Chapter VII: Part ONE (6)

Perhaps there was something in what he said after all. Though Laura had probably said the truest word. The fundamental fact in Sister Hedvig’s nature was still fear. And this fear had not, as in Peter’s case, spread over the surface in the shape of pretended good nature and a magnificent tissue of lies. No, in Hedvig it grew inwards in the dark. And this growth she felt as an ever-present gnawing ache in her inmost being. In the end this dark groping fear had become so much a part of her that every glimpse of happiness, liberty, spaciousness only seemed to her a mockery. But her suffering was terrible just because of its indefiniteness, its formlessness and its teeming darkness. Under these circumstances she must have felt every really definite cause for fear as a sort of relief, a release. He who sees, need not brood. That was why the sick bed and the death bed held such a strange attraction for her. That was why her expression would sometimes reveal such curious relief in the presence of the most awful struggles. That was why she closed the eyes of the dead with such pale and still solemnity. She herself interpreted it as the brief precious peace of heart before God after service and sacrifice. During her training as a nurse Sister Hedvig had turned more and more away from the world and relapsed into religious gloom. She walked about like a living protest against every form of levity and vanity.

And now she stood on a cold and clear September day by Percy’s bed at Hill Villa.

Percy stared at her dark eyes and pale cheeks. It was really an unusual pallor. One did not know whether she burned or froze.

“And so you are Stellan’s sister,” he muttered. “We must have met, as children at least, when I was still living at Stonehill. Strange that I did not notice your looks, then.”

“I have always kept apart,” she answered coldly.

Percy smiled a little apologetic smile.

“But now ... now Sister Hedvig comes here and wants to help me, poor wretch....”

“I will try to do my duty,” answered Sister Hedvig.

Percy sank back with half-closed eyes on his pillow. It suddenly seemed to him inconceivable that a woman with such a face should witness his frailty, help him to change his shirt and reach him the basin. “I shall have a high temperature this evening,” he thought. “But that doesn’t matter. I shan’t be bored anyhow.”

Hedvig left the sick room on some errand. When she came back Percy had already managed to allot a place to the newcomer in his world.

“Now I have got it,” he said contentedly. “Sister Hedvig is a Spanish saint. Yes? I have seen Sister Hedvig hanging on a church wall in Toledo.... Or perhaps it is something Byzantine,” he added thoughtfully. “Yes, you would look well in a mosaic ... on a ground of gold ... or perhaps a cold greenish blue....”

Sister Hedvig received this speech, which was to her partly incomprehensible, partly offensive, in silence. She had never before met a dilettante patron of art of Percy’s type. She was highly distressed and confused by the whole atmosphere of Hill’s villa. She walked with lowered eyes and frightened steps through these rooms in which the walls were covered with impudently brilliant coloured pictures. I won’t even mention all the nudes that met her gaze everywhere without trace of shame, in strange and challenging forms. To her the nude was now exclusively associated with sickness and death. She could not and would not think of it except under fever cooling bandages or under the surgeon’s knife. And here it insolently glowed with health or made a pretence of harmony and peace which could be nothing but a delusion and abomination. It was incredible. But that was not all. Even from the landscapes it seemed to her that there emanated something of sin and danger. The mixture of French impressionism and national lyricism of that time, which nowadays appears to us so harmless and innocent, still seemed then alarmingly modern, and Hedvig also found in these pictures a defiant worldliness quite different from that of the old brown-gravy landscapes which hung on the walls at Selambshof. Art with its flavour of sin and damnation pursued her even into the sickroom. Opposite the bed there hung a picture of a handsome naked youth who smiled an ecstatic smile though his breast was pierced with cruel arrows.

“Isn’t he beautiful, Saint Sebastian?” said Percy proudly. “I discovered him in Naples in an old Jew’s shop. The painter is unknown, but you can see at once that he must have been a contemporary of Bernini. The typical mixture of sensualism and ecstasy of the baroque style cannot be mistaken. My Sebastian is a male cousin of Saint Teresa of the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. His breast is full of the arrows with which the beautiful angel threatens her. One does not quite know if it is the arrows of love or of martyrdom.”

Sister Hedvig looked at the floor and shook her head:

“I don’t understand anything of all this. And I don’t want to understand it either. I am not here to look at pictures.”

In this strange world she had come into, Percy Hill’s illness was somehow the only thing she had to hold on to and she felt hurt that he did not take it seriously enough.

Percy looked quite frightened.

“Dear, dear, surely I have not hurt you, Sister, in any way. I didn’t mean to at all.” Then he added with a pale, little smile: “I must talk about art, you see, otherwise my temperature will rise....”

She did not give an answering smile.

She continued all along to be stiff, silent and suspicious. In his weakness and helplessness he suffered at first from this lack of sympathy. If he had been an artist he would perhaps have felt a genuine hatred for her. But he was only a dilettante and an amateur, so he not only suffered it, but even began to be attracted by the gloomy and rigid creature as he might have been by some old sombre family treasure which had been hidden from the world in some dusty and sunless corner. Yes, exactly like some gloomy treasure which dumbly reminds us of the dreams and passions of a bygone age. And which is not for sale amongst the rubbish of today.

Thus far had Percy come after a week’s dilettante analysis of Hedvig’s personality. By this time he had entirely ceased to speak about art. But one evening when she stood by the window staring out on the hard and wind-swept autumn sky the expression on her face suddenly brought an idea into his head:

“Sister Hedvig,” he exclaimed, “won’t you read to me a little out of the Old Testament?”

And he rang for a footman and sent him for a new illustrated edition de luxe bible from the library.

But Hedvig refused at first. She was afraid of the echo from the luxurious rooms with their works of art just outside. She was afraid of his vain and scoffing secret thoughts. But Percy was persistent. He told her about his childhood when his mother would sometimes read aloud to him out of the school bible in the evenings. It sounded almost as if in his strange way he took the scriptures seriously. And at last to her own surprise Hedvig gave in. His face lit up:

“Take Deborah’s song,” he begged, as keen as any child to hear its favourite story.

And Hedvig read in a low voice of Deborah who led the chiefs of Israel, whose soul went forth in strength. But there was something too mournful and cold in her voice. Percy’s sensitive ear suspected old Kristin’s influence, the deep-rooted fatalism of the people. He was however afraid of hurting her and let her finish the chapter.

“That is too hard and bright,” he muttered. “There is too much victory for us two, Sister Hedvig. Take something more difficult and more gloomy.”

And Hedvig read on. She did not know why herself. Perhaps she had a feeling in her inmost heart that he in some way seemed to understand her. But this no longer alarmed her shyness. He was so weak and helpless. He lay there in the shadow of death. He would never rise up and boldly cast her secrets into her face. So she read on. She read of how Jehu annihilated the whole house of Ahab and of how the dogs ate Jezebel on the fields of Jezreel. And she read in the book of Job how man, born of woman, lives a short time full of care, how his illness rises up and bears witness against him and over his eyes rests the shadow of death. To the grave he must say: “Thou art my father,” and to the worms of putrefaction: “my mother, my sister.” And she read in Isaiah about the earth which was consumed by the curse, how the sap of the vine sorrowed and the vine languished. Plaintive cries are heard over the wine and all joy is like a sun that has set—all joy of the earth has disappeared. Dangers and pitfalls and snares lie in wait for you, inhabitants of earth! Earth is utterly broken down, and shall reel like a drunkard, it shall be clean dissolved.

Percy lay quite silent and looked at Hedvig. He followed unconsciously the movements of her lips. This is absolutely sincere, he thought. She is a being from the past. She belongs to an age when fear formed a great part of human life. It is strange to hear the Jewish cast of thought from her lips, persistent as the groans of a sufferer, bitter as the knowledge which is hammered into you by blow upon blow. Only the pressure of the world and sad experience....

And he felt a great joy as if he had succeeded at last in finding a really precious antique for his collection.

It was getting dusk and Hedvig did not see the print any longer. She put down the heavy book. She had a sudden feeling of relief as after confession. Though faint and transient it was nevertheless something unique in her life.

But already the next morning Hedvig felt a dull anxiety at having given herself up. And she was more curt and silent and reserved than usual.

In November Percy grew somewhat worse. He was often troubled by coughs and his temperature curve showed a tendency to rise. The doctor shook his head when his patient spoke of going to Switzerland.

“Not before the spring,” he said. “Now we must be good and keep quiet and drink milk.”

Percy did not like the doctor very much. He represented the prose side of his illness. But Hedvig looked meaningly at her patient when the doctor had gone. She looked at him as if he had been a child who had wanted to run away from school but who had been brought to reason. She had grown with his weakness. She nursed him diligently and carefully but with an expression of solemn superiority. “There, you see,” she seemed to say, “after all, your vanity won’t help you. Of what use now is your art and your worldly pride?”

Percy noticed it, but he did not grow angry. He was not of that kind. He also derived a sort of pleasure from this new development. Hedvig no longer seemed to him a dark and rare treasure that he had added to his collections. And he loved to droop away in sight of that sombre and stern virgin face. Even pain could give him a secret pleasure.

“This is an auto-da-fé,” he muttered once in delirium. “I can see the sparks in the pupils of Sister Hedvig’s eyes. They are roasting me with slow fire because I have doubted the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception.”

And then he smiled his mysterious, derisive, little smile, which was so full of weakness and courage. But in the midst of the smile there came a sudden fit of coughing accompanied by blood and froth between his pale lips, blood on the lace of sheets and pillows. His wound had broken out again. He had another attack of hæmorrhage of the lungs.

Percy’s face grew still paler and thinner. It was as if he had shrunk before the cold breath of Death’s wings. But he was never a coward in his suffering. There was never a trace of panic.

But his weakness was such that Sister Hedvig found no occasion for any anxious, defensive suspicion. She was afraid of life, but he no longer belonged to life, she thought. A dying man she dared to approach. Confronted by death she dared to be woman. Yes, now the shy, severe Sister Hedvig could be quite tender and open. Turning away a little, she could softly stroke his hand as it lay there so white on the eiderdown. Yes, sometimes she gave him little stealthy caresses that had no tomorrow. It was her woman’s soul that lay half suffocated beneath her fear, which now ventured to make little hesitating excursions in the twilight of death.

Thus had Sister Hedvig by the force of circumstances come quite near to one who was the complete opposite to herself. We witness here the strange meeting of two persons, one of whom is sterile from fear and the other from lack of fear. Percy Hill’s life showed a strange blunting of the faculty of fear. He had always lacked the spur to action and to life that fear provides. Hence his dilettantism. He lived on his money without knowing anything about the hard struggle which had brought it together. He loved art without being capable of diving beneath the work itself to the deep disquietude which had created it. He never went beyond the enjoyment of it. His own creative work had only been a form of enjoyment. That is why he had never created anything new. He knew it himself, but he had not the strength to feel any real anguish over it, that anguish which might perhaps in the end have opened the gates to the mysterious creative world.

But now in the face of death this deficiency seemed like a splendid liberation. It is a fact that death does not come to us as a stranger. It grows coarser or more delicate and refined according to our natures. Percy’s death must of course be frail and subtle and with an element of incurable dilettantism.

“You must not think, Sister Hedvig,” he whispered with a little smile of ineradicable irony vanquishing his weakness, “that this is anything very extraordinary to me. There is really not very much that will be lost with me. I have always stood rather well with death. I cannot remember that I have ever fought against it even in the thoughts of my boyhood. My mother was so unnaturally afraid for me that I, by mere reaction, grew more and more indifferent. At first I hoped perhaps a little to get something from my illness. I hoped that the fever and the fine restlessness would yield me something. So much beauty has been born of consumption. Perhaps I still hope. But not so feverishly that it consumes me.” In vain Hedvig told herself that this was false blasphemy. In vain she entrenched herself behind her religious feelings. She felt that he did not lie. To her it seemed monstrous that a person could speak so without lying. An exquisite coolness descended upon her soul. Her own dark fear of life shrank in this unusual light. There were moments of a glorious release of the usual tension within her. She felt something almost resembling gratitude and tenderness. She need not hide anything, nor pretend, nor creep away. All this had no tomorrow. He could not betray her, nor trample upon her. He would soon die.

Thus Hedvig went about prepared to close his eyes, to mourn for him and keep him as a beautiful memory which nobody in the world would know of, or could deprive her of.

Already she was depositing him, the secret treasure of the poor, with Death.

But now the unexpected happened, Percy Hill did not die. On the contrary he began to pick up a little in the spring. In the beginning it almost looked as if he himself had been a little embarrassed and ashamed at this turn of events.

“I have never done what was expected of me,” he said. “I never finished my pictures. And of course, I did not see this thing through either....”

But there was all the same something new in his tone. These phrases no longer rang true as formerly.

You may have been nearly run over by a tram and it is only afterwards when you are safe on the pavement that you begin to be frightened and feel the threat of death within you. As his temperature fell there rose a new restlessness in Percy Hill. He began anxiously to avoid talking of death. It seemed as if he had been ashamed of his weakness. He did all he could to appear as well as possible. It was only with difficulty that he was kept in bed. He grew impatient at the constant relapses of the early spring into cold and miserable weather. He insisted on going somewhere where there was plenty of sunshine. He had suddenly been seized by a violent zest for life.

Yes, and now Percy Hill felt for the first time a certain fear of death. A mysterious change had taken place in him. He had been inoculated with some of Sister Hedvig’s poisons in the same way as she had been with his.

How did she behave for her part now when he slowly began to slip out of the shadow of death under which they had come so near to each other? Did she draw back into her shell? Did she become the closed garden or the sealed spring once again? It might seem so. She had an expression which seemed to command him to forget what had passed between them. That furtive tenderness, whose shoots seemed only to thrive in darkness, ceased. But the seal was all the same broken. Her reserve and shyness could never be exactly the same again, they had no longer the true depth. There rather arose moments of a certain banal and everyday embarrassment between them. Percy clearly suffered in accepting her assistance. He shaved himself every day and became particular about his appearance. Certain situations galled him as being lowering to his masculine pride. It seemed as if he had to overcome a certain reluctance each time he had to call her “Sister Hedvig.” Without saying anything Hedvig acquired the habit of knocking at his door before she entered the room. She did this with a strange feeling half of bitterness and half of satisfaction. Her suspiciousness found the change in Percy’s manners wounding. But in her inmost heart she proudly understood what it really meant. Officially she was as much a stranger in his world as ever before. But it was a fact that she no longer walked through the picture galleries with lowered eyes. Though she did not admit it to herself, certain echoes of what he had said concerning pleasure and beauty being something self-evident would crop up in her thoughts. After a youth which had been haunted by the ghost of poverty, she sometimes felt a shiver run through her in the presence of this magnificent house and of all she had heard about his wealth. It was really something hitherto hidden and downtrodden in her Selamb soul that very cautiously raised its head.

From this moment Sister Hedvig began to develop a certain coquetry. If she read a silent question in Percy Hill’s eyes she purposely appeared dull and impenetrable. Her instinct told her that a man like him was attracted by the unknown, by what was unlike himself. Consequently she carefully avoided betraying anything of the change that had taken place in herself. She well remembered what he had said about the image of the saint in Toledo and about the sparks from the stake in her eyes. So she now appeared really pale and dark and Spanish. And with secret joy she saw that the Spanish effect did its work. The cool and mocking light had disappeared from Percy’s eyes. Instead there sometimes came a shy and nervous look of supplication. He was clearly in love with her.

Then Stellan called, just at the right moment. He came from what seemed to have been a family council of the Selambs. Curiosity had been stimulated enormously of late. Percy was so rich that you could not help reflecting. Nothing was impossible. It might mean marriage, it might mean a bequest in his will. One did not know if he was going to live or die. Neither Peter nor Laura knew Percy Hill enough to call on him. Hedvig herself was impossible to approach. Laura had tried over the telephone but had, of course, got nothing out of her.

Then at last Stellan came home from a command in Norrland and was sent out to Hill’s villa at once to reconnoitre.

It was a clear, warm, sunny day after a long spell of cruelly disagreeable spring weather. Stellan had a strange gift of always bringing fine weather. Percy was sitting up in an easy chair in front of an open window facing south. Sister Hedvig had slipped away into the darkest corner with some kind of Christian needlework. Such April sunshine was still too much for her. Stellan had ridden out. He was walking up and down the room lightly striking his riding boots with his whip. At first he had been shocked for a moment by Percy’s wasted look, but now he was already praising his rapid recovery. He always talked a lot, Stellan. He had a peculiar tendency to dwell with a mixture of envy and admiration on Percy’s precious art treasures, on his admirable patronage of art and his subtle intelligence. He also returned several times by sly, roundabout ways to the subject of wealth, and money.

“Yes, because Percy is the sort of man who must be reminded that he can get whatever he wants,” he said. “He will forget to keep alive if you don’t remind him.”

Stellan was insistent as if at one and the same time he had wished to free Percy from his lack of self-confidence and rouse him from the lassitude of his illness. Percy listened with his eyes half-closed. Of course he did not take all this seriously. But in his present frame of mind he enjoyed Stellan’s talk, all the same. It blended with the clear strong sunshine and seemed to hold out something like a promise of life.

Hedvig in her corner also listened to this glorification of Percy. She suspected that Stellan was also addressing himself to her. When he returned to the subject of money and to the wonderful opportunities of becoming rich she looked down at her work and continued her sewing with feverish haste. She detested him and yet she wanted to hear more. She grew hot and cold by turns. To save her life she could not have looked up.

But Stellan walked up and down between the two and observed them with cool and cheerful curiosity. He felt strangely elated. And then his black horse neighed outside by the gate post, and a loud and festive flourish of trumpets like a call to battle was sounded in the clear, radiant spring air. Stellan took a hasty farewell. Hedvig accompanied him to the front door. She was astonished at herself for doing so. But there was a certain pleasure in walking through these magnificent rooms by the side of Stellan with his jingling spurs. Out on the stairs she looked into his eyes for a moment. There was a bitter and savage triumph in her glance. Stellan pointed to his horse.

“Winnings at cards,” he said. “I have christened him the ‘Ace of Spades.’ Fine, isn’t he?”

And then he jumped into the saddle and trotted away down the hill.

Hedvig slowly returned to Percy, who was still sitting among his cushions in the sunshine.

Stellan’s visit had, as it were, aired out the place after the long confined winter. Yes, they had lived as in a monastery cell. And now the horseman on his black steed had come like a messenger from the great, cold exciting world beyond. And there was relief in that.

“As soon as I can I am going away,” said Percy, “first to Meran and then to Mentone.”

He looked at Sister Hedvig, who had resumed her sewing. She was sewing very fast and did not answer. Percy spoke again with forced ease:

“Are you coming with me, Sister Hedvig?”

She shrugged her shoulders without looking up:

“There are other sick people who need me....”

“I mean will Sister ... will Hedvig come with me as my wife?”

Hedvig shrank further into her corner. Her wretched fear once again took possession of her and thrust her into the deepest shadows.

“No, ... I can’t, ... I will never be anybody’s wife....”

For a moment Percy looked at her with anxious amazement. He had lately done his utmost to appear as well and as manly as possible, and then the poor fellow all of a sudden completely changed his pose.

“But I ... I am not a real man, Hedvig. Not now, at least. I am only a convalescent. And I don’t know if I can live without your presence.”

She was white and her hands trembled.

“If we can go on living as we have done before, then....”

“Yes, till I am well ... and you yourself want it otherwise....”

His voice sounded both sad and happy. He beckoned Hedvig towards him:

“O, we both need a lot of sunshine, you and I, Hedvig,” he muttered.

And he took her hand in his uplifted hands with an expression of reverence. It was as if he also wished to touch her beautiful oval face with his fingers. Then he sank back against his cushions and breathed heavily, oppressed by his emotions. Hedvig had to lead him back to bed.

“Our Eros,” whispered Percy pointing at Saint Sebastian, “who smiles though his breast is full of arrows.”

Such was Hedvig Selamb’s engagement. She would have shrunk back frightened from complete matrimony. She dared to go half way. It really was a typical Selamb insurance against the risks both of loneliness and poverty and the demands of life. But before the dawn of the next day she had already convinced herself that she was making a great sacrifice.

The banns had been read for the second time and Percy was expected on a visit to Selambshof, in which he had not set his foot since he was a child. Hedvig had gone there at the last moment. She could of course not stay on alone in the house of her fiancé.

The Selambs were sitting in front of a fire in the hall. The main building had stood empty the whole of the winter, since Peter nowadays lived in the bailiff’s wing. The hall was like a cave. The winter cold still clung to the walls, though it was May. But that did not seem to disturb the Selambs. They whispered in eager tones and were agreeably excited as if by an interesting game of cards. Now and then they threw pitying, envious, and secretly admiring side-glances at Hedvig, who was standing by one of the windows. Hedvig was dressed in a plain black frock. She was standing there alone, silent, cold, with a severe and haughty expression on her face. She looked down the avenue by which Percy would arrive. Yes, here her fiancé was about to drive up in a great fine carriage, round the very same bend as did Brundin once upon a time in his little green dog-cart. And during dinner she would sit silent and erect by his side and scarcely taste her food. The silence would spread around her so that not even Laura would dare to begin her empty, worldly chatter. There would be a real contrast to all the shouts and hurrahs of her own unfortunate wedding. And it would be the last time Percy would appear at Selambshof. Yes, Hedvig had decided to have a quiet wedding ceremony without her relations. That would be the most dignified way. She had no further use for all these people out here. She would go abroad and leave it all behind.

Hedvig thought of all this as she stood at the window. The shadow of a smile passed now and again over her severe red lips. Wonderfully sweet contentment suffused her whole being. She trampled on her old fear, loneliness, and humiliation, and felt as if she had truly her old fear under her foot. But she could not trample it to death. One does not trample a shadow to death. It can only be killed by light....

Then Percy Hill came driving up to the steps. He remained for a moment sitting in the open carriage looking up at the high, gloomy walls of Selambshof. It was impossible for him to escape a feeling of discomfort in the presence of this sham feudal architecture, this suburban gothic which did not even take itself seriously. “Well,” he thought, “we are going away from all this.”

He entered. He moved slowly and looked very pale and thin in his black morning coat. Nobody could help seeing that he had been in the shadow of death. For a moment he seemed to shrink from the wintry air inside. But his glance brightened when he caught sight of Hedvig’s frock. He had been afraid to see her without her nurse’s uniform. Her simple black frock seemed to him an expression of tactfulness. He kissed Hedvig’s hand and greeted Laura and Stellan. Then it was Peter’s turn. Percy had had no communication with him for many years. Peter’s gross figure startled him somewhat. He offered his transparent fingers with half-closed eyes and withdrew them again quickly with a little embarrassed smile.

Nobody said much. Laura pulled her shawl more closely over her shoulders and even Stellan seemed somewhat ill at ease.

Then Hedvig led Percy with an absent-minded expression to the wedding presents which were laid out on a table by the window. There were crystal vases and bowls in the taste of the day—all eloquent of decent, commonplace domestic life. Hedvig walked away. Percy looked at the floor.

“They are all overtaxing my nerves,” he thought. “Such meaningless ugliness!” He had to make a real effort to realise that this was not a deliberate mockery of their marriage, but merely a sacrifice to the conventionalities. At last he began to thank everybody very eagerly and politely to right and left on behalf of himself and Hedvig.

It was Stellan who saved the situation. He took Percy’s arm.

“Now I must show you round a little in this owls’ nest,” he said, in a tone of command that had something engagingly impersonal in it. “Selambshof was not conjured up in a day like your palace. It is as old as sin, though it was unfortunately rebuilt and spoilt in the process sometime in the ’fifties.”

Percy stopped in the dining-room in front of old Enoch’s portrait. Suddenly he looked quite relieved and was delighted:

“This is very interesting!” he exclaimed.

“Do you think so? It’s our grandfather. An old devil, between ourselves.”

Percy climbed up and examined the signature in the corner:

“Just fancy, a Tervillius! But yet not quite like him. He never achieved such rapid execution elsewhere. What swift, cruel characterisation! And he is otherwise so extremely conscientious.”

“Well, he is said to have had his reasons for not loving old Enoch. It cannot have been very pleasant to owe him money.”

“So it is the inspiration of hatred! Well, there are worse inspirations.”

“Our dear grandfather was apparently not at all displeased with the caricature, though for certain reasons it cannot have been very agreeable to him. I suppose you know that Tervillius committed suicide ... just a few days after he had finished out here?”

“Oh, so this is his last work ... an anathema....”

Hedvig had silently stolen up to them and stood there staring Old Hök in the eyes whilst she listened greedily to each word that was uttered. Percy pushed his arm smilingly under Hedvig’s and eagerly solicited the condescension of his Spanish saint:

“Fancy the last masterpiece of a distinguished artist! And quite unknown to the critics. That is most remarkable.”

Peter had also come up to the picture: “Is the old fellow really worth something?” he wondered.

“Thirty thousand, at least. It’s a pity it is a family portrait as one does not dare to make an offer for it.”

The eyes of the Selambs lit up. They evidently regarded their grandfather with a new interest.

“Thirty thousand for the curse,” mumbled Hedvig with a shrug of her shoulders.

“The old man gave five hundred,” said Peter. “I have seen an old receipt. He was always a good business man.”

“Aren’t you afraid to marry into old Enoch’s family?” cried Laura with a voice that had suddenly become quite gay. “Just look how like him I am.” And with comic eagerness she imitated his hard looks and pulled down the corners of her mouth.

But Percy looked searchingly round the circle of faces and his look rested with an expression of admiration on Hedvig:

“Isn’t the likeness all the same most striking in Hedvig?” he said lightly.

Not for a second did he shrink from the thought that she was of the same blood as the old usurer against whom the soul of a hunted and despairing artist had exploded its hatred before his eyes.

He was a dilettante, Percy Hill.

After the early dinner Percy had to return home at once. And Hedvig did not want to stay with the others round the coffee table.

“Now, I will leave you, so that you can discuss us more freely,” she said.

Hedvig was going up to her room. She had not gone many steps up the creaking stairs before she heard the dammed-up floods of talk of her sister and brothers released. Silently as a ghost she crept back to the door and listened. First she heard Stellan’s voice:

“The devil take me if I can understand Hedvig. I really did not think her capable of this.”

“Indeed,” interposed Laura, “it was exactly what I expected. She used to sneak things when she was small.”

Then it was Stellan again:

“Poor Percy is a decent fellow anyhow. He only wants to get away as quickly as possible in secret. I understand that they don’t want us to be present at the wedding.”

“Well,” said Laura, “we are sure to meet again soon—on another solemn occasion.”

Then one heard Peter bang his knees together. “Yes, yes, the money will last longer than the husband. She will soon have pots of money.”

Hedvig leaned against the doorpost with closed eyes. She felt cold and stiff all over. Her disgust at the people in there who so impudently and blindly defiled her sacrifice froze her blood. And all the same she could not tear herself away from her listening post. And all the same she devoured greedily every word of her sister and brothers. In her innermost heart there was a wild frightened joy to hear how rich she was going to be.

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XII

+PETER CASTS OUT MAJÄNGEN AND BRINGS HOME EKBACKEN+

Peter the Boss had begun to frequent the observatory again. But it was not in order to watch the workers at Selambshof as old Enoch had done. No, the observatory was rather the scene of his economic dreams. With the help of the old marine glass he now and then peeped into the future. On the blackened billiard marker he had a few calculations, for the airiness of which quickly wiped-off chalk was a better medium than paper and ink. It was a sort of game. But behind the game lurked a serious purpose. Peter the Boss longed more and more to rise above the humble rank of an ordinary farm-bailiff. It is true that he had been called “Director” ever since the estate had been transformed into a limited company after the death of their father, but the change of the title did not alter the facts. Peter was tired of his elementary tricks in buying and selling and they had now become a matter of mechanical routine with him. They were simply a means of obtaining the commission which his sisters and brothers were too mean to pay him. Of course he did earn a certain amount of money. Yes, the amount increased quite nicely, quite nicely. But all the same he felt the restlessness of one who is conscientiously capable of greater things. He had half-frightened, dizzying visions of profits of millions. The future teemed with possibilities which confused and distracted him during his day’s work. He had to climb up to a high place in order to survey the situation. And that place was the observatory.

Peter used to begin his observations from the west window. At first he pretended to be there for the sake of the fine view. He was coquetting, as it were, with his shy hopes. Contemptuously his look passed over treeless and insignificant Ryssvik. But further away he beheld Trefvinge beyond the fine fishing water and densely wooded forests. Well grown and no mortgages! Fancy what a lot of money could be got out of that estate. Peter could not help making calculations. It was, of course, mere fancy, idle fancies ... though perhaps Stellan might ... he had flirted rather freely with Elvira Lähnfeldt at Laura’s wedding ... but probably it meant nothing.

With a little sigh Peter stepped to the south window. Here he at once approached a little nearer to reality. Here lay Kolsnäs and it looked quite different, with big bare patches in the forest, and bushes and felled trees and melancholy seed-pines on the horizon. Yes, yes, cash would be wanted there when the old lady died and Lieutenant Manne von Strelert began to sow his wild oats. Lots of timber had been cut down and the estate was mortgaged, but there was still lots more to take. Manne was a deuced decent fellow, anyhow, and Peter would not have minded making him a little loan now and then. He had a distinct sensation of pressing a bundle of notes into the Lieutenant’s hand and receiving a nice little I.O.U. in return, which would give him a hold over a corner of Kolsnäs.

Yes, those were his dreams. Unfortunately Peter had nothing to spare for Kolsnäs now. Stellan immediately consumed the cash Peter could lay hands on. He was awful, Stellan. Already more than half of his shares lay as security in Peter’s drawer.

At last Peter came to the east window. From here he had a fine view nowadays since he had felled a couple of enormous aspens on the slope behind the avenue. He did that because of Ekbacken. Now he could see both the yard and the sawmill and a bit of the town behind. Peter could not help interesting himself in Ekbacken. Herman had avoided him since the divorce. It was not so easy either to enter into conversation with old Lundbom now that his trusteeship had lapsed. So Peter had to be content with what he could discover with the help of his glasses, though that was quite a lot. He saw, for instance, that the proud yacht building Herman had spoken of had completely ceased. There was never more than one yacht and that was Herman’s own “Laura.” Well, the name was of course painted out, which really was not to be wondered at. That tall figure over there was Herman himself. He would stroll out onto the pier and sit for hours with a glass and a bottle beside him on the green seat. Sometimes he went out sailing for a couple of days and then the boat would lie rubbing against the pier with sails up whilst half the pier was littered with empty bottles handed up out of the boat.

Peter shook his head in joyful concern:

“Poor boy,” he muttered, “breakers after a storm. This will never end well.”

Neither did it.

Peter soon saw that activity in the shipyard decreased. The repairing slips began to be empty for long periods, the capstan struggled with its long arms as if it were begging for help from all the four quarters of the compass and the crane hung helpless over the water as if in expectation of an inevitable fall. And the few workmen visible were mostly loitering or sitting smoking on the sly between the weathering stacks of boards round the sawmill.

Peter was quite touched at this decay. He felt an agreeable compassion for the excellent Herman. It was not his fault that all this misery might turn out to his advantage and to that of Selambshof. For if the resistance of Ekbacken was broken then Herman could no longer foolishly oppose the advance of the town. And in that fact Peter secretly already saw his great opportunity.

Peter had felt a profound emotion when for the first time he fully realised that the town over there was smoking and sweating in order to increase the value of Selambshof. From that moment he began to think that the smell from the glue works on the other side of the lake was rather pleasant. The glue works was the first outpost of the town and with one blow it had broken the spell of the silent little Mälare bay. What would it not bring in its train? Damage to property, stolen boats, poaching, brawls, servants in trouble. And worst of all the horrid smell. A southerly wind was a real trial to Selambshof nowadays. Stellan called it the sirocco. But Peter thought in his heart that the smell was rather pleasant. It smelt of money, money. But as he walked and sniffed it, he grew impatient with the sirocco all the same, but not in the same way as ordinary people did. On the other shore, things moved along deuced quickly he thought. But on this side Ekbacken can’t resist for many years. And the town may expand in other directions.

It was a close day in July. There had been a bad drought this summer and the fields at Selambshof were half scorched, and promised a failure of the crops. Between the drooping and dusty elms of the avenue there was a smell of carrion and old cheese. The whole estate was enveloped in a vapour of putrefaction. The glue works over on the other side of the lake vibrated in the heat haze and seemed to dissolve in mere smells.

Peter suffered from the economic sirocco worse than ever. He could not even remain in the observatory, but had to go out for a walk in spite of the heat. How were things going at Ekbacken? Eagerly but carefully he spied round the corner, afraid of being seen, and cursing beneath his breath the high wooden fence that Herman had built towards the road. Then he moved on further in order to see how the town was behaving. Well, at last the new quay was ready. But how was building progressing on this side? Peter ferretted amongst the dumps of macadam and the blast holes. He searched for newly staked-out building sites and for new foundations. No, there was not enough progress to record. Why did they not hurry on the work more? It irritated him to see the workmen lying with their coats under their heads sleeping amongst the stones after their lunch.

Peter returned home by another way. He took a dull, ill-kept road, far back from the lake, which led on past the old quarry between the bare hills. Unsightly, ragged, untidy, the hill rose up, useless for all but the crows. The black smoke from a goods train puffing up the incline on the other side drifted slowly in between the dwarfed and miserable pines. Peter stopped a moment in the damp cold that rose even in the hot sun out of the fens of Träskängen. He struck his stick on the dried-up lumps of clay on the road and stared in front of him. He had suddenly got an idea. The railway! he thought. The railway! This corner is furthest from town, but I have got the railway. I attack Ekbacken from behind. I am finding gold on the rubbish heap!

He staggered home as in a delirium.

A few days later the shareholders of Selambshof were summoned to a meeting. Peter told them in a few words that he had found a buyer for the quarry and Träskängen. “That rubbish is not worth keeping and we need money to cover the bad season,” he said. Nobody had any serious objection and the sale was made. The buyer was Peter Selamb, through an agent of the name of Thomson. Mr. Thomson got very favourable terms of payment. Then there appeared an immense white board up in the Quarry overlooking the railway and bearing the words:

“SOLBERGET and MAJÄNGEN

Building Sites for Sale!

Majängen Building Co., 3, Nygatan, Stockholm.”

Peter the Boss had thought it suitable to make this little change in the old place-names.

At the same time a magnificent system of wide intersecting streets was marked out with neat white painted posts and iron stakes.

Strange to say the sites found a ready sale, for it was during the golden time of uncritical speculation in suburban land. And evidently there were some poor overcrowded, shut up souls for whom even the Quarry and Träskängen was a taste of liberty and of nature.

The whole autumn, winter and spring, the money dribbled in regularly. “Majängen” was a splendid coup. But Peter did not sit down on his gold hoard and purr. On the contrary he grew more and more restless as his banking account grew. He kept all his money in ready cash. With this ace of trumps in his hands he watched eagerly for the best moment to play it and gather in a fat trick. His glass almost burnt in his hand when he directed it towards Ekbacken. During many soliloquies he roamed restlessly about outside the cursed high wooden fence. Yes, yes, it reeked of an exquisite decay from afar. But why did not that stupid Herman come to Peter the Boss? If he had only known how willingly Peter would have helped him! It was not right of him to forget an old friend. Just fancy if Herman had been foolish enough to throw himself into the arms of one of the banks in the town, which would just hold his head above water for a time in order to let him sink afterwards and then march off with everything!

This thought worried Peter the Boss cruelly. One day when he had seen Herman sail out with the usual case of bottles he went straight through the high wooden gate and in to old Lundbom in the office.

Lundbom sat there aged and grey-haired, with a worried expression.

Peter stretched out a big and honest hand:

“Tell me all,” he said. “You can rely upon an old country neighbour. I am Herman’s friend, though he does not care about me. I want to help as much as I can.”

Lundbom had always had a sort of tender regard for Peter. He had taught him to play “vira.” He had been his legal adviser. With a sort of impartial pleasure he had seen his knowledge boldly applied by his clever pupil. In his theoretical eagerness he had been rather proud, though he was himself the soul of honour, of his being able to show Peter certain loopholes and snags. Old Lundbom symbolised, as it were, the fate of the law in this world: to be made use of by rogues.

Peter stood there with outstretched hand, and Lundbom really could not help seizing it, though Herman had forbidden all communication with Selambshof.

“What’s the position?” grunted Peter. “If I can do anything I must know the position.”

Lundbom shook the ledger:

“There were losses last year already. This year will be still worse.”

“The figures?”

“Thirty thousand last year. At least fifty thousand this year, if things go on like this. Now we are selling out our timber below cost. We are hard up for ready money.”

“Have you any specially difficult payment to make?”

“Yes, on Saturday week, a bill for twenty thousand. Fancy, we who never used to touch bills before.”

“Who has got your bill?”

Lundbom mentioned a small notorious usurious banker. Peter whistled. That bank proved that Herman had not known how to look after his business in town properly. He rose and pressed Lundbom’s hand:

“Good-bye! Not a word to Herman about this. He must be managed carefully, poor boy, Good-bye!”

A week later Herman came back from his sailing trip. He was once more sitting on the pier. The twilight was strangely yellow. In the south a big grey-black cloud floated, so heavy and solid-looking that it seemed a miracle that it did not fall. A warm but strong south-easterly wind had sprung up after the day’s calm. The leafy mosses of the willows on the shore turned in the wind and yellow crested waves beat with foreboding insistence against the slimy green piles on their sloping stone ballast. Then the foresail halyard of the cutter began to flap persistently against the mast, a sound which in a badly chosen harbour at night threatens to cast you adrift and to shift your anchor in the dark.

Herman was sitting with outstretched legs. His chin had sunk into the sweater and he stared motionless out over the water. Over his whole being there descended a chill shadow of loneliness which gave a touch of melancholy and appeal even to his warm yachting shoes.

He stretched out for his whiskey glass but checked his groping hand and muttered something to himself about a renewal, a commission, and nine per cent. He came no further. There he stopped. He refused, from a kind of spite, to think any more than was necessary to keep things just afloat for the moment. It was also from some foolish spite that he had sought the assistance of an ill-famed bank. “That fits in with me best,” he thought, “for everybody thinks I am an impossible person.”

Ugh! business ... banks ... the whole town!

He felt such a strong desire to take flight in his boat again that it hurt him. Alone! out into the storm and darkness!

At this moment a massive figure came walking out along the pier. There was something disarming even in his way of dodging between the holes in the rotten floor-boards of the pier. His little, round, wrinkled head hung on one side between his enormous shoulders—as if it were drooping from sheer compassion. He somehow looked like an enormous child. He stopped and looked at Herman, with two small watery eyes that threatened to overflow.

Herman jumped up when he caught sight of the newcomer, he drew himself to his full height, erect and rigid as a post:

“What do you want here?”

Peter stretched out his arms, which resembled thighs on which hands had happened to grow.

“Look here, old boy ... why should we go on like this, ... two old friends like ourselves.... You know I couldn’t help things....”

Herman suppressed his angry impulse and with a shrug of his shoulders sank back on the seat, staring once again out over the water where an old black-tarred fire-wood smack was just taking in her topsail and slowly turning into the wind with dark sails booming.

Peter seized the opportunity of sitting down on the seat without further ceremony:

“You mustn’t think I am on Laura’s side,” he assured Herman. “She is a handful, she is, without a heart in her breast!”

“I have never asked to hear your opinion about my divorced wife,” said Herman in a voice that was meant to be frigid.

But all the same there was a corner in his soul where Peter’s words did good. He could not hide his wound. Peter noticed it at once. So much sensitiveness he had left from the time of the Great Fear. Yes, yes, that is the after-swell, he thought, and moved closer up to Herman, ready to give him another dose. Then it suddenly started to rain. Big, whipping drops. Herman rose silently, taking his glass and bottle with him. Without looking at Peter he walked quickly up to the house. “I don’t mind your being short with me if it soothes you,” thought Peter, and followed him faithfully up the steps and into the smoking room.

Herman put the bottle on the table, threw himself on the sofa and stared at his toes.

Peter took the matches and lit the lamp. Then he went into the kitchen and returned with a couple of bottles of soda water and a clean glass. After that he filled Herman’s glass and prepared one for himself.