A stretch of open ground outside the main building, which lies to the right. One of its corners, including a flight of stone steps leading to the entrance door, projects out. Extending across the background near the edge of the open land, steep slopes covered with fir trees. To the left, scattered trees, the beginnings of a small woods. The snowstorm has ended, but the earth is deeply buried under the new-fallen snow. The fir branches hang heavy under its weight. The night is dark with scudding clouds. Occasionally a pale glimmer of the moon shines through. The surroundings are visible only in the faint light reflected by the snow.
BORKMAN, MRS. BORKMAN, and ELLA RENTHEIM are standing on the steps. BORKMAN leans wearily against the wall of the house. He has an old-fashioned cape thrown over his shoulders and holds a soft gray felt hat in one hand, a thick, gnarled walking stick in the other. ELLA carries her coat on her arm. MRS. BORKMAN’S large shawl has slipped down about her neck, leaving her hair uncovered.
ELLA (barring MRS. BORKMAN’S path). Don’t go after him, Gunhild!
MRS. BORKMAN (panic-stricken). Out of my way, you! He mustn’t leave me!
ELLA. I tell you, it’s totally useless! You’ll never catch up to him.
MRS. BORKMAN. I don’t care; let me go, Ella! I’ll scream after him down the road. He’s got to hear his mother’s cry!
ELLA. He can’t hear you. He’s already sitting in the sleigh—
MRS. BORKMAN. No, no—he couldn’t have reached the sleigh!
ELLA. He’s been in the sleigh for some time, believe me!
MRS. BORKMAN (in desperation). If he’s in the sleigh, then he’s sitting by her, by her—her!
BORKMAN (laughs darkly). Then he won’t likely hear his mother scream.
MRS. BORKMAN. No—then he won’t hear. (Listens.) Shh! What’s that?
ELLA (also listening). That sounds like sleigh bells—
MRS. BORKMAN (with a stifled moan). It’s her sleigh!
ELLA. It could be somebody else’s—
MRS. BORKMAN. No, no, it’s Mrs. Wilton’s sleigh! Those silver bells, I know them. Listen! Now they’re driving right past us—at the foot of the hill.
ELLA (hurriedly). Gunhild, if you want to call to him, do it now! Maybe he still might— (The sleigh bells sound close at hand within the woods.) Quick, Gunhild! They’re down there below us right now!
MRS. BORKMAN (stands indecisively a moment; then stiffens, hard and cold). No, I won’t cry after him. Let Erhart Borkman go from me—far, far off into what he now calls life and happiness.
(The sound fades in the distance.)
ELLA (after a moment). You can’t hear them anymore.
MRS. BORKMAN. To me they sounded like funeral bells.
BORKMAN (with dry, hushed laughter). Ah—they’re not ringing for me yet.
MRS. BORKMAN. But for me. And for him that left me.
ELLA (nodding pensively). Who knows, Gunhild—they could be ringing in life and happiness for him, after all.
MRS. BORKMAN (with a start; stares at her). Life and happiness—?
ELLA. For a brief while, anyway.
MRS. BORKMAN. Would you wish him life and happiness—with her?
ELLA (fervently). Yes, I would, from the bottom of my heart!
MRS. BORKMAN (coldly). You must be richer than I, then, in the power to love.
ELLA (looking far off). Maybe it’s lack of love that nourishes the power.
MRS. BORKMAN (fastens her eyes on her). If that’s so, Ella—then I’ll soon be as rich as you.
(She turns and goes into the house. ELLA stands a moment, looking with concern at BORKMAN; then she lays her hand lightly on his shoulder.)
ELLA. John, do come inside. You, too.
BORKMAN (as if awakening). I?
ELLA. Yes. You can’t take this raw winter air—you’re showing the cold, John. Come on now; go in with me. Inside, where it’s warm.
BORKMAN (angrily). You mean, up in that salon again?
ELLA. No, downstairs instead, with her.
BORKMAN (seething with rage). I’ll never set foot under that roof again.
ELLA. But where will you go then? It’s late in the night, John.
BORKMAN (puts on his hat). First of all, I want to go out and have a look at my buried treasures.
ELLA (regarding him anxiously). John—I don’t understand you!
BORKMAN (with a coughing laugh). Oh, I don’t mean any stowed-away embezzlings. Don’t worry about that, Ella. (Stops and points.) Look, a man, there! Who is it?
(VILHELM FOLDAL, in an old, snow-spattered greatcoat, with his hat-brim turned down and a large umbrella in his hand, appears, making his way with difficulty toward the corner of the house. He limps markedly on his left foot.)
BORKMAN. Vilhelm! What are you doing back here?
FOLDAL (looks up). Good Lord—you’re out on the steps, John Gabriel? (Bows.) And Mrs. Borkman, too, I see.
BORKMAN (curtly). This isn’t my wife.
FOLDAL. Oh, excuse me. The thing is, I lost my glasses in the snow. But what’s brought you, who never go out of doors—?
BORKMAN (with a careless gaiety). It’s about time I became an outdoorsman again, don’t you think? Nearly three years in detention; five years in the cell; eight years in that salon up there—
ELLA (with concern). John Gabriel—please—!
FOLDAL. Ah me, yes, yes—
BORKMAN. But what do you want of me?
FOLDAL (remains standing at the foot of the steps). I wanted to see you, John Gabriel. I felt I had to come up and see you in the salon. Dear me, that salon—!
BORKMAN. Wanted to see me, after I showed you the door?
FOLDAL. Good Lord, that’s not important.
BORKMAN. What did you do to your foot? You were limping.
FOLDAL. Yes, you know what—I was run over.
ELLA. Run over!
BORKMAN. Aha!
FOLDAL. With two horses. They came sweeping down the hill. I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and so—
ELLA. So they ran over you.
FOLDAL. They bore right down on me, Mrs.—or Miss. Right down on me, so that I rolled in the snow and lost my glasses and got my umbrella broken— (Rubs his leg.) —and injured my foot a bit, too.
BORKMAN (laughs silently). You know who was in that sleigh, Vilhelm?
FOLDAL. No, how could I see? It was a closed sleigh, and the curtains were drawn. And the coachman didn’t slow one iota when I went spinning. But what’s the difference, because— (Impulsively.) Oh, I’m so wonderfully happy!
BORKMAN. Happy?
FOLDAL. Well, I really don’t know what to call it. But the nearest word for it is happy. Because something so extraordinary has happened! And that’s why I couldn’t resist—why I simply had to come back and share my joy with you, John Gabriel.
BORKMAN (gruffly). Well, let’s have my share, then.
ELLA. Invite your friend in with you first, John Gabriel.
BORKMAN (adamantly). I told you, I’m not going into that house.
ELLA. But you heard that he’s been run over!
BORKMAN. Oh, we all get run over—sometime in life. But then you have to pick yourself up. And pretend it was nothing.
FOLDAL. Those were deep words, John Gabriel. But I can just as well tell you quickly out here.
BORKMAN (more gently). Yes, if you’d be so kind, Vilhelm.
FOLDAL. Well, listen to this! When I got home this evening from your place—would you believe it?—I found a letter. Can you guess who it was from?
BORKMAN. From your little Frida perhaps?
FOLDAL. Exactly! To think, you guessed it right off! Yes, it was a long—a fairly long letter from Frida. A servant had brought it. And can you imagine what she wrote?
BORKMAN. Was it possibly a farewell message to her parents?
FOLDAL. Precisely! It’s incredible the way you can guess, John Gabriel! Yes, she wrote that Mrs. Wilton had taken such a great liking for her. And now she wants to travel abroad with her. So Frida can study more music, she writes. And Mrs. Wilton’s arranged for a highly capable tutor to go along to give Frida private instruction. Because, unfortunately, she’s fallen behind a bit in some of her subjects, you see.
BORKMAN (shaking with silent laughter). Why, yes, yes, I see the whole thing amazingly well.
FOLDAL (continues enthusiastically). And just think, she only found out about the trip this evening. That was at the party that you know—uh, hm! And still she took time to write. And the letter’s so warm and so beautiful and so heartfelt; it really is. Not a trace of contempt for her father. And what a thoughtful gesture, her wanting to say good-bye to us in writing—before she went. (Laughs.) But we can’t have anything like that!
BORKMAN (looks inquiringly at him). Like what?
FOLDAL. She writes that they’re leaving tomorrow, quite early.
BORKMAN. I see, I see—tomorrow. She writes that?
FOLDAL (laughs and rubs his hands). Yes, but I’m the sly one, see! I’m on my way right now to Mrs. Wilton’s—
BORKMAN. Tonight?
FOLDAL. My goodness, yes. It still isn’t so very late. And if the house is dark, I’ll ring. Without hesitation. For I will and I must see Frida before she leaves. Good night, good night! (He starts off.)
BORKMAN. Vilhelm, listen—you can save yourself that hard piece of road.
FOLDAL. Oh, you mean my foot—
BORKMAN. Yes, and you’ll never get in anyway at Mrs. Wilton’s.
FOLDAL. Oh, I will definitely. I’ll keep on ringing and ringing till somebody comes and opens up. Because I simply have to see Frida.
ELLA. Your daughter’s already left, Mr. Foldal.
FOLDAL (thunderstruck). Frida’s left, already! Are you positive? Who told you that?
BORKMAN. Her future tutor.
FOLDAL. Oh? And who’s he?
BORKMAN. A student named Erhart Borkman.
FOLDAL (radiant with delight). Your son, John Gabriel! Is he going with them?
BORKMAN. That’s right. He’s the one who’ll help Mrs. Wilton with your little Frida’s education.
FOLDAL. Well, thank God! Then the child’s in the best of hands. But is it really for certain that they’ve left already with her?
BORKMAN. They drove off in the sleigh that ran you down.
FOLDAL (clasps his hands). Imagine, my little Frida in that elegant sleigh!
BORKMAN (nods). Oh yes, Vilhelm—your daughter’s riding high these days. And my son Erhart????. Did you notice those silver bells?
FOLDAL. Well, now—silver bells, you say. Were they silver bells? Genuine, solid silver?
BORKMAN. You can bet your life they were. Everything was solid. Both outside and—and in.
FOLDAL (with quiet feeling). Isn’t it curious, the way good fortune can unfold for a person? It’s my—my frail talent for poetry that’s transformed itself to music in Frida. So really, it hasn’t come to nothing that I’ve been a poet. For now she has her chance to go out in the great, wide world that I once dreamed so hopefully of seeing. Little Frida, riding in a closed sleigh. And with silver bells on the harness—
BORKMAN. And riding down her father—
FOLDAL (joyously). Oh, now! What’s that to me—as long as the child—Well, so I did come too late, after all. I’d better go home then and comfort her mother, who’s sitting in the kitchen, crying.
BORKMAN. She’s crying?
FOLDAL. Yes, can you imagine? She was crying as if her heart would break when I left.
BORKMAN. And you laugh, Vilhelm.
FOLDAL. Quite so, I do! But she, poor thing, she doesn’t know any better, you see. Well, good-bye. It’s lucky I have the streetcar so near. Good-bye, good-bye, John Gabriel! Good-bye, miss! (He bows and hobbles back the same way he came.)
BORKMAN (stands silently a moment, gazing into space). Good-bye, Vilhelm! It’s not the first time in life you’ve been run over, old friend.
ELLA (looks at him with suppressed anxiety). You’re so pale, so pale, John—
BORKMAN. That’s from the prison air upstairs.
ELLA. I’ve never seen you like this before.
BORKMAN. Probably because you’ve never seen an escaped convict before.
ELLA. Oh, please, John, come in with me now!
BORKMAN. You can drop the cajoling voice. I’ve already told you—
(The MAID appears out on the steps.)
MAID. Begging your pardon, but Madam has said I should lock up the front door now.
BORKMAN (in an undertone to ELLA). Hear that! Now they want to lock me in again.
ELLA (to the MAID). The master isn’t too well. He’d like a little fresh air first.
MAID. Yes, but Madam said to me herself—
ELLA. I’ll lock up the door. Just leave the key in it—
MAID. Oh, all right then; that’s what I’ll do. (She goes back into the house.)
BORKMAN (stands quietly a moment, listening, then goes hurriedly down onto the open ground). Now I’m outside the walls, Ella. They’ll never get me again!
ELLA (going down beside him). But you’re a free man in there, too, John. You can come and go as you will.
BORKMAN (hushed, as if in fright). Under a roof for the last time! It’s so good being out here in the night. If I went up in the salon now, the ceiling and walls would close in and crush me—grind me flat as a fly—
ELLA. But where will you go?
BORKMAN. Just walk and walk and walk. See if I can win my way through to freedom, and life, and people again. Will you go with me, Ella?
ELLA. I? Now?
BORKMAN. Yes, yes—at once!
ELLA. But how far?
BORKMAN. As far as I can manage.
ELLA. Oh, but what are you thinking! Out in this wet, cold winter night—
BORKMAN (in a hoarse, rasping voice). Aha—the lady’s worried about her health? Yes, of course—it is fragile.
ELLA. It’s your health I’m worried about.
BORKMAN (with a laugh). A dead man’s health! I have to laugh at you, Ella! (He walks farther on.)
ELLA (follows him and holds him back). What did you say you were?
BORKMAN. I said, a dead man. Don’t you remember Gunhild telling me to rest quietly where I lay?
ELLA (decisively, throwing her coat about her). I’ll go with you, John.
BORKMAN. Yes, we two, we really belong together, Ella. (Proceeds farther.) Come on!
(Little by little they enter the low trees to the left, which increasingly conceal them until they disappear from sight. The house and the open land are lost to view. The landscape, with its slopes and ridges, alters slowly and becomes wilder and wilder.)
ELLA’S VOICE (heard from within the trees, right). Where are we going, John? I don’t know where this is.
BORKMAN’S VOICE (higher up). Keep following my footprints in the snow.
ELLA’S VOICE. But why do we need to climb so high?
BORKMAN’S VOICE (nearer). We have to go up the winding path.
ELLA (still hidden). Oh, I’m not good for much more.
BORKMAN (at the edge of the forest, right). Come on! We’re not far now from the view. There used to be a bench here once—
ELLA (becoming visible through the trees). You remember that?
BORKMAN. You can rest yourself there.
(They have emerged in a small clearing, high in the woods. The slope rises sharply behind them. To the left, far below, is an expansive landscape, with fjords and high, distant mountain ranges towering one after another. In the clearing at the left is a dead fir-tree, with a bench beneath it. The snow lies deep on the ground. BORKMAN and, behind him, ELLA struggle across from the right through the snow.)
BORKMAN (stops where the clearing falls off at the left). Come here, Ella, so you can see.
ELLA (joining him). What do you want to show me, John?
BORKMAN (pointing out). You see how the land lies before us, free and open—all the way out.
ELLA. We often used to sit on that bench—and look even farther still.
BORKMAN. It was a dreamland we were seeing then.
ELLA. The dreamland of our lives, yes. And now it’s a land of snow. And the old tree is dead.
BORKMAN (not hearing her). Can you see the smoke from the great steamers out on the fjord?
ELLA. No.
BORKMAN. I can. They come and they go. They make this whole round earth into one community. They spread light and warmth into human hearts in countless thousands of homes. That’s the thing I dreamed of doing.
ELLA (softly). And it stayed a dream.
BORKMAN. It stayed a dream, yes. (Listening.) Hear that? Down by the river, the factories whirring! My factories! All the ones I would have built! Can you hear how they’re going? It’s the night shift. Night and day they’re working. Listen, listen! The wheels are spinning, and the gears are gleaming—around and around! Don’t you hear them, Ella?
ELLA. No.
BORKMAN. I hear them.
ELLA (fearfully). I think you’re mistaken, John.
BORKMAN (more and more exhilarated). Oh, but all this—it’s only a kind of outworks enclosing the kingdom, you know!
ELLA. The kingdom? What kingdom?
BORKMAN. My kingdom, of course! The kingdom I was on the verge of possessing when I—when I died.
ELLA (quietly shaken). Oh, John, John!
BORKMAN. And now it lies there—defenseless, leaderless—exposed to the rape and plunder of thieves—! Ella! Do you see those mountain ranges there—far off. One after another. They leap skyward. They tower in space. That’s my deep, my endless, inexhaustible kingdom!
ELLA. Yes, but John, the wind blows ice-cold from that kingdom!
BORKMAN. That wind works on me like the breath of life. It comes to me like a greeting from captive spirits. I can sense them, the buried millions. I feel the veins of metal, reaching their curving, branching, beckoning arms out to me. I saw them before me like living shadows—the night I stood in the bank vault with a lantern in my hand. You wanted your freedom then—and I tried to set you free. But I lacked the strength for it. Your treasures sank back in the depths. (His hands outstretched.) But I’ll whisper to you here in the silence of the night. I love you, lying there unconscious in the depths and the darkness! I love you, your riches straining to be born—with all your shining aura of power and glory! I love you, love you, love you!
ELLA (with constrained but mounting agitation). Yes, your love is still down there, John. That’s where it’s always been. But up here in the daylight—here there was a warm, living human heart that beat for you. And this heart you crushed. Oh, more than that! Ten times worse! You sold it for—for—
BORKMAN (a cold tremor seems to go through him). For the kingdom—and the power—and the glory—you mean?
ELLA. Yes, it’s what I mean. I said it once before to you this evening: you’ve murdered the capacity to love in the woman that loved you. And that you loved in return—as far as you could love anyone. (Her arm upraised.) And so I prophesy this for you, John Gabriel Borkman—you’ll never win the prize you murdered for. You’ll never ride in triumph into your cold, dark kingdom!
BORKMAN (falters over to the bench and sinks down heavily). I’m almost afraid your prophecy is right, Ella.
ELLA (over beside him). It’s nothing to be afraid of, John. It would be exactly the best that could ever happen to you.
BORKMAN (with a cry, clutches his chest). Ah—! (Faintly.) There it let me go.
ELLA (shaking him). What was it, John?
BORKMAN (slumps against the back of the bench). A hand of ice—that choked my heart.
ELLA. John! Now you feel it, the ice hand!
BORKMAN (murmurs). No—no ice hand. It was a hand of metal. (He slides down upon the bench.)
ELLA (tearing her coat off and spreading it over him). Lie still and rest quietly! I’ll go for help. (She moves several steps to the right, then stops, returns, and feels his pulse and his face for a long moment.) No. It’s best, John Borkman. Best like this for you. (She tucks the coat more tightly around him and sits down in the snow in front of the bench.)
(After a short silence, MRS. BORKMAN, wrapped in her overcoat, comes through the snow from the right. The MAID goes ahead of her with a lit lantern.)
MAID (shining the light on the snow). Oh, yes, ma’am. It’s their footprints here—
MRS. BORKMAN (peering about). Yes, there they are! Over there on the bench. (Calls.) Ella!
ELLA (getting up). Are you searching for us?
MRS. BORKMAN (acidly). Yes, I thought I’d better.
ELLA (pointing). See, there he lies, Gunhild.
MRS. BORKMAN. Sleeping!
ELLA (nods). A deep sleep and a long one, I think.
MRS. BORKMAN (in an outburst). Ella! (Controls herself and asks in a whisper.) Did it happen—deliberately?
MRS. BORKMAN (relieved). Not by his own hand, then?
ELLA. No. It was a freezing hand of metal that seized his heart.
MRS. BORKMAN (to the MAID). Get some help. Some people from the farm.
MAID. Yes, of course, ma’am. (Softly.) In Jesus’ name— (She goes off through the trees to the right.)
MRS. BORKMAN (standing behind the bench). Then the night air killed him—
ELLA. I suppose so.
MRS. BORKMAN. He, that strong man.
ELLA (moving in front of the bench). Won’t you look at him, Gunhild?
MRS. BORKMAN (with a gesture of aversion). No. no, no. (Lowers her voice.) He was a miner’s son—Borkman, the bank president. He couldn’t survive in the fresh air.
ELLA. It was more probably the cold that killed him.
MRS. BORKMAN (shaking her head). You say, the cold? The cold—that killed him a long time back.
ELLA (nodding to her). And turned the two of us into shadows.
MRS. BORKMAN. You’re right about that.
ELLA (with a painful smile). A dead man and two shadows—that’s what the cold has made.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, a coldness in the heart. And so, at last, we two might reach our hands out to each other.
ELLA. Now I think we can.
MRS. BORKMAN. We two twin sisters—over him we both once loved.
ELLA. We two shadows—over the dead man.
(MRS. BORKMAN, behind the bench, and ELLA RENTHEIM, in front of it, reach across and take each other’s hands.)