Scene I.—A pretty little room, with a window looking out on an early spring garden. Wendla’s bed in one corner, wardrobe in the other, table and two chairs between. Doors just below bed and wardrobe.
Wendla stands at the foot of the bed, all dressed except for her frock, which hangs on the chair in front of her. Her mother stands on the other side of the table, with a long dress in her hands.
Wendla—Why did you make the dress so long for me, mother?
Mrs. Bergmann—You’re fourteen years old to-day!
Wendla—If I had known you were going to make my dress so long, I’d rather not have been fourteen.
Mrs. Bergmann—It isn’t too long, Wendla. What do you want? Can I help my girl’s growing two inches taller every spring? A girl as grown up as you can’t go round in a little princess-dress!
Wendla—All the same, my little princess-dress looks better on me than that nightgown. Let me wear it just once more, mother! Just this summer! That penitence-frock will suit me just as well at fifteen as at fourteen: let’s hang it up till my next birthday! Now I’d only tread on the braid.
Mrs. Bergmann—I don’t know what I ought to say. I’d like so much to keep you this way, child,—just as you are. Other girls are overgrown and awkward at your age. You’re just the opposite. Who knows what you will be like when the others are fully developed?
Wendla—Who knows? Perhaps I shan’t be at all.
Mrs. Bergmann—Child, child, what makes you think such things!
Wendla—Don’t, mother dear; oh, don’t be sad.
Mrs. Bergmann—[Kissing her.] My only darling!
Wendla—They come to me so, night-times, when I can’t go to sleep. They don’t make me a bit sad, and I know I sleep better afterwards. Is it wrong, mother, to think about things like that?
Mrs. Bergmann—Go, dear, and hang the “penitence-frock” away, and put on your princess-dress again, God bless you! When I get the chance I’ll put another breadth of ruffles on the bottom of it.
Wendla—[Hanging the dress in the wardrobe.] No! Then I might as well be all of twenty right away!
Mrs. Bergmann—If only you don’t get too cold. In its time that little dress was plenty long enough for you, but now——
Wendla—Now, with summer coming? Oh, mother, not even little children get diphtheria in their knees! Why are you so scary? At my age nobody freezes, least of all in the legs. Do you think it would be better if I got too hot, mother? Thank the good God if your darling doesn’t cut off her sleeves some morning and come to you at twilight without her shoes and stockings!—When I wear my penitence-frock I’ll dress like a fairy queen under it.... Don’t scold, motherkin,—nobody’ll see how, then!
CURTAIN
Scene II.—Sunday evening. A gravel walk in front of a park bench; shrubbery and tree-tops behind. Melchior enters, followed by the other boys.
Melchior—I’m tired of that: I don’t want to any more.
Otto—Then the rest of us can just as well stop, too. Have you done your work, Melchior?
Melchior—Go on playing, why don’t you!
Moritz—Where are you going?
Melchior—For a walk.
George—It’ll be dark soon.
Robert—Have you done your work already?
Melchior—And why shouldn’t I go for a walk in the dark?
Ernest—Central America!—Louis XV!—Sixty lines of Homer!—Seven equations!
Melchior—Damn the work!
George—Oh, if only Latin Comp. didn’t come to-morrow!
Moritz—One can’t think of anything without some work coming in between!
Otto—I’m going home.
George—I, too, home to work!
Ernest—Me, too; me, too.
Robert—Good night, Melchior.
Melchior—Sleep well!... [All make off except Moritz.] Gosh, I’d like to know what we’re in the world for!
Moritz—School makes me wish I’d been a cabhorse sooner!—What do we go to school for? So that somebody can examine us. And what are we examined for? To make us flunk! Seven of us have got to flunk just because the classroom upstairs only holds sixty.—I’ve felt so queer since Christmas! Devil take me, if it weren’t for Papa I’d tie up my bundle this very night and be off to Altoona!
Melchior—Let’s talk about something else. [They go for a walk.]
[In practice, Melchior can here fling himself down on the bench; Moritz remain standing.]
Moritz—Do you see the black cat there with its tail stuck up?
Melchior—Do you believe in omens?
Moritz—I don’t quite know.—It came from over there.—Means nothing!
Melchior—I believe that’s a Charybdis everyone falls into who has struggled up out of the Scylla of religious nonsense. Let’s sit down under this beech. The warm spring wind is streaming over the mountains. I’d like to be a young Dryad in the woods up there letting herself be rocked and swung in the highest tree-tops all night long to-night....
Moritz—Unbutton your vest, Melchior.
Melchior—Ah, how it blows through one’s clothes!
Moritz—It’s getting so jolly dark you can’t see your hand before your face. Where are you? [He draws Melchior down beside him. Only their voices, from here on, come out of the darkness.] Don’t you believe too, Melchior, that modesty in people is just the effect of their bringing-up?
Melchior—I started thinking about that just the day before yesterday. No, after all it seems to me to be deeply rooted in human nature. Imagine undressing completely before even your best friend! You wouldn’t do it unless he did it, too, at the same time. But it’s also more or less a matter of custom.
Moritz—I’ve sometimes thought, if I have children, boys and girls, right from the start I’ll have them sleep together in the same room—if possible, on the same bed—and help each other twice a day to dress and undress,—and on hot days, boys and girls alike, let ’em wear nothing at all but a short tunic, white woolen with just a leather belt. It seems to me, if they grew up so, they’d surely, later, be more at ease than we are, usually....
Melchior—Oh, I’m sure of that, Moritz!—The only question is, what if the girls should have children?
Moritz—How do you mean—have children?
Melchior—I believe there’s a kind of instinct in that matter. I believe, for instance, if you shut up a pair of kittens, male and female, and cut them off from any contact with the outer world—left them absolutely to their own impulses, that is—well, the female sooner or later would get pregnant, though neither she nor the male had anyone to imitate or show them how.
Moritz—With animals—yes—it must happen all by itself.
Melchior—With people, too, just the same! I ask you, Moritz,—if your boys are sleeping on the same bed as the girls, and all of a sudden the first masculine impulses stir in them.... I’d like to bet with anybody....
Moritz—Yes, you may be right there. But all the same——
Melchior—And with your girls it would be absolutely the same at the corresponding age. Not that a girl exactly—of course, one can’t tell so well ... at least, it would be natural to expect ... and their curiosity, too, would be there, to do its share.
Moritz—One question by the way——
Melchior—Well?
Moritz—You’ll answer?
Melchior—Surely.
Moritz—True?
Melchior—There’s my hand. Well, Moritz?
Moritz—Have you written your theme yet?
Melchior—Oh, speak out what you want to say! No one can hear us or see us.
Moritz—You understand my children would be made to work all day in the yard or the garden, or play games that called for real physical exertion. They’ll have to ride and wrestle and climb, and of all things not sleep so soft at night as we do. We are awfully softened! I don’t believe people dream when they have hard beds!
Melchior—I’m going to sleep from now till vintage time in just my hammock. I’ve shoved my bed behind the stove: they go together. Last winter I dreamt once that I whipped our Lolo till he couldn’t move a limb! That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever dreamt.—What makes you look at me so strangely?
Moritz—Have you felt them yet?
Melchior—What?
Moritz—How did you phrase it?
Melchior—Masculine impulses?
Moritz—M-hm.
Melchior—Yes indeed!
Moritz—I too.
Melchior—In fact I’ve known that quite a while—nearly a year.
Moritz—It struck me like a bolt of lightning!
Melchior—You had dreamt?
Moritz—Oh, just a flash ... of legs in sky-blue tights climbing over the teacher’s desk—to be exact, I thought they were going to climb over it. I only got a glimpse of them.
Melchior—George Zirschnitz dreamt of his mother.
Moritz—Did he tell you that?
Melchior—Out there on the gallows-path.
Moritz—If you only knew what I’ve gone through since that night!
Melchior—Qualms of conscience?
Moritz—Qualms of conscience?—Pangs of death!
Melchior—Good God....
Moritz—I thought I was past cure. I thought I was suffering from some inward weakness.—I only began to feel easier when I set out to take notes on the memories of my life. Oh, yes, Melchior! the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me.
Melchior—I had been more or less prepared for it beforehand. I felt a bit ashamed, but that was all.
Moritz—And yet you’re almost a full year younger than me.
Melchior—On that point, Moritz, I wouldn’t waste much thought. By all I can make out, there is no definite age for this phantom’s first appearance. You know that big Lämmermeier with the straw-colored hair and the big nose? He’s three years older than me, but Hansy Rilow says that to this very day he dreams of nothing but tarts and apricot jelly.
Moritz—I ask you, how can Hansy Rilow tell about that?
Melchior—He’s asked him.
Moritz—He’s asked him?—I’d never have dared to ask anybody!
Melchior—You just asked me, didn’t you?
Moritz—Yes, I did!—Maybe Hansy had made his will too, beforehand!—Isn’t it a queer game the world plays with us?! And we’re supposed to be grateful! I don’t remember having felt the least desire for this sort of disturbance.—Why couldn’t I have been left sleeping quietly until everything was still again! Father and mother could have had a hundred better children. But here I am, with no idea how I got here, and now I must be responsible for not having stayed away!—Haven’t you sometimes thought about that too, Melchior: in what kind of a way exactly we got mixed up in this whirl?
Melchior—Do you mean you don’t know that either, Moritz?
Moritz—How should I know?—I see how the hens lay eggs and hear how Mama says she carried me under her heart; but is that enough?—And I remember being embarrassed even at five years old when someone turned up the queen of hearts, she was so décolleté. That feeling has gone; but to-day I can scarcely speak to any girl any more without something abominable coming into my head—and I swear to you, Melchior, I don’t know what!
Melchior—I’ll tell you the whole thing. I’ve gotten it partly out of books, partly from pictures, partly from observations of nature. You’ll be surprised. It made me an atheist at first. I told George Zirschnitz about it, too. He wanted to tell Hansy Rilow, but Hansy had learned it all from his French governess when he was a kid.
Moritz—I’ve gone through Meyer’s Abridged from A to Z. Words! just words and more words! Not one simple explanation! Oh, this reticence! What good to me is an encyclopædia that has nothing to say on the most vital question of all?
Melchior—Did you ever see two dogs running about the streets?
Moritz—No!—Don’t tell me anything yet—not to-day, Melchior! I’ve still got Central America and Louis XV before me, not to speak of the sixty lines of Homer, the seven equations, the Latin Comp.—I should lose out at everything to-morrow again. If I am to drudge successfully I must be as dull as an ox.
Melchior—But come up to my room with me. In three-quarters of an hour I’ll have the Homer, the algebra, and two Latin Comp.’s. I’ll put a few harmless blunders into yours, and the thing’s done. Mama’ll make us some lemonade again, and we’ll talk comfortably about propagation.
Moritz—I can’t!—I can’t talk comfortably about propagation! If you want to help me, give me your information in writing. Write down what you know. Make it as short and plain as you can, and stick it between my books to-morrow at recess. I’ll carry it home without knowing I have it, and come upon it sometime unexpectedly. I won’t be able to help skimming thru it, even if I’m tired.... If it’s absolutely necessary, you can draw something in the margin, too.
Melchior—You’re like a girl.... But just as you like. It’ll be an interesting job for me all right.—One question, Moritz.
Moritz—Hm?
Melchior—Have you ever seen a girl?
Moritz—Yes!
Melchior—All?
Moritz—Every bit!
Melchior—I, too.—Then no illustrations will be necessary.
Moritz—At the Shooting-meet, in Leilich’s Anatomical Museum. If it had come up, I’d have been chucked out of school. As beautiful as the daylight—and oh, so true!
Melchior—I was with Mama in Frankfort last summer— Are you going already, Moritz?
Moritz—To get my work done.—Good night.
Melchior—So long!
CURTAIN
Scene III.—A stormy afternoon. Martha, Wendla and Thea are coming along the path.
Martha—How the water gets into your shoes!
Wendla—How the wind whistles past your cheeks!
Thea—How your heart pounds!
Wendla—Let’s go out to the bridge. Ilse said the river was full of bushes and trees. The boys have a raft on the water. They say Melchi Gabor nearly got drowned yesterday evening.
Thea—Oh, he can swim!
Martha—You bet he can, kid!
Wendla—If he hadn’t been able to swim, I guess he’d have been really drowned.
Thea—Your braid’s coming out, Martha, your braid’s coming out!
Martha—Pooh, let it! It bothers me so all the time! I can’t wear my hair short, like you; I can’t wear it loose like Wendla; I can’t wear a bang; and at home I even have to put it up—all on account of my aunt!
Wendla—I’ll bring scissors with me to-morrow to the confirmation-class. While you’re reciting “Well for him who erreth not” I’ll cut it off!
Martha—For God’s sake, Wendla! Papa’ll beat me to pieces, and Mama’ll lock me up three nights in the coal-hole!
Wendla—What’ll he beat you with, Martha?
Martha—It often strikes me that they’d miss something, after all, if they didn’t have such a horrid little brat as I am.
Thea—Oh, my dear!
Martha—Aren’t you allowed to have a sky-blue ribbon thru the top of your chemise?
Thea—Pink satin! Mama thinks pink goes well with my pitch-black eyes.
Martha—Blue’s awfully becoming to me.—Well, Mama yanked me out of bed by the hair—this way; I fell with my hands out on the floor.—You see Mama prays with us night after night....
Wendla—In your place I’d have run away from them long ago, out into the world.
Martha—There! That’s it, that’s just what I’m aiming at. That’s just it.—But she’d like to see me! Oh, she’d just like to see me! At any rate, I shan’t have anything to blame my mother for later on!
Thea—Huh—huh—
Martha—Can you possibly think, Thea, what Mama meant by that?
Thea—Not I— Can you, Wendla?
Wendla—I would simply have asked her.
Martha—I lay on the floor and shrieked and screamed. In comes Papa. Rip!—Off with the chemise! Out of the door with me! There now! Maybe I’d like to go down on the street like that, eh?...
Wendla—Oh, Martha, that just can’t be true!
Martha—I froze. I told all about it. Well, I must sleep in the sack the whole night.
Thea—Never in my life could I sleep in a sack!
Wendla—I really wish I could sleep in your sack for you sometime.
Martha—If only you’re not beaten——
Thea—But don’t you smother in it?
Martha—Your head stays out. It’s tied under your chin.
Thea—And then do they beat you?
Martha—No. Only when there’s something special.
Wendla—What do they beat you with, Martha?
Martha—Oh, what—with anything handy.—Does your mother think it’s “disreputable” to eat a piece of bread in bed?
Wendla—No, no.
Martha—I do believe they enjoy it, though, even if they never speak of that.—When once I have children I’ll let them grow up like the weeds in our flower-garden. No one bothers himself about them, and they stand so high, so thick!—while the roses in the beds are flowering worse and worse each summer.
Thea—When I have children I’ll dress them all in rosy pink—pink hats, pink dresses, pink shoes. Only their stockings—their stockings will be black as night! Then when I go walking I’ll have them march ahead of me.—And you, Wendla?
Wendla—How do you two know that you’ll have any?
Thea—Well, why shouldn’t we have some?
Martha—It’s true Aunt Euphemia hasn’t any.
Thea—Silly! That’s because she’s not married!
Wendla—Aunty Bauer was married three times, and hasn’t got one.
Martha—If you have any, Wendla, which would you rather—boys or girls?
Wendla—Boys! Boys!
Thea—Me too—boys!
Martha—Me too—better twenty boys than three girls.
Thea—Girls are tiresome.
Martha—If I weren’t a girl already, I surely wouldn’t want to be one any more!
Wendla—That’s a matter of taste, I guess, Martha. I’m glad every day that I’m a girl. I wouldn’t exchange with a prince, believe me.—But that’s why I’d only want boys.
Thea—But that’s nonsense, Wendla, rank nonsense!
Wendla—But look here, child,—mustn’t it be a thousand times more uplifting to be loved by a man than by a girl?
Thea—But you wouldn’t say that forest-inspector Pfälle loved Melitta more than she loves him!
Wendla—Yes, I would, too, Thea.—Pfälle is proud. Pfälle is proud of being forest-inspector, for he has nothing else.—Melitta is happy, because she gets ten thousand times more than she is.
Martha—Aren’t you proud of yourself, Wendla?
Wendla—That would be silly.
Martha—How proud I wish I could be, in your place!
Thea—Only see how she puts her feet down, how straight ahead she looks, how she holds herself, Martha! If that isn’t pride—
Wendla—But what for? I’m so happy that I’m a girl! If I weren’t one, I’d kill myself, so that next time.... [Stops, seeing Melchior. He crosses past them, greeting them, and goes, followed by their eyes.]
Thea—He’s got a wonderful head.
Martha—That’s how I think of the young Alexander, when he went to school to Aristotle.
Thea—Oh, good gracious! Greek History!—I only remember how Socrates lay in his tub when Alexander sold him the donkey’s shadow.
Wendla—They say he’s the third best in his class.
Thea—Professor Knochenbruch says he could be first, if he wanted to.
Martha—He has a lovely forehead, but his friend has more soulful eyes.
Thea—Moritz Stiefel?—He’s a stupid!
Martha—I’ve always gotten on with him perfectly well.
Thea—He humiliates you, no matter where you are with him. At the Rilows’ party he offered me some sugar-almonds. Imagine, Wendla,—they were soft and warm! Isn’t that just—— He said he had kept them too long in his trousers pocket!
Wendla—Think of this: Melchi Gabor told me that time that he didn’t believe in anything—not in God, or in a future life—in just nothing in the world!
CURTAIN
Scene IV.—Near the Boys’ School. All the boys but Melchior and Moritz and Ernest Roebel are standing about expectantly.
Melchior—[Entering.] Can any of you tell me where Moritz Stiefel is keeping himself?
George—He’s going to catch it—Oh, he’s going to catch it!
Otto—He’ll go too far once, and then he’ll get what’s coming to him good and plenty.
Lämmermeier—Lord knows I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes at this moment!
Robert—Some cheek! Some impudence!
Melchior—But wha—wha—what do you mean?
George—What do we mean?—Well, listen....
Lämmermeier—I wish I hadn’t said anything.
Otto—Me too—wish I hadn’t!
Melchior—If you don’t tell me this minute——
Robert—Well, here it is: Moritz Stiefel has broken into the Faculty-Room!
Melchior—The Faculty-Room!
Otto—The Faculty-Room! Right after Latin.
George—He was the last out. He stayed behind on purpose.
Lämmermeier—As I turned the hall corner I saw him opening the door.
Melchior—You go to——
Lämmermeier—Yeah, if only he doesn’t go to——
George—I guess someone had left the key in the lock.
Robert—Or else Moritz Stiefel has a pick-lock on him.
Otto—I’d believe it of him!
Lämmermeier—If he has luck he’ll only get a Sunday afternoon.
Robert—Along with a demerit in his report.
Otto—If he doesn’t get a suspension on top of a reprimand.
Hansy Rilow—There he is!
Melchior—Pale as a sheet. [Moritz appears, in the utmost excitement.]
Lämmermeier—Moritz, Moritz, what have you done?
Moritz—Nothing—nothing——
Robert—You’re feverish.
Moritz—With joy—with rapture—with jubilation——
Otto—You were caught——?
Moritz—I’ve passed!—Melchior, I’ve passed! Oh, let the world go hang now—I have passed!—Who would have believed that I’d be promoted! I can’t realize it! Twenty times over I read it! I can’t believe it—but God be thanked, there it was—there it stayed! I am promoted!—[Smiling.] I don’t know—I feel so queer—the earth’s going round.... Melchior, Melchior, if you only knew what I’ve gone thru!
Hansy Rilow—Congratulations, Moritz!—Just be glad that you got away safe!
Moritz—You don’t know, Hansy—you can’t imagine what depended on it. For the last three weeks I’ve slunk past that door as though it were the mouth of hell. Then, to-day,—it was ajar! I think if a million had been offered me, nothing, oh, nothing could have held me back! Before I knew it I was standing in the middle of the room—I was opening the record book, turning the pages, finding—and during all that time—it makes me shudder!——
Melchior—During all that time——
Moritz—All that time the door behind me was standing wide open!—How I got out, how I got down the stairs, I don’t remember.
Hansy Rilow—Did Ernest Roebel pass, too?
Moritz—Oh, yes, Hansy, sure! Ernest Roebel is promoted the same way.
Robert—Then you just can’t have read right. Not counting the dunces’ bench, there are sixty-one of us with you and Roebel, and the upper classroom can’t hold more than sixty!
Moritz—I read perfectly right. Ernest Roebel is moved up just as I am—both of us, for the present, to be sure, only provisionally. During the first quarter it will be decided which of us must make room for the other.—Poor Roebel! God knows I’m not afraid for myself any more. I’ve looked too far down into the depths this time for that!
Otto—I bet you five marks it’ll be you that makes room.
Moritz—You haven’t got it. I don’t want to rob you.—Gosh, won’t I grind from now on!—Now I can tell you all too,—and you can believe it or not, it doesn’t matter now—but I know, I know how true it is: if I had not been promoted, I’d have shot myself.
Robert—Brag!
George—The coward!
Otto—I’d like to see you shoot anything!
Lämmermeier—Punch his face!
Melchior—[Punches Lämmermeier.] Come along, Moritz. Let’s go to the forester’s house.
George—Do you really believe that rot?
Melchior—Is that your business?—Let ’em talk, Moritz. Just let’s get away, out o’ the city. [He pulls him away. They meet Professors Knochenbruch and Hungergurt, touch their caps, and exeunt. The other boys vanish, to the other side.]
Knochenbruch—It is beyond my comprehension, dear colleague, how the best of my pupils can feel drawn like that to the very worst of them all.
Hungergurt—And beyond mine too, dear colleague.
CURTAIN
Scene V.—A sunny afternoon in a wood of beech and oak trees. Thick undergrowth. A big oak-trunk with mossy roots. By it, Wendla stands, looking about for the path. Melchior breaks thru the brush.
Melchior—[Seeing her, stops dead.] Is it really you, Wendla? What are you doing up here so all alone? I’ve been tramping up and down this wood for the last three hours without meeting a soul, and now all of a sudden you step out of the thickest covert at me!
Wendla—Yes, it’s I.
Melchior—If I didn’t know you were Wendla Bergmann I’d think you were a Dryad fallen out of the branches!
Wendla—No, no, I’m Wendla Bergmann.—Where have you come from?
Melchior—I’m following my thoughts.
Wendla—I’m looking for woodruff.[1] Mama wants to flavor May-wine with them. At first she was going to come too, but at the last moment Aunty Bauer turned up, and she doesn’t like to climb: so I came up here alone.
Melchior—Have you got your woodruff?
Wendla—The whole basket full. Over there under the beech-trees they’re as thick as meadow-clover. Just now I’m looking round for a way out. I seem to have got mixed up. Maybe you can tell me what time it is.
Melchior—Just after ha’ past three.—When do they expect you back?
Wendla—I thought it would be later. I lay a long time in the moss by the brook and dreamed. The time went by me so quickly, I was afraid it would soon be night.
Melchior—If nobody’s expecting you yet, let’s lie down here a little while. Under the oak there’s my favorite place. When you lean your head back against the trunk and stare thru the twigs at the sky, you get hypnotized. [He does as he says.] The ground is still warm from the morning sun. [She sits on a root.]—There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for weeks, Wendla.
Wendla—But I must be at home before five.
Melchior—We’ll go in time together. I’ll take the basket and we’ll strike out thru the underbrush and get to the bridge in ten minutes. When one lies like this, with his forehead in his palm, one gets the strangest ideas....
Wendla—What was it you wanted to ask me, Melchior?
Melchior—I’ve heard, Wendla, that you go a lot to poor people and take them things to eat and even clothes and money. Do you do that of your own accord or does your mother send you?
Wendla—Generally Mother sends me. There are poor laborers’ families with an awful lot of children. Often the man is out of work, and then they’re cold or go hungry. We have still such a lot of things left in cupboards and bureaus that we don’t need any longer.—But what made you think of it?
Melchior—Do you like to go, or not, when your mother sends you on such errands?
Wendla—Oh, I like to ever so much!—How can you ask?
Melchior—But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the rooms are alive with filth, the men hate you because you don’t work——
Wendla—That isn’t true, Melchior,—and if it were true I’d go all the more!
Melchior—What do you mean, Wendla,—all the more?
Wendla—I’d go all the more for that: it would give me so much more pleasure to be able to help them!
Melchior—Oh, so you go to the poor people for the pleasure you get out of it!
Wendla—I go because they’re poor!
Melchior—But if it didn’t give you any pleasure, would you stop going?
Wendla—Well, can I help it if it does give me pleasure?
Melchior—[Rolling over and staring straight up.] And yet it’s for that that you’ll get into heaven!—So it was true, the thought that has left me no peace for the last month!—Can the skinflint help it if it doesn’t give him any pleasure to go and visit sick and dirty children?
Wendla—Oh, I’m sure it would give you the greatest pleasure!
Melchior—And yet it’s for that that he’s condemned to everlasting death. [Sits up, his back against the tree.] I’ll write it up and send it to Pastor Kahlbauch. He started me on this. Why does he drivel to us about “the joy of sacrifice”?—If he can’t answer me I won’t go to his Sunday-school any more, nor let myself be confirmed.
Wendla—Why do you want to give pain to your dear father and mother? Let yourself be confirmed! It won’t cost you your head! If it weren’t for our horrid white dresses and your baggy trousers, perhaps one could even feel enthusiastic about it.
Melchior—There is no self-sacrifice. There is no unselfishness.—I see the good rejoice in their goodness, and the wicked tremble and groan—I see you, Wendla Bergmann, shake your curls and laugh, and I get as glum about it as a pariah!—What did you dream about just now, Wendla, when you lay in the grass by the brookside?
Wendla—Silly things—foolishness——
Melchior—With your eyes open?
Wendla—Oh, I dreamt I was a poor beggar-child, oh, awfully poor, who was shoved out on the street at five in the morning and had to beg the whole day long in wind and rain among harsh, hard-hearted people; and if I came home at night shivering with hunger and cold, and hadn’t as much money as my father wanted, then I was beaten and beaten....
Melchior—Oh, I know, Wendla. You get that out of silly kid-stories. Believe me, such brutal people don’t exist any more!
Wendla—Oh, yes, they do, Melchior,—you don’t know!—Martha Bessel is beaten night after night, so that you can see the marks the next day. Oh, what she must suffer! It makes you boiling hot to hear her tell about it. I’m so terribly sorry for her, I often have to cry into my pillow in the middle of the night. For months I’ve been thinking and thinking how to help her. I’d joyfully put myself in her place for a week.
Melchior—Her father should simply be reported to the police. Then they’d take the child away from him.
Wendla—I, Melchior, have never been whipped in my life—not one single time. I can scarcely guess what it’s like to be beaten. I’ve tried hitting myself, to find out how it feels really, inside.—It must be a shuddery sensation.
Melchior—I don’t believe a child is ever made better by it.
Wendla—Better by what?
Melchior—Being struck.
Wendla—[Reaching over and plucking a young shoot.] With this switch, for example.—Whew, but that’s strong and slender!
Melchior—That would draw blood.
Wendla—Wouldn’t you hit me with it once?
Melchior—You?
Wendla—Yes.
Melchior—What’s got into you, Wendla?
Wendla—[Drawing back, a little alarmed.] Why shouldn’t you?
Melchior—Oh, don’t shrink. I won’t hit you.
Wendla—But even if I let you?
Melchior—Never, girl!
Wendla—Even if I ask you to, Melchior?
Melchior—Have you lost your senses?
Wendla—I have never in my life been beaten!
Melchior—If you can beg for a thing like that!...
Wendla—[Thrusting it into his hands.] I do! Please!
Melchior—I’ll teach you to say Please! [Strikes her.]
Wendla—Oh, what! I don’t feel the least thing!
Melchior—No wonder—thru all your skirts like that....
Wendla—Then hit me on the legs—here!
Melchior—Wendla! [Strikes her harder.]
Wendla—Oh, you’re just stroking me!—You’re stroking me!
Melchior—You wait, you witch—I’ll beat the devil out of you! [He throws the sprig aside and falls upon her with his fists so that she breaks out with a fearful cry. Undeterred, raging, his blows rain on her thick and fast, while big tears overflow and streak his cheeks. Of a sudden, he springs upright, clasps his temples with both hands, and, passionately sobbing, plunges into the forest.]
CURTAIN