Part 3

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

ACT II

SCENE I.--MELCHIOR’S _study. A recess, rear center, with casements looking out upon moonlit garden and dark, evening woods. Window-seat. Low table with a well-shaded oil lamp, books, cigarettes, etc._ MORITZ _and_ MELCHIOR _sit on the two ends of the window-seat, in profile, facing each other_.

MORITZ--Now I’m quite cheerful again--only a bit excited. But in the Greek class I went to sleep like the besotted Polyphemus! I’m amazed old Zungenschlag didn’t tweak my ears. This morning again I came within an ace of being late. My first thought when I woke up was of the verbs in -MI. Gee whiz, but didn’t I conjugate all during breakfast and along the road till everything turned green before me!--It must have been a little after three when I dropped off. The pen left a blot on my book. The lamp was smoking when Matilda woke me. In the elders under my window the blackbirds were twittering so joyously--I got unutterably melancholy again at once. I buttoned my collar and pulled the brush thru my hair.--But you feel it when you force yourself against nature....

MELCHIOR--Shall I roll you a cigarette?

MORITZ--No, thanks--I won’t smoke.--If only it can keep on like this! I mean to work and work till my eyes pop out of my head. Ernest Roebel has fallen down six times already since vacation--three times in Greek, twice with Knochenbruch, last time in History of Literature. I haven’t been in that pitiful fix more than five times, and from to-day on it shall never happen again!--Roebel won’t shoot himself. Roebel hasn’t got parents who are sacrificing their all for him. Whenever he wants to, he can be a soldier of fortune or a cowboy or a sailor. But if _I_ fail my father’ll have a stroke and Mama’ll go crazy. That’s the kind of thing nobody would live to see. Before the exam I prayed God to let me get consumption, so that the cup might pass me by untasted. It did pass over--even tho its nimbus still gleams at me from afar so that I never dare to lift my eyes.--But now that I’ve got hold of the first rung I shall haul myself up. I’m sure of that, because the inevitable consequence of a fall will be a broken neck.

MELCHIOR--There’s an undreamed-of meanness to this life. It wouldn’t take much to make me hang myself up in the branches.--Wonder where Mama can be with the tea.

MORITZ--Your tea will do me good, Melchior.--I’m actually trembling! I feel so strangely sensitized. Touch me a moment. I see, I hear, I feel much more sharply, and yet everything’s so dreamy, so charged with atmosphere.--How the garden recedes in the moonlight there, so still, so deep, as if it went on forever! Dim-veiled figures are moving among the bushes; they slip over the open tracts in breathless activity, and vanish in the half-dark. I should say they were holding a conference under the chestnut-tree.--Shan’t we go down, Melchior?

MELCHIOR--Let’s wait till we’ve had some tea.

MORITZ--The leaves whisper so eagerly. It’s as if I were hearing dead Grandmother tell the story of the Queen without a Head. She was a perfectly beautiful queen, fair as the sun, lovelier than all the maidens in the land,--only she had come into the world, alas! without a head. She couldn’t eat nor drink nor see nor laugh nor kiss either. She could only make herself understood to her court thru her supple little hand. With her dainty feet she tossed off declarations of war and death-sentences. Then one day she was conquered by a king who happened to have two heads that were always at outs with each other--quarreled the whole year long so hard that neither let the other speak a word. So the chief court conjurer took the smaller of the two heads and set it on the queen; and lo and behold, it was mighty becoming to her; so then the king married the queen and the two were no longer at loggerheads but kissed each other on the forehead and the cheeks and the mouth, and lived for a long, long time after in happiness and joy.... Confounded rot! Since vacation I haven’t been able to get the Headless Queen out of my head! If I see a beautiful girl, I see her without a head,--and then all of a sudden I appear as the Headless Queen--myself!... Well, it’s possible that one will be set on my shoulders yet. [MRS. GABOR _enters with a tray of steaming tea, which she sets down on the table after moving the lamp a little, and then shakes hands with_ MORITZ.]

MRS. GABOR--Here, children! Fall to!--Good evening, Moritz Stiefel. How are you?

MORITZ--[_Standing._] Well, thank you, Mrs. Gabor.--I’m listening to the roundelays down there.

MRS. GABOR--But you’re not looking a bit well.--Don’t you feel quite right?

MORITZ--It’s nothing to speak of. I’ve been rather late getting to bed the last few nights.

MELCHIOR--Think of it--he’s been studying all night!

MRS. GABOR--You shouldn’t do that kind of thing, Master Stiefel! You should take care of yourself. Look out for your health. School can’t take the place of health in your life. Take frequent long walks in the fresh air! That is worth more to you at your age than correct Middle High German!

MORITZ--I will go walking oftener. You’re right. One can work, too, while one is walking. Why didn’t I think of that myself!--The written lessons I should have to do at home just the same.

MELCHIOR--You’ll do the written work here with me. That way it’ll be easier for both of us.--You know, Mama, Max von Trenk has been down with brain-fever. Well, this noon Hansy Rilow came from Trenk’s death-bed to inform Mr. Sonnenstich that Trenk had just died in his presence. “Is that so?” says Sonnenstich. “Haven’t you still got two hours’ work to make up from last week? Here’s the note to the proctor. See that the thing is cleared up at last. The entire class will attend the interment.”--Hansy was simply paralyzed.

MRS. GABOR--What is that book you have there, Melchior?

MELCHIOR--“Faust.”

MRS. GABOR--Have you read it all yet?

MELCHIOR--Not all thru.

MORITZ--We’re just at the Walpurgisnacht.

MRS. GABOR--I should have waited a year or two more, if I’d been you, before reading that.

MELCHIOR--I don’t know any book, Mama, that I’ve found so much that was beautiful in. Why shouldn’t I have read it?

MRS. GABOR--Because you can’t understand it.

MELCHIOR--How can you know that, Mama? I feel plainly enough that I’m not able yet to grasp it in its full sublimity, but....

MORITZ--We always read it together. That makes understanding it vastly easier.

MRS. GABOR--You are old enough, Melchior, to be able to judge what is good for you and what isn’t. Do whatever you feel you can justify. I shall be the first to realize, and be glad, if you never give me any reason to have to withhold anything from you. I only wanted to remind you that even the best can do harm if one is still too immature to appraise it rightly. I shall always rather put my trust in you than in any possible set of educational rules.--If you want anything else, children, come and call me, Melchior: I shall be in my bedroom. [_Exit._]

MORITZ--Your Mama meant the story of Gretchen.

MELCHIOR--Have we lingered even a moment over that!

MORITZ--Faust himself can’t have been more cold-blooded getting thru it!

MELCHIOR--After all, that villainy isn’t the climax of the poem. Faust could have promised the girl marriage, he could have deserted her directly after, without being one whit less guilty in my eyes. Gretchen could have died of a broken heart for all the difference I’d see.--When you behold how intensely everyone always looks first for that sort of thing, you might think the whole world revolved round penis and vulva.[2]

MORITZ--To be frank with you, Melchior, I’ve had exactly that feeling since I read your paper. It fell out at my feet in the first days of vacation. I had my Plötz [a French grammar] in my hand.--I bolted the door and ran through your quivering lines like a frightened owl flying through a blazing wood. I think I read most of it with my eyes shut. At your explanations a stream of vague memories rang in my ears like a song one used to hum joyously to one’s self in childhood, and at the brink of death hears from the mouth of another, and is appalled.--My sympathy was aroused most by what you wrote about the girl’s part, I shall never get over the impression that made. I’m sure, Melchior, to have to suffer wrong is sweeter than to do wrong. Blamelessly to have to undergo so sweet a wrong seems to me the essence of every earthly bliss.

MELCHIOR--I don’t want my bliss given me as a charity!

MORITZ--But why not?

MELCHIOR--I don’t want anything that I haven’t had to struggle and win for myself.

MORITZ--But then is it still enjoyable, Melchior?--The girl’s delight, Melchior, is like the blessèd gods’. The girl represses. Her very nature protects her. She is kept free from any bitterness or regret up to the last moment, and so can see, all at once, heaven itself break over her. She is still fearful of hell in the very instant of discovering and embracing paradise. Her senses are as fresh as the spring that bubbles from pure rock. She lays hold of a cup no earthly breath has yet clouded--a draught of nectar that she takes and swallows even as it flames and flares.... The gratification that the man receives seems to me shallow and flat beside hers!

MELCHIOR--Let it seem what it will to you, but keep it to yourself. I don’t like to think about it.

CURTAIN

SCENE II.--WENDLA’S _room, empty_. MRS. BERGMANN, _her hat on, her shawl round her shoulders, a basket on her arm, enters with beaming face_.

MRS. BERGMANN--Wendla! Wendla!

WENDLA--[_Appearing, half dressed, at the other door._] What is it, Mother?

MRS. BERGMANN--Up already, dear? Well! That’s nice of you.

WENDLA--Have you been out already?

MRS. BERGMANN--Hurry up now and get dressed! You must go straight down to Ina’s and take this basket to her.

WENDLA--[_Finishing dressing during the following._] Have you been at Ina’s? How is Ina feeling? Isn’t she ever going to get better?

MRS. BERGMANN--Just think, Wendla: the stork came to her last night and brought her a new little boy!

WENDLA--A boy?--A boy?--Oh, that’s grand!--So it was for that she’s been sick so long with influenza!

MRS. BERGMANN--A splendid boy!

WENDLA--I’ve got to see him, Mother!--So now I’m an aunt for the third time--one niece and two nephews!