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

“So it’s a boy!” said the “family.” “Don’t quite lose your head!”

“That would be the last straw!” said Pelle gravely.

The feminine members of the family teased him because he looked after the child. “What a man⁠—perhaps he’d like to lie in childbed, too!” they jeered.

“I don’t doubt it,” growled Stolpe. “But he’s near becoming an idiot, and that’s much more serious. And it pains me to say it, but that’s the girl’s fault. And yet all her life she has only heard what is good and proper. But women are like cats⁠—there’s no depending on them.”

Pelle only laughed at their gibes. He was immeasurably happy.

And now Lasse managed to find his way to see them! He had scarcely received the news of the event, when he made his appearance just as he was. He was full of audaciously high spirits; he threw his cap on the ground outside the door, and rushed into the bedroom as though someone were trying to hold him back.

“Ach, the little creature! Did anyone ever see such an angel!” he cried, and he began to babble over the child until Ellen was quite rosy with maternal pride.

His joy at becoming a grandfather knew no limits. “So it’s come at last, it’s come at last!” he repeated, over and over again. “And I was always afraid I should have to go to my grave without leaving a representative behind me! Ach, what a plump little devil! He’s got something to begin life on, he has! He’ll surely be an important citizen, Pelle! Just look how plump and round he is! Perhaps a merchant or a manufacturer or something of that sort! To see him in his power and greatness⁠—but that won’t be granted to Father Lasse.” He sighed. “Yes, yes, here he is, and how he notices one already! Perhaps the rascal’s wondering, who is this wrinkled old man standing there and coming to see me in his old clothes? Yes, it’s Father Lasse, so look at him well, he’s won his magnificence by fair means!”

Then he went up to Pelle and fumbled for his hand. “Well, I’ve hardly dared to hope for this⁠—and how fine he is, my boy! What are you going to call him?” Lasse always ended with that question, looking anxiously at his son as he asked it. His old head trembled a little now when anything moved him.

“He’s to be called Lasse Frederik,” said Pelle one day, “after his two grandfathers.”

This delighted the old man. He went off on a little carouse in honor of the day.

And now he came almost every day. On Sunday mornings he made himself scrupulously tidy, polishing his boots and brushing his clothes, so as to make himself thoroughly presentable. As he went home from work he would look in to ask whether little Lasse had slept well. He eulogized Ellen for bringing such a bright, beautiful youngster into the world, and she quite fell in love with the old man, on account of his delight in the child.

She even trusted him to sit with the little one, and he was never so pleased as when she wished to go out and sent for him accordingly.

So little Lasse succeeded, merely by his advent, in abolishing all misunderstandings, and Pelle blessed him for it. He was the deuce of a fellow already⁠—one day he threw Lasse and Ellen right into one another’s arms! Pelle followed step by step the little creature’s entrance into the world; he noticed when first his glance showed a watchful attention, and appeared to follow an object, and when first his hand made a grab at something. “Hey, hey, just look! He wants his share of things already!” he cried delightedly. It was Pelle’s fair moustache the child was after⁠—and didn’t he give it a tug!

The little hand gripped valiantly and was scarcely to be removed; there were little dimples on the fingers and deep creases at the wrist. There was any amount of strength in Ellen’s milk!

They saw nothing more of Morton. He had visited them at first, but after a time ceased coming. They were so taken up with one another at the time, and Ellen’s cool behavior had perhaps frightened him away. He couldn’t know that that was her manner to everybody. Pelle could never find an idle hour to look him up, but often regretted him. “Can you understand what’s amiss with him?” he would ask Ellen wonderingly. “We have so much in common, he and I. Shall I make short work of it and go and look him up?”

Ellen made no answer to this; she only kissed him. She wanted to have him quite to herself, and encompassed him with her love; her warm breath made him feel faint with happiness. Her will pursued him and surrounded him like a wall; he had a faint consciousness of the fact, but made no attempt to bestir himself. He felt quite comfortable as he was.

The child occasioned fresh expenses, and Ellen had all she could do; there was little time left for her to help him. He had to obtain suitable work, so that they might not suffer by the slack winter season, but could sit cozily between their four walls. There was no time for loafing about and thinking. It was an obvious truth, which their daily life confirmed, that poor people have all they can do to mind their own affairs. This was a fact which they had not at once realized.

He no longer gave any thought to outside matters. It was really only from old habit that, as he sat eating his breakfast in the workshop, he would sometimes glance at the paper his sandwiches were wrapped in⁠—part of some back number of The Working Man. Or perhaps it would happen that he felt something in the air, that passed him by, something in which he had no part; and then he would