ELLIE He did indeed, and never uttered a reproach to my father. He bought what was left of the business—the buildings and the machinery and things—from the official trustee for enough money to enable my father to pay six and eightpence in the pound and get his discharge.kp Everyone pitied papa so much, and saw so plainly that he was an honorable man, that they let him off at six-and-eight-pence instead of ten shillings. Then Mr Mangan started a company to take up the business, and made my father a manager in it to save us from starvation; for I wasn’t earning anything then.
MRS HUSHABYE Quite a romance. And when did the Boss develop the tender passion?
ELLIE Oh, that was years after, quite lately. He took the chair one night at a sort of people’s concert. I was singing there. As an amateur, you know: half a guinea for expenses and three songs with three encores. He was so pleased with my singing that he asked might he walk home with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I took him home and introduced him to my father, his own manager. It was then that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And—and—we drifted into a sort of understanding—I suppose I should call it an engagement—[she is distressed and cannot go on].
MRS HUSHABYE [rising and marching about] You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it.
ELLIE [hopelessly] No: it’s no use. I am bound in honor and gratitude. I will go through with it.
MRS HUSHABYE [behind the sofa, scolding down at her] You know, of course, that it’s not honorable or grateful to marry a man you don’t love. Do you love this Mangan man?
ELLIE Yes. At least—
MRS HUSHABYE I don’t want to know about “at least”: I want to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all sorts of impossible people, especially old people.
ELLIE I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be—
MRS HUSHABYE [impatiently completing the sentence and prancing away intolerantly to starboard]—grateful to him for his kindness to dear father. I know. Anybody else?
ELLIE What do you mean?
MRS HUSHABYE Anybody else? Are you in love with anybody else?
ELLIE Of course not.
MRS HUSHABYE Humph! [The book on the drawing-table catches her eye. She picks it up, and evidently finds the title very unexpected. She looks at ELLIE, and asks, quaintly] Quite sure you’re not in love with an actor?
ELLIE No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head?
MRS HUSHABYE This is yours, isn’t it? Why else should you be reading Othello?
ELLIE My father taught me to love Shakespeare.
MRS HUSHABYE [flinging the book down on the table] Really! your father does seem to be about the limit.
ELLIE [naïvely] Do you never read Shakespeare, Hesione? That seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello.
MRS HUSHABYE Do you, indeed? He was jealous, wasn’t he?
ELLIE Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is horrible. But don’t you think it must have been a wonderful experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home, to meet a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts of brave things and having terrible adventures, and yet finding something in her that made him love to sit and talk with her and tell her about them?
MRS HUSHABYE That’s your idea of romance, is it?
ELLIE Not romance, exactly. It might really happen.
ELLIE’s eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. MRS HUSHABYE, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.
MRS HUSHABYE Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those stories that Othello told Desdemona couldn’t have happened?
ELLIE Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened.
MRS HUSHABYE Um! Desdemona thought they could have happened. But they didn’t.
ELLIE Why do you look so enigmatic about it?You are such a sphinx: I never know what you mean.
MRS HUSHABYE Desdemona would have found him out if she had lived, you know. I wonder was that why he strangled her!
ELLIE Othello was not telling lies.
MRS HUSHABYE How do you know?
ELLIE Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white, and very handsome, and—
MRS HUSHABYE Ah! Now we’re coming to it. Tell me all about him. I knew there must be somebody, or you’d never have been so miserable about Mangan: you’d have thought it quite a lark to marry him.
ELLIE [blushing vividly] Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don’t want to make a secret of it, though of course I don’t tell everybody. Besides, I don’t know him.
MRS HUSHABYE Don’t know him! What does that mean?
ELLIE Well, of course I know him to speak to.
MRS HUSHABYE But you want to know him ever so much more intimately, eh?
ELLIE No, no: I know him quite—almost intimately.
MRS HUSHABYE You don’t know him; and you know him almost intimately. How lucid!
ELLIE I mean that he does not call on us. I—I got into conversation with him by chance at a concert.
MRS HUSHABYE You seem to have rather a gay time at your concerts, Ellie.
ELLIE Not at all: we talk to everyone in the green-room waiting for our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so splendid. But he was only one of the committee. I happened to tell him that I was copying a picture at the National Gallery. I make a little money that way. I can’t paint much; but as it’s always the same picture I can do it pretty quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It happened that he came to the National Gallery one day.
MRS HUSHABYE On students’ day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and found the floor clear! Quite by accident?
ELLIE [triumphantly] No. On purpose. He liked talking to me. He knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable women who are all in love with him. But he ran away from them to see me at the National Gallery and persuade me to come with him for a drive round Richmond Park in a taxi.
MRS HUSHABYE My pettikins, you have been going it. It’s wonderful what you good girls can do without anyone saying a word.
ELLIE I am not in society, Hesione. If I didn’t make acquaintances in that way I shouldn’t have any at all.
MRS HUSHABYE Well, no harm if you know how to take care of yourself. May I ask his name?
ELLIE [slowly and musically] Marcus Darnley.
MRS HUSHABYE [echoing the music] Marcus Darnley! What a splendid name!
ELLIE Oh, I’m so glad you think so. I think so too; but I was afraid it was only a silly fancy of my own.
MRS HUSHABYE Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys?
ELLIE Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an antique chest—
MRS HUSHABYE A what?
ELLIE An antique chest, one summer morning in a rose garden, after a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.
MRS HUSHABYE What on earth was he doing in the chest? Did he get into it because he was afraid of the lightning?
ELLIE Oh, no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley was embroidered on his baby clothes. And five hundred pounds in gold.
MRS HUSHABYE [looking hard at her] Ellie!
ELLIE The garden of the Viscount—
MRS HUSHABYE—de Rougemont?kq
ELLIE [innocently] No: de Larochejaquelin. A French family. A vicomte. His life has been one long romance. A tiger—
MRS HUSHABYE Slain by his own hand?
ELLIE Oh, no: nothing vulgar like that. He saved the life of the tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward’s hunting parties in India. The King was furious: that was why he never had his military services properly recognized. But he doesn’t care. He is a Socialist and despises rank, and has been in three revolutions fighting on the barricades.
MRS
HUSHABYE How can you sit there telling me such lies? You, Ellie, of all people! And I thought you were a perfectly simple, straightforward, good girl.
ELLIE [rising, dignified but very angry] Do you mean to say you don’t believe me?
MRS HUSHABYE Of course I don’t believe you. You’re inventing every word of it. Do you take me for a fool?
ELLIE stares at her. Her candor is so obvious that MRS HUSHABYE is puzzled.
ELLIE Goodbye, Hesione. I’m very sorry. I see now that it sounds very improbable as I tell it. But I can’t stay if you think that way about me.
MRS HUSHABYE [catching her dress] You shan’t go. I couldn’t be so mistaken: I know too well what liars are like. Somebody has really told you all this.
ELLIE [flushing] Hesione, don’t say that you don’t believe him. I couldn’t bear that.
MRS HUSHABYE [soothing her] Of course I believe him, dearest. But you should have broken it to me by degrees. [Drawing her back to her seat.] Now tell me all about him. Are you in love with him?
ELLIE Oh, no. I’m not so foolish. I don’t fall in love with people. I’m not so silly as you think.
MRS HUSHABYE I see. Only something to think about—to give some interest and pleasure to life.
ELLIE Just so. That’s all, really.
MRS HUSHABYE It makes the hours go fast, doesn’t it? No tedious waiting to go to sleep at nights and wondering whether you will have a bad night. How delightful it makes waking up in the morning! How much better than the happiest dream! All life transfigured! No more wishing one had an interesting book to read, because life is so much happier than any book! No desire but to be alone and not to have to talk to anyone: to be alone and just think about it.
ELLIE [embracing her] Hesione, you are a witch. How do you know? Oh, you are the most sympathetic woman in the world!
MRS HUSHABYE [caressing her] Pettikins, my pettikins, how I envy you! and how I pity you!
ELLIE Pity me! Oh, why?
A very handsome man of fifty, with mousquetaire moustaches, wearing a rather dandified curly brimmed hat, and carrying an elaborate walking-stick, comes into the room from the hall, and stops short at sight of the women on the sofa.
ELLIE [seeing him and rising in glad surprise] Oh! Hesione: this is Mr Marcus Darnley.
MRS HUSHABYE [rising] What a lark! He is my husband.
ELLIE But now—[she stops suddenly: then turns pale and sways].
MRS HUSHABYE [catching her and sitting down with her on the sofa] Steady, my pettikins.
THE MAN [with a mixture of confusion and effrontery, depositing his hat and stick on the teak table] My real name, Miss Dunn, is Hector Hushabye. I leave you to judge whether that is a name any sensitive man would care to confess so. I never use it when I can possibly help it. I have been away for nearly a month; and I had no idea you knew my wife, or that you were coming here. I am none the less delighted to find you in our little house.
ELLIE [in great distress] I don’t know what to do. Please, may I speak to papa? Do leave me. I can’t bear it.
MRS HUSHABYE Be off, Hector.
HECTOR I—
MRS HUSHABYE Quick, quick. Get out.
HECTOR If you think it better—[he goes out, taking his hat with him but leaving the stick on the table].
MRS HUSHABYE [laying ELLIE down at the end of the sofa] Now, pettikins, he is gone. There’s nobody but me. You can let yourself go. Don’t try to control yourself. Have a good cry.
ELLIE [raising her head] Damn!
MRS HUSHABYE Splendid! Oh, what a relief! I thought you were going to be broken-hearted. Never mind me. Damn him again.
ELLIE I am not damning him. I am damning myself for being such a fool. [Rising.] How could I let myself be taken in so? [She begins prowling to and fro, her bloom gone, looking curiously older and harder.]
MRS HUSHABYE [cheerfully] Why not, pettikins? Very few young women can resist Hector. I couldn’t when I was your age. He is really rather splendid, you know.
ELLIE [turning on her] Splendid! Yes, splendid looking, of course. But how can you love a liar?
MRS HUSHABYE I don’t know. But you can, fortunately. Otherwise there wouldn’t be much love in the world.
ELLIE But to lie like that! To be a boaster! a coward!
MRS HUSHABYE [rising in alarm] Pettikins, none of that, if you please. If you hint the slightest doubt of Hector’s courage, he will go straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things to convince himself that he isn’t a coward. He has a dreadful trick of getting out of one third-floor window and coming in at another, just to test his nerve. He has a whole drawerful of Albert Medalskr for saving people’s lives.
ELLIE He never told me that.
MRS HUSHABYE He never boasts of anything he really did: he can’t bear it; and it makes him shy if anyone else does. All his stories are made-up stories.
ELLIE [coming to her] Do you mean that he is really brave, and really has adventures, and yet tells lies about things that he never did and that never happened?
MRS HUSHABYE Yes, pettikins, I do. People don’t have their virtues and vices in sets: they have them anyhow: all mixed.
ELLIE [staring at her thoughtfully] There’s something odd about this house, Hesione, and even about you. I don’t know why I’m talking to you so calmly. I have a horrible fear that my heart is broken, but that heartbreak is not like what I thought it must be.
MRS HUSHABYE [fondling her] It’s only life educating you, pettikins. How do you feel about Boss Mangan now?
ELLIE [disengaging herself with an expression of distaste] Oh, how can you remind me of him, Hesione?
MRS HUSHABYE Sorry, dear. I think I hear Hector coming back. You don’t mind now, do you, dear?
ELLIE Not in the least. I am quite cured.
MAZZINI DUNN and HECTOR come in from the hall.
HECTOR [as he opens the door and allows MAZZINI to pass in] One second more, and she would have been a dead woman!
MAZZINI Dear! dear! what an escape! Ellie, my love, Mr Hushabye has just been telling me the most extraordinary—
ELLIE Yes, I’ve heard it [she crosses to the other side of the room].
HECTOR [following her] Not this one: I’ll tell it to you after dinner. I think you’ll like it. The truth is I made it up for you, and was looking forward to the pleasure of telling it to you. But in a moment of impatience at being turned out of the room, I threw it away on your father.
ELLIE [turning at bay with her back to the carpenter’s bench, scornfully self-possessed] It was not thrown away. He believes it. I should not have believed it.
MAZZINI [benevolently] Ellie is very naughty, Mr Hushabye. Of course she does not really think that. [He goes to the bookshelves, and inspects the titles of the volumes.]
BOSS MANGAN comes in from the hall, followed by the captain. MANGAN, carefully frock-coated as for church or for a directors’ meeting, is about fifty-five, with a care-worn, mistrustful expression, standing a little on an entirely imaginary dignity, with a dull complexion, straight, lustreless hair, and features so entirely commonplace that it is impossible to describe them.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [to MRS HUSHABYE, introducing the newcomer] Says his name is Mangan. Not able-bodied.
MRS HUSHABYE [graciously] How do you do, Mr Mangan?
MANGAN [shaking hands] Very pleased.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Dunn’s lost his muscle, but recovered his nerve. Men seldom do after three attacks of delirium tremens [he goes into the pantry].
MRS HUSHABYE I congratulate you, Mr Dunn.
MAZZINI [dazed] I am a lifelong teetotaler.
MRS HUSHABYE You will find it far less trouble to let papa have his own way than try to explain.
MAZZINI But three attacks of delirium tremens, really!
MRS HUSHABYE [to MANGAN] Do you know my husband, Mr Mangan [she indicates HECTOR].
MANGAN [going to HECTOR, who meets him with outstretched hand] Very pleased. [Turning to ELLIE.] I hope, Miss Ellie, you have not found the journe
y down too fatiguing. [They shake hands.]
MRS HUSHABYE Hector, show Mr Dunn his room.
HECTOR Certainly. Come along, Mr Dunn. [He takes MAZZINI out.]
ELLIE You haven’t shown me my room yet, Hesione.
MRS HUSHABYE How stupid of me! Come along. Make yourself quite at home, Mr Mangan. Papa will entertain you. [She calls to the captain in the pantry.] Papa, come and explain the house to Mr Mangan.
She goes out with ELLIE. The captain comes from the pantry.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER You’re going to marry Dunn’s daughter. Don’t. You’re too old.
MANGAN [staggered] Well! That’s fairly blunt, Captain.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER It’s true.
MANGAN She doesn’t think so.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER She does.
MANGAN Older men than I have—
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [finishing the sentence for him]—made fools of themselves. That, also, is true.
MANGAN [asserting himself] I don’t see that this is any business of yours.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER It is everybody’s business. The stars in their courses are shaken when such things happen.
MANGAN I’m going to marry her all the same.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER How do you know?
MANGAN [playing the strong man] I intend to. I mean to. See? I never made up my mind to do a thing yet that I didn’t bring it off. That’s the sort of man I am; and there will be a better understanding between us when you make up your mind to that, Captain.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER You frequent picture palaces.
MANGAN Perhaps I do. Who told you?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Talk like a man, not like a movy.You mean that you make a hundred thousand a year.
MANGAN I don’t boast. But when I meet a man that makes a hundred thousand a year, I take off my hat to that man, and stretch out my hand to him and call him brother.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Then you also make a hundred thousand a year, hey?
MANGAN No. I can’t say that. Fifty thousand, perhaps.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER His half brother only [he turns away from MANGAN with his usual abruptness, and collects the empty tea-cups on the Chinese tray].
MANGAN [irritated] See here, Captain Shotover. I don’t quite understand my position here. I came here on your daughter’s invitation. Am I in her house or in yours?
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 53