+THE GREAT DINNER+
Leaning against the polished black marble counter in a magnificent new
bank was standing a thin slightly grey gentleman with a rigid haughty
face. He was rather pale, and in spite of the summer heat was dressed in
a closely buttoned-up dark frock-coat. He was Stellan Selamb, ex-Captain
of the Göta Guards, now landed proprietor. He had suffered since his
long shooting expedition in Africa from the after effects of a malarial
fever which made him sensitive to chill.
Stellan wore mourning crepe round his arm. His father-in-law had moved
down to the aristocracy in the sepulchral vault at Trefvinge half a year
ago, not without having first immortalized his memory by a donation to
the House of Nobles and in this way gaining posthumous admittance.
Stellan had arranged to meet Laura at the bank. He felt quite
comfortable in banks nowadays, since he no longer had any bills to meet
on their due date. He had waited more than a quarter of an hour without
showing any special signs of impatience. He enjoyed the quiet hum, the
hushed murmur of voices, as in a temple. And indeed the big vaulted hall
supported on its massive polished stone pillars was like a temple above
his shining silk hat. Behind the counter the bank clerks solemnly
officiated at the high altar of capital, to the accompaniment of
rustling bank-notes, ringing coins and the rattling of the calculating
machines that reminded you of eternally revolving prayer wheels.
It was a temple raised to the real State religion. Above its high copper
doors there ought to have stood in thin gold letters the one great word:
“Possess!”
Here in the bank Stellan almost seemed to grow reconciled to the thought
of his new brother-in-law. At first he had felt a pronounced discomfort
when the news of Laura’s marriage in Petersburg suddenly tumbled down on
him at Trefvinge. Her husband, Count Alexis von Borgk, was a Finnish
senator of the Bobrikov régime and was a very well-known instrument of
Tzarism in Finland. And Laura had written that they meant to move over
to Sweden. Stellan did not need to see his wife screw up her face to
feel anxious concerning the reception of the couple in society.
But Count von Borgk was rich, very rich, it was said. And here in the
bank Stellan felt, as I said before, a little calmer.
At last Laura appeared through the swingdoors, smiling light-heartedly,
just pleasantly plump, perhaps a shade more blonde than before. She was
dressed in white, dazzling white, from the silk ribbon in her hat to the
tips of her shoes below the rich folds of her skirt.
“Good-morning, Laura dear! Congratulations. It was a surprise!”
“For me too,” said Laura and smiled her most innocent smile. “I had
positively no idea I was going to get married. But why does Your
Highness give audience here and not at Trefvinge?”
“Oh, I wanted to meet you alone the first time.”
“I see—and Elvira detests banks, doesn’t she...?” Laura looked round and
turned up her nose a little: “Well, so here we are back in this
gossipping hole. And I who felt so happy in Petersburg! Asia, that’s the
place for me!”
Stellan blinked his eyes somewhat nervously:
“Why did you not stay in—Asia, then, my dear Laura?”
“I can understand that it would have saved Elvira some worry. But Alexis
has altogether withdrawn from politics. And he does not feel at home in
either Finland or Russia. He is just selling his estates there. ‘I have
saved them from one revolution,’ he says, ‘but I should not succeed in
the next.’ He longs for the peace of Sweden. It was the last
negotiations that unexpectedly detained him. He is coming next week....”
The bank began to fill up with people. Stellan proposed that they should
go down into the safe deposit where he had some papers to look through.
It was quiet and cool down in the crypt of the Mammon temple. The
electric lights hung more heavily and more motionless there than
anywhere else in this catacomb of wealth, where deeds of mortgages,
receipts and share certificates slept their sleep in hundreds and
hundreds of polished steel boxes in the walls, and where there were
discreet and comfortable little compartments for the devotions of the
worshippers.
Sister and brother sat down in one compartment.
“So this is your refuge nowadays,” said Laura. “Well, but what about
your Aeronautic Society and your ballooning? I have looked in the papers
but have never seen your name.”
“No, I have given it up.”
“Yes, it is easier to go up with a hundred thousand in debts than with
double the amount in income. But you still gamble in this little town, I
suppose?”
Stellan shrugged his shoulders:
“I’ve given that up, too,” he muttered.
“But what in God’s name do you do then?”
“I cut off coupons and look after my malaria. But it was not of me we
were speaking, but of you. Where do you intend to settle?”
“Well, not in the country, that is certain,” exclaimed Laura, and one
could see in her face that this point had been the subject of
discussions.
“So your husband wants to settle on an estate.”
“Yes, he imagines he does.”
“What if you should make a compromise and take Selambshof.”
“Selambshof! That dismal old place! Are you mad?”
“Why not? The big house stands quite unoccupied. Repaired and restored
it might make a splendid home. And then it would be useful to keep an
eye on Peter. He is getting too awful. There are always stories about
him in the papers.”
Laura looked at her brother coldly:
“The master of Trefvinge is afraid of the papers. And so he wants to put
me in as a lovely guardian for Peter.”
Stellan lowered his voice:
“There are other reasons too. Peter is, as a matter of fact, beginning
to go down hill. He is yellow and flabby in the face and he doesn’t take
care of himself. If I am not mistaken something may soon happen. We have
great interests to guard.”
Laura suddenly became thoughtful. She swung the gold knob of her white
sunshade and looked as if she were making calculations. She always did
this when she was serious.
Stellan had got his papers and the steel lid of his safe closed with a
bang:
“You needn’t say anything definite now,” he said. “I will arrange a
family dinner out there when your husband comes. My man will have to
clean up a little, as best he can. And on a fine summer evening
Selambshof doesn’t look so bad.... Well, we shall see.”
Laura nodded silently. As a matter of fact over there in the East she
had boasted a little of her social relations. Count von Borgk had
perhaps partly married her in order to be introduced to the aristocratic
circles of Sweden. And that is why she wanted Selambshof to appear as
attractive as possible.
They left the vault.
Up in the bank they met Levy with a black portfolio under his arm and
surrounded by a crowd of business friends. He was pale, handsome, and
still wore his old exquisitely ironical expression. He hurried up and
bowed to Laura.
“Congratulations, Countess von Borgk! Is it true what people say, that
you won your husband at roulette?”
Levy was his old self.
Laura tapped him on the shoulders with her sunshade and laughed
unconcernedly. But Stellan looked stiffly after the Jew as he
disappeared in eager discussion with his company.
Sister and brother stopped for a moment at the corner before they said
good-bye:
“That fellow Levy is making up to Hedvig, I think,” Stellan mumbled.
“The winding-up of the estate took an enormous time. They say he still
appears out there at Lidingön.”
There was a malicious flash in Laura’s eyes:
“Hedvig? Poor fellow!”
“It would not be exactly pleasant to have Levy in the family, don’t you
think so?”
Laura stood there in shining white and without a trace of a flush.
“No ... perhaps not....”
“It would be best to give Hedvig a hint—tactfully—that Levy is—second
hand....”
“Nonsense, just frighten her and tell her that Levy wants her money.
That will have more effect!”
Then they separated.
“Ugh,” Laura mumbled as she walked about in the sunshine outside the
Grand Hotel, “ugh, how moral Stellan has grown.”
From which you can see that everything is relative in this world.
* * * * *
Peter stalked home from his tailor. It was Stellan who had forced him to
order a new suit of evening clothes for the family dinner.
Peter had at first obstinately refused. It seemed to him a matter of
honour not to betray his greasy old evening coat. Not till Stellan had
promised to pay the bill did he give in.
“Tell the tailor you have won the suit as a bet,” Stellan hissed out.
“It is unnecessary to show people what a mean beggar you are!”
Peter took his revenge by ordering the most expensive things he could
get hold of.
He was walking homewards one sultry August night, yellow in the face,
bent and heavy. His head, which had always been a little askew, had sunk
between his shoulders. He walked on the edge of the foot path, staring
at the paving stones, and carefully avoided stepping on the joints, so
that sometimes he took gigantic steps and sometimes proceeded with a
ridiculous strut. It was always so when Peter went pondering over
business.
Twice he stole into small bars and had a glass. The further he came out
towards the suburb—his suburb—the more slowly he walked. He stopped at a
row of houses that were being built in a blocked up suburban street that
was under repair and from which you could see the tops of the masts in
the Ekbacken shipyard away in the background. These houses lay silent
and deserted. Their uneven brick walls glowed in the last rays of the
sun high up above the chasm of the street. But in the empty window-holes
the heavy twilight floated and he visualized all the struggles and mean
worries that would soon be housed there. Peter stood in the raw chilly
draught from the gaps in the walls and thoughtfully stirred a big trough
of mortar with his stick. His expression was at the same time one of
disapproval and contempt. “Don’t build,” he muttered, “don’t build! Buy
from those who have built beyond their means. Houses are worst for those
who have them first. Quite different from girls, ha, ha! But then they
are good, damned good. No shares and such rubbish for me. What is it
they say about a thief? Yes, he is one who has not had time to promote a
company, ha, ha! No, land and bricks are better. Both real bricks and
those that have engraved on them ‘robur et securitas.’”
After this monologue Peter stalked on in the twilight. He then came to a
rather wild and queer patch of stony ground which most resembled the
scene of a devastating battle. It was here that the country and town
skirmished with each other on a battlefield that was never cleared, full
of blown-up rocks, rubbish heaps, bottomless fragments of road and
fields brown and intersected with a deep trench. The town had pushed
forward its apparatus of siege: stone-cutters’ sheds, metal-crushers and
dynamite boxes. The country obstinately defended its retreat by guerilla
troops of creeping nettles and dock leaves, whilst one or two dried-up
dusty pines represented the remnants of the main army in retreat.
And over it all whirled the crows, the ravens of the battlefield.
But Peter was the marauder in this war. From each onward push of the
town he would creep home with fresh booty of war. He strolled among the
rubbish and interposed his coarse signature between those of the buyer
and seller. And woe to him who had ventured too far in the heat of the
moment. They were his victims at once.
Peter struggled panting up a mountain of road metal. He stood up dark
against the red evening sky, a grinning and spying evil spirit on a
pedestal of millions of broken fragments of stones. He looked out over
the masses of houses of the town. They were enveloped in smoke,
smouldering like a weary brain after a long working day. The very air
around them seem used up and tired. Yes, there the stupid town lay and
sweated and converted Peter’s rocks into gold. It paid dearly for its
work. And still there was no gratitude in his glance as he looked down
upon it from the macadam mountain, but rather something resembling
inveterate distrust and aversion. The town, the community, and the
public were there to be cheated and that was all. This was the doom
pronounced on the honest old granite rocks and it made them less safe,
less suited for human habitation.
Then Peter turned on his heel and glanced at his own domains. Then he
saw the grey ribbon of a new road stretched past red fences and high
piles of wood, long and straight as an arrow it stretched with neat,
well measured plots of building land on either side. Yes, it was like
following the columns of a cash book with safe entries and solid
credits. All the way to the big sandpit all was well. But there Majängen
began, Peter’s sore spot. He fell in his own estimation as half
involuntarily he stared at that miserable agglomeration of cottages
above which even the sunset glow seemed sullied and decayed.
Peter was afraid of Majängen. For several years he had not dared to set
foot there. And his fear was shared by all his neighbours and, as a
matter of fact, by the whole town. Yes, Majängen was a name of terror.
Peter’s own policy had long ago driven away all decent, honest people,
and now only the worst rabble lived there. In the twilight they swarmed
out of their holes, the Majängen roughs, thin, pale, with their hands
deep in the pockets of their wide trousers and caps pulled down over
their eyes. They had a new style. Their slang and their types quickly
took possession of the comic papers, so that Peter and his like soon
began to talk the simple but expressive language of their mortal
enemies.
These youths conducted a bitter war against Selambshof. They pulled down
fences, broke windows, trampled on garden beds. Their numerous thefts
testified to their activity, against which he tried in vain to defend
himself with fierce dogs and barbed wire. Safe in their immunity from
punishment and intoxicated with their success, the hooligans of Majängen
extended their raids to the outskirts of the town, where epidemics of
theft and brawling broke out. But it was not enough that hooliganism,
prostitution, theft, damage to property and brawls issued from Majängen
as from an open sore, worst of all were the epidemics. Diphtheria,
scarlet fever and typhus succeeded each other out there in the cottages
and were a constant menace both to Selambshof and to the town. These
were Peter’s epidemics. There were no drains, and in his greed he had
not given a hand’s breadth of land to those who wanted to supply water
and light to the community. It was a terrible blunder that was to become
both costly and dangerous both to him and to the town. Now in the dog
days there raged again a terrible typhus epidemic which had caused the
loss of several human lives in the immediate neighbourhood of
Selambshof.
Peter crawled down from the heap of road metal as if the very sight of
the seat of plague were dangerous. As usual, he returned by way of
Ekbacken.
Slowly he walked past the fine house, where old Hermansson had lived,
and which was now used as a public-house and for working men’s
tenements. Down in the shipyard he stopped below an old ghost of a brig
that raised its blackened rigging towards the empty space above and
whose riven sides disclosed serious rot. Here, as usual, his temper
improved. Why did Peter really like to walk about among the tarred
shavings or to sit and ponder over the rough weathered logs on the
stack? Why did he continue this business, which, even if it did not
quite run at a loss, was still of no importance? Did he perhaps after
all enjoy the shadow of honest and productive work that lifted its
languishing head here on his fine shore property—which increased in
value from year to year? Or did he keep the yard going from a pious
memory of Herman and his first good stroke of business?
Then he came down to the pier, the long rotting, shaking, pier which
still, as if by miracle, held together. Out there on the seat two
figures were visible against the dark smooth water, one bent and huddled
up and the other thin like a boy, with straight back. One was, of
course, Lundbom, the old fixture Lundbom, who was still able to keep the
books. But the other? It was funny how he reminded you of poor old
Herman! But it must be Georg, Laura’s Georg! It was not the first time
Peter had seen the tall lad wandering about here on the quay, talking to
the workmen and old Lundbom. “Let me see,” thought Peter, “what if the
fellow is planning some trouble for Laura.” And this thought brought him
a certain satisfaction. For his own part he did not feel any remorse or
the least unpleasantness at the sight of Georg out here. It simply did
not occur to him that he had once wronged his father. He thought rather
with a certain phantom-like return of sentimentality of the twenty
thousand that Herman had with him when he left. “Well, yes, I saved the
slam for him anyhow, I saved the slam.”
Of Herman’s fate in America he had during all these years never heard a
sound, he did not even know if he was alive....
At last Peter reached the avenue leading up to Selambshof. He now walked
slowly and half reluctantly. The evenings had grown very long in the
bailiff’s wing. And he did not dare to call in the coachman now when
Stellan’s cursed butler was there in the main building....
It was very dark under the dense old elms. Just over his head Peter saw
a narrow strip of sky and some faint, twinkling stars. Then he heard
steps and whispers in the garden. Holding his stick tight and feeling
quite revived, he crept behind a scraggy tree trunk.
The old fence creaked and suddenly several boys came jumping over the
ditch beside Peter. He got hold of the nearest whilst the others
disappeared quick as lightning in the dark. Aha! Apple thieves! The boy
had his pockets full of unripe fruit.
“Damned rascal!” roared Peter. “You damned rascal! I’ll give you
something for stealing.”
And he struck the writhing figure with his rough stick.
A long, terrible, shrill scream rent the close air. And then Peter
suddenly felt the pain of a bite in his arm. He did not let go, but
puffing and blowing he dragged the boy with him into the office, where
he locked the door and lit the lamp.
“Here nobody will hear if you yell,” he mumbled.
But when Peter came up to the boy again with the stick, he was startled
at something in his pale dirty face, distorted with crying:
“Where do you come from?” he mumbled.
“Majängen.”
“Who are your parents?”
“Mother washes....”
“What’s her name?”
“Frida Öberg!”
Then the boy suddenly stopped sobbing and stared Peter boldly in the
face with an impudent, horribly precocious look that seemed to indicate
that he knew all.
Peter had the sensation of horrid nakedness, of bare shivering flesh. It
was as when in a nightmare you suddenly find you have forgotten your
trousers. But at the same time he was afraid to betray himself by a hint
of weakness. So he seized the boy firmly by the ear and led him to the
door:
“Don’t ever steal apples again,” he muttered. “It’s ugly to steal. I
won’t thrash you any more this time.”
Quick as a flash the boy disappeared from his grip and was swallowed up
in the shadows of the trees. But from the thick silent darkness Peter at
once heard a shrill, sharp voice, mad with fury but at the same time
pitiful and terrible:
“You damned carcase. I’ll pay you out for that, you damned old carcase!”
Peter closed the shutters. He had long ago had shutters put up. Then he
sat down under the lamp and examined the bite in his arm. And he was
frightened, frightened as a mouse, of infection from Majängen.
* * * * *
Then the day of the great family dinner arrived.
Between resplendent footmen the carriages and the motor cars drove up
over the newly-weeded and freshly-raked sand-covered ground in front of
the house. For many reasons they had avoided the daylight and chosen the
twilight, which concealed the worst neglect.
Peter had received strict orders to behave decently. He stood in the
hall underneath an improvised decoration of antelopes’ heads and negro
weapons—trophies from Stellan’s African shooting trip—and received the
guests. In his new evening dress he felt like a foot that has gone to
sleep in a tight boot. He had pins and needles in his whole body. The
thought that he would eat and drink as much as he liked quite free of
charge could not overcome his fear of Count von Borgk, whom after all
these magnificent preparations he imagined to be some sort of wonderful
superman, so covered with orders that any other poor devil would feel
quite naked in the region of the left lapel. But Peter calmed down when
the newly married couple arrived at last and the Count proved to be a
gentleman whom Laura could have hidden away in her décolletage. Yes, he
was a little dark gentleman with soft eyes, that avoided looking into
other people’s eyes, and with an expression round the mouth that was
both suffering and sensual. He had thin, hairy hands which seemed to
melt away when you shook hands. He spoke a low, sing-song
Finnish-Swedish with a certain admixture of Slavonic softness and
suppleness. And his dress coat was bare, quite bare over his heart.
It was strange to think that this was the hated and feared Count Alexis
von Borgk, accused by exiled Finns of a perverse betrayal of his country
and of coarse political sadism. Was he one of those neurasthenics of
authority who are only able to breathe amid the cold momentous gusts of
world politics? Was he one of those strange heraldic beings who are
irresistibly attracted by the austere magnificence of a throne; who are
linked to the forces of reaction by emblems and ceremonies? Or was he
perhaps a weak dreamer who had fallen a victim to the mystery of
panslavism and who had nothing but the grey spleen left for anything so
mean as a Grand Duchy with a few million souls? Anyhow he was now a man
who could no longer retain the post he had chosen, but had retired,
having all the same suffered and sacrificed something. A son by a
previous marriage with a Russian had fallen in the Russian-Japanese war
just after he had been commissioned lieutenant.
But Laura was not in the least affected by this. She took her husband
playfully. The Countess had really escaped from the skirmishes of life
with surprising ease. Her smile had kept its impertinent freshness. She
still continued to look as if she had just got out of bed, and had a
little of the warmth of the bed left. And her skin was in some strange
way more naked than that of other ladies. This evening a lot of
jewellery with some cold green stones shimmered on it, but no pearls.
Pearls did not suit her, she thought. Did she perhaps realize that their
soft roundness and mellow sheen are symbols of quite a different sort of
womanliness?
Among those who did not know her, Laura always created a sensation by
having Georg with her. They had not seen him for years and had almost
forgotten his existence. And now he suddenly appeared on the scene, a
tall, well grown lad of sixteen, dressed up in his first dress shirt and
dress coat and still quite shy and confused by this unexpected promotion
after years of oblivion and neglect. He was really very like his father,
Georg, so like that one was almost startled. There was something open,
honest, straight-backed, that the Selambs regarded as stupidity, but
with a new admixture of grit and determination that made all except
Laura think. She seemed to be merely content with her new possession.
Imagine that that overgrown schoolboy in his ridiculous knickers and
worn sailor’s blouse should turn out so presentable. Yes, these last
days Georg had been paraded, introduced, boasted of, and spoilt. She
went with him everywhere just as in the recklessness of love you would
show off a new lover. Perhaps it may, as a matter of fact, have been a
whimsical motherly falling in love. Perhaps something reserved, even
hostile in her son had awakened her feminine desire for conquest. Or was
it only secret anxiety born of the glance of shy, uncomprehending fear
that Georg first cast upon his new stepfather?
They went in to dinner.
Stellan and his butler had really worked marvels. The shabby old
dining-room at Selambshof was impossible to recognize, thanks to a soft
wine-red carpet, expensive sconces, handsome high backed chairs,
exquisite table silver, and plenty of white orchids.
But it looked all the same as if it was going to be a silent dinner.
They were mute after the first nervous talk. They stared at the
batteries of untouched glasses in front of each chair as if they
signified a troublesome journey with many hardships. Mrs. Elvira sat
cool and thin in her armour of jet and black silk and breathed reserve
from every fibre of her body. And Hedvig Hill seemed a monument of
silence. Words seemed to shrink and freeze away in her neighbourhood.
Everybody seemed to be afraid of the wine going down the wrong throat
after Peter’s awkward speech of welcome during the soup. All except
Laura. She continued, apparently unconcerned and gay, her little
flirtation with Georg.
“Your health, Georg dear!”
Georg drank to her attentively and obediently, carefully sipping his
glass:
“Put a white orchid in your buttonhole.”
Georg obeyed again. Laura threw a kiss to him: “Just look how sweet the
boy looks!”
Georg grew purple in the face and looked at his plate. Laura clapped her
hands:
“And he blushes like a little girl!”
Count Alexis followed this flirtation with languid eyes and a little
tired smile:
“Well, that is something our good Georg has not inherited from you.”
Evidently the Count had no illusions.
Then there was a new silence, only interrupted by the almost inimical
ringing of glasses and knives. But Laura did not give in. She looked
about her with bright defiant eyes. Then she suddenly turned to Hedvig
and began to talk of Levy. It was really deliciously impudent of her to
start just that topic. Laura teased Hedvig a little about her lawyer,
warned her in playful phrases against his business genius and then said
a few malevolent little truths about Jews in general.
“You see Alexis is an anti-Semite and I’ve caught it from him,” she
ended up with a soft smile.
Hedvig answered nothing. She only turned white in the face. Even her
perfect bare shoulders grew whiter and seemed to radiate a chill through
the dark velvet of her dress. But her black eyes stared with a shy
irresolute hatred into her sister’s restless eyes.
Stellan was afraid lest Hedvig should suddenly tell Laura some awful
truth; he was so afraid that his glass jingled against the plate as he
raised it. But Laura had already noticed a haughty expression of disgust
on Elvira’s face and turned at once to her sister-in-law. She began
innocently far far away in Africa, on the Nile, during Stellan’s and
Elvira’s famous wedding trip. From there she went over to the little
panther cubs that they had brought home and which she had seen during
her call at Trefvinge. Yes, they were too sweet, those little panther
cubs, though she for her own part would never have dared to take them in
her arms and play with them now that they had grown so big. But Elvira
had been like a mother to them from the beginning. It was really
delightful to see her with her little twins, so one could imagine worse
results from a wedding trip....
That was one for Elvira. If Laura had torn off her clothes and pointed
at the scars after the operation knife it could not have been more
obvious. But the lady of Trefvinge Castle did not move a muscle. She
only muttered quite low—so low that only those nearest to her could
hear:
“My dear Laura, now you have stayed long enough in Africa. It would
perhaps be good for you to think of a cooler place—say Siberia for
instance.”
Laura did not trouble to catch the whisper. After her last bravado she
settled down and seemed determined to be bored too.
Count Alexis seemed absent-minded during the last part of the
conversation. Now his soft and musical voice was heard:
“I wonder if I might have some water.... No thank you, not
soda,—ordinary water....”
“Ordinary water?” grunted Peter, suddenly quite amazed.
“Yes, thank you, if you have spring water.”
“Yes, certainly, ha, ha. There is certainly spring water!”
Stellan sent one of the servants for a jug of fresh water, straight from
the well.
The Count filled a champagne glass, sipped it a little and leant
slightly back with half-closed eyes:
“Water is so pleasant,” he mumbled. “It taste of nothing, absolutely
nothing.... And everything is so calm in Sweden. You shoot so
surprisingly seldom indoors or in the streets. It is like a sanatorium.
And all the ladies look like nurses, charming nurses—except Laura of
course....”
Then Count Alexis’ glance fell upon Old Enoch, who hung over the green
sofa opposite him. He started as if a real live person had suddenly
stood up, as if there were a hitherto unnoticed guest in the room.
“Whom does this excellent portrait represent?”
“It is our grandfather,” Stellan hastened to answer. “Enoch Selamb, a
landed proprietor. He was a clever agriculturist in his day.”
The time was past when Stellan indulged in any playful truths about his
ancestors.
Peter had already in secret found time to drink a good deal, and looked
somewhat bloated.
“He was a damned rascal,” he cut in contentedly, “a real old rascal. You
couldn’t cheat him....”
He stopped when Stellan trampled on his feet and turned back to his bird
and his wine. But Laura skittishly made the sign of the cross before her
ancestor.
“Old Enoch is our patron saint,” she explained to her husband. “He ought
always to have a candle burning before his picture—as before an ikon.
Thanks to him no Selamb can do really bad business.”
The Count’s glance travelled searchingly round the table and then back
to the portrait.
“Hm,” he mumbled, “one can see the likeness.”
There was a pause again and everybody felt old Enoch’s looks directed
towards him, even those who had their backs turned to the portrait.
Peter ate and drank for the whole company. The dress coat did not pinch
him any more. By Jove, he began to feel at home amongst the guinea-hens
and the golden pheasants. Yes this was not a bad show. “May I be damned
if I ever sat down with so much money before,” he thought, “Here is
Hedvig the Tragedy, who is worth at least three millions. She is lost in
her pile of notes as big as herself, and there are Stellan and Elvira
who are also expensive creatures, even more expensive than Hedvig, at
least five millions if we count Trefvinge as worth three. And Laura, the
little minx, weighs as much, if it is true that the Count has sold three
big estates in Finland and Esthonia.” And then there was himself, Peter
the Boss ... with Ekbacken and Kolsnäs and a big slice of Selambshof and
all his building land and houses. He was the worst of them all, not less
than eight millions. And that was calculating absurdly low, almost as if
for income tax returns. He scarcely dared to confess to himself how much
he owned. And if he added it all together it came to more than twenty
millions. Or perhaps more correctly thirty. Thirty millions. Peter
rolled the figure in his mouth, chewed it with the fowl, swallowed it
with the wine. Thirty millions, thirty millions....
He was not at all like King Midas. The gold agreed with him splendidly.
But just opposite sat Stellan, thin, straight, scrupulously elegant,
with the set face of the retired gambler. He sat looking at the row of
untouched glasses in front of his wife. All those fine vintages! An
exquisite harmony in colour from the golden green mist over the light
sparkling sunshine of the champagne and the glowing burgundy down to the
heavy brown dash of colour in the Malvoisier! And all of it untouched,
disdained. Oh what sort of a creature had he bound himself to, thin,
cold, fastidious, sterile, incapable of life! Not even Africa had for a
moment raised her temperature above zero. Even her capricious love of
sport had suddenly been blown away when she noticed that he had expected
something of it. She seemed nowadays to be exclusively occupied in being
bored. It seemed as if the staff of servants at the Castle had gradually
assumed all her functions of life. Stellan sometimes felt a sort of fear
of her, as of a lingering disease, a dangerous languor. Yes, the disease
of wealth is infectious. He was already infected. And still he could
think of nothing but collecting more money, and more money. He was
afraid when he thought of anything else than money.
Stellan started. By Jove, they had already reached the dessert. He
absolutely must stand up and make a speech. But how difficult it was to
get out of the chair today! “Supposing I refuse to tell a lot of lies
about Laura and the damned Russian,” he thought suddenly. “Supposing
instead I rise and propose a toast to—absent friends! To poor Manne von
Strelert who happened to shoot a hole through his head. And to that
decent fellow, Herman Hermansson, who took a little trip to America. And
to Percy Hill, who died in beauty. And to von Borgk’s boarders in the
Peter-Paul fortress and in Siberia. And to all the people we have kicked
over and climbed up on. Supposing I raise up Banquo’s ghost! That would
be exciting!”
Compassion was not one of Stellan’s frailties. He regretted nothing,
felt no remorse. He only felt stiff, isolated, frozen, paralysed by
melancholy irony. And when he looked round the silent circles the others
seemed to him frozen also. It seemed as if they were all sitting frozen
in a gigantic block of ice, and only imagined that they could reach each
other with their thoughts, words and gestures. That they breathed and
moved was probably only imagination. Really they were all dead, except
Peter. Nothing affected him. He belonged to those organisms low down in
the scale that can stand any amount of cold....
Yes, it was a ghost-dinner. The great ghost dinner at Selambshof. And
from the wall old Enoch’s eyes stared, stared, and stung. “That’s right,
my children,” they seemed to say, “now you are ready. Now I’ve got you.
Now you are inside my magic circle. And none of you will escape,
none....”
Stellan felt an emptiness in his head, paralysed, sick. His glance
wandered from one face to the other in the circle. He scorned them, he
saw through them, but still he begged them for help. “If only I can get
up out of this cursed chair. If only I could get up out of this cursed
chair!”
Then his wandering glance suddenly fell on Georg. Georg sat in his
corner and looked lost and unhappy. An honest young face. “Bah, you know
nothing yet,” Stellan thought, shrugging his shoulders. “What is
straight will be crooked, my young friend, and what is warm will grow
cold.” And he felt his lips move in a pitying smile. But still he could
not look away from the boy’s face. It was as if he had suspected that
here was something like a crack in the wall of ice, a break in the magic
circle. Yes, deep down he felt a strange relief to see him, to notice
his timid protest against his stepfather, his anxious wonder at his
mother, and all reflected in a face that knew nothing of dissimulation.
At last Stellan got up and made his well-balanced speech to the newly
married couple with a certain military briskness in his delivery.
After all even lies have nothing but truth to live on. And even the
coldest egoism must in the end draw breath beside whatever honour and
goodness is left in the world. Otherwise it would die of suffocation....
* * * * *
Two days after the dinner at Selambshof, Count von Borgk got typhus and
was taken to a nursing home. At the same time not less than three of the
servants on the estate fell ill, amongst them Peter’s housekeeper.
Peter was in deadly fear, and could think of no other way out than to
sail away immediately from all this misery. He was already on his way
down to his boat—Herman’s old “Laura,”—which still lay at her buoy in
the bay where the bathing box was. But when he passed the well on the
slope below the terrace, he saw that the cotter pin was not in its place
in the little trap door at the foot of the pump. Peter lifted the lid of
the well and peeped down. It was a shallow well and was now almost dried
up from the long drought of the dog days. He saw at once that the bottom
was covered with newspapers, dirty rags and unspeakable filth.
Peter got up dizzy and sick. “Majängen!” he thought. “The apple thief!
Frida Öberg’s boy. That was what the Count got for drinking water!
That’s what he got for his sanatorium!”
With a groan and a push of his massive body, Peter seized the pump and
pump-house in a mighty grip and threw it down so that all might see that
the well was poisoned. Then he fled head over heels down the hill to his
boat and out towards the bays of Lake Mälare.
Count von Borgk’s condition did not at first cause much anxiety. His
temperature was comparatively low and his strength seemed to hold out.
Laura felt normal again by and by after her own terror of infection had
passed. She telephoned each day to the nursing home and sent flowers and
little notes.
But as the time passed she found it more and more difficult to find
anything to write. She began to feel out of sorts, listless, bitter. She
had looked forward to some pleasant weeks at the seaside and now she had
to sit here and be baked at the Grand Hotel in the midst of the summer
heat and the dead season.
That Count Alexis should immediately fall ill was not a part of the
marriage contract.
Laura consoled herself as far as possible with Georg. During her long
stay abroad he had been boarded out in the family of a bank cashier.
There he had a tiny room about as big as a wardrobe, which just held his
bed and school books. The cashier and his wife were cold, silent,
nervous people who made a face if you talked aloud or banged the door,
but who otherwise left Georg completely alone. Nobody during the last
two years had asked how he was doing at school. But this very
forlornness had awakened in him a defiant ambition that had kept him up
to the mark.
Now he moved to his mother at the hotel and they had their meals in the
big dining-room. It was an immense change. Laura had to force him to
help himself to the fine food. He writhed on his chair and it looked as
if he were eating with a bad conscience.
Laura stayed in bed late in the mornings. Usually she heard no sound
from Georg until he came home breathless for lunch. He had been out for
a walk, he said. Laura became curious. One morning she awoke early, at
eight o’clock, and stole into Georg’s room. It was empty. And he did not
return before twelve. When his mother pressed him with questions, he
suddenly looked her straight in the eyes and answered vehemently that he
had been at Ekbacken....
Laura smiled a tart little smile and pulled together her kimono which
had opened and showed her silk stockings:
“Oh! are you so mad on boats?” she said.
The following day whilst Laura still lay in bed the telephone on her
night table rang. It was from the nursing home. The nurse who spoke
sounded very serious. The Count was worse and incessantly expressed his
wish that the Countess should come to see him.
Laura felt a violent discomfort. She grew cold all over. The thought of
the nursing home made her sick. She had not yet been there. She was
afraid, mortally afraid of long corridors, temperature curves, the smell
of disinfectants, groans, biers. Every fibre of her body shrank back
from the serious danger of infection and the nearness of death. But all
of a sudden she felt relief, a wonderful relief. Georg! Yes Georg would
probably go! With trembling fingers she seized the receiver again:
“Oh! nurse, I should like to come. But I can’t, not today. I am ill in
bed myself. I feel most awfully dizzy. But I will send my son.”
After which Laura tied a damp towel round her head and waited for Georg.
When he came in she lay writhing on her pillows and really looked rather
ill. She caught hold of his hand and pressed it violently:
“Georg dear, they have rung up from the nursing home. He wants to see
me. But I can’t trail myself there. I feel so awfully bad. Will you go
there and give him my love, tell him how ill I am.”
Georg stood pale, hating the thought of going to the sick bed of this
feared and secretly detested stranger. But he drew himself up. It did
not enter his head to say “no” on an occasion like this.
After some hours Georg came back. He had not been able to give any
message as the patient was unconscious.
Laura put no questions about the nursing home, what the doctor had said,
or how the patient looked. She only heaped her gratitude on Georg and
fawned on him like a dog.
She probably felt she might need him again.
The next day the Count was still unconscious and then Laura ventured to
be a little bit better and to get up. It was boring to stay in bed, and
besides she had a superstitious fear of pretending to be ill—she might
really become ill.
On the whole, she thought extraordinarily little of the man whose name
she bore. It seemed as if his illness had obliterated all her memories,
from the earliest society ones to the latest exquisitely sensual; it
seemed as if it had made of him a remote half-hostile stranger.
Several days passed. There was no talk of any visit to the invalid. He
could speak to nobody, periods of unconsciousness interchanged with
periods of delirium. Laura could no longer keep quiet or sit alone. She
had at last made some acquaintances in the hotel, a secretary of the
Danish Legation and a young widow whom she had met at the seaside. They
in their turn had introduced her to a Russian musician who was passing
through. So they were able to have a little game of bridge up in Laura’s
sitting room in the evening.
“How is your husband getting on?” said the lady between the bids.
“Oh, I was there today ... he is much better....”
Georg heard these words through the half open door.
Then the telephone in Laura’s bedroom rang. With a sigh she dropped her
cards and went in, carefully closing the door to the sitting room. The
Russian did not play bridge, but was improvising on the piano.
Once more there was a terrible, pious, insistent voice on the telephone:
“The Count is conscious again. He only mumbles your name. He must speak
to you. He can’t have long to live. You won’t let him die quite
alone....”
Laura’s voice sounded like a cry of distress, half in despair, half in
fury:
“Good God ... I ... I told you, nurse, that I was ill myself ... that I
am in bed ... that the doctor has forbidden me.... But I will try to
send somebody....”
She rushed in to Georg. She was pale, very much décolletée, dressed in
black rustling silk and covered with jewels. She did not notice how her
son quickly hid a parcel under the table. She stroked him on his arm and
hand quickly and nervously.
“Dear little Georg, you must go to the nursing home again! Alexis has
become worse. I can’t bear to see him suffer. My nerves are quite
exhausted. Yes, it would quite finish me. I have some friends here but
they must leave, they must leave at once.... I am simply done....”
Georg turned away. Her perfume enveloped him. As she bent forward he saw
with a shudder her dazzling white breasts move below her low-cut frock.
He suddenly felt a strange sickening shame that she should be his
mother, that he had sprung from her body. He jumped out of his chair:
“No, mamma, you go yourself!” he exclaimed.
But she clung to him, moaned, begged, caressed, kissed him. Yes, in her
miserable panic she seemed to have forgotten that he was her son and she
was prepared to employ all the artifices that a frightened woman can
employ in order to move a man.
Georg jumped up and pushed her away from him:
“Leave me alone!” he said, “I don’t want you to touch me!”
Merely from anxiety and in order to get away from her he at last rushed
out for the second time to the sick man.
Laura stood at the table with a rigid smile on her lips. The danger she
had escaped seemed to have numbed every limb in her body. She pulled her
shawl over her bare shoulders. Her son’s contempt passed like a chill
shiver over her skin. Your own flesh and blood! Bah! The boy was like
wax in her hands.
She went into the sitting room. She walked slowly and carefully. It
seemed as if there were something cold, frail and motionless within her,
something that could not bear a shock.
Laura excused herself to her guests:
“My husband is worse and I must go to him,” she said, quietly and
solemnly.
Appearances must, of course, be saved.
They said good-bye with many regrets and expressions of sympathy. The
young Russian musician had a refined and a very sensitive face. He meant
to kiss his hostess’s hand but stopped half way and turned a little
pale. As he bent over this beautiful and robust woman’s body it seemed
as if he had suddenly been startled as before something dead, before the
stench of a dead soul.
Laura hurried to bed, took a sleeping draught and pulled the bed cover
over her head.
* * * * *
Early the next morning she was awakened by the message of the death of
her husband. She first felt a strange creepy sensation of relief. Now he
would never call for her again. Now she no longer need go and see him.
Now she could escape the nursing home....
But then she was seized by a bitter ague. Her nerves at least had not
forgotten him. A cold breath chilled certain of her more intimate
memories and the cold bony fingers of death groped too close to her own
spine. It was like a poisoning of the senses.
Laura felt so out of sorts and so sick that she quite believed she was
mourning her dead husband and felt keenly sorry for herself. She dressed
in her plainest black frock and sank down into an easy chair.
Then a tall thin man in a black frock coat, carefully buttoned, and
dismal folds on his forehead appeared ghostlike on the scene. He was the
undertaker. Laura told him with a tired, an infinitely tired gesture,
and in a few monosyllables to address himself to her brothers at
Selambshof and Trefvinge. After which the gloomy looking figure withdrew
bowing solemnly.
Laura sank together. “I am an old woman,” she thought. “Everything
inside me feels so frozen and dead. I am an old, broken, lonely woman.
My life is finished.”
Then she suddenly thought of Georg. Good God, Georg! She had forgotten
Georg. Of course, she had Georg. She was not alone. Her life was not
finished. She had her son, a big, handsome, clever, brave boy.
A glow of warmth surged once more through Laura’s veins. A certain
remorse for her previous indifference and neglect stirred inside her.
For once she really suspected something of a mother’s feelings.
She flew into Georg’s room.
It was empty.
She sat down to wait. She sat on the edge of his bed, fingering his
pillow and his night shirt and got out her watch every second minute.
Never before in her life had she really waited for any human being.
She called the chambermaid. She inquired of the waiter and the hall
porter. No, nobody had seen the young gentleman. And still he had been
sleeping in his bed, you could see that.
Laura worked herself up into a state of nervous, shivering, whining
anxiety. Towards dinner time the hall porter sent up a letter that had
been left by a messenger boy. It was from Georg and read as follows:—
To my mother,
I am writing to say good-bye. We shall not see each other again.
I had not meant to leave like this, but what happened yesterday
was too cowardly. I can’t stay any longer. I am going to sign on
as soon as I get a chance and sail to America to find father. It
is no good trying to find me because I am sixteen years of age
and I am not coming back to you. I know all about how you and
Uncle Peter behaved to father. I know it through old Lundbom and
Sara, who was a maid at Ekbacken. She is married to a workman in
the yard now. Old Lundbom believed in you at first but he was
sorry when he understood how everything had happened. Two years
ago he received a letter from father that was to be given to me
when I was sixteen. In it is his address and everything. He is
in a big office and has a rather good job, though it was not so
easy at first. He is a noble man, I know that. It is for his
sake I have been working so hard at school because you have
never cared for me before. So now I am going. All the money I
have got from you is in the right hand drawer of the table,
because I don’t want to use it to run away with. Good-bye now.
And you must forgive me, for I cannot do anything else.
Good-bye!
Georg Hermansson.
_P. S._
If anybody does any harm to old Lundbom because of this, they
will hear from me when I come back!
Laura did not faint after reading this letter. She had no attack of
nerves, made no scene, did not stir up heaven and earth to get her son
back. She only suddenly felt empty, quite empty. She no longer felt
anxious for Georg. She could not as a matter of fact understand her
former anxiety and eagerness for him.
She washed her face in cold water, powdered it, and drove out to order
mourning clothes.
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