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

ever so.

JOHN [preparing to pass]

Good morning....

BILL

Can't come through. Too late.

JOHN

Too late? Why, the train's only just in.

BILL

Don't care. It's the rule.

JOHN

O, nonsense. [He carries on.]

BILL

It's too late. I tell you you can't come.

JOHN

But that's absurd. I want to catch my train.

BILL

It's too late.

BERT

Let him go, Bill.

BILL

I'm blowed if I let him go.

JOHN

I want to catch my train.

[JOHN is stopped by BILL and pushed back by the face. JOHN advances towards BILL looking like fighting. The train has gone.]

BILL

Only doing my duty.

[JOHN stops and reflects at this, deciding it isn't good enough. He shrugs his shoulders, turns round and goes away.]

JOHN

I shouldn't be surprised if I didn't get even with you one of these days, you..... and some way you won't expect.

Curtain

SCENE 2

Yesterday evening.

[Curtain rises on JOHN and MARY in their suburban home.]

JOHN

I say, dear. Don't you think we ought to plant an acacia?

MARY

An acacia, what's that, John?

JOHN

O, it's one of those trees that they have.

MARY

But why, John?

JOHN

Well, you see the house is called The Acacias, and it seems rather silly not to have at least one.

MARY

O, I don't think that matters. Lots of places are called lots of things. Everyone does.

JOHN

Yes, but it might help the postman.

MARY

O, no, it wouldn't, dear. He wouldn't know an acacia if he saw it any more than I should.

JOHN

Quite right, Mary, you're always right. What a clever head you've got!

MARY

Have I, John? We'll plant an acacia if you like. I'll ask about it at the grocer's.

JOHN

You can't get one there.

MARY

No, but he's sure to know where it can be got.

JOHN

Where do they grow, Mary?

MARY

I don't know, John; but I am sure they do, somewhere.

JOHN

Somehow I wish sometimes, I almost wish I could have gone abroad for a week or so to places like where acacias grow naturally.

MARY

O, would you really, John?

JOHN

No, not really. But I just think of it sometimes.

MARY

Where would you have gone?

JOHN

O, I don't know. The East or some such place. I've often heard people speak of it, and somehow it seemed so...

MARY

The East, John? Not the East. I don't think the East somehow is quite respectable.

JOHN

O well, it's all right, I never went, and never shall go now. It doesn't matter.

MARY [the photographs catching her eye]

O, John, I meant to tell you. Such a dreadful thing happened.

JOHN

What, Mary?

MARY

Well, Liza was dusting the photographs, and when she came to Jane's she says she hadn't really begun to dust it, only looked at it, and it fell down, and that bit of glass is broken right out of it.

JOHN

Ask her not to look at it so hard another time.

MARY

O, what do you mean, John?

JOHN

Well, that's how she broke it; she said so, and as I know you believe in Liza...

MARY

Well, I can't think she'd tell a lie, John.

JOHN

No, of course not. But she mustn't look so hard another time.

MARY

And it's poor little Jane's photograph. She will feel it so.

JOHN

O, that's all right, we'll get it mended.

MARY

Still, it's a dreadful thing to have happened.