Krogstad

“ NORA.
No, you wouldn’t, would you, Torvald?
HELMER.
Many a man has been able to retrieve his character, if he has openly confessed his fault and taken his punishment.
NORA.
Punishment—?
HELMER.
But Krogstad did nothing of that sort; he got himself out of it by a cunning trick, and that is why he has gone under altogether.
NORA.
But do you think it would—?
HELMER.
Just think how a guilty man like that has to lie and play the hypocrite with every one, how he has to wear a mask in the presence of those near and dear to him, even before his own wife and children. ”

“ Linden to have a place in the Bank?
Nora. How dare you catechise me in this way, Mr. Krogstad—you, a subordinate of my husband’s? But since you ask, you shall know. Yes, Mrs. Linden is to be employed. And it is I who recommended her, Mr. Krogstad. Now you know.
Krogstad. Then my guess was right.
Nora. [Walking up and down.] You see one has a wee bit of influence, after all. It doesn’t follow because one’s only a woman——When people are in a subordinate position, Mr. Krogstad, they ought really to be careful how they offend anybody who—h’m——
Krogstad. ”

“ Nora. Yes, yes; for my sake, you must let Krogstad keep his place in the Bank.
Helmer. My dear Nora, it’s his place I intend for Mrs. Linden.
Nora. Yes, that’s so good of you. But instead of Krogstad, you could dismiss some other clerk.
Helmer. Why, this is incredible obstinacy! Because you have thoughtlessly promised to put in a word for him, I am to——!
Nora. It’s not that, Torvald. It’s for your own sake. This man writes for the most scurrilous newspapers; you said so yourself. He can do you no end of harm. I’m so terribly afraid of him——
Helmer. ”

“ Oh, TORVALD, if only you won't dismiss KROGSTAD, you can't think how your little lark would jump about and twitter!
Helmer. The inducement would be stronger but for the fact that, as it is, the little lark is generally engaged in that particular occupation. And I really must get rid of KROGSTAD. If I didn't, people would say I was under the thumb of my little squirrel here, and then KROGSTAD and I knew each other in early youth ”

“ Your husband shall create a place on purpose for me——
Nora. He will never do that!
Krogstad. He will do it; I know him—he won’t dare to show fight! And when he and I are together there, you shall soon see! Before a year is out I shall be the manager’s right hand. It won’t be Torvald Helmer, but Nils Krogstad, that manages the Joint Stock Bank.
Nora. That shall never be.
Krogstad. Perhaps you will——?
97Nora. Now I have the courage for it.
Krogstad. Oh, you don’t frighten me! A sensitive, petted creature like you——
Nora. ”

“ Krogstad (with a searching look at her) . Is that what it all means?—that you want to save your friend at any cost? Tell me frankly. Is that it?
Mrs. Linde. Nils, a woman who has once sold herself for another's sake, doesn't do it a second time.
Krogstad. I will ask for my letter back.
Mrs. Linde. No, no.
Krogstad. Yes, of course I will. I will wait here till Helmer comes; I will tell him he must give me my letter back—that it only concerns my dismissal—that he is not to read it—
Mrs. Linde. No, Nils, you must not recall your letter. ”

“ Two on the same piece of wreckage would stand a better chance than each on their own.
Krogstad. Christine!
Mrs. Linde. What do you suppose brought me to town?
Krogstad. Do you mean that you gave me a thought?
Mrs. Linde. I could not endure life without work. All my life, as long as I can remember, I have worked, and it has been my greatest and only pleasure. But now I am quite alone in [pg 85] the world—my life is so dreadfully empty and I feel so forsaken. There is not the least pleasure in working for one's self. Nils, give me someone and something to work for.
Krogstad. ”

“ Linden.
Don't you? I do. I am a widow—a Norwegian widow. And it has occurred to me that there may be a nobler side to your nature somewhere—though you have not precisely the best of reputations.
Krogstad.
Right. I am a forger, and a money-lender; I am on the staff of the Norwegian Punch—a most scurrilous paper. More, I have been blackmailing Mrs. Helmer by trading on her fears, like a low cowardly cur. But, in spite of all that— [clasping his hands] —there are the makings of a fine man about me yet, Christina! ”

“ Hush! The tarantella! Go! go!
Krogstad. Why? What is it?
Mrs. Linden. Don’t you hear the dancing overhead? As soon as that is over they will be here.
Krogstad. Oh yes, I shall go. Nothing will come of this, after all. Of course, you don’t know the step I have taken against the Helmers.
Mrs. Linden. Yes, Nils, I do know.
117Krogstad. And yet you have the courage to——?
Mrs. Linden. I know to what lengths despair can drive a man.
Krogstad. Oh, if I could only undo it!
Mrs. Linden. You could. Your letter is still in the box.
Krogstad. Are you sure?
Mrs. Linden. Yes; but——
Krogstad. ”

“ And what did he want with Torvald?
Rank. I haven’t an idea; I only gathered that it was some bank business.
Nora. I didn’t know that Krog—that this Mr. Krogstad had anything to do with the Bank?
Rank. Yes. He has got some sort of place there. [To Mrs. Linden.] I don’t know whether, in your part of the country, you have people who go grubbing and sniffing around in search of moral rottenness—and then, when they have found a “case,” don’t rest till they have got their man into some good position, where they can keep a watch upon him. Men with a clean bill of health they leave out in the cold. ”

“ An adapter, I fancy, with a free hand would scarcely have made one of the characters use the same exit speech on two occasions. Nils Krogstad does this. He can think of nothing better than, "If I am flung into the gutter, you shall accompany me," repeated twice with the slight variation, "If I am flung into the gutter for the second time, you shall accompany me," used for the last exit. Again, Torvald Helmer has a long monologue in the final Act that a practised playwright would have "broken up" with the assistance of a portrait, or a letter, or something. ”

“ I have got authority from the retiring manager to undertake the necessary changes in the staff and in the rearrangement of the work; and I must make use of the Christmas week for that, so as to have everything in order for the new year.
NORA.
Then that was why this poor Krogstad—
HELMER.
Hm!
NORA.
[leans against the back of his chair and strokes his hair] . If you hadn’t been so busy I should have asked you a tremendously big favour, Torvald.
HELMER.
What is that? Tell me.
NORA.
There is no one has such good taste as you. And I do so want to look nice at the fancy-dress ball. ”

“ As a lawyer, a close observer of human nature, and a Bank Manager, I have remarked that people who forge names seldom or never confide the fact to their children—which inevitably brings moral contagion into the entire family. From which it follows, logically, that Krogstad has been poisoning his children for years by acting a part, and is morally lost. [Stretches out his hands to her.] I can't bear a morally lost Bank-cashier about me!
Nora.
But you never thought of dismissing him till Christina came!
Helmer.
H'm! I've got some business to attend to—so good-bye, little lark! ”

“ I think the “happy ending” which is actually reached when Krogstad returns the forged document was, in Ibsen’s original conception, intended to be equivalent to the stopping of the Indian Girl, and the return of Olaf, in Pillars of Society—that is to say, it was to be the end of the drama properly so called, and the rest was to be a more or less conventional winding-up, a confession of faults on both sides, accompanied by mutual congratulations on the blowing-over of the threatened storm. ”

“ Helmer. Of course!—if only this obstinate little person can get her way! Do you suppose I am going to make myself ridiculous before my whole staff, to let people think that I am a man to be swayed by all sorts of outside influence? I should very soon feel the consequences of it, I can tell you. And besides, there is one thing that makes it quite impossible for me to have Krogstad in the bank as long as I am manager.
Nora. ”

“ Mrs LindeI. have learned to act prudently Life, and hard, bitter necessity have taught me that. KrogstadAnd life has taught me not to believe in fine speeches. Mrs LindeThen. life has taught you something very reasonable But deeds you must believe in? KrogstadWhat do you mean by that? Mrs LindeYou said you were like a shipwrecked man clinging to some wreckage. KrogstadI had good reason to say so. Mrs LindeWell, I am like a shipwrecked woman clinging to some wreckage—no one to mourn for, no one to care for. ”

“ Andrew N. Crogstad, a leading citizen, a man of honor and intelligence, has shared the difficulties of the frontier. He was born in Trondhjem, Norway, 1852, received a good schooling and in February, 1872, left his fatherland for Dunn county, Wisconsin, and five years later disembarked in the Skagit valley. He turned his attention to logging and farming. A beautiful farm, surrounded by a wealthy orchard, stands as a pride to his energy. He has seen days of romantic awfulness, once hazardous, but now pleasing reminiscences. The flood has always been a dread, and many frights has it caused. ”

“ The race must have been a vigorous one, for the Krogs are like this to-day.
The first Dutch owner was not called Krog, nor did he live at Krogskogen; but the son who inherited the place was baptised Anders Krog, after his mother's father; he called his son Hans, after his own father; and since then these two names have alternated. If there were several sons, one was always named Klas and another Jürges, which names in the course of time became Klaus and Jörgen. The family continued to intermarry with its Dutch kinsfolk, so that the race was as much Dutch as Norwegian ”

“ He did not pause at the road and bridge, but went on down the further bank of the Cocahutchie. It was a pretty stream of water, and it spread out wide and shallow, and rippled merrily among stones and bowlders and clumps of willow and alder for nearly half a mile. Gradually, then, it grew narrower, quieter, deeper, and wore a sleepy look which made it seem more in keeping with quiet old Crofield.
"The hay's about ready to cut," said Jack, as he plodded along the path, near the water's edge, through a thriving meadow of clover and timothy. "There's always plenty of work in haying time. ”

“ In Norway a fortune rarely descends to the third generation. If it is not squandered in the second, it is certain to be in [7] the third. Not so in this case. To the main branch of the Krog family the woods were now the same source of wealth that they had been three hundred years before.
A desire which was transmitted from generation to generation was the desire to travel. In the book-cases at Krogskogen books of travel predominated, and additions were constantly made to their number. ”

“ Croft and I followed, as propelled by the straining muscles of well-nigh naked rowers, it moved across the waves. With a sense of the bizarreness, the weirdness, of it all, I found myself perching upon a gunwale, while Croft actually took his place at Naia's side.
It was an odd sensation to realize myself a part of that strange archaic scene; wherein a beautiful woman had been abducted, and her captors, bronzed men dressed more in the fashion of the soldiery of forgotten empires than anything else, drove their boat across a moonlight silvered tide. ”

“ The younger brother, Anders, who in the meantime had also taken to trade, and acquired the largest grocery business in the neighbouring town, was obliged to take over the property as well.
Young Anders Krog was not really a good business man. But his extraordinary conscientiousness and considerateness soon gained him the custom of the whole town. Another man in his place might have made a fortune; he did not. When he entered on possession of Krogskogen he had not yet paid up the price of his business in [10] town, and in taking over the property he incurred a still larger debt. ”

“ Here Croft found the man he sought, reclining on a padded divan, his too full red lips slightly parted in a bibulous smile, his long hair curled and anointed and perfumed till he reeked of aromatic scents; his well-formed hands loaded with rings, his body clad in a crimson garment, embroidered in gold.
Beside him, lying outstretched like some splendid creature of the jungle as it came to Croft, was a woman; tawny as a lioness in the tint of her hair and heavy-lidded eyes, lithe as a lioness, too, in every sensuous line of her body, well-nigh unclothed. ”

“ The first step of winning to the woman of his soul flashed into Croft's brain, even as his plan for winning a body had flashed there days before.
But he kept it to himself, locked safely in his breast, as he set forth for his new home, with his parents, Sinon and Mellia, that afternoon.
That Sinon of Nodhur was wealthy he was assured when he saw the galley in which the homeward journey was to be made. It was a swift craft, gilded and ornate as to hull and masts and spars. Ten rowers furnished power on its two banks of oars, seated on the benches in the waist of the hull. ”

“ So much Croft saw, and then, forsaking the caravan, let himself drift along beside the strange conveyance to inspect the girl. In fact, after the first swift glance at the man, he had no eyes save for his companion in the coach.
She was younger than the man, yet strangely like him in a feminine way—more slender, more graceful as she lay at her ease. Her face was a perfect oval, framed in a wealth of golden hair, which, save for a jeweled cincture, fell unrestrained about her shoulders in a silken flood. ”