Her breast heaved as she undressed and laid her things neatly on a chair, as her father had taught her when a child. She listened breathlessly—was Egholm asleep?
Should she?... He didn’t deserve it—but why think of that now?
Softly she dragged the mattress from under the window, a little way over the floor, stopped, listened, and dragged it a little farther. Then she started at a sound, and felt ashamed, as if she had been a thief trying to steal her own bed.
Little by little she edged her way along, and finally crept under the clothes with a sigh of resignation.
When he awoke, he should find her humble couch on the floor beside his bed.
But Egholm was not asleep; only lying quite still, with wide-open eyes.
His trouble was that going to bed only made him wakeful, however sleepy he might have been while undressing. It generally took him a couple of hours to get to sleep, and during that time his eyes seemed to acquire a power of inward vision. The experiences of the day lifted their coffin lid and swarmed out from his brain-cells as terrifying apparitions in the dark.
True, it might happen at times, as now to-day, that they also appeared in the daytime, but then he could ward them off as long as he kept on talking and talking incessantly.
But at night! They laughed at him in horrid wise, lifted the wrappings from their skulls, and blinked at him with empty eye-sockets. He wastheirs.
Nevertheless, he had developed a certain method in his madness; they could not take him by surprise now, as they had done at first.
To-day, he had struck Anna three times in the face—nolight blows either, for he could feel his knuckles slightly tender still—well and good, then to-night the result would be that he found Anna exchanged for Clara Steen, the child with the deep eyes, the splendid Clara of youth, the beloved little maiden in the gold frame.
In a gold frame—yes, an oval gold frame.
Here again was one of those ridiculous things that could, given the opportunity and a suitable mood, make a man laugh himself crooked.
Egholm turned over on the other side, and set himself to think through the whole affair from the beginning, how it had started when he had first gone as a boy to work in Konsul Steen’s business in Helsingør.
The memory here was sweet as a breath from gardens of lilac, and was intended solely to form a nice, crude background of contrast to that which was to come. Yes, Egholm knew the system of these things.
He saw himself as a slender, brown-eyed, curly-haired lad running about upstairs and down in the big store, hauling at casks and pulling out drawers, followed everywhere by the sharp eyes of Jespersen, the assistant.
Now down into the cellar for rum, now to the warehouse for dried fish, then up to the huge loft for tobacco. Up there was the place he liked best; not only were the finest goods kept there, breathingessences of the whole world towards him from cases of spice, but he loved the view from the slip-door, out over the Sound and the fortress of Kronborg, and the red roofs of the town.
From north and south came ships with proudly upright masts and rigging, heaving to while the Customs officers went on board. And each of them utilised the opportunity to lay in provisions. Kasper Egholm was rowed out to them with heavy boat-loads of wares, and was soon at home on vessels of all nations—Dutch, English, French, and Russian. He even began to feel himself familiar with the languages.
It was from here he had first caught sight of Clara, Konsul Steen’s daughter.
Possibly it was as much for her sake as for anything else that he loved to throw open the slip-door, or climb up to a window in the roof.
One little episode he remembered as distinctly as if it had happened yesterday.
He had been set to counting Swedish nails, a hundred to each packet, but, seeing his chance, used the scales instead. It was ever so much easier to weigh them out, than with all that everlasting counting; also, he could finish in no time, and be free to loiter by the window and dream.
The wind blows freshly about his ears, he looks over toward the grey-green slopes of the Swedish coast, and feels himself as free as if his glance couldcarry him over the Sound, high over the roofs, and green trees, and the top-masts of the ships.
Suddenly he cranes his neck forward, and a flood of warmth surges from his heart to his cheeks, swelling the veins of his neck;there, on the gravel path just below, in his master’s garden, walks Clara.
White stockings and little low shoes; her footsteps shoot forward like the narrow-leaved bine of some swiftly growing plant, and she hums in time to her walk. Kasper is so fascinated that involuntarily he hums as well, but wakes with a start of fright at hearing his own rough voice. He fancies he can see the delicate skin of her neck gleaming through the lace edge of her dress, the blue pulse in her temples, and the play of the sunlight in her dark-brown hair.
She walks round the lawn, and turns into a patch that would take her along under the wall, where Kasper cannot follow. He realises this, and works his way right out on to the roof, with only his legs dangling down inside.
“Clara, dear little Jomfru Clara,” whispers his mouth, “do not go away!”
At the same moment his legs are gripped by powerful claws, and he is hauled down with such force and suddenness that he has not time even to put out his hands. Down he comes anyhow on the floor, and lies there, bruised and shaken, looking up into Jespersen’s green eyes.
“Ho! So you loaf about looking out of the window when you ought to be counting nails!”
And now it was discovered that he had used the scales. Jespersen found one packet with ninety-eight nails and another with a hundred and one instead of a hundred, and ran off to tell his master. Next day Kasper was sent for from the inner office.
The thought of this is a culmination of delight for Egholm in his sleepless state, but at the same time, he notes, in parenthesis, as it were, that he is now on the brink of the abyss heknowswill shortly swallow him up.
The stately man with the dark, full beard talks to him of doing one’s duty to the utmost, not merely as far as may be seen. And during the speech Kasper discovers on the leather-covered wall a picture in a gilded oval frame—a painting of Clara.
To him it seems even more lovely, even more living, than the girl herself; his eyes are simply held spellbound to the beautiful vision.
Konsul Steen glances absently in the same direction, and then, with a very eloquent gesture, places himself between Kasper and his daughter.
“Have you already forgotten your duties in life, which your parents, honest people, I have no doubt, taught you? What did you say your father was?”
“I’m a foundling,” says the boy, with dignity, enjoying his master’s embarrassment.
Afterwards, standing out in the passage, he remembersonly that one question and answer. But, most of all, Clara’s portrait is burned deep into his brain. Many a time he steals a peep at it through the keyhole. Even in the golden days when Clara’s living self would place her hand in his and follow him adventuring through the gloomy cellars, or over mountains of sacks to the topmost opening of the loft, telling him her troubles and her joys, and listening to allhisconfessions, with her firm, commanding, and yet so innocent eyes fixed on his—even then the painting did not lose its halo. And throughout the many years of struggle, it lived on in his joy and his anguish, mostly in anguish, it is true, for there was certainly nothing merely amusing when it rose up like life before his mental vision, in all its smiling, merciless beauty, rendering his agony tenfold worse. Egholm had spoken to several people about that same thing, among them the doctor at the hospital where he had once been a patient for some time. The doctor knew that sort of thing very well; it was what was called anobsession. Well and good—but was that any explanation, after all? No; it was rather something mysterious, something of the nature of magic, that had come into his life from the time he married Anna.
Anna—yes....
He writhed and twisted in his bed, as if he were on a spit. His heart pumped audibly and irregularly.
To begin with, she had opened the door, letting out all the warmth, and made him nervous with all the things she strewed about the floor.
Then there had been that trouble about the dark-room, which had driven him out of his senses with its insistence.
Why couldn’t she understand that it was not her his blows were aimed at, but at Fate?
What was a photographer without a dark-room?
No—she could not understand. Not an atom. She could only stand there and say “But, Egholm....” and plague him about her kitchen.
Egholm half raised himself in bed, utterly in the power of his nightmare thoughts, and struck wildly at the air with his clenched fist.
The vision—yes, there it was!
“Herregud!—can’t a man be left to sleep in peace?” he murmured offendedly, yet with a sort of humility at the same time. “I’m so tired....”
But as in the gleam of lightning he saw again and again Jomfru Clara, and at last she stood there clearly, steadfastly, with her great deep and mischievous eyes radiantly upon him.
He groaned and shuddered, flinging himself desperately about as he lay, for he knew what was coming now.
Hastily, mechanically, he ran through the scene once more. There stood Anna, and there he himself....
“But, Egholm....”
“You are the serpent....”
His fist shot out into the dark, and struck, this time, not Anna, but the pale, bright girl who seemed to glide into her place.
“Oh—oh!” He writhed and groaned again, drawing in his breath between closed lips, as one who has suddenly cut a deep wound in his hand.
“Aren’t you well, dear?” It was Anna’s voice, close at hand.
He lay stiff and still, hardly breathing now. The interruption had driven the horrors away.
Ridiculous—but so it was with him. He remembered, for instance, having been haunted by a snake—one he had seen preserved in spirits at some railway station office or other ... yes. That had stopped, after a while, of itself. But it was worse with Clara’s picture. In a way, it was more beautiful, of course—oh, so beautiful....
He yawned audibly.
But he thought many other things out yet: of his business and his money affairs; of Vang and Vang’s domestic life; of an invention he wanted to get on with—a thing of almost world-revolutionary importance, a steam turbine, that could go forward or back like lightning. It would make him a rich man—a wealthy man....
A little later he dropped off to sleep, lying on his back, and breathing still in little unsteady gasps.
Fru Egholm’s straw mattress creaked as she rose quietly, and with a gentle touch here and there tucked his bedclothes close about him.
In the next room Hedvig was talking in her sleep—something about cakes....
“Herregud!” murmured her mother—“dreaming of cakes means illness. I hope it doesn’t mean Emanuel’s going to get the chickenpox.”
With a sigh she fell off to sleep.
The clock struck two.
Madam Hermansen came into every house in Knarreby, without exception—whence follows, that she came to Egholm’s.
How she managed to effect an entry there, where shutters and bolts were carefully set to hide the shame of poverty, is not stated.
Presumably, she came of herself, like most diseases—and she came again and again, like a series of bad relapses. She literally clung to the Egholms, and almost neglected her other visits therefor.
They were somehow more remarkable than others, she thought. They had a past.
Madam Hermansen herself was tolerated—almost, one might say, esteemed. At any rate, no attempt was ever made to find a cure for her. Egholm enjoyed the abundant laughter with which she greeted even the most diluted sample of his wit, and Fru Egholm needed someone toconfide in.
It was all very well forhim. In his all too extensive leisure, he made excursions through the town, spending hours in talk with fishermen down at the harbour, or going off for solitary walks along the shore or in the woods.She, on the other hand,could only trip about in the two small rooms, with never a sight of the sun beyond the narrow strip that drew like the hand of a clock across the kitchen floor from four till half-past seven in the morning. And no one to talk to but her husband and the children. Little wonder, then, that the flow of speech so long held back poured forth in flood when Madam Hermansen began deftly working at the sluices.
The talk itself was but a detail, that cropped up before one knew, thought Fru Egholm at times; but if she had not had someone to look at her needlework, why, in the long run, it would mean sinking down to the level of a man.
True, Madam Hermansen was no connoisseur of art, but a dollymop who never achieved more than the knitting of stockings herself. On the other hand, she was ready to prostrate herself in admiration of even the most trivial piece of embroidery or crochet-work. There was something in that....
“Why, it almost turns my head only to look at it,” she declared, fingering the coverlet for the chest of drawers. It was one afternoon in May, and the two women were alone in the house with little Emanuel.
“Oh, you could learn it yourself in five minutes.” Fru Egholm flushed with pride, and her hands flew over the work. “No, but you should see a thing I made just before we left Odense. Fancy crochet.”
“Heaven preserve us! Me! Never to mydying day! It’s more than I’m ever likely to learn, I’m sure. What was it you called it?”
“Fancy crochet. And then I lost it—it was a cruel shame, really. And such a lovely pattern.”
“Stolen?” cried Fru Hermansen, slapping her thighs.
“No. I gave it away to a woman that came up to congratulate when Emanuel was born. She praised it up, and I saw what she meant, of course. But here’s another thing you must see.”
She rose, and took out a pin-cushion from a drawer.
“There’s nothing special about that, of course....”
But Madam Hermansen declared she had never seen anything like it. The pale pink silk showing all glossy through under the crochet cover was simply luxurious.
“Ah yes! That’s the sort of things a body would like to have about the house,” she said, turning it over in her chapped and knotty hands. “And what do you use a thing like that for, now?”
“Oh, fine ladies use it for brooches and things. But it’s mostly meant for a young girl, you know, to have on a chest of drawers, this way....”
“Yes, yes, that’s much the best. Why, it would be a sin and a shame to stick pins in a thing like that.”
“Look here,” said Fru Egholm, flushing, “youkeep it. Yes, do; it’s yours. No, no; do as I say—and we’ll speak no more about it.”
Madam Hermansen made a great fuss of protest, but allowed herself to be persuaded, and thrust it under her shawl. She held it as if it had been a live lobster.
And Fru Egholm brought out other things. There was a newspaper holder worked with poppies, and a cushion embroidered on canvas.
“There’s little pleasure in having them,” she sighed. “Egholm, he doesn’t value it more than the dirt under his feet.”
“Ah! It’s just the same with Hermansen, now. One Sunday afternoon I came home and found him, as true as I’m here, sitting on the curtains, smoking, as careless as could be. But your husband—I thought he was a model.”
“Egholm doesn’t smoke. If he did, he’d be just the same. But I can tell you a thing—just to show what he thinks about my work. Ah, Madam Hermansen, take my word for it, there’s many a slight a woman has to put up with that hurts more than all your blows.”
“And he’s been on the railway, too....”
“It doesn’t change human nature, after all. It was these here things from the auction at Gammelhauge, the mirror and the chest of drawers, and the big chair over by the window, and that very one you’re sitting in now. Now, tell me honestly, would you call them nice to look at?”
Madam Hermansen shifted a little under in her big green shawl.
“They’re a trifle old fashioned to my mind.” And she sniffed disdainfully.
“Old fashioned and worm eaten and heavy and clumsy—you needn’t be afraid to say it. Why, it’s almost two men’s work to lift a chair like that. And as for the glass—why, it makes you look like a chimney-sweep. The chest of drawers is not so bad; it does hold a good deal. Wools and odds and ends.... But, all the same....”
“My daughter she had one with nickel handles to pull out,” said Madam Hermansen, poking at it. “And walnut’s the nicest you can have, so the joiner man said.”
“Yes, that’s what I say. But what do you think Egholm said? ‘Rare specimens,’ he said—‘solid mahogany!’ Ugh! Well, do you know what I did? I set to work then and there and made up something to cover the worst of it. Those butterflies for the rocking-chair, and the cloth with the stars on for the chest of drawers, and paper roses to put in by the mirror. It took me the whole of a night, but I wouldn’t have grudged it, if I’d only got a thimbleful of thanks for my pains. And now, just listen, and I’ll tell you the thanks I got. One day the Sanitary Inspector came round to have a look at the sink. He’d brought a whole crowd with him—it was a commission or something, with themayor and the doctor and the vet, and so on. Then one of them gets it into his head he’d like to have a look round the place. Egholm, of course, waves his hand and says, ‘With pleasure.’ And never a thought in his head of anything the matter.”
Madam Hermansen nodded sympathetically.
“Well, they came in through the kitchen and stood there poking about at the sink for a bit, and while they’re at it, Egholm comes in here. And then—what do you say to this?—he rushes round the room and pulls it all off. As true as I’m here; the butterflies and the paper flowers, and the toilet cover and all. Threw the flowers under the table, and stuffed the rest in under his coat. Now, if that isn’t simply disgraceful....”
“And what did yousayto him?” Madam Hermansen shook herself, giving out a perfume of leeks and celery from under her shawl.
“Not a word. I had to keep it all back, and bow and scrape to the gentlemen, with my heart like to bursting all the time. ‘We must take all that stuff out of the way when anyone comes,’ he says after. Oh, he’s that full of his fashionable notions, there’s no room for human feeling in his breast. And if there is one thing I can’t abide, it is that fashionable nonsense.”
“Well, now, I don’t know that it’s altogether put on, you know, with him, seeing he’s a man of good family, as you might say.”
“Good family—h’m. As to that....” Fru Egholm raised her eyebrows.
“Well, well, I don’t know, of course,” said Madam Hermansen, shifting heavily a little forward. “I thought he was a parson’s son, and his parents were dead?”
“No, indeed he’s not. Nothing of the kind.”
“He’s not a circus child, is he?—there’s some say he is.”
“It wouldn’t be so surprising, with all his antics generally. But the real truth is, he’s a foundling—that is to say, illegitimate.” Fru Egholm uttered the last word with a certain coldness, but a moment after sighed compassionately.
“You don’t say so! Well, now, I never did....” Madam Hermansen sat rocking backwards and forwards in ecstasy, and as she realised what a grand piece of news she had got hold of, a silent laughter began bubbling up from her heart.
Fru Egholm looked at her in some surprise, and, uncertain how to take her, bent over the cradle and busied herself with the child.
“Why, then, Madam Danielsen was right, after all,” said Madam Hermansen. “But who was his mother, then?”
“Well, to tell the truth, she was a fine lady, and married a professor after—and that’s a strange thing, seeing what a plenty of honest girls there areabout. She must have been a baggage, though, all the same, to get into trouble like that.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Madam Hermansen, patting the hairpins that jostled each other in a knot of hair about the size of a walnut. “And his father?”
“Oh, a scatter-brained fellow. Government official, they called him, but he was a painter—an artist, you know—besides, and I daresay it was that was his undoing in the end, when he led the girl astray.”
“But I thought the doctors at the Foundling Hospital were under oath not to tell who the parents were?”
“That’s true enough. But d’you think Egholm would be put off like that? No, he set to work—that is, when he was grown up—and advertised inBerlingske Tidende, putting it all in, so-and-so, as if he didn’t know what shame was. And then his sister—half-sister, that is, of course—wrote and came along of her own accord. Nice enough in her way, she was, too, but you could see she was one of the same sort....”
Fru Egholm made a grimace involving numerous wrinkles of the nose. Madam Hermansen nodded as one who understood.
“Yes ... she gave herself out for an artist, like her father had been—and she was the image of him to look at, too.”
“But I thought....”
“Well, that of course, in a way. For they said she used to go sitting in a public place and painting pictures with a man stark naked as a model.”
“Heaven preserve us!” gasped Madam Hermansen. “In all my born days.... Well, she must have been a nice one.”
“She and Egholm simply slobbered over each other with their affected ways. She called him her dear lost brother, and how glad she was to find him again—and all that sort of thing. I simply said there was no need to carry on too much about it that I could see, for if they had grown up together, like as not they’d have been tearing each other’s eyes out. He was a terrible child, I believe—used to pour sand over the cake-man’s basket outside Rundetaarn, and let off fireworks in the street and so on.”
“And his father wouldn’t acknowledge him, then?”
“No. That is to say, his father made haste and died when the boy was only four or five about, but he’d had the grace to set aside a little money beforehand, so Egholm could have the most expensive schooling there ever was. And it’s left its pretty mark on him, as you can hear when he speaks.”
“Well, in the way of politeness, as you might say, he certainly is,” said Fru Hermansen warmly.
“Puh! When there’s anyone about, yes,” said Fru Egholm. She was not in the humour for praising her husband just now. “But what’s he like athome? Ah—that’s where you get to know people’s hearts!”
And before she knew it, she had lifted the roof off their entire abode, making plain to her visitor that which had formerly been shrouded in darkness.
It was not a little.
Madam Hermansen was simply speechless when Fru Egholm showed her, with tears, the scars under her eyes and the little spot by the temple where the hair was gone.
“I can’t understand you staying another day,” she said, when the sufferer stuck fast in a sob.
“Oh, you mustn’t talk like that. When you’ve vowed before the altar....”
“Didhevow before the altar to knock you about like that, eh? Did he say anything about that?”
“No—o.” Fru Egholm laughed through her tears, anxious to bring her visitor to a gentler frame of mind. “No, and it would be no more than his deserts if I said I wouldn’t live with him any more. But I can’t help it; it’s not in my nature to do it. And, after all, it’s his business how he treats his wife, isn’t it? What’s it to do with me? I couldn’t think of living anywhere but where he is. Love’s not a thing you can pull up by the roots all of a sudden.
“‘When first the flame of love warms human heart, they little knowWhat harm they do beyond repair who make it cease to glow!’”
“‘When first the flame of love warms human heart, they little knowWhat harm they do beyond repair who make it cease to glow!’”
“Hymns!” said Madam Hermansen scornfully.
“Ah, but it’s just hymns and such that lift us up nearer to God.”
“Oh, God’s all right, of course, but it doesn’t do in this world to leave too much to God.”
“It’s all we poor sinful mortals have. Where do you suppose I should ever find comfort and solace if I hadn’t God to turn to? Why, He’s almighty. He’s even done things with Egholm at times. When I think of it, I feel ashamed of myself that I ever can sit and complain. Now, just by way of example.... It was the day we came over here from Odense, me and the children. I’d no sooner got out of the train than he puts his arms round me and kisses me right on the cheek. And what’s the most marvellous thing about it all—I can’t understand it to this day—he did it right in front of three or four girls standing staring at us all the time. Ah, Madam Hermansen, take my word for it, a little thing like that gives you strength to live on for a long time after. And then Egholm’s been good to me in other ways. He knows—Lord forgive me that I should say it—that I’m more of a God-fearing sort than he is himself. And—I don’t know how to put it—that my God’s—well, more genuine, as you might say, than his. I’ll tell you how I found that out, Madam Hermansen. You know it was said the end of the world was to come a few years back. It was in all the papers, and Egholm, he took it all in for gospel truth, because he said itagreed with the signs in the Revelations, you know....”
“And did it come?”
“Why, of course it didn’t—or we shouldn’t be sitting here now, should we? But Egholm, he was as sure as could be it was going to happen, on the thirteenth of November, and when it was only the eighth, he came and told me to make up a bed for one of us on the floor. We’d always been used to sleep together in one bed.”
“But what did he want to change for?” asked Madam Hermansen, with increasing interest.
“Why,” explained Fru Egholm eagerly, “you see—he confessed himself why it was; he was wonderfully gentle those days. He wouldn’t have us sleeping together—not because of anything indecent or that sort, but because it says in the Bible that on the Day of Judgment there may be two people sleeping in the same bed, ‘and the one shall be taken and the other left.’”
“So, you see. Madam Hermansen, I soon reckoned out what he thought, how I might get to heaven after all.”
“And he’s never been in love with anybody—outside, I mean?”
“There’s one he’s in love with,” laughed Fru Egholm—“more than anything else in the world. And that’s—himself! No, thank goodness he’s never had time for that sort of thing, being too busy withhis steam-engine inventions. Now I think of it, though, there was a girl once, when he was quite young, over in Helsingør. Clara Steen was her name. You’ll have heard of Consul Steen, no doubt; he’s ever so rich. His daughter, it was. And she ran after him to such a degree.... Why, he used to write verses to her. Though I don’t count that anything very much against him, for he’s written poetry to me, too, in the days when we were engaged.”
She thrust a practised hand into her workbox, and fished up a yellowed scrap of paper, and read:
“‘Helsingør by waters brightLike a Venice to the sight,All the world thy fame doth know.Beeches fair around thee grow,And the fortress with its crownLooks majestically down,...’”
“‘Helsingør by waters brightLike a Venice to the sight,All the world thy fame doth know.Beeches fair around thee grow,And the fortress with its crownLooks majestically down,...’”
Fru Hermansen relapsed into an envious silence, absently investigating her nostrils with one finger. Fru Egholm took out some new hair, and compared the colour with that she was using.
“Think that will do?” she asked ingratiatingly.
“Well, it ought to. It’s a deal prettier than the other.”
“But it oughtn’t to be! You’re supposed to have all the same coloured hair in one plait.”
“Ugh! I’ve no patience with all their affected ways,” said Fru Hermansen sullenly. She was disappointed at finding the conversation turned tosomething of so little interest by comparison. “What was I going to say now?” she went on. “Was it just lately he knocked you about like that?”
“Ye—es, of course. But no worse than before. Not nearly so bad. And anyhow, if he did, I suppose it was God’s will. Or else, perhaps, he can’t help it, by reason of always having an unruly mind.”
She checked herself with a sudden start, and her busy hands fell to patting aimlessly here and there.
“I think it must be toothache,” she said in a loud, drawling, careless voice, altogether different from her former manner.
“Toothache?...” Madam Hermansen sat with her mouth wide open for a moment—then she, too, caught the sound of Egholm’s approaching step. “Yes, yes, of course, it would be toothache, yes, yes....” And she chuckled with a sound like the rattle of a rake on a watering-can.
“Emanuel, I mean, of course,” said Fru Egholm confusedly, as her husband walked in. He was carrying a huge paper bag, that looked as if it might burst at any minute.
He set it down carefully, and joined in the conversation.
“Now, if only Anna would let me,” he said eagerly, “I’d cure that child in no time.”
“I’ve heard you can do all sorts of wonders, so people say.” Fru Hermansen leaned back with herhands folded across her lap, and looked up admiringly at Egholm.
“Why, I know a trifle of the secrets of Nature, that’s all. As for toothache, there’s no such thing. The youngster there—what’s his name, now?—Emanuel, is suffering from indigestion, nothing more. Give him a plate of carrots chopped up fine, mixed with equal parts of sand and gravel, morning and evening, and he’d be all right in a couple of days.”
“Never as long as I live!” said Fru Egholm.
“Powdered glass is very effective, too,” went on Egholm, encouraged by Fru Hermansen’s laughter, and putting on a thoughtful expression.
“I’ll not see a child of mine murdered that or any other way,” said the mother.
“Oh, but you’d see what a difference it would make. I’m quite in earnest. Haven’t you heard that fowls have to have gravel? I noticed it myself yesterday with my own eyes, saw them pecking it up. And the idea came to me at once. I’ve half a mind, really, to set up as a quack doctor....”
Egholm was interrupted by a sudden splash behind him. The paper bag he had placed on the chest of drawers, dissolved by the moisture of something within, had burst; a lump of squashy-looking semi-transparent stuff had slipped to the floor, and more threatened to follow.
Fru Egholm, sorrowful and indignant, hurried to save her embroidered slip from further damage.
“Don’t go spoiling my jelly-fish! Better bring a plate, or a dish or something.”
“What on earth are they for, now?” asked Madam Hermansen.
“That’s a great secret. For the present, at any rate. Well, I don’t know; I may as well tell you, perhaps. These ... are jelly-fish—Medusæ.” He tipped the contents out into a washing-basin, and poked about among the quivering specimens. “Look, here’s a red one—the sort they call stingers. If you touch one, it stings you like nettles. The others are harmless—just touch one and try. Smooth and luscious, like soapsuds, what?”
Madam Hermansen advanced one hand hesitatingly, but drew it back with a scream.
“Isn’t it?” said Egholm, undismayed. “Well, now, what do you think they’re for? Shall I tell you? Why,soap!There’s only one thing lacking to make them into perfect soap—a touch of lime to get a grip on the dirt—and perhaps a trifle of scent. And, only think, they’re lying about on the beach in thousands, all to no use. Yes ... I’ll start a soap factory, that’s what I’ll do.”
“I thought you said you were going to be a doctor,” said Fru Egholm, with an innocent expression, winking at Madam Hermansen.
“Both. And then we can save on the advertising. ‘Egholm’s United Surgeries and Soap Factories.’”
“And one as bad as the other.” Anna had to shout aloud to make herself heard through the tempest of Madam Hermansen’s laughter.
“Say, rather, one as good as the other. Oh, I shall be famous all over Denmark, all over Europe. We’ll have an advertisement for the doctoring on all the soap wrappers: speciality—broken legs!”
“If only you don’t break your neck holding your head in the air.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of bones,” said Egholm, delighted with the effect he was producing. “I was referring to the fracture ofwoodenlegs.”
“Well, now, I wonder if you could set this to rights for me?” said Fru Hermansen, patting her calf.
“Easily! What’s the matter?”
“Well, I don’t know that it’s proper for me to show you, but never mind. We’re both married folk. This leg of mine’s been bad for—let me see—fifteen or sixteen years it is now. And Dr. Hoff, he’s no idea, the way he’s messed about with it.”
Fru Hermansen turned round, set her foot upon a chair, and busied herself with underclothing, tying and untying here and there, and muttering to herself the while.
“There, you have a look at it,” she said at last, with a laugh, and faced round again.
She had a rag in her mouth, and her face was flushed from bending down. Her skirts were lifted to her knees.
From the ankle up over the shin, almost to the kneecap, was a long red sore, yellowish in the centre. It looked horribly like a trail of some climbing plant.
Egholm put out a hand as if to ward off the sight, and looked away. But the would-be patient said harshly:
“And you going to be a doctor! If you can’t abide the smell of hot bread, then it’s no good going for a baker!”
Egholm overcame his reluctance, knelt down, and began examining the leg, from the greenish-faded stocking that was gathered like an ankle-ring at the bottom, to the knee, where a garter had cut deep brownish-red furrows.
“Here’s the mischief,” he said, nodding wisely. “The blood can’t get past here, and that’s why it can’t heal. You’ll have to stop wearing garters at once.”
“Easy to hear it’s a man that’s talking,” laughed Fru Egholm.
“And then we must draw fresh blood to the spot. Let me see....”
“I should think you’d have seen enough by this time.”
“Fresh blood....” he murmured. His mind was busy choosing and rejecting from a hundred different things; nothing seemed to satisfy him quite. A smile of irony at his own idea curved his lips; it was not such a simple matter, after all, to getto work with Egholm’s United Soap Factories and Surgeries, specialising in leg troubles.
Suddenly his face brightened all over.
“Those jelly-fish—what did you do with the dish?”
“But, Egholm? what do you want them for now?”
“You leave that to me. We want something to tickle up the nerves, and draw the blood to the spot.”
He picked up the “stinger”—in his coat-tails—and held it out. It was domed like a dish-cover, and ornamented with a fiery double star at the top; innumerable threads of slimy stuff hung from its lower side.
“Suppose we put that on the sore?”
Madam Hermansen, in her first amazement, had hoisted her canvas beyond all reasonable limits; now, she let all down with a run.
“None of your games with me, thank you,” she said sharply.
“What?” said Egholm in surprise. “You won’t? I warrant you the leg will be all in a glow in no time. And then it’s a practically certain cure.”
He waved the thing enticingly before her, exhibiting it from all sides, and bending it to show the venomous lips. “Why, I wouldn’t mind putting it on myself.”
But Madam Hermansen’s face was dark and discouraging;she set about resolutely wrapping her tender spot in all its armour of rags and bandages.
“And quite right of you, I’m sure, Madam Hermansen,” said Fru Egholm.
“Well, well, we must hit on something else,” said Egholm. “I won’t give it up. But it must be a natural cure in any case. The sources of Nature are manifold.”
And by way of restoring good humour all round, he began telling the story of the furniture from Gammelhauge.
“Isn’t that an elegant chair I’ve got there? Do for a throne; look at the coronet on the back—it’s almost on my own head now as I sit here. I’ve just the feel of an old nobleman, a general, or a landed aristocrat, in this chair. Let’s bring it up in front of the glass. What’s the use of sitting on a throne with a coronet on your bald pate when you can’t see yourself?”
“Now I suppose you’ll be putting a new glass in the mirror—another twenty—thirty—forty—fiftykronergone, but that’s nothing, of course,” cried Madam Hermansen.
“Not in the least, my dear lady. Inthis glassit was that the splendidly attired knights and ladies surveyed their magnificence before the feasting commenced.”
It could be seen from Egholm’s movements how a knight and his lady were wont to prance and preenthemselves before a mirror. A little after, he added in a voice of mystery:
“I have often seen shadows moving by in there, of an evening.”
“Ugh! The nasty thing! I wouldn’t have it in my house for anything,” said Madam Hermansen, with a shiver.
Egholm took his washing-basin across to the studio, which had been fitted up at one end of the carpenter’s store shed. The jelly-fish he placed for the present as far in under the table as possible.
First of all, he must get some work done. There were Sunday’s negatives to develop—he could be thinking a bit while he was doing that. Egholm found the new dark-room an excellent place for thought, free from all disturbance.
Yes, he would think over that turbine.
That jelly-fish soap business was merely an idea—quite possibly, indeed probably, a good idea. But the turbine, thereversible steam-turbine, was the child of his heart, born of him, conceived by him in a length of sleep-forsaken nights. Once brought forth to the world, it would be greeted with acclamation.
It was imminent, it was hovering in the air, this question of something to replace the more complicated steam-engine. The English had come very near to a solution already.
But, for all that, it might perhaps be reserved forhimself, for Egholm the Dane, to show them how to make their turbine reverse.
He could think of more than one thing at a time. As long as he could cast out sufficient ballast, he could always find a new direction of the wind to carry his thought. Nearest earth was the current connected with his work, but even that was no less erratic than those of the higher strata.
Might as well try the new developer to-day, he thought to himself, and set out his dishes all ready. Then he went into the studio again, and began studying the recipes he had scrawled up from time to time on the plank wall of the dark-room. Already there were so many of them that the list reached to the floor. He had to go down on his knees to see if it said 25 gr. or 35 gr. Suddenly he forgot what he was there for, and remained lying prone, thinking only of his steam-turbine; it seemed to him the axle bearings ought to be made with a little more stability yet. The slightest oscillation, of course, would mean an escape of steam—waste of power. Then, becoming aware of his posture, he wondered how he had got there, but, finding himself on his knees, he at once, as a practical man, decided to utilise the opportunity, and started off on a long and earnest prayer to God for the furtherance of his idea. It was, indeed, not merely a point of honour with him that it should succeed, but also,he might as well confess, a hoped-for way out of his present difficulties.
The photography business had turned out a desperate failure—there was no denying it.
The only people who came at all were the peasants who came into town on Sundays. Of these, quite a good number patronised the studio, but, unfortunately, they did not always come for the photos they had ordered. They were not impressed by his skill when they found the studio situate in a woodshed at the back of Andreasen’s, with the camera perched on a cement barrel instead of a tripod.
The fine folk of the place, in accordance with an established tradition, always went over to the neighbouring town for their photographs. It didn’t seem to count, somehow, unless they did.
They were just as superficial in their judgment as the peasants, and paid more heed to a smart shop than to the artistic execution of the pictures.
Here Egholm laughed to himself. The photographs he turned out could hardly be included under the heading of art at all, and he knew it. But was there anything surprising in that? In the first place, how could anyone help becoming dulled by so much adversity, and in the second—oh, well, in the second place, why the devil shouldheput himself out for all and sundry, when it was only a question of time before he threw aside his mask and revealed himself as a world-renowned inventor?
Smilingly he set to rocking his plates in their bath, and as the work went on, he bored out, in his mind, the steam channels of his turbine, and decided on the cogwheel transference.
He held a negative up to the light, and recognised three of his customers grouped about the little round table. Yes, it was those three that had taken such particular care to have the labels on their beer bottles facing neatly front, towards the observer.
Ho, ho! And that was the sort one had to bow and scrape to!
Unfortunately, this business of the turbine was not a matter to be settled in a moment. Rothe, the ironfounder, had promised to make him the larger parts, and Krogh, the smith, who had at first answered gruffly and bent farther over his intricate lock work, had been completely won over as an adherent. The next thing was to procure a boat into which the turbine could be built.
Now, where on earth could he get a boat for no money at all? Well, never mind; imagine the boat was there. Then the upright boiler would have to be set inthere, a trifle aft of midships, so that the man at the helm could stoke as well. As for the screw, that would require special treatment in these waters, where there was so much weed about. He would have to go into that.
Egholm’s mind was so keen that he saw everydetail. Difficulties were disposed of as fast as they appeared.
Not till the last of the plates glided into the fixing solution did he come to himself, and then to find his heart pumping like the steam-turbine at full speed. It was always like that when he had been long at work in the dark-room. He threw open the door and went out, but the light and the fresh air turned him dizzy and blind for the moment; he staggered to a bench, and had to sit there some time before he recovered.
Hedvig knew how to make herself respected. She and her father glared at each other with eyes alert and claws ready, but it was rarely anything more came of it. She had a place at the baker’s, running errands for sixkronera month, which was no small sum for a girl still at school. Anyhow, it was practically half their rent.
Yet she was a strange little creature, not like other children, and her confidence slipped somehow between her mother’s fingers.
Many a night the keyhole of the door to her little room still showed a speck of light by the time the clock struck twelve, or even one. Her mother lay anxiously listening to Egholm’s snore; there was no saying what terrible thing might happen if he were to wake and find it out. But Hedvig would listen to reproaches the next morning with an unfathomable expression on her face, or smile, and shake her head. The pocket of her dress bulged with a new novel every other day.
“You should tell your mother what itsaysin those silly books you’re always reading,” said Fru Egholm admonishingly.
“Oh, you’d never understand a word of it,” was all Hedvig answered.
One day she had stuck up a picture over her bed, showing a man and a woman, tied together with a rope, flinging themselves into the water from a bridge. A yellow half-moon shone through the tree-tops and was reflected in the water. Hedvig stood quietly, apparently indifferent, as her mother tore it down and told in vehement words how sinful it was to look at such things. But when her mother moved to hold it over the lamp, the girl flung herself suddenly in front of her with wild screams, and would not be brought to her senses until she had the horrible picture safely put away in her workbox.
Now, who would ever believe that this was the same good little Hedvig that the baker’s people always said a good word for, and who could always manage to find a way when it was a case of helping others! Fuel, for instance—Egholm did not seem to have the instinct of acquiring fuel. But Hedvig was a little marvel in that way—though, no doubt, it was largely through the help of Marinus in the workshop, to give him his due. He always tucked away odd bits under his work-bench for her. He was a kindly sort, was Marinus. And he seemed particularly fond of Hedvig, and she of him—that is to say, at times. For it was towards Marinus that her fickleness of humour showed itself most of all. Sometimes when she had been in the workshop she wouldcome back and fall into a fit of miserable weeping; at other times she would rush in at once the moment he tapped with his rule on the pane, whether she wanted firewood for the kitchen or no. And as to getting any explanation out of her—that, of course, was hopeless.
Otherwise, she was particularly good at telling things, and both her father and her mother were often amused at her way of relating little things that had passed.
Her father even had a speciality of his own in this respect; he loved to hear of the money Hedvig took across the counter when she was minding shop while her mistress was at dinner.
Then it would be Wassermann, the Customs officer, who came in and bought best part of a tray of mixed pastries—he was such a sweet tooth. Then perhaps there would be a message from Etatsraadens’ for sixty butter puffs for to-morrow morning.
“Sixty!” cried her father. “And what do they cost apiece?”
“Threeøre—but, Lord! that’s nothing to them at all. No, you should have seen the order that came in the day they had their garden party.Fivecakes with icing and marzipan.”
“Why, the bakers must be making a fortune.”
“They’ve made it already. Mistress bought a new hat the other day.”
“What was on it?” asked her mother. But herfather leaned back with closed eyes, feeling as if his own thirst were assuaged for the moment by the flow of money Hedvig dipped her fingers in.
He was feverish, and needed something cooling. Here he was in the throes of his invention, and could not get it out.
Not a step nearer. No boat, nothing. And it was nearly autumn now. The trees stood there with their round juicy fruits. But, in his mind, it was all flowers. Was there anyone in all Knarreby so poor as the Egholms? Unless it were Bisserup, the brushmaker. And yet Egholm had spared no pains. He had tried Etatsraaden, tried Bro, the grocer, Rothe, the ironfounder; practically speaking, everyone of means in the place. He had also, by the way, tried those without means. Altogether, he had not passed by many an open ear without shouting into it something about Egholm’s fore-and-aft turbine. Rothe had promised to make the castings for him, but that was all.
He looked at Hedvig. She stood up, reaching with her thin, girlish arms for the parcel with her white apron in, up on the dresser. Off to her work. Off to all that money again.
“Wait a minute,” he said. There was a slight pause then, before he could stammer out his proposal—that they should all kneel down and pray to God. He did not know why, but it must be now, just at this moment, he said.
This was by no means a new and unheard-of thing; on the contrary, it had been known as far back as Hedvig could remember.
“It’ll keep till this evening, won’t it?” she said. “I shall be late if I stay behind now.”
“‘Seek first the kingdom of God and righteousness....’”
“Ha!” A single sound, like the scream of a cockerel, escaped from Hedvig. It was the first time she had openly derided her father’s godliness. She regretted it bitterly next moment. True, the door out to the alley-way was open, just at her left, but what was the good of escaping herself when her mother was left behind to face what would come? She knew what it was to come home in high spirits from her work, and find her mother weeping, perhaps bruised into the bargain. She had no wish to experience that again.
The tears were gathering already; something was choking her.
Egholm set his hands on the arms of his chair, to spring up and dash out into the kitchen, but his anger seemed to snap in the middle.
In a sudden glimpse of vision he saw Hedvig in a new light. The slip of a girl, whose naughtinesses he had been at such pains to weed out, was no longer a slip of a girl and merely naughty—she was asinner.
Every line of her figure, every feature in herface spoke blasphemy. She stood there with the challenge of an idol.
With a strangely sweet horror her father noted all: her guilty mouth, half-open, with lips pale and narrow, yet fresh, and teeth white as almonds, whence issued that hell-born defiance. Her blood must be evil as smoking brimstone.
Egholm sank back powerless in his chair.
But a moment later a new feeling came over him. How great a thing would it be to bring this child of sin to God, with bowed head and folded hands. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than of the ninety and nine which need no repentance.” So the Scripture said. Hedvig would be a heavenly subject for conversion.
And there could be no doubt but that God would appreciate the efforts of the one who had borne the trial of that conversion.
Hedvig stood with her back to him, slightly stooping, as if awaiting the blow. She started when her father came out and laid his hand on her shoulder instead.
The conversion process appeared strangely easy; yes, she should always find something to say to the bakers by way of excuse. She set to work at once pulling the chairs aside to make room.
Her father looked crestfallen and unsatisfied. He had been prepared for a struggle—but this wastooeasy.
Still, he had something in reserve. Little Emanuel, whose inconsiderable length of days might serve as warrant for his innocence, was set on a pillow in the middle of the floor.
“Put something under your knees, Hedvig dear,” said her mother.
“No need of that,” said Egholm, thumping his own on the floor with unnecessary force.
“Oh, great and merciful God....”
“You’ve got your hat on, dear,” said Fru Egholm mildly.
He sent her a wrathful glance, but laid aside his hat with much dignity.
“Almighty God, Lord of Heaven and Earth....”
Egholm’s prayer began as a sonorous commonplace, an echo from the halls of the Brethren of St. John. But gradually, as his subject grew on him, his own individual religious view for the time being showed through.
It was to God as the Owner of great possessions that he prayed.
If any had asked him who was the greatest inventor in the world, he would have confessed, with a pious bend of the head, that it was one of the least of God’s servants, an unworthy creature by the name of Egholm. But at the thought that Godownedthe fields, the woods, and the cities—the lands and the seas, Egholm, who had never owned more than the poor clothes he wore and a trifle ofold furniture, was moved to prostrate himself before that mighty power.
It distressed him, however, that God should suffer those possessions of His to be put to ill use, in that He allowed them to fall into the wrong hands. It was by no means altogether selfishness that led him, Egholm, here to point out himself as one who would be a true and grateful steward of even the largest and most troublesome estate.
“Am I not Thy son, art Thou not my Father, whose will it is that all should be well with me?”
Hedvig heard but little of her father’s words: her eyes were following the hands of the clock; it was jerking by tiny stages on towards twelve. There it stopped, and seemed to linger for a moment, as if inviting the figure to join it on its way; then on again, irrevocably on and on. She clenched her teeth in impotent fury. Then suddenly a new note was touched in her father’s prayer—something which made her all attention.
He had commenced, quite advisedly, with the practical human tactics of praising those qualities in the Lord which he himself wished to call forth towards himself.
“Thy goodness is without end and beyond all measure. So great is Thy love to us poor children of men, that Thou hearest every prayer we offer up to Thee, and grantest it. It is written: ‘Ask, and thou shalt receive!’ So great is Thy loving-kindnessunto us, that Thou wouldst not have us suffer more, and therefore sayest, let there be an end. Behold, Egholm Thy servant groaneth under the weight of poverty; Thou seest, and it is enough; Thou sayest the word, and lo, Thy servant cometh into riches and happiness....”
The words seemed to have a sort of hypnotic power; for a moment, Hedvig quivered with hope that it might really come to pass. Then she remembered how often she had heard the same thing; how many times she had been forced to kneel thus on aching knees in prayer for the same, but to no avail. From the time she was first able to speak, her tongue had praised the Lord. Now, it revolted her; something within her seemed to rise in protest; she felt that shehatedGod.
Never for a moment did she doubt His existence; on the contrary, she seemed to see His face. But it was a face hard and cold as stone, with eyes looking absently out. The ardent prayers of men were powerless to affect Him.
She began mumbling an oath every time her father found a new form for his praise.
It was otherwise with Egholm himself. He felt stronger and stronger as he went on; and at sight of Hedvig’s lips moving, he burst into tears, and found courage to speak out without reserve.
For it was a curious fact that more courage was needed to ask for little things. It was a simple matterenough to pray for wealth and happiness in general, but to-day he managed to get out the matter that really troubled him.
“Dear, good Lord, grant me—or onlylendme—one hundredkroner; even fifty would do. You know what it’s for—that boat, the green boat of Ulrik’s. Not his new one, but the old. You know, dear Lord, I want it for my steam-turbine. And I’ve come to a dead stop now, and can’t move a step if you won’t lend me a miserable fiftykroner....”
His voice had altered now to a wheedling tone, with a marked city accent. He made a sort of half scrape-and-bow, and finished off.
“A—far....” prattled Emanuel.
It was Egholm’s habit after a prayer to embrace his wife. He made as if to do so now, but, to his surprise, she thrust him away with every indication of ill-will.
“No! Don’t think you’re going to get me on to that sort of thing, because I won’t.”
“That sort of thing!” Egholm’s voice was uncertain; he had a feeling that his wife was, after all, somehow in relation with the heavenly powers.
“No good having a cow that yields when it kicks over the bucket after. The first part was all right, but if you think God’s going to help with your silly tricks about that turbine thing—why, you’re very much mistaken.”
“But, why not?...”
“Because it’s an abomination. Cain was the first smith, and you know it. And the Lord hates all that hammering and smithying about at turbines and steam carts and friction cylinders....”
“Friction couplings,” corrected Egholm gently.
“Well, I don’t care what you call them. He hates all that sort of stuff, whatever name you give it. And you can be certain sure you’ll get nothing out of that prayer,” she concluded, with a lofty shake of her head.
Egholm sat down in silence, and Hedvig, seeing that he was overcome by some incomprehensible means, hurried off in relief.
What had come to Egholm now? Was he impressed by his wife’s wisdom? Oh, he thought her foolish beyond words.
But she had destroyed his exaltation as effectively as a knife thrust into a balloon.
His head dropped on his breast.
Yes, it was true enough, no doubt, that God was against him in all his plans and inventions. His prayer had been in vain, despite the brilliant idea of bringing along Hedvig as a sacrifice.
“Well, what do you think I ought to do?” he asked weakly.
“Me! And how’s a simple creature like me to say what you should do? You’re so clever....”
He fancied there was something behind her words, and grasped at it eagerly.
“What d’you mean?”
Fru Egholm kept up her pretence of emptiness for some time, but her speech was crafty as a will-o’-the-wisp, and he followed her till he lost his foothold. Then she said:
“Write to the Brethren, and ask for your money back.”
Egholm looked up with a momentary gleam of light, but pursed up his mouth in a grimace, and said:
“The Brethren—no. I’ve done with them for good and all.”
“All right, then, just as you please,” said she. And no more was said.
Towards evening, Egholm took his stick, and went for a walk through the town and down along the quay.
The black gliding waters of the Belt slapped softly against the stonework, and patted like flat hands under the tarred beams. He went right out to the point, where some boys were fishing with lines, and calling to one another in their singing dialect, as often as they fancied a bite.
A big Norwegian timber ship with a heavy deck-load lay in the harbour, and all the fishing-boats of Knarreby were gathered along the side of the quay.
The background was dominated by the church, the Custom House, and Vang’s hotel. To the west, little fisher huts set all up a steep slope, that rosefarther on to the great beeches of Kongeskoven. Knarreby itself was on an elevation; the ground line of St. Nicholas Church was level with the roof of the Custom House. From where he stood, Egholm could see two gravestones showing white in the churchyard.
Loud voices could be heard from the terrace of Vang’s hotel; three gentlemen had just come out, and were sniffing and wiping their foreheads with handkerchiefs. Evidently, they had been dining. Somebody gave an order to a waiter, with a heavy slap on the back. There was a certain noisiness apparent.
Egholm pricked up his ears—that was Rothe’s voice and no other.
Ah—and now he recognised the other two: the warlike editor and Vang with a silk skull-cap.
Here were three men who, he felt sure, never bowed the knee to God. And yet they seemed to enjoy themselves.
How could it be?
That fellow Rothe, for instance, the ironfounder. He was said to have started at the lowest rung, as a blacksmith’s hand, eighteen years ago. Now, he owned the whole of Knarreby ironfoundry.
A turbine boat would be a mere nothing to a man like that.
Egholm sat on the quay for a while, following the three with envious eyes; then he strolled intowards the land with the ferrule of his stick dragging listlessly over the stones.
There was the usual crowd of fishermen gathered about the warehouse. They were always to be found there or over by the agent’s house. The walls of both were worn smooth by the backs of their trousers.
“Going to have thunder?” asked Egholm, with a swinging gesture which he fancied smacked of the sea.
They puffed at their pipes, and squinted in towards the centre, where Peder Kvabs stood. He was the fattest and reddest-faced of them all, and went about in his shirt-sleeves all the year round. When he said nothing, then there was nothing to be said.
Well, after all, no need for any introduction, thought Egholm, and came to the matter of his turbine at once. Funny thing, when you came to think of it, that in four or five years from now every little rowing-boat would have its turbine, and go spurting across the Belt like a cat, dead against the wind.