Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“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 raise his head with a listening expression. But Ellen was familiar with the remoteness that came into his eyes at such times, and she knew how to dispel it with a kiss.