The Crown Prince received the cheque with an amazed but gracious smile.
About half a year later, Lähnfeldt received two large letters with seals of State and Portuguese stamps. One contained an account of the use to which his money had been put in an Orphanage in Lisbon, the other letter contained the letters patent of his title.
He rushed down to Lisbon and threw himself at the feet of the newly crowned King Charles. Then he rushed home again to buy an estate as a background to his new dignity. And now he sat here at Trefvinge, the ancestral home of the Oxenstierna family, and tried to fill out the magnificent frame.
Such was Count Lähnfeldt’s history.
He had one great grief. The title was not hereditary. Already in Elvira’s childhood he would look at the little plebeian with compassion and melancholy. And when she grew up his only hope lay in a suitable marriage for her.
“You must marry, Elvira,” he preached. “If you don’t marry you will remain plain ‘Miss’ all your life.”
But it had not pleased Miss Elvira to marry yet. She was already nearing thirty. Some suitors she had turned away herself, others had withdrawn of their own accord, to the great astonishment of all but the initiated.
Neither Stellan nor Manne belonged to the initiated. But both were in such miserable circumstances. And they knew only too well each other’s business at Trefvinge. All the same, they kept countenance when they met out in the sunshine on the steps, at least Stellan did. Manne was not quite so happy. The poor boy had of course arrived first at the mill but it hurt him all the same to stand in the way of an old friend. So he cast timid and remorseful glances at Stellan when he helped Miss Elvira into the saddle.
She, on the other hand, seemed in excellent spirits this morning.
“Come on, Captain Selamb,” she said with a little side-glance at her father. “Caesar II is free. We are riding towards the sand pit.”
Stellan’s voice sounded cold:
“Thank you, but I am too much handicapped.”
She shrugged her shoulders and gave her black mare a light cut with her whip. But Manne sat still and looked as if he could not get going. Stellan was cruel enough to wave a glove, with a meaning wink, to remind his friend of his faithlessness to “The Glove.”
Never before in his life had Manne looked so lost on horseback. He suddenly set his bay to a gallop and followed his companion, who was already disappearing through the park gates.
Stellan had settled on an entirely different plan of action to Manne. He had made up his mind to be indifferent to Miss Lähnfeldt so as to excite her spirit of contradiction, and to try to win the father instead. For that reason he at once began to display immense interest in the history of the castle. Faithfully and indefatigably he accompanied the Count, as he rattled out a whole armoury of dates, and roamed around like a parody of greatness in the many splendid apartments. Patiently he sat for hours in the library amongst peerages, pedigrees, genealogies, and Gotha-almanacs and listened to the anecdotes of the lord of the castle. Count Lähnfeldt knew every anecdote concerning a prince. … Then they walked outside and down the steps, and Stellan duly admired the Oxenstierna coat of arms cut in sandstone over the proud Renaissance doorway. He sat with a becoming thrill of reverence on the seat round the giant oak which Axel Oxenstierna had planted with his own hand and in the shadow of which the Count, like the previous owners of the castle, used to sit and marvel at “the small amount of wisdom that the world is ruled with” and grow horrified at the tendency of the time to level us all “like pigs’ feet.” Stellan was surprised at himself that he need not sit silent at the feast but was also able to say something about Oxenstierna. The moment before he had not suspected his knowledge. It had been the same at school long ago when lazy Stellan always knew an answer after all. Perhaps it was some kind of thought reading. …
The Count by and by worked himself up into stammering enthusiasm. Oxenstierna! Oxenstierna! It sounded as if he were speaking of his own ancestor. Well, who knows if he had not some such thoughts. Then he took Stellan’s arm and drew him to the small Chapel, of which he had the patronage, whose whitewashed gable shone under the yellowing birches on the other side of the garden wall. He took the rather large key of the crypt out of a case he always carried in his pocket, and staggered in front of Stellan down into the dusky vault. And over the richly carved oak and copper coffins he mumbled reverently a string of names of which most were well known in history, and stopped at last in front of a gigantic open coffin of porphyry, the lid of which was leaning against the wall.
“This,” he said, caressing the carvings on the lid, which depicted a bear with a little child on its back, “is the Lähnfeldt coat of arms. And here I shall one day rest my weary bones.”
You could hear from his tone that death had lost its bitterness for him since he would enter such distinguished company.
After all this the Count was a little tired, and, excusing himself on the plea of important correspondence, he went up to take his little snooze before dinner, just like any ordinary human being.
Stellan wandered about alone with his hands behind his back in the stately park of Trefvinge. Around him this
