Three Dramas | Page 9

for the heart or the imagination; they do not breed faith or a longing for high achievement. Look at our life! Is our life really our own?
Mrs. Evje. No. You have only to think of our language, our tastes, our society, our--
The Doctor (interrupting her). Those are the externals of our life, merely the externals! No, look within--look at such a view of life as we were talking about, clamouring for "hardening"--is that ours? Can we, for all our diligence, make as much way in it as, for instance, a born Parisian journalist?--become like a bar of steel with a point at each end, a pen-point and a sword-point? We can't do that; the Teutonic temperament is not fitted for it.
Evje. Oh, we are well on the way towards it. Look at the heartless intolerance in our politics; it will soon match what you were describing.
Harald. Everyone that disagrees with you is either an ambitious scoundrel, or half mad, or a blockhead.
The Doctor (laughing). Yes, and here in the north, in our small communities, where a man meets all his enemies in the same barber's shop, we feel it as keenly as if we were digging our knives into each other! (Seriously.) We may laugh at it, but if we could add up the sum of suffering that has been caused to families and to individuals--if we could see the concrete total before us--we should be tempted to believe that our liberty had been given to us as a curse! For it is a cursed thing to destroy the humanity that is in us, and make us cruel and hard to one another.
Harald (getting up, but standing still). But, my good friends, if you are of the same mind about that, and I with you--what is the next thing to do?
The Doctor. The next thing to do?
Harald. Naturally, to unite in making an end of it.
Mrs. Evje (as she works). What can we do?
Evje. I am no politician and do not wish to become one.
The Doctor (laughing, and sitting down). No, a politician is a principle, swathed round with a printed set of directions for use. I prefer to be allowed to be a human being.
Harald. No one can fairly insist on your taking up any vocation to which you do not feel you have a calling.
The Doctor. Of course not.
Harald. But one certainly might insist on your not helping to maintain a condition of affairs that you detest.
All. We?
Harald. This newspaper, which is the ultimate reason of all this conversation we have had--you take it in.
Evje. Why, you take it in yourself!
Harald. No. Every time there is anything nasty in it about me or mine, it is sent to me anonymously.
The Doctor (with a laugh). I don't take it in; I read my hall-porter's copy.
Harald. I have heard you say that before. I took an opportunity to ask your hall-porter. He said he did not read it, and did not take it in either.
The Doctor (as before). Then I should like to know who does pay for it!
Evje. A newspaper is indispensable to a business man.
Harald. An influential business man could by himself, or at any rate with one or two others, start a paper that would be as useful again to him as this one is.
Evje. That is true enough; but, after all, if we agree with its politics?
Harald. I will accept help from any one whose opinions on public affairs agree with my own. Who am I that I should pretend to judge him? But I will not give him my help in anything that is malicious or wicked.
The Doctor. Pshaw!
Harald. Everyone who subscribes to, or contributes to, or gives any information to a paper that is scurrilous, is giving his help to what is wicked. And, moreover, every one who is on terms of friendship with a man who is destroying public morality, is helping him to do it.
The Doctor (getting up). Does he still come here? (A silence.)
Evje. He and I are old schoolfellows--and I don't like breaking with old acquaintances.
Mrs. Evje. He is a most amusing man, too--though I can't deny that he is malicious. (The DOCTOR sits down again, humming to himself.)
Harald. But that is not all. Both you and the Doctor have--with some eloquence--
The Doctor (with a laugh). Thank you!
Harald. --expressed your abhorrence of certain political tendencies with which neither you nor I have any sympathy--which affront our ideas of humane conduct. You do not feel called upon to enter actively into the lists against them; but why do you try to prevent those who do feel so called upon? You lament the existing state of things--and yet you help to maintain it, and make a friend of the man who is its champion!
The Doctor (turning his head). Apparently we are on