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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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NORA Now I’m sure you’re dying of curiosity, ChristinaMRS. LINDEN Listen to me, Nora dear: haven’t you been a littlerash? NORA[Sitting upright again.] Is it rash to save one’s husband’slife? MRS. LINDEN I think it was rash of you, without his knowledgeNORA But it would have been fatal for him to know! Can’t you understand that? He wasn’t even to suspect how ill he was. The doctors came to me privately and told me his life was in dangerthat nothing could save him but a winter in the South. Do you think I didn’t try diplomacy first? I told him how I longed to have a trip abroad, like other young wives; I wept and prayed; I said he ought to think of my condition, and not to thwart me; and then I hinted that he could borrow the money. But then, Christina, he got almost angry. He said I was frivolous, and that it was his duty as a husband not to yield to my whims and fancies-so he called them. Very well, thought I, but saved you must be; and then I found the way to do it. MRS. LINDEN And did your husband never learn from your father that the money was not from him? NORA No; never. Papa died at that very time. I meant to have told him all about it, and begged him to say nothing. But he was so ill-unhappily, it wasn’t necessary. MRS. LINDEN And you have never confessed to your husband? NORA Good heavens! What can you be thinking of of? Tell him when he has such a loathing of debt And besides-how painful and humiliating it would he for Torvald, with his manly self- respect, to know that he owed anything to me! It would utterly upset the relation between us; our beautiful, happy home would never again be what it is. MRS. LINDEN Will you never tell him? NORA[Thoughtfully, half-smiling.] Yes, some time perhaps-many many years hence, when I’m-not so pretty. You mustn’t laugh at me! Of course I mean when Torvald is not so much in love with me as he is now; when it doesn’t amuse him any longer to see me dancing about, and dressing up and acting. Then it might be well to have something in reserve. [Breaking off.] Nonsense! nonsense! That time will never come. Now, what do you say to my grand secret, Christina? Am I fit for nothing now? You may believe it has cost me a lot of anxiety. It has been no joke to meet my engagements punctually. You must know, Christina, that in business there are things called instalments, and quarterly interest, that are terribly hard to provide for. So I’ve had to pinch a little here and there, wherever I could. I couldn’t save much out of the housekeeping, for of course Torvald had to live well. And I couldn’t let the children go about badly dressed; all I got for them, I spent on them, the blessed darlings! MRS. LINDEN Poor Nora! So it had to come out of your own pocket-money. NORA Yes, of course. After all, the whole thing was my doing. When Torvald gave me money for clothes, and so on, I never spent more than half of it; I always bought the simplest and cheapest things. It’s a mercy that everything suits me so well-Torvald never had any suspicions. But it was often very hard, Christina dear. For it’s nice to be beautifully dressed-now, isn’t it? MRS.LINDEN Indeed it is. |
