For more than two years Laura had been at a boarding school in Neuchatel. She had been home a few times, at Christmas and Midsummer, but soon she had contrived to get away again. It was quite amusing to meet Herman for a week or two. And it was awfully nice to have him to think of in lonely and sentimental moments. But she was afraid to bind herself to him quite definitely. “We can’t marry yet, of course,” she said, “and then it is better not to wear out each other’s feelings.”
It was always so delightful to say good-bye to Herman. His grief did her good. There was always a faithful heart waiting for her whilst she flew out into the wide world.
And it may even have happened that Laura cried a little in the train.
But it was always with the happiest laughter and the most excited talk that she rushed back to her school friends. And she was greeted with delighted shouts of welcome. For though she had no real friend, she was liked by all. They never got tired of ruffling her unusual, fair hair, which in the general opinion, was frightfully pretty. She was the obvious leader whenever they wanted to throw dust in the eyes of the poor teachers on returning home too late after walks or after mysterious expeditions in the dense garden of an evening. With a mixture of fear and unwilling admiration, the good German teachers nicknamed her “Die blonde Lüge.”
Had Laura so much to lie about then? Well! perhaps 116a little flirtation with the students in the town. But nothing serious. As a matter of fact Laura was very careful—much more careful than one would have believed if one had been allowed to read her diary, written in profoundest secrecy. For there she exaggerated and romanced in a most charming manner and seized every opportunity to make herself interesting to herself. Yes, she falsified her own memoirs, quite gaily and airily. All of which your moralist would no doubt consider the height of mendacity, but after all it does not signify very much when you are at boarding school.
“Die blonde Lüge” had nothing to do with a certain little Polish lady who was packed off because she came home much too late one evening ... and who received the following morning a parcel containing neither more nor less than her corsets.
That was a great and mysterious event which became the subject of endless whispered conversations, when the light was turned out in the evenings.
But then there came a telegram and a letter, saying that old Hermansson was dead and that she must go home. Then Laura felt at once that the best thing she could do was to fall seriously in love with her faithful Herman. And strange to say, it was not at all so difficult to say good-bye to Neuchatel, as she had thought it would be. The prospect of meeting Herman alone, free, and independent was quite agreeable to her. Strange, but it actually seemed as if old Hermansson had, in spite of all his kindness, stood between her and Herman. Now she really enjoyed indulgence in all the romantic sentiments of her diary.
Before Laura left, the idea came to her that she would become properly engaged to Herman at a distance. This they did and they exchanged rings by post. It was a sentimental idea of a schoolgirl conceived in order to impress the other girls and to make a brilliant exit.
117And so Laura at last returned home to make ready for the great wedding trip with the luxurious hotels and shops and the tunnels and moonlight nights. She sat there in the train and grew more sure of her love for Herman. She felt a real thrill when she saw him on the platform, a delicious thrill straight through her heart. He looked so awfully handsome, refined, and serious in his tall hat and mourning band, one could not really wish for a better companion on a wedding trip.
Herman wanted the wedding to take place in the autumn. One could not have the wedding immediately after the funeral.
Summer came, a delightful summer of sunshine, and Herman was pleasant, devoted and chivalrous. There was nothing but flowers and admiration and knightly courtesy. They were out sailing a great deal in Herman’s fine new cutter, which of course was called “Laura.” Herman himself had designed the boat and expected a lot from it. He was known as “The Engineer” at the yard. He had spent a couple of years at the School of Technology but he had left it because he was dissatisfied with the instruction. Now he was sitting there holding the tiller, tall, slim and sunburnt, wearing the uniform of the Royal Yacht Club, which was also very becoming. And Laura lay in a white sweater and white yachting shoes in the sunshine on deck and thought it was good that he sat and kept a look out with his faithful blue eyes whilst the ship of their lives elegantly tacked into the brilliant future.
Herman entered the boat for several races. Unhappily owing to a series of annoying accidents, such as bad luck with the wind, and small breakdowns, he was unable to win a prize. But anyhow there was open-air dancing afterwards and a regatta with Chinese lanterns and fireworks. And Laura came home quite excited with dancing and wine and the sound of lapping water in a blue darkness full of kisses and the sound of clinking glasses and songs and hearty 118curses and bright, sinuous, reflections and sudden bouquets of light shooting up above the edge of the forests.
Laura was really unreservedly happy during this period. It seemed as if the happy care-free years down in a Southern atmosphere had set fire to her and thawed her. She had acquired a certain sweetness that was unusual under the skies of Selambshof. During these summer months it seemed as if Selambshof had lost its power over her. She hovered laughingly around the coarse and greedy imp, Peter the Boss. She smiled at Hedvig’s bitter, stiff and offended airs. She moved like a happy and contented stranger in and out of this dreary malevolent house, where the former naughty Laura had once sat drinking vinegar in order to escape into the world.
Laura was just twenty years old. The particular kind of egoism that comes from bad nerves was completely alien to her. She blossomed out under kisses, which had not yet become the serious business of life. It was her season of roses. All the good elements in her nature had their great opportunity. Would this soft mellow rose-perfume penetrate to the core of her being? Where there is a fund of health there are always possibilities. Things had never looked so promising.
Laura had taken it into her head that they would take a flat in town. The idea was constantly in her mind. What supreme comfort it would be to live amongst restaurants, shops and theatres with plenty of pin money! She begged and implored Herman, but on this point he was really immovable. He felt it would be treason to his dead father to leave Ekbacken. And lo! Laura yielded like a good child. She even liked him because he knew his own mind.
She also gave in on another point. She had dreamed that they would start on their great wedding trip at once. But Herman, who had a dispute, concerning shore rights, with the town to attend to, had to wait till the spring, when the matter would be regulated. He had to defend 119his dead father’s old Ekbacken. He seemed to gather strength from the mourning band on his sleeve.
If only that strength had survived a little longer.... The wedding day came nearer and nearer.
Stellan came home from the summer man?uvres, brought his heels together with a slight click of his spurs and greeted his pretty sister with ironical politeness. He had grown into a witty and elegant young officer. The uniform was exactly the right mask for his easy cynicism and light irony. Now he kissed Laura’s hand.
“So you’re going to get married,” he said, “and you’re sticking to your old lake. What an idyl, my dear Laura.”
Laura snatched her hand away shyly. She somehow could not answer with a smile. Stellan made quite another impression on her than the others at Selambshof. He was the real brother of the old, naughty Laura. Her love was in some way afraid of him. Yes, she was also afraid on Herman’s account. Quite instinctively Laura did all she could to avoid Stellan during the next days, though it was he who had undertaken all the arrangements for the wedding.
Now the morning of the wedding had arrived. Laura came for the last time out of the room in which she had slept as a little girl. She left it without regrets. Selambshof had never been a home. She remembered how lonely she had been these last days. Nobody had sat by her bedside the last night and talked late in whispers far into the night. She was not afraid. One could not be afraid of Herman. No, but she had been lying in her bed longing to have at least a little letter from a school friend to read.
As Laura walked down the passage she suddenly heard Stellan’s voice in the smoking room. It must have been Peter he was talking to, because the replies sounded like coarse mutterings. She was just stealing past the door to find Hedvig, for today she felt a strange aversion to meeting 120her brothers alone. But then something made her stop and listen. She heard her own name and Herman’s pronounced. “Laura ... she ... will be able to twist the poor boy round her little finger....”
It was Stellan’s voice—curiously penetrating—like drinking iced water. Then she heard Peter mumble in a thick voice, expressive at one and the same time of satisfaction and discontent:
“There are sure to be difficulties in the long run with Ekbacken—not a business man at all.”
Laura heard no more, for somebody had begun to hammer in the hall. For a moment she stood motionless. She felt a little sick from the smell of freshly scrubbed floors, which lingered in the dark passage. She suddenly felt the oppressiveness of the high dismal house again. For a fraction of a second a strange sensation of being in some way cheated shot through her. Then she became angry—exceedingly angry with Stellan and Peter. But she said nothing, she did not go in to them, but hurried down to Ekbacken to greet Herman and convince herself that he was still the same. She remained there so long that he grew anxious lest she should not have time to dress for the wedding.
Then the guests began to arrive. Stellan had managed to collect quite a fair number of fine folk. The dowager from Kolsn?s and her son were there. L?hnfeldt’s elegant carriage drove up to the door. But Percy Hill was abroad and was only represented by the fine old Dutch master he had sent as a wedding present. Peter’s contribution was a collection of the wealthiest customers of Selambshof. Herman had very few relatives left, except the two old aunts, who had been at the funeral and who looked very shy and plain.
Hedvig demonstratively put on a dark severe-looking frock and she spread a chill around her. Tord was not there. He did not go to bourgeois parties.
121The marriage ceremony was to take place in the hall, which was decorated with all the bright autumn flowers the old gardener had been able to collect in the garden.
They had almost succeeded in concealing the shabbiness and gloom of the room. Laura was late. The clergyman had already had time to smell the dahlias three times before she appeared. Her expression had something of both defiance and anxiety, as if the guests had assembled there to amuse themselves at her expense. But Herman’s looks apologized both for the delay and for his having to stand on the right of his lady.
Laura’s voice sounded impatient when she answered her “yes.” It sounded as if she had been kept waiting at the booking office window before a long journey.
During dinner she was also nervous. She was silent, and emptied her glass absent-mindedly, and drummed with her fingers on the table during the clergyman’s speech. The speech was somewhat lugubrious. It seemed as if he had only two speeches to choose from, one for weddings and the other for funerals, and as if he had fallen on the wrong one.
Laura’s brothers were sitting opposite, further down the table. There was a challenging and hostile flash in her eyes, as she looked at them. She suddenly raised her glass to Peter, who looked like a dressed-up farmhand:
“Your health, Mr. Bailiff!” she said. “It feels queer to be in evening dress, doesn’t it?”
Her voice sounded strained. She looked quickly and appealingly at Herman, who, however, did not seem to understand. Angry at not receiving any support, though it was for his sake she was taking her revenge, she now turned on Stellan. Stellan had placed himself beside Elvira L?hnfeldt, now a slim and distinguished-looking young lady, who chatted about horses and tennis. He seemed to enjoy paying her attention. He did it with the expression of a man who is already accustomed to succeed 122with the ladies. “Look at me,” he seemed to be saying, “I am privileged to wear a full dress uniform. I belong to the few who look dressed up when they wear civilian clothes. I am born for the good things in life, for pretty women and a fine setting.” But Laura knew her elegant brother. She knew how to penetrate his arrogant self-assurance. Her voice became suddenly tender and affecting:
“Stellan,” she said, looking into his eyes over the sparkling champagne, “Old Hermansson died so suddenly that neither you nor I had an opportunity of thanking him. Now as you are sitting with Herman in front of you, I think you ought to stand up and make a speech to his father’s memory. For if he had not been so awfully decent and helped you, instead of being such a really smart officer and lady’s man as you are now, you would have been quite an ordinary little bank-clerk or teacher of mathematics or something equally ridiculous and civilian!”
Miss L?hnfeldt looked as if she had heard something positively indecent. Stellan bit his lip and grew a trifle pale. He did not rise, and he made no speech, but he straightened himself as if to salute and lifted his glass, without saying a word, to Herman, who looked very embarrassed and could not understand at all what had come over his dear Laura.
But Laura at once became wildly gay. She had had her revenge and she could now say good-bye to stupid old Selambshof.
She looked smiling over all the flowers and the heads in order to say a last contemptuous good-bye to the old dining-room where she had eaten so much porridge and where they had given each other so many kicks underneath the table. Then her glance fastened on the portrait of old Enoch over the green settee. It was more visible than usual because of two sconces which had been moved in 123from the blue room. The old man stood there with his steel-capped stick in his thin claw-like hand and fixed his glance upon her. Laura had never observed before what scornful, sneering eyes he had. It was as if he looked straight through her love.
“You may wriggle about, my doll, but you can’t get away from me, anyway.”
She took Herman’s hand: “Won’t it soon be over?” she murmured.
At last they said good-bye. Laura was already standing in the porch dressed in her fur coat. Then she saw Herman walk up to Stellan and Peter and pat them on the shoulders. He looked very moved and solemn and magnanimous. She could understand that he asked them not to be annoyed with her. Stellan shrugged his shoulders, and she could see by his lips what he answered:
“Stage-fright....”
Then the silence of the cold star-lit autumn night was broken by a roar of deep bass voices, and then there was the pattering of rice against the carriage windows and a forward jerk of the horses.
Laura flung herself into Herman’s arms. She wanted to flee away from something at any cost—as if she did not want to see anything or know anything.
The following day Hedvig came in to Peter, who was lying on the sofa with a pipe that had gone out in the corner of his mouth, feeling a little stale after the wedding celebrations which he and his companions had continued noisily until the early morning. Hedvig came slipping in and looking paler and more severe than ever. Peter felt really frightened of her. He felt like a big, swollen gland which has secreted the worst excretions of sin.
“You will have to get somebody else to nurse father,” said Hedvig, “I am not going to stay here any longer. There is nothing but dissipation and vileness. Nobody seems to think that we may be dead tomorrow. I am 124going to take a course in nursing and then I shall join the Red Cross.”
Peter began to fear new unforeseen expenses. He begged and prayed, he clumsily touched on all sorts of points. Finally he stretched out a finger and poked it into the region of her heart:
“Hedvig, dear, one fine day you will also get married.”
Peter stopped dead. He felt as if he had sandpaper in his throat. Hedvig stood motionless and stared at him, with loathing in her eyes:
“You are disgusting” she said, in a low voice. “I hate all men. I will never, never marry!”
And with that she left the room.
A fortnight later Hedvig had started as a probationer at a hospital. And she never put her foot inside Selambshof.
Peter did not know if he felt this as a loss or relief. Sometimes he felt as if his bad conscience had left him. Sometimes he felt a little alarmed. With the departure of Hedvig he seemed to have lost his last connection with “The Powers.”
But Mrs. Laura at Ekbacken was very annoyed when Peter stalked in one day and told her about Hedvig’s new move.
“It really is a pity about Hedvig,” the little wife exclaimed. “Just think how really beautiful she can be sometimes, Herman. It almost hurts one. Couldn’t we find her a husband some way or other, Herman dear?”
Mrs. Laura still lived on her honeymoon and she thought that all people ought to marry.
Herman moved away the pink silk ribbon of her coquettish boudoir cap and kissed her hair:
“She is as pretty as anyone can be who is not fair,” he whispered.
By now Peter had gone again. This sort of thing was unbearable. They don’t care a straw either for me or Hedvig, he thought sadly in his loneliness. But wait a 125little, Laura has still got claws in her silky hands. Herman will feel them soon enough.
This thought consoled him a little.
The honeymoon was scarcely over before Mrs. Laura realised that there would be no wedding trip that spring.
No, she was definitely cheated of it, cheated of her grand wedding trip. She had not imagined things would turn out like that. This might possibly have been permitted to occur in the remote future, but just now she had desired nothing but happy surprises.
At first Laura told Herman nothing. She felt that it would be humiliating to admit her condition. But she observed him secretly. She watched for a searching or a triumphant expression in his face. Has he been expecting this? Was he only playing with me when he spoke about the wedding trip, she thought. And she felt something in her heart that almost resembled dislike. But then it struck her how sad and strange and really impossible it was that she was feeling dislike of her own Herman. And then she went down to the office and let him kiss her behind old Lundbom’s back. But she was not yet able to speak about it. She felt a strange cold shame at her condition. In her there was nothing groping with tender hands towards the new life. It was as if this tender seed of life had been growing outside her and not beneath her heart.
After a few weeks Laura had no need to decide whether to tell or not—she simply could not hide it. She felt sick and she could not for ever run away and hide every morning. Laura had never been ill since she had the measles as a child. She felt a cold dread. It was as if her body were insulted every day. In her mirror she seemed to see how ugly and pale she was already growing. Still Herman said nothing. He was only doubly tender and attentive. But Laura saw all the same a flash of irritating pride and satisfaction in his eyes. And she turned away and set her teeth. What sort of a knight was this whose 126kisses at once produced sickness. She seemed to feel his pride like a pain within her. And then a torrent of complaints and accusations broke from her. Herman had cheated her out of her wedding trip! And she had not been allowed to live in town, as she wanted! And now she was ill, awfully ill! And she was getting ugly, old and ugly! And soon she would probably be dead—Yes, this would certainly mean her death!
Herman made no reply to all these accusations, which induced in him a solemn mood. He stroked her hair softly and calmly as one would in putting a crying child to sleep. And in the end Laura could find no other place than his arms in which she could cry out her heart.
After a time she grew calmer. The first crisis was over. It looked as if she would submit to her fate with a certain equanimity.
One dark and wet December day Laura was sitting in the bedroom window sewing some small garments. She always locked the door so as not to be taken by surprise. The sewing did not amuse her, but she did it in order to pass the time.
“Ugh!” she had pricked her finger. She stared at th............