II

+PETER THE BOSS IN LOVE+

One warm and calm Saturday evening in July Peter sat alone in his office

and examined his books. Round about him Selambshof seemed deserted. Not

a single soul had been visible the whole afternoon. But far away from

Kolsnäs on the other side of the lake an accordion was heard. They were

dancing in a barn and everybody was there.

Peter puffed aloud. He cursed the low, mellow, rich sunshine and the

still air in which so many small winged creatures were hovering about!

With his massive body he felt alone and helpless. He had often felt so

of late. And then there was practically nothing else but the books, the

soiled, faded Selambshof books up on the shelf by the fireplace, to busy

himself with. But Peter did not look only at the books of the current

year, he went back several years. Their soiled columns constituted his

excursions into the past, his diaries and memoirs. Here there were

entries and totals at which he had always smiled contentedly. In his

memory they were associated with all those who had let themselves be

cheated by him in one way or another and sometimes he had the feeling of

being amongst good and faithful friends. Yes, there are many ways of

fighting loneliness in this world.

Today Peter was more than unusually obstinate with his books. He had

already penetrated so far back in the books that the handwriting was not

his own scrawl nor that of Inglund’s but a soft elegant handwriting with

almost sensuous curls and flourishes. It was Brundin’s beautiful

handwriting, which still made Peter feel sick. He tried for the

hundredth time to enjoy the stale sweetness of victory. But it did not

bring him joy. He still had a queer feeling that Brundin had cheated him

of something ... something that Peter the Boss would never enjoy.

Then a woman dressed in white came tripping gaily across the lawn, a

plump little lady dressed in white with a big white bundle under her

arm. She disappeared round the corner of the kitchen. Peter put out his

head through the window and called out:

“Hallo! There’s nobody at home there! Come in here instead!”

Peter looked very surprised when the woman with the bundle came to the

door of the office:

“Upon my word, it’s ... isn’t it Frida?”

She answered with fluent tongue:

“Yes sir, it’s Frida right enough. I have the new laundry at Majängen

now—Frida Öberg, Laundress—No. 5, Solbacken. Here is the bill. Excuse my

bringing the laundry at this hour, but I had promised it on Saturday.

There is no change here at Selambshof, I see.”

Peter stood with the bill in his hand, staring at the laundress, who had

begun to pick collars, cuffs and starched shirts out of her bundle. How

strange that it was Frida he was staring at, Frida of Brundin’s bedroom.

That white and soft creature he had one night caught a glimpse of from

behind the blind in the bailiff’s wing. This then was the Frida of his

timid, oppressive, light-shy boyish dreams. There she stood, well

preserved, smiling, insinuatingly plump, equipped with such charms that

not even the simplest country yokel could help noticing them. Suddenly

she was enveloped by a warmth as from hot irons, thought Peter. And far

away at Kolsnäs they heard the accordion again tuning up a dance. Then

he felt a sudden furious desire for movement, to make a noise and jump

about with somebody in his arms. And he seized one of the shirts and

waved it about:

“I hope you have washed the wedding shirt well?” he cried out almost

menacingly.

“Why, are you going to get married, too?”

“Yes, this very moment, if necessary. Don’t you hear the wedding music?

Shan’t we take a turn, we two?”

With the shirt spread out before him he jumped about in a sort of

grotesque dance, threw his great arms round Frida and began to jump

about whilst the wedding shirt still flapped about them. The worn

floor-boards groaned under Peter’s weight, the dust rose high and the

flies buzzed away frightened from the paper ball below the lamp in the

ceiling.

Frida defended herself laughingly when Peter wanted to kiss her:

“No, I must go now, sir.”

Peter stood perspiring and nervous and withheld the money for the bill:

“Won’t you have a look round old Selambshof for a moment? There isn’t a

soul at home. I reign alone here now. Come along.”

He pulled her with him up to the main building and, eager and flushed,

piloted her through the dusty closed rooms where the old gloomy and

worn-out furniture slept and dreamed evil dreams in the heat and

twilight.

“It is so cursedly quiet here tonight,” exclaimed Peter. “Can’t you

laugh a little again so that I may hear what it sounds like?”

Frida laughed, but the echo came back hollow and scoffing from the

depths of the corridors. Then they entered the green smoking room off

the hall, which resembled a thousand other smoking rooms in so far as it

contained an equipment of guns, deers’ horns, elks’ heads and stuffed

birds. Peter seized the opportunity to impress upon her what a wonderful

Nimrod he was and what an expert on the secrets of animal life,

especially of animal sex attraction. He imitated the call of the

capercailzie, he described the feathers of the mating ruff and its

collar of feathers and finally he imitated the night call of the ruttish

elk and its stamping so that it echoed through the whole of the empty

house. Meanwhile he drew nearer and nearer to the door of the next room

where he slept in the summer because it was so much cooler there than in

his own wing. But when Frida saw that they were approaching the bedroom

she wisely stopped on the threshold and not even the wildest and most

seductive bird-calls could make her penetrate further. No, now she

suddenly remembered that she ought to have met a friend long ago. She

thanked him for all the kindness he had shown her and insisted on going.

Then Peter became furious and reproached her coarsely for her behaviour

with the bailiff:

“If that blackguard was good enough, I ought to be too—don’t you think

so?”

A hard look came into Frida’s eyes and she hissed out as if testing a

hot iron with her wet finger:

“I should like to tell you, sir, that I am on my own now and don’t need

to listen to anybody.”

“Don’t be so high and mighty. It was I who managed things so that you

escaped examination when Brundin was caught, because I was sorry for

you.”

Peter had no proofs at all that she too was involved in Brundin’s

frauds, but he always seized an opportunity of boasting of his kindness

and of threatening a little. Frida was not at all frightened. No, but

she was too worldly-wise to issue a challenge to money and power.

She therefore contented herself with lying in a humble tone about the

whole affair:

“No, I had nothing to do with that scoundrel, sir. And besides a poor

girl can’t understand all that men do....”

By now Frida had already backed out on to the stairs and as soon as she

felt safe she at once adopted her most seductive manner again:

“I hope I may iron many wedding shirts for you, sir,” she said, and

curtsied and smiled and tripped gaily away, white, plump and

coquettishly swaying whatever was capable of being swayed.

Peter stood on the stairs mumbling curses after her. Then he climbed

breathlessly up into the observatory and watched with his glass to his

eyes where she would emerge from the avenue into the road. He followed

the white little figure in the twilight till it disappeared in a strange

black house up on the ridge of the hill over Majängen.

A woman had entered the life of Peter the Boss. He was in love,

positively in love with Frida Öberg, owner of the Majängen Laundry, No.

5, Solbacken.

Peter had never been able to associate with decent women. He was

frightened of the “guinea hens,” as he called them. He grew nervous and

hot from the unaccustomed effort of not saying anything coarse or

mingling curses with his speech. He even felt a sort of fear of his

sister Laura. Once many years ago she had dragged him into a set of

Lancers and that was one of his most awful memories. Even today he felt

a shiver down his back whenever he saw a dress suit. Thus it is clear

that Peter’s erotic experiences were of the simplest. They were all lost

in the fog that lies between the revels of the evening and the sore head

and sordid regrets of the morning.

But now he was in love, but it was a delight mingled with not a little

worry and anxiety. From the very start he felt love as a threat to his

purse. He had anxious little suspicions that he was now more susceptible

to cheating than before. For the first time he had to be on his guard

not only against others but also against himself. “Ugh, this will be an

expensive business,” he thought, when the longing to see Frida again

came on him. She is no fool, that little witch! She won’t do anything

for nothing. He positively endowed her with a calculating cunning and a

mysterious seductive self-interest. But the more difficult and dangerous

he made her, the more he must love her. Peter the Boss suspected a soul

akin to his own.

He made up his mind not to appear too eager. No, I’ll wait till she

brings the laundry again, he thought. But time passed, until he could

not wait and began to hover about Majängen.

It was not exactly a pleasure to walk about there. There were no decent

roads, but only heaps of stones and clay holes, for the company had long

ago sold all the sites and had thus no interest in fulfilling its vague

promise as to the construction of roads. Besides, the inhabitants of

Majängen were unpleasant people. All the earliest purchasers, honest

workingmen and small tradespeople, who had bought the ground and built

upon it at too high a price, had been forced to leave their

marsh-dwellings. In their place a floating population had found its way

out to Majängen. The worst scum of the town population was to be found

there. And Selambshof and Peter the Boss were not exactly loved by them.

They rightly considered that it was his filth they had to wade in up to

their knees and that it was on his heaps of stones they almost broke

their legs.

So that when in his rosiest and most gentle dreams Peter wandered about

there, he was perturbed by expressive glances, tightly clenched fists in

trouser pockets and long, rude oaths at the house corners. And in the

windows there teemed pale and dirty children who took their fingers out

of their mouths in order to point at him as the bad man from Selambshof.

All that would not have mattered so much if Peter could only have caught

a little glimpse of his beloved. But he never saw her outside in the

clay, no plump smiling face showed itself above the window curtains of

the laundry up in the “asphalt” house. Thus he had christened the big

two-storied ramshackle house half way up Solberget, because it was

covered with asphalted cardboard outside the boards, and none of the

successive owners had been able to afford to repair the outer boards, so

that it remained there as black and dismal as it had been three years

ago. And it was confoundedly difficult to get to it, for there were only

steep narrow wooden steps leading past the entrance and Peter could not

climb up and down them all day long in order to steal a glance through

the window panes.

“Life is hard,” thought Peter, “you never meet those you want to meet.”

In the end he went home and wrote a letter. There are many ways of

interpreting one’s feelings. Peter’s was not very personal because his

eloquence was based on a lover’s advertisement in a newspaper and of

course any mention of marriage was carefully avoided. And somehow the

handwriting was not quite his. And he did not sign it Peter Selamb, but

“Frida’s own Elk.” That is what he did.

“Never put your name unnecessarily to any document...”

The answer came by return post and was both pleasing and disquieting.

Frida wrote that she was doing well and did not need to bow down to

anybody, but that she might find use for a new Laundry stove of the

Orion make and a blue silk coat with white revers. And then she allowed

herself to hint at the possibility of further sympathy.

Peter fully realized the risk of payment in advance, but he also

understood that without some magnanimity he would make no progress at

all. So with a swimming head he sent a round sum for the two objects

aforesaid. At the same time he wrote that he had found a little refuge

well protected from the eyes of the world where they might meet and

sympathize. The refuge was Stellan’s flat. Stellan had been ordered

North again, much to his annoyance, and Peter had charge of the keys. He

now hurried to the elegant little two-roomed flat in Karlavägen, removed

the name plate, aired the rooms, put away all Stellan’s belongings into

the wardrobes and sat down to wait.

Frida arrived dressed in the new blue silk coat and with the whole

warmth of the new Laundry heater of “Orion” make around her.

“I always keep my promises,” she whispered, “I’m made that way.... But

goodness me! how smart this is. Are you living here too, Sir?”

“I have taken all this for your sake, Frida,” said Peter pressing her to

him. “It has cost me a good deal.”

And then at last Peter got his reward....

He lived in supreme well-being in a world of peace. Late on Sunday

morning, long after Frida had stolen home, he lay quite still and

watched the sunlight creep across the beautiful Persian carpet. It was a

strange feeling of relief, it was as if it was only now that he had at

last given the _coup de grâce_ to the nightmare of his youth, the

stubborn Brundin.

* * * * *

If Peter imagined that Frida now belonged to him, without any further

expense, he was mistaken. A few more such moments and she considered

herself free again. And so she let him understand in a delicate way that

new favours had to be bought with new offerings. Peter suffered, but he

suffered more in his greed than in his affection. He was so accustomed

to think that everything depended on money that he could scarcely

imagine a man being loved for his own sake. He puffed and whined—but

paid. He did not even try to press down her demands by simulated

indifference. Such is love.

So things went on for a few months. Then one fine day Peter received a

letter in which Frida herself proposed a meeting without mentioning any

fresh gifts. He was just about to welcome her, feeling heartily content,

when he was checked by an inward shock. He suddenly remembered some land

he had once bought when the seller in apparent absentmindedness had

registered the transfer in his own name instead of the purchaser’s.

It was the only time he had ever been completely taken in.

Peter read through Frida’s letter again. It was too eager. It was not

quite the same old Frida. He felt a slight presentiment of something

unpleasant. A voice whispered in his ear to be on his guard. He knew

what it all meant. He sat long and worried in front of the clean sheet

of note paper. In the end he wrote something about important business

which prevented him from meeting her just then. After this extraordinary

exercise of self-control Peter felt very sorry for himself, so much so

that the tears came into his eyes. He wandered about puffing and sighing

among the fields of Selambshof, a victim of desire, suspicion, hope and

fear. Into the bargain Stellan wired that he was coming home immediately

from the North, so that Peter was obliged with a bleeding heart to screw

the name-plate on to the door again and set out all the photographs of

horses and ladies. Thus the discreet little free retreat for his amours

disappeared from view. Then another letter from Frida arrived in which

she begged and prayed to be allowed to see her own Elk very soon. Peter

was really touched. It was sweet to hear her beg like this. All there

was of hunger and love in his great body stirred within him. But he felt

at the same time that the thing was growing more and more dangerous. “I

must be strong,” he thought, “very strong.” And he did not answer the

letter, not a line....

Peter was not left long in doubt. It was as he had suspected, Frida was

expecting a child. She absolutely must see him, she wrote. She was so

ill and so run down. If he did not arrange things for her at once she

would drown herself....

Peter sat long staring at the letter and it did not affect him in the

way he would have thought. Instead it rather comforted him in a strange

way. It cooled his desire to think of her growing more and more

unshapely and ugly every day.

“Oh no,” he muttered, “you won’t drown yourself. I have paid for what I

have had. We are square. It is high time for me to return to my senses.”

The long tug of war between his love and his purse had ended in a

victory for the purse.

Peter burnt all Frida’s letters and did not answer a word. He had

decided to regard the affair with Frida as a dream. And he knew he could

do it. There was not a trace of proof. So wonderful was the instinctive

cunning of this man that he had not sent a single line signed with his

name, written in his own handwriting, or even posted at Selambshof. And

scarcely once had he been seen in Frida’s company. She on her side had

from the first had every reason to keep the matter secret, because a

liaison with the hated Peter the Boss would at once have driven away all

her customers in Majängen.

But Peter was not to escape as unscathed as he had imagined. Frida was

not at all the sort of person to allow herself to be hanged in silence.

For a time she continued to bombard him with letters, full of entreaties

and reproaches. Then she began to hang around Selambshof, big, swollen,

with a sinister spotted face and awful to see. Peter kept a sharp

lookout and succeeded for a long time in avoiding her. But one winter

evening she suddenly confronted him in the avenue. Peter did not even

greet her, but walked on as if he had not noticed her. Then she seized

him by the sleeve and poured over him a wild flood of curses and

threats. There were no witnesses. Peter let the flood pass over him with

great calm—yes, positively with a kind of enjoyment. Only now when he

heard her voice and saw her body did he feel the child as something

real. And in his innermost heart he no longer doubted that it was his.

No, it was almost a pleasure to think how something of himself was

irresistibly developing within her. He enjoyed that sensation with the

last cruel glowing spark of his love. But his voice was low and ice-cold

when at last he answered her. And he spoke slowly as if he wanted to

impress something for all eternity upon her consciousness.

“Not a farthing,” he said. “Take from what you and Brundin stole. From

us you have had enough.”

With that he shook her off and went away.

* * * * *

Frida ceased to hover around Selambshof. She adopted new tactics. She

stayed at home in Majängen and talked. There was no longer any truce of

silence. To everybody who came she opened her heart concerning the

scoundrel at Selambshof, who would not do the proper thing. As the

unhappy victim of Peter Selamb she won much sympathy and many new

customers in Majängen. Her laundry was besieged by the women and became

a sort of focus for the hatred of Peter the Boss. The whole community

waited excitedly for the Spring Sessions.

But a good deal was to happen before then, and Peter would have several

reasons for reflecting on Majängen this winter.

There was the old business of the water supply. It had been decided

after several stormy meetings that water was to be laid on in the houses

at Majängen. It was necessary, because the wells were insufficient and

tainted. Part of the necessary money had already been collected and then

Peter’s permission to lay down the pipes was sought. It was considered

to be only a matter of form. The streets were of course his, but even if

he did not fulfil his promise of making roads it never occurred to

anybody that he would deny the people he had humbugged facilities for

the pipes. But that was exactly what Peter did.

“The ground is mine, and if you want to put down pipes you will have to

pay for them,” he said.

This answer was unworthy of Peter the Boss. It could be no pleasure to

have a hotbed of epidemics just outside your door. He acted in direct

opposition to his own interests. But it is a fact that one hardening of

the heart brings in its train others. He was furious with everything

that was brewing against him in that dark _charnel_ house. And he hated

to think of the coming Spring Sessions. And that is why he said “No,” an

obstinate, sullen, impossible “no,” which, as we have said, was quite

unworthy of the cleverness of Peter the Boss.

This was too much. The newspapers then got hold of him. The reporters

were about to catch the mood of the winter twilight. They described the

horrors of the outskirts of the town, the struggle between town and

country, tearing each other to pieces in an indescribable chaos, the

bottomless roads, the ragged hillside, the torn pines, the maimed,

squinting, hunchbacked, cold-sweating, ramshackle houses. And in the

midst of it all came the Salvation Army to their red barn with “Blood

and Fire” over the cross on the door. “Starvation and Frost” were

everywhere and thus the symphony was complete. Here hope, misfortune,

idleness, thrift, crime and the new life thronged together. Here the

scum that the town had cast out huddled together with the indomitable

spirits that boldly sought a new life on new ground. And just now when

all the good influences were co-operating, after a pathetic struggle, in

an united effort to make something worthy of human beings out of their

grey stone hill everything was brought to nought by the mere word of

Peter Selamb. Who was this gentleman after all? Well, he was the manager

of Selambshof. He sat there in his sinister highwayman’s lair and took

toll from the citizens of the town and grabbed all the land that the

town required. We are suffocating, we want air, we want to get out! Very

well, please pay up. Everybody must pay toll to Peter Selamb of

Selambshof.

People did not choose their words. The newspapers outdid each other in

indignation. They were of course right. But it is not always well to be

too much in the right—not even for a newspaper—

The hammer blows rained down with a frequency sufficient to fell an ox.

But Peter merely blinked his eyes. He did not understand how anybody

could be afraid of the press. He had no real respect for any other kind

of letterpress than that which is to be found on bank-notes and in the

paragraphs of the penal code.

“Do these damned journalists want to teach me how to build suburbs?” he

muttered with an almost compassionate shrug of the shoulders. And he did

not budge an inch on this matter: “The ground is mine. If they want to

put down pipes, they will have to pay.”

After a few weeks the newspaper campaign against Peter the Boss

subsided. It had had no effect.

As for Frida, things took their course. It is seldom that the birth of a

child has been awaited with such general interest. The women in Majängen

talked of nothing else when they met at the wells, laboriously to pump

up the grey and ill-flavoured clay water. Round this child the hopes of

the whole community for vengeance on Peter the Boss were centred.

At the end of March, Frida Öberg gave birth to a son, who was named

Bernhard.

And then Peter received a summons to appear before the Court and he

arrived in a grey suit in his dog-cart with old “Interest.” And when he

came he appeared neither haughty nor humbled.

The Court lay by the high road some distance away from the suburb. But

all Majängen was of course there. The crowd stretched out as far as the

yard. Peter stepped forward with half-closed eyes and a good-tempered

grin on his face. Nobody could say he looked frightened. He slapped some

of the men on the back:

“Make room, boys, nothing is going to happen without me, anyhow.”

A Swedish crowd is harmless when it is sober. People stared and made

way. But a coarse voice was heard:

“He ought to be hanged....”

Peter had now reached the hall. On the other side of the long table with

the judge and the jurymen sat Frida. She had a bundle in her arms. She

stared Peter straight in the eyes and lifted up the child so that he

should really see it. Then a murmur passed through the hall and the

jurymen put their close-cropped heads together. Peter turned away his

eyes at once, shrugged his shoulders, and bowed to the judge as if to

say: “As between gentlemen, cut the whole thing short.”

Through his friends he had conveyed to the judge the truth about Frida

Öberg: An easy-going wench, maid at Selambshof, an affair with the

fraudulent bailiff, dismissed with him, vengeance, blackmail, etc.

The baby began to cry. Did Frida pinch it for effect or not? The judge,

who looked as if he were at a meeting of shareholders, glanced up from

his papers with a wry face:

“Is it necessary to bring the child here?”

Frida jumped up, grateful for this opportunity to make a demonstration.

“What am I to do when I am poor and alone, sir? I have nobody to look

after the poor boy.”

The judge remarked in a dry voice that he had been informed she had a

laundry and that her sister was working with her.

At last the summons was read and the judge began his questions. When

Frida once began to speak, she could not stop, but flung herself with

such a primitive force and such a naïve matter-of-factness into the

dismal love story that the judge at once thought it wise to order the

hall to be cleared.

Peter grinned with malicious pleasure as the angrily muttering

inhabitants of Majängen shuffled out.

When Frida had finished, Peter rose, looked at the wall, and stoutly

denied everything.

Then a witness was called. Peter suddenly recognized with a certain

discomfort the porter at Stellan’s house. Well, it appeared that he had

never seen them together, but only believed he had noticed that they

both stayed on the second floor. Peter was calm again. He had won worse

cases. Then the judge showed him a love letter signed “Bull Elk,” on the

reverse side of which there appeared a part of the Selambshof receipt

stamp. Peter boldly denied everything except the stamp. But he began to

feel rather glum.

The parties were dismissed during the deliberations of the Court. Frida

sat in the midst of a crowd of women and suckled the baby. But Peter

went out and patted old “Interest.” He stood there stroking and stroking

and found it difficult to look up. He felt hate all round him like

something prickly. He no longer felt safe. He would probably have to

resort to ... the last ...

After a long delay all were admitted into the Court again. It was black

with people but absolutely silent. The oath was taken.

All eyes were fastened on Peter the Boss. He seemed to shrink and grow

smaller as he stood there. Now he looked like an old bent and grey

peasant. Would he do what peasants had been accustomed to do so often

before in similar cases?

Peter stepped slowly up to the table. He felt just as if he were walking

in a vacuum. He seemed to be paralysed in the arm when he wanted to

place his hand on the Bible, the greasy old court Bible, which had seen

so many things. He could not help glancing at Frida. She also had risen

and taken a step towards the table. She looked at him with an expression

in which hatred and anxiety mingled with a strange cold curiosity. The

child also stared at him with vacant black eyes. And a little hand moved

with awkward, blind jerks. Peter suddenly thought of a newborn,

trembling young fox which he had once pulled out of its lair and killed

with the butt end of his gun. He felt queer, sick. He was afraid ...

afraid.... For a moment he let his hand fall....

The judge fixed him with his eye:

“Well, what’s the matter? Can’t you take the oath?”

Peter started. He suddenly heard Stellan’s clear sneering voice:

“Clodhopper! In love with an old servant girl, what? Ridiculous!”

He placed his hand on the Bible again. The judge recited the oath with

the expression of one who had been offered at dinner hare that was too

high. Peter repeated it after him. He wanted to speak quickly, but he

could only get the words out slowly. His voice was thick and

indescribably humble and there was in him something of the fat rat and

the lascivious dog.

Frida had been quiet, surprisingly quiet during all this. Then her voice

was suddenly heard. There was no cry, no sob, no longer any affectation:

“He swore false all the same.” And it sounded like a weary statement of

fact.

With that the case was finished and the defendant was acquitted of

responsibility for the child. The judge muttered something to the Clerk

of the Court and the jurymen next to him. Nobody in the hall moved.

Peter was the first to go out, straight past all the amazed, loathing

and disgusted faces that stared closely at him. He staggered out into

the cool, dazzling April sunshine. He stood there fumbling with the

reins and patting old “Interest’s” back and muttered inanely:

“How have things been with you, old girl? How have things been with you?

They have been playing hell with your old master, really hell.”

Peter got up in his dog-cart and drove with slack reins down towards the

point where the road to Selambshof turned off. Then he suddenly heard

behind him a prolonged shrill, strident whistling, a sound that seemed

to be pure venom.

It was a greeting from Majängen. It was the signal of a long and bitter

guerilla war.

* * * * *

Peter had won his case—but he felt all the same confoundedly dismal. He

could eat nothing for dinner, though he took a couple of appetisers. And

things did not improve when Stellan rang up. Fancy he had heard of it

already. He was absolutely furious:

“Scandalous,” he cried, “grotesque—that sort of thing should be settled

on the quiet. You are a damned clodhopper, you make us all impossible.”

Peter put down the receiver, hurt, sad, almost ready to cry. “Abuse,” he

thought, “nothing but abuse. And all the same it was really for

Stellan’s sake that I ... swore....”

With the coming of dark, Peter began to be frightened. He could not

forget all those eyes staring at him in the hall. And every one of them

knew that he had forsworn himself. Perjury! What did that matter now,

when nothing could be proved. He had put his hand on the book and

repeated what that damned judge—who as a matter of fact was a rake in

financial difficulties himself—had said. But he, Peter, had not asked to

lay his hand on the book. It was the Court that had forced him into

entirely unnecessary folly. Anyhow he had certainly won his case. Why

the devil then should he have to lay his hand on the book? The book, the

book ... Peter suddenly felt cold inside. The old terror of his

childhood rose out of the depths of the past and seized him. He had of

course never felt anything so noble as an honest doubt. He had never

felt any sort of contact with the powers for which the Bible stood. A

little piece of Kristin’s and Hedvig’s hard old God, the centre of

Selambshof’s gloomy crippled terror, still survived deep down in his

soul beneath the rich flora of lies and dishonesty. “So help me God in

body and soul,” yes, that was what he had sworn. Supposing God should

punish him now! Supposing he were to take away from him all that he

possessed! Supposing he had to sit naked, starved, and alone in the dark

forest just as he had dreamt as a child!

Peter was afraid of the God in the book, afraid as a negro of his

fetish....

Oh, if only he had had Hedvig to talk to. She knew all about that sort

of thing. She was the medicine man who knew the appropriate spell...!

The clock had already struck twelve when Peter set out to look for a

Bible in the great dark owl’s nest called Selambshof. From one room to

another he walked searching in every corner, but without finding what he

looked for. At last he crept stealthily into the housekeeper’s room like

a thief and stole her Bible from her night table. Then he sat down to

turn over the pages, greedily fastening on everything that spoke of

wrath and threats and punishment. With swimming head and smarting eyes

he made himself drunk with fear. At dawn he staggered trembling and

shivering into the office and took a thousand-crown note out of the

safe. And he spread it out so that he might really see how large it was.

Then he put it in the housekeeper’s Bible—at one of the worst

passages....

That was the way out of Peter the Boss. He tried to bribe God with a

thousand crowns.

As soon as it was dark the following evening he stole towards Majängen

with the note in his pocket. It would have been simpler of course to

send the money by post. But that was not good enough. The post is such a

silent and mysterious institution. He was afraid that his sacrifice

would go unnoticed by the Lord. And if he could “bull” shares by his

self-abnegation that would be all to the good. So he would deliver the

money himself—though of course without witnesses. Otherwise it might be

dangerous.

Peter crept forward in the rain with the brim of his hat turned down and

his collar turned up. It was really bold of him to go to Majängen now,

but he was not the first whom fear has made bold. He slipped, stumbled,

and stepped into holes in the darkness on the bottomless roads. Several

times he thought he heard steps and whispering voices behind him. But

these sounds were at once drowned in the soughing of the poor meagre

pine branches which were struggling against the storm somewhere up in

the darkness above his head. Now he would reach the asphalt house in a

moment. Black as misfortune it hung there over the damp edge of the

cliff. The laundry was closed, but there was a light in the window.

Peter was just going to sneak up the long wooden staircase to

reconnoitre when suddenly there came something whizzing through the

darkness. It was a rain of big stones. Peter drew back a step but was

hit by the next shower in the back just below the neck and also on the

head. He fell forward without a sound, and lay there in his own clay

like a sack of sand.

These were the first shots in the war between Selambshof and Majängen.

Fatal hits. Peter was after all on the way to his woman and child. There

was perhaps after all just a chance of Peter turning human being.... But

then the stones intervened...!

Peter was unconscious and half suffocated by the clay. The

thousand-crown note still lay in his pocket and it never reached its

destination. He woke up in his bed at Selambshof. And his first thought

in the midst of all his pains was: “That’s what you get for trying to do

good...!”

Peter had to stop in bed quite a long time. He had injured his spine. He

got up again even more bent, more pale and more flabby in the face than

before.

He was now a man without pity. If Peter the Boss had had before his

sentimental moments, they were now a thing of the past. And he had, as

it were, grown too coarse for all fear. And he procured for himself a

watch-dog—a great, shaggy, wolf-like monster—chiefly for the pleasure of

seeing people anxiously sneaking past Selambshof. And then the harsh

barking of the dog was a kind of company at nights. For Peter had begun

to find difficulty in sleeping.

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