Scene 2
Clara (enters).
Good-evening, Leonard.
Leonard.
Clara? (Aside.) I didn’t expect this. (Aloud.) Didn’t you get my letter? Oh—perhaps your father’s sent you to pay the rates. How much is it? (Turning leaves in a journal.) I ought to know it without looking it up.
Clara.
I’ve come to give you your letter back. Here it is. Read it again.
Leonard (reads it very seriously).
It’s quite a sensible letter. How can a man, who’s in charge of public money, marry into a family that—(swallowing a word) your brother belongs to?
Clara.
Leonard!
Leonard.
Perhaps the whole town’s wrong? Your brother isn’t in prison? Never been in prison? You’re not the sister of—of your brother?
Clara.
Leonard, I’m my father’s daughter. I don’t come as the sister of an innocent man whose name has already been cleared—that’s my brother;—nor as a girl who shudders at unmerited shame—for (in a low voice) I shudder more at you—I come in the name of the old man who gave me life.
Leonard.
What do you want?
Clara.
Can you ask? Oh, if only I were free to go! My father will cut his throat if I—marry me!
Leonard.
Your father——
Clara.
He has sworn it. Marry me!
Leonard.
Hand and throat are close cousins. They won’t damage one another. Don’t worry about that.
Clara.
He has sworn it.—Marry me, and then kill me—and I’ll thank you more for the one than the other.
Leonard.
Do you love me? Did your heart tell you to come? Am I the man without whom you can’t live or die?
Clara.
Answer that yourself.
Leonard.
Can you swear that you love me? That you love me as a girl should love the man who is to be bound to her for life?
Clara.
No, I can’t swear that. But this I can swear. That whether I love you or not, you shall never know. I’ll serve you, I’ll work for you. You don’t need to feed me. I’ll keep myself. I’ll sew and spin in the night-time for other people. I’ll go hungry if I’ve no work to do. I’ll eat my own flesh rather than go to my father and let him notice anything. If you strike me because your dog isn’t handy, or you’ve done away with him, I’ll swallow my own tongue rather than utter a sound that could let it out to the neighbours. I can’t promise you that my skin shall not show the marks of your lash, but I’ll lie about it, I’ll say that I ran my head against the cupboard or that the floor was too much polished and I slipped on it. I’ll do it before anybody has time to ask me where the blue marks came from. Marry me—I shan’t live long. And if it lasts too long for you, and you can’t afford to divorce me, buy some poison at the chemist’s and put it down as if it were for the rats. I’ll take it without even a sign from you, and when I’m dying I’ll tell the neighbours I thought it was crushed sugar.
Leonard.
Well, if you expect me to do all that, you won’t be surprised if I say no.
Clara.
May God, then, not look upon me too hardly, if I come before He calls me. If it meant only me, I’d bear it; take it patiently, as well-deserved punishment for I don’t know what, if people trampled on me in my misery, instead of helping me. I would love my child, even if it bore this man’s features. I would weep so before it’s helpless innocence, that it would not curse and despise its mother when it was older and wiser. But I’m not the only one. And when the judge asks me on the last day “Why did you kill yourself?” it will be an easier question to answer than “Why did you drive your father to it?”
Leonard.
You talk as if you were the first woman and the last. Thousands before you have gone through this and borne it. Thousands after you will get into your plight and accept their fate. Are they all so low, that you want to go away in a corner by yourself? They had fathers too, who invented heaps of new curses when they heard of it, and talked about death and murder. They were ashamed of themselves later on, and did penance for their curses and blasphemies. Why! they sat down and rocked the child, or fanned the flies off him!
Clara.
Oh, I can well believe that you don’t understand how anybody in the world should keep his oath!