LADY UTTERWORD I quite sympathize with you, Mr Mangan. I have been through it all; and I know by experience that men and women are delicate plants and must be cultivated under glass. Our family habit of throwing stones in all directions and letting the air in is not only unbearably rude, but positively dangerous. Still, there is no use catching physical colds as well as moral ones; so please keep your clothes on.
MANGAN I’ll do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a child or a grown man? I won’t stand this mothering tyranny. I’ll go back to the city, where I’m respected and made much of.
MRS HUSHABYE Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city. Think of Ellie’s youth!
ELLIE Think of Hesione’s eyes and hair!
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Think of this garden in which you are not a dog barking to keep the truth out!
HECTOR Think of Lady Utterword’s beauty! her good sense! her style!
LADY UTTERWORD Flatterer. Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere: that is the essential point, isn’t it?
MANGAN [surrendering] All right: all right. I’m done. Have it your own way. Only let me alone. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels when you all start on me like this. I’ll stay. I’ll marry her. I’ll do anything for a quiet life. Are you satisfied now?
ELLIE No. I never really intended to make you marry me, Mr Mangan. Never in the depths of my soul. I only wanted to feel my strength: to know that you could not escape if I chose to take you.
MANGAN [indignantly] What! Do you mean to say you are going to throw me over after my acting so handsome?
LADY UTTERWORD I should not be too hasty, Miss Dunn. You can throw Mr Mangan over at any time up to the last moment. Very few men in his position go bankrupt. You can live very comfortably on his reputation for immense wealth.
ELLIE I cannot commit bigamy, Lady Utterword.
ELLIE Only half an hour ago I became Captain Shotover’s white wife.
MRS HUSHABYE Ellie! What nonsense! Where?
ELLIE In heaven, where all true marriages are made.
LADY UTTERWORD Really, Miss Dunn! Really, papa!
MANGAN He told me I was too old! And him a mummy!
HECTOR [quoting Shelley]
“Their altar the grassy earth outspread: And their priest the muttering wind.”[320]
ELLIE Yes: I, Ellie Dunn, give my broken heart and my strong sound soul to its natural captain, my spiritual husband and second father.
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 [sniffing and wiping his eyes] It isn’t kind — [his emotion chokes him.].
LADY UTTERWORD You are well out of it, Mr Mangan. Miss Dunn is the most conceited young woman I have met since I came back to England.
MRS HUSHABYE Oh, Ellie isn’t conceited. Are you, pettikins?
ELLIE I know my strength now, Hesione.
MANGAN Brazen, I call you. Brazen.
MRS HUSHABYE Tut, tut, Alfred: don’t be rude. Don’t you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Aren’t you happy, you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful enough to please the most fastidious man: we live and love and have not a care in the world. We women have managed all that for you. Why in the name of common sense do you go on as if you were two miserable wretches? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER I tell you happiness is no good. You can be happy when you are only half alive. I am happier now I am half dead than ever I was in my prime. But there is no blessing on my happiness.
ELLIE [her face lighting up] Life with a blessing! that is what I want. Now I know the real reason why I couldn’t marry Mr Mangan: there would be no blessing on our marriage. There is a blessing on my broken heart. There is a blessing on your beauty, Hesione. There is a blessing on your father’s spirit. Even on the lies of Marcus there is a blessing; but on Mr Mangan’s money there is none.
MANGAN I don’t understand a word of that.
ELLIE Neither do I. But I know it means something.
MANGAN Don’t say there was any difficulty about the blessing. I was ready to get a bishop to marry us.
MRS HUSHABYE Isn’t he a fool, pettikins?
HECTOR [fiercely] Do not scorn the man. We are all fools.
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. [He sits down on the campstool.]
MRS HUSHABYE On the contrary, I could wish you always like that.
LADY UTTERWORD Your daughter’s match is off, Mr Dunn. It seems that Mr Mangan, whom we all supposed to be a man of property, owns absolutely nothing.
MAZZINI Well, of course I knew that, Lady Utterword. But if people believe in him and are always giving him money, whereas they don’t believe in me and never give me any, how can I ask poor Ellie to depend on what I can do for her?
MANGAN Don’t you run away with this idea that I have nothing. I —
HECTOR Oh, don’t explain. We understand. You have a couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found out. That’s the reality of your millions.
MAZZINI Oh no, no, no. He is quite honest: the businesses are genuine and perfectly legal.
HECTOR [disgusted] Yah! Not even a great swindler!
MANGAN So you think. But I’ve been too many for some honest men, for all that.
LADY UTTERWORD There is no pleasing you, Mr Mangan. You are determined to be neither rich nor poor, honest nor dishonest.
MANGAN There you go again. Ever since I came into this silly house I have been made to look like a fool, though I’m as good a man in this house as in the city.
ELLIE [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.{72}
MANGAN [breaks into a low snivelling]!!!
MRS HUSHABYE There! you have set Alfred off.
320
Near quotation from “Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue,” by English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (179 2- 1822); Shaw has changed “our” to “their.”