CLARA (_enters_).
Good-evening, Leonard.
LEONARD.
Clara? (_Aside._) I didn’t expect this. (_Aloud._) Didn’t you get
my letter? Oh--perhaps your father’s sent you to pay the rates.
How much is it? (_Turning leaves in a journal._) I ought to know
it without looking it up.
CLARA.
I’ve come to give you your letter back. Here it is. Read it again.
LEONARD (_reads it very seriously_).
It’s quite a sensible letter. How can a man, who’s in charge of
public money, marry into a family that--(_swallowing a word_)
your brother belongs to?
CLARA.
Leonard!
LEONARD.
Perhaps the whole town’s wrong? Your brother isn’t in prison?
Never been in prison? You’re not the sister of--of your brother?
CLARA.
Leonard, I’m my father’s daughter. I don’t come as the sister of
an innocent man whose name has already been cleared--that’s my
brother;--nor as a girl who shudders at unmerited shame--for (_in
a low voice_) I shudder more at you--I come in the name of the
old man who gave me life.
LEONARD.
What do you want?
CLARA.
Can you ask? Oh, if only I were free to go! My father will cut
his throat if I--marry me!
LEONARD.
Your father----
CLARA.
He has sworn it. Marry me!
LEONARD.
Hand and throat are close cousins. They won’t damage one another.
Don’t worry about that.
CLARA.
He has sworn it.--Marry me, and then kill me--and I’ll thank you
more for the one than the other.
LEONARD.
Do you love me? Did your heart tell you to come? Am I the man
without whom you can’t live or die?
CLARA.
Answer that yourself.
LEONARD.
Can you swear that you love me? That you love me as a girl should
love the man who is to be bound to her for life?
CLARA.
No, I can’t swear that. But this I can swear. That whether I love
you or not, you shall never know. I’ll serve you, I’ll work for
you. You don’t need to feed me. I’ll keep myself. I’ll sew and
spin in the night-time for other people. I’ll go hungry if I’ve
no work to do. I’ll eat my own flesh rather than go to my father
and let him notice anything. If you strike me because your dog
isn’t handy, or you’ve done away with him, I’ll swallow my own
tongue rather than utter a sound that could let it out to the
neighbours. I can’t promise you that my skin shall not show the
marks of your lash, but I’ll lie about it, I’ll say that I ran my
head against the cupboard or that the floor was too much polished
and I slipped on it. I’ll do it before anybody has time to ask
me where the blue marks came from. Marry me--I shan’t live long.
And if it lasts too long for you, and you can’t afford to divorce
me, buy some poison at the chemist’s and put it down as if it
were for the rats. I’ll take it without even a sign from you, and
when I’m dying I’ll tell the neighbours I thought it was crushed
sugar.
LEONARD.
Well, if you expect me to do all that, you won’t be surprised if
I say no.
CLARA.
May God, then, not look upon me too hardly, if I come before He
calls me. If it meant only me, I’d bear it; take it patiently,
as well-deserved punishment for I don’t know what, if people
trampled on me in my misery, instead of helping me. I would love
my child, even if it bore this man’s features. I would weep so
before it’s helpless innocence, that it would not curse and
despise its mother when it was older and wiser. But I’m not the
only one. And when the judge asks me on the last day “Why did you
kill yourself?” it will be an easier question to answer than “Why
did you drive your father to it?”
LEONARD.
You talk as if you were the first woman and the last. Thousands
before you have gone through this and borne it. Thousands after
you will get into your plight and accept their fate. Are they
all so low, that you want to go away in a corner by yourself?
They had fathers too, who invented heaps of new curses when they
heard of it, and talked about death and murder. They were ashamed
of themselves later on, and did penance for their curses and
blasphemies. Why! they sat down and rocked the child, or fanned
the flies off him!
CLARA.
Oh, I can well believe that you don’t understand how anybody in
the world should keep his oath!