He was not at all like King Midas. The gold agreed with him splendidly.
But just opposite sat Stellan, thin, straight, scrupulously elegant, with the set face of the retired gambler. He sat looking at the row of untouched glasses in front of his wife. All those fine vintages! An exquisite harmony in colour from the golden green mist over the light sparkling sunshine of the champagne and the glowing burgundy down to the heavy brown dash of colour in the Malvoisier! And all of it untouched, disdained. Oh what sort of a creature had he bound himself to, thin, cold, fastidious, sterile, incapable of life! Not even Africa had for a moment raised her temperature above zero. Even her capricious love of sport had suddenly been blown away when she noticed that he had expected something of it. She seemed nowadays to be exclusively occupied in being bored. It seemed as if the staff of servants at the Castle had gradually assumed all her functions of life. Stellan sometimes felt a sort of fear of her, as of a lingering disease, a dangerous languor. Yes, the disease of wealth is infectious. He was already infected. And still he could think of nothing but collecting more money, and more money. He was afraid when he thought of anything else than money.
Stellan started. By Jove, they had already reached the dessert. He absolutely must stand up and make a speech. But how difficult it was to get out of the chair today! “Supposing I refuse to tell a lot of lies about Laura and the damned Russian,” he thought suddenly. “Supposing instead I rise and propose a toast to—absent friends! To poor Manne von Strelert who happened to shoot a hole through his head. And to that decent fellow, Herman Hermansson, who took a little trip to America. And to Percy Hill, who died in beauty. And to von Borgk’s boarders in the Peter-Paul fortress and in Siberia. And to all the people we have kicked over and climbed up on. Supposing I raise up Banquo’s ghost! That would be exciting!”
Compassion was not one of Stellan’s frailties. He regretted nothing, felt no remorse. He only felt stiff, isolated, frozen, paralysed by melancholy irony. And when he looked round the silent circles the others seemed to him frozen also. It seemed as if they were all sitting frozen in a gigantic block of ice, and only imagined that they could reach each other with their thoughts, words and gestures. That they breathed and moved was probably only imagination. Really they were all dead, except Peter. Nothing affected him. He belonged to those organisms low down in the scale that can stand any amount of cold. …
Yes, it was a ghost-dinner. The great ghost dinner at Selambshof. And from the wall old Enoch’s eyes stared, stared, and stung. “That’s right, my children,” they seemed to say, “now you are ready. Now I’ve got you. Now you are inside my magic circle. And none of you will escape, none. …”
Stellan felt an emptiness in his head, paralysed, sick. His glance wandered from one face to the other in the circle. He scorned them, he saw through them, but still he begged them for help. “If only I can get up out of this cursed chair. If only I could get up out of this cursed chair!”
Then his wandering glance suddenly fell on Georg. Georg sat in his corner and looked lost and unhappy. An honest young face. “Bah, you know nothing yet,” Stellan thought, shrugging his shoulders. “What is straight will be crooked, my young friend, and what is warm will grow cold.” And he felt his lips move in a pitying smile. But still he could not look away from the boy’s face. It was as if he had suspected that here was something like a crack in the wall of ice, a break in the magic circle. Yes, deep down he felt a strange relief to see him, to notice his timid protest against his stepfather, his anxious wonder at his mother, and all reflected in a face that knew nothing of dissimulation.
At last Stellan got up and made his well-balanced speech to the newly married couple with a certain military briskness in his delivery.
After all even lies have nothing but truth to live on. And even the coldest egoism must in the end draw breath beside whatever honour and goodness is left in the world. Otherwise it would die of suffocation. …
Two days after the dinner at Selambshof, Count von Borgk got typhus and was taken to a nursing home. At the same time not less than three of the servants on the estate fell ill, amongst them Peter’s housekeeper.
Peter was in deadly fear, and could think of no other way out than to sail away immediately from all this misery. He was already on his way down to his boat—Herman’s old Laura—which still lay at her buoy in the bay where the bathing box was. But when he passed the well on the slope below the terrace, he saw that the cotter pin was not in its place in the little trap door at the foot of the pump. Peter lifted the lid of the well and peeped down. It was a shallow well and was now almost dried up from the long drought of the dog days. He saw at once that the bottom was covered with newspapers, dirty rags and unspeakable filth.
Peter got up dizzy and sick. “Majängen!” he thought. “The apple thief! Frida Öberg’s boy. That was what the Count got for drinking water! That’s what he got for his sanatorium!”
With a groan and a push of his massive body, Peter seized the pump and pump-house in a mighty grip and threw it down so that all
