Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

They climbed up past the Hermitage and thence out over the grass and into the forest again, until they came to the little ranger’s house where they drank coffee and ate some of the bread-and-butter they had brought with them. Then they trudged on again. Madam Johnsen was paying a rare visit to the forest and wanted to see everything. The young people raised objections, but she was not to be dissuaded. She had girlhood memories of the forest, and she wanted to renew them; let them say what they would. If they were tired of running after her they could go their own way. But they followed her faithfully, looking about them wearily and moving along dully onward, moving along rather more stupidly than was justifiable.

On the path leading to Raavad there were not so many people.

“It’s just as forest-like here as in my young days!” said the old woman. “And beautiful it is here. The leaves are so close, it’s just the place for a loving couple of lovers. Now I’m going to sit down and take my boots off for a bit, my feet are beginning to hurt me. You look about you for a bit.”

But the young people looked at one another strangely and threw themselves down at her feet. She had taken off her boots, and was cooling her feet in the fresh grass as she sat there chatting. “It’s so warm today the stones feel quite burning⁠—but you two certainly won’t catch fire. Why do you stare in that funny way? Give each other a kiss in the grass, now! There’s no harm in it, and it’s so pretty to see!”

Pelle did not move. But Hanne moved over to him on her knees, put her hands gently round his head, and kissed him. When she had done so she looked into his eyes, lovingly, as a child might look at her doll. Her hat had slipped on to her shoulders. On her white forehead and her upper lip were little clear drops of sweat. Then, with a merry laugh, she suddenly released him. Pelle and the old woman had gathered flowers and boughs of foliage; these they now began to arrange. Hanne lay on her back and gazed up at the sky.

“You leave that old staring of yours alone,” said the mother. “It does you no good.”

“I’m only playing at ‘Glory’; it’s such a height here,” said Hanne. “But at home in the ‘Ark’ you see more. Here it’s too light.”

“Yes, God knows, one does see more⁠—a sewer and two privies. A good thing it’s so dark there. No, one ought to have enough money to be able to go into the forests every Sunday all the summer. When one has grown up in the open air it’s hard to be penned in between dirty walls all one’s life. But now I think we ought to be going on. We waste so much time.”

“Oh Lord, and I’m so comfortable lying here!” said Hanne lazily. “Pelle, just push my shawl under my head!”

Out of the boughs high above them broke a great bird. “There, there, what a chap!” cried Pelle, pointing at it. It sailed slowly downward, on its mighty outspread wings, now and again compressing the air beneath it with a few powerful strokes, and then flew onward, close above the treetops, with a scrutinizing glance.

“Jiminy, I believe that was a stork!” said Madam Johnsen. She reached for her boots, alarmed. “I won’t stay here any longer now. One never knows what may happen.” She hastily laced up her boots, with a prudish expression on her face. Pelle laughed until the tears stood in his eyes.

Hanne raised her head. “That was surely a crane, don’t you think so? Stupid bird, always to fly along like that, staring down at everything as though he were shortsighted. If I were he I should fly straight up in the air and then shut my eyes and come swooping down. Then, wherever one got to, something or other would happen.”

“Sure enough, this would happen, that you’d fall into the sea and be drowned. Hanne has always had the feeling that something has got to happen; and for that reason she can never hold on to what she’s got in her hands.”

“No, for I haven’t anything in them!” cried Hanne, showing her hands and laughing. “Can you hold what you haven’t got, Pelle?”

About four o’clock they came to the Schleswig Stone, where the Social-Democrats were holding a meeting. Pelle had never yet attended any big meeting at which he could hear agitators speaking, but had obtained his ideas of the new movements at second hand. They were in tune with the blind instinct within him. But he had never experienced anything really electrifying⁠—only that confused, monotonous surging such as he had heard in his childhood when he listened with his ear to the hollow of the wooden shoe.

“Well, it looks as if the whole society was here!” said Madam Johnsen half contemptuously. “Now you can see all the Social-Democrats of Copenhagen. They never have been more numerous, although they pretend the whole of society belongs to them. But things don’t always go so smoothly as they do on paper.”

Pelle frowned, but was silent. He himself knew too little of the matter to be able to convert another.

The crowd affected him powerfully; here were several thousands of people gathered together for a common object, and it became exceedingly clear to him that he himself belonged to this crowd. “I belong to them too!” Over and over again the words repeated themselves rejoicingly in his mind. He felt the need to verify it all himself, and to prove himself grateful for the quickly-passing day. If the Court shoemaker hadn’t spoken the words that drove him to join the Union he would still have been standing apart from it all, like a heathen. The act of subscribing the