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

the hand. She went slowly, and appeared to resist. He set her ceremoniously ashore, turned back to the cabin, and locked the door behind him. The girl stood still for a moment. A low ’plaint escaped her lips. She stretched her arms pleadingly toward the cabin. Then she turned and went mournfully along the quay.

“That was the old man,” whispered Per Kofod. “That’s how he treats them all⁠—and yet they don’t want to give him up.”

Pelle could not utter a word; he stood there cowering, oppressed as by some terrible burden. Suddenly he pulled himself together, pressed his comrade’s hand, and set off quickly between the coal-stacks.

After a time he turned aside and followed the young girl at a little distance. Like a sleepwalker, she staggered along the quay and went over the long bridge. He feared she would throw herself in the water, so strangely did she behave.

On the bridge she stood gazing across at the ship, with a frozen look on her face. Pelle stood still; turned to ice by the thought that she might see him. He could not have borne to speak to her just then⁠—much less look into her eyes.

But then she moved on. Her bearing was broken; from behind she looked like one of those elderly, shipwrecked females from the “Ark,” who shuffled along by the house-walls in trodden-down men’s shoes, and always boasted a dubious past. “Good God!” thought Pelle, “is her dream over already? Good God!”

He followed her at a short distance down the narrow street, and as soon as he knew that she must have reached her dwelling he entered the tunnel.

VII

In the depths of Pelle’s soul lay a confident feeling that he was destined for something particular; it was his old dream of fortune, which would not be wholly satisfied by the good conditions for all men which he wanted to help to bring about. His fate was no longer in his eyes a grievous and crushing predestination to poverty, which could only be lifted from him by a miracle; he was lord of his own future, and already he was restlessly building it up!

But in addition to this there was something else that belonged only to him and to life, something that no one else in the world could undertake. What it was he had not yet figured to himself; but it was something that raised him above all others, secretly, so that only he was conscious of it. It was the same obscure feeling of being a pioneer that had always urged him forward; and when it did take the form of a definite question he answered it with the confident nod of his childhood. Yes, he would see it through all right! As though that which was to befall him was so great and so wonderful that it could not be put into words, nor even thought of. He saw the straight path in front of him, and he sauntered on, strong and courageous. There were no other enemies than those a prudent man might perceive; those lurking forces of evil which in his childhood had hovered threateningly above his head were the shadows of the poor man’s wretchedness. There was nothing else evil, and that was sinister enough. He knew now that the shadows were long. Morten was right. Although he himself when a child had sported in the light, yet his mind was saddened by the misery of all those who were dead or fighting in distant parts of the earth; and it was on this fact that the feeling of solidarity must be based. The miraculous simply had no existence, and that was a good thing for those who had to fight with the weapon of their own physical strength. No invisible deity sat overhead making his own plans for them or obstructing others. What one willed, that could one accomplish, if only he had strength enough to carry it through. Strength⁠—it was on that and that alone that everything depended. And there was strength in plenty. But the strength of all must be united, must act as the strength of one. People always wondered why Pelle, who was so industrious and respectable, should live in the “Ark” instead of in the northern quarter, in the midst of the Movement. He wondered at himself when he ever thought about it at all; but he could not as yet tear himself away from the “Ark.” Here, at the bottom of the ladder, he had found peace in his time of need. He was too loyal to turn his back on those among whom he had been happy.

He knew they would feel it as a betrayal; the adoration with which the inmates of the “Ark” regarded the three orphan children was also bestowed upon him; he was the foundling, the fourth member of the “Family,” and now they were proud of him too!

It was not the way of the inmates of the “Ark” to make plans for the future. Sufficient to the day was the evil thereof; tomorrow’s cares were left for the morrow. The future did not exist for them. They were like careless birds, who had once suffered shipwreck and had forgotten it. Many of them made their living where they could; but however down in the world they were, let the slightest ray of sunlight flicker down to them, and all was forgotten. Of the labor movement and other new things they gossiped as frivolously as so many chattering starlings, who had snapped up the news on the wind.

But Pelle went so confidently out into the world, and set his shoulders against it, and then came back home to them. He had no fear; he could look Life straight in the face, he grappled boldly with the future, before which they shudderingly closed their eyes. And thereby his name came to be spoken with a particular accent; Pelle was a prince; what a pity it was that he wouldn’t,