Buch lesen: «Egholm and his God»

I

Sivert stands leaning his elbows on the window ledge, digging all ten fingers into his curly hair, and looking down at the muddy court below.

Not a soul.

He looks at the wet roofs, and the raindrops splashing tiny rings in the water all along the gutter.

Not so much as a sparrow in sight. Only the sullen November drizzle, flung now and then into gusts, and whipping the panes with a lash of rain.

But that is enough for Sivert. He looks out into the grey desolation, highly amused at it all.

Now he purses up his lips and whispers something, raises his eyebrows, mutters something in reply, and giggles.

Let him, for Heaven’s sake, as long as he can, thinks his mother.

And Sivert finds it more amusing still. Wonderful, so much there is going on inside him. He shakes his poodle mop of hair, and gives way to a long-drawn, gasping laugh – simply can’t help it – leans his forehead against the pane, thrusts both hands suddenly deep into his pockets, and gives a curious wriggle.

“You great big boy, what’s the matter now?” says his mother gently.

Sivert turns his head away and answers with an evasive laugh:

“All that rain … it tickles so.”

Fru Egholm does not question him again; for a moment she really feels as if the boy were right. And, anyhow, it would be no use asking him. If only he can find his little pleasure in it, so much the better.

And there’s no saying how long … Egholm had said it was time the boy found something to do, now he was confirmed. Find him a place at once. And Sivert, poor weakly lad – how would it go with him?

Fru Egholm shakes her head, and sends a loving glance at the boy, who is plainly busy in his mind with something new and splendid.

Then suddenly his face changes, as if at the touch of death itself. His eyes grow dull, his jaw drops; the childish features with their prematurely aged look are furrowed with dread as he stares down at something below.

“Is it Father?” she whispers breathlessly. “Back already?”

She lays down her sewing and hurries to the window; mother and son stand watching with frightened eyes each movement of the figure below.

Egholm walks up from the gate, lithe and erect, just as in the old days when he came home from the office. But at every step his knees give under him, he stumbles, and his wet cloak hangs uncomfortably about him. At last he comes to a standstill, heedless of the fact that his broad boots are deep in a puddle of water.

Once he looks up, and Sivert and his mother hold their breath. But the flower-pots in the window hide them. His head droops forward, he stands there still. A little after, they see him trudging along close to the wall, past his own door.

The watchers stand on tiptoe, pressing their temples against the cold glass, straining to see what next.

Egholm stops at the Eriksens’ gate, glances round, and kneels.

Kneels down full in the mire, while the gale flings the cape of his ulster over his head. Now he snatches off his hat and crushes it in his fingers; his bald head looks queerly oblong, like a pumpkin, seen from above.

“He’s praying!”

And the two at the window shudder, as if they were witnessing some dreadful deed.

“Where am I to hide?” blubbers Sivert.

The mother pulls herself together – she must find strength for two.

“You need not hide to-day. Take your little saw and be doing some work. You’ll see, it will be all right to-day.”

“But suppose he counts the money?”

“Oh, heaven…!”

“Hadn’t we better tell him at once? Shout out and tell him as soon as he comes in, and say Hedvig took it?”

“No, no.”

“Or go and kill ourselves?”

“No, no. Sit still, Sivert dear, and don’t say a word. Maybe God will help us. We might put something over the bowl … no. Better leave it as it is.”

Heavy steps on the stairs outside. Egholm walks in, strong and erect again now.

He hangs up his wet things, and fumbles with a pair of sodden cuffs.

“Didn’t get a place, I suppose?” asks his wife, looking up from the machine. Sivert sits obediently at a little table at the farther end of the room.

“Is it likely?” Egholm’s face is that of one suffering intensely. And he speaks in an injured tone.

“I only thought… You’re home earlier than usual.”

No answer. Egholm walks over to the window and stares into the greyness without, his long, thin fingers pulling now and again at his dark beard.

Lost in thought…

His wife does not venture to disturb him, though he is shutting out the fading light. She keeps the machine audibly in motion, making pretence of work.

A long, long time he stands there. Sivert has been sawing away conscientiously all the time, but at last he can bear it no longer, and utters a loud sigh. Fru Egholm reaches stealthily for the matches, and lights the lamp. Her fingers tremble as she lifts the glass.

Egholm turns at the sound. And now he is no longer Egholm the upright, nor Egholm the abject; Egholm the Great he is now. His eyes glow like windows in a burning house; he stands there filling the room with Egholm; Egholm the invincible. The mother cowers behind her sewing-machine; and her seam runs somewhat awry.

What terrible thing can he be thinking of now? The “Sect,” as usual? – Heaven have mercy on them, now that Egholm has joined the Brotherhood.

Surely something terrible must happen soon; he has rarely been as bad as this before.

He moves, and his wife looks up with a start. But now he has changed again, to something less terrible now – not quite so deadly terrible as before.

He is far away in his dreamings now, without a thought for his earthbound fellow-creatures.

He stands in his favourite attitude, with one hand on his hip, as if posing to a sculptor. A fine figure of a man. His watch-chain hangs in a golden arc from one waistcoat pocket to the other. Only one who knew of the fact would ever notice that one of the oval links is missing, and a piece of string tied in its place.

After a little he begins walking up and down, stopping now and again at the window, with a gesture of the hand, as if addressing an assembly without.

Then suddenly he swings round, facing his wife, and utters these words:

“Now I know what it means. At last!”

Fru Egholm checks the wheel of her machine, and looks up at him with leaden-grey, shadow-fringed eyes. But he says no more, and she sets the machine whirring once more.

Peace for a little while longer, at any rate, she thinks to herself.

Sivert looks up stealthily every time his father turns his back; the boy is flushed with repressed excitement, the tip of his tongue keeps creeping out.

“Mark you,” says Egholm after a long pause, “I’m wiser perhaps – a good deal wiser – than you take me for.”

He throws out his chest with conscious dignity, lifting his head, and placing one hand on his hip as before.

Oh, so he’s still thinking of that quarrel of theirs this morning. Well, well, of course it would be something to do with the Brotherhood some way or other.

“You said I was wasting my time.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said I was throwing money out of the window.”

Fru Egholm shifts in her seat, pulling nervously at her work. She would like to mitigate the sharpness of her words, and yet, if possible, stand by what she had said.

Sivert wakes to the fact that he is dribbling down over his hand, and sniffs up hastily.

“Didn’t you say it was throwing money out of the window?”

“I said, it was hard taking money where there was none.”

“You said it was throwing money away. But do you know what I’m doing with that money all the time? I’m putting it in the bank.”

“In the bank?..”

“In the Bank of Heaven– where the interest is a thousand – nay, tens of thousands – per cent.! If it wasn’t for that, I’d never have thought of joining the Brotherhood at all.”

“But – I can’t help it, but I don’t believe in him, that Evangelist man. Young Karlsen, I mean.”

Egholm breathed sharply, and quickened his steps. The answer did not please him.

“You talk about young Karlsen: I am talking of Holy Writ.”

“But it was Karlsen that…”

“Yes, and I shall thank him for it till my dying day. He it was that opened my eyes, and showed me I was living the life of one accursed; pointed out the goal I can reach – cannot fail to reach – if only I will pay my tithe. Do you know what it says in Malachi? Shall I give you the words of Malachi the Prophet?”

“Ye – es … if you please,” answers his wife confusedly.

“Yes … if you please,” echoes Sivert in precisely the same tone. He has a painful habit of taking up his mother’s words when anything excites him.

But Egholm had no time now to punish the interruption; he stood forth and spoke, with threatening sternness:

“‘Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.’

“‘Ye are cursed with a curse…’

“Cursed!” Egholm struck the table with his fist in condemnation. “Do you hear? They are accursed who would rob the Lord —in tithes and offerings!”

“It’s solemn hard words,” said the mother, with a sigh.

“No harder than it should be. Just and right!”

“I was only thinking – the New Testament – perhaps there might be something there to make it easier.”

“Make it easier! God’s Law to be made easier! Are you utterly lost in sin, woman? Or do you think I would tamper with the Holy Scriptures? Read for yourself – there!”

He snatched the old Bible from its shelf and flung it down on the sewing-machine. Fru Egholm looked at the thick, heavy tome with something like fear in her eyes.

“I only meant … if it was really God’s will that we should starve to find that money for Karlsen.”

“Starve – and what’s a trifle of starvation when the reward’s so much the greater? What does it say there, only a little farther on: ‘Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it’?

“Isn’t that a glorious promise? Perhaps the finest in the whole Bible. Are you so destitute of imagination that you cannot see the Lord opening the windows of heaven, and the money pouring out like a waterfall, like a rainbow, over us poor worms that have not room enough to receive it?”

“Money? – but it doesn’t say anything about money.”

“Yes, it does – if you read it aright. It’s there all right, only” – Egholm drew his lips back a little, baring his teeth – “only, of course, it needs a little sense in one’s head to read the Bible, just as any other book. It wasn’t all quite easy to me at first, but now I understand it to the full. There’s not a shadow of doubt, but the Bible means ready money. What else could it be? The blessing of the Lord, you say. Well, there’s more than one of the Brethren in the congregation thinks the same – and that’s what makes them slow in paying up their tithes and offerings. They think the blessing is just something supernatural; an inner feeling of content – fools’ nonsense! Do you suppose I could be content, with duns and creditors tearing at me like dogs about a carcase? No; ready money, that’s what it means. Money we give, and money shall be given unto us in return; we shall receive our own with usury, as it is written.”

“Do you really mean…”

Egholm grasped eagerly at the hint of admission that he fancied lay behind her doubt. He strode to the chest of drawers, and, picking up the crystal bowl, held it out towards the light as if raising it in salutation. The tithe-money showed like some dark wine at the bottom.

“I swear unto you,” he said, with great solemnity, “it is even so.”

Fru Egholm meets his burning glance, and is confused.

“It would be a grand thing, sure enough, if we could come by a little money.” And she sighs.

“But it’s not a little,” says Egholm. The impression he has made on her is reacting now with added force upon himself. “Not altogether little; no. I can feel it; there is a change about to come. And a change, with me, must be a change for the better. It means I am to be exalted. ‘Friend, come up higher!’”

Again he strides up and down, seeking an outlet for his emotion. He sets down the bowl, and picks up the Bible instead, presses the book to his breast, and slaps its wooden cover, shaking out a puff of worm-eaten dust.

“Beautiful book,” he says tenderly – “beautiful old book. By thee I live, and am one with thee!” And, turning to his wife, he goes on: “After all, it’s simple enough. If I do my duty by God, He’s got to do His by me, and I’d like to see how He can get out of it.”

There was a rattle of the door below. Fru Egholm listened … yes, it was Hedvig, coming back from her work. There – wiping her boots on Eriksens’ mat, the very thing she’d been strictly forbidden. And dashing upstairs three steps at a time and whistling like a boy. No mistaking Hedvig.

Fru Egholm signed covertly to Sivert to go out in the kitchen. She could give the children their food there, without being noticed. What you don’t hear you don’t fear, as the saying goes. And that was true of Egholm; it always irritated him when Sivert made a noise over his food. Poor child – a good thing he’d the heart to eat and enjoy it.

Hedvig came tumbling in, with a clatter of wooden shoes.

“Puh, what a mess! I’m drenched to the skin. Look!” She ducked forward, sending a stream of water from the brim of her hat. Her hair, in two heavy yellow plaits, slipped round on either side, the ends touching the floor; then with a toss of her head she threw it back, and stood there laughing, in the full glare of the lamp.

Glittering white teeth and golden eyelashes. The freckles round her nose gave a touch of boyishness to her face.

“My dear child, what can we give you to put on?”

“Oh, I’ll find some dry stockings – there’s a pair of mine in the settee.”

“Sivert borrowed those, dear, last Sunday, you know. But you can ask him – he’s outside in the kitchen.”

Egholm, too, must have his meal. He had a ravenous appetite. The pile of bread and dripping vanished from his plate as a cloud passes from the face of the moon. Possibly because he was reading, as he ate, of the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey.

The rain spattered unceasingly against the panes.

“What are you hanging about here for?” asked Hedvig. Sivert was standing huddled up by the sink.

“He’ll find out in a minute,” whispered the boy. “He’s waving his arms and legs about, and talking all about money.”

“Puh – let him. We must eat, so there’s an end of it. He’ll have forgotten by to-morrow how much there was.”

“But he’ll count it to-night. He’s going to the meeting.”

“To-night – h’m. That’s a nasty one,” said Hedvig thoughtfully.

Sivert showed a strange reluctance to hand over the stockings.

“They’ve been confirmed,” he explained. “I wore them last Sunday. You can’t have them back now after they’ve been to my confirmation. It’s a great honour.”

“You take them off, and that sharp! You can see mine are wet through.”

“Mine are … they’re wet, too.”

“Wet, too? Why, what have you been doing?”

“I – I couldn’t help it,” snivelled Sivert shamefacedly. “It came of itself, when Father took the bowl…”

Hedvig drew away from him, turning up her nose in disgust.

“Ugh! You baby!”

“Mother! Is she to call me a baby now I’m grown up and confirmed?”

“Hold your noise, out there!” cried his father. “Run down to Eriksens’ and ask the time.”

Sivert hurried away, and brought back word: half-past seven.

“I must be off,” said Egholm, with an air of importance.

Mother and children looked with a shiver of dread towards the cut-glass bowl. But Egholm was quietly putting on his still dripping coat, looking at himself in the glass, as he always did. It was a game of blind man’s buff, where all save the blind man know how near the culprit stands.

“Leave out the key, Anna, if I’m not…”

“Oh, I’ll be waiting up all right.”

“Well, if you like.” Egholm moved to the door; he grasped the handle. A flicker of hope went through them; he had forgotten his tithe and offering. To-morrow it wouldn’t matter so much…

But Egholm stood there still, pulling at his beard, straining himself to think…

“Ah – I mustn’t forget the chiefest of all.”

In the midst of a ghastly silence he took the bowl from its place, shook out the little heap of coppers, and with a satisfied air stacked them up in orderly piles, ready to count. He counted all through, counted over again, and moved the piles in different order, pulled at his beard, and glowered. The mother kept her eyes fixed on her work, but the children were staring, staring at their father’s hands.

“How much was it he lent us on the clock last time? Three kroner, surely?”

“Yes; I think it was three,” said Fru Egholm, trying her hardest to speak naturally.

“What do you mean? – ‘you think it was!’” Her husband rose to his feet with a threatening mien.

“Yes, yes, I remember now. It was three kroner.”

“And did you put the thirty-øre tithe in the bowl, as I ordered?”

Fru Egholm felt instinctively that it would be best to insist that the money had been put in the bowl. But another and stronger instinct led her at this most unfortunate moment to hold forth in protest against the giving of tithes at all, and more especially tithe of moneys received on pawned effects. And very soon she had floundered into a slough of argument that led no way at all.

Egholm strode fuming up and down the room.

“You didn’t put it in at all.”

“I did. To the last øre.”

Now this was perfectly true. The money had been put in…

“Then you must have stolen it again after.”

“God wouldn’t have it, I know. It’s blood money.”

“Wouldn’t He? He shall – I’ll see that He does! You’ve stolen money from the Lord! What have you done with it?”

“What do you think we should do with it?”

“Who’s been out buying things?” he thundered, turning to the children.

“It wasn’t me – not quite,” said Sivert, with one thumb deep in his mouth.

“That means it was you, you little whelp. What did you buy with the money?”

“I didn’t buy two eggs.” Sivert was steadfastly pleading not guilty.

Egholm called to mind that he had had an egg with his dinner. The depth of villainy was clear and plain.

Fru Egholm could hold out no longer. “I – I thought you needed something strengthening, Egholm; you’ve been looking so poorly. And I took out the thirty øre again and bought two eggs. One you had, and one I gave the children. They need it, too, poor dears.”

Egholm felt his brain seething; he gripped his head with both hands, as if fearing it might burst. Every nerve seemed to shudder as at the touch of glowing iron.

“Ye are cursed with a curse,” he said in a hollow voice.

“Egholm, do be calm…” But his wife’s well-meaning effort only made him the more furious. He picked up his stick and struck the table with a crash.

“You should be struck down and smitten to earth – you have brought a curse upon my house!”

“Egholm, do be careful. It’s not for my own sake I say it, but remember the state I’m in…”

“What have I to do with the state you’re in?” he thundered inconsequently, but laid down his stick. “Out with the money this minute! Do you hear? The money, the money you took!”

“But you know yourself we used all we had for the rent, or I wouldn’t have touched the other. I can’t dig up money out of the ground.”

“Then give me the silver spoon.”

This was a little child’s spoon, worn thin, and bearing the date of Fru Egholm’s christening.

“Take it, then,” she said, weeping.

The children had been looking on with frightened eyes. Sivert, in his confusion, now began sawing again.

“What – you dare – at such a time! Stop that at once!” cried his father. And by way of securing immediate obedience, he twined his fingers in the boy’s hair and dragged him backwards out of his chair, till his wooden shoes rattled against the flap of the table.

Fru Egholm sprang towards them; the linen she was at work on tore with a scream.

“For Heaven’s sake!” she cried desperately, picking up the boy in her arms.

“Give me the spoon and let’s have no more nonsense,” said Egholm, and strode out. The three stood listening, as to the echoes of retreating thunder. First the slam of the door below, then the heavier clang of the gate across the yard.

“O – oh!” said Hedvig, “he ought to be thrashed!” And she drew a deep breath, as of cleaner air.

“Don’t speak like that, child. After all, he’s your father.”