George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

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.