Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (252 page)

Rebecca. When I had passed my twenty-fifth birthday, I thought I was getting altogether too old for an unmarried girl, so I resolved to tell a lie and take a year off my age.

Kroll. You — an emancipated woman — cherishing prejudices as to the marriageable age!

Rebecca. I know it was a silly thing to do — and ridiculous, too. But every one has some prejudice or another that they cannot get quite rid of. We are like that.

Kroll. Maybe. But my calculation may be quite correct, all the same; because Dr. West was up in Finmark for a flying visit the year before he was appointed.

Rebecca
(impetuously)
. That is not true

Kroll. Isn’t it?

Rebecca. No. My mother never mentioned it.

Kroll. Didn’t she, really!

Rebecca. No, never. Nor Dr. West, either. Never a word of it.

Kroll. Might that not be because they both had good reason to jump over a year? — @just as you have done yourself, Miss West? Perhaps it is a family failing.

Rebecca
(walking about, wringing her hands)
. It is impossible. It is only something you want to make me believe. Nothing in the world will make me believe it. It cannot be true! Nothing in the world —

Kroll
(getting up)
. But, my dear Miss West, why in Heaven’s name do you take it in this way? You quite alarm me! What am I to believe and think?

Rebecca. Nothing. Neither believe nor think anything.

Kroll. Then you really must give me some explanation of your taking this matter — this possibility — so much to heart.

Rebecca
(controlling herself)
. It is quite obvious, I should think, Mr. Kroll. I have no desire for people here to think me an illegitimate child.

Kroll. Quite so. Well, well, let us be content with your explanation, for the present. But you see that is another point on which you have cherished a certain prejudice.

Rebecca. Yes, that is quite true.

Kroll. And it seems to me that very much the same applies to most of this “emancipation” of yours, as you call it. Your reading has introduced you to a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions; you have made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in various directions — researches that seem to you to upset a good many ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and unassailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in your case, Miss West — a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got into your blood.

Rebecca
(thoughtfully)
. Perhaps you are right.

Kroll. Yes, only test yourself, and you will see! And if it is true in your case, it is easy to recognise how true it must be in John Rosmer’s. Of course it is madness, pure and simple. He will be running headlong to his ruin if he persists in coming openly forward and proclaiming himself an apostate! Just think of it — he, with his shy disposition! Think of HIM disowned — hounded out of the circle to which he has always belonged — exposed to the uncompromising attacks of all the best people in the place. Nothing would ever make him the man to endure that.

Rebecca. He MUST endure it! It is too late now for him to draw back.

Kroll. Not a bit too late — not by any means too late. What has happened can be hushed up — or at any rate can be explained away as a purely temporary, though regrettable, aberration. But — there is one step that it is absolutely essential he should take.

Rebecca. And that is?

Kroll. You must get him to legalise his position, Miss West.

Rebecca. The position in which he stands to me?

Kroll. Yes. You must see that you get him to do that.

Rebecca. Then you can’t rid yourself of the conviction that the relations between us need “legalising,” as you say?

Kroll. I do not wish to go any more precisely into the question. But I certainly have observed that the conditions under which it always seems easiest for people to abandon all their so-called prejudices are when — ahem!

Rebecca. When it is a question of the relations between a man and a woman, I suppose you mean?

Kroll. Yes — to speak candidly — that is what I mean.

Rebecca
(walks across the room and looks out of the window)
. I was on the point of saying that I wish you had been right, Mr. Kroll.

Kroll. What do you mean by that? You say it so strangely!

Rebecca. Oh, nothing! Do not let us talk any more about it. Ah, there he is!

Kroll. Already! I will go, then.

Rebecca
(turning to him)
. No — stay here, and you will hear something.

Kroll. Not now. I do not think I could bear to see him.

Rebecca. I beg you to stay. Please do, or you will regret it later. It is the last time I shall ever ask you to do anything.

Kroll
(looks at her in surprise, and lays his hat down)
. Very well, Miss West. It shall be as you wish.
(A short pause. Then ROSMER comes in from the hall.)

Rosmer
(stops at the door, as he sees KROLL)
. What! you here?

Rebecca. He wanted to avoid meeting you, John.

Kroll
(involuntarily)
. “John?”

Rebecca. Yes, Mr. Kroll. John and I call each other by our Christian names. That is a natural consequence of the relations between us.

Kroll. Was that what I was to hear if I stayed?

Rebecca. Yes, that and something else.

Rosmer
(coming into the room)
. What is the object of your visit here to-day?

Kroll. I wanted to make one more effort to stop you, and win you back.

Rosmer
(pointing to the newspaper)
. After that?

Kroll. I did not write it.

Rosmer. Did you take any steps to prevent its appearing?

Kroll. That would have been acting unjustifiably towards the cause I serve. And, besides that, I had no power to prevent it.

Rebecca
(tears the newspaper into pieces, which she crumples up and throws into the back of the stove)
. There! Now it is out of sight; let it be out of mind too. Because there will be no more of that sort of thing, John.

Kroll. Indeed, I wish you could ensure that.

Rebecca. Come, and let us sit down, dear — all three of us. Then I will tell you all about it.

Rosmer
(sitting down involuntarily)
. What has come over you, Rebecca? You are so unnaturally calm — What is it?

Rebecca. The calmness of determination.
(Sits down.)
Please sit down too, Mr. Kroll.
(He takes a seat on the couch.)

Rosmer. Determination, you say. Determination to do what?

Rebecca. I want to give you back what you need in order to live your life. You shall have your happy innocence back, dear friend.

Rosmer. But what do you mean?

Rebecca. I will just tell you what happened. That is all that is necessary.

Rosmer. Well?

Rebecca. When I came down here from Finmark with Dr. West, it seemed to me that a new, great, wide world was opened to me. Dr. West had given me an erratic sort of education — had taught me all the odds and ends that I knew about life then.
(Has an evident struggle with herself, and speaks in barely audible tones.)
And then —

Kroll. And then?

Rosmer. But, Rebecca — I know all this.

Rebecca
(collecting herself)
. Yes — that is true enough. You know it only too well.

Kroll
(looking fixedly at her)
. Perhaps it would be better if I left you.

Rebecca. No, stay where you are, dear Mr. Kroll.
(To ROSMER.)
Well, this was how it was. I wanted to play my part in the new day that was dawning — to have a share in all the new ideas. Mr. Kroll told me one day that Ulrik Brendel had had a great influence over you once, when you were a boy. I thought it might be possible for me to resume that influence here.

Rosmer. Did you come here with a covert design?

Rebecca. What I wanted was that we two should go forward together on the road towards freedom — always forward, and further forward! But there was that gloomy, insurmountable barrier between you and a full, complete emancipation.

Rosmer. What barrier do you mean?

Rebecca. I mean, John, that you could never have attained freedom except in the full glory of the sunshine. And, instead of that, here you were — ailing and languishing in the gloom of such a marriage as yours.

Rosmer. You have never spoken to me of my marriage in that way, before to-day.

Rebecca. No, I did not dare, for fear of frightening you.

Kroll
(nodding to ROSMER)
. You hear that!

Rebecca
(resuming)
. But I saw quite well where your salvation lay — your only salvation. And so I acted.

Rosmer. How do you mean — you acted?

Kroll. Do you mean that?

Rebecca. Yes, John.
(Gets up.)
No, do not get up. Nor you either, Mr. Kroll. But we must let in the daylight now. It was not you, John. You are innocent. It was I that lured — that ended by luring — Beata into the tortuous path —

Rosmer
(springing up)
. Rebecca!

Kroll
(getting up)
. Into the tortuous path!

Rebecca. Into the path that — led to the mill-race. Now you know it, both of you.

Rosmer
(as if stunned)
. But I do not understand — What is she standing there saying? I do not understand a word —

Kroll. Yes, yes. I begin to understand.

Rosmer. But what did you do? What did you find to tell her? Because there was nothing — absolutely nothing!

Rebecca. She got to know that you were determined to emancipate yourself from all your old prejudices.

Rosmer. Yes, but at that time I had come to no decision.

Rebecca. I knew that you soon would come to one.

Kroll
(nodding to ROSMER)
. Aha!

Rosmer. Well — and what more? I want to know everything now.

Rebecca. Some time afterwards, I begged and implored her to let me leave Rosmersholm.

Rosmer. Why did you want to leave here — then?

Rebecca. I did not want to. I wanted to remain where I was. But I told her that it would be best for us all if I went away in time. I let her infer that if I remained here any longer I could not tell what-what-might happen.

Rosmer. That is what you said and did, then?

Rebecca. Yes, John.

Rosmer. That is what you referred to when you said that you “acted”?

Rebecca
(in a broken voice)
. Yes, that was it.

Rosmer
(after a pause)
. Have you confessed everything now, Rebecca?

Rebecca. Yes.

Kroll. Not everything.

Rebecca
(looking at him in terror)
. What else can there be?

Kroll. Did you not eventually lead Beata to believe that it was necessary — not merely that it should be best — but that it was necessary, both for your own sake and for John’s, that you should go away somewhere else as soon as possible? — Well?

Rebecca
(speaking low and indistinctly)
. Perhaps I did say something of the sort.

Rosmer
(sinking into a chair by the window)
. And she, poor sick creature, believed in this tissue of lies and deceit! Believed in it so completely — so absolutely!
(Looks up at REBECCA.)
And she never came to me about it — never said a word! Ah, Rebecca — I see it in your face — YOU dissuaded her from doing so.