Georg had not always been so lonely.
Just after the divorce, whilst Laura still felt her position to be delicate, she had cultivated the ladies, well knowing that it is they who make one’s position. Then she availed herself of every opportunity to pose as a deserted mother with her little baby. But her baby grew up and the ladies bored Laura. Nor did they feel very much drawn to Laura. It was not that she made any mistakes. On the contrary, at first she was very careful about her reputation. But she made her friends restless in some way. They did not like to see her entertain their husbands. They gradually held aloof. Only the eccentrics and the bohemians among them remained faithful to her, including a fashionable woman sculptor and a middle-aged baroness who wrote causeries on the fashions.
Thus there were mostly men at Laura’s little parties. She realized this with a shrug of her shoulders, a contented shrug. As a matter of fact she always felt at home with men. But little Georg was not an additional attraction for them. He was still exhibited now and then as an almost newborn babe. But in the end the sweet little baby grew too long in legs. And then Laura began to keep him out of sight. She came to think of him more and more as a tiresome encumbrance. She even grew ashamed of this reminder of her age and of her past. Georg was under the care of untidy, uncontrolled and incessantly changing nurses. When Laura was travelling she boarded him out with strangers wherever she might happen to be. And when she entertained he was put to bed to be out of the way.
Laura had resumed her work in front of the mirror. As the delicate task advanced towards the finishing touch with the powder puff and the choice of perfumes and jewels, her serious expression grew in solemnity.
Her movements became more deliberate like those of an officiating priest. All these pastes, creams, essences and perfumes were sacrifices and incense in a secret cult. The dressing table was the altar and the image in the mirror was the god. And just as a worshipper at the altar ponders over the past and questions the future, so it was at her dressing table that Laura became absorbed in recollections and sought inspiration for her future plans. Her face thus participated very intimately in all she did. When she thought of herself it was quite naturally of her hair, her mouth, her eyes, that she thought. Her egoism flourished under the spell of the mirrored image. The shadow and the reality merged imperceptibly together. She was sitting at the high altar of feminine selfishness.
Then Stellan arrived, dressed in a dinner jacket. He stepped without ceremony into the holiest of holies, patted Laura approvingly on the neck, and threw himself down in an empty chair beside the dressing table. You could scarcely have seen that he was over thirty and that his life during the last years had been rather stormy. His face still bore an expression of self-satisfied, smiling irony. Only the corners of his mouth had set, not into earnestness, but into hardness.
Sister and brother had not met during the whole summer. Laura tore herself away from the mirror with an effort. She looked at her brother searchingly. It was as if she looked in vain for something in his face:
“And now you have become a balloon pilot, too,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. “How did you get that idea into your head?”
Stellan played with a small lady’s watch of about the size of a sixpence.
“Well, I did it in anger. I had to sell the Ace of Spades, and it got into the papers. So then I found a way of cutting out the cavalry. They look simply ludicrous down below on their horses.”
Laura did not answer Stellan’s smile:
“Do you know what I thought when I read about your folly?” she said. “ ‘Oh, are his affairs in such a rotten state?’ I thought.”
Stellan frowned:
“No, dash it all, don’t think it is a subtle form of suicide. Rather then as a new phase of my notorious passion for gambling. I must have excitement. It is a game with a rather higher stake than usual, that’s all. …”
“Well, but how are your affairs?”
“My affairs,” said Stellan with a shrug of his shoulders. “I have no affairs, only debts. But they are of no importance anyhow. Just sufficient to keep me from getting fat. They keep one up to the mark.”
Stellan’s financial position was bad. And still his superior airs were not all pose. He did not worry over his position. If he had done that he would have been lost. It never occurred to him to refuse himself anything; on the contrary. He, Stellan Selamb, must of course live up to his position. The best was, of course, always for him and his like. It is an enormous source of strength to have such an inborn conviction. Because you usually get what you consider should as a matter of course be yours.
It was this elegant microcosm of upper class prejudices that kept Stellan afloat.
Laura looked at her brother with something almost resembling admiration. His assurance, his elegant bearing, his haughty smile, impressed her:
“There is an easy solution,” she said in a significant tone.
Stellan suddenly looked bored. He understood only too well what Laura meant. The great day of settlement was approaching when he would have to produce the heiress in anticipation of whom he had drawn so many bills.
“Damn it,” he muttered, “you too! My colonel attacked me the other day and asked if I did not
