Chapter VI: Part ONE (5)

Herman entered the boat for several races. Unhappily owing to a series of annoying accidents, such as bad luck with the wind, and small breakdowns, he was unable to win a prize. But anyhow there was open-air dancing afterwards and a regatta with Chinese lanterns and fireworks. And Laura came home quite excited with dancing and wine and the sound of lapping water in a blue darkness full of kisses and the sound of clinking glasses and songs and hearty curses and bright, sinuous, reflections and sudden bouquets of light shooting up above the edge of the forests.

Laura was really unreservedly happy during this period. It seemed as if the happy care-free years down in a Southern atmosphere had set fire to her and thawed her. She had acquired a certain sweetness that was unusual under the skies of Selambshof. During these summer months it seemed as if Selambshof had lost its power over her. She hovered laughingly around the coarse and greedy imp, Peter the Boss. She smiled at Hedvig’s bitter, stiff and offended airs. She moved like a happy and contented stranger in and out of this dreary malevolent house, where the former naughty Laura had once sat drinking vinegar in order to escape into the world.

Laura was just twenty years old. The particular kind of egoism that comes from bad nerves was completely alien to her. She blossomed out under kisses, which had not yet become the serious business of life. It was her season of roses. All the good elements in her nature had their great opportunity. Would this soft mellow rose-perfume penetrate to the core of her being? Where there is a fund of health there are always possibilities. Things had never looked so promising.

Laura had taken it into her head that they would take a flat in town. The idea was constantly in her mind. What supreme comfort it would be to live amongst restaurants, shops and theatres with plenty of pin money! She begged and implored Herman, but on this point he was really immovable. He felt it would be treason to his dead father to leave Ekbacken. And lo! Laura yielded like a good child. She even liked him because he knew his own mind.

She also gave in on another point. She had dreamed that they would start on their great wedding trip at once. But Herman, who had a dispute, concerning shore rights, with the town to attend to, had to wait till the spring, when the matter would be regulated. He had to defend his dead father’s old Ekbacken. He seemed to gather strength from the mourning band on his sleeve.

If only that strength had survived a little longer.... The wedding day came nearer and nearer.

Stellan came home from the summer manœuvres, brought his heels together with a slight click of his spurs and greeted his pretty sister with ironical politeness. He had grown into a witty and elegant young officer. The uniform was exactly the right mask for his easy cynicism and light irony. Now he kissed Laura’s hand.

“So you’re going to get married,” he said, “and you’re sticking to your old lake. What an idyl, my dear Laura.”

Laura snatched her hand away shyly. She somehow could not answer with a smile. Stellan made quite another impression on her than the others at Selambshof. He was the real brother of the old, naughty Laura. Her love was in some way afraid of him. Yes, she was also afraid on Herman’s account. Quite instinctively Laura did all she could to avoid Stellan during the next days, though it was he who had undertaken all the arrangements for the wedding.

Now the morning of the wedding had arrived. Laura came for the last time out of the room in which she had slept as a little girl. She left it without regrets. Selambshof had never been a home. She remembered how lonely she had been these last days. Nobody had sat by her bedside the last night and talked late in whispers far into the night. She was not afraid. One could not be afraid of Herman. No, but she had been lying in her bed longing to have at least a little letter from a school friend to read.

As Laura walked down the passage she suddenly heard Stellan’s voice in the smoking room. It must have been Peter he was talking to, because the replies sounded like coarse mutterings. She was just stealing past the door to find Hedvig, for today she felt a strange aversion to meeting her brothers alone. But then something made her stop and listen. She heard her own name and Herman’s pronounced. “Laura ... she ... will be able to twist the poor boy round her little finger....”

It was Stellan’s voice—curiously penetrating—like drinking iced water. Then she heard Peter mumble in a thick voice, expressive at one and the same time of satisfaction and discontent:

“There are sure to be difficulties in the long run with Ekbacken—not a business man at all.”

Laura heard no more, for somebody had begun to hammer in the hall. For a moment she stood motionless. She felt a little sick from the smell of freshly scrubbed floors, which lingered in the dark passage. She suddenly felt the oppressiveness of the high dismal house again. For a fraction of a second a strange sensation of being in some way cheated shot through her. Then she became angry—exceedingly angry with Stellan and Peter. But she said nothing, she did not go in to them, but hurried down to Ekbacken to greet Herman and convince herself that he was still the same. She remained there so long that he grew anxious lest she should not have time to dress for the wedding.

Then the guests began to arrive. Stellan had managed to collect quite a fair number of fine folk. The dowager from Kolsnäs and her son were there. Lähnfeldt’s elegant carriage drove up to the door. But Percy Hill was abroad and was only represented by the fine old Dutch master he had sent as a wedding present. Peter’s contribution was a collection of the wealthiest customers of Selambshof. Herman had very few relatives left, except the two old aunts, who had been at the funeral and who looked very shy and plain.

Hedvig demonstratively put on a dark severe-looking frock and she spread a chill around her. Tord was not there. He did not go to bourgeois parties.

The marriage ceremony was to take place in the hall, which was decorated with all the bright autumn flowers the old gardener had been able to collect in the garden.

They had almost succeeded in concealing the shabbiness and gloom of the room. Laura was late. The clergyman had already had time to smell the dahlias three times before she appeared. Her expression had something of both defiance and anxiety, as if the guests had assembled there to amuse themselves at her expense. But Herman’s looks apologized both for the delay and for his having to stand on the right of his lady.

Laura’s voice sounded impatient when she answered her “yes.” It sounded as if she had been kept waiting at the booking office window before a long journey.

During dinner she was also nervous. She was silent, and emptied her glass absent-mindedly, and drummed with her fingers on the table during the clergyman’s speech. The speech was somewhat lugubrious. It seemed as if he had only two speeches to choose from, one for weddings and the other for funerals, and as if he had fallen on the wrong one.

Laura’s brothers were sitting opposite, further down the table. There was a challenging and hostile flash in her eyes, as she looked at them. She suddenly raised her glass to Peter, who looked like a dressed-up farmhand:

“Your health, Mr. Bailiff!” she said. “It feels queer to be in evening dress, doesn’t it?”

Her voice sounded strained. She looked quickly and appealingly at Herman, who, however, did not seem to understand. Angry at not receiving any support, though it was for his sake she was taking her revenge, she now turned on Stellan. Stellan had placed himself beside Elvira Lähnfeldt, now a slim and distinguished-looking young lady, who chatted about horses and tennis. He seemed to enjoy paying her attention. He did it with the expression of a man who is already accustomed to succeed with the ladies. “Look at me,” he seemed to be saying, “I am privileged to wear a full dress uniform. I belong to the few who look dressed up when they wear civilian clothes. I am born for the good things in life, for pretty women and a fine setting.” But Laura knew her elegant brother. She knew how to penetrate his arrogant self-assurance. Her voice became suddenly tender and affecting:

“Stellan,” she said, looking into his eyes over the sparkling champagne, “Old Hermansson died so suddenly that neither you nor I had an opportunity of thanking him. Now as you are sitting with Herman in front of you, I think you ought to stand up and make a speech to his father’s memory. For if he had not been so awfully decent and helped you, instead of being such a really smart officer and lady’s man as you are now, you would have been quite an ordinary little bank-clerk or teacher of mathematics or something equally ridiculous and civilian!”

Miss Lähnfeldt looked as if she had heard something positively indecent. Stellan bit his lip and grew a trifle pale. He did not rise, and he made no speech, but he straightened himself as if to salute and lifted his glass, without saying a word, to Herman, who looked very embarrassed and could not understand at all what had come over his dear Laura.

But Laura at once became wildly gay. She had had her revenge and she could now say good-bye to stupid old Selambshof.

She looked smiling over all the flowers and the heads in order to say a last contemptuous good-bye to the old dining-room where she had eaten so much porridge and where they had given each other so many kicks underneath the table. Then her glance fastened on the portrait of old Enoch over the green settee. It was more visible than usual because of two sconces which had been moved in from the blue room. The old man stood there with his steel-capped stick in his thin claw-like hand and fixed his glance upon her. Laura had never observed before what scornful, sneering eyes he had. It was as if he looked straight through her love.

“You may wriggle about, my doll, but you can’t get away from me, anyway.”

She took Herman’s hand: “Won’t it soon be over?” she murmured.

At last they said good-bye. Laura was already standing in the porch dressed in her fur coat. Then she saw Herman walk up to Stellan and Peter and pat them on the shoulders. He looked very moved and solemn and magnanimous. She could understand that he asked them not to be annoyed with her. Stellan shrugged his shoulders, and she could see by his lips what he answered:

“Stage-fright....”

Then the silence of the cold star-lit autumn night was broken by a roar of deep bass voices, and then there was the pattering of rice against the carriage windows and a forward jerk of the horses.

Laura flung herself into Herman’s arms. She wanted to flee away from something at any cost—as if she did not want to see anything or know anything.

The following day Hedvig came in to Peter, who was lying on the sofa with a pipe that had gone out in the corner of his mouth, feeling a little stale after the wedding celebrations which he and his companions had continued noisily until the early morning. Hedvig came slipping in and looking paler and more severe than ever. Peter felt really frightened of her. He felt like a big, swollen gland which has secreted the worst excretions of sin.

“You will have to get somebody else to nurse father,” said Hedvig, “I am not going to stay here any longer. There is nothing but dissipation and vileness. Nobody seems to think that we may be dead tomorrow. I am going to take a course in nursing and then I shall join the Red Cross.”

Peter began to fear new unforeseen expenses. He begged and prayed, he clumsily touched on all sorts of points. Finally he stretched out a finger and poked it into the region of her heart:

“Hedvig, dear, one fine day you will also get married.”

Peter stopped dead. He felt as if he had sandpaper in his throat. Hedvig stood motionless and stared at him, with loathing in her eyes:

“You are disgusting” she said, in a low voice. “I hate all men. I will never, never marry!”

And with that she left the room.

A fortnight later Hedvig had started as a probationer at a hospital. And she never put her foot inside Selambshof.

Peter did not know if he felt this as a loss or relief. Sometimes he felt as if his bad conscience had left him. Sometimes he felt a little alarmed. With the departure of Hedvig he seemed to have lost his last connection with “The Powers.”

But Mrs. Laura at Ekbacken was very annoyed when Peter stalked in one day and told her about Hedvig’s new move.

“It really is a pity about Hedvig,” the little wife exclaimed. “Just think how really beautiful she can be sometimes, Herman. It almost hurts one. Couldn’t we find her a husband some way or other, Herman dear?”

Mrs. Laura still lived on her honeymoon and she thought that all people ought to marry.

Herman moved away the pink silk ribbon of her coquettish boudoir cap and kissed her hair:

“She is as pretty as anyone can be who is not fair,” he whispered.

By now Peter had gone again. This sort of thing was unbearable. They don’t care a straw either for me or Hedvig, he thought sadly in his loneliness. But wait a little, Laura has still got claws in her silky hands. Herman will feel them soon enough.

This thought consoled him a little.

* * * * *

The honeymoon was scarcely over before Mrs. Laura realised that there would be no wedding trip that spring.

No, she was definitely cheated of it, cheated of her grand wedding trip. She had not imagined things would turn out like that. This might possibly have been permitted to occur in the remote future, but just now she had desired nothing but happy surprises.

At first Laura told Herman nothing. She felt that it would be humiliating to admit her condition. But she observed him secretly. She watched for a searching or a triumphant expression in his face. Has he been expecting this? Was he only playing with me when he spoke about the wedding trip, she thought. And she felt something in her heart that almost resembled dislike. But then it struck her how sad and strange and really impossible it was that she was feeling dislike of her _own_ Herman. And then she went down to the office and let him kiss her behind old Lundbom’s back. But she was not yet able to speak about it. She felt a strange cold shame at her condition. In her there was nothing groping with tender hands towards the new life. It was as if this tender seed of life had been growing outside her and not beneath her heart.

After a few weeks Laura had no need to decide whether to tell or not—she simply could not hide it. She felt sick and she could not for ever run away and hide every morning. Laura had never been ill since she had the measles as a child. She felt a cold dread. It was as if her body were insulted every day. In her mirror she seemed to see how ugly and pale she was already growing. Still Herman said nothing. He was only doubly tender and attentive. But Laura saw all the same a flash of irritating pride and satisfaction in his eyes. And she turned away and set her teeth. What sort of a knight was this whose kisses at once produced sickness. She seemed to feel his pride like a pain within her. And then a torrent of complaints and accusations broke from her. Herman had cheated her out of her wedding trip! And she had not been allowed to live in town, as she wanted! And now she was ill, awfully ill! And she was getting ugly, old and ugly! And soon she would probably be dead—Yes, this would certainly mean her death!

Herman made no reply to all these accusations, which induced in him a solemn mood. He stroked her hair softly and calmly as one would in putting a crying child to sleep. And in the end Laura could find no other place than his arms in which she could cry out her heart.

After a time she grew calmer. The first crisis was over. It looked as if she would submit to her fate with a certain equanimity.

One dark and wet December day Laura was sitting in the bedroom window sewing some small garments. She always locked the door so as not to be taken by surprise. The sewing did not amuse her, but she did it in order to pass the time.

“Ugh!” she had pricked her finger. She stared at the red drop of blood, and with a long sigh let the sewing fall into her lap.

Out of doors it was drizzling from the grey winter sky. Through the bare lilac hedge Laura could see the yard. There lay the cutter, their cutter, drawn up forlorn under its ugly unpainted cover. Their beautiful summer cutter! It looked like a butterfly with the wings pulled off, and the crutches were its legs. It suddenly occurred to Laura that the boat had never won a prize. There had always been something to prevent it. Supposing it was not so finely designed and built after all!

Laura suddenly felt terribly depressed at this thought. She could not understand herself why she felt so sad. She rose up groaning and went to her chest of drawers. In the bottom drawer beneath her chemises and bits of ribbon, there lay a small locked box. She found the key hidden amongst her jewellery. Then she took out her diary, the romantic diary from Neuchatel, and sat down to read it from beginning to end. She hastened nervously through its pages and it seemed as if she had jumped with great anxious strides back into the past. But there was no refuge there. She could not help sneering at all that sloppy, girlish nonsense. No, the past was past. As she was turning a page, a drop of blood fell on it. Laura threw away the book. Then she saw that there were many drops of blood on her light grey dressing gown also. “Blood,” she thought with a shiver. “I shall give my blood. I shall suffer and sacrifice myself for another. People say that it is a splendid and glorious sensation. But I am not made that way. Herman must teach me. He must treat me more severely—bend me to it—.”

Laura dashed on her fur coat and galoshes and flew down to the office where Herman sat talking to Lundbom about the lawsuit, which looked as if it would be prolonged.

But Herman did not handle her firmly. He was only kind and indulgent and gave her much well-meant advice: “You must not go about thinking of disagreeable things: you must just make yourself comfortable and let me look after you.” And then he telephoned for theatre tickets for the evening.

Herman did not understand that he had a soul to fight for, a soul round which the magic circle was about to close again.

Laura could not help pondering over this lawsuit, over the shore rights. If Herman had not allowed it to interfere she would now have been on her wedding trip. And then all this would not have happened. No! then this would not have happened. How Laura arrived at this conviction seems strange, but, as we all know, our most sensible thoughts are not the most persistent ones.

Laura began to hate that lawsuit. Sometimes it almost seemed as if she wanted Herman to lose it. What if she should go over to Peter and talk it over with him for a moment. For the first time Laura had a certain furtive feeling of attraction to Selambshof. She had not been there since her wedding. But now the spirit of family called gently to its erring child.

Peter sat in his office writing in his books. The room was thick with tobacco smoke and Peter the Boss looked so coarse and vulgar that Laura at once dismissed all the subterfuges she had thought out.

“Herman’s lawsuit?” muttered Peter, “well, between ourselves, I should have settled the matter while the door was still open. The Town Council offered forty thousand for the little strip of shore and it was a fine offer. If Herman had accepted, they would never have found out that his title was doubtful. It all hangs on some old papers dating from the eighteenth century, and then justice is like a lottery. But Herman won’t give up the least bit of Ekbacken of his own free will, and of course that’s very fine of him—but, if one wants to strike fine attitudes...!”

Peter leered with half-closed eyes through the smoke, with his dull peasant cunning. Compared with Herman, Peter looked a real monster. But all the same Laura listened attentively to his words. She waited greedily for a shrug of his shoulders or a note of tolerant contempt, in order that she might, as she thought, become angry with him and say something really nasty. But in point of fact she was seeking with a strange sort of hunger to effect a secret reconciliation with something within herself, something that had been concealed by the rosy veil of her foolish sentimentality.

On her way home Laura stopped in the course of the avenue by the big oak which she and Stellan had tricked Herman into climbing. “Were you hoarse yesterday, Herman?” Oh! how furious she was with her husband for having allowed himself to be tricked that day!

For several days she went about at Ekbacken looking at Herman from hiding places and ambushes. She felt a stranger to him as she beheld his open countenance. A certain expression of unperturbed self-confidence in him annoyed her in some way. What was he really so confident about? He does not listen or watch, nor does he fight to defend me and mine, she thought. Why is he not cleverer and quicker than Peter and Stellan? Why does he not look through them? Why does he not look through me? Laura had a strange feeling of the insecurity of Herman’s position—that there was a conspiracy against him, against them. And she had an irresistible desire to arouse him, to perturb him, and goad him on with insidious words. They were sitting planning summer yachting trips, when she suddenly exclaimed:

“Fancy if you could explore a little ashore too, Herman.”

When that shaft missed its mark she began to prophesy losses and misfortunes:

“I am sure you will lose that stupid lawsuit, Herman.”

Herman replied by placing a shawl over her shoulders. Then she seized the most dangerous weapon she could think of and told him of the conversation she had overheard between Stellan and Peter on her wedding day:

“Just fancy! they said that you were not a business man at all, Herman; that you were a good-natured simpleton that anyone could twist round his little finger. That’s what they said, and I think they ought to pay for that. You ought somehow to put them down a peg.”

However strange it may sound, Laura was nevertheless still fighting for her love when she spoke like this. It was the last spasm of her feeling for him. But Herman understood nothing. He only became serious and pulled a face for a moment. Then he dismissed the subject:

“Nonsense, child, you misunderstood them. How can you imagine such a thing. Near relations like that! Besides I have stolen from them the best thing they had, their pretty sister.”

He wanted to kiss her on the neck, but Laura pushed him violently away from her and ran into the bedroom, seized by an unreasoning frenzy.

The last months before the birth of the child were very difficult for Herman. He was exiled from the bedroom into the smoky atmosphere of the study, where he had to sleep on a sofa. He was a ridiculous, superfluous and disagreeable person in his own home. Even the maids were rude to him. He went about in a constant state of nervousness in this house where he was the only man. The poor fellow did not revolt, but his face grew longer and longer. He busied himself with his beloved cutter, since he was not allowed to busy himself with Laura. Above all he felt a compelling need to go and amuse himself with his summer things. It was as if he were still a child, longing for the promise of the summer holidays. He still cherished their semblance of liberty without responsibility. But in the evening he took refuge in spirit and his father’s game of patience—hoping that his beloved and exquisite Laura would return to him after the birth of her child.

But Laura lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. She was full of bitterness and disappointment. Something within her that had been deliciously softened now hardened again and left a scar behind. She was full of anger against Herman, who was not man enough to break down her egoism; who gave her a child but was unable to make her feel a mother.

Laura was very ill towards the end. She felt her pains and her helplessness as direct insults by Herman. Sometimes she almost went mad with fear at her approaching delivery. For a woman whose being is cramped by egoism the agony of childbirth is doubly terrible. There is no joy in the suffering. It is martyrdom without faith. After a struggle of three days she gave birth to a boy. When they wanted to place the child beside her, she pushed it away with her last remaining strength:

“Take it away,” she muttered, “I don’t want to see it.”

That was the first day. Afterwards she calmed down and showed a certain interest in her child. But she could not bear to hear it cry. Then it had to be taken away into another room at once. And she could not be persuaded to suckle the newborn child. Thus far Nature had forced her, but now at last she could say “No.” Oh what a joy to be able to say “no” at last!

When a mother is not delivered of her egoism it grows sevenfold worse.

There is something mysterious in the quick recovery of women after child-birth. In a week and a half Mrs. Laura was up again, well and flourishing, more beautiful than ever, without any trace of all the suffering that she had passed through—at least no outward traces. She made a very charming picture with her son, when she occasionally condescended to bend over his bed and pat his cheek. Herman, who had already forgiven her for not wanting to suckle their little Georg, was quite ready with his admiration and chivalrous attentions to the young mother.

And Laura accepted the homage calmly and unmoved.

Herman was still a very young man. He could not go about for ever satisfied with the sensation of being a happy father. There came a moment when he wanted to receive some of the gracious caresses that were occasionally bestowed on little Georg. He found something especially bewitching in Laura’s new fulness, in the milky whiteness of her skin, in her lazy, contented, catlike purring after the storm she had passed through. But he was far too sensitive to behave roughly. And there was something in that purring that made him a little shy and timid. He went about with a new and hesitating love as if he were the fiancé of his own wife. He seized every opportunity to pay her little attentions and to make her little presents which she graciously deigned to accept. Soon, Herman thought, I shall be a happy man again. But Laura smiled and shrugged her shoulders. She was playing with her tall fiancé. She gave him her little finger. But when he suddenly wanted the whole hand she shook her head and said “no,” a pitiless purring little “no.”

Herman reproached himself. “I have not behaved properly,” he thought. “I have been too rough and hasty.” And then once more he played the chivalrous fiancé for a while, and tried to get her out in the yacht as he did last summer, but no! the lake amused her no longer. Then he heaped amusements, jewels, and pretty clothes upon her. She developed a studied coquetry and opened out boldly in the sunshine.

Now it was their wedding day. Herman waited on her with an enormous bunch of red roses; he appeared at dinner in full dress and drank her health in champagne and appealed to their sweet memories. At last he thought she would be able to celebrate the anniversary of their wedding. For a moment Laura seemed touched. But it was only the champagne. At the last moment she turned away from him, froze up, and talked of her delicate health, of an uncontrollable anxiety, and held up the child as a shield between herself and her husband. And then the key grated in the bedroom door and Herman was shut out.

Laura sat down on the edge of her bed and slowly picked Herman’s roses to pieces. She felt that she would never again belong to him. It was not only cowardly selfishness in face of the new demands of life. She was no longer afraid, because her body had already forgotten. No, she no longer wanted to belong to _him_. It was the air itself here at old Hermansson’s Ekbacken that did not suit her.

Laura flicked away the last rose petal. “He allowed me to lock the door,” she thought, with a shrug of her shoulders, “I am much stronger than he is.”

It is dangerous for a woman of Laura’s temperament to begin to think like that.

* * * * *

Herman’s wounded pride did not rebel, he did not seek any revenge. He was miserable, and in despair. He fell on his knees and begged and entreated her, humiliated himself before her. And then she despised him, grew tired of him, and became cruel, deliberately cruel, so that afterwards she was half surprised at herself.

Herman flew to drink and neglected his work. All ordinary business was of course still in Lundbom’s hands but Herman supervised the building on the slips. Now he roamed about brooding and gloomy, gave orders and counter-orders, began to quarrel with his men and then suddenly he threw it all up and went down to stare at the dump. Yes! that had been the result of his lawsuit. The ground over which the town had acquired the shore rights was his, but they had begun to fill in the lake in order to build a quay. Barge after barge came along with broken china and bricks, rubbish, and sweepings. The evil smelling dump already stretched far out into the lake. One could see it all from the windows of Ekbacken and the comfort of the old place was gone. Herman would stand there for hours with his hands in his pockets, and reflect with a certain melancholy pleasure how the town dumped its rubbish there under his very nose. Then he would go inside and sit down and drink.

Once when he was half drunk he struck Laura, when for the fiftieth time she cast the unsuccessful lawsuit in his face. It was a feeble hesitating blow that only recoiled on his own suffering heart. But Laura accepted it with secret satisfaction. She had already begun to plan how she might escape with the greatest possible profit from this besieged fortress, whilst retaining all the honours of war.

An unhappy marriage is the finest arsenal of egoism. In the constant clash of two wills, selfishness sharpens its edge, and in the suffering of an opponent tempers its steel.

Laura developed surprisingly fast. It was not long before she understood with masterly cunning how to push Herman to extremes and to make him compromise himself seriously whilst she herself wisely kept quiet. It was she who encouraged him to seek men’s company and to amuse himself in town so that he should be spoken of as a reveller and a drunkard. Finally it was she who in devious ways reminded him that the world was full of women and thus furtively placed in his hands an instrument of revenge for her coldness. Otherwise Herman would never have been able to make up his mind. He was, as it were, hypnotised by her. Certainly it seemed as if it was directly by her secret influence that he threw himself with the courage of despair, and without a spark of desire, into the arms of a waitress at the nearest public house. But all the same, some childish hopes of making Laura jealous must have seized him, for a woman’s voice began to ask for him on the telephone and the poor boy tried to look provokingly cheerful when he answered. These conversations on the ’phone were followed by nights out which in their turn were followed by forced explanations which Laura had never asked for. Finally, in order to reveal the situation quite clearly to her, he began to forget and leave lying about short incriminating notes where Laura must find them. She almost felt sorry for him. But anyhow she took great care of the letters.

With a selection of these documents in her little silk bag Laura now paid a visit to Selambshof. She went off in a state of clear, cool exhilaration like a business man who is about to settle up a difficult piece of business. It seemed as if she wanted to gather strength amidst the old surroundings before the decisive battle. But all this did not prevent her from playing the martyr, a rôle that was really more pleasant than she had anticipated. Even when confronting Peter the Boss it had its satisfaction, though she felt that he looked through her completely. Peter, of course was disgusting. She was almost ashamed to meet him in the streets in town. And all the same here in his office she felt a strange affinity to him. Yes, it was almost like quenching one’s thirst to look at his coarse ugliness. And now she suddenly knew instinctively that their wishes concerning Herman coincided.

Laura presented her husband’s compromising letters with a tragic mien and she soon saw Peter’s eyes looking at her with almost frightened admiration. “How the deuce have you already brought him so far?” they seemed to ask. But meanwhile he poured forth expressions of good-natured and sentimental commiseration, in much the same way as a dog dribbles when it catches sight of a rich piece of food. But afterwards he showed his teeth:

“Valuable papers,” he muttered.

It came out so suddenly that Laura had some difficulty in preserving her mien of martyrdom.

“Of course I can no longer live with Herman,” she sighed.

“These letters are worth at least a hundred thousand,” said Peter.

“I want to know how to set about getting a divorce. It’s probably a dreadful business.”

Peter thought for a moment and then he brightened up:

“I will speak to Lundbom. He knows everything.”

“Lundbom?”

“Yes, Lundbom’s the man. He won’t suspect that it concerns you two. He is absolutely blind to everything personal.”

In spite of her martyr’s air Laura laughed low:

“Hum! That really would be rather funny.”

Peter had a free consultation with Lundbom at their next card party. Lundbom saw no escape for the faithless spouse; either hopeless and scandalous divorce proceedings or a friendly settlement with a promise to surrender the children and a handsome allowance.

Armed with this information Laura made a great scene with Herman. Now all of a sudden she pretended to be insulted, in despair, and mortally wounded in her wifely dignity. She took the matter in such deadly earnest and was so absorbed in the dramatic situation that she almost began to believe in her feelings herself. Herman was aghast. His first feeling was one of wild joy that she had after all suffered, that she still loved him. This made him forget that it was she herself who had placed his revenge in his hands. But after her first outburst Laura continued more calmly, with profound reproach in her tone. Herman might have waited for her. A little patience only and everything would perhaps have been all right between them again. “You might have excused a poor woman who has had to pass through so much.”

Laura was magnificent when she said all this. Her words fell like molten lead on Herman’s heart. He confessed his helplessness, his despair at his indulgence in spirits, and his disgust at his sorry folly with the other woman, who had never given him a moment’s relief. He was filled with a deep despair and remorse and begged her forgiveness with tears streaming from his eyes.

It was the old, banal, and horrible struggle, in which the result is a foregone conclusion, the struggle between the one who loves and the one who is loved.

Laura was merely irritated by Herman’s tears. Did she suspect that they sprang from sources which in her had already dried up? Was that why her tone was so hard and dry? When one cannot be Love one wishes to be Fate. Oh! there was a secret luxury in standing there stiff and unyielding:

“You have killed my love,” she said, “I want a divorce and I shall take Georg. You have no right to refuse.”

Herman staggered as if he had been struck in the face. The violence of the blow prevented him from seeing how the whole thing had been pre-arranged.

He stood there gazing around him in front of an image of stone and muttered alternate prayers and curses till at last he ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

But Herman could not get away from the fact that Laura had everything beautifully arranged. She had public opinion on her side, she had witnesses and letters. If he wanted to escape the horrible divorce proceedings he must accept her conditions. So he had to take the familiar journey to Copenhagen and give up little Georg, and mortgage Ekbacken heavily in order to purchase a nice little annuity for his wife.

He stayed on in his lonely home with a bleeding hatred. Sometimes he did not know whether it was hatred or love. But Laura made a triumphant entry with baby and annuity into an elegant little flat in Karlavägen, in the same house as Stellan had his little two-roomed bachelor flat. She was determined to enter society in order to amuse herself and for this purpose Stellan’s brother officers and his circle of fine friends might be invaluable for a divorced young wife.

The very evening that Laura moved in, she went down to see Stellan:

“I did not stay at the old lake,” she said, “and the little idyl did not materialise.”

“No, no!” said Stellan. “Shall we play a game of écarté?”

And they did.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XI

+THE SPANISH SAINT+

One fine day in September Stellan Selamb, lieutenant of the Göta Guards, was out at field manœuvres at Lidingön with his platoon. They had already during the cool and clear morning hours practised advancing in open formation through the broken brushwood to the right of the main road, when he gave over the command to the sergeant and, consulting his map, began to climb a steep hill path to make an attack on his own. After some searching he found another new cross road which brought him to a large, new and somewhat strange looking house, which lay alone in the midst of the dense pine wood.

Stellan did not associate with architects and did not usually pay much attention to houses. But he was accustomed to safe old manor-houses which seemed to have grown out of the ground where they were stood. This house on the contrary looked as if it had fallen down from the sky with its dazzling white walls broken up in a fantastic way and its bright green roof! It was positively difficult to tell whether it was meant for a temple, a sanatorium, a museum or perhaps even an ordinary house. Anyhow Stellan hammered the antique knocker against a huge black church door densely studded with coarse nails.

A groom opened the door.

“The master is in bed, but I am to announce visitors all the same.”

He disappeared but returned at once with the message that if the lieutenant would look at the pictures for a moment his master would receive him. Stellan walked through several large rooms full of pictures, like picture galleries.

Some of them he knew from Percy’s old flat in town, but most of them had probably been bought during his last long journey abroad. There was both ancient and modern art, Spanish and Dutch masters and some of the most modern impressionists, but he could discover no trace of Percy’s own canvases.

“Just like him,” Stellan thought, “they are of course relegated to some old boxroom.”

At last the door into the bedroom was opened. There lay “The China Doll.” It was the same thin, refined face as before. And the same little smile, amiable, gentle and slightly reserved. Only the blue of the eyes was not as cool as before.

“Good-morning, Percy, old man, I happened to have field exercises in the neighbourhood and thought I would have a peep at your new Tusculum.”

“O, I am so pleased when somebody is kind enough to look in.”

Percy’s voice sounded strangely fragile. But Stellan did not notice it. He was so accustomed to see Percy ill. Having looked closely at the bedroom he suddenly burst out laughing. It was black and white with a vaulted ceiling and heavy carved oak furniture. The chairs seemed completely taken up with their own ornament and would no doubt have looked upon the back of anyone sitting down on them as a desecration. Percy’s bed resembled most nearly a catafalque and it was standing in an alcove which looked like a chapel in the church of “The Third Kingdom.”

“I say, this looks rather as if it was prepared for the eternal sleep,” Stellan exclaimed. “For a marble statue.”

Percy’s smile was a shade more wan.

“Yes, perhaps you are right....”

Stellan opened the door of a W. C. which the uninitiated would have taken for some kind of confession box. He suddenly grew furious and felt a desire to say something indecent; he wisely kept it back however.

“Excuse me, Percy, old chap, but do you really feel at home here?”

“No, I can’t say I do.”

“Well, then, why the devil do you have it in this style, then?”

Percy looked at the ceiling of the alcove which was painted all over with pentagrams and spirals.

“Well, my architect did it,” he muttered resignedly. “He wanted it like this. And I dared not oppose him. It is so difficult when you are not able to say that you cannot afford it. It brings so many responsibilities. Do you know, Stellan, I don’t think it is possible really to will something, really to be something for your own sake if you have lots of money.”

Stellan thought that if that was the difficulty he was ready to ease him of his burden.

“Poor Percy,” he laughed sarcastically. “The prisoner of wealth, for life.”

But then he remembered the refined little boy dressed in white behind the gates at Stonehill. And it struck him that there might perhaps be a bitter blighting truth in his exclamation. And that Percy perhaps was a shade more serious this time than usual. Stellan drummed, a little embarrassed, on the rough carved block of black oak that constituted the foot of the bed.

“I say, Percy, how are you really?”

Percy smiled an apologetic smile:

“Well, to be frank, I had a rather serious hæmorrhage of the lungs a week and a half ago ... my chest has always been weak, you know.”

For various reasons Stellan was horrified:

“But your footman did not tell me so. I had not the slightest idea that....”

“Well, I don’t want to advertise my illness.”

“What does the medicine man say?”

“He shakes his head and says that I must lie quiet in bed for the present, only lie quiet.... But dash it all, Stellan, don’t take it so seriously. I myself am rather pleased. I have never been anything but a dilettante. But this will perhaps be my opportunity. A real danger! An honest compulsion! Sometimes I feel as if I would really be able to do something after all. Oh, there is a curious excitement in the fever and the imminence of death.”

Stellan was just pondering how best in these circumstances he might decorously prepare Percy for the comparative relief to be derived from backing a bill for five thousand. Then a head with fair straggling hair and broad good-natured features peeped in through the door and disappeared again with a smile of apology at the sight of Stellan. It was the nurse. There were red spots in Percy’s cheeks and his voice sounded worried and nervous:

“If you knew how I suffer from that woman,” he whispered. “She is not at all unkind to me. On the contrary. But I can’t stand people with that sort of stolid face. I shiver when she touches me.”

“Why don’t you send her away?”

“No, it is so difficult. I can’t bring myself to do it. Once she is here she has certain claims on me.”

Percy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand entreatingly:

“Perhaps you could help me, Stellan? Hasn’t the Army some connection with the Red Cross? Oh, if you could find me in some way a more bearable face!”

Stellan suddenly had an idea, a strange half-impossible idea which, however, at bottom seemed to him to be curiously charged with infinite possibilities. “Hedvig!” he thought. “Hedvig!” He had to make an effort to recover his normal, smooth and kindly tone.

“I could speak to my sister Hedvig,” he said. “She is a nurse. But I tell you beforehand that she has a sombre and strange temper. But her face is really something for an artist to look upon.”

Percy became quite excited and was filled with touching gratitude:

“A face, a temperament, a human being! Oh, how grateful I should be to you!”

“Good, I’ll speak to her if she can get free. Anyhow this grinning monster must be got rid of!”

With this Stellan took a warm good-bye. But at the door he turned round with his most charming and unconcerned expression.

“By the way, Percy, I am going about with a damned little bill in my hip pocket. You would not like by any chance to put your scrawl across it?”

“With pleasure, old boy, with pleasure.”

Stellan stepped whistling out of Hill’s villa and, in excellent temper, resumed his command over his dusty and perspiring platoon.

The same evening Stellan went to see Laura. He had got into the habit of running up to her to talk things over before he settled anything important.

Laura was dressing to go to the theatre. He helped her to fasten her frock behind.

“Percy has had a hæmorrhage of the lungs and is dissatisfied with his nurse. I offered to get Hedvig for him. What do you think about it?”

“Poor Percy!”

“But how shall I persuade Hedvig?”

“You must talk about sacrifice, and give her an opportunity to look long-suffering.”

Stellan rang up the Red Cross at once. There he was given another telephone number and rang again. A weak tremulous voice replied:

“Sister Hedvig? Yes, I’ll tell her.”

Hedvig came to the telephone. Stellan presented his case. He made Percy as ill as possible and begged her to sacrifice herself for their old friend. Hedvig’s distant voice assumed a peculiarly hard resigned note.

“I don’t think I can.”

“But why?”

“Well, at least not at once.”

“Why?”

She lowered her voice:

“No, it won’t be ... all over here for another few days....”

“All over!” Then a human being lay dying at the other end of the wire! Stellan felt a cold shiver. He looked at Laura, who sat there in low-cut evening frock polishing her nails. He looked around him in the coquettish little room. All over in a few days. All over! How curiously Hedvig had said that. It was as if she had wanted to force the thought of death on him like a tablespoonful of medicine.

“Well, ... I may tell poor Percy that you will come when you ... you are free?”

“Yes, I suppose I must give up my idea of resting a little.”

Then she rang off.

Stellan hung up the receiver.

“Yes, she will go to Percy as soon as her present patient has had time to die. And it is Hedvig who is leading such a life! Really I can’t understand it....”

Laura pursed up her lips whilst she pulled on her glove. She looked unusually free from any sentimentality at that moment.

“Hedvig is frightened,” she said.

Stellan felt nervous.

“Frightened? Damned funny way of being frightened. What do you really mean?”

Laura’s answer came short, sharp and pleased. One could see how she had worried about this matter and at last found a satisfactory explanation:

“Who is it that runs about in the cemeteries at midnight?” she said. “Precisely those who are afraid of ghosts. Others have no business there.”

And then Mrs. Laura went to the theatre.

It was a fact that for a year and a half past Hedvig had been a trained Red Cross nurse and that she was already one of those who was sent to the more difficult cases and that she herself desired it so.

To her fellow nurses she was an enigma. They felt at once that she was not one of those simple good women whose hearts call them to serve, care for, and struggle against suffering and death. As they knew that she had gone straight from her sister’s wedding to the hospital the younger nurses at once concluded that Hedvig’s secret was unrequited love, but the older and more experienced nurses shook their heads.

The doctors also discussed Sister Hedvig. Men will always discuss women such as Sister Hedvig. After long discussions which were not free from criticism, though they were supposed to be scientific, they too, turned to love as explanation. And they of course protested against such childish nonsense as women’s talk of an unhappy love. A young psychiatrist had the word last. He said nothing cynical. He would perhaps have done so ten years earlier. But now cynicism was no longer the fashion—at least among the psychiatrists—that was left to the surgeons and other humbler craftsmen.

“Sister Hedvig,” the young doctor said, “is a very interesting case. As a matter of fact she cannot look a healthy man full in the eyes. But all the same she at once chose the male division in the hospital. She simply had to go there, she was really incapable of doing her duty to the women patients. What else is that but a case of timid, wounded, sickly eroticism slinking away to sick people. She feels a secret relief in seeing men suffer and die. She sacrifices them to Eros—probably by a religious perversion of her feelings.”

Thus spoke the young doctor and did not observe his own involuntary confession of having looked very deep into Sister Hedvig’s eyes.