(Shouting.) Now then! You clear off; I’ve had about enough of it. The next man that shoves his head into my room will get it broken!
(He closes the door, re-enters the room and sits down, choking.)
(To JACK.) Three of ’em! Three of ’em!
JACK. I wonder whether there’s enough money left to pay ’em all?
EVANS (fiercely). That’s his look-out.
(He rises and addresses FRED.)
Look here! I’ve had enough of this. I think we can do without you, after all. I’ve no doubt you owe money all over England. You’re a cadger, that’s what you are. (He ‘produces FRED’S watch and chain, money, etc., and dumps them on the table.) Here you are. Take it and go.
(FRED opens his mouth as though about to speak. Then slowly he takes the things from the table and crams them into his pocket. He stands looking from one to the other.)
(Pointing.) There’s the door!
(FRED blunders towards it.)
JACK. And three of ’em waiting outside for you.
NANCY (with gentle severity). Cheats never prosper.
FRED (pausing at the door). Good-bye.
NANCY (slowly). Good-bye. It’s your own fault, you know. If you hadn’t come here pretending to be Bert Simmons and calling me Nan, as if you had known me all your life, I wouldn’t have done it.
FRED. It doesn’t matter. I wish I was Bert Simmons, that’s all. Good-bye.
EVANS (listening in open-mouthed astonishment). Wish you was? Wish you was? Look here! Man to man — are you Bert Simmons or are — you — not?
FRED. No.
NANCY. Of course not. I told you he wasn’t.
EVANS. Why did you come back and say you were, then?
FRED (looking at NANCY). Because I thought I’d like to be.
EVANS. And you didn’t owe that money I gave Wilson and Ben Prout?
NANCY. Nobody owed it. I did it just to punish him.
EVANS (roaring, as he goes to the door). I’ll have that money out of ’em if I have to turn ’em over and shake it out of their trouser pockets! You stay here. You, too, miss. I’ll talk to you when I come back. Come on, Jack!
(He rushes out, followed by JACK.)
NANCY (after a long pause). Well, you’ve got me into a nice mess.
FEED. Never mind. Perhaps Bert Simmons will come back one day, and then you’ll be all right. No, that’s impossible; he can’t come back.
NANCY. Can’t come back? Why not?
FEED (solemnly). Because he’s dead.
NANCY. Dead? How do you know?
FEED. I’m certain of it.
NANCY. Why?
FEED. Why, because if he was alive he’d come back to you. Any man would. He couldn’t stay away.
NANCY. I think you’re crazy.
FEED (Softly). I wasn’t until I saw you.
NANCY. H’m! Well, you’d better make the most of it; father’ll be back soon.
FEED. I know, but this is the first day of my fortnight. (Musingly.) A hard-working, determined man can do a lot in a fortnight.
NANCY. YOU won’t stay here. I can tell you that much.
FEED. NO, but I shall be in the same town. That’s something. And perhaps I can call and see you.
NANCY. I don’t think you will, then.
FEED. Well, I can call and see your father. I’ve taken quite a fancy to him.
NANCY. HOW nice! Perhaps you’d like to sit and hold his hand when you come?
FEED (nodding). That’s a good idea. I shall close my eyes and try and think it’s yours.
NANCY (hotly). Mine? Have you noticed the size of father’s hand?
FEED. That doesn’t matter. I can imagine it’s yours easy enough. Look here! Sit down a moment.
NANCY. What for?
FEED. If you’ll sit down, you’ll see.
(NANCY seats herself, scornfully. FEED takes a chair beside her.)
NANCY. Well?
FRED. It’s just a little experiment. I want to hold your hand and see if I can imagine it’s your father’s. Then if I can do that it’ll prove to me that I can imagine his hand is yours.
NANCY. DO you think I’m as crazy as you are?
FRED (wistfully). No, but I wish you were. But, of course, if you’re afraid to let me hold your hand —
NANCY. Afraid!
(She gives him her hand.)
FRED (after a pause). No: I’m afraid the experiment has failed. I couldn’t possibly imagine that it is your father’s — or anybody’s but yours. It’s so soft and small, and — and —
NANCY (derisively). Go on! Surely you haven’t finished yet.
FRED (still holding her hand). I can think of a lot more if you will only give me time.
(There is a long pause.)
NANCY. Well?
FRED. I shall think of the words in a minute; they’re just on the tip of my tongue. I hope your father won’t get into any trouble trying to get that money back.
NANCY. Don’t you worry about father; he can look after himself all right.
FRED. Yes, I suppose so; he looks strong. It’s curious that he and Jack took me for Bert Simmons, and you knew that I wasn’t. Pity it wasn’t the other way about. But life’s like that. (He sighs.) Look here! Why not close your eyes and try and think I’m Bert?
NANCY (dryly). Couldn’t be done.
FRED. Why not?
NANCY. Because I know that Bert wouldn’t just sit holding my hand.
FRED. Oh! He — he — he —
NANCY. Well?
FRED. He’d be a bit more venturesome, I suppose.
NANCY (half-closing her eyes and speaking dreamily). He would.
FRED (kissing her). Like that?
NANCY (starting up and pulling her hand away). Well, of all the impudence! How dare you?
(FRED rises as EVANS and JACK return.)
EVANS (putting the money on the table). Here you are. I gave Prout a black eye for his lot, and... Hallo! What’s the matter?
NANCY (dramatically). He — he kissed me!
EVANS (calmly). Well, you must have given him some encouragement.
NANCY (rising voice). Encouragement?
EVANS. Yes, I know you, my gal. You wouldn’t be kissed unless you wanted to be.
NANCY (breathlessly). O-oh!
EVANS (nodding). Yes, you can say “Oh,” as much as you like.
NANCY (loftily). I was taken by surprise — I never dreamt —— (She turns to FRED.) If you were a man you’d tell my father how you did it.
(FRED puts his arm round NANCY’S waist, draws her head on to his shoulder, and, very slowly, kisses her.)
FRED (turning to EVANS). Like this, sir.
CURTAIN.
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
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Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
&nb
sp; Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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O. Henry
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Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
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L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
Series Six
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
Series Seven
Adam Smith
Benjamin Disraeli
Confucius
David Hume
E. M. Delafield
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edmund Burke
Ernest Hemingway
Frances Trollope
Galileo Galilei
Guy Boothby
Hans Christian Andersen
Ian Fleming
Immanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Kenneth Grahame
Lytton Strachey
Mary Wollstonecraft
Michel de Montaigne
René Descartes
Richard Marsh
Sax Rohmer
Sir Richard Burton
Talbot Mundy
Thomas Babington Macaulay
W. W. Jacobs
Ancient Classics
Achilles Tatius
Aeschylus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Apollodorus
Appian
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
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Bede
Cassius Dio
Cato
Catullus
Cicero
Clement of Alexandria
Demosthenes
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Euripides
Frontius
Herodotus
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Homer
Horace
Josephus
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Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
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Plautus
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Plotinus
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Polybius
Procopius
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Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Septuagint
Sophocles
Statius
Strabo
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Tacitus
Terence
Theocritus
Thucydides
Tibullus
Virgil
Xenophon
Delphi Poets Series
A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Chapman
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Rumi
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Sir Walter Raleigh
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Thomas Hood
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Torquato Tasso
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Masters of Art
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Canaletto
Caravaggio
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Piero della Francesca
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Sandro Botticelli
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
Thomas Gainsborough
Titian
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Wassily Kandinsky
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Jacobs’ body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, the first crematorium to be opened in London, Barnet
Jacobs’ ashes were scattered in the garden of Golders Green Crematorium
Works of W. W. Jacobs Page 305