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 empty and 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 father _saw_ the 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 into Lund’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 son apprenticed 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 ...
Sivert _was_ from 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 up for 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 the
_Knarreby 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, you _didn’t_ find 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 being _at 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 to the 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....
Egholm hears a peculiar sound ... springs up with a roar....
Off goes Sivert like a hare across the ice, unable to stop what he had
already begun. It looked as if he were spinning a thread behind him
like a spider. He had no intention of returning, however. He had but
one thought--home.
Egholm did not attempt to pursue. He tried to go on with his prayer,
but gave it up, and went into the woods. He walked all the morning, and
came round by a wide detour into Knarreby about dinner-time. But his
haste was such that he passed by the house without thought of hunger or
thirst. Not till he was in the main street did he slacken his pace, and
begin looking absently into the shop windows. They were crammed with
all manner of things--Christmas was near. There were ducks, and these
he noticed in particular, but all the rest made one confused medley
to his eyes. Nevertheless, he went up to the next window and gazed at
it attentively, as if mentally selecting something specially rare and
costly as a present for his love.
Then, at the sale department of the ironfoundry, he came to himself
again. Here at last were things worth looking at. Right up against the
glass were lovely heavy castings, pieces of machinery, and metal parts.
Pumps of all sizes, stacks of copper and brass tubing, taps and boiler
gauges, and heaps of nuts and bolts and screws, as if a wagon load had
been tipped down at random. Then there were spiral coils of the most
delicious lead and hempen packing, and farther back, at the end of
the shop, stood a mail-clad army of stoves. Somehow or other, Egholm
always found comfort in the sight of masses of cold metal. Possibly it
drew off the warmth of his over-heated brain.
Rothe, the ironfounder, a giant of a man, stood on the steps calling to
passers-by in greeting: “_Goddag, goddag!_”--the words seemed to echo
in the shield-like cavity of his stomach. His great head shone as if it
were of burnished copper. Now he caught sight of Egholm.
“Hey, _goddag, goddag_, Egholm! How’s the turbine getting on?”
Egholm walked in and spluttered out his latest ideas. Rothe laughed,
and slapped him genially on the shoulder.
“Henrik Vang’s full of it. Talks of nothing else down at the hotel.
But, look here--when are you going to get it _done_? Egholm’s famous
turbine....”
“Well, there’s one or two little things I still want,” said Egholm,
walking round the shop and fingering the items that caught his
attention.
“What sort of things?”
“A boat, for instance, and a small boiler.” Egholm mentioned these as
carelessly as if it had been a matter of a couple of waistcoat buttons.
“But”--he broke off suddenly--“what’s that thing there?” He dragged at
something in the warehouse behind.
“That? Oh, that’s Dr. Hoff’s old bath oven. I’ve just sent him a new
one.”
Egholm was still pulling the thing about, when Rothe, who was in his
best lunch-time and Christmas-time mood, said:
“If it’s any good to you, bring round a barrow and take it along.”
Whereupon he slapped Egholm again on the shoulder, and took up his
post again at the door, dealing out his double-barrelled greetings:
“_Goddag--goddag!_”
Egholm was in high spirits for quite a time over his unexpected coup.
Then, happening to catch sight of himself in a mirror-backed window, he
started in horror to see what a ghastly figure he made.
Yellow and haggard, with his black beard hanging limp and dead over his
worn and stained waistcoat. A disgusting sight.
Could it really be the Lord’s intention to starve him to death?
The thought almost brought him to his knees; he turned in through the
churchyard gate, as to a refuge where he could recover himself. The
naked branches of the mighty chestnuts sang in the wind, and great
heavy drops fell like tears from the roof of the church.
The wind must have changed. It was thawing now.
Egholm noticed that he no longer felt the biting cold. Perhaps, after
all, it was not so cruelly meant.
One end of the fire-ladder had fallen down. Egholm seated himself on
it, with his back against the church wall. He was physically exhausted,
and his brain had hardly rested for the past twenty-four hours.
It generally made him feel better to come in here for a while and look
out over the landscape he loved.
There at his feet lay the Custom House, its acute-angled roof just on
a level with the church foundations. Down in the office there sat Old
Poulsen at one window and Wassermann himself at the other. Funny thing,
really, that Poulsen should be called Old Poulsen, for the sake of the
few grey hairs about his ears--he was an infant, really, compared with
Wassermann.
How old could Wassermann be? Some said eighty-eight, but, looking at
his mummy-face, one might feel more inclined to think he had stood as
a man in the prime of life, wearing his gold-braided cap, what time
Noah’s Ark had landed on Mount Ararat, and he had come to examine the
ship’s papers.
Egholm gave a little grunt.
There was but a single vessel in the harbour--a schooner, laid up for
the winter. Its masts looked thin and, as it were, leafless, with the
sails and rigging taken down. The boys had built themselves a snow hut
out on the ice under its bowsprit. The current of the Belt was too
strong just here for the ice to hold it altogether in check; a little
farther north, there had been a battle between the two, and the ice had
lost. Mighty sheets of it came floating down the channel; off the mole,
they packed and closed in an angry whirl, setting their teeth in the
piles, but were torn away ruthlessly and sent on southward again.
In the curve of the channel between the black woods, the ice-floes
looked like a flock of white swans on a blue lake. The grey-green line
of hills on the Jutland side looked far away in the misty air, though
the distance was not so great but that one could count the windows of
the ferry station over between the trees.
Egholm’s brain had rested for just the space of time it took to turn
his head from right to left and back again. Now it began hammering
again; he had caught sight of a certain green-painted dinghy down by
the harbour, and that particular craft interested him more than all the
other rowing boats in the world.
But--in Heaven’s name--how was he to gain possession?
He rose, and went down into the coal-cellar of the church, where he
commenced to pray. His thoughts were confused with excitement, he did
not understand his own words, and when he stood up again, the coals
came rattling down with a sound as of scornful laughter. Could a man
go to the devil and get hold of fifty _kroner_ that way?
Or, could not a man settle the business himself, by his own unaided
power? Why this constant begging round?
Egholm walked out of the churchyard, talking to himself, and took the
road to Kongeskoven--thus completing the whole circuit of the town and
neighbourhood for that day.
All his inventions, were they of no more value when it came to the
point than that he must die of hunger? Surely there should be some
appreciation of them--at any rate, in higher quarters. He thought of
some of the more important; not mere ideas he had busied himself with
to pass the time, shaking them out of his sleeve like a conjurer, but
those that were really worth something, say, a million.
As, for instance, the pair of frictionless wheels for railway
carriages--that should have meant an income to the inventor out of
every pair of wheels in all the world, if only God had lifted a little
finger to help.
And then that preparation of his for turning yellow bricks red--a
profit of several _kroner_ per thousand of bricks!
There was Egholm’s smoke-consumer, that would make the atmosphere of
great cities as pure as the purest sea air.
There was ... but, no; it was enough. These three supreme inventions
of his were in themselves sufficient to condemn that God up there!
Plainly, God was not disposed to help: He kept down genius out of sheer
envy.
Egholm walked into the woods, beating his breast and threatening high
Heaven. Once he happened to strike himself on the mouth, and this set
his thoughts off in an entirely new direction, where they tore away
even more furiously, and flung themselves cascading into headlong
depths.
The blow had reminded him of that last affair with Anna--yesterday
morning, was it, or the day before?
“It’s a lie!” he hissed, kicking at a root. “A downright lie, fostered
in a venomous woman’s brain. Her nose came on to bleed, that was all.
Just an ordinary case of nose-bleeding, that happened to come on at
the same time. But, of course, she made the most of it. I didn’t do
anything worse than”--here he lashed out with his stick--“other days,
but then she starts screaming hysterically, and there’s the blood
trickling down through her fingers. Ugly--horrible....”
What was that?
Egholm came to a standstill in the middle of the path, and looked round
with staring eyes.
What was this? Was he to be haunted now, in broad daylight? Surely it
might at least have the decency to wait till night?
No; it was here. The same old story from his sleepless nights; the
fights with Anna over again. Every word that had been spoken between
them. And then, at the decisive moment--the loved and detested face of
Clara Steen rising up to take the blows--Clara’s white fingers vainly
trying to stop that crimson stream.... Clara’s eyes, looking at him....
“I must be ill, I think,” he murmured to himself. “And there’s a nasty
pain here in the middle of my chest. Throbbing and throbbing like
anything. Not quite in the middle, though--no, a little to the left.”
He burst out into a wild laugh and beat his forehead with the back of
his hand.
Not so strange, after all, that it should be more to the left. The
heart was on the left side. Ha ha! yes, he was a witty fellow, after
all!
But the drama was still going on before his eyes. Oh, but he would
not see it. No, no--not here in the daytime. For the love of God, let
the curtain fall! Leave it till the night, when all sorts of things
happened anyway, beyond understanding. Here, in the middle of the road,
he could not go smashing pictures in broad daylight. It was too much to
ask.
And--well, he was ready to admit, if that would help at all, that it
wasn’t just ordinary nose-bleeding. No, Heaven help him, he had struck
her with all his force right across nose and mouth. Well, then, now he
had confessed. Wasn’t that enough?
Where was the sense of being an inventor and a natural healer, if he
could not find a pain-killer for his own case?
Still, perhaps he might, after all. Suppose, now, he were to make one
smart cut and tear that beating heart right out, all would be well.
Next moment he sawed the fancy across with a grin. Ugh! poetic nonsense!
No--but there was something else--something far better....
Here, close by, must be Fruedammen, the Lady Pool, where a noble dame
had once disappeared in her bridal chariot with all eight horses.
Surely it would make things easier to get down deep into that?
Aha! Good old inventor--never at a loss!
He hung his stick over his arm and folded his hands.
“Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for this once--for just this once.”
Some critical self within himself marked the words as lisping and
ridiculous.
He ran at a stumbling trot along the ground over the serpentine
contortions of the great beech roots. It could not be more than a
minute’s walk to the pool. But there was no time to be lost.
Curious, by the way, that a man should for close on fifty years have
clung to life tooth and nail, and now, to-day, on Christmas Eve, be
hurrying to get rid of it.
What would they say to it all at home?
Would Hedvig stand up straight and stiff and say, “A good thing, too”?
And Emanuel, the child of victory, what would be his future? Ah, well,
there was little victory to be expected there, after all. No, that
turbine was the true victory child.
Farewell, smooth round thing, that should have gone one day with a soft
“dut-dut,” while all the world shouted hurrah and wept at the same
moment.
Egholm found himself weeping at the thought, and his legs grew weak
under him, but he kept up his pace, and took a last evasive mental
farewell of Anna as he went.
Now, just across to the other side of the road--here it was.
There was a little low seat with many initials cut in. Egholm ran round
it, swept past a thorn-bush, tearing his face against the branches,
and stood breathing heavily on the brink of the bottomless pool in the
forest.
A chill shudder passed through him. His head sank forward. A moment
after he gave a queer little laugh, shrugged his shoulders, then
staggered up to a tree and leaned against it.
On the farther side of the pool, a blackbird was rustling in the
leaves; now it flew off with a long whistling cry. It was a little past
noon. Now and again a draggled ray of sunlight slipped through the
covering of clouds, and the branches threw pale shadows in its gleam.
Only a second they remained, then vanished again like spirits.
Egholm felt his knees sinking--he was deadly tired. Then, at the sound
of a cart crushing through the wood far away, he drew himself up with a
sigh and walked off among the trees.
The blood began pulsing in long swells through his veins, following
on his excitement, but there was no pain anywhere now. He had a nice
strong feeling of having been honest.
He murmured a few words of Sivert’s oracular speech that had stuck in
his mind:
“It’s ever so hard to do a thing when it’s impossible.”
Suppose he tried laughing a little at the whole thing. He had hurried
to the pool--and lo, the ice was Heaven knows how many inches thick. Of
course, it was. Still, he had been honest--God was his witness to that.
It must have been the open water of the Belt that made him forget.
It was evening before he found himself back, wiping his shoes carefully
and gently in the passage. So unwontedly gentle was he, indeed, that
Anna came out in a fright with the lamp to see who was there.
“Oh, heavens, is it you, Egholm? We’ve been almost out of our wits
because you didn’t come back. Wherever have you been all day?”
She rubbed his wet things with a towel, and told of the joint of pork
that had come from the Christmas Charity Committee, and the cakes that
Hedvig had brought home.
She rubbed away, chattering all the time, mentioning casually what a
blessing it was Sivert had got that place with the glazier’s--to have
his own room and all. She stopped, astounded at her own boldness in
daring to utter Sivert’s name.
But Egholm made no sound, and she went on, scraping the mud from his
boots the while, to tell how she had just happened to think of Nøckel,
the glazier, if he might happen to want a boy, and she had hardly got
inside the door when they said yes, and were glad to have him.
“He can stay here this evening--if you like,” said his father.
Fru Egholm could hardly believe her ears, and Sivert, carefully hidden
away in the pantry, fancied, too, that there must be something queer
behind it all.
“Don’t somehow feel like being thrashed to-day, either,” he said,
darkly reflecting.
So the Egholms had some sort of a Christmas, after all. The gentler
feelings flourished in every heart. Egholm himself gave orders that
Marinus from the carpenter’s shop should be sent for, having found
him gazing longingly in through a window. On Christmas Eve, it was a
duty to entertain the poor at one’s table, he said, if one wanted to
feel any Christmas rejoicing oneself. His wife found this a very pretty
sentiment, with the one reservation that the principle, to her mind,
was followed out to an extreme degree in their case, since the five who
were daily entertained at their board were undeniably poor themselves.
Later in the evening, she went to the window, and with a certain
awkwardness brought over the champagne blossom and set it on a chair
in the middle of the room with a candle in front. Anyone could see it
was meant to be a Christmas tree, all ready decked. Marinus giggled at
Sivert, but Hedvig rose of her own accord, stepped out into their midst
like an actress, and sang till the windows rattled about sweet and
joyous Christmastide.
“Now we ought to hand round the presents,” said Fru Egholm to Marinus,
with a laugh.
Egholm joined absently in the laugh. He had a vague idea of having
already received a Christmas present that was worth something.
He had been given back his life.
And that was, after all, a thing of some importance, if he was ever to
get that turbine done.