of the room made him fidgety. Scraps of his daily life lay scattered
all over chairs and chests of drawers; his black portmanteau yawned
wide-open like a coffin; his white linen was carefully laid on the top
of his black suit, which showed slight traces of wear and tear at the
knees and elbows. It seemed to him that he himself was lying there,
wearing a white shirt with a starched front. Presently they would
close the coffin and carry it away.
On the following morning--it was in August--he rose early and dressed
hurriedly. His nerves were unstrung. He went into the nursery and
kissed the children who stared at him with sleepy eyes. Then he kissed
his wife, got into a cab, and told the driver to drive him to the
station.
The journey, which he made in the company of his Board, did him good;
it really was a good thing for him to get out of his groove;
domesticity lay behind him like a stuffy bedroom, and on the arrival
of the train at Linkoping he was in high spirits.
An excellent dinner had been ordered at the best hotel and the
remainder of the day was spent in eating it. They drank the health of
the Lord Lieutenant; no one thought of the prisoners on whose behalf
the journey had been undertaken.
Dinner over, he had to face a lonely evening in his solitary room. A
bed, two chairs, a table, a washing-stand and a wax candle, which
threw its dim light on bare walls. He couldn’t suppress a feeling of
nervousness. He missed all his little comforts,--slippers,
dressing-gown, pipe rack and writing table; all the little details
which played an important part in his daily life. And the kiddies? And
his wife? What were they doing? Were they all right? He became
restless and depressed. When he wanted to wind up his watch, he found
that he had left his watch-key at home. It was hanging on the
watch-stand which his wife had given him before they were married. He
went to bed and lit a cigar. Then he wanted a book out of his
portmanteau and he had to get up again. Everything was packed so
beautifully, it was a pity to disturb it. In looking for the book, he
came across his slippers. She had forgotten nothing. Then he found the
book. But he couldn’t read. He lay in bed and thought of the past, of
his wife, as she had been ten years ago. He saw her as she had been
then; the picture of her, as she now was, disappeared in the blue-grey
clouds of smoke which rose in rings and wreaths to the rain-stained
ceiling. An infinite yearning came over him. Every harsh word he had
ever spoken to her now grated on his ears; he thought remorsefully of
every hour of anguish he had caused her. At last he fell asleep.
The following day brought much work and another banquet with a toast
to the Prison-Governor--the prisoners were still unremembered. In the
evening solitude, emptiness, coldness. He felt a pressing need to talk
to her. He fetched some notepaper and sat down to write. But at the
very outset he was confronted by a difficulty. How was he to address
her? Whenever he had sent her a few lines to say that he would not be
home for dinner, he had always called her “Dear Mother.” But now he
was not going to write to the mother, but to his fiancée, to his
beloved one. At last he made up his mind and commenced his letter with
“My Darling Lily,” as he had done in the old days. At first he wrote
slowly and with difficulty, for so many beautiful words and phrases
seemed to have disappeared from the clumsy, dry language of every-day
life; but as he warmed to his work, they awakened in his memory like
forgotten melodies, valse tunes, fragments of poems, elder-blossoms,
and swallows, sunsets on a mirror-like sea. All his memories of the
springtime of life came dancing along in clouds of gossamer and
enveloped her. He drew a cross at the bottom of the page, as lovers
do, and by the side of it he wrote the words: “Kiss here.”
When the letter was finished and he read it through, his cheeks burnt
and he became self-conscious. He couldn’t account for the reason.
But somehow he felt that he had shown his naked soul to a stranger.
In spite of this feeling he posted the letter.
A few days elapsed before he received a reply. While he was waiting
for it, he was a prey to an almost childish bashfulness and
embarrassment.
At last the answer came. He had struck the right note, and from the
din and clamour of the nursery, and the fumes and smell of the
kitchen, a song arose, clear and beautiful, tender and pure, like
first love.
Now an exchange of love-letters began. He wrote to her every night,
and sometimes he sent her a postcard as well during the day. His
colleagues didn’t know what to think of him. He was so fastidious
about his dress and personal appearance, that they suspected him of a
love affair. And he was in love--in love again. He sent her his
photograph, without the spectacles, and she sent him a lock of her
hair.
Their language was simple like a child’s, and he wrote on coloured
paper ornamented with little doves. Why shouldn’t they? They were a
long way off forty yet, even though the struggle for an existence had
made them feel that they were getting old. He had neglected her during
the last twelvemonth, not so much from indifference as from respect--he
always saw in her the mother of his children.
The tour of inspection was approaching its end. He was conscious of a
certain feeling of apprehension when he thought of their meeting. He
had corresponded with his sweetheart; should he find her in the mother
and housewife? He dreaded a disappointment. He shrank at the thought
of finding her with a kitchen towel in her hand, or the children
clinging to her skirts. Their first meeting must be somewhere else,
and they must meet alone. Should he ask her to join him at Waxholm, in
the Stockholm Archipelago, at the hotel where they had spent so many
happy hours during the period of their engagement? Splendid idea!
There they could, for two whole days, re-live in memory the first
beautiful spring days of their lives, which had flown, never to return
again.
He sat down and made the suggestion in an impassioned love-letter. She
answered by return agreeing to his proposal, happy that the same idea
had occurred to both of them.
* * * * *
Two days later he arrived at Waxholm and engaged rooms at the hotel.
It was a beautiful September day. He dined alone, in the great
dining-room, drank a glass of wine and felt young again. Everything
was so bright and beautiful. There was the blue sea outside; only the
birch trees on the shore had changed their tints. In the garden the
dahlias were still in full splendour, and the perfume of the mignonette
rose from the borders of the flower beds. A few bees still visited the
dying calyces but returned disappointed to their hives. The fishing
boats sailed up the Sound before a faint breeze, and in tacking the
sails fluttered and the sheets shook; the startled seagulls rose into
the air screaming, and circled round the fishermen who were fishing
from their boats for small herring.
He drank his coffee on the verandah, and began to look out for the
steamer which was due at six o’clock.
Restlessly, apprehensively, he paced the verandah, anxiously watching
fiord and Sound on the side where Stockholm lay, so as to sight the
steamer as soon as she came into view.
At last a little cloud of smoke showed like a dark patch on the horizon.
His heart thumped against his ribs and he drank a liqueur. Then he went
down to the shore.
Now he could see the funnel right in the centre of the Sound, and soon
after he noticed the flag on the fore-topmast.... Was she really on the
steamer, or had she been prevented from keeping the tryst? It was
only necessary for one of the children to be ill, and she wouldn’t be
there, and he would have to spend a solitary night at the hotel. The
children, who during the last few weeks had receded into the background,
now stepped between her and him. They had hardly mentioned them in their
last letters, just as if they had been anxious to be rid of all
eyewitnesses and spoil-sports.
He stamped on the creaking landing-stage and then remained standing
motionless near a bollard staring straight at the steamer which
increased in size as she approached, followed in her wake by a river
of molten gold that spread over the blue, faintly rippled expanse. Now
he could distinguish people on the upper deck, a moving crowd, and
sailors busy with the ropes, now a fluttering speck of white near the
wheel-house. There was no one besides him on the landing-stage, the
moving white speck could only be meant for him, and no one would wave
to him but her. He pulled out his handkerchief and answered her
greeting, and in doing so he noticed that his handkerchief was not a
white one; he had been using coloured ones for years for the sake of
economy.
The steamer whistled, signalled, the engines stopped, she came
alongside, and now he recognised her. Their eyes met in greeting; the
distance was still too great for words. Now he could see her being
pushed slowly by the crowd across the little bridge. It was she, and
yet it wasn’t.
Ten years stretched between her and the picture of her which he had
had in his mind. Fashion had changed, the cut of the clothes was
different. Ten years ago her delicate face with its olive complexion
was framed by the cap which was then worn, and which left the forehead
free; now her forehead was hidden by a wicked imitation of a bowler
hat. Ten years ago the beautiful lines of her figure were clearly
definable under the artistic draperies of her cloak which playfully
now hid, now emphasised the curve of her shoulders and the movement of
her arms; now her figure was completely disguised by a long driving
coat which followed the lines of her dress but completely concealed
her figure. As she stepped off the landing-bridge, he caught sight of
her little foot with which he had fallen in love, when it was encased
in a buttoned boot, shaped on natural lines; the shoe which she was
now wearing resembled a pointed Chinese slipper, and did not allow her
foot to move in those dancing rhythms which had bewitched him.
It was she and yet it was not she! He embraced and kissed her. She
enquired after his health and he asked after the children. Then they
walked up the strand.
Words came slowly and sounded dry and forced. How strange! They were
almost shy in each other’s presence, and neither of them mentioned the
letters.
In the end he took heart of grace and asked:
“Would you like to go for a walk before sunset?”
“I should love to,” she replied, taking his arm.
They went along the high-road in the direction of the little town. The
shutters of all the summer residences were closed; the gardens plundered.
Here and there an apple, hidden among the foliage, might still be found
hanging on the trees, but there wasn’t a single flower in the flower
beds. The verandahs, stripped of their sunblinds, looked like skeletons;
where there had been bright eyes and gay laughter, silence reigned.
“How autumnal!” she said.
“Yes, the forsaken villas look horrible.”
They walked on.
“Let us go and look at the house where we used to live.”
“Oh, yes! It will be fun.”
They passed the bathing vans.
Over there, squeezed in between the pilot’s and the gardener’s cottages,
stood the little house with its red fence, its verandah and its little
garden.
Memories of past days awoke. There was the bedroom where their first
baby had been born. What rejoicing! What laughter! Oh! youth and gaiety!
The rose-tree which they had planted was still there. And the
strawberry-bed which they had made--no, it existed no longer, grass
had grown over it. In the little plantation traces of the swing which
they had put up were still visible, but the swing itself had
disappeared.
“Thank you so much for your beautiful letters,” she said, gently
pressing his arm.
He blushed and made no reply.
Then they returned to the hotel, and he told her anecdotes, in
connection with his tour.
He had ordered dinner to be served in the large dining-room at the
table where they used to sit. They sat down without saying grace.
It was a tête-à-tête dinner. He took the bread-basket and offered her
the bread. She smiled. It was a long time since he had been so
attentive. But dinner at a seaside hotel was a pleasant change and
soon they were engaged in a lively conversation. It was a duet in
which one of them extolled the days that had gone, and the other
revived memories of “once upon a time.” They were re-living the past.
Their eyes shone and the little lines in their faces disappeared. Oh!
golden days! Oh! time of roses which comes but once, if it comes at
all, and which is denied to so many of us--so many of us.
At dessert he whispered a few words into the ear of the waitress; she
disappeared and returned a few seconds later with a bottle of champagne.
“My dear Axel, what are you thinking of?”
“I am thinking of the spring that has past, but will return again.”
But he wasn’t thinking of it exclusively, for at his wife’s reproachful
words there glided through the room, catlike, a dim vision of the nursery
and the porridge bowl.
However--the atmosphere cleared again; the golden wine stirred their
memories, and again they lost themselves in the intoxicating rapture
of the past.
He leaned his elbow on the table and shaded his eyes with his hand, as
if he were determined to shut out the present--this very present
which,--after all, had been of his own seeking.
The hours passed. They left the dining-room and went into the
drawing-room which boasted a piano, ordering their coffee to be
brought there.
“I wonder how the kiddies are?” said she, awakening to the hard facts
of real life.
“Sit down and sing to me,” he answered, opening the instrument.
“What would you like me to sing? You know I haven’t sung a note for
many days.”
He was well aware of it, but he _did_ want a song.
She sat down before the piano and began to play. It was a squeaking
instrument that reminded one of the rattling of loose teeth.
“What shall I sing?” she asked, turning round on the music-stool.
“You know, darling,” he replied, not daring to meet her eyes.
“Your song! Very well, if I can remember it.” And she sang: “Where is
the blessed country where my beloved dwells?”
But alas! Her voice was thin and shrill and emotion made her sing out
of tune. At times it sounded like a cry from the bottom of a soul
which feels that noon is past and evening approaching. The fingers
which had done hard work strayed on the wrong keys. The instrument,
too, had seen its best days; the cloth on the hammers had worn away;
it sounded as if the springs touched the bare wood.
When she had finished her song, she sat for a while without turning
round, as if she expected him to come and speak to her. But he didn’t
move; not a sound broke the deep silence. When she turned round at
last, she saw him sitting on the sofa, his cheeks wet with tears. She
felt a strong impulse to jump up, take his head between her hands and
kiss him as she had done in days gone by, but she remained where she
was, immovable, with downcast eyes.
He held a cigar between his thumb and first finger. When the song was
finished, he bit off the end and struck a match.
“Thank you, Lily,” he said, puffing at his cigar, “will you have your
coffee now?”
They drank their coffee, talked of summer holidays in general and
suggested two or three places where they might go next summer. But
their conversation languished and they repeated themselves.
At last he yawned openly and said: “I’m off to bed.”
“I’m going, too,” she said, getting up. “But I’ll get a breath of
fresh air first, on the balcony.”
He went into the bed-room. She lingered for a few moments in the
dining-room, and then talked to the landlady for about half an hour of
spring-onions and woollen underwear.
When the landlady had left her she went into the bedroom and stood for
a few minutes at the door, listening. No sound came from within. His
boots stood in the corridor. She opened the door gently and went in.
He was asleep.
He was asleep!
* * * * *
At breakfast on the following morning he had a headache, and she
fidgeted.
“What horrible coffee,” he said, with a grimace.
“Brazilian,” she said, shortly.
“What shall we do to-day?” he asked, looking at his watch.
“Hadn’t you better eat some bread and butter, instead of grumbling at
the coffee?” she said.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he answered, “and I’ll have a liqueur at the
same time. That champagne last night, ugh!”
He asked for bread and butter and a liqueur and his temper improved.
“Let’s go to the Pilot’s Hill and look at the view.”
They rose from the breakfast table and went out.
The weather was splendid and the walk did them good. But they walked
slowly; she panted, and his knees were stiff; they drew no more
parallels with the past.
They walked across the fields. The grass had been cut long ago, there
wasn’t a single flower anywhere. They sat down on some large stones.
He talked of the Board of Prisons and his office. She talked of the
children.
Then they walked on in silence. He looked at his watch.
“Three hours yet till dinner time,” he said. And he wondered how they
could kill time on the next day.
They returned to the hotel. He asked for the papers. She sat down by
the side of him with a smile on her lips.
They talked little during dinner. After dinner she mentioned the
servants.
“For heaven’s sake, leave the servants alone!” he exclaimed.
“Surely we haven’t come here to quarrel!”
“Am I quarrelling?”
“Well, I’m not!”
An awkward pause followed. He wished somebody would come. The children!
Yes! This tête-à-tête embarrassed him, but he felt a pain in his heart
when he thought of the bright hours of yesterday.
“Let’s go to Oak Hill,” she said, “and gather wild strawberries.”
“There are no wild strawberries at this time of the year, it’s autumn.”
“Let’s go all the same.”
And they went. But conversation was difficult. His eyes searched for
some object on the roadside which would serve for a peg on which to
hang a remark, but there was nothing. There was no subject which they
hadn’t discussed. She knew all his views on everything and disagreed
with most of them. She longed to go home, to the children, to her own
fireside. She found it absurd to make a spectacle of herself in this
place and be on the verge of a quarrel with her husband all the time.
After a while they stopped, for they were tired. He sat down and began
to write in the sand with his walking stick. He hoped she would
provoke a scene.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked at last.
“I?” he replied, feeling as if a burden were falling off his shoulders,
“I am thinking that we are getting old, mother: our innings are over,
and we have to be content with what has been. If you are of the same
mind, we’ll go home by the night boat.”
“I have thought so all along, old man, but I wanted to please you.”
“Then come along, we’ll go home. It’s no longer summer, autumn is here.”
They returned to the hotel, much relieved.
He was a little embarrassed on account of the prosaic ending of the
adventure, and felt an irresistible longing to justify it from a
philosophical standpoint.
“You see, mother,” he said, “my lo--h’m” (the word was too strong) “my
affection for you has undergone a change in the course of time. It has
developed, broadened; at first it was centred on the individual, but
later on, on the family as a whole. It is not now you, personally,
that I love, nor is it the children, but it is the whole....
“Yes, as my uncle used to say, children are lightning conductors!”
After his philosophical explanation he became his old self again. It
was pleasant to take off his frock coat; he felt, as if he were
getting into his dressing-gown.
When they entered the hotel, she began at once to pack, and there she
was in her element.
They went downstairs into the saloon as soon as they got on board. For
appearance sake, however, he asked her whether she would like to watch
the sunset; but she declined.
At supper he helped himself first, and she asked the waitress the
price of black bread.
When he had finished his supper, he remained sitting at the table,
lingering over a glass of porter. A thought which had amused him for
some time, would no longer be suppressed.
“Old fool, what?” he said, lifting his glass and smiling at his wife
who happened to look at him at the moment.
She did not return his smile but her eyes, which had flashed for a
second, assumed so withering an expression of dignity that he felt
crushed.
The spell was broken, the last trace of his old love had vanished; he
was sitting opposite the mother of his children; he felt small.
“No need to look down upon me because I have made a fool of myself for
a moment,” she said gravely. “But in a man’s love there is always a
good deal of contempt; it is strange.”
“And in the love of a woman?”
“Even more, it is true! But then, she has every cause.”
“It’s the same thing--with a difference. Probably both of them are
wrong. That which one values too highly, because it is difficult of
attainment, is easily underrated when one has obtained it.”
“Why does one value it too highly?”
“Why is it so difficult of attainment?”
The steam whistle above their heads interrupted their conversation.
They landed.
When they had arrived home, and he saw her again among her children,
he realised that his affection for her had undergone a change, and
that her affection for him had been transferred to and divided amongst
all these little screamers. Perhaps her love for him had only been a
means to an end. His part had been a short one, and he felt deposed.
If he had not been required to earn bread and butter, he would
probably have been cast off long ago.
He went into his study, put on his dressing-gown and slippers, lighted
his pipe and felt at home.
Outside the wind lashed the rain against the window panes, and whistled
in the chimney.
When the children had been put to bed, his wife came and sat by him.
“No weather to gather wild strawberries,” she said.
“No, my dear, the summer is over and autumn is here.”
“Yes, it is autumn,” she replied, “but it is not yet winter, there is
comfort in that.”
“Very poor comfort if we consider that we live but once.”
“Twice when one has children; three times if one lives to see one’s
grandchildren.”
“And after that, the end.”
“Unless there is a life after death.”
“We cannot be sure of that! Who knows? I believe it, but my faith is
no proof.”
“But it is good to believe it. Let us have faith! Let us believe that
spring will come again! Let us believe it!”
“Yes, let us believe it,” he said, gathering her to his breast.
COMPULSORY MARRIAGE
His father died early and from that time forth he was in the hands of
a mother, two sisters and several aunts. He had no brother. They lived
on an estate in the Swedish province, Soedermanland, and had no
neighbours with whom they _could be_ on friendly terms. When he was
seven years old, a governess was engaged to teach him and his sisters,
and about the same time a girl cousin came to live with them.
He shared his sisters’ bedroom, played their games and went bathing
with them; nobody looked upon him as a member of the other sex. Before
long his sisters took him in hand and became his schoolmasters and
tyrants.
He was a strong boy to start with, but left to the mercy of so many
doting women, he gradually became a helpless molly-coddle.
Once he made an attempt to emancipate himself and went to play with
the boys of the cottagers. They spent the day in the woods, climbed
the trees, robbed the birds’ nests and threw stones at the squirrels.
Frithiof was as happy as a released prisoner, and did not come home to
dinner. The boys gathered whortle-berries, and bathed in the lake. It
was the first really enjoyable day of his life.
When he came home in the evening, he found the whole house in great
commotion. His mother though anxious and upset, did not conceal her
joy at his return; Aunt Agatha, however, a spinster, and his mother’s
eldest sister, who ruled the house, was furious. She maintained that
it would be a positive crime not to punish him. Frithiof could not
understand why it should be a crime, but his aunt told him that
disobedience was a sin. He protested that he had never been forbidden
to play with the children of the cottagers. She admitted it but said
that, of course, there could never have been two questions about it.
And she remained firm, and regardless of his mother’s pleading eyes,
took him away to give him a whipping in her own room. He was eight
years old and fairly big for his age.