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Back The Fifth Column Save as PDF
Chapters (16)
  1. Cover
  2. Colophon
  3. The Hemingway eBook Collection
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. Contents
  7. Part one
  8. The Fifth Column
  9. Act Two  •  Scene One
  10. Act Three  •  Scene One
  11. Part two
  12. The Denunciation
  13. The Butterfly and the Tank
  14. Night Before Battle
  15. Under the Ridge
  16. About the Author

PHILIP. I don’t love you in the daytime. I don’t love anything in the daytime. Listen, I want to say something else. Would you like to marry me or stay with me all the time or go wherever I go, and be my girl? Hear me say it? I said it, see.

DOROTHY. Darling, I’d like to marry you.

PHILIP. Yeah. I say funny things in the night, don’t I?

DOROTHY. I’d like us to be married and work hard and have a fine life. You know I’m not as silly as I sound, or I wouldn’t be here. And I work when you’re not around. And just because I can’t cook. You can hire people to cook under normal circumstances. Oh, you. I love you with the big shoulders and the walk like a gorilla and the funny face.

PHILIP. It’ll be a lot funnier face when I get through with this business.

DOROTHY. Are the horrors any better, darling? Do you want to tell me about them?

PHILIP. Oh, the hell with them. I’ve had them so long I’d miss them if they went away. Let me say one thing more to you.

[He says it very slowly]

I’d like to marry you, and go away, and get out of all this. Did I say it just like that? Did you hear me say it?

DOROTHY. Well, darling, we will.

PHILIP. No, we won’t. Even lying in the night I know we won’t. But I like to say it. Oh, I love you. Goddamn it, goddamn it, I love you. And you’ve got the loveliest damn body in the world. And I adore you, too. Did you hear me say that?

DOROTHY. Yes, my sweet, but it’s not true about my body. It’s just an all right body, but I like to hear you say it. And tell me about the horrors, and maybe they will go away.

PHILIP. No. Everybody gets their own, and you don’t want to pass them around.

DOROTHY. Should we try to go to sleep, my big lovely one? My old snow storm.

PHILIP. It’s getting almost daylight, and I’m getting sensible again.

DOROTHY. Please try to go to sleep.

PHILIP. Listen, Bridges, while I say something else. It’s getting light now.

DOROTHY. [Her voice catching] Yes, darling.

PHILIP. If you want me to go to sleep, Bridges, just hit me on the head with a hammer.

CURTAIN

END OF ACT TWO

Act Three  •  Scene One