60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
PROSERPINE. Then hold your tongue.
MARCHBANKS. Yes: that is what it always comes to. We hold our tongues. Does that stop the cry of your heart? — for it does cry: doesn’t it? It must, if you have a heart.
PROSERPINE (suddenly rising with her hand pressed on her heart). Oh, it’s no use trying to work while you talk like that. (She leaves her little table and sits on the sofa. Her feelings are evidently strongly worked on.) It’s no business of yours, whether my heart cries or not; but I have a mind to tell you, for all that.
MARCHBANKS. You needn’t. I know already that it must.
PROSERPINE. But mind: if you ever say I said so, I’ll deny it.
MARCHBANKS (compassionately). Yes, I know. And so you haven’t the courage to tell him?
PROSERPINE (bouncing up). HIM! Who?
MARCHBANKS. Whoever he is. The man you love. It might be anybody. The curate, Mr. Mill, perhaps.
PROSERPINE (with disdain). Mr. Mill!!! A fine man to break my heart about, indeed! I’d rather have you than Mr. Mill.
MARCHBANKS (recoiling). No, really — I’m very sorry; but you mustn’t think of that. I —
PROSERPINE. (testily, crossing to the fire and standing at it with her back to him). Oh, don’t be frightened: it’s not you. It’s not any one particular person.
MARCHBANKS. I know. You feel that you could love anybody that offered —
PROSERPINE (exasperated). Anybody that offered! No, I do not. What do you take me for?
MARCHBANKS (discouraged). No use. You won’t make me REAL answers — only those things that everybody says. (He strays to the sofa and sits down disconsolately.)
PROSERPINE (nettled at what she takes to be a disparagement of her manners by an aristocrat). Oh, well, if you want original conversation, you’d better go and talk to yourself.
MARCHBANKS. That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it’s horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.
PROSERPINE. Wait until Mr. Morell comes. HE’LL talk to you. (Marchbanks shudders.) Oh, you needn’t make wry faces over him: he can talk better than you. (With temper.) He’d talk your little head off. (She is going back angrily to her place, when, suddenly enlightened, he springs up and stops her.)
MARCHBANKS. Ah, I understand now!
PROSERPINE (reddening). What do you understand?
MARCHBANKS. Your secret. Tell me: is it really and truly possible for a woman to love him?
PROSERPINE (as if this were beyond all bounds). Well!!
MARCHBANKS (passionately). No, answer me. I want to know: I MUST know. I can’t understand it. I can see nothing in him but words, pious resolutions, what people call goodness. You can’t love that.
PROSERPINE (attempting to snub him by an air of cool propriety). I simply don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand you.
MARCHBANKS (vehemently). You do. You lie —
PROSERPINE. Oh!
MARCHBANKS. You DO understand; and you KNOW. (Determined to have an answer.) Is it possible for a woman to love him?
PROSERPINE (looking him straight in the face.) Yes. (He covers his face with his hands.) Whatever is the matter with you! (He takes down his hands and looks at her. Frightened at the tragic mask presented to her, she hurries past him at the utmost possible distance, keeping her eyes on his face until he turns from her and goes to the child’s chair beside the hearth, where he sits in the deepest dejection. As she approaches the door, it opens and Burgess enters. On seeing him, she ejaculates) Praise heaven, here’s somebody! (and sits down, reassured, at her table. She puts a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter as Burgess crosses to Eugene.)
BURGESS (bent on taking care of the distinguished visitor). Well: so this is the way they leave you to yourself, Mr. Morchbanks. I’ve come to keep you company. (Marchbanks looks up at him in consternation, which is quite lost on him.) James is receivin’ a deppitation in the dinin’ room; and Candy is hupstairs educatin’ of a young stitcher gurl she’s hinterusted in. She’s settin’ there learnin’ her to read out of the “‘Ev’nly Twins.” (Condolingly.) You must find it lonesome here with no one but the typist to talk to. (He pulls round the easy chair above fire, and sits down.)
PROSERPINE (highly incensed). He’ll be all right now that he has the advantage of YOUR polished conversation: that’s one comfort, anyhow. (She begins to typewrite with clattering asperity.)
BURGESS (amazed at her audacity). Hi was not addressin’ myself to you, young woman, that I’m awerr of.
PROSERPINE (tartly, to Marchbanks). Did you ever see worse manners, Mr. Marchbanks?
BURGESS (with pompous severity). Mr. Morchbanks is a gentleman and knows his place, which is more than some people do.
PROSERPINE (fretfully). It’s well you and I are not ladies and gentlemen: I’d talk to you pretty straight if Mr. Marchbanks wasn’t here. (She pulls the letter out of the machine so crossly that it tears.) There, now I’ve spoiled this letter — have to be done all over again. Oh, I can’t contain myself — silly old fathead!
BURGESS (rising, breathless with indignation). Ho! I’m a silly ole fathead, am I? Ho, indeed (gasping). Hall right, my gurl! Hall right. You just wait till I tell that to your employer. You’ll see. I’ll teach you: see if I don’t.
PROSERPINE. I —
BURGESS (cutting her short). No, you’ve done it now. No huse a-talkin’ to me. I’ll let you know who I am. (Proserpine shifts her paper carriage with a defiant bang, and disdainfully goes on with her work.) Don’t you take no notice of her, Mr. Morchbanks. She’s beneath it. (He sits down again loftily.)
MARCHBANKS (miserably nervous and disconcerted). Hadn’t we better change the subject. I — I don’t think Miss Garnett meant anything.
PROSERPINE (with intense conviction). Oh, didn’t I though, just!
BURGESS. I wouldn’t demean myself to take notice on her.
(An electric bell rings twice.)
PROSERPINE (gathering up her notebook and papers). That’s for me. (She hurries out.)
BURGESS (calling after her). Oh, we can spare you. (Somewhat relieved by the triumph of having the last word, and yet half inclined to try to improve on it, he looks after her for a moment; then subsides into his seat by Eugene, and addresses him very confidentially.) Now we’re alone, Mr. Morchbanks, let me give you a friendly ‘int that I wouldn’t give to everybody. ‘Ow long ‘ave you known my son-in-law James here?
MARCHBANKS. I don’t know. I never can remember dates. A few months, perhaps.
BURGESS. Ever notice anything queer about him?
MARCHBANKS. I don’t think so.
BURGESS (impressively). No more you wouldn’t. That’s the danger in it. Well, he’s mad.
MARCHBANKS. Mad!
BURGESS. Mad as a Morch ‘are. You take notice on him and you’ll see.
MARCHBANKS (beginning). But surely that is only because his opinions —
BURGESS (touching him with his forefinger on his knee, and pressing it as if to hold his attention with it). That’s wot I used tee think, Mr. Morchbanks. Hi thought long enough that it was honly ‘is hopinions; though, mind you, hopinions becomes vurry serious things when people takes to hactin on ’em as ‘e does. But that’s not wot I go on. (He looks round to make sure that they are alone, and bends over to Eugene’s ear.) Wot do you think he says to me this mornin’ in this very room?
MARCHBANKS. What?
BURGESS.