pelle blushed. "I owe her a few words, but over here I quite forgot it somehow! And I have half promised her my portrait. I must see now about sending it."

"Yes, do," said Father La.s.se. "I don't know how close you two stand to each other, but she was a good woman. And those who stay behind, they're sad when they're forgotten. Remember that."

At midday La.s.se had tidied himself a trifle and began to brush his hat.

"What now?" inquired Pelle. "You don't want to go out all alone?"

"I want to go out and look at the city a bit," replied La.s.se, as though it were quite a matter of course. "I want to find some work, and perhaps I'll go and have a peep at the king for once. You need only explain in which direction I must go."

"You had better wait until I can come with you--you'll only lose yourself."

"Shall I do that?" replied La.s.se, offended. "But I found my way here alone, I seem to remember!"

"I can go with the old man!" said Marie.

"Yes, you come with the old man, then no one can say he has lost his youth!" cried La.s.se jestingly, as he took her hand. "I think we two shall be good friends."

Toward evening they returned. "There are folks enough here," said La.s.se, panting, "but there doesn't seem to be a superfluity of work. I've been asking first this one and then that, but no one will have me. Well, that's all right! If they won't, I can just put a spike on my stick and set to work collecting the bits of paper in the streets, like the other old men; I can at least do that still."

"But I can't give my consent to that," replied Pelle forcibly. "My father shan't become a scavenger!"

"Well--but I must get something to do, or I shall go back home again.

I'm not going to go idling about here while you work."

"But you can surely rest and enjoy a little comfort in your old days, father. However, we shall soon see."

"I can rest, can I? I had better lie on my back and let myself be fed like a long-clothes child! Only I don't believe my back would stand it!"

They had placed La.s.se's bed with the footboard under the sloping ceiling; there was just room enough for it. Pelle felt like a little boy when he went to bed that night; it was so many years since he had slept in the same room as Father La.s.se. But in the night he was oppressed by evil dreams; Due's dreadful fate pursued him in his sleep. His energetic, good-humored face went drifting through the endless grayness, the head bowed low, the hands chained behind him, a heavy iron chain was about his neck, and his eyes were fixed on the ground as though he were searching the very abyss. When Pelle awoke it was because Father La.s.se stood bending over his bed, feeling his face, as in the days of his childhood.

XIV

La.s.se would not sit idle, and was busily employed in running about the city in search of work. When he spoke to Pelle he put a cheerful face on a bad business; and looked hopeful; but the capital had already disillusioned him. He could not understand all this hubbub, and felt that he was too old to enter into it and fathom its meaning--besides, perhaps it had none! It really looked as though everybody was just running to and fro and following his own nose, without troubling in the least about all the rest. And there were no greetings when you pa.s.sed folks in the street; the whole thing was more than La.s.se could understand. "I ought to have stayed at home," he would often think.

And as for Pelle--well, Pelle was taken up with his own affairs! That was only to be expected in a man. He ran about going to meetings and agitating, and had a great deal to do; his thoughts were continually occupied, so that there was no time for familiar gossip as in the old days. He was engaged, moreover, so that what time was not devoted to the Labor movement was given to his sweetheart. How the boy had grown, and how he had altered, bodily and in every way! La.s.se had a feeling that he only reached up to Pelle's belt nowadays. He had grown terribly serious, and was quite the man; he looked as though he was ready to grasp the reins of something or other; you would never, to look at him, have thought that he was only a journeyman cobbler. There was an air of responsibility about him--just a little too much may be!

Marie got into the way of accompanying the old man. They had become good friends, and there was plenty for them to gossip over. She would take him to the courtyard of the Berlingske Tidende, where the people in search of work eddied about the advertis.e.m.e.nt board, filling up the gateway and forming a crowd in the street outside.

"We shall never get in there!" said La.s.se dejectedly. But Marie worked herself forward; when people scolded her she scolded them back. La.s.se was quite horrified by the language the child used; but it was a great help!

Marie read out the different notices, and La.s.se made his comments on every one, and when the bystanders laughed La.s.se gazed at them uncomprehendingly, then laughed with them, and nodded his head merrily.

He entered into everything.

"What do you say? Gentleman's coachman? Yes, I can drive a pair of horses well enough, but perhaps I'm not fine enough for the gentry--I'm afraid my nose would drip!"

He looked about him importantly, like a child that is under observation.

"But errand boy--that isn't so bad. We'll make a note of that. There's no great skill needed to be everybody's dog! House porter! Deuce take it--there one need only sit downstairs and make angry faces out of a bas.e.m.e.nt window! We'll look in there and try our luck."

They impressed the addresses on their minds until they knew them by heart, and then squeezed their way out through the crowd. "d.a.m.n funny old codger!" said the people, looking after him with a smile--La.s.se was quite high-spirited. They went from house to house, but no one had any use for him. The people only laughed at the broken old figure with the wide-toed boots.

"They laugh at me," said La.s.se, quite cast down; "perhaps because I still look a bit countrified. But that after all can soon be overcome.

"I believe it's because you are so old and yet want to get work," said Marie.

"Do you think it can be on that account? Yet I'm only just seventy, and on both my father's and mother's side we have almost all lived to ninety. Do you really think that's it? If they'd only let me set to work they'd soon see there's still strength in old La.s.se! Many a younger fellow would sit on his backside for sheer astonishment. But what are those people there, who stand there and look so dismal and keep their hands in their pockets?"

"Those are the unemployed; it's a slack time for work, and they say it will get still worse."

"And all those who were crowding round the notice-board--were they idle hands too?"

Marie nodded.

"But then it's worse here than at home--there at least we always have the stone-cutting when there is nothing else. And I had really believed that the good time had already begun over here!"

"Pelle says it will soon come,' said Marie consolingly.

"Yes, Pelle--he can well talk. He is young and healthy and has the time before him."

La.s.se was in a bad temper; nothing seemed right to him. In order to give him pleasure, Marie took him to see the guard changed, which cheered him a little.

"Those are smart fellows truly," he said. "Hey, hey, how they hold themselves! And fine clothes too. But that they know well enough themselves! Yes--I've never been a king's soldier. I went up for it when I was young and felt I'd like it; I was a smart fellow then, you can take my word for it! But they wouldn't have me; my figure wouldn't do, they said; I had worked too hard, from the time I was quite a child.

They'd got it into their heads in those days that a man ought to be made just so and so. I think it's to please the fine ladies. Otherwise I, too, might have defended my country."

Down by the Exchange the roadway was broken up; a crowd of navvies were at work digging out the foundation for a conduit. La.s.se grew quite excited, and hurried up to them.

"That would be the sort of thing for me," he said, and he stood there and fell into a dream at the sight of the work. Every time the workers swung their picks he followed the movement with his old head. He drew closer and closer. "Hi," he said to one of the workers, who was taking a breath, "can a man get taken on here?"

The man took a long look at him. "Get taken on here?" he cried, turning more to his comrades than to La.s.se. "Ah, you'd like to, would you? Here you foreigners come running, from Funen and Middlefart, and want to take the bread out of the mouths of us natives. Get away with you, you Jutland carrion!" Laughing, he swung his pick over his head.

La.s.se drew slowly hack. "But he was angry!" he said dejectedly to Marie.

In the evening Pelle had to go to all his various meetings, whatever they might be. He had a great deal to do, and, hard as he worked, the situation still remained unfavorable. It was by no means so easy a thing, to break the back of poverty!

"You just look after your own affairs," said La.s.se. "I sit here and chat a little with the children--and then I go to bed. I don't know why, but my body gets fonder and fonder of bed, although I've never been considered lazy exactly. It must be the grave that's calling me. But I can't go about idle any longer--I'm quite stiff in my body from doing it."

Formerly La.s.se never used to speak of the grave; but now he had seemingly reconciled himself to the idea. "And the city is so big and so confusing," he told the children. "And the little one has put by soon runs through one's fingers."