Ghosts [13]
Manders (in a low voice, fearing to be heard in the dining room). Yes, we must raise no suspicions.
Mrs. Alving (quietly but firmly). No; and then this long dreadful comedy will be at an end. After tomorrow, I shall feel as if my dead husband had never lived in this house. There will be no one else here then but my boy and his mother.
(From the dining-room is heard the noise of a chair falling; then REGINA'S voice is heard in a loud whisper: Oswald! Are you mad? Let me go!)
Mrs. Alving (starting in horror). Oh--!
(She stares wildly at the half-open door. OSWALD is heard coughing and humming, then the sound of a bottle being uncorked.)
Manders (in an agitated manner). What's the matter? What is it, Mrs. Alving?
Mrs. Alving (hoarsely). Ghosts. The couple in the conservatory-- over again.
Manders. What are you saying! Regina--? Is SHE--!
Mrs. Alving. Yes, Come. Not a word--!
(Grips MANDERS by the arm and walks unsteadily with him into the dining-room.)
ACT II
(The same scene. The landscape is still obscured by Mist. MANDERS and MRS. ALVING come in from the dining-room.)
Mrs. Alving (calls into the dining-room from the doorway). Aren't you coming in here, Oswald?
Oswald. No, thanks; I think I will go out for a bit.
Mrs. Alving. Yes, do; the weather is clearing a little. (She shuts the dining-room door, then goes to the hall door and calls.) Regina!
Regina (from without). Yes, ma'am?
Mrs. Alving. Go down into the laundry and help with the garlands.
Regina. Yes, ma'am.
(MRS. ALVING satisfies herself that she has gone, then shuts the door.)
Manders. I suppose he can't hear us?
Mrs. Alving. Not when the door is shut. Besides, he is going out.
Manders. I am still quite bewildered. I don't know how I managed to swallow a mouthful of your excellent dinner.
Mrs. Alving (walking up and down, and trying to control her agitation). Nor I. But, what are we to do?
Manders. Yes, what are we to do? Upon my word I don't know; I am so completely unaccustomed to things of this kind.
Mrs. Alving. I am convinced that nothing serious has happened yet.
Manders. Heaven forbid! But it is most unseemly behaviour, for all that.
Mrs. Alving. It is nothing more than a foolish jest of Oswald's, you may be sure.
Manders. Well, of course, as I said, I am quite inexperienced in such matters; but it certainly seems to me--
Mrs. Alving. Out of the house she shall go--and at once. That part of it is as clear as daylight--
Manders. Yes, that is quite clear.
Mrs. Alving. But where is she to go? We should not be justified in--
Manders. Where to? Home to her father, of course.
Mrs. Alving. To whom, did you say?
Manders. To her--. No, of course Engstrand isn't--. But, great heavens, Mrs. Alving, how is such a thing possible? You surely may have been mistaken, in spite of everything.
Mrs. Alving. There was no chance of mistake, more's the pity. Joanna was obliged to confess it to me--and my husband couldn't deny it. So there was nothing else to do but to hush it up.
Manders. No, that was the only thing to do.
Mrs. Alving. The girl was sent away at once, and was given a tolerably liberal sum to hold her tongue. She looked after the rest herself when she got to town. She renewed an old acquaintance with the carpenter Engstrand; gave him a hint, I suppose, of how much money she had got, and told him some fairy tale about a foreigner who had been here in his yacht in the summer. So she and Engstrand were married in a great hurry. Why, you married them yourself!
Manders. I can't understand it--, I remember clearly Engstrand's coming to arrange about the marriage. He was full of contrition, and accused himself bitterly for the light conduct he and his fiancee had been guilty of.
Mrs. Alving. Of course he had to take the blame on himself.
Manders. But the deceitfulness of it! And with me, too! I positively would not have believed it of Jacob Engstrand. I shall most certainly give him a serious talking to. And the immorality of such a marriage! Simply for the