Miss Lähnfeldt looked as if she had heard something positively indecent. Stellan bit his lip and grew a trifle pale. He did not rise, and he made no speech, but he straightened himself as if to salute and lifted his glass, without saying a word, to Herman, who looked very embarrassed and could not understand at all what had come over his dear Laura.
But Laura at once became wildly gay. She had had her revenge and she could now say goodbye to stupid old Selambshof.
She looked smiling over all the flowers and the heads in order to say a last contemptuous goodbye to the old dining-room where she had eaten so much porridge and where they had given each other so many kicks underneath the table. Then her glance fastened on the portrait of old Enoch over the green settee. It was more visible than usual because of two sconces which had been moved in from the blue room. The old man stood there with his steel-capped stick in his thin claw-like hand and fixed his glance upon her. Laura had never observed before what scornful, sneering eyes he had. It was as if he looked straight through her love.
“You may wriggle about, my doll, but you can’t get away from me, anyway.”
She took Herman’s hand: “Won’t it soon be over?” she murmured.
At last they said goodbye. Laura was already standing in the porch dressed in her fur coat. Then she saw Herman walk up to Stellan and Peter and pat them on the shoulders. He looked very moved and solemn and magnanimous. She could understand that he asked them not to be annoyed with her. Stellan shrugged his shoulders, and she could see by his lips what he answered:
“Stage-fright. …”
Then the silence of the cold starlit autumn night was broken by a roar of deep bass voices, and then there was the pattering of rice against the carriage windows and a forward jerk of the horses.
Laura flung herself into Herman’s arms. She wanted to flee away from something at any cost—as if she did not want to see anything or know anything.
The following day Hedvig came in to Peter, who was lying on the sofa with a pipe that had gone out in the corner of his mouth, feeling a little stale after the wedding celebrations which he and his companions had continued noisily until the early morning. Hedvig came slipping in and looking paler and more severe than ever. Peter felt really frightened of her. He felt like a big, swollen gland which has secreted the worst excretions of sin.
“You will have to get somebody else to nurse father,” said Hedvig, “I am not going to stay here any longer. There is nothing but dissipation and vileness. Nobody seems to think that we may be dead tomorrow. I am going to take a course in nursing and then I shall join the Red Cross.”
Peter began to fear new unforeseen expenses. He begged and prayed, he clumsily touched on all sorts of points. Finally he stretched out a finger and poked it into the region of her heart:
“Hedvig, dear, one fine day you will also get married.”
Peter stopped dead. He felt as if he had sandpaper in his throat. Hedvig stood motionless and stared at him, with loathing in her eyes:
“You are disgusting,” she said, in a low voice. “I hate all men. I will never, never marry!”
And with that she left the room.
A fortnight later Hedvig had started as a probationer at a hospital. And she never put her foot inside Selambshof.
Peter did not know if he felt this as a loss or relief. Sometimes he felt as if his bad conscience had left him. Sometimes he felt a little alarmed. With the departure of Hedvig he seemed to have lost his last connection with “The Powers.”
But Mrs. Laura at Ekbacken was very annoyed when Peter stalked in one day and told her about Hedvig’s new move.
“It really is a pity about Hedvig,” the little wife exclaimed. “Just think how really beautiful she can be sometimes, Herman. It almost hurts one. Couldn’t we find her a husband some way or other, Herman dear?”
Mrs. Laura still lived on her honeymoon and she thought that all people ought to marry.
Herman moved away the pink silk ribbon of her coquettish boudoir cap and kissed her hair:
“She is as pretty as anyone can be who is not fair,” he whispered.
By now Peter had gone again. This sort of thing was unbearable. They don’t care a straw either for me or Hedvig, he thought sadly in his loneliness. But wait a little, Laura has still got claws in her silky hands. Herman will feel them soon enough.
This thought consoled him a little.
The honeymoon was scarcely over before Mrs. Laura realised that there would be no wedding trip that spring.
No, she was definitely cheated of it, cheated of her grand wedding trip. She had not imagined things would turn out like that. This might possibly have been permitted to occur in the remote future, but just now she had desired nothing but happy surprises.
At first Laura told Herman nothing. She felt that it would be humiliating to admit her condition. But she observed him secretly. She watched for a searching or a triumphant expression in his face. Has he been expecting this? Was he only playing with me when he spoke about the wedding trip, she thought. And she felt something in her heart that almost resembled dislike. But then it struck her how sad and strange and really impossible it was that she was feeling dislike of her own Herman. And then she went down to the office and let him kiss her behind old Lundbom’s back. But she was not yet able to speak about it. She felt a strange cold
