Egholm and his God

“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 knowWhat 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 brightLike a Venice to the sight,All the world thy fame doth know.Beeches fair around thee grow,And the fortress with its crownLooks 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.

XIV

Egholm took his washing-basin across to the studio, which had been fitted up at one end of the carpenter’s store shed. The jelly-fish he placed for the present as far in under the table as possible.

First of all, he must get some work done. There were Sunday’s negatives to develop – he could be thinking a bit while he was doing that. Egholm found the new dark-room an excellent place for thought, free from all disturbance.

Yes, he would think over that turbine.

That jelly-fish soap business was merely an idea – quite possibly, indeed probably, a good idea. But the turbine, the reversible steam-turbine, was the child of his heart, born of him, conceived by him in a length of sleep-forsaken nights. Once brought forth to the world, it would be greeted with acclamation.

It was imminent, it was hovering in the air, this question of something to replace the more complicated steam-engine. The English had come very near to a solution already.

But, for all that, it might perhaps be reserved for himself, for Egholm the Dane, to show them how to make their turbine reverse.

He could think of more than one thing at a time. As long as he could cast out sufficient ballast, he could always find a new direction of the wind to carry his thought. Nearest earth was the current connected with his work, but even that was no less erratic than those of the higher strata.

Might as well try the new developer to-day, he thought to himself, and set out his dishes all ready. Then he went into the studio again, and began studying the recipes he had scrawled up from time to time on the plank wall of the dark-room. Already there were so many of them that the list reached to the floor. He had to go down on his knees to see if it said 25 gr. or 35 gr. Suddenly he forgot what he was there for, and remained lying prone, thinking only of his steam-turbine; it seemed to him the axle bearings ought to be made with a little more stability yet. The slightest oscillation, of course, would mean an escape of steam – waste of power. Then, becoming aware of his posture, he wondered how he had got there, but, finding himself on his knees, he at once, as a practical man, decided to utilise the opportunity, and started off on a long and earnest prayer to God for the furtherance of his idea. It was, indeed, not merely a point of honour with him that it should succeed, but also, he might as well confess, a hoped-for way out of his present difficulties.

The photography business had turned out a desperate failure – there was no denying it.

The only people who came at all were the peasants who came into town on Sundays. Of these, quite a good number patronised the studio, but, unfortunately, they did not always come for the photos they had ordered. They were not impressed by his skill when they found the studio situate in a woodshed at the back of Andreasen’s, with the camera perched on a cement barrel instead of a tripod.

The fine folk of the place, in accordance with an established tradition, always went over to the neighbouring town for their photographs. It didn’t seem to count, somehow, unless they did.

They were just as superficial in their judgment as the peasants, and paid more heed to a smart shop than to the artistic execution of the pictures.

Here Egholm laughed to himself. The photographs he turned out could hardly be included under the heading of art at all, and he knew it. But was there anything surprising in that? In the first place, how could anyone help becoming dulled by so much adversity, and in the second – oh, well, in the second place, why the devil should he put himself out for all and sundry, when it was only a question of time before he threw aside his mask and revealed himself as a world-renowned inventor?

Smilingly he set to rocking his plates in their bath, and as the work went on, he bored out, in his mind, the steam channels of his turbine, and decided on the cogwheel transference.

He held a negative up to the light, and recognised three of his customers grouped about the little round table. Yes, it was those three that had taken such particular care to have the labels on their beer bottles facing neatly front, towards the observer.

Ho, ho! And that was the sort one had to bow and scrape to!

Unfortunately, this business of the turbine was not a matter to be settled in a moment. Rothe, the ironfounder, had promised to make him the larger parts, and Krogh, the smith, who had at first answered gruffly and bent farther over his intricate lock work, had been completely won over as an adherent. The next thing was to procure a boat into which the turbine could be built.

Now, where on earth could he get a boat for no money at all? Well, never mind; imagine the boat was there. Then the upright boiler would have to be set in there, a trifle aft of midships, so that the man at the helm could stoke as well. As for the screw, that would require special treatment in these waters, where there was so much weed about. He would have to go into that.

Egholm’s mind was so keen that he saw every detail. Difficulties were disposed of as fast as they appeared.

Not till the last of the plates glided into the fixing solution did he come to himself, and then to find his heart pumping like the steam-turbine at full speed. It was always like that when he had been long at work in the dark-room. He threw open the door and went out, but the light and the fresh air turned him dizzy and blind for the moment; he staggered to a bench, and had to sit there some time before he recovered.

XV

Hedvig knew how to make herself respected. She and her father glared at each other with eyes alert and claws ready, but it was rarely anything more came of it. She had a place at the baker’s, running errands for six kroner a month, which was no small sum for a girl still at school. Anyhow, it was practically half their rent.

Yet she was a strange little creature, not like other children, and her confidence slipped somehow between her mother’s fingers.

Many a night the keyhole of the door to her little room still showed a speck of light by the time the clock struck twelve, or even one. Her mother lay anxiously listening to Egholm’s snore; there was no saying what terrible thing might happen if he were to wake and find it out. But Hedvig would listen to reproaches the next morning with an unfathomable expression on her face, or smile, and shake her head. The pocket of her dress bulged with a new novel every other day.

“You should tell your mother what it says in those silly books you’re always reading,” said Fru Egholm admonishingly.

“Oh, you’d never understand a word of it,” was all Hedvig answered.

One day she had stuck up a picture over her bed, showing a man and a woman, tied together with a rope, flinging themselves into the water from a bridge. A yellow half-moon shone through the tree-tops and was reflected in the water. Hedvig stood quietly, apparently indifferent, as her mother tore it down and told in vehement words how sinful it was to look at such things. But when her mother moved to hold it over the lamp, the girl flung herself suddenly in front of her with wild screams, and would not be brought to her senses until she had the horrible picture safely put away in her workbox.

Now, who would ever believe that this was the same good little Hedvig that the baker’s people always said a good word for, and who could always manage to find a way when it was a case of helping others! Fuel, for instance – Egholm did not seem to have the instinct of acquiring fuel. But Hedvig was a little marvel in that way – though, no doubt, it was largely through the help of Marinus in the workshop, to give him his due. He always tucked away odd bits under his work-bench for her. He was a kindly sort, was Marinus. And he seemed particularly fond of Hedvig, and she of him – that is to say, at times. For it was towards Marinus that her fickleness of humour showed itself most of all. Sometimes when she had been in the workshop she would come back and fall into a fit of miserable weeping; at other times she would rush in at once the moment he tapped with his rule on the pane, whether she wanted firewood for the kitchen or no. And as to getting any explanation out of her – that, of course, was hopeless.

Otherwise, she was particularly good at telling things, and both her father and her mother were often amused at her way of relating little things that had passed.

Her father even had a speciality of his own in this respect; he loved to hear of the money Hedvig took across the counter when she was minding shop while her mistress was at dinner.

Then it would be Wassermann, the Customs officer, who came in and bought best part of a tray of mixed pastries – he was such a sweet tooth. Then perhaps there would be a message from Etatsraadens’ for sixty butter puffs for to-morrow morning.

“Sixty!” cried her father. “And what do they cost apiece?”

“Three øre– but, Lord! that’s nothing to them at all. No, you should have seen the order that came in the day they had their garden party. Five cakes with icing and marzipan.”

“Why, the bakers must be making a fortune.”

“They’ve made it already. Mistress bought a new hat the other day.”

“What was on it?” asked her mother. But her father leaned back with closed eyes, feeling as if his own thirst were assuaged for the moment by the flow of money Hedvig dipped her fingers in.

He was feverish, and needed something cooling. Here he was in the throes of his invention, and could not get it out.

Not a step nearer. No boat, nothing. And it was nearly autumn now. The trees stood there with their round juicy fruits. But, in his mind, it was all flowers. Was there anyone in all Knarreby so poor as the Egholms? Unless it were Bisserup, the brushmaker. And yet Egholm had spared no pains. He had tried Etatsraaden, tried Bro, the grocer, Rothe, the ironfounder; practically speaking, everyone of means in the place. He had also, by the way, tried those without means. Altogether, he had not passed by many an open ear without shouting into it something about Egholm’s fore-and-aft turbine. Rothe had promised to make the castings for him, but that was all.