John Gabriel Borkman Part 28

MRS. BORKMAN.

[Shaking her head.] It is of no use. Temptations and promptings acquit no one.

BORKMAN.

They may acquit one in one's own eyes.

MRS. BORKMAN.

[With a gesture of repulsion.] Oh, let all that alone! I have thought over that black business of yours enough and to spare.

BORKMAN.

I too. During those five endless years in my cell--and elsewhere --I had time to think it over. And during the eight years up there in the gallery I have had still more ample time. I have re-tried the whole case--by myself. Time after time I have re-tried it. I have been my own accuser, my own defender, and my own judge. I have been more impartial than any one else could be--that I venture to say. I have paced up and down the gallery there, turning every one of my actions upside down and inside out. I have examined them from all sides as unsparingly, as pitilessly, as any lawyer of them all. And the final judgment I have always come to is this: the one person I have sinned against is--myself.

MRS. BORKMAN.

And what about me? What about your son?

BORKMAN.

You and he are included in what I mean when I say myself.

MRS. BORKMAN.

And what about the hundreds of others, then--the people you are said to have ruined?

BORKMAN.

[More vehemently.] I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry--I alone had ears for it.

MRS. BORKMAN.

Yes, to the branding of the name of Borkman.

BORKMAN.

If the others had had the power, do you think they would not have acted exactly as I did?

MRS. BORKMAN.

No one, no one but you would have done it!

BORKMAN.

Perhaps not. But that would have been because they had not my brains. And if they had done it, it would not have been with my aims in view. The act would have been a different act. In short, I have acquitted myself.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

[Softly and appealingly.] Oh, can you say that so confidently, Borkman?

BORKMAN.

[Nodding.] Acquitted myself on that score. But then comes the great, crushing self-accusation.

MRS. BORKMAN.

What is that?

BORKMAN.

I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world--out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality!

I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew--higher than ever before--in spite of all that lay between.

MRS. BORKMAN.

Oh, it would have been the same thing over again; take my word for that.

BORKMAN.

[Shakes his head, and looks at her with a sententious air.] It is true that nothing new happens; but what has happened does not repeat itself either. It is the eye that transforms the action.

The eye, born anew, transforms the old action. [Breaking off.]

But you do not understand this.

MRS. BORKMAN.

[Curtly.] No, I do not understand it.

BORKMAN.

Ah, that is just the curse--I have never found one single soul to understand me.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

[Looking at him.] Never, Borkman?

BORKMAN.

Except one--perhaps. Long, long ago. In the days when I did not think I needed understanding. Since then, at any rate, no one has understood me! There has been no one alive enough to my needs to be afoot and rouse me--to ring the morning bell for me--to call me up to manful work anew. And to impress upon me that I had done nothing inexpiable.

MRS. BORKMAN.

[With a scornful laugh.] So, after all, you require to have that impressed on you from without?

BORKMAN.

[With increasing indignation.] Yes, when the whole world hisses in chorus that I have sunk never to rise again, there come moments when I almost believe it myself. [Raising his head.] But then my inmost a.s.surance rises again triumphant; and that acquits me.

MRS. BORKMAN.

[Looking harshly at him.] Why have you never come and asked me for what you call understanding?

BORKMAN.

What use would it have been to come to you?

MRS. BORKMAN.

[With a gesture of repulsion.] You have never loved anything outside yourself; that is the secret of the whole matter.

BORKMAN.

[Proudly.] I have loved power.

MRS. BORKMAN.

Yes, power!

BORKMAN.

The power to create human happiness in wide, wide circles around me!

MRS. BORKMAN.

You had once the power to make me happy. Have you used it to that end?

BORKMAN.

[Without looking at her.] Some one must generally go down in a shipwreck.