A few days later Peter the Boss went to sleep, having never wakened again while he lived. His egoism survived him. Blind and unredeemed it still survived in his stupid cunning will. “My money shall rule them,” he had thought. “They shan’t pass over Peter the Boss so easily.” And neither did they.
The will showed that he had not taken any steps legally to recognise his son. He simply made him his sole heir—but with the important and particularly sound reservation that he should not dissipate the fortune but only draw the interest. To this will were attached, however, a lot of strange conditions which really seemed to have been added only to give the disappointed heirs a tempting opportunity. Thus the heir, if he wanted to retain the inheritance, must always remain clean shaven like the testator when alive; never travel in motor cars; never back any bills or go abroad. Strange also was the way he had remembered his dear sisters and brother. To Stellan was bequeathed Peter’s watch, an old silver turnip which the lord of Trefvinge would not even touch with his fingers. Hedvig got the humble stock of old clothes of the deceased, and Laura was consoled with the yacht “Laura,” laid up in the yard at Ekbacken with all its inventory, as for instance, anchor, buoy, ensign staff, and glass rack, all in memory of her beloved first husband, Herman Hermansson.
This will was the tombstone of Peter the Boss, and his relations celebrated its unveiling by a long and scandalous lawsuit in which nothing of the Selamb nature was hidden from the eyes of the world. Against Levy, whom Peter had had the good idea of appointing executor of the will and who now got a welcome opportunity for revenge both on Laura and Hedvig, a whole army of lawyers and psychologists was mobilised. The Selamb brother and sisters were now no longer afraid of scandal. These people, who were really choking with money, tore every shred of cover from the deceased and scratched the brain out of his skull, in order to fling it on the judge’s table. The whole press of the country echoed these magnificent disclosures. From the court of first instance to that of final instance this comedy of greed dragged its way along, but Peter was too cunning for his opponents and won his lawsuit in the end, as he had said. Yes, one may really say that it was Peter who won and not his son. That young rogue had, as might have been expected, not been able to support his good fortune, but by the time of the final settlement of the case, already lay in hospital, having drunk himself to death.
Already during his lifetime Peter had been moderately well known, but now under the plain stone out in the New Cemetery, he grew to a type of power. He was accepted and quoted. People told anecdotes about him, laughed at those he had tricked, and shrugged their shoulders at his enemies. The masses in the end always capitulate to a scoundrel of coarser calibre than themselves. And when nowadays a poor honest bourgeois who has been working hard the whole week, takes his Sunday walk beyond the toll bar and catches sight of Selambshof, he forgets all that was done up there in that robbers’ stronghold in order to hamper his own life and make it more difficult and expensive. And he points at the false Gothic over the edge of the forest and exclaims:
“Look! That’s where that scoundrel Peter Selamb lived! Do you know what he used to say? ‘God will surely feed the hawk,’ he used to say. And that is true enough—for he cheated the town of a good round sum. Twelve millions he left behind him, that scoundrel, Peter Selamb!”
There is secret admiration in his voice. The heart swells so strangely in the poor little bourgeois heart, just as does the heart of a soldier when you tell him about Napoleon.
Here ends this book, which has told of such as prefer to hunt alone.
Georg Hermansson is at the moment of writing already a prominent engineer in Philadelphia. As far as we can see, he will soon have to return home to take over the greater part of the spoil. Who knows? perhaps he will one day fight the battle of civilisation with the ill-gotten wealth of the Selambs against those who hunt in flocks. The best days of the Selambs’ system are now over and the egoism of the masses is perhaps now the greater danger.
THE END