Chapter IV: Daybreak (9)

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.

Kornelius Brun felt it his duty to carry on the old business, and in order to keep on a level with his brothers as regarded rank, he married a lady of noble birth from Funen, of a very old family heavily burdened with debt. She bore him three children, all of whom—as he himself said —were failures. The first child was a deaf mute with very small intellectual powers. It fortunately died before it attained to man’s estate. Number two was very intelligent and endowed with every talent, but even as a boy exhibited perverse tendencies. He was very handsome, had soft, dark hair, and a delicate, womanish complexion. His mother dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful, but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The announcement of the death gave a stroke as the cause; but the truth was that rumors had begun to circulate of a scandal in which he was implicated together with some persons of high standing. It was at the end of the seventies, at the time when the lower class movement began to gather way. An energetic investigation was demanded from below, and it was considered inadvisable to hush the story up altogether, for fear of giving support to the assertion of the rottenness and onesidedness of the existing conditions. When an investigation became imminent, and it was evident that Brun would be offered up upon the altar of the multitude in order to shield those who stood higher, Kornelius Brun put a pistol into his son’s hand—or shot him; the librarian was unable to say which.

“Those were two of the fruits upon the decaying family tree,” said Brun bitterly, “and it can’t be denied that they were rather worm-eaten. The third was myself. I came fifteen years after my youngest brother. By that time my parents had had enough of their progeny; at any rate, I was considered from the beginning to be a hopeless failure, even before I had had an opportunity of showing anything at all. Perhaps they felt instinctively that I should take a wrong direction too. In me too the disintegrating forces predominated; I was greatly deficient, for instance, in family feeling. I remember when still quite little hearing my mother complain of my plebeian tendencies; I always kept with the servants, and took their part against my parents. My family looked more askance at me for upholding the rights of our inferiors than they had done at the idiot who tore everything to pieces, or the spendthrift who made scandals and got into debt. And I dare say with good reason! Mother gave me plenty of money to amuse myself with, probably to counteract my plebeian tendencies; but I had soon done with the pleasures and devoted myself to study. Things of the day did not interest me, but even as a boy I had a remarkable desire to look back; I devoted myself especially to history and its philosophy. Father was right when he derided me and called it going into a monastery; at an age when other young men are lovers, I could not find any woman that interested me, while almost any book tempted me to a closer acquaintance. For a long time he hoped that I would think better of it and take over the business, and when I definitely chose study, it came to a quarrel between us. ‘When the business comes to an end, there’s an end of the family!’ he said, and sold the whole concern. He had been a widower then for several years, and had only me; but during the five years that he lived after selling the business we didn’t see one another. He hated me because I didn’t take it over, but what could I have done with it? I possessed none of the qualities necessary for the carrying on of business in our day, and should only have ruined the whole thing. From the time I was thirty, my time has been passed among bookshelves, and I’ve registered the lives and doings of others. It’s only now that I’ve come out into the daylight and am beginning to live my own life; and now it’ll soon be ended!”

“It’s only now that life’s beginning to be worth living,” said Pelle, “so you’ve come out just at the right time.”

“Ah, no!” said Brun despondently. “I’m not in the ascendant! I meet young men and my mind inclines to them; but it’s like evening and morning meeting in the same glow during the light nights. I’ve only got my share in the new because the old must bend to it, so that the ring may be completed. You go in where I go out.”

“It must have been a melancholy existence to be always among books, books, without a creature that cared for you,” put in Ellen. “Why didn’t you marry? Surely we women aren’t so terrible that there mightn’t have been _one_ that you liked?”

“No, you’d think not, but it’s true nevertheless,” answered Brun, with a smile. “The antipathy was mutual too; it’s always like that. I suppose it wasn’t intended that an old fellow like me should put children into the world! It’s not nice, though, to be the end of something.”

Ellen laughed. “Yes, but you haven’t always been old!”

“Yes, I have really; I was born old. I’m only now beginning to feel young. And who knows?” he exclaimed with grim humor. “I may play Providence a trick and make my appearance some day with a little wife on my arm.”

“Brun’s indulging in fancies,” said Pelle, as they went down to bed. “But I suppose they’ll go when he’s about again.”

“He’s not had much of a time, poor old soul!” said Ellen, going closer to Pelle. “It’s a shame that there are people who get no share in all the love there is—just as great a shame as what you’re working against, I think!”

“Yes, but we can’t put that straight!” exclaimed Pelle, laughing.

XXI

In the garden at “Daybreak” the snow was disappearing from day to day. First it went away nearest the house, and gave place to a little forest of snowdrops and crocuses. The hyacinths in the grass began to break through the earth, coming up like a row of knuckles that first knocked at the door.

The children were always out watching the progress made. They could not understand how the delicate crocus could push straight up out of the frozen ground without freezing to death, but died when it came into the warm room. Every day they wrapped some snowdrops in paper and laid them on Brun’s table—they were “snowdrop-letters”—and then hovered about in ungovernable excitement until he came in from the fields, when they met him with an air of mystery, and did all they could to entice him upstairs.

Out in the fields they were nearly finished with the excavations, and were only waiting for the winter water to sink in order to cart up gravel and stone and begin the foundations; the ground was too soft as yet.

Old Brun was not so active now after his confinement to bed; although there was not much the matter with him, it had weakened him. He allowed Pelle a free hand with the works, and said Yea and Amen to everything he proposed. “I can’t keep it all in my head,” he would say when Pelle came to suggest some alteration; “but just do as you like, my son, and it’s sure to be right.” There were not enough palpable happenings down there to keep his mind aglow, and he was too old to hear it grow and draw strength from that. His faith, however, merely shifted from the Cause over to Pelle; he saw him alive before him, and could lean upon his youthful vigor.

He had given up his work on the plans. He could not keep at it, and contented himself with going the round of the fields two or three times a day and watching the men. The sudden flame of energy that Pelle’s youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. He no longer measured himself by Pelle, and was not jealous of his taking the lead in anything, but simply admired him and kept carefully within the circle of those for whom Pelle acted providence. Ellen treated him like a big child who needed a great deal of care, and the children of course looked upon him as their equal.

When he went his round of the fields, he generally had Boy Comfort by the hand; the two could both keep pace with one another and converse together. There was one thing that interested them both and kept them in great excitement. The stork was expected every day back at the Hill Farm, and when it came it would bring a baby to Mother Ellen. The expectation was not an unmixed pleasure. The stork always bit the mother in the leg when he came with a baby for her. Boy Comfort’s own mother died of the bite; he was wise enough to know that now. The little fellow looked upon Ellen as his mother, and went about in a serious, almost depressed, mood. He did not talk to the other children of his anxiety, for fear they would make fun of him; but when he and the old man walked together in the fields they discussed the matter, and Brun, as the older and wiser, came to the conclusion that there was no danger. All the same, they always kept near the house so as to be at hand.

One day Pelle stayed at home from work, and Ellen did not get up as usual. “I’m going to lie here and wait for the stork,” she said to Boy Comfort. “Go out and watch for it.” The little boy took a stick, and he and Brun tramped round the house; and when they heard Ellen cry out, they squeezed one another’s hands. It was such a disturbed day, it was impossible to keep anything going straight; now a carriage drove up to the door with a fat woman in it, now it was Lasse Frederik who leaped upon his bicycle and raced down the field-path, standing on the pedals. Before Boy Comfort had any idea of it, the stork had been there, and Ellen was lying with a baby boy on her arm. He and Brun went in together to congratulate her, and they were both equally astonished. The old man had to be allowed to touch the baby’s cheek.

“He’s still so ugly,” said Ellen, with a shy smile, as she lifted the corner of the shawl from the baby’s head. Then she had to be left quiet, and Brun took Boy Comfort upstairs with him.

Pelle sat on the edge of the bed, holding Ellen’s hand, which in a few hours had become white and thin. “Now we must send for ‘Queen Theresa,’” she said.

“Shan’t we send for your mother too?” asked Pelle, who had often proposed that they should take the matter into their own hands, and go and see the old people. He did not like keeping up old quarrels.

Ellen shook her head. “They must come of their own accord,” she said decidedly. She did not mind for herself, but they had looked down upon Pelle, so it was not more than fair that they should come and make it up.

“But I _have_ sent for them,” said Pelle. “That was what Lasse Frederik went about. You mustn’t have a baby without help from your mother.”

In less than a couple of hours Madam Stolpe had arrived. She was much moved, and to hide it she began turning the house inside out for clean cloths and binders, scolding all the time. A nice time, indeed, to send for anybody, when it was all over!

Father Stolpe was harder. He was not one to come directly he was whistled for! But two or three evenings after the baby had arrived, Pelle ran up against him hanging about a little below the house. Well, he was waiting for mother, to take her home, and it didn’t concern anybody else, he supposed. He pretended to be very determined, but it was comparatively easy to persuade him to come in; and once in, it was not long before Ellen had thawed him. She had, as usual, her own manner of procedure.

“Let me tell you, father, that it’s not me that sent for you, but Pelle; and if you don’t give him your hand and say you’ve done him an injustice, we shall never be good friends again!”

“Upon my word, she’s the same confounded way of taking the bull by the horns that she always had!” said Stolpe, without looking at her. “Well, I suppose I may as well give in at once, and own that I’ve played the fool. Shall we agree to let bygones be bygones, son-in-law?” extending his hand to Pelle.

When once the reconciliation was effected, Stolpe became quite cheerful. “I never dreamt I should see you so soon, least of all with a baby!” he said contentedly, stroking Ellen’s face with his rough hand.

“No, she’s always been his darling, and father’s often been tired of it,” said Madam Stolpe. “But men make themselves so hard!”

“Rubbish, mother!” growled Stolpe. “Women will always talk nonsense!”

Time had left its mark upon them both. There had been a certain amount of unemployment in his trade, and Stolpe was getting on in years and had a difficulty in keeping up with the young men on the scaffolding. Their clothes showed that they were not so prosperous as formerly; but Stolpe was still chairman of his trade union and a highly respected man within the Movement.

“And now, my boy,” he said suddenly, placing his hands on Pelle’s shoulders, “you must explain to me what it is you’re doing this time. I hear you’ve begun to stir up men’s feelings again.”

Pelle told him about his great plan for coöperative works. The old man knew indeed a good deal about it; it appeared that he had followed Pelle’s movements from a distance.

“That’s perhaps not so out of the way,” he said. “We might squeeze capital out of existence just as quietly, if we all bestirred ourselves. But you must get the Movement to join you; and it must be made clear that every one who doesn’t support his own set is a black-leg.”

“_I have_ got a connection, but it goes rather slowly,” said Pelle.

“Then we must stir them up a little. I say, that queer fellow—Brun, I think you call him—doesn’t he live with you?”

“He isn’t a queer fellow,” said Pelle, laughing. “We can go up and see him.”

Brun and Stolpe very soon found something to talk about. They were of the same age, and had witnessed the first days of the Movement, each from his own side. Madam Stolpe came several times and pulled her husband by the coat: they ought to be going home.

“Well, it’s not worth while to quarrel with your own wife,” said Stolpe at last; “but I shall come again. I hear you’re building out here, and I should like to see what our own houses’ll be like.”

“We’ve not begun yet,” answered Pelle. “But come out on Sunday, and Brun and I will show it all to you.”

“I suppose it’s masters who’ll get it?” asked Stolpe.

“No, we thought of letting the unemployed have the work if they could undertake it, and have a man to put at the head,” said Brun. “Perhaps you could undertake it?”

“Why, of course I can!” answered Stolpe, with a feeling of his own importance. “I’m the man to build houses for workmen! I was member of the party when it numbered only one man.”

“Yes, Stolpe’s the veteran of the Movement,” said Pelle.

“Upon my word, it’d be awfully nice if it was me!” exclaimed Stolpe when Pelle accompanied the old couple down to the tram. “I’ll get together a set of workmen that have never been equalled. And what houses we shall put up! There won’t be much papier-mâché there!”

XXII

It still sometimes happened that Pelle awoke in the night not knowing where he was. He was oppressed with a stifling anxiety, dreaming that he was in prison, and fancying he could still smell the rank, mouldy odor of the cell. He gradually came to his senses and knew where he was; the sounds of breathing around him, and the warm influence of the darkness itself, brought him back to his home. He sat up joyfully, and struck a match to get a glimpse of Ellen and the little ones. He dared not go to sleep again, for sleep would instantly take him back to the prison; so he dressed quietly and stole out to see the day awaken.

It was strange with these dreams, for they turned everything upside down. In the prison he always dreamed he was free and living happily; nothing less would do there. There the day was bad and the night good, and here it was the reverse. It was as though something within one would always have everything. “That must be the soul!” he thought as he wandered eastward to meet the first gleam of day. In the country at home, the old people in his childhood believed that dreams were the soul wandering about by itself; some had seen it as a white mouse creeping out of the sleeper’s mouth to gather fresh experiences for him. It was true, too, that through dreams the poor man had hitherto had everything; they carried him out of his prison. Perhaps the _roles_ were exchanged during the darkness of night. Perhaps the rich man’s soul came during the night and slipped into the poor man’s body to gather suffering for his master.

There was spring in the air. As yet it was only perceptible to Pelle in a feeling of elation, a desire to expand and burst all boundaries. He walked with his face toward the opening day, and had a feeling of unconquerable power. Whence this feeling came he knew not, but it was there. He felt himself as something immense that was shut into a small space and would blow up the world if it were let loose. He walked on quickly. Above his head rose the first lark. Slowly the earth drew from its face the wonderful veil of rest and mystery that was night.

Perhaps the feeling of strength came from his having taken possession of his spirit and commanding a view of the world. The world had no limits, but neither had his powers; the force that could throw him out of his course did not exist. In his own footfall he heard the whole future; the Movement would soon be concluded when it had taken in the fact that the whole thing must be included. There was still a little difficulty; from that side they still made it a condition for their cooperation that Pelle should demand a public recognition of his good character. Pelle laughed and raised his face to the morning breeze which came like a cold shiver before the sunrise. Outsider! Yes, there was some truth in it. He did not belong to the existing state of things; he desired no civil rights there. That he was outside was his stamp of nobility; his relations to the future were contained in that fact. He had begun the fight as one of the lowest of the people, and as such he would triumph. When he rose there should no longer be a pariah caste.

As he walked along with the night behind him and his face to the light, he seemed to have just entered into youth with everything before him— everything to look forward to! And yet he seemed to have existed since the morning of time, so thoroughly did he know the world of darkness that he left. Was not man a wonderful being, both in his power to shrink up and become nothing, and in his power to expand and fill everything? He now understood Uncle Kalle’s smile on all occasions; he had armed himself with it in order that life should not draw too deep furrows in his gentle nature. The poor man had been obliged to dull himself; he would simply bleed to death if he gave himself up to stern reality. The dullness had been like a hard shell that protected the poor; and now they came with their heart quite safe in spite of everything. They could very well lead when times were good.

Pelle had always a vague feeling of being chosen. Even as a child it made him look with courage in the face of a hard world, and filled his bare limbs with elasticity. Poor and naked he came into the world, apparently without a gift of any kind; and yet he came as a bright promise to the elderly, work-bowed Father Lasse. Light radiated from him, insignificant and ordinary though he was; God had given him the spark, the old man always said, and he always looked upon the boy as a little miracle of heaven. The boy Pelle wondered a little at it, but was happy in his father’s pleasure. He himself knew some very different miracles at that time, for instance the calf of the fair with two heads, and the lamb with eight legs. He had his own demands to make of life’s wonderful riches, and was not struck with surprise at a very ordinary, big-eared urchin such as one might see any day.

And now he was just showing that Father Lasse had been right. The greatest miracles were in himself—Pelle, who resembled hundreds of millions of other workmen, and had never yet had more than just enough for his food. Man was really the most wonderful of all. Was he not himself, in all his commonplace naturalness, like a luminous spark, sprung from the huge anvil of divine thought? He could send out his inquiring thought to the uttermost borders of space, and back to the dawn of time. And this all-embracing power seemed to have proceeded from nothing, like God Himself! The mere fact that he, who made so much noise, had to go to prison in order to comprehend the great object of things, was a marvel! There must have been far-reaching plans deposited in him, since he shut himself in.

When he looked out over the rising, he felt himself to be facing a world-thought with extraordinarily long sight. The common people, without knowing it, had been for centuries preparing themselves for an entry into a new world; the migration of the masses would not be stopped until they had reached their goal. A law which they did not even know themselves, and could not enter into, led them the right way; and Pelle was not afraid. At the back of his unwearied labor with the great problem of the age was the recognition that he was one of those on whom the nation laid the responsibility for the future; but he was never in doubt as to the aim, nor the means. During the great lock-out the foreseeing had feared the impossibility of leading all these crowds into the fire. And then the whole thing had opened out of itself quite naturally, from an apparently tiny cause to a steadily ordered battle all along the line. The world had never before heard a call so great as that which he and his followers brought forward! It meant nothing less than the triumph of goodness! He was not fond of using great words, but at the bottom of his heart he was convinced that everything bad originated in want and misery. Distrust and selfishness came from misusage; they were man’s defence against extortion. And the extortion came from insecure conditions, from reminders of want or unconscious fear of it. Most crimes could easily be traced back to the distressing conditions, and even where the connection was not perceptible he was sure that it nevertheless existed. It was his experience that every one in reality was good: the evil in them could nearly always be traced back to something definite, while the goodness often existed in spite of everything. It would triumph altogether when the conditions became secure for everybody. He was sure that even the crimes that were due to abnormity would cease of themselves when there were no longer hidden reminders of misery in the community.

It was his firm belief that he and his followers should renew the world; the common people should turn it into a paradise for the multitude, just as it had already made it a paradise for the few. It would require a great and courageous mind for this, but his army had been well tested. Those who, from time immemorial, had patiently borne the pressure of existence for others, must be well fitted to take upon themselves the leadership into the new age.

Pelle at last found himself in Strand Road, and it was too late to return home. He was ravenously hungry and bought a couple of rolls at a baker’s, and ate them on his way to work.

At midday Brun came into the works to sign some papers and go through accounts with Pelle. They were sitting up in the office behind the shop. Pelle read out the items and made remarks on them, while the old man gave his half attention and merely nodded. He was longing to get back to “Daybreak.”

“You won’t mind making it as short as possible?” he said, “for I don’t feel quite well.” The harsh spring winds were bad for him and made his breathing difficult. The doctor had advised a couple of months in the Riviera—until the spring was over; but the old man could not make up his mind. He had not the courage to set out alone.

The shop-bell rang, and Pelle went in to serve. A young sunburnt man stood on the other side of the counter and laughed.

“Don’t you know me?” he asked, holding out his hand to Pelle. It was Karl, the youngest of the three orphans in the “Ark.”

“Why, of course I know you!” answered Pelle, delighted. “I’ve been to Adel Street to look for you; I was told you had your business there.”

That had been a long time ago! Now Karl Anker was manager of a large supply association over on Funen. He had come over to order some boots and shoes from Pelle for the association. “It’s only a trial,” he said. “If it succeeds I’ll get you a connection with the cooperative association, and that’s a customer that takes something, I can tell you!”

Pelle had to make haste to take down the order, as Karl had to catch a train.

“It’s a pity you haven’t got time to see our works,” said Pelle. “Do you remember little Paul from the ‘Ark’? The factory-girl’s child that she tied to the stove when she went to work? He’s become a splendid fellow. He’s my head man in the factory. He’d like to see you!”

When Karl was gone and Pelle was about to go in to Brun in the office, he caught sight of a small, somewhat deformed woman with a child, walking to and fro above the workshop windows, and taking stolen glances down. They timidly made way for people passing, and looked very frightened. Pelle called them into the shop.

“Do you want to speak to Peter Dreyer?” he asked.

The woman nodded. She had a refined face with large, sorrowful eyes. “If it won’t disturb him,” she said.

Pelle called Peter Dreyer and then went into the office, where he found Brun had fallen asleep.

He heard them whispering in the shop. Peter was angry, and the woman and the child cried; he could hear it in the tones of their whisper. It did not last more than a minute, and then Peter let them out. Pelle went quickly into the shop.

“If it was money,” he said hurriedly, “you know you’ve only got to tell me.”

“No, it was the big meeting of unemployed this afternoon. They were begging me to stop at home, silly creatures! Goodness knows what’s come to them!” Peter was quite offended. “By the by—I suppose you haven’t any objection to my going now? It begins in an hour’s time.”

“I thought it had been postponed,” said Pelle.

“Yes, but that was only a ruse to prevent its being prohibited. We’re holding it in a field out by Nörrebro. You ought to come too; it’ll be a meeting that’ll be remembered. We shall settle great matters to-day.” Peter was nervous, and fidgeted with his clothes while he spoke.

Pelle placed his hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. “You’d better do what those two want,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know them, of course; but if their welfare’s dependent on you, then they too have a claim upon you. Give up what you were going to do, and go out for a walk with those two! Everything’s budding now; take them to the woods! It’s better to make two people happy than a thousand unhappy.”

Peter looked away. “We’re not going to do anything special, so what is there to make such a fuss about?” he murmured.

“You _are_ going to do something to-day; I can see it in you. And if you can’t carry it through, who’ll have to take the consequences? Why, the women and children! You _can’t_ carry it through! Our strength doesn’t lie in that direction.”

“You go your way and let me go mine,” said Peter, gently freeing himself.

Two policemen were standing on the opposite pavement, talking together, while they secretly kept an eye on the shop. Pelle pointed to them.

“The police don’t know where the meeting’s to be held, so they’re keeping watch on me,” said Peter, shrugging his shoulders. “I can easily put those two on the wrong track.”

The policemen crossed the street and separated outside the shop. One of them stood looking at the articles exhibited in the window for a little while, and then quickly entered the shop. “Is Peter Dreyer here?” he asked haughtily.

“I’m he,” answered Peter, withdrawing behind the counter. “But I advise you not to touch me! I can’t bear the touch of a policeman’s hands.”

“You’re arrested!” said the policeman shortly, following him.

Pelle laid his hand upon his arm. “You should go to work with a little gentleness,” he said. But the man pushed him roughly away. “I’ll have no interference from you!” he cried, blowing his whistle. Peter started, and for a moment his thoughts were at a standstill; then he leaped like a cat over the iron railing, of the workshop steps. But the other policeman was there to receive him, and he sprang once more into the shop, close up to his pursuer. He had his revolver in his hand. “I’ve had enough of this, confound you!” he hissed.

Two shots sounded, one immediately after the other. The policeman just managed to turn round, but fell forward with his head under the counter, and Peter dropped upon the top of him. It looked as if he had tripped over the policeman’s leg; but when Pelle went to help him up he saw that the blood was trickling from a hole in his temple. The policeman was dead.

Peter opened his eyes with difficulty when Pelle raised his head. “Take me away!” he whispered, turning his head toward the dead man with an expression of loathing. He still kept a convulsive hold upon his revolver.

Pelle took it from him, and carried him in to the sofa in the office. “Get me a little water!” said Pelle to the old librarian, who was standing trembling at the door, but the old man did not hear him.

Peter made a sign that he needed nothing now. “But those two,” he whispered. Pelle nodded. “And then—Pelle—comrade—” He tried to fix his dying gaze upon Pelle, but suddenly started convulsively, his knees being drawn right up to his chin. “Bloodhounds!” he groaned, his eyes converging so strongly that the pupils disappeared altogether; but then his features fell once more into their ordinary folds as his head sank back, and he was dead.

The policeman came in. “Well, is he dead?” he asked maliciously. “He’s made fools of us long enough!”

Pelle took him by the arm and led him to the door. “He’s no longer in your district,” he said, as he closed the door behind him and followed the man into the shop, where the dead policeman lay upon the counter. His fellow-policeman had laid him there, locked the outer door, and pulled down the blinds.

“Will you stop the work and tell the men what has happened?” said Pelle quietly to Brun. “There’s something else I must see to. There’ll be no more work done here to-day.”

“Are you going?” asked the old man anxiously.

“Yes, I’m going to take Peter’s meeting for him, now that he can’t do it himself,” answered Pelle in a low voice.

They had gone down through the workshop, where the men were standing about, looking at one another. They had heard the shots, but had no idea what they meant. “Peter is dead!” said Pelle. His emotion prevented him from saying anything more. Everything seemed suddenly to rush over him, and he hastened out and jumped onto a tram-car.

Out on one of the large fields behind Nörrebro a couple of thousand unemployed were gathered. The wind had risen and blew gustily from the west over the field. The men tramped backward and forward, or stood shivering in their thin clothes. The temper of the crowd was threatening. Men continued to pour out from the side streets, most of them sorry figures, with faces made older by want of work. Many of them could no longer show themselves in the town for want of clothes, and took this opportunity of joining the others.

There was grumbling among them because the meeting had not begun. Men asked one another what the reason was, and no one could tell. Suppose Peter Dreyer had cheated them too, and had gone over to the corporation!

Suddenly a figure appeared upon the cart that was to be used as a platform, and the men pressed forward on all sides. Who in the world was it? It was not Peter Dreyer! Pelle? What smith? Oh, him from The Great Struggle—“the Lightning”! Was he still to the fore? Yes, indeed he was! Why, he’d become a big manufacturer and a regular pillar of society. What in the world did he want here? He had plenty of cheek!

Suddenly a storm of shouts and hisses broke out, mingled with a little applause.

Pelle stood looking out over the crowd with an expression of terrible earnestness. Their demonstration against him did not move him; he was standing here in the stead of a dead man. He still felt Peter’s heavy head on his arm.

When comparative quiet was restored he raised his head. “Peter Dreyer is dead!” he said in a voice that was heard by every one. Whispers passed through the crowd, and they looked questioningly at one another as though they had not heard correctly. He saw from their expression how much would go to pieces in their lives when they believed it.

“It’s a lie!” suddenly cried a voice, relieving the tension. “You’re hired by the police to entice us round the corner, you sly fellow!”

Pelle turned pale. “Peter Dreyer is lying in the factory with a bullet through his head,” he repealed inexorably. “The police were going to arrest him, and he shot both the policeman and himself!”

For a moment all the life in the crowd seemed to be petrified by the pitiless truth, and he saw how they had loved Peter Dreyer. Then they began to make an uproar, shouting that they would go and speak to the police, and some even turned to go.

“Silence, people!” cried Pelle in a loud voice. “Are you grown men and yet will get up a row beside the dead body of a comrade?”

“What do you know about it?” answered one. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I do know at any rate that at a place out by Vesterbro there sits a woman with a child, waiting for Peter, and he will not come. Would you have more like them? What are you thinking of, wanting to jump into the sea and drown yourselves because you’re wet through? Will those you leave behind be well off? For if you think so, it’s your duty to sacrifice yourselves. But don’t you think rather that the community will throw you into a great common pit, and leave your widows and fatherless children to weep over you?”

“It’s all very well for you to talk!” some one shouted. “Yours are safe enough!”

“I’m busy making yours safe for you, and you want to spoil it by stupidity! It’s all very well for me to talk, you say! But if there’s any one of you who dares turn his face to heaven and say he has gone through more than I have, let him come up here and take my place.”

He was silent and looked out over the crowd. Their wasted faces told him that they were in need of food, but still more of fresh hope. Their eyes gazed into uncertainty. A responsibility must be laid upon them—a great responsibility for such prejudiced beings—if possible, great enough to carry them on to the goal.

“What is the matter with you?” he went on. “You suffer want, but you’ve always done that without getting anything for it; and now when there’s some purpose in it, you won’t go any further. We aren’t just from yesterday, remember! Wasn’t it us who fought the great battle to its end together? Now you scorn it and the whole Movement and say they’ve brought nothing; but it was then we broke through into life and won our right as men.

“Before that time we have for centuries borne our blind hope safely through oppression and want. Is there any other class of society that has a marching route like ours? Forced by circumstances, we prepared for centuries of wandering in the desert and never forgot the country; the good God had given us some of His own infinite long-suffering to carry us through the toilsome time. And now, when we are at the border, you’ve forgotten what we were marching for, and sacrifice the whole thing if only _you_ can be changed from thin slaves to fat slaves!”

“There are no slaves here!” was the threatening cry on all sides.

“You’re working horses, in harness and with blinkers on! Now you demand good feeding. When will the scales fall from your eyes, so that you take the responsibility upon yourselves? You think you’re no end of fine fellows when you dare to bare your chest to the bayonets, but are we a match for brutality? If we were, the future would not be ours.”

“Are you scoffing at Peter Dreyer?” asked a sullen voice.

“No, I am not. Peter Dreyer was one of those who go on in advance, and smear the stones on the road with their hearts’ blood, so that the rest of us may find our way. But you’ve no right to compare yourselves with him. He sank under the weight of a tremendous responsibility; and what are you doing? If you want to honor Peter’s memory as it deserves, go quietly home, and join the Movement again. There you have work to do that will transform the world when you all set about it. What will it matter if your strength ebbs and you suffer hunger for a little longer while you’re building your own house? You were hungry too when you were building for others.

“You referred to Peter Dreyer, but we are none of us great martyrs; we are everyday, ordinary men, and there’s where our work lies. Haven’t the thousands who have suffered and died in silence a still greater claim to be followed? They have gone down peacefully for the sake of the development, and have the strongest right to demand our belief in a peaceable development. It is just we that come from the lowest stratum who must preserve the historic development; never has any movement had so long and sad a previous history as ours! Suffering and want have taught us to accept the leadership, when the good has justice done to it; and you want to throw the whole thing overboard by an act of violence.”

They listened to him in silence now. He had caught their minds, but it was not knowledge they absorbed. At present they looked most like weary people who are told that they still have a long way to go. But he _would_ get them through!

“Comrades!” he cried earnestly, “perhaps we who are here shall not live to see the new, but it’s through us that it’ll some day become reality. Providence has stopped at us, and has appointed us to fight for it. Is that not an honor? Look! we come right from the bottom of everything— entirely naked; the old doesn’t hang about our clothes, for we haven’t any; we can clothe ourselves in the new. The old God, with His thousands of priests as a defence against injustice, we do not know; the moral of war we have never understood—we who have always been its victims. We believe in the Good, because we know that without the victory of goodness there will be no future. Our mind is light and can receive the light; we will lift up our little country and show that it has a mission on the earth. We who are little ourselves will show how the little ones keep up and assert themselves by the principle of goodness. We wish no harm to any one, therefore the good is on our side. Nothing can in the long run keep us down! And now go home! Your wives and children are perhaps anxious on your account.”

They stood for a moment as though still listening, and then dispersed in silence.

When Pelle sprang down from the cart, Morten came up and held out his hand. “You are strong, Pelle!” he said quietly.

“Where have you come from?” exclaimed Pelle in glad surprise.