“Well, I suppose I shall have to present you with fifty thousand to spend on champagne and gambling.”
Peter sounded quite broken-hearted. But Stellan was not at all touched. He even demanded five thousand in cash. And as soon as Peter had produced the notes he made off as quickly as he had come so that Peter sat there and did not know what had really happened, and believed it was some fine new way of robbing him of some cash. But Stellan returned and in three days the whole business was settled.
Manne had, on Stellan’s advice, turned to the estate agent, O. W. Thomson.
“Thomson has good connections with my brother, who might reflect on Kolsnäs,” he said. “But it is better to choose an indirect way, because you must not appear too keen.”
At Manne’s request Stellan was present at these transactions. That is to say, at all except the last and decisive meeting. For by then he had already got his fifty thousand. And he thought that Manne might as well bear the responsibility himself if there should be any trouble. The result was that Peter seized Kolsnäs for four hundred and fifty thousand only by threatening to withdraw at the last moment—offensively simple.
Poor Manne was both sad and happy when it was all over. He was ashamed to mention the fifty thousand to Stellan and thanked him warmly for his help.
When drawing up the contract he had, by criminal negligence and ignorance, completely forgotten to safeguard the interests of the people on the estate. And this was very hard on a number of old tenants and dependants who had now no refuge but the workhouse.
He had spoken a true word of himself that night:
“Traitor, traitor to his home and to the soil that had nourished him.”
And so it happened when Kolsnäs was thrown into the market in Laura’s drawing room. It was not the first estate that had suffered such a fate, nor would it be the last.