The same setting as before with the exception that the walls have been torn down so that the garden is made visible, with its vast variety of spring flowers—daphnes, deutzias, daffodils, narcissuses, tulips, auriculas—and with all the fruit-trees in bloom.
ERICSON, ANDERSON and his old wife, GUSTAFSON, the HEARSE-DRIVER, MRS. WESTERLUND, and the painter, SJÖBLOM, are standing in a row staring at the spot where the house used to be.
STRANGER. [Entering] There they stand, enjoying the misfortune that's in the air and waiting for the victim to appear—he being the principal item. That the fire was incendiary they take for granted, merely because they want it that way.—And all these rascals are the friends and comrades of my youth. I am even related to the hearse-driver through my stepmother, whose father used to help carry out the coffins—[He speaks to the crowd of spectators] Look here, you people, I shouldn't stand there if I were you. There may have been some dynamite stored in the cellar, and if such were the case an explosion might take place any moment.
The curious crowd scatters and disappears.
STRANGER. [Stoops over the scrap-heap and begins to poke in the books piled there] Those are the student's books—Same kind of rot as in my youth—Livy's Roman history, which is said to be lies, every word—But here's a volume out of my brother's library—"Columbus, or the Discovery of America"! My own book, which I got as a Christmas gift in 1857. My name has been erased. This means it was stolen from me—and I accused one of our maids, who was discharged on that account! Fine business! Perhaps it led to her ruin—fifty years ago! Here is the frame of one of our family portraits; my renowned grandfather, the smuggler, who was put in the pillory—fine!—But what is this? The foot-piece of a mahogany bed—the one in which I was born! Oh, damn!—Next item: a leg of a dinner-table—the one that was an heirloom. Why, it was supposed to be of ebony, and was admired on that account! And now, after fifty years, I discover it to be made of painted maple. Everything had its colours changed in our house to render it unrecognisable, even the clothes of us children, so that our bodies always were stained with various dyes. Ebony—humbug! And here's the dining-room clock—smuggled goods, that, too—which has measured out the time for two generations. It was wound up every Saturday, when we had salt codfish and a posset made with beer for dinner. Like all intelligent clocks, it used to stop when anybody died, but when I died it went on just as before. Let me have a look at you, old friend—I want to see your insides. [As he touches the clock it falls to pieces] Can't stand being handled! Nothing could stand being handled in our home—nothing! Vanity, vanity!—But there's the globe that was on top of the clock, although it ought to have been at the bottom. You tiny earth: you, the densest and the heaviest of all the planets—that's what makes everything on you so heavy—so heavy to breathe, so heavy to carry. The cross is your symbol, but it might just as well have been a fool's cap or a strait-jacket—you world of delusions and deluded!—Eternal One—perchance Thy earth has gone astray in the limitless void? And what set it whirling so that Thy children were made dizzy, and lost their reason, and became incapable of seeing what really is instead of what only seems?—Amen!—And here is the student!
The STUDENT enters and looks around in evident search of somebody.
STRANGER. He is looking for the mistress of the house. And he tells everything he knows—with his eyes. Happy youth!—Whom are you looking for?
STUDENT. [Embarrassed] I was looking——
STRANGER. Speak up, young man—or keep silent. I understand you just the same.