should keep them; he resolved to marry a free and independent woman
who could earn her own living; such a woman would be his equal and a
companion for life, not a housekeeper.
Fate ordained that they should meet. He was an artist and she, as I
already mentioned, made flowers; they were both living in Paris at the
time when they conceived these ideas.
There was style in their marriage. They took three rooms at Passy. In
the centre was the studio, to the right of it his room, to the left
hers. This did away with the common bed-room and double bed, that
abomination which has no counterpart in nature and is responsible for
a great deal of dissipation and immorality. It moreover did away with
the inconvenience of having to dress and undress in the same room. It
was far better that each of them should have a separate room and that
the studio should be a neutral, common meeting-place.
They required no servant; they were going to do the cooking themselves
and employ an old charwoman in the mornings and evenings. It was all
very well thought out and excellent in theory.
“But supposing you had children?” asked the sceptics.
“Nonsense, there won’t be any!”
It worked splendidly. He went to the market in the morning and did the
catering. Then he made the coffee. She made the beds and put the rooms
in order. And then they sat down and worked.
When they were tired of working they gossiped, gave one another good
advice, laughed and were very jolly.
At twelve o’clock he lit the kitchen fire and she prepared the
vegetables. He cooked the beef, while she ran across the street to
the grocer’s; then she laid the table and he dished up the dinner.
Of course, they loved one another as husbands and wives do. They said
good-night to each other and went into their own rooms, but there was
no lock to keep him out when he knocked at her door; but the
accommodation was small and the morning found them in their own
quarters. Then he knocked at the wall:
“Good morning, little girlie, how are you to-day?”
“Very well, darling, and you?”
Their meeting at breakfast was always like a new experience which never
grew stale.
They often went out together in the evening and frequently met their
countrymen. She had no objection to the smell of tobacco, and was never
in the way. Everybody said that it was an ideal marriage; no one
had ever known a happier couple.
But the young wife’s parents, who lived a long way off, were always
writing and asking all sorts of indelicate questions; they were longing
to have a grandchild. Louisa ought to remember that the institution of
marriage existed for the benefit of the children, not the parents.
Louisa held that this view was an old-fashioned one. Mama asked her
whether she did not think that the result of the new ideas would be the
complete extirpation of mankind? Louisa had never looked at it in that
light, and moreover the question did not interest her. Both she and her
husband were happy; at last the spectacle of a happy married couple was
presented to the world, and the world was envious.
Life was very pleasant. Neither of them was master and they shared
expenses. Now he earned more, now she did, but in the end their
contributions to the common fund amounted to the same figure.
Then she had a birthday! She was awakened in the morning by the entrance
of the charwoman with a bunch of flowers and a letter painted all over
with flowers, and containing the following words:
“To the lady flower-bud from her dauber, who wishes her many happy
returns of the day and begs her to honour him with her company at an
excellent little breakfast--at once.”
She knocked at his door--come in!
And they breakfasted, sitting on the bed--his bed; and the charwoman
was kept the whole day to do all the work. It was a lovely birthday!
Their happiness never palled. It lasted two years. All the prophets
had prophesied falsely.
It was a model marriage!
But when two years had passed, the young wife fell ill. She put it
down to some poison contained in the wall-paper; he suggested germs of
some sort. Yes, certainly, germs. But something was wrong. Something
was not as it should be. She must have caught cold. Then she grew
stout. Was she suffering from tumour? Yes, they were afraid she was.
She consulted a doctor--and came home crying. It was indeed a growth,
but one which would one day see daylight, grow into a flower and bear
fruit.
The husband did anything but cry. He found style in it, and then the
wretch went to his club and boasted about it to his friends. But the
wife still wept. What would her position be now? She would soon not be
able to earn money with her work and then she would have to live on
him. And they would have to have a servant! Ugh! those servants!
All their care, their caution, their wariness had been wrecked on the
rock of the inevitable.
But the mother-in-law wrote enthusiastic letters and repeated over and
over again that marriage was instituted by God for the protection of
the children; the parents’ pleasure counted for very little.
Hugo implored her to forget the fact that she would not be able to
earn anything in future. Didn’t she do her full share of the work by
mothering the baby? Wasn’t that as good as money? Money was, rightly
understood, nothing but work. Therefore she paid her share in full.
It took her a long time to get over the fact that he had to keep her.
But when the baby came, she forgot all about it. She remained his wife
and companion as before in addition to being the mother of his child,
and he found that this was worth more than anything else.
A NATURAL OBSTACLE
Her father had insisted on her learning book-keeping, so that she might
escape the common lot of young womanhood; to sit there and wait for a
husband.
She was now employed as book-keeper in the goods department of the
Railways, and was universally looked upon as a very capable young
woman. She had a way of getting on with people, and her prospects were
excellent.
Then she met the green forester from the School of Forestry and
married him. They had made up their minds not to have any children;
theirs was to be a true, spiritual marriage, and the world was to be
made to realise that a woman, too, has a soul, and is not merely sex.
Husband and wife met at dinner in the evening. It really was a true
marriage, the union of two souls; it was, of course, also the union of
two bodies, but this is a point one does not discuss.
One day the wife came home and told her husband that her office hours
had been changed. The directors had decided to run a new night train
to Malmo, and in future she would have to be at her office from six to
nine in the evening. It was a nuisance, for he could not come home
before six. That was quite impossible.
Henceforth they had to dine separately and meet only at night. He was
dissatisfied. He hated the long evenings.
He fell into the habit of calling for her. But he found it dull to sit
on a chair in the goods department and have the porters knocking against
him. He was always in the way. And when he tried to talk to her as she
sat at her desk with the penholder behind her ear, she interrupted him
with a curt:
“Oh! do be quiet until I’ve done!”
Then the porters turned away their faces and he could see by their
backs that they were laughing.
Sometimes one or the other of her colleagues announced him with a:
“Your husband is waiting for you, Mrs. X.”
“Your husband!” There was something scornful in the very way in which
they pronounced the word.
But what irritated him more than anything else was the fact that the
desk nearest to her was occupied by a “young ass” who was always
gazing into her eyes and everlastingly consulting the ledger, bending
over her shoulders so that he almost touched her with his chin.
And they talked of invoices and certificates, of things which might
have meant anything for all he knew. And they compared papers and
figures and seemed to be on more familiar terms with one another than
husband and wife were. And that was quite natural, for she saw more of
the young ass than of her husband. It struck him that their marriage
was not a true spiritual marriage after all; in order to be that he,
too, would have had to be employed in the goods department. But as it
happened he was at the School of Forestry.
One day, or rather one night, she told him that on the following
Saturday a meeting of railway employés, which was to conclude with a
dinner, would be held, and that she would have to be present. Her
husband received the communication with a little air of constraint.
“Do you want to go?” he asked naïvely.
“Of course, I do!”
“But you will be the only woman amongst so many men, and when men have
had too much to drink, they are apt to become coarse.”
“Don’t you attend the meetings of the School of Forestry without me?”
“Certainly, but I am not the only man amongst a lot of women.”
“Men and women were equals, she was amazed that he, who had always
preached the emancipation of women could have any objection to her
attending the meeting.”
“He admitted that it was nothing but prejudice on his part. He admitted
that she was right and that he was wrong, but all the same he begged her
not to go; he hated the idea. He couldn’t get over the fact.”
“He was inconsequent.”
“He admitted that he was inconsequent, but it would take ten generations
to get used to the new conditions.”
“Then he must not go to meetings either?”
“That was quite a different matter, for his meetings were attended by
men only. He didn’t mind her going out without him; what he didn’t like
was that she went out alone with so many men.”
“She wouldn’t be alone, for the cashier’s wife would be present as--”
“As what?”
“As the cashier’s wife.”
“Then couldn’t he be present as her husband?”
“Why did he want to make himself so cheap by being in the way?”
“He didn’t mind making himself cheap.”
“Was he jealous?”
“Yes! Why not? He was afraid that something might come between them.”
“What a shame to be jealous! What an insult! What distrust! What did
he think of her?”
“That she was perfect. He would prove it. She could go alone!”
“Could she really? How condescending of him!”
She went. She did not come home until the early hours of the morning.
She awakened her husband and told him how well it had all gone off. He
was delighted to hear it. Somebody had made a speech about her; they
had sung quartets and ended with a dance.
“And how had she come home?”
“The young ass had accompanied her to the front door.”
“Supposing anybody who knew them had seen her at three o’clock in the
morning in the company of the young ass?”
“Well, and what then? She was a respectable woman.”
“Yes, but she might easily lose her reputation.”
“Ah! He was jealous, and what was even worse, he was envious. He
grudged her every little bit of fun. That was what being married
meant! To be scolded if one dared to go out and enjoy oneself a
little. What a stupid institution marriage was! But was their union a
true marriage? They met one another at night, just as other married
couples did. Men were all alike. Civil enough until they were married,
but afterwards, oh! Afterwards.... Her husband was no better than
other men: he looked upon her as his property, he thought he had a
right to order her about.”
“It was true. There was a time when he had believed that they belonged
to one another, but he had made a mistake. He belonged to her as a dog
belonged to its master. What was he but her footman, who called for
her at night to see her home? He was ‘her husband.’ But did she want
to be ‘his wife’? Were they equals?”
“She hadn’t come home to quarrel with him. She wanted to be nothing
but his wife, and she did not want him to be anything but her
husband.”
The effect of the champagne, he thought, and turned to the wall.
She cried and begged him not to be unjust, but to--forgive her.
He pulled the blankets over his ears.
She asked him again if he--if he didn’t want her to be his wife any
more?
“Yes, of course, he wanted her! But he had been so dreadfully bored
all the evening, he could never live through another evening like it.”
“Let them forget all about it then!”
And they forgot all about it and continued loving one another.
On the following evening, when the green forester came for his wife,
he was told that she had gone to the store rooms. He was alone in the
counting-house and sat down on a chair. Presently a glass door was
opened and the young ass put in his head: “Are you here, Annie?”
No, it was only her husband!
He rose and went away. The young ass called his wife Annie, and was
evidently on very familiar terms with her. It was more than he could
bear.
When she came home they had a scene. She reproached him with the fact
that he did not take his views on the emancipation of women seriously,
otherwise he could not be annoyed at her being on familiar terms with
her fellow-clerks. He made matters worse by admitting that his views
were not to be taken seriously.
“Surely he didn’t mean what he was saying! Had he changed his mind?
How could he!”
“Yes, he had changed his mind. One could not help modifying one’s
views almost daily, because one had to adapt them to the conditions of
life which were always changing. And if he had believed in spiritual
marriages in the days gone by, he had now come to lose faith in
marriages of any sort whatever. That was progress in the direction of
radicalism. And as to the spiritual, she was spiritually married to
the young ass rather than to him, for they exchanged views on the
management of the goods department daily and hourly, while she took no
interest at all in the cultivation of forests. Was there anything
spiritual in their marriage? Was there?”
“No, not any longer! Her love was dead! He had killed it when he
renounced his splendid faith in--the emancipation of women.”
Matters became more and more unbearable. The green forester began to
look to his fellow-foresters for companionship and gave up thinking of
the goods department and its way of conducting business, matters which
he never understood.
“You don’t understand me,” she kept on saying over and over again.
“No, I don’t understand the goods department,” he said.
One night, or rather one morning, he told her that he was going
botanising with a girls’ class. He was teaching botany in a girls’
school.
“Oh! indeed! Why had he never mentioned it before? Big girls?”
“Oh! very big ones. From sixteen to twenty.”
“H’m! In the morning?”
“No! In the afternoon! And they would have supper in one of the
outlying little villages.”
“Would they? The head-mistress would be there of course?”
“Oh! no, she had every confidence in him, since he was a married man.
It was an advantage, sometimes, to be married.”
On the next day she was ill.
“Surely he hadn’t the heart to leave her!”
“He must consider his work before anything else. Was she very ill?”
“Oh! terribly ill!”
In spite of her objections he sent for a doctor. The doctor declared
that there was nothing much the matter; it was quite unnecessary for
the husband to stay at home. The green forester returned towards morning.
He was in high spirits. He had enjoyed himself immensely! He had not had
such a day for a long, long time.
The storm burst. Huhuhu! This struggle was too much for her! He must
swear a solemn oath never to love any woman but her. Never!
She had convulsions; he ran for the smelling salts.
He was too generous to give her details of the supper with the
schoolgirls, but he could not forego the pleasure of mentioning his
former simile anent dogs and possession, and he took the occasion to
draw her attention to the fact that love without the conception of a
right to possession--on both sides--was not thinkable. What was
making her cry? The same thing which had made him swear, when she went
out with twenty men. The fear of losing him! But one can lose only
that which one possesses! Possesses!
Thus the rent was repaired. But goods department and girls’ school
were ready with their scissors to undo the laborious mending.
The harmony was disturbed.
The wife fell ill.
She was sure that she had hurt herself in lifting a case which was too
heavy for her. She was so keen on her work that she could not bear to
wait while the porters stood about and did nothing. She was compelled
to lend a hand. Now she must have ruptured herself.
Yes, indeed, there was something the matter!
How angry she was! Angry with her husband who alone was to blame. What
were they going to do with the baby? It would have to be boarded out!
Rousseau had done that. It was true, he was a fool, but on this
particular point he was right.
She was full of fads and fancies. The forester had to resign his lessons
at the girls’ school at once.
She chafed and fretted because she was no longer able to go into the
store rooms, but compelled to stay in the counting-house all day long
and make entries. But the worst blow which befell her was the arrival
of an assistant whose secret mission it was to take her place when she
would be laid up.
The manner of her colleagues had changed, too. The porters grinned.
She felt ashamed and longed to hide herself. It would be better to
stay at home and cook her husband’s dinner than sit here and be stared
at. Oh! What black chasms of prejudice lay concealed in the deceitful
hearts of men!
She stayed at home for the last month, for the walk to and from her
office four times a day was too much for her. And she was always so
hungry! She had to send out for sandwiches in the morning. And every
now and then she felt faint and had to take a rest. What a life! A
woman’s lot was indeed a miserable one.
The baby was born.
“Shall we board it out?” asked the father.
“Had he no heart?”
“Oh! yes, of course he had!”
And the baby remained at home.
Then a very polite letter arrived from the head office, enquiring after
the young mother’s health.
“She was very well and would be back at the office on the day after
to-morrow.”
She was still a little weak and had to take a cab; but she soon picked
up her strength. However, a new difficulty now presented itself. She
must be kept informed of the baby’s condition; a messenger boy was
despatched to her home, at first twice a day, then every two hours.
And when she was told that the baby had been crying, she put on her
hat and rushed home at once. But the assistant was there, ready to
take her place. The head clerk was very civil and made no comment.
One day the young mother discovered accidentally that the nurse was
unable to feed the baby, but had concealed the fact for fear of losing
her place. She had to take a day off in order to find a new foster mother.
But they were all alike; brutal egoists every one of them, who took no
interest in the children of strangers. No one could ever depend on them.
“No,” agreed the husband, “in a case of this sort one can only depend on
oneself.”
“Do you mean to insinuate that I ought to give up my work?”
“Oh! You must do as you like about that!”
“And become your slave!”
“No, I don’t mean that at all!”
The little one was not at all well; all children are ill occasionally.
He was teething! One day’s leave after another! The poor baby suffered
from toothache. She had to soothe him at night, work at the office
during the day, sleepy, tired, anxious, and again take a day off.
The green forester did his best and carried the baby about in his arms
half the night, but he never said a word about his wife’s work at the
goods department.
Nevertheless she knew what was in his mind. He was waiting for her to
give in; but he was deceitful and so he said nothing! How treacherous
men were! She hated him; she would sooner kill herself than throw up
her work and “be his slave.”
The forester saw quite clearly now that it was impossible for any
woman to emancipate herself from the laws of nature; _under present
circumstances_, he was shrewd enough to add.
When the baby was five months old, it was plainly evident that the
whole thing would before very long repeat itself.
What a catastrophe!
But when that sort of thing once begins....
The forester was obliged to resume his lessons at the girls’ school to
augment their income, and now--she laid down her arms.
“I am your slave, now,” she groaned, when she came home with her
discharge.
Nevertheless she is the head of the house, and he gives her every
penny he earns. When he wants to buy a cigar he makes a long speech
before he ventures to ask for the money. She never refuses it to him,
but all the same he finds the asking for it unpleasant. He is allowed
to attend meetings, but no dinners, and all botanising with girls is
strictly forbidden. He does not miss it much, for he prefers playing
with his children.
His colleagues call him henpecked; but he smiles, and tells them that
he is happy in spite of it, because he has in his wife a very sweet
and sensible companion.
She, on her part, obstinately maintains that she is nothing but his
slave, whatever he might say to the contrary. It is her one comfort,
poor, little woman!
A DOLL’S HOUSE
They had been married for six years, but they were still more like
lovers than husband and wife. He was a captain in the navy, and every
summer he was obliged to leave her for a few months; twice he had been
away on a long voyage. But his short absences were a blessing in
disguise, for if their relations had grown a little stale during the
winter, the summer trip invariably restored them to their former
freshness and delightfulness.
During the first summer he wrote veritable love-letters to her and
never passed a sailing ship without signalling: “Will you take
letters?” And when he came in sight of the landmarks of the Stockholm
Archipelago, he did not know how to get to her quickly enough. But she
found a way. She wired him to Landsort that she would meet him at
Dalarö. When he anchored, he saw a little blue scarf fluttering on the
verandah of the hotel: then he knew that it was she. But there was so
much to do aboard that it was evening before he could go ashore. He
saw her from his gig on the landing-stage as the bow held out his oar
to fend off; she was every bit as young, as pretty and as strong as
she had been when he left her; it was exactly as if they were
re-living the first spring days of their love. A delicious little
supper waited for him in the two little rooms she had engaged. What a
lot they had to talk about! The voyage, the children, the future! The
wine sparkled in the glasses and his kisses brought the blood to her
cheeks.
Tattoo went on the ship, but he took no notice of it, for he did not
intend to leave her before one o’clock.
“What? He was going?”
“Yes; he must get back aboard, but it would do if he was there for the
morning watch.”
“When did the morning watch begin?”
“At five o’clock.”
“Oh!... As early as that!”
“But where was she going to stay the night?”
“That was her business!”
He guessed it and wanted to have a look at her room; but she planted
herself firmly on the threshold. He covered her face with kisses, took
her in his arms as if she were a baby and opened the door.
“What an enormous bed! It was like the long boat. Where did the people
get it from?”
She blushed crimson.
“Of course, she had understood from his letter that they would stay at
the hotel together.”
“Well, and so they would, in spite of his having to be back aboard for
the morning watch. What did he care for the stupid morning prayers!”
“How could he say such a thing!”
“Hadn’t they better have some coffee and a fire? The sheets felt damp!
What a sensible little rogue she was to provide for his staying, too!
Who would have thought that she had so much sense? Where did she get
it from?”
“She didn’t get it from anywhere!”
“No? Well, he might have known! He might have known everything!”
“Oh! But he was so stupid!”
“Indeed, he was stupid, was he?”
And he slipped his arm round her waist.
“But he ought to behave himself!”
“Behave himself? It was easy to talk!”
“The girl was coming with the wood!”
When it struck two, and sea and Skerries were flaming in the east,
they were sitting at the open window.
“They were lovers still, weren’t they? And now he must go. But he
would be back at ten, for breakfast, and after that they would go for
a sail.”
He made some coffee on her spirit lamp, and they drank it while the
sun was rising and the seagulls screamed. The gunboat was lying far
out at sea and every now and then he saw the cutlasses of the watch
glinting in the sunlight. It was hard to part, but the certainty of
meeting again in a few hours’ time helped them to bear it. He kissed
her for the last time, buckled on his sword and left her.