"Sit down!" commanded the brother.
It was customary with him to ask people to sit down whenever he intended to take them to task; he had them under him, then, and it was more easy to crush them—if necessary.
"Business? Are we doing business together?" he began. "I don't know anything about it. Are you doing business? Are you?"
"I only meant to say that I should like to know whether there's anything more coming to me?"
"What, may I ask? Do you mean money?" said Charles Nicholas, jestingly, allowing his brother to enjoy the scent of his good cigar. As the reply, which he did not want, was not forthcoming, he went on:
"Coming to you? Haven't you received everything due to you? Haven't you yourself receipted the account for the Court of Wards? Haven't I kept and clothed you since—to be strictly correct, haven't I made you a loan, according to your own wish, to be paid back when you are able to do so? I've put it all down, in readiness for the day when you will be earning your livelihood, a thing which you've not done yet."
"I'm going to do it now, and that's why I'm here. I wanted to know whether there's still anything owing to me, or whether I am in debt."
The brother cast a penetrating look at his victim, wondering whether he had any mental reservations. His creaking boots began stamping the floor on a diagonal line between spittoon and umbrella-stand; the trinkets on his watch-chain tinkled, a warning to people not to cross his way; the smoke of his cigar rose and lay in long, ominous clouds, portentous of a thunderstorm, between tiled stove and door. He paced up and down the room furiously, his head bowed, his shoulders rounded, as if he were rehearsing a part. When he thought he knew it, he stopped short before his brother, gazed into his eyes with a long, glinting, deceitful look, intended to express both confidence and sorrow, and said, in a voice meant to sound as if it came from the family grave in the churchyard of St. Clara's:
"You're not straight, Arvid; you're not straight."
Who, with the exception of Andersson, who was standing behind the door, listening, would not have been touched by those words, spoken by a brother to a brother, fraught with the deepest brotherly sorrow? Even Arvid, accustomed from his childhood to believe all men perfect and himself alone unworthy, wondered for a moment whether he was straight or not? And as his education, by efficacious means, had provided him with a highly sensitive conscience, he found that he really had not been quite straight, or at least quite frank, when he asked his brother the not-altogether candid question as to whether he wasn't a scoundrel.