Married Part 32

"What is a capon?" he was asked by one of his sisters one day. She was busy with her needlework and asked the question a propos of nothing.

He looked at her suspiciously. No, she did not know the meaning of the word; she had probably listened to a conversation and her curiosity was aroused.

But the iron had entered his soul. He was being laughed at. He grew suspicious. Everything he heard and saw he connected with that charge.

Beside himself with rage, he seduced one of the maids.

His act had the desired result. In due time he was a father.

Now Louisa was looked upon as a martyr and he as a blackguard. The abuse left him indifferent, for he had vindicated his honour--if it was an honour and not merely a lucky chance to be born without defects.

But the incident roused Louisa's jealousy and--it was a strange thing--awakened in her a sort of love for her husband. It was a love which irritated him, for it showed itself in unremitting watchfulness and nervous obtrusiveness; sometimes even in maternal tenderness and solicitude which knew no bounds. She wanted to look after his gun, see whether it was charged; she begged him on her knees to wear his overcoat when he went out.... She kept his home with scrupulous care, tidied and dusted all day long; every Sat.u.r.day the rooms were turned inside out, the carpets beaten and his clothes aired. He had no peace and never knew when he would be turned out of his room so that it could be scrubbed.

There was not sufficient to do to occupy him during the day, for the women looked after everything. He studied agriculture and attempted to make improvements, but all his efforts were frustrated. He was not master in his own house.

Finally he lost heart. He had grown taciturn because he was always contradicted. The want of congenial company and fellows-in-misfortune gradually dulled his brain; his nerves went to pieces; he neglected his appearance and took to drink.

He was hardly ever at home now. Frequently he could be found, intoxicated, at the public house or in the cottages of the farm labourers. He drank with everybody and all day long. He stimulated his brain with alcohol for the sake of the relief he found in talking. It was difficult to decide whether he drank in order to be able to talk to somebody who did not contradict him, or whether he drank merely in order to get drunk.

He sold privileges and farm produce to the cottagers to provide himself with money, for the women held the cash. Finally he burgled his own safe and stole the contents.

There was an orthodox, church-going inspector on the premises now; the previous one had been dismissed on account of his intemperate habits.

When at last, through the clergyman's influence, the proprietor of the inn lost his license Frithiof took to drinking with his own farm labourers. Scandal followed on scandal.

He developed into a heavy drinker who had epileptic fits whenever he was deprived of alcohol.

He was ultimately committed to an inst.i.tution where he remained as an incurable patient.

At lucid intervals, when he was capable of surveying his life, his heart was filled with compa.s.sion for all women who are compelled to marry without love; his compa.s.sion was all the deeper because he had suffered in his own flesh the curse which lies on every violation of nature; and yet he was only a man.

He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family--the family as a social inst.i.tution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time.

He brought no charge against his wife, for was she not equally unhappy, a victim of the same unfortunate conditions which are honoured by the sacred name of Law?

CORINNA

Her father was a general, her mother died when she was still a baby.

After her mother's death few ladies visited the house; the callers were mostly men. And her father took her education into his own hands.

She went out riding with him, was present at the manoeuvres, took an interest in gymnastics and attended the musters of the reserves.

Since her father occupied the highest rank in their circle of friends, everybody treated him with an amount of respect which is rarely shown to equals, and as she was the general's daughter, she was treated in the same way. She held the rank of a general and she knew it.

There was always an orderly sitting in the hall who rose with much clanking and clas.h.i.+ng of steel and stood at attention whenever she went in or out. At the b.a.l.l.s none but the majors dared to ask her for a dance; she looked upon a captain as a representative of an inferior race, and a lieutenant as a naughty boy.

She fell into the habit of appreciating people entirely according to their rank. She called all civilians "fishes," poorly-clad people "rascals," and the very poor "the mob."

The ladies, however, were altogether outside this scale. Her father, who occupied a position above all men, and who was saluted respectfully wherever he went, always stood up before a lady, regardless of her age, kissed the hands of those he knew, and was at the beck and call of every pretty woman. The result of this was that very early in life she became very firmly convinced of the superiority of her own s.e.x, and accustomed herself to look upon a man as a lower being.

Whenever she went out on horseback, a groom invariably rode behind her. When she stopped to admire the landscape, he stopped too. He was her shadow. But she had no idea what he looked like, or whether he was young or old. If she had been asked about his s.e.x, she would not have known how to reply; it had never occurred to her that the shadow could have a s.e.x; when, in mounting, she placed her little riding-boot in his hand, she remained quite indifferent, and even occasionally raised her habit a little as if n.o.body were present.

These inbred conceptions of the surpa.s.sing importance of rank influenced her whole life. She found it impossible to make friends with the daughters of a major or a captain, because their fathers were her father's social inferiors. Once a lieutenant asked her for a dance.

To punish him for his impudence, she refused to talk to him in the intervals. But when she heard later on that her partner had been one of the royal princes, she was inconsolable. She who knew every order and t.i.tle, and the rank of every officer, had failed to recognise a prince! It was too terrible!

She was beautiful, but pride gave her features a certain rigidity which scared her admirers away. The thought of marriage had never occurred to her. The young men were not fully qualified, and those to whose social position there was no objection, were too old. If she, the daughter of a general, had married a captain, then a major's wife would have taken precedence of her. Such a degradation would have killed her. Moreover, she had no wish to be a man's chattel, or an ornament for his drawing-room. She was accustomed to command, accustomed to be obeyed; she could obey no man. The freedom and independence of a man's life appealed to her; it had fostered in her a loathing for all womanly occupations.

Her s.e.xual instinct awoke late. As she belonged to an old family which on her father's side, had squandered its strength in a soulless militarism, drink and dissipation, and on her mother's had suppressed fertility to prevent the splitting up of property, Nature seemed to have hesitated about her s.e.x at the eleventh hour; or perhaps had lacked strength to determine on the continuation of the race. Her figure possessed none of those essentially feminine characteristics, which Nature requires for her purposes, and she scorned to hide her defects by artificial means.

The few women friends she had, found her cold and indifferent towards everything connected with the s.e.x problem. She treated it with contempt, considered the relations.h.i.+p between the s.e.xes disgusting, and could not understand how a woman could give herself to a man. In her opinion Nature was unclean; to wear clean underlinen, starched petticoats and stockings without holes was to be virtuous; poor was merely another term for dirt and vice.

Every summer she spent with her father on their estate in the country.

She was no great lover of the country. Nature made her feel small; she found the woods uncanny, the lake made her shudder, there was danger hidden in the tall meadow-gra.s.s. She regarded the peasants as cunning and rather filthy beasts. They had so many children, and she had no doubt that both boys and girls were full of vice. Nevertheless they were always invited to the manor house on Midsummer day and on the general's birthday, to play the part of the chorus of grand opera, that is to say, to cheer and dance, and look like the figures in a painting.

It was springtime. Helena, on her thoroughbred mare, had penetrated into the depths of the country. She felt tired and dismounted; she fastened her mare to a birchtree which grew near an enclosure. Then she strolled along by the side of a ditch and began to gather wild orchids. The air was soft and balmy, steam was rising from the ground.

She could hear the frogs jumping into the ditch which was half-full of water.

All at once the mare neighed and, stretching her slender neck over the fence, drew in the air with wide-open nostrils.

"Alice!" she called out, "be quiet, old girl!"

And she continued to gather the modest flowers which so cleverly hide their secrets behind the prettiest and neatest curtains that for all the world look like printed calico.

But the mare neighed again. From behind the hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his teeth. Then he galloped across the gra.s.s and approached the railings.

Helena picked up her skirt and ran to her mare; she raised her hand to seize the bridle, but the mare broke away and took the fence. Then the wooing began.

She stood at the fence and called, but the excited mare paid no heed.

Inside the enclosure the horses chased one another; the situation was a critical one. The breath of the stallion came like smoke from his nostrils and white foam flecked his shoulders.

Helena longed to escape, for the scene filled her with horror. She had never witnessed the raging of a natural instinct in a living body.

This uncontrolled outbreak terrified her.

She wanted to run after her mare and drag her away by force, but she was afraid of the savage stallion. She wanted to call for help, but she was loath to attract other eyewitnesses. She turned her back to the scene and decided to wait.

The sound of horses' hoofs came from the direction of the highroad; a carriage appeared in sight.

There was no escape; although she was ashamed to stay where she was, it was too late now to run away, for the horses were slowing down and the carriage stopped a few yards in front of her.

"How beautiful!" exclaimed one of the occupants of the carriage, a lady, and raised her golden lorgnette so as to get a better view of the spectacle.

"But why are we stopping?" retorted the other, irritably. "Drive on!"

"Don't you think it beautiful?" asked the elder lady.

The coachman's smile was lost in his great beard, as he urged the horses on.