“If only it don’t turn out one of them infernal machines like they use for the Czar,” said Peder Kvabs, spitting between his teeth. The others were roused at his words to some considerable emotion. They rubbed themselves against the wooden wall, spat, and worked their eyebrows up and down. One of them made strange sounds.
“Ah, well,” said Egholm, discomfited, “you wait and see.”
He walked a few paces, swinging his stick, then turned and called back to them:
“You wait and see when it comes! I’m getting the money now—three or four hundredkroner. From Odense. It’s money I was done out of under false pretences. And I’m going to have the law of them....”
The woollen jerseys seemed to betray a seething and bubbling within. The men could contain themselves no longer. Suddenly Peder Kvabs hoisted his slacks, and led the whole flock hastily into the nearestcafé. There was no need to ask should they go; all felt it was a simple necessity.
“Yes,” said Egholm to himself. “That’s what I’ll do. They couldn’t give it against me if I went to law.”
But he felt sorely in need of someone who would have faith in him, and he longed for Henrik Vang’s ever-ready admiration. Might just slip up to his room....
Fru Vang kept a quiet little boarding-house for a few old bachelors who had taken the best rooms of the house. She and Vang himself occupied separate attics.
Vang was in bed, with half an inch of reddish stubble on his chin, and the hair on his forehead clammy with feverish sweat.
“Why, what’s this?” cried Egholm, aghast. “Are you ill? And I’d never heard a word.... A great strong fellow like you! What’s the matter?”
“Sit down a minute,” said Vang faintly. “We can shift this here. Or give it to Diana ... there you are.”
He set a plate down on the floor, and wiped the seat of a chair with his bare arm.
“I’ve worked it out,” said Egholm, without preface. “The boiler must be vertical. With the first experimental boat, of course, it’s more than ever important to save space. Can’t make out why I didn’t hit on that before.”
There were half a score of other things he had “worked out.” Vang listened attentively, wrinkling up his forehead and gazing ceilingwards, as if something were passing far above his head.
Egholm felt comfortable now, and in a burst of geniality exclaimed:
“Here, Vang, you’d better let me have a look at you. I’m something of a doctor—natural healer, you know. I was patching up Madam Hermansen’s leg the other day. Have you seen a doctor at all? What did he say?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Vang, looking away.
“All the better; nothing to distract my instinctive powers. Where’s the pain?”
“Oh, you know all the time,” said Vang piteously,laying one hand on Egholm’s arm. “Don’t go teasing me now, there’s a good fellow.”
Egholm rose to his feet in surprise; his imagination was weaving intricate tangles in a moment.
“Is it—is it.... No, I’ve no idea—really, I haven’t.”
Vang pouted like a boy, and after a little hesitation explained that his wife had a habit now and again—more and more frequently of late—of taking away his trousers. He had been lying here now for four days, with no trousers to put on.
“Oh, don’t sit there grinning just like all the rest of them!”
“I’m not, indeed. So she takes away your trousers? First-rate idea, you know, really. She’s one of my sort. But, look here, you know, we must be able to borrow a pair from somewhere. I’ve only these myself, more’s the pity. But we might take it in turns....”
“There’s only one man in the place whose trousers fit me. And he won’t. Oh, the beast! I sent down to ask him. He knows very well what’s the trouble. It’s Rothe.”
There was a sound of short, rapid steps outside. Vang listened, waved one arm as if with a baton to bid the orchestra cease, and fell back, looking very ill indeed. There was a knock, and Fru Vang entered. She was a dark, thin, sour-looking woman with pale cheeks and a burnt fringe.
Vang sat up hastily and made the introduction with an ease of manner acquired from habitual attendance at ballrooms, then lay back and resumed his invalid air.
“I’ve sewed that button on,” said Fru Vang, laying something on the bed. “Don’t you think you might try to get up now?”
She tripped back and forth about her husband’s bed, settled his pillows, and pulled the sheet straight. Her skirts were shorter than was usual, and her patent shoes had pointed toes and very high heels.
The legs were undoubtedly the legs of a waitress, but the rest of her was unimpeachable. Save, perhaps, for the fringe.... Yes, the legs and the fringe....
Egholm left the pair to themselves and hurried home. He had gained something at least, in that his gloomy thoughts were dispersed for the time being. Again and again he stopped, shook his head, and snorted with laughter, at the recollection of huge Vang’s helpless expression.
After all, there was no sense in taking things too seriously. Most of life was only fooling at the best. He would write to the Brethren, yes; but he would not be a fool and insist on his rights; much better to go warily, and beg their assistance in his extremity. It was one of the rules of the community to help any brother in distress.
Fru Egholm had the pleasure of her husband’scompany till late that night. She looked to her work, and he sat there as in the old days, busy with pen and ink and quantities of paper. But he was not angry now; he hummed and chuckled in a self-satisfied way. At one o’clock he began to read his petition aloud.
The letter ought to be sent off at once, wherefore he started off himself to the railway station, and Fru Egholm was for once the first to retire. She was asleep when he returned, but woke shortly after, and was puzzled a good deal by a curious sniffling sound that seemed to come from his pillow. Then the bed shook, and all at once she realised that he was laughing!
Ah, well, those who laugh at night may come to weep by day, she thought to herself, with some irritation.
Egholm gabbled away for some time about the turbine, about his letter to the Brethren, and about Vang, the trouserless, and his wife.
His wife.... Ah, she was a devil! A cold air seemed to breathe from her—though she might well have exhaled overmuch warmth in earlier days. He remembered her mechanical smile and her soft, gentle ministrations about her husband’s bedside. False, false from top to toe.
One might almost be tempted to say that there was but one thing genuine about her—her false teeth! Egholm ducked down in bed again at the thought, his lips opening and closing stickily.
The Egholms managed to drag on into December without using their stove.
Fru Egholm pointed to the trees in Andreasen’s garden, showing how the leaves broke away in the frost, and slid drowning one by one down through the air, like naked yellowish bodies.
“Well, and what then?” asked her husband uncomprehendingly.
“Why, then—it’s winter, and time to be getting in fuel, unless you want to perish with cold.”
“Why, as for that,” said Egholm, leaning over the kitchen table to get a better view, “there’s one tree there that’s as green as ever. Look.”
“Green as ever it may be,” said his wife, “seeing it’s an evergreen. That’s holly.”
“Holly’s a sacred tree,” said Egholm, “and we should take it as a model.” It was not meant in jest. He really endeavoured to school himself to endurance. He left one button of his coat undone, and made long speeches about the unwarrantable luxury of having a fire in the stove. When you went about wrapped up in clothes, and even lived in a house, why....
Fru Egholm sighed. She made herself and Emanuel into bundles of clothes, and hoped for the best.
At first it really seemed as if Egholm had conquered the ancient prejudice in favour of warmth. He talked about pawning his overcoat, and went about rejoicing at his excellent health. He expected to feel even better as it grew colder, he said.
But cold was a strangely elusive enemy to fight against. Out in the open, in a gale of wind, where one might expect to find it at its worst, he could defeat it easily, and come home flushed and warm. Then, before he knew it, it had crushed and left him exhausted in his own comparatively sheltered room. His wrists grew thinner, and his fingers curled like the fingers of a corpse.
One evening he gave in completely. Now hewouldhave a fire, and that at once. And since there was nothing else in the place to burn, he cut up his wife’s chopping-boards, tore out the stuffing from an old straw mattress, and trampled Hedvig’s doll’s house flat. Fru Egholm made piteous protest, but Hedvig simply looked on with a curious smile. Next day Egholm himself was most eager to obtain credit at the coal merchant’s.
This, then, was the state of things in the house. They had no money, and very little credit; both difficult things to do without.
People seemed to have forgotten there was such a thing as having their photograph taken.
The Egholms felt it in various ways: food and clothing, for instance. Hedvig could manage all right as to food. She was always eating at the baker’s, and cakes dropped out of her clothes when she undressed at night; she brought them home for Emanuel. But even her existence was touched with the ugly grey brush of poverty. Her boots were a marvel; every schoolgirl in the town knew Hedvig’s boots. They had an extraordinary number of buttons up the side, with springs, and a sort of ventilation. They must have cost a great deal at one time. There were no soles to them now, but that did not matter, said her father—you don’t walk with your feet in the air! Hedvig admitted there was something in that, and comforted herself further with the thought that no one could see what her under things were like.
There was little gaiety about the Egholms’ life.
And yet there was one little being whose only longing day and night was to share their lot in every way. This was Sivert in his smithy.
The day his mother had got into the train and glided out into the morning mist, his organ of equilibrium had suffered a shock. One day he would fall, and fall, moreover, in the direction of Knarreby.
He had always been keenly attached to his mother, and, now that she was gone, his longing conjured up her picture into this or that piece of bright metal he held, or he would hear her voice in the blowing of the bellows. Then he would laugh and talk out loud, or stand up and swing his arms in a joyful embrace towards his beloved mother.
Whereupon his master would immediately land out at him from one side, and Olsen from the other, which was perhaps the reason why he retained the same degree of crookedness.
His mother had given him to understand that there would be occasional visits; either he should come to Knarreby, or she would come to him there, but there came nothing more than a letter once a month, and even these grew shorter and shorter. At last they contained hardly more than the advice to be a good boy and do what he was told, and not to forget his prayers.
Sivert read them with quivering mouth, and nodded; he would do as she said.
Then, further, the letter reported that they were all well at home. Sivert nodded at this likewise. But when he came to read the signature, “Your own loving mother,” the tears began to trickle down, and, a moment after, he was sobbing all over.
Each day was for the boy a ladder of a hundred toilsome steps, and the ladder led to nights spent with Olsen. It was getting on towards Christmas.Sivert realised it one day, as he came trotting along through the street with a load of iron rods.
In one of the shop windows stood a Christmas tree decked out with little baskets and paper horns and cottonwool on all the branches. There was a crowd of children in front of the window. Sivert made a sharp turn about, and stood there lost in admiration. Ho! That was a Christmas tree! He knew it!
He was not suffered to stand there very long, for his iron rods barred the whole footway. But for the rest of his journey back, he talked out loud to himself of the wonderful vision.
Itwasa Christmas tree. Then Christmas must be coming. It was put in the window as a sign that Christmas would soon be here.
Already there was a taste of sweets in his mouth, just as he remembered once before....
Then suddenly his mother’s letters, that he knew by heart, began talking too.
“All well at home!”
At home—yes, at home ... with Mother, they were all well.
An indomitable craving, and a resolution, ripened within him.
His craving was that he, too, would share in that “all well” at home. As to the resolution, he clenched his teeth upon it for the present, and his eyes stared fixedly. In the evening, when he hadseen Olsen go out, he stood with shaking hands up in their room, and collected his belongings. Yes, this was what he was going to do. He was going home. And never come back any more. So he must be careful not to forget a single thing.
There were his pictures all cut out, his letters and—under the mattress—that indispensable tie-pin given him by the Eriksens at his confirmation; he would find some use for it, no doubt, when he was older.
And that was all. But still he wandered about the room, looking into every corner.
In the washstand drawer was Olsen’s registration book—fancy Olsen’s leaving it there! Suppose a thief....
In a moment of confusion, Sivert’s hand dipped into the drawer, closed all five fingers on the book, and thrust it under his blouse, close against his trembling heart.
Then, overcome by dizziness, he stole on all fours down the stairs.
The shop windows were ablaze, and the streets full of people. It was all like some great festival, thought Sivert, as he trotted along in the gutter.
Suddenly it struck him that he might encounter Olsen.
Wasn’t that Olsen coming round the corner there? Sivert did not stay to make closer investigation, but raced off down the first turning. And there—Heaven preserve him!—was Olsen himself,coming out of a tavern not ten paces away. ItwasOlsen this time. Leaning up against the railing just as Olsen always did. Sivert turned round and fled, as if the lightnings of retribution were at his heels, dodging in a zigzag through a maze of intercrossing streets.
He came into quarters of the town where he had never been before, and met four more Olsens on his way. Once with a girl on his arm, once in the very gateway where he was hiding in fear of—yes, of that same Olsen.
At last he found the road he sought—the road to Knarreby. The distance between the houses increased, and the gale rose to a hurricane. It was full in his face now, and beating against his cheeks with a torrent of sand and stones, but he bent forward and drew his cap down over his eyes, sighting at the next lamp-post through the split between the peak and the cloth top, and keeping his hands behind his back.
Yes, he would manage it now!
Then suddenly there were no more lamp-posts to go by. The last one shed its gleam a few yards round, a solitary figure of a lamp, the extreme outpost, rattling its glass with a noise as of chattering teeth in the cold, and its flame hopping from the wick at every gust. Sivert set his back against it—he dared not give himself up entirely to the gaping jaws of the black dark ahead.
He knew the place well, by the way; he had stood here many a Sunday afternoon, staring out towards Knarreby. The tears welled up chokingly within him now.
A little later, there came a man with a pole. He growled out something or other, but Sivert drew away shyly out of the ring of light.
Well, well, the man put out the lamp, and turned in towards the town again, leaving darkness behind him as he went.
Sivert stole on behind him, sobbing. The putting out of the lamps entered into his consciousness as a picture of his own desolation.
Late that night he squeezed himself up in the doorway of the old home in Nedergade, where he had not been since his mother left.
The gloomy place had something of homeliness about it; almost instinctively he stole in through the door to the washing cellar. There were tubs lying about, full of washing left to soak.
He stumbled in amongst them, and took a drink of water from the tap, not so much from thirst, but more from a fancy to use his familiar knowledge of the place. Then he recollected that it made a buzzing sound in the tenements upstairs when that tap was turned on, and he hurried away to the passage between the coal cellars. Egholms’ cellar used to be the fifth. Could he manage now to tear open the padlock with a smart twist? Wonderful—it was aseasy as ever! That showed that God was with him after all. Full of thankfulness, Sivert slipped into the narrow space, and tried to concentrate his mind on the Lord’s Prayer, but fell asleep despite his efforts, and did not wake until the pale light of morning came filtering in to him through the cobwebbed windows. His back was like a boil from the knobs and points of the firewood he had been lying on.
Out in the washing cellars someone was rattling tubs and buckets, and the water was running.
Sivert pressed himself closer up in a corner. He stood there a long time, till his sense was dulled. There was a bottle in the window, that looked as if it had been used for oil. A cork was stuck half-way down the neck. And from among the broken lumps of peat and turf on the floor a lump of old iron pipe was sticking out.
Sivert looked at the two things—first one, then the other, a hundred times. Bottle—iron pipe—iron pipe—bottle. He thrust out his wooden shoe and kicked at the pipe to make a change. There was a brass tap on it. It emerged from the litter on the floor like a revelation.
“Father’s big tap,” he burst out in wondering recognition. They must have forgotten it. No, not forgotten; it had been left here for him to take with him.
Half an hour later he was clattering along at a sharp trot out of the town, with the tap under his coat.
The poplars stood in two endless rows with their leafless branches pointing stiffly heavenwards. Only one thing to do now—get along as fast as he could. His heart might hop and thump as it pleased, like a dry nut in its shell; he had no use for that now—only for his legs.
Villages showed up ahead of him and faded away behind, all nothing to do with him. It did not enter his head to ask for food anywhere, or even to rest. Only go on, on, along the road, past ditches where the snow lay streaked with wind-borne dust, and tufts of withered grass above; past flattened heaps of road-metal that lay like so many nameless graves. Trotting or dragging his feet, he went on past buzzing telegraph poles, passing or following heavy-laden milk-carts or solitary peasants with kerchiefs bound over their ears as a protection from the biting cold.
He spoke to no one until evening was drawing on; then, an old woman told him there was but another mile to Knarreby.
This came to him as something of a shock; he felt there ought to be, say, four or six miles more yet.
He slackened his pace, and at the same time his mind began working again.
All the way till now, through those twenty-four icy miles, he had had a feeling that he was running straight into his mother’s welcoming arms. Nowthe picture changed incomprehensibly. Her open arms were turned to clenched fists, and her gentle eyes gave place to his father’s glaring fiery orbs. After all, perhaps it was not so simple a matter to run away from one’s place and go home!
Thrashings, even kicks, he knew, but how should he ever be able to bear his father’s thundering voice when he was angry? Sivert remembered how he had once himself offered his father a brass ladle to beat him with, just to get it over. His father had taken it—yes—and there were dints in it still. Oh, his father’s voice was the most terrible thing in the world. It was not thick like Olsen’s, or whinnying like the smith’s, but a sort of voice that made one feel stiff all over.
By the time he reached Knarreby Mill it was pitch dark. The high invisible sails flung rattling round past a little red window far above. A little later, and the town itself blinked out to meet him, but it was some time before he managed, with the help of a lad of his own age, to find the way in through Andreasen’s yard, and stood, with beating heart, looking in at the light behind the familiar green curtains. Someone was standing outside the window, looking in from one side where the curtain was folded. Someone in a blue blouse, only a little bigger than Sivert himself. He did not look so very dangerous.... When Sivert crept nearer, the other started, as if to run away, but judging Sivert to be equally harmless,he thought better of it, and soon the two had come to a whispered understanding.
The figure in the blue blouse was called Marinus. Yes, and Sivert could stand there by the other window, if he liked, and look in, if he kept quite still.
Inside, was Mother—yes, his mother—sitting over her work, making up hair. Her practised fingers took up the piece, plaited it into the three strands, thrust it into place, and then, wetting her fingers, she reached for another. She nodded now and then as she worked. And the lamp was reflected upside down in her spectacles.
Sivert began sniffing and swallowing something in his throat. Then he tore himself away from that picture, and perceived his father sitting in a big arm-chair, his fingers twined into his beard, reading the Bible. Now he turned a page; now he lifted his eyes from the book and fixed something or other in space, nailing it, as it were, to the ceiling with his glance.
On the settee in the room behind, the light from the lamp shone on Emanuel’s fair round head, and by the door sat Hedvig, undressed, combing her hair. She had drawn one leg up under her, and leaned back dreamily. A feeling of envy stole over Sivert at sight of those legs, so thick and overfed they seemed, both here and there. And both legs, too—oh, it was not fair.
Truly, all well at home.
His father was speaking. Hedvig answered, but with lips tight and straight as a line, though her nose moved.
“Won’t?” cried her father. “You disobedient little devil! To bed with you this instant!”
He slapped down the Bible on the table and shook his hand in the air.
“That’s Father’s voice; I know it. I know it’s the right one,” muttered Sivert. His legs carried him staggering out through the gateway again, and Marinus turned and watched him as he went.
After much aimless wandering, Sivert found his way at last into the waiting-room of the railway station. It was naturally his last resource, being the only place that showed a light still burning.
His wooden shoes echoed in the empty room, but no one came to turn him out. He slept close to a lovely warm stove, and heard trains rushing past, doors opening and slamming through his sleep; not till next morning did anyone disturb him, and then it was an old peasant who slipped the boy’s feet down to make room for himself on the bench. There were a number of other people about.
One or two men in heavy travelling cloaks walked up and down, rubbing their hands for warmth. A waitress with beautiful frills at her throat had appeared; she took down the shutters from the buffetand set out dishes of refreshments. A little later came the popping of corks.
Vehicles rolled up outside; and drivers with silver-tasseled hats came in and hung over the bar. They talked with noisy humour of the waitress, who, they declared, looked as if she had not slept well that night. The lady in question, however, merely raised her eyebrows to show that she had not even heard what they said. Now and again she scratched her hair with the least little touch of one fourth finger. Sivert understood this as evidence that so elegant a being had little need to scratch at all.
Altogether, it was a morning rich in experience for Sivert. When the trains and the passengers had gone, the head-scratching waitress sat down to further cups of coffee. Sivert shifted a little closer, and saw how deliciously ready to hand were the dishes ofsmørrebrød,[4]whereat his mouth watered quite literally, down his blouse.
“Are you going by train?”
“No,” said Sivert, dismayed at being noticed. Doubtless he would be turned out at once.
“What are you doing, then?” said the waitress after a pause. She was taking her hair down, and undoing the plaits.
What was he doing? Heaven only knew!
“Taking home the big tap. For Father,” he stammered.
The lady laughed—it sounded like a scream. A moment after she was serious again, but anyhow, shehadlaughed. She was sitting now, bending forward, combing her back hair upward and forward in little jerks, and observing the effect in a little round mirror with an advertisement on the back. She laughed, though it evidently hurt badly when the comb stuck.
A lovely creature, was that waitress.
“And who’s your father?”
“Egholm. I saw him eat one of those once. Just like that.” Sivert nodded sideways towards the dish.
“One of what?”
“One of those!” said Sivert, springing up to the counter and pointing to a piece with slices of sausage. “This one’s bigger, though, I’m sure.”
Sivert could not say more; he stammered and hiccuped in a delirium of hunger.
The waitress was combing back again now, till the comb fairly crackled; she spread out her chest mightily, and shook her mane of hair.
“You can have that piece, if you like,” she said, with her mouth full of hairpins. And added mysteriously: “Serve her right, too.”
Three further pieces were granted Sivert on the same grounds, of serving somebody right. He laughed and cried and stuffed his mouth all at the same time.
“You’re a funny sort of deaf-and-dumb lad, you are. What’s your name?”
“Well, I’m mostly Olsen, really,” said Sivert, fumbling at the place where the precious book was hidden. “But I’m not all deaf and dumb. Not quite....”
“Well, I said you were half a lunatic.”
“... Or I couldn’t sing, you know.”
“Let’s hear you sing.” The barmaiden surveyed her work of art in its entirety, until it seemed as if her eyes would turn back to front in their sockets.
“Well, I can, you know....” said Sivert hesitatingly.
The barmaid pointed to another piece—cheese it was this time—with her little finger. Sivert pounced on it at once.
Then he wiped his mouth, wrinkled up his forehead thoughtfully, and rattled off at a furious rate:
“The pretty bird upon the tree its merry notes doth sing....”
“The pretty bird upon the tree its merry notes doth sing....”
and all the rest of that verse. It sounded like an Eskimo letting off a single word of a hundred syllables or so.
“That wasn’t singing, not yet; I was just trying if I knew all the words,” explained Sivert apologetically, and proceeded to repeat the words “with music.”
A porter and one or two others came up, andgrouped themselves in an attentive half-circle about the singing mannikin.
Sivert sang all thesmørrebrødoff one dish, and then went out with the porter to a little room where they cleaned the lamps, and here he talked of many remarkable things, helping to clean lamps the while. At last he brought out his brass tap, and polished that up till it shone. Then suddenly he stole off unobserved.
Down the street and across Andreasen’s yard, walking awkwardly and shuffling like an epileptic, his mouth running over all the time with prayers and verses of hymns.
In the little entry he stood still and laid one ear to the crack of the door, listening breathlessly.
Yes, there was Emanuel prattling away, and his mother answering with a few low words.
Was it to be his luck to find them alone? He listened again, with his head on one side, and heard now another sound—a long-drawn, sucking sound, almost like a snore, and then the rattle of a cup, repeated at regular intervals. Ah ... now he knew who was there besides!
Sivert knelt down where he stood, with his face against the door and his hands folded piously. He had knelt that way once before, when he had happened to upset a lamp. So, too, Knud, the Martyr-King, had knelt waiting for death. It was the properthing on such occasions, and no doubt looked well. But was his hair all right?
He drew forth the brass tap, and tried to make out his own reflection swimming unsteadily in the polished metal.
Perhaps he had spoken aloud. For suddenly his father appeared in the open door. The first astonishment in his face changed to inflamed fury, and he swung back his boot ready for a blow.
Sivert, terrified, held up the brass tap like a crucifix above his head, as if to guard.
His thoughts were scattered in flight like sparrows at a shot, but some instinct came to his aid, and he cried out in his cracked voice, echoing through the house:
“Oh, Lord my God, I’ve brought your brass tap.”
Sivert’s ideas as to his father on earth and his Father in heaven had always been somewhat vague; now, they seemed fused into one.
The effect of his words was beyond comprehension. The threatened kick did not fall; his father snatched up the tap instead, and said:
“Wherever did you find it? I’ve been wanting it all the time.”
“In the cellar,” said Sivert. “But it wasn’t me that didn’t bring it along.”
And with an idiot laugh he collapsed in his mother’s arms.
Egholm stood by the window overlooking the yard. He blew through the tap, and turned it lovingly in his fingers. A great ship came throbbing towards him and took him on board. And he mounted up, high, high, up to the bridge.
“Full speed ahead! Stand by! Full speed astern!”
And the ship went astern till Captain Egholm felt the tears welling into his eyes with delight. A little after, he went to the kitchen door.
“Sivert!”
A timorous “Yes” came from within.
“Did you really think I was God Himself?”
Sivert nodded.
His father turned on his heel and said calmly:
“Then you were wrong, boy, because I’m not.”
Egholm went up to the station in a great state of excitement every time a train was due from Odense. There had come a wondrous letter in a blue envelope from the Brethren there—a document to the effect that the community had voted him a gift of money. It would be delivered in person within a few days, by Evangelist Karlsen.
The letter lay on the floor, as if deposited by mysterious means from above. And certainly no one had heard the postman come.
Egholm gave thanks to God. That was a thing which should be done to the full, and preferably a little before the fulfilment of his prayer.
For the first few days he talked a great deal about the practice he had gradually acquired in the art of prayer. But as Karlsen still failed to appear, he grew silent, and began going up to meet the trains. And then at last, on the eighth day, just as he came home tired and discouraged from the station, there sat the Evangelist himself in the parlour.
He, too, looked as if some angel had brought him on wings through the air, though, as a matter of fact,this was not the case. He explained himself that he had come by train from Jutland.
Egholm forgot to take off his coat; he sat down opposite his ancient enemy, lacking words with which to begin. And, truth to tell, he was humiliated and abashed after all at having to accept a gift, in view of what had passed. What made things worse was that the Evangelist was grown so surpassingly elegant in his dress. No more butcher-boots—nothing like it. Striped trousers he wore, and a smart-looking collar and cuffs. True, the last were of indiarubber, but still.... His moustache was simply beyond description, and the blue-black wether-eyes glittered like globes of lightning. Under his chair was a handbag, undeniably new, but, of course, ... no, of course, it couldn’t be the money in that.
Karlsen looked round the room, and thrust his shoulders back, as if preparing to speak, but still he did not seem to find the suitable “word.”
What was he to say? As for the gift, that could wait a little. A sermon would hardly do either, though he was known to be a first-rate hand at that. Suppose he were to launch out with a suitable text? Yes, that would be the thing!
Karlsen went about, so to speak, with his pockets full of texts, which he used, now to smite the head of an unruly disciple, now to scatter like golden largesse among the poor. He had, too, long extracts from Revelations, which could be flung like lassosto entangle the ungodly, cooling draughts from the Sermon on the Mount, and blood and fire from the Mosaic portions of the Old Testament. But it always took a certain degree of opposition before he could be brought to use them.
Egholm asked in a very general way how the Brotherhood was getting on.
“First-rate,” said Karlsen, with an absent yawn—“first-rate,” and relapsed into silence.
Egholm could not keep away from the scene of the crime. He stammered out:
“Karlsen, you mustn’t regard my attack—my somewhat over-zealous attack, perhaps—that evening, you know, as—as evidence of enmity towards the Brethren. Not in the least. There was much in the Brotherhood that I greatly appreciated. A certain simplicity.... No; if hard words were said, they were due to a momentary indignation over the refusal to give me a plain, straightforward answer to my definite question, regarding that text in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which—at any rate to my humble mind—expressly annuls all giving of tithes.”
Karlsen gloated awhile over Egholm’s downcast eyes and the tip of his tongue creeping over dry lips. He wrinkled up his forehead deeply, and said, with that crafty, ingratiating smile that was so thoroughly his own:
“An answer, my dear friends—why, of course.Nothing easier. You shall have it to-day. I’ve a big fat book here in my bag; you can read it there to your heart’s content....”
“A book?...”
“Yes. Half a minute, I’ll show you. Sixkroner’sthe price of it, but there’s edifying reading for more than twice the money. Guaranteed. A big fat book, bound cloth boards. Let me show you.”
“No, no. I’ll take your word for it. No doubt it’s excellent. But ... er ... well....”
It would be sheer madness to offend Karlsen now, and send him away with the three or four hundredkroner, but still, there was no sense in spending the sixkronerif it could be helped. Egholm knew the book well enough himself—a rambling translation from the English.
“But ... er ... well, you know, there was nothing said about that on the night. If only they’d given me an answer in some way or other, I’m sure I’d never have resigned from the Brotherhood at all.”
“You never did resign from the Brotherhood!”
“Well, no, not resigned exactly ... that is to say....”
Egholm sat crushed and despairing in the arm-chair, letting Karlsen do with him as he pleased.
“No, my dear good man, what possessed you to say so? If you weren’t a disciple still, of course weshouldn’t have troubled to help you. Nothing to do with us, you understand. As it is, why, we hung up a box for you at the meeting.”
Egholm sighed inaudibly, and inwardly reduced his claim to half. So they had hung up a collecting box for him. Well, well. He knew those boxes. There were a number of them—hung along the wall like a row of young birds with hungrily gaping mouths. He remembered how the Evangelist used to draw attention to them discreetly before closing the proceedings for each evening—quite unnecessarily, by the way, seeing that Karlsen senior, the Angel of the flock, stood with hand outstretched in farewell, just where the boxes began.
“And now, my dear friends, we have heard the Word, for our souls’ good, and that we can take with us in our hearts. And, in return, let us not forget to put something in the boxes. No one calls upon you to give much. When each gives what he can, it is enough. The first is for the hall, that we may have a place to meet in; the second is for light and firing—neither of these can be got for nothing, my dear friends—and the third is for myself—I need hardly remind you, my dear friends, that I cannot live on air. The fourth is for members of the Brotherhood in distress, and the fifth towards the purchase of a library. Put a little in each, and your conscience will be at ease!”
On tithe nights the boxes were not in evidence.
Egholm remembered that according to an unwritten law it was permissible to pass by the boxes for Brethren in distress and for the library. How would it have been with the sixth in the row, hung up for Egholm in the throes of poverty?
“Did any of them give anything?” he asked humbly.
“Oh, it brought in quite a lot,” said Karlsen comfortingly. “Quite a decent little sum. You see”—he leaned forward confidentially and plucked at Egholm’s coat collar, almost stupefying him with his tobacco-laden breath—“I got the old man to stand beside it!”
He gave Egholm a friendly shake, and laughed in a spluttering shower.
“But there’s one condition. I may as well tell you that first as last. The condition of your receiving this gift is, that your wife becomes a member of the Brotherhood. Both of you, you understand—or no gift! For it’s her fault we’ve had all this bother about you. Yes, I’ve found that out. She’s from Aalborg. I know those obstinate Jutland folk!”
“My wife!” cried Egholm. New difficulties towered before him at the idea, but, at the same time, the value of the gift seemed to increase. He sprang to his feet, and ran to the kitchen door.
“Well, there you are. Now you can talk it over with her,” said Karlsen, with a laugh, leaning his head back and showing the scar of his “glands” andhis ill-shaven throat. “But, look here, tell her at the same time I’m staying till the eight o’clock train, so you’ll have to find me a bite of something to eat. You know what it says about us Evangelists: we’re to have neither scrip nor staff, but take that which is set before us.”
Fru Egholm was busy plaiting hair at the kitchen table. Her husband could see from the way she tugged at her work that she had followed the conversation in the next room.
“Never as long as I live,” she said firmly.
A catastrophe seemed imminent, but Egholm was so destitute of physical or moral force at the moment that he contented himself with a threatening gesture.
“And as for supper,” she went on, “wild horses wouldn’t give us more than we’ve got, and that’s no more than bread and dripping and a rind of cheese.”
“Nothing hot—not even a cup of tea?”
“Only the clove.”
“Onlythe clove! As if that wasn’t good enough.”
Clove tea was one of Egholm’s minor inventions. One day when the tea and coffee canisters were as empty as his empty purse, he had manufactured an aromatic beverage from cloves and hot water. He himself drank it thereafter in quantities and with relish, and Sivert was for a time in his good books merely on account of the audible “Aaah!” whichhe gave when it was poured out. Fru Egholm, too, conceded that it was certainly cheap—a packet of cloves costing twoøresufficed for a whole month. But Hedvig would not touch it.
“Good enough for that young humbug, yes.”
Once more Egholm felt his hands itching with murderous instincts, but when the tension was at its height, a spark flew over to some nerve of humour. He bent down almost double, put one hand to his mouth like a funnel, and whispered in his wife’s ear:
“Sh! Remember, his father’s an Angel!”
The Evangelist closed his puffy eyes reflectively for a moment when Egholm returned and stated what was the menu for the day.
“H’m. I’ll stay, all the same,” he said. And added a moment after: “If there’s eggs, I like them hard boiled.”
“Hard boiled—yes, yes,” said Egholm, precisely in the manner of a waiter, and disappeared into the kitchen once more.
“I never heard the like—that rascally scamp ... thinks we can dig up eggs out of the ground—and that in December! Why, only to ask at the grocer’s they’d think we were mad. Eggs, indeed!Eggs—on credit!No, as long as we can get what’s barely needful. Why....”
But Egholm, with great ends in view, wasted little time in talk. He went out himself, and returnedfive minutes later with a bag of eggs and a lump of sausage, which he set down triumphantly on the kitchen table. Thus supper was provided of a kind to exceed Karlsen’s expectations, and set him in good humour.
Both laughed, Karlsen, however, the louder, when the host’s egg was found to be bad. As for the clove tea, Karlsen, like Hedvig, did not find it to his taste. He explained that he liked something with a little more colour, his taste and smell having suffered through smoking.
Then, at a suitable moment, Egholm said:
“My wife says she won’t come into the Brotherhood at any price—not just at the moment, that is to say. But perhaps later, I’ve no doubt ... that is to say....”
And he waited for the answer with the sweat standing out on his forehead.
“Oh, well, never mind. Hang the condition. We’ll leave it out.”
Egholm could have knelt at his feet.
Karlsen went on to tell of the Brotherhood and its doings. Everything was going on first-rate. Fru Westergaard had got dropsy, and there was every likelihood—here Karlsen clicked his tongue in anticipation—every likelihood of her bequeathing them a whole heap of money. The Angel went to see her practically every day, and, in case of need, the Prophet from Copenhagen would come too.
“Father’s in touch with a heap of them, you know. By letter. He got a letter the other day from John the Apostle. He’s in London.”
“John the Apostle? You don’t mean.... Is that....”
“Exactly. He lives in London. Don’t you know it’s written: ‘If he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ Yes, he’ll be here all right, up to the day of the coming again. Father’s got his address, but he keeps himself quiet, you understand, mostly. And Father doesn’t say where he is, but I managed to get hold of it, all the same. I sent him a picture post card from Veile only yesterday.”
Egholm ran in to borrow a pipe from Marinus. On the way he whispered to his wife:
“He’s the biggest liar on earth. But if only he’d hand over that money.... I can’t stand the suspense. Put in a prayer meanwhile.”
The Evangelist puffed great clouds, and delivered another turn or so.
“I’ve something to tell you, my dear friend—in confidence, that is.The Star of Bethlehem’s been seen!”
He bent over Egholm and stared full into his eyes.
“Yes, the Star of Bethlehem—right over Odense, it was.”
And he puffed a spurt of smoke into Egholm’s face, his own contracting into an unconcealed grin.
“My father, the Angel, was standing in his office, and he saw it. It isn’t everyone that can see it, you know. But I could. It was the hugest star I’ve ever seen.”
Egholm condescended to shake his head as if deeply impressed. For the rest, his every nerve-cell was concentrating in an effort to hypnotise Karlsen’s hand into Karlsen’s pocket for that bundle of notes.
At eleven minutes past seven the Evangelist laid down his pipe and buttoned his coat.
“The money! Er—you’ll excuse me, but—you’re not forgetting ... that gift.... No hurry, of course, not in the least....”
“You shall have it. I’m not forgetting it, no,” said Karlsen, with unction. “It’s not a great sum, but with the blessing of the Lord it may go a long way.”
He drew out a leather purse with a string from his pocket, unfastened the lace with exasperating care, and flung out a hand with a two-kronerpiece.
“Twokroner! Is that—the gift? Karlsen, you don’t mean it!” said Egholm, weeping.
“Onedaler, yes,” said Karlsen, laughing heartily. But his expression changed suddenly, possibly influenced by Egholm’s threatening look, and, resuming his dignified manner, he went on:
“The gift was originally forty-twokroneraltogether, that being the sum found when the box wasopened. Fru Westergaard gave thirty-five herself. You were in her good books, my friend.”
Karlsen allowed himself a momentary lapse from dignity to the extent of a single wink.
“The rocking-chair,” murmured Egholm reminiscently.
“But,” went on the Evangelist, “you owed arrears of tithe ever since February of last year....”
His voice grew thick with imminent laughter.
“So we decided to annex the fortykronerfor tithes—and here’s the rest!”
“Decided ... who decided? When the money was collected for me? Impossible!”
“The congregation agreed to it,” said Karlsen unconcernedly. Then suddenly he dug one thumb into his despairing brother’s ribs, uttered a sound like the rasp of a saw, and whispered:
“And Fru Westergaard was there, too—my son!”
Limp and utterly dispirited, Egholm walked up with Karlsen to the station. A strange feeling of detachment had come over him, and the inclination to weep that he always felt after great excitement.
Karlsen walked a couple of paces ahead, talking gaily over his shoulder.
“What say?” queried Egholm against the wind. The handbag with edifying works at sixkronercloth boards weighed heavily in his numbed hand.
“I say, it’s a good thing we’re near the end of the month.”
“Yes,” agreed Egholm. “But what d’you mean?”
“Pay day, my dear man. And I can do with it!”
“But I thought—I thought the work was voluntary. It says in the Rules of the Brotherhood....”
“Well, what d’you expect me to live on?”
“Why, gifts.”
“Huh! A long way that’d go. About as far as....”
“No, of course....” agreed Egholm meekly, shifting the bag to his other hand.
“But they don’t pay me enough,” said the Evangelist harshly. “Not by a long way. Everything’s getting dearer, and I’ve had a lot of extra expenses into the bargain. I helped a poor girl that had got into trouble. A Frøken Madsen. Bought her a cigar shop in Kerteminde; it cost an awful sum. But she was a sort of relation—not of mine, you understand. My wife’s people. But I count it all the same, of course. No, they’ll have to give me a rise. And they will, too, I know. They can’t do without me, and that’s the end of it.”
They reached the station, and Karlsen took his ticket.
“Secondclass, I said,” he cried, and winked at Egholm.
“Came from Veile, and going back to Veile. Life’s one long journey. Anyhow, it’s what we’re supposed to do: go out into the world and make converts. Know a man named Justesen in Veile? Horse-dealer. No? Ah, he’s a man if you like! Never troubles to ask the price when he finds a pair to suit him. ‘Bring ’em along’—that’s all he says.”
“Horse-dealers don’t go in much for religion as a rule.”
“Not him—no. But his wife!” said Karlsen, rasping again like a saw. “His wife.... Had a wire from Justesen last evening; he’s coming home to-day and going off again by the night train to Hamburg. So off I go to look up my old friend Egholm—what?”
“Yes....” said Egholm.
He stood in the waiting-room a little after the train had gone, warming himself by the stove. Then he shook his head and staggered off homewards.
Again and again he tried to reckon up how he stood.
“No hope of getting to work on the boat now,” he muttered. But, to his surprise, he found his thoughts refused to dwell on this disaster, which should by rights have overshadowed all else.
No; he could think of one thing—he was hungry.
For months past he had not had a decent meal, and, though he had not realised it himself, his lookingforward to that gift from the Brotherhood had been associated with an indomitable desire forfood.
Outside his own door he stopped. The scent of the clove tea came to greet him, and revolted him for the first time. He turned round and walked away again, out over the sandhills, along the quay, and down between the warehouses.
The group of fishermen sighted his thin, fluttering figure in the gloom, shook themselves, and pressed their backs closer against the wall of the shed.
But Egholm found at last an old green rowing boat among those drawn up on the beach. He struck a match, and made sure it was the one.
Then he clambered up on to it, and knelt down on the boards.
The wind tore his plaintive prayer to shreds, and strewed a shower of broken, unmeaning sounds out over the harbour and the town.
Egholm’s God was perhaps not as generous as might be wished, but, on the other hand, possessed of limitless patience as a listener, differing in this regard considerably from the children of men. It was perhaps this which led Egholm, the ever restless, to come again faithfully with his hopes and his prayers, though he might have turned away in dudgeon but a short while back.
It was not brain-weariness. That was an ailment Egholm never knew. He lived, as it were, under full sail all day and night. He rose in the morning, swallowed his clove tea, hurried out to his place of prayer in the woods, and came back about dinner-time. Then he would mess about for a few hours in the studio, while his thoughts flew all ways at will, generally down to the beach, where he struggled with imaginary parts of his machine in an imaginary boat, but ready and willing to occupy themselves with anything of any sort anywhere in the world. Egholm felt it a wasted day when he had not stowed away a couple of new inventions in the warehouse of his mind. And a night that brought him nothing but sleep and rest he counted emptyand unfruitful. Better a touch of the horrors than just nothing. For, painful as it was to have Clara Steen’s face there before him in the dark, taking the blows that Anna should have had, still, after all—in the long run—one could get used to anything. Yes.
True, it was no use striking Anna, but it was at least excusable. And God never said anything about it to him out in the woods where he prayed. More especially since that boy had come home it was excusable ... nay, it was a simple necessity.
Thus Egholm forgave his God and revenged himself on his family.
His wife noticed, too, how the boy’s coming had brought a kind of ferment into their home life. Ah, why should it be so? There he sat, the little lad, at her side, as simple and innocent as when he was a child, helping her at her work. She did all she could to make him appear a harmless and useful item about the house. She would have liked to make him invisible, but his fathersawthe boy to the exclusion of all else, circled round him, shot sparks at him, and might be found gripping him by the hair if she only went out into the kitchen for a minute.
Things could not go on like this. And so one afternoon she put on the best things she possessed, and went out with Sivert to try and find him a place.
With trembling knees she walked straight intoLund’s smart drapery shop. After all, he couldn’t do more than eat her. And she always went to him for what she needed in the way of thread and material, and that was the truth. They stood just inside the door, waiting for other customers to be served first. Modesty, that was the way.
There! Minna Lund, the daughter of the house, coming in with coffee for the assistant. Was there ever such a place? She set down the tray on a step-ladder, and began pulling out drawers full of ribbons.
A little princess, that was the least one could call her—though little was hardly the word, seeing she was half a head taller than her father. Why, she could wind off as many yards of ribbon as she pleased, without even asking the price.
And the mother, standing there, fell to weaving a long and beautiful future for her boy in Lund’s splendid house. Those two young people—they would surely have an eye to each other.... And then when Sivert’s apprenticeship was at an end, and Lund was getting on in years, who knows.... Once they found out what a heart the boy had, surely there’d be no one in the world they’d sooner trust with their daughter and the shop....
She pressed Sivert’s hand; for here was Lund himself right in front of her, bowing politely. He wouldn’t eat her, no fear of that....
So Fru Egholm had thought of having her sonapprenticed to the business? Why, a nice idea, to be sure....
Lund was a little man with a full beard, and elegantly dressed in brand-new things, but with a thread or a piece of fluff here and there. And his manner was precisely the same.
He talked with studied ease and distinction, flourishing the roll of material before him into a fan as he spoke. And so thoroughly did he possess the gift of salesmanship that a moment later Fru Egholm was eagerly discussing with him how much it would take for a pair of curtains.
“Or we’ve a rather better quality,” said Lund, reaching for another roll. But here Fru Egholm came to herself, and thrust Sivert forward.
“Well, you know, I’m afraid,” said Lund kindly—he had only forgotten the business of the apprenticeship for a moment—“we could hardly ... you see, we make a point of taking only boys—pupils in the business that is—from better-class homes. The customers demand it.”
“But”—the mother was ready to sink into the ground for shame—but ... Sivertwasfrom a better-class home. Not meaning herself, of course, but her husband. He knew all sorts of languages, English and French and so on. And only a little time back he’d been an assistant on the railway—why they had his uniform coat in the house now! Hr. Lund ought just to hear him talk and speak upfor himself, like he did with those people from the Public Health Committee. And as for Sivert, he was as good and honest a lad as any could wish to have.
Hr. Lund didn’t doubt it for a moment, but—er—well, one could hardly see it, for instance, from the way he was dressed, you know. Now, could you? And Lund bent over the counter with a smile, whereby his own coat was brought in close proximity to Sivert’s blouse. He he! Still, he might just examine the young man a little. Sivert was given two or three smart questions, while his mother was on the point of swooning from confusion. Then Lund turned calmly round and took down the roll of material before mentioned—the rather better quality....
“But how about the place?” asked Fru Egholm doubtfully. “Is he to have it?”
“Eh? Oh, no. I’ve no use for him. Did you notice he said ‘drawers’? Well, ‘knickers’ is the proper word—at any rate, the one we use in this establishment. A little trap of mine, you know. He he!”
Fru Egholm sighed, purchased resignedly a reel of No. 50 white, and left the shop. She and Sivert went to many places that day—to a barber’s, to Bro, the grocer, and at last to the editor of theKnarreby News—only to wander home at last discouraged at a total failure all round.
Well, she would leave it for a day or two, and look round.
“Find him a place?” asked Egholm.
“Well—there’s places enough where they’d be glad to have him....”
“That is to say, youdidn’tfind him a place?”
Fru Egholm was so very loth to utter that little decisive “No.” She talked eagerly about the Christmas sales at Bro’s and Lund’s.
“... And, do you know, the editor, he knew about your plans with the machine business. He asked a heap of things, and said you were a genius.”
The subject was wisely chosen. And it did draw off attention for the moment from the matter in hand, but then her husband lapsed into his gloomy thoughts once more.
“No—we’ll never get rid of him now. Who’d ever have him? What can you use a head like that for, anyway? He’s little better than a lunatic. Eh? What do you say?”
Here Fru Egholm suddenly appeared unwontedly versed in the Scriptures. She answered boldly, and with emphasis:
“Well, there’s one place where Sivert won’t be set behind the rest—even if they’re ever so much of a genius.”
“Eh, what—what do you say?”
“I say:Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!”
Egholm gasped, utterly at a loss, and made no answer.
Sivert slept in the little back room where Hedvig had her couch. He lay on the floor, upon a sort of bed of some nondescript material, and slept in his clothes to keep warm. Nevertheless, he went to bed with a smile on his lips. His father’s persecution could not shatter his joy at beingat home. Even the blows and kicks he got beat into him the fact that he was at home, and he took them without complaint. Yes, all was well, everything.
Next morning, as Egholm was gulping down his tea, he caught sight of Sivert’s bowed and huddled figure slipping across the yard. Ordinarily, Sivert stole out of his room by the window, and kept out of the way till his father had gone out—there was no sense in giving him the trouble of getting angry if it could be avoided. But to-day the boy had overslept himself.
Egholm reached out and rapped at the window, at the imminent risk of breaking the glass.
Sivert stopped, gave a sickly smile, turned round twice where he stood, and made towards the gate.
“Here, you fool!” roared his father, and Sivert stopped again.
“Be quick and come in,” whispered his mother out from the kitchen door.
“Well, why don’t you come? Put on your cap and come along with me.”
Sivert obeyed without a word.
Egholm held the boy close to his side, and they marched down the path towards the beach.
“Go on ahead, so I can keep an eye on you,” he commands. And Sivert walks on ahead with the transcendent smile of the martyr-about-to-be. He knows now he is to die, but it doesn’t matter so much, after all. Going to drown him, he supposes, since they are making towards the water.
“Know what you’ve got to do?” asks his father.
“Yes,” says Sivert, smiling again. And a little after, he ventures to add: “But if—if you don’t mind, I’d like it better if you’d take a nice soft stone and batter my head with it. I’d die quite soon that way....”
“Soft stone?” says Egholm mechanically, busy with his own thoughts. “Nonsense. You walk straight on; that’s all you’ve got to do.”
“Ah well,” sighs Sivert, breaking into a trot. “I was only thinking, perhaps I’m not a good one to drown, after all. I can’t swim, you know.”
“Who’s talking about drowning? That can wait till to-morrow, anyway. You’re coming out with me to a place of mine, to pray.”
“I think I’d like that better, yes,” said Sivert. But his voice showed only the slightest possible change of tone.
They walked along the beach a long way, out tothe woods. Sivert walked with an unsteady gait; he would really rather have died after all if only he might be left to himself for a single minute first.... But his father drove him on like a donkey in front. The boy’s strangeness of manner irritated him.
“Walk properly, boy, and keep your mind on godly things!”
“Yes,” said Sivert, and managed to call to mind a verse of a hymn, which he proceeded to mutter as he went. But he still walked unsteadily, bending spasmodically every now and then.
“We can stop here,” said his father, as they reached a wooded slope, where some young pines stood out from a thin covering of snow.
“Do you know the text: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’? Good. We’ll say that text, and then a prayer, that you’ll repeat after me word for word. You understand?”
Then, while they were still in the preparatory stage, kneeling opposite each other with bared heads, something happened which destroyed at one blow all possibility of further co-operation.
Under cover of his cap, held before him in his folded hands, Sivert has managed to undo one button....