The Home in the Valley Part 14

When the dutiful husband arrived at the landing, he found his tender wife, standing near the boat, clasping her child's hand in her own, and our friend was obliged to see that his jewels were safely seated in the boat. After he had rowed the skiff out as far as Ulrica thought was proper, he with many misgivings threw out his line.

"How strange it is my dear Fabian, that every time you fish you sit still there on your seat like a perfect automaton!"

With this preamble, Mistress Ulrica opened the floodgates of her ill-humor, to which on occasions like the present especially she gave perfect freedom.

"An automaton, my dear!"

"A post, a perfect post. You do not even turn your head; just as though the company of your wife and child was the most wearisome thing of your life."

But dearest Ulrique Eugenie, I must keep watch for a bite. If I turn around--"

"You would not lose the sense of feeling if you should; but you hope, I suppose, that persons on the sh.o.r.e will think you master of the boat.

Simpleton! What folly to think that!"

"Dear Ulrique Eugenie, shall I ask if you have spared my nephew your ill-humor that you may vent it on me. It is my opinion--"

"What is your opinion, sir?"

"O nothing further than that I am sufficiently burdened with your natural bad-temper already, without having it increased by the aid of another."

"Burdened!--ill-humor--bad temper!--is the man mad? Do you thus speak to me, your wedded wife, who bears your stupid indifference; your want of tenderness and love with angelic forbearance? O, this is too much! It is shameful! It is undeserved!"

"Now, now, Ulgenie, do not be so hasty. You know how patient I am."

"And what am I, then, to be married to such a musty husband? Your wife is courted before your very eyes; you see nothing! you hear nothing!--I could be unfaithful to you, and even then you would close your eyes. O, fate! O bitter life! such a husband can drive a wife to desperation, and from thence it is but one step to madness."

"Who is again playing the gallant to you?"

And in this "again," reposed an expression which displayed that such scenes were not new to him. Mistress Ulrica, like other women, possessed her weak points, one of which was that if a gentleman happened to converse with her pleasantly, she immediately imagined that he was desperately in love with her. But to her great sorrow, Mrs. Ulrica, although she possessed entire control over her husband's actions, never could make an Oth.e.l.lo of him. Had Mr. Fabian but known her desire in this respect, he could have deprived his wife of her sceptre, and taken up the reins of matrimonial government himself.

A tyrannical husband would have been able to bend Mrs. Ulrica like a reed, and to have trodden her under his feet which she would willingly have kissed; but now Mr. Fabian kissed her feet, and therefore she crushed him to the dust, and although she did not merit the reproach that Desdemona received, it was, nevertheless, no fault of his. But of what use would it have been even should she have merited it? Oth.e.l.lo was a fanciful creation which her husband of all men would have been least willing to personate.

"My Fabian," she would say to herself, "my Fabian can never prove unfaithful to me. He is too much of an idler, and thinks only of his sofa, pipe and tobacco."

But we will resume the thread of the worthy couple's conversation.

"Who is again making love to you?" inquired Mr. Fabian again.

Mrs. Ulrica uplifted her reproachful eyes to Heaven. "He asks who! he has not even observed it!"

"No, my dear wife, I have not."

"And yet he has this entire day--," she turned her face aside, feigning to conceal a blush.

"To-day! Why we have had no gentlemen guests to-day, except the pastor's a.s.sistant who came with the young ladies, and took his departure before they did."

"No gentlemen guests! As if he, the accomplished scholar, and entertaining gentleman, was n.o.body! and it was nothing that--"

"Well, what further?"

"That he, carried away by those charms, that you have so long observed with indifference, should become deeply smitten with me."

"What! Do you think he entertains a secret affection for you?"

"Affection, I will not say affection; but pa.s.sion, which word your dull brain cannot comprehend, you virtuous and modest Joseph!" the lady laughed at her own joke, and then continued, "I am not certain whether I had better tell the young man that I have discovered his hope; but I shall be forced to forbid his visiting me, which will be the same as telling the whole world how this delicate affair stands."

"Will you permit me to give you a little advice?" said Mr. Fabian.

"Why not, Fabian, you are my husband, and as such you have the right to do so."

"Then I would say, drop the subject where it stands."

"Are you not fearful! Do you not shudder at the possibility of an unpleasant event?"

"O, my dearest Ulgenie, can I for a moment doubt your strength of soul, your virtue?"

"It is true I am thus strongly armed, and I thank you, my dear Fabian, for confiding in my faithfulness."--As was usual a few cheering sun-beams followed the cooling shower.--"Forgive me, my dear husband, for harrowing your feelings; but there are times when even the strongest minded are weak."

"You are an exception, my love."

These confident words had nearly renewed the vexation within Mistress Ulrica's bosom; but suddenly she was struck with an idea that caused her to a.s.sume a still more affectionate expression of countenance.

"We will trouble ourselves no more concerning that deeply to be pitied young man. I have something else which I wish to confide to you."

"Another lover?" inquired Mr. Fabian, widening his eyes.

"I refer to a youth, for whose welfare I am deeply concerned."

"Explain yourself, my dear."

"Fabian, you must not hate him, for the young man does not understand himself, this I will answer for with my life, and perhaps he only indulges a platonic affection for one who realizes the romantic ideas which his youthful imagination had formerly brought forth."

"You do not mean Gottlieb, do you?" inquired Fabian, unsuccessfully endeavoring to conceal a laugh.

"Fabian, why do you speak so sardonically? If in spite of your watchfulness, his has, un.o.bserved by you, paid a tribute to your wife's beauty, you must remember that he did not know he was sinning. It was merely an accident that made me acquainted with the secret of his heart."

"Will you permit me to inquire what that accident was?"

"With pleasure. I had--I tell you this in confidence--I had chosen one of the pastor's daughters as his wife; I invited her to Almvik to-day, but he avoided her presence. He retired to that solitude which he seeks every evening either before or after we go out on our drive. A certain instinctive sentiment causes him to leave the house when you are absent, and more than all, when I reproached him for his faults, and pointed to the advantageous match I had in view for him, he had the boldness to say that he would retain to himself the right of disposing of his own heart."

"And do you believe, my dear, that you are the first cause of this trouble?"

"I have felt grieved at the thought that it might be so, nothing further."

"Well, well, dear Ulgenie, I will release you from this burden on your conscience."

Mr. Fabian, who always found it a difficult matter to converse long upon a serious matter, spoke the above words in a tone of voice especially lively, for his heart was rejoiced at the thought that now he had an opportunity of ridding himself of an unwelcome guest, without giving cause for any one to believe that it was his own desire to do so.