Читать книгу Three Plays by Granville Barker: The Marrying of Ann Leete, The Voysey Inheritance & Waste онлайн

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The close turf around is in parts worn bare. This plot of ground is surrounded by a terrace three feet higher. Three sides of it are seen. From two corners broad steps lead down; stone urns stand at the bottom and top of the stone balustrades. The other two corners are rounded convexly into broad stone seats.

Along the edges of the terrace are growing rose trees, close together; behind these, paths; behind those, shrubs and trees. No landscape is to be seen. A big copper beech overshadows the seat on the left. A silver birch droops over the seat on the right. The trees far to the left indicate an orchard, the few to the right are more of the garden sort. It is the height of summer, and after a long drought the rose trees are dilapidated.

It is very dark in the garden. Though there may be by now a faint morning light in the sky it has not penetrated yet among these trees. It is very still, too. Now and then the leaves of a tree are stirred, as if in its sleep; that is all. Suddenly a shrill, frightened, but not tragical scream is heard. After a moment ann leete runs quickly down the steps and on to the fountain, where she stops, panting. lord john carp follows her, but only to the top of the steps, evidently not knowing his way. ann is a girl of twenty; he an English gentleman, nearer forty than thirty.