Honeymoon (eBook)

Arnold Bennett (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
89 Seiten
Charles River Editors (Verlag)
978-1-5183-0295-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was a prolific British writer and journalist.  Bennett is popular for fiction such as The Old Wives' Tale and also for non-fiction works such as How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and Mental Efficiency.  This edition of The Honeymoon includes a table of contents.

Textauszug

ACT I.

..................

A SITTING-ROOM IN THE ONLY hotel at a small seaside resort in Essex. Old-fashioned Victorian furniture, producing a picturesque general effect. Some modern touch, such as a framed coloured advertisement of pneumatic tyres.

Door, R., leading to hall, principal entrance, and kitchen. Door, L., leading through a porch to the garden. A large window, divided into three portions by stonework, at the back: the panes are small; one of these portions is open, the others are closed.

Through the window can be seen a view of the garden, and the sea in the distance. The fireplace is not seen.

Cedric and Flora are seated at either side of a tea-table.

Time: Afternoon in June. Sunshine.

Flora. Another cup? (Cedric, looking at her, makes no reply.) Cedric! Another cup? (with a touch of very good-humoured impatience).

(Cedric rises, goes round the table to her, takes hold of her, and kisses her.)

Cedric. (Standing over her, she looking up at him.) I’ve been wanting to do that for about thirty solid minutes.

Flora. Then why didn’t you, my poor boy? (Cedric gives a gesture to show that he doesn’t know why) ... Instead of keeping us both waiting like that! (Reflective.) And yet it’s barely three hours since you kissed me in the vestry!

Cedric. Vestry be dashed! And here’s another thing I’ve been wanting to do (he carefully kisses her ear).

Flora. My ear!

Cedric. Precisely, your ear! Strange!... And I can tell you something even stranger. Shall I? (She nods.) When I’m standing over you I feel as if I should like to kill you! Yes, really, Fluff! It takes me all of a sudden! You know—when you lean out of a high balcony and you feel you must jump—well, it’s that sort of a feeling.

Flora. What particular kind of homicide?

Cedric. Oh! (at a loss) a kind of a fierce crushing. (She smiles.) You think it’s justifiable?

Flora. I don’t mind so long as I know my risks.

Cedric. (After staring at her, with a convinced air.) We shall get on together all right!

Flora. Yes, I think we’re doing rather well so far, considering (turning the ring on his finger).

Cedric. Considering what?

Flora. Considering how nervous we both are, naturally (drops his hand).

Cedric. (Moving away. Half to himself.) Yes, and we shall keep getting more nervous!

Flora. (Resuming exactly the same matter-of-fact tone as when she first put the question.) Another cup?

Cedric. (Similar tone.) How many have I had?

Flora. I don’t know, dear.

Cedric. I’ve had enough, then.

Flora. Well, about our programme. Suppose we settle it a bit.

Cedric. Yes, let’s. (Sits down.)

Flora. I do think it was a lovely idea to start off without any programme at all! Heaven itself couldn’t say where we shan’t be this time next week!

Cedric. Well, subject to your approval, I don’t mind informing heaven that anyhow we shan’t be here.

Flora. Tired of this place—already?

Cedric. On the contrary! But it’s too small to hold a couple that have just walked out of a vestry. One hotel, one flagstaff, one boat, one sea. No pier, no tea-shop, no concert, and very probably no moon.

Flora. Extraordinary how even three hours of married life will change a man! You always used to be rather keen on quietness, solitude, old flannel suits, and so on.

Cedric. Now look here, Fluff! This honeymoon programme is important. Er—(hesitates).

Flora. (Nods.) Let’s talk as man to man.

Cedric. The fact is I’ve always had a very distinct theory about honeymoons. Far from the madding crowd is a mistake on a honeymoon.... Solitude! Wherever you are, if you’re on a honeymoon, you’ll get quite as much solitude as is good for you every twenty-four hours. Constant change and distraction—that’s what wants arranging for. Solitude will arrange itself.

Flora. I didn’t expect this from you, dear.

Cedric. (Hastily, apologetic.) Simply a theory! I’ve had no practical experience, and I’m perfectly ready to sit at your feet in the matter. Honestly, I don’t care a straw. I may be wrong, and if you——

Flora. (Solemnly.) You aren’t wrong! You’re quite fearfully right!

Cedric. (After staring at her with a convinced air.) We shall get on together—that’s a bedrock certainty! Now this place ought to be excellent for a beginning, but I should imagine that about a couple of days of it would do us.

Flora. I never suspected—no, really, I never did suspect—that any man could have as much common-sense, beforehand, as you have, Cedric. Not to speak of courage!

Cedric. Cheek, you mean. But then, of course, I am supposed to have a bit of nerve. Well, that’s settled. We are to travel, then.

Flora. The point is, where?

Cedric. Where would you like?

Flora. (Radiantly.) Anywhere.

Cedric. What about Paris?

Flora. Oh, not Paris.

Cedric. Why not?

Flora. We should be simply mobbed. My dearest boy, have you ever heard speak of the simplicity of genius?

Cedric. I seem to have read about it somewhere, perhaps in the ladies’ papers.

Flora. Well, you won’t understand it, because you’ve got it—acutely.

Cedric. And here all these years I’ve been taking myself for rather a crafty person!

Flora. Do you know how many times I’ve counted your portrait in the weeklies this year? One hundred and forty-six! And that’s not reckoning the pictures where your aeroplane’s so high up that you only look like a fly in a mouse-trap.

Cedric. In my simple mind I’d always thought that the surest way never to be recognised in the street was to have your portrait in the papers.

Flora. And then there’s your likeness to your mother! A hundred and fifty-one thousand copies of your dear mother’s last novel sold up to yesterday—so I saw in the “Telegraph.” And then her new novel out to-day!

Cedric. I’m not suggesting that we should camp out in Piccadilly for our honeymoon, my dove and my love; I said Paris.

Flora. All London will be in Paris.

Cedric. What—next week?

Flora. Every week. Excuse me asking a pointed question, dearest, but have you ever been to Paris—I mean, since the flood?

Cedric. Yes. My knowledge of the unwieldy goods department of the big railway stations is probably matchless.

Flora. Well, if you’d stepped outside the stations you’d know that Paris is now exclusively inhabited by nice respectable people from London and nice respectable people from Arizona; and when they aren’t cricking their necks to look at aeroplanes, they’re improving their minds with your dear mother’s latest novel.

Cedric. (Mock serious.) Will you believe me—I’d no notion of this at all!

Flora. I tell you what—I wouldn’t mind going to Paris under an assumed name.

Cedric. Oh, no!

Flora. Why not? It would be amusing.

Cedric. I don’t see myself travelling under a false name. I suppose I am too English.

Flora. Well, I don’t see myself in a Paris hotel as the bride of the most celebrated English aviator, and the daughter-in-law of the most celebrated English lady-novelist. I do not! (With a characteristic gesture.) Mobbed isn’t the word for what we should be.

Cedric. (Gazing at her.) You must have noticed that I’m not what you’d call gushing. I’ve known myself go for a month without using a single superlative; but really, my most dear girl, my Fluffiest, when you strike an attitude like that, you’re more marvellously and ineffably adorable than ever. Your beauty, your charm, your enormous slap-upness—(changing his tone)—Well, ecstasy is not my line.... I only said Paris because the mater asked me if I thought we should be going there, and I told her it was possible.

Flora. Will she be there?

Cedric. No, no! Only, if we should happen to go there, she wanted me to count the panes of glass in a lamp-post on the Alexander III. bridge. One of her realistic details, you know. I expect she’s got her hero staring absently up at that lamp-post—after an indiscreet evening.... She may be depending on me.

Flora. But surely that isn’t a reason why we should go to Paris! Your dear mother might have wanted to know the number of ribs in the umbrella of the King of Siam—should we have had to book to Bangkok?

Cedric. I was only——

Flora. Husband, I must tell you something about your mother. I’ve kept it a secret from you. Do you know what made her give up her terrific scheme of our being married in the cathedral by the Bishop, surrounded by the press of Europe?

Cedric. I thought our angel-tongues persuaded her out of it.

Flora. Not at all. A threat did it. I dropped in on her one day for a little private chat while you were at Blackpool. She was just going to arrange with the Bishop. I told her confidentially—but of course nicely—that if she wouldn’t agree to us being married by a curate...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.3.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Anna of the Five Towns • British • Clayhanger • Culture • Historical • how to live • mental efficacy • old wives tale • Victorian
• ISBN-10: 1-5183-0295-5 / 1518302955
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5183-0295-4 / 9781518302954