“It can’t have been very sentimental; Peter is said to have stared rather angrily at the figure before him and to have cried: ‘You are a lucky young rascal!’ And then he asked: ‘Can you play camphio?’ No, he could not play camphio but he must have been willing to learn, because from that time the cards were out several evenings one after the other. Now when Peter is too weak himself, the coachman and that creature have to be in with him with cards and alcohol....
“Yes, that is how things are at present. I don’t for a moment suppose that Peter’s conscience has in any way awakened or that he has grown fond of the scamp. No, he is the slave of his money and nothing else. And now he is working out a trick to keep his fortune together and to cheat his legal heirs.”
The sledge stopped, they had arrived.
Selambshof looked higher and gloomier than ever—with all its black windows. In the trees the crows were quarrelling over their perch for the night. Nobody kept them in check any longer, so they collected there every evening. Both horses and people started at the screams of hundreds of black ghostlike birds in the deep twilight.
An uncanny presentiment of death came over brother and sisters. Selambshof was at one with Peter the Boss. But Selambshof was also their own youth ... the root of their lives ... and now Peter was going to die and lots of other things with him....
Laura was frightened and wanted to get out of the sledge:
“No, this is too awful! I am going home again!”
Stellan had to pull her with him. They walked in silently.
Peter had had his bed moved into the office. It stood in the place of the old leather settee underneath the yellow, fly-marked Selambshof map. A lonely oil lamp feebly lit up some soiled glasses on the night table and his own swollen, puffy, pale face. It really was a room in which an Eskimo might have complained of the lack of comfort. But Peter seemed to think it ought to be like that. He had cheated many in the course of his life, had Peter the Boss, amongst others himself.
The visit of his sisters and brother did not seem to be unexpected or unwelcome. You could even see a little flash of satisfaction in his features, which seemed to worry Stellan. Hedvig was earnestly requested to keep quiet at first, and even did so, after she had crept away into a corner, wrapped up in all her jerseys and shawls. Otherwise their tones were of the gentlest. They were all kind care and spoke eagerly of doctors, nurses, cures, during which Laura all the same kept at a certain cautious distance, nervously chewing....