Peter stepped slowly up to the table. He felt just as if he were walking in a vacuum. He seemed to be paralysed in the arm when he wanted to place his hand on the Bible, the greasy old court Bible, which had seen so many things. He could not help glancing at Frida. She also had risen and taken a step towards the table. She looked at him with an expression in which hatred and anxiety mingled with a strange cold curiosity. The child also stared at him with vacant black eyes. And a little hand moved with awkward, blind jerks. Peter suddenly thought of a newborn, trembling young fox which he had once pulled out of its lair and killed with the butt end of his gun. He felt queer, sick. He was afraid ... afraid.... For a moment he let his hand fall....
“Well, what’s the matter? Can’t you take the oath?”
Peter started. He suddenly heard Stellan’s clear sneering voice:
“Clodhopper! In love with an old servant girl, what? Ridiculous!”
He placed his hand on the Bible again. The judge recited the oath with the expression of one who had been offered at dinner hare that was too high. Peter repeated it after him. He wanted to speak quickly, but he could only get the words out slowly. His voice was thick and indescribably humble and there was in him something of the fat rat and the lascivious dog.
Frida had been quiet, surprisingly quiet during all this. Then her voice was suddenly heard. There was no cry, no sob, no longer any affectation:
“He swore false all the same.” And it sounded like a weary statement of fact.
With that the case was finished and the defendant was acquitted of responsibility for the child. The judge muttered something to the Clerk of the Court and the jurymen next to him. Nobody in the hall moved. Peter was the first to go out, straight past all the amazed, loathing and disgusted faces that stared closely at him. He staggered out into the cool, dazzling April sunshine. He stood there fumbling with the reins and patting old “Interest’s” back and muttered inanely:
“How have things been with you, old girl? How have things been with you? They have been playing hell with your old master, really hell.”
Peter got up in his dog-cart and drove with slack reins down towards the point where the road to Selambshof turned off. Then he suddenly heard behind him a prolonged shrill, strident whistling, a sound that seemed to be pure venom.