Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (22 page)

UNDERSHAFT I can take two with me in a little motor I am experimenting with for field use. You wont mind its being rather unfashionable. It’s not painted yet; but it’s bullet proof.

LOMAX
[appalled at the prospect of confronting WILTON CRESCENT in an unpainted motor] Oh I say!

SARAH The carriage for me, thank you. Barbara doesnt mind what shes seen in.

LOMAX I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car being a guy? Because of course if you do I’ll go in it. Still—

CUSINS I prefer it.

LOMAX Thanks awfully, old man. Come, Sarah.
[He hurries out to secure his seat in the carriage. SARAH follows him.]

CUSINS
[moodily walking across
to
LADY BRITOMART’s writing table]
Why are we two coming to this Works Department of Hell? that is what I ask myself.

BARBARA I have always thought of it as a sort of pit where lost creatures with blackened faces stirred up smoky fires and were driven and tormented by my father? Is it like that, dad?

UNDERSHAFT
[scandalized]
My dear! It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town.

CUSINS With a Methodist chapel? Oh do say theres a Methodist chapel.

UNDERSHAFT There are two: a Primitive one
^bt
and a sophis ticated one. There is even an Ethical Society;
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it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the High Explosives Sheds they object to the presence of Agnostics as unsafe.

CUSINS And yet they dont object to you!

BARBARA Do they obey all your orders?

UNDERSHAFT I never give them any orders. When I speak to one of them it is “Well, Jones, is the baby doing well? and has Mrs. Jones made a good recovery.” “Nicely, thank you, sir.” And thats all.

CUSINS But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain discipline among your men?

UNDERSHAFT I dont.They do. You see, the one thing Jones wont stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself, and Mrs. Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I dont even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I dont order anybody to do them. I dont say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me.

CUSINS
[revolted]
You really are a—well, what I was saying yesterday.

BARBARA What was he saying yesterday?

UNDERSHAFT Never mind, my dear. He thinks I have made you unhappy. Have I?

BARBARA Do you think I can be happy in this vulgar silly dress? I! who have worn the uniform. Do you understand what you have done to me? Yesterday I had a man’s soul in my hand. I set him in the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your money he turned back to drunkenness and derision.
[With intense conviction.]
I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and you destroyed its body with your explosives—if you murdered Dolly with your horrible guns—I could forgive you if my forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is worse than any murder.

UNDERSHAFT Does my daughter despair so easily? Can you strike a man to the heart and leave no mark on him?

BARBARA
[her face lighting up]
Oh, you are right: he can never be lost now: where was my faith?

CUSINS Oh, clever clever devil!

BARBARA You may be a devil; but God speaks through you sometimes.
[She takes her father’s hands and kisses them.]
You have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though my spirit is troubled.

UNDERSHAFT You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

BARBARA Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this frightful irony. Come, Dolly. [She goes
out.]

CUSINS My guardian angel!
[To UNDERSHAFT.]
Avaunt!
[He follows BARBARA.]

STEPHEN
[quietly, at the writing table]
You must not mind Cusins, father. He is a very amiable good fellow; but he is a Greek scholar and naturally a little eccentric.

UNDERSHAFT Ah, quite so. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you.
[He goes out.
]

STEPHEN
(embarrassed]
Mother—

LADY BRITOMART Dont be apologetic, Stephen. And dont forget that you have outgrown your mother.
[She goes out.] Perivale St. Andrews lies between two Middlesex hills, half climbing the northern one. It is an almost smokeless town of white walls, roofs of narrow green slates or red tiles, tall trees, domes, campaniles, and slender chimney shafts, beautifully situated and beautiful in itself. The best view of it is obtained from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge skittles
^bv
into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests
a
fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by STEPHEN. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a seat.

BARBARA is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold, with
a
fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge
conical bombshell, with a red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction.

BARBARA Well?

CUSINS Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one.

BARBARA Have you found out whether they have done anything for old Peter Shirley.

CUSINS They have found him a job as gatekeeper and time-keeper. He’s frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork, and says he isnt used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid that hes ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery.

BARBARA Poor Peter!

STEPHEN
[enthusiastically)
Have you two seen the place? Why did you leave us?

CUSINS I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and Barbara wanted to make the men talk.

STEPHEN Have you found anything discreditable?

CUSINS No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a cunning old rascal; but it’s all horribly, frightfully, im morally, unanswerably perfect.

SARAH Heavens! what a place!
[She crosses to the trolley.]
Did you see the nursing home!?
[She sits down on the shell.
]

STEPHEN Did you see the libraries and schools!?

SARAH Did you see the ball room and the banqueting chamber in the Town Hall!?

STEPHEN Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund, the building society, the various applications of cooperation!?

UNDERSHAFT Well, have you seen everything? I’m sorry I was called away.
[Indicating the telegrams.]
News from Manchuria.

STEPHEN Good news, I hope.

UNDERSHAFT Very.

STEPHEN Another Japanese victory?

UNDERSHAFT Oh, I dont know. Which side wins does not concern us here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort with three hundred soldiers in it.

CUSINS
[from the platform]
Dummy soldiers?

UNDERSHAFT No: the real thing.
[CUSINS and BARBARA exchange glances. Then CUSINS sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. BARBARA gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation.]
Well, Stephen, what do you think of the place?

STEPHEN Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization. Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of what it all meant—of the wonderful forethought, the power of organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius, the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to myself as I came through your streets “Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War.”
^bw
I have only one misgiving about it all.

UNDERSHAFT Out with it.

STEPHEN Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea at that splendid restaurant—how they gave us all that luxury and cake and jam and cream for threepence I really cannot imagine!—still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is really good for the men’s characters?

UNDERSHAFT Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply dont organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment.

SARAH By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives?

UNDERSHAFT In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed.

LOMAX
[with studied coolness]
My good fellow: you neednt get into a state of nerves. Nothing’s going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldnt be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap.
[He descends and strolls across to SARAH.
]

UNDERSHAFT
[to the foreman]
Anything wrong, Bilton?

BILTON
[with ironic calm]
Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: thats all.

UNDERSHAFT Ah, quite so.
[To LOMAX.]
Do you happen to remember what you did with the match?

LOMAX Oh come! I’m not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away.

BILTON The top of it was red hot inside, sir.

LOMAX Well, suppose it was! I didnt chuck it into any of your messes.

UNDERSHAFT Think no more of it, Mr. Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches?

LOMAX
[offering his box]
Certainly.

UNDERSHAFT Thanks.
[He pockets the matches.]

LOMAX
[lecturing to the company generally
] You know, these high explosives dont go off like gunpowder, except when theyre in a gun. When theyre spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper.
[Warming to the scientific interest of the subject.]
Did you know that, Undershaft?
³²
Have you ever tried?

UNDERSHAFT Not on a large scale, Mr. Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home.
[Bilton looks puzzled. ]

SARAH Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it’s your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly.
[BILTON gives it up and retires into the shed.
]

LOMAX My ownest, there is no danger.
[He sits beside her on the shell.
]

LADY BRITOMART
[coming impetuously between UNDERSHAFT and the deck chair]
Andrew: you shouldnt have let me see this place.

UNDERSHAFT Why, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART Never mind why: you shouldnt have: thats all. To think of all that
[indicating the town]
being yours! and that you have kept it to yourself all these years!