Three Plays by Granville-Barker: The Marrying of Ann Leete; The Voysey Inheritance; WasteGranville-Barker, Harley
General
Three Plays by Granville-Barker: The Marrying of Ann Leete; The Voysey Inheritance; Waste
Granville-Barker, Harley
English drama
AMY. As if I could! If I have to lie through the night simply shaking
with bodily fear much longer . . I believe I shall go mad.
_This aspect of the matter is meaningless to him. He returns to the
practical issue._
TREBELL. There's nobody that need be suspecting, is there?
AMY. My maid sees I'm ill and worried and makes remarks . . only to me
so far. Don't I look a wreck? I nearly ran away when I saw Dr.
Wedgecroft . . some of these men are so clever.
TREBELL. [_Calculating._] Someone will have to be trusted.
AMY. [_Burrowing into her little tortured self again._] And I ought to
feel as if I had done Justin a great wrong . . but I don't. I hate you
now; now and then. I was being myself. You've brought me down. I feel
worthless.
_The last word strikes him. He stares at her._
TREBELL. Do you?
AMY. [_Pleadingly._] There's only one thing I'd like you to tell me,
Henry . . it isn't much. That night we were together . . it was for a
moment different to everything that has ever been in your life before,
wasn't it?
TREBELL. [_Collecting himself as if to explain to a child._] I must make
you understand . . I must get you to realise that for a little time to
come you're above the law . . above even the shortcomings and
contradictions of a man's affection.
AMY. But let us have one beautiful memory to share.
TREBELL. [_Determined she shall face the cold logic of her position._]
Listen. I look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of
drunkenness.
AMY. [_Neither understanding nor wishing to; only shocked and hurt._]
You beast.
TREBELL. [_With bitter sarcasm._] No, don't say that. Won't it comfort
you to think of drunkenness as a beautiful thing? There are precedents
enough . . classic ones.
AMY. You mean I might have been any other woman.
TREBELL. [_Quite inexorable._] Wouldn't any other woman have served the
purpose . . and is it less of a purpose because we didn't know we had
it? Does my unworthiness then . . if you like to call it so . . make you
unworthy now? I must make you see that it doesn't.
AMY. [_Petulantly hammering at her idée fixe._] But you didn't love me . .
and you don't love me.
TREBELL. [_Keeping his patience._] No . . only within the last five
minutes have I really taken the smallest interest in you. And now I
believe I'm half jealous. Can you understand that? You've been talking a
lot of nonsense about your emotions and your immortal soul. Don't you
see it's only now that you've become a person of some importance to the
world . . and why?
AMY. [_Losing her patience, childishly._] What do you mean by the World?
You don't seem to have any personal feelings at all. It's horrible you
should have thought of me like that. There has been no other man than
you that I would have let come anywhere near me . . not for more than a
year.
_He realises that she will never understand._
TREBELL. My dear girl, I'm sorry to be brutal. Does it matter so much to
you that I should have =wished= to be the father of your child?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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