Percy lived one week longer. He had several troublesome attacks of suffocation after which he was seized by a deathlike weakness. But as soon as he had a clear moment Hedvig spoke to him of the child. It grew, it developed, it lived in her consciousness. It was a boy and he was called Percy. He was a little delicate, but handsome, with dark hair like his mother’s, blue eyes like his father’s. Hedvig was no longer so quiet. She spoke quickly, nervously, in short breathless sentences. It seemed as if she had tried to put her own fear to sleep. She made a convulsive and touching effort to keep death away with the last resources of her womanhood.
And still the whole thing was a lie.
One winter morning when the snow lay thick on the ground Percy Hill died in his wife’s arms. Something seemed to make him restless during his last moments. It was not the child. No, he muttered something over and over again about the lawyer … the donation. … It sounded almost as if he had wanted to force a promise from Hedvig.
Truly pitiful was this hopeless appeal to her.
Percy Hill died a dilettante. He had succeeded in completing nothing in all his life. Not even a new will had he been able to draw up. There was only the one that he had written the day they were married and in which he left Hedvig everything.
And there was no child born to him after his death. Hedvig had cheated him. It was a lie of love. Yes, no doubt she believed that she lied to console him, to sweeten his last moments and to make death easier. She was perhaps quite unconscious of the terrible Selamb logic in the fact that it was just on the very day that Percy began to be interested in his donation again that her fiction about an heir escaped her.
Exhausted by vigils and anxiety Hedvig collapsed after Percy’s death. For several days she lay unconscious. Not one of those who arranged for the funeral knew any of Percy’s old artist friends. So the strange thing happened that he was driven out to Lidingö cemetery together with Peter, Stellan and an old gouty sea-captain from Gothenburg, whom he had never seen in his life.
Hedvig mourned him sincerely. As soon as she could stand up she hurried out to his grave. For months not a day passed without her paying it a visit. A rigid figure in black, she stood there under the snowcovered trees staring at his grave. Did she ask his pardon for her lie, for not laying his ashes in an urn in the Hill gallery? Did she fall back upon memories of their love, sensuous memories? Did she only try to fill an aching void with the foolish illusion of physical proximity? I don’t know, but it is a fact that the tears often came to her eyes. Hedvig cried, the tearless Hedvig. …
Then she returned home to conferences with Levy, who was making the inventory. Percy had an old-established, solid fortune. He had only been obliged to sell an insignificant part of it in order to realize his dreams of a gallery. There was a cold, numb pleasure in hearing the clever Jew descant on funds, interest, dividend warrants and investments. It seemed as if the very soul of gold had spoken to her with glib tongue and beautiful though ironically curled lips. After a time she began to understand with a feeling of secret, refreshing joy how rich she really was.
IV
The Cold Moment
There was a charity fête at the Athletic Ground. The quadrille on horseback and the bicycle race were over and now people thronged round the tombola and the stalls.
Stellan did not look up at the sky when he stepped out into the saddling yard. He did not give a thought to the balloon whose gigantic yellow silk bubble was already beginning to swell out and shimmer in the cool September sunshine. No, his looks searched anxiously amongst the scattered groups of spectators outside the ring of guard. And he suddenly muttered a half-suppressed oath at the sight of Peter who, furious and massive as a bull, bore down on him from his ambush. He awaited the attack in the most deserted spot he could find. And a certain weariness appeared in the hard lines of his mouth:
“You have become damned difficult to find,” panted Peter. But Stellan was already prepared with a smile. It is strange that smiles can thrive so many degrees below freezing point.
“You can meet me as much as you like when you have got decent clothes—and a decent face. …”
Peter was unshaven. His overcoat dated from the fat and sentimental period. It now hung on him like a sack. His barge-like shoes were covered with the dirt of the bad roads of Selambshof and he had in his hand, not a stick but a cudgel. And he shook the cudgel and struck the ground with it:
“You are damned smart, you are! But if I take everything this fine gentleman possesses perhaps he won’t be quite so smart. Tomorrow I want my seventy-five thousand, or else I’ll make you bankrupt!”
Stellan still smiled. He pointed to the balloon and his tone became exquisitely ironical:
“Come up with me and then we can talk business.”
Peter looked with a ludicrous expression of suspicion and disapproval on the expensive and dangerous ascent in which his seventy-five thousand would soar heavenwards:
“If you were at least decently insured,” he sighed. Then he suddenly grew furious again and shouted, so that he was overheard by the people round about them:
“I must have the money tomorrow. I won’t wait any
