60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
his officers, and followed by the bluejackets and the petty officer.)
SIR HOWARD (to Lady Cicely). Cicely: in the course of my professional career I have met with unscrupulous witnesses, and, I am sorry to say, unscrupulous counsel also. But the combination of unscrupulous witness and unscrupulous counsel I have met to-day has taken away my breath You have made me your accomplice in defeating justice.
LADY CICELY. Yes: aren’t you glad it’s been defeated for once? (She takes his arm to go out with him.) Captain Brassbound: I will come back to say goodbye before I go. (He nods gloomily. She goes out with Sir Howard, following the Captain and his staff.)
RANKIN (running to Brassbound and taking both his hands). I’m right glad ye’re cleared. I’ll come back and have a crack with ye when yon lunch is over. God bless ye. (Hs goes out quickly.)
Brassbound and his men, left by themselves in the room, free and unobserved, go straight out of their senses. They laugh; they dance; they embrace one another; they set to partners and waltz clumsily; they shake hands repeatedly and maudlinly. Three only retain some sort of self-possession. Marzo, proud of having successfully thrust himself into a leading part in the recent proceedings and made a dramatic speech, inflates his chest, curls his scanty moustache, and throws himself into a swaggering pose, chin up and right foot forward, despising the emotional English barbarians around him. Brassbound’s eyes and the working of his mouth show that he is infected with the general excitement; but he bridles himself savagely. Redbrook, trained to affect indifference, grins cynically; winks at Brassbound; and finally relieves himself by assuming the character of a circus ringmaster, flourishing an imaginary whip and egging on the rest to wilder exertions. A climax is reached when Drinkwater, let loose without a stain on his character for the second time, is rapt by belief in his star into an ecstasy in which, scorning all partnership, he becomes as it were a whirling dervish, and executes so miraculous a clog dance that the others gradually cease their slower antics to stare at him.
BRASSBOUND (tearing off his hat and striding forward as Drinkwater collapses, exhausted, and is picked up by Redbrook). Now to get rid of this respectable clobber and feel like a man again. Stand by, all hands, to jump on the captain’s tall hat. (He puts the hat down and prepares to jump on it. The effect is startling, and takes him completely aback. His followers, far from appreciating his iconoclasm, are shocked into scandalized sobriety, except Redbrook, who is immensely tickled by their prudery.)
DRINKWATER. Naow, look eah, kepn: that ynt rawt. Dror a lawn somewhere.
JOHNSON. I say nothin agen a bit of fun, Capn, but let’s be gentlemen.
REDBROOK. I suggest to you, Brassbound, that the clobber belongs to Lady Sis. Ain’t you going to give it back to her?
BRASSBOUND (picking up the hat and brushing the dust off it anxiously). That’s true. I’m a fool. All the same, she shall not see me again like this. (He pulls off the coat and waistcoat together.) Does any man here know how to fold up this sort of thing properly?
REDBROOK. Allow me, governor. (He takes the coat and waistcoat to the table, and folds them up.)
BRASSBOUND (loosening his collar and the front of his shirt). Brandyfaced Jack: you’re looking at these studs. I know what’s in your mind.
DRINKWATER (indignantly). Naow yer down’t: nort a bit on it. Wot’s in maw mawnd is secrifawce, seolf-secrifawce.
BRASSBOUND. If one brass pin of that lady’s property is missing, I’ll hang you with my own hands at the gaff of the Thanksgiving — and would, if she were lying under the guns of all the fleets in Europe. (He pulls off the shirt and stands in his blue jersey, with his hair ruffled. He passes his hand through it and exclaims) Now I am half a man, at any rate.
REDBROOK. A horrible combination, governor: churchwarden from the waist down, and the rest pirate. Lady Sis won’t speak to you in it.
BRASSBOUND. I’ll change altogether. (He leaves the room to get his own trousers.)
REDBROOK (softly). Look here, Johnson, and gents generally. (They gather about him.) Spose she takes him back to England!
MARZO (trying to repeat his success). Im! Im only dam pirate. She saint, I tell you — no take any man nowhere.
JOHNSON (severely). Don’t you be a ignorant and immoral foreigner. (The rebuke is well received; and Marzo is hustled into the background and extinguished.) She won’t take him for harm; but she might take him for good. And then where should we be?
DRINKWATER. Brarsbahnd ynt the ownly kepn in the world. Wot mikes a kepn is brines an knollidge o lawf. It ynt thet ther’s naow sitch pusson: it’s thet you dunno where to look fr im. (The implication that he is such a person is so intolerable that they receive it with a prolonged burst of booing.)
BRASSBOUND (returning in his own clothes, getting into his jacket as he comes). Stand by, all. (They start asunder guiltily, and wait for orders.) Redbrook: you pack that clobber in the lady’s portmanteau, and put it aboard the yacht for her. Johnson: you take all hands aboard the Thanksgiving; look through the stores: weigh anchor; and make all ready for sea. Then send Jack to wait for me at the slip with a boat; and give me a gunfire for a signal. Lose no time.
JOHNSON. Ay, ay, air. All aboard, mates.
ALL. Ay, ay. (They rush out tumultuously.)
When they are gone, Brassbound sits down at the end of the table, with his elbows on it and his head on his fists, gloomily thinking. Then he takes from the breast pocket of his jacket a leather case, from which he extracts a scrappy packet of dirty letters and newspaper cuttings. These he throws on the table. Next comes a photograph in a cheap frame. He throws it down untenderly beside the papers; then folds his arms, and is looking at it with grim distaste when Lady Cicely enters. His back is towards her; and he does not hear her. Perceiving this, she shuts the door loudly enough to attract his attention. He starts up.
LADY CICELY (coming to the opposite end of the table). So you’ve taken off all my beautiful clothes!
BRASSBOUND. Your brother’s, you mean. A man should wear his own clothes; and a man should tell his own lies. I’m sorry you had to tell mine for me to-day.
LADY CICELY. Oh, women spend half their lives telling little lies for men, and sometimes big ones. We’re used to it. But mind! I don’t admit that I told any to-day.
BRASSBOUND. How did you square my uncle?
LADY CICELY. I don’t understand the expression.
BRASSBOUND. I mean —
LADY CICELY. I’m afraid we haven’t time to go into what you mean before lunch. I want to speak to you about your future. May I?
BRASSBOUND (darkening a little, but politely). Sit down. (She sits down. So does he.)
LADY CICELY. What are your plans?
BRASSBOUND. I have no plans. You will hear a gun fired in the harbor presently. That will mean that the Thanksgiving’s anchor’s weighed and that she is waiting for her captain to put out to sea. And her captain doesn’t know now whether to turn her head north or south.
LADY CICELY. Why not north for England?
BRASSBOUND. Why not south for the Pole?
LADY CICELY. But you must do something with yourself.
BRASSBOUND (settling himself with his fists and elbows weightily on the table and looking straight and powerfully at her). Look you: when you and I first met, I was a man with a purpose. I stood alone: I saddled no friend, woman or man, with that purpose, because it was against law, against religion, against my own credit and safety. But I believed in it; and I stood alone for it, as a man should stand for his belief, against law and religion as much as against wickedness and selfishness. Whatever I may be, I am none of your fairweather sailors that’ll do nothing for their creed but go to Heaven for it. I was ready to go to hell for mine. Perhaps you don’t understand that.
LADY CICELY. Oh bless you, yes. It’s so very like a certain sort of man.
BRASSBOUND.