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I
+LAURA ENTERTAINS+
Laura cast a glance down the esplanade before she pulled the blind. She
had moved to Narvavägen now. It was the most fashionable quarter.
The September evening was clear and cool. The prosperous-looking windows
in the house opposite threw back discreet golden reflections. The little
church at the corner looked like a luxurious bigoted needlework box. The
recently planted trees of the esplanade were as like each other as
soldiers in a row marching in column order out towards the fields.
Laura sighed faintly and contentedly. Everybody was back in town. The
season was beginning.
She switched on the light. The cream coloured blind completed the circle
of coquettish intimacy. She sat down at her dressing table. In the
mirror she saw a face which still retained the seaside sunburn. It
suited her well, made her hair still fairer and her teeth whiter. Laura
was now a woman of thirty. There was something of the fair renaissance
type in her plumpness, something at one and the same time crude and
refined. Her quick smile was full of health and light impudence.
But just now Laura was not smiling. On the whole women are never so
serious as when they are occupied with their personal appearance. During
the siege of the Legations during the Boxers’ rising in China it is told
that a lady stole yolks of eggs, whilst people died of starvation all
round her, in order to preserve the colour of her hair. That is
serious....
Laura always had a long tête-à-tête with her face before she paraded it
in public.
She became very impatient as somebody hesitatingly fingered the door
handle and little Georg at last stepped in.
Georg was very like his father. He had his long face and fair eyes. In
this case the weaker had been the stronger. It looked like nature’s
revenge. She had always the image of the wronged father before her.
Georg smiled the hesitating smile of the neglected child. There was a
certain shyness about him as he crept up to the mother.
Laura’s face hardened as she turned from the mirror:
“Don’t touch me! You soil my clothes.”
Georg humbly drew back:
“Mummie darling, may I stay up a little longer?”
“No, you must obey Sofi!”
“But mummie, why must I always go to bed when people come?”
“That’s enough. Run away now. I’m in a hurry!”
He went slowly, looking troubled, but he stopped at the door:
“May I sit and play in bed a little at least?”
“All right, but run away now!”
Then Georg went to bed. And in bed he sat and drew a picture of his
mummie as a hobgoblin. But then he grew frightened of what he had done
and drew her as a princess. And when Sofi came to pull down the blind he
lay awake in the twilight and listened to the guests. He was accustomed
to lie in the darkness and enjoy Laura’s parties through closed doors.
Georg had not always been so lonely.
Just after the divorce, whilst Laura still felt her position to be
delicate, she had cultivated the ladies, well knowing that it is they
who make one’s position. Then she availed herself of every opportunity
to pose as a deserted mother with her little baby. But her baby grew up
and the ladies bored Laura. Nor did they feel very much drawn to Laura.
It was not that she made any mistakes. On the contrary, at first she was
very careful about her reputation. But she made her friends restless in
some way. They did not like to see her entertain their husbands. They
gradually held aloof. Only the eccentrics and the bohemians among them
remained faithful to her, including a fashionable woman sculptor and a
middle-aged baroness who wrote causeries on the fashions.
Thus there were mostly men at Laura’s little parties. She realized this
with a shrug of her shoulders, a contented shrug. As a matter of fact
she always felt at home with men. But little Georg was not an additional
attraction for them. He was still exhibited now and then as an almost
newborn babe. But in the end the sweet little baby grew too long in
legs. And then Laura began to keep him out of sight. She came to think
of him more and more as a tiresome encumbrance. She even grew ashamed of
this reminder of her age and of her past. Georg was under the care of
untidy, uncontrolled and incessantly changing nurses. When Laura was
travelling she boarded him out with strangers wherever she might happen
to be. And when she entertained he was put to bed to be out of the way.
Laura had resumed her work in front of the mirror. As the delicate task
advanced towards the finishing touch with the powder puff and the choice
of perfumes and jewels, her serious expression grew in solemnity.
Her movements became more deliberate like those of an officiating
priest. All these pastes, creams, essences and perfumes were sacrifices
and incense in a secret cult. The dressing table was the altar and the
image in the mirror was the god. And just as a worshipper at the altar
ponders over the past and questions the future, so it was at her
dressing table that Laura became absorbed in recollections and sought
inspiration for her future plans. Her face thus participated very
intimately in all she did. When she thought of herself it was quite
naturally of her hair, her mouth, her eyes, that she thought. Her egoism
flourished under the spell of the mirrored image. The shadow and the
reality merged imperceptibly together. She was sitting at the high altar
of feminine selfishness.
Then Stellan arrived, dressed in a dinner jacket. He stepped without
ceremony into the holiest of holies, patted Laura approvingly on the
neck, and threw himself down in an empty chair beside the dressing
table. You could scarcely have seen that he was over thirty and that his
life during the last years had been rather stormy. His face still bore
an expression of self-satisfied, smiling irony. Only the corners of his
mouth had set, not into earnestness, but into hardness.
Sister and brother had not met during the whole summer. Laura tore
herself away from the mirror with an effort. She looked at her brother
searchingly. It was as if she looked in vain for something in his face:
“And now you have become a balloon pilot, too,” she said, with a shrug
of her shoulders. “How did you get that idea into your head?”
Stellan played with a small lady’s watch of about the size of a
sixpence.
“Well, I did it in anger. I had to sell the Ace of Spades, and it got
into the papers. So then I found a way of cutting out the cavalry. They
look simply ludicrous down below on their horses.”
Laura did not answer Stellan’s smile:
“Do you know what I thought when I read about your folly?” she said.
“Oh, are his affairs in such a rotten state?” I thought.
Stellan frowned:
“No, dash it all, don’t think it is a subtle form of suicide. Rather
then as a new phase of my notorious passion for gambling. I must have
excitement. It is a game with a rather higher stake than usual, that’s
all....”
“Well, but how are your affairs?”
“My affairs,” said Stellan with a shrug of his shoulders. “I have no
affairs, only debts. But they are of no importance anyhow. Just
sufficient to keep me from getting fat. They keep one up to the mark.”
Stellan’s financial position was bad. And still his superior airs were
not all pose. He did not worry over his position. If he had done that he
would have been lost. It never occurred to him to refuse himself
anything; on the contrary. He, Stellan Selamb, must of course live up to
his position. The best was, of course, always for him and his like. It
is an enormous source of strength to have such an inborn conviction.
Because you usually get what you consider should as a matter of course
be yours.
It was this elegant microcosm of upper class prejudices that kept
Stellan afloat.
Laura looked at her brother with something almost resembling admiration.
His assurance, his elegant bearing, his haughty smile, impressed her:
“There is an easy solution,” she said in a significant tone.
Stellan suddenly looked bored. He understood only too well what Laura
meant. The great day of settlement was approaching when he would have to
produce the heiress in anticipation of whom he had drawn so many bills.
“Damn it,” he muttered, “you too! My colonel attacked me the other day
and asked if I did not mean to get married. He must have heard something
alarming. And do you know what that idiot Ohrnfeldt said the other day
when I got him to indorse a note for me? ‘It is your duty as an honest
man to marry a rich girl,’ he said. Not bad, what? I am a positive
enigma to those honest souls. They think I have let several fine chances
slip through my fingers.”
“Well, but why do you neglect those ... chances?”
“Ugh, it goes against the grain to do what everybody expects me to do. I
think it is ridiculous.”
Laura did not answer. She resumed her task at the mirror. There is all
the same something artificial in Stellan’s recklessness tonight, she
thought, not without anxiety. Because she also had lent him money. Not
much, certainly, but more than she would like to lose.
Stellan sat silent a moment staring at the absurdly small lady’s watch,
which seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with anything so serious
as time. Then he rose as if he had suddenly noticed what time it was:
“I suppose Manne is coming tonight?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Good ... Laura, you must see that one of your financial friends backs
his new bills. Manne must have money.”
“Yes, because if he has any money, you will get some too. Isn’t that
so?”
“Well, Manne still has delightfully bad luck at cards.”
The guests began to arrive.
Laura’s home was a meeting place for some younger financiers and a
certain set of officers introduced by Stellan. Great interest was shown
at Laura’s in aristocrats in financial difficulty. And sometimes the
play was high.
Laura was a charming hostess at these highly original men’s parties. She
enjoyed queening it over these men with a future or a past. She flirted
gaily and without sentimentality with both Mars and Mercury, with a
secret leaning towards Mercury. Yes, in the company of these moneyed men
Laura was perfectly at home. She enjoyed the cool rapid talk of
investments and bargains in shares. Their lightning estimates and
calculations gently stimulated her. She was buoyed up and sustained by
these speculative chances. She constantly swayed between pleasant
irresponsibility and instructive calculations. Her cool and sparkling
head exercised, in the last resort, a natural and easy domination over
her senses. She played with bold assurance, with her womanliness as the
stake.
Yes, Laura liked gambling, but she liked winners still better, winners
who understood how delicately to share their gains. Since she had
observed that her fair type made a special impression on Jews she had
deliberately begun to cultivate “the little black boys” as she called
them. This was the period of the first national industrial boom and “the
little black boys” were making larger fortunes than ever. Because
whatever happens in the world it is sure to make the Jews wealthier. And
Laura kept to the fore and was given many a helping hand and many a hint
which she did not neglect to use to her advantage. People thought that
she liked to risk small sums for the fun of the thing, but secretly she
carried an a systematic and extensive business by which she had
collected a not insignificant fortune.
The last comer in Laura’s circle was Jacob Levy, the lawyer.
Levy was a business lawyer, still quite young, but obviously a man with
a future. He had a large, but finely chiselled nose, dark brown eyes and
thin, ironically curled lips. His was an international face, a face
which seemed as if for generations it had stared itself tired in all the
markets of the world. Though born in Sweden, Levy spoke with a certain
accent. His father was a Danish Jew and his mother came from Poland. The
ancient Swedish title of his professional rank seemed incongruous in
him. He was a cosmopolitan, and money and the hazards of money were his
real home and country. Behind his mask of pale indifference lay a
passionate will and a cool, sharp observation which sometimes got the
better of him. In the most impersonal tones he would utter
extraordinarily insolent truths, which sometimes cut straight across his
own interests.
Laura liked those truths, which had not yet however, been directed
against herself.
Stellan did not share his sister’s taste. He detested Levy and treated
him with an icy cold rudeness, which only seemed to amuse him. They
emphasized their respective vocations as officer and lawyer and
indulged, of course in most general terms, in exquisite sarcasms at each
other’s expense. To keep to the general is often the best way to offer
personal insults. In the beginning the atmosphere was a little chilly
and depressed at Laura’s first dinner of the season. Financiers sat
stiff in a corner and looked as if the State Bank had raised its rate,
and the military kept to themselves and discussed promotions and the
damned journalistic moles. The hostess herself hovered about with a
little frown on her brow. Perhaps it was Stellan’s irritation that
infected the others. He was not the only one waiting for Manne von
Strelert, everybody was saying,
“Wasn’t Captain von Strelert coming tonight...? I hope Manne won’t fail
us tonight...!”
Good old Manne seemed to be a special attraction! At last the cavalry
arrived in all its glory. The talk at once became livelier and gayer.
Everybody chatted and laughed round the tall young officer with the
careless and mischievous eyes. Though not a wit there was nevertheless a
certain distinction in all that Manne said. He was especially
characterized by a kind of good-tempered acquiescence in his Fate. He
was capable of anything impossible and was always game. He realized that
somewhere within him there were numerous possibilities but it never
occurred to him to try to develop them. In his aristocratic helplessness
he had a certain likeness to those race horses which are so tall that
they can never feed themselves. They simply cannot reach down to their
fodder.
Manne von Strelert’s character was summed up in two prominent and widely
appreciated fundamental qualities: he could not say “no” and he had a
wonderful, glorious, never-failing bad luck in gambling. To this it
should be added that for some time past the owner of Kolsnäs found
himself in an embarrassing financial position. Is it then strange that
all eyes lit up around him and that tonight he was the greatest
attraction at Laura’s dinner?
Stellan occasionally reproached Manne in gentle and almost flattering
tones for his extravagance. He had during the course of years won
somewhat large sums of money from his old messmate and childhood friend.
And tonight he simply could not help winning more.
They had dined early so as not to be disturbed in their play. Manne took
the hostess in. That evening she courted the army.
Laura’s manner varied entirely according to the category of guests in
which she happened to be moving. She preferred to take her financiers
one by one, and whatever was said openly had often a hard metallic ring
about it. But with her officer friends she displayed a special abandon.
With them she was the personification of reckless gaiety. Her playful
coquetry, and her light-hearted, infectious laughter at once threw open
the gates to a paradise of irresponsibility and golden unconcern. Yes,
she could be quite delightfully gay, Laura, a veritable _saute marquis_
and _vogue la galère_.
Finance did not mind this apparent neglect and watched for an
opportunity to grind its own little axe.
Manne von Strelert was not the man to resist any kind of seduction,
least of all Laura’s. He soon began to drink her health, in all sorts of
drinks, and to make a series of perfectly absurd little speeches in her
honour.
Laura frankly enjoyed the admiration, both coarse and refined, of her
hair and shoulders, of these connoisseurs of horses and women. But in
the midst of the laughter and toasts her eyes now and then searched Levy
and Stellan. Nothing had been arranged beforehand. But it so happened
that they had every reason to be pleased with her. There was surely—hang
it all—no harm in her enjoying herself to the full with dear old Manne,
who at this moment seized an opportunity of pressing her hand under the
table.
Dinner was over and the party was just rising from the table when Manne
noticed some little pink shells that had been brought in as ashtrays. He
filled one with the last drops of his champagne:
“One more toast,” he exclaimed! “A toast for the little pink shell and
the eternal line of curve.”
And with his hand Manne indicated round his lady a very significant wave
line.
Laura pushed back her chair and stood there with her bare white
shoulders and a seductive smile. She lifted her soft arms as if
waltzing.
“Yes, I appeal to you, gentlemen, am I not round?”
“Indeed, indeed,” sighed Manne and kissed her shoulders.
“Then you must see how one of our youngest Parisian painters has
imagined me,” she laughed. “I made a little trip there a few weeks
ago....”
All eyes turned upon Levy for a second. They knew that he also had been
to Paris a few weeks ago. He looked quite unconcerned.
“The most modern art is like an unshelled chestnut,” he said. “Green and
full of prickles.”
“I look like a starved green skeleton with mauve-coloured frost bites,”
Laura interposed, eagerly, with her cheeks a little flushed.
“I told the great master that it was not kind of him to make me so
angular. Then he bowed and said: ‘Art is free, Madame, and on this
occasion it has not been able to take any notice of your roundness.’
Yes, that’s what he said. But come with me and look at the masterpiece
for yourselves.”
With the whole troop of laughing men after her Laura ran through the
yellow drawing room into her little reading and writing room where she
had hung the curiosity. She opened the door quickly and almost stumbled
over something that lay across the threshold.
It was Georg. He had crept out of bed to peep at the party through the
keyhole and had fallen asleep at his post. He lay there dressed only in
his outgrown nightshirt and with black streaks across his knees from his
stockings. There was an air of sad neglect and helplessness over the
whole emaciated little figure.
“Who the deuce is that kid?” laughed one of the men, who did not know
that Laura had a child.
Laura grew rigid for a moment, but quickly recovered herself and assumed
as well as she could the pose of the tender-hearted mother. She lifted
up the boy, wrapped him up as decoratively as possible in her shawl, and
kissed his cheek. And at this kiss from his mother Georg awoke in the
midst of the glorious party. Still half asleep, he threw his arms round
her neck and whispered something out of his dreams: “Mummie ... princess
all the same.”
Everybody politely applauded the group. Only Levy was silent. He stood
alone and stared obstinately at the famous picture, which nevertheless
was tame compared with the geometrical excesses of some later schools.
“Hm ... frost bites,” he mumbled in a low voice. “Perhaps there is
something in the frost bites all the same....”
His voice sounded quite impersonal, as if he had not known what he was
saying.
Laura carried off the boy quickly. She did not stop in the nursery. From
there they might hear. No, she went all the way to her own bedroom.
There she let loose her anger. There she suddenly began to pinch and
beat the disobedient child who had torn away the veil, betrayed, and
exposed her. It was as if she had wished to take her revenge for all the
annoyance, and all the worries he had caused her from the moment that
she was first conscious of his presence in her womb. It was as if she
wished to take her revenge for all the memories from Ekbacken, which
seemed to her unspeakably oppressive and outworn.
“You were told to stay in bed!” she panted. “Why don’t you obey? I shall
smack you if you don’t obey!”
Georg did not scream. He shrank under the blows and glanced horrified at
his mother. He did not understand. Oh, how the pretty rings hurt when
she beat him. And just now she had smiled and kissed him. He did not
understand. His little soul was full to the brim with strange and
ghastly questions....
The memory of this terrible contrast was to remain with him all his
life.
Laura suddenly felt ashamed and stopped beating him. She felt a sort of
gratitude that he did not scream, and she led him back to his bed as if
nothing had happened.
“There, go to sleep now,” she said in a tone of indifference.
And then she went back with her most charming smile to her guests.
Play started. They did not start playing cards at once. First of all
they gaily laid their stakes at roulette. Laura was banker and imitated
the professional croupiers’ cry: “_Faites vos jeux! Rien ne va plus!_”
Laura always had phenomenally good luck, and all laid their stakes as if
it were a tribute due to the hostess. Then they began to play whist or
bridge, which had just become fashionable, in order to pass on to écarté
or vingt-et-un later on.
Stellan from the very beginning appropriated the well-primed Manne. It
was interesting to see the two friends together at the card table. Manne
was no gambler. He threw down his stakes with reckless optimism and with
a boyish challenge to Fate. And he swore a little in evident surprise
each time he did not win. Stellan on the contrary was a born gambler, at
once cold and passionate. Nobody who saw him at cards could fail to see
that this was his great vice. His excitement showed itself in a slight
pallor in his smooth, distinguished features, from which everything else
seemed to slip away as from a polished metal. A blue vein pulsed in his
hard clear forehead. He spoke shortly and sharply, and unconsciously
raised his voice as if he had been surrounded by deaf people.
Forgetfulness, slowness, or bad play drew forth his biting irony. He
himself had an astounding memory for cards and a keen sense of
observation. He took the game as seriously as if it were a science, and
he jealously guarded it as a precious joy which a gentleman should know
how to invest with a certain cult. He impressed you at one and the same
time as an expert and custodian of chance. Thus he developed in his
friends a real devotion to play which concealed from weaker heads among
them its dangerously exciting and undermining viciousness.
During the course of years the stakes had grown bigger and bigger. They
started now where formerly they had ended. Stellan won, but never
enough. So it was today again. It was usually not difficult to pluck
poor Manne. But just now he had had a little spell of absurd good luck,
which had decreased Stellan’s winnings. And Stellan had to have cash. He
then made a plunge, drove up the stakes, doubled five times!—ten times!!
One after another the bids fell. Before Manne could turn around Stellan
held in his hand three thousand-crown notes and a cheque for five
thousand.
Levy had already finished playing bridge. He never played anything else.
Now he was standing by their table looking on at the final spasms.
“What’s this, Kolsnäs is not entailed?” he suddenly asked in an
indifferent tone. It seemed as if he had not understood himself the
impertinence of the question.
Stellan expected a scene, but Manne was not his usual self tonight.
“Oh no,” he muttered, “it is waiting for God’s chosen people.”
“Why not just as well only for propertied people,” Stellan cut in.
Manne rose. He suddenly looked sober and slapped Stellan on the back.
“You are difficult tonight,” he said. “Now I must have a whiskey and
soda.”
The art of losing gracefully never forsook him.
Stellan leant back in his chair and puffed hard at his torn cigarette.
He felt his winnings like a cool shiver in his limbs.
Levy was still standing beside him with a pale smile:
“Shall we two play a little?”
“I am rather tired.”
Levy raised his voice so that he should be heard all over the room:
“Are you so anxious to keep your winnings?”
Stellan grew pale with anger and had a sharp answer ready, but then it
struck him that he might just as well be engaged when Manne came back
for his revenge. He forced himself to a polite gesture towards the empty
chair and Levy sat down.
They continued with écarté and, against Stellan’s wish, the stakes were
high. This was something so unusual for Levy that everybody gathered
around them.
Now Stellan had no longer a sunburnt, cursing country youth opposite
him. Over his cards he saw a pale immobile mask. It was the pallor of a
race fifty generations removed from forest and field but for whom
calculation is second nature. Yes, it seemed as if he had the very soul
of money pitted against him. He felt all the time that his winnings were
insecure and that he would inevitably lose.
Levy sat there with half-closed eyes as if half asleep, and in the end
won from Stellan all that he had won and more into the bargain. He had
seen that his opponent was not at ease, and that he had had to win that
evening. And that is exactly the time when one is most likely to lose.
Levy had only to wait till he had won enough in the ups and downs of the
game. Then he proposed higher stakes than Stellan could afford. Then it
was Stellan’s turn to rise from the table and take a whiskey and soda.
“How can you find anything in this miserable gambling?” Levy scornfully
flung after him.
Then he kissed Laura’s hand and drove home with the thousand-crown notes
and Manne’s I.O.U. in his pocketbook....
It was late. All the guests except Stellan and Manne had already said
good-bye. Laura yawned openly. But Manne insisted on staying and would
not go.
“Laura dear, do let me stay till six. Only till six when my horse is
groomed. I must mount him a moment before ... before ... oh, good
God....”
Laura knew what was coming. Manne was going to be sentimental. The
situation no longer had any novelty. She had an irresistible longing to
go to bed and with a mocking curtsey entrusted Manne to the care of
Stellan, who never slept after a night’s gambling. Then she withdrew.
And as Laura sat in her lace nightdress and pink silk boudoir cap and
counted out her neat little winnings on the eiderdown, Stellan and Manne
lounged in their easy chairs in front of the fireplace. The fire had
gone out long ago.
The dawn was raw and dismal. Half-emptied glasses with lip marks and
thumb marks, cigar ash and stinking, saliva-soaked cigar ends were
everywhere. And then the pitiless sharp grey light peeping in through
the blinds and the cold anguish of the dry air itself in a room where
people have worn out their nerves with barren excitement.
On the carpet lay a torn knave of spades grinning at them.
Manne began to talk about “the Glove.” He always did at this time of
night.
“The Glove” was Manne’s pet name for a plump little lady who had a glove
shop in Regeringsgatan. For a long time she had kept Manne at a distance
and he had been forced to purchase and make presents of an incredible
number of pairs of gloves in order to win her favour. And now marriage
with her was not the most impossible of dear old Manne’s eccentricities.
He was unfaithful to “the Glove” now and then with ladies of his own
class, but he always returned to her, disappointed and full of remorse.
Her diligence, thrift, wordly wisdom and other bourgeois qualities had
for him an exotic attraction, the whole charm of the incomprehensible.
Manne tried to kick away the knave of spades and looked appealingly at
Stellan with his boyish, humid eyes.
“If you only knew what a woman she is! Damn me if the tears do not come
into my eyes when she sews on my buttons. And I had promised her not to
gamble again! What will she say when I tell her this?”
Stellan sat there shivering and sleepless, with the worries of tomorrow
like poison in his veins and nerves. He was sick of Manne’s
sentimentality. It was as if a night frost had fallen on their
friendship:
“Why the devil do you tell her?”
Manne smiled a pathetic smile:
“You don’t understand, Stellan. I can hide nothing from her. I can’t. I
should go mad at once if I did. She is my reason and conscience, you
know. We won’t go just yet, Stellan. It isn’t six yet. And I must ride a
little before I talk to her....”
Manne poured out a glass of soda water and swallowed it in one draught:
“Ugh!” he said, “how awful it all was!” And then he suddenly began to
talk about old Kolsnäs, about his father, the late chamberlain, who had
taken part in the battle of Dybböl, and about his poor little shivering
mother with her sewing basket and screen and fires well into June. And
he talked about their long battle on the lake outside Stonehill and
about their riding trips in the Backa forest.
“Do you remember it all, Stellan? Those were fine times, weren’t they,
Stellan? My old home. It is a damned shame. What have I done with it all
now? I am a traitor. Yes, a traitor. Curse it!”
Stellan, cold and numb, felt a shock pass through him. Was this how
matters stood? Was it as bad as that with Kolsnäs?
“What nonsense are you talking?” he muttered.
Manne stared anxiously at him:
“Stellan, old man, it ... you had better not go to the bank with my
cheque ... not tomorrow, anyway....”
“Why not?”
“Because there is nothing there, not a farthing.”
“You ought to have told Levy that. He won it from me.”
For the second time a shock passed through Stellan, as he pronounced
Levy’s name. But Manne sank back in the chair staring straight out in
front of him:
“I shall have to clear out,” he muttered, half crying. “Tomorrow I shall
have to get away. What will ‘the Glove’ say?”
Stellan was again cool, tense, fully awake. He was one of those people
who do not know the meaning of melancholy or remorse. Their egotism is
so rounded and complete that such things do not touch them. Neither can
they admit defeat. That would be the end of their world. Adversity to
them only points forward to new opportunities to be seized.
Levy wants Kolsnäs, thought Stellan. Once again he sat there, tense,
cool and collected with the blue vein throbbing in his forehead just as
if the table and the cards were again before him. Levy wants Kolsnäs,
that’s as clear as daylight.
Each time he thought of Levy he felt as if he had been pricked by a
spur. He hated Levy, and during these moments he was learning a great
deal from him. What was it Levy had said? “How can you find anything in
this miserable gambling?” Yes, that’s what he said. Things which had
seemed impossible before seemed all at once self-evident, final. Yes, of
course, that’s it, he thought. I’ll trick Levy and save myself.
He suddenly looked Manne steadily in the eyes:
“Do you know what it means to write cheques like that?” he asked. His
tone was so sharp that poor Manne was startled.
“No...!”
Stellan blurted out the worst:
“Prison, old man, if you don’t find the five thousand by the time the
banks open. Can you do it?”
“No, it is impossible.”
“I’ll try to get you the money, but on one condition—that you won’t let
Levy have Kolsnäs.”
That was a condition that the astounded Manne agreed to with all his
heart.
“No, because I think I know of a better buyer, if you really can’t keep
the estate. That’s agreed then. You take your ride and confess to ‘the
Glove’ and I will go and hunt for the money. We meet outside the bank at
half past nine. Good-bye!”
Stellan called a cab and drove straight to Selambshof.
Peter the Boss was of course impossible at Laura’s parties. But there
was all the same a secret channel of communication between her drawing
room and Selambshof. Peter, too, had his interests in society.
Stellan opened a window, climbed in and sat down on the edge of his
brother’s bed. He looked like a fat hog when he was asleep. On the night
table lay an old silver watch, a cash book and a half-finished cigar.
Peter jumped up and rubbed his eyes:
“What the devil is the matter?”
“Business. Kolsnäs is ripe. What will you give me if I get it for you
for five hundred thousand?”
Peter was not quite awake yet, but he could always manage to appear
indifferent at first.
“Damn Kolsnäs,” he rattled, lighting the half-smoked cigar.
Stellan opened both windows. He also looked supercilious and
indifferent. From his manner you would have thought he was the master,
rolling in money, and Peter the servant.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” he cut in. “You know you want Kolsnäs like dear
life.”
Peter felt a mixture of fear and secret admiration for his brother’s
brilliancy and his careless way of handling money. Stellan was, as a
matter of fact, much more difficult to trick than he had believed. Peter
held nearly all Stellan’s shares in Selambshof as security, but he
didn’t own them and there was a damned big difference between the two
things. But now this fine gentleman must surely be in a difficult
dilemma as he came so early in the morning.
“You seem to imagine that I lie dreaming about Kolsnäs since you come
whilst I am still in bed,” ventured Peter cunningly.
“I come from one of Laura’s shows. It was there I saw this opportunity.
The matter is urgent. Levy is after the estate. What do you offer?”
“Well, five thousand!”
Stellan laughed aloud:
“Ridiculous! I want fifty thousand.”
Now it was Peter’s turn to laugh.
“You are mad. You have no idea what a big sum fifty thousand is.”
“Fifty thousand. Not a farthing less.”
Peter began to dress. He tried to do so slowly.
“I’ll send Thomson to Manne.”
“Good! Thomson will be kicked out.”
“I’ll go myself.”
“You’ll only see me. Manne will settle nothing without me. He has a
horror of business.”
“Well, I’ll give twenty thousand.”
“Good. Levy will get the estate.”
“Thirty thousand.”
“Fifty, not a farthing less.”
Peter whined, reproached Stellan for his extravagance, dwelt upon the
fabulousness of the sum and his own miserable means. Meanwhile he
calculated quickly and surely and arrived at the result that anyhow it
would be a good stroke of business.
“Well, I suppose I shall have to present you with fifty thousand to
spend on champagne and gambling.”
Peter sounded quite broken-hearted. But Stellan was not at all touched.
He even demanded five thousand in cash. And as soon as Peter had
produced the notes he made off as quickly as he had come so that Peter
sat there and did not know what had really happened, and believed it was
some fine new way of robbing him of some cash. But Stellan returned and
in three days the whole business was settled.
Manne had, on Stellan’s advice, turned to the estate agent, O. W.
Thomson.
“Thomson has good connections with my brother, who might reflect on
Kolsnäs,” he said. “But it is better to choose an indirect way, because
you must not appear too keen.”
At Manne’s request Stellan was present at these transactions. That is to
say, at all except the last and decisive meeting. For by then he had
already got his fifty thousand. And he thought that Manne might as well
bear the responsibility himself if there should be any trouble. The
result was that Peter seized Kolsnäs for four hundred and fifty thousand
only by threatening to withdraw at the last moment—offensively simple.
Poor Manne was both sad and happy when it was all over. He was ashamed
to mention the fifty thousand to Stellan and thanked him warmly for his
help.
When drawing up the contract he had, by criminal negligence and
ignorance, completely forgotten to safeguard the interests of the people
on the estate. And this was very hard on a number of old tenants and
dependants who had now no refuge but the workhouse.
He had spoken a true word of himself that night:
“Traitor, traitor to his home and to the soil that had nourished him.”
And so it happened when Kolsnäs was thrown into the market in Laura’s
drawing room. It was not the first estate that had suffered such a fate,
nor would it be the last.
This affair had scarcely become known before Laura came rushing into
Stellan’s room. She was furiously angry.
“You have behaved abominably” she cried. “You have acted behind my back.
Why was I not told anything? I had almost promised Levy that he should
be allowed to do Manne that little service.”
Stellan made no effort to defend himself. He atoned for his crime by
giving his sister a beautiful bracelet of brilliants. There were several
of Laura’s jewels that had their little history.
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