Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

nothing good. To picture for himself a future beside Hanne seemed impossible; for her only the moment existed. Her peculiar nature had a certain power over him⁠—that was all. He often vowed to himself that he would not allow her to make a fool of him⁠—but he always went over to see her again. He must try to conquer her⁠—and then take the consequences.

One day, when work was over, he strolled across to see her. There was no one on the gallery, so he went into the little kitchen.

“Is that you, Pelle?” Hanne’s voice sounded from the living-room. “Come in, then!”

She had apparently been washing her body, and was now sitting in a white petticoat and chemise, and combing her beautiful hair. There was something of the princess about her; she took such care of her body, and knew how it should be done. The mirror stood before her, on the windowsill; from the little back room one could see, between the roofs and the mottled party-wall, the prison and the bridge and the canal that ran beneath it. Out beyond the Exchange the air was gray and streaked with the tackle of ships.

Pelle sat down heavily by the stove, his elbows on his knees, and gazed on the floor. He was greatly moved. If only the old woman would come! “I believe I’ll go out,” he thought, “and behave as though I were looking out for her.” But he remained sitting there. Against the wall was the double bed with its red-flowered counterpane, while the table stood by the opposite wall, with the chairs pushed under it. “She shouldn’t drive me too far,” he thought, “or perhaps it’ll end in my seizing her, and then she’ll have her fingers burnt!”

“Why don’t you talk to me, Pelle?” said Hanne.

He raised his head and looked at her in the mirror. She was holding the end of her plait in her mouth, and looked like a kitten biting its tail.

“Oh, what should I talk about?” he replied morosely.

“You are angry with me, but it isn’t fair of you⁠—really, it isn’t fair! Is it my fault that I’m so terrified of poverty? Oh, how it does frighten me! It has always been like that ever since I was born, and you are poor too, Pelle, as poor as I am! What would become of us both? We know the whole story!”

“What will become of us?” said Pelle.

“That I don’t know, and it’s all the same to me⁠—only it must be something I don’t know all about. Everything is so familiar if one is poor⁠—one knows every stitch of one’s clothes by heart; one can watch them wearing out. If you’d only been a sailor, Pelle!”

“Have you seen him again?” asked Pelle.

Hanne laughingly shook her head. “No; but I believe something will happen⁠—something splendid. Out there lies a great ship⁠—I can see it from the window. It’s full of wonderful things, Pelle.”

“You are crazy!” said Pelle scornfully. “That’s a bark⁠—bound for the coal quay. She comes from England with coals.”

“That may well be,” replied Hanne indifferently. “I don’t mind that. There’s something in me singing, ‘There lies the ship, and it has brought something for me from foreign parts.’ And you needn’t grudge me my happiness.”

But now her mother came in, and began to mimic her.

“Yes, out there lies the ship that has brought me something⁠—out there lies the ship that has brought me something! Good God! Haven’t you had enough of listening to your own crazy nonsense? All through your childhood you’ve sat there and made up stories and looked out for the ship! We shall soon have had enough of it! And you let Pelle sit there and watch you uncovering your youth⁠—aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Pelle’s so good, mother⁠—and he’s my brother, too. He thinks nothing of it.”

“Thinks nothing of it? Yes, he does; he thinks how soft and white your bosom is! And he’s fit to cry inside of him because he mustn’t lay his head there. I, too, have known what it is to give joy, in my young days.”

Hanne blushed from her bosom upward. She threw a kerchief over her bosom and ran into the kitchen.

The mother looked after her.

“She’s got a skin as tender as that of a king’s daughter. Wouldn’t one think she was a cuckoo’s child? Her father couldn’t stand her. ‘You’ve betrayed me with some fine gentleman’⁠—he used so often to say that. ‘We poor folks couldn’t bring a piece like that into the world!’ ‘As God lives, Johnsen,’ I used to say, ‘you and no other are the girl’s father.’ But he used to beat us⁠—he wouldn’t believe me. He used to fly into a rage when he looked at the child, and he hated us both because she was so fine. So its no wonder that she had gone a bit queer in the head. You can believe she’s cost me tears of blood, Pelle. But you let her be, Pelle. I could wish you could get her, but it wouldn’t be best for you, and it isn’t good for you to have her playing with you. And if you got her after all, it would be even worse. A woman’s whims are poor capital for setting up house with.”

Pelle agreed with her in cold blood; he had allowed himself to he fooled, and was wasting his youth upon a path that led nowhere. But now there should be an end of it.

Hanne came back and looked at him, radiant, full of visions. “Will you take me for a walk, Pelle?” she asked him.

“Yes!” answered Pelle joyfully, and he threw all his good resolutions overboard.

V

Pelle and his little neighbor used to compete as to which of them should be up first in the morning. When she was lucky and had to wake him her face was radiant with pride. It sometimes happened that he would lie in bed a little longer, so that he should not deprive her