Leaning against the polished black marble counter in a magnificent new bank was standing a thin slightly grey gentleman with a rigid haughty face. He was rather pale, and in spite of the summer heat was dressed in a closely buttoned-up dark frock-coat. He was Stellan Selamb, ex-Captain of the G?ta Guards, now landed proprietor. He had suffered since his long shooting expedition in Africa from the after effects of a malarial fever which made him sensitive to chill. Stellan wore mourning crepe round his arm. His father-in-law had moved down to the aristocracy in the sepulchral vault at Trefvinge half a year ago, not without having first immortalized his memory by a donation to the House of Nobles and in this way gaining posthumous admittance.
Stellan had arranged to meet Laura at the bank. He felt quite comfortable in banks nowadays, since he no longer had any bills to meet on their due date. He had waited more than a quarter of an hour without showing any special signs of impatience. He enjoyed the quiet hum, the hushed murmur of voices, as in a temple. And indeed the big vaulted hall supported on its massive polished stone pillars was like a temple above his shining silk hat. Behind the counter the bank clerks solemnly officiated at the high altar of capital, to the accompaniment of rustling bank-notes, ringing coins and the rattling of the calculating machines that reminded you of eternally revolving prayer wheels.
318It was a temple raised to the real State religion. Above its high copper doors there ought to have stood in thin gold letters the one great word: “Possess!”
Here in the bank Stellan almost seemed to grow reconciled to the thought of his new brother-in-law. At first he had felt a pronounced discomfort when the news of Laura’s marriage in Petersburg suddenly tumbled down on him at Trefvinge. Her husband, Count Alexis von Borgk, was a Finnish senator of the Bobrikov régime and was a very well-known instrument of Tzarism in Finland. And Laura had written that they meant to move over to Sweden. Stellan did not need to see his wife screw up her face to feel anxious concerning the reception of the couple in society.
But Count von Borgk was rich, very rich, it was said. And here in the bank Stellan felt, as I said before, a little calmer.
At last Laura appeared through the swingdoors, smiling light-heartedly, just pleasantly plump, perhaps a shade more blonde than before. She was dressed in white, dazzling white, from the silk ribbon in her hat to the tips of her shoes below the rich folds of her skirt.
“Good-morning, Laura dear! Congratulations. It was a surprise!”
“For me too,” said Laura and smiled her most innocent smile. “I had positively no idea I was going to get married. But why does Your Highness give audience here and not at Trefvinge?”
“Oh, I wanted to meet you alone the first time.”
“I see—and Elvira detests banks, doesn’t she...?” Laura looked round and turned up her nose a little: “Well, so here we are back in this gossipping hole. And I who felt so happy in Petersburg! Asia, that’s the place for me!”
Stellan blinked his eyes somewhat nervously:
319“Why did you not stay in—Asia, then, my dear Laura?”
“I can understand that it would have saved Elvira some worry. But Alexis has altogether withdrawn from politics. And he does not feel at home in either Finland or Russia. He is just selling his estates there. ‘I have saved them from one revolution,’ he says, ‘but I should not succeed in the next.’ He longs for the peace of Sweden. It was the last negotiations that unexpectedly detained him. He is coming next week....”
The bank began to fill up with people. Stellan proposed that they should go down into the safe deposit where he had some papers to look through.
It was quiet and cool down in the crypt of the Mammon temple. The electric lights hung more heavily and more motionless there than anywhere else in this catacomb of wealth, where deeds of mortgages, receipts and share certificates slept their sleep in hundreds and hundreds of polished steel boxes in the walls, and where there were discreet and comfortable little compartments for the devotions of the worshippers.
Sister and brother sat down in one compartment.
“So this is your refuge nowadays,” said Laura. “Well, but what about your Aeronautic Society and your ballooning? I have looked in the papers but have never seen your name.”
“No, I have given it up.”
“Yes, it is easier to go up with a hundred thousand in debts than with double the amount in income. But you still gamble in this little town, I suppose?”
Stellan shrugged his shoulders:
“I’ve given that up, too,” he muttered.
“But what in God’s name do you do then?”
“I cut off coupons and look after my malaria. But it was not of me we were speaking, but of you. Where do you intend to settle?”
320“Well, not in the country, that is certain,” exclaimed Laura, and one could see in her face that this point had been the subject of discussions.
“So your husband wants to settle on an estate.”
“Yes, he imagines he does.”
“What if you should make a compromise and take Selambshof.”
“Selambshof! That dismal old place! Are you mad?”
“Why not? The big house stands quite unoccupied. Repaired and restored it might make a splendid home. And then it would be useful to keep an eye on Peter. He is getting too awful. There are always stories about him in the papers.”
Laura looked at her brother coldly:
“The master of Trefvinge is afraid of the papers. And so he wants to put me in as a lovely guardian for Peter.”
Stellan lowered his voice:
“There are other reasons too. Peter is, as a matter of fact, beginning to go down hill. He is yellow and flabby in the face and he doesn’t take care of himself. If I am not mistaken something may soon happen. We have great interests to guard.”
Laura suddenly became thoughtful. She swung the gold knob of her white sunshade and looked as if she were making calculations. She always did this when she was serious.
Stellan had got his papers and the steel lid of his safe closed with a bang:
“You needn’t say anything definite now,” he said. “I will arrange a family dinner out there when your husband comes. My man will have to clean up a little, as best he can. And on a fine summer evening Selambshof doesn’t look so bad.... Well, we shall see.”
Laura nodded silently. As a matter of fact over there in the East she had boasted a little of her social relations. 321Count von Borgk had perhaps partly married her in order to be introduced to the aristocratic circles of Sweden. And that is why she wanted Selambshof to appear as attractive as possible.
They left the vault.
Up in the bank they met Levy with a black portfolio under his arm and surrounded by a crowd of business friends. He was pale, handsome, and still wore his old exquisitely ironical expression. He hurried up and bowed to Laura.
“Congratulations, Countess von Borgk! Is it true what people say, that you won your husband at roulette?”
Levy was his old self.
Laura tapped him on the shoulders with her sunshade and laughed unconcernedly. But Stellan looked stiffly after the Jew as he disappeared in eager discussion with his company.
Sister and brother stopped for a moment at the corner before they said good-bye:
“That fellow Levy is making up to Hedvig, I think,” Stellan mumbled. “The winding-up of the estate took an enormous time. They say he still appears out there at Liding?n.”
There was a malicious flash in Laura’s eyes:
“Hedvig? Poor fellow!”
“It would not be exactly pleasant to have Levy in the family, don’t you think so?”
Laura stood there in shining white and without a trace of a flush.
“No ... perhaps not....”
“It would be best to give Hedvig a hint—tactfully—that Levy is—second hand....”
“Nonsense, just frighten her and tell her that Levy wants her money. That will have more effect!”
Then they separated.
322“Ugh,” Laura mumbled as she walked about in the sunshine outside the Grand Hotel, “ugh, how moral Stellan has grown.”
From which you can see that everything is relative in this world.
Peter stalked home from his tailor. It was Stellan who had forced him to order a new suit of evening clothes for the family dinner.
Peter had at first obstinately refused. It seemed to him a matter of honour not to betray his greasy old evening coat. Not till Stellan had promised to pay the bill did he give in.
“Tell the tailor you have won the suit as a bet,” Stellan hissed out. “It is unnecessary to show people what a mean beggar you are!”
Peter took his revenge by ordering the most expensive things he could get hold of.
He was walking homewards one sultry August night, yellow in the face, bent and heavy. His head, which had always been a little askew, had sunk between his shoulders. He walked on the edge of the foot path, staring at the paving stones, and carefully avoided stepping on the joints, so that sometimes he took gigantic steps and sometimes proceeded with a ridiculous strut. It was always so when Peter went pondering over business.
Twice he stole into small bars and had a glass. The further he came out towards the suburb—his suburb—the more slowly he walked. He stopped at a row of houses that were being built in a blocked up suburban street that was under repair and from which you could see the tops of the masts in the Ekbacken shipyard away in the background. These houses lay silent and deserted. Their uneven brick walls glowed in the last rays of the sun high up above the chasm of the street. But in the empty window-holes the heavy twilight floated and he visualized 323all the struggles and mean worries that would soon be housed there. Peter stood in the raw chilly draught from the gaps in the walls and thoughtfully stirred a big trough of mortar with his stick. His expression was at the same time one of disapproval and contempt. “Don’t build,” he muttered, “don’t build! Buy from those who have built beyond their means. Houses are worst for those who have them first. Quite different from girls, ha, ha! But then they are good, damned good. No shares and such rubbish for me. What is it they say about a thief? Yes, he is one who has not had time to promote a company, ha, ha! No, land and bricks are better. Both real bricks and those that have engraved on them ‘robur et securitas.’”
After this monologue Peter stalked on in the twilight. He then came to a rather wild and queer patch of stony ground which most resembled the scene of a devastating battle. It was here that the country and town skirmished with each other on a battlefield that was never cleared, full of blown-up rocks, rubbish heaps, bottomless fragments of road and fields brown and intersected with a deep trench. The town had pushed forward its apparatus of siege: stone-cutters’ sheds, metal-crushers and dynamite boxes. The country obstinately defended its retreat by guerilla troops of creeping nettles and dock leaves, whilst one or two dried-up dusty pines represented the remnants of the main army in retreat.
And over it all whirled the crows, the ravens of the battlefield.
But Peter was the marauder in this war. From each onward push of the town he would creep home with fresh booty of war. He strolled among the rubbish and interposed his coarse signature between those of the buyer and seller. And woe to him who had ventured too far in the heat of the moment. They were his victims at once.
Peter struggled panting up a mountain of road metal. 324He stood up dark against the red evening sky, a grinning and spying evil spirit on a pedestal of millions of broken fragments of stones. He looked out over the masses of houses of the town. They were enveloped in smoke, smouldering like a weary brain after a long working day. The very air around them seem used up and tired. Yes, there the stupid town lay and sweated and converted Peter’s rocks into gold. It paid dearly for its work. And still there was no gratitude in his glance as he looked down upon it from the macadam mountain, but rather something resembling inveterate distrust and aversion. The town, the community, and the public were there to be cheated and that was all. This was the doom pronounced on the honest old granite rocks and it made them less safe, less suited for human habitation.
Then Peter turned on his heel and glanced at his own domains. Then he saw the grey ribbon of a new road stretched past red fences and high piles of wood, long and straight as an arrow it stretched with neat, well measured plots of building land on either side. Yes, it was like following the columns of a cash book with safe entries and solid credits. All the way to the big sandpit all was well. But there Maj?ngen began, Peter’s sore spot. He fell in his own estimation as half involuntarily he stared at that miserable agglomeration of cottages above which even the sunset glow seemed sullied and decayed.
Peter was afraid of Maj?ngen. For several years he had not dared to set foot there. And his fear was shared by all his neighbours and, as a matter of fact, by the whole town. Yes, Maj?ngen was a name of terror. Peter’s own policy had long ago driven away all decent, honest people, and now only the worst rabble lived there. In the twilight they swarmed out of their holes, the Maj?ngen roughs, thin, pale, with their hands deep in the pockets of their wide trousers and caps pulled down over their eyes. They had a new style. Their slang and their types quickly took 325possession of the comic papers, so that Peter and his like soon began to talk the simple but expressive language of their mortal enemies.
These youths conducted a bitter war against Selambshof. They pulled down fences, broke windows, trampled on garden beds. Their numerous thefts testified to their activity, against which he tried in vain to defend himself with fierce dogs and barbed wire. Safe in their immunity from punishment and intoxicated with their success, the hooligans of Maj?ngen extended their raids to the outskirts of the town, where epidemics of theft and brawling broke out. But it was not enough that hooliganism, prostitution, theft, damage to property and brawls issued from Maj?ngen as from an open sore, worst of all were the epidemics. Diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhus succeeded each other out there in the cottages and were a constant menace both to Selambshof and to the town. These were Peter’s epidemics. There were no drains, and in his greed he had not given a hand’s breadth of land to those who wanted to supply water and light to the community. It was a terrible blunder that was to become both costly and dangerous both to him and to the town. Now in the dog days there raged again a terrible typhus epidemic which had caused the loss of several human lives in the immediate neighbourhood of Selambshof.
Peter crawled down from the heap of road metal as if the very sight of the seat of plague were dangerous. As usual, he returned by way of Ekbacken.
Slowly he walked past the fine house, where old Hermansson had lived, and which was now used as a public-house and for working men’s tenements. Down in the shipyard he stopped below an old ghost of a brig that raised its blackened rigging towards the empty space above and whose riven sides disclosed serious rot. Here, as usual, his temper improved. Why did Peter really like to walk about among the tarred shavings or to sit and ponder over 326the rough weathered logs on the stack? Why did he continue this business, which, even if it did not quite run at a loss, was still of no importance? Did he perhaps after all enjoy the shadow of honest and productive work that lifted its languishing head here on his fine shore property—which increased in value from year to year? Or did he keep the yard going from a pious memory of Herman and his first good stroke of business?
Then he came down to the pier, the long rotting, shaking, pier which still, as if by miracle, held together. Out there on the seat two figures were visible against the dark smooth water, one bent and huddled up and the other thin like a boy, with straight back. One was, of course, Lundbom, the old fixture Lundbom, who was still able to keep the books. But the other? It was funny how he reminded you of poor old Herman! But it must be Georg, Laura’s Georg! It was not the first time Peter had seen the tall lad wandering about here on the quay, talking to the workmen and old Lundbom. “Let me see,” thought Peter, “what if the fellow is planning some trouble for Laura.” And this thought brought him a certain satisfaction. For his own part he did not feel any remorse or the least unpleasantness at the sight of Georg out here. It simply did not occur to him that he had once wronged his father. He thought rather with a certain phantom-like return of sentimentality of the twenty thousand that Herman had with him when he left. “Well, yes, I saved the slam for him anyhow, I saved the slam.”
Of Herman’s fate in America he had during all these years never heard a sound, he did not even know if he was alive....
At last Peter reached the avenue leading up to Selambshof. He now walked slowly and half reluctantly. The evenings had grown very long in the bailiff’s wing. And he did not dare to call in the coachman now when Stellan’s cursed butler was there in the main building....
327It was very dark under the dense old elms. Just over his head Peter saw a narrow strip of sky and some faint, twinkling stars. Then he heard steps and whispers in the garden. Holding his stick tight and feeling quite revived, he crept behind a scraggy tree trunk.
The old fence creaked and suddenly several boys came jumping over the ditch beside Peter. He got hold of the nearest whilst the others disappeared quick as lightning in the dark. Aha! Apple thieves! The boy had his pockets full of unripe fruit.
“Damned rascal!” roared Peter. “You damned rascal! I’ll give you something for stealing.”
And he struck the writhing figure with his rough stick.
A long, terrible, shrill scream rent the close air. And then Peter suddenly felt the pain of a bite in his arm. He did not let go, but puffing and blowing he dragged the boy with him into the office, where he locked the door and lit the lamp.
“Here nobody will hear if you yell,” he mumbled.
But when Peter came up to the boy again with the stick, he was startled at something in his pale dirty face, distorted with crying:
“Where do you come from?” he mumbled.
“Maj?ngen.”
“Who are your parents?”
“Mother washes....”
“What’s her name?”
“Frida ?berg!”
Then the boy suddenly stopped sobbing and stared Peter boldly in the face with an impudent, horribly precocious look that seemed to indicate that he knew all.
Peter had the sensation of horrid nakedness, of bare shivering flesh. It was as when in a nightmare you suddenly find you have forgotten your trousers. But at the same time he was afraid to betray himself by a hint of 328weakness. So he seized the boy firmly by the ear and led him to the door:
“Don’t ever steal apples again,” he muttered. “It’s ugly to steal. I won’t thrash you any more this time.”
Quick as a flash the boy disappeared from his grip and was swallowed up in the shadows of the trees. But from the thick silent darkness Peter at once heard a shrill, sharp voice, mad with fury but at the same time pitiful and terrible:
“You damned carcase. I’ll pay you out for that, you damned old carcase!”
Peter closed the shutters. He had long ago had shutters put up. Then he sat down under the lamp and examined the bite in his arm. And he was frightened, frightened as a mouse, of infection from Maj?ngen.
Then the day of the great family dinner arrived.
Between resplendent footmen the carriages and the motor cars drove up over the newly-weeded and freshly-raked sand-covered ground in front of the house. For many reasons they had avoided the daylight and chosen the twilight, which concealed the worst neglect.
Peter had received strict orders to behave decently. He stood in the hall underneath an improvised decoration of antelopes’ heads and negro weapons—trophies from Stellan’s African shooting trip—and received the guests. In his new evening dress he felt like a foot that has gone to sleep in a tight boot. He had pins and needles in his whole body. The thought that he would eat and drink as much as he liked quite free of charge could not overcome his fear of Count von Borgk, whom after all these magnificent preparations he imagined to be some sort of wonderful superman, so covered with orders that any other poor devil would feel quite naked in the region of the left lapel. But Peter calmed down when the newly married couple arrived at last and the Count proved to be a gentleman whom Laura 329could have hidden away in her décolletage. Yes, he was a little dark gentleman with soft eyes, that avoided looking into other people’s eyes, and with an expression round the mouth that was both suffering and sensual. He had thin, hairy hands which seemed to melt away when you shook hands. He spoke a low, sing-song Finnish-Swedish with a certain admixture of Slavonic softness and suppleness. And his dress coat was bare, quite bare over his heart.
It was strange to think that this was the hated and feared Count Alexis von Borgk, accused by exiled Finns of a perverse betrayal of his country and of coarse political sadism. Was he one of those neurasthenics of authority who are only able to breathe amid the cold momentous gusts of world politics? Was he one of those strange heraldic beings who are irresistibly attracted by the austere magnificence of a throne; who are linked to the forces of reaction by emblems and ceremonies? Or was he perhaps a weak dreamer who had fallen a victim to the mystery of panslavism and who had nothing but the grey spleen left for anything so mean as a Grand Duchy with a few million souls? Anyhow he was now a man who could no longer retain the post he had chosen, but had retired, having all the same suffered and sacrificed something. A son by a previous marriage with a Russian had fallen in the Russian-Japanese war just after he had been commissioned lieutenant.
But Laura was not in the least affected by this. She took her husband playfully. The Countess had really escaped from the skirmishes of life with surprising ease. Her smile had kept its impertinent freshness. She still continued to look as if she had just got out of bed, and had a little of the warmth of the bed left. And her skin was in some strange way more naked than that of other ladies. This evening a lot of jewellery with some cold green stones shimmered on it, but no pearls. Pearls did not suit her, 330she thought. Did she perhaps realize that their soft roundness and mellow sheen are symbols of quite a different sort of womanliness?
Among those who did not know her, Laura always created a sensation by having Georg with her. They had not seen him for years and had almost forgotten his existence. And now he suddenly appeared on the scene, a tall, well grown lad of sixteen, dressed up in his first dress shirt and dress coat and still quite shy and confused by this unexpected promotion after years of oblivion and neglect. He was really very like his father, Georg, so like that one was almost startled. There was something open, honest, straight-backed, that the Selambs regarded as stupidity, but with a new admixture of grit and determination that made all except Laura think. She seemed to be merely content with her new possession. Imagine that that overgrown schoolboy in his ridiculous knickers and worn sailor’s blouse should turn out so presentable. Yes, these last days Georg had been paraded, introduced, boasted of, and spoilt. She went with him everywhere just as in the recklessness of love you would show off a new lover. Perhaps it may, as a matter of fact, have been a whimsical motherly falling in love. Perhaps something reserved, even hostile in her son had awakened her feminine desire for conquest. Or was it only secret anxiety born of the glance of shy, uncomprehending fear that Georg first cast upon his new stepfather?
They went in to dinner.
Stellan and his butler had really worked marvels. The shabby old dining-room at Selambshof was impossible to recognize, thanks to a soft wine-red carpet, expensive sconces, handsome high backed chairs, exquisite table silver, and plenty of white orchids.
But it looked all the same as if it was going to be a silent dinner. They were mute after the first nervous talk. They stared at the batteries of untouched glasses in front of e............