The Complete Plays of J. M. Barrie - 30 Titles in One Edition. Джеймс Барри

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СКАЧАТЬ as — large. (Moves up and looks off.)

      COSENS. They are wonderfully large, but I shall keep this one until after dinner, it is so — large.

      PROFESSOR (feeling a vacuum). Miss Lucy has gone! (Looks for her.)

      (MISS GOODWILLIE signs hurriedly to COSENS to take him away, and goes.)

      COSENS (crossing to PROFESSOR and taking him by arm and dragging him across stage). Come along, Tom, and show me the sights. I’m burning to revisit them. The bridge and the kirk — and the kirk and the bridge. Is the village pump mended yet?

      PROFESSOR. But Miss White?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Oh, I want to talk with her.

      PROFESSOR. Good, very good. I am so glad you and she get on so well together, Agnes.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Don’t we?

      COSENS. Come, Tom.

      PROFESSOR. Dick, could you jump that stook?

      COSENS. Not I.

      PROFESSOR. Then look here. Hold my hat. (Hands hat to COSENS, throws rod and creel down, jumps over stook.) What do you think of that?

      COSENS. For a man with lumbago, capital.

      PROFESSOR. Look out! (Jumps back.)

      COSENS. Hang it, Tom, you seem to have put off the Professor since you came north, and to have become a boy again.

      PROFESSOR. That is so, Dick, and I can’t understand it. Very odd — very — it must be something in the air.

      (COSENS looks at MISS GOODWILLIE, who signs to him to take PROFESSOR away.)

      COSENS. Let us go.

      PROFESSOR. Yes.

      (Just as they are going LUCY’S voice is heard calling ‘Peep bo.’)

      PROFESSOR (going). You heard that. Where is Miss Lucy? Where can she be? I wonder where Miss Lucy is?

      (Jumps stook and exit, COSENS laughs.)

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Now you know the situation — and you seem to enjoy it more than I do.

      COSENS. YOU seem to like it so little that I wonder you have not ended it.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I wish I could, but I can’t send the woman away without telling Tom the reason, and then he is just as likely as not to propose to her.

      COSENS. Or would it frighten him out of his wits?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Who can say?

      COSENS. Do you want him always to remain a bachelor?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Till I can find the right woman for him.

      COSENS. Men are independent creatures, you know. Suppose Tom has found the right woman for himself.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Lucy White?

      COSENS. After all, you know nothing against her.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I wish I did.

      COSENS. Except that Tom loves her.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Loves her, bah!

      COSENS. How bitterly you speak of love.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Your old friend, Bob Sandeman, taught me what a man’s love amounts to, and I am not afraid to put an end to Tom’s.

      COSENS. Are you doing right?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I know what is best for Tom Goodwillie.

      COSENS. And I suppose no one can be expected to think of what might be best for Lucy White?

      (LUCY runs on in game.)

      Miss GOODWILLIE. Ah, Miss White, we were talking about you.

      LUCY. That must be why my ear was burning. And which of you thinks the worst of me?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I do.

      COSENS. Miss Goodwillie, come!

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I must speak, whatever happens. This girl shall be told what I think of her.

      LUCY. I know already.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. We were discussing your plot to marry my brother.

      COSENS. No, no!

      LUCY. Oh yes, I am sure it is true.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. I said that Tom is so simple that you may succeed. That you are a mere adventuress. That you obtained your position as his secretary merely with a desire to entrap him, and that you would stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, in order to do so.

      COSENS. Miss Goodwillie, you really go too far.

      LUCY (to MISS GOODWILLIE). Have you finished?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. For the present.

      LUCY. And you won’t withdraw those words?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. No!

      LUCY. I give you one last chance. (Takes stage.) You know that I have never encouraged the Professor. In your heart you are afraid that had I cared to do so, I could be engaged to him at this moment. You know that since I came here I have been treated as a pariah; yes, by all of you, from the Dowager, who patronises me, and your Lady Gilding and her husband, who call me by my surname, down to your brother, whose belief that no one could love Lucy White, even while he does it, is the greatest insult of all.

      COSENS (to miss goodwillie). Be just to her, my friend.

      LUCY. All this you know to be true, and still have you no pity for me nor for the position I am in through no fault of my own?

      MISS GOODWILLIE. None!

      LUCY. Very well, then I’ll have none for you. The great desire of your life has been to keep your brother single. To have no one come between his love for you and your selfish love for him, and I — I have respected that desire — but now I will do so no longer.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Hoity-toity, Miss. I am not afraid of you.

      COSENS. Miss White, I am not your enemy. If you tell me that you truly love Tom —

      LUCY. Would you believe my word?

      COSENS. I may be a fool but — yes, I would. Do you?

      LUCY (after hesitation). What has he done to deserve my love? (Exit.)

      COSENS. She does care for him. Miss Goodwillie, if you don’t mind I will beat a retreat to the cottage.

      MISS GOODWILLIE. Why?

      COSENS. For one reason, I see the СКАЧАТЬ