The whole of this winter Tord went about plaguing himself with his money worries, so that he had no energy left for anything else. The great book that he was to write, his masterpiece, his hymn to nature, weighed him down like a dead weight. It was like loose ballast which only increased the lurch, when he inclined to melancholy. Nature swayed around him like a helpless chaos. He had moments of hatred of the frequent gales that would never yield a song. He grew furious with the eternal, rolling, breaking seas whose rhythm he could not catch.
“Money,” he thought, “that cursed money. I am never free!”
Towards the spring he at last wrote the letter to Peter. It had cost him weeks of effort and disgust, such a terror had he of everything in the nature of business. His haughty insolence was only an armour to shield him against his lack of confidence, his fear, and his suspicions.
Peter had not expected such news so soon. He rubbed his hands. And he took good care not to show the letter to his brother and sisters. This time he meant to settle the business alone. Peter delayed his reply for a whole fortnight in order to humble Tord. Then he came sailing out himself to Järnö, not in his own cutter, but in a humble little fisherman’s boat. It was in the twilight of an April day. Nobody seemed to have noticed him up in the big, grey, log house. The island looked completely deserted. Peter took the opportunity of looking round a little. Neglect and waste struck him like a cold blast. Broken down fences, unploughed fields, empty cattle sheds, plundered outhouses with half open doors hanging on a single hinge. Not a cow or a pig or a hen. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, but his expression was not of discontent, on the contrary! “I see, that’s how things are,” he thought, “I shall escape cheaper than I had thought. Why give a lot of money to people who can’t look after anything?” And he mentally lowered his bid for the remainder of Tord’s shares in Selambshof by several tens of thousand crowns.
At last Peter struggled up the hill panting, and knocked at the door; he was greeted by an infernal barking from the brutes inside.
Tord had been watching Peter the whole time from the window, but had not cared to go and meet him. Such is the custom of the skerries! And then, he did not want to appear too eager, poor fellow!