Egholm and his God

XX

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.”