Frida arrived dressed in the new blue silk coat and with the whole warmth of the new Laundry heater of “Orion” make around her.
“I always keep my promises,” she whispered, “I’m made that way. … But goodness me! how smart this is. Are you living here too, Sir?”
“I have taken all this for your sake, Frida,” said Peter pressing her to him. “It has cost me a good deal.”
And then at last Peter got his reward. …
He lived in supreme well-being in a world of peace. Late on Sunday morning, long after Frida had stolen home, he lay quite still and watched the sunlight creep across the beautiful Persian carpet. It was a strange feeling of relief, it was as if it was only now that he had at last given the coup de grâce to the nightmare of his youth, the stubborn Brundin.
If Peter imagined that Frida now belonged to him, without any further expense, he was mistaken. A few more such moments and she considered herself free again. And so she let him understand in a delicate way that new favours had to be bought with new offerings. Peter suffered, but he suffered more in his greed than in his affection. He was so accustomed to think that everything depended on money that he could scarcely imagine a man being loved for his own sake. He puffed and whined—but paid. He did not even try to press down her demands by simulated indifference. Such is love.
So things went on for a few months. Then one fine day Peter received a letter in which Frida herself proposed a meeting without mentioning any fresh gifts. He was just about to welcome her, feeling heartily content, when he was checked by an inward shock. He suddenly remembered some land he had once bought when the seller in apparent absentmindedness had registered the transfer in his own name instead of the purchaser’s.
It was the only time he had ever been completely taken in.
Peter read through Frida’s letter again. It was too eager. It was not quite the same old Frida. He felt a slight presentiment of something unpleasant. A voice whispered in his ear to be on his guard. He knew what it all meant. He sat long and worried in front of the clean sheet of note paper. In the end he wrote something about important business which prevented him from meeting her just then. After this extraordinary exercise of self-control Peter felt very sorry for himself, so much so that the tears came into his eyes. He wandered about puffing and sighing among the fields of Selambshof, a victim of desire, suspicion, hope and fear. Into the bargain Stellan wired that he was coming home immediately from the North, so that Peter was obliged with a bleeding heart to screw the nameplate on to the door again and set out all the photographs of horses and ladies. Thus the discreet little free retreat for his amours disappeared from view. Then another letter from Frida arrived in which she begged and prayed to be allowed to see her own Elk very soon. Peter was really touched. It was sweet to hear her beg like this. All there was of hunger and love in his great body stirred within him. But he felt at the same time that the thing was growing more and more dangerous. “I must be strong,” he thought, “very strong.” And he did not answer the letter, not a line. …
Peter was not left long in doubt. It was as he had suspected, Frida was expecting a child. She absolutely must see him, she wrote. She was so ill and so run down. If he did not arrange things for her at once she would drown herself. …
Peter sat long staring at the letter and it did not affect him in the way he would have thought. Instead it rather comforted him in a strange way. It cooled his desire to think of her growing more and more unshapely and ugly every day.
“Oh no,” he muttered, “you won’t drown yourself. I have paid for what I have had. We are square. It is high time for me to return to my senses.”
The long tug of war between his love and his purse had ended in a victory for the purse.
Peter burnt all Frida’s letters and did not answer a word. He had decided to regard the affair with Frida as a dream. And he knew he could do it. There was not a trace of proof. So wonderful was the instinctive cunning of this man that he had not sent a single line signed with his name, written in his own handwriting, or even posted at Selambshof. And scarcely once had he been seen in Frida’s company. She on her side had from the first had every reason to keep the matter secret, because a liaison with the hated Peter the Boss would at once have driven away all her customers in Majängen.
But Peter was not to escape as unscathed as he had imagined. Frida was not at all the sort of person to allow herself to be hanged in silence. For a time she continued to bombard him with letters, full of entreaties and reproaches. Then she began to hang around Selambshof, big, swollen, with a sinister spotted
