Married Part 10

"I don't think so," replied the bookseller, conscious of his temporary importance and selling his wares one by one.

"Is she beautiful?" asked the Pole. "My wife was very beautiful. Ugh!"

"No, she's not beautiful either," answered the bookseller, "but nice-looking."

"Have you seen her?" enquired the proprietor. "Is she old?" His eyes wandered towards the kitchen door.

"No, she's young!"

"And her parents?" continued the proprietor.

"I heard that her father was a bra.s.s founder in Orebro."

"The rascal! Well, I never!" said the proprietor.

"Haven't I always said so? The man is a born husband," said the bookseller.

"We all of us are," said the proprietor, "and take my word for it, no one escapes his fate!"

With this philosophical remark he closed the subject and returned to the counter.

When they had settled that the schoolmaster was not marrying for money, they discussed the problem of "what the young people were going to live on." The bookseller made a guess at the schoolmaster's salary and "what he might earn besides by giving private lessons." When that question, too, had been settled, the proprietor, who had returned to the table, asked for details.

"Where had he met her? Was she fair or dark? Was she in love with him?"

The last question was by no means out of the way; the bookseller "thought she was," for he had seen them together, arm in arm, looking into shop windows.

"But that he, who was such a stick, could fall in love! It was incredible!"

"And what a husband he would make!" The proprietor knew that he was _devilish particular_ about his food, and that, he said, was a mistake when one was married.

"And he likes a gla.s.s of punch in the evening, and surely a married man can't drink punch every evening of his life. And he doesn't like children! It won't turn out well," he whispered. "Take my word for it, it won't turn out well. And, gentlemen, there's another thing," (he rose from his seat, looked round and continued in a whisper), "I believe, I'm hanged if I don't, that the old hypocrite has had a love affair of some sort. Do you remember that incident, gentlemen, with the--hihihi--sleeping suit? He's one of those whom you don't find where you leave them! Take care, Mrs. Blom! Mind what you are about! I'll say no more!"

It was certainly a fact that the schoolmaster was engaged to be married and that the wedding was to take place within two months.

What happened after, does not belong to this story, and, moreover, it is difficult to know what goes on behind the convent walls of domesticity when the vow of silence is being kept.

It was also a fact that the schoolmaster, after his marriage, was never again seen at a public house.

The bookseller, who met him by himself in the street one evening, had to listen to a long exhortation on getting married. The schoolmaster had inveighed against all bachelors; he had called them egotists, who refused to do their duty by the State; in his opinion they ought to be heavily taxed, for all indirect taxes weighed most cruelly on the father of a family. He went so far as to say that he wished to see bachelorhood punished by the law of the land as a "crime against nature."

The bookseller had a good memory. He said that he doubted the advisability of taking a _fool_ into one's house, permanently. But the schoolmaster replied that _his_ wife was the most intelligent woman he had ever met.

Two years after the wedding the Pole saw the schoolmaster and his wife in the theatre; he thought that they looked happy; "ugh!"

Another three years went by. On a Midsummer day the proprietor of the restaurant made a pleasure trip on the Lake of Malar to Mariafred.

There, before Castle Cripsholm, he saw the schoolmaster, pushing a perambulator over a green field, and carrying in his disengaged hand a basket containing food, while a whole crowd of young men and women, "who looked like country folk," followed in the rear. After dinner the schoolmaster sang songs and turned somersaults with the youngsters. He looked ten years younger and had all the ways of a ladies' man.

The proprietor, who was quite close to the party while they were having dinner, overheard a little conversation between Mr. and Mrs.

Blom. When the young wife took a dish of crabs from the basket, she apologised to Albert, because she had not been able to buy a single female crab in the whole market. Thereupon the schoolmaster put his arm round her, kissed her and said that it didn't matter in the least, because male or female crabs, it was all the same to him. And when one of the babies in the perambulator began to cry, the schoolmaster lifted it out and hushed it to sleep again.

Well, all these things are mere details, but how people can get married and bring up a family when they have not enough for themselves while they are bachelors, is a riddle to me. It almost looks as if babies brought their food with them when they come into this world; it really almost does look as if they did.

COMPENSATION

He was considered a genius at College, and no one doubted that he would one day distinguish himself. But after pa.s.sing his examinations, he was obliged to go to Stockholm and look out for a berth. His dissertation, which was to win him the doctor's degree, had to be postponed. As he was very ambitious, but had no private means, he resolved to marry money, and with this object in view, he visited only the very best families, both at Upsala where he studied for the bar, and later on at Stockholm. At Upsala he always fraternised with the new arrivals, that is to say, when they were members of aristocratic families, and the freshers felt flattered by the advances made by the older man.

In this way he formed many useful ties, which meant invitations to his friends' country houses during the summer.

The country houses were his happy hunting ground. He possessed social talents, he could sing and play and amuse the ladies, and consequently he was a great favourite. He dressed beyond his means; but he never borrowed money from any of his friends or aristocratic acquaintances.

He even went to the length of buying two worthless shares and mentioning on every possible occasion that he had to attend a General Meeting of the shareholders.

For two summers he had paid a great deal of attention to a t.i.tled lady who owned some property, and his prospects were the general topic, when he suddenly disappeared from high life and became engaged to a poor girl, the daughter of a cooper, who owned no property whatever.

His friends were puzzled and could not understand how he could thus stand in his own light. He had laid his plans so well, he "had but to stretch out his hand and success was in his grasp"; he had the morsel firmly stuck on his fork, it was only necessary for him to open his mouth and swallow it. He himself was at a loss to understand how it was that the face of a little girl whom he had met but once on a steamer could have upset all his plans of many years' standing. He was bewitched, obsessed.

He asked his friends whether they didn't think her beautiful?

Frankly speaking they didn't.

"But she is so clever! Just look into her eyes! What expressive eyes she has!"

His friends could see nothing and hear less, for the girl never opened her lips.

But he spent evening after evening with the cooper's family; to be sure, the cooper was a very intelligent man! On his knees before her (a trick often practised at the country houses) he held her skeins of wool; he played and sang to her, talked about religion and the drama, and he always read acquiescence in her eyes. He wrote poetry about her, and sacrificed at her shrine his laurels, his ambitious dreams, even his dissertation.

And then he married her.

The cooper drank too much at the wedding and made an improper speech about girls in general. But the son-in-law found the old man so unsophisticated, so amiable, that he egged him on instead of shutting him up. He felt at his ease among these simple folk; in their midst he could be quite himself.

"That's being in love," said his friends. "Love is a wonderful thing."

And now they were married. One month--two months. He was unspeakably happy. Every evening they spent together and he sang a song to her about the Rose in the Wood, her favourite song. And he talked about religion and the drama, and she sat and listened eagerly. But she never expressed an opinion; she listened in silence and went on with her crochet work.

In the third month he relapsed into his old habit of taking an afternoon nap. His wife, who hated being by herself, insisted on sitting by him.

It irritated him, for he felt an overwhelming need to be alone with his thoughts.

Sometimes she met him on his way home from his office, and her heart swelled with pride when he left his colleagues and crossed the street to join her. She took him home in triumph: he was _her_ husband!

In the fourth month he grew tired of her favourite song. It was stale now! He took up a book and read, and neither of them spoke.

One evening he had to attend a meeting which was followed by a banquet.

It was his first night away from home. He had persuaded his wife to invite a friend to spend the evening with her, and to go to bed early, for he did not expect to be home until late.

The friend came and stayed until nine o'clock. The young wife sat in the drawing-room, waiting, for she was determined not to go to bed until her husband had returned. She felt too restless to go to sleep.