I
On the day after our departure the whole town knew that Baroness X had
eloped with one of the librarians of the Royal Library.
This was only what was to be expected, to be dreaded! After all my
efforts to save her good name, we had forgotten everything in a moment
of weakness.
She had spoiled all our plans, and all that remained for me to do was
to take the responsibility on my own shoulders and grapple to the
best of my ability with the consequences which threatened to ruin her
theatrical career; there was only one theatre where she could possibly
appear, and loose morals were not likely to increase her chances of an
engagement at the Royal Theatre.
On the morning after my return I made an excuse to call on the chief
librarian, who was slightly unwell and unable to go out. The sole
object of my visit was the establishment of an alibi. After leaving
him I strolled through the main streets and thoroughfares and arrived
at my office at the usual hour. I spent the evening at the Press Club,
and deliberately set the rumour afloat that there was but one reason
for the divorce, and that was the Baroness's determination to enter the
theatrical profession. I maintained that husband and wife were on the
best of terms, and that their separation was but the inevitable result
of class prejudice.
If I had only known what harm I was doing myself by spreading these
rumours and proclaiming her innocence! ... But no, I should not have
acted otherwise.
The papers scrambled eagerly for the smart society scandal, but the
public scoffed at this irresistible love of art, a more or less
doubtful phenomenon always, but more especially when the stage is
concerned. The women in particular were sceptical, and the forsaken
child remained an ugly fact which nothing could explain away.
In the meantime I received a letter--a perfect howl of anguish--from
Copenhagen. Tortured by remorse, by a yearning for her deserted child,
she asked me to come to her at once, complaining bitterly of her
relatives who, she asserted, were making her life one long drawn-out
agony. She charged them with having suppressed, in collusion with her
husband, an important document, which was essential for the final
decision in the case.
I refused to leave town, but wrote a few angry lines to the Baron. His
reply was so insolent that it led to a complete rupture between us.
One or two telegrams passed, and peace was re-established. The document
was found, and the proceedings went on.
I spent my evenings in writing long letters to her, giving her minute
instructions how to comport herself in the circumstances. These letters
were intended to cheer and encourage her. I advised her to work, to
study her art, to visit the theatres. In my anxiety to supplement her
income, I urged her to write on anything which she found interesting,
and undertook to get her articles accepted by a first-class paper.
No answer. I had every reason to believe that her independent spirit
resented my well-meant interference.
A week passed; a week full of care, unrest and hard work. Then, early
one morning, before I was up, I received a letter from Copenhagen.
The tone of her letter was calm and serene; she seemed unable to hide a
certain pride on account of the quarrel between the Baron and myself.
(She was in a fair position to form an opinion, since she had received
the respective letters from both of us.) She found the "duel" not
without style, and admired my pluck. "It is a pity," she concluded her
letter, "that two men like you and the Baron should not be friends."
Further on she gave me a detailed account of what she was doing to
while away the time. She was evidently enjoying herself; she had made
her way into second-rate artistic circles, a fact which I did not like.
She described an evening spent at some assembly-rooms in the company of
a number of young men, who paid her a great deal of attention; she had
made the conquest of a musician, a youth who had sacrificed his family
to his art. "What a strange similarity between our two cases!" she
remarked. Then followed a detailed biography of the interesting martyr
and the request not to be jealous.
"What did she mean?" I wondered, taken aback by the half-sarcastic,
half-familiar tone of her letter, which appeared to be written between
two entertainments.
Was it possible that this coldly voluptuous madonna belonged to the
class of born wantons, that she was a coquette, a cocotte?
I sat down at once and indited a furious scolding; I painted her
picture as she then appeared to me. I called her Madame Bovary; I
entreated her to break the spell which was leading her to a precipice.
In reply, "as a proof of her absolute faith in me," she sent me the
letters which the young enthusiast had written to her. Love letters!
The same old use of the term friendship, the inexplicable sympathy of
the souls, and the whole list of the trite and to us both so familiar
words: brother and sister, little mother, playmates, and so on, cloaks
and covers under which lovers are wont to hide, to abandon themselves
ultimately to their passions.
What was I to think? Was she mentally deranged?
Was she an unconscious criminal who remembered nothing of the terrible
experience of the last two months, when the hearts of three people
were on fire for her? And I who had been made to play the part of a
Cinderella, a scape-goat, a man of straw, I was toiling to remove all
obstacles from her way to the irregular life of the theatre.
A fresh blow! To see the woman whom I adored wallow in the gutter.
My soul was filled with unspeakable compassion, I had a foreboding of
the fate which awaited her, perverse woman that she was, and vowed to
lift her up, to strengthen and support her, to do everything in my
power to shield her from a fatal catastrophe.
Jealous! That vulgar word invented by a woman in order to mislead
the man she has deceived or means to deceive. The hoodwinked husband
shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous
husband--husband betrayed! And there are women who look upon jealousy
as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only
shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.
She returned after a fortnight, pretty, fresh, in high spirits, and
full of bright memories, for she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She
was wearing a new dress with touches of brilliant colouring, which
struck me as vulgar. I was puzzled. The woman who used to dress so
simply, so quietly, with such exquisite taste, was adopting a colour
scheme which was positively garish.
Our meeting was colder than either of us had expected; there was a
constrained silence at first, followed by a sudden outburst.
The flatteries of her new friends had turned her head; she gave herself
airs, teased me, made fun of me. She spread her gorgeous dress over
my old sofa, to hide its shabbiness. Her old power over me reasserted
itself, and for a moment I forgot all resentment in a passionate kiss;
nevertheless, a slight feeling of anger remained at the bottom of my
heart, and presently found vent in a torrent of reproaches. Subdued by
my impetuosity, which contrasted so strangely with her own indolent
nature, she took refuge in tears.
"How can you be so absurd as to imagine that I was flirting with that
young man?" she sobbed. "I promise you never to write to him again,
although I'm sure he'll think it rude of me."
Rude! One of her favourite catchwords! A man pays her attention, in
other words makes advances to her, and she listens politely, for fear
of being rude. What a woman!
But fate was against me. I was lying at her feet, her beautiful little
feet, encased in tiny shoes. She was wearing black silk stockings,
which added to my confusion; her leg was a little fuller than it had
been; the black legs in a cloud of petticoats were the legs of a
she-devil.
Her constant fear of motherhood irritated me; I lied to her; I told her
that she had nothing to fear from me; that I knew how to cheat nature.
I repeated my assurances until I finished by believing in them myself,
and in the end succeeded in setting her mind at ease by promising to be
responsible for all consequences.
She was living with her mother and aunt in the second story of a house
in one of the main thoroughfares. As she threatened to visit me in my
own room if they prevented me from seeing her, I was allowed to call.
But the thought of the supervision of these two old women, whom I knew
to be watching us through the keyhole all the time, was almost beyond
bearing.
The divorced husband and wife were beginning to realise how much they
had lost. The Baroness, once a respected married woman, mistress of
an aristocratic establishment, had returned to the conditions of her
childhood. She was under the control of her mother, almost a prisoner
in one room, kept by two old women, who were themselves in needy
circumstances. The mother never lost an opportunity of reminding her
of her careful bringing up and how she had been fitted to take an
honourable social position, and the daughter remembered the happy days
following her release from the parental yoke. Bitter words were spoken
on both sides, tears and insults were all too frequent, and I had to
pay for them when I called in the evening ... to visit a prisoner under
the eyes of a warder and witness.
When the strain of these painful meetings became unbearable, we
ventured to meet two or three times in the park. But we only jumped
from the frying-pan into the fire, for now we were exposed to the
contemptuous stare of the crowd. We hated the spring sunshine which
illuminated our misery. We missed the darkness, we longed for the
winter, which made it easier for us to hide our shame. Alas! the summer
was coming with its long nights, which know no darkness.
Our former friends dropped us, one after the other. Even my sister,
intimidated by the now universal gossip, grew suspicious and estranged
when the ex-baroness, at a little supper party, tried to keep up her
spirits by taking too much wine, became intoxicated, proposed a toast,
smoked cigarettes, and generally behaved in a way which excited the
disgust of the women and the contempt of the men.
"That woman's a common prostitute!" said a respectable married man and
father of a family to my brother-in-law, and the latter took the first
chance to repeat the remark to me.
When on the following Sunday evening we arrived at my sister's house,
where we had been invited to supper, the servant informed us, to our
consternation, that her master and mistress were out.
We spent the evening in my room, a prey to anger and despair, seeking
comfort in the thought of suicide. I pulled down the blinds to shut
out the daylight, and we sat together in misery, waiting for night and
darkness, before we ventured out again into the street. But the summer
sun did not set until late, and at eight o'clock we both felt hungry.
Neither of us had any money, and there was nothing to eat or drink in
the cupboard. These moments were some of the most wretched moments of
my life, and gave me a foretaste of misery to come. Reproaches, cold
kisses, floods of tears, remorse, disgust.
I tried to persuade her to go home and have supper with her mother, but
she was afraid of the daylight; moreover, her heart sank at the thought
of the necessary explanation. She had eaten nothing since two o'clock,
and the melancholy prospect of going to bed supperless aroused the wild
beast hunger in her.
She had grown up in a wealthy home, and had been used to every kind
of luxury; she had no idea what poverty meant, and consequently she
was completely unstrung. I, who had been familiar with hunger from
childhood, suffered torture to see her in such a desperate position. I
ransacked my cupboard, but could find nothing; I searched the drawers
of my writing-table, and there, amongst all sorts of keep-sakes, faded
flowers, old love-letters, discoloured ribbons, I found two sweets
which I had kept in remembrance of a funeral. I offered them to her
just as they were, wrapped in black paper and tinfoil. A distressing
banquet indeed, these sweets in their mourning dress!
Depressed, humiliated, apprehensive, I raged and thundered furiously
against all respectable women whose doors were closed to us, who would
have none of us.
"Why this hostility and contempt? Had we committed a crime? Surely not;
it was but a question of a straightforward divorce; we were complying
with all the rules and requirements of the law."
"We have been behaving too correctly," she said, trying to comfort
herself. "The world is but a pack of knaves. It winks at open,
shameless adultery, but condemns divorce. A high standard of morality
indeed!"
We were agreed on the subject. But the facts remained. The crime
continued to hang over our heads, which drooped under its weight.
I felt like a boy who has robbed a bird's nest. The mother had flown
away, the little ones lay prostrate, chirping plaintively, bereft of
the protecting warmth of the mother's wings.
And the father? He was left desolate in the ruined home. I pictured him
of a Sunday evening, an evening like this, when the family assembles
round the fire-place, alone in the drawing-room, with the silenced
piano; alone in the dining-room, eating his solitary dinner; alone
always....
"Oh, no, nothing of the kind!" she interrupted my musings; "you are
quite mistaken! You would be much more likely to find him lounging on
the comfortable sofa at Matilde's brother-in-law's; he has had a good
dinner with plenty of wine, and is gently squeezing the hand of my
poor, dear, libelled little cousin, laughing at the outrageous stories
told of his wife's ill-conduct--his wife, who refused to countenance
his infidelity. And both of them, surrounded and upheld by the sympathy
and applause of this hypocritical world, are eager to throw the first
stone at us."
Her words set me thinking, and after a while I expressed the opinion
that the Baron had led us by the nose; that he had schemed to rid
himself of a troublesome wife, so as to be able to marry again, and had
managed to secure her dowry, in spite of the law.
She became indignant at once.
"You have no right to say anything against him! It was all my fault!"
"Why have I no right to say anything against him? Is his person sacred?"
One might almost have thought so, for whenever I attacked him she took
his part.
Was it the freemasonry of caste which prompted her to stand up for him?
Or were there secrets in her life which made her fear his enmity? I
could not solve the riddle, nor discover the reason of her loyalty to
him, which no disloyalty on his part could shake.
The sun set at last, and we parted. I slept the sleep of the famished;
I dreamed that I was making desperate efforts to wing my way
heavenwards, with a millstone round my neck.
* * * * *
Misfortune dogged our footsteps. We approached one of the theatrical
managers with the request to give us a date for her first appearance.
He replied that he could not, in his official position, have anything
to do with a runaway wife.
We left no stone unturned, but all our efforts were doomed to failure.
A year hence her resources would be exhausted, and she would be thrown
on the street. It was my business, the business of the poor Bohemian,
to save her from that fate.
To avoid every possibility of a misunderstanding, she called on an old
friend of hers, a former tragedienne, whom up to quite recently she had
constantly met in society, and who had cringed like a dog before the
"golden-haired Baroness," her "little fairy."
The great actress, a notoriously unfaithful wife, grown grey in vice at
the side of her husband, received the honest sinner with insults and
closed her door to her.
We had tried everything!
There remained nothing but revenge.
"Very well," I said to her, "why not try writing? Write a play, get it
produced at this very theatre? Why descend when there is a possibility
of rising? Put your foot on that old woman! With one stride rise far
above her head! Show off this lying, hypocritical, vicious society,
which opens its houses to prostitutes, but closes them to a divorced
wife. It's good stuff for a play."
But she was one of those soft natures, very susceptible, very easily
impressed, but unable to strike back.
"No, no revenge!"
And cowardly and revengeful at the same time, she left vengeance
to God; it came to the same thing in the end, but it put the
responsibility on a man of straw.
But I persevered, and at last fortune favoured me. I had an order from
a publisher to edit an illustrated book for children.
"Write the text," I suggested; "you will be paid a hundred francs for
it."
I supplied her with reference books; I made her believe that she had
done the work unaided, and she pocketed the hundred francs. But I
paid a heavy penalty. The publisher stipulated that my name, which
had come before the public as that of a playwright, should appear on
the title-page. It was literary prostitution, and my enemies, who
had predicted my incapacity of distinguishing myself in literature,
triumphed.
After that I persuaded her to write an article for one of the morning
papers. She acquitted herself fairly well. The article was accepted,
but the paper made no payment.
I wore myself out in trying to raise a sovereign, and, succeeding after
endless efforts, I handed it over to her with the white lie that it
represented her remuneration from the paper.
Poor Marie! She was delighted to give her small earnings to her old
mother, who supplemented her income by letting furnished apartments.
The old ladies began to look upon me as their saviour; copies of
translations, unanimously rejected by theatrical managers in bygone
days, appeared from drawers, where they had long lain forgotten. I was
credited with the wondrous capacity to effect their acceptance, and
burdened with futile commissions which interfered with my work and
caused me no end of trouble. I had to fall back on my small savings
because I wasted my time and used up my nervous energy; I could only
afford one meal a day, and reverted to my old habit of going to bed
without supper.
Encouraged by her few little successes, Marie undertook to write a
play in five acts. I seemed to have sown into her soul all the sterile
seed of my poetic inspirations. In this virgin soil it germinated and
grew, while I remained unproductive, like a flower which shakes out its
seed and withers. My soul was lacerated, sick to death. The influence
of that little female brain, so different from the brain of a man,
disturbed and disordered the mechanism of my thoughts. I was at a loss
to understand why I thought so highly of her literary gifts, why I
kept on urging her to write, for with the exception of her letters to
me, which were mostly personal and frequently quite commonplace, I had
no proof that she could write at all. She had become my living poem;
she had taken the place of my vanished talent. Her personality was
grafted on mine and was dominating it. I existed only through her; I,
the mother-root, led an underground life, nourishing this tree which
was growing sunwards and promising wonderful blossoms. I delighted in
its marvellous beauty, never dreaming that the day would come when the
offshoot would separate from the exhausted trunk, to bloom and dazzle
independently, proud of the borrowed splendour.
The first act of her play was finished. I read it. Under the spell of
my hallucination I found it perfect; I loudly expressed by sincere
admiration and heartily congratulated the author. She was herself
astonished at her talent, and I prophesied for her a brilliant future.
But all of a sudden our plans were changed. Marie's mother remembered
a friend, an artist, a very wealthy woman with a fine estate, and,
what was of greater importance still, closely in touch with one of our
leading actors whose wife was the rival and sworn enemy of the great
tragedienne, Marie's former friend.
The artist, a spinster, vouched for the high moral standard of this
couple, and they expressed themselves ready to undertake the guidance
and supervision of Marie's studies until her first appearance in
public. Marie was invited to stay for a fortnight with her mother's
friend to discuss the matter. There she was to meet the great actor and
his wife who, to fill her cup of happiness, had used their influence
with the manager of the theatre on her behalf with very satisfactory
results. His former reported refusal was thereby entirely contradicted,
and turned out to have been a fabrication of her mother's, invented for
the sole purpose of keeping her daughter off the stage.
Marie's future appeared to be safe. I could breathe freely, sleep
undisturbed, work.
She stayed away for a fortnight. To judge from her scanty letters she
was anything but dull. Her new friends, to whom she had given proofs of
her talent, had told her that she would do well on the stage.
On her return she engaged rooms in a farmhouse and arranged with the
farmer's wife to board her. She was free of her warders now, and we
could spend unchaperoned week-ends together. Life was smiling at us, a
little sadly, it is true, for a certain melancholy, the effect of her
divorce, always remained. But in the country the burden of convention
weighs less heavily than in town, and the summer sun soon dispelled the
gloom which hung over our lives.
II
Her appearance under the patronage of the two famous actors was
announced in the autumn and put a stop to all gossip. I did not
like the part chosen for her. It was a small character-part in
an old-fashioned play. But her teacher and patron counted on the
sympathy of the audience and the effect of a good scene, in which she
refused an aristocratic suitor who saw in her a rare ornament for his
drawing-room, and declared that in her eyes the noble heart of the poor
young man was infinitely more precious than all the wealth and title of
the nobleman.
As I was dismissed from my post as her teacher, I was able to devote
all my time and attention to my scientific studies, and the writing of
a paper destined for some academy or other. This was necessary in order
to prove myself a man of letters and efficient librarian. With ardent
zeal I gave myself up to ethnographical research in connection with the
farthest East. It acted like opium on my brain, which was exhausted
by the struggles, cares and pains I had undergone. Inspired by the
ambition to show myself worthy of my beloved, whose future appeared in
the rosiest hues, I achieved wonders of industry; I shut myself up in
the vaults of the Royal Castle from morning till night; I suffered from
the damp and icy atmosphere without a complaint; I defied poverty and
need.
* * * * *
Marie's appearance in public was postponed by the death of her little
daughter, who died of brain fever; another month of tears, reproaches
and remorse followed.
"It is a judgment on you," declared the child's grand-mother, glad to
thrust the poisoned dagger into the heart of the daughter-in-law whom
she hated because she had brought dishonour on her name.
Marie was broken-hearted, and spent day and night at the bedside of the
dying child, under the roof of her former husband, chaperoned by her
late mother-in-law. The father was overcome with grief at the death of
his only child, and, bowed down with sorrow, he longed to meet again
the friend of former days, the witness of the past. One evening, a few
days after the little girl's funeral, my landlady informed me that the
Baron had called and had left a message to the effect that he hoped to
see me at his house.
Considering the unusual circumstances which had led up to the breach, I
wanted anything but a reconciliation. I sent him a polite refusal.
A quarter of an hour had hardly elapsed when Marie herself appeared,
dressed in deep mourning, her eyes full of tears, and begged me to
comply with the request of the inconsolable Baron.
I found this mission in abominable taste. I rated her soundly, and
pointed out to her how ambiguous and unjustifiable in the eyes of the
world such a situation would be. She upbraided me with my prejudices,
implored me, appealed to my generous disposition, and ended by
overruling all my objections; I agreed to the indelicate proposal.
I had sworn never again to enter the house in which the drama had been
enacted. But the widower had removed. He had taken rooms not far from
us; I was glad to be spared a renewed visit to the old place, and
accompanied the divorced wife on her visit to her late husband.
The mourning, the evident grief, the grave and gloomy appearance of
the house all combined to rob our meeting of any trace of strangeness
or embarrassment. The habit of seeing these two people together was a
bar to any feeling of jealousy on my part, and the tactful and cordial
bearing of the Baron helped to reassure me completely.
We dined together, we drank and played cards just as in the old days.
On the following day we met in my room; on a third evening at Marie's,
who was now living in the house of an old lady. We fell into our former
habits, and Marie was happy to see us together. It comforted her, and
since we had ourselves under perfect control nobody was offended or
aggrieved. The Baron looked upon us as being secretly engaged, his love
for Marie seemed to be dead. Sometimes he even talked of his unhappy
love-affair, for Matilda was carefully watched by her father and out of
his reach.... Marie teased and comforted him alternately, and he made
no secret, now, of his true feelings.
At parting their intimacy was more marked, but instead of rousing my
jealousy it merely excited my disgust.
One day Marie told me that she had been to see the Baron, and stayed to
have dinner with him; she justified her visit by saying that she had to
talk to him on urgent business in connection with her daughter's estate
which the Baron inherited.
I objected to this want of taste; in fact, I told her that her conduct
was downright indecent. She burst out laughing, teasingly reminded me
of my former railings against prejudice, and in the end I joined in her
laughter. It was ridiculous, it was unusual, but it was good form to
laugh at everything, and a splendid thing to see virtue rewarded.
After that she visited the Baron whenever she pleased, and I believe he
helped her to study her part.
Up to now we had had no quarrels, for any jealousy I might have
felt disappeared as soon as I got used to the state of things, and I
never quite lost the old illusion that they were husband and wife.
But one evening Marie came to see me alone. On helping her to remove
her cloak I noticed that her dress was somewhat deranged. It roused
my suspicions. She sat down on the sofa opposite the looking-glass,
talking volubly all the time. Her conversation struck me as forced, she
cast furtive glances at her reflection and stealthily tried to smooth
her hair.
A horrible thought flashed into my mind. Unable to control my
agitation, I exclaimed--
"Where have you been?"
"With Gustav."
"What did you do there?"
She started, but quickly suppressing her emotion, she replied--
"I was studying my part."
"It's a lie!"
She made an angry exclamation; she accused me of being absurdly
jealous, deluged me with explanations. I wavered, and as we were
invited out that evening I had to postpone all further investigation.
Thinking of this incident to-day, I would swear a solemn oath that she
committed bigamy in those days, to say the least of it. But at that
time I was completely deceived by her trickery. What had happened?...
Probably this--
She had dined alone with the Baron; they had had coffee and liqueurs;
she was seized with that after-dinner lassitude; the Baron advised
her to lie down on the sofa and rest awhile, a proposal which did
not displease her ... and the rest followed as a matter of course.
Solitude, complete confidence, old memories, increased temptation, and
the lonely man succumbed. Why deny themselves, as long as no one knew?
She was her own mistress, since she had never taken money from her
lover, and to break a promise--what is that to a woman! Perhaps she
already regretted his loss; perhaps she had come to the conclusion that
he understood her needs better than I; perhaps, now that her curiosity
was satisfied, she yearned again for the stronger man; for in the
struggle for the love of a woman the sensitive and delicate lover, may
he be never so ardent, is always beaten by the athlete.
It was more than probable that she gave herself to him, more especially
as she was free from responsibility and her woman's heart pitied the
lonely man. Had I been in the place of the offended husband should I
have acted otherwise? I hardly think so.
But since the beloved lips never tired of using the sublime words
"honour," "decency," "morality," I refused to harbour any suspicions.
For these reasons a woman will always get the better of her lover, if
he be a man of honour. He flatters himself that he is the only one,
because he wants' to be the only one, and the wish is father to the
thought.
To-day Marie's loyalty seems to me in the highest degree improbable,
incredible, impossible.
It was also a significant fact that the Baron, when we were alone
together, always manifested a lively interest in other women; and one
evening, after dining with him at a restaurant, he went so far as to
ask me for certain addresses. Doubtless this was done in order to
deceive me.
Another thing which struck me was his attitude towards Marie; he
treated her with a somewhat contemptuous courtesy; she behaved like a
cocotte, and her passion for me seemed to be more and more on the wane.
III
At last Marie appeared before the footlights. She was a success for
many and complex reasons. Firstly, everybody was curious to see a
baroness on the stage; secondly, the middle-classes were sympathetic
because they delighted in the blow dealt to aristocratic prestige by
this divorce; the bachelors, the sexless, the enemies of matrimonial
slavery, lavished flowers on her; not to forget the friends and
relations of the great actor, who were interested in her because he had
been her teacher and was bringing her out.
After the performance the Baron asked both of us, and the old lady with
whom Marie was living, to supper.
Everybody was charmed with the result and intoxicated with the success.
I was displeased with Marie's appearance because she had not removed
her make-up, and her hair was still dressed as she had worn it on the
stage. She was no longer the virginal mother with whom I had fallen in
love, but an actress with insolent gestures, bad manners, boastful,
overbearing, behaving with a kind of offensive foppishness.
In her imagination she had scaled the highest summits of art, and she
dismissed all my remarks, my suggestions, with a shrug of her shoulders
or a condescending, "My dear, you know nothing about it."
The Baron wore a look of dejection, like an unhappy lover. But for my
presence he would have kissed her. Under the influence of an incredible
quantity of Madeira he opened his heart to us, and regretted that art,
the divine, should claim so many cruel sacrifices. The press--which
had been well managed--confirmed her success, and an engagement seemed
likely to follow.
Two photographers fought for the honour of being permitted to
photograph the debutante. A successful little magazine sold the
portrait of the new star, together with her biography.
What struck me most in looking at these new portraits was the fact
that not one of them resembled the old one in my possession. Was it
possible that her character, the expression of her face, could have
changed in so short a time, in a year? Or was she a different woman
when she reflected the love, the tenderness, the compassion which my
eyes radiated as soon as I looked at her? The expression of her face on
these portraits was vulgar, hard and insolent, every feature expressed
a cruel coquetry, a challenge. One pose in particular disgusted me.
She was represented leaning over the back of a low chair in such a
manner that the beholder could see her bosom, which was only partly
hidden by a fan resting against the upper part of her dress. Her eyes
seemed riveted on the eyes of an invisible person, not myself, for my
love, coupled with respect and tenderness, never caressed her with the
shameless sensuality which roused in her the passion of a wanton. The
photograph reminded me of those obscene pictures which are furtively
offered to the passers-by at the doors of low coffee-houses under cover
of the night.
When she offered me this portrait I refused to accept it.
"What!" she exclaimed in a piteous voice, which for a moment revealed
her carefully concealed want of true refinement, "you refuse my
photograph? Then you don't love me any more!"
When a woman says to her lover, "You don't love me any more," she has
already ceased to love him.
I knew from this moment that her love was growing cold. She realised
that her feeble soul had drawn from me the courage, the boldness
necessary to arrive at her goal, and she wanted to be rid of the
troublesome creditor. She had been stealing my thoughts while she
seemed to scorn them with her contemptuous, "You know nothing about it,
my dear!"
This uncultured woman, whose only accomplishment was her fluent French,
whose education had been neglected, who had been brought up in the
country, who knew nothing of literature or the stage, to whom I had
given the first lessons in the correct pronunciation of Swedish, to
whom I had explained the secrets of metrics and prosody, treated me as
if I were an idiot.
I advised her to select for her second appearance in public, which
was to take place shortly, the principal part in the best melodrama
on the repertoire. She refused. But a few days later she informed me
casually that the idea had occurred to her to choose this particular
part. I analysed it for her, sketched the costumes, drew her attention
to all the points to be made, showed her how to make her entrances and
exits, and pointed out to her the features which should be specially
emphasized.
A secret struggle went on between the Baron and myself. He, who
stage-managed the performances of the Royal Guards, instructed the
play-acting soldiers, fondly imagining himself to be better acquainted
with theatrical affairs than I was. Marie valued his so-called hints
more highly; accepted him as her authority, scorned my suggestions.
Oh! the vileness of his conception of æsthetics! He extolled the
commonplace, the vulgar, the banal, because, as he said, it was true
nature.
I admitted his arguments as far as modern comedy was concerned, for
here the characters are depicted among the thousand details of everyday
life. But his theory became impossible when applied, for instance, to
English melodrama; great passions cannot be expressed in the same way
as the whims and witticisms of a drawing-room conversation.
But this distinction was too subtle for a mediocre brain, which could
only generalise and assume that because a certain thing happened in one
case, it must infallibly become the rule and happen in all others.
On the day before her appearance Marie showed me her dresses. In spite
of my opposition and entreaties she had chosen a dull grey material,
most unbecoming to her because it gave her complexion an ashen hue. Her
only reply had been a curt repulse and the truly feminine argument--
"But Mrs. X., the great tragedienne, created the part in a grey dress!"
"True, but Mrs. X. is not fair like you! And what suits a dark woman
doesn't always suit a fair one."
She had not been able to see my point and had only been angry with me.
I had prophesied a fiasco, and her second appearance really was a dead
failure.
The tears, the reproaches, the insults even which followed!
As misfortune would have it, a week later the great actress appeared
in the same part, in a special performance, and received cart-loads of
flowers.
Of course Marie was furious with me and made me responsible for
her failure, simply because I had prophesied it; the grief and
disappointment brought her still nearer to the Baron; it drew them
together with the sympathy which always unites inferior characters.
I, the man of letters, the playwright, the dramatic critic, at home
in all the literatures, through my work and position at the library
in correspondence with the finest intellects of the world, I was cast
aside like a worn-out garment, treated like an idiot, considered of no
more importance than a footman or a dog.
But although her second appearance had been a failure, she was engaged
with a pay of 2,400 crowns[1] per annum. She had acquitted herself
fairly well, but she had no great career before her. She would never
rise above the level of a "useful actress"; she would be cast for small
parts, society women, mere dressed-up dolls, and spend her days at the
dressmaker's. Three, four, sometimes five different dresses on one and
the same evening would swallow up her insufficient pay.
What bitter disappointments, what heart-rending scenes, as she watched
her parts grow smaller and smaller, until they consisted of a few
sentences only. Her room had the appearance of a dressmaker's workshop,
littered with dress materials, patterns and millinery. The mother, the
real _grande dame_ who had left her drawing-rooms, renounced dress
and fashion, to devote her life to a lofty ideal of art, had become a
bungling seamstress who worked at her sewing machine till midnight, so
that she might play before an indifferent bourgeoisie for a few minutes
the part of a society woman.
The waste of time behind the scenes during rehearsal, when she stood in
the wings for hours waiting for her cue which should bring her before
the footlights to say two or three words, developed in her a taste for
gossip, for idle talk and risky stories; it killed all honest striving
to rise above her condition; the soul was shorn of its wings and was
flung to earth, into the gutter.
The disintegrating process went on. She continued to deteriorate, and
after her dresses had been remodelled again and again for want of means
to buy new ones, she was deprived of even her small parts and degraded
to the role of a walker on. Poverty was staring her in the face,
and her mother, a modern Cassandra, made life a burden to her; the
public, well acquainted with her sensational divorce, and the premature
death of her little girl, cried out against the unfaithful wife, the
unnatural mother. It was but a question of time and the manager of the
theatre would not be able to protect her against the antipathy of the
audience; the great actor, her teacher, disowned her and admitted his
mistake in believing in her talent.
So much ado, so much unhappiness, to humour a woman who did not know
her own mind.
And still matters grew worse, for Marie's mother suddenly died of heart
disease, of a broken heart, as it was called, broken with sorrow,
caused by her unnatural daughter. Again my honour was involved. I
was furious with the injustice of the world, and made a desperate
effort to vindicate her honour. I proposed the foundation of a weekly
paper, for the discussion of the drama, music, literature and art, and
she, thankful now for every effort to help her, gratefully accepted
my proposal. In this paper she was to make her début as a critic
and writer of feuilletons, and so gradually become acquainted with
publishers. She sunk two hundred crowns in the enterprise. I undertook
the editorial work and proof-reading. Since I was well aware of my
complete incapacity as a business manager, I left her to attend to the
sale and advertisements, the proceeds of which she was to share with
the manager of her theatre, who was also the proprietor of a news stall.
The first number was set and looked very well indeed. It contained
a leader written by one of our rising artists; an original article
from a correspondent in Rome; another one from Paris; a critique on a
musical performance by a distinguished writer and contributor to one
of the first Stockholm papers; a literary review written by myself; a
feuilleton and reports on first nights by Marie.
It would have been impossible to improve the arrangements made; the
great thing was to publish the first number at the time advertised.
Everything was ready, but at the last moment we lacked the necessary
funds and credit.
Alas! I had put my fate into the hands of a woman! On the day of the
publication she remained calmly in bed and slept till broad daylight.
Convinced that everything was well, I went to town, but everywhere on
my way I was greeted with sarcastic smiles.
"Well, where is the wonderful paper to be had?" I was asked the
question dozens of times by the numerous people interested in its
appearance.
"Everywhere!"
"Or nowhere!"
I went into a newspaper shop.
"We haven't received it yet," said the assistant behind the counter.
I rushed to the printing-office. It had not left the press yet.
A complete failure! We had an angry scene. Her inborn carelessness and
ignorance of the publishing trade exonerated her to some extent. She
had completely relied on her friend, the theatrical manager.
The two hundred crowns were gone. My time, my honour, the eager thought
I had devoted to the scheme, all were wasted.
In this general shipwreck one haunting thought remained: our condition
was hopeless.
I proposed that we should die together. What was to become of us? She
was quite broken down and I had not the strength to lift her up a
second time.
"Let us die," I said to her. "Don't let us degenerate into walking
corpses and obstruct the path of the living."
She refused.
What a coward you were, my proud Marie! And how cruel it was of you to
make me a witness of the spectacle of your downfall, the laughter and
sneers of the onlookers!
I spent the evening at my club, and when I went home that night I was
intoxicated.
I went to see her early on the following morning. The alcohol seemed
to have made me more clear-sighted. For the first time I noticed the
change in her. Her room was untidy, her dress slovenly, her beloved
little feet were thrust into a pair of old slippers, the stockings hung
in wrinkles round her ankles. What squalor!
Her vocabulary had become enriched by some ugly theatrical slang; her
gestures were reminiscent of the street, her eyes looked at me with
hatred, an expression of bitterness drew down the corners of her mouth.
She remained stooping over her work, without looking at me, as if she
were thinking evil thoughts.
Suddenly, without raising her head, she said hoarsely--
"Do you know, Axel, what a woman is justified in expecting from the man
with whom she is on intimate terms, such as we are?"
Thunderstruck, unwilling to trust my ears, I faltered--
"No ... what?"
"What does a woman expect from her lover?"
"Love!"
"And what else?"
"Money!"
The vulgar word saved her from further questioning, and I left her,
convinced that I had guessed correctly.
"Prostitute! Prostitute!" I said to myself, stumbling through the
streets, the autumnal appearance of which depressed my spirits. We
had arrived at the last stage.... All that remained to do was to make
payment for pleasures received, to admit the trade without shame.
If she had been poor, at least, suffering from want! But she had just
come into her mother's money, the entire furniture of a house, and a
number of shares, some of doubtful value, but nevertheless representing
two or three thousand crowns; moreover, she was still receiving her pay
regularly from the theatre.
I could not understand her attitude ... until suddenly I remembered her
landlady and intimate friend.
She was an abominable, elderly woman, with the suspicious manners of
a procuress; nobody knew how she lived; she was always in debt, yet
always extravagantly and strikingly dressed; somehow she managed to
ingratiate herself with people, and she always ended by asking them
for a small loan, eternally bewailing her miserable existence. A shady
character, who hated me because I saw through her.
Now I suddenly remembered an incident which had happened two or three
months ago, but which had not interested me at the time. The woman had
extracted a promise from a friend of Marie's to lend her a thousand
crowns. The promise had remained a promise. Eventually Marie, giving
way to pressure and anxious to save the reputation of her friend, who
was badly compromised, guaranteed to find the money, and actually
raised the sum. But instead of gratitude she reaped nothing but
reproaches from her friend, and when it came to explanations, the
old-woman insisted on her perfect innocence and laid the full blame on
Marie's shoulders. I had at the time expressed my dislike and distrust
of her, and urged Marie to have nothing to do with an individual whose
manipulations came very close to blackmail.
But she had exonerated her false friend at the time.... Later on she
told a different story altogether, talked of a misunderstanding; in the
end the whole incident became "an invention of my evil imagination."
Possibly this woman had suggested to Marie the vile idea of "presenting
me with the bill." It must have been so, for the suggestion had not
been made easily and was most unlike her. I tried to make myself
believe it, hope it.
If she had merely asked me for the money which she had invested in the
paper, the money which had been lost through her fault--that would
have been female mathematics. Or, if she had insisted on an immediate
marriage! But she had no wish to be married, I was sure of that. It was
a question of paying for the love, the kisses she had given me. It was
payment she demanded.... Supposing I sent her in my bill: for my work
according to time and quality, for the waste of brain power, of nerve
force, for my heart's blood, my name, my honour, my sufferings; the
bill for my career, ruined, perhaps, for ever.
But no, it was her privilege to send in the first bill; I took no
exception to that.
I spent my evening at a restaurant, wandered through the streets and
pondered the problem of degradation. Why is it so painful to watch a
person sink? It must be because there is something unnatural in it, for
nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step
means the disintegration of force.
The same argument applies to the life of the community where everybody
strives to reach the material or spiritual summits. Thence comes the
tragic feeling which seizes us in the contemplation of failure, tragic
as autumn, sickness and death. This woman, who had not yet reached her
thirtieth year, had been young, beautiful, frank, honest, amiable,
strong and well-bred; in two short years she had been so degraded, had
fallen so low.
For a moment I tried to blame myself; the thought that the fault was
mine would have been a comfort to me, for it would have made her
shame seem less. But try as I would, I did not succeed, for had I
not taught her the cult of the beautiful? the love of high ideals?
the longing to do noble acts? While she adopted the vulgarities of
her theatrical friends, I had improved, I had acquired the manners
and language of fashionable society, I had learned that self-control
which keeps emotion in check and is considered the hall-mark of good
breeding. I had become chaste in love, anxious to spare modesty, not
to offend against beauty and seemliness, for thus only can we forget
the brutality of an act which to my mind is much more spiritual than
physical.
I was rough sometimes, it is true, but never vulgar. I killed,
but never wounded. I called a spade a spade, but never hinted and
insinuated; my ideas were my own, prompted by the situations in which I
happened to find myself; I never tried to dazzle with the witticisms of
musical comedies or comic papers.
I loved cleanliness, purity, beauty in my daily surroundings; I
preferred to refuse an invitation to accepting it and appearing badly
dressed. I never received her in dressing-gown and slippers; I may not
always have been able to offer a guest more than bread and butter and a
glass of beer, but there was always a clean table-cloth.
I had not set her a bad example; it was not my fault that she had
deteriorated. Her love for me was dead, therefore she did not want to
please me any longer. She belonged to the public, it was that fact
which had made her the wanton who could calmly present her bill for so
many nights of pleasure....
During the next few days I shut myself up in my library. I mourned
for my love, my splendid, foolish, divine love. All was over, and the
battlefield on which the struggle had raged was silent and still. Two
dead and so many wounded to satisfy a woman who was not worth a pair
of old shoes! If her passion had at least been roused by the longing
for motherhood, if she had been guided by the unrealised instincts
which force those unfortunates who are mothers on the streets! But
she detested children; in her eyes motherhood was degrading. Unnatural
and perverse woman that she was, she debased the maternal instinct to
a vulgar pleasure. Her race was doomed to extinction because she was
a degenerate, in the process of dissolution; but she concealed this
dissolution under high-sounding phrases, proclaimed that it was our
duty to live for higher ends, for the good of humanity at large.
I loathed her now, I tried to forget her. I paced the room, up and
down, up and down, before the rows of book-shelves, unable to rid
myself of the accursed night-mare which haunted me. I had no desire for
her, or for her company, for she inspired me with disgust; and yet a
deep compassion, an almost paternal tenderness made me feel responsible
for her future. I knew that if I left her to her own devices, she would
go under, and end either as the mistress of her late husband, or the
mistress of all the world.
I was powerless to lift her up, powerless to struggle out of the morass
into which we had fallen. I resigned myself to remain tied to her,
even if I had to witness and share in her downward course. She was
dragging me down with her--life had become a burden to me, I had lost
all enthusiasm for my work. The instinct of self-preservation, hope,
were dead. I wanted nothing, desired nothing. I had developed into a
complete misanthrope; I frequently turned away from the door of my
restaurant and, forgoing dinner, returned home, threw myself on my sofa
and buried myself under my rugs. There I lay, like a wild beast that
has received its death wound, rigid, with an empty brain, unable to
think or sleep, waiting for the end.
One day, however, I was sitting in a back room of my restaurant, a
private room where lovers meet and shabby coats hide themselves, both
afraid of the daylight. All at once a well-known voice woke me from my
reverie: a man wished me a good afternoon.
He was an unsuccessful architect, a lost member of our late Bohemia,
which was now scattered to all the winds.
"You are still among the living, then?" he said, sitting down opposite
me.
"I am ... but what about you?"
"I'm so-so ... off to Paris to-morrow ... some fool left me ten
thousand crowns."
"Lucky dog!"
"Unfortunately I have to devour it all by myself...."
"The misfortune is not so great, I know a set of teeth ready to help
you."
"Really? Would you care to come?..."
"Only too glad to!"
"Is it a bargain then?"
"It's a bargain."
"To-morrow night, by the six o'clock train, to Paris...."
"And afterwards?..."
"A bullet through the head!"
"The devil! Where did you get this idea from?"
"From your face! Suicide is plainly written on it!"
"Haruspex! Well, pack up and come along!"
When I saw Marie that night I told her the good news. She listened with
every appearance of pleasure, wished me a pleasant time, and repeated
again and again that it would do me a world of good, would refresh me
mentally. In short, she seemed well pleased, and overwhelmed me with
affection, which touched me deeply.
We spent the evening together, talking of the days which had gone
by. We made no plans, for we had lost faith in the future. Then we
parted.... For ever? ... The question was not mooted; we silently
agreed to leave it to chance to reunite us or not.
[1] A Swedish crown is equivalent to 1s. 4d.
IV
The journey really rejuvenated me. It stirred up the memories of my
early youth and I felt a mad joy surging in my heart; I wanted to
forget the last two years of misery, and not for one single moment did
I feel inclined to speak of Marie. The whole tragedy of the divorce was
like a repulsive heap of offal, from which I was eager to fly without
turning round. I could not help smiling in my sleeve at times, like a
fugitive who is firmly resolved not to be taken again; I felt like a
debtor who has escaped from his creditors and is hiding in a distant
country.
For two weeks I revelled in the Paris theatres, museums and libraries.
I received no letters from Marie, and was beginning to hope that she
had got over our separation and that everything was well in the best of
all possible worlds.
But after a certain time I grew tired of wandering about, and sated
with so many new and strong impressions; things began to lose their
interest. I stayed in my room and read the papers, oppressed by vague
apprehensions, by an inexplicable uneasiness.
The vision of the white woman, the Fata Morgana of the virginal mother
began to haunt me and disturbed my peace. The picture of the insolent
actress was wiped out of my memory; I remembered only the Baroness,
young, beautiful; her fragile body transfigured and clothed with the
beauty of the Land of Promise, dreamed of by the ascètes.
I was indulging in those painful and yet delicious dreams when I
received a letter from Marie, in which she informed me in heartbreaking
words that she was about to become a mother, and implored me to save
her from dishonour.
Without a moment's hesitation I packed my portmanteau. I left Paris by
the first train for Stockholm. I was going to make her my wife.
I had no doubt about the paternity of the expected baby. I looked
upon the result of our irregular relations as a blessing, as the end
of our sufferings; but also as a fact which burdened us with a heavy
responsibility, which might spell ruin; at the same time, however, it
was the starting point into the unknown; something quite new. Moreover,
I always had a very high conception of married life; I considered it
the only possible form under which two persons of opposite sex could
live together. Life together held no terror for me. My love received a
fresh stimulus from the fact that Marie was about to become a mother;
she arose purified, ennobled, from the mire of our illicit relationship.
On my arrival at Stockholm she received me very ungraciously and
accused me of having deceived her. We had a painful scene--but need
she have been so surprised after all that had happened during the last
twelve months?
She hated matrimony. Her objectionable friend had impressed upon her
that a married woman is a slave who works for her husband gratuitously.
I detest slaves, and therefore proposed a modern _ménage_, in keeping
with our views.
I suggested that we should take three rooms, one for her, one for
myself and a common room. We should neither do our own housekeeping,
nor have any servants in the house. Dinner should be sent in from
a neighbouring restaurant, breakfast and supper be prepared in
the kitchen by a daily servant. In this way expenses were easily
calculated and the causes for unpleasantness reduced to a minimum.
To avoid every suspicion of living on my wife's dowry, I suggested
that it should be settled on her. In the North a man considers himself
dishonoured by the acceptance of his wife's dowry, which in civilised
countries forms a sort of contribution from the wife, and creates in
her the illusion that her husband is not keeping her entirely. To avoid
a bad start it is the custom in Germany and Denmark for the wife to
furnish the house; this creates the impression on the husband that he
is living in his wife's house, and in the latter that she is in her own
home, maintaining her husband.
Marie had recently inherited her mother's furniture, articles without
any intrinsic value, their only claim to distinction being a certain
sentimental merit of old association and an air of antiquity. She
proposed that she should furnish the rooms, arguing that it would be
absurd to buy furniture for three rooms when she had enough for six. I
willingly agreed to her proposal.
There only remained one more point, the main one, the expected baby.
We were agreed on the necessity of keeping its birth a secret, and we
decided to place it with a reliable nurse until such time as we could
adopt it.
The wedding was fixed for the 31st of December. During the remaining
two months I strained every nerve to make adequate provision for
the future. For this purpose, and knowing that Marie would soon be
compelled to renounce her work at the theatre, I renewed my literary
efforts. I worked with such ease that at the end of the first month I
was able to offer for publication a volume of short stories, which was
accepted without difficulty.
Fortune favoured me; I was appointed assistant-librarian with a salary
of twelve hundred crowns, and when the collections were transferred
from the old building to the new one I received a bonus of six hundred
crowns. This was good fortune indeed, and taken together with other
favourable omens I began to think that a relentless fate had tired of
persecuting me.
The first and foremost magazine in Finland offered me a post on the
staff as reviewer at fifty crowns for each article. The official
Swedish Journal, published by the Academy, gave me the much-coveted
order to write the reviews on art for thirty-five crowns the column.
Besides all this I was entrusted with the revision of the classics
which were being published at that time.
All this good fortune came to me in those two months, the most fateful
months of my whole life.
My short stories appeared almost immediately and were a great success.
I was hailed as a master of this particular style; it was said that the
book was epoch-making in the literature of Sweden, because it was the
first to introduce modern realism.
It was unspeakable happiness to me to lay at the feet of my poor,
adored Marie a name which, apart from the titles of a royal secretary,
and assistant-librarian, was beginning to be known, with every prospect
of a brilliant future.
Some day I should be able to give her a fresh start, to re-open her
theatrical career, which for the moment had been interrupted by,
perhaps, undeserved misfortune.
Fortune was smiling at us with a tear in the eye....
The banns were published. I packed my belongings and said good-bye to
my attic, the witness of many joys and sorrows. I marched into that
prison which all fear, but which, perhaps, we had less cause to dread
than others, since we had foreseen all dangers, removed all stumbling
blocks.... And yet....