To avoid every suspicion of living on my wife's dowry, I suggested that it should be settled on her. In the North a man considers himself dishonoured by the acceptance of his wife's dowry, which in civilised countries forms a sort of contribution from the wife, and creates in her the illusion that her husband is not keeping her entirely. To avoid a bad start it is the custom in Germany and Denmark for the wife to furnish the house; this creates the impression on the husband that he is living in his wife's house, and in the latter that she is in her own home, maintaining her husband.
Marie had recently inherited her mother's furniture, articles without any intrinsic value, their only claim to distinction being a certain sentimental merit of old association and an air of antiquity. She proposed that she should furnish the rooms, arguing that it would be absurd to buy furniture for three rooms when she had enough for six. I willingly agreed to her proposal.
There only remained one more point, the main one, the expected baby. We were agreed on the necessity of keeping its birth a secret, and we decided to place it with a reliable nurse until such time as we could adopt it.
The wedding was fixed for the 31st of December. During the remaining two months I strained every nerve to make adequate provision for the future. For this purpose, and knowing that Marie would soon be compelled to renounce her work at the theatre, I renewed my literary efforts. I worked with such ease that at the end of the first month I was able to offer for publication a volume of short stories, which was accepted without difficulty.
Fortune favoured me; I was appointed assistant-librarian with a salary of twelve hundred crowns, and when the collections were transferred from the old building to the new one I received a bonus of six hundred crowns. This was good fortune indeed, and taken together with other favourable omens I began to think that a relentless fate had tired of persecuting me.
The first and foremost magazine in Finland offered me a post on the staff as reviewer at fifty crowns for each article. The official Swedish Journal, published by the Academy, gave me the much-coveted order to write the reviews on art for thirty-five crowns the column. Besides all this I was entrusted with the revision of the classics which were being published at that time.
All this good fortune came to me in those two months, the most fateful months of my whole life.
My short stories appeared almost immediately and were a great success. I was hailed as a master of this particular style; it was said that the book was epoch-making in the literature of Sweden, because it was the first to introduce modern realism.
It was unspeakable happiness to me to lay at the feet of my poor, adored Marie a name which, apart from the titles of a royal secretary, and assistant-librarian, was beginning to be known, with every prospect of a brilliant future.
Some day I should be able to give her a fresh start, to re-open her theatrical career, which for the moment had been interrupted by, perhaps, undeserved misfortune.