Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (21 page)

 

PROSERPINE Another lecture?

MORELL Yes. The Hoxton Freedom Group want me to address them on Sunday morning
[great emphasis on “Sunday,” this being the unreasonable part of the business
]
.
What are they?

PROSERPINE Communist Anarchists, I think.

MORELL Just like Anarchists not to know that they can't have a parson on Sunday! Tell them to come to church if they want to hear me: it will do them good. Say I can only come on Mondays and Thursdays. Have you the diary there?

PROSERPINE
[taking up the diary]
Yes.

MORELL Have I any lecture on for next Monday?

PROSERPINE [
referring to diary
] Tower Hamlets Radical Club.

MORELL Well, Thursday then?

PROSERPINE English Land Restoration League.

MORELL What next?

PROSERPINE Guild of St. Matthew on Monday. Independent Labor Party, Greenwich Branch, on Thursday. Monday, Social-Democratic Federation, Mile End Branch. Thursday, first Confirmation class—[
Impatiently.
] Oh, I'd better tell them you can't come. They're only half a dozen ignorant and conceited costermongers without five shillings between them.

MORELL [
amused
] Ah; but you see they're near relatives of mine, Miss Garnett.

PROSERPINE [
staring at him
] Relatives of yours!

MORELL Yes: we have the same father—in Heaven.

PROSERPINE
[relieved]
Oh, is that all?

MORELL
[with a sadness which is a luxury to a man whose voice expresses
it
so finely
] Ah, you don't believe it. Everybody says it: nobody believes it—nobody. [
Briskly, getting back to business.
] Well, well! Come, Miss Proserpine, can't you find a date for the costers? What about the 25th?: that was vacant the day before yesterday.

PROSERPINE
[referring to diary]
Engaged—the Fabian Society.

MORELL Bother the Fabian Society! Is the 28th gone, too?

PROSERPINE City dinner. You're invited to dine with the Founder's Company.

MORELL That'll do; I'll go to the Hoxton Group of Freedom instead.
[She enters the engagement in silence, with implacable disparagement of the Hoxton Anarchists in every line of her face. MORELL bursts open the cover of a copy of The Church Reformer, which has come by post, and glances through Mr. Stewart Headlam's leader and the Guild of St. Matthew news. These proceedings are presently enlivened by the appearance of MORELL's curate, the Reverend Alexander Mill, a young gentleman gathered by MORELL from the nearest University settlement,
^ah
whither he had come from Oxford to give the east end of London the benefit of his university training. He is a conceitedly well intentioned, enthusiastic, immature person, with nothing positively unbearable about him except a habit of speaking with his lips carefully closed for half an inch from each corner, a finicking articulation, and a set of horribly corrupt vowels, notably ow for o; this being his chief means of bringing
Oxford refinement to bear on Hackney vulgarity. MORELL, whom he has won over by a doglike devotion, looks up indulgently from The Church Reformer as he enters, and remarks
] Well, Lexy! Late again, as usual.

LEXY I'm afraid so. I wish I could get up in the morning.

MORELL
[exulting in his own energy
] Ha! ha! [
Whimsically
] Watch and pray, Lexy: watch and pray.

LEXY I know.
[Rising wittily to the occasion
] But how can I watch and pray when I am asleep? Isn't that so, Miss Prossy?

PROSERPINE [
sharply
] Miss Garnett, if you please.

LEXY I beg your pardon—Miss Garnett.

PROSERPINE You've got to do all the work to-day.

LEXY Why?

PROSERPINE Never mind why. It will do you good to earn your supper before you eat it, for once in a way, as I do. Come: don't dawdle. You should have been off on your rounds half an hour ago.

LEXY
[perplexed]
Is she in earnest, Morell?

MORELL
[in the highest spirits
—
his eyes dancing
] Yes.
I
am going to dawdle to-day.

LEXY You! You don't know how.

MORELL [
heartily
] Ha! ha! Don't I? I'm going to have this day all to myself—or at least the forenoon. My wife's coming back: she's due here at 11.45.

LEXY
[surprised]
Coming back already—with the children? I thought they were to stay to the end of the month.

MORELL So they are: she's only coming up for two days, to get some flannel things for Jimmy, and to see how we're getting on without her.

LEXY [
anxiously
] But, my dear Morell, if what Jimmy and Fluffy had was scarlatina, do you think it wise—

MORELL Scarlatina!—rubbish, German measles. I brought it into the house myself from the Pycroft Street School. A parson is like a doctor, my boy: he must face infection as a soldier must face bullets. [
He rises and claps Lexy on the shoulder.
] Catch the measles if you can, Lexy: she'll nurse you; and what a piece of luck that will be for you!—eh?

LEXY
[smiling uneasily]
It's so hard to understand you about Mrs. Morell—

MORELL [
tenderly
] Ah, my boy, get married—get married to a good woman; and then you'll understand. That's a foretaste of what will be best in the Kingdom of Heaven we are trying to establish on earth. That will cure you of dawdling. An honest man feels that he must pay Heaven for every hour of happiness with a good spell of hard, unselfish work to make others happy. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Get a wife like my Candida; and you'll always be in arrear with your repayment.
[He pats LEXY affectionately on the back, and is leaving the room when LEXY calls
to
him.
]

LEXY Oh, wait a bit: I forgot. [
MORELL halts and turns with the door knob in his hand.]
Your father-in-law is coming round to see you. [
MORELL shuts the door again, with a complete change of manner.
]

MORELL
[surprised and not pleased]
Mr. Burgess?

LEXY Yes. I passed him in the park, arguing with somebody. He gave me good day and asked me to let you know that he was coming.

MORELL
[half incredulous]
But he hasn't called here for—I may almost say for years. Are you sure, Lexy? You're not joking, are you?

LEXY [
earnestly
] No, sir, really.

MORELL [
thoughtfully
] Hm! Time for him to take another look at Candida before she grows out of his knowledge. [
He resigns himself to the inevitable, and goes out. LEXY looks after him with beaming, foolish worship.]

LEXY What a good man! What a thorough, loving soul he is!
[He takes MORELL's place at the table, making himself very comfortable as he takes out a cigaret
.]

PROSERPINE [
impatiently, pulling the letter she has been working at off the typewriter and folding
it] Oh, a man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.

LEXY [
shocked
] Oh, Miss Prossy!

PROSERPINE [
rising busily and coming to the stationery case to get an envelope, in which she encloses the letter as she speaks]
Candida here, and Candida there, and Candida everywhere! [
She licks the envelope.]
It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses
[thumping the envelope to make it stick]
to hear a perfectly commonplace woman raved about in that absurd manner merely because she's got good hair, and a tolerable figure.

LEXY
[with reproachful gravity]
I think her extremely beautiful, Miss Garnett. [
He takes the photograph up; looks at it; and adds, with even greater impressiveness
] Extremely beautiful. How fine her eyes are!

PROSERPINE Her eyes are not a bit better than mine—now!
[He puts down the photograph and stares austerely at her.]
And you know very well that you think me dowdy and second rate enough.

LEXY [
rising majestically
] Heaven forbid that I should think of any of God's creatures in such a way! [
He moves softly away from her across the room to the neighbourhood of the bookcase.
]

PROSERPINE Thank you. That's very nice and comforting.

LEXY [
saddened by her depravity]
I had no idea you had any feeling against Mrs. Morell.

PROSERPINE [
indignantly
] I have no feeling against her. She's very nice, very good-hearted: I'm very fond of her and can appreciate her real qualities far better than any man can. [
He shakes his head sadly and turns to the bookcase, looking along the shelves for a volume. She follows him with intense pepperiness.] You don't believe
me?
[He turns and faces her. She pounces at him with spitfire energy.
] You think I'm jealous. Oh, what a profound knowledge of the human heart you have, Mr. Lexy Mill! How well you know the weaknesses of Woman, don't you? It must be so nice to be a man and have a fine penetrating intellect instead of mere emotions like us, and to know that the reason we don't share your amorous delusions is that we're all jealous of one another!
[She abandons him with a toss of her shoulders, and crosses to the fire to warm her hands.
]

LEXY Ah, if you women only had the same clue to Man's strength that you have to his weakness, Miss Prossy, there would be no Woman Question.
⁵

PROSERPINE [
over her shoulder, as she stoops, holding her hands to the blaze
] Where did you hear Morell say that? You didn't invent it yourself: you're not clever enough.

LEXY That's quite true. I am not ashamed of owing him that, as I owe him so many other spiritual truths. He said it at the annual conference of the Women's Liberal Federation. Allow me to add that though they didn't appreciate it, I, a mere man, did.
[He turns to the bookcase again, hoping that this may leave her crushed.]

PROSERPINE
[putting her hair straight at the little panel of mirror in the mantelpiece
] Well, when you talk to me, give me your own ideas, such as they are, and not his. You never cut a poorer figure than when you are trying to imitate him.

LEXY
[stung]
I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.

PROSERPINE
[coming at him again on her way back to her work
] Yes, you do: you imitate him. Why do you tuck your umbrella under your left arm instead of carrying it in your hand like anyone else? Why do you walk with your chin stuck out before you, hurrying along with that eager look in your eyes—you, who never get up before half past nine in the morning? Why do you say “knoaledge” in church, though you always say “knolledge” in private conversation! Bah! do you think I don't know? [
She
goes back to the
typewriter.
] Here, come and set about your work: we've wasted enough time for one morning. Here's a copy of the diary for to-day. [
She hands him a memorandum.
]

LEXY [
deeply offended
] Thank you. [
He takes it and stands at the table with his back to her, reading it. She begins to transcribe her shorthand notes on the typewriter without troubling herself about his feelings. MR. BURGESS enters unannounced. He is a man of sixty, made coarse and sordid by the compulsory selfishness of petty commerce, and later on softened into sluggish bumptiousness by overfeeding and commercial success. A vulgar, ignorant, guzzling man, offensive and contemptuous to people whose labor is cheap, respectful to wealth and rank, and quite sincere and without rancour or envy in both attitudes. Finding him without talent, the world has offered him no decently paid work except ignoble work, and he has become in consequence, somewhat hoggish. But he has no suspicion of this himself, and honestly regards his commercial prosperity as the inevitable and socially wholesome triumph of the ability, industry, shrewdness and experience in business of a man who in private is easy-going, affectionate and humorously convivial to a fault. Corporeally, he is a podgy man, with a square, clean shaven face and a square beard under his chin; dust colored, with a patch of grey in the centre, and small watery blue eyes with a plaintively sentimental expression, which he transfers easily to his voice by his habit of pompously intoning his sentences.
]

BURGESS
[stopping on the threshold, and looking round]
They told me Mr. Morell was here.

PROSERPINE
[rising]
He's upstairs. I'll fetch him for you.

BURGESS
[staring boorishly at her]
You're not the same young lady as hused to typewrite for him?

PROSERPINE No.

BURGESS
[assenting]
No: she was young-er.
[MISS GARNETT stolidly stares at him; then goes out with great dignity. He receives this quite obtusely, and crosses to the hearth-rug, where he turns and spreads himself with his back to the fire.]
Startin' on your rounds, Mr. Mill?

LEXY [
folding his paper and pocketing it]
Yes: I must be off presently.

BURGESS
[momentously]
Don't let me detain you, Mr. Mill. What I come about is private between me and Mr. Morell.

LEXY
[huffily]
I have no intention of intruding, I am sure, Mr. Burgess. Good morning.