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

factories had grown up, and now formed quite a belt about the city, with their hundreds of giant chimneys stretching up into the sky. But something must be going on, since they were not smoking. Was it a wages conflict?

He was now going to lay plans for his life, build it up again upon the deep foundation that had been laid in his solitude; and yet he knew absolutely nothing of the conditions down in the town! Well, he had friends in thousands; the town was simply lying waiting to receive him with open arms, more fond of him than ever because of all he had suffered. With all his ignorance he had been able to lead them on a little way; the development had chosen him as its blind instrument, and it had been successful; but now he was going to lead them right into the land, for now he felt the burden of life within him.

Hullo! if he wasn’t building castles in the air just as in the old days, and forgetting all that the prison cell had taught him so bitterly! The others’ good indeed! He had been busily concerned for the homes of others, and had not even succeeded in building his own! What humbug! Down there were three neglected beings who would bring accusations against him, and what was the use of his sheltering himself behind the welfare of the many? What was the good of receiving praise from tens of thousands and being called benefactor by the whole world, if those three whose welfare had been entrusted to him accused him of having failed them? He had often enough tried to stifle their accusing voices, but in there it was not possible to stifle anything into silence.

Pelle still had no doubt that he was chosen to accomplish something for the masses, but it had become of such secondary importance when he recollected that he had neglected his share of that which was the duty of everyone. He had mistaken small for great, and believed that when he accomplished something that no one else could do, he might in return pay less attention to ordinary everyday duties; but the fates ordained that the burden of life should be laid just where everyone could help. And now he was coming back like a poor beggar, who had conquered everything except the actual, and therefore possessed nothing, and had to beg for mercy. Branded as a criminal, he must now begin at the beginning, and accomplish that which he had not been able to do in the days of his power. It would be difficult to build his home under these circumstances, and who was there to help him? Those three who could have spoken for him he had left to their own devices as punishment for an offence which in reality was his own.

He had never before set out in such a poverty-stricken state. He did not even come like one who had something to forgive: his prison-cell had left him nothing. He had had time enough there to go carefully over the whole matter, and everything about Ellen that he had before been too much occupied to notice or had felt like a silent opposition to his projects, now stood out clearly, and formed itself, against his will, into the picture of a woman who never thought of herself, but only of the care of her little world and how she could sacrifice herself. He could not afford to give up any of his right here, and marshalled all his accusations against her, bringing forward laws and morals; but it all failed completely to shake the image, and only emphasized yet more the strength of her nature. She had sacrificed everything for him and the children, her one desire being to see them happy. Each of his attacks only washed away a fresh layer of obstructing mire, and made the sacrifice in her action stand out more clearly. It was because she was so unsensual and chaste that she could act as she had done. Alas! she had had to pay dearly for his remissness; it was the mother who, in their extreme want, gave her own body to nourish her offspring.

Pelle would not yield, but fought fiercely against conviction. He had been robbed of freedom and the right to be a human being like others, and now solitude was about to take from him all that remained to sustain him. Even if everything joined together against him, he was not wrong, he would not be wrong. It was he who had brought the great conflict to an end at the cost of his own⁠—and he had found Ellen to be a prostitute! His thoughts clung to this word, and shouted it hoarsely, unceasingly⁠—prostitute! prostitute! He did not connect it with anything, but only wanted to drown the clamor of accusations on all sides which were making him still more naked and miserable.

At first letters now and then came to him, probably from old companions-in-arms, perhaps too from Ellen: he did not know, for he refused to take them. He hated Ellen because she was the stronger, hated in impotent defiance everything and everybody. Neither she nor anyone else should have the satisfaction of being any comfort to him; since he had been shut up as an unclean person, he had better keep himself quite apart from them. He would make his punishment still more hard, and purposely increased his forlornness, kept out of his thoughts everything that was near and dear to him, and dragged the painful things into the foreground. Ellen had of course forgotten him for someone else, and had perhaps turned the children’s thoughts from him; they would certainly be forbidden to mention the word “father.” He could distinctly see them all three sitting happily round the lamp; and when some turn in the conversation threatened to lead it to the subject of himself, a coldness and stillness as of death