On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

After he was out he felt like turning back, for through mental strain he was in a condition of weakness that made him susceptible to impressions of the sufferings of others. But after having been alone for a few seconds and collected himself, so that his powers returned, he firmly decided to break this engagement, which threatened to usurp his whole soul-life; and in time cut off all relation with a woman, who had showed so plainly that it was only his body she desired, while she ejected his soul, which he would pour into this lifeless image of flesh. She enjoyed the sound of his voice, but the thoughts she did not receive only in such cases as when they were of direct benefit. He had often caught her looking at the lines of his figure, and she used sometimes thoughtlessly to grasp his arm whose swelling muscles formed a ridge beneath the soft cloth. He remembered now these many overtures at the bath, on yachting; on going up to the lookout, which he never visited because it upset his nerve system to stand on a bluff without sufficient support. And now this evening, when he had seen this eruption of uncontrollable passion, he saw with fear that this woman was not of the developed race, which could individualize its love to a certain one, and that he to her only played the role of the indispensable opposite sex in general.

He had strolled down to the strand for a breeze, but the night was sultry. The sea had ceased to roll, and in the northwest the heaven was a faint melon color, while out in the east over the water rested the night. The strand cliffs were still warm, and he placed himself down on one of the many arm chairs, that the cold had blasted out and the waves had polished smooth.

The events he had just lived through passed before him, and now, when his senses were cooled off, he saw them in another light. His dream had always been that he should awaken a woman's love to such a degree that she should come begging, crawling to him, saying, "I love you, deign to love me!" Such was the order of nature, that the weaker approach the stronger with a submissive mind and not vice versa, although the latter still was the case with those who were living with a trace of superstitious ideas about something supernaturally exalted in woman, notwithstanding that investigation had made it manifest that the mysterious was only confusion and the exalted only a collection of poems by the suppressed desires of male propensity.

Now she had come as he had dreamed it, the woman of the new time free from prejudice, had shown all her inward incandescent nature, and he had recoiled! Why? Perhaps tradition and conventional habits still governed him! For there was nothing bold in her effusion, no trace of the harlot offering, no immodest behavior or impudent mien! She loved him in her way. What more could he desire, and with such a love he could safely bind himself to her, for perhaps not many men could boast of having lighted such a flame. But he felt no pride over having gained her, for he felt his own value, and rather a pressing responsibility which he would get rid of; and therefore he must depart from the island.

In thought now he sat and packed his belongings. He gathered the things from the writing table and saw the green empty spread, took away the lamp that shed light in the evening and sparkled colors in the daytime, and there was a vacuum. Stripped the walls of their pictures and draperies, and the white, sad, mathematical figure came forth. He took the books from their shelves, and the dreadful solitude faced him, monotony, nudeness, poverty!

And then came the fatigue from bodily efforts, fear of traveling and its tiring effects; anxiety of the unknown where he now might be cast, deprived of his accustomed surroundings and her company. And he saw the young girl in her childish but still majestic beauty; heard her complain, saw her whitened cheeks, which another would cause to blush again as time passed.

Thus he suffered all the pangs of separation through a whole quarter of an hour, which had seemed to him as long as hours, when in the dusk of the summer night, he saw a woman's figure up on the rock outlined against the light sky. The splendid contours, that he knew so well, assumed still nobler proportions against the now pale yellow sky, which could just as well be the end of a sunset as the beginning of sunrise. She seemed to have come from the custom house cottage, and to be searching for someone. Bareheaded and with her hair still hanging over her shoulders, turning her head to spy, she seemed suddenly to discover what she sought, and with brisk steps she hurried down to the beach where the object of her search was sitting, immovable, without the power to flee, without the will to proclaim himself. And when she reached him she fell down and laid her head in his lap and talked wildly, modestly, beseechingly, as though she was annihilated with shame without being able to hold her tongue in check.

"Don't go away," sobbed she. "Despise me, but have mercy! Love me, love me or I will go where I shall never return!"

There now awoke in him the mature man's intense longing for love. And when he saw the woman at his feet, it aroused the inherent chivalry of man, who would see in its mate the mistress not the slave; and he arose, lifted her up, placed his arm round her waist and pressed her to him.

"At my side, Mary, not at my feet," said he. "You love me, for you knew that I loved you, and now you belong to me for life. And you will never leave me alive, do you hear! For our whole life long. And now I place you on my throne and give you the power over me and my belongings, my name and my property, my honor and my actions, but if you forget that it is I who gave you the power, and if you misuse or give it away, then as a tyrant I will overthrow you to such a depth that you shall never see the sunlight more! But you cannot do it, for you love me, is it not true that you love me?"