Pele

“ On hearing these words, which had in them the sting of truth, for poison had been mixed with some of the food, the women stealthily hid away certain dishes and substituted for them others.
At the conclusion of the repast the women who had been in attendance brought him a girdle delicately embroidered with fibers from the coconut that he might be suitably appareled for his interview with the woman Pele. “You will find,” they said, “that Pele is in reality a woman of wonderful beauty.... ”

“ when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. ”

“ If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. ”

“ It was so good to be here, and the feeling sank gently over Pelle every time a cow licked herself, or the warm vapor rose from freshly- falling dung. Every sound was like a mother’s caress, and every thing was a familiar toy, with which a bright world could be built. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such is the jade who leads us up hill and down, through jungles and morasses, into deep waters and into swamps, through thick weather and thin, under blue skies and brown ones, in heat and in cold, hungry and thirsty and ragged, and heart-sore and foot-sore, now hopeful and now hopeless, now striding and now stumbling, now exultant and now despairing, now singing, now sighing, and now swearing, up to her dilapidated old temple. ”

“ A peculiar sense of energy was exhaled by this dense crowd of men, this thinking and feeling crowd. It produced a singular feeling of strength. Pelle was no longer the poor journeyman shoemaker, who found it difficult enough to make his way. He became one, as he stood there, with that vast being; he felt its strength swelling within him; the little finger shares in the strength of the whole body. ”

“ Since Pelleas and I have grown old together the events of our days lie rather among plants than people, or so we imagine.
“You know,” he said with a kind of happy importance, “we wondered who would be the first to find our motto on the sun-dial.”
“Yes,” I said eagerly.
“Just now,” imparted Pelleas, “I came through the rose-garden. And at the turn of the path by the Blush-rose tree, I surprised—but I took care they didn’t see me—two lovers, reading the motto.”
“Lovers!” cried I in fine excitement. “How do you know that they were lovers, Pelleas?” ”

“ Pelle marches in the front rank beside the standard-bearer. He sees and hears nothing, but his luminous gaze sweeps over the heads of the crowd. His skin is still blackened by the smoke of the fire; it is peeling off his hands; his hair and moustache seem to have been cropped very strangely; and the skin is drawn round the burn on his cheek. He is conscious of one thing only: the rhythmic tread of fifty thousand men! As a child he has known it in dreams, heard it like a surging out of doors when he laid his head upon his pillow. ”

“ And now he was just showing that Father Lasse had been right. The greatest miracles were in himself—Pelle, who resembled hundreds of millions of other workmen, and had never yet had more than just enough for his food. Man was really the most wonderful of all. ”

“ Pelle began, in an easy tone, “I have been sent here to you with greetings from those outside there—from the comrades who used to stand next to you at work, from your friends and fellow-unionists. Where are our old comrades?—they are asking. We have fought so many battles by their side, we have shared good and evil with them—are we to enter into the new conditions without them? And your wives and children are asking after you! Outside there it is the spring! They don’t understand why they can’t pack the picnic basket and go out into the forest with father!” ”

“ No one could hit out like Pelle, and yet at the same time make them feel that they were decent fellows after all. The foreign workers stood round about them, eagerly listening, in order that they, too, might catch a little of what was said. ”

“ The sudden flame of energy that Pelle’s youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. ”

“ Peele's wanton mode of life involved him in endless anxieties. He may indeed be held innocent of part, or possibly of the whole, of the discreditable escapades detailed in the ‘Merry conceited Jests of George Peele, sometime a Student in Oxford,’ which was entered in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ in 1605, and of which the earliest known edition appeared in 1607, nine years or more after his death. ”

“ I looked up at Pelleas almost fearfully in the flood of Spring moonlight. The radiance was full on his white hair and tranquil face, and he met my eyes with the knowledge that we were suddenly become the custodians of an exquisite secret. The words of the young servant of God came to me understandingly.
“‘And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,’” I said over. “O, Pelleas,” I added, tremulously, “do you think....”
Pelleas lifted his face and I thought that it shone in the dimness.
“Ah, well,” he answered, “we must believe all the beautiful things we can.” ”

“ It makes me want to say something to you, Pelle, for my day was like this before I knew you—endlessly long and gray! When you are the last member of a dying family, you have to bear the gray existence of the others too. ”

“ Pelle went. His mind was oppressed; all that day fresh responsibilities had heaped themselves upon him; a burden heavy for one man to bear. Was he to accept the responsibility for all that the Movement destroyed as it progressed, simply because he had placed all his energies and his whole fortune at its disposal? And now Father Lasse was going about as a scavenger. He blushed for shame—yet how could he have prevented it? Was he to be made responsible for the situation? And now they were spitting upon Ellen—that was the thanks he got! ”

“ And Pelle had many points of contact with this leisurely life in the open air; he had his whole childhood to draw upon. He could lie for hours, chewing a grass-stem, patient as a convalescent, while sun and air did their work upon him.
“Why do you never preach to me?” he said suddenly, and he peeped mischievously from tinder his cap.
“Why should I preach to you? Because I am religious? Well, so are you; every one who rejoices and is content is religious.” ”

“ When one is seventy and closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful. And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me beyond measure. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Pelle was like a kid that makes a plaything of everything. In his play he took up, without suspecting it, many of the serious phenomena of life, and gambolled with them in frolicsome bounds. He exercised his small mind as he exercised his body, twisted himself into everything and out of everything, imitated work and fun and shirking, and learned how to puff himself up into a very devil of a fellow where his surroundings were yielding, and to make himself almost invisible with modesty when they were hard. ”

“ For you poor are the chosen people of God, who must wander and wander until they come into the Kingdom. Now the sea has stayed you here, and you can go no farther; so you think the Kingdom must lie here. God has sent me to tell you that you are mistaken. And you, Pelle, will you join us now? God is waiting and longing for you; he wants to use you for the good of all these little ones.” And he held Pelle’s hand in his, gazing at him compellingly; perhaps he thought Pelle had come in order to seek the shelter of his “Kingdom.” ”

“ It was raining a little; the light from the street lamps and shop-windows was reflected in the wet flagstones; the street wore a cheerful look. He went onward with a feeling that his mind was lifted above the things of everyday; the grimy old woman who lived as a parasite on the poverty of the “Ark” and who had a wonderful daughter who was absorbing riches like a leech. And on top of it all the little Pelle with the “lucky curl,” like the curly-haired apprentice in the story! ”

“ During most of the winter Pelle drove the horse for the threshing- machine. All day he trotted round upon the horse-way outside the farm, over his wooden shoes in trodden-down snow and manure. It was the most intolerable occupation that life had yet offered him. He could not even carve, it was too cold for his fingers; and he felt lonely. As a herd-boy he was his own master, and a thousand things called to him ”

“ I have loved you since the very first time I ever saw you, Pelle, and I began to grow, because I wanted to be beautiful for you. I owe nothing to any one but you, and if you don’t want me I don’t want to go on living! ”

“ And then Pelle told them the story of Howling Peter; who was born and grew up in poverty and grief, until he was big and strong, and every man’s cur to kick. For it was the greatest pity to see this finely-made fellow, who was so full of fear and misery that if even a girl so much as touched him he must flood himself with tears; and the only way out of his misery was the rope. ”

“ For a time no one spoke in the workshop—the journeyman was silent, so the others had to hold their tongues. Each bent over his work, and Pelle pulled the pitch out to as great a length as possible, kneaded some grease into it, and pulled again. Outside, in the sunshine, some street urchins were playing, running to and fro. When they saw Pelle, they held their clenched fist under their noses, nodded to him in a provocative manner, and sang—
“The cobbler has a pitchy nose,
The more he wipes it the blacker it grows!” ”

“ From the Bible he went on further and discovered that the serious books were men who sat in solitude like himself, and spoke out.
Was solitude so dreadful then when you had such company? Pelle was no longer able to comprehend his own fear of it. As a child he had been a creature in the widest sense, and found companionship in everything; he could converse with trees, animals, and stones. Those fibers had withered, and no longer conveyed nourishment; but then he became one with the masses, and thought and felt exactly as they did. ”

“ A few were always absent, and those who had a good excuse had to establish it in order to draw their strike-pay. Pelle was now here, now there, and always unexpected, acting on impulse as he did. “Lightning Pelle,” they called him, on account of the suddenness of his movements. His actions were not based upon long deliberations; nevertheless, he had a radical comprehension of the entire movement; one thing grew out of another, naturally, until the whole was more than any conscious intelligence could comprehend. And Pelle grew with it, and by virtue of his impulsiveness was a summary of it all. ”

“ Pell, ‘dining with him on one occasion; there was only us two, but everything as splendid as if twenty people had been expected—the great seal on a dumb–waiter at his right hand, and a man in a bag–wig and suit of armour guarding the mace with a drawn sword and silk stockings—which is perpetually done, gentlemen, night and day; when he said, “Pell,” he said, “no false delicacy, Pell. You’re a man of talent; you can get anybody through the Insolvent Court, Pell; and your country should be proud of you.” ”

“ Hairpins bothered where her head rested against his shoulder. With her left hand she pulled them out. She shook her riotous chestnut tresses free and they fell about her oval face like the bacchanal crown of a Sybarite. The lad bent his head and buried his lips in them.
She was his—his! Such a night would never come again—could never come again—because this was the first. No thrust-and-parry, drooling calf-talk; no bids for sex-interest here.
Youth, nature and night were stripped to their framework. For this were the worlds made and the constellations hung infinitely. ”

“ Pelle went about blushing and quite bewildered, as though something had happened to him that no one else had ever experienced. At first he took Master Beck’s work home with him and looked after the child himself at night. Every other moment he had to put down his work and run in to the mother and child. “You are a wonderful woman, to give me such a child for a kiss,” he said, beaming, “and a boy into the bargain! What a man he’ll be!” ”