Fair Haven and Foul Strand

by August Strindberg

"It may be logic, but it is not morality. But do you want to hear the continuation?"

"Wasn't it over then, with their love at any rate?"

"No, sir! not by a long way! Love does not depart so easily. Well! she believed now just as you do, that it was all over with love, and she asked the bailiff, who came in just then, to make an appeal for separation in her name to the King."

"And she wanted to leave her child?"

"No, she thought she could take it with her. Her pride was wounded to the quick, and she felt crushed under the ruins of her beautiful castle in the air."

"And her husband?"

"He was pulverised! His dream of wedded love was over, and he was ruined besides, for the rainstorm had carried away and destroyed the whole of his harvest. And when he saw that it was she whom he loved who was the cause of his misfortune he felt resentment in his heart against her, but he loved her still? when his anger had been allayed."

"Still?"

"Yes, sir, for love does not ask why. It only knows that it is so. The Knight was ruined, and left his house to look after itself while he rode about in the woods and fields. His wife, on the contrary, awoke to a life of energy and diligence and took in hand the whole management of the house; necessity made the little, tender being who never had worked, strong; she sewed clothes for herself and the children; she made payments and looked after the servants, and this last was not the easiest, for the latter had grown accustomed to regard the little spoilt lady as only a guest, but she took hold of affairs with an energetic hand and kept them in order. When money was insufficient she pawned her jewels, and by that means paid wages and cleared off debts. One day when the Knight awoke to reflection and came home anxiously to look after the condition of affairs which he regarded as hopeless, he found everything in proper order. When he made inquiries, he was told that his wife had saved everything. Then remorse and shame awoke in him and he went to ask her on his knees to forgive him for not having understood and valued her. She forgave him and declared that she had not formerly deserved to be more highly valued, since she did not then possess the qualities which she afterwards acquired. They were reconciled as friends, but she declared that her love was dead, and that she did not intend to be his wife for the future.

"Their conversation was interrupted by the bailiff, who during this time had lived in the house and helped the wife by his advice and service. Her husband felt himself put aside and his place occupied by another; jealousy raged in him, and he forbade his wife to receive a stranger in her rooms. His wife thereupon declared that she would visit the bailiff in his rooms but her husband reminded her that he had rights over her person, since she was still his wife according to the law. But she had that day received by post the decree of separation and told him that she was free and could go where she liked. Then when he saw that it was all over, he collapsed and begged her on his knees to remain. When she saw the proud Knight crawling on the ground like a slave she lost the last remnants of respect for him, and when she remembered how once in her weakness and misery, she had looked up to him as the one who could carry her in his arms over thorns and stones, she wished to fly from this spectacle. Being no more able to find in him, what he had once been to her, she simply went away."