Peter the Boss had begun to frequent the observatory again. But it was not in order to watch the workers at Selambshof as old Enoch had done. No, the observatory was rather the scene of his economic dreams. With the help of the old marine glass he now and then peeped into the future. On the blackened billiard marker he had a few calculations, for the airiness of which quickly wiped-off chalk was a better medium than paper and ink. It was a sort of game. But behind the game lurked a serious purpose. Peter the Boss longed more and more to rise above the humble rank of an ordinary farm-bailiff. It is true that he had been called “Director” ever since the estate had been transformed into a limited company after the death of their father, but the change of the title did not alter the facts. Peter was tired of his elementary tricks in buying and selling and they had now become a matter of mechanical routine with him. They were simply a means of obtaining the commission which his sisters and brothers were too mean to pay him. Of course he did earn a certain amount of money. Yes, the amount increased quite nicely, quite nicely. But all the same he felt the restlessness of one who is conscientiously capable of greater things. He had half-frightened, dizzying visions of profits of millions. The future teemed with possibilities which confused and distracted him during his day’s work. He had to climb up 165to a high place in order to survey the situation. And that place was the observatory. Peter used to begin his observations from the west window. At first he pretended to be there for the sake of the fine view. He was coquetting, as it were, with his shy hopes. Contemptuously his look passed over treeless and insignificant Ryssvik. But further away he beheld Trefvinge beyond the fine fishing water and densely wooded forests. Well grown and no mortgages! Fancy what a lot of money could be got out of that estate. Peter could not help making calculations. It was, of course, mere fancy, idle fancies ... though perhaps Stellan might ... he had flirted rather freely with Elvira L?hnfeldt at Laura’s wedding ... but probably it meant nothing.
With a little sigh Peter stepped to the south window. Here he at once approached a little nearer to reality. Here lay Kolsn?s and it looked quite different, with big bare patches in the forest, and bushes and felled trees and melancholy seed-pines on the horizon. Yes, yes, cash would be wanted there when the old lady died and Lieutenant Manne von Strelert began to sow his wild oats. Lots of timber had been cut down and the estate was mortgaged, but there was still lots more to take. Manne was a deuced decent fellow, anyhow, and Peter would not have minded making him a little loan now and then. He had a distinct sensation of pressing a bundle of notes into the Lieutenant’s hand and receiving a nice little I.O.U. in return, which would give him a hold over a corner of Kolsn?s.
Yes, those were his dreams. Unfortunately Peter had nothing to spare for Kolsn?s now. Stellan immediately consumed the cash Peter could lay hands on. He was awful, Stellan. Already more than half of his shares lay as security in Peter’s drawer.
At last Peter came to the east window. From here he had a fine view nowadays since he had felled a couple of enormous aspens on the slope behind the avenue. He did 166that because of Ekbacken. Now he could see both the yard and the sawmill and a bit of the town behind. Peter could not help interesting himself in Ekbacken. Herman had avoided him since the divorce. It was not so easy either to enter into conversation with old Lundbom now that his trusteeship had lapsed. So Peter had to be content with what he could discover with the help of his glasses, though that was quite a lot. He saw, for instance, that the proud yacht building Herman had spoken of had completely ceased. There was never more than one yacht and that was Herman’s own “Laura.” Well, the name was of course painted out, which really was not to be wondered at. That tall figure over there was Herman himself. He would stroll out onto the pier and sit for hours with a glass and a bottle beside him on the green seat. Sometimes he went out sailing for a couple of days and then the boat would lie rubbing against the pier with sails up whilst half the pier was littered with empty bottles handed up out of the boat.
Peter shook his head in joyful concern:
“Poor boy,” he muttered, “breakers after a storm. This will never end well.”
Neither did it.
Peter soon saw that activity in the shipyard decreased. The repairing slips began to be empty for long periods, the capstan struggled with its long arms as if it were begging for help from all the four quarters of the compass and the crane hung helpless over the water as if in expectation of an inevitable fall. And the few workmen visible were mostly loitering or sitting smoking on the sly between the weathering stacks of boards round the sawmill.
Peter was quite touched at this decay. He felt an agreeable compassion for the excellent Herman. It was not his fault that all this misery might turn out to his advantage and to that of Selambshof. For if the resistance of Ekbacken was broken then Herman could no longer foolishly oppose 167the advance of the town. And in that fact Peter secretly already saw his great opportunity.
Peter had felt a profound emotion when for the first time he fully realised that the town over there was smoking and sweating in order to increase the value of Selambshof. From that moment he began to think that the smell from the glue works on the other side of the lake was rather pleasant. The glue works was the first outpost of the town and with one blow it had broken the spell of the silent little M?lare bay. What would it not bring in its train? Damage to property, stolen boats, poaching, brawls, servants in trouble. And worst of all the horrid smell. A southerly wind was a real trial to Selambshof nowadays. Stellan called it the sirocco. But Peter thought in his heart that the smell was rather pleasant. It smelt of money, money. But as he walked and sniffed it, he grew impatient with the sirocco all the same, but not in the same way as ordinary people did. On the other shore, things moved along deuced quickly he thought. But on this side Ekbacken can’t resist for many years. And the town may expand in other directions.
It was a close day in July. There had been a bad drought this summer and the fields at Selambshof were half scorched, and promised a failure of the crops. Between the drooping and dusty elms of the avenue there was a smell of carrion and old cheese. The whole estate was enveloped in a vapour of putrefaction. The glue works over on the other side of the lake vibrated in the heat haze and seemed to dissolve in mere smells.
Peter suffered from the economic sirocco worse than ever. He could not even remain in the observatory, but had to go out for a walk in spite of the heat. How were things going at Ekbacken? Eagerly but carefully he spied round the corner, afraid of being seen, and cursing beneath his breath the high wooden fence that Herman had built towards the road. Then he moved on further 168in order to see how the town was behaving. Well, at last the new quay was ready. But how was building progressing on this side? Peter ferretted amongst the dumps of macadam and the blast holes. He searched for newly staked-out building sites and for new foundations. No, there was not enough progress to record. Why did they not hurry on the work more? It irritated him to see the workmen lying with their coats under their heads sleeping amongst the stones after their lunch.
Peter returned home by another way. He took a dull, ill-kept road, far back from the lake, which led on past the old quarry between the bare hills. Unsightly, ragged, untidy, the hill rose up, useless for all but the crows. The black smoke from a goods train puffing up the incline on the other side drifted slowly in between the dwarfed and miserable pines. Peter stopped a moment in the damp cold that rose even in the hot sun out of the fens of Tr?sk?ngen. He struck his stick on the dried-up lumps of clay on the road and stared in front of him. He had suddenly got an idea. The railway! he thought. The railway! This corner is furthest from town, but I have got the railway. I attack Ekbacken from behind. I am finding gold on the rubbish heap!
He staggered home as in a delirium.
A few days later the shareholders of Selambshof were summoned to a meeting. Peter told them in a few words that he had found a buyer for the quarry and Tr?sk?ngen. “That rubbish is not worth keeping and we need money to cover the bad season,” he said. Nobody had any serious objection and the sale was made. The buyer was Peter Selamb, through an agent of the name of Thomson. Mr. Thomson got very favourable terms of payment. Then there appeared an immense white board up in the Quarry overlooking the railway and bearing the words:
169“SOLBERGET and MAJ?NGEN
Building Sites for Sale!
Maj?ngen Building Co., 3, Nygatan, Stockholm.”
Peter the Boss had thought it suitable to make this little change in the old place-names.
At the same time a magnificent system of wide intersecting streets was marked out with neat white painted posts and iron stakes.
Strange to say the sites found a ready sale, for it was during the golden time of uncritical speculation in suburban land. And evidently there were some poor overcrowded, shut up souls for whom even the Quarry and Tr?sk?ngen was a taste of liberty and of nature.
The whole autumn, winter and spring, the money dribbled in regularly. “Maj?ngen” was a splendid coup. But Peter did not sit down on his gold hoard and purr. On the contrary he grew more and more restless as his banking account grew. He kept all his money in ready cash. With this ace of trumps in his hands he watched eagerly for the best moment to play it and gather in a fat trick. His glass almost burnt in his hand when he directed it towards Ekbacken. During many soliloquies he roamed restlessly about outside the cursed high wooden fence. Yes, yes, it reeked of an exquisite decay from afar. But why did not that stupid Herman come to Peter the Boss? If he had only known how willingly Peter would have helped him! It was not right of him to forget an old friend. Just fancy if Herman had been foolish enough to throw himself into the arms of one of the banks in the town, which would just hold his head above water for a time in order to let him sink afterwards and then march off with everything!
This thought worried Peter the Boss cruelly. One day 170when he had seen Herman sail out with the usual case of bottles he went straight through the high wooden gate and in to old Lundbom in the office.
Lundbom sat there aged and grey-haired, with a worried expression.
Peter stretched out a big and honest hand:
“Tell me all,” he said. “You can rely upon an old country neighbour. I am Herman’s friend, though he does not care about me. I want to help as much as I can.”
Lundbom had always had a sort of tender regard for Peter. He had taught him to play “vira.” He had been his legal adviser. With a sort of impartial pleasure he had seen his knowledge boldly applied by his clever pupil. In his theoretical eagerness he had been rather proud, though he was himself the soul of honour, of his being able to show Peter certain loopholes and snags. Old Lundbom symbolised, as it were, the fate of the law in this world: to be made use of by rogues.
Peter stood there with outstretched hand, and Lundbom really could not help seizing it, though Herman had forbidden all communication with Selambshof.
“What’s the position?” grunted Peter. “If I can do anything I must know the position.”
Lundbom shook the ledger:
“There were losses last year already. This year will be still worse.”
“The figures?”
“Thirty thousand last year. At least fifty thousand this year, if things go on like this. Now we are selling out our timber below cost. We are hard up for ready money.”
“Have you any specially difficult payment to make?”
“Yes, on Saturday week, a bill for twenty thousand. Fancy, we who never used to touch bills before.”
“Who has got your bill?”
Lundbom mentioned a small notorious usurious banker. Peter whistled. That bank proved that Herman had not 171known how to look after his business in town properly. He rose and pressed Lundbom’s hand:
“Good-bye! Not a word to Herman about this. He must be managed carefully, poor boy, Good-bye!”
A week later Herman came back from his sailing trip. He was once more sitting on the pier. The twilight was strangely yellow. In the south a big grey-black cloud floated, so heavy and solid-looking that it seemed a miracle that it did not fall. A warm but strong south-easterly wind had sprung up after the day’s calm. The leafy mosses of the willows on the shore turned in the wind and yellow crested waves beat with foreboding insistence against the slimy green piles on their sloping stone ballast. Then the foresail halyard of the cutter began to flap persistently against the mast, a sound which in a badly chosen harbour at night threatens to cast you adrift and to shift your anchor in the dark.
Herman was sitting with outstretched legs. His chin had sunk into the sweater and he stared motionless out over the water. Over his whole being there descended a chill shadow of loneliness which gave a touch of melancholy and appeal even to his warm yachting shoes.
He stretched out for his whiskey glass but checked his groping hand and muttered something to himself about a renewal, a commission, and nine per cent. He came no further. There he stopped. He refused, from a kind of spite, to think any more than was necessary to keep things just afloat for the moment. It was also from some foolish spite that he had sought the assistance of an ill-famed bank. “That fits in with me best,” he thought, “for everybody thinks I am an impossible person.”
Ugh! business ... banks ... the whole town!
He felt such a strong desire to take flight in his boat again that it hurt him. Alone! out into the storm and darkness!
At this moment a massive figure came walking out 172along the pier. There was something disarming even in his way of dodging between the holes in the rotten floor-boards of the pier. His little, round, wrinkled head hung on one side between his enormous shoulders—as if it were drooping from sheer compassion. He somehow looked like an enormous child. He stopped and looked at Herman, with two small watery eyes that threatened to overflow.
Herman jumped up when he caught sight of the newcomer, he drew himself to his full height, erect and rigid as a post:
“What do you want here?”
Peter stretched out his arms, which resembled thighs on which hands had happened to grow.
“Look here, old boy ... why should we go on like this, ... two old friends like ourselves.... You know I couldn’t help things....”
Herman suppressed his angry impulse and with a shrug of his shoulders sank back on the seat, staring once again out over the water where an old black-tarred fire-wood smack was just taking in her topsail and slowly turning into the wind with dark sails booming.
Peter seized the opportunity of sitting down on the seat without further ceremony:
“You mustn’t think I am on Laura’s side,” he assured Herman. “She is a handful, she is, without a heart in her breast!”
“I have never asked to hear your opinion about my divorced wife,” said Herman in a voice that was meant to be frigid.
But all the same there was a corner in his soul where Peter’s words did good. He could not hide his wound. Peter noticed it at once. So much sensitiveness he had left from the time of the Great Fear. Yes, yes, that is the after-swell, he thought, and moved closer up to Herman, ready to give him another dose. Then it suddenly started 173to rain. Big, whipping drops. Herman rose silently, taking his glass and bottle with him. Without looking at Peter he walked quickly up to the house. “I don’t mind your being short with me if it soothes you,” thought Peter, and followed him faithfully up the steps and into the smoking room.
Herman put the bottle on the table, threw himself on the sofa and stared at his toes.
Peter took the matches and lit the lamp. Then he went into the kitchen and returned with a couple of bottles of soda water and a clean glass. After that he filled Herman’s glass and prepared one for himself.
“Your health,” he said.
Herman drank deeply without replying. Then followed a moment’s silence. The rain drummed against the upper windows, and rushed down the rainpipes. A cool damp penetrated into the close room.
Peter took a cigar out of a box and lit it:
“I’ll be damned if I don’t stay the night, old boy! It feels jolly to be back at old Ekbacken again!”
Herman was still mute and seemed absorbed in the opposite wall. But when Peter drank he drank also. And that happened often. Peter thought the whiskey tasted good. Yes it really was very jolly to be sitting here at Ekbacken and see old father Hermansson’s treasures gleam behind the glass of the cupboard in the corner. He was already drinking Herman’s health, the delightful sensation of being host himself and of Herman being less secure in the place than himself. Not that he was thinking of business tonight. He could save that up for tomorrow. No, now he gave himself up to his feelings and the whiskey. And it was no small amount of feeling that he showed.
In the intervals between draining their glasses, Peter suddenly began to abuse Laura again. Was this mere calculation on his part? Did he sit there in cold blood 174and sacrifice the sister for his own profit? Was he, with his diabolical cunning, playing upon poor Herman’s love and hate? No, Peter really began to realise Herman’s loneliness. Was he not himself a poor bachelor too? He felt real pity for Herman. Why shouldn’t he curse Laura if it did any good to this poor devil—and to himself, also, by the way? He sat there working up his fury at the recollection of his sister’s old sarcasms. Like a mad bull he tore fiercely and passionately at the red tissue of lies, caprice, ingratitude, and cursed coquetry called woman. Yes it was a relief to him to take his revenge on the whole of the abominable sex that turned up its nose at Peter the Boss, but ran after such scamps as Brundin.
With a stiff expression of disapproval, Herman sat and listened to Peter’s disclosures concerni............