PICKERING Youve never been broken in properly to the social routine. [Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dipping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people cant do it at all: theyre such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. Theres always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.
HIGGINS Yes: thats what drives me mad: the silly people dont know their own silly business.[219] [Rising] However, it’s over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow.
ELIZA’s beauty becomes murderous.
PICKERING I think I shall turn in too. Still, it’s been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes].
HIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning: I’ll take tea. [He goes out]. ELIZA tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins’s chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings herself furiously on the floor raging.
HIGGINS [in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with my slippers? [He appears at the door] .
LIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day’s luck with them!
HIGGINS [astounded] What on earth — ! [He comes to her]. Whats the matter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything wrong?
LIZA [breathless] Nothing wrong — with you. Ive won your bet for you, havnt I? Thats enough for you. I dont matter, I suppose.
HIGGINS You won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! I won it. What did you throw those slippers at me for?
LIZA Because I wanted to smash your face. I’d like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didnt you leave me where you picked me out of — in the gutter?You thank God it’s all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers frantically].
HIGGINS [looking at her in cool wonder] The creature[220] i s nervous, after all.
LIZA [gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her nails at his face]!!
HIGGINS [catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you shew your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. [He throws her roughly into the easy-chair].
LIZA [crushed by superior strength and weight] Whats to become of me? Whats to become of me?
HIGGINS How the devil do I know whats to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you?
LIZA You dont care. I know you dont care. You wouldnt care if I was dead. I’m nothing to you — not so much as them slippers.
HIGGINS [thundering] Those slippers.
LIZA [with bitter submission] Those slippers. I didnt think it made any difference now.
A pause. ELIZA hopeless and crushed. HIGGINS a little uneasy.
HIGGINS [in his loftiest manner] Why have you begun going on like this? May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?
LIZA No.
HIGGINS Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering ? Mrs. Pearce? Any of the servants?
LIZA No.
HIGGINS I presume you dont pretend that I have treated you badly.
LIZA No.
HIGGINS I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps youre tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne? [He moves towards the door].
LIZA No. [Recollecting her manners] Thank you.
HIGGINS [good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But thats all over now [He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She writhes]. Theres nothing more to worry about.
LIZA No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and gets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and hides her face]. Oh God! I wish I was dead.
HIGGINS [staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven’s name, why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective.
LIZA I dont understand. I’m too ignorant.
HIGGINS It’s only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody’s hurting you. Nothing’s wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you comfortable.
LIZA I heard your prayers. “Thank God it’s all over!”
HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, dont you thank God it’s all over? Now you are free and can do what you like.
LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? Whats to become of me?
HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, thats whats worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldnt bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you wont have much difficulty in settling yourself somewhere or other, though I hadnt quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. .You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and youre not bad-looking; it’s quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes — not now, of course, because youre crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when youre all right and quite yourself, youre what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you wont feel so cheap.
ELIZA again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.
The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.
HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well.
LIZA We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?
LIZA I sold flowers. I didnt sell myself. Now youve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish youd left me where you found me.
HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] [221] Tosh, Eliza. Dont you insult human relations by dragging all this cant[222] about buying and selling into it. You neednt marry the fellow if you dont like him.
LIZA What else am I to do?
HIGGINS Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist’s shop? Pickering could set you up in one: hes lots of money. [Chuckling] He’ll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! youll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I’m devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was.
LIZA Your slippers.
HIGGINS Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].
LIZA Before you go, sir —
HIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him Sir] Eh?
LIZA Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?
HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering ?
LIZA He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experim
ent on.
HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is t h a t the way you feel towards us?
LIZA I dont want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.
HIGGINS But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night?
LIZA I want to know what I may take away with me. I dont want to be accused of stealing.
HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldnt have said that, Eliza. That shews a want of feeling.
LIZA I’m sorry. I’m only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There cant be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn’t?
HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. Theyre hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].[223]
LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I dont want to run the risk of their being missing.
HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I’d ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains].
LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isnt the jeweler’s: it’s the one you bought me in Brighton. I dont want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Dont you hit me.
HIGGINS Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.
LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I’m glad. Ive got a little of my own back, anyhow.
HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever hap pend to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.
LIZA [pertly] Youd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she wont be told by me.
HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely] .
ELIZA smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of HIGGINS’s exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring. {57}
ACT V
Mrs. Higgins’s drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The parlor-maid comes in.
THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with Colonel Pickering.
MRS. HIGGINS Well, shew them up.
THE PARLOR-MAID Theyre using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the police, I think.
MRS. HIGGINS What!
THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry’s in a state, mam. I thought I’d better tell you.
MRS. HIGGINS If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when theyve finished with the police. I suppose hes lost something.
THE PARLOR-MAID Yes, mam [going].
MRS. HIGGINS Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.
THE PARLOR-MAID Yes, mam.
HIGGINS bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.
HIGGINS Look here, mother: heres a confounded thing!
MRS. HIGGINS Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?
HIGGINS Eliza’s bolted.[224]
MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened her.
HIGGINS Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual, to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasnt slept in. She came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool Mrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What am I to do?
MRS. HIGGINS Do without, I’m afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect right to leave if she chooses.
HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I cant find anything. I dont know what appointments Ive got. I‘m — [PICKERING comes in. MRS. HIGGINS puts down her pen and turns away from the writing-table].
PICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry told you? [He sits down on the ottoman].
HIGGINS What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered a reward?
MRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You dont mean to say you have set the police after Eliza?
HIGGINS Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He sits in the Elizabethan chair].
PICKERING The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he suspected us of some improper purpose.
MRS. HIGGINS Well, of course he did. What right have you to go to the police and give the girl’s name as if she were a thief, or a lost umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again, deeply vexed].
HIGGINS But we want to find her.
PICKERING We cant let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins. What were we to do?
MRS. HIGGINS You have no more sense, either of you, than two children. Why —
The parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.
THE PARLOR-MAID Mr. Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very particular. Hes been sent on from Wimpole Street.
HIGGINS Oh, bother! I cant see anyone now. Who is it?
THE PARLOR-MAID A Mr. Doolittle, sir.
PICKERING Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?
THE PARLOR-MAID Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.
HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it’s some relative of hers that shes gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the parlor-maid] Send him up, quick.
THE PARLOR-MAID Yes, sir. [She goes].
HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we shall hear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].
MRS. HIGGINS Do you know any of her people?
PICKERING Only her father: the fellow we told you about.
THE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws ] .
DOOLITTLE enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable frock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A, flower in his buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes complete the effect. He is too concerned with the business he has come on to notice MRS. HIGGINS. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with vehement reproach.
DOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this?You done this.
HIGGINS Done what, man?
DOOLITTLE This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look at this coat.
PICKERING Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me clothes?
MRS. HIGGINS Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Wont you sit down?
DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten his hostess] Asking your pardon, maam. [He approaches her and shakes her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on PICKERING’s right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I cant think of anything else.
HIGGINS What the dickens has happened to you?
DOOLITTLE I shouldnt mind if it had only happened to me: anything might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry Higgins.
HIGGINS Have you found Eliza? Thats th
e point.
DOOLITTLE Have you lost her?
HIGGINS Yes.
DOOLITTLE You have all the luck, you have. I aint found her; but she’ll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.
MRS. HIGGINS But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.
HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over DOOLITTLE] Youre raving. Youre drunk. Youre mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. Ive never seen you since.
DOOLITTLE Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you not write a letter to an old blighter[225] in America that was giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for him?
HIGGINS What! Ezra D. Wannafeller![226] Hes dead. [He sits down again carelessly].
DOOLITTLE Yes: hes dead; and I’m done for. Now did you or did you not write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman.
HIGGINS Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of the kind.
DOOLITTLE Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to shew that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Predigested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year.
HIGGINS The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!
PICKERING A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They wont ask you twice.
DOOLITTLE It aint the lecturing I mind. I’ll lecture them blue in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It’s a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it’s a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I’m not a healthy man and cant live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I’m not let do a hand’s turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me[227] for it. A year ago I hadnt a relative in the world except two or three that wouldnt speak to me. Now Ive fifty, and not a decent week’s wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Dont you be anxious: I bet shes on my doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasnt respectable. And the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I’ll have to learn to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English. Thats where youll come in; and I daresay thats what you done it for.
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays Page 43