Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen [best books to read for women txt] 📗

“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.

MANDERS. Yes, that is just what we must talk about. What have you to answer?

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—

MANDERS. I know all about that, Engstrand; the ruffians threw you downstairs. You have told me of the affair already. Your infirmity is an honour to you.

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—

MANDERS. Come, no nonsense [wrings his hand]. There we are!

ENGSTRAND. And if I might humbly beg your Reverence’s pardon—

MANDERS. You? On the contrary, it is I who ought to beg your pardon—

ENGSTRAND. Lord, no, Sir!

MANDERS. Yes, assuredly. And I do it with all my heart. Forgive me for misunderstanding you. I only wish I could give you some proof of my hearty regret, and of my goodwill towards you—

ENGSTRAND. Would your Reverence do it?