Egholm hears a peculiar sound ... springs up with a roar....
Off goes Sivert like a hare across the ice, unableto stop what he had already begun. It looked as if he were spinning a thread behind him like a spider. He had no intention of returning, however. He had but one thought—home.
Egholm did not attempt to pursue. He tried to go on with his prayer, but gave it up, and went into the woods. He walked all the morning, and came round by a wide detour into Knarreby about dinner-time. But his haste was such that he passed by the house without thought of hunger or thirst. Not till he was in the main street did he slacken his pace, and begin looking absently into the shop windows. They were crammed with all manner of things—Christmas was near. There were ducks, and these he noticed in particular, but all the rest made one confused medley to his eyes. Nevertheless, he went up to the next window and gazed at it attentively, as if mentally selecting something specially rare and costly as a present for his love.
Then, at the sale department of the ironfoundry, he came to himself again. Here at last were things worth looking at. Right up against the glass were lovely heavy castings, pieces of machinery, and metal parts. Pumps of all sizes, stacks of copper and brass tubing, taps and boiler gauges, and heaps of nuts and bolts and screws, as if a wagon load had been tipped down at random. Then there were spiral coils of the most delicious lead and hempen packing, and farther back, at the end of the shop,stood a mail-clad army of stoves. Somehow or other, Egholm always found comfort in the sight of masses of cold metal. Possibly it drew off the warmth of his over-heated brain.
Rothe, the ironfounder, a giant of a man, stood on the steps calling to passers-by in greeting: “Goddag, goddag!”—the words seemed to echo in the shield-like cavity of his stomach. His great head shone as if it were of burnished copper. Now he caught sight of Egholm.
“Hey,goddag, goddag, Egholm! How’s the turbine getting on?”
Egholm walked in and spluttered out his latest ideas. Rothe laughed, and slapped him genially on the shoulder.
“Henrik Vang’s full of it. Talks of nothing else down at the hotel. But, look here—when are you going to get itdone? Egholm’s famous turbine....”
“Well, there’s one or two little things I still want,” said Egholm, walking round the shop and fingering the items that caught his attention.
“What sort of things?”
“A boat, for instance, and a small boiler.” Egholm mentioned these as carelessly as if it had been a matter of a couple of waistcoat buttons. “But”—he broke off suddenly—“what’s that thing there?” He dragged at something in the warehouse behind.
“That? Oh, that’s Dr. Hoff’s old bath oven. I’ve just sent him a new one.”
Egholm was still pulling the thing about, when Rothe, who was in his best lunch-time and Christmas-time mood, said:
“If it’s any good to you, bring round a barrow and take it along.”
Whereupon he slapped Egholm again on the shoulder, and took up his post again at the door, dealing out his double-barrelled greetings: “Goddag—goddag!”
Egholm was in high spirits for quite a time over his unexpected coup. Then, happening to catch sight of himself in a mirror-backed window, he started in horror to see what a ghastly figure he made.
Yellow and haggard, with his black beard hanging limp and dead over his worn and stained waistcoat. A disgusting sight.
Could it really be the Lord’s intention to starve him to death?
The thought almost brought him to his knees; he turned in through the churchyard gate, as to a refuge where he could recover himself. The naked branches of the mighty chestnuts sang in the wind, and great heavy drops fell like tears from the roof of the church.
The wind must have changed. It was thawing now.
Egholm noticed that he no longer felt the biting cold. Perhaps, after all, it was not so cruelly meant.
One end of the fire-ladder had fallen down. Egholm seated himself on it, with his back against the church wall. He was physically exhausted, and his brain had hardly rested for the past twenty-four hours.
It generally made him feel better to come in here for a while and look out over the landscape he loved.
There at his feet lay the Custom House, its acute-angled roof just on a level with the church foundations. Down in the office there sat Old Poulsen at one window and Wassermann himself at the other. Funny thing, really, that Poulsen should be called Old Poulsen, for the sake of the few grey hairs about his ears—he was an infant, really, compared with Wassermann.
How old could Wassermann be? Some said eighty-eight, but, looking at his mummy-face, one might feel more inclined to think he had stood as a man in the prime of life, wearing his gold-braided cap, what time Noah’s Ark had landed on Mount Ararat, and he had come to examine the ship’s papers.
Egholm gave a little grunt.
There was but a single vessel in the harbour—a schooner, laid up for the winter. Its masts looked thin and, as it were, leafless, with the sails and rigging taken down. The boys had built themselves a snow hut out on the ice under its bowsprit. The currentof the Belt was too strong just here for the ice to hold it altogether in check; a little farther north, there had been a battle between the two, and the ice had lost. Mighty sheets of it came floating down the channel; off the mole, they packed and closed in an angry whirl, setting their teeth in the piles, but were torn away ruthlessly and sent on southward again.
In the curve of the channel between the black woods, the ice-floes looked like a flock of white swans on a blue lake. The grey-green line of hills on the Jutland side looked far away in the misty air, though the distance was not so great but that one could count the windows of the ferry station over between the trees.
Egholm’s brain had rested for just the space of time it took to turn his head from right to left and back again. Now it began hammering again; he had caught sight of a certain green-painted dinghy down by the harbour, and that particular craft interested him more than all the other rowing boats in the world.
But—in Heaven’s name—how was he to gain possession?
He rose, and went down into the coal-cellar of the church, where he commenced to pray. His thoughts were confused with excitement, he did not understand his own words, and when he stood up again, the coals came rattling down with a soundas of scornful laughter. Could a man go to the devil and get hold of fiftykronerthat way?
Or, could not a man settle the business himself, by his own unaided power? Why this constant begging round?
Egholm walked out of the churchyard, talking to himself, and took the road to Kongeskoven—thus completing the whole circuit of the town and neighbourhood for that day.
All his inventions, were they of no more value when it came to the point than that he must die of hunger? Surely there should be some appreciation of them—at any rate, in higher quarters. He thought of some of the more important; not mere ideas he had busied himself with to pass the time, shaking them out of his sleeve like a conjurer, but those that were really worth something, say, a million.
As, for instance, the pair of frictionless wheels for railway carriages—that should have meant an income to the inventor out of every pair of wheels in all the world, if only God had lifted a little finger to help.
And then that preparation of his for turning yellow bricks red—a profit of severalkronerper thousand of bricks!
There was Egholm’s smoke-consumer, that would make the atmosphere of great cities as pure as the purest sea air.
There was ... but, no; it was enough. Thesethree supreme inventions of his were in themselves sufficient to condemn that God up there!
Plainly, God was not disposed to help: He kept down genius out of sheer envy.
Egholm walked into the woods, beating his breast and threatening high Heaven. Once he happened to strike himself on the mouth, and this set his thoughts off in an entirely new direction, where they tore away even more furiously, and flung themselves cascading into headlong depths.
The blow had reminded him of that last affair with Anna—yesterday morning, was it, or the day before?
“It’s a lie!” he hissed, kicking at a root. “A downright lie, fostered in a venomous woman’s brain. Her nose came on to bleed, that was all. Just an ordinary case of nose-bleeding, that happened to come on at the same time. But, of course, she made the most of it. I didn’t do anything worse than”—here he lashed out with his stick—“other days, but then she starts screaming hysterically, and there’s the blood trickling down through her fingers. Ugly—horrible....”
What was that?
Egholm came to a standstill in the middle of the path, and looked round with staring eyes.
What was this? Was he to be haunted now, in broad daylight? Surely it might at least have the decency to wait till night?
No; it was here. The same old story from his sleepless nights; the fights with Anna over again. Every word that had been spoken between them. And then, at the decisive moment—the loved and detested face of Clara Steen rising up to take the blows—Clara’s white fingers vainly trying to stop that crimson stream.... Clara’s eyes, looking at him....
“I must be ill, I think,” he murmured to himself. “And there’s a nasty pain here in the middle of my chest. Throbbing and throbbing like anything. Not quite in the middle, though—no, a little to the left.”
He burst out into a wild laugh and beat his forehead with the back of his hand.
Not so strange, after all, that it should be more to the left. The heart was on the left side. Ha ha! yes, he was a witty fellow, after all!
But the drama was still going on before his eyes. Oh, but he would not see it. No, no—not here in the daytime. For the love of God, let the curtain fall! Leave it till the night, when all sorts of things happened anyway, beyond understanding. Here, in the middle of the road, he could not go smashing pictures in broad daylight. It was too much to ask.
And—well, he was ready to admit, if that would help at all, that it wasn’t just ordinary nose-bleeding. No, Heaven help him, he had struck her with all hisforce right across nose and mouth. Well, then, now he had confessed. Wasn’t that enough?
Where was the sense of being an inventor and a natural healer, if he could not find a pain-killer for his own case?
Still, perhaps he might, after all. Suppose, now, he were to make one smart cut and tear that beating heart right out, all would be well.
Next moment he sawed the fancy across with a grin. Ugh! poetic nonsense!
No—but there was something else—something far better....
Here, close by, must be Fruedammen, the Lady Pool, where a noble dame had once disappeared in her bridal chariot with all eight horses. Surely it would make things easier to get down deep into that?
Aha! Good old inventor—never at a loss!
He hung his stick over his arm and folded his hands.
“Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for this once—for just this once.”
Some critical self within himself marked the words as lisping and ridiculous.
He ran at a stumbling trot along the ground over the serpentine contortions of the great beech roots. It could not be more than a minute’s walk to the pool. But there was no time to be lost.
Curious, by the way, that a man should for closeon fifty years have clung to life tooth and nail, and now, to-day, on Christmas Eve, be hurrying to get rid of it.
What would they say to it all at home?
Would Hedvig stand up straight and stiff and say, “A good thing, too”?
And Emanuel, the child of victory, what would be his future? Ah, well, there was little victory to be expected there, after all. No, that turbine was the true victory child.
Farewell, smooth round thing, that should have gone one day with a soft “dut-dut,” while all the world shouted hurrah and wept at the same moment.
Egholm found himself weeping at the thought, and his legs grew weak under him, but he kept up his pace, and took a last evasive mental farewell of Anna as he went.
Now, just across to the other side of the road—here it was.
There was a little low seat with many initials cut in. Egholm ran round it, swept past a thorn-bush, tearing his face against the branches, and stood breathing heavily on the brink of the bottomless pool in the forest.
A chill shudder passed through him. His head sank forward. A moment after he gave a queer little laugh, shrugged his shoulders, then staggered up to a tree and leaned against it.
On the farther side of the pool, a blackbird wasrustling in the leaves; now it flew off with a long whistling cry. It was a little past noon. Now and again a draggled ray of sunlight slipped through the covering of clouds, and the branches threw pale shadows in its gleam. Only a second they remained, then vanished again like spirits.
Egholm felt his knees sinking—he was deadly tired. Then, at the sound of a cart crushing through the wood far away, he drew himself up with a sigh and walked off among the trees.
The blood began pulsing in long swells through his veins, following on his excitement, but there was no pain anywhere now. He had a nice strong feeling of having been honest.
He murmured a few words of Sivert’s oracular speech that had stuck in his mind:
“It’s ever so hard to do a thing when it’s impossible.”
Suppose he tried laughing a little at the whole thing. He had hurried to the pool—and lo, the ice was Heaven knows how many inches thick. Of course, it was. Still, he had been honest—God was his witness to that. It must have been the open water of the Belt that made him forget.
It was evening before he found himself back, wiping his shoes carefully and gently in the passage. So unwontedly gentle was he, indeed, that Anna came out in a fright with the lamp to see who was there.
“Oh, heavens, is it you, Egholm? We’ve been almost out of our wits because you didn’t come back. Wherever have you been all day?”
She rubbed his wet things with a towel, and told of the joint of pork that had come from the Christmas Charity Committee, and the cakes that Hedvig had brought home.
She rubbed away, chattering all the time, mentioning casually what a blessing it was Sivert had got that place with the glazier’s—to have his own room and all. She stopped, astounded at her own boldness in daring to utter Sivert’s name.
But Egholm made no sound, and she went on, scraping the mud from his boots the while, to tell how she had just happened to think of Nøckel, the glazier, if he might happen to want a boy, and she had hardly got inside the door when they said yes, and were glad to have him.
“He can stay here this evening—if you like,” said his father.
Fru Egholm could hardly believe her ears, and Sivert, carefully hidden away in the pantry, fancied, too, that there must be something queer behind it all.
“Don’t somehow feel like being thrashed to-day, either,” he said, darkly reflecting.
So the Egholms had some sort of a Christmas, after all. The gentler feelings flourished in every heart. Egholm himself gave orders that Marinus from the carpenter’s shop should be sent for, havingfound him gazing longingly in through a window. On Christmas Eve, it was a duty to entertain the poor at one’s table, he said, if one wanted to feel any Christmas rejoicing oneself. His wife found this a very pretty sentiment, with the one reservation that the principle, to her mind, was followed out to an extreme degree in their case, since the five who were daily entertained at their board were undeniably poor themselves.
Later in the evening, she went to the window, and with a certain awkwardness brought over the champagne blossom and set it on a chair in the middle of the room with a candle in front. Anyone could see it was meant to be a Christmas tree, all ready decked. Marinus giggled at Sivert, but Hedvig rose of her own accord, stepped out into their midst like an actress, and sang till the windows rattled about sweet and joyous Christmastide.
“Now we ought to hand round the presents,” said Fru Egholm to Marinus, with a laugh.
Egholm joined absently in the laugh. He had a vague idea of having already received a Christmas present that was worth something.
He had been given back his life.
And that was, after all, a thing of some importance, if he was ever to get that turbine done.
After a cruel winter came the spring at last, offering gentle hands to all mankind. Folk might be seen walking in the streets, hat in hand, in gratitude and veneration towards the bright, happy face of the sun.
It was much the same with the flowers; they came forth in hosts from out of the earth,sawthe sun, and bowed.
The beech, knowing its flowers were nothing to speak of, put on its pale green silk first thing in the morning, and found no reason to be ashamed, but the apple tree surpassed them all; it had to put on its bridal dress with a blush.
Fru Egholm left the kitchen window open all day long. A branch from Andreasen’s espalier, an apple branch of all things, thrust itself up across the opening. It was almost her property, so to speak, that apple branch. She showed Emanuel how the bees came flying up, whispered something sweet into the ears of the little flower things, and were given honeyed kisses in return before flying off again.
Fru Egholm did more than that for her little boy; she got Hedvig to take him out every afternooninto the meadow near by. He came home with a chain of dandelion stalks round his neck, and one day he even had a dead butterfly in his clammy little fist. That day, he could hardly speak for the wonders he had seen.
Spring came to Egholm, too. He had got his boat—the very green one he had prayed for. Vang had procured it for him, by some means unknown.
“My dear fellow, my old and trusted friend, let me make you a present of it. Here you are, the boat is yours, presented by a circle of friends.”
And the pair overflowed in a transport of mutual affection.
The boiler was already in its place, and the funnel towered proudly above, painted a fine bold red. The screw stuck out behind, and could revolve when turned by hand. All looked well, so far.
But the turbine itself, the beating heart that was to make the thing alive, was not yet finished.
Krogh, the old blacksmith, worked away at it till his yellow drooping jaws shook. His tools were mediæval. What a machine drill could have managed in an afternoon, he took a week to do. Egholm turned up his eyes to heaven, when he saw how little had been done in twenty-four hours, but he said nothing. The fact was, that Krogh had one quality which rendered him more valuable than all other blacksmiths together: he was willing to work without seeing the money first. Moreover, his workwas good when itwasdone, and in spite of his sour looks, he took a real interest in the project.
Egholm was so kindly and easy to get on with all that spring that his wife was quite uneasy about him at times. All the hours he could spare from his studio—and they, alas, were not a few—he spent down on the beach, scraping and patching and painting his wonderful creation.
At home, he would sit dreaming in the arm-chair, so far removed from all reality that Emanuel might sing and prattle as much as he pleased without being stopped by a peremptory order from his father.
He was sitting thus one evening towards the end of May; both Emanuel and Hedvig were asleep. The day had been hot, and the heat still hung in the low-ceiled rooms. The children were tossing restlessly in their beds. If only one dared to open a window—but no; the night air was a thing to be careful about, while there were children in the place, thought Fru Egholm to herself. It was late, very late, but what did that matter, as long as there was oil enough in the lamp?
“Whatever are you sitting there thinking about?” she asked, when the silence had lasted an eternity. There was not the slightest danger now in such a piece of familiarity on her part. Not as he had been lately.
“Nothing,” said Egholm, drawing in his breathas if he had just emerged from the depths of the sea. “What’s that you’re fussing about now?”
“Wassermann’s wig. Look at it—it’s simply falling to pieces. But as for a new one—well, you should have seen his wife’s face when I spoke of it. And if it hadn’t been that there’s a chance they might take Hedvig as maid there, I’d never....”
“What d’you get for a bit of work like that?”
“Well, it ought to be akrone, but seventy-fiveøreI will have, and that’s the least. Though I don’t suppose she’ll offer me more than fifty, the stingy old wretch.”
Egholm sat silent a while, then involuntarily he lied a little. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “what I was thinking about. You know that verse from ‘Adam Homo’:
“‘What trouble’s worst? We’ve trials enough, Lord knowsIf I should ask, a score of voices swiftWould tell me wheretheyfound the “little rift”Each as experience led him to suppose.One says ’tis boredom, one, ’tis married life;Another finds it worsewithouta wife.One thinks remorsefully of sins committed,Another with regret of those omitted.One, of all pains we’ve suffered since the Fall,Will reckonMoney Troublesworst of all.’
“‘What trouble’s worst? We’ve trials enough, Lord knowsIf I should ask, a score of voices swiftWould tell me wheretheyfound the “little rift”Each as experience led him to suppose.One says ’tis boredom, one, ’tis married life;Another finds it worsewithouta wife.One thinks remorsefully of sins committed,Another with regret of those omitted.One, of all pains we’ve suffered since the Fall,Will reckonMoney Troublesworst of all.’
Yes, money troubles—that’s the worst. Paludan Müller, he knew. And he’s my favourite poet. He knew everything!”
And Egholm fell to talking pitifully of poverty,the nightmare that had its teeth in his throat, and could not be torn away.
“But there’s more comes after,” said Anna, when he paused. “Don’t you remember the next verse?”
“I know the whole thing off by heart. Anywhere you like to choose.”
“Well, then, you know that money troubles aren’t the worst in the world. It’s no good losing courage like that. And we’re getting on nicely now, really. Etatsraaden said about the rhubarb, we might....”
She put forth all her womanly arts to comfort him, but in vain. Still she kept on—and her voice was much the same as when she was soothing Emanuel.
Egholm let her go on; yes, they were getting on nicely now, he thought to himself, and smiled bitterly. Oh yes, nicely, magnificently!
The globe of the lamp was stuck together with strips of newspaper. Before the window hung a piece of faded green stuff in two tapes, drooping down to a slack fold in the middle. At the sides were ragged, dusty curtains, into which Anna had stuck some paper flowers.
On the walls were a couple of old engravings, an embroidered newspaper-holder of his wife’s, and a few fretwork brackets and photograph frames, these being Sivert’s work.
The big mirror, too, looked ridiculous, really, at that angle—it had to be slanted forward to an excessive degree, owing to the lowness of the room. Egholm could see himself in it, and the children’s bed as well. Emanuel lay on the settee, but Hedvig’s bed, in the little side room, consisted of three chairs. Her coverlet was his old uniform cloak, and the chairs rocked at every breath she drew.
Poverty in every corner. The very pattern of the wallpaper was formed of holes and patches of damp.
True, there were the two arm-chairs and the chest of drawers, but....
His wife was still talking away of all the good things they had to be thankful for. Of Hedvig, coming home regularly with her good wages, and the chance now of getting a place at tenkroner, at Wassermann’s. And then Sivert, still at the glazier’s this ever so long. Surely it was a mercy they could be proud of their children?
And soon Egholm himself would have finished that steamboat thing of his.... Fru Egholm threw out this last by some chance, having exhausted all other items that could reasonably be included.
Her husband started. It was what he had been thinking of all the evening himself. But, anxious not to betray the fact, he said only:
“Yes; if I’m lucky.”
But Anna saw through him all the same. Stupidof her not to have thought before of the one thing that was all the world to him.
“And why shouldn’t you be lucky, I should like to know? You haven’t lost faith in your own invention?”
“It’s a curious thing,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “One moment I believe in it, and the next I don’t. How is it possible that the trained experts with all modern equipment at their backs—and money, most of all—with nothing to worry about but their own calculations and plans—how could they have missed the solution of the problem when it seems to me as plain as the nose on your face?”
“Why, as to that, I don’t know, I’m sure. But that steam cart you made, you know, just before Hedvig was born, that didn’t work.”
“Oh, what’s that got to do with it?” said Egholm irritably.
His wife pointed warningly towards the sleeping children. “Sh!” she said. Then, noticing that the cloak had slipped down from Hedvig’s legs, she hastened to tuck it up again. Egholm calmed down.
“Don’t mix up a steam cart and a turbine,” he said when she re-entered the room. “I didn’t take any particular trouble over that steam cart—at any rate, not enough. After all, it was only construction work, that. But a turbine that canreverse—that’s an independent invention. I’d give my heart’s bloodto realise it. You know what a friction coupling is, I suppose?”
“Do you mean the thing with the two balls, that swing round and look like an umbrella?”
“Good heavens, no! You’re thinking of a centrifugal regulator valve.”
“Oh well, well, then....”
No, it was no use talking to her; she muddled up the simplest things imaginable. Egholm wrung his hands and was silent.
But a little after, he looked up brightly and suggested they should go and have a look at the machinery now, both together.
Anna shook her head. What an idea!
“Aren’t you a bit interested in my things?”
“Why, that you know I am, Egholm. But you wouldn’t ask me to go running out now in the middle of the night. Look, it’s half-past one!”
“But you say you never can go out in the daytime.”
This was true; Anna never set foot outside the door as long as it was light. Her dress had been ruined altogether this winter, from having to use it for Emanuel’s bedclothes at night. And what was the use of having rooms across a courtyard, when Andreasen’s workmen came running to the window every time they heard the door?
“But the lamp might upset, and the house burn down and the children in it.”
“Turn it out, then, of course. Don’t talk such a lot.”
Fru Egholm writhed; there was no persuading him any way once he had taken a thing into his head.
Hesitatingly she took out a white knitted kerchief from a drawer. She had almost forgotten what it was like to put on one’s things to go out....
It was moonlight outside; the shadow of the tall workshop roof lay coal-black over half the courtyard, leaving the remainder white as if it had been lime-washed.
Every step she took seemed new and strange. So softly their steps fell in the thick dust as they crossed the road.
Up in the old churchyard, every tree stood like a temple of perfume in the quiet, soft night. And all the time, she was marvelling that it reallywasmoonlight. She had not noticed it at home—doubtless because the lamp was burning.
The tears came into her eyes—just such a moonlight night it had been the time they....
And here she was walking with him, just as then.
Surely, it was enough to turn one’s head.
Here was Egholm actually taking her arm. Taking her arm!...
Great moths and small glided silently past; one of them vanished into the hedge as if by magic.
Bats showed up here and there against the palesky, flung about like leaves in the wind. From the meadow came a quivering chorus of a thousand frogs.
“It must be like this in Paradise,” she said faintly.
“Ah, wait till you can see the boat,” said her husband.
The dew on the thick grass down by the beach soaked through her boots and stockings. Moonlightandstockings wet with dew.... Oh, it was notjust likethat time now; itwasthat time ... that night at Aalborg, after the dance at the assembly rooms, where she had met the interesting young photographer—the pale one, as they called him—and let herself be tempted to go out for a walk in the woods after. And Thea, her sister, who was with them, had almost pinched her arm black and blue in her excitement. But it had to be; he was irresistible, with his foreign-looking appearance, his silver-mounted stick, and his smartly creaking calfskin boots.
He had not danced himself, by the way, but sat majestically apart drinking his tea.
But how he could talk! Until one hardly knew if it was real or all a dream....
It was light when she pulled off her soaking wet stockings and her sodden dancing shoes.
Yes, it must be some good angel that had put back the clock of time to-night. Here she was, walking in the woods of Aalborg with her lover.There was the fjord, and the moon drawing a silvery path right to her feet. Come, come!
She gazed with dimmed eyes towards the wondrous ball in the heavens, that called up tides in the seas and in hearts; she clung trustingly to her friend’s arm. And, glancing at him sideways, she saw that his eyes were looking out towards it too. Yes, their glances moved together, taking the same road out over the gliding waters of the Belt, in through a gate of clouds, to kneel at the full moon, that is the God of Fools.
A startled bird rose at their feet and flew, the air rushing audibly in its feathers.
“Listen—a lark! And singing now, though it’s night!”
“A lark!” Egholm took this, too, as an omen of good fortune for his turbine.
At the foot of the slope lay the boat, drawn up on land with props against the sides.
He explained it all, the parts that were there and the rest that should be added as soon as Krogh had got the turbine finished. He spoke eagerly and disconnectedly; none but an expert could have understood him. But Anna kept on saying:
“Yes, yes, I can understand that, of course. Ever so much better that way, yes. And how prettily it’s painted, the boiler there. I thought it would be just an old rusty stove. And the boat—why, it’s quite a ship in itself.”
“Beautiful little boat, isn’t it?” said Egholm, in high good humour now. “And I’ve caulked it all over. Take my word for it, the natives’ll stare a bit when the day comes, and they see it racing away. Let’s sit down and look at it a bit. Here, Anna, just here.”
They sat down, but it was wet in the tufty grass.
“We can climb up in the boat and sit there.”
Anna hesitated at first, but soon gave way. After all, everything was topsy-turvy already; she hardly knew if she were awake or dreaming. Egholm turned up an old bucket. “Here!” and he offered his hand like a polite cavalier and helped her up.
The summer night was all about them. The lapping of the waves sounded now near, now far; it was like delicate footsteps. For a little while neither spoke.
“But—you’re not crying, Anna, dear?” He had felt her shoulders quivering.
“We’ve been so far away from each other; strangers like,” she sniffed. And then she broke down completely. “Anna, dear,” he had said. “Far away from each other.... I don’t see how.... Seems to me we’ve been seeing each other all day the same as usual.”
“Oh, but—we haven’t talked together for an hour like we are now, not really, all the time we’ve been here.”
“Well, what should we talk about? You don’t generally take any interest in my things. And, besides, living as we do in a hell of poverty....”
“But that’s just the reason why we ought to have helped each other. It would have made everything easier if we had.”
“Well, I don’t know.... But, anyhow, there’s never been any difficulty on my part, I’m sure.” Egholm spoke throughout with the same slight touch of surprise. Really, she was getting too unreasonable.
There was nothing for it now—she must say it.
“You’ve struck me many a time in the two years we’ve been living here.” She stopped in fright at her own words, then hastened to add: “But I know you don’t mean any harm, of course.”
“Then why do you bother about it?” he said, in the same tone as before. But a moment later, before she could answer, he got up, reached out as if to swing himself out of the boat, then sat down again and shook his head.
“Struck you?” he said plaintively. “Have I really struck you?”
He did not expect an answer, but asked the same question again, all the same. He fumbled for her hand under her apron, and stroked it again and again.
“Have I really struck you?”
Then he drew back his hand again, and shook his head once more.
Anna was deeply moved. The single caress seemed to her like the sunlight and the scent of flowers that came in through the kitchen window in the morning, before the others were awake. Her heart swelled up within her, and her tears poured down as she put her arms round him and begged him to forget what she had said. She lost sight of the starting-point altogether, and behaved like a penitent sinner herself.
“Forgive me, do say you forgive me. Say you’ll forget it. Oh, don’t make me miserable now because it slipped out like that! You’re so good, so good....”
White banks of mist lay over the Belt, and away in the north-east the sun was already preparing to emerge after the brief night. The larks rose and fell, singing; the gulls called cheerily as they came tearing down after food.
Egholm turned round several times to look back at the boat as they walked home.
Quietly they stole into the house. Nothing had gone wrong in their absence.
Hedvig awoke, and stared stiffly at her parents; then she yawned and lay down again. Very soon the chairs were rocking under her again as they should.
Egholm began undressing at once; he lookedtired and peaceful. But his wife whispered to say she would be there directly; only a few more stitches to finish the work.
And as she sewed, she looked with a smile at the spots of red paint on her fingers. There, on the left hand, was one that looked just like a ring. That was where he had helped her up into the boat.
Who could sleep after a night like that?
Draper Lund and Barber Trane came walking together from the direction of the town. Reaching Egholm’s beach path, Lund broke off in the middle of a sentence, and said:
“Well, I think I’ll go down this way. Enjoy the view, you know. Good-bye!”
“Why, I was going down that way myself. It’s to-day that thing was to start, you know—the miracle man’s steamboat thing.”
“H’m. If it goes at all.” Lund straightened his glasses and shot an unexpected glance of considerable meaning at the other.
“No, no, of course. But it’s as well to know how it went off, you know, when customers come in and talk about it.”
“I don’t want to deliver any definite judgment,” said Lund delicately, as a very Professor of Drapery, “but there is something about the man that leads me to doubt. He talks so much.”
“Yes, and so mysterious about things. And conceited, too.”
“Which, with his dirty vest and frayed trousers....” added Lund in agreement.
“I suppose he’ll go sailing round with it to show it off?”
“I daresay he’ll take out a patent.”
“Those patent things are never any good,” said Trane energetically. He knew. He had a patent pipe at home, that was always sour.
Lund and Trane stopped in surprise when they came down to the beach and found how many others of the townsfolk had had the same idea of going down that way. Lund made as if to turn back, but realised that it was too late, and laughed with great heartiness. And those on the spot laughed again in perfect comprehension—they had felt exactly the same way themselves. One of them had made a long detour round by Etatsraaden’s garden, and others had done the same as Lund, walking smartly out as if going a long way, and then turning off suddenly, as if by the impulse of the moment, towards the beach.
Well,Herregud!here they were. And, anyhow, it was only reasonable to take what fun there might be going these sad times. There was not much in the way of amusement in the town.
Besides, it was pleasant enough, lying here in the soft dried seaweed and the warm tickling sand. The sun shone over the Belt and the green shores of Jutland beyond. They could, as Lund repeated again and again, enjoy the view.
He and Trane joined a group that had gatheredfor instruction in steam engines about the person of Lange, the schoolmaster.
“Then there’s a pipe goes here....” The schoolmaster pointed to a certain spot in the air and came to a standstill. He was very nervous without a blackboard and his handbook of physics to help him out. And now here were those two unpleasant characters, Lund and Trane, lounging up in the middle of the lesson.
“A pipe goes there ... and that leads to the cylinder here....” He raised his voice and pointed again.
Trane, anxious to see as much as possible, craned his neck to follow the direction of Lange’s index finger, but perceived, to his surprise, nothing more tangible than the driving clouds.
He shook his head. How could he tell his customers this? He gave it up, and lay down with the others to bask in the September sunshine.
Egholm’s boat lay some twenty yards out; the shallow water prevented it from coming closer in. It was white, with a brilliant red stripe along the side. Behind the red-leaded funnel, which was supported with stays, could be seen curious parts of bright metal. Egholm was on his knees, hat in hand, puffing at the furnace. The fuel, which consisted of half-rotten fragments of board, was not quite dry. Now and again he lifted his head and gave a brief glance towards land.
Astonishing, such a lot of people had turned up. He felt his responsibility towards them like a delicious ache at his heart.
Oh, it would turn out all right.
If only he had had someone to lend a hand. Even Sivert would have been better than nothing. Egholm looked across reproachfully at Krogh, the old blacksmith, who stood on the beach with his jaws drooping as ever. He had just come down with the last bits of the machine, but could not be persuaded to go on board. He dared not mix with the rest, even, for he was an accomplice in the thing, however much he might turn up his nose to show disapproval.
Well, well, he would have to manage alone.
What was that?—who were they lifting their hats to suddenly?
Heavens, if it wasn’t the editor himself! Egholm dropped a nut that slipped away between the bottom boards. Perhaps, after all, Anna had not been altogether lying when she said the editor had called him a genius. But he would not do discredit to the name—no, he would take care of that!
Trembling with emotion, Egholm watched the mighty personage striding through the groups. He always walked as if battling his way forward in the teeth of a gale. Even to-day, when the water was smooth as a mirror, his flowing cloak, his greyish-yellow military beard, even his bushy eyebrows,seemed to stand away from him as if borne on the wings of some private particular wind; possibly one he had brought home with him from the battlefields of ’64.
The onlookers leaped aside, like recruits, to make way for him. His presence brought sudden encouragement to the rest—something would surely come of it, after all. A good thing they had not stayed at home.
The editor stopped at the water’s edge, and hailed across, with a voice rent by the storm:
“Egholm! Can you get done by six, so that I can have a line in the paper?”
Egholm tried to rise, but slipped down again. He was rather cramped for room.
“I think so, yes, I think so!” He drew out his watch and looked at it. A quarter to nine it showed now—as it had done for heaven knows how long past. “I’ll do my best.”
The editor muttered something, balanced against a sudden gust, and marched off.
But there were plenty remaining. The slopes of the beach were alive and noisy as bird-cliffs in the nesting season.
How had all these people ever managed to find their way to the spot? Egholm had not drummed about any announcement as to time and place of his experiment. He had, indeed, grown rather more reticent of late. And old Krogh would hardly saymore than he need. How could it have come about?
The explanation was there in the flesh—with a shawl about her head and beautifully varnished clogs on her feet. The explanation was Madam Hermansen, who had the backstairs entry of every house in Knarreby. Whatever was thrown into her as into a sink at one place was gladly used to wash up the coffee cups in at another. She smelt a little of everything, like a sewer, and was as useful and as indispensable.
In addition to this comprehensive occupation for the public weal, she found time to cherish great amorous passions for all the big fat men in the town. She walked about, smiling and confident, from group to group, shaking her hips at every step, and sidling round people like a horse preparing to kick.
“That leg of yours still bad?” asked little Dr. Hoff.
“Yes, much the same.”
“H’m,” said Hoff, a little annoyed. “Mind you keep it clean. That’s the only thing to do.”
“I suppose it’s no use trying an earth cure?”
“Earth cure? What on earth’s that?”
“Why, it’s just an earth cure, that’s all. It was Egholm’s been plaguing me to try it. But he ... well, I’m not sure his intentions are really decent like and proper. I know how he’s been with me sometimes ... and his poor wife....”
“What’s he want you to do with the leg?” asked Hoff, his eyes glittering behind his glasses.
“Why, as sure as I’m alive, he wants me to bury it in the ground.” Madam Hermansen laughed alarmingly.
“Now, does he mean? While it’s on you, that is?” Hoff blinked again.
“Now, this moment, if he could get me to do it. And then sit there for a week, for the juices of the earth to work a cure, if you please.”
“Well, mind you don’t take root,” said Hoff. His face was immobile, save for his eyes.
“What? Yes, and then all the worms and rats and things.... But how he can talk, that Egholm. Never knew such a man.”
Wassermann from the Customs House came down too, his galoshes leaving a long dragging trail in the dry sand. Under the gold-braided cap his red wig stuck out, stiff as a tuft of hay. It was said he had inherited it from his father. Be that as it may, he certainly kept it in use, wore it at all times, and stayed religiously at home while it was being mended once a year by Fru Egholm. His features seemed erased, with the exception of his mouth, which appeared as a black cavity like a rat’s hole in a white-washed wall. He stood for some minutes gaping over towards Egholm’s boat, then he shambled on again. His moribund perceptions had had their touch of excitement, and that sufficed.
Henrik Vang had settled himself almost as in a cave, half-way up the slope between two willow bushes. Sivert, who had likewise succumbed to the prevalent fever, and run off from his glazier work in the middle of a day, had brought him down a whole case of beer. The boy had run so fast with the barrow that half the bottles were broken.
“No harm done as far as I’m concerned,” said Vang solemnly as a funeral oration. “But it is a pity to waste good beer.”
The onlookers of the better class came up to him one by one, to shake hands and dispose of a bottle of beer, as quietly as might be.
“Why the devil can’t you come over to the rest of us?” said Rothe, who was dressed in his best, having just come from a meeting of the town council.
“Not such a fool. This is not the only place where there’s any shade to cool the beer.” Vang pointed under one of the bushes. “Look there—might be in the garden of Eden.”
Henrik Vang himself was perspiring profusely, out of anxiety on his friend Egholm’s behalf.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Just look out there, and see it’s really true. There’s the boat—the steamer he’s invented. Now, if I live to be a hundred”—here he glanced darkly at Rothe—“if I lived to betwohundred, I could never invent a steamboat. Not me.”
“There’ve been steamboats before, I fancy,” said Rothe.
“Eh, what?” Vang looked up sharply, and was for a moment at a loss; then he laughed, and waved Rothe aside with his broad paw. “Oh yes, those great big unwieldy things, I know. Any fool can make a thing like that. But alittlesteamboat—that’s another thing!”
He caught sight of Sivert lying flat in the grass, dividing his attention equally between his father’s manœuvres with the machinery and Vang’s operations with the bottles.
“Come up here, boy!” cried Vang, and Sivert crawled nearer. He dared not let himself be seen, least of all by his father.
“How does he do it?” Vang looked sternly, but with unsteady gaze, at the boy. “You ought to know. How does your father manage it—inventing things and all that?”
“Like this!” said Sivert, without a moment’s hesitation, shaking his woolly head from side to side like a rattle.
“The devil he does!”
“But it was me that invented the big brass tap in the cellar, though. But then it was a very little one, really. I don’t think it was bigger than there to there,” said Sivert modestly, indicating a length of Vang’s leg from the ankle to the middle of the thigh. “Look how it’s puffing now!”
The smoke was pouring out violently from the funnel of the boat, drifting in towards the onlookers as a foretaste of what was to come. Egholm was working away feverishly. Now he was seen clambering barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to the knee, out past the engine to the bow; a moment later, he was back in the stern, leaning over with his sleeves in the water up to the elbows, turning at the screw, or baling out water as frantically as if in peril of shipwreck.
Folk whispered to one another; now he was doing so-and-so....
But—what was this? Here was Egholm’s girl Hedvig coming down, with the youngest child by the hand—what did she want? And wearing the famous button boots, too—the ones with ventilators in. Emanuel had one stocking hanging in rings about his ankle.
“What doyouwant?” Egholm’s nose was smeared with soot and oil, and his brow was puckered angrily.
“There’s a lady come to be taken.”
“Tell her to come again to-morrow.”
Egholm gave a single proud, firm glance towards the land. Then he bent down again over his spanner. The matter was decided. Hedvig tossed her head, fished up Emanuel out of the sand, and walked off.
What legs the girl had! But it was really indecentto go about like that, with her skirts cut short above the knee.
“Say your father’s busy—dreadfully busy about something just now.” Egholm consulted his dead watch once more. “Ask if she can’t wait, say, about an hour, and I’ll be there directly.”
“Very well.”
“Hedvig!” Egholm stood up and shouted. “Who was the lady?”
“A fine lady,” said Hedvig, angry and ashamed.
“Ask her to sit down,” said Egholm, his voice somewhat faint. “I’ll come directly.”
He thrust more fuel under the boiler, stepped over the side, and waded ashore, with his boots in his hand and his socks dangling out of his pockets.
“You’re a smart one!” said Rothe, playfully threatening.
“Very annoying,” said Egholm. “But I’ll be back in five minutes’ time.”
He thrust his bare feet into his boots and ran up towards home.
“We may as well go,” said Lange, the schoolmaster, looking round. “It won’t come to anything, after all.”
“I’m going out to have a look at the thing, anyhow,” said Rothe, and began pulling off his boots.
“I’m half a mind to myself,” said Dr. Hoff, tripping about.
“Give you a ride out, Doctor?” suggested Rothe.
Several of the onlookers laughed, but the little dark medico accepted the offer in all seriousness.
And suddenly quite a number decided to go out and look for themselves.
Trane, the barber, and schoolmaster Lange sat down back to back and began pulling off shoes and stockings. Lange put his hat over the foot he bared first.
“Ugh!” from one and then another as they dipped their feet. The water was cold.
“But surely—it looks like....” The Doctor stood in the boat, gazing nearsightedly at the engine. “Surely that’s the lid of my old bathroom stove—you remember I sent it back to you?”
“Why, so it is!” cried Rothe. “Oho, so that was what he wanted the old scrap-iron for.”
“Have you noticed the funnel?” said Lange.
All saw at once that the funnel was a milk-can with the button knocked out; the stays were made fast to the handles on either side. Lange laughed, with chattering teeth; it was abominably cold.
“It makes an excellent funnel, anyhow,” said the Doctor shortly.
“Suppose the thing started off with us now,” said Trane, measuring the distance to shore.
“We’d soon be at the bottom, in this rotten old hulk.” Lange pointed to the water slopping about over the bottom boards. He had in his mind appointed Dr. Hoff head of the class, and did not care to address himself to others.
“No doubt,” said Hoff sharply. “You’d have preferred him to start with mahogany and polished brass.”
Lange turned away angrily; it was distressing to have to set a mental black mark against the name of his most promising pupil. But impertinence....
“Still, a man need not be stingy all round,” said Trane. He was thinking of Egholm’s bald pate and untouched beard, that rendered him independent of all the barbers in the world.
“Here, Rothe,” said the Doctor. “Come and explain the thing. How’s it supposed to work? I’ve seen plans and drawings of that sort, of course, but I don’t mind admitting it’s altogether beyond me.”
“Oh,” said Rothe, shrugging his shoulders and puckering his brows with a careless air, “it’s not so easy to explain when you’re not in the business. But, roughly, it’s like this....” And he began setting forth briefly the principles of the turbine.
“And that, of course, can only go round one way. How he’s ever managed to get it to reverse, the Lord only knows. There’s nothing much to see from the outside.”
“Well, we shall hear this evening how it works.”
“Perhaps—perhaps not. I shouldn’t be too certain. There’s a heap of things to take into consideration, apart from what you might call the principle of the thing.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you wouldn’t see it, of course, but there’s a hundred odd things. That boiler there, for instance—can he get up a sufficient head of steam with that? I don’t believe it. A turbine wants any amount of steam to drive. If he got it fairly going, the thing’d simply burst. Hark! how it’s thumping away already. But there’s no danger as long as he’s only got that dolls’ house grate to heat it with. And as for the boat”—Rothe looked round to make sure that Lange was out of hearing; the others were limping back shiveringly to land—“the freckle-nosed birch-and-ruler merchant’s right enough; it’s simply falling to pieces as it is. Egholm, poor devil, he got some odd bits of tin from my place and patched up the worst parts, but the nails wouldn’t hold even then.—Coming off, Doctor? Here, get up again.—And the stuff he’s burning’s no better than hay. He’s been stoking away for a couple of hours now, and hasn’t got up steam yet.”
“What d’you reckon it would cost to make the experiment properly?” asked the Doctor, with his expressionless face, as they reached dry land again.
“Oh, any amount of money. Thousands ofkroner. It’s hopeless for a poor devil like him to try. But, of course, once he could get the thing to go once round and reverse, why,he’d be a millionaire!”
Rothe shouted out the last words to the whole assembly; then he hopped across to Henrik Vang’sbush. He pricked up his ears at the murmur that arose from his words.
Madam Hermansen had only just discovered Vang. Suddenly she stood at the foot of the slope and gave an amorous laugh.
Vang took the bottle from his lips in the middle of a draught, and the beer frothed over down his vest.
“Get out!” he cried, with horror in his face. “Get out!” And he threw the bottle at her.
Vang was a big man among his fellows; but under Madam Hermansen’s glance he felt himself naked and ashamed.
Madam Hermansen sidled away in her polished clogs, still smiling.
Egholm came back at a trot, pushing an old perambulator full of coals. He breathed in relief to find that the crowd was still there; it had, indeed, increased. The workmen from the factory had come down to the beach on their way home, and stood there now talking in bass voices, their eyes turning ridiculously in their black faces. The apprentice lads had come, too—unable to resist. They felt a kind of primitive, brutally affectionate attraction towards the boat, which for some unexplained reason they had christenedThe Long Dragon. It was just the right distance for a stone-throwing target, and gave a delightful metallic sound when hit. They had used it as a bathing-stationwhile the weather was still warm, undressing in it, diving in from it, and rocking it in the water till the waves washed up on the sand. They heaved up the anchoring stones, and sailed out with it, shouting and singing, into deep water, where they swam round it in flocks, like grampus about a whale. They turned the screw and made bonfires under the boiler. But they did more: they laid an oar across from gunwale to gunwale, and danced on it to see if it would break. And found it did. They threw the manometer into the water to see if it would float. And found it didn’t. A pale youngster, the son of Worms, the brewer, who was not a factory apprentice at all, but a fine gentleman in the uniform of the Academy, found a pot of paint under one of the seats, and promptly painted his name,Cornelius, in red on the side of the boat.
This was not done merely in jest, but by way of revenge for a nasty jagged cut he had sustained when making his first investigations.
Egholm waged a continual hopeless war against those boys. It was rarely that he encountered them himself, but he found their traces frequently. When he did happen to catch one, it always turned out to be an innocent, who did not even know the others of the band.
This evening, however, in the presence of so many respectable citizens, the boys stood with hunched-up shoulders and hands in their pockets, silent, or speaking only in whispers. Now and again they nudged one another, like owls on a beam in the church tower.
The fire was being fed properly now, with coal, sending out a cloud of smoke like a waving velvet banner. There was a rasp of filing and sharp strokes of a hammer; the sound of iron against iron. Then down came a compositor boy with the editor’s compliments, and....
“You can tell him I guarantee the machine will work all right. Iguaranteeit—you understand. And....”
“Then it hasn’t gone yet?”
“But you can see for yourself,” cried Egholm in despair; “the pressure’s there all right now.” And, to prove it, he sprang up and pulled at the little steam whistle. It gave a shriek as if to call for help—then died away.
“Hark at the cock-crow!” shouted Sivert, beside himself. “The world-famous cock crowing.”
“What’s that he’s shouting about?”
No one had understood the words. But they saw the boy dancing on the crest of a hill with his white curls whirling about his head, and the enthusiasm laid hold on them, too. They leaped up from their mounds of seaweed, and in the dusk it seemed to them as if the boat moved. There was a tickling in their throats. Vang was weeping copiously already.
“Give him a cheer,” said the doctor, moving from group to group. The doctor with his glasses was not to be contradicted.
They filled their lungs with air ready for a shout; then up came Petrea Bisserup, dragging her father along, and that air was expended in laughter.
Bisserup was a blind brushmaker, who lived in a little white house on the outskirts of the town. He was a little grey man, with a felt hat several sizes too large, and his face so covered with a fungus-growth of beard that only his nose showed through. His daughter, who led him, had a crooked neck, which bent over so far as to leave her head lying archly on one shoulder; she was a woman grown, but wore short skirts and cloth shoes. They were a remarkable pair, and in face of this counter-attraction, Egholm’s wonder-boat might have sailed away to Jutland without being noticed by the crowd.
“Ei, ei.... Anything hereabout for a blind man to see?”
The boys from the factory could contain themselves no longer; one of them barged another over against the old man, while the rest chuckled and cackled and quacked like a yard full of mixed poultry.
“Petrea—here, Petrea, what are you looking at?”
“Little devils!” said Trane, gloating over them all the same. Lund, the scientific draper, laughed too, but schoolmaster Lange, recollecting his lessons at the drawing school, shrank back a little.
Petrea strode untroubled through the crowd, her mouth hanging open, and the old man trailing behind at her skirts like some uncouth goblin child. His moleskin breeches were of enormous capacity; the seat hung down behind to his calves. When he stood still, the superfluous folds fluttered in the wind like a rag-and-patch tent at a fair.
“Is’t that way there, Petrea?” He pointed with his stick, and leant over, listening.
It was growing dusk. Folk were beginning to shiver a little in the evening air. And there was nothing amusing after all in the sight of these two poor vagrants. What was the time?
When Egholm opened the furnace door, the column of smoke shone like gold, and his face glowed fantastically big and red. Still a few more degrees were needed on the manometer—just a few. He stoked away, till the sparks flew like shooting stars across the sky. A fever seized him; he threw on coal with his bare hands, and found himself grasping with all ten fingers at a single lump.
Every second he glanced over at the shore, though it was impossible to distinguish anything clearly now.
Trembling, he heard a burst of laughter, that rolled like a wave along the line.
“Look straight ahead, Petrea, pretty Petrea, do!”
Heaven be thanked—they were not laughing athim, after all. If only the coals had been a little better. But it was dust and refuse, every handful.
“Is Dr. Hoff here?” someone cried.
“Who’s asking forme?”
“There’s a cart from the country.”
The doctor cast a final glance at the water, where the glow from the fire played like a shoal of red fish; then he walked away with little hurried steps.
“I’m off,” said Lange. “I don’t see what there is to stand about here for.”
What was there to stand about there for? No one could find any satisfactory answer.
It was dark and cold, and wife and supper were waiting at home.
The crowd broke up in little groups by common instinct. Lund and Trane went. The workmen from the factory went. All of them together.
Over between the two bushes Rothe was giving orders in a low voice. It was Henrik Vang being lifted on to a wheelbarrow. Sivert and his bosom friend, Ditlev Pløk, the cobbler’s boy, were hauling each at one leg. When they came up to the level road, Sivert left the work to Ditlev, and clambered up himself beside Vang. The boy was wild with delight, and bubbling over with laughter and snatches of song. Madam Hermansen hurried up after them.