FullReads

“Surely he didn’t mean what he was saying! Had he changed his mind? How could he!”

“Yes, he had changed his mind. One could not help modifying one’s views almost daily, because one had to adapt them to the conditions of life which were always changing. And if he had believed in spiritual marriages in the days gone by, he had now come to lose faith in marriages of any sort whatever. That was progress in the direction of radicalism. And as to the spiritual, she was spiritually married to the young ass rather than to him, for they exchanged views on the management of the goods department daily and hourly, while she took no interest at all in the cultivation of forests. Was there anything spiritual in their marriage? Was there?”

“No, not any longer! Her love was dead! He had killed it when he renounced his splendid faith in–the emancipation of women.”

Matters became more and more unbearable. The green forester began to look to his fellow-foresters for companionship and gave up thinking of the goods department and its way of conducting business, matters which he never understood.

“You don’t understand me,” she kept on saying over and over again.

“No, I don’t understand the goods department,” he said.

One night, or rather one morning, he told her that he was going botanising with a girls’ class. He was teaching botany in a girls’ school.

“Oh! indeed! Why had he never mentioned it before? Big girls?”

“Oh! very big ones. From sixteen to twenty.”

“H’m! In the morning?”

“No! In the afternoon! And they would have supper in one of the outlying little villages.”

“Would they? The head-mistress would be there of course?”

“Oh! no, she had every confidence in him, since he was a married man. It was an advantage, sometimes, to be married.”

On the next day she was ill.

“Surely he hadn’t the heart to leave her!”

“He must consider his work before anything else. Was she very ill?”

“Oh! terribly ill!”

In spite of her objections he sent for a doctor. The doctor declared that there was nothing much the matter; it was quite unnecessary for the husband to stay at home. The green forester returned towards morning. He was in high spirits. He had enjoyed himself immensely! He had not had such a day for a long, long time.

The storm burst. Huhuhu! This struggle was too much for her! He must swear a solemn oath never to love any woman but her. Never!

She had convulsions; he ran for the smelling salts.

He was too generous to give her details of the supper with the schoolgirls, but he could not forego the pleasure of mentioning his former simile anent dogs and possession, and he took the occasion to draw her attention to the fact that love without the conception of a right to possession–on both sides–was not thinkable. What was making her cry? The same thing which had made him swear, when she went out with twenty men. The fear of losing him! But one can lose only that which one possesses! Possesses!

Thus the rent was repaired. But goods department and girls’ school were ready with their scissors to undo the laborious mending.

The harmony was disturbed.

The wife fell ill. She was sure that she had hurt herself in lifting a case which was too heavy for her. She was so keen on her work that she could not bear to wait while the porters stood about and did nothing. She was compelled to lend a hand. Now she must have ruptured herself.

Yes, indeed, there was something the matter!

How angry she was! Angry with her husband who alone was to blame. What were they going to do with the baby? It would have to be boarded out! Rousseau had done that. It was true, he was a fool, but on this particular point he was right.

She was full of fads and fancies. The forester had to resign his lessons at the girls’ school at once.