However much Peter pondered over the matter he could not guess why old Hermansson was so distant and on his dignity toward him, whilst he yet seized every occasion to show his fatherly interest in Stellan. That lazy, supercilious Stellan who strutted about in his uniform and sneered and looked important when he occasionally came home after his idiotic drill. Peter had an economic contempt for everything in uniform, which showed how simple he was, and how much he still had to learn from life. If he had only observed old Hermansson a little more closely, as with his head held high and his hand inside the lapel of his coat he strutted up and down the avenue by the side of Stellan with his glittering braid and sword belt, he would perhaps have understood a good deal better.
Everything striking and challenging stirred Peter’s egoism, though it still sought to hide itself.
Whilst he scratched his head, a thought flashed through his brain: “If I could think of something sufficiently mad, perhaps it would work better,” he thought, and soon after he conceived the brilliant idea that was to bring matters to a successful issue.
After weeks of careful preparation he marched off one day to Ekbacken. It was a fine windy day in May and down at the repairing slip they were just fitting out Herman’s fine, new cutter. Herman himself was standing on the pier dressed in the uniform of the Royal Yacht Club and gave orders to a crowd of lazy-looking youths who had succeeded the old sailors. Peter shook his head as he passed. It positively hurt him to see such expensive toys.
In the smoke-room at Ekbacken a card table and an easy chair were placed between the Marieberg stove and a new piece of furniture, a mahogany and glass monstrosity containing coloured silk ribbons and the gilt insignia of all the secret societies in which the owner of the house held high rank. There old Hermansson now sat playing patience.
“What do you want here, my friend?” muttered the old man without looking up from his cards.
“Well, there was something I had to tell you. You know that it is a very long time since father said anything rational. But today when I went in to see him as usual he seemed to have brightened up. He fumbled after my hand and then he said: ‘You must go and thank my old friend. You must go and thank old William for all he has done for old Selambshof.’ Yes, that’s what he said. And I felt so strange because it was just as if father would not have long to live. That was all I wanted to tell you.”
His guardian looked up from his cards with an expression of solemn sympathy and quiet reproach:
“Well, well, did he really say that, dear old Oskar? Yes, it really does me good to hear that there are still some people who are grateful. I will go and see him as soon as possible.”
Peter went home contented. A visit was exactly what he wished for. The following day old Hermansson came. It evidently affected him to see the invalid. Much moved and very solemn he walked up to the bed: