The Project Gutenberg eBook of John Gabriel Borkman, by Henrik Ibsen

The anecdotic history of John Gabriel Borkman is even scantier than that of Little Eyolf. It is true that two mentions of it occur in Ibsen's letters, but they throw no light whatever upon its spiritual antecedents. Writing to George Brandes from Christiania, on April 24, 1896, Ibsen says: "In your last letter you make the suggestion that I should visit London. If I knew enough English, I might perhaps go. But as I unfortunately do not, I must give up the idea altogether. Besides, I am engaged in preparing for a big new work, and I do not wish to put off the writing of it longer than necessary. It might so easily happen that a roof-tile fell on my head before I had 'found time to make the last verse.' And what then?" On October 3 of the same year, writing to the same correspondent, he again alludes to his work as "a new long play, which must be completed as soon as possible." It was, as a matter of fact, completed with very little delay, for it appeared in Copenhagen on December 15, 1896.

The irresponsible gossip of the time made out that Bjornson discerned in the play some personal allusions to himself; but this Bjornson emphatically denied. I am not aware that any attempt has been made to identify the original of the various characters. It need scarcely be pointed out that in the sisters Gunhild and Ella we have the pair of women, one strong and masterful, the other tender and devoted, who run through so many of Ibsen's plays, from The Feast at Solhoug onwards—nay, even from Catalina. In my Introduction to The Lady from the Sea (p. xxii) it is pointed out that Ibsen had the character of Foldal clearly in his mind when, in March 1880, he made the first draft of that play. The character there appears as: "The old married clerk. Has written a play in his youth which was only once acted. Is for ever touching it up, and lives in the illusion that it will be published and will make a great success. Takes no steps, however, to bring this about. Nevertheless accounts himself one of the 'literary' class. His wife and children believe blindly in the play." By the time Foldal actually came to life, the faith of his wife and children had sadly dwindled away.

There was scarcely a theatre in Scandinavia or Finland at which John Gabriel Borkman was not acted in the course of January 1897. Helsingors led the way with performances both at the Swedish and the Finnish Theatres on January 10. Christiania and Stockholm followed on January 25, Copenhagen on January 31; and meanwhile the piece had been presented at many provincial theatres as well. In Christiania, Borkman, Gunhild, and Ella were played by Garmann, Fru Gundersen, and Froken Reimers respectively; in Copenhagen, by Emil Pousen, Fru Eckhardt, and Fru Hennings. In the course of 1897 it spread all over Germany, beginning with Frankfort on Main, where, oddly enough, it was somewhat maltreated by the Censorship. In London, an organization calling itself the New Century Theatre presented John Gabriel Borkman at the Strand Theatre on the afternoon of May 3, 1897, with Mr. W. H. Vernon as Borkman, Miss Genevieve Ward as Gunhild, Miss Elizabeth Robins as Ella Rentheim, Mr. Martin Harvey as Erhart, Mr. James Welch as Foldal, and Mrs. Beerbohm Tree as Mrs. Wilton. The first performance in America was given by the Criterion Independent Theatre of New York on November 18, 1897, Mr. E. J. Henley playing Borkman, Mr. John Blair Erhart, Miss Maude Banks Gunhild, and Miss Ann Warrington Ella. For some reason, which I can only conjecture to be the weakness of the the third act, the play seems nowhere to have taken a very firm hold on the stage.

Dr. Brahm has drawn attention to the great similarity between the theme of John Gabriel Borkman and that of Pillars of Society. "In both," he says, "we have a business man of great ability who is guilty of a crime; in both this man is placed between two sisters; and in both he renounces a marriage of inclination for the sake of a marriage that shall further his business interests." The likeness is undeniable; and yet how utterly unlike are the two plays! and how immeasurably superior the later one! It may seem, on a superficial view, that in John Gabriel Borkman Ibsen has returned to prose and the common earth after his excursion into poetry and the possibly supernatural, if I may so call it, in The Master Builder and Little Eyolf. But this is a very superficial view indeed. We have only to compare the whole invention of John Gabriel Borkman with the invention of Pillars of Society, to realise the difference between the poetry and the prose of drama. The quality of imagination which conceived the story of the House of Bernick is utterly unlike that which conceived the tragedy of the House of Borkman. The difference is not greater between (say) The Merchant of Venice and King Lear.

The technical feat which Ibsen here achieves of carrying through without a single break the whole action of a four-act play has been much commented on and admired. The imaginary time of the drama is actually shorter than the real time of representation, since the poet does not even leave intervals for the changing of the scenes. This feat, however, is more curious than important. Nothing particular is gained by such a literal observance of the unity of time. For the rest, we feel definitely in John Gabriel Borkman what we already felt vaguely in Little Eyolf—that the poet's technical staying-power is beginning to fail him. We feel that the initial design was larger and more detailed than the finished work. If the last acts of The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler be compared with the last acts of Little Eyolf and Borkman, it will be seen that in the earlier plays it relaxes towards the close, to make room for pure imagination and lyric beauty. The actual drama is over long before the curtain falls on either play, and in the one case we have Rita and Allmers, in the other Ella and Borkman, looking back over their shattered lives and playing chorus to their own tragedy. For my part, I set the highest value on these choral odes, these mournful antiphones, in which the poet definitely triumphs over the mere playwright. They seem to me noble and beautiful in themselves, and as truly artistic, if not as theatrical, as any abrupter catastrophe could be. But I am not quite sure that they are exactly the conclusions the poet originally projected, and still less am I satisfied that they are reached by precisely the paths which he at first designed to pursue.

The traces of a change of scheme in John Gabriel Borkman seem to me almost unmistakable. The first two acts laid the foundation for a larger and more complex superstructure than is ultimately erected. Ibsen seems to have designed that Hinkel, the man who "betrayed" Borkman in the past, should play some efficient part in the alienation of Erhart from his family and home. Otherwise, why this insistence on a "party" at the Hinkels', which is apparently to serve as a sort of "send-off" for Erhart and Mrs. Wilton? It appears in the third act that the "party" was imaginary. "Erhart and I were the whole party," says Mrs. Wilton, "and little Frida, of course." We might, then, suppose it to have been a mere blind to enable Erhart to escape from home; but, in the first place, as Erhart does not live at home, there is no need for any such pretext; in the second place, it appears that the trio do actually go to the Hinkels' house (since Mrs. Borkman's servant finds them there), and do actually make it their starting-point. Erhart comes and goes with the utmost freedom in Mrs. Wilton's own house; what possible reason can they have for not setting out from there? No reason is shown or hinted. We cannot even imagine that the Hinkels have been instrumental in bringing Erhart and Mrs. Wilton together; it is expressly stated that Erhart made her acquaintance and saw a great deal of her in town, before she moved out to the country. The whole conception of the party at the Hinkels' is, as it stands, mysterious and a little cumbersome. We are forced to conclude, I think, that something more was at one time intended to come of it, and that, when the poet abandoned the idea, he did not think it worth while to remove the scaffolding. To this change of plan, too, we may possibly trace what I take to be the one serious flaw in the the play—the comparative weakness of the second half of the third act. The scene of Erhart's rebellion against the claims of the mother, aunt, and father strikes one as the symmetrical working out of a problem rather than a passage of living drama.

All this means, of course, that there is a certain looseness of fibre in John Gabriel Borkman which we do not find in the best of Ibsen's earlier works. But in point of intellectual power and poetic beauty it yields to none of its predecessors. The conception of the three leading figures is one of the great things of literature; the second act, with the exquisite humour of the Foldal scene, and the dramatic intensity of the encounter between Borkman and Ella, is perhaps the finest single act Ibsen ever wrote, in prose at all events; and the last scene is a thing of rare and exalted beauty. One could wish that the poet's last words to us had been those haunting lines with which Gunhild and Ella join hands over Borkman's body:

We twin sisters—over him we both have loved.
We two shadows—over the dead man.

Among many verbal difficulties which this play presents, the greatest, perhaps, has been to find an equivalent for the word "opreisning," which occurs again and again in the first and second acts. No one English word that I could discover would fit in all the different contexts; so I have had to employ three: "redemption," "restoration," and in one place "rehabilitation." The reader may bear in mind that these three terms represent one idea in the original.

Borkman in Act II. uses a very odd expression—"overskurkens moral," which I have rendered "the morals of the higher rascality." I cannot but suspect (though for this I have no authority) that in the word "overskurk," which might be represented in German by "Ueberschurke," Borkman is parodying the expression "Uebermensch," of which so much has been heard of late. When I once suggested this to Ibsen, he neither affirmed nor denied it. I understood him to say, however, that in speaking of "overskurken" he had a particular man in view. Somewhat pusillanimously, perhaps, I pursued my inquiries no further.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN (1896)

PERSONS.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN, formerly Managing Director of a Bank.
MRS. GUNHILD BORKMAN, his wife.
ERHART BORKMAN, their son, a student.
MISS ELLA RENTHEIM, Mrs. Borkman's twin sister.
MRS. FANNY WILTON.
VILHELM FOLDAL, subordinate clerk in a Government office.
FRIDA FOLDAL, his daughter.
MRS. BORKMAN'S MAID.

The action passes one winter evening, at the Manorhouse of
the Rentheim family, in the neighbourhood of Christiania.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN

PLAY IN FOUR ACTS

ACT FIRST

MRS. BORKMAN's drawing-room, furnished with old-fashioned, faded splendour. At the back, an open sliding-door leads into a garden-room, with windows and a glass door. Through it a view over the garden; twilight with driving snow. On the right, a door leading from the hall. Further forward, a large old-fashioned iron stove, with the fire lighted. On the left, towards the back, a single smaller door. In front, on the same side, a window, covered with thick curtains. Between the window and the door a horsehair sofa, with a table in front of it covered with a cloth. On the table, a lighted lamp with a shade. Beside the stove a high-backed armchair.

MRS. GUNHILD BORKMAN sits on the sofa, crocheting. She is an elderly lady, of cold, distinguished appearance, with stiff carriage and immobile features. Her abundant hair is very grey. Delicate transparent hands. Dressed in a gown of heavy dark silk, which has originally been handsome, but is now somewhat worn and shabby. A woollen shawl over her shoulders.

She sits for a time erect and immovable at her crochet. Then the bells of a passing sledge are heard.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Listens; her eyes sparkle with gladness and she involuntarily whispers]. Erhart! At last!

[She rises and draws the curtain a little aside to look out. Appears disappointed, and sits down to her work again, on the sofa. Presently THE MAID enters from the hall with a visiting card on a small tray.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Taking the card.] Let me see—— [Reads it; rises hastily and looks intently at the girl.] Are you sure this is for me?

[THE MAID opens the door for the strange lady and goes out. MISS ELLA RENTHEIM enters. She resembles her sister; but her face has rather a suffering than a hard expression. It still shows signs of great beauty, combined with strong character. She has a great deal of hair, which is drawn back from the forehead in natural ripples, and is snow-white. She is dressed in black velvet, with a hat and a fur-lined cloak of the same material.

    [The two sisters stand silent for a time, and look searchingly
        at each other. Each is evidently waiting for the other to
        speak first.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Who has remained near the door.] You are surprised to see me,
Gunhild.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Standing erect and immovable between the sofa and the table, resting her finger-tips upon the cloth.] Have you not made a mistake? The bailiff lives in the side wing, you know.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Coming forward into the middle of the room.] Well—then sit down.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Stands looking at her for a time with her arms resting on the back of the armchair.] Well, Gunhild, it is nearly eight years now since we saw each other last.

ELLA RENTHEIM. True, since we spoke to each other. I daresay you have seen me now and again—when I came on my yearly visit to the bailiff.

ELLA RENTHEIM. I have caught one or two glimpses of you, too—there, at the window.

MRS. BORKMAN. You must have seen me through the curtains then. You have good eyes. [Harshly and cuttingly.] But the last time we spoke to each other—it was here in this room——

MRS. BORKMAN. [Firmly, but in a low voice.] It was the week before he—was set at liberty.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Coming down.] Oh yes, yes, yes! I shall never forget that time! But it is too terrible to think of! Only to recall it for the moment—oh!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Gloomily.] And yet one's thoughts can never get away from it. [Vehemently; clenching her hands together.] No, I can't understand how such a thing—how anything so horrible can come upon one single family! And then—that it should be our family! So old a family as ours! Think of its choosing us out!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Oh, Gunhild—there were many, many families besides ours that that blow fell upon.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh yes; but those others don't trouble me very much. For in their case it was only a matter of a little money—or some papers. But for us——! For me! And then for Erhart! My little boy—as he then was! [In rising excitement.] The shame that fell upon us two innocent ones! The dishonour! The hateful, terrible dishonour! And then the utter ruin too!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looks at her in surprise.] You don't suppose I ever have anything to do with him? That I ever meet him? That I see anything of him?

MRS. BORKMAN. [As before.] The man was in gaol, in gaol for five years! [Covers her face with her hands.] Oh, the crushing shame of it! [With increased vehemence.] And then to think of all that the name of John Gabriel Borkman used to mean! No, no, no—I can never see him again! Never!

MRS. BORKMAN.
Did he not say in court that it was I who began his ruin? That
I spent money so recklessly?

MRS. BORKMAN. Why, it was he himself that made me do it! He insisted on our living in such an absurdly lavish style——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, I know. But that is just where you should have restrained him; and apparently you didn't.

MRS. BORKMAN. How was I to know that it was not his own money he gave me to squander? And that he himself used to squander, too—ten times more than I did!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Quietly.] Well, I daresay his position forced him to do that— to some extent at any rate.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Scornfully.] Yes, it was always the same story—we were to "cut a figure." And he did "cut a figure" to some purpose! He used to drive about with a four-in-hand as if he were a king. And he had people bowing and scraping to him just as to a king. [With a laugh.] And they always called him by his Christian names—all the country over—as if he had been the king himself. "John Gabriel," "John Gabriel," "John Gabriel." Every one knew what a great man "John Gabriel" was!

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, to all appearance. But he never breathed a single word to me as to his real position—never gave a hint as to where he got his means from.

MRS. BORKMAN. I don't care about the other people. But it was his duty to tell me the truth. And that he never did! He kept on lying to me—lying abominably——

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Interrupting.] Surely not, Gunhild. He kept things back perhaps, but I am sure he did not lie.

MRS. BORKMAN.
Well, well; call it what you please; it makes no difference.
And then it all fell to pieces—the whole thing.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [To herself.] Yes, everything fell to pieces—for him—and for others.

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Drawing herself up menacingly.] But I tell you this, Ella,
I do not give in yet! I shall redeem myself yet—you may make
up your mind to that!

MRS. BORKMAN. Redeem my name, and honour, and fortune! Redeem my ruined life— that is what I mean! I have some one in reserve, let me tell you— one who will wash away every stain that he has left.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With rising excitement.] There is an avenger living, I tell you! One who will make up to me for all his father's sins!

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, Erhart, my own boy! He will redeem the family, the house, the name. All that can be redeemed.—And perhaps more besides.

MRS. BORKMAN. It must be done as best it can; I don't know how. But I know that it must and shall be done. [Looks searchingly at her.] Come now, Ella; isn't that really what you have had in mind too, ever since he was a child?

MRS. BORKMAN. No? Then why did you take charge of him when the storm broke upon—upon this house?

MRS. BORKMAN. No, no, I could not. And his father—he had a valid enough excuse—while he was there—in safe keeping——

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a venomous expression.] And how could you make up your mind to take charge of the child of a—a John Gabriel! Just as if he had been your own? To take the child away from me—home with you—and keep him there year after year, until the boy was nearly grown up. [Looking suspiciously at her.] What was your real reason, Ella? Why did you keep him with you?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Evasively.] I don't know about that. And then, you know,
Erhart was rather delicate as a child——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, I thought so—at that time at any rate. And you know the air of the west coast is so much milder than here.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Smiling bitterly.] H'm—is it indeed? [Breaking off.] Yes, it is true you have done a great deal for Erhart. [With a change of tone.] Well, of course, you could afford it. [Smiling.] You were so lucky, Ella; you managed to save all your money.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Hurt.] I did not manage anything about it, I assure you. I had no idea—until long, long afterwards—that the securities belonging to me—that they had been left untouched.

MRS. BORKMAN. Well, well; I don't understand anything about these things! I only say you were lucky. [Looking inquiringly at her.] But when you, of your own accord, undertook to educate Erhart for me—what was your motive in that?

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, some motive you must have had. What did you want to do with him? To make of him, I mean?

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Slowly.] I wanted to smooth the way for Erhart to happiness in life.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Contemptuously.] Pooh—people situated as we are have something else than happiness to think of.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking steadily and earnestly at her.] Erhart has in the first place to make so brilliant a position for himself, that no trace shall be left of the shadow his father has cast upon my name—and my son's.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Searchingly.] Tell me, Gunhild, is this what Erhart himself demands of his life?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Curtly.] Erhart and I always make the same demands upon ourselves.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Sadly and slowly.] You are so very certain of your boy, then,
Gunhild?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With veiled triumph.] Yes, that I am—thank Heaven. You may be sure of that!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Then I should think in reality you must be happy after all; in spite of all the rest.

MRS. BORKMAN. So I am—so far as that goes. But then, every moment, all the rest comes rushing in upon me like a storm.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a change of tone.] Tell me—you may as well tell me at once—for that is really what I have come for——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Something I felt I must talk to you about.—Tell me—Erhart does not live out here with—with you others?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Harshly.] Erhart cannot live out here with me. He has to live in town——

MRS. BORKMAN. He must, for the sake of his studies. But he comes out to me for a little while every evening.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Why, Gunhild, surely he must have come. I can hear his footsteps overhead.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes. I have heard him walking up and down there ever since
I came.

MRS. BORKMAN. He walks up and down like that—backwards and forwards—from morning to night—day out and day in.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Erhart has spoken of it in his letters. He said that his father generally remained by himself—up there—and you alone down here.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes; that is how it has been, Ella, ever since they let him out, and sent him home to me. All these long eight years.

MRS. BORKMAN. Always to hear his footsteps up there—from early morning till far into the night. And everything sounds so clear in this house!

MRS. BORKMAN.
I often feel as if I had a sick wolf pacing his cage up there in
the gallery, right over my head. [Listens and whispers.] Hark!
Do you hear! Backwards and forwards, up and down, goes the wolf.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a gesture of repulsion.] He has never made any movement towards a change.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Indignantly.] I! After all the wrong he has done me! No thank you! Rather let the wolf go on prowling up there.

ELLA RENTHEIM. This room is too hot for me. You must let me take off my things after all.

[ELLA RENTHEIM takes off her hat and cloak and lays them on a
chair beside the door leading to the hall.

MRS. BORKMAN. I suppose not. He has his great cloak and his hat hanging in the cupboard—the cupboard in the hall, you know——

ELLA RENTHEIM. [To herself.] The cupboard we used to hide in when we were little.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Nods.] And now and then—late in the evening—I can hear him come down as though to go out. But he always stops when he is halfway downstairs, and turns back—straight back to the gallery.

MRS. BORKMAN. H'm! He took the best possible way to get rid of them. He was a dear friend to his friends, was John Gabriel.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] All the same, I call it mean, petty, base, contemptible of them, to think so much of the paltry losses they may have suffered through him. They were only money losses, nothing more.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Not answering her.] So he lives up there quite alone.
Absolutely by himself.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, practically so. They tell me an old clerk or copyist or something comes out to see him now and then.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Ah, indeed; no doubt it is a man called Foldal. I know they were friends as young men.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, I believe they were. But I know nothing about him. He was quite outside our circle—when we had a circle——

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, he condescends to. But of course he only comes when it is dark.

ELLA RENTHEIM. This Foldal—he was one of those that suffered when the bank failed?

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Carelessly.] Yes, I believe I heard he had lost some money.
But no doubt it was something quite trifling.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Smiling.] Oh, well; what he possessed must have been little enough—nothing to speak of.

ELLA RENTHEIM. And he did not speak of it—Foldal I mean—during the investigation.

MRS. BORKMAN. At all events, I can assure you Erhart has made ample amends for any little loss he may have suffered.

MRS. BORKMAN. He has taken an interest in Foldal's youngest daughter. He has taught her things, and put her in the way of getting employment, and some day providing for herself. I am sure that is a great deal more than her father could ever have done for her.

MRS. BORKMAN.
And then Erhart has arranged for her to have lessons in music.
She has made such progress already that she can come up to—to
him in the gallery, and play to him.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh yes, I suppose he is. Of course he has the piano you sent out here—when he was expected back——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Has the poor girl to come all the long way out here, and then back to town again?

MRS. BORKMAN. No, she doesn't need to. Erhart has arranged for her to stay with a lady who lives near us—a Mrs. Wilton——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Erhart has mentioned her several times. Does she live out here now?

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, she has taken a villa here; she moved out from town some time ago.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a slight hesitation.] They say she is divorced from her husband.

MRS. BORKMAN. He deserted her, that is what he did. I am sure the fault wasn't hers.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh yes, pretty well. She lives close by here; and she looks in every now and then.

MRS. BORKMAN.
Yes, principally of people. She has made quite a study of
Erhart; looked deep into his character—into his soul. And
the result is she idolises him, as she could not help doing.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a touch of finesse.] Then perhaps she knows Erhart still better than she knows you?

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, Erhart saw a good deal of her in town, before she came out here.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Taken aback, looking keenly at her.] In spite of that! What do you mean?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Looking her straight in the eyes.] Yes, that is true, Gunhild!
I did mean something by it.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
First let me tell you, I think I too have a certain claim upon
Erhart. Do you think I haven't?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Glancing round the room.] No doubt—after all the money you have spent upon him.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Smiling scornfully.] Love my son? Is it possible? You? In spite of everything?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, it is possible—in spite of everything. And it is true.
I love Erhart—as much as I can love any one—now—at my time of
life.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Why, then, I am troubled as soon as I see anything threatening him.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looks at her for a moment in speechless surprise.] And you think such things of Erhart! Of my own boy! He, who has his great mission to fulfil!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Do you think a young man of Erhart's age, full of health and spirits—do you think he is going to sacrifice himself for—for such a thing as a "mission"?

ELLA RENTHEIM. It is only a dream that you cherish. For if you hadn't that to cling to, you feel that you would utterly despair.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, indeed I should despair. [Vehemently.] And I daresay that is what you would like to see, Ella!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With head erect.] Yes, I would rather see that than see you "redeem" yourself at Erhart's expense.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Threateningly.] You want to come between us? Between mother and son? You?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Triumphantly.] You are too late! You had him in your nets all these years—until he was fifteen. But now I have won him again, you see!

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Then I will win him back from you! [Hoarsely, half whispering.]
We two have fought a life-and-death battle before, Gunhild—for a
man's soul!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a smile of scorn.] Do you still think that victory was worth the winning?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Smiling.] Yes, I have taken that liberty. Could you not see that in his letters?

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Nods slowly.] Yes. I could see you—the whole of you—in his letters of late.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Gallingly.] I have made the best use of these eight years. I have had him under my own eye, you see.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Controlling herself.] What have you said to Erhart about me?
Is it the sort of thing you can tell me?

MRS. BORKMAN. I have impressed upon him, every day of his life, that he must never forget that it is you we have to thank for being able to live as we do—for being able to live at all.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, that is the sort of thing that rankles; I feel that in my own heart.

MRS. BORKMAN. When he came home to me, he imagined that you did it all out of goodness of heart. [Looks malignly at her.] Now he does not believe that any longer, Ella.

MRS. BORKMAN. He believes what is the truth. I asked him how he accounted for the fact that Aunt Ella never came here to visit us——

MRS. BORKMAN. He knows them better now. You had got him to believe that it was to spare me and—and him up there in gallery——

MRS. BORKMAN. He thinks, what is the truth, that you are ashamed of us—that you despise us. And do you pretend that you don't? Were you not once planning to take him quite away from me? Think, Ella; you cannot have forgotten.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a gesture of negation.] That was at the height of the scandal—when the case was before the courts. I have no such designs now.

MRS. BORKMAN. And it would not matter if you had. For in that case what would become of his mission? No, thank you. It is me that Erhart needs— not you. And therefore he is as good as dead to you—and you to him.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Coldly, with resolution.] We shall see. For now I shall remain out here.

MRS. BORKMAN. Everything is yours. The chair I am sitting in is yours. The bed I lie and toss in at night belongs to you. The food we eat comes to us from you.

ELLA RENTHEIM. It can't be arranged otherwise, you know. Borkman can hold no property of his own; for some one would at once come and take it from him.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, I know. We must be content to live upon your pity and charity.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Coldly.] I cannot prevent you from looking at it in that light, Gunhild.

MRS. BORKMAN. [In great excitement.] Yes; you don't imagine that I will go on living under the same roof with you! I tell you, I would rather go to the workhouse or tramp the roads!

MRS. BORKMAN. [After reflecting a moment, firmly.] Erhart himself shall choose between us.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking doubtfully and hesitatingly at her.] He choose? Dare you risk that, Gunhild?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a hard laugh.] Dare I? Let my boy choose between his mother and you? Yes, indeed I dare!

[There is a sharp knock at the door leading in from the hall, which is immediately opened. MRS. WILTON enters, in evening dress, and with outer wraps. She is followed by THE MAID, who has not had time to announce her, and looks bewildered. The door remains half open. MRS. WILTON is a strikingly handsome, well-developed woman in the thirties. Broad, red, smiling lips, sparkling eyes. Luxuriant dark hair.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Rather drily.] Good evening, Mrs. Wilton. [To THE MAID, pointing toward the garden-room.] Take the lamp that is in there and light it.

MRS. WILTON. [Observing ELLA RENTHEIM.] Oh, I beg your pardon—you have a visitor.

    [ERHART BORKMAN flings the half-open door wide open and rushes
        in. He is a young man with bright cheerful eyes. He is
        well dressed; his moustache is beginning to grow.

ERHART.
[Radiant with joy; on the threshold.] What is this! Is Aunt
Ella here? [Rushing up to her and seizing her hands.] Aunt,
aunt! Is it possible? Are you here?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Throws her arms round his neck.] Erhart! My dear, dear boy!
Why, how big you have grown! Oh, how good it is to see you again!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Sharply.] What does this mean, Erhart? Were you hiding out in the hallway?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking hard at him.] Indeed, Erhart! You don't come to your mother first?

ERHART. I had just to look in at Mrs. Wilton's for a moment—to call for little Frida.

ERHART. [Addressing some one through the open door.] You can go right upstairs, Frida.

[Pause. ELLA RENTHEIM observes ERHART. He seems embarrassed and a little impatient; his face has assumed a nervous and colder expression.

[THE MAID brings the lighted lamp into the garden-room, goes out again and closes the door behind her.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With forced politeness.] Well, Mrs. Wilton, if you will give us the pleasure of your company this evening, won't you——

MRS. WILTON. Many thanks, my dear lady, but I really can't. We have another invitation. We're going down to the Hinkels'.

MRS. WILTON. [Laughing.] Oh, I ought really to have said I. But I was commissioned by the ladies of the house to bring Mr. Borkman with me—if I happened to see him.

MRS. WILTON. Yes, fortunately. He was good enough to look in at my house— to call for Frida.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Drily.] But, Erhart, I did not know that you knew that family— those Hinkels?

ERHART.
[Irritated.] No, I don't exactly know them. [Adds rather
impatiently.] You know better than anybody, mother, what people
I know and don't know.

MRS. WILTON. Oh, it doesn't matter! They soon put you at your ease in that house! They are such cheerful, hospitable people—the house swarms with young ladies.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With emphasis.] If I know my son rightly, Mrs. Wilton, they are no fit company for him.

ERHART.
[Concealing his impatience.] Well, well, well, mother, it's
quite clear I can't got to the Hinkels' this evening. Of course
I shall remain here with you and Aunt Ella.

ERHART. Yes, indeed, my dear Aunt; I can't think of going. [Looking doubtfully at MRS. WILTON.] But how shall we manage? Can I get out of it? You have said "Yes" for me, haven't you?

MRS. WILTON. [Gaily.] What nonsense! Not get out of it! When I make my entrance into the festive halls—just imagine it!—deserted and forlorn—then I must simply say "No" for you.

MRS. WILTON. [Putting the matter lightly aside.] I am quite used to saying both yes and no—on my own account. And you can't possibly think of leaving your aunt the moment she has arrived! For shame, Monsieur Erhart! Would that be behaving like a good son?

MRS. WILTON. Oh, it seems to me we have often more cause to be grateful to a foster-mother than to our own mother.

MRS. WILTON. I knew very little of my own mother, I am sorry to say. But if I had had a good foster-mother, perhaps I shouldn't have been so— so naughty, as people say I am. [Turning towards ERHART.] Well, then we stop peaceably at home like a good boy, and drink tea with mamma and auntie! [To the ladies.] Good-bye, good-bye Mrs. Borkman! Good-bye Miss Rentheim.

MRS. WILTON. [In the doorway, motioning him back.] You shan't go a step with me. I am quite accustomed to taking my walks alone. [Stops on the threshold, looks at him and nods.] But now beware, Mr. Borkman—I warn you!

MRS. WILTON.
[Gaily.] Why, as I go down the road—deserted and forlorn, as
I said before—I shall try if I can't cast a spell upon you.

MRS. WILTON.
[Half seriously.] Yes, just you beware! As I go down the road,
I will say in my own mind—right from the very centre of my will—
I will say: "Mr. Erhart Borkman, take your hat at once!"

MRS. WILTON. [Laughing.] Good heavens, yes, he'll snatch up his hat instantly. And then I will say: "Now put on your overcoat, like a good boy, Erhart Borkman! And your goloshes! Be sure you don't forget the goloshes! And then follow me! Do as I bid you, as I bid you, as I bid you!"

ERHART. Oh, not at all. How can you think so! She only says it in fun. [Breaking off.] But don't let us talk about Mrs. Wilton. [He forces ELLA RENTHEIM to seat herself at the armchair beside the stove, then stands and looks at her.] To think of your having taken all this long journey, Aunt Ella! And in winter too!

ELLA RENTHEIM. There is no one in my neighbourhood that I have any real confidence in. And, besides, I did not feel it so much at that time.

ERHART. [Emphatically.] Well, then, I tell you what it is, Aunt Ella; you mustn't think of going home again for the present.

ERHART. You must remain in town; for here you can have your choice of all the best doctors.

ERHART. And then you must be sure and find a really nice place to live— quiet, comfortable rooms.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
I went this morning to the old ones, where I used to stay before.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Crocheting; without looking up.] Your aunt will live here, in her own house, Erhart.

ERHART. [Looking from one to the other alternately.] Here, with us? Is this true, Aunt?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
I intend to remain here, Erhart—just now—for the present.
I shall set up a little establishment of my own, over in the
bailiff's wing.

ERHART. Ah, that's a good idea. There are plenty of rooms there. [With sudden vivacity.] But, by-the-bye, Aunt—aren't you very tired after your journey?

ERHART. [Eagerly.] And then we could have a good long talk to-morrow— or some other day, of course—about this and that—about things in general—you and mother and I. Wouldn't that be much the best plan, Aunt Ella?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With an outburst, rising from the sofa.] Erhart, I can see you are going to leave me!

ERHART.
[Involuntarily.] Oh, that! [Collecting himself.] Well, you
wouldn't have me sit here and keep Aunt Ella up half the night?
Remember, she's an invalid, mother.

ERHART. [Impatiently.] Well, really, mother, I don't think I can well get out of it. What do you say, Aunt?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Rising.] Yes, if only I could, Gunhild!
[Music is heard from above.

ERHART. [Writhing as if in pain.] Oh, I can't endure this! [Looking round.] What have I done with my hat? [To ELLA RENTHEIM.] Do you know the air that she is playing up there?

ERHART. It's the Danse Macabre—the Dance of Death! Don't you know the Dance of Death, Aunt?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looks hardly at him.] Away from your mother? So that is what you want to do?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With passionate emotion.] You want to go away from me! To be with those strange people! With—with—no, I will not even think of it!

ERHART. There are bright lights down there, and young, happy faces; and there's music there, mother!

ERHART. No, I don't. I'm very, very glad that he should have it—if only I don't have to listen.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking solemnly at him.] Be strong, Erhart! Be strong, my son! Do not forget that you have your great mission.

ERHART.
Oh, mother—do spare me these phrases! I wasn't born to be
a "missionary."—Good-night, aunt dear! Good-night, mother.
[He goes hastily out through the hall.

MRS. BORKMAN. [After a short silence.] It has not taken you long to recapture him, Ella, after all.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Nodding slowly.] That I understand. I say the same. Rather she than you.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Taking her outdoor things upon her arm.] For the first time in our lives, we twin sisters are of one mind. Good-night, Gunhild.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Stands still for a moment, starts, shrinks together, and whispers involuntarily.] The wolf is whining again—the sick wolf. [She stands still for a moment, then flings herself down on the floor, writhing in agony and whispering:] Erhart! Erhart!—be true to me! Oh, come home and help your mother! For I can bear this life no longer!

ACT SECOND

The great gallery on the first floor of the Rentheim House. The walls are covered with old tapestries, representing hunting-scenes, shepherds and shepherdesses, all in faded colours. A folding-door to the left, and further forward a piano. In the left-hand corner, at the back, a door, cut in the tapestry, and covered with tapestry, without any frame. Against the middle of the right wall, a large writing-table of carved oak, with many books and papers. Further forward on the same side, a sofa with a table and chairs in front of it. The furniture is all of a stiff Empire style. Lighted lamps on both tables.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN stands with his hands behind his back, beside the piano, listening to FRIDA FOLDAL, who is playing the last bars of the "Danse Macabre."

BORKMAN is of middle height, a well-knit, powerfully-built man, well on in the sixties. His appearance is distinguished, his profile finely cut, his eyes piercing, his hair and beard curly and greyish-white. He is dressed in a slightly old-fashioned black coat, and wears a white necktie. FRIDA FOLDAL is a pretty, pale girl of fifteen, with a somewhat weary and overstrained expression. She is cheaply dressed in light colours.

BORKMAN. A miner's son. And my father used sometimes to take me with him into the mines. The metal sings down there.

BORKMAN. [Nodding.] When it is loosened. The hammer-strokes that loosen it are the midnight bell clanging to set it free; and that is why the metal sings—in its own way—for gladness.

BORKMAN.
  It wants to come up into the light of day and serve mankind.
     [He paces up and down the gallery, always with his hands
        behind his back.

FRIDA.
[Sits waiting a little, then looks at her watch and rises.]
I beg your pardon, Mr. Borkman; but I am afraid I must go.

FRIDA. [Putting her music in its case.] I really must. [Visibly embarrassed.] I have an engagement this evening.

BORKMAN.
[Stands and looks at her.] Do you like playing dance music?
At parties, I mean?

FRIDA. [Putting on her outdoor things.] Yes, when I can get an engagement. I can always earn a little in that way.

BORKMAN. [With interest.] Is that the principal thing in your mind as you sit playing for the dancers?

FRIDA. No; I'm generally thinking how hard it is that I mayn't join in the dance myself.

BORKMAN. [Nodding.] That is just what I wanted to know. [Moving restlessly about the room.] Yes, yes, yes. That you must not join in the dance, that is the hardest thing of all. [Stopping.] But there is one thing that should make up to you for that, Frida.

BORKMAN. The knowledge that you have ten times more music in you than all the dancers together.

BORKMAN. [Holding up his fore-finger warningly.] You must never be so mad as to have doubts of yourself!

BORKMAN. So long as you know it yourself, that is enough. Where is it you are going to play this evening?

BORKMAN. [With a cutting smile.] Does that man give parties? Can he get people to visit him?

FRIDA.
[A little nervously.] No, I really don't know. Yes, by-the-bye,
I know that young Mr. Borkman is to be there this evening.

BORKMAN. [Inquiringly.] Do you know if he called here too? I mean, did he see any one downstairs?

BORKMAN. Indeed? Was there? Oh yes, I suppose people do come now and then to see Mrs. Borkman.

FRIDA. If I meet young Mr. Borkman this evening, shall I ask him to come up and see you too?

BORKMAN. [Harshly.] You shall do nothing of the sort! I won't have it on any account. The people who want to see me can come of their own accord.

BORKMAN. Oh, by all means; take whatever stair you please, so far as I am concerned. Good-night to you!

[BORKMAN, lost in thought, goes up to the piano, and is about to close it, but changes his mind. Looks round the great empty room, and sets to pacing up and down it from the corner at the back on the right—pacing backward and forward uneasily and incessantly. At last he goes up to the writing-table, listens in the direction of the folding door, hastily snatches up a hand-glass, looks at himself in it, and straightens his necktie.

[A knock at the folding door. BORKMAN hears it, looks rapidly towards the door, but says nothing.

BORKMAN. [Standing beside the writing-table with his left hand resting upon it, and his right thrust in the breast of his coat.] Come in!

[VILHELM FOLDAL comes softly into the room. He is a bent and worn man with mild blue eyes and long, thin grey hair straggling down over his coat collar. He has a portfolio under his arm, a soft felt hat, and large horn spectacles, which he pushes up over his forehead.

BORKMAN. [Changes his attitude and looks at FOLDAL with a half disappointed, half pleased expression.] Oh, is it only you?

FOLDAL. Well, you know, it's a good bit of a way, especially when you have to trudge it on foot.

FOLDAL.
It's better for you to walk—and then you always save twopence.
Well, has Frida been playing to you lately?

FOLDAL. No, I have seen nothing of her for a long time; not since she went to live with this Mrs. Wilton.

BORKMAN.
[Seating himself on the sofa and waving his hand toward a chair.]
You may sit down, Vilhelm.

FOLDAL. [Seating himself on the edge of a chair.] Many thanks. [Looks mournfully at him.] You can't think how lonely I feel since Frida left home.

FOLDAL. Yes, God knows I have—five of them. But Frida was the only one who at all understood me. [Shaking his head sadly.] The others don't understand me a bit.

BORKMAN. [Gloomily, gazing straight before him, and drumming on the table with his fingers.] No, that's just it. That is the curse we exceptional, chosen people have to bear. The common herd— the average man and woman—they do not understand us, Vilhelm.

FOLDAL. [With resignation.] If it were only the lack of understanding— with a little patience, one could manage to wait for that awhile yet. [His voice choked with tears.] But there is something still bitterer.

FOLDAL. Yes, there is, John Gabriel. I have gone through a domestic scene to-night—just before I started.

FOLDAL. [Wiping his eyes.] I have long known it; but to-day it came out unmistakably.

BORKMAN. [After a short silence.] You made an unwise choice, I fear, when you married.

FOLDAL.
I had practically no choice in the matter. And, you see, one
feels a need for companionship as one begins to get on in years.
And so crushed as I then was—so utterly broken down——

FOLDAL. Besides, you mustn't think it is my wife that I complain of. It is true she has not much polish, poor thing; but she is a good sort of woman all the same. No, it's the children.

FOLDAL. For the children—well, they have more culture and therefore they expect more of life.

BORKMAN. [Looking at him sympathetically.] And so your children despise you, Vilhelm?

FOLDAL. [Shrugging his shoulders.] I haven't made much of a career, you see—there is no denying that.

BORKMAN. [Moving nearer to him, and laying his hand upon his arm.] Do they not know, then, that in your young days you wrote a tragedy?

FOLDAL. Yes, of course they know that. But it doesn't seem to make much impression on them.

BORKMAN. Then they don't understand these things. For your tragedy is good. I am firmly convinced of that.

FOLDAL. [Brightening up.] Yes, don't you think there are some good things in it, John Gabriel? Good God, if I could only manage to get it placed——! [Opens his portfolio, and begins eagerly turning over the contents.] Look here! Just let me show you one or two alterations I have made.

FOLDAL. Yes, I thought I would bring it. It's so long now since I have read it to you. And I thought perhaps it might amuse you to hear an act or two.

BORKMAN. [Rising, with a negative gesture.] No, no, we will keep that for another time.

BORKMAN. [Stopping in front of him.] You are quite right in what you said just now—you have not made any career. But I promise you this, Vilhelm, that when once the hour of my restoration strikes——

BORKMAN. [Waving his hand.] No, please be seated. [With rising excitement.] When the hour of my restoration strikes—when they see that they cannot get on without me—when they come to me, here in the gallery, and crawl to my feet, and beseech me to take the reins of the bank again——! The new bank, that they have founded and can't carry on—— [Placing himself beside the writing-table in the same attitude as before, and striking his breast.] Here I shall stand, and receive them! And it shall be known far and wide, all the country over, what conditions John Gabriel Borkman imposes before he will—— [Stopping suddenly and staring at FOLDAL.] You're looking so doubtfully at me! Perhaps you do not believe that they will come? That they must, must, must come to me some day? Do you not believe it?

BORKMAN. [Seating himself again on the sofa.] I firmly believe it. I am immovably convinced—I know that they will come. If I had not been certain of that I would have put a bullet through my head long ago.

BORKMAN.
[Exultantly.] But they will come! They will come sure enough!
You shall see! I expect them any day, any moment. And you see,
I hold myself in readiness to receive them.

BORKMAN.
[Restlessly.] Yes, time flies: the years slip away; life——
Ah, no—I dare not think of it! [Looking at him.] Do you know
what I sometimes feel like?

FOLDAL.
[Quietly.] My little world of poetry is very precious to me,
John Gabriel.

BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] Yes, but think of me, who could have created millions! All the mines I should have controlled! New veins innumerable! And the water-falls! And the quarries! And the trade routes, and the steamship-lines all the wide world over! I would have organised it all—I alone!

FOLDAL. Yes, I know, I know. There was nothing in the world you would have shrunk from.

BORKMAN. [Clenching his hands together.] And now I have to sit here, like a wounded eagle, and look on while others pass me in the race, and take everything away from me, piece by piece!

BORKMAN. [Not noticing him.] Only to think of it; so near to the goal as I was! If I had only had another week to look about me! All the deposits would have been covered. All the securities I had dealt with so daringly should have been in their places again as before. Vast companies were within a hair's-breadth of being floated. Not a soul should have lost a half-penny.

BORKMAN. [With suppressed fury.] And then treachery overtook me! Just at the critical moment! [Looking at him.] Do you know what I hold to be the most infamous crime a man can be guilty of?

BORKMAN. It is not murder. It is not robbery or house-breaking. It is not even perjury. For all these things people do to those they hate, or who are indifferent to them, and do not matter.

BORKMAN. [With emphasis.] The most infamous of crimes is a friend's betrayal of his friend's confidence.

BORKMAN. [Firing up.] What are you going to say? I see it in your face. But it is of no use. The people who had their securities in the bank should have got them all back again—every farthing. No; I tell you the most infamous crime a man can commit is to misuse a friend's letters; to publish to all the world what has been confided to him alone, in the closest secrecy, like a whisper in an empty, dark, double-locked room. The man who can do such things is infected and poisoned in every fibre with the morals of the higher rascality. And such a friend was mine—and it was he who crushed me.

BORKMAN. There was not a nook or cranny of my life that I hesitated to lay open to him. And then, when the moment came, he turned against me the weapons I myself had placed in his hands.

FOLDAL. I have never been able to understand why he—— Of course, there were whispers of all sorts at the time.

BORKMAN.
What were the whispers? Tell me. You see I know nothing.
For I had to go straight into—into isolation. What did people
whisper, Vilhelm?

BORKMAN. [Interrupting.] Well, well—let us say no more of these stupid old stories. After all, neither of us got into the Cabinet, neither he nor I.

BORKMAN.
[Nodding to him.] Almost as terrible as yours, I fancy, when
I come to think of it.

BORKMAN. [Laughing quietly.] But looked at from another point of view, it is really a sort of comedy as well.

BORKMAN. Yes, it seems to be taking a turn in that direction. For let me tell you——

BORKMAN. At this moment, as we sit here, she is playing waltzes for the guests of the man who betrayed and ruined me.

BORKMAN. Yes, she took her music, and went straight from me to—to the great house.

BORKMAN. What do you think of that, Vilhelm? My son is down there in the whirl of the dance this evening. Am I not right in calling it a comedy?

BORKMAN. [Gloomily, sitting and beating the table.] Yes, he knows, as surely as I am sitting here.

BORKMAN. [Shaking his head.] My son probably does not see things with my eyes. I'll take my oath he is on my enemies' side! No doubt he thinks, as they do, that Hinkel only did his confounded duty when he went and betrayed me.

BORKMAN. Who? Do you forget who has brought him up? First his aunt, from the time he was six or seven years old; and now, of late years, his mother!

BORKMAN. [Firing up.] I never do any one injustice! Both of them have gone and poisoned his mind against me, I tell you!

BORKMAN. [Indignantly.] Oh these women! They wreck and ruin life for us! Play the devil with our whole destiny—our triumphal progress.

BORKMAN.
[With a snort of scorn.] Well then, what is the good of it?
What is the good of such women existing—if you never know them?

FOLDAL.
[Warmly.] Yes, John Gabriel, there is good in it, I assure you.
It is such a blessed, beneficial thought that here or there in the
world, somewhere, far away—the true woman exists after all.

BORKMAN. [Moving impatiently on the sofa.] Oh, do spare me that poetical nonsense.

FOLDAL. [Looks at him, deeply wounded.] Do you call my holiest faith poetical nonsense?

BORKMAN. [Harshly.] Yes I do! That is what has always prevented you from getting on in the world. If you would get all that out of your head, I could still help you on in life—help you to rise.

BORKMAN. [Rising, cold and dignified, and waving his hand towards the door.] Then I no longer have any use for you.

FOLDAL. How can I believe in the teeth of all reason? You would have to be legally rehabilitated——

FOLDAL. It's true I never passed my examination; but I have read enough law to know that——

BORKMAN. [Dismissing the subject, without answering.] We are only wasting each other's time. You had better not come here again.

BORKMAN. Have you not sat here feeding me with hope, and trust, and confidence—that was all a lie?

FOLDAL. It wasn't a lie so long as you believed in my vocation. So long as you believed in me, I believed in you.

BORKMAN. Then we have been all the time deceiving each other. And perhaps deceiving ourselves—both of us.

BORKMAN. [Smiling bitterly.] Yes, you are right there. Friendship means—deception. I have learnt that once before.

FOLDAL. [Looking at him.] I have no poetic vocation! And you could actually say it to me so bluntly.

BORKMAN. [In a gentler tone.] Well, you know, I don't pretend to know much about these matters.

BORKMAN. I?

FOLDAL. [Softly.] Yes, you. For I myself have had my doubts, now and then, I may tell you. The horrible doubt that I may have bungled my life for the sake of a delusion.

FOLDAL. That was why I found such comfort in coming here to lean upon your faith in me. [Taking his hat.] But now you have become a stranger to me.

[BORKMAN stands for a moment gazing at the closed door; makes a movement as though to call FOLDAL back, but changes his mind, and begins to pace the floor with his hands behind his back. Then he stops at the table beside the sofa and puts out the lamp. The room becomes half dark. After a short pause, there comes a knock at the tapestry door.

BORKMAN.
[At the table, starts, turns, and asks in a loud voice:] Who is
that knocking?
[No answer, another knock.

    [ELLA RENTHEIM, with a lighted candle in her hand, appears in
        the doorway. She wears her black dress, as before, with
        her cloak thrown loosely round her shoulders.

BORKMAN. [Stands as though thunderstruck, stares fixedly at her, and says in a half-whisper.] Is it—is it Ella? Is it Ella Rentheim?

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, it's "your" Ella, as you used to call me in the old days; many, many years ago.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
The years have told on me, and brought winter with them, Borkman.
Do you not think so?

BORKMAN. [In a forced voice.] You are a good deal changed—just at first glance.

ELLA RENTHEIM. There are no dark curls on my neck now—the curls you once loved to twist round your fingers.

BORKMAN. [Quickly.] True! I can see now, Ella, you have done your hair differently.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a sad smile.] Precisely; it is the way I do my hair that makes the difference.

BORKMAN. [Changing the subject.] I had no idea that you were in this part of the world.

ELLA RENTHEIM. You among others. But if I am to tell you my errand, I must begin far back.

    [She crosses to the right and seats herself in the furthest
        forward corner of the sofa. BORKMAN stands beside the
        table with his hands behind his back looking at her. A
        short silence.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
It seems an endless time since we two met, Borkman, face to face.

BORKMAN. [Gloomily.] It is a long, long time. And terrible things have passed since then.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Bitterly.] Oh, yes, I know well enough there was some one else ready to marry me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Scornfully.] Year after year I rejected happiness, I suppose you think?

BORKMAN. You might perfectly well have been happy with him. And then I should have been saved.

BORKMAN. He thought I was at the bottom of your obstinacy—of your perpetual refusals. And then he took his revenge. It was so easy for him; he had all my frank, confiding letters in his keeping. He made his own use of them; and then it was all over with me—for the time, that is to say. So you see it is all your doing, Ella!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Oh indeed, Borkman. If we look into the matter, it appears that it is I who owe you reparation.

BORKMAN. It depends how you look at it. I know quite well all that you have done for us. You bought in this house, and the whole property, at the auction. You placed the house entirely at my disposal—and your sister too. You took charge of Erhart, and cared for him in every way——

BORKMAN. By your sister, you mean. I have never mixed myself up in these domestic affairs. As I was saying, I know all the sacrifices you have made for me and for your sister. But you were in a position to do so, Ella; and you must not forget that it was I who placed you in that position.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Indignantly.] There you make a great mistake, Borkman! It was the love of my inmost heart for Erhart—and for you too—that made me do it!

BORKMAN. [Interrupting.] My dear Ella, do not let us get upon questions of sentiment and that sort of thing. I mean, of course, that if you acted generously, it was I that put it in your power to do so.

BORKMAN. [Warmly.] Yes, put it in your power, I say! On the eve of the great decisive battle—when I could not afford to spare either kith or kin—when I had to grasp at—when I did grasp at the millions that were entrusted to me—then I spared all that was yours, every farthing, although I could have taken it, and made use of it, as I did of all the rest!

BORKMAN. Yes it is. And that was why, when they came and took me, they found all your securities untouched in the strong-room of the bank.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking at him.] I have often and often wondered what was your real reason for sparing all my property? That, and that alone.

BORKMAN. [Harshly and scornfully.] Perhaps you think it was that I might have something to fall back upon, if things went wrong?

BORKMAN. [Shrugging his shoulders.] Upon my soul, Ella, it is not so easy to remember one's motives of twenty years ago. I only know that when I used to grapple, silently and alone, with all the great projects I had in my mind, I had something like the feeling of a man who is starting on a balloon voyage. All through my sleepless nights I was inflating my giant balloon, and preparing to soar away into perilous, unknown regions.

BORKMAN. [Impatiently.] Men are made so, Ella. They both doubt and believe at the same time. [Looking straight before him.] And I suppose that was why I would not take you and yours with me in the balloon.

BORKMAN. [Without looking at her.] One shrinks from risking what one holds dearest on such a voyage.

ELLA RENTHEIM. You had risked what was dearest to you on that voyage. Your whole future life——

ELLA RENTHEIM. And yet years had passed since you had deserted me—and married— married another!

BORKMAN.
Deserted you, you say? You must know very well that it was
higher motives—well then, other motives that compelled me.
Without his support I could not have done anything.

BORKMAN. I could not get on without his help. And he made you the price of helping me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [In a trembling voice, looking at him.] Can what you tell me be true—that I was then the dearest thing in the world to you?

ELLA RENTHEIM. But you bartered me away none the less; drove a bargain with another man for your love. Sold my love for a—for a directorship.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Oh, don't imagine I'm thinking of anything you may have done against the law of the land! The use you made of all those vouchers and securities, or whatever you call them—do you think I care a straw about that! If I could have stood at your side when the crash came——

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Trust me, I should have borne it all so gladly along with you.
The shame, the ruin—I would have helped you to bear it all—all!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Both the will and the strength. For then I did not know of your great, your terrible crime.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Approaching him.] You are a murderer! You have committed the one mortal sin!

ELLA RENTHEIM. You have killed the love-life in me. [Still nearer him.] Do you understand what that means? The Bible speaks of a mysterious sin for which there is no forgiveness. I have never understood what it could be; but now I understand. The great, unpardonable sin is to murder the love-life in a human soul.

ELLA RENTHEIM. You have done that. I have never rightly understood until this evening what had really happened to me. That you deserted me and turned to Gunhild instead—I took that to be mere common fickleness on your part, and the result of heartless scheming on hers. I almost think I despised you a little, in spite of everything. But now I see it! You deserted the woman you loved! Me, me, me! What you held dearest in the world you were ready to barter away for gain. That is the double murder you have committed! The murder of your own soul and of mine!

BORKMAN. [With cold self-control.] How well I recognise your passionate, ungovernable spirit, Ella. No doubt it is natural enough that you should look at the thing in this light. Of course, you are a woman, and therefore it would seem that your own heart is the one thing you know or care about in this world.

BORKMAN. But you must remember that I am a man. As a woman, you were the dearest thing in the world to me. But if the worst comes to the worst, one woman can always take the place of another.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looks at him with a smile.] Was that your experience when you had made Gunhild your wife?

BORKMAN. No. But the great aims I had in life helped me to bear even that. I wanted to have at my command all the sources of power in this country. All the wealth that lay hidden in the soil, and the rocks, and the forests, and the sea— I wanted to gather it all into my hands to make myself master of it all, and so to promote the well-being of many, many thousands.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Lost in recollection.] I know it. Think of all the evenings we spent in talking over your projects.

ELLA RENTHEIM. I jested with your plans, and asked whether you wanted to awaken all the sleeping spirits of the mine.

BORKMAN. [Nodding.] I remember that phrase. [Slowly.] All the sleeping spirits of the mine.

ELLA RENTHEIM. But you did not take it as a jest. You said: "Yes, yes, Ella, that is just what I want to do."

BORKMAN.
And so it was. If only I could get my foot in the stirrup——
And that depended on that one man. He could and would secure me
the control of the bank—if I on my side——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, just so! If you on your side would renounce the woman you loved—and who loved you beyond words in return.

BORKMAN. I knew his consuming passion for you. I knew that on no other condition would he——

BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] Yes, I did, Ella! For the love of power is uncontrollable in me, you see! So I struck the bargain; I had to. And he helped me half-way up towards the beckoning heights that I was bent on reaching. And I mounted and mounted; year by year I mounted——

BORKMAN. And after all he hurled me into the abyss again. On account of you, Ella.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [After a short thoughtful silence.] Borkman, does it not seem to you as if there had been a sort of curse on our whole relation?

BORKMAN.
[Uneasily.] Yes. But why is it? [With an outburst.] Oh Ella,
I begin to wonder which is in the right—you or I!

ELLA RENTHEIM. It is you who have sinned. You have done to death all the gladness of my life in me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. All a woman's gladness at any rate. From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me—and at last utterly impossible—to love any living creature. Human beings, animals, plants: I shrank from all—from all but one——

ELLA RENTHEIM. Why else should I have taken him to me, and kept him as long as ever I could? Why?

ELLA RENTHEIM. [In strong inward emotion.] Pity! Ha, ha! I have never known pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If a poor starved child came into my kitchen, shivering, and crying, and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it. I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert within me—and without me too!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, except for your son. But I am hardened to every other living thing. You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness in life—and of a mother's sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Who knows? It may be that a mother's sorrows and tears were what I needed most. [With still deeper emotion.] But at that time I could not resign myself to my loss; and that was why I took Erhart to me. I won him entirely. Won his whole, warm, trustful childish heart—until—— Oh!

ELLA RENTHEIM. Until his mother—his mother in the flesh, I mean—took him from me again.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Wringing her hands.] Yes, but I cannot bear the solitude— the emptiness! I cannot bear the loss of your son's heart!

BORKMAN. [With an evil expression in his eyes.] H'm—I doubt whether you have lost it, Ella. Hearts are not so easily lost to a certain person—in the room below.

ELLA RENTHEIM. I have lost Erhart here, and she has won him back again. Or if not she, some one else. That is plain enough in the letters he writes me from time to time.

BORKMAN. It is possible enough, if you have set your heart upon it. For you have the first and strongest claims upon him.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Oh, claims, claims! What is the use of claims? If he is not
mine of his own free will, he is not mine at all. And have him
I must! I must have my boy's heart, whole and undivided—now!

BORKMAN. You must remember that Erhart is well into his twenties. You could scarcely reckon on keeping his heart very long undivided, as you express it.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a melancholy smile.] It would not need to be for so very long.

BORKMAN. Indeed? I should have thought that when you want a thing, you want it to the end of your days.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
I suppose you know I have been in bad health for many years past?

BORKMAN. Oh, yes, I believe he has spoken of you. But the fact is, I so seldom see anything of him—scarcely ever. There is a certain person below that keeps him away from me. Keeps him away, you understand?

BORKMAN. Yes, absolutely sure. [Changing his tone.] And so you have been in bad health, Ella?

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, I have. And this autumn I grew so much worse that I had to come to town and take better medical advice.

ELLA RENTHEIM. It is a disease that there is no help or cure for. The doctors can do nothing with it. They must just let it take its course. They cannot possibly check it; at most, they can allay the suffering. And that is always something.

BORKMAN. [Eagerly, changing the subject.] But what in all the world can have brought on this illness? You, who have always lived such a healthy and regular life? What can have brought it on?

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking at him.] The doctors thought that perhaps at one time in my life I had had to go through some great stress of emotion.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With increasing inward agitation.] It is too late to go into that matter now! But I must have my heart's own child again before I go! It is so unspeakably sad for me to think that I must go away from all that is called life—away from sun, and light, and air—and not leave behind me one single human being who will think of me—who will remember me lovingly and mournfully—as a son remembers and thinks of the mother he has lost.

BORKMAN. [Gloomily.] Yes. And it is no great sacrifice either. For in any case he is not mine.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Thank you, thank you all the same for the sacrifice! But I have one thing more to beg of you—a great thing for me, Borkman.

ELLA RENTHEIM. I daresay you will think it childish of me—you will not understand——

ELLA RENTHEIM. When I die—as I must soon—I shall have a fair amount to leave behind me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Nodding slowly.] Yes, that is just it. When I die, the name of Rentheim dies with me. And that is such a torturing thought to me. To be wiped out of existence—even to your very name——

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Passionately.] Do not let this be my forte. Let Erhart bear my name after me!

BORKMAN. I understand you well enough. You want to save my son from having to bear his father's name. That is your meaning.

ELLA RENTHEIM. No, no, not that! I myself would have borne it proudly and gladly along with you! But a mother who is at the point of death—— There is more binding force in a name than you think or believe, Borkman.

BORKMAN. [Coldly and proudly.] Well and good, Ella. I am man enough to bear my own name alone.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Seizing and pressing his hand.] Thank you, thank you! Now there has been a full settlement between us! Yes, yes, let it be so! You have made all the atonement in your power. For when I have gone from the world, I shall leave Erhart Rentheim behind me!

[The tapestry door is thrown open. MRS. BORKMAN, with the large shawl over her head, stands in the doorway.

MRS. BORKMAN. [In violent agitation.] Never to his dying day shall Erhart be called by that name!

MRS. BORKMAN. I will fight with all my might for you. I will protect you from the powers of evil.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Harshly.] So be it then. [Menacingly, with upstretched arm.] But this I tell you—he shall bear his father's name! And bear it aloft in honour again! My son's heart shall be mine—mine and no other's.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Shaken and shattered.] Borkman, Erhart's life will be wrecked
in this storm. There must be an understanding between you and
Gunhild. We must go down to her at once.

BORKMAN.
[Shaking his head.] She is hard, I tell you. Hard as the metal
I once dreamed of hewing out of the rocks.

ACT THIRD

MRS. BORKMAN's drawing room. The lamp is still burning on the table beside the sofa in front. The garden-room at the back is quite dark.

MRS. BORKMAN, with the shawl still over her head, enters, in violent agitation, by the hall door, goes up to the window, draws the curtain a little aside, and looks out; then she seats herself beside the stove, but immediately springs up again, goes to the bell-pull and rings. Stands beside the sofa, and waits a moment. No one comes. Then she rings again, this time more violently.

THE MAID presently enters from the hall. She looks sleepy and out of temper, and appears to have dressed in great haste.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Impatiently.] What has become of you, Malena? I have rung for you twice!

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, you must dress yourself properly, and then you must run and fetch my son.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes; tell him he must come home to me at once; I want to speak to him.

THE MAID. [Grumbling.] Then I'd better go to the bailiff's and call up the coachman.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, that doesn't matter; only make haste and go. It's just round the corner.

THE MAID. [With a slight smile.] Well, I only thought he might be where he usually is.

MRS. BORKMAN. That's all nonsense, Malena. Go straight to Mr. Hinkel's and try to to get hold of him.

    [She is on the point of going out by the hall, but just at
        that moment the hall door is opened, and ELLA RENTHEIM
        and BORKMAN appear on the threshold.

    [ELLA RENTHEIM and, after her, BORKMAN enter the room. THE
        MAID sidles behind them to the door, goes out, and closes
        it after her.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Having recovered her self-control, turns to ELLA.] What does he want down here in my room?

MRS. BORKMAN.
The last time we stood face to face—it was in the Court, when
I was summoned to give an account——

BORKMAN. [Approaching.] And this evening it is I who will give an account of myself.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a bitter sigh.] Yes, that is true; all the world knows that.

BORKMAN. But it does not know why I did it; why I had to do it. People do not understand that I had to, because I was myself—because I was John Gabriel Borkman—myself, and not another. And that is what I will try to explain to you.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Shaking her head.] It is of no use. Temptations and promptings acquit no one.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a gesture of repulsion.] Oh, let all that alone! I have thought over that black business of yours enough and to spare.

BORKMAN. I too. During those five endless years in my cell—and elsewhere —I had time to think it over. And during the eight years up there in the gallery I have had still more ample time. I have re-tried the whole case—by myself. Time after time I have re-tried it. I have been my own accuser, my own defender, and my own judge. I have been more impartial than any one else could be—that I venture to say. I have paced up and down the gallery there, turning every one of my actions upside down and inside out. I have examined them from all sides as unsparingly, as pitilessly, as any lawyer of them all. And the final judgment I have always come to is this: the one person I have sinned against is—myself.

MRS. BORKMAN. And what about the hundreds of others, then—the people you are said to have ruined?

BORKMAN. [More vehemently.] I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry—I alone had ears for it.

BORKMAN. If the others had had the power, do you think they would not have acted exactly as I did?

BORKMAN. Perhaps not. But that would have been because they had not my brains. And if they had done it, it would not have been with my aims in view. The act would have been a different act. In short, I have acquitted myself.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Softly and appealingly.] Oh, can you say that so confidently,
Borkman?

BORKMAN. [Nodding.] Acquitted myself on that score. But then comes the great, crushing self-accusation.

BORKMAN. I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world—out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew—higher than ever before—in spite of all that lay between.

MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, it would have been the same thing over again; take my word for that.

BORKMAN. [Shakes his head, and looks at her with a sententious air.] It is true that nothing new happens; but what has happened does not repeat itself either. It is the eye that transforms the action. The eye, born anew, transforms the old action. [Breaking off.] But you do not understand this.

BORKMAN. Ah, that is just the curse—I have never found one single soul to understand me.

BORKMAN. Except one—perhaps. Long, long ago. In the days when I did not think I needed understanding. Since then, at any rate, no one has understood me! There has been no one alive enough to my needs to be afoot and rouse me—to ring the morning bell for me—to call me up to manful work anew. And to impress upon me that I had done nothing inexpiable.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a scornful laugh.] So, after all, you require to have that impressed on you from without?

BORKMAN. [With increasing indignation.] Yes, when the whole world hisses in chorus that I have sunk never to rise again, there come moments when I almost believe it myself. [Raising his head.] But then my inmost assurance rises again triumphant; and that acquits me.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking harshly at him.] Why have you never come and asked me for what you call understanding?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a gesture of repulsion.] You have never loved anything outside yourself; that is the secret of the whole matter.

MRS. BORKMAN. You had once the power to make me happy. Have you used it to that end?

BORKMAN. [Without looking at her.] Some one must generally go down in a shipwreck.

MRS. BORKMAN. And your own son! Have you used your power—have you lived and laboured—to make him happy?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking at him with a lofty air.] Oh, you do not know what I have taken care of!

BORKMAN. [With a short dry laugh.] My memory? Oh, indeed! It sounds almost as if I were dead already.

BORKMAN. [Slowly.] Yes, perhaps you are right. [Firing up.] But no, no! Not yet! I have been close to the verge of death. But now I have awakened. I have come to myself. A whole life lies before me yet. I can see it awaiting me, radiant and quickening. And you—you shall see it too.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Raising her hand.] Never dream of life again! Lie quiet where you are.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Not listening to her.] I will raise the monument over your grave.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With increasing excitement.] Oh, no, it shall be no pillar of metal or stone. And no one shall be suffered to carve any scornful legend on the monument I shall raise. There shall be, as it were, a quickset hedge of trees and bushes, close, close around your tomb. They shall hide away all the darkness that has been. The eyes of men and the thoughts of men shall no longer dwell on John Gabriel Borkman!

MRS. BORKMAN. Not by my own strength. I cannot think of that. But I have brought up one to help me, who shall live for this alone. His life shall be so pure and high and bright, that your burrowing in the dark shall be as though it had never been!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking him straight in the eyes.] Yes, it is Erhart; my son; he whom you are ready to renounce in atonement for your own acts.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Repelling the idea.] A sin towards a stranger only. Remember the sin towards me! [Looking triumphantly at them both.] But he will not obey you! When I cry out to him in my need, he will come to me! It is with me that he will remain! With me, and never with any one else. [Suddenly listens, and cries.] I hear him! He is here, he is here! Erhart!

[ERHART BORKMAN hastily tears open the hall door, and enters the room. He is wearing an overcoat and has his hat on.

ERHART. [Pale and anxious.] Mother! What in Heaven's name——! [Seeing BORKMAN, who is standing beside the doorway leading into the garden-room, he starts and takes off his hat. After a moment's silence, he asks:] What do you want with me, mother? What has happened?

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Stretching her arms towards him.] I want to see you, Erhart!
I want to have you with me, always!

MRS. BORKMAN. I will have you, I say! There is some one who wants to take you away from me!

MRS. BORKMAN.
Aha, so you have planned it all out! Behind my back! Erhart!
Erhart!

MRS. BORKMAN. I know everything. I know that your aunt has come here to take you from me.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Continuing.] She wants me to give you up to her. She wants to stand in your mother's place to you, Erhart! She wants you to be her son, and not mine, from this time forward. She wants you to inherit everything from her; to renounce your own name and take hers instead!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Hardly.] You are losing him to me—yes. And that is just as it should be.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking beseechingly at him.] Erhart, I cannot afford to lose you. For, I must tell you I am a lonely—dying woman.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, dying. Will you came and be with me to the end? Attach yourself wholly to me? Be to me, as though you were my own child——?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Interrupting.] And forsake your mother, and perhaps your mission in life as well? Will you, Erhart?

ERHART. [Warmly, with emotion.] Aunt Ella, you have been unspeakably good to me. With you I grew up in as perfect happiness as any boy can ever have known——

ERHART. But I cannot sacrifice myself to you now. It is not possible for me to devote myself wholly to taking a son's place towards you.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Triumphing.] Ah, I knew it! You shall not have him! You shall not have him, Ella!

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, yes! Mine he is, and mine he shall remain! Erhart, say it is so, dear; we two have still a long way to go together, have we not?

ERHART. [Plucking up spirit.] Good heavens, mother, I am young, after all! I feel as if the close air of this room must stifle me in the end.

ERHART. Oh, Aunt Ella, it's not a whit better with you. It's different, but no better—no better for me. It smells of rose-leaves and lavender there too; it is as airless there as here.

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Shaken, but having recovered her composure with an effort.]
Airless in your mother's room, you say!

ERHART. [In growing impatience.] Yes, I don't know how else to express it. All this morbid watchfulness and—and idolisation, or whatever you like to call it—— I can't endure it any longer!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking at him with deep solemnity.] Have you forgotten what you have consecrated your life to, Erhart?

ERHART. [With an outburst.] Oh, say rather what you have consecrated my life to. You, you have been my will. You have never given me leave to have any of my own. But now I cannot bear this yoke any longer. I am young; remember that, mother. [With a polite, considerate glance towards BORKMAN.] I cannot consecrate my life to making atonement for another—whoever that other may be.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Seized with growing anxiety.] Who is it that has transformed you, Erhart?

MRS. BORKMAN. No, no, no! You have come under some strange power. You are not in your mother's power any longer; nor in your—your foster-mother's either.

ERHART. [With laboured defiance.] I am in my own power, mother! And working my own will!

BORKMAN. [Continuing undisturbed.] Listen, Erhart—will you not cast in your lot with your father? It is not through any other man's life that a man who has fallen can be raised up again. These are only empty fables that have been told to you down here in the airless room. If you were to set yourself to live your life like all the saints together, it would be of no use whatever to me.

BORKMAN. Yes, it is. And it would be of no use either if I should resign myself to wither away in abject penitence. I have tried to feed myself upon hopes and dreams, all through these years. But I am not the man to be content with that; and now I mean to have done with dreaming.

BORKMAN. I will work out my own redemption, that is what I will do. I will begin at the bottom again. It is only through his present and his future that a man can atone for his past. Through work, indefatigable work, for all that, in my youth, seemed to give life its meaning—and that now seems a thousand times greater than it did then. Erhart, will you join with me and help me in this new life?

ERHART. [With a sudden glow.] I am young! I want to live, for once in a way, as well as other people! I want to live my own life!

ELLA RENTHEIM. You cannot give up two or three little months to brighten the close of a poor waning life?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking sharply at him.] And your mother has no power over you either, any more?

ERHART. I will always love you, mother; but I cannot go on living for you alone. This is no life for me.

BORKMAN. Then come and join with me, after all! For life, life means work, Erhart. Come, we two will go forth into life and work together!

ERHART. [Passionately.] Yes, but I don't want to work now! For I am young! That's what I never realised before; but now the knowledge is tingling through every vein in my body. I will not work! I will only live, live, live!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Shrieks.] Erhart! [ERHART goes quickly to the hall door and throws it open.]

MRS. WILTON. [Hesitating a little, with an enquiring glance at ERHART.] Do you want me to——?

[MRS. WILTON comes forward into the room. ERHART closes the door behind her. She bows formally to BORKMAN, who returns her bow in silence. A short pause.

MRS. WILTON. [In a subdued but firm voice.] So the word has been spoken— and I suppose you all think I have brought a great calamity upon this house?

MRS. BORKMAN. [Slowly, looking hard at her.] You have crushed the last remnant of interest in life for me. [With an outburst.] But all of this—all this is utterly impossible!

MRS. WILTON.
I can quite understand that it must appear impossible to you,
Mrs. Borkman.

MRS. BORKMAN.
Yes, you can surely see for yourself that it is impossible.
Or what——?

MRS. WILTON. I should rather say that it seems highly improbable. But it's so, none the less.

ERHART. This means happiness for me, mother—all the beauty and happiness of life. That is all I can say to you.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Clenching her hands together; to MRS. WILTON.] Oh, how you have cajoled and deluded my unhappy son!

MRS. WILTON. No. I have neither cajoled nor deluded him. Erhart came to me of his own free will. And of my own free will I went out half-way to meet him.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Measuring her scornfully with her eye.] Yes, indeed! That I can easily believe.

MRS. WILTON. [With self-control.] Mrs. Borkman, there are forces in human life that you seem to know very little about.

MRS. WILTON. The forces which ordain that two people shall join their lives together, indissolubly—and fearlessly.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a smile.] I thought you were already indissolubly bound— to another.

ERHART. [Insistently.] Yes, mother, he is dead to Fanny. And besides, this other makes no difference to me!

ERHART. [With defiant petulance.] I can only tell you that it is happiness I must have! I am young! I want to live, live, live!

MRS. WILTON. [Firmly and earnestly.] You must not think, Mrs. Borkman, that I haven't said the same to him. I have laid my whole life before him. Again and again I have reminded him that I am seven years older than he——

MRS. BORKMAN. Indeed? Nothing? Then why did you not dismiss him without more ado? Close your door to him? You should have done that, and done it in time!

MRS. WILTON.
[Looks at her, and says in a low voice.] I could not do that,
Mrs. Borkman.

MRS. WILTON. I have never before known happiness in life. And I cannot possibly drive happiness away from me, merely because it comes so late.

ERHART. [Interrupting.] Whether it lasts or does not last, mother, it doesn't matter now!

MRS. BORKMAN. [In anger.] Blind boy that you are! Do you not see where all this is leading you?

ERHART. I don't want to look into the future. I don't want to look around me in any direction; I am only determined to live my own life—at last!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Wringing her hands.] And I have to bear this load of shame as well!

BORKMAN. [At the back, harshly and cuttingly.] Ho—you are used to bearing things of that sort, Gunhild!

MRS. BORKMAN.
Day after day I shall have to see my own son linked to a—a——

ERHART. [Interrupting her harshly.] You shall see nothing of the kind, mother! You may make your mind easy on that point. I shall not remain here.

MRS. WILTON. [Nodding.] Yes, I am going abroad, to the south. I am taking a young girl with me. And Erhart is going along with us.

MRS. WILTON.
Yes. It is little Frida Foldal, whom I have had living with me.
I want her to go abroad and get more instruction in music.

ERHART. [With some embarrassment, shrugging his shoulders.] Well, mother, since Fanny will have it so——

MRS. BORKMAN. [Coldly.] And when does this distinguished party set out, if one may ask?

MRS. WILTON. We are going at once—to-night. My covered sledge is waiting on the road, outside the Hinkels'.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looking her from head to foot.] Aha! so that was what the party meant?

MRS. WILTON.
[Smiling.] Yes, Erhart and I were the whole party. And little
Frida, of course.

ERHART.
[In painful embarrassment.] Mother, surely you can understand?
I would have spared you all this—you and every one.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Looks at him, deeply pained.] You would have gone away from me without saying a good-bye?

ERHART. Yes, I thought that would be best; best for all of us. Our boxes were packed and everything settled. But of course when you sent for me, I—— [Holding out his hands to her.] Good-bye, mother.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Pressing his hands.] Good-bye, Erhart! And live your life— and be as happy—as happy as ever you can.

ERHART. Thanks, Aunt. [Bowing to BORKMAN.] Good-bye, father. [Whispers to MRS. WILTON.] Let us get away, the sooner the better.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a malignant smile.] Mrs. Wilton, do you think you are acting quite wisely in taking that girl with you?

MRS. WILTON. [Returning the smile, half ironically, half seriously.] Men are so unstable, Mrs. Borkman. And women too. When Erhart is done with me—and I with him—then it will be well for us both that he, poor fellow, should have some one to fall back upon.

[She bows and goes out by the hall door. ERHART stands for a
moment as though wavering; then he turns and follows her.

BORKMAN.
[As though awakening to a resolution.] Then out into the storm
alone! My hat! My cloak!
[He goes hastily towards the door.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Holding him back.] No, no, I won't let you out! You are ill.
I can see it in your face!

MRS. BORKMAN. [Coldly and sharply, standing in the middle of the room.] I will not try to hold any one in all the world. Let them go away from me—both the one and the other! As far—as far as ever they please. [Suddenly, with a piercing shriek.] Erhart, don't leave me!

ACT FOURTH

An open space outside the main building, which lies to the right. A projecting corner of it is visible, with a door approached by a flight of low stone steps. The background consists of steep fir-clad slopes, quite close at hand. On the left are small scattered trees, forming the margin of a wood. The snowstorm has ceased; but the newly fallen snow lies deep around. The fir-branches droop under heavy loads of snow. The night is dark, with drifting clouds. Now and then the moon gleams out faintly. Only a dim light is reflected from the snow.

BORKMAN, MRS. BORKMAN and ELLA RENTHEIM are standing upon the steps, BORKMAN leaning wearily against the wall of the house. He has an old-fashioned cape thrown over his shoulders, holds a soft grey felt hat in one hand and a thick knotted stick in the other. ELLA RENTHEIM carries her cloak over her arm. MRS. BORKMAN's great shawl has slipped down over her shoulders, so that her hair is uncovered.

MRS. BORKMAN. [In fear and agitation.] Let me pass, I say! He must not go away from me!

MRS. BORKMAN.
Let me go, Ella! I will cry aloud after him all down the road.
And he must hear his mother's cry!

MRS. BORKMAN. [In despair.] If he is in the sledge, then he is there with her, with her—her!

MRS. BORKMAN. No, no, it is Mrs. Wilton's covered sledge! I know the silver bells! Hark! Now they are driving right past here, at the foot of the hill!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Quickly.] Gunhild, if you want to cry out to him, now is the time! Perhaps after all——! [The tinkle of the bells sounds close at hand, in the wood.] Make haste, Gunhild! Now they are right under us!

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Stands for a moment undecided, then she stiffens and says
sternly and coldly.] No. I will not cry out to him. Let Erhart
Borkman pass away from me—far, far away—to what he calls life
and happiness.
[The sound dies away in the distance.

BORKMAN. [With a dry suppressed laugh.] Oho—it is not for me they are ringing to-night!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Nodding thoughtfully.] Who knows if, after all, they may not be ringing in life and happiness for him, Gunhild.

MRS. BORKMAN. [With sudden animation, looking hard at her.] Life and happiness, you say!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With warmth and feeling.] Indeed, I could, with all my heart and soul!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking far away.] Perhaps it is the lack of love that keeps the power alive.

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Fixing her eyes on her.] If that is so, then I shall soon be
as rich as you, Ella.
[She turns and goes into the house.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Stands for a time looking with a troubled expression at BORKMAN; then lays her hand cautiously on his shoulder.] Come, John—you must come in, too.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, this winter air is too keen for you; I can see that, John.
So come—come in with me—into the house, into the warmth.

BORKMAN. [His anger flaming forth.] Never will I set foot under that roof again!

BORKMAN. [Putting on his hat.] First of all, I will go out and see to all my buried treasures.

BORKMAN. [With laughter, interrupted by coughing.] Oh, it is not hidden plunder I mean; don't be afraid of that, Ella. [Stopping, and pointing outwards.] Do you see that man there? Who is it?

[VILHELM FOLDAL, in an old cape, covered with snow, with his hat-brim turned down, and a large umbrella in his hand, advances towards the corner of the house, laboriously stumbling through the snow. He is noticeably lame in his left foot.

FOLDAL.
[Looking up.] Good heavens, are you out on the steps, John
Gabriel? [Bowing.] And Mrs. Borkman, too, I see.

FOLDAL. Oh, I beg pardon. You see, I have lost my spectacles in the snow. But how is it that you, who never put your foot out of doors——?

BORKMAN. [Carelessly and gaily.] It is high time I should come out into the open air again, don't you see? Nearly three years in detention—five years in prison—eight years in the gallery up there——

FOLDAL.
[Still standing at the foot of the steps.] I wanted to come up
to you, John Gabriel. I felt I must come to you, in the gallery.
Ah me, that gallery——!

FOLDAL.
With two horses. They came down the hill at a tearing gallop.
I couldn't get out of the way quick enough; and so——

FOLDAL. They came right down upon me, madam—or miss. They came right upon me and sent me rolling over and over in the snow—so that I lost my spectacles and got my umbrella broken. [Rubbing his leg.] And my ankle a little hurt too.

FOLDAL. No, how could I see? It was a covered sledge, and the curtains were down. And the driver didn't stop a moment after he had sent me spinning. But it doesn't matter a bit, for—— [With an outburst.] Oh, I am so happy, so happy!

FOLDAL. Well, I don't exactly know what to call it. But I think happy is the nearest word. For something wonderful has happened! And that is why I couldn't help—I had to come out and share my happiness with you, John Gabriel.

BORKMAN. Oh, we are all of us run over, sometime or other in life. The thing is to jump up again, and let no one see you are hurt.

FOLDAL. That is a profound saying, John Gabriel. But I can easily tell you my story out here, in a few words.

FOLDAL.
Well, now you shall hear! Only think, when I got home this
evening after I had been with you, what did I find but a letter.
Can you guess who it was from?

FOLDAL. Precisely! Think of your hitting on it at once! Yes, it was a long letter from Frida. A footman had brought it. And can you imagine what was in it?

FOLDAL. Exactly! How good you are at guessing, John Gabriel! Yes, she tells me that Mrs. Wilton has taken such a fancy to her, and she is to go abroad with her and study music. And Mrs. Wilton has engaged a first-rate teacher who is to accompany them on the journey—and to read with Frida. For unfortunately she has been a good deal neglected in some branches, you see.

BORKMAN. [Shaken with inward laughter.] Of course, of course—I see it all quite clearly, Vilhelm.

FOLDAL. [Eagerly continuing.] And only think, she knew nothing about the arrangement until this evening; at that party, you know, h'm! And yet she found time to write to me. And the letter is such a beautiful one—so warm and affectionate, I assure you. There is not a trace of contempt for her father in it. And then what a delicate thought it was to say good-bye to us by letter—before she started. [Laughing.] But of course I can't let her go like that.

FOLDAL. [Laughing and rubbing his hands.] Yes; but I know a trick worth two of that, you see! I am going straight up to Mrs. Wilton's——

FOLDAL.
Oh, it's not so very late yet. And even if the house is shut
up, I shall ring; without hesitation. For I must and will see
Frida before she starts. Good-night, good-night!
[Makes a movement to go.

BORKMAN. Stop a moment, my poor Vilhelm; you may spare yourself that heavy bit of road.

FOLDAL. Yes, indeed I will. I'll go on ringing and knocking till some one comes and lets me in. For I must and will see Frida.

FOLDAL. [Stands as though thunderstruck.] Has Frida gone already! Are you quite sure? Who told you?

BORKMAN. Yes; it is he that is to help Mrs. Wilton with little Frida's education.

FOLDAL.
Oh, Heaven be praised! Then the child is in the best of hands.
But is it quite certain that they have started with her already?

FOLDAL. [Clasping his hands.] To think that my little Frida was in that magnificent sledge!

BORKMAN. [Nodding.] Yes, yes, Vilhelm, your daughter has come to drive in her carriage. And Master Erhart, too. Tell me, did you notice the silver bells?

FOLDAL. Yes, indeed. Silver bells did you say? Were they silver? Real, genuine silver bells?

BORKMAN. You may be quite sure of that. Everything was genuine—both outside and in.

FOLDAL. [In quiet emotion.] Isn't it strange how fortune can sometimes befriend one? It is my—my little gift of song that has transmuted itself into music in Frida. So after all, it is not for nothing that I was born a poet. For now she is going forth into the great wide world, that I once yearned so passionately to see. Little Frida sets out in a splendid covered sledge with silver bells on the harness——

FOLDAL. [Happily.] Oh, pooh! What does it matter about me, if only the child——! Well, so I am too late, then, after all. I must go home again and comfort her mother. I left her crying in the kitchen.

FOLDAL. [Smiling.] Yes, would you believe it, she was crying her eyes out when I came away.

FOLDAL. Yes, I am, of course. But she, poor thing, she doesn't know any better, you see. Well, good-bye! It's a good thing I have the tramway so handy. Good-bye, good-bye, John Gabriel. Good-bye, Madam.

BORKMAN.
[Stands silent for a moment, gazing before him.] Good-bye,
Vilhelm! It is not the first time in your life that you've
been run over, old friend.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Looking at him with suppressed anxiety.] You are so pale,
John, so very pale.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [To THE MAID.] Mr. Borkman is not quite well. He wants to have a little fresh air before coming in.

BORKMAN. [Stands silent for a moment, and listens; then goes hastily down the steps and out into the open space.] Now I am outside the walls, Ella! Now they will never get hold of me again!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Who has gone down to him.] But you are a free man in there, too, John. You can come and go just as you please.

BORKMAN. [Softly, as though in terror.] Never under a roof again! It is so good to be out here in the night. If I went up into the gallery now, ceiling and walls would shrink together and crush me—crush me flat as a fly.

BORKMAN. I will simply go on, and on, and on. I will try if I cannot make my way to freedom, and life, and human beings again. Will you go with me, Ella?

ELLA RENTHEIM. Oh, but think what you are doing! Out in this raw, cold winter night——

BORKMAN. [Speaking very hoarsely.] Oho—my lady is concerned about her health? Yes, yes—I know it is delicate.

BORKMAN.
Hohoho! A dead man's health! I can't help laughing at you,
Ella! [He moves onwards.

BORKMAN. A dead man, I said. Don't you remember, Gunhild told me to lie quiet where I was?

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With resolution, throwing her cloak around her.] I will go with you, John.

    [They have gradually passed into the low wood on the left.
        It conceals them little by little, until they are quite
        lost to sight. The house and the open space disappear.
        The landscape, consisting of wooded slopes and ridges,
        slowly changes and grows wilder and wilder.

ELLA RENTHEIM's VOICE.
[Is heard in the wood to the right.] Where are we going, John?
I don't recognise this place.

BORKMAN. [On the verge of the wood to the right.] Come, come! We are not far from the view now. There used to be a seat there.

[They have emerged upon a small high-lying, open plateau in the wood. The mountain rises abruptly behind them. To the left, far below, an extensive fiord landscape, with high ranges in the distance, towering one above the other. On the plateau, to the left, a dead fir-tree with a bench under it. The snow lies deep upon the plateau.

[BORKMAN and, after him, ELLA RENTHEIM enter from the right
and wade with difficulty through the snow.

BORKMAN.
[Stopping at the verge of the steep declivity on the left.]
Come here, Ella, and you shall see.

BORKMAN. [Pointing outwards.] Do you see how free and open the country lies before us—away to the far horizon?

ELLA RENTHEIM. We have often sat on this bench before, and looked out into a much, much further distance.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Nodding sadly.] It was the dreamland of our life, yes. And now that land is buried in snow. And the old tree is dead.

BORKMAN. [Not listening to her.] Can you see the smoke of the great steamships out on the fiord?

BORKMAN. I can. They come and they go. They weave a network of fellowship all round the world. They shed light and warmth over the souls of men in many thousands of homes. That was what I dreamed of doing.

BORKMAN. It remained a dream, yes. [Listening.] And hark, down by the river, dear! The factories are working! My factories! All those that I would have created! Listen! Do you hear them humming? The night shift is on—so they are working night and day. Hark! hark! the wheels are whirling and the bands are flashing—round and round and round. Can't you hear, Ella?

BORKMAN. [More and more fired up.] Oh, but all these—they are only like the outworks around the kingdom, I tell you!

BORKMAN. My kingdom, of course! The kingdom I was on the point of conquering when I—when I died.

BORKMAN. And now there it lies—defenceless, masterless—exposed to all the robbers and plunderers. Ella, do you see the mountain chains there—far away? They soar, they tower aloft, one behind the other! That is my vast, my infinite, inexhaustible kingdom!

BORKMAN. That blast is the breath of life to me. That blast comes to me like a greeting from subject spirits. I seem to touch them, the prisoned millions; I can see the veins of metal stretch out their winding, branching, luring arms to me. I saw them before my eyes like living shapes, that night when I stood in the strong-room with the candle in my hand. You begged to be liberated, and I tried to free you. But my strength failed me; and the treasure sank back into the deep again. [With outstretched hands.] But I will whisper it to you here in the stillness of the night: I love you, as you lie there spellbound in the deeps and the darkness! I love you, unborn treasures, yearning for the light! I love you, with all your shining train of power and glory! I love you, love you, love you!

ELLA RENTHEIM. [In suppressed but rising agitation.] Yes, your love is still down there, John. It has always been rooted there. But here, in the light of day, here there was a living, warm, human heart that throbbed and glowed for you. And this heart you crushed. Oh worse than that! Ten times worse! You sold it for—for——

BORKMAN. [Trembles; a cold shudder seems to go through him.] For the kingdom—and the power—and the glory—you mean?

ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, that is what I mean. I have said it once before to-night: you have murdered the love-life in the woman who loved you. And whom you loved in return, so far as you could love any one. [With uplifted arm.] And therefore I prophesy to you, John Gabriel Borkman—you will never touch the price you demanded for the murder. You will never enter in triumph into your cold, dark kingdom!

BORKMAN. [Staggers to the bench and seats himself heavily.] I almost fear your prophecy will come true, Ella.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Going up to him.] You must not fear it, John. That is the best thing that can happen to you.

BORKMAN.
[With a shriek; clutching at his breast.] Ah——! [Feebly.]
Now it let me go again.

BORKMAN. [Sinking down against the back of the seat.] It was a hand of ice that clutched at my heart.

BORKMAN.
[Murmurs.] No. No ice-hand. It was a metal hand.
[He sinks right down upon the bench.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Tears off her cloak and throws it over him.] Lie still where you are! I will go and bring help for you.

    [She goes a step or two towards the right; then she stops,
        returns, and carefully feels his pulse and touches his
        face.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Softly and firmly.] No. It is best so, John Borkman. Best for you.

[She spreads the cloak closer around him, and sinks down in
the snow in front of the bench. A short silence.

[MRS. BORKMAN, wrapped in a mantle, comes through the wood
on the right. THE MAID goes before her carrying a lantern.

THE MAID. [Throwing the light upon the snow.] Yes, yes, ma'am, here are their tracks.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Peering around.] Yes, here they are! They are sitting there on the bench. [Calls.] Ella!

MRS. BORKMAN. [With an outburst.] Ella! [Controls herself and asks in a low voice.] Did he do it—of his own accord?

THE MAID.
Yes, I will, ma'am. [To herself.] Lord save us!
[She goes out through the wood to the right.

MRS. BORKMAN.
[Standing behind the bench.] So the night air has killed him——

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Coming in front of the bench.] Will you not look at him,
Gunhild?

MRS. BORKMAN. [With a gesture of repulsion.] No, no, no. [Lowering her voice.] He was a miner's son, John Gabriel Borkman. He could not live in the fresh air.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Shakes her head.] The cold, you say? The cold—that had killed him long ago.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [With a painful smile.] A dead man and two shadows—that is what the cold has made of us.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, the coldness of heart.—And now I think we two may hold out our hands to each other, Ella.

[MRS. BORKMAN behind the bench, and ELLA RENTHEIM in front
of it, take each other's hand.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN ***

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