Dec 2, 2021
From our Edwardian Entertainments collection, just in time for the winter holidays.
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
A hereditary curse appears in a torrent of water every Christmas to the current heir. How to stop this perennial wet blanket?
By John Kendrick Bangs, adapted by Julie Hoverson
Sound produced by Scott Pigg
Cast:
The GHOST - Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard
Edward - Gareth Bowley
Leslie - Tansy Undercrypt
Father - John Lingard
Mother - Jennifer Dixon
The American - Julie Hoverson
****************************************************
THE WATER GHOST OF HARROWBY HALL
Adapted by Julie Hoverson from the story by John Kendrick Bangs
[published in 1894]
Cast:
- The GHOST
- EDWARD Oglethorpe, the Young Master
- LESLIE Widdrington, The Secretary
- HENRY Oglethorpe, the father
- LYDIA Oglethorpe, the mother
- Christina, vapid American debutante
MUSIC - CHRISTMAS
SCENE 1. BALLROOM
SOUND FAIRLY SEDATE PARTY
CHRISTINA [american] I'm terribly charmed to meet you! I've never danced with a Lord before. Makes me feel like a lady.
EDWARD [chuckles] You're lucky I'm also a gentleman - not every lord can claim that.
CHRISTINA Oh, you!
EDWARD You're in London with friends?
CHRISTINA I'm a guest of the Harrisons. Daddy thought a trip to England would be nice polish. He's very impressed by nobilities.
EDWARD I'm sure.
SOUND CLOCK STARTS TO STRIKE TWELVE
CHRISTINA Goodness, your parties go late over here. I'm afraid you must think I'm terribly provincial.
EDWARD Oh no. Never.
SOUND CLOCK FINISHES, SUDDEN DELUGE OF WATER, COVERS EVERYTHING.
CHRISTINA [screaming!] My dress! Oh no!
SOUND OTHER PEOPLE PROTESTING, RUNNING AWAY
EDWARD [calm but shouting] Just clear out, everyone, please!
SOUND DOORS SLAM, NO MORE RUNNING
GHOST Oglethorpe.
EDWARD [sigh] Yes.
MUSIC
SCENE 2. BALLROOM, DRIPPING WET
SOUND KNOCK ON THE DOOR
LESLIE Hello?
SOUND WATER STILL DRIPPING ALL OVER
EDWARD [glum] It's all over but the blotting. Safe to come in.
SOUND DOOR OPENS, WOMAN WALKS IN
LESLIE Oh, my.
EDWARD [resigned] I'll take care of any repairs.
LESLIE Towel? I also brought you a robe, but we haven't even been properly introduced yet.
EDWARD Henry Oglethorpe. [sigh] Baron Harrowby, I suspect.
LESLIE Leslie Widdrington. Poor relation.
EDWARD [chuckles, but not really amused] Huh. I've just come into a great deal of money.
LESLIE How's that?
EDWARD My father must have died, or this would have happened to him.
LESLIE Ah. [sympathetical understanding] Ancestral curse?
EDWARD You're curiously sanguine about it.
LESLIE [flippant] It's not my ballroom. Come along, let's get you out of this damp. Perhaps a hot bath would be in order?
MUSIC
SCENE 3. CASTLE
LESLIE [reading] "The trouble with Harrowby Hall is that it was haunted. What was worse, the ghost did not content itself with merely appearing at the bedside of the afflicted person who saw it, but persisted in remaining there for one mortal hour before it would disappear."
EDWARD My father had a flowery turn of phrase.
LESLIE A style the suits the classic ghost story. You're quite sure you don't mind?
EDWARD I need to confide in someone, and he's already written it all down. But you can skip past the part about it appearing only for an hour every Christmas at midnight. I think we've established that.
LESLIE You're lucky you didn't catch pneumonia.
EDWARD I'm still undecided. [coughs, but not seriously] At least one good thing came from the deluge.
LESLIE Oh?
EDWARD I needed a secretary.
LESLIE I suppose it pays to be intrepid, then.
SOUND PAGES FLIP
LESLIE Ah. [start here?] "The owners of Harrowby Hall had done their utmost--?"
EDWARD Sounds good.
LESLIE "--their utmost to rid themselves of the damp and dewy lady who rose up out of the best bedroom floor at midnight, but without avail. They had tried stopping the clock, so that the ghost would not know when it was midnight; but she made her appearance just the same, with that fearful miasmatic personality of hers, and there she would stand until everything about her was thoroughly saturated."
EDWARD We've done absolutely everything. Or tried to. My own grandfather caulked up every crack in the floor, covered it with tarpaper - every conceivable kind of waterproofing was put into effect. And yet--
LESLIE But you weren't even in the tower room.
EDWARD [sigh] It's all in the manuscript.
LESLIE At least it will be another year until she makes an appearance.
EDWARD There is a great deal to be said for predictability.
LESLIE [reading dramatically] "The following Christmas eve she appeared as promptly as before, and frightened the occupant of the room--"
EDWARD That wasn't even one of my forefathers. Just an unfortunate guest.
LESLIE "Frightened him quite out of his senses by sitting down alongside of him and gazing with her cavernous blue eyes into his; and her long, aqueously bony fingers were entwined with bits of dripping seaweed - these ends she drew across his forehead until he became like one insane.
EDWARD I believe he never recovered from the shock, or the damp, or perhaps the cold, and died several years later of pneumonia and nervous prostration.
LESLIE Then comes a year they chose not to open the room at all.
EDWARD "Let her haunt the room - she'll not haunt me!" Father railed, or so I have been told.
LESLIE Didn't work, though, did it?
EDWARD [sigh] No. Apparently the room is only the primary target. If there is no one present to receive her, the current lord will always have a visitor.
LESLIE Thus the monsoon in the ballroom?
EDWARD [rueful] Father didn't even tell me he was doing poorly. [snappy again] A little warning would have been ... convenient. I could have spent the night in the desert.
LESLIE What do you plan to do?
EDWARD Foil her.
LESLIE How?
EDWARD That I do not quite know... yet. I need to go over father's manuscript with a fine tooth comb for any possible clues. Anything can be overcome with the application of a modicum of logic.
LESLIE Well, then. Shall we get back to it?
EDWARD Go back to the year father tried to simply ignore the ghost. It seems she first appeared in the tower room, for the parlor below had a great damp spot on the ceiling. But she didn't stay there.
LESLIE [reading] "She found me in my own cozy room drinking whiskey," undiluted, he notes, "and felicitating myself upon having foiled her ghostship, when all of a sudden the curl went out of my hair, the whiskey bottle filled and overflowed, and I found myself in a condition similar to that of a man who has fallen into a water-butt." [chuckles]
EDWARD Father always did have a turn of phrase. And a fondness for water-butts. [dramatic] And there she stood. The lady of the cavernous eyes and seaweed fingers.
LESLIE "The sight was so unexpected and so terrifying that I fainted, but immediately came to, as the vast amount of chill water trickling down over my face restored my consciousness."
EDWARD I like a good shower bath as much as the next person, but I do prefer it on the tropical side of tepid.
LESLIE [teasing] Hush.
EDWARD My father was a brave man, and not to be daunted. Forced to face the ghost, he determined to discover some particulars.
LESLIE "In an effort to warm myself, I approached the hearth, an unfortunate move as it turned out, because it brought the ghost directly over the fire, which immediately was extinguished."
EDWARD So he faced her with all the bravado he could muster.
LESLIE Sounds like he was chock a block with bravado. At least the way he wrote it.
EDWARD Let us hope it runs in the family.
LESLIE [leading into flashback] He faced the ghost...
MUSIC SEGUE INTO FLASHBACK
SOUND WATER DRIPPING and TRICKLING
HENRY Far be it from me to be impolite to a woman, madam, but I'm hanged if it wouldn't please me better if you'd stop these infernal visits of yours to this house. Go sit out on the lake, if you like that sort of thing; soak the water-butt, if you wish; but do not, I implore you, come into a gentleman's house and saturate him and his possessions in this way. It is damned disagreeable.
GHOST Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe. That is a bit of specious nonsense. You must know that I am compelled to haunt this place year after year by inexorable fate. I never aspired to be a shower-bath, but it is my doom. Do you know who I am?
HENRY No, I do not. I should say you were the Lady of the Lake, or Little Sallie Waters.
GHOST You are a witty man for your years.
HENRY Well, my humor is drier than yours ever will be.
GHOST No doubt - I am never dry. I am the Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall, and dryness is a quality entirely beyond my wildest hope. I have been the incumbent of this highly unpleasant office for two hundred years tonight.
HENRY How the deuce did you ever come to get elected?
GHOST [matter of fact] Suicide. I am the ghost of that fair maiden whose picture hangs over the mantelpiece in the drawing room.
LESLIE [v.o.] That lovely early Georgian piece? Or do I mean Jacobean?
EDWARD [v.o.] Take down a memorandum - draw a mustache on her at the earliest opportunity.
GHOST Had I lived, I should have been your great-great-great-great-great-aunt.
HENRY But what induced you to get this house into such a predicament?
GHOST It was my father's fault. It was he who built Harrowby Hall, and the haunted chamber was to have been mine. My father had it furnished in pink and yellow, knowing well that blue and gray formed the only combination of colours I could tolerate.
HENRY And...?
GHOST He did it merely to spite me, and I declined to live in the room. Whereupon father said I could live there or on the lawn, he didn't care which. That night I ran from the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea.
EDWARD [v.o.] That was rash.
LESLIE [v.o.] Dying over pink and yellow? I should say so. Green and orange, perhaps.
EDWARD [v.o.] But only if one is Irish.
GHOST Had I but known the consequences, I should not have jumped.
HENRY A bit late for hindsight.
GHOST I had been drowned a week when I was informed it would be my doom to haunt Harrowby Hall.
LESLIE [v.o.] Informed? Informed by whom?
EDWARD [v.o.] Hmm. Never considered it. The local union of apparations, phantoms and sundry visitations?
HENRY I'll sell the place.
EDWARD [v.o.] Sound thinking.
GHOST That you cannot do, for it is also required of me that I shall appear to any purchaser, and divulge to him the awful secret of the house.
LESLIE [v.o.] Snap!
HENRY Do you mean to tell me that on every Christmas eve you are going to haunt me wherever I may be, ruining my whiskey and extinguishing my fire? And soaking me through to the skin?
GHOST You have stated the case clearly, Oglethorpe. And what is more - it doesn't make the slightest difference where you are. If I find that room empty, wherever you may be I shall douse you with my spectral pres--
SOUND CLOCK STRIKES ONE
LESLIE [v.o.] "Here the clock struck one, and immediately the apparition faded away. It was perhaps more of a trickle than a fade, but as a disappearance it was complete"
HENRY By St. George and his Dragon! It is guineas to hot-cross buns that next Christmas there'll be an occupant of that room, or I shall spend the night in a bathtub!
EDWARD [v.o. fading to normal] He would have lost that bet. That was last year, and this year, he passed away just in time to avoid the deluge.
LESLIE And you didn't know, and we are now caught up to the present.
EDWARD [sigh] But for the bill for the ballroom.
MUSIC
SCENE 4. TEA
LYDIA So glad you could accommodate me for tea, Edward. I've not returned to society yet, and I'm getting sick to the teeth of a house covered in black crepe.
EDWARD Ah.
LYDIA Your father positively loathed black.
EDWARD Ah.
LYDIA And I loathe crepe. I've developed quite a mental aversion to it. I don't supposed a doctor could furnish me with some sort of prescription?
EDWARD I doubt it. Mourning is mourning, mother. And you are hardly the only one inconvenienced by father's untimely demise.
LYDIA [slightly amused] Ah, yes I heard.
EDWARD You might have sent a wire or something.
LYDIA I was rather preoccupied. So, now that you are the Baron, am I to expect the pitter-patter of little feet in the great hall any time soon?
EDWARD I could get you some corgis.
LYDIA Hush. You know very well what I mean! It is your responsibility to produce an heir and a spare, particularly now that you are effectively the last of the line.
EDWARD Hmm... [chuckle] It would be funny to find out who gets haunted, should I die early.
LYDIA I should say not!
EDWARD Anyway, after my very public unmasking as the bearer of an ancestral curse, there's hardly a family worth knowing that would want me as a graft to the family tree.
LYDIA There's always some rich American. they'll even pay extra for such a heritage!
EDWARD [laughing ruefully] While an American won't bat an eye at a spectre or two, true - threaten them with a waterlogged poiret [pwah-RAY] or patou [pah-TOO], and they flee in panic, clutching their pocketbooks.
LYDIA OH. Yes, I see.
EDWARD So I'm down to shop assistants and ladies who speak no English.
SOUND DOOR OPENS, LESLIE ENTERS BRISKLY
LESLIE Here's your correspondence for the day-- oh. I'm so dreadfully sorry. I wasn't aware -- I don't have any engagements on your calendar for this afternoon.
EDWARD Miss Widdrington, may I present my mother, the Dowager Baroness of Harrowby. Mother, my new secretary.
LYDIA [a bit snotty] Charmed.
LESLIE [overly subservient, almost goofy] I'll be in the study, then, sir, should you need me. If I may excuse myself?
EDWARD [equally over the top] Dismissed.
SOUND LESLIE LEAVES
LYDIA Who is she?
EDWARD My secretary.
LYDIA Widdrington. Widdrington. Any relation to the Haversham Widdringtons?
EDWARD [offhanded] Poor relation. Quite destitute.
LYDIA [musing] Still. She's got a good back. Does she ride?
MUSIC
SCENE 5. STUDY
SOUND DOOR OPENS
LESLIE So sorry about that--
EDWARD You couldn't have known.
LESLIE It's dreadfully easy to fall into old habits.
EDWARD Old?
LESLIE I wasn't always "how you see me now." Impoverished. I was polished at the finest schools, only to find that the family coffer had been tapped out to pay death duties and father's debts. And that, as they say, was that.
EDWARD At least you're not bitter.
LESLIE Oh you should have heard me a year ago. I would have blistered a sailor's ears.
EDWARD And now?
LESLIE [pleased] Now, I am employed.
EDWARD And you don't mind?
LESLIE Well I'm also intrigued by your dilemma - most particularly because it's not my own.
EDWARD [laughs]
LESLIE But today's problem is your social calander.
EDWARD oh? More cancellations?
LESLIE Every dinner party, every engagement for the opera, every ball.
EDWARD Everything that might possibly involve late nights, in other words.
LESLIE Precisely. But there are still afternoon teas, ascot, and a tentative engagement for croquet.
EDWARD [sulky] Suddenly I'm an elderly uncle.
MUSIC - CHRISTMAS
SCENE 6. NEXT YEAR
SOUND DRIPPING
SOUND STEAM HISS
SOUND DOOR OPENS
LESLIE Time?
EDWARD [sigh] Yes.
SOUND HUGE SWOOSH OF WATER
EDWARD [disgusted sigh]
LESLIE I brought some heated towels.
EDWARD I am par-broiled. I'll need more than towels!
MUSIC
SCENE 7. STUDY
SOUND DOOR OPENS, FABRIC RUBS
LESLIE Check off steam pipes.
EDWARD Yes. Just turned her from cold water to hot. The Turkish baths for the past month seem to have helped a bit, but on the whole, it was‑‑ [searching for the right word]
LESLIE [teasing] A washout?
EDWARD Oh, please don’t.
LESLIE [apologetic] Sorry. I thought that since steam-pipes could lie hundreds of feet deep in water, and still retain sufficient heat to drive the water away in vapor, they might‑‑
EDWARD [cutting her off] It was a good sight better than any of my ideas. Trying to evaporate the ghost into steam.
LESLIE Now you have a year to plan. Again.
EDWARD I don't know. I doubt my health can take another such night. And the room is destroyed. Again. Anything not simply soaked through has been cracked and warped to an extent that I've no doubt it will break me to repair.
LESLIE Heat can do terrible things. Tea.
SOUND POURS
EDWARD [sips] Worst of all, as the last drop of the water ghost was slowly sizzling itself out on the floor, she whispered that this scheme would avail me nothing, because--
GHOST There is always water in great plenty where I come from, and next year will find me rehabilitated and as exasperatingly saturating as ever.
EDWARD She will always be wet. So I must somehow be dry...
MUSIC
SCENE 8. CASTLE
SOUND TEA
SOUND CONSTRUCTION [OFF]
MOTHER Must they be so loud?
EDWARD At least I can tell they're working.
MOTHER So it happened again?
EDWARD You can't be surprised. You had to go through it, didn't you? With father?
MOTHER Oh, no. No, I didn't even know about it for quite years.
EDWARD How the devil?
MOTHER Language.
EDWARD I'll devil as I please, until I get what I want.
MOTHER When your father inherited the title - after his father died of pneumonia, as I recall.
EDWARD [sarcasm] Imagine.
MOTHER Hush. It was in the spring, and Henry somehow managed to pick a dreadful quarrel with me - something that sent me flying home to mother for the holidays.
EDWARD Truly? That was clever.
MOTHER And I believe there was a year where he had to take a business trip.
EDWARD to the tropics, by any chance?
MOTHER May very well have been. I believe I spent the holidays with my sister, in town.
EDWARD And he kept this up for years and years?
MOTHER Well you were away at school for much of this.
EDWARD No wonder he never had me home for the winter holidays. I was rather bereft at the time.
MOTHER We sent presents.
EDWARD Much appreciated, but--
MOTHER So - what are you doing about this?
EDWARD I tried steam pipes.
SOUND CRASH
EDWARD That's what they are engaged in repairing upstairs at the moment, and--
MOTHER Not that! What are you doing about providing me with a brace of grandchildren to brighten my declining years?
EDWARD Oh, that. [sigh]
MUSIC
SCENE 9. STUDY
SOUND TEARING PAPER - letter opening.
LESLIE Hmm. Catalog of some sort? [gasp, the laughing a bit] oh-ho.
SOUND DOOR OPENS
EDWARD What's the joke?
LESLIE [arch] A catalog of gentlemen's garments?
EDWARD Hmm?
LESLIE In the finest quality india rubber?
EDWARD Oh that! Uhhhhh... It's not what you--
LESLIE I would assume they're for waterproofing, except that many of them seem to be ... excised in certain locations.
EDWARD Skip to the back. They assured me there would be more... complete... units.
SOUND PAGES FLIP
LESLIE Ah. So you're thinking--?
EDWARD If I can't keep the room dry, at least I might be able to keep my person insulated.
LESLIE If you were to wear one of these over something in wool, perhaps?
EDWARD Mm. I would start to look like a child in swaddling.
LESLIE Better swaddled than soaked.
EDWARD True.
LESLIE And it would be warm, even if wet.
EDWARD Wouldn't want to get cold. I might -- [idea] oh!
LESLIE Oh?
EDWARD I've got it!
LESLIE Do tell?
EDWARD Order me one of those - a size bigger than my suits, and in their thickest rubber. Then another two sizes larger.
LESLIE Why?
EDWARD I'll let you guess. I must go and consult a furrier.
MUSIC
SCENE 10. MONTAGE - PHONE CALLS
LESLIE That sounds like it will precisely fill the bill. And everything is reinforced with asbestos? Very good.
EDWARD You have the address to ship to? Excellent. I realize it will take a prodigious amount of power to maintain. If necessary, I shall buy the power company!
LESLIE Woolens. Two sizes larger than I had originally inquired. Yes - the warmest you have. Oh, no, he likes it thick.
EDWARD No, no, the first set was quite satisfactory. [annoyed] Please place my order and refrain from further comment on my proclivities!
MUSIC
SCENE 11. DRESSING ROOM
SOUND CHRISTMAS CAROLS PLAY LIGHTLY IN THE BACKGROUND
SOUNDS RUBBERY SQUEAKS AND RUSTLES AS SHE DRESSES HIM.
EDWARD I've come to hate that music.
LESLIE This may be the last time it calls to mind such misfortunes. I've stitched the wool together at the waist. Too bad your valet can be no help.
EDWARD He demanded this week off. No wish to be anywhere in the entire country when the ghost arrives.
LESLIE Some people simply do not pay attention. The ghost only makes a bother in a given vicinity for a given time.
EDWARD Logic has nothing to do with superstitious fear. Let's see if the second rubber suit will go on.
LESLIE I've brought talc.
EDWARD You plan for everything, don't you?
LESLIE That's why you keep me around, though I must say you are the master planner here. Fur, then rubber, then wool, and rubber again - she shan't be able to get a drop of her icy dampness near you!
EDWARD No, indeed. Have you noticed, is it still snowing?
LESLIE There are great drifts on the windward side of the house, though the wind has died away.
EDWARD Excellent.
LESLIE When this is all over, you can focus on finding yourself a bride and satisfying your poor mother.
EDWARD [musing] Yes.
LESLIE Now the diving helmet.
SOUND LARGE METAL PICKED UP
MUSIC
SCENE 12. MUD ROOM / PORCH
SOUND DOOR OPENS, HEAVY SQUEAKY RUBBER NOISES ENTER
SOUND CLOCK CHIMES TWELVE, DOOR SHUT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT
SOUND CAREFULLY SITTING DOWN
EDWARD [slightly canned throughout - in his diving helmet] Oh... that's a bit tight.
SOUND SQUEAK AS HE ADJUSTS
EDWARD [hums a bit]
SOUND BANGING OF DOORS, WIND, SPLASH
EDWARD Right on time.
GHOST Greetings. You must know you cannot avoid me by hiding here in - in - what is this room, anyway?
EDWARD It is called a mud room, and I'm not hiding. In fact, I'm glad to see you.
GHOST You are the most original man I've met, if that is true. And what an odd hat!
EDWARD It is a little portable observatory I had made for just such engagements as this.
SOUND CLUNK ON HELMET
EDWARD Is it true that you are doomed to follow me for one mortal hour -- to stand where I stand, to sit where I sit?
GHOST That is my detestable fate.
EDWARD Let's go for a walk, then.
GHOST You cannot get rid of me that way! My water does not wear out with movement of any sort. I will merely damage more of your home.
EDWARD Then we will not walk through the house. Come along.
SOUND SQUEAKING, FOOTSTEPS
SOUND DRIPPING SQUISHES FOLLOW
SOUND DOOR OPENS, SNOWSTORM, FEET INTO SNOW
SCENE 13. OUTSIDE
SOUND XMAS MUSIC NEARBY FROM INSIDE
GHOST But, my dear sir! It is fearfully cold out there! You shall be frozen hard before you've been out ten minutes.
EDWARD Not I! I am very warmly dressed. Come along!
SOUND SNOWSTORM GETS LOUDER TO SHOW TIME
SOUND MUSIC IS FARTHER AWAY
GHOST Oh sir! You walk too slowly! I am nearly frozen.
EDWARD Is that so. Hmm.
GHOST My knees are so stiff now I can hardly move. I beseech you to accelerate your step.
EDWARD I should like to oblige a lady, but my clothes are rather heavy, and a hundred yards an hour is about my top speed. Indeed, I think we would better sit down here on this snowdrift and talk matters over.
GHOST Do not! Do not do so, I beg! Let us move along. I feel myself growing rigid as it is. If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff.
EDWARD [chuckles] That, madam, is precisely why I have brought you here. We have been on this spot just ten minutes; we have fifty more before your hour ends. Take your time about it, madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you.
GHOST I cannot move my right leg now! And my overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters.
EDWARD Never, madam. I have you at last, and I plan to keep you!
GHOST Alas! Help me, I beg. I congeal!
EDWARD Congeal, madam, congeal! You have drenched me and mine for over two hundred years, madam. Tonight you have had your last drench.
GHOST Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you'll see. Instead of the comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be iced water!
EDWARD No, you won't, either! For when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there you shall remain an icy work of art forever more.
GHOST But warehouses burn.
EDWARD So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fireproof walls.
GHOST For the last time let me beseech you. I would go on my knees to you, Oglethorpe, were they not already frozen. [freezing up] I beg of you do not doom me--
SOUND DISTANT CLOCK STRIKES ONE
SOUND CRACKLE OF ICE
SOUND WIND RISES
EDWARD I do feel for you, miss. But I feel for myself more.
MUSIC
SCENE 14. STUDY
SOUND PHONE HUNG UP
LESLIE Delivery was made, and all is well. The room has been sealed, and that, as they say, is that.
EDWARD I'm almost at a loss.
LESLIE What? Why?
EDWARD If you have an obstacle for such a long time, then it is gone, what can be left?
LESLIE Your mother still wishes for grandchildren.
EDWARD Now that "all good families" will have me over again?
LESLIE You are now not only rich and titled and eligible, you are also known to have single-handedly defeated an ancestral ghost. You are quite the talk of the town. Parents will be lining up to introduce their marriageable daughters to you.
EDWARD I think I can save them the trouble.
LESLIE What do you mean?
EDWARD There is something very alluring about a person who will stand by you through thick and thin.
LESLIE [oblivious] You're still upset that they wouldn't have anything to do with you while you were haunted?
EDWARD I shan't pay any mind to what they did. Just what you did.
LESLIE Pardon?
EDWARD [teasing] Are you not interested in being the mistress of Harrowby Hall? There is an opening in that position.
LESLIE [startled] Me? Marry you?
EDWARD If not you, my next best option is to thaw out the ghost and make an honest woman of her. I'm reasonably certain we're far enough removed that it would be legal.
LESLIE You're quite serious? About me, not her.
EDWARD Of course. About you, not her.
LESLIE Of course!
CLOSER
END