Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (62 page)

STRAWMAN.
She must obey a law that heaven dictated.

STIVER.
But Lind can circumvent that law, you see.
                                    [To LIND.
Put off your journey, and then — budge no jot.

AUNTS
[delighted]
.
Yes, that’s the way!

MRS HALM.
                     Agreed!

MISS JAY.
                             That cuts the knot.

[SVANHILD and the maids have meantime laid the tea-table beside the verandah steps. At MRS. HALM’s invitation the ladies sit down. The rest of the company take their places, partly on the verandah and in the summer-house, partly in the garden. FALK sits on the verandah. During the following scene they drink tea.

MRS. HALM
[smiling]
.
And so our little storm is overblown.
Such summer showers do good when they are gone;
The sunshine greets us with a double boon,
And promises a cloudless afternoon.

MISS JAY.
Ah yes, Love’s blossom without rainy skies
Would never thrive according to our wishes.

FALK.
In dry land set it, and it forthwith dies;
For in so far the flowers are like the fishes —

SVANHILD.
Nay, for Love lives, you know, upon the air —

MISS JAY.
Which is the death of fishes —

FALK.
                               So I say.

MISS JAY.
Aha, we’ve put a bridle on you there!

MRS. STRAWMAN.
The tea is good, one knows by the bouquet.

FALK.
Well, let us keep the simile you chose.
Love is a flower; for if heaven’s blessed rain
Fall short, it all but pines to death — [Pauses.

MISS JAY.
                                     What then?

FALK
[with a gallant bow]
.
Then come the aunts with the reviving hose. —
But poets have this simile employed,
And men for scores of centuries enjoyed, —
Yet hardly one its secret sense has hit;
For flowers are manifold and infinite.
Say, then, what flower is love? Name me, who knows,
The flower most like it?

MISS JAY.
                         Why, it is the rose;
Good gracious, that’s exceedingly well known; —
Love, all agree, lends life a rosy tone.

A YOUNG LADY.
It is the snowdrop; growing, snow enfurled;
Till it peer forth, undreamt of by the world.

AN AUNT.
It is the dandelion, — made robust
By dint of human heel and horse hoof thrust;
Nay, shooting forth afresh when it is smitten,
As Pedersen so charmingly has written.

LIND.
It is the bluebell, — ringing in for all
Young hearts life’s joyous Whitsun festival.

MRS. HALM.
No, ‘tis an evergreen, — as fresh and gay
In desolate December as in May.

GULDSTAD.
No, Iceland moss, dry gathered, — far the best
Cure for young ladies with a wounded breast.

A GENTLEMAN.
No, the wild chestnut tree, — high repute
For household fuel, but with a bitter fruit.

SVANHILD.
No, a camellia; at our balls, ‘tis said,
The chief adornment of a lady’s head.

MRS. STRAWMAN.
No, it is like a flower, O such a bright one; —
Stay now — a blue one, no, it was a white one —
What is it’s name — ? Dear me — the one I met — ;
Well it is singular how I forget!

STIVER.
None of these flower similitudes will run.
The flowerpot is a likelier candidate.
There’s only room in it, at once, for one;
But by progressive stages it holds eight.

STRAWMAN
[with his little girls round him]
.
No, love’s a pear tree; in the spring like snow
With myriad blossoms, which in summer grow
To pearlets; in the parent’s sap each shares; —
And with God’s help they’ll all alike prove pears.

FALK.
So many heads, so many sentences!
No, you all grope and blunder off the line.
Each simile’s at fault; I’ll tell you mine; —
You’re free to turn and wrest it as you please.
                     [Rises as if to make a speech.
In the remotest east there grows a plant;(4)
And the sun’s cousin’s garden is its haunt —

THE LADIES.
Ah, it’s the tea-plant!

FALK.
                        Yes.

MRS. STRAWMAN.
                             His voice is so
Like Strawman’s when he —

STRAWMAN.
                          Don’t disturb his flow.

FALK.
It has its home in fabled lands serene;
Thousands of miles of desert lie between; —
Fill up, Lind! — So. — Now in a tea-oration,
I’ll show of tea and Love the true relation.
                    [The guests cluster round him.
It has its home in the romantic land;
Alas, Love’s home is also in Romance,
Only the Sun’s descendants understand
The herb’s right cultivation and advance.
With Love it is not otherwise than so.
Blood of the Sun along the veins must flow
If Love indeed therein is to strike root,
And burgeon into blossom, into fruit.

MISS JAY.
But China is an ancient land; you hold
In consequence that tea is very old —

STRAWMAN.
Past question antecedent to Jerusalem.

FALK.
Yes, ‘twas already famous when Methusalem
His picture-books and rattles tore and flung —

MISS JAY
[triumphantly]
.
And love is in its very nature young!
To find a likeness there is pretty bold.

FALK.
No; Love, in truth, is also very old;
That principle we here no more dispute
Than do the folks of Rio or Beyrout.
Nay, there are those from Cayenne to Caithness,
Who stand upon its everlastingness; —
Well, that may be slight exaggeration,
But old it is beyond all estimation.

MISS JAY.
But Love is all alike; whereas we see
Both good and bad and middling kinds of tea!

MRS. STRAWMAN.
Yes, they sell tea of many qualities.

ANNA.
The green spring shoots I count the very first —

SVANHILD.
Those serve to quench celestial daughter’s thirst.

A YOUNG LADY.
Witching as ether fumes they say it is —

ANOTHER.
Balmy as lotus, sweet as almond, clear —

GULDSTAD.
That’s not an article we deal in here.

FALK
[who has meanwhile come down from the verandah]
.
Ah, ladies, every mortal has a small
Private celestial empire in his heart.
There bud such shoots in thousands, kept apart
By Shyness’s soon shatter’d Chinese Wall.
But in her dim fantastic temple bower
The little Chinese puppet sits and sighs,
A dream of far-off wonders in her eyes —
And in her hand a golden tulip flower.
For her the tender firstling tendrils grew; —
Rich crop or meagre, what is that to you?
Instead of it we get an after crop
They kick the tree for, dust and stalk and stem, —
As hemp to silk beside what goes to them —

GULDSTAD.
That is black tea.

FALK
[nodding]
.
                   That’s what fills the shop.

A GENTLEMAN.
There’s beef tea too, that Holberg says a word of —

MISS JAY
[sharply]
.
To modern taste entirely out of date.

FALK.
And a beef love has equally been heard of,
Wont — in romances — to brow-beat its mate,
And still they say its trace may be detected
Amongst the henpecked of the married state.
In short there’s likeness where ‘twas least expected.
So, as you know, an ancient proverb tells,
That something ever passes from the tea
Of the bouquet that lodges in its cells,
If it be carried hither over the sea.
It must across the desert and the hills, —
Pay toll to Cossack and to Russian tills; —
It gets their stamp and licence, that’s enough,
We buy it as the true and genuine stuff.
But has not Love the self-same path to fare?
Across Life’s desert? How the world would rave
And shriek if you or I should boldly bear
Our Love by way of Freedom’s ocean wave!
“Good heavens, his moral savour’s passed away,
And quite dispersed Legality’s bouquet!” —

STRAWMAN
[rising]
.
Yes, happily, — in every moral land
Such wares continue to be contraband!

FALK.
Yes, to pass current here, Love must have cross’d
The great Siberian waste of regulations,
Fann’d by no breath of ocean to its cost;
It must produce official attestations
From friend and kindred, devils of relations,
From church curators, organist and clerk,
And other fine folks — over and above
The primal licence which God gave to Love. —
And then the last great point of likeness; — mark
How heavily the hand of culture weighs
Upon that far Celestial domain;
Its power is shatter’d, and its wall decays,
The last true Mandarin’s strangled; hands profane
Already are put forth to share the spoil;
Soon the Sun’s realm will be a legend vain,
An idle tale incredible to sense;
The world is gray in gray — we’ve flung the soil
On buried Faery, — then where can Love be found?
Alas, Love also is departed hence!
                                 [Lifts his cup.
Well let him go, since so the times decree; —
A health to Amor, late of Earth, — in tea!
    [He drains his cup; indignant murmurs amongst
      the company.

MISS JAY.
A very odd expression! “Dead” indeed!

THE LADIES.
To say that Love is dead — !

STRAWMAN.
                           Why, here you see
Him sitting, rosy, round and sound, at tea,
In all conditions! Here in her sable weed
The widow —

MISS JAY.
            Here a couple, true and tried, —

STIVER.
With many ample pledges fortified.

GULDSTAD.
The Love’s light cavalry, of maid and man,
The plighted pairs in order —

STRAWMAN.
                              In the van
The veterans, whose troth has laughed to scorn
The tooth of Time —

MISS JAY
[hastily interrupting]
.
                    And then the babes new-born —
The little novices of yester-morn —

STRAWMAN.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter, in a word,
Are here; the truth is patent, past all doubt,
It can be clutched and handled, seen and heard, —

FALK.
What then?

MISS JAY.
           And yet you want to thrust it out!

FALK.
Madam, you quite mistake. In all I spoke
I cast no doubt on anything you claim;
But I would fain remind you that, from smoke,
We cannot logically argue flame.
That men are married, and have children, I
Have no desire whatever to deny;
Nor do I dream of doubting that such things
Are in the world as troth and wedding-rings;
The billets-doux some tender hands indite
And seal with pairs of turtle doves that — fight;
That sweethearts swarm in cottage and in hall,
That chocolate reward the wedding call;
That usage and convention have decreed,
In every point, how “Lovers” shall proceed: —
But, heavens! We’ve majors also by the score,
Arsenals heaped with muniments of war,
With spurs and howitzers and drums and shot,
But what does that permit us to infer?
That we have men who dangle swords, but not
That they will wield the weapons that they wear.
Tho’ all the plain with gleaming tents you crowd,
Does that make heroes of the men they shroud?

STRAWMAN.
Well, all in moderation; I must own,
It is not quite conducive to the truth
That we should paint the enamourment of youth
So bright, as if — ahem — it stood alone.
Love-making still a frail foundation is.
Only the snuggery of wedded bliss
Provides a rock where Love may builded be
In unassailable security.

MISS JAY.
There I entirely differ. In my view,
A free accord of lovers, heart with heart,
Who hold together, having leave to part,
Gives the best warrant that their love is true.

ANNA
[warmly]
.
O no — Love’s bound when it is fresh and young
Is of a stuff more precious and more strong.

LIND
[thoughtfully]
.
Possibly the ideal flower may blow,
Even as that snowdrop, — hidden by the snow.

FALK
[with a sudden outburst]
.
You fallen Adam! There a heart was cleft
With longing for the Eden it has left!

LIND.
What stuff!