The Awakening of Spring

SCENE THIRD

How the water gets into one's shoes!

How the wind blows against one's cheeks!

How one's heart thumps!

Let's go out there to the bridge. Ilse says the stream is full of bushes and trees. The boys have built a raft. Melchi Gabor was almost drowned yesterday.

Oh, he can swim!

I should think so, child!

If he hadn't been able to swim he would have been drowned!

Your hair is coming down, Martha, your hair is coming down.

Pooh!–Let it come down! It bothers me day and night. I may not wear short hair like you; I may not wear my hair down my back like Wendla; I may not wear bangs, and I must always do my hair up at home–all on account of my aunt!

I'll bring the scissors with me to-morrow to devotions. While you are saying, “Blessed are they who do not stray,” I will clip it off.

For heaven's sake, Wendla! Papa would beat me black and blue, and Mamma would lock me up in the coal hole for three nights.

What does he beat you with, Martha?

It often seems to me as if they would miss something if they didn't have an ill-conditioned brat like me.

Why, girl!

Are you ever allowed to put a blue ribbon through the top of your chemise?

A pink ribbon! Mamma thinks a pink ribbon goes well with my big dark eyes.

Blue suits me to a T!–Mamma pulled me out of bed by the hair. I fell with my hands out so on the floor.–Mamma prayed night after night with us–

In your place I should have run away long ago.

There you have it! The reason I am going away!–There you have it!–They will soon see–oh, they will soon see! At least I shall never be able to reproach my mother–

H'm, h'm.–

Can you imagine, Thea, what Mamma meant by it?

I can't–can you, Wendla?

I should simply have asked her.

I lay on the floor and shrieked and howled. Then Papa came in. Rip–he tore off my chemise. Out of the door I went. There you have it!–I only wanted to get out in the street that way–

But that is not so, Martha.

I froze. I was locked up. I had to sleep all night in a sack.

Never in my life could I sleep in a sack!

I only wish I could sleep once for you in your sack.

If only one weren't beaten!

But one would suffocate in it!

Your head is left outside. It's tied under your chin.

And then they beat you?

No. Only when there is special occasion.

What do they beat you with, Martha?

Oh, with anything that is handy.–Does your mother think it's naughty to eat a piece of bread in bed?

No! no!

I believe they enjoy it–even if they don't say so. If I ever have children I will let them grow up like the weeds in our flower garden. Nobody worries about them and they grow so high and thick–while the roses in the beds grow poorer and poorer every summer.

If I have children I shall dress them all in pink. Pink hats, pink dresses, pink shoes. Only the stockings–the stockings shall be black as night! When I go for a walk they shall march in front of me.–And you, Wendla?

How do you know that you will have any?

Why shouldn't we have any?

Well, Aunt Euphemia hasn't any.

You goose, that's because she isn't married.

Aunt Bauer was married three times and she didn't have a single one.

If you have any, Wendla, which would you rather have, boys or girls?

Boys! boys!

I, too, boys!

So would I. Better twenty boys than three girls.

Girls are tiresome.

If I weren't a girl already I certainly wouldn't want to be one.

That's a matter of taste, I believe, Martha. I rejoice every day that I am a girl. Believe me, I wouldn't change places with a king's son.–That's the reason why I only want boys!

But that's crazy, pure craziness, Wendla!

But it must be a thousand times more exciting to be loved by a man than by a girl!

But you don't want to assert that Forest Inspector Pfälle loves Melitta more than she does him.

That I do, Thea. Pfälle is proud. Pfälle is proud because he is a forest inspector—for Pfälle has nothing.–Melitta is happy because she gets ten thousand times more than she is.

Aren't you proud of yourself, Wendla?

That would be silly.

In your place I should be proud of my appearance.

Only look how she steps out–how free her glance is—how she holds herself, Martha. Isn't that pride?

Why not? I am so happy to be a girl; if I weren't a girl I should break down the next time–

He has a wonderful head.

He makes me think of the young Alexander going to school to Aristotle.

Oh dear, Greek history!–I only know how Socrates lay in his barrel when Alexander sold him the ass' shadow.

He stands third in his class.

Professor Knochenbruch says he can be first if he wants.

He has a beautiful brow, but his friend has a soulful look.

Moritz Stiefel?–He's a stupid!

I've always gotten along well with him.

He disgraces anybody who is with him. At Rilow's party he offered me some bon-bons. Only think, Wendla, they were soft and warm. Isn't that–? He said he had kept them too long in his trouser's pocket.

Only think, Melchi Gabor told me once that he didn't believe anything–not in God, not in a hereafter–in anything more in this world.

SCENE FOURTH

Can any of you say where Moritz Stiefel is keeping himself?

It may go hard with him!–Oh, it may go hard with him!

He'll keep on until he gets caught dead to rights.

Lord knows, I wouldn't want to be in his skin at this moment!

What cheek! What insolence!

Wha–Wha–what do you know?

What do we know?–Now, I tell you–

I wish I hadn't said anything!

So do I–God knows I do!

If you don't at once–

The long and the short of it is, Moritz Stiefel has broken into the Board Room.

Into the Board Room–?

Into the Board Room. Right after the Latin lesson.

He was the last. He hung back intentionally.

As I turned the corner of the corridor, I saw him open the door.

The devil take–

If only the devil doesn't take him.

Perhaps the Rector didn't take the key.

Or Moritz Stiefel carries a skeleton key.

That may be possible.

If he has luck, he'll only be kept in.

Besides getting a demerit mark in his report!

If this doesn't result in his being kicked out.

There he is!

White as a handkerchief.

Moritz, Moritz, what have you done!

Nothing–nothing–

You're feverish!

From good fortune–from happiness–from jubilation–

You were caught!

I am promoted!–Melchior, I am promoted! Oh, I don't care what happens now!–I am promoted!–Who would have believed that I should be promoted!–I don't realize it yet!–I read it twenty times!–I couldn't believe it–Good Lord, it's so!–It's so; I am promoted! (Laughing.) I don't know–I feel so queer–the ground turns around–Melchior, Melchior, can you realize what I've gone through?

I congratulate you, Moritz–Only be happy that you got away with it!

You don't know, Hans, you can't guess, what depends on it. For three weeks I've slunk past that door as if it were a hellish abyss. To-day I saw it was ajar. I believe that if some one had offered me a million–nothing, oh nothing, could have held me.–I stood in the middle of the room,—I opened the report book–ran over the leaves–found–and during all that time–I shudder–

——During all that time?

During all that time the door behind me stood wide open. How I got out–how I came down the steps, I don't know.

Is Ernest Röbel promoted, too?

Oh, certainly, Hans, certainly!–Ernest Röbel is promoted, too.

Then you can't have read correctly. Counting in the dunce's stool, we, with you and Robert, make sixty-one, and the upper class-room cannot accommodate more than sixty.

I read it right enough. Ernest Röbel is given as high a rating as I am—both of us have conditions to work off.–During the first quarter it will be seen which of us has to make room for the other. Poor Röbel!–Heaven knows, I'm not afraid of myself any longer. I've looked into it too deeply this time for that.

I bet five marks that you lose your place.

You haven't anything. I won't rob you.–Lord, but I'll grind from to-day on!–I can say so now–whether you believe it or not–It's all the same now–I–I know how true it is; if I hadn't been promoted I would have shot myself.

Boaster!

Coward!

I'd like to see you shoot yourself!

Box his ears.

Come, Moritz, let's go to the forester's house!

Do you believe his nonsense?

What's that to you? Let them chatter, Moritz! Come on, let's go to town.

It is inexplicable to me, my dear colleague, how the best of my scholars can fail the very worst of all.

To me, also, professor.

SCENE FIFTH

Is it really you, Wendla?–What are you doing up here all alone?–For three hours I've been going from one side of the wood to the other without meeting a soul, and now you come upon me out of the thickest part of it!

Yes, it's I.

If I didn't know you were Wendla Bergmann, I would take you for a dryad, fallen out of your tree.

No, no, I am Wendla Bergmann.–How did you come here?

I followed my thoughts.

I'm hunting waldmeister.1 Mamma wants to make Maybowl. At first she intended coming along herself, but at the last moment Aunt Bauer dropped in, and she doesn't like to climb.–So I came by myself.

Have you found your waldmeister?

A whole basketful. Down there under the beach it grows as thick as meadow clover. Just now I am looking for a way out. I seem to have lost the path. Can you tell me what time it is?

Just a little after half-past four. When do they expect you?

I thought it was later. I lay dreaming for a long time on the moss by the brook. The time went by so fast, I feared it was already evening.

If nobody is waiting for you, let us linger here a little longer. Under the oak tree there is my favorite place. If one leans one's head back against the trunk and looks up through the branches at the sky, one becomes hypnotized. The ground is warm yet from the morning sun.–For weeks I've been wanting to ask you something, Wendla.

But I must be home at five o'clock.

We'll go together, then. I'll take the basket and we'll beat our way through the bushes, so that in ten minutes we'll be on the bridge!–When one lies so, with one's head in one's hand, one has the strangest thoughts.–

What do you want to ask me, Melchior?

I've heard, Wendla, that you visit poor people's houses. You take them food and clothes and money also. Do you do that of your own free will, or does your mother send you?

Mother sends me mostly. They are families of day laborers that have too many children. Often the husband can't find work and then they freeze and go hungry. We have a lot of things which were laid away long ago in our closets and wardrobes and which are no longer needed.–But how did you know it?

Do you go willingly or unwillingly, when your mother sends you?

Oh, I love to go!–How can you ask?

But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the houses are full of filth, the men hate you because you don't work–

That's not true, Melchior. And if it were true, I'd go just the same!

Why just the same, Wendla?

I'd go just the same! It would make me all the happier to be able to help them.

Then you go to see the poor because it makes you happy?

I go to them because they are poor.

But if it weren't a pleasure to you, you wouldn't go?

Can I help it that it makes me happy?

And because of it you expect to go to heaven! So it's true, then, that which has given me no peace for a month past!—Can the covetous man help it that it is no pleasure to him to go to see dirty sick children?

Oh, surely it would give you the greatest pleasure!

And, therefore, he must suffer everlasting death. I'll write a paper on it and send it to Pastor Kahlbauch. He is the cause of it. Why did he fool us with the joy of good works.—If he can't answer me I won't go to Sunday-school any longer and won't let them confirm me.

Why don't you tell your trouble to your dear parents? Let yourself be confirmed, it won't cost you your head. If it weren't for our horrid white dresses and your long trousers one might be more spiritual.

There is no sacrifice! There is no self-denial! I see the good rejoice in their hearts, I see the evil tremble and groan—I see you, Wendla Bergmann, shake your locks and laugh while I am as melancholy as an outlaw.—What did you dream, Wendla, when you lay in the grass by the brook?

——Foolishness–nonsense.–

With your eyes open?

I dreamed I was a poor, poor beggar girl, who was turned out in the street at five o'clock in the morning. I had to beg the whole long day in storm and bad weather from rough, hard-hearted people. When I came home at night, shivering from hunger and cold, and without as much money as my father coveted, then I was beaten–beaten–

I know that, Wendla. You have the silly children's stories to thank for that. Believe me, such brutal men exist no longer.

Oh yes, Melchior, you're mistaken. Martha Bessel is beaten night after night, so that one sees the marks of it the next day. Oh, but it must hurt! It makes one boiling hot when she tells it. I'm so frightfully sorry for her that I often cry over it in my pillows at night. For months I've been thinking how one can help her.–I'd take her place for eight days with pleasure.

One should complain of her father at once. Then the child would be taken away from him.

I, Melchior, have never been beaten in my life–not a single time. I can hardly imagine what it means to be beaten. I have beaten myself in order to see how one felt then in one's heart–It must be a gruesome feeling.

I don't believe a child is better for it.

Better for what?

For being beaten.

With this switch, for instance! Ha! but it's tough and thin.

That would draw blood!

Would you like to beat me with it once?

Who?

Me.

What's the matter with you, Wendla?

What might happen?

Oh, be quiet! I won't beat you.

Not if I allow you?

No, girl!

Not even if I ask you, Melchior?

Are you out of your senses?

I've never been beaten in my life!

If you can ask for such a thing–

Please–please–

I'll teach you to say please! (He hits her.)

Oh, Lord, I don't notice it in the least!

I believe you–through all your skirts–

Then strike me on my legs!

Wendla! (He strikes her harder.)

You're stroking me! You're stroking me!

Wait, witch, I'll flog Satan out of you!

ACT II