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Title: The Good Hope
(In "The Drama: A Quarterly Review of Dramatic Literature")
Author: Herman Heijermans, Jr.
Commentator: Ashley Dukes
Translator: Harriet Gampert Higgins
Release Date: December 14, 2018 [EBook #58473]
Language: English
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THE DRAMA
A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE
NO. 8 NOVEMBER 1912
THE GOOD HOPE.
A DRAMA OF THE SEA IN FOUR ACTS.
BY HERMAN HEIJERMANS, JR.
TRANSLATED BY HARRIET GAMPERT HIGGINS.
THE PLAYS OF HERMAN HEIJERMANS.
To those content with convenient superficialities the plays of a
dramatist such as Heijermans are easy of definition. He is dismissed
as "a realistic writer," "a playwright of the naturalistic school,"
a follower of Ibsen, or Hauptmann, or Tolstoy, or Zola. Even then,
perhaps, the definitions are not exhausted. They spring from the
encyclopedia of commonplaces, and are as chaotic as the minds of their
authors. There is the adjective "meticulous," for example,--invaluable
to critics. And "morbid,"--equally indispensable, in the form of
"morbid psychology." "Photographic" and "kinematographic" must not be
forgotten; the latter an almost brand-new weapon of offence. For the
rest, "grey," "faithful," "squalid" or "lifelike" will serve their
turn, according to the critic's point of view.
In phrases such as these we hear the echoes of a controversy now a
generation old; a controversy dating back to the "free theatres" of
the 1890 period in Paris, Berlin and London, the first performances of
Ibsen's "Ghosts," and the early plays of Hauptmann and Strindberg. Then
the issues between Realist and Philistine were sharply defined;
the very terms were mutually exclusive. To be modern, to be "free,"
was to be an Ibsenite, an apostle of moral indignation, an author or
playgoer burning to lay bare social hypocrisies and shams; not merely
pour épater le bourgeois, but in order to assert the Great Truths
of Actual Life, so recently discovered by the stage. It mattered
little that Ibsenites owed their existence to their misunderstanding
of Ibsen. He had supplied them with an essential war cry. The old
domination of insincere sentiment and false romance in the theatre
was indefensible and insupportable. All the enthusiasm of dramatic
reformers was perforce directed to the advance of the new realistic
movement. Hence arose a battle of epithets between the two camps,
with "antiquated," "conventional," "sentimental," "romantic" on the
one hand, and "vulgar," "dreary," "indecent," "noisome" on the other.
In Anglo-Saxon countries, naturally enough, the issue was made one of
morality rather than artistic method. Ibsen's views on marriage were
suspect, and the whole dramatic movement lay in quarantine. Indeed,
realism in literature came to be regarded as an unsettling tendency,
emanating from the Continent, and directed against all British
institutions from property to religion. The division of opinion may
be studied in historical documents such as the criticisms of the
London Press on the first English performance of "Hedda Gabler," and
the early prefaces of Bernard Shaw; the one side tilting at realism,
the other at romance;--both, alas, the most shifty of windmills where
morality is concerned.
The provocative cry of "naturalism," raised by the newer dramatists and
their supporters, was responsible for half the trouble. A naturalist,
in good English usage, is taken to be a professor with a butterfly net
or an inquirer into the lower forms of pond life; and there is a good
deal to be said for the analogy as applied to the author of realistic
literature. Pins and chloroform may be his implements of tragedy; his
coldly scientific method gives point to the comparison. Undoubtedly
the "naturalistic drama" suggested probable inhumanity and possible
horror. In any case it clearly offered no hope of an enjoyable evening,
and was condemned from the first to be unpopular.
So much for the misconception encouraged by a purely journalistic
phrase. Useless to maintain that the older dramatists, from
Robertson and Dumas fils to Sardou, held a monopoly of the milk
of human kindness, while Ibsen, Hauptmann, Tolstoy and Strindberg
wallowed in mere brutal, original sin. The alleged "naturalism" of
the latter belied its name. It ranged from revolutionary Utopianism
to the creation of most unnatural giants,--stage characters removed
from the average of everyday life by their own distinction. Indeed,
the differences between the old school and the new were as nothing
compared with the intellectual gulf between, say, Strindberg and
Tolstoy. Setting out from the common ground of external approximation
to life, the dramatists of the period soon diverged upon individual
paths. Hauptmann passed from the vivid and revolutionary "Weavers"
to the mythology of "Hannele" and the "Sunken Bell," and the simple
domestic drama of "Fuhrmann Henschel" and "Rose Bernd." Tolstoy became
a preacher; Strindberg a Swedenborgian mystic. Of the early playwrights
of the French Théâtre Libre, Courteline and Ancey, practised the
Comédie rosse, or brutal comedy, until Paris, tired of the uncouth
novelty, turned to the more amiable and no less natural work of Capus
and Donnay. Brieux devoted himself to the composition of dramatic
tracts. Bernard Shaw, after protesting that he "could none other" than
dramatize slum landlords and rent collectors in "Widowers' Houses,"
found readier targets for his wit in bishops, professors of Greek and
millionaires. Nature, in fact, proved too strong for naturalism. No
formula could embrace all the individual playwrights of that stormy
time. The most catholic of "schools" could not hold them.
Formulas, however, die hard; and it is still necessary to free
Heijermans from the "naturalistic" label so conveniently attached in
1890 to works like Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," Hauptmann's Vor
Sonnenaufgang and Zola's "Therèse Raquin." All that his plays have
in common with theirs is a faithful observation of life, and more
particularly of life among the common people. Moreover, he belongs
to a newer generation. He had written several short pieces (notably
Ahasuerus and 'n Jodenstreek?) in 1893 and 1894, but "The Ghetto"
(1899) was his first important play. This three-act tragedy of the
Jewish quarter in a Dutch city has been published in an English
adaptation which woefully misrepresents the original, and I should
rather refer readers to a German translation (Berlin, Fleische)
revised by Heijermans himself. Like most early work, the play did
not satisfy its author, and several versions exist.
The story is simple enough. Rafael, the son of an old Jewish merchant,
has an intrigue with the Gentile maidservant, Rose. His father,
Sachel, lives in an atmosphere of mistrust, hard dealing, thievery;
a patriarch with all the immemorial wrongs of the ghetto upon his
shoulders, and all the racial instinct to preserve property, family
and religion from contact with "strange people." He is blind, but
in the night he has heard the lovers' footsteps in the house. Rose
has lied to him; Rafael, as usual, is neglecting his business for
Gentile companions. So the play opens. After some bargaining over
the dowry, a marriage is arranged for Rafael with the daughter of
another merchant. The authority of the Rabbi is called in, but Rafael
refuses. He is a freethinker; in the ghetto, but not of it. "Oh,
these little rooms of yours,--these hot, stifling chambers of despair,
where no gust of wind penetrates, where the green of the leaves grows
yellow, where the breath chokes and the soul withers! No, let me speak,
Rabbi Haeser! Now I am the priest; I, who am no Jew and no Christian,
who feel God in the sunlight, in the summer fragrance, in the gleam of
the water and the flowers upon my mother's grave ... I have pity for
you, for your mean existence, for your ghettos and your little false
gods--for the true God is yet to come, the God of the new community;
the commonwealth without gods, without baseness, without slaves!"
Sachel is blamed for allowing this open rupture to come about. It
is better to pay the girl off quietly and have done with her,
argue the other Jews. Every woman has her price--and especially
every Gentile woman. A hundred gulden--perhaps two hundred if she
is obstinate--will settle the matter. The money is offered, but Rose
is not to be bought. She has promised to go away with Rafael as his
wife. He has gone out, but he will return for her. The family tell
her that the money is offered with his consent; that he is tired of
her and has left home for good. But she is unmoved. She has learned
to mistrust the word of the Jews; she will only believe their sacred
oath. At last old Sachel swears by the roll of the commandments that
his son will not return. In despair, Rose throws herself into the
canal and is drowned. Rafael comes too late to save her. The God of
the Jews has taken his revenge.
The play is perhaps a little naïve and crudely imagined, but it
has all the essential characteristics of Heijermans' later work;
the intense humanitarian feeling, the burning rhetoric, the frankly
partisan denunciation of society. Indeed, it could not be otherwise. In
dealing with such a case of bigotry and racial intolerance, it is
idle for a playwright to hold the scales with abstract justice. At
most he can only humanise the tragedy by humanising the villains of
his piece, and showing them driven into cruelty by traditional forces
beyond their control. That is the part of the "Ankläger," the social
prophet and Public Prosecutor; and it is the part which Heijermans,
above all others, has filled in the newer dramatic movement.
In Het Pantser ("The Coat of Mail") his subject is the life of a Dutch
garrison town. "The Coat of Mail" is militarism; the creed of the
governing caste. And the setting is peculiarly apt for the presentation
of a social issue. In a small country such as Holland military
patriotism may be strong, but it is tempered by the knowledge that the
country only exists by the tolerance, or the diplomatic agreement, of
more powerful neighbours, and that in case of war it could do no more
than sacrifice an army to the invader. To the philosophic workman,
then, well read in revolutionary literature from Marx to Kropotkin,
the standing army presents itself simply as a capitalist tool, a
bulwark of the employing class against trade unionism. The industrial
struggle is uncomplicated by sentimentality. Patriotic stampedes to the
conservative side are unknown. Social Democracy is strong. Strikes are
frequent, and the protection of "blackleg" labourers is in the hands
of the garrison. That is the theme of this "romantic military play."
Mari, a second lieutenant, refuses to serve on strike duty. He is a
weak but sincere idealist; his head full of humanitarian enthusiasm,
his rooms stocked with anti-militarist pamphlets. He will leave the
army rather than order his men to fire on the factory workers. Around
him stand the members of the military caste, linked together by
tradition and family relationship. His father is a colonel in the same
regiment; the father of his fiancée, Martha, is commanding officer. One
friend he has: an army doctor named Berens, who has infected himself
with cancer serum in attempting to discover a cure for the disease,
and passes for a drunkard because he keeps the symptoms in check by
alcohol. Here a parallel is drawn between military bravery and the
civilian courage of the scientist.
Mari is put under arrest, but the affair is kept secret in order to
avoid a scandal. He can only be reinstated by full withdrawal and
apology. Martha comes to him and implores him to withdraw. The strike
is thought to be over. He can plead the excitement of the moment
in excuse, and the matter will be settled honorably. He gives way
and apologises. A friendly discussion of the point with his superior
officers is interrupted by a volley in the street outside. The troops
have fired upon the mob, and the son of the shoemaker over the way
has been shot.
Mari sends in his papers; but a newspaper has published the facts of
the case, and he is met with the disgrace of immediate dismissal from
the army. This does not suit Martha. She must marry a soldier; civilian
life with a dismissed lieutenant was not in the bond. So Mari suffers
another disillusionment, and the end of the play sees him setting
out from home, while the old shoemaker is left to lament for his son.
And the sum total of it all? A warm heart, a weakness for rhetoric,
and--a study in vacillation.
In Ora et Labora Heijermans is less rhetorical; rather, one suspects,
for lack of a mouthpiece. His peasants bear their fate, if not in
silence, with almost inarticulate resignation. They are too hungry to
waste words. Moreover, there is no visible enemy to denounce, no Coat
of Mail, no racial prejudice, no insatiate capitalism. Winter is the
villain of the piece. This is indeed naturalism, in the literal sense;
humanity devoured by Nature. Everything is frost-bound: the canal,
the soil, the very cattle. The barges are idle. There is no work and
no warmth. When the last cow upon the farm dies of disease, its throat
is cut so that it can be sold to the butcher. All hopes are centred
in the father of the family, who is to sell the carcase in the town;
but he spends the money and returns home drunk. As a last resort,
his son Eelke enlists in the army for six years' colonial service,
leaving Sytske, the girl he was about to marry. His advance pay buys
fuel and food, but the lovers part with a hopeless quarrel, and the
old peasants are left wrangling over the money he has brought.
Allerzielen (1906) is a later work. A village pastor finds a woman
in a state of collapse upon his threshold. He takes her in, and she
gives birth to a child. She is a stranger in the district, Rita by
name. The child is sent into the village to be nursed, while the
pastor gives up his own room to the mother. She recovers slowly, and
meanwhile the peasants set their tongues to work upon the scandal. The
child is discovered to be illegitimate. A good village housewife is
suckling a bastard. The pastor is housing an outcast, and shows no
sign of sending her about her business. The neighbouring clergy are
perturbed. Dimly and distantly the Bishop is said to be considering
the facts.... Amid alarums and excursions the affair pursues its
course. The village passes from astonishment to ribaldry, from ribaldry
to stone-throwing. The pastor speaks gently of Christian charity and
souls to be saved, but fails to appease his parishioners. They are
hot upon the scent in a heresy-hunt. If they could see within the
parsonage walls, they would yelp still louder. For Rita proves to be
an unblushing hedonist. No prayers for her, when the birth-pangs are
once over; no tears, no repentance. She sings gaily in her room while
the pastors argue about duty and morals. She feels "heavenly." She
invades the study to enjoy a view of sunlight, clouds and sea. She
finds the waves more musical than the wheezing of the church organ. If
only the child were with her, her happiness would be complete.
But the child is neglected by its foster mother. It sickens and
dies. The pastor is driven from his church by the Bishop, and leaves
the broken windows of the parsonage to his successor. Rita and he
are both homeless now. And then the child's father comes,--another
hedonist. The child is dead, but Life remains. Its body lies in
unconsecrated ground, but the vows of love are renewed at the
graveside. The Church can only crush its own slaves. All roads are
open to the spirits of the free. The pastor can only offer a hopeless
"Farewell" as the two set out upon their way. But Rita calls after,
"No,--no! You will come over to us."
It matters nothing that this gospel of Life has often been
preached. Heijermans has caught the spirit of it as well as the
letter. His characters say and do nothing particularly original;
nothing that would even pass for originality by reason of its
manner. He works in vivid contrasts, without a shade of paradox. He
figures the opposed forces of Reaction and Revolution in religion,
in statecraft, in economics, in all human relationships, with a
simplicity of mind which would draw a smile from the forever up-to-date
"intellectual." Reaction is a devilish superstition; Revolution
a prophetic angel pointing the way to the promised land. The one
is false, the other true. There is no disputing the point, since
truth and falsehood are absolute terms. Perhaps the secret is that
Heijermans never tires of his own philosophy. He is content to see it
firmly planted on the ground; he does not demand that it should walk
the tight-rope or turn somersaults as an intellectual exercise. He
has accepted a view of life which some call materialistic, and others
positivist, or scientific, or humanitarian; but for him it is simply
humane,--founded upon social justice and human need.
A philosophy, however, does not make a dramatist. In the plays I
have already described Heijermans shows his power of translating
the world-struggle of thought into the dramatic clash of will, but
it is upon "The Good Hope" (Op Hoop van Zegen) that his reputation
chiefly depends. He chooses a great subject; not merely the conflict
of shipowners and fishermen in the struggle for existence, but the
sea-faring life and the ocean itself. Truly "a sea-piece"; tempestuous,
powerful. One can hear the breaking of the waves. From the opening
scene, with the old men's tale of sharks, to the night of the storm
in the third act, when the women and children huddle in Kneirtje's
cottage for shelter, the story is always the same. The sea is the
symbol of Fate. It takes a father here, a brother there. It seizes
Geert and Barend alike; the one going aboard carelessly, the other
screaming resistance. Sometimes it plays with its victims on shore,
making no sign, leaving months of hope to end in despair. In a more
merciful mood it sends children running through the village to cry
"'n Ball op! 'n Ball op!" as an overdue ship is signalled from the
coastguard tower. And there an echo of the sea-ballad now and again;
when raps are heard upon the door at the height of the storm, or
a flapping curtain blows out the lamp, or a pallid face is seen at
the window....
In sheer force of theatrical construction "The Good Hope" is still
more striking. There are great moments, finely conceived. The play is
full of natural rather than violent coincidence. Barend has always
feared death by drowning, and he makes his first and last voyage in
a leaky trawler. His father sank in a wreck, and it is his mother,
unable to maintain the household, who persuades him to go. She fears
the disgrace of his refusal after the papers are signed, but he is
dragged aboard by the harbour police. His brother Geert sets out
proudly enough, singing the Marseillaise and preaching rebellion;
but he sinks far away, impotent, unheard, and leaves his sweetheart
to bear a fatherless child. Old Cobus can only reflect, "We take
the fishes, and God takes us." That is perhaps the most dramatic
thread of all,--the parallel of fate. The struggle for existence on
land drives men to the fishing-boats and the Dogger Bank. From the
minnows to leviathan, there is no escape. "We take the fishes, and
God takes us." A gale of wind and rain whistles through the play,
sweeping the decks of life, tossing men out into the unknown.
Let us turn to the social standpoint. The ship-owner, Bos, is frankly
a villain. He knows "The Good Hope" is unseaworthy, but he allows her
to sail. True, the warning comes from a drunken ship's carpenter,
but he understands the risks. Business is business. The ship is
well insured....
It is implied, then, that shipowners are unscrupulous scoundrels,
and fishermen their unhappy victims. Here is a bias which makes
the actual tragedy no more impressive. Good ships, as well as bad,
may perish in a storm. Nature is cruel enough without the help of
man. The problem of the big fish and the little fish is one of size,
not of morality. Even sharks may possibly rejoice in an amiable
temperament. It can only be said that Heijermans has here chosen the
right motive for his own particular type of drama. His sympathy is
with the fishermen. He knows that, humanly speaking, in every conflict
between employers and employed, the men are right and the masters
wrong. Impossible to redress the balance by individual virtue or
kindliness. The masters stand for the exploiting system; for capital,
for insurance, for power, for law and order and possession. Their
risks are less and their temptations greater. Even from the standpoint
of abstract justice, a dishonest employer may fairly be set against
a drunken labourer or a gaol-bird fisherman. The one is no less
natural than the other. But Heijermans goes beyond all finicking
considerations of this sort. He seeks to destroy and rebuild, not
to repair or adjust. He avoids mere naturalism; the "conscientious
transcription of all the visible and repetition of all the audible"
is not for him. And here he is undoubtedly justified, not only by
his own experience, but by that of other dramatists. There was no
inspiration in the movement towards mere actuality on the stage. It
sickened of its own surfeit of "life." Its accumulated squalor became
intolerable. It was choked by its own irrelevance, circumscribed
by its own narrowness. For naturalism is like a prison courtyard;
it offers only two ways of escape. One is the poet's upward flight,
the other the revolutionist's battering-ram. Heijermans has chosen
his own weapon, and used it well. He has given us "The Good Hope,"
not as a mere pitiful study in disillusionment, but as a tragic symbol
of human effort in the conquest of despair.
Ashley Dukes.
THE GOOD HOPE.
A Drama of the Sea in Four Acts.
By Herman Heijermans, Jr.
Translated by Harriet Gampert Higgins.
PERSONS.
Kneirtje, a fisherman's widow.
Geert }
Barend } her sons.
Jo, her niece.
Cobus, her brother.
Daantje, from the Old Men's Home.
Clemens Bos, a ship owner.
Clementine, his daughter.
Mathilde, his wife.
Simon, a ship carpenter's assistant.
Marietje, his daughter.
Mees, Marietje's betrothed.
Kaps, a bookkeeper.
Saart, a fisherman's widow.
Truus, a fisherman's wife.
Jelle, a beggar.
First Policeman.
Second Policeman.
The Drama is laid in a North Sea fishing village.
Copyright 1912 by The Dramatic Publishing Company.
THE GOOD HOPE
A Drama of the Sea in Four Acts.
By Herman Heijermans, Jr.
ACT I.
[Kneirtje's home, a poor living-room. At the left, two wall bedsteads
and a door; to the right, against the wall, a chest of drawers
with holy images, vases and photographs. A chimney fireplace nearer
front. At the back wall, near right corner, a wicket leading to the
cooking shed; at left against the wall a cupboard; a cage with dove;
window with flower pots, left of center; in back wall right of center a
door overlooking a narrow cobblestone roadway backed by a view of beach
with sea in middle distance and horizon. Through the window to the left
is seen the red tiled lower corner of roof of a cottage. Time, noon.]
CLEMENTINE. [Sketch book on her knee.] Now, then! Cobus!
COBUS. [Who poses, awakes with a start, smiles.] He-he-he! I wasn't
asleep--No, no--
CLEM. Head this way--still more--what ails you now? You were sitting
so natural. Hand on the knee again.
COBUS. Tja--when you sit still so long--you get stiff.
CLEM. [Impatiently.] Please! please! stop chewing.
COB. I haven't any chew. Look.
CLEM. Then keep your mouth shut.
DAANTJE. [Entering by the cooking shed.] Good day.
CLEM. Good day. Take a walk around the corner.
DAAN. No, Miss--time's up. [Looking at sketch.] It don't look like
him yet.
CLEM. [Smiling.]
DAAN. [Shifting his spectacles.] You see--if I may take the liberty,
Miss--his chin sets different--and his eyes don't suit me--but his
nose--that's him--and--and--his necktie, that's mighty natural--I'd
swear to that anywhere.
CLEM. Indeed.
DAAN. And the bedstead with the curtains--that's fine. Now, Miss,
don't you think you could use me?
CLEM. Perhaps. Hand higher--keep your mouth still.
COB. That's easy said--but when y'r used to chewing and ain't allowed
to--then you can't hold your lips still--what do you say, Daantje?
DAAN. I say time's up. We eat at four and the matron is strict.
CLEM. That will be necessary with you old fellows.
DAAN. Peh! We've a lot to bring in, haven't we? An Old Man's Home is a
jail--scoldings with your feed--as if y'r a beggar. Coffee this morning
like the bottom of the rain barrel--and peas as hard as y'r corns.
CLEM. If I were in your place--keep your mouth still--I'd thank God
my old age was provided for.
COB. Tja--tja--I don't want to blaspheme, but--
DAAN. Thank God?--Not me--sailed from my tenth year--voyages--more
than you could count--suffered shipwreck--starvation--lost two sons
at sea--no--no. I say the matron is a beast--I'd like to slap her jaw.
CLEM. That will do! This is no dive.
DAAN. I know that, but it makes your gorge rise. I wasn't allowed to
go out last week because, begging your pardon, I missed and spat beside
the sand box. Now I ask, would you spit beside a box on purpose? An old
man's home is a jail--and when they've shut you up, in one of them,
decent, they're rid of you. Wish the sharks had eaten me before I
quit sailing.
COB. [Giggling.] He! he! he! Man, the sharks wouldn't eat you--you
were too tough for them.
CLEM. Keep your lips still!
COB. Tja, tja.
DAAN. Sharks not like me--They'll swallow a corpse. Peh! I saw old
Willem bitten in two till the blood spouted on high. And he was a
thin man.
CLEM. Was old Willem eaten by a shark?
DAAN. By one? By six. Quick as he fell overboard they grabbed him. The
water was red.
CLEM. Hey! How frightful. And yet--I'd rather like to see a thing
like that.
DAAN. Like to see it! We had to.
CLEM. Did he scream?
DAAN. Did he scream!
COB. Tja, wouldn't you if you felt the teeth in your flesh? He--hehe!
[Sound of a fiddle is heard outside. Cobus sways in his chair in time
to the tune.] Ta da da de--da da da--
CLEM. [Hastily closing the sketch book.] There then! [Rises.] Tomorrow
you sit still--You hear!
COB. [Stretching himself.] All stiff! [Dances, snapping his fingers,
his knees wabbling.] Ta de da da--da-da-da.
DAAN. [At the window.] Psst! Nobody home.
JELLE. [Playing at window outside.] If you please.
DAAN. Nobody home.
JELLE. I come regular once a week.
DAAN. They have gone to the harbor.
CLEM. [Throws a coin out of the window.] There! [Playing stops.]
JELLE. Thank you. [Searches for the coin.]
COB. Behind that stone, stupid.
DAAN. No; more that way.
CLEM. I threw it out that way. Hey! what a donkey! Is he near-sighted?
COB. He's got only half an eye--and with half an eye you don't see
much. [To Jelle.] Behind you!
JELLE. I don't see anything.
DAAN. [Barend appears at door.] Psst! Hey! Barend, you help him----
CLEM. There is a ten-cent piece out there.
BAREND. [Basket of driftwood on his back.] Give it to 'im in his paws
then. [Enters.] [Throws down basket with a thud.] Here!
COB. Did you hear that impudent boy?
CLEM. Say there, big ape, were you speaking to me?
BAR. [Shy and embarrassed.] No, Miss. I did not know you were there,
I thought----
COB. What right had you to think--better be thinking of going to sea
again to earn your Mother's bread.
BAR. That's none of your business.
COB. Just hear his insolence to me--when he's too bashful to open
his mouth to others. [Taunting.] I'm not afraid--he-he-he!--No,
I don't get the belly ache when I must go to sea--he-he-he!
DAAN. Come along now. It's struck four.
CLEM. Ten o'clock tomorrow, Cobus.
DAAN. He can't do it, Miss, we must pull weeds in the court yard.
COB. Yes, we must scratch the stones.
CLEM. Tomorrow afternoon, then.
COB. Tja! I'll be here, then. Good day, Miss. [To Barend.] Good day,
pudding breeches.
CLEM. [Pinning on her hat.] He teases you, doesn't he?
BAR. [Laughing bashfully.] Yes, Miss.
CLEM. Been out searching the beach? [He nods embarrassed.] Found much?
BAR. No, it was ebb last night--and--and--[Gets stuck.]
CLEM. Are you really afraid to go to sea, silly boy? [He nods,
laughing.] They all go.
BAR. [Dully.] Yes, they all go.
CLEM. A man must not be afraid----
BAR. No, a man must not be afraid.
CLEM. Well, then?
BAR. [Timidly.] I'd rather stay on shore.
CLEM. I won't force you to go--How old are you?
BAR. Rejected for the army last month.
CLEM. Rejected?
BAR. For my--for my--I don't know why, but I was rejected.
CLEM. [Laughing.] That's lucky--A soldier that's afraid!
BAR. [Flaring up quickly.] I'm not afraid on land--let them come at
me--I'll soon stick a knife through their ribs!
CLEM. Fine!
BAR. [Again lapsing into embarrassment.] Beg pardon, Miss. [The soft
tooting of a steamboat whistle is heard.] That's the Anna--there's
a corpse on board----
CLEM. Another one dead?
BAR. The flag hung half-mast.
CLEM. Tu-tu-tu-tu--The second this week. First, the Agatha Maria----
BAR. No, 'twas the Charlotte.
CLEM. Oh, yes! The Agatha was last week--Do they know who? [He shakes
his head.] Haven't you any curiosity?
BAR. Ach--you get used to it--and none of our family are
aboard. [Embarrassed silence.] Father can't--Hendrick can't--Josef
can't--you know about them--and--and--Geert--he's still under arrest.
CLEM. Yes, he's brought disgrace on all of you.
BAR. Disgrace--disgrace----
CLEM. When is he free?
BAR. I don't know.
CLEM. You don't know?
BAR. They gave him six months--but they deduct the time before
trial--we don't know how long that was, so we can't tell.
KNEIRTJE. [Through the window.] Good day, Miss.
CLEM. Good day.
KNEIR. How did the chickens get out? Do look at that rooster! Get out,
you salamander! Kischt! Jo! Jo!
BAR. Let them alone. They'll go of themselves.
KNEIR. [Entering the room.] That's an endless devilment, Miss. [To
Barend.] Come, you, stick out your paws. Must we have another row
with Ari?
BAR. Then we'll have a row. [Goes off indifferently, chases away the
chickens, outside.]
KNEIR. Then we'll--such a lazy boy, I wish he'd never been
born--Sponger!--Are you going so soon, Miss?
CLEM. I am curious to know what's happened on the Anna.
KNEIR. Yes--I was on the way there--but it takes so long--and I've
had my fill of waiting on the pier--if that pier could only talk. Have
you finished my brother's portrait?
CLEM. Tomorrow. I want to make a drawing of Barend also--just as he
came in with the basket on his shoulders.
KNEIR. Barend? Well--All the same to me.
CLEM. He doesn't seem to get much petting around here.
KNEIR. [Annoyed.] Pet him! I should say not! The sooner I get rid of
him, the better! [Through the window.] Chase them away! Kischt! Kischt!
BAR. [Outside.] All that yelling makes the rooster afraid.
KNEIR. Afraid! He takes after you, then! Kischt!
CLEM. Hahaha! Hahaha! Say, he's enjoying himself there on Ari's roof.
JO. [Coming through the door at left. Brown apron--gold head pieces
on the black band around her head.] Good day.
KNEIR. The chickens are out again! The rooster is sitting on Ari's
roof.
JO. [Laughing merrily.] Hahaha! He's not going to lay eggs there!
KNEIR. [Crossly.] Hear her talk! She knows well enough we almost came
to blows with Ari because the hens walked in his potato patch.
JO. I let them out myself, old cross patch--Truus dug their potatoes
yesterday.
KNEIR. Why didn't you say so then?
JO. What am I doing now? Oh, Miss--she would die if she couldn't
grumble; she even keeps it up in her sleep. Last night she swore out
loud in her dreams. Hahaha! Never mind! scold all you like; you're a
good old mother just the same. [To Barend, who enters the room.] Ach,
you poor thing! Is the rooster setting on the roof? And does he refuse
to come down?
BAR. You quit that now!
JO. I'll wager if you pet the hens he will come down of himself from
jealousy. Hahaha! He looks pale with fear.
CLEM. Now, now.
JO. Say, Aunt, you should make a baker of him. His little bare feet
in the rye flour. Hahaha!
BAR. You can all----[Goes angrily off at left.]
JO. [Calling after him.] The poor little fellow!
CLEM. Now, stop teasing him. Are you digging potatoes?
JO. Tja; since four o'clock this morning. Nothing--Aunt--all rotten.
KNEIR. We poor people are surely cursed--rain--rain--the crops had
to rot--they couldn't be saved--and so we go into the winter--the
cruel winter--Ach,--Ach,--Ach!
JO. There! You're worrying again. Come, Mother, laugh. Am I ever
sad? Geert may return at any moment.
KNEIR. Geert--and what then?
JO. What then? Then--then--then, nothing! Cheer up! You don't add
to your potatoes by fretting and grumbling. I have to talk like this
all day to keep up her spirits--See, I caught a rabbit!
CLEM. In a trap?
JO. As neat as you please. The rascal was living on our poverty--the
trap went snap as I was digging. A fat one--forty cents at the least.
CLEM. That came easy--I must go now.
BOS. [At door.] Hello! Are you going to stay all day--May I come in?
KNEIR. [Friendly manner.] Of course you may, Meneer; come in, Meneer.
BOS. My paws are dirty, children.
KNEIR. That's nothing. A little dry sand doesn't matter--will you
sit down?
BOS. Glad to do so--Yes, Kneir, my girl, we're getting older every
day--Good day, little niece.
JO. Good day, Meneer. [Points, laughing, to her hands.] You see----
BOS. Have you put on gloves for the dance?
JO. [Nods saucily.] The hornpipe and the Highland fling, hey?
BOS. Hahaha! Saucy black eye. [To Clementine.] Come, let me have
a look.
CLEM. [Petulantly.] No, you don't understand it, anyway.
BOS. Oh, thanks!--You educate a daughter. Have her take drawing
lessons, but must not ask to see--come! Don't be so childish!
CLEM. [With spoiled petulance.] No. When it is finished.
BOS. Just one look.
CLEM. Hey, Pa, don't bother me.
BOS. Another scolding, ha ha ha!
[Barend enters.]
BAR. [Bashfully.] Good day, Meneer.
BOS. Well, Barend, you come as if you were called.
BAR. [Surprised laugh.] I?
BOS. We need you, my boy.
BAR. Yes, Meneer.
BOS. The deuce! How you have grown.
BAR. Yes, Meneer.
BOS. You're quite a man, now--How long have you been out of a job?
BAR. [Shyly.] Nine months.
KNEIR. That's a lie--It's more than a year.
BAR. No, it isn't.
JO. Well, just count up--November, December--
BOS. That'll do, children. No quarreling. Life is too short. Well,
Barend, how would the forty-seven suit you?--Eh, what?----
BAR. [Anxiously.] The forty-seven----
BOS. The Good Hope----
CLEM. [Surprised.] Are you going to send out the Good Hope?----
BOS. [Sharply.] You keep out of this! Keep out, I say!
CLEM. And this morning----
BOS. [Angrily.] Clementine!
CLEM. But Pa----
BOS. [Angrily stamping his foot.] Will you please go on?
CLEM. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Hey! How contemptible, to get mad--how
small--Bonjour! [Exits.]
KNEIR. Good day, Miss.
BOS. [Smiling.] A cat, eh! Just like her Mama, I have to raise the
devil now and then,--hahaha!--or my wife and daughter would run
the business--and I would be in the kitchen peeling the potatoes,
hahaha! Not but what I've done it in my youth.
KNEIR. And don't I remember----
BOS. [Smacking his lips.] Potatoes and fresh herring! but what's
past is gone. With a fleet of eight luggers your mind is on other
things--[Smiling.] Even if I do like the sight of saucy black
eyes--Don't mind me, I'm not dangerous--there was a time.----Hahaha!
KNEIR. Go on, Meneer. Don't mind us.
BOS. Well, our little friend here, what does he say?
KNEIR. Open your mouth, speak!
BAR. I would rather----
KNEIR. [Angrily.] Rather--rather!
JO. Hey! What a stupid!----
BOS. Children! No quarreling. Boy, you must decide for yourself. Last
year at the herring catch the Good Hope made the sum of fourteen
hundred guilders in four trips. She is fully equipped, Hengst is
skipper--all the sailors but one--and the boys--Hengst spoke of you
for oldest boy.
BAR. [Nervously.] No, no, Meneer----
KNEIR. Ah, the obstinate beast! All my beating won't drive him aboard.
JO. If I were a man----
BOS. Yes, but you're not; you're a pretty girl--ha, ha, ha! We can't
use such sailors. Well, Daddy! And why don't you want to go? Afraid
of seasickness? You've already made one trip as middle boy----
KNEIR. And as play boy.
JO. He'd rather loaf and beg. Ah! what a big baby.
BOS. You are foolish, boy. I sailed with your grandfather. Yes, I,
too, would rather have sat by Mother's pap-pot than held eels with
my ice cold hands; rather bitten into a slice of bread and butter
than bitten off the heads of the bait. And your father----
BAR. [Hoarsely.] My father was drowned--and brother Hendrick--and
Josef--no, I won't go!
BOS. [Rising.] Well--if he feels that way--better not force him,
Mother Kneirtje; I understand how he feels, my father didn't die
in his bed, either--but if you begin to reason that way the whole
fishery goes up the spout.
KNEIR. [Angrily.] It's enough to----
BOS. Softly--softly--You don't catch tipsy herrings with force----
JO. [Laughing.] Tipsy herring, I would like to see that!
BOS. [Laughing.] She doesn't believe it, Kneir! We know better! Eh,
what!
KNEIR. Ach--it's no joking matter, Meneer, that miserable bad
boy talks as if--as if--I had forgotten my husband--and my good
Josef--and--and--but I have not. [Ends in low sobbing.]
JO. Come, foolish woman! please, Aunty dear!--Good-for-nothing Torment!
BOS. Don't cry, Kneir! Tears will not restore the dead to life----
KNEIR. No, Meneer--I know that, Meneer. Next month it will be twelve
years since the Clementine went down.
BOS. Yes, it was the Clementine.
KNEIR. November--'88--He was a monkey of seven then, and yet he
pretends to feel more than I do about it.
BAR. [Nervously.] I didn't say that. I don't remember my father,
nor my brothers--but--but----
BOS. Well, then?
BAR. I want another trade--I don't want to go to sea--no--no----
KNEIR. Another trade--What else can you do? Can't even read or
write----
BAR. Is that my fault?
KNEIR. No--it is mine, of course! Three years I had an allowance--the
first year three--the second two twenty-five--and the third one
dollar--the other nine I had to root around for myself.
BOS. Have you forgotten me entirely?
KNEIR. I shall always be grateful to you, Meneer. If you and the
priest hadn't given me work and a warm bite now and then to take
home--then--then--and that booby even reproaches me!----
BAR. I don't reproach--I--I----
JO. Out with it! The gentleman is looking for a place to live off
his income.
BAR. Shut up!--I will do anything--dig sand--plant broom--salting
down--I'll be a mason, or a carpenter--or errand boy----
JO. Or a burgomaster! Or a policeman! Hahaha! And walk about dark
nights to catch thieves--Oh!--Oh!--what a brave man!
BOS. Little vixen!
BAR. You make me tired!--Did I complain when the salt ate the flesh
off my paws so I couldn't sleep nights with the pain?
KNEIR. Wants to be a carpenter--the boy is insane--A mason--see the
accidents that happen to masons. Each trade has something.
BOS. Yes, Barendje--There are risks in all trades--my boy. Just think
of the miners, the machinists, the stokers--the--the--How often do
not I, even now, climb the man rope, or row out to a lugger? Fancies,
my boy! You must not give way to them.
KNEIR. And we have no choice. God alone knows what the winter will
be. All the potatoes rotted late this fall, Meneer.
BOS. Yes, all over the district. Well, boy?
BAR. No, Meneer.
KNEIR. [Angrily.] Get out of my house, then--sponger!
BAR. [Faintly.] Yes, Mother.
KNEIR. March! Or I'll----[Threatening.]
BOS. Come, come. [A pause during which Barend walks timidly away.]
JO. If I had a son like that----
BOS. Better get a lover first----
JO. [Brightly.] I've already got one!--If I had a son like that I'd
bang him right and left! Bah! A man that's afraid! [Lightly.] A sailor
never knows that sooner or later--He never thinks of that--If Geert
were that way--there, I know--Aunt, imagine--Geert----
BOS. Geert?----
JO. He'd face the devil--eh, Aunt? Now, I'm going to finish the
potatoes. Good bye, Meneer.
BOS. Say, black eyes--do you laugh all the time?
JO. [With burst of laughter.] No, I'm going to cry. [Calls back from
the opened door.] Aunt--speak of Geert. [Goes off.]
BOS. Geert?--Is that your son, who----
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer.
BOS. Six months?
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer.
BOS. Insubordination?
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer--Couldn't keep his hands at
home.
BOS. The stupid blockhead!
KNEIR. I think they must have teased him----
BOS. That's nonsense! They don't tease the marines. A fine state
of affairs. Discipline would be thrown overboard to the sharks if
sailors could deal out blows every time things didn't go to suit them.
KNEIR. That's so, Meneer, but----
BOS. And is she--smitten with that good-for-nothing?
KNEIR. She's crazy about him, and well she may be. He's a handsome
lad, takes after his father--and strong--there is his photograph--he
still wore the uniform then--first class--now he is----
BOS. Degraded?----
KNEIR. No, discharged--when he gets out. He's been to India twice--it
is hard--if he comes next week--or in two weeks--or tomorrow, I don't
know when--I'll have him to feed, too--although--I must say it of
him, he won't let the grass grow under his feet--A giant like him
can always find a skipper.
BOS. A sweet beast--I tell you right now, Kneir, I'd rather not take
him--dissatisfied scoundrels are plenty enough these days--All that
come from the Navy, I'm damned if it isn't so--are unruly and I have
no use for that kind--Am I not right?
KNEIR. Certainly, Meneer, but my boy----
BOS. There was Jacob--crooked Jacob, the skipper had to discharge
him. He was, God save him, dissatisfied with everything--claimed
that I cheated at the count--yes--yes--insane. Now he's trying it at
Maassluis. We don't stand for any nonsense.
KNEIR. May I send him to the skipper then--or direct to the water
bailiff's office?
BOS. Yes, but you tell him----
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer.
BOS. If he comes in time, he can go out on the Good Hope. She's just
off the docks. They are bringing the provisions and casks aboard
now. She'll come back with a full cargo--You know that.
KNEIR. [Glad.] Yes, Meneer.
BOS. Well--Good bye! [Murmur of voices outside.] What's that?
KNEIR. People returning from the harbor. There's a corpse aboard
the Anna.
BOS. Pieterse's steam trawler--The deuce! Who is it?
KNEIR. I don't know. I'm going to find out.
[Both go off--the stage remains empty--a vague murmur of voices
outside. Fishermen, in conversation, pass the window. Sound of
a tolling church bell. Geert sneaks inside through the door at
left. Throws down a bundle tied in a red handkerchief. Looks cautiously
into the bedsteads, the cooking shed, peers through the window, then
muttering he plumps down in a chair by the table, rests his head on
his hand, rises again; savagely takes a loaf of bread from the back
cupboard, cuts off a hunk. Walks back to chair, chewing, lets the
bread fall; wrathfully stares before him. The bell ceases to toll.]
BAR. [From the cooking shed.] Who's there?--Geert!--[Entering.]
GEERT. [Curtly.] Yes--it's me--Well, why don't you give me a paw.
BAR. [Shaking hands.] Have you--have you seen Mother yet?
GEERT. [Curtly.] No, where is she----
BAR. Mother, she--she----
GEERT. What are you staring at?
BAR. You--you--Have you been sick?
GEERT. Sick? I'm never sick.
BAR. You look so--so pale----
GEERT. Give me the looking-glass. I'll be damned. What a mug! [Throws
the mirror roughly down.]
BAR. [Anxiously.] Was it bad in prison?
GEERT. No, fine!--What a question--They feed you on beefsteaks! Is
there any gin in the house?
BAR. No.
GEERT. Go and get some then--if I don't have a swallow, I'll keel over.
BAR. [Embarrassed.] I haven't any money.
GEERT. I have. [Peers in his pocket, throws a handful of coins on
the table.] Earned that in prison--There!----
BAR. At the "Red" around the corner?
GEERT. I don't care a damn--so you hurry. [Calling after him.] Is--is
Mother well? [A pause.]--and Jo?
BAR. [At door.] She is digging potatoes.
GEERT. Are they mad at me?
BAR. Why?
GEERT. Because I--[Savagely.] Don't stare so, stupid----
BAR. [Embarrassed.] I can't get used to your face--it's so queer.
GEERT. Queer face, eh! I must grow a beard at once!--Say, did they
make a devil of a row? [Gruffly.] Well?----
BAR. I don't know.
GEERT. Go to the devil! You don't know anything.
[A pause, Barend slips out. Jo enters, a dead rabbit in her hand.]
JO. Jesus! [Lets the rabbit fall.]--Geert! [Rushes to him, throws
her arms about his neck, sobbing hysterically.]
GEERT. [In a muffled voice.] Stop it! Stop your damned bawling--stop!
JO. [Continuing to sob.] I am so happy--so happy, dear Geert----
GEERT. [Irritated.] Now! Now!
JO. I can't help it. [Sobs harder.]
GEERT. [Pulling her arms from his neck.]--Now then! My head can't
stand such a lot of noise----
JO. [Startled.] A lot of noise?
GEERT. [Grumbling.] You don't understand it of course--six months
solitary--in a dirty, stinking cell. [Puts his hand before his eyes
as if blinded by the light.] Drop the curtain a bit--This sunshine
drives me mad!
JO. My God--Geert----
GEERT. Please!--that's better.
JO. Your beard----
GEERT. They didn't like my beard--The government took that--become
ugly, haven't I?--Look as if I'd lost my wits? Eh?
JO. [With hesitating laugh.] You? No--What makes you think that? You
don't show it at all. [Sobs again softly.]
GEERT. Well, damn it! Is that all you have to say. [She laughs
hysterically. He points to his temples.] Become grey, eh?
JO. No, Geert.
GEERT. You lie. [Kicking away the mirror.] I saw it myself. The
beggars; to shut up a sailor in a cage where you can't walk, where you
can't speak, where you--[Strikes wildly upon the table with his fist.]
BAR. Here is the gin.
JO. The gin?
BAR. For Geert.
GEERT. Don't you meddle with this--Where is a glass?--Never
mind--[Swallows eagerly.]--That's a bracer! What time is it?
BAR. Half past four.
JO. Did you take bread? Were you hungry?
GEERT. Yes, no--no, yes. I don't know. [Puts the bottle again to
his lips.]
JO. Please, Geert--no more--you can't stand it.
GEERT. No more? [Swallows.] Ripping!--Hahaha! That's the best way
to tan your stomach. [Swallows.] Ripping! Don't look so unhappy,
girl--I won't get drunk! Bah! It stinks! Not accustomed to it--Are
there any provisions on board?
JO. Look--a fat one, eh? Trapped him myself. [Picks up the rabbit.] Not
dead an hour.
GEERT. That will do for tomorrow--Here, you, go and lay in a
supply--some ham and some meat----
BAR. Meat, Geert?
JO. No--that's extravagance--If you want to buy meat, keep your money
till Sunday.
GEERT. Sunday--Sunday--If you hadn't eaten anything for six months but
rye bread, rats, horse beans--I'm too weak to set one foot before the
other. Stop your talk--Hurry up! and--and a piece of cheese--I feel
like eating myself into a colic. Hahaha! Shall I take another wee drop?
[Barend goes off.]
JO. No.
GEERT. Good, not another drop. Is there any tobacco?
JO. God!--I'm glad to see you cheerful again. Yes, there's some
tobacco left--in the jar.
GEERT. That's good. Fine! Is that my old pipe?
JO. I saved it for you.
GEERT. Who did you flirt with, while I sat----
JO. [Merrily.] With Uncle Cobus!
GEERT. You women are all trash. [Fills his pipe; smokes.] Haven't
had the taste in my mouth for half a year. This isn't tobacco;
[Exhales.] tastes like hay--Bah! The gin stinks and the pipe stinks.
JO. Eat something first----
GEERT. [Laying down the pipe.] Say, do you still sleep with Mother?
JO. Yes, next to the pig stye.
GEERT. [Laughing.] And must I sleep under the roof again?
JO. You'll sleep nice and warm up there, dear.
KNEIR. [Outside.] Why is the window curtain down?
JO. [Finger on her lips.] Sst! [Goes and stands before Geert.]
KNEIR. [Inside.] What's going on here? Why is the looking-glass on
the floor? Who sits----
GEERT. [Rising.] Well, little old one!
KNEIR. God almighty!
GEERT. No--it's me--Geert----
KNEIR. [Dropping into a chair.] Oh!--Oh!--My heart beats so!
GEERT. Hahaha! That's damned good! [Tries to embrace her.]
KNEIR. No--no--not yet--later.
GEERT. Not yet?--Why later?
KNEIR. [Reproachfully.] You--what have you done to make me happy!
JO. [Coaxingly.] Never mind that now----
GEERT. I've got enough in my head now. If you intend to reproach
me?--I shall----
KNEIR. You shall----
GEERT. Pack my bundle!----
KNEIR. And this is his home-coming!
GEERT. Do you expect me to sit on the sinner's bench? No, thank you.
KNEIR. [Anxious; almost crying.] The whole village talked about you--I
couldn't go on an errand but----
GEERT. [Curtly.] Let them that talk say it to my face. I'm no thief
or burglar.
KNEIR. No, but you raised your hand against your superior.
GEERT. [Fiercely.] I should have twisted my fingers in his throat.
KNEIR. Boy--boy; you make us all unhappy.
[Begins to sob.]
GEERT. [Stamping.] Treated like a beast, then I get the devil
besides. [Grabs his bundle.] I'm in no mood to stand it. [At the door,
hesitates, throws down his bundle.] Now! [Lower voice.] Don't cry,
Mother--I would rather--Damn it!
JO. Please--Auntie dear----
KNEIR. Your father lies somewhere in the sea. Never would he have
looked at you again--And he also had a great deal to put up with.
GEERT. I'm glad I'm different--not so submissive--It's a great honor
to let them walk over you! I have no fish blood in me--Now then,
is it to go on raining?
KNEIR. [Embracing him.] If you would only repent.
GEERT. [Flaring up.] I'd knock the teeth out of his jaw tomorrow.
KNEIR. How did it happen?
JO. Hey! Yes--tell us all about it. Come, now, sit down peaceably.
GEERT. I've sat long enough, hahaha!--Let me walk to get the hang of
it. [Lighting his pipe again.] Bah!
JO. Stop smoking then, donkey!
GEERT. Now I'll--But for you it would never have happened----
JO. [Laughing.] But for me?--that's a good
one!
GEERT. I warned you against him.
JO. Against who--What are you talking about?
GEERT. That cad--Don't you remember dancing with him at the tavern
van de Rooie?
JO. I?--Danced?----
GEERT. The night before we sailed.
JO. With that cross-eyed quartermaster?--I don't understand a word
of it--was it with him?--And you yourself wanted me to----
GEERT. You can't refuse a superior--On board ship he had stories. I
overheard him tell the skipper that he----
JO. [Angrily.] What?
GEERT. That he--never mind what--He spoke of you as if you were any
sailor's girl.
JO. I!--The low down----
GEERT. When he came into the hold after the dog watch, I hammered
him on the jaw with a marlin spike. Five minutes later I sat in
irons. Kept in them six days--[Sarcastically.] the provost was full;
then two weeks provost; six months solitary; and suspended from the
navy for ten years; that, damn me, is the most--I'd chop off my two
hands to get back in; to be nigger-driven again; cursed as a beggar
again; ruled as a slave again----
KNEIR. Geert--Geert--Don't speak such words. In the Bible it stands
written----
GEERT. [Grimly.] Stands written--If there was only something written
for us----
KNEIR. Shame on you----
JO. Well, wasn't he in the right?
KNEIR. If he had gone politely to the Commander----
GEERT. Hahaha! You should have been a sailor,
Mother--Hahaha! Politely? They were too glad of the chance to clip and
shear me. While I was in the provost they found newspapers in my bag I
was not allowed to read--and pamphlets I was not allowed to read--that
shut the door--otherwise they would have given me only third class----
KNEIR. Newspapers you were not allowed to read? Then why did you
read them?
GEERT. Why--simple soul--Ach!--when I look at your submissive face I
see no way to tell why--Why do men desert?--Why, ten days before this
happened to me, did Peter the stoker cut off his two fingers?--Just
for a joke? No, on purpose! I can't blame you people--you knew no
better--and I admired the uniform--But now that I've got some brains
I would like to warn every boy that binds himself for fourteen years
to murder.
KNEIR. To murder? Boy, don't say such dreadful things--you are
excited----
GEERT. Excited? No--not at all--worn out, in fact--in Atjeh I fought
with the rest--stuck my bayonet into the body of a poor devil till the
blood spurted into my eyes--For that they gave me the Atjeh medal. I
have it still in my bundle. Hand it here. [Jo picks up the bundle;
Barend looks on.] Where is the thing? [Jerks the medal from his
jacket, throws it out of the window.] Away! you have dangled on my
breast long enough!
KNEIR. Geert! Geert! Who has made you like this! I no longer know
you----
GEERT. Who--who took an innocent boy, that couldn't count ten, and
kidnaped him for fourteen years? Who drilled and trained him for a
dog's life? Who put him in irons when he defended his girl? Irons--you
should have seen me walking in them, groaning like an animal. Near me
walked another animal with irons on his leg, because of an insolent
word to an officer of the watch. Six days with the damned irons on
your claws and no power to break them. Six days lower than a beast.
JO. Don't talk about it any more, you are still so tired----
GEERT. [Wrapped in the grimness of his story.] Then the provost,
that stinking, dark cage; your pig stye is a palace to it. A cage
with no windows--no air--a cage where you can't stand or lie down. A
cage where your bread and water is flung to you with a "there, dog,
eat!" There was a big storm in those days,--two sloops were battered to
pieces;--when you expected to go to the bottom any moment. Never again
to see anyone belongin' to me--neither you--nor you--nor you. To go
down in that dark, stinking hole with no one to talk to--no comrade's
hand!--No, no, let me talk--it lightens my chest! Another drop. [Drinks
quickly.] From the provost to the court martial. A fellow has lots to
bring in there. Your mouth shut. Sit up; mouth shut some more. Gold
epaulettes sitting in judgment on the trash God has kicked into the
world to serve, to salute, to----
KNEIR. Boy--boy----
GEERT. Six months--six months in a cell for reformation. To be reformed
by eating food you could not swallow;--rye bread, barley, pea soup,
rats! Three months I pasted paper bags, and when I saw the chance I
ate the sour paste from hunger. Three months I sorted peas; you'll
not believe it, but may I never look on the sea again if I lie. At
night, over my gas light, I would cook the peas I could nip in my
slop pail. When the handle became too hot to hold any longer, I ate
them half boiled--to fill my stomach. That's to reform you--reform
you--for losing your temper and licking a blackguard that called your
girl a vile name, and reading newspapers you were not allowed to read.
KNEIR. [Anxiously.] That was unjust.
GEERT. Unjust! How dare you say it! Fresh from the sea--in a cell--no
wind and no water, and no air--one small high window with grating like
a partridge cage. The foul smell and the nights--the damned nights,
when you couldn't sleep. When you sprang up and walked, like an insane
man, back and forth--back and forth--four measured paces. The nights
when you sat and prayed not to go insane--and cursed everything,
everything, everything! [Drops his head upon his hands.]
JO. [After a long pause goes to him and throws her arms about his
neck. Kneirtje weeps, Barend stands dazed.] Geert!
GEERT. Now! Don't let us--[Forcibly controlling his tears.] A
light! [Smokes.] Now, Mother! [Goes to the window--says to Barend.] Lay
out the good things--[Draws up the curtain.] I'll be damned! if the
rooster isn't sitting on the roof again, ha, ha, ha! will you believe
it? I would like to sail at once--two days on the Sea! the Sea! the
Sea!--and I'm my old self again. What?--Why is Truus crying as she
walks by? Truus! [Calling.]
KNEIR. Ssst!--Don't call after her. The Anna has just come in without
her husband. [A few sad-looking, low-speaking women walk past the
window.] Poor thing! Six children----
GEERT. Is Ari--[She nods.] That's damned sad! [Drops the window
curtain, stands in somber thought.]
CURTAIN.
ACT II.
[Same Room. Time--Early Afternoon.]
JO. [By the table.] Hey!
MARIETJE. [Entering.] They haven't come yet?
SIMON. No, they haven't come yet. [Starting to go.]
JO. Are you running away again?
SIMON. That is to say----
MARIETJE. Good gracious, father, do stay awhile.
SIMON. Yes--I won't go far--I must----
MARIETJE. You must nothing----
SIMON. Well, Salamander, am I a child? I must--I must----[Abruptly
off.]
MARIETJE. Stop it if you can. It begins early in the morning.
JO. Is he bad again?
MARIETJE. You should have seen him day before yesterday--half the
village at his heels. Ach! Ach! When Mother was living he didn't
dare. She used to slap his face for him when he smelled of gin--just
let me try it.
JO. [Bursting into a laugh.] You say that as though--ha ha ha! Mees
ought to hear that.
MARIETJE. I never have seen Mees drinking--and father very seldom
formerly. Ah well--I can't put a cork in his mouth, nor lead him
around by a rope. [Looks through the window.] Gone, of course--to
the Rooie. Horrid old drunkard. How old is Kneirtje today?
JO. Sixty-one. Young for her years, isn't she, eh? Sit down and tell me
[Merrily.] when are you going to be married?
MARIETJE. That depends on the length of the voyage. You know we would
like to marry at once [Smiles, hesitates.] because--because----Well,
you understand. But Mees had to send for his papers first--that takes
two weeks--by that time he is far out at sea; now five weeks--five
little weeks will pass quickly enough.
JO. [Joyfully confidential.] We shall be married in December.
MARIETJE. That's about the same----Are you two!----Now?----I told
you everything----
[Jo shrugs her shoulders and laughs.]
KNEIR. [Entering.] Laughing as usual.
MARIETJE. [Kissing her.] May you live to be a hundred----
KNEIR. God forbid!--a hundred years. I haven't the money for
that! [Opening a bag.] You may try one--you, too--gingerbread nuts--no,
not two, you, with the grab-all fingers! For each of the boys a
half pound gingerbread nuts--and a half pound chewing tobacco--and
a package of cigars. Do you know what I'm going to give Barend since
he has become so brave--look----
JO. Now--you should give those to Geert----
KNEIR. No, I'm so pleased with the lad that he has made up his mind
I want to reward him.
MARIETJE. Did you buy them?
KNEIR. No, indeed! These are ever so old, they are earrings. My
husband wore them Sundays, when he was at home.
MARIETJE. There are little ships on them--masts--and sails--I wish
I had them for a brooch.
JO. Why give them to that coward? That's not right.
MARIETJE. You had a time getting him to sign--Eh!
KNEIR. Yes--yes. But he was willing to go with his brother--and
now take it home to yourself--a boy that is not strong--not very
strong--rejected for the army, and a boy who heard a lot about his
father and Josef.
JO. I just can't stand that! First you curse and scold at him, and
now nothing is too good.
KNEIR. Even so, no matter what has been. In an hour he will be gone,
and you must never part in anger. Have a sweet dram, Marietje. We
have fresh wafers and ginger cakes all laid in for my birthday--set it
all ready, Jo. Saart is coming soon, and the boys may take a dram, too.
COBUS. [Through the window. Daantje with him.]
A sweet young Miss
And a glass of Anis--
I shall surely come in for this.
KNEIR. Throw your chew away before you come in.
COB. Indeed I'll not! [Hides it in his red handkerchief.] No--now--you
know what I want to say.
DAAN. Same here. Same here.
JO. I don't need to ask if----[Pours the dram.]
COB. No--no--go ahead--just a little more.
JO. There!--now it is running over.
COB. No matter, I shan't spill a drop. [Bends trembling to the
table. Lips to the glass, sucks up the liquor.] He, he, he!
DAAN. Ginger cake? If you please. [Yawns.]
MARIETJE. [Imitating his yawn.] Ah! Thanks!
DAAN. When you have my years!--Hardly slept a wink last night--and
no nap this afternoon.
JO. Creep into the bedstead.
COB. That's what he would like to do----
MARIETJE. Better take a hot bottle, Daan!
COB. Now, if I had my choice----
KNEIR. Hold your tongue--Story teller! The Matron at the Home has to
help dress him. And yet he----
JO. Ha, ha, ha! Oh, Uncle Cobus!
MARIETJE. Oh! Oh! Hahaha!
COB. Tja! the Englishman says: "The old man misses the kisses, and
the young man kisses the misses." Do you know what that means?
JO. Yes, that means, "Woman, take your cat inside, its beginning to
rain." Hahaha! Hahaha!
SAART. [Through door at left.] Good day! Congratulations everybody!
COB. Come in.
SAART. Good day, Daantje; day, Cobus; and day, Marietje; and day,
Jo. No, I'll not sit down.
KNEIR. A dram----
SAART. No, I'll not sit down. My kettle is on the fire.
JO. Come now!
SAART. No, I'm not going to do it--my door is ajar--and the cat may
tip over the oil stove. No, just give it to me this way--so--so--many
happy returns, and may your boys--Where are the boys?
KNEIR. Geert has gone to say good bye, and Barend has gone with Mees
to take the mattresses and chests in the yawl. They'll soon be here,
for they must be on board by three o'clock.
SAART. Hey, this burns my heart out. [Refers to the anisette.] Were
you at Leen's yesterday?
KNEIR. No, couldn't go.
SAART. There was a lot of everything and more too. The bride was
full,--three glasses "roses without thorns," two of "perfect love,"
and surely four glasses of "love in a mist." Well! Where she stowed
it all I don't know.
COB. Give me the old fashioned dram, brandy and syrup--eh! Daantje?
DAANTJE. [Startled.] What?
KNEIR. He's come here to sleep--you look as if you hadn't been to
bed at all.
COB. In his bed--he, he, he!
DAAN. [Crossly.] Come, no jokes.
COB. Hehehe! [Takes out his handkerchief.]
KNEIR. No, I say, don't take out your chew.
SAART. Old snooper!
COB. Snooper? No, you'd never guess how I got it. Less than ten
minutes ago I met Bos the ship-owner, and he gave me--he gave me a
little white roll--of--of tissue paper with tobacco inside. What do
you call the things?
MARIETJE. Cigarettes.
COB. Yes, catch me smoking a thing like that in--in paper--that's a
chew with a shirt on.
SAART. And you're a crosspatch without a shirt. No, I'm not going to
sit down.
JO. It's already poured out.
SIMON. [Drunk.] Day.
KNEIR. Day, Simon--shove in, room for you here.
SIMON. [Plumps down by door at left.] I'll sit here.
COB. Have a sweet dram?
MARIETJE. No.
SIMON. [Huskily.] Why no?
MARIETJE. You've had enough.
SIMON. Have I? Salamanders!
MARIETJE. No, I won't have it.
KNEIR. Did you see Geert?
SIMON. [Muttering.] Wh--wh--Geert!
COB. Give him just one, for a parting cup.
MARIETJE. [Angrily.] No! No!
SIMON. [Thickly.] No? I'll be damned! [Lights a nose warmer.]
KNEIR. Is there much work in the dry dock, Simon?
SIMON. That stands fast.
SAART. Well--I'm going.
JO. Hey! How unsociable! They'll soon be here. Come sit down----
SAART. No, if I sit down I stay too long. Well then, half a
glass--no--no cookies.
GEERT. [Through door at left.] It looks like all hands on deck
here! Good day, everybody! [Pointing to Simon.] Lazarus! Eh, Simon?
SIMON. [Muttering.] Uh--ja----
MARIETJE. Let him alone.
GEERT. The deuce, but you're touchy! We've got a quarter of an hour,
boys! Pour out the drinks, Jo. [Sits between Kneir. and Jo.] Here's
to you, Mother! Prost! Santy, Jo! Santy, Daantje! Santys!
JO. Hahaha! Fallen asleep with a ginger nut in his hand.
KNEIR. Isn't he well?
COB. No. Sick in the night--afraid to call the matron; walked about
in his bare feet; got chilled.
GEERT. Afraid of the Matron! Are you eating charity bread?
COB. It's easy for you to talk, but if you disturb her, she keeps
you in for two weeks.
GEERT. Poor devils--I don't want to live to be so old.
JO. Oh, real sweet of you. We're not even married
yet--and he's a widower already!
GEERT. [Gaily.] There's many a slip! Hahaha! Shall I give him a
poke? I don't need a belaying pin----[Sings.]
"Sailing, sailing, don't wait to be called;
Starboard watch, spring from your bunk;
Let the man at the wheel go to his rest;
The rain is good and the wind is down.
It's sailing, it's sailing,
It's sailing for the starboard watch."
[The others join him in beating time on the table with their fists.]
Hahaha! [General laugh.]
DAAN. [Awakes with a start.] You'll do the same when you're as old
as I am.
GEERT. Hahaha! I'll never be old. Leaky ships must sink.
JO. Now, Geert.
SAART. Never be old! You might have said that a while back when you
looked like a wet dish rag. But now! Prison life agreed with you, boy!
COB. Hehehe! Now we can make up a song about you, pasting paper
bags--just as Domela--he he he! [Sings in a piping voice.]
My nevvy Geert pastes paper bags,
Hi-ha, ho!
My nevvy Geert----
SAART. Pastes paper bags.
DAAN., JO., MARIETJE AND COBUS. Hi--ha--ho!
GEERT. [Laughing.] Go to thunder! You're making a joke of it!
KNEIR. [Anxiously.] Please don't be so noisy. It isn't best.
JO. Oh! I expected that! This is your birthday, see! Do take a chair,
Saart.
SAART. Chair. I'm blest if I see----
MARIETJE. I don't mind standing.
SAART. No--there's room here. [Squeezes in beside Cobus.]
COB. I'll be falling off here!
MARIETJE. [Standing beside her dazed father.] Father!
SIMON. [Muttering.] They must--they must--not--not--that's fast.
MARIETJE. Come, now!
GEERT. Let the man sail his own mast overboard! He isn't in the way.
SIMON. [With dazed gesture.] You must--you must----
MARIETJE. [Crossly.] What's the matter now?
SIMON. [Mumbling.] The ribs--and--and----[Firmly.] That's fast!----
GEERT, JO., COBUS, DAANTJE AND SAART. Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!
MEES. [Enters.] Salute!
KNEIR. [Anxiously.] Are you alone? Where's Barend?
MEES. I don't know.
KNEIR. You went together to take the mattresses and chests----
MEES. Row with the skipper! He's no sailor!
JO. A row? Has the trouble begun already?
MEES. Can't repeat a word of it--afraid--afraid--always afraid----[To
Marietje, who has induced her father to rise.] Are you coming along?
JO. No, take a dram before you go. It's Aunt's birthday.
MEES. You don't say! Now--now--Kneir, many happy returns.
KNEIR. You have made me anxious.
JO. [Laughing.] Anxious!
KNEIR. Yes, anxious! She's surprised at that. I've taken an advance
from Bos.
GEERT. He's signed, hasn't he? Don't worry, Mother!
COB. Perhaps he's saying good-bye to his girl. [Sound of Jelle's
fiddle outside.] Ta, de, da!
SAART. Do sit still--one would think you'd eaten horse flesh.
DAAN. They give us meat? Not even a dead cat!
JELLE. [Playing the old polka.] If you please!
GEERT. Come on in, old man!
JO. Poor old fellow, gets blinder every day.
JELLE. [Playing.] I come regular once a week.
GEERT. Another tune first, Old Man! Not that damned old polka.
JO. Yes, play that tune of--of--what do you call 'em?
COB. Yes, the one she mentions is fine.
SAART. You know, Jelle, the one--that one that goes [Sings.] "I know
a song that charms the heart."
MEES. Say! Give us----[Jelle begins the Marseillaise.] That's better
fare. [Sings.] "Alloose--vodela--bedeije--deboe--debie--de boolebie."
MARIETJE. Hahaha! That's the French of a dead codfish!
JO. Hahaha!
MEES. Laugh all you please! I've laid in a French port--and say, it
was first rate! When I said pain they gave me bread--and when I said
"open the port," they opened the door. Great!
GEERT. All Gammon! Begin again, Jelle. Why the devil! Let's use the
Dutch words we've got for it.
[Jelle begins again. Geert roars.]
"Arise men, brothers, all united!
Arise burgers, come join with us!
Your wrongs, your sorrows be avenged"--
BOS. [Who has stood at the open window listening during the singing,
yells angrily.] What's going on here? [Scared hush over all.] Damn
it! It's high time you were all on board! [Goes off furious.]
KNEIR. [After a long pause.] Oh--Oh--how he scared me--he! he!
JO. What's the matter with him?
MEES. I couldn't think where the voice came from.
SAART. How stupid of you to roar like a weaned pig, when you know
Meneer Bos lives only two doors away.
MARIETJE. Lord, wasn't he mad.
COB. Hehehe! You'll never eat a sack of salt with him.
KNEIR. What business had you to sing those low songs, anyway?
GEERT. Well, I'll be damned! Am I in my own house or not? If he
hadn't taken me by surprise! An old frog like that before your eyes
of a sudden. I'd cleaned out his cupboard! Play on, Jelle!
[Jelle begins again.]
KNEIR. Ach, please don't, Geert. I'm afraid that if Meneer
Bos----[Motions to Jelle to stop.]
GEERT. This one is afraid to sail, this one of the Matron of the Old
Men's Home, this one of a little ship owner! Forbids me in my own
house! Commands me as though I were a servant!
SAART. Fun is fun, but if you were a ship owner, you wouldn't want
your sailors singing like socialists either.
KNEIR. When he knows how dependent I am, too.
GEERT. [Passionately.] Dependent! Don't be dependent! Is it an
honor to do his cleaning! Why not pay for the privilege! Thank him
for letting you scrub! Dependent! For mopping the office floor and
licking his muddy boots you get fifty cents twice a week and the
scraps off their plates.
JO. Don't get so angry, foolish boy!
KNEIR. Oh, what a row I'll get Saturday!
GEERT. A row, you? Why should he row with you? If you hadn't all your
life allowed this braggart who began with nothing to walk over you
and treat you as a slave, while father and my brothers lost their
lives on the sea making money for him, you'd give him a scolding and
damn his hide for his insolence in opening his jaw.
KNEIR. I--I--God forbid.
GEERT. God forbids you to bend your neck. Here--take it--Jelle. Next
year Mother will give you pennies to play. "Arise men, brothers,
all unite-e-ed"----
KNEIR. Please, Geert, please don't. [Lays her hand on his mouth.]
JO. Hey! Stop tormenting your old mother on her birthday. [Jelle
holds out his hand.] Here, you can't stand on one leg.
COB. Do you want money from me? It's all in the bank. [Pointing to
Daan.] He's the man to go to.
DAAN. [Crossly, drinking.] Peh! Don't make a fool of me.
JELLE. Well, thanks to you both. [Off.]
MEES. Will you come along now?
GEERT. I'll wait a few minutes for Barend. What's your hurry? The
boys will come by here any way.
SAART. Don't you catch on that those two are--A good voyage.
MEES AND MARIETJE. [Shaking hands.] Good voyage!
KNEIR. Half past two--I'm uneasy.
SAART. Half past two? Have I staid so long--and my door ajar! Good
voyage. Good day, Kneir. [Off.]
BOS. [Brusquely coming through the kitchen door.] Are you also planning
to stay behind?
GEERT. [Gruffly.] Are you speaking to me?
BOS. [Angrily.] Yes, to you. Skipper Hengst has my orders. Understand?
GEERT. [Calmly to the others.] Gone crazy----
BOS. [More angry.] The police have been notified.
GEERT. [With forced calm.] You and the police make me tired. [Cobus
and Daantje slink away, stopping outside to listen at the window.] Are
you out of your head? Who said I wasn't going?
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer, he is all ready to go.
BOS. That other boy of yours that Hengst engaged--refuses to go.
KNEIR. Oh, good God!
BOS. [To Cobus and Daan.] Why are you listening? [They bow in a
scared way and hastily go on.] This looks like a dive--drunkenness
and rioting.
JO. [Excusing.] It's Aunt's birthday.
GEERT. [Angrily.] Mother's birthday or not, we do as we please here.
BOS. You change your tone or----
GEERT. My tone? You get out!
KNEIR. [Anxious.] Ach--dear Geert--Don't take offense, Meneer--he's
quick tempered, and in anger one says----
BOS. Things he's no right to say. Dirt is all the thanks you get for
being good to you people. [Threatening.] If you're not on board in
ten minutes, I'll send the police for you!
GEERT. You send--what do you take me for, any way!
BOS. What I take him for--he asks that--dares to ask----[To
Kneirtje.] You'll come to me again recommending a trouble-maker kicked
out by the Navy.
GEERT. [Mocking.] Did you recommend? Hahaha! You make me laugh! You
pay wages and I do the work. For the rest you can go to hell.
BOS. You're just a big overgrown boy, that's all!
GEERT. [Threatening.] If it wasn't for Mother--I'd----
KNEIR. [Throwing her arms about him.] Geert! Geert! [A long pause.]
BOS. And this in your house! Good day. [At the door.] Kneir, Kneir,
consider well what you do--I gave you an advance in good faith----
KNEIR. Ach, yes, Meneer--Ach, yes----
BOS. Haven't I always treated you well?
KNEIR. Yes, Meneer--you and the priest----
BOS. One of your sons refuses to go, the other--you'll come to a bad
end, my little friend.
GEERT. Haul in your fore sheet! On board I'm a sailor--I'm the skipper
here. Such a topsy turvy! A ship owner layin' down the law; don't do
this and don't do that! Boring his nose through the window when you
don't sing to suit him.
BOS. For my part, sing, but a sensible sailor expecting to marry ought
to appreciate it when his employer is looking out for his good. Your
father was a thorough good man. Did he ever threaten his employer? You
young fellows have no respect for grey hairs.
GEERT. Respect for grey hairs? By thunder, yes! for grey hairs that
have become grey in want and misery----
BOS. [Shrugging his shoulders.] Your mother's seen me, as child,
standing before the bait trays. I also have stood in an East wind
that froze your ears, biting off bait heads----
GEERT. That'll do. We don't care for your stories, Meneer. You have
become a rich man, and a tyrant. Good!--you are perhaps no worse than
the rest, but don't interfere with me in my own house. My father was
a different sort. We may all become different, and perhaps my son may
live to see the day when he will come, as I did, twelve years ago,
crying to the office, to ask if there's any news of his father and
his two brothers! and not find their employer sitting by his warm fire
and his strong box, drinking grog. He may not be damned for coming so
often to ask the same thing, nor be turned from the door with snubs
and the message, "When there's anything to tell you'll hear of it."
BOS. [Roughly.] You lie--I never did anything of the sort.
GEERT. I won't soil any more words over it. Only to let you know I
remember. My father's hair was grey, my mother's hair is grey, Jelle,
the poor devil who can't find a place in the Old Men's Home because
on one occasion in his life he was light-fingered--Jelle has also
grey hairs.
BOS. Fine! Reasoning without head or tail. If you hear him or crooked
Jacob, it's the same cuckoo song. [To Kneir.] It's come out, eh? But
now I'll give another word of advice, my friend, before you go under
sail. You have an old mother, you expect to marry, good; you've been
in prison six months--I won't talk of that; you have barked out your
insolence to me in your own house, but if you attempt any of this
talk on board the Hope you'll find out there is a muster roll.
GEERT. Every year old child knows that.
BOS. When you've become older--and wiser--you'll be ashamed of your
insolence--"the ship owner by his warm stove, and his grog"----
GEERT. And his strong box----
BOS. [Hotly.] And his cares, you haven't the wits to understand! Who
feeds you all?
GEERT. [Forced calmness.] Who hauls the fish out of the sea? Who
risks his life every hour of the day? Who doesn't take off his
clothes in five or six weeks? Who walks with hands covered with salt
sores,--without water to wash face or hands? Who sleep like beasts
two in a bunk? Who leave wives and mothers behind to beg alms? Twelve
head of us are presently going to sea--we get twenty-five per cent
of the catch, you seventy-five. We do the work, you sit safely at
home. Your ship is insured, and we--we can go to the bottom in case
of accident--we are not worth insuring----
KNEIR. [Soothing.] Geert! Geert! Geert!
BOS. That's an entertaining lad! You should be a clown in a
circus! Twenty-seven per cent isn't enough for him----
GEERT. I'll never eat salted codfish from your generosity! Our whole
share is in "profit and loss." When luck is with us we each make eight
guilders a week, one guilder a day when we're lucky. One guilder a
day at sea, to prepare salt fish, cod with livers for the people in
the cities--hahaha!--a guilder a day--when you're lucky and don't go
to the bottom. You fellows know what you're about when you engage us
on shares.
[Old and young heads of fishermen appear at the window.]
A VOICE. Are you coming? [Bos is politely greeted.]
GEERT. I shall soon follow you.
BOS. Good voyage, men! And say to the skipper--no, never mind--I'll
be there myself----[A pause.] Twenty-five minutes past two. Now I'll
take two minutes more, blockhead, to rub under your nose something
I tried three times to say, but you gave me no chance to get in a
word. When you lie in your bunk tonight--as a beast, of course!--try
and think of my risks, by a poor catch--lost nets and cordage--by
damages and lightning in the mast, by running aground, and God knows
what else. The Jacoba's just had her hatches torn off, the Queen
Wilhelmina half her bulwarks washed away. You don't count that,
for you don't have to pay for it! Three months ago the Expectation
collided with a steamer. Without a thought of the catch or the nets,
the men sprang overboard, leaving the ship to drift! Who thought of
my interests? You laugh, boy, because you don't realize what cares I
have. On the Mathilde last week the men smuggled gin and tobacco in
their mattresses to sell to the English. Now the ship lies chained. Do
you pay the fine?
GEERT. Pluck feathers off a frog's back. Hahaha!
BOS. If you were talking about conditions in Middelharnis or Pernis,
you'd have reason for it. My men don't pay the harbor costs, don't
pay for bait, towing, provisions, barrels, salt. I don't expect you
to pay the loss of the cordage, if a gaff or a boom breaks. I go into
my own pocket for it. I gave your mother an advance, your brother
Barend deserts.
KNEIR. No, Meneer, I can't believe that.
BOS. Hengst telephoned me from the harbor, else I wouldn't have
been here to be insulted by your oldest son, who's disturbing the
whole neighborhood roaring his scandalous songs! I'm going to the
ship! [Angrily.] If you're not on board on time I'll apply "Article
Sixteen" and fine you twenty-five guilders.
GEERT. Yes, why not? I can stand it!
BOS. [Turning to Kneir.] As for you, my wife doesn't need you at
present, you're all a bad lot here.
KNEIR. [Anxiously.] Ach, Meneer, it isn't my fault!
GEERT. Must you punish the old woman too?
BOS. Blame your own sons for that! After this voyage you can look for
another employer, who enjoys throwing pearls before swine better than
I do!
GEERT. And now, get out! Get out! [Pushes the door shut after Bos.]
KNEIR. What a birthday! What a birthday!
JO. Don't hang your head so soon, Aunt! Geert was in the right----
KNEIR. In the right! What good does that do?
GEERT. You're not running after him?
KNEIR. No, to look for Barend. Great God, if he should desert--if he
deserts--he also goes to prison--two sons who----
GEERT. Aren't you going to wish me a good voyage--or don't you think
that necessary?
KNEIR. My head is queer. I'm coming to the harbor. Yes, I'm coming----
JO. I'm sorry for her, the poor thing.
GEERT. He's a hound, that fellow!
JO. Where's your sou'wester? Hope it isn't mislaid. You gave him a
talking to, didn't you? It was drunken Simon that set him going. Now
don't look so solemn. Here it is. [Picks a geranium from a flower
pot.] There! And you keep it on, so. [On his knee.] And you will
think of me every night, will you? Will you? [Springing up.] What,
are you back so soon?
KNEIR. [Enters.] Isn't he in here?
GEERT. He's in the pocket of my jacket! Hahaha!
KNEIR. Truus saw him hanging around the house. Ach! Ach! Ach!
GEERT. We're going! Come along with us. If that coward refuses to go,
your sitting at home won't help a damn.
KNEIR. No, no, no.
JO. Follow after us, then!
KNEIR. [Anxiously.] Yes, yes, yes! Don't forget your chewing tobacco
and your cigars----
GEERT. [Gaily.] If you're too late--I'll never look at you again!
[Exeunt Geert and Jo.]
BAR. [Entering quickly from left.] S-s-s-st!
KNEIR. You miserable bad boy!
BAR. S-ssst!
KNEIR. What sssst! I'll shout the whole village together if you don't
immediately run and follow Geert and Jo.
BAR. [Panting.] If you can keep Geert from going--call him back!
KNEIR. Have you gone crazy with fear, you big coward?
BAR. [Panting.] The Good Hope is no good, no good--her ribs are
rotten--the planking is rotten!----
KNEIR. Don't stand there telling stories to excuse yourself. After
half past two! March!----
BAR. [Almost crying.] If you don't believe me!
KNEIR. I won't listen. March! or I'll slap your face.
BAR. Strike me then! Strike me then! Ah, God! keep Geert from
going! Simon the ship carpenter warned me.
KNEIR. Simon, the ship carpenter--that drunken sot who can't speak
two words. You are a disgusting bad boy. First you sign, then you
run away! Get up!
BAR. Me--you may beat me to death!--but I won't go on an unseaworthy
ship!
KNEIR. What do you know about it? Hasn't the ship been lying in the
dry docks?
BAR. There was no caulking her any more--Simon----
KNEIR. Shut your mouth with your Simon! March, take your package of
chewing tobacco.
BAR. [Yelling.] I'm not going--I'm not going. You don't know--you
didn't see it! The last voyage she had a foot of water in her hold!
KNEIR. The last voyage? A ship that has just returned from her fourth
voyage to the herring catch and that has brought fourteen loads! Has
it suddenly become unseaworthy, because you, you miserable coward,
are going along?
BAR. [With feverish anxiety.] I looked in the hold--the barrels were
floating. You can see death that is hiding down there.
KNEIR. Bilge water, as in every ship! The barrels floating! Tell that
to your grandmother, not to an old sailor's wife. Skipper Hengst
is a child, eh! Isn't Hengst going and Mees and Gerrit and Jacob
and Nellis--your own brother and Truus' little Peter? Do you claim
to know more than old seamen? [Fiercely.] Get up! I'm not going to
stand it to see you taken aboard by the police----
BAR. [Crying.] Oh, Mother dear, Mother dear, don't make me go!
KNEIR. Oh, God; how you have punished me in my children--my children
are driving me to beggary. I've taken an advance--Bos has refused to
give me any more cleaning to do--and--and----[Firmly.] Well, then,
let them come for you--you'd better be taken than run away. Oh, oh,
that this should happen in my family----
BAR. [Running to the cooking shed.]
KNEIR. [Barring the way.] You'll not get out----
BAR. Let me pass, Mother. I don't know what I'm doing--I might hurt----
KNEIR. Now he is brave, against his sixty year old mother----Raise
your hand if you dare!
BAR. [Falls on a chair shaking his head between his hands.] Oh, oh,
oh--If they take me aboard, you'll never see me again--you'll never
see Geert again----
KNEIR. The ship is in God's hands. It's tempting God to rave this
way with fear----[Friendlier tone.] Come, a man of your age must
not cry like a child--come! I wanted to surprise you with Father's
earrings--come!
BAR. Mother dear--I don't dare--I don't dare--I shall drown--hide
me--hide me----
KNEIR. Have you gone insane, boy! If I believed a word of your talk,
would I let Geert go? [Puts a package in his pocket.] There's a
package of tobacco, and one of cigars. Now sit still, and I'll put
in your earrings--look--[Talking as to a child.]--real silver--ships
on them with sails--sit still, now--there's one--there's two--walk
to the looking glass----
BAR. [Crying.] No--no!----
KNEIR. Come now, you're making me weak for nothing--please,
dear boy--I do love you and your brother--you're all I have on
earth. Come now! Every night I will pray to the good God to bring you
home safely. You must get used to it, then you will become a brave
seaman--and--and----[Cries.] Come now, Barend, Barend! [Holds the
mirror before him.] Look at your earrings--what?----
1ST POLICEMAN. [Coming in through door at left, good-natured
manner.] Skipper Hengst has requested the Police----If you please,
my little man, we have no time to lose.
BAR. [Screaming.] I won't go! I won't go! The ship--is rotten----
2ND POLICEMAN. [Smiling good naturedly.] Then you should not have
mustered in. Must we use force? Come now, little man. [Taps him kindly
on the shoulder.]
BAR. Don't touch me! Don't touch me! [Clings desperately to the
bedstead and door jamb.]
2ND POLICEMAN. Must we put on the handcuffs, boy?
BAR. [Moaning.] Help me, Mother! You'll never see me again! I shall
drown in the dirty, stinking sea!
1ST POLICEMAN. [Crossly.] Come, come! Let go of the door jamb! [Seizes
his wrists.]
BAR. [Clinging harder.] No! [Shrieking.] Cut off my hands! Oh God, Oh
God, Oh God! [Crawls up against the wall, beside himself with terror.]
KNEIR. [Almost crying.] The boy is afraid----
1ST POLICEMAN. Then you tell him to let go!
KNEIR. [Sobbing as she seizes Barend's hands.] Come now, boy--come
now--God will not forsake you----
BAR. [Moaning as he loosens his hold, sobs despairingly.] You'll
never see me again, never again----
1ST POLICEMAN. Forward, march!
[They exeunt, dragging Barend.]
KNEIR. Oh, oh----
TRUUS. [With anxious curiosity, at side door.] What was the matter,
Kneir?
KNEIR. [Sobbing.] Barend had to be taken by the police. Oh, and now
I'm ashamed to go walk through the village, to tell them good bye--the
disgrace--the disgrace----
CURTAIN.
ACT III.
[Scene: Same as before. Evening. A lighted lamp--the illuminated
chimney gives a red glow. A rushing wind howls about the house. Jo
and Kneirtje discovered. Kneirtje lying on bed, dressed, Jo reading
to her from prayerbook.]
JO. And this verse is mighty fine. Are you listening? [Reads.]
"Mother Mary! in piteousness,
To your poor children of the sea,
Reach down your arms in their distress;
With God their intercessor be.
Unto the Heart Divine your prayer
Will make an end to all their care."
[Staring into the bed.] Are you asleep? Aunt! Are you asleep? [A
knock--she tiptoes to cook-shed door, puts her finger to her lips in
warning to Clementine and Kaps, who enter.] Softly, Miss.
CLEMENTINE. [To Kaps.] Shut the door. What a tempest! My eyes are
full of sand. [To Jo.] Is Kneir in bed?
JO. She's lying down awhile in her clothes. She's not herself yet,
feverish and coughing.
CLEMENTINE. I've brought her a plate of soup, and a half dozen
eggs. Now then, Kaps! Kaps!
KAPS. Yes?
CLEMENTINE. On the table. What a bore! Deaf as a post! What were
you reading?
JO. The "Illustrated Catholic."
CLEMENTINE. Where did you put the eggs?
KAPS. I understand.
KNEIRTJE. [From the bedstead.] Is anyone there?
CLEMENTINE. It's me, Clementine.
KNEIRTJE. [Rising.] Hasn't the wind gone down yet?
CLEMENTINE. I've brought you some veal soup, Kneir. It's
delicious. Well, Almighty! You've spilled it all over.
KAPS. I'd like to see you carry a full pan with the sand blowing in
your eyes.
CLEMENTINE. Well, its mighty queer. There was twice as much meat in it.
KAPS. What? Can't hear, with the wind.
KNEIRTJE. Thank you kindly, Miss.
CLEMENTINE. [Counting the eggs.] One, two, three, four! The others?
KAPS. There's five--and--[Looking at his hand, which drips with egg
yolk.]--and----
CLEMENTINE. Broken, of course!
KAPS. [Bringing out his handkerchief and purse covered with egg.] I
put them away so carefully. What destruction! What a muss!
JO. [Laughing.] Make an omelet of it.
KAPS. That's because you pushed against me. Just look at my keys.
CLEMENTINE. [Laughing.] He calls that putting them away
carefully. You'd better go home.
KAPS. [Peevishly.] No, that's not true.
CLEMENTINE. [Louder.] You may go! I can find the way back alone!
KAPS. My purse, my handkerchief, my cork screw. [Crossly.] Good
night. [Off.]
CLEMENTINE. I don't know why Father keeps that bookkeeper, deaf,
and cross. Does it taste good?
KNEIRTJE. Yes, Miss. You must thank your mother.
CLEMENTINE. Indeed I'll not. Pa and Ma are obstinate. They haven't
forgotten the row with your sons yet. Mouth shut, or I'll get a
scolding. May Jo go to the beach with me to look at the sea? The
waves have never been so high!
JO. Yes, I'll go, Miss.
KNEIRTJE. No, don't leave me alone. Go on the beach in such a
storm! [Crash outside, she screams.]
JO. What was that?
CLEMENTINE. I heard something break. [Enter Cobus.]
COB. God bless me! That missed me by a hair.
JO. Are you hurt?
COB. I got a tap aft that struck the spot. Lucky my head wasn't
there! The tree beside the pig stye was broken in two like a pipe stem.
KNEIRTJE. Did it come down on the pig stye?
COB. I believe it did.
KNEIRTJE. I'm afraid it's fallen in. The wood is so rotten.
JO. Ach, no! Aunt always expects the worst. [Surprised.] Uncle Cobus,
how do you come to be out, after eight o'clock, in this beastly
weather?
COB. To fetch the doctor for Daan.
CLEMENTINE. Is old Daan sick?
COB. Tja. Old age. Took to his bed suddenly. Can't keep anything on
his stomach. The beans and pork gravy he ate----
CLEMENTINE. Beans and pork gravy for a sick old man?
COB. Tja. The matron broils him a chicken or a beefsteak--Eh? She's
even cross because she's got to beat an egg for his breakfast. This
afternoon he was delirious, talking of setting out the nets, and paying
out the buoy line. I sez to the matron, "His time's come." "Look out or
yours'll come," sez she. I sez, "The doctor should be sent for." "Mind
your own business," sez she, "am I the Matron or are you?" Then I
sez, "You're the matron." "Well then," sez she. Just now, she sez,
"You'd better go for the doctor." As if it couldn't a been done this
afternoon. I go to the doctor and the doctor's out of town. Now I've
been to Simon to take me to town in his dog car.
JO. Is Simon coming here?
CLEMENTINE. If drunken Simon drives, you're likely to roll off
the dyke.
COB. He isn't drunk tonight.
JO. Give him a chalk mark for that. Must the doctor ride in the dog
car? Hahaha!
COB. Why not if he feels like it? Shall I tell you something? Hey,
what a storm! Listen! Listen! The tiles will soon be coming down.
JO. Go on, now, tell us the rest.
COB. What I want to say is, that it's a blessing for Daantje he's
out of his head, 'fraid as he's always been of death. Afraid!
JO. So is everyone else, Cobus.
COB. Every one? That's all in the way you look at it. If my time
should come tomorrow, then, I think, we must all! The waters of the sea
will not wash away that fact. God has given, God has taken away. Now,
don't laugh, think! God takes us and we take the fish. On the fifth
day He created the Sea, great whales and the moving creatures that
abound therein, and said: "Be fruitful," and He blessed them. That
was evening and that was morning, that was the fifth day. And on the
sixth day He created man and said also: "Be fruitful," and blessed
them. That was again evening and again morning, that was the sixth
day. No, now, don't laugh. You must think. When I was on the herring
catch, or on the salting voyage, there were times when I didn't dare
use the cleaning knife. Because when you shove a herring's head
to the left with your thumb, and you lift out the gullet with the
blade, the creature looks at you with such knowing eyes, and yet
you clean two hundred in an hour. And when you cut throats out of
fourteen hundred cod, that makes twenty-eight hundred eyes that look
at you! Look! Just look. Ask me how many fish have I killed? I had few
equals in boning and cutting livers. Tja, tja, and how afraid they all
were! Afraid! They looked up at the clouds as if they were saying:
"How about this now. He blessed us same as He blessed you?" I say:
we take the fish and God takes us. We must all, the beasts must,
and the men must, and because we all must, none of us should--now,
that's just as if you'd pour a full barrel into an empty one. I'd
be afraid to be left alone in the empty barrel, with every one else
in the other barrel. No, being afraid is no good; being afraid is
standing on your toes and looking over the edge.
KNEIRTJE. Is that a way to talk at night? You act as if you'd had
a dram.
COB. A dram? No, not a drop! Is that Simon?
KNEIRTJE. [Listening between the bedsteads.] Am I right about the pig
stye or not? Hear how the poor animal is going on out there. I'm sure
the wall has fallen in.
JO. Let me go then. Don't you go outside!
KNEIRTJE. Ach, don't bother me! [Off.]
JO. You pour yourself out a bowl, Uncle Cobus! I'll give her a
helping hand.
COB. Take care of the lamp chimney.
CLEMENTINE. [At the window.] Oh! Oh! Oh! What a gale! [Returning to
the table.] Cobus, I'll thank God when the Good Hope is safely in.
COB. Tja. No ship is safe tonight. But the Hope is an old ship,
and old ships are the last to go down.
CLEMENTINE. That's what you say.
COB. No, that's what every old sailor says. Have a bowl, Miss?
CLEMENTINE. [After a silence, staring.] All the same, I shall pray
God tonight.
COB. That's real good of you, Miss. But the Jacoba is out and the
Mathilda is out and the Expectation is out. Why should you pray for
one ship?
CLEMENTINE. The Good Hope is rotten--so--so----[Stops anxiously.]
COB. [Drinking coffee.] Who said that?
CLEMENTINE. That's what----Why--that's what----I thought----It just
occurred to me.
COB. No, you are lying now.
CLEMENTINE. Oh, you are polite!
COB. If the Good Hope was rotten, then your father would----
CLEMENTINE. Oh, shut your fool mouth, you'll make Kneir anxious. Quick,
Kneir, shut the door, for the lamp.
KNEIRTJE. [Entering with Jo.] Good thing we looked.
JO. The stye had blown down.
KNEIRTJE. Oh, my poor boys! How scared Barend will be, and just as
they're homeward bound.
JO. Coffee, Mother? Aunt! Funny, isn't it, eh? I keep saying
Mother. You take another cup, Miss. The evening is still so long and
so gloomy--Yes?
[Enter Simon and Marietje, who is crying.]
SIMON. Good evening. Salamanders, what a wind! Stop your damn
howling----
KNEIRTJE. What's the matter?
MARIETJE. When I think of Mees.
KNEIRTJE. Now, now, look at Jo. Her lover is also--be a good seaman's
wife. Foolish girl! Don't be childish. Give her a bowl to cheer her up.
MARIETJE. It's going into the sixth week.
COB. Don't cry before you're hurt! You girls haven't had any trouble
yet! Is the carriage at the door?
SIMON. I'm damned if I like the trip. If it wasn't for Daan----
JO. Here, this will warm you up, Simon.
SIMON. [Drinking.] Curse it, that's hot. It's happened to me before
with the dog car, in a tempest like this. It was for Katrien. She was
expecting every minute. I was upset twice, car and all. And when the
doctor came, Katrien was dead and the child was dead, but if you ask
me, I'd rather sit in my dog car tonight than to be on the sea.
KNEIRTJE. Yes! Yes!
JO. Another bowl?
SIMON. No, don't let us waste our time. Ready, Cobus?
COB. If you'll only be careful! Good night, all! [Both exit.]
JO. Jesus! Don't sit around so solemn! Let's talk, then we won't
think of anything.
MARIETJE. Last night was stormy, too, and I had such a bad dream. It
was so awful.
CLEMENTINE. Foolish girl! Dreams are not real.
MARIETJE. I can't rightly say it was a dream. There was a rap on the
window, once. I lay still. Again a rap, then I got up. Nothing to be
seen. Nothing. Soon as I lay down there came another rap, so. [Raps on
the table with her knuckles.] And then I saw Mees, his face was pale,
pale as--God! Oh, God! and there was nothing. Nothing but the wind.
KNEIRTJE. [In deadly fear.] Rapped three times? Three times?
MARIETJE. Each time--like that, so----[Raps.]
JO. You stupid, you, to scare the old woman into a fit with your
raps. [A rap. All startled. Enter Saart and Truus.]
SAART. How scared you all look! Good evening, Miss.
TRUUS. May we come in awhile?
JO. Hey! Thank God you've come.
SAART. Nasty outside! My ears and neck full of sand, and it's
cold. Just throw a couple of blocks on the fire.
TRUUS. I couldn't stand it at home either, children asleep, no one
to talk to, and the howling of the wind. Two mooring posts were
washed away.
KNEIR. [Darning a sock.] Two mooring posts!
SAART. Talk about something else.
JO. Yes, I say so too. What's that to us----Milk and sugar? Yes, eh?
SAART. What a question! I take coffee without sugar!
JO. Well, Geert never takes sugar.
CLEMENTINE. Your little son was a brave boy, Truus. I can see him
now as he stood waving good-bye.
TRUUS. [Knitting.] Yes, that boy's a treasure, barely twelve. You
should have seen him two and a half months ago. When the Anna came
in without Ari. The child behaved like an angel, just like a grown
man. He would sit up evenings to chat with me, the child knows more
than I do. The lamb, hope he's not been awfully sea sick.
SAART. [Knitting.] Now, you may not believe it, but red spectacles
keep you from being sea sick.
JO. [Mending a flannel garment.] Hahaha! Did you ever try it
yourself? You're like the doctors, they let others swallow their doses.
SAART. Many's the night I've slept on board; when my husband was
alive I went along on many a voyage.
JO. Should like to have seen you in oil skins.
CLEMENTINE. Were you ever married, Saart?
SAART. Hear, now, the young lady is flattering me. I'm not so bad
looking as that, Miss. Yes, I was married. Spliced good and fast,
too! He was a good man. An excellent man. Now and then, when things
didn't go to suit him, without speaking ill of the dead, I may say,
he couldn't keep his paws at home; then he'd smash things. I still
have a coffee pot without a handle I keep as a remembrance.--I wouldn't
part with it for a rix dollar.
CLEMENTINE. I won't even offer you a guilder! Hahaha!
JO. Say, you're such a funny story teller, tell us about the Harlemmer
oil, Saart.
SAART. Yes, if it hadn't been for Harlemmer oil I might not have been
a widow. I could marry again!
CLEMENTINE. How odd!
JO. You must hear her talk. Come, drink faster!
SAART. I'm full to the brim! What are you staring at Kneir? That's just
the wind. Now, then, my man was a comical chap. Never was another like
him. I'd bought him a knife in a leather sheath, paid a good price
for it too, and when he'd come back in five weeks and I'd ask him:
"Jacob, have you lost your knife?" he'd say, "I don't know about my
knife--you never gave me a knife." He was that scatter-brained. But
when he'd undress himself for the first time in five weeks, and pulled
off his rubber boots, bang, the knife would fall on the floor. He
hadn't felt it in all that time.
CLEMENTINE. Didn't take off his rubber boots in five weeks?
SAART. Then I had to scrub 'im with soap and soda; he hadn't seen
water, and covered with vermin.
CLEMENTINE. Hey! Ugh!
SAART. Wish I could get a cent a dozen for all the lice on board;
they get them thrown in with their share of the cargo. Hahaha! Now
then, his last voyage a sheet of water threw him against the bulwarks
just as they pulled the mizzen staysail to larboard, and his leg was
broke. Then they were in a fix--The skipper could poultice and cut a
corn, but he couldn't mend a broken leg. Then they wanted to shove a
plank under it, but Jacob wanted Harlemmer oil rubbed on his leg. Every
day he had them rub it with Harlemmer oil, and again Harlemmer oil,
and some more Harlemmer oil. Ach, the poor thing! When they came in
his leg was a sight. You shouldn't have asked me to tell it.
JO. Last time you laughed about it yourself.
SAART. Now, yes; you can't bring the dead back to life. And when you
think of it, it's a dirty shame I can't marry again.
CLEMENTINE. Why not? Who prevents you?
SAART. Who? Those that pieced together the silly laws! A year later
the Changeable went down with man and mouse. Then, bless me, you'd
suppose, as your husband was dead, for he'd gone along with his leg
and a half, you could marry another man. No, indeed. First you must
advertise for him in the newspapers three times, and then if in three
times he don't turn up, you may go and get a new license.
TRUUS. [Monotonously knitting.] I don't think I'll ever marry again.
SAART. That's not surprisin' when you've been married twice already;
if you don't know the men by this time.
TRUUS. I wish I could talk about things the way you do. No, it's
anxiety. With my first it was a horror; with my second you know
yourselves.
CLEMENTINE. Go on, Truus. I could sit up all night hearing tales of
the sea.
KNEIRTJE. Don't tell stories of suffering and death----
SAART. Hey! How fretful you are! Come, pour us some more coffee.
TRUUS. [Quietly knitting and speaking in a toneless voice.] Ach,
it couldn't have happened here, Kneir. We lived in Vlaardingen then,
and I'd been married a year without any children. No, Pietje was Ari's
child--and he went away on the Magnet. Yes, it was the Magnet. On the
herring catch. That's gone up now. And you understand what happened;
else I wouldn't have got acquainted with Ari and be living next door
to you now. The Magnet stayed on the sands or some other place. But
I didn't know that then, and so didn't think of it.
JO. Ssst! Keep still!
SAART. It's nothing. Only the wind.
TRUUS. Now in Vlaardingen they have a tower and on the tower a lookout.
MARIETJE. Same as at Maassluis.
TRUUS. And this lookout hoists a red ball when he sees a lugger or
a trawler or other boat in the distance. And when he sees who it
is, he lets down the ball, runs to the ship owner and the families
to warn them; that's to say: the Albert Koster or the Good Hope is
coming. Now mostly he's no need to warn the family. For, as soon as
the ball is hoisted in the tower, the children run in the streets
shouting, I did it, too, as a child: "The ball is up! The ball is
up!" Then the women run, and wait below for the lookout to come down,
and when it's their ship they give him pennies.
CLEMENTINE. And then----
TRUUS. [Staring into the fire.] And--and--the Magnet with my first
husband, didn't I say I'd been married a year? The Magnet stayed out
seven weeks--with provisions for six--and each time the children
shouted: "The ball is up, Truus! The ball is up, Truus!" Then I
ran like mad to the tower. No one looked at me. They all knew why
I ran, and when the lookout came down I could have torn the words
out of his mouth. But I would say: "Have you tidings--tidings of
the Magnet?" Then he'd say: "No, it's the Maria," or the Alert,
or the Concordia, and then I'd drag myself away slowly, so slowly,
crying and thinking of my husband. My husband! And each day, when
the children shouted, I got a shock through my brain, and each day I
stood by the tower, praying that God--but the Magnet did not come--did
not come. At the last I didn't dare to go to the tower any more when
the ball was hoisted. No longer dared to stand at the door waiting,
if perhaps the lookout himself would bring the message. That lasted
two months--two months--and then--well, then I believed it. [Toneless
voice.] The fish are dearly paid for.
CLEMENTINE. [After a silence.] And Ari?--What happened to him?
TRUUS. Ari?
JO. Now, that's so short a time since.
TRUUS. [Calmly.] Ach, child, I'd love to talk about it to every
one, all day long. When you've been left with six children--a good
man--never gave me a harsh word--never. In two hours he was gone. A
blow from the capstan Bar. He never spoke again. Had it happened six
days later they would have brought him in. We would have buried him
here. The sharks already swam about the ship. They smell when there's
a corpse aboard.
KNEIRTJE. Yes, that's true, you never see them otherwise.
TRUUS. [Resigned.] You'll never marry a fisherman, Miss; but it's sad,
sad; God, so sad! when they lash your dear one to a plank, wrapped in
a piece of sail with a stone in it, three times around the big mast,
and then, one, two, three, in God's name. The fish are dearly paid
for. [Sobs softly.]
JO. [Rising and embracing her.] Now, Truus!
SAART. Pour her out another bowl. [To Marietje.] Are you crying
again? She keeps thinking of Mees?
MARIETJE. No, I wasn't thinking of Mees, I was thinking of my little
brother, who was also drowned.
JO. [Nervously.] You all seem to enjoy it.
CLEMENTINE. Wasn't that on the herring catch?
MARIETJE. [Going on with her knitting.] His second voyage, a blow
from the fore sail, and he lay overboard. He was rope caster. The
skipper reached him the herring shovel, but it was smooth and it
slipped from his hands. Then Jerusalem, the mate, held out the broom
to him--again he grabbed hold. The three of them pulled him up; then
the broom gave way, he fell back into the waves, and for the third
time the skipper threw him a line. God wanted my little brother, the
line broke, and the end went down with him to the bottom of the sea.
CLEMENTINE. Frightful! frightful!--Grabbed it three times, and lost
it three times.
MARIETJE. As if the child knew what was coming in the morning, he had
lain crying all night. So the skipper told. Crying for Mother, who was
sick. When the skipper tried to console him, he said: "No, skipper,
even if Mother does get well, I eat my last herring today." That's
what started Father to drinking.
CLEMENTINE. Now, Marietje.
MARIETJE. No, truly, Miss, when he came back from Pieterse's with the
money, Toontje's share of the cargo as rope caster, eighteen guilders
and thirty-five cents for five and a half weeks. Then he simply acted
insane, he threw the money on the ground, then he cursed at--I won't
repeat what--at everything. And I, how old was I then? Fourteen. I
picked up the money, crying. We needed it. Mother's sickness and burial
had cost a lot. Eighteen guilders is a heap of money, a big heap.
JO. Eighteen guilders for your child, eighteen--[Listening in alarm
to the blasts of the wind.] Hush! keep still!
SAART. Nothing, nothing at all! What makes you so afraid tonight?
JO. Afraid? I afraid? No, say, Hahaha!----
KNEIRTJE. [Staring straight ahead.] Yes, yes, if the water could
only speak.
CLEMENTINE. Come now, you tell a tale of the sea. You've had so
much experience.
KNEIRTJE. A tale? Ach, Miss, life on the sea is no tale. Nothing
between yourself and eternity but the thickness of a one-inch
plank. It's hard on the men, and hard on the women. Yesterday I passed
by the garden of the Burgomaster. They sat at table and ate cod from
which the steam was rising, and the children sat with folded hands
saying grace. Then, thought I, in my ignorance--if it was wrong, may
God forgive me--that it wasn't right of the Burgomaster--not right
of him--and not right of the others. For the wind blew so hard out
of the East, and those fish came out of the same water in which our
dead--how shall I say it?--in which our dead--you understand me. [A
pause.] It was foolish to think such nonsense. It is our living,
and we must not rebel against our living.
TRUUS. Yes, I know how that is.
KNEIRTJE. [Quietly darning.] My husband was a fisherman. One out of a
thousand. When the lead was dropped he could tell by the taste of the
sand where they were. Often in the night he'd say we are on the 56th
and on the 56th they'd be. And what experiences he had sailing! Once
he drifted about two days and nights in a boat with two others. That
was the time they were taking in the net and a fog came up so thick
they couldn't see the buoys, let alone find the lugger. Two days and
nights without food. Later when the boat went to pieces--you should
have heard him tell it--how he and old Dirk swam to an overturned
rowboat; he climbed on top. "I'll never forget that night," said
he. Dirk was too old or tired to get a hold. Then my husband stuck
his knife into the boat. Dirk tried to grasp it as he was sinking,
and he clutched in such a way that three of his fingers hung
down. Yes! yes! It all happened. Then at the risk of his own life,
my husband pulled Dirk up onto the overturned boat. So the two of
them drifted in the night, and Dirk--old Dirk--from loss of blood
or from fear, went insane. He sat and glared at my husband with the
eyes of a cat. He raved of the devil that was in him. Of Satan, and
the blood, my husband said, ran all over the boat--the waves were
kept busy washing it away. Just at dawn Dirk slipped off, insane
as he was. My man was picked up by a freighter that sailed by. But
it was no use, three years later--that's twelve years ago now--the
Clementine--named after you by your father--stranded on the Doggerbanks
with him and my two oldest. Of what happened to them, I know nothing,
nothing at all. Never a buoy, or a hatch, washed ashore. Nothing more,
nothing. You can't realize it at first, but after so many years one
can't recall their faces any more, and that's a blessing. For hard it
would be if one remembered. Now, I've told my story. Every sailor's
wife has something like this in her family, it's not new. Truus is
right: "The fish are dearly paid for." Are you crying, Miss?
CLEMENTINE. [Bursting out.] God! If any ships should go down tonight.
KNEIRTJE. We are all in God's hands, and God is great and good.
JO. [Springing up wildly.] Ships go down! Ships go down! The one
howls. The other cries. I wish I'd sat alone tonight. [Beating her
head with her fists.] You're all driving me mad, mad, mad!
CLEMENTINE. [Amazed.] Jo, what ails you?
JO. [Passionately.] Her husband and her little brother--and my poor
uncle--those horrible stories--instead of cheering us up! Ask me now
for my story! [Shrieking.] My father was drowned, drowned, drowned,
drowned! There are others--all--drowned, drowned!--and--you are all
miserable wretches--you are! [Violently bangs the door shut as she
runs out.]
TRUUS. [Anxiously.] I believe she's afraid.
MARIETJE. Shall I go after her?
KNEIRTJE. No, child, she will quiet down by herself. Nervous strain
of the last two days. Are you going now, Miss?
CLEMENTINE. It has grown late, Kneir, and your niece--your niece was a
little unmannerly. No, I'm not offended. Who is going to take me home?
SAART. If one goes, we all go. Together we won't blow away. Good
night, Kneir.
MARIETJE. [Depressed.] Good night, Aunt Kneir.
KNEIRTJE. Thank you again, Miss, for the soup and eggs.
TRUUS. Are you coming to drink a bowl with me tomorrow night? Please
say yes.
KNEIRTJE. Well, perhaps. Good night, Miss. Good night, Marietje. Good
night, Saart. If you see Jo send her in at once. [All go out except
Kneirtje. She clears away the cups. A fierce wind howls, shrieking
about the house. She listens anxiously at the window, shoves her
chair close to the chimney, stares into the fire. Her lips move in
a muttered prayer while she fingers a rosary. Jo enters, drops into
a chair by the window and nervously unpins her shawl.]
KNEIRTJE. You'd better go to bed. You are all unstrung. What an
outburst! And that dear child that came out in the storm to bring me
soup and eggs.
JO. [Roughly.] Your sons are out in the storm for her and her father.
KNEIRTJE. And for us.
JO. And for us. [A silence.] The sea is so wild.
KNEIRTJE. Have you been to look?
JO. [Anxiously.] I couldn't stand against the wind. Half the guard
rail is washed away, the pier is under water. [A silence. Kneirtje
prays.] Oh! Oh! I'm dead from those miserable stories!
KNEIRTJE. You're not yourself tonight. You never went on like this
when Geert sailed with the Navy. Go to bed and pray. Prayer is the
only consolation. A sailor's wife must not be weak. In a month or two
it will storm again; each time again. And there are many fishermen on
the sea besides our boys. [Her speech sinks into a soft murmur. Her
old fingers handle the rosary.]
JO. Barend, we almost drove him away! I taunted him to the
last. [Seeing that Kneirtje prays, she walks to the window wringing
her hands, pulls up the curtain uncertainly, stares through the window
panes. Then she cautiously opens a window shutter. The wind blows the
curtain on high, the lamp dances, the light puffs out. She swiftly
closes the window.]
KNEIRTJE. [Angry from fear.] Have you gone crazy! Keep your paws off
that window!
JO. [Moaning.] Oh! oh! oh!----
KNEIRTJE. [Terrified.] Shut your mouth! Look for the matches! Not so
slow! Quick! Beside the soap dish. [A silence.] Have you got them? [Jo
lights the lamp, shivering with fear.] I'm completely chilled. [To Jo,
who crouches sobbing by the chimney.] Why do you sit there?
JO. I'm afraid.
KNEIRTJE. [Anxiously.] You must not be.
JO. If anything happens--then--then----
KNEIRTJE. Be sensible. Undress yourself.
JO. No, I shall stay here all night.
KNEIRTJE. Now, I ask you, how will it be when you're married? When
you are a mother yourself?
JO. [Passionately.] You don't know what you say! You don't know
what you say, Aunt Kneir! If Geert--[Stops, panting.] I didn't dare
tell you.
KNEIRTJE. Is it between you and Geert? [Jo sobs loudly.] That was not
good of you--not good--to have secrets. Your lover--your husband--is
my son. [A silence, the wind shrieks.] Don't stare that way into the
fire. Don't cry any more. I shall not speak any hard words. Even if
it was wrong of you and of him. Come and sit opposite to me, then
together we will--[Lays her prayerbook on the table.]
JO. [Despairingly.] I don't want to pray.
KNEIRTJE. Don't want to pray?
JO. [Excitedly.] If anything happens----
KNEIRTJE. [Vehemently.] Nothing will happen!
JO. [Wildly.] If anything--anything--anything--then I'll never pray
again, never again. Then there is no God. No Mother Mary--then there
is nothing--nothing----
KNEIRTJE. [Anxiously.] Don't talk like that.
JO. What good is a child without a husband!
KNEIRTJE. How dare you say that?
JO. [Beating her head on the table.] The wind! It drives me mad, mad!
KNEIRTJE. [Opens the prayerbook, touches Jo's arm. Jo looks up, sobbing
passionately, sees the prayerbook, shakes her head fiercely. Again
wailing, drops to the floor, which she beats with her hands. Kneirtje's
trembling voice sounds.] Oh Merciful God! I trust! With a firm faith,
I trust. [The wind races with wild lashings about the house.]
CURTAIN.
ACT IV.
[An old-fashioned office. Left, office door, separated from the
main office by a wooden railing. Between this door and railing are
two benches; an old cupboard. In the background; three windows with
view of the sunlit sea. In front of the middle window a standing
desk and high stool. Right, writing table with telephone--a safe,
an inside door. On the walls, notices of wreckage, insurance, maps,
etc. In the center a round iron stove.]
[Kaps, Bos and Mathilde discovered.]
MATHILDE. Clemens!----
KAPS. [Reading, with pipe in his mouth.] "The following wreckage,
viz.: 2,447 ribs, marked Kusta; ten sail sheets, marked 'M. S. G.'"
MATHILDE. Stop a moment, Kaps.
KAPS. "Four deck beams, two spars, five"----
MATHILDE. [Giving him a tap.] Finish your reading later.
KAPS. Yes, Mevrouw.
BOS. [Impatiently.] I have no time now.
MATHILDE. Then make time. I have written the circular for the tower
bell. Say, ring up the Burgomaster.
BOS. [Ringing impatiently.] Quick! Connect me with the
Burgomaster! Yes! This damn bother while I'm busy. Up to my ears
in--[Sweetly.] Are you there? My little wife asks----
MATHILDE. If Mevrouw will come to the telephone about the circular.
BOS. [Irritably.] Yes! yes! Not so long drawn--[Sweetly.] If Mevrouw
will come to the telephone a moment? Just so, Burgomaster,--the
ladies--hahaha! That's a good one. [Curtly.] Now? What do you want
to say? Cut it short. [To Mathilde.]
MATHILDE. Here, read this circular out loud. Then it can go to the
printers.
BOS. [Angrily.] That whole sheet! Are you crazy? Do you think I
haven't anything on my mind! That damned----
MATHILDE. Keep your temper! Kaps!----
BOS. Go to hell! [Sweetly.] Yes, Mevrouw. Tomorrow. My wife? No,
she can't come to the telephone herself, she doesn't know
how. [Irritably.] Where is the rag? Hurry up! [Reaches out hand for
paper. Mathilde hands it to him.] My wife has written the circular for
the tower bell. Are you listening? [Reads.] "Date, postmark, MM." What
did you say? You would rather have L. S.? Yes, yes, quite right. Do you
hear? [Reads.] "You are no doubt acquainted with the new church."--She
says, "No," the stupid! I am reading, Mevrouw, again. "You are no
doubt acquainted with the new church. The church has, as you know,
a high tower; that high tower points upward, and that is good, that is
fortunate, and truly necessary for many children of our generation"----
MATHILDE. Read more distinctly.
BOS. [To Mathilde.] Shut your mouth. Pardon, I was speaking to
my bookkeeper. [In telephone.] Yes--yes--ha, ha, ha--[Reads again
from paper.] "But that tower could do something else that also is
good. Yes, and very useful. It can mark the time for us children of the
times. That it does not do. It stands there since 1882 and has never
answered to the question, 'What time is it?' That it should do. It
was indeed built for it, there are four places visible for faces;
for years in all sorts of ways"--Did you say anything? No?--"for years
the wish has been expressed by the surrounding inhabitants that they
might have a clock--About three hundred guilders are needed. Who will
help? The Committee, Mevrouw"--What did you say? Yes, you know the
names, of course. Yes, very nicely worded? Yes--Yes--All the ladies of
the Committee naturally sign for the same amount, a hundred guilders
each? Yes--Yes--Very well--My wife will be at home, Mevrouw. [Rings off
angrily.] Damned nonsense!--a hundred guilders gone to the devil! What
is it to you if there's a clock on the damn thing or not?
MATHILDE. [Turns away.] I'll let you fry in your own fat.
BOS. She'll be here in her carriage in quarter of an hour.
MATHILDE. Bejour! bejour! If you drank less grog in the evenings
you wouldn't have such a bad temper in the mornings. Just hand me
five guilders.
BOS. No, no! You took five guilders out of my purse this morning
while I was asleep. I can keep no----
MATHILDE. I take a rix dollar! What an infamous lie. Just one
guilder! Bah, what a man, who counts his money before he goes to bed!
BOS. Bejour! bejour!
MATHILDE. Very well, don't give it--Then I can treat the Burgomaster's
wife to a glass of gin presently--three jugs of old gin and not a
single bottle of port or sherry! [Bos angrily throws down two rix
dollars.] Say, am I your servant? If it wasn't for me you wouldn't
be throwing rix dollars around!--Bah! [Goes off angrily.]
KAPS. [Reading.] IJmuiden, 24 December--Today there were four sloops
in the market with 500 to 800 live and 1,500 to 2,100 dead haddock
and some--live cod--The live cod brought 7 1/4--the dead----
BOS. Haven't you anything else to do?
KAPS. The dead haddock brought thirteen and a half guilders a basket.
BOS. [Knocking on the desk.] I know all that! Here, take hold! Take
your book--turn to the credit page of the Expectation----
KAPS. [Looking.] The Jacoba? no, the Queen Wilhelmina? no, the
Mathilde? no--the Good Hope?--We can whistle for her. The Expectation?
BOS. What was the gross total?
KAPS. Fourteen hundred and forty-three guilders and forty-seven cents.
BOS. I thought so. How could you be so ungodly stupid, to deduct four
guilders, 88, for the widows and orphans' fund?
KAPS. Let's see. [Figuring.]--1,443--3 per cent off--that's
1,400--that's gross three hundred and 87 guilders--yes, it should be
three guilders, 88, instead of four, 88.
BOS. [Rising.] If you're going into your dotage, Jackass! you can
go. Your errors are always on the wrong side!
KAPS. [With a knowing laugh.] There might be something to say against
that, Meneer--you didn't go after me when, when----
BOS. Now, that'll do, that'll do!----
KAPS. And that was an error with a couple of big ciphers after it. [Bos
goes off impatiently at right.] Hehehe! It all depends on what side----
[Looks around, sees Bos is gone, pokes up the fire; fills his pipe from
Bos's tobacco jar, carefully steals a couple of cigars from his box.]
SIMON. [Entering.] Is Bos here?
KAPS. Mynheer Bos, eh?--no.
SIMON. Is he out?
KAPS. Can't you give me the message?
SIMON. I ask you, is he out?
KAPS. Yes.
SIMON. No tidings?
KAPS. No. Has this running back and forth begun again? Meneer said
that when he got news, he----
SIMON. It will be nine weeks tomorrow.
KAPS. The Jacoba came in after fifty-nine days' lost time.
SIMON. You are--You know more than you let on.
KAPS. Are you loaded already?
SIMON. Not a drop.
KAPS. Then it's time--I know more, eh? I'm holding off the ships by
ropes, eh?
SIMON. I warned you folks when that ship lay in the docks. What were
the words I spoke then, eh?
KAPS. [Shrugging his shoulders.] All tales on your part for a glass
of gin!
SIMON. You lie. You was there, and the Miss was there. I says,
"The ship is rotten, that caulking was damn useless. That a floating
coffin like that"----
KAPS. Good! that's what you said. I don't deny it. What of it? Are
you so clever that when you're half drunk----
SIMON. [Angry.] That's a damned lie!
KAPS. Not drunk then, are you such an authority, you a shipmaster's
assistant, that when you say "no," and the owner and the Insurance
Company say "yes," my employer must put his ship in the dry docks?
SIMON. Damned rot! I warned you! And now, I say--now, I say--that
if Mees, my daughter's betrothed, not to speak of the others, if
Mees--there will be murder.
KAPS. You make me laugh! Go get yourself a dram and talk sense.
[Enter Marietje.]
SIMON. Better have stayed outside. No tidings.
MARIETJE. [Softly sobbing.] No tidings.
SIMON. Murder will come of it. [Both off.]
BOS. [Enters.] Who's here?
KAPS. Simon and his daughter. Threats! Are you going out?
BOS. Threats! Is the fellow insane? I'll be back in ten
minutes. Whoever comes must wait.
KAPS. He spoke of----
BOS. I don't care to hear! [Off.]
KAPS. [Goes back to his desk; the telephone rings. He solemnly listens
at the receiver.] Can't understand you. I am the bookkeeper. Mynheer
will be back in ten minutes. Ring up again.
[Enter Saart.]
SAART. Good day, my dear.
KAPS. You here again? What do you want?
SAART. I want you--Jesus! What a cold wind! May I warm my hands
a moment?
KAPS. Stay on that side of the railing.
SAART. Sweet beast! You make me tired. Mynheer Bos just went round the
corner. [Warms herself.] No use asking about the Hope. Jesus! Seven
families. How lucky that outside of the children there were three
unmarried men on board. Nothing washed ashore anywhere?
KAPS. No, no!
SAART. Now, don't eat me up.
KAPS. I wish you'd stay behind the railing. What do you want?
SAART. [Looking in his pocket.] Look out! Or you'll break Meneer's
cigars. Old thief! [He smiles.] Kaps, do you want to make a guilder?
KAPS. That depends.
SAART. I'm engaged to Bol, the skipper.
KAPS. I congratulate you!
SAART. He's lying here, with a load of peat for the city. Now, how
can I marry him?
KAPS. How can you?
SAART. I can't; because they don't know if my husband's dead.
KAPS. The legal limit is----
SAART. I know that much myself.
KAPS. You must summons him, 'pro Deo,' three times in the papers and
if he doesn't come then, and that he'll not do, for there aren't any
more ghosts in the world, then you can----
SAART. Now, if you'd attend to this little matter, Bol and I would
always be grateful to you.
KAPS. That is lawyer's business. You must go to the city for that.
SAART. Gracious, what botheration! When your common sense tells you
I haven't seen Jacob in three years and the----
[Cobus enters, trembling with agitation.]
COB. There are tidings! There are tidings!
KAPS. Tidings? What are you telling us?
COB. [Almost crying.] There must be tidings of the boys--of--of--the
Hope.
KAPS. Nothing! [Friendlier.] Now, there is no use in your coming
to this office day after day. I haven't any good news to give you,
the bad you already know. Sixty-two days----
COB. The water bailiff received a telegram. Ach, ach, ach; Meneer Kaps,
help us out of this uncertainty. My sister--and my niece--are simply
insane with grief. [Trembling violently.]
KAPS. On my word of honor. Are you running away again?
COB. My niece is sitting alone at home--my sister is at the Priest's,
cleaning house. There must be something--there must be something.
KAPS. Who made you believe that?
COB. The water bailiff's clerk said--said--Ach, dear God----[Off.]
SAART. Perhaps he is right.
KAPS. Everything is possible.
SAART. Has Meneer Bos any hope?
KAPS. Hope? Nine weeks! that old ship! after that storm--all things
are possible. No, I wouldn't give a cent for it. Provisions for
six weeks. If they had run into an English harbor, we would have
had tidings.
CLEMENTINE. [Enters.] Good day, Saart. Are there visitors inside, Kaps?
KAPS. [Looking through window.] The Burgomaster's carriage. Committee
meeting for the clock. A new span. I wish I had their money.
CLEMENTINE. [Laying her sketch book on Kaps's desk.] I saw Cobus go
by. Poor thing! How he has aged. I hardly recognized him. [Opening
the sketch book.] Look. That's the way he was three months ago,
hale and jolly. You may look, too, Kaps.
KAPS. No, Miss, I haven't the time.
SAART. Daantje's death was a blow to him--you always saw them together,
always discussing. Now he hasn't a friend in the "Home"; that makes
a big difference.
CLEMENTINE. Do you recognize these?
SAART. Well, that's Kneir, that's Barend with the basket on his back,
and that's--[The telephone bell rings. Clementine closes her book.]
KAPS. Meneer is out. They rang once before.
CLEMENTINE. [Listening at telephone.] Yes!--Papa isn't here. How long
will he be, Kaps?
KAPS. Two or three minutes.
CLEMENTINE. [Startled.] What did you say? A hatch marked
47--and--[Trembling.]--I don't understand you. [Screams and lets the
receiver fall.]
KAPS. What's that? What's that?
CLEMENTINE. [Painfully shocked.] I don't dare listen--Oh, oh!
KAPS. Was that the water bailiff?
CLEMENTINE. [Passionately.] Barend washed ashore. Oh God, now it
is ended!
SAART. Barend?----Barend?----
CLEMENTINE. A telegram from Nieuwediep. A hatch--and a corpse----
[Enter Bos.]
BOS. What's going on here? Why are you crying?
KAPS. Tidings of the Good Hope.
BOS. Tidings?
KAPS. The water bailiff is on the 'phone.
BOS. The water bailiff?--Step aside--Go along, you! What are you
gaping at?
SAART. I--I--[Goes timidly off.]
BOS. [Ringing.] Hello! Who is that? The water bailiff? A
telegram from Nieuwediep? North of the Hook? I don't understand
a word! Stop your howling! a hatch, you say? 47?--Well,
that's damned--miserable--that! the corpse--advanced stage of
decomposition! Barend--mustered in as oldest boy! Recognized by
who? by--oh!--The Expectation has come into Nieuwediep disabled? And
did Skipper Maatsuiker recognize him? Earrings? Yes, yes, silver
earrings. No, never mind that. So it isn't necessary to send any
one from here for the identification? Yes, damned sad--yes--yes--we
are in God's hand--Yes--yes--I no longer had any doubts--thank
you--yes--I'd like to get the official report as soon as possible. I
will inform the underwriters, bejour! [Hangs up the receiver.] I'm
simply dead! twelve men!
KAPS. Barend? Kneirtje's son? Washed ashore? That's--that's a wonder. I
never expected to hear of the ship again. With the Clementine.
BOS. [Angrily.] Yes--yes--yes--yes--[To Clementine.] Go inside to
your mother! What stupidity to repeat what you heard in that woman's
presence. It won't be five minutes now till half the village is
here! Don't you understand me? You sit there, God save me, and take
on as if your lover was aboard----
CLEMENTINE. Why didn't you listen? [Sobs softly.]
BOS. Listen!
CLEMENTINE. When Simon, the shipbuilder's assistant----
BOS. The fellow was drunk.
CLEMENTINE. [Firmly.] He was not!
BOS. He was, too! And if he hadn't been, what right have you to stick
your nose into matters you don't understand?
CLEMENTINE. Dear God, now I am also guilty----
BOS. [Angrily.] Guilty? Guilty! Have the novels you read gone to
your head? Guilty! Are you possessed, to use those words after such
an accident?
CLEMENTINE. He said that the ship was a floating coffin. Then I heard
you say that in any case it would be the last voyage for the Hope.
BOS. [Angrily at first.] That damned boarding school; those damned
boarding school fads! Walk if you like through the village like a fool,
sketching the first rascal or beggar you meet! But don't blab out
things you can be held to account for. A floating coffin! Say, rather,
a drunken authority--The North, of Pieterse, and the Surprise and the
Willem III and the Young John. I can keep on naming them. Half of the
fishing fleet and half the merchant fleet are floating coffins. Did
you hear that, Kaps?
KAPS. [Timidly.] No, Meneer, I don't hear anything.
BOS. If you had asked me: "Father, how is this?" I would have explained
it to you. But you conceited young people meddle with everything and
more, too! What stronger proof is there than the yearly inspection of
the ships by the underwriters? Do you suppose that when I presently
ring up the underwriter and say to him, "Meneer, you can plank down
fourteen hundred guilders"--that he does that on loose grounds? You
ought to have a face as red as a buoy in shame for the way you flapped
out your nonsense! Nonsense, I say! Nonsense; that might take away
my good name, if I wasn't so well known.
CLEMENTINE. [Sadly.] If I were a ship owner--and I heard----
BOS. God preserve the fishery from an owner who makes drawings and
cries over pretty vases! I stand as a father at the head of a hundred
homes. Business is business. When you get sensitive you go head over
heels. What, Kaps? [Kaps makes a motion that he cannot hear.] Now,
go to your mother. The Burgomaster's wife is making a call.
KAPS. Here is the muster roll. [Reading.] Willem Hengst, aged
thirty-seven, married, four children----
BOS. Wait a moment till my daughter----
CLEMENTINE. I won't speak another word.
KAPS. [Reading on.] Jacob Zwart, aged thirty-five years, married,
three children. Gerrit Plas, aged twenty-five years, married, one
child. Geert Vermeer, unmarried, aged twenty-six years. Nellis Boom,
aged thirty-five years, married, seven children. Klaas Steen, aged
twenty-four years, married. Solomon Bergen, aged twenty-five years,
married, one child. Mari Stad, aged forty-five years, married. Mees,
aged nineteen years. Jacob Boom, aged twenty years. Barend Vermeer,
aged nineteen years. Pietje Stappers, aged twelve years.
BOS. [Cast down.] Seven homes.
CLEMENTINE. Sixteen children.
[Enter Truus and Marietje.]
TRUUS. [Panting.] Are there tidings? Tidings of my little son? [Wild
despair.] Ach, God! Ach, God; don't make me unhappy, Meneer!----
BOS. I'm sorry, Mrs. Stappers----
MARIETJE. [Shrieking.] It can't be! It can't be! You lie!--It isn't
possible!----
BOS. [Gently.] The Burgomaster at Nieuwediep has telegraphed the water
bailiff. Barend Vermeer was washed ashore. You know what that means,
and a hatch of the 47----
TRUUS. [Loudly.] Oh, Mother Mary, must I lose that child, too? that
lamb of twelve years! [With a whimpering cry.] Oh, oh, oh, oh! Oh,
oh, oh, oh!--Pietje--Pietje----
MARIETJE. [Bewildered.] Then--Then--[Bursts into a hysterical
laugh.] Hahaha!--Hahaha!----
BOS. Give her a glass of water.
MARIETJE. [Striking the glass from Clementine's hand.] Go away! Go
away! [Falling on her knees, her hands catching hold of the railing
gate.] Let me die!--Let me die, please, dear God, dear God!
CLEMENTINE. [Sobbing.] Come Marietje, be calm; get up.
TRUUS. On his first voyage. And so brave; as he stood there, waving,
when the ship--[Sobs loudly.]
BOS. It can't be helped, Truus. It is a visitation. There hasn't
been a storm like that in years. Think of Hengst with four children,
and Jacob and Gerrit--And, although it's no consolation, I will hand
you your boy's wages today, if you like. Both of you go home now and
resign yourselves to the inevitable--take her with you--she seems----
MARIETJE. [With trembling sobs.] I don't want to go home. I want to
die, die----
CLEMENTINE. [Supporting her.] Cry, Marietje, cry, poor lamb----
[They go off.]
BOS. [Angrily walking back and forth.] What's the matter with you? Are
you too lazy to put pen to paper today? You needn't answer! Have you
the Widows' and Orphans' fund at hand? Well!
KAPS. [Shuffling to the safe.] The top drawer is still locked. [Bos
throws him the keys.] Oh, thank you. [Opens the safe, shuffles back
to Bos's desk with the book.] If you please, Meneer.
BOS. Ninety-five widows, fourteen old sailors and fishermen.
KAPS. Yes, the fund fell short some time ago. We will have to put in
another appeal.
MATHILDE. [Entering.] Clemens, what a misfortune! The Burgomaster's
wife asks if you will come in for a moment. She sits there crying.
BOS. No! Crying enough here. No time!
MATHILDE. Ach! Ach! Kaps, here is the copy for the circular. Hurry,
do you hear!
BOS. Talk to her about making a public appeal for the unfortunates.
MATHILDE. Yes, but, Clemens, isn't that overdoing it, two begging
parties?
BOS. I will do it myself, then--[Both exit.]
CLEMENTINE. [Enters. Softly weeping.] Kaps! Kaps! [Goes to his desk
and sits down opposite to him.] I feel so miserable----
KAPS. Very unwise, Miss. Many ships go down. The Good Hope scarcely
counts. I have it here. Where is it? where is it? The statement of
Veritas for October--October alone; lost, 105 sailing vessels and
30 steamships--that's a low estimate; fifteen hundred dead in one
month. [Pointing to the sea.] Yes, when you see it as it appears
today, so smooth, with the floating gulls, you wouldn't believe that
it murders so many people.
[Enter Jo and Cobus.]
CLEMENTINE. [To Jo and Cobus, who sit alone in a dazed way.] Come in,
Jo. Jo! [Jo slowly shakes her head.]
COB. [Trembling.] We have just run from home--for Saart just as I
said--just as I said----
[Enter Bos.]
BOS. [To Jo.] Here, sit down. [Shoves a chair by the stove.] You stay
where you are, Cobus. You have no doubt heard?----
JO. [Sobbing.] About Barend? Yes, but Geert! It happens so often that
they get off in row boats.
BOS. I can't give you that consolation. Not only was there a hatch,
but the corpse was in an extreme state of dissolution.
JO. [Anxiously.] Yes! Yes! But if it shouldn't be Barend. Who says
it was Barend?
BOS. Skipper Maatsuiker of the Expectation identified him, and the
earrings.
JO. Maatsuiker? Maatsuiker? And if--he should be mistaken----I've
come to ask you for money, Meneer, so I can go to the Helder myself.
BOS. Come, that's foolish!
JO. [Crying.] Barend must be buried any way.
BOS. The Burgomaster of Nieuwediep will take care of that----
[Enter Simon.]
SIMON. [Drunk.] I--I--heard----[Makes a strong gesture towards Bos.]
BOS. [Nervous vehemence.] Get out, you drunken sot!
SIMON. [Stammering.] I--I--won't murder you. I--I--have no evil
intentions----
BOS. [Trembling.] Send for a policeman, Kaps. Must that drunken
fellow----
SIMON. [Steadying himself by holding to the gate.] No--stay where
you are--I'm going--I--I--only wanted to say how nicely it came
out--with--with--The Good Hope.
BOS. You get out, immediately!
SIMON. Don't come so close to me--never come so close to a man with
a knife----No-o-o-o--I have no bad intentions. I only wanted to say,
that I warned you--when--she lay in the docks.
BOS. You lie, you rascal!
SIMON. Now just for the joke of it--you ask--ask--ask your bookkeeper
and your daughter--who were there----
BOS. [Vehemently.] That's a lie. You're not worth an answer, you sot! I
have nothing to do with you! My business is with your employer. Did
you understand me, Kaps?
SIMON. My employer--doesn't do the caulking himself. [To Kaps, who
has advanced to the gate.] Didn't I warn him?--wasn't you there?
KAPS. [Looking anxiously at Bos.] No, I wasn't there, and even if I
was, I didn't hear anything.
BOS. [To Clementine.] And now, you! Did that drunken sot----
CLEMENTINE. [Almost crying with anxiety.] Papa!
BOS. [Threatening.] As my daughter do you permit----[Grimly.] Answer
me!
CLEMENTINE. [Anxiously.] I don't remember----
SIMON. That's low--that's low--damned low! I said, the ship was
rotten--rotten----
BOS. A drunken man's stories. You're trying to drag in my bookkeeper
and daughter, and you hear----
COB. Yes, but--yes, but--now I remember also----
BOS. By thunder! you warned us too, eh?
COB. No, no, that would be lying. But your daughter--your daughter
says now that she hadn't heard the ship was rotten. And on the second
night of the storm, when she was alone with me at my sister Kneirtje's,
she did say that--that----
CLEMENTINE. [Trembling.] Did I--say----
COB. Yes, that you did! That very evening. These are my own words
to you: "Now you are fibbing, Miss; for if your father knew the Good
Hope was rotten"----
JO. [Springing up wildly, speaking with piercing distinctness.] You,
you lie! You began to cry. You were afraid ships would be lost. I
was there, and Truus was there, and----Oh, you adders!
BOS. [Banging his desk with his fist.] Adders? Adders? You scum! Who
gives you your feed, year in, year out? Haven't you decency enough to
believe us instead of that drunken beggar who reels as he stands there?
JO. [Raving with anger.] Believe you? You! She lies and you lie!
BOS. [Threatening.] Get out of my office!
JO. You had Barend dragged on board by the police; Geert was too
proud to be taken! Thief! thief! [Overwrought, hysterical laugh.] No,
no, you needn't point to your door! We are going. If I staid here
any longer I would spit in your face--spit in your face! [Makes
threatening gesture.]
COB. [Restraining her.] Come--come----
BOS. [After a silence.] For your Aunt's sake I will consider that you
are overwrought; otherwise--otherwise----The Good Hope was seaworthy,
was seaworthy! Have I no loss? Even if the ship was insured? And even
had the fellow warned me--which is a lie, could I, a business man,
take the word of a drunkard who can no longer get a job because he
is unable to handle tools?
SIMON. [Stammering.] I--I told you and him and her--that a floating
coffin like that. That stands fast!
JO. [Bursting out.] Oh! oh! Geert and Barend and Mees and the
others! Oh God, how could you allow it! [Sinks on the chair
sobbing.] Give me the money to go to Nieuwediep myself, then I won't
speak of it any more.
BOS. [Vindictively.] No! Not a red cent! A girl that talks to me as
rudely as you did----
JO. [Confused, crying.] I don't know what I said--and--and--I don't
believe that you--that you--that you would be worse than the devil.
BOS. The water-bailiff says that it isn't necessary to send any one
to Nieuwediep.
JO. [Staggering to the door.] Not necessary! Not necessary! What will
become of me now?----
[Cobus and Simon follow her out.]
[Bos walks back and forth. Kaps creeps up on his stool.]
BOS. [To Clementine.] And you--don't you ever dare to set foot again
in my office.
CLEMENTINE. [With a terrified look.] No, never again. [A long
pause.] Father, I ask myself [Bursts into sobs.] how I can ever again
respect you? Ever again respect myself? [Exits.]
BOS. Crazy! She would be capable of ruining my good name--with
her boarding-school whims. Who ever comes now you send away,
understand? Trash! Rabble! That whole set are no good! That damned
drunkard! That fellow that stinks of gin! [Sound of Jelle's fiddle
outside.] That too? [At the window.] Go on! No, not a cent! [The
music stops.] I am simply worn out. [Falls into his chair, takes
up Clementine's sketch book; spitefully turns the leaves; throws
it on the floor; stoops, jerks out a couple of leaves, tears them
up. Sits in thought a moment, then rings the telephone.] Hello! with
Dirksen--Dirksen, I say, the underwriter! [Waits, looking
sombre.] Hello! Are you there, Dirksen? It's all up with the
Good Hope. A hatch with my mark washed ashore and the body of a
sailor. [Changing to quarrelsome tone.] What do you say? I should
say not! No question of it! Sixty-two days! The probabilities are too
small. [Calmer.] Good! I shall wait for you here at my office. But be
quick about it! Yes, fourteen hundred guilders. Bejour. [Rings off;
at the last words Kneirtje has entered.]
KNEIRTJE. [Absently.] I----[She sinks on the bench, patiently weeping.]
BOS. [At the safe, without seeing her.] Have you mislaid the
policies? You never put a damn thing in its place.
KAPS. [Pointing from his stool.] The policies are higher, behind
the stocks.
BOS. [Snappishly.] All right, shut your mouth, now! [Turning around
with the policies in his hand.] Why don't you knock?
KNEIRTJE. I wanted to----
BOS. [Peevishly.] You've come five minutes too late. That hussy that
lives with you has been in here kicking up such a scandal that I came
near telephoning for the police. [Crossly.] Come in. Close the gate
after you.
KNEIRTJE. [Speaking with difficulty.] Is it true--is it true
that----The priest said----[Bos nods with a sombre expression.] Oh,
oh----[She stares helplessly, her arms hang limp.]
BOS. I have sympathy for you. I know you as a respectable woman--and
your husband too. But your children! I'm sorry to have to say it to you
now after such a blow, your children and that niece of yours have never
been any good. [Kneirtje's head sinks down.] How many years haven't
we had you around, until your son Geert threatened me with his fists,
mocked my grey hairs, and all but threw me out of your house--and your
other son----[Frightened.] Kneirtje! Kneirtje! [Rising.] Kaps! Water!
[Bathing her forehead and wrists.] I'll be damned! I'll be damned!
KAPS. Shall I call Mevrouw or your daughter?
BOS. No! Stay here! she's coming to. [Kneir. with long drawn out sobs,
sits looking before her with a dazed stare.]
KAPS. Kneir----
BOS. Keep still! Let her have her cry.
KNEIRTJE. [In an agonized voice, broken with sobs.] He didn't want
to go! He didn't want to go! And with my own hands I loosened his
fingers from the door post. [Moans softly.]
BOS. [In a muffled voice.] You have no cause to reproach yourself----
KNEIRTJE. [In the same voice as before.] Before he went I hung his
father's rings in his ears. Like--like a lamb to the slaughter----
BOS. Come----
KNEIRTJE. [Panting.] And my oldest boy that I didn't bid good
bye----"If you're too late"--these were his words--"I'll never look
at you again."--"Never look at you again!"
BOS. [Strongly moved.] Stop! in God's name, stop!----
KNEIRTJE. Twelve years ago--when the Clementine--I sat here as I am
now. [Sobs with her face between her trembling old hands.]
BOS. Come now, be strong.
[Mathilde enters.]
MATHILDE. Clemens! Ach, poor, dear Kneir, I am so sorry for you. It's
dreadful! It is frightful! Two sons!
KNEIRTJE. [Staring.] My husband and four sons----
MATHILDE. [Consoling.] But don't you worry. We have written an
appeal, the Burgomaster's wife and I, and it's going to be in all
the papers tomorrow. Here, Kaps----[Hands Kaps a sheet of paper which
he places on desk--Bos motions to her to go.] Let her wait a while,
Clemens. [Sweetly.] I have a couple of cold chops--that will brace
her up--and--and--let's make up with her. You have no objections
to her coming again to do the cleaning? We won't forget you, do you
hear? Good day, Kneir. Be brave. [Exits.]
BOS. No, we will not forget you.
KNEIRTJE. Now, my only hope is--my niece's child.
BOS. [Surprised.] A child?
KNEIRTJE. That misfortune is added. She is with child by my
son----[Softly smiling.] Misfortune? No, that isn't a misfortune
now----
BOS. And you sit and tell that? This immorality under your own
roof? Don't you know the rules of the fund, that no aid can be
extended to anyone leading an immoral life, or whose conduct does
not meet with our approval?
KNEIRTJE. [Submissive voice.] I leave it to the gentlemen
themselves--to do for me--the gentlemen----
BOS. It will be a tussle with the Committee--the committee of the
fund--your son had been in prison and sang revolutionary songs. And
your niece who----However, I will do my best. I shall recommend
you, but I can't promise anything. There are seven new families,
awaiting aid, sixteen new orphans. [Rising and closing the safe.] No,
sit awhile longer. My wife wants to give you something to take home
with you. [Exits.]
MATHILDE. [Invisible.] Kaps! Kaps! [The bookkeeper rises, disappears
for a moment, and returns with a dish and an enamelled pan.]
KAPS. [Kindly.] If you will return the dish when it's convenient,
and if you'll come again Saturday, to do the cleaning. [She stares
vacantly. He closes her nerveless hands about the dish and pan;
shuffles back to his stool. A silence. Kneirtje sits motionless,
in dazed agony; mumbles--moves her lips--rises with difficulty,
stumbles out of the office.]
KAPS. [Taking up sheet of paper from desk.] Appeal, for the
newspapers! [Smiling sardonically, he comes to the foreground; leaning
on Bos's desk, he reads.] "Benevolent Fellow Countrymen: Again we
urge upon your generosity an appeal in behalf of a number of destitute
widows and orphans. The lugger Good Hope----[As he continues reading.]
CURTAIN.
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