“Drowned! All three. It’s dreadful,” moaned Herman.
Then they began to run. At the corner of the avenue where they must separate to reach their respective homes, Stellan caught hold of his friend’s arm again. There were blue and yellow streaks on his face from the soaked lining of his cap, but his expression was both tense and elated:
“Don’t forget that we capsized in trying to rescue them,” he muttered. “It looks beastly bad otherwise.”
That same evening they were sitting out on the long landing stage by the yard. It was quite calm now. The atmosphere twinkled coldly between the black fleets of cloud. Over the oak trees out on the spit of land the lights of Stockholm lit the sky. There is always something both of exhortation and menace in the pale radiance in the sky over an invisible city. Now the crescent moon peeped out over the serried edge of the forest behind Stonehill and threw a few shafts of light over the dark water—the dark water holding the three dead.
Herman was talking of the accident. He could not let the subject drop. He returned time after time to certain points, in order to prove that they could have done absolutely nothing to save the drowning men. There was a note of supplication in his voice as if nevertheless he felt remorse. He also shivered secretly. The world seemed to him gruesome—gruesome but still blessed, because Laura was in it. Her smile was there and so were the cold stars, over the black water. He was sitting beside her brother. Again Herman felt that burning desire to talk of her. But he did not dare, there was something in Stellan’s tone that kept him back, that made him vaguely uneasy. And he was too young too, thought Herman, to understand how different people can be.
Stellan walked up and down the landing stage. He talked in short, jerky sentences about sailing and riding and sport. He seemed strangely excited. He was one of those who are stimulated by the icy blasts of life. It was as if the dead out there helped him to come to a decision. With complete detachment from all this talk he suddenly came to reflect coolly, clearly and swiftly on his own future. Life is short and uncertain, he thought. Life is a gamble. It is silly to take it too seriously. I shall be an officer. I shall have a smart uniform. I shall spend my time amidst arms, horses and smart people. I want to be on top. I shall have excitement, adventures, be in danger, and perhaps go to war. But the money? It is expensive to be an officer. Well, there will always be a way out. I suppose I shall have to use Laura as a lure. Poor Herman has surrendered unconditionally. I can get him to do what I like. He just goes about begging me to trample on him for Laura’s sake. He will do the hard work for me with the old man. Anyhow he can’t say “no” to anything, poor old fellow. I’ll be an officer all right if I play my cards properly.
Thus it happened that Stellan Selamb found his guiding star one autumn evening. It was a bright, frosty star twinkling keenly over there in the pale light halo over the town, the town that lay thus waiting on the confines of his childhood’s kingdom, the town with the cross lightning of fate and a merciless consuming fire.
That same evening Laura stood with a bag of sweets in her hand and looked out through a small half-opened ground glass window. She was, with due respect, in the smallest room in the school, a room with a bolt on the inside. She had withdrawn there in order to eat her sweets in peace. If you were to share with all the other girls there would be nothing left for yourself.
Whilst Laura munched sweets her glance strayed up the sloping expanse of roofs and treetops of the town and out over the calm Neuchatel Lake, which seemed to her as large as a sea, and on to the towering Alps in the distance, whose snow covered tops soared out of the shadow and silence into the light of a crescent moon of the palest silver.