Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (229 page)

MRS. SORBY
[softly to the Servant, who has come back.]
Well, did you give the old man something?

PETTERSEN.
Yes; I sent him off with a bottle of cognac.

MRS. SORBY.
Oh, you might have thought of something better than that.

PETTERSEN.
Oh no, Mrs. Sorby; cognac is what he likes best in the world.

THE FLABBY GENTLEMAN
[in the doorway with a sheet of music in his hand.]
Shall we play a duet, Mrs. Sorby?

MRS. SORBY.
Yes, suppose we do.

THE GUESTS.
Bravo, bravo!
[She goes with all the Guests through the back room, out to the right. GREGERS remains standing by the fire. WERLE is looking for Something on the writing-table, and appears to wish that GREGERS would go; as GREGERS does not move, WERLE goes towards the door.]

GREGERS.
Father, won’t you stay a moment?

WERLE
[stops.]
What is it?

GREGERS.
I must have a word with you.

WERLE.
Can it not wait till we are alone?

GREGERS.
No, it cannot; for perhaps we shall never be alone together.

WERLE
[drawing nearer.]
What do you mean by that?
[During what follows, the pianoforte is faintly heard from the distant music-room.]

GREGERS.
How has that family been allowed to go so miserably to the wall?

WERLE.
You mean the Ekdals, I suppose.

GREGERS.
Yes, I mean the Ekdals. Lieutenant Ekdal was once so closely associated with you.

WERLE.
Much too closely; I have felt that to my cost for many a year. It is thanks to him that I — yes I — have had a kind of slur cast upon my reputation.

GREGERS
[softly.]
Are you sure that he alone was to blame?

WERLE.
Who else do you suppose — ?

GREGERS.
You and he acted together in that affair of the forests —

WERLE.
But was it not Ekdal that drew the map of the tracts we had bought — that fraudulent map! It was he who felled all that timber illegally on Government ground. In fact, the whole management was in his hands. I was quite in the dark as to what Lieutenant Ekdal was doing.

GREGERS.
Lieutenant Ekdal himself seems to have been very much in the dark as to what he was doing.

WERLE.
That may be. But the fact remains that he was found guilty and I acquitted.

GREGERS.
Yes, I know that nothing was proved against you.

WERLE.
Acquittal is acquittal. Why do you rake up these old miseries that turned my hair grey before its time? Is that the sort of thing you have been brooding over up there, all these years? I can assure you, Gregers, here in the town the whole story has been forgotten long ago — so far as I am concerned.

GREGERS.
But that unhappy Ekdal family —

WERLE.
What would you have had me do for the people? When Ekdal came out of prison he was a broken-down being, past all help. There are people in the world who dive to the bottom the moment they get a couple of slugs in their body, and never come to the surface again. You may take my word for it, Gregers, I have done all I could without positively laying myself open to all sorts of suspicion and gossip —

GREGERS.
Suspicion — ? Oh, I see.

WERLE.
I have given Ekdal copying to do for the office, and I pay him far, far more for it than his work is worth —

GREGERS
[without looking at him.]
H’m; that I don’t doubt.

WERLE.
You laugh? Do you think I am not telling you the truth? Well, I certainly can’t refer you to my books, for I never enter payments of that sort.

GREGERS
[smiles coldly.]
No, there are certain payments it is best to keep no account of.

WERLE
[taken aback.]
What do you mean by that?

GREGERS
[mustering up courage.]
Have you entered what it cost you to have Hialmar Ekdal taught photography?

WERLE.
I? How “entered” it?

GREGERS.
I have learnt that it was you who paid for his training. And I have learnt, too, that it was you who enabled him to set up house so comfortably.

WERLE.
Well, and yet you talk as though I had done nothing for the Ekdals! I can assure you these people have cost me enough in all conscience.

GREGERS.
Have you entered any of these expenses in your books?

WERLE.
Why do you ask?

GREGERS.
Oh, I have my reasons. Now tell me: when you interested yourself so warmly in your old friend’s son — it was just before his marriage, was it not?

WERLE.
Why, deuce take it — after all these years, how can I — ?

GREGERS.
You wrote me a letter about that time — a business letter, of course; and in a postscript you mentioned — quite briefly — that Hialmar Ekdal had married a Miss Hansen.

WERLE.
Yes, that was quite right. That was her name.

GREGERS.
But you did not mention that this Miss Hansen was Gina Hansen — our former housekeeper.

WERLE
[with a forced laugh of derision.]
No; to tell the truth, it didn’t occur to me that you were so particularly interested in our former housekeeper.

GREGERS.
No more I was. But
[lowers his voice]
there were others in this house who were particularly interested in her.

WERLE.
What do you mean by that?
[Flaring up.]
You are not alluding to me, I hope?

GREGERS
[softly but firmly.]
Yes, I am alluding to you.

WERLE.
And you dare — ! You presume to — ! How can that ungrateful hound — that photographer fellow — how dare he go making such insinuations!

GREGERS.
Hialmar has never breathed a word about this. I don’t believe he has the faintest suspicion of such a thing.

WERLE.
Then where have you got it from? Who can have put such notions in your head?

GREGERS.
My poor unhappy mother told me; and that the very last time I saw her.

WERLE.
Your mother! I might have known as much! You and she — you always held together. It was she who turned you against me, from the first.

GREGERS.
No, it was all that she had to suffer and submit to, until she broke down and came to such a pitiful end.

WERLE.
Oh, she had nothing to suffer or submit to; not more than most people, at all events. But there’s no getting on with morbid, overstrained creatures — that I have learnt to my cost. — And you could go on nursing such a suspicion — burrowing into all sorts of old rumours and slanders against your own father! I must say, Gregers, I really think that at your age you might find something more useful to do.

GREGERS.
Yes, it is high time.

WERLE.
Then perhaps your mind would be easier than it seems to be now. What can be your object in remaining up at the works, year out and year in, drudging away like a common clerk, and not drawing a farthing more than the ordinary monthly wage? It is downright folly.

GREGERS.
Ah, if I were only sure of that.

WERLE.
I understand you well enough. You want to be independent; you won’t be beholden to me for anything. Well, now there happens to be an opportunity for you to become independent, your own master in everything.

GREGERS.
Indeed? In what way — ?

WERLE.
When I wrote you insisting on your coming to town at once — h’m —

GREGERS.
Yes, what is it you really want of me? I have been waiting all day to know.

WERLE.
I want to propose that you should enter the firm, as partner.

GREGERS.
I! Join your firm? As partner?

WERLE.
Yes. It would not involve our being constantly together. You could take over the business here in town, and I should move up to the works.

GREGERS.
You would?

WERLE.
The fact is, I am not so fit for work as I once was. I am obliged to spare my eyes, Gregers; they have begun to trouble me.

GREGERS.
They have always been weak.

WERLE.
Not as they are now. And, besides, circumstances might possibly make it desirable for me to live up there — for a time, at any rate.

GREGERS.
That is certainly quite a new idea to me.

WERLE.
Listen, Gregers: there are many things that stand between us; but we are father and son after all. We ought surely to be able to come to some sort of understanding with each other.

GREGERS.
Outwardly, you mean, of course?

WERLE.
Well, even that would be something. Think it over, Gregers. Don’t you think it ought to be possible? Eh?

GREGERS
[looking at him coldly.]
There is something behind all this.

WERLE.
How so?

GREGERS.
You want to make use of me in some way.

WERLE.
In such a close relationship as ours, the one can always be useful to the other.

GREGERS.
Yes, so people say.

WERLE.
I want very much to have you at home with me for a time. I am a lonely man, Gregers; I have always felt lonely, all my life through; but most of all now that I am getting up in years. I feel the need of some one about me —

GREGERS.
You have Mrs. Sorby.

WERLE.
Yes, I have her; and she has become, I may say, almost indispensable to me. She is lively and even-tempered; she brightens up the house; and that is a very great thing for me.

GREGERS.
Well then, you have everything just as you wish it.

WERLE.
Yes, but I am afraid it can’t last. A woman so situated may easily find herself in a false position, in the eyes of the world. For that matter it does a man no good, either.

GREGERS.
Oh, when a man gives such dinners as you give, he can risk a great deal.

WERLE.
Yes, but how about the woman, Gregers? I fear she won’t accept the situation much longer; and even if she did — even if, out of attachment to me, she were to take her chance of gossip and scandal and all that — ? Do you think, Gregers — you with your strong sense of justice —

GREGERS
[interrupts him.]
Tell me in one word: are you thinking of marrying her?

WERLE.
Suppose I were thinking of it? What then?

GREGERS.
That’s what I say: what then?

WERLE.
Should you be inflexibly opposed to it!

GREGERS.
 
— Not at all. Not by any means.

WERLE.
I was not sure whether your devotion to your mother’s memory —

GREGERS.
I am not overstrained.

WERLE.
Well, whatever you may or may not be, at all events you have lifted a great weight from my mind. I am extremely pleased that I can reckon on your concurrence in this matter.

GREGERS
[looking intently at him.]
Now I see the use you want to put me to.

WERLE.
Use to put you to? What an expression!

GREGERS.
Oh, don’t let us be nice in our choice of words — not when we are alone together, at any rate.
[With a short laugh.]
Well well. So this is what made it absolutely essential that I should come to town in person. For the sake of Mrs. Sorby, we are to get up a pretence at family life in the house — a tableau of filial affection! That will be something new indeed.

WERLE.
How dare you speak in that tone!

GREGERS.
Was there ever any family life here? Never since I can remember. But now, forsooth, your plans demand something of the sort. No doubt it will have an excellent effect when it is reported that the son has hastened home, on the wings of filial piety, to the grey-haired father’s wedding-feast. What will then remain of all the rumours as to the wrongs the poor dead mother had to submit to? Not a vestige. Her son annihilates them at one stroke.