Chapter 18
After a year or two their union was blest with a son. The mistress had thereby risen to the rank of a mother, and everything else was forgotten. The pangs which she had endured at the birth of the baby, and her care for the newly born infant, had purged her of her old selfish claims to all the good things of the earth, including the monopoly of her husband’s love.
In her new role as mother she gave herself superior little airs with her friend, and showed a little more assurance in her intercourse with her lover.
One day the latter came home with a great piece of news. He had met his eldest sister in the street and had found her well informed on all their private affairs. She was very anxious to see her little nephew and had promised to pay them a call.
Mary-Louisa was surprised, and at once began to sweep and dust the flat; in addition she insisted on a new dress for the occasion. And then she waited for a whole week. The curtains were sent to the laundry, the brass knobs on the doors of the stoves were made to shine, the furniture was polished. The sister should see that her brother was living with a decent person.
And then she made coffee, one morning at eleven o’clock, the time when the sister would call.
She came, straight as if she had swallowed a poker, and gave Mary-Louisa a hand which was as stiff as a batting staff. She examined the bed-room furniture, but refused to drink coffee, and never once looked her sister-in-law in the face. But she showed a faint, though genuine, interest in the baby. Then she went away again.
Mary-Louisa in the meantime had carefully examined her coat, priced the material of her dress and conceived a new idea of doing her hair. She had not expected any great display of cordiality. As a start, the fact of the visit was quite sufficient in itself, and she soon let the house know that her sister-in-law had called.
The boy grew up and by and by a baby sister arrived. Now Mary-Louisa began to show the most tender solicitude for the future of the children, and not a day passed but she tried to convince their father that nothing but a legal marriage with her would safeguard their interests.
In addition to this his sister gave him a very plain hint to the effect that a reconciliation with his parents was within the scope of possibility, if he would but legalise his liaison.
After having fought against it day and night for two years, he consented at last, and resolved that for the children’s sake the mythological ceremony should be allowed to take place.
But whom should they ask to the wedding? Mary-Louisa insisted on being married in church. In this case Sophy could not be invited. That was an impossibility. A girl like her! Mary-Louisa had already learnt to pronounce the word “girl” with a decidedly moral accent. He reminded her that Sophy had been a good friend to her, and that ingratitude was not a very fine quality. Mary-Louisa, however, pointed out that parents must be prepared to sacrifice private sympathies at the altar of their children’s prospects; and she carried the day.
The wedding took place.
The wedding was over. No invitation arrived from his parents, but a furious letter from Sophy which resulted in a complete rupture.
Mary-Louisa was a wedded wife, now. But she was more lonely than she had been before. Embittered by her disappointment, sure of her husband who was now legally tied to her, she began to take all those liberties which married people look upon as their right. What she had once regarded in the light of a voluntary gift, she now considered a tribute due to her. She entrenched herself behind the honourable title of “the mother of his children,” and from there she made her sallies.
Simple-minded, as all duped husbands are, he could never grasp what constituted the sacredness in the fact that she was the mother of _his_ children. Why his children should be different from other children, and from himself, was a riddle to him.
But, with an easy conscience, because his children had a legal mother now, he commenced to take again an interest in the world which he had to a certain extent forgotten in the first ecstasy of his love-dream, and which later on he had neglected because he hated to leave his wife and children alone.
These liberties displeased his wife, and since there was no necessity for her to mince matters now, and she was of an outspoken disposition, she made no secrets of her thoughts.
But he had all the lawyer’s tricks at his fingers’ ends, and was never at a loss for a reply.
“Do you think it right,” she asked, “to leave the mother of your children alone at home with them, while you spend your time at a public house?”
“I don’t believe you missed me,” he answered by way of a preliminary.
“Missed you? If the husband spends the housekeeping money on drink, the wife will miss a great many things in the house.”
“To start with I don’t drink, for I merely have a mouthful of food and drink a cup of coffee; secondly, I don’t spend the housekeeping money on drink, for you keep it locked up: I have other funds which I spend ‘on drink.’”
Unfortunately women cannot stand satire, and the noose, made in fun, was at once thrown round his neck.
“You do admit, then, that you drink?”
“No, I don’t, I used your expression in fun.”
“In fun? You are making fun of your wife? You never used to do that!”
“You wanted the marriage ceremony. Why are things so different now?”
“Because we are married, of course.”
“Partly because of that, and partly because intoxication has the quality of passing off.”
“It was only intoxication in your case, then?”
“Not only in my case; in your case, too, and in all others as well. It passes off more or less quickly.”
“And so love is nothing but intoxication as far as a man is concerned!”
“As far as a woman is concerned too!”
“Nothing but intoxication!”
“Quite so! But there is no reason why one shouldn’t remain friends.”
“One need not get married for that!”
“No; and that’s exactly what I meant to point out.”
“You? Wasn’t it you who insisted on our marriage?”
“Only because you worried me about it day and night three long years.”
“But it was your wish, too!”
“Only because you wished it. Be grateful to me now that you’ve got it!”
“Shall I be grateful because you leave the mother of your children alone with them while you spend your time at the public-house?”
“No, not for that, but because I married you!” “You really think I ought to be grateful for that?”
“Yes, like all decent people who have got their way!”
“Well, there is no happiness in a marriage like ours. Your family doesn’t acknowledge me!”
“What have you got to do with my family? I haven’t married yours?”
“Because you didn’t think it good enough!”
“But mine was good enough for you. If they had been shoemakers, you wouldn’t mind so much.”
“You talk of shoemakers as if they were beneath your notice. Aren’t they human beings like everybody else?”
“Of course they are, but I don’t think you would have run after them.”
“All right! Have your own way.”
But it was not all right, and it was never again all right. Was it due to the fact of their being married, or was it due to something else? Mary-Louisa could not help admitting in her heart that the old times had been better times; they had been “jollier” she said.
He did not think that it was only owing to the fact that their marriage had been legalised for he had observed that other marriages, too, were not happy. And the worst of it all was this: when one day he went to see his old friend and Sophy, as he sometimes did, behind his wife’s back, he was told that there was an end to that matter. And they had not been married. So it could not have been marriage which was to blame.
A DUEL
She was plain and therefore the coarse young men who don’t know how to appreciate a beautiful soul in an ugly body took no notice of her. But she was wealthy, and she knew that men run after women for the sake of their wealth; whether they do it because all wealth has been created by men and they therefore claim the capital for their sex, or on other grounds, was not quite clear to her. As she was a rich woman, she learned a good many things, and as she distrusted and despised men, she was considered an intellectual young woman.
She had reached the age of twenty. Her mother was still alive, but she had no intention to wait for another five years before she became her own mistress. Therefore she quite suddenly surprised her friends with an announcement of her engagement.
“She is marrying because she wants a husband,” said some.
“She is marrying because she wants a footman and her liberty,” said others.
“How stupid of her to get married,” said the third; “she doesn’t know that she will be even less her own mistress than she is now.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the fourth, “she’ll hold her own in spite of her marriage.”
What was he like? Who was he? Where had she found him?
He was a young lawyer, rather effeminate in appearance, with broad hips and a shy manner. He was an only son, brought up by his mother and aunt. He had always been very much afraid of girls, and he detested the officers on account of their assurance, and because they were the favourites at all entertainments. That is what he was like.
They were staying at a watering place and met at a dance. He had come late and all the girls’ programmes were full. A laughing, triumphant “No!” was flung into his face wherever he asked for a dance, and a movement of the programme brushed him away as if he were a buzzing fly.
Offended and humiliated he left the ball-room and sat down on the verandah to smoke a cigar. The moon threw her light on the lime-trees in the Park and the perfume of the mignonette rose from the flower beds.
He watched the dancing couples through the windows with the impotent yearning of the cripple; the voluptuous rhythm of the waltz thrilled him through and through.
“All alone and lost in dreams?” said a voice suddenly. “Why aren’t you dancing?”
“Why aren’t you?” he replied, looking up.
“Because I am plain and nobody asked me to,” she answered.
He looked at her. They had known each other for some time, but he had never studied her features. She was exquisitely dressed, and in her eyes lay an expression of infinite pain, the pain of despair and vain revolt against the injustice of nature; he felt a lively sympathy for her.
“I, too, am scorned by everybody,” he said. “All the rights belong to the officers. Whenever it is a question of natural selection, right is on the side of the strong and the beautiful. Look at their shoulders and epaulettes....”
“How can you talk like that!”
“I beg your pardon! To have to play a losing game makes a man bitter! Will you give me a dance?”
“For pity’s sake?”
“Yes! Out of compassion for me!”
He threw away his cigar.
“Have you ever known what it means to be marked by the hand of fate, and rejected? To be always the last?” he began again, passionately.
“I have known all that! But the last do not always remain the last,” she added, emphatically. “There are other qualities, besides beauty, which count.”
“What quality do you appreciate most in a man?”
“Kindness,” she exclaimed, without the slightest hesitation. “For this is a quality very rarely found in a man.”
“Kindness and weakness usually go hand in hand; women admire strength.”
“What sort of women are you talking about? Rude strength has had its day; our civilisation has reached a sufficiently high standard to make us value muscles and rude strength no more highly than a kind heart.”
“It ought to have! And yet--watch the dancing couples!”
“To my mind true manliness is shown in loftiness of sentiment and intelligence of the heart.”
“Consequently a man whom the whole world calls weak and cowardly....”
“What do I care for the world and its opinion!”
“Do you know that you are a very remarkable woman?” said the young lawyer, feeling more and more interested.
“Not in the least remarkable! But you men are accustomed to regard women as dolls....”
“What sort of men do you mean? I, dear lady, have from my childhood looked up to woman as a higher manifestation of the species man, and from the day on which I fell in love with a woman, and she returned my love, I should be her slave.”
Adeline looked at him long and searchingly.
“You are a remarkable man,” she said, after a pause.
After each of the two had declared the other to be a remarkable specimen of the species man, and made a good many remarks on the futility of dancing, they began to talk of the melancholy influence of the moon. Then they returned to the ball-room and took their place in a set of quadrilles.
Adeline was a perfect dancer and the lawyer won her heart completely because he “danced like an innocent girl.”
When the set was over, they went out again on the verandah and sat down.
“What is love?” asked Adeline, looking at the moon as if she expected an answer from heaven.
“The sympathy of the souls,” he replied, and his voice sounded like the whispering breeze.
“But sympathy may turn to antipathy; it has happened frequently,” objected Adeline.
“Then it wasn’t genuine! There are materialists who say that there would be no such thing as love if there weren’t two sexes, and they dare to maintain that sensual love is more lasting than the love of the soul. Don’t you think it low and bestial to see nothing but sex in the beloved woman?”
“Don’t speak of the materialists!”
“Yes, I must, so that you may realise the loftiness of my feelings for a woman, if ever I fell in love. She need not be beautiful; beauty soon fades. I should look upon her as a dear friend, a chum. I should never feel shy in her company, as with any ordinary girl. I should approach her without fear, as I am approaching you, and I should say: ‘Will you be my friend for life?’ I should be able to speak to her without the slightest tremor of that nervousness which a lover is supposed to feel when he proposes to the object of his tenderness, because his thoughts are not pure.”
Adeline looked at the young man, who had taken her hand in his, with enraptured eyes.
“You are an idealist,” she said, “and I agree with you from the very bottom of my heart. You are asking for my friendship, if I understand you rightly. It shall be yours, but I must put you to the test first. Will you prove to me that you can pocket your pride for the sake of a friend?”
“Speak and I shall obey!”
Adeline took off a golden chain with a locket which she had been wearing round her neck.
“Wear this as a symbol of our friendship.”
“I will wear it,” he said, in an uncertain voice; “but it might make the people think that we are engaged.”
“And do you object?”
“No, not if you don’t! Will you be my wife?”
“Yes, Axel! I will! For the world looks askance at friendship between man and woman; the world is so base that it refuses to believe in the possibility of such a thing.”
And he wore the chain.
The world, which is very materialistic at heart, repeated the verdict of her friends:
“She marries him in order to be married; he marries her because he wants a wife.”
The world made nasty remarks, too. It said that he was marrying her for the sake of her money; for hadn’t he himself declared that anything so degrading as love did not exist between them? There was no need for friends to live together like married couples.
The wedding took place. The world had received a hint that they would live together like brother and sister, and the world awaited with a malicious grin the result of the great reform which should put matrimony on another basis altogether.
The newly married couple went abroad.
When they returned, the young wife was pale and ill-tempered. She began at once to take riding-lessons. The world scented mischief and waited. The man looked as if he were guilty of a base act and was ashamed of himself. It all came out at last.
“They have _not_ been living like brother and sister,” said the world.
“What? Without loving one another? But that is--well, what is it?”
“A forbidden relationship!” said the materialists.
“It is a spiritual marriage!”
“Or incest,” suggested an anarchist.
Facts remained facts, but the sympathy was on the wane. Real life, stripped of All make-believe, confronted them and began to take revenge.
The lawyer practised his profession, but the wife’s profession was practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live in idleness. He never did it again.
“She had no profession.”
“True; to be idle was no profession. Why didn’t she nurse the baby?”
“Nurse the baby? She wanted a profession which brought in money.”
“Was she such a miser, then? She had already more than she knew how to spend; why should she want to earn money?”
“To be on an equal footing with him.”
“That could never be, for she would always be in a position to which he could never hope to attain. It was nature’s will that the woman was to be the mother, not the man.”
“A very stupid arrangement!”
“Very likely! The opposite might have been the case, but that would have been equally stupid.”
“Yes; but her life was unbearable. It didn’t satisfy her to live for the family only, she wanted to live for others as well.”
“Hadn’t she better begin with the family? There was plenty of time to think of the others.”
The conversation might have continued through all eternity; as it was it only lasted an hour.
The lawyer was, of course, away almost all day long, and even when he was at home he had his consulting hours. It drove Adeline nearly mad. He was always locked in his consulting-room with other women who confided information to him which he was bound to keep secret. These secrets formed a barrier between them, and made her feel that he was more than a match for her.
It roused a sullen hatred in her heart; she resented the injustice of their mutual relationship; she sought for a means to drag him down. Come down he must, so that they should be on the same level.
One day she proposed the foundation of a sanatorium. He said all he could against it, for he was very busy with his practice. But on further consideration he thought that occupation of some sort might be the saving of her; perhaps it would help her to settle down.
The sanatorium was founded; he was one of the directors.
She was on the Committee and ruled. When she had ruled for six months, she imagined herself so well up in the art of healing that she interviewed patients and gave them advice.
“It’s easy enough,” she said.
Then it happened that the house-surgeon made a mistake, and she straightway lost all confidence in him. It further happened that one day, in the full consciousness of her superior wisdom, she prescribed for a patient herself, in the doctor’s absence. The patient had the prescription made up, took it and died.
This necessitated a removal to another centre of activity. But it disturbed the equilibrium. A second child, which was born about the same time, disturbed it still more and, to make matters worse, a rumour of the fatal accident was spreading through the town.
The relations between husband and wife were unlovely and sad, for there had never been any love between them. The healthy, powerful natural instinct, which does not reflect, was absent; what remained was an unpleasant liaison founded on the uncertain calculations of a selfish friendship.
She never voiced the thoughts hatched behind her burning brow after she had discovered that she was mistaken in believing that she had a higher mission, but she made her husband suffer for it.
Her health failed; she lost her appetite and refused to go out. She grew thin and seemed to be suffering from a chronic cough. The husband made her repeatedly undergo medical examinations, but the doctors were unable to discover the cause of her malady. In the end he became so accustomed to her constant complaints that he paid no more attention to them.
“I know it’s unpleasant to have an invalid wife,” she said.
He admitted in his heart that it was anything but pleasant; had he loved her, he would neither have felt nor admitted it.
Her emaciation became so alarming, that he could not shut his eyes to it any longer, and had to consent to her suggestion that she should consult a famous professor.
Adeline was examined by the celebrity. “How long have you been ill?” he asked.
“I have never been very strong since I left the country,” she replied. “I was born in the country.”
“Then you don’t feel well in town?”
“Well? Who cares whether I feel well or not?” And her face assumed an expression which left no room for doubt: she was a martyr.
“Do you think that country air would do you good?” continued the professor.
“Candidly, I believe that it is the only thing which could save my life.”
“Then why don’t you live in the country?”
“My husband couldn’t give up his profession for my sake.”
“He has a wealthy wife and we have plenty of lawyers.”
“You think, then, that we ought to live in the country?”
“Certainly, if you believe that it would do you good. You are not suffering from any organic disease, but your nerves are unstrung; country air would no doubt benefit you.”
Adeline returned home to her husband very depressed.
“Well?”
“The professor had sentenced her to death if she remained in town.”
The lawyer was much upset. But since the fact that his distress was mainly caused by the thought of giving up his practice was very apparent, she held that she had absolute proof that the question of her health was a matter of no importance to him.
“What? He didn’t believe that it was a matter of life and death? Didn’t he think the professor knew better than he? Was he going to let her die?”
He was not going to let her die. He bought an estate in the country and engaged an inspector to look after it.
As a sheriff and a district-judge were living on the spot, the lawyer had no occupation. The days seemed to him as endless as they were unpleasant. Since his income had stopped with his practice, he was compelled to live on his wife’s money. In the first six months he read a great deal and played “Fortuna.” In the second six months he gave up reading, as it served no object. In the third he amused himself by doing needle-work.
His wife, on the other hand, devoted herself to the farm, pinned up her skirts to the knees and went into the stables. She came into the house dirty, and smelling of the cow-shed. She felt well and ordered the labourers about that it was a pleasure to hear her, for she had grown up in the country and knew what she was about.
When her husband complained of having nothing to do, she laughed at him.
“Find some occupation in the house. No one need ever be idle in a house like this.”
He would have liked to suggest some outside occupation, but he had not the courage.
He ate, slept, and went for walks. If he happened to enter the barn or the stables, he was sure to be in the way and be scolded by his wife.
One day, when he had grumbled more than usual, while the children had been running about, neglected by the nurse, she said:
“Why don’t you look after the children? That would give you something to do.”
He stared at her. Did she really mean it?
“Well, why shouldn’t he look after the children? Was there anything strange in her suggestion?”
He thought the matter over and found nothing strange in it. Henceforth he took the children for a walk every day.
One morning, when he was ready to go out, the children were not dressed. The lawyer felt angry and went grumbling to his wife; of the servants he was afraid.
“Why aren’t the children dressed?” he asked.