These were the first shots in the war between Selambshof and Majängen. Fatal hits. Peter was after all on the way to his woman and child. There was perhaps after all just a chance of Peter turning human being.... But then the stones intervened...!
Peter was unconscious and half suffocated by the clay. The thousand-crown note still lay in his pocket and it never reached its destination. He woke up in his bed at Selambshof. And his first thought in the midst of all his pains was: “That’s what you get for trying to do good...!”
Peter had to stop in bed quite a long time. He had injured his spine. He got up again even more bent, more pale and more flabby in the face than before.
He was now a man without pity. If Peter the Boss had had before his sentimental moments, they were now a thing of the past. And he had, as it were, grown too coarse for all fear. And he procured for himself a watch-dog—a great, shaggy, wolf-like monster—chiefly for the pleasure of seeing people anxiously sneaking past Selambshof. And then the harsh barking of the dog was a kind of company at nights. For Peter had begun to find difficulty in sleeping.
III
THE ANGEL OF DEATH
Hedvig’s and Percy’s marriage had for long been unconsummated. At first in the Swiss mountain sanatorium Hedvig was not allowed to live in the same house as her husband. Later on when he was better she still remained his nurse.
“Think of your fever,” she said, and withdrew gently from his delicate approaches. “It is your duty to get well, Percy dear.”
Percy was all too far away from the thousandfold stimulant of art from which in his longing and his imagination he had otherwise derived vitality. His natural submissiveness was still further fortified by the strict discipline of the sanatorium. So he yielded and always acquiesced in her cold sisterly behaviour to him. But only to approach her again at the next opportunity with the same persistent, childlike, half-embarrassed supplication for love. And if he had not done so Hedvig would certainly have felt secretly hurt and worried. After having wandered about the whole day in the pure cold air and in the light of the white snow-capped peaks, among the brotherhood of suffering and among the recaptured convalescents high up in the seclusion of the alpine world it was pleasant in the evening to whisper a soft “no” to the adoring husband. There was rehabilitation in it. It healed old wounds. It was an innocent triumph. She lived through happy days. There was nothing that tempted or scorched or tore at the heart. There was just life enough for Hedvig Hill.
“No, Percy dear. For your own sake. Your temperature would rise....”