After this quarrel in the orthodox Selambian fashion they resumed their seats and proceeded with smoothed foreheads and clear eyes with the agenda.
Hedvig had been sitting silent the whole time staring at Levy. She thought of the strong family feeling of the Jews, and their racial esprit de corps. She searched nervously for a look of disgust and contempt in his face. The whole meeting occasioned her a new and mysterious torment. The harshness of their cold voices jarred on her. She felt strangely weak and moved. She had suffered and struggled during those last weeks and now she was tired, tired. She wanted to stand up and propose that they should give poor Tord what the shares were worth. The words burnt her tongue. Never before had Hedvig been so near the mellow and fragrant shores of life. If only Levy had reacted, if only she could have seen the proper pained expression on his face. But she could only discover a half-amused and half-contemptuous curiosity behind his oriental mask. And so she never rose up from her chair. And so the words remained unsaid. And so she believed that he was cold and hard like the others....
And yet Levy had fought like a lion just for her sake. He had disclosed what he knew only in order to disarm Stellan and Laura, whose opposition and ill-will he had foreseen. There is no time to sit and turn up your nose when you are fighting for the object of your passion. And must he not be pleased when he saw the magnificent effect of his information? I have made myself indispensable, he thought. Now they can’t have the impudence to turn me out....
But Levy had reckoned without his host.
Without any further quarrels they had gone through the annual report and accounts, agreed the balance sheet, approved the action of the directors, settled the dividend and had now come to the election of the new board. Stellan’s fingers travelled thoughtfully along the edge of an inky paperknife. He seemed to want to sit on only half of the old, worn, dirty office chair:
“May I ask the meeting to propose new members of the Board?”
There was another silence. The room smelt of dust, pipe-smoke, dry paper and old sun-dried leather. The shadows of the elm branches in the garden moved sleepily across the knots in the worn floor-boards. Then Laura’s voice sounded again, clear, dry and cold:
“I beg to propose Peter and Stellan and then—Mr. Sundelius.”
Sundelius was the Manager of a rival firm of Levy’s, with whom he was moreover engaged in a lawsuit. Nothing could be more outspoken. Levy took a long puff at his cigarette:
“Excuse me, but has Sundelius any shares in the company?” he mumbled.