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BARBRA RING

Into the Dark

SIGRID UNDSET

Jenny

The Bridal Wreath

HENNING KEHLER

The Red Garden

SIGFRID SIWERTZ

Downstream

EJNAR MIKKELSON

Frozen Justice

JOHANNES V. JENSEN

The Long Journey

VILHELM RASMUSSEN

Child Psychology

SVEND FLEURON

Grim, The Story of a Pike

Kittens

LAURIDS BRUUN

Van Zanten’s Happy Days

The Promised Isle

GUNNAR GUNNARSSON

The Sworn Brothers

Guest the One-Eyed

JOHANNES BUCHHOLTZ

Egholm and his God

The Miracles of Clara Van Haag

THE WORKS OF KNUT HAMSUN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART ONE

I
THE CRY

To tell the story of a child as you would tell the story of a grown-up would be to commit forgery, for once you are wide awake it costs you a great effort to describe a dream exactly as it occurred.

The tide of events flows remote from the child. Only occasionally do its eddies touch upon the consciousness of the child, and then the latter is unaware of their significance. It is precisely this inability to understand the connection between events which makes the realities of children so dream-like.

In the long dream of childhood there reigns a capricious, mysterious and yet irresistible Fate, beneficent like the fairy with its wand beside the princess’s cradle, or cruel like the wolf in Red Riding Hood. The shadow of that Fate still casts itself over our riper years. It haunts us, ghostlike, even when we have begun consciously to order our lives. Only a few chosen spirits are able to cast off the spell of these fairies and trolls.

This is a tale of people whose childhood was passed in the shadow of the wolf—and who never could escape from their childhood.

First let me tell you about that evening, many years ago, when Peter and Hedvig heard a strange cry coming from the window of their parents’ bedroom. The whole of that day it had been evident that something was in the air. The children were not allowed to go into the bedroom at all, nor even to play on the stairs. After lunch there arrived an old lady with a bag. And then an old man in spectacles drove up in a small carriage. It was the doctor. Little Laura ran away immediately and hid herself, so that she should not have to show her tongue. But this time the doctor had not come to see her, for he went straight up to Mother, and beds were prepared for the children in the green room downstairs.

Stellan, Laura, and Tord had to go to bed at once, as they were so young. But Peter and Hedvig went out onto the kitchen steps. There old Kristin sat and told stories of former days at Selambshof when “Old Hök” was alive.

The most remarkable thing about Kristin was that she alone survived from the days of the old owner. She was grey, bent, tough, the incarnation of the everlasting ill-humoured peasant soul. Even if she only talked of a pair of grey stockings it still sounded like a fairy tale. And since, moreover, the fatalism of age is closely related to the helplessness of childhood, we can well understand that she had two attentive listeners in Peter and Hedvig. Just now the great and serious event that was about to occur plunged her into a gloomy, solemn mood. And just as her ancestors for hundreds of grey generations before her had huddled together by the hearth on dark stormy nights and had told tales of dangers past, so also she now sat in the autumn twilight on the kitchen stairs at Selambshof and told ghost stories to the maids and the cowherd about the old master. She still looked frightened as she talked of him. It really sounded as if she were talking of some great and notorious criminal.

Hedvig had slipped out as silently as a mouse. Her small face with its dark, hungry eyes was pale. Peter leaned sulkily in an awkward posture against the doorpost. But it is not to be supposed that the presence of the children disturbed Kristin in the very least. She just went on. She was talking now about the old pensioned couple down by the Hökar meadow:—You see the master, Old Hök, had made up his mind to starve out such encumbrances on the estate. They received only some thin whey and a little dust that the miller swept up from the floor. But it is strange how little an old woman can live on. So the old master had to turn to vermin. He put a sofa that was crawling into old Kerstin’s cottage. But Kerstin thought, “If I must die, I shall at least die on his front step”—so one winter morning she trailed herself up to his house and began to take off her rags before the front door. And you may imagine she was not beautiful, because she had smeared tar over her whole body as a protection against lice. It was so awful that even Old Hök had to hurry to his cupboard and take a drop of something strong.

Here Kristin stopped suddenly and caught hold of Hedvig’s hand as it lay anxiously clenched in her lap. Yes, indeed, it clenched a sticky lump of sugar. The temptation had proven too strong as she stole through the empty kitchen. Kristin’s tone now became still more sinister and solemn: “Well, well, that’s what heredity does,” she mumbled. “Keep your fingers out of the sugar jar, Hedvig, otherwise the sugar knife will fall and cut off your hand. Or maybe the Bogey Man will come and take you.”

Hedvig turned quite white. A spasm passed over her face—but she did not cry. She cowered and went on listening to Kristin, who continued in her sombre manner: “Yes, as I always say, everything goes wrong here at Selambshof, both with human beings and with animals, since the old master drove away the good house spirits. And there are strange things both in the forest and in the lake. Would any of you like to be alone at night time in Enoch’s cave? And don’t bubbles rise even today by the big stone beyond the reeds? The master said that Matts fell in whilst he was trying to catch hold of an oar that he had lost. But I know what I know. They didn’t find Matts. But afterwards Old Hök always dropped his hooks just at that spot and caught lots of eels, and beat the young master because he wouldn’t eat them. Yes, he was like that. And he has not gone from this place yet. Tell me, Andres, don’t the horses still jib down there by the grey stone at the corner of the avenue? They have done so ever since Old Hök died there. He sat quite straight with his hands on the knob of his stick and frowned, though he was stone dead. They had to bring four men to straighten him out and lay him in his coffin, so obstinate was he even after death. But he left lots of money.”

At this point, old Kristin lowered her voice and became humble in spite of herself. That was of course the people’s admiration for wealth. It was the unconditional surrender of the old peasant woman to the fact of possession. And both Andres and the maid, who had been peacefully dozing during this recital of well-known horrors, now leant forward with listening eyes as Kristin sat there and spun out her story of all the gold in the chest and all the corn in the barns— “Yes, he did look after the farm, did the old master. In those days there was something like a manure heap for a cock to stand on and crow. And nobody dared to steal even a potato then. Do you hear that, Andres? No, those were different days—for now you do nothing but idle about and steal. Well, I suppose everything will lie waste soon. Yes, yes, we have not seen the end yet—we have not seen the end. And there are lots of children to share it too—and more are coming. It is a real pity. Poor Peter, who is the eldest and will inherit it. Poor Peter, that’s what I say! Are you loafing about there with your hands in your pockets again? Take your hands out of your pockets—otherwise you will lose both house and land. You wait and see if I don’t speak the truth. And don’t climb on the rail and wear out your stockings.”

Kristin had come to this point when they heard a scream from the bedroom upstairs. The silence beneath the bare elms was suddenly and harshly torn asunder. Perhaps it sounded to Peter and Hedvig like one of those strange, petrified screeches which sometimes fill the sleep of grown-ups with horror.

The little group dissolved instantly. The maid ran into the kitchen for the kettles. Anders strolled hesitatingly towards the lake, and Kristin pushed the children into the dining-room and turned the key. Peter and Hedvig were locked in with Old Hök, whose portrait hung there in the twilight over the leather-covered sofa. They were standing in the middle of the room and dared not look at the picture. They were expecting another scream that would make their hair stand on end again. They supposed it must come since they had been driven in here. But they heard no scream—for many long, long minutes all was still. By and by their eyes were irresistibly drawn to Old Hök. There he stood in a long, black coat. And his nose looked like a bird’s beak, and his fingers were clenched round his stick handle and looked like claws. But worst of all were his eyes, for wherever you stood they stared straight down at you, so that you felt that your blood ran cold. It had, of course, been horrid to listen to Kristin, but then, it was not altogether uncanny, for there was mixed with it a curiously pleasant sensation as when you step into a pool and the cold water oozes into your stockings. But this! Oh this was ever so much worse! Their childish fear, awakened out of its semi-sleep, now fluttered wildly round Old Hök—and Kristin’s superstition and her prophecies of woe hovered over them in new and terrifying shapes.

Peter was perhaps not so sensitive to the more remote horrors. His fears fastened on what was nearest to hand. Very small as he was, he stood there staring at the grey and tattered ghost of poverty. His anxiety was centred on a big signet ring that Old Hök was wearing on his finger. He wore it, of course, because he was awfully rich. But where was the ring now? Old Hök’s eyes pursued him with the question: Where is my ring now? Peter knew nothing of it. His father had not worn it, and it was not in his mother’s jewel box. Supposing Anders had stolen it! Or fat Lotten in the kitchen? Fancy if they should steal everything at Selambshof, so that he, Peter, had to sit without any clothes in the forest and starve and shiver. Fancy if that was why Mamma lay up there and screamed so terribly. Yes, he knew it was Mamma who had screamed.

That was Peter’s fear. But Hedvig’s fear was different, deeper, vaguer. She was afraid of the Bogey Man with whom Kristin used to frighten her. And now he had suddenly assumed Old Hök’s features. Yes the Bogey Man was there in the room, just in front of her. But it never occurred to her to take Peter’s hand. Hedvig was not like that. She was alone from the beginning, alone in her fear and helpless with that complete and profound helplessness that grown-ups only experience in the dangers and horrors of a nightmare.

And now they heard another scream, fainter but just as dreadful. It came from all sides at once—from the stairs, from the door, from the walls themselves. Hedvig suddenly understood, the Bogey Man had come! He was taking somebody as he passed on his way. Because it was, of course, herself, Hedvig, that he really wanted. She shrank and closed her eyes. Then she looked up again, just for a second. He was no longer there above the sofa. He had climbed down—he was coming towards her! He was stretching out his claws!!

Hedvig dug her nails into the edge of the table and screamed, screamed wildly. She could not bear it. Peter also started screaming. He saw himself standing starving and naked in a big dark forest full of wolves. It is not to be wondered at then that they screamed. But that was not all. The younger children, who slept in the adjoining room, awoke in a fright and started to scream too. So the whole chorus of children’s voices joined with the mother’s groans above.

Kristin suddenly appeared in the door with a candle: “Good gracious—you dreadful children to make such a noise when the mistress is ill!”

She packed Peter and Hedvig into the green room. Oh, what a wonderful, pleasant relief it was to feel Kristin’s bony hands in your back. They undressed with feverish haste, afraid lest she should go before they had had time to pull the bedclothes over their heads.

“Dearest Kristin, please leave the light burning.”—“Nonsense, go to sleep now.”

And the light was gone.

They lay huddled up in terrible darkness like two poor little orphans. Fear kept them long awake and pursued them ever in their dreams, when at last they had fallen asleep. The night of the earth is but a passing shadow, but the night of fear in the heart is evil and long. And for many it seems as if there will be no morning.

The following day the children at Selambshof lost their mother. Both she and the newborn baby died before their father reached home. He had been kept late during a shoot at Kolsnäs.

II
THE ROBBER’S STRONGHOLD

The children were playing up in the big attic at Selambshof. The rain pattered against the tiles of the roof and rushed down the spouts. But inside it was dry and dusty and mysterious in the twilight among the roof-timbers and the chimney pipes. And there were heaps of things that the grown-ups had thrown aside, but which for that very reason were so tempting: old, worn-out things which had reached their second childhood, and just for that reason suited the children’s games so well.

It was only with great difficulty that Stellan could open the lock of the iron-bound oak chest. Triumphant, he pulled out a torn black skirt and spread it over the pram in which Hedvig lay on her back, pale and with her legs hanging over the edge. He called to Peter, who was the hearse-horse, and the melancholy procession was just about to start, when Hedvig began to sneeze because the skirt was full of red pepper.

“Can’t you pretend to be dead, you silly girl,” shouted Stellan impatiently.

And Laura bent down and giggled in the midst of the procession. Besides these two, the mourners were Herman Hermansson from Ekbacken and little Tord. But Tord did not want to take part in the game any longer, so he crept into a corner and sulked. The outlook was not very promising.

Creakily the pram began to move. They were playing “Mamma’s funeral” for the hundredth time.

The procession stopped before the church, which was the triangle under the staircase up to the ceiling. Herman, with an air of deadly earnest on his open face, stood and chimed a nail on a stove ring. But Stellan drew the black skirt over his shoulders and climbed up on a wooden box and pretended to be the clergyman. He threw his head back and laying his hands on his chest began to hold forth: “From the earth you come, and wipe your feet, and honour your father and mother and sister and brother, and don’t hang on to people’s skirts, and don’t balance yourself on your chair because you will fall, fallevall, appala, mesala, mesinka, meso, sebedi, sebede, and get away now you silly, for now you are dead.”

This long rigmarole was uttered with the utmost solemnity and did not fail to impress the listeners. Hedvig grew frightened of shamming death. She was so frightened that she felt cold shivers down her back. But she did not climb out of the coffin, she remained as quiet as a mouse, for she knew that if she gave up the place of honour Laura would seize it at once. And Hedvig did not want that on any account.

Suddenly the rain stopped pattering on the roof. Silently the shadows crept on in the dust under the heavy beams. It was as if the silence and the emptiness of the big gloomy house had stealthily crept up among these mourners. They really felt the emptiness after their mother’s death, after her dainties and her scolding—perhaps most after her scolding. Yes, formerly when Mamma was in the kitchen scolding, they heard it up in the attic. But with old Kristin it was different. She kept on worrying them the whole time—and they got tired of it—

And then there was something funny about father. Since Mamma died he was always in town, and when sometimes he came home he looked so dull-eyed and shabby, almost as if he was drunk. And then they felt still lonelier. Stellan had overheard Kristin say to the gardener that the master was drinking himself to death—but Stellan could not understand how that could happen. Surely one did not die from being drunk?

Alas, how gloomy and empty it was up there in the big attic! Herman began to long for his home at Ekbacken where it was not at all strange as it was here.

But the Selambshof children felt they must fight against the silence with shouts and noise and quarrelling.

“Let us play drunkards,” shouted Peter and began to slouch and reel and push the others about in his clumsy way.

But Stellan knew better. Both Peter and Herman were stronger than Stellan, but all the same it was usually he who was leader. If a lot of dogs play about on a lawn you will in nine cases out of ten find that there is a small one taking the lead in the game.

“No, let us get out on the roof and play robbers,” he shouted.

With the help of Peter and Herman he managed to open the big trap door and they tumbled out on the roof, which sloped gently and had strong iron bars between the battlements. Selambshof was an old manor house which had been rebuilt, during a period of bad taste, in the gloomy style of a fortress castle, with narrow windows, towers, gables and battlements.

They were on forbidden ground. Hedvig stopped half inside and half outside the trap—she was like that. “Take care you people on the roof,” she whimpered repeatedly to the others, but they took no notice of her.

It was awfully cold up there. And it gave you a queer feeling in the pit of the stomach to be so high over the wet glistening tops of the trees in the park. And she had never seen such a big black cloud as the one which was just passing over the town. Beneath was the black smoke and through the smoke the windows flashed like a shot. But opposite the sky was as green as ice, except in the furthest distance over the dark and ragged edge of the forest, where it was yellow. And the lake looked like a piece of mirror of the sky which had fallen down among the trees. It was quite unbroken except between Kolsnäs and Stonehill, where the steamer was passing and shattered it.

Stellan was the first to reach the railing. Oh, how cold he felt about the forehead. But giddiness changed to recklessness—wild shouting recklessness. How small everything down there looked! Just look at Anders at the corner of the stable! Wasn’t he a mere spot. And Kristin—what did he care about Kristin? No, now they would have some fun!

“Selambshof is a robbers’ stronghold!” he shouted—quite pale with excitement. “We are wild highwaymen! We care for nothing—we just kill and take what we want.”

This seemed to appeal to Peter. He took aim at Ekbacken and pulled the trigger—that is to say he levelled his finger and said: “Bang, I shot Ekbacken! Ekbacken is mine.”

Herman protested: “No—Ekbacken belongs to my father.”

He was severely snubbed: “Blockhead! are we robbers or are we not?”

And then Stellan mercilessly shot to pieces Kolsnäs, the white walls of which peeped out behind the trees on the other side of the lake. Peter reloaded and took aim and shot at Trefvinge, which was the finest place within sight, a real big castle with four copper towers far away beyond the edge of the forest. Things were now getting exciting, for Peter and Stellan and Herman were all aiming at the town itself with all its church towers and chimneys! Bang, Bang, Bang, the shots were fired almost simultaneously.

“The town is mine” cried Herman. “I shot first.”

“No, I shot first,” lied Peter confidently.

“No, mine was the only one that hit,” cried Stellan stamping on the roof. “Now both Kolsnäs and the town are mine.”

“That’s not fair,” insisted Herman, “I ought to have something, and I shot first.”

“That’s a lie,” insisted Peter quietly, but menacingly.

Stellan was already furious: “Whose idea was it that we should play robbers—eh? I am the chief of the robbers. And now I have taken the town and am king of the castle.”

But Herman would not give way, as he knew that his was the first shot.

“It’s not fair. It’s beastly unfair. I won’t play robbers with you if you are unfair.”

It looked like a fight.

Laura had been watching with her teeth chattering and trying to hide her little fat fingers in the sleeves of her frock. Now she jumped excitedly down towards the infuriated robbers. Unobserved, even Hedvig left her spy hole in the trap.

Stellan and Herman had already come to grips and scratched and tore at each other in the artless way of children. At last they began to wrestle and Stellan, who was the shorter of the two, was underneath.

“You see that I did shoot first,” panted Herman.

Then Peter with his cool cheek intervened. He rolled round this human knot and extricated Stellan, who, rather shamefaced at his defeat, withdrew with feigned contempt from the robber band. Then Peter sat down astride of Herman.

“Now say that the town is mine.”

“No.”

He began to jump on Herman. This hurt Herman, because he was lying athwart the ridge of the roof.

“Say that it is mine!”

“No.”

Peter jumped on him more than ever.

“Is it mine, what?”

Herman did not cry out. But he hit out wildly, and at last, maddened by pain, he bit Peter’s hand. Peter at once uttered a wild scream. Then Herman let go. But Peter was wise and screamed after the pain was gone.

“Take care, you who bite,” piped Hedvig in her thin voice.

Herman suddenly became horrified at his wicked deed. “Dear Peter, please forgive me,” he begged.

“Was it I who took the town then?” hissed Peter.

“Yes, I suppose it was.”

Peter felt better at once, but it suddenly struck him that his victory was not worth much and so he began to moan and cry again: “Oh, Oh, Oh.”

Herman was again alarmed and stricken with remorse: “Dear Peter, don’t cry, please forgive me, Peter, dear.”

“Will you give me your glass marble then?” whimpered Peter pitifully.

Herman pulled the glass marble out of his bag with a sigh and gave it to Peter. So at last Peter had gained something real from his robber’s career. He stood smiling to himself and weighed the five heavy marbles in his right hand but did not trouble to wipe off the blood from his left hand. It might always be useful to leave it there.

During this scene little Tord had also clambered out on to the roof. But he took no notice of the cries and noise of the others. He sat apart and leant over an old green box where nasturtiums had once grown, but which was now half-filled with rain water. Something moved in the depths. Strange little creatures with only heads and tails teemed in it. And they rose to the surface with little jerks and then disappeared again in the black, brown depths. Oh! how wonderfully mysterious it all was! He drew himself up silently. He cast anxious side-glances at the fight which was going on. Soon they would probably come and kick over the whole of his wonderful find. He hated his big brothers and sisters, who never let him enjoy anything in peace.

A voice was heard from the stairs and he crept behind the chimney.

It was Kristin. She emerged from the trap door like an old witch ready for a ride on her broom. She shook her fist, which was covered with gouty lumps, but nevertheless still had an iron grip.

“Were there ever such heathen children. You will break your necks and be good for nothing—that’s what will happen to you. Come down at once from the roof.”

The children slouched back to the trap door. Each one of them felt Kristin’s fingers in his hair. Peter approached cautiously and hunched up, holding his wounded hand like a shield in front of him. Kristin caught sight of it.

“What have you been doing, you naughty boy?”

Peter did not tell any tales himself but he looked beseechingly at Hedvig. He knew that she could not resist.

“It was Herman,” she panted. “He bit Peter until the blood ran. I only went out on the roof to see who was crying.”

In this way both Peter and Hedvig escaped a hair pulling and that was exactly what they had hoped for.

But Herman got a double dose and went home with bitterness in his heart.

Not until the other children were in their beds was Tord missed. It was not at all unusual for him to be lost like that. They looked for him in the usual places: the empty dog kennel, the wood shed, the hollow oak by the stable. But without success. At last Hedvig remembered that he had been with them on the roof and there they found him huddled up on the cold tiles, leaning against the box with the wonderful mosquito larvæ, and wet with dew. He was sleeping with his dirty little thumb in his mouth.

Soon everything was silent in the big house. And one of the frosty “iron” nights of June fell with its devastation upon the neglected garden and fields of Selambshof.

III
THE DANCE OF THE CROW INDIANS

It was a fine warm summer afternoon, when the mosquito swarms hovered like high pillars of smoke in the avenue of Selambshof.

But in the garden on the north side of the house Oskar Selamb was sitting in his usual seat. He was sitting just where the mosses of the walls hung most heavily over the grey stone base and where the damp shade beneath the old elm tree seemed full of evil memories. His big straw hat was pushed far back on his head and his purple trembling hands were clasped round the handle of his walking stick. His beard grew like a weed round his weak half open mouth, and he stared in front of him with a lifeless, taciturn gloom that had little human left in it.

A friend of former days would scarcely have recognized him.

How had Oskar Selamb, owner of Selambshof, father of five young children, and not much past fifty, come to such a pass? The immediate cause was probably the death of his wife, but in order really to understand this tragedy one must go back to the tyranny of old Enoch. It was he who had broken his son’s spirit. Up to his thirtieth year Oskar had been little more than a sort of superior farm labourer on the estate, without any rights, without a will of his own, reviled and ill-treated by Old Hök, who kept his claws and his beak sharp till the end. It leaves a mark on a man to have his hopes in life picked piece by piece out of his breast by a father who feeds his own strong flame of life by doing so. When the hour of delivery once struck at last, Oskar Selamb had come to hate his inheritance. Yes, he hated this place of humiliation, for ever haunted by the old man’s shadow. But he had not strength to throw it all off and begin afresh. He merely absented himself as much as possible and let the estate go to ruin. And late in life he married a servant girl, whom he had raised to the rank of housekeeper at Selambshof. His friends were not surprised by this mesalliance. Even during the days of his humiliation he had been fond of the girl, for which reason of course she had at once been shown the door. And when Oskar afterwards by chance caught sight of her behind a bar, he took her into his house and married her, out of pure spite, as people said, in order to make old Enoch turn in his grave. To tell the truth, he was not in love with her. It was rather the spasmodic effort of a weak and vacillating man to kick away the past. His wife was a small, dark, thin woman with a pointed nose, and moderately capable and energetic within her domain. Her voice penetrated shrill and alert through the fumes of the kitchen or the washtub. She remained a bad-tempered but capable servant of her husband and, later, of the children. But for her the home would not have held together as well as it did, for Oskar Selamb became more and more incapable of looking after anything. And he still spent most of his time in the town. There he sat among his fellow topers, lost at whist and in business, cursed and harangued, as weak people do, between his draughts of steaming toddy, on the evils of the times. Meanwhile Selambshof decayed, Ryssvik was lost, the forest melted away and the mortgages became heavier and heavier. His wife bore him in quick succession and with eternal lamentations, five hungry and crying children. With the sixth she succumbed herself. When her husband came driving home that autumn morning she already lay dead in the big double bed.

Oskar Selamb had never loved his wife. He had neglected her, treated her brutally, and worn her out. But all the same her death gave him the finishing blow. It was her scolding that had kept him going. Now he sank irrevocably. His journeys to town grew more frequent then ever. Meaner and meaner grew the bars outside which his shabby old coach had to wait till late into the night. He could not even keep himself decent. Old friends avoided him, whilst discussing with interest whether it was from joy of getting rid of his wife or from grief at losing her that he was drinking himself to death.

The more subtle held that it was a combination of these two feelings. The only one who tried to do something for his friend Oskar was his neighbour and companion from childhood, William Hermansson, owner of the Ekbacken sawmill and shipyard. As it happened the Ekbacken establishment was situated just by the main road into town, and when, nowadays, William saw Oskar’s dreary looking coach, he stepped out on to his front-door step and admonished his old friend in carefully chosen words. He tried in every way to tempt him to decent intercourse in his respectable and comfortable widower’s home, reminding him of the times when he had found a refuge there from old Enoch’s tyranny. But Oskar always drove past with some vague pretext of important meetings and urgent business.

Within a few months the crash came. Oskar Selamb was brought home a pitiful wreck after having had a stroke at a miserable little inn in the slums. After several months he got up from his sickbed, bloated, with unsteady hands, and no memory, scarcely a human being any more. But still there was no sign that death would mercifully do its work. After solemn lamentations, the owner of Ekbacken agreed to become the guardian of the children, and through his efforts a new bailiff, named John Brundin, was appointed.

That is how things had been for more than two years at Selambshof. Thus on the still summer evening we have described Oskar Selamb sat on his usual seat underneath the old elm. He sat there so motionless that the sparrows hopped about in front of him on the round stone slab superposed on an enormous oak stump which did service as a table. But out there in the slanting golden rays of the sun, round the wing where the bailiff lived, shimmered clouds of gnats and fine spiders’ webs.

Stellan and Laura were playing in the sand and in the lilac hedge in front of the house. The simple games of robbers of former days were now a thing of the past. They wore a bright array of feathers, and carried bows and tomahawks. They had read Cooper and Marryat and knew how to choose impressive names and make subtle stratagems. The hedge was also dense and deep, with fine ambushes and splendid hiding places for stealthy Indian warfare. Stellan was called “Black Panther” and Laura “Flying Arrow.” Don’t imagine that she was allowed to impersonate some pale squaw with a soft flower name. No, she was a young warrior on her first warpath. “Black Panther’s” voice sounded sharp and commanding when he was teaching his young companions the use of the bow. “Flying Arrow” had displayed some squeamishness and had giggled in an unwarriorlike manner, which was not in keeping with the seriousness of the moment, and which was duly corrected.

Peter was looking on. Big and clumsy in his outgrown and patched sailor’s suit, he leant against a rusty rainpipe grinning provocatively. “Black Panther” ran up to him.

“Won’t you come and play with us and be a Pale-Face?”

“No,” came Peter’s sulky reply in a husky voice, about to break—

“Black Panther” looked round about him wondering how to get some new excitement into the game, as it was beginning to become dull. His glance fell with a sudden expression of premature and hopeless loathing on his father on the seat. But just as suddenly he brightened up—caught hold of “Flying Arrow” by the arm and pointed at the old man:

“He is a Comanche. He is ‘Heavy Ox.’ We’ll creep up to him from two sides.”

“Black Panther” and “Flying Arrow” crept across the plot of sand with sly, watchful eyes. Then “Black Panther” sprang up like a steel spring released and swung his lasso. “Heavy Ox” was caught. They tied him to the seat as to a torture post. “Heavy Ox” did not seem to notice anything. From behind, “Black Panther” even managed to put on his head a chieftain’s feather crown consisting of some crow’s feathers pushed into the ribbon of an old, brimless, tattered straw hat. But “Heavy Ox” sat there with his new and wonderful ornament as solemnly and as apathetically unconcerned as ever.

Shrill laughter from “Flying Arrow” greeted this ridiculous apparition.

They began to dance round their victim. Swinging their tomahawks and their bows, they danced to the accompaniment of wild cries of excitement.

“‘Heavy Ox’ can’t get free! ‘Heavy Ox’ is fat and stupid! ‘Heavy Ox’ shall die. ‘Heavy Ox’ is fat and stupid!”

This sudden wild joy quite surprised the Crow Indians themselves. They perhaps did not know that there was vengeance in this game. And how much had they not to avenge! How well they might have called out to “Heavy Ox”: “That is for the hundreds of meals that were made disgusting by your nasty snuffling! That’s for your horrid snuffle and for your dull eyes that don’t see us! That’s for the neglect, the ruin, the incurable wounds to our tender beings! That’s for the great musty hole in which we spend our childhood.”

Tired of dancing they sat down to smoke a calumet, whilst still deriding and challenging their bound enemy.

“Heavy Ox” had taken no more notice of his tormentors than of the flies that buzzed around him. But now he showed signs of restlessness. And his restlessness was always of the same kind:

“Is it time for supper soon?” he stammered.

Then they jumped up again and began to dance with a renewal of their wild exultation:

“‘Heavy Ox’ shan’t get any food. ‘Heavy Ox’ is fat and stupid. ‘Heavy Ox’ shall die! ‘Heavy Ox’ is fat and stupid!”

Peter was still leaning against the rainpipe. He followed the game with a half troubled, half pleased, grin. “They will catch it for this,” he thought. “I have not taken part in it. I have been standing here the whole time by the rainpipe and have not taken any part in it.”

Then Peter saw Mr. Brundin thrust his head out of a window. It was beginning to get exciting. The punishment for these reckless children was drawing nearer. But Peter was at once disillusioned. Brundin only laughed and puffed at a big cigar. And Peter made a note in his memory that Brundin only grinned at forbidden and dangerous things.

Then at last something happened. Old Hermansson came walking up the avenue. And instantly Brundin’s head disappeared from the window. But “Black Panther” and “Flying Arrow” noticed nothing. Old Hermansson walked quietly across the sand plot. He was as straight-backed as if he had been drawn on a slate by a good boy. He walked with his coat buttoned high up to the throat, his head erect, and his hands behind his back. He walked with measured dignity and each step seemed to be an admonition to the careless, the irreverent and the reckless. One can scarcely imagine anything more typical to children of the grown-up.

Peter stood still with excitement and bit his nails. This was really a great moment.

Then Mr. Brundin came rushing out of the door. He had put aside the big cigar and hastened with every mark of respect to free “Heavy Ox” from his bonds, whilst with serious and angry mien he shook his fist at the two Indians.

This was something more for Peter to note: a moment ago Brundin had only grinned and now he became serious when old Hermansson was present.

At last old Hermansson had arrived. Now at last somebody would be cuffed. But Peter had to wait. Old Hermansson first saw that the unsuitable ornament was removed from his old friend’s head. Then he greeted him, obstinately maintaining the habit of speech of past and happier days.

“How do you do, how do you do, my dear Oskar? I hope you are well. Yes, it is a fine day today, a very fine day. So I thought I would take a little walk in order to talk to our good bailiff about the rye-crop.”

Oskar Selamb had recovered his greasy old hat again. But he was clearly completely insensible to these see-saws of exultation and degradation. He stared sulkily in front of him and grunted:

“I want my supper—can’t I have my supper?”

“In due time, my dear Oskar. In due time you will certainly have your supper.”

Now it seemed to be Stellan’s and Laura’s turn. Their guardian placed himself in front of them and made a little speech:

“Listen carefully now, my children,” he said. “I don’t want to see you show your father such disrespect again. Honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long in the land and that it may go well with you.”

Here he shook his head solemnly and let the culprits go. And the fair and plump little Laura danced away with small side steps like a puppy, but not before she had cast a coquettish and triumphant glance at Peter in passing, as if to say,—“Cheated!—there was no thrashing!”

But Stellan stood there with all his war-like array in his hand and with an air of disillusionment looked at “Heavy Ox,” who was no longer “Heavy Ox,” but only the familiar dismal figure. Then he lightly shrugged his shoulders and quietly went away whistling among the currant bushes. With his quick cold eyes and his proud mouth he did not exactly look like one of those who fare badly in this world.

It may be that old Hermansson was also somewhat mistaken. It may be that callousness developed early in life may be one of the conditions of success in this world. It may be that daily and hourly contact with degraded humanity simply hardens a little Indian’s heart for life’s cruel warfare.

IV
PETER THE WATCH-DOG

Peter’s school report at the end of the term was, as usual, not good, and he was not promoted. Now he sat in the billiard room on the third floor grinding away in the summer holidays.

Peter sat drawing his fingers through his rough hair and bent over his book. We all know that struggle against an incurable lack of concentration, the bending very closely over an unfortunate text until the letters begin to swell and jostle each other out of line and shamelessly vanish in the blue.

Peter lifted his head, puffing as if he had been under water and could no longer hold his breath. But it was not only the common, boyish instinct to throw all to the winds and rush out to the day’s adventures in the forest and field. It was not only the healthy restlessness of a growing boy that was reflected in his face. He turned and twisted on his chair and looked about him, and secretly cast stealthy side-glances from beneath his unkempt shock of hair as if fearing that somebody stood behind him listening to his thoughts.

Not even when he was alone could he look anything straight in the face.

Now he jumped up and took a turn round the old billiard table covered by an old torn dust sheet. All round him in the dilapidated room the torn wallpaper was curling and the dry paint was peeling off the skirting boards and window frames. Peter stopped a moment in front of a blackboard that had once been the billiard marker, but which was now covered with his unsolved algebra problems. He made a weak effort, but then he flung away the chalk as if it had burnt his fingers, and rushed suddenly to the window and peeped out.

Since Old Hök’s time the billiard room had been generally called the conservatory. Its high, narrow fortress-like windows faced three ways, and from this high point one could look out over the whole of the Selamb estate. On a stand made of three worn-out cues stood a long, battered leather-covered telescope. It was here that Peter’s grandfather used to sit and spy on his people in order mercilessly to sweep down on the idle or the dishonest. You could still see his old focus marks on the brass tube of the telescope, and they had crept further and further out as he grew older and more short sighted.

If anybody had seen Peter by the window overlooking the terrace he would have thought that Old Hök was not yet quite dead.

The bailiff was going to have a crayfish party for some friends from the town. He was standing down there hanging up Chinese lanterns. Frida, the new maid, was handing them to him out of a big clothes basket.

Peter found it impossible to remain any longer at his work. Silently as a mouse he stole out into the garden. He did not make straight for the terrace, but walked with long, searching side-glances till at last he settled on an observation post in the dense lilac hedge. Then he pretended to be carving a stick, but all the time he kept his eyes on the little lantern-scene. Brundin was standing in his shirt sleeves with a long cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth so as not to get the smoke in his eyes. He was a fair man with small, light, curly mustaches. He was wearing a check waistcoat, riding breeches and top boots. But even if he did not look like the Fairy Prince himself, he might at least have passed for one of the members of his suite. For the moment he was carrying on with Frida, who made eyes and giggled as if he had tickled her.

Peter sat and fidgetted. There was a lot of questions that tormented him like insects. That Brundin fellow had no farm, so how could he be so awfully smart with his check waistcoat and heavy gold chain stretched across his vest? And his tie-pin was as big as a penny! And where had he got all those splendid lanterns. And why should Frida stand there and dance attendance on him and hand him the lanterns?

All Peter’s brooding and discontent found expression in that one question: why should our Frida stand there and hand lanterns to Brundin? And he had to gulp it down time after time lest it should escape his lips in a loud growl.

No, he could not bear to look any longer.

With his eyes on the ground and his big hands hanging awkwardly by his sides Peter strolled round the yard and out into the fields. He lumbered about like a watch-dog, sniffing reflectively at every corner. Everywhere he scented decay. From his own father, who sat there heedless and inert on his bench by the front door, and who in the depth of his decay had no thought for anything else but his next meal, this ruin spread itself over garden, barn, stable and granary—and out over fields, meadows and forest. There were a thousand things that whispered of it, the weeds in the paths, the broken glass of the cucumber frames, the broken down, moss-covered fences, bottomless patches of road, bare neglected forest slopes. There were a thousand things Peter would have liked to ask Brundin about, but when he met him smart and resplendent with a big cigar in the corner of his mouth, a kind of paralysis of fear overtook him. Not with red-hot tongs could one have dragged a straightforward, direct question out of the boy—and that even though the bailiff had never uttered an unkind word to him, but on the contrary had cracked good-natured jokes with him and had offered him good things from town which Peter had grabbed clumsily and disappeared with, like a dog who is afraid of a thrashing.

The labourers on the estate were the only ones with whom Peter could talk on the subject. Obeying the instinct of a sort of subordinate, the future heir pried about for signs of discontent, for hints and suggestions. But he had little success. It was of importance that he should be very careful. He turned his questions over and over again in his mind before they passed his lips. In his timidity and excess of carefulness he began to beat about the bush so much that often he never reached his point at all. Those who asked for nothing better than to speak the truth about the bailiff did not understand what he was driving at. And cleverer ones and those with a bad conscience saw through him in their own way, and thought it best to beware of this sneaking, spying nuisance of a boy and not to criticise those in authority.

Down in the bend of the avenue Peter met Anders, who was driving home with a load of rye from the Hökar meadow. The boy climbed up in the rye beside the old stable hand, but he did not think how jolly it was to lie softly like this among the sheaves glowing with blue cornflowers and to swing gently along in the half-light under the old elms. Today his restlessness was worse than ever, and he grew quite bold of speech.

“How much is a load like this worth, Anders?”

“Oh, it’s worth a good deal of money. And it would fetch more if it wasn’t for the weeds.”

“Who takes care of the money?”

“The bailiff, of course.”

“But Anders, when they pay him the money, how can he know what is ours and what is his?”

“Well, Master Peter, the bailiff keeps his books.”

“But supposing somebody went and wrote something wrong in his books?”

“No, they can’t, for he keeps his books locked up, you see.”

“But suppose he should forget to write something in the books?”

Peter’s tone was one of entreaty, but Anders was impossible.

“It is his chief work to write down everything in the books,” he muttered with a side-glance.

Thus Peter helped to drive in the rye. They had reached the barn now and he jumped down no wiser than before. The cracked old gong rang for dinner, and it sounded like a funeral bell.

The dining-room smelt of “sluring,” a soup which was the abomination of all the children. They pushed the chairs about, kicked each other’s legs, and quarrelled because nobody wanted to sit next to father, who was horrid at table. They were just like a lot of crows on a branch at night time, pecking at each other because none wants to sit furthest out on the branch, in the darkness and emptiness. Finally Tord was pushed there, he was the smallest and weakest. Frida flung down the soup. It was worse than ever. There had probably been no time for cooking because of the preparations for the evening party. Peter shrank and held his hands to his ears so as not to hear his father eating his soup. There came a queer smell from the neighbourhood of Tord, who did not touch his food but pulled out a dirty handkerchief full of snakes’ eggs which he had found in the manure heap. Stellan waited upon his father. When he had lapped up his soup, the young man was there in a flash with his own full plate the contents of which disappeared just as quickly. Laura’s plate went the same way. Those two always adopted the same strategy. But Peter and Hedvig did their duty. There were bread fritters to follow. Old Kristin came in. Nowadays, there was not much left of her. Usually she sat in her little room mumbling as she knitted. But she still retained her power over Tord, so he had to sit there with his soup. He could be shut up with his plate for ever so long without uttering a sound. He was a strange, silent child, Tord.

Still hungry and out of humour Peter crept down into the garden and stole whatever he could find to eat there.

Then the steamer arrived with Brundin’s guests. There were corn dealers, greengrocers, and butchers from the town, nothing but rogues that he did business with. They at once sat down to smoke and drink punch at a long table on the terrace. From the beginning there were heard shouts of coarse, bass voices and roars of laughter, and it was clear that they had laid a solid foundation for their merriment in some inn in town. Frida, fresh and not at all shy, in spite of her seventeen years, flitted about the whole time bearing trays frequently replenished and was vigorously pinched, tickled and caressed. But in the midst of all shone Brundin in his check waistcoat, and whenever you looked at him he sat with glass uplifted and “Your health” on his lips.

Peter hovered about, gloomy and unnoticed, on the fringe of this festive party. He loitered about the bedroom window, he crept into the lilac hedge. In the end he secured himself up among the branches of the big maple tree below the signal-guns on the terrace. From there he saw them light the gay-coloured lanterns and bring in the enormous dishes of crayfish, with their fennel crowns to the accompaniment of wild shouts of welcome. The lanterns swung to and fro and the candles in the big candlesticks from off the sideboard flickered and flamed as if intoxicated, and cast a shimmering light on napkins tied round fat necks, on rolled-up shirt sleeves and rows of sparkling glasses simultaneously raised.

To crown all Peter saw how Stellan and Laura who had been leaping round with eager and unrestrained curiosity amongst the merry guests were called by the bailiff, and how each was given a big portion of crayfish to eat at the table. Breathlessly Peter held fast to his branch and communed with the whispering gloom of the great, dark tree top.

Then an old fellow rose and thanked the host. He fumbled with his wine glass and now and then squeezed out a word, just as if he had been on the point of suffocation before he got it out. And his shadow, ragged and giantlike, mounted the loosening plaster of the walls of Selambshof.

“Kalle Brundin,” he shouted, “Kalle Brundin! All here present join with me! And what do we join in? We join in the belief that this has been a damned fine party. Damned jolly to see you out here in your old Selambshof! Thank you, Kalle Brundin! A fourfold hurrah for Kalle Brundin and his Selambshof. May he live long: hip, hip, hurrah!”

In reply Kalle Brundin pointed with an elegant gesture to the landing stage and the steamer. And instantly the whole company stumbled towards it, so that the table was deserted.

Sssh! Bang! there went the first rocket. And then came cracking grasshoppers and divers that fizzed and spluttered in the water, and golden rains that vomited sparks round the gate posts, and bright Roman candles, and then rockets again and crackers and starlights.

Peter slipped down out of the tree. This was too much. He shrank as if the sparks had rained in his eyes. What was it that sparkled and cracked but Brundin’s arrogance. This abominable Brundin filled the skies with his violent, sneering, exultant pride.

But amidst the smell of powder there came some odours from the table and then it struck Peter that Brundin for the moment was not guarding his interests on the terrace. In a trice Peter was there. Like a frightened, thieving dog he gulped down pieces of meat, cake and whatever was left in the wine glasses. He had not time to taste anything properly and half choked himself, but somehow it did him good all the same. It was as if he had stolen back a little of his own, and with a somewhat easier mind he stole away into the darkness again.

The fireworks were over and the guests stumbled back to their punch glasses again. But now it seemed as if the last remnants of their dignity had vanished with the rockets. Some fell down on the chairs as if their legs had been struck off beneath them. And some stood with their arms round each others’ necks, panting, as if they would drown each other in friendship. And others were quarrelling with raised voices that were lost among the shy shadows of the still August night. But Brundin sat there unperturbed and contented in the midst of the noise, like the devil at a horsefair, smiling with half-closed eyes and puffing at his cigar.

Then Peter heard somebody come stamping out on the kitchen stairs where he was sitting. It was old Kristin. In the light of the lanterns which now caught fire and flared up one after the other she raised her trembling, bony arms like two withered branches. And she muttered a long string of reproaches and threats against the impious bailiff and his inhuman company. When she caught sight of Peter her voice, which seemed to have been worn down to a pale, feeble thread by all the unhappiness and misery of this world, broke and putting her cold, withered hand on his head, she said: “You poor orphan children! We all know what happens to them. You will never grow up to sit at Selambshof. No. No!”

Thereupon old Kristin stumped in again. But Peter felt the chill of that withered, trembling hand through his whole body right down to his toes.

Then Frida came carrying a tray of empty glasses, pursued by panting and shouting figures, which let fall coins in the pockets of her apron and in her hair and down her plump neck inside her cotton blouse. But she looked over their shoulders at Brundin, who was standing by the corner of his wing of the house making some mysterious signs.

Then the whole company broke up and returned home by land and down the avenue the babel of voices gradually disappeared.

Peter was just going to bed. He did not light the lamp, but sat for a moment balanced on the edge of the bed and listening to Stellan’s breathing beside him. Then he crept to the window again.

All was dark and silent. Only from a chink in a blind in the bailiff’s wing a narrow streak of light cut the darkness. Over the dusky house there hung the witchery of an unknown fear. As Peter stared out he seemed to see a shadow cross the yard and disappear under the lime tree by Brundin’s porch. Peter stole quietly down the stairs again. The sky had clouded over and it had become strangely oppressive. There was soughing and whispering in the darkness. Peter walked on the edge of the grass so that the gravel should not crunch beneath his feet. In the sweet smell under the lime tree he suddenly struck against something soft, and heard a low, frightened cry.

It was Hedvig, his sister. He had not seen her the whole evening. He pinched her arm:

“What are you doing here, girl?”

Hedvig was breathing heavily. Through the darkness he could almost see how pale she was.

“Frida!” It escaped her in a whisper, and she pointed to a window that stood open where the blind was drawn: “There, there!”

Peter put his arm round her waist in order to pass her on the narrow grass edge. She was trembling and she seemed in a cold sweat, blended of shame, curiosity and disgust.

“Go in again,” he mumbled harshly.

She gave a start as if he had struck her and ran in. But Peter stepped noiselessly up to the open window. There was light inside and he heard the sound of chairs being moved, giggles and whispering. But it was impossible to see anything. He carefully pushed aside the blind a little with a pencil.

Between a box in the window and the corner of a yellow wardrobe he could catch a glimpse over the end of the bed of some curls of brown hair and a big, dark hand that pressed against something soft and white.

Peter wanted to lift the blind higher but then a bottle on the window-sill tipped over and an arm was stretched out and put out the lamp.

He ran away as if possessed.

Now he lies stretched out on his bed, staring into the darkness. He lies as still as a terrified insect feigning death.

Fancy that it was Frida—the Frida who brought in his shoes and clothes in the morning!

Hitherto when Peter had looked at the girl he felt a certain uneasiness in her presence—an uneasiness which found expression chiefly in giggles and rudeness. But nothing in the world would have induced him to touch her.

But Brundin dared! For him nothing was forbidden and nothing dangerous. He did everything he liked.

By contrast with his own helplessness Brundin became a monster of power and impudence.

The darkness became oppressive round the poor boy, he suddenly felt the girl in his inmost being, in the very marrow of his bone. But not her alone, that was the horror of it! This man whom he dreaded, his pet horror was also there. His feelings were a strange mixture of shame, lust, fear, powerlessness, loneliness and grief. The very springs of life were diverted and unclean from the beginning. Even his first dreams of awakening were sullied by anxiety, and by cowardly, curious hate.

The more tired Peter became the more distinctly did he feel how the chill of old Kristin’s hand passed through his body. And Frida dissolved and disappeared. But Brundin remained. He pursued Peter deep into the night’s sleep.

His sleep was like that of one in a besieged fortress, where one hears the shots shattering bit by bit the walls that save one from destruction.

Yes, this was the story of Peter the Watch-dog.

We must not forget that this thin and anxious figure was the embryo of the future coarse and brutal Peter the Boss.

V
FEAR

Excited and curious, Frida thrust her head into the girls’ room:

“If you please, Miss Hedvig,—you ought to let me make your bed on a day like this.”

Hedvig was leaning over her narrow bed with her black hair full of curling papers. She would soon be fifteen years old now. Her breasts were already filling out beneath her bodice. Her lips were very red, and looked almost skinless, in her long pale face.

“No,” she said vehemently, “Kristin must come up.”

For some time past Hedvig had made her own bed. She could not bear Frida to touch anything of hers. She seemed to shiver as in a cold draught and her teeth began to chatter as soon as the plump, laughing hussy came near her. But the maid did not pay her back in the same coin. The excellent Frida had no stiff-necked pride. With a mixture of good nature and bad conscience she only became more servile. “Kristin? very well.”

Humming softly as usual she vanished down the stairs.

Laura yawned, stretched herself lazily and shook her fair hair. For all her laziness her arch eyes sparkled. She was not in the least like her elder sister:

“You really are mad, Hedvig,” she said, jumping out of the bed.

Then Kristin came puffing and muttering up the stairs. Her old black frock had not shrunk as she herself had done, and it seemed almost empty when she sank down on the edge of the bed. Her hands twitched and trembled as if they had gone to sleep in her lap and were dreaming of knitting needles.

“Well, Hedvig, do you know your catechism, so that we need not be ashamed of you?”

Laura came up, stark naked, with a lather of soap on her neck:

“Know her catechism? when she is overflowing with it!”

The old woman had no smile for this fresh, plump young thing.

“Are you not ashamed, child, to talk like that of God’s word? And you won’t be ready in time either.”

Hedvig had done her hair and Kristin helped her on with the white frock that reached almost to her ankles. She fumbled a long time with the fastenings at the back, and then she arranged the pleats with bony, trembling fingers.

“Just like dressing a little bride,” she muttered. “And truth it is that it is the best of bridegrooms you are meeting today!”

But behind Kristin’s back Hedvig stole a glance at herself in the mirror. It was with a shy, unsteady look she saw her own image. There was not a spark of fresh and natural joy.

Now it was breakfast time. The other children, arrayed in their poor best, were already sitting round the table. But it was impossible to get Hedvig down. She remained in the little girls’ room, and in the end Kristin had to take a plate of porridge to her. Laura also soon came running back. A new frock was anyhow a new frock. And this was almost the beginning of long skirts and putting the hair up. And perhaps she might even see Hedvig cry!

A carriage was heard crunching the gravel outside. Hedvig jumped up. It was only old Hermansson. Yes! of course he must come with them. She sank down on her chair again. Laura was looking at her with big greedy eyes, purring like a cat.

“He is also coming,” she said suddenly in a sleek little voice. “I heard him order the dog-cart.”

Hedvig turned pale, just as one’s knuckles whiten when one clenches one’s fist.

“What he?”

“Mr. Brundin, of course.”

Over Hedvig’s face spread an expression of anxious and obstinate defiance which made it look almost old. Everybody was waiting about for an opportunity to point her out, everybody—

“What right has he to come. His place is among the farmhands.” And with that she pushed Laura out of the room and locked the door.

But then she stole to the window and stood there hidden by the curtain.

Then the bailiff, Brundin, came driving in his little dog-cart. He wore a fur coat, a top hat thrust back on his head, and red dogskin gloves.

Hedvig devoured him with her eyes, just like a boy who steals his first glass of strong drink, and is frightened when it burns his throat. Then she caught sight of Peter. He was standing some distance away with his coarse red hands hanging out of his short sleeves. He pulled a face at the bailiff and then looked furtively up at the girls’ room. Hedvig ran away from the window, and sat down in a corner fidgetting with her handkerchief. She looked as if she had been struck.

Now they were calling her. Now she must go down—“God! if only it were over,” she thought. Stiffly and hesitatingly, as if afraid to lose her balance, she greeted old Hermansson. But she shot past the outstretched hand of Brundin as if impelled by an invisible force, rushed out to the carriage and crept into a corner. With her pale face and her screwed-up eyes, she looked like some strange creature of the twilight which had been forced out into the merciless spring sunshine.

Old Kristin had to run after her with her coat and hat.

At last the carriage was full and they started off. Out in the yard in the sunshine it was still temptingly warm. The lilac bushes had great green buds and the damp soil of the flower beds was steaming round the bulbs. But in the avenue they met the cold air from the dirty snow in the ditches. And whenever a little cloud hid the sun for a moment, they were back in winter again. It was one of those treacherous and dangerous days when the cautious and the wise, such as old Hermansson, prefer to keep their fur coats on.

It was some distance to the Church, which was situated at a crossing of two roads, by the side of a plain which was chequered by the black, brown, and green of fallow land, pastures, and young rye.

Behind it rose a bare slope sprinkled with juniper trees which resembled dark solid flames. The Church was very old, without a tower. With its high black roof, its coarse walls of rustic stone, it resembled a fortress, a barn, or a cellar. And there was a musty smell beneath the vaulted roof, for in spite of the big rusty stove, the cold winter air still lingered.

With the troop of children close upon his heels old Hermansson squeezed himself into the high narrow pew. He did so the more calmly as the pew was at this moment the most respectable place. But to Mr. Brundin the hard wooden seat of duty at once seemed repugnant.

Hedvig stealthily joined the other children who were to be confirmed, and sat down under the pulpit.

The clergyman was an old shaggy-bearded man with a face like granite and reindeer-moss. This teacher of Our Lord began the catechism in a dry, hard voice, as if he were engaged in an interrogation on the four rules of arithmetic rather than in partaking of the divine sacrament. In this severe old Church, confronted by this severe old man, the gospel seemed to be a vain mockery and punishment, the great punishment, the only reality. It was strange to hear the young girlish voices answer his lifeless voice as it spelled out, without a spark of fire, the long record of judgment. It was as if Death had been sitting on a stone and piped a tune on a dry bone, while frightened Echo answered from the green shores of life. There was in the quick, breathless repetition of the lesson every degree of fear, from the side-glance which would avoid the whip, down to the low trembling sigh that dies out in a sob. But he who had ears to hear would nevertheless have been startled by Hedvig’s voice. She knew her lesson and her voice did not shake, but there was something unnaturally tense, something of keenest anguish in her voice.

What sort of a God was it whom Hedvig feared and whom she was to receive today at the altar rails. Let us pause to reflect on his origin and on his history, which is much older than Hedvig’s first meeting with the clergyman. From the beginning, he was a God from the Servants’ Hall and he was an inheritance from Hedvig’s first horror, the Bogey Man!

We never escape from our first impressions and experiences. They bind us with the fibres of deep-seated roots which we never draw up into the full light of consciousness.

There Kristin, severe and foreboding, stood over the little sugar thief whom she had caught: “Hedvig, if you do not leave the sugar box alone, the Bogey Man will come and take you.”

From the beginning these two experiences blended, and each by unfortunate association strengthened the influence of the other. The more frightened she grew of the Bogey Man, the more she thought of the sugar box, and the more she thought of the sugar box, the more frightened she grew of the Bogey Man. At last he overshadowed her whole existence. He was in the dark hole under the kitchen stairs; in Kristin’s big black book; in the dull eyes of her moribund apoplectic father, in the hawk-like face of her grandfather in there over the green sofa. The darker it grew, the more dangerous the Bogey Man became. She ate her supper slowly, slowly, in order to postpone the inevitable. Alone and silent in her fear, she sat amongst her sisters and brothers who romped and struggled round about her. Then they were driven to bed. “Please, Kristin, don’t pull down the blind. Dear Kristin, please leave the lamp a little longer.”

It was no use. In vain she pulled the bedclothes over her head, the Bogey Man was still there, the blackest thing in the darkness. And he came sneaking into her dreams and groped with his shadow hands about her little trembling heart so that she often awoke with a loud shriek in the middle of the night.

In her terror, Hedvig attached herself more and more closely to old Kristin, who knew all about all these ominous mysteries. And thus it came about that God succeeded to the Bogey Man.

But this intimacy during the long hours of twilight with an old, tired, and harried creature who had not the sense to spare tender ears, was dangerous. In everyday life Kristin’s God was a mean and nagging kitchen-God whose chief business was to punish the maids’ laziness and pilfering. But he had also his greater and more threatening moods when he emerged from his past in a small soldiers’ cottage in a mighty Småland forest in order to punish incendiaries and murderers and to look after brownies and trolls. When on Sunday evenings Kristin sat reading aloud from the Old Testament her voice would assume an expression of cruel lamentation, something submissively threatening which gripped Hedvig with a deep awe of the people through the dim and distant ages.

In the dark, Hedvig grew frightened of God. Not even school when it began with its monotonous and mechanical cramming, not even the alleviating joys of companionship, could kill her fear. Amidst the noise of the class-room she sat alone in communion with both the great and the dangerous. Before she could read properly, she spelled out greedily and eagerly the tale of the fall of man and the ten commandments. Especially the seventh commandment made a deep impression on her. Here was the terrible fascination of the unknown. By and by she began to read the Bible for herself. There was much to brood over, much that nourished her fears, which now began to undergo strange transformation. She could sit for hours thinking of such expressions as “circumcision,” “menstruation,” then she imagined she bore a son. Her gaze fastened on passages concerning the sin of fornication, the great Babylonian harlot, Absolom’s exploits on the roof of the house with King David’s concubines.

The darkness enclosing Hedvig’s God began to be oppressive. His too early threats provoked the very sins which he intended to prevent. She brooded over evil till at last it began to stir in her blood. Her ever present fear developed into stealthy, premature curiosity. It was no longer anything so white and innocent as sugar that Hedvig now stole. No! In the forbidden box now lay worm eaten, half rotten fruit fallen from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But there was still the same fatal and even more intimate association of ideas as in the case of the sugar and the Bogey Man.

Soon Hedvig’s curiosity found something different from the shadowy figures of the old rat-eaten family Bible to brood over and to spy out, namely, the bailiff and Frida.

That sultry night when Peter caught her peeping under the blind into Brundin’s window had been a fateful night in her life. The discovery of the secret of the bailiff’s wing was the greatest and most dangerous discovery she had yet made. Hot and cold by turns, tempted, frightened, caught in the act, she had crept to bed. Her soul was outraged. Night and day the memory of that scene remained with her. She was afraid of Peter, disgusted with Frida, but could not get the man out of her thoughts. It was like an obsession. She avoided him, scarcely greeted him, could not for anything in the world look him in the face. But secretly she devoured him with her eyes. His bold, wicked self-assurance had some inexpressible allurement for her. She found herself incessantly following this sinner, and then fled, frightened and ashamed, to her bed. But as she had shaped her God out of fear, he had no pity and could not help her. This girlish love might have been the means of leading her out into the fresh air if it had not been of such a strange and stunted kind. As it was, it only threw her back more and more upon herself.

Such was the Hedvig who now knelt by the altar rails and received the bread and the wine from the hand of the old clergyman. She had grown up in the shadow of her own dreams like one of those long white shoots that grew down in the deep darkness. Not one poor single little bud of her being had been able to open out in the clear sunshine of the busy, living world. In a pew behind sat the genteel farmer, Brundin, with his pert military moustache, not for a moment suspecting that he was a terrible Behemoth, sucking the nourishment out of a poor little woman’s soul.

Communion was over. The girls rose with tear-stained faces and walked slowly, hesitatingly, down the aisle. Hedvig was pale and dry-eyed. Outside it had suddenly begun to snow, wet ice-cold snow, and it was pathetic to see her as she stood amongst these thinly clad, shivering children, slowly and awkwardly bidding each other good-bye, and looking like butterflies that have left their chrysalis too soon and have no flowers to rest on. The girl from Selambshof was better dressed than the poor peasant girls. And she was the prettiest of them too. But she looked more forlorn and colder than the poor lonely little snow-drops that shivered amongst the snowflakes on a poor man’s grave behind her.

Old Hermansson had something to say to the Vicar. Brundin came up to Hedvig and made his compliments.

“Well, Hedvig, that went off splendidly! Now you are a big grown-up lady and I suppose I must call you Miss Hedvig. But we must not let it snow any longer on your white hat.”

He led her to the carriage which was waiting with the hood up, helped her in and fastened the apron. Hedvig drew back as if his touch had scorched her. When he had gone she sat there trembling and with chattering teeth. Will he drive before or after us, she thought. If he drives before us, I can sit and look at him the whole time. But when her guardian at last arrived and they started with Brundin in front, she stared obstinately at a hole in the apron, because she was afraid of God.

Both old Hermansson and Brundin were to stay for dinner. A gloomy snow light filled the dining-room and there was a fire burning, just as in mid-winter. Hedvig sat stiff and silent in the place of honour, and scarcely tasted the food. Then her guardian solemnly drew forth a present from his coat pocket. It was a little watch with Hedvig’s initials engraved on it. He made a short admonitory speech before giving it to her and hoped that she would learn to make the same good use of time as he had done when he was young. He even finished with a little verse:

“May this watch the right time tell

To a little girl who works right well.”

Hedvig sat fidgetting on her chair with downcast eyes, as if she were being scolded. It was with difficulty that she stood up and returned thanks for the gift with a stiff curtsey.

Now it was Brundin’s turn to put his hand in his pocket. He pulled out a red case, opened the lid with a snap and, bowing gallantly, handed her a narrow gold brooch.

“Well, Miss Hedvig, I also take the liberty of offering a simple little gift. Please accept it, Miss Hedvig. Hall-marked!”

Hedvig blanched. Her glass trembled against the edge of her plate as she set it down. Her dark eyes fastened, wide-open with fright, on a spot on the wall opposite. She stretched out her hand like a blind man and groped for the case. But she stopped half way. She had suddenly caught sight of Frida, who, with a bottle of port in one hand and a napkin in the other, forgot her duties and bent over Brundin’s shoulder to stare greedily at the glittering ornament. Hedvig’s voice, unnaturally tense, suddenly cut the silence:

“No, I don’t want the brooch—give it to ... to Frida instead.”

She covered her face with her hands and ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed.

Nobody round the table said anything. Frida tittered a little. Then she stood crimson and fidgetted for a moment before she could pull herself together and go out. Brundin muttered something that sounded like a curse, and sat silently playing with his little fair moustache, looking half embarrassed and half self-satisfied. Peter almost collapsed with excitement.

Now Brundin will be kicked out, he thought, and an agreeable, cold shiver passed through his bones. Old Hermansson had become rigid, with his spoon half way between his mouth and his plate and looking very upset. At last Laura’s voice broke the spell:

“Hedvig is mad,” she said and jumped up as she sat on her chair, for she had a curious trick of being able to jump whilst sitting.

“There now, she is spoiling everything,” thought Peter, and gave her a pinch under the table. Quite right, old Hermansson did not seize Brundin by the collar and kick him out. Instead he rose with slow dignity, and took up the case and the brooch:

“I will teach this ill-bred girl how to receive a well-meant gift,” he said, with an air that promised full amends to Brundin. Then he stalked off after Hedvig.

He found her lying full length on her bed in her white frock, which looked like a shroud. She lay there dry-eyed staring up at the ceiling.

“Now put this brooch in your frock, Hedvig, and go down and say thank you nicely,” he said.

A shiver passed through her and the skin on her thin arms looked like goose flesh.

“Please, please, leave me alone,” she begged.

“Put the brooch on at once!”

“No, no, it is sinful,” she stammered and turned her face to the wall.

Then old Hermansson thought he ought not to insist any longer. He left the case on the table beside the bed and went downstairs again.

“The poor child has had a trying day today,” he said to the bailiff. “She seems strangely upset. I thought I ought to let her put off her apologies.”

Then he returned to his tart.

But up in her room Hedvig lay with the red case on her breast. Suddenly she tore out the brooch and stuck the pin deep into her left hand. Then she sucked drop after drop of the slowly oozing blood.

VI
THE TWO FAIR HEADS

The terrace at Selambshof was adorned with two small ship’s-guns on gun-carriages of decayed oak. They were spiked with pine-needles and twigs, and it was long since a birthday salute had been fired with them. Laura sat astride of one of these, swinging her legs lazily and catching maple-blossoms in her hat. It was a fine day in the beginning of June, and with each breeze there rained down over the old cannon golden green maple blossoms, and the pools glistened after the night’s rain.

Sometimes it almost looked as if an idyl could exist even in the presence of the sham Gothic of Selambshof.

The sun gently warmed the fair down on Laura’s neck. She kept behind the house today, because she had put up her hair for the first time, though only for fun, of course. She thought it would be jolly to see what sort of a face Herman would make. He would probably appear in the avenue soon.

Otherwise it was rather empty at Selambshof this summer. Peter was laid up with measles. And there was not even Hedvig to quarrel with. She had been sent away to an old aunt in Sala. Usually she had sat and sulked in a corner since the day when she behaved so idiotically to Brundin. It was impossible to get her down into the garden, for she was frightened to approach the bailiff’s quarters. And when into the bargain old Kristin died she became so refractory that old Hermansson had to send her away.

Not that Laura understood the reason. But when she sat lonely like this and looked at the shadows of the leaves dancing and jumping about and overtaking each other down on the gravel, it amused her to think of that story. And then suddenly Laura thought of Herman again. Why was he really so anxious to be alone with her lately? Herman was not like his old self, no—there was something strange about him.

There he was already in the avenue!

Yes, there was Herman Hermansson coming up, with his schoolcap on the back of his head and swinging a stick. He tried to look quite unconcerned and indifferent. But he did not succeed, because secretly he stole anxious glances on all sides, and even his whistle sounded somehow shy, humble and supplicating.

Laura’s little woman’s heart beat happily and she felt a gay and mischievous wish to play a little with old Hermansson’s tall, fine boy. So she hurried into the kitchen before he had caught sight of her.

There sat Miss Isaksson, the new housekeeper. She was tall, pale, and thin, and she held the coffee grinder in one hand and a fat novel in the other. And she ground and read and nodded her head sadly to herself.

Laura peeped out of the window.

“Do they get married?” she giggled.

“I won’t look at the end,” sighed Miss Isaksson, “but it is a sad book, so they will probably both die.”

Now Herman was on the terrace. He glanced shyly round him and had a guilty look. Laura was enjoying herself and did not hurry. She had a vague feeling of superiority over both Herman and poor, thin Miss Isaksson. At last she was pleased to emerge on the steps with an air of marked indifference and boredom.

Herman jumped up as if someone had commanded “attention!” He certainly did not dare to make any comment on Laura’s having put her hair up, for that only increased his shyness and diffidence.

“Will you come fishing with me for a bit, Laura?”

“What! fishing?”

“Do, please, only for a short time.”

“Well, perhaps I will, if Stellan comes too.”

It was always the same, Stellan had to be there too, and so Herman was forced against his will to go and persuade that young lordling, who lay in a tattered old hammock in the park, staring at his toes, to join them. Only after a long discussion did he lazily get out of the hammock.

At last three floats bobbed about on the half-clear, glittering, greenish June water which can look so warm and inviting from the shore and is yet so icy cold when you venture in.

Stellan had the first bite.

“What rotten fish! Not worth while getting dirty for!”

He was in a bad temper. It irritated him that Herman could find any pleasure in putting on worms for that fat Laura.

Now it was Herman’s turn. His float dived deep down without his noticing it; he was so absorbed in Laura. And when at last he awoke he pulled so violently that the roach got free and the hook caught in Laura’s hat. Then Laura scolded him and Stellan shrugged his shoulders.

“Were you hoarse yesterday, Herman?” he said in a cold, mocking voice.

This formula had a crushing effect. Once when Herman had been reproved because he did not know his history lesson he had stood up and said: “Please sir, I was so hoarse yesterday that I could not learn my lesson.” Since then he was always asked the unfortunate question: “Were you hoarse yesterday, Herman?” And each time Laura laughed heartily. It was a cause of inexpressible suffering to his proud, chivalrous nature. Herman tried to keep up an appearance of gay indifference and to join in the laugh of these cruel companions. But his was a poor, weak mockery of a laugh.

They were already thoroughly tired of fishing and began to jump about on the stones and the roots of the alder trees along the shore. This year’s reeds were just beginning to come up between the yellow stalks of last year’s, the dragon flies flew past like blue, silken threads in a current of air, and dark, green beetles hovered up and down like little balls supported by an invisible force. The day was almost too warm and fine. They could not make up their minds to do anything—they only teased each other and had their little quarrels. Now they are amongst the cows in the Hökar meadow, and Herman catches sight of a starling hopping between the hind legs of the bell-cow and incessantly flying up to catch a fly on its udders.

“Look at that starling, Laura!” he cried, proud of the interesting observation he had made. “Look at that starling, he is friendly with the cow.”

“That’s nothing compared with Egypt,” snapped Stellan. “There the birds come and pick the teeth of the crocodiles. And they keep their mouths quite still. But of course, you haven’t heard of that.”

No, Herman had not heard of that, so probably he had been hoarse again.

Then Laura had an idea. She drew her brother aside.

“I say, Stellan, shall we get Herman to climb the oak?”

It was an enormous oak growing on a green hillock by the roadside, just where the avenue ended.

“All right!”

They sat down on a stone in the shade. Stellan looked up at the tree with the eyes of an expert.

“I say, Herman, that is an awfully difficult tree.”

“Not so very. If it weren’t so hot....”

“Yes, the first bit is easy. I can see that too—but further up there is a long bit without branches.”

“Nonsense. You can swing yourself up. If it weren’t so warm....”

“Of course—you can brag—but you daren’t do it,” scoffed Laura.

“Daren’t I?”

“No, you daren’t.”

Herman jumped up, red in the face, and tore off his coat. At last he had a chance of shining, and of dazzling the cruel one by a knightly deed.

“I’ll show you whether I dare!” he cried.

And then he began to climb. It really was a difficult tree. His fingers were already bleeding and, ritsch! he tore one of his shirt sleeves. For a moment he was on the point of falling down. The perspiration stood out on his forehead and his heart beat fast. But he set his teeth and struggled on. She was standing down there admiring him.

Now he had reached the very top swaying in the wind. Breathless he pushed away a branch in order to be seen and to enjoy his triumph.

But the stone was empty. Nobody was visible.

“Laura,” he called, “Laura, do you see that I was not afraid?”

No answer. Down below everything was green, silent and empty. Above, abandoned, covered with dirt from the wet bark, Herman was sitting up among the whispering, swaying masses of leaves. His hands were aching, and he had an unpleasant sensation in his stomach. Most of all he would like to throw himself down and break his neck in order to punish a hard and unfeeling world.

He resisted this temptation, however, and climbed down with moderate care; he put on his coat and walked home in order to grind at the subjects in which he had failed in his examination last spring. You could see even by his back that he was deeply hurt and had nothing left but duty to live for.

But Laura stepped out from behind one of the trees in the avenue where she had been hiding with Stellan. She smiled and danced and her voice rang out clear and mocking in the mellow summer air:

“Were you hoarse yesterday, Herman? Were you hoarse yesterday?”

Herman did not answer. Only his back stiffened still more and he took still longer steps. And then he disappeared behind the willows by the wash house.

The next day Laura again sat astride the gun catching maple blossoms in her hat and looking down the avenue now and then, ready to begin the jolly game over again.

But that was not to be. Herman did not come. It was almost dinner time and still Herman did not come. “I see, he is sulking,” thought Laura. “Well, let him!” And with her nose in the air she hopped away to the lean Miss Isaksson and borrowed a big novel.

But Stellan was lying in the hammock like a fish in a net and yawned and became more and more sleepy and bad-tempered. At last he climbed out, however, opened the gate with a kick, without taking his hands out of his pockets, and slipped down to the jetty where the washing and rinsing was done, and where Selambshof’s rotten old rowing boat lay hopelessly water-logged and simply could not be made water tight.

“What an establishment this Selambshof! What a dilapidated, dull, impossible, old place!”

And just at this moment the special steamer with the usual Stonehill party for the summer arrived. He could see little Percy in white sailor trousers walking along the pier.

Stonehill lay on the other shore opposite Selambshof. It was an awfully fine place with a big globe mirror and white plaster statues and coloured glass windows round the verandahs, as was the fashion in the villas of the well-to-do at that time. And there were temples and hothouses with peaches and grapes, for Percy’s mother was awfully rich. His father had got his money by smuggling during the war in America. But now he was dead.

Stellan kicked angrily at what was left above water of the old rowing boat. How could he get across to Stonehill now?

It was only last summer that he had made the acquaintance of the “china doll.” He called Percy Hill “china doll” because he looked so brittle and so fine. That summer he had also had plenty of fun on the lake with Manne von Strelert at Kolsnäs, for Manne never wanted to be at home because his tutor was there. Stellan thought this was a pity, because there was nothing he admired so much as the horses at Kolsnäs. But Manne was so obstinate! And there was added spice in their excursions on the lake since they had noticed the boy in white stealing behind the rose hedge and the fine, high fence at Stonehill, and gazing enviously at them. In order to tease him they used to hover about the Stonehill landing stage. One day Manne called out:

“Won’t you come out on the lake with us?”

“I’m not allowed.”

“Come out on the landing stage, then.”

“Mother is afraid I might tumble in.”

“What have you got a sailor’s suit on for, then?”

The boy could not answer. He was a prisoner of the roses. He was a poor little land sailor, and the two sunburnt sailors jeered at him mercilessly.

“You’re a beastly coward,” called Manne. “I have ridden the legs off a horse and I have thrashed my tutor. You are a beastly coward.”

Then the boy in white stepped out on to the stage.

“My name is Percy,” he said with a wan, little smile, “and I am not a coward.”

Then he climbed into Stellan’s boat.

“Now, let us see who can splash the other most!” cried Manne, and Percy was wet through at once.

“Now you will be spanked when you get home.”

Percy’s face looked troubled.

“No, but I shall have to go to bed. And then the doctor will come, of course.”

At this stage in their acquaintance Stellan suddenly checked Manne’s arrogance and changed his tactics. He had suddenly come to think of all the fine things visible through the railings round Stonehill.

“Take off your coat and spread it out on the seat and it will soon dry,” he said.

Percy obeyed. After a moment’s reflection Stellan continued, “So you never get a thrashing?”

“No,” said Percy with something of a sigh.

“Must you go without your dinner, then?”

“Without dinner?” asked Percy astonished, “they stuff me with food.”

This somehow appealed to Stellan.

“Perhaps you are allowed to eat as much as you like in the hothouses,” he mumbled, almost shyly.

“Of course,” answered Percy with indifference.

“May I come with you some time?”

“Yes, come tomorrow, both of you, and we’ll have fruit juice and biscuits first, and then go into the hothouses.”

It was in this way Stellan penetrated beyond the high, white fence round Stonehill. From the beginning he tried to imitate the aristocratic indifference of the “china doll” to all the good things to eat. Except, of course, when he thought nobody was looking, and then he gobbled up all he could. Worldly wisdom and fine manners are all very well, but we are only human after all....

Yes, all this had happened the year before. Now he was cut off from all that splendour, because of the rotten old boat, and the gardener’s tarred punt he was ashamed to go in.

Stellan was already walking away from the pier, where the water glittered and beat so mockingly against the wet boards, when it suddenly struck him that at Ekbacken old Hermansson had a smart little craft that was decorated every Sunday with a fine display of streamers in the stem, and a flag in the stern.

“I was beastly stupid, yesterday,” he thought, “beastly stupid,” and his usual expression, the cool, half-sneer returned.

Stellan stole cautiously across the park so as not to be seen or have Laura on his heels. From the bend in the avenue he got a good view of Ekbacken. And he stopped a moment, impressed by the sight. It seemed as if he were looking at Ekbacken for the first time. An expression of amazing cunning came into Stellan’s face, as he passed in through the red wooden gateway. Already his thoughts travelled far, far beyond to old Hermansson’s fine, little boat.

Ekbacken Sawmill and Shipyard was a fine, old business that ran itself. Trustworthy, leisurely, old workers stalked about on the timber rafts inside the boom, and there were steady, old, grey sailors who had sailed in all the seas of the world and were caulking old brigs and barges. And inside in the office sat the book-keeper Lundbom, with eyeglasses and a leather shade, writing out bills to a lot of good and safe customers, who paid in cash and not with miserable acceptances. There also sat old Hermansson reading his paper. There was such a blessed peace that he had smoked half his cigar and the ash was still on it.

He looked up at Stellan with an expression of fatherly benevolence.

“Good-morning, my dear boy. You are looking for Herman, I suppose, but he is at his lessons now. Yes, that’s what happens when you flunk. Come along now, and let us have a talk.”

Stellan asked for nothing better. They went over to the house in a pretty oak wood just by the road to town. On the other side spread soft, billowing, green fields set with old, brown barns. This land also belonged to Ekbacken, but was let to tobacco growers. On the town side the estate was sheltered by some stony hillocks with a few pines here and there, behind which, however, some high, bare walls had entirely shot up and threatened to destroy the idyl.

The house itself was an old, but well-preserved one story house, long and low, where everything from the door handles to the brass doors of the Marieberg earthenware stoves was radiantly clean and polished.

“Why have I not been to Ekbacken more often?” thought Stellan.

Old Hermansson talked about school and praised Herman because he had worked hard, which praise the young man listened to with an open countenance. It opened up further vistas to him. Cleverly he manœuvred the conversation in the direction he wanted. School and school friends, of course! There was Manne at Kolsnäs. He was a jolly decent fellow. And his father, who was a chamberlain to the King, could come and go at court just as he pleased. And they had footmen and horses and everything else. It really was strange that Herman did not see more of Manne. Manne liked Herman awfully. He had told Stellan so—and fancy what fun it would be for Manne to look at all the boats in the yard. And Percy Hill. Didn’t Mr. Hermansson know him and how tremendously rich he was. And Percy was so awfully generous and kind and obedient. Mr. Hermansson would certainly like him....

It became clearer and clearer to Stellan. It was as if he could look straight through old Hermansson and discover his little vanity. Victory seemed already secure, when at last he got out his real purpose. It would soon be his birthday. He had been so often in Manne’s and Percy’s houses that he was really ashamed and wanted most awfully to invite them to something in return. But he could not do so at home, as Mr. Hermansson would understand. There was poor father who was nothing for strangers to look at. And besides, Peter had measles. So wouldn’t it be nice if Mr. Hermansson would be so awfully kind as to let him have a little party here at Ekbacken, where everything was so fine and elegant. And as to the cost, well, his mother had left Stellan something and he might use that.

“Nonsense, my boy,” beamed old Hermansson, “I will give a little dinner for you with pleasure.”

Then Stellan rushed into Herman and slapped him on the back:

“I say, you’re not angry still, are you? We’ll stick together—what?”

Herman, in the loneliness of his heart, was not the one to reject a word of reconciliation.

Next day they rigged out old Hermansson’s little lugger. For many years it had done nothing but lie by the pier and look smart, for old Hermansson was rather afraid of the lake, even though he was owner of a shipyard. But now, as I have already mentioned, the boat was fitted out. It was also the result of Stellan’s diabolical powers of persuasion that the boys were permitted to sail the boat. Herman had never dreamt of such happiness. They started at once for Stonehill and Kolsnäs and conveyed the invitation for the birthday party at Ekbacken.

At home at Selambshof Laura sank into ever deeper and deeper reflections. Herman no longer came up the avenue. And Stellan was also away most of the time. Our young lady felt lonely and very bored. Whenever she did get hold of Stellan he only shrugged his shoulders and looked contemptuous. And he always managed to get away without her discovering where he went.

But one fine day when she was sitting on the landing stage, there came a smart, white sailing boat gliding past. At the foresail-sheet sat Herman. But astern Stellan was lounging like a prince, his head against the tiller and his feet up against the gunwale. When he caught sight of Laura on the landing stage he put about so that Herman should not notice her. And Laura was so dumbfounded and furious that she did not call out to them. She roamed about on the shore and felt deserted, cheated of her fun. To crown all she saw Stellan try on an absolutely new, black suit with long trousers which had been sent from town.

“What are you getting a new suit for?”

“I’m giving a dinner,” said Stellan carelessly.

“Where? Here?”

“No! At Herman’s. My birthday’s coming.”

“I suppose I am to come too?”

“No, it’s a men’s dinner, you see, ta-ta!” With that he pushed Laura out of the room. The new suit was the logical result of Stellan’s diplomacy. Hang it all, you can’t very well appear in anything when you have such smart guests.

But Laura threw herself down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She did not cry—but she wanted to tear her face. “How stupid I have been,” she thought, “goodness, how stupid I have been!”

Next morning she got up early. It was not yet nine o’clock when she came dancing into her guardian’s room at Ekbacken as he sat shaving with deliberate and methodical dignity. She shone like a little sunbeam, and had a bunch of the brightest wild flowers in her hand. Then she ran about for a vase and placed it between the washbasin and the soap dish, so that nobody could mistake the object of her attention.

“How awfully good of you, uncle, to give a dinner for Stellan.”

“And of course, you would love to come,” muttered her guardian through the lather.

“Rather, as it is Stellan’s birthday. But there are to be only boys?”

“Yes, but we ought to have a hostess, even though it is a men’s dinner.”

Laura suddenly grew serious, terribly serious.

“Oh, but my old red frock is worn out, and besides the sleeves are too short.”

“But supposing you came to town with me one day and bought a new frock....”

Laura jumped up in his lap and kissed him in the middle of the lather:

“Oh, thank you, dear darling. But don’t tell Stellan and Herman!”

Thus it came about that when at last that birthday dinner came off and the boys had already been down to look at the sawmill and had been climbing in the shrouds of the old brigs and had been chatting with the jolly old tars—who should be standing on the front steps to receive them like an amiable hostess but Laura, dressed in a brand new silk frock, almost down to her ankles and full of bows and frills.

For a moment Stellan frowned, but his face soon lit up with involuntary approval. At least one didn’t need to feel ashamed of the girl.

But Herman grew quite red in the face and was unable to get out a sound, but stole in without daring to look at her. She was altogether too lovely.

It was quite a smart dinner. Old Hermansson offered wine and even made a little speech for the young people. Speechmaking was his weakness.

While the others were going out into the garden for coffee, Laura seized the opportunity and gave Herman a kiss behind a door—a swift, fugitive, little kiss on the cheek. But for Herman it was as if the doors of Paradise had been suddenly flung open. He sat there mute amidst the chatter and laughter, and revelled in the wonderful thought that the girl in the silk frock, the beautiful Laura, had kissed him.

And Laura also paused in drinking her coffee and munching her sweets and remembered how his cheek had burnt her lips. It really was rather pleasant to kiss. Neither did it cost anything—possibly just the contrary....

They carefully avoided speaking to each other and they could not for the world have looked each other in the eyes.

After this Stellan and Laura detached themselves more and more from their brothers and sisters and came more and more frequently to Herman’s house. They both felt that the sombre and shabby Selambshof was not their chosen field. No! Ekbacken was quite different—here you escaped the sight of your father sitting about in his dull fashion. From here intercourse with Stonehill and Kolsnäs was easiest. Here, with their guardian, they had the exciting and pleasurable feeling of being at the heart of things. They felt already, those two fair heads, that it was Ekbacken that was to be their stepping stone to success in the world.

VII
BRUNDIN’S DOWNFALL

It had been a long autumn. With grey creeping mists and ankle-deep slush, November had drawn a close ring round Selambshof.

Peter was alone in the day time. As he had failed again in his examination, he had had to leave school and it was not yet decided what he was going to do. But time passed quickly all the same, for recently he had lots of things to attend to.

For example, the great pig-slaughter. Since six o’clock this morning he had been strolling about in the dark yard and as soon as dawn came he was down by the pig-sty behind the cowshed.

The cowherd came trailing one poor pig after another. Then they were raised on to the slaughter block and instantly Anders, the stable man, stuck them in the neck so that the blood spurted out. The bailiff was there himself, and scratched the pigs’ backs with his stick and chatted in friendly tones to them before execution. But old Kristin was no longer there with the pail to collect the blood. As long as she kept going, she had taken part in the slaughter of the pigs. Silent and solemn she used to stand there bent over her pail, stirring the blood as did the rest of the tribe in days of old at the great winter sacrifice. There was a strange emptiness after her. But the crows were still here. Flocks of them settled in the high bare lime tree and their croaking seemed like the voice of the grey November day. Now and then they flew for a moment down towards the steaming hot tripe as if to give a reminder of their ancient rights.

I-i-i-i! squeaked a pig again, and the crows rose for a moment as if from the pressure of the cry. But Peter kept near the corner of the cowshed the whole time; he came no nearer, and Brundin thought he was frightened:

“Come and help us. What kind of a country lad are you to be frightened of the killing?”

But the bailiff was mistaken. Peter was not at all frightened because the pigs were squeaking. He was only afraid that they were squeaking for Brundin’s benefit and not for his own and Selambshof’s. He stood anyhow sufficiently near to hear what was called out at the weighing machine, and if you looked carefully you could see that his lips moved the whole time. He stood there counting and muttering the figures in an undertone in order to get them to stick in his memory. For Peter had really a great deal in his memory. It was not the first time he had stood aside like this and counted and measured. But then he also knew to a nicety how much grain, potatoes, milk and butter had been driven into town during the whole autumn. What cunning, what tricks and pretences, what long patient watches had not been necessary to keep count of all this. No, Peter was not troubled for the pigs’ sakes. There was good reason to look out for Peter the Watch-dog nowadays. He no more looked as if he was afraid of a beating. And he had become bigger of body and deeper of voice.

Of course Peter was still afraid of Brundin. But his terror no longer rose up like a mountain in front of him. Brundin’s great and wonderful power had already been dealt the first blow. That was when the mighty Brundin had agreed without protest to Frida’s being dismissed. Peter had brooded for days over this. And as he pondered he observed that Brundin did not reach into the clouds. And his great fear shrank up exquisitely into a little heap of envy, anxiety and angry suspicion.

Peter did not go to his guardian, because it was he who had placed Brundin in authority. Perhaps he was even in league with the dangerous fellow. Imagine suspecting old Hermansson! Ignorance is either very credulous or very suspicious. In this case it was suspicious. And besides Peter the Watch-dog was one of those who prefer hunting alone.

The pig sticking was finished. The November day was silent and grey as before.

Peter was still standing on his stone by the corner of the cowshed. Round him the filth resembled a bog and Brundin came splashing through it. He no longer looked so good-tempered. His little fairy moustache curled contemptuously at the rain, the mud, the smell of manure, and the whole of the November atmosphere. He stopped just in front of Peter, rocking on his heels and reflecting:

“Yes, Anders, get the dog-cart ready. I am going to town after dinner after all.”

Peter started. Brundin going into town! Here was an opportunity. He leaped after the bailiff through the mud. Outside the bailiff’s quarters he even sidled up to the object of his fear. And he was still like a great mountain when you came near him—a high mountain with mocking superior airs.

“I just wanted to come in and glance at the map for a moment,” muttered Peter.

Brundin hummed a little tune and good-humouredly led the boy into the office which lay to the right of the entrance hall in the bailiff’s wing.

Now Peter was actually in the lion’s den. The yellow cracked old plan of Selambshof hung over the sofa. For a long while Peter was tremendously interested in it. Then he began to glance round to right and left, and make strange trampling movements to and fro like a bear on a hot plate. Indeed he was not exactly beautiful to look at, but deserved perhaps a certain admiration. As a matter of fact he required a great deal of self-control to remain in Brundin’s room.

Peter looked for the accounts books of the estate. From outside he had often stolen a glance at them where they were lying on the writing desk. But now they were not there. They could not be anywhere else but in the big brown cupboard between the windows.

The key was in the lock.

Peter sat down on the sofa and turned over the pages of a price list. Brundin lit his pipe, looked over his papers and did not seem to be in a hurry. Peter perspired more and more.

At last the bailiff had to leave the room for a moment. Instantly Peter jumped up and took the key out of the cupboard. And he did more than that—he lifted off the hooks of one window, both the inner and the outer—Then another idea seized him: he took up another key from amongst the rubbish on the writing desk and pushed it into the keyhole of the cupboard so that nothing should be noticed. He was no fool.

Now the cracked old dinner gong sounded and with his booty in his damp hands, Peter stole out of the lion’s den.

After dinner came the first disappointment. The dog-cart was never brought out, for Brundin received some Saturday-guests and put off his journey to town until Sunday. Peter had got to wait—a difficult task. He could not stay at home. He felt so brittle and queer from the strain that he scarcely dared to put his foot down on the ground and still he had to go on walking and walking. Now he had already reached town and once there he of course made for the hay market. Shivering, and with a queer trembling in the pit of his stomach he stood in the Saturday crush, amidst sacks of potatoes and sides of beef, staring at a big sign on a low yellow house with a tiled roof:

AXEL BRUNDIN & CO.

Cereals, grain, and vegetables.

It was not the first time Peter had stood there spying. He felt a need, as it were, to assure himself all the time that the shop was still there. A fat old man usually stood in the doorway with his thumbs stuck in the armholes of his waistcoat. He was Brundin’s brother. He knew him from the crayfish party. Most of the produce of Selambshof went to him. And Peter had an intuition that here lay the solution of some of the problems that worried him.

Just fancy if only he could send in a policeman to take a big bag of money from that fat old rascal! Slowly Peter the Watch-dog sauntered homewards in the dark and raw November night.

He awoke very early on Sunday morning. First he examined the office window. Yes, the hooks were still unfastened. Then he might just slip down to the outhouses for a little. There had been frost during the night and there were a few light snowflakes in the air. Peter crept into the barn through a broken shutter. On the ground floor the pig carcases gleamed with a pale light in the deep twilight. He touched the hard cold fat. He felt how the pigs hung helpless there. And once more he had a frantic sense of his duty to defend them against Brundin. He promised them that they had not died in vain.

Then Peter climbed to the next floor. Here the grain lay about in big heaps on the floor. He sat down and let the wheat run through his fingers. Usually it is pleasant to sit in a granary and let the cool, round, fragrant grains of corn run softly through the fingers. It makes one think of summer and sunshine and the wide green fields.

But Peter, poor boy, had no such spacious feelings of the prospective farmer. Everything had been spoilt for him by Brundin. The gifts of the soil were poisoned for him by a premature greedy anxiety.

At breakfast Peter was very silent. He did not fight with his brothers and sisters, but of his own free will sat down next to his father, even though it was not his turn. Today was a great day and he tried to propitiate the Gods by this sacrifice. You must neglect nothing if you would succeed. He also stole to Church afterwards in order to be quite on the safe side. Straight as a poker he sat there trying to be really attentive, though of course he only listened to his own thoughts. Peter had a long intimate conversation with his God. And what kind of God had Peter the Watch-dog? He was related to his sister Hedvig’s God. Both had grown out of a common parentage. Old Kristin’s servants’ God. Both had drawn their nourishment from the terrors of those years of helplessness. But, whilst Hedvig’s God had been reared on the fear of desire and of sex, Peter’s God was from the first an economic potentate, who severely punished torn clothes and broken money-boxes, and he had gradually developed into a protector of the rights of property with the more specific function of making the bailiff of Selambshof smart. But Peter was afraid that God might not have had time to consider the matter properly and therefore he gave him in all humility a number of delicate little hints as to the most suitable way of dealing with Brundin.

Yes! such was Peter Selamb’s communion with God on this day of great expectations—which, however, became a day of disappointment.

At last evening came. The bailiff had already driven off to town and the yard was in darkness. Then Peter crept out in order to steal back Selambshof from Brundin. If only he could get a glance at that armful of big blue books all would be clear. His house-breaking was quite successful, the windows opened, as did also the door of the cupboard and in there he felt the books side by side. With the precious burden in his arms Peter stole up the dark stairs to the Observatory. He locked the door carefully, lit a piece of candle and sank down trembling with expectation at the table and began to examine the books.

And then he made a terrible discovery. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing of this system of figures and lines. “Debit,” “credit,” “carried forward,” etc., stood there. What it all meant he could not make out. The name Axel Brundin & Co. he found everywhere in the books. It stared out at him with ever-increasing mystery. It was not at all the straightforward way that Peter had imagined in connection with sacks of flour and barrels of potatoes. He found nothing to hold fast to. At last his head swam. He could not master Brundin’s row of figures.

Peter struck his forehead against the table, cursing and sobbing. This was a terrible defeat. Hopeless, miserable, stiff with cold, he stole down from the icy Observatory and put the books back in the cupboard without having succeeded in stealing a single one of the bailiff’s secrets.

That night chronicled a grievous relapse into the old sense of impotence. Peter lay again in a besieged fortress. And the Giant pursued him through a cycle of gruesome dreams. Amongst other things the “Dreadful One” ate six recently slaughtered pigs in a trice, whilst Frida stood stark naked before him and stirred a pail containing Peter’s blood.

But in spite of all this the old days were over. Peter the Watch-dog began slowly to pluck up courage again. As he brooded and brooded he realised at last that it was no longer possible to hunt alone. And so it came about that Peter too began to haunt Ekbacken. But he took very good care not to run up against Stellan and Laura, whose road lay in the same direction. He did not aim so high as they. He had no desire to talk to his guardian. No, Peter hovered about the old book-keeper, Lundbom. His opportunity came in the evenings when the old man sat in his own room smoking his pipe and drinking his hot whisky, with his books in front of him. He questioned him patiently and insistently until the old man felt touched by the interest of this promising youth in double-entry Italian book-keeping, and gave him proper instruction. Peter literally sucked up the information. He was not difficult to teach. Now he could calculate—he who had always failed in his examinations in mathematics. With every successful addition he added something to his power and with every correct subtraction he subtracted something from Brundin’s. Oh, what bliss it was to feel how his bugbear was again shrinking and growing less each day.

During these efforts, Peter had not ceased his observations. Now he knew what had been sent from the estate during four whole months, prices and all. Then he repeated his bold stroke one Saturday evening when the bailiff went to town as usual to enjoy himself. But this time he could decipher the mysterious writing. Oh! it was an hour of feverish triumph up there in the Observatory. Peter the Watch-dog found at once audacious frauds to fasten his teeth into, amongst other things, Axel Brundin who was only debited for 60 barrels of potatoes during November and December. But Peter knew for certain that the correct figure was 73. There he had a bite at the two brothers’ hind legs.

Peter lay sleepless the whole night and fed his revenge on Brundin.

Early on Sunday morning he stalked over to Ekbacken and found his guardian in bed. Now he no longer shunned the public gaze or beat about the bush. He went straight to the point, was bold and insinuating. He cast the stolen rye and potatoes straight in old Hermansson’s face. But his guardian jumped up highly offended.

“What are you saying, boy? Remember that you are talking of a person I have appointed. How did you get hold of the books? What do you know about the yield of the estate?”

But Peter was not to be intimidated. He came back time after time with his rye and his potatoes. Gradually his guardian began to soften.

“But it’s not possible,” he sighed dismally, “I am not accustomed to people betraying my confidence in this way. Very sad, really very sad, why did I ever undertake the thankless task of becoming your guardian. Most sad and unpleasant!”

After this he ordered his shaving water and began to dress. Peter sat still with his armful of books and watched his guardian. As soon as he was dressed he recovered his dignity and his authority:

“I shall arrange for an investigation,” he said. “Go back to your lessons now, my dear Peter. This is no matter for children.”

No, there Uncle Hermansson was right. This was no matter for children. That’s why he ought to have looked after it better himself.

Peter sauntered home again entirely liberated from his frightened sensation in the presence of grown-ups, and of their authority and their ability.

After service old Hermansson came solemnly driving up to Selambshof and conducted a great investigation in the office in the absence of Brundin.

There was no end to the revelations now. Everyone had something to say against the bailiff. As soon as the ice was broken, accusations poured in against the culprit. They almost fought to stick their knives into him in order to save their own skins.

Evidently Selambshof had been systematically robbed for years.

In the midst of all this, Brundin came driving back from town in a state of mild intoxication. The old Fairy Prince now cut a poor figure. He seemed quite nonplussed that the old servants should have so completely forgotten his gifts to them, his snuff, his gin, and his blind eye to their own little peculations. For a moment he stiffened and made an insolent effort to deny everything, but he failed miserably in the face of Anders’ evidence. Anders had become anxious about his carelessness in the matter of receipts, etc., and had himself written down all that he had driven into town in order to protect himself.

Peter did not now stand aside as at the sticking of the pigs. No, he stood in the midst of the crowd. Now he had a voice in the matter. Sometimes he laughed suddenly, a giggling, nervous laughter. The boy seemed suddenly to have grown into something more like a man. When the examination was over he suddenly looked quite disappointed. For his part he would have liked to go on for ever. The old servants left, however, and old Hermansson went home to consult a lawyer. Brundin sat alone in the office, ruminating. Then Peter thrust his face through the door, grinning:

“You thief,” he cried. “You cursed thief.”

Oh, it was heavenly to spit at the cracked Colossus, really to trample the old fear under foot.

No action was brought against Brundin. He himself possessed nothing, but his brother was frightened into paying a round sum corresponding to the proved losses of the estate.

Then came the ignominious departure. He had been ill for some days, but now he was off at last.

Peter did not show himself at first. But down under the lime tree stood Hedvig. She had come straight home when she heard of the scandal. There she stood pale and stiff and motionless and watched Brundin’s furniture being carried out. God only knows what she thought and felt. Perhaps it was a feeling of dismal deliverance.

Now the sledge with its load of furniture slipped towards the town crunching through the half-melted snow mixed with sand—a bad surface for sledging. Brundin had not even put his head outside the door but now he had to get out. Crestfallen, grey, with downcast eyes, he came out with a dining-room clock under his arm. Hedvig only stared at him. His eyes met hers for a moment when he was getting into the sledge. He bowed awkwardly and then the spring of the clock made a noise as if it had been broken. Hedvig did not bend her head, did not return his greeting. She stood there like a graven image and there was something of a rigid dark triumph in her expression.

But when Brundin disappeared down the avenue she stole into his empty house and with a face suddenly grey with the hunger of love she rubbed it against the empty walls.

But Peter stood down at the corner of the avenue. He had relapsed into his old habit of going somewhere alone to meditate. He wondered how it was that Brundin was not put into prison. Fancy if it was because old Hermansson did not dare to bring Brundin into Court. What was it Kristin used to say: “It’s a pity for those children who have to have a guardian,” she used to say. Well, Peter did not exactly believe that old Hermansson had cheated them. But he had all the same a vague feeling that the matter ought not to be forgotten.

The distrust we learn during the years when we have a right to be trustful easily becomes a dangerous weapon.

It was now a little later in the spring. A new bailiff of proved honesty had been appointed and Peter was sent to an elementary Agricultural School in the Upland plain.

He did not like being there. The other pupils seemed to him dull, the soil unfavourable. The Brundin case was still fermenting within him. He longed to be home. There are many kinds of homesickness, and one of them is of a kind not suitable for poetry.

Let us now look at our friend Peter during the spring ploughing. The pupils were standing in a bunch out on the clay and each one had to plough a plot with the new American steel plough.

“Press harder on the right guide. Not too shallow and not too deep. Look at the horses. The furrows must be straight as a die.”

Thus said the teacher. Peter was the last. He stood there changing feet and thinking that he would take root in the clay. At last it was his turn. He called to the horses and the furrow was started. It was a still April day with big white clouds in the sky. The horses’ sides and the newly turned clay soil shone in the sun. Down in a hollow hung a blue mist and further away a wood of budding birches shimmered like a purple-brown cloud. But Peter neither saw nor felt anything of all that. Nor did he enjoy seeing how finely the ploughshare cut through and turned up the frozen soil. He had no desire just to add furrow to furrow in the ploughed field. He only thought it was heavy, tiresome, lost labour. And all the same he looked like a peasant with his coarse features and his heavy awkward carriage, which he had probably inherited from his mother’s side. But a poison had entered into the peasant’s body. It was the infection of the town—the town that had begun to creep nearer and nearer Selambshof. It was anxiety to turn everything into money. If only he were back at Selambshof, he thought. But he did not long for the house or the trees. He longed to sneak about, and spy and struggle for possession of the money that he already scented. To go about here ploughing soil that was not even his own made him sick. He had already developed the habit of looking at everything from the point of view of ownership. You cannot take any interest in a thing for itself. No, nothing exists in itself but only as “mine” or “yours,” principally “mine.” To whom did this field belong? To the County? That is the same thing as nobody. That was empty, strange, and simply repellent, thought Peter. He had already begun to fear common interests and common institutions. They constituted a kind of silent affront to his selfishness.

Then Peter came slowly back on the return and moved alongside his first furrow. It did not look very straight. He was reproved by his instructor—he heard the mumbling and suppressed laughter of his fellow students. What stupid country bumpkins they were with their lazy self-confidence. Their rustic self-importance about spray-drains and dung-wells irritated him. What experience of life had they had? It would do them good to get caught in the snares of somebody like Brundin and to be really, thoroughly cheated for once. And then he began to think of that old story again. There was something strangely fascinating in thinking of Brundin’s tricks and wheezes. Of course he disapproved of it all. But he could not help thinking of it, all the same. “So that is what they call business,” thought Peter. “That is the way to get rich.” He felt a strange disquietude, one moment he was hot and the next cold. “I shall never allow anybody to cheat me,” he thought. “But how can you really make sure? The only way is, of course, to go to meet one’s enemy and forestall him. You must practise deception, not much, of course, but sufficient to prevent him from deceiving you.”

Peter had now done his allotted share of the ploughing. He stopped the horses and wiped his brow.

“You are not ploughing deep enough, or straight enough. This is not a surface-plough. You ought to get down to the subsoil all the way. What sort of a growth do you expect to get here?”

“I don’t care a damn,” thought Peter.

Then the Farm gong sounded and they moved homewards along the wet road. Peter jogged beside the horses with half-closed eyes. He was dreaming of Selambshof in figures. He had seen them,—when he pried into the books of the estate. There were rents for land and houses, for fishing rights, and quarries, for cartage and for the produce of the estate. Enormous sums in his eyes. “I shall control all that money,” he thought. “I shall be bailiff, and I shall have my reward, because I saved the estate from Brundin. No, don’t imagine that I can be kept out of all that.”

Peter breathed heavily. He felt a queer sucking sensation in his stomach. Fancy if it should all be his. Fancy if one day he should become rich, rich! No, he no longer had only fear and worries—certain timid, trembling voluptuous desires contracted his throat.

Is it then to be wondered at that Peter Selamb did not plough deep enough in the alien and unsympathetic Upland clay?

These were the days of his betrothal to wealth.

VIII
SEPTEMBER SPRING

Laura lay awake the whole night reading a novel, and at breakfast she only played with her food. Then she stole out into the pantry and took her usual draught of vinegar.

It was a day in the late summer, warm and still. Down the slope the August pears were tempting, the hammock and the lazy lapping of the water against the shutters of the bathing box were also a standing temptation. But Laura resisted them. For a whole fortnight she had struggled to get rid of her sunburn and to become pale and thin. Slowly she went back to her room and tried to think at each step that she was rather weak and feeble.

Laura’s room was small and shady. It lay on the ground floor overlooking the avenue. She walked up to the mirror and scrutinized herself carefully from head to foot. She was no longer a plump little bright-eyed imp with plaits of fair hair dangling behind, and fat legs. No, it was a pale, interesting-looking young lady who stood there with a curled fringe, neat waist and a tired and dreamy look in her eyes.

When Laura had gazed at herself for a long while, with mixed feelings of complete approval and vague pity, she stole to the window and sat down very carefully as if she had been made of some very brittle material. It was a narrow and rather dismal window in the thick walls of Selambshof. A spray of the sparse and dying vine on the north side of the house flapped against the window-sill. It bore a small bunch of grapes, green and no bigger than pin-heads. What sweet doll’s grapes they are, she thought suddenly, and she had a vision of a doll’s party in the nursery with grapes for dessert, but she punished herself immediately for this childishness. She had indeed other things to think of. Piously she laid her hands one over the other and settled down comfortably in the chair and with her newfound refinement of melancholy, she dreamed that she was in very weak health and very sad—a really seductive little dream!

Then Herman came walking towards the house, straight, smart, and correct. He was wearing a student’s cap, for by dint of hard work and an ambitious spirit he had come so far. And in spite of the heat he did not wear it tipped back, but on top of his head as if it were a part of the uniform of manhood and knowledge. And he did not look around him so nervously under an affected unconcern. No, now he looked just a little haughty as he came straight up to Laura’s window, climbed up on the seat and shook hands with her.

“Why do you never come to Ekbacken nowadays? It’s a fortnight since you were there.”

Laura half-closed her eyes and smiled a wan smile. Her hand dropped out of his and lay like a tired little bird on the window-sill:

“My dear Herman, we have been there too much already.”

“What nonsense!”

Laura was vexed at his clumsiness in not noticing her haggard appearance:

“Besides, I don’t feel very well, you know, Herman.”

That was too much, even for Herman. He could not help laughing.

“You ill, Laura! don’t talk such rubbish!”

What unfeeling, hard-hearted laughter. After all her efforts. At that moment she thoroughly detested him. But she did not answer sharply, she only looked deeply grieved and pained:

“Good-bye,” she murmured, “I am too tired to talk to you any longer. I must lie down for a while.”

Thereupon she closed the window in Herman’s face and pulled down the blind. Then she lay down on her bed and thought how unseeing and cold-hearted people were. Did they want to make her drink more vinegar? Well she was not frightened, although she had heard that it might make her really ill.

For another week Laura continued the darkness and vinegar treatment and then walked resolutely down to old Hermansson.

At Ekbacken the saws were humming as smoothly as ever in the red shed. The sailors were still there caulking the old smacks and old Lundbom was still casting up not unfavourable balances. Nothing had changed at Ekbacken except that it had grown a little older and more peaceful. But now and then a certain ill-disposed rival would rub his hands and think that Ekbacken would prove too good for this world.

Old Hermansson was not in the office. He did not often appear there nowadays. He sat in his dressing gown and smoking cap in the big easy chair in the drawing room, reading a newspaper that he held far from his eyes as if not to come into close contact with the restlessness and misery of the world.

Old Hermansson had aged considerably of late. He was almost always poorly now. But he did not complain. He protested with more and more marked dignity against his weakness. Unconsciously the Brundin case had dealt a nasty blow to his assurance and comfort. In consequence, his tone had become more self-satisfied and domineering than ever. The old man was really quite tender-hearted beneath his hard exterior and Stellan and Laura had at once perceived this, with the cruel insight of youth. They did not hesitate to exploit their guardian’s weakness for their own comfort.

Laura said “Good-morning,” and sank with a sigh into a chair, and looked worse than ever.

“What’s the matter with you, dear child? At your age one should not go about looking ill. Look at me, I shall soon be seventy and I am as well as ever.”

And saying this, he relapsed into the soft upholstery of his chair, his face twitching from rheumatism. But this had no effect on Laura:

“I can’t help it, I cough and have no appetite. I think I need a change of air.”

“Change of air! When do you think I have ever had a change of air in my life? And yet I have never been ill more than three days together in all my life!”

“Everybody can’t be as well as you, Uncle. And I am only a girl. Oh! if only Mother were alive so that I might have somebody to talk to.”

Laura’s voice trembled and the tears were already in her eyes. Her guardian grew alarmed:

“What’s the matter? What do you want to do, then, my dear child?”

Then Laura could restrain her desire no longer:

“I ... I want to go to a boarding school ... in Switzerland. You get such an appetite there. It would do my chest good. Elvira Lähnfeldt at Trefvinge is going to Neuchatel. Stellan told me so, for he was invited. Neuchatel is said to be so very suitable. And fancy to be able to talk French properly—and then the air,—”

Old Hermansson’s horizon did not stretch beyond the frontiers of his own country. He was dumbfounded by the audacity of the proposal:

“Impossible, my dear child, impossible!”

After the first attack Laura collected her forces for a more systematic siege:

“Oh, Uncle, you should live at Selambshof,” she wailed. “You would be ill in a week. Yes, it is so unpleasant at home since that dreadful business with Brundin.”

Laura glanced at her guardian; she seemed satisfied with the effect and continued:

“It is worst with Peter. He curses like a farm labourer and he swears at table. He is really no company for a young girl!”

That also had a good effect. Old Hermansson could not bear Peter since he had exposed Brundin. Laura already knew so much about the human heart. The old man nodded pensively:

“I admit that your brother Peter is not all that he ought to be. But if it is not always pleasant at home, you know that you are always welcome at Ekbacken.”

“Thank you. You are so awfully kind, both you and Herman. But ...” (Laura flushed beneath her self-induced pallor and glanced archly at her guardian) “but ... it looks strange for me to be always here. I don’t know if it is right any longer and then I thought that both you and Herman would like me to have some sort of education.”

Here she was interrupted by an attack of coughing, and she put her hand to her chest with an anxious and sudden air of distraction.

Her guardian looked very perplexed. As a matter of fact he looked upon the affection of the young pair for each other with some pleasure. He himself had originally been a poor clerk who had risen to his present position by marrying the daughter of his employer. To him Selambshof and the Selambs still seemed an old distinguished place and family. Yes! secretly he was even flattered by Laura’s walks with Herman. The thought of his future daughter-in-law being in a Swiss boarding school like the young lady at Trefvinge was also pleasant. So he slowly assumed an expression which was more of anxiety than of opposition.

“Well, my dear child, we must think it over.”

Laura had to control herself not to dance for joy so long as she was within sight of Ekbacken. But when she reached home she ate for the first time for a whole month till she was satisfied.

The following weeks were for Laura a time of glowing expectation, blissful faithlessness, touching farewells and a feeling almost approaching love.

On one of the first days of September, when the air had all the coolness and clearness of autumn, she and Herman were walking through the garden of Selambshof. The garden was situated on the southern slope, between the avenue and the lake, screened by a row of tall ash trees from the dismal, brooding, heaviness of the house. It was much neglected but it was a pleasant sort of neglect and this was after all a little corner of Selambshof where something of an idyll still lingered.

Laura and Herman were strolling slowly along the wet, half choked paths between currant bushes smothered in weeds and scraggy old apple trees covered with grey moss which still as if by a miracle bore beautiful shining apples. Here a tumbled-down fence lay with an appearance of infinite fatigue, and there the pestweed had pushed up into the light out of a half smothered ditch, and with its dense growth of enormous leaves had vanquished a row of raspberry bushes, where dry branches stretched up helplessly out of the green sea. Then there was a row of frames with broken glass and a bed of cabbages looking quite blue in the shade. Then came the long beds with a few asters and dahlias in front of the gardener’s dilapidated old cottage.

“It is very beautiful here,” whispered Laura. There was a note of surprise in her voice. It had evidently never occurred to her that it might be beautiful here. She glanced sideways at Herman who looked at once shy and hurt.

“If it is beautiful here why are you going away?”

The sun was not less bright because Herman turned away from her and grumbled. Laura pressed his hand encouragingly:

“I’ll soon be back,” she whispered softly.

She felt very superior to Selambshof and Herman and all the other everyday things which remained where they were put and never moved. But all the same there was a strange tenderness in her feeling of superiority. Sometimes she did not quite know if it was gay or sad.

Old Johannes, the gardener, sat in his porch and looked tranquilly at the neglect around him. He had been a sailor in his youth and divided his day into watches, four hours he smoked his pipe and four hours he rested. But during the day watch he slept. But somehow he managed to pay his rent so that he was not driven out. Until today Laura had only thought of the old man as something unkempt and dirty. She had never given him a further thought as she munched his apples. But now he suddenly appeared quite nice to her, sitting there in the sunshine. A bumble bee buzzed lazily round the patches on his trouser-knees. His hands seemed as if made of bark. His whole face was smothered with hair, just as the garden was with weeds. When he scratched his beard with his coarse nail there was a grating sound. But his eyes were wonderfully calm. It was as if in a quiet, still, protected corner the sun were shining down on a barrel of rainwater.

Laura suddenly realised why Tord spent so much time with the gardener.

“How is Tord’s fox?” she wondered.

She referred to a fox that had been caught in a trap and which Tord had been allowed to keep. It lived in a shed.

“Tord has got him on the leash,” smiled the old fellow, pleased at the interest in their common pet.

The door of a big grateless room stood open. The floor was covered with fruit. Laura dived in with the gardener and came out with her hat filled with the rosiest apples that ever woman tempted man with. Herman sighed and ate. It was all “sour grapes” to him. He pulled at Laura’s arm. He wanted to be alone with her. He was jealous of the garden, of the gardener, of the Swiss Alps, and of everything.

They moved on.

On the other side there was a hillock with terraces and ledges and some tumbled-down summer cottages. Here everything was silent, mysterious, and abandoned. Laura and Herman walked about in the small devastated gardens and peeped into the empty rooms where the winter seemed already to have thrown its shadow. Squeezed in between the lake and the hill lay a rambling old house given over to the rooks. It was a high house with three balconies, built over the water and embellished with some extraordinary extensions on the land side. Here the water splashed against the piles, covered with a green ooze, and the aspens, burnt red by the autumn, rustled, and the whole was illuminated by a strange light reflected from the paths covered with yellow leaves.

Herman succeeded in opening the door. Past empty cupboards, garden furniture and old gate-legged tables covered with marks left by glasses they penetrated to the highest balcony. Here the last flies of autumn buzzed against the window panes and tendrils of Virginia Creeper pushed in through the chinks and cracks.

They sank down on a garden seat strangely moved by this sunny brightness and forlorn melancholy. Herman dug his stick into the floor-boards and then he suddenly threw it aside and kissed her. He kissed her passionately and violently with bitter sealed lips. But she pulled him towards her and opened her lips softly. And she loved to feel how he tried to resist her but was not able to do so. No, humbly and helplessly he clung to her lips. This was their first real kiss. Everything before had been play. And she was going to leave all this behind. She felt so tenderly, so blissfully, so lovingly faithless. The tears came into her eyes and she smiled like a real little angel.

At this moment Laura happened to look out through one of the side windows. Who was that standing far away on the hill, almost on the same level as they were, if not Hedvig. She pretended to be interested in something out on the lake. But the expression of offended loneliness and stern disapproval in her pinched face was not to be mistaken. She had a disagreeable way of stealing upon you, had Hedvig. Of course she had seen everything. Of course she was green with envy because Laura had caught Herman and was going to Switzerland and was not as silly as Hedvig herself.

“So now we shall have her haunting this place,” muttered Laura. “Now this jolly place is spoilt for us.”

They pulled an old curtain before the window so that Hedvig should see nothing and then they stole away from “The Rookery” as silently as Indians. Now they were out in the wood on the other side of the avenue and they kissed each other again, but without lingering. A restless longing drove them on. They walked all the way to Träskängen and when they got there it was almost evening. A cold breeze met them as they jumped about from one dry spot to another.

In the deepest hollow there lay a white mist over banks of reeds and pools. But when they came up again on the other side of the hill towards the quarries it was so hot that they had to stop. In the twilight the scene around them seemed ragged and gloomy and deserted.

It was old Enoch who had started blasting here once upon a time. It seemed as if an evil spirit had ruled the forest, or some barren destructive fiend. Everywhere there were ravines, caves, treacherous holes and screes of clattering stones and loose boulders ready to slip away beneath your feet, and everything was enveloped in an almost impenetrable growth of young golden aspen.

And then the autumn moon rose above the forest in the west.

“It really is wonderfully fine,” whispered Herman, fascinated by the romance of this desolate wilderness.

“Yes, it is almost like the Alps,” answered Laura, and groped for him that she might feel him tremble with jealous love. But as soon as she had said it she trembled herself. Yes, she was playing a dangerous game up there among the rough boulders of Old Hök’s overgrown stony wilderness. Laura suddenly felt love clutching her heart with burning fingers. For a moment she gave herself up to this new and painful sensation, but then she became frightened, with the violent fear of a threatened egoism. She jumped up and pushed him away from her:

“No, now I must go home.”

But Herman insisted:

“No, we must go up to Enoch’s gorge,” he panted. “It is haunted, and up to the old quarrymen’s shed.”

His voice had never sounded so near her, so strangely near. She followed him against her will.

Enoch’s gorge was a perpendicular precipitous gully, blasted out of the rock. They held each others’ hands and crept up to the edge with their heads swimming. It was dark down below. Fancy if he pulls me down! the thought flashed through Laura’s head, and she suddenly tore her hand out of his.

Then they came to the shed. There were stones in front of the door, but Herman rolled them away. Inside something lay on a couple of overturned empty boxes. In the light of a match they saw a few books, a heap of strange stones, shells and horses’ teeth, a dried-up lizard and a broken bottle with fish spawn, by the side of a half-eaten piece of bread and butter.

Then somebody stood in the doorway. It was Tord. He looked unusually tall in the twilight. In spite of his sixteen years he was dressed in breeches and an outgrown sailor blouse, his long wrists sticking out from the sleeves. He stood quite still and stared at the invaders with an expression of fear and anger. And between his legs the fox thrust out his pointed nose and his bright eyes and sniffed. He had only three legs, poor thing, the fourth had been caught in the trap.

“What are you doing here?” growled Tord at last in a thick voice.

Herman and Laura were embarrassed to have been taken unawares and in their haste resorted to jeers.

Laura pushed some beetles on to Tord’s bread and butter.

“Here you are! a beetle sandwich!”

Tord turned pale. This was his refuge, his peaceful retreat. Here he had all his trophies from Träskängen, his lonely and glorious hunting ground for frog spawn, lizards, divers, birds’ eggs and bats—and now his poor secrets were captured by intruders. He stood there swinging his long bare arms. He gave one the impression of a dumb captive creature like the fox beside him. It was as if he could only express his feelings by a shriek. But now he clenched his fist and his face twitched with sudden and violent anger.

“Go away,” he cried. “Get away. This is my place.”

“All right, we are going.”

Laura dragged Herman with her. In the bushes beside them they heard the flop of a stone that Tord had cast after them. And then he called out something coarse after them, one of those impossible, foul expressions of impotent boyhood. Herman wanted to rush back and thrash him, but Laura stamped her foot on the ground and commanded him to take her home at once. She was suddenly short, cold, and offended, just as if Herman had injured her.

“You are silly,” she snapped. “What business had we up in that stupid quarry? Tell me what business we had there!”

In reality Laura was not in the least angry. She was afraid, and she sought relief for her fear in scolding him. Love had touched the egoism of her heart with a burning finger, and she felt restless in the twilight. That was the reason why she was so anxious to get home.

Poor Herman got no benefit from his kiss that evening. And there were no more kisses before her departure. Laura had suddenly grown careful, prim and full of moral qualms. Only at the very last, when her ticket was bought and the retreat clear did she recover some of her old amiability and mischief, and deigned graciously to cajole his heart out of his breast so as to have something to show to the other schoolgirls.

Now she was already standing on the step of the railway carriage with Elvira Lähnfeldt and Manne and his mother who were also travelling south. Cheerfully and with perfect ease she chatted to everybody. She was radiantly happy and her happiness made her beautiful. How could she be so happy when Herman was standing there with a void in his breast?

The train started. Her handkerchief was lost in the enveloping white steam.

On the way back to Ekbacken, Herman instinctively joined Stellan. With him the air seemed less oppressive and it seemed that something of Laura remained after all.

Stellan had not been very often at Ekbacken lately. And if he came it was to scold Laura, who was always there. Sisters are a doubtful blessing when they begin to take your friends away from you.

No, nowadays, Stellan went mostly to Manne at Kolsnäs. He had nobody else to turn to, because Percy was away in Jämtland for the summer on account of his chest. And Stonehill had been sold. Lake Mälare was beginning to be unfashionable and nice people moved out to sea. And then the town was creeping nearer, and it seemed to make the whole landscape look poor and ugly. They were already laying the foundation of a factory close to Stonehill. In those few years the fine place had already begun to look insignificant and neglected. Stellan avoided looking that way when he rowed over to Manne. He had to think of the footman and the horses at Kolsnäs in order not to feel sick of the old lake.

Manne had had a horse given to him in the spring, when he had at last succeeded in squeezing through his matriculation examination. The whole summer had been spent in wild riding. Every second day Manne lent Stellan his black horse, “Sultan,” for Manne was always a good friend. He had a kind, open smile and blue, somewhat misty eyes. He had already begun to lose the hair on the top of his head, but that did not prevent him from looking as boyish as ever. Nobody could look so splendidly unaware of the fact that necks can be broken. But his wild careering about was not restlessness. He did not worry about what he was going to be. That was quite superfluous, for his future was written on his face and the shape of his legs. He was a born Cavalry officer!

For Stellan the matter was not quite so simple—he was poor and besides, confound it, he had brains.

Anyhow, he enlarged his horizon. In company with Manne he sometimes rode across to Trefvinge, the great and magnificent Trefvinge. Stellan had always a strange cold sensation, a mixture of voluptuous ease and of hatred when his horse carried him across the grand stretch of gravel in front of its great white façade. Trefvinge was a real castle, a famous, historic castle of the seventeenth century. It impressed everybody against their wills, except the owner, Count Lähnfeldt, who had not been born a count. The lord of the castle himself scarcely ever appeared, but Elvira rode out with them. She was a slender girl with a shrill commanding voice, especially when she was excited. There was nothing shy about her and she had no particularly girlish manners, so she did not spoil sport. None of the young men were in love with her. Stellan used to tease her in a way that was sometimes cold and biting. It was as if he wanted to take his revenge because the castle in which she lived was so shockingly big and aristocratic.

In this way, then, the summer passed, and then Manne got the silly idea of going to Germany with his mother. That Elvira and Laura should go, of course, made no difference to Stellan, but Manne! That was a blow—because of “Sultan.”

Stellan had nothing but Herman and the sailing boat to fall back upon. And so after all the wild riding began sailing just as wild. Stellan could not remain still. In the autumn he felt that the cessation of the constraint of school had left a certain emptiness and restlessness. The future worried him.

Herman was with him in the boat. His future was Laura. He had thought of going to an English shipbuilding school in the autumn. But he could not make up his mind. He was caught in the memory of their kisses. He clung to Stellan, her brother. Yes, it was only for Stellan’s sake he took part in those chilly autumn sailing trips. He sat there huddled up in the spray and hugged Laura’s solitary little letter in his pocket and hoped that her brother would talk of her.

Stellan saw very well that Herman was not living in the same world as himself and that irritated him. He shrugged his shoulders with a contemptuous pity which perhaps at bottom was nothing more than the secret envy of the poor. He smiled grim little smiles when he saw Herman’s eyes directed towards him with the same expression of supplication. He pressed the helm and conspired with the autumn, the wind and the lake against this obstinate love. He was happiest when Herman was fully occupied in bailing out the water.

Herman sat by the fore-sheet, and slackened and made fast. Now and then he looked astern at Stellan. There was a mixture of admiration, anxiety and something akin to secret pity in his look. Stellan wore the same expression now as at school when things were at their hottest—bold, independent, and scoffing. Oh! how Herman had envied him that he never allowed himself to be impressed by his teachers, that, in spite of his laziness, he always knew how to answer. Ugh! the water dashed in from the lee! But Stellan never condescended to luff up. It was almost terrible to see how indifferent he was. He was quite capable of sinking them. Herman was not afraid for himself. But he felt a pang in his heart. Was there not something strangely forlorn about Stellan. Did he not sit there alone with the wind and the grey lake. It seemed as if poor Stellan had been locked out from something. And he did not even know that he could knock at the door.

These were Herman’s thoughts as he clung wet and cold to the weather gunwale and received the worst spray over his back. For he had a little letter in his pocket to hug furtively.

One day something happened. But this time Herman sat at the helm and not Stellan.

There was a dash of fitful April weather at the beginning of October. The hot sun shone between big clouds and below were black squalls. It was not rough, but there came treacherous gusts of wind by the dips of the land. And into the bargain it was Saturday.

Old Hermansson’s trim little “Ellida” lay for the moment to lee as on a mirror. The sails hung slack, the boat lay over to windward and the sun was deliciously warm. Slowly they overhauled an absurd little overrigged boat, a real caricature of a boat. It was painted white, and on the stern was painted “Kalla,” in big black letters. Aboard were three workingmen from the new factory under construction. Their half-drunk bass voices rolled out over the water. One of them stood with his foot on the gunwale, gripping the stays with one hand and flourishing a bottle in the other. Never had the sun shone on such recklessness.

Stellan’s eyes flashed:

“This will be interesting,” he muttered.

“Ellida” was now in the shadow of a racing cloud. They stared back at the man with the bottle. They had a sudden horrid sensation of cold in the pit of the stomach. Heigh Ho! Then the dark squall came sweeping along. It first struck the small boat. She instantly went round as if by a single turn of the hand of Fate. The three workingmen had not even time to utter a curse before they were in the water and the boat had sunk.

On the “Ellida” as I have said before, Herman sat at the tiller. Not for a moment did he think of their own danger. He only wanted to rush to help the drowning men. But in his flurry he put the tiller over to windward instead of to leeward. And in an instant the “Ellida” had the same fate. The whole thing had not taken more than five seconds.

The water was ice cold. The boat disappeared quickly under them. Herman saw Stellan appear beside him. He did not say anything, but began to swim towards land. Herman followed. It was a fair distance, but at last they crawled up amongst the boulders along the shore, stiff and tired out.

“How idiotic,” gasped Stellan. “You don’t sail a boat to capsize it!”

But Herman stared, as if suddenly turned to stone, across the lake. It was empty and silent. The water shone green again, with little white crests, in the sun. Only a few floating bulkheads and oars bore witness to the catastrophe. Ashore nobody seemed to have noticed anything.

Herman ran out into the water again up to his waist:

“Help!” he cried, “Help! They are drowning! Help!”

The echo came back from the nearest cliff: “Help! Help!”

Stellan pulled him by the arm:

“There is no use calling. They are where they are. Now let us run home!”

“Drowned! All three. It’s dreadful,” moaned Herman.

Then they began to run. At the corner of the avenue where they must separate to reach their respective homes, Stellan caught hold of his friend’s arm again. There were blue and yellow streaks on his face from the soaked lining of his cap, but his expression was both tense and elated:

“Don’t forget that we capsized in trying to rescue them,” he muttered. “It looks beastly bad otherwise.”

That same evening they were sitting out on the long landing stage by the yard. It was quite calm now. The atmosphere twinkled coldly between the black fleets of cloud. Over the oak trees out on the spit of land the lights of Stockholm lit the sky. There is always something both of exhortation and menace in the pale radiance in the sky over an invisible city. Now the crescent moon peeped out over the serried edge of the forest behind Stonehill and threw a few shafts of light over the dark water—the dark water holding the three dead.

Herman was talking of the accident. He could not let the subject drop. He returned time after time to certain points, in order to prove that they could have done absolutely nothing to save the drowning men. There was a note of supplication in his voice as if nevertheless he felt remorse. He also shivered secretly. The world seemed to him gruesome—gruesome but still blessed, because Laura was in it. Her smile was there and so were the cold stars, over the black water. He was sitting beside her brother. Again Herman felt that burning desire to talk of her. But he did not dare, there was something in Stellan’s tone that kept him back, that made him vaguely uneasy. And he was too young too, thought Herman, to understand how different people can be.

Stellan walked up and down the landing stage. He talked in short, jerky sentences about sailing and riding and sport. He seemed strangely excited. He was one of those who are stimulated by the icy blasts of life. It was as if the dead out there helped him to come to a decision. With complete detachment from all this talk he suddenly came to reflect coolly, clearly and swiftly on his own future. Life is short and uncertain, he thought. Life is a gamble. It is silly to take it too seriously. I shall be an officer. I shall have a smart uniform. I shall spend my time amidst arms, horses and smart people. I want to be on top. I shall have excitement, adventures, be in danger, and perhaps go to war. But the money? It is expensive to be an officer. Well, there will always be a way out. I suppose I shall have to use Laura as a lure. Poor Herman has surrendered unconditionally. I can get him to do what I like. He just goes about begging me to trample on him for Laura’s sake. He will do the hard work for me with the old man. Anyhow he can’t say “no” to anything, poor old fellow. I’ll be an officer all right if I play my cards properly.

Thus it happened that Stellan Selamb found his guiding star one autumn evening. It was a bright, frosty star twinkling keenly over there in the pale light halo over the town, the town that lay thus waiting on the confines of his childhood’s kingdom, the town with the cross lightning of fate and a merciless consuming fire.

That same evening Laura stood with a bag of sweets in her hand and looked out through a small half-opened ground glass window. She was, with due respect, in the smallest room in the school, a room with a bolt on the inside. She had withdrawn there in order to eat her sweets in peace. If you were to share with all the other girls there would be nothing left for yourself.

Whilst Laura munched sweets her glance strayed up the sloping expanse of roofs and treetops of the town and out over the calm Neuchatel Lake, which seemed to her as large as a sea, and on to the towering Alps in the distance, whose snow covered tops soared out of the shadow and silence into the light of a crescent moon of the palest silver.

Laura stared, ate, and dreamed. How perfectly lovely, she thought. And she was right. Not even a poster could be more beautiful.

What was Laura dreaming about now in the glow of this eternal snow? Not about silence, the infinite withdrawal from the world, oh no! Laura was dreaming about a long honeymoon, a long, long honeymoon. She was walking on wonderfully soft hotel carpets, she was eating seven course dinners in luxurious dining-rooms, she was furtively kissing in dark rumbling tunnels, she was saved by strong arms on the edge of dizzy precipices. And it was of course Herman who kissed her in the tunnels, and saved her with his strong arms. Of course it was Herman. She never thought of anybody else. It was not at all disagreeable to dream of a long wedding trip with Herman.

But of a home with him she did not dream.

The bag was suddenly empty, and her throat was burning after all the strong-flavoured sweets she had eaten. Laura had to run down and drink a whole bottle of water and somehow she did not write any letters as she had intended.

IX
PETER THE BOSS

Already at the Agricultural school a strange change had begun in Peter Selamb. And it became still more pronounced on his return home. He somehow became more positive. He realised that one cannot go on for ever merely watching and spying on others. It is better to be the object of attention.

Peter wanted to be bailiff at Selambshof and for that reason he tried to get friends and supporters. Was the spying and grumbling Peter the Watch-dog endeavouring to secure friends like a politician before an election? Was he not doomed to failure? No, because Peter was no longer the same after his victory over Brundin. Fear had thrown a spell upon him. It had made him ugly and repulsive. But now he had somehow broken the enchantment. To the naked eye he seemed almost human. From fear he had passed quite readily to lying, a not uncommon step. Fear is the parent of a real and deliberate mendacity and somehow it persists under the smiling exterior. As yet Peter did not lie consciously. Alas! the conscious lie is so slight, so harmless, so transparent. No, give me the real, thorough, unconscious lie, especially if it is joined with that particular greed that so often grows up from the deep root of fear. Then we may expect consequences.

As Peter changed, the people round about him also began to change. They were no longer dangerous and malevolent people before whom he had to be on his guard every moment. He began to see them in the light of his desires, and that is also a light of its kind. He found to his surprise that these people, formerly so unreliable, not unwillingly allowed themselves to be manœuvred to his advantage. Sometimes they seemed to move round him like mutes in a play, in which Peter Selamb was the hero, and which play must end with his enrichment and aggrandisement. But do not suppose that Peter grew proud, extravagant or reckless. No, he took good care not to awaken any dangerous fear in others. Quite instinctively, and only to hide his real self, he gradually grew more and more good-natured, pleasant and cheerful. It cost him no effort because he felt he would earn money by it. Yes, even his body assumed something of his cunning and grew and expanded about the chest and stomach, in order to remove all angles and give him a more trustworthy appearance, so that he might the more easily achieve his end. Peter never looked so pleased as when someone joked with him about his getting fat.

The first indication of Peter’s new frame of mind was that of learning to play “vira.” He made a third with the bailiff Inglund and old Lundbom from the yard.

As a matter of fact Peter had never been on a really bad footing with the new bailiff. Inglund was an experienced farmer, but obstinate and averse to everything new. He was fond of his ease, the type of man who has worked his whole life for low wages for other people. He did not love authority and was not unwilling to divide his responsibility. He did not mind Peter shadowing him under the pretence of helping him. He liked to teach whatever he knew of his trade. “Next time I can send the boy and need not go myself,” was his thought. And then he would remain on his sofa smoking his pipe and smiling at silly Peter, who ran his errands. Meanwhile Peter’s knowledge grew daily and as he advanced with rapid strides to his position of authority he became more and more indispensable. And both were satisfied.

Thus Peter played “vira” with Inglund and Lundbom. With what an agreeable feeling of dangers overcome did he not sit there in the bailiff’s quarters smoking and drinking and sending forth his orders from these seats of power and knowledge. This was different from roaming about in the dark outside, hungry, lonely and frightened. Peter enjoyed the old men’s calm and circumstantial way of talking and telling stories. It was somehow informed with a superior and yet harmless and benevolent wordly wisdom. And one could still feel one’s superior strength. Warmed by his grog Peter sat smiling contentedly and drank in their golden lore of the changing nature of the earth and the varying seasons and the strange ways of money among the labyrinths of the law. And all the time he saw visions of future wealth in the thick clouds of tobacco smoke.

Like all new beginners Peter had, of course, shamelessly good luck. But he did not become disagreeably smug or unpleasantly overweening. That was a great feature in his character. He tried to moderate his good luck in order to be tolerated in the company. And soon he had become quite a shrewd and skilful player.

Peter never regretted having learnt to play “vira.” The cards soon proved an excellent means of communication with useful people. The gatherings in the bailiff’s rooms soon had some offshoots in town. Peter accompanied the bailiff to cheery drinking and card parties with business friends, both buyers and sellers. Thus it was by the paths of rye, potatoes and bacon that Peter penetrated into the town. Here Peter recognised amongst many new faces some of the old ones from Brundin’s great crayfish party. They were all men of seventeen stone with heavy fists and well filled purses. But they no longer pressed Peter down to the ground. On the contrary, he felt a solemn exhilaration mingled with hopeful expectation as he sat among these bulging pocketbooks. And whilst he arranged his cards and watched his play he kept his eyes and ears open, learned the correct jargon, studied the market, and did not lose a thread in the skein of business names and connections. During all this time there often came over him the dreamy expression of one who stops in his walk to listen to the rush of a still invisible cataract. It was the rolling of money that Peter heard in the noise of the streets, which is so unfamiliar to country folk. The town to him meant money, the money that would one day roll into Selambshof and fall into Peter’s pockets.

But let us return to the bailiff’s rooms and see Peter’s second adversary. Old Lundbom, who was an expert in the difficult game of “misère,” sat muttering, with his spectacles slipping down over his nose and his extinguished cigar stuck into a gap in his front teeth. From him, too, could Peter derive much useful knowledge. As a managing clerk he knew not only the recognised forms of business and ways of money and the setting forth of it in columns with figures and names. He was also secretly a keen amateur lawyer, was this old nutcracker. The Law of Sweden, text books of civil law, reports of law cases and judgments constituted his favourite reading in his spare time. Once started on that subject he was difficult to stop. It was with a peculiar enjoyment that Peter heard him tell of long and involved lawsuits in which large sums had changed hands. To Peter’s simple understanding the law was nothing else but a collection of all the tricks that could be used to get hold of other people’s money. Old Lundbom would have been very perplexed in his unselfish complacency if he had seen how greedily Peter picked up any information that might possibly be of use to him some day.

One evening—it was as a matter of fact a fine and calm evening in the beginning of July and the hay had just been got in—the usual trio sat playing by the light of a lamp out in the porch. Then Peter suddenly heard something which made him think hard. Old Lundbom was speaking about a business that had to be sold at a great loss after the death of the owner because one of the heirs was a minor and had to receive his inheritance in trustee stock.

Here at Selambshof both Laura and Tord were minors! And their father had lain in bed for half a year past. If he died now—how could Peter become bailiff?

Peter tried in vain to lure Lundbom into a discussion of the case of Selambshof. He could not force a direct question over his lips. He was somehow afraid to give himself away, and his old lurking fear beset him again in this stupid, meaningless fashion. It would have been quite natural for him to ask questions about the future risks of the estate. But then we all have such fits....

That night Peter lay sleepless. Selambshof was once more a besieged fortress. Even Brundin’s ghost haunted the dual silence. A sad relapse...!

As early as four o’clock he put on his trousers and stole to his father. The old man lay put away in a small room by himself far away on the ground floor towards the north. In former days the soiled linen had been kept there. Oskar Selamb had now overlived his time seventeen years. There must after all have been something in old Enoch’s toughness and vitality. But last Christmas he had been ill for some time and since then he had never troubled to get up again. He thought it more comfortable in bed. Now he lay there with his chin in the air and his long grey beard in waves over the sheet. He did not snore at all. A spider came out of a corner and ran quickly over the counterpane. Was the old man dead? Peter started and stole with trembling limbs up to the bedside. No! Oskar Selamb lay awake staring with his bleared, grey eyes at the brown damp stains on the ceiling.

“How are you, father?” Peter said anxiously.

The old man’s voice was as rusty as if it had not been used for years:

“Been running,” he muttered pointing at the damp stains.

“But I asked how you were, father.”

Hedvig occupied the room next door and it was she who nursed the old man. She insisted on doing it. Now her father pointed with his thumb to her room.

“Up?” he wondered anxiously.

“But I wanted to know how you felt, father?”

“Must not wash me,” whined Oskar Selamb. “Cold water!—don’t wash me...!”

Then Hedvig suddenly stood in the door. She was dressed in a torn old dressing gown. Her black hair was brushed tight over the temples and hung over her shoulders in a long shining plait, which looked as if it had been plaited by hard, mean fingers. She was still pale with a strange, deathly pallor, and her dark eyes were awake, as intensely awake as if the sweet drops of sleep had never been poured into them.

“What’s the matter now?”

She spoke in a tone as if she had been lying reproaching herself the whole night.

Peter felt uncomfortable. Did people not sleep in this house of a night. He did not particularly like to see Hedvig. Brundin’s shadow hung over her still. She was like a ghost from the time of his great fear. And then she was religious. She had a sort of secret understanding with the gods of which Peter in his innermost heart was still rather frightened. Yes, however one approached her, one seemed to be burnt up. But all the same Peter managed the business splendidly. He resembled a man playing ball with a live coal which is still too hot to hold for long in his hand. Though frightened himself he directed her fear into a channel where there might slumber things of use to Peter Selamb.

“I woke up and felt so anxious about father,” he muttered. “I felt as if something was going to happen to him.”

“Do you think I am not listening?” Hedvig said, shrugging her shoulders.

“We have not always been as we ought to be to poor father,” sighed Peter.

Hedvig’s beautiful face hardened and she assumed the expression of an injured martyr.

“Don’t I wear myself out for him? Haven’t I nursed him day and night since he has been confined to his bed?”

Peter was not so convinced that her nursing was so tender. When he thought of lying ill and being washed by Hedvig’s hands he felt cold shivers down his back. But he took care not to show it.

“Yes, Hedvig, you are a real saint. But Laura and Stellan, who never come to see father—and I who—yes, we shall get our punishment.”

Over Hedvig’s face there spread a glimmer of satisfaction.

“What kind of punishment will that be?”

“Oh, father might die, for example. Do you know what would happen if father dies before Tord is of age? They will sell the estate for an old song and we shall become paupers. But if we can keep it we are sure to be well off, all of us.”

Peter said no more. He only sighed and then he went back to his room to recover his lost sleep.

That same day old Selamb was moved up into a big, light and airy room facing east. Peter spied on Hedvig and received several proofs that his words had taken effect. She was evidently frightened, for secretly she redoubled her efforts. Enviously and with a look of silent reproach to the whole world she watched incessantly over her father. With a sort of gloomy, obstinate determination she wore herself out with her cares.

Peter’s own worry was agreeably relieved. He felt that he had given the matter into good hands. Sister Hedvig was now to be numbered among the many that struggled in the cause of Peter Selamb.

Peter had a habit of stealing in to glance at the old man now and then. It was quite edifying to see him lying there washed and brushed between white sheets in the sparkling sunshine. Peter felt something of the pleasure of the merchant who goes to his safe and turns over his gilt-edge securities. One day Peter brought a bunch of flowers in his hand. Flowers in Peter’s hand! That was, of course, a piece of pure superstition, the offer of a bribe to the Powers. His expression was strange, for he was probably afraid of being found out. But as nobody was in the room he put the flowers quickly into a glass and placed them on the bed-table. Then he stood there quite a long while with his head on one side and he felt quite moved.

After that there were almost always flowers in the glass when Peter came. Yes, Hedvig had also begun to pick flowers. And they did not wither in her hand. No, they looked perfectly fresh and bright on the bed-table. But all the same there was a kind of suspicious aversion in her movements, and she did not like to look at them. It was all so new and strange. One would scarcely have recognised the old Selambshof. A stranger coming in for a few days only would have thought that he was moving amongst the angels.

The only one who did not like the change was old Selamb. He had grown accustomed to the dim light, the dirt, the knocks, and sour faces. This quiet, bright room worried him in some way. Into his dull brain some thought of illness and death must have penetrated when he found himself treated like a feeble invalid. He followed Hedvig’s silent movements with suspicious glances. He was stubborn, whined, and indulged in foolish little pinpricks and impotent acts of spite, all of which she suffered with a secret joy as adding spice to her martyrdom. But the old man’s hate was especially directed towards the flowers, that strange innovation that smelt of a funeral. One day the glass was empty and he pointed with a grin under the bed. He had thrown them into the bedchamber.

And so that was the end of the flowers, and indeed there could never be flowers for long within the four walls of Selambshof. Peter was not very disappointed. One can’t always be sentimental. Moreover during subsequent “vira” parties Peter had made further inquiries and now knew more. The matter would not be so hopeless even if his father did die. But he took good care not to tell Hedvig. There was no harm in being careful.

It now only remained to enlist old Hermansson in the company of those who lived and worked for Peter Selamb. He felt that this was where the shoe pinched. But though he loitered about Ekbacken he still refrained from approaching the old man. He came over to consult his guardian about the management of the estate. He did not directly complain of the bailiff, but he managed to convey discreetly that the bailiff spent most of his time lying on his sofa, smoking his pipe. But still the old man did not grasp his excellent idea of dismissing Inglund and making the capable and conscientious Peter bailiff.

However much Peter pondered over the matter he could not guess why old Hermansson was so distant and on his dignity toward him, whilst he yet seized every occasion to show his fatherly interest in Stellan. That lazy, supercilious Stellan who strutted about in his uniform and sneered and looked important when he occasionally came home after his idiotic drill. Peter had an economic contempt for everything in uniform, which showed how simple he was, and how much he still had to learn from life. If he had only observed old Hermansson a little more closely, as with his head held high and his hand inside the lapel of his coat he strutted up and down the avenue by the side of Stellan with his glittering braid and sword belt, he would perhaps have understood a good deal better.

Everything striking and challenging stirred Peter’s egoism, though it still sought to hide itself.

Whilst he scratched his head, a thought flashed through his brain: “If I could think of something sufficiently mad, perhaps it would work better,” he thought, and soon after he conceived the brilliant idea that was to bring matters to a successful issue.

After weeks of careful preparation he marched off one day to Ekbacken. It was a fine windy day in May and down at the repairing slip they were just fitting out Herman’s fine, new cutter. Herman himself was standing on the pier dressed in the uniform of the Royal Yacht Club and gave orders to a crowd of lazy-looking youths who had succeeded the old sailors. Peter shook his head as he passed. It positively hurt him to see such expensive toys.

In the smoke-room at Ekbacken a card table and an easy chair were placed between the Marieberg stove and a new piece of furniture, a mahogany and glass monstrosity containing coloured silk ribbons and the gilt insignia of all the secret societies in which the owner of the house held high rank. There old Hermansson now sat playing patience.

“What do you want here, my friend?” muttered the old man without looking up from his cards.

“Well, there was something I had to tell you. You know that it is a very long time since father said anything rational. But today when I went in to see him as usual he seemed to have brightened up. He fumbled after my hand and then he said: ‘You must go and thank my old friend. You must go and thank old William for all he has done for old Selambshof.’ Yes, that’s what he said. And I felt so strange because it was just as if father would not have long to live. That was all I wanted to tell you.”

His guardian looked up from his cards with an expression of solemn sympathy and quiet reproach:

“Well, well, did he really say that, dear old Oskar? Yes, it really does me good to hear that there are still some people who are grateful. I will go and see him as soon as possible.”

Peter went home contented. A visit was exactly what he wished for. The following day old Hermansson came. It evidently affected him to see the invalid. Much moved and very solemn he walked up to the bed:

“Good-morning, dear old Oskar!”

Old Selamb grunted something in his beard. He did not seem specially pleased at the meeting.

“How are things with you, old friend? I am ashamed that I have not been to see you for such a long time.”

The invalid was still not interested. Peter had to intervene.

“It’s William. Don’t you see, father, that it is William who has been so good to us all?”

“Yes, Oskar, you recognise old William, don’t you?”

Old Selamb seemed to be growing impatient. He looked critically at his old friend:

“Seedy,” he muttered, “damned seedy.”

Peter did not like the turn the conversation had taken.

He suddenly sat down on the edge of the bed with his back to old Hermansson. Then he looked his father full in the eyes, touched his pocket and showed the corner of a paper bag. Then the invalid’s face suddenly assumed a keen, wide-awake and almost human expression, and he stretched out a trembling hand to his son:

“Peter ... look after ... estate,” he muttered, in his deep, rusty voice. “Peter shall manage the estate....”

“Now he seems to be getting excited again,” whispered Peter to old Hermansson. “It is dangerous for him to get excited. But he usually calms down if he gets something to chew.”

Peter took some crumbs of cheese out of the paper bag and gave them to his father, who devoured them with avidity and then sank into his usual apathy again.

Old Hermansson stood in deep thought. Here lay the sick friend of his youth on the bed he would never leave. In a lucid moment he first sends a touching greeting and then when he came to see him his reason once more flashes up and he begs help for his first-born. It was almost like a command from the grave.

Peter’s guardian seized his hand and pressed it warmly:

“Old Oskar shall be obeyed,” he said, “you shall manage Selambshof!”

Peter, alarmed and startled, protested, but the old man was firm:

“You and none else,” he said in a tone that suffered no contradiction.

Then he went home to his patience again.

Peter had succeeded by a clever use of his father’s insatiable greed for old cheese with caraway seeds in it. Day after day he had been sitting there on the edge of the bed tempting him with a piece of cheese in his hands, till the old man learnt the formula that opened the gates of joy to him.

It is generally the boldest and stupidest tricks that succeed. Peter never forgot the caraway cheese. He used it, as a matter of fact, throughout his life.

Thus half a year later Peter became manager at Selambshof. He had developed quickly. He began as a coarse, lumbering, hulking hireling. But this massive foundation concealed by a certain smiling good temper and maudlin sentimentality was rather misleading to those who were not warned by the quick flashes in his cunning bear’s eyes.

It was at this point that the firstborn of the family got the nickname “Peter the Boss,” a name which stuck to him all his life and under which he was known in wide circles.

Thus Peter the Boss now sat enthroned in the office at Selambshof. Now he wandered in the perfection of his power through the domains of Selambshof, controlled only by Peter the Boss himself. But he did not swagger. He did not become an absolute tyrant as old Enoch had been in his time. He did not worry people too much. He only had a habit of turning up grinning on the most unexpected occasions. You never knew where you had him. There was no possibility of pilfering as in Brundin’s time. Peter was content with that. His desire was not power, but possession. There were many things he reflected upon, but always from the point of view of “yours” or “mine,” preferably “mine.” And then slowly he began to walk in Brundin’s footsteps. But without the boldness and rashness of that “fairy prince.” He felt his way carefully. He left no traces. He began with modest schemes. He joked his way through, so that you never knew when you had him until you suddenly found you had agreed to something after a jolly evening with cards and drink. One of the old customers of the estate, for instance, wanted potatoes at the old price, which was really too low. Peter laughed at him. But when they sat down to cards, he said he would be damned if he shouldn’t have the potatoes if he won that night. In this way Peter recovered half the difference of price and the matter was settled in the early morning. Peter pretended that he settled the business whilst in his cups, and the other was welcome to think he had got the better of Peter. Or perhaps some cab proprietor wanted to buy hay. There was a scarcity of hay that spring—but not at Selambshof. This was a fine chance for Peter. He snapped out a very high price. The proprietor offered two-thirds. Business seemed impossible. But as they sat there hobnobbing with each other they began to argue about the height of the Eiffel Tower. Peter maintained it was 300 metres high. If he had not just been reading about it he would not have mentioned it. The cab proprietor doubted it.

“All right, let us lay a wager,” said Peter. “All right,” replied the cab proprietor. “A thousand kronor,” said Peter and winked. But the cab proprietor became thoughtful.

“I am like a little child when I have won a wager,” grinned Peter. The cab proprietor made a rapid calculation and then agreed to the bet in the cloud of smoke. And Peter won the bet and the cab proprietor got the hay at his own price. So you see that even the Eiffel Tower has its uses.

In this way much business was done in the good old times.

Soon there was not a single turnip sold but Peter the Boss managed in some cunning way or other to exact his toll. The money came rolling in and he already had a nice little banking account.

But conscience! Did not Peter understand that this was bad faith towards his principals? Did he not think it ugly to rob his brothers and sisters in this way? No, when it came to the point Peter did not think of principals or brothers and sisters or anything at all in that way. The whole thing was a matter between himself and Brundin. Peter was taking his revenge on Brundin, that was all. He beat the nightmare of his childhood on his own ground. So strange are our victories sometimes. Peter felt a delightful relief after each successful coup, a relief that was almost related to a good conscience.

Meanwhile Peter the Boss grew fatter and more good-tempered and jovial. He patted Isaksson, the housekeeper, on the back and lent Stellan, who was always in a tight corner, money with pleasure. Then he offered punch and with his customary luck won the whole lot back from him again, so that Stellan had to write an I.O.U. for the double amount, for he had to have the money. Stellan rose, shrugging his shoulders, when he had written it and looked contemptuously at his elder brother:

“Just like the Jews,” he said in his sneering voice. “Hang it all, Peter, you do look common. It is so under-class to become bloated with spirit!”

“Dear, oh dear!” said Peter in his softest voice, “didn’t you notice that before you began to play?”

It is true that Peter drank a good deal. Spirit and business melted together with him so that he could not distinguish one from the other. That was why he always drank with a good conscience and grew fat with a good conscience. Because in Sweden in those days it was still easier for fat people to do business than for thin.

If Peter could think of nothing else he used to put a bottle in his pocket and march down to Tord, who now lived in “The Rookery,” with all his crows and snakes and foxes. He was a queer fish, Tord, but he was always good enough to drink a glass with. In school he had made himself impossible long ago, but instead of school he sat at home reading a lot of bulky old volumes, and amongst the working people of the estate he was the object of a certain superstitious reverence on account of his strange ways and his learning. Then one day he flung the books on the floor and decided to turn painter—animal painter. That was after he had taken in another inmate, a two-legged one this time, a mysterious creature who seldom appeared in daylight, but who passed for an artist, a real artist from the Academy. His name was Eklund and he was an incurable bohemian, contemptuous of the world, and cynical. Nobody knew where Tord had caught this fish, but it was probably in some ditch on the outskirts of the town. Anyhow he was now going to teach Tord to paint animals.

Yes, Tord was a queer fellow who sooner or later would be sure to go to the dogs, but nobody would be any the poorer for that, at least not Peter, so he could always drink a glass with him in anticipation of the catastrophe. And that strange creature Eklund did not spoil things either. It tasted rather good to drink with such impossible fellows. Tord did not, of course, talk much—he usually sat and stared. But with Eklund one could discuss the profoundest problems, if only he had enough inside him. He was one of those radical devils who believe neither in Heaven nor Hell. Peter protested with inimitable sentimentality against his acid cynicism, but secretly he enjoyed it. In his inmost heart he had a feeling it somehow sanctioned his little tricks....

About that time the guardian of Selambshof died.

Old Hermansson had of late been so unnaturally sound that he could not have long to live. And one morning he could not get out of his bed. He had died during the night from paralysis of the heart.

At the funeral in the little granite church Herman sobbed between his two old aunts, his only relations. But Peter clung instinctively to his sister Hedvig. This was something in her line, he thought. Here she held the direct connections. Far away from the cynicism of Eklund Peter the Boss stood there anxiously wondering if this business would not bring him some profit in its train. And had he not been kind to his own aged, sick father, and had him removed into a better room, and seen to it that he had the best care? Yes, there in the church Peter was still making his little efforts to cheat the Almighty. But out here beside the open grave he grew unctuous. It was no longer cowardice in face of the last judgment. That was an exquisite refuge when compared with the dark hole in front of him. Before the grave every man is shaken down to his most elementary instincts. Peter the Boss ate ashes at the thought of creeping down there away from everything that he possessed and would possess. Fancy having nothing more, absolutely nothing! He stood there pale and ill with his hat in his hand and gulped down the lump in his throat like a fish out of water. He would willingly have sacrificed a whole year’s salary if he could have got away from it all.

At last he sat in his carriage and rolled away from Death’s domains into those of Selambshof. His sickness disappeared by and by. He felt with a feverish sigh how business was resuming its normal sway over his thoughts. But still he was like a man who, after a dangerous sea voyage, feels the movement of the sea even though he is walking on the green earth.

There was a dinner at Ekbacken. To everybody’s amazement, Peter rose and made a speech. After the day’s emotions he was very sentimental. Oh, how delightful it was to let yourself go and to be moved by, and grateful for, everything, and to be filled with great, beautiful and solemn emotions. There were no bounds to the greatness and noble philanthropy of old Hermansson and to what they all had to thank his noble generous heart for. Peter then turned to the only son of this great and noble man. He did not need to describe what Herman was suffering at that moment. But he must not feel himself alone in the world. Everybody present suffered with him. And if it was hard for Herman to throw himself at once into business in the midst of his grief, he must never forget that Selambshof lay next door to old Ekbacken. A helping hand from Peter Selamb would not be lacking when required....

Peter had tears in his eyes. He was whole-heartedly a “helping hand.” His emotion was almost genuine, and he felt that his tears watered soil of which he might himself reap the harvest.

Herman had never liked Peter, but had rather avoided him. But now he had no power of resistance. Childishly ashamed of his own tears, he sought cover behind these of Peter. He believed him because just now he felt the need of belief in somebody. And there was nobody else to hand. Stellan was so strangely silent and cold just now. He was somehow not made to be a consoler. But Peter overwhelmed him by his rhapsodies, helpfulness, and his massive vitality overflowing with life and animation. There were not many moments when he left Herman alone during the following days. And he used to talk about Laura. It helped Herman in the bitter loneliness that fastened upon his still unguarded soul. Twice Laura had been allowed to go back to her boarding school. And hitherto she had to a certain extent been right when she thought that both she and Herman were too young to get married. But now she was to stay at home, said Peter. He had telegraphed her on the day of the death of Herman’s father and could not understand why she had not come back already. Did she really deserve such a husband as Herman, such a jolly good fellow, heir to an honourable name and a substantial fortune? And so Peter’s thoughts turned to money again. Did Herman fully realise how rich he was? Ekbacken—oh, it had immense possibilities! Peter saw them, because he had already had business experience. And, as he had said before, he would help Herman in word and deed now when everything had to be cleared up after the death of his father.

Everything went as Peter wished. He became administrator of the estate of the late timber merchant and shipbuilder, William Hermansson. A week ago he would have shaken his head at such a possibility. Now the thing was almost obvious.

Old Lundbom had to supply the necessary expert knowledge. He was so touched and so flattered when Peter came and wanted to make him guardian over his father that he willingly sacrificed his evening hours to clear up all difficulties of the administration. He had managed Ekbacken’s business practically alone during recent years—but without having asked for a penny’s increase of salary. The old man had never realised that one might be clever on one’s own account too. He was a servant and nothing but a servant. And now in the midst of his sincere grief at the death of his beloved old master he took a childish pleasure in seeing his knowledge of law being put into practice on such an important occasion.

The winding-up of the estate was entirely Lundbom’s work. It gave Peter a very interesting insight into the affairs of Ekbacken and six thousand crowns into the bargain. At first he made a few diffident attempts to refuse the money that Herman pressed on him. Herman was flushed with excitement and very stiff in the back. Had not the estate shown more than three hundred thousand crowns assets? Then he supposed he could afford to pay a friend for his solicitude and care. Peter gave in in good time and put the cheque in his pocket with a sigh:

“Thank you, dear Herman! We Selambs are unfortunately too poor to say no!”

When this matter was settled they walked about a long time on the estate discussing the future of Ekbacken. Herman wanted to give up building barges and instead wanted to build racing yachts of a type that had just won through. It was a high-class and interesting-quality work. He would build his own boats and compete for prizes just as people kept racehorses in their stables. It would be a fine advertisement and would perhaps interest Laura.

Peter looked thoughtful but did not contradict him.

They came out on to the highroad, which was dusty and worn out by the constantly increasing traffic. The heaps of road metal and the stone-cutters’ sheds were drawing nearer the old oaks. The town was grinding the hills around it to powder. Soon the last grey granite fortress of Ekbacken would fall. But Herman swore that he would defend his own idyllic home. There were already plenty of people who came to him and wanted to buy sites for factories. But his father’s old Ekbacken must not be split up and spoilt in that way.

Peter still did not contradict him. He was absorbed in deep thought. Suddenly he warmly pressed his future brother-in-law’s hand:

“You are a fine fellow, Herman. Damn me, but you are a fine fellow!”

After this Peter the Boss stalked homewards—with the first great cheque of his life in his pocket he stalked homewards this cold, still evening in spring. He felt strangely cool about his forehead, and sometimes he felt as if he were treading on air. Strange how everything played into his hands. By making Lundbom guardian he ruled absolutely at Selambshof. Through Laura he would soon be able to control Ekbacken. And the town with its thousand possibilities, crept nearer and nearer with every hour.

X
LAURA’S MARRIAGE

For more than two years Laura had been at a boarding school in Neuchatel. She had been home a few times, at Christmas and Midsummer, but soon she had contrived to get away again. It was quite amusing to meet Herman for a week or two. And it was awfully nice to have him to think of in lonely and sentimental moments. But she was afraid to bind herself to him quite definitely.

“We can’t marry yet, of course,” she said, “and then it is better not to wear out each other’s feelings.”

It was always so delightful to say good-bye to Herman. His grief did her good. There was always a faithful heart waiting for her whilst she flew out into the wide world.

And it may even have happened that Laura cried a little in the train.

But it was always with the happiest laughter and the most excited talk that she rushed back to her school friends. And she was greeted with delighted shouts of welcome. For though she had no real friend, she was liked by all. They never got tired of ruffling her unusual, fair hair, which in the general opinion, was frightfully pretty. She was the obvious leader whenever they wanted to throw dust in the eyes of the poor teachers on returning home too late after walks or after mysterious expeditions in the dense garden of an evening. With a mixture of fear and unwilling admiration, the good German teachers nicknamed her “Die blonde Lüge.”

Had Laura so much to lie about then? Well! perhaps a little flirtation with the students in the town. But nothing serious. As a matter of fact Laura was very careful—much more careful than one would have believed if one had been allowed to read her diary, written in profoundest secrecy. For there she exaggerated and romanced in a most charming manner and seized every opportunity to make herself interesting to herself. Yes, she falsified her own memoirs, quite gaily and airily. All of which your moralist would no doubt consider the height of mendacity, but after all it does not signify very much when you are at boarding school.

“Die blonde Lüge” had nothing to do with a certain little Polish lady who was packed off because she came home much too late one evening ... and who received the following morning a parcel containing neither more nor less than her corsets.

That was a great and mysterious event which became the subject of endless whispered conversations, when the light was turned out in the evenings.

But then there came a telegram and a letter, saying that old Hermansson was dead and that she must go home. Then Laura felt at once that the best thing she could do was to fall seriously in love with her faithful Herman. And strange to say, it was not at all so difficult to say good-bye to Neuchatel, as she had thought it would be. The prospect of meeting Herman alone, free, and independent was quite agreeable to her. Strange, but it actually seemed as if old Hermansson had, in spite of all his kindness, stood between her and Herman. Now she really enjoyed indulgence in all the romantic sentiments of her diary.

Before Laura left, the idea came to her that she would become properly engaged to Herman at a distance. This they did and they exchanged rings by post. It was a sentimental idea of a schoolgirl conceived in order to impress the other girls and to make a brilliant exit.

And so Laura at last returned home to make ready for the great wedding trip with the luxurious hotels and shops and the tunnels and moonlight nights. She sat there in the train and grew more sure of her love for Herman. She felt a real thrill when she saw him on the platform, a delicious thrill straight through her heart. He looked so awfully handsome, refined, and serious in his tall hat and mourning band, one could not really wish for a better companion on a wedding trip.

Herman wanted the wedding to take place in the autumn. One could not have the wedding immediately after the funeral.

Summer came, a delightful summer of sunshine, and Herman was pleasant, devoted and chivalrous. There was nothing but flowers and admiration and knightly courtesy. They were out sailing a great deal in Herman’s fine new cutter, which of course was called “Laura.” Herman himself had designed the boat and expected a lot from it. He was known as “The Engineer” at the yard. He had spent a couple of years at the School of Technology but he had left it because he was dissatisfied with the instruction. Now he was sitting there holding the tiller, tall, slim and sunburnt, wearing the uniform of the Royal Yacht Club, which was also very becoming. And Laura lay in a white sweater and white yachting shoes in the sunshine on deck and thought it was good that he sat and kept a look out with his faithful blue eyes whilst the ship of their lives elegantly tacked into the brilliant future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stage-fright....”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And with that she left the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This thought consoled him a little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Laura accepted the homage calmly and unmoved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Valuable papers,” he muttered.

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

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

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

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

Peter thought for a moment and then he brightened up:

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

“Lundbom?”

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

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

“Hum! That really would be rather funny.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they did.

XI
THE SPANISH SAINT

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

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

A groom opened the door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Percy’s smile was a shade more wan.

“Yes, perhaps you are right....”

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

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

“No, I can’t say I do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I say, Percy, how are you really?”

Percy smiled an apologetic smile:

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

For various reasons Stellan was horrified:

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

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

“What does the medicine man say?”

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

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

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

“Why don’t you send her away?”

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

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

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

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

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

Percy became quite excited and was filled with touching gratitude:

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

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

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

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

“With pleasure, old boy, with pleasure.”

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

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

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

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

“Poor Percy!”

“But how shall I persuade Hedvig?”

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

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

“Sister Hedvig? Yes, I’ll tell her.”

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

“I don’t think I can.”

“But why?”

“Well, at least not at once.”

“Why?”

She lowered her voice:

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

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

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

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

Then she rang off.

Stellan hung up the receiver.

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

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

“Hedvig is frightened,” she said.

Stellan felt nervous.

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

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

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

And then Mrs. Laura went to the theatre.

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

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

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

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

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

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.