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Page 95
STRANGER. I'm ashamed. I attributed my evil thoughts to you.
Ingeborg, you were made of better stuff than I. I'm ashamed!
LADY. Now you look handsome. How handsome!
STRANGER. Oh no. Not I. You!
LADY (ecstatically). No, you! Yes, now I've seen through the
mask and the false beard. Now I can see the man you hid from me,
the man I thought I'd found in you ... the man I was always
searching for. I've often thought you a hypocrite; but we're no
hypocrites. No, no, we can't pretend.
STRANGER. Ingeborg, now we're on the other side of the river, and
have life beneath us, behind us ... how different everything seems.
Now, now, I can see your soul; the ideal, the angel, who was
imprisoned in the flesh because of sin. So there is an Above, and
an Earlier Age. When we began it wasn't the beginning, and it won't
be the end when we are ended. Life is a fragment, without beginning
or end! That's why it's so difficult to make head or tail of it.
LADY (kindly). So difficult. So difficult. Tell me, for instance--
now we're beyond guilt or innocence--how was it you came to hate
women?
STRANGER. Let me think! To hate women? Hate them? I never hated
them. On the contrary! Ever since I was eight years old I've always
had some love affair, preferably an innocent one. And I've loved
like a volcano three times! But wait--I've always felt that women
hated me ... and they've always tortured me.
LADY. How strange!
STRANGER. Let me think about it a little. ... Perhaps I've been
jealous of my own personality; and been afraid of being influenced
too much. My first love made herself into a sort of governess and
nurse to me. But, of course, there _are_ men who detest children;
who detest women too, if they're superior to them, that is!
LADY (amiably). But you've called women the enemies of mankind. Did
you mean it?
STRANGER. Of course I meant it, if I wrote it! For I wrote out of
experience, not theory. ... In woman I sought an angel, who could
lend me wings, and I fell into the arms of an earth-spirit, who
suffocated me under mattresses stuffed with the feathers of wings!
I sought an Ariel and I found a Caliban; when I wanted to rise she
dragged me down; and continually reminded me of the fall. ...
LADY (kindly). Solomon knew much of women; do you know what he
said? 'I find more bitter than death a woman, whose heart is snares
and nets and her hands as bands; whoso pleaseth God shall escape
from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.'
STRANGER. I was never acceptable in God's sight. Was that a
punishment? Perhaps. But I was never acceptable to anyone, and I've
never had a good word addressed to me! Have I never done a good
action? Is it possible for a man never to have done anything good?
(Pause.) It's terrible never to hear any good words about oneself!
LADY. You've heard them. But when people have spoken well of you,
you've refused to listen, as if it hurt you.
STRANGER. That's true, now you remind me. But can you explain it?
LADY. Explain it? You're always asking for explanations of the
inexplicable. 'When I applied my heart to know wisdom ... I beheld
all the work of God, that a man cannot find out that is done under
the sun. Because, though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall
not find it; yea, further, though a wise man think to know it, yet
shall he not be able to find it!'
STRANGER. Who says that?
LADY. The Prophet Ecclesiastes. (She takes a doll out of her
pocket.) This is Mizzi's doll. You see she longs for her little
mistress! How pale she's grown ... and she seems to know where
Mizzi is, for she's always gazing up to heaven, whichever way I
hold her. Look! Her eyes follow the stars as the compass the pole.
She is my compass and always shows me where heaven is. She should,
of course, be dressed in black, because she's in mourning; but
we're so poor. ... Do you know why we never had money? Because God
was angry with us for our sins. 'The righteous suffer no dearth.'
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