Part 2

The story was as follows. The now divorced married pair had met three years before in a watering-place, and passed through all the stages of being in love in the normal way. They discovered, as usual, that they had been born for the special purpose of meeting each other and wandering through life hand in hand. In order to be worthy of her he gave up all doubtful habits and refined his language and his morals. She seemed to him an angel sent by God to open his eyes and to point him upwards. He overcame the usual difficulties regarding the publishing of the banns, convinced that those very difficulties were placed in his way in order to give him an opportunity of showing his courage and energy.

They read the scandalous anonymous letters which generally follow engagements together, and put them in the fire. She wept, it is true, over the wickedness of men, but he said the purpose of it was to test their faith in each other.

The period of their betrothal was one long intoxication. He declared that he did not need to drink any more, for her presence made him literally drunk. Once in a way they felt the weirdness of the solitude which surrounded them, for their friends had given them up, considering themselves superfluous.

"Why do people avoid us?" she asked one evening as they walked outside the town.

"Because," he answered, "men run away when they see happiness."

They did not notice that they themselves avoided intercourse with others, as they actually did. He, especially, showed a real dread of meeting his old bachelor friends, for they seemed to him like enemies, and he saw their sceptical grimaces, which were only too easy to interpret.

"See! there he is caught! To think of the old rascal letting himself be hoodwinked!" etc. For the young bachelors were of the opinion then, as now, that love was a piece of trickery which sooner or later must be unmasked.

But the conversation of the betrothed pair kept them above the banalities of everyday life, and they lived, as people say rightly, above the earth. But they began to feel afraid of the solitude which surrounded them and drove them together. They tried to go among other people, partly from the need of showing their happiness, and partly to quiet themselves. But when after the theatre they entered a restaurant, and she arranged her hair at the glass in the hall, he felt as though she was adorning herself for strangers. And when they sat down at the table, he became instantaneously silent, for her face assumed a new expression which was strange to him. Her glances seemed to parry the looks of strangers. They both became silent, and his face wore an anxious expression. It was a dismal supper, and they soon left.

When they came out she asked, somewhat out of humour at being disappointed of a pleasure, "Are you vexed with me?"

"No, my dear, I cannot be vexed with you. But I bleed inwardly when I see young fellows desecrate you with their looks." So their visits to the restaurant ceased.

The weeks before the marriage were spent in arranging their future dwelling. They had discussed carpets and curtains, had interviewed workmen and shopmen, and in so doing had descended from their ideal heights. Now they wanted to go out to get rid of these prosaic impressions. So they went, but with that ominous silence when the heads of a pair feel empty and someone seems to walk between them. He tried to rally himself and put her in good spirits but unsuccessfully.

"I hang too heavily upon you," she said, and let go of his arm. He did not answer, for he really felt some relief. That annoyed her and she drew nearer the wall. The conversation was at an end, and they soon found themselves before her door.

"Good night," she said curtly.

"Good night," he replied with equal curtness, and they parted obviously to their mutual relief. This time there was no kiss in the passage and he did not wait outside the glass door to watch her slender figure move gracefully up the first flight of stairs.

He went down the street with an elastic gait and drawing a deep breath of relief. He felt released from something oppressive, which nevertheless had been charming for three months. Pulling himself together, he mentally picked up the dropped threads of a past which now seemed strong and sincere. He hurried on, his ego exulted, and both his arms, as they swung, felt like wings.

That the affair was over he felt no doubt, but he saw no reason for it, and with wide-awake consciousness confronted a fact which he unhesitatingly accepted. When he came near his door he met an old friend whom, without further ado, he took by the arm, and invited to share his simple supper and to talk. His friend looked astonished, but followed him up the stairs.

They ate and drank, smoked and chatted till midnight, discussing every variety of topic, old reminiscences and affairs of State, the Reichstag and political economy. There was not a word regarding his betrothal and marriage, or even an allusion to them. It was a very enjoyable evening and he seemed to have gone back three months in his life. He noticed that his voice assumed a more manly tone, that he spoke his thoughts straight out as they came, without having to take the trouble to round off the corners of strong words to emphasise some expressions, and soften down others in order not to give offence. He felt as though he had found himself again, thrown off a strait-jacket, and laid aside a mask. He accompanied his friend downstairs to open the house-door.

"Well, you will be married in eight days," said the latter with the usual sceptical grimace. It was as though he had pressed a button and the door slammed to in answer.

When he came to his room, he felt seized with disgust; he took the things off the table, cleared up, swept the room, and then became conscious of what he had lost, and how low he had sunk.

He felt he had been unfaithful to his betrothed, because he had given his soul to another, even though that other was a man. He had lost something better than that which he thought he had gained. What he had found again was merely his old selfish, inconsiderate, comfortable, everyday ego, with its coarseness and uncleanness, which his friend liked because it suited his own.

And now it was all over, and the link broken for ever! The great solitude would resume its sway, the ugly bachelor life begin again. It did not occur to him to sit down and write a letter, for he felt it would be useless. Therefore he tried to weary himself in order to obtain sleep, soaked his whole head in cold water, and so went to bed. The little ceremony of winding up his watch made, to-night, a peculiar impression on him. Everything had to be renewed at night, even time itself. Perhaps her love only needed a night's rest in order to recommence.

When he awoke the following morning, the sun shone into the room. An indescribable feeling of quietness had taken possession of him, and he felt that life was good as it was, yes, better to-day than usual, for his soul felt at home again after a long excursion. He dressed himself and went to his office, opened his letters, read the newspaper, and felt quite calm all the time. But this unnatural calm began at last to make him uneasy. He felt an increasing nervousness and a feverishness over his whole body. The vacuum began to be filled again with her soul; the electric band had been stretched, and the stream cut off, but it was still there; there had only been a break in the current, and now all the recollections rushed upon him, all their beautiful and great experiences, all the elevated feelings and great thoughts which they had amassed together, all the dream-world in which they had lived, so unlike the present world of prose where they now found themselves.

With a feeling of despair he betook himself to his correspondence in order to conceal his emotions, and began to answer letters with calmness, order, and clearness. Offers were accepted on certain conditions, and declined on definite grounds. He went into questions of coffee and sugar, exchange prices and accounts with unusual clearness and decision.

A clerk brought him a letter, which he saw at once was from her.

"The messenger waits for an answer," he said.

Without looking up from his desk, the merchant had at once decided and replied: "He needn't wait."

In that moment he had said to himself: "Explanations, reproaches, accusations--how can I answer such things?"

And the letter lay unopened while his business correspondence went on with stormy celerity.

* * * * *

When his fiancée had parted from him on the previous evening her first emotion had been anger--anger to think that he, the merchant, had dared to despise her. She herself belonged to an official's family and had dreamt of playing a rôle in society. His warm and faithful affection had made her gradually forget this. Since he was never weary of telling her what an ennobling influence she exercised on his life, and since she herself perceived how he became refined and beautiful under her hand, she felt herself to be a higher being. His steady veneration kindled her self-esteem and she grew and blossomed in the sunshine which his love spread around her. When that was suddenly extinguished, it grew cold and dark around her; she felt herself dwindle down to her original insignificance, shrivel and disappear. This discovery that she had been the victim of an error and that his love was the cause of her new life and the enlargement of her personality, aroused her hatred against the man who had given her such clear proof that her existence depended on him and on his love. Now that he was no longer her lover, he became the tradesman whom she despised.

"A fellow who sells coffee and sugar!" she said to herself, as she fell asleep, "I could change him for a better one."

But when she awoke after a good night's sleep, she felt alarmed at the disgrace of being given up. A broken engagement, after two offers, would always cast a shadow over her life and make it difficult to procure another fiancé.

In a spiteful mood she sat down to write the letter, in which in a lofty, insulting tone she demanded an explanation, and at the same time asked him to come and see her.

When the messenger returned with the news that there was no answer she fell in a rage, and prepared to go out. She intended to find him in his office, where she had never yet been, and before the eyes of his clerks throw his ring on the ground to show how deeply she despised him. So she went.

She stood outside the door and knocked. But since no one opened or answered she entered and stood in the hall. Through the glass pane of the inner door she saw her betrothed bending over the large ledger, his face intent and serious. She had never seen him at work before. And when at work every man, even the most insignificant, is imposing. Sacred work, which makes a man what he is, invested his appearance with the dignity of concentrated strength, and she was seized with a feeling of respect for him which she could not throw off.

Just then he was inspecting in the ledger the entries of the expenses of furnishing their house.

They had absorbed his savings during the ten years he had been in business, and though not petty-minded, he thought with sorrow and bitterness, how they were all thrown away. He sighed and looked up in order not to see the tell-tale figures. Then, all of a sudden, he noticed behind the glass pane of the door, like a crayon drawing in a frame, a pale face and two large eyes full of an expression of pain and sympathy. He rose and stood reverently, mute in his great, virile grief, interrogative and trembling. Then he saw in her looks how the lost love had returned, and with that all was said.

When after a while they were walking past Skeppsholm, bright with their recovered happiness, he asked: "What happened to us yesterday?" (He said "us" for he did not wish to raise the question whose fault it was.)

"I don't know; I cannot explain it; but it was the most terrible experience I have had. We will never do it again!"

"No! we will never do it again. And now, Ebba, it is for our whole lives, you and I!"

She pressed his arm, fully convinced that after this fiery trial, nothing in the world could separate them, so far as it depended on themselves.

II

And they were married. But instead of hiding their happiness in their beautiful clean home, they set out on a journey among strange, indifferent, curious, and even hostile people. Then they went from hotel to hotel, were stared at at tables d'hôte, got headaches in museums, and in the evening were dumb with fatigue and put out of humour by mishaps.

Tom away from his work and his surroundings, the industrious man found it difficult to collect himself. When his thoughts went back to the business matters which he had left in the hands of others, he was inattentive and tiresome. They both longed for home, but were ashamed to return and to be received with ridicule.

The first week they occupied the time by talking over the recollections of their engagement; during the second week they discussed the journeys of the first. They never lived in the present but in the past. When there was an interval of dullness or silence he had always comforted her with the thought that their intercourse would be easier when they had amassed a store of common memories, and had learnt to avoid each other's antipathies. Meanwhile, out of consideration, they had borne with these and suppressed their own peculiarities and weaknesses as well-brought-up people usually do. This led to a feeling of restraint and being on one's guard which was exhausting; and the time had come for making important discoveries. Since he possessed more self-control than she did, he was careful not to say too much, but concealed one inclination and habit after another, while she revealed all hers. As he loved her, he wished to be agreeable, and therefore learned to be silent. The result was that with all her inherited habits, peculiarities, and prejudices she had so insinuated herself into his life that he began to feel himself attenuated and annihilated.

One evening the young wife was seized with a sudden desire to praise her sister, a hateful coquette, whom her husband disliked because she had tried, from selfish motives, to break their engagement. He listened to his wife in respectful silence, now and then murmuring an indistinct assent. At last his wife's praise of her sister mounted to a paean, and though he thought her affection for her relatives a fine trait in her character, he could not entirely place himself in her skin nor see with her eyes. So he took refuge in the kind of silence which is more eloquent than plain words. This silence was accompanied by a gnawing of the lips and a violent perspiration. All the words and opinions he had suppressed found mute expression in these movements of his lips--he merely "marked time" as actors say--and the breaths which were not used in forming words, he emitted through his nose. Simultaneously the pores of his skin opened as so many safety-valves for his suppressed emotions, and it became really unpleasant to have him at the table.

The young wife did not conceal her annoyance, for she feared no revenge. She made an ugly gesture, which always ill becomes a woman; she held her nose with both fingers, looking around to those present as if to ask whether she was not right!

Her husband became pale, rose, and went out. Several people were sitting close by who witnessed the unpleasant scene. When he came out on the streets of the foreign town, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and breathed freely. And then his thoughts took their own course ruthlessly.

"I am becoming a hypocrite simply out of consideration for her. One lie is piled up on another, and some day it will all come down with a crash. What a coarse woman she is! And it was from her that I believed I should learn and be refined into a higher being. It is all optical delusion and deceit. All this 'love' is merely a piece of trickery on the part of nature to dazzle one's sight."

He tried to picture to himself what was now happening in the dining-room. She would naturally weep and appeal with her eyes to those present as if to ask whether she was not very unfortunate with such a husband. It was indeed her habit so to appeal with her eyes, and when he expected an answer from her, she always turned her looks on those around as if asking for help against her oppressor. He was always treated as a tyrant, although out of pure kindness he had made himself her slave. There was no help for it!

He found himself down by the harbour, and caught sight of the swimming-baths--that was just what he wanted. Quickly he plunged into the sea, and swam far out into the darkness. His soul, tortured by mosquito-stings and nettle-pricks, was able to cool itself, and he felt how he left a wake of dirt behind him. He lay on his back and gazed at the starry sky, but at the same moment heard a whistling and splashing behind him. It was a great steamer coming in, and he had to get out of the way to save His life. He made for the lamp-lit shore and saw the hotel with all its lights.

When he had dressed, he felt an unmeasured sorrow--sorrow over his lost paradise. At the same time all bitterness had passed away.

In this mood he entered his room and found his wife seated at the writing-table. She rose and threw herself into his arms without a word of apology; naturally enough he did not desire it, and she had no idea of having done wrong.

They sat down and wept together over their vanished love, for that it had gone there was no doubt. But it had gone without their will, and they sorrowed over it, as over some dear friend which they had not killed but could not save. They were confronted by a fact before which they were helpless; love the good genius who magnifies every trifle, rejuvenates what is old, beautifies what is ugly, had abandoned them, and life stretched before them in naked monotony.

But it did not occur to them that they would be separated or were separated, for their grief itself was an experience they shared, which held them together. They were also united in a common grudge against Fate, which had so deceived them in their tenderest emotions. In their great dejection they were not capable of such a strong feeling as hate. They only felt resentment and indignation at Fate, which was their scapegoat and lightning-conductor.

They had never talked so harmoniously and so intimately before, and while their voices assumed a more affectionate tone, they formed a firm resolve to go home and commence their domestic life. He talked himself into a state of enthusiasm at the thought of home, where one could exclude all evil influences, and where peace and harmony would reign. She also dilated on the same topic with similar warmth till they had forgotten their sorrow. And when they had forgotten it, they smiled as before, and behold! love was again there, and not dead at all; its death was also a delusion and so was all their grief.

III

He had realised his youthful dream of a wife and a home, and for eight days the young wife also thought that her dream had come true. But on the ninth day she wanted to go out.

"Where?" he asked.

"Say, yourself!"

No, she must say. He proposed the opera, but Wagner was being performed there, and she could not bear him. The theatre? No, there they had Maeterlinck, and that was silly. He did not wish to go to an operetta, for they always ridiculed what he now regarded as sacred. Nor did he like the circus, where there were only horses and queer women.

So the discussion went on and they privately discovered a great quantity of divergences in tastes and principles. In order to please her, he proposed an operetta, but she would not accept the sacrifice. He suggested that they should give a party, but then they discovered that there was no one to invite, for they had separated from their friends, and their friends from them.

So they sat there, still in harmony, and considered their destiny together, without having yet begun to blame each other. They stayed at home, and felt bored.

Next day, the same scene was repeated. He now saw that his happiness was at stake; therefore he took courage, and said in a friendly way but decidedly, "Dress yourself and we will go to an operetta." She beamed, put on her new dress, and was quickly ready. When he saw her so happy and pretty, he felt a stab in his heart, and thought to himself, "Now she brightens up, when she can dress for others and not for me." When he then conducted her to the theatre, he felt as though he were escorting a stranger, for her thoughts were already in the auditorium, which was her stage, where she wished to appear, and where she could now appear under her husband's escort without being insulted.

Since they could already divine each other's thoughts, this alienation, while they were on the way, changed into something like hostility. They longed to be in the theatre in order to find something to divert their emotions, though he felt as though he were going to an execution.

When they came to the ticket-office there were no tickets left.

Then her face changed, and when she looked at him, and thought she saw an expression of satisfaction, which possibly was latent there, she broke out, "That pleases you?"

He wished to deny it, but could not, for it was true. On the way home he felt as though he were dragging a corpse with him, and that a hostile one.

The fact that she had discovered his very natural thought, which he had self-denyingly repressed, hurt him like a rudeness for one has no right to punish the thoughts of another. He would have borne it more easily if there had been no tickets left, for he was already accustomed to be a scapegoat. But now he lamented over his lost happiness, and that he had not the power to amuse her.

When she observed that he was not angry, but only sad, she despised him. They came home in ominous silence; she went straight to her bedroom and shut the door. He sat down in the dining-room, where he lit the lamps and candles, for the darkness seemed to be closing round him.

Then he heard a cry from the bedroom, the cry of a child, but of a grown one. When he came in he saw a sight which tore his heart. She was on her knees, her hands stretched towards him, wailing as she wept, "Don't be angry with me, don't be hard; you put out the light round me, you stifle me with your severity; I am a child that trusts life and must have sunshine."

He could find no answer, for she seemed sincere. And he could not defend himself, for that meant arraigning her thoughts, which he also could not do.

Dumb with despair, he went into his room and felt crushed. He had pillaged her youth, shut her up, torn out her joy by the roots. He had not the light which this tender flower needed, and she withered under his hand. These self-reproaches broke down all the self-confidence he had hitherto possessed; he felt unworthy of her love, or of any woman's, and felt himself a murderer who had killed her happiness.

After he had suffered all these pangs of conscience he began to examine himself calmly and with sober common sense.