VIII
TORD SAILS OUT TO SEA
With its knife-sharp stem the big motor boat cut straight through the September storm. In the stern Stellan and Laura were lying, well protected from both draught and spray by canvas and bevelled glass screens. The splash of the waves mingled with the sound of jingling mirrors and trays in the elegant saloon.
“The motor runs nicely today,” observed Laura.
“It always runs well when you are on your way to something disagreeable,” mumbled Stellan.
“Do you think there is more vibration in the bows?”
“Of course there is nearer the motor. Why do you ask?”
“The vibration is nearly as good as massage. I have not had any for a whole week. It’s perfectly awful. I think I will move up there.”
Laura stepped up to the bows. Her life was now characterised by an incessant struggle against incipient corpulency. She took massage, had gymnastics, played games and rode. The fear of getting old forced her out of her feline laziness. She positively dared not sit still. “If I rest or if I lie on my back, then old age will come over me,” she thought. This new restlessness went hand in hand with an ardent desire to be in at everything, not to miss anything. She had fallen a helpless victim to the disease of seeing and being seen. Dances, first nights, private views, bazaars, matches:—everywhere you saw Countess von Borgk. And everywhere you saw her flirt with young men, preferably very young men.
It had not been exactly an agreeable surprise for Stellan to discover her at the great autumn shooting party at Granö. Stellan was no longer fond of female company. His wife he fortunately escaped. She was always at the seaside or at some sanatorium, but Laura he often met. But with the old bachelor Major von Brauner he had thought he would be free from her. Certainly Brauner had figured at Laura’s gambling evenings out in the Narvavägen, but Stellan did not know that relations had continued. Judge of his annoyance, then, when he turned in his motor boat and saw his pretty sister on the pier; Laura in short skirts, with puttees on her legs and a young painter fool carrying her gun.