The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 123

MRS. Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Shaking MRS. JOHN._] Wake up, my good woman! Wake up, Mrs. John! You are ill! Your husband ought to take you to see a physician.

MRS. JOHN

Bruno, you ain' doin' right! [_The bells are ringing again._] Ain't them the bells?

MRS. Ha.s.sENREUTER

The service is over, Mrs. John.

MRS. JOHN

[_Wholly awake now, stares about her._] Why does I wake up? Why didn't you take an ax when I was asleep an' knock me over the head with it?--What did I say? Sh! Only don't tell a livin' soul a word, Mrs.

Ha.s.senreuter.

[_She jumps up and arranges her hair by the help of many hairpins._

_Manager Ha.s.sENREUTER appears in the doorway._

Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Starting at the sight of his family._]

"Behold, behold, Timotheus, _Here_ are the cranes of Ibicus!"

Didn't you tell me there was a shipping agent's office in the neighbourhood, Mrs. John?--[_To WALBURGA._] Ah, yes, my child! While, with the frivolousness of youth you have been thinking of your pleasure and nothing but your pleasure, your papa has been running about for three whole hours again purely on business.--[_To SPITTA._] You wouldn't be in such a hurry to establish a family, young man, if you had the least suspicion how hard it is--a struggle from day to day--to get even the wretched, mouldy necessary bit of daily bread for one's wife and child! I trust it will never be your fate to be suddenly hurled one day, quite penniless, into the underworld of Berlin and be obliged to struggle for a naked livelihood for yourself and those dear to you, breast to breast with others equally desperate, in subterranean holes and pa.s.sages! But you may all congratulate me! A week from now we will be in Stra.s.sburg.

[_MRS. Ha.s.sENREUTER, WALBURGA and SPITTA all press his hand._] Everything else will be adjusted.

MRS. Ha.s.sENREUTER

You have fought an heroic battle for us during these past years, papa.

And you did it without stooping to anything unworthy.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

It was a fight like that of drowning men who struggle for planks in the water. My n.o.ble costumes, made to body forth the dreams of poets, in what dens of vice, on what reeking bodies have they not pa.s.sed their nights--_odi profanum vulgus_--only that a few pennies of rental might clatter in my cashbox! But let us turn to more cheerful thoughts. The freight waggon, alias the cart of Thespis is at the door in order to effect the removal of our Penates to happier fields--[_Suddenly turning to SPITTA._] My excellent Spitta, I demand your word of honour that, in your so-called despair, you two do not commit some irreparable folly. In return I promise to lend my ear to any utterances of yours characterised by a modic.u.m of good sense.--Finally: I've come to you, Mrs. John, firstly because the officers bar all the exits and will permit no one to go out; and secondly because I would like exceedingly to know why a man like myself, at the very moment when his triumphant flag is fluttering in the wind again, should have become the object of a malicious newspaper report!

MRS. Ha.s.sENREUTER

Dear Harro, Mrs. John doesn't understand you.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Aha! Then let us begin _ab ovo_. I have letters here [_he shows a bundle of them_] one, two, three, five--about a dozen! In these letters unknown but malicious individuals congratulate me upon an event which is said to have taken place in my storage loft. I would pay no attention to these communications were they not confirmed by a news item in the papers according to which a newborn infant is said to have been found in the loft of a costumer in the suburbs ... a costumer, forsooth! I would have said nothing, I repeat, if this item had not perplexed me. Undoubtedly there is a case of mistaken ident.i.ty involved here. In spite of that, I don't like to have the report stick to me. Especially since this cub of a reporter speaks of the costumer as being a bankrupt manager of barn stormers. Read it, mama: "The Stork Visits Costumer." I'll box that fellow's ears! This evening my appointment at Stra.s.sburg is to be made public in the papers and at the same time I am to be offered as a kind of comic dessert _urbi et orbi_. As if it were not obvious that of all curses that of being made ridiculous is the worst!

MRS. JOHN

You say there's policemen at the door downstairs, sir?

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Yes, and their watch is so close that the funeral procession of Mrs.

k.n.o.bbe's baby has been brought to a standstill. They won't even let the little coffin and the horrid fellow from the burial society who is carrying it go out to the carriage.

MRS. JOHN

What child's funeral was that?

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Don't you know? It's the little son of Mrs. k.n.o.bbe which was brought up to me in so mysterious a way by two women and died almost under my very eyes, probably of exhaustion. _a propos_ ...

MRS. JOHN

The k.n.o.bbe woman's child is dead?

Ha.s.sENREUTER

_a propos_, Mrs. John, I was going to say that you ought really to know how the affair of those two half-crazy women who got hold of the child finally ended?

MRS. JOHN

Well now, tell me, ain't it like the very finger of G.o.d that they didn't take my little Adelbert an' that he didn't die?

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Just why? I don't understand the logic of that. On the other hand, I have been asking myself whether the confused speeches of the Polish girl, the theft committed in my loft, and the milk bottle which Quaquaro brought down in a boot--whether all these things had not something to do with the notice in the papers.

MRS. JOHN

No, there ain't no connection between them things. Has you seen Paul, sir?

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Paul? Ah yes; that's your husband. Yes, yes. Indeed I saw him in conversation with detective Puppe, who visited me too in connection with the theft.

_JOHN enters._

JOHN

Well, Jette, wasn't I right? This here thing's happened soon enough!

MRS. JOHN

What's happened?

JOHN