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At first it seemed to him as if he didn't quite know how to manage with the keg his mouth was so sore; but afterwards things went along smoothly enough. So they sat for some time pretty silently, and drank glass after glass, till Eilert began to think that they had had quite enough.
But the fact remains that it was I that upset them, I that had driven them away without their clothes; perhaps they had really expected some money to be sent here who knows? I got hold of Eilert. How big was the bill? What, was that all? "Good heavens! Here you are, here's your money; now row across to them at once with their clothes!"
Funny effect it has sometimes; Paul seemed to think the whole inn was an aquarium and we visitors the goldfish! "Ha, ha, ha, goldfish; I wish we were, I must say! Well, Eilert, are we getting some fresh haddock for supper? Good! Really, we like it here very much; we've already been here several days; we want to stay and get a good rest."
In the middle of a plain, which opened right before them at a turn of the road, stood a few houses together like a little town, and, a little further on, Eilert saw a church turned upside down, looking, with its long pointed tower, as if it were mirrored in the water.
There were lots of strangers present from the village, and so Eilert, lest folks should think that he and she were engaged, answered mockingly, so that every one could hear him, "that church-cleansing was perhaps a very good thing for Finnish sorcery," but she must find some one else to ferry her across. After that she never spoke to him at all, but Eilert was anything but happy in consequence.
In 'Hedda Gabler' as in the 'Enemy of the People' Ibsen gives up the Sophoclean form which was exactly appropriate for the theme of 'Ghosts. With admirable artistic instinct the playwright returns to the framework of the "well-made play" or at least to that modification of the Scribe formula which Augier and Dumas fils had devised for their own use. The action has not happened before the curtain rises on the first act; it takes place in the play itself, in front of the spectators, just as it does in the 'Demi-monde. The exposition is contained in the first act, clearly and completely; the characters are all set in motion before us, Hedda and her husband, Mrs. Elvsted and Eilert, and the sinister figure of Inspector Brack in the background. This first act, even to its note of interrogation hung in the air at the end, might have been constructed by Augier, just as the scene in the second act between Hedda and Brack recalls the manner of the younger Dumas, even in its lightness and its wit. Yet we may doubt whether any of the modern French playwrights could have lent the same curt significance to this commonplace interview between a married demi-vierge and an homme-
But it all proved in vain, for the strangers had gone; they had arrived just in time for the boat, and were aboard it at that very moment. Well, there was no help for it. "Here's their address," says Eilert. "We can send the clothes next Thursday; that's the next trip the boat goes south again." I took down the address, but I was most ungracious to Eilert.
At any rate it is now evident that I was right in suspecting Eilert, for I heard him going upstairs, and when I came in, he was turning out the bag and going through the clothes. "What are you doing?" I said. At first he tried to brazen it out. "Never you mind," he replied. But my knowing something about him was so much to my advantage that he soon drew in his horns.
How I wronged him, he complained, and exploited him: "You haven't bought these clothes," he said. "I could have got more for them if I'd sold them." He had been paid, but he still wanted more, like the stomach, which goes on digesting after death. That was Eilert. Yet he was not too bad; he had never been any better, and he certainly had grown no worse with his new livelihood.
But he carried his ill-will too far, and made a false step. He asked: "What shall we say your name was?" "No need to say anything at all," I answered. "A wandering Eilert Sundt?" he suggested. And I entered into the jest and answered: "Yes, why not?" But at that he fired up and snapped out sharply: "Then I'm sorry for Fru Sundt, that's all."
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