The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - LightNovelsOnl.com
You're reading novel online at LightNovelsOnl.com. Please use the follow button to get notifications about your favorite novels and its latest chapters so you can come back anytime and won't miss anything.
_In this room, which does not measure six feet from the dilapidated wooden floor to the smoke-blackened rafters, sit four people. Two young girls, EMMA and BERTHA BAUMERT, are working at their looms; MOTHER BAUMERT, a decrepit old woman, sits on a stool beside the bed, with a winding-wheel in front of her; her idiot son AUGUST sits on a foot-stool, also winding. He is twenty, has a small body and head, and long, spider-like legs and arms._
_Faint, rosy evening light makes its way through two small windows in the right wall, which have their broken panes pasted over with paper or stuffed with straw. It lights up the flaxen hair of the girls, which falls loose on their slender white necks and thin bare shoulders, and their coa.r.s.e chemises. These, with a short petticoat of the roughest linen, form their whole attire. The warm glow falls on the old woman's face, neck, and breast--a face worn away to a skeleton, with shrivelled skin and sunken eyes, red and watery with smoke, dust, and working by lamplight--a long goitre neck, wrinkled and sinewy--a hollow breast covered with faded, ragged shawls._
_Part of the right wall is also lighted up, with stove, stove-bench, bedstead, and one or two gaudily coloured sacred prints. On the stove rail rags are hanging to dry, and behind the stove is a collection of worthless lumber. On the bench stand some old pots and cooking utensils, and potato parings are laid out on it, on paper, to dry.
Hanks of yarn and reels hang from the rafters; baskets of bobbins stand beside the looms. In the back wall there is a low door without fastening. Beside it a bundle of willow wands is set up against the wall, and beyond them lie some damaged quarter-bushel baskets._
_The room is full of sound--the rhythmic thud of the looms, shaking floor and walls, the click and rattle of the shuttles pa.s.sing back and forward, and the steady whirr of the winding-wheels, like the hum of gigantic bees._
MOTHER BAUMERT
[_In a querulous, feeble voice, as the girls stop weaving and bend over their webs._] Got to make knots again already, have you?
EMMA
[_The elder of the two girls, about twenty-two, tying a broken thread_]
It's the plagueyest web, this!
BERTHA
[_Fifteen._] Yes, it's real bad yarn they've given us this time.
EMMA
What can have happened to father? He's been away since nine.
MOTHER BAUMERT
That he has! yes. Where in the wide world c'n he be?
BERTHA
Don't you worry yourself, mother.
MOTHER BAUMERT
I can't help it, Bertha la.s.s.
[_EMMA begins to weave again._
BERTHA
Stop a minute, Emma!
EMMA
What is it!
BERTHA
I thought I heard some one.
EMMA
It'll be Ansorge comin' home.
_Enter FRITZ, a little, barefooted, ragged boy of four._
FRITZ
[_Whimpering._] I'm hungry, mother.
EMMA
Wait, Fritzel, wait a bit! Gran'father'll be here very soon, an' he's bringin' bread along with him, an' coffee too.
FRITZ
But I'm awful hungry, mother.
EMMA
Be a good boy now, Fritz. Listen to what I'm tellin' you. He'll be here this minute. He's bringin' nice bread an' nice corn-coffee; an' when we stops workin' mother'll take the tater peelin's and carry them to the farmer, and the farmer'll give her a drop o' good b.u.t.termilk for her little boy.
FRITZ
Where's grandfather gone?
EMMA
To the manufacturer, Fritz, with a web.
FRITZ
To the manufacturer?
EMMA
Yes, yes, Fritz, down to Dreissiger's at Peterswaldau.
FRITZ
Is it there he gets the bread?
EMMA
Yes; Dreissiger gives him money, and then he buys the bread.
FRITZ
