“Sit down!” she said kindly. “My husband’ll be here directly.”
“Why, I’m your husband!” he exclaimed, hardly able to keep back his tears; but she looked at him coldly and without recognition, and moved toward the door.
“I’m Pelle!” he said, holding out his hand beseechingly. “Don’t you know me?”
Ellen opened her lips to cry out, and at that moment the husband appeared threateningly in the doorway. From behind him Lasse Frederik and Sister peeped out in alarm, and Pelle saw with a certain amount of satisfaction that there were only the two. The terrible thing, however, was that the man was himself, the true Pelle with the good, fair moustache, the lock of hair on his forehead and the go-ahead expression. When he discovered this, it all collapsed and he sank down in despair.
Pelle awoke with a start, bathed in perspiration, and saw with thankfulness the fields and the bright atmosphere: he was at any rate still alive! He rose and walked on with heavy steps while the spring breeze cooled his brow.
His road led him to Nörrebro. The sun was setting behind him; it must be about the time for leaving off work, and yet no hooter sounded from the numerous factories, no stream of begrimed human beings poured out of the side streets. In the little tea-gardens in the Frederikssund Road sat workmen’s families with perambulator and provision-basket; they were dressed in their best and were enjoying the spring day. Was there after all something in his dream? If so, it would be splendid to come back! He asked people what was going on, and was told that it was the elections. “We’re going to take the city to-day!” they said, laughing triumphantly.
From the square he turned into the churchyard, and went down the somber avenue of poplars to Chapel Road. Opposite the end of the avenue he saw the two little windows in the second floor; and in his passionate longing he seemed to see Ellen standing there and beckoning. He ran now, and took the stairs three or four at a time.
Just as he was about to pull the bell-cord, he heard strange voices within, and paused as though paralyzed. The door looked cold and as if it had nothing to do with him; and there was no door-plate. He went slowly down the stairs and asked in the greengrocer’s cellar below whether a woman who sewed uppers did not live on the second floor to the left. She had been forsaken by her husband and had two children— three, he corrected himself humbly; what had become of them?
The deputy-landlord was a new man and could give him no information; so he went up into the house again, and asked from door to door but without any result. Poor people do not generally live long in one place.
Pelle wandered about the streets at haphazard. He could think of no way of getting Ellen’s address, and gave it up disheartened; in his forlorn condition he had the impression that people avoided him, and it discouraged him. His soul was sick with longing for a kind word and a caress, and there was no one to give them. No eyes brightened at seeing him out again, and he hunted in vain in house after house for some one who would sympathize with him. A sudden feeling of hatred arose in him, an evil desire to hit out at everything and go recklessly on.