Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (68 page)

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Authors: George Bernard Shaw

BOOK: Man and Superman and Three Other Plays
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RAMSDEN
[who has been staring at MENDOZA]
I seem to remember the face of your friend here.
[MENDOZA rises politely and advances with a smile between ANN and RAMSDEN].
HECTOR Why, so do I.
OCTAVIUS I know you perfectly well, sir; but I can't think where I have met you.
MENDOZA
[to VIOLET]
Do you remember me, madam?
VIOLET Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.
MENDOZA It was at the Savoy Hotel. [
To HECTOR
] You, sir, used to come with this lady [
VIOLET
] to lunch. [To
OCTAVIUS
] You, sir, often brought this lady
[ANN]
and her mother to dinner on your way to the Lyceum Theatre. [
To RAMSDEN
] You, sir, used to come to supper, with [
dropping his voice to a confidential but perfectly audible whisper]
several different ladies.
RAMSDEN [
angrily
] Well, what is that to you, pray?
OCTAVIUS Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another before this trip, you and Malone!
VIOLET [
vexed
] I suppose this person was the manager.
MENDOZA The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you all. I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me that you all enjoyed your visits very much.
VIOLET What impertinence! [
She turns her back on him, and goes up the hill with HECTOR].
RAMSDEN That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies to treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have waited on them at table.
MENDOZA Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The ladies followed your example. However, this display of the unfortunate manners of your class closes the incident. For the future, you will please address me with the respect due to a stranger and fellow traveller.
[He turns haughtily away and resumes his presidential seat
]
.
TANNER There! I have found one man on my journey capable of reasonable conversation; and you all instinctively insult him. Even the New Man is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved just like a miserable gentleman.
STRAKER Gentleman! Not me.
RAMSDEN Really, Tanner, this tone—
ANN Don't mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this
time [she takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join VIOLET and HECTOR. OCTAVIUS follows her, dog-like
]
.
VIOLET [
calling from the hill
] Here are the soldiers. They are getting out of their motors.
DUVAL [
panicstricken
] Oh, nom de Dieu!
THE ANARCHIST Fools: the State is about to crush you because you spared it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the bourgeoisie.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [
argumentative to the last
] On the contrary, only by capturing the State machine—
THE ANARCHIST It is going to capture you.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [
his anguish culminating
] Ow, chack it. Wot are we ere for? otare we wytin for?
MENDOZA
[between his teeth]
Go on. Talk politics, you idiots: nothing sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.
The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with their rifles. The brigands, struggling with an overwhelming impulse to hide behind one another, look as unconcerned as they can. MENDOZA rises superbly, with undaunted front. The officer in command steps down from the road into the amphitheatre; looks hard at the brigands; and then inquiringly at TANNER.
THE OFFICER Who are these men, Señor Ingles?
TANNER My escort.
MENDOZA, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows prcifoundly. An irrepressible grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They touch their hats, except the ANARCHIST, who defies the State with folded arms.
ACT IV
The garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it is like must go to Granada and see. One may prosaically specify a group of hills dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one of the hills, and a considerable town in the valley, approached by dusty white roads in which the children, no matter what they are doing or thinking about, automatically whine for halfpence and reach out little clutching brown palms for them; but there is nothing in this description except the Alhambra, the begging, and the color of the roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as Spain. The difference is that the Surrey hills are comparatively small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the amenity which conceals their size does not compromise their dignity.
This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the hill. Between us and this platform is a flower garden with a circular basin and fountain in the centre, surrounded by geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew trees in the genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn; so we reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a couple more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of the town up the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond it to where, in the remotest distance, they become mountains. On our left is the villa, accessible by steps from the left hand corner of the garden. Returning from the platform through the garden and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves the villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary interests on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little iron garden table with books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a chair beside it. A chair on the right has also a couple of open books upon it. There are no newspapers, a circumstance which, with the absence of games, might lead an intelligent spectator to the most far reaching conclusions as to the sort of people who live in the villa. Such speculations are checked, however, on this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a little gate in a paling on our left, of Henry Straker in his professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman, and follows him on to the lawn.
This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock coat, tall silk hat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate: one who would dress thus for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. And since he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in a working dress of any kind he would look dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion, stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the corners, and a dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes with age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a perceptible menace that he has other methods in reserve if necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he is not to be feared; for there is something pathetic about him at times, as if the huge commercial machine which has worked him into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own way and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose native intonation has clung to him through many changes of place and rank. One can only guess that the original material of his speech was perhaps the surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of speech that occurs in London, Glasgow, Dublin and big cities generally has been at work on it so long that nobody but an arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue now; for its music is almost gone, though its surliness is still perceptible. Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with implacable contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his own language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky species, but occasionally with indignant alarm when the old gentleman shews signs of intending his Irish nonsense to be taken seriously.
STRAKER I'll go tell the young lady. She said you'd prefer to stay here
[he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].
MALONE [
who has been looking round him with lively curiosity
] The young lady? That's Miss Violet, eh?
STRAKER
[stopping on the steps with sudden suspicion]
Well, you know, don't you?
MALONE Do I?
STRAKER
[his temper rising
] Well, do you or don't you?
MALONE What business is that of yours?
STRAKER, now highly indignant, comes back from the steps and confronts the visitor.
STRAKER I'll tell you what business it is of mine. Miss Robinson—
MALONE
[interrupting]
Oh, her name is Robinson, is it? Thank you.
STRAKER Why, you don't know even her name?
MALONE Yes I do, now that you've told me.
STRAKER [
after a moment of stupefaction at the old man's readiness in repartee
] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I took that note to?
MALONE Who else did you take it to, pray?
STRAKER I took it to Mr. Ector Malone, at Miss Robinson's request, see? Miss Robinson is not my principal: I took it to oblige her. I know Mr. Malone; and he ain't you, not by a long chalk. At the hotel they told me that your name is Ector Malone—
MALONE Hector Malone.
STRAKER [
with calm superiority
] Hector in your own country: that's what comes o livin in provincial places like Ireland and America. Over here you're Ector: if you avn't noticed it before you soon will.
The growing strain of the conversation is here relieved by VIOLET, who has sallied from the villa and through the garden to the steps, which she now descends, coming very opportunely between MALONE and STRAKER.
VIOLET [
to STRAKER
] Did you take my message?
STRAKER Yes, miss. I took it to the hotel and sent it up, expecting to see young Mr. Malone. Then out walks this gent, and says it's all right and he'll come with me. So as the hotel people said he was Mr. Ector Malone, I fetched him. And now he goes back on what he said. But if he isn't the gentleman you meant, say the word: it's easy enough to fetch him back again.
MALONE I should esteem it a great favor if I might have a short conversation with you, madam. I am Hector's father, as this bright Britisher would have guessed in the course of another hour or so.
STRAKER [
coolly defiant
] No, not in another year or so. When we've ad you as long to polish up as we've ad im, perhaps you'll begin to look a little bit up to is mark. At present you fall a long way short. You've got too many aitches, for one thing. [
To VIOLET, amiably
] All right, Miss: you want to talk to him: I shan't intrude. [
He nods affably to MALONE and goes out through the little gate in the paling
]
.
VIOLET [
very civilly
] I am so sorry, Mr. Malone, if that man has been rude to you. But what can we do? He is our chauffeur.
MALONE Your hwat?
VIOLET The driver of our automobile. He can drive a motor car at seventy miles an hour, and mend it when it breaks down. We are dependent on our motor cars; and our motor cars are dependent on him; so of course we are dependent on him.
MALONE I've noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he's dependent on. However, you needn't apologize for your man: I made him talk on purpose. By doing so I learnt that you're staying here in Grannida with a party of English, including my son Hector.
VIOLET [
conversationally
] Yes. We intended to go to Nice; but we had to follow a rather eccentric member of our party who started first and came here. Won't you sit down? [
She clears the nearest chair of the two books on it].
MALONE [
impressed by
this
attention
] Thank you.
[He sits down, examining her curiously as she goes to the iron table to put down the books. When she turns to him again, he says
] Miss Robinson, I believe?
VIOLET [
sitting down
] Yes.
MALONE [
taking a letter from his pocket
] Your note to Hector runs as follows
[VIOLET is unable to repress a start. He pauses quietly to take out and put on his spectacles, which have gold rims]:
“Dearest: they have all gone to the Alhambra for the afternoon. I have shammed headache and have the garden all to myself. Jump into Jack's motor: Straker will rattle you here in a jiffy. Quick, quick, quick. Your loving Violet.”
[He looks at her; but by this time she has recovered herself, and meets his spectacles with perfect composure. He continues slowly]
Now I don't know on what terms young people associate in English society; but in America that note would be considered to imply a very considerable degree of affectionate intimacy between the parties.

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