Draper Lund and Barber Trane came walking together from the direction
of the town. Reaching Egholm’s beach path, Lund broke off in the middle
of a sentence, and said:
“Well, I think I’ll go down this way. Enjoy the view, you know.
Good-bye!”
“Why, I was going down that way myself. It’s to-day that thing was to
start, you know--the miracle man’s steamboat thing.”
“H’m. If it goes at all.” Lund straightened his glasses and shot an
unexpected glance of considerable meaning at the other.
“No, no, of course. But it’s as well to know how it went off, you know,
when customers come in and talk about it.”
“I don’t want to deliver any definite judgment,” said Lund delicately,
as a very Professor of Drapery, “but there is something about the man
that leads me to doubt. He talks so much.”
“Yes, and so mysterious about things. And conceited, too.”
“Which, with his dirty vest and frayed trousers....” added Lund in
agreement.
“I suppose he’ll go sailing round with it to show it off?”
“I daresay he’ll take out a patent.”
“Those patent things are never any good,” said Trane energetically. He
knew. He had a patent pipe at home, that was always sour.
Lund and Trane stopped in surprise when they came down to the beach
and found how many others of the townsfolk had had the same idea of
going down that way. Lund made as if to turn back, but realised that
it was too late, and laughed with great heartiness. And those on the
spot laughed again in perfect comprehension--they had felt exactly
the same way themselves. One of them had made a long detour round by
Etatsraaden’s garden, and others had done the same as Lund, walking
smartly out as if going a long way, and then turning off suddenly, as
if by the impulse of the moment, towards the beach.
Well, _Herregud!_ here they were. And, anyhow, it was only reasonable
to take what fun there might be going these sad times. There was not
much in the way of amusement in the town.
Besides, it was pleasant enough, lying here in the soft dried seaweed
and the warm tickling sand. The sun shone over the Belt and the green
shores of Jutland beyond. They could, as Lund repeated again and again,
enjoy the view.
He and Trane joined a group that had gathered for instruction in steam
engines about the person of Lange, the schoolmaster.
“Then there’s a pipe goes here....” The schoolmaster pointed to a
certain spot in the air and came to a standstill. He was very nervous
without a blackboard and his handbook of physics to help him out. And
now here were those two unpleasant characters, Lund and Trane, lounging
up in the middle of the lesson.
“A pipe goes there ... and that leads to the cylinder here....” He
raised his voice and pointed again.
Trane, anxious to see as much as possible, craned his neck to follow
the direction of Lange’s index finger, but perceived, to his surprise,
nothing more tangible than the driving clouds.
He shook his head. How could he tell his customers this? He gave it up,
and lay down with the others to bask in the September sunshine.
Egholm’s boat lay some twenty yards out; the shallow water prevented
it from coming closer in. It was white, with a brilliant red stripe
along the side. Behind the red-leaded funnel, which was supported with
stays, could be seen curious parts of bright metal. Egholm was on his
knees, hat in hand, puffing at the furnace. The fuel, which consisted
of half-rotten fragments of board, was not quite dry. Now and again he
lifted his head and gave a brief glance towards land.
Astonishing, such a lot of people had turned up. He felt his
responsibility towards them like a delicious ache at his heart.
Oh, it would turn out all right.
If only he had had someone to lend a hand. Even Sivert would have been
better than nothing. Egholm looked across reproachfully at Krogh, the
old blacksmith, who stood on the beach with his jaws drooping as ever.
He had just come down with the last bits of the machine, but could not
be persuaded to go on board. He dared not mix with the rest, even, for
he was an accomplice in the thing, however much he might turn up his
nose to show disapproval.
Well, well, he would have to manage alone.
What was that?--who were they lifting their hats to suddenly?
Heavens, if it wasn’t the editor himself! Egholm dropped a nut that
slipped away between the bottom boards. Perhaps, after all, Anna had
not been altogether lying when she said the editor had called him a
genius. But he would not do discredit to the name--no, he would take
care of that!
Trembling with emotion, Egholm watched the mighty personage striding
through the groups. He always walked as if battling his way forward
in the teeth of a gale. Even to-day, when the water was smooth as a
mirror, his flowing cloak, his greyish-yellow military beard, even his
bushy eyebrows, seemed to stand away from him as if borne on the wings
of some private particular wind; possibly one he had brought home with
him from the battlefields of ’64.
The onlookers leaped aside, like recruits, to make way for him. His
presence brought sudden encouragement to the rest--something would
surely come of it, after all. A good thing they had not stayed at home.
The editor stopped at the water’s edge, and hailed across, with a voice
rent by the storm:
“Egholm! Can you get done by six, so that I can have a line in the
paper?”
Egholm tried to rise, but slipped down again. He was rather cramped for
room.
“I think so, yes, I think so!” He drew out his watch and looked at it.
A quarter to nine it showed now--as it had done for heaven knows how
long past. “I’ll do my best.”
The editor muttered something, balanced against a sudden gust, and
marched off.
But there were plenty remaining. The slopes of the beach were alive and
noisy as bird-cliffs in the nesting season.
How had all these people ever managed to find their way to the spot?
Egholm had not drummed about any announcement as to time and place of
his experiment. He had, indeed, grown rather more reticent of late. And
old Krogh would hardly say more than he need. How could it have come
about?
The explanation was there in the flesh--with a shawl about her head
and beautifully varnished clogs on her feet. The explanation was Madam
Hermansen, who had the backstairs entry of every house in Knarreby.
Whatever was thrown into her as into a sink at one place was gladly
used to wash up the coffee cups in at another. She smelt a little of
everything, like a sewer, and was as useful and as indispensable.
In addition to this comprehensive occupation for the public weal, she
found time to cherish great amorous passions for all the big fat men in
the town. She walked about, smiling and confident, from group to group,
shaking her hips at every step, and sidling round people like a horse
preparing to kick.
“That leg of yours still bad?” asked little Dr. Hoff.
“Yes, much the same.”
“H’m,” said Hoff, a little annoyed. “Mind you keep it clean. That’s the
only thing to do.”
“I suppose it’s no use trying an earth cure?”
“Earth cure? What on earth’s that?”
“Why, it’s just an earth cure, that’s all. It was Egholm’s been
plaguing me to try it. But he ... well, I’m not sure his intentions are
really decent like and proper. I know how he’s been with me sometimes
... and his poor wife....”
“What’s he want you to do with the leg?” asked Hoff, his eyes
glittering behind his glasses.
“Why, as sure as I’m alive, he wants me to bury it in the ground.”
Madam Hermansen laughed alarmingly.
“Now, does he mean? While it’s on you, that is?” Hoff blinked again.
“Now, this moment, if he could get me to do it. And then sit there for
a week, for the juices of the earth to work a cure, if you please.”
“Well, mind you don’t take root,” said Hoff. His face was immobile,
save for his eyes.
“What? Yes, and then all the worms and rats and things.... But how he
can talk, that Egholm. Never knew such a man.”
Wassermann from the Customs House came down too, his galoshes leaving
a long dragging trail in the dry sand. Under the gold-braided cap his
red wig stuck out, stiff as a tuft of hay. It was said he had inherited
it from his father. Be that as it may, he certainly kept it in use,
wore it at all times, and stayed religiously at home while it was being
mended once a year by Fru Egholm. His features seemed erased, with
the exception of his mouth, which appeared as a black cavity like a
rat’s hole in a white-washed wall. He stood for some minutes gaping
over towards Egholm’s boat, then he shambled on again. His moribund
perceptions had had their touch of excitement, and that sufficed.
Henrik Vang had settled himself almost as in a cave, half-way up the
slope between two willow bushes. Sivert, who had likewise succumbed to
the prevalent fever, and run off from his glazier work in the middle of
a day, had brought him down a whole case of beer. The boy had run so
fast with the barrow that half the bottles were broken.
“No harm done as far as I’m concerned,” said Vang solemnly as a funeral
oration. “But it is a pity to waste good beer.”
The onlookers of the better class came up to him one by one, to shake
hands and dispose of a bottle of beer, as quietly as might be.
“Why the devil can’t you come over to the rest of us?” said Rothe, who
was dressed in his best, having just come from a meeting of the town
council.
“Not such a fool. This is not the only place where there’s any shade
to cool the beer.” Vang pointed under one of the bushes. “Look
there--might be in the garden of Eden.”
Henrik Vang himself was perspiring profusely, out of anxiety on his
friend Egholm’s behalf.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Just look out there, and see it’s really true.
There’s the boat--the steamer he’s invented. Now, if I live to be a
hundred”--here he glanced darkly at Rothe--“if I lived to be _two_
hundred, I could never invent a steamboat. Not me.”
“There’ve been steamboats before, I fancy,” said Rothe.
“Eh, what?” Vang looked up sharply, and was for a moment at a loss;
then he laughed, and waved Rothe aside with his broad paw. “Oh yes,
those great big unwieldy things, I know. Any fool can make a thing like
that. But a _little_ steamboat--that’s another thing!”
He caught sight of Sivert lying flat in the grass, dividing his
attention equally between his father’s manœuvres with the machinery and
Vang’s operations with the bottles.
“Come up here, boy!” cried Vang, and Sivert crawled nearer. He dared
not let himself be seen, least of all by his father.
“How does he do it?” Vang looked sternly, but with unsteady gaze, at
the boy. “You ought to know. How does your father manage it--inventing
things and all that?”
“Like this!” said Sivert, without a moment’s hesitation, shaking his
woolly head from side to side like a rattle.
“The devil he does!”
“But it was me that invented the big brass tap in the cellar, though.
But then it was a very little one, really. I don’t think it was bigger
than there to there,” said Sivert modestly, indicating a length of
Vang’s leg from the ankle to the middle of the thigh. “Look how it’s
puffing now!”
The smoke was pouring out violently from the funnel of the boat,
drifting in towards the onlookers as a foretaste of what was to
come. Egholm was working away feverishly. Now he was seen clambering
barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to the knee, out past the
engine to the bow; a moment later, he was back in the stern, leaning
over with his sleeves in the water up to the elbows, turning at the
screw, or baling out water as frantically as if in peril of shipwreck.
Folk whispered to one another; now he was doing so-and-so....
But--what was this? Here was Egholm’s girl Hedvig coming down, with
the youngest child by the hand--what did she want? And wearing the
famous button boots, too--the ones with ventilators in. Emanuel had one
stocking hanging in rings about his ankle.
“What do _you_ want?” Egholm’s nose was smeared with soot and oil, and
his brow was puckered angrily.
“There’s a lady come to be taken.”
“Tell her to come again to-morrow.”
Egholm gave a single proud, firm glance towards the land. Then he bent
down again over his spanner. The matter was decided. Hedvig tossed her
head, fished up Emanuel out of the sand, and walked off.
What legs the girl had! But it was really indecent to go about like
that, with her skirts cut short above the knee.
“Say your father’s busy--dreadfully busy about something just now.”
Egholm consulted his dead watch once more. “Ask if she can’t wait, say,
about an hour, and I’ll be there directly.”
“Very well.”
“Hedvig!” Egholm stood up and shouted. “Who was the lady?”
“A fine lady,” said Hedvig, angry and ashamed.
“Ask her to sit down,” said Egholm, his voice somewhat faint. “I’ll
come directly.”
He thrust more fuel under the boiler, stepped over the side, and waded
ashore, with his boots in his hand and his socks dangling out of his
pockets.
“You’re a smart one!” said Rothe, playfully threatening.
“Very annoying,” said Egholm. “But I’ll be back in five minutes’ time.”
He thrust his bare feet into his boots and ran up towards home.
“We may as well go,” said Lange, the schoolmaster, looking round. “It
won’t come to anything, after all.”
“I’m going out to have a look at the thing, anyhow,” said Rothe, and
began pulling off his boots.
“I’m half a mind to myself,” said Dr. Hoff, tripping about.
“Give you a ride out, Doctor?” suggested Rothe.
Several of the onlookers laughed, but the little dark medico accepted
the offer in all seriousness.
And suddenly quite a number decided to go out and look for themselves.
Trane, the barber, and schoolmaster Lange sat down back to back and
began pulling off shoes and stockings. Lange put his hat over the foot
he bared first.
“Ugh!” from one and then another as they dipped their feet. The water
was cold.
“But surely--it looks like....” The Doctor stood in the boat, gazing
nearsightedly at the engine. “Surely that’s the lid of my old bathroom
stove--you remember I sent it back to you?”
“Why, so it is!” cried Rothe. “Oho, so that was what he wanted the old
scrap-iron for.”
“Have you noticed the funnel?” said Lange.
All saw at once that the funnel was a milk-can with the button knocked
out; the stays were made fast to the handles on either side. Lange
laughed, with chattering teeth; it was abominably cold.
“It makes an excellent funnel, anyhow,” said the Doctor shortly.
“Suppose the thing started off with us now,” said Trane, measuring the
distance to shore.
“We’d soon be at the bottom, in this rotten old hulk.” Lange pointed
to the water slopping about over the bottom boards. He had in his mind
appointed Dr. Hoff head of the class, and did not care to address
himself to others.
“No doubt,” said Hoff sharply. “You’d have preferred him to start with
mahogany and polished brass.”
Lange turned away angrily; it was distressing to have to set a
mental black mark against the name of his most promising pupil. But
impertinence....
“Still, a man need not be stingy all round,” said Trane. He was
thinking of Egholm’s bald pate and untouched beard, that rendered him
independent of all the barbers in the world.
“Here, Rothe,” said the Doctor. “Come and explain the thing. How’s it
supposed to work? I’ve seen plans and drawings of that sort, of course,
but I don’t mind admitting it’s altogether beyond me.”
“Oh,” said Rothe, shrugging his shoulders and puckering his brows with
a careless air, “it’s not so easy to explain when you’re not in the
business. But, roughly, it’s like this....” And he began setting forth
briefly the principles of the turbine.
“And that, of course, can only go round one way. How he’s ever managed
to get it to reverse, the Lord only knows. There’s nothing much to see
from the outside.”
“Well, we shall hear this evening how it works.”
“Perhaps--perhaps not. I shouldn’t be too certain. There’s a heap of
things to take into consideration, apart from what you might call the
principle of the thing.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you wouldn’t see it, of course, but there’s a hundred odd
things. That boiler there, for instance--can he get up a sufficient
head of steam with that? I don’t believe it. A turbine wants any amount
of steam to drive. If he got it fairly going, the thing’d simply burst.
Hark! how it’s thumping away already. But there’s no danger as long as
he’s only got that dolls’ house grate to heat it with. And as for the
boat”--Rothe looked round to make sure that Lange was out of hearing;
the others were limping back shiveringly to land--“the freckle-nosed
birch-and-ruler merchant’s right enough; it’s simply falling to pieces
as it is. Egholm, poor devil, he got some odd bits of tin from my
place and patched up the worst parts, but the nails wouldn’t hold even
then.--Coming off, Doctor? Here, get up again.--And the stuff he’s
burning’s no better than hay. He’s been stoking away for a couple of
hours now, and hasn’t got up steam yet.”
“What d’you reckon it would cost to make the experiment properly?”
asked the Doctor, with his expressionless face, as they reached dry
land again.
“Oh, any amount of money. Thousands of _kroner_. It’s hopeless for a
poor devil like him to try. But, of course, once he could get the thing
to go once round and reverse, why, _he’d be a millionaire!_”
Rothe shouted out the last words to the whole assembly; then he hopped
across to Henrik Vang’s bush. He pricked up his ears at the murmur
that arose from his words.
Madam Hermansen had only just discovered Vang. Suddenly she stood at
the foot of the slope and gave an amorous laugh.
Vang took the bottle from his lips in the middle of a draught, and the
beer frothed over down his vest.
“Get out!” he cried, with horror in his face. “Get out!” And he threw
the bottle at her.
Vang was a big man among his fellows; but under Madam Hermansen’s
glance he felt himself naked and ashamed.
Madam Hermansen sidled away in her polished clogs, still smiling.
Egholm came back at a trot, pushing an old perambulator full of coals.
He breathed in relief to find that the crowd was still there; it had,
indeed, increased. The workmen from the factory had come down to the
beach on their way home, and stood there now talking in bass voices,
their eyes turning ridiculously in their black faces. The apprentice
lads had come, too--unable to resist. They felt a kind of primitive,
brutally affectionate attraction towards the boat, which for some
unexplained reason they had christened _The Long Dragon_. It was just
the right distance for a stone-throwing target, and gave a delightful
metallic sound when hit. They had used it as a bathing-station while
the weather was still warm, undressing in it, diving in from it, and
rocking it in the water till the waves washed up on the sand. They
heaved up the anchoring stones, and sailed out with it, shouting and
singing, into deep water, where they swam round it in flocks, like
grampus about a whale. They turned the screw and made bonfires under
the boiler. But they did more: they laid an oar across from gunwale
to gunwale, and danced on it to see if it would break. And found it
did. They threw the manometer into the water to see if it would float.
And found it didn’t. A pale youngster, the son of Worms, the brewer,
who was not a factory apprentice at all, but a fine gentleman in the
uniform of the Academy, found a pot of paint under one of the seats,
and promptly painted his name, _Cornelius_, in red on the side of the
boat.
This was not done merely in jest, but by way of revenge for a nasty
jagged cut he had sustained when making his first investigations.
Egholm waged a continual hopeless war against those boys. It was
rarely that he encountered them himself, but he found their traces
frequently. When he did happen to catch one, it always turned out to be
an innocent, who did not even know the others of the band.
This evening, however, in the presence of so many respectable citizens,
the boys stood with hunched-up shoulders and hands in their pockets,
silent, or speaking only in whispers. Now and again they nudged one
another, like owls on a beam in the church tower.
The fire was being fed properly now, with coal, sending out a cloud of
smoke like a waving velvet banner. There was a rasp of filing and sharp
strokes of a hammer; the sound of iron against iron. Then down came a
compositor boy with the editor’s compliments, and....
“You can tell him I guarantee the machine will work all right. I
_guarantee_ it--you understand. And....”
“Then it hasn’t gone yet?”
“But you can see for yourself,” cried Egholm in despair; “the
pressure’s there all right now.” And, to prove it, he sprang up and
pulled at the little steam whistle. It gave a shriek as if to call for
help--then died away.
“Hark at the cock-crow!” shouted Sivert, beside himself. “The
world-famous cock crowing.”
“What’s that he’s shouting about?”
No one had understood the words. But they saw the boy dancing on the
crest of a hill with his white curls whirling about his head, and the
enthusiasm laid hold on them, too. They leaped up from their mounds of
seaweed, and in the dusk it seemed to them as if the boat moved. There
was a tickling in their throats. Vang was weeping copiously already.
“Give him a cheer,” said the doctor, moving from group to group. The
doctor with his glasses was not to be contradicted.
They filled their lungs with air ready for a shout; then up came Petrea
Bisserup, dragging her father along, and that air was expended in
laughter.
Bisserup was a blind brushmaker, who lived in a little white house on
the outskirts of the town. He was a little grey man, with a felt hat
several sizes too large, and his face so covered with a fungus-growth
of beard that only his nose showed through. His daughter, who led him,
had a crooked neck, which bent over so far as to leave her head lying
archly on one shoulder; she was a woman grown, but wore short skirts
and cloth shoes. They were a remarkable pair, and in face of this
counter-attraction, Egholm’s wonder-boat might have sailed away to
Jutland without being noticed by the crowd.
“Ei, ei.... Anything hereabout for a blind man to see?”
The boys from the factory could contain themselves no longer; one of
them barged another over against the old man, while the rest chuckled
and cackled and quacked like a yard full of mixed poultry.
“Petrea--here, Petrea, what are you looking at?”
“Little devils!” said Trane, gloating over them all the same. Lund, the
scientific draper, laughed too, but schoolmaster Lange, recollecting
his lessons at the drawing school, shrank back a little.
Petrea strode untroubled through the crowd, her mouth hanging open,
and the old man trailing behind at her skirts like some uncouth goblin
child. His moleskin breeches were of enormous capacity; the seat hung
down behind to his calves. When he stood still, the superfluous folds
fluttered in the wind like a rag-and-patch tent at a fair.
“Is’t that way there, Petrea?” He pointed with his stick, and leant
over, listening.
It was growing dusk. Folk were beginning to shiver a little in the
evening air. And there was nothing amusing after all in the sight of
these two poor vagrants. What was the time?
When Egholm opened the furnace door, the column of smoke shone like
gold, and his face glowed fantastically big and red. Still a few more
degrees were needed on the manometer--just a few. He stoked away, till
the sparks flew like shooting stars across the sky. A fever seized him;
he threw on coal with his bare hands, and found himself grasping with
all ten fingers at a single lump.
Every second he glanced over at the shore, though it was impossible to
distinguish anything clearly now.
Trembling, he heard a burst of laughter, that rolled like a wave along
the line.
“Look straight ahead, Petrea, pretty Petrea, do!”
Heaven be thanked--they were not laughing at him, after all. If only
the coals had been a little better. But it was dust and refuse, every
handful.
“Is Dr. Hoff here?” someone cried.
“Who’s asking for _me_?”
“There’s a cart from the country.”
The doctor cast a final glance at the water, where the glow from the
fire played like a shoal of red fish; then he walked away with little
hurried steps.
“I’m off,” said Lange. “I don’t see what there is to stand about here
for.”
What was there to stand about there for? No one could find any
satisfactory answer.
It was dark and cold, and wife and supper were waiting at home.
The crowd broke up in little groups by common instinct. Lund and Trane
went. The workmen from the factory went. All of them together.
Over between the two bushes Rothe was giving orders in a low voice. It
was Henrik Vang being lifted on to a wheelbarrow. Sivert and his bosom
friend, Ditlev Pløk, the cobbler’s boy, were hauling each at one leg.
When they came up to the level road, Sivert left the work to Ditlev,
and clambered up himself beside Vang. The boy was wild with delight,
and bubbling over with laughter and snatches of song. Madam Hermansen
hurried up after them.
What had they been thinking of?
Away, away! homeward; see, the lights were lit already in the town.
The factory boys whistled like rockets, and marched in procession two
and two about Petrea and her father.
The respectable citizens stepped out briskly to get warm, and laughed
modestly one to another, like peasants emerging from a conjurer’s tent.
But never again!
The sound of footsteps died away on the path, and the last of the
figures disappeared into the gloom, leaving a solitary figure still
waiting on the beach--a little woman, shivering under a white knitted
kerchief. It was Fru Egholm. No one had seen her come; she sat as if
under a spell, watching the myriad sparks that rose in curves against
the evening sky, to fall and expire in the sand.