Part 16

This street, this street, this house, these stairs which only a short time ago he had hurried up with his hands full of presents in order for an hour long to see his beautiful home, and the best which life has to show--the young maidenly mother putting her child to bed! The two together! One still more beautiful than the other! And made more beautiful by love, or a friendship which has sprung up in painful solitude.

He took the little girl's hand, and they went down the now darkened street. Then the child turned round, and said aloud, "Mamma is coming behind us."

Why did he not turn round, but went on still faster, drawing the child with him?

Ask the pains of seven long years, which had robbed him of his self-esteem so that he no longer believed he possessed the poor solitary heart that followed him contritely and longed for reconciliation.

The child turned round yet again, and several times, as though it were a plot laid in all friendliness, and the man felt by the throbbing of the little hand how its heart beat in hope and expectation.

But he went straight forward, for he did not believe any more in the possibility of a return, and he did not dare to encounter a scornful smile, or a proud, sharp word. He turned down side-streets, but he felt that she followed. Who suffered most during this five minutes in hell, in this interplay of feelings? The child with her beautiful hopes which were disappointed; the mother with her injured self-esteem, as she sought on the street what she had thrown away; or the man with uncertainty and doubt in one half of his heart, and in the other the immeasurable grief of being obliged to hurt the innocent little child-heart? But while it was actually going on, he felt almost nothing, for he was stunned by the shock. Not till the next day did he feel the pain in his heart, and the longer the time that elapsed, the more that pain increased.

=The Jewel-casket or his Better Half.=--When a man during the first days of love has deposited the best and fairest part of his soul with the woman he loves, he has laid up a treasure with her. If then he sinks below the heavy burdens of everyday life and loses his ornaments, he generally finds them again with her; she has kept and guarded them (not always, however).

At such moments he calls her his better half, and such she is. She can, at the right time, return to him a beautiful thought or word, which he has given her once; then he is ashamed and laments over his fall. And when he sees his earlier better self in her, he realises how low he has sunk, while she still stands on the clear cliff. Then he looks up to her, cries out for help, and when she reaches him her hand, he is raised, and he thanks her for having saved him.

Paul explains this relation between man and wife, which is so often misunderstood and really difficult to understand. "For in the Lord, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man; for as the woman is from the man, so also is the man by the woman, but all is of God."

Therefore in a true marriage neither the husband nor the wife appear separate, but both regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as one being. If one receives any good from the other, the recipient should thank, and the giver also because he was able to give. They thank each other because they are one being, and the interchange of gifts is continuous and unceasing, so that they cannot distinguish between giving and taking.

Therefore a true marriage is indissoluble; it cannot suffer severance, for what it possesses is not alienable, it is common; it is a spiritual property which cannot be sold or bought.

But in the rough tumult of life the man loses his ideal part sooner than the woman, who sits sheltered by the warm hearth of the well-protected home. There she can guard his jewel-casket for him, and if she does it faithfully, he will always look up to her, as to his better self.

=The Mummy-Coffin.=--Seven years of marriage had passed; they had not tended their lamp, but it smoked so that everything in the beautiful home was blackened. Now each sits in their own comer of the dwelling, because they cannot look each other in the eyes. They lament each other as dead, and miss each other like lost children.

Then he opens a drawer and takes out a little box. A scent of fresh roses streams into the room, although it comes from dry rose-leaves pressed between sheets of paper.

Those are her letters which she wrote during her engagement seven years ago. How beautiful it all is: the paper with its fine, still unbleached lavender tint and gold borders, just like the wedding-breakfast glasses; the envelopes carefully folded like the embroidered cushion-cover of the cradle; the letters themselves in beautiful rows of gentle words from beautiful lips which smile gracefully.

Beauty and love in thoughts and feelings--there he had found her again in the little box embalmed with rose-leaves and violets.

But now she is dead, and he weeps!

And at the other end of the house she sits over her little mummy-coffin and speaks with her beloved dead, and weeps.

Lost for ever! For ever!

=In the Attic.=--Only three years had passed since his marriage, and now the storm had carried away all--his wife and child. He had occasion to go up to the attic to fetch something which had been put away there. So he came up to this room, where it always rustled and creaked, and cats slunk about, and the viscera of the house, so to speak, were visible in beams and chimney, where there were rust and soot and hanging cobwebs. He unfastened the padlock. There lay all the flotsam and jetsam after the wreck. It was too late to turn back, and he remained. There was the canopy of their marriage-bed, with green silk and gilt-brass ornaments. There was the cradle of the little one, and the six milk-bottles which the mother always used to wash with her small hands in the ice-cold water; all the flower-vases and glasses which came into the house on the wedding evening, when the table was laid in the hall.

There stood the basket once filled with roses, which she had received on her engagement, which had afterwards become a work-basket. There were withered bouquets, laurel-wreaths, and even books, presents from him at Christmas and on birthdays, with beautiful inscriptions....

But there were also prehistoric articles: pieces of furniture belonging to her girlhood which she had brought into the new home--a Japanese umbrella adorned with chrysanthemums and golden pheasants, a small carpet, a flower-stand....

But why did all these relics lie here in the dust and soot, and not downstairs with him who cherished those memories? Was it that he did not dare to see them every day, or did not wish to?

Then his eyes fell on a little toy cupboard, which lay in a paper-basket. There occurred to his mind the faint recollection of a moment like a Christmas evening, a child's eyes, little white milk teeth, the first musical-box which the little one played to the Christmas-tree, the rocking-horse, and her dolls Rosa and Brita.

He opened the toy cupboard; it contained no musical-box, but a phonograph, very small and simple, a toy which could only utter a single word! He did not remember which. The key lay close by; he wound it up and set it going. At first it hummed like a bee; it did not sting, however, but whispered the only word it could, "Darling!"

And in her voice! Yes, she had spoken it into the phonograph, though he had forgotten it.

"Darling!"

Then he cried to God, then he raged against fate, and then he fell to the ground! And as he lay there he could only lament, "If they were at least only dead! If...."

For they were not dead. They lived.

That was the thing which could not be altered nor atoned for, and all these things were not relics; they were the flotsam and jetsam of a wreck.

=The Sculptor.=--Even when a man has found a masterpiece of creation in his wife, he still tries to improve away little faults in design and colour, in order to make his work of art as free from faults as possible. His little wife does not always understand that, and often becomes irritable.

"You only see faults in me."

"On the contrary, you are for me the most beautiful that exists, but I want to have you perfect. You should, for example, never be angry, for then your beautiful eyes grow ugly, and I suffer. You must not dress in verdigris-colour, for that does not suit you, and you look poisonous, so that I turn my looks away." And so on.

Eating is not beautiful, and to watch one's darling stowing away food in her beautiful mouth, which ought to speak beautiful words, smile bewitchingly, and purse up her tender lips to a kind of flower-bud which one inhales in a kiss--that may be downright repugnant! Therefore one is accustomed to hide this unseemly function under light conversation, and forgets what the beautiful mouth is occupied with.

"You are always finding fault! Say something nice for once."

"Can you not read in my eyes that I admire you; I do not generally say it first with my lips. But I want you to be perfect. That is the whole matter!"

=On the Threshold at Five Years of Age.=--A certain Dr. Ogle states in his statistics that in six-and-twenty years four cases of suicide have taken place among children between five and ten years old. When I read that, "between five and ten years old," I thought, "No! between five and ten! Is that possible? And the reason of it?" I could not think more, but I saw one scene, two scenes, three scenes....

The little girl was five years old; she was playing in the room near her mother; children must have something to do, but the mother was nervous, because she had been going into gaiety and flirting beyond measure.

"Don't rock the horse; it makes mamma's head ache."

The little one took the cat, and pinched it, so that it mewed.

"Don't do that, child; mamma is ill."

The child was good, and did not wish to be troublesome. She sat down at the table, and was silent in order not to irritate mamma.

But a child's little body cannot be still; nor ought it indeed; it moves of itself. Probably the child must have been singing a song to itself, for the little unruly feet beat time against the legs of the chair.

The mother started up, "Go to Ellen in the kitchen, disobedient child!"

The child was not disobedient; doubly wounded in her little heart, she went into the kitchen, good and obedient. But immediately afterwards she reappeared in the doorway, "Ellen was washing up."

There stood the child on the threshold, turned out and repulsed from both sides, and could not go anywhere. She looked like a despairing child, tearless, but with all the terror of the lonely in her face. Dumb, turned to stone, as though in the whole world there were no place for her, as though no one would have her, and she knew not why. At this moment she really stood on the threshold of life, for she suddenly brightened up, and approached the open window, which was high above the ground.

To the honour of the mother, I must confess that she has described this scene to me with the greatest remorse; it ended by her springing up, taking the child in her arms, and playing with her till the sun went down.

"If anything had happened to the child, I should have lived in a hell of self-reproach! And now I think; for every moment which I had not devoted to my child, for every little joy which I had denied her, I would, if it had departed, weep my soul out of my body; I would plunge into space and seek the child under the stars in order to beg her forgiveness, if I could be forgiven...."

To think of it! At five years old, on the threshold of life!

=Goethe on Christianity and Science.=--As I waded in Professor Delitzsch's dung-heap,[1] I reached at last his third lecture. In the last lines of the last page I found a pearl, which I will set, in order to show it to those who misuse poor Goethe's name for their heathenish propaganda. In a conversation with Eckermann, on March 11, 1832, that is, eleven days before his death, Goethe spoke these ever memorable words: "Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it shines in the Gospel."

That was the fruit of a life of eighty years spent in seeking God and His Son. After long useless detours, Goethe found it again at the end of his life, as is apparent from the conclusion of the second part of _Faust_. I will only add some words of Goethe's on superstition, as it is not comprehended by the apelings: "Superstition is an inheritance of powerful, earnest, progressive natures; unbelief is peculiarly characteristic of weak, petty, retrogressive men." Such is unbelief as Goethe said in 1808.

[Footnote 1: The work entitled _Babel und Bibel_.]

=Summa Summarum.=--Since destructive science has proved itself so hollow, consisting as it does of guesses, false inferences, self-deceit, hair-splittings, why does the State support these armies of conjecturers and soothsayers?

Rousseau's first prize-essay regarding the curse of culture and learning should be repondered.

A Descartes ought to return and teach men to doubt the untruths of the sciences.

Another Kant might write a new _Critique of Pure Reason_ and re-establish the doctrine of the Categorical Imperative and Postulate, which, however, is already to be found in the Ten Commandments and the Gospels.

And a prophet must be born to teach men the simple meaning of life in a few words, though it has been already so well summed up: "Fear God, and keep His commandments," or "Pray and work."

All the errors and mistakes which we have made should serve to instil into us a lively hatred of evil, and to impart to us fresh impulses to good; these we can take with us to the other side, where they can first bloom and bear fruit.

That is the true meaning of life, at which the obstinate and impenitent cavil in order to escape trouble.

Pray, _but_ work; suffer, _but_ hope; keeping both the earth and the stars in view. Do not try and settle permanently, for it is a place of pilgrimage; not a home, but a halting-place. Seek truth, for it is to be found, but only in one place, with Him who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Zones of the Spirit, by August Strindberg