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

She looked happy, and treated him to a little petting, now in one way and now in another. Her joy increased her beauty, and when he looked at her it was impossible for him to regret anything. She had sacrificed everything for him, and he could do nothing without considering her. He must see her perfectly happy once more, let it cost what it might, for he owed her everything. How beautiful she was in her unaffectedness! She still had a fondness for dressing in black, and with her dark hair about her pale face, she resembled one of those Sisters who have suffered much and do everything out of compassion.

It struck him that he had never heard her really laugh; she only smiled. He had not awakened the strongest feeling in her yet, he had not succeeded in making her happy; and therefore, though she had shared his bed and board, she had kept the most beautiful part to herself, like an unapproachable virgin. But now her cheeks glowed with happy expectation, and her eyes rested upon him eagerly; he no longer represented for her the everyday dullness, he was the fairy-story that might take her by surprise when the need was greatest. He felt he could hardly pay too dearly for this change. Women were not made for adversity and solitude; they were flowers that only opened fully when happiness kissed them. Ellen might shift the responsibility over onto his shoulders.

The next day he dressed himself carefully to go out and make the final agreement with the manufacturer. Ellen helped him to button his collar, and brushed his coat, talking, as she did so, with the lightheartedness of a bird, of the future. “What are we going to do now? We must try and get rid of this flat and move out to that end of the town,” she said, “or else you’ll have too far to walk.”

“I forgot to tell you that we shall live out there,” said Pelle. “He has three stairs with one-roomed apartments, and we’re to be the vice-landlord of them. He can’t manage the tenants himself.” Pelle had not forgotten it, but had not been able to bring himself to tell her that he was to be watchdog.

Ellen looked at him in petrified astonishment. “Does that go with the post?” she gasped.

Pelle nodded.

“You mustn’t do it!” she cried, suddenly seizing him by the arms. “Do you hear, Pelle? You mustn’t do it!” She was greatly disturbed and gazed beseechingly at him. “I don’t understand you at all.”

He looked at her in bewilderment and murmured something in self-defence.

“Don’t you see that he only wants to make use of you?” she continued excitedly. “It’s a Judas post he’s offered you, but we won’t earn our bread by turning poor people into the street. I’ve seen my own bits of furniture lying in the gutter. Oh, if you’d gone there!” She gazed shudderingly straight before her.

“I can’t understand what you can have been thinking about⁠—you who are generally so sensible,” she said when she had once more calmed down, looking reproachfully at him; but the next instant she understood it all, and sank down weeping.

“Oh, Pelle, Pelle!” she exclaimed, and hid her face.

Pelle read no more and no longer went to the library. He had enough to do to keep things going. There was no question now of trying to get a place; winter was at the door, and the army of the unemployed grew larger every day. He stayed at home, worked when there was anything to do, and for the rest minded the children for Ellen while she washed. He talked to Lasse Frederik as he would to a comrade, but it was nice to have to look after the little ones too. They were grateful for it, and he discovered that it gave him much pleasure. Boy Comfort he was very fond of now, his only sorrow being that the boy could not talk yet. His dumbness was always a silent accusation.

“Why don’t you bring books home?” Ellen would say when she came up from the washhouse to look after them, with her arms bare and tiny drops in her hair from the steam down there. “You’ve plenty of time now.”

No, what did he want with books? They did perhaps widen his horizon a little, but what lay behind it became so very much greater again; and he himself only grew smaller by reading. It was impossible in any case to obtain any reassuring view of the whole. The world followed its own crooked course in defiance of all wisdom. There was little pleasure in absorbing knowledge about things that one could not remedy; poor people had better be dull.

He and Morten had just been to Madam Johnsen’s funeral. She had not succeeded in seeing Jutland. Out of a whole life of toil there had never been ten krones over for a ticket home; and the trains ran day after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality they whirled away from station to station. Heaven knows how many thousand empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the years in which the old woman longed to see her home! And if she had trudged to the railway-station and got into the train, remorseless hands would have removed her at the first station. What had she to do with Jutland? She longed to go there, it was true, but she had no money!

Was it malice or heartless indifference? A more fiendish sport can at any rate hardly be imagined than this running with empty places. It was they that made the journey so terribly vivid⁠—as though the devil himself were harnessed to the train and, panting with wantonness, dragging it along through the country to places that people were longing to see. It must be dreadful to be the guard and call the names of the stations in to those seats for the