Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (251 page)

Rosmer
(uneasily)
. Was it anything for me?

Rebecca. No, only something about the housekeeping. You ought to go out into the open air now, John dear. You should go for a good long walk.

Rosmer
(taking up his hat)
. Yes, come along; we will go together.

Rebecca. No, dear, I can’t just now. You must go by yourself. But shake off all these gloomy thoughts — promise me that!

Rosmer. I shall never be able to shake them quite off, I am afraid.

Rebecca. Oh, but how can you let such groundless fancies take such a hold on you!

Rosmer. Unfortunately they are not so groundless as you think, dear. I have lain, thinking them over, all night. Perhaps Beata saw things truly after all.

Rebecca. In what way do you mean?

Rosmer. Saw things truly when she believed I loved you, Rebecca.

Rebecca. Truly in THAT respect?

Rosmer
(laying his hat down on the table)
. This is the question I have been wrestling with — whether we two have deluded ourselves the whole time, when we have been calling the tie between us merely friendship.

Rebecca. Do you mean, then, that the right name for it would have been — ?

Rosmer. Love. Yes, dear, that is what I mean. Even while Beata was alive, it was you that I gave all my thoughts to. It was you alone I yearned for. It was with you that I experienced peaceful, joyful, passionless happiness. When we consider it rightly, Rebecca, our life together began like the sweet, mysterious love of two children for one another — free from desire or any thought of anything more. Did you not feel it in that way too? Tell me.

Rebecca
(struggling with herself)
. Oh, I do not know what to answer.

Rosmer. And it was this life of intimacy, with one another and for one another, that we took to be friendship. No, dear — the tie between us has been a spiritual marriage — perhaps from the very first day. That is why I am guilty. I had no right to it — no right to it for Beata’s sake.

Rebecca. No right to a happy life? Do you believe that, John?

Rosmer. She looked at the relations between us through the eyes of HER love — judged them after the nature of HER love. And it was only natural. She could not have judged them otherwise than she did.

Rebecca. But how can you so accuse yourself for Beata’s delusions?

Rosmer. It was for love of me — in her own way that — she threw herself into the mill-race. That fact is certain, Rebecca. I can never get beyond that.

Rebecca. Oh, do not think of anything else but the great, splendid task that you are going to devote your life to!

Rosmer
(shaking his head)
. It can never be carried through. Not by me. Not after what I know now.

Rebecca. Why not by you?

Rosmer. Because no cause can ever triumph which has its beginnings in guilt.

Rebecca
(impetuously)
. Oh, these are nothing but prejudices you have inherited — these doubts, these fears, these scruples! You have a legend here that your dead return to haunt you in the form of white horses. This seems to me to be something of that sort.

Rosmer. Be that as it may, what difference does it make if I cannot shake it off? Believe me, Rebecca, it is as I say — any cause which is to win a lasting victory must be championed by a man who is joyous and innocent.

Rebecca. But is joy so absolutely indispensable to you, John?

Rosmer. Joy? Yes, indeed it is.

Rebecca. To you, who never laugh?

Rosmer. Yes, in spite of that. Believe me, I have a great capacity for joy.

Rebecca. Now you really must go out, dear — for a long walk — a really long one, do you hear? There is your hat, and there is your stick.

Rosmer
(taking them from her)
. Thank you. And you won’t come too?

Rebecca. No, no, I can’t come now.

Rosmer. Very well. You are none the less always with me now.
(Goes out by the entrance hall. After a moment REBECCA peeps out from behind the door which he has left open. Then she goes to the door on the right, which she opens.)

Rebecca
(in a whisper)
. Now, Mrs. Helseth. You can let him come in now.
(Crosses to the window. A moment later, KROLL comes in from the right. He bows to her silently and formally and keeps his hat in his hand.)

Kroll. Has he gone, then?

Rebecca. Yes.

Kroll. Does he generally stay out long?

Rebecca. Yes. But to-day he is in a very uncertain mood — so, if you do not want to meet him —

Kroll. Certainly not. It is you I wish to speak to — and quite alone.

Rebecca. Then we had better make the best of our time. Please sit down.
(She sits down in an easy-chair by the window. KROLL takes a chair beside her.)

Kroll. Miss West, you can scarcely have any idea how deeply pained and unhappy I am over this revolution that has taken place in John Rosmer’s ideas.

Rebecca. We were prepared for that being so — at first.

Kroll. Only at first?

Rosmer. Mr. Rosmer hoped confidently that sooner or later you would take your place beside him.

Kroll. I?

Rebecca. You and all his other friends.

Kroll. That should convince you how feeble his judgment is on any matter concerning his fellow-creatures and the affairs of real life.

Rebecca. In any case, now that he feels the absolute necessity of cutting himself free on all sides —

Kroll. Yes; but, let me tell you, that is exactly what I do not believe.

Rebecca. What do you believe, then?

Kroll. I believe it is you that are at the bottom of the whole thing.

Rebecca. Your wife put that into your head, Mr. Kroll.

Kroll. It does not matter who put it into my head. The point is this, that I feel grave doubts — exceedingly grave doubts — when I recall and think over the whole of your behaviour since you came here.

Rebecca
(looking at him)
. I have a notion that there was a time when you had an exceedingly strong BELIEF in me, dear Mr. Kroll — I might almost say, a warm belief.

Kroll
(in a subdued voice)
. I believe you could bewitch any one — if you set yourself to do it.

Rebecca. And you say I set myself to do it!

Kroll. Yes, you did. I am no longer such a simpleton as to suppose that sentiment entered into your little game at all. You simply wanted to secure yourself admission to Rosmersholm — to establish yourself here. That was what I was to help you to. I see it now.

Rebecca. Then you have completely forgotten that it was Beata that begged and entreated me to come and live here.

Kroll. Yes, because you had bewitched her too. Are you going to pretend that friendship is the name for what she came to feel towards you? It was idolatry — adoration. It degenerated into a — what shall I call, it? — a sort of desperate passion. Yes, that is just the word for it.

Rebecca. Have the goodness to remember the condition your sister was in. As far as I am concerned I do not think I can be said to be particularly emotional in any way.

Kroll. No, you certainly are not. But that makes you all the more dangerous to those whom you wish to get into your power. It comes easy to you to act with deliberation and careful calculation, just because you have a cold heart.

Rebecca. Cold? Are you so sure of that?

Kroll. I am certain of it now. Otherwise you could not have pursued your object here so unswervingly, year after year. Yes, yes — you have gained what you wanted. You have got him and everything else here into your power. But, to carry out your schemes, you have not scrupled to make him unhappy.

Rebecca. That is not true. It is not I; it is you yourself that have made him unhappy.

Kroll. I!

Rebecca. Yes, by leading him to imagine that he was responsible for the terrible end that overtook Beata.

Kroll. Did that affect him so deeply, then?

Rebecca. Of course. A man of such gentle disposition as he —

Kroll. I imagined that one of your so-called “emancipated” men would know how to overcome any scruples. But there it is! Oh, yes — as a matter of fact it turned out just as I expected. The descendant of the men who are looking at us from these walls need not think he can break loose from what has been handed down as an inviolable inheritance from generation to generation.

Rebecca
(looking thoughtfully in front of her)
. John Rosmer’s nature is deeply rooted in his ancestors. That is certainly very true.

Kroll. Yes, and you ought to have taken that into consideration, if you had had any sympathy for him. But I dare say you were incapable of that sort of consideration. Your starting-point is so very widely-removed from his, you see.

Rebecca. What do you mean by my starting-point?

Kroll. I mean the starting-point of origin — of parentage, Miss West.

Rebecca. I see. Yes, it is quite true that my origin is very humble. But nevertheless —

Kroll. I am not alluding to rank or position. I am thinking of the moral aspect of your origin.

Rebecca. Of my origin? In what respect?

Kroll. In respect of your birth generally.

Rebecca. What are you saying!

Kroll. I am only saying it because it explains the whole of your conduct.

Rebecca. I do not understand. Be so good as to tell me exactly what you mean.

Kroll. I really thought you did not need telling. Otherwise it would seem a very strange thing that you let yourself be adopted by Dr. West.

Rebecca
(getting up)
. Oh, that is it! Now I understand.

Kroll. And took his name. Your mother’s name was Gamvik.

Rebecca
(crossing the room)
. My father’s name was Gamvik, Mr. Kroll.

Kroll. Your mother’s occupation must, of course, have brought her continually into contact with the district physician.

Rebecca. You are quite right.

Kroll. And then he takes you to live with him, immediately upon your mother’s death. He treats you harshly, and yet you stay with him. You know that he will not leave you a single penny — as a matter of fact you only got a box of books — and yet you endure living with him, put up with his behaviour, and nurse him to the end.

Rebecca
(comes to the table and looks at him scornfully)
. And my doing all that makes it clear to you that there was something immoral — something criminal about my birth!

Kroll. What you did for him, I attributed to an unconscious filial instinct. And, as far as the rest of it goes, I consider that the whole of your conduct has been the outcome of your origin.

Rebecca
(hotly)
. But there is not a single word of truth in what you say! And I can prove it! Dr. West had not come to Finmark when I was born.

Kroll. Excuse me, Miss West. He went there a year before you were born. I have ascertained that.

Rebecca. You are mistaken, I tell you! You are absolutely mistaken!

Kroll. You said here, the day before yesterday, that you were twenty-nine — going on for thirty.

Rebecca. Really? Did I say that?

Kroll. Yes, you did. And from that I can calculate —

Rebecca. Stop! That will not help you to calculate. For, I may as well tell you at once, I am a year older than I give myself out to be.

Kroll
(smiling incredulously)
. Really? That is something new. How is that?