“I am sure you will lose that stupid lawsuit, Herman.”
Herman replied by placing a shawl over her shoulders. Then she seized the most dangerous weapon she could think of and told him of the conversation she had overheard between Stellan and Peter on her wedding day:
“Just fancy! they said that you were not a business man at all, Herman; that you were a good-natured simpleton that anyone could twist round his little finger. That’s what they said, and I think they ought to pay for that. You ought somehow to put them down a peg.”
However strange it may sound, Laura was nevertheless still fighting for her love when she spoke like this. It was the last spasm of her feeling for him. But Herman understood nothing. He only became serious and pulled a face for a moment. Then he dismissed the subject:
“Nonsense, child, you misunderstood them. How can you imagine such a thing. Near relations like that! Besides I have stolen from them the best thing they had, their pretty sister.”
He wanted to kiss her on the neck, but Laura pushed him violently away from her and ran into the bedroom, seized by an unreasoning frenzy.
The last months before the birth of the child were very difficult for Herman. He was exiled from the bedroom into the smoky atmosphere of the study, where he had to sleep on a sofa. He was a ridiculous, superfluous and disagreeable person in his own home. Even the maids were rude to him. He went about in a constant state of nervousness in this house where he was the only man. The poor fellow did not revolt, but his face grew longer and longer. He busied himself with his beloved cutter, since he was not allowed to busy himself with Laura. Above all he felt a compelling need to go and amuse himself with his summer things. It was as if he were still a child, longing for the promise of the summer holidays. He still cherished their semblance of liberty without responsibility. But in the evening he took refuge in spirit and his father’s game of patience—hoping that his beloved and exquisite Laura would return to him after the birth of her child.
But Laura lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. She was full of bitterness and disappointment. Something within her that had been deliciously softened now hardened again and left a scar behind. She was full of anger against Herman, who was not man enough to break down her egoism; who gave her a child but was unable to make her feel a mother.
Laura was very ill towards the end. She felt her pains and her helplessness as direct insults by Herman. Sometimes she almost went mad with fear at her approaching delivery. For a woman whose being is cramped by egoism the agony of childbirth is doubly terrible. There is no joy in the suffering. It is martyrdom without faith. After a struggle of three days she gave birth to a boy. When they wanted to place the child beside her, she pushed it away with her last remaining strength:
“Take it away,” she muttered, “I don’t want to see it.”