MORELL [drolly] Oh, is that all? Won’t my suggestion that you should take a turn in the park meet the difficulty?
MARCHBANKS How?
MORELL [exploding good-humoredly] Why, you duffer—[But this boisterousness jars himself as well as EUGENE. He checks himself and resumes, with affectionate seriousness] No: I won’t put it in that way. My dear lad: in a happy marriage like ours, there is something very sacred in the return of the wife to her home. [MARCHBANKS looks quickly at him, half anticipating his meaning. ] An old friend or a truly noble and sympathetic soul is not in the way on such occasions; but a chance visitor is. [The hunted, horror-stricken expression comes out with sudden vividness in EUGENE‘s face as he understands. MORELL, occupied with his own thought, goes on without noticing it.] Candida thought I would rather not have you here; but she was wrong. I’m very fond of you, my boy, and I should like you to see for yourself what a happy thing it is to be married as I am.
MARCHBANKS Happy!—y o u r marriage! You think that! You believe that!
MORELL [buoyantly] I know it, my lad. La Rochefoucauld said that there are convenient marriages, but no delightful ones. You don’t know the comfort of seeing through and through a thundering liar and rotten cynic like that fellow. Ha, ha! Now off with you to the park, and write your poem. Half past one, sharp, mind: we never wait for anybody.
MARCHBANKS [wildly] No: stop: you shan’t. I’ll force it into the light.
MORELL [puzzled] Eh? Force what?
MARCHBANKS I must speak to you. There is something that must be settled between us.
MORELL [with a whimsical glance at the clock] Now?
MARCHBANKS (passionately] Now. Before you leave this room. [He retreats a few steps, and stands as if to bar MORELL’s way to the door. ]
MORELL [without moving, and gravely, perceiving now that there is something serious the matter] I’m not going to leave it, my dear boy: I thought y o u were. [EUGENE, baffled by his firm tone, turns his back on him, writhing with anger. MORELL goes to him and puts his hand on his shoulder strongly and kindly, disregarding his attempt to shake it off.] Come: sit down quietly; and tell me what it is. And remember: we are friends, and need not fear that either of us will be anything but patient and kind to the other, whatever we may have to say.
MARCHBANKS [twisting himself round on him] Oh, I am not forgetting myself: I am only [covering his face desperately with his hands] full of horror. [Then, dropping his hands, and thrusting his face forward fiercely at MORELL, he goes on threateningty.] You shall see whether this is a time for patience and kindness. [MORELL, firm as a rock, looks indulgently at him.] Don’t look at me in that self-complacent way. You think yourself stronger than I am; but I shall stagger you if you have a heart in your breast.
MORELL [powerfully confident] Stagger me, my boy. Out with it.
MARCHBANKS First—
MORELL First?
MARCHBANKS I love your wife.
[MORELL recoils, and, after staring at him for a moment in utter amazement, bursts into uncontrollable laughter. EUGENE is taken aback, but not disconcerted; and he soon becomes indignant and contemptuous. ]
MORELL [sitting down to have his laugh out] Why, my dear child, of course you do. Everybody loves her: they can’t help it. I like it. But [looking up whimsically at him] I say, Eugene: do you think yours is a case to be talked about? You’re under twenty: she’s over thirty. Doesn’t it look rather too like a case of calf love?
MARCHBANKS [vehementty] You dare say that of her! You think that way of the love she inspires! It is an insult to her!
MORELL [rising quickly, in an altered tone] To her! Eugene: take care. I have been patient. I hope to remain patient. But there are some things I won’t allow. Don’t force me to shew you the indulgence I should shew to a child. Be a man.
MARCHBANKS [with a gesture as if sweeping something behind him] Oh, let us put aside all that cant. It horrifies me when I think of the doses of it she has had to endure in all the weary years during which you have selfishly and blindly sacrificed her to minister to your self-sufficiency—y o u[turning on him] who have not one thought—one sense—in common with her.
MORELL [philosophically] She seems to bear it pretty well. [Looking him straight in the face. Eugene, my boy: you are making a fool of yourself—a very great fool of yourself. There’s a piece of wholesome plain speaking for you.
MARCHBANKS Oh, do you think I don’t know all that? Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? [MORELL’s gaze wavers for the first time. He instinctively averts his face and stands listening, startled and thoughtful.] They are more true: they are the only things that are true. You are very calm and sensible and moderate with me because you can see that I am a fool about your wife; just as no doubt that old man who was here just now is very wise over your socialism, because he sees that y o u are a fool about it. [MORELL’s perplexity deepens markedly. EUGENE follows up his advantage, plying him fiercely with questions. ] Does that prove you wrong? Does your complacent superiority to me prove that I am wrong?
MORELL [turning on EUGENE, who stands his ground] Marchbanks: some devil is putting these words into your mouth. It is easy—terribly easy—to shake a man’s faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man’s spirit is devil’s work. 10 Take care of what you are doing. Take care.
MARCHBANKS [ruthlessly] I know. I’m doing it on purpose. I told you I should stagger you. [They confront one another threateningly for a moment. Then MORELL recovers his dignity.]
MORELL [with noble tenderness] Eugene: listen to me. Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a happy man like me. [EUGENE chafes intolerantly, repudiating the worth of his happiness. MORELL, deeply insulted, controls himself with fine forbearance, and continues steadily, with great artistic beauty of delivery] You will be married; and you will be working with all your might and valor to make every spot on earth as happy as your own home. You will be one of the makers of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; and—who knows?—you may be a pioneer and master builder where I am only a humble journeyman; for don’t think, my boy, that I cannot see in you, young as you are, promise of higher powers than I can ever pretend to. I well know that it is in the poet that the holy spirit of man—the god within him—is most godlike. It should make you tremble to think of that—to think that the heavy burthen and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.
MARCHBANKS [unimpressed and remorseless, his boyish crudity of assertion telling sharply against MORELL’s oratory] It does not make me tremble. It is the want of it in others that makes me tremble.
MORELL [redoubling his force of style under the stimulus of his genuine feeling and EUGENE’s obduracy] Then help to kindle it in them—in m e -not to extinguish it. In the future—when you are as happy as I am—I will be your true brother in the faith. I will help you to believe that God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise. I will help you to believe that every stroke of your work is sowing happiness for the great harvest that all—even the humblest—shall one day reap. And last, but trust me, not least, I will help you to believe that your wife loves you and is happy in her home. We need such help, Marchbanks: we need it greatly and always. There are so many things to make us doubt, if once we let our understanding be troubled. Even at home, we sit as if in camp, encompassed by a hostile army of doubts. Will you play the traitor and let them in on me?
MARCHBANKS [looking round him] Is it like this for her here always ? A woman, with a great soul, craving for reality, truth, freedom, and being fed on metaphors, sermons, stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you think a woman’s soul can live on your talent for preaching?
MORELL [stung] Marchbanks: you make it hard for me to control myself. My talent is like yours insofar as it has any real worth at all. It is the gift of finding words for divine truth.
MARCHBANKS [impetuously] It’s the gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing le
ss. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? I’ve never been in your church; but I’ve been to your political meetings; and I’ve seen you do what’s called rousing the meeting to enthusiasm : that is, you excited them until they behaved exactly as if they were drunk. And their wives looked on and saw clearly enough what fools they were. Oh, it’s an old story: you’ll find it in the Bible. I imagine King David, in his fits of enthusiasm, was very like you. [Stabbing him with the words. “But his wife despised him in her heart.”
MORELL [wrathfully] Leave my house. Do you hear? [He advances on him threateningly.]
MARCHBANKS [shrinking back against the couch] Let me alone. Don’t touch me. [MORELL grasps him powerfully by the lappell of his coat: he cowers down on the sofa and screams passionately.] Stop, Morell, if you strike me, I’ll kill myself: I won’t bear it. [Almost in hysterics.] Let me go. Take your hand away.
MORELL [with slow, emphatic scorn] You little snivelling, cowardly whelp. [Releasing him.] Go, before you frighten yourself into a fit.
MARCHBANKS [on the sofa, gasping, but relieved by the withdrawal of MORELL’s hand] I’m not afraid of you: it’s you who are afraid of me.
MORELL [quietly, as he stands over him] It looks like it, doesn’t it?
MARCHBANKS [with petulant vehemence] Yes, it does. [MORELL turns away contemptuously. EUGENE scrambles to his feet and follows him.] You think because I shrink from being brutally handled—because [with tears in his voice] I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with violence—because I can’t lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab like you—because I can’t fight you for your wife as a navvy would: all that makes you think that I’m afraid of you. But you’re wrong. If I haven’t got what you call British pluck, I haven’t British cowardice either: I’m not afraid of a clergyman’s ideas. I’ll fight your ideas. I’ll rescue her from her slavery to them: I’ll pit my own ideas against them. You are driving me out of the house because you daren’t let her choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her again. [MORELL, angered, turns suddenly on him. He flies to the door in involuntary dread.] Let me alone, I say. I’m going.
MORELL [with cold scorn] Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: don’t be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our threshold again, she will want to have that explained, too. Now I don’t wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a blackguard.
MARCHBANKS [coming back with renewed vehemence] You shall—you must. If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified; and how you called me a snivelling little whelp and put me out of the house. If you don’t tell her, I will: I’ll write it to her.
MORELL [taken aback] Why do you want her to know this?
MARCHBANKS [with lyric rapture] Because she will understand me, and know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from her—if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am—then you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and not to you. Good-bye. [Going.] ]
MORELL [terribly disquieted] ] Stop: I will not tell her.
MARCHBANKS [turning near the door] Either the truth or a lie you must tell her, if I go.
MORELL [temporizing] Marchbanks: it is sometimes justifiable.
MARCHBANKS [cutting him short] I know—to lie. It will be useless. Good-bye, Mr. Clergyman. [As he turns finally to the door, it opens and CANDIDA enters in housekeeping attire.]
CANDIDA Are you going, Eugene? [Looking more observantly at him. Well, dear me, just look at you, going out into the street in that state! You area poet, certainly. Look at him, James! [She takes him by the coat, and brings him forward to show him to MORELL.] Look at his collar! look at his tie! look at his hair! One would think somebody had been throttling you. [The two men guard themselves against betraying their consciousness.] Here! Stand still. [She buttons his collar; ties his neckerchief in a bow; and arranges his hair.] There! Now you look so nice that I think you’d better stay to lunch after all, though I told you you mustn’t. It will be ready in half an hour. [She puts a final touch to the bow. He kisses her hand.] Don’t be silly.
MARCHBANKS I want to stay, of course—unless the reverend gentleman, your husband, has anything to advance to the contrary.
CANDIDA Shall he stay, James, if he promises to be a good boy and to help me to lay the table? [MARCHBANKS turns his head and looks steadfastly at MORELL over his shoulder, challenging his answer.]
MORELL [shortly] Oh, yes, certainly: he had better. [He goes to the table and pretends to busy himself with his papers there.]
MARCHBANKS [offering his arm to CANDIDA] Come and lay the table. [She takes it and they go to the door together. As they go out he adds] I am the happiest of men.
MORELL So was I—an hour ago.
ACTII
The same day. The same room. Late in the afternoon. The spare chair for visitors has been replaced at the table, which is, if possible, more untidy than before. MARCHBANKS, alone and idle, is trying to find out how the typewriter works. Hearing someone at the door, he steals guiltily away to the window and pretends to be absorbed in the view. MISS GARNETT, carrying the notebook in which she takes down MORELL’s letters in shorthand from his dictation, sits down at the typewriter and sets to work transcribing them, much too busy to notice EUGENE. Unfortunately the first key she strikes sticks.
PROSERPINE Bother! You’ve been medling with my typewriter, Mr. Marchbanks; and there’s not the least use in your trying to look as if you hadn’t.
MARCHBANKS [timidly] I’m very sorry, Miss Garnett. I only tried to make it write.
PROSERPINE Well, you’ve made this key stick.
MARCHBANKS [earnestly] I assure you I didn’t touch the keys. I didn‘t, indeed. I only turned a little wheel. [He points irresolutely at the tension wheel.]
PROSERPINE Oh, now I understand. [She sets the machine to rights, talking volubly all the time.] I suppose you thought it was a sort of barrel-organ. Nothing to do but turn the handle, and it would write a beautiful love letter for you straight off, eh?
MARCHBANKS [seriously] I suppose a machine could be made to write love-letters. They’re all the same, aren’t they?
PROSERPINE [somewhat indignantly: any such discussion, except by way of pleasantry, being outside her code of manners] How do I know? Why do you ask me?
MARCHBANKS I beg your pardon. I thought clever people— people who can do business and write letters, and that sort of thing—always had love affairs.
PROSERPINE [rising, outraged] Mr. Marchbanks! [She looks severely at him, and marches with much dignity to the bookcase.]
MARCHBANKS [approaching her humbly] I hope I haven’t offended you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have alluded to your love affairs.
PROSERPINE [plucking a blue book from the shelf and turning sharply on him] I haven’t any love affairs. How dare you say such a thing?
MARCHBANKS [simply] Really! Oh, then you are shy, like me. Isn’t that so?
PROSERPINE Certainly I am not shy. What do you mean?
MARCHBANKS [secretly] You must be: that is the reason there are so few love affairs in the world. We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy. [Very earnestly. Oh, Miss Garnett, what would you not give to be without fear, without shame-
PROSERPINE [scandalized] Well, upon my word!
MARCHBANKS [with petulant impatience] Ah, don’t say those stupid things to me: they don’t deceive me: what use are they? Why are you afraid to be your real self with me? I am just like you.
P ROSERPINE Like me! Pray, are you flattering me or flattering yourself? I don’t feel quite sure which. [She turns to go back to the typewriter. ]
&
nbsp; MARCHBANKS [stopping her mysteriously] Hush! I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things—foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. [Almost whispering.] It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. [At his normal pitch, but with deep melancholy.] All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world’s tragedy. [With a deep sigh he sits in the spare chair and buries his face in his hands.]
PROSERPINE [amazed, but keeping her wits about her—her point of honor in encounters with strange young men] Wicked people get over that shyness occasionally, don’t they?
MARCHBANKS [scrambling up almost fiercely] Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore they have no shame. They have the power to ask for love because they don’t need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. [He collapses into his seat, and adds, mournfully] But we, who have love, and long to mingle it with the love of others: we cannot utter a word. [Timidly.] You find that, don’t you?
PROSERPINE Look here : if you don’t stop talking like this, I’ll leave the room, Mr. Marchbanks: I really will. It’s not proper. [She resumes her seat at the typewriter, opening the blue book and preparing to copy a passage from it.]
MARCHBANKS [hopelessly] Nothing that’s worth saying is proper. [He rises, and wanders about the room in his lost way, saying] I can’t understand you, Miss Garnett. What am I to talk about?
PROSERPINE [snubbing him] Talk about indifferent things. Talk about the weather.
MARCHBANKS Would you stand and talk about indifferent things if a child were by, crying bitterly with hunger.
PROSERPINE I suppose not.
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays Page 18