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

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 god. He rose, newborn, 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 strikebreakers, 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 strikebreakers 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 paterfamilias, 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 partisanship. 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 hell with the comrades and their big words⁠—what have they led to?