60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
I wasn’t unhappy, because I wasn’t drifting. I was steering a course and had work in hand. Give a man health and a course to steer; and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
LADY CICELY. Sometimes he won’t even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.
BRASSBOUND. I don’t deny that: nothing makes a man so selfish as work. But I was not self-seeking: it seemed to me that I had put justice above self. I tell you life meant something to me then. Do you see that dirty little bundle of scraps of paper?
LADY CICELY. What are they?
BRASSBOUND. Accounts cut out of newspapers. Speeches made by my uncle at charitable dinners, or sentencing men to death — pious, highminded speeches by a man who was to me a thief and a murderer! To my mind they were more weighty, more momentous, better revelations of the wickedness of law and respectability than the book of the prophet Amos. What are they now? (He quietly tears the newspaper cuttings into little fragments and throws them away, looking fixedly at her meanwhile.)
LADY CICELY. Well, that’s a comfort, at all events.
BRASSBOUND. Yes; but it’s a part of my life gone: YOUR doing, remember. What have I left? See here! (He take up the letters) the letters my uncle wrote to my mother, with her comments on their cold drawn insolence, their treachery and cruelty. And the piteous letters she wrote to him later on, returned unopened. Must they go too?
LADY CICELY (uneasily). I can’t ask you to destroy your mother’s letters.
BRASSBOUND. Why not, now that you have taken the meaning out of them? (He tears them.) Is that a comfort too?
LADY CICELY. It’s a little sad; but perhaps it is best so.
BRASSBOUND. That leaves one relic: her portrait. (He plucks the photograph out of its cheap case.)
LADY CICELY (with vivid curiosity). Oh, let me see. (He hands it to her. Before she can control herself, her expression changes to one of unmistakable disappointment and repulsion.)
BRASSBOUND (with a single sardonic cachinnation). Ha! You expected something better than that. Well, you’re right. Her face does not look well opposite yours.
LADY CICELY (distressed). I said nothing.
BRASSBOUND. What could you say? (He takes back the portrait: she relinquishes it without a word. He looks at it; shakes his head; and takes it quietly between his finger and thumb to tear it.)
LADY CICELY (staying his hand). Oh, not your mother’s picture!
BRASSBOUND. If that were your picture, would you like your son to keep it for younger and better women to see?
LADY CICELY (releasing his hand). Oh, you are dreadful! Tear it, tear it. (She covers her eyes for a moment to shut out the sight.)
BRASSBOUND (tearing it quietly). You killed her for me that day in the castle; and I am better without her. (He throws away the fragments.) Now everything is gone. You have taken the old meaning out of my life; but you have put no new meaning into it. I can see that you have some clue to the world that makes all its difficulties easy for you; but I’m not clever enough to seize it. You’ve lamed me by showing me that I take life the wrong way when I’m left to myself.
LADY CICELY. Oh no. Why do you say that?
BRASSBOUND. What else can I say? See what I’ve done! My uncle is no worse a man than myself — better, most likely; for he has a better head and a higher place. Well, I took him for a villain out of a storybook. My mother would have opened anybody else’s eyes: she shut mine. I’m a stupider man than Brandyfaced Jack even; for he got his romantic nonsense out of his penny numbers and such like trash; but I got just the same nonsense out of life and experience. (Shaking his head) It was vulgar — VULGAR. I see that now; for you’ve opened my eyes to the past; but what good is that for the future? What am I to do? Where am I to go?
LADY CICELY. It’s quite simple. Do whatever you like. That’s what I always do.
BRASSBOUND. That answer is no good to me. What I like is to have something to do; and I have nothing. You might as well talk like the missionary and tell me to do my duty.
LADY CICELY (quickly). Oh no thank you. I’ve had quite enough of your duty, and Howard’s duty. Where would you both be now if I’d let you do it?
BRASSBOUND. We’d have been somewhere, at all events. It seems to me that now I am nowhere.
LADY CICELY. But aren’t you coming back to England with us?
BRASSBOUND. What for?
LADY CICELY. Why, to make the most of your opportunities.
BRASSBOUND. What opportunities?
LADY CICELY. Don’t you understand that when you are the nephew of a great bigwig, and have influential connexions, and good friends among them, lots of things can be done for you that are never done for ordinary ship captains?
BRASSBOUND. Ah; but I’m not an aristocrat, you see. And like most poor men, I’m proud. I don’t like being patronized.
LADY CICELY. What is the use of saying that? In my world, which is now your world — OUR world — getting patronage is the whole art of life. A man can’t have a career without it.
BRASSBOUND. In my world a man can navigate a ship and get his living by it.
LADY CICELY. Oh, I see you’re one of the Idealists — the Impossibilists! We have them, too, occasionally, in our world. There’s only one thing to be done with them.
BRASSBOUND. What’s that?
LADY CICELY. Marry them straight off to some girl with enough money for them, and plenty of sentiment. That’s their fate.
BRASSBOUND. You’ve spoiled even that chance for me. Do you think I could look at any ordinary woman after you? You seem to be able to make me do pretty well what you like; but you can’t make me marry anybody but yourself.
LADY CICELY. Do you know, Captain Paquito, that I’ve married no less than seventeen men (Brassbound stares) to other women. And they all opened the subject by saying that they would never marry anybody but me.
BRASSBOUND. Then I shall be the first man you ever found to stand to his word.
LADY CICELY (part pleased, part amused, part sympathetic). Do you really want a wife?
BRASSBOUND. I want a commander. Don’t undervalue me: I am a good man when I have a good leader. I have courage: I have determination: I’m not a drinker: I can command a schooner and a shore party if I can’t command a ship or an army. When work is put upon me, I turn neither to save my life nor to fill my pocket. Gordon trusted me; and he never regretted it. If you trust me, you shan’t regret it. All the same, there’s something wanting in me: I suppose I’m stupid.
LADY CICELY. Oh, you’re not stupid.
BRASSBOUND. Yes I am. Since you saw me for the first time in that garden, you’ve heard me say nothing clever. And I’ve heard you say nothing that didn’t make me laugh, or make me feel friendly, as well as telling me what to think and what to do. That’s what I mean by real cleverness. Well, I haven’t got it. I can give an order when I know what order to give. I can make men obey it, willing or unwilling. But I’m stupid, I tell you: stupid. When there’s no Gordon to command me, I can’t think of what to do. Left to myself, I’ve become half a brigand. I can kick that little gutterscrub Drinkwater; but I find myself doing what he puts into my head because I can’t think of anything else. When you came, I took your orders as naturally as I took Gordon’s, though I little thought my next commander would be a woman. I want to take service under you. And there’s no way in which that can be done except marrying you. Will you let me do it?
LADY CICELY. I’m afraid you don’t quite know how odd a match it would be for me according to the ideas of English society.
BRASSBOUND. I care nothing about English society: let it mind its own business.
LADY