Married Part 16

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 inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed, 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 inst.i.tuted by G.o.d 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 s.e.x.

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 p.r.o.nounced the word.

But what irritated him more than anything else was the fact that the desk nearest to her was occupied by a "young a.s.s" 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 a.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day a meeting of railway employes, 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 navely.

"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 coa.r.s.e."

"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 emanc.i.p.ation 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."