Daughter. Yes—yes—yes. I know all that already. I know—I know!
Mother. You’re making yourself disagreeable again. Get something proper to do, and don’t sit slacking there in that fashion. A grown-up girl like you!
Daughter. Then why do you always treat me like a child if I’m grown up?
Mother. Because you behave like one.
Daughter. You have no right to rag me—you yourself wanted me to remain like this.
Mother. Look here, Helen; for some time past I think you’ve been a bit too bloomin’ smart. Come, whom have you been talking to down here?
Daughter. With you two, among others.
Mother. You don’t mean to say you’re going to start having secrets from your own mother?
Daughter. It’s about time.
Dresser. Shame on you, you young thing, being so cheeky to your own mother!
Mother. Come, let’s do something sensible instead of jangling like this. Why not come here, and read over your part with me?
Daughter. The manager said I wasn’t to go through it with anyone, because if I did, I should only learn something wrong.
Mother. I see, so that’s the thanks one gets for trying to help you. Of course, of course! Everything that I do is always silly, I suppose.
Daughter. Why do you do it then? And why do you put the blame on to me, whenever you do anything wrong?
Dresser. Of course you want to remind your mother that she ain’t educated? Ugh, ’ow common!
Daughter. You say I want to, aunt, but it’s not the case. If mother goes and teaches me anything wrong, I’ve got to learn the whole thing over again, if I don’t want to lose my engagement. We don’t want to find ourselves stranded.
Mother. I see. You’re now letting us know that we’re living on what you earn. But do you really know what you owe Aunt Augusta here? Do you know that she looked after us when your blackguard of a father left us in the lurch?—that she took care of us and that you therefore owe her a debt which you can never pay off—in all your born days? Do you know that? [DAUGHTER is silent.] Do you know that? Answer.
Daughter. I refuse to answer.
Mother. You do—do you? You won’t answer?
Dresser. Steady on, Amelia. The people next door might hear us, and then they’d start gossiping again. So you go steady.
Mother. [To DAUGHTER.] Put on your things and come out for a walk.
Daughter. I’m not going out for a walk to-day.
Mother. This is now the third day that you’ve refused to go out for a walk with your mother. [Reflecting.] Would it be possible? Go out on to the veranda, Helen. I want to say something to Aunt Augusta. [DAUGHTER exit on to the veranda.]
SCENE II
Mother. Do you think it’s possible?
Dresser. What?
Mother. That she’s found out something?
Dresser. It ain’t possible.
Mother. It might ’appen, of course. Not that I think anybody could be so heartless as to tell it to her to her face. I had a nephew who was thirty-six years old before he found out that his father was a suicide, but Helen’s manner’s changed, and there’s something at the bottom of it. For the last eight days I’ve noticed that she couldn’t bear my being with her on the promenade. She would only go along lonely paths; when anyone met us she looked the other way; she was nervous, couldn’t manage to get a single word out. There’s something behind all this.
Dresser. Do you mean, if I follow you aright, that the society of her mother is painful to her?—the society of her own mother?
Mother. Yes.
Dresser. No, that’s really a bit too bad.
Mother. Well, I’ll tell you something which is even worse. Would you believe it, that when we came here, she didn’t introduce me to some of her friends on the steamer?
Dresser. Do you know what I think? She’s met someone or other who’s come here during the last week. Come, we’ll just toddle down to the post office and find out about the latest arrivals.
Mother. Yes, let’s do that. I say, Helen, just mind the house a minute. We’re only going down to the post for a moment.
Daughter. Yes, mamma.
Mother. [To DRESSER.] It’s just as though I’d dreamed all this before.
Dresser. Yes, dreams come true sometimes—I know that all right—but not the nice ones.
[Exeunt R.]
SCENE III
[DAUGHTER gives a nod out of the window; LISE enters. She wears a tennis costume quite white, and a white hat.]
Lise. Have they gone?
Daughter. Yes; but they’re soon coming back.
Lise. Well, what did your mother say?
Daughter. I haven’t even had the pluck to ask her. She was in such a temper.
Lise. Poor Helen! So you Can’t come with us on the excursion? And I was looking forward to it so much. If you only knew how fond I am of you. [Kisses her.]
Daughter. I you only knew, dear, what these days have meant to me since I’ve made your acquaintance and visited your house—have meant to a girl like me, who’s never mixed with decent people in her whole life. Just think what it must have been for me. Up to the present I’ve been living in a den where the air was foul, where shady, mysterious people came in and out, who spied and brawled and wrangled, where I have never heard a kind word, much less ever got a caress, and where my soul was watched like a prisoner. Oh, I’m talking like this about my mother, and it hurts me! And you will only despise me for it.
Lise. One can’t be made responsible for one’s parents.
Daughter. No; but you’ve got to pay the penalty for them. A»t any rate they say that very often one doesn’t find out before the end of one’s life the kind of people one’s own parents, with whom one’s lived all one’s life, have really been. And I’ve picked up this as well, that even if one does get to hear about it one doesn’t believe a word.
Lise. [Uneasily.] Have you heard anything?
Daughter. Yes. When I was in the Bath-house three days ago I heard through the wall what people were saying about my mother. Do you know what it was?
Lise. Don’t bother about it.
Daughter. They said my mother had been just a common creature! I wouldn’t believe it, I won’t yet believe it. But I feel that it is true; it all fits in—to make it probable—and I am ashamed—ashamed of going near her, because I think that people stare at us— that the men throw us looks. It’s too awful. But is it true? Tell me if you think that it’s true?
Lise. People tell so many lies—and I don’t know anything.
Daughter. Yes, you do know—you do know something. You won’t tell me, and I thank you for it; but I am equally miserable whether you tell me or whether you don’t—
Lise. My darling friend, knock that thought out of your head and come home to us—you’ll find you’ll get on splendidly with everyone. My father arrived early this morning. He asked after you, and wanted to see you—I ought, of course, to tell you they have written to him about you—and Cousin Gerhard as well, because I think—