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

Name: Plays: Lady Frederick, The Explorer, A Man of Honour
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Author: Сомерсет Моэм

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Сомерсет Моэм

Год написания книги

2017

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[Going towards her eagerly and taking both her hands.] Best of women!

Mrs. Crowley

You seem quite glad to see me?

Dick

I am. But where is Lucy?

Mrs. Crowley

She's coming later… I don't know why you should squeeze my hands in this pointed manner.

Dick

What an age it is since I saw you!

Mrs. Crowley

If you bury yourself in Scotland all the summer, you can't expect to see people who go to Homburg and the Italian lakes.

Dick

Heavens, how you cultivate respectability!

Mrs. Crowley

It's a sensitive plant whose vagaries one has to humour.

Dick

Aren't you delighted to be back in town?

Mrs. Crowley

London's the most charming place in the world to get away from and to come back to. Now tell me all you've been doing, if I can hear it without blushing too furiously.

Dick

My behaviour would have done credit to a clergyman's only daughter. I dragged Alec off to Scotland after that horrible scene at Lady Kelsey's, and we played golf.

Mrs. Crowley

Was he very wretched, poor thing?

Dick

He didn't say a word. I wanted to comfort him, but he never gave me a chance. He never mentioned Lucy's name.

Mrs. Crowley

Did he seem unhappy?

Dick

No. He was just the same as ever, impassive and collected.

Mrs. Crowley

Really he's inhuman.

Dick

He's an anomaly in this juvenile century. He's an ancient Roman who buys his clothes in Savile Row. An eagle caged with a colony of canaries.

Mrs. Crowley

Then he's very much in the way in England, and it's much better for him that he should go back to Africa.

Dick

This time to-morrow he'll be half-way down the channel.

Mrs. Crowley

I'm really beginning to think you're a perfect angel, Mr. Lomas.

Dick

Don't say that, it makes me feel so middle-aged. I'd much sooner be a young sinner than an elderly cherub.

Mrs. Crowley

It was sweet of you to look after him through the summer and then insist on his staying here till he went away. How long is he going for this time?

Dick

Heaven knows! Perhaps for ever.

Mrs. Crowley

Have you told him that Lucy is coming?

Dick

No. I thought that was a pleasing piece of information which I'd leave you to impart.

Mrs. Crowley