Daughter. And you tell me that I shall see him—that he wants to meet me? It’s like a fairy tale.
Lise. The fairy tale’s over now. I hear your mother. You get back —I’m going first, to face the fire.
Daughter. Something dreadful’s going to happen now, I feel it. Why can’t people agree with each other and be at peace? Oh, if only it were all over! If mamma would only be nice. I will pray to God outside there to make her soft-hearted —but I’m certain He can’t do it—I don’t know why.
Lise. He can do it, and He will, if you can only have faith, have a little faith in happiness and your own strength.
Daughter. Strength? What for? To be selfish? I can’t do it. And the enjoyment of a happiness that is bought at the cost of someone else’s unhappiness cannot be lasting.
Lise. Indeed? Now go out.
Daughter. How can you possibly believe that this will turn out all right?
Lise. Hush!
SCENE IV
Previous characters. The MOTHER.
Lise. Madam.
Mother. Miss—if you don’t mind.
Lise. Your daughter
Mother. Yes, I have a daughter, even though I’m only a “Miss,” and indeed that happens to many of us, and I’m not a bit ashamed of it. But what’s it all about?
Lise. The fact is, I’m commissioned to ask you if Miss Helen can join in an excursion which some visitors have got up.
Mother. Hasn’t Helen herself answered you?
Lise. Yes; she has very properly answered that I should address myself to you.
Mother. That wasn’t a straightforward answer. Helen, my child, do you want to join a party to which your mother isn’t invited?
Daughter. Yes, if you allow it.
Mother. If I allow it! How can I decide what a big girl like you is to do? You yourself must tell the young lady what you want; if you want to leave your mother alone in disgrace, while you gad about and have a good time; if you want people to ask after mamma, and for you to have to try and wriggle out of the answer: “She has been left out of the invitation, because and because and because.” Now say what you really want to do.
Lise. My dear lady, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I know perfectly well the view Helen takes of this business, and I also know your method of getting her to make that particular answer which happens to suit you. If you are as fond of your daughter as you say you are, you ought to wish what is best for her, even though it might be humiliating for you.
Mother. Look here, my girl; I know what your name is, and who you are, even though I haven’t had the privilege of being introduced to you, but I should really like to know what a girl of your years has got to teach a woman of mine.
Lise. Who knows? For the last six years, since my mother died, I have spent all my time in bringing up my young sisters and brothers, and I’ve found out that there are people who never learn anything from life, however old they get.
Mother. What do you mean?
Lise. I mean this. Your daughter has now got an opportunity of taking her place in- the world; of either getting recognition for her talent or of contracting an alliance with a young man in good position.
Mother. That sounds all very fine, but what do you propose to do about me?
Lise. You’re not the point, your daughter is! Can’t you think about her for a single minute without immediately thinking of yourself?
Mother. Ah, but, mind you, when I think of myself I think of my daughter at the same time, because she has learned to love her mother.
Lise. I don’t think so. She depends on you because you’ve shut her off from all the rest of the world, and she must have someone to depend on, since you’ve stolen her away from her father.
Mother. What’s that you say?
Lise. That you took the child away from her father when he refused to marry you, because you hadn’t been faithful to him. You then prevented him from seeing his child, and avenged your own misconduct on him and upon your child.
Mother. Helen, don’t you believe a single word of anything that she says —that I should live to see such a day! For a stranger to intrude into my house and insult me in the presence of my own child!
Daughter. [Comes forward.] You have no business to say anything bad about my mother.
Lise. It’s impossible to do otherwise, if I’m to say anything good about my father. Anyway I observe that the conversation is nearly over, so allow me to give you one or two pieces of advice. Get rid of the procuress who finds herself so at home here under the name of Aunt Augusta if you don’t want your daughter’s reputation to be absolutely ruined. That’s tip number one. Further, put in order all your receipts for the money which you had from my father for Helen’s education, because settlement day’s precious near. That’s tip number two. And now for an extra tip. Leave off persecuting your daughter with your company in the street and, above all, at the theater, because if you don’t she’s barred from any engagement; and then you’ll go about trying to sell her favors, just as, up to the present, you’ve been trying to buy back your lost respectability at the expense of her father.
Mother. [Sits, crushed.]
Daughter. [To LISE.] Leave this house. You find nothing sacred, not even motherhood.
Lise. A sacred motherhood, I must say!
Daughter. It seems now as though you’ve only come into this house to destroy us, and not for a single minute to put matters right.
Lise. Yes, I did! I came here to—to put right the good name of my father, who was perfectly guiltless—as guiltless as that incendiary whose house had been set on fire. I came also to put you right, you who’ve been the victim of a woman whose one and only chance of rehabilitation is by retiring to a place where she won’t be disturbed by anybody, and where she on her side won’t disturb anybody’s peace. That’s why I came. I have done my duty. Good-bye.
Mother. Miss Lise—don’t go before I’ve said one thing—you came here, apart from all the other tomfoolery, to invite Helen out to your place.
Lise. Yes. She was to meet the director of the Imperial Theater, who takes quite an interest in her.
Mother. What’s that? The director? And you’ve never mentioned a word about it. Yes—Helen may go— alone. Yes, without me!
Daughter. [Makes a gesture.]
Lise. Well, after all, it was only human nature that you should hare carried on like that. Helen, you must come, do you see?
Daughter. Yes, but now I don’t want to any more.
Mother. What are you talking about?
Daughter. No, I’m not fitted for society. I shall never feel comfortable anywhere where my mother is despised.
Mother. Stuff and nonsense! You surely ain’t going to go and cut your own throat? Now just you go and dress so as to look all right!
Daughter. No, I can’t, mother. I can’t leave you now that I know everything. I shall never have another happy hour. I can never believe in anything again.
Lise. [To MOTHER.] Now you shall reap what you have sown— if one day a man comes and makes your daughter his bride, then you’ll be alone in your old age, and then you’ll have time to be sorry for your foolishness. Good-bye. [Goes and kisses HELEN’S forehead.] Goodbye, sister.
Daughter. Good-bye.
Lise. Look me in the face and try and seem as though you had some hope in life.
Daughter. I can’t. I can’t thank you either for your good-will, for you have given me more pain than you know—you woke me with a shake when I lay in the sunshine by a woodland precipice and slept.
Lise. Give me another chance, and I’ll wake you with songs and flowers. Good night. Sleep well. [Exit.]
SCENE V
Previous characters. Later the DRESSER.
Mother. An angel of light in white garments, T suppose! No! She’s a devil, a regular devil! And you! How silly you’ve been behaving! What madness next, I wonder! Playing the sensitive when other people’s hides are so thick.
Daughter. To think of your being able to tell me all those untruth
s. Deceiving me so that I talked thus about my father during so many years.
Mother. Oh, come on! It’s no good crying over spilt milk.
Daughter. And then again, Aunt Augusta!
Mother. Stop it. Aunt Augusta is a most excellent woman, to whom you are under a great obligation.
Daughter. That’s not true either—it was my father, I’m sure, who had me educated.
Mother. Well, yes, it was, but I too have to live. You’re so petty! And you’re vindictive as well. Can’t you forget a little taradiddle like that? Hello!Augusta’s turned up already. Come along, now let us humble folks amuse ourselves as best as we can.
SCENE VI
Previous Characters. DRESSER.
Dresser. Yes, it was he right enough. You see, I’d guessed quite right.
Mother. Oh, well, don’t let’s bother about the blackguard.
Daughter. Don’t speak like that, mother; it’s not a bit true!
Dresser. What’s not true?
Daughter. Come along. We’ll play cards. I can’t pull down the wall which you’ve taken so many years to build up. Come along then. [She sits down at the card table and begins to shuffle the cards.]
Mother. Well, you’ve come to your senses at last, my gal.
[Curtain.]
PARIA
CHARACTERS
MR. X., an archaeologist
MR. Y., a traveler from America
MALMO, aged men.
SCENERY
Simple room in the country; door and windows at the back looking out on a landscape. In the middle of the floor a big dining table with books, writing materials, archaeological implements on one side; microscope, etymological cabinet, flask of spirits on the other. On the left a bookcase; otherwise the furniture of the house of a rich peasant.
MR. Y. comes in with a butterfly net and in his shirtsleeves; goes straight up to the bookcase and takes down a book, which he starts reading. The bells ring after service in the local church; the landscape and the room are Hooded with sunlight.
Now and again the hens are to be heard clucking outside. Enter MR. X. in his shirt-sleeves.
Mr. Y. gives a violent start, in turn puts the book down and takes it up—pretends to look for another book on the shelf.
Mr. X. What oppressive weather! I quite think we shall have thunder.
Mr. Y. Really, old man? Why do you think so?
Mr. X. The bells are ringing so dully—the flies are stinging, the hens are clucking, I should be out fishing, but couldn’t find a worm. Don’t you feel nervous?
Mr. Y. [Reflectively.] I? Oh no!
Mr. X. My dear man, you look the whole time as though you were expecting a regular thunderstorm.
Mr. Y. [Gives a start.] Do I?
Mr. X. Well, you’ll be leaving to-morrow with me. What’s the news? Here’s the post. [Takes up a letter from the table.] Ah! My heart beats like anything each time I open a letter—nothing but debts, debts, debts. Have you ever been in debt?
Mr. Y. [Shifting about.] No.
Mr. X. Quite so, then my dear chap, you’ve no idea what I feel like when unpaid bills come in. [He reads letter.] Rent unpaid, landlord on the warpath, wife in despair. And I who sit here up to my ears in gold. [Opens an iron-bound chest which is on the table on either side of which the two men are sitting.] Look here, I’ve got here about six thousand kronors’ worth of gold which I dug up in fourteen days! I only want these armlets here for the three hundred and fifty kronors that I actually require. And with all this I ought to do myself thundering well. I ought, of course, at once to get drawings made, and blocks cut for my book, and then get it published, and then travel. Why don’t I do it, do you think?
Mr. Y. You are afraid of being discovered.
Mr. X. Perhaps that’s it. But don’t you think that a man of my intelligence ought to be able to work it so that he’s not discovered? I just went alone—without witnesses—rummaged about there beyond the hills. Would there be anything strange in my filling my pockets a bit?
Mr. Y. Quite so, but selling would probably be particularly risky.
Mr. X. Ah! ah! I should of course melt it all down and coin good golden ducats —full weight, of course.
Mr. Y. Of course.
Mr. X. You can quite understand that, if I were running a false mint, well, there’d be no need for me to dig up my gold. [Pause.] It’s remarkable, at all events, if another person were to do this, which I can’t reconcile myself to, why I should absolve him, but I can’t absolve myself. I could make a brilliant defence of the thief, prove that gold was res nullius, or nobody’s, that it came into the earth at a time when there was no such thing as property, that it shouldn’t by right belong to anybody else except the first-comer, since the contents of the earth existed a long time before landowners made their artificial laws of real property.
Mr. Y. And you would make your case all the more plausible if, as you say, the thief did not steal from want, but as a matter of collecting mania, as a matter of pure scholarship, because of his ambition to make a discovery. Isn’t that so?
Mr. X. You mean that I shouldn’t get him off if he had stolen out of want? No, that’s just the one case for which there is no excuse. That’s pure theft.
Mr. Y. And wouldn’t you excuse that?
Mr. X. How? Excuse? I couldn’t, for there are no excuses in law. But I must confess that I should find it hard to prosecute a collector for theft, because he made an archaeological discovery in somebody else’s ground which he didn’t have in his own collection.
Mr. Y. Then vanity and ambition are to serve as an excuse where want is no excuse?
Mr. X. And all the same want should be the valid, the only excuse. But it’s like this, I can’t alter, any more than I can alter my own will not to steal in any such case.
Mr. Y. You count it then, as a great merit of yours that you can’t—hm— steal.
Mr. X. It’s an irresistible something in my character, just as the craving to steal is something irresistible in other people, and therefore it’s no virtue. I cannot do it and he cannot refrain from doing it —you quite understand, my dear fellow? I covet this gold and want to possess it. Why don’t I take it, then? I can’t. It’s simply disability, and something lacking is scarcely a merit. That’s what it is. [Beats on the chest.]
[It has rained in streams outside in the country, and now and then the room becomes dark. The darkness is that of approaching thunder.]
Mr. Y. It’s awfully stuffy. I think we shall have thunder. [Mr. Y. rises and closes the door and windows.]
Mr. X. Are you frightened of thunder?
Mr. Y. One has to be careful. [Pause.]
Mr. X. You are a queer fellow. You spring yourself on me here a fortnight ago, introduce yourself as a Swedish American on an etymological journey for a museum.
Mr. Y. Don’t bother yourself about me.
Mr. X. That’s how you always go on when I get tired of talking about myself and want to show you some little attention. That’s perhaps why you’re so sympathetic to me, because you let me speak so much about myself. We became old friends in no time, you had no angles I could knock up against, no bristles to prick me with. It wasn’t just so much that your whole person was so full of a deference which only a highly refined man could manifest, you never made any row when you came home late, never made a noise when you got up in the morning; didn’t bother about trifles; caved in when there was any chance of a squabble—in a word, you were the ideal companion. But you were much too yielding, much too negative, much too silent, for me not to think about it in the long run—and you’re as funky and nervous as they’re made. That looks as though you had a shadow knocking about somewhere. I tell you what—when I sit here in front of the mirror, and look at your back, it’s as though I saw another man altogether. [Mr. Y. turns round and looks in the looking glass.] Yes; you can’t see yourself from the back. From the front view you look like a straight man going about to face his life with his head up, but the back view—no, I don’t
want to be offensive —> but you look as though you carried some burden, as though you were flinching from some blow, and when I see the cross of your red braces on your shirt—then you look like one big brand, an export brand on a package.
Mr. Y. [Rises.] I think I shall suffocate, if the thunderstorm doesn’t break soon.
Mr. X. That’ll come in a minute, you just steady on. And then the nape of your neck. It looks as though there were another face there, but of another type than yours; you are so awfully small between the ears that I sometimes wonder what race you are. [It lightens.] That looks as though it had struck the inspector’s place.
Mr. Y. [Anxious.] The inspector’s place?
Mr. X. Yes, that’s what it looks like. But all this thunderstorm business doesn’t matter to us. Just you sit down and let’s have a chat, as you are leaving to-morrow. It’s a queer thing that you, with whom I became quite pally in almost no time, are one of those people whose faces I can’t call to mind when they aren’t there. When you’re out of doors, and I remember you, I think all the time of another friend of mine, who isn’t really like you, though at the same time there is a certain likeness.
Mr. Y. Who is it?
Mr. X. I won’t mention his name. However, I always used to feed at the same place many years ago, and I met then, over the hors d’ceuzres, a little blond man with pale, agonized eyes. He had an extraordinary power of being in the front of any crush without either pushing or being pushed; he could take a slice of bread from yards away even though he stood by the door; he always seemed happy to be with people, and when he found a friend he would follow him about with hysterical enthusiasm, embrace him and slap him on his back as though he hadn’t met a human being for years and years. If anyone trampled on him, it would be as though he begged his pardon for being in the way. During the two years I kept on seeing him I amused myself by guessing his profession and character, but I never asked him what he was, because I didn’t want to know, because my hobby would have gone bust as soon as I did. This man had the same characteristic as you—that of being nondescript. Sometimes I’d put him down as a grammar school usher, a subaltern, a chemist, a clerk of the peace, or one of the secret police, and he seemed, like you, to be made up of two heterogeneous pieces which fitted in front but not at the back.
Miss Julie and Other Plays Page 12