One evening the husband came home with a roll of music under his arm and said to his wife:
“Let us play duets after supper!”
“What have you got there?” asked his wife.
“Romeo and Julia, arranged for the piano. Do you know it?”
“Yes, of course I do,” she replied, “but I don’t remember ever having seen it on the stage.”
“Oh! It’s splendid! To me it is like a dream of my youth, but I’ve only heard it once, and that was about twenty years ago.”
After supper, when the children had been put to bed and the house lay silent, the husband lighted the candles on the piano. He looked at the lithographed title-page and read the title: Romeo and Julia.
“This is Gounod’s most beautiful composition,” he said, “and I don’t believe that it will be too difficult for us.”
As usual his wife undertook to play the treble and they began. D major, common time,allegro giusto.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the husband, when they had finished the overture.
“Y—es,” admitted the wife, reluctantly.
“Now the martial music,” said the husband; “it is exceptionally fine. I can remember the splendid choruses at the Royal Theatre.”
They played a march.
“Well, wasn’t I right?” asked the husband, triumphantly, as if he had composed “Romeo and Julia” himself.
“I don’t know; it rather sounds like a brass band,” answered the wife.
The husband’s honour and good taste were involved; he looked for the Moonshine Aria in the fourth act. After a little searching he came across an aria for soprano. That must be it.
And he began again.
Tram-tramtram, tram-tramtram, went the bass; it was very easy to play.
“Do you know,” said his wife, when it was over, “I don’t think very much of it.”
The husband, quite depressed, admitted that it reminded him of a barrel organ.
“I thought so all along,” confessed the wife.
“And I find it antiquated, too. I am surprised that Gounod should be out of date, already,” he added dejectedly. “Would you like to go on playing? Let’s try the Cavatina and the Trio; I particularly remember the soprano; she was divine.”
When they stopped playing, the husband looked crestfallen and put the music away, as if he wanted to shut the door on the past.
“Let’s have a glass of beer,” he said. They sat down at the table and had a glass of beer.
“It’s extraordinary,” he began, after a little while, “I never realised before that we’ve grown old, for we really must have vied with Romeo and Julia as to who should age faster. It’s twenty years ago since I heard the opera for the first time. I was a newly fledged undergraduate then, I had many friends and the future smiled at me. I was immensely proud of the first down on my upper lip and my little college cap, and I remember as if it were to-day, the evening when Fritz, Phil and myself went to hear this opera. We had heard ‘Faust’ some years before and were great admirers of Gounod’s genius. But Romeo beat all our expectations. The music roused our wildest enthusiasm. Now both my friends are dead. Fritz, who was ambitious, was a private secretary when he died, Phil a medical student; I who aspired to the position of a minister of state have to content myself with that of a regimental judge. The years have passed by quickly and imperceptibly. Of course I have noticed that the lines under my eyes have grown deeper and that my hair has turned grey at the temples, but I should never have thought that we had travelled so far on the road to the grave.”
“Yes, my dear, we’ve grown old; our children could teach us that. And you must see it in me too, although you don’t say anything.”
“How can you say that!”
“Oh! I know only too well, my dear,” continued the wife, sadly; “I know that I am beginning to lose my good looks, that my hair is growing thin, that I shall soon lose my front teeth....”
“Just consider how quickly everything passes away”—interrupted her husband. “It seems to me that one grows old much more rapidly now-a-days, than one used to do. In my father’s house Haydn and Mozart were played a great deal, although they were dead long before he was born. And now—now Gounod has grown old-fashioned already! How distressing it is to meet again the ideals of one’s youth under these altered circumstances! And how horrible it is to feel old age approaching!”
He got up and sat down again at the piano; he took the music and turned over the pages as if he were looking for keepsakes, locks of hair, dried flowers and ends of ribbon in the drawer of a writing-table. His eyes were riveted on the black notes which looked like little birds climbing up and down a wire fencing; but where were the spring songs, the passionate protestations, the jubilant avowals of the rosy days of first love? The notes stared back at him like strangers; as if the memory of life’s spring-time were grown over with weeds.
Yes, that was it; the strings were covered with dust, the sounding board was dried up, the felt worn away.
A heavy sigh echoed through the room, heavy as if it came from a hollow chest, and then silence fell.
“But all the same, it is strange,” the husband said suddenly, “that the glorious prologue is missing in this arrangement. I remember distinctly that there was a prologue with an accompaniment of harps and a chorus which went like this.”
He softly hummed the tune, which bubbled up like a stream in a mountain glen; note succeeded note, his face cleared, his lips smiled, the lines disappeared, his fingers touched the keys, and drew from them melodies, powerful, caressing and full of eternal youth, while with a strong and ringing voice he sang the part of the bass.
His wife started from her melancholy reverie and listened with tears in her eyes.
“What are you singing?” she asked, full of amazement.
“Romeo and Julia! Our Romeo and our Julia!”
He jumped up from the music stool and pushed the music towards his astonished wife.
“Look! This was the Romeo of our uncles and aunts, this was—read it—Bellini! Oh! We are not old, after all!”
The wife looked at the thick, glossy hair of her husband, his smooth brow and flashing eyes, with joy.
“And you? You look like a young girl. We have allowed old Bellini to make fools of us. I felt that something was wrong.”
“No, darling, I thought so first.”
“Probably you did; that is because you are younger than I am.”
“No, you....”
And husband and wife, like a couple of children, laughingly quarrel over the question of which of them is the elder of the two, and cannot understand how they could have discovered lines and grey hairs where there are none.
He was a supernumerary at the Board of Trade and drew a salary of twelve hundred crowns. He had married a young girl without a penny; for love, as he himself said, to be no longer compelled to go to dances and run about the streets, as his friends maintained. But be that as it may, the life of the newly-wedded couple was happy enough to begin with.
“How cheaply married people can live,” he said one day, after the wedding was a thing of the past. The same sum which had been barely enough to cover the wants of the bachelor now sufficed for husband and wife. Really, marriage was an excellent institution. One had all one’s requirements within one’s four walls: club, cafe, everything; no more bills of fare, no tips, no inquisitive porter watching one as one went out with one’s wife in the morning.
Life smiled at him, his strength increased and he worked for two. Never in all his life had he felt so full of overflowing energy; he jumped out of bed as soon as he woke up in the morning, buoyantly, and in the highest spirits, he was rejuvenated.
When two months had elapsed, long before his new circumstances had begun to pall, his wife whispered a certain piece of information into his ear. New joys! New cares! But cares so pleasant to bear! It was necessary, however, to increase their income at once, so as to receive the unknown world-citizen in a manner befitting his dignity. He managed to obtain an order for a translation.
Baby-clothes lay scattered about all over the furniture, a cradle stood waiting in the hall, and at last a splendid boy arrived in this world of sorrows.
The father was delighted. And yet he could not help a vague feeling of uneasiness whenever he thought of the future. Income and expenditure did not balance. Nothing remained but to reduce his dress allowance.
His frock coat began to look threadbare at the seams; his shirt front was hidden underneath a large tie, his trousers were frayed. It was an undeniable fact that the porters at the office looked down on him on account of his shabbiness.
In addition to this he was compelled to lengthen his working day.
“It must be the first and last,” he said. But how was it to be done?
He was at a loss to know.
Three months later his wife prepared him in carefully chosen words that his paternal joys would soon be doubled. It would not be true to say that he rejoiced greatly at the news. But there was no alternative now; he must travel along the road he had chosen, even if married life should prove to be anything but cheap.
“It’s true,” he thought, his face brightening, “the younger one will inherit the baby-clothes of his elder brother. This will save a good deal of expense, and there will be food enough for them—I shall be able to feed them just as well as others.”
And the second baby was born.
“You are going it,” said a friend of his, who was a married man himself, but father of one child only.
“What is a man to do?”
“Use his common-sense.”
“Use his common-sense? But, my dear fellow, a man gets married in order to ... I mean to say, not only in order to ... but yet in order to.... Well, anyhow, we are married and that settles the matter.”
“Not at all. Let me tell you something, my dear boy; if you are at all hoping for promotion it is absolutely necessary that you should wear clean linen, trousers which are not frayed at the bottom, and a hat which is not of a rusty brown.”
And the sensible man whispered sensible words into his ear. As the result, the poor husband was put on short commons in the midst of plenty.
But now his troubles began.
To start with his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean starvation for all of them, and to work spelt death, too!
He went on working.
One day, as he was sitting at his desk, stooping over endless rows of figures, he had an attack of faintness, slipped off his chair and fell to the ground.
A visit to a specialist—eighteen crowns. A new prescription; he must ask for sick leave at once, take riding exercise every morning and have steak and a glass of port for breakfast.
Riding exercise and port!
But the worst feature of the whole business was a feeling of alienation from his wife which had sprung up in his heart—he did not know whence it came. He was afraid to go near her and at the same time he longed for her presence. He loved her, loved her still, but a certain bitterness was mingled with his love.
“You are growing thin,” said a friend.
“Yes, I believe I’ve grown thinner,” said the poor husband.
“You are playing a dangerous game, old boy!”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“A married man in half mourning! Take care, my friend!”
“I really don’t know what you’re driving at.”.
“It’s impossible to go against the wind for any length of time. Set all sails and run, old chap, and you will see that everything will come right. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You understand me.”
He took no notice of the advice for a time, fully aware of the fact that a man’s income does not increase in proportion to his family; at the same time he had no longer any doubt about the cause of his malady.
It was summer again. The family had gone into the country. On a beautiful evening husband and wife were strolling along the steep shore, in the shade of the alder trees, resplendent in their young green. They sat down on the turf, silent and depressed. He was morose and disheartened; gloomy thoughts revolved behind his aching brow. Life seemed a great chasm which had opened to engulf all he loved.
They talked of the probable loss of his appointment; his chief had been annoyed at his second application for sick leave. He complained of the conduct of his colleagues, he felt himself deserted by everyone; but the fact which hurt him more than anything else was the knowledge that she, too, had grown tired of him.
“Oh! but she hadn’t! She loved him every bit as much as she did in those happy days when they were first engaged. How could he doubt it?”
“No, he didn’t doubt it; but he had suffered so much, he wasn’t master of his own thoughts.”
He pressed his burning cheek against hers, put his arm round her and covered her eyes with passionate kisses.
The gnats danced their nuptial dance above the birch tree without a thought of the thousands of young ones which their ecstasy would call into being; the carp laid their eggs in the reed grass, careless of the millions of their kind to which they gave birth; the swallow made love in broad daylight, not in the least afraid of the consequences of their irregular liaisons.
All of a sudden he sprang to his feet and stretched himself like a sleeper awakening from a long sleep, which had been haunted by evil dreams, he drank in the balmy air in deep draughts.
“What’s the matter?” whispered his wife, while a crimson blush spread over her face.
“I don’t know. All I know is that I live, that I breathe again.”
And radiant, with laughing face and shining eyes, he held out his arms to her, picked her up as if she were a baby and pressed his lips to her forehead. The muscles of his legs swelled until they looked like the muscles of the leg of an antique god, he held his body erect like a young tree and intoxicated with strength and happiness, he carried his beloved burden as far as the footpath where he put her down.
“You will strain yourself, sweetheart,” she said, making a vain attempt to free herself from his encircling arms.
“Never, you darling! I could carry you to the end of the earth, and I shall carry you, all of you, no matter how many you are now, or how many you may yet become.”
And they returned home, arm in arm, their hearts singing with gladness.
“If the worst comes to the worst, sweet love, one must admit that it is very easy to jump that abyss which separates body and soul!”
“What a thing to say!”
“If I had only realised it before, I should have been less unhappy. Oh! those idealists!”
And they entered their cottage.
The good old times had returned and had, apparently, come to stay. The husband went to work to his office as before. They lived again through love’s spring time. No doctor was required and the high spirits never flagged.
After the third christening, however, he came to the conclusion that matters were serious and started playing his old game with the inevitable results: doctor, sick-leave, riding-exercise, port! But there must be an end of it, at all costs. Every time the balance-sheet showed a deficit.
But when, finally, his whole nervous system went out of joint, he let nature have her own way. Immediately expenses went up and he was beset with difficulties.
He was not a poor man, it is true, but on the other hand he was not blest with too many of this world’s riches.
“To tell you the truth, old girl,” he said to his wife, “it will be the same old story over again.”
“I am afraid it will, my dear,” replied the poor woman, who, in addition to her duties as a mother, had to do the whole work of the house now.
After the birth of her fourth child, the work grew too hard for her and a nursemaid had to be engaged.
“Now it must stop,” avowed the disconsolate husband. “This must be the last.”
Poverty looked in at the door. The foundations on which the house was built were tottering.
And thus, at the age of thirty, in the very prime of their life, the young husband and wife found themselves condemned to celibacy. He grew moody, his complexion became grey and his eyes lost their lustre. Her rich beauty faded, her fine figure wasted away, and she suffered all the sorrows of a mother who sees her children growing up in poverty and rags.
One day, as she was standing in the kitchen, frying herrings, a neighbour called in for a friendly chat.
“How are you?” she began.
“Thank you, I’m not up to very much. How are you?”
“Oh! I’m not at all well. Married life is a misery if one has to be constantly on one’s guard.”
“Do you think you are the only one?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what my husband said to me the other day? One ought to spare the draught cattle! And I suffer under it all, I can tell you. No, there’s no happiness in marriage. Either husband or wife is bound to suffer. It’s one or the other!”
“Or both!”
“But what about the men of science who grow fat at the expense of the Government?”
“They have to think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to write about such problems; they must not be discussed openly.”
“But that would be the first necessity!” And the two women fell to discussing their bitter experiences.
In the following summer they were compelled to remain in town; they were living in a basement with a view of the gutter, the smell of which was so objectionable that it was impossible to keep the windows open.
The wife did needlework in the same room in which the children were playing; the husband, who had lost his appointment on account of his extreme shabbiness, was copying a manuscript in the adjoining room, and grumbling at the children’s noise. Hard words were bandied through the open door.
It was Whitsuntide. In the afternoon the husband was lying on the ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by the side of her looking-glass.
She was fastening her dress without taking the least notice of his inquisitive glances.
“She’s not having a bad time,” mused the celibate, suddenly kindled into passion. “One lives but once in this world, and one must live one’s life, happen what will!”
His wife entered the room and caught sight of the object of his scrutiny. Her eyes blazed; the last feeble sparks of her dead love glowed under the ashes and revealed themselves in a temporary flash of jealousy.
“Hadn’t we better take the children to the Zoo?” she asked.
“To make a public show of our misery? No, thank you!”
“But it’s so hot in here. I shall have to pull down the blinds.”
“You had better open a window!”
He divined his wife’s thoughts and rose to do it himself. Out there, on the edge of the pavement, his four little ones were sitting, in close proximity of the waste pipes. Their feet were in the dry gutter, and they were playing with orange peels which they had found in the sweepings of the road. The sight stabbed his heart, and he felt a lump rising in his throat. But poverty had so blunted his feelings that he remained standing at the window with his arms crossed.
All at once two filthy streams gushed from the waste pipes, inundated the gutter and saturated the feet of the children who screamed, half suffocated by the stench.
“Get the children ready as quickly as you can,” he called, giving way at the heart-rending scene.
The father pushed the perambulator with the baby, the other children clung to the hands and skirts of the mother.
They arrived at the cemetery with its dark-stemmed lime-trees, their usual place of refuge; here the trees grew luxuriantly, as if the soil were enriched by the bodies which lay buried underneath it.
The bells were ringing for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the Royal Deer Park.
The children climbed about the shallow graves, most of which were decorated with armorial bearings and inscriptions.
Husband and wife sat down on a seat and placed the perambulator, in which the baby lay sucking at its bottle, by their side. Two puppies were disporting themselves on a grave close by, half hidden by the high grass.
A young and well dressed couple, leading by the hand a little girl clothed in silk and velvet, passed the seat on which they sat. The poor copyist raised his eyes to the young dandy and recognised a former colleague from the Board of Trade who, however, did not seem to see him. A feeling of bitter envy seized him with such intensity that he felt more humiliated by this “ignoble sentiment” than by his deplorable condition. Was he angry with the other man because he filled a position which he himself had coveted? Surely not. But of a sense of justice, and his suffering was all the deeper because it was shared by the whole class of the disinherited. He was convinced that the inmates of the poorhouse, bowed down under the yoke of public charity, envied his wife; and he was quite sure that many of the aristocrats who slept all around him in their graves, under their coats of arms, would have envied him his children if it had been their lot to die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, nobody under the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the mass said at evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which the others despised and of which they had no need because the gates of heaven opened readily enough to their wealth. But what about the good and just God who had distributed His gifts so unevenly? It would be better, indeed, to live one’s life without this unjust God, who had, moreover, candidly admitted that the “wind blew where it listed”; had He not himself confessed, in these words, that He did not interfere in the concerns of man? But failing the church, where should we look for comfort? And yet, why ask for comfort? Wouldn’t it be far better to strive to make such arrangements that no comfort was needed? Wouldn’t it?
His speculations were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which was against the regulations.
“We’d better go home,” said the distressed father. “How carefully they guard the interests of the dead, and how indifferent they are to the interests of the living.”
And they returned home.
He sat down and began to work. He had to copy the manuscript of an academical treatise on over-population.
The subject interested him and he read the contents of the whole book.
The young author who belonged to what was called the ethical school, was preaching against vice.
“What vice?” mused the copyist. “That which is responsible for our existence? Which the priest orders us to indulge in at every wedding when he says: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth?”
The manuscript ran on: Propagation, without holy matrimony, is a destructive vice, because the fate of the children, who do not receive proper care and nursing, is a sad one. In the case of married couples, on the other hand, it becomes a sacred duty to indulge one’s desires. This is proved, among other things, by the fact that the law protects even the female ovum, and it is right that it should be so.
“Consequently,” thought the copyist, “there is a providence for legitimate children, but not for illegitimate ones Oh! this young philosopher! And the law which protects the female ovum! What business, then, have those microscopic things to detach themselves at every change of the moon? Those sacred objects ought to be most carefully guarded by the police!”
All these futilities he had to copy in his best handwriting.
They overflowed with morality, but contained not a single word of enlightenment.
The moral or rather the immoral gist of the whole argument was: There is a God who feeds and clothes all children born in wedlock; a God in His heaven, probably, but what about the earth? Certainly, it was said that He came to earth once and allowed himself to be crucified, after vainly trying to establish something like order in the confused affairs of mankind; He did not succeed.
The philosopher wound up by screaming himself hoarse in trying to convince his audience that the abundant supply of wheat was an irrefutable proof that the problem of over-population did not exist; that the doctrine of Malthus was not only false, but criminal, socially as well as morally.
And the poor father of a family who had not tasted wheaten bread for years, laid down the manuscript and urged his little ones to fill themselves with gruel made of rye flour and bluish milk, a dish which satisfied their craving, but contained no nourishment.
He was wretched, not because he considered water gruel objectionable, but because he had lost his precious sense of humour, that magician who can transform the dark rye into golden wheat; almighty love, emptying his horn of plenty over his poor home, had vanished. The children had become burdens, and the once beloved wife a secret enemy despised and despising him.
And the cause of all this unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the large store houses of the new world were breaking down under the weight of the over-abundant supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions! The manner in which bread was distributed must be at fault.
Science, which has replaced religion, has no answer to give; it merely states facts and allows the children to die of hunger and the parents of thirst.
They had been married for ten years. Happily? Well, as happily as circumstances permitted. They had been running in double harness, like two young oxen of equal strength, each of which is conscientiously doing his own share.
During the first year of their marriage they buried many illusions and realised that marriage was not perfect bliss. In the second year the babies began to arrive, and the daily toil left them no time for brooding.
He was very domesticated, perhaps too much so; his family was his world, the centre and pivot of which he was. The children were the radii. His wife attempted to be a centre, too, but never in the middle of the circle, for that was exclusively occupied by him, and therefore the radii fell now on the top of one another, now far apart, and their life lacked harmony.
In the tenth year of their marriage he obtained the post of secretary to the Board of Prisons, and in that capacity he was obliged to travel about the country. This interfered seriously with his daily routine; the thought of leaving his world for a whole month upset him. He wondered whom he would miss more, his wife or his children, and he was sure he would miss them both.
On the eve of his departure he sat in the corner of the sofa and watched his portmanteau being packed. His wife was kneeling on the She brushed his black suit and folded it carefully, so that it should take up as little space as possible. He had no idea how to do these things.
She had never looked upon herself as his housekeeper, hardly as his wife, she was above all things mother: a mother to the children, a mother to him. She darned his socks without the slightest feeling of degradation, and asked for no thanks. She never even considered him indebted to her for it, for did he not give her and the children new stockings whenever they wanted them, and a great many other things into the bargain? But for him, she would have to go out and earn her own living, and the children would be left alone all day.
He sat in the sofa corner and looked at her. Now that the parting was imminent, he began to feel premature little twinges of longing. He gazed at her figure. Her shoulders were a little rounded; much bending over the cradle, ironing board and kitchen range had robbed her back of its straightness. He, too, stooped a little, the result of his toil at the writing-table, and he was obliged to wear spectacles. But at the moment he really was not thinking of himself. He noticed that her plaits were thinner than they had been and that a faint suggestion of silver lay on her hair. Had she sacrificed her beauty to him, to him alone? No, surely not to him, but to the little community which they formed; for, after all, she had also worked for herself. His hair, too, had grown thin in the struggle to provide for all of them. He might have retained his youth a little longer, if there hadn’t been so many mouths to fill, if he had remained a bachelor; but he didn’t regret his marriage for one second.
“It will be a good thing for you to get away for a bit,” said his wife; “you have been too much at home.”
“I suppose you are glad to get rid of me,” he replied, not without bitterness; “but I—I shall miss you very much.”
“You are like a cat, you’ll miss your cosy fireside, but not me; you know you won’t.”
“And the kiddies?”
“Oh, yes! I daresay you’ll miss them when you are away, for all your scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don’t mean that you are unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won’t be unjust, and I know that you love them.”
At supper he was very tired and depressed. He didn’t read the evening paper, he wanted to talk to his wife. But she was too busy to pay much attention to him; she had no time to waste; moreover, her ten years’ campaign in kitchen and nursery had taught her self-control.
He felt more sentimental than he cared to show, and the topsy-turvydom of the room made him fidgety. Scraps of his daily life lay scattered all over chairs and chests of drawers; his black portmanteau yawned wide-open like a coffin; his white linen was carefully laid on the top of his black suit, which showed slight traces of wear and tear at the knees and elbows. It seemed to him that he himself was lying there, wearing a white shirt with a starched front. Presently they would close the coffin and carry it away.
On the following morning—it was in August—he rose early and dressed hurriedly. His nerves were unstrung. He went into the nursery and kissed the children who stared at him with sleepy eyes. Then he kissed his wife, got into a cab, and told the driver to drive him to the station.
The journey, which he made in the company of his Board, did him good; it really was a good thing for him to get out of his groove; domesticity lay behind him like a stuffy bedroom, and on the arrival of the train at Linkoping he was in high spirits.
An excellent dinner had been ordered at the best hotel and the remainder of the day was spent in eating it. They drank the health of the Lord Lieutenant; no one thought of the prisoners on whose behalf the journey had been undertaken.
Dinner over, he had to face a lonely evening in his solitary room. A bed, two chairs, a table, a washing-stand and a wax candle, which threw its dim light on bare walls. He couldn’t suppress a feeling of nervousness. He missed all his little comforts,—slippers, dressing-gown, pipe rack and writing table; all the little details which played an important part in his daily life. And the kiddies? And his wife? What were they doing? Were they all right? He became restless and depressed. When he wanted to wind up his watch, he found that he had left his watch-key at home. It was hanging on the watch-stand which his wife had given him before they were married. He went to bed and lit a cigar. Then he wanted a book out of his portmanteau and he had to get up again. Everything was packed so beautifully, it was a pity to disturb it. In looking for the book, he came across his slippers. She had forgotten nothing. Then he found the book. But he couldn’t read. He lay in bed and thought of the past, of his wife, as she had been ten years ago. He saw her as she had been then; the picture of her, as she now was, disappeared in the blue-grey clouds of smoke which rose in rings and wreaths to the rain-stained ceiling. An infinite yearning came over him. Every harsh word he had ever spoken to her now grated on his ears; he thought remorsefully of every hour of anguish he had caused her. At last he fell asleep.
The following day brought much work and another banquet with a toast to the Prison-Governor—the prisoners were still unremembered. In the evening solitude, emptiness, coldness. He felt a pressing need to talk to her. He fetched some notepaper and sat down to write. But at the very outset he was confronted by a difficulty. How was he to address her? Whenever he had sent her a few lines to say that he would not be home for dinner, he had always called her “Dear Mother.” But now he was not going to write to the mother, but to his fiancée, to his beloved one. At last he made up his mind and commenced his letter with “My Darling Lily,” as he had done in the old days. At first he wrote slowly and with difficulty, for so many beautiful words and phrases seemed to have disappeared from the clumsy, dry language of every-day life; but as he warmed to his work, they awakened in his memory like forgotten melodies, valse tunes, fragments of poems, elder-blossoms, and swallows, sunsets on a mirror-like sea. All his memories of the springtime of life came dancing along in clouds of gossamer and enveloped her. He drew a cross at the bottom of the page, as lovers do, and by the side of it he wrote the words: “Kiss here.”
When the letter was finished and he read it through, his cheeks burnt and he became self-conscious. He couldn’t account for the reason.
But somehow he felt that he had shown his naked soul to a stranger.
In spite of this feeling he posted the letter.
A few days elapsed before he received a reply. While he was waiting for it, he was a prey to an almost childish bashfulness and embarrassment.
At last the answer came. He had struck the right note, and from the din and clamour of the nursery, and the fumes and smell of the kitchen, a song arose, clear and beautiful, tender and pure, like first love.
Now an exchange of love-letters began. He wrote to her every night, and sometimes he sent her a postcard as well during the day. His colleagues didn’t know what to think of him. He was so fastidious about his dress and personal appearance, that they suspected him of a love affair. And he was in love—in love again. He sent her his photograph, without the spectacles, and she sent him a lock of her hair.
Their language was simple like a child’s, and he wrote on coloured paper ornamented with little doves. Why shouldn’t they? They were a long way off forty yet, even though the struggle for an existence had made them feel that they were getting old. He had neglected her during the last twelvemonth, not so much from indifference as from respect—he always saw in her the mother of his children.
The tour of inspection was approaching its end. He was conscious of a certain feeling of apprehension when he thought of their meeting. He had corresponded with his sweetheart; should he find her in the mother and housewife? He dreaded a disappointment. He shrank at the thought of finding her with a kitchen towel in her hand, or the children clinging to her skirts. Their first meeting must be somewhere else, and they must meet alone. Should he ask her to join him at Waxholm, in the Stockholm Archipelago, at the hotel where they had spent so many happy hours during the period of their engagement? Splendid idea! There they could, for two whole days, re-live in memory the first beautiful spring days of their lives, which had flown, never to return again.
He sat down and made the suggestion in an impassioned love-letter. She answered by return agreeing to his proposal, happy that the same idea had occurred to both of them.
Two days later he arrived at Waxholm and engaged rooms at the hotel. It was a beautiful September day. He dined alone, in the great dining-room, drank a glass of wine and felt young again. Everything was so bright and beautiful. There was the blue sea outside; only the birch trees on the shore had changed their tints. In the garden the dahlias were still in full splendour, and the perfume of the mignonette rose from the borders of the flower beds. A few bees still visited the dying calyces but returned disappointed to their hives. The fishing boats sailed up the Sound before a faint breeze, and in tacking the sails fluttered and the sheets shook; the startled seagulls rose into the air screaming, and circled round the fishermen who were fishing from their boats for small herring.
He drank his coffee on the verandah, and began to look out for the steamer which was due at six o’clock.
Restlessly, apprehensively, he paced the verandah, anxiously watching fiord and Sound on the side where Stockholm lay, so as to sight the steamer as soon as she came into view.
At last a little cloud of smoke showed like a dark patch on the horizon. His heart thumped against his ribs and he drank a liqueur. Then he went down to the shore.
Now he could see the funnel right in the centre of the Sound, and soon after he noticed the flag on the fore-topmast.... Was she really on the steamer, or had she been prevented from keeping the tryst? It was only necessary for one of the children to be ill, and she wouldn’t be there, and he would have to spend a solitary night at the hotel. The children, who during the last few weeks had receded into the background, now stepped between her and him. They had hardly mentioned them in their last letters, just as if they had been anxious to be rid of all eyewitnesses and spoil-sports.
He stamped on the creaking landing-stage and then remained standing motionless near a bollard staring straight at the steamer which increased in size as she approached, followed in her wake by a river of molten gold that spread over the blue, faintly rippled expanse. Now he could distinguish people on the upper deck, a moving crowd, and sailors busy with the ropes, now a fluttering speck of white near the wheel-house. There was no one besides him on the landing-stage, the moving white speck could only be meant for him, and no one would wave to him but her. He pulled out his handkerchief and answered her greeting, and in doing so he noticed that his handkerchief was not a white one; he had been using coloured ones for years for the sake of economy.
The steamer whistled, signalled, the engines stopped, she came alongside, and now he recognised her. Their eyes met in greeting; the distance was still too great for words. Now he could see her being pushed slowly by the crowd across the little bridge. It was she, and yet it wasn’t.
Ten years stretched between her and the picture of her which he had had in his mind. Fashion had changed, the cut of the clothes was different. Ten years ago her delicate face with its olive complexion was framed by the cap which was then worn, and which left the forehead free; now her forehead was hidden by a wicked imitation of a bowler hat. Ten years ago the beautiful lines of her figure were clearly definable under the artistic draperies of her cloak which playfully now hid, now emphasised the curve of her shoulders and the movement of her arms; now her figure was completely disguised by a long driving coat which followed the lines of her dress but completely concealed her figure. As she stepped off the landing-bridge, he caught sight of her little foot with which he had fallen in love, when it was encased in a buttoned boot, shaped on natural lines; the shoe which she was now wearing resembled a pointed Chinese slipper, and did not allow her foot to move in those dancing rhythms which had bewitched him.
It was she and yet it was not she! He embraced and kissed her. She enquired after his health and he asked after the children. Then they walked up the strand.
Words came slowly and sounded dry and forced. How strange! They were almost shy in each other’s presence, and neither of them mentioned the letters.
In the end he took heart of grace and asked:
“Would you like to go for a walk before sunset?”
“I should love to,” she replied, taking his arm.
They went along the high-road in the direction of the little town. The shutters of all the summer residences were closed; the gardens plundered. Here and there an apple, hidden among the foliage, might still be found hanging on the trees, but there wasn’t a single flower in the flower beds. The verandahs, stripped of their sunblinds, looked like skeletons; where there had been bright eyes and gay laughter, silence reigned.
“How autumnal!” she said.
“Yes, the forsaken villas look horrible.”
They walked on.
“Let us go and look at the house where we used to live.”
“Oh, yes! It will be fun.”
They passed the bathing vans.
Over there, squeezed in between the pilot’s and the gardener’s cottages, stood the little house with its red fence, its verandah and its little garden.
Memories of past days awoke. There was the bedroom where their first baby had been born. What rejoicing! What laughter! Oh! youth and gaiety! The rose-tree which they had planted was still there. And the strawberry-bed which they had made—no, it existed no longer, grass had grown over it. In the little plantation traces of the swing which they had put up were still visible, but the swing itself had disappeared.
“Thank you so much for your beautiful letters,” she said, gently pressing his arm.
He blushed and made no reply.
Then they returned to the hotel, and he told her anecdotes, in connection with his tour.
He had ordered dinner to be served in the large dining-room at the table where they used to sit. They sat down without saying grace.
It was a tête-à-tête dinner. He took the bread-basket and offered her the bread. She smiled. It was a long time since he had been so attentive. But dinner at a seaside hotel was a pleasant change and soon they were engaged in a lively conversation. It was a duet in which one of them extolled the days that had gone, and the other revived memories of “once upon a time.” They were re-living the past. Their eyes shone and the little lines in their faces disappeared. Oh! golden days! Oh! time of roses which comes but once, if it comes at all, and which is denied to so many of us—so many of us.
At dessert he whispered a few words into the ear of the waitress; she disappeared and returned a few seconds later with a bottle of champagne.
“My dear Axel, what are you thinking of?”
“I am thinking of the spring that has past, but will return again.”
But he wasn’t thinking of it exclusively, for at his wife’s reproachful words there glided through the room, catlike, a dim vision of the nursery and the porridge bowl.
However—the atmosphere cleared again; the golden wine stirred their memories, and again they lost themselves in the intoxicating rapture of the past.
He leaned his elbow on the table and shaded his eyes with his hand, as if he were determined to shut out the present—this very present which,—after all, had been of his own seeking.
The hours passed. They left the dining-room and went into the drawing-room which boasted a piano, ordering their coffee to be brought there.
“I wonder how the kiddies are?” said she, awakening to the hard facts of real life.
“Sit down and sing to me,” he answered, opening the instrument.
“What would you like me to sing? You know I haven’t sung a note for many days.”
He was well aware of it, but hedidwant a song.
She sat down before the piano and began to play. It was a squeaking instrument that reminded one of the rattling of loose teeth.
“What shall I sing?” she asked, turning round on the music-stool.
“You know, darling,” he replied, not daring to meet her eyes.
“Your song! Very well, if I can remember it.” And she sang: “Where is the blessed country where my beloved dwells?”
But alas! Her voice was thin and shrill and emotion made her sing out of tune. At times it sounded like a cry from the bottom of a soul which feels that noon is past and evening approaching. The fingers which had done hard work strayed on the wrong keys. The instrument, too, had seen its best days; the cloth on the hammers had worn away; it sounded as if the springs touched the bare wood.
When she had finished her song, she sat for a while without turning round, as if she expected him to come and speak to her. But he didn’t move; not a sound broke the deep silence. When she turned round at last, she saw him sitting on the sofa, his cheeks wet with tears. She felt a strong impulse to jump up, take his head between her hands and kiss him as she had done in days gone by, but she remained where she was, immovable, with downcast eyes.
He held a cigar between his thumb and first finger. When the song was finished, he bit off the end and struck a match.
“Thank you, Lily,” he said, puffing at his cigar, “will you have your coffee now?”
They drank their coffee, talked of summer holidays in general and suggested two or three places where they might go next summer. But their conversation languished and they repeated themselves.
At last he yawned openly and said: “I’m off to bed.”
“I’m going, too,” she said, getting up. “But I’ll get a breath of fresh air first, on the balcony.”
He went into the bed-room. She lingered for a few moments in the dining-room, and then talked to the landlady for about half an hour of spring-onions and woollen underwear.
When the landlady had left her she went into the bedroom and stood for a few minutes at the door, listening. No sound came from within. His boots stood in the corridor. She opened the door gently and went in. He was asleep.
He was asleep!
At breakfast on the following morning he had a headache, and she fidgeted.
“What horrible coffee,” he said, with a grimace.
“Brazilian,” she said, shortly.
“What shall we do to-day?” he asked, looking at his watch.
“Hadn’t you better eat some bread and butter, instead of grumbling at the coffee?” she said.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he answered, “and I’ll have a liqueur at the same time. That champagne last night, ugh!”
He asked for bread and butter and a liqueur and his temper improved.
“Let’s go to the Pilot’s Hill and look at the view.”
They rose from the breakfast table and went out.
The weather was splendid and the walk did them good. But they walked slowly; she panted, and his knees were stiff; they drew no more parallels with the past.
They walked across the fields. The grass had been cut long ago, there wasn’t a single flower anywhere. They sat down on some large stones.
He talked of the Board of Prisons and his office. She talked of the children.
Then they walked on in silence. He looked at his watch.
“Three hours yet till dinner time,” he said. And he wondered how they could kill time on the next day.
They returned to the hotel. He asked for the papers. She sat down by the side of him with a smile on her lips.
They talked little during dinner. After dinner she mentioned the servants.
“For heaven’s sake, leave the servants alone!” he exclaimed.
“Surely we haven’t come here to quarrel!”
“Am I quarrelling?”
“Well, I’m not!”
An awkward pause followed. He wished somebody would come. The children! Yes! This tête-à-tête embarrassed him, but he felt a pain in his heart when he thought of the bright hours of yesterday.
“Let’s go to Oak Hill,” she said, “and gather wild strawberries.”
“There are no wild strawberries at this time of the year, it’s autumn.”
“Let’s go all the same.”
And they went. But conversation was difficult. His eyes searched for some object on the roadside which would serve for a peg on which to hang a remark, but there was nothing. There was no subject which they hadn’t discussed. She knew all his views on everything and disagreed with most of them. She longed to go home, to the children, to her own fireside. She found it absurd to make a spectacle of herself in this place and be on the verge of a quarrel with her husband all the time.
After a while they stopped, for they were tired. He sat down and began to write in the sand with his walking stick. He hoped she would provoke a scene.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked at last.
“I?” he replied, feeling as if a burden were falling off his shoulders, “I am thinking that we are getting old, mother: our innings are over, and we have to be content with what has been. If you are of the same mind, we’ll go home by the night boat.”
“I have thought so all along, old man, but I wanted to please you.”
“Then come along, we’ll go home. It’s no longer summer, autumn is here.”
They returned to the hotel, much relieved.
He was a little embarrassed on account of the prosaic ending of the adventure, and felt an irresistible longing to justify it from a philosophical standpoint.
“You see, mother,” he said, “my lo—h’m” (the word was too strong) “my affection for you has undergone a change in the course of time. It has developed, broadened; at first it was centred on the individual, but later on, on the family as a whole. It is not now you, personally, that I love, nor is it the children, but it is the whole....
“Yes, as my uncle used to say, children are lightning conductors!”
After his philosophical explanation he became his old self again. It was pleasant to take off his frock coat; he felt, as if he were getting into his dressing-gown.
When they entered the hotel, she began at once to pack, and there she was in her element.
They went downstairs into the saloon as soon as they got on board. For appearance sake, however, he asked her whether she would like to watch the sunset; but she declined.
At supper he helped himself first, and she asked the waitress the price of black bread.
When he had finished his supper, he remained sitting at the table, lingering over a glass of porter. A thought which had amused him for some time, would no longer be suppressed.
“Old fool, what?” he said, lifting his glass and smiling at his wife who happened to look at him at the moment.
She did not return his smile but her eyes, which had flashed for a second, assumed so withering an expression of dignity that he felt crushed.
The spell was broken, the last trace of his old love had vanished; he was sitting opposite the mother of his children; he felt small.
“No need to look down upon me because I have made a fool of myself for a moment,” she said gravely. “But in a man’s love there is always a good deal of contempt; it is strange.”
“And in the love of a woman?”
“Even more, it is true! But then, she has every cause.”
“It’s the same thing—with a difference. Probably both of them are wrong. That which one values too highly, because it is difficult of attainment, is easily underrated when one has obtained it.”
“Why does one value it too highly?”
“Why is it so difficult of attainment?”
The steam whistle above their heads interrupted their conversation.
They landed.
When they had arrived home, and he saw her again among her children, he realised that his affection for her had undergone a change, and that her affection for him had been transferred to and divided amongst all these little screamers. Perhaps her love for him had only been a means to an end. His part had been a short one, and he felt deposed. If he had not been required to earn bread and butter, he would probably have been cast off long ago.
He went into his study, put on his dressing-gown and slippers, lighted his pipe and felt at home.
Outside the wind lashed the rain against the window panes, and whistled in the chimney.
When the children had been put to bed, his wife came and sat by him.
“No weather to gather wild strawberries,” she said.
“No, my dear, the summer is over and autumn is here.”
“Yes, it is autumn,” she replied, “but it is not yet winter, there is comfort in that.”
“Very poor comfort if we consider that we live but once.”
“Twice when one has children; three times if one lives to see one’s grandchildren.”
“And after that, the end.”
“Unless there is a life after death.”
“We cannot be sure of that! Who knows? I believe it, but my faith is no proof.”
“But it is good to believe it. Let us have faith! Let us believe that spring will come again! Let us believe it!”
“Yes, let us believe it,” he said, gathering her to his breast.