The very evening that Laura moved in, she went down to see Stellan:
“I did not stay at the old lake,” she said, “and the little idyl did not materialise.”
“No, no!” said Stellan. “Shall we play a game of écarté?”
And they did.
XI
The Spanish Saint
One fine day in September Stellan Selamb, lieutenant of the Göta Guards, was out at field manoeuvres at Lidingön with his platoon. They had already during the cool and clear morning hours practised advancing in open formation through the broken brushwood to the right of the main road, when he gave over the command to the sergeant and, consulting his map, began to climb a steep hill path to make an attack on his own. After some searching he found another new cross road which brought him to a large, new and somewhat strange looking house, which lay alone in the midst of the dense pine wood.
Stellan did not associate with architects and did not usually pay much attention to houses. But he was accustomed to safe old manor-houses which seemed to have grown out of the ground where they were stood. This house on the contrary looked as if it had fallen down from the sky with its dazzling white walls broken up in a fantastic way and its bright green roof! It was positively difficult to tell whether it was meant for a temple, a sanatorium, a museum or perhaps even an ordinary house. Anyhow Stellan hammered the antique knocker against a huge black church door densely studded with coarse nails.
A groom opened the door.
“The master is in bed, but I am to announce visitors all the same.”
He disappeared but returned at once with the message that if the lieutenant would look at the pictures for a moment his master would receive him. Stellan walked through several large rooms full of pictures, like picture galleries.
Some of them he knew from Percy’s old flat in town, but most of them had probably been bought during his last long journey abroad. There was both ancient and modern art, Spanish and Dutch masters and some of the most modern impressionists, but he could discover no trace of Percy’s own canvases.
“Just like him,” Stellan thought, “they are of course relegated to some old boxroom.”
At last the door into the bedroom was opened. There lay “The China Doll.” It was the same thin, refined face as before. And the same little smile, amiable, gentle and slightly reserved. Only the blue of the eyes was not as cool as before.
“Good morning, Percy, old man, I happened to have field exercises in the neighbourhood and thought I would have a peep at your new Tusculum.”
“O, I am so pleased when somebody is kind enough to look in.”
Percy’s voice sounded strangely fragile. But Stellan did not notice it. He was so accustomed to see Percy ill. Having looked closely at the bedroom he suddenly burst out laughing. It was black and white with a vaulted ceiling and heavy carved oak furniture. The chairs seemed completely taken up with their own ornament and would no doubt have looked upon the back of anyone sitting down on them as a desecration. Percy’s bed resembled most nearly a catafalque and it was standing in an alcove which looked like a chapel in the church of “The Third Kingdom.”
“I say, this looks rather as if it was prepared for the eternal sleep,” Stellan exclaimed. “For a marble statue.”
Percy’s smile was a shade more wan.
“Yes, perhaps you are right. …”
Stellan opened the door of a W.C. which the uninitiated would have taken for some kind of confession box. He suddenly grew furious and felt a desire to say something indecent; he wisely kept it back however.
“Excuse me, Percy, old chap, but do you really feel at home here?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“Well, then, why the devil do you have it in this style, then?”
Percy looked at the ceiling of the alcove which was painted all over with pentagrams and spirals.
“Well, my architect did it,” he muttered resignedly. “He wanted it like this. And I dared not oppose him. It is so difficult when you are not able to say that you cannot afford it. It brings so many responsibilities. Do you know, Stellan, I don’t think it is possible really to will something, really to be something for your own sake if you have lots of money.”
Stellan thought that if that was the difficulty he was ready to ease him of his burden.
“Poor Percy,” he laughed sarcastically. “The prisoner of wealth, for life.”
But then he remembered the refined little boy dressed in white behind the gates at Stonehill. And it struck him that there might perhaps be a bitter blighting truth in his exclamation. And that Percy perhaps was a shade more serious this time than usual. Stellan drummed, a little embarrassed, on the rough carved block of black oak that constituted the foot of the bed.
“I say, Percy, how are you really?”
Percy smiled an apologetic smile:
“Well, to be frank, I had a rather serious hæmorrhage of the lungs a week and a half ago … my chest has always been weak, you know.”
For various reasons Stellan was horrified:
“But your footman did not tell me so. I had not the slightest idea that. …”
“Well, I don’t want to advertise my illness.”
“What does the medicine man say?”
“He shakes his head and says that I must lie quiet in bed for the present, only lie quiet. … But dash it all, Stellan, don’t take it so seriously. I myself am rather pleased. I have never been anything but a dilettante. But this will perhaps be my opportunity. A real danger! An honest compulsion! Sometimes I feel as if I would really be able to do something after all. Oh, there is a curious excitement in the fever and the imminence of death.”
Stellan was just pondering how best in these circumstances he
