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

they are? I think it’s quite as well they should go back to school for a time!” “Hurrah!” they cried. “Hurrah! Long live ‘Lightning’!” A movement went through the crowd. “That’s Pelle!” The whisper passed from mouth to mouth, and the women stood on tiptoe to see him.

Pelle and Stolpe were standing against a wall, surrounded by a few dozen pickets. The police went up to them and reprimanded them. They had orders to hinder the picketing, but they had no desire to meddle with Pelle. They lived in the workers’ quarter, were at home there, and a word from him would make the city impossible for them.

The usual time for stopping work came round, but the workers were not released from the factory. The crowd used its wits to keep itself warm; punning remarks concerning strikebreakers and capitalists buzzed through the air. But suddenly an alarm ran through the crowd. The street urchins, who are always the first to know everything, were whistling between their fingers and running down the side streets. Then the crowd began to move, and the police followed at a quick march, keeping to the middle of the street. The factory had discharged the workers by a back door. They were moving down Guldberg Street by now, disheartened and with never a glance behind them, while a whole escort of police accompanied them. They were soon overtaken and brought home to the accompaniment of a sinister concert, which now and again was interrupted by cries of, “Three cheers for the gentlemen!”

The pickets walked in a long file, close to the procession, zealously occupied in noting each individual worker, while Pelle moved in the midst of the crowd, endeavoring to prevent overhasty action. There was need to be careful. Several men were still in prison because during the winter they had come to blows with the strikebreakers, and the police had received stringent orders from the authorities. The press of the propertied classes was daily calling for stricter measures, demanding that every meeting in the streets, and especially before the gates of a factory, should be broken up by the police.

Now and then a strikebreaker parted from the squad and ran into the door of his dwelling, followed by a long whistle.

Among the workers was a solitary, elderly man, still powerful, whom Pelle recognized. He kept at the extreme edge of the police, walking heavily, with bowed head, along the pavement close to the houses. His hair was quite gray, and his gait was almost crippled. This was Mason Hansen, Stolpe’s old comrade and fellow-unionist, whom Pelle had interviewed in the winter, in the hope of persuading him to refrain from strikebreaking.

“It’s going badly with him,” thought Pelle, involuntarily keeping his eyes on him. The results of strikebreaking had dealt hardly with him.

By St. Hans Street he turned the corner, winking at the policeman who was about to follow him, and went down the street alone, looking neither to right nor left, embarrassed, and with hanging head. Every time a child cried aloud, he started. Then he stood as though riveted to the ground, for in front of his door a heap of poverty-stricken household goods lay in the gutter. A crowd of gaping children stood round the heap, and in the midst of the group stood a youngish woman, with four children, who were keeping tearful watch over the heap of trash. The man pressed through the crowd and exchanged a few words with the woman, then clenched his fists and shook them threateningly at the tenement house.

Pelle went up to him. “Things aren’t going well with you, comrade,” he said, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder. “And you are much too good for what you are doing. You had better come with me and re-enter the organization.”

The man slowly turned his head. “Oh, it’s you!” he said, shaking Pelle’s hand away with a jerk. “And you seem as cool and impudent as ever. Poverty hasn’t dealt hardly with you! It’s not at all a bad business, growing fat on the pence of the workers, eh?”

Pelle grew crimson with anger, but he controlled himself. “Your insults don’t hurt me,” he said. “I have gone hungry for the Cause while you have been playing the turncoat. But that will be forgotten if you’ll come with me.”

The man laughed bitterly, pointing at the tenement-house. “You’d better go and give them a medal. Three months now they’ve tormented me and made hell hot for my wife and children, in order to drive us away. And as that didn’t answer, they went to the landlord and forced him to give me notice. But Hansen is obstinate⁠—he wouldn’t be shown the door. So now they’ve got the bailiffs to turn me out, see?” He gave a hollow laugh. “But these few sticks, why, we can soon carry them up again, damn it all! Shall we begin, mother?”

“I’ll willingly speak to the landlord. Remember, you are an old unionist.”

“An old⁠—yes, I was in it from the very beginning.” The man drew himself proudly erect. “But for all that I don’t let my wife and children starve. So you want to go begging favors for me, eh? You be gone⁠—at once, will you? Be off, to the devil, or I’ll beat you to a jelly with this!” He seized a table-leg; his eyes were quite bloodshot. His young wife went up to him and took his hand. “Hansen!” she said quietly. He let his weapon fall. Pelle felt the woman’s pleading eyes upon him, and went.

XXXI

When Pelle, tired to death, made his way homeward in the evening, he had lost the feeling of invincibility and his thoughts turned to Ellen.

In the daytime he felt neither hesitation nor certainty. When he set to work it was always with thousands behind him. He felt the great body of workers at his back, whether he was fighting in the open or waiting with close-buttoned coat to deal with the leaders of