LITTLE MOPSËMAN.
THE THIRD ACT.
An elevation and rockery in Früyseck's back-garden, from which—but for the houses in between—an extensive view over the steamer-pier and fiord could be obtained. In front, a summer-house, covered with creepers and wild earwigs. On a bench outside, Mopsa is sitting. She has the inevitable little travelling-bag on a strap over her shoulder. Blochdrähn comes up in the dusk. He, too, has a travelling-bag, made of straw, containing professional implements, over his shoulder. He is carrying a rolled-up handbill and a small paste-pot.
Sanitary Engineer Blochdrähn (catching sight of Mopsa's handbag). So you really are off at last? So am I. I'm going by train.
Mopsa (with a faint smile). Are you? Then I take the steamer. Have you seen Alfred anywhere about—or Spreta?
San. Eng. Bloch. I have been seeing a good deal of Mrs. Früyseck. She asked me to come up here and paste one of these handbills on the summer-house. To offer a reward for Little Mopsëman, you know. I've been sticking them up everywhere. (Busied with the paste-pot.) But you'll see—he'll never turn up.
"It takes two to connect the ventilating shaft with the main drainage."
Mopsa (sighing). Poor Spreta! and oh, poor dear Alfred! I really don't know if I can have the heart to leave him.
San. Eng. Bloch. (pasting up the bill). I shall not believe it myself until I actually see you do it. But why shouldn't you come along with me, if you are going—h'm?
Mopsa. If you were only a married man—but I have to be so careful now, you know!
San. Eng. Bloch. It tortures me to think of our two handbags each taking its own way; it really does, Miss Mopsa. And then for me to have to plumb all by myself. Though, to be sure, one can always get round the district surveyor alone.
Mopsa. Ah, yes, that you can surely manage alone.
San. Eng. Bloch. But it takes two to connect the ventilating shaft with the main drainage.
Mopsa (looking up at him). Always two? Never more? Never many?
San. Eng. Bloch. Well, then, you see, it becomes quite a different matter—it cuts down the profits. But are you sure you can never make up your mind to share my great new job with me?
Mopsa. I tried that once—with Alfred. It didn't quite answer—though it was delightful, all the same.
San. Eng. Bloch. Then there really has been a bright and happy time in your life? I should never have suspected it!
Mopsa. Oh yes, you can't think how amusing Alfred was in those days. When he distinguished himself by failing to pass his examinations, and then, from time to time, when he lost his post in some school or other, or when his big, bulky manuscripts were declined by some magazine—with thanks!
San. Eng. Bloch. Yes, I can quite see that such an existence must have had its moments of quiet merriment. (Shaking his head.) But I don't see what in the world possessed Alfred to go and marry as he did.
Mopsa (with suppressed emotion). The Law of Change. Our latest catchphrase, you know. Alfred is so subject to it. So will you be, some day or other!
San. Eng. Bloch. Never in all my life; whatever progress may be made in sanitation! (Insistently.) Can't you really care for me?
Mopsa. I might—(looking down)—if you have no objection to go halves with Alfred.
San. Eng. Bloch. I am behind the times, I daresay; but such an arrangement does not strike me as a firm basis for a really happy home. I should certainly object to it, most decidedly.
Mopsa (laughs bitterly). What creatures of convention you men are, after all! (Recollecting herself.) But I quite forgot. I am conventional myself now. You are perfectly right; it would be utterly irregular!
Alfred (comes up the steps). Is it you, Blochdrähn, that has posted up that bill? On the new summer-house!
San. Eng. Bloch. Yes, Mrs. Früyseck asked me to.
Alfred (touched). Then she does miss Little Mopsëman, after all! Are you going? Not without Mopsa?
San. Eng. Bloch. (shaking his head). I did invite her to accompany me; but she won't. So I must make my jobs alone.
Alfred. It's so horrible to be alone—or not to be alone, if it comes to that! (Oppressed—to himself.) My troll is at it again! I shall press her to stay—I know I shall—and it will end in the usual way!
Spreta (comes up the steps, plaintively). It is unkind of you all to leave me alone like this. When I'm so nervous in the dark, too!
Mopsa (tenderly). But I must leave you, Spreta, dear. By the next steamer. That is——Well, I really ought to!
Alfred (almost inaudibly, hitting himself on the chest). Down, you little beggar, down! No, it's no use; the troll will keep popping up! (Aloud) Can't we persuade you, dear Mopsa? Do stay—just to keep Spreta company, you know!
Mopsa (as if struggling with herself). Oh, I want to so much! I'd do anything to oblige dear Spreta!
San. Eng. Bloch. (to himself, dejectedly). She is just like that Miss Hilda Wangel for making herself so perfectly at home!
Spreta (resignedly). Oh, I don't mind. After all, I would rather Alfred philandered than fretted and fussed here alone with me. You had better stay, and be our Little Mopsëman. It will keep Alfred quiet—and that's something!
Mopsa. No; it was only a temporary lapse. I keep on forgetting that I am no longer an emotional Cuckoo heroine. I am perfectly respectable. And I will prove it by leaving with Mr. Blochdrähn at once—if he will be so obliging as to escort me?
San. Eng. Bloch. Delighted, my dear Miss Mopsa, at so unexpected a bit of good luck. We've only just time to catch the steamer.
Mopsa. Then, thanks so much for a quite too delightful visit, Spreta. So sorry to have to run away like this! (To Alfred, with subdued anguish.) I am running away—from you! I entreat you not to follow me—not just yet, at any rate!
Alfred (shrinking back). Ah! (To himself.) If it depends upon our two trolls whether——. (Mopsa goes off with Sanitary Engineer Blochdrähn.) There's the steamer, Spreta.... By Jove, they'll have a run for it! Look, she's putting in.
Spreta. I daren't. The steamer has one red and one green eye—just like Mopsëman's at mealtimes!
Alfred (common-sensibly). Only her lights, you know. She doesn't mean anything personal by it.
Spreta. But they're actually mooring her by the very pier that——How can they have the heart!
Alfred. Steamboat companies have no feelings. Though why you should feel it so, when you positively loathed the dog.
Spreta. After all, you weren't so particularly fond of him yourself; now were you, Alfred?
Alfred. H'm, he was a decent dog enough—for a mongrel. I didn't mind him; now you did.
Spreta (nods slowly). There is a change in me now. I am easier to please. I could share you with the mangiest mongrel, if I were only quite sure you would never again want to follow that minx Mopsa, Alfred!
Alfred. I never said I did want to; though I can't answer for the troll. But I must go away somewhere—I'm such a depressing companion for you. I shall go away up into the solitudes—which reminds me of an anecdote I never told either you or Mopsa before. Sit down and I will tell it you.
Spreta (timidly). Not the one about the night of terror you had on the mountains, Alfred, when you lost your way and couldn't find a policeman anywhere about the peaks? Because I've heard that—and I don't think I can stand it again.
Alfred (coldly and bitterly). You see that I have really nothing to fill up my life with, when my own wife refuses to listen to my anecdotes! Now Mopsa always—— What is all that barking down there in the town?
Spreta (with an outburst). Oh, you'll see, they've found Little Mopsëman!
Alfred. Not they. He'll never be found. Those handbills of yours were a mere waste of money. It is only the curs fighting in the street—as usual.
Spreta (slowly, and with resolution). Only that, Alfred. And do you know what I mean to do, as soon as you are away solitudinising up there in the mountain hotels? I will go down and bring all those poor neglected dogs home with me.
Alfred (uneasily). What—the whole lot of them, Spreta? (Shocked.) In our Little Mopsëman's place!
Spreta (firmly and decidedly). Every one. To fill Little Mopsëman's place. They shall dig up his bones, lie on his mat, take it in turns to sleep in his basket. I will try to—h'm—lighten and ennoble their lot in life.
Alfred (with growing uneasiness). When you simply detest all dogs! I don't know anyone less fitted than you to manage a Dog's Home. I really don't!
Spreta. I must fill the void in my life somehow—if you go and leave me. And I must educate myself to understand dogs better, that's all.
Alfred. Yes, that you would have to do. (As if struck with an idea.) Before you begin. Suppose I take up my big fat book on Canine Idiosyncrasy once more, eh? That would teach you how to purify and ennoble every poodle really scientifically, you know. Only you must promise to wait till I've got it done.
Spreta (with a melancholy smile). I am in no hurry Alfred. Only to write that you would have to remain at home.
Alfred (half evasively). Not necessarily. I might, of course—for a while, that is. But I shall have many a heavy day of work before me, Spreta, and you will see, now and then perhaps, a great slumberous peace descend on me as I toil away in my brown study—but I shall be making wonderful progress all the same.
Spreta. I shall quite understand that, Alfred. Oh, dear, who in the world's this?
[The Varmint-Blõk appears mysteriously in the gloom.
The Varmint-Blõk. Excuse me, Captin, and your sweet ladyship, but I just happened to drop my eye on one of those lovely little hand-billikins here, and took the liberty to step up, thinking it might so happen that you'd been advertising the very identical dawg what followed me home the other day. You may remember me passing the remark how wonderful partial dawgs was to me. So I brought him up on the chance like.
[He produces Little Mopsëman—in mufti—from a side-pocket.
Spreta. It is our Little Mopsëman! So you are not some supernatural sort of shadowy symbol after all, then?
The Varm.-B. (hurt). Now I ask you, lady—do I look it? Here's my professional card. And if you should have the reward handy—— (As Alfred pays him.) Five Rix dollarkins—correct, my lord, and thankee kindly. (As he departs.) You'll find I've learned that sweet little mongrel a thing or two; take the nonsense out of any rat in Norway now, he will. And just you ask him to set up and give three cheers for Dr. Ibsen—that's all!
[He goes out, chuckling softly.
Alfred (holding out Little Mopsëman at arms' length). H'm; it will be a heavy day's work to purify and ennoble this poodle after all he has been through, eh, Spreta? I think, as you seem to have developed quite a taste for such tasks, I shall allow you to undertake it—all by yourself.
Spreta (turns away with her half-teasing smile). Thanks!
THE END.