"Are you going to spend Christmas Eve with your family?"
He flared up at once. Was his friend aware of his position? Or what did he mean?
The other man saw that he had stepped on a corn, and added hastily, without waiting for a reply:
"Because if you are not, you might spend it with us. You know, perhaps, that I have a little friend, a dear little soul."
It sounded all right and he accepted the invitation on condition that they should both be invited. Well, but of course, what else did he think? And this settled the problem of friends and Christmas Eve.
They met at six o"clock at the friend"s flat, and while the two "old men" had a gla.s.s of punch, the women went into the kitchen.
All four helped to lay the table. The two "old men" knelt on the floor and tried to lengthen the table by means of boards and wedges. The women were on the best of terms at once, for they felt bound together by that very obvious tie which bears the great name of "public opinion."
They respected one another and saved one another"s feelings. They avoided those innuendoes in which husbands and wives are so fond of indulging when their children are not listening, just as if they wanted to say: "We have a right to say these things now we are married."
When they had eaten the pudding, the barrister made a speech praising the delights of one"s own fireside, that refuge from the world and from all men: that harbour where one spends one"s happiest hours in the company of one"s real friends.
Mary-Louisa began to cry, and when he urged her to tell him the cause of her distress, and the reason of her unhappiness, she told him in a voice broken by sobs that she could see that he was missing his mother and sisters.
He replied that he did not miss them in the least, and that he should wish them far away if they happened to turn up now.
"But why couldn"t he marry her?"
"Weren"t they as good as married?"
"No, they weren"t married properly."
"By a clergyman? In his opinion a clergyman was nothing but a student who had pa.s.sed his examinations, and his incantations were pure mythology."
"That was beyond her, but she knew that something was wrong, and the other people in the house pointed their fingers at her."
"Let them point!"
Sophy joined in the conversation. She said she knew that they were not good enough for his relations; but she didn"t mind. Let everybody keep his own place and be content.
Anyhow, they had friends now, and lived together in harmony, which is more than could be said of many properly const.i.tuted families. The tie which held them together remained intact, but they were otherwise unfettered. They continued being lovers without contracting any bad matrimonial habits, as, for example, the habit of being rude to one another.
After a year or two their union was blest with a son. The mistress had thereby risen to the rank of a mother, and everything else was forgotten. The pangs which she had endured at the birth of the baby, and her care for the newly born infant, had purged her of her old selfish claims to all the good things of the earth, including the monopoly of her husband"s love.
In her new role as mother she gave herself superior little airs with her friend, and showed a little more a.s.surance in her intercourse with her lover.
One day the latter came home with a great piece of news. He had met his eldest sister in the street and had found her well informed on all their private affairs. She was very anxious to see her little nephew and had promised to pay them a call.
Mary-Louisa was surprised, and at once began to sweep and dust the flat; in addition she insisted on a new dress for the occasion. And then she waited for a whole week. The curtains were sent to the laundry, the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs on the doors of the stoves were made to shine, the furniture was polished. The sister should see that her brother was living with a decent person.
And then she made coffee, one morning at eleven o"clock, the time when the sister would call.
She came, straight as if she had swallowed a poker, and gave Mary-Louisa a hand which was as stiff as a batting staff. She examined the bed-room furniture, but refused to drink coffee, and never once looked her sister-in-law in the face. But she showed a faint, though genuine, interest in the baby. Then she went away again.
Mary-Louisa in the meantime had carefully examined her coat, priced the material of her dress and conceived a new idea of doing her hair.
She had not expected any great display of cordiality. As a start, the fact of the visit was quite sufficient in itself, and she soon let the house know that her sister-in-law had called.
The boy grew up and by and by a baby sister arrived.
Now Mary-Louisa began to show the most tender solicitude for the future of the children, and not a day pa.s.sed but she tried to convince their father that nothing but a legal marriage with her would safeguard their interests.
In addition to this his sister gave him a very plain hint to the effect that a reconciliation with his parents was within the scope of possibility, if he would but legalise his liaison.
After having fought against it day and night for two years, he consented at last, and resolved that for the children"s sake the mythological ceremony should be allowed to take place.
But whom should they ask to the wedding? Mary-Louisa insisted on being married in church. In this case Sophy could not be invited. That was an impossibility. A girl like her! Mary-Louisa had already learnt to p.r.o.nounce the word "girl" with a decidedly moral accent. He reminded her that Sophy had been a good friend to her, and that ingrat.i.tude was not a very fine quality. Mary-Louisa, however, pointed out that parents must be prepared to sacrifice private sympathies at the altar of their children"s prospects; and she carried the day.
The wedding took place.
The wedding was over. No invitation arrived from his parents, but a furious letter from Sophy which resulted in a complete rupture.
Mary-Louisa was a wedded wife, now. But she was more lonely than she had been before. Embittered by her disappointment, sure of her husband who was now legally tied to her, she began to take all those liberties which married people look upon as their right. What she had once regarded in the light of a voluntary gift, she now considered a tribute due to her. She entrenched herself behind the honourable t.i.tle of "the mother of his children," and from there she made her sallies.
Simple-minded, as all duped husbands are, he could never grasp what const.i.tuted the sacredness in the fact that she was the mother of _his_ children. Why his children should be different from other children, and from himself, was a riddle to him.
But, with an easy conscience, because his children had a legal mother now, he commenced to take again an interest in the world which he had to a certain extent forgotten in the first ecstasy of his love-dream, and which later on he had neglected because he hated to leave his wife and children alone.
These liberties displeased his wife, and since there was no necessity for her to mince matters now, and she was of an outspoken disposition, she made no secrets of her thoughts.
But he had all the lawyer"s tricks at his fingers" ends, and was never at a loss for a reply.
"Do you think it right," she asked, "to leave the mother of your children alone at home with them, while you spend your time at a public house?"
"I don"t believe you missed me," he answered by way of a preliminary.
"Missed you? If the husband spends the housekeeping money on drink, the wife will miss a great many things in the house."
"To start with I don"t drink, for I merely have a mouthful of food and drink a cup of coffee; secondly, I don"t spend the housekeeping money on drink, for you keep it locked up: I have other funds which I spend "on drink.""
Unfortunately women cannot stand satire, and the noose, made in fun, was at once thrown round his neck.
"You do admit, then, that you drink?"
"No, I don"t, I used your expression in fun."
"In fun? You are making fun of your wife? You never used to do that!"
"You wanted the marriage ceremony. Why are things so different now?"
"Because we are married, of course."
"Partly because of that, and partly because intoxication has the quality of pa.s.sing off."
"It was only intoxication in your case, then?"