Thekla. Nonsense.
Gustav. Oh yes, what you’d have prayed your stars to avoid has happened: society, in the persons of two lady visitors—I didn’t commandeer their appearance because intrigue is not in my line—society, I say, has seen your pathetic reconciliation with your first husband, and the penitent way in which you crawled back into his faithful arms. Isn’t that enough?
Thekla [She goes over to him toward.the right.] Tell me—you who make such a point of being so logical and so intellectual—how does it come about that you, who make such a point of your maxim that everything which happens happens as a matter of necessity, and that all our actions are determined
Gustav. [Corrects her.] Determined up to a certain extent.
Thekla. It comes to the same thing.
Gustav. No.
Thekla. How does it come about that you, who are bound to regard me as an innocent person, inasmuch as nature and circumstances have driven me to act as I did, could regard yourself as justified in revenging yourself on me?
Gustav. Well, the same principle applies, you see—that is to say, the principle that my temperament and circumstances drove me to revenge myself. Isn’t it a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other? But do you know why you’ve got the worst of it in this struggle? [Thekla looks contemptuous.] Why you and that husband of yours managed to get downed? I’ll tell you. Because I was stronger than you, and smarter. It was you, my dear, who was a donkey—and he as well! So you see, that one isn’t necessarily bound to be quite an ass even though one doesn’t write any novels or paint any pictures. Just remember that! [He turns away from her to the left.]
Thekla. Haven’t you got a grain of feeling left?
Gustav. Not a grain—that’s why, don’t you know, I’m
so good at thinking, as you are perhaps able to see by the slight proofs which I’ve given you, and can play the practical man equally well, and I’ve just given you something of a sample of what I can do in that line. [He strides round the table and sofa on the left and turns again to her.]
Thekla. And all this simply because I wounded your vanity?
Gustav. [On her left.] Not that only, but you’ll be jolly careful in the future of wounding other people’s vanity—it’s the most sensitive part of a man.
Thekla. What a vindictive wretch! Ugh!
Gustav. What a promiscuous wretch. Ugh!
Thekla. Do you mean that’s my temperament?
Gustav. Do you mean that’s my temperament?
Thekla. [Goes over toward him to the left.] You wouldn’t like to forgive me?
Gustav. Certainly, I have forgiven you.
Thekla. You?
Gustav. Quite. Have I ever raised my hand against you two in all these years? No. But when I happened to be here I favored you two with scarce a look and the cleavage between you is already there. Did I ever reproach you, moralize, lecture? No. I joked a little with your husband and the accumulated dynamite in him just happened to go off, but I, who am defending myself like this, am the one who’s really entitled to stand here and complain. Thekla, have you nothing to reproach yourself with?
Thekla. Not the least bit—the Christians say it’s Providence that guides our actions, others call it Fate. Aren’t we quite guiltless?
Gustav. No doubt we are to a certain extent. But an infinitesimal something remains, and that contains the guilt, all the same, and the creditors turn up sooner or later! Men and women may be guiltless, but they have to render an account. Guiltless before Him in whom neither of us believes any more, responsible to themselves and to their fellow-men.
Thekla. You’ve come, then, to warn me?
Gustav. I’ve come to demand back what you stole from me, not what you had as a present. You stole my honor, and I could only win back mine by taking yours—wasn’t I right?
Thekla. [After a pause, going over to him on the right] Honor! Hm! And are you satisfied now?
Gustav. [After a pause.] I am satisfied now. [He presses the bell by the door for the WAITER.]
Thekla. [After another pause.] And now you’re going to your bride, Gustav?
Gustav. I have none—and shall never have one. I am not going home because I have no home, and shall never have one. [WAITER comes in on the left.]
SCENE VI
[Previous characters—WAITER standing back.] Gustav. Bring me the bill—I’m leaving by the twelve o’clock boat. [WAITER bows and exits left.]
SCENE VII
Thekla. Without a reconciliation?
Gustav. [On her left.] Reconciliation? You play about with so many words that they’ve quite lost their meaning. We reconcile ourselves? Perhaps we are to live in a trinity, are we? The way for you to effect a reconciliation is to put matters straight. You can’t do that alone. You have not only taken something, but you have destroyed what you took, and you can never put it back. Would you be satisfied if I were to say to you: “Forgive me because you mangled my heart with your claws; forgive me for the dishonor you brought upon me; forgive me for being seven years on end the laughing-stock of my pupils; forgive me for freeing you from the control of your parents; for releasing you from the tyranny of ignorance and superstition; for making you mistress over my house; for giving you a position and friends, I, the man who made you into a woman out of the child you were? Forgive me like I forgive you?” Anyway, I now regard my account with you as squared. You go and settle up your accounts with the other man.
Thekla. Where is he? What have you done with him? I’ve just got a suspicion—a—something dreadful!
Gustav. Done with him? Do you still love him?
Thekla. [Goes over to him toward the left.] Yes.
Gustav. And a minute ago you loved me? Is that really so?
Thekla. It is.
Gustav. Do you know what you are, then?
Thekla. You despise me?
Gustav. No, I pity you. It’s a characteristic—I don’t say a defect, but certainly a characteristic—that is very fatal, by reason of its results. Poor Thekla! I don’t know—but I almost think that I’m sorry for it, although I’m quite innocent—like you. But anyway, it’s perhaps all for the best that you’ve now got to feel what I felt then. Do you know where your husband is?
Thekla. I think I know now. [She points to the right.] He’s in your room just here. He has heard everything, seen everything, and you know they say that he who looks upon his vampire dies.
SCENE VIII
[ADOLF appears, on the right, deadly pale, a streak of blood on his left cheek, a fixed expression in his eyes, white foam on his mouth.]
Gustav. [Moves back.] No, here he is—settle with him now! See if he’ll be as generous to you as I was. Good-bye. [He turns to the left, stops after a few steps, and remains standing.]
Thekla. [Goes toward ADOLF with outstretched arms.] Adolf! [ADOLF sinks down in his chair by the table on the left. THEKLA throws herself over him and caresses him.] Adolf! My darling child, are you alive? Speak! Speak ! Forgive your wicked Thekla! Forgive me ! Forgive me! Forgive me! Little brother must answer. Does he hear? My God, he doesn’t hear me! He’s dead! Good God! O my God! Help! Help us!
Gustav. Quite true, she loves him as well—poor creature!
[Curtain]
THE STRONGER WOMAN
CHARACTERS
MRS. X., actress, married.
MISS Y., actress, unmarried.
SCENERY
A nook in a ladies’ café; two small tables, a red plush sofa and some chairs.
MRS. X. enters in winter dress, in a hat and cloak, with a light Japanese basket over her arm.
MISS Y. sits in front of an unfinished bottle of beer and reads an illustrated, paper, which she subsequently exchanges for another.
Mrs. X. How are you, my dear Millie? You look awfully lonely, at this gay time of year, sitting here all by yourself, like a poor bachelor girl.
Miss Y. [Looks up from her paper, nods and continues her reading.]
Mrs. X. It makes me really quite sorry to
look at you. All alone at a café when all the rest of us are having such a good time of it! It reminds me of how I felt when I saw a wedding party once, in a Paris restaurant, and the bride sat and read a comic paper while the bridegroom played billiards with the witnesses. If they begin like this, I said to myself, how will they go on, and how will they end? Fancy! He was playing billiards on the night of his wedding—and she was reading an illustrated paper! Oh, well, but you are not quite in the same box! [Waitress enters, puts a cup of chocolate in front of MRS. X., and exit.] I say, Millie, I’m not at all sure that you wouldn’t have done better to have kept him. If you come to think of it, I was the first to ask you to forgive him at the time. Don’t you remember? Why, you could have been married now, and have had a home! Do you remember how delighted you were at
Christmas when you stayed with your fiance’s people in the country? You were quite enthusiastic over domestic happiness and quite keen on getting away from the theater. After all, my dear Amelia, there’s nothing like home, sweet home—after the profession, of course!—and the kids. Isn’t it so? But you couldn’t understand that!
Miss Y. [Looks contemptuous.]
Mrs. X. [Drinks some spoonfuls of chocolate out of her cup, then opens the basket and looks at the Xmas presents.] There, let me show you what I’ve bought for my little chicks. [Takes up a doll.] Just look at this! That’s for Lisa. Just look, it can roll its eyes and waggle its neck. What? And here’s Maja’s cork pistol. [Loads and shoots at MISS Y.]
Miss Y. [Gives a start.]
Mrs. X. Are you frightened? Did you think I wanted to shoot you, dear? Upon my word, I’d never have thought you’d have thought that. I’d have been much less surprised if you’d wanted to shoot me, for getting in your way (I know that you can never forget anything), although I was absolutely innocent. You believed of course that I worked it to get you out of the Grand Theater, but I didn’t do that. I didn’t do it, although you think I did. But it makes no odds my saying all this, for you always think it was me…. [Takes out a pair of embroidered slippers.] These are for my hubby, with tulips on them which I embroidered myself. I can’t stand tulips, you know, but he’s awfully keen on the rrv
Miss Y. [Looks up ironically and curiously from her paper.]
Mrs. X. [Holds a slipper up in each hand.] Just look what small feet Bob has. Eh! You should just see, dear, how well he carries himself. But of course, you’ve never seen him in slippers, have you, dear?
Miss Y. [Laughs loudly.]
Mrs. X. Look, you must see. [She walks the slippers upon the table.]
Miss Y. [Laughs loudly.]
Mrs. X. Just see here. This is the way he always stamps about whenever he’s out of sorts, like this. “Eh, that damned girl will never learn how. to make coffee! Ugh! And now the confounded idiot has trimmed the lamp wrong!” The next minute there’s a draught and his feet get cold. “Oof, how cold it is, and that blighted fool can never manage to keep the fire going.” [She rubs the soles of the slippers one against the other.]
Miss Y. [Laughs out loud.]
Mrs. X. And this is how he goes on when he comes home and looks for his slippers, which Mary puts under the chest of drawers. Oh, but it’s a shame for me to sit here and give my husband away. He’s a good sort, at any rate, and that’s something, I can tell you… Yes, you should have a husband like that, Amelia; yes, you, my dear. What are you laughing at? Eh? Eh? And I’ll tell you how I know that he’s faithful! I am sure of it, for he told me so of his own accord… what are you giggling at? Why, when I went for a trip in Norway that ungrateful Frederique ran after him and tried to seduce him—can you think of anything so disgraceful! [Pause.] I’d have scratched the eyes out of the creature’s head, that I would, if she’d come playing around when I was on the scene! [Pause.] It was lucky that Bob told me of his own accord so that I didn’t get to hear of it first from a lot of sneaking scandalmongers. [Pause.] But Frederique was not the only one, you may say. I didn’t know it, but the women are absolutely crazy over my husband. They think he is awfully influential in getting engagements just because he holds an official position! It may be that you, too, have tried to run after him—I don’t trust you more than need be—anyway, I know that he doesn’t bother about you, and that you seem to have a grudge against him, and consequently against me, the whole time! [Pause; they look at each other with embarrassment.] Come round and see us tonight, dear, just to show that you don’t feel badly about us, or at any rate, about me! I don’t know why, but somehow I feel that it would be particularly ungracious of me to be unfriendly toward you of all people. It may be because I cut you out. [Speaking more slowly.] Or—or—I can’t tell the reason.
Miss Y. [Stares at MRS. X. curiously.]
Mrs. X. [Reflectively.] But everything went wrong, when you came to our house, because I saw that my husband couldn’t stand you—and I felt quite uncomfortable as though there was a hitch somewhere, and I did all I could to make him show himself friendly toward you, but without success—until you went and got engaged and then a keen friendship sprang up, so that it seemed for a moment as though you had only first dared to show your true feelings when you were in safety—and then it went on!… I didn’t get jealous—strangely enough— and I remember the christening when you stood godmother and I made him kiss you. Yes, I did that, and you got so embarrassed—I mean I didn’t notice it at the time—I haven’t thought of it since then either, I haven’t thought of it from then till now. [Gets up sharply.] Why don’t you say something? You haven’t said a word the whole time, but have just let me sit and talk; you have sat there with those eyes of yours and picked up all my thoughts—thoughts!—hallucinations perhaps—and worked them into your chain link by link. Ah, let me see. Why did you break off your engagement, and why, from that day to this, have you never come any more to our house? Why won’t you come in in the evening?
Miss Y. [Seems as though she were about to speak.]
Mrs. X. Stop! You needn’t say it! I quite understand now. It was because and because and because. Yes, it all fits in! That’s what it is. Ugh, I won’t sit at the same table with you. [Moves her things to another table,] That was why I had to embroider tulips on his slippers though I couldn’t stand them; that was why. [Throws the slippers on the floor.] That was why I had to spend the summer at Lake Malarn, because you couldn’t stand sea air; that was why my boy had to be called Eskil, because that was your father’s name; that was why I had to wear your colors, read your authors, eat your favorite dishes, drink your drinks—chocolate, for instance; that was why. O my God! it is ghastly to think of, ghastly; everything I got came from you to me, even your passions! Your soul crept into mine like a worm into an apple, ate and ate—burrowed and burrowed, till there was nothing left but the rotten core. I wanted to avoid you, but I could not; you lay there like a serpent with your black eyes of fascination—I knew that you would succeed at last in dragging me down; I was lying in a swamp with my feet tied, and the more violently I struggled with my hands the deeper did I work down, down to the bottom, while you lay there like a giant crab, and gripped me in your claws; and now here I am at the bottom! Oh, how I hate you, hate you, hate you! But you, you just sit there and say nothing, quiet, indifferent—indifferent. It is all the same to you if it is the beginning or the end of the month, Christmas or New Year, if the rest of the world is happy or unhappy, you can neither hate nor love; you sit as stolidly as a stork over a rat-trap. But you couldn’t capture your prey, mind you, you couldn’t pursue it; you could only wait for it. Here you sit in your lair—this nook, you know, has been called the Rat Trap— and you read your papers to see if somebody’s having a bad time of it, if somebody’s had a misfortune, if somebody’s been sacked from the theater; here you sit and survey your victims, reckon out your chances like a pilot his shipwrecks, take your toll.
My poor Amelia, do you know, I feel quite sorry for you, because I know that you are wretched, wretched, like a wounded creature, and malicious because you are wounded. I cannot be
angry with you, although I should like to be, because you are the weaker—why, as to that little affair with Bob, I am not bothering about that— what did it really matter to me? Supposing it was you or somebody else who taught me to eat chocolate, what does it matter? [Drinks a spoonful out of her cup.] Besides, chocolate is very wholesome, and if I did learn to dress myself in your model, well tant mieux—it only strengthens my hold upon my husband—and you were the loser by it while I was the winner. Why, I had ample grounds for coming to the conclusion that you had already lost him—but it was you still thought that I should go my way! But now you carry on as though you were sitting and repenting; but, you see, I don’t do that. One mustn’t be petty, you know.
Why should I just take what nobody else will have? Perhaps you—taking it all round—are stronger than I am at this particular moment—you never got anything out of me, but you gave me something of yourself. Oh, it’s really a case of thieving, in my case, isn’t it?—and when you woke up I had possessed myself of the very thing you missed.
How else does it come about that everything you touched became worthless and sterile? You couldn’t keep any man’s love, with those tulips and those passions of yours—but I could; you weren’t able to learn the art of my life out of your authors, but I learned it; you haven’t got any little Eskil, although your papa was called Eskil.
Else why do you sit there without a word, and brood and brood and brood? I thought it was strength, but perhaps the reason is just that you haven’t anything to say, that’s because you couldn’t think of anything to say. [Rises and takes up the slippers.] I’m going home now—and taking these tulip things with me—your tulips, my dear; you couldn’t learn anything from others—you couldn’t yield, and that’s why you crumpled up like a dried-up leaf. I didn’t do that. I must really thank you, Amelia, for the excellent training you have given me—thank you for teaching my husband how to love. And now I’m going home to love him. [Exit.]
Miss Julie and Other Plays Page 10