They stood for a moment as though still listening, and then dispersed in silence.
When Pelle sprang down from the cart, Morten came up and held out his hand. “You are strong, Pelle!” he said quietly.
“Where have you come from?” exclaimed Pelle in glad surprise.
“I came by the steamer this afternoon, and went straight up to the works. Brun told me what had happened and that you were here. It must have been a threatening meeting! There was a detachment of police over there in one of the side streets. What was going on?”
“They’d planned some demonstration or other, and would in that case have met with harsh treatment, I suppose,” said Pelle gravely.
“It was well you got them to change their minds. I’ve seen these demonstrations in the South, where the police and the soldiers ride over the miserable unemployed. It’s a sad sight.”
They walked up across the fields toward “Daybreak.” “To think that you’re home again!” said Pelle, with childlike delight. “You never wrote a word about coming.”
“Well, I’d meant to stay away another couple of months. But one day I saw the birds of passage flying northward across the Mediterranean, and I began to be so homesick. It was just as well I came too, for now I can see Brun before he goes.”
“Oh, is he going away, after all? That’s been settled very quickly. This morning he couldn’t make up his mind.”
“It’s this about Peter. The old man’s fallen off very much in the last six months. But let’s walk quicker! I’m longing to see Ellen and the children. How’s the baby?”
“He’s a little fatty!” said Pelle proudly. “Nine pounds without his clothes! Isn’t that splendid? He’s a regular sunshine baby.”
XXIII
It is spring once more in Denmark.
It has been coming for a long time. The lark came before the frost was out of the ground, and then the starling appeared. And one day the air seemed suddenly to have become high and light so that the eye could once more see far out; there was a peculiar broad airiness in the wind—the breath of spring. It rushed along with messages of young, manly strength, and people threw back their shoulders and took deep breaths. “Ah! the south wind!” they said, and opened their minds in anticipation.
There he comes riding across the sea from the south, in the middle of his youthful train. Never before has his coming been so glorious! Is he not like the sun himself? The sea glitters under golden hoofs, and the air is quivering with sunbeam-darts caught and thrown in the wild gallop over the waves. Heigh-ho! Who’ll be the first to reach the Danish shore?
Like a broad wind the spring advances over islands and belts, embracing the whole in arrogant strength. He sings in the children’s open mouths as in a shell, and is lavish of his airy freshness. Women’s teeth grow whiter with his kiss, and vie with their eyes in brightness; their cheeks glow beneath his touch, though they remain cool—like sun-ripe fruit under the morning dew. Men’s brains whirl once more, and expand into an airy vault, as large as heaven itself, giddy with expectancy. From high up comes the sound of the passage birds in flight; the air is dizzy with its own infinitude.
Bareheaded and with a sunny smile the spring advances like a young giant intoxicated with his own strength, stretches out his arms and wakens everything with his song. Nothing can resist him. He touches lightly the heart of the sleeping earth, calling merrily into her dull ears to awake. And deep down the roots of life begin to stir and wake, and send the sap circulating once more. Hedgehogs and field-mice emerge sleepily and begin to busy themselves in the hedges. From the darkness below old decayed matter ferments and bubbles up, and the stagnant water in the ditches begins to run toward the sea.
Men stand and gaze in amazement after the openhanded giant, until they feel the growth in themselves and can afford something. All that was impossible before has suddenly become possible, and more besides. The farmer has long since had his plough in the earth, and the sower straps his basket on: the land is to be clothed again.
The days lengthen and become warmer; it is delightful to watch them and know that they are going upward. One day Ellen opens wide the double doors out to the garden; it is like a release. But what a quantity of dirt the light reveals!
“We shall have to be busy now, Petra Dreyer!” says Ellen. The little deformed sewing-woman smiles with her sad eyes, and the two women begin to sweep floors and wash windows. Now and then a little girl comes in from the garden complaining that she is not allowed to play with Anna’s big doll. Boy Comfort is in the fields from morning to night, helping Grandfather Stolpe to build the new workmen’s houses. A fine help his is! When Ellen fetches him in to meals, he is so dirty that she nearly loses all patience.
“I wonder how Old Brun is!” says Ellen suddenly, in the middle of her work. “We haven’t heard from him now for three days. It’s quite sad to think he’s so far away. I only hope they’ll look after him properly.”
Pelle is tremendously busy, and they do not see much of him. The Movement has taken up his idea now in earnest, and he is to have the management of it all, so that he has his hands full. “Have I got a husband or not?” says Ellen, when she gets hold of him now and again.
“It’ll soon be better,” he answers. “When once we’ve got the machinery properly started, it’ll go by itself.”
Morten is the only one who has not set seriously to work on anything, and in the
