[Curtain.]
MOTHERLY LOVE
CHARACTERS
The Mother
A Dresser
The Daughter
Lise
SCENE I
[The MOTHER and the DRESSER are smoking cigars, drinking stout, and playing cards. The DAUGHTER sits by the window and looks out with intentness.]
Mother. Come along, Helen—it’s your deal.
Daughter. Oh, please let me off playing cards on a fine summer day like this. ,
Dresser. That’s right. Nice and affectionate to her mother, as usual.
Mother. Don’t sit like that on the veranda and get scorched.
Daughter. The sun isn’t a bit hot here.
Mother. Well, there’s a draught, anyway. [To the DRESSER.] Your deal, dear. Righto!
Daughter. Mayn’t I go and bathe this morning with the other girls?
Mother. Not without your mamma, you know that once for all.
Daughter. Oh, but the girls can swim, mamma, and you can’t swim at all.
Mother. That’s not the question, whether a body can swim or can’t, but you know, my child, that you mustn’t go out without your mamma.
Daughter. Do I know it? Since I’ve been able to understand the simplest thing, that’s been dinned into my ears.
Dresser. That only shows that Helen has had a most affectionate mother, who has always tried her best. Yes —yes; no doubt about it.
Mother. [Holds out her hand to the DRESSER.] Thank you for your kindly words, Augusta—whatever else I may have been—that—but I was always a tender-hearted mother. I can say that with a clear conscience.
Daughter. Then I suppose it’s no good my asking you if I can go down and have a game of tennis with the others?
Dresser. No, no, young lady. A girl shouldn’t sauce her mamma. And when she won’t oblige those who are nearest and dearest to her, by taking part in their harmless fun, it’s in a manner of speaking adding insult to injury for her to come and ask on top of it, if she can’t go and amuse herself with other people.
Daughter. Yes—yes—yes. I know all that already. I know—I know!
Mother. You’re making yourself disagreeable again. Get something proper to do, and don’t sit slacking there in that fashion. A grown-up girl like you!
Daughter. Then why do you always treat me like a child if I’m grown up?
Mother. Because you behave like one.
Daughter. You have no right to rag me—you yourself wanted me to remain like this.
Mother. Look here, Helen; for some time past I think you’ve been a bit too bloomin’ smart. Come, whom have you been talking to down here?
Daughter. With you two, among others.
Mother. You don’t mean to say you’re going to start having secrets from your own mother?
Daughter. It’s about time.
Dresser. Shame on you, you young thing, being so cheeky to your own mother!
Mother. Come, let’s do something sensible instead of jangling like this. Why not come here, and read over your part with me?
Daughter. The manager said I wasn’t to go through it with anyone, because if I did, I should only learn something wrong.
Mother. I see, so that’s the thanks one gets for trying to help you. Of course, of course! Everything that I do is always silly, I suppose.
Daughter. Why do you do it then? And why do you put the blame on to me, whenever you do anything wrong?
Dresser. Of course you want to remind your mother that she ain’t educated? Ugh, ’ow common!
Daughter. You say I want to, aunt, but it’s not the case. If mother goes and teaches me anything wrong, I’ve got to learn the whole thing over again, if I don’t want to lose my engagement. We don’t want to find ourselves stranded.
Mother. I see. You’re now letting us know that we’re living on what you earn. But do you really know what you owe Aunt Augusta here? Do you know that she looked after us when your blackguard of a father left us in the lurch?—that she took care of us and that you therefore owe her a debt which you can never pay off—in all your born days? Do you know that? [DAUGHTER is silent.] Do you know that? Answer.
Daughter. I refuse to answer.
Mother. You do—do you? You won’t answer?
Dresser. Steady on, Amelia. The people next door might hear us, and then they’d start gossiping again. So you go steady.
Mother. [To DAUGHTER.] Put on your things and come out for a walk.
Daughter. I’m not going out for a walk to-day.
Mother. This is now the third day that you’ve refused to go out for a walk with your mother. [Reflecting.] Would it be possible? Go out on to the veranda, Helen. I want to say something to Aunt Augusta. [DAUGHTER exit on to the veranda.]
SCENE II
Mother. Do you think it’s possible?
Dresser. What?
Mother. That she’s found out something?
Dresser. It ain’t possible.
Mother. It might ’appen, of course. Not that I think anybody could be so heartless as to tell it to her to her face. I had a nephew who was thirty-six years old before he found out that his father was a suicide, but Helen’s manner’s changed, and there’s something at the bottom of it. For the last eight days I’ve noticed that she couldn’t bear my being with her on the promenade. She would only go along lonely paths; when anyone met us she looked the other way; she was nervous, couldn’t manage to get a single word out. There’s something behind all this.
Dresser. Do you mean, if I follow you aright, that the society of her mother is painful to her?—the society of her own mother?
Mother. Yes.
Dresser. No, that’s really a bit too bad.
Mother. Well, I’ll tell you something which is even worse. Would you believe it, that when we came here, she didn’t introduce me to some of her friends on the steamer?
Dresser. Do you know what I think? She’s met someone or other who’s come here during the last week. Come, we’ll just toddle down to the post office and find out about the latest arrivals.
Mother. Yes, let’s do that. I say, Helen, just mind the house a minute. We’re only going down to the post for a moment.
Daughter. Yes, mamma.
Mother. [To DRESSER.] It’s just as though I’d dreamed all this before.
Dresser. Yes, dreams come true sometimes—I know that all right—but not the nice ones.
[Exeunt R.]
SCENE III
[DAUGHTER gives a nod out of the window; LISE enters. She wears a tennis costume quite white, and a white hat.]
Lise. Have they gone?
Daughter. Yes; but they’re soon coming back.
Lise. Well, what did your mother say?
Daughter. I haven’t even had the pluck to ask her. She was in such a temper.
Lise. Poor Helen! So you Can’t come with us on the excursion? And I was looking forward to it so much. If you only knew how fond I am of you. [Kisses her.]
Daughter. I you only knew, dear, what these days have meant to me since I’ve made your acquaintance and visited your house—have meant to a girl like me, who’s never mixed with decent people in her whole life. Just think what it must have been for me. Up to the present I’ve been living in a den where the air was foul, where shady, mysterious people came in and out, who spied and brawled and wrangled, where I have never heard a kind word, much less ever got a caress, and where my soul was watched like a prisoner. Oh, I’m talking like this about my mother, and it hurts me! And you will only despise me for it.
Lise. One can’t be made responsible for one’s parents.
Daughter. No; but you’ve got to pay the penalty for them. A»t any rate they say that very often one doesn’t find out before the end of one’s life the kind of people one’s own parents, with whom one’s lived all one’s life, have really been. And I’ve picked up this as well, that even if one does get to hear about it one doesn’t believe a word.
Lise. [Uneasily.] Have you heard anything?
Daughter. Yes. When I was in the Bath-house three days ago I heard through the wall what people were saying about my mother. Do you know what it was?
Lise. Don’t bother about it.
Daughter. They said my mother had been just a common creature! I wouldn’t believe it, I won’t yet believe it. But I feel that it is true; it all fits in—to make it probable—and I am ashamed—ashamed of going near her, because I think that people stare at us— that the men throw us looks. It’s too awful. But is it true? Tell me if you think that it’s true?
Lise. People tell so many lies—and I don’t know anything.
Daughter. Yes, you do know—you do know something. You won’t tell me, and I thank you for it; but I am equally miserable whether you tell me or whether you don’t—
Lise. My darling friend, knock that thought out of your head and come home to us—you’ll find you’ll get on splendidly with everyone. My father arrived early this morning. He asked after you, and wanted to see you—I ought, of course, to tell you they have written to him about you—and Cousin Gerhard as well, because I think—
Daughter. Yes, you—you have a father and I had one too, when I was still quite, quite tiny.
Lise. What became of him, then?
Daughter. Mother always says he left us because he was a bad lot.
Lise. It’s hard to find where the truth lies. But—I tell you what, if you come home to us now you’ll meet the director of the Imperial Theater, and it’s possible it might be a question of an engagement.
Daughter. What do you say?
Lise. Yes, yes—that’s it. And he takes an interest in you—I mean Gerhard—and I have made him take an interest in you, and you know quite well what trifles often decide one’s whole life; a personal interview, a good recommendation at the right moment—well, now, you can’t refuse any longer, without standing in the way of your own career.
Daughter. Oh, darling, I should think I did want to come. You know that quite well; but I don’t go out without mamma.
Lise. Why not? Can you give me any reason?
Daughter. I don’t know. She taught me to say that when I was a child. And now it’s got deeply rooted.
Lise. Has she extracted some promise from you?
Daughter. No, she didn’t have any need to do that. She just said “Say that!” and I said it.
Lise. Do you think then that you’re doing her a wrong if you leave her for an hour or two?
Daughter. I don’t think that she would miss me, because when I am at home she’s- always got some fault to find with me. But I should find it painful if I went to a house when she wasn’t allowed to come too.
Lise. Do you mean to say you’ve thought of the possibility of her visiting us?
Daughter. No—God forgive me, I never thought of it for a moment.
Lise. But supposing you were to get married?
Daughter. I shall never get married.
Lise. Has your mother taught you to say that as well?
Daughter. Yes, probably. She has always warned me of men.
Lise. Of married men as well?
Daughter. Presumably.
Lise. Look here, Helen, you should really emancipate yourself.
Daughter. Ugh! I haven’t the faintest desire to be a new woman.
Lise. No, I don’t mean that. But you must free yourself from a position of dependence which you have grown out of, and which may make you unhappy for life.
Daughter. I scarcely think I shall ever be able to. Just consider how I’ve been tied down to my mother since I was a child; that I’ve never dared to think a thought that wasn’t hers, have never wished anything but her wishes. I know that it’s a handicap; that it stands in my way, but I can’t do anything against it.
Lise. And if your mother goes to rest, one fine day, you’ll be all alone in the world.
Daughter. That’s how I shall find myself.
Lise. But you’ve got no set, no friend; and no one can live as lonely as all that. You must find some firm support. Have you never been in love?
Daughter. I don’t know. I’ve never dared to think of anything like that, and mother has never allowed young men even to look at me. Do you yourself think of such things?
Lise. Yes. If anyone’s fond of me I should like to have him.
Daughter. You’ll probably marry your cousin Gerhard.
Lise. I shall never do that—because he does not love me.
Daughter. Not love you?
Lise. No, because he’s fond of you.
Daughter. Me?
Lise. Yes—and he has commissioned me to inquire if he can call on you.
Daughter. Here? No, that’s impossible. And besides, do you think I would stand in your way? Do you think I could supplant you in his regard, you who are so pretty, so delicate. [Takes LISE’S hand in hers.] What a hand! And the wrists! I saw your foot when we were in the Bath-house together. [Falls on her knees before LISE, who has sat doun.] A foot on which there isn’t even a crooked nail, on which the toes are as round and as rosy as a baby’s hand. [Kisses LISE’S foot.] You belong to the nobility—you’re made of different stuff from what I am.
Lise. Leave off, please, and don’t talk so silly. [Gets up.] If you only knew—but…
Daughter. And I’m sure you’re as good as you’re beautiful; we always think that down below here when we look up at you above there, with your delicate chiseled features, where trouble hasn’t made any wrinkles, where envy and jealousy have not drawn their hateful lines
Lise. Look here, Helen; I really think you’re quite mad on me.
Daughter. Yes, I am that, too. I wish I were like you a bit, just as a miserable whitlow-grass is like an anemone, and that’s why I see in you my better self, something that I should like to be and never can be. You have tripped into my life during the last summer days as lightly and as delicately as an angel; now the autumn’s come: the day after to-morrow we go back to town—then we shan’t know each other any more—and we mustn’t know each other any more. You can never draw me up, dear, but I can draw you down—and I don’t want to do that! I want to have you so high, so high and so far away, that I can’t see your blemishes. And so good-bye, Lise, my first and only friend.
Lise. No, that’s enough. Helen, do you know—who I am? Well—I—am your sister.
Daughter. You What can you mean?
Lise. We have—the same father.
Daughter. And you are my sister, my little sister? But what is my father then? But of course he must be captain of a yacht, because your father is one. How silly I am! But then he married, after. Is he kind to you? He wasn’t to my mother.
Lise. You don’t know. But aren’t you awfully glad to have found a little sister— one too who isn’t so very loud?
Daughter. Oh, rather, I’m so glad that I really don’t know what to say. [Embrace.] But I really daren’t be properly glad because I don’t know what’s going to happen after all this. What will mother say, and what will it be like if we meet papa?
Lise. Just leave your mother to me. She can’t be far away now. And you keep in the background till you are wanted. And now come and give me a kiss, little ’un. [They kiss.]
Daughter. My sister. How strange the word sounds, just like the word father when one has never uttered it.
Lise. Don’t, let’s go on chattering now, but let’s stick to the point. Do you think that your mother would still refuse her permission if we were to invite you—to come and see your sister and your father?
Daughter. Without my mother? Oh, she hates your—my father so dreadfully.
Lise. But suppose she has no reason to do so? If you only knew how full the world is of concoctions and lies and mistakes and misunderstandings. My father used to tell the story of a chum he used to have when he first went to sea as a cadet. A gold watch was stolen from one of the officers’ cabins and— God knows why!— suspicion fell on the cadet. His mates avoided him, practically sent him to Coventry, and that embittered him to such an extent that
he became impossible to associate with, got mixed up in a row and had to leave. Two years afterward the thief was discovered, in the person of a boatswain; but no satisfaction could be given to the innocent boy, because people had only been suspicious of him. And the suspicion will stick to him for the rest of his life, although it was refuted, and the wretch still keeps a nickname which was given to him at the time. His life grew up like a house that’s built and based on its own bad fame, and when the false foundation is cut away the building remains standing all the same; it floated in the air like the castle in “The Arabian Nights.” You see—that’s what happens in the world. But even worse things can happen, as in the case of that instrument maker in Arboga, who got the name of being an incendiary because his house had been set fire to; or as happened to a certain Anderson, whom people called Thief Anders because he had been the victim of a celebrated burglary.
Daughter. Do you mean to say that my father hasn’t been what I always thought he was?
Lise. Yes, that’s just it.
Daughter. This is how I see him sometimes in dreams, since I lost all recollection of him—isn’t he fairly tall, with a dark beard and big blue sailor eyes?
Lise. Yes—more or less!
Daughter. And then—wait, now I remember. Do you see this watch? There’s a little compass fastened on to the chain, and on the compass at the north there’s an eye. Who gave me that?
Lise. Your father. I was there when he bought it.
Daughter. Then it’s he whom I’ve seen so often in the theater when I was playing. He always sat in the left stage box, and held his opera glasses trained on me. I never dared to tell mother because she was always so very nervous about me. And once he threw me flowers— t but mother burned them. Do you think it was he?
Lise. It was he; you can count on it that during all these years his eye has followed you like the eye of the needle on the compass.
Miss Julie and Other Plays Page 11