One winter morning when the snow lay thick on the ground Percy Hill died in his wife’s arms. Something seemed to make him restless during his last moments. It was not the child. No, he muttered something over and over again about the lawyer ... the donation.... It sounded almost as if he had wanted to force a promise from Hedvig.
Truly pitiful was this hopeless appeal to her.
Percy Hill died a dilettante. He had succeeded in completing nothing in all his life. Not even a new will had he been able to draw up. There was only the one that he had written the day they were married and in which he left Hedvig everything.
And there was no child born to him after his death. Hedvig had cheated him. It was a lie of love. Yes, no doubt she believed that she lied to console him, to sweeten his last moments and to make death easier. She was perhaps quite unconscious of the terrible Selamb logic in the fact that it was just on the very day that Percy began to be interested in his donation again that her fiction about an heir escaped her.
Exhausted by vigils and anxiety Hedvig collapsed after Percy’s death. For several days she lay unconscious. Not one of those who arranged for the funeral knew any of Percy’s old artist friends. So the strange thing happened that he was driven out to Lidingö cemetery together with Peter, Stellan and an old gouty sea-captain from Gothenburg, whom he had never seen in his life.
Hedvig mourned him sincerely. As soon as she could stand up she hurried out to his grave. For months not a day passed without her paying it a visit. A rigid figure in black, she stood there under the snowcovered trees staring at his grave. Did she ask his pardon for her lie, for not laying his ashes in an urn in the Hill gallery? Did she fall back upon memories of their love, sensuous memories? Did she only try to fill an aching void with the foolish illusion of physical proximity? I don’t know, but it is a fact that the tears often came to her eyes. Hedvig cried, the tearless Hedvig....
Then she returned home to conferences with Levy, who was making the inventory. Percy had an old-established, solid fortune. He had only been obliged to sell an insignificant part of it in order to realize his dreams of a gallery. There was a cold, numb pleasure in hearing the clever Jew descant on funds, interest, dividend warrants and investments. It seemed as if the very soul of gold had spoken to her with glib tongue and beautiful though ironically curled lips. After a time she began to understand with a feeling of secret, refreshing joy how rich she really was.
IV
THE COLD MOMENT
There was a charity fête at the Athletic Ground. The quadrille on horseback and the bicycle race were over and now people thronged round the tombola and the stalls.