PART II

I

On the day after our departure the whole town knew that Baroness X had eloped with one of the librarians of the Royal Library.

This was only what was to be expected, to be dreaded! After all my efforts to save her good name, we had forgotten everything in a moment of weakness.

She had spoiled all our plans, and all that remained for me to do was to take the responsibility on my own shoulders and grapple to the best of my ability with the consequences which threatened to ruin her theatrical career; there was only one theatre where she could possibly appear, and loose morals were not likely to increase her chances of an engagement at the Royal Theatre.

On the morning after my return I made an excuse to call on the chief librarian, who was slightly unwell and unable to go out. The sole object of my visit was the establishment of an alibi. After leaving him I strolled through the main streets and thoroughfares and arrived at my office at the usual hour. I spent the evening at the Press Club, and deliberately set the rumour afloat that there was but one reason for the divorce, and that was the Baroness's determination to enter the theatrical profession. I maintained that husband and wife were on the best of terms, and that their separation was but the inevitable result of class prejudice.

If I had only known what harm I was doing myself by spreading these rumours and proclaiming her innocence! ... But no, I should not have acted otherwise.

The papers scrambled eagerly for the smart society scandal, but the public scoffed at this irresistible love of art, a more or less doubtful phenomenon always, but more especially when the stage is concerned. The women in particular were sceptical, and the forsaken child remained an ugly fact which nothing could explain away.

In the meantime I received a letter--a perfect howl of anguish--from Copenhagen. Tortured by remorse, by a yearning for her deserted child, she asked me to come to her at once, complaining bitterly of her relatives who, she asserted, were making her life one long drawn-out agony. She charged them with having suppressed, in collusion with her husband, an important document, which was essential for the final decision in the case.

I refused to leave town, but wrote a few angry lines to the Baron. His reply was so insolent that it led to a complete rupture between us.

One or two telegrams passed, and peace was re-established. The document was found, and the proceedings went on.

I spent my evenings in writing long letters to her, giving her minute instructions how to comport herself in the circumstances. These letters were intended to cheer and encourage her. I advised her to work, to study her art, to visit the theatres. In my anxiety to supplement her income, I urged her to write on anything which she found interesting, and undertook to get her articles accepted by a first-class paper.

No answer. I had every reason to believe that her independent spirit resented my well-meant interference.

A week passed; a week full of care, unrest and hard work. Then, early one morning, before I was up, I received a letter from Copenhagen.

The tone of her letter was calm and serene; she seemed unable to hide a certain pride on account of the quarrel between the Baron and myself. (She was in a fair position to form an opinion, since she had received the respective letters from both of us.) She found the "duel" not without style, and admired my pluck. "It is a pity," she concluded her letter, "that two men like you and the Baron should not be friends." Further on she gave me a detailed account of what she was doing to while away the time. She was evidently enjoying herself; she had made her way into second-rate artistic circles, a fact which I did not like. She described an evening spent at some assembly-rooms in the company of a number of young men, who paid her a great deal of attention; she had made the conquest of a musician, a youth who had sacrificed his family to his art. "What a strange similarity between our two cases!" she remarked. Then followed a detailed biography of the interesting martyr and the request not to be jealous.

"What did she mean?" I wondered, taken aback by the half-sarcastic, half-familiar tone of her letter, which appeared to be written between two entertainments.

Was it possible that this coldly voluptuous madonna belonged to the class of born wantons, that she was a coquette, a cocotte?

I sat down at once and indited a furious scolding; I painted her picture as she then appeared to me. I called her Madame Bovary; I entreated her to break the spell which was leading her to a precipice.

In reply, "as a proof of her absolute faith in me," she sent me the letters which the young enthusiast had written to her. Love letters!

The same old use of the term friendship, the inexplicable sympathy of the souls, and the whole list of the trite and to us both so familiar words: brother and sister, little mother, playmates, and so on, cloaks and covers under which lovers are wont to hide, to abandon themselves ultimately to their passions.

What was I to think? Was she mentally deranged?

Was she an unconscious criminal who remembered nothing of the terrible experience of the last two months, when the hearts of three people were on fire for her? And I who had been made to play the part of a Cinderella, a scape-goat, a man of straw, I was toiling to remove all obstacles from her way to the irregular life of the theatre.

A fresh blow! To see the woman whom I adored wallow in the gutter.

My soul was filled with unspeakable compassion, I had a foreboding of the fate which awaited her, perverse woman that she was, and vowed to lift her up, to strengthen and support her, to do everything in my power to shield her from a fatal catastrophe.

Jealous! That vulgar word invented by a woman in order to mislead the man she has deceived or means to deceive. The hoodwinked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband--husband betrayed! And there are women who look upon jealousy as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.

She returned after a fortnight, pretty, fresh, in high spirits, and full of bright memories, for she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She was wearing a new dress with touches of brilliant colouring, which struck me as vulgar. I was puzzled. The woman who used to dress so simply, so quietly, with such exquisite taste, was adopting a colour scheme which was positively garish.

Our meeting was colder than either of us had expected; there was a constrained silence at first, followed by a sudden outburst.

The flatteries of her new friends had turned her head; she gave herself airs, teased me, made fun of me. She spread her gorgeous dress over my old sofa, to hide its shabbiness. Her old power over me reasserted itself, and for a moment I forgot all resentment in a passionate kiss; nevertheless, a slight feeling of anger remained at the bottom of my heart, and presently found vent in a torrent of reproaches. Subdued by my impetuosity, which contrasted so strangely with her own indolent nature, she took refuge in tears.

"How can you be so absurd as to imagine that I was flirting with that young man?" she sobbed. "I promise you never to write to him again, although I'm sure he'll think it rude of me."

Rude! One of her favourite catchwords! A man pays her attention, in other words makes advances to her, and she listens politely, for fear of being rude. What a woman!

But fate was against me. I was lying at her feet, her beautiful little feet, encased in tiny shoes. She was wearing black silk stockings, which added to my confusion; her leg was a little fuller than it had been; the black legs in a cloud of petticoats were the legs of a she-devil.

Her constant fear of motherhood irritated me; I lied to her; I told her that she had nothing to fear from me; that I knew how to cheat nature. I repeated my assurances until I finished by believing in them myself, and in the end succeeded in setting her mind at ease by promising to be responsible for all consequences.

She was living with her mother and aunt in the second story of a house in one of the main thoroughfares. As she threatened to visit me in my own room if they prevented me from seeing her, I was allowed to call. But the thought of the supervision of these two old women, whom I knew to be watching us through the keyhole all the time, was almost beyond bearing.

The divorced husband and wife were beginning to realise how much they had lost. The Baroness, once a respected married woman, mistress of an aristocratic establishment, had returned to the conditions of her childhood. She was under the control of her mother, almost a prisoner in one room, kept by two old women, who were themselves in needy circumstances. The mother never lost an opportunity of reminding her of her careful bringing up and how she had been fitted to take an honourable social position, and the daughter remembered the happy days following her release from the parental yoke. Bitter words were spoken on both sides, tears and insults were all too frequent, and I had to pay for them when I called in the evening ... to visit a prisoner under the eyes of a warder and witness.

When the strain of these painful meetings became unbearable, we ventured to meet two or three times in the park. But we only jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, for now we were exposed to the contemptuous stare of the crowd. We hated the spring sunshine which illuminated our misery. We missed the darkness, we longed for the winter, which made it easier for us to hide our shame. Alas! the summer was coming with its long nights, which know no darkness.

Our former friends dropped us, one after the other. Even my sister, intimidated by the now universal gossip, grew suspicious and estranged when the ex-baroness, at a little supper party, tried to keep up her spirits by taking too much wine, became intoxicated, proposed a toast, smoked cigarettes, and generally behaved in a way which excited the disgust of the women and the contempt of the men.

"That woman's a common prostitute!" said a respectable married man and father of a family to my brother-in-law, and the latter took the first chance to repeat the remark to me.

When on the following Sunday evening we arrived at my sister's house, where we had been invited to supper, the servant informed us, to our consternation, that her master and mistress were out.

We spent the evening in my room, a prey to anger and despair, seeking comfort in the thought of suicide. I pulled down the blinds to shut out the daylight, and we sat together in misery, waiting for night and darkness, before we ventured out again into the street. But the summer sun did not set until late, and at eight o'clock we both felt hungry. Neither of us had any money, and there was nothing to eat or drink in the cupboard. These moments were some of the most wretched moments of my life, and gave me a foretaste of misery to come. Reproaches, cold kisses, floods of tears, remorse, disgust.

I tried to persuade her to go home and have supper with her mother, but she was afraid of the daylight; moreover, her heart sank at the thought of the necessary explanation. She had eaten nothing since two o'clock, and the melancholy prospect of going to bed supperless aroused the wild beast hunger in her.

She had grown up in a wealthy home, and had been used to every kind of luxury; she had no idea what poverty meant, and consequently she was completely unstrung. I, who had been familiar with hunger from childhood, suffered torture to see her in such a desperate position. I ransacked my cupboard, but could find nothing; I searched the drawers of my writing-table, and there, amongst all sorts of keep-sakes, faded flowers, old love-letters, discoloured ribbons, I found two sweets which I had kept in remembrance of a funeral. I offered them to her just as they were, wrapped in black paper and tinfoil. A distressing banquet indeed, these sweets in their mourning dress!

Depressed, humiliated, apprehensive, I raged and thundered furiously against all respectable women whose doors were closed to us, who would have none of us.

"Why this hostility and contempt? Had we committed a crime? Surely not; it was but a question of a straightforward divorce; we were complying with all the rules and requirements of the law."

"We have been behaving too correctly," she said, trying to comfort herself. "The world is but a pack of knaves. It winks at open, shameless adultery, but condemns divorce. A high standard of morality indeed!"

We were agreed on the subject. But the facts remained. The crime continued to hang over our heads, which drooped under its weight.

I felt like a boy who has robbed a bird's nest. The mother had flown away, the little ones lay prostrate, chirping plaintively, bereft of the protecting warmth of the mother's wings.

And the father? He was left desolate in the ruined home. I pictured him of a Sunday evening, an evening like this, when the family assembles round the fire-place, alone in the drawing-room, with the silenced piano; alone in the dining-room, eating his solitary dinner; alone always....

"Oh, no, nothing of the kind!" she interrupted my musings; "you are quite mistaken! You would be much more likely to find him lounging on the comfortable sofa at Matilde's brother-in-law's; he has had a good dinner with plenty of wine, and is gently squeezing the hand of my poor, dear, libelled little cousin, laughing at the outrageous stories told of his wife's ill-conduct--his wife, who refused to countenance his infidelity. And both of them, surrounded and upheld by the sympathy and applause of this hypocritical world, are eager to throw the first stone at us."

Her words set me thinking, and after a while I expressed the opinion that the Baron had led us by the nose; that he had schemed to rid himself of a troublesome wife, so as to be able to marry again, and had managed to secure her dowry, in spite of the law.

She became indignant at once.

"You have no right to say anything against him! It was all my fault!"

"Why have I no right to say anything against him? Is his person sacred?"

One might almost have thought so, for whenever I attacked him she took his part.

Was it the freemasonry of caste which prompted her to stand up for him? Or were there secrets in her life which made her fear his enmity? I could not solve the riddle, nor discover the reason of her loyalty to him, which no disloyalty on his part could shake.

The sun set at last, and we parted. I slept the sleep of the famished; I dreamed that I was making desperate efforts to wing my way heavenwards, with a millstone round my neck.

* * * * *

Misfortune dogged our footsteps. We approached one of the theatrical managers with the request to give us a date for her first appearance. He replied that he could not, in his official position, have anything to do with a runaway wife.

We left no stone unturned, but all our efforts were doomed to failure. A year hence her resources would be exhausted, and she would be thrown on the street. It was my business, the business of the poor Bohemian, to save her from that fate.

To avoid every possibility of a misunderstanding, she called on an old friend of hers, a former tragedienne, whom up to quite recently she had constantly met in society, and who had cringed like a dog before the "golden-haired Baroness," her "little fairy."

The great actress, a notoriously unfaithful wife, grown grey in vice at the side of her husband, received the honest sinner with insults and closed her door to her.

We had tried everything!

There remained nothing but revenge.

"Very well," I said to her, "why not try writing? Write a play, get it produced at this very theatre? Why descend when there is a possibility of rising? Put your foot on that old woman! With one stride rise far above her head! Show off this lying, hypocritical, vicious society, which opens its houses to prostitutes, but closes them to a divorced wife. It's good stuff for a play."

But she was one of those soft natures, very susceptible, very easily impressed, but unable to strike back.

"No, no revenge!"

And cowardly and revengeful at the same time, she left vengeance to God; it came to the same thing in the end, but it put the responsibility on a man of straw.

But I persevered, and at last fortune favoured me. I had an order from a publisher to edit an illustrated book for children.

"Write the text," I suggested; "you will be paid a hundred francs for it."

I supplied her with reference books; I made her believe that she had done the work unaided, and she pocketed the hundred francs. But I paid a heavy penalty. The publisher stipulated that my name, which had come before the public as that of a playwright, should appear on the title-page. It was literary prostitution, and my enemies, who had predicted my incapacity of distinguishing myself in literature, triumphed.

After that I persuaded her to write an article for one of the morning papers. She acquitted herself fairly well. The article was accepted, but the paper made no payment.

I wore myself out in trying to raise a sovereign, and, succeeding after endless efforts, I handed it over to her with the white lie that it represented her remuneration from the paper.

Poor Marie! She was delighted to give her small earnings to her old mother, who supplemented her income by letting furnished apartments.

The old ladies began to look upon me as their saviour; copies of translations, unanimously rejected by theatrical managers in bygone days, appeared from drawers, where they had long lain forgotten. I was credited with the wondrous capacity to effect their acceptance, and burdened with futile commissions which interfered with my work and caused me no end of trouble. I had to fall back on my small savings because I wasted my time and used up my nervous energy; I could only afford one meal a day, and reverted to my old habit of going to bed without supper.

Encouraged by her few little successes, Marie undertook to write a play in five acts. I seemed to have sown into her soul all the sterile seed of my poetic inspirations. In this virgin soil it germinated and grew, while I remained unproductive, like a flower which shakes out its seed and withers. My soul was lacerated, sick to death. The influence of that little female brain, so different from the brain of a man, disturbed and disordered the mechanism of my thoughts. I was at a loss to understand why I thought so highly of her literary gifts, why I kept on urging her to write, for with the exception of her letters to me, which were mostly personal and frequently quite commonplace, I had no proof that she could write at all. She had become my living poem; she had taken the place of my vanished talent. Her personality was grafted on mine and was dominating it. I existed only through her; I, the mother-root, led an underground life, nourishing this tree which was growing sunwards and promising wonderful blossoms. I delighted in its marvellous beauty, never dreaming that the day would come when the offshoot would separate from the exhausted trunk, to bloom and dazzle independently, proud of the borrowed splendour.

The first act of her play was finished. I read it. Under the spell of my hallucination I found it perfect; I loudly expressed by sincere admiration and heartily congratulated the author. She was herself astonished at her talent, and I prophesied for her a brilliant future. But all of a sudden our plans were changed. Marie's mother remembered a friend, an artist, a very wealthy woman with a fine estate, and, what was of greater importance still, closely in touch with one of our leading actors whose wife was the rival and sworn enemy of the great tragedienne, Marie's former friend.

The artist, a spinster, vouched for the high moral standard of this couple, and they expressed themselves ready to undertake the guidance and supervision of Marie's studies until her first appearance in public. Marie was invited to stay for a fortnight with her mother's friend to discuss the matter. There she was to meet the great actor and his wife who, to fill her cup of happiness, had used their influence with the manager of the theatre on her behalf with very satisfactory results. His former reported refusal was thereby entirely contradicted, and turned out to have been a fabrication of her mother's, invented for the sole purpose of keeping her daughter off the stage.

Marie's future appeared to be safe. I could breathe freely, sleep undisturbed, work.

She stayed away for a fortnight. To judge from her scanty letters she was anything but dull. Her new friends, to whom she had given proofs of her talent, had told her that she would do well on the stage.

On her return she engaged rooms in a farmhouse and arranged with the farmer's wife to board her. She was free of her warders now, and we could spend unchaperoned week-ends together. Life was smiling at us, a little sadly, it is true, for a certain melancholy, the effect of her divorce, always remained. But in the country the burden of convention weighs less heavily than in town, and the summer sun soon dispelled the gloom which hung over our lives.

II

Her appearance under the patronage of the two famous actors was announced in the autumn and put a stop to all gossip. I did not like the part chosen for her. It was a small character-part in an old-fashioned play. But her teacher and patron counted on the sympathy of the audience and the effect of a good scene, in which she refused an aristocratic suitor who saw in her a rare ornament for his drawing-room, and declared that in her eyes the noble heart of the poor young man was infinitely more precious than all the wealth and title of the nobleman.

As I was dismissed from my post as her teacher, I was able to devote all my time and attention to my scientific studies, and the writing of a paper destined for some academy or other. This was necessary in order to prove myself a man of letters and efficient librarian. With ardent zeal I gave myself up to ethnographical research in connection with the farthest East. It acted like opium on my brain, which was exhausted by the struggles, cares and pains I had undergone. Inspired by the ambition to show myself worthy of my beloved, whose future appeared in the rosiest hues, I achieved wonders of industry; I shut myself up in the vaults of the Royal Castle from morning till night; I suffered from the damp and icy atmosphere without a complaint; I defied poverty and need.

* * * * *

Marie's appearance in public was postponed by the death of her little daughter, who died of brain fever; another month of tears, reproaches and remorse followed.

"It is a judgment on you," declared the child's grand-mother, glad to thrust the poisoned dagger into the heart of the daughter-in-law whom she hated because she had brought dishonour on her name.

Marie was broken-hearted, and spent day and night at the bedside of the dying child, under the roof of her former husband, chaperoned by her late mother-in-law. The father was overcome with grief at the death of his only child, and, bowed down with sorrow, he longed to meet again the friend of former days, the witness of the past. One evening, a few days after the little girl's funeral, my landlady informed me that the Baron had called and had left a message to the effect that he hoped to see me at his house.

Considering the unusual circumstances which had led up to the breach, I wanted anything but a reconciliation. I sent him a polite refusal.

A quarter of an hour had hardly elapsed when Marie herself appeared, dressed in deep mourning, her eyes full of tears, and begged me to comply with the request of the inconsolable Baron.

I found this mission in abominable taste. I rated her soundly, and pointed out to her how ambiguous and unjustifiable in the eyes of the world such a situation would be. She upbraided me with my prejudices, implored me, appealed to my generous disposition, and ended by overruling all my objections; I agreed to the indelicate proposal.

I had sworn never again to enter the house in which the drama had been enacted. But the widower had removed. He had taken rooms not far from us; I was glad to be spared a renewed visit to the old place, and accompanied the divorced wife on her visit to her late husband.

The mourning, the evident grief, the grave and gloomy appearance of the house all combined to rob our meeting of any trace of strangeness or embarrassment. The habit of seeing these two people together was a bar to any feeling of jealousy on my part, and the tactful and cordial bearing of the Baron helped to reassure me completely.

We dined together, we drank and played cards just as in the old days.

On the following day we met in my room; on a third evening at Marie's, who was now living in the house of an old lady. We fell into our former habits, and Marie was happy to see us together. It comforted her, and since we had ourselves under perfect control nobody was offended or aggrieved. The Baron looked upon us as being secretly engaged, his love for Marie seemed to be dead. Sometimes he even talked of his unhappy love-affair, for Matilda was carefully watched by her father and out of his reach.... Marie teased and comforted him alternately, and he made no secret, now, of his true feelings.

At parting their intimacy was more marked, but instead of rousing my jealousy it merely excited my disgust.

One day Marie told me that she had been to see the Baron, and stayed to have dinner with him; she justified her visit by saying that she had to talk to him on urgent business in connection with her daughter's estate which the Baron inherited.

I objected to this want of taste; in fact, I told her that her conduct was downright indecent. She burst out laughing, teasingly reminded me of my former railings against prejudice, and in the end I joined in her laughter. It was ridiculous, it was unusual, but it was good form to laugh at everything, and a splendid thing to see virtue rewarded.

After that she visited the Baron whenever she pleased, and I believe he helped her to study her part.

Up to now we had had no quarrels, for any jealousy I might have felt disappeared as soon as I got used to the state of things, and I never quite lost the old illusion that they were husband and wife. But one evening Marie came to see me alone. On helping her to remove her cloak I noticed that her dress was somewhat deranged. It roused my suspicions. She sat down on the sofa opposite the looking-glass, talking volubly all the time. Her conversation struck me as forced, she cast furtive glances at her reflection and stealthily tried to smooth her hair.

A horrible thought flashed into my mind. Unable to control my agitation, I exclaimed--

"Where have you been?"

"With Gustav."

"What did you do there?"

She started, but quickly suppressing her emotion, she replied--

"I was studying my part."

"It's a lie!"

She made an angry exclamation; she accused me of being absurdly jealous, deluged me with explanations. I wavered, and as we were invited out that evening I had to postpone all further investigation.

Thinking of this incident to-day, I would swear a solemn oath that she committed bigamy in those days, to say the least of it. But at that time I was completely deceived by her trickery. What had happened?... Probably this--

She had dined alone with the Baron; they had had coffee and liqueurs; she was seized with that after-dinner lassitude; the Baron advised her to lie down on the sofa and rest awhile, a proposal which did not displease her ... and the rest followed as a matter of course. Solitude, complete confidence, old memories, increased temptation, and the lonely man succumbed. Why deny themselves, as long as no one knew? She was her own mistress, since she had never taken money from her lover, and to break a promise--what is that to a woman! Perhaps she already regretted his loss; perhaps she had come to the conclusion that he understood her needs better than I; perhaps, now that her curiosity was satisfied, she yearned again for the stronger man; for in the struggle for the love of a woman the sensitive and delicate lover, may he be never so ardent, is always beaten by the athlete.

It was more than probable that she gave herself to him, more especially as she was free from responsibility and her woman's heart pitied the lonely man. Had I been in the place of the offended husband should I have acted otherwise? I hardly think so.

But since the beloved lips never tired of using the sublime words "honour," "decency," "morality," I refused to harbour any suspicions.

For these reasons a woman will always get the better of her lover, if he be a man of honour. He flatters himself that he is the only one, because he wants' to be the only one, and the wish is father to the thought.

To-day Marie's loyalty seems to me in the highest degree improbable, incredible, impossible.

It was also a significant fact that the Baron, when we were alone together, always manifested a lively interest in other women; and one evening, after dining with him at a restaurant, he went so far as to ask me for certain addresses. Doubtless this was done in order to deceive me.

Another thing which struck me was his attitude towards Marie; he treated her with a somewhat contemptuous courtesy; she behaved like a cocotte, and her passion for me seemed to be more and more on the wane.

III

At last Marie appeared before the footlights. She was a success for many and complex reasons. Firstly, everybody was curious to see a baroness on the stage; secondly, the middle-classes were sympathetic because they delighted in the blow dealt to aristocratic prestige by this divorce; the bachelors, the sexless, the enemies of matrimonial slavery, lavished flowers on her; not to forget the friends and relations of the great actor, who were interested in her because he had been her teacher and was bringing her out.

After the performance the Baron asked both of us, and the old lady with whom Marie was living, to supper.

Everybody was charmed with the result and intoxicated with the success. I was displeased with Marie's appearance because she had not removed her make-up, and her hair was still dressed as she had worn it on the stage. She was no longer the virginal mother with whom I had fallen in love, but an actress with insolent gestures, bad manners, boastful, overbearing, behaving with a kind of offensive foppishness.

In her imagination she had scaled the highest summits of art, and she dismissed all my remarks, my suggestions, with a shrug of her shoulders or a condescending, "My dear, you know nothing about it."

The Baron wore a look of dejection, like an unhappy lover. But for my presence he would have kissed her. Under the influence of an incredible quantity of Madeira he opened his heart to us, and regretted that art, the divine, should claim so many cruel sacrifices. The press--which had been well managed--confirmed her success, and an engagement seemed likely to follow.

Two photographers fought for the honour of being permitted to photograph the debutante. A successful little magazine sold the portrait of the new star, together with her biography.

What struck me most in looking at these new portraits was the fact that not one of them resembled the old one in my possession. Was it possible that her character, the expression of her face, could have changed in so short a time, in a year? Or was she a different woman when she reflected the love, the tenderness, the compassion which my eyes radiated as soon as I looked at her? The expression of her face on these portraits was vulgar, hard and insolent, every feature expressed a cruel coquetry, a challenge. One pose in particular disgusted me. She was represented leaning over the back of a low chair in such a manner that the beholder could see her bosom, which was only partly hidden by a fan resting against the upper part of her dress. Her eyes seemed riveted on the eyes of an invisible person, not myself, for my love, coupled with respect and tenderness, never caressed her with the shameless sensuality which roused in her the passion of a wanton. The photograph reminded me of those obscene pictures which are furtively offered to the passers-by at the doors of low coffee-houses under cover of the night.

When she offered me this portrait I refused to accept it.

"What!" she exclaimed in a piteous voice, which for a moment revealed her carefully concealed want of true refinement, "you refuse my photograph? Then you don't love me any more!"

When a woman says to her lover, "You don't love me any more," she has already ceased to love him.

I knew from this moment that her love was growing cold. She realised that her feeble soul had drawn from me the courage, the boldness necessary to arrive at her goal, and she wanted to be rid of the troublesome creditor. She had been stealing my thoughts while she seemed to scorn them with her contemptuous, "You know nothing about it, my dear!"

This uncultured woman, whose only accomplishment was her fluent French, whose education had been neglected, who had been brought up in the country, who knew nothing of literature or the stage, to whom I had given the first lessons in the correct pronunciation of Swedish, to whom I had explained the secrets of metrics and prosody, treated me as if I were an idiot.

I advised her to select for her second appearance in public, which was to take place shortly, the principal part in the best melodrama on the repertoire. She refused. But a few days later she informed me casually that the idea had occurred to her to choose this particular part. I analysed it for her, sketched the costumes, drew her attention to all the points to be made, showed her how to make her entrances and exits, and pointed out to her the features which should be specially emphasized.

A secret struggle went on between the Baron and myself. He, who stage-managed the performances of the Royal Guards, instructed the play-acting soldiers, fondly imagining himself to be better acquainted with theatrical affairs than I was. Marie valued his so-called hints more highly; accepted him as her authority, scorned my suggestions. Oh! the vileness of his conception of æsthetics! He extolled the commonplace, the vulgar, the banal, because, as he said, it was true nature.

I admitted his arguments as far as modern comedy was concerned, for here the characters are depicted among the thousand details of everyday life. But his theory became impossible when applied, for instance, to English melodrama; great passions cannot be expressed in the same way as the whims and witticisms of a drawing-room conversation.

But this distinction was too subtle for a mediocre brain, which could only generalise and assume that because a certain thing happened in one case, it must infallibly become the rule and happen in all others.

On the day before her appearance Marie showed me her dresses. In spite of my opposition and entreaties she had chosen a dull grey material, most unbecoming to her because it gave her complexion an ashen hue. Her only reply had been a curt repulse and the truly feminine argument--

"But Mrs. X., the great tragedienne, created the part in a grey dress!"

"True, but Mrs. X. is not fair like you! And what suits a dark woman doesn't always suit a fair one."

She had not been able to see my point and had only been angry with me.

I had prophesied a fiasco, and her second appearance really was a dead failure.

The tears, the reproaches, the insults even which followed!

As misfortune would have it, a week later the great actress appeared in the same part, in a special performance, and received cart-loads of flowers.

Of course Marie was furious with me and made me responsible for her failure, simply because I had prophesied it; the grief and disappointment brought her still nearer to the Baron; it drew them together with the sympathy which always unites inferior characters.

I, the man of letters, the playwright, the dramatic critic, at home in all the literatures, through my work and position at the library in correspondence with the finest intellects of the world, I was cast aside like a worn-out garment, treated like an idiot, considered of no more importance than a footman or a dog.

But although her second appearance had been a failure, she was engaged with a pay of 2,400 crowns[1] per annum. She had acquitted herself fairly well, but she had no great career before her. She would never rise above the level of a "useful actress"; she would be cast for small parts, society women, mere dressed-up dolls, and spend her days at the dressmaker's. Three, four, sometimes five different dresses on one and the same evening would swallow up her insufficient pay.

What bitter disappointments, what heart-rending scenes, as she watched her parts grow smaller and smaller, until they consisted of a few sentences only. Her room had the appearance of a dressmaker's workshop, littered with dress materials, patterns and millinery. The mother, the real _grande dame_ who had left her drawing-rooms, renounced dress and fashion, to devote her life to a lofty ideal of art, had become a bungling seamstress who worked at her sewing machine till midnight, so that she might play before an indifferent bourgeoisie for a few minutes the part of a society woman.

The waste of time behind the scenes during rehearsal, when she stood in the wings for hours waiting for her cue which should bring her before the footlights to say two or three words, developed in her a taste for gossip, for idle talk and risky stories; it killed all honest striving to rise above her condition; the soul was shorn of its wings and was flung to earth, into the gutter.

The disintegrating process went on. She continued to deteriorate, and after her dresses had been remodelled again and again for want of means to buy new ones, she was deprived of even her small parts and degraded to the role of a walker on. Poverty was staring her in the face, and her mother, a modern Cassandra, made life a burden to her; the public, well acquainted with her sensational divorce, and the premature death of her little girl, cried out against the unfaithful wife, the unnatural mother. It was but a question of time and the manager of the theatre would not be able to protect her against the antipathy of the audience; the great actor, her teacher, disowned her and admitted his mistake in believing in her talent.

So much ado, so much unhappiness, to humour a woman who did not know her own mind.

And still matters grew worse, for Marie's mother suddenly died of heart disease, of a broken heart, as it was called, broken with sorrow, caused by her unnatural daughter. Again my honour was involved. I was furious with the injustice of the world, and made a desperate effort to vindicate her honour. I proposed the foundation of a weekly paper, for the discussion of the drama, music, literature and art, and she, thankful now for every effort to help her, gratefully accepted my proposal. In this paper she was to make her début as a critic and writer of feuilletons, and so gradually become acquainted with publishers. She sunk two hundred crowns in the enterprise. I undertook the editorial work and proof-reading. Since I was well aware of my complete incapacity as a business manager, I left her to attend to the sale and advertisements, the proceeds of which she was to share with the manager of her theatre, who was also the proprietor of a news stall.

The first number was set and looked very well indeed. It contained a leader written by one of our rising artists; an original article from a correspondent in Rome; another one from Paris; a critique on a musical performance by a distinguished writer and contributor to one of the first Stockholm papers; a literary review written by myself; a feuilleton and reports on first nights by Marie.

It would have been impossible to improve the arrangements made; the great thing was to publish the first number at the time advertised. Everything was ready, but at the last moment we lacked the necessary funds and credit.

Alas! I had put my fate into the hands of a woman! On the day of the publication she remained calmly in bed and slept till broad daylight.

Convinced that everything was well, I went to town, but everywhere on my way I was greeted with sarcastic smiles.

"Well, where is the wonderful paper to be had?" I was asked the question dozens of times by the numerous people interested in its appearance.

"Everywhere!"

"Or nowhere!"

I went into a newspaper shop.

"We haven't received it yet," said the assistant behind the counter.

I rushed to the printing-office. It had not left the press yet.

A complete failure! We had an angry scene. Her inborn carelessness and ignorance of the publishing trade exonerated her to some extent. She had completely relied on her friend, the theatrical manager.

The two hundred crowns were gone. My time, my honour, the eager thought I had devoted to the scheme, all were wasted.

In this general shipwreck one haunting thought remained: our condition was hopeless.

I proposed that we should die together. What was to become of us? She was quite broken down and I had not the strength to lift her up a second time.

"Let us die," I said to her. "Don't let us degenerate into walking corpses and obstruct the path of the living."

She refused.

What a coward you were, my proud Marie! And how cruel it was of you to make me a witness of the spectacle of your downfall, the laughter and sneers of the onlookers!

I spent the evening at my club, and when I went home that night I was intoxicated.

I went to see her early on the following morning. The alcohol seemed to have made me more clear-sighted. For the first time I noticed the change in her. Her room was untidy, her dress slovenly, her beloved little feet were thrust into a pair of old slippers, the stockings hung in wrinkles round her ankles. What squalor!

Her vocabulary had become enriched by some ugly theatrical slang; her gestures were reminiscent of the street, her eyes looked at me with hatred, an expression of bitterness drew down the corners of her mouth.

She remained stooping over her work, without looking at me, as if she were thinking evil thoughts.

Suddenly, without raising her head, she said hoarsely--

"Do you know, Axel, what a woman is justified in expecting from the man with whom she is on intimate terms, such as we are?"

Thunderstruck, unwilling to trust my ears, I faltered--

"No ... what?"

"What does a woman expect from her lover?"

"Love!"

"And what else?"

"Money!"

The vulgar word saved her from further questioning, and I left her, convinced that I had guessed correctly.

"Prostitute! Prostitute!" I said to myself, stumbling through the streets, the autumnal appearance of which depressed my spirits. We had arrived at the last stage.... All that remained to do was to make payment for pleasures received, to admit the trade without shame.

If she had been poor, at least, suffering from want! But she had just come into her mother's money, the entire furniture of a house, and a number of shares, some of doubtful value, but nevertheless representing two or three thousand crowns; moreover, she was still receiving her pay regularly from the theatre.

I could not understand her attitude ... until suddenly I remembered her landlady and intimate friend.

She was an abominable, elderly woman, with the suspicious manners of a procuress; nobody knew how she lived; she was always in debt, yet always extravagantly and strikingly dressed; somehow she managed to ingratiate herself with people, and she always ended by asking them for a small loan, eternally bewailing her miserable existence. A shady character, who hated me because I saw through her.

Now I suddenly remembered an incident which had happened two or three months ago, but which had not interested me at the time. The woman had extracted a promise from a friend of Marie's to lend her a thousand crowns. The promise had remained a promise. Eventually Marie, giving way to pressure and anxious to save the reputation of her friend, who was badly compromised, guaranteed to find the money, and actually raised the sum. But instead of gratitude she reaped nothing but reproaches from her friend, and when it came to explanations, the old-woman insisted on her perfect innocence and laid the full blame on Marie's shoulders. I had at the time expressed my dislike and distrust of her, and urged Marie to have nothing to do with an individual whose manipulations came very close to blackmail.

But she had exonerated her false friend at the time.... Later on she told a different story altogether, talked of a misunderstanding; in the end the whole incident became "an invention of my evil imagination."

Possibly this woman had suggested to Marie the vile idea of "presenting me with the bill." It must have been so, for the suggestion had not been made easily and was most unlike her. I tried to make myself believe it, hope it.

If she had merely asked me for the money which she had invested in the paper, the money which had been lost through her fault--that would have been female mathematics. Or, if she had insisted on an immediate marriage! But she had no wish to be married, I was sure of that. It was a question of paying for the love, the kisses she had given me. It was payment she demanded.... Supposing I sent her in my bill: for my work according to time and quality, for the waste of brain power, of nerve force, for my heart's blood, my name, my honour, my sufferings; the bill for my career, ruined, perhaps, for ever.

But no, it was her privilege to send in the first bill; I took no exception to that.

I spent my evening at a restaurant, wandered through the streets and pondered the problem of degradation. Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? It must be because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means the disintegration of force.

The same argument applies to the life of the community where everybody strives to reach the material or spiritual summits. Thence comes the tragic feeling which seizes us in the contemplation of failure, tragic as autumn, sickness and death. This woman, who had not yet reached her thirtieth year, had been young, beautiful, frank, honest, amiable, strong and well-bred; in two short years she had been so degraded, had fallen so low.

For a moment I tried to blame myself; the thought that the fault was mine would have been a comfort to me, for it would have made her shame seem less. But try as I would, I did not succeed, for had I not taught her the cult of the beautiful? the love of high ideals? the longing to do noble acts? While she adopted the vulgarities of her theatrical friends, I had improved, I had acquired the manners and language of fashionable society, I had learned that self-control which keeps emotion in check and is considered the hall-mark of good breeding. I had become chaste in love, anxious to spare modesty, not to offend against beauty and seemliness, for thus only can we forget the brutality of an act which to my mind is much more spiritual than physical.

I was rough sometimes, it is true, but never vulgar. I killed, but never wounded. I called a spade a spade, but never hinted and insinuated; my ideas were my own, prompted by the situations in which I happened to find myself; I never tried to dazzle with the witticisms of musical comedies or comic papers.

I loved cleanliness, purity, beauty in my daily surroundings; I preferred to refuse an invitation to accepting it and appearing badly dressed. I never received her in dressing-gown and slippers; I may not always have been able to offer a guest more than bread and butter and a glass of beer, but there was always a clean table-cloth.

I had not set her a bad example; it was not my fault that she had deteriorated. Her love for me was dead, therefore she did not want to please me any longer. She belonged to the public, it was that fact which had made her the wanton who could calmly present her bill for so many nights of pleasure....

During the next few days I shut myself up in my library. I mourned for my love, my splendid, foolish, divine love. All was over, and the battlefield on which the struggle had raged was silent and still. Two dead and so many wounded to satisfy a woman who was not worth a pair of old shoes! If her passion had at least been roused by the longing for motherhood, if she had been guided by the unrealised instincts which force those unfortunates who are mothers on the streets! But she detested children; in her eyes motherhood was degrading. Unnatural and perverse woman that she was, she debased the maternal instinct to a vulgar pleasure. Her race was doomed to extinction because she was a degenerate, in the process of dissolution; but she concealed this dissolution under high-sounding phrases, proclaimed that it was our duty to live for higher ends, for the good of humanity at large.

I loathed her now, I tried to forget her. I paced the room, up and down, up and down, before the rows of book-shelves, unable to rid myself of the accursed night-mare which haunted me. I had no desire for her, or for her company, for she inspired me with disgust; and yet a deep compassion, an almost paternal tenderness made me feel responsible for her future. I knew that if I left her to her own devices, she would go under, and end either as the mistress of her late husband, or the mistress of all the world.

I was powerless to lift her up, powerless to struggle out of the morass into which we had fallen. I resigned myself to remain tied to her, even if I had to witness and share in her downward course. She was dragging me down with her--life had become a burden to me, I had lost all enthusiasm for my work. The instinct of self-preservation, hope, were dead. I wanted nothing, desired nothing. I had developed into a complete misanthrope; I frequently turned away from the door of my restaurant and, forgoing dinner, returned home, threw myself on my sofa and buried myself under my rugs. There I lay, like a wild beast that has received its death wound, rigid, with an empty brain, unable to think or sleep, waiting for the end.

One day, however, I was sitting in a back room of my restaurant, a private room where lovers meet and shabby coats hide themselves, both afraid of the daylight. All at once a well-known voice woke me from my reverie: a man wished me a good afternoon.

He was an unsuccessful architect, a lost member of our late Bohemia, which was now scattered to all the winds.

"You are still among the living, then?" he said, sitting down opposite me.

"I am ... but what about you?"

"I'm so-so ... off to Paris to-morrow ... some fool left me ten thousand crowns."

"Lucky dog!"

"Unfortunately I have to devour it all by myself...."

"The misfortune is not so great, I know a set of teeth ready to help you."

"Really? Would you care to come?..."

"Only too glad to!"

"Is it a bargain then?"

"It's a bargain."

"To-morrow night, by the six o'clock train, to Paris...."

"And afterwards?..."

"A bullet through the head!"

"The devil! Where did you get this idea from?"

"From your face! Suicide is plainly written on it!"

"Haruspex! Well, pack up and come along!"

When I saw Marie that night I told her the good news. She listened with every appearance of pleasure, wished me a pleasant time, and repeated again and again that it would do me a world of good, would refresh me mentally. In short, she seemed well pleased, and overwhelmed me with affection, which touched me deeply.

We spent the evening together, talking of the days which had gone by. We made no plans, for we had lost faith in the future. Then we parted.... For ever? ... The question was not mooted; we silently agreed to leave it to chance to reunite us or not.

[1] A Swedish crown is equivalent to 1s. 4d.

IV

The journey really rejuvenated me. It stirred up the memories of my early youth and I felt a mad joy surging in my heart; I wanted to forget the last two years of misery, and not for one single moment did I feel inclined to speak of Marie. The whole tragedy of the divorce was like a repulsive heap of offal, from which I was eager to fly without turning round. I could not help smiling in my sleeve at times, like a fugitive who is firmly resolved not to be taken again; I felt like a debtor who has escaped from his creditors and is hiding in a distant country.

For two weeks I revelled in the Paris theatres, museums and libraries. I received no letters from Marie, and was beginning to hope that she had got over our separation and that everything was well in the best of all possible worlds.

But after a certain time I grew tired of wandering about, and sated with so many new and strong impressions; things began to lose their interest. I stayed in my room and read the papers, oppressed by vague apprehensions, by an inexplicable uneasiness.

The vision of the white woman, the Fata Morgana of the virginal mother began to haunt me and disturbed my peace. The picture of the insolent actress was wiped out of my memory; I remembered only the Baroness, young, beautiful; her fragile body transfigured and clothed with the beauty of the Land of Promise, dreamed of by the ascètes.

I was indulging in those painful and yet delicious dreams when I received a letter from Marie, in which she informed me in heartbreaking words that she was about to become a mother, and implored me to save her from dishonour.

Without a moment's hesitation I packed my portmanteau. I left Paris by the first train for Stockholm. I was going to make her my wife.

I had no doubt about the paternity of the expected baby. I looked upon the result of our irregular relations as a blessing, as the end of our sufferings; but also as a fact which burdened us with a heavy responsibility, which might spell ruin; at the same time, however, it was the starting point into the unknown; something quite new. Moreover, I always had a very high conception of married life; I considered it the only possible form under which two persons of opposite sex could live together. Life together held no terror for me. My love received a fresh stimulus from the fact that Marie was about to become a mother; she arose purified, ennobled, from the mire of our illicit relationship.

On my arrival at Stockholm she received me very ungraciously and accused me of having deceived her. We had a painful scene--but need she have been so surprised after all that had happened during the last twelve months?

She hated matrimony. Her objectionable friend had impressed upon her that a married woman is a slave who works for her husband gratuitously. I detest slaves, and therefore proposed a modern _ménage_, in keeping with our views.

I suggested that we should take three rooms, one for her, one for myself and a common room. We should neither do our own housekeeping, nor have any servants in the house. Dinner should be sent in from a neighbouring restaurant, breakfast and supper be prepared in the kitchen by a daily servant. In this way expenses were easily calculated and the causes for unpleasantness reduced to a minimum.

To avoid every suspicion of living on my wife's dowry, I suggested that it should be settled on her. In the North a man considers himself dishonoured by the acceptance of his wife's dowry, which in civilised countries forms a sort of contribution from the wife, and creates in her the illusion that her husband is not keeping her entirely. To avoid a bad start it is the custom in Germany and Denmark for the wife to furnish the house; this creates the impression on the husband that he is living in his wife's house, and in the latter that she is in her own home, maintaining her husband.

Marie had recently inherited her mother's furniture, articles without any intrinsic value, their only claim to distinction being a certain sentimental merit of old association and an air of antiquity. She proposed that she should furnish the rooms, arguing that it would be absurd to buy furniture for three rooms when she had enough for six. I willingly agreed to her proposal.

There only remained one more point, the main one, the expected baby. We were agreed on the necessity of keeping its birth a secret, and we decided to place it with a reliable nurse until such time as we could adopt it.

The wedding was fixed for the 31st of December. During the remaining two months I strained every nerve to make adequate provision for the future. For this purpose, and knowing that Marie would soon be compelled to renounce her work at the theatre, I renewed my literary efforts. I worked with such ease that at the end of the first month I was able to offer for publication a volume of short stories, which was accepted without difficulty.

Fortune favoured me; I was appointed assistant-librarian with a salary of twelve hundred crowns, and when the collections were transferred from the old building to the new one I received a bonus of six hundred crowns. This was good fortune indeed, and taken together with other favourable omens I began to think that a relentless fate had tired of persecuting me.

The first and foremost magazine in Finland offered me a post on the staff as reviewer at fifty crowns for each article. The official Swedish Journal, published by the Academy, gave me the much-coveted order to write the reviews on art for thirty-five crowns the column. Besides all this I was entrusted with the revision of the classics which were being published at that time.

All this good fortune came to me in those two months, the most fateful months of my whole life.

My short stories appeared almost immediately and were a great success. I was hailed as a master of this particular style; it was said that the book was epoch-making in the literature of Sweden, because it was the first to introduce modern realism.

It was unspeakable happiness to me to lay at the feet of my poor, adored Marie a name which, apart from the titles of a royal secretary, and assistant-librarian, was beginning to be known, with every prospect of a brilliant future.

Some day I should be able to give her a fresh start, to re-open her theatrical career, which for the moment had been interrupted by, perhaps, undeserved misfortune.

Fortune was smiling at us with a tear in the eye....

The banns were published. I packed my belongings and said good-bye to my attic, the witness of many joys and sorrows. I marched into that prison which all fear, but which, perhaps, we had less cause to dread than others, since we had foreseen all dangers, removed all stumbling blocks.... And yet....