The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I Part 66

Where's father?

MOTHER BAUMERT

I don't know where he can have gone.

BERTHA

Do you think he's not been able to stomach the meat, with not gettin'

none for so long?

MOTHER BAUMERT

[_In distress, crying._] There now, there! He's not even able to keep it down when he's got it. Up it comes again, the only bite o' good food as he's tasted this many a day.

_Re-enter OLD BAUMERT, crying with rage._

OLD BAUMERT

It's no good! I'm too far gone! Now that I've at last got hold of somethin' with a taste in it, my stomach won't keep it.

[_He sits down on the bench by the stove crying._

JAEGER

[_With a sudden violent ebullition of rage._] An' yet there's people not far from here, justices they call themselves too, over-fed brutes, that have nothing to do all the year round but invent new ways of wastin'

their time. An' these people say that the weavers would be quite well off if only they wasn't so lazy.

ANSORGE

The men as says that are no men at all, they're monsters.

JAEGER

Never mind, father Ansorge; we're makin' the place hot for 'em. Becker and I have been and given Dreissiger a piece of our mind, and before we came away we sang him "b.l.o.o.d.y Justice."

ANSORGE

Good Lord! Is that the song?

JAEGER

Yes; I have it here.

ANSORGE

They calls it Dreissiger's song, don't they?

JAEGER

I'll read it to you,

MOTHER BAUMERT

Who wrote it?

JAEGER

That's what n.o.body knows. Now listen.

[_He reads, hesitating like a schoolboy, with incorrect accentuation, but unmistakably strong feeling. Despair, suffering, rage, hatred, thirst for revenge, all find utterance._

The justice to us weavers dealt Is b.l.o.o.d.y, cruel, and hateful; Our life's one torture, long drawn out: For Lynch law we'd be grateful.

Stretched on the rack day after day, Hearts sick and bodies aching, Our heavy sighs their witness bear To spirit slowly breaking.

[_The words of the song make a strong impression on OLD BAUMERT.

Deeply agitated, he struggles against the temptation to interrupt JAEGER. At last he can keep quiet no longer._

OLD BAUMERT [_To his wife, half laughing, half crying, stammering._]

Stretched on the rack day after day. Whoever wrote that, mother, wrote the truth. You can bear witness ... eh, how does it go? "Our heavy sighs their witness bear" ... What's the rest?

JAEGER

"To spirit slowly breaking."

OLD BAUMERT

You know the way we sigh, mother, day and night, sleepin' and wakin'.

[_ANSORGE had stopped working, and cowers on the floor, strongly agitated. MOTHER BAUMERT and BERTHA wipe their eyes frequently during the course of the reading._

JAEGER

[_Continues to read._]

The Dreissigers true hangmen are, Servants no whit behind them; Masters and men with one accord Set on the poor to grind them.

You villains all, you brood of h.e.l.l ...

OLD BAUMERT

[_Trembling with rage, stamping on the floor._] Yes, brood of h.e.l.l!!!

JAEGER

[_Reads._]

You fiends in fashion human, A curse will fall on all like you, Who prey on man and woman.