60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
holds her mouth.)
MRS. CLANDON. Now, Mr. Bohun, before they begin again —
WAITER (softer). Be quick, sir: be quick.
DOLLY (beaming at him). Dear William!
PHILIP. Sh!
BOHUN (unexpectedly beginning by hurling a question straight at Dolly). Have you any intention of getting married?
DOLLY. I! Well, Finch calls me by my Christian name.
McCOMAS. I will not have this. Mr. Bohun: I use the young lady’s Christian name naturally as an old friend of her mother’s.
DOLLY. Yes, you call me Dolly as an old friend of my mother’s. But what about Dorothee-ee-a? (McComas rises indignantly.)
CRAMPTON (anxiously, rising to restrain him). Keep your temper, McComas. Don’t let us quarrel. Be patient.
McCOMAS. I will not be patient. You are shewing the most wretched weakness of character, Crampton. I say this is monstrous.
DOLLY. Mr. Bohun: please bully Finch for us.
BOHUN. I will. McComas: you’re making yourself ridiculous. Sit down.
McCOMAS. I —
BOHUN (waving him down imperiously). No: sit down, sit down. (McComas sits down sulkily; and Crampton, much relieved, follows his example.)
DOLLY (to Bohun, meekly). Thank you.
BOHUN. Now, listen to me, all of you. I give no opinion, McComas, as to how far you may or may not have committed yourself in the direction indicated by this young lady. (McComas is about to protest.) No: don’t interrupt me: if she doesn’t marry you she will marry somebody else. That is the solution of the difficulty as to her not bearing her father’s name. The other lady intends to get married.
GLORIA (flushing). Mr. Bohun!
BOHUN. Oh, yes, you do: you don’t know it; but you do.
GLORIA (rising). Stop. I warn you, Mr. Bohun, not to answer for my intentions.
BOHUN (rising). It’s no use, Miss Clandon: you can’t put me down. I tell you your name will soon be neither Clandon nor Crampton; and I could tell you what it will be if I chose. (He goes to the other end of the table, where he unrolls his domino, and puts the false nose on the table. When he moves they all rise; and Phil goes to the window. Bohun, with a gesture, summons the waiter to help him in robing.) Mr. Crampton: your notion of going to law is all nonsense: your children will be of age before you could get the point decided. (Allowing the waiter to put the domino on his shoulders.) You can do nothing but make a friendly arrangement. If you want your family more than they want you, you’ll get the worse of the arrangement: if they want you more than you want them, you’ll get the better of it. (He shakes the domino into becoming folds and takes up the false nose. Dolly gazes admiringly at him.) The strength of their position lies in their being very agreeable people personally. The strength of your position lies in your income. (He claps on the false nose, and is again grotesquely transfigured.)
DOLLY (running to him). Oh, now you look quite like a human being. Mayn’t I have just one dance with you? C a n you dance? (Phil, resuming his part of harlequin, waves his hat as if casting a spell on them.)
BOHUN (thunderously). Yes: you think I can’t; but I can. Come along. (He seizes her and dances off with her through the window in a most powerful manner, but with studied propriety and grace. The waiter is meanwhile busy putting the chairs back in their customary places.)
PHILIP. “On with the dance: let joy be unconfined.” William!
WAITER. Yes, sir.
PHILIP. Can you procure a couple of dominos and false noses for my father and Mr. McComas?
McCOMAS. Most certainly not. I protest —
CRAMPTON. No, no. What harm will it do, just for once, McComas? Don’t let us be spoilsports.
McCOMAS. Crampton: you are not the man I took you for. (Pointedly.) Bullies are always cowards. (He goes disgustedly towards the window.)
CRAMPTON (following him). Well, never mind. We must indulge them a little. Can you get us something to wear, waiter?
WAITER. Certainly, sir. (He precedes them to the window, and stands aside there to let them pass out before him.) This way, sir. Dominos and noses, sir?
McCOMAS (angrily, on his way out). I shall wear my own nose.
WAITER (suavely). Oh, dear, yes, sir: the false one will fit over it quite easily, sir: plenty of room, sir, plenty of room. (He goes out after McComas.)
CRAMPTON (turning at the window to Phil with an attempt at genial fatherliness). Come along, my boy, come along. (He goes.)
PHILIP (cheerily, following him). Coming, dad, coming. (On the window threshold, he stops; looking after Crampton; then turns fantastically with his bat bent into a halo round his head, and says with a lowered voice to Mrs. Clandon and Gloria) Did you feel the pathos of that? (He vanishes.)
MRS. CLANDON (left alone with Gloria). Why did Mr. Valentine go away so suddenly, I wonder?
GLORIA (petulantly). I don’t know. Yes, I d o know. Let us go and see the dancing. (They go towards the window, and are met by Valentine, who comes in from the garden walking quickly, with his face set and sulky.)
VALENTINE (stiffly). Excuse me. I thought the party had quite broken up.
GLORIA (nagging). Then why did you come back?
VALENTINE. I came back because I am penniless. I can’t get out that way without a five shilling ticket.
MRS. CLANDON. Has anything annoyed you, Mr. Valentine?
GLORIA. Never mind him, mother. This is a fresh insult to me: that is all.
MRS. CLANDON (hardly able to realize that Gloria is deliberately provoking an altercation). Gloria!
VALENTINE. Mrs. Clandon: have I said anything insulting? Have I done anything insulting?
GLORIA. you have implied that my past has been like yours. That is the worst of insults.
VALENTINE. I imply nothing of the sort. I declare that my past has been blameless in comparison with yours.
MRS. CLANDON (most indignantly). Mr. Valentine!
VALENTINE. Well, what am I to think when I learn that Miss Clandon has made exactly the same speeches to other men that she has made to me — when I hear of at least five former lovers, with a tame naval lieutenant thrown in? Oh, it’s too bad.
MRS. CLANDON. But you surely do not believe that these affairs — mere jokes of the children’s — were serious, Mr. Valentine?
VALENTINE. Not to you — not to her, perhaps. But I know what the men felt. (With ludicrously genuine earnestness.) Have you ever thought of the wrecked lives, the marriages contracted in the recklessness of despair, the suicides, the — the — the —
GLORIA (interrupting him contemptuously). Mother: this man is a sentimental idiot. (She sweeps away to the fireplace.)
MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Oh, my d e a r e s t Gloria, Mr. Valentine will think that rude.
VALENTINE. I am not a sentimental idiot. I am cured of sentiment for ever. (He sits down in dudgeon.)
MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners of their freedom. Don’t think Gloria vulgar (Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so.
GLORIA. Mother! You apologize for me to h i m!
MRS. CLANDON. My dear: you have some of the faults of youth as well as its qualities; and Mr. Valentine seems rather too old fashioned in his ideas about his own sex to like being called an idiot. And now had we not better go and see what Dolly is doing? (She goes towards the window. Valentine rises.)
GLORIA.