Part 5

It went on for a whole month. Balls, visits, dinners, theatres. Sometimes, of course, they remained at home. And at home it was more pleasant than anywhere else. How lovely, for instance, to carry off one’s wife from her parents’ house, after supper, without saying as much as “by your leave,” put her into a closed carriage, slam the door, nod to her people and say: “Now we’re off home, to our own four walls! And there we’ll do exactly what we like!”

And then to have a little supper at home and sit over it, talking and gossiping until the small hours of the morning.

Lewis was always very sensible at home, at least in theory. One day his wife put him to the test by giving him salt salmon, potatoes boiled in milk and oatmeal soup for dinner. Oh! how he enjoyed it! He was sick of elaborate menus.

On the following Friday, when she again suggested salt salmon for dinner, Lewis came home, carrying two ptarmigans! He called to her from the threshold:

“Just imagine, Lou, a most extraordinary thing happened! A most extraordinary thing!”

“Well, what is it?”

“You’ll hardly believe me when I tell you that I bought a brace of ptarmigans, bought them myself at the market for--guess!”

His little wife seemed more annoyed than curious.

“Just think! One crown the two!”

“I have bought ptarmigans at eightpence the brace; but--” she added in a more conciliatory tone, so as not to upset him altogether, “that was in a very cold winter.”

“Well, but you must admit that I bought them very cheaply.”

Was there anything she would not admit in order to see him happy?

She had ordered boiled groats for dinner, as an experiment. But after Lewis had eaten a ptarmigan, he regretted that he could not eat as much of the groats as he would have liked, in order to show her that he was really very fond of groats. He liked groats very much indeed--milk did not agree with him after his attack of ague. He couldn’t take milk, but groats he would like to see on his table every evening, every blessed evening of his life, if only she wouldn’t be angry with him.

And groats never again appeared on his table.

When they had been married for six weeks, the young wife fell ill. She suffered from headaches and sickness. It could not be anything serious, just a little cold. But this sickness? Had she eaten anything which had disagreed with her? Hadn’t all the copper vessels new coatings of tin? He sent for the doctor. The doctor smiled and said it was all right.

“What was all right? Oh! Nonsense! It wasn’t possible. How could it have been possible? No, surely, the bed-room paper was to blame. It must contain arsenic. Let us send a piece to the chemist’s at once and have it tested.”

“Entirely free from arsenic,” reported the chemist.

“How strange! No arsenic in the wall papers?”

The young wife was still ill. He consulted a medical book and whispered a question in her ear. “There now! a hot bath!”

Four weeks later the midwife declared that everything was “as it should be.”

“As it should be? Well, of course! Only it was somewhat premature!”

But as it could not, be helped, they were delighted. Fancy, a baby! They would be papa and mama! What should they call him? For, of course, it would be a boy. No doubt, it would. But now she had a serious conversation with her husband! There had been no translating or proof-correcting since their marriage. And his salary alone was not sufficient.

“Yes, they had given no thought to the morrow. But, dear me, one was young only once! Now, however, there would be a change.”

On the following morning the assistant called on an old schoolfriend, a registrar, to ask him to stand security for a loan.

“You see, my dear fellow, when one is about to become a father, one has to consider how to meet increasing expenses.”

“Quite so, old man,” answered the registrar, “therefore I have been unable to get married. But you are fortunate in having the means.”

The assistant hesitated to make his request. How could he have the audacity to ask this poor bachelor to help him to provide the expenses for the coming event? This bachelor, who had not the means to found a family of his own? He could not bring himself to do it.

When he came home to dinner, his wife told him that two gentlemen had called to see him.

“What did they look like? Were they young? Did they wear eye-glasses? Then there was no doubt, they were two lieutenants, old friends of his whom he had met at Vaxholm.”

“No, they couldn’t have been lieutenants; they were too old for that.”

“Then he knew; they were old college friends from Upsala, probably P. who was a lecturer, and O. who was a curate, now. They had come to see how their old pal was shaping as a husband.”

“No, they didn’t come from Upsala, they came from Stockholm.”

The maid was called in and cross-examined. She thought the callers had been shabbily dressed and had carried sticks.

“Sticks! I can’t make out what sort of people they can have been. Well, we’ll know soon enough, as they said they would call again. But to change the subject, I happened to see a basket of hothouse strawberries at a really ridiculous price; it really is absurd! Just imagine, hothouse strawberries at one and sixpence a basket! And at this time of the year!”

“But, my darling, what is this extravagance to lead to?”

“It’ll be all right. I have got an order for a translation this very day.”

“But you are in debt, Lewis?”

“Trifles! Mere nothings! It’ll be all right when I take up a big loan, presently.”

“A loan! But that’ll be a new debt!”

“True! But there’ll be easy terms! Don’t let’s talk business now! Aren’t these strawberries delicious? What? A glass of sherry with them would be tip-top. Don’t you think so? Lina, run round to the stores and fetch a bottle of sherry, the best they have.”

After his afternoon nap, his wife insisted on a serious conversation.

“You won’t be angry, dear, will you?”

“Angry? I! Good heavens, no! Is it about household expenses?”

“Yes! We owe money at the stores! The butcher is pressing for payment; the man from the livery stables has called for his money; it’s most unpleasant.”

“Is that all? I shall pay them to the last farthing to-morrow. How dare they worry you about such trifles? They shall be paid to-morrow, but they shall lose a customer. Now, don’t let’s talk about it any more. Come out for a walk. No carriage! Well, we’ll take the car to the Deer Park, it will cheer us up.”

They went to the Deer Park. They asked for a private room at the restaurant, and people stared at them and whispered.

“They think we are out on a spree,” he laughed. “What fun! What madness!”

But his wife did not like it.

They had a big bill to pay.

“If only we had stayed at home! We might have bought such a lot of things for the money.”

Months elapsed. The great event was coming nearer and nearer. A cradle had to be bought and baby-clothes. A number of things were wanted. The young husband was out on business all day long. The price of wheat had risen. Hard times were at hand. He could get no translations, no proof-correcting. Men had become materialists. They didn’t spend money on books, they bought food. What a prosaic period we were living in! Ideals were melting away, one after the other, and ptarmigans were not to be had under two crowns the brace. The livery stables would not provide carriages for nothing for the cab-proprietors had wives and families to support, just as everybody else; at the stores cash had to be paid for goods, Oh! what realists they all were!

The great day had come at last. It was evening. He must run for the midwife. And while his wife suffered all the pangs of childbirth, he had to go down into the hall and pacify the creditors.

At last he held a daughter in his arms. His tears fell on the baby, for now he realised his responsibility, a responsibility which he was unable to shoulder. He made new resolutions. But his nerves were unstrung. He was working at a translation which he seemed unable to finish, for he had to be constantly out on business.

He rushed to his father-in-law, who was staying in town, to bring him the glad news.

“We have a little daughter!”

“Well and good,” replied his father-in-law; “can you support a child?”

“Not at present; for heaven’s sake, help us, father!”

“I’ll tide you over your present difficulties. I can’t do more. My means are only sufficient to support my own family.”

The patient required chickens which he bought himself at the market, and wine at six crowns the bottle. It had to be the very best.

The midwife expected a hundred crowns.

“Why should we pay her less than others? Hasn’t she just received a cheque for a hundred crowns from the captain?”

Very soon the young wife was up again. She looked like a girl, as slender as a willow, a little pale, it was true, but the pallor suited her.

The old man called and had a private conversation with his son-in-law.

“No more children, for the present,” he said, “or you’ll be ruined.”

“What language from a father! Aren’t we married! Don’t we love one another? Aren’t we to have a family?”

“Yes, but not until you can provide for them. It’s all very fine to love one another, but you musn’t forget that you have responsibilities.”

His father-in-law, too, had become a materialist. Oh! what a miserable world it was! A world without ideals!

The home was undermined, but love survived, for love was strong, and the hearts of the young couple were soft. The bailiff, on the contrary, was anything but soft. Distraint was imminent, and bankruptcy threatened. Well, let them distrain then!

The father-in-law arrived with a large travelling coach to fetch his daughter and grand-child. He warned his son-in-law not to show his face at his house until he could pay his debts and make a home for his wife and child. He said nothing to his daughter, but it seemed to him that he was bringing home a girl who had been led astray. It was as if he had lent his innocent child to a casual admirer and now received her back “dishonoured.” She would have preferred to stay with her husband, but he had no home to offer her.

And so the husband of one year’s standing was left behind to watch the pillaging of his home, if he could call it his home, for he had paid for nothing. The two men with spectacles carted away the beds and bedclothes; the copper kettles and tin vessels; the dinner set, the chandelier and the candlesticks; everything, everything!

He was left alone in the two empty, wretched rooms! If only _she_ had been left to him! But what should she do here, in these empty rooms? No, she was better off where she was! She was being taken care of.

Now the struggle for a livelihood began in bitter earnest. He found work at a daily paper as a proof-corrector. He had to be at the office at midnight; at three in the morning his work was done. He did not lose his berth, for bankruptcy had been avoided, but he had lost all chance of promotion.

Later on he is permitted to visit wife and child once a week, but he is never allowed to see her alone. He spends Saturday night in a tiny room, close to his father-in-law’s bedroom. On Sunday morning he has to return to town, for the paper appears on Monday morning.... He says good-bye to his wife and child who are allowed to accompany him as far as the garden gate, he waves his hand to them once more from the furthest hillock, and succumbs to his wretchedness, his misery, his humiliation. And she is no less unhappy.

He has calculated that it will take him twenty years to pay his debts. And then? Even then he cannot maintain a wife and child. And his prospects? He has none! If his father-in-law should die, his wife and child would be thrown on the street; he cannot venture to look forward to the death of their only support.

Oh! How cruel it is of nature to provide food for all her creatures, leaving the children of men alone to starve! Oh! How cruel, how cruel! that life has not ptarmigans and strawberries to give to all men. How cruel! How cruel!

COMPELLED TO

Punctually at half past nine on a winter evening he appears at the door leading to the glass-roofed verandah of the restaurant. While, with mathematical precision, he takes off his gloves, he peers over his dim spectacles, first to the right, then to the left, to find out whether any of his acquaintances are present. Then he hangs up his overcoat on its special hook, the one to the right of the fireplace. Gustav, the waiter, an old pupil of his, flies to his table and, without waiting for an order, brushes the crumbs off the tablecloth, stirs up the mustard, smooths the salt in the salt-cellar and turns over the dinner napkin. Then he fetches, still without any order, a bottle of Medhamra, opens half a bottle of Union beer and, merely for appearance sake, hands the schoolmaster the bill of fare.

“Crabs?” he asks, more as a matter of form than because there is any need of the question.

“Female crabs,” answers the schoolmaster.

“Large, female crabs,” repeats Gustav, walks to the speaking tube which communicates with the kitchen, and shouts: “Large female crabs for Mr. Blom, and plenty of dill.”

He fetches butter and cheese, cuts two very thin slices of rye-bread, and places them on the schoolmaster’s table. The latter has in the meantime searched the verandah for the evening papers, but has only found the official _Post_. To make up for this very poor success, he takes the _Daily Journal_, which he had not had time to finish at lunch, and after first opening and refolding the _Post_, and putting it on the top of the bread basket on his left, sits down to read it. He ornaments the rye-bread with geometrical butter hieroglyphics, cuts off a piece of cheese in the shape of a rectangle, fills his liqueur glass three quarters full and raises it to his lips, hesitates as if the little glass contained physic, throws back his head and says: Ugh!

He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until the day of his death.

As soon as the crabs, six of them, have been put before him, he examines them as to their sex, and everything being as it should be, makes ready to enjoy himself. He tucks a corner of his dinner napkin into his collar, places two slices of thin bread and cheese by the side of his plate and pours out a glass of beer and half a glass of liqueur. Then he takes the little crab-knife and business begins. He is the only man in Sweden who knows how to eat a crab, and whenever he sees anybody else engaged in the same pursuit, he tells him that he has no idea how to do it. He makes an incision all round the head, and a hole against which he presses his lips and begins to suck.

“This,” he says, “is the best part of the whole animal.”

He severs the thorax from the lower part, puts his teeth to the body and drinks deep draughts; he sucks the little legs as if they were asparagus, eats a bit of dill, and takes a drink of beer and a mouthful of rye-bread. When he has carefully taken the shell off the claws and sucked even the tiniest tubes, he eats the flesh; last of all he attacks the lower part of the body. When he has eaten three crabs, he drinks half a glass of liqueur and reads the promotions in the _Post_.

He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until he dies.

He was just twenty years old when he first began to patronise the restaurant, now he is thirty-two, and Gustav has been a waiter for ten years in the same place. Not one of its frequenters has known the restaurant longer than the school-master, not even the proprietor who took it over eight years ago. He has watched generations of diners come and go; some came for a year, some for two, some for five years; then they disappeared, went to another restaurant, left the town or got married. He feels very old, although he is only thirty-two! The restaurant is his home, for his furnished room is nothing but the place where he sleeps.

It is ten o’clock. He leaves his table and goes to the back room where his grog awaits him. This is the time when the bookseller arrives. They play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but they get on with the schoolmaster as if he were a contemporary.

The proprietor has his place behind the counter. He is an old sea captain who fell in love with the proprietress and married her. She rules in the kitchen, but the sliding panel is always open, so that she can keep an eye on the old man, lest he should take a glass too much before closing time. Not until the gas has been turned out, and the old man is ready to go to bed, is he allowed a nightcap in the shape of a stiff glass of rum and water.

At eleven o’clock the young bloods begin to arrive; they approach the counter diffidently and ask the proprietor in a whisper whether any of the private rooms upstairs are disengaged, and then there is a rustling of skirts in the hall and cautious footsteps are creeping upstairs.

“Well,” says the bookseller, who has suddenly found a topic of conversation, “when are you going to be married, Blom, old man?”

“I haven’t the means to get married,” answered the school-master. “Why don’t you take a wife to your bosom yourself?”

“No woman would have me, now that my head looks like an old, leather-covered trunk,” says the bookseller. “And, moreover, there’s my old Stafva, you know.”

Stafva was a legendary person in whom nobody believed. She was the incarnation of the bookseller’s unrealised dreams.

“But you, Mr. Potocki?” suggested the schoolmaster.

“He’s been married once, that’s enough,” replies the bookseller.

The Pole nods his head like a metrometer.

“Yes, I was married very happily. Ugh!” he says and finishes his grog.

“Well,” continues the schoolmaster, “if women weren’t such fools, one might consider the matter; but they are infernal fools.”

The Pole nods again and smiles; being a Pole, he doesn’t understand what the word fool means.

“I have been married very happily, ugh!”

“And then there is the noise of the children, and children’s clothes always drying near the stove; and servants, and all day long the smells from the kitchen. No, thank you! And, perhaps, sleepless nights into the bargain.”

“Ugh!” added the Pole, completing the sentence.

“Mr. Potocki says ‘ugh’ with the malice of the bachelor who listens to the complaints of the married man,” remarked the bookseller.

“What did I say?” asks the astonished widower. “Ugh!” says the bookseller, mimicking him, and the conversation degenerates into a universal grinning and a cloud of tobacco smoke.

It is midnight. The piano upstairs, which has accompanied a mixed choir of male and female voices, is silent. The waiter has finished his countless journeys from the speaking tube to the verandah; the proprietor enters into his daybook the last few bottles of champagne which have been ordered upstairs. The three friends rise from their chairs and go home, two to their “virgin couches,” and the bookseller to his Stafva.

When schoolmaster Blom had reached his twentieth year, he was compelled to interrupt his studies at Upsala and accept a post as assistant teacher at Stockholm. As he, in addition, gave private lessons, he made quite a good income. He did not ask much of life. All he wanted was peace and cleanliness. An elderly lady let him a furnished room and there he found more than a bachelor finds as a rule. She looked after him and was kind to him; she gave him all the tenderness which nature had intended her to bestow on the new generation that was to spring from her. She mended his clothes and looked after him generally. He had lost his mother when he was a little boy and had never been accustomed to gratuitous kindness; therefore he was inclined to look upon her services as an interference with his liberty, but he accepted them nevertheless. But all the same the public house was his real home. There he paid for everything and ran up no bills.

He was born in a small town in the interior of Sweden; consequently he was a stranger in Stockholm. He knew nobody; was not on visiting terms with any of the families and met his acquaintances nowhere but at the public-house. He talked to them freely, but never gave them his confidence, in fact he had no confidence to give. At school he taught the third class and this gave him a feeling of having been stunted in his growth. A very long time ago he had been in the third class himself, had gradually crept up to the seventh, and had spent a few terms at the University; now he had returned to the third; he had been there for twelve years without being moved. He taught the second and third books of Euclid; this was the course of instruction for the whole year. He saw only a fragment of life; a fragment without beginning or end; the second and third books. In his spare time he read the newspapers and books on archaeology. Archaeology is a modern science, one might almost say a disease of the time. And there is danger in it, for it proves over and over again that human folly has pretty nearly always been the same.