Chapter VIII: Part ONE (7)

“Your health,” he said.

Herman drank deeply without replying. Then followed a moment’s silence. The rain drummed against the upper windows, and rushed down the rainpipes. A cool damp penetrated into the close room.

Peter took a cigar out of a box and lit it:

“I’ll be damned if I don’t stay the night, old boy! It feels jolly to be back at old Ekbacken again!”

Herman was still mute and seemed absorbed in the opposite wall. But when Peter drank he drank also. And that happened often. Peter thought the whiskey tasted good. Yes it really was very jolly to be sitting here at Ekbacken and see old father Hermansson’s treasures gleam behind the glass of the cupboard in the corner. He was already drinking Herman’s health, the delightful sensation of being host himself and of Herman being less secure in the place than himself. Not that he was thinking of business tonight. He could save that up for tomorrow. No, now he gave himself up to his feelings and the whiskey. And it was no small amount of feeling that he showed.

In the intervals between draining their glasses, Peter suddenly began to abuse Laura again. Was this mere calculation on his part? Did he sit there in cold blood and sacrifice the sister for his own profit? Was he, with his diabolical cunning, playing upon poor Herman’s love and hate? No, Peter really began to realise Herman’s loneliness. Was he not himself a poor bachelor too? He felt real pity for Herman. Why shouldn’t he curse Laura if it did any good to this poor devil—and to himself, also, by the way? He sat there working up his fury at the recollection of his sister’s old sarcasms. Like a mad bull he tore fiercely and passionately at the red tissue of lies, caprice, ingratitude, and cursed coquetry called woman. Yes it was a relief to him to take his revenge on the whole of the abominable sex that turned up its nose at Peter the Boss, but ran after such scamps as Brundin.

With a stiff expression of disapproval, Herman sat and listened to Peter’s disclosures concerning Laura. But he listened all the same—he couldn’t help it—till at last he banged his fist on the table so that the glasses jumped:

“Be quiet,” he shrieked, “she is the mother of my child!”

Peter sat for a moment puzzled, he gasped and blinked his eyes. Laura was evidently played out. He must change his front:

“Herman, you are a gentleman,” he muttered at last, admiringly, “I’ll be damned if you are not a gentleman.”

What was Peter the Boss to do now with all the vague emotions that rose in his massive body? Some use must be made of this beautiful intoxication. Yes, move at once to the other extreme. He overflowed with sympathy and brotherhood and memories from boyhood. “Do you remember when it rained and we were playing in the loft at home?” “Do you remember when we climbed into the rigging down in the shipyard?” “Yes, that was in the good old days, old boy!” “We have had a damned fine time together all the same!”

Here Peter’s eyes filled with tears and he slapped the old fellow on the back and swore that a helping hand from Peter the Boss would not be lacking. Herman made no opposition. He suddenly looked terribly tired. He had been so utterly, miserably lonely. Though he still felt suspicious he had no longer strength to resist. Peter overpowered him by his sheer weight.

Peter forgot to remove his hand from Herman’s shoulder. He felt a great, vague exaltation. At that moment he really loved his dear old Herman. He felt an irresistible desire to do something for him. The observatory, Majängen and his errand to Ekbacken: all were forgotten in this moment:

“Look here, Herman,” he muttered in a thick voice, “I saw little Georg the other day. In his fourth year. Sailor blouse and a whistle on a white cord. Your image. Wouldn’t you like to have a look at him? Laura is going away, so it is easy to arrange. He can stay for a few days with the nurse at Selambshof. That’s not a bad idea, eh? Now do say yes!”

Herman had not wanted to see his child. In his injured pride he had refused for three years to allow himself that crumb of comfort. Yes, he had almost imagined that he hated the baby. Now he sank down with his hands in front of his face:

“Tomorrow,” he muttered. “Tomorrow, before I change my mind.”

“All right, tomorrow, old boy. With milk teeth and whistle and spade and pail and all the rest of it. Come up to Selambshof and have an afternoon whiskey and soda and then you’ll see him.”

Peter rose. He stood there like a lump of dough, massive and swaying to and fro, and would not let Herman’s hand go:

“Tomorrow, old boy, tomorrow. Welcome!”

Then Peter the Boss walked home to Selambshof.

But Herman swept bottle and glass on to the floor and then sat motionless as a statue and stared into the night and thought of his son.

* * * * *

There are men who are fat for slaughter and there are those who are fattened by the slaughter of others. Peter the Boss certainly belonged to the latter category. But heavy and sluggish blood may still leave you a victim of softer feelings. And Peter had, as we have seen, his weaknesses. But the strange thing is that somehow when it came to the point they always served his purpose. He could yield to any excess of feelings because the real Peter the Boss remained safely behind on guard. Whilst others awoke with remorse and a splitting head, he realised through the lifting mists that he was on the point of doing a fine stroke of business.

Big and good-tempered, he now stood in his soiled flannels and wide-brimmed sombrero by the corner of his house and looked at the touching group on the terrace. He was confoundedly fond both of the fair little thing between the sand moulds and of that tall unhappy Herman who had—God help him—dressed up in morning coat to meet his son. Perhaps it was because they were both equally helpless.

Herman sat there rigid and pale, torn by conflicting emotions. He did not try to explain who he was. He did not even dare to take the boy on his lap, he only looked silently at the vivacious open face and the chubby little eager hands. A living memory of the past! There they had mixed their blood, he and the woman from whom he would never escape as long as he lived.

There was a sighing of the wind in the old maple above the rusty signalling guns. Here Laura had sat, and there up the avenue he had come—always with that strange anxiety in his inmost heart, Herman leant back on the bench. A feeling of resignation stole over him. Here at Selambshof he had met his fate—and here he would still find it. Here were beings against whom it was no use fighting.

Peter coughed before he came up to them, a wonderful act of delicacy on his part.

Then the nurse came to put little Georg to bed. Herman started up as if in alarm. He lifted the boy up in his arms as if to kiss him, but put him down again and sank back on the seat beside Peter.

“I hope you have not talked about me—you have not told the nurse who I am,” he muttered.

“Not a word,” Peter assured him.

But Herman felt all the same a pang in his heart. “Then Laura won’t hear of it,” he thought. “And she won’t be forced to give me a thought.” And he hated himself because he could not help feeling a cold emptiness. In one draught he emptied the glass before him.

But Peter carefully slipped into business. He did not of course speak of Herman’s bill that was due or of the affairs of Ekbacken at all. He only said that he had met somebody who wanted to invest about fifty thousand crowns on good security. And then he had thought of Herman at once. Times were difficult and working capital always useful.

Herman did not seem to hear at first. Then his face contracted at the thought of this wretched business. And then he suddenly assumed the cold, severe, businesslike tone which is so often found in very impatient people:

“Terms? Interest?”

“Not bad—six per cent—”

“If I am to consider the proposition I must have half tomorrow against my promissory note until the bills of sale are redeemed.”

“Aha!” thought Peter the Boss, “there you gave yourself away. I should never have said that.”

“Well,” he muttered, “you might get about twenty thousand at once.”

Herman felt that this was easy. He glanced suspiciously at Peter:

“Who is this benefactor? Does he prefer to remain unknown?”

Peter smiled and looked transparently honest:

“Not at all, he is O. W. Thomson, director of Majängen. I can vouch for him. Decent fellow. I shall be pleased to arrange the business for you out of gratitude for all you have done for us at Ekbacken.”

Herman suspected that Thomson was Peter’s dummy. A few days ago when old Lundbom, encouraged by a certain visit he had received, had hinted vaguely at Peter, Herman had sworn that he would never have anything to do with Selambshof. But before he walked home that evening he had all the same arranged for a meeting. He was not strong enough to resist.

The following day it appeared that O. W. Thomson had gone away. The matter could not be arranged until two days later, that is to say, the day before the due date of Herman’s bill. And then Thomson was in a bad temper. He demanded eight per cent and only a month’s notice. It was risky. Peter had done what he could but that confounded Thomson was quite impossible. There was nothing left for Herman to do but sign and rush off to the bank.

* * * * *

Peter continued these friendly potations with Herman. He enjoyed his company very much, and showed a touching interest for his welfare, yes, he really ministered to his weaknesses:

“You have been living in hell, Herman,” he said. “It has got on your nerves.” (Yes, Peter had actually found out that there were such things as nerves.) “You must take care of yourself, sleep, amuse yourself, go sailing. Lundbom looks after the business. He is a magician, old Lundbom.”

“As if it helped to sail,” muttered Herman, as gloomy as the Flying Dutchman.

But he did go sailing, anyhow, and Peter went too, and did not let go of his dear Herman. And when now after long stormy cruises out to sea, they had dropped their hook far out in a fine night harbour under some rugged cliff and the waves roared on the pebbles on the shore and the crescent moon shone over the sea, whilst the evening sky hung green and cold over the long ragged forest edges in the west, then they both revelled in a beautiful and romantic hatred of the town, its dirt and stuffiness and humbug and misery. It was a most beautiful accord between shyness, laziness and weakness on the one hand and instinctive, furtive, self-interest on the other. To Herman the town meant rubbish, masons, walls scrawled all over, insidious threats against the idyls of his childhood. But it also meant his great smouldering trouble, neglected duties and a bad conscience. For Peter on the other hand the town meant ten thousand possibilities and the fine opportunities which Herman must not suspect. He liked to finish off his exhortation with little edifying stories, terrifying little accounts of the cursed banks.

“Yes, beware of the banks, Herman,” he exclaimed. “Bills here and bills there and not a moment’s peace. One fine day they get you into their clutches and then you have to say good-bye to everything. But we will defend ourselves, old boy. We know a few little tricks, we rustics too, now don’t we? If you get into difficulties don’t make them offers. There is nothing so dangerous as to make them offers. No, you come to Peter the Boss and he will stand by you. Not an inch shall they have of Ekbacken and Selambshof.”

Herman sat there eating his tinned food, half touched, half suspicious.

“Yes, but you have already sold some of it.”

Peter smiled a superior smile:

“Don’t you understand. I tricked them, tricked those town scoundrels splendidly. Sold away the rubbish heap in order to sit more securely in the Castle.”

There Herman had got something to sleep on. And in fact he did sleep better than usual. It was as if Peter had lifted the worries from off his back and taken them on his own broad shoulders.

Peter also snored soundly. He had not by any means done everything he might have done to ensure and isolate his victim. Never! he who liked Herman so much! No, he had only been jolly decent and said what he knew Herman liked to hear.

And when Peter afterwards came into town and told everybody he met that that fellow at Ekbacken was far too fine for business, and that he had such damned bad luck in all he did, it was not done at all in order to destroy the last remnants of Herman’s credit and make him even more impossible than before. He merely felt so frightfully sorry for Herman that it was impossible for him to keep quiet about it.

But the whole manœuvre was as a matter of fact quite unnecessary. When, towards the autumn, cash again began to run short, Herman simply had not the energy to go to anybody else but Peter. The mere thought of going to cold strangers made him shiver. And Peter did not say “no.” He really surpassed himself. Herman got all he wanted at once on the security of a new mortgage on Ekbacken, though this time with lower interest and a more reasonable notice of calling in.

Herman was really moved when he went home. Fancy if it had been Laura who had repented and forced Peter to this. Yes he really lived on this fantastic dream through the whole of the autumn. Poor Herman, his pride had been dealt a severe blow.

But a great calm had descended on Peter after his former restlessness. The sirocco no longer irritated him. He had only to wait for the ripening of the fruit now. Soon he would be able to free Herman from all his worries about Ekbacken, which only made him unhappy.

Whilst waiting, Peter made little dreary excursions to his little gold mine “Majängen” and “Solberget.”

It was mostly poorer people who had ventured out to the new suburb. They blasted, and dug, and sawed and hammered in nails. Quite a lot of queer looking cottages had already been hammered together down in the marsh and up in the quarry. And there were already geraniums in the windows and children on the doorsteps. Peter shook his head, smiled and pondered. “They build,” he thought. “That’s a mistake. They ought to buy from those who overbuild themselves. But they are decent people all the same, quite decent people.” He moved on carefully among the blocks of stone and the clay holes in the staked-out streets. He stopped before an arbour consisting of a few recently planted lilac bushes of the size of broom, in front of a patch of golden nasturtiums in a cleft in the granite filled with soil.

Peter the Boss really felt quite touched. It is strange how poetic poverty can be—in others. Fancy how simply one can live. Yes, they were really quite comfortable here in Majängen and Solberget. Peter actually began to feel a benefactor of all these people. “Goodness! I wonder if I did not let those sites go too cheaply,” he thought.

Meanwhile Ekbacken was ripening, as I have said before.

One day towards winter Herman came up to Selambshof and wanted more money. But the end had come, Peter had not a penny free. To crown it all that fellow Thomson came to Ekbacken a few days later and called in his fifty thousand. Herman ran over to Peter again. He had no hope. No, in his heart he knew that Peter and Thomson were one and the same. But he went all the same, he had nobody else to turn to after the way he had managed his business in town.

Peter grew furious with Thomson:

“I shall go in to town and lay down the law to that scoundrel,” he said.

As might have been expected, Thomson would not move. But Peter returned with a new proposal:

“I have managed to interest a few old boys in Ekbacken,” he said. “They are prepared to take over the whole thing and there will still be a nice little sum left over for you. You will escape all trouble and worry and get a little pile of thousand-crown notes that you can do what you deuced well like with!”

Herman sat there pale and with trembling hands:

“Yes, but the house ... the boat....”

“Well ... the old boys want the lot, of course....”

Herman started in alarm, like a child that has been left alone out in the forest. His home...! His memories from childhood ... the memory of Laura ... the boat ... his retreat, his consolation!

“No, I will never agree to that! It is too damnable!”

He rushed out of Selambshof. He roamed about the roads. It was a snowless winter day, raw and windy, when everything wears a frozen, worn face without the peace of age. He stopped and beat the dry thistles on the roadside with his stick. “I have been a child,” he thought. “A weak, obstinate, helpless wretch. But now I must become a man. Now I must go into town and fight for Ekbacken, tooth and nail.”

He hastened towards the town, walking and running, but as he approached the toll bar, his steps became slower. The old hopelessness, laziness, and cowardice crept over him again. “What’s the use?” he muttered. “Everybody is expecting my ruin, the workmen, the foreman, Lundbom, Peter ... everybody.... What’s the use?”

Huddled up, shivering, crushed with shame, he slunk into Ekbacken by a side path. He sank groaning into a settee and swallowed a glass of undiluted whiskey. And out of the whiskey came a thought, the thought of flight and failure, but also the thought of a thousand possibilities:

“America!”

Peter the Boss had been right in his calculation. Three days later the business was settled and Herman received twenty thousand crowns.

“You saved the slam anyhow, old boy,” said Peter, “You saved the slam anyhow.”

He was pleased with himself for having helped a friend in difficulties. It hurt him that Herman went about looking drained dry. And then those stupid America plans. Why the devil should Herman want to go away? With whom was Peter now to drink his whiskey during the long winter evenings? Who would be with him when he was out sailing in his new yacht? Herman, who knew the boat so well.

“It will be empty after you, Herman,” complained Peter, “damned empty.”

But for once Herman stuck to his decision and so the moment of farewell arrived. Peter was down at the station. Herman was already at the carriage window, filled with an impotent bitterness both sharp and dull. He had been a hopeless failure, fit to be plucked and cast aside. Laura and Peter had taken everything away from him. And in spite of it all he had not got the strength of mind to hate them. Yes, when he saw Peter’s coarse face, swollen with emotion, he positively did not know what to believe. “Perhaps he has really done what he could for me,” he thought. “And it was rather decent of him to come down here so that I need not be quite alone.”

Then the engine took its first deep breath as if it were challenging the distance it was about to cover.

Peter wept. He could not let go Herman’s hand:

“Good-bye, old boy! Take care of yourself now. Good-bye, Herman!”

And then old Hermansson’s tall Herman was swept off the stage.

But Peter the Boss drove slowly home in Brundin’s old dog-cart. He was both sad and glad. When he had passed the toll bar he fell into a solemn mood. The short cut across Ekbacken was open to him now. Somebody ran to the gate to open it for him. He drove past the house on the lake side and past the landing stage and the old office. Dusk began to fall and Peter felt suddenly very sorry for himself. What had he not undertaken! Fancy looking after all this. The road now ran along the lake. Peter held the reins very loosely and by and by the horse stopped. It was perfectly still and the lake was on the point of freezing over. A big, cold, glowing cloud hung over Kolsnäs and was reflected in the glassy surface of the water. The heavy clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the floating bridge floated out into the quiet of the evening. Peter sighed deeply. He envied Herman. Fancy travelling about with twenty thousand in your pocket. He will see something of the world. But I, old peasant, will never get abroad anywhere. I sit here in old Selambshof ... and old Ekbacken....

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

XIII

+TORD’S EXILE+

Lately Selambshof had not been as quiet as usual. The scattered brothers and sisters began once more to find the way back to the ancestral home.

The fact of the matter was that the estate was growing more and more valuable every day. The town had already begun—to Peter’s great joy—to encroach upon a part of Ekbacken. Now it began to stretch its arms around Selambshof. And like old King Midas it changed all it touched into gold.

Yes, it was extraordinarily pleasant to sit there and feel how you were growing richer and richer every moment. And then they had to look after their interests, keep an eye on each other, and especially on the honourable director of Selambshof Limited.

It was curious to watch the Selambs when they were together. They quarrelled terribly, but stuck together all the same—just like the Bonaparte family. None believed another. They laid mines and countermines. They tricked one another until they got even, so that in the end a sort of rough natural justice prevailed. Peter the Boss now sat in the prisoner’s dock as a result of a too bare-faced falsification of the accounts of Majängen and Solberget Ltd. Laura unhesitatingly accused him, in the clearest and most spirited terms of being a false old thief. Stellan’s sword play was more skilful and he got in a whole series of neat little thrusts, each one of which would have been a sufficient indictment in a prosecution for misrepresentation and misappropriation. Peter smiled complacently at these accusations, which he regarded as so many pleasant expressions of recognition of his merit. He lied with a certain heavy grace to this assembly of expert connoisseurs. Behind all his lies lay all the same the truth that he had really done great things for Selambshof. And he realised that in their inmost hearts his sisters and brothers knew they must look up to him, Peter the Boss, as the eldest and the head of the family. And after all the whole quarrel was sunk in the great and glorious consciousness of the daily increasing value of Selambshof.

But towards the spring these meetings were not quite as agreeable as usual. That was the fault of Tord. Yes, the despised, neglected, almost forgotten Tord down there in The Rookery began to cause the high family council very serious anxiety. He had dismissed the bohemian painter who had been a parasite on him for several years and instead he had returned with a woman, a slovenly person who spoke a sort of Norwegian and who was a very dubious person. Well, that might have passed if Tord had not got the mad idea of marrying her. The Selambs had had a terrible shock when they saw in the paper the reading of the banns. And now a fortnight later they were sitting by a big wood fire in the icy hall of Selambshof and knew no more than that Tord had driven to town with the woman that morning. They might already be married by now, though the sisters and brothers had been told nothing. Really it was extraordinary behaviour....

Let us now see how Tord Selamb had come to do this most unexpected thing: arranging for the banns to be read and going to church to be married.

The story really begins with the severing of Träskängen and the Quarry. Peter had in some way tricked Tord into being absent at the meeting when the sale was decided on. This put him into a fury which increased in violence when Tord saw the secret retreat of his youth defiled by boundary posts, trenches, blasting and disgusting hordes of insolent intruders. His protracted fury finally resulted in some immoderate and indignant articles in the yellow press. Tord was not, of course, indignant that people should be tricked into living on a marsh and on a refuse dump. No, he was furious because of this encroachment upon his dominion of boxes of lizards and frogs. He tried to enlist science in his cause by clamouring about some rare marsh flowers and an unique diving bug. It was a vehement defence of the wilderness and an infuriated battle cry against the town. And the whole concluded with some mixed reflections of a hermit’s spleen, pseudo-science, artist’s slang and bad nature-lyrics.

The articles were of course anonymous. But Peter recognised the author from certain attacks and exposures. He was not ungrateful for this valuable free advertisement of Majängen and Solberget, which must now appear to the uninitiated as a glorious paradise in the wilderness. But for the sake of order he made certain representations to his youngest brother, which resulted in a quarrel, during which Tord gave vent to his excitement by letting off his gun, into the air it is true, but still a gunshot.

Filled with a new indignation, Tord continued his articles and painted on the wall the devil of capitalistic greed despoiling nature, with features which resembled those of Peter the Boss to a nicety. He began to develop a taste for writing. He suddenly felt that he was meant to be a writer, and was at once seized with a violent contempt for the art of painting. It is true that all he wrote, except those violent articles of propaganda, was cast into the editor’s waste paper basket, but that only increased his irritation without in any way convincing him of his incapacity. After a quarrel with his old painter-friend over the relative values of the two arts he without further ado kicked out the disgusting parasite who had tricked him into wasting the most beautiful years of his youth with such rubbish as the crayon and the paint brush.

The painter was gone. Libations with Peter were over. Tord was alone, quite alone with his foxes and crows and mice in the gruesome Rookery.

He got into the habit of making long excursions into the town—the detestable town. Nothing like it had happened to him since he had slipped out there as a boy in profound secrecy for some devilment. At that time he had had a strange, secret partnership with some unknown vagabond in whose company he had pilfered in the market place and cut holes in sacks of flour down by Skeppsbron. He remembered the latter especially because of the strange, soothing satisfaction it afforded him to stand there in the twilight and feel the cool, velvety flour running through his fingers into the mud. He had already begun to revel in destruction, perhaps from a precocious, instinctive hatred of all the culture on which society is based.

Tord hated the town, but not in the same way as Herman, to whom it meant lawsuits and a bad conscience. Tord did not suffer from his conscience. No, he had an instinctive hatred of all the adaptability, refinement, co-operation and methodical work for which it stood. He detested the great complex machine in which men are only cogs. It was the complex purposefulness and relative common sense of teeming civic life which tormented him.

But Stockholm was becoming a great city and as such it had another side. It was a jungle, a wilderness of stone, the home of the thronging masses and of cold emptiness by night. But the town began to exert a certain fascination over Tord. He was going to be a writer, as we know, and those who can do nothing else can always explore the special vices of the imagination. He discovered that loneliness in a crowd has many joys for a fastidious individualist. The masses are necessary, so that we may look down on them. In the crush of humanity we dream so easily of the lofty heights from which all below look like creeping things. It is always so with the dreams of sterile genius. It would begin at the top, forgetful of all that lies below.

So much for Tord and the throng. But he did not hold out long. He soon relapsed into restless despair. He was frightened by the very masses over which he had just triumphed, and fled, full of loathing, home to The Rookery.

No, it was better in the emptiness and the cold stony landscape. To stroll about in the deserted outskirts of the town in the uncertain spring twilight when the masses of houses rise up like huge banks of darkness in the waning light and the street lamps look like giant submarine lilies which have collected all the cold phosphorescent light. To drift about on still summer’s nights when the lamps are out and everything sleeps at the bottom of a green sea, where the desires of our dreams move silently like great fishes. The town in storm and darkness when the lonely wanderer, stimulated by drink, imagines himself lord of this brooding deserted world of stone! The town as landscape, as nature, as the hunting ground of all the wild instincts. The narrow back street defiles, the dark ambushes of the doorways, the snares of the public house and the bordel. Hazard, adventure, vice, women! Yes, every evening the town was a great wild jungle where the chase of women was permitted. Tord pursued this chase with a restless and obstinate interest. He had the lonely man’s long vision for a woman’s shadow. He could follow one after the other for hours but without being able to approach one. He was consumed by an envious hatred of the enterprise of others more bold. He returned home dead tired, embittered and lonely, lonely....

Nevertheless it was in this hunting ground that Tord Selamb at last met his fate. It was one dark, rainy, icy cold evening in March. Hot and cold, heedless and obstinate he followed a woman. But it did not end as usual. The dark shadow would not allow itself to be caught; it did not suddenly vanish in a doorway. The figure in front of him only walked on and on, against the wind, restlessly, without goal or purpose, it seemed, but sharply dismissing all who accosted it. Now and then it dived into a dark back street or crept into a gateway, but more from caprice than to escape its pursuers. The purposelessness of its roving movements fascinated Tord in quite a peculiar way. It was like a beast of the forest, he thought. He had not yet seen its face but its step was young and springy. This was really no idle loitering. It walked with the conscious energy of one who is angry and mumbles disjointed phrases to himself. Then it walked towards the southern heights of the town. Then steps and a square with melancholy sighing trees, and then a cobbled back street with a few yellow flickering lamps on posts at the corners of the ramshackle old houses. It was a cul-de-sac, terminating in a big wooden barrier. Below glimmered the rough wet sides of the hill, lit up by the lights along a flight of steps on the other side of a deep, dark, shaft-like yard. The woman did not appear to notice Tord. She took something out of her pocket and hurled it down into the depths. It struck the stone with a faint metallic sound. Tord was now standing beside her. What had she thrown down? The question burnt his lips but he remained mute in spite of himself. She turned round and was about to resume her progress, when a sound was heard from the black bag she carried in her hand. She suddenly pulled out a little grey kitten and kissed it:

“Kirre,” she mumbled, “darling little Kirre....”

The kitten was Tord’s fate, it broke for a moment the spell of his dumbness:

“What did you throw down?” he asked suddenly.

She carefully put the kitten back again and answered without looking at him, straight into the chilly darkness, but in a tone of triumph and determination:

“It was the key.”

“What key?”

“To the studio, of course. Beastly, disgusting creature! Now that’s done with at last!”

And then came her story, disingenuous, straightforward, unblushing, and with a strong appeal. She had been living with a sculptor who had recently returned from Paris. She had been with him the whole winter. Oh, how she had spoilt the beast! Cooked his food and been his model all the day. She was posing as the young witch. “And everybody said I was a splendid witch,” she exclaimed, whilst an angry little smile flashed beneath the dripping brim of her hat. But what had this beast of a sculptor done when his lump of clay was ready? He had gone to an uncle in Kalmar to get some money. He would be back in a few days, he said. But no, not a sign of life for a fortnight. She had been sitting there cold and starving in company with the witch under her damp cover. But now that was over. Now she had stuck a knife and fork into the witch’s hands and an empty breadbasket on her head and the sculptor’s old pipe in her mouth. And now she had left and only taken Kirre with her. And down there lay the key and it was impossible to find it again.

“So now you will have to get food for me and the cat and a roof over our heads,” she said quickly to Tord.

Tord asked for nothing better. For once he did not feel anxious or suspicious. She seemed to him like a hunted animal. She was like the fox he had freed from the trap and taken home.

He took her home to The Rookery. Not until the following morning did he think of asking her name. She was called Dagmar Bru and was the daughter of a Norwegian musician in Copenhagen, she said. Probably some dissolute fiddler who scraped in some low-class restaurant. Her mother she could not remember. She had worked at a lace curtain factory before she came to the sculptor. Tord could get no more out of her and he did not press her. He loved hearing how she had hated the mill. There was style about her. Something wild and free. A beautiful witch! She had fair hair, plentiful, luxuriant, rough hair. A real mane. It was rather uneven, for she had simply cut it off where it was entangled. Any jewellery she could find she put on just like a savage.

Dagmar stayed at The Rookery. Tord would not let her go. He loved her with a love that consisted largely of scolding and sulking, and which was therefore sincere. He needed her. At whom otherwise could he hurl his bitter reflections on Woman. Once when he had been worse than usual she threatened to go back to her father, the musician. Then he felt how terribly empty it would be not to have her as a butt for his reproaches. He became frightened, frightened to the bottom of his heart lest she should throw away the key of The Rookery as she had done that of the studio. And then he suddenly did something that he had never dreamed of before. He asked her to become his wife.

Dagmar said that marriage would be something quite new—one might always try it.

So they had the banns read and drove to church on the same day as the great family council met at Selambshof.

* * * * *

Laura was warming her toes on the fender and quickly swallowed a third cup of coffee:

“Tord is an egoist,” she exclaimed in a tone of moral indignation. “He is an awful egoist. He has no regard for others.”

All agreed. Stellan’s ever watchful irony seemed to have vanished. He found nothing ridiculous in such words on Laura’s lips. He felt with a queer sort of bitterness that in Tord the Selamb egoism had declined from the high plane on which it was assured of success in the world. He was dangerous, Tord, he did not hide what ought to be hidden, he unmasked them all; he was a caricature of them.

Peter stood watching in the window. He made a sign. A cab came driving up the avenue. It was Tord and that woman. No doubt about it. Tord wore a white tie. It was the first time they had ever seen him in a white tie. And the woman had a bouquet of flowers in her hand. They had come from church....

Stellan stamped on the floor:

“Damn him! He must get out of this. I can’t have him within five miles’ distance of my mess and my club!”

“We ought to have let the police take that woman,” fumed Laura. “And Tord ought to be in some kind of home. Hasn’t he even tried to shoot Peter?”

Peter had kept silent the whole time and looked very mysterious. Now he thought the right moment had arrived:

“I was out duck shooting a week or two ago,” he grunted. “It was at a place called Järnö which lies far out at sea. A fine island. And it is for sale. Fancy if we put Tord in a boat and took him out there....”

At that moment somebody stepped into the hall. It was Mrs. Dagmar Selamb in an open fur coat, white silk frock and somewhat down-at-heel shoes. She did not look at all nervous or anxious. There was something light-hearted, something irrepressibly carefree about her:

“How do you do,” she said. “I thought I would call whilst I still had some decent clothes!”

She was greeted by amazed, icy silence.

Dagmar shook her fair mane with a little flash of impatience:

“Perhaps it seems strange that I haven’t brought him with me. He is playing with his Japanese mice, poor fellow, and in his new black evening dress, too! We must excuse him. ‘I won’t go up to those bourgeois!’ he screamed. ‘But I am going,’ I said. ‘They have done nothing to me,’ I said. Well, and here I am. The whole family is assembled, I see....”

Again a few moments of the same silence. Dagmar’s features were at last overshadowed by a certain doubt as to whether she was welcome.

Then Peter suddenly stepped up to her and took her hand:

“Congratulations,” he said, “congratulations.”

And suddenly all of them smiled, struck by the same thought as Peter. They were splendid, those Selambs. They realised at once that it was important to gain an ally.

“You can’t be very comfortable down in The Rookery,” said Laura.

Dagmar threw her coat on a chair and sat down by the fire:

“Oh, it’s good enough for us.”

Peter followed Laura:

“But how would it be to have your own place?”

Dagmar laughed:

“I see, you want to get rid of us!”

“It is for Tord’s sake,” continued Stellan. “We had thought it would be a little surprise. He is such a lover of nature....”

“I suppose it is somewhere at the end of the world,” asked Dagmar.

“Not at all,” Peter cut in. “It is out in the skerries by the sea. You couldn’t have a finer view. And such lots of game, sea birds and capercailzie and hares and foxes. That would be something for Tord. Fancy to be one’s own master and live exactly as one likes....”

Dagmar’s eyes suddenly lit up:

“The sea, you say. And do you think I could go out every morning and lie down quite naked in the sunshine?”

“Of course, that’s just what I mean.”

Dagmar was too absorbed in her thoughts to hear Laura snigger.

“I am perfectly mad on lying naked in the sunshine,” she said, in a serious tone.

“Good, then we agree.”

“Yes, I like your proposal very much. But how shall we manage to get Selamb to agree? He is so crazy sometimes, poor fellow. You simply can’t imagine.”

“Oh! be careful in the beginning” said Peter. “Flatter him a bit. Tell him that he has money enough to buy his own estate. That he ought to free himself from that cursed fellow, Peter the Boss. But our little sister-in-law will know better than I what to say.”

Dagmar rose smiling, pleased with the cunning which she would display.

“Good, there’s my hand. I shall be like a snake. Good-bye, all of you. He must have something to eat. I think you are jolly nice, all of you!”

With that Mrs. Dagmar Selamb went out in her shabby shoes—not without a certain savage grace.

And so they bribed Tord’s wife on her wedding day.

The solemn family council laughed and laughed. Laura writhed:—“Lying quite naked in the sun,” she screamed. “I am mad on lying absolutely naked in the sun.”

The laughter was soon followed by a quarrel, one of the sharpest in the history of the family council. And of course it was on a question of money. Tord had nothing but his shares in Selambshof, no ready money. There was first a keen debate as to who ought to collect the purchase money. Peter sat silent and let the others talk. Yes, Peter the Boss had suddenly become strangely indifferent. His cigar seemed to absorb him completely. This was a mock battle that he did not mind them fighting. He knew very well that he was the only one who had ready money. At last he said quietly that perhaps he could manage to scrape together a little.

The others suddenly grew suspicious of Peter’s indifference.

“You have been arranging the whole thing beforehand. You think you are going to earn money by this. You are going to cheat Tord,” they cried.

Peter defended himself like a bear amongst a swarm of bees, half conscious of his guilt and half pleased, but without feeling their stings very much. He blinked his eyes, grunted and beat them off with both his hands.

“Good, don’t let us talk any more about it. I am not a member of any smart clubs. I don’t entertain. I like my whiskey and soda with Tord even though he does shoot at me occasionally.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Stellan cut in. “What conditions have you thought of?”

“A moment ago I was really prepared to buy some of Tord’s shares,” Peter said reproachfully.

“At what price?” asked Laura with a sneer.

“At par,” grunted Peter. And it was as if he had torn this offer out of his bleeding heart.

His sister and brother laughed ironically, pitilessly. It would be very nice indeed to be able to buy the shares at that price. No, at least double. They were consumed by a noble indignation. They were full of fight in the cause of poor Tord. Peter was laid on the rack and was mercilessly compelled to offer more and more. He pulled faces, puffed, swore, writhed, but it was all of no use. Selamb against Selamb, diamond cut diamond. Finally they set to work coolly and keenly without the aid of lies. Things went so far that there were threats of dismissing the manager from his post. They all thought they had been cheated by Peter. Now was the opportunity for revenge. He was forced to give a binding guarantee of one hundred thousand crowns for half of Tord’s shares and not to take any commission on the purchase of Järnö.

Thus unconsciously Tord did a good stroke of business whilst he sat there feeding his Japanese mice—thanks to the envy of his brothers and sisters.

As things turned out there was no need to handle Tord delicately. He agreed at once when he heard of an island full of living creatures. And the sea! That would be something for his poetic bent. And when Peter, who had done all he possibly could in the matter, came and put the sixty thousand crowns that were left after the purchase of Järnö into his hands, he was so astounded that he forgot his suspicions for a whole week. Then for the first time he began to tell Dagmar that that cursed Peter had of course cheated him, though he could not say exactly how.

He was, as a matter of fact, right. Peter had at the last moment got Järnö five thousand crowns cheaper than his sisters and brothers were told. So he earned a little on the business all the same.

Thus Tord moved out to Järnö with a lot of cages. He had a whole menagerie. And Dagmar looked rather like a tamer of wild animals.

The old dilapidated dwelling house lay in a little garden among the small patches of cultivated ground below the rocks in the southern part of the island. Tord could not live there. It was too tame—too close to his tenant’s little red cottage. No, they must build a log hut of coarse timber on the highest cliff, a real eagle’s eyrie with a view over his estate of stones and water!

Here we shall find him later on, just as before in the old Rookery by the muddy bay of Lake Mälare—but all the same as if grown greater by the sea and the winter loneliness.

END OF PART ONE

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