John Gabriel Borkman Part 24

ELLA RENTHEIM.

All a woman's gladness at any rate. From the day when your image began to dwindle in my mind, I have lived my life as though under an eclipse. During all these years it has grown harder and harder for me--and at last utterly impossible--to love any living creature.

Human beings, animals, plants: I shrank from all--from all but one----

BORKMAN.

What one?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Erhart, of course.

BORKMAN.

Erhart?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Erhart--your son, Borkman.

BORKMAN.

Has he really been so close to your heart?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Why else should I have taken him to me, and kept him as long as ever I could? Why?

BORKMAN.

I thought it was out of pity, like all the rest that you did.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

[In strong inward emotion.] Pity! Ha, ha! I have never known pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If a poor starved child came into my kitchen, s.h.i.+vering, and crying, and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it.

I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert within me--and without me too!

BORKMAN.

Except only for Erhart.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Yes, except for your son. But I am hardened to every other living thing. You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness in life--and of a mother's sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.

BORKMAN.

Do you say that, Ella?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Who knows? It may be that a mother's sorrows and tears were what I needed most. [With still deeper emotion.] But at that time I could not resign myself to my loss; and that was why I took Erhart to me. I won him entirely. Won his whole, warm, trustful childish heart--until---- Oh!

BORKMAN.

Until what?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Until his mother--his mother in the flesh, I mean--took him from me again.

BORKMAN.

He had to leave you in any case; he had to come to town.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

[Wringing her hands.] Yes, but I cannot bear the solitude-- the emptiness! I cannot bear the loss of your son's heart!

BORKMAN.

[With an evil expression in his eyes.] H'm--I doubt whether you have lost it, Ella. Hearts are not so easily lost to a certain person--in the room below.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

I have lost Erhart here, and she has won him back again. Or if not she, some one else. That is plain enough in the letters he writes me from time to time.

BORKMAN.

Then it is to take him back with you that you have come here?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Yes, if only it were possible----!

BORKMAN.

It is possible enough, if you have set your heart upon it. For you have the first and strongest claims upon him.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Oh, claims, claims! What is the use of claims? If he is not mine of his own free will, he is not mine at all. And have him I must! I must have my boy's heart, whole and undivided--now!

BORKMAN.

You must remember that Erhart is well into his twenties. You could scarcely reckon on keeping his heart very long undivided, as you express it.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

[With a melancholy smile.] It would not need to be for so very long.

BORKMAN.

Indeed? I should have thought that when you want a thing, you want it to the end of your days.

ELLA RENTHEIM.

So I do. But that need not mean for very long.

BORKMAN.

[Taken aback.] What do you mean by that?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

I suppose you know I have been in bad health for many years past?

BORKMAN.

Have you?

ELLA RENTHEIM.

Do you not know that?

BORKMAN.

No, I cannot say I did----

ELLA RENTHEIM.