But one fine day Percy got up in spite of all her protest and in spite of his not having quite a normal temperature. And the following morning an architect arrived. The two men walked round the house, drew, measured and made a lot of calculations.
“I want the drawings as quickly as possible,” Percy said at lunch. “I am in a great hurry.”
His eyes glowed and he had little red patches in his cheeks.
The architect promised to do his best.
Immediately afterwards the pictures began to arrive from Paris. Not only those that Hedvig had already seen, but a whole lot of new ones. Percy evidently had somebody down there buying for his account.
Hedvig said nothing. She kept to herself, locked herself in, brooded and scarcely answered when spoken to.
Still more new pictures arrived, and Percy was busy with them the whole day, studying them, and moving them from one crowded room to another.
Then the plans were ready and the workmen arrived, a whole swarm of them. They dug and blasted, laid foundations and built the walls. Percy sat in an easy chair out in the sunshine and looked on. He was so eager that he scarcely allowed himself time to eat. “This is my protest against oblivion,” he thought. “I am building a house for my ashes. I am building my own little pyramid....”
He really imagined his ashes standing in a beautiful Japanese urn in a corner of the Hill gallery.
Towards autumn the roof was already on the new wing. Percy began to hang the pictures at once. He could not even wait till the walls had dried. He himself was not strong enough to move anything, but he sat in his chair and gave orders to Ohlesson, the coachman, who had now become a chauffeur. You could see even from Ohlesson’s back how he disapproved of these awful novelties. Percy did not worry. Whenever he looked in at the rooms containing examples of the older art, everything there seemed to him strangely quiet and as it were covered over with a fine dust. His taste was already brutalised by these strident colours and paradoxical forms. He really needed strong food now, poor Percy. Fatigue sometimes descended like a grey mist over his feverish zeal. He used these new excesses as weapons against the deepening shadows.