“Not a farthing,” he said. “Take from what you and Brundin stole. From us you have had enough.”
With that he shook her off and went away.
Frida ceased to hover around Selambshof. She adopted new tactics. She stayed at home in Majängen and talked. There was no longer any truce of silence. To everybody who came she opened her heart concerning the scoundrel at Selambshof, who would not do the proper thing. As the unhappy victim of Peter Selamb she won much sympathy and many new customers in Majängen. Her laundry was besieged by the women and became a sort of focus for the hatred of Peter the Boss. The whole community waited excitedly for the Spring Sessions.
But a good deal was to happen before then, and Peter would have several reasons for reflecting on Majängen this winter.
There was the old business of the water supply. It had been decided after several stormy meetings that water was to be laid on in the houses at Majängen. It was necessary, because the wells were insufficient and tainted. Part of the necessary money had already been collected and then Peter’s permission to lay down the pipes was sought. It was considered to be only a matter of form. The streets were of course his, but even if he did not fulfil his promise of making roads it never occurred to anybody that he would deny the people he had humbugged facilities for the pipes. But that was exactly what Peter did.
“The ground is mine, and if you want to put down pipes you will have to pay for them,” he said.
This answer was unworthy of Peter the Boss. It could be no pleasure to have a hotbed of epidemics just outside your door. He acted in direct opposition to his own interests. But it is a fact that one hardening of the heart brings in its train others. He was furious with everything that was brewing against him in that dark charnel house. And he hated to think of the coming Spring Sessions. And that is why he said “No,” an obstinate, sullen, impossible “no,” which, as we have said, was quite unworthy of the cleverness of Peter the Boss.
This was too much. The newspapers then got hold of him. The reporters were about to catch the mood of the winter twilight. They described the horrors of the outskirts of the town, the struggle between town and country, tearing each other to pieces in an indescribable chaos, the bottomless roads, the ragged hillside, the torn pines, the maimed, squinting, hunchbacked, cold-sweating, ramshackle houses. And in the midst of it all came the Salvation Army to their red barn with “Blood and Fire” over the cross on the door. “Starvation and Frost” were everywhere and thus the symphony was complete. Here hope, misfortune, idleness, thrift, crime and the new life thronged together. Here the scum that the town had cast out huddled together with the indomitable spirits that boldly sought a new life on new ground. And just now when all the good influences were cooperating, after a pathetic struggle, in an united effort to make something worthy of human beings out of their grey stone hill everything was brought to nought by the mere word of Peter Selamb. Who was this gentleman after all? Well, he was the manager of Selambshof. He sat there in his sinister highwayman’s lair and took toll from the citizens of the town and grabbed all the land that the town required. We are suffocating, we want air, we want to get out! Very well, please pay up. Everybody must pay toll to Peter Selamb of Selambshof.
People did not choose their words. The newspapers outdid each other in indignation. They were of course right. But it is not always well to be too much in the right—not even for a newspaper—
The hammer blows rained down with a frequency sufficient to fell an ox. But Peter merely blinked his eyes. He did not understand how anybody could be afraid of the press. He had no real respect for any other kind of letterpress than that which is to be found on banknotes and in the paragraphs of the penal code.
“Do these damned journalists want to teach me how to build suburbs?” he muttered with an almost compassionate shrug of the shoulders. And he did not budge an inch on this matter: “The ground is mine. If they want to put down pipes, they will have to pay.”
After a few weeks the newspaper campaign against Peter the Boss subsided. It had had no effect.
As for Frida, things took their course. It is seldom that the birth of a child has been awaited with such general interest. The women in Majängen talked of nothing else when they met at the wells, laboriously to pump up the grey and ill-flavoured clay water. Round this child the hopes of the whole community for vengeance on Peter the Boss
