Married Part 29

"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 embarra.s.sed 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 gla.s.s of porter. A thought which had amused him for some time, would no longer be suppressed.

"Old fool, what?" he said, lifting his gla.s.s 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, a.s.sumed 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 b.u.t.ter, 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; n.o.body looked upon him as a member of the other s.e.x. 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 emanc.i.p.ate 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.