Pelle the Conqueror, vol 3 | Page 8

as one
wheedles a child out of a thing," cried Morten morosely. "But there's no
real efficiency in anything that children do--and the poor have never
been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to
grow up, look you, and one fine day they'll ask for their own back."
"It would go ill with us if we went and tried to take it for ourselves,"
said Pelle.
"Not if we were united about it--but we are only the many."
Pelle listened; it had never occurred to him that the question of
organization was so stupendous. Men combined, sure enough, but it
was to secure better conditions in their trade.
"You are like your father!" he said. "He always had big ideas, and
wanted to get his rights. I was thinking about him a little while ago,
how he never let himself be trampled on. Then you used to be ashamed
of him; but...."
Morten hung his head. "I couldn't bear the contempt of respectable
folks," he said half under his breath. "I understood nothing beyond the
fact that he was destroying our home and bringing disgrace on us. And
I was horribly afraid, too, when he began to lay about him; I wake up
sometimes now quite wet and cold with sweat, when I've been
dreaming of my childhood. But now I'm proud that I'm the son of the
'Great Power.' I haven't much strength myself; yet perhaps I'll do
something to surprise the city folks after all.'"
"And I too!"
Power! It was really extraordinary that Morten should be the son of the
giant stone-cutter, so quiet and delicate was he. He had not yet quite
recovered the strength of which Bodil had robbed him in his early
boyhood; it was as though that early abuse was still wasting him.
He had retained his girlish love of comfort. The room was nicely kept;
and there were actually flowers in a vase beneath the looking-glass.
Flowers, good Lord! "How did you get those?" asked Pelle.
"Bought them, of course!"
Pelle had to laugh. Was there another man in the world who would pay
money for flowers?
But he did not laugh at the books. There seemed to be a sort of
mysterious connection between them and Morten's peculiar, still energy.

He had now a whole shelf full. Pelle took a few down and looked into
them.
"What sort of stuff is this, now?" he asked doubtfully. "It looks like
learning!"
"Those are books about us, and how the new conditions are coming,
and how we must make ready for them."
"Ah, you've got the laugh of me," said Pelle. "In a moment of
depression you've got your book-learning to help you along. But we
other chaps can just sit where we are and kick our heels." Morten
turned to him hastily.
"That's the usual complaint!" he cried irritably. "A man spits on his
own class and wants to get into another one. But that's not the point at
stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are, shoemakers
and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper conditions!
Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then the rest
can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe he'd get a
chance of rising if it wasn't that society needs him--wants to use him to
strike at his own people and keep them down? 'Now you can see for
yourself what a poor man can do if he likes!' That's what they tell you.
There's no need to blame society.
"No, the masses themselves are to blame if they aren't all rich men!
Good God! They just don't want to be! So they treat you like a fool, and
you put up with it and baa after them! No, let them all together demand
that they shall receive enough for their work to live on decently. I say a
working man ought to get as much for his work as a doctor or a
barrister, and to be educated as well. That's my Lord's Prayer!"
"Now I've set you off finely!" said Pelle good-naturedly. "And it's just
the same as what your father was raving about when he lay dying in the
shed. He lay there delirious, and he believed the ordinary workman had
got pictures on the wall and a piano, just like the fine folks."
"Did he say that?" cried Morten, and he raised his head. Then he fell
into thought. For he understood that longing. But Pelle sat there
brooding. Was this the "new time" all over again? Then there was
really some sense in banding people together--yes, and as many as
possible.
"I don't rightly understand it," he said at last. "But to-day I joined