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

Ellen did not like his being out among the navvies in all kinds of weather. In the evening the warmth of the room affected his lungs and made him cough badly.

“It’ll end in a regular cold,” she said. She wanted him to stay in bed for a few days and try to get rid of the cold before it took a firm hold.

It was a constant subject of argument between them, but Ellen did not give in until she got her way. When once he had made this concession to the cold, it came on in earnest. The warmth of bed thawed the cold out of his body and made both eyes and nose run.

“It’s a good thing we got you to bed in time,” said Ellen. “And now you won’t be allowed up until the worst cold weather is over, even if I have to hide your clothes.” She tended him like a child and made “camel tea” for him from flowers that she had gathered and dried in the summer.

When once he had gone to bed he quite liked it and took delight in being waited on, discovering a need of all kinds of things, so as to receive them from Ellen’s hands.

“Now you’re making yourself out worse than you are!” she said, laughing at him.

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 suchlike, 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 lockout in the trade.”

“The hides!” interpolated Brun.

“There we come to agriculture. That’s already arranged cooperatively, 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 today 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