The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 121

deserve no better.

BRUNO

Good-bye. I s'pose we ain't goin' to see each other for years an' years.

MRS. JOHN

Where you goin' to?

BRUNO

First of all I gotta lie flat on my back for a couple o' hours. I'm goin'

to Fritz's. He's got a room for rent in the old police station right acrost from the Fisher's Bridge. I'm safe there all right. If there's anythin' of a outcry you c'n lemme know.

MRS. JOHN

Don' you want to take a peek at the child onct more?

BRUNO

[_Trembling._] Naw!

MRS. JOHN

Why not?

BRUNO

No, Jette, not in this here life! Good-bye, Jette. Hol' on a minute: Here I got a horseshoe. [_He puts a horseshoe on the table._] I found it.

That'll bring you good luck. I don' need it.

_Stealthily as he has come, BRUNO MECHELKE also disappears. MRS.

JOHN, her eyes wide with horror, stares at the spot where he stood.

Then she totters backward a few paces, presses her hands, clenched convulsively as if in prayer, against her mouth, and collapses, still trying in vain to stammer out a prayerful appeal to heaven._

MRS. JOHN

I ain't no murderer! I ain't no murderer! I didn't want that to happen!

FIFTH ACT

_JOHN'S room. MRS. JOHN is asleep on the sofa. WALBURGA and SPITTA enter from the outer hall. The loud playing of a military band is heard from the street._

SPITTA

No one is here.

WALBURGA

Oh, yes, there is, Erich. Mrs. John! She's asleep here.

SPITTA

[_Approaching the sofa together with WALBURGA._] Is she asleep? So she is! I don't understand how anyone can sleep amidst this noise.

_The music of the band trails off into silence._

WALBURGA

Oh, Erich, s.h.!.+ I have a perfect horror of the woman. Can you understand anyhow why policemen are guarding the entrance downstairs and why they won't let us go out into the street? I'm so awfully afraid that, maybe, they'll arrest us and take us along to the station.

SPITTA

Oh, but there's not the slightest danger, Walburga! You're seeing ghosts by broad daylight.

WALBURGA

When the plain clothes man came up to you and looked at us and you asked him who he was and he showed his badge under his coat, I a.s.sure you, at that moment, the stairs and the hall suddenly began to go around with me.

SPITTA

They're looking for a criminal, Walburga. It is a so-called raid that is going on here, a kind of man hunt such as the criminal police is at times obliged to undertake.

WALBURGA

And you can believe me, too, Erich, that I heard papa's voice. He was talking quite loudly to some one.

SPITTA

You are nervous. You may have been mistaken.

WALBURGA

[_Frightened at MRS. JOHN, who is speaking in her sleep._] Listen to her: do!

SPITTA

Great drops of sweat are standing on her forehead. Come here! Just look at the rusty old horseshoe that she is clasping with both hands.

WALBURGA

[_Listens and starts with fright again._] Papa!

SPITTA