The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw - 60 Titles in One Edition (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Sartorius.]
SARTORIUS [bracing himself hostile] Well?
LICKCHEESE Quite well, Sartorius, thankee.
SARTORIUS I was not asking after your health, sir, as you know, I think, as well as I do. What is your business?
LICKCHEESE Business that I can take elsewhere if I meet with less civility than I please to put up with, Sartorius. You and me is man and man now. It was money that used to be my master, and not you: Dont think it. Now that I’m independent in respect of money —
SARTORIUS [crossing determinedly to tke door, and holding it open] You can take your independence out of my house, then. I wont have it here.
LICKCHEESE [indulgently] Come, Sartorius: Dont be stiffnecked. I come here as a friend to put money in your pocket. No use in your lettin on to me that youre above money. Eh?
SARTORIUS [hesitates, and at last shuts the door, saying guardedly] How much money?
LICKCHEESE [victorious, going to Blanche’ s chair and taking off his overcoat] Ah! there you speak like yourself, Sartorius. Now suppose you ask me to sit down and make myself comfortable.
SARTORIUS [coming from the door] I have a mind to put you downstairs by the back of your neck, you infernal blackguard.
LICKCHEESE [Not a bit ruffled, he hangs his overcoat on the back of Blanche’s chair, pulling a cigar case out of one of the pockets as he does so.] You and me is too much of a pair for me to take anything you say in bad part, Sartorius. ‘Ave a cigar.
SARTORIUS No smoking here : This is my daughter’s room. However, sit down, sit down. [They sit’]
LICKCHEESE I bin gittin on a little since I saw you last.
SARTORIUS So I see.
LICKCHEESE I owe it partly to you, you know. Does that surprise you?
SARTORIUS It doesnt concern me.
LICKCHEESE So you think, Sartorius, because it never did concern you how I got on, so long as I got you on by bringin in the rents. But I picked up something for myself down at Robbins’s Row.
SARTORIUS I always thought so. Have you come to make restitution?
LICKCHEESE You wouldnt take it if I offered it to you, Sartorius. It wasnt money: It was knowledge, knowledge of the great public question of the Housing of the Working Classes. You know theres a Royal Commission on it, dont you?
SARTORIUS Oh, I see. Youve been giving evidence.
LICKCHEESE Giving evidence! Not me. What good would that do me? Only my expenses; and that not on the professional scale, neither. No: I gev no evidence. But I’ll tell you what I did. I kep it back, jest to oblige one or two people whose feelins would a bin urt by seein their names in a bluebook as keepin a fever den. Their Agent got so friendly with me over it that he put his name on a bill of mine to the tune of well, no matter: It gev me a start; and a start was all I ever wanted to get on my feet. Ive got a copy of the first report of the Commission in the pocket of my overcoat. [He rises and gets at his overcoat, from a pocket of which he takes a bluebook] I turned down the page to shew you: I thought youd like to see it. [He doubles the book back at the place indicated, and hands it to Sartorius]
SARTORIUS So blackmail is the game, eh? [He puts the book on the table without looking at it, and strikes it emphatically with his fist] I dont care that for my name being in bluebooks. My friends dont read them; and I’m neither a Cabinet Minister nor a candidate for Parliament. Theres nothing to be got out of me on that lay.
LICKCHEESE [sbocked] Blackmail! Oh, Mr Sartorius, do you think I would let out a word about your premises? Round on an old pal! No: that aint Lickcheese’s way. Besides, they know all about you already. Them stairs that you and me quarrelled about, they was a whole arternoon examinin the clergyman that made such a fuss you remember? About the women that was urt on it. He made the worst he could of it, in an ungentlemanly, unchristian spirit. I wouldnt have that clergyman’s disposition for worlds. Oh no: Thats not what was in my thoughts.
SARTORIUS Come, come, man: What was in your thoughts? Out with it.
LICKCHEESE [With provoking deliberation, smiling and looking mysteriously at him] You aint spent a few hundreds in repairs since we parted, ave you? [Sartorius, losing patience, makes a threatening movement.] Now dont fly out at me. I know a landlord that owned as beastly a slum as you could find in London, down there by the Tower. By my advice that man put half the houses into first-class repair, and let the other half to a new Company: The North Thames Iced Mutton Depot Company, of which I hold a few shares promoters’ shares. And what was the end of it, do you think?
SARTORIUS Smash, I suppose.
LICKCHEESE Smash! Not a bit of it. Compensation, Mr Sartorius, compensation. Do you understand that?
SARTORIUS Compensation for what?
LICKCHEESE Why, the land was wanted for an extension of the Mint; and the Company had to be bought out, and the buildings compensated for. Somebody has to know these things beforehand, you know, no matter how dark theyre kept.
SARTORIUS [interested, but cautious] Well?
LICKCHEESE Is that all you have to say to me, Mr Sartorius? “Well!” As if I was next door’s dog! Suppose I’d got wind of a new street that would knock down Robbins’s Row and turn Burke’s Walk into a frontage worth thirty pound a foot! Would you say no more to me than [mimicking] “Well?” [Sartorius hesitates, looking at him in great doubt. Lickcheese rises and exhibits himself] Come: Look at my get-up, Mr Sartorius. Look at this watchchain! Look at the corporation Ive got on me! Do you think all that came from keeping my mouth shut? No: It came from keeping my ears and eyes open. [Blanche comes in, followed by the parlor maid, who has a silver tray on which she collects the coffee cups. Sartorius, impatient at the interruption, rises and motions Lickcheese to the door of the study.]
SARTORIUS Sh! We must talk this over in the study. There is a good fire there; and you can smoke. Blanche: An old friend of ours.
LICKCHEESE And a kind one to me. I hope I see you well, Miss Blanche.
BLANCHE Why, it’s Mr Lickcheese! I hardly knew you.
LICKCHEESE I find you a little changed yourself, miss.
BLANCHE [hastily] Oh, I am the same as ever. How are Mrs Lickcheese and the chil —
SARTORIUS [impatiently] We have business to transact, Blanche. You can talk to Mr Lickcheese afterwards. Come on. [Sartorius and Lickcheese go into the study. Blanche, surprised at her father’s abruptness, looks after them for a moment. Then, seeing Lickcheese’s overcoat on her chair, she takes it up, amused, and looks at the fur.]
THE PARLOR MAID Oh, we are fine, aint we, Miss Blanche? I think Mr Lickcheese must have come into a legacy. [Confidentially] I wonder what he can want with the master, Miss Blanche! He brought him this big book. [She shews the bluebook to Blanche.]
BLANCHE [her curiosity roused] Let me see. [She takes the book and looks at it.] Theres something about papa in it. [She sits down and begins to read.]
THE PARLOR MAID [folding the tea-table and putting it out of the way] He looks ever s’much younger, Miss Blanche, dont he? I couldnt help laughing when I saw him with his whiskers shaved off: It do look so silly when youre not accustomed to it. [No answer from Blanche.] You havnt finished your coffee, Miss: I suppose I may take it away? [No answer.] Oh, you are interested in Mr Lickcheese’s book, Miss. [Blanche springs up. The parlor maid looks at her face, and instantly hurries out of the room on tiptoe with her tray.]
BLANCHE So that was why he would not touch the money. [She tries to tear the book across; but that is impossible; so she throws it violently into the fireplace. It falls into the fender.] Oh, if only a girl could have no father, no family, just as I have no mother! Clergyman! Beast! “The worst slum landlord in London.” “Slum landlord.” Oh! [She covers her face with her hands and sinks shuddering into the chair on which the overcoat lies. The study door opens.]
LICKCHEESE [in the study] You just