Three Comedies | Page 8

you and I were secretly
engaged, and that we were making a stalking-horse of Laura; so for her
sake I had to bring matters to a head rather quickly.
Mathilde. Yes, you took a good many people by surprise.
Axel. Including even yourself, I believe--not to mention the old folk
and Laura. But the worst of it is that I took my own happiness by
surprise, too.
Mathilde. What do you mean?
Axel. Of course I knew Laura was only a child; but I thought she would
grow up when she felt the approach of love. But she has never felt its
approach; she is like a bud that will not open, and I cannot warm the
atmosphere. But you could do that--you, in whom she has confided all
her first longings--you, whose kind heart knows so well how to
sacrifice its happiness for others. You know you are to some extent
responsible, too, for the fact that the most important event in her life
came upon her a little unpreparedly; so you ought to take her by the

hand and guide her first steps away from her parents and towards
me--direct her affections towards me--
Mathilde. I? (A pause.)
Axel. Won't you?
Mathilde. No--
Axel. But why not? You love her, don't you?
Mathilde. I do; but this is a thing--
Axel. --that you can do quite well! For you are better off than the rest
of us--you have many more ways of reaching a person's soul than we
have. Sometimes when we have been discussing something, and then
you have given your opinion, it has reminded me of the refrains to the
old ballads, which sum up the essence of the whole poem in two lines.
Mathilde. Yes, I have heard you flatter before.
Axel. I flatter? Why, what I have just asked you to do is a clearer proof
than anything else how great my--
Mathilde. Stop, stop! I won't do it!
Axel. Why not? At least be frank with me!
Mathilde. Because--oh, because-- (Turns away.)
Axel. But what has made you so unkind? (MATHILDE stops for a
moment, as though she were going to answer; then goes hurriedly out.)
What on earth is the matter with her? Has anything gone wrong
between her and Laura? Or is it something about the house that is
worrying her? She is too level-headed to be disturbed by trifles.--Well,
whatever it is, it must look after itself; I have something else to think
about. If the one of them can't understand me, and the other won't, and
the old couple neither can nor will, I must act on my own account--and
the sooner the better! Later on, it would look to other people like a

rupture. It must be done now, before we settle down to this state of
things; for if we were to do that, it would be all up with us. To
acquiesce in such an unnatural state of affairs would be like crippling
one's self on purpose. I am entangled hand and foot here in the meshes
of a net of circumspection. I shall have to sail along at "dead slow" all
my life--creep about among their furniture and their flowers as warily
as among their habits. You might just as well try to stand the house on
its head as to alter the slightest thing in it. I daren't move!--and it is
becoming unbearable. Would it be a breach of a law of nature to move
this couch a little closer to the wall, or this chair further away from it?
And has it been ordained from all eternity that this table must stand just
where it does? Can it be shifted? (Moves it.) It actually can! And the
couch, too. Why does it stand so far forward? (Pushes it back.) And
why are these chairs everlastingly in the way? This one shall stand
there--and this one there. (Moves them.) I will have room for my legs; I
positively believe I have forgotten how to walk. For a whole year I
have hardly heard the sound of my own footstep--or of my own voice;
they do nothing but whisper and cough here. I wonder if I have any
voice left? (Sings.) "Bursting every bar and band, My fetters will I
shatter; Striding out, with sword in hand, Where the fight"-- (He stops
abruptly, at the entrance of the FATHER, the MOTHER, LAURA and
MATHILDE, who have come hurriedly from the breakfast table. A
long pause.)
Laura. Axel, dear!
Mathilde. What, all by himself?
Mother. Do you think you are at a ball?
Father. And playing the part of musician as well as dancer?
Axel. I am amusing myself.
Father. With our furniture?
Axel. I only wanted to see if it was possible to move it.

Mother. If it