Rosmersholm Part 9

Kroll. By no means! Besides, I have no knowledge of what customs may have grown up at Rosmersholm.

Rosmer. Kroll, you are not the least like yourself to-day.

Rebecca. I will wish you good morning, Mr. Kroll. (Goes out to the left.)

Kroll. If. you will allow me-- (Sits down on the couch.)

Rosmer. Yes, my dear fellow, let us make ourselves comfortable and have a confidential talk. (Sits down on a chair facing KROLL.)

Kroll. I have not been able to close an eye since yesterday. I lay all night, thinking and thinking.

Rosmer. And what have you got to say to-day?

Kroll. It will take me some time, Rosmer. Let me begin with a sort of introduction. I can give you some news of Ulrick Brendel.

Rosmer. Has he been to see you?

Kroll. No. He took up his quarters in a low-cla.s.s tavern--in the lowest kind of company, of course; drank, and stood drinks to others, as long as he had any money left; and then began to abuse the whole lot of them as a contemptible rabble--and, indeed, as far as that goes he was quite right. But the result was, that he got a thras.h.i.+ng and was thrown out into the gutter.

Rosmer. I see he is altogether incorrigible.

Kroll. He had p.a.w.ned the coat you gave him, too, but that is going to be redeemed for him. Can you guess by whom?

Rosmer. By yourself, perhaps?

Kroll. No. By our n.o.ble friend Mr. Mortensgaard.

Rosmer. Is that so?

Kroll. I am informed that Mr. Brendel's first visit was paid to the "idiot" and "plebeian".

Rosmer. Well, it was very lucky for him--

Kroll. Indeed it was. (Leans over the table, towards ROSMER.) Now I am coming to a matter of which, for the sake of our old--our former--friends.h.i.+p, it is my duty to warn you.

Rosmer. My dear fellow, what is that?

Kroll. It is this; that certain games are going on behind your back in this house.

Rosmer. How can you think that? Is it Rebec--is it Miss West you are alluding to?

Kroll. Precisely. And I can quite understand it on her part; she has been accustomed, for such a long time now, to do as she likes here. But nevertheless--

Rosmer. My dear Kroll, you are absolutely mistaken. She and I have no secrets from one another about anything whatever.

Kroll. Then has she confessed to you that she has been corresponding with the editor of the "Searchlight"?

Rosmer. Oh, you mean the couple of lines she wrote to him on Ulrik Brendel's behalf?

Kroll. You have found that out, then? And do you approve of her being on terms of this sort with that scurrilous hack, who almost every week tries to pillory me for my att.i.tude in my school and out of it?

Rosmer. My dear fellow, I don't suppose that side of the question has ever occurred to her. And in any case, of course she has entire freedom of action, just as I have myself.

Kroll. Indeed? Well, I suppose that is quite in accordance with the new turn your views have taken--because I suppose Miss West looks at things from the same standpoint as you?

Rosmer. She does. We two have worked our way forward in complete companions.h.i.+p.

Kroll (looking at him and shaking his head slowly). Oh, you blind, deluded man!

Rosmer. I? What makes you say that?

Kroll. Because I dare not--I WILL not--think the worst. No, no, let me finish what I want to say. Am I to believe that you really prize my friends.h.i.+p, Rosmer? And my respect, too? Do you?

Rosmer. Surely I need not answer that question.

Kroll. Well, but there are other things that require answering--that require full explanation on your part. Will you submit to it if I hold a sort of inquiry--?

Rosmer. An inquiry?

Kroll. Yes, if I ask you questions about one or two things that it may be painful for you to recall to mind. For instance, the matter of your apostasy--well, your emanc.i.p.ation, if you choose to call it so--is bound up with so much else for which, for your own sake, you ought to account to me.

Rosmer. My dear fellow, ask me about anything you please. I have nothing to conceal.

Kroll. Well, then, tell me this--what do you yourself believe was the real reason of Beata's making away with herself?

Rosmer. Can you have any doubt? Or perhaps I should rather say, need one look for reasons for what an unhappy sick woman, who is unaccountable for her actions, may do?

Kroll. Are you certain that Beata was so entirely unaccountable for her actions? The doctors, at all events, did not consider that so absolutely certain.

Rosmer. If the doctors had ever seen her in the state in which I have so often seen her, both night and day, they would have had no doubt about it.

Kroll. I did not doubt it either, at the time.

Rosmer. Of course not. It was impossible to doubt it, unfortunately.

You remember what I told you of her ungovernable, wild fits of pa.s.sion--which she expected me to reciprocate. She terrified me! And think how she tortured herself with baseless self-reproaches in the last years of her life!

Kroll. Yes, when she knew that she would always be childless.

Rosmer. Well, think what it meant--to be perpetually in the clutches of such--agony of mind over a thing that she was not in the slightest degree responsible for--! Are you going to suggest that she was accountable for her actions?

Kroll. Hm!--Do you remember whether at that time you had, in the house any books dealing with the purport of marriage--according to the advanced views of to-day?

Rosmer. I remember Miss West's lending me a work of the kind. She inherited Dr. West's library, you know. But, my dear Kroll, you surely do not suppose that we were so imprudent as to let the poor sick creature get wind of any such ideas? I can solemnly swear that we were in no way to blame. It was the overwrought nerves of her own brain that were responsible for these frantic aberrations.

Kroll. There is one thing, at any rate, that I can tell you now, and that is that your poor tortured and overwrought Beata put an end to her own life in order that yours might be happy--and that you might be free to live as you pleased.

Rosmer (starting half up from his chair). What do you mean by that?