Downstream

life by doing so. When the hour of delivery once struck at last, Oskar Selamb had come to hate his inheritance. Yes, he hated this place of humiliation, forever haunted by the old man’s shadow. But he had not strength to throw it all off and begin afresh. He merely absented himself as much as possible and let the estate go to ruin. And late in life he married a servant girl, whom he had raised to the rank of housekeeper at Selambshof. His friends were not surprised by this mésalliance. Even during the days of his humiliation he had been fond of the girl, for which reason of course she had at once been shown the door. And when Oskar afterwards by chance caught sight of her behind a bar, he took her into his house and married her, out of pure spite, as people said, in order to make old Enoch turn in his grave. To tell the truth, he was not in love with her. It was rather the spasmodic effort of a weak and vacillating man to kick away the past. His wife was a small, dark, thin woman with a pointed nose, and moderately capable and energetic within her domain. Her voice penetrated shrill and alert through the fumes of the kitchen or the washtub. She remained a bad-tempered but capable servant of her husband and, later, of the children. But for her the home would not have held together as well as it did, for Oskar Selamb became more and more incapable of looking after anything. And he still spent most of his time in the town. There he sat among his fellow topers, lost at whist and in business, cursed and harangued, as weak people do, between his draughts of steaming toddy, on the evils of the times. Meanwhile Selambshof decayed, Ryssvik was lost, the forest melted away and the mortgages became heavier and heavier. His wife bore him in quick succession and with eternal lamentations, five hungry and crying children. With the sixth she succumbed herself. When her husband came driving home that autumn morning she already lay dead in the big double bed.

Oskar Selamb had never loved his wife. He had neglected her, treated her brutally, and worn her out. But all the same her death gave him the finishing blow. It was her scolding that had kept him going. Now he sank irrevocably. His journeys to town grew more frequent then ever. Meaner and meaner grew the bars outside which his shabby old coach had to wait till late into the night. He could not even keep himself decent. Old friends avoided him, whilst discussing with interest whether it was from joy of getting rid of his wife or from grief at losing her that he was drinking himself to death.

The more subtle held that it was a combination of these two feelings. The only one who tried to do something for his friend Oskar was his neighbour and companion from childhood, William Hermansson, owner of the Ekbacken sawmill and shipyard. As it happened the Ekbacken establishment was situated just by the main road into town, and when, nowadays, William saw Oskar’s dreary looking coach, he stepped out on to his front-door step and admonished his old friend in carefully chosen words. He tried in every way to tempt him to decent intercourse in his respectable and comfortable widower’s home, reminding him of the times when he had found a refuge there from old Enoch’s tyranny. But Oskar always drove past with some vague pretext of important meetings and urgent business.

Within a few months the crash came. Oskar Selamb was brought home a pitiful wreck after having had a stroke at a miserable little inn in the slums. After several months he got up from his sickbed, bloated, with unsteady hands, and no memory, scarcely a human being any more. But still there was no sign that death would mercifully do its work. After solemn lamentations, the owner of Ekbacken agreed to become the guardian of the children, and through his efforts a new bailiff, named John Brundin, was appointed.

That is how things had been for more than two years at Selambshof. Thus on the still summer evening we have described Oskar Selamb sat on his usual seat underneath the old elm. He sat there so motionless that the sparrows hopped about in front of him on the round stone slab superposed on an enormous oak stump which did service as a table. But out there in the slanting golden rays of the sun, round the wing where the bailiff lived, shimmered clouds of gnats and fine spiders’ webs.

Stellan and Laura were playing in the sand and in the lilac hedge in front of the house. The simple games of robbers of former days were now a thing of the past. They wore a bright array of feathers, and carried bows and tomahawks. They had read Cooper and Marryat and knew how to choose impressive names and make subtle stratagems. The hedge was also dense and deep, with fine ambushes and splendid hiding places for stealthy Indian warfare. Stellan was called “Black Panther” and Laura “Flying Arrow.” Don’t imagine that she was allowed to impersonate some pale squaw with a soft flower name. No, she was a young warrior on her first warpath. “Black Panther’s” voice sounded sharp and commanding when he was teaching his young companions the use of the bow. “Flying Arrow” had displayed some squeamishness and had giggled in an unwarriorlike manner, which was not in keeping with the seriousness of the moment, and which was duly corrected.

Peter was looking on. Big and clumsy in his outgrown and patched sailor’s suit, he leant against a rusty rainpipe grinning provocatively. “Black Panther” ran up to him.

“Won’t you come and play with us and be a Paleface?”

“No,” came Peter’s sulky reply in a husky voice, about to break⁠—

“Black Panther” looked round about him wondering how to get some new