However much Peter pondered over the matter he could not guess why old Hermansson was so distant and on his dignity toward him, whilst he yet seized every occasion to show his fatherly interest in Stellan. That lazy, supercilious Stellan who strutted about in his uniform and sneered and looked important when he occasionally came home after his idiotic drill. Peter had an economic contempt for everything in uniform, which showed how simple he was, and how much he still had to learn from life. If he had only observed old Hermansson a little more closely, as with his head held high and his hand inside the lapel of his coat he strutted up and down the avenue by the side of Stellan with his glittering braid and sword belt, he would perhaps have understood a good deal better.
Everything striking and challenging stirred Peter’s egoism, though it still sought to hide itself.
Whilst he scratched his head, a thought flashed through his brain: “If I could think of something sufficiently mad, perhaps it would work better,” he thought, and soon after he conceived the brilliant idea that was to bring matters to a successful issue.
After weeks of careful preparation he marched off one day to Ekbacken. It was a fine windy day in May and down at the repairing slip they were just fitting out Herman’s fine, new cutter. Herman himself was standing on the pier dressed in the uniform of the Royal Yacht Club and gave orders to a crowd of lazy-looking youths who had succeeded the old sailors. Peter shook his head as he passed. It positively hurt him to see such expensive toys.
In the smoke-room at Ekbacken a card table and an easy chair were placed between the Marieberg stove and a new piece of furniture, a mahogany and glass monstrosity containing coloured silk ribbons and the gilt insignia of all the secret societies in which the owner of the house held high rank. There old Hermansson now sat playing patience.
“What do you want here, my friend?” muttered the old man without looking up from his cards.
“Well, there was something I had to tell you. You know that it is a very long time since father said anything rational. But today when I went in to see him as usual he seemed to have brightened up. He fumbled after my hand and then he said: ‘You must go and thank my old friend. You must go and thank old William for all he has done for old Selambshof.’ Yes, that’s what he said. And I felt so strange because it was just as if father would not have long to live. That was all I wanted to tell you.”
His guardian looked up from his cards with an expression of solemn sympathy and quiet reproach:
“Well, well, did he really say that, dear old Oskar? Yes, it really does me good to hear that there are still some people who are grateful. I will go and see him as soon as possible.”
Peter went home contented. A visit was exactly what he wished for. The following day old Hermansson came. It evidently affected him to see the invalid. Much moved and very solemn he walked up to the bed:
“Good morning, dear old Oskar!”
Old Selamb grunted something in his beard. He did not seem specially pleased at the meeting.
“How are things with you, old friend? I am ashamed that I have not been to see you for such a long time.”
The invalid was still not interested. Peter had to intervene.
“It’s William. Don’t you see, father, that it is William who has been so good to us all?”
“Yes, Oskar, you recognise old William, don’t you?”
Old Selamb seemed to be growing impatient. He looked critically at his old friend:
“Seedy,” he muttered, “damned seedy.”
Peter did not like the turn the conversation had taken.
He suddenly sat down on the edge of the bed with his back to old Hermansson. Then he looked his father full in the eyes, touched his pocket and showed the corner of a paper bag. Then the invalid’s face suddenly assumed a keen, wide-awake and almost human expression, and he stretched out a trembling hand to his son:
“Peter … look after … estate,” he muttered, in his deep, rusty voice. “Peter shall manage the estate. …”
“Now he seems to be getting excited again,” whispered Peter to old Hermansson. “It is dangerous for him to get excited. But he usually calms down if he gets something to chew.”
Peter took some crumbs of cheese out of the paper bag and gave them to his father, who devoured them with avidity and then sank into his usual apathy again.
Old Hermansson stood in deep thought. Here lay the sick friend of his youth on the bed he would never leave. In a lucid moment he first sends a touching greeting and then when he came to see him his reason once more flashes up and he begs help for his firstborn. It was almost like a command from the grave.
Peter’s guardian seized his hand and pressed it warmly:
“Old Oskar shall be obeyed,” he said, “you shall manage Selambshof!”
Peter, alarmed and startled, protested, but the old man was firm:
“You and none else,” he said in a tone that suffered no contradiction.
Then he went home to his patience again.
Peter had succeeded by a clever use of his father’s insatiable greed for old cheese with caraway seeds in it. Day after day he had been sitting there on the edge of the bed tempting him with a piece of cheese in his hands, till the old man learnt the formula that opened the gates of
