At first it really seemed as if Egholm had conquered the ancient prejudice in favour of warmth. He talked about pawning his overcoat, and went about rejoicing at his excellent health. He expected to feel even better as it grew colder, he said.
But cold was a strangely elusive enemy to fight against. Out in the open, in a gale of wind, where one might expect to find it at its worst, he could defeat it easily, and come home flushed and warm. Then, before he knew it, it had crushed and left him exhausted in his own comparatively sheltered room. His wrists grew thinner, and his fingers curled like the fingers of a corpse.
One evening he gave in completely. Now he would have a fire, and that at once. And since there was nothing else in the place to burn, he cut up his wife’s chopping-boards, tore out the stuffing from an old straw mattress, and trampled Hedvig’s doll’s house flat. Fru Egholm made piteous protest, but Hedvig simply looked on with a curious smile. Next day Egholm himself was most eager to obtain credit at the coal merchant’s.
This, then, was the state of things in the house. They had no money, and very little credit; both difficult things to do without.
People seemed to have forgotten there was such a thing as having their photograph taken.
The Egholms felt it in various ways: food and clothing, for instance. Hedvig could manage all right as to food. She was always eating at the baker’s, and cakes dropped out of her clothes when she undressed at night; she brought them home for Emanuel. But even her existence was touched with the ugly grey brush of poverty. Her boots were a marvel; every schoolgirl in the town knew Hedvig’s boots. They had an extraordinary number of buttons up the side, with springs, and a sort of ventilation. They must have cost a great deal at one time. There were no soles to them now, but that did not matter, said her father—you don’t walk with your feet in the air! Hedvig admitted there was something in that, and comforted herself further with the thought that no one could see what her under things were like.
There was little gaiety about the Egholms’ life.
And yet there was one little being whose only longing day and night was to share their lot in every way. This was Sivert in his smithy.
The day his mother had got into the train and glided out into the morning mist, his organ of equilibrium had suffered a shock. One day he would fall, and fall, moreover, in the direction of Knarreby.