BARBARA: You are so queer — and I am so all alone — and if you weren’t good to me —
WESSON: I think you needn’t be mean —
BARBARA: But look — you seem to want to take me away from everything and everybody. I feel as if you wanted to swallow me, and take my will away. You won’t do it, will you, Giacomo?
WESSON: You’re fatter than I am — ask a cat not to swallow a camel.
BARBARA: But do you think Frederick will divorce me?
WESSON: You’ll have to insist on it.
BARBARA: No — I can’t — it seems so cruel. I can’t, dear. He’s so cut up. You know, he says he can’t publicly accuse me.
WESSON: If he’d hate you and have done with it, it would be easier. Or if he loved you, he would offer you divorce. But no, he messes about between one thing and another, and sentimentalizes.
BARBARA: But he does love me, Giacomo.
WESSON: And a fat lot of use it is to you. But he sees you don’t clearly want a divorce and so he hangs on. Now he talks about your going to live with your mother, and repenting, then he’ll have you back. But you like to leave a loophole by which you could creep out and go back, don’t you? Ah, you do.
BARBARA: No — no — don’t say it — don’t say it. Only I’m frightened.
WESSON: You know your people have given out you’ve gone into a convent in France, for a little while, because you had got religious ideas or something like that. And I know they think you’ll come crawling back at last — and Frederick is waiting for you — he’s waiting — and you like to have it so — you do.
BARBARA (putting her arms round his neck): No, it’s not true, Giacometti, it’s not true. I do love you, don’t I?
WESSON: You only don’t want to belong to me.
BARBARA: But I do belong to you.
WESSON: You don’t — you tamper with the idea of Frederick.
BARBARA: He’d never do to me what you want to do.
WESSON: What?
BARBARA: Humble me, and make me nothing — and then swallow me. And it’s wrong. It’s wrong for you to want to swallow me. I am myself — and you ought to leave me free.
WESSON: Well, so I do.
BARBARA: You don’t. All the time you’re at me. Oh, and I hate you so sometimes, Giacomo. Now you’re cross with me.
WESSON: I should think the eggs are done.
BARBARA (seating herself): I’m hungry, Giacomo — are you?
WESSON: No — it makes me sick, the way you’re always bleeding my self-respect.
BARBARA: I! I! Why it’s I who’ve given you your self-respect. Think of the crumpled up, despairing, hating creature that came into Mrs Kelly’s drawing-room — and now look at yourself.
WESSON: But you won’t love me — you want to keep upper hand.
BARBARA (laughing with scorn): There you are quite mistaken. I want there to be no upper hand. I only want both of us to be free to be ourselves — and you seem as if you can’t have it — you want to bully me, you want to bully me inside.
WESSON: All right — eat your breakfast then.
BARBARA: And it makes me feel as if I want to run — I want to run from you.
WESSON: Back to Frederick.
BARBARA: Yes — poor Frederick — he never made me feel like this. I was always a free woman with him.
WESSON: And mightily you regretted it.
BARBARA: No — no! Not that! Your idea of marriage is like the old savages: hit a woman on the head and run off with her.
WESSON: Very well.
The bell rings noisily.
There’s the butcher.
Goes out door R — voices — re-enter WESSON.
What do you want?
BARBARA: I don’t know — what do we?
WESSON: I! —
He turns round. The butcher, a handsome young fellow of about twenty, has followed him and stands in the doorway.
BARBARA: Oh! — Buon giorno!
BUTCHER: Buon giorno, signora.
BARBARA: Piove?
BUTCHER: Si.
BARBARA: Ah! — e il lago — ?
BUTCHER: È burrascoso.
BARBARA: Ah — tempo cattivo per voi.
The butcher laughs.
WESSON: What do you want?
BARBARA: Er — ha vitello?
BUTCHER: Si — Si — quanto?
BARBARA: How much do we want?
WESSON: Mezzo chilo.
BARBARA: Mezzo chilo.
BUTCHER (touching his hood): Grazia — buon giorno.
The door is heard to close.
BARBARA: Oh, I like him, I like him — you said he wasn’t nice.
WESSON: He’s not — look at the way he comes in.
BARBARA: I like it. It’s so decided, at any rate. I hate English people for the way they always hang fire.
WESSON: Do you?
BARBARA: Yes! I like him as he stands there — he looks like a wild young bull or something, peering out of his hood.
WESSON: And you flirt with him.
BARBARA: Wesson!
WESSON: I know it’s a great insult to say so. But he is good-looking — and see the way you stretch out your arm, and show your throat.
BARBARA: But Wesson, how can you. I simply spoke to him. And when you think of yourself with the servant maid —
WESSON: I only laugh — you sort of show yourself.
BARBARA: Well, really, this is too much!
WESSON: True, whether or not. And you’re always doing it. You always want men to think I don’t keep you. You write to your mother like that, you write to Frederick like that — always as if I didn’t keep you, as if you were rather undecided, you would make up your mind to walk away from me in a little while, probably.
BARBARA: How can you be so false? It would serve you right if I did leave you.
WESSON: I know that, you’ve said it before.
BARBARA: Really — no one but a common man would say I flirted with that butcher —
WESSON: Well, I am common — what’s the odds? You’ve lived with me for three months.
BARBARA: That doesn’t say I shall live with you for ever.
WESSON: You can go the minute you want to go.
BARBARA: Ha, could I! It’s easy for you to talk. You’d see, when it came to it, how you would let me go.
WESSON: I wouldn’t try to stop you, if you really, really wanted to leave me. But you’ve got to convince me of that first.
BARBARA: You think there’s not another like you, don’t you?
WESSON: For you, there isn’t.
BARBARA: I’m not so sure.
WESSON: I am! But try, only try. Only try, and make your mistake. But it’ll be too late, once you’ve done it.
BARBARA: Pooh! you needn’t think you’ll threaten me.
WESSON: I only tell you. Can I give you anything?
BARBARA: The honey.
He rises and gets it from the cupboard.
WESSON: I wait on you, yet I want to bully you.
BARBARA: Yes, it’s subtler than that.
WESSON: If you let me wait on you, you leave yourself in my hands.
BARBARA: Not a bit of it — not a bit of it! Do you think it makes any difference to me? Frederick would have waited on me on his knees.
WESSON: Then it’s time somebody taught you you’re not as great as you think. You imagine you’re the one and only phoenix.
BARBARA (laughing): And I am, aren’t I, Giacometti? Say I am.
WESSON: I say you’re a pecky, scratchy one, at that rate.
BARBARA: No — no! Say I’m nice — say I’m ever so nice.
WESSON: On rare occasions.
BARBARA: Always — say always.
WESSON: It wouldn’t be true.
BARBARA: Yes — yes, it would, Giacomo. See, I’m ever so nice, aren’t I? I’m ever so nice! Look at my nice arms, how they love you.
WESSON: Better than you do.
BARBARA: No — not better than I do. Come and kiss them. Co
me and give them a little kiss.
WESSON (going and kissing her arms): You’re cruel, if you’re nothing else.
BARBARA: No, I’m not. Say I’m not. Kiss me!
WESSON, laughing shakily, kisses her — A voice is heard outside. “La posta.”
WESSON: Oh, Lord, there’s the postman — he’s the serpent in my Eden.
VOICE: La posta!
WESSON goes to the door, re-enters with letters.
WESSON (tearing open an envelope): The serpent’s left his venom.
BARBARA (making a frightened face): Is it Frederick?
WESSON: And your mother.
BARBARA: Oh dear! Gia, I can’t stand it.
WESSON: Why not?
BARBARA: I can’t stand it — I can’t — poor Frederick. If he was ill, Giacomo?
WESSON: He’d have to get better.
BARBARA: He might die.
WESSON: He wouldn’t be such a fool. What’s up in your letter?
BARBARA (wiping her eyes): It seems so cruel!
WESSON: Your father’s ill.
BARBARA (starting and snatching the letter from his hand): Papa!
She reads, crying quietly. WESSON sits waiting — he has read Frederick’s letter.
BARBARA (looking up): Is he very ill, Giacomo?
WESSON: No.
BARBARA: They’ll say it’s me.
WESSON: Let ‘em. It’s the whisky, as a matter of fact.
BARBARA: Look how cruel mama is, “Your father is very ill, but he does not wish to see you while you continue your present mode of life. The doctor says he is to be spared all strain and anxiety.”
WESSON: And they’re thinking of going to Harrogate, so he’s not at death’s door.
BARBARA: And look at Frederick’s letter — ”Ever since you drove a spike into my brain, on February the 24th, I have been mad.” Do you think he is mad, Giacomo?
WESSON: A bit, perhaps — but so were you when you lived with him — going clean cracked.
BARBARA: He won’t commit suicide, will he?
WESSON: No — no more than I shall.
BARBARA (reading): “There are some nights when I never sleep at all — I try to work, but my brain has gone.” (Shudders.)
WESSON: It is vile — but I can’t help it. Think of the hell if you went back to him.
BARBARA (reading — laughs): “Do not speak of Wesson. I do not wish to hear of his existence, or to know that he exists. Only, if ever he crosses my path, I will crush him like a beetle.” How strong his feelings are!
WESSON: His words, you mean.
BARBARA: No, he is passionate — you don’t know. And he can hate.
WESSON: He can sound like it.
BARBARA: But if he came here and killed you?
WESSON: I should offer myself to the knife, of course. I must practise being “daggerous” in readiness. (Puts a pointed kitchen knife between his teeth.) So!
BARBARA: Oh, you are lovely! (Laughs.) Let me kiss you. (He takes the knife from between his teeth — she kisses him.) Oh, the way he submits! Doesn’t he like it, then?
WESSON: He likes it all right — but he’s sick of this tragedy.
BARBARA: Are you tired of me, Giacomo?
WESSON: Tired of the mess we’re in, that’s all.
BARBARA: Do you want to be rid of me?
WESSON: I want to be sure of you.
BARBARA: Well, and you are. Do you think Frederick will ever let me go?
WESSON: You must insist on his divorcing you.
BARBARA: But I daren’t, Giacomo, I daren’t.
WESSON: You’d rather remain as we are?
BARBARA: No — no! Only he seems something so sure — you know — like when he said: “You have dishonoured our marriage vow, but I never will.”
WESSON: That’s as he pleases.
BARBARA: But it’s rather fine.
WESSON: He is fine, in a thousand ways where I’m not. But you never loved him.
BARBARA: No — I never loved him. Poor Frederick, it doesn’t seem fair, does it?
WESSON: It does not. You were rottenly unfair to him.
BARBARA: In what way?
WESSON: Holding him cheap. Holding his love for you lightly, when it was the biggest thing about him.
BARBARA: Why did it never seem so much to me, till I’d left him?
WESSON: You hated him. While he could keep you, he felt a man — but you didn’t mean to be kept — you tortured him — you fought against him — you undermined him — you were killing him.
BARBARA: Oh no — oh no! I never hated him. I did a lot for him.
WESSON: You, perhaps, had plenty of good-will towards him — but you tortured him like hell. You, with your kindness, are one of the cruellest things going.
BARBARA: How can you say so, Giacomo! Am I cruel to you?
WESSON: You are.
BARBARA (laughing): It seems to me only funny when you say I’m cruel — I, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
WESSON: Then I wish I was a fly, and not a man.
BARBARA: Aw, did it be a man! — did it be a little man in trousers, then, did it!
WESSON: It did! — I think they’re getting a bit impatient, your people. You’ll see they’ll combine forces just now to get you back.
BARBARA: Even if they did, I’d be gone again in three weeks.
WESSON: But if they got hold of the right handle, they’d get you back and keep you.
BARBARA: What handle?
WESSON: Oh, I dunno. Your pity, your self-sacrifice, your desire to be straight.
BARBARA: Self-sacrifice! There’s a lot of self-sacrifice about me. (Laughs.) They’d find I don’t work well with that handle.
WESSON: You don’t know yourself. You keep them dangling.
BARBARA: Why do you hate me?
WESSON: Go to hell.
BARBARA (plaintive): Are you cross with me? But you are! (very plaintive). Why are you cross with me, Giacomo, when I love you?
WESSON: You — you only love yourself.
BARBARA: No, Giacometti, no, I don’t. See how loving I am, really — see how unselfish I am —
WESSON: So unselfish you’d rob Peter to pay Paul, then go back to Peter to console him.
BARBARA: You’re horrid to me.
WESSON: And you are worse to me.
BARBARA: But I’m not.
WESSON: Hm.
BARBARA (mocking him): “Hm!” — what common grunts! Kiss me (pleading): Don’t you want to kiss me?
WESSON: No.
BARBARA (sadly): Aw!
WESSON (turning and taking her in his arms): You’re a baggage.
BARBARA: Do you want to kiss me? (She draws back.)
WESSON: Resigned, I kiss the rod.
BARBARA: And am I the rod? Oh, Giacomo, think of me as a rod.
WESSON: You see if Frederick and your mother aren’t up to some little trick just now.
BARBARA: I’m frightened, Giacomo.
WESSON: Then you’re frightened of yourself, of your own hesitating, half-and-half, neither-fish-flesh-fowl — nor — good-red-herring self.
CURTAIN
ACT II
Evening, several days after the first act. The dining-room of the same villa — a rather large room, with piano, writing-desk and old furniture. In the big bay window, which looks over a garden on to the lake, is a large couch. BARBARA is lying on the couch. WESSON, without his collar and tie, sits beside her.
WESSON: You’ve got a nice chin.
BARBARA: Frederick used to adore it.
WESSON: Then he’d no business to.
BARBARA (putting her arms round his neck): Dear!
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 702