Married Part 26

In the following summer they were compelled to remain in town; they were living in a bas.e.m.e.nt with a view of the gutter, the smell of which was so objectionable that it was impossible to keep the windows open.

The wife did needlework in the same room in which the children were playing; the husband, who had lost his appointment on account of his extreme shabbiness, was copying a ma.n.u.script in the adjoining room, and grumbling at the children's noise. Hard words were bandied through the open door.

It was Whitsuntide. In the afternoon the husband was lying on the ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by the side of her looking-gla.s.s.

She was fastening her dress without taking the least notice of his inquisitive glances.

"She's not having a bad time," mused the celibate, suddenly kindled into pa.s.sion. "One lives but once in this world, and one must live one's life, happen what will!"

His wife entered the room and caught sight of the object of his scrutiny. Her eyes blazed; the last feeble sparks of her dead love glowed under the ashes and revealed themselves in a temporary flash of jealousy.

"Hadn't we better take the children to the Zoo?" she asked.

"To make a public show of our misery? No, thank you!"

"But it's so hot in here. I shall have to pull down the blinds."

"You had better open a window!"

He divined his wife's thoughts and rose to do it himself. Out there, on the edge of the pavement, his four little ones were sitting, in close proximity of the waste pipes. Their feet were in the dry gutter, and they were playing with orange peels which they had found in the sweepings of the road. The sight stabbed his heart, and he felt a lump rising in his throat. But poverty had so blunted his feelings that he remained standing at the window with his arms crossed.

All at once two filthy streams gushed from the waste pipes, inundated the gutter and saturated the feet of the children who screamed, half suffocated by the stench.

"Get the children ready as quickly as you can," he called, giving way at the heart-rending scene.

The father pushed the perambulator with the baby, the other children clung to the hands and skirts of the mother.

They arrived at the cemetery with its dark-stemmed lime-trees, their usual place of refuge; here the trees grew luxuriantly, as if the soil were enriched by the bodies which lay buried underneath it.

The bells were ringing for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the princ.i.p.al service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the Royal Deer Park.

The children climbed about the shallow graves, most of which were decorated with armorial bearings and inscriptions.

Husband and wife sat down on a seat and placed the perambulator, in which the baby lay sucking at its bottle, by their side. Two puppies were disporting themselves on a grave close by, half hidden by the high gra.s.s.

A young and well dressed couple, leading by the hand a little girl clothed in silk and velvet, pa.s.sed the seat on which they sat. The poor copyist raised his eyes to the young dandy and recognised a former colleague from the Board of Trade who, however, did not seem to see him. A feeling of bitter envy seized him with such intensity that he felt more humiliated by this "ign.o.ble sentiment" than by his deplorable condition. Was he angry with the other man because he filled a position which he himself had coveted? Surely not. But of a sense of justice, and his suffering was all the deeper because it was shared by the whole cla.s.s of the disinherited. He was convinced that the inmates of the poorhouse, bowed down under the yoke of public charity, envied his wife; and he was quite sure that many of the aristocrats who slept all around him in their graves, under their coats of arms, would have envied him his children if it had been their lot to die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, n.o.body under the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the ma.s.s said at evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which the others despised and of which they had no need because the gates of heaven opened readily enough to their wealth. But what about the good and just G.o.d who had distributed His gifts so unevenly? It would be better, indeed, to live one's life without this unjust G.o.d, who had, moreover, candidly admitted that the "wind blew where it listed"; had He not himself confessed, in these words, that He did not interfere in the concerns of man? But failing the church, where should we look for comfort? And yet, why ask for comfort? Wouldn't it be far better to strive to make such arrangements that no comfort was needed? Wouldn't it?

His speculations were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which was against the regulations.

"We'd better go home," said the distressed father. "How carefully they guard the interests of the dead, and how indifferent they are to the interests of the living."

And they returned home.

He sat down and began to work. He had to copy the ma.n.u.script of an academical treatise on over-population.

The subject interested him and he read the contents of the whole book.

The young author who belonged to what was called the ethical school, was preaching against vice.

"What vice?" mused the copyist. "That which is responsible for our existence? Which the priest orders us to indulge in at every wedding when he says: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth?"

The ma.n.u.script ran on: Propagation, without holy matrimony, is a destructive vice, because the fate of the children, who do not receive proper care and nursing, is a sad one. In the case of married couples, on the other hand, it becomes a sacred duty to indulge one's desires.

This is proved, among other things, by the fact that the law protects even the female ovum, and it is right that it should be so.

"Consequently," thought the copyist, "there is a providence for legitimate children, but not for illegitimate ones Oh! this young philosopher! And the law which protects the female ovum! What business, then, have those microscopic things to detach themselves at every change of the moon? Those sacred objects ought to be most carefully guarded by the police!"

All these futilities he had to copy in his best handwriting.

They overflowed with morality, but contained not a single word of enlightenment.

The moral or rather the immoral gist of the whole argument was: There is a G.o.d who feeds and clothes all children born in wedlock; a G.o.d in His heaven, probably, but what about the earth? Certainly, it was said that He came to earth once and allowed himself to be crucified, after vainly trying to establish something like order in the confused affairs of mankind; He did not succeed.

The philosopher wound up by screaming himself hoa.r.s.e in trying to convince his audience that the abundant supply of wheat was an irrefutable proof that the problem of over-population did not exist; that the doctrine of Malthus was not only false, but criminal, socially as well as morally.

And the poor father of a family who had not tasted wheaten bread for years, laid down the ma.n.u.script and urged his little ones to fill themselves with gruel made of rye flour and bluish milk, a dish which satisfied their craving, but contained no nourishment.

He was wretched, not because he considered water gruel objectionable, but because he had lost his precious sense of humour, that magician who can transform the dark rye into golden wheat; almighty love, emptying his horn of plenty over his poor home, had vanished. The children had become burdens, and the once beloved wife a secret enemy despised and despising him.

And the cause of all this unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the large store houses of the new world were breaking down under the weight of the over-abundant supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions!

The manner in which bread was distributed must be at fault.

Science, which has replaced religion, has no answer to give; it merely states facts and allows the children to die of hunger and the parents of thirst.

AUTUMN

They had been married for ten years. Happily? Well, as happily as circ.u.mstances permitted. They had been running in double harness, like two young oxen of equal strength, each of which is conscientiously doing his own share.

During the first year of their marriage they buried many illusions and realised that marriage was not perfect bliss. In the second year the babies began to arrive, and the daily toil left them no time for brooding.

He was very domesticated, perhaps too much so; his family was his world, the centre and pivot of which he was. The children were the radii. His wife attempted to be a centre, too, but never in the middle of the circle, for that was exclusively occupied by him, and therefore the radii fell now on the top of one another, now far apart, and their life lacked harmony.

In the tenth year of their marriage he obtained the post of secretary to the Board of Prisons, and in that capacity he was obliged to travel about the country. This interfered seriously with his daily routine; the thought of leaving his world for a whole month upset him. He wondered whom he would miss more, his wife or his children, and he was sure he would miss them both.

On the eve of his departure he sat in the corner of the sofa and watched his portmanteau being packed. His wife was kneeling on the She brushed his black suit and folded it carefully, so that it should take up as little s.p.a.ce as possible. He had no idea how to do these things.

She had never looked upon herself as his housekeeper, hardly as his wife, she was above all things mother: a mother to the children, a mother to him. She darned his socks without the slightest feeling of degradation, and asked for no thanks. She never even considered him indebted to her for it, for did he not give her and the children new stockings whenever they wanted them, and a great many other things into the bargain? But for him, she would have to go out and earn her own living, and the children would be left alone all day.

He sat in the sofa corner and looked at her. Now that the parting was imminent, he began to feel premature little twinges of longing. He gazed at her figure. Her shoulders were a little rounded; much bending over the cradle, ironing board and kitchen range had robbed her back of its straightness. He, too, stooped a little, the result of his toil at the writing-table, and he was obliged to wear spectacles. But at the moment he really was not thinking of himself. He noticed that her plaits were thinner than they had been and that a faint suggestion of silver lay on her hair. Had she sacrificed her beauty to him, to him alone? No, surely not to him, but to the little community which they formed; for, after all, she had also worked for herself. His hair, too, had grown thin in the struggle to provide for all of them. He might have retained his youth a little longer, if there hadn't been so many mouths to fill, if he had remained a bachelor; but he didn't regret his marriage for one second.

"It will be a good thing for you to get away for a bit," said his wife; "you have been too much at home."

"I suppose you are glad to get rid of me," he replied, not without bitterness; "but I--I shall miss you very much."

"You are like a cat, you'll miss your cosy fireside, but not me; you know you won't."