(_Hammelev enters from the right_.)
HAMMELEV
Well, I showed Anton up to the room, mother. I thought he’d long to
see--to come up there. If you had only seen how he went around and felt
everything! “Oh, God!” he exclaimed, “there hangs the little rack.” And
he felt all the books. “There is my ‘Ivanhoe’--and there is Dickens’
‘Oliver Twist’; and there ‘The Last of the Mohicans’!” He felt all of
them by their backs. But the shirts and the socks--you could have saved
yourself the trouble of making them, Mother.
MRS. HAMMELEV
Why?
HAMMELEV
A person can never get enough of such things, of course, in a way. But
he is well looked after in this respect. She, his sweetheart, has sewn
and fixed and looked after everything for him. She works, by the way,
in a dressmaking establishment.
MRS. HAMMELEV (_with an expression of surprise_) She works--she works
at a dressmaker’s!
HAMMELEV
Yes--in one of those large department stores in Copenhagen. She is in
charge of the dressmaking department. She makes good money, too, he
says.
MRS. HAMMELEV (_as before_)
Good for her!
HAMMELEV
And a good thing for him, too. How would they have got along otherwise?
MRS. HAMMELEV
I should hope Anton does not have to receive anything from anybody.
HAMMELEV
But he had to do so once. Do you know who kept him alive? When he took
lessons from that professor, you know. We thought he was living with
that friend of his he wrote about.
MRS. HAMMELEV
Wasn’t he?
HAMMELEV
Well, yes--yes, he was, in a way. But his friend most of the time wears
skirts, and her name is Louise Thorsen. And it was she who took care of
him the best way she could.
MRS. HAMMELEV (_passionately_)
And stole his youth. For if they shared things with each other, it
must have meant that they lived together.
HAMMELEV
Yes--and what is there to be said? She is a woman and he a man. And,
besides, he is an artist. So we ought not to judge, I think.
MRS. HAMMELEV
But we must be allowed to have our opinions. We have only this one
child. And he is in need of parental love more than other children.
HAMMELEV
Yes, mother dear, but I think it has been a great fortune for him to
have found her. What can _we_ do for him, we two old cronies? We shall
soon have enough to do straightening out our own affairs until we
meet up there with the great Doctor who opens all eyes. And when we
have gone, who would he then have to cling to? No--a young woman like
her is what a man like him needs. And the old doctor said that--thank
God--should he get children, there was no danger that his affliction
would be hereditary.
MRS. HAMMELEV
But there are greater afflictions that _can_ be inherited.
HAMMELEV
Yes, I can see that you are not very pleased with the whole thing.
Before she took off her coat it seemed to me, too, as if she looked a
bit too “cityfied.” But I think she really is a good girl.