Three Dramas Part 25

Tjaelde. In the house of one of the skippers of what was their fleet.

Two small rooms and a kitchen.

Signe. Two small rooms and a kitchen! (A pause.)

Mrs. Tjaelde. What do they intend to do?

Tjaelde. There was a subscription started to enable Mrs. Moller to get the job of catering for the Club.

Mrs. Tjaelde. Is the poor woman going to have more cooking to do!

Signe. Did they send no messages to us?

Tjaelde. Of course they did; but I didn't pay any attention to them.

Hamar (who has been standing on the verandah). But Moller--what did he say? What did he do?

Tjaelde. I don't know, I tell you.

Valborg (who has been walking up and down the room during the preceding conversation). He has said and done quite enough already.

Tjaelde (who has at last finished eating and drinking, is struck by her words). What do you mean by that, Valborg?

Valborg. That if I were his daughter I would never forgive him.

Mrs. Tjaelde. My dear Valborg, don't say such things!

Valborg. I mean it! A man who would bring such shame and misery upon his family does not deserve any mercy from them.

Mrs. Tjaelde. We are all in need of mercy.

Valborg. In one sense, yes. But what I mean is that I could never give him my respect or my affection again. He would have wronged me too cruelly.

Tjaelde (getting up). Wronged you?

Mrs. Tjaelde. Have you finished already, dear?

Tjaelde. Yes.

Mrs. Tjaelde. No more wine?

Tjaelde. I said I had finished. Wronged you? How?

Valborg. Well, I cannot imagine how one could be more cruelly wronged than to be allowed to a.s.sume a position that was nothing but a lie, to live up to means that had no real existence but were merely a sham--one's clothes a lie, one's very existence a lie! Suppose I were the sort of girl that found a certain delight in making use of her position as a rich man's daughter--in using it to the fullest possible extent; well, when I discovered that all that my father had given me was stolen-that all he had made me believe in was a lie--I am sure that then my anger and my shame would be beyond all bounds!

Mrs. Tjaelde. My child, you have never been tried. You don't know how such things may happen. You don't really know what you are saying!

Hamar. Well it might do Moller good if he heard what she says!

Valborg. He has heard it. His daughter said that to him.

Mrs. Tjaelde. His own daughter! Child, child, is that what you write to each other about? G.o.d forgive you both!

Valborg. Oh, He will forgive us, because we speak the truth.

Mrs. Tialde. Child, child!

Tjaelde. You evidently don't understand what business is--success one day and failure the next.

Valborg. No one will ever persuade me that business is a lottery.

Tjaelde. No, a sound business is not.

Valborg. Exactly. It is the unsound sort that I condemn.

Tjaelde. Still, even the soundest have their anxious moments.

Valborg. If the anxious moments really foreshadow a crisis, no man of honour would keep his family o: his creditors in ignorance of the fact.

My G.o.d, how Mr. Moller has deceived his!

Signe. Valborg is always talking about business!

Valborg. Yes, it has had an attraction for me ever since I was a child.

I am not ashamed of that.

Signe. You think you know all about it, anyway.

Valborg. Oh, no; but you can easily get to know a little about anything you are fond of.

Hamar. And one would need no great knowledge of business to condemn the way Moller went on. It was obvious to every one. And the way his family went on, too! Who went the pace as much as the Mollers? Think of his daughter's toilettes!

Valborg. His daughter is my best friend. I don't want to hear her abused.

Hamar. Your Highness will admit that it is possible to be the daughter of a _very_ rich man without being as proud and as vain as--as the lady I am not allowed to mention!

Valborg. Nanna is neither proud nor vain. She is absolutely genuine.

She had the apt.i.tude for being exactly what she thought she was--a rich man's daughter.

Hamar. Has she the "apt.i.tude" for being a bankrupt's daughter now?

Valborg. Certainly. She has sold all her trinkets, her dresses--every single thing she had. What she wears, she has either paid for herself or obtained by promising future payment.

Hamar. May I ask if she kept her stockings?

Valborg. She sent everything to a sale.

Hamar. If I had known that I would certainly have attended it!

Valborg. Yes, I daresay there was plenty to make fun of, and plenty of idle loafers, too, who were not ashamed to do so.