Pelle the Conqueror Part 128

They were paid big wages and received abundance to eat and to drink. And the working day or s.h.i.+ft was shorter than usual. They did not understand the real significance of this change of life, but went about playing the bally. But there was a peculiar hesitation visible in their faces, as though they were not quite sure of one another. The native workers, who were in the minority, kept to themselves--as though they felt an inward contempt for those fellows who had travelled so far to fish in the troubled waters of their distress.

They were working three s.h.i.+fts, each of eight hours' duration.

"Oho!" thought Pelle, "why, this, good G.o.d, is the eight-hours' day!

This is surely the State of the future!" At the very moment of his arrival one s.h.i.+ft was completed, and the men immediately proceeded to make the most infernal uproar, hammering on metal and shouting for food and brandy. A huge cauldron full of beef and potatoes was dragged in.

Pelle was told off to join a mess of ten men.

"Eat, matey!" they said. "Hungry, ain't you? How long had you been out of work before you gave in?"

"Three months," said Pelle.

"Then you must be peckish. Here with the beef! More beef here!" they cried, to the cook's mate. "You can keep the potatoes and welcome! We've eaten enough potatoes all our lives!"--"This is Tom Tiddler's land, with b.u.t.ter sauce into the bargain! This is how we've always said it ought to be--good wages and little to do, lots to eat and brandy to drink! Now you can see it was a good thing we held out till it came to this--now we get our reward! Your health! Here, damme, what's your name, you there?"

"Karlsen," said Pelle.

"Here's to you, Karlsen! Well, and how are things looking outside? Have you seen my wife lately? She's easy to recognize--she's a woman with seven children with nothing inside their ribs! Well, how goes it with the strikers?"

After eating they sat about playing cards, and drinking, or they loafed about and began to quarrel; they were a sharp-tongued crew; they went about actuated by a malicious longing to sting one another. "Come and have a game with us, mate--and have a drink!" they cried to Pelle. "d.a.m.n it all, how else should a man kill the time in this infernal place?

Sixteen hours' sleep a day--no, that's more than a chap can do with!"

There was a deafening uproar, as though the place had been a vast tavern, with men shouting and abusing one another; each contributed to the din as though he wanted to drown it by his own voice. They were able to buy drink in the factory, and they drank what they earned. "That's their conscience," thought Pelle. "At heart they are good comrades."

There seemed to be some hope of success for his audacious maneuver. A group of Germans took no part in the orgy, but had set up a separate colony in the remotest corner of the hall. They were there to make money!

In one of the groups a dispute broke out between the players; they were reviling one another in no measured language, and their terms of abuse culminated in the term "strike-breaker." This made them perfectly furious. It was as though an abscess had broken; all their bottled-up shame and anger concerning their infamous position burst forth. They began to use knives and tools on one another. The police, who kept watch on the factory day and night, were called in, and restored tranquillity.

A wounded smith was bandaged in the office, but no arrest was made. Then a sudden slackness overcame them.

They constantly crowded round Pelle. He was a new man; he came from outside. "How are things going out there?" was the constant question.

"Things are going very well out there. It's a worse lookout for us in here," said Pelle.

"Going very well, are they? We've been told they are near giving in."

"Who told you that?"

"The bosses of the factory here."

"Then they were fooling you, in order to keep you here."

"That's a lie! And what d'you mean by saying it's a worse look-out for us? Out with it, now!"

"We shall never get regular work again. The comrades are winning--and when they begin work again they'll demand that we others shall be locked out."

"The devil--and they've promised us the best positions!" cried a great smith. "But you're a liar! That you are! And why did you come here if they are nearly winning outside? Answer me, d.a.m.n it all! A man doesn't come slinking into this h.e.l.l unless he's compelled!"

"To leave his comrades in the lurch, you might add," replied Pelle harshly. "I wanted to see how it feels to strike the bread away from the mouths of the starving."

"That's a lie! No one would be so wicked! You are making fools of us, you devil!"

"Give him a thras.h.i.+ng," said another. "He's playing a crooked game.

Are you a spy, or what do you want here? Do you belong to those idiots outside?"

It had been Pelle's plan to put a good face on a crooked job, and cautiously to feel his way; but now he grew angry.

"You had better think what you're doing before you call honorable men idiots," he retorted violently. "Do you know what you are? Swine! You lie there eating your fill and pouring the drink down your throats and living easy on the need of your comrades! Swine, that you are--Judases, who have sold a good cause for dirty money! How much did you get? Five and twenty kroner, eh? And out there they are loyally starving, so that all of us--yes, you too--can live a little more like human beings in the future!"

"You hold your jaw!" said the big smith. "You've no wife and children--you can easily talk!"

"Aren't you the fellow who lives in Jaegersborg Street?" Pelle demanded.

"Perhaps you are sending what you earn to your wife and children? Then why are they in want? Yesterday they were turned out of doors; the organization took them in and found a roof to go over their heads--although they were a strike-breaker's family!" Pelle himself had made this possible.

"Send--d.a.m.n and blast it all--I'll send them something! But if one lives this h.e.l.l of a life in here the bit of money one earns all goes in rot-gut! And now you're going to get a thras.h.i.+ng!" The smith turned up his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves so that his mighty muscles were revealed. He was no longer reasonable, but glared at Pelle like an angry bull.

"Wait a bit," said an older man, stepping up to Pelle. "I think I've seen you before. What is your real name, if I may make bold to ask?"

"My name? You are welcome to know it. I am Pelle."

This name produced an effect like that of an explosion. They were dazzled. The smith's arms fell slack; he turned his head aside in shame.

Pelle was among them! They had left him in the lurch, had turned their backs on him, and now he stood there laughing at them, not the least bit angry with them. What was more, he had called them comrades; so he did not despise them! "Pelle is here!" they said quietly; further and further spread the news, and their tongues dwelt curiously on his name.

A murmur ran through the shops. "What the devil--has Pelle come?" they cried, stumbling to their legs. Pelle had leaped onto a great anvil.

"Silence!" he cried, in a voice of thunder; "silence!" And there was silence in the great building. The men could hear their own deep breathing.

The foremen came rus.h.i.+ng up and attempted to drag him down. "You can't make speeches here!" they cried.

"Let him speak!" said the big smith threateningly. "You aren't big enough to stop his mouth, not by a long chalk!" He seized a hammer and stationed himself at the foot of the anvil.

"Comrades!" Pelle began, in an easy tone, "I have been sent here to you with greetings from those outside there--from the comrades who used to stand next to you at work, from your friends and fellow-unionists. Where are our old comrades?--they are asking. We have fought so many battles by their side, we have shared good and evil with them--are we to enter into the new conditions without them? And your wives and children are asking after you! Outside there it is the spring! They don't understand why they can't pack the picnic basket and go out into the forest with father!"

"No, there's no picnic basket!" said a heavy voice.

"There are fifty thousand men accepting the situation without grumbling," Pelle earnestly replied. "And they are asking after you--they don't understand why you demand more than they do. Have you done more for the movement than they have?--they ask. Or are you a lot of dukes, that you can't quietly stand by the rank and file? And now it's the spring out there!" he cried once more. "The poor man's winter is past, and the bright day is coming for him! And here you go over to the wrong side and walk into prison! Do you know what the locked-out workers call you? They call you the locked-in workers!"

There were a few suppressed smiles at this. "That's a dam' good smack!"

they told, one another. "He made that up himself!"

"They have other names for us as well!" cried a voice defiantly.

"Yes, they have," said Pelle vigorously. "But that's because they are hungry. People get unreasonable then, you know very well--and they grudge other folks their food!"

They thronged about him, pressing closer and closer. His words were scorching them, yet were doing them good. No one could hit out like Pelle, and yet at the same time make them feel that they were decent fellows after all. The foreign workers stood round about them, eagerly listening, in order that they, too, might catch a little of what was said.

Pelle had suddenly plunged into the subject of the famine, laying bare the year-long, endless despair of their families, so that they all saw what the others had suffered--saw really for the first time. They were amazed that they could have endured so much, but they knew that it was so; they nodded continually, in agreement; it was all literally true.

It was Pelle's own desperate struggle that was speaking through him now, but the refrain of suffering ran through it all. He stood before them radiant and confident of victory, towering indomitably over them all.

Gradually his words became keen and vigorous. He reproached them with their disloyalty; he reminded them how dearly and bitterly they had bought the power of cohesion, and in brief, striking phrases he awakened the inspiriting rhythm of the Cause, that lay slumbering in every heart.

It was the old, beloved music, the well-known melody of the home and labor. Pelle sounded it with a new accent. Like all those that forsake their country, they had forgotten the voice of their mother--that was why they could not find their way home; but now she was calling them, calling them back to the old dream of a Land of Fortune! He could see it in their faces, and with a leap he was at them: "Do you know of anything more infamous than to sell your mother-country? That is what you have done--before ever you set foot in it--you have sold it, with your brothers, your wives, and your children! You have foresworn your religion--your faith in the great Cause! You have disobeyed orders, and have sold yourselves for a miserable Judas-price and a keg of brandy!"

He stood with his left hand on the big smith's shoulder, his right hand he clenched and held out toward them. In that hand he was holding them; he felt that so strongly that he did not dare to let it sink, but continued to hold it outstretched. A murmuring wave pa.s.sed through the ranks, reaching even to the foreign workers. They were infected by the emotion of the others, and followed the proceedings with tense attention, although they did not understand much of the language. At each sally they nodded and nudged one another, until now they stood there motionless, with expectant faces; they, too, were under the spell of his words. This was solidarity, the mighty, earth-encircling power!

Pelle recognized the look of wonder on their faces; a cold shudder ran up and down his spine. He held them all in his hand, and now the blow was to be struck before they had time to think matters over. Now!