Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (83 page)

LADY UTTERWORD I’m sure I beg your pardon. I never heard of you.

MANGAN Let me tell you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime Minister of this country asked me to join the Government without even going through the nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a great public department.

LADY UTTERWORD As a Conservative or a Liberal?

MANGAN No such nonsense. As a practical business man. [
They all burst out laughing.
] What are you all laughing at?

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, Alfred, Alfred!

ELLIE You! who have to get my father to do everything for you!

MRS HUSHABYE You! who are afraid of your own workmen!

HECTOR You! with whom three women have been playing cat and mouse all the evening!

LADY UTTERWORD You must have given an immense sum to the party funds, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN Not a penny out of my own pocket. The syndicate found the money: they knew how useful I should be to them in the Government.

LADY UTTERWORD This is most interesting and unexpected, pected, Mr Mangan. And what have your administrative achievements been, so far?

MANGAN Achievements? Well, I don’t know what you call achievements; but I’ve jolly well put a stop to the games of the other fellows in the other departments. Every man of them thought he was going to save the country all by himself, and do me out of the credit and out of my chance of a title. I took good care that if they wouldn’t let me do it they shouldn’t do it themselves either. I may not know anything about my own machinery; but I know how to stick a ramrod into the other fellow’s. And now they all look the biggest fools going.

HECTOR And in heaven’s name, what do you look like?

MANGAN I look like the fellow that was too clever for all the others, don’t I? If that isn’t a triumph of practical business, what is?

HECTOR Is this England, or is it a madhouse?

LADY UTTERWORD Do you expect to save the country, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN Well, who else will? Will your Mr Randall save it?

LADY UTTERWORD Randall the rotter! Certainly not.

MANGAN Will your brother-in-law save it with his moustache and his fine talk?

HECTOR Yes, if they will let me.

MANGAN [
sneering
] Ah!
Will
they let you?

HECTOR No. They prefer you.

MANGAN Very well then, as you’re in a world where I’m appreciated and you’re not, you’d best be civil to me, hadn’t you? Who else is there but me?

LADY UTTERWORD There is Hastings. Get rid of your ridiculous sham democracy; and give Hastings the necessary powers, and a good supply of bamboo to bring the British native to his senses: he will save the country with the greatest ease.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER It had better be lost. Any fool can govern with a stick in his hand.
I
could govern that way. It is not God’s way. The man is a numskull.

LADY UTTERWORD The man is worth all of you rolled into one. What do you say, Miss Dunn?

ELLIE I think my father would do very well if people did not put upon him and cheat him and despise him because he is so good.

MANGAN [
contemptuously
] I think I see Mazzini Dunn getting into parliament or pushing his way into the Government. We’ve not come to that yet, thank God! What do you say, Mrs Hushabye?

MRS HUSHABYE Oh,
I
say it matters very little which of you governs the country so long as we govern you.

HECTOR We? Who is we, pray?

MRS HUSHABYE The devil’s granddaughters, dear. The lovely women.

HECTOR [
raising his hands as before
] Fall, I say, and deliver us from the lures of Satan!

ELLIE There seems to be nothing real in the world except my father and Shakespeare. Marcus’s tigers are false; Mr Mangan’s millions are false; there is nothing really strong and true about Hesione but her beautiful black hair; and Lady Utterword’s is too pretty to be real. The one thing that was left to me was the Captain’s seventh degree of concentration; and that turns out to be—

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Rum.

LADY UTTERWORD
[placidly]
A good deal of my hair is quite genuine. The Duchess of Dithering offered me fifty guineas for this
[touching her forehead
] under the impression that it was a transformation; but it is all natural except the color.

MANGAN [
wildly
] Look here: I’m going to take off all my clothes [he
begins tearing off his coat
].

MRS HUSHABYE [
catching his arm and stopping him
] Alfred, for shame! Are you mad?

MANGAN Shame! What shame is there in this house? Let’s all strip stark naked. We may as well do the thing thoroughly when we’re about it. We’ve stripped ourselves morally naked: well, let us strip ourselves physically naked as well, and see how we like it. I tell you I can’t bear this. I was brought up to be respectable. I don’t mind the women dyeing their hair and the men drinking: it’s human nature. But it’s not human nature to tell everybody about it. Every time one of you opens your mouth I go like this [
he cowers as
if to
avoid a missile
]
,
afraid of what will come next. How are we to have any self-respect if we don’t keep it up that we’re better than we really are?

LADY UTTERWORD I quite sympathize with you, Mr Mangan. I have been through it all; and I know by experience that men and women are delicate plants and must be cultivated under glass. Our family habit of throwing stones in all directions and letting the air in is not only unbearably rude, but positively dangerous. Still, there is no use catching physical colds as well as moral ones; so please keep your clothes on.

MANGAN I’ll do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a child or a grown man? I won’t stand this mothering tyranny. I’ll go back to the city, where I’m respected and made much of.

MRS HUSHABYE Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city. Think of Ellie’s youth!

ELLIE Think of Hesione’s eyes and hair!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Think of this garden in which you are not a dog barking to keep the truth out!

HECTOR Think of Lady Utterword’s beauty! her good sense! her style!

LADY UTTERWORD Flatterer. Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere: that is the essential point, isn’t it?

MANGAN [
surrendering
] All right: all right. I’m done. Have it your own way. Only let me alone. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels when you all start on me like this. I’ll stay. I’ll marry her. I’ll do anything for a quiet life. Are you satisfied now?

ELLIE No. I never really intended to make you marry me, Mr Mangan. Never in the depths of my soul. I only wanted to feel my strength: to know that you could not escape if I chose to take you.

MANGAN [
indignantly
] What! Do you mean to say you are going to throw me over after my acting so handsome?

LADY UTTERWORD I should not be too hasty, Miss Dunn. You can throw Mr Mangan over at any time up to the last moment. Very few men in his position go bankrupt. You can live very comfortably on his reputation for immense wealth.

ELLIE I cannot commit bigamy, Lady Utterword.

ELLIE Only half an hour ago I became Captain Shotover’s white wife.

MRS HUSHABYE Ellie! What nonsense! Where?

ELLIE In heaven, where all true marriages are made.

LADY UTTERWORD Really, Miss Dunn! Really, papa!

MANGAN He told me
I
was too old! And him a mummy!

HECTOR [
quoting Shelley
]

ELLIE Yes: I, Ellie Dunn, give my broken heart and my strong sound soul to its natural captain, my spiritual husband and second father.

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, that’s very clever of you, pettikins. Very clever. Alfred, you could never have lived up to Ellie.You must be content with a little share of me.

MANGAN [
sniffing and wiping his eyes
] It isn’t kind—[
his
emotion chokes him.
]
.

LADY UTTERWORD You are well out of it, Mr Mangan. Miss Dunn is the most conceited young woman I have met since I came back to England.

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, Ellie isn’t conceited. Are you, pettikins?

ELLIE I know my strength now, Hesione.

MANGAN Brazen, I call you. Brazen.

MRS HUSHABYE Tut, tut, Alfred: don’t be rude. Don’t you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Aren’t you happy, you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful enough to please the most fastidious man: we live and love and have not a care in the world. We women have managed all that for you. Why in the name of common sense do you go on as if you were two miserable wretches? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER I tell you happiness is no good. You can be happy when you are only half alive. I am happier now I am half dead than ever I was in my prime. But there is no blessing on my happiness.

ELLIE [
her face lighting up
] Life with a blessing! that is what I want. Now I know the real reason why I couldn’t marry Mr Mangan: there would be no blessing on our marriage. There is a blessing on my broken heart. There is a blessing on your beauty, Hesione. There is a blessing on your father’s spirit. Even on the lies of Marcus there is a blessing; but on Mr Mangan’s money there is none.

MANGAN I don’t understand a word of that.

ELLIE Neither do I. But I know it means something.

MANGAN Don’t say there was any difficulty about the blessing. I was ready to get a bishop to marry us.

MRS HUSHABYE Isn’t he a fool, pettikins?

HECTOR [
fiercely
] Do not scorn the man. We are all fools.

MRS HUSHABYE Oh! here comes the only man who ever resisted me. What’s the matter, Mr Dunn? Is the house on fire?

MAZZINI Oh, no: nothing’s the matter: but really it’s impossible to go to sleep with such an interesting conversation going on under one’s window, and on such a beautiful night too. I just had to come down and join you all. What has it all been about?

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, wonderful things, soldier of freedom.

HECTOR For example, Mangan, as a practical business man, has tried to undress himself and has failed ignominiously; whilst you, as an idealist, have succeeded brilliantly.

MAZZINI I hope you don’t mind my being like this, Mrs Hushabye. [
He sits down on the campstool.
]

MRS HUSHABYE On the contrary, I could wish you always like that.

LADY UTTERWORD Your daughter’s match is off, Mr Dunn. It seems that Mr Mangan, whom we all supposed to be a man of property, owns absolutely nothing.

MAZZINI Well, of course I knew that, Lady Utterword. But if people believe in him and are always giving him money, whereas they don’t believe in me and never give me any, how can I ask poor Ellie to depend on what I can do for her?

MANGAN Don’t you run away with this idea that I have nothing. I—

HECTOR Oh, don’t explain. We understand. You have a couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found out. That’s the reality of your millions.

MAZZINI Oh no, no, no. He is quite honest: the businesses are genuine and perfectly legal.

HECTOR [
disgusted
] Yah! Not even a great swindler!

MANGAN So you think. But I’ve been too many for some honest men, for all that.

LADY UTTERWORD There is no pleasing you, Mr Mangan. You are determined to be neither rich nor poor, honest nor dishonest.

MANGAN There you go again. Ever since I came into this silly house I have been made to look like a fool, though I’m as good a man in this house as in the city.