Goodbye!
Laura did not faint after reading this letter. She had no attack of nerves, made no scene, did not stir up heaven and earth to get her son back. She only suddenly felt empty, quite empty. She no longer felt anxious for Georg. She could not as a matter of fact understand her former anxiety and eagerness for him.
She washed her face in cold water, powdered it, and drove out to order mourning clothes.
VII
Shadow Play
The spring was early that year. Through the windows of the renaissance hall of the Hill villa the May sunshine flowed calm and warm as in June. But Hedvig, who was walking to and fro, had still retained her winter complexion. Yes, the tragic beauty of her face was deathly pale as she took a few steps to and fro like a prisoner measuring his cell. She seemed slimmer than ever and was still dressed in black. Like a dark shadow she glided to and fro, to and fro, across the wine-red sun-bespattered carpet.
Each time Hedvig came opposite to the little cupboard on the wall where the telephone was concealed, she stopped a moment with helplessly hanging hands and a restless, anxious expression. By and by she approached the spot more and more frequently and it seemed as if an irresistible force drew her to the telephone. Then she stretched out her hand to lift the receiver. But then a door banged in the region of the kitchen and at once she withdrew her hand as if it had been burnt, and she resumed her restless pacing. Then everything was quiet again and Hedvig was again at the telephone. In a low unsteady voice she asked for a number. After which her voice with a tremendous effort rose and became tense, haughty, commanding:
“May I speak to Mr. Levy?”
But the tension died away in a disappointed, dissatisfied tone,
“I see, not in yet. …”
Hedvig resumed her cell-walking. She mumbled to herself and looked if possible even paler than before. Incessantly she looked at the clock in despair that the minutes passed so slowly through the silent and sunny room.
For the second time Hedvig was drawn to the telephone. Now at last he had come to the office. The cool relief suddenly made her voice indifferent, hard, businesslike:
“Good morning! It is Mrs. Hill speaking. I only wanted to remind you of those mortgages that were to be attended to … those in. …”
Levy’s voice answered over the phone, stern and assured, with an imperceptible note of satisfaction:
“Yes, of course, the mortgages. … Yes, that will be all right. … I will come out to dinner, if I may, then we can talk it over. …”
It was not the first time Levy had invited himself to dinner at Hill villa. Probably in the correct surmise that his client would never be able to make up her mind to do it.
Hedvig put the receiver down with a shrug of the shoulders, a wretched false little shrug. She resumed her walking. You could see how she tried to convince herself that she was quite cool and indifferent now that her anxiety lest he should forget the mortgages was over.
Her steps halted suddenly in front of one of the patches of sunlight on the carpet. It looked as if she dared not venture out on that red sea of light. It looked as if the spring sun, which flooded the large silent room in ever greater volume, had dazzled and paralysed her.
Good God! What was she to do before dinner? How was she to occupy herself the whole of this long pitiless radiant spring day!
She found no way out but the usual one—to fly to the shadows. She rang the bell and ordered her car.
“Shan’t we begin with the open car soon, Madam?” said Ohlesson, the chauffeur.
“No!”
So the big black covered car ran out to the cemetery. And then Hedvig sat there on the seat by Percy’s grave, from which she had not allowed the dry withered funeral wreaths to be removed. Erect, motionless she sat under her black sunshade, whilst all around the light May green sparkled and swayed in the broad stream of sunlight. The sun appropriated even Hedvig’s black silk cloak and made it live and shimmer with a thousand colours. But her face was only lit up by a faint reflection from below, from the marble of the tomb.
It was more than a year and a half since Percy had died, but lately Hedvig had begun to take refuge here again. Here she fought her way back to the life of shadows, a thin life, a continuation of their life in the sanatorium. Not that she was able to forget even here on the seat in the cemetery all that consumed her:—money, business and everything connected with it. No, but she thought of it with less anxiety. Rather with a solemn and pious feeling that it
