The Essential Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
disappointed me, sir, very acutely. Good morning. [He follows Trench].
ACT III
The drawingroom in Sartorius’s house in Bedford Square. Winter evening: Fire burning, curtains drawn and lamps lighted. Sartorius and Blanche are sitting glumly near the fire. The parlor maid, who has just brought in coffee, is placing it on a small table between them. There is a large table in the middle of the room. Looking from it towards the two windows, the pianoforte, a grand, is on the right, with a photographic portrait of Blanche on a miniature easel on the top. There are two doors, one on the left, further forward than the fireplace, leading to the study; the other by the corner nearest the right hand window, leading to the lobby. Blanche has her work basket at hand, and is knitting. Sartorius, closer to the fire, has a newspaper. The parlor maid goes out.
SARTORIUS Blanche, my love.
BLANCHE Yes.
SARTORIUS I had a long talk to the doctor to-day about our going abroad.
BLANCHE [impatiently] I am quite well; and I will not go abroad. I loathe the very thought of the Continent. Why will you bother me so about my health?
SARTORIUS It was not about your health, Blanche, but about my own.
BLANCHE [rising] Yours! [She goes anxiously to him.] Oh, papa, theres nothing the matter with you, I hope?
SARTORIUS There will be, there must be, Blanche, long before you begin to consider yourself an old woman.
BLANCHE But theres nothing the matter now?
SARTORIUS Well, my dear, the doctor says I need change, travel, excitement —
BLANCHE Excitement! You need excitement! [She laughs joylessly, and sits down on the rug at his feet] How is it, papa, that you, who are so clever with everybody else, are not a bit clever with me? Do you think I cant see through your little plan to take me abroad? Since I will not be the invalid and allow you to be the nurse, you are to be the invalid and I am to be the nurse.
SARTORIUS Well, Blanche, if you will have it that you are well and have nothing preying on your spirits, I must insist on being ill and have something preying on mine. And indeed, my girl, there is no use in our going on as we have for the last four months. You have not been happy; and I have been far from comfortable. [Blanche’s face clouds : she turns away from him and sits dumb and brooding. He waits in vain for some reply; then adds in a lower tone:] Need you be so inflexible, Blanche?
BLANCHE I thought you admired inflexibility: You have always prided yourself on it.
SARTORIUS Nonsense, my dear, nonsense. I have had to give in often enough. And I could shew you plenty of soft fellows who have done as well as I, and enjoyed themselves more, perhaps. If it is only for the sake of inflexibility that you are standing out.
BLANCHE I am not standing out. I dont know what you mean. [She tries to rise and go away.]
SARTORIUS [Catching her arm and arresting her on her knees.] Come, my child: you must not trifle with me as if I were a stranger. You are fretting because —
BLANCHE [violently twisting herself free and speaking as she rises] If you say it, papa, I will kill myself. It is not true. If he were here on his knees tonight, I would walk out of the house sooner than endure it. [She goes out excitedly. Sartorius, greatly troubled, turns again to the fire with a heavy sigh]
SARTORIUS [gazing gloomily into the glow] Now if I fight it out with her, no more comfort for months! I might as well live with my clerk or my servant. And if I give in now, I shall have to give in always. Well! I cant help it. I have stuck to having my own way all my life; but there must be an end to that drudgery some day. She is young: Let her have her turn at it. [The parlor maid comes in.]
THE PARLOR MAID Please, sir, Mr Lickcheese wants to see you very particlar. On important business your business, he told me to say.
SARTORIUS Mr Lickcheese! Do you mean Lickcheese who used to come here on my business?
THE PARLOR MAID Yes, sir. But indeed, sir, youd scarcely know him.
SARTORIUS [frowning] Hm! Starving, I suppose. Come to beg?
THE PARLOR MAID [intensely repudiating the idea] O-o-o-o-h no, sir. Quite the gentleman, sir! Sealskin overcoat, sir! Come in a hansom, all shaved and clean! I’m sure he’s come into a fortune, sir.
SARTORIUS Hm! Shew him up.
[Lickcheese, who has been waiting at the door, instantly comes in. The change in his appearance is dazzling. He is in evening dress, with an overcoat lined throughout with furs presenting all the hues of the tiger. His shirt is fastened at the breast with a single diamond stud. His silk hat is of the glossiest black; a handsome gold watchchain hangs like a garland on his jilled-out waistcoat; he has shaved his whiskers and grown a moustache, the ends of which are waxed and pointed. As Sartorius stares speechless at him, he stands, smiling, to be admired, intensely enjoying the effect he is producing. The parlor maid, hardly less pleased with her own share in this coup-de-theatre, goes out beaming, full of the news for the kitchen. Lickcheese clinches the situation by a triumphant nod at 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