EPILOGUE
Doubtless there is not another street in Stockholm as ugly, and not
another house as old, as dirty, and as gloomy. The entrance gate has
the inviting appearance of a disused gallows. The rubble stones in the
yard have moved more closely together in the course of time, so that a
few small blades of grass have been able to shoot up. The house stands
by itself, like an old hermit who has sought a solitary spot in which
to collapse. There has once been an Assaying Office in the yard, and
the outside walls are blackened with smoke. The chinks between the
window frames and the walls are grown over, and the house looks as if
it had not washed its face or eyes for a generation. The foundation has
settled, and the building is stooping to the left. The leaking gutter
has been weeping tears which have drawn black furrows all over the
front of the building; the plastering is crumbling off here and there,
and on windy nights one can hear it rattling down the walls into the
street below. The house looks like an old dowager house of poverty,
recklessness, carelessness, and vice.
And yet there are two people who cannot pass through the street without
stopping to look at the miserable, frowning old building with emotion
almost amounting to love. To them the entrance gate is a triumphal
arch, the weeds and the gutter a green meadow, and a murmuring brook,
the black house a charming ruin, containing lovely, rose-red memories.
It is more, even, for whenever they pass it, the air vibrates with
music, perfumes rise from the earth, and they see the sun shining even
on the cloudiest autumn day; there have been times when they forgot
themselves so far as to kiss each other; but they have always been a
little mad, these good people.
Three years ago our young friend--we may call him friend since he
repented of his youthful errors, apologised to society, and became a
respectable individual, serving the country and wearing purple in the
House of Parliament--our young friend, I say, was busy on the third
floor of the ugly old house with a sheet of pins between his lips, a
hammer in his coat-pocket, and a pair of pincers under his arm; he was
standing on a ladder, putting up curtains in a small room, furnished
only with a tiny sofa, a tiny dressing-table, a small desk, and a very
small bed with white curtains.
In the dining-room the faithful Isaac, in shirt-sleeves, was engaged in
spreading paste on a piece of wallpaper, stretched on an ironing-board
which rested on two chairs; he was whistling and singing one unknown
song after the other to quite unheard-of tunes. When he was tired of
working, he prepared luncheon on an empty box standing before the
window.
Outside the sun was shining into the neighbour's garden. It was a tiny
garden squeezed between the walls of the houses; it had a pear tree in
full bloom, and two elder bushes covered with blossoms; between the
gables a piece of blue sky was visible and the mast heads of the timber
barges in the harbour.
Isaac had been to the dairy; had bought sandwiches and porter; had
papered the future mistress's room; had purchased oleanders and ivy, so
that the landing windows with their black frames should not shock the
young wife as she entered her new home; he would have liked to paint
them, but he was afraid that she might object to the smell.
A cab stopped before the front door.
"It's Borg," said Isaac. "What the dickens does he want here? And that
pest, Levin, is with him!"
It was a long visit, lasting ten minutes, and a disagreeable one; but
Falk bore it patiently, like any other trial; he had for ever broken
with the past; in one respect at least; in another he was bound, for he
had been compelled during the ten minutes to sign once more.
The next visitors were the sister-in-law, Mrs. Falk, and Mrs. Homan.
They found the paper in the dining-room too dark, and the paper in the
young wife's room too light. They thought the curtains in the husband's
room were not wide enough, the carpet a bad match to the furniture, the
clock old-fashioned, and the chandelier too dear for its plainness. One
piece of furniture in the young wife's room especially roused their
critical faculty, and gave rise to a long, whispered conversation. They
called the kitchen black, the landing dirty, the entrance terrible; but
otherwise they said everything was quite nice, much nicer than the
yard, where there was not even a porter, led one to expect.
This was the second plague, and it passed like everything else in this
world.
But Isaac had lost some of his gaiety after the criticism of his
wallpapers, and Falk realized for a moment that it was a miserable
hole. He opened the windows to let out the evil spirits which had
invaded his pleasure garden. Isaac declared that during the wedding
days he would have the two women shut up in the debtors' prison, so as
to keep them safely away.
And then--then she came. He was standing at the window, and he saw her
when she was still too far off to be seen; he expected to be believed
when he maintained that she radiated light and that the street through
which she was walking was bathed in sunshine. Of course he could have
told endless stories of her kindness, sweetness, and beauty; but not
even she believed them, and it is not worth while repeating them.
She entered her future home and found everything charming. Isaac went
into the kitchen to split some wood and light the kitchen fire. Nobody
missed him until he returned with a tray bearing some cups of
chocolate. It amused him; he knew that lovers never miss anybody in the
wide world, and he found the terrible selfishness, which is called
love, a very amiable quality; moreover, everybody admits that it is
justified.
"What people said about it?" They said:
"Well, and so Falk is married?"
"Is he? Whom did he marry?"
"A schoolmistress!"
"Ugh! A woman with blue spectacles and short hair!"
And the questioner had all the information he wanted.
If the answer had been: "He's married old Kochstrom's daughter," the
second question would have been: "Did he get any money with her?"
The world asks no further questions, and everything would be all
right--if this were all. But the world demands that a couple which has
three times given the clergyman the trouble to read the banns and the
community to listen to them; which has forced its fellow-creatures to
engage in genealogical research and send a reporter to the wedding--the
world demands that such a couple shall be happy--woe to it if it is
not!
Supposing that on coming home from school, tired with her work, angry
at a slight, depressed because some of her efforts have proved a
failure, she should meet a friend in the street who takes her hand and
says: "You don't look too happy, Elizabeth," then woe to him!
Supposing that on leaving his office, in despair because he has been
overlooked instead of promoted, he should meet a friend who finds him
looking depressed, then woe to her!
Unhappy people, if you dare to be anything but happy!
* * * * *
It was a winter evening two or three years later; she was bending over
her writing desk, correcting copybooks, he was sitting in his room
computing assessments of property. The pens were scribbling, the clock
was ticking, and the tea-kettle singing. Whenever he looked up from his
documents at her sweet face, she raised her eyes, their glances met,
and they nodded to each other as if they had been parted for a long
time. And they continued working.
But finally he grew tired of his work.
"Talk to me a little," he pleaded.
And she eagerly complied with his request.
"But what do they talk about?"
The scoffer Borg once asked that question, when he declared matrimony
to be an impossibility from the point of view of natural science.
He laid down the proposition that the moment must come when every
subject had been discussed, when each partner knew every thought and
opinion of the other, and when absolute silence was bound to reign.
The fool!
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Punctuation has been normalized.
The following lists the misprints that have been corrected:
Page 10: listening to the plashing [splashing] of the waves;
Page 38; their mutal [mutual] acquaintance.
Page 50; took if [it] off.
Page 94; calm foosteps [footsteps].
Page 105; were of [the] opinion.
Page 112; the promotor [promoter] of the Bill.
Page 189; the woman [in] question.
Page 213; Struve had diasppeared [disappeared].