Laura lay awake the whole night reading a novel, and at breakfast she only played with her food. Then she stole out into the pantry and took her usual draught of vinegar. It was a day in the late summer, warm and still. Down the slope the August pears were tempting, the hammock and the lazy lapping of the water against the shutters of the bathing box were also a standing temptation. But Laura resisted them. For a whole fortnight she had struggled to get rid of her sunburn and to become pale and thin. Slowly she went back to her room and tried to think at each step that she was rather weak and feeble.
Laura’s room was small and shady. It lay on the ground floor overlooking the avenue. She walked up to the mirror and scrutinized herself carefully from head to foot. She was no longer a plump little bright-eyed imp with plaits of fair hair dangling behind, and fat legs. No, it was a pale, interesting-looking young lady who stood there with a curled fringe, neat waist and a tired and dreamy look in her eyes.
When Laura had gazed at herself for a long while, with mixed feelings of complete approval and vague pity, she stole to the window and sat down very carefully as if she had been made of some very brittle material. It was a narrow and rather dismal window in the thick walls of Selambshof. A spray of the sparse and dying vine on the north side of the house flapped against the window-sill. 77It bore a small bunch of grapes, green and no bigger than pin-heads. What sweet doll’s grapes they are, she thought suddenly, and she had a vision of a doll’s party in the nursery with grapes for dessert, but she punished herself immediately for this childishness. She had indeed other things to think of. Piously she laid her hands one over the other and settled down comfortably in the chair and with her newfound refinement of melancholy, she dreamed that she was in very weak health and very sad—a really seductive little dream!
Then Herman came walking towards the house, straight, smart, and correct. He was wearing a student’s cap, for by dint of hard work and an ambitious spirit he had come so far. And in spite of the heat he did not wear it tipped back, but on top of his head as if it were a part of the uniform of manhood and knowledge. And he did not look around him so nervously under an affected unconcern. No, now he looked just a little haughty as he came straight up to Laura’s window, climbed up on the seat and shook hands with her.
“Why do you never come to Ekbacken nowadays? It’s a fortnight since you were there.”
Laura half-closed her eyes and smiled a wan smile. Her hand dropped out of his and lay like a tired little bird on the window-sill:
“My dear Herman, we have been there too much already.”
“What nonsense!”
Laura was vexed at his clumsiness in not noticing her haggard appearance:
“Besides, I don’t feel very well, you know, Herman.”
That was too much, even for Herman. He could not help laughing.
“You ill, Laura! don’t talk such rubbish!”
What unfeeling, hard-hearted laughter. After all her efforts. At that moment she thoroughly detested him. 78But she did not answer sharply, she only looked deeply grieved and pained:
“Good-bye,” she murmured, “I am too tired to talk to you any longer. I must lie down for a while.”
Thereupon she closed the window in Herman’s face and pulled down the blind. Then she lay down on her bed and thought how unseeing and cold-hearted people were. Did they want to make her drink more vinegar? Well she was not frightened, although she had heard that it might make her really ill.
For another week Laura continued the darkness and vinegar treatment and then walked resolutely down to old Hermansson.
At Ekbacken the saws were humming as smoothly as ever in the red shed. The sailors were still there caulking the old smacks and old Lundbom was still casting up not unfavourable balances. Nothing had changed at Ekbacken except that it had grown a little older and more peaceful. But now and then a certain ill-disposed rival would rub his hands and think that Ekbacken would prove too good for this world.
Old Hermansson was not in the office. He did not often appear there nowadays. He sat in his dressing gown and smoking cap in the big easy chair in the drawing room, reading a newspaper that he held far from his eyes as if not to come into close contact with the restlessness and misery of the world.
Old Hermansson had aged considerably of late. He was almost always poorly now. But he did not complain. He protested with more and more marked dignity against his weakness. Unconsciously the Brundin case had dealt a nasty blow to his assurance and comfort. In consequence, his tone had become more self-satisfied and domineering than ever. The old man was really quite tender-hearted beneath his hard exterior and Stellan and Laura had at once perceived this, with the cruel insight of youth. 79They did not hesitate to exploit their guardian’s weakness for their own comfort.
Laura said “Good-morning,” and sank with a sigh into a chair, and looked worse than ever.
“What’s the matter with you, dear child? At your age one should not go about looking ill. Look at me, I shall soon be seventy and I am as well as ever.”
And saying this, he relapsed into the soft upholstery of his chair, his face twitching from rheumatism. But this had no effect on Laura:
“I can’t help it, I cough and have no appetite. I think I need a change of air.”
“Change of air! When do you think I have ever had a change of air in my life? And yet I have never been ill more than three days together in all my life!”
“Everybody can’t be as well as you, Uncle. And I am only a girl. Oh! if only Mother were alive so that I might have somebody to talk to.”
Laura’s voice trembled and the tears were already in her eyes. Her guardian grew alarmed:
“What’s the matter? What do you want to do, then, my dear child?”
Then Laura could restrain her desire no longer:
“I ... I want to go to a boarding school ... in Switzerland. You get such an appetite there. It would do my chest good. Elvira L?hnfeldt at Trefvinge is going to Neuchatel. Stellan told me so, for he was invited. Neuchatel is said to be so very suitable. And fancy to be able to talk French properly—and then the air,—”
Old Hermansson’s horizon did not stretch beyond the frontiers of his own country. He was dumbfounded by the audacity of the proposal:
“Impossible, my dear child, impossible!”
After the first attack Laura collected her forces for a more systematic siege:
“Oh, Uncle, you should live at Selambshof,” she wailed. 80“You would be ill in a week. Yes, it is so unpleasant at home since that dreadful business with Brundin.”
Laura glanced at her guardian; she seemed satisfied with the effect and continued:
“It is worst with Peter. He curses like a farm labourer and he swears at table. He is really no company for a young girl!”
That also had a good effect. Old Hermansson could not bear Peter since he had exposed Brundin. Laura already knew so much about the human heart. The old man nodded pensively:
“I admit that your brother Peter is not all that he ought to be. But if it is not always pleasant at home, you know that you are always welcome at Ekbacken.”
“Thank you. You are so awfully kind, both you and Herman. But ...” (Laura flushed beneath her self-induced pallor and glanced archly at her guardian) “but ... it looks strange for me to be always here. I don’t know if it is right any longer and then I thought that both you and Herman would like me to have some sort of education.”
Here she was interrupted by an attack of coughing, and she put her hand to her chest with an anxious and sudden air of distraction.
Her guardian looked very perplexed. As a matter of fact he looked upon the affection of the young pair for each other with some pleasure. He himself had originally been a poor clerk who had risen to his present position by marrying the daughter of his employer. To him Selambshof and the Selambs still seemed an old distinguished place and family. Yes! secretly he was even flattered by Laura’s walks with Herman. The thought of his future daughter-in-law being in a Swiss boarding school like the young lady at Trefvinge was also pleasant. So he slowly assumed an expression which was more of anxiety than of opposition.
81“Well, my dear child, we must think it over.”
Laura had to control herself not to dance for joy so long as she was within sight of Ekbacken. But when she reached home she ate for the first time for a whole month till she was satisfied.
The following weeks were for Laura a time of glowing expectation, blissful faithlessness, touching farewells and a feeling almost approaching love.
On one of the first days of September, when the air had all the coolness and clearness of autumn, she and Herman were walking through the garden of Selambshof. The garden was situated on the southern slope, between the avenue and the lake, screened by a row of tall ash trees from the dismal, brooding, heaviness of the house. It was much neglected but it was a pleasant sort of neglect and this was after all a little corner of Selambshof where something of an idyll still lingered.
Laura and Herman were strolling slowly along the wet, half choked paths between currant bushes smothered in weeds and scraggy old apple trees covered with grey moss which still as if by a miracle bore beautiful shining apples. Here a tumbled-down fence lay with an appearance of infinite fatigue, and there the pestweed had pushed up into the light out of a half smothered ditch, and with its dense growth of enormous leaves had vanquished a row of raspberry bushes, where dry branches stretched up helplessly out of the green sea. Then there was a row of frames with broken glass and a bed of cabbages looking quite blue in the shade. Then came the long beds with a few asters and dahlias in front of the gardener’s dilapidated old cottage.
“It is very beautiful here,” whispered Laura. There was a note of surprise in her voice. It had evidently never occurred to her that it might be beautiful here. She glanced sideways at Herman who looked at once shy and hurt.
“If it is beautiful here why are you going away?”
82The sun was not less bright because Herman turned away from her and grumbled. Laura pressed his hand encouragingly:
“I’ll soon be back,” she whispered softly.
She felt very superior to Selambshof and Herman and all the other everyday things which remained where they were put and never moved. But all the same there was a strange tenderness in her feeling of superiority. Sometimes she did not quite know if it was gay or sad.
Old Johannes, the gardener, sat in his porch and looked tranquilly at the neglect around him. He had been a sailor in his youth and divided his day into watches, four hours he smoked his pipe and four hours he rested. But during the day watch he slept. But somehow he managed to pay his rent so that he was not driven out. Until today Laura had only thought of the old man as something unkempt and dirty. She had never given him a further thought as she munched his apples. But now he suddenly appeared quite nice to her, sitting there in the sunshine. A bumble bee buzzed lazily round the patches on his trouser-knees. His hands seemed as if made of bark. His whole face was smothered with hair, just as the garden was with weeds. When he scratched his beard with his coarse nail there was a grating sound. But his eyes were wonderfully calm. It was as if in a quiet, still, protected corner the sun were shining down on a barrel of rainwater.
Laura suddenly realised why Tord spent so much time with the gardener.
“How is Tord’s fox?” she wondered.
She referred to a fox that had been caught in a trap and which Tord had been allowed to keep. It lived in a shed.
“Tord has got him on the leash,” smiled the old fellow, pleased at the interest in their common pet.
The door of a big grateless room stood open. The floor was covered with fruit. Laura dived in with the gardener and came out with her hat filled with the rosiest apples that 83ever woman tempted man with. Herman sighed and ate. It was all “sour grapes” to him. He pulled at Laura’s arm. He wanted to be alone with her. He was jealous of the garden, of the gardener, of the Swiss Alps, and of everything.
They moved on.
On the other side there was a hillock with terraces and ledges and some tumbled-down summer cottages. Here everything was silent, mysterious, and abandoned. Laura and Herman walked about in the small devastated gardens and peeped into the empty rooms where the winter seemed already to have thrown its shadow. Squeezed in between the lake and the hill lay a rambling old house given over to the rooks. It was a high house with three balconies, built over the water and embellished with some extraordinary extensions on the land side. Here the water splashed against the piles, covered with a green ooze, and the aspens, burnt red by the autumn, rustled, and the whole was illuminated by a strange light reflected from the paths covered with yellow leaves.
Herman succeeded in opening the door. Past empty cupboards, garden furniture and old gate-legged tables covered with marks left by glasses they penetrated to the highest balcony. Here the last flies of autumn buzzed against the window panes and tendrils of Virginia Creeper pushed in through the chinks and cracks.
They sank down on a garden seat strangely moved by this sunny brightness and forlorn melancholy. Herman dug his stick into the floor-boards and then he suddenly threw it aside and kissed her. He kissed her passionately and violently with bitter sealed lips. But she pulled him towards her and opened her lips softly. And she loved to feel how he tried to resist her but was not able to do so. No, humbly and helplessly he clung to her lips. This was their first real kiss. Everything before had been play. And she was going to leave all this behind. She felt so 84tenderly, so blissfully, so lovingly faithless. The tears came into her eyes and she smiled like a real little angel.
At this moment Laura happened to look out through one of the side windows. Who was that standing far away on the hill, almost on the same level as they were, if not Hedvig. She pretended to be interested in something out on the lake. But the expression of offended loneliness and stern disapproval in her pinched face was not to be mistaken. She had a disagreeable way of stealing upon you, had Hedvig. Of course she had seen everything. Of course she was green with envy because Laura had caught Herman and was going to Switzerland and was not as silly as Hedvig herself.
“So now we shall have her haunting this place,” muttered Laura. “Now this jolly place is spoilt for us.”
They pulled an old curtain before the window so that Hedvig should see nothing and then they stole away from “The Rookery” as silently as Indians. Now they were out in the wood on the other side of the avenue and they kissed each other again, but without lingering. A restless longing drove them on. They walked all the way to Tr?sk?ngen and when they got there it was almost evening. A cold breeze met them as they jumped about from one dry spot to another.
In the deepest hollow there lay a white mist over banks of reeds and pools. But when they came up again on the other side of the hill towards the quarries it was so hot that they had to stop. In the twilight the scene around them seemed ragged and gloomy and deserted.
It was old Enoch who had started blasting here once upon a time. It seemed as if an evil spirit had ruled the forest, or some barren destructive fiend. Everywhere there were ravines, caves, treacherous holes and screes of clattering stones and loose boulders ready to slip away beneath your feet, and everything was enveloped in an almost impenetrable growth of young golden aspen.
85And then the autumn moon rose above the forest in the west.
“It really is wonderfully fine,” whispered Herman, fascinated by the romance of this desolate wilderness.
“Yes, it is almost like the Alps,” answered Laura, and groped for him that she might feel him tremble with jealous love. But as soon as she had said it she trembled herself. Yes, she was playing a dangerous game up there among the rough boulders of Old H?k’s overgrown stony wilderness. Laura suddenly felt love clutching her heart with burning fingers. For a moment she gave herself up to this new and painful sensation, but then she became frightened, with the violent fear of a threatened egoism. She jumped up and pushed him away from her:
“No, now I must go home.”
But Herman insisted:
“No, we must go up to Enoch’s gorge,” he panted. “It is haunted, and up to the old quarrymen’s shed.”
His voice had never sounded so near her, so strangely near. She followed him a............