And Pelle stands there laughing at them frankly, like a great child. This would have been the place to give them all a few words, but he has not yet recovered his mighty voice. So he waves it round over them with a slow movement as though he were administering an oath to them all. And he is very silent. This is an old dream of his, and at last it has come to fulfillment!
The police are pushing into the crowd in squads, but the banner has disappeared; Munck is standing with an empty stave in his hands, and is on the point of fixing his Union banner on it.
“You must take care to get these people away from here, or we shall hold you responsible for the consequences,” says the police inspector, with a look that promises mischief. Pelle looks in the face. “He’d like to throw me into prison, if only he had the courage,” he thought, and then he sets the procession in motion again.
Out on the Common the great gathering of people rocked to and fro, in restless confusion. From beyond its confines it looked like a dark, raging sea. About each of the numerous speakers’ platforms stood a densely packed crowd, listening to the leaders who were demonstrating the great significance of the day. But the majority did not feel inclined to-day to stand in a crowd about a platform. They felt a longing to surrender themselves to careless enjoyment, after all the hardships they had endured; to stand on their heads in the grass, to play the clown for a moment. Group upon group lay all over the great Common, eating and playing. The men had thrown off their coats and were wrestling with one another, or trying to revive the gymnastic exercises of their boyhood. They laughed more than they spoke; if any one introduced a serious subject it was immediately suppressed with a punning remark. Nobody was serious to-day!
Pelle moved slowly about, delighting in the crowd, while keeping a look- out for Madam Johnsen and the child, who were to have met him out here. Inwardly, at the back of everything, he was in a serious mood, and was therefore quiet. It must be fine to lie on one’s belly here, in the midst of one’s own family circle, eating hard-boiled eggs and bread-and- butter—or to go running about with Young Lasse on his shoulders! But what did it profit a man to put his trust in anything? He could not begin over again with Ellen; the impossible stood between them. To drive Young Lasse out of his thoughts—that would be the hardest thing of all; he must see if he could not get him away from Ellen in a friendly manner. As for applying to the law in order to get him back, that he would not do.
The entire Stolpe family was lying in a big circle, enjoying a meal; the sons were there with their wives and children; only Pelle and his family were lacking.
“Come and set to!” said Stolpe, “or you’ll be making too long a day of it.”
“Yes,” cried Madam Stolpe, “it is such a time since we’ve been together. No need for us to suffer because you and Ellen can’t agree!” She did not know the reason of the breach—at all events, not from him—but was none the less friendly toward him.
“I am really looking for my own basket of food,” said Pelle, lying down beside them.