Peter also snored soundly. He had not by any means done everything he might have done to ensure and isolate his victim. Never! he who liked Herman so much! No, he had only been jolly decent and said what he knew Herman liked to hear.
And when Peter afterwards came into town and told everybody he met that that fellow at Ekbacken was far too fine for business, and that he had such damned bad luck in all he did, it was not done at all in order to destroy the last remnants of Herman’s credit and make him even more impossible than before. He merely felt so frightfully sorry for Herman that it was impossible for him to keep quiet about it.
But the whole manoeuvre was as a matter of fact quite unnecessary. When, towards the autumn, cash again began to run short, Herman simply had not the energy to go to anybody else but Peter. The mere thought of going to cold strangers made him shiver. And Peter did not say “no.” He really surpassed himself. Herman got all he wanted at once on the security of a new mortgage on Ekbacken, though this time with lower interest and a more reasonable notice of calling in.
Herman was really moved when he went home. Fancy if it had been Laura who had repented and forced Peter to this. Yes he really lived on this fantastic dream through the whole of the autumn. Poor Herman, his pride had been dealt a severe blow.
But a great calm had descended on Peter after his former restlessness. The sirocco no longer irritated him. He had only to wait for the ripening of the fruit now. Soon he would be able to free Herman from all his worries about Ekbacken, which only made him unhappy.
Whilst waiting, Peter made little dreary excursions to his little gold mine “Majängen” and “Solberget.”
It was mostly poorer people who had ventured out to the new suburb. They blasted, and dug, and sawed and hammered in nails. Quite a lot of queer looking cottages had already been hammered together down in the marsh and up in the quarry. And there were already geraniums in the windows and children on the doorsteps. Peter shook his head, smiled and pondered. “They build,” he thought. “That’s a mistake. They ought to buy from those who overbuild themselves. But they are decent people all the same, quite decent people.” He moved on carefully among the blocks of stone and the clay holes in the staked-out streets. He stopped before an arbour consisting of a few recently planted lilac bushes of the size of broom, in front of a patch of golden nasturtiums in a cleft in the granite filled with soil.
Peter the Boss really felt quite touched. It is strange how poetic poverty can be—in others. Fancy how simply one can live. Yes, they were really quite comfortable here in Majängen and Solberget. Peter actually began to feel a benefactor of all these people. “Goodness! I wonder if I did not let those sites go too cheaply,” he thought.
Meanwhile Ekbacken was ripening, as I have said before.
One day towards winter Herman came up to Selambshof and wanted more money. But the end had come, Peter had not a penny free. To crown it all that fellow Thomson came to Ekbacken a few days later and called in his fifty thousand. Herman ran over to Peter again. He had no hope. No, in his heart he knew that Peter and Thomson were one and the same. But he went all the same, he had nobody else to turn to after the way he had managed his business in town.
Peter grew furious with Thomson:
“I shall go in to town and lay down the law to that scoundrel,” he said.
As might have been expected, Thomson would not move. But Peter returned with a new proposal:
“I have managed to interest a few old boys in Ekbacken,” he said. “They are prepared to take over the whole thing and there will still be a nice little sum left over for you. You will escape all trouble and worry and get a little pile of thousand-crown notes that you can do what you deuced well like with!”
Herman sat there pale and with trembling hands:
“Yes, but the house … the boat. …”
“Well … the old boys want the lot, of course. …”
Herman started in alarm, like a child that has been left alone out in the forest. His home … ! His memories from childhood … the memory of Laura … the boat … his retreat, his consolation!
“No, I will never agree to that! It is too damnable!”
He rushed out of Selambshof. He roamed about the roads. It was a snowless winter day, raw and windy, when everything wears a frozen, worn face without the peace of age. He stopped and beat the dry thistles on the roadside with his stick. “I have been a child,” he thought. “A weak, obstinate, helpless wretch. But now I must become a man. Now I must go into town and fight for Ekbacken, tooth and nail.”
He hastened towards the town, walking and running, but as he approached the toll bar, his steps became slower. The old hopelessness, laziness, and cowardice crept over him again. “What’s the use?” he muttered. “Everybody is expecting my ruin, the workmen, the foreman, Lundbom, Peter … everybody. … What’s the use?”
Huddled up, shivering, crushed with shame, he slunk into Ekbacken by a side path. He sank groaning into a settee and swallowed a glass of undiluted whiskey. And out of the whiskey came a thought, the thought of flight and failure, but also the thought of a thousand possibilities:
“America!”
Peter the Boss had been right in his calculation. Three days later the business was settled and Herman received twenty thousand crowns.
“You saved the slam anyhow, old boy,” said Peter, “You saved the slam anyhow.”
He was pleased with himself for having helped a friend
