Exeunt ELSA and BRENTNALL. GRAINGER and his wife sit silent a while. They are afraid of each other.
GRAINGER: Will you go to London to Billy’s rooms?
ETHEL: Does he want us to?
GRAINGER: I suppose so.
Silence.
GRAINGER: Will you?
ETHEL: Do you want me to?
GRAINGER: You please yourself. I’m not coming to Wolverhampton.
ETHEL (trying not to cry): Well, we’ll go to London.
GRAINGER: It’s a damned mess.
ETHEL (crying): You’d better do just as you like, then, and I’ll go home.
GRAINGER: I didn’t mean that.
ETHEL (crying): I’ll go home.
GRAINGER: Don’t begin again, Ethel.
ETHEL: You hate the thought of being married to me. So you can be free of me.
GRAINGER: And what about the baby? Don’t talk rot, Ethel. (Puts his arm round her.)
ETHEL: You don’t care for that, either.
GRAINGER: Don’t I — you don’t know. They all make me look as black as I can —
ETHEL: Well, I don’t know.
GRAINGER: Yes they do — and they always have done. I never have had anybody to stick up for me. (Weeps a few tears.) I’ve had a rotten time, a rotten time.
ETHEL: And so have I.
GRAINGER: You don’t know what it is to be a man.
ETHEL: I know what it is to be your wife.
GRAINGER: Are you going to sling it in my teeth for ever?
ETHEL: No, I’m not. But what did you marry me for? (Cries.)
GRAINGER (embracing her): You’re the only girl I could have married, Ethel. I’ve been a rotter to you, I have.
ETHEL: Never mind, we shall get on together, we shall. Mind, somebody is coming.
A knock — enter MRS PLUM with the baby.
MRS PLUM: He wants you, the precious little lad, he does. Oh Dr Grainger, let me see you hold him! (Gives the baby to GRAINGER.)
Enter BRENTNALL.
BRENTNALL: That’s the way, George.
GRAINGER: Shut up, fool.
CURTAIN
THE FIGHT FOR BARBARA
A COMEDY IN FOUR ACTS
CONTENTS
CHARACTERS
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
CHARACTERS
FRANCESCA
WESSON
BARBARA
DR FREDERICK TRESSIDER
LADY CHARLCOTE
Scene: A Villa in Italy
ACT I
8.30 in the morning. The kitchen of an Italian villa — a big open fire-place of stone, with a little charcoal grate — fornello — on either side — cupboards, table, rush-bottom chairs with high backs — many bright copper pans of all sizes hanging up. The door-bell rings in the kitchen — rings hard — after a minute a door is heard to bang.
Enter WESSON, in dressing-gown and pyjamas: a young man of about twenty-six, with thick hair ruffled from sleep. He crosses and goes through door R. Sounds of voices. Re-enter WESSON, followed by Italian maid-servant, FRANCESCA, young, fair, pretty — wears a black lace scarf over her head. She carries a saucepan full of milk. On the table stand a soup-tureen and an enamel jug.
FRANCESCA: Questa? (Puts her hand on the jug.)
WESSON: No, in the other. (She pours the milk into the tureen.)
FRANCESCA (smiling): Abondante misura!
WESSON: What’s that? Come?
FRANCESCA: Abondante misura latte!
WESSON: Oh — full measure. Si! — running over!
FRANCESCA: Ranning ova. (Both laugh.)
WESSON: Right you are — you’re learning English.
FRANCESCA: Come?
WESSON: Vous apprenez anglais — voi — inglese!
FRANCESCA: O — non — niente inglese!
WESSON: Nothing English? Oh yes! Er — fa tempo cattivo!
FRANCESCA: Tempo cattivo — si.
WESSON: Rotten weather —
FRANCESCA: Come?
WESSON: It’s all the same. (She puts the lid on her saucepan and turns away.) Er — what day is it? — er — giorno che giorno?
FRANCESCA: Oggi? Domenica.
WESSON: Domenica! — dimanche — Sonntag — Sunday.
FRANCESCA: Come?
WESSON: Sunday!
FRANCESCA: Sendy!
WESSON: That’s it. (Both laugh — she blushes and turns away — bows.)
FRANCESCA: Buon giorno, Signore.
WESSON: Buon giorno.
Exit FRANCESCA R. He drinks some milk, wipes his mouth and begins to whistle: “Put me among the girls!” — takes some branches of olive and ilex from a box near the fire — puts them in the fireplace. As he is so doing, enter Left — BARBARA — age about twenty-six — fair — rather a fine young woman, holding her blue silk dressing-gown about her. She stands in the doorway L., holding up her finger.
BARBARA: Yes, you may well whistle that! I heard you, Giacometti.
WESSON (turning round): And did it fetch you out of bed?
BARBARA: Yes, it did. I heard your dulcet tones.
WESSON: They were no dulcetter than usual.
BARBARA: And, pray, what right had they to be as dulcet! — (draws herself up) — to a little servant-maid, indeed!
WESSON: She’s awfully nice, and quite a lady.
BARBARA: Yes — yes — I know you! She’s pretty, is she?
WESSON: Awfully pretty! (Lighting the heap of branches in the fire.) These matches are the stinking devil.
BARBARA: Aren’t they! I tried to light a cigarette with them, and I thought I should have died!
WESSON: You should have waited till the sulphur had burned away (laughing). And the pretty maid had got a mantilla on this morning.
BARBARA: Ah! I suppose the poor thing had been to church.
WESSON: It took my breath away when I opened the door, and I said “Oh!”
BARBARA: Giacomo!
WESSON: Do call me Jimmy — I hate to be Italianized! — and she blushed like fury.
BARBARA: Poor thing! Really, Giacometti, really, you are impossible.
WESSON: What for?
BARBARA: Fancy saying “Oh!” to the young maid! Remember, you’re a gentleman in her eyes.
WESSON: And what’s wrong with saying “Oh!” when she’s got a fascinating mantilla on? I can’t say delicate things in Italian — and — ”Oh!” — who can’t say “Oh!” — after all, what is there in it?
BARBARA: What could have been more expressive! Think of the poor thing, how embarrassed she must feel.
The fire blazes up in the big chimney.
Oh, how beautiful! Now that makes me perfectly happy. How gorgeous! How adorable! No, but, Wesson, I don’t like it.
WESSON: What’s that, the fire?
BARBARA: No, the little servant-maid. And you made her feel so uncomfortable.
WESSON: I didn’t.
BARBARA: You must have done! Think — to her, at any rate, you’re a gentleman.
WESSON: A thundering lot of a gentleman, when she finds me lighting the fire and grinding the coffee —
BARBARA: Yes, but no doubt she thinks that’s an eccentricity.
WESSON: There’s a lot of eccentricity about living on a hundred-and-twenty a year, the pair of us.
BARBARA: And you must remember how fearfully poor these Italians are —
WESSON: It’s enough for me how fearfully poor we are ourselves — you in your silk dressing-gown! It’ll be some time before you get such a one out of our purse.
BARBARA: Well, it doesn’t matter — you are a gentleman here. Look, this flat is quite grand.
WESSON: It will be when you have to clean it.
BARBARA: I don’t mind cleaning it; don’t be horrid! This adorable fire! But you won’t do it, will you?
WESSON: What?
BARBARA: Say “Oh!” to the little maid. It’s not nice, really.
WESSON: Well, you see, it popped
out when I saw the mantilla. I s’ll be used to it another time.
BARBARA: And you won’t say it?
WESSON: I won’t say “Oh!”; oh dear, oh no, never no more, I won’t. (Sings.)
BARBARA (kissing him): Dear!
WESSON (kissing her): What d’yer want?
BARBARA: I love you.
WESSON: So you ought.
BARBARA: Why ought I?
WESSON (at the fire): There you are, you see, that’s how to set a fornello going.
BARBARA (teasing): Oh — oh, is it? And now you’re going to make coffee l’ltalienne, aren’t you? Oh, you wonderful person!
WESSON: I am.
Gets the coffee-mill from cupboard — grinds coffee on the table, singing:
Johnny used to grind the coffee-mill,
Mix the sugar with the sand;
But he got run in and all through mixing
His master’s money with his own.
BARBARA: What is that beautiful and classic song?
WESSON sings it again.
BARBARA (laughing): Oh, you common, common brat! Anybody could tell your father was a coal-miner.
WESSON: A butty collier — and I wish yours had been ditto — you’d ha’ been more use. Think of me, Lord of Creation, getting the breakfast ready. (She takes his head between her hands, and ruffles his hair.) While you stand messing about.
BARBARA: Oh, your lovely hair! — it makes waves just like the Apollo Belvedere.
WESSON: And come again to-morrer.
BARBARA: Don’t — don’t laugh at yourself — or at me when I say it’s nice hair. It is, Giacomo, it’s really beautiful.
WESSON: I know; it’s the Apollo Belvedere, and my beautiful nose is Antinous, and my lovely chin is Endymion — clear out.
BARBARA: You are horrid to yourself! Why won’t you let me say you’re nice?
WESSON: Because the water’s boiling.
BARBARA: You’re not a bit nice.
WESSON: Mind! — my water’s boiling! (Breaks away — making coffee in a brass jug.) If this was Pimlico or Bloomsbury, and this was a London kitchen, you wouldn’t love me, would you?
BARBARA: If you could do anything so horrid as to stifle me in a poor part of London, I would not love you — I would hate you for ever. Think of me!
WESSON: But because we come careering to Italy, and the pans are of copper and brass, you adore me, don’t you?
BARBARA: Yes — on the whole.
WESSON: That is, for the first month or two. We’ve been here six weeks.
BARBARA: Think of it — Giacomo mio, it seems like six minutes — it frightens me.
WESSON (hesitating): It doesn’t seem three months since we left England, does it?
BARBARA: I can’t believe we’re here yet. Giacomo, Giacomo, why is it so new, every day? Giacomo, why is it always more? It’s always more, isn’t it?
WESSON (putting his arms round her): You’re a Judy! (Kisses her.)
BARBARA: Do you love me?
WESSON: Not a bit.
BARBARA: Not a teenty bit?
WESSON: Not a seroddy atom. (Laughs — tightens her in his arms — kisses her.)
BARBARA: You’re a common thing!
WESSON: Am I no gentleman, as Frederick said?
BARBARA: No, no one could ever accuse you of being a gentleman.
WESSON: Am I a lout?
BARBARA: Oh — did it call him a lout!
WESSON: Am I a clodhopper?
BARBARA: Now — that makes me happy! That Frederick should call you a clodhopper — no, that is too much joy!
WESSON: Have they called me any more names?
BARBARA: You forget the clumsy clown —
WESSON: That your papa would have kicked downstairs — think of the poor old winded baronet —
BARBARA: Who’s had his Selma all his life! And then says you’re a degraded scoundrel for running away with me.
WESSON: Yes — his rotten old cheek.
BARBARA: He’s a failure, too, you know — Papa’s a failure! Why are all people failures?
WESSON: Couldn’t say.
BARBARA: It’s because their women have been so rotten to them. Mama treated my father badly, she did, just because of his Selma.
WESSON: You’d let me have a Selma, wouldn’t you?
BARBARA: What! I’d show you — I’ll show you if you try any of your little games on me. But poor Papa — everything he has done has gone wrong — his money — he had no son —
WESSON: So there’ll be no fifth baronet — how sad — what an awful loss to society!
BARBARA: And here am I, his favourite daughter, have run away with the son of a coal-miner, from my good and loving husband.
WESSON: The right worthy Frederick Tressider, doctor of medicine. Gentleman of means. Worth a dozen of me.
BARBARA: Oh, how I hated his wooden face!
WESSON: Well, you knocked spots off it pretty roughly.
BARBARA: How common, how inexpressibly common your language is.
WESSON: There goes the milk. (Dashes to the fire.) Are you going to have bregger in the kitchen, or in the bedroom?
BARBARA: We’ll have it here for once. Should we — because of this lovely fire — put some more sticks on.
WESSON: Put ‘em on yourself — or, wait a minute — want eggs, or don’t you?
BARBARA: Yes, let’s have eggs.
WESSON: You’re a lazy little devil.
BARBARA: Think — think how I worked yesterday!
WESSON: Yes — it nearly killed you, didn’t it!
Silence for a moment.
BARBARA: Poor Frederick. He does love me! If I’d seen it before I’d left him — I don’t think I could have done it. Why did he always hide it from me?
WESSON: He didn’t. You merely never saw it.
BARBARA: Oh, but it never came out!
WESSON: What did you want him to do! He loved you right enough; you merely didn’t love him — and there it stands.
BARBARA: But — I knew he was in love with me — but — why could I never feel his love? Why could I never feel it warm me?
WESSON: Because you never wanted to. You were non-conductive to this particular form of love, that’s all.
BARBARA: Think, I was married to him for three years, and I was no nearer to him than I am to that fornello.
WESSON: Poor devil — it wasn’t his fault.
BARBARA: Yes, I have treated him badly.
WESSON: You might have done worse by staying with him.
BARBARA: But think — how he adored me! Why did it never seem anything to me, his love? But think, Giacomo, how he must suffer — such a highly esteemed man, and so proud and sensitive —
WESSON: And we’d only known each other three weeks.
BARBARA: Oh, Giacomo; it makes me tremble! Do you think we shall bring it off?
WESSON: We shall — if we make up our minds to. But if you keep footling with the idea of Frederick, and your people, and duty — then we shan’t.
BARBARA: But, Giacomo — they loved me so.
WESSON: So do I.
BARBARA: Yes, but they needed me more. And I belonged to them! And they say love wears off — and if it does!
WESSON: You were saying only a minute since it was always more.
BARBARA: Giacomo, I’m frightened.
WESSON: What of?
BARBARA: Of everything — and sometimes I wonder — don’t be cross if I say it, will you?
WESSON: Say what you like.
BARBARA: Sometimes I wonder — it seems horrid — I wonder if I can trust you.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 701
