Hedvig cast a shy and searching glance around her. Then she quickly pulled off her glove and pushed her hand down into the hole. Her arm had grown plumper and it was a little difficult to reach the bottom. With the tips of her fingers she felt something hard and managed to pull it up. It was a little bottle with a death’s head and cross bones on it. There was still something thick and brown at the bottom. It was a souvenir of her confirmation. She had taken the bottle from the family medicine chest after that affair with Brundin. In the darkness she often ran down to feel it. It was death she fingered … death …
Hedvig stared at the sluggish brown drops. “It was that struggle that made a nurse of me,” she thought with sudden clear vision. “I had to finger—death. I was a fool.” And seized by a wild mortification she flung the bottle on the ground so that it was shattered into a thousand pieces.
Now Hedvig stepped through a broken-down hanging gate into a road, from the rustling, leafy carpet of which there was reflected a strange, sulphur yellow light which seemed like the very shimmer of putrefaction. Not a human soul was visible. It seemed as if Peter had devoured the whole population. Next she stood on the cliff by The Rookery where she used to spy on Laura’s and Herman’s kisses. Oh, she could still feel her burning mortification and her envy of her sister. Overhead the autumn breeze soughed heavily in the dark pine tops. Out on the lake sudden black gusts perturbed the surface as if in irresolute fury. But the waves beat against the shiny green stones on the shore with short, sharp onslaughts, already troubled by the thought of the moment when everything would be frozen up. Hedvig suddenly lifted her hands as if to ward off a blow. The thought that Percy would soon die, that she would soon be alone again, rushed over her with a vehemence as never before. Alas! to know a thing is one thing; to feel it in your heart and bones is another thing. She felt a shivering fear of the old loneliness of Selambshof. The autumn day, the decay all round her, the icy cold shadow of death, suddenly awakened all the hunger in her blood. The memories from Seville rose up before her flame-clear on this chilly northern autumn day. Once more they swept away her cautious fears and her anxious reserve. She had a savage pleasure in standing there in the cold wind and letting loose all the black hot gusts. …
And deep, deep down in her soul there was during all this seething turmoil the consciousness that Peter had given his approval, that she had the sanction of the Selamb family spirit for whatever might happen. Without that she might never, never have undertaken this stimulating and fateful excursion into the past. …
They had late dinner at the Hills’. Hedvig came down in her black Spanish dress, with her hair parted in the middle and a high comb under the mantilla. She was as stiff as an image of a saint. But she had a burning pallor, and there was fire in her alluring black eyes.
The saint drank several glasses of wine.
Percy sat mute. He did not take his eyes off her and trembled as if before some overpowering phenomenon of nature. We are to begin again, he thought. It was not dead. From the first moment he saw her there was no thought of resistance in his mind.
When they were sitting over coffee in the yellow twilight of the intimate little anteroom she suddenly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. He no longer wondered how it had happened, or why it had happened just then. He only revelled in his intoxication of joy, at once awful and glorious. He had a strange feeling of starting on a journey from which he would never return.
During a long, silent, dark autumn night she drank his fever like a fiery wine. She was the intoxicated nun officiating at the dark mass of love. Never had Percy found her lips so greedy, so glorious and unashamed.
In the morning Hedvig played with Percy, as the cat plays with the mouse. She stood there wonderfully naked in the pale sunlight from the window. Never before had she been able to show herself to him thus. There was in the very lines of her body something wild and virginal, a shyness which made the sight of her nakedness a sort of breathless sacrilege. Percy had the sensation of beholding a martyred girl who, with her clothes torn from her body, awaits the fierce and hungry beasts on the yellow sands of the arena.
“Today I need some air,” she said, “but I don’t mind walking if you want the chauffeur!”
“May I not come with you?” whispered Percy from his pillows. He looked so small in the big carved bed resembling a catafalque. “Could we not take a long run into the country to look at the autumn.”
That day Percy no longer spoke of his pictures, nor during the following days either. Hedvig did not see him even glance at the new gallery. He seemed to have grown afraid of his plans for farewell, his pyramid, the urn for his ashes and all the rest of it.
All Percy’s feelings had been transfused into a new, passionate love. Day and night he wanted to be with Hedvig. Protected by her white limbs he huddled together in the growing shadows and intoxicated himself in the warmth of her presence. But it was a fatal intoxication. Love made everything,
