Three Dramas, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson [best e reader for academics txt] 📗

ingenious when you start explaining me!

The King. Well, listen to this! At the time when I was behaving so badly to you, your terror, every time I approached you, was so piteous that it was always before my eyes and rang in my ears like a cry of agony from a wounded heart. It is true! It filled me with terror, too. Do you call that weakness, to feel things so intensely that another person is influenced by your feelings against his will?

Clara. No.

The King. And then, when I found you again--the way you listened to me--

Clara (stopping him with a kiss). Don't let us talk about it now!

The King. What shall we talk about, then? It is a little too early to start yet.--Ah, I have it! We will talk about the impression you will make this evening when you come forward through the brightly lit rooms, radiant against the background of ugly calumny! That was prettily put, wasn't it? "Is _that_ she?" they will think. And then something will come into their eyes that will cheat them into thinking that pearls and gold are strewn over your hair, over your dress, over your--

Clara (putting her hand over his mouth). No, no, no! Now I am going to tell you a little story!

The King. Tell away!

Clara. When I was a child, I saw a balloon being filled one day, and there was a horrible smell from the gas. Afterwards, when I saw the gleaming balloon rising in the air, I thought to myself: "Ah, that horrid smell was something burning; they had to burn it for the balloon to be able to rise." And after that, every time I heard anything horrid said about my father, I felt as if something was burning inside me, and I thought of the balloon and imagined I could smell the smell. And then all at once I imagined I saw it rising; the horrid part was burnt, and it was able to mount aloft! I assure you that balloon was a good genius to me. And now, years afterwards, when I have been a target for calumny myself--and you for my sake--I have felt just the same thing. Every word has burned; but I have got over it in a moment, and risen high, high above it all! I never seem to breathe so pure an atmosphere as a little while after something cruel has been said of me.

The King. I shall certainly set to work and abuse you at once, if it has such delightful results! I will begin with a selection from to-day's papers: "You Aspasia! You Messalina! You Pompadour! You Phylloxera, that are eating into our whole moral vine-crop! You blue-eyed curse of the country, that are causing panics in the money-market, overthrowing ministries, and upsetting all calculations in the elections! You mischievous hobgoblin, who are pouring gall into the printers' ink and poison into the people's coffee, filling all the old ladies' heads with buzzing flies, and the King's Majesty with a million lover's follies!" Do you know that, besides all the harm you are doing to-day, you are hastening a revolution by ten years? You are! And no one can be sure whether you haven't been pursuing the same wicked courses for the last hundred years or more! All our royal and noble ancestors are turning in their graves because of you! And if our deceased queens have any noses left--

Clara (interrupting him). The Baroness! (They get up. The BARONESS comes in wearing a cloak over her court dress and carrying CLARA'S cloak over her arm.)

Baroness. I must take the liberty of disturbing you. Time is up!

The King. We have been killing it by talking nonsense.

Baroness. And that has put you in a good humour?

The King (taking his hat). In the best of humours! Here, my darling (fastens CLARA'S cloak about her shoulders), here is the last scandalous bit of concealment for you! When we take it off again, you shall stand radiant in the light of your own truth. Come! (Gives her his arm, and they go trippingly up to the back of the room. Suddenly the phantom of an emaciated figure leaning on crutches appears in their path, staring at them. His hair and beard are in wild disorder, and blood is pouring from his mouth. CLARA gives a terrified scream.)

The King. In Heaven's name, what is it?

Clara. My father!

The King. Where? (To the BARONESS.) Go and see! (The BARONESS opens the doors at the back and looks out).

Baroness. I can see no one.

The King. Look down the corridor!

Baroness. No--no one there, either! (CLARA has sunk lifelessly into the KING'S arms. After one or two spasmodic twitchings of her hands, her arms slip away from him and her head falls back.)

The King. Help, help!

The Baroness (rushing to him with a shriek). Clara!

Curtain.


ACT IV


(SCENE.--A room in GRAN's house; the same as in Act I, Scene II. GRAN is standing at his desk on the right. FLINK comes in carrying a pistol-case, which he puts down upon the table.)

Gran. You?

Flink. As you see. (Walks up and down for a little without speaking.)

Gran. I haven't seen you since the day the King was here.

Flink. No.--Have you taken your holidays?

Gran. Yes; but, anyway, I am likely to have perpetual holidays now! The elections are going against us.

Flink (walking about). So I hear. The clerical party and the reactionaries are winning.

Gran. That would not have been so, but for her unhappy death--. (Breaks off, and sighs.)

Flink. A judgment from heaven--that is what the parsons say, and the women, and the reactionaries--

Gran.--and the landlords. And they really believe it.

Flink (stopping). Well, don't you believe it?

Gran (after a pause). At all events I interpret it differently from--

Flink.--from the parson? Naturally. But can any one doubt the fact that it was the finger of fate?

Gran. Then fate assumed her father's shape?

Flink. Whether her father appeared to her at the moment of his death or not (shrugs his shoulders) is a matter in which I am not interested. I don't believe in such things. But that she was suffering pangs of conscience, I do believe. I believe it may have brought painful visions before her eyes.

Gran. I knew her pretty well, and I will answer for it she had no guilty conscience. She was approaching her task with enthusiasm. Any one that knew her will tell you the same. With her the King was first and foremost.

Flink. What did she die of, then? Of enthusiasm?

Gran. Of being overwrought by the force of her emotions. Her task was too great for her. The time was not ripe for it. (Sadly.) Our experiment was bound to fail.

Flink. You condemn it when you say that!--But with her last breath she called out: "My father!" And, just at that moment, he died, fifty miles away from her. Either she _saw_ him, or she _imagined_ she saw him, standing before her. But his bloodstained, maltreated, crippled form standing in the way of her criminal advance towards the throne--is that not a symbol of maltreated humanity revolting against monarchy at the very moment when monarchy wishes to atone! Its guilt through thousands of years is too black. Fate is inflexible.

Gran. But with what result? Are we rid of monarchy yet?

Flink. We are rid of that treacherous attempt to reconcile it with modern conditions. Thank God it emerges, hand in glove with the parsons and reactionaries, none the worse for its temporary eclipse.

Gran. So everything is all right, I suppose?

Flink. For the moment--yes. But there used to exist here a strong republican party, which enjoyed universal respect, and was making extraordinary progress. Where is it now?

Gran. I knew that was why you came.

Flink. I have come to call you to account.

Gran. If I had been in your place I would not have acted so, towards a defeated and wounded friend.

Flink. The republican party has often been defeated--but never despised till now. Who is to blame for that?

Gran. None of us ever think we deserve contempt.

Flink. A traitor always deserves it.

Gran. It is but a step from the present state of things to a republic; and we shall have to take that step in the end.

Flink. But at least we can do so without treachery.

Gran. I honestly believe that what we did was right. It may have miscarried the first time, and may miscarry a second and a third; but it is the only possible solution.

Flink. You pronounced your doom in those words.

Gran (more attentively). What do you mean by that?

Flink. We must make sure that such an attempt will not be made again.

Gran. So that is it.--I begin to understand you now.

Flink. The republican party is broken up. For a generation it will be annihilated by contempt. But a community without a republican party must be one without ideals and without any aspirations towards truth in its political life--and in other respects as well! That is what you are responsible for.

Gran. You pay me too great a compliment.

Flink. By no means! Your reputation, your personal qualities and associations are what have seduced them.

Gran. Listen to me for a moment! You used to overrate me in the hopes you had of me. You are overrating me now in your censure. You are overrating the effects of our failure--you never seem to be able to do anything but overshoot your mark. For that reason you are a danger to your friends. You lure them on. When things go well you lure them on to excess of activity; when things go ill, you turn their despondency into despair. Your inordinate enthusiasm obscures your wits. _You_ are not called upon to sit in judgment upon any one; because you draw the pure truths that lie hidden in your soul into such a frenzied vortex of strife that you lose sight of them; and then they have so little of truth left in them that in your hands they can be answerable for crimes.

Flink. Oh, spare me your dialectics!--because any skill you have in them, _I_ taught you! You cannot excuse your own sins by running over the list of mine; that is the only answer I have to make to you! I don't stand before you as the embodiment of truth; I am no braggart. No; but simply as one who has loved you deeply and now is as deeply offended by you, I ask this question of your conscience: What have you done with the love we had for one another? Where is the sacred cause we both used to uphold? Where is our honour--our friends--our future?

Gran. I feel respect for your sorrow. Can you not feel any for mine? Or do you suppose that I am not suffering?

Flink. You cannot act as you have done without bringing unhappiness upon yourself. But there are others to be considered besides you, and we have the right to call you to account. Answer me!

Gran. And is it really you--you, my old friend--that propose to do that?

Flink. God knows I would sooner some one else did it! But none can do it so fitly as I--because no one else has loved you as I have. I expected