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Page 34
"How strange it is my dear Fabian, that every time you fish you sit
still there on your seat like a perfect automaton!"
With this preamble, Mistress Ulrica opened the floodgates of her
ill-humor, to which on occasions like the present especially she gave
perfect freedom.
"An automaton, my dear!"
"A post, a perfect post. You do not even turn your head; just as though
the company of your wife and child was the most wearisome thing of your
life."
But dearest Ulrique Eugenie, I must keep watch for a bite. If I turn
around--"
"You would not lose the sense of feeling if you should; but you hope, I
suppose, that persons on the shore will think you master of the boat.
Simpleton! What folly to think that!"
"Dear Ulrique Eugenie, shall I ask if you have spared my nephew your
ill-humor that you may vent it on me. It is my opinion--"
"What is your opinion, sir?"
"O nothing further than that I am sufficiently burdened with your
natural bad-temper already, without having it increased by the aid of
another."
"Burdened!--ill-humor--bad temper!--is the man mad? Do you thus speak to
me, your wedded wife, who bears your stupid indifference; your want of
tenderness and love with angelic forbearance? O, this is too much! It is
shameful! It is undeserved!"
"Now, now, Ulgenie, do not be so hasty. You know how patient I am."
"And what am I, then, to be married to such a musty husband? Your wife
is courted before your very eyes; you see nothing! you hear nothing!--I
could be unfaithful to you, and even then you would close your eyes. O,
fate! O bitter life! such a husband can drive a wife to desperation, and
from thence it is but one step to madness."
"Who is again playing the gallant to you?"
And in this "again," reposed an expression which displayed that such
scenes were not new to him. Mistress Ulrica, like other women, possessed
her weak points, one of which was that if a gentleman happened to
converse with her pleasantly, she immediately imagined that he was
desperately in love with her. But to her great sorrow, Mrs. Ulrica,
although she possessed entire control over her husband's actions, never
could make an Othello of him. Had Mr. Fabian but known her desire in
this respect, he could have deprived his wife of her sceptre, and taken
up the reins of matrimonial government himself.
A tyrannical husband would have been able to bend Mrs. Ulrica like a
reed, and to have trodden her under his feet which she would willingly
have kissed; but now Mr. Fabian kissed her feet, and therefore she
crushed him to the dust, and although she did not merit the reproach
that Desdemona received, it was, nevertheless, no fault of his. But of
what use would it have been even should she have merited it? Othello was
a fanciful creation which her husband of all men would have been least
willing to personate.
"My Fabian," she would say to herself, "my Fabian can never prove
unfaithful to me. He is too much of an idler, and thinks only of his
sofa, pipe and tobacco."
But we will resume the thread of the worthy couple's conversation.
"Who is again making love to you?" inquired Mr. Fabian again.
Mrs. Ulrica uplifted her reproachful eyes to Heaven. "He asks who! he
has not even observed it!"
"No, my dear wife, I have not."
"And yet he has this entire day--," she turned her face aside, feigning
to conceal a blush.
"To-day! Why we have had no gentlemen guests to-day, except the pastor's
assistant who came with the young ladies, and took his departure before
they did."
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