This was a smack! A good one this; it brought a light to the thin, impassive faces. There was an answer to the trick of the other day! This Pelle was a deuce of a fellow! Three cheers for “Lightning Pelle!” Hip, hip, hurrah!
Pelle was the deuce of a fellow as he strode along ruddy and full of pugnacity, with the echoes from the side-streets and the tenement-houses mingled with his own vigorous footsteps. Streets and houses were white with the night’s hoar frost, and overhead the air was full of a peculiar glow that came from the city—a light flowing from hidden sources. He had left all his cares at home; on every hand working-folk were greeting him, and his greeting in return was like an inspiriting song. He did not know them, but they knew him! The feeling that his work—however deep the scars it might leave—was arousing gratitude, had an uplifting effect upon him.
The city was in its morning mood. The lock-out lay like a paralyzing hand upon everything; business was slack, and the middle classes were complaining, but there was no prospect of peace; both sides were irreconcilable. The workers had lost nothing through the rash cessation of the masons. Sympathy for the lower classes had become a political principle; and contributions were still pouring in from the country. Considerable sums came from abroad. The campaign was now costing the workers half a million kroner a week; and the help from outside was like a drop in the ocean. But it had the effect of a moral support, and it stimulated the self-taxation to which all were subject. The hundred thousand households of the poor parted with their last possessions in order to continue the struggle; they meant to force a decision that should affect their whole future. The employers tried to hinder the great National Federation by calling the attention of the authorities to an ancient statute concerning mendicancy; but that merely aroused merriment. A little laughter over such expedients was permissible.
The workers had become accustomed to starvation. They went no more into the forest, but strolled thoughtfully through the streets like people who have too much time on their hands, so that the city’s face wore a peculiar stamp of meditative poverty. Their loitering steps aroused no echo, and in the houses the quietness gave one food for reflection. The noisy, ever-hungry children were scattered over the face of the country —they at least had plenty to eat. But the place was empty for the lack of them!
Pelle met several squads of workers; they were on the way to the various roll-calls. They raised their heads as he passed; his footsteps echoed loudly enough for all! It was the hope and the will of forty thousand men that passed there—Pelle was the expression of them all. They stared at his indomitable figure, and drew themselves up. “A devil of a chap!” they told one another joyfully; “he looks as if he could trample ’em all underfoot! Look at him—he scarcely makes way for that great loaded wagon! Long live Pelle, boys!”
The tavern-keepers stood on their cellar stairs gaping up at the morning sky—this was a time of famine for them! In the tavern windows hung cards with the inscription: “Contributions received here for the locked- out workers!”
On the Queen Luise Bridge Pelle encountered a pale, fat little man in a shabby coat. He had flabby features and a great red nose. “Good morning, General!” cried Pelle gaily; the man made a condescending movement with his hand. This was The Working Man’s man of straw; a sometime capitalist, who for a small weekly wage was, as far as the public was concerned, the responsible editor of the paper. He served various terms of imprisonment for the paper, and for a further payment of five kroner a week he also worked out in prison the fines inflicted on the paper. When he was not in jail he kept himself alive by drinking. He suffered from megalomania, and considered that he led the whole labor movement; for which reason he could not bear Pelle.
In the great court-yard of The Working Man building the dockers were assembled to answer the roll. The president of their Union met Pelle in the doorway; he was the very man whom Pelle and Howling Peter had rescued down by the harbor—now he was working for the new ideas!
“Well, how goes it?” asked Pelle, shaking his hand.
“Splendid! A thousand men all but seven!”