My brain, keen and refined by study and culture, was thrown into confusion by contact with a coarser brain; every attempt to bring it into harmony with my wife's caused me to have convulsions. I tried to get into touch with strangers. But they treated me with the forbearance which a sane person usually shows to a lunatic.
For three months I hardly opened my lips. At the end of that time I noticed with horror that I had almost lost my voice, and, from sheer want of practice, had no longer any control of the spoken word.
Determined not to be defeated in the struggle, I began a brisk correspondence with my friends in Sweden. But their guarded language, their deep sympathy, their well-meant advice, plainly betrayed the opinion which they had formed of my mental condition.
She triumphed. I was on the verge of insanity, and the first symptoms of persecutional mania showed themselves. Mania? Did I say mania? I was being persecuted, there was nothing irrational in the thought.
It was just as if I had become a child again. Extremely feeble, I lay for hours on the sofa, my head on her knees, my arms round her waist, like Michel Angelo's Pieta. I buried my face in her lap, and she called me her child. "Your child, yes," I stammered. I forgot my sex in the arms of the mother, who was no longer female, but sexless. Now she regarded me with the eyes of the conqueror, now she looked at me kindly, seized with the sudden tenderness which the hangman is said to feel sometimes for his victim. She was like the female spider which devours her mate immediately after the hymeneal embrace.
While I suffered thus, Marie led a mysterious life. She always remained in bed till the one o'clock dinner. After dinner she went to town, frequently without any definite purpose, and did not return until supper, sometimes even later. When I was asked where she had gone, I replied—
"To town!"
And the inquirer smiled furtively.
I never suspected her. I never thought of playing the spy. After supper she remained in the drawing-room, talking to strangers.
At night she often treated the servants to liqueurs; I heard their whispering voices, but I never stooped so low as to listen at her door....
What was it that held me back? I don't know. Only an instinct, I suppose, which teaches us that those actions are unmanly and dishonourable. Moreover, it had become a sort of religion with me to leave her an absolutely free hand.
Three months passed. Then the fact suddenly struck me that our expenditure was enormous. Now that our expenses were regulated, it was easy to check them.
We paid twelve francs a day at our hotel, that is three hundred and sixty francs a month, and I had given Marie a thousand francs a month. She had therefore spent six hundred francs a month in incidental expenses.
I asked her to account for her extravagance.
"The money has been spent on incidental items!" she exclaimed furiously.
"What! with an ordinary expenditure of three hundred and sixty francs, you spent six hundred francs incidentally? Do you take me for a fool?"
"I don't deny that you have given me a thousand francs, but you have spent the greater part on yourself!"
"Have I? Let's see! Tobacco (very inferior quality), and cigars at one penny each: ten francs; postage: ten francs; what else?"
"Your fencing lessons!"
"I've only had one: three francs!"
"Riding lessons!"
"Two: five francs."
"Books!"
"Books? Ten francs—together thirty francs; let us say one hundred francs; that leaves five hundred francs for incidental expenses.... Preposterous!"
"Do you mean to say I'm robbing you? You cad!" What could I say? Nothing at all!...
I was a cad, and on the following day all her friends in Sweden were informed of the progress of my insanity.
And gradually the myth grew and developed. The salient characteristics of my personality became more and more unmistakable as time went on, and instead of the harmless poet, a mythological figure was sketched, blackened, touched up until it closely resembled a criminal.
I made an attempt to escape to Italy, where I felt sure of meeting artists and men after my own heart. The attempt was a failure. We returned to the shores of the Lake of Geneva, there to await Marie's confinement.
When the child was a few days old, Marie, the martyr, the oppressed wife, the slave without rights, implored me to have it baptised. She knew very well that in my controversial writings I had fought Christianity tooth and nail, and was therefore strongly opposed to the ritual of the church.
Although she was not in the least religious herself, and had not set a foot inside a church for the last ten years, or been to communion for goodness knows how long; although she had only prayed for dogs, fowls and rabbits, the thought of this baptism, which she meant to elaborate into a great festival, completely obsessed her. I had no doubt that the motive which actuated her was the thought of my dislike to ceremonies which I considered insincere, and which are opposed to all my convictions.
But she implored me with tears in her eyes, appealed to my kind and generous nature. In the end I yielded to her importunity, on condition, however, that I was not expected to be present at the ceremony. She kissed my hand, thanked me effusively for what she called a mark of my affection for her, and assured me that her baby's baptism was a matter of conscience to her, a very vital point.
The ceremony took place. After her return from church, she ridiculed the "farce" in the presence of many witnesses, posed as a free-thinker, made fun of the ceremonial, and even boasted that she knew nothing whatever of the church into which her son had just been received.
She had won the game and could afford to laugh at the whole business; the "vital question" transformed itself into a victory over me, a victory which served to strengthen the hands of my adversaries.
Once again I had humiliated myself, laid myself open to attack, in order to humour the fads and fancies of an overbearing woman.
But my measure of calamities was not yet full. A Scandinavian lady appeared, on the scene, full of the mania called the "Emancipation of Woman." She and Marie became friends at once, and between them I had no chance.
She brought with her the cowardly book of a sexless writer who, rejected by all parties, became a traitor to his own sex by embracing the cause of all the blue-stockings of the civilised world. After having readMan and Woman, by Emile Girardin, I could well understand that this movement was bound to result in great advantages to the hostile camp of the women.
To depose man and put woman in his place by the re-introduction of the matriarchate; to dethrone the true lord of creation who evolved civilisation, spread the benefits of culture, created all great ideals, art, the professions, all that there is great and beautiful in the world, and crown woman who, with few exceptions, has not shared in the great work of civilisation, constituted to me a challenge to my sex. The very thought of having to witness the apotheosis of those intelligences of the iron age, those manlike creatures, those semi-apes, that pack of dangerous animals, roused my manhood. It was strange, but I was cured of my illness, cured through my intense repugnance to an enemy who, though intellectually my inferior, was more than a match for me on account of her complete lack of moral feeling.
In a tribal war the less honest, the more crafty, tribe generally remains in possession of the battlefield. The more a man respects woman, the more leisure he leaves her to arm and prepare herself for the fight, the smaller are his prospects of winning the battle. I determined to take the matter seriously. I armed myself for this new duel and wrote a book which I flung, like a gauntlet, at the feet of the emancipated women, those fools who demanded freedom at the price of man's bondage.
In the following spring we changed our hotel. Our new abode was a kind of purgatory where I was continually watched by twenty-five women who, incidentally, furnished me with copy for my book.
In three months' time the volume was ready for publication. It was a collection of stories of matrimonial life with an introduction in which I voiced a great number of disagreeable home-truths.
"Woman," I contended, "is not a slave, for she and her children are supported by her husband's work. She is not oppressed, for nature has ordained that she should live under the protection of the man while she fulfills her mission in life as mother. Woman is not man's intellectual equal; the man, on the other hand, cannot bear children. She is not an essential factor in the great work of civilisation; this is man's domain, for he is better fitted to grapple with spiritual problems than she is. Evolution teaches us that the greater the difference between the sexes, the stronger and more fit will be the resulting offspring. Consequently the aping of the masculine, the equality of the sexes, means retrogression, and is utter folly, the last dream of romantic and idealistic socialism.
"Woman, man's necessary complement, the spiritual creation of man, has no right to the privileges of her husband, for she can only be called 'the other half of humanity' by virtue of her numbers, proportionally she is merely the sixth part of a sixth. She should not, therefore, invade the labour market as long as it falls to the lot of the man to provide for his wife and family. And the fact should not be lost sight of that every time a woman wrests an appointment from a man, there is one more old maid or prostitute."
The fury of the feminists, and the formidable party which they formed, may easily be imagined when one realises that they demanded the confiscation of my book and brought a lawsuit against me.
But despite their attempt to represent my attack as an offence against religion (the folly of the unsexed actually aspired to raise their cause to the dignity of a religion), they were not clever enough to win their case.
Marie obstinately opposed my intention to go to Sweden unaccompanied by her; to take my family with me was out of the question on account of my limited means. Secretly she was afraid that I might escape from her strict guardianship and, worse still, that my appearance in court, before the public, would give the lie to the rumours concerning my mental condition which she had so sedulously disseminated.
She pleaded illness, without, however, being able to make a definite statement as to the nature of her illness, and kept her bed. Nevertheless I decided to appear personally in court, and left for Sweden.
The letters which I wrote to her during the following six weeks, while I was threatened with two years' penal servitude, were full of love, love rekindled by our separation. My overwrought brain cast a glamour over her fragile form, wove a resplendent halo round her sweet face; restraint and longing clothed her with the white garments of the guardian angel. Everything that was base, ugly, evil, disappeared; the madonna of my first love-dream reappeared. I went so far as to admit to an old friend, a journalist, "that the influence of a good woman had made me more humble and pure-minded." Probably this confession made the round of the papers of the United Kingdoms.
Did the unfaithful wife laugh when she read it?
The public got its money's worth, at any rate.
Marie's replies to my love-letters bore witness to the keen interest which she took in the financial side of the question. But her opinion underwent a change in the same proportion in which the ovations I received in the theatre, in the street and in court increased, and she called the judges stupid, and regretted that she was not a member of the jury.
She met my ardent declarations of love with clever reserve; she refused to be drawn into an argument, and confined herself to the repetition of the words: "To understand one another," "To comprehend each other's nature and ideas." She blamed my failure to understand her for the unhappiness of our marriage. But I could swear that she herself never understood a single word of the language of her learned poet.
Amongst the number of her letters there was one which reawakened my old suspicions. I had mentioned my intention to live permanently abroad, if I was fortunate enough to escape the meshes of the law.
This upset her; she scolded me, threatened me with the loss of her love; she appealed to my pity, went down on her knees before me, as it were, evoked the memory of my mother, and confessed that the thought of never again seeing her country (by which she did not mean Finland) sent cold shudders down her spine and would kill her.
Why cold shudders? I wondered....
To this day I have not found an explanation.
I was acquitted. A banquet was given in my honour, and—oh, irony of fate!—Marie's health was drunk "because she had persuaded me to appear personally before my judges."
It was indeed amusing!
As soon as possible I returned to Geneva, where my family had lived during my absence. To my great surprise Marie, whom I had believed to be ill and in bed, met me at the station; she looked well and happy, but a trifle absent-minded.
I soon recovered my spirits, and the evening and night which followed fully compensated me for all the sufferings I had endured during those six weeks.
On the following day I discovered that we were living in a boarding-house which was mainly patronised by students and light women. While listening to their chatter, it came home to me with a pang that Marie had found pleasure in drinking and playing cards with these shady characters. The familiar tone which prevailed revolted me. Marie posed to the students as the little mother (her old game); she was the bosom friend of the most objectionable of the women; she introduced her to me: a slut, who came down to dinner semi-intoxicated.
And in this hell my children had lived for six weeks! Their mother approved of the place, for she was without prejudices! And her illness—her simulated illness—had not prevented her from taking part in the amusements of this disreputable company.
She lightly dismissed all my remonstrances. I was jealous, a stickler, a snob....
And again it was war between us.
We were now confronted by a new difficulty: the question of the education of the children. The nurse, an uneducated country girl, was made their governess, and, in collusion with the mother, committed the most outrageous follies. Both women were indolent, and liked to stay in bed until broad daylight. Consequently the children were obliged to stay in bed also, during the morning, no matter how wide awake they were; if they insisted on getting up, they were punished. As soon as I became aware of this state of things, I interfered; without much ado I sounded the reveille in the nursery, and was greeted with shouts of delight as a deliverer from bondage. My wife reminded me of our contract: personal freedom—her interpretation of which was the limitation of the liberty of others—but I took no notice of her.
The monomania of weak and inferior brains, that desire to equalise what can never be equal, was the cause of much mischief in my family. My elder daughter, a precocious child, had for years been allowed to play with my illustrated books, and had, besides, enjoyed many of the priviliges usually enjoyed by the firstborn. Because I would not extend the same privileges to the younger one, who had no idea of handling an expensive book, I was accused of injustice.
"There ought to be no difference whatever," she said.
"No difference? Not even in the quantity of clothes and shoes?"
There was no direct reply to my remark, but a contemptuous "fool" made up for the omission.
"Every one according to merit and ability! This for the elder, that for the younger one!"
But she refused to understand my meaning, and stubbornly maintained that I was an unjust father, and "hated" my younger daughter.
To tell the truth, I was more attached to the elder one, because she awakened in me memories of the first beautiful days of my life, and because, also, she was sensible in advance of her years; I may also have been influenced by the fact that the younger one was born at a time when I had grave doubts of my wife's fidelity.
The mother's "justice," I may say, evidenced itself in complete indifference to the children. She was always either out or asleep. She was a stranger to them, and they became devoted to me; their preference for me was so marked that it aroused her jealousy, and in order to conciliate her, I made a practice of letting her distribute the toys and sweets which I bought for them, hoping that in this way she might win their affection.
The little ones were a very important factor in my life, and in my darkest moments, when I was almost broken by my isolation, contact with them bound me afresh to life and their mother. For the sake of the children the thought of divorcing my wife was unthinkable; an ominous fact, as far as I was concerned, for I was becoming more and more her abject slave.
The result of my attack on the strongholds of the feminists soon made itself felt. The Swiss press attacked me in such a manner that my life in Switzerland became unbearable. The sale of my books was prohibited, and I fled, hunted from town to town, to France.
But my former Paris friends had deserted me. They had become my wife's allies, and, surrounded and hemmed in like a wild beast, I again changed the arena; almost without means I at last made port in a colony of artists in the neighbourhood of Paris.
Alas! I was caught in a net, and I remained enmeshed for ten miserable months!
The society in which I found myself consisted of young Scandinavian artists, recruited from various professions, some of them of strange origin; but, worse still, there was a number of lady-artists, women without prejudices, completely emancipated and so enamoured with hermaphroditic literature that they believed themselves the equals of man. They tried to conceal their sex as far as possible by adopting certain masculine characteristics; they smoked, drank, played billiards ... and made love to each other. They wallowed in the lowest depths of immorality.
As an alternative to utter isolation, we made friends with two of those monstrous women; one of them was a writer, the other an artist.
The writer called on me first, as is customary when one happens to be a well-known author. My wife was jealous at once: she was anxious to win an ally sufficiently enlightened to appreciate my arguments against the unsexed.
But certain events happened which made my henceforth notorious mania break out in irrepressible fury.
The hotel boasted of an album which contained caricatures of all the well-known Scandinavians, sketched by Scandinavian artists. My portrait was amongst them, adorned with a horn cleverly contrived by the manipulation of a lock of hair.
The artist was one of our most intimate friends. I concluded that my wife's infidelity was an open secret; everybody knew it, everybody except myself. I asked the proprietor of the collection for an explanation.
Marie had taken care to inform him of my mental condition soon after our arrival, and he swore that the decoration of my forehead existed in my imagination only, that there was no trace of it in the sketch, and that I had worked myself into a passion for no reason whatever. I had to be content with this explanation until I was able to obtain more reliable information.
One evening we were sipping our coffee in the hotel garden in the company of an old friend who had just arrived from Sweden. It was still broad daylight, and from where I sat I could watch every expression on Marie's face. The old man gave us all the latest news. Amongst other names he mentioned that of the doctor who had treated my wife by massage. She did not let the name pass without comment, but interrupted him with a defiant—
"Ah! you know the doctor?"
"Oh yes, he is a very popular man.... I mean to say he enjoys a certain reputation——"
"As a conceited fool," I interposed.
Marie's cheeks grew pale; a cynical smile drew up the corners of her mouth, so that her white teeth became visible. The conversation dropped amid a general sense of embarrassment.
When I was left alone with my friend, I begged him to tell me frankly what he knew of those rumours which were giving me so much uneasiness. He swore a solemn oath that he knew nothing. I continued urging him, and at last drew from him the following enigmatical words of comfort—
"Moreover, my dear fellow, if you suspect one man, you may be sure that there are several."
That was all. But from this day onward Marie, who had been so fond of telling tales, of mentioning the doctor's name in public, that it sometimes seemed as if she were trying to get accustomed to talk about him without blushing, never again alluded to him.
This discovery impressed me so much that I took the trouble to search my memory for similar evidence. I recollected a play which had appeared at the time of her divorce. It threw light, vague, uncertain light, it is true, but yet sufficient light, on the channel which led up to the source of those rumours.
A play—by the famous Norwegian blue-stocking, the promoter of the "equality-mania," had fallen into my hands. I had read it without connecting it in the least with my own case. Now, however, I applied it easily, so easily that the blackest suspicions of my wife's good fame seemed justified.
This was the story of the play—
A photographer (the realism of my writings had won me this designation) had married a girl of doubtful morality. She had been the mistress of a smelter, and funds which she received from her former lover kept her home going. She made herself proficient in her husband's profession; and while she worked left him to loaf and spend his time in the cafés, drinking with boon companions.
The facts, albeit disguised in this way, must have been plain enough to the publisher; for although the latter knew that Marie was a translator, he did not know that I edited her translations and paid her the proceeds of her work without condition or deduction.
Matters did not improve when the unfortunate photographer discovered that his daughter, whom he idolised, had come into the world prematurely and was not his child at all, that he had been duped by his wife when she had prevailed on him to marry her.
To complete his degradation the deceived husband accepted a large sum from the old lover in lieu of damages.
In this I saw an allusion to Marie's loan which the Baron had guaranteed; it was the same guarantee which I had been compelled to countersign on our wedding-day.
I could not, at first, see any similitude between the illegitimate birth of the child in the play and my own case, for my little daughter was not born until two years after our marriage.
But I reflected.... What about the child who died?... I was on the right track!... Poor little dead baby!... It had been the cause of our marriage which otherwise might never have taken place.
I knew that my conclusion was not altogether sound, nevertheless I had arrived at a conclusion of some sort. Everything fitted in. Marie had visited the Baron after the divorce, he was on friendly terms with us, the walls of my home were decorated with his pictures, there was the loan, and all the rest of it.
I was determined to act, and laid my plans accordingly. I intended to suggest that Marie should draw up an indictment, or rather a defence, which would clear us both, for both of us had been attacked by the feminists' man of straw; he, doubtless, had been bribed into undertaking this profitable job.
When Marie entered my room, I received her in the most friendly manner.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"A very serious thing which concerns us both!" I told her the story of the play, and added that the actor who played the part of the photographer had made up to resemble me.
She reflected, silently, a prey to very evident excitement.
Then I suggested the defence.
"If it is true, tell me; I shall forgive you. If the little one who died was indeed Gustav's baby, well—you were free at the time; vague promises only bound you to me, and you had never accepted any money from me. As for the hero of the play, he behaved, in my opinion, like a man of heart; he was incapable of ruining the future prospects of his wife and daughter. The money which he accepted on behalf of the child was nothing but a quite legitimate compensation for an injury done to him."
She listened with great attention; her small soul nibbled at the bait without, however, swallowing it.
To judge from the calm which smoothed her conscience-stricken features, my assertion that she had a right to dispose of her body because she had never taken money from me pleased her. She agreed that the deceived husband was a man of heart. "A noble heart," she maintained.
The scene ended without my succeeding to draw a confession from her. I showed her the way out of the difficulty; I appealed to her for advice as to the best means of repairing our honour; suggested that we should publish our "defence" in the shape of a novel, and so cleanse ourselves before the world and our children from all those infamies....
I talked for an hour. She sat at my writing-table, playing with my penholder, in a state of intense agitation, without making a sound, only giving vent occasionally to a short exclamation.
I went out for a walk and then played a game of billiards. When I returned, after a couple of hours, I found her still sitting in the same place, motionless, like a statue.
She roused herself when she heard my footsteps.
"You were setting a trap for me!" she exclaimed.
"Not at all! Do you think I want to lose the mother of my children for ever?"
"I consider you capable of anything. You want to be rid of me; you made an attempt some time ago when you introduced a certain friend of yours to me." She mentioned a name which had never before been mentioned in this connection. "You hoped that I should betray you with him, didn't you?"
"Who told you that?"
"Helga!"
"Helga?"
She was Marie's last "friend" before we left Sweden. The revenge of the Lesbian!
"And you believed her?"
"Of course I did.... But I deceived you both, him and you!"
"You mean there was a third?"
"I didn't say so!"
"But you just confessed it! Since you deceived both of us, you must have deceived me! That is a logical conclusion."
She fought my arguments desperately, and demanded that I should prove them.
"Prove them!..."
Her treachery, surpassing the lowest depths of degradation of which I held a human heart capable, weighed on me like a crushing load. I bowed my head, I fell on my knees, I whined for mercy.
"You believed in the tittle-tattle of that woman! You believed that I wanted to be rid of you! And yet I have never been anything to you but a true friend, a faithful husband; I can't live without you! You complained of my jealousy ... while I regarded all women who run after me, trying to make love to me, as evil spirits. You believed what that woman said!... Tell me, did you really believe it?"
She was moved to compassion, and, all at once, yielding to a prompting to tell the truth, she confessed that she had never really believed it.
"And you deceived me.... Confess it, I'll forgive you.... Deliver me from the terrible, pitiless thoughts which torment me.... Confess it...."
She confessed nothing, and merely confined herself to calling my friend a "scoundrel."
A scoundrel he, my most intimate, my closest friend!
Oh, that I lay before her dead! Life was unbearable....
During dinner she was more than kind to me. When I had gone to bed, she came into my room, and, sitting on the edge of my bed, stroked my hands, kissed my eyes, and at last, shaken to the very foundation of her soul, burst into uncontrollable weeping.
"Don't cry, darling, tell me what's the matter; let me comfort you!..."
She stammered unintelligible, disconnected words about my generous heart, my kindness, my forbearance, the great compassion which I extended even to the worst of sinners.
How absurd it all was! I accused her of infidelity, she praised and caressed me.
But the fire had been kindled, and the flames could not be extinguished.
She had deceived me.
I must know the name of my rival!
The following week was one of the darkest of my whole life.
I fought a desperate fight against all those inbred principles which we inherit, or, rather, which we acquire through education. I resolved to open Marie's letters and make sure how I stood with her. And yet, although I allowed her to open all communications which came for me during my absence, I recoiled from tampering with the sacred law of the inviolability of letters, this most subtle obligation imposed on us by silent agreement between the whole community.
But my desire to know the full truth was stronger than my sense of honour, and a day dawned when the sacred law was forgotten. A letter had arrived; I opened it with trembling fingers; my hands shook as if they were unfolding the death-warrant of my honour.
It was a letter from the adventuress, friend No. 1. The subject of it was my insanity, mockingly, contemptuously discussed; it concluded with a prayer that God might soon deliver "her dear Marie" from her martyrdom by extinguishing the last glimmer of my reason.
I copied the worst passages, re-sealed the envelope, and laid the letter aside, ready to hand it to my wife with the evening mail. When the time came I gave it to her, and sat down by her side to watch her while she read it.
When she came to the part where the writer prayed for my death—at the top of the second page—she burst into shrill laughter.
So my beloved wife saw no other way out of her difficulties than my death. It was her only hope of escape from the consequences of her indiscretions. When I was gone, she would cash my life insurance and receive the pension due to the widow of a famous writer; then she would marry again, perhaps, or remain a gay widow all her life ... my beloved wife....
Moriturus sum!I resolved to hasten the catastrophe by a liberal recourse to absinthe, sole source of happiness now, and in the meantime play billiards to calm my excited brain.
A fresh complication confronted me, worse, if possible, than any of the previous ones. The authoress who had pretended to be in love with me made a conquest of Marie, and Marie became so devoted to her that her attachment gave rise to a great deal of gossip. This roused the jealousy of the authoress's former "inseparable," a fact which was not calculated to contradict the ugly rumours.
One evening Marie asked me whether I was in love with her friend....
"No, on the contrary! A common tippler! You can't be serious!"
"I am mad on her," she replied. "It is strange, isn't it?... I am afraid of being alone with her!"
"Why?"
"I don't know! She is so charming ... delicious...."
"Indeed...."
In the following week we invited some of our Paris friends, artists, without scruples or prejudices, and their wives.
The men came, but alone; the wives sent apologies, so transparent that they amounted to insults.
Dinner degenerated into perfect orgy. The scandalous conduct of the men revolted me.
They treated Marie's two friends as if they were prostitutes, and when every one was more or less intoxicated I saw one of the officers present repeatedly kissing my wife.
I waved my billiard cue above their heads and demanded an explanation.
"He's a friend of my childhood, a relative! Don't make yourself a laughing-stock, you silly!" replied Marie.
"Moreover, it is a Russian custom to kiss in public, and we are Russian subjects."
"Rubbish!" exclaimed one of the convives. "A relative? Humbug!"
I nearly committed a murder then. I had every intention to ... but the thought of leaving my children without father and mother arrested my arm.
When the company had left I had a scene with Marie.
"Prostitute!"
"Why?"
"Because you submit to being treated like one."
"Are you jealous?"
"Yes, I am jealous; jealous of my honour, the dignity of my family, the reputation of my wife, the future of my children! It is because of your unworthy conduct that we are ostracised by all decent women. To allow a stranger to kiss you in public! Don't you realise that you are mad, that you neither see, nor hear, nor understand what you are doing, that you are absolutely devoid of all sense of duty? I shall have you shut up if you don't mend your ways, and, to begin with, I forbid you to have anything more to do with those two women!"
"It's all your fault! You egged me on!"
"I wanted to see how far you would go!"
"See how far I would go! What proof have you that the relationship between me and my friends is such as you suspect?"
"What proof! None! But I have your admissions, your slippery tales. And didn't one of your friends admit that in her own country she would fall into the hands of the law?"
"I thought you denied the existence of vice!"
"I don't care how your friends amuse themselves so long as their amusements do not interfere with the welfare of my family. From the moment, however, that their 'peculiarities,' if you prefer this word, threaten to injure us, they are, as far as we are concerned, criminal acts. True, as a philosopher, I don't admit the existence of vice, but only of physical or moral defects. And, quite recently, when this unnatural tendency was discussed in the French parliament, all the French physicians of note were of opinion that it was not the province of the law to interfere in these matters, except in cases where the interests of individual citizens were violated."
I might as well have preached to stone walls. How could I hope to make this woman, who acknowledged no other law but her animal instincts, grasp a philosophical distinction!
To be quite sure of the facts, I wrote to a friend in Paris and asked him to tell me the plain truth.
In his reply, which was very candid, he told me that my wife's perverse tendencies were no secret in Scandinavia, and that the two Danes were well-known Lesbians in Paris.
We were in debt at our hotel, and had no money; therefore we were unable to move. But the two Danish ladies got into trouble with the peasants, and were compelled to leave.
We had known them for eight months, and an abrupt termination of our friendship was impossible; moreover, they belonged to good families, and were well educated; they had been comrades in trouble, and I resolved to grant them a retreat with honours. A farewell banquet was therefore arranged in the studio of one of the young artists.
At dessert, when every one was more or less gay with the wine which had been drunk, Marie, overcome by her feelings, rose to sing a song of her own composition. It was an imitation of the well-known song inMignon, and in it she bade farewell to her friend. She sang with fire and genuine feeling, her almond-shaped eyes were full of tears and glowed softly in the reflection of the candle-light; she opened her heart so wide that even I was touched and charmed. There was a candour, an ingenuousness in this woman's love-song to a woman, so pathetic that it kept all unchaste thoughts at bay. And how strange it was! She had neither the appearance nor the manners of the hermaphrodite; she was essentially woman; loving, tender, mysterious, unfathomable woman.
How different from her was the object of her tenderness! She was a pure Russian type, with masculine features, a hooked nose, a massive chin, yellow eyes and bloated cheeks, a flat chest, crooked fingers—a truly hideous woman—a peasant would not have looked at her.
When she had finished her song Marie sat down by the side of this freak; the latter rose, took Marie's head in her two hands and kissed her on the lips. That at least was pure and unadulterated sensuality.
I drank with the Russian until she was quite intoxicated; she stumbled, looked at me with large, bewildered eyes, and, sobbing like an imbecile, clutched the wall to support herself. I had never before seen such ugliness in human shape.
The banquet ended with a row in the street. On the following morning the two Danes left.
Marie passed through a terrible crisis; I was genuinely sorry for her; her longing for her friend, her suffering, were unmistakable. It was a genuine instance of unhappy love. She went for solitary walks in the woods, sang love-songs, visited the favourite haunts of her friends, exhibited every symptom of a wounded heart. I began to entertain fears for her sanity. She was unhappy, and I could not console her. She avoided my caresses, pushed me aside when I tried to kiss her. My heart was full of hatred for the woman who had robbed me of my wife's love. Perfectly unconscious of herself, Marie made no secret of the identity of the person for whom she was mourning. She talked of nothing but her love and her sorrow. It was incredible!
The two friends carried on a brisk correspondence. Infuriated with her indifference to me, I one day seized one of her friend's letters. It was a genuine love-letter. "My 'darling, my little puss, my clever, delicate, tender, noble-hearted Marie; that coarse husband of yours is but a stupid brute...." and so on. The letter further suggested that she should leave me, and proposed ways and means of escape....
I stood up against my rival, and on the same evening—oh, my God! Marie and I fought in the moonshine. She bit my hands, I dragged her to the river to drown her like a kitten—when suddenly I saw a vision of my children. It brought me to my senses.
I resolved to put an end to myself, but before doing so I determined to write the story of my life.
The first part of the book was finished when the news spread through the village that the Danish ladies had engaged rooms.
I instantly had the trunks packed, and we left for German Switzerland.
Lovely Argovia! Sweet Arcady, where the postmaster tends his flocks, where the colonel drives the only cab, where the young girls are virgins when they marry, and the young men shoot at targets and play the drum. Utopia! land of the golden beer and smoked sausages; birthplace of the game of ninepins, the House of Habsburg, William Tell, rustic merry-makings and naïve songs straight from the heart, pastors' wives and vicarage idylls!
Peace returned to our troubled hearts. I recovered, and Marie, weary of strife, wrapped herself in undisguised indifference. We played backgammon as a safety-valve, and our conversations, so fraught with danger, were replaced by the rolling of dice. I drank good, wholesome beer instead of wine and the nerve-shattering absinthe.
The influence of our environment soon made itself felt. I was amazed to find that such serene calm could follow the storms we had weathered, that the elasticity of the mind could withstand so many shocks, that we could forget the past, that I could fancy myself the happiest husband of the most faithful wife.
Marie, deprived of all society and friends, uncomplainingly devoted herself to her children. After a month had elapsed the little ones were dressed in frocks which she had cut out and made with her own hands. She was never impatient with them, and allowed them to absorb her completely.
For the first time now I noticed a certain lassitude in her; her love of pleasure was less pronounced, approaching middle-age made itself felt. How grieved she was when she lost her first tooth! Poor girl! She wept, put her arms round me and implored me never to cease loving her. She was now thirty-seven years old. Her hair had grown thinner, her bosom had sunk like the waves of the sea after a storm, the stairs tired her little feet, her lungs no longer worked with the old pressure.
And I, although I had not yet reached my prime, although my strength was increasing and I enjoyed excellent health, I loved her more than ever at the thought that now she would belong entirely to me and her children. Shielded from temptation, surrounded by my tender care, she would grow old in the fulfilment of her duties towards her family....
Her return to a more normal state of mind manifested itself in many pathetic ways. Realising her hazardous position as the wife of a comparatively young man of thirty-eight, she took it into her head to be jealous of me; she was more particular about the details of her dress, and took care of herself during the day, so that she might be fresh and able to please me in the evening.
She need have had no fear, for I am monogamous by temperament, and, far from abusing the situation, I did my utmost to spare her the cruel pangs of jealousy by giving her proof after proof of my renewed love.
In the autumn I made up my mind to make a tour through French Switzerland; I intended to be away for three weeks, and never stay longer than a day at any one place.
Marie, still clinging to the idea of my shattered health, tried to dissuade me.
"I am sure it will kill you," she reiterated.
"We shall see!"
The tour was a point of honour with me, an attempt to win her back completely, to reawaken in her the love of the virile.
I returned after incredible hardships, strong, brown and healthy.
There was a look of admiration, a challenge in her eyes when she met me, which was, however, quickly superseded by a look of disappointment.
I, on the other hand, after my three weeks' absence and abstinence, treated her as a man treats a beloved mistress, a wife from whom he has been parted all too long. I put my arm round her waist and, like a conqueror, seized my own, after a journey of forty-eight hours without a break.... She did not know what to think; she was amazed, afraid of betraying her real feelings; frightened at the thought of finding the "tamer" in her husband.
When my excitement had abated a little, I noticed that Marie's expression had undergone a change. I scrutinised her appearance: her missing tooth had been replaced, a fact which made her look much younger. Certain details of her dress betrayed a wish to please. It roused my attention. I soon discovered the reason in the presence of a young girl of about fourteen, with whom she was exceedingly friendly. They kissed one another, went for walks together, bathed together....
There was nothing left for me to do but to take her away it once.
We took rooms in a German private hotel on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne.
Marie relapsed into her former ways. She paid a great deal of attention to one of the guests, a young officer; played ninepins with him, and took melancholy walks in the garden while I worked.
I noticed at dinner that they exchanged tender glances, although no words were uttered. They seemed to caress one another with the eyes. I resolved to put them to the test at once, and, turning round sharply, looked straight into my wife's face. She tried to throw me off the scent by letting her eyes glide along the young man's temples until they rested on the wall, on a spot which was adorned by a huge poster advertising a brewery. She made an inane remark to cover her confusion.
"Is that a new brewery?" she stammered.
"Yes ... but don't imagine that you can hoodwink me," I retorted.
She bent her neck, as if I had pulled in the reins, and remained silent.
Two days later, in the evening, on pretence of being tired, she kissed me good-night and left the room. I too went to bed, and after reading for a little while, fell asleep.
All of a sudden I awoke. Some one was playing the piano in the drawing-room; a voice was singing—it was Marie's voice.
I arose and called the children's nurse.
"Go and tell your mistress to go to bed at once," I said. "Tell her that if she refuses I shall come down myself and shake her in the presence of the whole company."
Marie came up-stairs at once. She seemed ashamed, and with an air of injured innocence she asked me why I had sent her so strange a message; why I would not allow her to stay in the drawing-room, although there were other ladies present?
"I don't mind your staying in the drawing-room," I replied angrily. "But I do object to your sly ways of getting rid of me whenever you want to be there by yourself."
"If you insist, very well, I'll go to bed."
This candour, this sudden submission.... What had happened?
Winter had set in in good earnest. There was an abundance of snow; the sky was leaden, and we were cut off from all society. Everybody had left; we were the last guests in the modest hotel. The extreme cold compelled us to take our meals in the large public dining-room of the restaurant.
One morning, while we were at luncheon, a strong, thick-set man, rather nice-looking, evidently belonging to the servant class, entered, sat down at one of the tables, and asked for a glass of wine.
Marie scrutinised the stranger in her free and easy manner, took his measure, as it were, and became lost in a reverie.
The man went away, confused and flattered by her attention.
"A nice-looking man," she remarked, turning to the host.
"He used to be my porter."
"Was he? He really is unusually good-looking for his class! A very nice-looking man indeed!"
And she went into details, praising his virile beauty in terms which puzzled our host.
On the following morning the dashing ex-porter was already in his place when we entered. Dressed in his Sunday best, hair and beard trimmed, he appeared to be fully aware of his conquest. He bowed; my wife acknowledged his bow with a graceful bending of her head; he squared his shoulders and gave himself the airs of a Napoleon.
He returned on the third day, determined to break the ice. He started a polite conversation, reminiscent of the back-door, all the while addressing himself directly to my wife without wasting any time over the usual trick of first conciliating the husband.
It was intolerable!
Marie, in the presence of her husband and children, allowed herself to be drawn into a discussion by a stranger.
Once more I tried to open her eyes, begged her to be more careful of her reputation.
Her only answer was her usual: "You have a nasty mind!"
A second Apollo came to the rescue. He was the village tobacconist, an undersized man, at whose shop Marie was in the habit of making small purchases. More shrewd than the porter, he tried to make friends with me first; he was of a more enterprising nature. At the first meeting he stared impudently at Marie and loudly exclaimed to our host—
"I say, what a distinguished-looking family!"
Marie's heart caught fire, and the village beau returned night after night.
One evening he was intoxicated, and therefore more insolent than usual. He approached Marie while we were playing backgammon, and asked her to explain the rules of the game to him. I answered as civilly as I could under the circumstances, and the worthy man returned to his seat, snubbed. Marie, more sensitive than I, was under the impression that she ought to make amends for my rudeness; she turned to him with the first question which came into her mind—
"Do you play billiards?" she said.
"No, madame, or rather, I play badly...."
He rose again, approached a step or two, and offered me a cigar. I declined.
He turned to Marie. "Won't you smoke, madame?" Fortunately for her, for the tobacconist and the future of my family, she too declined, but she refused in a manner which flattered him.
How dared this man offer a lady a cigarette in a restaurant in the presence of her husband?
Was I a jealous fool? Or was my wife's conduct so scandalous that she excited the desire of the first-comer?
We had a scene in our room, for I regarded her as a somnambulist whom it was my duty to awaken. She was walking straight to her doom, without being in the least aware of it. I gave her an epitome of her sins, old and new, and minutely criticised her conduct.
Silently, with a pale face and dream-shadowed eyes, she listened until I had finished. Then she rose and went down-stairs to bed. But this time—for the first time in my life—I fell so low as to play the spy. I crept down-stairs, found her bedroom door, and looked through the keyhole.
The rich glow of the lamp fell on the children's nurse, who sat opposite the door right in the field of my vision. Marie was pacing the room excitedly, vehemently denouncing my unfounded suspicions; she conducted her case as a criminal conducts his defence.
And yet I was innocent, quite innocent, in spite of all my opportunities to sin....
She produced two glasses of beer, and they drank together. They sat down, side by side, and Marie looked at her caressingly. Closer and closer she moved to the girl, put her head on the shoulders of this new friend, slipped her arm round her waist and kissed her....
Poor Marie! Poor, unhappy woman, who sought comfort far from me, who alone could set her mind at rest and give her peace. All of a sudden she drew herself up, listened, and pointed towards the door.
"Some one's there!"
I slipped away.
When I returned to my post of observation I noticed that Marie was half undressed, exposing her shoulders to the gaze of the girl, who, however, remained quite unmoved. Then she resumed her defence.
"There can be no doubt that he is mad! I shouldn't be surprised if he tried to poison me.... I suffer unbearable pains in my inside.... But no, it's hardly probable ... perhaps I ought to fly to Finland.... What do you think?... Only it would kill him, for he loves the children...."
What was this, if not the outpourings of an evil conscience?... Stung with remorse, she was terror-stricken and sought refuge on the bosom of a woman! She was a perverted child; an unfaithful wife, a criminal; but, above all, she was an unhappy woman.
I lay awake all night, a prey to my tormenting thoughts. At two o'clock in the morning I heard her moaning in her sleep. Full of pity, I knocked on the floor to dispel the visions which terrified her. It was not the first time that I had done this.
She thanked me on the following morning for having awakened her from her nightmare. I made much of her, and begged her to tell me, her best friend, everything.
"Tell you what?... I have nothing to tell."
I should have given her absolution for whatever crime she had confessed to me at that moment, for my heart was full of compassion. I loved her with an infinite love, despite of, or perhaps because of, all the misery she had wrought. She was but an unhappy woman. How could I raise my hand against her?
But instead of delivering me once and for all from the terrible doubts which haunted me, she offered me the most strenuous resistance. She had persuaded herself that I was insane; her instinct of self-preservation had built up a legend behind which she could shield herself from the attacks of her anguished conscience.
Not a single ray of sunlight had gladdened the little village of Gersau on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne for three long weeks, not, in fact, since the beginning of October, when the Foehn began to blow. There had been a dead calm; after sunset I had fallen asleep and slept until I was awakened, in the middle of the night, by the ringing of the church bells and a noise which mingled with the peculiar rushing sound of the tempest as it came sweeping across the Alps, flung itself on the southern shore of the lake, was compressed into the valley and forced into the streets of our village, where it tore at the signs, shook the window shutters, rattled the slates and howled through the branches of trees and shrubs.
The waves of the lake dashed against the dam, foamed over the border and plashed against the sides of the boats. Handfuls of storm-lashed sand were flung at our windows; the leaves, torn from their branches, went dancing and whirling by, the doors of the stoves clattered, the walls shook. I looked out of the window; the church was lighted up, and the bells were ringing to awaken those who still slept. In these parts the Foehn is accounted as full of danger as an earthquake, for it does not only sweep away the houses, but it tears the mountains to pieces and flings them into the valleys. Our house was situated at the base of a mountain which, though only fifteen hundred metres high, carried on its summit a loose litter of rocks, peculiarly adapted to stone-throwing on a large scale. The tempest raged for three hours, then the danger was over; but on the following morning everybody in the village knew that at Schwyz a rock had fallen on a farmhouse and carried away the right wing without injury to those who lived in the left.
After this warm but terrific gale a fog descended on village and lake. The sky was overcast, but no rain fell; yet there was no sunshine. This continued for three weeks, and if the outlook had been grey to begin with, it ended by being black. The beautiful alpine landscape, the unrivalled restorer of flagging spirits, had lost its potency, for it was impossible to see further ahead than a hundred yards up the steep rocks; the heart became heavy as lead and indescribably depressed. The tourists had turned their faces homewards, the hotels were empty, November was upon us, sombre and gloomy. The hours dragged on wearily; one longed for the end of the dreary day and the cheerful light of the lamps; the dismal sky was grey, the lake was grey, the landscape was grey.
No wind, no rain, no thunder. Nature, so varied and diversified, had become monotonous, calm and quiet; so peaceful that an earthquake would have been a relief.
Wherever the light did not fall, greyness reigned; vision was dimmed, and drowsiness, akin to laziness, enveloped the soul.
One evening, when I complained to the magistrate of the long absence of the sun, he answered with the phlegm which characterises the German-Swiss—
"The sun! You can see the sun all day long on the Hochfluh!"
The Hochfluh was one of the small mountain ranges which surrounded the valley in which we lived; it was only two hundred metres lower than the Sulitelma, and consequently a favourite walk of young English tourists. Being a worshipper of the sun, I decided to make a pilgrimage to my deity, and early one November morning I set out on my travels.
The inhabitants of Gersau, living at the base of a mountain which, as I have already mentioned, every now and then transforms itself into a volcano and rains rocks and stones on the valleys, have from time immemorial cultivated the habit of preparing themselves for death by visiting their church three times a day, at morning, noon and evening. I was not surprised, therefore, to meet the church-goers now, at eight o'clock in the morning, carrying their Prayer Books in their hands. Two old women, patiently performing their daily half-mile trudge to morning prayers, were counting their beads on the highroad. One of them started the angelic salutation "Ave Maria!" and her companion joined in the burden "In sæcula sæculorum, Amen." They kept up their monotonous' mumbling the whole way, and though this counting of beads may not have done any actual good, it at least prevented any misuse of the tongue; I could not help thinking of the well-known anecdote of the count who made his butler whistle whenever he was busy in the wine cellar.
Soon after I had left the old women and the highroad behind, and begun the ascent, I came upon some sights which were so striking that they made a lasting impression on me. Close to the first curve of the road grew a walnut tree, to which were nailed a crucifix and a tablet; the inscription on the latter informed the passer-by that farmer Seppi, while busy with the harvest, fell from the tree and was killed. God have mercy on his soul! Pray for him! Amen!
At the next corner there was a queer little shrine built of whitewashed bricks, small like a child's dolls'-house. A peep through the railings disclosed pictures of the Holy Family, painted, perhaps, in the sixteenth century, and a legend to the effect that criminals on their way to execution were allowed a few minutes' respite before the shrine to utter a last prayer. I was, therefore, on the road which led to the gallows, and a few minutes later I arrived at the place of execution, a pleasant open spot on the top of an overhanging cliff which jutted out in the direction of the lake. From this point one had a magnificent view. To bid farewell to life with a last look at such a picture as greets the eye from the summit of Pilatus, Buechserhorn or Buergenstock is quite conceivably a genuine pleasure. Even Voltaire could have felt none of the repugnance which was excited in him by the idea of being hanged in secret, a contingency which filled him with such extreme disgust, that he was quite consistent in accusing Rousseau of a vanity so great that it would permit him to submit cheerfully to be hanged, if he could be sure of his name being nailed to the gallows.
In the distance, near the shore, I could dimly discern a faint outline of a haunted little church, called "Kindlimord" because a grief-stricken father is said there to have killed his starving child.
I left these four melancholy landmarks behind me in the grey morning light, and hastened my ascent to those happier heights where the sun was shining.
Very soon beeches took the place of chestnut and walnut trees. I rested for a while in a dairy cottage in the company of fine cattle and a horrible cur, and then entered cloudland. I seemed to be walking in a dense fog, which grew in density and almost completely blotted out the landscape. The effort to see made my eyes ache; trees and shrubs loomed indistinctly through a cloud of smoke; the millions of cobwebs which festooned the branches were richly studded with raindrops; it looked as if the old woman of the wood, if there is such a being, had hung up thousands of lace handkerchiefs to dry.
It was difficult to breathe; the fog hung on my coat, hair, beard and eyebrows, gave out a stale, sickly smell, and rendered the rocks so smooth and slippery that I could hardly keep my footing; it darkened the heart of the wood, where the trunks were quickly swallowed up in a monotonous grey, which limited the range of vision to a few yards.
I had to climb up through this layer of fog, extending about a thousand metres upwards, a cold and damp purgatory, before I could reach the sun; and I struggled on, with sublime faith in the magistrate's word of honour that the fog would cease before the mountain ceased and grey space began.
I had no barometer with me, but I felt that I was ascending, that the fog was growing less dense, and that I was approaching a purer atmosphere.
A feeling of intoxication seized me—a faint glimmer from above dimly illuminated the narrow pass, like the first dawn of day shining through the picture of a landscape painted on a window-blind; the trees stood out more distinctly, the field of vision increased, the tinkling of cowbells—from above—fell on my ear. And now, right on the summit, there hung a golden cloud; a few more steps and the stunted beeches and brushwood shone and glittered, dazzling splashes of gold, copper, bronze and silver, wherever a stream of broken sunlight fell on the faded foliage which was still clinging to the branches. I was standing in an autumn landscape looking out into a sun-bathed summerland; through my mind flashed the memory of a sail on the Lake of Mälar; I remembered how I was sitting in the sunshine, watching the passing of a black hail-storm no further off than a cable-length to leeward. And now I, too, stood in the sunlight, gazing at a northern landscape made up of firs and birch trees, green fields and red cattle, little brown cottages with old women on the thresholds, knitting socks for father, who was toiling far down in the canton of Tessin; my eyes rested on potato fields and lavender bushes, dahlias and marigolds.
The sun dried my hair and coat, and warmed my shivering limbs; I bared my head before the glowing orb, source and preserver of all there is, completely indifferent whether I was worshipping unquenchable flames of burning hydrogen, or the not yet scientifically acknowledged primordial substance, helium. Was it not the All-Father, who had given birth to the Cosmos, the Almighty, the Lord of life and death, ice and heat, summer and winter, dearth and plenty?
My eyes, which had been feasting on summer joy and green fields, plunged into the gloom of the abyss whence I had climbed. The mantle of cold and darkness which had been lying on the surface of the lake was cold and dark no longer; dazzling clouds, like snowy, sunlit piles of wool, hid from my gaze the twilight and the polluted earth; above them rose snow-clad peaks, glistening and sparkling, fashioned of condensed silver fog, a crystallised solution of air and sunlight, drift-ice on a sea of newly fallen snow. It was a vision of transcendent beauty, compared to which the cowbell-idyll under the birch trees was commonplace.
The dead silence was suddenly broken by a sound from below, where melancholy men and women toiled and trembled in the grey gloom. It was a splashing sound which approached deliberately; so deliberately that my eyes unconsciously tried to follow its course under the cloud-cover. It sounded like a millstream, a brook swollen with rain, a tidal wave. Then a scream rent the air, loud and wild, as if all the dwellers in the four cantons were calling for help against Uri-Rotstock; it was the shrill whistle of the paddle-boat which, penetrating the layer of clouds, gained in volume in the pure air and was caught up and tossed from rock to rock by the redundant echo of the Hochfluh.
It was noon! Time to begin my descent through the fog down to the greyness, the darkness, the damp, the dirt, and wait for another three weeks, perhaps, for another glimpse of the sun.
After the New Year we left Switzerland and took up our abode in Germany; we had decided to stay for a while at the lovely shores of the Lake of Constance.
In Germany, the land of militarism, where the patriarchate is still in full force, Marie felt completely out of it. No one would listen to her futile talk about women's rights. Here young girls had just been forbidden to attend the University lectures; here the dowry of a woman who marries an officer of the army has to be deposited with the War Office; here all government appointments are reserved for the man, the breadwinner of the family.
Marie struggled and fought as if she had been caught in a trap. On her first attempt to hoodwink me she was severely taken to task by the women. For the first time in my life I found the fair sex entirely on my side; henceforth she had to play second fiddle. The friendly intercourse with the officers braced me; their manners influenced mine; and after ten years of spiritual emasculation my manhood reasserted itself.
I let my hair grow as it liked, and abolished the fringe on which Marie had insisted; my voice, which had grown thin from everlastingly speaking in soothing tones to a woman, regained its former volume. The hollows in my cheeks filled out, and although I was now beginning my fortieth year my whole physique gained in strength and vigour.
I was friendly with all the women in the house, and soon fell into the habit of taking a very active part in the conversation, while Marie, poor, unpopular Marie, once again sat in silence.
She began to be afraid of me. One morning, for the first time in the last six years of our marriage, she appeared fully dressed in my bedroom before I was up. I could not understand this sudden move, but we had a stormy scene, during which she admitted that she was jealous of the girl who came into my room every morning to light the fire in my stove.
"And I do detest your new ways!" she exclaimed. "I hate this so-called manliness, and loathe you when you give yourself airs!"
Well, I knew that it had always been the page, the lap-dog, the weakling, "her child" that she loved. The virago never loves virility in her husband, however much she may admire it elsewhere.
I became more and more popular with the women. I sought their society; my whole nature was expanding in the friendly warmth which they emanated, these true women, who inspired the respectful love, the genuine devotion which a man only feels for a womanly woman.
We were discussing our return home. But again my old suspicions tormented me. I shrank from the renewal of old relations with former friends, some of whom might quite conceivably have been my wife's lovers. To put an end to my doubts, I determined to cross-examine her, for my letters to friends in Sweden had been so much waste of paper. I had been unable to elicit a candid statement.
Everybody pitied the "mother." No one cared whether or not the "father" would be ruined by the ridicule which threatened to befall him.
An excellent idea occurred to me. I would make use of the resources of the new science of psychology and thought-reading. I introduced it into our evening amusements, as if it were a game, employing the methods of Bishop and his kind. Marie was suspicious. She charged me with being a spiritualist; laughingly called me a superstitious free-thinker; overwhelmed me with abuse—in fact, used every means in her power to divert my attention from practices the danger of which she apparently anticipated. I pretended to give in, and dropped hypnotism, but I resolved to make my attack some time when she was off her guard.
The opportunity came one evening when we were sitting alone in the dining-room, facing each other. I gradually led the conversation to gymnastics. I succeeded in interesting her so much that she became excited and, compelled either by my will-power or the association of ideas which I had aroused in her mind, she mentioned massage. This suggested the pain caused by the treatment, and remembering her own experience in this connection she exclaimed—
"Oh yes, the treatment is certainly painful—I can feel the pain now when I think of——"
She paused. She bowed her head to hide her pallor; her lips moved as if she were anxious to change the subject; her eyelids flickered. A terrible silence followed which I prolonged as much as possible. This was the train of thought which I had set in motion and guided, full steam on, in the intended direction. In vain she tried to put on the brake. The abyss lay before her; she could not stop the engine. With a superhuman effort she broke from the grip of my eyes and rushed out of the room.
The blow had struck home.
She returned a few minutes later; her face had lost its strained expression. Under pretence of demonstrating to me the beneficial effect of massage, she came behind my chair and stroked my head. Unfortunately the little scene was acted before a mirror. A furtive glance showed me her pale, terrified face, her troubled eyes which scrutinised my features ... our searching glances met.
Contrary to her habit she came and sat on my knee, put her arms round me lovingly and murmured that she was very sleepy.
"What wrong have you committed to-day that you caress me like this?" I asked.
She hid her face on my shoulder, kissed me and went out of the room, bidding me good-night.