Egholm and his God. Buchholtz Johannes
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