After dinner came the first disappointment. The dogcart was never brought out, for Brundin received some Saturday-guests and put off his journey to town until Sunday. Peter had got to wait—a difficult task. He could not stay at home. He felt so brittle and queer from the strain that he scarcely dared to put his foot down on the ground and still he had to go on walking and walking. Now he had already reached town and once there he of course made for the hay market. Shivering, and with a queer trembling in the pit of his stomach he stood in the Saturday crush, amidst sacks of potatoes and sides of beef, staring at a big sign on a low yellow house with a tiled roof:
Axel Brundin & Co.
Cereals, grain, and vegetables.
It was not the first time Peter had stood there spying. He felt a need, as it were, to assure himself all the time that the shop was still there. A fat old man usually stood in the doorway with his thumbs stuck in the armholes of his waistcoat. He was Brundin’s brother. He knew him from the crayfish party. Most of the produce of Selambshof went to him. And Peter had an intuition that here lay the solution of some of the problems that worried him.
Just fancy if only he could send in a policeman to take a big bag of money from that fat old rascal! Slowly Peter the Watchdog sauntered homewards in the dark and raw November night.
He awoke very early on Sunday morning. First he examined the office window. Yes, the hooks were still unfastened. Then he might just slip down to the outhouses for a little. There had been frost during the night and there were a few light snowflakes in the air. Peter crept into the barn through a broken shutter. On the ground floor the pig carcases gleamed with a pale light in the deep twilight. He touched the hard cold fat. He felt how the pigs hung helpless there. And once more he had a frantic sense of his duty to defend them against Brundin. He promised them that they had not died in vain.
Then Peter climbed to the next floor. Here the grain lay about in big heaps on the floor. He sat down and let the wheat run through his fingers. Usually it is pleasant to sit in a granary and let the cool, round, fragrant grains of corn run softly through the fingers. It makes one think of summer and sunshine and the wide green fields.
But Peter, poor boy, had no such spacious feelings of the prospective farmer. Everything had been spoilt for him by Brundin. The gifts of the soil were poisoned for him by a premature greedy anxiety.
At breakfast Peter was very silent. He did not fight with his brothers and sisters, but of his own free will sat down next to his father, even though it was not his turn. Today was a great day and he tried to propitiate the Gods by this sacrifice. You must neglect nothing if you would succeed. He also stole to Church afterwards in order to be quite on the safe side. Straight as a poker he sat there trying to be really attentive, though of course he only listened to his own thoughts. Peter had a long intimate conversation with his God. And what kind of God had Peter the Watchdog? He was related to his sister Hedvig’s God. Both had grown out of a common parentage. Old Kristin’s servants’ God. Both had drawn their nourishment from the terrors of those years of helplessness. But, whilst Hedvig’s God had been reared on the fear of desire and of sex, Peter’s God was from the first an economic potentate, who severely punished torn clothes and broken money-boxes, and he had gradually developed into a protector of the rights of property with the more specific function of making the bailiff of Selambshof smart. But Peter was afraid that God might not have had time to consider the matter properly and therefore he gave him in all humility a number of delicate little hints as to the most suitable way of dealing with Brundin.
Yes! such was Peter Selamb’s communion with God on this day of great expectations—which, however, became a day of disappointment.
At last evening came. The bailiff had already driven off to town and the yard was in darkness. Then Peter crept out in order to steal back Selambshof from Brundin. If only he could get a glance at that armful of big blue books all would be clear. His housebreaking was quite successful, the windows opened, as did also the door of the cupboard and in there he felt the books side by side. With the precious burden in his arms Peter stole up the dark stairs to the Observatory. He locked the door carefully, lit a piece of candle and sank down trembling with expectation at the table and began to examine the books.
And then he made a terrible discovery. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing of this system of figures and lines. “Debit,” “credit,” “carried forward,” etc., stood there. What it all meant he could not make out. The name Axel Brundin & Co. he found everywhere in the books. It stared out at him with ever-increasing mystery. It was not at all the straightforward way that Peter had imagined in connection with sacks of flour and barrels of potatoes. He found nothing to hold fast to. At last his head swam. He could not master Brundin’s row of figures.
Peter struck his forehead against the table, cursing and sobbing. This was a terrible defeat. Hopeless, miserable, stiff with cold, he stole down from the icy Observatory and put the books back in the cupboard without having succeeded in stealing a single one of the bailiff’s secrets.
That night chronicled a grievous relapse into the old sense of impotence. Peter lay again in a besieged fortress. And
