- Victor Rhyall: Sellers, have you seen my Bible?
- Trevor Sellers: I'm afraid I've got it. I wanted to look something up.
- Victor Rhyall: First you borrow my Times, now you pinch my Bible. That's democracy running amok!
- Trevor Sellers: I'm extremely sorry, my lord. I'll put it back beside your bed.
- Victor Rhyall: Anyway, you should have a Bible of your own!
- Trevor Sellers: Well, the one you're using is mine, my lord.
- Charles Delacro: Sometimes I'm convinced that the greatest barrier between our countries is the bond of a common language.
- Victor Rhyall: Well, so long, be seeing you, as you say in America.
- Charles Delacro: Cheerio, as you say in England.
- Trevor Sellers: I wonder if I might have a word with you, my lord.
- Victor Rhyall: So do I, so we're both probably right. Now what's the matter, Sellers?
- Trevor Sellers: As I told you, my lord, I haven't any work to do.
- Victor Rhyall: What about your novel, why aren't you working at that?
- Trevor Sellers: I'm stuck badly. Nearly tore the whole thing up last night.
- Victor Rhyall: Oh, now, now, you mustn't do that! What's the trouble?
- Trevor Sellers: Almost certainly the basic trouble is myself. I'm fundamentally happy and contented. That's bad enough, of course. But on top of that, I'm normal. And that's fatal.
- Victor Rhyall: Oh. You mean you prefer to be unhappy and abnormal.
- Trevor Sellers: Of course! You see, I want to be a success, and to be a success, one must at least start off by being modern. And like yourself, my lord, I'm not. It means I have no feeling of insecurity or frustration. No despair.
- Victor Rhyall: And that's essential?
- Trevor Sellers: The first essential! I feel perfectly contented, really rather blameless, and hardly resent anything at all!
- Victor Rhyall: Well, you are in a pickle, aren't you? Well now, you must have known all that when you gave up teaching to become a writer! You answered my advertisement for a butler, and when I asked you what your qualifications were you said you had a degree in science. Now in spite of such a ludicrous recommendation I engaged you, partly because you told me you wanted to write a novel. Luckily you turned out very well. Now why don't you go back to your typewriter and take another crack at this, Sellers, might do you good. You might feel better now!
- Hilary Rhyall: Darling? I'm afraid I want to work on you, too.
- Victor Rhyall: Hmm, it's unlike you to warn me; but, work on me.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh, you're so good to me.
- Victor Rhyall: [reading aloud, "Spring-Time" by William Ernest Henley] "Oh, this gracious and thirsting and aching unrest, All life's at the bud, And my heart, full of April, Is breaking my breast."
- Victor Rhyall: Well, it's May the 9th. At least that's what I'm going to write on your check.
- Hilary Rhyall: Who said anything about a check?
- Victor Rhyall: You did: "this gracious and thirsting and aching unrest". That can only mean one thing, darling. New clothes.
- Trevor Sellers: Well, you see, my lord. You're a contemporary.
- Victor Rhyall: Oh, what does that mean?
- Trevor Sellers: You're not modern.
- Victor Rhyall: You mean I'm an antique.
- Trevor Sellers: No, my lord. You're traditional.
- Victor Rhyall: You know something.
- Hilary Rhyall: What?
- Victor Rhyall: I wish to make a statement.
- Hilary Rhyall: What is it?
- Victor Rhyall: I adore you.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh do you, darling. I'm so glad.
- Victor Rhyall: What you're saying is, in effect, is that I'm old fashioned, out-of-date, and clinging to a way of life that's had dry rot in it for years.
- Charles Delacro: Yes, Ma'am.
- Hilary Rhyall: Yes, and in England we only call the Queen "Ma'am".
- Charles Delacro: In the United States we try to make up for having no royalty by calling everyone Ma'am.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh, you are clever, aren't you.
- Victor Rhyall: On the contrary, you're the one whose clever.
- Victor Rhyall: [tour bus honks it's horn] Oh, here they come. Laughing and scratching. Spreading apple cores and nutshells all over the place. And little bits of sticky paper.
- Hilary Rhyall: Perhaps you'd like to help yourself.
- Charles Delacro: Alright, thank you.
- Hilary Rhyall: I imagine it's something you're quite used to. Helping yourself, I mean.
- Charles Delacro: Was that a crack or a compliment?
- Hilary Rhyall: Well, which do you think it is?
- Charles Delacro: Well, in my country I'd probably consider it a compliment. Here it's probably a crack.
- Charles Delacro: Would you like me to fix you a drink?
- Hilary Rhyall: Fix? You sound as if you're going to drug me or something.
- Charles Delacro: I'm an oil man.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh, you're a millionaire!
- Charles Delacro: As a matter of fact, I am.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh. Well. Won't you sit down?
- Charles Delacro: Thank you. Tell me, why were you so uh - why were you so sure I was a millionaire?
- Hilary Rhyall: Well, nearly all the Americans I meet seem to be. Especially the oily ones.
- Hilary Rhyall: You know by rights, you should be in the library by now. Enjoying "Portrait of a Burgermeister" by Van Dyck, "Lady Ryall and Children" by Nasmyth circa 1800 unfinished, "Henrietta Maria, the Wife of Charles I" by Rowlandson, and two mirrors by Robert Adam. Why don't you go and look at them?
- Charles Delacro: Because I'd rather look at you.
- Hilary Rhyall: Well, I'm not on exhibition.
- Charles Delacro: May I take a picture of you? "Portrait of the 20th Century Lady of Fashion" by Delacro.
- Charles Delacro: Your grandfather was probably a nobleman. Mine was a clockmaker.
- Hilary Rhyall: And now you're a millionaire, and I'm a mushroom grower. Oh well, there you are. That's the way the world wags.
- Victor Rhyall: You seem to be quite an Anglophile.
- Charles Delacro: Well, there are a number of things I find attractive in this country.
- Victor Rhyall: And how do you rate current Anglo-American relations?
- Charles Delacro: I like to think that they haven't been better since the War of Independence. Course there's always room for improvement.
- Victor Rhyall: How was the fishing?
- Charles Delacro: Well, on the whole, it was pretty fair. There were some big fish around, but I'm afraid your friend, Josh Peters, did a lot better than I did.
- Victor Rhyall: Well, and so he should. He knows that water as well as he know his own wife. Much prefers it, too.
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh, Victor, don't be vulgar.
- Victor Rhyall: Astonishing, isn't it? Here's a reasonable, decent sort of man who'd no more think of stealing my cuff links than he would of taking my umbrella. Yet he'll pay half a crown at the door, walk into my house, and without disturbing his conscience in anyway, calmly endeavor to steal my wife.
- Hattie Durant: By the same token, Hilary wouldn't cheat at cards. There's no honor where there's *sex*.
- Victor Rhyall: You are happy to say.
- Victor Rhyall: It was curiousity, wasn't it? You wanted to see how I reacted to my wife falling in love with another man.
- Hattie Durant: He's not just another man, darling. He's a millionaire!
- Victor Rhyall: Did you say you had rather a lot to do, darling?
- Hilary Rhyall: Oh! Yes, yes, I have. I must go and finish the mushrooms.
- Victor Rhyall: [reading aloud] "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife, nor his ox, nor his ass..."
- Hattie Durant: Well, good luck.
- Victor Rhyall: Well you say that as if you think I'm going to need it.
- Hattie Durant: Hmm, don't we all? Can't do a blasted thing without good luck. You need it from the moment you get out of bed in the morning, til the moment you get back in at night. Particularly when you get back in again at night.
- Victor Rhyall: You are a wanton.
- Hattie Durant: What else?
- Hattie Durant: What did Shakespeare say? A cuckoo then on every tree mocks married men.
- Victor Rhyall: Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Victor Rhyall: I ought to shoot him.
- Hattie Durant: Oh, I do think we should try and avoid bloodshed, darling. It's a little old-fashioned.
- Victor Rhyall: Well, it's time it was brought up to date.
- Victor Rhyall: The fundamental difference between men and women, is that what's sauce for the goose is *not* sauce for the gander. That's why women wear wedding rings and men don't.
- Hattie Durant: First proud, now arrogant. And exceedingly immoral.
- Victor Rhyall: Oh, come, come.
- Hattie Durant: If you give me some gin, I'll give you some advice. I don't believe in something for nothing.
- Victor Rhyall: I take it you're staying the weekend. Did you bring a bag?
- Hattie Durant: When you're addressing me, I prefer the word suitcase.
- Victor Rhyall: Without her I don't say I would be lost, but it certainly wouldn't be very clear in my mind which way to turn.
- Hattie Durant: I'd like a good dinner with a bottle of something very expensive, and preferably fizzy.
- Hattie Durant: I have a horrible feeling you're plotting something not to do with me. Which couldn't be more disappointing.
- Victor Rhyall: [singing] And with the girls be handy, Yankee Doodle came to London, Riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni...
- Victor Rhyall: [on the phone] Is that the Savoy? I want to speak to Charles Delacro, please. No, no. Da. D. Delacro. That's right. Oh, this is Rock Hudson calling.
- Hattie Durant: From a woman's point of view, the amount of time that men spend talking about *fish* is quite humiliating.
- Charles Delacro: I know it's my fault. I insisted on coming down here, but - well, now I know that he knows. And he *knows* that I know he knows. Hattie knows. We all know we all know.
- Hilary Rhyall: Perhaps you don't understand Englishmen very well.
- Charles Delacro: Well, who does?
- Hilary Rhyall: Englishwomen.
- Victor Rhyall: I can't see you on what's called the international set, my darling. Not the glitter and glare of St Moritz and Nassau, and Palm Beach. You're English. And you need the gentleness of the rain and the soft winds of England.
- Hattie Durant: [referring to the unknown contents inside a mysterious suitcase] You couldn't really get a body in there, could you? I mean not unless it was cut up, of course.
- Victor Rhyall: Now Hattie, don't be disgusting.
- Hattie Durant: Oh, alright then, dismembered.
- Victor Rhyall: Well, that's even worse.
- Hattie Durant: I expect that's why they always use it in the newspapers.
- Hilary Rhyall: I can give no guarantee of what I'm going to do or how I'm going to behave. Do you find that shocking?
- Hattie Durant: Well, coming from you I do, rather. Ah, surprising anyway. Of course, it's the sort of feeling I've been having ever since I was about 11.
- Hilary Rhyall: Well, you must be out of your mind. Dueling? I've never heard of anything so preposterous. You're the Earl of Rhyall, not the Count of Monte Cristo.
- Hilary Rhyall: I thought you were an intelligent, civilized person, and you behave like a barbarian.
- Victor Rhyall: If your mistress is unfaithful. She should be discarded. If your wife is - she should be befriended.
- Hilary Rhyall: Befriended? Meaning helped and patronized?
- Victor Rhyall: Meaning beloved and cherished. Unless she's a promiscuous trollop of course. Then the situation's out of control and quite hopeless.
- Hilary Rhyall: I am not a promiscuous trollop!
- Hilary Rhyall: Surely, you must see it's very tempting.
- Victor Rhyall: Oh yes, indeed. The grass is always greener on the other side of the hedge. You ought to think it over very carefully.
- Hilary Rhyall: How do I know that you're not a promiscuous - well, whatever the masculine is of trollop?