If: A Play in Four Acts, Lord Dunsany [any book recommendations TXT] 📗

Well, if it did you've never met her, so you needn't go into mourning for an elderly lady that you don't know; not yet, anyway.

JOHN BEAL

No, of course not. You're laughing at me, ARCHIE. But for the moment I took you seriously. Of course, she won't come. One can go into a thing closely without doing it absolutely literally. But, good Lord, wouldn't it be an awful situation if she did.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, I don't know.

JOHN BEAL

All alone with me here? No, impossible. And the country isn't civilised.

ARCHIE BEAL.

Women aren't civilised.

JOHN BEAL

Women aren't...? Good Lord, ARCHIE, what an awful remark. What do you mean?

ARCHIE BEAL

We're tame, they're wild. We like all the dull things and the quiet things, they like all the romantic things and the dangerous things.

JOHN BEAL

Why, ARCHIE, it's just the other way about.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, yes; we do all the romantic things, and all the dangerous things. But why?

JOHN BEAL

Why? Because we like them, I suppose. I can't think of any other reason.

ARCHIE BEAL

I hate danger. Don't you?

JOHN BEAL

Er—well, yes, I suppose I do, really.

ARCHIE BEAL

Of course you do. We all do. It's the women that put us up to it. She's putting you up to this. And the more she puts you up to the more likely is Hussein to get it in his fat neck.

JOHN BEAL

But—but you don't mean you'd hurt Hussein? Not—not badly, I mean.

ARCHIE BEAL

We're under her orders, Johnny. See what she says.

JOHN BEAL

You, you don't really think she'll come here?

ARCHIE BEAL

Of course I do, and the best thing too. It's her show; she ought to come.

JOHN BEAL

But, but you don't understand. She's just a young girl, A girl like Miss Miralda couldn't come out here over the pass and down these mountains, she'd never stand it, and as for the chaperon... You've never met Miss Miralda.

ARCHIE BEAL

No, Johnny. But the girl that was able to get you to go from Bromley to this place can look after herself.

JOHN BEAL

I don't see what that's got to do with it. She was in trouble and I had to help her.

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, and she'll be in trouble all the way here from Blackheath, and everyone will have to help her.

JOHN BEAL

What beats me is how you can have the very faintest inkling of what she's like without ever having seen her and without my having spoken of her to you for more than a minute.

ARCHIE BEAL

Well, Johnny, you're not a romantic bird, you're not a traveller by nature, barring your one trip to Eastbourne, and it was I that took you there. And contrariwise, as they say in a book you've never read, you're a levelheaded business man and a hardworking respectable stay-at-home. You meet a girl in a train, and the next time I see you you're in a place that isn't marked on the map and telling it what gods it ought to worship and what gods it ought to have agnosticism about. Well, I say some girl.

JOHN BEAL

Well, I must say you make the most extraordinary deductions, but it was awfully good of you to come, and I ought to be grateful; and I am, too, I'm awfully grateful; and I ought to let you talk all the rot you like. Go ahead. You shall say what you like and do what you like. It isn't many brothers that would do what you've done.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, that's nothing. I like this country. I'm glad I came. And if I can help you with Hussein, why all the better.

JOHN BEAL

It's an awful country, Archie, but we've got to see this through.

ARCHIE BEAL

Does she know all about Hussein?

JOHN BEAL

Yes, everything. I've written fully.

OMAR [Off]

Al Shaldomir, Al Shaldomir, The nightingales that guard thy ways...

JOHN BEAL [shouting|

O, go away, go away. [To ARCHIE.] I said it was an awful country. They sit down outside one's tent and do that kind of thing for no earthly reason.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, I'd let them sing.

JOHN BEAL

O, you can't have people doing that kind of thing.

OMAR [in doorway]

Master, I go.

JOHN BEAL

But why do you come?

OMAR

I came to sing a joyous song to you, master.

JOHN BEAL

Why did you want to sing me a joyous song?

OMAR

Because a lady is riding out of the West. [Exit.]

JOHN BEAL

A lady out of... Good Lord!

ARCHIE BEAL