I
The main destination of my journey was Paris, where I hoped to meet
old friends, well acquainted with my eccentricities; congenial spirits
who understood my moods, knew all about my whims, admired my courage,
and were consequently in a position to gauge accurately the temporary
state of my mind. In addition to this some of the foremost of the
Scandinavian poets had just taken up a permanent abode in Paris; I
meant to claim their protection and with their help defy Marie's
sinister schemes; for she intended to have me shut up in a lunatic
asylum.
During the whole journey she continued her hostilities and treated
me as a person altogether beneath contempt, whenever we were without
witnesses. She was always lost in thought, absent-minded, indifferent.
In vain I took her sight-seeing in the towns where we were forced to
spend the nights; she took no interest in anything, saw nothing, hardly
listened to me. My attentions bored her; she seemed to be fretting for
something. But for what? For the country where she had suffered, in
which she had not left one single friend, but--a lover, perhaps?
During the whole time she behaved like the most unpractical and
ignorant of women; she displayed none of the qualities of the organiser
and manager of which she had boasted so much. She insisted on staying
at the most expensive hotels, and for the sake of one night she often
had the whole furniture rearranged; a badly served cup of tea provoked
interviews with the hotel proprietor; the noise which she made in
the corridors drew unflattering comments upon us. We missed the best
trains because she would lie in bed until dinner-time; through her
carelessness our luggage went astray; and when we left, her tips to the
servants were of the meanest.
"You are a coward!" she said in reply to one of my remonstrances.
"And you are ill-bred and slovenly!"
It was a charming pleasure-trip, indeed.
* * * * *
As soon as we had arrived in Paris and settled down among my friends,
who were proof against her spells, she found that I had got the better
of her, and felt like a wild animal caught in a trap. She was furious
because the leading Norwegian poet received me warmly, and overwhelmed
me with kindness. She promptly detested him, for she sensed in him a
friend who might some day raise his voice in my favour.
One evening, at a dinner given to artists and writers, he proposed
my health, calling me the chief representative of modern Swedish
literature. Marie, poor martyr by reason of her marriage with the
"notorious pamphleteer," was present. The applause of the diners
depressed her to a degree which excited my compassion, and when the
speaker tried to make me promise to stay for at least two years in
France, I could no longer resist the wistful expression of her eyes.
To comfort her, to give her pleasure, I replied that I never took an
important decision without consulting with my wife. My reward was a
grateful look and the sympathy of all the women present.
But my friend remained obdurate. He urged me to prolong my stay, and
with a fine flourish of oratory asked all those present to support his
proposition. All raised their glasses in response.
My friend's obstinacy always remained inexplicable to me, although I
quite well understood at the time that a secret struggle was being
fought between my wife and him, the motive of which I could not guess.
Maybe he was better informed than I, and had penetrated my secret with
the clear-sightedness which frequently accompanies first impressions;
moreover, he was himself married to a woman of strange morals.
* * * * *
Marie did not feel at home in Paris, where her husband's genius was
generally acknowledged, and after three months' stay she hated the
beautiful city. She was indefatigable in warning me of "the false
friends who would one day bring me misfortune."
She was again expecting to become a mother, and again life with her was
unbearable. But this time I had no reason to doubt the paternity of the
expected baby.
Our stay in Paris came to an end; we broke up our tents and slowly made
our way to Switzerland.
_Isn't It Enough?_
It does not matter very much that the wealthy man did not ask Jesus
what he should do in order to solve the problem of life, for Jesus
would very likely have replied in the same way in which He replied to
the question relating to the Kingdom of Heaven: "Go and sell all thou
hast and give it to the poor." But it is a pity that the wealthy man
did not carry out this suggestion, and above all things that he did not
live to see a scorching day in June in the year 1885 in the humble form
of a sixty-year-old coster who pushed a heavy barrow down the Avenue de
Neuilly, ceaselessly calling out in a voice trembling with hunger and
increasing age--
"Cresson de fontaine!
La santé du corps!
Quatre liards la botte!
Quatre liards la botte!"
He went down on the left side of the avenue, halting before every door;
but everywhere the porters' wives shook their heads, for the younger
and stronger ones had stolen a march on the old man, and had already
supplied the necessary requirements for the day. He reached Porte
Mailot and gazed down the avenue which stretched before him, apparently
endlessly, down towards the Seine. He took off his black cotton cap
and with the sleeve of his blue blouse wiped the perspiration off his
forehead. Should he turn round and walk up on the right side, or should
he go to Paris to try his luck there? the wonderful luck to earn the
few pence by virtue of which he could keep up sufficient strength to
push his barrow along when to-morrow had dawned? Should he invest his
last shilling in the payment of the toll and go on to meet the unknown
fate awaiting him? He took the risk, paid the octroi and trudged along
the Avenue de la Grande Armée.
The sun had risen higher in the sky, and the pavements were still warm
from the previous day; the gay town smelled like the close, fetid
atmosphere of the bedroom, which streamed through the open windows
and hung heavily in the still air. The sunbeams heated the dust which
rose in clouds from the carpets beaten against the doorsteps; showy
advertisements flashed from privies and news-stalls, and a suffocating
smell of ammonia penetrated through the half-open doors; cigar ends,
tobacco, manure, orange skins, celery stalks, pieces of paper from
forgotten refuse heaps were carried away by the rushing stream which
gushed from the main and swept everything towards the gratings of the
gutter.
The old man cried his wares, but carts and omnibuses drowned his
voice, and no one bought. Tired, forsaken by every one, he sat down
on a seat under the plane trees. But the sunbeams found him out, and
scorched him in spite of the dusty leaves. How dismal the sun appeared
to the worn-out traveller, who longed for an overcast sky and a
downpour to relieve the unbearable heat, which robbed his nerves of
their strength and shrivelled up his muscles.
Yet the torture of the excessive heat did not make him insensible to
the torture of hunger and the dread of the morrow. He rose, seized the
shafts of his barrow, and toiled up the steep incline which leads to
the Arc de Triomphe, shouting incessantly--
"Quatre liards la botte!"
At the last street corner a little dressmaker bought two bunches.
He dragged himself through the Champs Elysées, and met the wealthy man,
seated in his carriage behind his English coachman, on his way to the
Bois de Boulogne, there to brood over the problem of life. The palaces
and large restaurants bought nothing; the fierce rays of the sun dried
up the water-cress, and the long green leaves of his cauliflowers
hung limp, so that he was obliged to sprinkle them with water at the
fountain near the Rond-Point.
It was noon when he passed the Place de la Concorde and arrived at
the Quays. Before the restaurants men were sitting and lunching; some
of them had already arrived at the coffee. They looked well-fed, but
bored, as if they were fulfilling a melancholy and painful duty by
keeping alive. But to the old man they were happy mortals who had
staved off death for a few hours, while he felt his soul shrinking like
a dried apple.
The barrow rattled past the Pont-Neuf, and every stone against which
the wheels pushed shook the muscles and nerves of his tired arms. He
had not broken his fast since the early morning; his voice sounded thin
like the voice of a consumptive, so that his cries were more like cries
for help now, with little preliminary sighs caused by want of breath.
His feet were burning and his hands trembled; he felt as if the marrow
in his spine were melting with the heat, and the thin blood hammered
in his temples as he turned towards the city, seeking the shade of the
Quai de l'Horloge. He halted for a moment before a wine-shop in the
Place de Parvis, half inclined to spend his few pennies on a glass of
wine. But he pulled himself together and trudged on, past Notre-Dame,
towards the Morgue.
He could not drag himself away from this mysterious little house, where
so many problems of life have been solved, and he entered. How cool
and beautiful it was inside, where the dead lay on marble slabs, the
hoar-frost on their hair and beards sparkling as on a beautiful, bright
winter day. Some of them looked distressed, because the rush of the
water into their lungs, or the stab of the knife into the heart, had
given them pain; one of them smiled as if he were glad that all was
over; one lay there with an expression of indifference on his face, as
if nothing mattered; the problem was solved, at any rate: he had lived
until he died. No more clothes required, no more food, no shelter! No
sorrow, no cares. All held in their grasp the greatest boon life has to
bestow: a calm which neither want, failure of crops, sickness, death,
war or famine, American wheat or the hard laws which regulate wages,
could disturb. Sleep without dreams, how gentle a sleep! And without an
awakening, how splendid!
The old man must have envied the sleepers, for he turned his head on
leaving, to feast his eyes once more on the sight of those blessed
ones, who slept in cool seclusion behind the large glass panes.
He plodded on to the other side of the church and stopped at the
principal entrance. He asked the dealer in relics to keep an eye on his
barrow, and entered. He stirred the holy water with his right hand and
cooled lips and brow. Inside the church it was cool, for the sunbeams
were powerless to penetrate the stained-glass windows. The pulpit was
occupied by a little abbé, freshly shaved, with traces of powder still
visible on his bluish skin; he was speaking, and the old man listened.
"'Consider the lilies in the field,'" said the abbé, "'how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like any one of these! Consider the ravens: for they
neither sow nor reap; which neither have store-houses nor barn; and God
feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls!'"
"How much more are we better than the fowls!" sighed the old man.
"But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God," concluded the abbé, "and all
else will be added, to you."
"All else," sighed the old man, "all else! First the Kingdom of God,
and then all else."
Leaning against a pillar in the side aisle, the wealthy man, holding
a Baedeker in his hand, tried to solve the problem of the essence and
origin of life by means of a careful study of the architecture of the
past. He did not believe in the Kingdom of God, but he brooded over the
purpose of life, and could not understand why a man should go to so
much trouble to kill time until he was seventy or at the most eighty
years old. Had it not been against all conventions, he would have gone
to the old man and said to him who had already passed his allotted
time--
"Give me your solution of the problem of life!"
And the old man, unless he had been too exhausted with hunger and
thirst, would have answered--
"The problem of life, as I understood it, is the maintenance of one's
own life."
"Is that all?" the wealthy man would have answered, astonished.
"All? Isn't it enough? All?"
"We do not understand one another."
"No, we do not understand one another; we have never understood one
another."
"Because you are a selfish old man, who has lived but for himself. But
humanity...."
"Sir, I too have lived for humanity, for I have brought up and educated
four children, a problem which was more difficult perhaps to solve than
yours, the solution of which you can buy at any bookseller's. Yes, go,
sell all you have and give it to the poor, then you will see whether
there is room in life for anything else!"
But the wealthy man preferred to leave the problem unsolved and keep
his gold; therefore he continued to study his Baedeker, and did not ask
the poor coster for his opinion.
The old man, with faith unshaken, left the church, the abbé's
comforting words ringing in his ears: "Take no heed of to-morrow," and
crossed to the left shore of the river.
At the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel he was fortunate enough to
sell six centimes' worth of his stuff at a reduced price. And on he
trudged and turned into the Rue Bonaparte.
It was afternoon, that saddest time of the day when the sun is setting,
but darkness has not yet fallen, darkness which brings in its train
peace for the weary souls who long to rest and play for a while before
they are compelled to face torturing dreams and memories.
He sat down on a stone step and counted his money: eighty centimes;
that was twenty centimes less than the franc which he had spent at the
gate. How could he pay six francs to the nursery gardener? How could he
buy food and drink, how return before nightfall to Suresnes? He saw in
imagination the endless Champs Elysées, the long Avenue de la Grande
Armée, the terrible Avenue Neuilly. No, it was too far to go back, too
far.
He looked about searchingly, and his dim eyes were dazzled by the gleam
of the blue and red glass bottles in the chemist's shop on the other
side of the street, which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. They
stood on long shelves, filled with bottles and boxes; patent medicines
for indigestion; appetite restoratives; powders to calm feverish brains
which had brooded too long over the riddle of life; means of protection
from over-population or increasing poverty; headache pencils for those
who tried to solve social problems; rouge for night-birds, tabloids for
nervous ailments and financially independent people. All these things
could be bought there.
The old man rose hastily, as if a buyer had beckoned to him, and
entered the chemist's shop.
"Six centimes' worth of laudanum, please," he said. "My wife is
suffering from convulsions."
And as if to prove his words, he lifted his right hand to show the ring
on his third finger. But there was only a white line and a groove in
the brown skin.
But the chemist, who, perhaps, had also been waiting for a buyer, took
no notice of his gesture; he filled a small bottle with the required
liquid, licked a label, bit a cork, took the money, and resumed the
study of his pharmacopoeia. What business was it of his?
The old man, the bottle in his pocket, staggered out of the shop,
once again seized the shafts, and wandered up the street. He stopped
at a bookseller's, and as if to make one more bid for good fortune, he
called out for the last time--
"Quatre liards la botte!
Quatre liards la botte!"
Afraid that somebody might beckon to him in reply, he put the bottle
to his lips and greedily drank the dark-red liquid, as if to quench a
burning thirst. The pupils of his eyes contracted as if he were staring
into the sun; a vivid scarlet flame shot across his cheeks, his knees
bent, and he fell on the edge of the gutter. He snored loudly like a
man in a sound sleep; the perspiration stood in large drops on his
face, and there was a quivering movement of his legs.
By the time the police had arrived he lay quite still, but the
expression of his face plainly betrayed his last conscious thoughts--
"Life was sometimes good, evil every now and then, but the best thing
came last. I solved the problem as well as I could, and it was not
easy, although the rich man found that it was not enough. But we did
not understand one another. It is a pity that men are not meant to
understand one another."
II
Arrived in Switzerland, we took rooms in a private hotel, so as to
avoid all quarrels on the subject of housekeeping.
Marie made up for lost time, for being alone now, and unbacked
by sympathising friends, I was again in her power. From the very
beginning she posed as the keeper of a harmless lunatic. She made the
acquaintance of the doctor, informed proprietor and proprietress,
the waitresses, the servants, the other guests. I was shut off from
association with intelligent people of my own kindred who understood
me. At meals she revenged herself for the silence to which she had
been condemned in Paris. She missed no opportunity of joining in the
conversation, and literally inundated us with a never-ending stream of
foolish twaddle which, she knew, irritated me horribly. And since the
uncultured, commonplace crowd among whom we lived always very politely
agreed with her, there was nothing for me to do but to keep silence;
they regarded my silence as a proof of my inferiority.
She looked ill and fragile, and appeared to be suffering from a great
grief; she treated me with dislike and contempt.
All I loved, she detested: she was disappointed with the Alps because I
admired them; she scorned the beautiful walks; she avoided being alone
with me; she made a practice of anticipating my wishes so as to thwart
them; she said Yes whenever I said No, and vice versa; there was no
doubt that she hated me.
Alone and solitary in a strange country, I was compelled to seek her
society; but since we never talked for fear of quarrelling, I had to be
content with merely seeing her at my side, with feeling that I was not
quite isolated.
My illness became worse; I was so ill that I could take nothing but
beef tea; I lay awake at night, suffering agonies, tortured by an
unbearable thirst which I tried to relieve by drinking cold milk.
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 read _Man 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.
III
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 in
_Mignon_, 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.
IV
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.
V
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.