Pelle the Conqueror Part 117

"It's no use going to the city council--not until we have elected members of our own party to it," cried Pelle. "Remember that at the elections, comrades! We must elect men of our party everywhere, their encroachments will never be stopped until then. And now we must stand together and be firm! If it's got to be, better starve to death at once than do it slowly!"

They did not reply, but pressed closely about him, heavily listening.

There was something altogether too fierce and profound in their attention. These men had declared a strike in midwinter, as their only remedy. What were they thinking of doing now? Pelle looked about him and was daunted by their dumb rage. This threatening silence wouldn't do; what would it lead to? It seemed as though something overwhelming, and uncontrollable, would spring from this stony taciturnity. Pelle sprang upon a heap of road-metal.

"Comrades!" he cried, in a powerful voice. "This is merely a change, as the fox said when they flayed his skin off. They have deprived us of clothes and food and drink, and comfort at home, and now they want to find a way of depriving us of our skins too! The question to-day is--forward or back? Perhaps this is the great time of trial, when we shall enter into possession of all we have desired! Hold together, comrades! Don't scatter and don't give way! Things are difficult enough now, but remember, we are well on in the winter, and it promises to break up early. The night is always darkest before daybreak! And shall we be afraid to suffer a little--we, who have suffered and been patient for hundreds of years? Our wives are sitting at home and fretting--perhaps they will be angry with us. We might at least have accepted what was offered us, they may say. But we can't go on seeing our dear ones at home fading away in spite of our utmost exertions!

Hitherto the poor man's labor has been like an aimless prayer to Heaven: Deliver us from hunger and dirt, from misery, poverty, and cold, and give us bread, and again bread! Deliver our children from our lot--let not their limbs wither and their minds lapse into madness! That has been our prayer, but there is only one prayer that avails, and that is, to defy the wicked! We are the chosen people, and for that reason we must cry a halt! We will no longer do as we have done--for our wives' sakes, and our children's, and theirs again! Ay, but what is posterity to us?

Of course it is something to us--precisely to us! Were your parents as you are? No, they were ground down into poverty and the dust, they crept submissively before the mighty. Then whence did we get all that makes us so strong and causes us to stand together? Time has stood still, comrades! It has placed its finger on our breast and he said, 'Thus you shall do!' Here where we stand, the old time ceases and the new time begins; and that is why we have thrown down our tools, with want staring us in the face--such a thing as has never been seen before! We want to revolutionize life--to make it sweet for the poor man! And for all time!

You, who have so often staked your life and welfare for a florin--you now hold the whole future in your hands! You must endure, calmly and prudently! And you will never be forgotten, so long as there are workers on the earth! This winter will be the last through which we shall have to endure--for yonder lies the land toward which we have been wandering!

Comrades! Through us the day shall come!"

Pelle himself did not know what words he uttered. He felt only that something was speaking through him--something supremely mighty, that never lies. There was a radiant, prophetic ring in his voice, which carried his hearers off their feet; and his eyes were blazing. Before their eyes a figure arose from the hopeless winter, towering in radiance, a figure that was their own, and yet that of a young G.o.d. He rose, new-born, out of misery itself, struck aside the old grievous idea of fate, and in its place gave them a new faith--the radiant faith in their own might! They cried up to him--first single voices, then all. He gathered up their cries into a mighty cheer, a paean in honor of the new age!

Every day they stationed themselves there, not to work, but to stand there in dumb protest. When the foreman called for workers they stood about in silent groups, threatening as a gloomy rock. Now and again they shouted a curse at those who had left them in the lurch. The city did nothing. They had held out a helping hand to the needy, and the latter had struck it away--now they must accept the consequences. The contractor had received permission to suspend the work entirely, but he kept it going with a few dozen strike-breakers, in order to irritate the workers.

All over the great terrace a silence as of death prevailed, except in that corner where the little gang was at work, a policeman beside it, as though the men had been convicts. The wheelbarrows lay with their legs in the air; it was as though the pest had swept over the works.

The strike-breakers were men of all callings; a few of the unemployed wrote down their names and addresses, in order to insert them in _The Working Man_. One of Stolpe's fellow-unionists was among them; he was a capable pater-familias, and had taken part in the movement from its earliest days. "It's a pity about him," said Stolpe; "he's an old mate of mine, and he's always been a good comrade till now. Now they'll give it him hard in the paper--we are compelled to. It does the trade no good when one of its representatives goes and turns traitor."

Madame Stolpe was unhappy. "It's such a nice family," she said; "we have always been on friendly terms with them; and I know they were hungry a long time. He has a young wife, father; it's not easy to stand out."

"It hurts me myself," replied Stolpe. "But one is compelled to do it, otherwise one would be guilty of partisans.h.i.+p. And no one shall come to me and say that I'm a respecter of persons."

"I should like to go and have a talk with them," said Pelle. "Perhaps they'd give it up then."

He got the address and went there after working hours. The home had been stripped bare. There were four little children. The atmosphere was oppressive. The man, who was already well on in years, but was still powerful, sat at the table with a careworn expression eating his supper, while the children stood round with their chins on the edge of the table, attentively following every bite he took. The young wife was going to and fro; she brought him his simple food with a peculiarly loving gesture.

Pelle broached the question at issue. It was not pleasant to attack this old veteran. But it must be done.

"I know that well enough," said the man, nodding to himself. "You needn't begin your lecture--I myself have been in the movement since the first days, and until now I've kept my oath. But now it's done with, for me. What do you want here, lad? Have you a wife and children crying for bread? Then think of your own!"

"We don't cry, Hans," said the woman quietly.

"No, you don't, and that makes it even worse! Can I sit here and look on, while you get thinner day by day, and perish with the cold? To h.e.l.l with the comrades and their big words--what have they led to? Formerly we used to go hungry just for a little while, and now we starve outright--that's the difference! Leave me alone, I tell you! Curse it, why don't they leave me in peace?"

He took a mouthful of brandy from the bottle. His wife pushed a gla.s.s toward him, but he pushed it violently away.

"You'll be put in the paper to-morrow," said Pelle, hesitating. "I only wanted to tell you that."

"Yes, and to write of me that I'm a swine and a bad comrade, and perhaps that I beat my wife as well. You know yourself it's all lies; but what is that to me? Will you have a drink?"

No, Pelle wouldn't take anything. "Then I will myself," said the man, and he laughed angrily. "Now you can certify that I'm a hog--I drink out of the bottle! And another evening you can come and listen at the keyhole--perhaps then you'll hear me beating my wife!"

The woman began to cry.

"Oh, d.a.m.n it all, they might leave me in peace!" said the man defiantly.

Pelle had to go with nothing effected.

XXV

The "Ark" was now freezing in the north wind; all outward signs of life were stripped from it. The sounds that in summer bubbled up from its deep well-like shaft were silent now; the indistinguishable dripping of a hundred waste-pipes, that turned the court into a little well with green slimy walls, was silent too. The frost had fitted them all with stoppers; and where the toads had sat gorging themselves in the cavities of the walls--fantastic caverns of green moss and slimy filaments--a crust of ice hung over all; a grimy glacier, which extended from the attics right down to the floor of the court.

Where were they now, the grimy, joyful children? And what of the evening carouse of the hea.r.s.e-driver, for which his wife would soundly thrash him? And the quarrelsome women's voices, which would suddenly break out over this or that railing, criticizing the whole court, sharp as so many razors?

The frost was harder than ever! It had swept all these things away and had locked them up as closely as might be. The hurdy-gurdy man lay down below in his cellar, and had as visitor that good friend of the north wind, the gout; and down in the deserted court the draught went shuffling along the dripping walls. Whenever any one entered the tunnel-entry the draught clutched at his knees with icy fingers, so that the pain penetrated to the very heart.

There stood the old barrack, staring emptily out of its black windows.

The cold had stripped away the last shred of figured curtain, and sent it packing to the p.a.w.n-shop. It had exchanged the canary for a score of firewood, and had put a stop to the day-long, lonely crying of the little children behind the locked doors--that hymn of labor, which had ceased only in the evening, when the mothers returned from the factories. Now the mothers sat with their children all day long, and no one but the cold grudged them this delight. But the cold and its sister, hunger, came every day to look in upon them.

On the third floor, away from the court, Widow Johnsen sat in the corner by the stove. Hanne's little girl lay cowering on the floor, on a tattered patchwork counterpane. Through the naked window one saw only ice, as though the atmosphere were frozen down to the ground.

Transparent spots had formed on the window-panes every time the child had breathed on them in order to look out, but they had soon closed up again. The old woman sat staring straight into the stove with big, round eyes; her little head quivered continually; she was like a bird of ill omen, that knew a great deal more than any one could bear to hear.

"Now I'm cold again, grandmother," said the child quietly.

"Don't keep from s.h.i.+vering, then you'll be warm," said the old woman.

"Are you s.h.i.+vering?"

"No, I'm too old and stiff for it--I can't s.h.i.+ver any more. But the cold numbs my limbs, so that I can't feel them. I could manage well enough if it wasn't for my back."

"You lean your back against the cold stove too!"

"Yes, the cold grips my poor back so."

"But that's stupid, when the stove isn't going."

"But if only my back would get numb too!" said the old woman piteously.

The child was silent, and turned her head away.

Over the whole of the wall were tiny glittering crystals. Now and again there was a rustling sound under the wall-paper.

"Grandmother, what's that funny noise?" asked the child.

"That's the bugs--they are coming down," said the old woman. "It's too cold for them up there in the attics, and they don't like it here. You should see them; they go to Olsen's with the warm wall; they stay there in the cold."

"Is the wall at Olsen's always warm, then?"

"Yes, when there's fire in the boiler of the steam mill."

Then the child was silent a while, wearily turning her head from side to side. A dreadful weariness was stamped on her face. "I'm cold," she complained after a time.

"See if you can't s.h.i.+ver!"

"Hadn't I better jump a bit?"