Madam Hermansen came into every house in Knarreby, without
exception--whence follows, that she came to Egholm’s.
How she managed to effect an entry there, where shutters and bolts were
carefully set to hide the shame of poverty, is not stated.
Presumably, she came of herself, like most diseases--and she came again
and again, like a series of bad relapses. She literally clung to the
Egholms, and almost neglected her other visits therefor.
They were somehow more remarkable than others, she thought. They had a
past.
Madam Hermansen herself was tolerated--almost, one might say, esteemed.
At any rate, no attempt was ever made to find a cure for her. Egholm
enjoyed the abundant laughter with which she greeted even the most
diluted sample of his wit, and Fru Egholm needed someone to _confide
in_.
It was all very well for _him_. In his all too extensive leisure, he
made excursions through the town, spending hours in talk with fishermen
down at the harbour, or going off for solitary walks along the shore
or in the woods. _She_, on the other hand, could only trip about in
the two small rooms, with never a sight of the sun beyond the narrow
strip that drew like the hand of a clock across the kitchen floor from
four till half-past seven in the morning. And no one to talk to but her
husband and the children. Little wonder, then, that the flow of speech
so long held back poured forth in flood when Madam Hermansen began
deftly working at the sluices.
The talk itself was but a detail, that cropped up before one knew,
thought Fru Egholm at times; but if she had not had someone to look at
her needlework, why, in the long run, it would mean sinking down to the
level of a man.
True, Madam Hermansen was no connoisseur of art, but a dollymop who
never achieved more than the knitting of stockings herself. On the
other hand, she was ready to prostrate herself in admiration of even
the most trivial piece of embroidery or crochet-work. There was
something in that....
“Why, it almost turns my head only to look at it,” she declared,
fingering the coverlet for the chest of drawers. It was one afternoon
in May, and the two women were alone in the house with little Emanuel.
“Oh, you could learn it yourself in five minutes.” Fru Egholm flushed
with pride, and her hands flew over the work. “No, but you should see a
thing I made just before we left Odense. Fancy crochet.”
“Heaven preserve us! Me! Never to my dying day! It’s more than I’m
ever likely to learn, I’m sure. What was it you called it?”
“Fancy crochet. And then I lost it--it was a cruel shame, really. And
such a lovely pattern.”
“Stolen?” cried Fru Hermansen, slapping her thighs.
“No. I gave it away to a woman that came up to congratulate when
Emanuel was born. She praised it up, and I saw what she meant, of
course. But here’s another thing you must see.”
She rose, and took out a pin-cushion from a drawer.
“There’s nothing special about that, of course....”
But Madam Hermansen declared she had never seen anything like it. The
pale pink silk showing all glossy through under the crochet cover was
simply luxurious.
“Ah yes! That’s the sort of things a body would like to have about the
house,” she said, turning it over in her chapped and knotty hands. “And
what do you use a thing like that for, now?”
“Oh, fine ladies use it for brooches and things. But it’s mostly meant
for a young girl, you know, to have on a chest of drawers, this way....”
“Yes, yes, that’s much the best. Why, it would be a sin and a shame to
stick pins in a thing like that.”
“Look here,” said Fru Egholm, flushing, “you keep it. Yes, do; it’s
yours. No, no; do as I say--and we’ll speak no more about it.”
Madam Hermansen made a great fuss of protest, but allowed herself to be
persuaded, and thrust it under her shawl. She held it as if it had been
a live lobster.
And Fru Egholm brought out other things. There was a newspaper holder
worked with poppies, and a cushion embroidered on canvas.
“There’s little pleasure in having them,” she sighed. “Egholm, he
doesn’t value it more than the dirt under his feet.”
“Ah! It’s just the same with Hermansen, now. One Sunday afternoon I
came home and found him, as true as I’m here, sitting on the curtains,
smoking, as careless as could be. But your husband--I thought he was a
model.”
“Egholm doesn’t smoke. If he did, he’d be just the same. But I can
tell you a thing--just to show what he thinks about my work. Ah, Madam
Hermansen, take my word for it, there’s many a slight a woman has to
put up with that hurts more than all your blows.”
“And he’s been on the railway, too....”
“It doesn’t change human nature, after all. It was these here things
from the auction at Gammelhauge, the mirror and the chest of drawers,
and the big chair over by the window, and that very one you’re sitting
in now. Now, tell me honestly, would you call them nice to look at?”
Madam Hermansen shifted a little under in her big green shawl.
“They’re a trifle old fashioned to my mind.” And she sniffed
disdainfully.
“Old fashioned and worm eaten and heavy and clumsy--you needn’t be
afraid to say it. Why, it’s almost two men’s work to lift a chair
like that. And as for the glass--why, it makes you look like a
chimney-sweep. The chest of drawers is not so bad; it does hold a good
deal. Wools and odds and ends.... But, all the same....”
“My daughter she had one with nickel handles to pull out,” said Madam
Hermansen, poking at it. “And walnut’s the nicest you can have, so the
joiner man said.”
“Yes, that’s what I say. But what do you think Egholm said? ‘Rare
specimens,’ he said--‘solid mahogany!’ Ugh! Well, do you know what I
did? I set to work then and there and made up something to cover the
worst of it. Those butterflies for the rocking-chair, and the cloth
with the stars on for the chest of drawers, and paper roses to put in
by the mirror. It took me the whole of a night, but I wouldn’t have
grudged it, if I’d only got a thimbleful of thanks for my pains. And
now, just listen, and I’ll tell you the thanks I got. One day the
Sanitary Inspector came round to have a look at the sink. He’d brought
a whole crowd with him--it was a commission or something, with the
mayor and the doctor and the vet, and so on. Then one of them gets it
into his head he’d like to have a look round the place. Egholm, of
course, waves his hand and says, ‘With pleasure.’ And never a thought
in his head of anything the matter.”
Madam Hermansen nodded sympathetically.
“Well, they came in through the kitchen and stood there poking about at
the sink for a bit, and while they’re at it, Egholm comes in here. And
then--what do you say to this?--he rushes round the room and pulls it
all off. As true as I’m here; the butterflies and the paper flowers,
and the toilet cover and all. Threw the flowers under the table,
and stuffed the rest in under his coat. Now, if that isn’t simply
disgraceful....”
“And what did you _say_ to him?” Madam Hermansen shook herself, giving
out a perfume of leeks and celery from under her shawl.
“Not a word. I had to keep it all back, and bow and scrape to the
gentlemen, with my heart like to bursting all the time. ‘We must take
all that stuff out of the way when anyone comes,’ he says after. Oh,
he’s that full of his fashionable notions, there’s no room for human
feeling in his breast. And if there is one thing I can’t abide, it is
that fashionable nonsense.”
“Well, now, I don’t know that it’s altogether put on, you know, with
him, seeing he’s a man of good family, as you might say.”
“Good family--h’m. As to that....” Fru Egholm raised her eyebrows.
“Well, well, I don’t know, of course,” said Madam Hermansen, shifting
heavily a little forward. “I thought he was a parson’s son, and his
parents were dead?”
“No, indeed he’s not. Nothing of the kind.”
“He’s not a circus child, is he?--there’s some say he is.”
“It wouldn’t be so surprising, with all his antics generally. But the
real truth is, he’s a foundling--that is to say, illegitimate.” Fru
Egholm uttered the last word with a certain coldness, but a moment
after sighed compassionately.
“You don’t say so! Well, now, I never did....” Madam Hermansen sat
rocking backwards and forwards in ecstasy, and as she realised what
a grand piece of news she had got hold of, a silent laughter began
bubbling up from her heart.
Fru Egholm looked at her in some surprise, and, uncertain how to take
her, bent over the cradle and busied herself with the child.
“Why, then, Madam Danielsen was right, after all,” said Madam
Hermansen. “But who was his mother, then?”
“Well, to tell the truth, she was a fine lady, and married a professor
after--and that’s a strange thing, seeing what a plenty of honest girls
there are about. She must have been a baggage, though, all the same,
to get into trouble like that.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Madam Hermansen, patting the hairpins that jostled
each other in a knot of hair about the size of a walnut. “And his
father?”
“Oh, a scatter-brained fellow. Government official, they called him,
but he was a painter--an artist, you know--besides, and I daresay it
was that was his undoing in the end, when he led the girl astray.”
“But I thought the doctors at the Foundling Hospital were under oath
not to tell who the parents were?”
“That’s true enough. But d’you think Egholm would be put off like that?
No, he set to work--that is, when he was grown up--and advertised in
_Berlingske Tidende_, putting it all in, so-and-so, as if he didn’t
know what shame was. And then his sister--half-sister, that is, of
course--wrote and came along of her own accord. Nice enough in her way,
she was, too, but you could see she was one of the same sort....”
Fru Egholm made a grimace involving numerous wrinkles of the nose.
Madam Hermansen nodded as one who understood.
“Yes ... she gave herself out for an artist, like her father had
been--and she was the image of him to look at, too.”
“But I thought....”
“Well, that of course, in a way. For they said she used to go sitting
in a public place and painting pictures with a man stark naked as a
model.”
“Heaven preserve us!” gasped Madam Hermansen. “In all my born days....
Well, she must have been a nice one.”
“She and Egholm simply slobbered over each other with their affected
ways. She called him her dear lost brother, and how glad she was to
find him again--and all that sort of thing. I simply said there was no
need to carry on too much about it that I could see, for if they had
grown up together, like as not they’d have been tearing each other’s
eyes out. He was a terrible child, I believe--used to pour sand over
the cake-man’s basket outside Rundetaarn, and let off fireworks in the
street and so on.”
“And his father wouldn’t acknowledge him, then?”
“No. That is to say, his father made haste and died when the boy was
only four or five about, but he’d had the grace to set aside a little
money beforehand, so Egholm could have the most expensive schooling
there ever was. And it’s left its pretty mark on him, as you can hear
when he speaks.”
“Well, in the way of politeness, as you might say, he certainly is,”
said Fru Hermansen warmly.
“Puh! When there’s anyone about, yes,” said Fru Egholm. She was not in
the humour for praising her husband just now. “But what’s he like at
home? Ah--that’s where you get to know people’s hearts!”
And before she knew it, she had lifted the roof off their entire abode,
making plain to her visitor that which had formerly been shrouded in
darkness.
It was not a little.
Madam Hermansen was simply speechless when Fru Egholm showed her, with
tears, the scars under her eyes and the little spot by the temple where
the hair was gone.
“I can’t understand you staying another day,” she said, when the
sufferer stuck fast in a sob.
“Oh, you mustn’t talk like that. When you’ve vowed before the altar....”
“Did _he_ vow before the altar to knock you about like that, eh? Did he
say anything about that?”
“No--o.” Fru Egholm laughed through her tears, anxious to bring her
visitor to a gentler frame of mind. “No, and it would be no more than
his deserts if I said I wouldn’t live with him any more. But I can’t
help it; it’s not in my nature to do it. And, after all, it’s his
business how he treats his wife, isn’t it? What’s it to do with me? I
couldn’t think of living anywhere but where he is. Love’s not a thing
you can pull up by the roots all of a sudden.
“‘When first the flame of love warms human heart, they little know
What harm they do beyond repair who make it cease to glow!’”
“Hymns!” said Madam Hermansen scornfully.
“Ah, but it’s just hymns and such that lift us up nearer to God.”
“Oh, God’s all right, of course, but it doesn’t do in this world to
leave too much to God.”
“It’s all we poor sinful mortals have. Where do you suppose I should
ever find comfort and solace if I hadn’t God to turn to? Why, He’s
almighty. He’s even done things with Egholm at times. When I think
of it, I feel ashamed of myself that I ever can sit and complain.
Now, just by way of example.... It was the day we came over here from
Odense, me and the children. I’d no sooner got out of the train than
he puts his arms round me and kisses me right on the cheek. And what’s
the most marvellous thing about it all--I can’t understand it to this
day--he did it right in front of three or four girls standing staring
at us all the time. Ah, Madam Hermansen, take my word for it, a little
thing like that gives you strength to live on for a long time after.
And then Egholm’s been good to me in other ways. He knows--Lord forgive
me that I should say it--that I’m more of a God-fearing sort than he
is himself. And--I don’t know how to put it--that my God’s--well, more
genuine, as you might say, than his. I’ll tell you how I found that
out, Madam Hermansen. You know it was said the end of the world was to
come a few years back. It was in all the papers, and Egholm, he took it
all in for gospel truth, because he said it agreed with the signs in
the Revelations, you know....”
“And did it come?”
“Why, of course it didn’t--or we shouldn’t be sitting here now, should
we? But Egholm, he was as sure as could be it was going to happen, on
the thirteenth of November, and when it was only the eighth, he came
and told me to make up a bed for one of us on the floor. We’d always
been used to sleep together in one bed.”
“But what did he want to change for?” asked Madam Hermansen, with
increasing interest.
“Why,” explained Fru Egholm eagerly, “you see--he confessed himself
why it was; he was wonderfully gentle those days. He wouldn’t have us
sleeping together--not because of anything indecent or that sort, but
because it says in the Bible that on the Day of Judgment there may be
two people sleeping in the same bed, ‘and the one shall be taken and
the other left.’”
“So, you see. Madam Hermansen, I soon reckoned out what he thought, how
I might get to heaven after all.”
“And he’s never been in love with anybody--_outside_, I mean?”
“There’s one he’s in love with,” laughed Fru Egholm--“more than
anything else in the world. And that’s--himself! No, thank goodness
he’s never had time for that sort of thing, being too busy with his
steam-engine inventions. Now I think of it, though, there was a girl
once, when he was quite young, over in Helsingør. Clara Steen was her
name. You’ll have heard of Consul Steen, no doubt; he’s ever so rich.
His daughter, it was. And she ran after him to such a degree.... Why,
he used to write verses to her. Though I don’t count that anything very
much against him, for he’s written poetry to me, too, in the days when
we were engaged.”
She thrust a practised hand into her workbox, and fished up a yellowed
scrap of paper, and read:
“‘Helsingør by waters bright
Like a Venice to the sight,
All the world thy fame doth know.
Beeches fair around thee grow,
And the fortress with its crown
Looks majestically down,...’”
Fru Hermansen relapsed into an envious silence, absently investigating
her nostrils with one finger. Fru Egholm took out some new hair, and
compared the colour with that she was using.
“Think that will do?” she asked ingratiatingly.
“Well, it ought to. It’s a deal prettier than the other.”
“But it oughtn’t to be! You’re supposed to have all the same coloured
hair in one plait.”
“Ugh! I’ve no patience with all their affected ways,” said Fru
Hermansen sullenly. She was disappointed at finding the conversation
turned to something of so little interest by comparison. “What was
I going to say now?” she went on. “Was it just lately he knocked you
about like that?”
“Ye--es, of course. But no worse than before. Not nearly so bad. And
anyhow, if he did, I suppose it was God’s will. Or else, perhaps, he
can’t help it, by reason of always having an unruly mind.”
She checked herself with a sudden start, and her busy hands fell to
patting aimlessly here and there.
“I think it must be toothache,” she said in a loud, drawling, careless
voice, altogether different from her former manner.
“Toothache?...” Madam Hermansen sat with her mouth wide open for a
moment--then she, too, caught the sound of Egholm’s approaching step.
“Yes, yes, of course, it would be toothache, yes, yes....” And she
chuckled with a sound like the rattle of a rake on a watering-can.
“Emanuel, I mean, of course,” said Fru Egholm confusedly, as her
husband walked in. He was carrying a huge paper bag, that looked as if
it might burst at any minute.
He set it down carefully, and joined in the conversation.
“Now, if only Anna would let me,” he said eagerly, “I’d cure that child
in no time.”
“I’ve heard you can do all sorts of wonders, so people say.” Fru
Hermansen leaned back with her hands folded across her lap, and looked
up admiringly at Egholm.
“Why, I know a trifle of the secrets of Nature, that’s all. As for
toothache, there’s no such thing. The youngster there--what’s his name,
now?--Emanuel, is suffering from indigestion, nothing more. Give him a
plate of carrots chopped up fine, mixed with equal parts of sand and
gravel, morning and evening, and he’d be all right in a couple of days.”
“Never as long as I live!” said Fru Egholm.
“Powdered glass is very effective, too,” went on Egholm, encouraged by
Fru Hermansen’s laughter, and putting on a thoughtful expression.
“I’ll not see a child of mine murdered that or any other way,” said the
mother.
“Oh, but you’d see what a difference it would make. I’m quite in
earnest. Haven’t you heard that fowls have to have gravel? I noticed
it myself yesterday with my own eyes, saw them pecking it up. And the
idea came to me at once. I’ve half a mind, really, to set up as a quack
doctor....”
Egholm was interrupted by a sudden splash behind him. The paper bag
he had placed on the chest of drawers, dissolved by the moisture of
something within, had burst; a lump of squashy-looking semi-transparent
stuff had slipped to the floor, and more threatened to follow.
Fru Egholm, sorrowful and indignant, hurried to save her embroidered
slip from further damage.
“Don’t go spoiling my jelly-fish! Better bring a plate, or a dish or
something.”
“What on earth are they for, now?” asked Madam Hermansen.
“That’s a great secret. For the present, at any rate. Well,
I don’t know; I may as well tell you, perhaps. These ... are
jelly-fish--Medusæ.” He tipped the contents out into a washing-basin,
and poked about among the quivering specimens. “Look, here’s a red
one--the sort they call stingers. If you touch one, it stings you like
nettles. The others are harmless--just touch one and try. Smooth and
luscious, like soapsuds, what?”
Madam Hermansen advanced one hand hesitatingly, but drew it back with a
scream.
“Isn’t it?” said Egholm, undismayed. “Well, now, what do you think
they’re for? Shall I tell you? Why, _soap!_ There’s only one thing
lacking to make them into perfect soap--a touch of lime to get a grip
on the dirt--and perhaps a trifle of scent. And, only think, they’re
lying about on the beach in thousands, all to no use. Yes ... I’ll
start a soap factory, that’s what I’ll do.”
“I thought you said you were going to be a doctor,” said Fru Egholm,
with an innocent expression, winking at Madam Hermansen.
“Both. And then we can save on the advertising. ‘Egholm’s United
Surgeries and Soap Factories.’”
“And one as bad as the other.” Anna had to shout aloud to make herself
heard through the tempest of Madam Hermansen’s laughter.
“Say, rather, one as good as the other. Oh, I shall be famous all over
Denmark, all over Europe. We’ll have an advertisement for the doctoring
on all the soap wrappers: speciality--broken legs!”
“If only you don’t break your neck holding your head in the air.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of bones,” said Egholm, delighted with the
effect he was producing. “I was referring to the fracture of _wooden_
legs.”
“Well, now, I wonder if you could set this to rights for me?” said Fru
Hermansen, patting her calf.
“Easily! What’s the matter?”
“Well, I don’t know that it’s proper for me to show you, but never
mind. We’re both married folk. This leg of mine’s been bad for--let me
see--fifteen or sixteen years it is now. And Dr. Hoff, he’s no idea,
the way he’s messed about with it.”
Fru Hermansen turned round, set her foot upon a chair, and busied
herself with underclothing, tying and untying here and there, and
muttering to herself the while.
“There, you have a look at it,” she said at last, with a laugh, and
faced round again.
She had a rag in her mouth, and her face was flushed from bending down.
Her skirts were lifted to her knees.
From the ankle up over the shin, almost to the kneecap, was a long red
sore, yellowish in the centre. It looked horribly like a trail of some
climbing plant.
Egholm put out a hand as if to ward off the sight, and looked away. But
the would-be patient said harshly:
“And you going to be a doctor! If you can’t abide the smell of hot
bread, then it’s no good going for a baker!”
Egholm overcame his reluctance, knelt down, and began examining the
leg, from the greenish-faded stocking that was gathered like an
ankle-ring at the bottom, to the knee, where a garter had cut deep
brownish-red furrows.
“Here’s the mischief,” he said, nodding wisely. “The blood can’t get
past here, and that’s why it can’t heal. You’ll have to stop wearing
garters at once.”
“Easy to hear it’s a man that’s talking,” laughed Fru Egholm.
“And then we must draw fresh blood to the spot. Let me see....”
“I should think you’d have seen enough by this time.”
“Fresh blood....” he murmured. His mind was busy choosing and rejecting
from a hundred different things; nothing seemed to satisfy him quite.
A smile of irony at his own idea curved his lips; it was not such a
simple matter, after all, to get to work with Egholm’s United Soap
Factories and Surgeries, specialising in leg troubles.
Suddenly his face brightened all over.
“Those jelly-fish--what did you do with the dish?”
“But, Egholm? what do you want them for now?”
“You leave that to me. We want something to tickle up the nerves, and
draw the blood to the spot.”
He picked up the “stinger”--in his coat-tails--and held it out. It was
domed like a dish-cover, and ornamented with a fiery double star at the
top; innumerable threads of slimy stuff hung from its lower side.
“Suppose we put that on the sore?”
Madam Hermansen, in her first amazement, had hoisted her canvas beyond
all reasonable limits; now, she let all down with a run.
“None of your games with me, thank you,” she said sharply.
“What?” said Egholm in surprise. “You won’t? I warrant you the leg will
be all in a glow in no time. And then it’s a practically certain cure.”
He waved the thing enticingly before her, exhibiting it from all sides,
and bending it to show the venomous lips. “Why, I wouldn’t mind putting
it on myself.”
But Madam Hermansen’s face was dark and discouraging; she set about
resolutely wrapping her tender spot in all its armour of rags and
bandages.
“And quite right of you, I’m sure, Madam Hermansen,” said Fru Egholm.
“Well, well, we must hit on something else,” said Egholm. “I won’t give
it up. But it must be a natural cure in any case. The sources of Nature
are manifold.”
And by way of restoring good humour all round, he began telling the
story of the furniture from Gammelhauge.
“Isn’t that an elegant chair I’ve got there? Do for a throne; look
at the coronet on the back--it’s almost on my own head now as I sit
here. I’ve just the feel of an old nobleman, a general, or a landed
aristocrat, in this chair. Let’s bring it up in front of the glass.
What’s the use of sitting on a throne with a coronet on your bald pate
when you can’t see yourself?”
“Now I suppose you’ll be putting a new glass in the mirror--another
twenty--thirty--forty--fifty _kroner_ gone, but that’s nothing, of
course,” cried Madam Hermansen.
“Not in the least, my dear lady. In _this glass_ it was that the
splendidly attired knights and ladies surveyed their magnificence
before the feasting commenced.”
It could be seen from Egholm’s movements how a knight and his lady were
wont to prance and preen themselves before a mirror. A little after,
he added in a voice of mystery:
“I have often seen shadows moving by in there, of an evening.”
“Ugh! The nasty thing! I wouldn’t have it in my house for anything,”
said Madam Hermansen, with a shiver.