Man and Superman and Three Other Plays

by George Bernard Shaw

  CROFTS Well, the fact is, it’s not what would be considered exactly a high-class business in my set—the county set, you know—ourset it will be if you think better of my offer. Not that there’s any mystery about it: don’t think that. Of course you know by your mother’s being in it that it’s perfectly straight and honest. I’ve known her for many years; and I can say of her that she’d cut off her hands sooner than touch anything that was not what it ought to be. I’ll tell you all about it if you like. I don’t know whether you’ve found in travelling how hard it is to find a really comfortable private hotel.

  VIVIE [sickened, averting her face] Yes: go on.

  CROFTS Well, that’s all it is. Your mother has a genius for managing such things. We’ve got two in Brussels, one in Berlin, one in Vienna, and two in Buda-Pesth.r Of course there are others besides ourselves in it; but we hold most of the capital; and your mother’s indispensable as managing director. You’ve noticed, I daresay, that she travels a good deal. But you see you can’t mention such things in society. Once let out the word hotel and everybody says you keep a public-house. You wouldn’t like people to say that of your mother, would you? That’s why we’re so reserved about it. By the bye, you’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you? Since it’s been a secret so long, it had better remain so.

  VIVIE And this is the business you invite me to join you in?

  CROFTS Oh, no. My wife shan’t be troubled with business. You’ll not be in it more than you’ve always been.

  VIVIE I always been! What do you mean?

  CROFTS Only that you’ve always lived on it. It paid for your education and the dress you have on your back. Don’t turn up your nose at business, Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?

  VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care. I know what this business is.

  CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?

  VIVIE Your partner—my mother.

  CROFTS [black with rage] The old—[VIVIE looks quickly at him. He swallows the epithet and stands swearing and raging foully to himself. But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic. He takes refuge in generous indignation.] She ought to have had more consideration for you. I’d never have told you.

  VIVIE I think you would probably have told me when we were married: it would have been a convenient weapon to break me in with.

  CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intended that. On my word as a gentleman I didn’t. [VIVIE wonders at him. Her sense of the irony of his protest cools and braces her. She replies with contemptuous self-possession.]

  VIVIE It does not matter. I suppose you understand that when we leave here to-day our acquaintance ceases.

  CROFTS Why? Is it for helping your mother?

  VIVIE My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but to do as she did. You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for the sake of 35 per cent. You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I think. That is my opinion of you.

  CROFTS [after a stare—not at all displeased, and much more at his ease on thesefrank terms than on their former ceremonious ones] Ha, ha, ha, ha! Go it, little missie, go it: it doesn’t hurt me and it amuses you. Why the devil shouldn’t I invest my money that way? I take the interest on my capital like other people: I hope you don’t think I dirty my own hands with the work. Come: you wouldn’t refuse the acquaintance of my mother’s cousin, the Duke of Bel gravia, because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways. You wouldn’t cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among their tenants? Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well, that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on. How d‘ye suppose most of them manage? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on 35 per cent when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible men? No such fool! If you’re going to pick and choose your acquaintances on moral principles, you’d better clear out of this country, unless you want to cut yourself out of all decent society.

  VIVIE [conscience stricken] You might go on to point out that I myself never asked where the money I spent came from. I believe I am just as bad as you.

  CROFTS [greatly reassured] Of course you are; and a very good thing, too! What harm does it do after all? [Rallying her jocularly.] So you don’t think me such a scoundrel now you come to think it over. Eh?

  VIVIE I have shared profits with you; and I admitted you just now to the familiarity of knowing what I think of you.

  CROFTS [with serious friendliness] To be sure you did. You won’t find me a bad sort: I don’t go in for being super-fine intellectually ; but I’ve plenty of honest human feeling; and the old Crofts breed comes out in a sort of instinctive hatred of anything low, in which I’m sure you’ll sympathize with me. Believe me, Miss Vivie, the world isn’t such a bad place as the croakers make out. So long as you don’t fly openly in the face of society, society doesn’t ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. In the society I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mother’s. No man can offer you a safer position.

  VIVIE [studying him curiously] I suppose you really think you’re getting on famously with me.

  CROFTS Well, I hope I may flatter myself that you think better of me than you did at first.

  VIVIE [quietly] I hardly find you worth thinking about at all now. [She rises and turns towards the gate, pausing on her way to contemplate him and say almost gently, but with intense conviction. When I think of the society that tolerates you, and the laws that protect you—when I think of how helpless nine out of ten young girls would be in the hands of you and my mother—the unmentionable woman and her capitalist bully—

  CROFTS [livid] Damn you!

  VIVIE You need not. I feel among the damned already. [She raises the latch of the gate to open it and go out. He follows her and puts his hand heavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.]

  CROFTS [panting with fury] Do you think I’ll put up with this from you, you young devil, you?

  VIVIE [unmoved] Be quiet. Some one will answer the bell. [Without flinching a step she strikes the bell with the back of her hand. It clangs harshly; and he starts back involuntarily. Almost immediately FRANK appears at the porch with his rifle.]

  FRANK [with cheerful politeness] Will you have the rifle, Viv; or shall I operate?

  VIVIE Frank: have you been listening?

  FRANK Only for the bell, I assure you; so that you shouldn’t have to wait. I think I showed great insight into your character, Crofts.

  CROFTS For two pins I’d take that gun from you and break it across your head.

  FRANK [stalking him cautiously] Pray don’t. I’m ever so careless in handling firearms. Sure to be a fatal accident, with a reprimand from the coroner’s jury for my negligence.

  VIVIE Put the rifle away, Frank: it’s quite unnecessary.

  FRANK Quite right, Viv. Much more sportsmanlike to catch him in a trap. [CROFTS, understanding the insult, makes a threatening movement.] Crofts: there are fifteen cartridges in the magazine here; and I am a dead shot at the present distance at an object of your size.

  CROFTS Oh, you needn’t be afraid. I’m not going to touch you.

  FRANK Ever so magnanimous of you under the circumstances! Thank you.

  CROFTS I’ll just tell you this before I go. It may interest you, since you’re so fond of one another. Allow me, Mister Frank, to introduce you to your half-sister, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Samuel Gardner. Miss Vivie: your half-brother. Good morning. [He goes out through the gate and along the road. ]

  FRANK [after a pause of stupefaction, raising the rifle] You’ll testify before the coroner that it’s an accident, Viv. [He takes aim at the retreating figure of
CROFTS. VIVIE seizes the muzzle and pulls it round against her breast. ]

  VIVIE Fire now. You may.

  FRANK [dropping his end of the rifle hastily] Stop! take care. [She lets it go. It falls on the turf.] Oh, you’ve given your little boy such a turn. Suppose it had gone off—ugh! [He sinks on the garden seat, overcome. ]

  VIVIE Suppose it had: do you think it would not have been a relief to have some sharp physical pain tearing through me?

  FRANK [coaxingly] Take it ever so easy, dear Viv. Remember: even if the rifle scared that fellow into telling the truth for the first time in his life, that only makes us the babes in the wood in earnest. [He holds out his arms to her.] Come and be covered up with leaves again.

  VIVIE [with a cry of disgust] Ah, not that, not that. You make all my flesh creep.

  FRANK Why, what’s the matter?

  VIVIE Good-bye. [She makes for the gate.]

  FRANK [jumping up] Hallo! Stop! Viv! Viv! [She turns in the gateway .] Where are you going to? Where shall we find you?

  VIVIE At Honoria Fraser’s chambers, 67 Chancery Lane, for the rest of my life. [She goes off quickly in the opposite direction to that taken by CROFTS.]

  FRANK But I say—wait—dash it! [He runs after her.]

  ACT IV

  Honoria Fraser’s chambers in Chancery Lane. An Office at the top of New Stone Buildings, with a plate-glass window, distempereds walls, electric light, and a patent stove. Saturday afternoon. The chimneys of Lincoln’s Inn and the western sky beyond are seen through the window. There is a double writing table in the middle of the room, with a cigar box, ash pans, and a portable electric reading lamp almost snowed up in heaps of papers and books. This table has knee holes and chairs right and left and is very untidy. The clerk’s desk, closed and tidy, with its high stool, is against the wall, near a door communicating with the inner rooms. In the opposite wall is the door leading to the public corridor. Its upper panel is of opaque glass, lettered in black on the outside, “Fraser and Warren.”A baizet screen hides the corner between this door and the window.

  FRANK, in a fashionable light-colored coaching suit, with his stick, gloves, and white hat in his hands, is pacing up and down the Office. Somebody tries the door with a key.

  FRANK [calling] Come in. It’s not locked. [ VIVIE comes in, in her hat and jacket. She stops and stares at him.]

  VIVIE [sternly] What are you doing here?

  FRANK Waiting to see you. I’ve been here for hours. Is this the way you attend to your business? [He puts his hat and stick on the table, and perches himself with a vault on the clerk’s stool, looking at her with every appearance of being in a specially restless, teasing, flippant mood. ]

  VIVIE I’ve been away exactly twenty minutes for a cup of tea. [She takes off her hat and jacket and hangs them up behind the screen.] How did you get in?

  FRANK The staff had not left when I arrived. He’s gone to play football on Primrose Hill. Why don’t you employ a woman, and give your sex a chance?

  VIVIE What have you come for?

  FRANK [springing off the stool and coming close to her] Viv: let’s go and enjoy the Saturday half-holiday somewhere, like the staff. What do you say to Richmond, and then a music hall, and a jolly supper?

  VIVIE Can’t afford it. I shall put in another six hours’ work before I go to bed.

  FRANK Can’t afford it, can’t we? Aha! Look here. [He takes out a handful of sovereigns and makes them chink. ] Gold, Viv, gold!

  VIVIE Where did you get it?

  FRANK Gambling, Viv, gambling. Poker.

  VIVIE Pah! It’s meaner than stealing it. No: I’m not coming. [She sits down to work at the table, with her back to the glass door, and begins turning over the papers. ]

  FRANK [remonstrating piteously] But, my dear Viv, I want to talk to you ever so seriously.

  VIVIE Very well: sit down in Honoria’s chair and talk here. I like ten minutes’ chat after tea. [He murmurs.] No use groaning: I’m inexorable. [He takes the opposite seat disconsolately.] Pass that cigar box, will you?

  FRANK [pushing the cigar box across] Nasty womanly habit. Nice men don’t do it any longer.

  VIVIE Yes: they object to the smell in the office; and we’ve had to take to cigarets. See! [She opens the box and takes out a cigaret, which she lights. She offers him one; but he shakes his head with a wry face. She settles herself comfortably in her chair, smoking.] Go ahead.

  FRANK Well, I want to know what you’ve done—what arrangements you’ve made.

  VIVIE Everything was settled twenty minutes after I arrived here. Honoria has found the business too much for her this year; and she was on the point of sending for me and proposing a partnership when I walked in and told her I hadn’t a farthing in the world. So I installed myself and packed her off for a fortnight’s holiday. What happened at Haslemere when I left?

  FRANK Nothing at all. I said you’d gone to town on particular business.

  VIVIE Well?

  FRANK Well, either they were too flabbergasted to say anything, or else Crofts had prepared your mother. Anyhow, she didn’t say anything; and Crofts didn’t say anything; and Praddy only stared. After tea they got up and went; and I’ve not seen them since.

  VIVIE [nodding placidly with one eye on a wreath of smoke] That’s all right. FRANK [looking round disparagingly] Do you intend to stick in this confounded place?

  VIVIE [blowing the wreath decisively away and sitting straight up] Yes. These two days have given me back all my strength and self-possession. I will never take a holiday again as long as I live.

  FRANK [with a very wry face] Mps! You look quite happy—and as hard as nails.

  VIVIE [grimly] Well for me that I am!

  FRANK [rising] Look here, Viv: we must have an explanation. We parted the other day under a complete misunderstanding.

  VIVIE [putting away the cigaret] Well: clear it up.

  FRANK You remember what Crofts said?

  VIVIE Yes.

  FRANK That revelation was supposed to bring about a complete change in the nature of our feeling for one another. It placed us on the footing of brother and sister.

  VIVIE Yes.

  FRANK Have you ever had a brother?

  VIVIE No.

  FRANK Then you don’t know what being brother and sister feels like? Now I have lots of sisters: Jessie and Georgina and the rest. The fraternal feeling is quite familiar to me; and I assure you my feeling for you is not the least in the world like it. The girls will go their way; I will go mine; and we shan’t care if we never see one another again. That’s brother and sister. But as to you, I can’t be easy if I have to pass a week without seeing you. That’s not brother and sister. It’s exactly what I felt an hour before Crofts made his revelation. In short, dear Viv, it’s love’s young dream.

  VIVIE [bitingly] The same feeling, Frank, that brought your father to my mother’s feet. Is that it?

  FRANK [revolted] I very strongly object, Viv, to have my feelings compared to any which the Reverend Samuel is capable of harboring ; and I object still more to a comparison of you to your mother. Besides, I don’t believe the story. I have taxed my father with it, and obtained from him what I consider tantamount to a denial.

  VIVIE What did he say?

  FRANK He said he was sure there must be some mistake.

  VIVIE Do you believe him?

  FRANK I am prepared to take his word as against Crofts’.

  VIVIE Does it make any difference? I mean in your imagination or conscience; for of course it makes no real difference.

  FRANK [shaking his head] None whatever to m e.

  VIVIE Nor to me.

  FRANK [staring] But this is ever so surprising! I thought our whole relations were altered in your imagination and conscience, as you put it, the moment those words were out of that brute’s muzzle.

  VIVIE No: it was not that. I didn’t believe him. I only wish I could.

  FRANK Eh?

  VIVIE I think brother and sister would be a very suitable r
elation for us.

  FRANK You really mean that?

  VIVIE Yes. It’s the only relation I care for, even if we could afford any other. I mean that.

  FRANK [raising his eyebrows like one on whom a new light has dawned, and speaking with quite an effusion of chivalrous sentiment] My dear Viv: why didn’t you say so before? I am ever so sorry for persecuting you. I understand, of course.

  VIVIE [puzzled] Understand what?

  FRANK Oh, I’m not a fool in the ordinary sense—only in the Scriptural sense of doing all the things the wise man declared to be folly, after trying them himself on the most extensive scale. I see I am no longer Vivvums’ little boy. Don’t be alarmed: I shall never call you Vivvums again—at least unless you get tired of your new little boy, whoever he may be.

  VIVIE My new little boy!

  FRANK [with conviction] Must be a new little boy. Always happens that way. No other way, in fact.

  VIVIE None that you know of, fortunately for you. [Someone knocks at the door.]

  FRANK My curse upon yon caller, whoe‘er he be!

  VIVIE It’s Praed. He’s going to Italy and wants to say good-bye. I asked him to call this afternoon. Go and let him in.

  FRANK We can continue our conversation after his departure for Italy. I’ll stay him out. [He goes to the door and opens it.] How are you, Praddy? Delighted to see you. Come in. [PRAED, dressed for travelling, comes in, in high spirits, excited by the beginning of his journey. ]

  PRAED How do you do, Miss Warren. [She presses his hand cordially, though a certain sentimentality in his high spirits jars on her. ] I start in an hour from Holborn Viaduct. I wish I could persuade you to try Italy.

  VIVIE What for?

  PRAED Why, to saturate yourself with beauty and romance, of course. [VIVIE, with a shudder, turns her chair to the table, as if the work waiting for her there were a consolation and support to her. PRAED sits opposite to her. FRANK places a chair just behind VIVIE, and drops lazily and carelessly into it, talking at her over his shoulder. ]

  FRANK No use, Praddy. Viv is a little Philistine. She is indifferent to my romance, and insensible to my beauty.