The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I Part 163

RAUCHHAUPT

[_Steps forward._] I should like 'umbly to report, your honour ...

WEHRHAHN

Go on! Go on! What else do you want? Let us have no more nonsense, my good man.

RAUCHHAUPT

[_Goes close up to MRS. FIELITZ._] G.o.d is my witness! I'll show you up!

THE CURTAIN FALLS

THE FOURTH ACT

_The attic room over LANGHEINRICH'S smithy. To the left, two small, curtained windows. At one of the windows an arm-chair on which MRS.

FIELITZ is sitting. She has aged perceptibly and grown thinner.--At the second window stands a sewing-machine with a chair beside it. A skirt at which some one has been working is thrown across the chair.

A bodice lies on the machine itself. A door in the rear wall leads to a little sleeping-chamber immediately under the roof. To the left of this door a brown tile-oven; to its right, a yellow wardrobe. In the right wall there is likewise a door which opens upon the hall. Behind this door a neatly made bed and a yellow chest of drawers. Above this chest hangs a seven-day clock. The SHOEMAKER FIELITZ stands in his stocking feet upon the chest of drawers and winds the clock._

_In the middle of the room an extension table. A hanging lamp above it. Four yellow chairs surround the table, a fifth--of the same set stands near the bed. LANGHEINRICH and EDE, _dressed in their working-clothes, are busy at the table. LANGHEINRICH holds an iron weather-vane which EDE is painting red._

_EDE and LANGHEINRICH break out in loud laugh._

FIELITZ

[_Who has been minding the clock while the others have been laughing._]

Somebody's been pokin' around here again.

LANGHEINRICH

You c'n bet on that. I s'ppose that's what's happened. You'd better watch out more.

[_Renewed laughter._

FIELITZ

All I say is: let me catch some one at it! An' I won't care what happens neither!

LANGHEINRICH

That's right! That's the way! Don't you care who it is, neither. I think it was Leontine.

MRS. FIELITZ

The girl ain't been near that there clock!

LANGHEINRICH

Oh, oh!

FIELITZ

Somethin's goin' to happen some day. I don't take no jokes o' that kind.

EDE

You gotta save that to put it in the shop.

LANGHEINRICH

That's the truth! That's what I always been sayin'! That corner shop'll soon be built now, an' then maybe he won't have no clock to hang up in it. How could he go an' start a business then!

FIELITZ

Firebrands! Pack o' thieves! Laugh if you wants to! You can't never get the better o' me!

LANGHEINRICH

Not a bit, can they! An' that wouldn't do. How many contracts has you been makin'? I mean about furnis.h.i.+n' people with shoes. You got to have somethin' to start with!

MRS. FIELITZ

Can't you leave the man in peace!

FIELITZ

You just go in my room; there you c'n see letters an' contracts lyin'

around--packages an' heaps o' them!

EDE

[_Looks into the adjoining room._] I don't see nothin'.

LANGHEINRICH

Tear up the floorin': you'll find the docyments hidden there. People has got to have their business secrets!

FIELITZ

O' course they has! An' whippersnappers don't know much about that. Go an' learn how to read an' write before you go an' mix in my business.

MRS. FIELITZ

Come, Fielitz, let them be! Don't lose your temper. You know as Langheinrich has got to have his joke! That's the way the man is made.