One Day More
Joseph Conrad
Novels
0:55 h
Level 8
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer, regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. One Day More is a play, first published in 1917. A retired coasting skipper, Captain Hagberd, spends every day preparing for when his son will finally come home back home to him. Attending to Captain Hagberd is the young Bessie Carvil who, with her father, lives in the cottage next door to Hagberd. Hagberd has grown extremely fond of Bessie that he is certain that his son will marry her.

One Day More

A Play in One Act

by
Joseph Conrad

Characters

Captain Hagberd (a retired coasting skipper).
Josiah Carvil (formerly a shipbuilder — a widower — blind).
Harry Hagberd (son of Captain Hagberd, who as a boy ran away from home).
A Lamplighter.
Bessie Carvil (daughter of Josiah Carvil).

Scene:
A Small Sea Port

To right, two yellow brick cottages belonging to Captain Hagberd, oneinhabited by himself the other by the Carvils. A lamp-post in front. Thered roofs of the town in the background. A sea-wall to left.

Time: The present-early autumn, towards dusk.

Scene I

CURTAIN RISES DISCLOSING CARVIL and Bessie moving away from sea-wall.Bessie about twenty-five. Black dress; black straw hat. A lot ofmahogany-coloured hair loosely done up. Pale face. Full figure. Veryquiet. Carvil, blind, unwieldy. Reddish whiskers; slow, deep voiceproduced without effort. Immovable, big face.

Carvil (Hanging heavily on Bessie’s arm). Careful! Go slow! (Stops;Bessie waits patiently.) Want your poor blind father to break hisneck? (Shuffles on.) In a hurry to get home and start thateverlasting yarn with your chum the lunatic?

Bessie. I am not in a hurry to get home, father.

Carvil. Well, then, go steady with a poor blind man. Blind! Helpless! (Strikesthe ground with his stick.) Never mind! I’ve had time to make enoughmoney to have ham and eggs for breakfast every morning — thank God!And thank God, too, for it, girl. You haven’t known a single hardship inall the days of your idle life. Unless you think that a blind, helplessfather — .

Bessie. What is there for me to be in a hurry for?

Carvil. What did you say?

Bessie. I said there was nothing for me to hurry home for.