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Updated: May 31, 2025
Morten rose quickly and went in, shutting the door carefully behind him. Pelle heard low voices Morten's admonishing, and a thin, refractory, girlish voice. "He's got a girl hidden in there," thought Pelle. "I'd better be off." He rose and looked out of the large attic window. How everything had changed since he first came to the capital and looked out over it from Morten's old lodging!
Jens shrank from continually hearing his father's name on all lips, and avoided looking people in the eyes, but in Morten's open glance he saw no trace of this nameless grief. One evening, when matters were quite at their worst, they took Pelle home with them. They lived in the east, by the great clay-pit, where the refuse of the town was cast away.
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."
"Are those the new ideas? I think the ignorant have always had to take the consequences! And there has never been lacking some one to spit on them!" said Morten sadly. "But, listen!" cried Pelle, springing to his feet. "You'll please not blame me for spitting at anybody the others did that!" He was very near losing his temper again, but Morten's quiet manner mastered him.
I haven't your fund to draw from, Pelle, remember that!" No, there had not been much sunshine on Morten's path, and now he cowered and shivered with cold. One evening, however, he rushed into the sitting-room, waving a sheet of paper. "I've received a legacy," he cried. "Tomorrow morning I shall start for the South." "But you'll have to arrange your affairs first," said Pelle. "Arrange?"
Now the footsteps were keeping time with his now; they had a double sound. And when he thought, another creature answered to him, from deep within him. There was something persistent about this, as there was in Morten's influence; an opinion that made its way through all obstacles, even when reduced to silence. What was wanted of him now hadn't he worked loyally enough?
Now Pelle was furious; the leader could go to hell! He gave the fellow a few sound boxes on the ear, and asked him which he would rather do hold his mouth or take some more? Morten appeared in the doorway this had happened in the doorway of the house in which he worked. "This won't do!" he whispered, and he drew Pelle away with him. Pelle could make no reply; he threw himself on Morten's bed.
It was true he had not celebrated Pelle's victory with a flourish of trumpets, but had preferred to be his conscience! That was really at the bottom of it. He had intoxicated himself in the noise, and wanted to find something with which to drown Morten's quiet warning voice, and the accusation was not far to seek envy! It was he himself, in fact, who had been the one to disappoint.
After the funeral he and Pelle walked home together while the others drove. Pelle talked of indifferent matters in order to draw Morten's thoughts away from the child, but Morten did not listen to him. "My dear fellow, you can't go on like this," said Pelle suddenly, putting his arm through Morten's.
Martyn goes back in a few weeks; Arbuthnot's returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government's built as relief-work. Morten's dead he was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn't know him. 'Pon my word, you and Will Miss Martyn seem to have come through it as well as anybody." "Oh, how is she, by-the-way?" The voice went up and down as he spoke.
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