Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) Part 21

ALVA. The white tulle expresses more the child-like in her nature.

ESCERNY. The rose tulle expresses more the female in her nature. (The electric bell rings over the door. Alva jumps up.)

ALVA. For heaven's sake, what is wrong?

ESCERNY. (Getting up too.) What's the matter? (The electric bell goes on ringing to the close of the dialogue.)

ALVA. Something's gone wrong there--

ESCERNY. How can you get so suddenly frightened?

ALVA. That must be a h.e.l.lish confusion! (He runs out. Escerny follows him. The door remains open. Faint dance-music heard. Pause. Lulu enters in a long cloak, and shuts the door to behind her. She wears a rose-colored ballet costume with flower garlands. She walks across the stage and sits down in the big arm-chair near the mirror. After a pause Alva returns.)

ALVA. You had a faint?

LULU. Please lock the door.

ALVA. At least come down to the stage.

LULU. Did you see him?

ALVA. See whom?

LULU. With his bride?

ALVA. With his-- (To Schon, who enters.) You might have spared yourself that jest!

SCHoN. What's the matter with her? (To Lulu.) How can you play the scene straight at me!

LULU. I feel as if I'd been whipped.

SCHoN. (After bolting the door.) You will dance--as sure as I've taken the responsibility for you!

LULU. Before your bride?

SCHoN. Have you a right to trouble yourself before whom? You've been engaged here. You receive your salary ...

LULU. Is that your affair?

SCHoN. You dance for anyone who buys a ticket. Whom I sit with in my box has nothing to do with your business!

ALVA. I wish you'd stayed sitting in your box! (To Lulu.) Tell me, please, what I am to do. (A knock at the door.) There is the manager.

(Calls.) Yes, in a moment! (To Lulu.) You won't compel us to break off the performance?

SCHoN. (To Lulu.) Onto the stage with you!

LULU. Let me have just a moment! I can't now. I'm utterly miserable.

ALVA. The devil take the whole theater crowd!

LULU. Put in the next number. No one will notice if I dance now or in five minutes. There's no strength in my feet.

ALVA. But you will dance then?

LULU. As well as I can.

ALVA. As badly as you like. (A knock at the door again.) I'm coming.

LULU. (When Alva is gone.) You are right to show me where my place is.

You couldn't do it better than by letting me dance the skirt-dance before your fiancee.... You do me the greatest service when you point out where I belong.

SCHoN. (Sardonically.) For you with your origin it's incomparable luck to still have the chance of entering before respectable people!

LULU. Even when my shamelessness makes them not know where to look.

SCHoN. Nonsense!--Shamelessness?--Don't make a necessity of virtue!

Your shamelessness is balanced with gold for you at every step. One cries "bravo," another "fie"--it's all the same to you! Can you wish for a more brilliant triumph than when a respectable girl can hardly be kept in the box? Has your life any other aim? As long as you still have a spark of self-respect, you are no perfect dancer. The more terribly you make people shudder, the higher you stand in your profession!

LULU. But it is absolutely indifferent to me what they think of me. I don't, in the least, want to be any better than I am. I'm content with myself.

SCHoN. (In moral indignation.) That is your true nature. I call that straightforward! A corruption!!

LULU. I wouldn't have known that I had a spark of self-respect--

SCHoN. (Suddenly distrustful.) No harlequinading--

LULU. O Lord--I know very well what I'd have become if you hadn't saved me from it.

SCHoN. Are you then, perhaps, something different to-day?

LULU. G.o.d be thanked, no!

SCHoN. That is right!

LULU. (Laughs.) And how awfully glad I am about it.

SCHoN. (Spits.) Will you dance now?

LULU. In anything, before anyone!

SCHoN. Then down to the stage!

LULU. (Begging like a child.) Just a minute more! Please! I can't stand up straight yet. They'll ring.

SCHoN. You have become what you are in spite of everything I sacrificed for your education and your welfare.

LULU. Had you overrated your enn.o.bling influence?