Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY (on deck). Ah! (Gives him money.) You can drink the Colonel’s health with that.

  BEN. And the young lady’s. The young lady’s health, ma’am, coupled with the name of her preserver — her preserver!

  (Exit BEN in punt.)

  JASPER (aside). An impudent fellow!

  (PENNY enters on deck with dishes, W. G. follows with tea and coffee. They place them on table, penny rings bell and exits.)

  W. G. Breakfast! Come on, everybody! (Takes seat at table.)

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Come, Colonel! (Takes head of table.)

  (Cuckoo once.)

  JASPER (stumbles at stern). Confound the cuckoo!

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. You are more exhausted than you said!

  (Enter BELL with ANDREW.)

  JASPER. It is only a dizziness I am subject to.

  BELL. Lean on me — do. (Takes his arm. To ANDREW, who enters saloon) How forgetful of us. You are wet!

  JASPER. It is nothing.

  ANDREW. Come to my bunk, and I’ll give you some dry things, Colonel. (Exit.)

  (BELL goes up ladder to deck, JASPER stands at window with a grin.)

  NANNY. He is middle-aged, but delightful!

  BELL. Not handsome exactly, but how modest!

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Perhaps a little wanting in polish —

  NANNY. Because he is no mere Piccadilly lounger, W. G. I bet he has shot lions!

  BELL. He is a hero!

  ALL. Yes, yes.

  JASPER. Oh, this is better than the shop! If I don’t spend all my honeymoon in this houseboat, my name isn’t Jasper Phipps — I mean, Colonel Neil —

  (SARAH comes along bank walking slowly, and in passing looks in at saloon window but none of them see her. JASPER sees her, gasps, and ducks head. She goes off. He looks after her in horror.)

  JASPER. Sarah! (With trembling hand he pulls down blind.)

  Oh, Jerusalem!

  ACT II

  THE houseboat at midday. There is a broiling sun. Jasper is lying in the hammock telling African stories. Bell is holding up sunshade to protect him. Nanny is fanning him. Mrs. Golightly sits at window knitting. Penny is listening at door. On deck Andrew is gazing at towpath through a telescope and W. G. is practising cricket, the ball being suspended on a rope, hanging from a sort of crane. The punt is on.

  NANNY (breathlessly). And you killed him?

  JASPER. Yes, it was my life or theirs. They leapt upon me, brandishing their spears, but I lifted the chief in my arms and flung him with such force against his two warriors that all three were hurled over the precipice.

  PENNY. Oh my!

  BELL. And then you ran away?

  JASPER (calmly). Ran! No! I walked away, turning round every now and again to shoot another through the heart.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. How brave!

  JASPER. It was nothing.

  PENNY (aside). He is a Nero. Haitch He Har Ho Nero.

  (Exits.)

  ANDREW (looking over). Miss O’Brien, the telegram with the result of my exams, may come at any moment now. Do you think I have passed?

  NANNY. Bother! Don’t you see I am fanning the dear Colonel?

  ANDREW. What do you think, Miss Golightly?

  BELL. I am busy, Mr. McPhail.

  ANDREW. What do you think, Mrs. Golightly?

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. Tell us about Lake Nyanza, Colonel.

  ANDREW (to w g.). W. G., the women can do nothing but gape over Neil’s adventures. He has been here nearly a week now, and what good has he done me, except that I have to sleep on a shakedown in the saloon, while he gets the best bedroom?

  W. G. Isn’t this a tip-top idea for practising batting?

  (Hits.) I say, I saw the Colonel spooning Nanny last night!

  ANDREW. No, no — it was your sister — I saw him too.

  W. G. About eight o’clock?

  ANDREW. It was nearer nine, W. G. Eight.

  ANDREW. Nine. I thought he had his arm round her.

  W. G. He has to do that, he says, when one of his dizzy fits comes on.

  ANDREW. Hum! (Continues to look through glass, and W. G.

  BATS.)

  NANNY. Of course you travelled with a caravan?

  JASPER. A caravan? Not in Africa!

  (PENNY listens again.)

  BELL. But I thought all explorers did?

  JASPER. They do — yes, in a sense.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. What is a caravan like, exactly?

  JASPER. Hum — ah — well, a covered-in van, you know, with brooms and baskets all over it and with two horses.

  BELL. I thought it meant the porters.

  JASPER. Yes, they march behind, except when they are in front, then of course they are not behind.

  (W. G. listens on deck.)

  NANNY. And is it true that the ladies dress — ah — lightly?

  JASPER. Mostly in telegraph wires —

  NANNY. What is the costume?

  JASPER. Oh, it’s nothing, W. G. Fancy?

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. NO, you mustn’t.

  (W. G. goes back and sits.)

  BELL. After all, these people are human beings — very like ourselves.

  NANNY. But, Bell, the women are sold to their husbands.

  BELL. So are most of our women, and they make willing slaves.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. But the native husbands are such bullies.

  BELL. So are all men naturally.

  NANNY. Yes, what a pity that all nice men are so nasty.

  BELL. Show me a man, be he African or English, and I will show you a born bully.

  PENNY (aside). She is a-hitting at Mr. Upjohn.

  JASPER. It’s just the same, all the world over, the men run after the women — and the women run after the men. Oh, yes they do, I’ve done it myself.

  (Exit PENNY.)

  W. G. I say, McPhail, wasn’t it clever of me to rig this up myself? I can do a lot of things on it. It is a way of getting into the punt, too. Look here, you hold this end, and I’ll show how it’s done.

  (ANDREW rises, holds end and W. G. clings to ball.)

  Mater, hi — all of you look!

  (They turn round, look up W. G. is lowered to punt.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY utters cries of fear, and coming out on plank.)

  That’s a handy way of getting into the punt, isn’t it? (Boards and returns to deck.)

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. I forbid you to do that again, you rash boy. You might have fallen into the river. (Goes back.)

  JASPER. It is nothing.

  W. G. Come up and let them see you do it, Colonel.

  JASPER. Not just now, W. G., too comfortable where I am.

  W. G. Well, don’t forget any of you that we start for the cricket match, men versus girls, in half an hour.

  ANDREW. I won’t leave the houseboat till my telegram arrives.

  W. G. You must play.

  ANDREW. Do you think I have passed, W. G.?

  W. G. No. (ANDREW looks through glass, W. G. tries to balance bat on his nose.)

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Who was the soldier that said the most dangerous thing he ever did was to cross Piccadilly Circus?

  BELL. That was nothing to Colonel Neil swimming the Congo with his hands tied.

  JASPER. Yes, I did swim the Congo with my hands tied. A trifle!

  BELL. Nor to his shooting the gorilla.

  JASPER. Pooh! When you meet a gorilla, what can you do? There’s the gorilla, and there you are — and — and — and there it is.

  NANNY. Nor to his march through the forest of the dwarfs.

  JASPER. My duty. Oh, I shot an elephant once! Oh yes, I did! I met the elephant in a forest, and I had an air gun with me, and I shot it. You can’t shoot without a gun in Africa. You would have been surprised if you had seen the birds, the way they came down and pecked it. Hundreds of them!

  BELL. What kind of birds?

  JASPER. Oh, there were eagles and snipe — vultures, sparrows, canaries, turkeys and bull-rushes, the oof bird — they ate that elephant up
and left nothing but the trunk.

  NANNY. And what did you do with the trunk?

  JASPER. Oh, I had it packed up. No, no, I had the trunk made into a portmanteau.

  NANNY. Did you meet any lions?

  JASPER. I wrestled with a lion and sent a graphic account to the papers.

  BELL. And then you saved me!

  JASPER. That was nothing.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Strange that your experiences of the dwarfs should be so like Mr. Stanley’s.

  BELL. And that you shot the gorilla just as De Rougemont did.

  JASPER. Yes, you see — there is only one way of doing these things. But, Mrs. Golightly, it sounds like boasting to be always talking of myself. Where have you been?

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY (at window). Never further than the Continent. I knitted half a muffler going up the Rigi — or was it in Notre-Dame? Then I began a worsted waistcoat for W. G. in the Kremlin, added to it in Cologne Cathedral, the Colosseum, the Acropolis, and elsewhere, and finished it, I remember, in the Alhambra.

  JASPER. The Alhambra?

  BELL. Yes, I was with mother.

  JASPER. YOU?

  BELL. And I should like to live near it, so that I could go daily.

  JASPER. What?

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. The Alhambra is in Spain, you know.

  JASPER. Oh, I thought you meant — oh!

  (ANDREW comes down ladder into saloon.)

  NANNY. NO sign of Ben with the telegram, Mr. McPhail?

  ANDREW. None.

  (MCPHAIL goes into saloon and reads book. The cuckoo is heard once, JASPER goes on bank.)

  BELL (following). You are feeling dizzy again, Colonel?

  JASPER. Just a little.

  W. G. Come up, Bell, and see me swiping.

  (Cuckoo is heard three times, JASPER goes on plank and then into saloon.)

  NANNY. Listen to that cuckoo.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Yes, we never heard it till you came to us, Colonel, and now we hear it a dozen times a day.

  (Exit JASPER, retires to bedroom, BELL goes on deck.

  ANDREW is watching bank in punt W. G. is on deck, MRS. GOLIGHTLY and NANNY at stern.)

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. (Looks after JASPER.) How interesting a clever man is.

  NANNY. Yes, and even if he isn’t clever.

  (MRS. GOLIGHTLY knits. Cuckoo is heard again.)

  JASPER (pulling up bedroom blind). Damn that cuckoo — it makes me nervous, I’ll get up early tomorrow and shoot it.

  (He suspends little mirror at window and proceeds to brush his hair.)

  W. G. Bell, I would rather take three wickets in an over than be Shakespeare and Homer and all these swells put together. I say, what’s the matter with you? You haven’t sneered at me for nearly a week — not since Upjohn went away.

  BELL. Mr. Upjohn! I told you, W. G., that I dislike the very mention of his name — he has not even written! I dare say he has forgotten me already, W. G. I dare say!

  BELL. W. G.

  JASPER (leaning out). If I’m not Colonel Neil, I’m the next thing to it, for I’ve shampooed him, and I’m very like him, and that was what made me think of being him. It ‘s only for a week and I’m doing no harm, and I am enjoying myself.

  W. G. You must have riled him by saying women are the equals of men, and all that rot!

  BELL. It isn’t rot!

  W. G. It is tommy-rot!

  JASPER. I wish they wouldn’t ask so many questions about Africa, though. Good thing I read up the African books before I started on my honeymoon.

  W. G. Don’t women’s brains weigh less than men’s?

  BELL. Don’t sixpences weigh less than pennies?

  JASPER. What I miss here is the hair oil.

  W. G. How can you be a man’s equal when you can’t even find the pocket of your dress?

  BELL. I can — usually.

  JASPER. It’s a funny thing, but I’m beginning to feel as if I had saved her life. I like that girl. Fancy her being at the Alhambra, though — even though it was a Spanish one.

  W. G. Look here, are you in thingummy with Upjohn?

  BELL. Hush, dear.

  W. G. Dear! You wouldn’t call me that unless you were in what’s its name.

  JASPER. I like the other one too.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY (in low voice and looking at NANNY). Nanny, (Signs) has Mr. McPhail spoken to you yet? You know what I mean.

  NANNY. I wouldn’t let him, but some other body very nearly has. (Whispers.)

  W. G. If it isn’t Upjohn, it’s Neil.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. The Colonel. (She nods.) Well!

  (They whisper.)

  BELL. I am not in love with Colonel Neil.

  W. G. Is he with you?

  BELL. Yes.

  W. G. Balbus!

  NANNY. Yes, Auntie the Colonel blew a ring of cigar smoke on to my engagement finger last night.

  JASPER. That dizziness has let me in for a lot of good things. I like being dizzy. It is a good, good wheeze being dizzy. I shall keep on being dizzy.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. I am afraid that wouldn’t count in law. Besides, I thought he and Bell —

  NANNY. Whatever made you think that?

  (ANDREW is looking out of back window, NANNY goes to him. They go right off.)

  W. G. Then it isn’t Nanny the Colonel is fond of?

  BELL. Oh dear no!

  JASPER. She’s a nice little girl that Penny. I must keep my eye on her.

  (Exit.)

  W. G. I say, I’ll go out in the punt and see if I can spot Ben with the telegram.

  MRS. GOLIGHTLY. Ah, good boy. (Goes into saloon.)

  (W. G. exits in punt.)

  BELL (to herself). Yes, the Colonel does love me. Conventionality says that a woman should never know whether a man cares for her until he tells her. Well, perhaps she does not know even then, for Mr. Upjohn said he cared for me, and how much he cared he has shown since then. Not a word from him! But Colonel Neil’s love for me is real, I know it. He saved my life, he agrees with me in all my views as completely as Mr. Upjohn differed from me. I respect the one highly, while I detest the other. Then how is it that every time I try to think lovingly of Colonel Neil, my mind wanders to Mr. Upjohn? Bell Golightly, you might be some silly ninny in a London ballroom instead of a B.A.

  ANDREW (runs through saloon to deck). I see him! I see him! (Runs up ladder to deck.) I see Ben coming with the telegram.

  (MRS. GOLIGHTLY and NANNY hurry on deck.)

  Do you think I’ve passed? Do you? Do you? (Draws diagrams.)

  NANNY. Oh, I hope so! (Calling) Quick, you two.

  BEN (not yet in sight). Coming.

  (W. G. and BEN arrive in punt, Andrew snatches telegram from W. G. and hurries on deck again, bell, nanny and W. G. gather round him ben remains in punt.)

  NANNY. Open it! Here is a hairpin! (Gives him hairpin from her hair; he is nervous and lets it fall.)

  ANDREW. I — I — ah — do you think I’ve passed?

  W. G. (on ladder). Look and see.

  ANDREW. I — ah — the examiners had a spite at me.

  BELL. Mr. McPhail, I was perfectly calm when I took the fourth wranglership.

  ANDREW. You see, to pass means giving up all one’s old student life. What a loss that would be! It would mean taking a practice and attending infectious cases, and very likely dying of small-pox.

  W. G. Open it, you ass!

  ANDREW. So I didn’t want to pass. I purposely left several questions unanswered, because I didn’t want to pass.

  (NANNY snatches telegram from him, rips it open with another hairpin and reads to herself.)

  ALL. Well?

  (Enter JASPER.)