But Egholm was not asleep; only lying quite still, with wide-open eyes.
His trouble was that going to bed only made him wakeful, however sleepy
he might have been while undressing. It generally took him a couple
of hours to get to sleep, and during that time his eyes seemed to
acquire a power of inward vision. The experiences of the day lifted
their coffin lid and swarmed out from his brain-cells as terrifying
apparitions in the dark.
True, it might happen at times, as now to-day, that they also appeared
in the daytime, but then he could ward them off as long as he kept on
talking and talking incessantly.
But at night! They laughed at him in horrid wise, lifted the wrappings
from their skulls, and blinked at him with empty eye-sockets. He was
_theirs_.
Nevertheless, he had developed a certain method in his madness; they
could not take him by surprise now, as they had done at first.
To-day, he had struck Anna three times in the face--no light blows
either, for he could feel his knuckles slightly tender still--well and
good, then to-night the result would be that he found Anna exchanged
for Clara Steen, the child with the deep eyes, the splendid Clara of
youth, the beloved little maiden in the gold frame.
In a gold frame--yes, an oval gold frame.
Here again was one of those ridiculous things that could, given the
opportunity and a suitable mood, make a man laugh himself crooked.
Egholm turned over on the other side, and set himself to think through
the whole affair from the beginning, how it had started when he had
first gone as a boy to work in Konsul Steen’s business in Helsingør.
The memory here was sweet as a breath from gardens of lilac, and was
intended solely to form a nice, crude background of contrast to that
which was to come. Yes, Egholm knew the system of these things.
He saw himself as a slender, brown-eyed, curly-haired lad running
about upstairs and down in the big store, hauling at casks and pulling
out drawers, followed everywhere by the sharp eyes of Jespersen, the
assistant.
Now down into the cellar for rum, now to the warehouse for dried fish,
then up to the huge loft for tobacco. Up there was the place he liked
best; not only were the finest goods kept there, breathing essences of
the whole world towards him from cases of spice, but he loved the view
from the slip-door, out over the Sound and the fortress of Kronborg,
and the red roofs of the town.
From north and south came ships with proudly upright masts and rigging,
heaving to while the Customs officers went on board. And each of them
utilised the opportunity to lay in provisions. Kasper Egholm was rowed
out to them with heavy boat-loads of wares, and was soon at home on
vessels of all nations--Dutch, English, French, and Russian. He even
began to feel himself familiar with the languages.
It was from here he had first caught sight of Clara, Konsul Steen’s
daughter.
Possibly it was as much for her sake as for anything else that he loved
to throw open the slip-door, or climb up to a window in the roof.
One little episode he remembered as distinctly as if it had happened
yesterday.
He had been set to counting Swedish nails, a hundred to each packet,
but, seeing his chance, used the scales instead. It was ever so much
easier to weigh them out, than with all that everlasting counting;
also, he could finish in no time, and be free to loiter by the window
and dream.
The wind blows freshly about his ears, he looks over toward the
grey-green slopes of the Swedish coast, and feels himself as free as if
his glance could carry him over the Sound, high over the roofs, and
green trees, and the top-masts of the ships.
Suddenly he cranes his neck forward, and a flood of warmth surges from
his heart to his cheeks, swelling the veins of his neck; _there_, on
the gravel path just below, in his master’s garden, walks Clara.
White stockings and little low shoes; her footsteps shoot forward like
the narrow-leaved bine of some swiftly growing plant, and she hums in
time to her walk. Kasper is so fascinated that involuntarily he hums as
well, but wakes with a start of fright at hearing his own rough voice.
He fancies he can see the delicate skin of her neck gleaming through
the lace edge of her dress, the blue pulse in her temples, and the play
of the sunlight in her dark-brown hair.
She walks round the lawn, and turns into a patch that would take her
along under the wall, where Kasper cannot follow. He realises this, and
works his way right out on to the roof, with only his legs dangling
down inside.
“Clara, dear little Jomfru Clara,” whispers his mouth, “do not go away!”
At the same moment his legs are gripped by powerful claws, and he is
hauled down with such force and suddenness that he has not time even to
put out his hands. Down he comes anyhow on the floor, and lies there,
bruised and shaken, looking up into Jespersen’s green eyes.
“Ho! So you loaf about looking out of the window when you ought to be
counting nails!”
And now it was discovered that he had used the scales. Jespersen found
one packet with ninety-eight nails and another with a hundred and one
instead of a hundred, and ran off to tell his master. Next day Kasper
was sent for from the inner office.
The thought of this is a culmination of delight for Egholm in his
sleepless state, but at the same time, he notes, in parenthesis, as it
were, that he is now on the brink of the abyss he _knows_ will shortly
swallow him up.
The stately man with the dark, full beard talks to him of doing one’s
duty to the utmost, not merely as far as may be seen. And during the
speech Kasper discovers on the leather-covered wall a picture in a
gilded oval frame--a painting of Clara.
To him it seems even more lovely, even more living, than the girl
herself; his eyes are simply held spellbound to the beautiful vision.
Konsul Steen glances absently in the same direction, and then, with a
very eloquent gesture, places himself between Kasper and his daughter.
“Have you already forgotten your duties in life, which your parents,
honest people, I have no doubt, taught you? What did you say your
father was?”
“I’m a foundling,” says the boy, with dignity, enjoying his master’s
embarrassment.
Afterwards, standing out in the passage, he remembers only that one
question and answer. But, most of all, Clara’s portrait is burned deep
into his brain. Many a time he steals a peep at it through the keyhole.
Even in the golden days when Clara’s living self would place her hand
in his and follow him adventuring through the gloomy cellars, or over
mountains of sacks to the topmost opening of the loft, telling him her
troubles and her joys, and listening to all _his_ confessions, with
her firm, commanding, and yet so innocent eyes fixed on his--even then
the painting did not lose its halo. And throughout the many years of
struggle, it lived on in his joy and his anguish, mostly in anguish, it
is true, for there was certainly nothing merely amusing when it rose
up like life before his mental vision, in all its smiling, merciless
beauty, rendering his agony tenfold worse. Egholm had spoken to several
people about that same thing, among them the doctor at the hospital
where he had once been a patient for some time. The doctor knew that
sort of thing very well; it was what was called an _obsession_. Well
and good--but was that any explanation, after all? No; it was rather
something mysterious, something of the nature of magic, that had come
into his life from the time he married Anna.
Anna--yes....
He writhed and twisted in his bed, as if he were on a spit. His heart
pumped audibly and irregularly.
To begin with, she had opened the door, letting out all the warmth, and
made him nervous with all the things she strewed about the floor.
Then there had been that trouble about the dark-room, which had driven
him out of his senses with its insistence.
Why couldn’t she understand that it was not her his blows were aimed
at, but at Fate?
What was a photographer without a dark-room?
No--she could not understand. Not an atom. She could only stand there
and say “But, Egholm....” and plague him about her kitchen.
Egholm half raised himself in bed, utterly in the power of his
nightmare thoughts, and struck wildly at the air with his clenched fist.
The vision--yes, there it was!
“_Herregud!_--can’t a man be left to sleep in peace?” he murmured
offendedly, yet with a sort of humility at the same time. “I’m so
tired....”
But as in the gleam of lightning he saw again and again Jomfru Clara,
and at last she stood there clearly, steadfastly, with her great deep
and mischievous eyes radiantly upon him.
He groaned and shuddered, flinging himself desperately about as he lay,
for he knew what was coming now.
Hastily, mechanically, he ran through the scene once more. There stood
Anna, and there he himself....
“But, Egholm....”
“You are the serpent....”
His fist shot out into the dark, and struck, this time, not Anna, but
the pale, bright girl who seemed to glide into her place.
“Oh--oh!” He writhed and groaned again, drawing in his breath between
closed lips, as one who has suddenly cut a deep wound in his hand.
“Aren’t you well, dear?” It was Anna’s voice, close at hand.
He lay stiff and still, hardly breathing now. The interruption had
driven the horrors away.
Ridiculous--but so it was with him. He remembered, for instance, having
been haunted by a snake--one he had seen preserved in spirits at some
railway station office or other ... yes. That had stopped, after a
while, of itself. But it was worse with Clara’s picture. In a way, it
was more beautiful, of course--oh, so beautiful....
He yawned audibly.
But he thought many other things out yet: of his business and his money
affairs; of Vang and Vang’s domestic life; of an invention he wanted to
get on with--a thing of almost world-revolutionary importance, a steam
turbine, that could go forward or back like lightning. It would make
him a rich man--a wealthy man....
A little later he dropped off to sleep, lying on his back, and
breathing still in little unsteady gasps.
Fru Egholm’s straw mattress creaked as she rose quietly, and with a
gentle touch here and there tucked his bedclothes close about him.
In the next room Hedvig was talking in her sleep--something about
cakes....
“_Herregud!_” murmured her mother--“dreaming of cakes means illness. I
hope it doesn’t mean Emanuel’s going to get the chickenpox.”
With a sigh she fell off to sleep.
The clock struck two.