“It will be empty after you, Herman,” complained Peter, “damned empty.”
But for once Herman stuck to his decision and so the moment of farewell arrived. Peter was down at the station. Herman was already at the carriage window, filled with an impotent bitterness both sharp and dull. He had been a hopeless failure, fit to be plucked and cast aside. Laura and Peter had taken everything away from him. And in spite of it all he had not got the strength of mind to hate them. Yes, when he saw Peter’s coarse face, swollen with emotion, he positively did not know what to believe. “Perhaps he has really done what he could for me,” he thought. “And it was rather decent of him to come down here so that I need not be quite alone.”
Then the engine took its first deep breath as if it were challenging the distance it was about to cover.
Peter wept. He could not let go Herman’s hand:
“Goodbye, old boy! Take care of yourself now. Goodbye, Herman!”
And then old Hermansson’s tall Herman was swept off the stage.
But Peter the Boss drove slowly home in Brundin’s old dogcart. He was both sad and glad. When he had passed the toll bar he fell into a solemn mood. The shortcut across Ekbacken was open to him now. Somebody ran to the gate to open it for him. He drove past the house on the lake side and past the landing stage and the old office. Dusk began to fall and Peter felt suddenly very sorry for himself. What had he not undertaken! Fancy looking after all this. The road now ran along the lake. Peter held the reins very loosely and by and by the horse stopped. It was perfectly still and the lake was on the point of freezing over. A big, cold, glowing cloud hung over Kolsnäs and was reflected in the glassy surface of the water. The heavy clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the floating bridge floated out into the quiet of the evening. Peter sighed deeply. He envied Herman. Fancy travelling about with twenty thousand in your pocket. He will see something of the world. But I, old peasant, will never get abroad anywhere. I sit here in old Selambshof … and old Ekbacken. …
XIII
Tord’s Exile
Lately Selambshof had not been as quiet as usual. The scattered brothers and sisters began once more to find the way back to the ancestral home.
The fact of the matter was that the estate was growing more and more valuable every day. The town had already begun—to Peter’s great joy—to encroach upon a part of Ekbacken. Now it began to stretch its arms around Selambshof. And like old King Midas it changed all it touched into gold.
Yes, it was extraordinarily pleasant to sit there and feel how you were growing richer and richer every moment. And then they had to look after their interests, keep an eye on each other, and especially on the honourable director of Selambshof Limited.
It was curious to watch the Selambs when they were together. They quarrelled terribly, but stuck together all the same—just like the Bonaparte family. None believed another. They laid mines and countermines. They tricked one another until they got even, so that in the end a sort of rough natural justice prevailed. Peter the Boss now sat in the prisoner’s dock as a result of a too barefaced falsification of the accounts of Majängen and Solberget Ltd. Laura unhesitatingly accused him, in the clearest and most spirited terms of being a false old thief. Stellan’s sword play was more skilful and he got in a whole series of neat little thrusts, each one of which would have been a sufficient indictment in a prosecution for misrepresentation and misappropriation. Peter smiled complacently at these accusations, which he regarded as so many pleasant expressions of recognition of his merit. He lied with a certain heavy grace to this assembly of expert connoisseurs. Behind all his lies lay all the same the truth that he had really done great things for Selambshof. And he realised that in their inmost hearts his sisters and brothers knew they must look up to him, Peter the Boss, as the eldest and the head of the family. And after all the whole quarrel was sunk in the great and glorious consciousness of the daily increasing value of Selambshof.
But towards the spring these meetings were not quite as agreeable as usual. That was the fault of Tord. Yes, the despised, neglected, almost forgotten Tord down there in The Rookery began to cause the high family council very serious anxiety. He had dismissed the bohemian painter who had been a parasite on him for several years and instead he had returned with a woman, a slovenly person who spoke a sort of Norwegian and who was a very dubious person. Well, that might have passed if Tord had not got the mad idea of marrying her. The Selambs had had a terrible shock when they saw in the paper the reading of the banns. And now a fortnight later they were sitting by a big wood fire in the icy hall of Selambshof and knew no more than that Tord had driven to town with the woman that morning. They might already be married by now, though the sisters and brothers had been told nothing. Really it was extraordinary behaviour. …
Let us now see how Tord Selamb had come to do this most unexpected thing: arranging for the banns to be read and going to church to be married.
The story really begins with the severing
