Rosmersholm Part 20

Rebecca. Really? Did I say that?

Kroll. Yes, you did. And from that I can calculate--

Rebecca. Stop! That will not help you to calculate. For, I may as well tell you at once, I am a year older than I give myself out to be.

Kroll (smiling incredulously). Really? That is something new. How is that?

Rebecca. When I had pa.s.sed my twenty-fifth birthday, I thought I was getting altogether too old for an unmarried girl, so I resolved to tell a lie and take a year off my age.

Kroll. You--an emanc.i.p.ated woman--cherishing prejudices as to the marriageable age!

Rebecca. I know it was a silly thing to do--and ridiculous, too. But every one has some prejudice or another that they cannot get quite rid of. We are like that.

Kroll. Maybe. But my calculation may be quite correct, all the same; because Dr. West was up in Finmark for a flying visit the year before he was appointed.

Rebecca (impetuously). That is not true

Kroll. Isn't it?

Rebecca. No. My mother never mentioned it.

Kroll. Didn't she, really!

Rebecca. No, never. Nor Dr. West, either. Never a word of it.

Kroll. Might that not be because they both had good reason to jump over a as you have done yourself, Miss West? Perhaps it is a family failing.

Rebecca (walking about, wringing her hands). It is impossible. It is only something you want to make me believe. Nothing in the world will make me believe it. It cannot be true! Nothing in the world--

Kroll (getting up). But, my dear Miss West, why in Heaven's name do you take it in this way? You quite alarm me! What am I to believe and think?

Rebecca. Nothing. Neither believe nor think anything.

Kroll. Then you really must give me some explanation of your taking this matter--this possibility--so much to heart.

Rebecca (controlling herself). It is quite obvious, I should think, Mr.

Kroll. I have no desire for people here to think me an illegitimate child.

Kroll. Quite so. Well, well, let us be content with your explanation, for the present. But you see that is another point on which you have cherished a certain prejudice.

Rebecca. Yes, that is quite true.

Kroll. And it seems to me that very much the same applies to most of this "emanc.i.p.ation" of yours, as you call it. Your reading has introduced you to a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions; you have made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in various directions--researches that seem to you to upset a good many ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and una.s.sailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in your case, Miss West--a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got into your blood.

Rebecca (thoughtfully). Perhaps you are right.

Kroll. Yes, only test yourself, and you will see! And if it is true in your case, it is easy to recognise how true it must be in John Rosmer's. Of course it is madness, pure and simple. He will be running headlong to his ruin if he persists in coming openly forward and proclaiming himself an apostate! Just think of it--he, with his shy disposition! Think of HIM disowned--hounded out of the circle to which he has always belonged--exposed to the uncompromising attacks of all the best people in the place. Nothing would ever make him the man to endure that.

Rebecca. He MUST endure it! It is too late now for him to draw back.

Kroll. Not a bit too late--not by any means too late. What has happened can be hushed up--or at any rate can be explained away as a purely temporary, though regrettable, aberration. But--there is one step that it is absolutely essential he should take.

Rebecca. And that is?

Kroll. You must get him to legalise his position, Miss West.

Rebecca. The position in which he stands to me?

Kroll. Yes. You must see that you get him to do that.

Rebecca. Then you can't rid yourself of the conviction that the relations between us need "legalising," as you say?

Kroll. I do not wish to go any more precisely into the question. But I certainly have observed that the conditions under which it always seems easiest for people to abandon all their so-called prejudices are when--ahem!

Rebecca. When it is a question of the relations between a man and a woman, I suppose you mean?

Kroll. Yes--to speak candidly--that is what I mean.

Rebecca (walks across the room and looks out of the window). I was on the point of saying that I wish you had been right, Mr. Kroll.

Kroll. What do you mean by that? You say it so strangely!

Rebecca. Oh, nothing! Do not let us talk any more about it. Ah, there he is!

Kroll. Already! I will go, then.

Rebecca (turning to him). No--stay here, and you will hear something.

Kroll. Not now. I do not think I could bear to see him.

Rebecca. I beg you to stay. Please do, or you will regret it later. It is the last time I shall ever ask you to do anything.

Kroll (looks at her in surprise, and lays his hat down). Very well, Miss West. It shall be as you wish. (A short pause. Then ROSMER comes in from the hall.)

Rosmer (stops at the door, as he sees KROLL). What! you here?

Rebecca. He wanted to avoid meeting you, John.

Kroll (involuntarily). "John?"

Rebecca. Yes, Mr. Kroll. John and I call each other by our Christian names. That is a natural consequence of the relations between us.

Kroll. Was that what I was to hear if I stayed?

Rebecca. Yes, that and something else.

Rosmer (coming into the room). What is the object of your visit here to-day?