60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
(twisting himself round on him). Oh, I am not forgetting myself: I am only (covering his face desperately with his hands) full of horror. (Then, dropping his hands, and thrusting his face forward fiercely at Morell, he goes on threateningly.) You shall see whether this is a time for patience and kindness. (Morell, firm as a rock, looks indulgently at him.) Don’t look at me in that self-complacent way. You think yourself stronger than I am; but I shall stagger you if you have a heart in your breast.
MORELL (powerfully confident). Stagger me, my boy. Out with it.
MARCHBANKS. First —
MORELL. First?
MARCHBANKS. I love your wife.
(Morell recoils, and, after staring at him for a moment in utter amazement, bursts into uncontrollable laughter. Eugene is taken aback, but not disconcerted; and he soon becomes indignant and contemptuous.)
MORELL (sitting down to have his laugh out). Why, my dear child, of course you do. Everybody loves her: they can’t help it. I like it. But (looking up whimsically at him) I say, Eugene: do you think yours is a case to be talked about? You’re under twenty: she’s over thirty. Doesn’t it look rather too like a case of calf love?
MARCHBANKS (vehemently). YOU dare say that of her! You think that way of the love she inspires! It is an insult to her!
MORELL (rising; quickly, in an altered tone). To her! Eugene: take care. I have been patient. I hope to remain patient. But there are some things I won’t allow. Don’t force me to show you the indulgence I should show to a child. Be a man.
MARCHBANKS (with a gesture as if sweeping something behind him). Oh, let us put aside all that cant. It horrifies me when I think of the doses of it she has had to endure in all the weary years during which you have selfishly and blindly sacrificed her to minister to your self-sufficiency — YOU (turning on him) who have not one thought — one sense — in common with her.
MORELL (philosophically). She seems to bear it pretty well. (Looking him straight in the face.) Eugene, my boy: you are making a fool of yourself — a very great fool of yourself. There’s a piece of wholesome plain speaking for you.
MARCHBANKS. Oh, do you think I don’t know all that? Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? (Morell’s gaze wavers for the first time. He instinctively averts his face and stands listening, startled and thoughtful.) They are more true: they are the only things that are true. You are very calm and sensible and moderate with me because you can see that I am a fool about your wife; just as no doubt that old man who was here just now is very wise over your socialism, because he sees that YOU are a fool about it. (Morell’s perplexity deepens markedly. Eugene follows up his advantage, plying him fiercely with questions.) Does that prove you wrong? Does your complacent superiority to me prove that I am wrong?
MORELL (turning on Eugene, who stands his ground). Marchbanks: some devil is putting these words into your mouth. It is easy — terribly easy — to shake a man’s faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man’s spirit is devil’s work. Take care of what you are doing. Take care.
MARCHBANKS (ruthlessly). I know. I’m doing it on purpose. I told you I should stagger you.
(They confront one another threateningly for a moment. Then Morell recovers his dignity.)
MORELL (with noble tenderness). Eugene: listen to me. Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a happy man like me. (Eugene chafes intolerantly, repudiating the worth of his happiness. Morell, deeply insulted, controls himself with fine forbearance, and continues steadily, with great artistic beauty of delivery) You will be married; and you will be working with all your might and valor to make every spot on earth as happy as your own home. You will be one of the makers of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; and — who knows? — you may be a pioneer and master builder where I am only a humble journeyman; for don’t think, my boy, that I cannot see in you, young as you are, promise of higher powers than I can ever pretend to. I well know that it is in the poet that the holy spirit of man — the god within him — is most godlike. It should make you tremble to think of that — to think that the heavy burthen and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.
MARCHBANKS (unimpressed and remorseless, his boyish crudity of assertion telling sharply against Morell’s oratory). It does not make me tremble. It is the want of it in others that makes me tremble.
MORELL (redoubling his force of style under the stimulus of his genuine feeling and Eugene’s obduracy). Then help to kindle it in them — in ME — not to extinguish it. In the future — when you are as happy as I am — I will be your true brother in the faith. I will help you to believe that God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise. I will help you to believe that every stroke of your work is sowing happiness for the great harvest that all — even the humblest — shall one day reap. And last, but trust me, not least, I will help you to believe that your wife loves you and is happy in her home. We need such help, Marchbanks: we need it greatly and always. There are so many things to make us doubt, if once we let our understanding be troubled. Even at home, we sit as if in camp, encompassed by a hostile army of doubts. Will you play the traitor and let them in on me?
MARCHBANKS (looking round him). Is it like this for her here always? A woman, with a great soul, craving for reality, truth, freedom, and being fed on metaphors, sermons, stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you think a woman’s soul can live on your talent for preaching?
MORELL (Stung). Marchbanks: you make it hard for me to control myself. My talent is like yours insofar as it has any real worth at all. It is the gift of finding words for divine truth.
MARCHBANKS (impetuously). It’s the gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing less. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? I’ve never been in your church; but I’ve been to your political meetings; and I’ve seen you do what’s called rousing the meeting to enthusiasm: that is, you excited them until they behaved exactly as if they were drunk. And their wives looked on and saw clearly enough what fools they were. Oh, it’s an old story: you’ll find it in the Bible. I imagine King David, in his fits of enthusiasm, was very like you. (Stabbing him with the words.) “But his wife despised him in her heart.”
MORELL (wrathfully). Leave my house. Do you hear? (He advances on him threateningly.)
MARCHBANKS (shrinking back against the couch). Let me alone. Don’t touch me. (Morell grasps him powerfully by the lapel of his coat: he cowers down on the sofa and screams passionately.) Stop, Morell, if you strike me, I’ll kill myself. I won’t bear it. (Almost in hysterics.) Let me go. Take your hand away.
MORELL (with slow, emphatic scorn.) You little snivelling, cowardly whelp. (Releasing him.) Go, before you frighten yourself into a fit.
MARCHBANKS (on the sofa, gasping, but relieved by the withdrawal of Morell’s hand). I’m not afraid of you: it’s you who are afraid of me.
MORELL (quietly, as he stands over him). It looks like it, doesn’t it?
MARCHBANKS (with petulant vehemence). Yes, it does. (Morell turns away contemptuously. Eugene scrambles to his feet and follows him.) You think because I shrink from being brutally handled — because (with tears in his voice) I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with violence — because I can’t lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab like you — because I can’t fight you for your wife as a navvy would: all that makes you think that I’m afraid of you. But you’re wrong. If I haven’t got what you call British pluck, I haven’t British cowardice either: I’m not afraid of a clergyman’s ideas. I’ll fight your ideas. I’ll rescue her from her slavery to them: I’ll pit my own ideas against them. You are driving me out of the house because you daren’t let her choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her again. (Morell, angered, turns suddenly on him. He flies to the door in involuntary dread.) Let me alone, I say. I’m going.
MORELL (with cold scorn). Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: don’t be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want