Lise. But suppose she has no reason to do so? If you only knew how full the world is of concoctions and lies and mistakes and misunderstandings. My father used to tell the story of a chum he used to have when he first went to sea as a cadet. A gold watch was stolen from one of the officers’ cabins and— God knows why!— suspicion fell on the cadet. His mates avoided him, practically sent him to Coventry, and that embittered him to such an extent that he became impossible to associate with, got mixed up in a row and had to leave. Two years afterward the thief was discovered, in the person of a boatswain; but no satisfaction could be given to the innocent boy, because people had only been suspicious of him. And the suspicion will stick to him for the rest of his life, although it was refuted, and the wretch still keeps a nickname which was given to him at the time. His life grew up like a house that’s built and based on its own bad fame, and when the false foundation is cut away the building remains standing all the same; it floated in the air like the castle in “The Arabian Nights.” You see—that’s what happens in the world. But even worse things can happen, as in the case of that instrument maker in Arboga, who got the name of being an incendiary because his house had been set fire to; or as happened to a certain Anderson, whom people called Thief Anders because he had been the victim of a celebrated burglary.
Daughter. Do you mean to say that my father hasn’t been what I always thought he was?
Lise. Yes, that’s just it.
Daughter. This is how I see him sometimes in dreams, since I lost all recollection of him—isn’t he fairly tall, with a dark beard and big blue sailor eyes?
Lise. Yes—more or less!
Daughter. And then—wait, now I remember. Do you see this watch? There’s a little compass fastened on to the chain, and on the compass at the north there’s an eye. Who gave me that?
Lise. Your father. I was there when he bought it.
Daughter. Then it’s he whom I’ve seen so often in the theater when I was playing. He always sat in the left stage box, and held his opera glasses trained on me. I never dared to tell mother because she was always so very nervous about me. And once he threw me flowers— t but mother burned them. Do you think it was he?
Lise. It was he; you can count on it that during all these years his eye has followed you like the eye of the needle on the compass.
Daughter. And you tell me that I shall see him—that he wants to meet me? It’s like a fairy tale.