"I am in love with my wife," he said--a superfluous remark, as I had not
questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten
minutes and then he said it again. I turned to look at him. He began to
talk and told me the tale I am now about to set down.
The thing he had on his mind happened during what must have been the
most eventful week of his life. He was to be married on Friday
afternoon. On Friday of the week before he got a telegram announcing his
appointment to a government position. Something else happened that made
him very proud and glad. In secret he was in the habit of writing verses
and during the year before several of them had been printed in poetry
magazines. One of the societies that give prizes for what they think the
best poems published during the year put his name at the head of their
list. The story of his triumph was printed in the newspapers of his home
city, and one of them also printed his picture.
As might have been expected, he was excited and in a rather highly
strung nervous state all during that week. Almost every evening he went
to call on his fiancée, the daughter of a judge. When he got there the
house was filled with people and many letters, telegrams and packages
were being received. He stood a little to one side and men and women
kept coming to speak with him. They congratulated him upon his success
in getting the government position and on his achievement as a poet.
Everyone seemed to be praising him, and when he went home to bed he
could not sleep. On Wednesday evening he went to the theatre and it
seemed to him that people all over the house recognized him. Everyone
nodded and smiled. After the first act five or six men and two women
left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed.
Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and
looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever
of expectancy took possession of him.
As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an
altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got
into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise
his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of
people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people
of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took
possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the
streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the
doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the
words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with
people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you
are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes
seemed to be saying.
My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due
to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new
government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment
where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a
cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he
could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not
sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him
more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.
As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine.
There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his
wife, think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect
his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the
sort.
At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat
man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She
was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a
very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for
some reason he could not explain being in her presence stirred him
profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the
only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When
he wanted so much to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her.
Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the
notion of having a love affair with the woman.
"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I
thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of
thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me
and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
pressed against the wall of the building and then I thought of the two
of them up there, no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.
"Then I grew more furious at myself. I went home and got into bed shaken
with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings
that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table
by my bed.
"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my
consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had
also become something far away, something with which I for the moment
seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It
was a miserable experience.
"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone.
I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me as I
had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about the
corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth, and there
was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older than
myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter behind which
she stood my hand trembled so that the pennies made a sharp rattling
noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat did not sound
like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely arose above a
thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very much. Can't you
run away from your husband? Come to me at my apartment at seven
to-night.'
"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she did not
say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each
other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she
nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot
remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven
and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October. I
had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.
"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my
office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They
attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went away
laughing.
"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a
long and very beautiful letter from my fiancée. During the night before
she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the
letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she
herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It
seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies,
and I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road
before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you
will understand what I mean?
"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her
heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay,
I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been
doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her
life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then
she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told
me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had
heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For
a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and
woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am
ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very
patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have
taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you
tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me, or I would
not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so
glad our marriage time is near at hand.'
"Now you see clearly enough into what a mess I had got. In my office,
after I read my fiancée's letter, I became at once very resolute and
strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of
the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I
felt concerning her as I had been feeling, about myself before I found
out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that
I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see
my fiancée. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her
character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the
other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and
told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and
I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.
"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming to my place
on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the telephone
down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment
it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot
be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said
to myself.
"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
everything she did that evening was soft and quiet but very determined
and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
within the door, where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what
the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me
at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
not true. On that evening I went to my fiancée at nine, as she had asked
me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other
woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been thinking
that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would
not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the
other with me,' I had said to myself.
"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
clear to you? When I got to my fiancée's house there was a crowd of
people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not
seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face
must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter
had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to
meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned
and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind.
'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two
human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'
"As you may suppose, everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my
fiancée had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear
little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her
house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I
said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you
the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman
did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancée
close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected
at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known
the truth about me God only knows!
"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
other woman at all. That is partially true but sometimes in the evening
when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking
now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night,
the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one
meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have
never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as
I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It
is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the
spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.
"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am
not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There
will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light
fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying
asleep with one arm thrown over her head.
"What is that I am talking about? A man does not speak of his wife lying
in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this talk, I shall
think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not take the form
they did the week before I was married. I will wonder what has become of
the woman. For a moment I will again feel myself holding her close. I
will think that for an hour I was closer to her than I have ever been to
anyone else. Then I will think of the time when I will be as close as
that to my wife. She is still, you see, an awakening woman. For a moment
I will close my eyes and the quick, shrewd, determined eyes of that
other woman will look into mine. My head will swim and then I will
quickly open my eyes and see again the dear woman with whom I have
undertaken to live out my life. Then I will sleep and when I awake in
the morning it will be as it was that evening when I walked out of my
dark apartment after having had the most notable experience of my life.
What I mean to say, you understand, is that, for me, when I awake, the
other woman will be utterly gone."