bottom of my heart. You are asking for my friendship, if I understand
you rightly. It shall be yours, but I must put you to the test first.
Will you prove to me that you can pocket your pride for the sake of a
friend?”
“Speak and I shall obey!”
Adeline took off a golden chain with a locket which she had been
wearing round her neck.
“Wear this as a symbol of our friendship.”
“I will wear it,” he said, in an uncertain voice; “but it might make
the people think that we are engaged.”
“And do you object?”
“No, not if you don’t! Will you be my wife?”
“Yes, Axel! I will! For the world looks askance at friendship between
man and woman; the world is so base that it refuses to believe in the
possibility of such a thing.”
And he wore the chain.
The world, which is very materialistic at heart, repeated the verdict
of her friends:
“She marries him in order to be married; he marries her because he
wants a wife.”
The world made nasty remarks, too. It said that he was marrying her
for the sake of her money; for hadn’t he himself declared that
anything so degrading as love did not exist between them? There was
no need for friends to live together like married couples.
The wedding took place. The world had received a hint that they would
live together like brother and sister, and the world awaited with a
malicious grin the result of the great reform which should put
matrimony on another basis altogether.
The newly married couple went abroad.
When they returned, the young wife was pale and ill-tempered. She
began at once to take riding-lessons. The world scented mischief and
waited. The man looked as if he were guilty of a base act and was
ashamed of himself. It all came out at last.
“They have _not_ been living like brother and sister,” said the world.
“What? Without loving one another? But that is--well, what is it?”
“A forbidden relationship!” said the materialists.
“It is a spiritual marriage!”
“Or incest,” suggested an anarchist.
Facts remained facts, but the sympathy was on the wane. Real life,
stripped of All make-believe, confronted them and began to take
revenge.
The lawyer practised his profession, but the wife’s profession was
practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The
want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal
over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an
intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once
her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live
in idleness. He never did it again.
“She had no profession.”
“True; to be idle was no profession. Why didn’t she nurse the baby?”
“Nurse the baby? She wanted a profession which brought in money.”
“Was she such a miser, then? She had already more than she knew how to
spend; why should she want to earn money?”
“To be on an equal footing with him.”
“That could never be, for she would always be in a position to which
he could never hope to attain. It was nature’s will that the woman was
to be the mother, not the man.”
“A very stupid arrangement!”
“Very likely! The opposite might have been the case, but that would
have been equally stupid.”
“Yes; but her life was unbearable. It didn’t satisfy her to live for
the family only, she wanted to live for others as well.”
“Hadn’t she better begin with the family? There was plenty of time to
think of the others.”
The conversation might have continued through all eternity; as it was
it only lasted an hour.
The lawyer was, of course, away almost all day long, and even when he
was at home he had his consulting hours. It drove Adeline nearly mad.
He was always locked in his consulting-room with other women who
confided information to him which he was bound to keep secret. These
secrets formed a barrier between them, and made her feel that he was
more than a match for her.
It roused a sullen hatred in her heart; she resented the injustice of
their mutual relationship; she sought for a means to drag him down.
Come down he must, so that they should be on the same level.
One day she proposed the foundation of a sanatorium. He said all he
could against it, for he was very busy with his practice. But on
further consideration he thought that occupation of some sort might be
the saving of her; perhaps it would help her to settle down.
The sanatorium was founded; he was one of the directors.
She was on the Committee and ruled. When she had ruled for six months,
she imagined herself so well up in the art of healing that she
interviewed patients and gave them advice.
“It’s easy enough,” she said.
Then it happened that the house-surgeon made a mistake, and she
straightway lost all confidence in him. It further happened that one
day, in the full consciousness of her superior wisdom, she prescribed
for a patient herself, in the doctor’s absence. The patient had the
prescription made up, took it and died.
This necessitated a removal to another centre of activity. But it
disturbed the equilibrium. A second child, which was born about the
same time, disturbed it still more and, to make matters worse, a
rumour of the fatal accident was spreading through the town.
The relations between husband and wife were unlovely and sad, for
there had never been any love between them. The healthy, powerful
natural instinct, which does not reflect, was absent; what remained
was an unpleasant liaison founded on the uncertain calculations of a
selfish friendship.
She never voiced the thoughts hatched behind her burning brow after
she had discovered that she was mistaken in believing that she had a
higher mission, but she made her husband suffer for it.
Her health failed; she lost her appetite and refused to go out. She
grew thin and seemed to be suffering from a chronic cough. The husband
made her repeatedly undergo medical examinations, but the doctors were
unable to discover the cause of her malady. In the end he became so
accustomed to her constant complaints that he paid no more attention
to them.
“I know it’s unpleasant to have an invalid wife,” she said.
He admitted in his heart that it was anything but pleasant; had he
loved her, he would neither have felt nor admitted it.
Her emaciation became so alarming, that he could not shut his eyes to
it any longer, and had to consent to her suggestion that she should
consult a famous professor.
Adeline was examined by the celebrity. “How long have you been ill?”
he asked.
“I have never been very strong since I left the country,” she replied.
“I was born in the country.”
“Then you don’t feel well in town?”
“Well? Who cares whether I feel well or not?” And her face assumed an
expression which left no room for doubt: she was a martyr.
“Do you think that country air would do you good?” continued the
professor.
“Candidly, I believe that it is the only thing which could save my
life.”
“Then why don’t you live in the country?”
“My husband couldn’t give up his profession for my sake.”
“He has a wealthy wife and we have plenty of lawyers.”
“You think, then, that we ought to live in the country?”
“Certainly, if you believe that it would do you good. You are not
suffering from any organic disease, but your nerves are unstrung;
country air would no doubt benefit you.”
Adeline returned home to her husband very depressed.
“Well?”
“The professor had sentenced her to death if she remained in town.”
The lawyer was much upset. But since the fact that his distress was
mainly caused by the thought of giving up his practice was very
apparent, she held that she had absolute proof that the question of
her health was a matter of no importance to him.
“What? He didn’t believe that it was a matter of life and death?
Didn’t he think the professor knew better than he? Was he going to let
her die?”
He was not going to let her die. He bought an estate in the country
and engaged an inspector to look after it.
As a sheriff and a district-judge were living on the spot, the lawyer
had no occupation. The days seemed to him as endless as they were
unpleasant. Since his income had stopped with his practice, he was
compelled to live on his wife’s money. In the first six months he read
a great deal and played “Fortuna.” In the second six months he gave up
reading, as it served no object. In the third he amused himself by
doing needle-work.
His wife, on the other hand, devoted herself to the farm, pinned up
her skirts to the knees and went into the stables. She came into the
house dirty, and smelling of the cow-shed. She felt well and ordered
the labourers about that it was a pleasure to hear her, for she had
grown up in the country and knew what she was about.
When her husband complained of having nothing to do, she laughed at
him.
“Find some occupation in the house. No one need ever be idle in a
house like this.”
He would have liked to suggest some outside occupation, but he had not
the courage.
He ate, slept, and went for walks. If he happened to enter the barn or
the stables, he was sure to be in the way and be scolded by his wife.
One day, when he had grumbled more than usual, while the children had
been running about, neglected by the nurse, she said:
“Why don’t you look after the children? That would give you something
to do.”
He stared at her. Did she really mean it?
“Well, why shouldn’t he look after the children? Was there anything
strange in her suggestion?”
He thought the matter over and found nothing strange in it. Henceforth
he took the children for a walk every day.
One morning, when he was ready to go out, the children were not
dressed. The lawyer felt angry and went grumbling to his wife; of the
servants he was afraid.
“Why aren’t the children dressed?” he asked.
“Because Mary is busy with other things. Why don’t you dress them?
You’ve nothing else to do. Do you consider it degrading to dress your
own children?”
He considered the matter for a while, but could see nothing degrading
in it. He dressed them.
One day he felt inclined to take his gun and go out by himself,
although he never shot anything.
His wife met him on his return.
“Why didn’t you take the children for a walk this morning?” she asked
sharply and reproachfully.
“Because I didn’t feel inclined to do so.”
“You didn’t feel inclined? Do you think I want to work all day long in
stable and barn? One ought to do _something_ useful during the day, even
if it does go against one’s inclination.”
“So as to pay for one’s dinner, you mean?”
“If you like to put it that way! If I were a big man like you, I
should be ashamed to be lying all day long on a sofa, doing nothing.”
He really felt ashamed, and henceforth he established himself the
children’s nurse. He never failed in his duties. He saw no disgrace in
it, yet he was unhappy. Something was wrong, somewhere, he thought,
but his wife always managed to carry her point.
She sat in the office and interviewed inspector and overseer; she
stood in the store-room and weighed out stores for the cottagers.
Everybody who came on the estate asked for the mistress, nobody ever
wanted to see the master.
One day he took the children past a field in which cattle were
grazing. He wanted to show them the cows and cautiously took them up
to the grazing herd. All at once a black head, raised above the backs
of the other animals, stared at the visitors, bellowing softly.
The lawyer picked up the children and ran back to the fence as hard as
he could. He threw them over and tried to jump it himself, but was
caught on the top. Noticing some women on the other side, he shouted:
“The bull! the bull!”
But the women merely laughed, and went to pull the children, whose
clothes were covered with mud, out of the ditch.
“Don’t you see the bull?” he screamed.
“It’s no bull, sir,” replied the eldest of the women, “the bull was
killed a fortnight ago.”
He came home, angry and ashamed and complained of the women to his
wife. But she only laughed.
In the afternoon, as husband and wife were together in the drawing-room,
there was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” she called out.
One of the women who had witnessed the adventure with the bull came
in, holding in her hand the lawyer’s gold chain.
“I believe this belongs to you, M’m,” she said hesitatingly.
Adeline looked first at the woman and then at her husband, who stared
at the chain with wide-open eyes.
“No, it belongs to your master,” she said, taking the proffered chain.
“Thank you! Your master will give you something for finding it.”
He was sitting there, pale and motionless.
“I have no money, ask my wife to give you something,” he said, taking
the necklet.
Adeline took a crown out of her big purse and handed it to the woman,
who went away, apparently without understanding the scene.
“You might have spared me this humiliation!” he said, and his voice
plainly betrayed the pain he felt.
“Are you not man enough to take the responsibility for your words and
actions on your own shoulders? Are you ashamed to wear a present I
gave you, while you expect me to wear yours? You’re a coward! And you
imagine yourself to be a man!”
Henceforth the poor lawyer had no peace. Wherever he went, he met
grinning faces, and farm-labourers and maid-servants from the safe
retreat of sheltered nooks, shouted “the bull! the bull!” whenever he
went past.
Adeline had resolved to attend an auction and stay away for a week.
She asked her husband to look after the servants in her absence.
On the first day the cook came and asked him for money for sugar and
coffee. He gave it to her. Three days later she came again and asked
him for the same thing. He expressed surprise at her having already
spent what he had given her.
“I don’t want it all for myself,” she replied, “and mistress doesn’t
mind.”
He gave her the money. But, wondering whether he had made a mistake,
he opened his wife’s account book and began to add up the columns.
He arrived at a strange result. When he had added up all the pounds
for a month, he found it came to a lispound.
He continued checking her figures, and the result was everywhere the
same. He took the principal ledger and found that, leaving the high
figures out of the question, very stupid mistakes in the additions had
been made. Evidently his wife knew nothing of denominate quantities or
decimal fractions. This unheard of cheating of the servants must
certainly lead to ruin.
His wife came home. After having listened to a detailed account of the
auction, he cleared his throat, intending to tell his tale, but his
wife anticipated his report:
“Well, and how did you get on with the servants?”
“Oh! very well, but I am certain that they cheat you.”
“Cheat me!”
“Yes; for instance the amount spent on coffee and sugar is too large.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it in your account book.”
“Indeed! You poked your nose into my books?”
“Poked my nose into your books? No, but I took it upon me to check
your....”
“What business was it of yours?”
“And I found that you keep books without having the slightest
knowledge of denominate quantities or decimal fractions.”
“What? You think I don’t know?”
“No, you don’t! And therefore the foundations of the establishment are
shaky. Your book-keeping is all humbug, old girl!”
“My book-keeping concerns no one but myself.”
“Incorrect book-keeping is an offence punishable by law; if you are
not liable, then I am.”
“The law? I care a fig for the law!”
“I daresay! But we shall get into its clutches, if not you, then most
certainly I! And therefore I am going to be book-keeper in the future.”
“We can engage a man to do it.”
“No, that’s not necessary! I have nothing else to do.”
And that settled the matter.
But once the husband occupied the chair at the desk and the people
came to see _him_, the wife lost all interest in farming and
cattle-breeding.
A violent reaction set in; she no longer attended to the cows and
calves, but remained in the house. There she sat, hatching fresh
plots.
But the husband had regained a fresh hold on life. He took an eager
interest in the estate and woke up the people. Now he held the reins;
managed everything, gave orders and paid the bills.
One day his wife came into the office and asked him for a thousand
crowns to buy a piano.
“What are you thinking of?” said the husband. “Just when we are going
to re-build the stables! We haven’t the means to buy a piano.”
“What do you mean?” she replied. “Why haven’t we got the means? Isn’t my
money sufficient?”
“Your money?”
“Yes, my money, my dowry.”
“That has now become the property of the family.”
“That is to say yours?”
“No, the family’s. The family is a small community, the only one which
possesses common property which, as a rule, is administered by the
husband.”
“Why should he administer it and not the wife?”
“Because he has more time to give to it, since he does not bear
children.”
“Why couldn’t they administer it jointly?”
“For the same reason that a joint stock company has only one managing
director. If the wife administered as well, the children would claim
the same right, for it is their property, too.”
“This is mere hair-splitting. I think it’s hard that I should have to
ask your permission to buy a piano out of my own money.”
“It’s no longer your money.”
“But yours?”
“No, not mine either, but the family’s. And you are wrong when you say
that you ‘have to ask for my permission’; it’s merely wise that you
should consult with the administrator as to whether the position of
affairs warrants your spending such a large sum on a luxury.”
“Do you call a piano a luxury?”
“A new piano, when there is an old one, must be termed a luxury. The
position of our affairs is anything but satisfactory, and therefore it
doesn’t permit you to buy a new piano at present, but _I_, personally,
can or will have nothing to say against it.”
“An expenditure of a thousand crowns doesn’t mean ruin.”
“To incur a debt of a thousand crowns at the wrong time may be the
first step towards ruin.”
“All this means that you refuse to buy me a new piano?”
“No, I won’t say that. The uncertain position of affairs....”
“When, oh! when will the day dawn on which the wife will manage her
own affairs and have no need to go begging to her husband?”
“When she works herself. A man, your father, has earned your money.
The men have gained all the wealth there is in the world; therefore it
is but just that a sister should inherit less than her brother,
especially as the brother is born with the duty to provide for a
woman, while the sister need not provide for a man. Do you
understand?”
“And you call that justice? Can you honestly maintain that it is?
Ought we not all to share and share alike?”
“No, not always. One ought to share according to circumstances and
merit. The idler who lies in the grass and watches the mason building
a house, should have a smaller share than the mason.”
“Do you mean to insinuate that I am lazy?”
“H’m! I’d rather not say anything about that. But when I used to lie
on the sofa, reading, you considered me a loafer, and I well remember
that you said something to that effect in very plain language.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Take the children out for walks.”
“I’m not constituted to look after the children.”
“But there was a time when I had to do it. Let me tell you that a
woman who says that she is not constituted to look after children,
isn’t a woman. But that fact doesn’t make a man of her, by any means.
What is she, then?”
“Shame on you that you should speak like that of the mother of your
children!”
“What does the world call a man who will have nothing to do with
women? Isn’t it something very ugly?”
“I won’t hear another word!”
And she left him and locked herself into her room.
She fell ill. The doctor, the almighty man, who took over the care of
the body when the priest lost the care of the soul, pronounced country
air and solitude to be harmful.
They were obliged to return to town so that the wife could have proper
medical treatment.
Town had a splendid effect on her health; the air of the slums gave
colour to her cheeks.
The lawyer practised his profession and so husband and wife had found
safety-valves for their temperaments which refused to blend.
HIS SERVANT OR DEBIT AND CREDIT
Mr. Blackwood was a wharfinger at Brooklyn and had married Miss
Dankward, who brought him a dowry of modern ideas. To avoid seeing his
beloved wife playing the part of his servant, Mr. Blackwood had taken
rooms in a boarding house.
The wife, who had nothing whatever to do, spent the day in playing
billiards and practising the piano, and half the night in discussing
Women’s Rights and drinking whiskies and sodas.
The husband had a salary of five thousand dollars. He handed over his
money regularly to his wife who took charge of it. She had, moreover,
a dress allowance of five hundred dollars with which she did as she
liked.
Then a baby arrived. A nurse was engaged who, for a hundred dollars,
took upon her shoulders the sacred duties of the mother.
Two more children were born.
They grew up and the two eldest went to school. But Mrs. Blackwood was
bored and had nothing with which to occupy her mind.
One morning she appeared at the breakfast table, slightly intoxicated.
The husband ventured to tell her that her behaviour was unseemly.
She had hysterics and went to bed, and all the other ladies in the
house called on her and brought her flowers.
“Why do you drink so much whisky?” asked her husband, as kindly as
possible. “Is there anything which troubles you?”
“How could I be happy when my whole life is wasted!”
“What do you mean by wasted? You are the mother of three children and
you might spend your time in educating them.”
“I can’t be bothered with children.”
“Then you ought to be bothered with them! You would be benefiting the
whole community and have a splendid object in life, a far more
honourable one, for instance, than that of being a wharfinger.”
“Yes, if I were free!”
“You are freer than I am. I am under your rule. You decide how my
earnings are to be spent. You have five hundred dollars pin money to
spend as you like; but I have no pin money. I have to make an
application to the cash-box, in other words, to you, whenever I want
to buy tobacco. Don’t you think that you are freer than I am?”
She made no reply; she tried to think the question out.
The upshot of it was that they decided to have a home of their own.
And they set up house-keeping.
“My dear friend,” Mrs. Blackwood wrote a little later on to a friend
of hers, “I am ill and tired to death. But I must go on suffering, for
there is no solace for an unhappy woman who has no object in life. I
will show the world that I am not the sort of woman who is content to
live on her husband’s bounty, and therefore I shall work myself to
death....”
On the first day she rose at nine o’clock and turned out her husband’s
room. Then she dismissed the cook and at eleven o’clock she went out
to do the catering for the day.
When the husband came home at one o’clock, lunch was not ready. It was
the maid’s fault.
Mrs. Blackwood was dreadfully tired and in tears. The husband could
not find it in his heart to complain. He ate a burnt cutlet and went
back to his work.
“Don’t work so hard, darling,” he said, as he was leaving.
In the evening his wife was so tired that she could not finish her
work and went to bed at ten o’clock.
On the following morning, as Mr. Blackwood went into his wife’s room
to say good morning to her, he was amazed at her healthy complexion.
“Have you slept well?” he asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you are looking so well.”
“I--am--looking--well?”
“Yes, a little occupation seems to agree with you.”
“A little occupation? You call it little? I should like to know what
you would call much.”
“Never mind, I didn’t mean to annoy you.”
“Yes, you did. You meant to imply that I wasn’t working hard enough.
And yet I turned out your room yesterday, just as if I were a
house-maid, and stood in the kitchen like a cook. Can you deny that I
am your servant?”
In going out the husband said to the maid:
“You had better get up at seven in future and do my room. Your
mistress shouldn’t have to do your work.”
In the evening Mr. Blackwood came home in high spirits but his wife
was angry with him.
“Why am I not to do your room?” she asked.
“Because I object to your being my servant.”
“Why do you object?”
“The thought of it makes me unhappy.”
“But it doesn’t make you unhappy to think of me cooking your dinner
and attending to your children?”
This remark set him thinking.
He pondered the question during the whole of his tram journey to
Brooklyn.
When he came home in the evening, he had done a good deal of thinking.