Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“Oh, poor little thing!” cried Marie pityingly. “He wants to thank you!”

In the evening the factory girl came rushing in; she was in a rage, and began to abuse them for breaking into her room. Pelle wondered at himself, that he was able to answer her so quietly instead of railing back at her. But he understood very well that she was ashamed of her poverty and did not want any one else to see it. “It is unkind to the child,” was all he said. “And yet you are fond of it!”

Then she began to cry. “I have to tie him up, or he climbs out over the window-sill and runs into the street—he got to the corner once before. And I’ve no clothes, to take him to the crêche!”

“Then leave the door open on the gangway! We will look after him, Marie and I.”

After this the child tumbled about the gangway and ran to and fro. Marie looked after him, and was like a mother to him. Pelle bought some old clothes, and they altered them to fit him. The child looked very droll in them; he was a little goblin who took everything in good part. In his loneliness he had not learned to speak, but now speech came quickly to him.

In Pelle this incident awakened something quite novel. Poverty he had known before, but now he saw the injustice that lay beneath it, and cried to heaven. His hands would suddenly clench with anger as he sat so quietly in his room. Here was something one must hasten forward, without intermission, day and night, as long as one drew breath—Morten was right about that! This child’s father was a factory hand, and the girl dared not summon him before the magistrates in order to make him pay for its support for fear of being dismissed from her place. The whole business seemed so hopeless—society seemed so unassailable—yet he felt that he must strike a blow. His own hands alone signified so little; but if they could only strike the blow all together—then perhaps it would have some effect.

In the evenings he and Morten went to meetings where the situation was passionately discussed. Those who attended these meetings were mostly young people like himself. They met in some inn by the North Bridge. But Pelle longed to see some result, and applied himself eagerly to the organization of his own craft.

He inspired the weary president with his own zeal, and they prepared together a list of all the members of their trade—as the basis of a more vigorous agitation. When the “comrades” were invited to a meeting through the press, they turned lazy and failed to appear. More effectual means were needed; and Pelle started a house-to-house agitation. This helped immediately; they were in a dilemma when one got them face to face, and the Union was considerably increased, in spite of the persecution of the big masters.

Morten began to treat him with respect; and wanted him to read about the movement. But Pelle had no time for that. Together with Peter and Karl, who were extremely zealous, he took in The Working Man, and that was enough for him. “I know more about poverty than they write there,” he said.

There was no lack of fuel to keep this fire burning. He had participated in the march of poverty, from the country to the town and thence to the capital, and there they stood and could go no farther for all their longing, but perished on a desert shore. The many lives of the “Ark” lay always before his eyes as a great common possession, where no one need conceal himself, and where the need of the one was another’s grief.