Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“ Mathilde is not my friend.
Axel. Mathilde not your—
Laura (as before) . A person who is always deceiving one is no friend.
Axel. Has Mathilde deceived anybody? You are unjust.
Laura (as before) . Am I? It is Mathilde's fault that I am unhappy now.
Axel. Laura!
Laura. My dear, you may defend her, if you choose; but you must allow me to tell you plainly that it is Mathilde's advice that has guided me from the days of my innocent childhood, and has led me into all the misery I am suffering now! If it were not for her I should not be married to-day and separated from my parents. ”

“ Riis. Svava!
Svava. I understand now, for the first time, what your consideration, your politeness to mother—which I have so often admired—all meant! Your fun, your good temper, your care of your appearance!—Oh, I never can believe in anything any more! It is horrible, horrible!
Mrs. Riis. Svava, dear!
Svava. All life seems to have become unclean for me! My nearest and dearest all soiled and smirched! That is why, ever since yesterday, I have had the feeling of being an outcast ”

“ Riis. Handsome, did you say?
Svava. Isn't he handsome? I think so, at all events. And so does mother, I think?
Mrs. Riis (without looking up from her book) . And so does mother.
Riis. Mothers always fall in love with their daughters' young men—but they fall out again when they become their mothers-in-law!
Svava. Is that your experience?
Riis. That is my experience. So Alfred Christensen has blossomed into a beauty? Well, we must consider that settled.
Svava. He stood there so sure of himself, and looking so honest and clean—for that is an essential thing, you know. ”

“ And who is it that these High Court of Morality's decisions would for the most part affect, do you suppose? Just the ablest and most vigorous of our young men. Are we going to turn them out and make a separate despised caste of them? And what things would be affected, do you suppose? A great part of the world's literature and art; a great part of all that is loveliest and most captivating in the life of to-day; the world's greatest cities, most particularly—those wonders of the world—teeming with their millions of people! ”

“ Our marriage is not a happy one, because it lacks the most essential thing of all.
Mother. Merciful heavens, what are you saying!
Father. Compose yourself; let me talk to him. What do you mean, sir?
Axel. Laura does not love me—
Laura. Yes, that is what he says!
Axel. She hasn't the least idea what love means, and will never learn as long as she is in her father's house.
Mother and Father. Why?
Axel. Because she lives only for her parents; me, she looks upon merely as an elder brother who is to assist her in loving them. ”

“ Axel. It would be wronging her whom I love so deeply, it would be wronging myself, and wronging you who mean so well, if now, when the power is in my hands, I had not the spirit to make use of it. Here, Laura lives only for you; when you die, life will be over for her. But that is not what marriage means, that is not what she promised at the altar, and that is what I cannot submit to. To go on like this will only make us all unhappy; and that is why Laura must go with me! (The MOTHER starts forward; LAURA goes to MATHILDE.)
Father. You cannot mean what you say. ”

“ Axel. Those who have been through such an experience are less selfish than the rest of us and are capable of more.
Mathilde. Yes. Love is always a consecration, but not always for the same kind of service.
Axel. Sometimes it only brings unhappiness.
Mathilde. Yes, when people have nothing in them, and no pride.
Axel. The more I get to know of you, the less I seem really to know you. What sort of a man can this fellow be, that you have loved without return?
Mathilde (in a subdued voice) . A man to whom I am now very grateful; because marriage is not my vocation. ”

“ But is that any reason why girls who are betrothed should behave as Miss Riis has been doing?—scream, and run away, and create a scandal? We should not be able to hear ourselves speak! It would be the queerest sort of anarchy the world has ever seen! Why, such doctrines as that are contrary to the very nature and order of things! They are mad! And when, into the bargain, they are thrown at our heads as if they were decisions of a High Court of Morality—well, then I strike! ”

“ Axel. Yes, my dear parents. You know, of course, that we did not begin very well—
Father. Quite so—but you can pass over that.
Axel. As soon as she was left to depend on herself alone, I realised the great wrong I had done to Laura. She used to tremble when I came near her, and before long she used to tremble just as much before any one. At first I felt the humility of a strong man who has triumphed; but after a time I became anxious, for I had acted too strongly. Then I dedicated my love to the task of winning back, in a Jacob's seven years of service, what I had lost in one moment. ”

“ Let me tell you this: the life that disregards marriage or loosens the bonds of marriage, or transforms the whole institution—you know very well what I mean—the life that is accused of using the "weapons of seduction" in its fashions, its luxury, its entertainments, its art, its theatre—that life is one of the most potent factors in these teeming cities, one of the most fruitful sources of their existence! ”

“ Laura. Surely you heard father say that mother has been coughing in the night.
Axel. Yes, I heard; but the ball is being given by the only friend I have in these parts, in your honour and mine. We are the reason of the whole entertainment—surely we cannot stay away from it?
Laura. But it wouldn't be any pleasure to us to go without mother.
Axel. One often has to do what is not any pleasure.
Laura. When it is a matter of duty, certainly. But our first duty is to mother, and we cannot possibly leave her alone at home when she is ill. ”

“ To think that any man could have the heart to let his child have such an experience!
Mrs. Riis. Svava—look at your father!
Svava. Yes—but if you think what I am saying now is hard, remember what I said to you before I knew this—no longer ago than yesterday morning. That will give you some idea of how I believed in you, father—and some idea of what I am feeling now! Oh—!
Riis. Svava!
Svava. You have ruined my home for me! Almost every other hour in it has been corrupted—and I cannot face a future like that.
Riis and Mrs. Riis (together) . But, Svava—!
Svava. No, I cannot! ”

“ Mrs. Christensen. My dear Svava, we have come here to—well, you know what we have come for. What has happened has distressed us very much; but what is done cannot be undone. None of us can excuse Alfred. But all the same we think that he might be granted forgiveness, especially at the hands of one who must know that he loves her, and loves her sincerely. That makes it a different matter altogether, of course.
Christensen. Of course!
Riis. Of course! ”

“ Christensen. What privilege?
Mrs. Riis. That of living as they please when they are bachelors, and then having their word of honour believed in when they choose to enter the married state. As long as women are powerless to put an end to that horrible privilege or to make themselves independent of it, so long will one half of the world continue to be sacrificed on account of the other half—on account of the other half's lack of self-control. That one privilege turns out to be more powerful than all the striving for liberty in the world. ”

“ Why do you not openly acknowledge that as your standpoint?
Christensen. But don't we?
Mrs. Riis. No—not here, at all events. On the contrary, you range yourselves ostensibly under our banner, while all the time you are secretly betraying it. Why have you not the courage to unfurl your own? Let these bachelor customs of yours be sanctioned as entirely suitable—then we should be able to join issue with you. And then every innocent bride would be able to know what it is she is entering upon—and in what capacity.
Nordan. That would be simply nothing more or less than abolishing marriage. ”

“ He tore her from her parents, her home and her familiar surroundings; but since then he has sought her forgiveness so perseveringly, and her love so humbly, that it would take all the obstinacy of a spoilt child to withstand him. Just as formerly he could think of nothing but his love, so now she will consider nothing except her self-love; but she is so much the more to blame than he, as her motives are less good than his. She is like a child that has woke up too early in the morning; it strikes and kicks at any one that comes to pet it."
Laura. Mathilde—does it really say that? ”

“ Christensen. A man's youth is by no means the test of his life. That depends on his marriage.
Mrs. Riis. And why should a man's faithlessness disappear when he is married? Can you tell me that?
Christensen. Because then he loves, of course.
Mrs. Riis. Because he loves? But do you mean that he has not loved before then? How absolutely you men have blinded yourselves!—No, love is not the least likely to be lasting when the will is vitiated. And that is what it is—vitiated by the life a bachelor leads.
Christensen. And yet I know plenty of sensual men who have strong wills. ”

“ Leonarda. We all have our troubles. (PEDERSEN waits; but as LEONARDA begins to pick apples carefully from a young tree and put them in a small basket that is on her arm, he goes out to the left. HAGBART appears from the right, and stands for a minute without her seeing him.)
Hagbart. Mrs. Falk! (LEONARDA gives a. little scream.) I beg your pardon, but I have been looking for you everywhere. How are you? I have only just this moment got back.
Leonarda. Aagot is not at home.
Hagbart. I know. Has she been away the whole time?
Leonarda. Yes.
Hagbart. Will she be away long? ”

“ You are too strong for me; because I love you—love you as only one can who has never believed such joy could exist or could possibly come to her—and now the depths of my peace are troubled with the thought that it is treachery to my child. ”

“ Svava. When I saw you standing amongst all the others yesterday, I felt for the first moment as if I did not know you. Some change seemed to have come over you—the effect of the others, perhaps—anyway you really were actually different.
Alfred. Of course. People always are that, among strangers. When you came in with the ladies, it just seemed to me as if I had never observed you carefully before. Besides, there are certain things one cannot know till one sees a person amongst others. ”

“ Alfred. I must confess I have never thought of what Mrs. Riis has just said, because such a thing never could happen. No man of honour would choose a woman of whose past he was not certain. Never!
Mrs. Riis. But what about a woman of honour, Alfred?
Alfred. Ah, that is quite different.
Nordan. To put it precisely: a woman owes a man both her past and her future; a man owes a woman only his future.
Alfred. Well, if you like to put it that way—yes.
Nordan (to SVAVA, as he gets up) . ”

“ When you refused to go with us to the betrothal party, had you already heard some thing about Alfred Christensen? Was what you had heard of such a nature that you felt you could not trust him?
Nordan (after a moment's thought) . Not altogether, certainly.
Mrs. Riis (to CHRISTENSEN) . There, you hear!—But will you let me ask you this, doctor: why did you not say so? Good God, why did you not speak?
Nordan. Listen to me, Mrs. Riis. When two young people, who after all are suited to one another—for they are that, are they not?
Christensen. They are that, I admit. ”

“ Are we to wish to play havoc with all that too?—to disown the flower of the world's youth, and ruin the world's finest cities? It seems to me that people wish to do so much in the name of morality, that they end by wishing to do what would be subversive of all morality. ”

“ Svava. Because we were not ready for it, of course!
Alfred. How do you know that?
Svava. Because I know that at that time I was quite another girl from what I am now.
Alfred. But there is a natural affinity between those that love one another. I am sure of it. And it was just its much the case at that time, surely?
Svava. We do not feel the natural affinity as long as we are developing on different lines.
Alfred. Have we been doing that? And nevertheless we—
Svava. Nevertheless we love one another. Our paths may be as unlike as they please, if only they lead together in the end. ”