[MANDERS and MRS. ALVING enter from the dining-room.]
MRS. ALVING . [Still in the doorway.] Velbekomme [Note: A phrase equivalent to the German Prosit die Mahlzeit--May good digestion wait on appetite.], Mr. Manders. [Turns back towards the dining-room.] Aren't you coming too, Oswald?
OSWALD. [From within.] No, thank you. I think I shall go out a little.MRS. ALVING. Yes, do. The weather seems a little brighter now. [She shuts the dining-room door, goes to the hall door, and calls:] Regina!
REGINA. [Outside.] Yes, Mrs. Alving?
MRS. ALVING. Go down to the laundry, and help with the garlands.
REGINA. Yes, Mrs. Alving.
[MRS. ALVING assures herself that REGINA goes; then shuts the door.]
MANDERS. I suppose he cannot overhear us in there?
MRS. ALVING. Not when the door is shut. Besides, he's just going out.
MANDERS. I am still quite upset. I don't know how I could swallow a morsel of dinner.
MRS. ALVING. [Controlling her nervousness, walks up and down.] Nor I. But what is to be done now?
MANDERS. Yes; what is to be done? I am really quite at a loss. I am so utterly without experience in matters of this sort.
MRS. ALVING. I feel sure that, so far, no mischief has been done.
MANDERS. No; heaven forbid! But it is an unseemly state of things, nevertheless.
MRS. ALVING. It is only an idle fancy on Oswald's part; you may be sure of that.
MANDERS . Well, as I say, I am not accustomed to affairs of the kind. But I should certainly think-
MRS. ALVING. Out of the house she must go, and that immediately. That is as clear as daylight--
MRS. ALVING. But where to? It would not be right to--
MANDERS. Where to? Home to her father, of course.
MRS. ALVING. To whom did you say?
MANDERS. To her--But then, Engstrand is not--? Good God, Mrs. Alving, it's impossible! You must be mistaken after all.
MRS. ALVING . Unfortunately there is no possibility of mistake. Johanna confessed everything to me; and Alving could not deny it. So there was nothing to be done but to get the matter hushed up.
MANDERS. No, you could do nothing else.MRS. ALVING . The girl left our service at once, and got a good sum of money to hold her tongue for the time. The rest she managed for herself when she got to town. She renewed her old acquaintance with Engstrand, no doubt let him see that she had money in her purse, and told him some tale about a foreigner who put in here with a yacht that summer. So she and Engstrand got married in hot haste. Why, you married them yourself.
MANDERS . But then how to account for--? I recollect distinctly Engstrand coming to give notice of the marriage. He was quite overwhelmed with contrition, and bitterly reproached himself for the misbehaviour he and his sweetheart had been guilty of.
MRS. ALVING. Yes; of course he had to take the blame upon himself.MANDERS. But such a piece of duplicity on his part! And towards me too! I never could have believed it of Jacob Engstrand. I shall not fail to take him seriously to task; he may be sure of that.--And then the immorality of such a connection! For money--! How much did the girl receive?
MRS. ALVING. Three hundred dollars.MANDERS. Just think of it--for a miserable three hundred dollars, to go and marry a fallen woman!
MRS. ALVING. Then what have you to say of me? I went and married a fallen man.
MANDERS. Why--good heavens!--what are you talking about! A fallen man!
MRS. ALVING. Do you think Alving was any purer when I went with him to the altar than Johanna was when Engstrand married her?
MANDERS. Well, but there is a world of difference between the two cases--
MRS. ALVING. Not so much difference after all--except in the price:-- a miserable three hundred dollars and a whole fortune.
MANDERS. How can you compare such absolutely dissimilar cases? You had taken counsel with your own heart and with your natural advisers.
MRS. ALVING. [Without looking at him.] I thought you understood where what you call my heart had strayed to at the time.
MANDERS. [Distantly.] Had I understood anything of the kind, I should not have been a daily guest in your husband's house.
MRS. ALVING. At any rate, the fact remains that with myself I took no counsel whatever.
MANDERS. Well then, with your nearest relatives--as your duty bade you--with your mother and your two aunts.
MRS. ALVING . Yes, that is true. Those three cast up the account for me. Oh, it's marvellous how clearly they made out that it would be downright madness to refuse such an offer. If mother could only see me now, and know what all that grandeur has come to!
MANDERS. Nobody can be held responsible for the result. This, at least, remains clear: your marriage was in full accordance with law and order.MRS. ALVING. [At the window.] Oh, that perpetual law and order! I often think that is what does all the mischief in this world of ours.
MANDERS. Mrs. Alving, that is a sinful way of talking.
MRS. ALVING. Well, I can't help it; I must have done with all this constraint and insincerity. I can endure it no longer. I must work my way out to freedom.
MANDERS. What do you mean by that?
MRS. ALVING . [Drumming on the window frame.] I ought never to have concealed the facts of Alving's life. But at that time I dared not do anything else-I was afraid, partly on my own account. I was such a coward.
MANDERS. A coward?
MANDERS. Such remarks might have been made with a certain show of right.
MRS. ALVING. [Looking steadily at him.] If I were what I ought to be, I should go to Oswald and say, "Listen, my boy: your father led a vicious life--"
MANDERS. Merciful heavens--!
MRS. ALVING. --and then I should tell him all I have told you--every word of it.
MANDERS. You shock me unspeakably, Mrs. Alving.
MRS. ALVING. Yes; I know that. I know that very well. I myself am shocked at the idea. [Goes away from the window.] I am such a coward.
MANDERS. You call it "cowardice" to do your plain duty? Have you forgotten that a son ought to love and honour his father and mother?
MRS. ALVING. Do not let us talk in such general terms. Let us ask: Ought Oswald to love and honour Chamberlain Alving?
MANDERS. Is there no voice in your mother's heart that forbids you to destroy your son's ideals?
MRS. ALVING. But what about the truth?
MANDERS. But what about the ideals?
MRS. ALVING. Oh--ideals, ideals! If only I were not such a coward!
MANDERS . Do not despise ideals, Mrs. Alving; they will avenge themselves cruelly. Take Oswald's case: he, unfortunately, seems to have few enough ideals as it is; but I can see that his father stands before him as an ideal.
MRS. ALVING. Yes, that is true.MANDERS. And this habit of mind you have yourself implanted and fostered by your letters.
MRS. ALVING . Yes; in my superstitious awe for duty and the proprieties, I lied to my boy, year after year. Oh, what a coward-- what a coward I have been! MANDERS. You have established a happy illusion in your son's heart, Mrs. Alving; and assuredly you ought not to undervalue it.
MRS. ALVING . H'm; who knows whether it is so happy after all--? But, at any rate, I will not have any tampering wide Regina. He shall not go and wreck the poor girl's life.
MANDERS. No; good God--that would be terrible!MRS. ALVING. If I knew he was in earnest, and that it would be for his happiness--
MANDERS. What? What then?
MRS. ALVING. But it couldn't be; for unfortunately Regina is not the right sort of woman.
MANDERS. Well, what then? What do you mean?
MRS. ALVING . If I weren't such a pitiful coward, I should say to him, "Marry her, or make what arrangement you please, only let us have nothing underhand about it."
MANDERS. Merciful heavens, would you let them marry! Anything so dreadful--! so unheard of--MRS. ALVING. Do you really mean "unheard of"? Frankly, Pastor Manders, do you suppose that throughout the country there are not plenty of married couples as closely akin as they?
MANDERS. I don't in the least understand you.MRS. ALVING. Oh yes, indeed you do.
MANDERS . Ah, you are thinking of the possibility that--Alas! yes, family life is certainly not always so pure as it ought to be. But in such a case as you point to, one can never know--at least with any certainty. Here, on the other hand--that you, a mother, can think of letting your son--
MRS. ALVING. But I cannot--I wouldn't for anything in the world; that is precisely what I am saying.MANDERS . No, because you are a "coward," as you put it. But if you were not a "coward," then--? Good God! a connection so shocking!
MRS. ALVING. So far as that goes, they say we are all sprung from connections of that sort. And who is it that arranged the world so, Pastor Manders?
MANDERS . Questions of that kind I must decline to discuss with you, Mrs. Alving; you are far from being in the right frame of mind for them. But that you dare to call your scruples "cowardly"--!
MRS. ALVING. Let me tell you what I mean. I am timid and faint-hearted because of the ghosts that hang about me, and that I can never quite shake off.MANDERS. What do you say hangs about you?
MRS. ALVING . Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though ghosts rose up before me. But I almost think we are all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
MANDERS. Aha--here we have the fruits of your reading. And pretty fruits they are, upon my word! Oh, those horrible, revolutionary, free-thinking books!MRS. ALVING. You are mistaken, my dear Pastor. It was you yourself who set me thinking; and I thank you for it with all my heart.
MANDERS. I!
MRS. ALVING . Yes--when you forced me under the yoke of what you called duty and obligation; when you lauded as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against as something loathsome. It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrines. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.
MANDERS. [Softly, with emotion.] And was that the upshot of my life's hardest battle?MRS. ALVING. Call it rather your most pitiful defeat.
MANDERS. It was my greatest victory, Helen--the victory over myself.
MRS. ALVING . It was a crime against us both. MANDERS. When you went astray, and came to me crying, "Here I am; take me!" I commanded you, saying, "Woman, go home to your lawful husband." Was that a crime?
MRS. ALVING. Yes, I think so.MANDERS. We two do not understand each other.
MRS. ALVING. Not now, at any rate.
MANDERS. Never--never in my most secret thoughts have I regarded you otherwise than as another's wife.
MRS. ALVING. Oh--indeed?
MANDERS. Helen--!
MRS. ALVING. People so easily forget their past selves.
MANDERS. I do not. I am what I always was.
MRS. ALVING . [Changing the subject.] Well well well; don't let us talk of old times any longer. You are now over head and ears in Boards and Committees, and I am fighting my battle with ghosts, both within me and without.
MANDERS . Those without I shall help you to lay. After all the terrible things I have heard from you today, I cannot in conscience permit an unprotected girl to remain in your house.
MRS. ALVING. Don't you think the best plan would be to get her provided for?--I mean, by a good marriage.MANDERS . No doubt. I think it would be desirable for her in every respect. Regina is now at the age when--Of course I don't know much about these things, but--
MRS. ALVING. Regina matured very early.MANDERS . Yes, I thought so. I have an impression that she was remarkably well developed, physically, when I prepared her for confirmation. But in the meantime, she ought to be at home, under her father's eye--Ah! but Engstrand is not--That he--that he--could so hide the truth from me! [A knock at the door into the hall.]
MRS. ALVING . Who can this be? Come in! ENGSTRAND. [In his Sunday clothes, in the doorway.] I humbly beg your pardon, but--
MANDERS. Aha! H'm--MRS. ALVING. Is that you, Engstrand?
ENGSTRAND. --there was none of the servants about, so I took the great liberty of just knocking.
MRS. ALVING. Oh, very well. Come in. Do you want to speak to me?
ENGSTRAND. [Comes in.] No, I'm obliged to you, ma'am; it was with his Reverence I wanted to have a word or two.
MANDERS. [Walking up and down the room.] Ah--indeed! You want to speak to me, do you?
ENGSTRAND. Yes, I'd like so terrible much to--
MANDERS. [Stops in front of him.] Well; may I ask what you want?
ENGSTRAND . Well, it was just this, your Reverence: we've been paid off down yonder--my grateful thanks to you, ma'am,--and now everything's finished, I've been thinking it would be but right and proper if we, that have been working so honestly together all this time--well, I was thinking we ought to end up with a little prayer-meeting to-night.
MANDERS. A prayer-meeting? Down at the Orphanage?ENGSTRAND. Oh, if your Reverence doesn't think it proper--
MANDERS. Oh yes, I do; but--h'm-
ENGSTRAND. I've been in the habit of offering up a little prayer in the evenings, myself--
MRS. ALVING. Have you?
ENGSTRAND . Yes, every now and then just a little edification, in a manner of speaking. But I'm a poor, common man, and have little enough gift, God help me!--and so I thought, as the Reverend Mr. Manders happened to be here, I'd--
MANDERS . Well, you see, Engstrand, I have a question to put to you first. Are you in the right frame of mind for such a meeting! Do you feel your conscience clear and at ease?
ENGSTRAND. Oh, God help us, your Reverence! we'd better not talk about conscience.
ENGSTRAND. Why--a man's conscience--it can be bad enough now and then.
MANDERS. Ah, you admit that. Then perhaps you will make a clean breast of it, and tell me--the real truth about Regina?
MRS. ALVING. [Quickly.] Mr. Manders!
MANDERS. [Reassuringly.] Please allow me--
ENGSTRAND. About Regina! Lord, what a turn you gave me! [Looks at MRS. ALVING.] There's nothing wrong about Regina, is there?
MANDERS. We will hope not. But I mean, what is the truth about you and Regina? You pass for her father, eh!
ENGSTRAND. [Uncertain.] Well--h'm--your Reverence knows all about me and poor Johanna.
MANDERS. Come now, no more prevarication! Your wife told Mrs. Alving the whole story before quitting her service.
ENGSTRAND. Well, then, may--! Now, did she really?
MANDERS. You see we know you now, Engstrand.
ENGSTRAND. And she swore and took her Bible oath--
MANDERS. Did she take her Bible oath?
ENGSTRAND. No; she only swore; but she did it that solemn-like.
MANDERS. And you have hidden the truth from me all these years? Hidden it from me, who have trusted you without reserve, in everything.
ENGSTRAND. Well, I can't deny it.
MANDERS . Have I deserved this of you, Engstrand? Have I not always been ready to help you in word and deed, so far as it lay in my power? Answer me. Have I not?
ENGSTRAND. It would have been a poor look-out for me many a time but for the Reverend Mr. Manders.
MANDERS . And this is how you reward me! You cause me to enter falsehoods in the Church Register, and you withhold from me, year after year, the explanations you owed alike to me and to the truth. Your conduct has been wholly inexcusable, Engstrand; and from this time forward I have done with you!
ENGSTRAND. [With a sigh.] Yes! I suppose there's no help for it.MANDERS. How can you possibly justify yourself?
ENGSTRAND . Who could ever have thought she'd have gone and made bad worse by talking about it? Will your Reverence just fancy yourself in the same trouble as poor Johanna--
MANDERS. I!ENGSTRAND . Lord bless you, I don't mean just exactly the same. But I mean, if your Reverence had anything to be ashamed of in the eyes of the world, as the saying goes. We menfolk oughtn't to judge a poor woman too hardly, your Reverence.
MANDERS. I am not doing so. It is you I am reproaching.ENGSTRAND. Might I make so bold as to ask your Reverence a bit of a question?
MANDERS. Yes, if you want to.
ENGSTRAND. Isn't it right and proper for a man to raise up the fallen?
MANDERS. Most certainly it is.
ENGSTRAND. And isn't a man bound to keep his sacred word?
MANDERS. Why, of course he is; but--
ENGSTRAND . When Johanna had got into trouble through that Englishman--or it might have been an American or a Russian, as they call them--well, you see, she came down into the town. Poor thing, she'd sent me about my business once or twice before: for she couldn't bear the sight of anything as wasn't handsome; and I'd got this damaged leg of mine. Your Reverence recollects how I ventured up into a dancing saloon, where seafaring men was carrying on with drink and devilry, as the saying goes. And then, when I was for giving them a bit of an admonition to lead a new life--
MRS. ALVING. [At the window.] H'm--
ENGSTRAND. I'm not puffed up about it, your Reverence. But what I wanted to say was, that when she cane and confessed all to me, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, I can tell your Reverence I was sore at heart to hear it.
MANDERS. Were you indeed, Engstrand? Well, go on.ENGSTRAND . So I says to her, "The American, he's sailing about on the boundless sea. And as for you, Johanna," says I, "you've committed a grievous sin, and you're a fallen creature. But Jacob Engstrand," says I, "he's got two good legs to stand upon, he has--" You see, your Reverence, I was speaking figurative-like.
MANDERS. I understand quite well. Go on.ENGSTRAND. Well, that was how I raised her up and made an honest woman of her, so as folks shouldn't get to know how as she'd gone astray with foreigners.
MANDERS. In all that you acted very well. Only I cannot approve of your stooping to take money--
ENGSTRAND. Money? I? Not a farthing!
MANDERS. [Inquiringly to MRS. ALVING.] But--
ENGSTRAND . Oh, wait a minute!--now I recollect. Johanna did have a trifle of money. But I would have nothing to do with that. "No," says I, "that's mammon; that's the wages of sin. This dirty gold-- or notes, or whatever it was--we'll just flint, that back in the American's face," says I. But he was off and away, over the stormy sea, your Reverence.
MANDERS. Was he really, my good fellow?ENGSTRAND . He was indeed, sir. So Johanna and I, we agreed that the money should go to the child's education; and so it did, and I can account for every blessed farthing of it.
MANDERS. Why, this alters the case considerably.ENGSTRAND . That's just how it stands, your Reverence. And I make so bold as to say as I've been an honest father to Regina, so far as my poor strength went; for I'm but a weak vessel, worse luck!
MANDERS. Well, well, my good fellow--
ENGSTRAND . All the same, I bear myself witness as I've brought up the child, and lived kindly with poor Johanna, and ruled over my own house, as the Scripture has it. But it couldn't never enter my head to go to your Reverence and puff myself up and boast because even the likes of me had done some good in the world. No, sir; when anything of that sort happens to Jacob Engstrand, he holds his tongue about it. It don't happen so terrible often, I daresay. And when I do come to see your Reverence, I find a mortal deal that's wicked and weak to talk about. For I said it before, and I says it again--a man's conscience isn't always as clean as it might be.
MANDERS. Give me your hand, Jacob Engstrand.ENGSTRAND. Oh, Lord! your Reverence--