Out in the middle of the open, fertile country, where the plough was busy turning up the soil round the numerous cheerful little houses, stood a gloomy building that on every side turned bare walls toward the smiling world. No panes of glass caught the ruddy glow of the morning and evening sun and threw back its quivering reflection; three rows of barred apertures drank in all the light of day with insatiable avidity. They were always gaping greedily, and seen against the background of blue spring sky, looked like holes leading into the everlasting darkness. In its heavy gloom the mass of masonry towered above the many smiling homes, but their peaceable inhabitants did not seem to feel oppressed. They ploughed their fields right up to the bare walls, and wherever the building was visible, eyes were turned toward it with an expression that told of the feeling of security that its strong walls gave.
Like a landmark the huge building towered above everything else. It might very well have been a temple raised to God’s glory by a grateful humanity, so imposing was it; but if so, it must have been in by-gone ages, for no dwellings—even for the Almighty—are built nowadays in so barbaric a style, as if the one object were to keep out light and air! The massive walls were saturated with the dank darkness within, and the centuries had weathered their surface and made on it luxuriant cultures of fungus and mould, and yet they still seemed as if they could stand for an eternity.
The building was no fortress, however, nor yet a temple whose dim recesses were the abode of the unknown God. If you went up to the great, heavy door, which was always closed you could read above the arch the one word Prison in large letters and below it a simple Latin verse that with no little pretentiousness proclaimed:
“I am the threshold to all virtue and wisdom;
Justice flourishes solely for my sake.”
One day in the middle of spring, the little door in the prison gate opened, and a tall man stepped out and looked about him with eyes blinking at the light which fell upon his ashen-white face. His step faltered and he had to lean for support against the wall; he looked as if he were about to go back again, but he drew a deep breath and went out on to the open ground.
The spring breeze made a playful assault upon him, tried to ruffle his prison-clipped, slightly gray hair, which had been curly and fair when last it had done so, and penetrated gently to his bare body like a soft, cool hand. “Welcome, Pelle!” said the sun, as it peeped into his distended pupils in which the darkness of the prison-cell still lay brooding. Not a muscle of his face moved, however; it was as though hewn out of stone. Only the pupils of his eyes contracted so violently as to be almost painful, but he continued to look earnestly before him. Whenever he saw any one, he stopped and gazed eagerly, perhaps in the hope that it was some one coming to meet him.
As he turned into the King’s Road some one called to him. He turned round in sudden, intense joy, but then his head dropped and he went on without answering. It was only a tramp, who was standing half out of a ditch in a field a little way off, beckoning to him. He came running over the ploughed field, crying hoarsely: “Wait a little, can’t you? Here have I been waiting for company all day, so you might as well wait a little!”
He was a broad-shouldered, rather puffy-looking fellow, with a flat back and the nape of his neck broad and straight and running right up into his cap without forming any projection for the back of his head, making one involuntarily think of the scaffold. The bone of his nose had sunk into his purple face, giving a bull-dog mixture of brutality and stupid curiosity to its expression.
“How long have you been in?” he asked, as he joined him, breathless. There was a malicious look in his eyes.
“I went in when Pontius Pilate was a little boy, so you can reckon it out for yourself,” said Pelle shortly.
“My goodness! That was a good spell! And what were you copped for?”
“Oh, there happened to be an empty place, so they took me and put me in —so that it shouldn’t stand empty, you know!”
The tramp scowled at him. “You’re laying it on a little too thick! You won’t get any one to believe that!” he said uncertainly. Suddenly he put himself in front of Pelle, and pushed his bull-like forehead close to the other’s face. “Now, I’ll just tell you something, my boy!” he said. “I don’t want to touch any one the first day I’m out, but you’d better take yourself and your confounded uppishness somewhere else; for I’ve been lying here waiting for company all day.”
“I didn’t mean to offend any one,” said Pelle absently. He looked as if he had not come back to earth, and appeared to have no intention of doing anything.
“Oh, didn’t you! That’s fortunate for you, or I might have taken a color-print of your doleful face, however unwillingly. By the way, mother said I was to give you her love.”
“Are you Ferdinand?” asked Pelle, raising his head.
“Oh, don’t pretend!” said Ferdinand. “Being in gaol seems to have made a swell of you!”
“I didn’t recognize you,” said Pelle earnestly, suddenly recalled to the world around him.
“Oh, all right—if you say so. It must be the fault of my nose. I got it bashed in the evening after I’d buried mother. I was to give you her love, by the way.”
“Thank you!” said Pelle heartily. Old memories from the “Ark” filled his mind and sent his blood coursing through his veins once more. “Is it long since your mother died?” he asked sympathetically.
Ferdinand nodded. “It was a good thing, however,” he said, “for now there’s no one I need go and have a bad conscience about. I’d made up my mind that she deserved to have things comfortable in her old age, and I was awfully careful; but all the same I was caught for a little robbery and got eight months. That was just after you got in—but of course you know that.”
“No! How could I know it?”
“Well, I telegraphed it over to you. I was just opposite you, in Wing A, and when I’d reckoned out your cell, I bespoke the whole line one evening, and knocked a message through to you. But there was a sanctimonious parson at the corner of your passage, one of those moral folk—oh, you didn’t even know that, then? Well, I’d always suspected him of not passing my message on, though a chap like that’s had an awful lot of learning put into him. Then when I came out I said to myself that there must be an end to all this, for mother’d taken it very much to heart, and was failing. I managed to get into one of the streets where honest thieves live, and went about as a colporteur, and it all went very well. It would have been horribly mean if she’d died of hunger. And we had a jolly good time for six months, but then she slipped away all the same, and I can just tell you that I’ve never been in such low spirits as the day they put her underground in the cemetery. Well, I said to myself, there lies mother smelling the weeds from underneath, so you can just as well give it all up, for there’s nothing more to trouble about now. And I went up to the office and asked for a settlement, and they cheated me of fifty subscribers, the rogues!
“Of course I went to the police: I was stupid enough to do that at that time. But they’re all a lot of rogues together. They thought it wouldn’t do to believe a word that I said, and would have liked to put me in prison at once; but for all they poked about they couldn’t find a peg to hang their hat upon. ‘He’s managing to hide it well this time, the sly fellow!’ they said, and let me go. But there soon was something, for I settled the matter myself, and you may take your oath my employers didn’t get the best of the arrangement. You see there are two kinds of people—poor people who are only honest when they let themselves be robbed, and all the others. Why the devil should one go about like a shorn sheep and not rob back! Some day of course there’ll be a bust-up, and then—‘three years, prisoner!’ I shall be in again before long.”
“That depends upon yourself,” said Pelle slowly.
“Oh, well, of course you can do something; but the police are always getting sharper, and the man isn’t born who won’t fall into the trap sooner or later.”
“You should try and get some honest employment again. You’ve shown that you can succeed.”
Ferdinand whistled. “In such a paltry way as that! Many thanks for the good advice! You’d like me to look after a bloated aristocrat’s geese and then sit on the steps and eat dry bread to the smell of the roast bird, would you? No, thank you! And even if I did—what then? You may be quite sure they’d keep a good watch on a fellow, if he tried an honest job, and it wouldn’t be two days before the shadow was there. ‘What’s this about Ferdinand? I hear things are not all square with him. I’m sorry, for he’s really worked well; but he’d better look out for another place.’ That’s what the decent ones would do; the others would simply wait until his wages were due and take something off—because he’d been in once. They could never be sure that he hadn’t stolen something from them, could they? and it’s best to be careful! If you make a fuss, you’re called a thief to your face. I’ve tried it, let me tell you! And now you can try it yourself. You’ll be in again as soon as ever the spring comes! The worst of it is that it gets more every time; a fellow like me may get five years for stealing five krones (five shillings). Isn’t that a shame? So it’s just as well to do something to make it worth while. It wouldn’t matter if you could only get a good hit at it all. It’s all one to me now that mother’s dead. There’s a child crying, but it’s not for me. There isn’t a soul that would shed a tear if I had to lay my head on the block. They’d come and stare, that’s what they’d do—and I should get properly into the papers!
“Wicked? Of course I’m wicked! Sometimes I feel like one great sore, and would like to let them hear all about it. There’s no such thing as gentle hands. That’s only a lie, so I owe nothing to anybody. Several times while I’ve been in there I’ve made up my mind to kill the warder, just so as to have a hit at something; for he hadn’t done me any harm. But then I thought after all it was stupid. I’d no objection to kick the bucket; it would be a pleasant change anyhow to sitting in prison all one’s life. But then you’d want to do something first that would make a stir. That’s what I feel!”
They walked on at a good pace, their faces turned in the direction of the smoky mist of the town far ahead, Ferdinand chewing his quid and spitting incessantly. His hardened, bulldog face with its bloodshot eyes was entirely without expression now that he was silent.
A peasant lad came toward them, singing at the top of his voice. He must have been about twelve or fourteen years of age.
“What are you so happy about, boy?” asked Ferdinand, stopping him.
“I took a heifer into the town, and I got two krones (two shillings) for the job,” answered the boy, smiling all over his face.
“You must have been up early then,” said Pelle.
“Yes, I left home at three last night. But now I’ve earned a day’s wages, and can take it easy the rest of the day!” answered the boy, throwing the two-krone piece into the air and catching it again.
“Take care you don’t lose it,” said Ferdinand, following the coin with covetous eyes.
The boy laughed merrily.
“Let’s see whether it’s a good one. They’re a fearful lot of thieves on the market in there.”
The boy handed him the coin. “Ah, yes, it’s one of those that you can break in half and make two of,” said Ferdinand, doing a few juggling tricks with it. “I suppose I may keep one?” His expression had become lively and he winked maliciously at Pelle as he stood playing with the coin so that it appeared to be two. “There you are; that’s yours,” he said, pressing the piece of money firmly into the boy’s hand. “Take good care of it, so that you don’t get a scolding from your mother.”
The boy opened his empty hand in wonderment. “Give me my two-krone!” he said, smiling uncertainly.
“What the devil—I’ve given it you once!” said Ferdinand, pushing the boy aside roughly and beginning to walk on.
The boy followed him and begged persistently for his money. Then he began to cry.
“Give him his money!” said Pelle crossly. “It’s not amusing now.”
“Amusing?” exclaimed Ferdinand, stopping abruptly and gazing at him in amazement. “Do you think I play for small sums? What do I care about the boy! He may take himself off; I’m not his father.”
Pelle looked at him a moment without comprehending; then he took a paper containing a few silver coins out of his waistcoat pocket, and handed the boy two krones. The boy stood motionless with amazement for a moment, but then, seizing the money, he darted away as quickly as he could go.
Ferdinand went on, growling to himself and blinking his eyes. Suddenly he stopped and exclaimed: “I’ll just tell you as a warning that if it wasn’t you, and because I don’t want to have this day spoiled, I’d have cracked your skull for you; for no one else would have played me that trick. Do you understand?” And he stood still again and pushed his heavy brow close to Pelle’s face.
Quick as thought, Pelle seized him by his collar and trousers, and threw him forcibly onto a heap of stones. “That’s the second time to-day that you’ve threatened to crack my skull,” he said in fury, pounding Ferdinand’s head against the stones. For a few moments he held him down firmly, but then released him and helped him to rise. Ferdinand was crimson in the face, and stood swaying, ready to throw himself upon Pelle, while his gaze wandered round in search of a weapon. Then he hesitatingly drew the two-krone piece out of his pocket, and handed it to Pelle in sign of subjection.
“You may keep it,” said Pelle condescendingly.
Ferdinand quickly pocketed it again, and began to brush the mud off his clothes. “The skilly in there doesn’t seem to have weakened you much,” he said, shaking himself good-naturedly as they went on. “You’ve still got a confounded hard hand. But what I can’t understand is why you should be so sorry for a hobbledehoy like that. He can take care of himself without us.”
“Weren’t you once sorry too for a little fellow when some one wanted to take his money away from him?”
“Oh, that little fellow in the ‘Ark’ who was going to fetch the medicine for his mother? That’s such a long time ago!”
“You got into difficulties with the police for his sake! It was the first time you were at odds with the authorities, I think.”
“Well, the boy hadn’t done anything; I saw that myself. So I hobbled the copper that was going to run him in. His mother was ill—and my old ’un was alive; and so I was a big idiot! You’ll see you won’t get far with your weak pity. Do we owe any one anything, I should like to know?”
“Yes, I do,” said Pelle, suddenly raising his face toward the light. “But I can’t say you’ve much to thank any one for.”
“What confounded nonsense!” exclaimed Ferdinand, staring at him. “Have they been good to you, did you say? When they shut you up in prison too, perhaps? You’re pretending to be good, eh? You stop that! You’ll have to go farther into the country with it. So you think you deserved your house-of-correction turn, while another was only suffering the blackest injustice? Nonsense! They know well enough what they’re doing when they get hold of me, but they might very well have let you off. You got together fifty thousand men, but what did you all do, I should like to know? You didn’t make as much disturbance as a mouse in a pair of lady’s unmentionables. Well-to-do people are far more afraid of me than of you and all your fellows together. Injustice! Oh, shut up and don’t slobber! You give no quarter, and you don’t ask any either: that’s all. And by the way, you might do me the favor to take back your two-krone. I don’t owe any one anything.”
“Well, borrow it, then,” said Pelle. “You can’t go to town quite without money.”
“Do take it, won’t you?” begged Ferdinand. “It isn’t so easy for you to get hold of any as for any one else, and it was a little too mean the way I got it out of you. You’ve been saving it up in there, a halfpenny a day, and perhaps gone without your quid, and I come and cheat you out of it! No, confound it! And you gave mother a little into the bargain; I’d almost forgotten it! Well, never mind the tin then! I know a place where there’s a good stroke of business to be done.”
A little above Damhus Lake they turned into a side road that led northward, in order to reach the town from the Nörrebro side. Far down to the right a great cloud of smoke hung in the air. It was the atmosphere of the city. As the east wind tore off fragments of it and carried them out, Ferdinand lifted his bull-dog nose and sniffed the air. “Wouldn’t I like to be sitting in the ‘Cupping-Glass’ before a horse-steak with onions!” he said.
By this time the afternoon was well advanced. They broke sticks out of a hedge and went on steadily, following ditches and dikes as best they could. The plough was being driven over the fields, backward and forward, turning up the black earth, while crows and sea-birds fought in the fresh furrows. The ploughmen put the reins round their waist each time they came to the end of their line, threw the plough over and brought it into position for a new furrow, and while they let their horses take breath, gazed afar at the two strange spring wayfarers. There was such a foreign air about their clothes that they must be two of that kind of people that go on foot from land to land, they thought; and they called after them scraps of foreign sentences to show they knew something about them. Ah, yes! They were men who could look about them! Perhaps by to-morrow those two would be in a foreign country again, while other folk never left the place they were once in!
They passed a white house standing in stately seclusion among old trees, a high hawthorn hedge screening the garden from the road. Ferdinand threw a hasty glance over the gate. The blinds were all down! He began to be restless, and a little farther on he suddenly slipped in behind a hedge and refused to go any farther. “I don’t care to show myself in town empty-handed,” he said. “And besides evening’s the best time to go in at full speed. Let’s wait here until it’s dark. I can smell silver in that house we passed.”
“Come on now and let those fancies alone,” said Pelle earnestly. “A new life begins from to-day. I’ll manage to help you to get honest work!”
Ferdinand broke into laughter. “Good gracious me! You help others! You haven’t tried yet what it is to come home from prison! You’ll find it hard enough to get anywhere yourself, my good fellow. New life, ha, ha! No; just you stay here and we’ll do a little business together when it gets dark. The house doesn’t look quite squint-eyed. Then this evening we can go to the ‘Cupping-Glass’ and have a jolly good spree, and act the home-coming American. Besides it’s not right to go home without taking something for your family. Just you wait! You should see ‘Laura with the Arm’ dance! She’s my cupboard-love, you know. She can dance blindfold upon a table full of beer-mugs without spilling a drop. There might be a little kiss for you too.—Hang it!—you don’t surely imagine you’ll be made welcome anywhere else, do you? I can tell you there’s no one who’ll stand beckoning you home.—Very well, then go to the devil, you fool, and remember me to your monthly nurse! When you’re tired of family life, you can ask for me at my address, the ‘Cupping-Glass’.” His hoarse, hollow voice cut through the clear spring air as he shouted the last words with his hand to his mouth.
Pelle went on quickly, as though anxious to leave something behind him. He had had an insane hope of being received in some kind way or other when he came out—comrades singing, perhaps, or a woman and two children standing on the white highroad, waiting for him! And there had only been Ferdinand to meet him! Well, it had been a damper, and now he shook off the disappointment and set out at a good pace. The active movement set his pulses beating. The sky had never before been so bright as it was to-day; the sun shone right into his heart. There was a smiling greeting in it all—in the wind that threw itself into his very arms, in the fresh earth and in the running water in the ditches. Welcome back again, Pelle!
How wide and fair the world looks when you’ve spent years within four bare walls! Down in the south the clouds were like the breast of a great bright bird, one of those that come a long way every year with summer in the beat of their strong wings; and on all sides lay the open, white roads, pointing onward with bright assurances.
For the fourth time he was setting out to conquer the world, and this time it was in bitter earnest. There had always before proved to be something more behind, but now he felt that what he should now set out upon would be decisive; if he was victorious now, he would conquer eternity. This time it must be either for weal or woe, and all that he possessed he was now bringing into the field. He had never before been so heavily equipped. Far off he could still make out the dome of the prison, which stood there like a huge mill over the descent to the nether world, and ground misery into crime in the name of humanity. It sucked down every one who was exposed to life’s uncertainty; he had himself hung in the funnel and felt how its whirling drew him down.
But Pelle had been too well equipped. Hitherto he had successfully converted everything into means of rising, and he took this in the same way. His hair was no longer fair, but, on the other hand, his mind was magically filled with a secret knowledge of the inner nature of things, for he had sat at the root of all things, and by listening had drawn it out of the solitude. He had been sitting moping in the dark mountain like Prince Fortune, while Eternity sang to him of the great wonder. The spirits of evil had carried him away into the mountains; that was all. And now they had set him free again, believing that he had become a troll like all his predecessors. But Pelle was not bewitched. He had already consumed many things in his growth, and this was added to the rest. What did a little confinement signify as compared with the slow drip, drip, of centuries? Had he not been born with a caul, upon which neither steel nor poison made any impression?
He sat down on an elevation, pulled off his cap, and let the cool breeze play upon his forehead. It was full of rich promises; in its vernal wandering over the earth it had gathered up all that could improve and strengthen, and loaded him with it. Look around you, Pelle!
On all sides the soil was being prepared, the plough-teams nodded up the gentle inclines and disappeared down the other side. A thin vapor rose from the soil; it was the last of the cold evaporating in the declining spring day. Some way down a few red cottages smilingly faced the sunset, and still farther on lay the town with its eternal cloud of smoke hanging over it.
What would his future be like down there? And how did matters stand? Had the new made its way to the front, or would he once more have to submit to an extortioner, get only the bare necessaries of life out of his work, and see the rest disappear into some one else’s pocket? A number of new factories had grown up, and now formed quite a belt about the city, with their hundreds of giant chimneys stretching up into the sky. But something must be going on, since they were not smoking. Was it a wages conflict?
He was now going to lay plans for his life, build it up again upon the deep foundation that had been laid in his solitude; and yet he knew absolutely nothing of the conditions down in the town! Well, he had friends in thousands; the town was simply lying waiting to receive him with open arms, more fond of him than ever because of all he had suffered. With all his ignorance he had been able to lead them on a little way; the development had chosen him as its blind instrument, and it had been successful; but now he was going to lead them right into the land, for now he felt the burden of life within him.
Hullo! if he wasn’t building castles in the air just as in the old days, and forgetting all that the prison cell had taught him so bitterly! The others’ good indeed! He had been busily concerned for the homes of others, and had not even succeeded in building his own! What humbug! Down there were three neglected beings who would bring accusations against him, and what was the use of his sheltering himself behind the welfare of the many? What was the good of receiving praise from tens of thousands and being called benefactor by the whole world, if those three whose welfare had been entrusted to him accused him of having failed them? He had often enough tried to stifle their accusing voices, but in there it was not possible to stifle anything into silence.
Pelle still had no doubt that he was chosen to accomplish something for the masses, but it had become of such secondary importance when he recollected that he had neglected his share of that which was the duty of every one. He had mistaken small for great, and believed that when he accomplished something that no one else could do, he might in return pay less attention to ordinary every-day duties; but the fates ordained that the burden of life should be laid just where every one could help. And now he was coming back like a poor beggar, who had conquered everything except the actual, and therefore possessed nothing, and had to beg for mercy. Branded as a criminal, he must now begin at the beginning, and accomplish that which he had not been able to do in the days of his power. It would be difficult to build his home under these circumstances, and who was there to help him? Those three who could have spoken for him he had left to their own devices as punishment for an offence which in reality was his own.
He had never before set out in such a poverty-stricken state. He did not even come like one who had something to forgive: his prison-cell had left him nothing. He had had time enough there to go carefully over the whole matter, and everything about Ellen that he had before been too much occupied to notice or had felt like a silent opposition to his projects, now stood out clearly, and formed itself, against his will, into the picture of a woman who never thought of herself, but only of the care of her little world and how she could sacrifice herself. He could not afford to give up any of his right here, and marshalled all his accusations against her, bringing forward laws and morals; but it all failed completely to shake the image, and only emphasized yet more the strength of her nature. She had sacrificed everything for him and the children, her one desire being to see them happy. Each of his attacks only washed away a fresh layer of obstructing mire, and made the sacrifice in her action stand out more clearly. It was because she was so unsensual and chaste that she could act as she had done. Alas! she had had to pay dearly for his remissness; it was the mother who, in their extreme want, gave her own body to nourish her offspring.
Pelle would not yield, but fought fiercely against conviction. He had been robbed of freedom and the right to be a human being like others, and now solitude was about to take from him all that remained to sustain him. Even if everything joined together against him, he was not wrong, he would not be wrong. It was he who had brought the great conflict to an end at the cost of his own—and he had found Ellen to be a prostitute! His thoughts clung to this word, and shouted it hoarsely, unceasingly—prostitute! prostitute! He did not connect it with anything, but only wanted to drown the clamor of accusations on all sides which were making him still more naked and miserable.
At first letters now and then came to him, probably from old companions- in-arms, perhaps too from Ellen: he did not know, for he refused to take them. He hated Ellen because she was the stronger, hated in impotent defiance everything and everybody. Neither she nor any one else should have the satisfaction of being any comfort to him; since he had been shut up as an unclean person, he had better keep himself quite apart from them. He would make his punishment still more hard, and purposely increased his forlornness, kept out of his thoughts everything that was near and dear to him, and dragged the painful things into the foreground. Ellen had of course forgotten him for some one else, and had perhaps turned the children’s thoughts from him; they would certainly be forbidden to mention the word “father.” He could distinctly see them all three sitting happily round the lamp; and when some turn in the conversation threatened to lead it to the subject of himself, a coldness and stillness as of death suddenly fell upon them. He mercilessly filled his existence with icy acknowledgment on all points, and believed he revenged himself by breathing in the deadly cold.
After a prolonged period of this he was attacked with frenzy, dashed himself blindly against the walls, and shouted that he wanted to get out. To quiet him he was put into a strait-waistcoat and removed to a pitch-dark cell. On the whole he was one of the so-called defiant prisoners, who meant to kick against the pricks, and he was treated accordingly.
But one night when he lay groaning after a punishment, and saw the angry face of God in the darkness, he suddenly became silent. “Are you a human being?” it said, “and cannot even bear a little suffering?” Pelle was startled. He had never known that there was anything particularly human in suffering. But from that night he behaved quietly, with a listening expression, as if he heard something through the walls. “Now he’s become quiet,” said the gaoler, who was looking at him through the peep-hole. “It won’t be long before he’s an idiot!”
But Pelle had only come out on the other side; he was staring bravely into the darkness to see God’s face once more, but in a gentler guise. The first thing he saw was Ellen again, sitting there beautiful, exculpated, made more desirable by all his accusations. How great and fateful all petty things became here! What was the good of defending