“Is anything wrong at home?”
“No, no, not that exactly. I just wanted to say—I want to give notice that I’m deserting!” he cried suddenly.
Stolpe sprang to his feet; he was as white as chalk. “You think what you are doing!” he cried threateningly.
“I’ve had time enough to think. They are starving, I tell you—and there’s got to be an end of it. I only wanted to tell you beforehand so that you shouldn’t hear it from others—after all, you’re my brother.”
“Your brother—I’m your brother no longer! You do this and we’ve done with one another!” roared Stolpe, striking the table. “But you won’t do it, you shan’t do it! God damn me, I couldn’t live through the shame of seeing the comrades condemning my own brother in the open street! And I shall be with them! I shall be the first to give you a kick, if you are my brother!” He was quite beside himself.
“Well, well, we can still talk it over,” said the carpenter quietly. “But now you know—I didn’t want to do anything behind your back.” And then he went.
Stolpe paced up and down the room, moving from one object to another. He picked them up and put them down again, quite unthinkingly. His hands were trembling violently; and finally he went to the other room and shut himself in. After a time his wife entered the room. “You had better go, Pelle! I don’t think father is fit for company to-day. He’s lying there quite gray in the face—if he could only cry even! Oh, those two brothers have always been so much to each other till now! They were so united in everything!”
Pelle went; he was thinking earnestly. He could see that Stolpe, in his integrity, would consider it his duty to treat his brother more harshly than others, dearly as he loved him; perhaps he himself would undertake the picketing of the place where his brother went to work.
Out by the lakes he met a squad of pickets who were on their way out of the city; he accompanied them for some distance, in order to make certain arrangements. Across the road a young fellow came out of a doorway and slunk round the corner. “You there, stop!” cried one of the comrades. “There he is—the toff!” A few pickets followed him down Castle Street and came back leading him among them. A crowd began to form round the whole party, women and children speedily joining it.
“You are not to do anything to him,” said Pelle decisively.