GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Where’s my wages?” he retorted reproachfully. “Where’s my lawful wages? I am su’prised at a lady like you, chock full o’ moral science and political economy, wanting to put a poor man off. Where’s your wages fund? Where’s your remuneratory capital?”

“Don’t you give him anything, ma’am,” said the inspector. “The money he’s had from the lady will pay him very well. Move on here, or we’ll precious soon hurry you.”

“Very well,” grumbled Smilash. “I bargained for ninepence, and what with the roller, and opening the soda water, and shoving them heavy tables about, there was a decomposition of tissue in me to the tune of two shillings. But all I ask is the ninepence, and let the lady keep the one and threppence as the reward of abstinence. Exploitation of labor at the rate of a hundred and twenty-five per cent., that is. Come, give us ninepence, and I’ll go straight off.”

“Here is a shilling,” said Miss Wilson. “Now go.”

“Threppence change!” cried Smilash. “Honesty has ever been—”

“You may keep the change.”

“You have a noble ‘art, lady; but you’re flying in the face of the law of supply and demand. If you keep payin’ at this rate, there’ll be a rush of laborers to the college, and competition’ll soon bring you down from a shilling to sixpence, let alone ninepence. That’s the way wages go down and death rates goes up, worse luck for the likes of hus, as has to sell ourselves like pigs in the market.”

He was about to continue when the policeman took him by the arm, turned him towards the gate, and pointed expressively in that direction. Smilash looked vacantly at him for a moment. Then, with a wink at Fairholme, he walked gravely away, amid general staring and silence.

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What had passed between Smilash and Henrietta remained unknown except to themselves. Agatha had seen Henrietta clasping his neck in her arms, but had not waited to hear the exclamation of “Sidney, Sidney,” which followed, nor to see him press her face to his breast in his anxiety to stifle her voice as he said, “My darling love, don’t screech I implore you. Confound it, we shall have the whole pack here in a moment. Hush!”

“Don’t leave me again, Sidney,” she entreated, clinging faster to him as his perplexed gaze, wandering towards the entrance to the shrubbery, seemed to forsake her. A din of voices in that direction precipitated his irresolution.

“We must run away, Hetty,” he said “Hold fast about my neck, and don’t strangle me. Now then.” He lifted her upon his shoulder and ran swiftly through the grounds. When they were stopped by the wall, he placed her atop of it, scrabbled over, and made her jump into his arms. Then he staggered away with her across the fields, gasping out in reply to the inarticulate remonstrances which burst from her as he stumbled and reeled at every hillock, “Your weight is increasing at the rate of a stone a second, my love. If you stoop you will break my back. Oh, Lord, here’s a ditch!”

“Let me down,” screamed Henrietta in an ecstasy of delight and apprehension. “You will hurt yourself, and — Oh, DO take—”

He struggled through a dry ditch as she spoke, and came out upon a grassy place that bordered the towpath of the canal. Here, on the bank of a hollow where the moss was dry and soft, he seated her, threw himself prone on his elbows before her, and said, panting:

“Nessus carrying off Dejanira was nothing to this! Whew! Well, my darling, are you glad to see me?”

“But—”

“But me no buts, unless you wish me to vanish again and for ever. Wretch that I am, I have longed for you unspeakably more than once since I ran away from you. You didn’t care, of course?”

“I did. I did, indeed. Why did you leave me, Sidney?”

“Lest a worse thing might befall. Come, don’t let us waste in explanations the few minutes we have left. Give me a kiss.”

“Then you are going to leave me again. Oh, Sidney—”

“Never mind tomorrow, Hetty. Be like the sun and the meadow, which are not in the least concerned about the coming winter. Why do you stare at that cursed canal, blindly dragging its load of filth from place to place until it pitches it into the sea — just as a crowded street pitches its load into the cemetery? Stare at ME, and give me a kiss.”

She gave him several, and said coaxingly, with her arm still upon his shoulder: “You only talk that way to frighten me, Sidney; I know you do.”

“You are the bright sun of my senses,” he said, embracing her. “I feel my heart and brain wither in your smile, and I fling them to you for your prey with exultation. How happy I am to have a wife who does not despise me for doing so — who rather loves me the more!”

“Don’t be silly,” said Henrietta, smiling vacantly. Then, stung by a half intuition of his meaning, she repulsed him and said angrily, “YOU despise ME.”

“Not more than I despise myself. Indeed, not so much; for many emotions that seem base from within seem lovable from without.”

“You intend to leave me again. I feel it. I know it.”

“You think you know it because you feel it. Not a bad reason, either.”

“Then you ARE going to leave me?”

“Do you not feel it and know it? Yes, my cherished Hetty, I assuredly am.”

She broke into wild exclamations of grief, and he drew her head down and kissed her with a tender action which she could not resist, and a wry face which she did not see.

“My poor Hetty, you don’t understand me.”

“I only understand that you hate me, and want to go away from me.”

“That would be easy to understand. But the strangeness is that I LOVE you and want to go away from you. Not for ever. Only for a time.”

“But I don’t want you to go away. I won’t let you go away,” she said, a trace of fierceness mingling with her entreaty. “Why do you want to leave me if you love me?”

“How do I know? I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county, as some one challenged a speculator in perpetual motion to do. I am too much a pessimist to respect my own affections. Do you know what a pessimist is?”

“A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”

“So, or thereabout. Modern English polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares for nothing but the lion’s share of the wealth wrung by threat of starvation from the hands of the classes that create it. If you interrupt me with a silly speech, Hetty, I will pitch you into the canal, and die of sorrow for my lost love afterwards. You know what I am, according to the conventional description: a gentleman with lots of money. Do you know the wicked origin of that money and gentility?”

“Oh, Sidney; have you been doing anything?”

“No, my best beloved; I am a gentleman, and have been doing nothing. That a man can do so and not starve is nowadays not even a paradox. Every halfpenny I possess is stolen money; but it has been stolen legally, and, what is of some practical importance to you, I have no means of restoring it to the rightful owners even if I felt inclined to. Do you know what my father was?”

“What difference can that make now? Don’t be disagreeable and full of ridiculous fads, Sidney dear. I didn’t marry your father.”

“No; but you married — only incidentally, of course — my father’s fortune. That necklace of yours was purchased with his money; and I can almost fancy stains of blood.”