Three Comedies, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson [best pdf reader for ebooks txt] 📗

say, with our host, a cabinet minister, and old Holk. It was a tremendous honour to lose one's money to grand folk like that. Because I always lose, you know.--I came home about three o'clock, I should think.--What is that you are reading?

Mrs. Riis. The Fortnightly.

Riis. Has there been anything good in it while I have been away? (Begins to hum a tune.)

Mrs. Riis. Yes--there is an article here on heredity that you must read. It has some reference to what we began to talk about.

Riis. Do you know this tune? (Goes over to the piano.) It is all the rage now. I heard it all over Germany. (Begins to play and sing, but breaks off suddenly.) I will go and fetch the music, while I think of it! (Goes into his room and comes out again with the music. Sits down and begins to play and sing again. SVAVA comes in by it, door on the left. RIIS stops when he sees her, and jumps up.) Good morning, my child! Good morning! I have hardly had a chance to say a word to you yet. At the party everyone took you away from me! (Kisses her, and comes forward with her.)

Svava. Why were you so long of coming back from abroad?

Riis. Why don't people give one some warning when they are going to get engaged?

Svava. Because people don't know anything about it themselves, till it happens! Good morning again, mother. (Kneels down beside her.)

Mrs. Riis. There is a delicious freshness about you, dear! Did you have a walk in the wood after your swim?

Svava (getting up). Yes, and just as I got home a few minutes ago Alfred passed the house and called up to me. He is coming in directly.

Riis. To tell you the truth--and one ought always to tell the truth--I had quite given up the hope of such happiness coming to our dear girl.

Svava. I know you had. I had quite given it up myself.

Riis. Until your fairy prince came?

Svava. Until my fairy prince came. And he took his time about it, too!

Riis. You had been waiting for him a long time, though--hadn't you?

Svava. Not a bit of it! I never once thought of him.

Riis. Now you are talking in riddles.

Svava. Yes, it is a riddle to understand how two people, who have seen each other from childhood without even giving each other a thought, suddenly--! Because that was really how it happened. It all dates from a certain moment--and then, all at once, he became quite another man in my eyes.

Riis. But in every one else's, I suppose, he is the same us before?

Svava. I hope so!

Riis. He is more lively than he was, at any rate--in my eyes.

Svava. Yes, I saw you laughing together last night. What was it?

Riis. We were discussing the best way of getting through the world. I gave him my three famous rules of life.

Mrs. Riis and Svava (together). Already!

Riis. They were a great success. Do you remember them, you bad girl?

Svava. Rule number one: Never make a fool of yourself.

Riis. Rule number two: Never be a burden to any one.

Svava. Rule number three: Always be in the fashion. They are not very hard to remember, because they art neither obscure nor profound.

Riis. But all the harder to put into practice! And thus is a great virtue in all rules of life.--I congratulate you on your new morning frock. Under the circumstances it is really charming.

Svava. "Under the circumstances" means, I suppose, considering that you have had no hand in it.

Riis. Yes, because I should never have chosen that trimming. However, the "under the circumstances" is not so bad. A good cut, too--yes. Aha! Just you wail till my portmanteau comes!

Svava. Some surprises for us?

Riis. Big ones!--By the way, I have something here. (Goes into his room.)

Svava. Do you know, mother, he seems to me more restless than ever.

Mrs. Riis. That is happiness, dear.

Svava. And yet father's restlessness has always something a little sad about it. He is--. (RIIS comes out of his room again.) Do you know what I heard a cabinet minister say about you yesterday?

Riis. A man of that stamp is sure to say something worth hearing.

Svava. "We all always look upon your father, Miss Riis, as our Well-dressed man par excellence."

Riis. Ah, a bien dit son excellence! But I can tell you something better than that. You are getting your father a knighthood.

Svava. I am?

Riis. Yes, who else? Of course the Government has once or twice made use of me to some small degree in connection with various commercial treaties; but now, as our great man's brother-in-law, I am going to be made a Knight of St. Olaf!

Svava. I congratulate you.

Riis. Well, when it rains on the parson it drips on the clerk, you know.

Svava. You are really most unexpectedly modest in your new position.

Riis. Am I not!--And now you shall see me as a modest showman of beautiful dresses--that is to say, of drawings of dresses--still more modest than the showman, from the latest play at the Francais.

Svava. Oh no, dad--not now!

Mrs. Riis. We won't start on that till the afternoon.

Riis. One would really think I were the only woman of the lot! However, as you please. You rule the world! Well, then, I have another proposition to make, in two parts. Part one, that we sit down!

Svava. We sit down! (She and her father sit.)

Riis. And next, that you tell your newly-returned parent exactly how it all happened. All about that "riddle," you know!

Svava. Oh, that!--You must excuse me; I cannot t you about that.

Riis. Not in all its sweet details, of course! Good heavens, who would be so barbarous as to ask such a thing in the first delicious month of an engagement! No, I of only I want you to tell us what was the primum mobile in the matter.

Svava. Oh, I understand. Yes, I will tell you that because that really means teaching you to know Alfred's true character.

Riis. For instance--how did you come to speak to him?

Svava. Well, that was those darling Kindergartens of ours--

Riis. Oho!--Your darling Kindergartens, you mean?

Svava. What, when there are over a hundred girls there--?

Riis. Never mind about that! I suppose he came to bring a donation?

Svava. Yes, he came several times with a donation--

Riis. Aha!

Svava. And one day we were talking about luxury saying that it was better to use one's time and money in our way, than to use them in luxurious living.

Riis. But how do you define luxury?

Svava. We did not discuss that at all. But I saw that he considered luxury to be immoral.

Riis. Luxury immoral!

Svava. Yes, I know that is not your opinion. But it is mine.

Riis. Your mother's, you mean, and your grand mother's.

Svava. Exactly; but mine too, if you don't object?

Riis. Not I!

Svava. I mentioned that little incident that happened to us when we were in America--do you remember? We had gone to a temperance meeting, and saw women drive up who were going to support the cause of abstinence, and yet were--well, of course we did not know their circumstances--but to judge from their appearance, with their carriages and horses, their jewellery and dresses--especially their jewellery--they must have been worth, say--

Riis. Say many thousands of dollars! No doubt about it.

Svava. There is no doubt about it. And don't you think that is really just as disgraceful debauchery, in its town way, as drink is in its?

Riis. Oh, well--!

Svava. Yes, you shrug your shoulders. Alfred did not do that. He told me of his own experiences--in great cities. It was horrible!

Riis. What was horrible?

Svava. The contrast between poverty and wealth--between the bitterest want and the most reckless luxury.

Riis. Oh--that! I thought, perhaps--. However, go on!

Svava. He did not sit looking quite indifferent and clean his nails.

Riis. I beg your pardon.

Svava. Oh, please go on, dear!--No, he prophesied a great social revolution, and spoke so fervently about it--and it was then that he told me what his ideas about wealth were. It was the greatest possible surprise to me--and a new idea to me, too, to some extent. You should have seen how handsome he looked!

Riis. Handsome, did you say?

Svava. Isn't he handsome? I think so, at all events. And so does mother, I think?

Mrs. Riis (without looking up from her book). And so does mother.

Riis. Mothers always fall in love with their daughters' young men--but they fall out again when they become their mothers-in-law!

Svava. Is that your experience?

Riis. That is my experience. So Alfred Christensen has blossomed into a beauty? Well, we must consider that settled.

Svava. He stood there so sure of himself, and looking so honest and clean--for that is an essential thing, you know.

Riis. What exactly do you mean by "clean," my dear?

Svava. I mean just what the word means.

Riis. Exactly--but I want to know what meaning attach to the word.

Svava. Well--the meaning that I hope any one would attach to it if they used the word of me.

Riis. Do you attach the same meaning to it if it is used' of a man, as you would if it were used of a girl?

Svava. Yes, of course.

Riis. And do you suppose that Christensen's son--

Svava (getting up). Father, you are insulting me!

Riis. How can the fact of his being his father's son I an insult to you?

Svava. In that respect he is not his father's son! I am not likely to make any mistake in a thing of that sort!

Mrs. Riis. I am just reading about inherited tendencies. It is Not necessary to suppose that he has inherited all his father's.

Riis. Oh, well--have it as you please! I am afraid all these superhuman theories of yours. You will never get through the world with them.

Svava. What do you mean?--Mother, what does father mean?

Mrs. Riis. I suppose he means that all men are alike. And one must allow that it is true.

Svava. You do not really mean that?

Riis. But why get so excited about it?--Come and sit down! And, besides, how can you possibly tell?

Svava. Tell? What?

Riis. Well, in each individual case--

Svava.--whether the man I see standing before me or walking past me is an unclean, disgusting beast--or a man?

Riis. Etcetera, etcetera!--You may make mistakes, my dear Svava?

Svava. No--not any more than I should make a mistake about you, father, when you begin to tease me with your horrid principles! Because, in spite of them, you are the chastest and most refined man I know.

Mrs. Riis (laying down her book). Are you going to keep that morning frock on, dear child? Won't you change your dress before Alfred comes?

Svava. No, mother, I am not going to be put off like that.--By this time I have seen so many of my girl friends giving