The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 124

D'you want me to go an' earn the thousand crowns' reward what's offered accordin' to placards on the news pillars by the chief o' police's office for denouncin' the criminal?

MRS. JOHN

How's that?

JOHN

Don't you know that all this manoeuverin' o' police an' detectives is started on account o' Bruno?

MRS. JOHN

How so? Where? What is it? What's been started?

JOHN

The funeral's been stopped an' two o' the mourners--queer customers they is, too--has been taken prisoner. Yes, sir! That's the pa.s.s things has come to, Mr. Ha.s.senreuter. I'm a man, sir, what's tied to a women as has a brother what's bein' pursued by the criminal police an' by detectives because he killed a woman not far from the river under a lilac bush.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

But my dear Mr. John: G.o.d forbid that that be true!

MRS. JOHN

That's a lie! My brother don' do nothin' like that.

JOHN

Aw, don' he though, Jette? Mr. Ha.s.senreuter, I was sayin' the other day what kind of a brother that is! [_He notices the bunch of lilacs and takes it from the table._] Look at this here! That there monster's been in my home! If he comes back I'll be the first one that'll take him, bound hand an' foot, an' deliver him up to justice!

[_He searches through the whole room._

MRS. JOHN

You c'n tell dam' fools there's such a thing as justice. There ain't no justice, not even in heaven. There wasn't a soul here. An' that bit o'

lilac I brought along from Hangelsberg where a big bush of it grows behind your sister's house.

JOHN

Jette, you wasn't at my sister's at all. Quaquaro jus' told me that! They proved that at headquarters. You was seen in the park by the river ...

MRS. JOHN

Lies!

JOHN

An' 'way out in the suburbs where you pa.s.sed the night in a arbour!

MRS. JOHN

What? D'you come into your own house to tear everythin' into bits?

JOHN

All right! I ain't sorry that things has come to this. There ain't no more secrets between us here. I foretold all that.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Tense with interest._] Did that Polish girl who fought like a lioness for Mrs. k.n.o.bbe's baby the other day ever show herself again?

JOHN

She's the very one. She's the one what they pulled out o' the water this morning. An' I has to say it without bitin' my tongue off: Bruno Mechelke took that girl's life.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Quickly._] Then she was probably his mistress?

JOHN

Ask mother! I don' know about that! That's what I was scared of; that's the reason I rather didn't come home at all no more, that my own wife was loaded down with a crowd like that an' didn't have the strength to shake it off.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Come, children!

JOHN

Why so? You jus' stay!

MRS. JOHN

You don' has to go an' open the windows an' cry out everythin' for all the world to hear! It's bad enough if fate's brought a misfortune like that on us. Go on! Make a noise about it if you want to. But you won't see me very soon again.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

And you mean to say that that ...

JOHN

That's jus' what I'll do! Jus' that! I'll call in anybody as wants to know--outa the street, offa the hall, the carpenter outa the yard, the boys an' the girls what takes their confirmation lessons--I'll call 'em all an' I'll tell 'em what a woman got into on account o' her fool love for her brother!

Ha.s.sENREUTER

And so that good-looking girl who laid claim to the child is actually dead to-day?

JOHN

Maybe she was good-lookin'. I don' know nothin' about that, whether she was pretty or ugly. But it's a fac' that she's lyin' in the morgue this day.