The Collected Dramas of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
hat up, though he is quite tall enough to reach the peg, and speaking with callous placidity, considering the nature of the announcement). Father’s dead too.
MRS. DUDGEON (stupent). Your father!
CHRISTY (sulkily, coming back to the fire and warming himself again, attending much more to the fire than to his mother). Well, it’s not my fault. When we got to Nevinstown we found him ill in bed. He didn’t know us at first. The minister sat up with him and sent me away. He died in the night.
MRS. DUDGEON (bursting into dry angry tears). Well, I do think this is hard on me — very hard on me. His brother, that was a disgrace to us all his life, gets hanged on the public gallows as a rebel; and your father, instead of staying at home where his duty was, with his own family, goes after him and dies, leaving everything on my shoulders. After sending this girl to me to take care of, too! (She plucks her shawl vexedly over her ears.) It’s sinful, so it is; downright sinful.
CHRISTY (with a slow, bovine cheerfulness, after a pause). I think it’s going to be a fine morning, after all.
MRS. DUDGEON (railing at him). A fine morning! And your father newly dead! Where’s your feelings, child?
CHRISTY (obstinately). Well, I didn’t mean any harm. I suppose a man may make a remark about the weather even if his father’s dead.
MRS. DUDGEON (bitterly). A nice comfort my children are to me! One son a fool, and the other a lost sinner that’s left his home to live with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the scum of the earth!
Someone knocks.
CHRISTY (without moving). That’s the minister.
MRS. DUDGEON (sharply). Well, aren’t you going to let Mr. Anderson in?
Christy goes sheepishly to the door. Mrs. Dudgeon buries her face in her hands, as it is her duty as a widow to be overcome with grief. Christy opens the door, and admits the minister, Anthony Anderson, a shrewd, genial, ready Presbyterian divine of about 50, with something of the authority of his profession in his bearing. But it is an altogether secular authority, sweetened by a conciliatory, sensible manner not at all suggestive of a quite thoroughgoing other-worldliness. He is a strong, healthy man, too, with a thick, sanguine neck; and his keen, cheerful mouth cuts into somewhat fleshy corners. No doubt an excellent parson, but still a man capable of making the most of this world, and perhaps a little apologetically conscious of getting on better with it than a sound Presbyterian ought.
ANDERSON (to Christy, at the door, looking at Mrs. Dudgeon whilst he takes off his cloak). Have you told her?
CHRISTY. She made me. (He shuts the door; yawns; and loafs across to the sofa where he sits down and presently drops off to sleep.)
Anderson looks compassionately at Mrs. Dudgeon. Then he hangs his cloak and hat on the rack. Mrs. Dudgeon dries her eyes and looks up at him.
ANDERSON. Sister: the Lord has laid his hand very heavily upon you.
MRS. DUDGEON (with intensely recalcitrant resignation). It’s His will, I suppose; and I must bow to it. But I do think it hard. What call had Timothy to go to Springtown, and remind everybody that he belonged to a man that was being hanged? — and (spitefully) that deserved it, if ever a man did.
ANDERSON (gently). They were brothers, Mrs. Dudgeon.
MRS. DUDGEON. Timothy never acknowledged him as his brother after we were married: he had too much respect for me to insult me with such a brother. Would such a selfish wretch as Peter have come thirty miles to see Timothy hanged, do you think? Not thirty yards, not he. However, I must bear my cross as best I may: least said is soonest mended.
ANDERSON (very grave, coming down to the fire to stand with his back to it). Your eldest son was present at the execution, Mrs. Dudgeon.
MRS. DUDGEON (disagreeably surprised). Richard?
ANDERSON (nodding). Yes.
MRS. DUDGEON (vindictively). Let it be a warning to him. He may end that way himself, the wicked, dissolute, godless — (she suddenly stops; her voice fails; and she asks, with evident dread) Did Timothy see him?
ANDERSON. Yes.
MRS. DUDGEON (holding her breath). Well?
ANDERSON. He only saw him in the crowd: they did not speak. (Mrs. Dudgeon, greatly relieved, exhales the pent up breath and sits at her ease again.) Your husband was greatly touched and impressed by his brother’s awful death. (Mrs. Dudgeon sneers. Anderson breaks off to demand with some indignation) Well, wasn’t it only natural, Mrs. Dudgeon? He softened towards his prodigal son in that moment. He sent for him to come to see him.
MRS. DUDGEON (her alarm renewed). Sent for Richard!
ANDERSON. Yes; but Richard would not come. He sent his father a message; but I’m sorry to say it was a wicked message — an awful message.
MRS. DUDGEON. What was it?
ANDERSON. That he would stand by his wicked uncle, and stand against his good parents, in this world and the next.
MRS. DUDGEON (implacably). He will be punished for it. He will be punished for it — in both worlds.
ANDERSON. That is not in our hands, Mrs. Dudgeon.
MRS. DUDGEON. Did I say it was, Mr. Anderson. 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,