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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Heartbreak House, by George Bernard Shaw
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+Title: Heartbreak House
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Release Date:  November, 2002  [Etext #3543]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Heartbreak House, by George Bernard Shaw
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+
+HEARTBREAK HOUSE: A FANTASIA IN THE RUSSIAN MANNER ON ENGLISH THEMES
+
+by BERNARD SHAW
+
+1913-1916
+
+
+
+
+HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL
+
+
+Where Heartbreak House Stands
+
+Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows
+this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war.
+When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the
+professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby
+is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian
+playwright, Tchekov, had produced four fascinating dramatic
+studies of Heartbreak House, of which three, The Cherry Orchard,
+Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been performed in England.
+Tolstoy, in his Fruits of Enlightenment, had shown us through it
+in his most ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did not
+waste any sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe
+was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and
+futilization in that overheated drawingroom atmosphere was
+delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless
+cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have
+now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed
+to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the
+ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the
+pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of
+opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly
+and exercising them violently until they were broad awake.
+Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming
+people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up
+and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple
+in exploiting and even flattering their charm.
+
+
+
+The Inhabitants
+
+Tchekov's plays, being less lucrative than swings and
+roundabouts, got no further in England, where theatres are only
+ordinary commercial affairs, than a couple of performances by the
+Stage Society. We stared and said, "How Russian!" They did not
+strike me in that way. Just as Ibsen's intensely Norwegian plays
+exactly fitted every middle and professional class suburb in
+Europe, these intensely Russian plays fitted all the country
+houses in Europe in which the pleasures of music, art,
+literature, and the theatre had supplanted hunting, shooting,
+fishing, flirting, eating, and drinking. The same nice people,
+the same utter futility. The nice people could read; some of them
+could write; and they were the sole repositories of culture who
+had social opportunities of contact with our politicians,
+administrators, and newspaper proprietors, or any chance of
+sharing or influencing their activities. But they shrank from
+that contact. They hated politics. They did not wish to realize
+Utopia for the common people: they wished to realize their
+favorite fictions and poems in their own lives; and, when they
+could, they lived without scruple on incomes which they did
+nothing to earn. The women in their girlhood made themselves look
+like variety theatre stars, and settled down later into the types
+of beauty imagined by the previous generation of painters. They
+took the only part of our society in which there was leisure for
+high culture, and made it an economic, political and; as far as
+practicable, a moral vacuum; and as Nature, abhorring the vacuum,
+immediately filled it up with sex and with all sorts of refined
+pleasures, it was a very delightful place at its best for moments
+of relaxation. In other moments it was disastrous. For prime
+ministers and their like, it was a veritable Capua.
+
+
+
+Horseback Hall
+
+But where were our front benchers to nest if not here? The
+alternative to Heartbreak House was Horseback Hall, consisting of
+a prison for horses with an annex for the ladies and gentlemen
+who rode them, hunted them, talked about them, bought them and
+sold them, and gave nine-tenths of their lives to them, dividing
+the other tenth between charity, churchgoing (as a substitute for
+religion), and conservative electioneering (as a substitute for
+politics). It is true that the two establishments got mixed at
+the edges. Exiles from the library, the music room, and the
+picture gallery would be found languishing among the stables,
+miserably discontented; and hardy horsewomen who slept at the
+first chord of Schumann were born, horribly misplaced, into the
+garden of Klingsor; but sometimes one came upon horsebreakers and
+heartbreakers who could make the best of both worlds. As a rule,
+however, the two were apart and knew little of one another; so
+the prime minister folk had to choose between barbarism and
+Capua. And of the two atmospheres it is hard to say which was the
+more fatal to statesmanship.
+
+
+Revolution on the Shelf
+
+Heartbreak House was quite familiar with revolutionary ideas on
+paper. It aimed at being advanced and freethinking, and hardly
+ever went to church or kept the Sabbath except by a little extra
+fun at weekends. When you spent a Friday to Tuesday in it you
+found on the shelf in your bedroom not only the books of poets
+and novelists, but of revolutionary biologists and even
+economists. Without at least a few plays by myself and Mr
+Granville Barker, and a few stories by Mr H. G. Wells, Mr Arnold
+Bennett, and Mr John Galsworthy, the house would have been out of
+the movement. You would find Blake among the poets, and beside
+him Bergson, Butler, Scott Haldane, the poems of Meredith and
+Thomas Hardy, and, generally speaking, all the literary
+implements for forming the mind of the perfect modern Socialist
+and Creative Evolutionist. It was a curious experience to spend
+Sunday in dipping into these books, and the Monday morning to
+read in the daily paper that the country had just been brought to
+the verge of anarchy because a new Home Secretary or chief of
+police without an idea in his head that his great-grandmother
+might not have had to apologize for, had refused to "recognize"
+some powerful Trade Union, just as a gondola might refuse to
+recognize a 20,000-ton liner.
+
+In short, power and culture were in separate compartments. The
+barbarians were not only literally in the saddle, but on the
+front bench in the House of commons, with nobody to correct their
+incredible ignorance of modern thought and political science but
+upstarts from the counting-house, who had spent their lives
+furnishing their pockets instead of their minds. Both, however,
+were practised in dealing with money and with men, as far as
+acquiring the one and exploiting the other went; and although
+this is as undesirable an expertness as that of the medieval
+robber baron, it qualifies men to keep an estate or a business
+going in its old routine without necessarily understanding it,
+just as Bond Street tradesmen and domestic servants keep
+fashionable society going without any instruction in sociology.
+
+
+
+The Cherry Orchard
+
+The Heartbreak people neither could nor would do anything of the
+sort. With their heads as full of the Anticipations of Mr H. G.
+Wells as the heads of our actual rulers were empty even of the
+anticipations of Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, they refused the
+drudgery of politics, and would have made a very poor job of it
+if they had changed their minds. Not that they would have been
+allowed to meddle anyhow, as only through the accident of being a
+hereditary peer can anyone in these days of Votes for Everybody
+get into parliament if handicapped by a serious modern cultural
+equipment; but if they had, their habit of living in a vacuum
+would have left them helpless end ineffective in public affairs.
+Even in private life they were often helpless wasters of their
+inheritance, like the people in Tchekov's Cherry Orchard. Even
+those who lived within their incomes were really kept going by
+their solicitors and agents, being unable to manage an estate or
+run a business without continual prompting from those who have to
+learn how to do such things or starve.
+
+>From what is called Democracy no corrective to this state of
+things could be hoped. It is said that every people has the
+Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every
+Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orators of the
+front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.
+Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle of reciprocal
+worthiness and unworthiness.
+
+
+
+Nature's Long Credits
+
+Nature's way of dealing with unhealthy conditions is
+unfortunately not one that compels us to conduct a solvent
+hygiene on a cash basis. She demoralizes us with long credits and
+reckless overdrafts, and then pulls us up cruelly with
+catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for example, common domestic
+sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect it utterly and
+scandalously, if not with absolute impunity, yet without any evil
+consequences that anyone thinks of tracing to it. In a hospital
+two generations of medical students way tolerate dirt and
+carelessness, and then go out into general practice to spread the
+doctrine that fresh air is a fad, and sanitation an imposture set
+up to make profits for plumbers. Then suddenly Nature takes her
+revenge. She strikes at the city with a pestilence and at the
+hospital with an epidemic of hospital gangrene, slaughtering
+right and left until the innocent young have paid for the guilty
+old, and the account is balanced. And then she goes to sleep
+again and gives another period of credit, with the same result.
+
+This is what has just happened in our political hygiene.
+Political science has been as recklessly neglected by Governments
+and electorates during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the
+days of Charles the Second. In international relations diplomacy
+has been a boyishly lawless affair of family intrigues,
+commercial and territorial brigandage, torpors of
+pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness and spasms of ferocious
+activity produced by terror. But in these islands we muddled
+through. Nature gave us a longer credit than she gave to France
+or Germany or Russia. To British centenarians who died in their
+beds in 1914, any dread of having to hide underground in London
+from the shells of an enemy seemed more remote and fantastic than
+a dread of the appearance of a colony of cobras and rattlesnakes
+in Kensington Gardens. In the prophetic works of Charles Dickens
+we were warned against many evils which have since come to pass;
+but of the evil of being slaughtered by a foreign foe on our own
+doorsteps there was no shadow. Nature gave us a very long credit;
+and we abused it to the utmost. But when she struck at last she
+struck with a vengeance. For four years she smote our firstborn
+and heaped on us plagues of which Egypt never dreamed. They were
+all as preventable as the great Plague of London, and came solely
+because they had not been prevented. They were not undone by
+winning the war. The earth is still bursting with the dead bodies
+of the victors.
+
+
+
+The Wicked Half Century
+
+It is difficult to say whether indifference and neglect are worse
+than false doctrine; but Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall
+unfortunately suffered from both. For half a century before the
+war civilization had been going to the devil very precipitately
+under the influence of a pseudo-science as disastrous as the
+blackest Calvinism. Calvinism taught that as we are
+predestinately saved or damned, nothing that we can do can alter
+our destiny. Still, as Calvinism gave the individual no clue as
+to whether he had drawn a lucky number or an unlucky one, it left
+him a fairly strong interest in encouraging his hopes of
+salvation and allaying his fear of damnation by behaving as one
+of the elect might be expected to behave rather than as one of
+the reprobate. But in the middle of the nineteenth century
+naturalists and physicists assured the world, in the name of
+Science, that salvation and damnation are all nonsense, and that
+predestination is the central truth of religion, inasmuch as
+human beings are produced by their environment, their sins and
+good deeds being only a series of chemical and mechanical
+reactions over which they have no control. Such figments as mind,
+choice, purpose, conscience, will, and so forth, are, they
+taught, mere illusions, produced because they are useful in the
+continual struggle of the human machine to maintain its
+environment in a favorable condition, a process incidentally
+involving the ruthless destruction or subjection of its
+competitors for the supply (assumed to be limited) of subsistence
+available. We taught Prussia this religion; and Prussia bettered
+our instruction so effectively that we presently found ourselves
+confronted with the necessity of destroying Prussia to prevent
+Prussia destroying us. And that has just ended in each destroying
+the other to an extent doubtfully reparable in our time.
+
+It may be asked how so imbecile and dangerous a creed ever came
+to be accepted by intelligent beings. I will answer that question
+more fully in my next volume of plays, which will be entirely
+devoted to the subject. For the present I will only say that
+there were better reasons than the obvious one that such sham
+science as this opened a scientific career to very stupid men,
+and all the other careers to shameless rascals, provided they
+were industrious enough. It is true that this motive operated
+very powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific
+doctrine which is associated with the name of the great
+naturalist Charles Darwin began, it was not only a reaction
+against a barbarous pseudo-evangelical teleology intolerably
+obstructive to all scientific progress, but was accompanied, as
+it happened, by discoveries of extraordinary interest in physics,
+chemistry, and that lifeless method of evolution which its
+investigators called Natural Selection. Howbeit, there was only
+one result possible in the ethical sphere, and that was the
+banishment of conscience from human affairs, or, as Samuel Butler
+vehemently put it, "of mind from the universe."
+
+
+
+Hypochondria
+
+Now Heartbreak House, with Butler and Bergson and Scott Haldane
+alongside Blake and the other major poets on its shelves (to say
+nothing of Wagner and the tone poets), was not so completely
+blinded by the doltish materialism of the laboratories as the
+uncultured world outside. But being an idle house it was a
+hypochondriacal house, always running after cures. It would stop
+eating meat, not on valid Shelleyan grounds, but in order to get
+rid of a bogey called Uric Acid; and it would actually let you
+pull all its teeth out to exorcise another demon named Pyorrhea.
+It was superstitious, and addicted to table-rapping,
+materialization seances, clairvoyance, palmistry, crystal-gazing
+and the like to such an extent that it may be doubted whether
+ever before in the history of the world did soothsayers,
+astrologers, and unregistered therapeutic specialists of all
+sorts flourish as they did during this half century of the drift
+to the abyss. The registered doctors and surgeons were hard put
+to it to compete with the unregistered. They were not clever
+enough to appeal to the imagination and sociability of the
+Heartbreakers by the arts of the actor, the orator, the poet, the
+winning conversationalist. They had to fall back coarsely on the
+terror of infection and death. They prescribed inoculations and
+operations. Whatever part of a human being could be cut out
+without necessarily killing him they cut out; and he often died
+(unnecessarily of course) in consequence. From such trifles as
+uvulas and tonsils they went on to ovaries and appendices until
+at last no one's inside was safe. They explained that the human
+intestine was too long, and that nothing could make a child of
+Adam healthy except short circuiting the pylorus by cutting a
+length out of the lower intestine and fastening it directly to
+the stomach. As their mechanist theory taught them that medicine
+was the business of the chemist's laboratory, and surgery of the
+carpenter's shop, and also that Science (by which they meant
+their practices) was so important that no consideration for the
+interests of any individual creature, whether frog or
+philosopher, much less the vulgar commonplaces of sentimental
+ethics, could weigh for a moment against the remotest off-chance
+of an addition to the body of scientific knowledge, they operated
+and vivisected and inoculated and lied on a stupendous scale,
+clamoring for and actually acquiring such legal powers over the
+bodies of their fellow-citizens as neither king, pope, nor
+parliament dare ever have claimed. The Inquisition itself was a
+Liberal institution compared to the General Medical Council.
+
+
+
+Those who do not know how to live must make a Merit of Dying
+
+Heartbreak House was far too lazy and shallow to extricate itself
+from this palace of evil enchantment. It rhapsodized about love;
+but it believed in cruelty. It was afraid of the cruel people;
+and it saw that cruelty was at least effective. Cruelty did
+things that made money, whereas Love did nothing but prove the
+soundness of Larochefoucauld's saying that very few people would
+fall in love if they had never read about it. Heartbreak House,
+in short, did not know how to live, at which point all that was
+left to it was the boast that at least it knew how to die: a
+melancholy accomplishment which the outbreak of war presently
+gave it practically unlimited opportunities of displaying. Thus
+were the firstborn of Heartbreak House smitten; and the young,
+the innocent, the hopeful, expiated the folly and worthlessness
+of their elders.
+
+
+War Delirium
+
+Only those who have lived through a first-rate war, not in the
+field, but at home, and kept their heads, can possibly understand
+the bitterness of Shakespeare and Swift, who both went through
+this experience. The horror of Peer Gynt in the madhouse, when
+the lunatics, exalted by illusions of splendid talent and visions
+of a dawning millennium, crowned him as their emperor, was tame
+in comparison. I do not know whether anyone really kept his head
+completely except those who had to keep it because they had to
+conduct the war at first hand. I should not have kept my own (as
+far as I did keep it) if I had not at once understood that as a
+scribe and speaker I too was under the most serious public
+obligation to keep my grip on realities; but this did not save me
+from a considerable degree of hyperaesthesia. There were of
+course some happy people to whom the war meant nothing: all
+political and general matters lying outside their little circle
+of interest. But the ordinary war-conscious civilian went mad,
+the main symptom being a conviction that the whole order of
+nature had been reversed. All foods, he felt, must now be
+adulterated. All schools must be closed. No advertisements must
+be sent to the newspapers, of which new editions must appear and
+be bought up every ten minutes. Travelling must be stopped, or,
+that being impossible, greatly hindered. All pretences about fine
+art and culture and the like must be flung off as an intolerable
+affectation; and the picture galleries and museums and schools at
+once occupied by war workers. The British Museum itself was saved
+only by a hair's breadth. The sincerity of all this, and of much
+more which would not be believed if I chronicled it, may be
+established by one conclusive instance of the general craziness.
+Men were seized with the illusion that they could win the war by
+giving away money. And they not only subscribed millions to Funds
+of all sorts with no discoverable object, and to ridiculous
+voluntary organizations for doing what was plainly the business
+of the civil and military authorities, but actually handed out
+money to any thief in the street who had the presence of mind to
+pretend that he (or she) was "collecting" it for the annihilation
+of the enemy. Swindlers were emboldened to take offices; label
+themselves Anti-Enemy Leagues; and simply pocket the money that
+was heaped on them. Attractively dressed young women found that
+they had nothing to do but parade the streets, collecting-box in
+hand, and live gloriously on the profits. Many months elapsed
+before, as a first sign of returning sanity, the police swept an
+Anti-Enemy secretary into prison pour encourages les autres, and
+the passionate penny collecting of the Flag Days was brought
+under some sort of regulation.
+
+
+
+Madness in Court
+
+The demoralization did not spare the Law Courts. Soldiers were
+acquitted, even on fully proved indictments for wilful murder,
+until at last the judges and magistrates had to announce that
+what was called the Unwritten Law, which meant simply that a
+soldier could do what he liked with impunity in civil life, was
+not the law of the land, and that a Victoria Cross did not carry
+with it a perpetual plenary indulgence. Unfortunately the
+insanity of the juries and magistrates did not always manifest
+itself in indulgence. No person unlucky enough to be charged with
+any sort of conduct, however reasonable and salutary, that did
+not smack of war delirium, had the slightest chance of acquittal.
+There were in the country, too, a certain number of people who
+had conscientious objections to war as criminal or unchristian.
+The Act of Parliament introducing Compulsory Military Service
+thoughtlessly exempted these persons, merely requiring them to
+prove the genuineness of their convictions. Those who did so were
+very ill-advised from the point of view of their own personal
+interest; for they were persecuted with savage logicality in
+spite of the law; whilst those who made no pretence of having any
+objection to war at all, and had not only had military training
+in Officers' Training Corps, but had proclaimed on public
+occasions that they were perfectly ready to engage in civil war
+on behalf of their political opinions, were allowed the benefit
+of the Act on the ground that they did not approve of this
+particular war. For the Christians there was no mercy. In cases
+where the evidence as to their being killed by ill treatment was
+so unequivocal that the verdict would certainly have been one of
+wilful murder had the prejudice of the coroner's jury been on the
+other side, their tormentors were gratuitously declared to be
+blameless. There was only one virtue, pugnacity: only one vice,
+pacifism. That is an essential condition of war; but the
+Government had not the courage to legislate accordingly; and its
+law was set aside for Lynch law.
+
+The climax of legal lawlessness was reached in France. The
+greatest Socialist statesman in Europe, Jaures, was shot and
+killed by a gentleman who resented his efforts to avert the war.
+M. Clemenceau was shot by another gentleman of less popular
+opinions, and happily came off no worse than having to spend a
+precautionary couple of days in bed. The slayer of Jaures was
+recklessly acquitted: the would-be slayer of M. Clemenceau was
+carefully found guilty. There is no reason to doubt that the same
+thing would have happened in England if the war had begun with a
+successful attempt to assassinate Keir Hardie, and ended with an
+unsuccessful one to assassinate Mr Lloyd George.
+
+
+
+The Long Arm of War
+
+The pestilence which is the usual accompaniment of war was called
+influenza. Whether it was really a war pestilence or not was made
+doubtful by the fact that it did its worst in places remote from
+the battlefields, notably on the west coast of North America and
+in India. But the moral pestilence, which was unquestionably a
+war pestilence, reproduced this phenomenon. One would have
+supposed that the war fever would have raged most furiously in
+the countries actually under fire, and that the others would be
+more reasonable. Belgium and Flanders, where over large districts
+literally not one stone was left upon another as the opposed
+armies drove each other back and forward over it after terrific
+preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving
+their feelings more emphatically than by shrugging their
+shoulders and saying, "C'est la guerre." England, inviolate for
+so many centuries that the swoop of war on her homesteads had
+long ceased to be more credible than a return of the Flood, could
+hardly be expected to keep her temper sweet when she knew at last
+what it was to hide in cellars and underground railway stations,
+or lie quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, houses crumbled, and
+aircraft guns distributed shrapnel on friend and foe alike until
+certain shop windows in London, formerly full of fashionable
+hats, were filled with steel helmets. Slain and mutilated women
+and children, and burnt and wrecked dwellings, excuse a good deal
+of violent language, and produce a wrath on which many suns go
+down before it is appeased. Yet it was in the United States of
+America where nobody slept the worse for the war, that the war
+fever went beyond all sense and reason. In European Courts there
+was vindictive illegality: in American Courts there was raving
+lunacy. It is not for me to chronicle the extravagances of an
+Ally: let some candid American do that. I can only say that to us
+sitting in our gardens in England, with the guns in France making
+themselves felt by a throb in the air as unmistakeable as an
+audible sound, or with tightening hearts studying the phases of
+the moon in London in their bearing on the chances whether our
+houses would be standing or ourselves alive next morning, the
+newspaper accounts of the sentences American Courts were passing
+on young girls and old men alike for the expression of opinions
+which were being uttered amid thundering applause before huge
+audiences in England, and the more private records of the methods
+by which the American War Loans were raised, were so amazing that
+they put the guns and the possibilities of a raid clean out of
+our heads for the moment.
+
+
+
+The Rabid Watchdogs of Liberty
+
+Not content with these rancorous abuses of the existing law, the
+war maniacs made a frantic rush to abolish all constitutional
+guarantees of liberty and well-being. The ordinary law was
+superseded by Acts under which newspapers were seized and their
+printing machinery destroyed by simple police raids a la Russe,
+and persons arrested and shot without any pretence of trial by
+jury or publicity of procedure or evidence. Though it was
+urgently necessary that production should be increased by the
+most scientific organization and economy of labor, and though no
+fact was better established than that excessive duration and
+intensity of toil reduces production heavily instead of
+increasing it, the factory laws were suspended, and men and women
+recklessly over-worked until the loss of their efficiency became
+too glaring to be ignored. Remonstrances and warnings were met
+either with an accusation of pro-Germanism or the formula,
+"Remember that we are at war now." I have said that men assumed
+that war had reversed the order of nature, and that all was lost
+unless we did the exact opposite of everything we had found
+necessary and beneficial in peace. But the truth was worse than
+that. The war did not change men's minds in any such impossible
+way. What really happened was that the impact of physical death
+and destruction, the one reality that every fool can understand,
+tore off the masks of education, art, science and religion from
+our ignorance and barbarism, and left us glorying grotesquely in
+the licence suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most
+abject terrors. Ever since Thucydides wrote his history, it has
+been on record that when the angel of death sounds his trumpet
+the pretences of civilization are blown from men's heads into the
+mud like hats in a gust of wind. But when this scripture was
+fulfilled among us, the shock was not the less appalling because
+a few students of Greek history were not surprised by it. Indeed
+these students threw themselves into the orgy as shamelessly as
+the illiterate. The Christian priest, joining in the war dance
+without even throwing off his cassock first, and the respectable
+school governor expelling the German professor with insult and
+bodily violence, and declaring that no English child should
+ever again be taught the language of Luther and Goethe, were kept
+in countenance by the most impudent repudiations of every decency
+of civilization and every lesson of political experience on the
+part of the very persons who, as university professors,
+historians, philosophers, and men of science, were the accredited
+custodians of culture. It was crudely natural, and perhaps
+necessary for recruiting purposes, that German militarism and
+German dynastic ambition should be painted by journalists and
+recruiters in black and red as European dangers (as in fact they
+are), leaving it to be inferred that our own militarism and our
+own political constitution are millennially democratic (which
+they certainly are not); but when it came to frantic
+denunciations of German chemistry, German biology, German poetry,
+German music, German literature, German philosophy, and even
+German engineering, as malignant abominations standing towards
+British and French chemistry and so forth in the relation of
+heaven to hell, it was clear that the utterers of such barbarous
+ravings had never really understood or cared for the arts and
+sciences they professed and were profaning, and were only the
+appallingly degenerate descendants of the men of the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries who, recognizing no national frontiers
+in the great realm of the human mind, kept the European comity of
+that realm loftily and even ostentatiously above the rancors of
+the battle-field. Tearing the Garter from the Kaiser's leg,
+striking the German dukes from the roll of our peerage, changing
+the King's illustrious and historically appropriate surname (for
+the war was the old war of Guelph against Ghibelline, with the
+Kaiser as Arch-Ghibelline) to that of a traditionless locality.
+One felt that the figure of St. George and the Dragon on our
+coinage should be replaced by that of the soldier driving his
+spear through Archimedes. But by that time there was no coinage:
+only paper money in which ten shillings called itself a pound as
+confidently as the people who were disgracing their country
+called themselves patriots.
+
+
+
+The Sufferings of the Sane
+
+The mental distress of living amid the obscene din of all these
+carmagnoles and corobberies was not the only burden that lay on
+sane people during the war. There was also the emotional strain,
+complicated by the offended economic sense, produced by the
+casualty lists. The stupid, the selfish, the narrow-minded, the
+callous and unimaginative were spared a great deal. "Blood and
+destruction shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when
+they behold their infantes quartered by the hands of war," was a
+Shakespearean prophecy that very nearly came true; for when
+nearly every house had a slaughtered son to mourn, we should all
+have gone quite out of our senses if we had taken our own and our
+friend's bereavements at their peace value. It became necessary
+to give them a false value; to proclaim the young life worthily
+and gloriously sacrificed to redeem the liberty of mankind,
+instead of to expiate the heedlessness and folly of their
+fathers, and expiate it in vain. We had even to assume that the
+parents and not the children had made the sacrifice, until at
+last the comic papers were driven to satirize fat old men,
+sitting comfortably in club chairs, and boasting of the sons they
+had "given" to their country.
+
+No one grudged these anodynes to acute personal grief; but they
+only embittered those who knew that the young men were having
+their teeth set on edge because their parents had eaten sour
+political grapes. Then think of the young men themselves! Many of
+them had no illusions about the policy that led to the war: they
+went clear-sighted to a horribly repugnant duty. Men essentially
+gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand,
+laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the
+barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye, so
+that they might go out to kill and maim men as gentle as
+themselves. These men, who were perhaps, as a class, our most
+efficient soldiers (Frederick Keeling, for example), were not
+duped for a moment by the hypocritical melodrama that consoled
+and stimulated the others. They left their creative work to
+drudge at destruction, exactly as they would have left it to take
+their turn at the pumps in a sinking ship. They did not, like
+some of the conscientious objectors, hold back because the ship
+had been neglected by its officers and scuttled by its wreckers.
+The ship had to be saved, even if Newton had to leave his
+fluxions and Michael Angelo his marbles to save it; so they threw
+away the tools of their beneficent and ennobling trades, and took
+up the blood-stained bayonet and the murderous bomb, forcing
+themselves to pervert their divine instinct for perfect artistic
+execution to the effective handling of these diabolical things,
+and their economic faculty for organization to the contriving of
+ruin and slaughter. For it gave an ironic edge to their tragedy
+that the very talents they were forced to prostitute made the
+prostitution not only effective, but even interesting; so that
+some of them were rapidly promoted, and found themselves actually
+becoming artists in wax, with a growing relish for it, like
+Napoleon and all the other scourges of mankind, in spite of
+themselves. For many of them there was not even this consolation.
+They "stuck it," and hated it, to the end.
+
+
+
+Evil in the Throne of Good
+
+This distress of the gentle was so acute that those who shared it
+in civil life, without having to shed blood with their own hands,
+or witness destruction with their own eyes, hardly care to
+obtrude their own woes. Nevertheless, even when sitting at home
+in safety, it was not easy for those who had to write and speak
+about the war to throw away their highest conscience, and
+deliberately work to a standard of inevitable evil instead of to
+the ideal of life more abundant. I can answer for at least one
+person who found the change from the wisdom of Jesus and St.
+Francis to the morals of Richard III and the madness of Don
+Quixote extremely irksome. But that change had to be made; and we
+are all the worse for it, except those for whom it was not really
+a change at all, but only a relief from hypocrisy.
+
+Think, too, of those who, though they had neither to write nor to
+fight, and had no children of their own to lose, yet knew the
+inestimable loss to the world of four years of the life of a
+generation wasted on destruction. Hardly one of the epoch-making
+works of the human mind might not have been aborted or destroyed
+by taking their authors away from their natural work for four
+critical years. Not only were Shakespeares and Platos being
+killed outright; but many of the best harvests of the survivors
+had to be sown in the barren soil of the trenches. And this was
+no mere British consideration. To the truly civilized man, to the
+good European, the slaughter of the German youth was as
+disastrous as the slaughter of the English. Fools exulted in
+"German losses." They were our losses as well. Imagine exulting
+in the death of Beethoven because Bill Sykes dealt him his death
+blow!
+
+
+
+Straining at the Gnat and swallowing the Camel
+
+But most people could not comprehend these sorrows. There was a
+frivolous exultation in death for its own sake, which was at
+bottom an inability to realize that the deaths were real deaths
+and not stage ones. Again and again, when an air raider dropped a
+bomb which tore a child and its mother limb from limb, the people
+who saw it, though they had been reading with great cheerfulness
+of thousands of such happenings day after day in their
+newspapers, suddenly burst into furious imprecations on "the
+Huns" as murderers, and shrieked for savage and satisfying
+vengeance. At such moments it became clear that the deaths they
+had not seen meant no more to them than the mimic death of the
+cinema screen. Sometimes it was not necessary that death should
+be actually witnessed: it had only to take place under
+circumstances of sufficient novelty and proximity to bring it
+home almost as sensationally and effectively as if it had been
+actually visible.
+
+For example, in the spring of 1915 there was an appalling
+slaughter of our young soldiers at Neuve Chapelle and at the
+Gallipoli landing. I will not go so far as to say that our
+civilians were delighted to have such exciting news to read at
+breakfast. But I cannot pretend that I noticed either in the
+papers, or in general intercourse, any feeling beyond the usual
+one that the cinema show at the front was going splendidly, and
+that our boys were the bravest of the brave. Suddenly there came
+the news that an Atlantic liner, the Lusitania, had been
+torpedoed, and that several well-known first-class passengers,
+including a famous theatrical manager and the author of a popular
+farce, had been drowned, among others. The others included Sir
+Hugh Lane; but as he had only laid the country under great
+obligations in the sphere of the fine arts, no great stress was
+laid on that loss. Immediately an amazing frenzy swept through
+the country. Men who up to that time had kept their heads now
+lost them utterly. "Killing saloon passengers! What next?" was
+the essence of the whole agitation; but it is far too trivial a
+phrase to convey the faintest notion of the rage which possessed
+us. To me, with my mind full of the hideous cost of Neuve
+Chapelle, Ypres, and the Gallipoli landing, the fuss about the
+Lusitania seemed almost a heartless impertinence, though I was
+well acquainted personally with the three best-known victims, and
+understood, better perhaps than most people, the misfortune of
+the death of Lane. I even found a grim satisfaction, very
+intelligible to all soldiers, in the fact that the civilians who
+found the war such splendid British sport should get a sharp
+taste of what it was to the actual combatants. I expressed my
+impatience very freely, and found that my very straightforward
+and natural feeling in the matter was received as a monstrous and
+heartless paradox. When I asked those who gaped at me whether
+they had anything to say about the holocaust of Festubert, they
+gaped wider than before, having totally forgotten it, or rather,
+having never realized it. They were not heartless anymore than I
+was; but the big catastrophe was too big for them to grasp, and
+the little one had been just the right size for them. I was not
+surprised. Have I not seen a public body for just the same reason
+pass a vote for œ30,000 without a word, and then spend three
+special meetings, prolonged into the night, over an item of seven
+shillings for refreshments?
+
+
+
+Little Minds and Big Battles
+
+Nobody will be able to understand the vagaries of public feeling
+during the war unless they bear constantly in mind that the war
+in its entire magnitude did not exist for the average civilian.
+He could not conceive even a battle, much less a campaign. To the
+suburbs the war was nothing but a suburban squabble. To the miner
+and navvy it was only a series of bayonet fights between German
+champions and English ones. The enormity of it was quite beyond
+most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a
+railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any
+effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of
+Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle
+of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery
+preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but
+when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at
+breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a
+bomb dropping into his egg-cup, their wrath and horror knew no
+bounds. They declared that this would put a new spirit into the
+army; and had no suspicion that the soldiers in the trenches
+roared with laughter over it for days, and told each other that
+it would do the blighters at home good to have a taste of what
+the army was up against. Sometimes the smallness of view was
+pathetic. A man would work at home regardless of the call "to
+make the world safe for democracy." His brother would be killed
+at the front. Immediately he would throw up his work and take up
+the war as a family blood feud against the Germans. Sometimes it
+was comic. A wounded man, entitled to his discharge, would return
+to the trenches with a grim determination to find the Hun who had
+wounded him and pay him out for it.
+
+It is impossible to estimate what proportion of us, in khaki or
+out of it, grasped the war and its political antecedents as a
+whole in the light of any philosophy of history or knowledge of
+what war is. I doubt whether it was as high as our proportion of
+higher mathematicians. But there can be no doubt that it was
+prodigiously outnumbered by the comparatively ignorant and
+childish. Remember that these people had to be stimulated to make
+the sacrifices demanded by the war, and that this could not be
+done by appeals to a knowledge which they did not possess, and a
+comprehension of which they were incapable. When the armistice at
+last set me free to tell the truth about the war at the following
+general election, a soldier said to a candidate whom I was
+supporting, "If I had known all that in 1914, they would never
+have got me into khaki." And that, of course, was precisely why
+it had been necessary to stuff him with a romance that any
+diplomatist would have laughed at. Thus the natural confusion of
+ignorance was increased by a deliberately propagated confusion of
+nursery bogey stories and melodramatic nonsense, which at last
+overreached itself and made it impossible to stop the war before
+we had not only achieved the triumph of vanquishing the German
+army and thereby overthrowing its militarist monarchy, but made
+the very serious mistake of ruining the centre of Europe, a thing
+that no sane European State could afford to do.
+
+
+
+The Dumb Capables and the Noisy Incapables
+
+Confronted with this picture of insensate delusion and folly, the
+critical reader will immediately counterplead that England all
+this time was conducting a war which involved the organization of
+several millions of fighting men and of the workers who were
+supplying them with provisions, munitions, and transport, and
+that this could not have been done by a mob of hysterical
+ranters. This is fortunately true. To pass from the newspaper
+offices and political platforms and club fenders and suburban
+drawing-rooms to the Army and the munition factories was to pass
+from Bedlam to the busiest and sanest of workaday worlds. It was
+to rediscover England, and find solid ground for the faith of
+those who still believed in her. But a necessary condition of
+this efficiency was that those who were efficient should give all
+their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its
+heart's content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient,
+because, as it was always wide of the mark, it often distracted
+attention very conveniently from operations that would have been
+defeated or hindered by publicity. A precept which I endeavored
+vainly to popularize early in the war, "If you have anything to
+do go and do it: if not, for heaven's sake get out of the way,"
+was only half carried out. Certainly the capable people went and
+did it; but the incapables would by no means get out of the way:
+they fussed and bawled and were only prevented from getting very
+seriously into the way by the blessed fact that they never knew
+where the way was. Thus whilst all the efficiency of England was
+silent and invisible, all its imbecility was deafening the
+heavens with its clamor and blotting out the sun with its dust.
+It was also unfortunately intimidating the Government by its
+blusterings into using the irresistible powers of the State to
+intimidate the sensible people, thus enabling a despicable
+minority of would-be lynchers to set up a reign of terror which
+could at any time have been broken by a single stern word from a
+responsible minister. But our ministers had not that sort of
+courage: neither Heartbreak House nor Horseback Hall had bred it,
+much less the suburbs. When matters at last came to the looting
+of shops by criminals under patriotic pretexts, it was the police
+force and not the Government that put its foot down. There was
+even one deplorable moment, during the submarine scare, in which
+the Government yielded to a childish cry for the maltreatment of
+naval prisoners of war, and, to our great disgrace, was forced by
+the enemy to behave itself. And yet behind all this public
+blundering and misconduct and futile mischief, the effective
+England was carrying on with the most formidable capacity and
+activity. The ostensible England was making the empire sick with
+its incontinences, its ignorances, its ferocities, its panics,
+and its endless and intolerable blarings of Allied national
+anthems in season and out. The esoteric England was proceeding
+irresistibly to the conquest of Europe.
+
+
+
+The Practical Business Men
+
+>From the beginning the useless people set up a shriek for
+"practical business men." By this they meant men who had become
+rich by placing their personal interests before those of the
+country, and measuring the success of every activity by the
+pecuniary profit it brought to them and to those on whom they
+depended for their supplies of capital. The pitiable failure of
+some conspicuous samples from the first batch we tried of these
+poor devils helped to give the whole public side of the war an
+air of monstrous and hopeless farce. They proved not only that
+they were useless for public work, but that in a well-ordered
+nation they would never have been allowed to control private
+enterprise.
+
+
+
+How the Fools shouted the Wise Men down
+
+Thus, like a fertile country flooded with mud, England showed no
+sign of her greatness in the days when she was putting forth all
+her strength to save herself from the worst consequences of her
+littleness. Most of the men of action, occupied to the last hour
+of their time with urgent practical work, had to leave to idler
+people, or to professional rhetoricians, the presentation of the
+war to the reason and imagination of the country and the world in
+speeches, poems, manifestoes, picture posters, and newspaper
+articles. I have had the privilege of hearing some of our ablest
+commanders talking about their work; and I have shared the common
+lot of reading the accounts of that work given to the world by
+the newspapers. No two experiences could be more different. But
+in the end the talkers obtained a dangerous ascendancy over the
+rank and file of the men of action; for though the great men of
+action are always inveterate talkers and often very clever
+writers, and therefore cannot have their minds formed for them by
+others, the average man of action, like the average fighter with
+the bayonet, can give no account of himself in words even to
+himself, and is apt to pick up and accept what he reads about
+himself and other people in the papers, except when the writer is
+rash enough to commit himself on technical points. It was not
+uncommon during the war to hear a soldier, or a civilian engaged
+on war work, describing events within his own experience that
+reduced to utter absurdity the ravings and maunderings of his
+daily paper, and yet echo the opinions of that paper like a
+parrot. Thus, to escape from the prevailing confusion and folly,
+it was not enough to seek the company of the ordinary man of
+action: one had to get into contact with the master spirits. This
+was a privilege which only a handful of people could enjoy. For
+the unprivileged citizen there was no escape. To him the whole
+country seemed mad, futile, silly, incompetent, with no hope of
+victory except the hope that the enemy might be just as mad. Only
+by very resolute reflection and reasoning could he reassure
+himself that if there was nothing more solid beneath their
+appalling appearances the war could not possibly have gone on for
+a single day without a total breakdown of its organization.
+
+
+
+The Mad Election
+
+Happy were the fools and the thoughtless men of action in those
+days. The worst of it was that the fools  were very strongly
+represented in parliament, as fools not only elect fools, but can
+persuade men of action to elect them too. The election that
+immediately followed the armistice was perhaps the maddest that
+has ever taken place. Soldiers who had done voluntary and heroic
+service in the field were defeated by persons who had apparently
+never run a risk or spent a farthing that they could avoid, and
+who even had in the course of the election to apologize publicly
+for bawling Pacifist or Pro-German at their opponent. Party
+leaders seek such followers, who can always be depended on to
+walk tamely into the lobby at the party whip's orders, provided
+the leader will make their seats safe for them by the process
+which was called, in derisive reference to the war rationing
+system, "giving them the coupon." Other incidents were so
+grotesque that I cannot mention them without enabling the reader
+to identify the parties, which would not be fair, as they were no
+more to blame than thousands of others who must necessarily be
+nameless. The general result was patently absurd; and the
+electorate, disgusted at its own work, instantly recoiled to the
+opposite extreme, and cast out all the coupon candidates at the
+earliest bye-elections by equally silly majorities. But the
+mischief of the general election could not be undone; and the
+Government had not only to pretend to abuse its European victory
+as it had promised, but actually to do it by starving the enemies
+who had thrown down their arms. It had, in short, won the
+election by pledging itself to be thriftlessly wicked, cruel, and
+vindictive; and it did not find it as easy to escape from this
+pledge as it had from nobler ones. The end, as I write, is not
+yet; but it is clear that this thoughtless savagery will recoil
+on the heads of the Allies so severely that we shall be forced by
+the sternest necessity to take up our share of healing the Europe
+we have wounded almost to death instead of attempting to complete
+her destruction.
+
+
+
+The Yahoo and the Angry Ape
+
+Contemplating this picture of a state of mankind so recent that
+no denial of its truth is possible, one understands Shakespeare
+comparing Man to an angry ape, Swift describing him as a Yahoo
+rebuked by the superior virtue of the horse, and Wellington
+declaring that the British can behave themselves neither in
+victory nor defeat. Yet none of the three had seen war as we have
+seen it. Shakespeare blamed great men, saying that "Could great
+men thunder as Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet; for
+every pelting petty officer would use his heaven for thunder:
+nothing but thunder." What would Shakespeare have said if he had
+seen something far more destructive than thunder in the hand of
+every village laborer, and found on the Messines Ridge the
+craters of the nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at
+the touch of a finger that might have been a child's finger
+without the result being a whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may
+have seen a Stratford cottage struck by one of Jove's
+thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted thatch
+and clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he have
+said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to Stratford,
+as French peasants are returning to their homes to-day, to find
+the old familiar signpost inscribed "To Stratford, 1 mile," and
+at the end of the mile nothing but some holes in the ground and a
+fragment of a broken churn here and there? Would not the
+spectacle of the angry ape endowed with powers of destruction
+that Jove never pretended to, have beggared even his command of
+words?
+
+And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain on
+human nature that breaks down the better half of it, and makes
+the worse half a diabolical virtue? Better, for us if it broke it
+down altogether, for then the warlike way out of our difficulties
+would be barred to us, and we should take greater care not to get
+into them. In truth, it is, as Byron said, "not difficult to
+die," and enormously difficult to live: that explains why, at
+bottom, peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more
+arduous. Did any hero of the war face the glorious risk of death
+more bravely than the traitor Bolo faced the ignominious
+certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how to die: can we say that
+he taught us all how to live? Hardly a week passes now without
+some soldier who braved death in the field so recklessly that he
+was decorated or specially commended for it, being haled before
+our magistrates for having failed to resist the paltriest
+temptations of peace, with no better excuse than the old one that
+"a man must live." Strange that one who, sooner than do honest
+work, will sell his honor for a bottle of wine, a visit to the
+theatre, and an hour with a strange woman, all obtained by
+passing a worthless cheque, could yet stake his life on the most
+desperate chances of the battle-field! Does it not seem as if,
+after all, the glory of death were cheaper than the glory of
+life? If it is not easier to attain, why do so many more men
+attain it? At all events it is clear that the kingdom of the
+Prince of Peace has not yet become the kingdom of this world. His
+attempts at invasion have been resisted far more fiercely than
+the Kaiser's. Successful as that resistance has been, it has
+piled up a sort of National Debt that is not the less oppressive
+because we have no figures for it and do not intend to pay it. A
+blockade that cuts off "the grace of our Lord" is in the long run
+less bearable than the blockades which merely cut off raw
+materials; and against that blockade our Armada is impotent. In
+the blockader's house, he has assured us, there are many
+mansions; but I am afraid they do not include either Heartbreak
+House or Horseback Hall.
+
+
+
+Plague on Both your Houses!
+
+Meanwhile the Bolshevist picks and petards are at work on the
+foundations of both buildings; and though the Bolshevists may be
+buried in the ruins, their deaths will not save the edifices.
+Unfortunately they can be built again. Like Doubting Castle, they
+have been demolished many times by successive Greathearts, and
+rebuilt by Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, by Feeble Mind and
+Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen of Vanity Fair. Another
+generation of "secondary education" at our ancient public schools
+and the cheaper institutions that ape them will be quite
+sufficient to keep the two going until the next war. For the
+instruction of that generation I leave these pages as a record of
+what civilian life was during the war: a matter on which history
+is usually silent. Fortunately it was a very short war. It is
+true that the people who thought it could not last more than six
+months were very signally refuted by the event. As Sir Douglas
+Haig has pointed out, its Waterloos lasted months instead of
+hours. But there would have been nothing surprising in its
+lasting thirty years. If it had not been for the fact that the
+blockade achieved the amazing feat of starving out Europe, which
+it could not possibly have done had Europe been properly
+organized for war, or even for peace, the war would have lasted
+until the belligerents were so tired of it that they could no
+longer be compelled to compel themselves to go on with it.
+Considering its magnitude, the war of 1914-18 will certainly be
+classed as the shortest in history. The end came so suddenly that
+the combatant literally stumbled over it; and yet it came a full
+year later than it should have come if the belligerents had not
+been far too afraid of one another to face the situation
+sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she
+began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously
+exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too
+close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at
+which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it
+remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will
+not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy fastening on
+themselves the chains they have struck from the limbs of the
+vanquished.
+
+
+
+How the Theatre fared
+
+Let us now contract our view rather violently from the European
+theatre of war to the theatre in which the fights are sham
+fights, and the slain, rising the moment the curtain has fallen,
+go comfortably home to supper after washing off their rose-pink
+wounds. It is nearly twenty years since I was last obliged to
+introduce a play in the form of a book for lack of an opportunity
+of presenting it in its proper mode by a performance in a
+theatre. The war has thrown me back on this expedient. Heartbreak
+House has not yet reached the stage. I have withheld it because
+the war has completely upset the economic conditions which
+formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in London. The
+change is not in the theatres nor in the management of them, nor
+in the authors and actors, but in the audiences. For four years
+the London theatres were crowded every night with thousands of
+soldiers on leave from the front. These soldiers were not
+seasoned London playgoers. A childish experience of my own gave
+me a clue to their condition. When I was a small boy I was taken
+to the opera. I did not then know what an opera was, though I
+could whistle a good deal of opera music. I had seen in my
+mother's album photographs of all the great opera singers, mostly
+in evening dress. In the theatre I found myself before a gilded
+balcony filled with persons in evening dress whom I took to be
+the opera singers. I picked out one massive dark lady as Alboni,
+and wondered how soon she would stand up and sing. I was puzzled
+by the fact that I was made to sit with my back to the singers
+instead of facing them. When the curtain went up, my astonishment
+and delight were unbounded.
+
+
+
+The Soldier at the Theatre Front
+
+In 1915, I saw in the theatres men in khaki in just the same
+predicament. To everyone who had my clue to their state of mind
+it was evident that they had never been in a theatre before and
+did not know what it was. At one of our great variety theatres I
+sat beside a young officer, not at all a rough specimen, who,
+even when the curtain rose and enlightened him as to the place
+where he had to look for his entertainment, found the dramatic
+part of it utterly incomprehensible. He did not know how to play
+his part of the game. He could understand the people on the stage
+singing and dancing and performing gymnastic feats. He not only
+understood but intensely enjoyed an artist who imitated cocks
+crowing and pigs squeaking. But the people who pretended that
+they were somebody else, and that the painted picture behind them
+was real, bewildered him. In his presence I realized how very
+sophisticated the natural man has to become before the
+conventions of the theatre can be easily acceptable, or the
+purpose of the drama obvious to him.
+
+Well, from the moment when the routine of leave for our soldiers
+was established, such novices, accompanied by damsels (called
+flappers) often as innocent as themselves, crowded the theatres
+to the doors. It was hardly possible at first to find stuff crude
+enough to nurse them on. The best music-hall comedians ransacked
+their memories for the oldest quips and the most childish antics
+to avoid carrying the military spectators out of their depth. I
+believe that this was a mistake as far as the novices were
+concerned. Shakespeare, or the dramatized histories of George
+Barnwell, Maria Martin, or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,
+would probably have been quite popular with them. But the novices
+were only a minority after all. The cultivated soldier, who in
+time of peace would look at nothing theatrical except the most
+advanced postIbsen plays in the most artistic settings, found
+himself, to his own astonishment, thirsting for silly jokes,
+dances, and brainlessly sensuous exhibitions of pretty girls. The
+author of some of the most grimly serious plays of our time told
+me that after enduring the trenches for months without a glimpse
+of the female of his species, it gave him an entirely innocent
+but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction
+from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in
+which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things
+gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of
+having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven
+them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of
+distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who
+were no longer under fire and under military discipline, but
+actually clean and comfortable and in a mood to be pleased with
+anything and everything that a bevy of pretty girls and a funny
+man, or even a bevy of girls pretending to be pretty and a man
+pretending to be funny, could do for them.
+
+Then could be seen every night in the theatres oldfashioned
+farcical comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each
+side and a practicable window in the middle, was understood to
+resemble exactly the bedroom in the flats beneath and above, all
+three inhabited by couples consumed with jealousy. When these
+people came home drunk at night; mistook their neighbor's flats
+for their own; and in due course got into the wrong beds, it was
+not only the novices who found the resulting complications and
+scandals exquisitely ingenious and amusing, nor their equally
+verdant flappers who could not help squealing in a manner that
+astonished the oldest performers when the gentleman who had just
+come in drunk through the window pretended to undress, and
+allowed glimpses of his naked person to be descried from time to
+time.
+
+
+
+Heartbreak House
+
+Men who had just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying,
+and were thereby sadly reminded of Pink Dominos and the torrent
+of farcical comedies that followed it in his heyday until every
+trick of that trade had become so stale that the laughter they
+provoked turned to loathing: these veterans also, when they
+returned from the field, were as much pleased by what they knew
+to be stale and foolish as the novices by what they thought fresh
+and clever.
+
+
+
+Commerce in the Theatre
+
+Wellington said that an army moves on its belly. So does a London
+theatre. Before a man acts he must eat. Before he performs plays
+he must pay rent. In London we have no theatres for the welfare
+of the people: they are all for the sole purpose of producing the
+utmost obtainable rent for the proprietor. If the twin flats and
+twin beds produce a guinea more than Shakespeare, out goes
+Shakespeare and in come the twin flats and the twin beds. If the
+brainless bevy of pretty girls and the funny man outbid Mozart,
+out goes Mozart.
+
+
+
+Unser Shakespeare
+
+Before the war an effort was made to remedy this by establishing
+a national theatre in celebration of the tercentenary of the
+death of Shakespeare. A committee was formed; and all sorts of
+illustrious and influential persons lent their names to a grand
+appeal to our national culture. My play, The Dark Lady of The
+Sonnets, was one of the incidents of that appeal. After some
+years of effort the result was a single handsome subscription
+from a German gentleman. Like the celebrated swearer in the
+anecdote when the cart containing all his household goods lost
+its tailboard at the top of the hill and let its contents roll in
+ruin to the bottom, I can only say, "I cannot do justice to this
+situation," and let it pass without another word.
+
+
+
+The Higher Drama put out of Action
+
+The effect of the war on the London theatres may now be imagined.
+The beds and the bevies drove every higher form of art out of it.
+Rents went up to an unprecedented figure. At the same time prices
+doubled everywhere except at the theatre pay-boxes, and raised
+the expenses of management to such a degree that unless the
+houses were quite full every night, profit was impossible. Even
+bare solvency could not be attained without a very wide
+popularity. Now what had made serious drama possible to a limited
+extent before the war was that a play could pay its way even if
+the theatre were only half full until Saturday and three-quarters
+full then. A manager who was an enthusiast and a desperately hard
+worker, with an occasional grant-in-aid from an artistically
+disposed millionaire, and a due proportion of those rare and
+happy accidents by which plays of the higher sort turn out to be
+potboilers as well, could hold out for some years, by which time
+a relay might arrive in the person of another enthusiast. Thus
+and not otherwise occurred that remarkable revival of the British
+drama at the beginning of the century which made my own career as
+a playwright possible in England. In America I had already
+established myself, not as part of the ordinary theatre system,
+but in association with the exceptional genius of Richard
+Mansfield. In Germany and Austria I had no difficulty: the system
+of publicly aided theatres there, Court and Municipal, kept drama
+of the kind I dealt in alive; so that I was indebted to the
+Emperor of Austria for magnificent productions of my works at a
+time when the sole official attention paid me by the British
+Courts was the announcement to the English-speaking world that
+certain plays of mine were unfit for public performance, a
+substantial set-off against this being that the British Court, in
+the course of its private playgoing, paid no regard to the bad
+character given me by the chief officer of its household.
+
+Howbeit, the fact that my plays effected a lodgment on the London
+stage, and were presently followed by the plays of Granville
+Barker, Gilbert Murray, John Masefield, St. John Hankin, Lawrence
+Housman, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, John Drinkwater, and
+others which would in the nineteenth century have stood rather
+less chance of production at a London theatre than the Dialogues
+of Plato, not to mention revivals of the ancient Athenian drama
+and a restoration to the stage of Shakespeare's plays as he wrote
+them, was made economically possible solely by a supply of
+theatres which could hold nearly twice as much money as it cost
+to rent and maintain them. In such theatres work appealing to a
+relatively small class of cultivated persons, and therefore
+attracting only from half to three-quarters as many spectators as
+the more popular pastimes, could nevertheless keep going in the
+hands of young adventurers who were doing it for its own sake,
+and had not yet been forced by advancing age and responsibilities
+to consider the commercial value of their time and energy too
+closely. The war struck this foundation away in the manner I have
+just described. The expenses of running the cheapest west-end
+theatres rose to a sum which exceeded by twenty-five per cent the
+utmost that the higher drama can, as an ascertained matter of
+fact, be depended on to draw. Thus the higher drama, which has
+never really been a commercially sound speculation, now became an
+impossible one. Accordingly, attempts are being made to provide a
+refuge for it in suburban theatres in London and repertory
+theatres in the provinces. But at the moment when the army has at
+last disgorged the survivors of the gallant band of dramatic
+pioneers whom it swallowed, they find that the economic
+conditions which formerly made their work no worse than
+precarious now put it out of the question altogether, as far as
+the west end of London is concerned.
+
+
+
+Church and Theatre
+
+I do not suppose many people care particularly. We are not
+brought up to care; and a sense of the national importance of the
+theatre is not born in mankind: the natural man, like so many of
+the soldiers at the beginning of the war, does not know what a
+theatre is. But please note that all these soldiers who did not
+know what a theatre was, knew what a church was. And they had
+been taught to respect churches. Nobody had ever warned them
+against a church as a place where frivolous women paraded in
+their best clothes; where stories of improper females like
+Potiphar's wife, and erotic poetry like the Song of Songs, were
+read aloud; where the sensuous and sentimental music of Schubert,
+Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Brahms was more popular than severe
+music by greater composers; where the prettiest sort of pretty
+pictures of pretty saints assailed the imagination and senses
+through stained-glass windows; and where sculpture and
+architecture came to the help of painting. Nobody ever reminded
+them that these things had sometimes produced such developments
+of erotic idolatry that men who were not only enthusiastic
+amateurs of literature, painting, and music, but famous
+practitioners of them, had actually exulted when mobs and even
+regular troops under express command had mutilated church
+statues, smashed church windows, wrecked church organs, and torn
+up the sheets from which the church music was read and sung. When
+they saw broken statues in churches, they were told that this was
+the work of wicked, godless rioters, instead of, as it was, the
+work partly of zealots bent on driving the world, the flesh, and
+the devil out of the temple, and partly of insurgent men who had
+become intolerably poor because the temple had become a den of
+thieves. But all the sins and perversions that were so carefully
+hidden from them in the history of the Church were laid on the
+shoulders of the Theatre: that stuffy, uncomfortable place of
+penance in which we suffer so much inconvenience on the
+slenderest chance of gaining a scrap of food for our starving
+souls. When the Germans bombed the Cathedral of Rheims the world
+rang with the horror of the sacrilege. When they bombed the
+Little Theatre in the Adelphi, and narrowly missed bombing two
+writers of plays who lived within a few yards of it, the fact was
+not even mentioned in the papers. In point of appeal to the
+senses no theatre ever built could touch the fane at Rheims: no
+actress could rival its Virgin in beauty, nor any operatic tenor
+look otherwise than a fool beside its David. Its picture glass
+was glorious even to those who had seen the glass of Chartres. It
+was wonderful in its very grotesques: who would look at the
+Blondin Donkey after seeing its leviathans? In spite of the
+Adam-Adelphian decoration on which Miss Kingston had lavished so
+much taste and care, the Little Theatre was in comparison with
+Rheims the gloomiest of little conventicles: indeed the cathedral
+must, from the Puritan point of view, have debauched a million
+voluptuaries for every one whom the Little Theatre had sent home
+thoughtful to a chaste bed after Mr Chesterton's Magic or
+Brieux's Les Avaries. Perhaps that is the real reason why the
+Church is lauded and the Theatre reviled. Whether or no, the fact
+remains that the lady to whose public spirit and sense of the
+national value of the theatre I owed the first regular public
+performance of a play of mine had to conceal her action as if it
+had been a crime, whereas if she had given the money to the
+Church she would have worn a halo for it. And I admit, as I have
+always done, that this state of things may have been a very
+sensible one. I have asked Londoners again and again why they pay
+half a guinea to go to a theatre when they can go to St. Paul's
+or Westminster Abbey for nothing. Their only possible reply is
+that they want to see something new and possibly something
+wicked; but the theatres mostly disappoint both hopes. If ever a
+revolution makes me Dictator, I shall establish a heavy charge
+for admission to our churches. But everyone who pays at the
+church door shall receive a ticket entitling him or her to free
+admission to one performance at any theatre he or she prefers.
+Thus shall the sensuous charms of the church service be made to
+subsidize the sterner virtue of the drama.
+
+
+
+The Next Phase
+
+The present situation will not last. Although the newspaper I
+read at breakfast this morning before writing these words
+contains a calculation that no less than twenty-three wars are at
+present being waged to confirm the peace, England is no longer in
+khaki; and a violent reaction is setting in against the crude
+theatrical fare of the four terrible years. Soon the rents of
+theatres will once more be fixed on the assumption that they
+cannot always be full, nor even on the average half full week in
+and week out. Prices will change. The higher drama will be at no
+greater disadvantage than it was before the war; and it may
+benefit, first, by the fact that many of us have been torn from
+the fools' paradise in which the theatre formerly traded, and
+thrust upon the sternest realities and necessities until we have
+lost both faith in and patience with the theatrical pretences
+that had no root either in reality or necessity; second, by the
+startling change made by the war in the distribution of income.
+It seems only the other day that a millionaire was a man with
+œ50,000 a year. To-day, when he has paid his income tax and super
+tax, and insured his life for the amount of his death duties, he
+is lucky if his net income is 10,000 pounds though his nominal
+property remains the same. And this is the result of a Budget
+which is called "a respite for the rich." At the other end of the
+scale millions of persons have had regular incomes for the first
+time in their lives; and their men have been regularly clothed,
+fed, lodged, and taught to make up their minds that certain
+things have to be done, also for the first time in their lives.
+Hundreds of thousands of women have been taken out of their
+domestic cages and tasted both discipline and independence. The
+thoughtless and snobbish middle classes have been pulled up short
+by the very unpleasant experience of being ruined to an
+unprecedented extent. We have all had a tremendous jolt; and
+although the widespread notion that the shock of the war would
+automatically make a new heaven and a new earth, and that the dog
+would never go back to his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing in
+the mire, is already seen to be a delusion, yet we are far more
+conscious of our condition than we were, and far less disposed to
+submit to it. Revolution, lately only a sensational chapter in
+history or a demagogic claptrap, is now a possibility so imminent
+that hardly by trying to suppress it in other countries by arms
+and defamation, and calling the process anti-Bolshevism, can our
+Government stave it off at home.
+
+Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day is the American
+President who was once a historian. In those days it became his
+task to tell us how, after that great war in America which was
+more clearly than any other war of our time a war for an idea,
+the conquerors, confronted with a heroic task of reconstruction,
+turned recreant, and spent fifteen years in abusing their victory
+under cover of pretending to accomplish the task they were doing
+what they could to make impossible. Alas! Hegel was right when he
+said that we learn from history that men never learn anything
+from history. With what anguish of mind the President sees that
+we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything we professed to
+fight for, are sitting down with watering mouths to a good square
+meal of ten years revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate
+foe, can only be guessed by those who know, as he does, how
+hopeless is remonstrance, and how happy Lincoln was in perishing
+from the earth before his inspired messages became scraps of
+paper. He knows well that from the Peace Conference will come, in
+spite of his utmost, no edict on which he will be able, like
+Lincoln, to invoke "the considerate judgment of mankind: and the
+gracious favor of Almighty God." He led his people to destroy the
+militarism of Zabern; and the army they rescued is busy in
+Cologne imprisoning every German who does not salute a British
+officer; whilst the government at home, asked whether it
+approves, replies that it does not propose even to discontinue
+this Zabernism when the Peace is concluded, but in effect looks
+forward to making Germans salute British officers until the end
+of the world. That is what war makes of men and women. It will
+wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving
+impracticable; but before the humble and contrite heart ceases to
+be despised, the President and I, being of the same age, will be
+dotards. In the meantime there is, for him, another history to
+write; for me, another comedy to stage. Perhaps, after all, that
+is what wars are for, and what historians and playwrights are
+for. If men will not learn until their lessons are written in
+blood, why, blood they must have, their own for preference.
+
+
+
+The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre
+
+To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the
+theatre will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All Highest
+Hohenzollern languishes in Holland, threatened with trial on a
+capital charge of fighting for his country against England;
+Imperial Romanoff, said to have perished miserably by a more
+summary method of murder, is perhaps alive or perhaps dead:
+nobody cares more than if he had been a peasant; the lord of
+Hellas is level with his lackeys in republican Switzerland; Prime
+Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief have passed from a brief glory
+as Solons and Caesars into failure and obscurity as closely on
+one another's heels as the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides
+and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen
+remain fixed in their everlasting seats.
+
+
+
+How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet
+
+As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays
+about the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is
+significant. You cannot make war on war and on your neighbor at
+the same time. War cannot bear the terrible castigation of
+comedy, the ruthless light of laughter that glares on the stage.
+When men are heroically dying for their country, it is not the
+time to show their lovers and wives and fathers and mothers how
+they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the
+cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the
+electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the
+lusts and lies and rancors and bloodthirsts that love war because
+it opens their prison doors, and sets them in the thrones of
+power and popularity. For unless these things are mercilessly
+exposed they will hide under the mantle of the ideals on the
+stage just as they do in real life.
+
+And though there may be better things to reveal, it may not, and
+indeed cannot, be militarily expedient to reveal them whilst the
+issue is still in the balance. Truth telling is not compatible
+with the defence of the realm. We are just now reading the
+revelations of our generals and admirals, unmuzzled at last by
+the armistice. During the war, General A, in his moving
+despatches from the field, told how General B had covered himself
+with deathless glory in such and such a battle. He now tells us
+that General B came within an ace of losing us the war by
+disobeying his orders on that occasion, and fighting instead of
+running away as he ought to have done. An excellent subject for
+comedy now that the war is over, no doubt; but if General A had
+let this out at the time, what would have been the effect on
+General B's soldiers? And had the stage made known what the Prime
+Minister and the Secretary of State for War who overruled General
+A thought of him, and what he thought of them, as now revealed in
+raging controversy, what would have been the effect on the
+nation? That is why comedy, though sorely tempted, had to be
+loyally silent; for the art of the dramatic poet knows no
+patriotism; recognizes no obligation but truth to natural
+history; cares not whether Germany or England perish; is ready to
+cry with Brynhild, "Lass'uns verderben, lachend zu grunde geh'n"
+sooner than deceive or be deceived; and thus becomes in time of
+war a greater military danger than poison, steel, or
+trinitrotoluene. That is why I had to withhold Heartbreak House
+from the footlights during the war; for the Germans might on any
+night have turned the last act from play into earnest, and even
+then might not have waited for their cues.
+
+June, 1919.
+
+
+
+HEARTBREAK HOUSE
+
+ACT I
+
+The hilly country in the middle of the north edge of Sussex,
+looking very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of September,
+is seen through the windows of a room which has been built so as
+to resemble the after part of an old-fashioned high-pooped ship,
+with a stern gallery; for the windows are ship built with heavy
+timbering, and run right across the room as continuously as the
+stability of the wall allows. A row of lockers under the windows
+provides an unupholstered windowseat interrupted by twin glass
+doors, respectively halfway between the stern post and the sides.
+Another door strains the illusion a little by being apparently in
+the ship's port side, and yet leading, not to the open sea, but
+to the entrance hall of the house. Between this door and the
+stern gallery are bookshelves. There are electric light switches
+beside the door leading to the hall and the glass doors in the
+stern gallery. Against the starboard wall is a carpenter's bench.
+The vice has a board in its jaws; and the floor is littered with
+shavings, overflowing from a waste-paper basket. A couple of
+planes and a centrebit are on the bench. In the same wall,
+between the bench and the windows, is a narrow doorway with a
+half door, above which a glimpse of the room beyond shows that it
+is a shelved pantry with bottles and kitchen crockery.
+
+On the starboard side, but close to the middle, is a plain oak
+drawing-table with drawing-board, T-square, straightedges, set
+squares, mathematical instruments, saucers of water color, a
+tumbler of discolored water, Indian ink, pencils, and brushes on
+it. The drawing-board is set so that the draughtsman's chair has
+the window on its left hand. On the floor at the end of the
+table, on its right, is a ship's fire bucket. On the port side of
+the room, near the bookshelves, is a sofa with its back to the
+windows. It is a sturdy mahogany article, oddly upholstered in
+sailcloth, including the bolster, with a couple of blankets
+hanging over the back. Between the sofa and the drawing-table is
+a big wicker chair, with broad arms and a low sloping back, with
+its back to the light. A small but stout table of teak, with a
+round top and gate legs, stands against the port wall between the
+door and the bookcase. It is the only article in the room that
+suggests (not at all convincingly) a woman's hand in the
+furnishing. The uncarpeted floor of narrow boards is caulked and
+holystoned like a deck.
+
+The garden to which the glass doors lead dips to the south before
+the landscape rises again to the hills. Emerging from the hollow
+is the cupola of an observatory. Between the observatory and the
+house is a flagstaff on a little esplanade, with a hammock on the
+east side and a long garden seat on the west.
+
+A young lady, gloved and hatted, with a dust coat on, is sitting
+in the window-seat with her body twisted to enable her to look
+out at the view. One hand props her chin: the other hangs down
+with a volume of the Temple Shakespeare in it, and her finger
+stuck in the page she has been reading.
+
+A clock strikes six.
+
+The young lady turns and looks at her watch. She rises with an
+air of one who waits, and is almost at the end of her patience.
+She is a pretty girl, slender, fair, and intelligent looking,
+nicely but not expensively dressed, evidently not a smart idler.
+
+With a sigh of weary resignation she comes to the draughtsman's
+chair; sits down; and begins to read Shakespeare. Presently the
+book sinks to her lap; her eyes close; and she dozes into a
+slumber.
+
+An elderly womanservant comes in from the hall with three
+unopened bottles of rum on a tray. She passes through and
+disappears in the pantry without noticing the young lady. She
+places the bottles on the shelf and fills her tray with empty
+bottles. As she returns with these, the young lady lets her book
+drop, awakening herself, and startling the womanservant so that
+she all but lets the tray fall.
+
+THE WOMANSERVANT. God bless us! [The young lady picks up the book
+and places it on the table]. Sorry to wake you, miss, I'm sure;
+but you are a stranger to me. What might you be waiting here for
+now?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. Waiting for somebody to show some signs of
+knowing that I have been invited here.
+
+THE WOMANSERVANT. Oh, you're invited, are you? And has nobody
+come? Dear! dear!
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. A wild-looking old gentleman came and looked in
+at the window; and I heard him calling out, "Nurse, there is a
+young and attractive female waiting in the poop. Go and see what
+she wants." Are you the nurse?
+
+THE WOMANSERVANT. Yes, miss: I'm Nurse Guinness. That was old
+Captain Shotover, Mrs Hushabye's father. I heard him roaring; but
+I thought it was for something else. I suppose it was Mrs
+Hushabye that invited you, ducky?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. I understood her to do so. But really I think I'd
+better go.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, don't think of such a thing, miss. If Mrs
+Hushabye has forgotten all about it, it will be a pleasant
+surprise for her to see you, won't it?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. It has been a very unpleasant surprise to me to
+find that nobody expects me.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. You'll get used to it, miss: this house is full
+of surprises for them that don't know our ways.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [looking in from the hall suddenly: an ancient
+but still hardy man with an immense white beard, in a reefer
+jacket with a whistle hanging from his neck]. Nurse, there is a
+hold-all and a handbag on the front steps for everybody to fall
+over. Also a tennis racquet. Who the devil left them there?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. They are mine, I'm afraid.
+
+TAE CAPTAIN [advancing to the drawing-table]. Nurse, who is this
+misguided and unfortunate young lady?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. She says Miss Hessy invited her, sir.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. And had she no friend, no parents, to warn her
+against my daughter's invitations? This is a pretty sort of
+house, by heavens! A young and attractive lady is invited here.
+Her luggage is left on the steps for hours; and she herself is
+deposited in the poop and abandoned, tired and starving. This is
+our hospitality. These are our manners. No room ready. No hot
+water. No welcoming hostess. Our visitor is to sleep in the
+toolshed, and to wash in the duckpond.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Now it's all right, Captain: I'll get the lady
+some tea; and her room shall be ready before she has finished it.
+[To the young lady]. Take off your hat, ducky; and make yourself
+at home [she goes to the door leading to the hall].
+
+THE CAPTAIN [as she passes him]. Ducky! Do you suppose, woman,
+that because this young lady has been insulted and neglected, you
+have the right to address her as you address my wretched
+children, whom you have brought up in ignorance of the commonest
+decencies of social intercourse?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Never mind him, doty. [Quite unconcerned, she
+goes out into the hall on her way to the kitchen].
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Madam, will you favor me with your name? [He sits
+down in the big wicker chair].
+
+THE YOUNG LADY. My name is Ellie Dunn.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Dunn! I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn. He was
+originally a pirate in China. He set up as a ship's chandler with
+stores which I have every reason to believe he stole from me. No
+doubt he became rich. Are you his daughter?
+
+ELLIE [indignant]. No, certainly not. I am proud to be able to
+say that though my father has not been a successful man, nobody
+has ever had one word to say against him. I think my father is
+the best man I have ever known.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the
+seventh degree of concentration?
+
+ELLIE. I don't understand.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. But how could he, with a daughter? I, madam, have
+two daughters. One of them is Hesione Hushabye, who invited you
+here. I keep this house: she upsets it. I desire to attain the
+seventh degree of concentration: she invites visitors and leaves
+me to entertain them. [Nurse Guinness returns with the tea-tray,
+which she places on the teak table]. I have a second daughter who
+is, thank God, in a remote part of the Empire with her numskull
+of a husband. As a child she thought the figure-head of my ship,
+the Dauntless, the most beautiful thing on earth. He resembled
+it. He had the same expression: wooden yet enterprising. She
+married him, and will never set foot in this house again.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [carrying the table, with the tea-things on it, to
+Ellie's side]. Indeed you never were more mistaken. She is in
+England this very moment. You have been told three times this
+week that she is coming home for a year for her health. And very
+glad you should be to see your own daughter again after all these
+years.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. I am not glad. The natural term of the affection of
+the human animal for its offspring is six years. My daughter
+Ariadne was born when I was forty-six. I am now eighty-eight. If
+she comes, I am not at home. If she wants anything, let her take
+it. If she asks for me, let her be informed that I am extremely
+old, and have totally forgotten her.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. That's no talk to offer to a young lady. Here,
+ducky, have some tea; and don't listen to him [she pours out a
+cup of tea].
+
+THE CAPTAIN [rising wrathfully]. Now before high heaven they have
+given this innocent child Indian tea: the stuff they tan their
+own leather insides with. [He seizes the cup and the tea-pot and
+empties both into the leathern bucket].
+
+ELLIE [almost in tears]. Oh, please! I am so tired. I should have
+been glad of anything.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, what a thing to do! The poor lamb is ready to
+drop.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. You shall have some of my tea. Do not touch that
+fly-blown cake: nobody eats it here except the dogs. [He
+disappears into the pantry].
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. There's a man for you! They say he sold himself
+to the devil in Zanzibar before he was a captain; and the older
+he grows the more I believe them.
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE [in the hall]. Is anyone at home? Hesione! Nurse!
+Papa! Do come, somebody; and take in my luggage.
+
+Thumping heard, as of an umbrella, on the wainscot.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. My gracious! It's Miss Addy, Lady Utterword, Mrs
+Hushabye's sister: the one I told the captain about. [Calling].
+Coming, Miss, coming.
+
+She carries the table back to its place by the door and is
+harrying out when she is intercepted by Lady Utterword, who
+bursts in much flustered. Lady Utterword, a blonde, is very
+handsome, very well dressed, and so precipitate in speech and
+action that the first impression (erroneous) is one of comic
+silliness.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, is that you, Nurse? How are you? You don't
+look a day older. Is nobody at home? Where is Hesione? Doesn't
+she expect me? Where are the servants? Whose luggage is that on
+the steps? Where's papa? Is everybody asleep? [Seeing Ellie]. Oh!
+I beg your pardon. I suppose you are one of my nieces.
+[Approaching her with outstretched arms]. Come and kiss your
+aunt, darling.
+
+ELLIE. I'm only a visitor. It is my luggage on the steps.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. I'll go get you some fresh tea, ducky. [She takes
+up the tray].
+
+ELLIE. But the old gentleman said he would make some himself.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Bless you! he's forgotten what he went for
+already. His mind wanders from one thing to another.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Papa, I suppose?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Yes, Miss.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [vehemently]. Don't be silly, Nurse. Don't call me
+Miss.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [placidly]. No, lovey [she goes out with the
+tea-tray].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [sitting down with a flounce on the sofa]. I know
+what you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back to it
+after twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage
+lying on the steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at
+home to receive anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry
+because they are always gnawing bread and butter or munching
+apples, and, what is worse, the same disorder in ideas, in talk,
+in feeling. When I was a child I was used to it: I had never
+known anything better, though I was unhappy, and longed all the
+time--oh, how I longed!--to be respectable, to be a lady, to live
+as others did, not to have to think of everything for myself. I
+married at nineteen to escape from it. My husband is Sir Hastings
+Utterword, who has been governor of all the crown colonies in
+succession. I have always been the mistress of Government House.
+I have been so happy: I had forgotten that people could live like
+this. I wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews and nieces
+(one ought to, you know), and I was looking forward to it. And
+now the state of the house! the way I'm received! the casual
+impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione
+might at least have been here: some preparation might have been
+made for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am
+really very much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had
+realized it was to be like this, I wouldn't have come. I have a
+great mind to go away without another word [she is on the point
+of weeping].
+
+ELLIE [also very miserable]. Nobody has been here to receive me
+either. I thought I ought to go away too. But how can I, Lady
+Utterword? My luggage is on the steps; and the station fly has
+gone.
+
+The captain emerges from the pantry with a tray of Chinese
+lacquer and a very fine tea-set on it. He rests it provisionally
+on the end of the table; snatches away the drawing-board, which
+he stands on the floor against table legs; and puts the tray in
+the space thus cleared. Ellie pours out a cup greedily.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Your tea, young lady. What! another lady! I must
+fetch another cup [he makes for the pantry].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [rising from the sofa, suffused with emotion].
+Papa! Don't you know me? I'm your daughter.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Nonsense! my daughter's upstairs asleep. [He
+vanishes through the half door].
+
+Lady Utterword retires to the window to conceal her tears.
+
+ELLIE [going to her with the cup]. Don't be so distressed. Have
+this cup of tea. He is very old and very strange: he has been
+just like that to me. I know how dreadful it must be: my own
+father is all the world to me. Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it.
+
+The captain returns with another cup.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Now we are complete. [He places it on the tray].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [hysterically]. Papa, you can't have forgotten me.
+I am Ariadne. I'm little Paddy Patkins. Won't you kiss me? [She
+goes to him and throws her arms round his neck].
+
+THE CAPTAIN [woodenly enduring her embrace]. How can you be
+Ariadne? You are a middle-aged woman: well preserved, madam, but
+no longer young.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. But think of all the years and years I have been
+away, Papa. I have had to grow old, like other people.
+
+THE CAPTAIN [disengaging himself]. You should grow out of kissing
+strange men: they may be striving to attain the seventh degree of
+concentration.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. But I'm your daughter. You haven't seen me for
+years.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. So much the worse! When our relatives are at home,
+we have to think of all their good points or it would be
+impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console
+ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices. That is
+how I have come to think my absent daughter Ariadne a perfect
+fiend; so do not try to ingratiate yourself here by impersonating
+her [he walks firmly away to the other side of the room].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Ingratiating myself indeed! [With dignity]. Very
+well, papa. [She sits down at the drawing-table and pours out tea
+for herself].
+
+THE CAPTAIN. I am neglecting my social duties. You remember Dunn?
+Billy Dunn?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. DO you mean that villainous sailor who robbed
+you?
+
+THE CAPTAIN [introducing Ellie]. His daughter. [He sits down on
+the sofa].
+
+ELLIE [protesting]. No--
+
+Nurse Guinness returns with fresh tea.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. Take that hogwash away. Do you hear?
+
+NURSE. You've actually remembered about the tea! [To Ellie]. Oh,
+miss, he didn't forget you after all! You HAVE made an
+impression.
+
+THE CAPTAIN [gloomily]. Youth! beauty! novelty! They are badly
+wanted in this house. I am excessively old. Hesione is only
+moderately young. Her children are not youthful.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. How can children be expected to be youthful in
+this house? Almost before we could speak we were filled with
+notions that might have been all very well for pagan philosophers
+of fifty, but were certainly quite unfit for respectable people
+of any age.
+
+NURSE. You were always for respectability, Miss Addy.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Nurse, will you please remember that I am Lady
+Utterword, and not Miss Addy, nor lovey, nor darling, nor doty?
+Do you hear?
+
+NURSE. Yes, ducky: all right. I'll tell them all they must call
+you My Lady. [She takes her tray out with undisturbed placidity].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. What comfort? what sense is there in having
+servants with no manners?
+
+ELLIE [rising and coming to the table to put down her empty cup].
+Lady Utterword, do you think Mrs Hushabye really expects me?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, don't ask me. You can see for yourself that
+I've just arrived; her only sister, after twenty-three years'
+absence! and it seems that I am not expected.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. What does it matter whether the young lady is
+expected or not? She is welcome. There are beds: there is food.
+I'll find a room for her myself [he makes for the door].
+
+ELLIE [following him to stop him]. Oh, please--[He goes out].
+Lady Utterword, I don't know what to do. Your father persists in
+believing that my father is some sailor who robbed him.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You had better pretend not to notice it. My
+father is a very clever man; but he always forgot things; and now
+that he is old, of course he is worse. And I must warn you that
+it is sometimes very hard to feel quite sure that he really
+forgets.
+
+Mrs Hushabye bursts into the room tempestuously and embraces
+Ellie. She is a couple of years older than Lady Utterword, and
+even better looking. She has magnificent black hair, eyes like
+the fishpools of Heshbon, and a nobly modelled neck, short at the
+back and low between her shoulders in front. Unlike her sister
+she is uncorseted and dressed anyhow in a rich robe of black pile
+that shows off her white skin and statuesque contour.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie, my darling, my pettikins [kissing her], how
+long have you been here? I've been at home all the time: I was
+putting flowers and things in your room; and when I just sat down
+for a moment to try how comfortable the armchair was I went off
+to sleep. Papa woke me and told me you were here. Fancy your
+finding no one, and being neglected and abandoned. [Kissing her
+again]. My poor love! [She deposits Ellie on the sofa. Meanwhile
+Ariadne has left the table and come over to claim her share of
+attention]. Oh! you've brought someone with you. Introduce me.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Hesione, is it possible that you don't know me?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [conventionally]. Of course I remember your face
+quite well. Where have we met?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Didn't Papa tell you I was here? Oh! this is
+really too much. [She throws herself sulkily into the big chair].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Papa!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, Papa. Our papa, you unfeeling wretch!
+[Rising angrily]. I'll go straight to a hotel.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [seizing her by the shoulders]. My goodness gracious
+goodness, you don't mean to say that you're Addy!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I certainly am Addy; and I don't think I can be
+so changed that you would not have recognized me if you had any
+real affection for me. And Papa didn't think me even worth
+mentioning!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What a lark! Sit down [she pushes her back into the
+chair instead of kissing her, and posts herself behind it]. You
+DO look a swell. You're much handsomer than you used to be.
+You've made the acquaintance of Ellie, of course. She is going to
+marry a perfect hog of a millionaire for the sake of her father,
+who is as poor as a church mouse; and you must help me to stop
+her.
+
+ELLIE. Oh, please, Hesione!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, the man's coming here today with your
+father to begin persecuting you; and everybody will see the state
+of the case in ten minutes; so what's the use of making a secret
+of it?
+
+ELLIE. He is not a hog, Hesione. You don't know how wonderfully
+good he was to my father, and how deeply grateful I am to him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [to Lady Utterword]. Her father is a very remarkable
+man, Addy. His name is Mazzini Dunn. Mazzini was a celebrity of
+some kind who knew Ellie's grandparents. They were both poets,
+like the Brownings; and when her father came into the world
+Mazzini said, "Another soldier born for freedom!" So they
+christened him Mazzini; and he has been fighting for freedom in
+his quiet way ever since. That's why he is so poor.
+
+ELLIE. I am proud of his poverty.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Of course you are, pettikins. Why not leave him in
+it, and marry someone you love?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [rising suddenly and explosively]. Hesione, are
+you going to kiss me or are you not?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What do you want to be kissed for?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I DON'T want to be kissed; but I do want you to
+behave properly and decently. We are sisters. We have been
+separated for twenty-three years. You OUGHT to kiss me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. To-morrow morning, dear, before you make up. I hate
+the smell of powder.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! you unfeeling--[she is interrupted by the
+return of the captain].
+
+THE CAPTAIN [to Ellie]. Your room is ready. [Ellie rises]. The
+sheets were damp; but I have changed them [he makes for the
+garden door on the port side].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! What about my sheets?
+
+THE CAPTAIN [halting at the door]. Take my advice: air them: or
+take them off and sleep in blankets. You shall sleep in Ariadne's
+old room.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. That
+little hole! I am entitled to the best spare room.
+
+THE CAPTAIN [continuing unmoved]. She married a numskull. She
+told me she would marry anyone to get away from home.
+
+LADT UTTERWORD. You are pretending not to know me on purpose. I
+will leave the house.
+
+Mazzini Dunn enters from the hall. He is a little elderly man
+with bulging credulous eyes and earnest manners. He is dressed in
+a blue serge jacket suit with an unbuttoned mackintosh over it,
+and carries a soft black hat of clerical cut.
+
+ELLIE. At last! Captain Shotover, here is my father.
+
+THE CAPTAIN. This! Nonsense! not a bit like him [he goes away
+through the garden, shutting the door sharply behind him].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I will not be ignored and pretended to be
+somebody else. I will have it out with Papa now, this instant.
+[To Mazzini]. Excuse me. [She follows the captain out, making a
+hasty bow to Mazzini, who returns it].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [hospitably shaking hands]. How good of you to come,
+Mr Dunn! You don't mind Papa, do you? He is as mad as a hatter,
+you know, but quite harmless and extremely clever. You will have
+some delightful talks with him.
+
+MAZZINI. I hope so. [To Ellie]. So here you are, Ellie, dear. [He
+draws her arm affectionately through his]. I must thank you, Mrs
+Hushabye, for your kindness to my daughter. I'm afraid she would
+have had no holiday if you had not invited her.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Not at all. Very nice of her to come and attract
+young people to the house for us.
+
+MAZZINI [smiling]. I'm afraid Ellie is not interested in young
+men, Mrs Hushabye. Her taste is on the graver, solider side.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [with a sudden rather hard brightness in her
+manner]. Won't you take off your overcoat, Mr Dunn? You will find
+a cupboard for coats and hats and things in the corner of the
+hall.
+
+MAZZINI [hastily releasing Ellie]. Yes--thank you--I had better--
+[he goes out].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [emphatically]. The old brute!
+
+ELLIE. Who?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Who! Him. He. It [pointing after Mazzini]. "Graver,
+solider tastes," indeed!
+
+ELLIE [aghast]. You don't mean that you were speaking like that
+of my father!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I was. You know I was.
+
+ELLIE [with dignity]. I will leave your house at once. [She turns
+to the door].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. If you attempt it, I'll tell your father why.
+
+ELLIE [turning again]. Oh! How can you treat a visitor like this,
+Mrs Hushabye?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I thought you were going to call me Hesione.
+
+ELLIE. Certainly not now?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Very well: I'll tell your father.
+
+ELLIE [distressed]. Oh!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. If you turn a hair--if you take his part against me
+and against your own heart for a moment, I'll give that born
+soldier of freedom a piece of my mind that will stand him on his
+selfish old head for a week.
+
+ELLIE. Hesione! My father selfish! How little you know--
+
+She is interrupted by Mazzini, who returns, excited and
+perspiring.
+
+MAZZINI. Ellie, Mangan has come: I thought you'd like to know.
+Excuse me, Mrs Hushabye, the strange old gentleman--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Papa. Quite so.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, I beg your pardon, of course: I was a little
+confused by his manner. He is making Mangan help him with
+something in the garden; and he wants me too--
+
+A powerful whistle is heard.
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S VOICE. Bosun ahoy! [the whistle is repeated].
+
+MAZZINI [flustered]. Oh dear! I believe he is whistling for me.
+[He hurries out].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Now MY father is a wonderful man if you like.
+
+ELLIE. Hesione, listen to me. You don't understand. My father and
+Mr Mangan were boys together. Mr Ma--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I don't care what they were: we must sit down if
+you are going to begin as far back as that. [She snatches at
+Ellie's waist, and makes her sit down on the sofa beside her].
+Now, pettikins, tell me all about Mr Mangan. They call him Boss
+Mangan, don't they? He is a Napoleon of industry and disgustingly
+rich, isn't he? Why isn't your father rich?
+
+ELLIE. My poor father should never have been in business. His
+parents were poets; and they gave him the noblest ideas; but they
+could not afford to give him a profession.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Fancy your grandparents, with their eyes in fine
+frenzy rolling! And so your poor father had to go into business.
+Hasn't he succeeded in it?
+
+ELLIE. He always used to say he could succeed if he only had some
+capital. He fought his way along, to keep a roof over our heads
+and bring us up well; but it was always a struggle: always the
+same difficulty of not having capital enough. I don't know how to
+describe it to you.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Poor Ellie! I know. Pulling the devil by the tail.
+
+ELLIE [hurt]. Oh, no. Not like that. It was at least dignified.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. That made it all the harder, didn't it? I shouldn't
+have pulled the devil by the tail with dignity. I should have
+pulled hard--[between her teeth] hard. Well? Go on.
+
+ELLIE. At last it seemed that all our troubles were at an end. Mr
+Mangan did an extraordinarily noble thing out of pure friendship
+for my father and respect for his character. He asked him how
+much capital he wanted, and gave it to him. I don't mean that he
+lent it to him, or that he invested it in his business. He just
+simply made him a present of it. Wasn't that splendid of him?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. On condition that you married him?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, no, no, no! This was when I was a child. He had never
+even seen me: he never came to our house. It was absolutely
+disinterested. Pure generosity.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh! I beg the gentleman's pardon. Well, what became
+of the money?
+
+ELLIE. We all got new clothes and moved into another house. And I
+went to another school for two years.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Only two years?
+
+ELLIE. That was all: for at the end of two years my father was
+utterly ruined.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. How?
+
+ELLIE. I don't know. I never could understand. But it was
+dreadful. When we were poor my father had never been in debt. But
+when he launched out into business on a large scale, he had to
+incur liabilities. When the business went into liquidation he
+owed more money than Mr Mangan had given him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Bit off more than he could chew, I suppose.
+
+ELLIE. I think you are a little unfeeling about it.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, you mustn't mind my way of talking. I
+was quite as sensitive and particular as you once; but I have
+picked up so much slang from the children that I am really hardly
+presentable. I suppose your father had no head for business, and
+made a mess of it.
+
+ELLIE. Oh, that just shows how entirely you are mistaken about
+him. The business turned out a great success. It now pays
+forty-four per cent after deducting the excess profits tax.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Then why aren't you rolling in money?
+
+ELLIE. I don't know. It seems very unfair to me. You see, my
+father was made bankrupt. It nearly broke his heart, because he
+had persuaded several of his friends to put money into the
+business. He was sure it would succeed; and events proved that he
+was quite right. But they all lost their money. It was dreadful.
+I don't know what we should have done but for Mr Mangan.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What! Did the Boss come to the rescue again, after
+all his money being thrown away?
+
+ELLIE. He did indeed, and never uttered a reproach to my father.
+He bought what was left of the business--the buildings and the
+machinery and things--from the official trustee for enough money
+to enable my father to pay six-and-eight-pence in the pound and
+get his discharge. Everyone pitied Papa so much, and saw so
+plainly that he was an honorable man, that they let him off at
+six-and-eight-pence instead of ten shillings. Then Mr. Mangan
+started a company to take up the business, and made my father a
+manager in it to save us from starvation; for I wasn't earning
+anything then.
+
+MRS. HUSHABYE. Quite a romance. And when did the Boss develop the
+tender passion?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, that was years after, quite lately. He took the chair
+one night at a sort of people's concert. I was singing there. As
+an amateur, you know: half a guinea for expenses and three songs
+with three encores. He was so pleased with my singing that he
+asked might he walk home with me. I never saw anyone so taken
+aback as he was when I took him home and introduced him to my
+father, his own manager. It was then that my father told me how
+nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance
+for me, as he is so rich. And--and--we drifted into a sort of
+understanding--I suppose I should call it an engagement--[she is
+distressed and cannot go on].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rising and marching about]. You may have drifted
+into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to
+have anything to do with it.
+
+ELLIE [hopelessly]. No: it's no use. I am bound in honor and
+gratitude. I will go through with it.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [behind the sofa, scolding down at her]. You know,
+of course, that it's not honorable or grateful to marry a man you
+don't love. Do you love this Mangan man?
+
+ELLIE. Yes. At least--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I don't want to know about "at least": I want to
+know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all sorts of
+impossible people, especially old people.
+
+ELLIE. I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [impatiently completing the sentence and prancing
+away intolerantly to starboard]. --grateful to him for his
+kindness to dear father. I know. Anybody else?
+
+ELLIE. What do you mean?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Anybody else? Are you in love with anybody else?
+
+ELLIE. Of course not.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Humph! [The book on the drawing-table catches her
+eye. She picks it up, and evidently finds the title very
+unexpected. She looks at Ellie, and asks, quaintly] Quite sure
+you're not in love with an actor?
+
+ELLIE. No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. This is yours, isn't it? Why else should you be
+reading Othello?
+
+ELLIE. My father taught me to love Shakespeare.
+
+MRS HUSHAYE [flinging the book down on the table]. Really! your
+father does seem to be about the limit.
+
+ELLIE [naively]. Do you never read Shakespeare, Hesione? That
+seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do you, indeed? He was jealous, wasn't he?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is
+horrible. But don't you think it must have been a wonderful
+experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home, to meet
+a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts of brave
+things and having terrible adventures, and yet finding something
+in her that made him love to sit and talk with her and tell her
+about them?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. That's your idea of romance, is it?
+
+ELLIE. Not romance, exactly. It might really happen.
+
+Ellie's eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. Mrs
+Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to
+the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those
+stories that Othello told Desdemona couldn't have happened--?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Desdemona thought they could have happened. But
+they didn't.
+
+ELLIE. Why do you look so enigmatic about it? You are such a
+sphinx: I never know what you mean.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Desdemona would have found him out if she had
+lived, you know. I wonder was that why he strangled her!
+
+ELLIE. Othello was not telling lies.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. How do you know?
+
+ELLIE. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are
+men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of
+course, white, and very handsome, and--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Ah! Now we're coming to it. Tell me all about him.
+I knew there must be somebody, or you'd never have been so
+miserable about Mangan: you'd have thought it quite a lark to
+marry him.
+
+ELLIE [blushing vividly]. Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don't
+want to make a secret of it, though of course I don't tell
+everybody. Besides, I don't know him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Don't know him! What does that mean?
+
+ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. But you want to know him ever so much more
+intimately, eh?
+
+ELLIE. No, no: I know him quite--almost intimately.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You don't know him; and you know him almost
+intimately. How lucid!
+
+ELLIE. I mean that he does not call on us. I--I got into
+conversation with him by chance at a concert.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You seem to have rather a gay time at your
+concerts, Ellie.
+
+ELLIE. Not at all: we talk to everyone in the greenroom waiting
+for our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so
+splendid. But he was only one of the committee. I happened to
+tell him that I was copying a picture at the National Gallery. I
+make a little money that way. I can't paint much; but as it's
+always the same picture I can do it pretty quickly and get two or
+three pounds for it. It happened that he came to the National
+Gallery one day.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. One students' day. Paid sixpence to stumble about
+through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day
+for nothing and found the floor clear! Quite by accident?
+
+ELLIE [triumphantly]. No. On purpose. He liked talking to me. He
+knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable women who are
+all in love with him. But he ran away from them to see me at the
+National Gallery and persuade me to come with him for a drive
+round Richmond Park in a taxi.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, you have been going it. It's
+wonderful what you good girls can do without anyone saying a
+word.
+
+ELLIE. I am not in society, Hesione. If I didn't make
+acquaintances in that way I shouldn't have any at all.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, no harm if you know how to take care of
+yourself. May I ask his name?
+
+ELLIE [slowly and musically]. Marcus Darnley.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [echoing the music]. Marcus Darnley! What a splendid
+name!
+
+ELLIE. Oh, I'm so glad you think so. I think so too; but I was
+afraid it was only a silly fancy of my own.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys?
+
+ELLIE. Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an antique
+chest--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. A what?
+
+ELLIE. An antique chest, one summer morning in a rose garden,
+after a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What on earth was he doing in the chest? Did he get
+into it because he was afraid of the lightning?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley was
+embroidered on his baby clothes. And five hundred pounds in gold.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [Looking hard at her]. Ellie!
+
+ELLIE. The garden of the Viscount--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. --de Rougemont?
+
+ELLIE [innocently]. No: de Larochejaquelin. A French family. A
+vicomte. His life has been one long romance. A tiger--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Slain by his own hand?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, no: nothing vulgar like that. He saved the life of the
+tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward's hunting parties
+in India. The King was furious: that was why he never had his
+military services properly recognized. But he doesn't care. He is
+a Socialist and despises rank, and has been in three revolutions
+fighting on the barricades.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. How can you sit there telling me such lies? You,
+Ellie, of all people! And I thought you were a perfectly simple,
+straightforward, good girl.
+
+ELLIE [rising, dignified but very angry]. Do you mean you don't
+believe me?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Of course I don't believe you. You're inventing
+every word of it. Do you take me for a fool?
+
+Ellie stares at her. Her candor is so obvious that Mrs Hushabye
+is puzzled.
+
+ELLIE. Goodbye, Hesione. I'm very sorry. I see now that it sounds
+very improbable as I tell it. But I can't stay if you think that
+way about me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [catching her dress]. You shan't go. I couldn't be
+so mistaken: I know too well what liars are like. Somebody has
+really told you all this.
+
+ELLIE [flushing]. Hesione, don't say that you don't believe him.
+I couldn't bear that.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [soothing her]. Of course I believe him, dearest.
+But you should have broken it to me by degrees. [Drawing her back
+to her seat]. Now tell me all about him. Are you in love with
+him?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, no. I'm not so foolish. I don't fall in love with
+people. I'm not so silly as you think.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I see. Only something to think about--to give some
+interest and pleasure to life.
+
+ELLIE. Just so. That's all, really.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. It makes the hours go fast, doesn't it? No tedious
+waiting to go to sleep at nights and wondering whether you will
+have a bad night. How delightful it makes waking up in the
+morning! How much better than the happiest dream! All life
+transfigured! No more wishing one had an interesting book to
+read, because life is so much happier than any book! No desire
+but to be alone and not to have to talk to anyone: to be alone
+and just think about it.
+
+ELLIE [embracing her]. Hesione, you are a witch. How do you know?
+Oh, you are the most sympathetic woman in the world!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [caressing her]. Pettikins, my pettikins, how I envy
+you! and how I pity you!
+
+ELLIE. Pity me! Oh, why?
+
+A very handsome man of fifty, with mousquetaire moustaches,
+wearing a rather dandified curly brimmed hat, and carrying an
+elaborate walking-stick, comes into the room from the hall, and
+stops short at sight of the women on the sofa.
+
+ELLIE [seeing him and rising in glad surprise]. Oh! Hesione: this
+is Mr Marcus Darnley.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rising]. What a lark! He is my husband.
+
+ELLIE. But now--[she stops suddenly: then turns pale and sways].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [catching her and sitting down with her on the
+sofa]. Steady, my pettikins.
+
+THE MAN [with a mixture of confusion and effrontery, depositing
+his hat and stick on the teak table]. My real name, Miss Dunn, is
+Hector Hushabye. I leave you to judge whether that is a name any
+sensitive man would care to confess to. I never use it when I can
+possibly help it. I have been away for nearly a month; and I had
+no idea you knew my wife, or that you were coming here. I am none
+the less delighted to find you in our little house.
+
+ELLIE [in great distress]. I don't know what to do. Please, may I
+speak to papa? Do leave me. I can't bear it.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Be off, Hector.
+
+HECTOR. I--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Quick, quick. Get out.
+
+HECTOR. If you think it better--[he goes out, taking his hat with
+him but leaving the stick on the table].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [laying Ellie down at the end of the sofa]. Now,
+pettikins, he is gone. There's nobody but me. You can let
+yourself go. Don't try to control yourself. Have a good cry.
+
+ELLIE [raising her head]. Damn!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Splendid! Oh, what a relief! I thought you were
+going to be broken-hearted. Never mind me. Damn him again.
+
+ELLIE. I am not damning him. I am damning myself for being such a
+fool. [Rising]. How could I let myself be taken in so? [She
+begins prowling to and fro, her bloom gone, looking curiously
+older and harder].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [cheerfully]. Why not, pettikins? Very few young
+women can resist Hector. I couldn't when I was your age. He is
+really rather splendid, you know.
+
+ELLIE [turning on her]. Splendid! Yes, splendid looking, of
+course. But how can you love a liar?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I don't know. But you can, fortunately. Otherwise
+there wouldn't be much love in the world.
+
+ELLIE. But to lie like that! To be a boaster! a coward!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rising in alarm]. Pettikins, none of that, if you
+please. If you hint the slightest doubt of Hector's courage, he
+will go straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things to
+convince himself that he isn't a coward. He has a dreadful trick
+of getting out of one third-floor window and coming in at
+another, just to test his nerve. He has a whole drawerful of
+Albert Medals for saving people's lives.
+
+ELLIE. He never told me that.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. He never boasts of anything he really did: he can't
+bear it; and it makes him shy if anyone else does. All his
+stories are made-up stories.
+
+ELLIE [coming to her]. Do you mean that he is really brave, and
+really has adventures, and yet tells lies about things that he
+never did and that never happened?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Yes, pettikins, I do. People don't have their
+virtues and vices in sets: they have them anyhow: all mixed.
+
+ELLIE [staring at her thoughtfully]. There's something odd about
+this house, Hesione, and even about you. I don't know why I'm
+talking to you so calmly. I have a horrible fear that my heart is
+broken, but that heartbreak is not like what I thought it must
+be.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [fondling her]. It's only life educating you,
+pettikins. How do you feel about Boss Mangan now?
+
+ELLIE [disengaging herself with an expression of distaste]. Oh,
+how can you remind me of him, Hesione?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry, dear. I think I hear Hector coming back. You
+don't mind now, do you, dear?
+
+ELLIE. Not in the least. I am quite cured.
+
+Mazzini Dunn and Hector come in from the hall.
+
+HECTOR [as he opens the door and allows Mazzini to pass in]. One
+second more, and she would have been a dead woman!
+
+MAZZINI. Dear! dear! what an escape! Ellie, my love, Mr Hushabye
+has just been telling me the most extraordinary--
+
+ELLIE. Yes, I've heard it [she crosses to the other side of the
+room].
+
+HECTOR [following her]. Not this one: I'll tell it to you after
+dinner. I think you'll like it. The truth is I made it up for
+you, and was looking forward to the pleasure of telling it to
+you. But in a moment of impatience at being turned out of the
+room, I threw it away on your father.
+
+ELLIE [turning at bay with her back to the carpenter's bench,
+scornfully self-possessed]. It was not thrown away. He believes
+it. I should not have believed it.
+
+MAZZINI [benevolently]. Ellie is very naughty, Mr Hushabye. Of
+course she does not really think that. [He goes to the
+bookshelves, and inspects the titles of the volumes].
+
+Boss Mangan comes in from the hall, followed by the captain.
+Mangan, carefully frock-coated as for church or for a diHECTORs'
+meeting, is about fifty-five, with a careworn, mistrustful
+expression, standing a little on an entirely imaginary dignity,
+with a dull complexion, straight, lustreless hair, and features
+so entirely commonplace that it is impossible to describe them.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [to Mrs Hushabye, introducing the newcomer].
+Says his name is Mangan. Not able-bodied.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [graciously]. How do you do, Mr Mangan?
+
+MANGAN [shaking hands]. Very pleased.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dunn's lost his muscle, but recovered his
+nerve. Men seldom do after three attacks of delirium tremens [he
+goes into the pantry].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I congratulate you, Mr Dunn.
+
+MAZZINI [dazed]. I am a lifelong teetotaler.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You will find it far less trouble to let papa have
+his own way than try to explain.
+
+MAZZINI. But three attacks of delirium tremens, really!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [to Mangan]. Do you know my husband, Mr Mangan [she
+indicates Hector].
+
+MANGAN [going to Hector, who meets him with outstretched hand].
+Very pleased. [Turning to Ellie]. I hope, Miss Ellie, you have
+not found the journey down too fatiguing. [They shake hands].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Hector, show Mr Dunn his room.
+
+HECTOR. Certainly. Come along, Mr Dunn. [He takes Mazzini out].
+
+ELLIE. You haven't shown me my room yet, Hesione.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. How stupid of me! Come along. Make yourself quite
+at home, Mr Mangan. Papa will entertain you. [She calls to the
+captain in the pantry]. Papa, come and explain the house to Mr
+Mangan.
+
+She goes out with Ellie. The captain comes from the pantry.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You're going to marry Dunn's daughter. Don't.
+You're too old.
+
+MANGAN [staggered]. Well! That's fairly blunt, Captain.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's true.
+
+MANGAN. She doesn't think so.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. She does.
+
+MANGAN. Older men than I have--
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [finishing the sentence for him].--made fools of
+themselves. That, also, is true.
+
+MANGAN [asserting himself]. I don't see that this is any business
+of yours.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It is everybody's business. The stars in their
+courses are shaken when such things happen.
+
+MANGAN. I'm going to marry her all the same.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. How do you know?
+
+MANGAN [playing the strong man]. I intend to. I mean to. See? I
+never made up my mind to do a thing yet that I didn't bring it
+off. That's the sort of man I am; and there will be a better
+understanding between us when you make up your mind to that,
+Captain.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You frequent picture palaces.
+
+MANGAN. Perhaps I do. Who told you?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Talk like a man, not like a movie. You mean
+that you make a hundred thousand a year.
+
+MANGAN. I don't boast. But when I meet a man that makes a hundred
+thousand a year, I take off my hat to that man, and stretch out
+my hand to him and call him brother.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Then you also make a hundred thousand a year,
+hey?
+
+MANGAN. No. I can't say that. Fifty thousand, perhaps.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. His half brother only [he turns away from
+Mangan with his usual abruptness, and collects the empty tea-cups
+on the Chinese tray].
+
+MANGAN [irritated]. See here, Captain Shotover. I don't quite
+understand my position here. I came here on your daughter's
+invitation. Am I in her house or in yours?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are beneath the dome of heaven, in the
+house of God. What is true within these walls is true outside
+them. Go out on the seas; climb the mountains; wander through the
+valleys. She is still too young.
+
+MANGAN [weakening]. But I'm very little over fifty.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are still less under sixty. Boss Mangan,
+you will not marry the pirate's child [he carries the tray away
+into the pantry].
+
+MANGAN [following him to the half door]. What pirate's child?
+What are you talking about?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [in the pantry]. Ellie Dunn. You will not marry
+her.
+
+MANGAN. Who will stop me?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [emerging]. My daughter [he makes for the door
+leading to the hall].
+
+MANGAN [following him]. Mrs Hushabye! Do you mean to say she
+brought me down here to break it off?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [stopping and turning on him]. I know nothing
+more than I have seen in her eye. She will break it off. Take my
+advice: marry a West Indian negress: they make excellent wives. I
+was married to one myself for two years.
+
+MANGAN. Well, I am damned!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I thought so. I was, too, for many years. The
+negress redeemed me.
+
+MANGAN [feebly]. This is queer. I ought to walk out of this
+house.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why?
+
+MANGAN. Well, many men would be offended by your style of
+talking.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Nonsense! It's the other sort of talking that
+makes quarrels. Nobody ever quarrels with me.
+
+A gentleman, whose first-rate tailoring and frictionless manners
+proclaim the wellbred West Ender, comes in from the hall. He has
+an engaging air of being young and unmarried, but on close
+inspection is found to be at least over forty.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Excuse my intruding in this fashion, but there is
+no knocker on the door and the bell does not seem to ring.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why should there be a knocker? Why should the
+bell ring? The door is open.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Precisely. So I ventured to come in.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Quite right. I will see about a room for you
+[he makes for the door].
+
+THE GENTLEMAN [stopping him]. But I'm afraid you don't know who I
+am.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. DO you suppose that at my age I make
+distinctions between one fellow creature and another? [He goes
+out. Mangan and the newcomer stare at one another].
+
+MANGAN. Strange character, Captain Shotover, sir.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Very.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [shouting outside]. Hesione, another person has
+arrived and wants a room. Man about town, well dressed, fifty.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Fancy Hesione's feelings! May I ask are you a
+member of the family?
+
+MANGAN. No.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. I am. At least a connection.
+
+Mrs Hushabye comes back.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. How do you do? How good of you to come!
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. I am very glad indeed to make your acquaintance,
+Hesione. [Instead of taking her hand he kisses her. At the same
+moment the captain appears in the doorway]. You will excuse my
+kissing your daughter, Captain, when I tell you that--
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Stuff! Everyone kisses my daughter. Kiss her as
+much as you like [he makes for the pantry].
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Thank you. One moment, Captain. [The captain halts
+and turns. The gentleman goes to him affably]. Do you happen to
+remember but probably you don't, as it occurred many years ago--
+that your younger daughter married a numskull?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes. She said she'd marry anybody to get away
+from this house. I should not have recognized you: your head is
+no longer like a walnut. Your aspect is softened. You have been
+boiled in bread and milk for years and years, like other married
+men. Poor devil! [He disappears into the pantry].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [going past Mangan to the gentleman and scrutinizing
+him]. I don't believe you are Hastings Utterword.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. I am not.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Then what business had you to kiss me?
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. I thought I would like to. The fact is, I am
+Randall Utterword, the unworthy younger brother of Hastings. I
+was abroad diplomatizing when he was married.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [dashing in]. Hesione, where is the key of the
+wardrobe in my room? My diamonds are in my dressing-bag: I must
+lock it up--[recognizing the stranger with a shock] Randall, how
+dare you? [She marches at him past Mrs Hushabye, who retreats and
+joins Mangan near the sofa].
+
+RANDALL. How dare I what? I am not doing anything.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Who told you I was here?
+
+RANDALL. Hastings. You had just left when I called on you at
+Claridge's; so I followed you down here. You are looking
+extremely well.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Don't presume to tell me so.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What is wrong with Mr Randall, Addy?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [recollecting herself]. Oh, nothing. But he has no
+right to come bothering you and papa without being invited [she
+goes to the window-seat and sits down, turning away from them
+ill-humoredly and looking into the garden, where Hector and Ellie
+are now seen strolling together].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I think you have not met Mr Mangan, Addy.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [turning her head and nodding coldly to Mangan]. I
+beg your pardon. Randall, you have flustered me so: I make a
+perfect fool of myself.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Lady Utterword. My sister. My younger sister.
+
+MANGAN [bowing]. Pleased to meet you, Lady Utterword.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [with marked interest]. Who is that gentleman
+walking in the garden with Miss Dunn?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I don't know. She quarrelled mortally with my
+husband only ten minutes ago; and I didn't know anyone else had
+come. It must be a visitor. [She goes to the window to look]. Oh,
+it is Hector. They've made it up.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Your husband! That handsome man?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, why shouldn't my husband be a handsome man?
+
+RANDALL [joining them at the window]. One's husband never is,
+Ariadne [he sits by Lady Utterword, on her right].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. One's sister's husband always is, Mr Randall.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Don't be vulgar, Randall. And you, Hesione, are
+just as bad.
+
+Ellie and Hector come in from the garden by the starboard door.
+Randall rises. Ellie retires into the corner near the pantry.
+Hector comes forward; and Lady Utterword rises looking her very
+best.
+
+MRS. HUSHABYE. Hector, this is Addy.
+
+HECTOR [apparently surprised]. Not this lady.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [smiling]. Why not?
+
+HECTOR [looking at her with a piercing glance of deep but
+respectful admiration, his moustache bristling]. I thought--
+[pulling himself together]. I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword. I
+am extremely glad to welcome you at last under our roof [he
+offers his hand with grave courtesy].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. She wants to be kissed, Hector.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Hesione! [But she still smiles].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Call her Addy; and kiss her like a good
+brother-in-law; and have done with it. [She leaves them to
+themselves].
+
+HECTOR. Behave yourself, Hesione. Lady Utterword is entitled not
+only to hospitality but to civilization.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [gratefully]. Thank you, Hector. [They shake hands
+cordially].
+
+Mazzini Dunn is seen crossing the garden from starboard to port.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [coming from the pantry and addressing Ellie].
+Your father has washed himself.
+
+ELLIE [quite self-possessed]. He often does, Captain Shotover.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A strange conversion! I saw him through the
+pantry window.
+
+Mazzini Dunn enters through the port window door, newly washed
+and brushed, and stops, smiling benevolently, between Mangan and
+Mrs Hushabye.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [introducing]. Mr Mazzini Dunn, Lady Ut--oh, I
+forgot: you've met. [Indicating Ellie] Miss Dunn.
+
+MAZZINI [walking across the room to take Ellie's hand, and
+beaming at his own naughty irony]. I have met Miss Dunn also. She
+is my daughter. [He draws her arm through his caressingly].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Of course: how stupid! Mr Utterword, my sister's--
+er--
+
+RANDALL [shaking hands agreeably]. Her brother-in-law, Mr Dunn.
+How do you do?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. This is my husband.
+
+HECTOR. We have met, dear. Don't introduce us any more. [He moves
+away to the big chair, and adds] Won't you sit down, Lady
+Utterword? [She does so very graciously].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry. I hate it: it's like making people show
+their tickets.
+
+MAZZINI [sententiously]. How little it tells us, after all! The
+great question is, not who we are, but what we are.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ha! What are you?
+
+MAZZINI [taken aback]. What am I?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A thief, a pirate, and a murderer.
+
+MAZZINI. I assure you you are mistaken.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. An adventurous life; but what does it end in?
+Respectability. A ladylike daughter. The language and appearance
+of a city missionary. Let it be a warning to all of you [he goes
+out through the garden].
+
+DUNN. I hope nobody here believes that I am a thief, a pirate, or
+a murderer. Mrs Hushabye, will you excuse me a moment? I must
+really go and explain. [He follows the captain].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [as he goes]. It's no use. You'd really better--
+[but Dunn has vanished]. We had better all go out and look for
+some tea. We never have regular tea; but you can always get some
+when you want: the servants keep it stewing all day. The kitchen
+veranda is the best place to ask. May I show you? [She goes to
+the starboard door].
+
+RANDALL [going with her]. Thank you, I don't think I'll take any
+tea this afternoon. But if you will show me the garden--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. There's nothing to see in the garden except papa's
+observatory, and a gravel pit with a cave where he keeps dynamite
+and things of that sort. However, it's pleasanter out of doors;
+so come along.
+
+RANDALL. Dynamite! Isn't that rather risky?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, we don't sit in the gravel pit when there's a
+thunderstorm.
+
+LADY UTTERORRD. That's something new. What is the dynamite for?
+
+HECTOR. To blow up the human race if it goes too far. He is
+trying to discover a psychic ray that will explode all the
+explosive at the well of a Mahatma.
+
+ELLIE. The captain's tea is delicious, Mr Utterword.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [stopping in the doorway]. Do you mean to say that
+you've had some of my father's tea? that you got round him before
+you were ten minutes in the house?
+
+ELLIE. I did.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You little devil! [She goes out with Randall].
+
+MANGAN. Won't you come, Miss Ellie?
+
+ELLIE. I'm too tired. I'll take a book up to my room and rest a
+little. [She goes to the bookshelf].
+
+MANGAN. Right. You can't do better. But I'm disappointed. [He
+follows Randall and Mrs Hushabye].
+
+Ellie, Hector, and Lady Utterword are left. Hector is close to
+Lady Utterword. They look at Ellie, waiting for her to go.
+
+ELLIE [looking at the title of a book]. Do you like stories of
+adventure, Lady Utterword?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [patronizingly]. Of course, dear.
+
+ELLIE. Then I'll leave you to Mr Hushabye. [She goes out through
+the hall].
+
+HECTOR. That girl is mad about tales of adventure. The lies I
+have to tell her!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [not interested in Ellie]. When you saw me what
+did you mean by saying that you thought, and then stopping short?
+What did you think?
+
+HECTOR [folding his arms and looking down at her magnetically].
+May I tell you?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Of course.
+
+HECTOR. It will not sound very civil. I was on the point of
+saying, "I thought you were a plain woman."
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, for shame, Hector! What right had you to
+notice whether I am plain or not?
+
+HECTOR. Listen to me, Ariadne. Until today I have seen only
+photographs of you; and no photograph can give the strange
+fascination of the daughters of that supernatural old man. There
+is some damnable quality in them that destroys men's moral sense,
+and carries them beyond honor and dishonor. You know that, don't
+you?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps I do, Hector. But let me warn you once
+for all that I am a rigidly conventional woman. You may think
+because I'm a Shotover that I'm a Bohemian, because we are all so
+horribly Bohemian. But I'm not. I hate and loathe Bohemianism. No
+child brought up in a strict Puritan household ever suffered from
+Puritanism as I suffered from our Bohemianism.
+
+HECTOR. Our children are like that. They spend their holidays in
+the houses of their respectable schoolfellows.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I shall invite them for Christmas.
+
+HECTOR. Their absence leaves us both without our natural
+chaperones.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Children are certainly very inconvenient
+sometimes. But intelligent people can always manage, unless they
+are Bohemians.
+
+HECTOR. You are no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your
+attraction is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count
+yourself?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can
+assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do
+the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct
+thing, you can do just what you like. An ill-conducted, careless
+woman gets simply no chance. An ill-conducted, careless man is
+never allowed within arm's length of any woman worth knowing.
+
+HECTOR. I see. You are neither a Bohemian woman nor a Puritan
+woman. You are a dangerous woman.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. On the contrary, I am a safe woman.
+
+HECTOR. You are a most accursedly attractive woman. Mind, I am
+not making love to you. I do not like being attracted. But you
+had better know how I feel if you are going to stay here.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You are an exceedingly clever lady-killer,
+Hector. And terribly handsome. I am quite a good player, myself,
+at that game. Is it quite understood that we are only playing?
+
+HECTOR. Quite. I am deliberately playing the fool, out of sheer
+worthlessness.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [rising brightly]. Well, you are my
+brother-in-law, Hesione asked you to kiss me. [He seizes her in
+his arms and kisses her strenuously]. Oh! that was a little more
+than play, brother-in-law. [She pushes him suddenly away]. You
+shall not do that again.
+
+HECTOR. In effect, you got your claws deeper into me than I
+intended.
+
+MRS HUBHABYE [coming in from the garden]. Don't let me disturb
+you; I only want a cap to put on daddiest. The sun is setting;
+and he'll catch cold [she makes for the door leading to the
+hall].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Your husband is quite charming, darling. He has
+actually condescended to kiss me at last. I shall go into the
+garden: it's cooler now [she goes out by the port door].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Take care, dear child. I don't believe any man can
+kiss Addy without falling in love with her. [She goes into the
+hall].
+
+HECTOR [striking himself on the chest]. Fool! Goat!
+
+Mrs Hushabye comes back with the captain's cap.
+
+HECTOR. Your sister is an extremely enterprising old girl.
+Where's Miss Dunn!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Mangan says she has gone up to her room for a nap.
+Addy won't let you talk to Ellie: she has marked you for her own.
+
+HECTOR. She has the diabolical family fascination. I began making
+love to her automatically. What am I to do? I can't fall in love;
+and I can't hurt a woman's feelings by telling her so when she
+falls in love with me. And as women are always falling in love
+with my moustache I get landed in all sorts of tedious and
+terrifying flirtations in which I'm not a bit in earnest.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, neither is Addy. She has never been in love in
+her life, though she has always been trying to fall in head over
+ears. She is worse than you, because you had one real go at
+least, with me.
+
+HECTOR. That was a confounded madness. I can't believe that such
+an amazing experience is common. It has left its mark on me. I
+believe that is why I have never been able to repeat it.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [laughing and caressing his arm]. We were
+frightfully in love with one another, Hector. It was such an
+enchanting dream that I have never been able to grudge it to you
+or anyone else since. I have invited all sorts of pretty women to
+the house on the chance of giving you another turn. But it has
+never come off.
+
+HECTOR. I don't know that I want it to come off. It was damned
+dangerous. You fascinated me; but I loved you; so it was heaven.
+This sister of yours fascinates me; but I hate her; so it is
+hell. I shall kill her if she persists.
+
+MRS. HUSHABYE. Nothing will kill Addy; she is as strong as a
+horse. [Releasing him]. Now I am going off to fascinate somebody.
+
+HECTOR. The Foreign Office toff? Randall?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Goodness gracious, no! Why should I fascinate him?
+
+HECTOR. I presume you don't mean the bloated capitalist, Mangan?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! I think he had better be fascinated by me than
+by Ellie. [She is going into the garden when the captain comes in
+from it with some sticks in his hand]. What have you got there,
+daddiest?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dynamite.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You've been to the gravel pit. Don't drop it about
+the house, there's a dear. [She goes into the garden, where the
+evening light is now very red].
+
+HECTOR. Listen, O sage. How long dare you concentrate on a
+feeling without risking having it fixed in your consciousness all
+the rest of your life?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ninety minutes. An hour and a half. [He goes
+into the pantry].
+
+Hector, left alone, contracts his brows, and falls into a
+day-dream. He does not move for some time. Then he folds his
+arms. Then, throwing his hands behind him, and gripping one with
+the other, he strides tragically once to and fro. Suddenly he
+snatches his walking stick from the teak table, and draws it; for
+it is a swordstick. He fights a desperate duel with an imaginary
+antagonist, and after many vicissitudes runs him through the body
+up to the hilt. He sheathes his sword and throws it on the sofa,
+falling into another reverie as he does so. He looks straight
+into the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her by the arms; and
+says in a deep and thrilling tone, "Do you love me!" The captain
+comes out of the pantry at this moment; and Hector, caught with
+his arms stretched out and his fists clenched, has to account for
+his attitude by going through a series of gymnastic exercises.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That sort of strength is no good. You will
+never be as strong as a gorilla.
+
+HECTOR. What is the dynamite for?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. To kill fellows like Mangan.
+
+HECTOR. No use. They will always be able to buy more dynamite
+than you.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I will make a dynamite that he cannot explode.
+
+HECTOR. And that you can, eh?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes: when I have attained the seventh degree of
+concentration.
+
+HECTOR. What's the use of that? You never do attain it.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What then is to be done? Are we to be kept
+forever in the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing
+but a machine for greasing their bristles and filling their
+snouts?
+
+HECTOR. Are Mangan's bristles worse than Randall's lovelocks?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER,. We must win powers of life and death over them
+both. I refuse to die until I have invented the means.
+
+HECTOR. Who are we that we should judge them?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What are they that they should judge us? Yet
+they do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and
+their seed. They know it and act on it, strangling our souls.
+They believe in themselves. When we believe in ourselves, we
+shall kill them.
+
+HECTOR. It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate has a
+very nice daughter. Mangan's son may be a Plato: Randall's a
+Shelley. What was my father?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The damnedst scoundrel I ever met. [He replaces
+the drawing-board; sits down at the table; and begins to mix a
+wash of color].
+
+HECTOR. Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent
+grandchildren?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They are mine also.
+
+HECTOR. Just so--we are members one of another. [He throws
+himself carelessly on the sofa]. I tell you I have often thought
+of this killing of human vermin. Many men have thought of it.
+Decent men are like Daniel in the lion's den: their survival is a
+miracle; and they do not always survive. We live among the
+Mangans and Randalls and Billie Dunns as they, poor devils, live
+among the disease germs and the doctors and the lawyers and the
+parsons and the restaurant chefs and the tradesmen and the
+servants and all the rest of the parasites and blackmailers. What
+are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power to kill them; and
+I'll spare them in sheer--
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [cutting in sharply]. Fellow feeling?
+
+HECTOR. No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must
+believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the
+red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them in
+simple magnanimous pity.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You can't spare them until you have the power
+to kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There
+are millions of blacks over the water for them to train and let
+loose on us. They're going to do it. They're doing it already.
+
+HECTOR. They are too stupid to use their power.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [throwing down his brush and coming to the end
+of the sofa]. Do not deceive yourself: they do use it. We kill
+the better half of ourselves every day to propitiate them. The
+knowledge that these people are there to render all our
+aspirations barren prevents us having the aspirations. And when
+we are tempted to seek their destruction they bring forth demons
+to delude us, disguised as pretty daughters, and singers and
+poets and the like, for whose sake we spare them.
+
+HECTOR [sitting up and leaning towards him]. May not Hesione be
+such a demon, brought forth by you lest I should slay you?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That is possible. She has used you up, and left
+you nothing but dreams, as some women do.
+
+HECTOR. Vampire women, demon women.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Men think the world well lost for them, and
+lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands
+of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the
+flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry]. I must
+think these things out. [Turning suddenly]. But I go on with the
+dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any
+X-ray: a mind ray that will explode the ammunition in the belt of
+my adversary before he can point his gun at me. And I must hurry.
+I am old: I have no time to waste in talk [he is about to go into
+the pantry, and Hector is making for the hall, when Hesione comes
+back].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Daddiest, you and Hector must come and help me to
+entertain all these people. What on earth were you shouting
+about?
+
+HECTOR [stopping in the act of turning the door handle]. He is
+madder than usual.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. We all are.
+
+HECTOR. I must change [he resumes his door opening].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, stop. Come back, both of you. Come back.
+[They return, reluctantly]. Money is running short.
+
+HECTOR. Money! Where are my April dividends?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Where is the snow that fell last year?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Where is all the money you had for that patent
+lifeboat I invented?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Five hundred pounds; and I have made it last since
+Easter!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Since Easter! Barely four months! Monstrous
+extravagance! I could live for seven years on 500 pounds.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Not keeping open house as we do here, daddiest.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Only 500 pounds for that lifeboat! I got twelve
+thousand for the invention before that.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Yes, dear; but that was for the ship with the
+magnetic keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we
+do, you cannot afford life-saving inventions. Can't you think of
+something that will murder half Europe at one bang?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on
+slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband
+invent something? He does nothing but tell lies to women.
+
+HECTOR. Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However,
+you are right: I ought to support my wife.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort: I should
+never see you from breakfast to dinner. I want my husband.
+
+HECTOR [bitterly]. I might as well be your lapdog.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other
+poor husbands?
+
+HECTOR. No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is
+anyhow!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [to the captain]. What about that harpoon cannon?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No use. It kills whales, not men.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Why not? You fire the harpoon out of a cannon. It
+sticks in the enemy's general; you wind him in; and there you
+are.
+
+HECTOR. You are your father's daughter, Hesione.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is something in it. Not to wind in
+generals: they are not dangerous. But one could fire a grapnel
+and wind in a machine gun or even a tank. I will think it out.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [squeezing the captain's arm affectionately]. Saved!
+You are a darling, daddiest. Now we must go back to these
+dreadful people and entertain them.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They have had no dinner. Don't forget that.
+
+HECTOR. Neither have I. And it is dark: it must be all hours.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Guinness will produce some sort of dinner for
+them. The servants always take jolly good care that there is food
+in the house.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [raising a strange wail in the darkness]. What a
+house! What a daughter!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [raving]. What a father!
+
+HECTOR [following suit]. What a husband!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is there no thunder in heaven?
+
+HECTOR. Is there no beauty, no bravery, on earth?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What do men want? They have their food, their
+firesides, their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the
+day. Why are they not satisfied? Why do they envy us the pain
+with which we bring them into the world, and make strange dangers
+and torments for themselves to be even with us?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [weirdly chanting].
+      I builded a house for my daughters, and opened the doors
+            thereof,
+      That men might come for their choosing, and their betters
+            spring from their love;
+      But one of them married a numskull;
+
+HECTOR [taking up the rhythm].
+      The other a liar wed;
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [completing the stanza].
+      And now must she lie beside him, even as she made her bed.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [calling from the garden]. Hesione! Hesione! Where
+are you?
+
+HECTOR. The cat is on the tiles.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Coming, darling, coming [she goes quickly into the
+garden].
+
+The captain goes back to his place at the table.
+
+HECTOR [going out into the hall]. Shall I turn up the lights for
+you?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Give me deeper darkness. Money is not made
+in the light.
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+The same room, with the lights turned up and the curtains drawn.
+Ellie comes in, followed by Mangan. Both are dressed for dinner.
+She strolls to the drawing-table. He comes between the table and
+the wicker chair.
+
+MANGAN. What a dinner! I don't call it a dinner: I call it a
+meal.
+
+ELLIE. I am accustomed to meals, Mr Mangan, and very lucky to get
+them. Besides, the captain cooked some maccaroni for me.
+
+MANGAN [shuddering liverishly]. Too rich: I can't eat such
+things. I suppose it's because I have to work so much with my
+brain. That's the worst of being a man of business: you are
+always thinking, thinking, thinking. By the way, now that we are
+alone, may I take the opportunity to come to a little
+understanding with you?
+
+ELLIE [settling into the draughtsman's seat]. Certainly. I should
+like to.
+
+MANGAN [taken aback]. Should you? That surprises me; for I
+thought I noticed this afternoon that you avoided me all you
+could. Not for the first time either.
+
+ELLIE. I was very tired and upset. I wasn't used to the ways of
+this extraordinary house. Please forgive me.
+
+MANGAN. Oh, that's all right: I don't mind. But Captain Shotover
+has been talking to me about you. You and me, you know.
+
+ELLIE [interested]. The captain! What did he say?
+
+MANGAN. Well, he noticed the difference between our ages.
+
+ELLIE. He notices everything.
+
+MANGAN. You don't mind, then?
+
+ELLIE. Of course I know quite well that our engagement--
+
+MANGAN. Oh! you call it an engagement.
+
+ELLIE. Well, isn't it?
+
+MANGAN. Oh, yes, yes: no doubt it is if you hold to it. This is
+the first time you've used the word; and I didn't quite know
+where we stood: that's all. [He sits down in the wicker chair;
+and resigns himself to allow her to lead the conversation]. You
+were saying--?
+
+ELLIE. Was I? I forget. Tell me. Do you like this part of the
+country? I heard you ask Mr Hushabye at dinner whether there are
+any nice houses to let down here.
+
+MANGAN. I like the place. The air suits me. I shouldn't be
+surprised if I settled down here.
+
+ELLIE. Nothing would please me better. The air suits me too. And
+I want to be near Hesione.
+
+MANGAN [with growing uneasiness]. The air may suit us; but the
+question is, should we suit one another? Have you thought about
+that?
+
+ELLIE. Mr Mangan, we must be sensible, mustn't we? It's no use
+pretending that we are Romeo and Juliet. But we can get on very
+well together if we choose to make the best of it. Your kindness
+of heart will make it easy for me.
+
+MANGAN [leaning forward, with the beginning of something like
+deliberate unpleasantness in his voice]. Kindness of heart, eh? I
+ruined your father, didn't I?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, not intentionally.
+
+MANGAN. Yes I did. Ruined him on purpose.
+
+ELLIE. On purpose!
+
+MANGAN. Not out of ill-nature, you know. And you'll admit that I
+kept a job for him when I had finished with him. But business is
+business; and I ruined him as a matter of business.
+
+ELLIE. I don't understand how that can be. Are you trying to make
+me feel that I need not be grateful to you, so that I may choose
+freely?
+
+MANGAN [rising aggressively]. No. I mean what I say.
+
+ELLIE. But how could it possibly do you any good to ruin my
+father? The money he lost was yours.
+
+MANGAN [with a sour laugh]. Was mine! It is mine, Miss Ellie, and
+all the money the other fellows lost too. [He shoves his hands
+into his pockets and shows his teeth]. I just smoked them out
+like a hive of bees. What do you say to that? A bit of shock, eh?
+
+ELLIE. It would have been, this morning. Now! you can't think how
+little it matters. But it's quite interesting. Only, you must
+explain it to me. I don't understand it. [Propping her elbows on
+the drawingboard and her chin on her hands, she composes herself
+to listen with a combination of conscious curiosity with
+unconscious contempt which provokes him to more and more
+unpleasantness, and an attempt at patronage of her ignorance].
+
+MANGAN. Of course you don't understand: what do you know about
+business? You just listen and learn. Your father's business was a
+new business; and I don't start new businesses: I let other
+fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends'
+money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies
+trying to make a success of them. They're what you call
+enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for
+them; and they haven't enough financial experience. In a year or
+so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or sell out to
+a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares: that is,
+if they're lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely as not
+the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more
+money and a couple of years' more work; and then perhaps they
+have to sell out to a third lot. If it's really a big thing the
+third lot will have to sell out too, and leave their work and
+their money behind them. And that's where the real business man
+comes in: where I come in. But I'm cleverer than some: I don't
+mind dropping a little money to start the process. I took your
+father's measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and that he
+would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that
+he was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his
+expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait for his market. I
+knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to
+handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea to some
+friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no
+risks in ideas, even when they're my own. Your father and the
+friends that ventured their money with him were no more to me
+than a heap of squeezed lemons. You've been wasting your
+gratitude: my kind heart is all rot. I'm sick of it. When I see
+your father beaming at me with his moist, grateful eyes,
+regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes feel I must tell
+him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know he wouldn't
+believe me. He'd think it was my modesty, as you did just now.
+He'd think anything rather than the truth, which is that he's a
+blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of
+himself. [He throws himself back into the big chair with large
+self approval]. Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?
+
+ELLIE [dropping her hands]. How strange! that my mother, who knew
+nothing at all about business, should have been quite right about
+you! She always said not before papa, of course, but to us
+children--that you were just that sort of man.
+
+MANGAN [sitting up, much hurt]. Oh! did she? And yet she'd have
+let you marry me.
+
+ELLIE. Well, you see, Mr Mangan, my mother married a very good
+man--for whatever you may think of my father as a man of
+business, he is the soul of goodness--and she is not at all keen
+on my doing the same.
+
+MANGAN. Anyhow, you don't want to marry me now, do you?
+
+ELLIE. [very calmly]. Oh, I think so. Why not?
+
+MANGAN. [rising aghast]. Why not!
+
+ELLIE. I don't see why we shouldn't get on very well together.
+
+MANGAN. Well, but look here, you know--[he stops, quite at a
+loss].
+
+ELLIE. [patiently]. Well?
+
+MANGAN. Well, I thought you were rather particular about people's
+characters.
+
+ELLIE. If we women were particular about men's characters, we
+should never get married at all, Mr Mangan.
+
+MANGAN. A child like you talking of "we women"! What next! You're
+not in earnest?
+
+ELLIE. Yes, I am. Aren't you?
+
+MANGAN. You mean to hold me to it?
+
+ELLIE. Do you wish to back out of it?
+
+MANGAN. Oh, no. Not exactly back out of it.
+
+ELLIE. Well?
+
+He has nothing to say. With a long whispered whistle, he drops
+into the wicker chair and stares before him like a beggared
+gambler. But a cunning look soon comes into his face. He leans
+over towards her on his right elbow, and speaks in a low steady
+voice.
+
+MANGAN. Suppose I told you I was in love with another woman!
+
+ELLIE [echoing him]. Suppose I told you I was in love with
+another man!
+
+MANGAN [bouncing angrily out of his chair]. I'm not joking.
+
+ELLIE. Who told you I was?
+
+MANGAN. I tell you I'm serious. You're too young to be serious;
+but you'll have to believe me. I want to be near your friend Mrs
+Hushabye. I'm in love with her. Now the murder's out.
+
+ELLIE. I want to be near your friend Mr Hushabye. I'm in love
+with him. [She rises and adds with a frank air] Now we are in one
+another's confidence, we shall be real friends. Thank you for
+telling me.
+
+MANGAN [almost beside himself]. Do you think I'll be made a
+convenience of like this?
+
+ELLIE. Come, Mr Mangan! you made a business convenience of my
+father. Well, a woman's business is marriage. Why shouldn't I
+make a domestic convenience of you?
+
+MANGAN. Because I don't choose, see? Because I'm not a silly gull
+like your father. That's why.
+
+ELLIE [with serene contempt]. You are not good enough to clean my
+father's boots, Mr Mangan; and I am paying you a great compliment
+in condescending to make a convenience of you, as you call it. Of
+course you are free to throw over our engagement if you like;
+but, if you do, you'll never enter Hesione's house again: I will
+take care of that.
+
+MANGAN [gasping]. You little devil, you've done me. [On the point
+of collapsing into the big chair again he recovers himself]. Wait
+a bit, though: you're not so cute as you think. You can't beat
+Boss Mangan as easy as that. Suppose I go straight to Mrs
+Hushabye and tell her that you're in love with her husband.
+
+ELLIE. She knows it.
+
+MANGAN. You told her!!!
+
+ELLIE. She told me.
+
+MANGAN [clutching at his bursting temples]. Oh, this is a crazy
+house. Or else I'm going clean off my chump. Is she making a swop
+with you--she to have your husband and you to have hers?
+
+ELLIE. Well, you don't want us both, do you?
+
+MANGAN [throwing himself into the chair distractedly]. My brain
+won't stand it. My head's going to split. Help! Help me to hold
+it. Quick: hold it: squeeze it. Save me. [Ellie comes behind his
+chair; clasps his head hard for a moment; then begins to draw her
+hands from his forehead back to his ears]. Thank you. [Drowsily].
+That's very refreshing. [Waking a little]. Don't you hypnotize
+me, though. I've seen men made fools of by hypnotism.
+
+ELLIE [steadily]. Be quiet. I've seen men made fools of without
+hypnotism.
+
+MANGAN [humbly]. You don't dislike touching me, I hope. You never
+touched me before, I noticed.
+
+ELLIE. Not since you fell in love naturally with a grown-up nice
+woman, who will never expect you to make love to her. And I will
+never expect him to make love to me.
+
+MANGAN. He may, though.
+
+ELLIE [making her passes rhythmically]. Hush. Go to sleep. Do you
+hear? You are to go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep; be quiet,
+deeply deeply quiet; sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
+
+He falls asleep. Ellie steals away; turns the light out; and goes
+into the garden.
+
+Nurse Guinness opens the door and is seen in the light which
+comes in from the hall.
+
+GUINNESS [speaking to someone outside]. Mr Mangan's not here,
+duckie: there's no one here. It's all dark.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [without]. Try the garden. Mr Dunn and I will be in
+my boudoir. Show him the way.
+
+GUINNESS. Yes, ducky. [She makes for the garden door in the dark;
+stumbles over the sleeping Mangan and screams]. Ahoo! O Lord,
+Sir! I beg your pardon, I'm sure: I didn't see you in the dark.
+Who is it? [She goes back to the door and turns on the light].
+Oh, Mr Mangan, sir, I hope I haven't hurt you plumping into your
+lap like that. [Coming to him]. I was looking for you, sir. Mrs
+Hushabye says will you please [noticing that he remains quite
+insensible]. Oh, my good Lord, I hope I haven't killed him. Sir!
+Mr Mangan! Sir! [She shakes him; and he is rolling inertly off
+the chair on the floor when she holds him up and props him
+against the cushion]. Miss Hessy! Miss Hessy! [quick, doty
+darling. Miss Hessy! [Mrs Hushabye comes in from the hall,
+followed by Mazzini Dunn]. Oh, Miss Hessy, I've been and killed
+him.
+
+Mazzini runs round the back of the chair to Mangan's right hand,
+and sees that the nurse's words are apparently only too true.
+
+MAZZINI. What tempted you to commit such a crime, woman?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [trying not to laugh]. Do you mean, you did it on
+purpose?
+
+GUINNESS. Now is it likely I'd kill any man on purpose? I fell
+over him in the dark; and I'm a pretty tidy weight. He never
+spoke nor moved until I shook him; and then he would have dropped
+dead on the floor. Isn't it tiresome?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [going past the nurse to Mangan's side, and
+inspecting him less credulously than Mazzini]. Nonsense! he is
+not dead: he is only asleep. I can see him breathing.
+
+GUINNESS. But why won't he wake?
+
+MAZZINI [speaking very politely into Mangan's ear]. Mangan! My
+dear Mangan! [he blows into Mangan's ear].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. That's no good [she shakes him vigorously]. Mr
+Mangan, wake up. Do you hear? [He begins to roll over]. Oh!
+Nurse, nurse: he's falling: help me.
+
+Nurse Guinness rushes to the rescue. With Mazzini's assistance,
+Mangan is propped safely up again.
+
+GUINNESS [behind the chair; bending over to test the case with
+her nose]. Would he be drunk, do you think, pet?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Had he any of papa's rum?
+
+MAZZINI. It can't be that: he is most abstemious. I am afraid he
+drank too much formerly, and has to drink too little now. You
+know, Mrs Hushabye, I really think he has been hypnotized.
+
+GUINNESS. Hip no what, sir?
+
+MAZZINI. One evening at home, after we had seen a hypnotizing
+performance, the children began playing at it; and Ellie stroked
+my head. I assure you I went off dead asleep; and they had to
+send for a professional to wake me up after I had slept eighteen
+hours. They had to carry me upstairs; and as the poor children
+were not very strong, they let me slip; and I rolled right down
+the whole flight and never woke up. [Mrs Hushabye splutters]. Oh,
+you may laugh, Mrs Hushabye; but I might have been killed.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I couldn't have helped laughing even if you had
+been, Mr Dunn. So Ellie has hypnotized him. What fun!
+
+MAZZINI. Oh no, no, no. It was such a terrible lesson to her:
+nothing would induce her to try such a thing again.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Then who did it? I didn't.
+
+MAZZINI. I thought perhaps the captain might have done it
+unintentionally. He is so fearfully magnetic: I feel vibrations
+whenever he comes close to me.
+
+GUINNESS. The captain will get him out of it anyhow, sir: I'll
+back him for that. I'll go fetch him [she makes for the pantry].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Wait a bit. [To Mazzini]. You say he is all right
+for eighteen hours?
+
+MAZZINI. Well, I was asleep for eighteen hours.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Were you any the worse for it?
+
+MAZZINI. I don't quite remember. They had poured brandy down my
+throat, you see; and--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Quite. Anyhow, you survived. Nurse, darling: go and
+ask Miss Dunn to come to us here. Say I want to speak to her
+particularly. You will find her with Mr Hushabye probably.
+
+GUINNESS. I think not, ducky: Miss Addy is with him. But I'll
+find her and send her to you. [She goes out into the garden].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [calling Mazzini's attention to the figure on the
+chair]. Now, Mr Dunn, look. Just look. Look hard. Do you still
+intend to sacrifice your daughter to that thing?
+
+MAZZINI [troubled]. You have completely upset me, Mrs Hushabye,
+by all you have said to me. That anyone could imagine that I--I,
+a consecrated soldier of freedom, if I may say so--could
+sacrifice Ellie to anybody or anyone, or that I should ever have
+dreamed of forcing her inclinations in any way, is a most painful
+blow to my--well, I suppose you would say to my good opinion of
+myself.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rather stolidly]. Sorry.
+
+MAZZINI [looking forlornly at the body]. What is your objection
+to poor Mangan, Mrs Hushabye? He looks all right to me. But then
+I am so accustomed to him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Have you no heart? Have you no sense? Look at the
+brute! Think of poor weak innocent Ellie in the clutches of this
+slavedriver, who spends his life making thousands of rough
+violent workmen bend to his will and sweat for him: a man
+accustomed to have great masses of iron beaten into shape for him
+by steam-hammers! to fight with women and girls over a halfpenny
+an hour ruthlessly! a captain of industry, I think you call him,
+don't you? Are you going to fling your delicate, sweet, helpless
+child into such a beast's claws just because he will keep her in
+an expensive house and make her wear diamonds to show how rich he
+is?
+
+MAZZINI [staring at her in wide-eyed amazement]. Bless you, dear
+Mrs Hushabye, what romantic ideas of business you have! Poor dear
+Mangan isn't a bit like that.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [scornfully]. Poor dear Mangan indeed!
+
+MAZZINI. But he doesn't know anything about machinery. He never
+goes near the men: he couldn't manage them: he is afraid of them.
+I never can get him to take the least interest in the works: he
+hardly knows more about them than you do. People are cruelly
+unjust to Mangan: they think he is all rugged strength just
+because his manners are bad.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do you mean to tell me he isn't strong enough to
+crush poor little Ellie?
+
+MAZZINI. Of course it's very hard to say how any marriage will
+turn out; but speaking for myself, I should say that he won't
+have a dog's chance against Ellie. You know, Ellie has remarkable
+strength of character. I think it is because I taught her to like
+Shakespeare when she was very young.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [contemptuously]. Shakespeare! The next thing you
+will tell me is that you could have made a great deal more money
+than Mangan. [She retires to the sofa, and sits down at the port
+end of it in the worst of humors].
+
+MAZZINI [following her and taking the other end]. No: I'm no good
+at making money. I don't care enough for it, somehow. I'm not
+ambitious! that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money: he
+thinks of nothing else. He is so dreadfully afraid of being poor.
+I am always thinking of other things: even at the works I think
+of the things we are doing and not of what they cost. And the
+worst of it is, poor Mangan doesn't know what to do with his
+money when he gets it. He is such a baby that he doesn't know
+even what to eat and drink: he has ruined his liver eating and
+drinking the wrong things; and now he can hardly eat at all.
+Ellie will diet him splendidly. You will be surprised when you
+come to know him better: he is really the most helpless of
+mortals. You get quite a protective feeling towards him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Then who manages his business, pray?
+
+MAZZINI. I do. And of course other people like me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Footling people, you mean.
+
+MAZZINI. I suppose you'd think us so.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. And pray why don't you do without him if you're all
+so much cleverer?
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, we couldn't: we should ruin the business in a year.
+I've tried; and I know. We should spend too much on everything.
+We should improve the quality of the goods and make them too
+dear. We should be sentimental about the hard cases among the
+work people. But Mangan keeps us in order. He is down on us about
+every extra halfpenny. We could never do without him. You see, he
+will sit up all night thinking of how to save sixpence. Won't
+Ellie make him jump, though, when she takes his house in hand!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Then the creature is a fraud even as a captain of
+industry!
+
+MAZZINI. I am afraid all the captains of industry are what you
+call frauds, Mrs Hushabye. Of course there are some manufacturers
+who really do understand their own works; but they don't make as
+high a rate of profit as Mangan does. I assure you Mangan is
+quite a good fellow in his way. He means well.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. He doesn't look well. He is not in his first youth,
+is he?
+
+MAZZINI. After all, no husband is in his first youth for very
+long, Mrs Hushabye. And men can't afford to marry in their first
+youth nowadays.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Now if I said that, it would sound witty. Why can't
+you say it wittily? What on earth is the matter with you? Why
+don't you inspire everybody with confidence? with respect?
+
+MAZZINI [humbly]. I think that what is the matter with me is that
+I am poor. You don't know what that means at home. Mind: I don't
+say they have ever complained. They've all been wonderful:
+they've been proud of my poverty. They've even joked about it
+quite often. But my wife has had a very poor time of it. She has
+been quite resigned--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [shuddering involuntarily!!
+
+MAZZINI. There! You see, Mrs Hushabye. I don't want Ellie to live
+on resignation.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want her to have to resign herself to living
+with a man she doesn't love?
+
+MAZZINI [wistfully]. Are you sure that would be worse than living
+with a man she did love, if he was a footling person?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [relaxing her contemptuous attitude, quite
+interested in Mazzini now]. You know, I really think you must
+love Ellie very much; for you become quite clever when you talk
+about her.
+
+MAZZINI. I didn't know I was so very stupid on other subjects.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You are, sometimes.
+
+MAZZINI [turning his head away; for his eyes are wet]. I have
+learnt a good deal about myself from you, Mrs Hushabye; and I'm
+afraid I shall not be the happier for your plain speaking. But if
+you thought I needed it to make me think of Ellie's happiness you
+were very much mistaken.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [leaning towards him kindly]. Have I been a beast?
+
+MAZZINI [pulling himself together]. It doesn't matter about me,
+Mrs Hushabye. I think you like Ellie; and that is enough for me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I'm beginning to like you a little. I perfectly
+loathed you at first. I thought you the most odious,
+self-satisfied, boresome elderly prig I ever met.
+
+MAZZINI [resigned, and now quite cheerful]. I daresay I am all
+that. I never have been a favorite with gorgeous women like you.
+They always frighten me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [pleased]. Am I a gorgeous woman, Mazzini? I shall
+fall in love with you presently.
+
+MAZZINI [with placid gallantry]. No, you won't, Hesione. But you
+would be quite safe. Would you believe it that quite a lot of
+women have flirted with me because I am quite safe? But they get
+tired of me for the same reason.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [mischievously]. Take care. You may not be so safe
+as you think.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh yes, quite safe. You see, I have been in love really:
+the sort of love that only happens once. [Softly]. That's why
+Ellie is such a lovely girl.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, really, you are coming out. Are you quite
+sure you won't let me tempt you into a second grand passion?
+
+MAZZINI. Quite. It wouldn't be natural. The fact is, you don't
+strike on my box, Mrs Hushabye; and I certainly don't strike on
+yours.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I see. Your marriage was a safety match.
+
+MAZZINI. What a very witty application of the expression I used!
+I should never have thought of it.
+
+Ellie comes in from the garden, looking anything but happy.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rising]. Oh! here is Ellie at last. [She goes
+behind the sofa].
+
+ELLIE [on the threshold of the starboard door]. Guinness said you
+wanted me: you and papa.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You have kept us waiting so long that it almost
+came to--well, never mind. Your father is a very wonderful man
+[she ruffles his hair affectionately]: the only one I ever met
+who could resist me when I made myself really agreeable. [She
+comes to the big chair, on Mangan's left]. Come here. I have
+something to show you. [Ellie strolls listlessly to the other
+side of the chair]. Look.
+
+ELLIE [contemplating Mangan without interest]. I know. He is only
+asleep. We had a talk after dinner; and he fell asleep in the
+middle of it.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You did it, Ellie. You put him asleep.
+
+MAZZINI [rising quickly and coming to the back of the chair]. Oh,
+I hope not. Did you, Ellie?
+
+ELLIE [wearily]. He asked me to.
+
+MAZZINI. But it's dangerous. You know what happened to me.
+
+ELLIE [utterly indifferent]. Oh, I daresay I can wake him. If
+not, somebody else can.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. It doesn't matter, anyhow, because I have at last
+persuaded your father that you don't want to marry him.
+
+ELLIE [suddenly coming out of her listlessness, much vexed]. But
+why did you do that, Hesione? I do want to marry him. I fully
+intend to marry him.
+
+MAZZINI. Are you quite sure, Ellie? Mrs Hushabye has made me feel
+that I may have been thoughtless and selfish about it.
+
+ELLIE [very clearly and steadily]. Papa. When Mrs. Hushabye takes
+it on herself to explain to you what I think or don't think, shut
+your ears tight; and shut your eyes too. Hesione knows nothing
+about me: she hasn't the least notion of the sort of person I am,
+and never will. I promise you I won't do anything I don't want to
+do and mean to do for my own sake.
+
+MAZZINI. You are quite, quite sure?
+
+ELLIE. Quite, quite sure. Now you must go away and leave me to
+talk to Mrs Hushabye.
+
+MAZZINI. But I should like to hear. Shall I be in the way?
+
+ELLIE [inexorable]. I had rather talk to her alone.
+
+MAZZINI [affectionately]. Oh, well, I know what a nuisance
+parents are, dear. I will be good and go. [He goes to the garden
+door]. By the way, do you remember the address of that
+professional who woke me up? Don't you think I had better
+telegraph to him?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [moving towards the sofa]. It's too late to
+telegraph tonight.
+
+MAZZINI. I suppose so. I do hope he'll wake up in the course of
+the night. [He goes out into the garden].
+
+ELLIE [turning vigorously on Hesione the moment her father is out
+of the room]. Hesione, what the devil do you mean by making
+mischief with my father about Mangan?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [promptly losing her temper]. Don't you dare speak
+to me like that, you little minx. Remember that you are in my
+house.
+
+ELLIE. Stuff! Why don't you mind your own business? What is it to
+you whether I choose to marry Mangan or not?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do you suppose you can bully me, you miserable
+little matrimonial adventurer?
+
+ELLIE. Every woman who hasn't any money is a matrimonial
+adventurer. It's easy for you to talk: you have never known what
+it is to want money; and you can pick up men as if they were
+daisies. I am poor and respectable--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [interrupting]. Ho! respectable! How did you pick up
+Mangan? How did you pick up my husband? You have the audacity to
+tell me that I am a--a--a--
+
+ELLIE. A siren. So you are. You were born to lead men by the
+nose: if you weren't, Marcus would have waited for me, perhaps.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [suddenly melting and half laughing]. Oh, my poor
+Ellie, my pettikins, my unhappy darling! I am so sorry about
+Hector. But what can I do? It's not my fault: I'd give him to you
+if I could.
+
+ELLIE. I don't blame you for that.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What a brute I was to quarrel with you and call you
+names! Do kiss me and say you're not angry with me.
+
+ELLIE [fiercely]. Oh, don't slop and gush and be sentimental.
+Don't you see that unless I can be hard--as hard as nails--I
+shall go mad? I don't care a damn about your calling me names: do
+you think a woman in my situation can feel a few hard words?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Poor little woman! Poor little situation!
+
+ELLIE. I suppose you think you're being sympathetic. You are just
+foolish and stupid and selfish. You see me getting a smasher
+right in the face that kills a whole part of my life: the best
+part that can never come again; and you think you can help me
+over it by a little coaxing and kissing. When I want all the
+strength I can get to lean on: something iron, something stony, I
+don't care how cruel it is, you go all mushy and want to slobber
+over me. I'm not angry; I'm not unfriendly; but for God's sake do
+pull yourself together; and don't think that because you're on
+velvet and always have been, women who are in hell can take it as
+easily as you.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [shrugging her shoulders]. Very well. [She sits down
+on the sofa in her old place. But I warn you that when I am
+neither coaxing and kissing nor laughing, I am just wondering how
+much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world. You
+object to the siren: well, I drop the siren. You want to rest
+your wounded bosom against a grindstone. Well [folding her arms]
+here is the grindstone.
+
+ELLIE [sitting down beside her, appeased]. That's better: you
+really have the trick of falling in with everyone's mood; but you
+don't understand, because you are not the sort of woman for whom
+there is only one man and only one chance.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I certainly don't understand how your marrying that
+object [indicating Mangan] will console you for not being able to
+marry Hector.
+
+ELLIE. Perhaps you don't understand why I was quite a nice girl
+this morning, and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, yes, I do. It's because you have made up your
+mind to do something despicable and wicked.
+
+ELLIE. I don't think so, Hesione. I must make the best of my
+ruined house.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Pooh! You'll get over it. Your house isn't ruined.
+
+ELLIE. Of course I shall get over it. You don't suppose I'm going
+to sit down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid
+living on a pittance from the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers'
+Association. But my heart is broken, all the same. What I mean by
+that is that I know that what has happened to me with Marcus will
+not happen to me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus
+and a lot of other men of whom one is just the same as another.
+Well, if I can't have love, that's no reason why I should have
+poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no YOUNG men with money?
+
+ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the
+right to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he
+found I could not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of
+their wives, you know, pretty cheaply. But this object, as you
+call him, can expect nothing more from me than I am prepared to
+give him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. He will be your owner, remember. If he buys you, he
+will make the bargain pay him and not you. Ask your father.
+
+ELLIE [rising and strolling to the chair to contemplate their
+subject]. You need not trouble on that score, Hesione. I have
+more to give Boss Mangan than he has to give me: it is I who am
+buying him, and at a pretty good price too, I think. Women are
+better at that sort of bargain than men. I have taken the Boss's
+measure; and ten Boss Mangans shall not prevent me doing far more
+as I please as his wife than I have ever been able to do as a
+poor girl. [Stooping to the recumbent figure]. Shall they, Boss?
+I think not. [She passes on to the drawing-table, and leans
+against the end of it, facing the windows]. I shall not have to
+spend most of my time wondering how long my gloves will last,
+anyhow.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [rising superbly]. Ellie, you are a wicked, sordid
+little beast. And to think that I actually condescended to
+fascinate that creature there to save you from him! Well, let me
+tell you this: if you make this disgusting match, you will never
+see Hector again if I can help it.
+
+ELLIE [unmoved]. I nailed Mangan by telling him that if he did
+not marry me he should never see you again [she lifts herself on
+her wrists and seats herself on the end of the table].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [recoiling]. Oh!
+
+ELLIE. So you see I am not unprepared for your playing that trump
+against me. Well, you just try it: that's all. I should have made
+a man of Marcus, not a household pet.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [flaming]. You dare!
+
+ELLIE [looking almost dangerous]. Set him thinking about me if
+you dare.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, of all the impudent little fiends I ever met!
+Hector says there is a certain point at which the only answer you
+can give to a man who breaks all the rules is to knock him down.
+What would you say if I were to box your ears?
+
+ELLIE [calmly]. I should pull your hair.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [mischievously]. That wouldn't hurt me. Perhaps it
+comes off at night.
+
+ELLIE [so taken aback that she drops off the table and runs to
+her]. Oh, you don't mean to say, Hesione, that your beautiful
+black hair is false?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [patting it]. Don't tell Hector. He believes in it.
+
+ELLIE [groaning]. Oh! Even the hair that ensnared him false!
+Everything false!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Pull it and try. Other women can snare men in their
+hair; but I can swing a baby on mine. Aha! you can't do that,
+Goldylocks.
+
+ELLIE [heartbroken]. No. You have stolen my babies.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Pettikins, don't make me cry. You know what you
+said about my making a household pet of him is a little true.
+Perhaps he ought to have waited for you. Would any other woman on
+earth forgive you?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, what right had you to take him all for yourself!
+[Pulling herself together]. There! You couldn't help it: neither
+of us could help it. He couldn't help it. No, don't say anything
+more: I can't bear it. Let us wake the object. [She begins
+stroking Mangan's head, reversing the movement with which she put
+him to sleep]. Wake up, do you hear? You are to wake up at once.
+Wake up, wake up, wake--
+
+MANGAN [bouncing out of the chair in a fury and turning on them].
+Wake up! So you think I've been asleep, do you? [He kicks the
+chair violently back out of his way, and gets between them]. You
+throw me into a trance so that I can't move hand or foot--I might
+have been buried alive! it's a mercy I wasn't--and then you think
+I was only asleep. If you'd let me drop the two times you rolled
+me about, my nose would have been flattened for life against the
+floor. But I've found you all out, anyhow. I know the sort of
+people I'm among now. I've heard every word you've said, you and
+your precious father, and [to Mrs Hushabye] you too. So I'm an
+object, am I? I'm a thing, am I? I'm a fool that hasn't sense
+enough to feed myself properly, am I? I'm afraid of the men that
+would starve if it weren't for the wages I give them, am I? I'm
+nothing but a disgusting old skinflint to be made a convenience
+of by designing women and fool managers of my works, am I? I'm--
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [with the most elegant aplomb]. Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh! Mr
+Mangan, you are bound in honor to obliterate from your mind all
+you heard while you were pretending to be asleep. It was not
+meant for you to hear.
+
+MANGAN. Pretending to be asleep! Do you think if I was only
+pretending that I'd have sprawled there helpless, and listened to
+such unfairness, such lies, such injustice and plotting and
+backbiting and slandering of me, if I could have up and told you
+what I thought of you! I wonder I didn't burst.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [sweetly]. You dreamt it all, Mr Mangan. We were
+only saying how beautifully peaceful you looked in your sleep.
+That was all, wasn't it, Ellie? Believe me, Mr Mangan, all those
+unpleasant things came into your mind in the last half second
+before you woke. Ellie rubbed your hair the wrong way; and the
+disagreeable sensation suggested a disagreeable dream.
+
+MANGAN [doggedly]. I believe in dreams.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. So do I. But they go by contraries, don't they?
+
+MANGAN [depths of emotion suddenly welling up in him]. I shan't
+forget, to my dying day, that when you gave me the glad eye that
+time in the garden, you were making a fool of me. That was a
+dirty low mean thing to do. You had no right to let me come near
+you if I disgusted you. It isn't my fault if I'm old and haven't
+a moustache like a bronze candlestick as your husband has. There
+are things no decent woman would do to a man--like a man hitting
+a woman in the breast.
+
+Hesione, utterly shamed, sits down on the sofa and covers her
+face with her hands. Mangan sits down also on his chair and
+begins to cry like a child. Ellie stares at them. Mrs Hushabye,
+at the distressing sound he makes, takes down her hands and looks
+at him. She rises and runs to him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Don't cry: I can't bear it. Have I broken your
+heart? I didn't know you had one. How could I?
+
+MANGAN. I'm a man, ain't I?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [half coaxing, half rallying, altogether tenderly].
+Oh no: not what I call a man. Only a Boss: just that and nothing
+else. What business has a Boss with a heart?
+
+MANGAN. Then you're not a bit sorry for what you did, nor
+ashamed?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I was ashamed for the first time in my life when
+you said that about hitting a woman in the breast, and I found
+out what I'd done. My very bones blushed red. You've had your
+revenge, Boss. Aren't you satisfied?
+
+MANGAN. Serve you right! Do you hear? Serve you right! You're
+just cruel. Cruel.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Yes: cruelty would be delicious if one could only
+find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt. By the way
+[sitting down beside him on the arm of the chair], what's your
+name? It's not really Boss, is it?
+
+MANGAN [shortly]. If you want to know, my name's Alfred.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [springs up]. Alfred!! Ellie, he was christened
+after Tennyson!!!
+
+MANGAN [rising]. I was christened after my uncle, and never had a
+penny from him, damn him! What of it?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. It comes to me suddenly that you are a real person:
+that you had a mother, like anyone else. [Putting her hands on
+his shoulders and surveying him]. Little Alf!
+
+MANGAN. Well, you have a nerve.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. And you have a heart, Alfy, a whimpering little
+heart, but a real one. [Releasing him suddenly]. Now run and make
+it up with Ellie. She has had time to think what to say to you,
+which is more than I had [she goes out quickly into the garden by
+the port door].
+
+MANGAN. That woman has a pair of hands that go right through you.
+
+ELLIE. Still in love with her, in spite of all we said about you?
+
+MANGAN. Are all women like you two? Do they never think of
+anything about a man except what they can get out of him? You
+weren't even thinking that about me. You were only thinking
+whether your gloves would last.
+
+ELLIE. I shall not have to think about that when we are married.
+
+MANGAN. And you think I am going to marry you after what I heard
+there!
+
+ELLIE. You heard nothing from me that I did not tell you before.
+
+MANGAN. Perhaps you think I can't do without you.
+
+ELLIE. I think you would feel lonely without us all, now, after
+coming to know us so well.
+
+MANGAN [with something like a yell of despair]. Am I never to
+have the last word?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [appearing at the starboard garden door]. There
+is a soul in torment here. What is the matter?
+
+MANGAN. This girl doesn't want to spend her life wondering how
+long her gloves will last.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [passing through]. Don't wear any. I never do
+[he goes into the pantry].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [appearing at the port garden door, in a handsome
+dinner dress]. Is anything the matter?
+
+ELLIE. This gentleman wants to know is he never to have the last
+word?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [coming forward to the sofa]. I should let him
+have it, my dear. The important thing is not to have the last
+word, but to have your own way.
+
+MANGAN. She wants both.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. She won't get them, Mr Mangan. Providence always
+has the last word.
+
+MANGAN [desperately]. Now you are going to come religion over me.
+In this house a man's mind might as well be a football. I'm
+going. [He makes for the hall, but is stopped by a hail from the
+Captain, who has just emerged from his pantry].
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Whither away, Boss Mangan?
+
+MANGAN. To hell out of this house: let that be enough for you and
+all here.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You were welcome to come: you are free to go.
+The wide earth, the high seas, the spacious skies are waiting for
+you outside.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. But your things, Mr Mangan. Your bag, your comb
+and brushes, your pyjamas--
+
+HECTOR [who has just appeared in the port doorway in a handsome
+Arab costume]. Why should the escaping slave take his chains with
+him?
+
+MANGAN. That's right, Hushabye. Keep the pyjamas, my lady, and
+much good may they do you.
+
+HECTOR [advancing to Lady Utterword's left hand]. Let us all go
+out into the night and leave everything behind us.
+
+MANGAN. You stay where you are, the lot of you. I want no
+company, especially female company.
+
+ELLIE. Let him go. He is unhappy here. He is angry with us.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Go, Boss Mangan; and when you have found the
+land where there is happiness and where there are no women, send
+me its latitude and longitude; and I will join you there.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You will certainly not be comfortable without
+your luggage, Mr Mangan.
+
+ELLIE [impatient]. Go, go: why don't you go? It is a heavenly
+night: you can sleep on the heath. Take my waterproof to lie on:
+it is hanging up in the hall.
+
+HECTOR. Breakfast at nine, unless you prefer to breakfast with
+the captain at six.
+
+ELLIE. Good night, Alfred.
+
+HECTOR. Alfred! [He runs back to the door and calls into the
+garden]. Randall, Mangan's Christian name is Alfred.
+
+RANDALL [appearing in the starboard doorway in evening dress].
+Then Hesione wins her bet.
+
+Mrs Hushabye appears in the port doorway. She throws her left arm
+round Hector's neck: draws him with her to the back of the sofa:
+and throws her right arm round Lady Utterword's neck.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. They wouldn't believe me, Alf.
+
+They contemplate him.
+
+MANGAN. Is there any more of you coming in to look at me, as if I
+was the latest thing in a menagerie?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You are the latest thing in this menagerie.
+
+Before Mangan can retort, a fall of furniture is heard from
+upstairs: then a pistol shot, and a yell of pain. The staring
+group breaks up in consternation.
+
+MAZZINI'S VOICE [from above]. Help! A burglar! Help!
+
+HECTOR [his eyes blazing]. A burglar!!!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. No, Hector: you'll be shot [but it is too late; he
+has dashed out past Mangan, who hastily moves towards the
+bookshelves out of his way].
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [blowing his whistle]. All hands aloft! [He
+strides out after Hector].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. My diamonds! [She follows the captain].
+
+RANDALL [rushing after her]. No. Ariadne. Let me.
+
+ELLIE. Oh, is papa shot? [She runs out].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Are you frightened, Alf?
+
+MANGAN. No. It ain't my house, thank God.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. If they catch a burglar, shall we have to go into
+court as witnesses, and be asked all sorts of questions about our
+private lives?
+
+MANGAN. You won't be believed if you tell the truth.
+
+Mazzini, terribly upset, with a duelling pistol in his hand,
+comes from the hall, and makes his way to the drawing-table.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, my dear Mrs Hushabye, I might have killed him. [He
+throws the pistol on the table and staggers round to the chair].
+I hope you won't believe I really intended to.
+
+Hector comes in, marching an old and villainous looking man
+before him by the collar. He plants him in the middle of the room
+and releases him.
+
+Ellie follows, and immediately runs across to the back of her
+father's chair and pats his shoulders.
+
+RANDALL [entering with a poker]. Keep your eye on this door,
+Mangan. I'll look after the other [he goes to the starboard door
+and stands on guard there].
+
+Lady Utterword comes in after Randall, and goes between Mrs
+Hushabye and Mangan.
+
+Nurse Guinness brings up the rear, and waits near the door, on
+Mangan's left.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What has happened?
+
+MAZZINI. Your housekeeper told me there was somebody upstairs,
+and gave me a pistol that Mr Hushabye had been practising with. I
+thought it would frighten him; but it went off at a touch.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Yes, and took the skin off my ear. Precious near
+took the top off my head. Why don't you have a proper revolver
+instead of a thing like that, that goes off if you as much as
+blow on it?
+
+HECTOR. One of my duelling pistols. Sorry.
+
+MAZZINI. He put his hands up and said it was a fair cop.
+
+THE BURGLAR. So it was. Send for the police.
+
+HECTOR. No, by thunder! It was not a fair cop. We were four to
+one.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What will they do to him?
+
+THE BURGLAR. Ten years. Beginning with solitary. Ten years off my
+life. I shan't serve it all: I'm too old. It will see me out.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You should have thought of that before you stole
+my diamonds.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Well, you've got them back, lady, haven't you? Can
+you give me back the years of my life you are going to take from
+me?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, we can't bury a man alive for ten years for a
+few diamonds.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Ten little shining diamonds! Ten long black years!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Think of what it is for us to be dragged through
+the horrors of a criminal court, and have all our family affairs
+in the papers! If you were a native, and Hastings could order you
+a good beating and send you away, I shouldn't mind; but here in
+England there is no real protection for any respectable person.
+
+THE BURGLAR. I'm too old to be giv a hiding, lady. Send for the
+police and have done with it. It's only just and right you
+should.
+
+RANDALL [who has relaxed his vigilance on seeing the burglar so
+pacifically disposed, and comes forward swinging the poker
+between his fingers like a well folded umbrella]. It is neither
+just nor right that we should be put to a lot of inconvenience to
+gratify your moral enthusiasm, my friend. You had better get out,
+while you have the chance.
+
+THE BURGLAR [inexorably]. No. I must work my sin off my
+conscience. This has come as a sort of call to me. Let me spend
+the rest of my life repenting in a cell. I shall have my reward
+above.
+
+MANGAN [exasperated]. The very burglars can't behave naturally in
+this house.
+
+HECTOR. My good sir, you must work out your salvation at somebody
+else's expense. Nobody here is going to charge you.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Oh, you won't charge me, won't you?
+
+HECTOR. No. I'm sorry to be inhospitable; but will you kindly
+leave the house?
+
+THE BURGLAR. Right. I'll go to the police station and give myself
+up. [He turns resolutely to the door: but Hector stops him].
+
+HECTOR.                  { Oh, no. You mustn't do that.
+RANDALL.    [speaking    { No no. Clear out man, can't you; and
+             together]      don't be a fool.
+MRS. HUSHABYE            { Don't be so silly. Can't you repent at
+                           home?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You will have to do as you are told.
+
+THE BURGLAR. It's compounding a felony, you know.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. This is utterly ridiculous. Are we to be forced to
+prosecute this man when we don't want to?
+
+THE BURGLAR. Am I to be robbed of my salvation to save you the
+trouble of spending a day at the sessions? Is that justice? Is it
+right? Is it fair to me?
+
+MAZZINI [rising and leaning across the table persuasively as if
+it were a pulpit desk or a shop counter]. Come, come! let me show
+you how you can turn your very crimes to account. Why not set up
+as a locksmith? You must know more about locks than most honest
+men?
+
+THE BURGLAR. That's true, sir. But I couldn't set up as a
+locksmith under twenty pounds.
+
+RANDALL. Well, you can easily steal twenty pounds. You will find
+it in the nearest bank.
+
+THE BURGLAR [horrified]. Oh, what a thing for a gentleman to put
+into the head of a poor criminal scrambling out of the bottomless
+pit as it were! Oh, shame on you, sir! Oh, God forgive you! [He
+throws himself into the big chair and covers his face as if in
+prayer].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Randall!
+
+HECTOR. It seems to me that we shall have to take up a collection
+for this inopportunely contrite sinner.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. But twenty pounds is ridiculous.
+
+THE BURGLAR [looking up quickly]. I shall have to buy a lot of
+tools, lady.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense: you have your burgling kit.
+
+THE BURGLAR. What's a jimmy and a centrebit and an acetylene
+welding plant and a bunch of skeleton keys? I shall want a forge,
+and a smithy, and a shop, and fittings. I can't hardly do it for
+twenty.
+
+HECTOR. My worthy friend, we haven't got twenty pounds.
+
+THE BURGLAR [now master of the situation]. You can raise it among
+you, can't you?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Give him a sovereign, Hector, and get rid of him.
+
+HECTOR [giving him a pound]. There! Off with you.
+
+THE BURGLAR [rising and taking the money very ungratefully]. I
+won't promise nothing. You have more on you than a quid: all the
+lot of you, I mean.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [vigorously]. Oh, let us prosecute him and have
+done with it. I have a conscience too, I hope; and I do not feel
+at all sure that we have any right to let him go, especially if
+he is going to be greedy and impertinent.
+
+THE BURGLAR [quickly]. All right, lady, all right. I've no wish
+to be anything but agreeable. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen;
+and thank you kindly.
+
+He is hurrying out when he is confronted in the doorway by
+Captain Shotover.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [fixing the burglar with a piercing regard].
+What's this? Are there two of you?
+
+THE BURGLAR [falling on his knees before the captain in abject
+terror]. Oh, my good Lord, what have I done? Don't tell me it's
+your house I've broken into, Captain Shotover.
+
+The captain seizes him by the collar: drags him to his feet: and
+leads him to the middle of the group, Hector falling back beside
+his wife to make way for them.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [turning him towards Ellie]. Is that your
+daughter? [He releases him].
+
+THE BURGLAR. Well, how do I know, Captain? You know the sort of
+life you and me has led. Any young lady of that age might be my
+daughter anywhere in the wide world, as you might say.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [to Mazzini]. You are not Billy Dunn. This is
+Billy Dunn. Why have you imposed on me?
+
+THE BURGLAR [indignantly to Mazzini]. Have you been giving
+yourself out to be me? You, that nigh blew my head off! Shooting
+yourself, in a manner of speaking!
+
+MAZZINI. My dear Captain Shotover, ever since I came into this
+house I have done hardly anything else but assure you that I am
+not Mr William Dunn, but Mazzini Dunn, a very different person.
+
+THE BURGLAR. He don't belong to my branch, Captain. There's two
+sets in the family: the thinking Dunns and the drinking Dunns,
+each going their own ways. I'm a drinking Dunn: he's a thinking
+Dunn. But that didn't give him any right to shoot me.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. So you've turned burglar, have you?
+
+THE BURGLAR. No, Captain: I wouldn't disgrace our old sea calling
+by such a thing. I am no burglar.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. What were you doing with my diamonds?
+
+GUINNESS. What did you break into the house for if you're no
+burglar?
+
+RANDALL. Mistook the house for your own and came in by the wrong
+window, eh?
+
+THE BURGLAR. Well, it's no use my telling you a lie: I can take
+in most captains, but not Captain Shotover, because he sold
+himself to the devil in Zanzibar, and can divine water, spot
+gold, explode a cartridge in your pocket with a glance of his
+eye, and see the truth hidden in the heart of man. But I'm no
+burglar.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Are you an honest man?
+
+THE BURGLAR. I don't set up to be better than my
+fellow-creatures, and never did, as you well know, Captain. But
+what I do is innocent and pious. I enquire about for houses where
+the right sort of people live. I work it on them same as I worked
+it here. I break into the house; put a few spoons or diamonds in
+my pocket; make a noise; get caught; and take up a collection.
+And you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get caught when you're
+actually trying to. I have knocked over all the chairs in a room
+without a soul paying any attention to me. In the end I have had
+to walk out and leave the job.
+
+RANDALL. When that happens, do you put back the spoons and
+diamonds?
+
+THE BURGLAR. Well, I don't fly in the face of Providence, if
+that's what you want to know.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Guinness, you remember this man?
+
+GUINNESS. I should think I do, seeing I was married to him, the
+blackguard!
+
+HESIONE         }  [exclaiming  { Married to him!
+LADY UTTERWORD  }  together]    { Guinness!!
+
+THE BURGLAR. It wasn't legal. I've been married to no end of
+women. No use coming that over me.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Take him to the forecastle [he flings him to
+the door with a strength beyond his years].
+
+GUINNESS. I suppose you mean the kitchen. They won't have him
+there. Do you expect servants to keep company with thieves and
+all sorts?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Land-thieves and water-thieves are the same
+flesh and blood. I'll have no boatswain on my quarter-deck. Off
+with you both.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Yes, Captain. [He goes out humbly].
+
+MAZZINI. Will it be safe to have him in the house like that?
+
+GUINNESS. Why didn't you shoot him, sir? If I'd known who he was,
+I'd have shot him myself. [She goes out].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Do sit down, everybody. [She sits down on the
+sofa].
+
+They all move except Ellie. Mazzini resumes his seat. Randall
+sits down in the window-seat near the starboard door, again
+making a pendulum of his poker, and studying it as Galileo might
+have done. Hector sits on his left, in the middle. Mangan,
+forgotten, sits in the port corner. Lady Utterword takes the big
+chair. Captain Shotover goes into the pantry in deep abstraction.
+They all look after him: and Lady Utterword coughs consciously.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. So Billy Dunn was poor nurse's little romance. I
+knew there had been somebody.
+
+RANDALL. They will fight their battles over again and enjoy
+themselves immensely.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [irritably]. You are not married; and you know
+nothing about it, Randall. Hold your tongue.
+
+RANDALL. Tyrant!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Well, we have had a very exciting evening.
+Everything will be an anticlimax after it. We'd better all go to
+bed.
+
+RANDALL. Another burglar may turn up.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, impossible! I hope not.
+
+RANDALL. Why not? There is more than one burglar in England.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. What do you say, Alf?
+
+MANGAN [huffily]. Oh, I don't matter. I'm forgotten. The burglar
+has put my nose out of joint. Shove me into a corner and have
+done with me.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [jumping up mischievously, and going to him]. Would
+you like a walk on the heath, Alfred? With me?
+
+ELLIE. Go, Mr Mangan. It will do you good. Hesione will soothe
+you.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [slipping her arm under his and pulling him
+upright]. Come, Alfred. There is a moon: it's like the night in
+Tristan and Isolde. [She caresses his arm and draws him to the
+port garden door].
+
+MANGAN [writhing but yielding]. How you can have the face-the
+heart-[he breaks down and is heard sobbing as she takes him out].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. What an extraordinary way to behave! What is the
+matter with the man?
+
+ELLIE [in a strangely calm voice, staring into an imaginary
+distance]. His heart is breaking: that is all. [The captain
+appears at the pantry door, listening]. It is a curious
+sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our
+powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are
+burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and
+the beginning of peace.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [suddenly rising in a rage, to the astonishment of
+the rest]. How dare you?
+
+HECTOR. Good heavens! What's the matter?
+
+RANDALL [in a warning whisper]. Tch--tch-tch! Steady.
+
+ELLIE [surprised and haughty]. I was not addressing you
+particularly, Lady Utterword. And I am not accustomed to being
+asked how dare I.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Of course not. Anyone can see how badly you have
+been brought up.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, I hope not, Lady Utterword. Really!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I know very well what you meant. The impudence!
+
+ELLIE. What on earth do you mean?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [advancing to the table]. She means that her
+heart will not break. She has been longing all her life for
+someone to break it. At last she has become afraid she has none
+to break.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [flinging herself on her knees and throwing her
+arms round him]. Papa, don't say you think I've no heart.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [raising her with grim tenderness]. If you had
+no heart how could you want to have it broken, child?
+
+HECTOR [rising with a bound]. Lady Utterword, you are not to be
+trusted. You have made a scene [he runs out into the garden
+through the starboard door].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! Hector, Hector! [she runs out after him].
+
+RANDALL. Only nerves, I assure you. [He rises and follows her,
+waving the poker in his agitation]. Ariadne! Ariadne! For God's
+sake, be careful. You will--[he is gone].
+
+MAZZINI [rising]. How distressing! Can I do anything, I wonder?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [promptly taking his chair and setting to work
+at the drawing-board]. No. Go to bed. Good-night.
+
+MAZZINI [bewildered]. Oh! Perhaps you are right.
+
+ELLIE. Good-night, dearest. [She kisses him].
+
+MAZZINI. Good-night, love. [He makes for the door, but turns
+aside to the bookshelves]. I'll just take a book [he takes one].
+Good-night. [He goes out, leaving Ellie alone with the captain].
+
+The captain is intent on his drawing. Ellie, standing sentry over
+his chair, contemplates him for a moment.
+
+ELLIE. Does nothing ever disturb you, Captain Shotover?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I've stood on the bridge for eighteen hours in
+a typhoon. Life here is stormier; but I can stand it.
+
+ELLIE. Do you think I ought to marry Mr Mangan?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [never looking up]. One rock is as good as
+another to be wrecked on.
+
+ELLIE. I am not in love with him.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Who said you were?
+
+ELLIE. You are not surprised?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Surprised! At my age!
+
+ELLIE. It seems to me quite fair. He wants me for one thing: I
+want him for another.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Money?
+
+ELLIE. Yes.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Well, one turns the cheek: the other kisses it.
+One provides the cash: the other spends it.
+
+ELLIE. Who will have the best of the bargain, I wonder?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You. These fellows live in an office all day.
+You will have to put up with him from dinner to breakfast; but
+you will both be asleep most of that time. All day you will be
+quit of him; and you will be shopping with his money. If that is
+too much for you, marry a seafaring man: you will be bothered
+with him only three weeks in the year, perhaps.
+
+ELLIE. That would be best of all, I suppose.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's a dangerous thing to be married right up
+to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all
+day, like a damned soul in hell.
+
+ELLIE. I never thought of that before.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. If you're marrying for business, you can't be
+too businesslike.
+
+ELLIE. Why do women always want other women's husbands?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why do horse-thieves prefer a horse that is
+broken-in to one that is wild?
+
+ELLIE [with a short laugh]. I suppose so. What a vile world it
+is!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It doesn't concern me. I'm nearly out of it.
+
+ELLIE. And I'm only just beginning.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes; so look ahead.
+
+ELLIE. Well, I think I am being very prudent.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I didn't say prudent. I said look ahead.
+
+ELLIE. What's the difference?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose
+your own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if
+you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your
+fingers.
+
+ELLIE [wearily, leaving him and beginning to wander restlessly
+about the room]. I'm sorry, Captain Shotover; but it's no use
+talking like that to me. Old-fashioned people are no use to me.
+Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money.
+They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young
+people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to
+keep: much more so than a motor car.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is it? How much does your soul eat?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and
+mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people
+to be with. In this country you can't have them without lots of
+money: that is why our souls are so horribly starved.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Mangan's soul lives on pig's food.
+
+ELLIE. Yes: money is thrown away on him. I suppose his soul was
+starved when he was young. But it will not be thrown away on me.
+It is just because I want to save my soul that I am marrying for
+money. All the women who are not fools do.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are other ways of getting money. Why
+don't you steal it?
+
+ELLIE. Because I don't want to go to prison.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is that the only reason? Are you quite sure
+honesty has nothing to do with it?
+
+ELLIE. Oh, you are very very old-fashioned, Captain. Does any
+modern girl believe that the legal and illegal ways of getting
+money are the honest and dishonest ways? Mangan robbed my father
+and my father's friends. I should rob all the money back from
+Mangan if the police would let me. As they won't, I must get it
+back by marrying him.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I can't argue: I'm too old: my mind is made up
+and finished. All I can tell you is that, old-fashioned or
+new-fashioned, if you sell yourself, you deal your soul a blow
+that all the books and pictures and concerts and scenery in the
+world won't heal [he gets up suddenly and makes for the pantry].
+
+ELLIE [running after him and seizing him by the sleeve]. Then why
+did you sell yourself to the devil in Zanzibar?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [stopping, startled]. What?
+
+ELLIE. You shall not run away before you answer. I have found out
+that trick of yours. If you sold yourself, why shouldn't I?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I had to deal with men so degraded that they
+wouldn't obey me unless I swore at them and kicked them and beat
+them with my fists. Foolish people took young thieves off the
+streets; flung them into a training ship where they were taught
+to fear the cane instead of fearing God; and thought they'd made
+men and sailors of them by private subscription. I tricked these
+thieves into believing I'd sold myself to the devil. It saved my
+soul from the kicking and swearing that was damning me by inches.
+
+ELLIE [releasing him]. I shall pretend to sell myself to Boss
+Mangan to save my soul from the poverty that is damning me by
+inches.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Riches will damn you ten times deeper. Riches
+won't save even your body.
+
+ELLIE. Old-fashioned again. We know now that the soul is the
+body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different
+because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we
+let them make slaves of our bodies. I am afraid you are no use to
+me, Captain.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What did you expect? A Savior, eh? Are you
+old-fashioned enough to believe in that?
+
+ELLIE. No. But I thought you were very wise, and might help me.
+Now I have found you out. You pretend to be busy, and think of
+fine things to say, and run in and out to surprise people by
+saying them, and get away before they can answer you.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It confuses me to be answered. It discourages
+me. I cannot bear men and women. I have to run away. I must run
+away now [he tries to].
+
+ELLIE [again seizing his arm]. You shall not run away from me. I
+can hypnotize you. You are the only person in the house I can say
+what I like to. I know you are fond of me. Sit down. [She draws
+him to the sofa].
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [yielding]. Take care: I am in my dotage. Old
+men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to
+happen to the world.
+
+They sit side by side on the sofa. She leans affectionately
+against him with her head on his shoulder and her eyes half
+closed.
+
+ELLIE [dreamily]. I should have thought nothing else mattered to
+old men. They can't be very interested in what is going to happen
+to themselves.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A man's interest in the world is only the
+overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your
+vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own
+affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a
+politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old
+age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child
+again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere
+scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care for anything but
+my own little wants and hobbies. I sit here working out my old
+ideas as a means of destroying my fellow-creatures. I see my
+daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and
+sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation,
+turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money
+and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the
+bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in
+darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a
+rich husband. At your age I looked for hardship, danger, horror,
+and death, that I might feel the life in me more intensely. I did
+not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I
+had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your
+life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not
+live.
+
+ELLIE [sitting up impatiently]. But what can I do? I am not a sea
+captain: I can't stand on bridges in typhoons, or go slaughtering
+seals and whales in Greenland's icy mountains. They won't let
+women be captains. Do you want me to be a stewardess?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are worse lives. The stewardesses could
+come ashore if they liked; but they sail and sail and sail.
+
+ELLIE. What could they do ashore but marry for money? I don't
+want to be a stewardess: I am too bad a sailor. Think of
+something else for me.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I can't think so long and continuously. I am
+too old. I must go in and out. [He tries to rise].
+
+ELLIE [pulling him back]. You shall not. You are happy here,
+aren't you?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I tell you it's dangerous to keep me. I can't
+keep awake and alert.
+
+ELLIE. What do you run away for? To sleep?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. To get a glass of rum.
+
+ELLIE [frightfully disillusioned]. Is that it? How disgusting! Do
+you like being drunk?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No: I dread being drunk more than anything in
+the world. To be drunk means to have dreams; to go soft; to be
+easily pleased and deceived; to fall into the clutches of women.
+Drink does that for you when you are young. But when you are old:
+very very old, like me, the dreams come by themselves. You don't
+know how terrible that is: you are young: you sleep at night
+only, and sleep soundly. But later on you will sleep in the
+afternoon. Later still you will sleep even in the morning; and
+you will awake tired, tired of life. You will never be free from
+dozing and dreams; the dreams will steal upon your work every ten
+minutes unless you can awaken yourself with rum. I drink now to
+keep sober; but the dreams are conquering: rum is not what it
+was: I have had ten glasses since you came; and it might be so
+much water. Go get me another: Guinness knows where it is. You
+had better see for yourself the horror of an old man drinking.
+
+ELLIE. You shall not drink. Dream. I like you to dream. You must
+never be in the real world when we talk together.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I am too weary to resist, or too weak. I am in
+my second childhood. I do not see you as you really are. I can't
+remember what I really am. I feel nothing but the accursed
+happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that
+comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming
+instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that
+is going rotten.
+
+ELLIE. You dread it almost as much as I used to dread losing my
+dreams and having to fight and do things. But that is all over
+for me: my dreams are dashed to pieces. I should like to marry a
+very old, very rich man. I should like to marry you. I had much
+rather marry you than marry Mangan. Are you very rich?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Living from hand to mouth. And I have a
+wife somewhere in Jamaica: a black one. My first wife. Unless
+she's dead.
+
+ELLIE. What a pity! I feel so happy with you. [She takes his
+hand, almost unconsciously, and pats it]. I thought I should
+never feel happy again.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why?
+
+ELLIE. Don't you know?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No.
+
+ELLIE. Heartbreak. I fell in love with Hector, and didn't know he
+was married.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Heartbreak? Are you one of those who are so
+sufficient to themselves that they are only happy when they are
+stripped of everything, even of hope?
+
+ELLIE [gripping the hand]. It seems so; for I feel now as if
+there was nothing I could not do, because I want nothing.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That's the only real strength. That's genius.
+That's better than rum.
+
+ELLIE [throwing away his hand]. Rum! Why did you spoil it?
+
+Hector and Randall come in from the garden through the starboard
+door.
+
+HECTOR. I beg your pardon. We did not know there was anyone here.
+
+ELLIE [rising]. That means that you want to tell Mr Randall the
+story about the tiger. Come, Captain: I want to talk to my
+father; and you had better come with me.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [rising]. Nonsense! the man is in bed.
+
+ELLIE. Aha! I've caught you. My real father has gone to bed; but
+the father you gave me is in the kitchen. You knew quite well all
+along. Come. [She draws him out into the garden with her through
+the port door].
+
+HECTOR. That's an extraordinary girl. She has the Ancient Mariner
+on a string like a Pekinese dog.
+
+RANDALL. Now that they have gone, shall we have a friendly chat?
+
+HECTOR. You are in what is supposed to be my house. I am at your
+disposal.
+
+Hector sits down in the draughtsman's chair, turning it to face
+Randall, who remains standing, leaning at his ease against the
+carpenter's bench.
+
+RANDALL. I take it that we may be quite frank. I mean about Lady
+Utterword.
+
+HECTOR. You may. I have nothing to be frank about. I never met
+her until this afternoon.
+
+RANDALL [straightening up]. What! But you are her sister's
+husband.
+
+HECTOR. Well, if you come to that, you are her husband's brother.
+
+RANDALL. But you seem to be on intimate terms with her.
+
+HECTOR. So do you.
+
+RANDALL. Yes: but I AM on intimate terms with her. I have known
+her for years.
+
+HECTOR. It took her years to get to the same point with you that
+she got to with me in five minutes, it seems.
+
+RANDALL [vexed]. Really, Ariadne is the limit [he moves away
+huffishly towards the windows].
+
+HECTOR [coolly]. She is, as I remarked to Hesione, a very
+enterprising woman.
+
+RANDALL [returning, much troubled]. You see, Hushabye, you are
+what women consider a good-looking man.
+
+HECTOR. I cultivated that appearance in the days of my vanity;
+and Hesione insists on my keeping it up. She makes me wear these
+ridiculous things [indicating his Arab costume] because she
+thinks me absurd in evening dress.
+
+RANDALL. Still, you do keep it up, old chap. Now, I assure you I
+have not an atom of jealousy in my disposition
+
+HECTOR. The question would seem to be rather whether your brother
+has any touch of that sort.
+
+RANDALL. What! Hastings! Oh, don't trouble about Hastings. He has
+the gift of being able to work sixteen hours a day at the dullest
+detail, and actually likes it. That gets him to the top wherever
+he goes. As long as Ariadne takes care that he is fed regularly,
+he is only too thankful to anyone who will keep her in good humor
+for him.
+
+HECTOR. And as she has all the Shotover fascination, there is
+plenty of competition for the job, eh?
+
+RANDALL [angrily]. She encourages them. Her conduct is perfectly
+scandalous. I assure you, my dear fellow, I haven't an atom of
+jealousy in my composition; but she makes herself the talk of
+every place she goes to by her thoughtlessness. It's nothing
+more: she doesn't really care for the men she keeps hanging about
+her; but how is the world to know that? It's not fair to
+Hastings. It's not fair to me.
+
+HECTOR. Her theory is that her conduct is so correct
+
+RANDALL. Correct! She does nothing but make scenes from morning
+till night. You be careful, old chap. She will get you into
+trouble: that is, she would if she really cared for you.
+
+HECTOR. Doesn't she?
+
+RANDALL. Not a scrap. She may want your scalp to add to her
+collection; but her true affection has been engaged years ago.
+You had really better be careful.
+
+HECTOR. Do you suffer much from this jealousy?
+
+RANDALL. Jealousy! I jealous! My dear fellow, haven't I told you
+that there is not an atom of--
+
+HECTOR. Yes. And Lady Utterword told me she never made scenes.
+Well, don't waste your jealousy on my moustache. Never waste
+jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary hero that supplants
+us all in the long run. Besides, jealousy does not belong to your
+easy man-of-the-world pose, which you carry so well in other
+respects.
+
+RANDALL. Really, Hushabye, I think a man may be allowed to be a
+gentleman without being accused of posing.
+
+HECTOR. It is a pose like any other. In this house we know all
+the poses: our game is to find out the man under the pose. The
+man under your pose is apparently Ellie's favorite, Othello.
+
+RANDALL. Some of your games in this house are damned annoying,
+let me tell you.
+
+HECTOR. Yes: I have been their victim for many years. I used to
+writhe under them at first; but I became accustomed to them. At
+last I learned to play them.
+
+RANDALL. If it's all the same to you I had rather you didn't play
+them on me. You evidently don't quite understand my character, or
+my notions of good form.
+
+HECTOR. Is it your notion of good form to give away Lady
+Utterword?
+
+RANDALL [a childishly plaintive note breaking into his huff]. I
+have not said a word against Lady Utterword. This is just the
+conspiracy over again.
+
+HECTOR. What conspiracy?
+
+RANDALL. You know very well, sir. A conspiracy to make me out to
+be pettish and jealous and childish and everything I am not.
+Everyone knows I am just the opposite.
+
+HECTOR [rising]. Something in the air of the house has upset you.
+It often does have that effect. [He goes to the garden door and
+calls Lady Utterword with commanding emphasis]. Ariadne!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [at some distance]. Yes.
+
+RANDALL. What are you calling her for? I want to speak--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [arriving breathless]. Yes. You really are a
+terribly commanding person. What's the matter?
+
+HECTOR. I do not know how to manage your friend Randall. No doubt
+you do.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Randall: have you been making yourself
+ridiculous, as usual? I can see it in your face. Really, you are
+the most pettish creature.
+
+RANDALL. You know quite well, Ariadne, that I have not an ounce
+of pettishness in my disposition. I have made myself perfectly
+pleasant here. I have remained absolutely cool and imperturbable
+in the face of a burglar. Imperturbability is almost too strong a
+point of mine. But [putting his foot down with a stamp, and
+walking angrily up and down the room] I insist on being treated
+with a certain consideration. I will not allow Hushabye to take
+liberties with me. I will not stand your encouraging people as
+you do.
+
+HECTOR. The man has a rooted delusion that he is your husband.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I know. He is jealous. As if he had any right to
+be! He compromises me everywhere. He makes scenes all over the
+place. Randall: I will not allow it. I simply will not allow it.
+You had no right to discuss me with Hector. I will not be
+discussed by men.
+
+HECTOR. Be reasonable, Ariadne. Your fatal gift of beauty forces
+men to discuss you.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Oh indeed! what about YOUR fatal gift of beauty?
+
+HECTOR. How can I help it?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You could cut off your moustache: I can't cut off
+my nose. I get my whole life messed up with people falling in
+love with me. And then Randall says I run after men.
+
+RANDALL. I--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Yes you do: you said it just now. Why can't you
+think of something else than women? Napoleon was quite right when
+he said that women are the occupation of the idle man. Well, if
+ever there was an idle man on earth, his name is Randall
+Utterword.
+
+RANDALL. Ariad--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [overwhelming him with a torrent of words]. Oh yes
+you are: it's no use denying it. What have you ever done? What
+good are you? You are as much trouble in the house as a child of
+three. You couldn't live without your valet.
+
+RANDALL. This is--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Laziness! You are laziness incarnate. You are
+selfishness itself. You are the most uninteresting man on earth.
+You can't even gossip about anything but yourself and your
+grievances and your ailments and the people who have offended
+you. [Turning to Hector]. Do you know what they call him, Hector?
+
+HECTOR  }  [speaking   { Please don't tell me.
+RANDALL }   together]  { I'll not stand it--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Randall the Rotter: that is his name in good
+society.
+
+RANDALL [shouting]. I'll not bear it, I tell you. Will you listen
+to me, you infernal--[he chokes].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Well: go on. What were you going to call me? An
+infernal what? Which unpleasant animal is it to be this time?
+
+RANDALL [foaming]. There is no animal in the world so hateful as
+a woman can be. You are a maddening devil. Hushabye, you will not
+believe me when I tell you that I have loved this demon all my
+life; but God knows I have paid for it [he sits down in the
+draughtsman's chair, weeping].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [standing over him with triumphant contempt].
+Cry-baby!
+
+HECTOR [gravely, coming to him]. My friend, the Shotover sisters
+have two strange powers over men. They can make them love; and
+they can make them cry. Thank your stars that you are not married
+to one of them.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [haughtily]. And pray, Hector--
+
+HECTOR [suddenly catching her round the shoulders: swinging her
+right round him and away from Randall: and gripping her throat
+with the other hand]. Ariadne, if you attempt to start on me,
+I'll choke you: do you hear? The cat-and-mouse game with the
+other sex is a good game; but I can play your head off at it. [He
+throws her, not at all gently, into the big chair, and proceeds,
+less fiercely but firmly]. It is true that Napoleon said that
+woman is the occupation of the idle man. But he added that she is
+the relaxation of the warrior. Well, I am the warrior. So take
+care.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [not in the least put out, and rather pleased by
+his violence]. My dear Hector, I have only done what you asked me
+to do.
+
+HECTOR. How do you make that out, pray?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You called me in to manage Randall, didn't you?
+You said you couldn't manage him yourself.
+
+HECTOR. Well, what if I did? I did not ask you to drive the man
+mad.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. He isn't mad. That's the way to manage him. If
+you were a mother, you'd understand.
+
+HECTOR. Mother! What are you up to now?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. It's quite simple. When the children got nerves
+and were naughty, I smacked them just enough to give them a good
+cry and a healthy nervous shock. They went to sleep and were
+quite good afterwards. Well, I can't smack Randall: he is too
+big; so when he gets nerves and is naughty, I just rag him till
+he cries. He will be all right now. Look: he is half asleep
+already [which is quite true].
+
+RANDALL [waking up indignantly]. I'm not. You are most cruel,
+Ariadne. [Sentimentally]. But I suppose I must forgive you, as
+usual [he checks himself in the act of yawning].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [to Hector]. Is the explanation satisfactory,
+dread warrior?
+
+HECTOR. Some day I shall kill you, if you go too far. I thought
+you were a fool.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [laughing]. Everybody does, at first. But I am not
+such a fool as I look. [She rises complacently]. Now, Randall, go
+to bed. You will be a good boy in the morning.
+
+RANDALL [only very faintly rebellious]. I'll go to bed when I
+like. It isn't ten yet.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. It is long past ten. See that he goes to bed at
+once, Hector. [She goes into the garden].
+
+HECTOR. Is there any slavery on earth viler than this slavery of
+men to women?
+
+RANDALL [rising resolutely]. I'll not speak to her tomorrow. I'll
+not speak to her for another week. I'll give her such a lesson.
+I'll go straight to bed without bidding her good-night. [He makes
+for the door leading to the hall].
+
+HECTOR. You are under a spell, man. Old Shotover sold himself to
+the devil in Zanzibar. The devil gave him a black witch for a
+wife; and these two demon daughters are their mystical progeny. I
+am tied to Hesione's apron-string; but I'm her husband; and if I
+did go stark staring mad about her, at least we became man and
+wife. But why should you let yourself be dragged about and beaten
+by Ariadne as a toy donkey is dragged about and beaten by a
+child? What do you get by it? Are you her lover?
+
+RANDALL. You must not misunderstand me. In a higher sense--in a
+Platonic sense--
+
+HECTOR. Psha! Platonic sense! She makes you her servant; and when
+pay-day comes round, she bilks you: that is what you mean.
+
+RANDALL [feebly]. Well, if I don't mind, I don't see what
+business it is of yours. Besides, I tell you I am going to punish
+her. You shall see: I know how to deal with women. I'm really
+very sleepy. Say good-night to Mrs Hushabye for me, will you,
+like a good chap. Good-night. [He hurries out].
+
+HECTOR. Poor wretch! Oh women! women! women! [He lifts his fists
+in invocation to heaven]. Fall. Fall and crush. [He goes out into
+the garden].
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+In the garden, Hector, as he comes out through the glass door of
+the poop, finds Lady Utterword lying voluptuously in the hammock
+on the east side of the flagstaff, in the circle of light cast by
+the electric arc, which is like a moon in its opal globe. Beneath
+the head of the hammock, a campstool. On the other side of the
+flagstaff, on the long garden seat, Captain Shotover is asleep,
+with Ellie beside him, leaning affectionately against him on his
+right hand. On his left is a deck chair. Behind them in the
+gloom, Hesione is strolling about with Mangan. It is a fine still
+night, moonless.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. What a lovely night! It seems made for us.
+
+HECTOR. The night takes no interest in us. What are we to the
+night? [He sits down moodily in the deck chair].
+
+ELLIE [dreamily, nestling against the captain]. Its beauty soaks
+into my nerves. In the night there is peace for the old and hope
+for the young.
+
+HECTOR. Is that remark your own?
+
+ELLIE. No. Only the last thing the captain said before he went to
+sleep.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I'm not asleep.
+
+HECTOR. Randall is. Also Mr Mazzini Dunn. Mangan, too, probably.
+
+MANGAN. No.
+
+HECTOR. Oh, you are there. I thought Hesione would have sent you
+to bed by this time.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [coming to the back of the garden seat, into the
+light, with Mangan]. I think I shall. He keeps telling me he has
+a presentiment that he is going to die. I never met a man so
+greedy for sympathy.
+
+MANGAN [plaintively]. But I have a presentiment. I really have.
+And you wouldn't listen.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. I was listening for something else. There was a
+sort of splendid drumming in the sky. Did none of you hear it? It
+came from a distance and then died away.
+
+MANGAN. I tell you it was a train.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. And I tell you, Alf, there is no train at this
+hour. The last is nine forty-five.
+
+MANGAN. But a goods train.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Not on our little line. They tack a truck on to the
+passenger train. What can it have been, Hector?
+
+HECTOR. Heaven's threatening growl of disgust at us useless
+futile creatures. [Fiercely]. I tell you, one of two things must
+happen. Either out of that darkness some new creation will come
+to supplant us as we have supplanted the animals, or the heavens
+will fall in thunder and destroy us.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [in a cool instructive manner, wallowing
+comfortably in her hammock]. We have not supplanted the animals,
+Hector. Why do you ask heaven to destroy this house, which could
+be made quite comfortable if Hesione had any notion of how to
+live? Don't you know what is wrong with it?
+
+HECTOR. We are wrong with it. There is no sense in us. We are
+useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense! Hastings told me the very first day he
+came here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is wrong with the
+house.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What! The numskull said there was something
+wrong with my house!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I said Hastings said it; and he is not in the
+least a numskull.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What's wrong with my house?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Just what is wrong with a ship, papa. Wasn't it
+clever of Hastings to see that?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The man's a fool. There's nothing wrong with a
+ship.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, there is.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. But what is it? Don't be aggravating, Addy.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Guess.
+
+HECTOR. Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar. Demons.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Not a bit. I assure you, all this house needs to
+make it a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with good appetites
+and sound sleep in it, is horses.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Horses! What rubbish!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Yes: horses. Why have we never been able to let
+this house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in
+England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really
+nice English people; and what do you always find? That the
+stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any
+visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset
+before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I
+never lived until I learned to ride; and I shall never ride
+really well because I didn't begin as a child. There are only two
+classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and
+the neurotic classes. It isn't mere convention: everybody can see
+that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who
+don't are the wrong ones.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is some truth in this. My ship made a man
+of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Exactly how Hastings explained your being a
+gentleman.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Not bad for a numskull. Bring the man here with
+you next time: I must talk to him.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well
+bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has
+been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has
+lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so
+contemptible? Why can't he get a valet to stay with him longer
+than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and
+pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and
+sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books
+and poems. He actually plays the flute; but I never let him bring
+it into my house. If he would only--[she is interrupted by the
+melancholy strains of a flute coming from an open window above.
+She raises herself indignantly in the hammock]. Randall, you have
+not gone to bed. Have you been listening? [The flute replies
+pertly]. How vulgar! Go to bed instantly, Randall: how dare you?
+[The window is slammed down. She subsides]. How can anyone care
+for such a creature!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Addy: do you think Ellie ought to marry poor Alfred
+merely for his money?
+
+MANGAN [much alarmed]. What's that? Mrs Hushabye, are my affairs
+to be discussed like this before everybody?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I don't think Randall is listening now.
+
+MANGAN. Everybody is listening. It isn't right.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. But in the dark, what does it matter? Ellie doesn't
+mind. Do you, Ellie?
+
+ELLIE. Not in the least. What is your opinion, Lady Utterword?
+You have so much good sense.
+
+MANGAN. But it isn't right. It--[Mrs Hushabye puts her hand on
+his mouth]. Oh, very well.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. How much money have you, Mr. Mangan?
+
+MANGAN. Really--No: I can't stand this.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense, Mr Mangan! It all turns on your income,
+doesn't it?
+
+MANGAN. Well, if you come to that, how much money has she?
+
+ELLIE. None.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You are answered, Mr Mangan. And now, as you have
+made Miss Dunn throw her cards on the table, you cannot refuse to
+show your own.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Come, Alf! out with it! How much?
+
+MANGAN [baited out of all prudence]. Well, if you want to know, I
+have no money and never had any.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, you mustn't tell naughty stories.
+
+MANGAN. I'm not telling you stories. I'm telling you the raw
+truth.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Then what do you live on, Mr Mangan?
+
+MANGAN. Travelling expenses. And a trifle of commission.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What more have any of us but travelling
+expenses for our life's journey?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. But you have factories and capital and things?
+
+MANGAN. People think I have. People think I'm an industrial
+Napoleon. That's why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you
+I have nothing.
+
+ELLIE. Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus's tigers?
+That they don't exist?
+
+MANGAN. They exist all right enough. But they're not mine. They
+belong to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy
+good-for-nothing capitalists. I get money from such people to
+start the factories. I find people like Miss Dunn's father to
+work them, and keep a tight hand so as to make them pay. Of
+course I make them keep me going pretty well; but it's a dog's
+life; and I don't own anything.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it
+to get out of marrying Ellie.
+
+MANGAN. I'm telling the truth about my money for the first time
+in my life; and it's the first time my word has ever been
+doubted.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. How sad! Why don't you go in for politics, Mr
+Mangan?
+
+MANGAN. Go in for politics! Where have you been living? I am in
+politics.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I'm sure I beg your pardon. I never heard of you.
+
+MANGAN. Let me tell you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime Minister
+of this country asked me to join the Government without even
+going through the nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a
+great public department.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. As a Conservative or a Liberal?
+
+MANGAN. No such nonsense. As a practical business man. [They all
+burst out laughing]. What are you all laughing at?
+
+MRS HUSHARYE. Oh, Alfred, Alfred!
+
+ELLIE. You! who have to get my father to do everything for you!
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You! who are afraid of your own workmen!
+
+HECTOR. You! with whom three women have been playing cat and
+mouse all the evening!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You must have given an immense sum to the party
+funds, Mr Mangan.
+
+MANGAN. Not a penny out of my own pocket. The syndicate found the
+money: they knew how useful I should be to them in the
+Government.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. This is most interesting and unexpected, Mr
+Mangan. And what have your administrative achievements been, so
+far?
+
+MANGAN. Achievements? Well, I don't know what you call
+achievements; but I've jolly well put a stop to the games of the
+other fellows in the other departments. Every man of them thought
+he was going to save the country all by himself, and do me out of
+the credit and out of my chance of a title. I took good care that
+if they wouldn't let me do it they shouldn't do it themselves
+either. I may not know anything about my own machinery; but I
+know how to stick a ramrod into the other fellow's. And now they
+all look the biggest fools going.
+
+HECTOR. And in heaven's name, what do you look like?
+
+MANGAN. I look like the fellow that was too clever for all the
+others, don't I? If that isn't a triumph of practical business,
+what is?
+
+HECTOR. Is this England, or is it a madhouse?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Do you expect to save the country, Mr Mangan?
+
+MANGAN. Well, who else will? Will your Mr Randall save it?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Randall the rotter! Certainly not.
+
+MANGAN. Will your brother-in-law save it with his moustache and
+his fine talk?
+
+HECTOR. Yes, if they will let me.
+
+MANGAN [sneering]. Ah! Will they let you?
+
+HECTOR. No. They prefer you.
+
+MANGAN. Very well then, as you're in a world where I'm
+appreciated and you're not, you'd best be civil to me, hadn't
+you? Who else is there but me?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. There is Hastings. Get rid of your ridiculous
+sham democracy; and give Hastings the necessary powers, and a
+good supply of bamboo to bring the British native to his senses:
+he will save the country with the greatest ease.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It had better be lost. Any fool can govern with
+a stick in his hand. I could govern that way. It is not God's
+way. The man is a numskull.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. The man is worth all of you rolled into one. What
+do you say, Miss Dunn?
+
+ELLIE. I think my father would do very well if people did not put
+upon him and cheat him and despise him because he is so good.
+
+MANGAN [contemptuously]. I think I see Mazzini Dunn getting into
+parliament or pushing his way into the Government. We've not come
+to that yet, thank God! What do you say, Mrs Hushabye?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, I say it matters very little which of you
+governs the country so long as we govern you.
+
+HECTOR. We? Who is we, pray?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. The devil's granddaughters, dear. The lovely women.
+
+HECTOR [raising his hands as before]. Fall, I say, and deliver us
+from the lures of Satan!
+
+ELLIE. There seems to be nothing real in the world except my
+father and Shakespeare. Marcus's tigers are false; Mr Mangan's
+millions are false; there is nothing really strong and true about
+Hesione but her beautiful black hair; and Lady Utterword's is too
+pretty to be real. The one thing that was left to me was the
+Captain's seventh degree of concentration; and that turns out to
+be--
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Rum.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [placidly]. A good deal of my hair is quite
+genuine. The Duchess of Dithering offered me fifty guineas for
+this [touching her forehead] under the impression that it was a
+transformation; but it is all natural except the color.
+
+MANGAN [wildly]. Look here: I'm going to take off all my clothes
+[he begins tearing off his coat].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD.  }    [in     { Mr. Mangan!
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER } consterna- { What's that?
+HECTOR.          }    tion]   { Ha! Ha! Do. Do
+ELLIE            }            { Please don't.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [catching his arm and stopping him]. Alfred, for
+shame! Are you mad?
+
+MANGAN. Shame! What shame is there in this house? Let's all strip
+stark naked. We may as well do the thing thoroughly when we're
+about it. We've stripped ourselves morally naked: well, let us
+strip ourselves physically naked as well, and see how we like it.
+I tell you I can't bear this. I was brought up to be respectable.
+I don't mind the women dyeing their hair and the men drinking:
+it's human nature. But it's not human nature to tell everybody
+about it. Every time one of you opens your mouth I go like this
+[he cowers as if to avoid a missile], afraid of what will come
+next. How are we to have any self-respect if we don't keep it up
+that we're better than we really are?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I quite sympathize with you, Mr Mangan. I have
+been through it all; and I know by experience that men and women
+are delicate plants and must be cultivated under glass. Our
+family habit of throwing stones in all directions and letting the
+air in is not only unbearably rude, but positively dangerous.
+Still, there is no use catching physical colds as well as moral
+ones; so please keep your clothes on.
+
+MANGAN. I'll do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a child or
+a grown man? I won't stand this mothering tyranny. I'll go back
+to the city, where I'm respected and made much of.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city.
+Think of Ellie's youth!
+
+ELLIE. Think of Hesione's eyes and hair!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Think of this garden in which you are not a dog
+barking to keep the truth out!
+
+HECTOR. Think of Lady Utterword's beauty! her good sense! her
+style!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Flatterer. Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can
+really do any better for yourself elsewhere: that is the
+essential point, isn't it?
+
+MANGAN [surrendering]. All right: all right. I'm done. Have it
+your own way. Only let me alone. I don't know whether I'm on my
+head or my heels when you all start on me like this. I'll stay.
+I'll marry her. I'll do anything for a quiet life. Are you
+satisfied now?
+
+ELLIE. No. I never really intended to make you marry me, Mr
+Mangan. Never in the depths of my soul. I only wanted to feel my
+strength: to know that you could not escape if I chose to take
+you.
+
+MANGAN [indignantly]. What! Do you mean to say you are going to
+throw me over after my acting so handsome?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I should not be too hasty, Miss Dunn. You can
+throw Mr Mangan over at any time up to the last moment. Very few
+men in his position go bankrupt. You can live very comfortably on
+his reputation for immense wealth.
+
+ELLIE. I cannot commit bigamy, Lady Utterword.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE.  }              { Bigamy! Whatever on earth are you
+               }              {  talking about, Ellie?
+LADY UTTERWORD } [exclaiming  { Bigamy! What do you mean, Miss
+               }              {  Dunn?
+MANGAN         }  altogether] { Bigamy! Do you mean to say you're
+               }              {  married already?
+HECTOR         }              { Bigamy! This is some enigma.
+
+ELLIE. Only half an hour ago I became Captain Shotover's white
+wife.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie! What nonsense! Where?
+
+ELLIE. In heaven, where all true marriages are made.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Miss Dunn! Really, papa!
+
+MANGAN. He told me I was too old! And him a mummy!
+
+HECTOR [quoting Shelley].
+
+"Their altar the grassy earth outspreads
+ And their priest the muttering wind."
+
+ELLIE. Yes: I, Ellie Dunn, give my broken heart and my strong
+sound soul to its natural captain, my spiritual husband and
+second father.
+
+She draws the captain's arm through hers, and pats his hand. The
+captain remains fast asleep.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, that's very clever of you, pettikins. Very
+clever. Alfred, you could never have lived up to Ellie. You must
+be content with a little share of me.
+
+MANGAN [snifflng and wiping his eyes]. It isn't kind--[his
+emotion chokes him].
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You are well out of it, Mr Mangan. Miss Dunn is
+the most conceited young woman I have met since I came back to
+England.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Ellie isn't conceited. Are you, pettikins?
+
+ELLIE. I know my strength now, Hesione.
+
+MANGAN. Brazen, I call you. Brazen.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Tut, tut, Alfred: don't be rude. Don't you feel how
+lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Aren't you happy,
+you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful
+enough to please the most fastidious man: we live and love and
+have not a care in the world. We women have managed all that for
+you. Why in the name of common sense do you go on as if you were
+two miserable wretches?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I tell you happiness is no good. You can be
+happy when you are only half alive. I am happier now I am half
+dead than ever I was in my prime. But there is no blessing on my
+happiness.
+
+ELLIE [her face lighting up]. Life with a blessing! that is what
+I want. Now I know the real reason why I couldn't marry Mr
+Mangan: there would be no blessing on our marriage. There is a
+blessing on my broken heart. There is a blessing on your beauty,
+Hesione. There is a blessing on your father's spirit. Even on the
+lies of Marcus there is a blessing; but on Mr Mangan's money
+there is none.
+
+MANGAN. I don't understand a word of that.
+
+ELLIE. Neither do I. But I know it means something.
+
+MANGAN. Don't say there was any difficulty about the blessing. I
+was ready to get a bishop to marry us.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Isn't he a fool, pettikins?
+
+HECTOR [fiercely]. Do not scorn the man. We are all fools.
+
+Mazzini, in pyjamas and a richly colored silk dressing gown,
+comes from the house, on Lady Utterword's side.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh! here comes the only man who ever resisted me.
+What's the matter, Mr Dunn? Is the house on fire?
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, no: nothing's the matter: but really it's impossible
+to go to sleep with such an interesting conversation going on
+under one's window, and on such a beautiful night too. I just had
+to come down and join you all. What has it all been about?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, wonderful things, soldier of freedom.
+
+HECTOR. For example, Mangan, as a practical business man, has
+tried to undress himself and has failed ignominiously; whilst
+you, as an idealist, have succeeded brilliantly.
+
+MAZZINI. I hope you don't mind my being like this, Mrs Hushabye.
+[He sits down on the campstool].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. On the contrary, I could wish you always like that.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Your daughter's match is off, Mr Dunn. It seems
+that Mr Mangan, whom we all supposed to be a man of property,
+owns absolutely nothing.
+
+MAZZINI. Well, of course I knew that, Lady Utterword. But if
+people believe in him and are always giving him money, whereas
+they don't believe in me and never give me any, how can I ask
+poor Ellie to depend on what I can do for her?
+
+MANGAN. Don't you run away with this idea that I have nothing.
+I--
+
+HECTOR. Oh, don't explain. We understand. You have a couple of
+thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence
+a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to
+poison yourself with when you are found out. That's the reality
+of your millions.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh no, no, no. He is quite honest: the businesses are
+genuine and perfectly legal.
+
+HECTOR [disgusted]. Yah! Not even a great swindler!
+
+MANGAN. So you think. But I've been too many for some honest men,
+for all that.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. There is no pleasing you, Mr Mangan. You are
+determined to be neither rich nor poor, honest nor dishonest.
+
+MANGAN. There you go again. Ever since I came into this silly
+house I have been made to look like a fool, though I'm as good a
+man in this house as in the city.
+
+ELLIE [musically]. Yes: this silly house, this strangely happy
+house, this agonizing house, this house without foundations. I
+shall call it Heartbreak House.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, Ellie; or I shall howl like an animal.
+
+MANGAN [breaks into a low snivelling]!!!
+
+MRS HUSAHBYE. There! you have set Alfred off.
+
+ELLIE. I like him best when he is howling.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Silence! [Mangan subsides into silence]. I say,
+let the heart break in silence.
+
+HECTOR. Do you accept that name for your house?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It is not my house: it is only my kennel.
+
+HECTOR. We have been too long here. We do not live in this house:
+we haunt it.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [heart torn]. It is dreadful to think how you have
+been here all these years while I have gone round the world. I
+escaped young; but it has drawn me back. It wants to break my
+heart too. But it shan't. I have left you and it behind. It was
+silly of me to come back. I felt sentimental about papa and
+Hesione and the old place. I felt them calling to me.
+
+MAZZINI. But what a very natural and kindly and charming human
+feeling, Lady Utterword!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. So I thought, Mr Dunn. But I know now that it was
+only the last of my influenza. I found that I was not remembered
+and not wanted.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You left because you did not want us. Was there
+no heartbreak in that for your father? You tore yourself up by
+the roots; and the ground healed up and brought forth fresh
+plants and forgot you. What right had you to come back and probe
+old wounds?
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You were a complete stranger to me at first, Addy;
+but now I feel as if you had never been away.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Thank you, Hesione; but the influenza is quite
+cured. The place may be Heartbreak House to you, Miss Dunn, and
+to this gentleman from the city who seems to have so little
+self-control; but to me it is only a very ill-regulated and
+rather untidy villa without any stables.
+
+HECTOR. Inhabited by--?
+
+ELLIE. A crazy old sea captain and a young singer who adores him.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. A sluttish female, trying to stave off a double
+chin and an elderly spread, vainly wooing a born soldier of
+freedom.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, really, Mrs Hushabye--
+
+MANGAN. A member of His Majesty's Government that everybody sets
+down as a nincompoop: don't forget him, Lady Utterword.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. And a very fascinating gentleman whose chief
+occupation is to be married to my sister.
+
+HECTOR. All heartbroken imbeciles.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh no. Surely, if I may say so, rather a favorable
+specimen of what is best in our English culture. You are very
+charming people, most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane,
+unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and everything that is
+delightful to thoughtful people.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. You do us proud, Mazzini.
+
+MAZZINI. I am not flattering, really. Where else could I feel
+perfectly at ease in my pyjamas? I sometimes dream that I am in
+very distinguished society, and suddenly I have nothing on but my
+pyjamas! Sometimes I haven't even pyjamas. And I always feel
+overwhelmed with confusion. But here, I don't mind in the least:
+it seems quite natural.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. An infallible sign that you are now not in really
+distinguished society, Mr Dunn. If you were in my house, you
+would feel embarrassed.
+
+MAZZINI. I shall take particular care to keep out of your house,
+Lady Utterword.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make
+you very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and
+anxiety of wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold
+or your green and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate
+life instead of simplifying it by doing these ridiculous things.
+
+ELLIE. Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady Utterword?
+
+HECTOR. Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That poor
+devil upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his heart,
+just as Mangan howls when my wife twists his.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. That is because Randall has nothing to do but
+have his heart broken. It is a change from having his head
+shampooed. Catch anyone breaking Hastings' heart!
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The numskull wins, after all.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I shall go back to my numskull with the greatest
+satisfaction when I am tired of you all, clever as you are.
+
+MANGAN [huffily]. I never set up to be clever.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. I forgot you, Mr Mangan.
+
+MANGAN. Well, I don't see that quite, either.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You may not be clever, Mr Mangan; but you are
+successful.
+
+MANGAN. But I don't want to be regarded merely as a successful
+man. I have an imagination like anyone else. I have a
+presentiment
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I am devoting
+myself to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous
+presentiment. You bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the
+stars. [She drags him away into the darkness].
+
+MANGAN [tearfully, as he disappears]. Yes: it's all very well to
+make fun of me; but if you only knew--
+
+HECTOR [impatiently]. How is all this going to end?
+
+MAZZINI. It won't end, Mr Hushabye. Life doesn't end: it goes on.
+
+ELLIE. Oh, it can't go on forever. I'm always expecting
+something. I don't know what it is; but life must come to a point
+sometime.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. The point for a young woman of your age is a
+baby.
+
+HECTOR. Yes, but, damn it, I have the same feeling; and I can't
+have a baby.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. By deputy, Hector.
+
+HECTOR. But I have children. All that is over and done with for
+me: and yet I too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking,
+and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil.
+Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual
+admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo
+to a badly brought up child to play at earthquakes with.
+
+MAZZINI. I know. I used often to think about that when I was
+young.
+
+HECTOR. Think! What's the good of thinking about it? Why didn't
+you do something?
+
+MAZZINI. But I did. I joined societies and made speeches and
+wrote pamphlets. That was all I could do. But, you know, though
+the people in the societies thought they knew more than Mangan,
+most of them wouldn't have joined if they had known as much. You
+see they had never had any money to handle or any men to manage.
+Every year I expected a revolution, or some frightful smash-up:
+it seemed impossible that we could blunder and muddle on any
+longer. But nothing happened, except, of course, the usual
+poverty and crime and drink that we are used to. Nothing ever
+does happen. It's amazing how well we get along, all things
+considered.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps somebody cleverer than you and Mr Mangan
+was at work all the time.
+
+MAZZINI. Perhaps so. Though I was brought up not to believe in
+anything, I often feel that there is a great deal to be said for
+the theory of an over-ruling Providence, after all.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. Providence! I meant Hastings.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But
+one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run
+them on the rocks.
+
+MAZZINI. Very true, no doubt, at sea. But in politics, I assure
+you, they only run into jellyfish. Nothing happens.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. At sea nothing happens to the sea. Nothing
+happens to the sky. The sun comes up from the east and goes down
+to the west. The moon grows from a sickle to an arc lamp, and
+comes later and later until she is lost in the light as other
+things are lost in the darkness. After the typhoon, the
+flying-fish glitter in the sunshine like birds. It's amazing how
+they get along, all things considered. Nothing happens, except
+something not worth mentioning.
+
+ELLIE. What is that, O Captain, O my captain?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [savagely]. Nothing but the smash of the drunken
+skipper's ship on the rocks, the splintering of her rotten
+timbers, the tearing of her rusty plates, the drowning of the
+crew like rats in a trap.
+
+ELLIE. Moral: don't take rum.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [vehemently]. That is a lie, child. Let a man
+drink ten barrels of rum a day, he is not a drunken skipper until
+he is a drifting skipper. Whilst he can lay his course and stand
+on his bridge and steer it, he is no drunkard. It is the man who
+lies drinking in his bunk and trusts to Providence that I call
+the drunken skipper, though he drank nothing but the waters of
+the River Jordan.
+
+ELLIE. Splendid! And you haven't had a drop for an hour. You see
+you don't need it: your own spirit is not dead.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Echoes: nothing but echoes. The last shot was
+fired years ago.
+
+HECTOR. And this ship that we are all in? This soul's prison we
+call England?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled
+ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. She will
+strike and sink and split. Do you think the laws of God will be
+suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?
+
+HECTOR. Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I
+still have the will to live. What am I to do?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an
+Englishman.
+
+HECTOR. And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and
+be damned.
+
+ELLIE. Quiet, quiet: you'll tire yourself.
+
+MAZZINI. I thought all that once, Captain; but I assure you
+nothing will happen.
+
+A dull distant explosion is heard.
+
+HECTOR [starting up]. What was that?
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Something happening [he blows his whistle].
+Breakers ahead!
+
+The light goes out.
+
+HECTOR [furiously]. Who put that light out? Who dared put that
+light out?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [running in from the house to the middle of the
+esplanade]. I did, sir. The police have telephoned to say we'll
+be summoned if we don't put that light out: it can be seen for
+miles.
+
+HECTOR. It shall be seen for a hundred miles [he dashes into the
+house].
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. The Rectory is nothing but a heap of bricks, they
+say. Unless we can give the Rector a bed he has nowhere to lay
+his head this night.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The Church is on the rocks, breaking up. I told
+him it would unless it headed for God's open sea.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. And you are all to go down to the cellars.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Go there yourself, you and all the crew. Batten
+down the hatches.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. And hide beside the coward I married! I'll go on
+the roof first. [The lamp lights up again]. There! Mr Hushabye's
+turned it on again.
+
+THE BURGLAR [hurrying in and appealing to Nurse Guinness]. Here:
+where's the way to that gravel pit? The boot-boy says there's a
+cave in the gravel pit. Them cellars is no use. Where's the
+gravel pit, Captain?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Go straight on past the flagstaff until you fall
+into it and break your dirty neck. [She pushes him contemptuously
+towards the flagstaff, and herself goes to the foot of the
+hammock and waits there, as it were by Ariadne's cradle].
+
+Another and louder explosion is heard. The burglar stops and
+stands trembling.
+
+ELLIE [rising]. That was nearer.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The next one will get us. [He rises]. Stand by,
+all hands, for judgment.
+
+THE BURGLAR. Oh my Lordy God! [He rushes away frantically past
+the flagstaff into the gloom].
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [emerging panting from the darkness]. Who was that
+running away? [She comes to Ellie]. Did you hear the explosions?
+And the sound in the sky: it's splendid: it's like an orchestra:
+it's like Beethoven.
+
+ELLIE. By thunder, Hesione: it is Beethoven.
+
+She and Hesione throw themselves into one another's arms in wild
+excitement. The light increases.
+
+MAZZINI [anxiously]. The light is getting brighter.
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [looking up at the house]. It's Mr Hushabye
+turning on all the lights in the house and tearing down the
+curtains.
+
+RANDALL [rushing in in his pyjamas, distractedly waving a flute].
+Ariadne, my soul, my precious, go down to the cellars: I beg and
+implore you, go down to the cellars!
+
+LADY UTTERWORD [quite composed in her hammock]. The governor's
+wife in the cellars with the servants! Really, Randall!
+
+RANDALL. But what shall I do if you are killed?
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. You will probably be killed, too, Randall. Now
+play your flute to show that you are not afraid; and be good.
+Play us "Keep the home fires burning."
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [grimly]. THEY'LL keep the home fires burning for
+us: them up there.
+
+RANDALL [having tried to play]. My lips are trembling. I can't
+get a sound.
+
+MAZZINI. I hope poor Mangan is safe.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. He is hiding in the cave in the gravel pit.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. My dynamite drew him there. It is the hand of
+God.
+
+HECTOR [returning from the house and striding across to his
+former place]. There is not half light enough. We should be
+blazing to the skies.
+
+ELLIE [tense with excitement]. Set fire to the house, Marcus.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. My house! No.
+
+HECTOR. I thought of that; but it would not be ready in time.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The judgment has come. Courage will not save
+you; but it will show that your souls are still live.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. Sh-sh! Listen: do you hear it now? It's
+magnificent.
+
+They all turn away from the house and look up, listening.
+
+HECTOR [gravely]. Miss Dunn, you can do no good here. We of this
+house are only moths flying into the candle. You had better go
+down to the cellar.
+
+ELLIE [scornfully]. I don't think.
+
+MAZZINI. Ellie, dear, there is no disgrace in going to the
+cellar. An officer would order his soldiers to take cover. Mr
+Hushabye is behaving like an amateur. Mangan and the burglar are
+acting very sensibly; and it is they who will survive.
+
+ELLIE. Let them. I shall behave like an amateur. But why should
+you run any risk?
+
+MAZZINI. Think of the risk those poor fellows up there are
+running!
+
+NURSE GUINNESS. Think of them, indeed, the murdering blackguards!
+What next?
+
+A terrific explosion shakes the earth. They reel back into their
+seats, or clutch the nearest support. They hear the falling of
+the shattered glass from the windows.
+
+MAZZINI. Is anyone hurt?
+
+HECTOR. Where did it fall?
+
+NURSE GUINNESS [in hideous triumph]. Right in the gravel pit: I
+seen it. Serve un right! I seen it [she runs away towards the
+gravel pit, laughing harshly].
+
+HECTOR. One husband gone.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Thirty pounds of good dynamite wasted.
+
+MAZZINI. Oh, poor Mangan!
+
+HECTOR. Are you immortal that you need pity him? Our turn next.
+
+They wait in silence and intense expectation. Hesione and Ellie
+hold each other's hand tight.
+
+A distant explosion is heard.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE [relaxing her grip]. Oh! they have passed us.
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. The danger is over, Randall. Go to bed.
+
+CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Turn in, all hands. The ship is safe. [He sits
+down and goes asleep].
+
+ELLIE [disappointedly]. Safe!
+
+HECTOR [disgustedly]. Yes, safe. And how damnably dull the world
+has become again suddenly! [he sits down].
+
+MAZZINI [sitting down]. I was quite wrong, after all. It is we
+who have survived; and Mangan and the burglar-
+
+HECTOR. --the two burglars--
+
+LADY UTTERWORD. --the two practical men of business--
+
+MAZZINI. --both gone. And the poor clergyman will have to get a
+new house.
+
+MRS HUSHABYE. But what a glorious experience! I hope they'll come
+again tomorrow night.
+
+ELLIE [radiant at the prospect]. Oh, I hope so.
+
+Randall at last succeeds in keeping the home fires burning on his flute.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Heartbreak House, by George Bernard Shaw
+
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