Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 4.5

Plays: Lady Frederick, The Explorer, A Man of Honour

Год написания книги
2017
<< 1 ... 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 ... 154 >>
На страницу:
113 из 154
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля
John

And what d'you think your friends will say to your marrying – a barmaid?

Basil

[Contemptuously.] I don't care two straws for my friends.

John

That's pleasant for them. You know, men and women without end have snapped their fingers at society and laughed at it, and for a while thought they had the better of it. But all the time society was quietly smiling up its sleeve, and suddenly it put out an iron hand – and scrunched them up.

Basil

[Shrugging his shoulders.] It only means that a few snobs will cut me.

John

Not you – your wife.

Basil

I'm not such a cad as to go to a house where I can't take my wife.

John

But you're the last man in the world to give up these things. There's nothing you enjoy more than going to dinner-parties and staying in country houses. Women's smiles are the very breath of your nostrils.

Basil

You talk of me as if I were a tame cat. I don't want to brag, John, but after all, I've shown that I'm fit for something in this world. I went to the Cape because I thought it was my duty. I intend to marry Jenny for the same reason.

John

[Seriously.] Will you answer me one question – on your honour?

Basil

Yes.

John

Are you in love with her?

Basil

[After a pause.] No.

John

[Passionately.] Then, by God, you have no right to marry her. A man has no right to marry a woman for pity. It's a cruel thing to do. You can only end by making yourself and her entirely wretched.

Basil

I can't break the poor girl's heart.

John

You don't know what marriage is. Even with two people who are devoted to one another, who have the same interests and belong to the same class, it's sometimes almost unbearable. Marriage is the most terrible thing in the world unless passion makes it absolutely inevitable.

Basil

My marriage is absolutely inevitable – for another reason.

John

You talk as if such things had never happened before.

Basil

Oh, I know, they happen every day. It's no business of the man's. And as for the girl, let her throw herself in the river. Let her go to the deuce, and be hanged to her.

John

Nonsense. She can be provided for. It only needs a little discretion – and no one will be a ha'porth the wiser, nor she a ha'porth the worse.

Basil

But it's not a matter of people knowing. It's a matter of honour.

John

[Opening his eyes.] And where precisely did the honour come in when you…?

Basil

Good heavens, I'm a man like any other. I have passions as other men have.

John

[Gravely.] My dear Basil, I wouldn't venture to judge you. But I think it's rather late in the day to set up for a moralist.

Basil

D'you think I've not regretted what I did? It's easy enough afterwards to say that I should have resisted. The world would be a Sunday School if we were all as level-headed at night as we are next morning.

John

[Shaking his head.] After all, it's only a very regrettable incident due to your youth and – want of innocence.

<< 1 ... 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 ... 154 >>
На страницу:
113 из 154