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\title{Heartbreak House}


\author{George Bernard Shaw}

\maketitle
\vspace*{\stretch{1}}

\noindent This public-domain (U.S.) text was produced by Eve Sobol,
South Bend, Indiana, USA. The Project Gutenberg edition ({}``hrtbk10'')
was subsequently converted to \LaTeX{} using \textbf{GutenMark} software
and re-edited (for formatting only) by Ron Burkey. Report problems
to info@sandroid.org.

\begin{center}Revision: A\\
 Date: 01/07/03\end{center}

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\frontmatter

\pagestyle{myheadings} {\small \tableofcontents{}}

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\mainmatter


\chapter*{\raggedright HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND\\
HORSEBACK HALL}

\markboth{Heartbreak House}{PREFACE}


\section*{\raggedright Where Heartbreak House Stands}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Where Heartbreak House Stands}

Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows
this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When
the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional
diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy
even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian playwright, Tchekov,
had produced four fascinating dramatic studies of Heartbreak House,
of which three, \emph{The Cherry Orchard}, \emph{Uncle Vanya}, and
\emph{The Seagull}, had been performed in England. Tolstoy, in his
\emph{Fruits of Enlightenment}, had shown us through it in his most
ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did not waste any sympathy
on it: it was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul;
and he knew that our utter enervation and futilization in that overheated
drawingroom atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control
of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences
which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not
disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about
the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the
pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of
opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly
and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov,
more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating
themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by
the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple in exploiting and even
flattering their charm.


\section*{\raggedright The Inhabitants}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Inhabitants}

Tchekov's plays, being less lucrative than swings and roundabouts,
got no further in England, where theatres are only ordinary commercial
affairs, than a couple of performances by the Stage Society. We stared
and said, {}``How Russian!'' They did not strike me in that way.
Just as Ibsen's intensely Norwegian plays exactly fitted every middle
and professional class suburb in Europe, these intensely Russian plays
fitted all the country houses in Europe in which the pleasures of
music, art, literature, and the theatre had supplanted hunting, shooting,
fishing, flirting, eating, and drinking. The same nice people, the
same utter futility. The nice people could read; some of them could
write; and they were the sole repositories of culture who had social
opportunities of contact with our politicians, administrators, and
newspaper proprietors, or any chance of sharing or influencing their
activities. But they shrank from that contact. They hated politics.
They did not wish to realize Utopia for the common people: they wished
to realize their favorite fictions and poems in their own lives; and,
when they could, they lived without scruple on incomes which they
did nothing to earn. The women in their girlhood made themselves look
like variety theatre stars, and settled down later into the types
of beauty imagined by the previous generation of painters. They took
the only part of our society in which there was leisure for high culture,
and made it an economic, political and; as far as practicable, a moral
vacuum; and as Nature, abhorring the vacuum, immediately filled it
up with sex and with all sorts of refined pleasures, it was a very
delightful place at its best for moments of relaxation. In other moments
it was disastrous. For prime ministers and their like, it was a veritable
Capua.


\section*{\raggedright Horseback Hall}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Horseback Hall}

But where were our front benchers to nest if not here? The alternative
to Heartbreak House was Horseback Hall, consisting of a prison for
horses with an annex for the ladies and gentlemen who rode them, hunted
them, talked about them, bought them and sold them, and gave nine-tenths
of their lives to them, dividing the other tenth between charity,
churchgoing (as a substitute for religion), and conservative electioneering
(as a substitute for politics). It is true that the two establishments
got mixed at the edges. Exiles from the library, the music room, and
the picture gallery would be found languishing among the stables,
miserably discontented; and hardy horsewomen who slept at the first
chord of Schumann were born, horribly misplaced, into the garden of
Klingsor; but sometimes one came upon horsebreakers and heartbreakers
who could make the best of both worlds. As a rule, however, the two
were apart and knew little of one another; so the prime minister folk
had to choose between barbarism and Capua. And of the two atmospheres
it is hard to say which was the more fatal to statesmanship.


\section*{\raggedright Revolution on the Shelf}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Revolution on the Shelf}

Heartbreak House was quite familiar with revolutionary ideas on paper.
It aimed at being advanced and freethinking, and hardly ever went
to church or kept the Sabbath except by a little extra fun at weekends.
When you spent a Friday to Tuesday in it you found on the shelf in
your bedroom not only the books of poets and novelists, but of revolutionary
biologists and even economists. Without at least a few plays by myself
and Mr Granville Barker, and a few stories by Mr H.\ G.\ Wells,
Mr Arnold Bennett, and Mr John Galsworthy, the house would have been
out of the movement. You would find Blake among the poets, and beside
him Bergson, Butler, Scott Haldane, the poems of Meredith and Thomas
Hardy, and, generally speaking, all the literary implements for forming
the mind of the perfect modern Socialist and Creative Evolutionist.
It was a curious experience to spend Sunday in dipping into these
books, and the Monday morning to read in the daily paper that the
country had just been brought to the verge of anarchy because a new
Home Secretary or chief of police without an idea in his head that
his great-grandmother might not have had to apologize for, had refused
to {}``recognize'' some powerful Trade Union, just as a gondola
might refuse to recognize a 20,000-ton liner.

In short, power and culture were in separate compartments. The barbarians
were not only literally in the saddle, but on the front bench in the
House of commons, with nobody to correct their incredible ignorance
of modern thought and political science but upstarts from the counting-house,
who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their
minds. Both, however, were practised in dealing with money and with
men, as far as acquiring the one and exploiting the other went; and
although this is as undesirable an expertness as that of the medieval
robber baron, it qualifies men to keep an estate or a business going
in its old routine without necessarily understanding it, just as Bond
Street tradesmen and domestic servants keep fashionable society going
without any instruction in sociology.


\section*{\raggedright \emph{The Cherry Orchard}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\emph{The Cherry Orchard}}

The Heartbreak people neither could nor would do anything of the sort.
With their heads as full of the \emph{Anticipations} of Mr H.\ G.\ Wells
as the heads of our actual rulers were empty even of the anticipations
of Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, they refused the drudgery of politics,
and would have made a very poor job of it if they had changed their
minds. Not that they would have been allowed to meddle anyhow, as
only through the accident of being a hereditary peer can anyone in
these days of Votes for Everybody get into parliament if handicapped
by a serious modern cultural equipment; but if they had, their habit
of living in a vacuum would have left them helpless and ineffective
in public affairs. Even in private life they were often helpless wasters
of their inheritance, like the people in Tchekov's \emph{Cherry Orchard}.
Even those who lived within their incomes were really kept going by
their solicitors and agents, being unable to manage an estate or run
a business without continual prompting from those who have to learn
how to do such things or starve.

From what is called Democracy no corrective to this state of things
could be hoped. It is said that every people has the Government it
deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate
it deserves; for the orators of the front bench can edify or debauch
an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious
circle of reciprocal worthiness and unworthiness.


\section*{\raggedright Nature's Long Credits}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Natures Long Credits}

Nature's way of dealing with unhealthy conditions is unfortunately
not one that compels us to conduct a solvent hygiene on a cash basis.
She demoralizes us with long credits and reckless overdrafts, and
then pulls us up cruelly with catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for
example, common domestic sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect
it utterly and scandalously, if not with absolute impunity, yet without
any evil consequences that anyone thinks of tracing to it. In a hospital
two generations of medical students may tolerate dirt and carelessness,
and then go out into general practice to spread the doctrine that
fresh air is a fad, and sanitation an imposture set up to make profits
for plumbers. Then suddenly Nature takes her revenge. She strikes
at the city with a pestilence and at the hospital with an epidemic
of hospital gangrene, slaughtering right and left until the innocent
young have paid for the guilty old, and the account is balanced. And
then she goes to sleep again and gives another period of credit, with
the same result.

This is what has just happened in our political hygiene. Political
science has been as recklessly neglected by Governments and electorates
during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the days of Charles
the Second. In international relations diplomacy has been a boyishly
lawless affair of family intrigues, commercial and territorial brigandage,
torpors of pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness and spasms of ferocious
activity produced by terror. But in these islands we muddled through.
Nature gave us a longer credit than she gave to France or Germany
or Russia. To British centenarians who died in their beds in 1914,
any dread of having to hide underground in London from the shells
of an enemy seemed more remote and fantastic than a dread of the appearance
of a colony of \textit{\emph{cobras}} and rattlesnakes in Kensington
Gardens. In the prophetic works of Charles Dickens we were warned
against many evils which have since come to pass; but of the evil
of being slaughtered by a foreign foe on our own doorsteps there was
no shadow. Nature gave us a very long credit; and we abused it to
the utmost. But when she struck at last she struck with a vengeance.
For four years she smote our firstborn and heaped on us plagues of
which Egypt never dreamed. They were all as preventable as the great
Plague of London, and came solely because they had not been prevented.
They were not undone by winning the war. The earth is still bursting
with the dead bodies of the victors.


\section*{\raggedright The Wicked Half Century}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Wicked Half Century}

It is difficult to say whether indifference and neglect are worse
than false doctrine; but Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall unfortunately
suffered from both. For half a century before the war civilization
had been going to the devil very precipitately under the influence
of a pseudo-science as disastrous as the blackest Calvinism. Calvinism
taught that as we are predestinately saved or damned, nothing that
we can do can alter our destiny. Still, as Calvinism gave the individual
no clue as to whether he had drawn a lucky number or an unlucky one,
it left him a fairly strong interest in encouraging his hopes of salvation
and allaying his fear of damnation by behaving as one of the elect
might be expected to behave rather than as one of the reprobate. But
in the middle of the nineteenth century naturalists and physicists
assured the world, in the name of Science, that salvation and damnation
are all nonsense, and that predestination is the central truth of
religion, inasmuch as human beings are produced by their environment,
their sins and good deeds being only a series of chemical and mechanical
reactions over which they have no control. Such figments as mind,
choice, purpose, conscience, will, and so forth, are, they taught,
mere illusions, produced because they are useful in the continual
struggle of the human machine to maintain its environment in a favorable
condition, a process incidentally involving the ruthless destruction
or subjection of its competitors for the supply (assumed to be limited)
of subsistence available. We taught Prussia this religion; and Prussia
bettered our instruction so effectively that we presently found ourselves
confronted with the necessity of destroying Prussia to prevent Prussia
destroying us. And that has just ended in each destroying the other
to an extent doubtfully reparable in our time.

It may be asked how so imbecile and dangerous a creed ever came to
be accepted by intelligent beings. I will answer that question more
fully in my next volume of plays, which will be entirely devoted to
the subject. For the present I will only say that there were better
reasons than the obvious one that such sham science as this opened
a scientific career to very stupid men, and all the other careers
to shameless rascals, provided they were industrious enough. It is
true that this motive operated very powerfully; but when the new departure
in scientific doctrine which is associated with the name of the great
naturalist Charles Darwin began, it was not only a reaction against
a barbarous pseudo-evangelical teleology intolerably obstructive to
all scientific progress, but was accompanied, as it happened, by discoveries
of extraordinary interest in physics, chemistry, and that lifeless
method of evolution which its investigators called Natural Selection.
Howbeit, there was only one result possible in the ethical sphere,
and that was the banishment of conscience from human affairs, or,
as Samuel Butler vehemently put it, {}``of mind from the universe.''


\section*{\raggedright Hypochondria}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Hypochondria}

Now Heartbreak House, with Butler and Bergson and Scott Haldane alongside
Blake and the other major poets on its shelves (to say nothing of
Wagner and the tone poets), was not so completely blinded by the doltish
materialism of the laboratories as the uncultured world outside. But
being an idle house it was a hypochondriacal house, always running
after cures. It would stop eating meat, not on valid Shelleyan grounds,
but in order to get rid of a bogey called Uric Acid; and it would
actually let you pull all its teeth out to exorcise another demon
named Pyorrhea. It was superstitious, and addicted to table-rapping,
materialization \textit{\emph{s\'{e}ances}}, \textit{\emph{clairvoyance}},
palmistry, crystal-gazing and the like to such an extent that it may
be doubted whether ever before in the history of the world did soothsayers,
astrologers, and unregistered therapeutic specialists of all sorts
flourish as they did during this half century of the drift to the
abyss. The registered doctors and surgeons were hard put to it to
compete with the unregistered. They were not clever enough to appeal
to the imagination and sociability of the Heartbreakers by the arts
of the actor, the orator, the poet, the winning conversationalist.
They had to fall back coarsely on the terror of infection and death.
They prescribed inoculations and operations. Whatever part of a human
being could be cut out without necessarily killing him they cut out;
and he often died (unnecessarily of course) in consequence. From such
trifles as \textit{\emph{uvulas}} and tonsils they went on to ovaries
and appendices until at last no one's inside was safe. They explained
that the human intestine was too long, and that nothing could make
a child of Adam healthy except short circuiting the pylorus by cutting
a length out of the lower intestine and fastening it directly to the
stomach. As their mechanist theory taught them that medicine was the
business of the chemist's laboratory, and surgery of the carpenter's
shop, and also that Science (by which they meant their practices)
was so important that no consideration for the interests of any individual
creature, whether frog or philosopher, much less the vulgar commonplaces
of sentimental ethics, could weigh for a moment against the remotest
off-chance of an addition to the body of scientific knowledge, they
operated and vivisected and inoculated and lied on a stupendous scale,
clamoring for and actually acquiring such legal powers over the bodies
of their fellow-citizens as neither king, pope, nor parliament dare
ever have claimed. The Inquisition itself was a Liberal institution
compared to the General Medical Council.


\section*{\raggedright Those who do not know how to live must make a Merit
of Dying}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Those who do not know how to live\\
must make a Merit of Dying}

Heartbreak House was far too lazy and shallow to extricate itself
from this palace of evil enchantment. It rhapsodized about love; but
it believed in cruelty. It was afraid of the cruel people; and it
saw that cruelty was at least effective. Cruelty did things that made
money, whereas Love did nothing but prove the soundness of Larochefoucauld's
saying that very few people would fall in love if they had never read
about it. Heartbreak House, in short, did not know how to live, at
which point all that was left to it was the boast that at least it
knew how to die: a melancholy accomplishment which the outbreak of
war presently gave it practically unlimited opportunities of displaying.
Thus were the firstborn of Heartbreak House smitten; and the young,
the innocent, the hopeful, expiated the folly and worthlessness of
their elders.


\section*{\raggedright War Delirium}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{War Delirium}

Only those who have lived through a first-rate war, not in the field,
but at home, and kept their heads, can possibly understand the bitterness
of Shakespeare and Swift, who both went through this experience. The
horror of Peer Gynt in the madhouse, when the lunatics, exalted by
illusions of splendid talent and visions of a dawning millennium,
crowned him as their emperor, was tame in comparison. I do not know
whether anyone really kept his head completely except those who had
to keep it because they had to conduct the war at first hand. I should
not have kept my own (as far as I did keep it) if I had not at once
understood that as a scribe and speaker I too was under the most serious
public obligation to keep my grip on realities; but this did not save
me from a considerable degree of hyper\ae{}sthesia. There were of
course some happy people to whom the war meant nothing: all political
and general matters lying outside their little circle of interest.
But the ordinary war-conscious civilian went mad, the main symptom
being a conviction that the whole order of nature had been reversed.
All foods, he felt, must now be adulterated. All schools must be closed.
No advertisements must be sent to the newspapers, of which new editions
must appear and be bought up every ten minutes. Travelling must be
stopped, or, that being impossible, greatly hindered. All pretences
about fine art and culture and the like must be flung off as an intolerable
affectation; and the picture galleries and museums and schools at
once occupied by war workers. The British Museum itself was saved
only by a hair's breadth. The sincerity of all this, and of much more
which would not be believed if I chronicled it, may be established
by one conclusive instance of the general craziness. Men were seized
with the illusion that they could win the war by giving away money.
And they not only subscribed millions to Funds of all sorts with no
discoverable object, and to ridiculous voluntary organizations for
doing what was plainly the business of the civil and military authorities,
but actually handed out money to any thief in the street who had the
presence of mind to pretend that he (or she) was {}``collecting''
it for the annihilation of the enemy. Swindlers were emboldened to
take offices; label themselves Anti-Enemy Leagues; and simply pocket
the money that was heaped on them. Attractively dressed young women
found that they had nothing to do but parade the streets, collecting-box
in hand, and live gloriously on the profits. Many months elapsed before,
as a first sign of returning sanity, the police swept an Anti-Enemy
secretary into prison \emph{pour encourages} \textit{les} \textit{autres},
and the passionate penny collecting of the Flag Days was brought under
some sort of regulation.


\section*{\raggedright Madness in Court}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Madness in Court}

The demoralization did not spare the Law Courts. Soldiers were acquitted,
even on fully proved indictments for wilful murder, until at last
the judges and magistrates had to announce that what was called the
Unwritten Law, which meant simply that a soldier could do what he
liked with impunity in civil life, was not the law of the land, and
that a Victoria Cross did not carry with it a perpetual plenary indulgence.
Unfortunately the insanity of the juries and magistrates did not always
manifest itself in indulgence. No person unlucky enough to be charged
with any sort of conduct, however reasonable and salutary, that did
not smack of war delirium, had the slightest chance of acquittal.
There were in the country, too, a certain number of people who had
conscientious objections to war as criminal or unchristian. The Act
of Parliament introducing Compulsory Military Service thoughtlessly
exempted these persons, merely requiring them to prove the genuineness
of their convictions. Those who did so were very ill-advised from
the point of view of their own personal interest; for they were persecuted
with savage logicality in spite of the law; whilst those who made
no pretence of having any objection to war at all, and had not only
had military training in Officers' Training Corps, but had proclaimed
on public occasions that they were perfectly ready to engage in civil
war on behalf of their political opinions, were allowed the benefit
of the Act on the ground that they did not approve of this particular
war. For the Christians there was no mercy. In cases where the evidence
as to their being killed by ill treatment was so unequivocal that
the verdict would certainly have been one of wilful murder had the
prejudice of the coroner's jury been on the other side, their tormentors
were gratuitously declared to be blameless. There was only one virtue,
pugnacity: only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition
of war; but the Government had not the courage to legislate accordingly;
and its law was set aside for Lynch law.

The climax of legal lawlessness was reached in France. The greatest
Socialist statesman in Europe, Jaures, was shot and killed by a gentleman
who resented his efforts to avert the war. M.\ Clemenceau was shot
by another gentleman of less popular opinions, and happily came off
no worse than having to spend a precautionary couple of days in bed.
The slayer of Jaures was recklessly acquitted: the would-be slayer
of M.\ Clemenceau was carefully found guilty. There is no reason
to doubt that the same thing would have happened in England if the
war had begun with a successful attempt to assassinate Keir Hardie,
and ended with an unsuccessful one to assassinate Mr Lloyd George.


\section*{\raggedright The Long Arm of War}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Long Arm of War}

The pestilence which is the usual accompaniment of war was called
influenza. Whether it was really a war pestilence or not was made
doubtful by the fact that it did its worst in places remote from the
battlefields, notably on the west coast of North America and in India.
But the moral pestilence, which was unquestionably a war pestilence,
reproduced this phenomenon. One would have supposed that the war fever
would have raged most furiously in the countries actually under fire,
and that the others would be more reasonable. Belgium and Flanders,
where over large districts literally not one stone was left upon another
as the opposed armies drove each other back and forward over it after
terrific preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving
their feelings more emphatically than by shrugging their shoulders
and saying, {}``\textit{C'est} \textit{la} \textit{guerre}.'' England,
inviolate for so many centuries that the swoop of war on her homesteads
had long ceased to be more credible than a return of the Flood, could
hardly be expected to keep her temper sweet when she knew at last
what it was to hide in cellars and underground railway stations, or
lie quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, houses crumbled, and aircraft
guns distributed shrapnel on friend and foe alike until certain shop
windows in London, formerly full of fashionable hats, were filled
with steel helmets. Slain and mutilated women and children, and burnt
and wrecked dwellings, excuse a good deal of violent language, and
produce a wrath on which many suns go down before it is appeased.
Yet it was in the United States of America where nobody slept the
worse for the war, that the war fever went beyond all sense and reason.
In European Courts there was vindictive illegality: in American Courts
there was raving lunacy. It is not for me to chronicle the \textit{\emph{extravagances}}
of an Ally: let some candid American do that. I can only say that
to us sitting in our gardens in England, with the guns in France making
themselves felt by a throb in the air as unmistakeable as an audible
sound, or with tightening hearts studying the phases of the moon in
London in their bearing on the chances whether our houses would be
standing or ourselves alive next morning, the newspaper accounts of
the sentences American Courts were passing on young girls and old
men alike for the expression of opinions which were being uttered
amid thundering applause before huge audiences in England, and the
more private records of the methods by which the American War Loans
were raised, were so amazing that they put the guns and the possibilities
of a raid clean out of our heads for the moment.


\section*{\raggedright The Rabid Watchdogs of Liberty}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Rabid Watchdogs of Liberty}

Not content with these rancorous abuses of the existing law, the war
maniacs made a frantic rush to abolish all constitutional guarantees
of liberty and well-being. The ordinary law was superseded by Acts
under which newspapers were seized and their printing machinery destroyed
by simple police raids \emph{a la Russe}, and persons arrested and
shot without any pretence of trial by jury or publicity of procedure
or evidence. Though it was urgently necessary that production should
be increased by the most scientific organization and economy of labor,
and though no fact was better established than that excessive duration
and intensity of toil reduces production heavily instead of increasing
it, the factory laws were suspended, and men and women recklessly
over-worked until the loss of their efficiency became too glaring
to be ignored. Remonstrances and warnings were met either with an
accusation of pro-Germanism or the formula, {}``Remember that we
are at war now.'' I have said that men assumed that war had reversed
the order of nature, and that all was lost unless we did the exact
opposite of everything we had found necessary and beneficial in peace.
But the truth was worse than that. The war did not change men's minds
in any such impossible way. What really happened was that the impact
of physical death and destruction, the one reality that every fool
can understand, tore off the masks of education, art, science and
religion from our ignorance and barbarism, and left us glorying grotesquely
in the licence suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most abject
terrors. Ever since Thucydides wrote his history, it has been on record
that when the angel of death sounds his trumpet the pretences of civilization
are blown from men's heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind.
But when this scripture was fulfilled among us, the shock was not
the less appalling because a few students of Greek history were not
surprised by it. Indeed these students threw themselves into the orgy
as shamelessly as the illiterate. The Christian priest, joining in
the war dance without even throwing off his cassock first, and the
respectable school governor expelling the German professor with insult
and bodily violence, and declaring that no English child should ever
again be taught the language of Luther and Goethe, were kept in countenance
by the most impudent repudiations of every decency of civilization
and every lesson of political experience on the part of the very persons
who, as university professors, historians, philosophers, and men of
science, were the accredited custodians of culture. It was crudely
natural, and perhaps necessary for recruiting purposes, that German
militarism and German dynastic ambition should be painted by journalists
and recruiters in black and red as European dangers (as in fact they
are), leaving it to be inferred that our own militarism and our own
political constitution are millennially democratic (which they certainly
are not); but when it came to frantic denunciations of German chemistry,
German biology, German poetry, German music, German literature, German
philosophy, and even German engineering, as malignant abominations
standing towards British and French chemistry and so forth in the
relation of heaven to hell, it was clear that the utterers of such
barbarous ravings had never really understood or cared for the arts
and sciences they professed and were profaning, and were only the
appallingly degenerate descendants of the men of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries who, recognizing no national frontiers in the
great realm of the human mind, kept the European comity of that realm
loftily and even ostentatiously above the rancors of the battle-field.
Tearing the Garter from the Kaiser's leg, striking the German dukes
from the roll of our peerage, changing the King's illustrious and
historically appropriate surname (for the war was the old war of Guelph
against Ghibelline, with the Kaiser as Arch-Ghibelline) to that of
a traditionless locality. One felt that the figure of St.\ George
and the Dragon on our coinage should be replaced by that of the soldier
driving his spear through Archimedes. But by that time there was no
coinage: only paper money in which ten shillings called itself a pound
as confidently as the people who were disgracing their country called
themselves patriots.


\section*{\raggedright The Sufferings of the Sane}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Sufferings of the Sane}

The mental distress of living amid the obscene din of all \textit{\emph{these}}
\textit{carmagnoles} and corobberies was not the only burden that
lay on sane people during the war. There was also the emotional strain,
complicated by the offended economic sense, produced by the casualty
lists. The stupid, the selfish, the narrow-minded, the callous and
unimaginative were spared a great deal. {}``Blood and destruction
shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when they behold their
\textit{\emph{infants}} quartered by the hands of war,'' was a Shakespearean
prophecy that very nearly came true; for when nearly every house had
a slaughtered son to mourn, we should all have gone quite out of our
senses if we had taken our own and our friend's bereavements at their
peace value. It became necessary to give them a false value; to proclaim
the young life worthily and gloriously sacrificed to redeem the liberty
of mankind, instead of to expiate the heedlessness and folly of their
fathers, and expiate it in vain. We had even to assume that the parents
and not the children had made the sacrifice, until at last the comic
papers were driven to satirize fat old men, sitting comfortably in
club chairs, and boasting of the sons they had {}``given'' to their
country.

No one grudged these anodynes to acute personal grief; but they only
embittered those who knew that the young men were having their teeth
set on edge because their parents had eaten sour political grapes.
Then think of the young men themselves! Many of them had no illusions
about the policy that led to the war: they went clear-sighted to a
horribly repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise,
with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent
months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw
in the public eye, so that they might go out to kill and maim men
as gentle as themselves. These men, who were perhaps, as a class,
our most efficient soldiers (Frederick Keeling, for example), were
not duped for a moment by the hypocritical melodrama that consoled
and stimulated the others. They left their creative work to drudge
at destruction, exactly as they would have left it to take their turn
at the pumps in a sinking ship. They did not, like some of the conscientious
objectors, hold back because the ship had been neglected by its officers
and scuttled by its wreckers. The ship had to be saved, even if Newton
had to leave his \textit{\emph{fluxions}} and Michael Angelo his marbles
to save it; so they threw away the tools of their beneficent and ennobling
trades, and took up the blood-stained bayonet and the murderous bomb,
forcing themselves to pervert their divine instinct for perfect artistic
execution to the effective handling of these diabolical things, and
their economic faculty for organization to the contriving of ruin
and slaughter. For it gave an ironic edge to their tragedy that the
very talents they were forced to prostitute made the prostitution
not only effective, but even interesting; so that some of them were
rapidly promoted, and found themselves actually becoming artists in
wax, with a growing relish for it, like Napoleon and all the other
scourges of mankind, in spite of themselves. For many of them there
was not even this consolation. They {}``stuck it,'' and hated it,
to the end.


\section*{\raggedright Evil in the Throne of Good}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Evil in the Throne of Good}

This distress of the gentle was so acute that those who shared it
in civil life, without having to shed blood with their own hands,
or witness destruction with their own eyes, hardly care to obtrude
their own woes. Nevertheless, even when sitting at home in safety,
it was not easy for those who had to write and speak about the war
to throw away their highest conscience, and deliberately work to a
standard of inevitable evil instead of to the ideal of life more abundant.
I can answer for at least one person who found the change from the
wisdom of Jesus and St.\ Francis to the morals of Richard III and
the madness of Don Quixote extremely irksome. But that change had
to be made; and we are all the worse for it, except those for whom
it was not really a change at all, but only a relief from hypocrisy.

Think, too, of those who, though they had neither to write nor to
fight, and had no children of their own to lose, yet knew the inestimable
loss to the world of four years of the life of a generation wasted
on destruction. Hardly one of the epoch-making works of the human
mind might not have been aborted or destroyed by taking their authors
away from their natural work for four critical years. Not only were
\textit{\emph{Shakespeares}} and \textit{\emph{Platos}} being killed
outright; but many of the best harvests of the survivors had to be
sown in the barren soil of the trenches. And this was no mere British
consideration. To the truly civilized man, to the good European, the
slaughter of the German youth was as disastrous as the slaughter of
the English. Fools exulted in {}``German losses.'' They were our
losses as well. Imagine exulting in the death of Beethoven because
Bill Sykes dealt him his death blow!


\section*{\raggedright Straining at the Gnat and swallowing the Camel}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Straining at the Gnat and swallowing\\
the Camel}

But most people could not comprehend these sorrows. There was a frivolous
exultation in death for its own sake, which was at bottom an inability
to realize that the deaths were real deaths and not stage ones. Again
and again, when an air raider dropped a bomb which tore a child and
its mother limb from limb, the people who saw it, though they had
been reading with great cheerfulness of thousands of such happenings
day after day in their newspapers, suddenly burst into furious imprecations
on {}``the Huns'' as murderers, and shrieked for savage and satisfying
vengeance. At such moments it became clear that the deaths they had
not seen meant no more to them than the mimic death of the cinema
screen. Sometimes it was not necessary that death should be actually
witnessed: it had only to take place under circumstances of sufficient
novelty and proximity to bring it home almost as sensationally and
effectively as if it had been actually visible.

For example, in the spring of 1915 there was an appalling slaughter
of our young soldiers at \textit{\emph{Neuve}} \textit{\emph{Chapelle}}
and at the Gallipoli landing. I will not go so far as to say that
our civilians were delighted to have such exciting news to read at
breakfast. But I cannot pretend that I noticed either in the papers,
or in general intercourse, any feeling beyond the usual one that the
cinema show at the front was going splendidly, and that our boys were
the bravest of the brave. Suddenly there came the news that an Atlantic
liner, the \emph{Lusitania}, had been torpedoed, and that several
well-known first-class passengers, including a famous theatrical manager
and the author of a popular farce, had been drowned, among others.
The others included Sir Hugh Lane; but as he had only laid the country
under great obligations in the sphere of the fine arts, no great stress
was laid on that loss. Immediately an amazing frenzy swept through
the country. Men who up to that time had kept their heads now lost
them utterly. {}``Killing saloon passengers! What next?''\ was
the essence of the whole agitation; but it is far too trivial a phrase
to convey the faintest notion of the rage which possessed us. To me,
with my mind full of the hideous cost of \textit{\emph{Neuve}} Chapelle,
Ypres, and the Gallipoli landing, the fuss about the \emph{Lusitania}
seemed almost a heartless impertinence, though I was well acquainted
personally with the three best-known victims, and understood, better
perhaps than most people, the misfortune of the death of Lane. I even
found a grim satisfaction, very intelligible to all soldiers, in the
fact that the civilians who found the war such splendid British sport
should get a sharp taste of what it was to the actual combatants.
I expressed my impatience very freely, and found that my very straightforward
and natural feeling in the matter was received as a monstrous and
heartless paradox. When I asked those who gaped at me whether they
had anything to say about the holocaust of Festubert, they gaped wider
than before, having totally forgotten it, or rather, having never
realized it. They were not heartless anymore than I was; but the big
catastrophe was too big for them to grasp, and the little one had
been just the right size for them. I was not surprised. Have I not
seen a public body for just the same reason pass a vote for \pounds{}30,000
without a word, and then spend three special meetings, prolonged into
the night, over an item of seven shillings for refreshments?


\section*{\raggedright Little Minds and Big Battles}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Little Minds and Big Battles}

Nobody will be able to understand the vagaries of public feeling during
the war unless they bear constantly in mind that the war in its entire
magnitude did not exist for the average civilian. He could not conceive
even a battle, much less a campaign. To the suburbs the war was nothing
but a suburban squabble. To the miner and navvy it was only a series
of bayonet fights between German champions and English ones. The enormity
of it was quite beyond most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced
to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could
produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments
of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle
of Jutland a mere ballad. The words {}``after thorough artillery
preparation'' in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but
when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast
in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb dropping
into his egg-cup, their wrath and horror knew no bounds. They declared
that this would put a new spirit into the army; and had no suspicion
that the soldiers in the trenches roared with laughter over it for
days, and told each other that it would do the blighters at home good
to have a taste of what the army was up against. Sometimes the smallness
of view was pathetic. A man would work at home regardless of the call
{}``to make the world safe for democracy.'' His brother would be
killed at the front. Immediately he would throw up his work and take
up the war as a family blood feud against the Germans. Sometimes it
was comic. A wounded man, entitled to his discharge, would return
to the trenches with a grim determination to find the Hun who had
wounded him and pay him out for it.

It is impossible to estimate what proportion of us, in khaki or out
of it, grasped the war and its political antecedents as a whole in
the light of any philosophy of history or knowledge of what war is.
I doubt whether it was as high as our proportion of higher mathematicians.
But there can be no doubt that it was prodigiously outnumbered by
the comparatively ignorant and childish. Remember that these people
had to be stimulated to make the sacrifices demanded by the war, and
that this could not be done by appeals to a knowledge which they did
not possess, and a comprehension of which they were incapable. When
the armistice at last set me free to tell the truth about the war
at the following general election, a soldier said to a candidate whom
I was supporting, {}``If I had known all that in 1914, they would
never have got me into khaki.'' And that, of course, was precisely
why it had been necessary to stuff him with a romance that any diplomatist
would have laughed at. Thus the natural confusion of ignorance was
increased by a deliberately propagated confusion of nursery bogey
stories and melodramatic nonsense, which at last overreached itself
and made it impossible to stop the war before we had not only achieved
the triumph of vanquishing the German army and thereby overthrowing
its militarist monarchy, but made the very serious mistake of ruining
the centre of Europe, a thing that no sane European State could afford
to do.


\section*{\raggedright The Dumb \textit{\emph{Capables}} and the Noisy \textit{\emph{Incapables}}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Dumb Capables and the Noisy\\
Incapables}

Confronted with this picture of insensate delusion and folly, the
critical reader will immediately counterplead that England all this
time was conducting a war which involved the organization of several
millions of fighting men and of the workers who were supplying them
with provisions, munitions, and transport, and that this could not
have been done by a mob of hysterical ranters. This is fortunately
true. To pass from the newspaper offices and political platforms and
club fenders and suburban drawing-rooms to the Army and the munition
factories was to pass from Bedlam to the busiest and sanest of workaday
worlds. It was to rediscover England, and find solid ground for the
faith of those who still believed in her. But a necessary condition
of this efficiency was that those who were efficient should give all
their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its heart's
content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient, because, as
it was always wide of the mark, it often distracted attention very
conveniently from operations that would have been defeated or hindered
by publicity. A precept which I endeavored vainly to popularize early
in the war, {}``If you have anything to do go and do it: if not,
for heaven's sake get out of the way,'' was only half carried out.
Certainly the capable people went and did it; but the \textit{\emph{incapables}}
would by no means get out of the way: they fussed and bawled and were
only prevented from getting very seriously into the way by the blessed
fact that they never knew where the way was. Thus whilst all the efficiency
of England was silent and invisible, all its imbecility was deafening
the heavens with its clamor and blotting out the sun with its dust.
It was also unfortunately intimidating the Government by its blusterings
into using the irresistible powers of the State to intimidate the
sensible people, thus enabling a despicable minority of would-be lynchers
to set up a reign of terror which could at any time have been broken
by a single stern word from a responsible minister. But our ministers
had not that sort of courage: neither Heartbreak House nor Horseback
Hall had bred it, much less the suburbs. When matters at last came
to the looting of shops by criminals under patriotic pretexts, it
was the police force and not the Government that put its foot down.
There was even one deplorable moment, during the submarine scare,
in which the Government yielded to a childish cry for the maltreatment
of naval prisoners of war, and, to our great disgrace, was forced
by the enemy to behave itself. And yet behind all this public blundering
and misconduct and futile mischief, the effective England was carrying
on with the most formidable capacity and activity. The ostensible
England was making the empire sick with its \textit{\emph{incontinences}},
its \textit{\emph{ignorances}}, its ferocities, its panics, and its
endless and intolerable blarings of Allied national anthems in season
and out. The esoteric England was proceeding irresistibly to the conquest
of Europe.


\section*{\raggedright The Practical Business Men}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Practical Business Men}

From the beginning the useless people set up a shriek for {}``practical
business men.'' By this they meant men who had become rich by placing
their personal interests before those of the country, and measuring
the success of every activity by the pecuniary profit it brought to
them and to those on whom they depended for their supplies of capital.
The pitiable failure of some conspicuous samples from the first batch
we tried of these poor devils helped to give the whole public side
of the war an air of monstrous and hopeless farce. They proved not
only that they were useless for public work, but that in a well-ordered
nation they would never have been allowed to control private enterprise.


\section*{\raggedright How the Fools shouted the Wise Men down}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{How the Fools shouted the Wise Men
down}

Thus, like a fertile country flooded with mud, England showed no sign
of her greatness in the days when she was putting forth all her strength
to save herself from the worst consequences of her littleness. Most
of the men of action, occupied to the last hour of their time with
urgent practical work, had to leave to idler people, or to professional
rhetoricians, the presentation of the war to the reason and imagination
of the country and the world in speeches, poems, manifestoes, picture
posters, and newspaper articles. I have had the privilege of hearing
some of our ablest commanders talking about their work; and I have
shared the common lot of reading the accounts of that work given to
the world by the newspapers. No two experiences could be more different.
But in the end the talkers obtained a dangerous ascendancy over the
rank and file of the men of action; for though the great men of action
are always inveterate talkers and often very clever writers, and therefore
cannot have their minds formed for them by others, the average man
of action, like the average fighter with the bayonet, can give no
account of himself in words even to himself, and is apt to pick up
and accept what he reads about himself and other people in the papers,
except when the writer is rash enough to commit himself on technical
points. It was not uncommon during the war to hear a soldier, or a
civilian engaged on war work, describing events within his own experience
that reduced to utter absurdity the ravings and maunderings of his
daily paper, and yet echo the opinions of that paper like a parrot.
Thus, to escape from the prevailing confusion and folly, it was not
enough to seek the company of the ordinary man of action: one had
to get into contact with the master spirits. This was a privilege
which only a handful of people could enjoy. For the unprivileged citizen
there was no escape. To him the whole country seemed mad, futile,
silly, incompetent, with no hope of victory except the hope that the
enemy might be just as mad. Only by very resolute reflection and reasoning
could he reassure himself that if there was nothing more solid beneath
their appalling appearances the war could not possibly have gone on
for a single day without a total breakdown of its organization.


\section*{\raggedright The Mad Election}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Mad Election}

Happy were the fools and the thoughtless men of action in those days.
The worst of it was that the fools were very strongly represented
in parliament, as fools not only elect fools, but can persuade men
of action to elect them too. The election that immediately followed
the armistice was perhaps the maddest that has ever taken place. Soldiers
who had done voluntary and heroic service in the field were defeated
by persons who had apparently never run a risk or spent a farthing
that they could avoid, and who even had in the course of the election
to apologize publicly for bawling Pacifist or Pro-German at their
opponent. Party leaders seek such followers, who can always be depended
on to walk tamely into the lobby at the party whip's orders, provided
the leader will make their seats safe for them by the process which
was called, in derisive reference to the war rationing system, {}``giving
them the coupon.'' Other incidents were so grotesque that I cannot
mention them without enabling the reader to identify the parties,
which would not be fair, as they were no more to blame than thousands
of others who must necessarily be nameless. The general result was
patently absurd; and the electorate, disgusted at its own work, instantly
recoiled to the opposite extreme, and cast out all the coupon candidates
at the earliest bye-elections by equally silly majorities. But the
mischief of the general election could not be undone; and the Government
had not only to pretend to abuse its European victory as it had promised,
but actually to do it by starving the enemies who had thrown down
their arms. It had, in short, won the election by pledging itself
to be thriftlessly wicked, cruel, and vindictive; and it did not find
it as easy to escape from this pledge as it had from nobler ones.
The end, as I write, is not yet; but it is clear that this thoughtless
savagery will recoil on the heads of the Allies so severely that we
shall be forced by the sternest necessity to take up our share of
healing the Europe we have wounded almost to death instead of attempting
to complete her destruction.


\section*{\raggedright The Yahoo and the Angry Ape}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Yahoo and the Angry Ape}

Contemplating this picture of a state of mankind so recent that no
denial of its truth is possible, one understands Shakespeare comparing
Man to an angry ape, Swift describing him as a Yahoo rebuked by the
superior virtue of the horse, and Wellington declaring that the British
can behave themselves neither in victory nor defeat. Yet none of the
three had seen war as we have seen it. Shakespeare blamed great men,
saying that {}``Could great men thunder as Jove himself does, Jove
would ne'er be quiet; for every pelting petty officer would use his
heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder.'' What would Shakespeare
have said if he had seen something far more destructive than thunder
in the hand of every village laborer, and found on the Messines Ridge
the craters of the nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at
the touch of a finger that might have been a child's finger without
the result being a whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may have seen a
Stratford cottage struck by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped
to extinguish the lighted thatch and clear away the bits of the broken
chimney. What would he have said if he had seen Ypres as it is now,
or returned to Stratford, as French peasants are returning to their
homes to-day, to find the old familiar signpost inscribed {}``To
Stratford, 1 mile,'' and at the end of the mile nothing but some
holes in the ground and a fragment of a broken churn here and there?
Would not the spectacle of the angry ape endowed with powers of destruction
that Jove never pretended to, have beggared even his command of words?

And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain on human
nature that breaks down the better half of it, and makes the worse
half a diabolical virtue? Better for us if it broke it down altogether,
for then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to
us, and we should take greater care not to get into them. In truth,
it is, as Byron said, {}``not difficult to die,'' and enormously
difficult to live: that explains why, at bottom, peace is not only
better than war, but infinitely more arduous. Did any hero of the
war face the glorious risk of death more bravely than the traitor
Bolo faced the ignominious certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how
to die: can we say that he taught us all how to live? Hardly a week
passes now without some soldier who braved death in the field so recklessly
that he was decorated or specially commended for it, being haled before
our magistrates for having failed to resist the paltriest temptations
of peace, with no better excuse than the old one that {}``a man must
live.'' Strange that one who, sooner than do honest work, will sell
his honor for a bottle of wine, a visit to the theatre, and an hour
with a strange woman, all obtained by passing a worthless cheque,
could yet stake his life on the most desperate chances of the battle-field!
Does it not seem as if, after all, the glory of death were cheaper
than the glory of life? If it is not easier to attain, why do so many
more men attain it? At all events it is clear that the kingdom of
the Prince of Peace has not yet become the kingdom of this world.
His attempts at invasion have been resisted far more fiercely than
the Kaiser's. Successful as that resistance has been, it has piled
up a sort of National Debt that is not the less oppressive because
we have no figures for it and do not intend to pay it. A blockade
that cuts off {}``the grace of our Lord'' is in the long run less
bearable than the blockades which merely cut off raw materials; and
against that blockade our Armada is impotent. In the blockader's house,
he has assured us, there are many mansions; but I am afraid they do
not include either Heartbreak House or Horseback Hall.


\section*{\raggedright{}Plague on Both your Houses!}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Plague on Both your Houses!}

Meanwhile the Bolshevist picks and \textit{p\'{e}tards} are at work
on the foundations of both buildings; and though the Bolshevists may
be buried in the ruins, their deaths will not save the edifices. Unfortunately
they can be built again. Like Doubting Castle, they have been demolished
many times by successive Greathearts, and rebuilt by Simple, Sloth,
and Presumption, by Feeble Mind and Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen
of Vanity Fair. Another generation of {}``secondary education''
at our ancient public schools and the cheaper institutions that ape
them will be quite sufficient to keep the two going until the next
war. For the instruction of that generation I leave these pages as
a record of what civilian life was during the war: a matter on which
history is usually silent. Fortunately it was a very short war. It
is true that the people who thought it could not last more than six
months were very signally refuted by the event. As Sir Douglas Haig
has pointed out, its \textit{\emph{Waterloos}} lasted months instead
of hours. But there would have been nothing surprising in its lasting
thirty years. If it had not been for the fact that the blockade achieved
the amazing feat of starving out Europe, which it could not possibly
have done had Europe been properly organized for war, or even for
peace, the war would have lasted until the belligerents were so tired
of it that they could no longer be compelled to compel themselves
to go on with it. Considering its magnitude, the war of 1914-18 will
certainly be classed as the shortest in history. The end came so suddenly
that the combatant literally stumbled over it; and yet it came a full
year later than it should have come if the belligerents had not been
far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany,
having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender
before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident,
went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It
was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony
of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated,
will not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy fastening
on themselves the chains they have struck from the limbs of the vanquished.


\section*{\raggedright How the Theatre fared}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{How the Theatre fared}

Let us now contract our view rather violently from the European theatre
of war to the theatre in which the fights are sham fights, and the
slain, rising the moment the curtain has fallen, go comfortably home
to supper after washing off their rose-pink wounds. It is nearly twenty
years since I was last obliged to introduce a play in the form of
a book for lack of an opportunity of presenting it in its proper mode
by a performance in a theatre. The war has thrown me back on this
expedient. \emph{Heartbreak House} has not yet reached the stage.
I have withheld it because the war has completely upset the economic
conditions which formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in
London. The change is not in the theatres nor in the management of
them, nor in the authors and actors, but in the audiences. For four
years the London theatres were crowded every night with thousands
of soldiers on leave from the front. These soldiers were not seasoned
London playgoers. A childish experience of my own gave me a clue to
their condition. When I was a small boy I was taken to the opera.
I did not then know what an opera was, though I could whistle a good
deal of opera music. I had seen in my mother's album photographs of
all the great opera singers, mostly in evening dress. In the theatre
I found myself before a gilded balcony filled with persons in evening
dress whom I took to be the opera singers. I picked out one massive
dark lady as Alboni, and wondered how soon she would stand up and
sing. I was puzzled by the fact that I was made to sit with my back
to the singers instead of facing them. When the curtain went up, my
astonishment and delight were unbounded.


\section*{\raggedright The Soldier at the Theatre Front}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Soldier at the Theatre Front}

In 1915, I saw in the theatres men in khaki in just the same predicament.
To everyone who had my clue to their state of mind it was evident
that they had never been in a theatre before and did not know what
it was. At one of our great variety theatres I sat beside a young
officer, not at all a rough specimen, who, even when the curtain rose
and enlightened him as to the place where he had to look for his entertainment,
found the dramatic part of it utterly incomprehensible. He did not
know how to play his part of the game. He could understand the people
on the stage singing and dancing and performing gymnastic feats. He
not only understood but intensely enjoyed an artist who imitated cocks
crowing and pigs squeaking. But the people who pretended that they
were somebody else, and that the painted picture behind them was real,
bewildered him. In his presence I realized how very sophisticated
the natural man has to become before the conventions of the theatre
can be easily acceptable, or the purpose of the drama obvious to him.

Well, from the moment when the routine of leave for our soldiers was
established, such novices, accompanied by damsels (called flappers)
often as innocent as themselves, crowded the theatres to the doors.
It was hardly possible at first to find stuff crude enough to nurse
them on. The best music-hall comedians ransacked their memories for
the oldest quips and the most childish antics to avoid carrying the
military spectators out of their depth. I believe that this was a
mistake as far as the novices were concerned. Shakespeare, or the
dramatized histories of George Barnwell, Maria Martin, or the Demon
Barber of Fleet Street, would probably have been quite popular with
them. But the novices were only a minority after all. The cultivated
soldier, who in time of peace would look at nothing theatrical except
the most advanced post-Ibsen plays in the most artistic settings,
found himself, to his own astonishment, thirsting for silly jokes,
dances, and brainlessly sensuous exhibitions of pretty girls. The
author of some of the most grimly serious plays of our time told me
that after enduring the trenches for months without a glimpse of the
female of his species, it gave him an entirely innocent but delightful
pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field
produced a condition of hyper\ae{}sthesia in which all the theatrical
values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity and stale things
novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of
the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to
seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling
men who were no longer under fire and under military discipline, but
actually clean and comfortable and in a mood to be pleased with anything
and everything that a bevy of pretty girls and a funny man, or even
a bevy of girls pretending to be pretty and a man pretending to be
funny, could do for them.

Then could be seen every night in the theatres oldfashioned farcical
comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each side and a practicable
window in the middle, was understood to resemble exactly the bedroom
in the flats beneath and above, all three inhabited by couples consumed
with jealousy. When these people came home drunk at night; mistook
their neighbor's flats for their own; and in due course got into the
wrong beds, it was not only the novices who found the resulting complications
and scandals exquisitely ingenious and amusing, nor their equally
verdant flappers who could not help squealing in a manner that astonished
the oldest performers when the gentleman who had just come in drunk
through the window pretended to undress, and allowed glimpses of his
naked person to be descried from time to time.


\section*{\raggedright Heartbreak House}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Heartbreak House}

Men who had just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying, and
were thereby sadly reminded of \emph{Pink} \textit{Dominos} and the
torrent of farcical comedies that followed it in his heyday until
every trick of that trade had become so stale that the laughter they
provoked turned to loathing: these veterans also, when they returned
from the field, were as much pleased by what they knew to be stale
and foolish as the novices by what they thought fresh and clever.


\section*{\raggedright Commerce in the Theatre}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Commerce in the Theatre}

Wellington said that an army moves on its belly. So does a London
theatre. Before a man acts he must eat. Before he performs plays he
must pay rent. In London we have no theatres for the welfare of the
people: they are all for the sole purpose of producing the utmost
obtainable rent for the proprietor. If the twin flats and twin beds
produce a guinea more than Shakespeare, out goes Shakespeare and in
come the twin flats and the twin beds. If the brainless bevy of pretty
girls and the funny man outbid Mozart, out goes Mozart.


\section*{\raggedright \emph{Unser} Shakespeare}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\emph{Unser} Shakespeare}

Before the war an effort was made to remedy this by establishing a
national theatre in celebration of the tercentenary of the death of
Shakespeare. A committee was formed; and all sorts of illustrious
and influential persons lent their names to a grand appeal to our
national culture. My play, \emph{The Dark Lady of The Sonnets}, was
one of the incidents of that appeal. After some years of effort the
result was a single handsome subscription from a German gentleman.
Like the celebrated swearer in the anecdote when the cart containing
all his household goods lost its tailboard at the top of the hill
and let its contents roll in ruin to the bottom, I can only say, {}``I
cannot do justice to this situation,'' and let it pass without another
word.


\section*{\raggedright The Higher Drama put out of Action}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Higher Drama put out of Action}

The effect of the war on the London theatres may now be imagined.
The beds and the bevies drove every higher form of art out of it.
Rents went up to an unprecedented figure. At the same time prices
doubled everywhere except at the theatre pay-boxes, and raised the
expenses of management to such a degree that unless the houses were
quite full every night, profit was impossible. Even bare solvency
could not be attained without a very wide popularity. Now what had
made serious drama possible to a limited extent before the war was
that a play could pay its way even if the theatre were only half full
until Saturday and three-quarters full then. A manager who was an
enthusiast and a desperately hard worker, with an occasional grant-in-aid
from an artistically disposed millionaire, and a due proportion of
those rare and happy accidents by which plays of the higher sort turn
out to be potboilers as well, could hold out for some years, by which
time a relay might arrive in the person of another enthusiast. Thus
and not otherwise occurred that remarkable revival of the British
drama at the beginning of the century which made my own career as
a playwright possible in England. In America I had already established
myself, not as part of the ordinary theatre system, but in association
with the exceptional genius of Richard Mansfield. In Germany and Austria
I had no difficulty: the system of publicly aided theatres there,
Court and Municipal, kept drama of the kind I dealt in alive; so that
I was indebted to the Emperor of Austria for magnificent productions
of my works at a time when the sole official attention paid me by
the British Courts was the announcement to the English-speaking world
that certain plays of mine were unfit for public performance, a substantial
set-off against this being that the British Court, in the course of
its private playgoing, paid no regard to the bad character given me
by the chief officer of its household.

Howbeit, the fact that my plays effected a lodgment on the London
stage, and were presently followed by the plays of Granville Barker,
Gilbert Murray, John Masefield, St.\ John Hankin, Lawrence Housman,
Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, John Drinkwater, and others which
would in the nineteenth century have stood rather less chance of production
at a London theatre than the Dialogues of Plato, not to mention revivals
of the ancient Athenian drama and a restoration to the stage of Shakespeare's
plays as he wrote them, was made economically possible solely by a
supply of theatres which could hold nearly twice as much money as
it cost to rent and maintain them. In such theatres work appealing
to a relatively small class of cultivated persons, and therefore attracting
only from half to three-quarters as many spectators as the more popular
pastimes, could nevertheless keep going in the hands of young adventurers
who were doing it for its own sake, and had not yet been forced by
advancing age and responsibilities to consider the commercial value
of their time and energy too closely. The war struck this foundation
away in the manner I have just described. The expenses of running
the cheapest west-end theatres rose to a sum which exceeded by twenty-five
per cent the utmost that the higher drama can, as an ascertained matter
of fact, be depended on to draw. Thus the higher drama, which has
never really been a commercially sound speculation, now became an
impossible one. Accordingly, attempts are being made to provide a
refuge for it in suburban theatres in London and repertory theatres
in the provinces. But at the moment when the army has at last disgorged
the survivors of the gallant band of dramatic pioneers whom it swallowed,
they find that the economic conditions which formerly made their work
no worse than precarious now put it out of the question altogether,
as far as the west end of London is concerned.


\section*{\raggedright Church and Theatre}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Church and Theatre}

I do not suppose many people care particularly. We are not brought
up to care; and a sense of the national importance of the theatre
is not born in mankind: the natural man, like so many of the soldiers
at the beginning of the war, does not know what a theatre is. But
please note that all these soldiers who did not know what a theatre
was, knew what a church was. And they had been taught to respect churches.
Nobody had ever warned them against a church as a place where frivolous
women paraded in their best clothes; where stories of improper females
like Potiphar's wife, and erotic poetry like the Song of Songs, were
read aloud; where the sensuous and sentimental music of Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Brahms was more popular than severe music
by greater composers; where the prettiest sort of pretty pictures
of pretty saints assailed the imagination and senses through stained-glass
windows; and where sculpture and architecture came to the help of
painting. Nobody ever reminded them that these things had sometimes
produced such developments of erotic idolatry that men who were not
only enthusiastic amateurs of literature, painting, and music, but
famous practitioners of them, had actually exulted when mobs and even
regular troops under express command had mutilated church statues,
smashed church windows, wrecked church organs, and torn up the sheets
from which the church music was read and sung. When they saw broken
statues in churches, they were told that this was the work of wicked,
godless rioters, instead of, as it was, the work partly of zealots
bent on driving the world, the flesh, and the devil out of the temple,
and partly of insurgent men who had become intolerably poor because
the temple had become a den of thieves. But all the sins and perversions
that were so carefully hidden from them in the history of the Church
were laid on the shoulders of the Theatre: that stuffy, uncomfortable
place of penance in which we suffer so much inconvenience on the slenderest
chance of gaining a scrap of food for our starving souls. When the
Germans bombed the Cathedral of Rheims the world rang with the horror
of the sacrilege. When they bombed the Little Theatre in the Adelphi,
and narrowly missed bombing two writers of plays who lived within
a few yards of it, the fact was not even mentioned in the papers.
In point of appeal to the senses no theatre ever built could touch
the fane at Rheims: no actress could rival its Virgin in beauty, nor
any operatic tenor look otherwise than a fool beside its David. Its
picture glass was glorious even to those who had seen the glass of
Chartres. It was wonderful in its very \textit{\emph{grotesques}}:
who would look at the Blondin Donkey after seeing its leviathans?
In spite of the Adam-Adelphian decoration on which Miss Kingston had
lavished so much taste and care, the Little Theatre was in comparison
with Rheims the gloomiest of little conventicles: indeed the cathedral
must, from the Puritan point of view, have debauched a million voluptuaries
for every one whom the Little Theatre had sent home thoughtful to
a chaste bed after Mr Chesterton's \emph{Magic} or Brieux's \textit{Les}
\textit{Avaries}. Perhaps that is the real reason why the Church is
lauded and the Theatre reviled. Whether or no, the fact remains that
the lady to whose public spirit and sense of the national value of
the theatre I owed the first regular public performance of a play
of mine had to conceal her action as if it had been a crime, whereas
if she had given the money to the Church she would have worn a halo
for it. And I admit, as I have always done, that this state of things
may have been a very sensible one. I have asked Londoners again and
again why they pay half a guinea to go to a theatre when they can
go to St.\ Paul's or Westminster Abbey for nothing. Their only possible
reply is that they want to see something new and possibly something
wicked; but the theatres mostly disappoint both hopes. If ever a revolution
makes me Dictator, I shall establish a heavy charge for admission
to our churches. But everyone who pays at the church door shall receive
a ticket entitling him or her to free admission to one performance
at any theatre he or she prefers. Thus shall the sensuous charms of
the church service be made to subsidize the sterner virtue of the
drama.


\section*{\raggedright The Next Phase}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Next Phase}

The present situation will not last. Although the newspaper I read
at breakfast this morning before writing these words contains a calculation
that no less than twenty-three wars are at present being waged to
confirm the peace, England is no longer in khaki; and a violent reaction
is setting in against the crude theatrical fare of the four terrible
years. Soon the rents of theatres will once more be fixed on the assumption
that they cannot always be full, nor even on the average half full
week in and week out. Prices will change. The higher drama will be
at no greater disadvantage than it was before the war; and it may
benefit, first, by the fact that many of us have been torn from the
fools' paradise in which the theatre formerly traded, and thrust upon
the sternest realities and necessities until we have lost both faith
in and patience with the theatrical pretences that had no root either
in reality or necessity; second, by the startling change made by the
war in the distribution of income. It seems only the other day that
a millionaire was a man with 50,000 a year. To-day, when he has paid
his income tax and super tax, and insured his life for the amount
of his death duties, he is lucky if his net income is \pounds{}10,000
though his nominal property remains the same. And this is the result
of a Budget which is called {}``a respite for the rich.'' At the
other end of the scale millions of persons have had regular incomes
for the first time in their lives; and their men have been regularly
clothed, fed, lodged, and taught to make up their minds that certain
things have to be done, also for the first time in their lives. Hundreds
of thousands of women have been taken out of their domestic cages
and tasted both discipline and independence. The thoughtless and snobbish
middle classes have been pulled up short by the very unpleasant experience
of being ruined to an unprecedented extent. We have all had a tremendous
jolt; and although the widespread notion that the shock of the war
would automatically make a new heaven and a new earth, and that the
dog would never go back to his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing
in the mire, is already seen to be a delusion, yet we are far more
conscious of our condition than we were, and far less disposed to
submit to it. Revolution, lately only a sensational chapter in history
or a demagogic claptrap, is now a possibility so imminent that hardly
by trying to suppress it in other countries by arms and defamation,
and calling the process anti-Bolshevism, can our Government stave
it off at home.

Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day is the American President
who was once a historian. In those days it became his task to tell
us how, after that great war in America which was more clearly than
any other war of our time a war for an idea, the conquerors, confronted
with a heroic task of reconstruction, turned recreant, and spent fifteen
years in abusing their victory under cover of pretending to accomplish
the task they were doing what they could to make impossible. Alas!\ Hegel
was right when he said that we learn from history that men never learn
anything from history. With what anguish of mind the President sees
that we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything we professed to
fight for, are sitting down with watering mouths to a good square
meal of ten years revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate foe,
can only be guessed by those who know, as he does, how hopeless is
remonstrance, and how happy Lincoln was in perishing from the earth
before his inspired messages became scraps of paper. He knows well
that from the Peace Conference will come, in spite of his utmost,
no edict on which he will be able, like Lincoln, to invoke {}``the
considerate judgment of mankind: and the gracious favor of Almighty
God.'' He led his people to destroy the militarism of Zabern; and
the army they rescued is busy in Cologne imprisoning every German
who does not salute a British officer; whilst the government at home,
asked whether it approves, replies that it does not propose even to
discontinue this Zabernism when the Peace is concluded, but in effect
looks forward to making Germans salute British officers until the
end of the world. That is what war makes of men and women. It will
wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving impracticable;
but before the humble and contrite heart ceases to be despised, the
President and I, being of the same age, will be dotards. In the meantime
there is, for him, another history to write; for me, another comedy
to stage. Perhaps, after all, that is what wars are for, and what
historians and playwrights are for. If men will not learn until their
lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, their own
for preference.


\section*{\raggedright The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{The Ephemeral Thrones and the\\
Eternal Theatre}

To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever \textit{\emph{Bastilles}}
fall, the theatre will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All
Highest Hohenzollern languishes in Holland, threatened with trial
on a capital charge of fighting for his country against England; Imperial
Romanoff, said to have perished miserably by a more summary method
of murder, is perhaps alive or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than
if he had been a peasant; the lord of Hellas is level with his lackeys
in republican Switzerland; Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief
have passed from a brief glory as Solons and C\ae{}sars into failure
and obscurity as closely on one another's heels as the descendants
of Banquo; but Euripides and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere,
Goethe and Ibsen remain fixed in their everlasting seats.


\section*{\raggedright How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet}

As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays about
the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is significant.
You cannot make war on war and on your neighbor at the same time.
War cannot bear the terrible castigation of comedy, the ruthless light
of laughter that glares on the stage. When men are heroically dying
for their country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives
and fathers and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders
of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors,
the electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the
lusts and lies and rancors and bloodthirsts that love war because
it opens their prison doors, and sets them in the thrones of power
and popularity. For unless these things are mercilessly exposed they
will hide under the mantle of the ideals on the stage just as they
do in real life.

And though there may be better things to reveal, it may not, and indeed
cannot, be militarily expedient to reveal them whilst the issue is
still in the balance. Truth telling is not compatible with the defence
of the realm. We are just now reading the revelations of our generals
and admirals, unmuzzled at last by the armistice. During the war,
General A, in his moving despatches from the field, told how General
B had covered himself with deathless glory in such and such a battle.
He now tells us that General B came within an ace of losing us the
war by disobeying his orders on that occasion, and fighting instead
of running away as he ought to have done. An excellent subject for
comedy now that the war is over, no doubt; but if General A had let
this out at the time, what would have been the effect on General B's
soldiers? And had the stage made known what the Prime Minister and
the Secretary of State for War who overruled General A thought of
him, and what he thought of them, as now revealed in raging controversy,
what would have been the effect on the nation? That is why comedy,
though sorely tempted, had to be loyally silent; for the art of the
dramatic poet knows no patriotism; recognizes no obligation but truth
to natural history; cares not whether Germany or England perish; is
ready to cry with Brynhild, {}``\emph{Lass'uns} \textit{verderben},
\emph{lachend} \textit{zu} \emph{grunde geh'n}'' sooner than deceive
or be deceived; and thus becomes in time of war a greater military
danger than poison, steel, or trinitrotoluene. That is why I had to
withhold \emph{Heartbreak House} from the footlights during the war;
for the Germans might on any night have turned the last act from play
into earnest, and even then might not have waited for their cues.

\noindent \begin{center}\noun{June, 1919.}\end{center}


\chapter*{\raggedright ACT I}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{ACT I}

\markboth{Heartbreak House}{ACT I}

\emph{The hilly country in the middle of the north edge of Sussex,
looking very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of September, is
seen through the windows of a room which has been built so as to resemble
the after part of an old-fashioned high-pooped ship, with a stern
gallery; for the windows are ship built with heavy timbering, and
run right across the room as continuously as the stability of the
wall allows. A row of lockers under the windows provides an unupholstered
windowseat interrupted by twin glass doors, respectively halfway between
the stern post and the sides. Another door strains the illusion a
little by being apparently in the ship's port side, and yet leading,
not to the open sea, but to the entrance hall of the house. Between
this door and the stern gallery are bookshelves. There are electric
light switches beside the door leading to the hall and the glass doors
in the stern gallery. Against the starboard wall is a carpenter's
bench. The vice has a board in its jaws; and the floor is littered
with shavings, overflowing from a waste-paper basket. A couple of
planes and a centrebit are on the bench. In the same wall, between
the bench and the windows, is a narrow doorway with a half door, above
which a glimpse of the room beyond shows that it is a shelved pantry
with bottles and kitchen crockery.}

\emph{On the starboard side, but close to the middle, is a plain oak
drawing-table with drawing-board, T-square, straightedges, set squares,
mathematical instruments, saucers of water color, a tumbler of discolored
water, Indian ink, pencils, and brushes on it. The drawing-board is
set so that the draughtsman's chair has the window on its left hand.
On the floor at the end of the table, on its right, is a ship's fire
bucket. On the port side of the room, near the bookshelves, is a sofa
with its back to the windows. It is a sturdy mahogany article, oddly
upholstered in sailcloth, including the bolster, with a couple of
blankets hanging over the back. Between the sofa and the drawing-table
is a big wicker chair, with broad arms and a low sloping back, with
its back to the light. A small but stout table of teak, with a round
top and gate legs, stands against the port wall between the door and
the bookcase. It is the only article in the room that suggests (not
at all convincingly) a woman's hand in the furnishing. The uncarpeted
floor of narrow boards is caulked and holystoned like a deck.}

\emph{The garden to which the glass doors lead dips to the south before
the landscape rises again to the hills. Emerging from the hollow is
the cupola of an observatory. Between the observatory and the house
is a flagstaff on a little esplanade, with a hammock on the east side
and a long garden seat on the west.}

\emph{A young lady, gloved and hatted, with a dust coat on, is sitting
in the window-seat with her body twisted to enable her to look out
at the view. One hand props her chin: the other hangs down with a
volume of the Temple Shakespeare in it, and her finger stuck in the
page she has been reading.}

\emph{A clock strikes six.}

\emph{The young lady turns and looks at her watch. She rises with
an air of one who waits, and is almost at the end of her patience.
She is a pretty girl, slender, fair, and intelligent looking, nicely
but not expensively dressed, evidently not a smart idler.}

\emph{With a sigh of weary resignation she comes to the draughtsman's
chair; sits down; and begins to read Shakespeare. Presently the book
sinks to her lap; her eyes close; and she dozes into a slumber.}

\emph{An elderly womanservant comes in from the hall with three unopened
bottles of rum on a tray. She passes through and disappears in the
pantry without noticing the young lady. She places the bottles on
the shelf and fills her tray with empty bottles. As she returns with
these, the young lady lets her book drop, awakening herself, and startling
the womanservant so that she all but lets the tray fall.}

THE WOMANSERVANT. God bless us! {[}\textit{The young lady picks up
the book and places it on the table}{]}. Sorry to wake you, miss,
I'm sure; but you are a stranger to me. What might you be waiting
here for now?

THE YOUNG LADY. Waiting for somebody to show some signs of knowing
that I have been invited here.

THE WOMANSERVANT. Oh, you're invited, are you? And has nobody come?
Dear!\ dear!

THE YOUNG LADY. A wild-looking old gentleman came and looked in at
the window; and I heard him calling out, {}``Nurse, there is a young
and attractive female waiting in the poop. Go and see what she wants.''
Are you the nurse?

THE WOMANSERVANT. Yes, miss: I'm Nurse Guinness. That was old Captain
Shotover, Mrs Hushabye's father. I heard him roaring; but I thought
it was for something else. I suppose it was Mrs Hushabye that invited
you, ducky?

THE YOUNG LADY. I understood her to do so. But really I think I'd
better go.

NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, don't think of such a thing, miss. If Mrs Hushabye
has forgotten all about it, it will be a pleasant surprise for her
to see you, won't it?

THE YOUNG LADY. It has been a very unpleasant surprise to me to find
that nobody expects me.

NURSE GUINNESS. You'll get used to it, miss: this house is full of
surprises for them that don't know our ways.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{looking in from the hall suddenly: an
ancient but still hardy man with an immense white beard, in a reefer
jacket with a whistle hanging from his neck}{]}. Nurse, there is a
hold-all and a handbag on the front steps for everybody to fall over.
Also a tennis racquet. Who the devil left them there?

THE YOUNG LADY. They are mine, I'm afraid.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{advancing to the drawing-table}{]}. Nurse,
who is this misguided and unfortunate young lady?

NURSE GUINNESS. She says Miss Hessy invited her, sir.

THE CAPTAIN. And had she no friend, no parents, to warn her against
my daughter's invitations? This is a pretty sort of house, by heavens!
A young and attractive lady is invited here. Her luggage is left on
the steps for hours; and she herself is deposited in the poop and
abandoned, tired and starving. This is our hospitality. These are
our manners. No room ready. No hot water. No welcoming hostess. Our
visitor is to sleep in the toolshed, and to wash in the duckpond.

NURSE GUINNESS. Now it's all right, Captain: I'll get the lady some
tea; and her room shall be ready before she has finished it. {[}\textit{To
the young lady}{]}. Take off your hat, ducky; and make yourself at
home {[}\textit{she goes to the door leading to the hall}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{as she passes him}{]}. Ducky! Do you suppose,
woman, that because this young lady has been insulted and neglected,
you have the right to address her as you address my wretched children,
whom you have brought up in ignorance of the commonest decencies of
social intercourse?

NURSE GUINNESS. Never mind him, doty. {[}\textit{Quite unconcerned,
she goes out into the hall on her way to the kitchen}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN. Madam, will you favor me with your name? {[}\textit{He
sits down in the big wicker chair}{]}.

THE YOUNG LADY. My name is Ellie Dunn.

THE CAPTAIN. Dunn! I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn. He was originally
a pirate in China. He set up as a ship's chandler with stores which
I have every reason to believe he stole from me. No doubt he became
rich. Are you his daughter?

ELLIE {[}\textit{indignant}{]}. No, certainly not. I am proud to be
able to say that though my father has not been a successful man, nobody
has ever had one word to say against him. I think my father is the
best man I have ever known.

THE CAPTAIN. He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh
degree of concentration?

ELLIE. I don't understand.

THE CAPTAIN. But how could he, with a daughter? I, madam, have two
daughters. One of them is Hesione Hushabye, who invited you here.
I keep this house: she upsets it. I desire to attain the seventh degree
of concentration: she invites visitors and leaves me to entertain
them. {[}\textit{Nurse Guinness returns with the tea-tray, which
she places on the teak table}{]}. I have a second daughter who is,
thank God, in a remote part of the Empire with her numskull of a husband.
As a child she thought the figure-head of my ship, the \emph{Dauntless},
the most beautiful thing on earth. He resembled it. He had the same
expression: wooden yet enterprising. She married him, and will never
set foot in this house again.

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{carrying the table, with the tea-things
on it, to Ellie's side}{]}. Indeed you never were more mistaken. She
is in England this very moment. You have been told three times this
week that she is coming home for a year for her health. And very glad
you should be to see your own daughter again after all these years.

THE CAPTAIN. I am not glad. The natural term of the affection of the
human animal for its offspring is six years. My daughter Ariadne was
born when I was forty-six. I am now eighty-eight. If she comes, I
am not at home. If she wants anything, let her take it. If she asks
for me, let her be informed that I am extremely old, and have totally
forgotten her.

NURSE GUINNESS. That's no talk to offer to a young lady. Here, ducky,
have some tea; and don't listen to him {[}\textit{she pours out a
cup of tea}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{rising wrathfully}{]}. Now before high heaven
they have given this innocent child Indian tea: the stuff they tan
their own leather insides with. {[}\textit{He seizes the cup and
the tea-pot and empties both into the leathern bucket}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{almost in tears}{]}. Oh, please! I am so tired. I
should have been glad of anything.

NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, what a thing to do! The poor lamb is ready to
drop.

THE CAPTAIN. You shall have some of my tea. Do not touch that fly-blown
cake: nobody eats it here except the dogs. {[}\textit{He disappears
into the pantry}{]}.

NURSE GUINNESS. There's a man for you! They say he sold himself to
the devil in Zanzibar before he was a captain; and the older he grows
the more I believe them.

A WOMAN'S VOICE {[}\textit{in the hall}{]}. Is anyone at home? Hesione!
Nurse! Papa! Do come, somebody; and take in my luggage.

\emph{Thumping heard, as of an umbrella, on the wainscot.}

NURSE GUINNESS. My gracious! It's Miss Addy, Lady Utterword, Mrs Hushabye's
sister: the one I told the captain about. {[}\textit{Calling}{]}.
Coming, Miss, coming.

\emph{She carries the table back to its place by the door and is harrying
out when she is intercepted by Lady Utterword, who bursts in much
flustered. Lady Utterword, a blonde, is very handsome, very well dressed,
and so precipitate in speech and action that the first impression
(erroneous) is one of comic silliness.}

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, is that you, Nurse? How are you? You don't look
a day older. Is nobody at home? Where is Hesione? Doesn't she expect
me? Where are the servants? Whose luggage is that on the steps? Where's
papa? Is everybody asleep? {[}\textit{Seeing Ellie}{]}. Oh! I beg
your pardon. I suppose you are one of my nieces. {[}\textit{Approaching
her with outstretched arms}{]}. Come and kiss your aunt, darling.

ELLIE. I'm only a visitor. It is my luggage on the steps.

NURSE GUINNESS. I'll go get you some fresh tea, ducky. {[}\textit{She
takes up the tray}{]}.

ELLIE. But the old gentleman said he would make some himself.

NURSE GUINNESS. Bless you!\ he's forgotten what he went for already.
His mind wanders from one thing to another.

LADY UTTERWORD. Papa, I suppose?

NURSE GUINNESS. Yes, Miss.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{vehemently}{]}. Don't be silly, Nurse. Don't
call me Miss.

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{placidly}{]}. No, lovey {[}\textit{she goes
out with the tea-tray}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{sitting down with a flounce on the sofa}{]}.
I know what you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back
to it after twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage
lying on the steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at
home to receive anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because
they are always gnawing bread and butter or munching apples, and,
what is worse, the same disorder in ideas, in talk, in feeling. When
I was a child I was used to it: I had never known anything better,
though I was unhappy, and longed all the time---oh, how I longed!---to
be respectable, to be a lady, to live as others did, not to have to
think of everything for myself. I married at nineteen to escape from
it. My husband is Sir Hastings Utterword, who has been governor of
all the crown colonies in succession. I have always been the mistress
of Government House. I have been so happy: I had forgotten that people
could live like this. I wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews
and nieces (one ought to, you know), and I was looking forward to
it. And now the state of the house!\ the way I'm received!\ the
casual impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse!\ really Hesione
might at least have been here: some preparation might have been made
for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am really very
much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had realized it
was to be like this, I wouldn't have come. I have a great mind to
go away without another word {[}\textit{she is on the point of weeping}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{also very miserable}{]}. Nobody has been here to
receive me either. I thought I ought to go away too. But how can I,
Lady Utterword? My luggage is on the steps; and the station fly has
gone.

\emph{The captain emerges from the pantry with a tray of Chinese lacquer
and a very fine tea-set on it. He rests it provisionally on the end
of the table; snatches away the drawing-board, which he stands on
the floor against table legs; and puts the tray in the space thus
cleared. Ellie pours out a cup greedily.}

THE CAPTAIN. Your tea, young lady. What!\ another lady! I must fetch
another cup {[}\textit{he makes for the pantry}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{rising from the sofa, suffused with emotion}{]}.
Papa! Don't you know me? I'm your daughter.

THE CAPTAIN. Nonsense!\ my daughter's upstairs asleep. {[}\textit{He
vanishes through the half door}{]}.

\emph{Lady Utterword retires to the window to conceal her tears.}

ELLIE {[}\textit{going to her with the cup}{]}. Don't be so distressed.
Have this cup of tea. He is very old and very strange: he has been
just like that to me. I know how dreadful it must be: my own father
is all the world to me. Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it.

\emph{The captain returns with another cup.}

THE CAPTAIN. Now we are complete. {[}\textit{He places it on the
tray}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{hysterically}{]}. Papa, you can't have forgotten
me. I am Ariadne. I'm little Paddy Patkins. Won't you kiss me? {[}\textit{She
goes to him and throws her arms round his neck}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{woodenly enduring her embrace}{]}. How can
you be Ariadne? You are a middle-aged woman: well preserved, madam,
but no longer young.

LADY UTTERWORD. But think of all the years and years I have been away,
Papa. I have had to grow old, like other people.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{disengaging himself}{]}. You should grow out
of kissing strange men: they may be striving to attain the seventh
degree of concentration.

LADY UTTERWORD. But I'm your daughter. You haven't seen me for years.

THE CAPTAIN. So much the worse! When our relatives are at home, we
have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to
endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their
absence by dwelling on their vices. That is how I have come to think
my absent daughter Ariadne a perfect fiend; so do not try to ingratiate
yourself here by impersonating her {[}\textit{he walks firmly away
to the other side of the room}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Ingratiating myself indeed! {[}\textit{With dignity}{]}.
Very well, papa. {[}\textit{She sits down at the drawing-table and
pours out tea for herself}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN. I am neglecting my social duties. You remember Dunn?
Billy Dunn?

LADY UTTERWORD. \emph{Do} you mean that villainous sailor who robbed
you?

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{introducing Ellie}{]}. His daughter. {[}\textit{He
sits down on the sofa}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{protesting}{]}. No---

\emph{Nurse Guinness returns with fresh tea.}

THE CAPTAIN. Take that hogwash away. Do you hear?

NURSE. You've actually remembered about the tea! {[}\textit{To Ellie}{]}.
Oh, miss, he didn't forget you after all! You \emph{have} made an
impression.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{gloomily}{]}. Youth!\ beauty!\ novelty! They
are badly wanted in this house. I am excessively old. Hesione is only
moderately young. Her children are not youthful.

LADY UTTERWORD. How can children be expected to be youthful in this
house? Almost before we could speak we were filled with notions that
might have been all very well for pagan philosophers of fifty, but
were certainly quite unfit for respectable people of any age.

NURSE. You were always for respectability, Miss Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nurse, will you please remember that I am Lady Utterword,
and not Miss Addy, nor lovey, nor darling, nor doty? Do you hear?

NURSE. Yes, ducky: all right. I'll tell them all they must call you
My Lady. {[}\textit{She takes her tray out with undisturbed placidity}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. What comfort?\ what sense is there in having servants
with no manners?

ELLIE {[}\textit{rising and coming to the table to put down her empty
cup}{]}. Lady Utterword, do you think Mrs Hushabye really expects
me?

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, don't ask me. You can see for yourself that I've
just arrived; her only sister, after twenty-three years' absence!\ and
it seems that I am not expected.

THE CAPTAIN. What does it matter whether the young lady is expected
or not? She is welcome. There are beds: there is food. I'll find a
room for her myself {[}\textit{he makes for the door}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{following him to stop him}{]}. Oh, please---{[}\textit{He
goes out}{]}. Lady Utterword, I don't know what to do. Your father
persists in believing that my father is some sailor who robbed him.

LADY UTTERWORD. You had better pretend not to notice it. My father
is a very clever man; but he always forgot things; and now that he
is old, of course he is worse. And I must warn you that it is sometimes
very hard to feel quite sure that he really forgets.

\emph{Mrs Hushabye bursts into the room tempestuously and embraces
Ellie. She is a couple of years older than Lady Utterword, and even
better looking. She has magnificent black hair, eyes like the fishpools
of Heshbon, and a nobly modelled neck, short at the back and low between
her shoulders in front. Unlike her sister she is uncorseted and dressed
anyhow in a rich robe of black pile that shows off her white skin
and statuesque contour.}

MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie, my darling, my pettikins {[}\textit{kissing her}{]},
how long have you been here? I've been at home all the time: I was
putting flowers and things in your room; and when I just sat down
for a moment to try how comfortable the armchair was I went off to
sleep. Papa woke me and told me you were here. Fancy your finding
no one, and being neglected and abandoned. {[}\textit{Kissing her
again}{]}. My poor love! {[}\textit{She deposits Ellie on the sofa.
Meanwhile Ariadne has left the table and come over to claim her share
of attention}{]}. Oh!\ you've brought someone with you. Introduce
me.

LADY UTTERWORD. Hesione, is it possible that you don't know me?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{conventionally}{]}. Of course I remember your
face quite well. Where have we met?

LADY UTTERWORD. Didn't Papa tell you I was here? Oh!\ this is really
too much. {[}\textit{She throws herself sulkily into the big chair}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Papa!

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, Papa. Our papa, you unfeeling wretch! {[}\textit{Rising
angrily}{]}. I'll go straight to a hotel.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{seizing her by the shoulders}{]}. My goodness
gracious goodness, you don't mean to say that you're Addy!

LADY UTTERWORD. I certainly am Addy; and I don't think I can be so
changed that you would not have recognized me if you had any real
affection for me. And Papa didn't think me even worth mentioning!

MRS HUSHABYE. What a lark! Sit down {[}\textit{she pushes her back
into the chair instead of kissing her, and posts herself behind it}{]}.
You \emph{do} look a swell. You're much handsomer than you used to
be. You've made the acquaintance of Ellie, of course. She is going
to marry a perfect hog of a millionaire for the sake of her father,
who is as poor as a church mouse; and you must help me to stop her.

ELLIE. Oh, please, Hesione!

MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, the man's coming here today with your
father to begin persecuting you; and everybody will see the state
of the case in ten minutes; so what's the use of making a secret of
it?

ELLIE. He is not a hog, Hesione. You don't know how wonderfully good
he was to my father, and how deeply grateful I am to him.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{to Lady Utterword}{]}. Her father is a very
remarkable man, Addy. His name is Mazzini Dunn. Mazzini was a celebrity
of some kind who knew Ellie's grandparents. They were both poets,
like the Brownings; and when her father came into the world Mazzini
said, {}``Another soldier born for freedom!'' So they christened
him Mazzini; and he has been fighting for freedom in his quiet way
ever since. That's why he is so poor.

ELLIE. I am proud of his poverty.

MRS HUSHABYE. Of course you are, pettikins. Why not leave him in it,
and marry someone you love?

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{rising suddenly and explosively}{]}. Hesione,
are you going to kiss me or are you not?

MRS HUSHABYE. What do you want to be kissed for?

LADY UTTERWORD. I \emph{don't} want to be kissed; but I do want you
to behave properly and decently. We are sisters. We have been separated
for twenty-three years. You \emph{ought} to kiss me.

MRS HUSHABYE. To-morrow morning, dear, before you make up. I hate
the smell of powder.

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh!\ you unfeeling---{[}\textit{she is interrupted
by the return of the captain}{]}.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{to Ellie}{]}. Your room is ready. {[}\textit{Ellie
rises}{]}. The sheets were damp; but I have changed them {[}\textit{he
makes for the garden door on the port side}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! What about my sheets?

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{halting at the door}{]}. Take my advice: air
them: or take them off and sleep in blankets. You shall sleep in Ariadne's
old room.

LADY UTTERWORD. Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. That little
hole! I am entitled to the best spare room.

THE CAPTAIN {[}\textit{continuing unmoved}{]}. She married a numskull.
She told me she would marry anyone to get away from home.

LADT UTTERWORD. You are pretending not to know me on purpose. I will
leave the house.

\emph{Mazzini Dunn enters from the hall. He is a little elderly man
with bulging credulous eyes and earnest manners. He is dressed in
a blue serge jacket suit with an unbuttoned mackintosh over it, and
carries a soft black hat of clerical cut.}

ELLIE. At last! Captain Shotover, here is my father.

THE CAPTAIN. This! Nonsense!\ not a bit like him {[}\textit{he goes
away through the garden, shutting the door sharply behind him}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. I will not be ignored and pretended to be somebody
else. I will have it out with Papa now, this instant. {[}\textit{To
Mazzini}{]}. Excuse me. {[}\textit{She follows the captain out, making
a hasty bow to Mazzini, who returns it}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{hospitably shaking hands}{]}. How good of
you to come, Mr Dunn! You don't mind Papa, do you? He is as mad as
a hatter, you know, but quite harmless and extremely clever. You will
have some delightful talks with him.

MAZZINI. I hope so. {[}\textit{To Ellie}{]}. So here you are, Ellie,
dear. {[}\textit{He draws her arm affectionately through his}{]}.
I must thank you, Mrs Hushabye, for your kindness to my daughter.
I'm afraid she would have had no holiday if you had not invited her.

MRS HUSHABYE. Not at all. Very nice of her to come and attract young
people to the house for us.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{smiling}{]}. I'm afraid Ellie is not interested
in young men, Mrs Hushabye. Her taste is on the graver, solider side.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{with a sudden rather hard brightness in her
manner}{]}. Won't you take off your overcoat, Mr Dunn? You will find
a cupboard for coats and hats and things in the corner of the hall.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{hastily releasing Ellie}{]}. Yes---thank you---I
had better--- {[}\textit{he goes out}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{emphatically}{]}. The old brute!

ELLIE. Who?

MRS HUSHABYE. Who! Him. He. It {[}\textit{pointing after Mazzini}{]}.
{}``Graver, solider tastes,'' indeed!

ELLIE {[}\textit{aghast}{]}. You don't mean that you were speaking
like that of my father!

MRS HUSHABYE. I was. You know I was.

ELLIE {[}\textit{with dignity}{]}. I will leave your house at once. {[}\textit{She
turns to the door}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. If you attempt it, I'll tell your father why.

ELLIE {[}\textit{turning again}{]}. Oh! How can you treat a visitor
like this, Mrs Hushabye?

MRS HUSHABYE. I thought you were going to call me Hesione.

ELLIE. Certainly not now?

MRS HUSHABYE. Very well: I'll tell your father.

ELLIE {[}\textit{distressed}{]}. Oh!

MRS HUSHABYE. If you turn a hair---if you take his part against me
and against your own heart for a moment, I'll give that born soldier
of freedom a piece of my mind that will stand him on his selfish old
head for a week.

ELLIE. Hesione! My father selfish! How little you know---

\emph{She is interrupted by Mazzini, who returns, excited and perspiring.}

MAZZINI. Ellie, Mangan has come: I thought you'd like to know. Excuse
me, Mrs Hushabye, the strange old gentleman---

MRS HUSHABYE. Papa. Quite so.

MAZZINI. Oh, I beg your pardon, of course: I was a little confused
by his manner. He is making Mangan help him with something in the
garden; and he wants me too---

\emph{A powerful whistle is heard.}

THE CAPTAIN'S VOICE. Bosun ahoy!\ {[}\textit{the whistle is repeated}{]}.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{flustered}{]}. Oh dear! I believe he is whistling
for me. {[}\textit{He hurries out}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Now \emph{my} father is a wonderful man if you like.

ELLIE. Hesione, listen to me. You don't understand. My father and
Mr Mangan were boys together. Mr Ma---

MRS HUSHABYE. I don't care what they were: we must sit down if you
are going to begin as far back as that. {[}\textit{She snatches at
Ellie's waist, and makes her sit down on the sofa beside her}{]}.
Now, pettikins, tell me all about Mr Mangan. They call him Boss Mangan,
don't they? He is a Napoleon of industry and disgustingly rich, isn't
he? Why isn't your father rich?

ELLIE. My poor father should never have been in business. His parents
were poets; and they gave him the noblest ideas; but they could not
afford to give him a profession.

MRS HUSHABYE. Fancy your grandparents, with their eyes in fine frenzy
rolling! And so your poor father had to go into business. Hasn't he
succeeded in it?

ELLIE. He always used to say he could succeed if he only had some
capital. He fought his way along, to keep a roof over our heads and
bring us up well; but it was always a struggle: always the same difficulty
of not having capital enough. I don't know how to describe it to you.

MRS HUSHABYE. Poor Ellie! I know. Pulling the devil by the tail.

ELLIE {[}\textit{hurt}{]}. Oh, no. Not like that. It was at least
dignified.

MRS HUSHABYE. That made it all the harder, didn't it? I shouldn't
have pulled the devil by the tail with dignity. I should have pulled
hard---{[}\textit{between her teeth}{]} hard. Well? Go on.

ELLIE. At last it seemed that all our troubles were at an end. Mr
Mangan did an extraordinarily noble thing out of pure friendship for
my father and respect for his character. He asked him how much capital
he wanted, and gave it to him. I don't mean that he lent it to him,
or that he invested it in his business. He just simply made him a
present of it. Wasn't that splendid of him?

MRS HUSHABYE. On condition that you married him?

ELLIE. Oh, no, no, no! This was when I was a child. He had never even
seen me: he never came to our house. It was absolutely disinterested.
Pure generosity.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh! I beg the gentleman's pardon. Well, what became
of the money?

ELLIE. We all got new clothes and moved into another house. And I
went to another school for two years.

MRS HUSHABYE. Only two years?

ELLIE. That was all: for at the end of two years my father was utterly
ruined.

MRS HUSHABYE. How?

ELLIE. I don't know. I never could understand. But it was dreadful.
When we were poor my father had never been in debt. But when he launched
out into business on a large scale, he had to incur liabilities. When
the business went into liquidation he owed more money than Mr Mangan
had given him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Bit off more than he could chew, I suppose.

ELLIE. I think you are a little unfeeling about it.

MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, you mustn't mind my way of talking. I
was quite as sensitive and particular as you once; but I have picked
up so much slang from the children that I am really hardly presentable.
I suppose your father had no head for business, and made a mess of
it.

ELLIE. Oh, that just shows how entirely you are mistaken about him.
The business turned out a great success. It now pays forty-four per
cent after deducting the excess profits tax.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then why aren't you rolling in money?

ELLIE. I don't know. It seems very unfair to me. You see, my father
was made bankrupt. It nearly broke his heart, because he had persuaded
several of his friends to put money into the business. He was sure
it would succeed; and events proved that he was quite right. But they
all lost their money. It was dreadful. I don't know what we should
have done but for Mr Mangan.

MRS HUSHABYE. What! Did the Boss come to the rescue again, after all
his money being thrown away?

ELLIE. He did indeed, and never uttered a reproach to my father. He
bought what was left of the business---the buildings and the machinery
and things---from the official trustee for enough money to enable
my father to pay six-and-eight-pence in the pound and get his discharge.
Everyone pitied Papa so much, and saw so plainly that he was an honorable
man, that they let him off at six-and-eight-pence instead of ten shillings.
Then Mr.\ Mangan started a company to take up the business, and made
my father a manager in it to save us from starvation; for I wasn't
earning anything then.

MRS.\ HUSHABYE. Quite a romance. And when did the Boss develop the
tender passion?

ELLIE. Oh, that was years after, quite lately. He took the chair one
night at a sort of people's concert. I was singing there. As an amateur,
you know: half a guinea for expenses and three songs with three encores.
He was so pleased with my singing that he asked might he walk home
with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I took him
home and introduced him to my father, his own manager. It was then
that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was
considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And---and---we
drifted into a sort of understanding---I suppose I should call it
an engagement---{[}\textit{she is distressed and cannot go on}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rising and marching about}{]}. You may have
drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I
am to have anything to do with it.

ELLIE {[}\textit{hopelessly}{]}. No: it's no use. I am bound in honor
and gratitude. I will go through with it.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{behind the sofa, scolding down at her}{]}.
You know, of course, that it's not honorable or grateful to marry
a man you don't love. Do you love this Mangan man?

ELLIE. Yes. At least---

MRS HUSHABYE. I don't want to know about {}``at least'': I want
to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all sorts of
impossible people, especially old people.

ELLIE. I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be---

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{impatiently completing the sentence and prancing
away intolerantly to starboard}{]}.\ ---grateful to him for his kindness
to dear father. I know. Anybody else?

ELLIE. What do you mean?

MRS HUSHABYE. Anybody else? Are you in love with anybody else?

ELLIE. Of course not.

MRS HUSHABYE. Humph! {[}\textit{The book on the drawing-table catches
her eye. She picks it up, and evidently finds the title very unexpected.
She looks at Ellie, and asks, quaintly}{]} Quite sure you're not in
love with an actor?

ELLIE. No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head?

MRS HUSHABYE. This is yours, isn't it? Why else should you be reading
Othello?

ELLIE. My father taught me to love Shakespeare.

MRS HUSHAYE {[}\textit{flinging the book down on the table}{]}. Really!\ your
father does seem to be about the limit.

ELLIE {[}\textit{naively}{]}. Do you never read Shakespeare, Hesione?
That seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you, indeed? He was jealous, wasn't he?

ELLIE. Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is horrible.
But don't you think it must have been a wonderful experience for Desdemona,
brought up so quietly at home, to meet a man who had been out in the
world doing all sorts of brave things and having terrible adventures,
and yet finding something in her that made him love to sit and talk
with her and tell her about them?

MRS HUSHABYE. That's your idea of romance, is it?

ELLIE. Not romance, exactly. It might really happen.

\emph{Ellie's eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream.
Mrs Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to
the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.}

MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those stories
that Othello told Desdemona couldn't have happened---?

ELLIE. Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened.

MRS HUSHABYE. \textit{\emph{Hm}}! Desdemona thought they could have
happened. But they didn't.

ELLIE. Why do you look so enigmatic about it? You are such a sphinx:
I never know what you mean.

MRS HUSHABYE. Desdemona would have found him out if she had lived,
you know. I wonder was that why he strangled her!

ELLIE. Othello was not telling lies.

MRS HUSHABYE. How do you know?

ELLIE. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men
who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course,
white, and very handsome, and---

MRS HUSHABYE. Ah! Now we're coming to it. Tell me all about him. I
knew there must be somebody, or you'd never have been so miserable
about Mangan: you'd have thought it quite a lark to marry him.

ELLIE {[}\textit{blushing vividly}{]}. Hesione, you are dreadful.
But I don't want to make a secret of it, though of course I don't
tell everybody. Besides, I don't know him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Don't know him! What does that mean?

ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to.

MRS HUSHABYE. But you want to know him ever so much more intimately,
eh?

ELLIE. No, no: I know him quite---almost intimately.

MRS HUSHABYE. You don't know him; and you know him almost intimately.
How lucid!

ELLIE. I mean that he does not call on us. I---I got into conversation
with him by chance at a concert.

MRS HUSHABYE. You seem to have rather a gay time at your concerts,
Ellie.

ELLIE. Not at all: we talk to everyone in the greenroom waiting for
our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so splendid.
But he was only one of the committee. I happened to tell him that
I was copying a picture at the National Gallery. I make a little money
that way. I can't paint much; but as it's always the same picture
I can do it pretty quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It
happened that he came to the National Gallery one day.

MRS HUSHABYE. One students' day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through
a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing
and found the floor clear! Quite by accident?

ELLIE {[}\textit{triumphantly}{]}. No. On purpose. He liked talking
to me. He knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable women
who are all in love with him. But he ran away from them to see me
at the National Gallery and persuade me to come with him for a drive
round Richmond Park in a taxi.

MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, you have been going it. It's wonderful
what you good girls can do without anyone saying a word.

ELLIE. I am not in society, Hesione. If I didn't make acquaintances
in that way I shouldn't have any at all.

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, no harm if you know how to take care of yourself.
May I ask his name?

ELLIE {[}\textit{slowly and musically}{]}. Marcus Darnley.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{echoing the music}{]}. Marcus Darnley! What
a splendid name!

ELLIE. Oh, I'm so glad you think so. I think so too; but I was afraid
it was only a silly fancy of my own.

MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys?

ELLIE. Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an antique chest---

MRS HUSHABYE. A what?

ELLIE. An antique chest, one summer morning in a rose garden, after
a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.

MRS HUSHABYE. What on earth was he doing in the chest? Did he get
into it because he was afraid of the lightning?

ELLIE. Oh, no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley was embroidered
on his baby clothes. And five hundred pounds in gold.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{Looking hard at her}{]}. Ellie!

ELLIE. The garden of the Viscount---

MRS HUSHABYE.\ ---de Rougemont?

ELLIE {[}\textit{innocently}{]}. No: de Larochejaquelin. A French
family. A vicomte. His life has been one long romance. A tiger---

MRS HUSHABYE. Slain by his own hand?

ELLIE. Oh, no: nothing vulgar like that. He saved the life of the
tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward's hunting parties in
India. The King was furious: that was why he never had his military
services properly recognized. But he doesn't care. He is a Socialist
and despises rank, and has been in three revolutions fighting on the
barricades.

MRS HUSHABYE. How can you sit there telling me such lies? You, Ellie,
of all people! And I thought you were a perfectly simple, straightforward,
good girl.

ELLIE {[}\textit{rising, dignified but very angry}{]}. Do you mean
you don't believe me?

MRS HUSHABYE. Of course I don't believe you. You're inventing every
word of it. Do you take me for a fool?

\emph{Ellie stares at her. Her candor is so obvious that Mrs Hushabye
is puzzled.}

ELLIE. Goodbye, Hesione. I'm very sorry. I see now that it sounds
very improbable as I tell it. But I can't stay if you think that way
about me.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{catching her dress}{]}. You shan't go. I couldn't
be so mistaken: I know too well what liars are like. Somebody has
really told you all this.

ELLIE {[}\textit{flushing}{]}. Hesione, don't say that you don't believe
him. I couldn't bear that.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{soothing her}{]}. Of course I believe him,
dearest. But you should have broken it to me by degrees. {[}\textit{Drawing
her back to her seat}{]}. Now tell me all about him. Are you in love
with him?

ELLIE. Oh, no. I'm not so foolish. I don't fall in love with people.
I'm not so silly as you think.

MRS HUSHABYE. I see. Only something to think about---to give some
interest and pleasure to life.

ELLIE. Just so. That's all, really.

MRS HUSHABYE. It makes the hours go fast, doesn't it? No tedious waiting
to go to sleep at nights and wondering whether you will have a bad
night. How delightful it makes waking up in the morning! How much
better than the happiest dream! All life transfigured! No more wishing
one had an interesting book to read, because life is so much happier
than any book! No desire but to be alone and not to have to talk to
anyone: to be alone and just think about it.

ELLIE {[}\textit{embracing her}{]}. Hesione, you are a witch. How
do you know? Oh, you are the most sympathetic woman in the world!

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{caressing her}{]}. Pettikins, my pettikins,
how I envy you!\ and how I pity you!

ELLIE. Pity me! Oh, why?

\emph{A very handsome man of fifty, with} \textit{\emph{mousquetaire}}
\textit{\emph{moustaches}}\emph{, wearing a rather dandified curly
brimmed hat, and carrying an elaborate walking-stick, comes into the
room from the hall, and stops short at sight of the women on the sofa.}

ELLIE {[}\textit{seeing him and rising in glad surprise}{]}. Oh! Hesione:
this is Mr Marcus Darnley.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rising}{]}. What a lark! He is my husband.

ELLIE. But now---{[}\textit{she stops suddenly: then turns pale and
sways}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{catching her and sitting down with her on
the sofa}{]}. Steady, my pettikins.

THE MAN {[}\textit{with a mixture of confusion and effrontery, depositing
his hat and stick on the teak table}{]}. My real name, Miss Dunn,
is Hector Hushabye. I leave you to judge whether that is a name any
sensitive man would care to confess to. I never use it when I can
possibly help it. I have been away for nearly a month; and I had no
idea you knew my wife, or that you were coming here. I am none the
less delighted to find you in our little house.

ELLIE {[}\textit{in great distress}{]}. I don't know what to do. Please,
may I speak to papa? Do leave me. I can't bear it.

MRS HUSHABYE. Be off, Hector.

HECTOR. I---

MRS HUSHABYE. Quick, quick. Get out.

HECTOR. If you think it better---{[}\textit{he goes out, taking his
hat with him but leaving the stick on the table}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{laying Ellie down at the end of the sofa}{]}.
Now, pettikins, he is gone. There's nobody but me. You can let yourself
go. Don't try to control yourself. Have a good cry.

ELLIE {[}\textit{raising her head}{]}. Damn!

MRS HUSHABYE. Splendid! Oh, what a relief! I thought you were going
to be broken-hearted. Never mind me. Damn him again.

ELLIE. I am not damning him. I am damning myself for being such a
fool. {[}\textit{Rising}{]}. How could I let myself be taken in so?
{[}\textit{She begins prowling to and fro, her bloom gone, looking
curiously older and harder}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{cheerfully}{]}. Why not, pettikins? Very few
young women can resist Hector. I couldn't when I was your age. He
is really rather splendid, you know.

ELLIE {[}\textit{turning on her}{]}. Splendid! Yes, splendid looking,
of course. But how can you love a liar?

MRS HUSHABYE. I don't know. But you can, fortunately. Otherwise there
wouldn't be much love in the world.

ELLIE. But to lie like that! To be a boaster!\ a coward!

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rising in alarm}{]}. Pettikins, none of that,
if you please. If you hint the slightest doubt of Hector's courage,
he will go straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things
to convince himself that he isn't a coward. He has a dreadful trick
of getting out of one third-floor window and coming in at another,
just to test his nerve. He has a whole drawerful of Albert Medals
for saving people's lives.

ELLIE. He never told me that.

MRS HUSHABYE. He never boasts of anything he really did: he can't
bear it; and it makes him shy if anyone else does. All his stories
are made-up stories.

ELLIE {[}\textit{coming to her}{]}. Do you mean that he is really
brave, and really has adventures, and yet tells lies about things
that he never did and that never happened?

MRS HUSHABYE. Yes, pettikins, I do. People don't have their virtues
and vices in sets: they have them anyhow: all mixed.

ELLIE {[}\textit{staring at her thoughtfully}{]}. There's something
odd about this house, Hesione, and even about you. I don't know why
I'm talking to you so calmly. I have a horrible fear that my heart
is broken, but that heartbreak is not like what I thought it must
be.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{fondling her}{]}. It's only life educating
you, pettikins. How do you feel about Boss Mangan now?

ELLIE {[}\textit{disengaging herself with an expression of distaste}{]}.
Oh, how can you remind me of him, Hesione?

MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry, dear. I think I hear Hector coming back. You
don't mind now, do you, dear?

ELLIE. Not in the least. I am quite cured.

\emph{Mazzini Dunn and Hector come in from the hall.}

HECTOR {[}\textit{as he opens the door and allows Mazzini to pass
in}{]}. One second more, and she would have been a dead woman!

MAZZINI. Dear!\ dear!\ what an escape! Ellie, my love, Mr Hushabye
has just been telling me the most extraordinary---

ELLIE. Yes, I've heard it {[}\textit{she crosses to the other side
of the room}{]}.

HECTOR {[}\textit{following her}{]}. Not this one: I'll tell it to
you after dinner. I think you'll like it. The truth is I made it up
for you, and was looking forward to the pleasure of telling it to
you. But in a moment of impatience at being turned out of the room,
I threw it away on your father.

ELLIE {[}\textit{turning at bay with her back to the carpenter's bench,
scornfully self-possessed}{]}. It was not thrown away. He believes
it. I should not have believed it.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{benevolently}{]}. Ellie is very naughty, Mr Hushabye.
Of course she does not really think that. {[}\textit{He goes to the
bookshelves, and inspects the titles of the volumes}{]}.

\emph{Boss Mangan comes in from the hall, followed by the captain.
Mangan, carefully frock-coated as for church or for a} \emph{Directors}'
\emph{meeting, is about fifty-five, with a careworn, mistrustful expression,
standing a little on an entirely imaginary dignity, with a dull complexion,
straight, lustreless hair, and features so entirely commonplace that
it is impossible to describe them.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{to Mrs Hushabye, introducing the newcomer}{]}.
Says his name is Mangan. Not able-bodied.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{graciously}{]}. How do you do, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN {[}\textit{shaking hands}{]}. Very pleased.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dunn's lost his muscle, but recovered his nerve.
Men seldom do after three attacks of \emph{delirium tremens} {[}\textit{he
goes into the pantry}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. I congratulate you, Mr Dunn.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{dazed}{]}. I am a lifelong teetotaler.

MRS HUSHABYE. You will find it far less trouble to let papa have his
own way than try to explain.

MAZZINI. But three attacks of \emph{delirium tremens}, really!

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{to Mangan}{]}. Do you know my husband, Mr
Mangan {[}\textit{she indicates Hector}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{going to Hector, who meets him with outstretched
hand}{]}. Very pleased. {[}\textit{Turning to Ellie}{]}. I hope,
Miss Ellie, you have not found the journey down too fatiguing. {[}\textit{They
shake hands}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Hector, show Mr Dunn his room.

HECTOR. Certainly. Come along, Mr Dunn. {[}\textit{He takes Mazzini
out}{]}.

ELLIE. You haven't shown me my room yet, Hesione.

MRS HUSHABYE. How stupid of me! Come along. Make yourself quite at
home, Mr Mangan. Papa will entertain you. {[}\textit{She calls to
the captain in the pantry}{]}. Papa, come and explain the house to
Mr Mangan.

\emph{She goes out with Ellie. The captain comes from the pantry.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You're going to marry Dunn's daughter. Don't. You're
too old.

MANGAN {[}\textit{staggered}{]}. Well! That's fairly blunt, Captain.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's true.

MANGAN. She doesn't think so.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. She does.

MANGAN. Older men than I have---

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{finishing the sentence for him}{]}.---made
fools of themselves. That, also, is true.

MANGAN {[}\textit{asserting himself}{]}. I don't see that this is
any business of yours.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It is everybody's business. The stars in their courses
are shaken when such things happen.

MANGAN. I'm going to marry her all the same.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. How do you know?

MANGAN {[}\textit{playing the strong man}{]}. I intend to. I mean
to. See? I never made up my mind to do a thing yet that I didn't bring
it off. That's the sort of man I am; and there will be a better understanding
between us when you make up your mind to that, Captain.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You frequent picture palaces.

MANGAN. Perhaps I do. Who told you?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Talk like a man, not like a movie. You mean that
you make a hundred thousand a year.

MANGAN. I don't boast. But when I meet a man that makes a hundred
thousand a year, I take off my hat to that man, and stretch out my
hand to him and call him brother.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Then you also make a hundred thousand a year, hey?

MANGAN. No. I can't say that. Fifty thousand, perhaps.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. His half brother only {[}\textit{he turns away from
Mangan with his usual abruptness, and collects the empty tea-cups
on the Chinese tray}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{irritated}{]}. See here, Captain Shotover. I don't
quite understand my position here. I came here on your daughter's
invitation. Am I in her house or in yours?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are beneath the dome of heaven, in the house
of God. What is true within these walls is true outside them. Go out
on the seas; climb the mountains; wander through the valleys. She
is still too young.

MANGAN {[}\textit{weakening}{]}. But I'm very little over fifty.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are still less under sixty. Boss Mangan, you
will not marry the pirate's child {[}\textit{he carries the tray away
into the pantry}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{following him to the half door}{]}. What pirate's
child? What are you talking about?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{in the pantry}{]}. Ellie Dunn. You will
not marry her.

MANGAN. Who will stop me?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{emerging}{]}. My daughter {[}\textit{he
makes for the door leading to the hall}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{following him}{]}. Mrs Hushabye! Do you mean to
say she brought me down here to break it off?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{stopping and turning on him}{]}. I know
nothing more than I have seen in her eye. She will break it off. Take
my advice: marry a West Indian negress: they make excellent wives.
I was married to one myself for two years.

MANGAN. Well, I am damned!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I thought so. I was, too, for many years. The negress
redeemed me.

MANGAN {[}\textit{feebly}{]}. This is queer. I ought to walk out of
this house.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why?

MANGAN. Well, many men would be offended by your style of talking.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Nonsense! It's the other sort of talking that makes
quarrels. Nobody ever quarrels with me.

\emph{A gentleman, whose first-rate tailoring and frictionless manners
proclaim the wellbred West Ender, comes in from the hall. He has an
engaging air of being young and unmarried, but on close inspection
is found to be at least over forty.}

THE GENTLEMAN. Excuse my intruding in this fashion, but there is no
knocker on the door and the bell does not seem to ring.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why should there be a knocker? Why should the bell
ring? The door is open.

THE GENTLEMAN. Precisely. So I ventured to come in.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Quite right. I will see about a room for you {[}\textit{he
makes for the door}{]}.

THE GENTLEMAN {[}\textit{stopping him}{]}. But I'm afraid you don't
know who I am.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Do you suppose that at my age I make distinctions
between one fellow creature and another? {[}\textit{He goes out. Mangan
and the newcomer stare at one another}{]}.

MANGAN. Strange character, Captain Shotover, sir.

THE GENTLEMAN. Very.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{shouting outside}{]}. Hesione, another
person has arrived and wants a room. Man about town, well dressed,
fifty.

THE GENTLEMAN. Fancy Hesione's feelings! May I ask are you a member
of the family?

MANGAN. No.

THE GENTLEMAN. I am. At least a connection.

\emph{Mrs Hushabye comes back.}

MRS HUSHABYE. How do you do? How good of you to come!

THE GENTLEMAN. I am very glad indeed to make your acquaintance, Hesione. {[}\textit{Instead
of taking her hand he kisses her. At the same moment the captain appears
in the doorway}{]}. You will excuse my kissing your daughter, Captain,
when I tell you that---

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Stuff! Everyone kisses my daughter. Kiss her as
much as you like {[}\textit{he makes for the pantry}{]}.

THE GENTLEMAN. Thank you. One moment, Captain. {[}\textit{The captain
halts and turns. The gentleman goes to him affably}{]}. Do you happen
to remember but probably you don't, as it occurred many years ago---that
your younger daughter married a numskull?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes. She said she'd marry anybody to get away from
this house. I should not have recognized you: your head is no longer
like a walnut. Your aspect is softened. You have been boiled in bread
and milk for years and years, like other married men. Poor devil!
{[}\textit{He disappears into the pantry}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{going past Mangan to the gentleman and scrutinizing
him}{]}. I don't believe you are Hastings Utterword.

THE GENTLEMAN. I am not.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then what business had you to kiss me?

THE GENTLEMAN. I thought I would like to. The fact is, I am Randall
Utterword, the unworthy younger brother of Hastings. I was abroad
diplomatizing when he was married.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{dashing in}{]}. Hesione, where is the key
of the wardrobe in my room? My diamonds are in my dressing-bag: I
must lock it up---{[}\textit{recognizing the stranger with a shock}{]}
Randall, how dare you? {[}\textit{She marches at him past Mrs Hushabye,
who retreats and joins Mangan near the sofa}{]}.

RANDALL. How dare I what? I am not doing anything.

LADY UTTERWORD. Who told you I was here?

RANDALL. Hastings. You had just left when I called on you at Claridge's;
so I followed you down here. You are looking extremely well.

LADY UTTERWORD. Don't presume to tell me so.

MRS HUSHABYE. What is wrong with Mr Randall, Addy?

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{recollecting herself}{]}. Oh, nothing. But
he has no right to come bothering you and papa without being invited
{[}\textit{she goes to the window-seat and sits down, turning away
from them ill-humoredly and looking into the garden, where Hector
and Ellie are now seen strolling together}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. I think you have not met Mr Mangan, Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{turning her head and nodding coldly to Mangan}{]}.
I beg your pardon. Randall, you have flustered me so: I make a perfect
fool of myself.

MRS HUSHABYE. Lady Utterword. My sister. My younger sister.

MANGAN {[}\textit{bowing}{]}. Pleased to meet you, Lady Utterword.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{with marked interest}{]}. Who is that gentleman
walking in the garden with Miss Dunn?

MRS HUSHABYE. I don't know. She quarrelled mortally with my husband
only ten minutes ago; and I didn't know anyone else had come. It must
be a visitor. {[}\textit{She goes to the window to look}{]}. Oh,
it is Hector. They've made it up.

LADY UTTERWORD. Your husband! That handsome man?

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, why shouldn't my husband be a handsome man?

RANDALL {[}\textit{joining them at the window}{]}. One's husband never
is, Ariadne {[}\textit{he sits by Lady Utterword, on her right}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. One's sister's husband always is, Mr Randall.

LADY UTTERWORD. Don't be vulgar, Randall. And you, Hesione, are just
as bad.

\emph{Ellie and Hector come in from the garden by the starboard door.
Randall rises. Ellie retires into the corner near the pantry. Hector
comes forward; and Lady Utterword rises looking her very best.}

MRS.\ HUSHABYE. Hector, this is Addy.

HECTOR {[}\textit{apparently surprised}{]}. Not this lady.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{smiling}{]}. Why not?

HECTOR {[}\textit{looking at her with a piercing glance of deep but
respectful admiration, his moustache bristling}{]}. I thought--- {[}\textit{pulling
himself together}{]}. I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword. I am extremely
glad to welcome you at last under our roof {[}\textit{he offers his
hand with grave courtesy}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. She wants to be kissed, Hector.

LADY UTTERWORD. Hesione! {[}\textit{But she still smiles}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Call her Addy; and kiss her like a good brother-in-law;
and have done with it. {[}\textit{She leaves them to themselves}{]}.

HECTOR. Behave yourself, Hesione. Lady Utterword is entitled not only
to hospitality but to civilization.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{gratefully}{]}. Thank you, Hector. {[}\textit{They
shake hands cordially}{]}.

\emph{Mazzini Dunn is seen crossing the garden from starboard to port.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{coming from the pantry and addressing
Ellie}{]}. Your father has washed himself.

ELLIE {[}\textit{quite self-possessed}{]}. He often does, Captain
Shotover.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A strange conversion! I saw him through the pantry
window.

\emph{Mazzini Dunn enters through the port window door, newly washed
and brushed, and stops, smiling benevolently, between Mangan and Mrs
Hushabye.}

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{introducing}{]}. Mr Mazzini Dunn, Lady \textit{\emph{Ut}}---\textit{oh},
I forgot: you've met. {[}\textit{Indicating Ellie}{]} Miss Dunn.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{walking across the room to take Ellie's hand, and
beaming at his own naughty irony}{]}. I have met Miss Dunn also. She
is my daughter. {[}\textit{He draws her arm through his caressingly}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Of course: how stupid! Mr Utterword, my sister's---\textit{er}---

RANDALL {[}\textit{shaking hands agreeably}{]}. Her brother-in-law,
Mr Dunn. How do you do?

MRS HUSHABYE. This is my husband.

HECTOR. We have met, dear. Don't introduce us any more. {[}\textit{He
moves away to the big chair, and adds}{]} Won't you sit down, Lady
Utterword? {[}\textit{She does so very graciously}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry. I hate it: it's like making people show their
tickets.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{sententiously}{]}. How little it tells us, after
all! The great question is, not who we are, but what we are.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ha! What are you?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{taken aback}{]}. What am I?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A thief, a pirate, and a murderer.

MAZZINI. I assure you you are mistaken.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. An adventurous life; but what does it end in? Respectability.
A ladylike daughter. The language and appearance of a city missionary.
Let it be a warning to all of you {[}\textit{he goes out through the
garden}{]}.

DUNN. I hope nobody here believes that I am a thief, a pirate, or
a murderer. Mrs Hushabye, will you excuse me a moment? I must really
go and explain. {[}\textit{He follows the captain}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{as he goes}{]}. It's no use. You'd really
better--- {[}\textit{but Dunn has vanished}{]}. We had better all
go out and look for some tea. We never have regular tea; but you can
always get some when you want: the servants keep it stewing all day.
The kitchen veranda is the best place to ask. May I show you? {[}\textit{She
goes to the starboard door}{]}.

RANDALL {[}\textit{going with her}{]}. Thank you, I don't think I'll
take any tea this afternoon. But if you will show me the garden---

MRS HUSHABYE. There's nothing to see in the garden except papa's observatory,
and a gravel pit with a cave where he keeps dynamite and things of
that sort. However, it's pleasanter out of doors; so come along.

RANDALL. Dynamite! Isn't that rather risky?

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, we don't sit in the gravel pit when there's a
thunderstorm.

LADY UTTERWORD. That's something new. What is the dynamite for?

HECTOR. To blow up the human race if it goes too far. He is trying
to discover a psychic ray that will explode all the explosive at the
well of a Mahatma.

ELLIE. The captain's tea is delicious, Mr Utterword.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{stopping in the doorway}{]}. Do you mean to
say that you've had some of my father's tea?\ that you got round
him before you were ten minutes in the house?

ELLIE. I did.

MRS HUSHABYE. You little devil! {[}\textit{She goes out with Randall}{]}.

MANGAN. Won't you come, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE. I'm too tired. I'll take a book up to my room and rest a little. {[}\textit{She
goes to the bookshelf}{]}.

MANGAN. Right. You can't do better. But I'm disappointed. {[}\textit{He
follows Randall and Mrs Hushabye}{]}.

\emph{Ellie, Hector, and Lady Utterword are left. Hector is close
to Lady Utterword. They look at Ellie, waiting for her to go.}

ELLIE {[}\textit{looking at the title of a book}{]}. Do you like stories
of adventure, Lady Utterword?

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{patronizingly}{]}. Of course, dear.

ELLIE. Then I'll leave you to Mr Hushabye. {[}\textit{She goes out
through the hall}{]}.

HECTOR. That girl is mad about tales of adventure. The lies I have
to tell her!

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{not interested in Ellie}{]}. When you saw
me what did you mean by saying that you thought, and then stopping
short? What did you think?

HECTOR {[}\textit{folding his arms and looking down at her magnetically}{]}.
May I tell you?

LADY UTTERWORD. Of course.

HECTOR. It will not sound very civil. I was on the point of saying,
{}``I thought you were a plain woman.''

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, for shame, Hector! What right had you to notice
whether I am plain or not?

HECTOR. Listen to me, Ariadne. Until today I have seen only photographs
of you; and no photograph can give the strange fascination of the
daughters of that supernatural old man. There is some damnable quality
in them that destroys men's moral sense, and carries them beyond honor
and dishonor. You know that, don't you?

LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps I do, Hector. But let me warn you once for
all that I am a rigidly conventional woman. You may think because
I'm a Shotover that I'm a Bohemian, because we are all so horribly
Bohemian. But I'm not. I hate and loathe Bohemianism. No child brought
up in a strict Puritan household ever suffered from Puritanism as
I suffered from our Bohemianism.

HECTOR. Our children are like that. They spend their holidays in the
houses of their respectable schoolfellows.

LADY UTTERWORD. I shall invite them for Christmas.

HECTOR. Their absence leaves us both without our natural chaperones.

LADY UTTERWORD. Children are certainly very inconvenient sometimes.
But intelligent people can always manage, unless they are Bohemians.

HECTOR. You are no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your attraction
is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count yourself?

LADY UTTERWORD. I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure
you that if you will only take the trouble always to do the perfectly
correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct thing, you can do
just what you like. An ill-conducted, careless woman gets simply no
chance. An ill-conducted, careless man is never allowed within arm's
length of any woman worth knowing.

HECTOR. I see. You are neither a Bohemian woman nor a Puritan woman.
You are a dangerous woman.

LADY UTTERWORD. On the contrary, I am a safe woman.

HECTOR. You are a most accursedly attractive woman. Mind, I am not
making love to you. I do not like being attracted. But you had better
know how I feel if you are going to stay here.

LADY UTTERWORD. You are an exceedingly clever lady-killer, Hector.
And terribly handsome. I am quite a good player, myself, at that game.
Is it quite understood that we are only playing?

HECTOR. Quite. I am deliberately playing the fool, out of sheer worthlessness.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{rising brightly}{]}. Well, you are my brother-in-law,
Hesione asked you to kiss me. {[}\textit{He seizes her in his arms
and kisses her strenuously}{]}. Oh!\ that was a little more than
play, brother-in-law. {[}\textit{She pushes him suddenly away}{]}.
You shall not do that again.

HECTOR. In effect, you got your claws deeper into me than I intended.

MRS HUBHABYE {[}\textit{coming in from the garden}{]}. Don't let me
disturb you; I only want a cap to put on daddiest. The sun is setting;
and he'll catch cold {[}\textit{she makes for the door leading to
the hall}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Your husband is quite charming, darling. He has actually
condescended to kiss me at last. I shall go into the garden: it's
cooler now {[}\textit{she goes out by the port door}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Take care, dear child. I don't believe any man can kiss
Addy without falling in love with her. {[}\textit{She goes into the
hall}{]}.

HECTOR {[}\textit{striking himself on the chest}{]}. Fool! Goat!

\emph{Mrs Hushabye comes back with the captain's cap.}

HECTOR. Your sister is an extremely enterprising old girl. Where's
Miss Dunn!

MRS HUSHABYE. Mangan says she has gone up to her room for a nap. Addy
won't let you talk to Ellie: she has marked you for her own.

HECTOR. She has the diabolical family fascination. I began making
love to her automatically. What am I to do? I can't fall in love;
and I can't hurt a woman's feelings by telling her so when she falls
in love with me. And as women are always falling in love with my moustache
I get landed in all sorts of tedious and terrifying flirtations in
which I'm not a bit in earnest.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, neither is Addy. She has never been in love in her
life, though she has always been trying to fall in head over ears.
She is worse than you, because you had one real go at least, with
me.

HECTOR. That was a confounded madness. I can't believe that such an
amazing experience is common. It has left its mark on me. I believe
that is why I have never been able to repeat it.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{laughing and caressing his arm}{]}. We were
frightfully in love with one another, Hector. It was such an enchanting
dream that I have never been able to grudge it to you or anyone else
since. I have invited all sorts of pretty women to the house on the
chance of giving you another turn. But it has never come off.

HECTOR. I don't know that I want it to come off. It was damned dangerous.
You fascinated me; but I loved you; so it was heaven. This sister
of yours fascinates me; but I hate her; so it is hell. I shall kill
her if she persists.

MRS.\ HUSHABYE. Nothing will kill Addy; she is as strong as a horse. {[}\textit{Releasing
him}{]}. Now I am going off to fascinate somebody.

HECTOR. The Foreign Office toff? Randall?

MRS HUSHABYE. Goodness gracious, no! Why should I fascinate him?

HECTOR. I presume you don't mean the bloated capitalist, Mangan?

MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! I think he had better be fascinated by me than by
Ellie. {[}\textit{She is going into the garden when the captain comes
in from it with some sticks in his hand}{]}. What have you got there,
daddiest?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dynamite.

MRS HUSHABYE. You've been to the gravel pit. Don't drop it about the
house, there's a dear. {[}\textit{She goes into the garden, where
the evening light is now very red}{]}.

HECTOR. Listen, O sage. How long dare you concentrate on a feeling
without risking having it fixed in your consciousness all the rest
of your life?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ninety minutes. An hour and a half. {[}\textit{He
goes into the pantry}{]}.

\emph{Hector, left alone, contracts his brows, and falls into a day-dream.
He does not move for some time. Then he folds his arms. Then, throwing
his hands behind him, and gripping one with the other, he strides
tragically once to and fro. Suddenly he snatches his walking stick
from the teak table, and draws it; for it is a swordstick. He fights
a desperate duel with an imaginary antagonist, and after many vicissitudes
runs him through the body up to the hilt. He sheathes his sword and
throws it on the sofa, falling into another reverie as he does so.
He looks straight into the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her
by the arms; and says in a deep and thrilling tone, {}``Do you love
me!'' The captain comes out of the pantry at this moment; and Hector,
caught with his arms stretched out and his fists clenched, has to
account for his attitude by going through a series of gymnastic exercises.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That sort of strength is no good. You will never
be as strong as a gorilla.

HECTOR. What is the dynamite for?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. To kill fellows like Mangan.

HECTOR. No use. They will always be able to buy more dynamite than
you.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I will make a dynamite that he cannot explode.

HECTOR. And that you can, eh?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes: when I have attained the seventh degree of
concentration.

HECTOR. What's the use of that? You never do attain it.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What then is to be done? Are we to be kept forever
in the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing but a machine
for greasing their bristles and filling their snouts?

HECTOR. Are Mangan's bristles worse than Randall's lovelocks?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER,. We must win powers of life and death over them
both. I refuse to die until I have invented the means.

HECTOR. Who are we that we should judge them?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What are they that they should judge us? Yet they
do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and their seed.
They know it and act on it, strangling our souls. They believe in
themselves. When we believe in ourselves, we shall kill them.

HECTOR. It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate has a very
nice daughter. Mangan's son may be a Plato: Randall's a Shelley. What
was my father?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The damnedst scoundrel I ever met. {[}\textit{He
replaces the drawing-board; sits down at the table; and begins to
mix a wash of color}{]}.

HECTOR. Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent grandchildren?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They are mine also.

HECTOR. Just so---we are members one of another. {[}\textit{He throws
himself carelessly on the sofa}{]}. I tell you I have often thought
of this killing of human vermin. Many men have thought of it. Decent
men are like Daniel in the lion's den: their survival is a miracle;
and they do not always survive. We live among the Mangans and Randalls
and Billie Dunns as they, poor devils, live among the disease germs
and the doctors and the lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant
chefs and the tradesmen and the servants and all the rest of the parasites
and blackmailers. What are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power
to kill them; and I'll spare them in sheer---

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{cutting in sharp\-ly}{]}. Fellow feeling?

HECTOR. No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must believe
that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the red light over
their door is hell fire. I should spare them in simple magnanimous
pity.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You can't spare them until you have the power to
kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There are millions
of blacks over the water for them to train and let loose on us. They're
going to do it. They're doing it already.

HECTOR. They are too stupid to use their power.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{throwing down his brush and coming to
the end of the sofa}{]}. Do not deceive yourself: they do use it.
We kill the better half of ourselves every day to propitiate them.
The knowledge that these people are there to render all our aspirations
barren prevents us having the aspirations. And when we are tempted
to seek their destruction they bring forth demons to delude us, disguised
as pretty daughters, and singers and poets and the like, for whose
sake we spare them.

HECTOR {[}\textit{sitting up and leaning towards him}{]}. May not
Hesione be such a demon, brought forth by you lest I should slay you?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That is possible. She has used you up, and left
you nothing but dreams, as some women do.

HECTOR. Vampire women, demon women.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Men think the world well lost for them, and lose
it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the
shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. {[}\textit{Walking
distractedly away towards the pantry}{]}. I must think these things
out. {[}\textit{Turning suddenly}{]}. But I go on with the dynamite
none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind
ray that will explode the ammunition in the belt of my adversary before
he can point his gun at me. And I must hurry. I am old: I have no
time to waste in talk {[}\textit{he is about to go into the pantry,
and Hector is making for the hall, when Hesione comes back}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Daddiest, you and Hector must come and help me to entertain
all these people. What on earth were you shouting about?

HECTOR {[}\textit{stopping in the act of turning the door handle}{]}.
He is madder than usual.

MRS HUSHABYE. We all are.

HECTOR. I must change {[}\textit{he resumes his door opening}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, stop. Come back, both of you. Come back. {[}\textit{They
return, reluctantly}{]}. Money is running short.

HECTOR. Money! Where are my April dividends?

MRS HUSHABYE. Where is the snow that fell last year?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Where is all the money you had for that patent lifeboat
I invented?

MRS HUSHABYE. Five hundred pounds; and I have made it last since Easter!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Since Easter! Barely four months! Monstrous extravagance!
I could live for seven years on \pounds{}500.

MRS HUSHABYE. Not keeping open house as we do here, daddiest.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Only \pounds{}500 for that lifeboat! I got twelve
thousand for the invention before that.

MRS HUSHABYE. Yes, dear; but that was for the ship with the magnetic
keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we do, you cannot
afford life-saving inventions. Can't you think of something that will
murder half Europe at one bang?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on
slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband invent
something? He does nothing but tell lies to women.

HECTOR. Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However, you
are right: I ought to support my wife.

MRS HUSHABYE. Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort: I should never
see you from breakfast to dinner. I want my husband.

HECTOR {[}\textit{bitterly}{]}. I might as well be your lapdog.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other poor
husbands?

HECTOR. No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is anyhow!

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{to the captain}{]}. What about that harpoon
cannon?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No use. It kills whales, not men.

MRS HUSHABYE. Why not? You fire the harpoon out of a cannon. It sticks
in the enemy's general; you wind him in; and there you are.

HECTOR. You are your father's daughter, Hesione.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is something in it. Not to wind in generals:
they are not dangerous. But one could fire a grapnel and wind in a
machine gun or even a tank. I will think it out.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{squeezing the captain's arm affectionately}{]}.
Saved! You are a darling, daddiest. Now we must go back to these dreadful
people and entertain them.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They have had no dinner. Don't forget that.

HECTOR. Neither have I.\ And it is dark: it must be all hours.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Guinness will produce some sort of dinner for them.
The servants always take jolly good care that there is food in the
house.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{raising a strange wail in the darkness}{]}.
What a house! What a daughter!

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{raving}{]}. What a father!

HECTOR {[}\textit{following suit}{]}. What a husband!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is there no thunder in heaven?

HECTOR. Is there no beauty, no bravery, on earth?

MRS HUSHABYE. What do men want? They have their food, their firesides,
their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are
they not satisfied? Why do they envy us the pain with which we bring
them into the world, and make strange dangers and torments for themselves
to be even with us?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{weirdly chanting}{]}.

\begin{verse}\footnotesize

I builded a house for my daughters,\\*

\ \ \ \ and opened the doors thereof,\\*

That men might come for their choosing,\\*

\ \ \ \ and their betters spring from their love;\\*

But one of them married a numskull; 

\end{verse}

HECTOR {[}\textit{taking up the rhythm}{]}.

\begin{verse}\footnotesize

\ \ \ \ The other a liar wed; 

\end{verse}

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{completing the stanza}{]}.

\begin{verse}\footnotesize

And now must she lie beside him,\\*

\ \ \ \ even as she made her bed. 

\end{verse}

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{calling from the garden}{]}. Hesione! Hesione!
Where are you?

HECTOR. The cat is on the tiles.

MRS HUSHABYE. Coming, darling, coming {[}\textit{she goes quickly
into the garden}{]}.

\emph{The captain goes back to his place at the table.}

HECTOR {[}\textit{going out into the hall}{]}. Shall I turn up the
lights for you?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Give me deep\-er darkness. Money is not made
in the light.


\chapter*{\raggedright ACT II}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{ACT II}

\markboth{Heartbreak House}{ACT II}

\emph{The same room, with the lights turned up and the curtains drawn.
Ellie comes in, followed by Mangan. Both are dressed for dinner. She
strolls to the drawing-table. He comes between the table and the wicker
chair.}

MANGAN. What a dinner! I don't call it a dinner: I call it a meal.

ELLIE. I am accustomed to meals, Mr Mangan, and very lucky to get
them. Besides, the captain cooked some maccaroni for me.

MANGAN {[}\textit{shuddering liverishly}{]}. Too rich: I can't eat
such things. I suppose it's because I have to work so much with my
brain. That's the worst of being a man of business: you are always
thinking, thinking, thinking. By the way, now that we are alone, may
I take the opportunity to come to a little understanding with you?

ELLIE {[}\textit{settling into the draughtsman's seat}{]}. Certainly.
I should like to.

MANGAN {[}\textit{taken aback}{]}. Should you? That surprises me;
for I thought I noticed this afternoon that you avoided me all you
could. Not for the first time either.

ELLIE. I was very tired and upset. I wasn't used to the ways of this
extraordinary house. Please forgive me.

MANGAN. Oh, that's all right: I don't mind. But Captain Shotover has
been talking to me about you. You and me, you know.

ELLIE {[}\textit{interested}{]}. The captain! What did he say?

MANGAN. Well, he noticed the difference between our ages.

ELLIE. He notices everything.

MANGAN. You don't mind, then?

ELLIE. Of course I know quite well that our engagement---

MANGAN. Oh!\ you call it an engagement.

ELLIE. Well, isn't it?

MANGAN. Oh, yes, yes: no doubt it is if you hold to it. This is the
first time you've used the word; and I didn't quite know where we
stood: that's all. {[}\textit{He sits down in the wicker chair; and
resigns himself to allow her to lead the conversation}{]}. You were
saying---?

ELLIE. Was I? I forget. Tell me. Do you like this part of the country?
I heard you ask Mr Hushabye at dinner whether there are any nice houses
to let down here.

MANGAN. I like the place. The air suits me. I shouldn't be surprised
if I settled down here.

ELLIE. Nothing would please me better. The air suits me too. And I
want to be near Hesione.

MANGAN {[}\textit{with growing uneasiness}{]}. The air may suit us;
but the question is, should we suit one another? Have you thought
about that?

ELLIE. Mr Mangan, we must be sensible, mustn't we? It's no use pretending
that we are Romeo and Juliet. But we can get on very well together
if we choose to make the best of it. Your kindness of heart will make
it easy for me.

MANGAN {[}\textit{leaning forward, with the beginning of something
like deliberate unpleasantness in his voice}{]}. Kindness of heart,
eh? I ruined your father, didn't I?

ELLIE. Oh, not intentionally.

MANGAN. Yes I did. Ruined him on purpose.

ELLIE. On purpose!

MANGAN. Not out of ill-nature, you know. And you'll admit that I kept
a job for him when I had finished with him. But business is business;
and I ruined him as a matter of business.

ELLIE. I don't understand how that can be. Are you trying to make
me feel that I need not be grateful to you, so that I may choose freely?

MANGAN {[}\textit{rising aggressively}{]}. No. I mean what I say.

ELLIE. But how could it possibly do you any good to ruin my father?
The money he lost was yours.

MANGAN {[}\textit{with a sour laugh}{]}. Was mine! It is mine, Miss
Ellie, and all the money the other fellows lost too. {[}\textit{He
shoves his hands into his pockets and shows his teeth}{]}. I just
smoked them out like a hive of bees. What do you say to that? A bit
of shock, eh?

ELLIE. It would have been, this morning. Now!\ you can't think how
little it matters. But it's quite interesting. Only, you must explain
it to me. I don't understand it. {[}\textit{Propping her elbows on
the drawingboard and her chin on her hands, she composes herself to
listen with a combination of conscious curiosity with unconscious
contempt which provokes him to more and more unpleasantness, and an
attempt at patronage of her ignorance}{]}.

MANGAN. Of course you don't understand: what do you know about business?
You just listen and learn. Your father's business was a new business;
and I don't start new businesses: I let other fellows start them.
They put all their money and their friends' money into starting them.
They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them.
They're what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the
thing is too much for them; and they haven't enough financial experience.
In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or
sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares:
that is, if they're lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely
as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more
money and a couple of years' more work; and then perhaps they have
to sell out to a third lot. If it's really a big thing the third lot
will have to sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind
them. And that's where the real business man comes in: where I come
in. But I'm cleverer than some: I don't mind dropping a little money
to start the process. I took your father's measure. I saw that he
had a sound idea, and that he would work himself silly for it if he
got the chance. I saw that he was a child in business, and was dead
certain to outrun his expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait
for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn't
know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea
to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take
no risks in ideas, even when they're my own. Your father and the friends
that ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap
of squeezed lemons. You've been wasting your gratitude: my kind heart
is all rot. I'm sick of it. When I see your father beaming at me with
his moist, grateful eyes, regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes
feel I must tell him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know
he wouldn't believe me. He'd think it was my modesty, as you did just
now. He'd think anything rather than the truth, which is that he's
a blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of himself. {[}\textit{He
throws himself back into the big chair with large self approval}{]}.
Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE {[}\textit{dropping her hands}{]}. How strange!\ that my mother,
who knew nothing at all about business, should have been quite right
about you! She always said not before papa, of course, but to us children---that
you were just that sort of man.

MANGAN {[}\textit{sitting up, much hurt}{]}. Oh!\ did she? And yet
she'd have let you marry me.

ELLIE. Well, you see, Mr Mangan, my mother married a very good man---for
whatever you may think of my father as a man of business, he is the
soul of goodness---and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

MANGAN. Anyhow, you don't want to marry me now, do you?

ELLIE. {[}\textit{very calmly}{]}. Oh, I think so. Why not?

MANGAN. {[}\textit{rising aghast}{]}. Why not!

ELLIE. I don't see why we shouldn't get on very well together.

MANGAN. Well, but look here, you know---{[}\textit{he stops, quite
at a loss}{]}.

ELLIE. {[}\textit{patiently}{]}. Well?

MANGAN. Well, I thought you were rather particular about people's
characters.

ELLIE. If we women were particular about men's characters, we should
never get married at all, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN. A child like you talking of {}``we women''! What next! You're
not in earnest?

ELLIE. Yes, I am. Aren't you?

MANGAN. You mean to hold me to it?

ELLIE. Do you wish to back out of it?

MANGAN. Oh, no. Not exactly back out of it.

ELLIE. Well?

\emph{He has nothing to say. With a long whispered whistle, he drops
into the wicker chair and stares before him like a beggared gambler.
But a cunning look soon comes into his face. He leans over towards
her on his right elbow, and speaks in a low steady voice.}

MANGAN. Suppose I told you I was in love with another woman!

ELLIE {[}\textit{echoing him}{]}. Suppose I told you I was in love
with another man!

MANGAN {[}\textit{bouncing angrily out of his chair}{]}. I'm not joking.

ELLIE. Who told you I was?

MANGAN. I tell you I'm serious. You're too young to be serious; but
you'll have to believe me. I want to be near your friend Mrs Hushabye.
I'm in love with her. Now the murder's out.

ELLIE. I want to be near your friend Mr Hushabye. I'm in love with
him. {[}\textit{She rises and adds with a frank air}{]} Now we are
in one another's confidence, we shall be real friends. Thank you for
telling me.

MANGAN {[}\textit{almost beside himself}{]}. Do you think I'll be
made a convenience of like this?

ELLIE. Come, Mr Mangan!\ you made a business convenience of my father.
Well, a woman's business is marriage. Why shouldn't I make a domestic
convenience of you?

MANGAN. Because I don't choose, see? Because I'm not a silly gull
like your father. That's why.

ELLIE {[}\textit{with serene contempt}{]}. You are not good enough
to clean my father's boots, Mr Mangan; and I am paying you a great
compliment in condescending to make a convenience of you, as you call
it. Of course you are free to throw over our engagement if you like;
but, if you do, you'll never enter Hesione's house again: I will take
care of that.

MANGAN {[}\textit{gasping}{]}. You little devil, you've done me. {[}\textit{On
the point of collapsing into the big chair again he recovers himself}{]}.
Wait a bit, though: you're not so cute as you think. You can't beat
Boss Mangan as easy as that. Suppose I go straight to Mrs Hushabye
and tell her that you're in love with her husband.

ELLIE. She knows it.

MANGAN. You told her!!!

ELLIE. She told me.

MANGAN {[}\textit{clutching at his bursting temples}{]}. Oh, this
is a crazy house. Or else I'm going clean off my chump. Is she making
a swop with you---she to have your husband and you to have hers?

ELLIE. Well, you don't want us both, do you?

MANGAN {[}\textit{throwing himself into the chair distractedly}{]}.
My brain won't stand it. My head's going to split. Help! Help me to
hold it. Quick: hold it: squeeze it. Save me. {[}\textit{Ellie comes
behind his chair; clasps his head hard for a moment; then begins to
draw her hands from his forehead back to his ears}{]}. Thank you. {[}\textit{Drowsily}{]}.
That's very refreshing. {[}\textit{Waking a little}{]}. Don't you
hypnotize me, though. I've seen men made fools of by hypnotism.

ELLIE {[}\textit{steadily}{]}. Be quiet. I've seen men made fools
of without hypnotism.

MANGAN {[}\textit{humbly}{]}. You don't dislike touching me, I hope.
You never touched me before, I noticed.

ELLIE. Not since you fell in love naturally with a grown-up nice woman,
who will never expect you to make love to her. And I will never expect
him to make love to me.

MANGAN. He may, though.

ELLIE {[}\textit{making her passes rhythmically}{]}. Hush. Go to sleep.
Do you hear? You are to go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep; be
quiet, deeply deeply quiet; sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

\emph{He falls asleep. Ellie steals away; turns the light out; and
goes into the garden.}

\emph{Nurse Guinness opens the door and is seen in the light which
comes in from the hall.}

GUINNESS {[}\textit{speaking to someone outside}{]}. Mr Mangan's not
here, duckie: there's no one here. It's all dark.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{without}{]}. Try the garden. Mr Dunn and I
will be in my boudoir. Show him the way.

GUINNESS. Yes, ducky. {[}\textit{She makes for the garden door in
the dark; stumbles over the sleeping Mangan and screams}{]}. Ahoo!
O Lord, Sir! I beg your pardon, I'm sure: I didn't see you in the
dark. Who is it? {[}\textit{She goes back to the door and turns on
the light}{]}. Oh, Mr Mangan, sir, I hope I haven't hurt you plumping
into your lap like that. {[}\textit{Coming to him}{]}. I was looking
for you, sir. Mrs Hushabye says will you please {[}\textit{noticing
that he remains quite insensible}{]}. Oh, my good Lord, I hope I haven't
killed him. Sir! Mr Mangan! Sir! {[}\textit{She shakes him; and he
is rolling inertly off the chair on the floor when she holds him up
and props him against the cushion}{]}. Miss Hessy! Miss Hessy!\ quick,
doty darling. Miss Hessy! {[}\textit{Mrs Hushabye comes in from the
hall, followed by Mazzini Dunn}{]}. Oh, Miss Hessy, I've been and
killed him.

\emph{Mazzini runs round the back of the chair to Mangan's right hand,
and sees that the nurse's words are apparently only too true.}

MAZZINI. What tempted you to commit such a crime, woman?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{trying not to laugh}{]}. Do you mean, you
did it on purpose?

GUINNESS. Now is it likely I'd kill any man on purpose? I fell over
him in the dark; and I'm a pretty tidy weight. He never spoke nor
moved until I shook him; and then he would have dropped dead on the
floor. Isn't it tiresome?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{going past the nurse to Mangan's side, and
inspecting him less credulously than Mazzini}{]}. Nonsense!\ he is
not dead: he is only asleep. I can see him breathing.

GUINNESS. But why won't he wake?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{speaking very politely into Mangan's ear}{]}. Mangan!
My dear Mangan!\ {[}\textit{he blows into Mangan's ear}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. That's no good {[}\textit{she shakes him vigorously}{]}.
Mr Mangan, wake up. Do you hear? {[}\textit{He begins to roll over}{]}.
Oh! Nurse, nurse: he's falling: help me.

\emph{Nurse Guinness rushes to the rescue. With Mazzini's assistance,
Mangan is propped safely up again.}

GUINNESS {[}\textit{behind the chair; bending over to test the case
with her nose}{]}. Would he be drunk, do you think, pet?

MRS HUSHABYE. Had he any of papa's rum?

MAZZINI. It can't be that: he is most abstemious. I am afraid he drank
too much formerly, and has to drink too little now. You know, Mrs
Hushabye, I really think he has been hypnotized.

GUINNESS. Hip no what, sir?

MAZZINI. One evening at home, after we had seen a hypnotizing performance,
the children began playing at it; and Ellie stroked my head. I assure
you I went off dead asleep; and they had to send for a professional
to wake me up after I had slept eighteen hours. They had to carry
me upstairs; and as the poor children were not very strong, they let
me slip; and I rolled right down the whole flight and never woke up. {[}\textit{Mrs
Hushabye splutters}{]}. Oh, you may laugh, Mrs Hushabye; but I might
have been killed.

MRS HUSHABYE. I couldn't have helped laughing even if you had been,
Mr Dunn. So Ellie has hypnotized him. What fun!

MAZZINI. Oh no, no, no. It was such a terrible lesson to her: nothing
would induce her to try such a thing again.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then who did it? I didn't.

MAZZINI. I thought perhaps the captain might have done it unintentionally.
He is so fearfully magnetic: I feel vibrations whenever he comes close
to me.

GUINNESS. The captain will get him out of it anyhow, sir: I'll back
him for that. I'll go fetch him {[}\textit{she makes for the pantry}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Wait a bit. {[}\textit{To Mazzini}{]}. You say he is
all right for eighteen hours?

MAZZINI. Well, I was asleep for eighteen hours.

MRS HUSHABYE. Were you any the worse for it?

MAZZINI. I don't quite remember. They had poured brandy down my throat,
you see; and---

MRS HUSHABYE. Quite. Anyhow, you survived. Nurse, darling: go and
ask Miss Dunn to come to us here. Say I want to speak to her particularly.
You will find her with Mr Hushabye probably.

GUINNESS. I think not, ducky: Miss Addy is with him. But I'll find
her and send her to you. {[}\textit{She goes out into the garden}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{calling Mazzini's attention to the figure
on the chair}{]}. Now, Mr Dunn, look. Just look. Look hard. Do you
still intend to sacrifice your daughter to that thing?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{troubled}{]}. You have completely upset me, Mrs
Hushabye, by all you have said to me. That anyone could imagine that
I---I, a consecrated soldier of freedom, if I may say so---could sacrifice
Ellie to anybody or anyone, or that I should ever have dreamed of
forcing her inclinations in any way, is a most painful blow to my---well,
I suppose you would say to my good opinion of myself.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rather stolidly}{]}. Sorry.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{looking forlornly at the body}{]}. What is your
objection to poor Mangan, Mrs Hushabye? He looks all right to me.
But then I am so accustomed to him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Have you no heart? Have you no sense? Look at the brute!
Think of poor weak innocent Ellie in the clutches of this slavedriver,
who spends his life making thousands of rough violent workmen bend
to his will and sweat for him: a man accustomed to have great masses
of iron beaten into shape for him by steam-hammers!\ to fight with
women and girls over a halfpenny an hour ruthlessly!\ a captain of
industry, I think you call him, don't you? Are you going to fling
your delicate, sweet, helpless child into such a beast's claws just
because he will keep her in an expensive house and make her wear diamonds
to show how rich he is?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{staring at her in wide-eyed amazement}{]}. Bless
you, dear Mrs Hushabye, what romantic ideas of business you have!
Poor dear Mangan isn't a bit like that.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{scornfully}{]}. Poor dear Mangan indeed!

MAZZINI. But he doesn't know anything about machinery. He never goes
near the men: he couldn't manage them: he is afraid of them. I never
can get him to take the least interest in the works: he hardly knows
more about them than you do. People are cruelly unjust to Mangan:
they think he is all rugged strength just because his manners are
bad.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you mean to tell me he isn't strong enough to crush
poor little Ellie?

MAZZINI. Of course it's very hard to say how any marriage will turn
out; but speaking for myself, I should say that he won't have a dog's
chance against Ellie. You know, Ellie has remarkable strength of character.
I think it is because I taught her to like Shakespeare when she was
very young.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{contemptuously}{]}. Sha\-k\-e\-speare!
The next thing you will tell me is that you could have made a great
deal more money than Mangan. {[}\textit{She retires to the sofa, and
sits down at the port end of it in the worst of humors}{]}.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{following her and taking the other end}{]}. No:
I'm no good at making money. I don't care enough for it, somehow.
I'm not ambitious!\ that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money:
he thinks of nothing else. He is so dreadfully afraid of being poor.
I am always thinking of other things: even at the works I think of
the things we are doing and not of what they cost. And the worst of
it is, poor Mangan doesn't know what to do with his money when he
gets it. He is such a baby that he doesn't know even what to eat and
drink: he has ruined his liver eating and drinking the wrong things;
and now he can hardly eat at all. Ellie will diet him splendidly.
You will be surprised when you come to know him better: he is really
the most helpless of mortals. You get quite a protective feeling towards
him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then who manages his business, pray?

MAZZINI. I do. And of course other people like me.

MRS HUSHABYE. Footling people, you mean.

MAZZINI. I suppose you'd think us so.

MRS HUSHABYE. And pray why don't you do without him if you're all
so much cleverer?

MAZZINI. Oh, we couldn't: we should ruin the business in a year. I've
tried; and I know. We should spend too much on everything. We should
improve the quality of the goods and make them too dear. We should
be sentimental about the hard cases among the work people. But Mangan
keeps us in order. He is down on us about every extra halfpenny. We
could never do without him. You see, he will sit up all night thinking
of how to save sixpence. Won't Ellie make him jump, though, when she
takes his house in hand!

MRS HUSHABYE. Then the creature is a fraud even as a captain of industry!

MAZZINI. I am afraid all the captains of industry are what you call
frauds, Mrs Hushabye. Of course there are some manufacturers who really
do understand their own works; but they don't make as high a rate
of profit as Mangan does. I assure you Mangan is quite a good fellow
in his way. He means well.

MRS HUSHABYE. He doesn't look well. He is not in his first youth,
is he?

MAZZINI. After all, no husband is in his first youth for very long,
Mrs Hushabye. And men can't afford to marry in their first youth nowadays.

MRS HUSHABYE. Now if I said that, it would sound witty. Why can't
you say it wittily? What on earth is the matter with you? Why don't
you inspire everybody with confidence?\ with respect?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{humbly}{]}. I think that what is the matter with
me is that I am poor. You don't know what that means at home. Mind:
I don't say they have ever complained. They've all been wonderful:
they've been proud of my poverty. They've even joked about it quite
often. But my wife has had a very poor time of it. She has been quite
resigned---

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{shuddering involuntarily}{]}!!

MAZZINI. There! You see, Mrs Hushabye. I don't want Ellie to live
on resignation.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want her to have to resign herself to living
with a man she doesn't love?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{wistfully}{]}. Are you sure that would be worse
than living with a man she did love, if he was a footling person?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{relaxing her contemptuous attitude, quite
interested in Mazzini now}{]}. You know, I really think you must love
Ellie very much; for you become quite clever when you talk about her.

MAZZINI. I didn't know I was so very stupid on other subjects.

MRS HUSHABYE. You are, sometimes.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{turning his head away; for his eyes are wet}{]}.
I have learnt a good deal about myself from you, Mrs Hushabye; and
I'm afraid I shall not be the happier for your plain speaking. But
if you thought I needed it to make me think of Ellie's happiness you
were very much mistaken.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{leaning towards him kindly}{]}. Have I been
a beast?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{pulling himself together}{]}. It doesn't matter
about me, Mrs Hushabye. I think you like Ellie; and that is enough
for me.

MRS HUSHABYE. I'm beginning to like you a little. I perfectly loathed
you at first. I thought you the most odious, self-satisfied, boresome
elderly prig I ever met.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{resigned, and now quite cheerful}{]}. I daresay
I am all that. I never have been a favorite with gorgeous women like
you. They always frighten me.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{pleased}{]}. Am I a gorgeous woman, Mazzini?
I shall fall in love with you presently.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{with placid gallantry}{]}. No, you won't, Hesione.
But you would be quite safe. Would you believe it that quite a lot
of women have flirted with me because I am quite safe? But they get
tired of me for the same reason.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{mischievously}{]}. Take care. You may not
be so safe as you think.

MAZZINI. Oh yes, quite safe. You see, I have been in love really:
the sort of love that only happens once. {[}\textit{Softly}{]}. That's
why Ellie is such a lovely girl.

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, really, you are coming out. Are you quite sure
you won't let me tempt you into a second grand passion?

MAZZINI. Quite. It wouldn't be natural. The fact is, you don't strike
on my box, Mrs Hushabye; and I certainly don't strike on yours.

MRS HUSHABYE. I see. Your marriage was a safety match.

MAZZINI. What a very witty application of the expression I used! I
should never have thought of it.

\emph{Ellie comes in from the garden, looking anything but happy.}

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rising}{]}. Oh!\ here is Ellie at last. {[}\textit{She
goes behind the sofa}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{on the threshold of the starboard door}{]}. Guinness
said you wanted me: you and papa.

MRS HUSHABYE. You have kept us waiting so long that it almost came
to---well, never mind. Your father is a very wonderful man {[}\textit{she
ruffles his hair affectionately}{]}: the only one I ever met who could
resist me when I made myself really agreeable. {[}\textit{She comes
to the big chair, on Mangan's left}{]}. Come here. I have something
to show you. {[}\textit{Ellie strolls listlessly to the other side
of the chair}{]}. Look.

ELLIE {[}\textit{contemplating Mangan without interest}{]}. I know.
He is only asleep. We had a talk after dinner; and he fell asleep
in the middle of it.

MRS HUSHABYE. You did it, Ellie. You put him asleep.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{rising quickly and coming to the back of the chair}{]}.
Oh, I hope not. Did you, Ellie?

ELLIE {[}\textit{wearily}{]}. He asked me to.

MAZZINI. But it's dangerous. You know what happened to me.

ELLIE {[}\textit{utterly indifferent}{]}. Oh, I daresay I can wake
him. If not, somebody else can.

MRS HUSHABYE. It doesn't matter, anyhow, because I have at last persuaded
your father that you don't want to marry him.

ELLIE {[}\textit{suddenly coming out of her listlessness, much vexed}{]}.
But why did you do that, Hesione? I do want to marry him. I fully
intend to marry him.

MAZZINI. Are you quite sure, Ellie? Mrs Hushabye has made me feel
that I may have been thoughtless and selfish about it.

ELLIE {[}\textit{very clearly and steadily}{]}. Papa. When Mrs.\ Hushabye
takes it on herself to explain to you what I think or don't think,
shut your ears tight; and shut your eyes too. Hesione knows nothing
about me: she hasn't the least notion of the sort of person I am,
and never will. I promise you I won't do anything I don't want to
do and mean to do for my own sake.

MAZZINI. You are quite, quite sure?

ELLIE. Quite, quite sure. Now you must go away and leave me to talk
to Mrs Hushabye.

MAZZINI. But I should like to hear. Shall I be in the way?

ELLIE {[}\textit{inexorable}{]}. I had rather talk to her alone.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{affectionately}{]}. Oh, well, I know what a nuisance
parents are, dear. I will be good and go. {[}\textit{He goes to the
garden door}{]}. By the way, do you remember the address of that professional
who woke me up? Don't you think I had better telegraph to him?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{moving towards the sofa}{]}. It's too late
to telegraph tonight.

MAZZINI. I suppose so. I do hope he'll wake up in the course of the
night. {[}\textit{He goes out into the garden}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{turning vigorously on Hesione the moment her father
is out of the room}{]}. Hesione, what the devil do you mean by making
mischief with my father about Mangan?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{promptly losing her temper}{]}. Don't you
dare speak to me like that, you little minx. Remember that you are
in my house.

ELLIE. Stuff! Why don't you mind your own business? What is it to
you whether I choose to marry Mangan or not?

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you suppose you can bully me, you miserable little
matrimonial adventurer?

ELLIE. Every woman who hasn't any money is a matrimonial adventurer.
It's easy for you to talk: you have never known what it is to want
money; and you can pick up men as if they were daisies. I am poor
and respectable---

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{interrupting}{]}. Ho!\ respectable! How did
you pick up Mangan? How did you pick up my husband? You have the audacity
to tell me that I am a---a---a---

ELLIE. A siren. So you are. You were born to lead men by the nose:
if you weren't, Marcus would have waited for me, perhaps.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{suddenly melting and half laughing}{]}. Oh,
my poor Ellie, my pettikins, my unhappy darling! I am so sorry about
Hector. But what can I do? It's not my fault: I'd give him to you
if I could.

ELLIE. I don't blame you for that.

MRS HUSHABYE. What a brute I was to quarrel with you and call you
names! Do kiss me and say you're not angry with me.

ELLIE {[}\textit{fiercely}{]}. Oh, don't slop and gush and be sentimental.
Don't you see that unless I can be hard---as hard as nails---I shall
go mad? I don't care a damn about your calling me names: do you think
a woman in my situation can feel a few hard words?

MRS HUSHABYE. Poor little woman! Poor little situation!

ELLIE. I suppose you think you're being sympathetic. You are just
foolish and stupid and selfish. You see me getting a smasher right
in the face that kills a whole part of my life: the best part that
can never come again; and you think you can help me over it by a little
coaxing and kissing. When I want all the strength I can get to lean
on: something iron, something stony, I don't care how cruel it is,
you go all mushy and want to slobber over me. I'm not angry; I'm not
unfriendly; but for God's sake do pull yourself together; and don't
think that because you're on velvet and always have been, women who
are in hell can take it as easily as you.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{shrugging her shoulders}{]}. Very well. {[}\textit{She
sits down on the sofa in her old place.}{]} But I warn you that when
I am neither coaxing and kissing nor laughing, I am just wondering
how much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world.
You object to the siren: well, I drop the siren. You want to rest
your wounded bosom against a grindstone. Well {[}\textit{folding her
arms}{]} here is the grindstone.

ELLIE {[}\textit{sitting down beside her, appeased}{]}. That's better:
you really have the trick of falling in with everyone's mood; but
you don't understand, because you are not the sort of woman for whom
there is only one man and only one chance.

MRS HUSHABYE. I certainly don't understand how your marrying that
object {[}\textit{indicating Mangan}{]} will console you for not being
able to marry Hector.

ELLIE. Perhaps you don't understand why I was quite a nice girl this
morning, and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, yes, I do. It's because you have made up your mind
to do something despicable and wicked.

ELLIE. I don't think so, Hesione. I must make the best of my ruined
house.

MRS HUSHABYE. Pooh! You'll get over it. Your house isn't ruined.

ELLIE. Of course I shall get over it. You don't suppose I'm going
to sit down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid living
on a pittance from the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Association.
But my heart is broken, all the same. What I mean by that is that
I know that what has happened to me with Marcus will not happen to
me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus and a lot of other
men of whom one is just the same as another. Well, if I can't have
love, that's no reason why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing
else, he has money.

MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no \emph{young} men with money?

ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the right
to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he found I
could not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of their wives,
you know, pretty cheaply. But this object, as you call him, can expect
nothing more from me than I am prepared to give him.

MRS HUSHABYE. He will be your owner, remember. If he buys you, he
will make the bargain pay him and not you. Ask your father.

ELLIE {[}\textit{rising and strolling to the chair to contemplate
their subject}{]}. You need not trouble on that score, Hesione. I
have more to give Boss Mangan than he has to give me: it is I who
am buying him, and at a pretty good price too, I think. Women are
better at that sort of bargain than men. I have taken the Boss's measure;
and ten Boss Mangans shall not prevent me doing far more as I please
as his wife than I have ever been able to do as a poor girl. {[}\textit{Stooping
to the recumbent figure}{]}. Shall they, Boss? I think not. {[}\textit{She
passes on to the drawing-table, and leans against the end of it, facing
the windows}{]}. I shall not have to spend most of my time wondering
how long my gloves will last, anyhow.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{rising superbly}{]}. Ellie, you are a wicked,
sordid little beast. And to think that I actually condescended to
fascinate that creature there to save you from him! Well, let me tell
you this: if you make this disgusting match, you will never see Hector
again if I can help it.

ELLIE {[}\textit{unmoved}{]}. I nailed Mangan by telling him that
if he did not marry me he should never see you again {[}\textit{she
lifts herself on her wrists and seats herself on the end of the table}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{recoiling}{]}. Oh!

ELLIE. So you see I am not unprepared for your playing that trump
against me. Well, you just try it: that's all. I should have made
a man of Marcus, not a household pet.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{flaming}{]}. You dare!

ELLIE {[}\textit{looking almost dangerous}{]}. Set him thinking about
me if you dare.

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, of all the impudent little fiends I ever met!
Hector says there is a certain point at which the only answer you
can give to a man who breaks all the rules is to knock him down. What
would you say if I were to box your ears?

ELLIE {[}\textit{calmly}{]}. I should pull your hair.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{mischievously}{]}. That wouldn't hurt me.
Perhaps it comes off at night.

ELLIE {[}\textit{so taken aback that she drops off the table and runs
to her}{]}. Oh, you don't mean to say, Hesione, that your beautiful
black hair is false?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{patting it}{]}. Don't tell Hector. He believes
in it.

ELLIE {[}\textit{groaning}{]}. Oh! Even the hair that ensnared him
false! Everything false!

MRS HUSHABYE. Pull it and try. Other women can snare men in their
hair; but I can swing a baby on mine. Aha!\ you can't do that, Goldylocks.

ELLIE {[}\textit{heartbroken}{]}. No. You have stolen my babies.

MRS HUSHABYE. Pettikins, don't make me cry. You know what you said
about my making a household pet of him is a little true. Perhaps he
ought to have waited for you. Would any other woman on earth forgive
you?

ELLIE. Oh, what right had you to take him all for yourself! {[}\textit{Pulling
herself together}{]}. There! You couldn't help it: neither of us could
help it. He couldn't help it. No, don't say anything more: I can't
bear it. Let us wake the object. {[}\textit{She begins stroking Mangan's
head, reversing the movement with which she put him to sleep}{]}.
Wake up, do you hear? You are to wake up at once. Wake up, wake up,
wake---

MANGAN {[}\textit{bouncing out of the chair in a fury and turning
on them}{]}. Wake up! So you think I've been asleep, do you? {[}\textit{He
kicks the chair violently back out of his way, and gets between them}{]}.
You throw me into a trance so that I can't move hand or foot---I might
have been buried alive!\ it's a mercy I wasn't---and then you think
I was only asleep. If you'd let me drop the two times you rolled me
about, my nose would have been flattened for life against the floor.
But I've found you all out, anyhow. I know the sort of people I'm
among now. I've heard every word you've said, you and your precious
father, and {[}\textit{to Mrs Hushabye}{]} you too. So I'm an object,
am I? I'm a thing, am I? I'm a fool that hasn't sense enough to feed
myself properly, am I? I'm afraid of the men that would starve if
it weren't for the wages I give them, am I? I'm nothing but a disgusting
old skinflint to be made a convenience of by designing women and fool
managers of my works, am I? I'm---

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{with the most elegant aplomb}{]}. \textit{\emph{Sh}}-sh-sh-sh-sh!
Mr Mangan, you are bound in honor to obliterate from your mind all
you heard while you were pretending to be asleep. It was not meant
for you to hear.

MANGAN. Pretending to be asleep! Do you think if I was only pretending
that I'd have sprawled there helpless, and listened to such unfairness,
such lies, such injustice and plotting and backbiting and slandering
of me, if I could have up and told you what I thought of you! I wonder
I didn't burst.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{sweetly}{]}. You dreamt it all, Mr Mangan.
We were only saying how beautifully peaceful you looked in your sleep.
That was all, wasn't it, Ellie? Believe me, Mr Mangan, all those unpleasant
things came into your mind in the last half second before you woke.
Ellie rubbed your hair the wrong way; and the disagreeable sensation
suggested a disagreeable dream.

MANGAN {[}\textit{doggedly}{]}. I believe in dreams.

MRS HUSHABYE. So do I.\ But they go by contraries, don't they?

MANGAN {[}\textit{depths of emotion suddenly welling up in him}{]}.
I shan't forget, to my dying day, that when you gave me the glad eye
that time in the garden, you were making a fool of me. That was a
dirty low mean thing to do. You had no right to let me come near you
if I disgusted you. It isn't my fault if I'm old and haven't a moustache
like a bronze candlestick as your husband has. There are things no
decent woman would do to a man---like a man hitting a woman in the
breast.

\emph{Hesione, utterly shamed, sits down on the sofa and covers her
face with her hands. Mangan sits down also on his chair and begins
to cry like a child. Ellie stares at them. Mrs Hushabye, at the distressing
sound he makes, takes down her hands and looks at him. She rises and
runs to him.}

MRS HUSHABYE. Don't cry: I can't bear it. Have I broken your heart?
I didn't know you had one. How could I?

MANGAN. I'm a man, ain't I?

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{half coaxing, half rallying, altogether tenderly}{]}.
Oh no: not what I call a man. Only a Boss: just that and nothing else.
What business has a Boss with a heart?

MANGAN. Then you're not a bit sorry for what you did, nor ashamed?

MRS HUSHABYE. I was ashamed for the first time in my life when you
said that about hitting a woman in the breast, and I found out what
I'd done. My very bones blushed red. You've had your revenge, Boss.
Aren't you satisfied?

MANGAN. Serve you right! Do you hear? Serve you right! You're just
cruel. Cruel.

MRS HUSHABYE. Yes: cruelty would be delicious if one could only find
some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt. By the way {[}\textit{sitting
down beside him on the arm of the chair}{]}, what's your name? It's
not really Boss, is it?

MANGAN {[}\textit{shortly}{]}. If you want to know, my name's Alfred.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{springs up}{]}. Alfred!! Ellie, he was christened
after Tennyson!!!

MANGAN {[}\textit{rising}{]}. I was christened after my uncle, and
never had a penny from him, damn him! What of it?

MRS HUSHABYE. It comes to me suddenly that you are a real person:
that you had a mother, like anyone else. {[}\textit{Putting her hands
on his shoulders and surveying him}{]}. Little Alf!

MANGAN. Well, you have a nerve.

MRS HUSHABYE. And you have a heart, Alfy, a whimpering little heart,
but a real one. {[}\textit{Releasing him suddenly}{]}. Now run and
make it up with Ellie. She has had time to think what to say to you,
which is more than I had {[}\textit{she goes out quickly into the
garden by the port door}{]}.

MANGAN. That woman has a pair of hands that go right through you.

ELLIE. Still in love with her, in spite of all we said about you?

MANGAN. Are all women like you two? Do they never think of anything
about a man except what they can get out of him? You weren't even
thinking that about me. You were only thinking whether your gloves
would last.

ELLIE. I shall not have to think about that when we are married.

MANGAN. And you think I am going to marry you after what I heard there!

ELLIE. You heard nothing from me that I did not tell you before.

MANGAN. Perhaps you think I can't do without you.

ELLIE. I think you would feel lonely without us all, now, after coming
to know us so well.

MANGAN {[}\textit{with something like a yell of despair}{]}. Am I
never to have the last word?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{appearing at the starboard garden door}{]}.
There is a soul in torment here. What is the matter?

MANGAN. This girl doesn't want to spend her life wondering how long
her gloves will last.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{passing through}{]}. Don't wear any. I
never do {[}\textit{he goes into the pantry}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{appearing at the port garden door, in a
handsome dinner dress}{]}. Is anything the matter?

ELLIE. This gentleman wants to know is he never to have the last word?

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{coming forward to the sofa}{]}. I should
let him have it, my dear. The important thing is not to have the last
word, but to have your own way.

MANGAN. She wants both.

LADY UTTERWORD. She won't get them, Mr Mangan. Providence always has
the last word.

MANGAN {[}\textit{desperately}{]}. Now you are going to come religion
over me. In this house a man's mind might as well be a football. I'm
going. {[}\textit{He makes for the hall, but is stopped by a hail
from the Captain, who has just emerged from his pantry}{]}.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Whither away, Boss Mangan?

MANGAN. To hell out of this house: let that be enough for you and
all here.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You were welcome to come: you are free to go. The
wide earth, the high seas, the spacious skies are waiting for you
outside.

LADY UTTERWORD. But your things, Mr Mangan. Your bag, your comb and
brushes, your pyjamas---

HECTOR {[}\textit{who has just appeared in the port doorway in a handsome
Arab costume}{]}. Why should the escaping slave take his chains with
him?

MANGAN. That's right, Hushabye. Keep the pyjamas, my lady, and much
good may they do you.

HECTOR {[}\textit{advancing to Lady Utterword's left hand}{]}. Let
us all go out into the night and leave everything behind us.

MANGAN. You stay where you are, the lot of you. I want no company,
especially female company.

ELLIE. Let him go. He is unhappy here. He is angry with us.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Go, Boss Mangan; and when you have found the land
where there is happiness and where there are no women, send me its
latitude and longitude; and I will join you there.

LADY UTTERWORD. You will certainly not be comfortable without your
luggage, Mr Mangan.

ELLIE {[}\textit{impatient}{]}. Go, go: why don't you go? It is a
heavenly night: you can sleep on the heath. Take my waterproof to
lie on: it is hanging up in the hall.

HECTOR. Breakfast at nine, unless you prefer to breakfast with the
captain at six.

ELLIE. Good night, Alfred.

HECTOR. Alfred! {[}\textit{He runs back to the door and calls into
the garden}{]}. Randall, Mangan's Christian name is Alfred.

RANDALL {[}\textit{appearing in the starboard doorway in evening dress}{]}.
Then Hesione wins her bet.

\emph{Mrs Hushabye appears in the port doorway. She throws her left
arm round Hector's neck: draws him with her to the back of the sofa:
and throws her right arm round Lady Utterword's neck.}

MRS HUSHABYE. They wouldn't believe me, Alf.

\emph{They contemplate him.}

MANGAN. Is there any more of you coming in to look at me, as if I
was the latest thing in a menagerie?

MRS HUSHABYE. You are the latest thing in this menagerie.

\emph{Before Mangan can retort, a fall of furniture is heard from
upstairs: then a pistol shot, and a yell of pain. The staring group
breaks up in consternation.}

MAZZINI'S VOICE {[}\textit{from above}{]}. Help! A burglar! Help!

HECTOR {[}\textit{his eyes blazing}{]}. A burglar!!!

MRS HUSHABYE. No, Hector: you'll be shot {[}\textit{but it is too
late; he has dashed out past Mangan, who hastily moves towards the
bookshelves out of his way}{]}.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{blowing his whistle}{]}. All hands aloft!
{[}\textit{He strides out after Hector}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. My diamonds! {[}\textit{She follows the captain}{]}.

RANDALL {[}\textit{rushing after her}{]}. No. Ariadne. Let me.

ELLIE. Oh, is papa shot? {[}\textit{She runs out}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Are you frightened, Alf?

MANGAN. No. It ain't my house, thank God.

MRS HUSHABYE. If they catch a burglar, shall we have to go into court
as witnesses, and be asked all sorts of questions about our private
lives?

MANGAN. You won't be believed if you tell the truth.

\emph{Mazzini, terribly upset, with a duelling pistol in his hand,
comes from the hall, and makes his way to the drawing-table.}

MAZZINI. Oh, my dear Mrs Hushabye, I might have killed him. {[}\textit{He
throws the pistol on the table and staggers round to the chair}{]}.
I hope you won't believe I really intended to.

\emph{Hector comes in, marching an old and villainous looking man
before him by the collar. He plants him in the middle of the room
and releases him.}

\emph{Ellie follows, and immediately runs across to the back of her
father's chair and pats his shoulders.}

RANDALL {[}\textit{entering with a poker}{]}. Keep your eye on this
door, Mangan. I'll look after the other {[}\textit{he goes to the
starboard door and stands on guard there}{]}.

\emph{Lady Utterword comes in after Randall, and goes between Mrs
Hushabye and Mangan.}

\emph{Nurse Guinness brings up the rear, and waits near the door,
on Mangan's left.}

MRS HUSHABYE. What has happened?

MAZZINI. Your housekeeper told me there was somebody upstairs, and
gave me a pistol that Mr Hushabye had been practising with. I thought
it would frighten him; but it went off at a touch.

THE BURGLAR. Yes, and took the skin off my ear. Precious near took
the top off my head. Why don't you have a proper revolver instead
of a thing like that, that goes off if you as much as blow on it?

HECTOR. One of my duelling pistols. Sorry.

MAZZINI. He put his hands up and said it was a fair cop.

THE BURGLAR. So it was. Send for the police.

HECTOR. No, by thunder! It was not a fair cop. We were four to one.

MRS HUSHABYE. What will they do to him?

THE BURGLAR. Ten years. Beginning with solitary. Ten years off my
life. I shan't serve it all: I'm too old. It will see me out.

LADY UTTERWORD. You should have thought of that before you stole my
diamonds.

THE BURGLAR. Well, you've got them back, lady, haven't you? Can you
give me back the years of my life you are going to take from me?

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, we can't bury a man alive for ten years for a few
diamonds.

THE BURGLAR. Ten little shining diamonds! Ten long black years!

LADY UTTERWORD. Think of what it is for us to be dragged through the
horrors of a criminal court, and have all our family affairs in the
papers! If you were a native, and Hastings could order you a good
beating and send you away, I shouldn't mind; but here in England there
is no real protection for any respectable person.

THE BURGLAR. I'm too old to be giv a hiding, lady. Send for the police
and have done with it. It's only just and right you should.

RANDALL {[}\textit{who has relaxed his vigilance on seeing the burglar
so pacifically disposed, and comes forward swinging the poker between
his fingers like a well folded umbrella}{]}. It is neither just nor
right that we should be put to a lot of inconvenience to gratify your
moral enthusiasm, my friend. You had better get out, while you have
the chance.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{inexorably}{]}. No. I must work my sin off
my conscience. This has come as a sort of call to me. Let me spend
the rest of my life repenting in a cell. I shall have my reward above.

MANGAN {[}\textit{exasperated}{]}. The very burglars can't behave
naturally in this house.

HECTOR. My good sir, you must work out your salvation at somebody
else's expense. Nobody here is going to charge you.

THE BURGLAR. Oh, you won't charge me, won't you?

HECTOR. No. I'm sorry to be inhospitable; but will you kindly leave
the house?

THE BURGLAR. Right. I'll go to the police station and give myself
up. {[}\textit{He turns resolutely to the door: but Hector stops
him}{]}.

\begin{tabular}{@{}l|p{1.6in}}
HECTOR. &
Oh, no. You mustn't do that. \\
RANDALL. &
No no. Clear out man, can't you; and don't be a fool. \\
MRS. HUSHABYE. &
Don't be so silly. Can't you repent at home?\\
\end{tabular}

LADY UTTERWORD. You will have to do as you are told.

THE BURGLAR. It's compounding a felony, you know.

MRS HUSHABYE. This is utterly ridiculous. Are we to be forced to prosecute
this man when we don't want to?

THE BURGLAR. Am I to be robbed of my salvation to save you the trouble
of spending a day at the sessions? Is that justice? Is it right? Is
it fair to me?

MAZZINI {[}\textit{rising and leaning across the table persuasively
as if it were a pulpit desk or a shop counter}{]}. Come, come!\ let
me show you how you can turn your very crimes to account. Why not
set up as a locksmith? You must know more about locks than most honest
men?

THE BURGLAR. That's true, sir. But I couldn't set up as a locksmith
under twenty pounds.

RANDALL. Well, you can easily steal twenty pounds. You will find it
in the nearest bank.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{horrified}{]}. Oh, what a thing for a gentleman
to put into the head of a poor criminal scrambling out of the bottomless
pit as it were! Oh, shame on you, sir! Oh, God forgive you! {[}\textit{He
throws himself into the big chair and covers his face as if in prayer}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Randall!

HECTOR. It seems to me that we shall have to take up a collection
for this inopportunely contrite sinner.

LADY UTTERWORD. But twenty pounds is ridiculous.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{looking up quickly}{]}. I shall have to buy
a lot of tools, lady.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense: you have your burgling kit.

THE BURGLAR. What's a jimmy and a centrebit and an acetylene welding
plant and a bunch of skeleton keys? I shall want a forge, and a smithy,
and a shop, and fittings. I can't hardly do it for twenty.

HECTOR. My worthy friend, we haven't got twenty pounds.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{now master of the situation}{]}. You can raise
it among you, can't you?

MRS HUSHABYE. Give him a sovereign, Hector, and get rid of him.

HECTOR {[}\textit{giving him a pound}{]}. There! Off with you.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{rising and taking the money very ungratefully}{]}.
I won't promise nothing. You have more on you than a quid: all the
lot of you, I mean.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{vigorously}{]}. Oh, let us prosecute him
and have done with it. I have a conscience too, I hope; and I do not
feel at all sure that we have any right to let him go, especially
if he is going to be greedy and impertinent.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{quickly}{]}. All right, lady, all right. I've
no wish to be anything but agreeable. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen;
and thank you kindly.

\emph{He is hurrying out when he is confronted in the doorway by Captain
Shotover.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{fixing the burglar with a piercing regard}{]}.
What's this? Are there two of you?

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{falling on his knees before the captain in
abject terror}{]}. Oh, my good Lord, what have I done? Don't tell
me it's your house I've broken into, Captain Shotover.

\emph{The captain seizes him by the collar: drags him to his feet:
and leads him to the middle of the group, Hector falling back beside
his wife to make way for them.}

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{turning him towards Ellie}{]}. Is that
your daughter? {[}\textit{He releases him}{]}.

THE BURGLAR. Well, how do I know, Captain? You know the sort of life
you and me has led. Any young lady of that age might be my daughter
anywhere in the wide world, as you might say.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{to Mazzini}{]}. You are not Billy Dunn.
This is Billy Dunn. Why have you imposed on me?

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{indignantly to Mazzini}{]}. Have you been giving
yourself out to be me? You, that nigh blew my head off! Shooting yourself,
in a manner of speaking!

MAZZINI. My dear Captain Shotover, ever since I came into this house
I have done hardly anything else but assure you that I am not Mr William
Dunn, but Mazzini Dunn, a very different person.

THE BURGLAR. He don't belong to my branch, Captain. There's two sets
in the family: the thinking Dunns and the drinking Dunns, each going
their own ways. I'm a drinking Dunn: he's a thinking Dunn. But that
didn't give him any right to shoot me.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. So you've turned burglar, have you?

THE BURGLAR. No, Captain: I wouldn't disgrace our old sea calling
by such a thing. I am no burglar.

LADY UTTERWORD. What were you doing with my diamonds?

GUINNESS. What did you break into the house for if you're no burglar?

RANDALL. Mistook the house for your own and came in by the wrong window,
eh?

THE BURGLAR. Well, it's no use my telling you a lie: I can take in
most captains, but not Captain Shotover, because he sold himself to
the devil in Zanzibar, and can divine water, spot gold, explode a
cartridge in your pocket with a glance of his eye, and see the truth
hidden in the heart of man. But I'm no burglar.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Are you an honest man?

THE BURGLAR. I don't set up to be better than my fellow-creatures,
and never did, as you well know, Captain. But what I do is innocent
and pious. I enquire about for houses where the right sort of people
live. I work it on them same as I worked it here. I break into the
house; put a few spoons or diamonds in my pocket; make a noise; get
caught; and take up a collection. And you wouldn't believe how hard
it is to get caught when you're actually trying to. I have knocked
over all the chairs in a room without a soul paying any attention
to me. In the end I have had to walk out and leave the job.

RANDALL. When that happens, do you put back the spoons and diamonds?

THE BURGLAR. Well, I don't fly in the face of Providence, if that's
what you want to know.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Guinness, you remember this man?

GUINNESS. I should think I do, seeing I was married to him, the blackguard!

\begin{tabular}{@{}l|l}

HESIONE. & Married to him!\\

LADY UTTERWORD. & Guinness!!\end{tabular}

THE BURGLAR. It wasn't legal. I've been married to no end of women.
No use coming that over me.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Take him to the forecastle {[}\textit{he flings
him to the door with a strength beyond his years}{]}.

GUINNESS. I suppose you mean the kitchen. They won't have him there.
Do you expect servants to keep company with thieves and all sorts?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Land-thieves and water-thieves are the same flesh
and blood. I'll have no boatswain on my quarter-deck. Off with you
both.

THE BURGLAR. Yes, Captain. {[}\textit{He goes out humbly}{]}.

MAZZINI. Will it be safe to have him in the house like that?

GUINNESS. Why didn't you shoot him, sir? If I'd known who he was,
I'd have shot him myself. {[}\textit{She goes out}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do sit down, everybody. {[}\textit{She sits down on
the sofa}{]}.

\emph{They all move except Ellie. Mazzini resumes his seat. Randall
sits down in the window-seat near the starboard door, again making
a pendulum of his poker, and studying it as Galileo might have done.
Hector sits on his left, in the middle. Mangan, forgotten, sits in
the port corner. Lady Utterword takes the big chair. Captain Shotover
goes into the pantry in deep abstraction. They all look after him:
and Lady Utterword coughs consciously.}

MRS HUSHABYE. So Billy Dunn was poor nurse's little romance. I knew
there had been somebody.

RANDALL. They will fight their battles over again and enjoy themselves
immensely.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{irritably}{]}. You are not married; and
you know nothing about it, Randall. Hold your tongue.

RANDALL. Tyrant!

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, we have had a very exciting evening. Everything
will be an anticlimax after it. We'd better all go to bed.

RANDALL. Another burglar may turn up.

MAZZINI. Oh, impossible! I hope not.

RANDALL. Why not? There is more than one burglar in England.

MRS HUSHABYE. What do you say, Alf?

MANGAN {[}\textit{huffily}{]}. Oh, I don't matter. I'm forgotten.
The burglar has put my nose out of joint. Shove me into a corner and
have done with me.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{jumping up mischievously, and going to him}{]}.
Would you like a walk on the heath, Alfred? With me?

ELLIE. Go, Mr Mangan. It will do you good. Hesione will soothe you.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{slipping her arm under his and pulling him
upright}{]}. Come, Alfred. There is a moon: it's like the night in
\emph{Tristan and Isolde}. {[}\textit{She caresses his arm and draws
him to the port garden door}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{writhing but yielding}{]}. How you can have the
face---the heart---{[}\textit{he breaks down and is heard sobbing
as she takes him out}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. What an extraordinary way to behave! What is the matter
with the man?

ELLIE {[}\textit{in a strangely calm voice, staring into an imaginary
distance}{]}. His heart is breaking: that is all. {[}\textit{The
captain appears at the pantry door, listening}{]}. It is a curious
sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers
of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing
matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of
peace.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{suddenly rising in a rage, to the astonishment
of the rest}{]}. How dare you?

HECTOR. Good heavens! What's the matter?

RANDALL {[}\textit{in a warning whisper}{]}. Tch---tch-tch! Steady.

ELLIE {[}\textit{surprised and haughty}{]}. I was not addressing you
particularly, Lady Utterword. And I am not accustomed to being asked
how dare I.

LADY UTTERWORD. Of course not. Anyone can see how badly you have been
brought up.

MAZZINI. Oh, I hope not, Lady Utterword. Really!

LADY UTTERWORD. I know very well what you meant. The impudence!

ELLIE. What on earth do you mean?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{advancing to the table}{]}. She means
that her heart will not break. She has been longing all her life for
someone to break it. At last she has become afraid she has none to
break.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{flinging herself on her knees and throwing
her arms round him}{]}. Papa, don't say you think I've no heart.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{raising her with grim tenderness}{]}.
If you had no heart how could you want to have it broken, child?

HECTOR {[}\textit{rising with a bound}{]}. Lady Utterword, you are
not to be trusted. You have made a scene {[}\textit{he runs out into
the garden through the starboard door}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! Hector, Hector!\ {[}\textit{she runs out after
him}{]}.

RANDALL. Only nerves, I assure you. {[}\textit{He rises and follows
her, waving the poker in his agitation}{]}. Ariadne! Ariadne! For
God's sake, be careful. You will---{[}\textit{he is gone}{]}.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{rising}{]}. How distressing! Can I do anything,
I wonder?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{promptly taking his chair and setting
to work at the drawing-board}{]}. No. Go to bed. Good-night.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{bewildered}{]}. Oh! Perhaps you are right.

ELLIE. Good-night, dearest. {[}\textit{She kisses him}{]}.

MAZZINI. Good-night, love. {[}\textit{He makes for the door, but turns
aside to the bookshelves}{]}. I'll just take a book {[}\textit{he
takes one}{]}. Good-night. {[}\textit{He goes out, leaving Ellie alone
with the captain}{]}.

\emph{The captain is intent on his drawing. Ellie, standing sentry
over his chair, contemplates him for a moment.}

ELLIE. Does nothing ever disturb you, Captain Shotover?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I've stood on the bridge for eighteen hours in a
typhoon. Life here is stormier; but I can stand it.

ELLIE. Do you think I ought to marry Mr Mangan?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{never looking up}{]}. One rock is as good
as another to be wrecked on.

ELLIE. I am not in love with him.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Who said you were?

ELLIE. You are not surprised?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Surprised! At my age!

ELLIE. It seems to me quite fair. He wants me for one thing: I want
him for another.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Money?

ELLIE. Yes.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Well, one turns the cheek: the other kisses it.
One provides the cash: the other spends it.

ELLIE. Who will have the best of the bargain, I wonder?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You. These fellows live in an office all day. You
will have to put up with him from dinner to breakfast; but you will
both be asleep most of that time. All day you will be quit of him;
and you will be shopping with his money. If that is too much for you,
marry a seafaring man: you will be bothered with him only three weeks
in the year, perhaps.

ELLIE. That would be best of all, I suppose.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to
the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day,
like a damned soul in hell.

ELLIE. I never thought of that before.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. If you're marrying for business, you can't be too
businesslike.

ELLIE. Why do women always want other women's husbands?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why do horse-thieves prefer a horse that is broken-in
to one that is wild?

ELLIE {[}\textit{with a short laugh}{]}. I suppose so. What a vile
world it is!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It doesn't concern me. I'm nearly out of it.

ELLIE. And I'm only just beginning.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes; so look ahead.

ELLIE. Well, I think I am being very prudent.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I didn't say prudent. I said look ahead.

ELLIE. What's the difference?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose your
own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick
to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.

ELLIE {[}\textit{wearily, leaving him and beginning to wander restlessly
about the room}{]}. I'm sorry, Captain Shotover; but it's no use talking
like that to me. Old-fashioned people are no use to me. Old-fashioned
people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less
money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know
better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than
a motor car.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is it? How much does your soul eat?

ELLIE. Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains
and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.
In this country you can't have them without lots of money: that is
why our souls are so horribly starved.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Mangan's soul lives on pig's food.

ELLIE. Yes: money is thrown away on him. I suppose his soul was starved
when he was young. But it will not be thrown away on me. It is just
because I want to save my soul that I am marrying for money. All the
women who are not fools do.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are other ways of getting money. Why don't
you steal it?

ELLIE. Because I don't want to go to prison.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is that the only reason? Are you quite sure honesty
has nothing to do with it?

ELLIE. Oh, you are very very old-fashioned, Captain. Does any modern
girl believe that the legal and illegal ways of getting money are
the honest and dishonest ways? Mangan robbed my father and my father's
friends. I should rob all the money back from Mangan if the police
would let me. As they won't, I must get it back by marrying him.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I can't argue: I'm too old: my mind is made up and
finished. All I can tell you is that, old-fashioned or new-fashioned,
if you sell yourself, you deal your soul a blow that all the books
and pictures and concerts and scenery in the world won't heal {[}\textit{he
gets up suddenly and makes for the pantry}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{running after him and seizing him by the sleeve}{]}.
Then why did you sell yourself to the devil in Zanzibar?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{stopping, startled}{]}. What?

ELLIE. You shall not run away before you answer. I have found out
that trick of yours. If you sold yourself, why shouldn't I?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I had to deal with men so degraded that they wouldn't
obey me unless I swore at them and kicked them and beat them with
my fists. Foolish people took young thieves off the streets; flung
them into a training ship where they were taught to fear the cane
instead of fearing God; and thought they'd made men and sailors of
them by private subscription. I tricked these thieves into believing
I'd sold myself to the devil. It saved my soul from the kicking and
swearing that was damning me by inches.

ELLIE {[}\textit{releasing him}{]}. I shall pretend to sell myself
to Boss Mangan to save my soul from the poverty that is damning me
by inches.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Riches will damn you ten times deeper. Riches won't
save even your body.

ELLIE. Old-fashioned again. We know now that the soul is the body,
and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they
want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make
slaves of our bodies. I am afraid you are no use to me, Captain.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What did you expect? A Savior, eh? Are you old-fashioned
enough to believe in that?

ELLIE. No. But I thought you were very wise, and might help me. Now
I have found you out. You pretend to be busy, and think of fine things
to say, and run in and out to surprise people by saying them, and
get away before they can answer you.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It confuses me to be answered. It discourages me.
I cannot bear men and women. I have to run away. I must run away now
{[}\textit{he tries to}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{again seizing his arm}{]}. You shall not run away
from me. I can hypnotize you. You are the only person in the house
I can say what I like to. I know you are fond of me. Sit down. {[}\textit{She
draws him to the sofa}{]}.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{yielding}{]}. Take care: I am in my dotage.
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to
happen to the world.

\emph{They sit side by side on the sofa. She leans affectionately
against him with her head on his shoulder and her eyes half closed.}

ELLIE {[}\textit{dreamily}{]}. I should have thought nothing else
mattered to old men. They can't be very interested in what is going
to happen to themselves.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A man's interest in the world is only the overflow
from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is
not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you
grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher,
or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there
is no overflow: you are a child again. I can give you the memories
of my ancient wisdom: mere scraps and leavings; but I no longer really
care for anything but my own little wants and hobbies. I sit here
working out my old ideas as a means of destroying my fellow-creatures.
I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and
sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning
from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort
and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the
typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you
or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. At your
age I looked for hardship, danger, horror, and death, that I might
feel the life in me more intensely. I did not let the fear of death
govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to
let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be
that you will eat, but you will not live.

ELLIE {[}\textit{sitting up impatiently}{]}. But what can I do? I
am not a sea captain: I can't stand on bridges in typhoons, or go
slaughtering seals and whales in Greenland's icy mountains. They won't
let women be captains. Do you want me to be a stewardess?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are worse lives. The stewardesses could come
ashore if they liked; but they sail and sail and sail.

ELLIE. What could they do ashore but marry for money? I don't want
to be a stewardess: I am too bad a sailor. Think of something else
for me.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I can't think so long and continuously. I am too
old. I must go in and out. {[}\textit{He tries to rise}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{pulling him back}{]}. You shall not. You are happy
here, aren't you?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I tell you it's dangerous to keep me. I can't keep
awake and alert.

ELLIE. What do you run away for? To sleep?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. To get a glass of rum.

ELLIE {[}\textit{frightfully disillusioned}{]}. Is that it? How disgusting!
Do you like being drunk?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No: I dread being drunk more than anything in the
world. To be drunk means to have dreams; to go soft; to be easily
pleased and deceived; to fall into the clutches of women. Drink does
that for you when you are young. But when you are old: very very old,
like me, the dreams come by themselves. You don't know how terrible
that is: you are young: you sleep at night only, and sleep soundly.
But later on you will sleep in the afternoon. Later still you will
sleep even in the morning; and you will awake tired, tired of life.
You will never be free from dozing and dreams; the dreams will steal
upon your work every ten minutes unless you can awaken yourself with
rum. I drink now to keep sober; but the dreams are conquering: rum
is not what it was: I have had ten glasses since you came; and it
might be so much water. Go get me another: Guinness knows where it
is. You had better see for yourself the horror of an old man drinking.

ELLIE. You shall not drink. Dream. I like you to dream. You must never
be in the real world when we talk together.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I am too weary to resist, or too weak. I am in my
second childhood. I do not see you as you really are. I can't remember
what I really am. I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have
dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the
happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing,
the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

ELLIE. You dread it almost as much as I used to dread losing my dreams
and having to fight and do things. But that is all over for me: my
dreams are dashed to pieces. I should like to marry a very old, very
rich man. I should like to marry you. I had much rather marry you
than marry Mangan. Are you very rich?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Living from hand to mouth. And I have a wife
somewhere in Jamaica: a black one. My first wife. Unless she's dead.

ELLIE. What a pity! I feel so happy with you. {[}\textit{She takes
his hand, almost unconsciously, and pats it}{]}. I thought I should
never feel happy again.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why?

ELLIE. Don't you know?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No.

ELLIE. Heartbreak. I fell in love with Hector, and didn't know he
was married.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Heartbreak? Are you one of those who are so sufficient
to themselves that they are only happy when they are stripped of everything,
even of hope?

ELLIE {[}\textit{gripping the hand}{]}. It seems so; for I feel now
as if there was nothing I could not do, because I want nothing.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That's the only real strength. That's genius. That's
better than rum.

ELLIE {[}\textit{throwing away his hand}{]}. Rum! Why did you spoil
it?

\emph{Hector and Randall come in from the garden through the starboard
door.}

HECTOR. I beg your pardon. We did not know there was anyone here.

ELLIE {[}\textit{rising}{]}. That means that you want to tell Mr Randall
the story about the tiger. Come, Captain: I want to talk to my father;
and you had better come with me.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{rising}{]}. Nonsense!\ the man is in
bed.

ELLIE. Aha! I've caught you. My real father has gone to bed; but the
father you gave me is in the kitchen. You knew quite well all along.
Come. {[}\textit{She draws him out into the garden with her through
the port door}{]}.

HECTOR. That's an extraordinary girl. She has the Ancient Mariner
on a string like a \textit{\emph{Pekinese}} dog.

RANDALL. Now that they have gone, shall we have a friendly chat?

HECTOR. You are in what is supposed to be my house. I am at your disposal.

\emph{Hector sits down in the draughtsman's chair, turning it to face
Randall, who remains standing, leaning at his ease against the carpenter's
bench.}

RANDALL. I take it that we may be quite frank. I mean about Lady Utterword.

HECTOR. You may. I have nothing to be frank about. I never met her
until this afternoon.

RANDALL {[}\textit{straightening up}{]}. What! But you are her sister's
husband.

HECTOR. Well, if you come to that, you are her husband's brother.

RANDALL. But you seem to be on intimate terms with her.

HECTOR. So do you.

RANDALL. Yes: but I \emph{am} on intimate terms with her. I have known
her for years.

HECTOR. It took her years to get to the same point with you that she
got to with me in five minutes, it seems.

RANDALL {[}\textit{vexed}{]}. Really, Ariadne is the limit {[}\textit{he
moves away huffishly towards the windows}{]}.

HECTOR {[}\textit{coolly}{]}. She is, as I remarked to Hesione, a
very enterprising woman.

RANDALL {[}\textit{returning, much troubled}{]}. You see, Hushabye,
you are what women consider a good-looking man.

HECTOR. I cultivated that appearance in the days of my vanity; and
Hesione insists on my keeping it up. She makes me wear these ridiculous
things {[}\textit{indicating his Arab costume}{]} because she thinks
me absurd in evening dress.

RANDALL. Still, you do keep it up, old chap. Now, I assure you I have
not an atom of jealousy in my disposition

HECTOR. The question would seem to be rather whether your brother
has any touch of that sort.

RANDALL. What! Hastings! Oh, don't trouble about Hastings. He has
the gift of being able to work sixteen hours a day at the dullest
detail, and actually likes it. That gets him to the top wherever he
goes. As long as Ariadne takes care that he is fed regularly, he is
only too thankful to anyone who will keep her in good humor for him.

HECTOR. And as she has all the Shotover fascination, there is plenty
of competition for the job, eh?

RANDALL {[}\textit{angrily}{]}. She encourages them. Her conduct is
perfectly scandalous. I assure you, my dear fellow, I haven't an atom
of jealousy in my composition; but she makes herself the talk of every
place she goes to by her thoughtlessness. It's nothing more: she doesn't
really care for the men she keeps hanging about her; but how is the
world to know that? It's not fair to Hastings. It's not fair to me.

HECTOR. Her theory is that her conduct is so correct

RANDALL. Correct! She does nothing but make scenes from morning till
night. You be careful, old chap. She will get you into trouble: that
is, she would if she really cared for you.

HECTOR. Doesn't she?

RANDALL. Not a scrap. She may want your scalp to add to her collection;
but her true affection has been engaged years ago. You had really
better be careful.

HECTOR. Do you suffer much from this jealousy?

RANDALL. Jealousy! I jealous! My dear fellow, haven't I told you that
there is not an atom of---

HECTOR. Yes. And Lady Utterword told me she never made scenes. Well,
don't waste your jealousy on my moustache. Never waste jealousy on
a real man: it is the imaginary hero that supplants us all in the
long run. Besides, jealousy does not belong to your easy man-of-the-world
pose, which you carry so well in other respects.

RANDALL. Really, Hushabye, I think a man may be allowed to be a gentleman
without being accused of posing.

HECTOR. It is a pose like any other. In this house we know all the
poses: our game is to find out the man under the pose. The man under
your pose is apparently Ellie's favorite, Othello.

RANDALL. Some of your games in this house are damned annoying, let
me tell you.

HECTOR. Yes: I have been their victim for many years. I used to writhe
under them at first; but I became accustomed to them. At last I learned
to play them.

RANDALL. If it's all the same to you I had rather you didn't play
them on me. You evidently don't quite understand my character, or
my notions of good form.

HECTOR. Is it your notion of good form to give away Lady Utterword?

RANDALL {[}\textit{a childishly plaintive note breaking into his huff}{]}.
I have not said a word against Lady Utterword. This is just the conspiracy
over again.

HECTOR. What conspiracy?

RANDALL. You know very well, sir. A conspiracy to make me out to be
pettish and jealous and childish and everything I am not. Everyone
knows I am just the opposite.

HECTOR {[}\textit{rising}{]}. Something in the air of the house has
upset you. It often does have that effect. {[}\textit{He goes to
the garden door and calls Lady Utterword with commanding emphasis}{]}.
Ariadne!

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{at some distance}{]}. Yes.

RANDALL. What are you calling her for? I want to speak---

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{arriving breathless}{]}. Yes. You really
are a terribly commanding person. What's the matter?

HECTOR. I do not know how to manage your friend Randall. No doubt
you do.

LADY UTTERWORD. Randall: have you been making yourself ridiculous,
as usual? I can see it in your face. Really, you are the most pettish
creature.

RANDALL. You know quite well, Ariadne, that I have not an ounce of
pettishness in my disposition. I have made myself perfectly pleasant
here. I have remained absolutely cool and imperturbable in the face
of a burglar. Imperturbability is almost too strong a point of mine.
But {[}\textit{putting his foot down with a stamp, and walking angrily
up and down the room}{]} I insist on being treated with a certain
consideration. I will not allow Hushabye to take liberties with me.
I will not stand your encouraging people as you do.

HECTOR. The man has a rooted delusion that he is your husband.

LADY UTTERWORD. I know. He is jealous. As if he had any right to be!
He compromises me everywhere. He makes scenes all over the place.
Randall: I will not allow it. I simply will not allow it. You had
no right to discuss me with Hector. I will not be discussed by men.

HECTOR. Be reasonable, Ariadne. Your fatal gift of beauty forces men
to discuss you.

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh indeed!\ what about \emph{your} fatal gift of
beauty?

HECTOR. How can I help it?

LADY UTTERWORD. You could cut off your moustache: I can't cut off
my nose. I get my whole life messed up with people falling in love
with me. And then Randall says I run after men.

RANDALL. I---

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes you do: you said it just now. Why can't you think
of something else than women? Napoleon was quite right when he said
that women are the occupation of the idle man. Well, if ever there
was an idle man on earth, his name is Randall Utterword.

RANDALL. Ariad---

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{overwhelming him with a torrent of words}{]}.
Oh yes you are: it's no use denying it. What have you ever done? What
good are you? You are as much trouble in the house as a child of three.
You couldn't live without your valet.

RANDALL. This is---

LADY UTTERWORD. Laziness! You are laziness incarnate. You are selfishness
itself. You are the most uninteresting man on earth. You can't even
gossip about anything but yourself and your grievances and your ailments
and the people who have offended you. {[}\textit{Turning to Hector}{]}.
Do you know what they call him, Hector?

\begin{tabular}{@{}l|p{2.2in}}
HECTOR. &
Please don't tell me. \\
RANDALL. &
I'll not stand it---\\
\end{tabular}

LADY UTTERWORD. Randall the Rotter: that is his name in good society.

RANDALL {[}\textit{shouting}{]}. I'll not bear it, I tell you. Will
you listen to me, you infernal---{[}\textit{he chokes}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD. Well: go on. What were you going to call me? An infernal
what? Which unpleasant animal is it to be this time?

RANDALL {[}\textit{foaming}{]}. There is no animal in the world so
hateful as a woman can be. You are a maddening devil. Hushabye, you
will not believe me when I tell you that I have loved this demon all
my life; but God knows I have paid for it {[}\textit{he sits down
in the draughtsman's chair, weeping}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{standing over him with triumphant contempt}{]}.
Cry-baby!

HECTOR {[}\textit{gravely, coming to him}{]}. My friend, the Shotover
sisters have two strange powers over men. They can make them love;
and they can make them cry. Thank your stars that you are not married
to one of them.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{haughtily}{]}. And pray, Hector---

HECTOR {[}\textit{suddenly catching her round the shoulders: swinging
her right round him and away from Randall: and gripping her throat
with the other hand}{]}. Ariadne, if you attempt to start on me, I'll
choke you: do you hear? The cat-and-mouse game with the other sex
is a good game; but I can play your head off at it. {[}\textit{He
throws her, not at all gently, into the big chair, and proceeds, less
fiercely but firmly}{]}. It is true that Napoleon said that woman
is the occupation of the idle man. But he added that she is the relaxation
of the warrior. Well, I am the warrior. So take care.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{not in the least put out, and rather pleased
by his violence}{]}. My dear Hector, I have only done what you asked
me to do.

HECTOR. How do you make that out, pray?

LADY UTTERWORD. You called me in to manage Randall, didn't you? You
said you couldn't manage him yourself.

HECTOR. Well, what if I did? I did not ask you to drive the man mad.

LADY UTTERWORD. He isn't mad. That's the way to manage him. If you
were a mother, you'd understand.

HECTOR. Mother! What are you up to now?

LADY UTTERWORD. It's quite simple. When the children got nerves and
were naughty, I smacked them just enough to give them a good cry and
a healthy nervous shock. They went to sleep and were quite good afterwards.
Well, I can't smack Randall: he is too big; so when he gets nerves
and is naughty, I just rag him till he cries. He will be all right
now. Look: he is half asleep already {[}\textit{which is quite true}{]}.

RANDALL {[}\textit{waking up indignantly}{]}. I'm not. You are most
cruel, Ariadne. {[}\textit{Sentimentally}{]}. But I suppose I must
forgive you, as usual {[}\textit{he checks himself in the act of yawning}{]}.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{to Hector}{]}. Is the explanation satisfactory,
dread warrior?

HECTOR. Some day I shall kill you, if you go too far. I thought you
were a fool.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{laughing}{]}. Everybody does, at first.
But I am not such a fool as I look. {[}\textit{She rises complacently}{]}.
Now, Randall, go to bed. You will be a good boy in the morning.

RANDALL {[}\textit{only very faintly rebellious}{]}. I'll go to bed
when I like. It isn't ten yet.

LADY UTTERWORD. It is long past ten. See that he goes to bed at once,
Hector. {[}\textit{She goes into the garden}{]}.

HECTOR. Is there any slavery on earth viler than this slavery of men
to women?

RANDALL {[}\textit{rising resolutely}{]}. I'll not speak to her tomorrow.
I'll not speak to her for another week. I'll give her such a lesson.
I'll go straight to bed without bidding her good-night. {[}\textit{He
makes for the door leading to the hall}{]}.

HECTOR. You are under a spell, man. Old Shotover sold himself to the
devil in Zanzibar. The devil gave him a black witch for a wife; and
these two demon daughters are their mystical progeny. I am tied to
Hesione's apron-string; but I'm her husband; and if I did go stark
staring mad about her, at least we became man and wife. But why should
you let yourself be dragged about and beaten by Ariadne as a toy donkey
is dragged about and beaten by a child? What do you get by it? Are
you her lover?

RANDALL. You must not misunderstand me. In a higher sense---in a Platonic
sense---

HECTOR. Psha! Platonic sense! She makes you her servant; and when
pay-day comes round, she bilks you: that is what you mean.

RANDALL {[}\textit{feebly}{]}. Well, if I don't mind, I don't see
what business it is of yours. Besides, I tell you I am going to punish
her. You shall see: I know how to deal with women. I'm really very
sleepy. Say good-night to Mrs Hushabye for me, will you, like a good
chap. Good-night. {[}\textit{He hurries out}{]}.

HECTOR. Poor wretch! Oh women!\ wo\-m\-en!\ women! {[}\textit{He
lifts his fists in invocation to heaven}{]}. Fall. Fall and crush. {[}\textit{He
goes out into the garden}{]}.


\chapter*{ACT III}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{ACT III}

\markboth{Heartbreak House}{ACT III}

\emph{In the garden, Hector, as he comes out through the glass door
of the poop, finds Lady Utterword lying voluptuously in the hammock
on the east side of the flagstaff, in the circle of light cast by
the electric arc, which is like a moon in its opal globe. Beneath
the head of the hammock, a campstool. On the other side of the flagstaff,
on the long garden seat, Captain Shotover is asleep, with Ellie beside
him, leaning affectionately against him on his right hand. On his
left is a deck chair. Behind them in the gloom, Hesione is strolling
about with Mangan. It is a fine still night, moonless.}

LADY UTTERWORD. What a lovely night! It seems made for us.

HECTOR. The night takes no interest in us. What are we to the night?
{[}\textit{He sits down moodily in the deck chair}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{dreamily, nestling against the captain}{]}. Its beauty
soaks into my nerves. In the night there is peace for the old and
hope for the young.

HECTOR. Is that remark your own?

ELLIE. No. Only the last thing the captain said before he went to
sleep.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I'm not asleep.

HECTOR. Randall is. Also Mr Mazzini Dunn. Mangan, too, probably.

MANGAN. No.

HECTOR. Oh, you are there. I thought Hesione would have sent you to
bed by this time.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{coming to the back of the garden seat, into
the light, with Mangan}{]}. I think I shall. He keeps telling me he
has a presentiment that he is going to die. I never met a man so greedy
for sympathy.

MANGAN {[}\textit{plaintively}{]}. But I have a presentiment. I really
have. And you wouldn't listen.

MRS HUSHABYE. I was listening for some\-thing else. There was a sort
of splendid drumming in the sky. Did none of you hear it? It came
from a distance and then died away.

MANGAN. I tell you it was a train.

MRS HUSHABYE. And I tell you, Alf, there is no train at this hour.
The last is nine forty-five.

MANGAN. But a goods train.

MRS HUSHABYE. Not on our little line. They tack a truck on to the
passenger train. What can it have been, Hector?

HECTOR. Heaven's threatening growl of disgust at us useless futile
creatures. {[}\textit{Fiercely}{]}. I tell you, one of two things
must happen. Either out of that darkness some new creation will come
to supplant us as we have supplanted the animals, or the heavens will
fall in thunder and destroy us.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{in a cool instructive manner, wallowing
comfortably in her hammock}{]}. We have not supplanted the animals,
Hector. Why do you ask heaven to destroy this house, which could be
made quite comfortable if Hesione had any notion of how to live? Don't
you know what is wrong with it?

HECTOR. We are wrong with it. There is no sense in us. We are useless,
dangerous, and ought to be abolished.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense! Hastings told me the very first day he came
here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is wrong with the house.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What! The numskull said there was something wrong
with my house!

LADY UTTERWORD. I said Hastings said it; and he is not in the least
a numskull.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What's wrong with my house?

LADY UTTERWORD. Just what is wrong with a ship, papa. Wasn't it clever
of Hastings to see that?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The man's a fool. There's nothing wrong with a ship.

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, there is.

MRS HUSHABYE. But what is it? Don't be aggravating, Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD. Guess.

HECTOR. Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar. Demons.

LADY UTTERWORD. Not a bit. I assure you, all this house needs to make
it a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with good appetites and sound
sleep in it, is horses.

MRS HUSHABYE. Horses! What rubbish!

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes: horses. Why have we never been able to let this
house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in England
where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English
people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real
centre of the household; and that if any visitor wants to play the
piano the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened, there
are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I learned to ride;
and I shall never ride really well because I didn't begin as a child.
There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian
classes and the neurotic classes. It isn't mere convention: everybody
can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people
who don't are the wrong ones.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is some truth in this. My ship made a man
of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.

LADY UTTERWORD. Exactly how Hastings explained your being a gentleman.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Not bad for a numskull. Bring the man here with
you next time: I must talk to him.

LADY UTTERWORD. Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well
bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has been
in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has lived all
his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so contemptible?
Why can't he get a valet to stay with him longer than a few months?
Just because he is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot.
He strums the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and
reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute; but I
never let him bring it into my house. If he would only---{[}\textit{she
is interrupted by the melancholy strains of a flute coming from an
open window above. She raises herself indignantly in the hammock}{]}.
Randall, you have not gone to bed. Have you been listening? {[}\textit{The
flute replies pertly}{]}. How vulgar! Go to bed instantly, Randall:
how dare you? {[}\textit{The window is slammed down. She subsides}{]}.
How can anyone care for such a creature!

MRS HUSHABYE. Addy: do you think Ellie ought to marry poor Alfred
merely for his money?

MANGAN {[}\textit{much alarmed}{]}. What's that? Mrs Hushabye, are
my affairs to be discussed like this before everybody?

LADY UTTERWORD. I don't think Randall is listening now.

MANGAN. Everybody is listening. It isn't right.

MRS HUSHABYE. But in the dark, what does it matter? Ellie doesn't
mind. Do you, Ellie?

ELLIE. Not in the least. What is your opinion, Lady Utterword? You
have so much good sense.

MANGAN. But it isn't right. It--- {[}\textit{Mrs Hushabye puts her
hand on his mouth}{]}. Oh, very well.

LADY UTTERWORD. How much money have you, Mr.\ Mangan?

MANGAN. Really---No: I can't stand this.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense, Mr Mangan! It all turns on your income,
doesn't it?

MANGAN. Well, if you come to that, how much money has she?

ELLIE. None.

LADY UTTERWORD. You are answered, Mr Mangan. And now, as you have
made Miss Dunn throw her cards on the table, you cannot refuse to
show your own.

MRS HUSHABYE. Come, Alf!\ out with it! How much?

MANGAN {[}\textit{baited out of all prudence}{]}. Well, if you want
to know, I have no money and never had any.

MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, you mustn't tell naughty stories.

MANGAN. I'm not telling you stories. I'm telling you the raw truth.

LADY UTTERWORD. Then what do you live on, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN. Travelling expenses. And a trifle of commission.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What more have any of us but travelling expenses
for our life's journey?

MRS HUSHABYE. But you have factories and capital and things?

MANGAN. People think I have. People think I'm an industrial Napoleon.
That's why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you I have nothing.

ELLIE. Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus's tigers? That
they don't exist?

MANGAN. They exist all right enough. But they're not mine. They belong
to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy good-for-nothing
capitalists. I get money from such people to start the factories.
I find people like Miss Dunn's father to work them, and keep a tight
hand so as to make them pay. Of course I make them keep me going pretty
well; but it's a dog's life; and I don't own anything.

MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it to
get out of marrying Ellie.

MANGAN. I'm telling the truth about my money for the first time in
my life; and it's the first time my word has ever been doubted.

LADY UTTERWORD. How sad! Why don't you go in for politics, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN. Go in for politics! Where have you been living? I am in politics.

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. {[}\textit{They
all burst out laughing}{]}. What are you all laughing at?

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

MANGAN {[}\textit{wildly}{]}. Look here: I'm going to take off all
my clothes {[}\textit{he begins tearing off his coat}{]}.

\begin{tabular}{@{}l|p{1.6in}}
&
{[}\emph{In cons-}\\
&
\emph{ternation}{]} \\
LADY UTTERWORD. &
Mr. Mangan! \\
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. &
What's that? \\
HECTOR. &
Ha! Ha! Do. Do. \\
ELLIE. &
Please don't.\\
\end{tabular}

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{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.

\begin{tabular}{@{}l|p{1.4in}}
&
{[}\emph{Exclaiming altogether}{]} \\
MRS HUSHABYE. &
Bigamy! Whatever on earth are you talking about, Ellie? \\
LADY UTTERWORD. &
Bigamy! What do you mean, Miss Dunn? \\
MANGAN. &
Bigamy! Do you mean to say you're married already? \\
HECTOR. &
Bigamy! This is some enigma.\\
\end{tabular}

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 {[}\textit{quoting Shelley}{]}.

\begin{verse}\footnotesize

``Their altar the grassy earth outspreads\\*

And their priest the muttering wind.''

\end{verse}

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

\emph{She draws the captain's arm through hers, and pats his hand.
The captain remains fast asleep.}

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 {[}\textit{snifflng and wiping his eyes}{]}. It isn't kind---{[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{fiercely}{]}. Do not scorn the man. We are all fools.

\emph{Mazzini, in pyjamas and a richly colored silk dressing gown,
comes from the house, on Lady Utterword's side.}

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. {[}\textit{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 {[}\textit{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.

ELLIE {[}\textit{musically}{]}. Yes: this silly house, this strangely
happy house, this agonizing house, this house without foundations.
I shall call it Heartbreak House.

MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, Ellie; or I shall howl like an animal.

MANGAN {[}\textit{breaks into a low snivelling}{]}!!!

MRS HUSAHBYE. There!\ you have set Alfred off.

ELLIE. I like him best when he is howling.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Silence! {[}\textit{Mangan subsides into silence}{]}.
I say, let the heart break in silence.

HECTOR. Do you accept that name for your house?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It is not my house: it is only my kennel.

HECTOR. We have been too long here. We do not live in this house:
we haunt it.

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{heart torn}{]}. It is dreadful to think
how you have been here all these years while I have gone round the
world. I escaped young; but it has drawn me back. It wants to break
my heart too. But it shan't. I have left you and it behind. It was
silly of me to come back. I felt sentimental about papa and Hesione
and the old place. I felt them calling to me.

MAZZINI. But what a very natural and kindly and charming human feeling,
Lady Utterword!

LADY UTTERWORD. So I thought, Mr Dunn. But I know now that it was
only the last of my influenza. I found that I was not remembered and
not wanted.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You left because you did not want us. Was there
no heartbreak in that for your father? You tore yourself up by the
roots; and the ground healed up and brought forth fresh plants and
forgot you. What right had you to come back and probe old wounds?

MRS HUSHABYE. You were a complete stranger to me at first, Addy; but
now I feel as if you had never been away.

LADY UTTERWORD. Thank you, Hesione; but the influenza is quite cured.
The place may be Heartbreak House to you, Miss Dunn, and to this gentleman
from the city who seems to have so little self-control; but to me
it is only a very ill-regulated and rather untidy villa without any
stables.

HECTOR. Inhabited by---?

ELLIE. A crazy old sea captain and a young singer who adores him.

MRS HUSHABYE. A sluttish female, trying to stave off a double chin
and an elderly spread, vainly wooing a born soldier of freedom.

MAZZINI. Oh, really, Mrs Hushabye---

MANGAN. A member of His Majesty's Government that everybody sets down
as a nincompoop: don't forget him, Lady Utterword.

LADY UTTERWORD. And a very fascinating gentleman whose chief occupation
is to be married to my sister.

HECTOR. All heartbroken \textit{\emph{imbeciles}}.

MAZZINI. Oh no. Surely, if I may say so, rather a favorable specimen
of what is best in our English culture. You are very charming people,
most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane, unconventional, democratic,
free-thinking, and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people.

MRS HUSHABYE. You do us proud, Mazzini.

MAZZINI. I am not flattering, really. Where else could I feel perfectly
at ease in my pyjamas? I sometimes dream that I am in very distinguished
society, and suddenly I have nothing on but my pyjamas! Sometimes
I haven't even pyjamas. And I always feel overwhelmed with confusion.
But here, I don't mind in the least: it seems quite natural.

LADY UTTERWORD. An infallible sign that you are now not in really
distinguished society, Mr Dunn. If you were in my house, you would
feel embarrassed.

MAZZINI. I shall take particular care to keep out of your house, Lady
Utterword.

LADY UTTERWORD. You will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you
very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of
wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green
and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of
simplifying it by doing these ridiculous things.

ELLIE. Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady Utterword?

HECTOR. Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That poor devil
upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his heart, just as Mangan
howls when my wife twists his.

LADY UTTERWORD. That is because Randall has nothing to do but have
his heart broken. It is a change from having his head shampooed. Catch
anyone breaking Hastings' heart!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The numskull wins, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD. I shall go back to my numskull with the greatest satisfaction
when I am tired of you all, clever as you are.

MANGAN {[}\textit{huffily}{]}. I never set up to be clever.

LADY UTTERWORD. I forgot you, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN. Well, I don't see that quite, either.

LADY UTTERWORD. You may not be clever, Mr Mangan; but you are successful.

MANGAN. But I don't want to be regarded merely as a successful man.
I have an imagination like anyone else. I have a presentiment

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I am devoting myself
to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous presentiment.
You bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the stars. {[}\textit{She
drags him away into the darkness}{]}.

MANGAN {[}\textit{tearfully, as he disappears}{]}. Yes: it's all very
well to make fun of me; but if you only knew---

HECTOR {[}\textit{impatiently}{]}. How is all this going to end?

MAZZINI. It won't end, Mr Hushabye. Life doesn't end: it goes on.

ELLIE. Oh, it can't go on forever. I'm always expecting something.
I don't know what it is; but life must come to a point sometime.

LADY UTTERWORD. The point for a young woman of your age is a baby.

HECTOR. Yes, but, damn it, I have the same feeling; and I can't have
a baby.

LADY UTTERWORD. By deputy, Hector.

HECTOR. But I have children. All that is over and done with for me:
and yet I too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and
leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of
the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang
wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought
up child to play at earthquakes with.

MAZZINI. I know. I used often to think about that when I was young.

HECTOR. Think! What's the good of thinking about it? Why didn't you
do something?

MAZZINI. But I did. I joined societies and made speeches and wrote
pamphlets. That was all I could do. But, you know, though the people
in the societies thought they knew more than Mangan, most of them
wouldn't have joined if they had known as much. You see they had never
had any money to handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected
a revolution, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that
we could blunder and muddle on any longer. But nothing happened, except,
of course, the usual poverty and crime and drink that we are used
to. Nothing ever does happen. It's amazing how well we get along,
all things considered.

LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps somebody cleverer than you and Mr Mangan was
at work all the time.

MAZZINI. Perhaps so. Though I was brought up not to believe in anything,
I often feel that there is a great deal to be said for the theory
of an over-ruling Providence, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD. Providence! I meant Hastings.

MAZZINI. Oh, I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But
one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them
on the rocks.

MAZZINI. Very true, no doubt, at sea. But in politics, I assure you,
they only run into jellyfish. Nothing happens.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. At sea nothing happens to the sea. Nothing happens
to the sky. The sun comes up from the east and goes down to the west.
The moon grows from a sickle to an arc lamp, and comes later and later
until she is lost in the light as other things are lost in the darkness.
After the typhoon, the flying-fish glitter in the sunshine like birds.
It's amazing how they get along, all things considered. Nothing happens,
except something not worth mentioning.

ELLIE. What is that, O Captain, O my captain?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{savagely}{]}. Nothing but the smash of
the drunken skipper's ship on the rocks, the splintering of her rotten
timbers, the tearing of her rusty plates, the drowning of the crew
like rats in a trap.

ELLIE. Moral: don't take rum.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER {[}\textit{vehemently}{]}. That is a lie, child.
Let a man drink ten barrels of rum a day, he is not a drunken skipper
until he is a drifting skipper. Whilst he can lay his course and stand
on his bridge and steer it, he is no drunkard. It is the man who lies
drinking in his bunk and trusts to Providence that I call the drunken
skipper, though he drank nothing but the waters of the River Jordan.

ELLIE. Splendid! And you haven't had a drop for an hour. You see you
don't need it: your own spirit is not dead.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Echoes: nothing but echoes. The last shot was fired
years ago.

HECTOR. And this ship that we are all in? This soul's prison we call
England?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water;
and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. She will strike and sink
and split. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor
of England because you were born in it?

HECTOR. Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I still
have the will to live. What am I to do?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman.

HECTOR. And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and be
damned.

ELLIE. Quiet, quiet: you'll tire yourself.

MAZZINI. I thought all that once, Captain; but I assure you nothing
will happen.

\emph{A dull distant explosion is heard.}

HECTOR {[}\textit{starting up}{]}. What was that?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Something happening {[}\textit{he blows his whistle}{]}.
Breakers ahead!

\emph{The light goes out.}

HECTOR {[}\textit{furiously}{]}. Who put that light out? Who dared
put that light out?

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{running in from the house to the middle
of the esplanade}{]}. I did, sir. The police have telephoned to say
we'll be summoned if we don't put that light out: it can be seen for
miles.

HECTOR. It shall be seen for a hundred miles {[}\textit{he dashes
into the house}{]}.

NURSE GUINNESS. The Rectory is nothing but a heap of bricks, they
say. Unless we can give the Rector a bed he has nowhere to lay his
head this night.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The Church is on the rocks, breaking up. I told
him it would unless it headed for God's open sea.

NURSE GUINNESS. And you are all to go down to the cellars.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Go there yourself, you and all the crew. Batten
down the hatches.

NURSE GUINNESS. And hide beside the coward I married! I'll go on the
roof first. {[}\textit{The lamp lights up again}{]}. There! Mr Hushabye's
turned it on again.

THE BURGLAR {[}\textit{hurrying in and appealing to Nurse Guinness}{]}.
Here: where's the way to that gravel pit? The boot-boy says there's
a cave in the gravel pit. Them cellars is no use. Where's the gravel
pit, Captain?

NURSE GUINNESS. Go straight on past the flagstaff until you fall into
it and break your dirty neck. {[}\textit{She pushes him contemptuously
towards the flagstaff, and herself goes to the foot of the hammock
and waits there, as it were by Ariadne's cradle}{]}.

\emph{Another and louder explosion is heard. The burglar stops and
stands trembling.}

ELLIE {[}\textit{rising}{]}. That was nearer.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The next one will get us. {[}\textit{He rises}{]}.
Stand by, all hands, for judgment.

THE BURGLAR. Oh my Lordy God! {[}\textit{He rushes away frantically
past the flagstaff into the gloom}{]}.

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{emerging panting from the darkness}{]}. Who
was that running away? {[}\textit{She comes to Ellie}{]}. Did you
hear the explosions? And the sound in the sky: it's splendid: it's
like an orchestra: it's like Beethoven.

ELLIE. By thunder, Hesione: it is Beethoven.

\emph{She and Hesione throw themselves into one another's arms in
wild excitement. The light increases.}

MAZZINI {[}\textit{anxiously}{]}. The light is getting brighter.

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{looking up at the house}{]}. It's Mr Hushabye
turning on all the lights in the house and tearing down the curtains.

RANDALL {[}\textit{rushing in in his pyjamas, distractedly waving
a flute}{]}. Ariadne, my soul, my precious, go down to the cellars:
I beg and implore you, go down to the cellars!

LADY UTTERWORD {[}\textit{quite composed in her hammock}{]}. The governor's
wife in the cellars with the servants! Really, Randall!

RANDALL. But what shall I do if you are killed?

LADY UTTERWORD. You will probably be killed, too, Randall. Now play
your flute to show that you are not afraid; and be good. Play us {}``Keep
the home fires burning.''

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{grimly}{]}. \emph{They'll} keep the home
fires burning for us: them up there.

RANDALL {[}\textit{having tried to play}{]}. My lips are trembling.
I can't get a sound.

MAZZINI. I hope poor Mangan is safe.

MRS HUSHABYE. He is hiding in the cave in the gravel pit.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. My dynamite drew him there. It is the hand of God.

HECTOR {[}\textit{returning from the house and striding across to
his former place}{]}. There is not half light enough. We should be
blazing to the skies.

ELLIE {[}\textit{tense with excitement}{]}. Set fire to the house,
Marcus.

MRS HUSHABYE. My house! No.

HECTOR. I thought of that; but it would not be ready in time.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The judgment has come. Courage will not save you;
but it will show that your souls are still live.

MRS HUSHABYE. \textit{\emph{Sh}}-sh! Listen: do you hear it now? It's
magnificent.

\emph{They all turn away from the house and look up, listening.}

HECTOR {[}\textit{gravely}{]}. Miss Dunn, you can do no good here.
We of this house are only moths flying into the candle. You had better
go down to the cellar.

ELLIE {[}\textit{scornfully}{]}. I don't think.

MAZZINI. Ellie, dear, there is no disgrace in going to the cellar.
An officer would order his soldiers to take cover. Mr Hushabye is
behaving like an amateur. Mangan and the burglar are acting very sensibly;
and it is they who will survive.

ELLIE. Let them. I shall behave like an amateur. But why should you
run any risk?

MAZZINI. Think of the risk those poor fellows up there are running!

NURSE GUINNESS. Think of them, indeed, the murdering blackguards!
What next?

\emph{A terrific explosion shakes the earth. They reel back into their
seats, or clutch the nearest support. They hear the falling of the
shattered glass from the windows.}

MAZZINI. Is anyone hurt?

HECTOR. Where did it fall?

NURSE GUINNESS {[}\textit{in hideous triumph}{]}. Right in the gravel
pit: I seen it. Serve un right! I seen it {[}\textit{she runs away
towards the gravel pit, laughing harshly}{]}.

HECTOR. One husband gone.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Thirty pounds of good dynamite wasted.

MAZZINI. Oh, poor Mangan!

HECTOR. Are you immortal that you need pity him? Our turn next.

\emph{They wait in silence and intense expectation. Hesione and Ellie
hold each other's hand tight.}

\emph{A distant explosion is heard.}

MRS HUSHABYE {[}\textit{relaxing her grip}{]}. Oh!\ they have passed
us.

LADY UTTERWORD. The danger is over, Randall. Go to bed.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Turn in, all hands. The ship is safe. {[}\textit{He
sits down and goes asleep}{]}.

ELLIE {[}\textit{disappointedly}{]}. Safe!

HECTOR {[}\textit{disgustedly}{]}. Yes, safe. And how damnably dull
the world has become again suddenly!\ {[}\textit{he sits down}{]}.

MAZZINI {[}\textit{sitting down}{]}. I was quite wrong, after all.
It is we who have survived; and Mangan and the burglar-

HECTOR.\ ---the two burglars---

LADY UTTERWORD.\ ---the two practical men of business---

MAZZINI.\ ---both gone. And the poor clergyman will have to get a
new house.

MRS HUSHABYE. But what a glorious experience! I hope they'll come
again tomorrow night.

ELLIE {[}\textit{radiant at the prospect}{]}. Oh, I hope so.

\emph{Randall at last succeeds in keeping the home fires burning on
his flute.}
\end{document}
