Chapter 12

When he had bored his friends for a whole year with anecdotes of the deceased, an extraordinary coincidence happened. He met a young girl of eighteen, with fair hair, and a striking resemblance to his late wife, as she had been at fourteen. He saw in this coincidence the finger of a bountiful providence, willing to bestow on him at last the first one, the well-beloved. He fell in love with her because she resembled the first one. And he married her. He had got her at last.

But his children, especially the girls, resented his second marriage. They found the relationship between their father and step-mother improper; in their opinion he had been unfaithful to their mother. And they left his house and went out into the world.

He was happy! And his pride in his young wife exceeded even his happiness.

“Only the aftermath!” said his old friends.

When a year had gone by, the young wife presented him with a baby. Papa, of course, was no longer used to a baby’s crying, and wanted his night’s rest. He insisted on a separate bed-room for himself, heedless of his wife’s tears; really, women were a nuisance sometimes. And, moreover, she was jealous of his first wife. He had been fool enough to tell her of the extraordinary likeness which existed between the two and had let her read his first wife’s love-letters. She brooded over these facts now that he neglected her. She realised that she had inherited all the first one’s pet names, that she was only her understudy, as it were. It irritated her and the attempt to win him for herself led her into all sorts of mischief. But she only succeeded in boring him, and in silently comparing the two women, his verdict was entirely in favour of the first one. She had been so much more gentle than the second who exasperated him. The longing for his children, whom he had driven from their home increased his regret, and his sleep was disturbed by bad dreams for he was haunted by the idea that he had been unfaithful to his first wife.

His home was no longer a happy one. He had done a deed, which he would much better have left undone.

He began to spend a good deal of time at his club. But now his wife was furious. He had deceived her. He was an old man and he had better look out! An old man who left his young wife so much alone ran a certain risk. He might regret it some day!

“Old? She called him old? He would show her that he was not old!”

They shared the same room again. But now matters were seven times worse. He did not want to be bothered with the baby at night. The proper place for babies was the nursery. No! he hadn’t thought so in the case of the first wife.

He had to submit to the torture.

Twice he had believed in the miracle of Phoenix rising from the ashes of his fourteen year old love, first in his daughter, then in his second wife. But in his memory lived the first one only, the little one from the vicarage, whom he had met when the wild strawberries were ripe, and kissed under the lime trees in the wood, but whom he had never married.

But now, as his sun was setting and his days grew short, he saw in his dark hours only the picture of the old mama, who had been kind to him and his children, who had never scolded, who was plain, who cooked the meals and patched the little boys’ knickers and the skirts of the little girls. His flush of victory being over, he was able to see facts clearly. He wondered whether it was not, after all, the old mama who had been the real true Phoenix, rising, calm and beautiful, from the ashes of the fourteen year old bird of paradise, laying its eggs, plucking the feathers from its breast to line the nest for the young ones, and nourishing them with its life-blood until it died.

He wondered ... but when at last he laid his weary head on the pillow, never again to lift it up, he was convinced that it was so.

ROMEO AND JULIA

One evening the husband came home with a roll of music under his arm and said to his wife:

“Let us play duets after supper!”

“What have you got there?” asked his wife.

“Romeo and Julia, arranged for the piano. Do you know it?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she replied, “but I don’t remember ever having seen it on the stage.”

“Oh! It’s splendid! To me it is like a dream of my youth, but I’ve only heard it once, and that was about twenty years ago.”

After supper, when the children had been put to bed and the house lay silent, the husband lighted the candles on the piano. He looked at the lithographed title-page and read the title: Romeo and Julia.

“This is Gounod’s most beautiful composition,” he said, “and I don’t believe that it will be too difficult for us.”

As usual his wife undertook to play the treble and they began. D major, common time, _allegro giusto_.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the husband, when they had finished the overture.

“Y--es,” admitted the wife, reluctantly.

“Now the martial music,” said the husband; “it is exceptionally fine. I can remember the splendid choruses at the Royal Theatre.”

They played a march.

“Well, wasn’t I right?” asked the husband, triumphantly, as if he had composed “Romeo and Julia” himself.

“I don’t know; it rather sounds like a brass band,” answered the wife.

The husband’s honour and good taste were involved; he looked for the Moonshine Aria in the fourth act. After a little searching he came across an aria for soprano. That must be it.

And he began again.

Tram-tramtram, tram-tramtram, went the bass; it was very easy to play.

“Do you know,” said his wife, when it was over, “I don’t think very much of it.”

The husband, quite depressed, admitted that it reminded him of a barrel organ.

“I thought so all along,” confessed the wife.

“And I find it antiquated, too. I am surprised that Gounod should be out of date, already,” he added dejectedly. “Would you like to go on playing? Let’s try the Cavatina and the Trio; I particularly remember the soprano; she was divine.”

When they stopped playing, the husband looked crestfallen and put the music away, as if he wanted to shut the door on the past.

“Let’s have a glass of beer,” he said. They sat down at the table and had a glass of beer.

“It’s extraordinary,” he began, after a little while, “I never realised before that we’ve grown old, for we really must have vied with Romeo and Julia as to who should age faster. It’s twenty years ago since I heard the opera for the first time. I was a newly fledged undergraduate then, I had many friends and the future smiled at me. I was immensely proud of the first down on my upper lip and my little college cap, and I remember as if it were to-day, the evening when Fritz, Phil and myself went to hear this opera. We had heard ‘Faust’ some years before and were great admirers of Gounod’s genius. But Romeo beat all our expectations. The music roused our wildest enthusiasm. Now both my friends are dead. Fritz, who was ambitious, was a private secretary when he died, Phil a medical student; I who aspired to the position of a minister of state have to content myself with that of a regimental judge. The years have passed by quickly and imperceptibly. Of course I have noticed that the lines under my eyes have grown deeper and that my hair has turned grey at the temples, but I should never have thought that we had travelled so far on the road to the grave.”

“Yes, my dear, we’ve grown old; our children could teach us that. And you must see it in me too, although you don’t say anything.”

“How can you say that!”

“Oh! I know only too well, my dear,” continued the wife, sadly; “I know that I am beginning to lose my good looks, that my hair is growing thin, that I shall soon lose my front teeth....”

“Just consider how quickly everything passes away”--interrupted her husband. “It seems to me that one grows old much more rapidly now-a-days, than one used to do. In my father’s house Haydn and Mozart were played a great deal, although they were dead long before he was born. And now--now Gounod has grown old-fashioned already! How distressing it is to meet again the ideals of one’s youth under these altered circumstances! And how horrible it is to feel old age approaching!”

He got up and sat down again at the piano; he took the music and turned over the pages as if he were looking for keepsakes, locks of hair, dried flowers and ends of ribbon in the drawer of a writing-table. His eyes were riveted on the black notes which looked like little birds climbing up and down a wire fencing; but where were the spring songs, the passionate protestations, the jubilant avowals of the rosy days of first love? The notes stared back at him like strangers; as if the memory of life’s spring-time were grown over with weeds.

Yes, that was it; the strings were covered with dust, the sounding board was dried up, the felt worn away.

A heavy sigh echoed through the room, heavy as if it came from a hollow chest, and then silence fell.

“But all the same, it is strange,” the husband said suddenly, “that the glorious prologue is missing in this arrangement. I remember distinctly that there was a prologue with an accompaniment of harps and a chorus which went like this.”

He softly hummed the tune, which bubbled up like a stream in a mountain glen; note succeeded note, his face cleared, his lips smiled, the lines disappeared, his fingers touched the keys, and drew from them melodies, powerful, caressing and full of eternal youth, while with a strong and ringing voice he sang the part of the bass.

His wife started from her melancholy reverie and listened with tears in her eyes.

“What are you singing?” she asked, full of amazement.

“Romeo and Julia! Our Romeo and our Julia!”

He jumped up from the music stool and pushed the music towards his astonished wife.

“Look! This was the Romeo of our uncles and aunts, this was--read it--Bellini! Oh! We are not old, after all!”

The wife looked at the thick, glossy hair of her husband, his smooth brow and flashing eyes, with joy.

“And you? You look like a young girl. We have allowed old Bellini to make fools of us. I felt that something was wrong.”

“No, darling, I thought so first.”

“Probably you did; that is because you are younger than I am.”

“No, you....”

And husband and wife, like a couple of children, laughingly quarrel over the question of which of them is the elder of the two, and cannot understand how they could have discovered lines and grey hairs where there are none.

PROLIFICACY

He was a supernumerary at the Board of Trade and drew a salary of twelve hundred crowns. He had married a young girl without a penny; for love, as he himself said, to be no longer compelled to go to dances and run about the streets, as his friends maintained. But be that as it may, the life of the newly-wedded couple was happy enough to begin with.

“How cheaply married people can live,” he said one day, after the wedding was a thing of the past. The same sum which had been barely enough to cover the wants of the bachelor now sufficed for husband and wife. Really, marriage was an excellent institution. One had all one’s requirements within one’s four walls: club, cafe, everything; no more bills of fare, no tips, no inquisitive porter watching one as one went out with one’s wife in the morning.

Life smiled at him, his strength increased and he worked for two. Never in all his life had he felt so full of overflowing energy; he jumped out of bed as soon as he woke up in the morning, buoyantly, and in the highest spirits, he was rejuvenated.

When two months had elapsed, long before his new circumstances had begun to pall, his wife whispered a certain piece of information into his ear. New joys! New cares! But cares so pleasant to bear! It was necessary, however, to increase their income at once, so as to receive the unknown world-citizen in a manner befitting his dignity. He managed to obtain an order for a translation.

Baby-clothes lay scattered about all over the furniture, a cradle stood waiting in the hall, and at last a splendid boy arrived in this world of sorrows.

The father was delighted. And yet he could not help a vague feeling of uneasiness whenever he thought of the future. Income and expenditure did not balance. Nothing remained but to reduce his dress allowance.

His frock coat began to look threadbare at the seams; his shirt front was hidden underneath a large tie, his trousers were frayed. It was an undeniable fact that the porters at the office looked down on him on account of his shabbiness.

In addition to this he was compelled to lengthen his working day.

“It must be the first and last,” he said. But how was it to be done?

He was at a loss to know.

Three months later his wife prepared him in carefully chosen words that his paternal joys would soon be doubled. It would not be true to say that he rejoiced greatly at the news. But there was no alternative now; he must travel along the road he had chosen, even if married life should prove to be anything but cheap.

“It’s true,” he thought, his face brightening, “the younger one will inherit the baby-clothes of his elder brother. This will save a good deal of expense, and there will be food enough for them--I shall be able to feed them just as well as others.”

And the second baby was born.

“You are going it,” said a friend of his, who was a married man himself, but father of one child only.

“What is a man to do?”

“Use his common-sense.”

“Use his common-sense? But, my dear fellow, a man gets married in order to ... I mean to say, not only in order to ... but yet in order to.... Well, anyhow, we are married and that settles the matter.”

“Not at all. Let me tell you something, my dear boy; if you are at all hoping for promotion it is absolutely necessary that you should wear clean linen, trousers which are not frayed at the bottom, and a hat which is not of a rusty brown.”

And the sensible man whispered sensible words into his ear. As the result, the poor husband was put on short commons in the midst of plenty.

But now his troubles began.

To start with his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean starvation for all of them, and to work spelt death, too!

He went on working.

One day, as he was sitting at his desk, stooping over endless rows of figures, he had an attack of faintness, slipped off his chair and fell to the ground.

A visit to a specialist--eighteen crowns. A new prescription; he must ask for sick leave at once, take riding exercise every morning and have steak and a glass of port for breakfast.

Riding exercise and port!

But the worst feature of the whole business was a feeling of alienation from his wife which had sprung up in his heart--he did not know whence it came. He was afraid to go near her and at the same time he longed for her presence. He loved her, loved her still, but a certain bitterness was mingled with his love.

“You are growing thin,” said a friend.

“Yes, I believe I’ve grown thinner,” said the poor husband.

“You are playing a dangerous game, old boy!”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“A married man in half mourning! Take care, my friend!”

“I really don’t know what you’re driving at.”.

“It’s impossible to go against the wind for any length of time. Set all sails and run, old chap, and you will see that everything will come right. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You understand me.”

He took no notice of the advice for a time, fully aware of the fact that a man’s income does not increase in proportion to his family; at the same time he had no longer any doubt about the cause of his malady.

It was summer again. The family had gone into the country. On a beautiful evening husband and wife were strolling along the steep shore, in the shade of the alder trees, resplendent in their young green. They sat down on the turf, silent and depressed. He was morose and disheartened; gloomy thoughts revolved behind his aching brow. Life seemed a great chasm which had opened to engulf all he loved.

They talked of the probable loss of his appointment; his chief had been annoyed at his second application for sick leave. He complained of the conduct of his colleagues, he felt himself deserted by everyone; but the fact which hurt him more than anything else was the knowledge that she, too, had grown tired of him.

“Oh! but she hadn’t! She loved him every bit as much as she did in those happy days when they were first engaged. How could he doubt it?”

“No, he didn’t doubt it; but he had suffered so much, he wasn’t master of his own thoughts.”

He pressed his burning cheek against hers, put his arm round her and covered her eyes with passionate kisses.

The gnats danced their nuptial dance above the birch tree without a thought of the thousands of young ones which their ecstasy would call into being; the carp laid their eggs in the reed grass, careless of the millions of their kind to which they gave birth; the swallow made love in broad daylight, not in the least afraid of the consequences of their irregular liaisons.

All of a sudden he sprang to his feet and stretched himself like a sleeper awakening from a long sleep, which had been haunted by evil dreams, he drank in the balmy air in deep draughts.

“What’s the matter?” whispered his wife, while a crimson blush spread over her face.

“I don’t know. All I know is that I live, that I breathe again.”

And radiant, with laughing face and shining eyes, he held out his arms to her, picked her up as if she were a baby and pressed his lips to her forehead. The muscles of his legs swelled until they looked like the muscles of the leg of an antique god, he held his body erect like a young tree and intoxicated with strength and happiness, he carried his beloved burden as far as the footpath where he put her down.

“You will strain yourself, sweetheart,” she said, making a vain attempt to free herself from his encircling arms.

“Never, you darling! I could carry you to the end of the earth, and I shall carry you, all of you, no matter how many you are now, or how many you may yet become.”

And they returned home, arm in arm, their hearts singing with gladness.

“If the worst comes to the worst, sweet love, one must admit that it is very easy to jump that abyss which separates body and soul!”

“What a thing to say!”

“If I had only realised it before, I should have been less unhappy. Oh! those idealists!”

And they entered their cottage.

The good old times had returned and had, apparently, come to stay. The husband went to work to his office as before. They lived again through love’s spring time. No doctor was required and the high spirits never flagged.

After the third christening, however, he came to the conclusion that matters were serious and started playing his old game with the inevitable results: doctor, sick-leave, riding-exercise, port! But there must be an end of it, at all costs. Every time the balance-sheet showed a deficit.

But when, finally, his whole nervous system went out of joint, he let nature have her own way. Immediately expenses went up and he was beset with difficulties.

He was not a poor man, it is true, but on the other hand he was not blest with too many of this world’s riches.

“To tell you the truth, old girl,” he said to his wife, “it will be the same old story over again.”

“I am afraid it will, my dear,” replied the poor woman, who, in addition to her duties as a mother, had to do the whole work of the house now.

After the birth of her fourth child, the work grew too hard for her and a nursemaid had to be engaged.

“Now it must stop,” avowed the disconsolate husband. “This must be the last.”

Poverty looked in at the door. The foundations on which the house was built were tottering.

And thus, at the age of thirty, in the very prime of their life, the young husband and wife found themselves condemned to celibacy. He grew moody, his complexion became grey and his eyes lost their lustre. Her rich beauty faded, her fine figure wasted away, and she suffered all the sorrows of a mother who sees her children growing up in poverty and rags.

One day, as she was standing in the kitchen, frying herrings, a neighbour called in for a friendly chat.

“How are you?” she began.

“Thank you, I’m not up to very much. How are you?”

“Oh! I’m not at all well. Married life is a misery if one has to be constantly on one’s guard.”

“Do you think you are the only one?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what my husband said to me the other day? One ought to spare the draught cattle! And I suffer under it all, I can tell you. No, there’s no happiness in marriage. Either husband or wife is bound to suffer. It’s one or the other!”

“Or both!”

“But what about the men of science who grow fat at the expense of the Government?”

“They have to think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to write about such problems; they must not be discussed openly.”

“But that would be the first necessity!” And the two women fell to discussing their bitter experiences.

In the following summer they were compelled to remain in town; they were living in a basement with a view of the gutter, the smell of which was so objectionable that it was impossible to keep the windows open.

The wife did needlework in the same room in which the children were playing; the husband, who had lost his appointment on account of his extreme shabbiness, was copying a manuscript in the adjoining room, and grumbling at the children’s noise. Hard words were bandied through the open door.

It was Whitsuntide. In the afternoon the husband was lying on the ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by the side of her looking-glass.

She was fastening her dress without taking the least notice of his inquisitive glances.

“She’s not having a bad time,” mused the celibate, suddenly kindled into passion. “One lives but once in this world, and one must live one’s life, happen what will!”

His wife entered the room and caught sight of the object of his scrutiny. Her eyes blazed; the last feeble sparks of her dead love glowed under the ashes and revealed themselves in a temporary flash of jealousy.

“Hadn’t we better take the children to the Zoo?” she asked.

“To make a public show of our misery? No, thank you!”

“But it’s so hot in here. I shall have to pull down the blinds.”

“You had better open a window!”

He divined his wife’s thoughts and rose to do it himself. Out there, on the edge of the pavement, his four little ones were sitting, in close proximity of the waste pipes. Their feet were in the dry gutter, and they were playing with orange peels which they had found in the sweepings of the road. The sight stabbed his heart, and he felt a lump rising in his throat. But poverty had so blunted his feelings that he remained standing at the window with his arms crossed.

All at once two filthy streams gushed from the waste pipes, inundated the gutter and saturated the feet of the children who screamed, half suffocated by the stench.

“Get the children ready as quickly as you can,” he called, giving way at the heart-rending scene.

The father pushed the perambulator with the baby, the other children clung to the hands and skirts of the mother.

They arrived at the cemetery with its dark-stemmed lime-trees, their usual place of refuge; here the trees grew luxuriantly, as if the soil were enriched by the bodies which lay buried underneath it.

The bells were ringing for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the Royal Deer Park.