one fine day in september stellan selamb, lieutenant of the g?ta guards, was out at field man?uvres at liding?n with his platoon. they had already during the cool and clear morning hours practised advancing in open formation through the broken brushwood to the right of the main road, when he gave over the command to the sergeant and, consulting his map, began to climb a steep hill path to make an attack on his own. after some searching he found another new cross road which brought him to a large, new and somewhat strange looking house, which lay alone in the midst of the dense pine wood.
stellan did not associate with architects and did not usually pay much attention to houses. but he was accustomed to safe old manor-houses which seemed to have grown out of the ground where they were stood. this house on the contrary looked as if it had fallen down from the sky with its dazzling white walls broken up in a fantastic way and its bright green roof! it was positively difficult to tell whether it was meant for a temple, a sanatorium, a museum or perhaps even an ordinary house. anyhow stellan hammered the antique knocker against a huge black church door densely studded with coarse nails.
a groom opened the door.
“the master is in bed, but i am to announce visitors all the same.”
he disappeared but returned at once with the message that if the lieutenant would look at the pictures for a moment 139his master would receive him. stellan walked through several large rooms full of pictures, like picture galleries.
some of them he knew from percy’s old flat in town, but most of them had probably been bought during his last long journey abroad. there was both ancient and modern art, spanish and dutch masters and some of the most modern impressionists, but he could discover no trace of percy’s own canvases.
“just like him,” stellan thought, “they are of course relegated to some old boxroom.”
at last the door into the bedroom was opened. there lay “the china doll.” it was the same thin, refined face as before. and the same little smile, amiable, gentle and slightly reserved. only the blue of the eyes was not as cool as before.
“good-morning, percy, old man, i happened to have field exercises in the neighbourhood and thought i would have a peep at your new tusculum.”
“o, i am so pleased when somebody is kind enough to look in.”
percy’s voice sounded strangely fragile. but stellan did not notice it. he was so accustomed to see percy ill. having looked closely at the bedroom he suddenly burst out laughing. it was black and white with a vaulted ceiling and heavy carved oak furniture. the chairs seemed completely taken up with their own ornament and would no doubt have looked upon the back of anyone sitting down on them as a desecration. percy’s bed resembled most nearly a catafalque and it was standing in an alcove which looked like a chapel in the church of “the third kingdom.”
“i say, this looks rather as if it was prepared for the eternal sleep,” stellan exclaimed. “for a marble statue.”
percy’s smile was a shade more wan.
“yes, perhaps you are right....”
stellan opened the door of a w. c. which the uninitiated 140would have taken for some kind of confession box. he suddenly grew furious and felt a desire to say something indecent; he wisely kept it back however.
“excuse me, percy, old chap, but do you really feel at home here?”
“no, i can’t say i do.”
“well, then, why the devil do you have it in this style, then?”
percy looked at the ceiling of the alcove which was painted all over with pentagrams and spirals.
“well, my architect did it,” he muttered resignedly. “he wanted it like this. and i dared not oppose him. it is so difficult when you are not able to say that you cannot afford it. it brings so many responsibilities. do you know, stellan, i don’t think it is possible really to will something, really to be something for your own sake if you have lots of money.”
stellan thought that if that was the difficulty he was ready to ease him of his burden.
“poor percy,” he laughed sarcastically. “the prisoner of wealth, for life.”
but then he remembered the refined little boy dressed in white behind the gates at stonehill. and it struck him that there might perhaps be a bitter blighting truth in his exclamation. and that percy perhaps was a shade more serious this time than usual. stellan drummed, a little embarrassed, on the rough carved block of black oak that constituted the foot of the bed.
“i say, percy, how are you really?”
percy smiled an apologetic smile:
“well, to be frank, i had a rather serious h?morrhage of the lungs a week and a half ago ... my chest has always been weak, you know.”
for various reasons stellan was horrified:
“but your footman did not tell me so. i had not the slightest idea that....”
141“well, i don’t want to advertise my illness.”
“what does the medicine man say?”
“he shakes his head and says that i must lie quiet in bed for the present, only lie quiet.... but dash it all, stellan, don’t take it so seriously. i myself am rather pleased. i have never been anything but a dilettante. but this will perhaps be my opportunity. a real danger! an honest compulsion! sometimes i feel as if i would really be able to do something after all. oh, there is a curious excitement in the fever and the imminence of death.”
stellan was just pondering how best in these circumstances he might decorously prepare percy for the comparative relief to be derived from backing a bill for five thousand. then a head with fair straggling hair and broad good-natured features peeped in through the door and disappeared again with a smile of apology at the sight of stellan. it was the nurse. there were red spots in percy’s cheeks and his voice sounded worried and nervous:
“if you knew how i suffer from that woman,” he whispered. “she is not at all unkind to me. on the contrary. but i can’t stand people with that sort of stolid face. i shiver when she touches me.”
“why don’t you send her away?”
“no, it is so difficult. i can’t bring myself to do it. once she is here she has certain claims on me.”
percy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand entreatingly:
“perhaps you could help me, stellan? hasn’t the army some connection with the red cross? oh, if you could find me in some way a more bearable face!”
stellan suddenly had an idea, a strange half-impossible idea which, however, at bottom seemed to him to be curiously charged with infinite possibilities. “hedvig!” he thought. “hedvig!” he had to make an effort to recover his normal, smooth and kindly tone.
“i could speak to my sister hedvig,” he said. “she is a 142nurse. but i tell you beforehand that she has a sombre and strange temper. but her face is really something for an artist to look upon.”
percy became quite excited and was filled with touching gratitude:
“a face, a temperament, a human being! oh, how grateful i should be to you!”
“good, i’ll speak to her if she can get free. anyhow this grinning monster must be got rid of!”
with this stellan took a warm good-bye. but at the door he turned round with his most charming and unconcerned expression.
“by the way, percy, i am going about with a damned little bill in my hip pocket. you would not like by any chance to put your scrawl across it?”
“with pleasure, old boy, with pleasure.”
stellan stepped whistling out of hill’s villa and, in excellent temper, resumed his command over his dusty and perspiring platoon.
the same evening stellan went to see laura. he had got into the habit of running up to her to talk things over before he settled anything important.
laura was dressing to go to the theatre. he helped her to fasten her frock behind.
“percy has had a h?morrhage of the lungs and is dissatisfied with his nurse. i offered to get hedvig for him. what do you think about it?”
“poor percy!”
“but how shall i persuade hedvig?”
“you must talk about sacrifice, and give her an opportunity to look long-suffering.”
stellan rang up the red cross at once. there he was given another telephone number and rang again. a weak tremulous voice replied:
“sister hedvig? yes, i’ll tell her.”
143hedvig came to the telephone. stellan presented his case. he made percy as ill as possible and begged her to sacrifice herself for their old friend. hedvig’s distant voice assumed a peculiarly hard resigned note.
“i don’t think i can.”
“but why?”
“well, at least not at once.”
“why?”
she lowered her voice:
“no, it won’t be ... all over here for another few days....”
“all over!” then a human being lay dying at the other end of the wire! stellan felt a cold shiver. he looked at laura, who sat there in low-cut evening frock polishing her nails. he looked around him in the coquettish little room. all over in a few days. all over! how curiously hedvig had said that. it was as if she had wanted to force the thought of death on him like a tablespoonful of medicine.
“well, ... i may tell poor percy that you will come when you ... you are free?”
“yes, i suppose i must give up my idea of resting a little.”
then she rang off.
stellan hung up the receiver.
“yes, she will go to percy as soon as her present patient has had time to die. and it is hedvig who is leading such a life! really i can’t understand it....”
laura pursed up her lips whilst she pulled on her glove. she looked unusually free from any sentimentality at that moment.
“hedvig is frightened,” she said.
stellan felt nervous.
“frightened? damned funny way of being frightened. what do you really mean?”
144laura’s answer came short, sharp and pleased. one could see how she had worried about this matter and at last found a satisfactory explanation:
“who is it that runs about in the cemeteries at midnight?” she said. “precisely those who are afraid of ghosts. others have no business there.”
and then mrs. laura went to the theatre.
it was a fact that for a year and a half past hedvig had been a trained red cross nurse and that she was already one of those who was sent to the more difficult cases and that she herself desired it so.
to her fellow nurses she was an enigma. they felt at once that she was not one of those simple good women whose hearts call them to serve, care for, and struggle against suffering and death. as they knew that she had gone straight from her sister’s wedding to the hospital the younger nurses at once concluded that hedvig’s secret was unrequited love, but the older and more experienced nurses shook their heads.
the doctors also discussed sister hedvig. men will always discuss women such as sister hedvig. after long discussions which were not free from criticism, though they were supposed to be scientific, they too, turned to love as explanation. and they of course protested against such childish nonsense as women’s talk of an unhappy love. a young psychiatrist had the word last. he said nothing cynical. he would perhaps have done so ten years earlier. but now cynicism was no longer the fashion—at least among the psychiatrists—that was left to the surgeons and other humbler craftsmen.
“sister hedvig,” the young doctor said, “is a very interesting case. as a matter of fact she cannot look a healthy man full in the eyes. but all the same she at once chose the male division in the hospital. she simply had to go there, she was really incapable of doing her duty to the women patients. what else is that but a case of 145timid, wounded, sickly eroticism slinking away to sick people. she feels a secret relief in seeing men suffer and die. she sacrifices them to eros—probably by a religious perversion of her feelings.”
thus spoke the young doctor and did not observe his own involuntary confession of having looked very deep into sister hedvig’s eyes.
perhaps there was something in what he said after all. though laura had probably said the truest word. the fundamental fact in sister hedvig’s nature was still fear. and this fear had not, as in peter’s case, spread over the surface in the shape of pretended good nature and a magnificent tissue of lies. no, in hedvig it grew inwards in the dark. and this growth she felt as an ever-present gnawing ache in her inmost being. in the end this dark groping fear had become so much a part of her that every glimpse of happiness, liberty, spaciousness only seemed to her a mockery. but her suffering was terrible just because of its indefiniteness, its formlessness and its teeming darkness. under these circumstances she must have felt every really definite cause for fear as a sort of relief, a release. he who sees, need not brood. that was why the sick bed and the death bed held such a strange attraction for her. that was why her expression would sometimes reveal such curious relief in the presence of the most awful struggles. that was why she closed the eyes of the dead with such pale and still solemnity. she herself interpreted it as the brief precious peace of heart before god after service and sacrifice. during her training as a nurse sister hedvig had turned more and more away from the world and relapsed into religious gloom. she walked about like a living protest against every form of levity and vanity.
and now she stood on a cold and clear september day by percy’s bed at hill villa.
percy stared at her dark eyes and pale cheeks. it was 146really an unusual pallor. one did not know whether she burned or froze.
“and so you are stellan’s sister,” he muttered. “we must have met, as children at least, when i was still living at stonehill. strange that i did not notice your looks, then.”
“i have always kept apart,” she answered coldly.
percy smiled a little apologetic smile.
“but now ... now sister hedvig comes here and wants to help me, poor wretch....”
“i will try to do my duty,” answered sister hedvig.
percy sank back with half-closed eyes on his pillow. it suddenly seemed to him inconceivable that a woman with such a face should witness his frailty, help him to change his shirt and reach him the basin. “i shall have a high temperature this evening,” he thought. “but that doesn’t matter. i shan’t be bored anyhow.”
hedvig left the sick room on some errand. when she came back percy had already managed to allot a place to the newcomer in his world.
“now i have got it,” he said contentedly. “sister hedvig is a spanish saint. yes? i have seen sister hedvig hanging on a church wall in toledo.... or perhaps it is something byzantine,” he added thoughtfully. “yes, you would look well in a mosaic ... on a ground of gold ... or perhaps a cold greenish blue....”
sister hedvig received this speech, which was to her partly incomprehensible, partly offensive, in silence. she had never before met a dilettante patron of art of percy’s type. she was highly distressed and confused by the whole atmosphere of hill’s villa. she walked with lowered eyes and frightened steps through these rooms in which the walls were covered with impudently brilliant coloured pictures. i won’t even mention all the nudes that met her gaze everywhere without trace of shame, in strange and challenging forms. to her the nude was now exclusively 147associated with sickness and death. she could not and would not think of it except under fever cooling bandages or under the surgeon’s knife. and here it insolently glowed with health or made a pretence of harmony and peace which could be nothing but a delusion and abomination. it was incredible. but that was not all. even from the landscapes it seemed to her that there emanated something of sin and danger. the mixture of french impressionism and national lyricism of that time, which nowadays appears to us so harmless and innocent, still seemed then alarmingly modern, and hedvig also found in these pictures a defiant worldliness quite different from that of the old brown-gravy landscapes which hung on the walls at selambshof. art with its flavour of sin and damnation pursued her even into the sickroom. opposite the bed there hung a picture of a handsome naked youth who smiled an ecstatic smile though his breast was pierced with cruel arrows.
“isn’t he beautiful, saint sebastian?” said percy proudly. “i discovered him in naples in an old jew’s shop. the painter is unknown, but you can see at once that he must have been a contemporary of bernini. the typical mixture of sensualism and ecstasy of the baroque style cannot be mistaken. my sebastian is a male cousin of saint teresa of the santa maria della vittoria in rome. his breast is full of the arrows with which the beautiful angel threatens her. one does not quite know if it is the arrows of love or of martyrdom.”
sister hedvig looked at the floor and shook her head:
“i don’t understand anything of all this. and i don’t want to understand it either. i am not here to look at pictures.”
in this strange world she had come into, percy hill’s illness was somehow the only thing she had to hold on to and she felt hurt that he did not take it seriously enough.
percy looked quite frightened.
148“dear, dear, surely i have not hurt you, sister, in any way. i didn’t mean to at all.” then he added with a pale, little smile: “i must talk about art, you see, otherwise my temperature will rise....”
she did not give an answering smile.
she continued all along to be stiff, silent and suspicious. in his weakness and helplessness he suffered at first from this lack of sympathy. if he had been an artist he would perhaps have felt a genuine hatred for her. but he was only a dilettante and an amateur, so he not only suffered it, but even began to be attracted by the gloomy and rigid creature as he might have been by some old sombre family treasure which had been hidden from the world in some dusty and sunless corner. yes, exactly like some gloomy treasure which dumbly reminds us of the dreams and passions of a bygone age. and which is not for sale amongst the rubbish of today.
thus far had percy come after a week’s dilettante analysis of hedvig’s personality. by this time he had entirely ceased to speak about art. but one evening when she stood by the window staring out on the hard and wind-swept autumn sky the expression on her face suddenly brought an idea into his head:
“sister hedvig,” he exclaimed, “won’t you read to me a little out of the old testament?”
and he rang for a footman and sent him for a new illustrated edition de luxe bible from the library.
but hedvig refused at first. she was afraid of the echo from the luxurious rooms with their works of art just outside. she was afraid of his vain and scoffing secret thoughts. but percy was persistent. he told her about his childhood when his mother would sometimes read aloud to him out of the school bible in the evenings. it sounded almost as if in his strange way he took the scriptures seriously. and at last to her own surprise hedvig gave in. his face lit up:
149“take deborah’s song,” he begged, as keen as any child to hear its favourite story.
and hedvig read in a low voice of deborah who led the chiefs of israel, whose soul went forth in strength. but there was something too mournful and cold in her voice. percy’s sensitive ear suspected old kristin’s influence, the deep-rooted fatalism of the people. he was however afraid of hurting her and let her finish the chapter.
“that is too hard and bright,” he muttered. “there is too much victory for us two, sister hedvig. take something more difficult and more gloomy.”
and hedvig read on. she did not know why herself. perhaps she had a feeling in her inmost heart that he in some way seemed to understand her. but this no longer alarmed her shyness. he was so weak and helpless. he lay there in the shadow of death. he would never rise up and boldly cast her secrets into her face. so she read on. she read of how jehu annihilated the whole house of ahab and of how the dogs ate jezebel on the fields of jezreel. and she read in the book of job how man, born of woman, lives a short time full of care, how his illness rises up and bears witness against him and over his eyes rests the shadow of death. to the grave he must say: “thou art my father,” and to the worms of putrefaction: “my mother, my sister.” and she read in isaiah about the earth which was consumed by the curse, how the sap of the vine sorrowed and the vine languished. plaintive cries are heard over the wine and all joy is like a sun that has set—all joy of the earth has disappeared. dangers and pitfalls and snares lie in wait for you, inhabitants of earth! earth is utterly broken down, and shall reel like a drunkard, it shall be clean dissolved.
percy lay quite silent and looked at hedvig. he followed unconsciously the movements of her lips. this is absolutely sincere, he thought. she is a being from the past. she belongs to an age when fear formed a great part of human 150life. it is strange to hear the jewish cast of thought from her lips, persistent as the groans of a sufferer, bitter as the knowledge which is hammered into you by blow upon blow. only the pressure of the world and sad experience....
and he felt a great joy as if he had succeeded at last in finding a really precious antique for his collection.
it was getting dusk and hedvig did not see the print any longer. she put down the heavy book. she had a sudden feeling of relief as after confession. though faint and transient it was nevertheless something unique in her life.
but already the next morning hedvig felt a dull anxiety at having given herself up. and she was more curt and silent and reserved than usual.
in november percy grew somewhat worse. he was often troubled by coughs and his temperature curve showed a tendency to rise. the doctor shook his head when his patient spoke of going to switzerland.
“not before the spring,” he said. “now we must be good and keep quiet and drink milk.”
percy did not like the doctor very much. he represented the prose side of his illness. but hedvig looked meaningly at her patient when the doctor had gone. she looked at him as if he had been a child who had wanted to run away from school but who had been brought to reason. she had grown with his weakness. she nursed him diligently and carefully but with an expression of solemn superiority. “there, you see,” she seemed to say, “after all, your vanity won’t help you. of what use now is your art and your worldly pride?”
percy noticed it, but he did not grow angry. he was not of that kind. he also derived a sort of pleasure from this new development. hedvig no longer seemed to him a dark and rare treasure that he had added to his collections. and he loved to droop away in sight of that sombre and 151stern virgin face. even pain could give him a secret pleasure.
“this is an auto-da-fé,” he muttered once in delirium. “i can see the sparks in the pupils of sister hedvig’s eyes. they are roasting me with slow fire because i have doubted the virgin mary’s immaculate conception.”
and then he smiled his mysterious, derisive, little smile, which was so full of weakness and courage. but in the midst of the smile there came a sudden fit of coughing accompanied by blood and froth between his pale lips, blood on the lace of sheets and pillows. his wound had broken out again. he had another attack of h?morrhage of the lungs.
percy’s face grew still paler and thinner. it was as if he had shrunk before the cold breath of death’s wings. but he was never a coward in his suffering. there was never a trace of panic.
but his weakness was such that sister hedvig found no occasion for any anxious, defensive suspicion. she was afraid of life, but he no longer belonged to life, she thought. a dying man she dared to approach. confronted by death she dared to be woman. yes, now the shy, severe sister hedvig could be quite tender and open. turning away a little, she could softly stroke his hand as it lay there so white on the eiderdown. yes, sometimes she gave him little stealthy caresses that had no tomorrow. it was her woman’s soul that lay half suffocated beneath her fear, which now ventured to make little hesitating excursions in the twilight of death.
thus had sister hedvig by the force of circumstances come quite near to one who was the complete opposite to herself. we witness here the strange meeting of two persons, one of whom is sterile from fear and the other from lack of fear. percy hill’s life showed a strange blunting of the faculty of fear. he had always lacked the 152spur to action and to life that fear provides. hence his dilettantism. he lived on his money without knowing anything about the hard struggle which had brought it together. he loved art without being capable of diving beneath the work itself to the deep disquietude which had created it. he never went beyond the enjoyment of it. his own creative work had only been a form of enjoyment. that is why he had never created anything new. he knew it himself, but he had not the strength to feel any real anguish over it, that anguish which might perhaps in the end have opened the gates to the mysterious creative world.
but now in the face of death this deficiency seemed like a splendid liberation. it is a fact that death does not come to us as a stranger. it grows coarser or more delicate and refined according to our natures. percy’s death must of course be frail and subtle and with an element of incurable dilettantism.
“you must not think, sister hedvig,” he whispered with a little smile of ineradicable irony vanquishing his weakness, “that this is anything very extraordinary to me. there is really not very much that will be lost with me. i have always stood rather well with death. i cannot remember that i have ever fought against it even in the thoughts of my boyhood. my mother was so unnaturally afraid for me that i, by mere reaction, grew more and more indifferent. at first i hoped perhaps a little to get something from my illness. i hoped that the fever and the fine restlessness would yield me something. so much beauty has been born of consumption. perhaps i still hope. but not so feverishly that it consumes me.” in vain hedvig told herself that this was false blasphemy. in vain she entrenched herself behind her religious feelings. she felt that he did not lie. to her it seemed monstrous that a person could speak so without lying. an exquisite coolness descended upon her soul. her own dark fear of life 153shrank in this unusual light. there were moments of a glorious release of the usual tension within her. she felt something almost resembling gratitude and tenderness. she need not hide anything, nor pretend, nor creep away. all this had no tomorrow. he could not betray her, nor trample upon her. he would soon die.
thus hedvig went about prepared to close his eyes, to mourn for him and keep him as a beautiful memory which nobody in the world would know of, or could deprive her of.
already she was depositing him, the secret treasure of the poor, with death.
but now the unexpected happened, percy hill did not die. on the contrary he began to pick up a little in the spring. in the beginning it almost looked as if he himself had been a little embarrassed and ashamed at this turn of events.
“i have never done what was expected of me,” he said. “i never finished my pictures. and of course, i did not see this thing through either....”
but there was all the same something new in his tone. these phrases no longer rang true as formerly.
you may have been nearly run over by a tram and it is only afterwards when you are safe on the pavement that you begin to be frightened and feel the threat of death within you. as his temperature fell there rose a new restlessness in percy hill. he began anxiously to avoid talking of death. it seemed as if he had been ashamed of his weakness. he did all he could to appear as well as possible. it was only with difficulty that he was kept in bed. he grew impatient at the constant relapses of the early spring into cold and miserable weather. he insisted on going somewhere where there was plenty of sunshine. he had suddenly been seized by a violent zest for life.
yes, and now percy hill felt for the first time a certain fear of death. a mysterious change had taken place in 154him. he had been inoculated with some of sister hedvig’s poisons in the same way as she had been with his.
how did she behave for her part now when he slowly began to slip out of the shadow of death under which they had come so near to each other? did she draw back into her shell? did she become the closed garden or the sealed spring once again? it might seem so. she had an expression which seemed to command him to forget what had passed between them. that furtive tenderness, whose shoots seemed only to thrive in darkness, ceased. but the seal was all the same broken. her reserve and shyness could never be exactly the same again, they had no longer the true depth. there rather arose moments of a certain banal and everyday embarrassment between them. percy clearly suffered in accepting her assistance. he shaved himself every day and became particular about his appearance. certain situations galled him as being lowering to his masculine pride. it seemed as if he had to overcome a certain reluctance each time he had to call her “sister hedvig.” without saying anything hedvig acquired the habit of knocking at his door before she entered the room. she did this with a strange feeling half of bitterness and half of satisfaction. her suspiciousness found the change in percy’s manners wounding. but in her inmost heart she proudly understood what it really meant. officially she was as much a stranger in his world as ever before. but it was a fact that she no longer walked through the picture galleries with lowered eyes. though she did not admit it to herself, certain echoes of what he had said concerning pleasure and beauty being something self-evident would crop up in her thoughts. after a youth which had been haunted by the ghost of poverty, she sometimes felt a shiver run through her in the presence of this magnificent house and of all she had heard about his wealth. it was really something hitherto hidden and 155downtrodden in her selamb soul that very cautiously raised its head.
from this moment sister hedvig began to develop a certain coquetry. if she read a silent question in percy hill’s eyes she purposely appeared dull and impenetrable. her instinct told her that a man like him was attracted by the unknown, by what was unlike himself. consequently she carefully avoided betraying anything of the change that had taken place in herself. she well remembered what he had said about the image of the saint in toledo and about the sparks from the stake in her eyes. so she now appeared really pale and dark and spanish. and with secret joy she saw that the spanish effect did its work. the cool and mocking light had disappeared from percy’s eyes. instead there sometimes came a shy and nervous look of supplication. he was clearly in love with her.
then stellan called, just at the right moment. he came from what seemed to have been a family council of the selambs. curiosity had been stimulated enormously of late. percy was so rich that you could not help reflecting. nothing was impossible. it might mean marriage, it might mean a bequest in his will. one did not know if he was going to live or die. neither peter nor laura knew percy hill enough to call on him. hedvig herself was impossible to approach. laura had tried over the telephone but had, of course, got nothing out of her.
then at last stellan came home from a command in norrland and was sent out to hill’s villa at once to reconnoitre.
it was a clear, warm, sunny day after a long spell of cruelly disagreeable spring weather. stellan had a strange gift of always bringing fine weather. percy was sitting up in an easy chair in front of an open window facing south. sister hedvig had slipped away into the darkest corner 156with some kind of christian needlework. such april sunshine was still too much for her. stellan had ridden out. he was walking up and down the room lightly striking his riding boots with his whip. at first he had been shocked for a moment by percy’s wasted look, but now he was already praising his rapid recovery. he always talked a lot, stellan. he had a peculiar tendency to dwell with a mixture of envy and admiration on percy’s precious art treasures, on his admirable patronage of art and his subtle intelligence. he also returned several times by sly, roundabout ways to the subject of wealth, and money.
“yes, because percy is the sort of man who must be reminded that he can get whatever he wants,” he said. “he will forget to keep alive if you don’t remind him.”
stellan was insistent as if at one and the same time he had wished to free percy from his lack of self-confidence and rouse him from the lassitude of his illness. percy listened with his eyes half-closed. of course he did not take all this seriously. but in his present frame of mind he enjoyed stellan’s talk, all the same. it blended with the clear strong sunshine and seemed to hold out something like a promise of life.
hedvig in her corner also listened to this glorification of percy. she suspected that stellan was also addressing himself to her. when he returned to the subject of money and to the wonderful opportunities of becoming rich she looked down at her work and continued her sewing with feverish haste. she detested him and yet she wanted to hear more. she grew hot and cold by turns. to save her life she could not have looked up.
but stellan walked up and down between the two and observed them with cool and cheerful curiosity. he felt strangely elated. and then his black horse neighed outside by the gate post, and a loud and festive flourish of trumpets like a call to battle was sounded in the clear, radiant spring air. stellan took a hasty farewell. hedvig accompanied 157him to the front door. she was astonished at herself for doing so. but there was a certain pleasure in walking through these magnificent rooms by the side of stellan with his jingling spurs. out on the stairs she looked into his eyes for a moment. there was a bitter and savage triumph in her glance. stellan pointed to his horse.
“winnings at cards,” he said. “i have christened him the ‘ace of spades.’ fine, isn’t he?”
and then he jumped into the saddle and trotted away down the hill.
hedvig slowly returned to percy, who was still sitting among his cushions in the sunshine.
stellan’s visit had, as it were, aired out the place after the long confined winter. yes, they had lived as in a monastery cell. and now the horseman on his black steed had come like a messenger from the great, cold exciting world beyond. and there was relief in that.
“as soon as i can i am going away,” said percy, “first to meran and then to mentone.”
he looked at sister hedvig, who had resumed her sewing. she was sewing very fast and did not answer. percy spoke again with forced ease:
“are you coming with me, sister hedvig?”
she shrugged her shoulders without looking up:
“there are other sick people who need me....”
“i mean will sister ... will hedvig come with me as my wife?”
hedvig shrank further into her corner. her wretched fear once again took possession of her and thrust her into the deepest shadows.
“no, ... i can’t, ... i will never be anybody’s wife....”
for a moment percy looked at her with anxious amazement. he had lately done his utmost to appear as well and as manly as possible, and then the poor fellow all of a sudden completely changed his pose.
158“but i ... i am not a real man, hedvig. not now, at least. i am only a convalescent. and i don’t know if i can live without your presence.”
she was white and her hands trembled.
“if we can go on living as we have done before, then....”
“yes, till i am well ... and you yourself want it otherwise....”
his voice sounded both sad and happy. he beckoned hedvig towards him:
“o, we both need a lot of sunshine, you and i, hedvig,” he muttered.
and he took her hand in his uplifted hands with an expression of reverence. it was as if he also wished to touch her beautiful oval face with his fingers. then he sank back against his cushions and breathed heavily, oppressed by his emotions. hedvig had to lead him back to bed.
“our eros,” whispered percy pointing at saint sebastian, “who smiles though his breast is full of arrows.”
such was hedvig selamb’s engagement. she would have shrunk back frightened from complete matrimony. she dared to go half way. it really was a typical selamb insurance against the risks both of loneliness and poverty and the demands of life. but before the dawn of the next day she had already convinced herself that she was making a great sacrifice.
the banns had been read for the second time and percy was expected on a visit to selambshof, in which he had not set his foot since he was a child. hedvig had gone there at the last moment. she could of course not stay on alone in the house of her fiancé.
the selambs were sitting in front of a fire in the hall. the main building had stood empty the whole of the winter, since peter nowadays lived in the bailiff’s wing. the hall was like a cave. the winter cold still clung to the walls, though it was may. but that did not seem to disturb the 159selambs. they whispered in eager tones and were agreeably excited as if by an interesting game of cards. now and then they threw pitying, envious, and secretly admiring side-glances at hedvig, who was standing by one of the windows. hedvig was dressed in a plain black frock. she was standing there alone, silent, cold, with a severe and haughty expression on her face. she looked down the avenue by which percy would arrive. yes, here her fiancé was about to drive up in a great fine carriage, round the very same bend as did brundin once upon a time in his little green dog-cart. and during dinner she would sit silent and erect by his side and scarcely taste her food. the silence would spread around her so that not even laura would dare to begin her empty, worldly chatter. there would be a real contrast to all the shouts and hurrahs of her own unfortunate wedding. and it would be the last time percy would appear at selambshof. yes, hedvig had decided to have a quiet wedding ceremony without her relations. that would be the most dignified way. she had no further use for all these people out here. she would go abroad and leave it all behind.
hedvig thought of all this as she stood at the window. the shadow of a smile passed now and again over her severe red lips. wonderfully sweet contentment suffused her whole being. she trampled on her old fear, loneliness, and humiliation, and felt as if she had truly her old fear under her foot. but she could not trample it to death. one does not trample a shadow to death. it can only be killed by light....
then percy hill came driving up to the steps. he remained for a moment sitting in the open carriage looking up at the high, gloomy walls of selambshof. it was impossible for him to escape a feeling of discomfort in the presence of this sham feudal architecture, this suburban gothic which did not even take itself seriously. “well,” he thought, “we are going away from all this.”
160he entered. he moved slowly and looked very pale and thin in his black morning coat. nobody could help seeing that he had been in the shadow of death. for a moment he seemed to shrink from the wintry air inside. but his glance brightened when he caught sight of hedvig’s frock. he had been afraid to see her without her nurse’s uniform. her simple black frock seemed to him an expression of tactfulness. he kissed hedvig’s hand and greeted laura and stellan. then it was peter’s turn. percy had had no communication with him for many years. peter’s gross figure startled him somewhat. he offered his transparent fingers with half-closed eyes and withdrew them again quickly with a little embarrassed smile.
nobody said much. laura pulled her shawl more closely over her shoulders and even stellan seemed somewhat ill at ease.
then hedvig led percy with an absent-minded expression to the wedding presents which were laid out on a table by the window. there were crystal vases and bowls in the taste of the day—all eloquent of decent, commonplace domestic life. hedvig walked away. percy looked at the floor.
“they are all overtaxing my nerves,” he thought. “such meaningless ugliness!” he had to make a real effort to realise that this was not a deliberate mockery of their marriage, but merely a sacrifice to the conventionalities. at last he began to thank everybody very eagerly and politely to right and left on behalf of himself and hedvig.
it was stellan who saved the situation. he took percy’s arm.
“now i must show you round a little in this owls’ nest,” he said, in a tone of command that had something engagingly impersonal in it. “selambshof was not conjured up in a day like your palace. it is as old as sin, though it was unfortunately rebuilt and spoilt in the process sometime in the ’fifties.”
161percy stopped in the dining-room in front of old enoch’s portrait. suddenly he looked quite relieved and was delighted:
“this is very interesting!” he exclaimed.
“do you think so? it’s our grandfather. an old devil, between ourselves.”
percy climbed up and examined the signature in the corner:
“just fancy, a tervillius! but yet not quite like him. he never achieved such rapid execution elsewhere. what swift, cruel characterisation! and he is otherwise so extremely conscientious.”
“well, he is said to have had his reasons for not loving old enoch. it cannot have been very pleasant to owe him money.”
“so it is the inspiration of hatred! well, there are worse inspirations.”
“our dear grandfather was apparently not at all displeased with the caricature, though for certain reasons it cannot have been very agreeable to him. i suppose you know that tervillius committed suicide ... just a few days after he had finished out here?”
“oh, so this is his last work ... an anathema....”
hedvig had silently stolen up to them and stood there staring old h?k in the eyes whilst she listened greedily to each word that was uttered. percy pushed his arm smilingly under hedvig’s and eagerly solicited the condescension of his spanish saint:
“fancy the last masterpiece of a distinguished artist! and quite unknown to the critics. that is most remarkable.”
peter had also come up to the picture: “is the old fellow really worth something?” he wondered.
“thirty thousand, at least. it’s a pity it is a family portrait as one does not dare to make an offer for it.”
162the eyes of the selambs lit up. they evidently regarded their grandfather with a new interest.
“thirty thousand for the curse,” mumbled hedvig with a shrug of her shoulders.
“the old man gave five hundred,” said peter. “i have seen an old receipt. he was always a good business man.”
“aren’t you afraid to marry into old enoch’s family?” cried laura with a voice that had suddenly become quite gay. “just look how like him i am.” and with comic eagerness she imitated his hard looks and pulled down the corners of her mouth.
but percy looked searchingly round the circle of faces and his look rested with an expression of admiration on hedvig:
“isn’t the likeness all the same most striking in hedvig?” he said lightly.
not for a second did he shrink from the thought that she was of the same blood as the old usurer against whom the soul of a hunted and despairing artist had exploded its hatred before his eyes.
he was a dilettante, percy hill.
after the early dinner percy had to return home at once. and hedvig did not want to stay with the others round the coffee table.
“now, i will leave you, so that you can discuss us more freely,” she said.
hedvig was going up to her room. she had not gone many steps up the creaking stairs before she heard the dammed-up floods of talk of her sister and brothers released. silently as a ghost she crept back to the door and listened. first she heard stellan’s voice:
“the devil take me if i can understand hedvig. i really did not think her capable of this.”
“indeed,” interposed laura, “it was exactly what i expected. she used to sneak things when she was small.”
then it was stellan again:
163“poor percy is a decent fellow anyhow. he only wants to get away as quickly as possible in secret. i understand that they don’t want us to be present at the wedding.”
“well,” said laura, “we are sure to meet again soon—on another solemn occasion.”
then one heard peter bang his knees together. “yes, yes, the money will last longer than the husband. she will soon have pots of money.”
hedvig leaned against the doorpost with closed eyes. she felt cold and stiff all over. her disgust at the people in there who so impudently and blindly defiled her sacrifice froze her blood. and all the same she could not tear herself away from her listening post. and all the same she devoured greedily every word of her sister and brothers. in her innermost heart there was a wild frightened joy to hear how rich she was going to be.
