place on a Saturday. Sunday dawned, the first day of their married life. Oh! what a life it was! Wasn’t it lovely to be married! Wasn’t marriage a splendid institution! One was allowed one’s own way in everything, and parents and relations came and congratulated one into the bargain.
At nine o’clock in the morning their bedroom was still dark. He wouldn’t open the shutters to let in daylight, but re-lighted the red lamp which threw its bewitching light on the blue eiderdown, the white sheets, a little crumpled now, and the Venus made of plaster of Paris, who stood there rosy-red and without shame. And the red light also fell on his little wife who nestled in her pillows with a look of contrition, and yet so refreshed as if she had never slept so well in all her life. There was no traffic in the street to-day for it was Sunday, and the church-bells were calling people to the morning service with exulting, eager voices, as if they wanted all the world to come to church and praise Him who had created men and women.
He whispered to his little bride to shut her eyes so that he might get up and order breakfast. She buried her head in the pillows, while he slipped on his dressing-gown and went behind the screen to dress.
A broad radiant path of sunlight lay on the sitting-room floor; he did not know whether it was spring or summer, autumn or winter; he only knew that it was Sunday!
His bachelor life was receding into the background like something ugly and dark; the sight of his little home stirred his heart with a faint recollection of the home of his childhood, and at the same time held out a glorious promise for the future.
How strong he felt! The future appeared to him like a mountain coming to meet him. He would breathe on it and the mountain would fall down at his feet like sand; he would fly away, far above gables and chimneys, holding his little wife in his arm.
He collected his clothes which were scattered all over the room; he found his white neck-tie hanging on a picture frame; it looked like a big white butterfly.
He went into the kitchen. How the new copper vessels sparkled, the new tin kettles shone! And all this belonged to him and to her! He called the maid who came out of her room in her petticoat. But he did not notice it, nor did he notice that her shoulders were bare. For him there was but one woman in all the world. He spoke to the girl as a father would to his daughter. He told her to go to the restaurant and order breakfast, at once, a first-rate breakfast. Porter and Burgundy! The manager knew his taste. She was to give him his regards.
He went out of the kitchen and knocked at the bed-room door.
“May I come in?”
There was a little startled scream.
“Oh, no, darling, wait a bit!”
He laid the breakfast table himself. When the breakfast was brought from the restaurant, he served it on her new breakfast set. He folded the dinner napkins according to all the rules of art. He wiped the wine-glasses, and finally took her bridal-bouquet and put it in a vase before her place.
When she emerged from her bed-room in her embroidered morning gown and stepped into the brilliant sunlight, she felt just a tiny bit faint; he helped her into the armchair, made her drink a little liqueur out of a liqueur glass and eat a caviare sandwich.
What fun it all was! One could please oneself when one was married. What would Mama have said if she had seen her daughter drinking liqueurs at this hour of the morning!
He waited on her as if she were still his fiancee. What a breakfast they were having on the first morning after their wedding! And nobody had a right to say a word. Everything was perfectly right and proper, one could enjoy oneself with the very best of consciences, and that was the most delightful part of it all. It was not for the first time that he was eating such a breakfast, but what a difference between then and now! He had been restless and dissatisfied then; he could not bear to think of it, now. And as he drank a glass of genuine Swedish porter after the oysters, he felt the deepest contempt for all bachelors.
“How stupid of people not to get married! Such selfishness! They ought to be taxed like dogs.”
“I’m sorry for those poor men who haven’t the means to get married,” replied his demure little wife kindly, “for I am sure, if they had the means they would all get married.”
A little pang shot through the assistant’s heart; for a moment he felt afraid, lest he had been a little too venturesome. All his happiness rested on the solution of a financial problem, and if, if.... Pooh! A glass of Burgundy! Now he would work! They should see!
“Game? With cranberries and cucumbers!” The young wife was a little startled, but it was really delicious.
“Lewis, darling,” she put a trembling little hand on his arm, “can we afford it?”
Fortunately she said “we.”
“Pooh! It doesn’t matter for once! Later on we can dine on potatoes and herrings.”
“Can you eat potatoes and herrings?”
“I should think so!”
“When you have been drinking more than is good for you, and expect a beefsteak after the herring?”
“Nonsense! Nothing of the kind! Your health, sweetheart! The game is excellent! So are these artichokes!”
“No, but you are mad, darling! Artichokes at this time of the year! What a bill you will have to pay!”
“Bill! Aren’t they good? Don’t you think that it is glorious to be alive? Oh! It’s splendid, splendid!”
At six o’clock in the afternoon a carriage drove up to the front door. The young wife would have been angry if it had not been so pleasant to loll luxuriously on the soft cushions, while they were being slowly driven to the Deer Park.
“It’s just like lying on a couch,” whispered Lewis.
She playfully hit his fingers with her sunshade. Mutual acquaintances bowed to them from the footpath. Friends waved their hands to him as if they were saying:
“Hallo! you rascal, you have come into a fortune!”
How small the passers-by looked, how smooth the street was, how pleasant their ride on springs and cushions!
Life should always be like that.
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