At last Laura appeared through the swingdoors, smiling light-heartedly, just pleasantly plump, perhaps a shade more blonde than before. She was dressed in white, dazzling white, from the silk ribbon in her hat to the tips of her shoes below the rich folds of her skirt.
“Good morning, Laura dear! Congratulations. It was a surprise!”
“For me too,” said Laura and smiled her most innocent smile. “I had positively no idea I was going to get married. But why does Your Highness give audience here and not at Trefvinge?”
“Oh, I wanted to meet you alone the first time.”
“I see—and Elvira detests banks, doesn’t she … ?” Laura looked round and turned up her nose a little: “Well, so here we are back in this gossipping hole. And I who felt so happy in Petersburg! Asia, that’s the place for me!”
Stellan blinked his eyes somewhat nervously:
“Why did you not stay in—Asia, then, my dear Laura?”
“I can understand that it would have saved Elvira some worry. But Alexis has altogether withdrawn from politics. And he does not feel at home in either Finland or Russia. He is just selling his estates there. ‘I have saved them from one revolution,’ he says, ‘but I should not succeed in the next.’ He longs for the peace of Sweden. It was the last negotiations that unexpectedly detained him. He is coming next week. …”
The bank began to fill up with people. Stellan proposed that they should go down into the safe deposit where he had some papers to look through.
It was quiet and cool down in the crypt of the Mammon temple. The electric lights hung more heavily and more motionless there than anywhere else in this catacomb of wealth, where deeds of mortgages, receipts and share certificates slept their sleep in hundreds and hundreds of polished steel boxes in the walls, and where there were discreet and comfortable little compartments for the devotions of the worshippers.
Sister and brother sat down in one compartment.
“So this is your refuge nowadays,” said Laura. “Well, but what about your Aeronautic Society and your ballooning? I have looked in the papers but have never seen your name.”
“No, I have given it up.”
“Yes, it is easier to go up with a hundred thousand in debts than with double the amount in income. But you still gamble in this little town, I suppose?”
Stellan shrugged his shoulders:
“I’ve given that up, too,” he muttered.
“But what in God’s name do you do then?”
“I cut off coupons and look after my malaria. But it was not of me we were speaking, but of you. Where do you intend to settle?”
“Well, not in the country, that is certain,” exclaimed Laura, and one could see in her face that this point had been the subject of discussions.
“So your husband wants to settle on an estate.”
“Yes, he imagines he does.”
“What if you should make a compromise and take Selambshof.”
“Selambshof! That dismal old place! Are you mad?”
“Why not? The big house stands quite unoccupied. Repaired and restored it might make a splendid home. And then it would be useful to keep an eye on Peter. He is getting too awful. There are always stories about him in the papers.”
Laura looked at her brother coldly:
“The master of Trefvinge is afraid of the papers. And so he wants to put me in as a lovely guardian for Peter.”
Stellan lowered his voice:
“There are other reasons too. Peter is, as a matter of fact, beginning to go down hill. He is yellow and flabby in the face and he doesn’t take care of himself. If I am not mistaken something may soon happen. We have great interests to guard.”
Laura suddenly became thoughtful. She swung the gold knob of her white sunshade and looked as if she were making calculations. She always did this when she was serious.
Stellan had got his papers and the steel lid of his safe closed with a bang:
“You needn’t say anything definite now,” he said. “I will arrange a family dinner out there when your husband comes. My man will have to clean up a little, as best he can. And on a fine summer evening Selambshof doesn’t look so bad. … Well, we shall see.”
Laura nodded silently. As a matter of fact over there in the East she had boasted a little of her social relations. Count von Borgk had perhaps partly married her in order to be introduced to the aristocratic circles of Sweden. And that is why she wanted Selambshof to appear as attractive as possible.
They left the vault.
Up in the bank they met Levy with a black portfolio under his arm and surrounded by a crowd of business friends. He was pale, handsome, and still wore his old exquisitely ironical expression. He hurried up and bowed to Laura.
“Congratulations, Countess von Borgk! Is it true what people say, that you won your husband at roulette?”
Levy was his old self.
Laura tapped him on the shoulders with her sunshade and laughed unconcernedly. But Stellan looked stiffly after the Jew as he disappeared in eager discussion with his company.
Sister and brother stopped for a moment at the corner before they said goodbye:
“That fellow Levy is making up to Hedvig, I think,” Stellan mumbled. “The winding-up of the estate took an enormous time. They say he still appears out there at Lidingön.”
There was a malicious flash in Laura’s eyes:
“Hedvig? Poor fellow!”
“It would not be exactly pleasant to have Levy in the family, don’t you think so?”
Laura stood there in shining white and without a trace of a flush.
“No … perhaps not. …”
“It would be best to give Hedvig a hint—tactfully—that Levy is—second hand. …”
“Nonsense, just frighten her and tell her that Levy wants her money. That will have more effect!”
Then they separated.
“Ugh,” Laura mumbled as she walked about in the sunshine outside the Grand Hotel, “ugh, how moral Stellan has grown.”
From which you can see that everything is relative in this world.
Peter stalked home from his tailor. It was Stellan who had forced him
