Elsie

by Alexander Lange Kielland

So she made a circuit through the park, and went right by the church. One of the side doors stood open; she had a strange longing, slipped in and sat down on a bench by one of the huge pillars.

At first she was half deafened by the loud clangor of the bells which were ringing in the tower. But when she had grown accustomed to the sound, it seemed as if she rested upon it and swung to and fro beneath the lofty arches.

There by the pulpit a couple of scrub-women were kneeling; they had a lamp on the floor which they moved about with them, and up in the choir was a lantern which the men, who were repairing the heating apparatus, had set down.

Loppen had not been in the church for a long time, and it touched her wonderfully to see the holy place again in the uncertain twilight, and amid this festive clangor of the chiming bells.

Until an hour ago, she had not had a single thought but to get herself something to eat, or still better, something to drink; for she had been starving for several weeks, as they starve who eat a little bread or salt fish if opportunity offers, and otherwise keep life in themselves with ale and brandy.

To-day she had tasted neither food nor drink, but that was all forgotten now; it had been forgotten, in fact, from the very first word Miss Falbe said.

That there was still granted one person who would talk to her like that!

A light had come into the night of degradation in which she had so long been roving about; thoughts of her better days, which she had dreaded and driven away with drink, came again without paining her. She could really sit there in the gloomy church and think of her little chamber at Madam Speckbom’s. For Miss Falbe had smoothed away the worst of her shame; she felt as if she had been cleansed from head to foot, and through it all she rejoiced on account of the porridge.

But the bells which had for a time been chiming softly, and as if far aloft, joined now in a great, strong peal which so filled the church that her ears rang with it. One of the scrub-women moved her light at the same moment, so that all the relieved heads on the pulpit stood out.

Elsie stared upon them and her eyes followed the dim light into all the corners of the church, up over the high arches where new heads gleamed out from among sculptured stone flowers and leaf-tracery.