“Excuse me, but this is not quite true. You have never forged a bill; you have never shown your ankles to a syphilitic doctor of whom you wanted to borrow money against security in natura; you have never been so romantically silly as to expect your husband to give himself up for a crime which his wife had committed from ignorance, and which was not a crime because there was no plaintiff; and you have never lied to me. I have treated you every bit as honestly as Helmer treated his wife when he took her into his full confidence and allowed her to have a voice in the banking business; tolerated her interference with the appointment of an employee. We have therefore been husband and wife according to all conceptions, old and new-fashioned.”
“Yes, but I have been your housekeeper!”
“Pardon me, you are wrong. You have never had a meal in the kitchen, you have never received wages, you have never had to account for money spent. I have never scolded you because one thing or the other was not to my liking. And do you consider my work: to reckon and to brace, to ease off and call out ‘Present arms,’ count herrings and measure rum, weigh peas and examine flour, more honourable than yours: to look after the servants, cater for the house and bring up the children?”
“No, but you are paid for your work! You are your own master! You are a man!”
“My dear child, do you want me to give you wages? Do you want to be my housekeeper in real earnest? That I was born a man is an accident. I might almost say a pity, for it’s very nearly a crime to be a man now-a-days, but it isn’t my fault. The devil take him who has stirred up the two halves of humanity, one against the other! He has much to answer for. Am I the master? Don’t we both rule? Have I ever decided any important matter without asking for your advice? What? But you—you bring up the children exactly as you like! Don’t you remember that I wanted you to stop rocking them to sleep because I said it produced a sort of intoxication? But you had your own way! Another time I had mine, and then it was your turn again. There was no compromise possible, because there was no middle course to steer between rocking and not rocking. We got on very well until now. But you have thrown me over for Ottilia’s sake!”
“Ottilia! always Ottilia! Didn’t you yourself send her to me?”
“No, not her personally! But there can be no doubt that it is she who rules now.”
“You want to separate me from all I care for!”
“Is Ottilia all you care for? It almost looks like it!”
“But I can’t send her away now that I have engaged her to teach the girls pedagogics and Latin.”