Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

LOMAX [
delighted
] Are you? Then I’ll get it. [
He goes upstairs for
the
instrument.
]

UNDERSHAFT Do you play, Barbara?

BARBARA Only the tambourine. But Cholly’s teaching me the concertina.

UNDERSHAFT Is Cholly also a member of the Salvation Army?

BARBARA No: he says it’s bad form to be a dissenter.
^ao
But I dont despair of Cholly. I made him come yesterday to a meeting at the dock gates, and took the collection in his hat.

LADY BRITOMART It is not my doing, Andrew. Barbara is old enough to take her own way. She has no father to advise her.

BARBARA Oh yes she has. There are no orphans in the Salvation Army.

UNDERSHAFT Your father there has a great many children and plenty of experience, eh?

BARBARA [
looking at him with quick interest and nodding
] Just so. How did you come to understand that?
[LOMAX is heard at the door trying the concertina.
]

LADY BRITOMART Come in, Charles. Play us something at once.

LOMAX Righto! [
He sits down in his former place, and preludes.]

UNDERSHAFT One moment, Mr. Lomax. I am rather interested in the Salvation Army. Its motto might be my own: Blood and Fire.

LOMAX
[shocked]
But not your sort of blood and fire, you know.

UNDERSHAFT My sort of blood cleanses: my sort of fire purifies.

BARBARA So do ours. Come down to-morrow to my shelter—the West Ham shelter—and see what we’re doing. We’re going to march to a great meeting in the Assembly Hall at Mile End. Come and see the shelter and then march with us: it will do you a lot of good. Can you play anything?

UNDERSHAFT In my youth I earned pennies, and even shillings occasionally, in the streets and in public house parlors by my natural talent for stepdancing. Later on, I became a member of the Undershaft orchestral society, and performed passably on the tenor trombone.

LOMAX
[scandalized]
Oh I say!

BARBARA Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the trombone, thanks to the Army.

LOMAX
[to BARBARA, still rather shocked]
Yes; but what about the cannon business, dont you know?
[To UNDERSHAFT.]
Getting into heaven is not exactly in your line, is it?

LADY BRITOMART Charles!!!

LOMAX Well; but it stands to reason, dont it? The cannon business may be necessary and all that: we cant get on without cannons; but it isnt right, you know. On the other hand, there may be a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army—I belong to the Established Church
^ap
myself—but still you cant deny that it’s religion; and you cant go against religion, can you? At least unless youre downright immoral, dont you know.

UNDERSHAFT You hardly appreciate my position, Mr. Lomax—

LOMAX [
hastily
] I’m not saying anything against you personally, you know.

UNDERSHAFT Quite so, quite so. But consider for a moment. Here I am, a manufacturer of mutilation and murder. I find myself in a specially amiable humor just now because, this morning, down at the foundry, we blew twenty-seven dummy soldiers into fragments with a gun which formerly destroyed only thirteen.

LOMAX
[leniently]
Well, the more destructive war becomes, the sooner it will be abolished, eh?

UNDERSHAFT Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it. No, Mr. Lomax: I am obliged to you for making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it. I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their business in watertight compartments. All the spare money my trade rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always done so; and I always shall. Therefore your Christmas card moralities of peace on earth and goodwill among men are of no use to me. Your Christianity, which enjoins you to resist not evil, and to turn the other cheek, would make me a bankrupt. M y morality—m y religion—must have a place for cannons and torpedoes in it.

STEPHEN
[coldly
—
almost sullenly]
You speak as if there were half a dozen moralities and religions to choose from, instead of one true morality and one true religion.

UNDERSHAFT For me there is only one true morality; but it might not fit you, as you do not manufacture aerial battleships. There is only one true morality for every man; but every man has not the same true morality.

LOMAX
[overtaxed]
Would you mind saying that again? I didnt quite follow it.

CUSINS It’s quite simple. As Euripides says, one man’s meat is another man’s poison morally as well as physically.

UNDERSHAFT Precisely.

LOMAX Oh, t hat. Yes, yes, yes. True. True.

STEPHEN In other words, some men are honest and some are scoundrels.

BARBARA Bosh. There are no scoundrels.

UNDERSHAFT Indeed? Are there any good men?

BARBARA No. Not one. There are neither good men nor scoundrels: there are just children of one Father; and the sooner they stop calling one another names the better. You neednt talk to me: I know them. Ive had scores of them through my hands: scoundrels, criminals, infidels, philanthropists, missionaries, county councillors, all sorts. Theyre all just the same sort of sinner; and theres the same salvation ready for them all.

UNDERSHAFT May I ask have you ever saved a maker of cannons ?

BARBARA No. Will you let me try?

UNDERSHAFT Well, I will make a bargain with you. If I go to see you to-morrow in your Salvation Shelter, will you come the day after to see me in my cannon works?

BARBARA Take care. It may end in your giving up the cannons for the sake of the Salvation Army.

UNDERSHAFT Are you sure it will not end in your giving up the Salvation Army for the sake of the cannons?

BARBARA I will take my chance of that.

UNDERSHAFT And I will take my chance of the other.
[They shake hands on it.]
Where is your shelter?

BARBARA In West Ham. At the sign of the cross. Ask anybody in Canning Town. Where are your works?

UNDERSHAFT In Perivale St. Andrews. At the sign of the sword. Ask anybody in Europe.

LOMAX Hadnt I better play something?

BARBARA Yes. Give us Onward, Christian Soldiers.

LOMAX Well, thats rather a strong order to begin with, dont you know. Suppose I sing Thourt passing hence, my brother. It’s much the same tune.

BARBARA It’s too melancholy. You get saved, Cholly; and youll pass hence, my brother, without making such a fuss about it.

LADY BRITOMART Really, Barbara, you go on as if religion were a pleasant subject. Do have some sense of propriety.

UNDERSHAFT I do not find it an unpleasant subject, my dear. It is the only one that capable people really care for.

LADY BRITOMART
[looking at her watch]
Well, if you are determined to have it, I insist on having it in a proper and respectable way. Charles: ring for prayers.
[General amazement. STEPHEN rises in dismay.
]

LOMAX
[risingJ
Oh I say!

UNDERSHAFT
[rising]
I am afraid I must be going.

LADY BRITOMART You cannot go now, Andrew: it would be most improper. Sit down. What will the servants think?

UNDERSHAFT My dear: I have conscientious scruples. May I suggest a compromise? If Barbara will conduct a little service in the drawingroom, with Mr. Lomax as organist, I will attend it willingly. I will even take part, if a trombone can be procured.

LADY BRITOMART Dont mock, Andrew.

UNDERSHAFT
[shocked
—
to BARBARA]
You dont think I am mocking, my love, I hope.

BARBARA No, of course not; and it wouldnt matter if you were: half the Army came to their first meeting for a lark.
[Rising.]
Come along. Come, Dolly. Come, Cholly.
[She goes out with UNDERSHAFT, who opens the door for her. CUSINS rises.]

LADY BRITOMART I will not be disobeyed by everybody. Adolphus: sit down. Charles: you may go. You are not fit for prayers: you cannot keep your countenance.

LOMAX Oh I say!
[He goes out.]

LADY BRITOMART [
continuing
] But you, Adolphus, can behave yourself if you choose to. I insist on your staying.

CUSINS My dear Lady Brit: there are things in the family prayer book that I couldnt bear to hear you say.

LADY BRITOMART What things, pray?

CUSINS Well, you would have to say before all the servants that we have done things we ought not to have done, and left undone things we ought to have done, and that there is no health in us. I cannot bear to hear you doing yourself such an injustice, and Barbara such an injustice. As for myself, I flatly deny it: I have done my best. I shouldnt dare to marry Barbara—I couldnt look you in the face—if it were true. So I must go to the drawingroom.

LADY BRITOMART
[offended]
Well, go.
[He starts for the door.]
And remember this, Adolphus
[he turns to listen]:
I have a very strong suspicion that you went to the Salvation Army to worship Barbara and nothing else. And I quite appreciate the very clever way in which you systematically humbug me. I have found you out. Take care Barbara doesnt. Thats all.

CUSINS
[with unruffled sweetness]
Dont tell on me.
[He goes out.]

LADY BRITOMART Sarah: if you want to go, go. Anything’s better than to sit there as if you wished you were a thousand miles away.

SARAH [
languidty
] Very well, mamma.
[She goes.] LADY BRITOMART, with a sudden flounce, gives way to a little gust of tears.

STEPHEN
[going to her]
Mother: whats the matter?

LADY BRITOMART
[swishing away her tears with her handkerchief]
Nothing. Foolishness. You can go with him, too, if you like, and leave me with the servants.

STEPHEN Oh, you mustnt think that, mother. I—I dont like him.

LADY BRITOMART The others do. That is the injustice of a woman’s lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.

STEPHEN He has not stolen our affection from you. It is only curiosity.

LADY BRITOMART
(violently]
I wont be consoled, Stephen. There is nothing the matter with me.
[She rises and goes towards the door
.]

STEPHEN Where are you going, mother?

LADY BRITOMART To the drawingroom, of course.
[She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door opens.] Are you coming,
Stephen?

STEPHEN No. Certainly not.
[She goes. He sits down on the settee, with compressed lips and an expression Of strong dislike.]

 

END OF ACT I.

ACT II