The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 13

HANNE

I believe you. There'll be a lot o' smoke. You won't let your pipe get cold whatever happens.

WERMELSKIRCH

[_Smiling a little._] You're pleased to be pointed in your remarks--pointed as a needle.--We've got to-day, for our table music, wait now, let me think--: First of all, a ba.s.s violin; secondly, two cellos; thirdly, two first violins and two second violins. Three first, two second, three second, two first: I'm getting mixed up now. At all events we have ten men from the public orchestra. What are you laughing at? Do you think I'm fooling you? You'll see for yourself. The ba.s.s violin alone will eat enough for ten. There'll be work enough to do!

HANNE

[_Laughing heartily._] Of course: the cook'll have a lot to do!

WERMELSKIRCH

[_Simply._] My wife, my daughter, the whole of my family--we have to work honestly and hard.--And when the summer is over we've worked ourselves to the bone--for nothing!

HANNE

I don't see what you has to complain of. You've got the best business in the house. Your taproom don't get empty, if it's summer or winter. If I was Siebenhaar upstairs, you'd have to whistle a different tune for me.

You wouldn't be gettin' off with no three hundred crowns o' rent. There wouldn't be no use comin' around me with less'n a thousand. An' then you'd be doin' well enough for yourself!

WERMELSKIRCH

[_Has arisen and walks about whistling._] Would you like anything else?

You frighten me so that my pipe goes out!

_GEORGE, a young, alert, neat waiter comes very rapidly down the stairs behind the gla.s.s door, carrying a tray with breakfast service.

While still behind the door he stops short, opens the door, however, and gazes up and down the pa.s.sage way._

GEORGE

Confound it all! What's this place here?

HANNE

[_Laughing over her tub._] You've lost your way! You has to go back!

GEORGE

It's enough, G.o.d knows, to make a feller dizzy, No horse couldn't find his way about this place.

HANNE

You've just taken service here, eh?

GEORGE

Well o' course! I came yesterday. But tell me, ladies an' gentlemen!

Nothin' like this has ever happened to me before. I've been in a good many houses but here you has to take along a kind o' mountain guide to find your way.

WERMELSKIRCH

[_Exaggerating the waiter's Saxonian accent._] Tell me, are you from Dresden, maybe?

GEORGE

Meissen is my native city.

WERMELSKIRCH

[_As before._] Good Lord A'mighty, is that so indeed?

GEORGE

How do I get out of here, tell me that!

HANNE

[_Alert, mobile, and coquettish in her way in the waiter's presence._]

You has to go back up the stairs. We has no use down here for your swallow tails.

GEORGE

This is the first story, eh? Best part o' the house?

HANNE

You mean the kennels or somethin' like that? We'll show you--that we will! The very best people live down here!

GEORGE

[_Intimately and flirtatiously._] Young woman, do you know what? You come along an' show me the way? With you I wouldn't be a bit afraid, no matter where you lead me to. I'd go into the cellar with you or up into the hay loft either.

HANNE

You stay out o' here! You're the right kind you are! We've got enough of your sort without you.

GEORGE

Young woman, do you want me to help with the washin'?

HANNE

No! But if you're aimin' at it exackly, I c'n help you to get along!

[_Half drawing a piece of linen out of the suds._] Then you'd be lookin'

to see where your starched shirt-front went to!

GEORGE

O dear! You're not goin' to mess me up that way, are you? Well, well, that wouldn't do! We'd have to have a talk about that first! That so, young woman? Well, o' course! We'll talk about it--when I has time, later.