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Married

by August Strindberg · English · Gutenberg #7956 · 481,162 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Married

Author: August Strindberg

Author of introduction, etc.: Thomas Seltzer


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7956]
                Most recently updated: October 26, 2016

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIED ***




Produced by David Starner, Marc D’Hooghe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








MARRIED

By August Strindberg




CONTENTS


ASRA

LOVE AND BREAD

COMPELLED TO

COMPENSATION

FRICTIONS

UNNATURAL SELECTION

AN ATTEMPT AT REFORM

A NATURAL OBSTACLE

A DOLL’S HOUSE

PHOENIX

ROMEO AND JULIA

PROLIFICACY

AUTUMN

COMPULSORY MARRIAGE

CORINNA

UNMARRIED AND MARRIED

A DUEL

HIS SERVANT

THE BREADWINNER





BIBLIOGRAPHY


Strindberg’s works in English translation: Plays translated by Edwin
Bjorkman; _Master Olof_, American Scandinavian Foundation, 1915; _The
Dream Play, The Link, The Dance of Death_, New York, Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1912; _Swanwhite, Simoon, Debit and Credit, Advent,
The Thunderstorm, After the Fire,_ the same, 1913; _There Are Crimes
and Crimes, Miss Julia, The Stronger, Creditors, Pariah_, the same,
1913; Bridal Crown, _The Spook Sonata, The First Warning, Gustavus
Vasa_, the same, 1916. Plays translated by Edith and Warner Oland,
Boston Luce & Co., Vol. I (1912), _The Father, Countess Julie, The
Stronger, The Outlaw_; Vol. II (1912), _Facing Death, Easter, Pariah,
Comrades_; Vol. III (1914), _Swanwhite, Advent, The Storm, Lucky Pehr_,
tr. by Velma Swanston Howard, Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Co., 1912.
_The Red Room_, tr. by Ellie Schleussner, New York, Putnam’s, 1913;
_Confession of a Fool_, tr. by S. Swift, London, F. Palmer, 1912; _The
German Lieutenant and Other Stories_, Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co.,
1915; _In Midsummer Days and Other Tales_, tr. by Ellie Schleussner,
London, H. Latimer, 1913; _Motherlove_, tr. by Francis J. Ziegler,
Philadelphia, Brown Bros., 2nd ed., 1916, _On the Seaboard_, tr. by
Elizabeth Clarke Westergren, Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Co., 1913;
_The Son of a Servant_, tr. by. Claud Field, introduction by Henry
Vacher-Burch, New York, Putnam’s, 1913; _The Growth of a Soul_, tr. by
Claud Field, London, W. Rider & Co., 1913; _The Inferno_, tr. by Claud
Field, New York, Putnam’s, 1913; _Legends, Autobiographical Sketches_,
London, A. Melrose, 1912; _Zones of the Spirit_, tr. by Claud Field,
introduction by Arthur Babillotte, London, G. Allen & Co.




INTRODUCTION


These stories originally appeared in two volumes, the first in 1884,
the second in 1886. The latter part of the present edition is thus
separated from the first part by a lapse of two years.

Strindberg’s views were continually undergoing changes. Constancy was
never a trait of his. He himself tells us that opinions are but the
reflection of a man’s experiences, changing as his experiences change.
In the two years following the publication of the first volume,
Strindberg’s experiences were such as to exercise a decisive influence
on his views on the woman question and to transmute his early
predisposition to woman-hating from a passive tendency to a positive,
active force in his character and writing.

Strindberg’s art in _Married_ is of the propagandist, of the fighter
for a cause. He has a lesson to convey and he makes frankly for his
goal without attempting to conceal his purpose under the gloss of
“pure” art. He chooses the story form in preference to the treatise as
a more powerful medium to drive home his ideas. That the result has
proved successful is due to the happy admixture in Strindberg of
thinker and artist. His artist’s sense never permitted him to distort
or misrepresent the truth for the sake of proving his theories. In
fact, he arrived at his theories not as a scholar through the study of
books, but as an artist through the experience of life. When life had
impressed upon him what seemed to him a truth, he then applied his
intellect to it to bolster up that truth. Hence it is that, however
opinionated Strindberg may at times seem, his writings carry that
conviction which we receive only when the author reproduces’ truths he
has obtained first-hand from life. One-sided he may occasionally be in
_Married_, especially in the later stories, but rarely unfaithful. His
manner is often to throw such a glaring searchlight upon one spot of
life that all the rest of it stays in darkness; but the places he does
show up are never unimportant or trivial. They are well worth seeing
with Strindberg’s brilliant illumination thrown upon them.

August Strindberg has left a remarkably rich record of his life in
various works, especially in his autobiographical series of novels. He
was born in 1849 in Stockholm. His was a sad childhood passed in
extreme poverty. He succeeded in entering the University of Upsala in
1867, but was forced for a time on account of lack of means to
interrupt his studies. He tried his fortune as schoolmaster, actor,
and journalist and made an attempt to study medicine. All the while he
was active in a literary way, composing his first plays in 1869. In
1874 he obtained a position in the Royal Library, where he devoted
himself to scientific studies, learned Chinese in order to catalogue
the Chinese manuscripts, and wrote an erudite monograph which was read
at the Academy of Inscriptions in Paris.

His first important literary productions were the drama _Master Olof_
(1878) and the novel _The Red Room_ (1879). Disheartened by the
failure of _Master Olof_, he gave up literature for a long time. When
he returned to it, he displayed an amazing productivity. Work followed
work in quick succession--novels, short stories, dramas, histories,
historical studies, and essays. _The Swedish People_ is said to be the
most popular book in Sweden next to the Bible. The mere enumeration of
his writings would occupy more than two pages. His versatility led him
to make researches in physics and chemistry and natural science and to
write on those subjects.

Through works like _The Red Room_, _Married_, and the dramas _The
Father_ and _Miss Julia_, Strindberg attached himself to the
naturalistic school of literature. Another period of literary
inactivity followed, during which he passed through a mental crisis
akin to insanity. When he returned to the writing of novels and dramas
he was no longer a naturalist, but a symbolist and mystic. Among the
plays he composed in this style are _To Damascus_, _The Dream Play_,
and _The Great Highway_.

Strindberg married three times, divorced his first two wives, but
separated amicably from the third. He died in 1913. The vast
demonstration at his funeral, attended by the laboring classes as well
as by the “upper” classes, proved that, in spite of the antagonisms he
had aroused, Sweden unanimously awarded him the highest place in her
literature.

THOMAS SELTZER.





ASRA


He had just completed his thirteenth year when his mother died. He
felt that he had lost a real friend, for during the twelve months of
her illness he had come to know her personally, as it were, and
established a relationship between them which is rare between parents
and children. He was a clever boy and had developed early; he had read
a great many books besides his schoolbooks, for his father, a
professor of botany at the Academy of Science, possessed a very good
library. His mother, on the other hand, was not a well-educated woman;
she had merely been head housekeeper and children’s nurse in her
husband’s house. Numerous births and countless vigils (she had not
slept through a single night for the last sixteen years), had
exhausted her strength, and when she became bedridden, at the age of
thirty-nine, and was no longer able to look after her house, she made
the acquaintance of her second son; her eldest boy was at a military
school and only at home during the week ends. Now that her part as
mother of the family was played to the end and nothing remained of her
but a poor invalid, the old-fashioned relationship of strict discipline,
that barrier between parents and children, was superseded.
The thirteen-year-old son was almost constantly at her bedside,
reading to her whenever he was not at school or doing home lessons.
She had many questions to ask and he had a great deal to explain, and
therefore all those distinguishing marks erected by age and position
vanished, one after the other: if there was a superior at all, it was
the son. But the mother, too, had much to teach, for she had learnt
her lessons in the school of life; and so they were alternately
teacher and pupil. They discussed all subjects. With the tact of a
mother and the modesty of the other sex she told her son all he ought
to know of the mystery of life. He was still innocent, but he had
heard many things discussed by the boys at school which had shocked
and disgusted him. The mother explained to him all she could explain;
warned him of the greatest danger to a young man, and exacted a
promise from him never to visit a house of ill-fame, not even out of
curiosity, because, as she pointed out, in such a case no man could
ever trust himself. And she implored him to live a temperate life, and
turn to God in prayer whenever temptation assaulted him.

His father was entirely devoted to science, which was a sealed book to
his wife. When the mother was already on the point of death, he made a
discovery which he hoped would make his name immortal in the scientific
world. He discovered, on a rubbish heap, outside the gates of Stockholm,
a new kind of goose-foot with curved hairs on the usually straight-haired
calyx. He was in communication with the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and
the latter was even now considering the advisability of including the new
variety in the “Flora Germanica”; he was daily expecting to hear whether
or not the Academy had decided to immortalise his name by calling the
plant Chenopodium Wennerstroemianium. At his wife’s death-bed he was
absentminded, almost unkind, for he had just received an answer in the
affirmative, and he fretted because neither he nor his wife could enjoy
the great news. She thought only of heaven and her children. He could not
help realising that to talk to her now of a calyx with curved hairs would
be the height of absurdity; but, he justified himself, it was not so
much a question of a calyx with straight or curved hairs, as of a
scientific discovery; and, more than that, it was a question of his
future and the future of his children, for their father’s distinction
meant bread for them.

When his wife died on the following evening, he cried bitterly; he had
not shed a tear for many years. He was tortured by remorse, remembered
even the tiniest wrong he had ever done her, for he had been, on the
whole, an exemplary husband; his indifference, his absent-mindedness
of the previous day, filled him with shame and regret, and in a moment
of blankness he realised all the pettishness and selfishness of his
science which, he had imagined, was benefiting mankind. But these
emotions were short-lived; if you open a door with a spring behind it,
it will close again immediately. On the following morning, after he
had drawn up an announcement of her death for the papers, he wrote a
letter of thanks to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. After that he
resumed his work.

When he came home to dinner, he longed for his wife, so that he might
tell her of his success, for she had always been his truest friend,
the only human being who had never been jealous or envious. Now he
missed this loyal companion on whose approval he could count as a
matter of course; never once had she contradicted him, for since he
never told her more than the practical result of his researches, there
was no room for argument. For a moment the thought occurred to him
that he might make friends with his son; but they knew each other too
little; their relationship was that of officer and private soldier.
His superior rank did not permit him to make advances; moreover, he
regarded the boy with suspicion, because the latter possessed a keener
intellect and had read a number of new books which were unknown to
him; occasionally it even happened that the father, the professor,
plainly revealed his ignorance to his son, the school-boy. In such
cases the father was either compelled to dismiss the argument, with a
few contemptuous remarks to “these new follies,” or peremptorily order
the school-boy to attend to his lessons. Once or twice, in self-defence,
the son had produced one or other of his school-books; the professor
had lost his temper and wished the new school-books to hell.

And so it came about that the father devoted himself to his
collections of dried plants and the son went his own way.

They lived in a quiet street to the left of the Observatory, in a
small, one-storey house, built of bricks, and surrounded by a large
garden; the garden was once the property of the Horticultural Society,
and had come into the professor’s possession by inheritance. But since
he studied descriptive botany, and took no interest in the much more
interesting subjects of the physiology and morphology of plants, a
science which was as good as unknown in his youth, he was practically
a stranger to living nature. He allowed the garden with its many
splendours to become a wilderness, and finally let it to a gardener on
condition that he and his children should be allowed certain
privileges. The son used the garden as a park and enjoyed its beauty
as he found it, without taking the trouble to try and understand it
scientifically.

One might compare the boy’s character to an ill-proportioned
compensation pendulum; it contained too much of the soft metal of the
mother, not enough of the hard metal of the father. Friction and
irregular oscillations were the natural consequences. Now he was full
of sentiment, now hard and sceptical. His mother’s death affected him
beyond words. He mourned her deeply, and she always lived in his memory
as the personification of all that was good and great and beautiful.

He wasted the summer following her death in brooding and novel-reading.
Grief, and to no small extent idleness, had shaken his whole nervous
system and quickened his imagination. His tears had been like warm April
showers falling on fruit trees, wakening them to a precocious burgeoning:
but alas! only too often the blossoms are doomed to wither and perish in
a frosty May night, before the fruit has had time to set.

He was fifteen years old and had therefore arrived at the age when
civilised man attains to manhood and is ripe to give life to a new
generation, but is prevented from doing so by his inability to
maintain a family. Consequently he was about to begin the ten years’
martyrdom which a young man is called upon to endure in the struggle
against an overwhelming force of nature, before he is in a position to
fulfil her laws.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is a warm afternoon about Whitsuntide. The appletrees are gorgeous
in their white splendour which nature has showered all over them with
a profuse hand. The breeze shakes the crowns and fills the air with
pollen; a part of it fulfils its destination and creates new life, a
part sinks to the ground and dies. What is a handful of pollen more or
less in the inexhaustible store-house of nature! The fertilised blossom
casts off its delicate petals which flutter to the ground and wither;
they decay in the rain and are ground to dust, to rise again through the
sap and re-appear as blossoms, and this time, perhaps, to become fruit.
But now the struggle begins: those which a kind fate has placed on the
sunny side, thrive and prosper; the seed bud swells, and if no frost
intervenes, the fruit, in due time, will set. But those which look
towards the North, the poor things which grow in the shadow of the
others and never see the sun, are predestined to fade and fall off;
the gardener rakes them together and carts them to the pig-sty.

Behold the apple-tree now, its branches laden with half-ripe fruit,
little, round, golden apples with rosy cheeks. A fresh struggle
begins: if all remain alive, the branches will not be able to bear
their weight, the tree will perish. A gale shakes the branches. It
requires firm stems to hold on. Woe to the weaklings! they are
condemned to destruction.

A fresh danger! The apple-weevil appears upon the scene. It, too, has
to maintain life and to fulfil a duty towards its progeny. The grub
eats its way through the fruit to the stem and the apple falls to the
ground. But the dainty beetle chooses the strongest and soundest for
its brood, otherwise too many of the strong ones would be allowed to
live, and competition would become over-keen.

The hour of twilight, the gathering dusk, arouses the passionate
instincts of the beast-world. The night-crow crouches on the newly-dug
flower-bed to lure its mate. Which of the eager males shall carry the
prize? Let them decide the question!

The cat, sleek and warm, fresh from her evening milk, steals away from
her corner by the hearth and picks her way carefully among daffodils
and lilies, afraid lest the dew make her coat damp and ragged before
her lover joins her. She sniffs at the young lavender and calls. Her
call is answered by the black tom-cat which appears, broad-backed like
a marten, on the neighbour’s fence; but the gardener’s tortoise-shell
approaches from the cow-shed and the fight begins. Handfuls of the
rich, black soil are flying about in all directions, and the
newly-planted radishes and spinach plants are roughly awakened from
their quiet sleep and dreams of the future. The stronger of the two
remains in possession of the field, and the female awaits complacently
the frenetic embraces of the victor. The vanquished flies to engage in
a new struggle in which, perhaps, victory will smile on him.

Nature smiles, content, for she knows of no other sin than the sin
against her law; she is on the side of the strong for her desire is
for strong children, even though she should have to kill the “eternal
ego” of the insignificant individual. And there is no prudery, no
hesitation, no fear of consequences, for nature has plenty of food for
all her children--except mankind.

       *       *       *       *       *

After supper he went for a walk in the garden while his father sat
down at his bed-room window to smoke a pipe and read the evening
paper. He strolled along the paths, revelling in the delicious odours
which a plant only exhales when it is in full bloom, and which is the
finest and strongest extract of etheric oils, containing in a
condensed form the full strength of the individual, destined to become
the representative of the species. He listened to the nuptial song of
the insects above the lime trees, which rings in our ears like a
funeral dirge: he heard the purring call of the night-crow; the ardent
mewing of the cat, which sounds as if death, and not life, were
wooing; the humming note of the dung-beetle, the fluttering of the
large moths, the thin peeping of the bats.

He stopped before a bed of narcissus, gathered one of the while,
starry flowers, and inhaled its perfume until he felt the blood
hammering in his temples. He had never examined this flower minutely.
But during the last term they had read Ovid’s story of Narcissus. He
had not discovered a deeper meaning in the legend. What did it mean,
this story of a youth who, from unrequited love, turned his ardour
upon himself and was consumed by the flame when he fell in love with
his own likeness seen in a well? As he stood, examining the white,
cup-shaped petals, pale as the cheeks of an invalid with fine red
lines such as one may see in the faces of consumptives when a pitiless
cough forces the blood into the extremest and tiniest blood-vessels,
he thought of a school-fellow, a young aristocrat, who was a
midshipman now; he looked like that.

When he had inhaled the scent of the flower for some time, the strong
odour of cloves disappeared and left but a disagreeable, soapy smell
which made him feel sick.

He sauntered on to where the path turned to the right and finally lost
itself in an avenue planted on both sides with elm-trees whose branches
had grown together and formed an arch overhead. In the semi-darkness,
far down the perspective, he could see a large green swing, suspended
by ropes, slowly moving backwards and forwards. A girl stood on the
back board, gently swinging herself by bending her knees and throwing
her body forward, while she clung, with arms raised high above her head,
to the ropes at her side. He recognised the gardener’s daughter, a girl
who had been confirmed last Easter and had just begun to wear long
skirts. To-night, however, she was dressed in one of her old dresses
which barely reached to her ankles.

The sight of the young man embarrassed her, for she remembered the
shortness of her skirt, but she nevertheless remained on the swing. He
advanced and looked at her.

“Go away, Mr. Theodore,” said the girl, giving the swing a vigorous
push.

“Why should I?” answered the youth, who felt the draught of her
fluttering skirts on his throbbing temples.

“Because I want you to,” said the girl.

“Let me come up, too, and I’ll swing you, Gussie,” pleaded Theodore,
springing on to the board.

Now he was standing on the swing, facing her. And when they rose into
the air, he felt her skirts flapping against his legs, and when they
descended, he bent over her and looked into her eyes which were
brilliant with fear and enjoyment. Her thin cotton blouse fitted
tightly and showed every line of her young figure; her smiling lips
were half-open, displaying two rows of sound white teeth, which looked
as if they would like to bite or kiss him.

Higher and higher rose the swing, until it struck the topmost branches
of the maple. The girl screamed and fell forward, into his arms; he
was pushed over, on to the seat. The trembling of the soft warm body
which nestled closely in his arms, sent an electric shock through his
whole nervous system; a black veil descended before his eyes and he
would have let her go if her left shoulder had not been tightly
pressed against his right arm.

The speed of the swing slackened. She rose and sat on the seat facing
him. And thus they remained with downcast eyes, not daring to look one
another in the face.

When the swing stopped, the girl slipped off the seat and ran away as
if she were answering a call. Theodore was left alone. He felt the
blood surging in his veins. It seemed to him that his strength was
redoubled. But he could not grasp what had happened. He vaguely
conceived himself as an electrophor whose positive electricity, in
discharging, had combined with the negative. It had happened during a
quite ordinary, to all appearances chaste, contact with a young woman.
He had never felt the same emotion in wrestling, for instance, with
his school-fellows in the play-ground. He had come into contact with
the opposite polarity of the female sex and now he knew what it meant
to be a man. For he was a man, not a precocious boy, kicking over the
traces; he was a strong, hardy, healthy youth.

As he strolled along, up and down the garden paths, new thoughts
formed in his brain. Life looked at him with graver eyes, he felt
conscious of a sense of duty. But he was only fifteen years old. He
was not yet confirmed and many years would have to elapse before he
would be considered an independent member of the community, before he
would be able to earn a living for himself, let alone maintain a wife
and family. He took life seriously, the thought of light adventures
never occurred to him. Women were to him something sacred, his
opposite pole, the supplement and completion of himself. He was mature
now, bodily and mentally, fit to enter the arena of life and fight his
way. What prevented him from doing so? His education, which had taught
him nothing useful; his social position, which stood between him and a
trade he might have learned. The Church, which had not yet received
his vow of loyalty to her priests; the State, which was still waiting
for his oath of allegiance to Bernadotte and Nassau; the School, which
had not yet trained him sufficiently to consider him ripe for the
University; the secret alliance of the upper against the lower
classes. A whole mountain of follies lay on him and his young
strength. Now that he knew himself to be a man, the whole system of
education seemed to him an institution for the mutilation of body and
soul. They must both be mutilated before he could be allowed to enter
the harem of the world, where manhood is considered a danger; he could
find no other excuse for it. And thus he sank back into his former
state of immaturity. He compared himself to a celery plant, tied up
and put under a flower-pot so as to make it as white and soft as
possible, unable to put forth green leaves in the sunshine, flower,
and bear seed.

Wrapped in these thoughts he remained in the garden until the clock on
the nearest church tower struck ten. Then he turned towards the house,
for it was bed-time. But the front door was locked. The house-maid, a
petticoat thrown over her nightgown, let him in. A glimpse of her bare
shoulders roused him from his sentimental reveries; he tried to put
his arm round her and kiss her, for at the moment he was conscious of
nothing but her sex. But the maid had already disappeared, shutting
the door with a bang. Overwhelmed with shame he opened his window,
cooled his head in a basin of cold water and lighted his lamp.

When he had got into bed, he took up a volume of Arndt’s _Spiritual
Voices of the Morning_, a book which had belonged to his mother; he
read a chapter of it every evening to be on the safe side, for in the
morning his time was short. The book reminded him of the promise of
chastity given to his mother on her death-bed, and he felt a twinge of
conscience. A fly which had singed its wings on his lamp, and was now
buzzing round the little table by his bedside, turned his thoughts
into another channel; he closed the book and lit a cigarette. He heard
his father take off his boots in the room below, knock out his pipe
against the stove, pour out a glass of water and get ready to go to
bed. He thought how lonely he must be since he had become a widower.
In days gone by he had often heard the subdued voices of his parents
through the thin partition, in intimate conversation on matters on
which they always agreed; but now no voice was audible, nothing but
the dead sounds which a man makes in waiting upon himself, sounds
which one must put side by side, like the figures in a rebus, before
one can understand their meaning.

He finished his cigarette, blew out the lamp and said the Lord’s Prayer
in an undertone, but he got no farther than the fifth petition. Then he
fell asleep.

He awoke from a dream in the middle of the night. He had dreamt that
he held the gardener’s daughter in his arms. He could not remember the
circumstances, for he was quite dazed, and fell asleep again directly.

On the following morning he was depressed and had a headache. He
brooded over the future which loomed before him threateningly and
filled him with dread. He realised with a pang how quickly the summer
was passing, for the end of the summer meant the degradation of
school-life. Every thought of his own would be stifled by the thoughts
of others; there was no advantage in being able to think independently;
it required a fixed number of years before one could reach one’s goal.
It was like a journey on a good’s train; the engine was bound to remain
for a certain time in the stations, and when the pressure of the steam
became too strong, from want of consumption of energy, a waste-pipe had
to be opened. The Board had drawn up the time-table and the train was
not permitted to arrive at the stations before its appointed time. That
was the principal thing which mattered.

The father noticed the boy’s pallor, but he put it down to grief over
his mother’s death.

Autumn came and with it the return to school. Theodore, by dint of
much novel-reading during the summer, and coming in this way, as it
were, in constant contact with grown-up people and their problems and
struggles, had come to look upon himself as a grown-up member of
society. Now the masters treated him with familiarity, the boys took
liberties which compelled him to repay them in kind. And this
educational institution, which was to ennoble him and make him fit to
take his place in the community, what did it teach him? How did it
ennoble him? The compendiums, one and all, were written under the
control of the upper classes, for the sole purpose of forcing the
lower classes to look up to their betters. The schoolmasters
frequently reproached their pupils with ingratitude and impressed on
them their utter inability to realise, even faintly, the advantage
they enjoyed in receiving an education which so many of their poorer
fellow-creatures would always lack. No, indeed, the boys were not
sophisticated enough to see through the gigantic fraud and its
advantages.

But did they ever find true joy, real pleasure in the subjects of
their studies for their own sakes? Never! Therefore the teachers had
to appeal incessantly to the lower passions of their pupils, to
ambition, self-interest, material advantages.

What a miserable make-believe school was! Not one of the boys believed
that he would reap any benefit from repeating the names and dates of
hated kings in their proper sequence, from learning dead languages,
proving axioms, defining “a matter of course,” and counting the anthers
of plants and the joints on the hindlegs of insects, to knowing the end
no more about them than their Latin names. How many long hours were
wasted in the vain attempt to divide an angle into three equal sections,
a thing which can be done so easily in a minute in an _unscientific_
(that is to say practical) way by using a graduator.

How they scorned everything practical! His sisters, who were taught
French from Ollendorf’s grammar, were able to speak the language after
two years’ study; but the college boys could not say a single sentence
after six. Ollendorf was a name which they pronounced with pity and
contempt. It was the essence of all that was stupid.

But when his sister asked for an explanation and enquired whether the
purpose of spoken language was not the expression of human thought,
the young sophist replied with a phrase picked up from one of the
masters who in his turn had borrowed it from Talleyrand. Language was
invented to hide one’s thoughts. This, of course, was beyond the
horizon of a young girl (how well men know how to hide their
shortcomings), but henceforth she believed her brother to be
tremendously learned, and stopped arguing with him.

And was there not even a worse stumbling-block in aesthetics, delusive
and deceptive, casting a veil of borrowed splendour and sham beauty
over everything? They sang of “The Knights’ Vigil of Light.” What
knights’ vigil? With patents of nobility and students’ certificates;
false testimonials, as they might have told themselves. Of light? That
was to say of the upper classes who had the greatest interest in
keeping the lower classes in darkness, a task in which they were ably
assisted by church and school. “And onward, onward, on the path of
light!”

Things were always called by the wrong name. And if it so happened
that a light-bearer arose from the lower classes, everybody was ready
and prepared to extinguish his torch. Oh! youthful, healthy host of
fighters! How healthy they were, all these young men, enervated by
idleness, unsatisfied desires and ambitions, who scorned every man who
had not the means to pay for a University education! What splendid
liars they were, the poets of the upper classes! Were they the
deceivers or the deceived?

What was the usual subject of the young men’s conversation? Their
studies? Never! Once in a way, perhaps, they would talk of certificates.
No, their conversation was of things obscene; of appointments with
women; of billiards and drink; of certain diseases which they had heard
discussed by their elder brothers. They lounged about in the afternoon
and “held the reviews,” and the best informed of them knew the name of
the officer and could tell the others where his mistress lived.

Once two members of the “Knights’ Vigil of Light,” had dined in the
company of two women on the terrace of a high-class restaurant in the
Zoological Gardens. For this offence they were expelled from school.
They were punished for their naïveté, not because their conduct was
considered vicious, for a year after they passed their examinations
and went to the University, gaining in this way a whole year; and when
they had completed their studies at Upsala, they were attached to the
Embassy in one of the capitals of Europe, to represent the United
Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway.

In these surroundings Theodore spent the best part of his youth. He
had seen through the fraud, but was compelled to acquiesce! Again and
again he asked himself the question: What can I do? There was no answer.
And so he became an accessory and learned to hold his tongue.

His confirmation appeared to him to be very much on a level with his
school experience. A young minister, an ardent pietist, was to teach
him in four months Luther’s Catechism, regardless of the fact that he was
well versed in theology, exegesis and dogmatics, besides having read the
New Testament in Greek. Nevertheless the strict pietism, which demanded
absolute truth in thought and action, could not fail to make a great
impression on him.

When the catechumens were assembled for the first time, Theodore found
himself quite unexpectedly surrounded by a totally different class of
boys to whom he had been used at school. When he entered the
assembly-room he was met by the stare of something like a hundred
inimical eyes. There were tobacco binders, chimney sweeps, apprentices
of all trades. They were on bad terms and freely abused one another,
but this enmity between the different trades was only superficial;
however much they quarrelled, they yet held together. He seemed to
breathe a strangely stifling atmosphere; the hatred with which they
greeted him was not unmixed with contempt, the reverse of a certain
respect or envy. He looked in vain for a friend, for a companion,
like-minded, dressed as he was. There was not a single one. The parish
was poor, the rich people sent their children to the German church which
was then the fashion. It was in the company of the children of the
people, the lower classes, that he was to approach the altar, as their
equal. He asked himself what it was that separated him from these boys?
Were they not, bodily, endowed with the same gifts as he? No doubt, for
every one of them earned his living, and some of them helped to keep
their parents. Were they less gifted, mentally? He did not think so, for
their remarks gave evidence of keen powers of observation; he would have
laughed at many of their witty remarks if he had not been conscious of
his superior caste. There was no definite line of demarcation between
him and the fools who were his school-fellows. But there was a line here
Was it the shabby clothes, the plain faces, the coarse hands, which
formed the barrier? Partly, he thought. Their plainness, especially,
repulsed him. But were they worse than others because they were plain?

He was carrying a foil, as he had a fencing lesson later on. He put it
in a corner of the room, hoping that it would escape attention. But it
had been seen already. Nobody knew what kind of a thing it really was,
but everybody recognised it as a weapon of some sort. Some of the
boldest busied themselves about the corner, so as to have a look at
it. They fingered the covering of the handle, scratched the guard with
their nails, bent the blade, handled the small leather ball. They were
like hares sniffing at a gun which had been lost in the wood. They did
not understand its use, but they knew it for something inimical,
something with a hidden meaning. Presently a belt-maker’s apprentice,
whose brother was in the Life Guards, joined the inquisitive throng
and at once decided the question: “Can’t you see that it is a sword,
you fools?” he shouted, with a look at Theodore. It was a respectful
look, but a look which also hinted at a secret understanding between
them, which, correctly interpreted, meant: You and I understand these
things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a
military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting
him a personal slight and declared that he “would be hanged if it
wasn’t a rapier!” The consequence was a fight which transformed the
place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and re-echoing with screams
and yells.

The door opened and the minister stood on the threshold. He was a pale
young man, very thin, with watery blue eyes and a face disfigured by a
rash. He shouted at the boys. The wild beasts ceased fighting. He
began talking of the precious blood of Christ and the power of the
Evil One over the human heart. After a little while he succeeded in
inducing the hundred boys to sit down on the forms and chairs. But now
he was quite out of breath and the atmosphere was thick with dust. He
glanced at the window and said in a faint voice: “Open the sash!” This
request re-awakened the only half-subdued passions. Twenty-five boys
made a rush for the window and tried to seize the window cord.

“Go to your places at once!” screamed the minister, stretching out his
hand for his cane.

There was a momentary silence during which the minister tried to think
of a way of having the sash raised without a fight.

“You,” he said at last to a timid little fellow, “go and open the
window!”

The small boy went to the window and tried to disentangle the window
cord. The others looked on in breathless silence, when suddenly a big
lad, in sailor’s clothes, who had just come home on the brig _Carl
Johan_, lost patience.

“The devil take me if I don’t show you what a lad can do,” he shouted,
throwing off his coat and jumping on the window sill; there was a
flash from his cutlass and the rope was cut.

“Cable’s cut!” he laughed, as the minister with a hysterical cry,
literally drove him to his seat.

“The rope was so entangled that there was nothing for it but to cut
it,” he assured him, as he sat down.

The minister was furious. He had come from a small town in the
provinces and had never conceived the possibility of so much sin, so
much wickedness and immorality. He had never come into contact with
lads so far advanced on the road to damnation. And he talked at great
length of the precious blood of Christ.

Not one of them understood what he said, for they did not realise that
they had fallen, since they had never bee different. The boys received
his words with coldness and indifference.

The minister rambled on and spoke of Christ’s precious wounds, but not
one of them took his words to heart, for not one of them was conscious
of having wounded Christ. He changed the subject and spoke of the
devil, but that was a topic so familiar to them that it made no
impression. At last he hit on the right thing. He began to talk of
their confirmation which was to take place in the coming spring. He
reminded them of their parents, anxious that their children should
play a part in the life of the community; when he went on to speak of
employers who refused to employ lads who had not been confirmed, his
listeners became deeply interested at once, and every one of them
understood the great importance of the coming ceremony. Now he was
sincere, and the young minds grasped what he was talking about; the
noisiest among them became quiet.

The registration began. What a number of marriage certificates were
missing! How could the children come to Christ when their parents had
not been legally married? How could they approach the altar when their
fathers had been in prison? Oh! what sinners they were!

Theodore was deeply moved by the exhibition of so much shame and
disgrace. He longed to tear his thoughts away from the subject, but
was unable to do so. Now it was his turn to hand in his certificates
and the minister read out: son: Theodore, born on such and such a
date; parents: professor and knight ... a faint smile flickered like a
feeble sunbeam over his face, he gave him a friendly nod and asked:
“And how is your dear father?” But when he saw that the mother was
dead (a fact of which he was perfectly well aware) his face clouded
over. “She was a child of God,” he said, as if he were talking to
himself, in a gushing, sympathetic, whining voice, but the remark
conveyed at the same time a certain reproach against the “dear father,”
 who was only a professor and knight. After that Theodore could go.

When he left the assembly-room he felt that he had gone through an
almost impossible experience. Were all those lads really depraved
because they used oaths and coarse language, as his companions, his
father, his uncle, and all the upper classes did at times? What did
the minister mean when he talked of immorality? They were more savage
than the spoilt children of the wealthy, but that was because they
were more fully alive. It was unfair to blame them for missing
marriage certificates. True, his father had never committed a theft,
but there was no necessity for a man to steal if he had an income of
six thousand crowns and could please himself. The act would be absurd
or abnormal in such a case.

Theodore went back to school realising what it meant “to have received
an education”; here nobody was badgered for small faults. As little
notice as possible was taken of one’s own or one’s parent’s weaknesses,
one was among equals and understood one another.

After school one “held the reviews,” sneaked into a cafe and drank a
liqueur, and finally went to the fencing-room. He looked at the young
officers who treated him as their equal, observed all those young
bloods with their supple limbs, pleasant manners and smiling faces,
every one of them certain that a good dinner was awaiting him at home,
and became conscious of the existence of two worlds: an upper and an
under-world. He remembered the gloomy assembly-room and the wretched
assembly he had just left with a pang; all their wounds and hidden
defects were mercilessly exposed and examined through a
magnifying-glass, so that the lower classes might acquire that true
humility failing which the upper classes cannot enjoy their amiable
weaknesses in peace. And for the first time something jarring had come
into this life.

However much Theodore was tossed about between his natural yearning
for the only half-realised temptations of the world, and his newly
formed desire to turn his back on this world and his mind heavenwards,
he did not break the promise given to his mother. The religious
teaching which he and the other catechumens received from the minister
in the church, did not fail to impress him deeply. He was often gloomy
and wrapped in thought and felt that life was not what it ought to be.
He had a dim notion that once upon a time a terrible crime had been
committed, which it was now everybody’s business to hide by practising
countless deceptions; he compared himself to a fly caught in a spider’s
web: the more it struggled to regain its freedom, the more it entangled
itself, until at last it died miserably, strangled by the cruel threads.

One evening--the minister scorned no trick likely to produce an effect
on his hard-headed pupils--they were having a lesson in the choir. It
was in January. Two gas jets lighted up the choir, illuminating and
distorting the marble figures on the altar. The whole of the large
church with its two barrel-vaults, which crossed one another, lay in
semi-darkness. In the background the shining organ pipes faintly
reflected the gas flames; above it the angels blowing their trumpets
to summon the sleepers before the judgment seat of their maker, looked
merely like sinister, threatening human figures above life size; the
cloisters were lost in complete darkness.

The minister had explained the seventh commandment. He had spoken of
immorality between married and unmarried people. He could not explain
to his pupils what immorality between husband and wife meant, although
he was a married man himself; but on the subject of immorality in all
its other aspects he was well-informed. He went on to the subject of
self-abuse. As he pronounced the word a rustling sound passed through
the rows of young men; they stared at him, with white cheeks and
hollow eyes, as if a phantom had appeared in their midst. As long as
he kept to the tortures of hell fire, they remained fairly indifferent,
but when he took up a book and read to them accounts of youths who had
died at the age of twenty-five of consumption of the spine, they
collapsed in their seats, and felt as if the floor were giving way
beneath them! He told them the story of a young boy who was committed
to an asylum at the age of twelve, and died at the age of fourteen,
having found peace in the faith of his Redeemer. They saw before their
shrinking eyes a hundred corpses, washed and shrouded. “There is but one
remedy against this evil,” went on the minister, “the precious wounds of
Christ.” But how this remedy was to be used against sexual precocity, he
did not tell them. He admonished them not to go to dances, to shun
theatres and gaming-houses, and above all things, to avoid women; that
is to say to act in exact contradiction to their inclinations. That this
vice contradicts and utterly confounds he pronouncement of the community
that a man is not mature until he is twenty-one, was passed over in
silence. Whether it could be prevented by early marriages (supposing a
means of providing food for all instead of banquets for a few could be
found) remained an open question. The final issue was that one should
throw oneself into the arms of Christ, that is to say, go to church, and
leave the care of temporal things to the upper classes.

After this admonishment the minister requested the first five on the
first form to stay behind. He wished to speak to them in private. The
first five looked as if they had been sentenced to death. Their chests
contracted; they breathed with difficulty, and a careful observer might
have noticed that their hair had risen an inch at the roots and lay over
their skulls in damp strands like the hair of a corpse. Their eyes stared
from their blanched sockets like two round glass bullets set in leather,
motionless, not knowing whether to face the question with a bold front,
or hide behind an impudent lie.

After the prayer the hymn of Christ’s wounds was sung; to-night it
sounded like the singing of consumptives; every now and then it died
away altogether, or was interrupted by a dry cough, like the cough of
a man who is dying of thirst. Then they began to file out. One of the
five attempted to steal away, but the minister called him back.

It was a terrible moment. Theodore who sat on the first form was one
of the five. He felt sick at heart. Not because he was guilty of the
offence indicated, but because in his heart he considered it an insult
to a man thus to have to lay bare the most secret places of his soul.

The other four sat down, as far from each other as they could. The
belt-maker’s apprentice, who was one of them, tried to make a joke,
but the words refused to come. They saw themselves confronted by the
police-court, the prison, the hospital and, in the background, the
asylum. They did not know what was going to happen, but they felt
instinctively that a species of scourging awaited them. Their only
comfort in their distressing situation was the fact that _he_, Mr.
Theodore, was one of them. It was not clear to them why that fact
should be a comfort, but they knew intuitively that no evil would
happen to the son of a professor.

“Come along, Wennerstroem,” said the minister, after he had lighted
the gas in the vestry.

Wennerstroem went and the door closed behind him. The four remained
seated on their forms, vainly trying to discover a comfortable
position for their limbs.

After a while Wennerstroem returned, with red eyes, trembling with
excitement; he immediately went down the corridor and out into the
night.

When he stood in the churchyard which lay silent under a heavy cover
of snow, he recapitulated all that had happened in the vestry. The
minister had asked him whether he had sinned? No, he had not. Did he
have dreams? Yes! He was told that dreams were equally sinful, because
they proved that the heart was wicked, and God looked at the heart.
“He trieth the heart and reins, and on the last day he will judge
every one of us for every sinful thought, and dreams are thoughts.
Christ has said: Give me your heart, my son! Go to Him! Pray, pray,
pray! Whatsoever is chaste, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is
lovely--that is He. The alpha and the omega, life and happiness.
Chasten the flesh and be strong in prayer. Go in the name of the Lord
and sin no more!”

He felt indignant, but he was also crushed. In vain did he struggle to
throw off his depression, he had not been taught sufficient common-sense
at school to use it as a weapon against this Jesuitical sophistry. It
was true, his knowledge of psychology enabled him to modify the statement
that dreams are thoughts; dreams are fancies, he mused, creations of the
imagination; but God has no regard for words! Logic taught him that there
was something unnatural in his premature desires. He could not marry at
the age of sixteen, since he was unable to support a wife; but why he was
unable to support a wife, although he felt himself to be a man, was a
problem which he could not solve. However anxious he might be to get
married, the laws of society which are made by the upper classes and
protected by bayonets, would prevent him. Consequently nature must have
been sinned against in some way, for a man was mature long before he was
able to earn a living. It must be degeneracy. His imagination must be
degenerate; it was for him to purify it by prayer and sacrifice.

When he arrived home, he found his father and sisters at supper. He
was ashamed to sit down with them, for he felt degraded. His father
asked him, as usual, whether the date of the confirmation had been
fixed. Theodore did not know. He touched no food, pretending that he
was not well; the truth was that he did not dare to eat any supper. He
went into his bedroom and read an essay by Schartau which the minister
had lent him. The subject was the vanity of reason. And here, just
here, where all his hopes of arriving at a clear understanding were
centred, the light failed. Reason which he had dared to hope would
some day guide him out of the darkness into the light, reason, too,
was sin; the greatest of all sins, for it questioned God’s very
existence, tried to understand what was not meant to be understood.
Why _it_ was not meant to be understood, was not explained; probably
it was because if _it_ had been understood the fraud would have been
discovered.

He rebelled no longer, but surrendered himself. Before going to bed he
read two _Morning Voices_ from Arndt, recited the Creed, the Lord’s
Prayer and the Blessing. He felt very hungry; a fact which he realised
with a certain spiteful pleasure, for it seemed to him that his enemy
was suffering.

With these thoughts he fell asleep. He awoke in the middle of the
night. He had dreamt of a champagne supper in the company of a girl.
And the whole terrible evening arose fresh in his memory.

He leapt out of bed with a bound, threw his sheets and blankets on the
floor and lay down to sleep on the bare mattress, covering himself
with nothing but a thin coverlet. He was cold and hungry, but he must
subdue the devil. Again he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, with additions
of his own. By and by his thoughts grew confused, the strained
expression of his features relaxed, a smile softened the expression of
his mouth; lovely figures appeared before him, serene and smiling, he
heard subdued voices, half-stifled laughter, a few bars from a waltz,
saw sparkling glasses and frank and merry faces with candid eyes,
which met his own unabashed; suddenly a curtain was parted in the
middle; a charming little face peeped through the red silk draperies,
with smiling lips and dancing eyes; the slender throat is bare, the
beautiful sloping shoulders look as if they had been modelled by a
caressing hand; she holds out her arms and he draws her to his
thumping heart.

The clock was striking three. Again he had been worsted in the fight.

Determined to win, he picked up the mattress and threw it out of the
bed. Then he knelt on the cold floor and fervently prayed to God for
strength, for he felt that he was indeed wrestling with the devil.
When he had finished his prayer he lay down on the bare frame, and
with a feeling of satisfaction felt the ropes and belting cutting into
his arms and shins.

He awoke in the morning in a high fever.

He was laid up for six weeks. When he arose from his bed of sickness,
he felt better than he had ever felt before. The rest, the good food
and the medicine had increased his strength, and the struggle was now
twice as hard. But he continued to struggle.

His confirmation took place in the spring. The moving scene in which
the lower classes promise on oath never to interfere with these things
which the upper classes consider their privilege, made a lasting
impression on him. It didn’t trouble him that the minister offered him
wine bought from the wine-merchant Högstedt at sixty-five öre the
pint, and wafers from Lettstroem, the baker, at one crown a pound, as
the flesh and blood of the great agitator Jesus of Nazareth, who was
done to death nineteen hundred years ago. He didn’t think about it,
for one didn’t think in those days, one had emotions.

A year after his confirmation he passed his final examination. The
smart little college cap was a source of great pleasure to him;
without being actually conscious of it, he felt that he, as a member
of the upper classes, had received a charter. They were not a little
proud of their knowledge, too, these young men, for the masters had
pronounced them “mature.” The conceited youths! If at least they had
mastered all the nonsense of which they boasted! If anybody had
listened to their conversation at the banquet given in their honour,
it would have been a revelation to him. They declared openly that they
had not acquired five per cent. of the knowledge which ought to have
been in their possession; they assured everybody who had ears to
listen that it was a miracle that they had passed; the uninitiated
would not have believed a word of it. And some of the young masters,
now that the barrier between pupil and teacher was removed, and
simulation was no longer necessary, swore solemnly, with half-intoxicated
gestures, that there was not a single master in the whole school who
would not have been plucked. A sober person could not help drawing the
conclusion that the examination was like a line which could be drawn at
will between upper and lower classes; and then he saw in the miracle
nothing but a gigantic fraud.

It was one of the masters who, sipping a glass of punch, maintained
that only an idiot could imagine that a human brain could remember at
the same time: the three thousand dates mentioned in history; the
names of the five thousand towns situated in all parts of the world;
the names of six hundred plants and seven hundred animals; the bones
in the human body, the stones which form the crust of the earth, all
theological disputes, one thousand French words, one thousand English,
one thousand German, one thousand Latin, one thousand Greek, half a
million rules and exceptions to the rules: five hundred mathematical,
physical, geometrical, chemical formulas. He was willing to prove that
in order to be capable of such a feat the brain would have to be as
large as the cupola of the Observatory at Upsala. Humboldt, he went on
to say, finally forgot his tables, and the professor of astronomy at
Lund had been unable to divide two whole numbers of six figures each.
The newly-fledged under-graduates imagined that they knew six
languages, and yet they knew no more than five thousand words at most
of the twenty thousand which composed their mother tongue. And hadn’t
he seen how they cheated? Oh! he knew all their tricks! He had seen
the dates written on their finger nails; he had watched them
consulting books under cover of their desks, he had heard them
whispering to one another! But, he concluded, what is one to do?
Unless one closes an eye to these things, the supply of students is
bound to come to an end. During the summer Theodore remained at home,
spending much of his time in the garden. He brooded over the problem
of his future; what profession was he to choose? He had gained so much
insight into the methods of the huge Jesuitical community which, under
the name of the upper classes, constituted society, that he felt
dissatisfied with the world and decided to enter the Church to save
himself from despair. And yet the world beckoned to him. It lay before
him, fair and bright, and his young, fermenting blood yearned for
life. He spent himself in the struggle and his idleness added to his
torments.

Theodore’s increasing melancholy and waning health began to alarm his
father. He had no doubt about the cause, but he could not bring
himself to talk to his son on such a delicate subject.

One Sunday afternoon the Professor’s brother who was an officer in the
Pioneers, called. They were sitting in the garden, sipping their coffee.

“Have you noticed the change in Theodore?” asked the Professor.

“Yes, his time has come,” answered the Captain.

“I believe it has come long ago.”

“I wish you’d talk to him, I can’t do it.”

“If I were a bachelor, I should play the part of the uncle,” said the
Captain; “as it is, I’ll ask Gustav to do it. The boy must see something
of life, or he’ll go wrong. Hot stuff these Wennerstroems, what?”

“Yes,” said the Professor, “I was a man at fifteen, but I had a
school-friend who was never confirmed because he was a father at
thirteen.”

“Look at Gustav! Isn’t he a fine fellow? I’m hanged if he isn’t as
broad across the back as an old captain! He’s a handful!”

“Yes,” answered the Professor, “he costs me a lot, but after all, I’d
rather pay than see the boy running any risks. I wish you’d ask Gustav
to take Theodore about with him a little, just to rouse him.”

“Oh! with pleasure!” answered the Captain.

And so the matter was settled.

One evening in July, when the summer is in its prime and all the
blossoms which the spring has fertilised ripen into fruit, Theodore
was sitting in his bed-room, waiting. He had pinned a text against his
wall. “Come to Jesus,” it said, and it was intended as a hint to the
lieutenant not to argue with him when he occasionally came home from
barracks for a few minutes. Gustav was of a lively disposition, “a
handful,” as his uncle had said. He wasted no time in brooding. He had
promised to call for Theodore at seven o’clock; they were going to
make arrangements for the celebration of the professor’s birthday.
Theodore’s secret plan was to convert his brother, and Gustav’s
equally secret intention was to make his younger brother take a more
reasonable view of life.

Punctually at seven o’clock, a cab stopped before the house, (the
lieutenant invariably arrived in a cab) and immediately after Theodore
heard the ringing of his spurs and the rattling of his sword on the
stairs.

“Good evening, you old mole,” said the elder brother with a laugh. He
was the picture of health and youth. His highly-polished Hessian boots
revealed a pair of fine legs, his tunic outlined the loins of a
cart-horse; the golden bandolier of his cartridge box made his chest
appear broader and his sword-belt showed off a pair of enormous thighs.

He glanced at the text and grinned, but said nothing.

“Come along, old man, let’s be off to Bellevue! We’ll call on the
gardener there and make arrangements for the old man’s birthday. Put
on your hat, and come, old chap!”

Theodore tried to think of an excuse, but the brother took him by the
arm, put a hat on his head, back to front, pushed a cigarette between
his lips and opened the door. Theodore felt like a fish out of water,
but he went with his brother.

“To Bellevue!” said the lieutenant to the cab-driver, “and mind you
make your thoroughbreds fly!”

Theodore could not help being amused. It would never have occurred to
him to address an elderly married man, like the cabman, with so much
familiarity.

On the way the lieutenant talked of everything under the sun and stared
at every pretty girl they passed.

They met a funeral procession on its return from the cemetery.

“Did you notice that devilish pretty girl in the last coach?” asked
Gustav.

Theodore had not seen her and did not want to see her.

They passed an omnibus full of girls of the barmaid type. The
lieutenant stood up, unconcernedly, in the public thoroughfare, and
kissed his hands to them. He really behaved like a madman.

The business at Bellevue was soon settled. On their return the
cab-driver drove them, without waiting for an order, to “The Equerry,”
 a restaurant where Gustav was evidently well-known.

“Let’s go and have something to eat,” said the lieutenant, pushing his
brother out of the cab.

Theodore was fascinated. He was no abstainer and saw nothing wrong in
entering a public-house, although it never occurred to him to do so.
He followed, though not without a slight feeling of uneasiness.

They were received in the hall by two girls. “Good evening, little
doves,” said the lieutenant, and kissed them both on the lips. “Let me
introduce you to my learned brother; he’s very young and innocent, not
at all like me; what do you say, Jossa?”

The girls looked shyly at Theodore, who did not know which way to turn.
His brother’s language appeared to him unutterably impudent.

On their way upstairs they met a dark-haired little girl, who had
evidently been crying; she looked quiet and modest and made a good
impression on Theodore.

The lieutenant did not kiss her, but he pulled out his handkerchief
and dried her eyes. Then he ordered an extravagant supper.

They were in a bright and pretty room, hung with mirrors and
containing a piano, a perfect room for banquetting. The lieutenant
opened the piano with his sword, and before Theodore knew where he
was, he was sitting on the music-stool, and his hands were resting on
the keyboard.

“Play us a waltz,” commanded the lieutenant, and Theodore played a
waltz. The lieutenant took off his sword and danced with Jossa;
Theodore heard his spurs knocking against the legs of the chairs and
tables. Then he threw himself on the sofa and shouted:

“Come here, ye slaves, and fan me!”

Theodore began to play softly and presently he was absorbed in the
music of Gounod’s _Faust_. He did not dare to turn round.

“Go and kiss him,” whispered the brother.

But the girls felt shy. They were almost afraid of him and his
melancholy music.

The boldest of them, however, went up to the piano.

“You are playing from the Freischütz, aren’t you?” she asked.

“No,” said Theodore, politely, “I’m playing Gounod’s _Faust_.”

“Your brother looks frightfully respectable,” said the little dark
one, whose name was Rieke; “he’s different to you, you old villain.”

“Oh! well, he’s going into the Church,” whispered the lieutenant.

These words made a great impression on the girls, and henceforth they
only kissed the lieutenant when Theodore’s back was turned, and looked
at Theodore shyly and apprehensively, like fowls at a chained mastiff.

Supper appeared, a great number of courses. There were eighteen dishes,
not counting the hot ones.

Gustav poured out the liqueurs.

“Your health, you old hypocrite!” he laughed.

Theodore swallowed the liqueur. A delicious warmth ran through his
limbs, a thin, warm veil fell over his eyes, he felt ravenous like a
starving beast. What a banquet it was! The fresh salmon with its
peculiar flavour, and the dill with its narcotic aroma; the radishes
which seem to scrape the throat and call for beer; the small
beef-steaks and sweet Portuguese onions, which made him think of
dancing girls; the fried lobster which smelt of the sea; the chicken
stuffed with parsley which reminded him of the gardener, and the first
gerkins with their poisonous flavour of verdigris which made such a
jolly, crackling sound between his crunching teeth. The porter flowed
through his veins like hot streams of lava; they drank champagne after
the strawberries; a waitress brought the foaming drink which bubbled
in the glasses like a fountain. They poured out a glass for her. And
then they talked of all sorts of things.

Theodore sat there like a tree in which the sap is rising. He had
eaten a good supper and felt as if a whole volcano was seething in his
inside. New thoughts, new emotions, new ideas, new points of view
fluttered round his brow like butterflies. He went to the piano and
played, he himself knew not what. The ivory keys under his hands were
like a heap of bones from which his spirit drew life and melody.

He did not know how long he had been playing, but when he turned,
round he saw his brother entering the room. He looked like a god,
radiating life and strength. Behind him came Rieke with a bowl of
punch, and immediately after all the girls came upstairs. The
lieutenant drank to each one of them separately; Theodore found that
everything was as it should be and finally became so bold that he
kissed Rieke on the shoulder. But she looked annoyed and drew away
from him, and he felt ashamed.

When Theodore found himself alone in his room, he had a feeling as if
the whole world were turned upside down. He tore the text from the
wall, not because he no longer believed in Jesus, but because its
being pinned against the wall struck him as a species of bragging. He
was amazed to find that religion sat on him as loosely as a Sunday
suit, and he asked himself whether it was not unseemly to go about
during the whole week in Sunday clothes. After all he was but an
ordinary, commonplace person with whom he was well content, and he
came to the conclusion that he had a better chance of living in peace
with himself if he lived a simple, unpretentious, unassuming life.

He slept soundly during the night, undisturbed by dreams.

When he arose on the following morning, his pale cheeks looked fuller
and there was a new gladness in his heart. He went out for a walk and
suddenly found himself in the country. The thought struck him that he
might go to the restaurant and look up the girls. He went into the
large room; there he found Rieke and Jossa alone, in morning dresses,
snubbing gooseberries. Before he knew what he was doing, he was sitting
at the table beside them with a pair of scissors in his hand, helping
them. They talked of Theodore’s brother and the pleasant evening they
had spent together. Not a single loose remark was made. They were just
like a happy family; surely he had fallen in good hands, he was among
friends.

When they had finished with the gooseberries, he ordered coffee and
invited the girls to share it with him. Later on the proprietress came
and read the paper to them. He felt at home.

He repeated his visit. One afternoon he went upstairs, to look for
Rieke. She was sewing a seam. Theodore asked her whether he was in her
way. “Not at all,” she replied, “on the contrary.” They talked of his
brother who was away at camp, and would be away for another two
months. Presently he ordered some punch and their intimacy grew.

On another occasion Theodore met her in the Park. She was gathering
flowers. They both sat down in the grass. She was wearing a light
summer dress, the material of which was so thin that it plainly
revealed her slight girlish figure. He put his arms round her waist
and kissed her. She returned his kisses and he drew her to him in a
passionate embrace; but she tore herself away and told him gravely
that if he did not behave himself she would never meet him again.

They went on meeting one another for two months. Theodore had fallen
in love with her. He had long and serious conversations with her on
the most sacred duties of life, on love, on religion, on everything,
and between-whiles he spoke to her of his passion. But she invariably
confounded him with his own arguments. Then he felt ashamed of having
harboured base thoughts of so innocent a girl, and finally his passion
was transformed into admiration for this poor little thing, who had
managed to keep herself unspotted in the midst of temptation.

He had given up the idea of going into the Church; he determined to
take the doctor’s degree and--who knows--perhaps marry Rieke. He read
poetry to her while she did needlework. She let him kiss her as much
as he liked, she allowed him to fondle and caress her; but that was
the limit.

At last his brother returned from camp. He immediately ordered a
banquet at “The Equerry”; Theodore was invited. But he was made to
play all the time. He was in the middle of a waltz, to which nobody
danced, when he happened to look round; he was alone. He rose and went
into the corridor, passed a long row of doors, and at last came to a
bed-room. There he saw a sight which made him turn round, seize his
hat and disappear into the darkness.

It was dawn when he reached his own bed-room, alone, annihilated,
robbed of his faith in life, in love, and, of course, in women, for to
him there was but one woman in the world, and that was Rieke from “The
Equerry.” On the fifteenth of September he went to Upsala to study
theology.

       *       *       *       *       *

The years passed. His sound common-sense was slowly extinguished by
all the nonsense with which he had to fill his brain daily and hourly.
But at night he was powerless to resist. Nature burst her bonds and
took by force what rebellious man denied her. He lost his health; all
his skull bones were visible in his haggard face, his complexion was
sallow and his skin looked damp and clammy; ugly pimples appeared
between the scanty locks of his beard. His eyes were without lustre,
his hands so emaciated that the joints seemed to poke through the
skin. He looked like the illustration to an essay on human vice, and
yet he lived a perfectly pure life.

One day the professor of Christian Ethics, a married man with very
strict ideas on morality, called on him and asked him pointblank
whether he had anything on his conscience; if so, he advised him to
make a clean breast of it. Theodore answered that he had nothing to
confess, but that he was unhappy. Thereupon the professor exhorted him
to watch and pray and be strong.

His brother had written him a long letter, begging him not to take a
certain stupid matter too much to heart. He told him that it was absurd
to take a girl seriously. His philosophy, and he had always found it
answering admirably, was to pay debts incurred and go; to play while
one was young, for the gravity of life made itself felt quite soon enough.
Marriage was nothing but a civil institution for the protection of the
children. There was plenty of time for it.

Theodore replied at some length in a letter imbued with true Christian
sentiment, which the lieutenant left unanswered.

After passing his first examination in the spring, Theodore was
obliged to spend a summer at Sköfde, in order to undergo the cold
water cure. In the autumn he returned to Upsala. His newly-regained
strength was merely so much fresh fuel to the fire.

Matters grew worse and worse. His hair had grown so thin that the
scalp was plainly visible. He walked with dragging footsteps and
whenever his fellow students met him in the street, they cut him as if
he were possessed of all the vices. He noticed it and shunned them in
his turn. He only left his rooms in the evening. He did not dare to go
to bed at night. The iron which he had taken to excess, had ruined his
digestion, and in the following summer the doctors sent him to
Karlsbad.

On his return to Upsala, in the autumn, a rumour got abroad, an ugly
rumour, which hung over the town like a black cloud. It was as if a
drain had been left open and men were suddenly reminded that the town,
that splendid creation of civilisation, was built over a sea of
corruption, which might at any moment burst its bonds and poison the
inhabitants. It was said that Theodore Wennerstroem, in a paroxysm of
passion had assaulted one of his friends, and the rumour did not lie.

His father went to Upsala and had an interview with the Dean of the
Theological Faculty. The professor of pathology was present. What was
to be done? The doctor remained silent. They pressed him for his
opinion.

“Since you ask me,” he said, “I must give you an answer; but you know
as well as I do that there is but one remedy.”

“And that is?” asked the theologian.

“Need you ask?” replied the doctor.

“Yes,” said the theologian, who was a married man. “Surely, nature
does not require immorality from a man?”

The father said that he quite understood the case, but that he was
afraid of making recommendations to his son, on account of the risks
the latter would run.

“If he can’t take care of himself he must be a fool,” said the doctor.

The Dean requested them to continue such an agitating conversation in
a more suitable place.... He himself had nothing more to add.

This ended the matter.

Since Theodore was a member of the upper classes the scandal was
hushed up. A few years later he passed his final, and was sent by the
doctor to Spa. The amount of quinine which he had taken had affected
his knees and he walked with two sticks. At Spa he looked so ill that
he was a conspicuous figure even in a crowd of invalids.

But an unmarried woman of thirty-five, a German, took compassion on
the unhappy man. She spent many hours with him in a lonely summer
arbour in the park, discussing the problems of life. She was a member
of a big evangelical society, whose object was the raising of the
moral standard. She showed him prospectuses for newspapers and
magazines, the principal mission of which was the suppression of
prostitution.

“Look at me,” she said, “I am thirty-five years old and enjoy
excellent health! What fools’ talk it is to say that immorality is a
necessary evil. I have watched and fought a good fight for Christ’s
sake.”

The young clergyman silently compared her well-developed figure, her
large hips, with his own wasted body.

“What a difference there is between human beings in this world,” was
his unspoken comment.

In the autumn the Rev. Theodore Wennerstroem and Sophia Leidschütz,
spinster, were engaged to be married.

“Saved!” sighed the father, when the news reached him in his house at
Stockholm.

“I wonder how it will end,” thought the brother in his barracks. “I’m
afraid that my poor Theodore is ‘one of those Asra who die when they
love.’”

Theodore Wennerstroem was married. Nine months after the wedding his
wife presented him with a boy who suffered from rickets--another
thirteen months and Theodore Wennerstroem had breathed his last.

The doctor who filled up the certificate of death, looked at the fine
healthy woman, who stood weeping by the small coffin which contained
the skeleton of her young husband of not much over twenty years.

“The plus was too great, the minus too small,” he thought, “and
therefore the plus devoured the minus.”

But the father, who received the news of his son’s death on a Sunday,
sat down to read a sermon. When he had finished, he fell into a brown
study.

“There must be something very wrong with a world where virtue is
rewarded with death,” he thought.

And the virtuous widow, _née_ Leidschütz, had two more husbands and
eight children, wrote pamphlets on overpopulation and immorality. But
her brother-in-law called her a cursed woman who killed her husbands.

The anything but virtuous lieutenant married and was father of six
children. He got promotion and lived happily to the end of his life.




LOVE AND BREAD


The assistant had not thought of studying the price of wheat before he
called on the major to ask him for the hand of his daughter; but the
major had studied it.

“I love her,” said the assistant.

“What’s your salary?” said the old man.

“Well, twelve hundred crowns, at present; but we love one another....”

“That has nothing to do with me; twelve hundred crowns is not enough.”

“And then I make a little in addition to my salary, and Louisa knows
that my heart....”

“Don’t talk nonsense! How much in addition to your salary?”

He seized paper and pencil.

“And my feelings....”

“How much in addition to your salary?”

And he drew hieroglyphics on the blotting paper.

“Oh! We’ll get on well enough, if only....”

“Are you going to answer my question or not? How much in addition to
your salary? Figures! figures, my boy! Facts!”

“I do translations at ten crowns a sheet; I give French lessons, I am
promised proof-correcting....”

“Promises aren’t facts! Figures, my boy! Figures! Look here, now, I’ll
put it down. What are you translating?”

“What am I translating? I can’t tell you straight off.”

“You can’t tell me straight off? You are engaged on a translation, you
say; can’t you tell me what it is? Don’t talk such rubbish!”

“I am translating Guizot’s _History of Civilisation_, twenty-five
sheets.”

“At ten crowns a sheet makes two hundred and fifty crowns. And then?”

“And then? How can I tell beforehand?”

“Indeed, can’t you tell beforehand? But you ought to know. You seem to
imagine that being married simply means living together and amusing
yourselves! No, my dear boy, there will be children, and children
require feeding and clothing.”

“There needn’t be babies directly, if one loves _as we love_ one
another.”

“How the dickens do you love one another?”

“_As we love_ one another.” He put his hand on his waistcoat.

“And won’t there be any children if people love as you love? You must
be mad! But you are a decent, respectable member of society, and
therefore I’ll give my consent; but make good use of the time, my boy,
and increase your income, for hard times are coming. The price of
wheat is rising.”

The assistant grew red in the face when he heard the last words, but
his joy at the old man’s consent was so great that he seized his hand
and kissed it. Heaven knew how happy he was! When he walked for the
first time down the street with his future bride on his arm, they both
radiated light; it seemed to them that the passers-by stood still and
lined the road in honour of their triumphal march; and they walked
along with proud eyes, squared shoulders and elastic steps.

In the evening he called at her house; they sat down in the centre of
the room and read proofs; she helped him. “He’s a good sort,” chuckled
the old man. When they had finished, he took her in his arms and said:
“Now we have earned three crowns,” and then he kissed her. On the
following evening they went to the theatre and he took her home in a
cab, and that cost twelve crowns.

Sometimes, when he ought to have given a lesson in the evening, he (is
there anything a man will not do for love’s sake?) cancelled his lesson
and took her out for a walk instead.

But the wedding-day approached. They were very busy. They had to
choose the furniture. They began with the most important purchases.
Louisa had not intended to be present when he bought the bedroom
furniture, but when it came to the point she went with him. They
bought two beds, which were, of course, to stand side by side. The
furniture had to be walnut, every single piece real walnut. And they
must have spring mattresses covered with red and white striped tick,
and bolsters filled with down; and two eiderdown quilts, exactly
alike. Louisa chose blue, because she was very fair.

They went to the best stores. They could not do without a red
hanging-lamp and a Venus made of plaster of Paris. Then they bought a
dinner-service; and six dozen differently shaped glasses with cut
edges; and knives and forks, grooved and engraved with their initials.
And then the kitchen utensils! Mama had to accompany them to see to
those.

And what a lot he had to do besides! There were bills to accept,
journeys to the banks and interviews with tradespeople and artisans;
a flat had to be found and curtains had to be put up. He saw to
everything. Of course he had to neglect his work; but once he was
married, he would soon make up for it.

They were only going to take two rooms to begin with, for they were
going to be frightfully economical. And as they were only going to
have two rooms, they could afford to furnish them well. He rented two
rooms and a kitchen on the first floor in Government Street, for six
hundred crowns. When Louisa remarked that they might just as well have
taken three rooms and a kitchen on the fourth floor for five hundred
crowns, he was a little embarrassed; but what did it matter if only
they loved one another? Yes, of course, Louisa agreed, but couldn’t
they have loved one another just as well in four rooms at a lower
rent, as in three at a higher? Yes, he admitted that he had been
foolish, but what _did_ it matter so long as they loved one another?

The rooms were furnished. The bed-room looked like a little temple.
The two beds stood side by side, like two carriages. The rays of the
sun fell on the blue eiderdown quilt, the white, white sheets and the
little pillow-slips which an elderly maiden aunt had embroidered with
their monogram; the latter consisted of two huge letters, formed of
flowers, joined together in one single embrace, and kissing here and
there, wherever they touched, at the corners. The bride had her own
little alcove, which was screened off by a Japanese screen. The
drawing-room, which was also dining-room, study and morning-room,
contained her piano, (which had cost twelve hundred crowns) his
writing-table with twelve pigeon-holes, (every single piece of it real
walnut) a pier-glass, armchairs; a sideboard and a dining-table. “It
looks as if nice people lived here,” they said, and they could not
understand why people wanted a separate dining-room, which always looked
so cheerless with its cane chairs.

The wedding took place on a Saturday. Sunday dawned, the first day of
their married life. Oh! what a life it was! Wasn’t it lovely to be
married! Wasn’t marriage a splendid institution! One was allowed one’s
own way in everything, and parents and relations came and congratulated
one into the bargain.

At nine o’clock in the morning their bedroom was still dark. He
wouldn’t open the shutters to let in daylight, but re-lighted the red
lamp which threw its bewitching light on the blue eiderdown, the white
sheets, a little crumpled now, and the Venus made of plaster of Paris,
who stood there rosy-red and without shame. And the red light also
fell on his little wife who nestled in her pillows with a look of
contrition, and yet so refreshed as if she had never slept so well in
all her life. There was no traffic in the street to-day for it was
Sunday, and the church-bells were calling people to the morning
service with exulting, eager voices, as if they wanted all the world
to come to church and praise Him who had created men and women.

He whispered to his little bride to shut her eyes so that he might get
up and order breakfast. She buried her head in the pillows, while he
slipped on his dressing-gown and went behind the screen to dress.

A broad radiant path of sunlight lay on the sitting-room floor; he did
not know whether it was spring or summer, autumn or winter; he only
knew that it was Sunday!

His bachelor life was receding into the background like something ugly
and dark; the sight of his little home stirred his heart with a faint
recollection of the home of his childhood, and at the same time held
out a glorious promise for the future.

How strong he felt! The future appeared to him like a mountain coming
to meet him. He would breathe on it and the mountain would fall down
at his feet like sand; he would fly away, far above gables and
chimneys, holding his little wife in his arm.

He collected his clothes which were scattered all over the room; he
found his white neck-tie hanging on a picture frame; it looked like a
big white butterfly.

He went into the kitchen. How the new copper vessels sparkled, the new
tin kettles shone! And all this belonged to him and to her! He called
the maid who came out of her room in her petticoat. But he did not
notice it, nor did he notice that her shoulders were bare. For him
there was but one woman in all the world. He spoke to the girl as a
father would to his daughter. He told her to go to the restaurant and
order breakfast, at once, a first-rate breakfast. Porter and Burgundy!
The manager knew his taste. She was to give him his regards.

He went out of the kitchen and knocked at the bed-room door.

“May I come in?”

There was a little startled scream.

“Oh, no, darling, wait a bit!”

He laid the breakfast table himself. When the breakfast was brought
from the restaurant, he served it on her new breakfast set. He folded
the dinner napkins according to all the rules of art. He wiped the
wine-glasses, and finally took her bridal-bouquet and put it in a vase
before her place.

When she emerged from her bed-room in her embroidered morning gown and
stepped into the brilliant sunlight, she felt just a tiny bit faint;
he helped her into the armchair, made her drink a little liqueur out
of a liqueur glass and eat a caviare sandwich.

What fun it all was! One could please oneself when one was married.
What would Mama have said if she had seen her daughter drinking
liqueurs at this hour of the morning!

He waited on her as if she were still his fiancee. What a breakfast
they were having on the first morning after their wedding! And nobody
had a right to say a word. Everything was perfectly right and proper,
one could enjoy oneself with the very best of consciences, and that
was the most delightful part of it all. It was not for the first time
that he was eating such a breakfast, but what a difference between
then and now! He had been restless and dissatisfied then; he could not
bear to think of it, now. And as he drank a glass of genuine Swedish
porter after the oysters, he felt the deepest contempt for all
bachelors.

“How stupid of people not to get married! Such selfishness! They ought
to be taxed like dogs.”

“I’m sorry for those poor men who haven’t the means to get married,”
 replied his demure little wife kindly, “for I am sure, if they had the
means they would all get married.”

A little pang shot through the assistant’s heart; for a moment he felt
afraid, lest he had been a little too venturesome. All his happiness
rested on the solution of a financial problem, and if, if.... Pooh! A
glass of Burgundy! Now he would work! They should see!

“Game? With cranberries and cucumbers!” The young wife was a little
startled, but it was really delicious.

“Lewis, darling,” she put a trembling little hand on his arm, “can we
afford it?”

Fortunately she said “we.”

“Pooh! It doesn’t matter for once! Later on we can dine on potatoes
and herrings.”

“Can you eat potatoes and herrings?”

“I should think so!”

“When you have been drinking more than is good for you, and expect a
beefsteak after the herring?”

“Nonsense! Nothing of the kind! Your health, sweetheart! The game is
excellent! So are these artichokes!”

“No, but you are mad, darling! Artichokes at this time of the year!
What a bill you will have to pay!”

“Bill! Aren’t they good? Don’t you think that it is glorious to be
alive? Oh! It’s splendid, splendid!”

At six o’clock in the afternoon a carriage drove up to the front door.
The young wife would have been angry if it had not been so pleasant to
loll luxuriously on the soft cushions, while they were being slowly
driven to the Deer Park.

“It’s just like lying on a couch,” whispered Lewis.

She playfully hit his fingers with her sunshade. Mutual acquaintances
bowed to them from the footpath. Friends waved their hands to him as
if they were saying:

“Hallo! you rascal, you have come into a fortune!”

How small the passers-by looked, how smooth the street was, how pleasant
their ride on springs and cushions!

Life should always be like that.

It went on for a whole month. Balls, visits, dinners, theatres.
Sometimes, of course, they remained at home. And at home it was more
pleasant than anywhere else. How lovely, for instance, to carry off
one’s wife from her parents’ house, after supper, without saying as
much as “by your leave,” put her into a closed carriage, slam the
door, nod to her people and say: “Now we’re off home, to our own four
walls! And there we’ll do exactly what we like!”

And then to have a little supper at home and sit over it, talking and
gossiping until the small hours of the morning.

Lewis was always very sensible at home, at least in theory. One day
his wife put him to the test by giving him salt salmon, potatoes
boiled in milk and oatmeal soup for dinner. Oh! how he enjoyed it! He
was sick of elaborate menus.

On the following Friday, when she again suggested salt salmon for
dinner, Lewis came home, carrying two ptarmigans! He called to her
from the threshold:

“Just imagine, Lou, a most extraordinary thing happened! A most
extraordinary thing!”

“Well, what is it?”

“You’ll hardly believe me when I tell you that I bought a brace of
ptarmigans, bought them myself at the market for--guess!”

His little wife seemed more annoyed than curious.

“Just think! One crown the two!”

“I have bought ptarmigans at eightpence the brace; but--” she added in
a more conciliatory tone, so as not to upset him altogether, “that was
in a very cold winter.”

“Well, but you must admit that I bought them very cheaply.”

Was there anything she would not admit in order to see him happy?

She had ordered boiled groats for dinner, as an experiment. But after
Lewis had eaten a ptarmigan, he regretted that he could not eat as
much of the groats as he would have liked, in order to show her that
he was really very fond of groats. He liked groats very much indeed--milk
did not agree with him after his attack of ague. He couldn’t take milk,
but groats he would like to see on his table every evening, every blessed
evening of his life, if only she wouldn’t be angry with him.

And groats never again appeared on his table.

When they had been married for six weeks, the young wife fell ill. She
suffered from headaches and sickness. It could not be anything serious,
just a little cold. But this sickness? Had she eaten anything which had
disagreed with her? Hadn’t all the copper vessels new coatings of tin?
He sent for the doctor. The doctor smiled and said it was all right.

“What was all right? Oh! Nonsense! It wasn’t possible. How could it
have been possible? No, surely, the bed-room paper was to blame. It
must contain arsenic. Let us send a piece to the chemist’s at once and
have it tested.”

“Entirely free from arsenic,” reported the chemist.

“How strange! No arsenic in the wall papers?”

The young wife was still ill. He consulted a medical book and whispered
a question in her ear. “There now! a hot bath!”

Four weeks later the midwife declared that everything was “as it
should be.”

“As it should be? Well, of course! Only it was somewhat premature!”

But as it could not, be helped, they were delighted. Fancy, a baby!
They would be papa and mama! What should they call him? For, of course,
it would be a boy. No doubt, it would. But now she had a serious
conversation with her husband! There had been no translating or
proof-correcting since their marriage. And his salary alone was not
sufficient.

“Yes, they had given no thought to the morrow. But, dear me, one was
young only once! Now, however, there would be a change.”

On the following morning the assistant called on an old schoolfriend,
a registrar, to ask him to stand security for a loan.

“You see, my dear fellow, when one is about to become a father, one
has to consider how to meet increasing expenses.”

“Quite so, old man,” answered the registrar, “therefore I have been
unable to get married. But you are fortunate in having the means.”

The assistant hesitated to make his request. How could he have the
audacity to ask this poor bachelor to help him to provide the expenses
for the coming event? This bachelor, who had not the means to found a
family of his own? He could not bring himself to do it.

When he came home to dinner, his wife told him that two gentlemen had
called to see him.

“What did they look like? Were they young? Did they wear eye-glasses?
Then there was no doubt, they were two lieutenants, old friends of his
whom he had met at Vaxholm.”

“No, they couldn’t have been lieutenants; they were too old for that.”

“Then he knew; they were old college friends from Upsala, probably P.
who was a lecturer, and O. who was a curate, now. They had come to see
how their old pal was shaping as a husband.”

“No, they didn’t come from Upsala, they came from Stockholm.”

The maid was called in and cross-examined. She thought the callers had
been shabbily dressed and had carried sticks.

“Sticks! I can’t make out what sort of people they can have been.
Well, we’ll know soon enough, as they said they would call again. But
to change the subject, I happened to see a basket of hothouse
strawberries at a really ridiculous price; it really is absurd! Just
imagine, hothouse strawberries at one and sixpence a basket! And at
this time of the year!”

“But, my darling, what is this extravagance to lead to?”

“It’ll be all right. I have got an order for a translation this very day.”

“But you are in debt, Lewis?”

“Trifles! Mere nothings! It’ll be all right when I take up a big loan,
presently.”

“A loan! But that’ll be a new debt!”

“True! But there’ll be easy terms! Don’t let’s talk business now! Aren’t
these strawberries delicious? What? A glass of sherry with them would be
tip-top. Don’t you think so? Lina, run round to the stores and fetch a
bottle of sherry, the best they have.”

After his afternoon nap, his wife insisted on a serious conversation.

“You won’t be angry, dear, will you?”

“Angry? I! Good heavens, no! Is it about household expenses?”

“Yes! We owe money at the stores! The butcher is pressing for payment;
the man from the livery stables has called for his money; it’s most
unpleasant.”

“Is that all? I shall pay them to the last farthing to-morrow. How
dare they worry you about such trifles? They shall be paid to-morrow,
but they shall lose a customer. Now, don’t let’s talk about it any
more. Come out for a walk. No carriage! Well, we’ll take the car to
the Deer Park, it will cheer us up.”

They went to the Deer Park. They asked for a private room at the
restaurant, and people stared at them and whispered.

“They think we are out on a spree,” he laughed. “What fun! What madness!”

But his wife did not like it.

They had a big bill to pay.

“If only we had stayed at home! We might have bought such a lot of things
for the money.”

Months elapsed. The great event was coming nearer and nearer. A cradle
had to be bought and baby-clothes. A number of things were wanted. The
young husband was out on business all day long. The price of wheat had
risen. Hard times were at hand. He could get no translations, no
proof-correcting. Men had become materialists. They didn’t spend money
on books, they bought food. What a prosaic period we were living in!
Ideals were melting away, one after the other, and ptarmigans were not
to be had under two crowns the brace. The livery stables would not
provide carriages for nothing for the cab-proprietors had wives and
families to support, just as everybody else; at the stores cash had to
be paid for goods, Oh! what realists they all were!

The great day had come at last. It was evening. He must run for the
midwife. And while his wife suffered all the pangs of childbirth, he
had to go down into the hall and pacify the creditors.

At last he held a daughter in his arms. His tears fell on the baby,
for now he realised his responsibility, a responsibility which he was
unable to shoulder. He made new resolutions. But his nerves were
unstrung. He was working at a translation which he seemed unable to
finish, for he had to be constantly out on business.

He rushed to his father-in-law, who was staying in town, to bring him
the glad news.

“We have a little daughter!”

“Well and good,” replied his father-in-law; “can you support a child?”

“Not at present; for heaven’s sake, help us, father!”

“I’ll tide you over your present difficulties. I can’t do more. My
means are only sufficient to support my own family.”

The patient required chickens which he bought himself at the market,
and wine at six crowns the bottle. It had to be the very best.

The midwife expected a hundred crowns.

“Why should we pay her less than others? Hasn’t she just received a
cheque for a hundred crowns from the captain?”

Very soon the young wife was up again. She looked like a girl, as
slender as a willow, a little pale, it was true, but the pallor suited
her.

The old man called and had a private conversation with his son-in-law.

“No more children, for the present,” he said, “or you’ll be ruined.”

“What language from a father! Aren’t we married! Don’t we love one
another? Aren’t we to have a family?”

“Yes, but not until you can provide for them. It’s all very fine to
love one another, but you musn’t forget that you have responsibilities.”

His father-in-law, too, had become a materialist. Oh! what a miserable
world it was! A world without ideals!

The home was undermined, but love survived, for love was strong, and
the hearts of the young couple were soft. The bailiff, on the contrary,
was anything but soft. Distraint was imminent, and bankruptcy threatened.
Well, let them distrain then!

The father-in-law arrived with a large travelling coach to fetch his
daughter and grand-child. He warned his son-in-law not to show his
face at his house until he could pay his debts and make a home for his
wife and child. He said nothing to his daughter, but it seemed to him
that he was bringing home a girl who had been led astray. It was as if
he had lent his innocent child to a casual admirer and now received
her back “dishonoured.” She would have preferred to stay with her
husband, but he had no home to offer her.

And so the husband of one year’s standing was left behind to watch the
pillaging of his home, if he could call it his home, for he had paid
for nothing. The two men with spectacles carted away the beds and
bedclothes; the copper kettles and tin vessels; the dinner set, the
chandelier and the candlesticks; everything, everything!

He was left alone in the two empty, wretched rooms! If only _she_ had
been left to him! But what should she do here, in these empty rooms?
No, she was better off where she was! She was being taken care of.

Now the struggle for a livelihood began in bitter earnest. He found
work at a daily paper as a proof-corrector. He had to be at the office
at midnight; at three in the morning his work was done. He did not
lose his berth, for bankruptcy had been avoided, but he had lost all
chance of promotion.

Later on he is permitted to visit wife and child once a week, but he
is never allowed to see her alone. He spends Saturday night in a tiny
room, close to his father-in-law’s bedroom. On Sunday morning he has
to return to town, for the paper appears on Monday morning.... He says
good-bye to his wife and child who are allowed to accompany him as far
as the garden gate, he waves his hand to them once more from the
furthest hillock, and succumbs to his wretchedness, his misery, his
humiliation. And she is no less unhappy.

He has calculated that it will take him twenty years to pay his debts.
And then? Even then he cannot maintain a wife and child. And his
prospects? He has none! If his father-in-law should die, his wife and
child would be thrown on the street; he cannot venture to look forward
to the death of their only support.

Oh! How cruel it is of nature to provide food for all her creatures,
leaving the children of men alone to starve! Oh! How cruel, how cruel!
that life has not ptarmigans and strawberries to give to all men. How
cruel! How cruel!




COMPELLED TO


Punctually at half past nine on a winter evening he appears at the
door leading to the glass-roofed verandah of the restaurant. While,
with mathematical precision, he takes off his gloves, he peers over
his dim spectacles, first to the right, then to the left, to find out
whether any of his acquaintances are present. Then he hangs up his
overcoat on its special hook, the one to the right of the fireplace.
Gustav, the waiter, an old pupil of his, flies to his table and,
without waiting for an order, brushes the crumbs off the tablecloth,
stirs up the mustard, smooths the salt in the salt-cellar and turns
over the dinner napkin. Then he fetches, still without any order, a
bottle of Medhamra, opens half a bottle of Union beer and, merely for
appearance sake, hands the schoolmaster the bill of fare.

“Crabs?” he asks, more as a matter of form than because there is any
need of the question.

“Female crabs,” answers the schoolmaster.

“Large, female crabs,” repeats Gustav, walks to the speaking tube
which communicates with the kitchen, and shouts: “Large female crabs
for Mr. Blom, and plenty of dill.”

He fetches butter and cheese, cuts two very thin slices of rye-bread,
and places them on the schoolmaster’s table. The latter has in the
meantime searched the verandah for the evening papers, but has only
found the official _Post_. To make up for this very poor success, he
takes the _Daily Journal_, which he had not had time to finish at
lunch, and after first opening and refolding the _Post_, and putting
it on the top of the bread basket on his left, sits down to read it.
He ornaments the rye-bread with geometrical butter hieroglyphics, cuts
off a piece of cheese in the shape of a rectangle, fills his liqueur
glass three quarters full and raises it to his lips, hesitates as if
the little glass contained physic, throws back his head and says: Ugh!

He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until the
day of his death.

As soon as the crabs, six of them, have been put before him, he
examines them as to their sex, and everything being as it should be,
makes ready to enjoy himself. He tucks a corner of his dinner napkin
into his collar, places two slices of thin bread and cheese by the
side of his plate and pours out a glass of beer and half a glass of
liqueur. Then he takes the little crab-knife and business begins. He
is the only man in Sweden who knows how to eat a crab, and whenever he
sees anybody else engaged in the same pursuit, he tells him that he
has no idea how to do it. He makes an incision all round the head, and
a hole against which he presses his lips and begins to suck.

“This,” he says, “is the best part of the whole animal.”

He severs the thorax from the lower part, puts his teeth to the body
and drinks deep draughts; he sucks the little legs as if they were
asparagus, eats a bit of dill, and takes a drink of beer and a mouthful
of rye-bread. When he has carefully taken the shell off the claws and
sucked even the tiniest tubes, he eats the flesh; last of all he attacks
the lower part of the body. When he has eaten three crabs, he drinks half
a glass of liqueur and reads the promotions in the _Post_.

He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until he
dies.

He was just twenty years old when he first began to patronise the
restaurant, now he is thirty-two, and Gustav has been a waiter for ten
years in the same place. Not one of its frequenters has known the
restaurant longer than the school-master, not even the proprietor who
took it over eight years ago. He has watched generations of diners
come and go; some came for a year, some for two, some for five years;
then they disappeared, went to another restaurant, left the town or
got married. He feels very old, although he is only thirty-two! The
restaurant is his home, for his furnished room is nothing but the
place where he sleeps.

It is ten o’clock. He leaves his table and goes to the back room where
his grog awaits him. This is the time when the bookseller arrives.
They play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the
second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole
who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his
former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but
they get on with the schoolmaster as if he were a contemporary.

The proprietor has his place behind the counter. He is an old sea
captain who fell in love with the proprietress and married her. She
rules in the kitchen, but the sliding panel is always open, so that
she can keep an eye on the old man, lest he should take a glass too
much before closing time. Not until the gas has been turned out, and
the old man is ready to go to bed, is he allowed a nightcap in the
shape of a stiff glass of rum and water.

At eleven o’clock the young bloods begin to arrive; they approach the
counter diffidently and ask the proprietor in a whisper whether any of
the private rooms upstairs are disengaged, and then there is a rustling
of skirts in the hall and cautious footsteps are creeping upstairs.

“Well,” says the bookseller, who has suddenly found a topic of
conversation, “when are you going to be married, Blom, old man?”

“I haven’t the means to get married,” answered the school-master. “Why
don’t you take a wife to your bosom yourself?”

“No woman would have me, now that my head looks like an old,
leather-covered trunk,” says the bookseller. “And, moreover, there’s
my old Stafva, you know.”

Stafva was a legendary person in whom nobody believed. She was the
incarnation of the bookseller’s unrealised dreams.

“But you, Mr. Potocki?” suggested the schoolmaster.

“He’s been married once, that’s enough,” replies the bookseller.

The Pole nods his head like a metrometer.

“Yes, I was married very happily. Ugh!” he says and finishes his grog.

“Well,” continues the schoolmaster, “if women weren’t such fools, one
might consider the matter; but they are infernal fools.”

The Pole nods again and smiles; being a Pole, he doesn’t understand
what the word fool means.

“I have been married very happily, ugh!”

“And then there is the noise of the children, and children’s clothes
always drying near the stove; and servants, and all day long the smells
from the kitchen. No, thank you! And, perhaps, sleepless nights into the
bargain.”

“Ugh!” added the Pole, completing the sentence.

“Mr. Potocki says ‘ugh’ with the malice of the bachelor who listens to
the complaints of the married man,” remarked the bookseller.

“What did I say?” asks the astonished widower. “Ugh!” says the
bookseller, mimicking him, and the conversation degenerates into a
universal grinning and a cloud of tobacco smoke.

It is midnight. The piano upstairs, which has accompanied a mixed
choir of male and female voices, is silent. The waiter has finished
his countless journeys from the speaking tube to the verandah; the
proprietor enters into his daybook the last few bottles of champagne
which have been ordered upstairs. The three friends rise from their
chairs and go home, two to their “virgin couches,” and the bookseller
to his Stafva.

When schoolmaster Blom had reached his twentieth year, he was compelled
to interrupt his studies at Upsala and accept a post as assistant teacher
at Stockholm. As he, in addition, gave private lessons, he made quite a
good income. He did not ask much of life. All he wanted was peace and
cleanliness. An elderly lady let him a furnished room and there he found
more than a bachelor finds as a rule. She looked after him and was kind
to him; she gave him all the tenderness which nature had intended her to
bestow on the new generation that was to spring from her. She mended his
clothes and looked after him generally. He had lost his mother when he
was a little boy and had never been accustomed to gratuitous kindness;
therefore he was inclined to look upon her services as an interference
with his liberty, but he accepted them nevertheless. But all the same
the public house was his real home. There he paid for everything and
ran up no bills.

He was born in a small town in the interior of Sweden; consequently he
was a stranger in Stockholm. He knew nobody; was not on visiting terms
with any of the families and met his acquaintances nowhere but at the
public-house. He talked to them freely, but never gave them his
confidence, in fact he had no confidence to give. At school he taught
the third class and this gave him a feeling of having been stunted in
his growth. A very long time ago he had been in the third class
himself, had gradually crept up to the seventh, and had spent a few
terms at the University; now he had returned to the third; he had been
there for twelve years without being moved. He taught the second and
third books of Euclid; this was the course of instruction for the
whole year. He saw only a fragment of life; a fragment without
beginning or end; the second and third books. In his spare time he
read the newspapers and books on archaeology. Archaeology is a modern
science, one might almost say a disease of the time. And there is
danger in it, for it proves over and over again that human folly has
pretty nearly always been the same.

Politics was to him nothing but an interesting game of chess--played
for the king, for he was brought up like everybody else; it was an
article of faith with him that nothing which happened in the world,
concerned him, personally; let those look to it whom God had placed in
a position of power. This way of looking at things filled his soul
with peace and tranquillity; he troubled nobody and nothing troubled
him. When he found, as he did occasionally, that an unusually foolish
event had occurred, he consoled himself with the conviction that it
could not have been helped. His education had made him selfish, and
the catechism had taught him that if everybody did his duty, all
things would be well, whatever happened. He did his duty towards his
pupils in an exemplary fashion; he was never late; never ill. In his
private life, too, he was above reproach; he paid his rent on the day
it fell due, never ran up bills at his restaurant, and spent only one
evening a week on pleasure. His life glided along like a railway train
 to the second and, being a clever man, he managed to avoid collisions.
He gave no thought to the future; a truly selfish man never does, for
the simple reason that the future belongs to him for no longer than
twenty or thirty years at the most.

And thus his days passed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Midsummer morning dawned--radiant and sunny as mid-summer morning
should be. The schoolmaster was still in bed, reading a book on the
Art of Warfare in ancient Egypt, when Miss Augusta came into his room
with his breakfast. She had put on his tray some slices of saffron
bread, in honour of the festival, and on his dinner-napkin lay a spray
of elder blossoms. On the previous night she had decorated his room
with branches of the birch-tree, put clean sand and some cowslips in
the spittoon, and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley on the dressing
table.

“Aren’t you going to make an excursion to-day, sir?” she asked, glancing
at the decorations, anxious for a word of thanks or approval.

But Mr. Blom had not even noticed the decorations, and therefore he
answered dryly:

“Haven’t you realised yet that I never make excursions? I hate elbowing
my way through a crowd, and the noise of the children gets on my nerves.”

“But surely you won’t stay in town on such a lovely day! You’ll at least
go to the Deer Park?”

“That would be the very last place I should go to, especially to-day,
when it will be crowded. Oh! no, I’m better off in town, and I wish to
goodness that this holiday nuisance would be stopped.”

“There are plenty of people who say that there aren’t half enough
holidays these days when everybody has to work so hard,” said the old
woman in a conciliatory tone. “But is there anything else you wish,
sir? My sister and I are making an excursion by steamer, and we shan’t
be back until ten o’clock to-night.”

“I hope you’ll enjoy yourselves, Miss Augusta. I want nothing, and am
quite able to look after myself. The caretaker can do my room when I
have gone out.”

Miss Augusta left him alone with his breakfast. When he had eaten it,
he lit a cigar and remained in bed with his _Egyptian Warfare_. The
open window shook softly in the southern breeze. At eight o’clock the
bells, large and small, of the nearest church began to ring, and those
of the other churches of Stockholm, St. Catherine’s, St. Mary’s and
St. Jacob’s, joined in; they tinkled and jingled, enough to make a
heathen tear his hair in despair. When the church bells stopped, a
military band on the bridge of a steamer began to play a set of
quadrilles from _The Weak Point_. The schoolmaster writhed between his
sheets, and would have got out of bed and shut the window if it had
not been so hot. Next there came a rolling of drums, which was
interrupted by the strains of a brass quintet which played, on another
steamer, the Hunter’s Chorus from the _Freischütz_. But the cursed
rolling of drums approached. They were marching at the head of the
Riflemen on their way to camp. Now he was subjected to a medley of
sounds: the Riflemen’s march, the signals, the bells and the brass
bands on the steamers, until at last the whole crash and din was
drowned by the throbbing of the screw.

At ten o’clock he lit his spirit lamp and boiled his shaving water.
His starched shirt lay on his chest of drawers, white and stiff as a
board. It took him a quarter of an hour to push the studs through the
button-holes. He spent half-an-hour in shaving himself. He brushed his
hair as if it were a matter of the utmost importance. When he put on
his trousers, he was careful that the lower ends should not touch the
floor and become dusty.

His room was simply furnished, extremely plain and tidy. It was
impersonal, neutral, like the room in a hotel. And yet he had spent in
it twelve years of his life. Most people collect no end of trifles
during such a period; presents, little superfluous nothings, ornaments.
Not a single engraving, not a supplement to an illustrated magazine
even, which at some time or other had appealed to him, hung on the walls;
no antimacassar, no rug worked by a loving sister, lay on the chairs;
no photograph of a beloved face stood on his writing-table, no
embroidered pen-wiper lay by the side of the ink-stand. Everything had
been bought as cheaply as possible with a view to avoiding unnecessary
expense which might have hampered the owner’s independence.

He leaned out of the window which gave him a view of the street and,
across Artillery Place, of the harbour. In the house opposite a woman
was dressing. He turned away as if something ugly had met his gaze, or
something which might disturb his peace of mind. The harbour was gay
with the fluttering flags on the steamers and sailing-ships, and the
water glittered in the sunshine. A few old women, prayer-book in hand,
passed his window on their way to church. A sentinel with drawn sword
was walking up and down before the Artillery Barracks, glancing
discontentedly at the clock on the tower every now and then to see how
much longer he would have to wait until the relieving guard arrived.
Otherwise the street lay empty and grey in the hot sunshine. His eyes
wandered back to the woman opposite. She was standing before her
looking-glass, powder puff in hand, intent on powdering the corners of
her nose, with a grimace which made her look like a monkey. He left the
window and sat down in his rocking chair.

He made his programme for the day, for he had a vague dread of
solitude. On week days he was surrounded by the school-boys, and
although he had no love for those wild beasts whose taming, or rather
whose efficient acquisition of the difficult art of dissembling, was
his life task, yet he felt a certain void when he was not with them.
Now, during the long summer vacations, he had established a holiday
school, but even so he had been compelled to give the boys short summer
holidays, and, with the exception of meal times when he could always
count on the bookseller and the second violin, he had been alone for
several days.

“At two o’clock,” he mused, “when the guard has been relieved, and the
crowds have dispersed, I’ll go to my restaurant to dine; then I’ll
invite the bookseller to Strömsborg; there won’t be a soul to-day; we
can have coffee there and punch, and stay till the evening when we’ll
return to town and to Rejner’s.” (Rejner’s was the name of his
restaurant in Berzelius Place.)

Punctually at two o’clock he took his hat, brushed himself carefully
and went out.

“I wonder whether there’ll be stewed perch to-day,” he thought. “And
mightn’t one treat oneself to asparagus, as it’s midsummer-day?”

He strolled past the high wall of the Government Bakery. In Berzelius
Park the seats which were usually occupied by the nursemaids of the
rich and their charges, were crowded with the families of the
labourers who had appeared in great numbers with their perambulators.
He saw a mother feeding her baby. She was a large, full-breasted
woman, and the baby’s dimpled hand almost disappeared in her bosom.
The schoolmaster turned away with a feeling of loathing. He was
annoyed to see these strangers in _his_ park. It was very much like
the servants using the drawing-room when their master and mistress had
gone out; moreover, he couldn’t forgive them their plainness.

He arrived at the glass verandah, and put his hand on the door handle,
thinking once more of the stewed perch “with lots of parsley,” when
his eyes fell on a notice on the door. There was no necessity to read
it, he knew its purport: the restaurant was closed on midsummer-day;
he had forgotten it. He felt as if he had run with his head into a
lamp-post. He was furious; first of all with the proprietor for
closing, then with himself for having forgotten that the restaurant
would be closed. It seemed to him so monstrous that he could have
forgotten an incident of such importance, that he couldn’t believe it
and racked his brain to find someone on whom he could lay the blame.
Of course, it was the fault of the proprietor. He had run off the
lines, come into collision. He was done. He sat down on the seat and
almost shed tears of rage.

Thump! a ball hit him right in the middle of his starched shirt front.
Like an infuriated wasp he rose from his seat to find the criminal; a
plain little girl’s face laughed into his; a labourer in his Sunday
clothes and straw hat appeared, took her by the hand and smilingly
expressed a hope that the child had not hurt him; a laughing crowd of
soldiers and servant girls stared at him. He looked round for a
constable for he felt that his rights as a human being had been
encroached upon. But when he saw the constable in familiar conversation
with the child’s mother, he dropped the idea of making a scene, went
straight to the nearest cab-stand, hired a cab, and told the driver
to drive him to the bookseller’s; he could not bear to be alone any
longer.

In the safe shelter of the cab he took out his handkerchief and flicked
the dust from his shirt front.

He dismissed the cab in Goten Street, for he felt sure that he would
find his friend at home. But as he walked upstairs his assurance left
him. Supposing he were out after all!

He was out. Not one of the tenants was at home. His knock sounded
through an empty house; his footsteps re-echoed on the deserted
stairs.

When he was again in the street he was at a loss to know what to do.
He did not know Potocki’s address, and where was he to find an address
book on a day when all the shops were closed?

Without knowing where he was going, he went down the street, past the
harbour, across the bridge. He did not meet a single man he knew. The
presence of the crowd which occupied the town during the absence of
their betters annoyed him, for, like the rest of us, the education
which he had received at school had made an aristocrat of him.

In his first anger he had forgotten his hunger, but now it re-asserted
itself. A new, terrible thought occurred to him, a thought which up to
now he had put away from him out of sheer cowardice: Where was he to
dine? He had started out with plenty of vouchers in his pocket, but
only one crown and fifty öre in coin. The vouchers were only used at
Rejner’s, for convenience sake, and he had spent a crown on his
cabfare.

He found himself again in Berzelius Park. Everywhere he met labourers
and their families, eating what they had brought with them in baskets;
hard-boiled eggs, crabs, pancakes. And the police did not interfere.
On the contrary, he saw a policeman with a sandwich in one hand and a
glass of beer in the other. But what irritated him more than anything
else was the fact that these people whom he despised had the advantage
of him. But why couldn’t he go into a dairy and appease his hunger?
Yes, why not? The very thought of it made him shudder.

After some little reflection he went down to the harbour, intending to
cross over to the Deer Park. He was bound to find acquaintances there
from whom he could borrow money (hateful thought!) for his dinner. And
if so, he would dine at “Hazelmount,” the best restaurant.

The steamer was so crowded that schoolmaster Blom had to stand close
to the engine; the heat at his back was intolerable; his morning coat
was being covered with grease spots, while he stood, with his gaze
rivetted on the untidy head of a servant girl and endured the rancid
smell of the hair-oil. But he did not see a single face he knew.

When he entered the restaurant in the Deer Park, he squared his
shoulders and tried to look as distinguished as possible.

The space before the restaurant was like the auditorium of a theatre
and seemed to serve the same purpose: that is to say, it was a place
where one met one’s friends and showed off. The verandah was occupied
by officers, blue in the face with eating and drinking; with them were
representatives of the foreign Powers, grown old and grey in their
strenuous efforts to protect fellow-countrymen who had got mixed up
with sailors and fishermen in drunken brawls, or assist at Gala
performances, christenings, weddings and funerals. So much for the
aristocracy. In the centre of a large space Mr. Blom suddenly discovered
the chimney sweep of his quarter, the proprietor of a small inn, the
chemist’s assistant and others of the same standing. He watched the
game-keeper in his green coat and silver lace, with his gilt staff,
walking up and down and casting contemptuous glances at the assembled
crowd, as if he were wondering why they were here? The schoolmaster felt
self-conscious under the stare of all those eyes which seemed to say:
“Look at him! there he goes, wondering how to get dinner!” But there was
nothing else for it. He went on to the verandah where the people sat
eating perch and asparagus, and drinking Sauternes and Champagne.

All of a sudden he felt the pressure of a friendly hand on his shoulder,
and as he turned round, he found himself face to face with Gustav, the
waiter, who seized his hand and exclaimed with undisguised pleasure:

“Is that really you, Mr. Blom? How are you?”

But Gustav, the waiter, who was so pleased to find himself for a few
moments the equal of his master, held a piece of wood in his warm hand
and met a pair of eyes which pierced his soul like gimlets. And yet
this same hand had given him ten crowns only yesterday, and the owner
of it had thanked him for six months’ service and attention in the way
one thanks a friend. The waiter went back to his companions and sat
down amongst them, embarrassed and snubbed. But Mr. Blom left the
verandah with bitter thoughts and pushed his way through the crowd; he
fancied that he could hear a mocking: “He hasn’t been able to get
dinner, after all!”

He came to a large open space. There was a puppet-show, and Jasper was
being beaten by his wife. A little further off a sailor was showing
servant girls, soldiers and apprentices their future husband or wife
in a wheel of fortune. They all had had dinner and were enjoying
themselves; for a moment he believed himself their inferior, but only
for a moment; then he remembered that they had not the vaguest idea of
how an Egyptian camp was fortified. The thought gave him back his
self-respect, and he wondered how it was possible that people could be
so degraded as to find pleasure in such childishness.

In the meantime he had lost all inclination to try the other restaurants;
he passed the Tivoli and went further into the heart of the park. Young
men and women were dancing on the grass to the strains of a violin: a
little further off a whole family was camping under an old oak; the head
of the family was kneeling down, in his shirt sleeves, with bare head, a
glass of beer in one hand, a sandwich in the other; his fat, jolly,
clean-shaven face beamed with pleasure and good-nature as he invited his
guests, who were evidently his wife, parents-in-law, brothers,
shop-assistants and servants, to eat, drink and be merry, for to-day was
Midsummer day, all day long. And the jovial fellow made such droll remarks
that the whole party writhed on the grass with amusement. After the
pancake had been produced and eaten with the fingers, and the port bottle
been round, the senior shop-assistant made a speech which was at once so
moving and so witty that the ladies at one moment pressed their
handkerchiefs to their eyes, while the head of the family bit his lips,
and at the next interrupted the speaker with loud laughter and cheers.

The schoolmaster’s mood became more and more morose, but instead of
going away he sat down on a stone under a pinetree and watched “the
animals.”

When the speech was finished and father and mother had been toasted
with cheers and a flourish of trumpets, executed on a concertina,
accompanied by the rattling of all cups and saucers that happened to
be empty, the party rose to play “Third Man,” while mother and
mother-in-law attended to the babies.

“Just like the beasts in the field,” thought the schoolmaster, turning
away, for all that was natural was ugly in his eyes, and only that
which was unnatural could lay any claim to beauty in his opinion,
except, of course, the paintings of “well-known” masters in the
National Museum.

He watched the young men taking off their coats, the young girls
slipping off their cuffs and hanging them on the blackthorn bushes;
then they took up their positions and the game began.

The girls picked up their skirts and threw up their legs so that their
garters, made of blue and red braid such as the grocers sell for tying
up pots, were plainly visible, and whenever the cavalier caught his
lady, he took her in his arms and swung her round so that her skirts
flew; and young and old shrieked so with laughter that the park
re-echoed.

“Is this innocence or corruption?” wondered the schoolmaster.

But evidently the party did not know what the learned word “corruption”
 meant, and that was the reason why they were so merry.

By the time they were tired of playing “Third Man” tea was ready. The
schoolmaster was puzzled to know where the cavaliers had learnt their
fine manners, for they moved about on all fours to offer the girls
sugar and cake; and the straps of their waistcoats stood out like
handles.

“The males showing off before the females!” thought the schoolmaster.
“They don’t know what they are in for.”

He noticed how the head of the family, the jolly fellow, waited on
father and mother-in-law, wife, shop-assistants and servant girls: and
whenever one of them begged him to help himself first, he invariably
answered that there was plenty of time for that.

He watched the father-in-law peeling a willow branch to make a flute
for the little boy; he watched the mother-in-law wash up as if she had
been one of the servants. And he thought that there was something
strange about selfishness, since it could be so cleverly disguised
that it looked as if no one gave more than he received; for it must be
selfishness, it couldn’t be anything else.

They played at forfeits and redeemed every forfeit with kisses, true,
genuine, resounding kisses on the lips; and when the jolly book-keeper
was made to kiss the old oak-tree, his conduct was too absurd for
anything; he embraced and caressed the gnarled trunk as if it had been
a girl whom he had met secretly; everybody shouted with laughter, for
all knew how to do it, although none of them would have liked to be
caught doing it.

The schoolmaster who had begun by watching the spectacle with critical
eyes, fell more and more under the spell of it; he almost believed
himself to be one of the party. He smiled at the sallies of the
shop-assistants, and before an hour was gone the head of the family
had won his whole sympathy. No one could deny that the man was a
comedian of the first rank. He could play “Skin-the-cat”; he could
“walk backwards,” “lie” on the tree-trunks, swallow coins, eat fire,
and imitate all sorts of birds. And when he extracted a saffron cake
from the dress of one of the girls and made it disappear in his right
ear, the schoolmaster laughed until his empty inside ached.

Then the dancing began. The schoolmaster had read in Rabe’s grammar:
Nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and had always looked upon
dancing as a species of insanity. True, he had watched puppies and
calves dancing when they felt frisky, but he did not believe that
Cicero’s maxim applied to the animal world, and he was in the habit of
drawing a sharp line between men and animals. Now, as he sat watching
these young people who were quite sober, and neither hungry nor thirsty,
moving round and round to the slow measures of the concertina, he felt
as if his soul were in a swing which was being kept going by his eyes
and ears, and his right foot beat time gently on the springy turf.

He spent three hours musing and watching, then he rose. He found it
almost difficult to tear himself away; it was just as if he were
leaving a merry party to which he had been invited; but his mood had
changed; he felt more reconciled. He was at peace with the world and
pleasantly tired, as if he had been enjoying himself.

It was evening. Smart carriages passed him, the lady-occupants lolling
on the back seats and looking in their long, white theatre wraps like
corpses in their shrouds; it was fashionable then to look as if one
had been exhumed. The schoolmaster, whose thoughts were running in
another direction, was sure that the ladies must be bored to death and
felt no trace of envy. Below the dusty highroad, far out on the sea,
the steamers with their flags and brass bands were returning from
their pleasure trips; cheers, strains of music and snatches of song
were wafted by the sea breezes to the mountains and the Deer Park.

The schoolmaster had never felt so lonely in his life as he did this
evening in the moving throng. He fancied that everybody was looking at
him compassionately as he made his solitary way through the crowd, and
almost gave way to self-pity. He would have liked to talk to the first
comer, for the mere pleasure of hearing his voice, for in his loneliness
he felt as if he were walking by the side of a stranger. And now his
conscience smote him. He remembered the waiter Gustav, who had been
unable to hide his pleasure at meeting him. Now he had arrived at a
point when he would have given worlds if anybody had met him and shown
any pleasure at the fact. But nobody came.

Yes, somebody did, after all. As he was sitting by himself on the
steamer, a setter, who had lost his master, came to him and put its
head on his knee. The schoolmaster was not particularly fond of dogs,
but he allowed it to stay; he felt it pressing its soft warm body
against his leg, he saw the eyes of the forsaken brute looking at him
in dumb appeal, as if it were asking him to find its master.

But as soon as they landed, the setter ran away. “It needed me no
longer,” thought the schoolmaster, and he walked home and went to bed.

These trifling incidents of Midsummer day had robbed the schoolmaster
of his assurance. They taught him that all foresight, all precautions,
all the clever calculations in the world availed nothing. He felt a
certain instability in his surroundings. Even the public house, his
home, was not to be counted on. It might be closed any day. Moreover,
a certain reserve on the part of Gustav troubled him. The waiter was
as civil as before, more attentive even, but his friendship was gone;
he had lost confidence. It afforded the schoolmaster food for thought,
and whenever a tough piece of meat, or too small a dish of potatoes
was set before him he thought:

“Haha! He’s paying me out!”

It was a bad summer for the schoolmaster: the second violin was out of
town and the book-seller frequented “Mosesheight,” a garden restaurant
in his own district, situated on a hill.

On an evening in autumn the bookseller and the second violin were
sitting at their favourite table, drinking a glass of punch, when
the schoolmaster entered, carrying under his arm a parcel which he
carefully hid in an empty hamper in a cupboard used for all sorts of
lumber. He was ill-tempered and unusually irritable.

“Well, old boy,” the bookseller began for the hundredth time, “and
when are you going to be married?”

“Confound your ‘when are you going to be married!’ As if a man hadn’t
enough trouble without it! Why don’t you get married yourself?”
 growled the schoolmaster.

“Oh! because I have my old Stafva,” answered the bookseller, who always
had a number of stereotyped answers in readiness.

“I was married very happily,” said the Pole, “but my wife is dead,
now, ugh!”

“Is she?” mimicked the schoolmaster; “and the gentleman is a widower?
How am I to reconcile these facts?”

The Pole nodded, for he did not in the least understand what the
schoolmaster was driving at.

The latter felt bored by his friends; their topic of conversation was
always the same; he knew their replies by heart.

Presently he went into the corridor for a few moments to fetch his
cigar-case which he had left in the pocket of his overcoat. The
bookseller instantly raided the cupboard and returned with the
mysterious parcel. As it was not sealed, he opened it quickly; it
contained a beautiful American sleeping-suit; he hung it carefully
over the back of the schoolmaster’s chair.

“Ugh!” said the Pole, grinning, as if he were looking at something
unsightly.

The proprietor of the restaurant who loved a practical joke, bent over
the counter, laughing loudly; the waiter stood rooted to the spot, and
one of the cooks peeped through the door which communicated with the
kitchen.

When the schoolmaster came back and realised the trick played on him,
he grew pale with anger; he immediately suspected the bookseller; but
when his eyes fell on Gustav who was standing in a corner of the room,
laughing, his old obsession returned to him: “He’s paying me out!”
 Without a word he seized his property, threw a few coins on the
counter and left the restaurant.

Henceforth the schoolmaster avoided Rejner’s. The bookseller had heard
that he dined at a restaurant in his own district. This was true. But
he was very discontented! The food was not actually bad, but it was
not cooked to his liking. The waiters were not attentive. He often
thought of returning to Rejner’s, but his pride would not let him. He
had been turned out of his home; in five minutes a bond of many years’
standing had been severed.

A short time after fate struck him a fresh blow. Miss Augusta had
inherited a little fortune in the provinces and had decided to leave
Stockholm on the first of October. The schoolmaster had to look out
for new lodgings.

But he had been spoilt, and there was no pleasing him. He changed his
room every month. There was nothing wrong with the rooms, but they
were not like his old room. It had become such a habit with him to
walk through certain streets, that he often found himself before his
old front door before he realised his mistake. He was like a lost
child.

Eventually he went to live in a boarding house, a solution which he
had always loathed and dreaded. And then his friends lost sight of him
altogether.

One evening, as the Pole was sitting alone over his grog, smoking,
drinking, and nodding with the capacity of the oriental to lapse into
complete stupor, the bookseller burst in on him like a thunderstorm,
flung his hat on the table, and shouted:

“Confound him! Has anybody ever heard anything like it?”

The Pole roused himself from his brandy-and-tobacco Nirvana, and
rolled his eyes.

“I say, confound it! Has anybody ever heard anything like it? He’s
going to be married!”

“Who’s going to be married?” asked the Pole, startled by the
bookseller’s violence and emphatic language.

“Schoolmaster Blom!”

The bookseller expected a glass of grog in exchange for his news. The
proprietor left the counter and came to their table to listen.

“Has she any money?” he asked acutely.

“I don’t think so,” replied the bookseller, conscious of his temporary
importance and selling his wares one by one.

“Is she beautiful?” asked the Pole. “My wife was very beautiful. Ugh!”

“No, she’s not beautiful either,” answered the bookseller, “but
nice-looking.”

“Have you seen her?” enquired the proprietor. “Is she old?” His eyes
wandered towards the kitchen door.

“No, she’s young!”

“And her parents?” continued the proprietor.

“I heard that her father was a brass founder in Orebro.”

“The rascal! Well, I never!” said the proprietor.

“Haven’t I always said so? The man is a born husband,” said the
bookseller.

“We all of us are,” said the proprietor, “and take my word for it, no
one escapes his fate!”

With this philosophical remark he closed the subject and returned to
the counter.

When they had settled that the schoolmaster was not marrying for money,
they discussed the problem of “what the young people were going to live
on.” The bookseller made a guess at the schoolmaster’s salary and “what
he might earn besides by giving private lessons.” When that question,
too, had been settled, the proprietor, who had returned to the table,
asked for details.

“Where had he met her? Was she fair or dark? Was she in love with
him?”

The last question was by no means out of the way; the bookseller
“thought she was,” for he had seen them together, arm in arm, looking
into shop windows.

“But that he, who was such a stick, could fall in love! It was incredible!”

“And what a husband he would make!” The proprietor knew that he was
_devilish particular_ about his food, and that, he said, was a mistake
when one was married.

“And he likes a glass of punch in the evening, and surely a married
man can’t drink punch every evening of his life. And he doesn’t like
children! It won’t turn out well,” he whispered. “Take my word for it,
it won’t turn out well. And, gentlemen, there’s another thing,” (he
rose from his seat, looked round and continued in a whisper), “I believe,
I’m hanged if I don’t, that the old hypocrite has had a love affair of
some sort. Do you remember that incident, gentlemen, with
the--hihihi--sleeping suit? He’s one of those whom you don’t find where
you leave them! Take care, Mrs. Blom! Mind what you are about! I’ll say
no more!”

It was certainly a fact that the schoolmaster was engaged to be
married and that the wedding was to take place within two months.

What happened after, does not belong to this story, and, moreover, it
is difficult to know what goes on behind the convent walls of
domesticity when the vow of silence is being kept.

It was also a fact that the schoolmaster, after his marriage, was never
again seen at a public house.

The bookseller, who met him by himself in the street one evening, had
to listen to a long exhortation on getting married. The schoolmaster
had inveighed against all bachelors; he had called them egotists, who
refused to do their duty by the State; in his opinion they ought to be
heavily taxed, for all indirect taxes weighed most cruelly on the
father of a family. He went so far as to say that he wished to see
bachelorhood punished by the law of the land as a “crime against
nature.”

The bookseller had a good memory. He said that he doubted the
advisability of taking a _fool_ into one’s house, permanently. But the
schoolmaster replied that _his_ wife was the most intelligent woman he
had ever met.

Two years after the wedding the Pole saw the schoolmaster and his wife
in the theatre; he thought that they looked happy; “ugh!”

Another three years went by. On a Midsummer day the proprietor of the
restaurant made a pleasure trip on the Lake of Mälar to Mariafred.
There, before Castle Cripsholm, he saw the schoolmaster, pushing a
perambulator over a green field, and carrying in his disengaged hand a
basket containing food, while a whole crowd of young men and women,
“who looked like country folk,” followed in the rear. After dinner the
schoolmaster sang songs and turned somersaults with the youngsters. He
looked ten years younger and had all the ways of a ladies’ man.

The proprietor, who was quite close to the party while they were
having dinner, overheard a little conversation between Mr. and Mrs.
Blom. When the young wife took a dish of crabs from the basket, she
apologised to Albert, because she had not been able to buy a single
female crab in the whole market. Thereupon the schoolmaster put his
arm round her, kissed her and said that it didn’t matter in the least,
because male or female crabs, it was all the same to him. And when one
of the babies in the perambulator began to cry, the schoolmaster
lifted it out and hushed it to sleep again.

Well, all these things are mere details, but how people can get married
and bring up a family when they have not enough for themselves while
they are bachelors, is a riddle to me. It almost looks as if babies
brought their food with them when they come into this world; it really
almost does look as if they did.




COMPENSATION


He was considered a genius at College, and no one doubted that he
would one day distinguish himself. But after passing his examinations,
he was obliged to go to Stockholm and look out for a berth. His
dissertation, which was to win him the doctor’s degree, had to be
postponed. As he was very ambitious, but had no private means, he
resolved to marry money, and with this object in view, he visited only
the very best families, both at Upsala where he studied for the bar, and
later on at Stockholm. At Upsala he always fraternised with the new
arrivals, that is to say, when they were members of aristocratic families,
and the freshers felt flattered by the advances made by the older man.
In this way he formed many useful ties, which meant invitations to his
friends’ country houses during the summer.

The country houses were his happy hunting ground. He possessed social
talents, he could sing and play and amuse the ladies, and consequently
he was a great favourite. He dressed beyond his means; but he never
borrowed money from any of his friends or aristocratic acquaintances.
He even went to the length of buying two worthless shares and mentioning
on every possible occasion that he had to attend a General Meeting of
the shareholders.

For two summers he had paid a great deal of attention to a titled lady
who owned some property, and his prospects were the general topic,
when he suddenly disappeared from high life and became engaged to a
poor girl, the daughter of a cooper, who owned no property whatever.

His friends were puzzled and could not understand how he could thus
stand in his own light. He had laid his plans so well, he “had but to
stretch out his hand and success was in his grasp”; he had the morsel
firmly stuck on his fork, it was only necessary for him to open his
mouth and swallow it. He himself was at a loss to understand how it
was that the face of a little girl whom he had met but once on a steamer
could have upset all his plans of many years’ standing. He was bewitched,
obsessed.

He asked his friends whether they didn’t think her beautiful?

Frankly speaking they didn’t.

“But she is so clever! Just look into her eyes! What expressive eyes
she has!”

His friends could see nothing and hear less, for the girl never opened
her lips.

But he spent evening after evening with the cooper’s family; to be
sure, the cooper was a very intelligent man! On his knees before her
(a trick often practised at the country houses) he held her skeins of
wool; he played and sang to her, talked about religion and the drama,
and he always read acquiescence in her eyes. He wrote poetry about
her, and sacrificed at her shrine his laurels, his ambitious dreams,
even his dissertation.

And then he married her.

The cooper drank too much at the wedding and made an improper speech
about girls in general. But the son-in-law found the old man so
unsophisticated, so amiable, that he egged him on instead of shutting
him up. He felt at his ease among these simple folk; in their midst he
could be quite himself.

“That’s being in love,” said his friends. “Love is a wonderful thing.”

And now they were married. One month--two months. He was unspeakably
happy. Every evening they spent together and he sang a song to her
about the Rose in the Wood, her favourite song. And he talked about
religion and the drama, and she sat and listened eagerly. But she never
expressed an opinion; she listened in silence and went on with her
crochet work.

In the third month he relapsed into his old habit of taking an afternoon
nap. His wife, who hated being by herself, insisted on sitting by him.
It irritated him, for he felt an overwhelming need to be alone with his
thoughts.

Sometimes she met him on his way home from his office, and her heart
swelled with pride when he left his colleagues and crossed the street
to join her. She took him home in triumph: he was _her_ husband!

In the fourth month he grew tired of her favourite song. It was stale
now! He took up a book and read, and neither of them spoke.

One evening he had to attend a meeting which was followed by a banquet.
It was his first night away from home. He had persuaded his wife to
invite a friend to spend the evening with her, and to go to bed early,
for he did not expect to be home until late.

The friend came and stayed until nine o’clock. The young wife sat in
the drawing-room, waiting, for she was determined not to go to bed
until her husband had returned. She felt too restless to go to sleep.

She sat alone in the drawing-room. What could she do to make the time
pass more quickly? The maid had gone to bed; the grandfather’s clock
ticked and ticked. But it was only ten o’clock when she put away her
crochet work. She fidgeted, moved the furniture about and felt a little
unstrung.

So that was what being married meant! One was torn from one’s early
surroundings, and shut up in three solitary rooms to wait until one’s
husband came home, half intoxicated.--Nonsense! he loved her, and he
was out on business. She was a fool to forget that. But _did_ he love
her still? Hadn’t he refused a day or two ago to hold a skein of wool
for her?--a thing he loved to do before they were married. Didn’t he
look rather annoyed yesterday when she met him before lunch? And--after
all--if he had to attend a business meeting to-night, there was no
necessity for him to be present at the banquet.

It was half-past ten when her musing had reached this point. She was
surprised that she hadn’t thought of these things before. She relapsed
into her dark mood and the dismal thoughts again passed through her
mind, one by one. But now reinforcements had arrived. He never talked
to her now! He never sang to her, never opened the piano! He had told
her a lie when he had said that he couldn’t do without his afternoon
nap, for he was reading French novels all the time.

He had told her a lie!

It was only half-past eleven. The silence was oppressive. She opened
the window and looked out into the street. Two men were standing down
below, bargaining with two women. That was men’s way! If he should
ever do anything like that! She should drown herself if he did.

She shut the window and lighted the chandelier in the bedroom. “One
ought to be able to see what one is about,” he had once said to her on
a certain occasion.--Everything was still so bright and new! The green
coverlet looked like a mown lawn, and the little pillows reminded her
of two white kittens curled up on the grass. The polish of her
dressing-table reflected the light: the mirror had as yet none of
those ugly stains which are made by the splashing of water. The silver
on the back of her hair-brush, her powder-box, her tooth-brush, all
shone and sparkled. Her bedroom slippers were still so new and pretty
that it was impossible to picture them down-at-heel. Everything looked
new, and yet everything seemed to have lost some of its freshness. She
knew all his songs, all his drawing-room pieces, all his words, all
his thoughts. She knew before-hand what he would say when he sat down
to lunch, what he would talk about when they were alone in the
evening.

She was sick of it all. Had she been in love with him? Oh, yes!
Certainly! But was this all then? Was she realising all the dreams of
her girlhood? Were things to go on like this until she died? Yes!
But--but--but--surely they would have children! though there was no
sign of it as yet. Then she would no longer be alone! Then he might go
out as often as he liked, for she would always have somebody to talk
to, to play with. Perhaps it was a baby which she wanted to make her
happy. Perhaps matrimony really meant something more than being a
man’s legitimate mistress. That must be it! But then, he would have to
love her, and he didn’t do that. And she began to cry.

When her husband came home at one o’clock, he was quite sober. But he
was almost angry with her when he found her still up.

“Why didn’t you go to bed?” were the words with which he greeted her.

“How can I go to sleep when I am waiting for you?”

“A fine look out for me! Am I never to go out then? I believe you have
been crying, too?”

“Yes, I have, and how can I help it if you--don’t--love--me--any--more?”

“Do you mean to say I don’t love you because I had to go out on
business?”

“A banquet isn’t business!”

“Good God! Am I not to be allowed to go out? How can women be so
obtrusive?”

“Obtrusive? Yes, I noticed that yesterday, when I met you. I’ll never
meet you again.”

“But, darling, I was with my chief--”

“Huhuhu!”

She burst into tears, her body moved convulsively.

He had to call the maid and ask her to fetch the hot-water bottle.

He, too, was weeping. Scalding tears! He wept over himself, his hardness
of heart, his wickedness, his illusions over everything.

Surely his love for her wasn’t an illusion? He did love her! Didn’t
he? And she said she loved him, too, as he was kneeling before her
prostrate figure, kissing her eyes. Yes, they loved one another! It
was merely a dark cloud which had passed, now. Ugly thoughts, born of
solitude and loneliness. She would never, never again stay alone. They
fell asleep in each other’s arms, her face dimpled with smiles.

But she did not go to meet him on the following day. He asked no
questions at lunch. He talked a lot, but more for the sake of talking
than to amuse her; it seemed as if he were talking to himself.

In the evening he entertained her with long descriptions of the life
at Castle Sjöstaholm; he mimicked the young ladies talking to the
Baron, and told her the names of the Count’s horses. And on the
following day he mentioned his dissertation.

One afternoon he came home very tired. She was sitting in the
drawing-room, waiting for him. Her ball of cotton had fallen on the
floor. In passing, his foot got entangled in the cotton; at his next
step he pulled her crochet work out of her hand and dragged it along;
then he lost his temper and kicked it aside.

She exclaimed at his rudeness.

He retorted that he had no time to bother about her rubbish, and
advised her to spend her time more profitably. He had to think of his
dissertation, if he was to have a career at all. And she ought to
consider the question of how to limit their household expenses.

Things had gone far indeed!

On the next day the young wife, her eyes swollen with weeping, was
knitting socks for her husband. He told her he could buy them cheaper
ready-made. She burst into tears. What was she to do? The maid did all
the work of the house, there was not enough work in the kitchen for
two. She always dusted the rooms. Did he want her to send the maid
away?

“No, no!”

“What did he want, then?”

He didn’t know himself, but he was sure that something was wrong. Their
expenses were too high. That was all. They couldn’t go on living at their
present rate, and then--somehow he could never find time to work at his
dissertation.

Tears, kisses, and a grand reconciliation! But now he started staying
away from home in the evening several times a week. Business! A man
must show himself! If he stays at home, he will be overlooked and
forgotten!

A year had passed; there were no signs of the arrival of a baby. “How
like a little liaison I once had in the old days,” he thought; “there
is only one difference: this one is duller and costs more.” There was
no more conversation, now; they merely talked of household matters.
“She has no brain,” he thought. “I am listening to myself when I am
talking to her, and the apparent depths of her eyes is a delusion, due
to the size of her pupils--the unusual size of her pupils.--”

He talked openly about his former love for her as of something that
was over and done with. And yet, whenever he did so, he felt a pain
in his heart, an irritating, cruel pain, a remorseless pain that could
never die.

“Everything on earth withers and dies,” he mused, “why should her
favourite song alone be an exception to this? When one has heard it
three hundred and sixty-five times, it becomes stale; it can’t be
helped. But is my wife right when she says that our love, also, has
died? No, and yet--perhaps she is. Our marriage is no better than a
vulgar liaison, for we have no child.”

One day he made up his mind to talk the matter over with a married
friend, for were they not both members of the “Order of the Married”?

“How long have you been married?”

“Six years.”

“And does matrimony bore you?”

“At first it did; but when the children came, matters improved.”

“Was that so? It’s strange that we have no child.”

“Not your fault, old man! Tell your wife to go and see a doctor about
it.”

He had an intimate conversation with her and she went.

Six weeks after what a change!

What a bustle and commotion in the house! The drawing-room table was
littered with baby-clothes which were quickly hidden if anybody entered
unexpectedly, and reappeared as quickly if it was only he who had come
in. A name had to be thought of. It would surely be a boy. The midwife
had to be interviewed, medical books had to be bought, and a cradle
and a baby’s outfit.

The baby arrived and it really was a boy! And when he saw the “little
monkey that smelled of butter” clasped to her bosom, which until then
had but been his plaything, he reverently discovered the mother in his
little wife; and “when he saw the big pupils looking at the baby so
intently that they seemed to be looking into the future”, he realised
that there were depths in her eyes after all; depths more profound
than he could fathom for all his drama and religion. And now all his
old love, his dear old love, burst into fresh flames, and there was
something new added to it, which he had dimly divined, but never
realised.

How beautiful she was when she busied herself about the house again!
And how intelligent in all matters concerning the baby!

As for him, he felt a man. Instead of talking of the Baron’s horses
and the Count’s cricket matches, he now talked, too much almost, of
his son.

And when occasionally he was obliged to be out of an evening, he always
longed for his own fireside; not because his wife sat there waiting for
him, like an evil conscience, but because he knew that she was not alone.
And when he came home, both mother and child were asleep. He was almost
jealous of the baby, for there had been a certain charm in the thought
that while he was out, somebody was sitting alone at home, eagerly
awaiting his return.

Now he was allowed his afternoon nap. And as soon as he had gone back
to town, the piano was opened and the favourite song of the _Rose in
the Wood_ was sung, for it was quite new to Harold, and had regained
all its freshness for poor little Laura who hadn’t heard it for so many
days.

She had no time now for crochet work, but there were plenty of
antimacassars in the house. He, on his part, could not spare the time
for his dissertation.

“Harold shall write it,” said the father, for he knew now that his
life would not be over when he came to die.

Many an evening they sat together, as before, and gossiped, but now
both took a share in the conversation, for now she understood what
they were talking about.

She confessed that she was a silly girl who knew nothing about religion
and the drama; but she said that she had always told him so, and that he
had refused to believe it.

But now he believed it less than ever.

They sang the old favourite song, and Harold crowed, they danced to the
tune and rocked the baby’s cradle to it, and the song always retained
its freshness and charm.




FRICTIONS


His eyes had been opened. He realised the perversity of the world, but
he lacked the power to penetrate the darkness and discover the cause
of this perversity; therefore he gave himself up to despair, a
disillusioned man. Then he fell in love with a girl who married
somebody else. He complained of her conduct to his friends, male and
female, but they only laughed at him. For a little while longer he trod
his solitary path alone and misunderstood. He belonged to “society,”
 and joined in its pursuits, because it distracted him; but at the bottom
of his heart he had nothing but contempt for its amusements, which he
took no pains to conceal.

One evening he was present at a ball. He danced with a young woman of
unusual beauty and animation. When the band ceased playing, he remained
standing by her side. He knew he ought to talk to her but he did not
know what to say. After a while the girl broke the silence.

“You are fond of dancing, Baron?” she said with a cold, smile.

“Oh no! not at all,” he answered. “Are you?”

“I can’t imagine anything more foolish,” she replied.

He had met his man, or rather his woman.

“Why do you dance, then?” he asked.

“For the same reason that you do.”

“Can you read my mind?”

“Easily enough; if two people think alike, the other always knows.”

“H’m! You’re a strange woman! Do you believe in love?”

“No!”

“Nor do I! You and I ought to get married.”

“I’m beginning to think so myself.”

“Would you marry me?”

“Why not? At any rate, we shouldn’t fight.”

“Horrible idea! But how can you be so sure?”

“Because we think alike.”

“Yes, but that might become monotonous. We should have nothing to talk
about, because the one would always know what the other is thinking.”

“True; but wouldn’t it be even more monotonous if we remained
unmarried and misunderstood?”

“You are right! Would you like to think it over?”

“Yes, until the cotillon.”

“No longer?”

“Why any longer?”

He took her back to the drawing-room and left her there, drank several
glasses of champagne and watched her during supper. She allowed two
young members of the Diplomatic Corps to wait on her, but made fun of
them all the time and treated them as if they were footmen.

As soon as the cotillon began, he went to her and offered her a bouquet.

“Do you accept me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

And so they were engaged.

It’s a splendid match, said the world. They are made for one another.
They are equals as far as social position and money are concerned.
They hold the same blasé views of life. By blasé the world meant that
they cared very little for dances, theatres, bazaars, and other noble
sports without which life is not really worth living.

They were like carefully wiped twin slates, exactly alike; but utterly
unable to surmise whether or not life would write the same legend on
both. They never asked one another during the tender moments of their
engagement: Do you love me? They knew quite well that it was impossible,
because they did not believe in love. They talked little, but they
understood one another perfectly.

And they married.

He was always attentive, always polite, and they were good friends.

When the baby was born, it had but one effect on their relationship;
they had something to talk about now.

But by-and-by the husband began to reveal a certain energy. He had a
sense of duty, and moreover, he was sick of being idle. He had a
private income, but was in no way connected with politics or the
Government. Now he looked round for some occupation which would fill
the void in his life. He had heard the first morning call of the
awakening spirits and felt it his duty to do his share of the great
work of research into the causes of human misery. He read much, made a
careful study of politics and eventually wrote an article and sent it
to a paper. The consequence was that he was elected a member of the
Board of Education. This necessitated hard reading in future, for all
questions were to be threshed out thoroughly.

The Baroness lay on the sofa and read Chateaubriand and Musset. She
had no faith in the improvement of humanity, and this stirring up of
the dust and mould which the centuries had deposited on human
institutions irritated her. Yet she noticed that she did not keep pace
with her husband. They were like two horses at a race. They had been
weighed before the start and been found to be of the same weight; they
had promised to keep side by side during the run; everything was
calculated to make them finish the race and leave the course at the
same time. But already the husband had gained by the length of a neck.
Unless she hurried up, she was bound to be left behind.

And the latter really happened. In the following year he was made
controller of the budget. He was away for two months. His absence made
the Baroness realise that she loved him; a fact which was brought home
to her by her fear of losing him.

When he returned home, she was all eagerness; but his mind was filled
with the things he had seen and heard abroad. He realised that they
had come to the parting of the ways, but he would have liked to delay
it, prevent it, if possible. He showed her in great living pictures
the functioning of the colossal gigantic machinery of the State, he
tried to explain to her the working of the wheels, the multifarious
transmissions, regulators and detents, unreliable pendulums and
untrustworthy safety valves.

She was interested at first, but after a while her interest waned.
Conscious of her mental inferiority, her insignificance, she devoted
herself entirely to her baby, anxious to demonstrate to her husband
that she yet had a value as a model mother. But her husband did not
appreciate this value. He had married her for the sake of companionship,
and he found in her an excellent nurse for his child. But how could it
be helped now? Who could have foreseen such a thing?

The house was always full of members of Parliament, and politics was
the subject of conversation at dinner. The hostess merely took care
that no fault could be found with the cooking. The Baron never omitted
to have one or two men amongst his guests who could talk to his wife
about music and the drama, but the Baroness wanted to discuss nothing
but the nursery and the bringing up of children. After dessert, as
soon as the health of the hostess was drunk, there was a general
stampede to the smoking-room where the political discussions were
continued. The Baroness left her guests and went to the nursery with a
feeling of bitterness in her heart; she realised that her husband had
so far outdistanced her that she could never again hope to come up
with him.

He worked much at home in the evening; frequently he was busy at his
writing-table until the small hours of the morning, but always behind
locked doors. When he noticed afterwards, as he sometimes did, that
his wife went about with red eyes, he felt a pain in his heart; but
they had nothing to say to each other.

Occasionally however, at those times when his work palled, when he
realised that his inner life was growing poorer and poorer, he felt a
void within him, a longing for warmth, for something intimate, something
he had dreamed of long ago, in the early days of his youth. But every
feeling of that sort he suppressed at once as unfaithfulness to his wife,
for he had a very high conception of the duty of a husband.

To bring a little more variety into her daily life, he suggested one
day that she should invite a cousin of whom she had often spoken, but
whom he had never seen, to spend the winter with them in town.

This had always been a great wish of the Baroness’s, but now that the
realisation of it was within her power, she changed her mind. She did
not want her in the least now. Her husband pressed her for reasons,
but she could not give him any. It roused his curiosity and finally
she confessed that she was afraid of her cousin; afraid that she might
win his heart, that he might fall in love with her.

“She must be a queer girl, we really must have her here!”

The Baroness wept and warned, but the Baron laughed and the cousin
arrived.

One afternoon the Baron came home, tired as usual; he had forgotten
all about the cousin and his curiosity in regard to her. They sat down
to dinner. The Baron asked the cousin if she was fond of the theatre.
She replied that she was not. She preferred reality to make-believe.
At home she had founded a school for black sheep and a society for the
care of discharged prisoners. Indeed! The Baron was much interested in
the administration of prisons. The cousin was able to give him a good
deal of information, and during the rest of the dinner the conversation
was exclusively about prisons. Eventually the cousin promised to treat
the whole question in a paper which the Baron was going to read and work
up.

What the Baroness had foreseen, happened. The Baron contracted a
spiritual marriage with the cousin, and his wife was left out in the
cold. But the cousin was also beautiful, and when she leaned over the
Baron at his writing-desk, and he felt her soft arm on his shoulder
and her warm breath against his cheek, he could not suppress a
sensation of supreme well-being. Needless to say, their conversation
was not always of prisons. They also discussed love. She believed in
the love of the souls, and she stated as plainly as she could, that
marriage without love was prostitution. The Baron had not taken much
interest in the development of modern ideas on love, and found that
her views on the subject were rather hard, but after all she was
probably quite right.

But the cousin possessed other qualities, too, invaluable qualifications
for a true spiritual marriage. She had no objection to tobacco smoke for
instance, in fact, she was very fond of a cigarette herself. There was no
reason, therefore, why she should not go into the smoking-room with the
men after dinner and talk about politics. And then she was charming.

Tortured by little twinges of conscience, the Baron would every now
and then disappear from the smoking-room, go into the nursery, kiss
his wife and child, and ask her how she was getting on? The Baroness
was grateful, but she was not happy. After these little journeys the
Baron always returned to his friends in the best of tempers; one might
have thought that he had faithfully performed a sacred duty. At other
times it irritated and distressed him that his wife did not join the
party in the smoking-room, too, as _his_ wife; this thought was a
burden which weighed quite heavily on him.

The cousin did not go home in the spring, but accompanied the couple
to a watering-place. There she organised little performances for the
benefit of the poor, in which she and the Baron played the parts of
the lovers. This had the inevitable result that the fire burst into
flames. But the flames were only spiritual flames; mutual interests,
like views, and, perhaps, similar dispositions.

The Baroness had ample time to consider her position. The day arrived
when she told her husband that since everything was over between them,
the only decent thing to do was to part. But that was more than he had
bargained for; he was miserable; the cousin had better return to her
parents, and he would prove to his wife that he was a man of honour.

The cousin left. A correspondence between her and the Baron began. He
made the Baroness read every letter, however much she hated doing it.
After a while, however, he gave in and read the letters without showing
them to his wife.

Finally the cousin returned. Then matters came to a crisis. The Baron
discovered that he could not live without her.

What were they to do? Separate? It would be death. Go on as at present?
Impossible! Annul the marriage which the Baron had come to look upon as
legal prostitution and marry his beloved? However painful it might be,
it was the only honest course to take.

But that was against the wishes of the cousin. She did not want it said
of her that she had stolen another woman’s husband. And then the scandal!
the scandal!

“But it was dishonest not to tell his wife everything; it was dishonest
to allow things to go on; one could never tell how the matter would end.”

“What did he mean? How could it end?”

“Nobody could tell!”

“Oh! How dared he! What did he think of her?”

“That she was a woman!”

And he fell on his knees and worshipped her; he said that he did not
care if the administration of prisons and the school for black sheep
went to the devil; he did not know what manner of woman she was; he
only knew that he loved her.

She replied that she had nothing but contempt for him, and went helter
skelter to Paris. He followed at her heels. At Hamburg he wrote a
letter to his wife in which he said that they had made a mistake and
that it was immoral not to rectify it. He asked her to divorce him.

And she divorced him.

A year after these events the Baron and the cousin were married. They
had a child. But that was a fact which did not interfere with their
happiness. On the contrary! What a wealth of new ideas germinated in
their minds in their voluntary exile! How strong were the winds which
blew here!

He encouraged her to write a book on “young criminals.” The press tore
it to pieces. She was furious and swore that she would never write
another book. He asked her whether she wrote for praise, whether she
was ambitious?--She replied by a question: Why did he write?--A little
quarrel arose. He said it was refreshing to hear her express views
which did not echo his own--always his own.--Always his own? What did
he mean? Didn’t she have _views of her own_? She henceforth made it
her business to prove to him on every occasion that she was capable of
forming her own opinions; and to prevent any errors on his part she
took good care that they always differed from his. He told her he did
not care what views she held as long as she loved him.--Love? What about
it? He was no better than other men and, moreover, he had betrayed her.
He did not love her soul, but her body.--No, he loved both, he loved
her, every bit of her!--Oh! How deceitful he had been!--No, he had not
been deceitful, he had merely deceived himself when he believed that he
loved her soul only.

They were tired of strolling up and down the boulevard, and sat down
before a cafe. She lighted a cigarette. A waiter requested her rather
uncivilly, not to smoke. The Baron demanded an explanation and the
waiter said that the cafe was a first-class establishment and the
management was anxious not to drive away respectable people by serving
_these ladies_. They rose from their seats, paid and went away. The
Baron was furious, the young Baroness had tears in her eyes.

“There they had a demonstration of the power of prejudice! Smoking was
a foolish act as far as a man was concerned, but in a woman it was a
crime! Let him who was able to do so, destroy this prejudice! Or, let
us say, him who would care to do so! The Baron had no wish that his
wife should be the first victim, even if it were to win for her the
doubtful honour of having cast aside a prejudice. For it was nothing
else. In Russia, ladies belonging to the best society smoked at the
dinner-table during the courses. Customs changed with the latitudes.
And yet those trifles were not without importance, for life consisted
of trifles. If men and women shared bad habits, intercourse between
them would be less stiff and formal: they would make friends more
easily and keep pace with one another. If they had the same education,
they would have the same interests, and cling together more closely
during the whole of their lives.”

The Baron was silent as if he had said something foolish. But she had
not been listening to him; her thoughts had been far away.

“She had been insulted by a waiter, told that she was not fit to
associate with respectable people. There was more behind that, than
appeared on the surface. She had been recognised. Yes, she was sure of
it, it was not the first time that she had noticed it.”

“What had she noticed?”

“That she had been treated with little respect at the restaurants. The
people evidently did not think that they were married; because they
were affectionate and civil to one another. She had borne it in silence
for a long time, but now she had come to the end of her tether. And yet
this was nothing compared to what they were saying at home!”

“Well, what were they saying? And why had she never told him anything
about it before?”

“Oh! horrible things! The letters she had received! Leaving the
anonymous ones quite out of the question.

“Well, and what about him? Was he not being treated as if he were a
criminal? And yet he had not committed a crime! He had acted according
to all legal requirements, he had not broken his marriage vows. He had
left the country in compliance with the dictates of the law; the Royal
Consistory has granted his appeal for a divorce; the clergy, Holy Church,
had given him his release from the bonds of his first marriage on stamped
paper; therefore he had not broken them! When a country was conquered, a
whole nation was absolved from its oath of loyalty to its monarch; why
did society look askance at the release from a promise? Had it not
conferred the right on the Consistory to dissolve a marriage? How could
it dare to assume the character of a judge now and condemn its own laws?
Society was at war with itself! He was being treated like a criminal!
Hadn’t the secretary of the Embassy, his old friend, on whom he had left
his and his wife’s cards, acknowledged them by simply returning one card
only? And was he not overlooked at all public functions?”

“Oh! She had had to put up with worse things! One of her friends in Paris
had closed her door to her, and several had cut her in the street.”

“Only the wearer of a boot knew where it pinched. The boots which they
were wearing now were real Spanish boots, and they were at war with
society. The upper classes had cut them. The upper classes! This
community of semi-imbeciles, who secretly lived like dogs, but showed
one another respect as long as there was no public scandal; that was to
say as long as one did not honestly revoke an agreement and wait until
it had lapsed before one made use of one’s newly-regained freedom! And
these vicious upper classes were the awarders of social position and
respect, according to a scale on which honesty ranked far below zero.
Society was nothing but a tissue of lies! It was inexplicable that it
hadn’t been found out long ago! It was high time to examine this fine
structure and inquire into the condition of its foundations.”

They were on friendlier terms on arriving home than they had been for
many years. The Baroness stayed at home with her baby, and was soon
expecting a second one. This struggle against the tide was too hard
for her, and she was already growing tired of it. She was tired of
everything! To write in an elegantly furnished, well-heated room on
the subject of discharged prisoners, offering them, at a proper
distance, a well-gloved hand, was a proceeding society approved of;
but to hold out the hand of friendship to a woman who had married a
legally divorced man was quite another thing. Why should it be so? It
was difficult to find an answer.

The Baron fought in the thick of the battle. He visited the Chamber of
Deputies, was present at meetings, and everywhere he listened to
passionate diatribes against society. He read papers and magazines,
kept a keen eye on literature, studied the subject deeply. His wife
was threatened by the same fate which had overtaken the first one; to
be left behind! It was strange. She seemed unable to take in all the
details of his investigations, she disapproved of much of the new
doctrine, but she felt that he was right and fighting for a good
cause. He knew that he could always count on her never-flagging
sympathy; that he had a friend at home who would always stand by him.
Their common fate drove them into each other’s arms like frightened
birds at the approach of a storm. All the womanliness in her,--however
little it may be appreciated now-a-days,--which is after all nothing
but a memory of the great mother, the force of nature which is woman’s
endowment, was roused. It fell on the children like the warm glow of a
fire at eventide; it fell on the husband like a ray of sunshine; it
brought peace to the home. He often wondered how it was that he did
not miss his old comrade, with whom he was wont to discuss everything;
he discovered that his thoughts had gained force and vigour since he
stopped pouring them out as soon as he conceived them; it seemed to
him that he was profiting more by the silent approval, the kindly nod,
the unwavering sympathy. He felt that his strength had increased, that
his views were less under outside control; he was a solitary man, now,
and yet he was less solitary than he had been in the past, for he was
no longer constantly met by contradictions which merely filled his
heart with misgivings.

It was Christmas Eve in Paris. A large Christmas tree, grown in the
wood of St. Germain, stood in their little chalet on the Cours de la
Reine. They were going out after breakfast to buy Christmas presents
for the children. The Baron was pre-occupied, for he had just published
a little pamphlet, entitled: “Do the Upper Classes constitute Society?”
 They were sitting at breakfast in their cosy dining-room, and the doors
which led to the nursery stood wide open. They listened to the nurse
playing with the children, and the Baroness smiled with contentment and
happiness. She had grown very gentle and her happiness was a quiet one.
One of the children suddenly screamed and she rose from the table to see
what was the matter. At the same moment the footman came into the
dining-room with the morning post. The Baron opened two packets of
printed matter. The first was a “big respectable” newspaper. He opened
it and his eyes fell on a headline in fat type: “A Blasphemer!”

He began to read: “Christmas is upon us again! This festival dear to
all pure hearts, this festival sacred to all Christian nations, which
has brought a message of peace and good-will to all men, which makes
even the murderer sheathe his knife, and the thief respect the sacred
law of property; this festival, which is not only of very ancient
origin, but which is also, especially in the countries of the North,
surrounded by a host of historic associations, etc., etc. And then like
foul fumes arising from a drain, an individual suddenly confronts us
who does not scruple to tear asunder the most sacred bonds, who vomits
malice on all respectable members of society; malice, dictated by the
pettiest vengeance....” He refolded the paper and put it into the
pocket of his dressing-gown. Then he opened the second parcel. It
contained caricatures of himself and his wife. It went the same way as
the first, but he had to be quick, for his wife was re-entering the
dining-room. He finished his breakfast and went into his bed-room to
get ready to go out. They left the house together.

The sunlight fell on the frosted plane-trees of the Champs Elysées,
and in the heart of the stony desert the Place de la Concorde opened
out like a large oasis. He felt her arm on his, and yet he had the
feeling as if she were supporting him. She talked of the presents
which they were going to buy for the children, and he tried to force
himself to take an interest in the subject. But all at once he
interrupted her conversation and asked her, à-propos of nothing:

“Do you know the difference between vengeance and punishment?”

“No, I’ve never thought about it.”

“I wonder whether it isn’t this: When an anonymous journalist revenges
himself, it is punishment; but when a well-known writer, who is not a
pressman, fights with an open visor, meting out punishment, then it is
revenge! Let us join the new prophets!”

She begged him not to spoil Christmas by talking of the newspapers.

“This festival,” he muttered, “on which peace and good-will....”

They passed through the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, turned into the
boulevards and made their purchases. They dined at the Grand Hotel.
She was in a sunny frame of mind and tried to cheer him up. But he
remained preoccupied. Suddenly he asked,

“How is it possible that one can have a bad conscience when one has
acted rightly?”

She did not know.

“Is it because the upper classes have so trained us, that our conscience
troubles us whenever we rebel against them? Probably it is so. Why
shouldn’t he who has been hurt unjustly, have the right to attack
injustice? Because only he who has been hurt will attack, and the upper
classes hate being attacked. Why did I not strike at the upper classes
in the past, when I belonged to them? Because, of course, I didn’t know
them then. One must look at a picture from a distance in order to find
the correct visual point!”

“One shouldn’t talk about such things on Christmas Eve!”

“True, it is Christmas. This festival of....”

They returned home. They lit the candles on the Christmas tree; it
radiated peace and happiness; but its dark branches smelt of a funeral
and looked sinister, like the Baron’s face. The nurse came in with the
little ones. His face lighted up, for, he thought, when they are grown
up they will reap in joy what we have sown in tears; then their
conscience will only trouble them when they have sinned against the
laws of nature; they won’t have to suffer from whims which have been
caned into us at school, drummed into us by the parsons, invented by
the upper classes for their own benefit.

The Baroness sat down at the piano when the maids and the footmen
entered. She played melancholy old dances, dear to the heart of the
people of the North, while the servants danced gravely with the
children. It was very much like the penitential part of divine
service.

After that the presents were distributed among the children, and the
servants received their gifts. And then the children were put to bed.

The Baroness went into the drawing-room and sat down in an arm-chair.
The Baron threw himself on a footstool at her feet. He rested his head
on her knees. It was so heavy--so heavy. She silently stroked his
forehead. “What! was he weeping?”

“Yes!”

She had never before seen a man weep. It was a terrible sight. His big
strong frame shook, but he made no sound.

“Why was he weeping?”

“Because he was unhappy.”

“Unhappy with her?”

“No, no, not with her, but still, unhappy.”

“Had anybody treated him badly?”

“Yes!”

“Couldn’t he tell her all about it?”

“No, he only wanted to sit at her knees, as he used to sit long ago,
at his mother’s.”

She talked to him as if he had been a child. She kissed his eyes and
wiped his face with her handkerchief. She felt so proud, so strong,
there were no tears in her eyes. The sight of her inspired him with
new courage.

“How weak he had been! That he should have found the machine-made
attacks of his opponents so hard to bear! Did his enemies really
believe what they said?”

“Terrible thought! Probably they did. One often found stones firmly
grown into pine-trees, why should not opinions grow into the brain in
the same way? But she believed in him, she knew that he was fighting
for a good cause?”

“Yes, she believed it! But--he must not be angry with her for asking
him such a question--but--did he not miss his child, the first one?”

“Yes, certainly, but it could not be helped. At least, not yet! But he
and the others who were working for the future would have to find a
remedy for that, too. He did not know, yet, what form that remedy
would take, but stronger brains than his, and many together, would
surely one day solve this problem which at present seemed insolvable.”

“Yes, she hoped it would be so.”

“But their marriage? Was it a marriage in the true sense of the word,
seeing that he couldn’t tell her what troubled him? Wasn’t it, too,
pro...?”

“No, it was a true marriage, for they loved one another. There had
been no love between him and his first wife. But he and she did love
one another, could she deny it?”

“She couldn’t, he was her dear love.” Then their marriage was a true
marriage before God and before Nature.




UNNATURAL SELECTION OR THE ORIGIN OF RACE


The Baron had read in _The Slaves of Life_ with disgust and indignation
that the children of the aristocracy were bound to perish unless they
took the mothers’ milk from the children of the lower classes. He had
read Darwin and believed that the gist of his teaching was that through
selection the children of the aristocracy had come to be more highly
developed representatives of the genus “Man.” But the doctrine of
heredity made him look upon the employment of a foster-mother with
aversion; for might not, with the blood of the lower classes, certain
conceptions, ideas and desires be introduced and propagated in the
aristocratic nursling? He was therefore determined that his wife should
nurse her baby herself, and if she should prove incapable of doing so,
the child should be brought up with the bottle. He had a right to the
cows’ milk, for they fed on his hay; without it they would starve, or
would not have come into existence at all. The baby was born. It was a
son! The father had been somewhat anxious before he became certain of
his wife’s condition, for he was, personally, a poor man; his wife, on
the other hand, was very wealthy, but he had no claim to her fortune
unless their union was blest with a legal heir, (in accordance with the
law of entail chap. 00 par. 00). His joy was therefore great and genuine.
The baby was a transparent little thoroughbred, with blue veins shining
through his waxen skin. Nevertheless his blood was poor. His mother who
possessed the figure of an angel, was brought up on choice food, protected
by rich furs from all the eccentricities of the climate, and had that
aristocratic pallor which denotes the woman of noble descent.

She nursed the baby herself. There was consequently no need to become
indebted to peasant women for the privilege of enjoying life on this
planet. Nothing but fables, all he had read about it! The baby sucked
and screamed for a fortnight. But all babies scream. It meant nothing.
But it lost flesh. It became terribly emaciated. The doctor was sent
for. He had a private conversation with the father, during which he
declared that the baby would die if the Baroness continued to nurse
him, because she was firstly too highly strung, and secondly had
nothing with which to feed him. He took the trouble to make a
quantitative analysis of the milk, and proved (by equations) that the
child was bound to starve unless there was a change in the method of
his feeding.

What was to be done? On no account could the baby be allowed to die.

Bottle or foster mother? The latter was out of the question. Let us
try the bottle! The doctor, however, prescribed a foster mother.

The best Dutch cow, which had received the gold medal for the district,
was isolated and fed with hay; with dry hay of the finest quality. The
doctor analysed the milk, everything was all right. How simple the system
was! How strange that they had not thought of it before! After all, one
need not engage a foster mother a tyrant before whom one had to cringe,
a loafer one had to fatten; not to mention the fact that she might have
an infectious disease.

But the baby continued to lose flesh and to scream. It screamed night
and day. There was no doubt it suffered from colic. A new cow was
procured and a fresh analysis made. The milk was mixed with Karlsbad
water, genuine Sprudel, but the baby went on screaming.

“There’s no remedy but to engage a foster mother,” said the doctor.

“Oh! anything but that! One did not want to rob other children, it was
against nature, and, moreover, what about heredity?”

When the Baron began to talk of things natural and unnatural, the
doctor explained to him that if nature were allowed her own way, all
noble families would die out and their estates fall to the crown. This
was the wisdom of nature, and human civilization was nothing but a
foolish struggle against nature, in which man was bound to be beaten.
The Baron’s race was doomed; this was proved by the fact that his wife
was unable to feed the fruit of her womb; in order to live they were
bound to buy or steal the milk of other women. Consequently the race
lived on robbery, down to the smallest detail.

“Could the purchase of the milk be called robbery? The purchase of
it!”

“Yes, because the money with which it was bought was produced by labour.
Whose labour? The people’s! For the aristocracy didn’t work.”

“The doctor was a socialist!”

“No, a follower of Darwin. However, he didn’t care in the least if they
called him a socialist. It made no difference to him.”

“But surely, purchase was not robbery! That was too strong a word!”

“Well, but if one paid with money one hadn’t earned!”

“That was to say, earned by manual labour?”

“Yes!”

“But in that case the doctor was a robber too!”

“Quite so! Nevertheless he would not hold back with the truth! Didn’t
the Baron remember the repenting thief who had spoken such true words?”

The conversation was interrupted; the Baron sent for a famous professor.
The latter called him a murderer straight out, because he had not
engaged a nurse long ago.

The Baron had to persuade his wife. He had to retract all his former
arguments and emphasize the one simple fact, namely, the love for his
child, (regulated by the law of entail).

But where was a foster mother to come from? It was no use thinking of
looking for one in town, for there all people were corrupt. No, it
would have to be a country girl. But the Baroness objected to a girl
because, she argued, a girl with a baby was an immoral person; and her
son might contract a hereditary tendency.

The doctor retorted that all foster mothers were unmarried women and
that if the young Baron inherited from her a preference for the other
sex, he would grow into a good fellow; tendencies of that sort ought
to be encouraged. It was not likely that any of the farmers’ wives
would accept the position, because a farmer who owned land, would
certainly prefer to keep his wife and children with him.

“But supposing they married a girl to a farm labourer?”

“It would mean a delay of nine months.”

“But supposing they found a husband for a girl who had a baby?”

“That wasn’t a bad idea!”

The Baron knew a girl who had a baby just three months old. He knew
her only too well, for he had been engaged for three years and had
been unfaithful to his fiancee by “doctor’s orders.” He went to her
himself and made his suggestion. She should have a farm of her own if
she would consent to marry Anders, a farm labourer, and come to the
Manor as foster mother to the young Baron. Well, was it strange that
she should accept the proffered settlement in preference to her bearing
her disgrace alone? It was arranged there and then that on the following
Sunday the banns should be read for the first, second and third time,
and that Anders should go home to his own village for two months.

The Baron looked at her baby with a strange feeling of envy. He was a
big, strong boy. He was not beautiful, but he looked like a guarantee
of many generations to come. The child was born to live but it was not
his fate to fulfil his destination.

Anna wept when he was taken to the orphanage, but the good food at the
Manor (her dinner was sent up to her from the dining-room, and she had
as much porter and wine as she wanted) consoled her. She was also
allowed to go out driving in the big carriage, with a footman by the
side of the coachman. And she read _A Thousand and One Nights_. Never
in all her life had she been so well off.

After an absence of two months Anders returned. He had done nothing
but eat, drink, and rest. He took possession of the farm, but he also
wanted his Anna. Couldn’t she, at least, come and see him sometimes?
No, the Baroness objected. No nonsense of that sort!

Anna lost flesh and the little Baron screamed. The doctor was
consulted.

“Let her go and see her husband,” he said.

“But supposing it did the baby harm?”

“It won’t!”

But Anders must be “analysed” first. Anders objected.

Anders received a present of a few sheep and was “analysed.”

The little Baron stopped screaming.

But now news came from the orphanage that Anna’s boy had died of
diphtheria.

Anna fretted, and the little Baron screamed louder than ever. She was
discharged and sent back to Anders and a new foster mother was
engaged.

Anders was glad to have his wife with him at last, but she had
contracted expensive habits. She couldn’t drink Brazilian coffee, for
instance, it had to be Java. And her health did not permit her to eat
fish six times a week, nor could she work in the fields. Food at the
farm grew scarce.

Anders would have been obliged to give up the farm after twelve months,
but the Baron had a kindly feeling for him and allowed him to stay on as
a tenant.

Anna worked daily at the Manor and frequently saw the little Baron;
but he did not recognise her and it was just as well that he did not.
And yet he had lain at her breast! And she had saved his life by
sacrificing the life of her own child. But she was prolific and had
several sons, who grew up and were labourers and railway men; one of
them was a convict.

But the old Baron looked forward with anxiety to the day on which his
son should marry and have children in his turn. He did not look strong!
He would have been far more reassured if the other little Baron, the
one who had died at the orphanage, had been the heir to the estates.
And when he read _The Slaves of Life_ a second time, he had to admit
that the upper classes live at the mercy of the lower classes, and when
he read Darwin again he could not deny that natural selection, in our
time, was anything but natural. But facts were facts and remained
unalterable, in spite of all the doctor and the socialists might say
to the contrary.




AN ATTEMPT AT REFORM


She had noticed with indignation that girls were solely brought up to
be housekeepers for their future husbands. Therefore she had learnt a
trade which would enable her to keep herself in all circumstances of
life. She made artificial flowers.

He had noticed with regret that girls simply waited for a husband who
should keep them; he resolved to marry a free and independent woman
who could earn her own living; such a woman would be his equal and a
companion for life, not a housekeeper.

Fate ordained that they should meet. He was an artist and she, as I
already mentioned, made flowers; they were both living in Paris at the
time when they conceived these ideas.

There was style in their marriage. They took three rooms at Passy. In
the centre was the studio, to the right of it his room, to the left
hers. This did away with the common bed-room and double bed, that
abomination which has no counterpart in nature and is responsible for
a great deal of dissipation and immorality. It moreover did away with
the inconvenience of having to dress and undress in the same room. It
was far better that each of them should have a separate room and that
the studio should be a neutral, common meeting-place.

They required no servant; they were going to do the cooking themselves
and employ an old charwoman in the mornings and evenings. It was all
very well thought out and excellent in theory.

“But supposing you had children?” asked the sceptics.

“Nonsense, there won’t be any!”

It worked splendidly. He went to the market in the morning and did the
catering. Then he made the coffee. She made the beds and put the rooms
in order. And then they sat down and worked.

When they were tired of working they gossiped, gave one another good
advice, laughed and were very jolly.

At twelve o’clock he lit the kitchen fire and she prepared the
vegetables. He cooked the beef, while she ran across the street to
the grocer’s; then she laid the table and he dished up the dinner.

Of course, they loved one another as husbands and wives do. They said
good-night to each other and went into their own rooms, but there was
no lock to keep him out when he knocked at her door; but the
accommodation was small and the morning found them in their own
quarters. Then he knocked at the wall:

“Good morning, little girlie, how are you to-day?”

“Very well, darling, and you?”

Their meeting at breakfast was always like a new experience which never
grew stale.

They often went out together in the evening and frequently met their
countrymen. She had no objection to the smell of tobacco, and was never
in the way. Everybody said that it was an ideal marriage; no one
had ever known a happier couple.

But the young wife’s parents, who lived a long way off, were always
writing and asking all sorts of indelicate questions; they were longing
to have a grandchild. Louisa ought to remember that the institution of
marriage existed for the benefit of the children, not the parents.
Louisa held that this view was an old-fashioned one. Mama asked her
whether she did not think that the result of the new idea

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