Pelle the Conqueror Part 95

"M--m!" she said, tapping her shrunken lips. "No need to tell me that--and do you know what I've hit on, so that the bloodhounds shan't wonder what I live on? I'm sewing canvas slippers."

Then came little Marie with mop and bucket, and the old woman hobbled away.

It was a slack time now in Master Beck's workshop, so Pelle was working mostly at home. He could order his hours himself now, and was able to use the day, when people were indoors, in looking up his fellow-craftsmen and winning them for the organization. This often cost him a lengthy argument, and he was proud of every man he was able to inscribe. He very quickly learned to cla.s.sify all kinds of men, and he suited his procedure to the character of the man he was dealing with; one could threaten the waverers, while others had to be enticed or got into a good humor by chatting over the latest theories with them. This was good practice, and he accustomed himself to think rapidly, and to have his subject at his fingers' ends. The feeling of mastery over his means continually increased in strength, and lent a.s.surance to his bearing.

He had to make up for neglecting his work, and at such times he was doubly busy, rising early and sitting late at his bench.

He kept away from his neighbors on the third story; but when he heard Hanne's light step on the planking over there, he used to peep furtively across the well. She went her way like a nun--straight to her work and straight home again, her eyes fixed on the ground. She never looked up at his window, or indeed anywhere. It was as though her nature had completed its airy flutterings, as though it now lay quietly growing.

It surprised him that he should now regard her with such strange and indifferent eyes, as though she had never been anything to him. And he gazed curiously into his own heart--no, there was nothing wrong with him. His appet.i.te was good, and there was nothing whatever the matter with his heart. It must all have been a pleasant illusion, a mirage such as the traveller sees upon his way. Certainly she was beautiful; but he could not possibly see anything fairy-like about her. G.o.d only knew how he had allowed himself to be so entangled! It was a piece of luck that he hadn't been caught--there was no future for Hanne.

Madam Johnsen continued to lean on him affectionately, and she often came over for a little conversation; she could not forget the good times they had had together. She always wound up by lamenting the change in Hanne; the old woman felt that the girl had forsaken her.

"Can you understand what's the matter with her, Pelle? She goes about as if she were asleep, and to everything I say she answers nothing but 'Yes, mother; yes, mother!' I could cry, it sounds so strange and empty, like a voice from the grave. And she never says anything about good fortune now--and she never decks herself out to be ready for it! If she'd only begin with her fool's tricks again--if she only cared to look out and watch for the stranger--then I should have my child again. But she just goes about all sunk into herself, and she stares about her as if she was half asleep, as though she were in the middle of empty s.p.a.ce; and she's never in any spirits now. She goes about so unmeaning--like with her own dreary thoughts, it's like a wandering corpse. Can you understand what's wrong with her?"

"No, I don't know," answered Pelle.

"You say that so curiously, as if you did know something and wouldn't come out with it--and I, poor woman, I don't know where to turn." The good-natured woman began to cry. "And why don't you come over to see us any more?"

"Oh, I don't know--I've so much on hand, Madam Johnsen," answered Pelle evasively.

"If only she's not bewitched. She doesn't enter into anything I tell her; you might really come over just for once; perhaps that would cheer her up a little. You oughtn't to take your revenge on us. She was very fond of you in her way--and to me you've been like a son. Won't you come over this evening?"

"I really haven't the time. But I'll see, some time," he said, in a low voice.

And then she went, drooping and melancholy. She was showing her fifty years. Pelle was sorry for her, but he could not make up his mind to visit her.

"You are quite detestable!" said Marie, stamping angrily on the floor.

"It's wretched of you!"

Pelle wrinkled his forehead. "You don't understand, Marie."

"Oh, so you think I don't know all about it? But do you know what the women say about you? They say you're no man, or you would have managed to clip Hanne's feathers."

Pelle gazed at her, wondering; he said nothing, but looked at her and shook his head.

"What are you staring at me for?" she said, placing herself aggressively in front of him. "Perhaps you think I'm afraid to say what I like to you? Don't you stare at me with that face, or you'll get one in the mouth!" She was burning red with shame. "Shall I say something still worse? with you staring at me with that face? Eh? No one need think I'm ashamed to say what I like!" Her voice was hard and hoa.r.s.e; she was quite beside herself with rage.

Pelle was perfectly conscious that it was shame that was working in her.

She must be allowed to run down. He was silent, but did not avert his reproachful gaze. Suddenly she spat in his face and ran into her own room with a malicious laugh.

There she was very busy for a time.

There for a time she worked with extreme vigor, but presently grew quieter. Through the stillness Pelle could hear her gently sobbing. He did not go in to her. Such scenes had occurred between them before, and he knew that for the rest of the day she would be ashamed of herself, and it would be misery for her to look him in the face. He did not wish to lessen that feeling.

He dressed himself and went out.

VIII

The "Ark" now showed as a clumsy gray ma.s.s. It was always dark; the autumn daylight was unable to penetrate it. In the interior of the ma.s.s the pitch-black night brooded continually; those who lived there had to grope their way like moles. In the darkness sounds rose to the surface which failed to make themselves noticeable in the radiance of summer.

Innumerable sounds of creatures that lived in the half-darkness were heard. When sleep had laid silence upon it all, the stillness of night unveiled yet another world: then the death-watches audibly bored their way beneath the old wall-papers, while rats and mice and the larvae of wood-beetles vied with one another in their efforts. The darkness was full of the aromatic fragrance of the falling worm-dust. All through this old box of a building dissolution was at work, with thousands of tiny creatures to aid it. At times the sound of it all rose to a tremendous crash which awoke Pelle from sleep, when some old worm-eaten timber was undermined and sagged in a fresh place. Then he would turn over on the other side.

When he went out of an evening he liked to make his way through the cheerful, crowded streets, in order to share in the brightness of it all; the rich luxury of the shops awakened something within him which noted the startling contrast between this quarter of the town and his own. When he pa.s.sed from the brightly lit city into his own quarter, the streets were like ugly gutters to drain the darkness, and the "Ark"

rose mysteriously into the sky of night like a ponderous mountain. Dark cellar-openings led down into the roots of the mountain, and there, in its dark entrails, moved wan, grimy creatures with smoky lamps; there were all those who lived upon the poverty of the "Ark"--the old iron merchant, the old clothes merchant, and the money-lender who lent money upon tangible pledges. They moved fearfully, burrowing into strange-looking heaps. The darkness was ingrained in them; Pelle was always reminded of the "underground people" at home. So the base of the cliffs had opened before his eyes in childhood, and he had shudderingly watched the dwarfs pottering about their accursed treasure. Here they moved about like greedy goblins, tearing away the foundations from under the careless beings in the "Ark," so that one day these might well fall into the cellars--and in the meantime they devoured them hair and hide.

At all events, the bad side of the fairy tale was no lie!

One day Pelle threw down his work in the twilight and went off to carry out his mission. Pipman had some days earlier fallen drunk from the rickety steps, and down in the well the children of the quarter surrounded the place where he had dropped dead, and illuminated it with matches. They could quite plainly see the dark impress of a shape that looked like a man, and were all full of the spectacle.

Outside the mouth of the tunnel-like entry he stopped by the window of the old clothes dealer's cellar. Old Pipman's tools lay spread out there in the window. So she had got her claws into them too! She was rummaging about down there, scurfy and repulsive to look at, chewing an unappetizing slice of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and starting at every sound that came from above, so anxious was she about her filthy money! Pelle needed a new heel-iron, so he went in and purchased that of Pipman. He had to haggle with her over the price.

"Well, have you thought over my proposal?" she asked, when the deal was concluded.

"What proposal?" said Pelle, in all ignorance.

"That you should leave your cobbling alone and be my a.s.sistant in the business."

So that was what she meant? No, Pelle hadn't thought over it sufficiently.

"I should think there isn't much to think over. I have offered you more than you could earn otherwise, and there's not much to do. And I keep a man who fetches and carries things. It's mostly that I have a fancy to have a male a.s.sistant. I am an old woman, going about alone here, and you are so reliable, I know that."

She needed some one to protect all the thousands of kroner which she had concealed in these underground chambers. Pelle knew that well enough--she had approached him before on the subject.

"I should scarcely be the one for that--to make my living out of the poverty of others," said Pelle, smiling. "Perhaps I might knock you over the head and distribute all your pennies to the poor!"

The old woman stared at him for a moment in alarm. "Ugh, what a horrible thing to say!" she cried, shuddering. "You libel your good heart, joking about such things. Now I shan't like to stay here in the cellar any longer when you've gone. How can you jest so brutally about life and death? Day and night I go about here trembling for my life, and yet I've nothing at all, the living G.o.d knows I've nothing. That is just gossip!

Everybody looks at me as much as to say, 'I'd gladly strike you dead to get your money!' And that's why I'd like to have a trustworthy man in the business; for what good is it to me that I've got nothing when they all believe I have? And there are so many worthless fellows who might fall upon one at any moment."

"If you have nothing, you can be easy," said Pelle teasingly. "No need for an empty stomach to have the nightmare!"

"Have nothing! Of course one always has something! And Pelle"--she leaned confidentially over him with a smirk on her face--"now Mary will soon come home, perhaps no later than this summer. She has earned so much over there that she can live on it, and she'll still be in the prime of her youth. What do you think of that? In her last letter she asked me to look out for a husband for her. He need only be handsome, for she has money enough for two. Then she'd rent a big house in the fine part of the city, and keep her own carriage, and live only for her handsome husband. What do you say to that, Pelle?"

"Well, that is certainly worth thinking over!" answered Pelle; he was in overflowing high spirits.

"Thinking over? Is that a thing to think over? Many a poor lord would accept such an offer and kiss my hand for it, if only he were here."

"But I'm not a lord, and now I must be going."

"Won't you just see her pictures?" The old woman began to rummage in a drawer.

"No." Pelle only wanted to be gone. He had seen these pictures often enough, grimed with the air of the cellar and the old woman's filthy hands; pictures which represented Mary now as a slim figure, striped like a tiger-cat, as she sang in the fas.h.i.+onable variety theaters of St.

Petersburg, now naked, with a mantle of white furs, alone in the midst of a crowd of Russian officers--princes, the old woman said. There was also a picture from the aquarium, in which she was swimming about in a great gla.s.s tank amid some curious-looking plants, with nothing on her body but golden scales and diamond ornaments. She had a magnificent body--that he could plainly see; but that she could turn the heads of fabulously wealthy princes and get thousands out of their pockets merely by undressing herself--that he could not understand. And he was to take her to wife, was he?--and to get all that she had h.o.a.rded up! That was tremendously funny! That beat everything!

He went along the High Street with a rapid step. It was raining a little; the light from the street lamps and shop-windows was reflected in the wet flagstones; the street wore a cheerful look. He went onward with a feeling that his mind was lifted above the things of everyday; the grimy old woman who lived as a parasite on the poverty of the "Ark"

and who had a wonderful daughter who was absorbing riches like a leech.