One warm and calm Saturday evening in July Peter sat alone in his office and examined his books. Round about him Selambshof seemed deserted. Not a single soul had been visible the whole afternoon. But far away from Kolsn?s on the other side of the lake an accordion was heard. They were dancing in a barn and everybody was there. Peter puffed aloud. He cursed the low, mellow, rich sunshine and the still air in which so many small winged creatures were hovering about! With his massive body he felt alone and helpless. He had often felt so of late. And then there was practically nothing else but the books, the soiled, faded Selambshof books up on the shelf by the fireplace, to busy himself with. But Peter did not look only at the books of the current year, he went back several years. Their soiled columns constituted his excursions into the past, his diaries and memoirs. Here there were entries and totals at which he had always smiled contentedly. In his memory they were associated with all those who had let themselves be cheated by him in one way or another and sometimes he had the feeling of being amongst good and faithful friends. Yes, there are many ways of fighting loneliness in this world.
Today Peter was more than unusually obstinate with his books. He had already penetrated so far back in the books that the handwriting was not his own scrawl nor that of Inglund’s but a soft elegant handwriting with almost sensuous curls and flourishes. It was Brundin’s 223beautiful handwriting, which still made Peter feel sick. He tried for the hundredth time to enjoy the stale sweetness of victory. But it did not bring him joy. He still had a queer feeling that Brundin had cheated him of something ... something that Peter the Boss would never enjoy.
Then a woman dressed in white came tripping gaily across the lawn, a plump little lady dressed in white with a big white bundle under her arm. She disappeared round the corner of the kitchen. Peter put out his head through the window and called out:
“Hallo! There’s nobody at home there! Come in here instead!”
Peter looked very surprised when the woman with the bundle came to the door of the office:
“Upon my word, it’s ... isn’t it Frida?”
She answered with fluent tongue:
“Yes sir, it’s Frida right enough. I have the new laundry at Maj?ngen now—Frida ?berg, Laundress—No. 5, Solbacken. Here is the bill. Excuse my bringing the laundry at this hour, but I had promised it on Saturday. There is no change here at Selambshof, I see.”
Peter stood with the bill in his hand, staring at the laundress, who had begun to pick collars, cuffs and starched shirts out of her bundle. How strange that it was Frida he was staring at, Frida of Brundin’s bedroom. That white and soft creature he had one night caught a glimpse of from behind the blind in the bailiff’s wing. This then was the Frida of his timid, oppressive, light-shy boyish dreams. There she stood, well preserved, smiling, insinuatingly plump, equipped with such charms that not even the simplest country yokel could help noticing them. Suddenly she was enveloped by a warmth as from hot irons, thought Peter. And far away at Kolsn?s they heard the accordion again tuning up a dance. Then he felt a sudden furious desire for movement, to make a noise and jump about with 224somebody in his arms. And he seized one of the shirts and waved it about:
“I hope you have washed the wedding shirt well?” he cried out almost menacingly.
“Why, are you going to get married, too?”
“Yes, this very moment, if necessary. Don’t you hear the wedding music? Shan’t we take a turn, we two?”
With the shirt spread out before him he jumped about in a sort of grotesque dance, threw his great arms round Frida and began to jump about whilst the wedding shirt still flapped about them. The worn floor-boards groaned under Peter’s weight, the dust rose high and the flies buzzed away frightened from the paper ball below the lamp in the ceiling.
Frida defended herself laughingly when Peter wanted to kiss her:
“No, I must go now, sir.”
Peter stood perspiring and nervous and withheld the money for the bill:
“Won’t you have a look round old Selambshof for a moment? There isn’t a soul at home. I reign alone here now. Come along.”
He pulled her with him up to the main building and, eager and flushed, piloted her through the dusty closed rooms where the old gloomy and worn-out furniture slept and dreamed evil dreams in the heat and twilight.
“It is so cursedly quiet here tonight,” exclaimed Peter. “Can’t you laugh a little again so that I may hear what it sounds like?”
Frida laughed, but the echo came back hollow and scoffing from the depths of the corridors. Then they entered the green smoking room off the hall, which resembled a thousand other smoking rooms in so far as it contained an equipment of guns, deers’ horns, elks’ heads and stuffed birds. Peter seized the opportunity to impress upon her what a wonderful Nimrod he was and what an expert on 225the secrets of animal life, especially of animal sex attraction. He imitated the call of the capercailzie, he described the feathers of the mating ruff and its collar of feathers and finally he imitated the night call of the ruttish elk and its stamping so that it echoed through the whole of the empty house. Meanwhile he drew nearer and nearer to the door of the next room where he slept in the summer because it was so much cooler there than in his own wing. But when Frida saw that they were approaching the bedroom she wisely stopped on the threshold and not even the wildest and most seductive bird-calls could make her penetrate further. No, now she suddenly remembered that she ought to have met a friend long ago. She thanked him for all the kindness he had shown her and insisted on going. Then Peter became furious and reproached her coarsely for her behaviour with the bailiff:
“If that blackguard was good enough, I ought to be too—don’t you think so?”
A hard look came into Frida’s eyes and she hissed out as if testing a hot iron with her wet finger:
“I should like to tell you, sir, that I am on my own now and don’t need to listen to anybody.”
“Don’t be so high and mighty. It was I who managed things so that you escaped examination when Brundin was caught, because I was sorry for you.”
Peter had no proofs at all that she too was involved in Brundin’s frauds, but he always seized an opportunity of boasting of his kindness and of threatening a little. Frida was not at all frightened. No, but she was too worldly-wise to issue a challenge to money and power.
She therefore contented herself with lying in a humble tone about the whole affair:
“No, I had nothing to do with that scoundrel, sir. And besides a poor girl can’t understand all that men do....”
By now Frida had already backed out on to the stairs 226and as soon as she felt safe she at once adopted her most seductive manner again:
“I hope I may iron many wedding shirts for you, sir,” she said, and curtsied and smiled and tripped gaily away, white, plump and coquettishly swaying whatever was capable of being swayed.
Peter stood on the stairs mumbling curses after her. Then he climbed breathlessly up into the observatory and watched with his glass to his eyes where she would emerge from the avenue into the road. He followed the white little figure in the twilight till it disappeared in a strange black house up on the ridge of the hill over Maj?ngen.
A woman had entered the life of Peter the Boss. He was in love, positively in love with Frida ?berg, owner of the Maj?ngen Laundry, No. 5, Solbacken.
Peter had never been able to associate with decent women. He was frightened of the “guinea hens,” as he called them. He grew nervous and hot from the unaccustomed effort of not saying anything coarse or mingling curses with his speech. He even felt a sort of fear of his sister Laura. Once many years ago she had dragged him into a set of Lancers and that was one of his most awful memories. Even today he felt a shiver down his back whenever he saw a dress suit. Thus it is clear that Peter’s erotic experiences were of the simplest. They were all lost in the fog that lies between the revels of the evening and the sore head and sordid regrets of the morning.
But now he was in love, but it was a delight mingled with not a little worry and anxiety. From the very start he felt love as a threat to his purse. He had anxious little suspicions that he was now more susceptible to cheating than before. For the first time he had to be on his guard not only against others but also against himself. “Ugh, this will be an expensive business,” he thought, when the longing to see Frida again came on him. She is no fool, that little witch! She won’t do anything for nothing. He 227positively endowed her with a calculating cunning and a mysterious seductive self-interest. But the more difficult and dangerous he made her, the more he must love her. Peter the Boss suspected a soul akin to his own.
He made up his mind not to appear too eager. No, I’ll wait till she brings the laundry again, he thought. But time passed, until he could not wait and began to hover about Maj?ngen.
It was not exactly a pleasure to walk about there. There were no decent roads, but only heaps of stones and clay holes, for the company had long ago sold all the sites and had thus no interest in fulfilling its vague promise as to the construction of roads. Besides, the inhabitants of Maj?ngen were unpleasant people. All the earliest purchasers, honest workingmen and small tradespeople, who had bought the ground and built upon it at too high a price, had been forced to leave their marsh-dwellings. In their place a floating population had found its way out to Maj?ngen. The worst scum of the town population was to be found there. And Selambshof and Peter the Boss were not exactly loved by them. They rightly considered that it was his filth they had to wade in up to their knees and that it was on his heaps of stones they almost broke their legs.
So that when in his rosiest and most gentle dreams Peter wandered about there, he was perturbed by expressive glances, tightly clenched fists in trouser pockets and long, rude oaths at the house corners. And in the windows there teemed pale and dirty children who took their fingers out of their mouths in order to point at him as the bad man from Selambshof.
All that would not have mattered so much if Peter could only have caught a little glimpse of his beloved. But he never saw her outside in the clay, no plump smiling face showed itself above the window curtains of the laundry up in the “asphalt” house. Thus he had christened the big two-storied ramshackle house half way up Solberget, 228because it was covered with asphalted cardboard outside the boards, and none of the successive owners had been able to afford to repair the outer boards, so that it remained there as black and dismal as it had been three years ago. And it was confoundedly difficult to get to it, for there were only steep narrow wooden steps leading past the entrance and Peter could not climb up and down them all day long in order to steal a glance through the window panes.
“Life is hard,” thought Peter, “you never meet those you want to meet.”
In the end he went home and wrote a letter. There are many ways of interpreting one’s feelings. Peter’s was not very personal because his eloquence was based on a lover’s advertisement in a newspaper and of course any mention of marriage was carefully avoided. And somehow the handwriting was not quite his. And he did not sign it Peter Selamb, but “Frida’s own Elk.” That is what he did.
“Never put your name unnecessarily to any document...”
The answer came by return post and was both pleasing and disquieting. Frida wrote that she was doing well and did not need to bow down to anybody, but that she might find use for a new Laundry stove of the Orion make and a blue silk coat with white revers. And then she allowed herself to hint at the possibility of further sympathy.
Peter fully realized the risk of payment in advance, but he also understood that without some magnanimity he would make no progress at all. So with a swimming head he sent a round sum for the two objects aforesaid. At the same time he wrote that he had found a little refuge well protected from the eyes of the world where they might meet and sympathize. The refuge was Stellan’s flat. Stellan had been ordered North again, much to his annoyance, and Peter had charge of the keys. He now hurried to the elegant little two-roomed flat in Karlav?gen, removed the 229name plate, aired the rooms, put away all Stellan’s belongings into the wardrobes and sat down to wait.
Frida arrived dressed in the new blue silk coat and with the whole warmth of the new Laundry heater of “Orion” make around her.
“I always keep my promises,” she whispered, “I’m made that way.... But goodness me! how smart this is. Are you living here too, Sir?”
“I have taken all this for your sake, Frida,” said Peter pressing her to him. “It has cost me a good deal.”
And then at last Peter got his reward....
He lived in supreme well-being in a world of peace. Late on Sunday morning, long after Frida had stolen home, he lay quite still and watched the sunlight creep across the beautiful Persian carpet. It was a strange feeling of relief, it was as if it was only now that he had at last given the coup de grace to the nightmare of his youth, the stubborn Brundin.
If Peter imagined that Frida now belonged to him, without any further expense, he was mistaken. A few more such moments and she considered herself free again. And so she let him understand in a delicate way that new favours had to be bought with new offerings. Peter suffered, but he suffered more in his greed than in his affection. He was so accustomed to think that everything depended on money that he could scarcely imagine a man being loved for his own sake. He puffed and whined—but paid. He did not even try to press down her demands by simulated indifference. Such is love.
So things went on for a few months. Then one fine day Peter received a letter in which Frida herself proposed a meeting without mentioning any fresh gifts. He was just about to welcome her, feeling heartily content, when he was checked by an inward shock. He suddenly remembered some land he had once bought when the seller in apparent 230absentmindedness had registered the transfer in his own name instead of the purchaser’s.
It was the only time he had ever been completely taken in.
Peter read through Frida’s letter again. It was too eager. It was not quite the same old Frida. He felt a slight presentiment of something unpleasant. A voice whispered in his ear to be on his guard. He knew what it all meant. He sat long and worried in front of the clean sheet of note paper. In the end he wrote something about important business which prevented him from meeting her just then. After this extraordinary exercise of self-control Peter felt very sorry for himself, so much so that the tears came into his eyes. He wandered about puffing and sighing among the fields of Selambshof, a victim of desire, suspicion, hope and fear. Into the bargain Stellan wired that he was coming home immediately from the North, so that Peter was obliged with a bleeding heart to screw the name-plate on to the door again and set out all the photographs of horses and ladies. Thus the discreet little free retreat for his amours disappeared from view. Then another letter from Frida arrived in which she begged and prayed to be allowed to see her own Elk very soon. Peter was really touched. It was sweet to hear her beg like this. All there was of hunger and love in his great body stirred within him. But he felt at the same time that the thing was growing more and more dangerous. “I must be strong,” he thought, “very strong.” And he did not answer the letter, not a line....
Peter was not left long in doubt. It was as he had suspected, Frida was expecting a child. She absolutely must see him, she wrote. She was so ill and so run down. If he did not arrange things for her at once she would drown herself....
Peter sat long staring at the letter and it did not affect him in the way he would have thought. Instead it rather comforted him in a strange way. It cooled his desire to 231think of her growing more and more unshapely and ugly every day.
“Oh no,” he muttered, “you won’t drown yourself. I have paid for what I have had. We are square. It is high time for me to return to my senses.”
The long tug of war between his love and his purse had ended in a victory for the purse.
Peter burnt all Frida’s letters and did not answer a word. He had decided to regard the affair with Frida as a dream. And he knew he could do it. There was not a trace of proof. So wonderful was the instinctive cunning of this man that he had not sent a single line signed with his name, written in his own handwriting, or even posted at Selambshof. And scarcely once had he been seen in Frida’s company. She on her side had from the first had every reason to keep the matter secret, because a liaison with the hated Peter the Boss would at once have driven away all her customers in Maj?ngen.
But Peter was not to escape as unscathed as he had imagined. Frida was not at all the sort of person to allow herself to be hanged in silence. For a time she continued to bombard him with letters, full of entreaties and reproaches. Then she began to hang around Selambshof............