Alas! alas!
[MRS. ALVING continues looking at him.]
MANDERS. And what do you say to all this?
MRS. ALVING. I say that Oswald was right in every word.
MANDERS. [Stands still.] Right? Right! In such principles?
MRS. ALVING. Here, in my loneliness, I have come to the same way of thinking, Pastor Manders. But I have never dared to say anything. Well!
now my boy shall speak for me.
MANDERS. You are greatly to be pitied, Mrs. Alving. But now I must speak seriously to you. And now it is no longer your business manager and adviser, your own and your husband"s early friend, who stands before you. It is the priest--the priest who stood before you in the moment of your life when you had gone farthest astray.
MRS. ALVING. And what has the priest to say to me?
MANDERS. I will first stir up your memory a little. The moment is well chosen. To-morrow will be the tenth anniversary of your husband"s death.
To-morrow the memorial in his honour will be unveiled. To-morrow I shall have to speak to the whole a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. But to-day I will speak to you alone.
MRS. ALVING. Very well, Pastor Manders. Speak.
MANDERS. Do you remember that after less than a year of married life you stood on the verge of an abyss? That you forsook your house and home?
That you fled from your husband? Yes, Mrs. Alving--fled, fled, and refused to return to him, however much he begged and prayed you?
MRS. ALVING. Have you forgotten how infinitely miserable I was in that first year?
MANDERS. It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life. What right have we human beings to happiness?
We have simply to do our duty, Mrs. Alving! And your duty was to hold firmly to the man you had once chosen, and to whom you were bound by the holiest ties.
MRS. ALVING. You know very well what sort of life Alving was leading--what excesses he was guilty of.
MANDERS. I know very well what rumours there were about him; and I am the last to approve the life he led in his young days, if report did not wrong him. But a wife is not appointed to be her husband"s judge. It was your duty to bear with humility the cross which a Higher Power had, in its wisdom, laid upon you. But instead of that you rebelliously throw away the cross, desert the backslider whom you should have supported, go and risk your good name and reputation, and--nearly succeed in ruining other people"s reputation into the bargain.
MRS. ALVING. Other people"s? One other person"s, you mean.
MANDERS. It was incredibly reckless of you to seek refuge with me.
MRS. ALVING. With our clergyman? With our intimate friend?
MANDERS. Just on that account. Yes, you may thank G.o.d that I possessed the necessary firmness; that I succeeded in dissuading you from your wild designs; and that it was vouchsafed me to lead you back to the path of duty, and home to your lawful husband.
MRS. ALVING. Yes, Pastor Manders, that was certainly your work.
MANDERS. I was but a poor instrument in a Higher Hand. And what a blessing has it not proved to you, all the days of your life, that I induced you to resume the yoke of duty and obedience! Did not everything happen as I foretold? Did not Alving turn his back on his errors, as a man should? Did he not live with you from that time, lovingly and blamelessly, all his days? Did he not become a benefactor to the whole district? And did he not help you to rise to his own level, so that you, little by little, became his a.s.sistant in all his undertakings? And a capital a.s.sistant, too--oh, I know, Mrs. Alving, that praise is due to you.--But now I come to the next great error in your life.
MRS. ALVING. What do you mean?
MANDERS. Just as you once disowned a wife"s duty, so you have since disowned a mother"s.
MRS. ALVING. Ah--!
MANDERS. You have been all your life under the dominion of a pestilent spirit of self-will. The whole bias of your mind has been towards insubordination and lawlessness. You have never known how to endure any bond. Everything that has weighed upon you in life you have cast away without care or conscience, like a burden you were free to throw off at will. It did not please you to be a wife any longer, and you left your husband. You found it troublesome to be a mother, and you sent your child forth among strangers.
MRS. ALVING. Yes, that is true. I did so.
MANDERS. And thus you have become a stranger to him.
MRS. ALVING. No! no! I am not.
MANDERS. Yes, you are; you must be. And in what state of mind has he returned to you? Bethink yourself well, Mrs. Alving. You sinned greatly against your husband;--that you recognise by raising yonder memorial to him. Recognise now, also, how you have sinned against your son--there may yet be time to lead him back from the paths of error. Turn back yourself, and save what may yet be saved in him. For [With uplifted forefinger] verily, Mrs. Alving, you are a guilt-laden mother! This I have thought it my duty to say to you.
[Silence.]
MRS. ALVING. [Slowly and with self-control.] You have now spoken out, Pastor Manders; and to-morrow you are to speak publicly in memory of my husband. I shall not speak to-morrow. But now I will speak frankly to you, as you have spoken to me.
MANDERS. To be sure; you will plead excuses for your conduct--
MRS. ALVING. No. I will only tell you a story.
MANDERS. Well--?
MRS. ALVING. All that you have just said about my husband and me, and our life after you had brought me back to the path of duty--as you called it--about all that you know nothing from personal observation.
From that moment you, who had been our intimate friend, never set foot in our house gain.
MANDERS. You and your husband left the town immediately after.
MRS. ALVING. Yes; and in my husband"s lifetime you never came to see us. It was business that forced you to visit me when you undertook the affairs of the Orphanage.
MANDERS. [Softly and hesitatingly.] Helen--if that is meant as a reproach, I would beg you to bear in mind--
MRS. ALVING.--the regard you owed to your position, yes; and that I was a runaway wife. One can never be too cautious with such unprincipled creatures.
MANDERS. My dear--Mrs. Alving, you know that is an absurd exaggeration--
MRS. ALVING. Well well, suppose it is. My point is that your judgment as to my married life is founded upon nothing but common knowledge and report.
MANDERS. I admit that. What then?
MRS. ALVING. Well, then, Pastor Manders--I will tell you the truth. I have sworn to myself that one day you should know it--you alone!
MANDERS. What is the truth, then?
MRS. ALVING. The truth is that my husband died just as dissolute as he had lived all his days.
MANDERS. [Feeling after a chair.] What do you say?
MRS. ALVING. After nineteen years of marriage, as dissolute--in his desires at any rate--as he was before you married us.
MANDERS. And those-those wild oats--those irregularities--those excesses, if you like--you call "a dissolute life"?