I find myself still quite solitary at home, a thing I have never known
since I was a single young man.
My poor wife still lingers on at the hospital, and the doctor lately
asked me to make as few visits as I possibly could to her, so that she
might be kept from all excitement. For she no sooner sees me than she
throws her arms passionately round my neck, as though I had just been
rescued from some alarming danger. When I have to leave her there is
a renewal of these agitating scenes, and it is long before she can
reconcile herself to the idea of my going. After the conversations
we have had together, her thoughts naturally wander back to me and
the other members of the family; and the more she suffers them to run
in this groove the more anxiety and uncertainty does she feel on our
account. She is constantly fancying us exposed to all kinds of dreadful
persecutions and perils, and is afraid of never seeing us more. The
shock her system sustained through the death of our little daughter,
and through the events connected with the flight of Franz and Agnes,
still affects her most severely.
My wish was to consult our former doctor on her case. He knows her
system thoroughly well, as he has attended her, when occasion required,
ever since our marriage. When I called upon him he had just returned
from a youthful suicide, whom he had in vain endeavoured to call back
to life. He told me he was extremely sorry to say that his eight hours
maximum working-day had just expired, and that such being the case,
he was unable, although much against his will, and in spite of the
friendship between us, to give any more medical advice on that day.
He told me that he had already, on two occasions, been denounced by a
younger colleague, who was not able to render a sufficient number of
coupons to the State Book-keeping Department, to prove that he had been
engaged professionally for eight hours each day. This young man had
laid an information against him for exceeding the hours of labour, and
he had been heavily fined for over-production.
Commenting upon the case he had just returned from, the old gentleman
enlarged upon the frightful increase in the number of suicides in the
socialistic Community. I asked him whether this one had been a case of
unrequited love. He replied in the negative, but went on to say that
such cases did sometimes occur, precisely as formerly, as it would
scarcely do to prohibit women by act of Parliament from rejecting
proposals which were not agreeable to them. The old gentleman who, in
his younger days, had been an army surgeon, attributed the increase in
the number of suicides to other causes. He told me he had frequently
observed that a considerable number of such suicides as took place in
the army arose from the simple fact that many young men, although they
felt perfectly content in all other respects, found the unaccustomed
restraints of military life utterly unbearable. These young men found
life under such circumstances unendurable, even although they knew
that in the course of two or three years they would return to their
accustomed freedom. Hence, it was no wonder, he continued, that the
irksome and life-long restrictions of personal freedom which have
resulted from the new organisation of production and consumption,
together with the idea of the absolute social equality of all, should
have had the effect with many persons, and those by no means of an
inferior order, of so far robbing life of all its charms, that at
last they had recourse to suicide as the only way of escape from the
restraints of a dreary and monotonous existence, which all their
efforts were powerless to alter. It is very possible the old gentleman
is not altogether in the wrong.
It is cheering to reflect that we have good news from Franz and Agnes
in America. This is the only ray of sunshine in my life. They write
that they have already left the boarding-house in New York, in which
they stayed immediately after their marriage, and have managed to get
a humble little home together. Through being an excellent hand at his
trade, and through his honourable character, Franz has become foreman
in a first-class printing concern. Agnes works for a large millinery
establishment, and it seems that the wages in this branch have gone up
considerably in America since the competition on the part of Germany
has fallen so seriously in arrears. Thus, by economy, they are enabled
to buy one thing after another for their cosy home. Franz was terribly
upset by the news of his little sister’s death, and he much wants me to
send Ernst over to him, and promises to provide for his future.
No words could describe how sorry I feel for Ernst at his school.
And, in fact, as a general thing, one hears nothing but unfavourable
accounts of these schools, more particularly of those which are
occupied by young men of from eighteen to twenty-one years of age.
These young men all know that upon the completion of their twenty-first
year, irrespective of what they have learnt, or whether they have
learnt much or little, precisely the same fate awaits them all. They
know they will find exactly the same course prescribed for them that
is prescribed for all alike, and that no efforts or talents will ever
avail to enable them to pass beyond that prescribed course. They know,
further, that the fact of their tastes lying in this or that particular
direction, affords not the slightest guarantee of their receiving an
appointment in accordance with those tastes, or even in any approximate
accordance with them. The result is, that almost without exception they
run into all sorts of extravagance and excess, so that lately such
severe measures had to be taken for keeping them within bounds as could
scarcely be surpassed in reformatories.
But in spite of all this, I dare not yet venture to whisper a word to
Ernst about flight. Even if I could devise a sure way of getting the
young fellow on board a foreign vessel, and supposing I had any means
of recouping Franz for the expense of the journey, I should still feel
incapable of taking such a decisive step for Ernst’s future, without
his mother’s full acquiescence. And to talk to her of such a thing, in
her present frame of mind, might be her death.