60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
We are told that the wicked shall be punished. Why should we do our duty and keep God’s law if there is to be no difference made between us and those who follow their own likings and dislikings, and make a jest of us and of their Maker’s word?
ANDERSON. Well, Richard’s earthly father has been merciful and his heavenly judge is the father of us all.
MRS. DUDGEON (forgetting herself). Richard’s earthly father was a softheaded —
ANDERSON (shocked). Oh!
MRS. DUDGEON (with a touch of shame). Well, I am Richard’s mother. If I am against him who has any right to be for him? (Trying to conciliate him.) Won’t you sit down, Mr. Anderson? I should have asked you before; but I’m so troubled.
ANDERSON. Thank you — (He takes a chair from beside the fireplace, and turns it so that he can sit comfortably at the fire. When he is seated he adds, in the tone of a man who knows that he is opening a difficult subject.) Has Christy told you about the new will?
MRS. DUDGEON (all her fears returning). The new will! Did Timothy — ? (She breaks off, gasping, unable to complete the question.)
ANDERSON. Yes. In his last hours he changed his mind.
MRS. DUDGEON (white with intense rage). And you let him rob me?
ANDERSON. I had no power to prevent him giving what was his to his own son.
MRS. DUDGEON. He had nothing of his own. His money was the money I brought him as my marriage portion. It was for me to deal with my own money and my own son. He dare not have done it if I had been with him; and well he knew it. That was why he stole away like a thief to take advantage of the law to rob me by making a new will behind my back. The more shame on you, Mr. Anderson, — you, a minister of the gospel — to act as his accomplice in such a crime.
ANDERSON (rising). I will take no offence at what you say in the first bitterness of your grief.
MRS. DUDGEON (contemptuously). Grief!
ANDERSON. Well, of your disappointment, if you can find it in your heart to think that the better word.
MRS. DUDGEON. My heart! My heart! And since when, pray, have you begun to hold up our hearts as trustworthy guides for us?
ANDERSON (rather guiltily). I — er —
MRS. DUDGEON (vehemently). Don’t lie, Mr. Anderson. We are told that the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. My heart belonged, not to Timothy, but to that poor wretched brother of his that has just ended his days with a rope round his neck — aye, to Peter Dudgeon. You know it: old Eli Hawkins, the man to whose pulpit you succeeded, though you are not worthy to loose his shoe latchet, told it you when he gave over our souls into your charge. He warned me and strengthened me against my heart, and made me marry a Godfearing man — as he thought. What else but that discipline has made me the woman I am? And you, you who followed your heart in your marriage, you talk to me of what I find in my heart. Go home to your pretty wife, man; and leave me to my prayers. (She turns from him and leans with her elbows on the table, brooding over her wrongs and taking no further notice of him.)
ANDERSON (willing enough to escape). The Lord forbid that I should come between you and the source of all comfort! (He goes to the rack for his coat and hat.)
MRS. DUDGEON (without looking at him). The Lord will know what to forbid and what to allow without your help.
ANDERSON. And whom to forgive, I hope — Eli Hawkins and myself, if we have ever set up our preaching against His law. (He fastens his cloak, and is now ready to go.) Just one word — on necessary business, Mrs. Dudgeon. There is the reading of the will to be gone through; and Richard has a right to be present. He is in the town; but he has the grace to say that he does not want to force himself in here.
MRS. DUDGEON. He shall come here. Does he expect us to leave his father’s house for his convenience? Let them all come, and come quickly, and go quickly. They shall not make the will an excuse to shirk half their day’s work. I shall be ready, never fear.
ANDERSON (coming back a step or two). Mrs. Dudgeon: I used to have some little influence with you. When did I lose it?
MRS. DUDGEON (still without turning to him). When you married for love. Now you’re answered.
ANDERSON. Yes: I am answered. (He goes out, musing.)
MRS. DUDGEON (to herself, thinking of her husband). Thief! Thief!! (She shakes herself angrily out of the chair; throws back the shawl from her head; and sets to work to prepare the room for the reading of the will, beginning by replacing Anderson’s chair against the wall, and pushing back her own to the window. Then she calls, in her hard, driving, wrathful way) Christy. (No answer: he is fast asleep.) Christy. (She shakes him roughly.) Get up out of that; and be ashamed of yourself — sleeping, and your father dead! (She returns to the table; puts the candle on the mantelshelf; and takes from the table drawer a red table cloth which she spreads.)
CHRISTY (rising reluctantly). Well, do you suppose we are never going to sleep until we are out of mourning?
MRS. DUDGEON. I want none of your sulks. Here: help me to set this table. (They place the table in the middle of the room, with Christy’s end towards the fireplace and Mrs. Dudgeon’s towards the sofa. Christy drops the table as soon as possible, and goes to the fire, leaving his mother to make the final adjustments of its position.) We shall have the minister back here with the lawyer and all the family to read the will before you have done toasting yourself. Go and wake that girl; and then light the stove in the shed: you can’t have your breakfast here. And mind you wash yourself, and make yourself fit to receive the company. (She punctuates these orders by going to the cupboard; unlocking it; and producing a decanter of wine, which has no doubt stood there untouched since the last state occasion in the family, and some glasses, which she sets on the table. Also two green ware plates, on one of which she puts a barmbrack with a knife beside it. On the other she shakes some biscuits out of a tin, putting back one or two, and counting the rest.) Now mind: there are ten biscuits there: let there be ten there when I come back after dressing myself. And keep your fingers off the raisins in that cake. And tell Essie the same. I suppose I can trust you to bring in the case of stuffed birds without breaking the glass? (She replaces the tin in the cupboard, which she locks, pocketing the key carefully.)
CHRISTY (lingering at the fire). You’d better put the inkstand instead, for the lawyer.
MRS. DUDGEON. That’s no answer to make to me, sir. Go and do as you’re told. (Christy turns sullenly to obey.) Stop: take down that shutter before you go, and let the daylight in: you can’t expect me to do all the heavy work of the house with a great heavy lout like you idling about.
Christy takes the window bar out of its damps, and puts it aside; then opens the shutter, showing the grey morning. Mrs. Dudgeon takes the sconce from the mantelshelf; blows out the candle; extinguishes the snuff by pinching it with her fingers, first licking them for the purpose; and replaces the sconce on the shelf.
CHRISTY (looking through the window). Here’s the minister’s wife.
MRS. DUDGEON (displeased). What! Is she coming here?
CHRISTY. Yes.
MRS. DUDGEON. What does she want troubling me at this hour, before I’m properly dressed to receive people?
CHRISTY. You’d better ask her.
MRS. DUDGEON (threateningly). You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head. (He goes sulkily towards the door. She comes after him, plying him with instructions.) Tell that girl to come to me as soon as she’s had her breakfast. And tell her to make herself fit to be seen before the people. (Christy goes out and slams the door in her face.) Nice manners, that! (Someone knocks at the house door: she turns and cries inhospitably.) Come in. (Judith Anderson, the minister’s wife, comes in. Judith is more than twenty years younger than her husband, though she will never be as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and proper and ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which serves her instead of strength. She has