 | How Dreams Come True |  |
1
SCENE I.
Aldobrand discovered kneeling on the floor, packing a knapsack. Bertha, passing the window, peeps in through an open casement, and then enters (R.).Bertha.
(Beginning to clear the table.)
So thou art going forth into the world,
A dreamer, still a dreamer, Aldobrand!
But, tell me, art thou sad to say farewell
To Nuremberg, my father's house, and me?
Aldobrand.
A man must see the world, sweet Mistress Bertha!
I am glad to see it. After the 'prentice years,
The years of wandering—hey for liberty!
2
So thou art glad to leave us? Man forsooth!
Call'st thou thyself a man, the gosling down
Scarce yellow on thy chin? Ungrateful boy,
Thou who hast shared our house, eaten our bread,
These seven long years—and now trudge forth and quit us
Without the heaving of one kindly sigh.
Aldobrand.
Nay, sweetheart, I am glad and sorry too;
I love old Nuremberg, your father's house,
And—all it holds. My 'prentice years, you know,
Were not all flowers, yet now they seem to me
A cloistered Paradise, whereon I gaze
Through the fast-closing doors. But close they must,
And forth must I. I am glad and sorry too.
Bertha.
My father's rule was something stern, I know.
3
And his hands hard. If cunning came by blows,
I should be now a master of my craft:
Many a shrewd bang hath dusted my brown jerkin,
For which I bear no grudge.
Bertha.
Dost thou remember
How in the orchard once I found thee lying,
With tear-stained face, under yon apple-tree?
Aldobrand.
That was the day, desolate with more than blows—
Your father broke my model.
Bertha.
Child as I was,
The very sunshine seemed far-off and cruel,
Smiling upon the sorrow I beheld.
Aldobrand.
Your father's wrong cut to the roots of life,
Made me an outlaw in an unjust world,
4
And won but obloquy: I never dreamed
Invention was a crime. That stinging pain
Made me a man. I was but a child before;
My skin-deep sorrows were a thoughtless child's:
Since then I have been thinking.
Bertha.
'Twas ill done,
Were he ten times my father, 'twas ill done,
In that one wrathful moment so to mar
Your work of many an hour. I marvel still
How a just man could find it in his heart.
Aldobrand.
Ay, like the Pharisees, just men are just
Within their little circle: all beyond
Is but a wilderness wherein they grope,
And, killing Christ, they know not what they do.
Bertha.
You are grown a mine of strange and gloomy thoughts;
My father, like the Pharisees, kill Christ!
5
I spoke but in a figure, of all men.
Bertha.
I fear you hate my father.
Aldobrand.
Not a whit.
He is your father. No, I hate him not.
We hate but with a kind of sympathy;
Some men sometimes are too far off for hate.
Bertha.
Forsooth! Well, I can hate at any distance,
Strike back my striker and be friends again:
But you are unforgiving, unforgetting.
Aldobrand.
I can forgive, perhaps; not quite forget,
But, hate the man who taught me all I know?
Not I!
Bertha.
Good boy! But even I remember
The very process of the tragic scene
You made me play that noontide, o'er the corpse
6
I shut my eyes and see it all: the trees,
Just whispering in the heat, dropt now and then
A wizened apple on the sunny grass.
One plumped upon your forehead, yet you moved not;
And I crept close, and saw where you had laid
Your mangled model tenderly by your side,
Like some slain creature you had loved, I thought.
You never made another?
Aldobrand.
With my hands,
No. With my brain a better, which defies,
Where it lies hid, the world's contemptuous heel.
It shall come forth some day, and print for you
Faster and fairer than that lumbering thing
That makes the old master's pride. He broke my model,
Well-nigh my heart, my thought he could not kill.
7
Dost thou remember how I came to thee,
My apron full of cherries, and stood there,
Dumb, every limb of me a several ache
Of shyness, with a sense of some cold air
That strangered us?
Aldobrand.
I was a sullen lout
And glowered aloof.
Bertha.
O how I pitied thee!
Yet could not choose but mark, hating myself
The while for noting, what a sorry sight
Thou wast, with thy red eyes and redder nose,
So ugly—O so ugly!
Aldobrand.
Like enough!
So looked not you to me Your pity seemed
Wonderful as the angel's when he came
To outlawed Hagar, o'er the desert sands.
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Yet when I crept to kiss thee, thou didst frown,
And with a shrug repulse my pouted lips—
Not angrily, but with a patient scorn.
Aldobrand.
Whereat you wept.
Bertha.
And thou didst pity me,
Deigning to let me feed thee with my cherries
Quite graciously.
Aldobrand.
We munched them share and share,
They tasted well, those cherries, after all;
For your sweet consolation made them sweet.
Bertha.
Then with the stones we played at cherry-pit,
And O, but I was glad to see you smile!
Aldobrand.
Ah, we were children then! That's over now.
Will you be sorry, just a little sorry,
9
After me, out into the wide, cold world?
Bertha.
Ay, many a thought; thou art the only brother
Ever I had, and I shall miss thee sorely.
Why, I should miss my father's leathern chair,
Or my dead mother's foot-stool—senseless things,
But bits of my old home; how much more thee,
The comrade I have played with, talked with, dreamed with,
Fought with and kissed again. Yes, I am sorry,
And, for a token of my melancholy,
I never spoke so long without a jest.
Aldobrand.
But I am not your brother. And to-day,
I would be something more, or something less.
10
Be then my friend, that's something less and more.
There is my hand, so let us part good friends.
Aldobrand.
Nay, hear me, Bertha, you must hear me out.
Bertha.
Spoil not our parting, then, with foolish words.
Aldobrand.
Fear not! But listen: I go forth to-day
Into the world, to do what I have dreamed,
To make my thought my deed.
Bertha.
I know thy thought:
A printing press, a magic printing press,
That shall make stale the legends of old Faust.
Aldobrand.
There's magic in a thought, I know none other.
Your father's idle 'prentice, as he deemed me,
(You know I was not idle) is thus far
A sorcerer, and no more.
11
Poor Aldobrand!
Hast thou a spell that can subdue the world,
With all its malice, all its evil tongues?
Aldobrand.
I think I shall succeed. I think my power
Lies here: I care not what men deem of me,
What slights, what shames, what names they stick upon me,
So I be fair-assoiled of mine own soul.
Your father called me shameless—so I was,
A dull unheeding block—and so I was,
When passion and not justice ruled his tongue;
Yet often one stray word stabbed and let loose
A hidden well of shame within myself,
Till I was drowned in it. I will succeed,
Or never more see Nuremberg and you.
Bertha.
Thou wilt succeed, I know thou wilt succeed,
For thou goest plodding on, a brick a day,
Till thou hast built the house planned in thy thought:
My dreams are only dreams that ne'er come true.
12
The house I build I build for you to dwell in,
If I come back, I shall come back for you.
Bertha.
Ye gentle saints, the boy is making love!
Aldobrand.
No, I'm not making love: love has made me.
O Bertha, every drop that swells my veins
Is warm with love of you! My love for you
Makes every trivial heart-beat like the throb
Of a great nation's marching tune.
Bertha.
No more!
Thou foolish Aldobrand, I have no patience
With playfellows turned lovers! Shall I jog
To homely wedlock by this beaten track,
As country dames to market on a pillion?
Not I, be sure.
Aldobrand.
I will come back for you.
13
Pshaw! there are other women in the world,
And other men, I trow.
Aldobrand.
There's but one woman
In the world for me.
Bertha.
We are but boy and girl,
Let us keep open that sweet chapter still,
Nor ever turn the page.
Aldobrand.
Time turns the page.
Canst thou not love me, Bertha?
Bertha.
So I do,
Placidly, as a girl may love a boy,
Not that grand, blind, uncomfortable way
You dream of now. I love thee, Aldobrand,
Therefore I cannot love thee. Can I change
All in a moment, open in my heart
New eyes to look on thee?
14
Not in a moment,
But in three years—perhaps. I am grown a man:
I shall come back a man, even in your eyes.
Bertha.
And find me something else than what you dream.
Aldobrand.
And yet the same. Bertha, I'll never marry,
Or I will marry you.
Bertha.
(Curtseying).
Gramercy, friend!
There are two words to that. I'll never marry,
Or, if I do, I will not marry you.
I have known thee far too long, know thee too well.
Aldobrand.
'Tis a good fault. To keep that knowledge green,
Keep this, the half of a split silver groat.
15
Here, round my neck, see! I have hung its fellow,
And there I'll wear it, Bertha, till I die!
Bertha.
(Tearing off ribbon and coin, and flinging them upon the floor.)
The thing feels like a chain. I'll wear no chains,
No troth-plight tokens.
Aldobrand.
Well, fling it away:
Fling by me and my love! I'll stay no longer
To vex you.
(Goes to the window and looks out, then comes back.)
Come with me. I would once more
See the old places with you, look my last
On the old home; and then farewell indeed!
16
I'll go with thee, O my poor Aldobrand,
I would not have thee bind thyself to me!
But see! (Picks up the coin.)
I will not lose this foolish thing,
But keep it for thy sake, to know thee by
When thou comest back, a man. Not round my neck, though.
Aldobrand.
Your father comes. One kiss!
Bertha
(Kissing him).
A woman's kiss means nothing.
Aldobrand.
But a man's means much. Remember,
Three years, three days, and I'll come back again.
(As they move towards the door, the curtain falls.)
| How Dreams Come True | |