But there were those who were not so fortunate as to reach the aid, and many to whom the aid would not stretch down. For where vice had allied itself with poverty, help might be a curse, and it was a sin to take the bread from the worthy poor, who gave thanks with tears and blessings.
Loppen no longer got aid; all became, in time, tired of her. When she and Svend, late in the autumn, moved in from the brick-works, they lived well for a week or so, on the rest of his summer’s wages; but when it was gone, they had nothing at all.
For what Madam Speckbom had once said, that Elsie and Svend suited each other, proved only too true. They were alike light-hearted, alike happy in living well, and alike incapable of saving.
Svend, in this particular, was the better; but he drank it up immediately.
Loppen for a time set about deceiving one after another of the charitable ladies. But when it was over, she was of so bad repute the city over, that she did not know which way to turn.
So she deserted Svend and went with another, who had a few shillings left, came back to him and disappeared again; so no one really knew where she kept herself.
Even Miss Falbe lost sight of her. But at gentlemen’s dinners, the chief of police used to quote Loppen as an example of how exceedingly fast, women of the common people go to the bottom when they have once gone astray. And the gentlemen stared moodily down into their champagne glasses, and wondered that moral strength was so poor among the lower classes.
Elsie neither thought nor dreamed any more; she was neither ashamed nor penitent.
From day to day she struggled on through misery; laughed when it went merrily, with food and drink, and ran the town over when she was in want.
At last she sank into a kind of a waitress in a bar-room down by the dock, where she drank ale with foreign sailors.