Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (175 page)

Olaf: I should like to, but —

Hilmar: There is some sense in a thing like that; it is always an excitement every time you fire it off.

Olaf: And then I could shoot bears, uncle. But daddy won’t let me.

Mrs. Bernick: You really mustn’t put such ideas into his head, Hilmar.

Hilmar: Hm! It’s a nice breed we are educating up now-a-days, isn’t it! We talk a great deal about manly sports, goodness knows — but we only play with the question, all the same; there is never any serious inclination for the bracing discipline that lies in facing danger manfully. Don’t stand pointing your crossbow at me, blockhead — it might go off!

Olaf: No, uncle, there is no arrow in it.

Hilmar: You don’t know that there isn’t — there may be, all the same. Take it away, I tell you! — Why on earth have you never gone over to America on one of your father’s ships? You might have seen a buffalo hunt then, or a fight with Red Indians.

Mrs. Bernick: Oh, Hilmar — !

Olaf: I should like that awfully, uncle; and then perhaps I might meet Uncle Johan and Aunt Lona.

Hilmar: Hm! — Rubbish.

Mrs. Bernick: You can go down into the garden again now, Olaf.

Olaf: Mother, may I go out into the street too?

Mrs. Bernick: Yes, but not too far, mind.

(OLAF runs down into the garden and out through the gate in the fence.)

Rorlund: You ought not to put such fancies into the child’s head, Mr. Tonnesen.

Hilmar: No, of course he is destined to be a miserable stay-at-home, like so many others.

Rorlund: But why do you not take a trip over there yourself?

Hilmar: I? With my wretched health? Of course I get no consideration on that account. But putting that out of the question, you forget that one has certain obligations to perform towards the community of which one forms a part. There must be some one here to hold aloft the banner of the Ideal. — Ugh, there he is shouting again!

The Ladies: Who is shouting?

Hilmar: I am sure I don’t know. They are raising their voices so loud in there that it gets on my nerves.

Mrs. Bernick: I expect it is my husband, Mr. Tonnesen. But you must remember he is so accustomed to addressing large audiences.

Rorlund: I should not call the others low-voiced, either.

Hilmar: Good Lord, no! — not on any question that touches their pockets. Everything here ends in these petty material considerations. Ugh!

Mrs. Bernick: Anyway, that is a better state of things than it used to be when everything ended in mere frivolity.

Mrs. Lynge: Things really used to be as bad as that here?

Mrs. Rummel: Indeed they were, Mrs. Lynge. You may think yourself lucky that you did not live here then.

Mrs. Holt: Yes, times have changed, and no mistake, when I look back to the days when I was a girl.

Mrs. Rummel: Oh, you need not look back more than fourteen or fifteen years. God forgive us, what a life we led! There used to be a Dancing Society and a Musical Society —

Mrs. Bernick: And the Dramatic Club. I remember it very well.

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, that was where your play was performed, Mr. Tonnesen.

Hilmar
(from the back of the room)
: What, what?

Rorlund: A play by Mr. Tonnesen?

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, it was long before you came here, Mr. Rorlund. And it was only performed once.

Mrs. Lynge: Was that not the play in which you told me you took the part of a young man’s sweetheart, Mrs. Rummel?

Mrs. Rummel
(glancing towards RORLUND)
: I? I really cannot remember, Mrs. Lynge. But I remember well all the riotous gaiety that used to go on.

Mrs. Holt: Yes, there were houses I could name in which two large dinner-parties were given in one week.

Mrs. Lynge: And surely I have heard that a touring theatrical company came here, too?

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, that was the worst thing of the lot.

Mrs. Holt
(uneasily)
: Ahem!

Mrs. Rummel: Did you say a theatrical company? No, I don’t remember that at all.

Mrs. Lynge: Oh yes, and I have been told they played all sorts of mad pranks. What is really the truth of those stories?

Mrs. Rummel: There is practically no truth in them, Mrs. Lynge.

Mrs. Holt: Dina, my love, will you give me that linen?

Mrs. Bernick
(at the same time)
: Dina, dear, will you go and ask Katrine to bring us our coffee?

Martha: I will go with you, Dina.
(DINA and MARTHA go out by the farther door on, the left.)

Mrs. Bernick
(getting up)
: Will you excuse me for a few minutes? I think we will have our coffee outside.
(She goes out to the verandah and sets to work to lay a table. RORLUND stands in the doorway talking to her. HILMAR sits outside, smoking.)

Mrs. Rummel
(in a low voice)
: My goodness, Mrs. Lynge, how you frightened me!

Mrs. Lynge: I?

Mrs. Holt: Yes, but you know it was you that began it, Mrs. Rummel.

Mrs. Rummel: I? How can you say such a thing, Mrs. Holt? Not a syllable passed my lips!

Mrs. Lynge: But what does it all mean?

Mrs. Rummel: What made you begin to talk about — ? Think — did you not see that Dina was in the room?

Mrs. Lynge: Dina? Good gracious, is there anything wrong with — ?

Mrs. Holt: And in this house, too! Did you not know it was Mrs. Bernick’s brother — ?

Mrs. Lynge: What about him? I know nothing about it at all; I am quite new to the place, you know.

Mrs. Rummel: Have you not heard that — ? Ahem!
(To her daughter)
Hilda, dear, you can go for a little stroll in the garden?

Mrs. Holt: You go too, Netta. And be very kind to poor Dina when she comes back.
(HILDA and NETTA go out into the garden.)

Mrs. Lynge: Well, what about Mrs. Bernick’s brother?

Mrs. Rummel: Don’t you know the dreadful scandal about him?

Mrs. Lynge: A dreadful scandal about Mr. Tonnesen?

Mrs. Rummel: Good Heavens, no. Mr. Tonnesen is her cousin, of course, Mrs. Lynge. I am speaking of her brother —

Mrs. Holt: The wicked Mr. Tonnesen —

Mrs. Rummel: His name was Johan. He ran away to America.

Mrs. Holt: Had to run away, you must understand.

Mrs. Lynge: Then it is he the scandal is about?

Mrs. Rummel: Yes; there was something — how shall I put it? — there was something of some kind between him and Dina’s mother. I remember it all as if it were yesterday. Johan Tonnesen was in old Mrs. Bernick’s office then; Karsten Bernick had just come back from Paris — he had not yet become engaged —

Mrs. Lynge: Yes, but what was the scandal?

Mrs. Rummel: Well, you must know that Moller’s company were acting in the town that winter —

Mrs. Holt: And Dorf, the actor, and his wife were in the company. All the young men in the town were infatuated with her.

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, goodness knows how they could think her pretty. Well, Dorf came home late one evening —

Mrs. Holt: Quite unexpectedly.

Mrs. Rummel: And found his — No, really it isn’t a thing one can talk about.

Mrs. Holt: After all, Mrs. Rummel, he didn’t find anything, because the door was locked on the inside.

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, that is just what I was going to say — he found the door locked. And — just think of it — the man that was in the house had to jump out of the window.

Mrs. Holt: Right down from an attic window.

Mrs. Lynge: And that was Mrs. Bernick’s brother?

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, it was he.

Mrs. Lynge: And that was why he ran away to America?

Mrs. Holt: Yes, he had to run away, you may be sure.

Mrs. Rummel: Because something was discovered afterwards that was nearly as bad; just think — he had been making free with the cash-box...

Mrs. Holt: But, you know, no one was certain of that, Mrs. Rummel; perhaps there was no truth in the rumour.

Mrs. Rummel: Well, I must say — ! Wasn’t it known all over the town? Did not old Mrs. Bernick nearly go bankrupt as the result of it? However, God forbid I should be the one to spread such reports.

Mrs. Holt: Well, anyway, Mrs. Dorf didn’t get the money, because she —

Mrs. Lynge: Yes, what happened to Dina’s parents afterwards?

Mrs. Rummel: Well, Dorf deserted both his wife and his child. But madam was impudent enough to stay here a whole year. Of course she had not the face to appear at the theatre any more, but she kept herself by taking in washing and sewing —

Mrs. Holt: And then she tried to set up a dancing school.

Mrs. Rummel: Naturally that was no good. What parents would trust their children to such a woman? But it did not last very long. The fine madam was not accustomed to work; she got something wrong with her lungs and died of it.

Mrs. Lynge: What a horrible scandal!

Mrs. Rummel: Yes, you can imagine how hard it was upon the Bernicks. It is the dark spot among the sunshine of their good fortune, as Rummel once put it. So never speak about it in this house, Mrs. Lynge.

Mrs. Holt: And for heaven’s sake never mention the stepsister, either!

Mrs. Lynge: Oh, so Mrs. Bernick has a step-sister, too?

Mrs. Rummel: Had, luckily — for the relationship between them is all over now. She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather!

Mrs. Holt: And when her step-brother, the black sheep, had gone away, and the whole town naturally was talking about him — what do you think she did? She went out to America to him!

Mr. Rummel: Yes, but remember the scandal she caused before she went, Mrs. Holt.

Mrs. Holt: Hush, don’t speak of it.

Mrs. Lynge: My goodness, did she create a scandal too?

Mrs. Rummel: I think you ought to hear it, Mrs. Lynge. Mr. Bernick had just got engaged to Betty Tonnesen, and the two of them went arm in arm into her aunt’s room to tell her the news —

Mrs. Holt: The Tonnesens’ parents were dead, you know —

Mrs. Rummel: When, suddenly, up got Lona Hessel from her chair and gave our refined and well-bred Karsten Bernick such a box on the ear that his head swam.

Mrs. Lynge: Well, I am sure I never —

Mrs. Holt: It is absolutely true.

Mrs. Rummel: And then she packed her box and went away to America.

Mrs. Lynge: I suppose she had had her eye on him for herself.

Mrs. Rummel: Of course she had. She imagined that he and she would make a match of it when he came back from Paris.

Mrs. Holt: The idea of her thinking such a thing! Karsten Bernick — a man of the world and the pink of courtesy, a perfect gentleman, the darling of all the ladies...

Mrs. Rummel: And, with it all, such an excellent young man, Mrs. Holt — so moral.

Mrs. Lynge: But what has this Miss Hessel made of herself in America?

Mrs. Rummel: Well, you see, over that
(as my husband once put it)
has been drawn a veil which one should hesitate to lift.

Mrs. Lynge: What do you mean?