The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I Part 20

Guess!

[_He opens his hand at once._

LOTH

What? Is it really true--you shoot the larks. You good for nothing! Do you know that you deserve to be beaten for such mischief?

KAHL

[_Stares at LOTH for some seconds in stupid amazement. Then, clenching his fist furtively he says:_] You son of a...!

[_And swinging around, disappears toward the right._

[_For some moments the yard remains empty._]

_HELEN steps from the house door. She wears a light-coloured summer dress and a large garden hat. She looks all around her, walks a few paces toward the gate-way, stands still and gazes out. Hereupon she saunters across the yard toward the right and turns into the path that leads to the inn. Great bundles of various tea-herbs are slung across the fence to dry. She stops to inhale their odours. She also bends downward the lower boughs of fruit trees and admires the low hanging, red-cheeked apples. When she observes LOTH coming toward her from the inn, a yet greater restlessness comes over her, so that she finally turns around and reaches the farm yard before LOTH. Here she notices that the dove-cote is still closed and goes thither through the little gate that leads into the orchard. While she is still busy pulling down the cord which, blown about by the wind, has become entangled somewhere, she is addressed by LOTH, who has come up in the meantime._

LOTH

Good morning, Miss Krause.

HELEN

Good morning. See, the wind has blown the cord up there!

LOTH

Let me help you.

[_He also pa.s.ses through the little gate, gets the cord down and opens the dove-cote. The pigeons flutter out._

HELEN

Thank you so much!

LOTH

[_Has pa.s.sed out by the little gate once more and stands there, leaning against the fence. HELEN is on the other side of it. After a brief pause._] Do you make a habit of rising so early?

HELEN

I was just going to ask you the same thing.

LOTH

I? Oh, no! But after the first night in a strange place it usually happens so.

HELEN

Why does that happen?

LOTH

I have never thought about it. To what end?

HELEN

Oh, wouldn't it serve some end?

LOTH

None, at least, that is apparent and practical.

HELEN

And so everything that you do or think must have some practical end in view.

LOTH

Exactly. Furthermore ...

HELEN

I would not have thought that of you.

LOTH

What, Miss Krause?

HELEN

It was with those very words that, day before yesterday, my stepmother s.n.a.t.c.hed "The Sorrows of Werther" from my hand.

LOTH

It is a foolish book.

HELEN

Oh, don't say that.

LOTH

Indeed, I must repeat it, Miss Krause. It is a book for weaklings.

HELEN

That may well be.