The Collected Dramas of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
(angrily). She had no right to do it. I will not allow this.
GLORIA. You had no right to give me your sister’s name. I don’t know her.
CRAMPTON. You’re talking nonsense. There are bounds to what I will put up with. I will not have it. Do you hear that?
GLORIA (rising warningly). Are you resolved to quarrel?
CRAMPTON (terrified, pleading). No, no: sit down. Sit down, won’t you? (She looks at him, keeping him in suspense. He forces himself to utter the obnoxious name.) Gloria. (She marks her satisfaction with a slight tightening of the lips, and sits down.) There! You see I only want to shew you that I am your father, my — my dear child. (The endearment is so plaintively inept that she smiles in spite of herself, and resigns herself to indulge him a little.) Listen now. What I want to ask you is this. Don’t you remember me at all? You were only a tiny child when you were taken away from me; but you took plenty of notice of things. Can’t you remember someone whom you loved, or (shyly) at least liked in a childish way? Come! someone who let you stay in his study and look at his toy boats, as you thought them? (He looks anxiously into her face for some response, and continues less hopefully and more urgently) Someone who let you do as you liked there and never said a word to you except to tell you that you must sit still and not speak? Someone who was something that no one else was to you — who was your father.
GLORIA (unmoved). If you describe things to me, no doubt I shall presently imagine that I remember them. But I really remember nothing.
CRAMPTON (wistfully). Has your mother never told you anything about me?
GLORIA. She has never mentioned your name to me. (He groans involuntarily. She looks at him rather contemptuously and continues) Except once; and then she did remind me of something I had forgotten.
CRAMPTON (looking up hopefully). What was that?
GLORIA (mercilessly). The whip you bought to beat me with.
CRAMPTON (gnashing his teeth). Oh! To bring that up against me! To turn from me! When you need never have known. (Under a grinding, agonized breath.) Curse her!
GLORIA (springing up). You wretch! (With intense emphasis.) You wretch!! You dare curse my mother!
CRAMPTON. Stop; or you’ll be sorry afterwards. I’m your father.
GLORIA. How I hate the name! How I love the name of mother! You had better go.
CRAMPTON. I — I’m choking. You want to kill me. Some — I — (His voice stifles: he is almost in a fit.)
GLORIA (going up to the balustrade with cool, quick resourcefulness, and calling over to the beach). Mr. Valentine!
VALENTINE (answering from below). Yes.
GLORIA. Come here a moment, please. Mr. Crampton wants you. (She returns to the table and pours out a glass of water.)
CRAMPTON (recovering his speech). No: let me alone. I don’t want him. I’m all right, I tell you. I need neither his help nor yours. (He rises and pulls himself together.) As you say, I had better go. (He puts on his hat.) Is that your last word?
GLORIA. I hope so. (He looks stubbornly at her for a moment; nods grimly, as if he agreed to that; and goes into the hotel. She looks at him with equal steadiness until he disappears, when she makes a gesture of relief, and turns to speak to Valentine, who comes running up the steps.)
VALENTINE (panting). What’s the matter? (Looking round.) Where’s Crampton?
GLORIA. Gone. (Valentine’s face lights up with sudden joy, dread, and mischief. He has just realized that he is alone with Gloria. She continues indifferently) I thought he was ill; but he recovered himself. He wouldn’t wait for you. I am sorry. (She goes for her book and parasol.)
VALENTINE. So much the better. He gets on my nerves after a while. (Pretending to forget himself.) How could that man have so beautiful a daughter!
GLORIA (taken aback for a moment; then answering him with polite but intentional contempt). That seems to be an attempt at what is called a pretty speech. Let me say at once, Mr. Valentine, that pretty speeches make very sickly conversation. Pray let us be friends, if we are to be friends, in a sensible and wholesome way. I have no intention of getting married; and unless you are content to accept that state of things, we had much better not cultivate each other’s acquaintance.
VALENTINE (cautiously). I see. May I ask just this one question? Is your objection an objection to marriage as an institution, or merely an objection to marrying me personally?
GLORIA. I do not know you well enough, Mr. Valentine, to have any opinion on the subject of your personal merits. (She turns away from him with infinite indifference, and sits down with her book on the garden seat.) I do not think the conditions of marriage at present are such as any selfrespecting woman can accept.
VALENTINE (instantly changing his tone for one of cordial sincerity, as if he frankly accepted her terms and was delighted and reassured by her principles). Oh, then that’s a point of sympathy between us already. I quite agree with you: the conditions are most unfair. (He takes off his hat and throws it gaily on the iron table.) No: what I want is to get rid of all that nonsense. (He sits down beside her, so naturally that she does not think of objecting, and proceeds, with enthusiasm) Don’t you think it a horrible thing that a man and a woman can hardly know one another without being supposed to have designs of that kind? As if there were no other interests — no other subjects of conversation — as if women were capable of nothing better!
GLORIA (interested). Ah, now you are beginning to talk humanly and sensibly, Mr. Valentine.
VALENTINE (with a gleam in his eye at the success of his hunter’s guile). Of course! — two intelligent people like us. Isn’t it pleasant, in this stupid, convention-ridden world, to meet with someone on the same plane — someone with an unprejudiced, enlightened mind?
GLORIA (earnestly). I hope to meet many such people in England.
VALENTINE (dubiously). Hm! There are a good many people here — nearly forty millions. They’re not all consumptive members of the highly educated classes like the people in Madeira.
GLORIA (now full of her subject). Oh, everybody is stupid and prejudiced in Madeira — weak, sentimental creatures! I hate weakness; and I hate sentiment.
VALENTINE. That’s what makes you so inspiring.
GLORIA (with a slight laugh). Am I inspiring?
VALENTINE Yes. Strength’s infectious.
GLORIA. Weakness is, I know.
VALENTINE (with conviction). Y o u’re strong. Do you know that you changed the world for me this morning? I was in the dumps, thinking of my unpaid rent, frightened about the future. When you came in, I was dazzled. (Her brow clouds a little. He goes on quickly.) That was silly, of course; but really and truly something happened to me. Explain it how you will, my blood got — (he hesitates, trying to think of a sufficiently unimpassioned word) — oxygenated: my muscles braced; my mind cleared; my courage rose. That’s odd, isn’t it? considering that I am not at all a sentimental man.
GLORIA (uneasily, rising). Let us go back to the beach.
VALENTINE (darkly — looking up at her). What! you feel it, too?
GLORIA. Feel what?
VALENTINE. Dread.
GLORIA. Dread!
VALENTINE. As if something were going to happen. It came over me suddenly just before you proposed that we should run away to the others.
GLORIA (amazed). That’s strange — very strange! I had the same presentiment.
VALENTINE. How extraordinary! (Rising.) Well: shall we run away?
GLORIA. Run away! Oh, no: that would be childish. (She sits down again. He resumes his seat beside her, and watches her with a gravely sympathetic air. She is thoughtful and a little troubled as she adds) I wonder what is the scientific explanation of those fancies