Laura cast a glance down the esplanade before she pulled the blind. She had moved to Narvav?gen now. It was the most fashionable quarter. The September evening was clear and cool. The prosperous-looking windows in the house opposite threw back discreet golden reflections. The little church at the corner looked like a luxurious bigoted needlework box. The recently planted trees of the esplanade were as like each other as soldiers in a row marching in column order out towards the fields.
Laura sighed faintly and contentedly. Everybody was back in town. The season was beginning.
She switched on the light. The cream coloured blind completed the circle of coquettish intimacy. She sat down at her dressing table. In the mirror she saw a face which still retained the seaside sunburn. It suited her well, made her hair still fairer and her teeth whiter. Laura was now a woman of thirty. There was something of the fair renaissance type in her plumpness, something at one and the same time crude and refined. Her quick smile was full of health and light impudence.
But just now Laura was not smiling. On the whole women are never so serious as when they are occupied with their personal appearance. During the siege of the Legations during the Boxers’ rising in China it is told that a lady stole yolks of eggs, whilst people died of starvation all round her, in order to preserve the colour of her hair. That is serious....
202Laura always had a long tête-à-tête with her face before she paraded it in public.
She became very impatient as somebody hesitatingly fingered the door handle and little Georg at last stepped in.
Georg was very like his father. He had his long face and fair eyes. In this case the weaker had been the stronger. It looked like nature’s revenge. She had always the image of the wronged father before her.
Georg smiled the hesitating smile of the neglected child. There was a certain shyness about him as he crept up to the mother.
Laura’s face hardened as she turned from the mirror:
“Don’t touch me! You soil my clothes.”
Georg humbly drew back:
“Mummie darling, may I stay up a little longer?”
“No, you must obey Sofi!”
“But mummie, why must I always go to bed when people come?”
“That’s enough. Run away now. I’m in a hurry!”
He went slowly, looking troubled, but he stopped at the door:
“May I sit and play in bed a little at least?”
“All right, but run away now!”
Then Georg went to bed. And in bed he sat and drew a picture of his mummie as a hobgoblin. But then he grew frightened of what he had done and drew her as a princess. And when Sofi came to pull down the blind he lay awake in the twilight and listened to the guests. He was accustomed to lie in the darkness and enjoy Laura’s parties through closed doors.
Georg had not always been so lonely.
Just after the divorce, whilst Laura still felt her position to be delicate, she had cultivated the ladies, well knowing that it is they who make one’s position. Then she availed herself of every opportunity to pose as a deserted mother with her little baby. But her baby grew up and the ladies 203bored Laura. Nor did they feel very much drawn to Laura. It was not that she made any mistakes. On the contrary, at first she was very careful about her reputation. But she made her friends restless in some way. They did not like to see her entertain their husbands. They gradually held aloof. Only the eccentrics and the bohemians among them remained faithful to her, including a fashionable woman sculptor and a middle-aged baroness who wrote causeries on the fashions.
Thus there were mostly men at Laura’s little parties. She realized this with a shrug of her shoulders, a contented shrug. As a matter of fact she always felt at home with men. But little Georg was not an additional attraction for them. He was still exhibited now and then as an almost newborn babe. But in the end the sweet little baby grew too long in legs. And then Laura began to keep him out of sight. She came to think of him more and more as a tiresome encumbrance. She even grew ashamed of this reminder of her age and of her past. Georg was under the care of untidy, uncontrolled and incessantly changing nurses. When Laura was travelling she boarded him out with strangers wherever she might happen to be. And when she entertained he was put to bed to be out of the way.
Laura had resumed her work in front of the mirror. As the delicate task advanced towards the finishing touch with the powder puff and the choice of perfumes and jewels, her serious expression grew in solemnity.
Her movements became more deliberate like those of an officiating priest. All these pastes, creams, essences and perfumes were sacrifices and incense in a secret cult. The dressing table was the altar and the image in the mirror was the god. And just as a worshipper at the altar ponders over the past and questions the future, so it was at her dressing table that Laura became absorbed in recollections and sought inspiration for her future plans. Her 204face thus participated very intimately in all she did. When she thought of herself it was quite naturally of her hair, her mouth, her eyes, that she thought. Her egoism flourished under the spell of the mirrored image. The shadow and the reality merged imperceptibly together. She was sitting at the high altar of feminine selfishness.
Then Stellan arrived, dressed in a dinner jacket. He stepped without ceremony into the holiest of holies, patted Laura approvingly on the neck, and threw himself down in an empty chair beside the dressing table. You could scarcely have seen that he was over thirty and that his life during the last years had been rather stormy. His face still bore an expression of self-satisfied, smiling irony. Only the corners of his mouth had set, not into earnestness, but into hardness.
Sister and brother had not met during the whole summer. Laura tore herself away from the mirror with an effort. She looked at her brother searchingly. It was as if she looked in vain for something in his face:
“And now you have become a balloon pilot, too,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. “How did you get that idea into your head?”
Stellan played with a small lady’s watch of about the size of a sixpence.
“Well, I did it in anger. I had to sell the Ace of Spades, and it got into the papers. So then I found a way of cutting out the cavalry. They look simply ludicrous down below on their horses.”
Laura did not answer Stellan’s smile:
“Do you know what I thought when I read about your folly?” she said. “Oh, are his affairs in such a rotten state?” I thought.
Stellan frowned:
“No, dash it all, don’t think it is a subtle form of suicide. Rather then as a new phase of my notorious passion for gambling. I must have excitement. It is a game 205with a rather higher stake than usual, that’s all....”
“Well, but how are your affairs?”
“My affairs,” said Stellan with a shrug of his shoulders. “I have no affairs, only debts. But they are of no importance anyhow. Just sufficient to keep me from getting fat. They keep one up to the mark.”
Stellan’s financial position was bad. And still his superior airs were not all pose. He did not worry over his position. If he had done that he would have been lost. It never occurred to him to refuse himself anything; on the contrary. He, Stellan Selamb, must of course live up to his position. The best was, of course, always for him and his like. It is an enormous source of strength to have such an inborn conviction. Because you usually get what you consider should as a matter of course be yours.
It was this elegant microcosm of upper class prejudices that kept Stellan afloat.
Laura looked at her brother with something almost resembling admiration. His assurance, his elegant bearing, his haughty smile, impressed her:
“There is an easy solution,” she said in a significant tone.
Stellan suddenly looked bored. He understood only too well what Laura meant. The great day of settlement was approaching when he would have to produce the heiress in anticipation of whom he had drawn so many bills.
“Damn it,” he muttered, “you too! My colonel attacked me the other day and asked if I did not mean to get married. He must have heard something alarming. And do you know what that idiot Ohrnfeldt said the other day when I got him to indorse a note for me? ‘It is your duty as an honest man to marry a rich girl,’ he said. Not bad, what? I am a positive enigma to those honest souls. They think I have let several fine chances slip through my fingers.”
“Well, but why do you neglect those ... chances?”
“Ugh, it goes against the grain to do what everybody expects me to do. I think it is ridiculous.”
206Laura did not answer. She resumed her task at the mirror. There is all the same something artificial in Stellan’s recklessness tonight, she thought, not without anxiety. Because she also had lent him money. Not much, certainly, but more than she would like to lose.
Stellan sat silent a moment staring at the absurdly small lady’s watch, which seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with anything so serious as time. Then he rose as if he had suddenly noticed what time it was:
“I suppose Manne is coming tonight?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Good ... Laura, you must see that one of your financial friends backs his new bills. Manne must have money.”
“Yes, because if he has any money, you will get some too. Isn’t that so?”
“Well, Manne still has delightfully bad luck at cards.”
The guests began to arrive.
Laura’s home was a meeting place for some younger financiers and a certain set of officers introduced by Stellan. Great interest was shown at Laura’s in aristocrats in financial difficulty. And sometimes the play was high.
Laura was a charming hostess at these highly original men’s parties. She enjoyed queening it over these men with a future or a past. She flirted gaily and without sentimentality with both Mars and Mercury, with a secret leaning towards Mercury. Yes, in the company of these moneyed men Laura was perfectly at home. She enjoyed the cool rapid talk of investments and bargains in shares. Their lightning estimates and calculations gently stimulated her. She was buoyed up and sustained by these speculative chances. She constantly swayed between pleasant irresponsibility and instructive calculations. Her cool and sparkling head exercised, in the last resort, a natural and easy domination over her senses. She played with bold assurance, with her womanliness as the stake.
Yes, Laura liked gambling, but she liked winners still 207better, winners who understood how delicately to share their gains. Since she had observed that her fair type made a special impression on Jews she had deliberately begun to cultivate “the little black boys” as she called them. This was the period of the first national industrial boom and “the little black boys” were making larger fortunes than ever. Because whatever happens in the world it is sure to make the Jews wealthier. And Laura kept to the fore and was given many a helping hand and many a hint which she did not neglect to use to her advantage. People thought that she liked to risk small sums for the fun of the thing, but secretly she carried an a systematic and extensive business by which she had collected a not insignificant fortune.
The last comer in Laura’s circle was Jacob Levy, the lawyer.
Levy was a business lawyer, still quite young, but obviously a man with a future. He had a large, but finely chiselled nose, dark brown eyes and thin, ironically curled lips. His was an international face, a face which seemed as if for generations it had stared itself tired in all the markets of the world. Though born in Sweden, Levy spoke with a certain accent. His father was a Danish Jew and his mother came from Poland. The ancient Swedish title of his professional rank seemed incongruous in him. He was a cosmopolitan, and money and the hazards of money were his real home and country. Behind his mask of pale indifference lay a passionate will and a cool, sharp observation which sometimes got the better of him. In the most impersonal tones he would utter extraordinarily insolent truths, which sometimes cut straight across his own interests.
Laura liked those truths, which had not yet however, been directed against herself.
Stellan did not share his sister’s taste. He detested Levy and treated him with an icy cold rudeness, which only seemed to amuse him. They emphasized their respective 208vocations as officer and lawyer and indulged, of course in most general terms, in exquisite sarcasms at each other’s expense. To keep to the general is often the best way to offer personal insults. In the beginning the atmosphere was a little chilly and depressed at Laura’s first dinner of the season. Financiers sat stiff in a corner and looked as if the State Bank had raised its rate, and the military kept to themselves and discussed promotions and the damned journalistic moles. The hostess herself hovered about with a little frown on her brow. Perhaps it was Stellan’s irritation that infected the others. He was not the only one waiting for Manne von Strelert, everybody was saying,
“Wasn’t Captain von Strelert coming tonight...? I hope Manne won’t fail us tonight...!”
Good old Manne seemed to be a special attraction! At last the cavalry arrived in all its glory. The talk at once became livelier and gayer. Everybody chatted and laughed round the tall young officer with the careless and mischievous eyes. Though not a wit there was nevertheless a certain distinction in all that Manne said. He was especially characterized by a kind of good-tempered acquiescence in his Fate. He was capable of anything impossible and was always game. He realized that somewhere within him there were numerous possibilities but it never occurred to him to try to develop them. In his aristocratic helplessness he had a certain likeness to those race horses which are so tall that they can never feed themselves. They simply cannot reach down to their fodder.
Manne von Strelert’s character was summed up in two prominent and widely appreciated fundamental qualities: he could not say “no” and he had a wonderful, glorious, never-failing bad luck in gambling. To this it should be added that for some time past the owner of Kolsn?s found himself in an embarrassing financial position. Is it then strange that all eyes lit up around him and that tonight he was the greatest attraction at Laura’s dinner?
209Stellan occasionally reproached Manne in gentle and almost flattering tones for his extravagance. He had during the course of years won somewhat large sums of money from his old messmate and childhood friend. And tonight he simply could not help winning more.
They had dined early so as not to be disturbed in their play. Manne took the hostess in. That evening she courted the army.
Laura’s manner varied entirely according to the category of guests in which she happened to be moving. She preferred to take her financiers one by one, and whatever was said openly had often a hard metallic ring about it. But with her officer friends she displayed a special abandon. With them she was the personification of reckless gaiety. Her playful coquetry, and her light-hearted, infectious laughter at once threw open the gates to a paradise of irresponsibility and golden unconcern. Yes, she could be quite delightfully gay, Laura, a veritable saute marquis and vogue la galère.
Finance did not mind this apparent neglect and watched for an opportunity to grind its own little axe.
Manne von Strelert was not the man to resist any kind of seduction, least of all Laura’s. He soon began to drink her health, in all sorts of drinks, and to make a series of perfectly absurd little speeches in her honour.
Laura frankly enjoyed the admiration, both coarse and refined, of her hair and shoulders, of these connoisseurs of horses and women. But in the midst of the laughter and toasts her eyes now and then searched Levy and Stellan. Nothing had been arranged beforehand. But it so happened that they had every reason to be pleased with her. There was surely—hang it all—no harm in her enjoying herself to the full with dear old Manne, who at this moment seized an opportunity of pressing her hand under the table.
Dinner was over and the party was just rising from the 210table when Manne noticed some little pink shells that had been brought in as ashtrays. He filled one with the last drops of his champagne:
“One more toast,” he exclaimed! “A toast for the little pink shell and the eternal line of curve.”
And with his hand Manne indicated round his lady a very significant wave line.
Laura pushed back her chair and stood there with her bare white shoulders and a seductive smile. She lifted her soft arms as if waltzing.
“Yes, I appeal to you, gentlemen, am I not round?”
“Indeed, indeed,” sighed Manne and kissed her shoulders.
“Then you must see how one of our youngest Parisian painters has imagined me,” she laughed. “I made a little trip there a few weeks ago....”
All eyes turned upon Levy for a second. They knew that he also had been to Paris a few weeks ago. He looked quite unconcerned.
“The most modern art is like an unshelled chestnut,” he said. “Green and full of prickles.”
“I look like a starved green skeleton with mauve-coloured frost bites,” Laura interposed, eagerly, with her cheeks a little flushed.
“I told the great master that it was not kind of him to make me so angular. Then he bowed and said: ‘Art is free, Madame, and on this occasion it has not been able to take any notice of your roundness.’ Yes, that’s what he said. But come with me and look at the masterpiece for yourselves.”
With the whole troop of laughing men after her Laura ran through the yellow drawing room into her little reading and writing room where she had hung the curiosity. She opened the door quickly and almost stumbled over something that lay across the threshold.
It was Georg. He had crept out of bed to peep at the 211party through the keyhole and had fallen asleep at his post. He lay there dressed only in his outgrown nightshirt and with black streaks across his knees from his stockings. There was an air of sad neglect and helplessness over the whole emaciated little figure.
“Who the deuce is that kid?” laughed one of the men, who did not know that Laura had a child.
Laura grew rigid for a moment, but quickly recovered hers............