That was the first day. Afterwards she calmed down and showed a certain interest in her child. But she could not bear to hear it cry. Then it had to be taken away into another room at once. And she could not be persuaded to suckle the newborn child. Thus far Nature had forced her, but now at last she could say “No.” Oh what a joy to be able to say “no” at last!
When a mother is not delivered of her egoism it grows sevenfold worse.
There is something mysterious in the quick recovery of women after child-birth. In a week and a half Mrs. Laura was up again, well and flourishing, more beautiful than ever, without any trace of all the suffering that she had passed through—at least no outward traces. She made a very charming picture with her son, when she occasionally condescended to bend over his bed and pat his cheek. Herman, who had already forgiven her for not wanting to suckle their little Georg, was quite ready with his admiration and chivalrous attentions to the young mother.
And Laura accepted the homage calmly and unmoved.
Herman was still a very young man. He could not go about for ever satisfied with the sensation of being a happy father. There came a moment when he wanted to receive some of the gracious caresses that were occasionally bestowed on little Georg. He found something especially bewitching in Laura’s new fulness, in the milky whiteness of her skin, in her lazy, contented, catlike purring after the storm she had passed through. But he was far too sensitive to behave roughly. And there was something in that purring that made him a little shy and timid. He went about with a new and hesitating love as if he were the fiancé of his own wife. He seized every opportunity to pay her little attentions and to make her little presents which she graciously deigned to accept. Soon, Herman thought, I shall be a happy man again. But Laura smiled and shrugged her shoulders. She was playing with her tall fiancé. She gave him her little finger. But when he suddenly wanted the whole hand she shook her head and said “no,” a pitiless purring little “no.”
Herman reproached himself. “I have not behaved properly,” he thought. “I have been too rough and hasty.” And then once more he played the chivalrous fiancé for a while, and tried to get her out in the yacht as he did last summer, but no! the lake amused her no longer. Then he heaped amusements, jewels, and pretty clothes upon her. She developed a studied coquetry and opened out boldly in the sunshine.
Now it was their wedding day. Herman waited on her with an enormous bunch of red roses; he appeared at dinner in full dress and drank her health in champagne and appealed to their sweet memories. At last he thought she would be able to celebrate the anniversary of their wedding. For a moment Laura seemed touched. But it was only the champagne. At the last moment she turned away from him, froze up, and talked of her delicate health, of an uncontrollable anxiety, and held up the child as a shield between herself and her husband. And then the key grated in the bedroom door and Herman was shut out.
Laura sat down on the edge of her bed and slowly picked Herman’s roses to pieces. She felt that she would never again belong to him. It was not only cowardly selfishness in face of the new demands of life. She was no longer afraid, because her body had already forgotten. No, she no longer wanted to belong to him. It was the air itself here at old Hermansson’s Ekbacken that did not suit her.
Laura flicked away the last rose petal. “He allowed me to lock the door,” she thought, with a shrug of her shoulders, “I am much stronger than he is.”
It is dangerous for a woman of Laura’s temperament to begin to think like that.