III
At last Marie appeared before the footlights. She was a success for many and complex reasons. Firstly, everybody was curious to see a baroness on the stage; secondly, the middle-classes were sympathetic because they delighted in the blow dealt to aristocratic prestige by this divorce; the bachelors, the sexless, the enemies of matrimonial slavery, lavished flowers on her; not to forget the friends and relations of the great actor, who were interested in her because he had been her teacher and was bringing her out.
After the performance the Baron asked both of us, and the old lady with whom Marie was living, to supper.
Everybody was charmed with the result and intoxicated with the success. I was displeased with Marie’s appearance because she had not removed her make-up, and her hair was still dressed as she had worn it on the stage. She was no longer the virginal mother with whom I had fallen in love, but an actress with insolent gestures, bad manners, boastful, overbearing, behaving with a kind of offensive foppishness.
In her imagination she had scaled the highest summits of art, and she dismissed all my remarks, my suggestions, with a shrug of her shoulders or a condescending, “My dear, you know nothing about it.”
The Baron wore a look of dejection, like an unhappy lover. But for my presence he would have kissed her. Under the influence of an incredible quantity of Madeira he opened his heart to us, and regretted that art, the divine, should claim so many cruel sacrifices. The press—which had been well managed—confirmed her success, and an engagement seemed likely to follow.
Two photographers fought for the honour of being permitted to photograph the debutante. A successful little magazine sold the portrait of the new star, together with her biography.
What struck me most in looking at these new portraits was the fact that not one of them resembled the old one in my possession. Was it possible that her character, the expression of her face, could have changed in so short a time, in a year? Or was she a different woman when she reflected the love, the tenderness, the compassion which my eyes radiated as soon as I looked at her? The expression of her face on these portraits was vulgar, hard and insolent, every feature expressed a cruel coquetry, a challenge. One pose in particular disgusted me. She was represented leaning over the back of a low chair in such a manner that the beholder could see her bosom, which was only partly hidden by a fan resting against the upper part of her dress. Her eyes seemed riveted on the eyes of an invisible person, not myself, for my love, coupled with respect and tenderness, never caressed her with the shameless sensuality which roused in her the passion of a wanton. The photograph reminded me of those obscene pictures which are furtively offered to the passers-by at the doors of low coffee-houses under cover of the night.
When she offered me this portrait I refused to accept it.
“What!” she exclaimed in a piteous voice, which for a moment revealed her carefully concealed want of true refinement, “you refuse my photograph? Then you don’t love me any more!”
When a woman says to her lover, “You don’t love me any more,” she has already ceased to love him.
I knew from this moment that her love was growing cold. She realised that her feeble soul had drawn from me the courage, the boldness necessary to arrive at her goal, and she wanted to be rid of the troublesome creditor. She had been stealing my thoughts while she seemed to scorn them with her contemptuous, “You know nothing about it, my dear!”
This uncultured woman, whose only accomplishment was her fluent French, whose education had been neglected, who had been brought up in the country, who knew nothing of literature or the stage, to whom I had given the first lessons in the correct pronunciation of Swedish, to whom I had explained the secrets of metrics and prosody, treated me as if I were an idiot.
I advised her to select for her second appearance in public, which was to take place shortly, the principal part in the best melodrama on the repertoire. She refused. But a few days later she informed me casually that the idea had occurred to her to choose this particular part. I analysed it for her, sketched the costumes, drew her attention to all the points to be made, showed her how to make her entrances and exits, and pointed out to her the features which should be specially emphasized.
A secret struggle went on between the Baron and myself. He, who stage-managed the performances of the Royal Guards, instructed the play-acting soldiers, fondly imagining himself to be better acquainted with theatrical affairs than I was. Marie valued his so-called hints more highly; accepted him as her authority, scorned my suggestions. Oh! the vileness of his conception of æsthetics! He extolled the commonplace, the vulgar, the banal, because, as he said, it was true nature.
I admitted his arguments as far as modern comedy was concerned, for here the characters are depicted among the thousand details of everyday life. But his theory became impossible when applied, for instance, to English melodrama; great passions cannot be expressed in the same way as the whims and witticisms of a drawing-room conversation.
But this distinction was too subtle for a mediocre brain, which could only generalise and assume that because a certain thing happened in one case, it must infallibly become the rule and happen in all others.
On the day before her appearance Marie showed me her dresses. In spite of my opposition and entreaties she had chosen a dull grey material, most unbecoming to her because it gave her complexion an ashen hue. Her only reply had been a curt repulse and the truly feminine argument—
“But Mrs. X., the great tragedienne, created the part in a grey dress!”
“True, but Mrs. X. is not fair like you! And what suits a dark woman doesn’t always suit a fair one.”
She had not been able to see my point and had only been angry with me.
I had prophesied a fiasco, and her second appearance really was a dead failure.
The tears, the reproaches, the insults even which followed!
As misfortune would have it, a week later the great actress appeared in the same part, in a special performance, and received cart-loads of flowers.
Of course Marie was furious with me and made me responsible for her failure, simply because I had prophesied it; the grief and disappointment brought her still nearer to the Baron; it drew them together with the sympathy which always unites inferior characters.
I, the man of letters, the playwright, the dramatic critic, at home in all the literatures, through my work and position at the library in correspondence with the finest intellects of the world, I was cast aside like a worn-out garment, treated like an idiot, considered of no more importance than a footman or a dog.
But although her second appearance had been a failure, she was engaged with a pay of 2,400 crowns1 per annum. She had acquitted herself fairly well, but she had no great career before her. She would never rise above the level of a “useful actress”; she would be cast for small parts, society women, mere dressed-up dolls, and spend her days at the dressmaker’s. Three, four, sometimes five different dresses on one and the same evening would swallow up her insufficient pay.
What bitter disappointments, what heart-rending scenes, as she watched her parts grow smaller and smaller, until they consisted of a few sentences only. Her room had the appearance of a dressmaker’s workshop, littered with dress materials, patterns and millinery. The mother, the real grande dame who had left her drawing-rooms, renounced dress and fashion, to devote her life to a lofty ideal of art, had become a bungling seamstress who worked at her sewing machine till midnight, so that she might play before an indifferent bourgeoisie for a few minutes the part of a society woman.
The waste of time behind the scenes during rehearsal, when she stood in the wings for hours waiting for her cue which should bring her before the footlights to say two or three words, developed in her a taste for gossip, for idle talk and risky stories; it killed all honest striving to rise above her condition; the soul was shorn of its wings and was flung to earth, into the gutter.
The disintegrating process went on. She continued to deteriorate, and after her dresses had been remodelled again and again for want of means to buy new ones, she was deprived of even her small parts and degraded to the role of a walker on. Poverty was staring her in the face, and her mother, a modern Cassandra, made life a burden to her; the public, well acquainted with her sensational divorce, and the premature death of her little girl, cried out against the unfaithful wife, the unnatural mother. It was but a question of time and the manager of the theatre would not be able to protect her against the antipathy of the audience; the great actor, her teacher, disowned her and admitted his mistake in believing in her talent.
So much ado, so much unhappiness, to humour a woman who did not know her own mind.
And still matters grew worse, for Marie’s mother suddenly died of heart disease, of a broken heart, as it was called, broken with sorrow, caused by her unnatural daughter. Again my honour was involved. I was furious with the injustice of the world, and made a desperate effort to vindicate her honour. I proposed the foundation of a weekly paper, for the discussion of the drama, music, literature and art, and she, thankful now for every effort to help her, gratefully accepted my proposal. In this paper she was to make her début as a critic and writer of feuilletons, and so gradually become acquainted with publishers. She sunk two hundred crowns in the enterprise. I undertook the editorial work and proof-reading. Since I was well aware of my complete incapacity as a business manager, I left her to attend to the sale and advertisements, the proceeds of which she was to share with the manager of her theatre, who was also the proprietor of a news stall.
The first number was set and looked very well indeed. It contained a leader written by one of our rising artists; an original article from a correspondent in Rome; another one from Paris; a critique on a musical performance by a distinguished writer and contributor to one of the first Stockholm papers; a literary review written by myself; a feuilleton and reports on first nights by Marie.
It would have been impossible to improve the arrangements made; the great thing was to publish the first number at the time advertised. Everything was ready, but at the last moment we lacked the necessary funds and credit.
Alas! I had put my fate into the hands of a woman! On the day of the publication she remained calmly in bed and slept till broad daylight.
Convinced that everything was well, I went to town, but everywhere on my way I was greeted with sarcastic smiles.
“Well, where is the wonderful paper to be had?” I was asked the question dozens of times by the numerous people interested in its appearance.
“Everywhere!”
“Or nowhere!”
I went into a newspaper shop.
“We haven’t received it yet,” said the assistant behind the counter.
I rushed to the printing-office. It had not left the press yet.
A complete failure! We had an angry scene. Her inborn carelessness and ignorance of the publishing trade exonerated her to some extent. She had completely relied on her friend, the theatrical manager.
The two hundred crowns were gone. My time, my honour, the eager thought I had devoted to the scheme, all were wasted.
In this general shipwreck one haunting thought remained: our condition was hopeless.
I proposed that we should die together. What was to become of us? She was quite broken down and I had not the strength to lift her up a second time.
“Let us die,” I said to her. “Don’t let us degenerate into walking corpses and obstruct the path of the living.”
She refused.
What a coward you were, my proud Marie! And how cruel it was of you to make me a witness of the spectacle of your downfall, the laughter and sneers of the onlookers!
I spent the evening at my club, and when I went home that night I was intoxicated.
I went to see her early on the following morning. The alcohol seemed to have made me more clear-sighted. For the first time I noticed the change in her. Her room was untidy, her dress slovenly, her beloved little feet were thrust into a pair of old slippers, the stockings hung in wrinkles round her ankles. What squalor!
Her vocabulary had become enriched by some ugly theatrical slang; her gestures were reminiscent of the street, her eyes looked at me with hatred, an expression of bitterness drew down the corners of her mouth.
She remained stooping over her work, without looking at me, as if she were thinking evil thoughts.
Suddenly, without raising her head, she said hoarsely—
“Do you know, Axel, what a woman is justified in expecting from the man with whom she is on intimate terms, such as we are?”
Thunderstruck, unwilling to trust my ears, I faltered—
“No... what?”
“What does a woman expect from her lover?”
“Love!”
“And what else?”
“Money!”
The vulgar word saved her from further questioning, and I left her, convinced that I had guessed correctly.
“Prostitute! Prostitute!” I said to myself, stumbling through the streets, the autumnal appearance of which depressed my spirits. We had arrived at the last stage.... All that remained to do was to make payment for pleasures received, to admit the trade without shame.
If she had been poor, at least, suffering from want! But she had just come into her mother’s money, the entire furniture of a house, and a number of shares, some of doubtful value, but nevertheless representing two or three thousand crowns; moreover, she was still receiving her pay regularly from the theatre.
I could not understand her attitude... until suddenly I remembered her landlady and intimate friend.
She was an abominable, elderly woman, with the suspicious manners of a procuress; nobody knew how she lived; she was always in debt, yet always extravagantly and strikingly dressed; somehow she managed to ingratiate herself with people, and she always ended by asking them for a small loan, eternally bewailing her miserable existence. A shady character, who hated me because I saw through her.
Now I suddenly remembered an incident which had happened two or three months ago, but which had not interested me at the time. The woman had extracted a promise from a friend of Marie’s to lend her a thousand crowns. The promise had remained a promise. Eventually Marie, giving way to pressure and anxious to save the reputation of her friend, who was badly compromised, guaranteed to find the money, and actually raised the sum. But instead of gratitude she reaped nothing but reproaches from her friend, and when it came to explanations, the old-woman insisted on her perfect innocence and laid the full blame on Marie’s shoulders. I had at the time expressed my dislike and distrust of her, and urged Marie to have nothing to do with an individual whose manipulations came very close to blackmail.
But she had exonerated her false friend at the time.... Later on she told a different story altogether, talked of a misunderstanding; in the end the whole incident became “an invention of my evil imagination.”
Possibly this woman had suggested to Marie the vile idea of “presenting me with the bill.” It must have been so, for the suggestion had not been made easily and was most unlike her. I tried to make myself believe it, hope it.
If she had merely asked me for the money which she had invested in the paper, the money which had been lost through her fault—that would have been female mathematics. Or, if she had insisted on an immediate marriage! But she had no wish to be married, I was sure of that. It was a question of paying for the love, the kisses she had given me. It was payment she demanded.... Supposing I sent her in my bill: for my work according to time and quality, for the waste of brain power, of nerve force, for my heart’s blood, my name, my honour, my sufferings; the bill for my career, ruined, perhaps, for ever.
But no, it was her privilege to send in the first bill; I took no exception to that.
I spent my evening at a restaurant, wandered through the streets and pondered the problem of degradation. Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? It must be because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means the disintegration of force.
The same argument applies to the life of the community where everybody strives to reach the material or spiritual summits. Thence comes the tragic feeling which seizes us in the contemplation of failure, tragic as autumn, sickness and death. This woman, who had not yet reached her thirtieth year, had been young, beautiful, frank, honest, amiable, strong and well-bred; in two short years she had been so degraded, had fallen so low.
For a moment I tried to blame myself; the thought that the fault was mine would have been a comfort to me, for it would have made her shame seem less. But try as I would, I did not succeed, for had I not taught her the cult of the beautiful? the love of high ideals? the longing to do noble acts? While she adopted the vulgarities of her theatrical friends, I had improved, I had acquired the manners and language of fashionable society, I had learned that self-control which keeps emotion in check and is considered the hall-mark of good breeding. I had become chaste in love, anxious to spare modesty, not to offend against beauty and seemliness, for thus only can we forget the brutality of an act which to my mind is much more spiritual than physical.
I was rough sometimes, it is true, but never vulgar. I killed, but never wounded. I called a spade a spade, but never hinted and insinuated; my ideas were my own, prompted by the situations in which I happened to find myself; I never tried to dazzle with the witticisms of musical comedies or comic papers.
I loved cleanliness, purity, beauty in my daily surroundings; I preferred to refuse an invitation to accepting it and appearing badly dressed. I never received her in dressing-gown and slippers; I may not always have been able to offer a guest more than bread and butter and a glass of beer, but there was always a clean table-cloth.
I had not set her a bad example; it was not my fault that she had deteriorated. Her love for me was dead, therefore she did not want to please me any longer. She belonged to the public, it was that fact which had made her the wanton who could calmly present her bill for so many nights of pleasure....
During the next few days I shut myself up in my library. I mourned for my love, my splendid, foolish, divine love. All was over, and the battlefield on which the struggle had raged was silent and still. Two dead and so many wounded to satisfy a woman who was not worth a pair of old shoes! If her passion had at least been roused by the longing for motherhood, if she had been guided by the unrealised instincts which force those unfortunates who are mothers on the streets! But she detested children; in her eyes motherhood was degrading. Unnatural and perverse woman that she was, she debased the maternal instinct to a vulgar pleasure. Her race was doomed to extinction because she was a degenerate, in the process of dissolution; but she concealed this dissolution under high-sounding phrases, proclaimed that it was our duty to live for higher ends, for the good of humanity at large.
I loathed her now, I tried to forget her. I paced the room, up and down, up and down, before the rows of book-shelves, unable to rid myself of the accursed night-mare which haunted me. I had no desire for her, or for her company, for she inspired me with disgust; and yet a deep compassion, an almost paternal tenderness made me feel responsible for her future. I knew that if I left her to her own devices, she would go under, and end either as the mistress of her late husband, or the mistress of all the world.
I was powerless to lift her up, powerless to struggle out of the morass into which we had fallen. I resigned myself to remain tied to her, even if I had to witness and share in her downward course. She was dragging me down with her—life had become a burden to me, I had lost all enthusiasm for my work. The instinct of self-preservation, hope, were dead. I wanted nothing, desired nothing. I had developed into a complete misanthrope; I frequently turned away from the door of my restaurant and, forgoing dinner, returned home, threw myself on my sofa and buried myself under my rugs. There I lay, like a wild beast that has received its death wound, rigid, with an empty brain, unable to think or sleep, waiting for the end.
One day, however, I was sitting in a back room of my restaurant, a private room where lovers meet and shabby coats hide themselves, both afraid of the daylight. All at once a well-known voice woke me from my reverie: a man wished me a good afternoon.
He was an unsuccessful architect, a lost member of our late Bohemia, which was now scattered to all the winds.
“You are still among the living, then?” he said, sitting down opposite me.
“I am... but what about you?”
“I’m so-so... off to Paris to-morrow... some fool left me ten thousand crowns.”
“Lucky dog!”
“Unfortunately I have to devour it all by myself....”
“The misfortune is not so great, I know a set of teeth ready to help you.”
“Really? Would you care to come?...”
“Only too glad to!”
“Is it a bargain then?”
“It’s a bargain.”
“To-morrow night, by the six o’clock train, to Paris....”
“And afterwards?...”
“A bullet through the head!”
“The devil! Where did you get this idea from?”
“From your face! Suicide is plainly written on it!”
“Haruspex! Well, pack up and come along!”
When I saw Marie that night I told her the good news. She listened with every appearance of pleasure, wished me a pleasant time, and repeated again and again that it would do me a world of good, would refresh me mentally. In short, she seemed well pleased, and overwhelmed me with affection, which touched me deeply.
We spent the evening together, talking of the days which had gone by. We made no plans, for we had lost faith in the future. Then we parted.... For ever?... The question was not mooted; we silently agreed to leave it to chance to reunite us or not.
Notes
1 A Swedish crown is equivalent to 1s. 4d.