“Old Enoch is our patron saint,” she explained to her husband. “He ought always to have a candle burning before his picture—as before an ikon. Thanks to him no Selamb can do really bad business.”
The Count’s glance travelled searchingly round the table and then back to the portrait.
“Hm,” he mumbled, “one can see the likeness.”
There was a pause again and everybody felt old Enoch’s looks directed towards him, even those who had their backs turned to the portrait.
Peter ate and drank for the whole company. The dress coat did not pinch him any more. By Jove, he began to feel at home amongst the guinea-hens and the golden pheasants. Yes this was not a bad show. “May I be damned if I ever sat down with so much money before,” he thought, “Here is Hedvig the Tragedy, who is worth at least three millions. She is lost in her pile of notes as big as herself, and there are Stellan and Elvira who are also expensive creatures, even more expensive than Hedvig, at least five millions if we count Trefvinge as worth three. And Laura, the little minx, weighs as much, if it is true that the Count has sold three big estates in Finland and Esthonia.” And then there was himself, Peter the Boss ... with Ekbacken and Kolsnäs and a big slice of Selambshof and all his building land and houses. He was the worst of them all, not less than eight millions. And that was calculating absurdly low, almost as if for income tax returns. He scarcely dared to confess to himself how much he owned. And if he added it all together it came to more than twenty millions. Or perhaps more correctly thirty. Thirty millions. Peter rolled the figure in his mouth, chewed it with the fowl, swallowed it with the wine. Thirty millions, thirty millions....
He was not at all like King Midas. The gold agreed with him splendidly.
But just opposite sat Stellan, thin, straight, scrupulously elegant, with the set face of the retired gambler. He sat looking at the row of untouched glasses in front of his wife. All those fine vintages! An exquisite harmony in colour from the golden green mist over the light sparkling sunshine of the champagne and the glowing burgundy down to the heavy brown dash of colour in the Malvoisier! And all of it untouched, disdained. Oh what sort of a creature had he bound himself to, thin, cold, fastidious, sterile, incapable of life! Not even Africa had for a moment raised her temperature above zero. Even her capricious love of sport had suddenly been blown away when she noticed that he had expected something of it. She seemed nowadays to be exclusively occupied in being bored. It seemed as if the staff of servants at the Castle had gradually assumed all her functions of life. Stellan sometimes felt a sort of fear of her, as of a lingering disease, a dangerous languor. Yes, the disease of wealth is infectious. He was already infected. And still he could think of nothing but collecting more money, and more money. He was afraid when he thought of anything else than money.
Stellan started. By Jove, they had already reached the dessert. He absolutely must stand up and make a speech. But how difficult it was to get out of the chair today! “Supposing I refuse to tell a lot of lies about Laura and the damned Russian,” he thought suddenly. “Supposing instead I rise and propose a toast to—absent friends! To poor Manne von Strelert who happened to shoot a hole through his head. And to that decent fellow, Herman Hermansson, who took a little trip to America. And to Percy Hill, who died in beauty. And to von Borgk’s boarders in the Peter-Paul fortress and in Siberia. And to all the people we have kicked over and climbed up on. Supposing I raise up Banquo’s ghost! That would be exciting!”
Compassion was not one of Stellan’s frailties. He regretted nothing, felt no remorse. He only felt stiff, isolated, frozen, paralysed by melancholy irony. And when he looked round the silent circles the others seemed to him frozen also. It seemed as if they were all sitting frozen in a gigantic block of ice, and only imagined that they could reach each other with their thoughts, words and gestures. That they breathed and moved was probably only imagination. Really they were all dead, except Peter. Nothing affected him. He belonged to those organisms low down in the scale that can stand any amount of cold....
Yes, it was a ghost-dinner. The great ghost dinner at Selambshof. And from the wall old Enoch’s eyes stared, stared, and stung. “That’s right, my children,” they seemed to say, “now you are ready. Now I’ve got you. Now you are inside my magic circle. And none of you will escape, none....”