Kroll. Yes, and you ought to have taken that into consideration, if you had had any sympathy for him. But I dare say you were incapable of that sort of consideration. Your starting-point is so very widely-removed from his, you see.
Rebecca. What do you mean by my starting-point?
Kroll. I mean the starting-point of origin--of parentage, Miss West.
Rebecca. I see. Yes, it is quite true that my origin is very humble. But nevertheless--Kroll. I am not alluding to rank or position. I am thinking of the moral aspect of your origin.
Rebecca. Of my origin? In what respect?
Kroll. In respect of your birth generally.
Rebecca. What are you saying!
Kroll. I am only saying it because it explains the whole of your conduct.
Rebecca. I do not understand. Be so good as to tell me exactly what you mean.
Kroll. I really thought you did not need telling. Otherwise it would seem a very strange thing that you let yourself be adopted by Dr. West.
Rebecca (getting up). Oh, that is it! Now I understand.
Kroll. And took his name. Your mother's name was Gamvik.
Rebecca (crossing the room). My father's name was Gamvik, Mr.
Kroll.
Kroll. Your mother's occupation must, of course, have brought her continually into contact with the district physician.
Rebecca. You are quite right.
Kroll. And then he takes you to live with him, immediately upon your mother's death. He treats you harshly, and yet you stay with him. You know that he will not leave you a single penny--as a matter of fact you only got a box of books--and yet you endure living with him, put up with his behaviour, and nurse him to the end.
Rebecca (comes to the table and looks at him scornfully). And my doing all that makes it clear to you that there was something immoral--something criminal about my birth!
Kroll. What you did for him, I attributed to an unconscious filial instinct. And, as far as the rest of it goes, I consider that the whole of your conduct has been the outcome of your origin.
Rebecca (hotly). But there is not a single word of truth in what you say! And I can prove it! Dr. West had not come to Finmark when I was born.
Kroll. Excuse me, Miss West. He went there a year before you were born. I have ascertained that.
Rebecca. You are mistaken, I tell you! You are absolutely mistaken!
Kroll. You said here, the day before yesterday, that you were twenty-nine--going on for thirty.
Rebecca. Really? Did I say that?
Kroll. Yes, you did. And from that I can calculate--Rebecca. Stop! That will not help you to calculate. For, I may as well tell you at once, I am a year older than I give myself out to be.
Kroll (smiling incredulously). Really? That is something new. How is that?
Rebecca. When I had passed my twenty-fifth birthday, I thought Iwas getting altogether too old for an unmarried girl, so Iresolved to tell a lie and take a year off my age.
Kroll. You--an emancipated woman--cherishing prejudices as to the marriageable age!
Rebecca. I know it was a silly thing to do--and ridiculous, too.
But every one has some prejudice or another that they cannot get quite rid of. We are like that.
Kroll. Maybe. But my calculation may be quite correct, all the same; because Dr. West was up in Finmark for a flying visit the year before he was appointed.
Rebecca (impetuously). That is not true Kroll. Isn't it?
Rebecca. No. My mother never mentioned it.
Kroll. Didn't she, really!
Rebecca. No, never. Nor Dr. West, either. Never a word of it.
Kroll. Might that not be because they both had good reason to jump over a year?--@just as you have done yourself, Miss West?
Perhaps it is a family failing.
Rebecca (walking about, wringing her hands). It is impossible. It is only something you want to make me believe. Nothing in the world will make me believe it. It cannot be true! Nothing in the world--Kroll (getting up). But, my dear Miss West, why in Heaven's name do you take it in this way? You quite alarm me! What am I to believe and think?
Rebecca. Nothing. Neither believe nor think anything.
Kroll. Then you really must give me some explanation of your taking this matter--this possibility--so much to heart.
Rebecca (controlling herself). It is quite obvious, I should think, Mr. Kroll. I have no desire for people here to think me an illegitimate child.
Kroll. Quite so. Well, well, let us be content with your explanation, for the present. But you see that is another point on which you have cherished a certain prejudice.
Rebecca. Yes, that is quite true.
Kroll. And it seems to me that very much the same applies to most of this "emancipation" of yours, as you call it. Your reading has introduced you to a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions;you have made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in various directions--researches that seem to you to upset a good many ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and unassailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in your case, Miss West--a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got into your blood.
Rebecca (thoughtfully). Perhaps you are right.
Kroll. Yes, only test yourself, and you will see! And if it is true in your case, it is easy to recognise how true it must be in John Rosmer's. Of course it is madness, pure and ******. He will be running headlong to his ruin if he persists in coming openly forward and proclaiming himself an apostate! Just think of it--he, with his shy disposition! Think of HIM disowned--hounded out of the circle to which he has always belonged--exposed to the uncompromising attacks of all the best people in the place.
Nothing would ever make him the man to endure that.
Rebecca. He MUST endure it! It is too late now for him to draw back.
Kroll. Not a bit too late--not by any means too late. What has happened can be hushed up--or at any rate can be explained away as a purely temporary, though regrettable, aberration. But--there is one step that it is absolutely essential he should take.
Rebecca. And that is?
Kroll. You must get him to legalise his position, Miss West.
Rebecca. The position in which he stands to me?