mountain glen; note succeeded note, his face cleared, his lips smiled,
the lines disappeared, his fingers touched the keys, and drew from
them melodies, powerful, caressing and full of eternal youth, while
with a strong and ringing voice he sang the part of the bass.
His wife started from her melancholy reverie and listened with tears
in her eyes.
“What are you singing?” she asked, full of amazement.
“Romeo and Julia! Our Romeo and our Julia!”
He jumped up from the music stool and pushed the music towards his
astonished wife.
“Look! This was the Romeo of our uncles and aunts, this was--read
it--Bellini! Oh! We are not old, after all!”
The wife looked at the thick, glossy hair of her husband, his smooth
brow and flashing eyes, with joy.
“And you? You look like a young girl. We have allowed old Bellini to
make fools of us. I felt that something was wrong.”
“No, darling, I thought so first.”
“Probably you did; that is because you are younger than I am.”
“No, you....”
And husband and wife, like a couple of children, laughingly quarrel
over the question of which of them is the elder of the two, and cannot
understand how they could have discovered lines and grey hairs where
there are none.
PROLIFICACY
He was a supernumerary at the Board of Trade and drew a salary of
twelve hundred crowns. He had married a young girl without a penny;
for love, as he himself said, to be no longer compelled to go to
dances and run about the streets, as his friends maintained. But be
that as it may, the life of the newly-wedded couple was happy enough
to begin with.
“How cheaply married people can live,” he said one day, after the
wedding was a thing of the past. The same sum which had been barely
enough to cover the wants of the bachelor now sufficed for husband and
wife. Really, marriage was an excellent institution. One had all one’s
requirements within one’s four walls: club, cafe, everything; no more
bills of fare, no tips, no inquisitive porter watching one as one went
out with one’s wife in the morning.
Life smiled at him, his strength increased and he worked for two.
Never in all his life had he felt so full of overflowing energy; he
jumped out of bed as soon as he woke up in the morning, buoyantly, and
in the highest spirits, he was rejuvenated.
When two months had elapsed, long before his new circumstances had
begun to pall, his wife whispered a certain piece of information into
his ear. New joys! New cares! But cares so pleasant to bear! It was
necessary, however, to increase their income at once, so as to receive
the unknown world-citizen in a manner befitting his dignity. He managed
to obtain an order for a translation.
Baby-clothes lay scattered about all over the furniture, a cradle
stood waiting in the hall, and at last a splendid boy arrived in this
world of sorrows.
The father was delighted. And yet he could not help a vague feeling of
uneasiness whenever he thought of the future. Income and expenditure
did not balance. Nothing remained but to reduce his dress allowance.
His frock coat began to look threadbare at the seams; his shirt front
was hidden underneath a large tie, his trousers were frayed. It was an
undeniable fact that the porters at the office looked down on him on
account of his shabbiness.
In addition to this he was compelled to lengthen his working day.
“It must be the first and last,” he said. But how was it to be done?
He was at a loss to know.
Three months later his wife prepared him in carefully chosen words
that his paternal joys would soon be doubled. It would not be true to
say that he rejoiced greatly at the news. But there was no alternative
now; he must travel along the road he had chosen, even if married life
should prove to be anything but cheap.
“It’s true,” he thought, his face brightening, “the younger one will
inherit the baby-clothes of his elder brother. This will save a good
deal of expense, and there will be food enough for them--I shall be
able to feed them just as well as others.”
And the second baby was born.
“You are going it,” said a friend of his, who was a married man himself,
but father of one child only.
“What is a man to do?”
“Use his common-sense.”
“Use his common-sense? But, my dear fellow, a man gets married in
order to ... I mean to say, not only in order to ... but yet in order
to.... Well, anyhow, we are married and that settles the matter.”
“Not at all. Let me tell you something, my dear boy; if you are at all
hoping for promotion it is absolutely necessary that you should wear
clean linen, trousers which are not frayed at the bottom, and a hat
which is not of a rusty brown.”
And the sensible man whispered sensible words into his ear. As the
result, the poor husband was put on short commons in the midst of
plenty.
But now his troubles began.
To start with his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and
did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him
three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had
worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean
starvation for all of them, and to work spelt death, too!
He went on working.
One day, as he was sitting at his desk, stooping over endless rows of
figures, he had an attack of faintness, slipped off his chair and fell
to the ground.
A visit to a specialist--eighteen crowns. A new prescription; he must
ask for sick leave at once, take riding exercise every morning and
have steak and a glass of port for breakfast.
Riding exercise and port!
But the worst feature of the whole business was a feeling of alienation
from his wife which had sprung up in his heart--he did not know whence
it came. He was afraid to go near her and at the same time he longed for
her presence. He loved her, loved her still, but a certain bitterness
was mingled with his love.
“You are growing thin,” said a friend.
“Yes, I believe I’ve grown thinner,” said the poor husband.
“You are playing a dangerous game, old boy!”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“A married man in half mourning! Take care, my friend!”
“I really don’t know what you’re driving at.”.
“It’s impossible to go against the wind for any length of time. Set
all sails and run, old chap, and you will see that everything will
come right. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You understand
me.”
He took no notice of the advice for a time, fully aware of the fact
that a man’s income does not increase in proportion to his family; at
the same time he had no longer any doubt about the cause of his
malady.
It was summer again. The family had gone into the country. On a
beautiful evening husband and wife were strolling along the steep
shore, in the shade of the alder trees, resplendent in their young
green. They sat down on the turf, silent and depressed. He was morose
and disheartened; gloomy thoughts revolved behind his aching brow.
Life seemed a great chasm which had opened to engulf all he loved.
They talked of the probable loss of his appointment; his chief had
been annoyed at his second application for sick leave. He complained
of the conduct of his colleagues, he felt himself deserted by everyone;
but the fact which hurt him more than anything else was the knowledge
that she, too, had grown tired of him.
“Oh! but she hadn’t! She loved him every bit as much as she did in
those happy days when they were first engaged. How could he doubt it?”
“No, he didn’t doubt it; but he had suffered so much, he wasn’t master
of his own thoughts.”
He pressed his burning cheek against hers, put his arm round her and
covered her eyes with passionate kisses.
The gnats danced their nuptial dance above the birch tree without a
thought of the thousands of young ones which their ecstasy would call
into being; the carp laid their eggs in the reed grass, careless of
the millions of their kind to which they gave birth; the swallow made
love in broad daylight, not in the least afraid of the consequences of
their irregular liaisons.
All of a sudden he sprang to his feet and stretched himself like a
sleeper awakening from a long sleep, which had been haunted by evil
dreams, he drank in the balmy air in deep draughts.
“What’s the matter?” whispered his wife, while a crimson blush spread
over her face.
“I don’t know. All I know is that I live, that I breathe again.”
And radiant, with laughing face and shining eyes, he held out his arms
to her, picked her up as if she were a baby and pressed his lips to
her forehead. The muscles of his legs swelled until they looked like
the muscles of the leg of an antique god, he held his body erect like
a young tree and intoxicated with strength and happiness, he carried
his beloved burden as far as the footpath where he put her down.
“You will strain yourself, sweetheart,” she said, making a vain
attempt to free herself from his encircling arms.
“Never, you darling! I could carry you to the end of the earth, and I
shall carry you, all of you, no matter how many you are now, or how
many you may yet become.”
And they returned home, arm in arm, their hearts singing with
gladness.
“If the worst comes to the worst, sweet love, one must admit that it
is very easy to jump that abyss which separates body and soul!”
“What a thing to say!”
“If I had only realised it before, I should have been less unhappy.
Oh! those idealists!”
And they entered their cottage.
The good old times had returned and had, apparently, come to stay. The
husband went to work to his office as before. They lived again through
love’s spring time. No doctor was required and the high spirits never
flagged.
After the third christening, however, he came to the conclusion that
matters were serious and started playing his old game with the
inevitable results: doctor, sick-leave, riding-exercise, port! But
there must be an end of it, at all costs. Every time the balance-sheet
showed a deficit.
But when, finally, his whole nervous system went out of joint, he let
nature have her own way. Immediately expenses went up and he was beset
with difficulties.
He was not a poor man, it is true, but on the other hand he was not
blest with too many of this world’s riches.
“To tell you the truth, old girl,” he said to his wife, “it will be
the same old story over again.”
“I am afraid it will, my dear,” replied the poor woman, who, in
addition to her duties as a mother, had to do the whole work of the
house now.
After the birth of her fourth child, the work grew too hard for her
and a nursemaid had to be engaged.
“Now it must stop,” avowed the disconsolate husband. “This must be the
last.”
Poverty looked in at the door. The foundations on which the house was
built were tottering.
And thus, at the age of thirty, in the very prime of their life, the
young husband and wife found themselves condemned to celibacy. He grew
moody, his complexion became grey and his eyes lost their lustre. Her
rich beauty faded, her fine figure wasted away, and she suffered all
the sorrows of a mother who sees her children growing up in poverty
and rags.
One day, as she was standing in the kitchen, frying herrings, a
neighbour called in for a friendly chat.
“How are you?” she began.
“Thank you, I’m not up to very much. How are you?”
“Oh! I’m not at all well. Married life is a misery if one has to be
constantly on one’s guard.”
“Do you think you are the only one?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what my husband said to me the other day? One ought to
spare the draught cattle! And I suffer under it all, I can tell you.
No, there’s no happiness in marriage. Either husband or wife is bound
to suffer. It’s one or the other!”
“Or both!”
“But what about the men of science who grow fat at the expense of the
Government?”
“They have to think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to
write about such problems; they must not be discussed openly.”
“But that would be the first necessity!” And the two women fell to
discussing their bitter experiences.
In the following summer they were compelled to remain in town; they
were living in a basement with a view of the gutter, the smell of
which was so objectionable that it was impossible to keep the windows
open.
The wife did needlework in the same room in which the children were
playing; the husband, who had lost his appointment on account of his
extreme shabbiness, was copying a manuscript in the adjoining room,
and grumbling at the children’s noise. Hard words were bandied through
the open door.
It was Whitsuntide. In the afternoon the husband was lying on the
ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the
street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing
for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by
the side of her looking-glass.
She was fastening her dress without taking the least notice of his
inquisitive glances.
“She’s not having a bad time,” mused the celibate, suddenly kindled
into passion. “One lives but once in this world, and one must live
one’s life, happen what will!”
His wife entered the room and caught sight of the object of his
scrutiny. Her eyes blazed; the last feeble sparks of her dead love
glowed under the ashes and revealed themselves in a temporary flash
of jealousy.
“Hadn’t we better take the children to the Zoo?” she asked.
“To make a public show of our misery? No, thank you!”
“But it’s so hot in here. I shall have to pull down the blinds.”
“You had better open a window!”
He divined his wife’s thoughts and rose to do it himself. Out there,
on the edge of the pavement, his four little ones were sitting, in
close proximity of the waste pipes. Their feet were in the dry gutter,
and they were playing with orange peels which they had found in the
sweepings of the road. The sight stabbed his heart, and he felt a lump
rising in his throat. But poverty had so blunted his feelings that he
remained standing at the window with his arms crossed.
All at once two filthy streams gushed from the waste pipes, inundated
the gutter and saturated the feet of the children who screamed, half
suffocated by the stench.
“Get the children ready as quickly as you can,” he called, giving way
at the heart-rending scene.
The father pushed the perambulator with the baby, the other children
clung to the hands and skirts of the mother.
They arrived at the cemetery with its dark-stemmed lime-trees, their
usual place of refuge; here the trees grew luxuriantly, as if the soil
were enriched by the bodies which lay buried underneath it.
The bells were ringing for evening prayers. The inmates of the
poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant
by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the
principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages
to the Royal Deer Park.
The children climbed about the shallow graves, most of which were
decorated with armorial bearings and inscriptions.
Husband and wife sat down on a seat and placed the perambulator, in
which the baby lay sucking at its bottle, by their side. Two puppies
were disporting themselves on a grave close by, half hidden by the
high grass.
A young and well dressed couple, leading by the hand a little girl
clothed in silk and velvet, passed the seat on which they sat. The
poor copyist raised his eyes to the young dandy and recognised a
former colleague from the Board of Trade who, however, did not seem to
see him. A feeling of bitter envy seized him with such intensity that
he felt more humiliated by this “ignoble sentiment” than by his
deplorable condition. Was he angry with the other man because he
filled a position which he himself had coveted? Surely not. But
of a sense of justice, and his suffering was all the deeper because
it was shared by the whole class of the disinherited. He was convinced
that the inmates of the poorhouse, bowed down under the yoke of public
charity, envied his wife; and he was quite sure that many of the
aristocrats who slept all around him in their graves, under their coats
of arms, would have envied him his children if it had been their lot to
die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, nobody under
the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall
to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And
how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great
lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the mass said at
evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which
the others despised and of which they had no need because the gates of
heaven opened readily enough to their wealth. But what about the good
and just God who had distributed His gifts so unevenly? It would be
better, indeed, to live one’s life without this unjust God, who had,
moreover, candidly admitted that the “wind blew where it listed”; had
He not himself confessed, in these words, that He did not interfere in
the concerns of man? But failing the church, where should we look for
comfort? And yet, why ask for comfort? Wouldn’t it be far better to
strive to make such arrangements that no comfort was needed? Wouldn’t
it?
His speculations were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him
for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her
doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little
twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch
the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable
requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which
was against the regulations.
“We’d better go home,” said the distressed father. “How carefully they
guard the interests of the dead, and how indifferent they are to the
interests of the living.”
And they returned home.
He sat down and began to work. He had to copy the manuscript of an
academical treatise on over-population.
The subject interested him and he read the contents of the whole book.
The young author who belonged to what was called the ethical school,
was preaching against vice.
“What vice?” mused the copyist. “That which is responsible for our
existence? Which the priest orders us to indulge in at every wedding
when he says: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth?”
The manuscript ran on: Propagation, without holy matrimony, is a
destructive vice, because the fate of the children, who do not receive
proper care and nursing, is a sad one. In the case of married couples,
on the other hand, it becomes a sacred duty to indulge one’s desires.
This is proved, among other things, by the fact that the law protects
even the female ovum, and it is right that it should be so.
“Consequently,” thought the copyist, “there is a providence for
legitimate children, but not for illegitimate ones Oh! this young
philosopher! And the law which protects the female ovum! What
business, then, have those microscopic things to detach themselves at
every change of the moon? Those sacred objects ought to be most
carefully guarded by the police!”
All these futilities he had to copy in his best handwriting.
They overflowed with morality, but contained not a single word of
enlightenment.
The moral or rather the immoral gist of the whole argument was: There
is a God who feeds and clothes all children born in wedlock; a God in
His heaven, probably, but what about the earth? Certainly, it was said
that He came to earth once and allowed himself to be crucified, after
vainly trying to establish something like order in the confused
affairs of mankind; He did not succeed.
The philosopher wound up by screaming himself hoarse in trying to
convince his audience that the abundant supply of wheat was an
irrefutable proof that the problem of over-population did not exist;
that the doctrine of Malthus was not only false, but criminal,
socially as well as morally.
And the poor father of a family who had not tasted wheaten bread for
years, laid down the manuscript and urged his little ones to fill
themselves with gruel made of rye flour and bluish milk, a dish which
satisfied their craving, but contained no nourishment.
He was wretched, not because he considered water gruel objectionable,
but because he had lost his precious sense of humour, that magician
who can transform the dark rye into golden wheat; almighty love,
emptying his horn of plenty over his poor home, had vanished. The
children had become burdens, and the once beloved wife a secret enemy
despised and despising him.
And the cause of all this unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the
large store houses of the new world were breaking down under the weight
of the over-abundant supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions!
The manner in which bread was distributed must be at fault.
Science, which has replaced religion, has no answer to give; it merely
states facts and allows the children to die of hunger and the parents
of thirst.
AUTUMN
They had been married for ten years. Happily? Well, as happily as
circumstances permitted. They had been running in double harness, like
two young oxen of equal strength, each of which is conscientiously
doing his own share.
During the first year of their marriage they buried many illusions and
realised that marriage was not perfect bliss. In the second year the
babies began to arrive, and the daily toil left them no time for
brooding.
He was very domesticated, perhaps too much so; his family was his
world, the centre and pivot of which he was. The children were the
radii. His wife attempted to be a centre, too, but never in the middle
of the circle, for that was exclusively occupied by him, and therefore
the radii fell now on the top of one another, now far apart, and their
life lacked harmony.
In the tenth year of their marriage he obtained the post of secretary
to the Board of Prisons, and in that capacity he was obliged to travel
about the country. This interfered seriously with his daily routine;
the thought of leaving his world for a whole month upset him. He
wondered whom he would miss more, his wife or his children, and he was
sure he would miss them both.
On the eve of his departure he sat in the corner of the sofa and
watched his portmanteau being packed. His wife was kneeling on the
She brushed his black suit and folded it carefully, so that it should
take up as little space as possible. He had no idea how to do these
things.
She had never looked upon herself as his housekeeper, hardly as his
wife, she was above all things mother: a mother to the children, a
mother to him. She darned his socks without the slightest feeling of
degradation, and asked for no thanks. She never even considered him
indebted to her for it, for did he not give her and the children new
stockings whenever they wanted them, and a great many other things
into the bargain? But for him, she would have to go out and earn her
own living, and the children would be left alone all day.
He sat in the sofa corner and looked at her. Now that the parting was
imminent, he began to feel premature little twinges of longing. He
gazed at her figure. Her shoulders were a little rounded; much bending
over the cradle, ironing board and kitchen range had robbed her back
of its straightness. He, too, stooped a little, the result of his toil
at the writing-table, and he was obliged to wear spectacles. But at
the moment he really was not thinking of himself. He noticed that her
plaits were thinner than they had been and that a faint suggestion of
silver lay on her hair. Had she sacrificed her beauty to him, to him
alone? No, surely not to him, but to the little community which they
formed; for, after all, she had also worked for herself. His hair,
too, had grown thin in the struggle to provide for all of them. He
might have retained his youth a little longer, if there hadn’t been so
many mouths to fill, if he had remained a bachelor; but he didn’t
regret his marriage for one second.
“It will be a good thing for you to get away for a bit,” said his
wife; “you have been too much at home.”
“I suppose you are glad to get rid of me,” he replied, not without
bitterness; “but I--I shall miss you very much.”
“You are like a cat, you’ll miss your cosy fireside, but not me; you
know you won’t.”
“And the kiddies?”
“Oh, yes! I daresay you’ll miss them when you are away, for all your
scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don’t mean that you are
unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won’t be
unjust, and I know that you love them.”
At supper he was very tired and depressed. He didn’t read the evening
paper, he wanted to talk to his wife. But she was too busy to pay much
attention to him; she had no time to waste; moreover, her ten years’
campaign in kitchen and nursery had taught her self-control.