Herman did not understand that he had a soul to fight for, a soul round which the magic circle was about to close again.
Laura could not help pondering over this lawsuit, over the shore rights. If Herman had not allowed it to interfere she would now have been on her wedding trip. And then all this would not have happened. No! then this would not have happened. How Laura arrived at this conviction seems strange, but, as we all know, our most sensible thoughts are not the most persistent ones.
Laura began to hate that lawsuit. Sometimes it almost seemed as if she wanted Herman to lose it. What if she should go over to Peter and talk it over with him for a moment. For the first time Laura had a certain furtive feeling of attraction to Selambshof. She had not been there since her wedding. But now the spirit of family called gently to its erring child.
Peter sat in his office writing in his books. The room was thick with tobacco smoke and Peter the Boss looked so coarse and vulgar that Laura at once dismissed all the subterfuges she had thought out.
“Herman’s lawsuit?” muttered Peter, “well, between ourselves, I should have settled the matter while the door was still open. The Town Council offered forty thousand for the little strip of shore and it was a fine offer. If Herman had accepted, they would never have found out that his title was doubtful. It all hangs on some old papers dating from the eighteenth century, and then justice is like a lottery. But Herman won’t give up the least bit of Ekbacken of his own free will, and of course that’s very fine of him—but, if one wants to strike fine attitudes...!”
Peter leered with half-closed eyes through the smoke, with his dull peasant cunning. Compared with Herman, Peter looked a real monster. But all the same Laura listened attentively to his words. She waited greedily for a shrug of his shoulders or a note of tolerant contempt, in order that she might, as she thought, become angry with him and say something really nasty. But in point of fact she was seeking with a strange sort of hunger to effect a secret reconciliation with something within herself, something that had been concealed by the rosy veil of her foolish sentimentality.
On her way home Laura stopped in the course of the avenue by the big oak which she and Stellan had tricked Herman into climbing. “Were you hoarse yesterday, Herman?” Oh! how furious she was with her husband for having allowed himself to be tricked that day!
For several days she went about at Ekbacken looking at Herman from hiding places and ambushes. She felt a stranger to him as she beheld his open countenance. A certain expression of unperturbed self-confidence in him annoyed her in some way. What was he really so confident about? He does not listen or watch, nor does he fight to defend me and mine, she thought. Why is he not cleverer and quicker than Peter and Stellan? Why does he not look through them? Why does he not look through me? Laura had a strange feeling of the insecurity of Herman’s position—that there was a conspiracy against him, against them. And she had an irresistible desire to arouse him, to perturb him, and goad him on with insidious words. They were sitting planning summer yachting trips, when she suddenly exclaimed:
“Fancy if you could explore a little ashore too, Herman.”
When that shaft missed its mark she began to prophesy losses and misfortunes: