V
 
 •r /N 
 
 ^ /^.
 
 PLAYS: PLEASANT 
 AND UNPLEASANT
 
 PLAYS: PLEASANT AND UN- 
 PLEASANT • BY BERNARD 
 SHAW • THE SECOND VOL- 
 UME, CONTAINING THE 
 FOUR PLEASANT PLAYS 
 
 BRENTANO'S • NEW YORK 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright. 1898, h/ George Bernard Shaw 
 Copyright, 1898, hy Herbert 8. Stone ^ Co. 
 
 Copyright^ 1905, hy Brentano's
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ifHeater Arts 
 
 Libra r>' 
 
 PR. 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 XXI 
 
 Preface . . . , . . 
 
 Introduction . < ... 
 
 Arms and the Man ..<.., 3 
 
 Candida ........ 83 
 
 The ]VLa.n of Destiny . c , . c 163 
 
 You Never Can Tell ..... 219
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Readers of the discourse with which the preceding 
 yolume is prefaced will remember that I turned my hand 
 to playwriting when a great deal of talk about " the 
 New Drama/' and the actual establishment of a " New 
 Theatre " (the Independent), threatened to end in the 
 humiliating discovery that " the New Drama/' in Eng- 
 land at least, was a figment of the revolutionary imagina- 
 tion. This was not to be endured. I had rashly taken 
 up the case; and rather than let it collapse, I manu- 
 factured the evidence. 
 
 Man is a creature of habit. You cannot write three 
 plays and then stop. Besides, the " New " movement did 
 not stop. In 1894, some public spirited person, then as 
 now unknown to me, declared that the London theatres 
 were intolerable, and financed a season of plays of the 
 " new " order at the Avenue Theatre. There were, as 
 available new dramatists, myself, discovered by the In- 
 dependent Theatre (at my own suggestion) ; and Mr. 
 John Todhunter, who had indeed been discovered before, 
 but whose Black Cat had been one of the Independent's 
 successes. Mr. Todhunter supplied A Comedy of Sighs. 
 I, having nothing but " unpleasant " plays in my desk, 
 hastily completed a first attempt at a pleasant one, and 
 called it Arms and the Man. It passed for a success: 
 that is, the first night was as brilliant as could be de- 
 sired; and it ran from the 21st April to the 7th July. 
 To witness it the public paid precisely ^1777:5:6, an 
 average of £23:2:5 per representation (including nine 
 matinees), the average cost of each representation being
 
 vi Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 about <£80. A publisher receiving ,£1700 for a book 
 would have made a satisfactory profit on it: the loss 
 to the Avenue management veas not far from <£5000. 
 This, however, need not altogether discourage specula- 
 tors in the " new " drama. If the people who were 
 willing to pay j£l700 to see the play had all come within 
 a fortnight instead of straggling in during twelve weeks 
 — and such people can easily be trained to understand 
 this necessity — the result would have been financially 
 satisfactory to the management and at least flattering to 
 the author. In America, where the play, after a fort- 
 night in New York, took its place simply as an item 
 in the repertory of Mr. Richard Mansfield, it has kept 
 alive to this day. What the feelings of the unknown 
 benefactor of the drama were on realizing that the net 
 cost of running an " artistically successful " theatre on 
 the ordinary London system was from <£400 to £500 a 
 week, I do not know. As for me, I opened a very modest 
 banking account, and became comparatively Conserva- 
 tive in my political opinions. 
 
 In the autumn of 1894 I spent a few weeks in Flor- 
 ence, where I occupied myself with the religious art of 
 the Middle Ages and its destruction by the Renasence. 
 From a former visit to Italy on the same business I had 
 hurried back to Birmingham to discharge my duties as 
 musical critic at the Festival there. On that occasion 
 there was a very remarkable collection of the works of 
 our " pre-Raphaelite " painters at the public gallery. I 
 looked at these, and then went into the Birmingham 
 churclies to see the windows of AVilliam Morris and 
 Burne-Jones. On the whole, Birmingham was more 
 hopeful than the Italian cities ; for the art it had to shew 
 me was the work of living men, whereas modern Italy 
 had, as far as I could see, no more connection with Giotto 
 than Port Said has with Ptolemy. Now I am no believer 
 in the worth of any " taste " for art that cannot pro- 
 duce what it professes to love. When my subsequent
 
 Preface vii 
 
 visit to Italy found me practising the dramatist's craft, 
 the time was ripe for the birth of a pre-Raphaelite play ; 
 for religion was alive again, coming back upon men — 
 even clergymen — with such power that not the Church 
 of England itself could keep it out. Here my activity 
 as a Socialist had placed me on sure and familiar ground. 
 To me the members of the Guild of St. Matthew were 
 no more " High Church clergymen," Dr. Clifford no 
 more " an eminent Nonconformist divine," than I was to 
 them " an infidel." There is only one religion, though 
 there are a hundred versions of it. We all had the same 
 thing to say; and though some of us cleared our throats 
 to say it by singing Secularist poems or republican 
 hymns, we sang them to the music of " Onward, Chris- 
 tian Soldiers " or Haydn's " God Preserve the Emperor." 
 But unity, however desirable in political agitations, is 
 fatal to drama, since every drama must be the artistic 
 presentation of a conflict. The end may be reconcilia- 
 tion or destruction, or, as in life itself, there may be no 
 end; but the conflict is indispensable: no conflict, no 
 drama. Now it is easy enough to dramatize the prosaic 
 conflict of Christian Socialism with vulgar Unsocialism: 
 for instance, in Widower's Houses the clergyman, who 
 never appears on the stage at all, is the only real op- 
 ponent of the slum landlord. But the obvious conflicts 
 of unmistakeable good with unmistakeable evil can only 
 supply the crude drama of villain and hero, in which 
 some absolute point of view is taken, and the dissentients 
 are treated by the dramatist as enemies to be deliber- 
 ately and piously vilified. In such cheap wares I do 
 not deal. Even in the propagandist dramas of the previ- 
 ous volume I have allowed every person his or her own 
 point of view, and have, I hope, to the full extent of my 
 understanding of him, been as sympathetic with Sir 
 George Crofts as with any of the more genial and popular 
 characters in the present volume. To distil the quin- 
 tessential drama from pre-Raphaelitism, medieval or
 
 viii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 modern, it must be shewn in conflict with the first 
 broken, nervous, stumbling attempts to formulate its own 
 revolt against itself as it develops into something higher. 
 A coherent explanation of any such revolt, addressed in- 
 telligibly and prosaically to the intellect, can only come 
 when the work is done, and indeed done with: that is to 
 say, when the development, accomplished, admitted, and 
 assimilated, is only a story of yesterday. But long 
 before any such understanding is reached, the eyes of 
 men begin to turn towards the distant light of the new 
 age. Discernible at first only by the eyes of the man 
 of genius, it must be concentrated by him on the 
 speculum of a work of art, and flashed back from 
 that into the eyes of the common man. Nay, the artist 
 himself has no other way of making himself conscious 
 of the ray: it is by a blind instinct that he keeps on 
 building up his masterpieces until their pinnacles catch 
 the glint of the unrisen sun. Ask him to explain him- 
 self prosaically, and you find that he " writes like an 
 angel and talks like poor Poll," and is himself the 
 first to make that epigram at his own expense. Mr. 
 Ruskin has told us clearly enough what is in the pic- 
 tures of Carpaccio and Bellini: let him explain, if 
 he can, where we shall be when the sun that is caught 
 by the summits of the work of his favorite Tintoretto, 
 of his aversion Rembrandt, of Mozart, of Beethoven 
 and Wagner, of Blake and of Shelley, shall have 
 reached the valleys. Let Ibsen explain, if he can, why 
 the building of churches and happy homes is not the 
 ultimate destiny of Man, and why, at the bidding of the 
 younger generations, he must mount beyond it to heights 
 that now seem unspeakably giddy and dreadful to him, 
 and from which the first climbers must fall and dash 
 themselves to pieces. He cannot explain it: he can 
 only shew it to you as a vision in the magic glass of 
 his art work; so that you may catch his presentiment 
 and make what you can of it. And this is the function
 
 Preface ix 
 
 that raises dramatic art above imposture and pleasure 
 hunting, and enables the dramatist to be something more 
 than a skilled liar and pandar. 
 
 Here, then, was the higher, but vaguer, timider vision, 
 and the incoherent, mischievous, and even ridiculous, un- 
 practicalness, which offered me a dramatic antagonist 
 for the clear, bold, sure, sensible, benevolent, salutarily 
 shortsighted Christian Socialist idealism. I availed my- 
 self of it in my drama Candida, the " drunken scene " 
 in which has been much appreciated, I am told, in 
 Aberdeen. I purposely contrived the play in such a 
 way as to make the expenses of representation insig- 
 nificant; so that, without pretending that I could appeal 
 to a very wide circle of playgoers, I could reasonably 
 sound a few of our more enlightened managers as to an 
 experiment with half a dozen afternoon performances. 
 They admired the play so generously that I tliink that 
 if any of them had been young enough to play the 
 poet, my proposal might have been acceded to, in spite 
 of many incidental difficulties. Nay, if only I had made 
 the poet a cripple, or at least blind, so as to combine 
 an easier disguise with a larger claim for sympathy, 
 something might have been done. Mr. Richard Mans- 
 field, who had won distinction for my Arms and the 
 Man in America by his impersonation of Captain 
 Bluntschli, went so far as to put the play actually into 
 rehearsal before he would confess himself beaten by the 
 physical difficulties of the part. But they did beat him; 
 and Candida did not see the footlights until last year, 
 when my old ally the Independent Theatre, making a 
 propagandist tour through the provinces with A Doll's 
 House, added Candida to its repertory, to the great 
 astonishment of its audiences. 
 
 In an idle moment in 1895 I began the little scene 
 called The Man of Destiny, Avhich is hardly more than 
 a bravura piece to display the virtuosity of the two 
 principal performers. Its stage rights were secured by
 
 X Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 a hasty performance at Croydon last year, when, affront- 
 ing the stupefied inhabitants of that suburb in the guise 
 of a blood-and-thunder historical drama, in which Na- 
 poleon's suggestion that the innkeeper should kill some- 
 body to provide him with red ink was received as a 
 serious trait of the Corsican ogre, it drove my critical 
 colleagues to the verge of downright mendacity — in fact, 
 one or two went over it — to conceal the worst from the 
 public, and spare the author's feelings. 
 
 In the meantime I had devoted the spare moments 
 of 1896 to the composition of two more plays, only 
 the first of which appears in this volume. You Never 
 Can Tell was an attempt to comply with many requests 
 for a play in which the much paragraphed " brilliancy " 
 of Arms and the Man should be tempered by some con- 
 sideration for the requirements of managers in search 
 of fashionable comedies for West End theatres. I had 
 no difficulty in complying, as I have always cast my 
 plays in the ordinary practical comedy form in use at 
 all the theatres ; and far from taking an unsympathetic 
 view of the popular demand for fun, for fashionable 
 dresses, for a pretty scene or two, a little music, and 
 even for a great ordering of drinks by people with an 
 expensive air from an if-possible-comic waiter, I was 
 more than willing to shew that the drama can humanize 
 these things as easily as they, in undramatic hands, can 
 dehumanize the drama. But it is one thing to give 
 the theatre what its wants, and quite another for the 
 theatre to do what it wants. The demands of the fash- 
 ionable theatre are founded on an idealization of its 
 own resources ; and the test of rehearsal proved that in 
 making my play acceptable I had made it, for the mo- 
 ment at least, impracticable. And so I reached the 
 point at which, as narrated in the preface to the first 
 volume, I resolved to avail myself of my literary ex- 
 pertness to put my plays before the public in my own 
 way.
 
 Preface xi 
 
 It will be noticed that I have not been driven to this 
 expedient by any hostility on the part of our managers. 
 I will not pretend that the modern actor-manager's rare 
 combination of talent as an actor with capacity as a 
 man of business can in the nature of things be often 
 associated with exceptional critical insight. As a rule, 
 by the time a manager has experience enough given him 
 to be as safe a judge of plays as a Bond Street dealer 
 is of pictures, he begins to be thrown out in his cal- 
 culations by the slow but constant change of public taste, 
 and by his own growing Conservatism. But his need 
 for new plays is so great, and the handful of accredited 
 authors so little able to keep pace with their commis- 
 sions, that he is always apt to overrate rather than to 
 underrate his discoveries in the way of new pieces by 
 new authors. An original work by a man of genius like 
 Ibsen may, of course, baflSe him as it baffles many pro- 
 fessed critics; but in the beaten path of drama no un- 
 acted works of merit, suitable to his purposes, have been 
 discovered; whereas the production, at great expense, of 
 very faulty plays written by novices (not " backers ") 
 is by no means an unknown event. Indeed, to anyone 
 who can estimate, even vaguely, the complicated trouble, 
 the risk of heavy loss, and the initial expense and 
 thought involved by the production of a play, the ease 
 with which dramatic authors, known and unknown, get 
 their works performed must needs seem a wonder. 
 
 Only, authors must not expect managers to invest 
 many thousands of pounds in plays, however fine (or the 
 reverse), which will clearly not attract perfectly com- 
 monplace people. Playwriting and theatrical manage- 
 ment, on the present commercial basis, are businesses like 
 other businesses, depending on the patronage of great 
 numbers of very ordinary customers. If the managers 
 and authors study the wants of those customers they 
 will succeed: if not, they will fail. A public-spirited 
 manager, or author with a keen artistic conscience, may
 
 xii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 choose to pursue his business with the minimum of profit 
 and the maximum of social usefulness by keeping as 
 close as he can to the highest marketable limit of quality, 
 and constantly feeling for an extension of that limit 
 through the advance of popular culture. An unscrupu- 
 lous manager or author may aim simply at the maximum 
 of profit with the minimum of risk. These are the ex- 
 treme limits of our system, represented in practice by 
 our first rate managements on the one hand, and the 
 syndicates which exploit pornographic musical farces at 
 the other. Between them there is plenty of room for 
 most talents to breathe freely: at all events there is a 
 career, no harder of access than any cognate career, for 
 all qualified playwrights who bring the manager what 
 his customers want and understand, or even enough of 
 it to induce them to swallow at the same time a great 
 deal of what they neither want nor understand (the 
 public is touchingly humble in such matters). 
 
 For all that, the commercial limits are too narrow for 
 our social welfare. The theatre is growing in importance 
 as a social organ. Bad theatres are as mischievous as 
 bad schools or bad churches ; for modern civilization is 
 rapidly multiplying the numbers to whom the theatre is 
 both school and church. Public and private life become 
 daily more theatrical: the modern Emperor is " the lead- 
 ing man" on the stage of his country; all great news- 
 papers are now edited dramatically; the records of our 
 law courts show that the spread of dramatic conscious- 
 ness is affecting personal conduct to an unprecedented 
 extent, and affecting it by no means for the worse, 
 except in so far as the dramatic education of the persons 
 concerned has been romantic : that is, spurious, cheap and 
 vulgar. In the face of such conditions there can be 
 no question that the commercial limits should be over- 
 stepped, and that the highest prestige, with a personal 
 position of reasonable security and comfort, should be 
 attainable in theatrical management by keeping the pub-
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 lie in constant touch with the highest achievements of 
 dramatic art. Our managers will not dissent to this: 
 the best of them are so willing to get as near that 
 position as they can without ruining themselves, that 
 they can all point to honorable losses incurred through 
 aiming " over the heads of the public," and are quite 
 willing to face such a loss again as soon as a few 
 popular successes enable them to afford it, for the sake 
 of their reputation as artists. But even if it were pos- 
 sible for them to educate the nation at their own private 
 cost, why should they be expected to do it? There 
 are much stronger objections to the pauperization of the 
 public by private doles than were ever entertained, even 
 by the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834, to the pauper- 
 ization of private individuals by public doles. If we 
 want a theatre which shall be to the drama what the 
 National Gallery and British Museum are to painting 
 and literature, we can get it by endowing it in the same 
 way. The practical question then is, where is the State 
 to find such a nucleus for a national theatre as was 
 presented in the case of the National Gallery by the 
 Angerstein collection, and in that of the British Mu- 
 seum by the Cotton and Sloane collections? No doubt 
 this is the moment for my old ally the Independent 
 Theatre, and its rival the New Century Theatre, to 
 invite attention by a modest cough. But though I ap- 
 preciate the value of both, I perceive that they will be 
 as incapable of attracting a State endowment as they 
 already are of even uniting the supporters of " the New 
 Drama." The proper course is to form an influential 
 committee, without any actors, critics, or dramatists on 
 it, and with as many persons of title as possible, for 
 the purpose of approaching one of our leading man- 
 agers with a proposal that he shall, under a guarantee 
 against loss, undertake a certain number of afternoon 
 performances of the class required by the committee, in 
 addition to his ordinary business. If the committee is
 
 xiv Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 influential enough, the offer will be accepted. In that 
 case, the first performance will be the beginning of a 
 classic repertory for the manager and his company 
 which every subsequent performance will extend. The 
 formation of the repertory will go hand in hand with 
 the discovery and habituation of a regular audience 
 for it, like that of the Saturday Popular Concerts; and 
 it will eventually become profitable for the manager to 
 multiply the number of performances at his own risk. 
 Finally it might become worth his while to take a second 
 theatre and establish the repertory permanently in it. 
 In the event of any of his classic productions proving 
 a fashionable success, he could transfer it to his fash- 
 ionable house and make the most of it there. Such 
 managership would carry a knighthood with it; and such 
 a theatre would be the needed nucleus for municipal or 
 national endowment. I make the suggestion quite dis- 
 interestedly; for as I am not an academic person, I 
 should not be welcomed as an unacted classic by such 
 a committee; and cases like mine would still leave fore- 
 lorn hopes like the Independent and New Century The- 
 atres their reason for existing. The committee plan, I 
 may remind its critics, has been in operation in Lon- 
 don for two hundred years in support of Italian opera. 
 Returning now to the actual state of things, it will 
 be seen that I have no grievance against our theatres. 
 Knowing quite well what I was doing, I have heaped 
 difficulties in the way of the performance of my plays 
 by ignoring the majority of the manager's customers — 
 nay, by positively making war on them. To the actor 
 I have been much more considerate, using all my cun- 
 ning to enable him to make the most of his methods; 
 but though I have facilitated his business, I have occa- 
 sionally taxed his intelligence very severely, making the 
 stage effect depend not only on nuances of execution 
 quite beyond the average skill produced by the routine 
 of the English stage, in its present condition, but upon
 
 Preface xv 
 
 a perfectly simple and straightforward conception of 
 states of mind which still seem cynically perverse to 
 most people, or on a goodhumoredly contemptuous or 
 profoundly pitiful attitude towards ethical conceptions 
 which seem to them validly heroic or venerable. It is 
 inevitable that actors should suffer more than any other 
 class from the sophistication of their consciousness by 
 romance; and my conception of romance as the great 
 heresy to be rooted out from art and life — as the root 
 of modern pessimism and the bane of modern self- 
 respect, is far more puzzling to the performers than it 
 is to the pit. The misunderstanding is complicated by 
 the fact that actors, in their demonstrations of emo- 
 tion, have made a second nature of stage custom, which 
 is often very much out of date as a representation of 
 contemporary life. Sometimes the stage custom is not 
 only obsolete, but fundamentally wrong: for instance, 
 in the simple case of laughter and tears, in which it 
 deals too liberally, it is certainly not based on the fact, 
 easily enough discoverable in real life, *;hat tears in 
 adult life are the natural expression of happiness, as 
 laughter is at all ages the natural recognition of de- 
 struction, confusion, and ruin. When a comedy of mine 
 is performed, it is nothing to me that the spectators 
 laugh — any fool can make an audience laugh. I want 
 to see how many of them, laughing or grave, have tears 
 in their eyes. And this result cannot be achieved, even 
 by actors who thoroughly understand my purpose, except 
 through an artistic beauty of execution unattainable with- 
 out long and arduous practice, and an effort which my 
 plays probably do not seem serious enough to call forth. 
 Beyond the difficulties thus raised by the nature and 
 quality of my plays, I have none to complain of. I have 
 come upon no ill will, no inaccessibility, on the part of 
 the very few managers with whom I have discussed them. 
 As a rule, I find that the actor-manager is over-sanguine, 
 because he has the artist's habit of underrating the force
 
 xvi Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 of circumstances and exaggerating the power of the 
 talented individual to prevail against them ; whilst I 
 have acquired the politician's habit of regarding the in- 
 dividual^ however talented, as having no choice but to 
 make the most of his circumstances. I half suspect that 
 those managers who have had most to do with me, if 
 asked to name the main obstacle to the performance of 
 my plays, would unhesitatingly and unanimously reply 
 " The author." And I confess that though as a matter 
 of business I wish my plays to be performed, as a 
 matter of instinct I fight against the inevitable misrepre- 
 sentation of them with all the subtlety needed to conceal 
 my ill will from myself as well as from the manager. 
 The real difficulty, of course, is the incapacity for 
 serious drama of thousands of playgoers of all classes 
 whose shillings and half guineas will buy as much in 
 the market as if they delighted in the highest art. But 
 with them I must frankly take the superior position. I 
 know that many managers are wholly dependent on them, 
 and that no manager is wholly independent of them ; but 
 I can no more write what they want than Joachim can 
 put aside his fiddle and oblige a happy company of 
 beanf casters with a marching tune on the German con- 
 certina. They must keep away from my plays: that 
 is all. There is no reason, however, why I should take 
 this haughty attitude towards those representative critics 
 whose complaint is that my plays, though not unenter- 
 taining, lack the elevation of sentiment and seriousness 
 of purpose of Shakespear and Ibsen. They can find, 
 under the surface brilliancy for which they give me 
 credit, no coherent thought or sympath)'^, and accuse me, 
 in various terms and degrees, of an inhuman and freakish 
 wantonness ; of preoccupation with " the seamy side of 
 life; " of paradox, cynicism, and eccentricity, reducible, 
 as some contend, to a trite formula of treating bad 
 as good, and good as bad, important as trivial, and 
 trivial as important, serious as laughable, and laughable
 
 Preface xvii 
 
 as serious, and so forth. As to this formula I can only 
 say that if any gentleman is simple enough to think 
 that even a good comic opera can be produced by it, 
 I invite him to try his hand, and see whether anything 
 remotely resembling one of my plays will result. 
 
 I could explain the matter easily enough if I chose ; but 
 the result would be that the people who misunderstand 
 the plays would misunderstand the explanation ten times 
 more. The particular exceptions taken are seldom more 
 than symptoms of the underlying fundamental disagree- 
 ment between the romantic morality of the critics and the 
 realistic morality of the plays. For example, I am quite 
 aware that the much criticized Swiss officer in Arms 
 and the Man is not a conventional stage soldier. He 
 suffers from want of food and sleep; his nerves go 
 to pieces after three days under fire, ending in the 
 horrors of a rout and pursuit; he has found by experi- 
 ence that it is more important to have a few bits of 
 chocolate to eat in the field than cartridges for his 
 revolver. When many of my critics rejected these cir- 
 cumstances as fantastically improbable and cynically 
 unnatural, it was not necessary to argue them into com- 
 mon sense: all I had to do was to brain them, so to 
 speak, with the first half dozen military authorities at 
 hand, beginning with the present Commander in Chief. 
 But when it proved that such unromantic (but all the 
 more dramatic) facts implied to them a denial of the 
 existence of courage, patriotism, faith, hope, and charity, 
 I saw that it was not really mere matter of fact that 
 was at issue between us. One strongly Liberal critic, 
 who had received my first play with the most generous 
 encouragement, declared, when Arms and the Man was 
 produced, that I had struck a wanton blow at the cause 
 of liberty in the Balkan Peninsula by mentioning that 
 it was not a matter of course for a Bulgarian in 1885 
 to wash his hands every day. My Liberal critic no 
 doubt saw soon afterwards the squabble, reported all
 
 xviii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 through Europe, between StambouilofF and an eminent 
 lady of the Bulgarian court who took exception to his 
 neglect of his fingernails. After that came the news of 
 his ferocious assassination, and a description of the room 
 prepared for the reception of visitors by his widow, who 
 draped it with black, and decorated it with photographs 
 of the mutilated body of her husband. Here was a suffi- 
 ciently sensational confirmation of the accuracy of my 
 sketch of the theatrical nature of the first apings of 
 western civilization by spirited races just emerging from 
 slavery. But it had no bearing on the real issue between 
 my critic and myself, which was, whether the political 
 and religious idealism which had inspired the rescue of 
 these Balkan principalities from the despotism of the 
 Turk, and converted miserably enslaved provinces into 
 hopeful and gallant little states, will survive the general 
 onslaught on idealism which is implicit, and indeed ex- 
 plicit, in Arms and the Man and the realistic plays of 
 the modern school, lor my part I hope not; for ideal- 
 ism, which is only a flattering name for romance in 
 politics and morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in 
 ethics or religion. In spite of a Liberal Revolution or 
 two, I can no longer be satisfied with fictitious morals 
 and fictitious good conduct, shedding fictitious glory on 
 overcrowding, disease, crime, drink, war, cruelty, infant 
 mortality, and all the other commonplaces of civilization 
 which drive men to the theatre to make foolish pretences 
 that these things are progress, science, morals, religion, 
 patriotism, imperial supremacy, national greatness and 
 all the other names the newspapers call them. On the 
 other hand, I see plenty of good in the world working 
 itself out as fast as the idealist will allow it; and if 
 they would only let it alone and learn to respect reality, 
 which would include the beneficial exercise of respecting 
 themselves, and incidentally respecting me, we should 
 all get along much better and faster. At all events, I 
 do not see moral chaos and anarchy as the alternative
 
 Preface xix 
 
 to romantic convention; and I am not going to pre- 
 tend that I do to please the less clear-sighted people 
 who are convinced that the world is only held together 
 by the force of unanimous, strenuous, eloquent, trumpet- 
 tongued lying. To me the tragedy and comedy of life 
 lie in the consequences, sometimes terrible, sometimes lu- 
 dicrous, of our persistent attempts to found our insti- 
 tutions on the ideals suggested to our imaginations by 
 our half-satisfied passions, instead of on a genuinely 
 scientific natural history. And with that hint as to 
 what I am driving at, I withdraw and ring up the 
 curtain.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 To the irreverent — and which of us will claim entire 
 exemption from that comfortable classification? — there is 
 something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox 
 criticism toward Bernai-d Shaw, He so obviously disre- 
 gards all the canons and unities and other Jiings which 
 every well-bred dramatist is bound to respect that his 
 work is really unworthy of serious criticism (orthodox). 
 Indeed he knows no more about the dranuitic art than, ac- 
 cording to his own story in "^'The Man of Destiny," Napo- 
 leon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. But both 
 men were successes each in his way — the latter won vic- 
 tories and the former gained audiences, in the very teeth 
 of the accepted theories of war and the theatre. Shaw 
 does not know that it is unpardonable sin to have his char- 
 acters make long speeches at one another, apjiarently 
 thinking tliat this embargo applies only to long speeches 
 which consist mainly of bombast and rhetoric. 
 
 There never was an author who showed less predilection 
 for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results. 
 He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the 
 world and he assumed the task of mundane reformation 
 with a confident spirit. It seems such a small job at 
 twenty to set the times aright. He began as an Essay- 
 ist, but who reads essays now-a-days? — he then turned 
 novelist with no better success, for no one would read such 
 preposterous stuff as he chose to emit. He only succeeded 
 in proving that absolutely rational men and women — al- 
 though he has created few of the latter — can be most ex- 
 tremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.
 
 xxii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 As a last resort, he turned to the stage, not that he cared 
 for the dramatic art, for no man seems to care less about 
 "Art for Art's sake," being in this a perfect foil to his 
 brilliant compatriot and contemporary, Wilde. He cast 
 his theories in dramatic forms merely because no other 
 course except silence or physical revolt was open to him. 
 For a long time it seemed as if this resource too was 
 doomed to fail him. But finally he has attained a hearing 
 and now attempts at suppression merely serve to advertise 
 their victim. 
 
 It will repay those who seek analogies in literature to 
 compare Shaw with Cervantes. After a life of heroic en- 
 deavor, disappointment, slavery, and poverty, the author of 
 '' Don Quixote " gave the world a serious work which caused 
 to be laughed off the world's stage forever the final ves- 
 tiges of decadent chivalry. 
 
 The institution had long been outgrown, but its vernac- 
 ular continued to be the speech and to express the thought 
 "of the world and among the vulgar," as the quaint, old 
 novelist puts it, just as to-day the novel intended for the 
 consumption of the unenlightened must deal with peers 
 and millionnaires and be dressed in stilted language. 
 Marvellously he succeeded, but in a way he least intended. 
 We have not yet, after so many years, deteraiined whether 
 it is a work to laugh or cry over. " It is our joyfullest 
 modern book," says Carlyle, while Landor thinks that 
 ** readers who see nothing more than a burlesque in *Don 
 Quixote' have but shallow appreciation of the work." 
 
 Shaw in like manner comes upon the scene when many 
 of our social usages are outworn. He sees the fact, an- 
 nounces it, and we burst into guffaws. The continuous 
 laughter which greets Shaw's plays arises from a real 
 contrast in the point of view of the dramatist and his 
 audiences. When Pinero or Jones describes a whimsical 
 situation we never doubt for a moment that the author's 
 point of view is our own and that the abnormal predicament 
 of his characters appeals to him in the same light as to his
 
 Introduction xxiii 
 
 audience. With Shaw this sense of community of feeling 
 is wholly lacking. He describes things as he sees them, 
 and the house is in a roar. Who is right.'' If we were 
 really using our own senses and not gazing through the 
 glasses of convention and romance and make-believe, 
 should we see things as Shaw does.'' 
 
 Must it not cause Shaw to doubt his own or the public's 
 sanity to hear audiences laughing boisterously over tragic 
 situations ? And yet, if they did not come to laugh, 
 they would not come at all. Mockery is the price 
 he must pay for a hearing. Or has he calculated to a 
 nicety the power of reaction } Does he seek to drive us 
 to aspiration by the portrayal of sordidness, to disinter- 
 estedness by the picture of selfishness, to illusion by dis- 
 illusionment .'' It is impossible to believe that he is 
 unconscious of the humor of his dramatic situations, yet 
 he stoically gives no sign. He even dares the charge, ter- 
 rible in proportion to its truth, which the most serious 
 of us shrinks from — the lack of a sense of humor. Men 
 would rather have their integrity impugned. 
 
 In " Arms and the Man " the subject which occupies the 
 dramatist's attention is that survival of barbarity — mili- 
 tarism — which raises its horrid head from time to time to 
 cast a doubt on the reality of our civilization. No more 
 hoary superstition survives than that the donning of a uni- 
 form changes the nature of the wearer. This notion 
 pervades society to such an extent that when we find some 
 soldiers placed upon the stage acting rationally, our con- 
 ventionalized senses are shocked. The only men who 
 have no illusions about war are those who have recently 
 been there, and, of course, Mr. Shaw, who has no illusions 
 about anything. 
 
 It is hard to speak too highly of " Candida." No equally 
 subtle and incisive study of domestic relations exists in 
 the English drama. One has to turn to George Meredith's 
 "The Egoist" to find such character dissection. The 
 central note of the play is, that with the true woman.
 
 xxiv Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant 
 
 weakness which appeals to the maternal instinct is more 
 powerful than strength which offers protection. Candida is 
 quite unpoetic, as, indeed, with rare exceptions, women 
 are prone to be. They have small delight in poetry, but 
 are the stuff of which poems and dreams are made. The 
 husband glorying in his strength but convicted of his weak- 
 ness, the poet pitiful in his physical impotence but strong 
 in his perception of truth, the hopelessly de-moralized 
 manufacturer, the conventional and hence emotional typist 
 make up a group which the drama of any language may be 
 challenged to rival. 
 
 In "The Man of Destiny" the object of the dramatist is 
 not so much the destruction as the explanation of the 
 Napoleonic tradition, which has so powerfully influenced 
 generation after generation for a century. However the 
 man may be regarded, he was a miracle. Shaw shows that 
 he achieved his extraordinary career by suspending, for 
 himself, the pressure of the moral and conventional atmos- 
 phere, while leaving it operative for others. Those who 
 study this play — extravaganza, that it is — will attain a 
 clearer comprehension of Napoleon than they can get from 
 all the biographies. 
 
 "You Never Can Tell" offers an amusing study of the 
 play of social conventions. The 'Hwins" illustrate the dis- 
 concerting effects of that perfect frankness which would 
 make life intolerable. Gloria demonstrates the power- 
 lessness of reason to overcome natural instincts. The 
 idea that parental duties and functions can be fulfilled by 
 the light of such knowledge as man and woman attain by 
 intuition is brilliantly lampooned. Crampton, the father, 
 typifies the common superstition that among the privileges 
 of parenthood are inflexibility, tyranny, and respect, the 
 last entirely regardless of whether it has been deserved. 
 
 The waiter, William, is the best illustration of the man 
 ''who knows his place" that the stage has seen. He is 
 the most pathetic figure of the play. One touch of verisi- 
 militude is lacking; none of the guests gives him a tip.
 
 Introduction xxv 
 
 yet he maintains his urbanity. As Mr. Shaw has not yet 
 visited America he may be unaware of the improbability 
 of this situation. 
 
 To those who regard Hterary men merely as purveyors 
 of amusement for people who have not wit enough to 
 entertain themselves, Ibsen and Shaw, Maeterlinck and 
 Gorky must remain enigmas. It is so much pleasanterto 
 ignore than to face unpleasant realities — to take Riverside 
 Drive and not Mulberry Street as the exponent of our life 
 and the expression of our civilization. These men are the 
 sappers and miners of the advancing army of justice. The 
 audience which demands the truth and despises the con- 
 temptible conventions that dominate alike our stage and 
 our life is daily growing. Shaw and men like him — if in- 
 deed he is not absolutely unique — will not for the future 
 lack a hearing. 
 
 M.
 
 ARMS AND THE MAN
 
 ARMS AND THE MAN 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Night. A lady's bedchamber in Bulgaria, in a small 
 town near the Dragoman Pass. It is late in November 
 in the year 1885, and through an open window with a 
 little balcony on the left can be seen a peak of the 
 Balkans, wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit 
 snow. The interior of the room is not like anything to 
 be seen in the east of Europe. It is half rich Bulgarian, 
 half cheap Viennese. The counterpane and hangings of 
 the bed, the window curtains, the little carpet, and all 
 the ornamental textile fabrics in the room are oriental 
 and gorgeous: the paper on the walls is occidental and 
 paltry. Above the head of the bed, which stands against 
 a little wall cutting off the right hand corner of the room 
 diagonally, is a painted ivooden shrine, blue and gold, 
 with an ivory image of Christ, and a light hanging be- 
 fore it in a pierced metal ball suspended by three chains. 
 On the left, further forward, is an ottoman. The wash- 
 stand, against the wall on the left, consists of an 
 enamelled iron basin with a pail beneath it in a painted 
 metal frame, and a single towel on the rail at the side. 
 A chair near it is Austrian bent wood, with cane seat. 
 The dressing table, between the bed and the window, 
 is an ordinary pine table, covered with a cloth of many 
 colors, but with an expensive toilet mirror on it. The 
 door is on the right; and there is a chest of drawers be- 
 
 3
 
 4 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 tween the door and the bed. This chest of drawers is 
 also covered by a variegated native cloth, and on it there 
 is a pile of paper backed novels, a box of chocolate 
 creams, and a miniature easel, on which is a large pho- 
 tograph of an extremely handsome officer, whose lofty 
 bearing and magnetic glance can be felt even from the 
 portrait. The room is lighted by a candle on the chest 
 of drawers, and another on the dressing table, with a 
 box of matches beside it. 
 
 The window is hinged doorwise and stands wide open, 
 folding back to the left. Outside a pair of wooden shut- 
 ters, opening outwards, also stand open. On the bal- 
 cony, a young lady, intensely conscious of the romantic 
 be uty of the night, and of the fact that her own youth 
 and beauty is a part of it, is on the balcony, gazing at 
 the snowy Balkans. She is covered by a long mantle of 
 furs, worth, on a moderate estimate, about three times 
 the furniture of her room. 
 
 Her reverie is interrupted by her mother, Catherine 
 Petkoff, a woman over forty, imperiously energetic, with 
 magnificent black hair and eyes, who might be a very 
 splendid specimen of the wife of a mountain farmer, but 
 is determined to be a Viennese lady, and to that end 
 wears a fashionable tea gown on all occasions. 
 
 Catherine {entering hastily, full of good news^. 
 Raina — (she pronounces it Rah-eena, with the stress on 
 the ee) Raina — (she goes to the bed, expecting to find 
 Raina there) Why, where — (Raina looks into the 
 room.) Heavens! child, are you out in the night air in- 
 stead of in your bed ? You'll catch your death. Louka 
 told me you were asleep. 
 
 Raina (coming in). I sent her away. I wanted to 
 be alone. The stars are so beautiful ! What is the 
 matter ? 
 
 Catherine. Such news. There has been a battle ! 
 
 Raina (her eyes dilating). Ah! (She throws the
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 5 
 
 cloak on the ottoman, and comes eagerly to Catherine in 
 her nightgown, a pretty garment, but evidently the only 
 one she has on.) 
 
 Catherine. A great battle at Slivnitza! A victory! 
 And it was won by Sergius. 
 
 Raina (with a cry of delight). Ah! {Rapturously.) 
 Oh, mother! {Then, with sudden anxiety) Is father 
 safe? 
 
 Catherine. Of course: he sent me the news. Ser- 
 gius is the hero of the hour, the idol of the regiment. 
 
 Raina. Tell me, tell me. How was it ! {Ecstati- 
 cally.) Oh, mother, mother, mother! {Raina pulls her 
 mother down on the ottoman; and they kiss one another 
 frantically.) 
 
 Catherine {with surging enthusiasm) . You can t 
 guess how splendid it is. A cavalry charge — think of 
 that! He defied our Russian commanders — acted with- 
 out orders — led a charge on his own responsibility — 
 headed it himself — was the first man to sweep through 
 their guns. Can't you see it, Raina; our gallant splen- 
 did Bulgarians with their swords and eyes flashing, 
 thundering down like an avalanche and scattering the 
 wretched Servian dandies like chaff. And you — you 
 kept Sergius waiting a year before you would be be- 
 trothed to him. Oh, if you have a drop of Bulgarian 
 blood in your veins, you will worship him when he comes 
 back. 
 
 Raina. What will he care for my poor little worship 
 after the acclamations of a whole army of heroes? But 
 no matter: I am so happy — so proud! {She rises and 
 walks about excitedly.) It proves that all our ideas were 
 real after all. 
 
 Catherine {indignantly). Our ideas real ! What do 
 you mean? 
 
 Raina. Our ideas of what Sergius would do — our 
 patriotism — our heroic ideals. Oh, what faithless little 
 creatures girls are ! — I sometimes used to doubt whether
 
 6 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 they were anj-thing but dreams. When I buckled on 
 Sergius's sword he looked so noble: it was treason to 
 think of disillusion or humiliation or failure. And 
 yet — and yet — (Quickly.) Promise me you'll never 
 tell him. 
 
 Catherine. Don't ask me for promises until I know 
 what I am promising. 
 
 Rain A. Well, it came into my head just as he was 
 holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that 
 perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are 
 so fond of reading Byron and Pushkin, and because we 
 were so delighted with the opera that season at Bucharest. 
 Real life is so seldom like that — indeed never, as far 
 as I knew it then. (Remorse fully.) Only think, mother, 
 I doubted him : I wondered whether all his heroic quali- 
 ties and his soldiership might not prove mere imagination 
 when he went into a real battle. I had an uneasy fear 
 that he might cut a poor figure there beside all those 
 clever Russian officers. 
 
 Catherine. A poor figure ! Shame on you ! The 
 Servians have Austrians officers who are just as clever 
 as our Russians ; but we have beaten them in every battle 
 for all that. 
 
 Raina (laughing and sitting down again). Yes, I 
 was only a prosaic little coward. Oh, to think that it 
 was all true — that Sergius is just as splendid and noble 
 as he looks — that the world is really a glorious world 
 for women who can see its glory and men who can act 
 its romance ! What happiness ! what unspeakable fulfil- 
 ment! Ah! (She throws herself on her knees beside her 
 mother and flings her arms passionately round her. 
 They are interrupted hy the entry of Louka, a hand- 
 some, proud girl in a pretty Bulgarian peasant's dress 
 with double apron, so defiant that her servility to Raina 
 is almost insolent. She is afraid of Catherine, but even 
 with her goes as far as she dares. She is just now 
 excited like the others; but she has no sympathy for"
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 7 
 
 Raina's raptures and looks contemptuously at the ecsta- 
 sies of the two before she addresses them.) 
 
 LouKA. If you please^ madam, all the windows are 
 to be closed and the shutters made fast. They say there 
 may be shooting in the streets. (Raina and Catherine 
 rise together, alarmed.) The Servians are being chased 
 right back through the pass ; and they say they may run 
 into the town. Our cavalry will be after them ; and our 
 people will be ready for them you may be sure, now 
 that they are running away. (She goes out on the bal- 
 cony and pulls the outside shutters to; then steps back 
 into the room.) 
 
 Raina. I wish our people were not so cruel. What 
 glory is there in killing wretched fugitives ? 
 
 Catherine (business-like, her housekeeping instincts 
 aroused). I must see that everything is made safe down- 
 stairs. 
 
 Raina (to Louka). Leave the shutters so that I cart 
 just close them if I hear any noise. 
 
 Catherine (authoritatively , turning on her way to the 
 door). Oh, no, dear, you must keep them fastened. You 
 would be sure to drop off to sleep and leave them open. 
 Make them fast, Louka. 
 
 LouKA. Yes, madam. (She fastens them.) 
 
 Raina. Don't be anxious about me. The moment I 
 hear a shot, I shall blow out the candles and roll myself 
 up in bed with my ears well covered. 
 
 Catherine. Quite the wisest thing you can do, my 
 love. Good-night. 
 
 Raina. Good-night. (They kiss one another, and 
 Raina's emotion comes back for a moment.) Wish me 
 joy of the happiest night of my life — if only there are 
 no fugitives. 
 
 Catherine. Go to bed, dear; and don't think of 
 them. (She goes out.) 
 
 Louka (secretly, to Raina). If you would like the 
 shutters open, just give them a push like this. (She^
 
 8 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 pushes them: they open: she pulls them to again.) One 
 of them ought to be bolted at the bottom; but the bolt's 
 gone. 
 
 Raina (with dignity, reproving her). Thanks, Louka; 
 but we must do what we are told. (Louka makes a 
 grimace.) Good-night. 
 
 Louka (carelessly). Good-night. (She goes out, 
 swaggering.) 
 
 (Raina, left alone, goes to the chest of drawers, and 
 adores the portrait there with feelings that are beyond 
 all expression. She does not kiss it or press it to her 
 breast, or shew it any mark of bodily affection; but she 
 takes it in her hands and elevates it like a priestess.) 
 
 Raina (looking up at the picture with worship). Oh, 
 I shall never be unworthy of you any more, my hero — 
 never, never, never. (She replaces it reverently, and 
 selects a novel from the little pile of books. She turns 
 over the leaves dreamily; finds her page; turns the book 
 inside out at it; and then, with a happy sigh, gets into 
 bed and prepares to read herself to sleep. But before 
 abandoning herself to fiction, she raises her eyes once 
 more, thinking of the blessed reality and murmurs) My 
 hero ! my hero ! (A distant shot breaks the quiet of the 
 night outside. She starts, listening; and two more shots, 
 much nearer, follow, startling her so that she scrambles 
 out of bed, and hastily blows out the candle on the chest 
 of drawers. Then, putting her fingers in her ears, she 
 runs to the dressing-table and blows out the light there, 
 and hurries back to bed. The room is now in darkness: 
 nothing is visible but the glimmer of the light in the 
 pierced ball before the image, and the starlight seen 
 through the slits at the top of the shutters. The firing 
 breaks out again : there is a startling fusillade quite close 
 at hand. Whilst it is still echoing, the shutters disap- 
 pear, pulled open from without, and for an instant the 
 rectangle of snowy starlight flashes out with the figure 
 of a man in black upon it. The shutters close immedi-
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 9 
 
 ately and the room is dark again. But the silence isi 
 now broken by the sound of panting. Then there is a 
 scrape; and the f.ame of a match is seen in the middle 
 of the room.) 
 
 Rain A {crouching on the bed). Who's there? (The 
 match is out instantly.) Who's there? Who is that? 
 
 A Man's Voice {iii the darkness, subduedly, but 
 threateningly). Sh — sh ! Don't call out or you'll be 
 shot. Be good; and no harm will happen to you. {She 
 is heard leaving her bed, and making for the door.) 
 Take care, there's no use in trying to run away. Remem- 
 ber, if you raise your voice my pistol will go off. {Com- 
 mandingly.) Strike a light and let me see you. Do you 
 hear? {Another moment of silence and darkness. Then 
 she is heard retreating to the dressing-table. She lights 
 a candle, and the mystery is at an end. A man of about 
 85, in a deplorable plight, bespattered rvith mud and 
 blood and snow, his belt and the strap of his revolver 
 case keeping together the torn ruins of the blue coat of a 
 Servian artillery officer. As far as the candlelight and his 
 unwashed, unkempt condition make it possible to judge, 
 he is a man of middling stature and undistinguished 
 appearance, with strong neck and shoulders, a roundish, 
 obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze 
 curls, clear quick blue eyes and good brows and mouth, a 
 hopelessly prosaic nose like that of a strong-minded baby, 
 trim soldierlike carriage and energetic manner, and with 
 all his wits about him in spite of his desperate predica- 
 ment — even with a sense of humor of it, without, how- 
 ever, the least intention of trifling with it or throwing 
 away a chance. He reckons up what he can guess about 
 Raina — her age, her social position, her character, the 
 extent to which she is frightened — at a glance, and con- 
 tinues, more politely but still most determinedly) Excuse 
 my disturbing you; but you recognise my uniform — 
 Servian. If I'm caught I shall be killed. {Deter- 
 minedly.) Do you imderstand that?
 
 10 Arms and the Ma,n Act I 
 
 Raina. Yes. 
 
 Man. Well, I don't intend to get killed if I can help 
 it. {Still more determinedly.) Do you understand 
 that? (He locks the door with a snap.) 
 
 Raina {disdainfully). I suppose not. {She draws 
 herself up superbly, and looks him straight in the face, 
 saying with emphasis) Some soldiers, I know, are 
 afraid of death. 
 
 Man {with grim goodhumor) . All of them, dear lady, 
 all of them, believe me. It is our duty to live as long as 
 we can, and kill as many of the enemy as we can. Now 
 if you raise an alarm 
 
 Raina {cutting him short). You will shoot me. How 
 do you know that I am afraid to die? 
 
 Man {cunningly). Ah; but suppose I don't shoot 
 you, what will happen then ? Why, a lot of your cavalry 
 — the greatest blackguards in your army — will burst into 
 this pretty room of yours and slaughter me here like a 
 pig; for I'll fight like a demon: they shan't get me into 
 the street to amuse themselves with: I know what they 
 are. Are you prepared to receive that sort of company 
 in your present undress? {Raina, suddenly conscious of 
 her nightgown, instinctively shrinks and gathers it more 
 closely about her. He watches her, and adds, pitilessly) 
 It's rather scanty, eh? {She turns to the ottoman. He 
 raises his pistol instantly, and cries) Stop ! {She 
 stops.) Where are you going? 
 
 Raina {with dignified patience). Only to get my 
 -cloak. 
 
 Man {darting to the ottoman and snatching the cloak). 
 A good idea. No: I'll keep the cloak: and you will 
 take care that nobody comes in and sees you without it. 
 This is a better weapon than the pistol. {He throws the 
 pistol down on the ottoman.) 
 
 Raina {revolted). It is not the weapon of a gentle- 
 man ! 
 
 Man. It's good enough for a man with only you to
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 11 
 
 stand between him and death. (As they look at one 
 another for a moment, Raina hardly able to believe that 
 even a Servian officer can be so cynically and selfishly 
 unchivalrous, they are startled by a sharp fusillade in 
 the street. The chill of imminent death hushes the man's 
 voice as he adds) Do you hear? If you are going to 
 bring those scoundrels in on me you shall receive them 
 as you are. (Raina meets his eye with unflinching scorn. 
 Suddenly he starts, listening. There is a step outside. 
 Someone tries the door, and then knocks hurriedly and 
 urgently at it. Raina looks at the man, breathless. He 
 throws up his head with the gesture of a man who sees 
 that it is all over with him, and, dropping the manner 
 which he has been assuming to intimidate her, flings the 
 cloak to her, exclaiming, sincerely and kindly) No use: 
 I'm done for. Quick! wrap yourself up: they're coming! 
 
 Raina (catching the cloak eagerly). Oh, thank you. 
 (She wraps herself up with great relief. He draws his 
 sabre and turns to the door, waiting.) 
 
 L,ovKA (outside, knocking). My lady, my lady ! Get 
 up, quick, and open the door. 
 
 Raina (anxiously). What will you do? 
 
 Man (grimly). Never mind. Keep out of the way. 
 It will not last long. 
 
 Raina (impulsively). I'll help you. Hide yourself, 
 oh, hide yourself, quick, behind the curtain. (She seizes 
 him by a torn strip of his sleeve, and pulls him towards 
 the window.) 
 
 Man (yielding to her). There is just half a chance, 
 if you keep your head. Remember: nine soldiers out of 
 ten are born fools. (He hides behind the curtain, 
 looking out for a moment to say, finally) If they find 
 me, I promise you a fight — a devil of a fight! (He dis- 
 appears. Raina takes off the cloak and throws it across 
 the foot of the bed. Then with a sleepy, disturbed air, 
 she opens the door. Louka enters excitedly.) 
 
 LouKA. A man has been seen climbing up the water-
 
 12 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 pipe to your balcony — a Servian. The soldiers want to 
 search for him; and they are so wild and drunk and 
 furious. My lady says you are to dress at once. 
 
 Raina (as if annoyed at being disturbed). They shall 
 not search here. Why have they been let in ? 
 
 Catherine (coming in hastily). Raina, darling, are 
 you safe.'' Have you seen anyone or heard anything.'' 
 
 Raina. I heard the shooting. Surely the soldiers 
 will not dare come in here.'' 
 
 Catherine. I have found a Russian officer, thank 
 Heaven: he knows Sergius. (Speaking through the door 
 to someone outside.) Sir, will you come in now! My 
 daughter is ready. 
 
 (A young Russian officer, in Bulgarian uniform, en- 
 ters, sword in hand.) 
 
 The Officer (with soft, feline politeness and stiff 
 military carriage). Good evening, gracious lady; I ara 
 sorry to intrude, but there is a fugitive hiding on the 
 balcony. Will you and the gracious lady your mother 
 please to withdraw whilst we search.'' 
 
 Raina (petulantly). Nonsense, sir, you can see that 
 there is no one on the balcony. (She throws the shut- 
 ters wide open and stands with her back to the curtain 
 where the man is hidden, pointing to the moonlit bal- 
 cony. A couple of shots are fired right under the win- 
 dow, and a bullet shatters the glass opposite Raina, who 
 winks and gasps, but stands her ground, whilst Catherine 
 screams, and the officer rushes to the balcony.) 
 
 The Officer (on the balcony, shouting savagely down 
 to the street). Cease firing there, you fools; do you 
 hear? Cease firing, damn you. (He glares down for a 
 moment; then turns to Raina, trying to resume his polite 
 manner.) Could anyone have got in without your knowl- 
 edge. Were you asleep.'' 
 
 Raina. No, I have not been to bed. 
 
 The Officer (impatiently, coming back into the 
 room). Your neighbours have their heads so full of run-
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 13 
 
 away Servians that they see them everywhere. (Po~ 
 liteh/.) Gracious lady^ a thousand pardons. Good-night. 
 (Military bow, which Raina returns coldly. Another to 
 Catherine, who follows him out. Raina closes the shut- 
 ters. She turns and sees Louka, who has been watching 
 the scene curiously.) 
 
 Raina. Don't leave my mother, Louka, whilst the 
 soldiers are here. {Louka glances at Raina, at the otto- 
 man, at the curtain; then purses her lips secretively, 
 laughs to herself, and goes out. Raina follows her tv 
 the door, shuts it behind her with a slam, and locks it 
 violently. The man im?nediately steps out from behind 
 the curtain, sheathing his sabre, and dismissing the dan- 
 ger from his mind in a businesslike way.) 
 
 Man. a narrow shave; but a miss is as good as a 
 mile. Dear young lady, your servant until death. I 
 wish for your sake I had joined the Bulgarian army in- 
 stead of the Servian. I am not a native Servian. 
 
 Raina (haughtily). No, you are one of the Aus- 
 trians who set the Servians on to rob us of our national 
 liberty, and who officer their army for them. We hate 
 them ! 
 
 Man. Austrian ! not I. Don't hate me, dear young 
 lady. I am only a Swiss, fighting merely as a profes- 
 sional soldier. I joined Servia because it was nearest 
 to me. Be generous : you've beaten us hollow. 
 
 Raina. Have I not been generous ? 
 
 Man. Noble! — heroic! But I'm not saved yet. This 
 particular rush will soon pass through; but the pursuit 
 will go on all night by fits and starts. I must take my 
 chance to get off during a quiet interval. You don't 
 mind my waiting just a minute or two, do you? 
 
 Raina. Oh, no: I am sorry you will have to go into 
 danger again. (Motioning towards ottoman.) Won'f. 
 you sit — (She breaks off with an irrepressible cry of 
 alarm as she catches sight of the pistol. The man, all' 
 nerves, shies like a frightened horse.)
 
 14 Arms and the Man a<jt I 
 
 Man (irritably). Don't frighten me like that. What 
 is it? 
 
 Raina. Your pistol ! It was staring that officer in 
 the face all the time. What an escape ! 
 
 Man (vexed at being unnecessarily terrified). Oh, is 
 that all.^ 
 
 Raina (staring at Mm rather superciliously, conceiv- 
 ing a poorer and poorer opinion of him, and feeling pro- 
 portionately more and more at her ease with him). I am 
 sorry I frightened you. (She takes up the pistol and 
 hands it to him.) Pray take it to protect yourself against 
 me. 
 
 Man (grinning wearily at the sarcasm as he takes the 
 pistol). No use, dear young lady: there's nothing in 
 it. It's not loaded. (He makes a grimace at it, and 
 drops it disparagingly into his revolver case.) 
 
 Raina. Load it by all means. 
 
 Man. I've no ammunition. What use are cartridges 
 in battle? I always carry chocolate instead; and I fin- 
 ished the last cake of that yesterday. 
 
 Raina (outraged in her most cherished ideals of man- 
 hood). Chocolate! Do you stuff your pockets with 
 sweets — like a schoolboy — even in the field? 
 
 Man. Yes. Isn't it contemptible? 
 
 (Raina stares at him, unable to utter her feelings. 
 Then she sails away scornfully to the chest of drawers, 
 and returns with the box of confectionery in her hand.) 
 
 Raina. Allow me. I am sorry I have eaten them all 
 except these. (She offers him the box.) 
 
 Man (ravenously). You're an angel! (He gobbles 
 the comfits.) Creams I Delicious! (He looks anxiously 
 to see whether there are any more. There are none. 
 He accepts the inevitable with pathetic goodhumor, and 
 says, with grateful emotion) Bless you, dear lady. You 
 can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his 
 holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pis- 
 tols and cartridges ; the old ones, grub. Thank you.
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 15 
 
 {He hands hack the box. She snatches it contemptuously 
 from him and throws it away. This impatient action is 
 so sudden that he shies again.) Ugh! Don't do things 
 so suddenly, gracious lady. Don't revenge yourself be- 
 cause I frightened you just now. 
 
 Raina (superbly). Frighten me! Do you know, sir, 
 that though I am only a woman, I think I am at heart 
 as brave as you. 
 
 Man. I should think so. You haven't been under 
 fire for three days as I have. I can stand two days 
 without shewing it much; but no man can stand three 
 days: I'm as nervous as a mouse. (He sits down on the 
 ottoman, and takes his head in his hands.) Would you 
 like to see me cry? 
 
 Raina (quickly). No. 
 
 Man. If you would, all you have to do is to scold me 
 just as if I were a little boy and you my nurse. If I 
 were in camp now they'd play all sorts of tricks on me. 
 
 Raina (a little moved). I'm sorry. I won't scold 
 you. (Touched by the sympathy in her tone, he raises 
 his head and looks gratefully at her: she immediately 
 draws back and says stiffly) You must excuse me: our 
 soldiers are not like that. (She moves away from the 
 ottoman.) 
 
 Man. Oh, yes, they are. There are only two sorts 
 of soldiers: old ones and young ones. I've served four- 
 teen years: half of your fellows never smelt powder 
 before. Why, how is it that you've just beaten us? 
 Sheer ignorance of the art of war, nothing else. (Indig- 
 nantly.) I never saw anything so unprofessional. 
 
 Raina (ironically). Oh, was it unprofessional to 
 beat you? 
 
 Man. Well, come, is it professional to throw a regi- 
 ment of cavalry on a battery of machine guns, with the 
 dead certainty that if the guns go off not a horse or 
 man will ever get within fifty yards of the fire? I 
 couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.
 
 16 Arms and the Man Act 1 
 
 Raina (^eagerly turning to him, as all her enthusiasm 
 and her dream of glory rush back on her). Did you see 
 the great cavalry charge? Oh, tell me about it. De- 
 scribe it to me. 
 
 Man. You never saw a cavalry charge, did you? 
 
 Raina. How could I ? 
 
 Man. Ah, perhaps not — of course. Well, it's a 
 funny sight. It's like slinging a handful of peas against 
 a window pane : first one comes ; then two or three close 
 behind him ; and then all the rest in a lump. 
 
 Raina (her eyes dilating as she raises her clasped 
 hands ecstatically). Yes, first One! — the bravest of the 
 brave ! 
 
 Man (prosaically). Hm ! you should see the poor 
 devil pulling at his horse. 
 
 Raina. Why should he pull at his horse? 
 
 Man (^impatient of so stupid a question). It's run- 
 ning away with him, of course : do you suppose the fellow 
 wants to get there before the others and be killed? Then 
 they all come. You can tell the young ones by their 
 wildness and their slashing. The old ones come bunched 
 up under the number one guard: they know that they 
 are mere projectiles, and that it's no use trying to fight. 
 The wounds are mostly broken knees, from the horses 
 cannoning together. 
 
 Raina. Ugh ! But I don't believe the first man is a 
 coward. I believe he is a hero ! 
 
 Man (goodhumoredly) . That's what you'd have saij 
 if you'd seen the first man in the charge to-day. 
 
 Raina (breathless). Ah, I knew it! Tell me — tell 
 me about him. 
 
 Man. He did it like an operatic tenor — a regular 
 handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely mous- 
 tache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote 
 at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him ; 
 but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet, and 
 told us they'd sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we
 
 4cT I Arms and the Man 17 
 
 couldn't fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed 
 at the other side of our mouths. I never felt so sick in 
 my life, though I've been in one or two very tight places. 
 And I hadn't even a revolver cartridge — nothing but 
 chocolate. We'd no bayonets — nothing. Of course, they 
 just cut us to bits. And there was Don Quixote flourish- 
 ing like a drum major, thinking he'd done the cleverest 
 thing ever kno-vvn, whereas he ought to be courtmartialled 
 for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, 
 that man must be the very maddest. He and his regi- 
 ment simply committed suicide — only the pistol missed 
 fire, that's all. 
 
 Rain A {deeply rvounded, hut steadfastly loyal to her 
 ideals). Indeed! Would you know him again if you 
 saw him.'' 
 
 Man. Shall I ever forget him. (She again goes to 
 the chest of drawers. He watches her with a vague hope 
 that she may have something else for him to eat. She 
 takes the portrait from its stand and brings it to him.) 
 
 Raina. That is a photograph of the gentleman — the 
 patriot and hero — to whom I am betrothed. 
 
 Man (looking at it). I'm really very sorry. (Look- 
 ing at her.) Was it fair to lead me on.'' (He looks at 
 the portrait again.) Yes: that's him: not a doubt of it. 
 (He stifles a laugh.) 
 
 Raina (quickly). Why do you laugh? 
 
 Man (shamefacedly, but still greatly tickled). I 
 didn't laugh, I assure you. At least I didn't mean to. 
 But when I think of him charging the windmills and 
 thinking he was doing the finest thing — (chokes with 
 suppressed laughter). 
 
 Raina (sternly). Give me back the portrait, sir. 
 
 Man (with sincere remorse). Of course. Certainly. 
 I'm really very sorry. (She deliberately kisses it, and 
 looks him straight in the face, before returning to the 
 chest of drawers to replace it. He follows her, apologiz- 
 ing.) Perhaps I'm quite wrong, you know: no doubt I
 
 18 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 am. Most likely he had got wind of the cartridge busi- 
 ness somehow, and knew it was a safe job. 
 
 Raina. That is to say, he was a pretender and a 
 coward ! You did not dare say that before. 
 
 Man {with a comic gesture of despair). It's no use, 
 dear lady: I can't make you see it from the professional 
 point of view. (As he turns away to get hack to the 
 ottoman, the firing begins again in the distance.) 
 
 Raina {sternly, as she sees him listening to the shots). 
 So much the better for you. 
 
 Man {turning). How? 
 
 Raina. You are my enemy ; and you are at my mercy. 
 What would I do if I were a professional soldier? 
 
 Man. Ah, true, dear young lady : you're always right. 
 I know how good you have been to me: to my last hour 
 I shall remember those three chocolate creams. It was 
 unsoldierly; but it was angelic. 
 
 Raina (coldly). Thank you. And now I will do a 
 soldierly thing. You cannot stay here after what you 
 have just said about my future husband; but I will go 
 out on the balcony and see whether it is safe for you 
 to climb down into the street. (She turns to the window.) 
 
 Man (changing countenance). Down that waterpipe ! 
 Stop ! Wait ! I can't ! I daren't ! The very thought of 
 it makes me giddy. I came up it fast enough with death 
 behind me. But to face it now in cold blood! — (He 
 sinks on the ottoman.) It's no use: I give up: I'm 
 beaten. Give the alarm. (He drops his head in his 
 hands in the deepest dejection.) 
 
 Raina (disarmed by pity). Come, don't be disheart- 
 ened. (She stoops over him almost maternally : he shakes 
 his head.) Oh, you are a very poor soldier — a chocolate 
 cream soldier. Come, cheer up: it takes less courage to 
 climb down than to face capture — remember that. 
 
 Man (dreamily, lulled by her voice). No, capture 
 only means death; and death is sleep — oh, sleep, sleep, 
 sleep, undisturbed sleep ! Climbing down the pipe means
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 19 
 
 doing something — exerting myself — thinking ! Death 
 ten times over first. 
 
 Raina (^softly and wonderingly, catching the rhythm 
 of his weariness). Are you so sleepy as that? 
 
 Man. I've not had two hours undisturbed sleep since 
 the war began. I'm on the staff: you don't know what 
 that means. I haven't closed my eyes for thirty-six 
 hours. 
 
 Raina {desperately). But what am I to do with you, 
 
 Man (staggering up). Of course I must do some- 
 thing. (He shakes himself; pulls himself together; and 
 speaks with rallied vigour and courage.) You see, sleep 
 or no sleep, hunger or no hunger, tired or not tired, you 
 can always do a thing when you know it must be done. 
 Well, that pipe must be got down — (He hits himself 
 on the chest, and adds) — Do you hear that, you chocolate 
 cream soldier.'' (He turns to the window.) 
 
 Raina (anxiously) . But if you fall? 
 
 Man. I shall sleep as if the stones were a feather bed. 
 Good-bye. (He makes boldly for the window, and his 
 hand is on the shutter when there is a terrible burst of 
 firing in the street beneath.) 
 
 Raina (rushing to him). Stop! (She catches him by 
 the shoulder, and turns him quite round.) They'll kill 
 you. 
 
 Man (coolly, but attentively). Never mind: this sort 
 of thing is all in my day's work. I'm bound to take my 
 chance. (Decisively.) Now do what I tell you. Put 
 out the candles, so that they shan't see the light when I 
 open the shutters. And keep away from the window, 
 whatever you do. If they see me, they're sure to have a 
 shot at me. 
 
 Raina (clinging to him). They're sure to see you: 
 it's bright moonlight. I'll save you — oh, how can you be 
 so indifferent? You want me to save you, don't you? 
 
 Man. I really don't want to be troublesome. (She 
 shakes him in her impatience.) I am not indifferent.
 
 20 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 dear young lady, I assure you. But how is it to be 
 done ? 
 
 Raina. Come away from the window — please. (She 
 coaxes him back to the middle of the room. He submits 
 humbly. She releases him, and addresses him patroniz- 
 ingly.) Now listen. You must trust to our hospitality. 
 You do not yet know in whose house you are. I am a 
 PetkofF. 
 
 Man. What's that? 
 
 Raina {rather indignantly). I mean that I belong to 
 the family of the PetkofFs, the richest and best known 
 in our country. 
 
 Man. Oh, yes, of course. I beg your pardon. The 
 Petkoifs, to be sure. How stupid of me! 
 
 Raina. You know vou never heard of them until this 
 minute. How can you stoop to pretend.'' 
 
 Man. Forgive me: I'm too tired to think; and the 
 change of subj ect was too much for me. Don't scold me. 
 
 Raina. I forgot. It might make you cry. {He nods, 
 quite seriously. She pouts and then resumes her patron- 
 izing tone.) I must tell you that my father holds the 
 highest command of any Bulgarian in our army. He is 
 {proudly) a Major. 
 
 Man {pretending to be deeply impressed). A Major! 
 Bless me! Think of that! 
 
 Raina. You shewed great ignorance in thinking that 
 it was necessary to climb up to the balcony, because ours 
 is the only private house that has two rows of windows. 
 There is a flight of stairs inside to get up and down by. 
 
 Man. Stairs ! How grand ! You live in great luxury 
 indeed, dear young lady. 
 
 Raina. Do you know what a library is."^ 
 
 Man. a library? A roomful of books. 
 
 Raina. Yes, we have one, the only one in Bulgaria. 
 
 Man. Actually a real library! I should like to see 
 that. 
 
 Raina (affectedly). I tell you these things to shew
 
 Act I Arms and the Man 21 
 
 you that you are not in the house of ignorant country 
 folk who would kill you the moment they saw your Ser- 
 vian uniform, but among civilized people. We go to 
 Bucharest every year for the opera season; and I have 
 spent a whole month in Vienna. 
 
 Man. I saw that, dear young lady. I saw at once 
 that you knew the world. 
 
 Raina. Have you ever seen the opera of Ernani? 
 
 Man. Is that the one with the devil in it in red velvet, 
 and a soldier's chorus? 
 
 Raina (contemptuously). No! 
 
 Man (stifling a heavy sigh of weariness). Then I 
 don't know it. 
 
 Raina. I thouglit you might have remembered the 
 great scene where Ernani, flying from his foes just as 
 you are to-night, takes refuge in the castle of his bitter- 
 est enemy, an old Castilian noble. The noble refuses to 
 give him up. His guest is sacred to him. 
 
 Man (quickly waking up a little). Have your people 
 got that notion .'' 
 
 Raina (with dignity). My mother and I can under- 
 stand that notion, as you call it. And if instead of 
 threatening me with your pistol as you did, you had 
 simply thrown yourself as a fugitive on our hospitality, 
 you would have been as safe as in your father's house. 
 
 Man. Quite sure? 
 
 Raina (turning her back on him in disgust). Oh, it 
 is useless to try and make you understand. 
 
 Man. Don't be angry : you see how awkward it would 
 be for me if there was any mistake. My father is a very 
 hospitable man: he keeps six hotels; but I couldn't trust 
 him as far as that. ^\Tiat about your father? 
 
 Raina. He is away at Slivnitza fighting for his coun- 
 try. I answer for your safety. There is my hand in 
 pledge of it. Will that reassure you? (She offers him 
 her hand.) 
 
 Man (looking dubiously at his own hand). Better not
 
 22 Arms and the Man Act I 
 
 touch my hand, dear young lady. I must have a wash 
 first. 
 
 Rain A (touched). That is very nice of you. I see 
 that you are a gentleman. 
 
 Man (puzzled). Eh? 
 
 Raina. You must not think I am surprised. Bulgar- 
 ians of really good standing — people in our position — 
 wash their hands nearly every day. But I appreciate 
 your delicacy. You may take my hand. (She offers it 
 again. ) 
 
 Man (kissing it with his hands behind his back). 
 Thanks, gracious young lady: I feel safe at last. And 
 now would you mind breaking the news to your mother? 
 I had better not stay here secretly longer than is nec- 
 essary. 
 
 Raina. If you will be so good as to keep perfectly 
 still whilst I am away. 
 
 Man. Certainly. (He sits down on the ottoman.) 
 
 (Raina goes to the bed and wraps herself in the fur 
 cloak. His eyes close. She goes to the door, but on 
 turning for a last look at him, sees that he is dropping 
 off to sleep.) 
 
 Raina (at the door). You are not going asleep, are 
 you? (He murmurs inarticulately : she runs to him and 
 shakes him.) Do you hear? Wake up: you are falling 
 asleep. 
 
 Man. Eh? Falling aslee — ? Oh, no, not the least in 
 the world: I was only thinking. It's all right: I'm wide 
 awake. 
 
 Raina (severely). Will you please stand up while I 
 am away. (He rises reluctantly.) All the time, mind. 
 
 Man (standing unsteadily). Certainly — certainly: 
 you may depend on me. 
 
 (Raina looks doubtfully at him. He smiles foolishly. 
 She goes reluctantly, turning again at the door, and 
 almost catching him in the act of yawning. She goes 
 out.)
 
 Act 1 Arms and tlie Man 23 
 
 Man (drowsily). Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, slee — 
 (The words trail off into a murmur. He wahes again 
 with a shock on the point of falling.) Where am I? 
 That's what I want to know: where am I? Must keep 
 awake. Nothing keeps me awake except danger — re- 
 member that — (intently) danger, danger, danger, dan — 
 WTiere's danger? Must find it. (He starts off vaguely 
 around the room in search of it.) What am I look- 
 ing for? Sleep — danger — don't know. (He stumbles 
 against the bed.) Ah, yes: now I know. All right now. 
 I'm to go to bed, but not to sleep — be sure not to sleep — • 
 because of danger. Not to lie down, either, only sit 
 down. (He sits on the bed. A blissful expression 
 comes into his face. ) Ah ! ( With a happy sigh he sinks 
 back at full length; lifts his boots into the bed with a 
 final effort; and falls fast asleep instantly.) 
 
 (Catherine comes in, followed by Raina.) 
 
 Raina (looking at the ottoman). He's gone! I left 
 him here. 
 
 Catherine. Here ! Then he must have climbed down 
 from the 
 
 "Rki^x (seeing him). Oh! (She points.) 
 
 Catherine (scandalized). Well! (She strides to the 
 left side of the bed, Raina following and standing oppo- 
 site her on the right.) He's fast asleep. The brute! 
 
 Raina (anxiously). Sh ! 
 
 Catherine (shaking him). Sir! (Shaking him 
 again, harder.) Sir!! (Vehemently shaking very hard.) 
 Sir!!! 
 
 Raina (catching her arm). Don't, mamma: the poor 
 dear is worn out. Let him sleep. 
 
 Catherine (letting him go and turning amazed to 
 Raina). The poor dear! Raina!!! (She looks sternly 
 at her daughter. The man sleeps profoundly.) 
 
 END OF ACT I.
 
 ACT II 
 
 The sixth of March, 1886. In the garden of Major 
 Petkoff's house. It is a fine spring morning; and the 
 garden looks fresh and pretty. Beyond the paling the 
 tops of a couple of minarets can be seen, shewing that 
 there is a valley there, with the little town in it. A few 
 miles further the Balkan mountains rise and shut in the 
 view. Within the garden the side of the house is seen 
 on the right, with a garden door reached by a little flight 
 of steps. On the left the stable yard, with its gateway, 
 encroaches on the garden. There are fruit bushes along 
 the paling and house, covered with washing hung out to 
 dry. A path rtins by the house, and rises by two steps 
 at the corner where it turns out of the sight along the 
 front. In the middle a small table, with two bent wood 
 chairs at it, is laid for breakfast with Turkish coffee 
 pot, cups, rolls, etc.; but the cups have been used and 
 the bread broken. There is a wooden garden seat 
 against the wall on the left. 
 
 Louka, smoking a cigaret, is standing between the 
 table and the house, turning her back with angry dis- 
 dain on a man-servant who is lecturing her. He is a 
 middle-aged man of cool temperament and low but clear 
 and keen intelligence, with the complacency of the ser- 
 vant who values himself on his rank in servility, and the 
 imperturbability of the accurate calculator who has no 
 illusions. He wears a white Bidgarian costume jacket 
 with decorated border, sash, wide knickerbockers, and 
 decorated gaiters. His head is shaved up to the crown, 
 giving him a high Japanese forehead. His name is 
 Nicola. 
 
 24
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 25 
 
 Nicola. Be warned in time, Louka: mend your man- 
 ners. I know the mistress. She is so grand that she 
 never dreams that any servant could dare to be dis- 
 respectful to her; but if she once suspects that you are 
 defying her, out you go. 
 
 Louka. I do defy her. I will defy her. What do I 
 care for her? 
 
 Nicola. If you quarrel with the family, I never can 
 marry you. It's the same as if you quarrelled with me ! 
 
 Louka. You take her part against me, do you.'' 
 
 Nicola {sedately). I shall always be dependent on 
 the good will of the family. When I leave their service 
 and start a shop in Sofea, their custom will be half my 
 capital: their bad word would ruin me. 
 
 Louka. You have no spirit. I should like to see them 
 dare say a word against me ! 
 
 Nicola {pityingly). I should have expected more 
 sense from you, Louka. But you're young, you're young ! 
 
 Louka. Yes; and you like me the better for it, don't 
 you? But I know some family secrets they wouldn't 
 care to have told, young as I am. Let them quarrel with 
 me if they dare ! 
 
 Nicola {with compassionate superiority). Do you 
 know what they would do if they heard you talk like 
 that? 
 
 Louka. ^Vhat could they do? 
 
 Nicola. Discharge you for untruthfulness. Who 
 would believe any stories you told after that? Who 
 would give you another situation? Who in this house 
 would dare be seen speaking to you ever again? How 
 long would your father be left on his little farm? {She 
 impatiently throws away the end of her cigaret, and 
 stamps on it.) Child, you don't know the power such 
 high people have over the like of you and me when we 
 try to rise out of our poverty against them. {He goes 
 close to her and lowers his voice.) Look at me, ten years 
 in their service. Do you think I know no secrets? I
 
 26 Arms and the JMjui Act II 
 
 know things about the mistress that she wouldn't have 
 the master know for a thousand levas. I know things 
 about him that she wouldn't let him hear the last of for 
 six months if I blabbed them to her. I know things 
 about Raina that would break off her match with Ser- 
 gius if 
 
 LouKA {turning on Mm quickly). How do you know? 
 I never told you ! 
 
 Nicola (^opening his eyes cunningly). So that's your 
 little secret, is it? I thought it might be something like 
 that. Well, you take my advice, and be respectful; and 
 make the mistress feel that no matter what you know or 
 don't know, they can depend on you to hold your tongue 
 and serve the family faithfully. That's what they like; 
 and that's how you'll make most out of them. 
 
 LouKA (with searching scorn). You have the soul of 
 a servant, Nicola. 
 
 Nicola (complacently) . Yes: that's the secret of suc- 
 cess in service. 
 
 (A loud knocking with a whip handle on a wooden 
 door, outside on the left, is heard.) 
 
 Male Voice Outside. Hollo ! Hollo there ! Nicola ! 
 
 LouKA. ]\Iaster ! back from the war ! 
 
 Nicola (quickly). My word for it, Louka, the war's 
 over. Off with you and get some fresh coffee. (He runs 
 out into the stable yard.) 
 
 LouKA (as she puts the coffee pot and the cups upon 
 the tray, and carries it into the house). You'll never put 
 the soul of a servant into me. 
 
 (Major Petkoff comes from the stable yard, followed 
 by Nicola. He is a cheerful, excitable, insignificant, un- 
 polished man of about 50, naturally unambitious except 
 as to his income and his importance in local society, but 
 just now greatly pleased with the military rank which 
 the war has thrust on him as a man of consequence in his 
 town. The fever of plucky patriotism which the Servian 
 attack roused in all the Bulgarians has pulled him
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 27 
 
 through the war; but he is obviously glad to be home 
 again.) 
 
 Petkoff (pointing to the table with his whip). Break- 
 fast out here, eh ? 
 
 Nicola. Yes, sir. The mistress and Miss Raina have 
 just gone in. 
 
 Petkoff (sitting down and talcing a roll). Go in and 
 say I've come; and get me some fresh coffee. 
 
 Nicola. It's coming, sir. (He goes to the house door. 
 Louha, with fresh coffee, a clean cup, and a brandy bot- 
 tle on her tray meets him.) Have you told the mistress.'* 
 
 LouKA. Yes: she's coming. 
 
 (Nicola goes into the house. Louha brings the coffee 
 to the table.) 
 
 Petkoff. Well, the Servians haven't run away with 
 you, have they.'' 
 
 LouKA. No, sir. 
 
 Petkoff. That's right. Have you brought me some 
 cognac .'' 
 
 LouKA (putting the bottle on the table). Here, sir. 
 
 Petkoff. That's right. (He pours some into his 
 coffee.) 
 
 (Catherine who has at this early hour made only a 
 very perfunctory toilet, and wears a Bulgarian apron 
 over a once brilliant, but now half worn out red dressing 
 gown, and a colored handkerchief tied over her thick 
 black hair, with Turkish slippers on her bare feet, comes 
 from the house, looking astonishingly handsome and 
 stately under all the circumstances. Louka goes into the 
 house.) 
 
 Catherine. My dear Paul, what a surprise for us. 
 (She stoops over the back of his chair to kiss him.) Have 
 they brought you fresh coffee? 
 
 Petkoff. Yes, Louka's been looking after me. The 
 war's over. The treaty was signed three days ago at 
 Bucharest; and the decree for our army to demobilize 
 was issued yesterday.
 
 28 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 Catherine (springing erect, with flashing eyes). The 
 war over ! Paul : have you let the Austrians force you to 
 make peace? 
 
 Petkoff (submissively). My dear: they didn't con- 
 sult me. What could /do? (She sits down and turns 
 away from him.) But of course we saw to it that the 
 treaty was an honorable one. It declares peace 
 
 Catherine (outraged). Peace! 
 
 Petkoff (appeasing her). — but not friendly rela- 
 tions: remember that. They wanted to put that in; but 
 I insisted on its being struck out. What more could 
 I do? 
 
 Catherine. You could have annexed Servia and made 
 Prince Alexander Emperor of the Balkans. That's what 
 I would have done. 
 
 Petkoff. I don't doubt it in the least, my dear. But 
 I should have had to subdue the whole Austrian Empire 
 first; and that would have kept me too long away from 
 you. I missed you greatly. 
 
 Catherine (relenting). Ah! (Stretches her hand 
 affectionately across the table to squeeze his.) 
 
 Petkoff. And how have you been, my dear? 
 
 Catherine. Oh, my usual sore throats, that's all. 
 
 Petkoff (with conviction). That comes from wash- 
 ing your neck every day. I've often told you so. 
 
 Catherine. Nonsense, Paul ! 
 
 Petkoff (over his coffee and cigaret). I don't believe 
 in going too far with these modern customs. All this 
 washing can't be good for the health: it's not natural. 
 There was an Englishman at Phillipopolis who used to 
 wet himself all over with cold water every morning when 
 he got up. Disgusting! It all comes from the English: 
 theii climate makes them so dirty that they have to be 
 perpetually washing themselves. Look at my father: 
 he never had a bath in his life; and he lived to be 
 ninety-eight, the healthiest man in Bulgaria. I don't 
 mind a good wash once a week to keep up my position;
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 29 
 
 but once a day is carrying the thing to a ridiculous 
 extreme. 
 
 Catherine. You are a barbarian at heart still, Paul. 
 I hope you behaved yourself before all those Russian 
 officers. 
 
 Petkoff. I did my best. I took care to let them 
 know that we had a library. 
 
 Catherine. Ah; but you didn't tell them that we 
 have an electric bell in it ? I have had one put up. 
 
 Petkoff. What's an electric bell? 
 
 Catherine. You touch a button ; something tinkles 
 in the kitchen ; and then Nicola comes up. 
 
 Petkoff. Why not shout for him? 
 
 Catherine. Civilized people never shout for their 
 servants. I've learnt that while you were away. 
 
 Petkoff. Well, I'll tell you something I've learnt, 
 too. Civilized people don't hang out their washing to 
 dry where visitors can see it; so you'd better have all 
 that {indicating the clothes on the bushes) put some- 
 where else. 
 
 Catherine. Oh, that's absurd, Paul: I don't believe 
 really refined people notice such things. 
 
 (Someone is heard knocking at the stable gates.) 
 
 Petkoff. There's Sergius. {Shouting.) Hollo, 
 Nicola ! 
 
 Catherine. Oh, don't shout, Paul : it really isn't nice. 
 
 Petkoff. Bosh! {He shouts louder than before.) 
 Nicola ! 
 
 Nicola {appearing at the house door). Yes, sir. 
 
 Petkoff. If that is Major Saranoff, bring him round 
 this way. {He pronounces the name with the stress on 
 the second syllable — Sarah noff.) 
 
 Nicola. Yes, sir. {He goes into the stable yard.) 
 
 Petkoff. You must talk to him, my dear, until Raina 
 takes him off our hands. He bores my life out about our 
 not promoting him — over my head, mind you. 
 
 Catherine. He certainly ought to be promoted when
 
 30 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 he marries Raina. Besides, the country should insist 
 on having at least one native general. 
 
 Petkoff. Yes, so that he could throw away whole 
 brigades instead of regiments. It's no use, my dear: he 
 has not the slightest chance of promotion until we are 
 quite sure that the peace will be a lasting one. 
 
 Nicola (at the gate, announcing). Major Sergius 
 SaranofF ! (He goes into the house and returns presently 
 Tvith a third chair, which he places at the table. He then 
 withdraws.) 
 
 (Major Sergius Saranoff, the original of the portrait 
 in Raina' s room, is a tall, romantically handsome man, 
 with the physical hardihood, the high spirit, and the sus- 
 ceptible imagination of an untamed mountaineer chief- 
 tain. But his remarhable personal distinction is of a 
 characteristically civilized type. The ridges of his eye- 
 brows, curving with a ram's-horn twist round the marked 
 projections at the outer corners, his jealously observant 
 eye, his nose, thin, keen, and apprehensive in spite of 
 the pugnacious high bridge and large nostril, his assertive 
 chin, would not be out of place in a Paris salon. In 
 short, the clever, imaginative barbarian has an acute criti- 
 cal facidty which has been thrown into intense activity 
 by the arrival of western civilization in the Balkans ; and 
 the residt is precisely what the advent of nineteenth cen- 
 tury thought first produced in England: to-wit, Byron- 
 ism. By his brooding on the perpetual failure, not only 
 of others, but of himself, to live up to his imaginative 
 ideals, his consequent cynical scorn for humanity, the 
 jejune credulity as to the absolute validity of his ideals 
 and the unworthiness of the world in disregarding them, 
 his wincings and mockeries under the sting of the petty 
 disillusions which every hour spent among men brings 
 to his infallibly quick observation, he has acquired the 
 half tragic, half ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the 
 suggestion of a strange and terrible history that has left 
 him nothing but undying remorse, by which Childe Har-
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 31 
 
 old fascinated the grandmothers of his English contem- 
 poraries. Altogether it is clear that here or nowhere is 
 Raina's ideal hero. Catherine is hardly less enthusiastic, 
 and much less reserved in sherving her enthusiasm. As 
 he enters from the stable gate, she rises effusively to 
 greet him. Petkoff is distinctly less disposed to make a 
 fuss about him.) 
 
 Petkoff. Here already, Sergius. Glad to see 
 you! 
 
 Catherine. My dear Sergius ! (She holds out both 
 her hands.) 
 
 Sergius (kissing them with scrupulous gallantry). 
 My dear mother, if I may call you so. 
 
 Petkoff (drily). Mother-in-law, Sergius; mother-in- 
 law! Sit down, and have some coffee. 
 
 Sergius. Thank you, none for me. (He gets arvay 
 from the table with a certain distaste for Petkoff's en- 
 joyment of it, and posts himself with conscious grace 
 against the rail of the steps leading to the house.) 
 
 Catherine. You look superb — splendid. The cam- 
 paign has improved you. Everybody here is mad about 
 you. We were all wild with enthusiasm about that mag- 
 nificent cavalry charge. 
 
 Sergius (with grave irony). Madam: it was the cradle 
 and the grave of my military reputation. 
 
 Catherine. How so? 
 
 Sergius. I won the battle the wrong way when our 
 worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way. 
 That upset their plans, and wounded their self-esteem. 
 Two of their colonels got their regiments driven back on 
 the correct principles of scientific warfare. Two major- 
 generals got killed strictly according to military eti- 
 quette. Those two colonels are now major-generals; and 
 I am still a simple major. 
 
 Catherine. You shall not remain so, Sergius. The 
 women are on your side; and they will see that justice 
 is done you.
 
 32 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 Sergius. It is too late. I have only waited for the 
 peace to send in my resignation. 
 
 Petkoff {dropping his cup in his amazement). Your 
 resignation ! 
 
 Catherine. Oh, you must withdraw it ! 
 
 Sergius (with resolute, measured emphasis, folding 
 his arms). I never withdraw! 
 
 Petkoff (vexed). Now who could have supposed you 
 were going to do such a thing .^ 
 
 Sergius (with fre). Everyone that knew me. But 
 enough of myself and my affairs. How is Raina; and 
 where is Raina .^ 
 
 Raina (suddenly coming round the corner of the house 
 and standing at the top of the steps in the path). Raina 
 is here. (She makes a charming picture as they all turn 
 to look at her. She wears an underdress of pale green 
 silk, draped with an overdress of thin ecru canvas em- 
 broidered with gold. On her head she wears a pretty 
 Phrygian cap of gold tinsel. Sergius, with an exclama- 
 tion of pleasure, goes impulsively to meet her. She 
 stretches out her hand: he drops chivalrously on one knee 
 and kisses it.) 
 
 Petkoff (aside to Catherine, beaming with parental 
 pride). Pretty, isn't it.'' She always appears at the 
 right moment. 
 
 Catherine (impatiently). Yes: she listens for it. It 
 is an abominable habit. 
 
 (Sergius leads Raina forward with splendid gallantry, 
 as if she were a queen. When they come to the table, 
 she turns to him with a bend of the head; he bows; and 
 thus they separate, he coming to his place, and she going 
 behind her father's chair.) 
 
 Raina (stooping and kissing her father). Dear 
 father ! Welcome home ! 
 
 Petkoff (patting her cheek). My little pet girl. 
 (He kisses her; she goes to the chair left by Nicola for 
 Sergius, and sits down.^
 
 Act II Arms and the INI an 33 
 
 Catherine. And so you're no longer a soldier, 
 Sergius. 
 
 Sergius. I am no longer a soldier. Soldiering, my 
 dear madam, is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly 
 when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way 
 when you are weak. That is the whole secret of success- 
 ful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and 
 never, on any account, fight him on equal terms. Eh, 
 Major! 
 
 Petkoff. They wouldn't let us make a fair stand-up 
 fight of it. However, I suppose soldiering has to be a 
 trade like any other trade. 
 
 Sergius. Precisely. But I have no ambition to suc- 
 ceed as a tradesman; so I have taken the advice of that 
 bagman of a captain that settled the exchange of pris- 
 oners with us at Peerot, and given it up. 
 
 Petkoff. What, that Swiss fellow.^ Sergius: I've 
 often thought of that exchange since. He over-reached 
 us about those horses. 
 
 Sergius. Of course he over-reached us. His father 
 was a hotel and livery stable keeper ; and he owed his first 
 step to his knowledge of horse-dealing. {With mock 
 enthusiasm.) Ah, he was a soldier — every inch a soldier! 
 If only I had bought the horses for my regiment instead 
 of foolishly leading it into danger, I should have been a 
 field-marshal now ! 
 
 Catherine. A Swiss? What was he doing in the 
 Servian army? 
 
 Petkoff. A volunteer of course — keen on picking up 
 his profession. {Chuckling.) We shouldn't have been 
 able to begin fighting if these foreigners hadn't shewn 
 us how to do it: we knew nothing about it; and neither 
 did the Servians. Egad, there'd have been no war with- 
 out them. 
 
 Raina. Are there many Swiss officers in the Servian 
 army? 
 
 Petkoff. No — all Austrians, just as our officers were
 
 34 Arms and the Man Act IT 
 
 all Russians. This was the only Swiss I came across. 
 I'll never trust a Swiss again. He cheated us — hum- 
 bugged us into giving him fifty able bodied men for two 
 hundred confounded worn out chargers. They weren't 
 even eatable ! 
 
 Sergius. We were two children in the hands of that 
 consummate soldier^ Major: simply two innocent little 
 children. 
 
 Raina. What was he like? 
 
 Catherine. Oh, Raina, what a silly question! 
 
 Sergius. He was like a commercial traveller in uni- 
 form. Bourgeois to his boots. 
 
 Petkoff (grinning). Sergius: tell Catherine that 
 queer story his friend told us about him — how he escaped 
 after Slivnitza. You remember? — about his being hid 
 by two women. 
 
 Sergius (with bitter irony). Oh, yes, quite a romance. 
 He was serving in the very battery I so unprof essionally 
 charged. Being a thorough soldier, he ran away like the 
 rest of them, with our cavalry at his heels. To escape 
 their attentions, he had the good taste to take refuge in 
 the chamber of some patriotic young Bulgarian lady. 
 The young lady was enchanted by his persuasive com- 
 mercial traveller's manners. She very modestly enter- 
 tained him for an hour or so and then called in her 
 mother lest her conduct should appear unmaidenly. The 
 old lady was equally fascinated; and the fugitive was 
 sent on his way in the morning, disguised in an old coat 
 belonging to the master of the house, who was away at 
 the war. 
 
 Raina (rising with marked stateliness) . Your life in 
 the camp has made you coarse, Sergius. I did not think 
 you would have repeated such a story before me. (She 
 turns away coldly.) 
 
 Catherine (also rising). She is right, Sergius. If 
 such women exist, we should be spared the knowledge 
 of them.
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 35 
 
 Petkoff. Pooh! nonsense! what does it matter? 
 
 Sergius (ashamed) . No, PetkofF: I was wrong. (To 
 Raina, with earnest humility.) I beg your pardon. I 
 have behaved abominably. Forgive me, Raina. (She 
 hows reservedly.) And you, too, madam. (Catherine 
 hows graciously and sits down. He proceeds solemnly, 
 again addressing Raina.) The glimpses I have had of 
 the seamy side of life during the last few months have 
 made me cynical; but I should not have brought my 
 cynicism here — least of all into your presence, Raina. 
 I — (Here, turning to the others, he is evidently about 
 to begin a long speech when the Major interrupts 'him.) 
 
 Petkoff. Stuff and nonsense, Sergius. That's quite 
 enough fuss about nothing: a soldier's daughter should 
 be able to stand up without flinching to a little strong 
 conversation. (He rises.) Come: it's time for us to get 
 to business. We have to make up our minds how those 
 three regiments are to get back to Phillipopolis : — there's 
 no forage for them on the Sophia route. (He goes 
 towards the house.) Come along. (Sergius is about to 
 follow him when Catherine rises and intervenes.) 
 
 Catherine. Oh, Paul, can't you spare Sergius for a 
 few moments.'' Raina has hardly seen him yet. Per- 
 haps I can help you to settle about the regiments. 
 
 Sergius (protesting). My dear madam, impossible: 
 you 
 
 Catherine (stopping him playfully). You stay here, 
 my dear Sergius: there's no hurry. I have a word or 
 two to say to Paul. (Sergius instantly bows and steps 
 back.) Now, dear (taking Petkoff 's arm), come and see 
 the electric bell. 
 
 Petkoff. Oh, very well, very well. (They go into 
 the house together affectionately. Sergius, left alone 
 with Raina, looks anxiously at her, fearing that she may 
 be still offended. She smiles, and stretches out her arms 
 to him.) 
 
 (Exit R. into house, followed by Catherine.)
 
 36 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 Sergius (hastening to her, hut refraining from touch- 
 ing her without express permission^. Am I forgiven? 
 
 Raina (placing her hands on his shoulder as she looks 
 up at him with admiration and worship). My hero! My 
 king. 
 
 Sergius. My queen ! ( J/e kisses her on the forehead 
 with holy awe.} 
 
 Raina. How I have envied you, Sergius ! You have 
 been out in the world, on the field of battle, able to prove 
 yourself there worthy of any woman in the world ; whilst 
 I have had to sit at home inactive, — dreaming — useless 
   — doing nothing that could give me the right to call 
 myself worthy of any man. 
 
 Sergius. Dearest, all my deeds have been yours. You 
 inspired me. I have gone through the war like a knight 
 in a tournament with his lady looking on at him ! 
 
 Raina. And you have never been absent from my 
 thoughts for a moment. (Very solemnly.) Sergius: I 
 think we two have found the higher love. When I think 
 of you, I feel that I could never do a base deed, or think 
 an ignoble thought. 
 
 Sergius. My lady, and my saint ! (Clasping her rev- 
 erently.) 
 
 Raina (returning his embrace). My lord and my 
 
 g 
 
 Sergius. Sh — sh ! Let me be the worshipper, dear. 
 
 You little know how unworthy even the best man is of a 
 girl's pure passion ! 
 
 Raina. I trust you. I love you. You will never dis- 
 appoint me, Sergius. (Louka is heard singing within the 
 house. Tliey quickly release each other.) Hush! I 
 can't pretend to talk indifferently before her: my heart 
 is too full. (Louka comes from the house with her tray. 
 She goes to the table, and begins to clear it, with her 
 hack turned to them.) I will go and get my hat; and 
 then we can go out until lunch time. Wouldn't you like 
 that.?
 
 Act n Arms and the Man 37 
 
 Sergius. Be quick. If you are away five minutes, it 
 will seem five hours. (Raina runs to the top of the steps 
 and turns there to exchange a look rvith him and rvave 
 him a kiss with both hands. He looks after her with 
 emotion for a moment, then turns slowly away, his face 
 radiant with the exultation of the scene which has just 
 passed. The movement shifts his field of vision, into the 
 corner of which there now comes the tail of Louka's 
 double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a 
 stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache 
 nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, 
 striking the ground with his heels in something of a 
 cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, 
 opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what the 
 higher love is } 
 
 LouKA (^astonished). No, sir. 
 
 Sergius. Very fatiguing thing to keep up for any 
 length of time, Louka. One feels the need of some relief 
 after it. 
 
 LouKA (innocently). Perhaps you would like some 
 coffee, sir.f* (She stretches her hand across the table for 
 the coffee pot.) 
 
 Sergius (taking her hand). Thank you, Louka. 
 
 LouKA (pretending to pull). Oh, sir, you know I 
 didn't mean that. I'm surprised at you! 
 
 Sergius (coming clear of the table and drawing her 
 rvith him). I am surprised at myself, Louka. What 
 would Sergius, the hero of Slivnitza, say if he saw me 
 now? What would Sergius, the apostle of the higher 
 love, say if he saw me now? What would the half dozen 
 Sergiuses who keep popping in and out of this handsome 
 figure of mine say if they caught us here? (Letting go 
 her hand and slipping his arm dexterously round her 
 waist.) Do you consider my figure handsome, Louka? 
 
 LouKA. Let me go, sir. I shall be disgraced. (She 
 struggles: he holds her inexorably.) Oh, will you let 
 go?
 
 38 Arms and the INIan Act II 
 
 Sergius {looking straight into her eyes). No. 
 
 LouKA. Then stand back where we can't be seen. 
 Have you no common sense? 
 
 Sergius. Ah, that's reasonable. {He takes her into 
 the stahleyard gateway, where they are hidden from the 
 house.) 
 
 LouKA {complaining) . I may have been seen from the 
 windows : Miss Raina is sure to be spying about after you. 
 
 Sergius {stung — letting her go). Take care, Louka. 
 I may be worthless enough to betray the higher love; 
 but do not you insult it. 
 
 LouKA {demurely). Not for the world, sir, I'm sure. 
 May I go on with my work please, now? 
 
 Sergius {again putting his arm round her). You are 
 a provoking little witch, Louka. If you were in love 
 with me, would you spy out of windows on me? 
 
 LouKA. Well, you see, sir, since you say you are half 
 a dozen different gentlemen all at once, I should have a 
 great deal to look after. 
 
 Sergius {charmed). Witty as well as pretty. {He 
 tries to kiss her.) 
 
 LouKA {avoiding him). No, I don't want your kisses. 
 Gentlefolk are all alike — you making love to me behind 
 Miss Raina's back, and she doing the same behind yours. 
 
 Sergius {recoiling a step). Louka! 
 
 LouKA. It shews how little you really care ! 
 
 Sergius {dropping his familiarity and speaking with 
 freezing politeness). If our conversation is to continue, 
 Louka, you will please remember that a gentleman does 
 not discuss the conduct of the lady he is engaged to with 
 her maid. 
 
 LouKA. It's so hard to know what a gentleman con- 
 siders right. I thought from your trying to kiss me that 
 you had given up being so particular. 
 
 Sergius {turning from her and striking his forehead 
 as he comes back into the garden from the gateway). 
 Devil! devil!
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 39 
 
 LouKA. Ha ! ha ! I expect one of the six of you is 
 very like me, sir, though I am only Miss Raina's maid. 
 (^She goes hack to her work at the table, taking no fur- 
 ther notice of him.) 
 
 Sergius (speaking to himself). Which of the six is 
 the real man ? — that's the question that torments me. 
 One of them is a hero, another a buffoon, another a hum- 
 bug, another perhaps a bit of a blackguard. (He pauses 
 and looks furtively at Louka, as he adds with deep bit- 
 terness.) And one, at least, is a coward — jealous, like 
 all cowards. (He goes to the table.) Louka. 
 
 LouKA. Yes? 
 
 Sergius. Who is my rival? 
 
 Louka. You shall never get that out of me, for love 
 or money. 
 
 Sergius. Why ? 
 
 Louka. Never mind why. Besides, you would tell 
 that I told you ; and I should lose my place. 
 
 Sergius (holding out his right hand iji affirmation). 
 No; on the honor of a — (He checks himself, and his 
 hand drops nerveless as he concludes, sardonically) — of 
 a man capable of behaving as I have been behaving for 
 the last fiv e minutes. Who is he ? 
 
 Louka. I don't know. I never saw him. I only 
 heard his voice through the door of her room. 
 
 Sergius. Damnation ! How dare you ? 
 
 Louka (retreating). Oh, I mean no harm: you've no 
 right to take up my words like that. The mistress knows 
 all about it. And I tell you that if that gentleman ever 
 comes here again. Miss Raina will marry him, whether 
 he likes it or not. I know the difference between the 
 sort of manner you and she put on before one another 
 and the real manner. (Sergius shivers as if she had 
 stabbed him. Then, setting his face like iron, he strides 
 grimly to her, and grips her above the elbows with both 
 hands.) 
 
 Sergius. Now listen you to me !
 
 40 Arms and the JMan Act II 
 
 LouKA (wincing). Not so tight: you're hurting 
 me! 
 
 Sergius. That doesn't matter. You have stained my 
 honor by making me a party to your eavesdropping. 
 And you have betrayed your mistress 
 
 LouKA (writhing). Please 
 
 Sergius. That shews that you are an abominable little 
 clod of common clay, with the soul of a servant. (^He 
 lets her go as if she were an unclean thing, and turns 
 away, dusting his hands of her, to the bench by the wall, 
 where he sits down with averted head, meditating gloom- 
 ily.) 
 
 LouKA (whimpering angrily with her hands up her 
 sleeves, feeling her bruised arms). You know how to 
 hurt with your tongue as well as with your hands. But 
 I don't care, now I've found out that whatever clay I'm 
 made of, you're made of the same. As for her, she's a 
 liar; and her fine airs are a cheat; and I'm worth six of 
 her. (She shakes the pain off hardily; tosses her head; 
 and sets to work to put the things on the tray. He looks 
 doubtfully at her once or twice. She finishes packing 
 the tray, and laps the cloth over the edges, so as to carry 
 all out together. As she stoops to lift it, he rises.) 
 
 Sergius. Louka ! (She stops and looks defiantly at 
 him ivith the tray in her hands.) A gentleman has no 
 right to hurt a woman under any circumstances. (With 
 profound humility, uncovering his head.) I beg your 
 pardon. 
 
 LouKA. That sort of apology may satisfy a lady. Of 
 what use is it to a servant? 
 
 Sergius (thus rudely crossed in his chivalry, throws it 
 off with a bitter laugh and says slightingly). Oh, you 
 wish to be paid for the hurt.'' (He puts on his shako, 
 and takes some money from his pocket.) 
 
 LouKA (her eyes filling with tears in spite of herself). 
 No, I want my hurt made well. 
 
 Sergius (sobered by her tone). How?
 
 Act II Arms and the Man 41 
 
 (She rolls up her left sleeve; clasps her arm with the 
 thumb and fingers of her right hand; and looks down at 
 the bruise. Then she raises her head and looks straight 
 at him. Finally, with a superb gesture she presents her 
 arm to be kissed. Amazed, he looks at her; at the arm, 
 at her again; hesitates; and then, with shuddering inten- 
 sity, exclaims^ Never ! (and gets away as far as possible 
 from her.) 
 
 {Her arm drops. Without a word, and with unaffected 
 dignity, she takes her tray, and is approaching the house 
 when Raina returns wearing a hat and jacket in the 
 height of the Vienna fashion of the previous year, 1885. 
 Louka makes way proudly for her, and then goes into 
 the house.) 
 
 Raina. I'm ready! What's the matter? (Gaily.) 
 Have you been flirting with Louka? 
 
 Sergius (hastily). No, no. How can you think such 
 a thing? 
 
 Raina (ashamed of herself). Forgive me, dear: it 
 was only a jest. I am so happy to-day. 
 
 (He goes quickly to her, and kisses her hand remorse- 
 fully. Catherine comes out and calls to them from the 
 top of the steps.) 
 
 Catherine (coming down to them). I am sorry to 
 disturb you, children; but Paul is distracted over those 
 three regiments. He does not know how to get them to 
 Phillipopolis; and he objects to every suggestion of 
 mine. You must go and help him, Sergius. He is in 
 the library. 
 
 Raina (disappointed) . But we are just going out for 
 a walk. 
 
 Sergius. I shall not be long. Wait for me just five 
 minutes. (He runs up the steps to the door.) 
 
 Raina (following him to the foot of the steps and 
 looking up at him with timid coquetry). I shall go 
 round and wait in full view of the library windows. Be 
 sure you draw father's attention to me. If you are a
 
 42 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 moment longer than five minutes^ I shall go in and fetch 
 you, regiments or no regiments. 
 
 Sergius {laughing). Very well. {He goes in. Raina 
 watches him until he is out of her sight. Then, with a 
 perceptible relaxation of manner, she begins to pace up 
 and down about the garden in a brown study.) 
 
 Catherine. Imagine their meeting that Swiss and 
 hearing the whole story ! The very first thing your 
 father asked for was the old coat we sent him off in. A 
 nice mess you have got us into ! 
 
 Raina {gazing thoughtfully at the gravel as she 
 walks). The little beast! 
 
 Catherine. Little beast! What little beast? 
 
 Raina. To go and tell. Oh, if I had him here, I'd 
 stuff him with chocolate creams till he couldn't ever 
 speak again ! 
 
 Catherine. Don't talk nonsense. Tell me the truth, 
 Raina. How long was he in your room before you came 
 to me.'' 
 
 Raina {whisking round and recommencing her march 
 in the opposite direction). Oh, I forget. 
 
 Catherine. You cannot forget ! Did he really climb 
 up after the soldiers were gone, or was he there when 
 that officer searched the room ? 
 
 Raina. No. Yes, I think he must have been there 
 then. 
 
 Catherine. You think! Oh, Raina, Raina! Will 
 anything ever make you straightforward? If Sergius 
 finds out, it is all over between you. 
 
 Raina {with cool impertinence). Oh, I know Sergius 
 is your pet. I sometimes wish you could marry him 
 instead of me. You would just suit him. You would 
 pet hhn, and spoil him, and mother him to perfection. 
 
 Catherine {opening her eyes very widely indeed). 
 Well, upon my word ! 
 
 Raina {capriciously — half to herself). I always feel 
 a longing to do or say something dreadful to him — to
 
 Act II Arms and the Man .43 
 
 shock his propriety — to scandalize the five senses out of 
 him! {To Catherine perversely.) I don't care whether 
 he finds out about the chocolate cream soldier or not. I 
 half hope he may. {She again turns flippantly arvay 
 and strolls up the path to the corner of the house.) 
 
 Catherine. And what should I be able to say to your 
 father, pray.^ 
 
 Raina {over her shoulder, from the top of the two 
 steps). Oh, poor father! As if he could help himself! 
 {She turns the corner and passes out of sight.) 
 
 Catherine {looking after her, her fingers itching). 
 Oh, if you were only ten years younger ! {Louka comes 
 from the house with a salver, which she carries hanging 
 down by her side.) Well? 
 
 LouKA. There's a gentleman just called, madam — a 
 Servian officer 
 
 Catherine {flaming). A Servian! How dare he — 
 {Checking herself bitterly.) Oh, I forgot. We are at 
 peace now. I suppose we shall have them calling every 
 day to pay their compliments. Well, if he is an officer 
 why don't you tell your master? He is in the library 
 with Major Saranoff. Why do you come to me? 
 
 LouKA. But he asks for you, madam. And I don't 
 think he knows who you are: he said the lady of the 
 house. He gave me this little ticket for you. {She takes 
 a card out of her bosom; puts it on the salver and offers 
 it to Catherine.) 
 
 Catherine {reading). "Captain Bluntschli!" That's 
 a German name. 
 
 LouKA. Swiss, madam, I think. 
 
 Catherine {with a bound that makes Louka jump 
 back). Swiss! What is he like? 
 
 LouKA {timidly). He has a big carpet bag, madam. 
 
 Catherine. Oh, Heavens, he's come to return the 
 coat ! Send him away — say we're not at home — ask him 
 to leave his address and I'll write to him — Oh, stop: 
 that will never do. Wait! {She throws herself into a
 
 44 Arms and the INlan Act II 
 
 chair to think it out. Louka waits.) The master and 
 Major SaranofF are busy in the library, aren't they? 
 
 Louka. Yes, madam. 
 
 Catherine (decisively). Bring the gentleman out 
 here at once. (Imperatively.) And be very polite to 
 him. Don't delay. Here (impatiently snatching the 
 salver from her): leave that here; and go straight back 
 to him. 
 
 Louka. Yes, madam. (Going.) 
 
 Catherine. Louka ! 
 
 Louka (stopping). Yes, madam. 
 
 Catherine. Is the library door shut? 
 
 Louka. I think so, madam. 
 
 Catherine. If not, shut it as you pass through. 
 
 Louka. Yes, madam. (Going.) 
 
 Catherine. Stop! (Louka stops.) He will have to 
 go out that way (indicating the gate of the stable yard). 
 Tell Nicola to bring his bag here after him. Don't for- 
 get. 
 
 Louka (surprised). His bag? 
 
 Catherine. Yes, here, as soon as possible. (Vehe- 
 mently.) Be quick ! (Louka runs into the house. Cath- 
 erine snatches her apron off and throws it behind a bush. 
 She then takes up the salver and uses it as a mirror, 
 with the result that the handkerchief tied round her head 
 follows the apron. A touch to her hair and a shake to 
 her dressing gown makes her presentable.) Oh, how — 
 how — how can a man be such a fool! Such a moment 
 to select! (Louka appears at the door of the house, an- 
 nouncing " Captain Bluntschli ; " and standing aside at 
 the top of the steps to let him pass before she goes in 
 again. He is the man of the adventure in Raina's room, 
 lie is now clean, well brushed, smartly uniformed, and 
 out of trouble, but still unmistakably the same man. The 
 moment Louka's back is turned, Catherine swoops on him 
 with hurried, urgent, coaxing appeal.) Captain Blunt- 
 schli, I am very glad to see you; but you must leave
 
 Act it Arms and the Man 45 
 
 this house at once. {He raises his eyebrows.) My hus- 
 band has just returned, with my future son-in-law; and 
 they know nothing. If they did, the consequences would 
 be terrible. You are a foreigner: you do not feel our 
 national animosities as we do. We still hate the Ser- 
 vians: the only effect of the peace on my husband is to 
 make him feel like a lion baulked of his prey. If he 
 discovered our secret, he would never forgive me; and 
 my daughter's life would hardly be safe. Will you, like 
 the chivalrous gentleman and soldier you are, leave at 
 once before he finds you here? 
 
 Bluntschli {disappointed, but philosophical). At 
 once, gracious lady. I only came to thank you and re- 
 turn the coat you lent me. If you will alloAV me to take 
 it out of my bag and leave it with your servant as I pass 
 out, I need detain you no further. {He turns to go into 
 the house.) 
 
 Catherine {catching him by the sleeve). Oh, you 
 must not think of going back that way. {Coaxing him 
 across to the stable gates.) This is the shortest way out. 
 Many thanks. So glad to have been of service to you. 
 Good-bye. 
 
 Bluntschli. But my bag? 
 
 Catherine. It will be sent on. You will leave me 
 your address. 
 
 Bluntschli. True. Allow me. {He takes out his 
 card-case, and stops to write his address, keeping Cath- 
 erine in an agony of impatience. As he hands her the 
 card, Petkoff, hatless, rushes from the house in a fluster 
 of hospitality, followed by Sergius.) 
 
 Petkoff {as he hurries down the steps). My dear 
 Captain Bluntschli 
 
 Catherine. Oh Heavens ! {She sinks on the seat 
 against the wall.) 
 
 Petkoff {too preoccupied to notice her as he shakes 
 Bluntschli's hand heartily). Those stupid people of 
 mine thought I was out here, instead of in the — haw ! —
 
 46 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 library. (77e cannot mention the library rvithout betray- 
 ing how proud he is of it.) I saw you through the win- 
 dow. I was wondering why you didn't come in. Sar- 
 anofF is with me: you remember him, don't you? 
 
 Sergius {saluting humorously, and then offering his 
 hand with great charm of maimer). Welcome, our friend 
 the enemy ! 
 
 Petkoff. No longer the enemy, happily. (Rather 
 anxiously.) I hope j'ou've come as a friend, and not on 
 business. 
 
 Catherine. Oh, quite as a friend, Paul. I was just 
 asking Captain Bluntschli to stay to lunch; but he de- 
 clares he must go at once. 
 
 Sergius {sardonically). Impossible, Bluntschli. We 
 want 3"ou here badly. We have to send on three cavalry 
 regiments to Phillipopolis ; and we don't in the least 
 know how to do it. 
 
 Bluntchli (suddenly attentive and business-like). 
 Phillipopolis ! The forage is the trouble, eh ? 
 
 Petkoff (eagerly). Yes, that's it. (To Sergius.) 
 He sees the whole thing at once. 
 
 Bluntschli. I think I can shew you how to manage 
 that. 
 
 Sergius. Invaluable man! Come along! (Tower- 
 ing over Bluntschli, he puts his hand on his shoulder 
 and takes him to the steps, Petkoff following. As Blunt- 
 schli puts his foot on the first step, Raina comes out of 
 the house.) 
 
 Raina (completely losing her presence of mind). Oh, 
 the chocolate cream soldier ! 
 
 (Bluntschli stands rigid. Sergius, amazed, looks at 
 Raina, then at Petkoff, who looks back at him and then 
 at his wife.) 
 
 Catherine (with commanding presence of mind). 
 My dear Raina, don't you see that we have a guest here 
 — Captain Bluntschli, one of our new Servian friends .'' 
 
 (Raina bows; Bluntschli bows.)
 
 Act II Arms and the INIan 47 
 
 Raina. How silly of me ! (She comes down into the 
 centre of the group, between Bluntschli and Petkoff.) 
 I made a beautiful ornament this morning for the ice 
 pudding; and that stupid Nicola has just put down a 
 pile of plates on it and spoiled it. (To Bluntschli, win- 
 ningly.) I hope you didn't think that you were the 
 chocolate cream soldier^ Captain Bluntschli. 
 
 Bluntschli (laughing). I assure you I did. (Steal- 
 ing a whimsical glance at her.) Your explanation was a 
 relief. 
 
 Petkoff (suspiciously, to Raina). And since when, 
 pray, have you taken to cooking? 
 
 Catherine. Oh, whilst you were away. It is her 
 latest fancy. 
 
 Petkoff (testily). And has Nicola taken to drink- 
 ing? He used to be careful enough. First he shews 
 Captain Bluntschli out here when he knew quite well I 
 was in the — hum ! — library ; and then he goes downstairs 
 and breaks Raina's chocolate soldier. He must — (At 
 this moment Nicola appears at the top of the steps R., 
 with a carpet bag. He descends; places it respectfully 
 before Bluntschli; and waits for further orders. General 
 amazement. Nicola, unconscious of the effect he is pro- 
 ducing, looks perfectly satisfied with himself. When 
 Petkoff recovers his power of speech, he breaks out at 
 him with) Are you mad, Nicola? 
 
 Nicola (taken aback). Sir? 
 
 Petkoff. What have you brought that for? 
 
 Nicola. My lady's orders, sir. Louka told me 
 that 
 
 Catherine (interrupting him). My orders! Why 
 should I order you to bring Captain Bluntschli's luggage 
 out here? What are you tliinking of, Nicola? 
 
 Nicola (after a moment's bewilderment, picking up 
 the bag as he addresses Bluntschli with the very perfec- 
 tion of servile discretion). I beg your pardon, sir, I 
 am sure. (To Catherine.) My fault, madam! I hope
 
 48 Arms and the Man Act II 
 
 you'll overlook it ! {He hows, and is going to the steps 
 with the bag, when Petkoff addresses him angrily.) 
 
 Petkoff. You'd better go and slam that bag, too, 
 down on Miss Raina's ice pudding! (This is too much 
 for Nicola. The bag drops from his hands on Petkoff's 
 corns, eliciting a roar of anguish from him.) Begone, 
 you butter-fingered donkey. 
 
 Nicola (snatching up the bag, and escaping into the 
 house). Yes, sir. 
 
 Catherine. Oh, never mind, Paul, don't be angry! 
 
 Petkoff (muttering). Scoundrel. He's got out of 
 hand while I was away. I'll teach him. (Recollecting 
 his guest.) Oh, well, never mind. Come, Bluntschli, 
 let's have no more nonsense about you having to go 
 away. You know very well you're not going back to 
 Switzerland yet. Until you do go back you'll stay with 
 us, 
 
 Raina. Oh, do. Captain Blimtschli. 
 
 Petkoff (to Catherine). Now, Catherine, it's of you 
 that he's afraid. Press him and he'll stay. 
 
 Catherine. Of course I shall be only too delighted 
 if (appealingly) Captain Bluntschli really wishes to 
 stay. He knows my wishes. 
 
 Bluntschli (in his driest military manner). I am 
 at madame's orders. 
 
 Sergius (cordially). That settles it! 
 
 Petkoff (heartily). Of course! 
 
 Raina. You see, you must stay! 
 
 Bluntschli (smiling). Well, if I must, I must! 
 
 (Gesture of despair from Catherine.) 
 
 END of act II.
 
 ACT III 
 
 In the library after lunch. It is not much of a library, 
 its literary equipment consisting of a single fixed shelf 
 stocked niih old paper covered novels, broken backed, 
 coffee stained, torn and thumbed, and a couple of little 
 hanging shelves with a ferv gift books on them, the rest 
 of the wall space being occupied by trophies of war and 
 the chase. But it is a most comfortable sitting-room. A 
 row of three large windows in the front of the house 
 shew a mountain panorama, which is just now seen in 
 one of its softest aspects in the melloiving afternoon 
 light. In the left hand corner, a square earthenware 
 stove, a perfect tower of colored pottery, rises nearly to 
 the ceiling and guarantees plenty of warmth. The otto- 
 man in the middle is a circular bank of decorated cush- 
 ions, and the window seats are well upholstered divans. 
 Little Turkish tables, one of them with an elaborate 
 hookah on it, and a screen to match them, complete the 
 handsome effect of the furnishing. There is one object, 
 however, which is hopelessly out of keeping with itst. 
 surroundings. This is a small kitchen table, much the 
 worse for wear, fitted as a writing table with an old 
 canister full of pens, an eggcup filled with ink, and a 
 deplorable scrap of severely used pink blotting paper. 
 
 At the side of this table, which stands on the right, 
 Bluntsrhli is hard at work, with a couple of maps before 
 him, writing orders. At the head of it sits Sergius, who 
 is also supposed to be at work, but who is actually gnaw- 
 ing the feather of a pen, and contemplating Bluntschli's 
 quick, sure, businesslike progress with a mixture of 
 envious irritation at his own incapacity, and awestruck 
 wonder at an ability which seems to him almost miracu- 
 
 49
 
 50 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 lous, though its prosaic character forbids him to esteem 
 it. The major is comfortably established on the otto- 
 man, with a newspaper in his hand and the tube of 
 the hookah within his reach. Catherine sits at the stove, 
 with her back to them, embroidering. Raina, reclining 
 on the divan under the left hand window, is gazing in 
 a daydream out at the Balkan landscape, with a neg-- 
 lected novel in her lap. 
 
 The door is on the left. The button of the electric 
 bell is between the door and the fireplace. 
 
 Petkoff {looking up from his paper to watch how 
 they are getting on at the table). Are you sure I can't 
 help you in any way, Bluntschli? 
 
 Bluntschli {without interrupting his writing or 
 looking up). Quite sure, thank you. SaranofF and I 
 will manage it. 
 
 Sergius {grimly). Yes: we'll manage it. He finds 
 out what to do ; draws up the orders ; and I sign 'em. 
 Division of labour, Major. {Bluntschli passes him a pa- 
 per.) Another one? Thank you. {He plants the papers 
 squarely before him; sets his chair carefully parallel to 
 them; and signs with the air of a man resolutely per- 
 forming a difficult and dangerous feat.) This hand is 
 more accustomed to the sword than to the pen. 
 
 Petkoff. It's very good of you, Bluntschli, it is 
 indeed, to let yourself be put upon in this way. Now 
 are you quite sure I can do nothing? 
 
 Catherine {in a low, warning tone). You can stop 
 interrupting, Paul. 
 
 Petkoff {starting and looking round at her). Eh? 
 Oh ! Quite right, my love, quite right. {He takes his 
 newspaper up, but lets it drop again.) Ah, you haven't 
 been campaigning, Catherine: you don't know how pleas- 
 ant it is for us to sit here, after a good lunch, with 
 nothing to do but enjcj^ ourselves. There's only one 
 thing I want to make me thoroughly comfortable.
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 51 
 
 Catherine. What is that? 
 
 Petkoff. My old coat. I'm not at home in this one: 
 I feel as if I were on parade. 
 
 Catherine. My dear Paul, how absurd you are about 
 that old coat! It must be hanging in the blue closet 
 where you left it. 
 
 Petkoff. My dear Catherine^ I tell you I've looked 
 there. Am I to believe my own eyes or not? (Cath- 
 erine quietly rises and presses the button of the electric 
 bell by the fireplace.) What are you shewing off that 
 bell for. (She looks at him majestically, and silently 
 resumes her chair and her needlework.) My dear: if 
 you think the obstinacy of your sex can make a coat out 
 of two old dressing gowns of Raina's, your waterproof, 
 and my mackintosh, you're mistaken. That's exactly 
 what the blue closet contains at present. (^Nicola pre- 
 sents himself.) 
 
 Catherine (unmoved by Petkoff's sally). Nicola: 
 go to the blue closet and bring your master's old coat here 
 — the braided one he usually wears in the house. 
 
 Nicola. Yes, madam. (Nicola goes out.) 
 
 Petkoff. Catherine. 
 
 Catherine. Yes, Paul? 
 
 Petkoff. I bet you any piece of jewellery you like 
 to order from Sophia against a week's housekeeping 
 money, that the coat isn't there. 
 
 Catherine. Done, Paul. 
 
 Petkoff (excited by the prospect of a gamble). 
 Come: here's an opportunity for some sport. Who'll 
 bet on it? Bluntschli: I'll give you six to one. 
 
 Bluntschli (imperturbably). It would be robbing 
 you. Major. Madame is sure to be right. (Without look- 
 ing up, he passes another batch of papers to Sergius.) 
 
 Sergius (also excited). Bravo, Switzerland ! Major: 
 I bet my best charger against an Arab mare for Raina 
 that Nicola finds the coat in the blue closet. 
 
 Petkoff (eagerly). Your best char
 
 52 Arms and the Man Acr III 
 
 Catherine {hastily interrupting him^. Don't be 
 foolish, Paul. An Arabian mare will cost you 50,000 
 levas. 
 
 Raina {suddenly coming out of her picturesque rev- 
 ery^. Really, mother, if you are going to take the 
 jewellery, I don't see why you should grudge me my 
 Arab. 
 
 (Nicola comes back with the coat and brings it to 
 Petkoff, who can hardly believe his eyes.) 
 
 Catherine. Where was it, Nicola? 
 
 Nicola. Hanging in the blue closet, madam. 
 
 Petkoff. Well, I am d 
 
 Catherine {stopping him), Paul! 
 
 Petkoff. I could have sworn it wasn't there. Age 
 is beginning to tell on me. I'm getting hallucinations. 
 {To Nicola.) Here: help me to change. Excuse me, 
 Bluntschli. {He begins changing coats, Nicola acting 
 as valet.) Remember: I didn't take that bet of yours, 
 Sergius. You'd better give Raina that Arab steed your- 
 self, since you've roused her expectations. Eh, Raina? 
 {lie looks round at her; but she is again rapt in the 
 landscape. With a little gush of paternal affection and 
 pride, he points her out to them and says) She's dream- 
 ing, as usual. 
 
 Sergius. Assuredly she shall not be the loser. 
 
 Petkoff. So much the better for her. / shan't 
 come off so cheap, I expect. {The change is now com- 
 plete. Nicola goes out with the discarded coat.) Ah, 
 now I feel at home at last. {He sits down and takes 
 his newspaper with a grunt of relief.) 
 
 Bluntschli {to Sergius, handing a paper). That's 
 the last order. 
 
 Petkoff {jumping up). What! finished? 
 
 Bluntschli. Finished. {Petkoff goes beside Ser- 
 gius; looks curiously over his left shoulder as he signs; 
 and says with childlike envy) Haven't you anything for 
 me to sign?
 
 Act in Arms and the Man 53 
 
 Bluntschli. Not necessary. His signature will do. 
 Petkoff. Ah, well, I think we've done a thunder- 
 ing good day's work. {He goes away from the table.) 
 Can I do anything more? 
 
 Bluntschli. You had better both see the fellows 
 that are to take these, {To Sergius.) Pack them off at 
 once; and shew them that I've marked on the orders the 
 time they should hand them in by. Tell them that if 
 they stop to drink or tell stories — if they're five minutes 
 late, they'll have the skin taken off their backs. 
 
 Sergius {rising indignantly). I'll say so. And if 
 one of them is man enough to spit in my face for in- 
 sulting him, I'll buy his discharge and give him a 
 pension. {He strides out, his humanity deeply out- 
 raged. ) 
 
 Bluntschli {confidentially). Just see that he talks 
 to them properly. Major, will you? 
 
 Petkoff {officiously). Quite right, Bluntschli, quite 
 right. I'll see to it. {He goes to the door importantly, 
 but hesitates on the threshold.) By the bye, Catherine, 
 you may as well come, too. They'll be far more fright- 
 ened of you than of me. 
 
 Catherine {putting down her embroidery). I dare- 
 say I had better. You will only splutter at them. {She 
 goes out, Petkoff holding the door for her and following 
 her.) 
 
 Bluntschli. What a country ! They make cannons 
 (5ut of cherry trees ; and the officers send for their wives 
 to keep discipline! {He begins to fold and docket the 
 papers. Raina, who has risen from the divan, strolls 
 down the room with her hands clasped behind her, and 
 looks mischievously at him.) 
 
 Raina. You look ever so much nicer than when we 
 Last met. {He looks up, surprised.) What have you 
 done to yourself? 
 
 Bluntschli. Washed; brushed; good night'3 sleep 
 Wid breakfast. That's all.
 
 54 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 Raina. Did you get back safely that morning? 
 
 Bluntschli. Quite, thanks. 
 
 Raina. Were they angry with you for running away 
 from Sergius's charge.'' 
 
 Bluntschli. No, they were glad; because they'd all 
 just run away themselves. 
 
 Raina (going to the table, and leaning over it towards 
 him). It must have made a lovely story for them — all 
 that about me and my room. 
 
 Bluntschli. Capital story. But I only told it to 
 one of them — a particular friend. 
 
 Raina. On whose discretion you could absolutely 
 rely ? 
 
 Bluntschli. Absolutely. 
 
 Raina. Hm! He told it all to my father and Ser- 
 gius the day you exchanged the prisoners. {She turns 
 arvay and strolls carelessly across to the other side of 
 the room.) 
 
 Bluntschli {deeply concerned and half incredulous). 
 No ! you don't mean that, do you ? 
 
 Raina (turning, with szidden earnestness). I do in- 
 deed. But they don't know that it was in this house that 
 you hid. If Sergius knew, he would challenge you and 
 kill you in a duel. 
 
 Bluntschli. Bless me ! then don't tell him. 
 
 Raina (full of reproach for his levity). Can you 
 realize what it is to me to deceive him.^ I want to be 
 quite perfect with Sergius — no meanness, no smallness, 
 no deceit. My relation to him is the one really beautiful 
 and noble part of my life. I hope you can understand 
 that. 
 
 Bluntschli (sceptically). You mean that you 
 wouldn't like him to find out that the story about the ice 
 pudding was a — a — a — You know. 
 
 Raina (wincing). Ah, don't talk of it in that flip- 
 pant way. I lied: I know it. But I did it to save 
 your life. He would have killed you. That was the
 
 Act m Arms and the INIan 55 
 
 second time I ever uttered a falsehood. (Bluntschli 
 rises quickly and looks doubtfully and somewhat severely 
 at her.) Do you remember the first time? 
 
 Bluntschli. I! No. Was I present? 
 
 Raina. Yes; and I told the officer who was search- 
 ing for you that you were not present. 
 
 Bluntschli. True. I should have remembered it. 
 
 Raina (greatly encouraged). Ah^ it is natural that 
 you should forget it first. It cost you nothing: it cost 
 me a lie ! — a lie ! ! (She sits down on the ottoman, look- 
 ing straight before her with her hands clasped on her 
 knee. Bluntschli, quite touched, goes to the ottoman with 
 a particularly reassuring and considerate air, and sits 
 down beside her.) 
 
 Bluntschli. My dear young lady, don't let this 
 worry you. Remember: I'm a soldier. Now what are the 
 two things that happen to a soldier so often that he 
 comes to think nothing of them? One is hearing people 
 tell lies (Raina recoils) : the other is getting his life 
 saved in all sorts of ways by all sorts of people. 
 
 Raina (rising in indignant protest). And so he be- 
 oomes a creature incapable of faith and of gratitude. 
 
 Bluntschli (making a wry face). Do you like 
 gratitude? I don't. If pity is akin to love, gratitude is 
 akin to the other thing. 
 
 Raina. Gratitude! (Turning on him.) If you are 
 incapable of gratitude you are incapable of any noble 
 sentiment. Even animals are grateful. Oh, I see now 
 exactly what you think of me ! You were not surprised 
 to hear me lie. To you it was something I probably did 
 every day — every hour. That is how men think of 
 women. (She walks up the room melodramatically.) 
 
 Bluntschli (dubiously). There's reason in every- 
 thing. You said you'd told only two lies in your whole 
 life. Dear young lady: isn't that rather a short al- 
 lowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but 
 it wouldn't last me a whole morning.
 
 56 Arms and the Man Act m 
 
 Rain A (staring haughtily at him). Do you know, 
 sir, that you are insulting me? 
 
 Bluntschli. I can't help it. When you get into 
 that noble attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I 
 admire you; but I find it impossible to believe a single 
 word you say. 
 
 Raina {superbly'). Captain Bluntschli! 
 
 Bluntschli (unmoved). Yes? 
 
 Raina (coming a little towards him, as if she could 
 not believe her senses). Do you mean what you said 
 just now? Do you know what you said just now? 
 
 Bluntschli. I do. 
 
 Raina (gasping). I! I!!! (She points to herself 
 incredulously , meaning " 1, Raina Petkoff, tell lies! " 
 He meets her gaze unflinchingly. She suddenly sits 
 down beside him, and adds, with a complete change of 
 manner from the heroic to the familiar) How did you 
 find me out? 
 
 Bluntschli (promptly). Instinct, dear young lady. 
 Instinct, and experience of the world. 
 
 Raina (wonderingly). Do you know, you are the 
 first man I ever met who did not take me seriously? 
 
 Bluntschli. You mean, don't you, that I am the 
 first man that has ever taken you quite seriously? 
 
 Raina. Yes, I suppose I do mean that. (Cosily, 
 quite at her ease with him.) How strange it is to be 
 talked to in such a way! You know, I've always gone 
 on like that — I mean the noble attitude and the thrilling 
 voice. I did it when I was a tiny child to my nurse. 
 She believed in it. I do it before my parents. They 
 believe in it. I do it before Sergius. He believes in it. 
 
 Bluntschli. Yes: he's a little in that line himself, 
 isn't he? 
 
 Raina (startled) . Do you think so? 
 
 Bluntschli. You know him better than I do. 
 
 Raina. I wonder — I wonder is he? If I thought 
 that — ! (Discouraged.) Ah, well, what does it matter,^
 
 Act m Arms and the Man 57 
 
 I suppose^ now that you've found me out, you despise 
 me. 
 
 Bluntschli (^warmly, rising). No, my dear young 
 lady, no, no, no a thousand times. It's part of your 
 youth — part of your charm. I'm like all the rest of 
 them — the nurse — your parents — Sergius: I'm your in- 
 fatuated admirer. 
 
 Rain A {pleased). Really.'* 
 
 Bluntschli {slapping his breast smartly with his 
 hand, German fashion). Hand aufs Herz ! Really and 
 truly. 
 
 Raina {very happy). But what did you think of me 
 jfor giving you my portrait.'' 
 
 Bluntschli {astonished). Your portrait! You 
 never gave me your portrait. 
 
 Raina {quickly). Do you mean to say you never 
 got it.f* 
 
 Bluntschli. No. {He sits down beside her, with 
 renewed interest, and says, with some complacency.) 
 When did you send it to me} 
 
 Raina {indignantly) . I did not send it to you. {She 
 turns her head away, and adds, reluctantly.) It was in 
 the pocket of that coat. 
 
 Bluntschli {pursing his lips and rounding his eyes). 
 Oh-o-oh! I never found it. It must be there still. 
 
 Raina {springing up). There still! — for my father 
 to find the first time he puts his hand in his pocket! 
 Oh, how could you be so stupid.'' 
 
 Bluntschli {rising also). It doesn't matter: it's 
 only a photograph: how can he tell who it was intended 
 for? Tell him he put it there himself. 
 
 Raina {impatiently). Yes, that is so clever — so 
 clever ! What shall I do ? 
 
 Bluntschli. Ah, I see. You wrote something on it. 
 That was rash ! 
 
 Raina {annoyed almost to tears). Oh, to have done 
 such a thing for you, who care no more — except to
 
 58 Arms and the Man Act IU 
 
 laugh at me — oh! Are you sure nobody has touched 
 it? 
 
 Bluntschli. Well, I can't be quite sure. You see 
 I couldn't carry it about with me all the time: one can't 
 take much luggage on active service. 
 
 Raina. What did you do with it? 
 
 Bluntschli. When I got through to Peerot I had 
 to put it in safe keeping somehow. I thought of the 
 railway cloak room; but that's the surest place to get 
 looted in modern warfare. So I pawned it. 
 
 Raina. Pawned it!!! 
 
 Bluntschli. I know it doesn't sound nice; but it 
 was much the safest plan. I redeemed it the day before 
 yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker 
 cleared out the pockets or not. 
 
 Raina {furious — throwing the words right into his 
 face). You have a low, shopkeeping mind. You think 
 of things that would never come into a gentleman's head. 
 
 Bluntschli (phlegmatically). That's the Swiss na- 
 tional character, dear lady. 
 
 Raina. Oh, I wish I had never met you. (She 
 flounces away and sits at the window fuming.) 
 
 Louka comes in with a heap of letters and telegrams 
 on her salver, and crosses, with her bold, free gait, to 
 the table. Her left sleeve is looped up to the shoulder 
 with a brooch, shewing her naked arm, with a broad gilt 
 bracelet covering the bruise. 
 
 Louka {to Bluntschli). For you. {She empties the 
 salver recklessly on the table.) The messenger is wait- 
 ing. {She is determined not to be civil to a Servian, 
 even if she must bring him his letters.) 
 
 Bluntschli {to Raina). Will you excuse me: the 
 last postal delivery that reached me was three weeks ago. 
 These are the subsequent accumulations. Four telegrams 
 — a week old. {He opens one.) Oho! Bad news! 
 
 Raina {rising and advancing a little remorsefully). 
 Bad news?
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 59 
 
 Bluntschli. My father's dead. {He looks at the 
 telegram with his lips pursed, musing on the unexpected 
 change in his arrangements.^ 
 
 Raina. Oh, how very sad ! 
 
 Bluntschli. Yes: I shall have to start for home in 
 an hour. He has left a lot of big hotels behind him 
 to be looked after. {Takes up a heavy letter in a long 
 blue envelope.) Here's a whacking letter from the 
 family solicitor. {He pulls out the enclosures and 
 glances over them.) Great Heavens ! Seventy ! Two 
 hundred! {In a crescendo of dismay.) Four hundred! 
 Four thousand!! Nine thousand six hundred !! ! What 
 on earth shall I do with them all? 
 
 Raina {timidly). Nine thousand hotels? 
 
 Bluntschli. Hotels ! Nonsense. If you only 
 knew! — oh, it's too ridiculous! Excuse me: I must give 
 my fellow orders about starting. {He leaves the room 
 hastily, with the documents in his hand.) 
 
 Louka {tauntingly). He has not much heart, that 
 Swiss, though he is so fond of the Servians. He has 
 not a word of grief for his poor father. 
 
 Raina {bitterly). Grief! — a man who has been doing 
 nothing but killing people for years ! What does he 
 care? What does any soldier care? {She goes to the 
 door, evidently restraining her tears with difflculty.) 
 
 LouKA. Major SaranofF has been fighting, too; and 
 he has plenty of heart left. {Raina, at the door, looks 
 haughtily at her and goes out.) Aha! I thought you 
 wouldn't get much feeling out of your soldier. {She is 
 following Raina when Nicola enters with an armful of 
 logs for the fire.) 
 
 Nicola {grinning amorously at her). I've been try- 
 ing all the afternon to get a minute alone with you, my 
 girl. {His countenance changes as he notices her arm.) 
 Why, what fashion is that of wearing your sleeve, child? 
 
 LouKA {proudly). My own fashion. 
 
 Nicola. Indeed! If the mistress catches you, she'll
 
 60 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 talk to you. {He throws the logs down on the ottoman, 
 and sits comfortably beside them.) 
 
 LouKA. Is that any reason why you should take it 
 on yourself to talk to me? 
 
 Nicola. Come: don't be so contrary with me. I've 
 some good news for you. {He takes out some paper 
 moneij. Louha, with an eager gleam in her eyes, comes 
 close to look at it.) See, a twenty leva bill! Sergius 
 gave me that out of pure swagger. A fool and his money 
 are soon parted. There's ten levas more. The Swiss 
 gave me that for backing up the mistress's and Raina's 
 lies about him. He's no fool, he isn't. You should 
 have heard old Catherine downstairs as polite as you 
 please to me, telling me not to mind the Major being 
 a little impatient; for they knew what a good servant 
 I was — after making a fool and a liar of me before 
 them all ! The twenty will go to our savings ; and you 
 shall have the ten to spend if you'll only talk to me 
 so as to remind me I'm a human being. I get tired 
 o^ being a servant occasionally. 
 
 LouKA {scornfully). Yes: sell your manhood for 
 thirty levas, and buy me for ten ! Keep your money. 
 You were born to be a servant. I was not. When you 
 set up your shop you will only be everybody's servant 
 instead of somebody's servant. 
 
 Nicola {picking up his logs, and going to the stove). 
 Ah, wait till you see. We shall have our evenings to our- 
 selves ; and I shall be master in my own house, I promise 
 you. {He throws the logs down and kneels at the stove.) 
 
 LouKA. You shall never be master in mine. {She 
 sits down on Sergius's chair.) 
 
 Nicola {turning, still on his knees, and squatting 
 down rather forlornly, on his calves, daunted by her im- 
 placable disdain). You have a great ambition in you, 
 Louka. Remember: if any luck comes to you, it was I 
 that made a woman of you. 
 
 LouKA. You !
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 61 
 
 Nicola (with dogged self-assertion). Yes, me. Who 
 was it made you give up wearing a couple of pounds of 
 false black hair on your head and reddening your lips 
 and cheeks like any other Bulgarian girl? I did. Who 
 taught you to trim your nails, and keeps your hands 
 clean, and be dainty about yourself, like a fine Russian 
 lady? Me! do you hear that? me! (She tosses her 
 head defiantlt/j and he rises, illhumoredly , adding more 
 coolly) I've often thought that if Raina were out of 
 the way, and you just a little less of a fool and Sergius 
 just a little more of one, you might come to be one of 
 my grandest customers, instead of only being my wife 
 and costing me money. 
 
 LouKA. I believe you would rather be my servant 
 than my husband. You would make more out of me. Oh, 
 I know that soul of yours. 
 
 Nicola (going up close to her for greater emphasis). 
 Never you mind my soul; but just listen to my advice. 
 If you want to be a lady, your present behaviour to 
 me won't do at all, unless when we're alone. It's too 
 sharp and impudent; and impudence is a sort of 
 familiarity: it shews affection for me. And don't you 
 try being high and mighty with me either. You're like 
 all country girls : you think it's genteel to treat a servant 
 the way I treat a stable-boy. That's only your igno- 
 rance; and don't you forget it. And don't be so ready 
 to defy everybody. Act as if you expected to have 
 your own way, not as if you expected to be ordered 
 about. The way to get on as a lady is the same as the 
 way to get on as a servant: you've got to know your 
 place; that's the secret of it. And you may depend on 
 me to know my place if you get promoted. Think over 
 it, my girl. I'll stand by you: one servant should always 
 stand by another. 
 
 LouKA (rising impatiently). Oh, I must behave in 
 my own way. You take all the courage out of me with 
 your cold-blooded wisdom. Go and put those logs on
 
 62 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 the fire: that's the sort of thing you understand. (Be- 
 fore Nicola can retort, Sergius comes in. He checks 
 himself a moment on seeing Louka; then goes to the 
 stove.) 
 
 Sergius (to Nicola). I am not in the way of your 
 work^ I hope. 
 
 Nicola (in a smooth, elderly manner). Oh, no, sir, 
 thank you kindly. I was only speaking to this foolish 
 girl about her habit of running up here to the library 
 whenever she gets a chance, to look at the books. That's 
 the worst of her education, sir: it gives her habits above 
 her station. (To Louka.) Make that table tidy, Louka, 
 for the Major. (He goes out sedately.) 
 
 Louka, without looking at Sergius, begins to arrange 
 the papers on the table. He crosses slowly to her, and 
 studies the arrangement of her sleeve reflectively. 
 
 Sergius. Let me see: is there a mark there.'' (He 
 turns up the bracelet and sees the bruise made by his 
 grasp. She stands motionless, not looking at him: fas- 
 cinated, but on her guard.) Ffff ! Does it hurt? 
 
 Louka. Yes. 
 
 Sergius. Shall I cure it? 
 
 Louka (instantly withdrawing herself proudly, but 
 still not looking at him). No. You cannot cure it now. 
 
 Sergius (masterfully). Quite sure? (He makes a 
 movement as if to take her in his arms.) 
 
 Louka. Don't trifle with me, please. An officer 
 should not trifle with a servant. 
 
 Sergius (touching the arm with a merciless stroke of 
 his forefinger). That was no trifle, Louka. 
 
 Louka. No. (Looking at him for the first time.) 
 Are you sorry? 
 
 Sergius (with measured emphasis, folding his arms). 
 I am never sorry. 
 
 Louka (wistfully). I wish I could believe a man 
 could be so unlike a woman as that. I wonder are you 
 really a brave man?
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 63 
 
 Sergius (unaffectedly, relaxing his attitude). Yes: 
 I am a brave man. My heart jumped like a woman's at 
 the first shot ; but in the charge I found that I was brave. 
 Yes: that at least is real about me. 
 
 LouKA. Did you find in the charge that the men 
 whose fathers are poor like mine were any less brave 
 than the men who are rich like you? 
 
 Sergius (with bitter levity). Not a bit. They all 
 slashed and cursed and yelled like heroes, Psha ! the 
 courage to rage and kill is cheap. I have an English 
 bull terrier who has as much of that sort of courage as 
 the whole Bulgarian nation, and the whole Russian na- 
 tion at its back. But he lets my groom thrash him, all 
 the same. That's your soldier all over ! No, Louka, 
 your poor men can cut throats ; but they are afraid of 
 their officers ; they put up with insults and blows ; they 
 stand by and see one another punished like children — 
 aye, and help to do it when they are ordered. And the 
 officers ! — well (with a short, bitter laugh) I am an officer. 
 Oh, (fervently) give me the man who will defy to the 
 death any power on earth or in heaven that sets itself 
 up against his own will and conscience: he alone is the 
 brave man. 
 
 LouKA. How easy it is to talk ! Men never seem 
 to me to grow up: they all have schoolboy's ideas. You 
 don't know what true courage is. 
 
 Sergius (ironically). Indeed! I am willing to be 
 instructed. 
 
 Louka. Look at me ! how much am I allowed to have 
 my own will.'' I have to get your room ready for you —   
 to sweep and dust, to fetch and carry. How could that 
 degrade me if it did not degrade you to have it done 
 for you.'' But (with subdued passion) if I were Empress 
 of Russia, above everyone in the world, then — ah, then, 
 though according to you I could shew no courage at all; 
 you should see, you should see. 
 
 Sergius. What would you do, most noble Empress ?
 
 64 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 LouKA. 1 would marry the man I loved, which no 
 other queen in Europe has the courage to do. If I loved 
 you, though you would be as far beneath me as I am 
 beneath you, I would dare to be the equal of my inferior. 
 Would you dare as much if you loved me? No: if you 
 felt the beginnings of love for me you would not let 
 it grow. You dare not: you would marry a rich man's 
 daughter because you would be afraid of what other 
 people would say of you. 
 
 Sergius (carried arvay^. You lie: it is not so, by all 
 the stars ! If I loved you, and I were the Czar himself, 
 I would set you on the throne by my side. You know 
 that I love another woman, a woman as high above you 
 as heaven is above earth. And you are jealous of her. 
 
 LouKA. I have no reason to be. She will never 
 marry you now. The man I told you of has come back. 
 She will marry the Swiss. 
 
 Sergius {recoiling). The Swiss! 
 
 LouKA. A man worth ten of you. Then you can 
 come to me; and I will refuse you. You are not good 
 enough for me. {She turns to the door.) 
 
 Sergius (springing after her and catching her fiercely 
 in his arms). I will kill the Swiss; and afterwards I 
 will do as I please with you. 
 
 LouKA (in his arms, passive and steadfast). The 
 Swiss will kill you, perhaps. He has beaten you in love. 
 He may beat you in war. 
 
 Sergius (tormentedly) . Do you think I believe that 
 she — she! whose worst thoughts are higher than your 
 best ones, is capable of trifling with another man behind 
 my back? 
 
 LouKA. Do you think she would believe the Swiss 
 if he told her now that I am in your arms ? 
 
 Sergivs (releasing her in despair). Damnation! Oh, 
 damnation! Mockery, mockery everywhere: everything 
 I think is mocked by everything I do. (He strikes him- 
 self frantically on the breast.) Coward, liar, fool!
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 65 
 
 Shall I kill myself like a man, or live and pretend to 
 laugh at myself? (She again, turns to go.) Louka! 
 {She stops near the door.) Remember: you belong to 
 me. 
 
 Louka (quietly). What does that mean — an insult? 
 
 Sergius (commandingly). It means that you love 
 me, and that I have had you here in my arms, and will 
 perhaps have you there again. Whether that is an insult 
 I neither know nor care: take it as you please. But 
 (vehemently) 1 will not be a coward and a trifler. If 
 I choose to love you, I dare marry you, in spite of all 
 Bulgaria. If these hands ever touch you again, they 
 shall touch my affianced bride. 
 
 Louka. We shall see whether you dare keep your 
 word. But take care. I will not wait long. 
 
 Sergius (again folding his arms and standing mO' 
 tionless in the middle of the room). Yes, we shall see. 
 And you shall wait my pleasure. 
 
 Bluntschli, much preoccupied, rvith his papers still in 
 his hand, enters, leaving the door open for Louka to go 
 out. He goes across to the table, glancing at her as he 
 passes. Sergius, without altering his resolute attitude, 
 watches him steadily. Louka goes out, leaving the door 
 open. 
 
 Bluntschli (absently, sitting at the table as before, 
 and putting down his papers). That's a remarkable 
 looking young woman. 
 
 Sergius (gravely, without moving). Captain Blunt- 
 schli. 
 
 Bluntschli. Eh? 
 
 Sergius. You have deceived me. You are my rival. 
 I brook no rivals. At six o'clock I shall be in the drilling- 
 ground on the Klissoura road, alone, on horseback, with 
 my sabre. Do you understand? 
 
 Bluntschli (staring, but sitting quite at his ease). 
 Oh, thank you: that's a cavalry man's proposal. I'm 
 in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If
 
 6?) Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 I go, I shall take a machine gun. And there shall be 
 no mistake about the cartridges this time. 
 
 Sergius (flushing, but with deadly coldness). Take 
 care, sir. It is not our custom in Bulgaria to allow in- 
 vitations of that kind to be trifled with. 
 
 Bluntschli (warmly). Pooh! don't talk to me about 
 Bulgaria. You don't know what fighting is. But have 
 it your own way. Bring your sabre along. I'll meet 
 you. 
 
 Sergius (fiercely delighted to find his opponent a man 
 of spirit). Well said, Switzer. Shall I lend you my 
 best horse ? 
 
 Bluntschli. No: damn your horse! — thank you all 
 the same, my dear fellow. (Raina comes in, and hears 
 the next sentence.) I shall fight you on foot. Horse- 
 back's too dangerous: I don't want to kill you if I can 
 help it. 
 
 Raina (hurrying forward anxiously). I have heard 
 what Captain Bluntschli said, Sergius. You are going 
 to fight. Why.^ (Sergius turns away in silence, and 
 goes to the stove, where he stands watching her as she 
 continues, to Bluntschli) What about? 
 
 Bluntschli. I don't know: he hasn't told me. Bet- 
 ter not interfere, dear young lady. No harm will be 
 done: I've often acted as sword instructor. He won't 
 be able to touch me; and I'll not hurt him. It will save 
 explanations. In the morning I shall be off home; and 
 you'll never see me or hear of me again. You and he will 
 then make it up and live happily ever after. 
 
 Raina (turning away deeply hurt, almost with a sob 
 in her voice). I never said I wanted to see you again. 
 
 Sergius (striding forward). Ha! That is a confes- 
 »ion. 
 
 Raina (haughtily). What do you mean? 
 
 Sergius. You love that man ! 
 
 Raina (scandalized) . Sergius ! 
 
 Sergius. You allow him to make love to you behind
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 67 
 
 my back, just as you accept me as your affianced husband 
 behind his. Bluntschli : you knew our relations ; and you 
 deceived me. It is for that that I call you to account, 
 not for having received favours that I never enjoyed. 
 
 ^LVNTScnt,! (jumping up indignanth/). Stuff! Rub- 
 bish ! I have received no favours. Why, the young lady 
 doesn't even know whether I'm married or not. 
 
 Raina (forgetting herself). Oh! (Collapsing on 
 the ottoman.) Are you? 
 
 Sergius. You see the young lady's concern, Cap}--Ain 
 Bluntschli. Denial is useless. You have enjoyed the 
 privilege of being received in her own room, late at 
 night 
 
 Bluntschli (interrupting him pepperily). Yes; you 
 blockhead ! She received me with a pistol at her head. 
 Your cavalry were at my heels. I'd have blown out her 
 brains if she'd uttered a cry. 
 
 Sergius (taken aback). Blimtschli ! Raina: is this 
 true ? 
 
 Raina (rising in wrathful majesty). Oh, how dare 
 you, how dare you? 
 
 Bluntschli. Apologize, man, apologize! (He re- 
 sumes his seat at the table.) 
 
 Sergius (with the old measured emphasis, folding his 
 arms). I never apologize. 
 
 Raina (passionately). This is the doing of that 
 friend of yours. Captain Bluntschli. It is he who is 
 spreading this horrible story about me. (She walks 
 about excitedly.) 
 
 Bluntschli. No: he's dead — burnt alive. 
 
 Raina (stopping, shocked). Burnt alive! 
 
 Bluntschli. Shot in the hip in a wood-yard. 
 Couldn't drag himself out. Your fellows' shells set the 
 timber on fire and burnt him, with half a dozen other 
 poor devils in the same predicament. 
 
 Raina. How horrible ! 
 
 Sergius. And how ridiculous ! Oh, war ! war ! the
 
 68 Arms and the Man Act in 
 
 dream of patriots and heroes ! A fraud, Bluntschli, a 
 hollow shain, like love. 
 
 Rain A (outraged). Like love! You say that before 
 me. 
 
 Bluntschli. Come, Saranoff: that matter is ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Sergius. a hollow sham, I say. Would you have 
 come back here if nothing had passed between you, ex- 
 cept at the muzzle of your pistol? Raina is mistaken 
 about our friend who was burnt. He was not my in- 
 formant. 
 
 Raina. Who then.^ (Suddenly guessing the truth.) 
 Ah, Louka ! my maid, my servant ! You were with her 
 this morning all that time after — after — Oh, what sort 
 of god is this I have been worshipping! (He meets her 
 gaze with sardonic enjoyment of her disenchantment. 
 Angered all the more, she goes closer to him, and says, 
 in a lower, intenser tone) Do you know that I looked 
 out of the window as I went upstairs, to have another 
 sight of my hero; and I saw something that I did not 
 understand then. I know now that you were making love 
 to her. 
 
 Sergius (with grim humor). You saw that? 
 
 Raina. Only too well. (She turns away, and throws 
 herself on the divan under the centre window, quite over- 
 come.) 
 
 Sergius (cynically). Raina: our romance is shat- 
 tered. Life's a farce. 
 
 Bluntschli (to Raina, goodhumoredly) . You see: 
 he's found himself out now. 
 
 Sergius. Bluntschli: I have allowed you to call me 
 a blockhead. You may now call me a coward as well. I 
 refuse to fight you. Do you know why? 
 
 Bluntschli. No; but it doesn't matter. I didn't 
 ask the reason when you cried on; and I don't ask the 
 reason now that you cry off. I'm a professional soldier. 
 I fight when I have to, and am very glad to get out of
 
 Act in Arms and the JNIan 69 
 
 it when I haven't to. You're only an amateur: you think 
 fighting's an amusement. 
 
 Sergius. You shall hear the reason all the same, my 
 professional. The reason is that it takes two men —   
 real men — men of heart, blood and honor — to make a 
 genuine combat. I could no more fight with you than I 
 could make love to an ugly woman. You've no magnet- 
 ism: you're not a man, you're a machine. 
 
 Bluntschli (apologetically). Quite true, quite true. 
 I always was that sort of chap. I'm very sorry. But 
 now that you've found that life isn't a farce, but some- 
 thing quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle 
 is there to your happiness.^ 
 
 Raina (rising). You are very solicitous about my 
 happiness and his. Do you forget his new love — Louka.'* 
 It is not you that he must fight now, but his rivt.!, 
 Nicola. 
 
 Sergius. Rival ! ! (Striking his forehead. ) 
 
 Raina. Did you not know that they are engaged.'' 
 
 Sergius. Nicola ! Are fresh abysses opening ! Nico- 
 la ! ! 
 
 Raina (sarcastically). A shocking sacrifice, isn't it.'' 
 Such beauty, such intellect, such modesty, wasted on a 
 middle-aged servant man ! Really, Sergius, you cannot 
 stand by and allow such a thing. It would be unworthy 
 of your chivalry. 
 
 Sergius (losing all self-control). Viper! Viper! 
 (He rushes to and fro, raging.) 
 
 Bluntschli. Look here, Saranoff ; you're getting the 
 worst of this. 
 
 Raina (getting angrier). Do you realize what he has 
 done. Captain Bluntschli.^ He has set this girl as a 
 spy on us; and her reward is that he makes love to her. 
 
 Sergius. False ! Monstrous ! 
 
 Raina. Monstrous! (Confronting him). Do you 
 deny that she told you about Captain Bluntschli being 
 in my room.''
 
 70 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 Sergius. No; but 
 
 Raina (interrupting). Do you deny that you were 
 making love to her when she told you? 
 
 Sergius., No; but I tell you 
 
 Raina (cutting him short contemptuously) . It is un- 
 necessary to tell us anything more. That is quite enough 
 for us. (She turns her back on him and sweeps majesti- 
 cally back to the window.) 
 
 Bluntschli (quietly, as Sergius, in an agony of mor- 
 tification, sinks on the ottoman, clutching his averted 
 head between his fists). I told you you were getting the 
 worst of it, Saranoff. 
 
 Sergius. Tiger cat! 
 
 Raina (running excitedly to Bluntschli). You hear 
 this man calling me names, Captain Bluntschli? 
 
 Bluntschli. What else can he do, dear lady? He 
 must defend himself somehow. Come (very persua- 
 sively), don't quarrel. What good does it do? (Raina, 
 with a gasp, sits down on the ottoman, and after a vain 
 effort to look vexedly at Bluntschli, she falls a victim to 
 her sense of humor, and is attacked with a disposition to 
 laugh.) 
 
 Sergius. Engaged to Nicola! (He rises.) Ha! ha! 
 (Going to the stove and standing ?vith his back to it.) 
 Ah, well, Bluntschli, you are right to take this huge 
 imposture of a world coolly. 
 
 Raina (to Bluntschli with an intuitive guess at his 
 state of mind). I daresay you think us a couple of 
 grown up babies, don't you? 
 
 Sergius (grinning a little). He does, he does. Swiss 
 civilization nursetending Bulgarian barbarism, eh? 
 
 Bluntschli (blushing). Not at all, I assure you. 
 I'm only very glad to get you two quieted. There now, 
 let's be pleasant and talk it over in a friendly way. 
 Where is this other young lady? 
 
 Raina. Listening at the door, probably. 
 
 Sergius (shivering as if a bullet had struck him, and
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 71 
 
 speaking with quiet hut deep indignation). I will prove 
 that that, at least, is a calumny. {He goes with dignity 
 to the door and opens it. A yell of fury bursts from 
 him as he looks out. He darts into the passage, and re- 
 turns dragging in Louka, whom he flings against the 
 table, R., as he cries) Judge her, Bluntschli — you, the 
 moderate, cautious man: judge the eavesdropper. 
 
 (Louka stands her ground, proud and silent.) 
 
 Bluntschli (shaking his head). I mustn't judge 
 her. I once listened myself outside a tent when there was 
 a mutiny brewing. It's all a question of the degree of 
 provocation. My life was at stake. 
 
 LouKA. My love was at stake. (Sergius flinches, 
 ashamed of her in spite of himself.) I am not ashamed. 
 
 Raina (contemptuously). Your love! Your curi- 
 osity, you mean. 
 
 LouKA (facing her and retorting her contempt with 
 interest). My love, stronger than anything you can 
 feel, even for your chocolate cream soldier. 
 
 Sergius (with quick suspicion — to Louka). What 
 does that mean? 
 
 LouKA (fiercely). It means 
 
 Sergius (interrupting her slightingly). Oh, I re- 
 member, the ice pudding. A paltry taunt, girl. 
 
 (Major Petkoff enters, in his shirtsleeves.) 
 
 Petkoff. Excuse my shirtsleeves, gentlemen. Raina : 
 somebody has been wearing that coat of mine: I'll swear 
 it — somebody with bigger shoulders than mine. It's all 
 burst open at the back. Your mother is mending it. I 
 wish she'd make haste. I shall catch cold. (He looks' 
 more attentively at them.) Is anything the matter? 
 
 Raina. No. (She sits down at the stove with a 
 tranquil air.) 
 
 Sergius. Oh, no! (He sits down at the end of the 
 table, as at first.) 
 
 Bluntschli (who is already seated). Nothing, noth- 
 ing.
 
 72 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 Petkoff (sitting down on the ottoman in his old 
 place). That's all right. {He notices Louka.) Any- 
 thing the matter, Louka? 
 
 Louka. No, sir. 
 
 Petkoff {genially). That's all right. (He 
 sneezes.) Go and ask your mistress for my coat, like 
 a good girl, will you.'' (She turns to obey; hut Nicola 
 enters with the coat; and she makes a pretence of having 
 business in the room by taking the little table with the 
 hookah away to the wall near the windows.) 
 
 Raina (rising quickly, as she sees the coat on Nicola's 
 arm). Here it is, papa. Give it to me, Nicola; and 
 do you put some more wood on the fire. (She takes the 
 coat, and brings it to the Major, who stands up to put 
 it on. Nicola attends to the fire.) 
 
 Petkoff (to Raina, teasing her affectionately). Alia! 
 Going to be very good to poor old papa just for one 
 day after his return from the wars, eh ? 
 
 Raina (with solemn reproach). Ah, how can you say 
 that to me, father? 
 
 Petkoff. Well, well, only a joke, little one. Come, 
 give me a kiss. (She kisses him.) Now give me the 
 coat. 
 
 Raina. Now, I am going to put it on for you. Turn 
 your back. (He turns his back and feels behind him 
 rvith his arms for the sleeves. She dexterously takes the 
 photograph from the pocket and throws it on the table 
 before Bluntschli, who covers it with a sheet of paper 
 under the very nose of Sergius, who looks on amazed, 
 rvith his suspicions roused in the highest degree. She 
 then helps Petkoff on with his coat.) There, dear! Now 
 are you comfortable? 
 
 Petkoff. Quite, little love. Thanks. (He sits- 
 down; and Raina returns to her seat near the stove.) Oh, 
 by the bye, I've found something funny. What's the 
 meaning of this? (He puts his hand into the picked 
 pocket.) Eh? Hallo! (He tries the other pocket.)
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 73 
 
 Well, I could have sworn — (Much puzzled, he tries the 
 breast pocket.) I wonder — (Tries the original pocket.) 
 where can it — (A light flashes on him; he rises, 
 exclaiming) Your mother's taken it. 
 
 Raina (very red). Taken what? 
 
 Petkoff. Your photograph, with the inscription: 
 " Raina, to her Chocolate Cream Soldier — a souvenir." 
 Now you know there's something more in this than meets 
 the eye; and I'm going to find it out. (Shouting) 
 Nicola ! 
 
 Nicola (dropping a log, and turning). Sir! 
 
 Petkoff. Did you spoil any pastry of Miss Raina's 
 this morning? 
 
 Nicola. You heard ]\Iiss Raina say that I did, sir. 
 
 Petkoff. I know that, you idiot. Was it true? 
 
 Nicola. I am sure Miss Raina is incapable of saying 
 anything that is not true, sir. 
 
 Petkoff. Are you? Then I'm not. (Turning to the 
 others.) Come: do you think I don't see it all? (Goes 
 to Sergius, and slaps him on the shoulder.) Sergius: 
 you're the chocolate cream soldier, aren't you? 
 
 Sergius (starting up). I! a chocolate cream soldier! 
 Certainly not. 
 
 Petkoff. Not! (He looks at them. They are all 
 very serious and very conscious.) Do you mean to tell 
 me that Raina sends photographic souvenirs to other 
 men? 
 
 Sergius (enigmatically.) The world is not such an 
 innocent place as we used to think, Petkoff. 
 
 Bluntschli (rising). It's all right. Major. I'm the 
 chocolate cream soldier. (Petkoff and Sergius are 
 equally astonished.) The gracious young lady saved my 
 life by giving me chocolate creams when I was starving 
 — shall I ever forget their flavour ! My late friend Stolz 
 told you the story at Peerot. I was the fugitive. 
 
 Petkoff. You! (He gasps.) Sergius: do you re- 
 member how those two women went on this morning when
 
 74s Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 we mentioned it? (Sergius smiles cynically. Petkoff 
 confronts Raina severely.^ You're a nice young wom- 
 an, aren't you? 
 
 Raina (bitterly'). Major Saranoff has changed his 
 mind. And when I wrote that on the photograph, I did 
 not know that Captain Bluntschli was married. 
 
 Bluntschli (much startled — protesting vehemently^. 
 I'm not married. 
 
 Raina (with deep reproach). You said you were. 
 
 Bluntschli. I did not. I positively did not. I never 
 was married in my life. 
 
 Petkoff (exasperated). Raina: will you kindly in- 
 form me, if I am not asking too much, which gentleman 
 you are engaged to? 
 
 Raina. To neither of them. This young lady (in- 
 troducing Louka, who faces them all proudly) is the 
 object of Major Saranoff 's affections at present. 
 
 Petkoff. Louka! Are you mad, Sergius? Why, 
 this girl's engaged to Nicola. 
 
 Nicola (coming forward). I beg your pardon, sir. 
 There is a mistake. Louka is not engaged to me. 
 
 Petkoff. Not engaged to you, you scoundrel ! Why, 
 you had twenty-five levas from me on the day of your 
 betrothal; and she had that gilt bracelet from Miss 
 Raina. 
 
 Nicola (with cool unction). We gave it out so, sir. 
 But it was only to give Louka protection. She had a 
 soul above her station; and I have been no more than 
 her confidential servant. I intend, as you know, sir, to 
 set up a shop later on in Sofea; and I look forward to 
 her custom and recommendation should she marry into 
 the nobility. (He goes out with impressive discretion, 
 leaving them all staring after him.) 
 
 Petkoff (breaking the silence). Well, I am — hm! 
 
 Sergius. This is either the finest heroism or the 
 most crawling baseness. Which is it, Bluntschli ? 
 
 Bluntschli. Never mind whether it's heroism or
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 75 
 
 baseness. Nicola's the ablest man I've met in Bulgaria. 
 I'll make him manager of a hotel if he can speak French 
 and German. 
 
 LouKA {suddenly breaking out at Sergius). I have 
 been insulted by everyone here. You set them the ex- 
 ample. You owe me an apology. (Sergius immediately, 
 like a repeating clock of which the spring has been 
 touched, begins to fold his arms.) 
 
 Bluntschli (before he can speak). It's no use. He 
 never apologizes. 
 
 LouKA. Not to you, his equal and his enemy. To 
 me, his poor servant, he will not refuse to apologize. 
 
 Sergius (approvingly). You are right. (He bends 
 his k7iee in his grandest manner.) Forgive me! 
 
 LouKA. I forgive you. (She timidly gives him her 
 hand, which he kisses.) That touch makes me your 
 affianced wife. 
 
 Sergius (springing up). Ah, I forgot that! 
 
 LouKA (coldly). You can withdraw if you like. 
 
 Sergius. Withdraw ! Never ! You belong to me ! 
 (He puts his arm about her and draws her to him.) 
 
 (Catherine comes in and finds Louka in Sergius's 
 arms, and all the rest gazing at them in bewildered aston- 
 ishment.) 
 
 Catherine. What does this mean? (Sergius releases 
 Louka.) 
 
 Petkoff. Well, my dear, it appears that Sergius is 
 going to marry Louka instead of Raina. (She is about 
 to break out indignantly at him: he stops her by ex- 
 claiming testily.) Don't blame me: I've nothing to do 
 with it. (He retreats to the stove.) 
 
 Catherine. Marry Louka! Sergius: you are bound 
 by your word to us ! 
 
 Sergius (folding his arms). Nothing binds me. 
 
 Bluntschli (much pleased by this piece of common 
 sense). Saranoff: your hand. My congratulations. 
 These heroics of yours have their practical side after all.
 
 76 Arms and the Man Act ni 
 
 {To Louka.) Gracious young lady: the best wishes of 
 a good Republican! {He kisses her hand, to Raina's 
 great disgust.) 
 
 Catherine {threateningly). Louka: you have been 
 telling stories. 
 
 Louka. I have done Raina no harm. 
 
 Catherine {haughtily). Raina! {Raina is equally 
 indignant at the liberty.) 
 
 Louka. I have a right to call her Raina: she calls 
 me Louka. I told Major Saranoff she would never marry 
 him if the Swiss gentleman came back. 
 
 Bluntschli {surprised). Hallo! 
 
 Louka {turning to Raina). I thougbt you were 
 fonder of him than of Sergius. You know best whether 
 I was right. 
 
 Bluntschli. What nonsense! I assure you, my 
 dear Major, my dear Madame, the gracious young lady 
 simply saved my life, nothing else. She never cared two 
 straws for me. Why, bless my heart and soul, look at 
 the young lady and look at me. She, rich, young, beau- 
 tiful, with her imagination full of fairy princes and noble 
 natures and cavalry charges and goodness knows what! 
 And I, a commonplace Swiss soldier who hardly knows 
 what a decent life is after fifteen years of barracks and 
 battles — a vagabond — a man who has spoiled all his 
 chances in life through an incurably romantic disposition 
 — a man 
 
 Sergius {starting as if a needle has pricked him and 
 interrupting Bluntschli in incredulous amazement). Ex- 
 cuse me, Bluntschli: what did you say had spoiled your 
 chances in life? 
 
 Bluntschli {promptly). An incurably romantic dis- 
 position. I ran away from home twice when I was a 
 boy. I went into the army instead of into my father's 
 business. I climbed the balcony of this house when a 
 man of sense would have dived into the nearest cellar. I 
 came sneaking back here to have another look at the
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 77 
 
 young lady when any other man of my age would have 
 sent the coat back 
 
 Petkoff. My coat ! 
 
 Bluntschli. — Yes: that's the coat I mean — would 
 have sent it back and gone quietly home. Do you sup- 
 pose I am the sort of fellow a young girl falls in love 
 with? Why, look at our ages! I'm thirty- four: I don't 
 suppose the young lady is much over seventeen. (This 
 estimate produces a marked sensation, all the rest turn- 
 ing and staring at one another. He proceeds innocently .) 
 All that adventure which was life or death to me, was 
 only a schoolgirl's game to her — chocolate creams and 
 hide and seek. Here's the proof! {He takes the 
 photograph from the table.) Now, I ask you, would 
 a woman who took the affair seriously have sent me this 
 and written on it: " Raina, to her chocolate cream sol- 
 dier — a souvenir.''" {He exhibits the photograph tri- 
 umphantly, as if it settled the matter beyond all pos- 
 sibility of refutation.) 
 
 Petkoff. That's what I was looking for. How the 
 deuce did it get there? 
 
 Bluntschli {to Raina complacently). I have put 
 everything right, I hope, gracious young lady ! 
 
 Raina {in uncontrollable vejcation). I quite agree 
 with your account of yourself. You are a romantic idiot. 
 {Bluntschli is unspeakably taken aback.) Next time I 
 hope you M-ill know the difference between a schoolgirl of 
 seventeen and a woman of twenty-three. 
 
 Bluntschli {stupefied) . Twenty-three! {She snaps 
 the photograph contemptuously from his hand; tears it 
 across; and throws the pieces at his feet.) 
 
 Sergius {with grim enjoyment of Bluntschli's discom- 
 fiture). Bluntschli: my one last iDclief is gone. Your 
 sagacity is a fraud, like all the other things. You have 
 less sense than even I have. 
 
 Bluntschli {overrvhelmed). Twenty-three! Twen- 
 ty-three ! ! {He considers.) Hm ! {Srviftly making up
 
 78 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 his mind.) In that case. Major Petkoff, I beg to pro- 
 pose formally to become a suitor for your daughter's 
 hand, in place of Major Saranoff retired. 
 
 Raina. You dare! 
 
 Bluntschli. If you were twenty-three when you 
 said those things to me this afternoon, I shall take them 
 seriously. 
 
 Catherine (loftily polite). I doubt, sir, whether you 
 quite realize either my daughter's position or that of 
 Major Sergius Saranoff, whose place you propose to 
 take. The Petkoffs and the Saranoffs are known as the 
 richest and most important families in the country. Our 
 position is almost historical: we can go back for nearly 
 twenty years. 
 
 Petkoff. Oh, never mind that, Catherine. {To 
 Bluntschli.) We should be most happy, Bluntschli, if 
 it were only a question of your position; but hang it, 
 you know, Raina is accustomed to a very comfortable 
 establishment. Sergius keeps twenty horses. 
 
 Bluntschli. But what on earth is the use of twenty 
 horses ? Why, it's a circus. 
 
 Catherine (severely). My daughter, sir, is accus- 
 tomed to a first-rate stable. 
 
 Raina. Hush, mother, you're making me ridiculous. 
 
 Bluntschll Oh, well, if it comes to a question of 
 an establishment, here goes ! (He goes impetuously to 
 the table and seizes the papers in the blue envelope.) 
 How many horses did you say.^ 
 
 Sergius. Twenty, noble Switzer! 
 
 Bluntschli. I have two hundred horses. (They are 
 amazed.) How many carriages? 
 
 Sergius. Three. 
 
 Bluntschll I have seventy. Twenty-four of them 
 will hold twelve inside, besides two on the box, without 
 counting the driver and conductor. How many table- 
 cloths have you? 
 
 Sergius. How the deuce do I know?
 
 Act III Arms and the Man 79 
 
 Bluntschli. Have you four thousand? 
 
 Sergius. No. 
 
 Bluntschli. I have. I have nine thousand six hun- 
 dred pairs of sheets and blankets, with two thousand four 
 hundred eider-down quilts. I have ten thousand knives 
 and forks, and the same quantity of dessert spoons. I 
 have six hundred servants. I have six palatial estab- 
 lishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden 
 and a private house. I have four medals for distin- 
 guished services; I have the rank of an officer and the 
 standing of a gentleman ; and I have three native lan- 
 guages. Show me any man in Bulgaria that can offer as 
 much. 
 
 Petkoff (with childish awe). Are you Emperor of 
 Switzerland .'' 
 
 Bluntschli. My rank is the highest known in Swit- 
 zerland: I'm a free citizen. 
 
 Catherine. Then Captain Bluntschli, since you are 
 my daughter's choice, I shall not stand in the way of 
 her happiness. (Petkoff is about to speak.) That is 
 Major Petkoff 's feeling also. 
 
 Petkoff. Oh, I shall be only too glad. Two hun- 
 dred horses ! Whew ! 
 
 Sergius. What says the lady? 
 
 Raina (pretending to sulk). The lady says that he 
 can keep his tablecloths and his omnibuses. I am not 
 here to be sold to the highest bidder. 
 
 Bluntschli. I won't take that answer. I appealed 
 to you as a fugitive, a beggar, and a starving man. You 
 accepted me. You gave me your hand to kiss, your bed 
 to sleep in, and your roof t^ shelter me 
 
 Raina (interrupting him.y I did not give them to the 
 Emperor of Switzerland ! 
 
 Bluntschli. That's just what I say. (He catches 
 her hand quickly and looks her straight in the face as he 
 adds, with confident mastery). Now tell us who you did 
 give them to.
 
 80 Arms and the Man Act III 
 
 Raina (succumbing with a shy smile). To my choco- 
 late cream soldier ! 
 
 Bluntschli (with a boyish laugh of delight). 
 That'll do. Thank you. (Looks at his watch and sud- 
 denly becomes businesslike.) Time's up, Major. You've 
 managed those regiments so well that you are sure to 
 be asked to get rid of some of the Infantry of the Tee- 
 mok division. Send them home by way of Lom Palanka. 
 Saranoff: don't get married until I come back: I shall 
 be here punctually at five in the evening on Tuesday fort- 
 night. Gracious ladies — good evening. (He makes them 
 a military bow, and goes.) 
 
 Sergius. What a man ! What a man ! 
 
 CURTAIN,
 
 CANDIDA
 
 CANDIDA 
 
 ACT I 
 
 A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of 
 London, a vast district many miles away from the Lon- 
 don of Mayfair and St. James's, much less known there 
 than the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs 
 Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless 
 in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle 
 class life; wide streetedj myriad-populated ; well-served 
 with ugly iron urinals. Radical clubs, tram lines, and a 
 perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main 
 thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown " front gar- 
 dens," untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path 
 from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an in- 
 tolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, 
 characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pave- 
 ments, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or dis- 
 reputably poorly dressed veople, quite accustomed to the 
 place, and mostly plodding about somebody else's work, 
 which they would not do if they themselves could help 
 it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up shew 
 themselves in cockney cupidity and business " push.'* 
 Even the policeman and the chapels are not infrequent 
 enough to break the monotony. The sun is shining cheer- 
 fully; there is no fog; and though the smoke effectually 
 prevents anything, whether faces and hands or bricks 
 and mortar, from looking fresh and clean, it is not 
 hanging heavily enough to trouble a Londoner. 
 
 This desert of un attractiveness has its oasis. Near the 
 
 83
 
 84 Candida Act I 
 
 outer end of the Hackney Road is a park of 217 acres, 
 fenced in, not by railings, but by a wooden paling, and 
 containing plenty of greensward, trees, a lake for bath- 
 ers, florver beds with the flowers arranged carefully in 
 patterns by the admired cockney art of carpet gardening 
 and a sandpit, imported from the seaside for the delight 
 of the children, but speedily deserted on its becoming a 
 natural vermin preserve for all the petty fauna of Kings- 
 land, Hackney and Tloxton. A bandstand, an unfinished 
 forum for religious, anti-religious and political orators, 
 cricket pitches, a gymnasium, and an old fashioned stone 
 kiosk are among its attractions. Wherever the prospect 
 is bounded by trees or risiJig green grounds, it is a 
 pleasant place. Where the ground stretches flat to the 
 grey palings, with bricks and mortar, sky signs, crowded 
 chimneys and smoke beyond, the prospect makes it 
 desolate and sordid. 
 
 The best view of Victoria Park is from the front win- 
 dow of St. Dominic's Parsonage, from which not a 
 single chimney is visible. The parsonage is a se?ni- 
 detached villa with a front garden and a porch. Visitors 
 go up the flight of steps to the porch: tradespeople and 
 members of the family go down by a door under the 
 steps to the basement, with a breakfast room, used for 
 all meals, in front, and the kitchen at the back. Up- 
 stairs, on the level of the hall door, is the drawing-room, 
 with its large plate glass window looking on the park. 
 In this room, the only sitting-room that can be spared 
 from the children and the family meals, the parson, the 
 Reverend James Mavor Morell does his work. He is 
 sitting in a strong round backed revolving chair at the 
 right hand end of a long table, which stands across the 
 window, so that he can cheer himself with the view of 
 the park at his elbow. At the opposite end of the table, 
 adjoining it, is a little table only half the width of the 
 other, with a typewriter on it. His typist is sitting at 
 this machine, with her back to the window. The large
 
 Act I Candida 85 
 
 table is littered with pamphlets, journals, letters, nests 
 of drawers, an of/ice diary, postage scales and the like. A 
 spare chair for visitors having business with the parson 
 is in the middle, turned to his end. Within reach of his 
 hand is a stationery case, and a cabinet photograph in 
 a frame. Behind him the right hand wall, recessed above 
 the fireplace, is fitted with bookshelves, on which an 
 adept eye can measure the parson's divinity and casuistry 
 by a complete set of Browning's poems and Maurice's 
 Theological Essays, and guess at his politics from a 
 yellow backed Progress and Poverty, Fabian Essays, a 
 Dream of John Ball, Marx's Capital, and half a dozen 
 other literary landmarks in Socialism. Opposite him on 
 the left, near the typewriter, is the door. Further down 
 the room, opposite the fireplace, a bookcase stands on a 
 cellaret, with a sofa near it. There is a generous fire 
 burning; and the hearth, with a comfortable armchair and 
 a japanned flower painted coal scuttle at one side, a 
 miniature chair for a boy or girl on the other, a nicely 
 varnished wooden mantelpiece, with neatly moulded 
 shelves, tiny bits of mirror let into the panels, and a 
 travelling clock in a leather case {the inevitable wed- 
 ding present), and on the wall above a large autotype 
 of the chief figure in Titian's Virgin of the Assumption, 
 is very inviting. Altogether the room is the room of a 
 good housekeeper, vanquished, as far as the table is con- 
 cerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere mistress of the 
 situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, be- 
 trays the style of the advertised " drawing-room suite " 
 of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is 
 nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper 
 and panelling are dark, throwing the big cheery win- 
 dow and the park outside into strong relief. 
 
 The Reverend James Mavor Morell is a Christian So- 
 cialist clergyman of the Church of England, and an 
 active member of the Guild of St. Matthew and the 
 Christian Social Union. A vigorous, genial, popular man
 
 86 Candida Act I 
 
 of forty, robust and goodlooTcing, full of energy, with 
 pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound, unaf- 
 fected voice, which he uses with the clean, athletic 
 articulation of a practised orator, and with a wide range 
 and perfect command of expression. He is a first rate 
 clergyman, able to say what he likes to whom he likes, 
 to lecture people without setting himself up against them, 
 to impose his authority on them without humiliating them, 
 and to interfere in their business without impertinence. 
 His well spring of spiritual enthusiasm and sympathetic 
 emotion has never run dry for a moment: he still eats 
 and sleeps heartily enough to win the daily battle 
 between exhaustion and recuperation triumphantly. 
 Withal, a great baby, pardonably vain of his powers and 
 unconsciously pleased with himself. He has a healthy 
 complexion, a good forehead, with the brows somewhat 
 blunt, and the eyes bright and eager, a mouth resolute, 
 but not particularly well cut, and a substantial nose, with 
 the mobile, spreading nostrils of the dramatic orator, but, 
 like all his features, void of subtlety. 
 
 The typist, Miss Proserpine Garnett, is a brisk little 
 woman of about 30, of the lower middle class, neatly 
 but cheaply dressed in a black merino skirt and a blouse, 
 rather pert and quick of speech, and not very civil in 
 her manner, but sensitive and affectionate. She is clat- 
 tering away busily at her machine whilst Morell opens 
 the last of his morning's letters. He realises its con- 
 tents with a comic groan of despair. 
 
 Proserpine. Another lecture? 
 
 Morell. Yes. The Hoxton Freedom Group want me 
 to address them on Sunday morning (great emphasis on 
 " Sunday," this being the unreasonable part of the 
 business). What are they.^ 
 
 Proserpine. Communist Anarchists, I think. 
 
 Morell. Just like Anarchists not to know that they 
 can't have a parson on Sunday! Tell them to come to
 
 Act I Candida 87 
 
 church if they want to hear me: it will do them good. 
 Say I can only come on Mondays and Thursdays. Have 
 you the diary there? 
 
 Proserpine {taking up the diary). Yes. 
 
 MoRELL. Have I any lecture on for next Monday? 
 
 Proserpine (referring to diary). Tower Hamlets 
 Radical Club. 
 
 MoRELL. Well, Thursday then? 
 
 Proserpine. English Land Restoration League. 
 
 MoRELL. What next? 
 
 Proserpine. Guild of St. Matthew on Monday. In- 
 dependent Labor Party, Greenwich Branch, on Thurs- 
 day. Monday, Social-Democratic Federation, Mile End 
 Branch. Thursday, first Confirmation class — {Impa- 
 tiently.) Oh, I'd better tell them you can't come. 
 They're only half a dozen ignorant and conceited coster- 
 mongers without five shillings between them. 
 
 MoRELL {amused). Ah; but you see they're near rela- 
 tives of mine. Miss Garnett. 
 
 Proserpine {staring at him). Relatives of yours! 
 
 MoRELL. Yes: we have the same father — in Heaven. 
 
 Proserpine {relieved). Oh, is that all? 
 
 MoRELL {with a sadness which is a luxury to a man 
 rohose voice expresses it so finely). Ah, you don't be- 
 lieve it. Everybody says it: nobody believes it — nobody. 
 {Briskly, getting hack to business.) Well, well! Come, 
 Miss Proserpine, can't you find a date for the costers ? 
 What about the 25th?: that was vacant the day before 
 yesterday. 
 
 Proserpine {referring to diary). Engaged — ^the Fa- 
 bian Society. 
 
 Morell. Bother the Fabian Society! Is the 28th 
 gone, too? 
 
 Proserpine. City dinner. You're invited to dine 
 with the Founder's Company. 
 
 Morell. That'll do; I'll go to the Hoxton Group of 
 Freedom instead. {She enters the engagement in silence.
 
 88 Candida Act I 
 
 with implacable disparagement of the Hoxton Anarchists 
 in every line of her face. Morell bursts open the cover 
 of a copy of The Church Reformer, which has come 
 by post, and glances through Mr. Stewart Hendlam's 
 leader and the Guild of St. Matthew news. These pro- 
 ceedings are presently enlivened by the appearance of 
 Morell' s curate, the Reverend Alexander Mill, a young 
 gentleman gathered by Morell from the nearest Uni- 
 versity Settlement, whither he had come from Oxford to 
 give the east end of London the benefit of his university 
 training. He is a conceitedly well intentioned, enthusi- 
 astic, immature person, with notJiing positively unbear- 
 able about him except a habit of speaking with his lips 
 carefully closed for half an inch from each corner, a 
 finicking articidation, and a set of horribly corrupt 
 vowels, notably ow for o, this being his chief means of 
 bringing Oxford refinement to bear on Hackney vul- 
 garity. Morell, whom he has won over by a doglike de- 
 votion, looks up indulgently from The Church Reformer 
 as he enters, and remarks) Well, Lexy ! Late again, as 
 usual. 
 
 Lexy. I'm afraid so. I wish I could get up in the 
 morning. 
 
 Morell {exulting in his own energy). Ha! ha! 
 {Whimsically.) Watch and pray, Lexy: watch and pray. 
 
 Lexy. I know. {Rising wittily to the occasion.) 
 But how can I watch and pray when I am asleep .^ Isn't 
 that so. Miss Prossy? 
 
 Proserpine {sharply). Miss Garnett, if you please. 
 
 Lexy. I beg your pardon — ISIiss Garnett. 
 
 Proserpine. You've got to do all the work to-day. 
 
 Lexy. Why ? 
 
 Proserpine. Never mind why. It will do you good 
 to earn your supper before you eat it, for once in a way, 
 as I do. Come: don't dawdle. You should have been 
 off on your rounds half an hour ago. 
 
 Lexy {perplexed). Is she in earnest, Morell.''
 
 Act I Candida 89 
 
 MoRELL (in the highest spirits — his eyes dancing^. 
 Yes. I am going to dawdle to-day. 
 
 Lexy. You ! You don't know how. 
 
 MoRELL (heartily). Ha! ha! Don't I? I'm going 
 to have this day all to myself — or at least the forenoon. 
 My wife's coming back: she's due here at 11:45. 
 
 Lexy (surprised). Coming back already — with the 
 children? I thought they were to stay to the end of the 
 month. 
 
 MoRELL. So they are: she's only coming up for two 
 days, to get some flannel things for Jimmy, and to see 
 how we're getting on without her. 
 
 Lexy (anxiously). But, my dear Morell, if what 
 Jimmy and Fluffy had was scarlatina, do you think it 
 wise 
 
 MoRELL. Scarlatina ! — rubbish, German measles. I 
 brought it into the house myself from the Pycroft Street 
 School. A parson is like a doctor, my boy: he must face 
 infection as a soldier must face bullets. (He rises and 
 claps Lexy on the shoulder.) Catch the measles if you 
 can, Lexy: she'll nurse you; and what a piece of luck 
 that will be for you ! — eh ? 
 
 Lexy (smiling uneasily). It's so hard to understand 
 you about Mrs. Morell 
 
 MoRELL (tenderly). Ah, my boy, get married — get 
 married to a good woman; and then you'll understand. 
 That's a foretaste of what will be best in the Kingdom 
 of Heaven we are trying to establish on earth. That 
 will cure you of dawdling. An honest man feels that he 
 must pay Heaven for every hour of happiness with a 
 good spell of hard, unselfish work to make others happy. 
 We have no more right to consume happiness without 
 producing it than to consume wealth without producing 
 it. Get a wife like my Candida ; and you'll always be 
 in arrear with your repayment. 
 
 (He pats Lexy affectionately on the back, and is leav- 
 ing the room when Lexy calls to him.)
 
 90 Candida Act I 
 
 Lexy. Oh, wait a bit: I forgot. (Morell halts and 
 turns with the door knob in his hand.) Your father-in- 
 law is coming round to see you. {Morell shuts the door 
 again, with a complete change of maimer.) 
 
 MoRELL (surprised and not pleased). Mr. Burgess? 
 
 Lexy. Yes. I passed him in the park, arguing with 
 somebody. He gave me good day and asked me to let 
 you know that he was coming. 
 
 MoRELL (half incredulous). But he hasn't called 
 here for — I may almost say for years. Are you sure, 
 Lexy? You're not joking, are you.'' 
 
 Lexy (earnestly). No, sir, really. 
 
 Morell, (thou ghtf idly). Hm ! Time for him to take 
 another look at Candida before she grows out of his 
 knowledge. (He resigns himself to the inevitable, and 
 goes out. Lexy looks after him with beaming, foolish 
 worship.) 
 
 Lexy. What a good man ! What a thorough, loving 
 soul he is ! 
 
 (He takes Morell's place at the table, making himself 
 very comfortable as he takes out a cigaret.) 
 
 Proserpine (impatiently, pulling the letter she has 
 been working at off the typewriter and folding it). Oh, 
 a man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without 
 making a fool of himself about her. 
 
 Lexy (shocked). Oh, Miss Prossy! 
 
 Proserpine (rising busily and coming to the station- 
 ery case to get an envelope, in which she encloses the 
 letter as she speaks). Candida here, and Candida there, 
 and Candida everywhere! (She licks the envelope.) It's 
 enough to drive anyone out of their senses (thump- 
 ing the envelope to make it stick) to hear a perfectly 
 commonplace woman raved about in that absurd manner 
 merely because she's got good hair, and a tolerable figure. 
 
 Lexy (with reproachful gravity). I think her ex- 
 tremely beautiful. Miss Garnett. (He takes the photo- 
 graph np; looks at it; and adds, with even greater im-
 
 Act I Candida 91 
 
 pressiveness) Extremely beautiful. How fine her 
 eyes are! 
 
 Proserpine. Her eyes are not a bit better than mine 
 — now ! {He puts down the photograph and stares 
 austerely at her). And you know very well that you 
 think me dowdy and second rate enough. 
 
 Lexy (rising majestically). Heaven forbid that I 
 should think of any of God's creatures in such a way ! 
 (He moves stiffly arvay from her across the room to the 
 neighbourhood of the bookcase.) 
 
 Proserpine. Thank you. That's very nice and com- 
 forting. 
 
 Lexy (saddened by her depravity). I had no idea 
 you had any feeling against Mrs. Morell. 
 
 Proserpine (indignantly) . I have no feeling against 
 her. She's very nice, very good-hearted: I'm very fond 
 of her and can appreciate her real qualities far better 
 than any man can. (He shakes his head sadly and turns 
 to the bookcase, looking along the shelves for a volume. 
 She follows him with intense pepperiness.) You don't 
 believe me.'' (He turns and faces her. She pounces at 
 him with spitfire energy.) You think I'm jealous. Oh, 
 what a profound knowledge of the human heart you have, 
 Mr. Lexy Mill ! How well you know the weaknesses of 
 Woman, don't you .'' It must be so nice to be a man and 
 have a fine penetrating intellect instead of mere emo- 
 tions like us, and to know that the reason we don't share 
 your amorous delusions is that we're all jealous of one 
 another! (She abandons him with a toss of her shoul- 
 ders, and crosses to the fire to warm her hands.) 
 
 Lexy. Ah, if you women only had the same clue to 
 Man's strength that you have to his weakness. Miss 
 Prossy, there would be no Woman Question. 
 
 Proserpine (over her shoulder, as she stoops, holding 
 her hands to the blaze). Where did you hear Morell say 
 that? You didn't invent it yourself: you're not clever 
 enough.
 
 92 Candida Act I 
 
 Lexy. That's quite true. I am not ashamed of owing 
 him that, as I owe him so many other spiritual truths. 
 He said it at the annual conference of the Women's 
 Liberal Federation. Allow me to add that though they 
 didn't appreciate it, I, a mere man, did. {He turns to 
 the bookcase again, hoping that this may leave her 
 crushed.) 
 
 Proserpine {putting her hair straight at the little 
 panel of mirror in the mantelpiece). Well, when you 
 talk to me, give me your own ideas, such as they are, 
 and not his. You never cut a poorer figure than when 
 you are trying to imitate him. 
 
 Lexy (stung). I try to follow his example, not to 
 imitate him. 
 
 Proserpine (coming at him again on her way back to 
 her rvork). Yes, you do: you imitate him. Why do 
 you tuck your umbrella under your left arm instead of 
 carrying it in your hand like anyone else? Why do you 
 walk with your chin stuck out before you, hurrying along 
 with that eager look in your eyes — you, who never get 
 up before half past nine in the morning? Why do you 
 say " knoaledge " in church, though you always say 
 " knolledge " in private conversation ! Bah ! do you think 
 I don't know? (She goes back to the typewriter.) 
 Here, come and set about your work: we've wasted enough 
 time for one morning. Here's a copy of the diary for 
 to-day. (She hands him a memorandum.) 
 
 Lexy (deeply offe?ided). Thank you. (He takes it 
 and stands at the table with his back to her, reading it. 
 She begins to transcribe her shorthand notes on the type- 
 writer without troubling herself about his feelings. Mr. 
 Burgess enters unannounced. He is a man of sixty, 
 made coarse and sordid by the compulsory selfishness 
 of petty commerce, and later on softened into sluggish 
 bumptiousness by overfeeding and commercial success. 
 A vulgar, ignorant, guzzling man, offensive and con- 
 temptuous to people whose labor is cheav, respectful to
 
 Act I Candida 93 
 
 wealth and rank, and quite sincere and without rancour 
 or envy in both attitudes. Finding him without talent, 
 the world has offered him no decently paid work except 
 ignoble work, and he has become in consequence, some- 
 what hoggish. But he has no suspicion of this himself, 
 and honestly regards his commercial prosperity as the 
 inevitable and socially wholesome triumph of the ability, 
 industry, shrewdness and experience in btisiness of a 
 man who in private is easygoing, affectionate and humor- 
 ously convival to a fault. Corporeally, he is a podgy 
 man, with a square, clean shaven face and a square beard 
 under his chin; dust colored, with a patch of grey in the 
 centre, and small watery blue eyes with a plaintively 
 sentimental expression, which he transfers easily to his 
 voice by his habit of pompously intoning his sentences.^ 
 
 Burgess (stopping on the threshold, and looking 
 round). They told me Mr. Morell was here. 
 
 Proserpine (rising). He's upstairs. I'll fetch him 
 for you. 
 
 Burgess (staring boorishly at her). You're not the 
 same young lady as hused to typewrite for him? 
 
 Proserpine. No. 
 
 Burgess (assenting). No: she was young-er. (Miss 
 Garnett stolidly stares at him; then goes out with great 
 dignity. He receives this quite obtusely, and crosses to 
 the hearth-rug, where he turns and spreads himself with 
 his back to the fire.) Startin' on your rounds, Mr. Mill? 
 
 Lexy (folding his paper and pocketing it). Yes: I 
 must be off presently. 
 
 Burgess (momentously). Don't let me detain you, 
 Mr. Mill. What I come about is private between me 
 and Mr. Morell. 
 
 Lexy (huffily). I have no intention of intruding, I 
 am sure, Mr. Burgess. Good morning. 
 
 Burgess (patronizingly) . Oh, good morning to you. 
 (Morell returns as Lexy is making for the door.') 
 
 Morell (to Lexy). Off to work?
 
 94) Candida Acr I 
 
 Lexy, Yes, sir. 
 
 MoRELL (patting him affectionately on the shoulder). 
 Take my silk handkerchief and wrap your throat up. 
 There's a cold wind. Away with you. 
 
 (Lexy brightens up, and goes out.) 
 
 Burgess. Spoilin' your curates, as usu'l, James. 
 Good mornin'. When I pay a man, an' 'is livin' depen's 
 on me, I keep him in his place. 
 
 MoRELL (^rather shortly). I always keep my curates 
 in their places as my helpers and comrades. If you get 
 as much work out of your clerks and warehousemen as I 
 do out of my curates, you must be getting rich pretty 
 fast. Will you take your old chair ? 
 
 (7/e points with curt authority to the arm chair beside 
 the fireplace; then takes the spare chair from the table 
 and sits down in front of Burgess.) 
 
 Burgess (without moving). Just the same as hever, 
 James ! 
 
 MoRELL. When you last called — it was about three 
 years ago, I think — you said the same thing a little more 
 frankly. Your exact words then were: "Just as big 
 a fool as ever, James ? " 
 
 Burgess (soothingly). Well, perhaps I did; but 
 (with conciliatory cheerfulness) I meant no offence by 
 it. A clorgyman is privileged to be a bit of a fool, 
 you know: it's on'y becomin' in his profession that he 
 should. Anyhow, I come here, not to rake up hold dif- 
 ferences, but to let bygones be bygones. (Suddenly 
 becoming very solemn, and approaching Morell.) 
 James : three year ago, you done me a hill turn. You 
 done me hout of a contrac'; an' when I gev you 'arsh 
 words in my nat'ral disappointment, you turned my 
 daughrter again me. Well, I've come to act the part of 
 a Cherischin. (Offering his hand.) I forgive you, 
 James. 
 
 MoRELL (starting up). Confound your impudence! 
 
 Burgess (retreating, with almost lachrymose depreca-
 
 Act I Candida 95 
 
 Hon of this treatment). Is that becomin' language for 
 a clorgyman, James? — and you so partic'lar, too? 
 
 MoRELL (Jiotly). No, sir, it is not becoming langVjdge 
 for a clergyman. I used the wrong word. I should have 
 said damn your impudence: that's what St. Paul, Oy^ any 
 honest priest would have said to you. Do you tL»nk I 
 have forgotten that tender of yours for the contract to 
 supply clothing to the workhouse? 
 
 Burgess (in a paroxysm of public spirit). I acted 
 in the interest of the ratepayers, James. It was the 
 lowest tender: you can't deny that. 
 
 MoRELL. Yes, the lowest, because you paid worse 
 wages than any other employer — starvation wages — aye, 
 worse than starvation wages — to the women who made 
 the clothing. Your wages would have driven them to the 
 streets to keep body and soul together. {Getting angrier 
 and angrier.) Those women were my parishioners. I 
 shamed the Guardians out of accepting your tender: I 
 shamed the ratepayers out of letting them do it: I shamed 
 everybody but you. (Boiling over.) How dare you, sir, 
 come here and offer to forgive me, and talk about your 
 daughter, and 
 
 Burgess. Easy, James, easy, easy. Don't git hinto 
 a fluster about nothink. I've howned I was wrong. 
 
 Morell (fuming about). Have you? I didn't hear 
 you. 
 
 Burgess. Of course I did. I hown it now. Come: I 
 harsk your pardon for the letter I wrote you. Is that 
 enough ? 
 
 MoRELL (snapping his fingers). That's nothing. 
 Have you raised the wages? 
 
 Burgess (triumphantly). Yes. 
 
 MoRELL (stopping dead). What! 
 
 Burgess (unctuously). I've turned a moddle hem- 
 ployer. I don't hemploy no women now: they're all 
 sacked; and the work is done by machinery. Not a 
 man 'as less than sixpence a ^our; and the skilled 'ands
 
 96 Candida Act I 
 
 gits the Trade Union rate. {Proudly.) What 'ave you to 
 say to me now? 
 
 MoRELL {overwhelmed). Is it possible! Well, 
 there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repent- 
 eth — {Going to Burgess with an explosion of apologetic 
 cordiality.) My dear Burgess, I most heartily beg 
 your pardon for my hard thoughts of you. {Grasps his 
 hand.) And now, don't you feel the better for the 
 change.? Come, confess, you're happier. You look 
 happier. 
 
 Burgess {ruefully). Well, p'raps I do. I s'pose I 
 must, since you notice it. At all events, I git my contrax 
 asseppit (accepted) by the County Council. {Savagely.) 
 They dussent 'ave nothink to do with me unless I paid 
 fair wages — curse 'em for a parcel o' meddlin' fools ! 
 
 MoRELL {dropping his hand, utterly discouraged). 
 So that was why you raised the wages! {He sits down 
 moodily.) 
 
 Burgess {severely, in spreading, -mounting tones). 
 Why else should I do it.? What does it lead to but 
 drink and huppishness in workin' men.? {He seats him- 
 self magisterially in the easy chair.) It's hall very well 
 for you, James : it gits you hinto the papers and makes 
 a great man of you; but you never think of the 'arm 
 you do, puttin' money into the pockets of workin' men 
 that they don't know 'ow to spend, and takin' it from 
 people that might be makin' a good huse on it. 
 
 MoRELL {with a heavy sigh, speaking with cold polite- 
 ness). What is your business with me this morning? 
 I shall not pretend to believe that you are here merely 
 out of family sentiment. 
 
 Burgess {obstinately). Yes, I ham — just family 
 sentiment and nothink else. 
 
 Morell {with weary calm). I don't believe you! 
 
 Burgess {rising threateningly). Don't say that to 
 me again, James Mavor Morell. 
 
 Morell {unmoved). I'll say it just as often as may
 
 Act I Candida 97 
 
 be necessary to convince you that it's true. I don't be- 
 lieve you. 
 
 Burgess {collapsing into an abyss of wounded feel- 
 ing). Oh, well, if you're determined to be unfriendly, 
 I s'pose I'd better go. {He moves reluctantly towards 
 the door. Morell makes no sign. He lingers.) I didn't 
 hexpect to find a hunforgivin' spirit in you, James. 
 (Morell still not responding, he takes a few more re- 
 luctant steps doorwards. Then he comes hack whining.) 
 We huseter git on well enough, spite of our different 
 opinions. Why are you so changed to me? I give you 
 my word I come here in pyorr (pure) frenliness, not 
 wishin' to be on bad terms with my hown daughr- 
 ter's 'usban'. Come, James: be a Cheristhin and shake 
 'ands. {He puts his hand sentimentally on Morell's 
 shoulder.) 
 
 MoRKLL {looking up at him thoughtfully). Look 
 here. Burgess. Do you want to be as welcome here as you 
 were before you lost that contract.'' 
 
 Burgess. I do, James. I do — honest. 
 
 Morell. Then why don't you behave as you did 
 then ? 
 
 Burgess {cautiously removing his hand). 'Ow d'y* 
 mean? 
 
 Morell. I'll tell you. You thought me a young 
 fool then. 
 
 Burgess {coaxingly). No, I didn't, James. I 
 
 Morell {cutting him short). Yes, you did. And I 
 thought you an old scoundrel. 
 
 Burgess {most vehemently deprecating this gross self- 
 accusation on Morell's part). No, you didn't, James. 
 Now you do yourself a hin justice. 
 
 Morell. Yes, I did. Well, that did not prevent 
 our getting on very well together. God made you what 
 I call a scoundrel as he made me vvhat you call a fool. 
 {The effect of this observation on Burgess is to itmove 
 the keystone of his moral arch. He becomes bodily
 
 98 Candida Act I 
 
 weak, and, with his eyes fixed on Morell in a helpless 
 itare, puts out his hand apprehensively to balance him,- 
 telf, as if the floor had suddenly sloped under him. 
 Morell proceeds in the same tone of quiet conviction.) 
 It was not for me to quarrel with his handiwork in the 
 one case more than in the other. So long as you come 
 here honestly as a self-respecting, thorough, convinced 
 scoundrel, justifying your scoundrelism, and proud of it, 
 you are welcome. But {and now Morell' s tone becomes 
 formidable; and he rises and strikes the back of the 
 chair for greater emphasis) I won't have you here 
 snivelling about being a model employer and a converted 
 man when you're only an apostate with your coat turned 
 for the sake of a County Council contract. {He nods at 
 him to enforce the point; then goes to the hearth-rug, 
 where he takes up a comfortably commanding position 
 ■with his back to the fire, and continues) No: I like a 
 man to be true to himself, even in wickedness. Come 
 now: either take your hat and go; or else sit down and 
 give me a good scoundrelly reason for wanting to be 
 friends with me. (Burgess, whose emotions have sub- 
 sided sufficiently to be expressed by a dazed grin, is 
 relieved by this concrete proposition. He ponders it for a 
 moment, and then, slowly and very modestly, sits down 
 in the chair Morell has just left.) That's right. Now, 
 out with it. 
 
 Burgess (chuckling in spite of himself). Well, you 
 are a queer bird, James, and no mistake. But (almost 
 enthusiastically) one carnt 'elp likin' you; besides, as I 
 said afore, of course one don't take all a clergyman says 
 seriously, or the world couldn't go on. Could it now? 
 (He composes himself for graver discourse, and turning 
 his eyes on Morell proceeds with dull seriousness.) Well, 
 I don't mind tellin' you, since it's your wish we should be 
 free with one another, that I did think you a bit of 
 a fool once; but I'm beginnin' to think that p'r'aps I 
 was be'ind the times a bit.
 
 Act I Candida 99 
 
 MoRELL (delighted). Aha! You're finding that out 
 at last, are you? 
 
 Burgess (portentously). Yes, times 'as changed 
 mor'n I could a believed. Five yorr (year) ago, no sen- 
 sible man would a thought o' takin' up with your ideas. 
 I hused to wonder you was let preach at all. Why, I 
 know a clergyman that 'as bin kep' hout of his job 
 for yorrs by the Bishop of London, although the pore 
 feller's not a bit more religious than you are. But 
 to-day, if henyone was to offer to bet me a thousan' 
 poun' that you'll end by bein' a bishop yourself, I 
 shouldn't venture to take the bet. You and yore crew 
 are gettin' hinfluential: I can see that. They'll 'ave 
 to give you something someday, if it's only to stop 
 yore mouth. You 'ad the right instinc' arter all, James: 
 the line you took is the payin' line in the long run fur 
 a man o' your sort. 
 
 MoRELii (decisively — offering his hand). Shake 
 hands. Burgess. Now you're talking honestly. I don't 
 think they'll make me a bishop; but if they do, I'll in- 
 troduce you to the biggest jobbers I can get to come to 
 my dinner parties. 
 
 Burgess (who has risen with a sheepish grin and ac- 
 cepted the hand of friendship). You will 'ave your 
 joke, James. Our quarrel's made up now, isn't it-f* 
 
 A Woman's Voice. Say yes, James. 
 
 Startled, they turn quickly and find that Candida has 
 just come in, and is looking at them with an amused 
 maternal indulgence which is her characteristic expres- 
 sion. She is a woman of S3, well built, well nourished, 
 likely, one guesses, to become matronly later on, but now 
 quite at her best, with the double charm of youth and 
 motherhood. Her ways are those of a woman who has 
 found that she can always manage people by engaging 
 their affection, and who does so frankly and instinctively 
 without the smallest scruple. >9o far, she is like any 
 other pretty woman who is just clever enough to make
 
 100 Candida Act I 
 
 the most of her sexual attractions for trivially selfish 
 ends; but Candida's serene brow, courageous eyes, and 
 well set mouth and chin signify largeness of mind and 
 dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the af- 
 fections. A wisehearted observer, looking at her, would 
 at once guess that whoever had placed the Virgin of the 
 Assumption over her hearth did so because he fancied 
 some spiritual resemblance between them, and yet would 
 not suspect either her husband or herself of any such 
 idea, or indeed of any concern with the art of Titian. 
 
 Just now she is in bonnet and mantle, laden with a 
 strapped rug with her umbrella stuck through it, a hand- 
 bag, and a supply of illustrated papers. 
 
 MoRELL (^shocked at his remissness). Candida! 
 Why — (looks at his watch, and is horrified to find it so 
 late.) My darling! (Hurrying to her and seising the 
 rug strap, pouring forth his remorseful regrets all the 
 time.) I intended to meet you at the train. I let the 
 time slip. (Flinging the rug on the sofa.) I was so 
 engrossed by — (returning to her) — I forgot — oh! (He 
 embraces her with penitent emotion.) 
 
 Burgess (a little shamefaced and doubtful of his re- 
 ception). How orr you, Candy? (She, still in Morell's 
 arms, offers him her cheek, which he kisses.) James and 
 me is come to a unnerstandin' — a /lonourable unnerstand- 
 in', Ain' we, James? 
 
 MoRELL (impetuously). Oh, bother your under- 
 standing! You've kept me late for Candida. (With 
 compassionate fervor.) My poor love: how did you man- 
 age about the luggage? — how 
 
 Candida (stopping him. and disengaging herself). 
 There, there, there. I wasn't alone. Eugene came down 
 yesterday; and we traveled up together. 
 
 MoRELL (pleased). Eugene! 
 
 Candida. Yes : he's struggling with my luggage, poor 
 boy. Go out, dear, at once; or he will pay for the cab; 
 and I don't want that. (Morell hurries out. Candida
 
 Act I Candida 101 
 
 puts down her handbag; then takes off her mantle and 
 bonnet and puts them on the sofa with the rug, chatting 
 meanwhile.) Well^ papa, liow are you getting on at 
 home ? 
 
 Burgess. The 'ouse ain't worth livin' in since you 
 left it. Candy. I wish you'd come round and give the 
 gurl a talkin' to. Who's this Eugene that's come with 
 you? 
 
 Candida. Oh, Eugene's one of James's discoveries. 
 He found him sleeping on the Embankment last June. 
 Haven't you noticed our new picture (pointing to the 
 Virgin) ? He gave us that. 
 
 Burgess (incredulously). Gam! D'you mean to tell 
 me — your hown father ! — that cab touts or such like, orf 
 the Embankment, buys pictur's like that.^ (Severely.) 
 Don't deceive me. Candy: it's a 'Igh Church pictur; and 
 James chose it hisself. 
 
 Candida. Guess again. Eugene isn't a cab tout. 
 
 Burgess. Then wot is he? (Sarcastically.) A no- 
 bleman, I 'spose, 
 
 Candida (delighted — nodding). Yes. His uncle's a 
 peer — a real live earl. 
 
 Burgess (not daring to believe such good news). No! 
 
 Candida. Yes. He had a seven day bill for £55 in 
 his pocket when James found him on the Embankment. 
 He thought he couldn't get any money for it until the 
 seven days were up; and he was too shy to ask for 
 credit. Oh, he's a dear boy ! We are very fond of him. 
 
 Burgess (pretending to belittle the aristocracy, but 
 with his eyes gleaming). Hm, I thort you wovddn't git 
 a piorr's (peer's) nevvy visitin' in Victoria Park unless 
 he were a bit of a flat. (Looking again at the picture.) 
 Of course I don't 'old with that pictur. Candy; but 
 still it's a 'igh class, fust rate work of art: I can see 
 that. Be sure you hintroduce me to him. Candy. (He 
 looks at his watch ajixiously.) I can only stay about 
 two minutes.
 
 102 Candida Act I 
 
 Morell comes back with Eugene, whom Burgess con- 
 templates moist-eyed with enthusiasvi. He is a strange, 
 shy youth of eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate 
 childish voice, and a hunted, tormented expression and 
 shrinking manner that shew the painful sensitiveness 
 that very swift and acute apprehensiveness produces in 
 youth, before the character has grown to its full strength. 
 Yet everything that his timidity and fraility suggests is 
 contradicted by his face. He is miserably irresolute, 
 does not know where to stand or what to do with his 
 hands and feet, is afraid of Burgess, and would run away 
 into solitude if he dared; but the very intensity with 
 which he feels a perfectly commonplace position shews 
 great nervous force, and his nostrils and mouth shew a 
 fiercely petulant wilfulness, as to the quality of which 
 his great imaginative eyes and fine brow are reassuring. 
 He is so entirely uncommon as to be almost unearthly ; 
 and to prosaic people there is something noxious in this 
 unearthliness, just as to poetic people there is something 
 angelic in it. His dress is anarchic. He wears an old 
 blue serge jacket, unbuttoned over a woolen lawn tennis 
 shirt, with a silk handkerchief for a cravat, trousers 
 matching the jacket, and brown canvas shoes. In these 
 garments he has apparently lain in the heather and 
 waded through the waters; but there is no evidence of 
 his having ever brushed them. 
 
 As he catches sight of a stranger on entering, he 
 stops, and edges along the wall on the opposite side of 
 the room. 
 
 Morell {as he enters). Come along: you can spare 
 us quarter of an hour, at all events. This is my father- 
 in-law, Mr. Burgess — Mr. Marchbanks. 
 
 Marchbanks {nervously backing against the book- 
 case). Glad to meet you, sir. 
 
 Burgess {crossing to him with great heartiness, whilst 
 Morell joins Candida at the fire). Glad to meet you, 
 I'm shore, Mr. Morchbanks. {Forcing him to shake
 
 Act I Candida 103 
 
 hands.) 'Ow do you find yoreself this weather? 'Ope 
 you ain't lettin* James put no foolish ideas into your 
 'ed? 
 
 Marchbanks. Foolish ideas ! Oh, you mean So- 
 cialism. No. 
 
 Burgess. That's right. (Again looking at his 
 watch.) Well, I must go now: there's no 'elp for it. 
 Yo're not comin' my way, are you, Mr. Morchbanks? 
 
 Marchbanks. Which way is that? 
 
 Burgess. Victawriar Pork Station. There's a city 
 train at 12:25. 
 
 MoRELL. Nonsense. Eugene will stay to lunch with 
 us, I expect. 
 
 Marchbanks (anxiously excusing himself). No — I 
 —I 
 
 Burgess. Well, well, I shan't press you: I bet you'd 
 rather lunch with Candy. Some night, I 'ope, you'll 
 come and dine with me at my club, the Freeman Found- 
 ers in Nortn Folgit. Come, say you will. 
 
 Marchbanks. Thank you, Mr. Burgess. Where is 
 Norton Folgate — down in Surrey, isn't it? (Burgess, 
 inexpressibly tickled, begins to splutter rvitli laugJiter.) 
 
 Candida (coming to the rescue). You'll lose your 
 train, papa, if you don't go at once. Come back in the 
 afternoon and tell Mr. Marchbanks where to find the 
 club. 
 
 Burgess (roaring with glee). Down in Surrey — har, 
 har ! that's not a bad one. Well, I never met a man as 
 didn't know Nortn Folgit before. (Abashed at his own 
 noisiness.) Good-bye, Mr. Morchbanks: I know you're 
 too 'ighbred to take my pleasantry in bad part. (He 
 again offers his hand.) 
 
 Marchbanks (taking it with a nervous jerk). Not 
 at all. 
 
 Burgess. Bye, bye. Candy. I'll look in again later 
 on. So long, James. 
 
 Morell. Must you go?
 
 104 Candida Act I 
 
 Burgess. Don't stir. {He goes out with unabated 
 heartiness.) 
 
 MoRELL. Oh, I'll see you out. (He follows him 
 out. Eugene stares after them apprehensively, holding 
 his breath until Burgess disappears.) 
 
 Candida (laughing). Well, Eugene. (He turns with 
 a start and comes eagerly towards her, but stops irres- 
 olutely as he meets her amused look.) What do you 
 think of my father? 
 
 Marchbanks. I — I hardly know him yet. He 
 seems to be a very nice old gentleman. 
 
 Candida (7vith gentle irony). And you'll go to the 
 Freeman Founders to dine with him, won't you? 
 
 Marchbanks (miserably, taking it quite seriously). 
 Yes, if it will please you. 
 
 Candida (touched). Do you know, you are a very 
 nice boy, Eugene, with all your queerness. If you had 
 laughed at my father I shouldn't have minded; but I 
 like you ever so much better for being nice to him. 
 
 Marchbanks. Ought I to have laughed? I noticed 
 that he said something funny; but I am so ill at ease 
 with strangers; and I never can see a joke! I'm very 
 sorry. (He sits down on the sofa, his elbows on his 
 kyiees and his temples between his fists, with an expres- 
 sion of hopeless suffering.) 
 
 Candida (bustling him goodnaturedly) . Oh, come! 
 You great baby, you! You are worse than usual this 
 morning. Why were you so melancholy as we came along 
 in the cab? 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, that was nothing. I was won- 
 dering how much I ought to give the cabman. I know 
 it's utterly silly; but you don't know how dreadful such 
 things are to me — how I shrink from having to deal 
 with strange people. (Quickly and reassuringly.) But 
 it's all right. He beamed all over and touched his hat 
 when Morell gave him two shillings. I was on the point 
 of offering him ten. (Candida laughs heartily. Morell
 
 Act I Candida 105 
 
 comes hack with a few letters and newspapers which have 
 come by the midday post.) 
 
 Candida. Oh, James, dear, he was going to give the 
 cabman ten shillings — ten shillings for a three minutes' 
 drive — oh, dear ! 
 
 MoRELL (at the table, glancing through the letters). 
 Never mind her, Marchbanks. The overpaying instinct 
 is a generous one: better than the vmderpaying instinct, 
 and not so common. 
 
 Marchbanks (relapsing into dejection). No: cow- 
 ardice, incompetence. Mrs. Morell's quite right. 
 
 Candida. Of course she is. (She takes up her hand- 
 bag.) And now I must leave you to James for the 
 present. I suppose you are too much of a poet to know 
 the state a woman finds her house in when she's been 
 away for three weeks. Give me my rug. (Eugene takes 
 the strapped rug from the couch, and gives it to her. She 
 takes it in her left hand, having the bag in her right.) 
 Now hang my cloak across my arm. (He obeys.) Now 
 my hat. (He puts it into the hand which has the bag.) 
 Now open the door for me. (He hurries up before her 
 and opens the door.) Thanks. (She goes out; and 
 Marchbanks shuts the door.) 
 
 MoRELL (still busy at the table). You'll stay to 
 lunch, Marchbanks, of course. 
 
 Marchbanks (scared). I mustn't. (He glances 
 quickly at Morell, but at once avoids his frank look, and 
 adds, with obvious disingenuousness) I can't. 
 
 MoRELL (over his shoulder). You mean you won't. 
 
 Marchbanks (earnestly). No: I should like to, in- 
 deed. Thank you very much. But — but 
 
 MoRELL (breezily, finishing with the letters and com- 
 ing close to him). But — but — but — but — bosh! If 
 you'd like to stay, stay. You don't mean to persuade me 
 you have anything else to do. If you're shy, go and 
 take a turn in the park and write poetry until half past 
 one; and then come in and have a good feed.
 
 106 Candida Act i 
 
 Marciibanks. Thank you^ I should like that very- 
 much. But I really musn't. The truth is, Mrs. Morell 
 told me not to. She said she didn't think you'd ask me 
 to stay to lunch, but that I was to remember, if you did, 
 that you didn't really want me to. (Plaintively.) She 
 said I'd understand; but I don't. Please don't tell her 
 I told you. 
 
 MoRELL (drolly). Oh, is that all.'' Won't my sug- 
 gestion that you should take a turn in the park meet 
 the difficulty.'' 
 
 Marchbanks. How? 
 
 MoRELL {exploding good-humoredly) . Why, you 
 duffer — (But this hoisterousness jars himself as well 
 as Eugene. He checks himself, and resumes, with af- 
 fectionate 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 anticipat- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 pression 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! — your marriage! You think 
 that! You believe that! 
 
 MoRELL (buoyantly). I know it, my lad. La Roche- 
 foucauld said that there are convenient marriages, but 
 no delightful ones. You don't know the comfort of see- 
 ing 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.
 
 Act I Candida 107 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 go- 
 ing to leave it, my dear boy: I thought you 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, disregard- 
 ing 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, drop- 
 ping his hands, and thrusting his face forward fiercely 
 at Morell, he goes on threateningly.) You shall see 
 whether this is a time for patience and kindness. {Mo- 
 rell, 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 mo-
 
 108 Candida Act I 
 
 ment iii 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 whimsi- 
 cally 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 (vehemently). You dare say that of 
 her ! You think that vray 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 re- 
 main 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 some- 
 thing 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 — you (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.) Eu- 
 gene, 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? (MoreU'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
 
 Act I Candida 109 
 
 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 you are a fool about it. {Mor ell's perplexity 
 deepens markedly. Eugene follorvs up his advantage, 
 plying him fiercely with questions.) Does that prove 
 you wrong? Does your complacent superiority to me 
 prove that / 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. 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 mo- 
 ment. 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 trem- 
 ble to think of that — to think that the heavy burthen 
 and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.
 
 110 Candida Act I 
 
 Marchbanks (unimpressed and remorseless, his boy- 
 ish 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 me — 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 liome, 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, crav- 
 ing for reality, truth, freedom, and being fed on meta- 
 phors, sermons, stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you 
 think a woman's soul can live on your talent for preach- 
 ing? 
 
 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 less. What has your knack 
 of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than play- 
 ing 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:
 
 Act I Candida 111 
 
 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 these words.) " But his wife de- 
 spised him in her heart." 
 
 MoRELL (wrath fully) . 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, be- 
 fore you frigliten yourself into a fit. 
 
 Marchbanks (on the sofa, gasping, but relieved by 
 the withdrawal of Mor ell'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 be- 
 cause 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 — be- 
 cause 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 be-
 
 112 Candida Act I 
 
 cause 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 g^ing 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 {temporising). 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.)
 
 Act I Candida 113 
 
 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 are a poet, 
 certainly. Look at him, James ! {She takes him by the 
 coat, and brings him forrvard 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 
 trvo men guard themselves against betraying their con- 
 sciousness.) Here! Stand still. (She buttons his col- 
 lar; ties his neckerchief in a borv; 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 ad- 
 vance to the contrary. 
 
 Candida. Shall he stay, James, if he promises to be 
 a good boy and to help me to lay the table? (March- 
 banks turns his head and looks steadfastly at Morell over 
 his shoulder, challenging his answer.) 
 
 Morell (shortly). Oh, yes, certainly: he had bet- 
 ter. (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. 
 
 END OF act I.
 
 ACT II 
 
 The same day. The same room. Late in the after- 
 noon. The spare chair for visitors has been replaced at 
 the table, which is, if possible, more untidy than before. 
 Marchbanhs, 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 note- 
 book in which she takes down Morell's letters in short- 
 hand 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 meddling with my 
 tj'pewriter, 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 Gar- 
 nett. 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 sup- 
 pose you thougi'^t 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.'' 
 
 114
 
 Act n Candida 115 
 
 Proserpine (^somewhat indignantly: any such discus- 
 sion, 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 dig- 
 nity to the bookcase.) 
 
 Marchbanks (approaching her humbly). I hope I 
 baven'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 with- 
 out 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. 
 
 Proserpine. 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.) 
 
 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
 
 116 Candida Act n 
 
 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 long- 
 ing 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 occasion- 
 ally, don't they? 
 
 Marchbanks (scrambling up almost fiercely). 
 Wicked people means people who have no love: there- 
 fore they have no shame. They have the power to ask 
 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 in-
 
 Act II Candida 117 
 
 different things if a child were by, crying bitterly with 
 hunger ? 
 
 Proserpine. I suppose not. 
 
 Marchbanks. Well: / can't talk about indifferent 
 things with my heart crying out bitterly in its hunger. 
 
 Proserpine. Then hold your tongue. 
 
 Marchbanks. Yes: that is what it always comes to. 
 We hold our tongues. Does that stop the cry of your 
 heart.'' — for it does cry: doesn't it? It must, if you 
 have a heart. 
 
 Proserpine {suddenly rising with her hand pressed 
 on her heart). Oh, it's no use trying to work while you 
 talk like that. {She leaves her little table and sits on the 
 sofa. Her feelings are evidently strongly worked on.) 
 It's no business of yours, whether my heart cries or 
 not; but I have a mind to tell you, for all that. 
 
 Marchbanks. You needn't. I know already that it 
 must. 
 
 Proserpine. But mind: if you ever say I said so, 
 I'll deny it. 
 
 Marchbanks {compassionately) . Yes, I know. And 
 so you haven't the courage to tell him? 
 
 Proserpine {bouncing up). Him! Who? 
 
 Marchbanks. Whoever he is. The man you love. 
 It might be anybody. The curate, ^Ir. Mill, perhaps. 
 
 Proserpine {with disdain). Mr. Mill!!! A fine man 
 to break my heart about, indeed! I'd rather have you 
 than Mr. Mill. 
 
 Marchbanks {recoiling). No, really — I'm very 
 sorry; but you mustn't think of that. I 
 
 Proserpine {testily, crossing to the fire and standing 
 at it with her back to him). Oh, don't be frightened: 
 it's not you. It's not any one particular person. 
 
 Marchbanks. I know. You feel that you could love- 
 anybody that offered 
 
 Proserpine {exasperated). Anybody that offered! 
 No, I do not. What do you take me for?
 
 118 Candida Act II 
 
 Marchbanks {discouraged). No use. You won't 
 make me real answers — only those things that everybody 
 says. {He strays to the sofa and sits down disconso- 
 lately.) 
 
 Proserpine {nettled at what she takes to he a dis- 
 paragement of her manners by an aristocrat) . Oh, well, 
 if you want original conversation, you'd better go and 
 talk to yourself. 
 
 Marchbanks. That is what all poets do: they talk 
 to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. 
 But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk 
 sometimes. 
 
 Proserpine. Wait until Mr. Morell comes. He'll 
 talk to you. {Marchbanks shudders.) Oh, you needn't 
 make wry faces over him: he can talk better than you. 
 {With temper.) He'd talk your little head off. {She is 
 going back angrily to her place, when, suddenly enlight- 
 ened, he springs up and stops her.) 
 
 Marchbanks. Ah, I understand now ! 
 
 Proserpine {reddening). What do you vmderstand .f* 
 
 Marchbanks. Your secret. Tell me: is it really and 
 truly possible for a woman to love him? 
 
 Proserpine {as if this were beyond all bounds). 
 Well ! ! 
 
 Marchbanks {passionately). No, answer me. I 
 want to know: I must know. I can't understand it. I 
 can see nothing in him but words, pious resolutions, what 
 people call goodness. You can't love that. 
 
 Proserpine {attempting to snub him by an air of cool 
 propriety). I simply don't know what you're talking 
 about. I don't understand you. 
 
 Marchbanks {vehemently). You do. You lie 
 
 Proserpine. Oh ! 
 
 Marchbanks. You do understand; and you know. 
 {Determined to have an answer.) Is it possible for a 
 woman to love him.^ 
 
 Proserpine {looking him straight in the face). Yes.
 
 Act II Candida 119 
 
 {He covers his face with his hands.) Whatever is the 
 matter with you! (He takes down his hands and loohs 
 at her. Frightened at the tragic mask presented to her, 
 she hurries past him at the utmost possible distance, 
 keeping her eyes on his face until he turns from her and 
 goes to the child's chair beside the hearth, where he sits 
 in the deepest dejection. As she approaches the door, it 
 opens and Burgess enters. On seeing him, she ejacu- 
 lates) Praise heaven, here's somebody! (and sits down, 
 reassured, at her table. She puts a fresh sheet of paper 
 into the typewriter as Burgess crosses to Eugene.) 
 
 Burgess (bent on taking care of the distinguished vis- 
 itor). Well: so this is the way they leave you to your- 
 self, Mr. Morchbanks. I've come to keep you company. 
 (Marchbanks looks up at him in consternation, which 
 is quite lost on him.) James is receivin' a deppitation in 
 the dinin' room; and Candy is hupstairs educatin' of a 
 young stitcher gurl she's hinterested in. She's settin' 
 there learnin' her to read out of the " 'Ev'nly Twins." 
 (Condolingly.) You must find it lonesome here with no 
 one but the typist to talk to. (He pulls round the easy 
 chair above fire, and sits down.) 
 
 Proserpine (highly incensed). He'll be all right 
 now that he has the advantage of your polished conver- 
 sation : that's one comfort, anyhow. (She begins to type- 
 write with clattering asperity.) 
 
 Burgess (amazed at her audacity). Hi was not ad- 
 dressin' myself to you, young woman, that I'm awerr of. 
 
 Proserpine (tartly, to Marchbanks). Did you ever 
 see worse manners, Mr. Marchbanks ? 
 
 Burgess (with pompous severity). Mr. Morchbanks 
 is a gentlem^an and knows his place, which is more than 
 some people do. 
 
 Proserpine (fretfully). It's well you and I are not 
 ladies and gentlemen: I'd talk to you pretty straight if 
 Mr. Marchbanks wasn't here. (She pulls the letter out 
 of the machine so crossly that it tears.) There, now
 
 120 Candida Act II 
 
 I've spoiled this letter — liave to be done all over again. 
 Oh, I can't contain myself — silly old fathead! 
 
 Burgess (rising, breathless rvith indignation). Ho! 
 I'm a silly ole fat'ead, am I? Ho, indeed (gasping). 
 Hall right, my gurl! Hall right. You just wait till I 
 tell that to your employer. You'll see. I'll teach you: 
 see if I don't. 
 
 Proserpine. I 
 
 Burgess (cutting her short). No, you've done it now. 
 No huse a-talkin' to me. I'll let you know who I am. 
 (Proserpine shifts her paper carriage with a defiant bang, 
 and disdainfully goes on with her work.) Don't you 
 take no notice of her, Mr. Morchbanks. She's beneath 
 it. (He sits down again loftily.) 
 
 Marchbanks (miserably nervous and disconcerted). 
 Hadn't we better change the subject. I — I don't think 
 Miss Garnett meant anything. 
 
 Proserpine (with intense conviction). Oh, didn't I 
 though, just! 
 
 Burgess. I wouldn't demean myself to take notice on 
 her. 
 
 (An electric bell rings twice.) 
 
 Proserpine (gathering up her note-book and papers). 
 That's for me. (She hurries out.) 
 
 Burgess (calling after her). Oh, we can spare j^ou. 
 (Somewhat relieved by the triumph of having the last 
 word, and yet half inclined to try to improve on it, 
 he looks after her for a moment; then subsides into 
 his seat by Eugene, and addresses him very confiden- 
 tially.) Now we're alone, Mr. Morchbanks, let me 
 give you a friendly 'int that I wouldn't give to every- 
 body. 'Ow long 'ave you known my son-in-law James 
 here? 
 
 Marchbanks. I don't know. I never can remember 
 dates. A few months, perhaps. 
 
 Burgess. Ever notice anything queer about him? 
 
 Marchbanks. I don't think so.
 
 Act II Candida 121 
 
 Burgess {impressively). No more you wouldn't. 
 That's the danger in it. Well, he's mad. 
 Marchbanks. Mad ! 
 
 Burgess, Mad as a Morch 'are. You take notice on 
 him and you'll see. 
 
 Marchbanks (beginning). But surely that is only 
 because his opinions 
 
 Burgess {touching him with his forefinger on his 
 Jcnee, and pressing it as if to hold his attention with it). 
 That's wot I used ter think, Mr. Morchbanks. Hi 
 thought long enough that it was honly 'is opinions; 
 though, mind you, hopinions becomes vurry serious things 
 when people takes to hactin on 'em as 'e does. But 
 that's not wot I go on. {He looks round to make sure 
 that they are alone, and bends over to Eugene's ear.) 
 Wot do you think he says to me this mornin' in this very 
 room? 
 
 Marchbanks. What? 
 
 Burgess. He sez to me — this is as sure as we're settin' 
 here now — he sez: "I'm a fool," he sez; "and yore a 
 scounderl " — as cool as possible. Me a scounderl, mind 
 you! And then shook 'ands with me on it, as if it was 
 to my credit! Do you mean to tell me that that man's 
 sane? 
 
 MoRELL {outside, calling to Proserpine, holding the 
 door open). Get all their names and addresses. Miss 
 Garnett. 
 
 Proserpine {in the distance). Yes, Mr. Morell. 
 
 {Morell comes in, with the deputation's documents in 
 his hands.) 
 
 Burgess {aside to Marchbanks). Yorr he is. Just 
 you keep your heye on him and see. {Rising moment- 
 ously.) I'm sorry, James, to 'ave to make a complaint 
 to you. I don't want to do it; but I feel I oughter, as 
 a matter o' right and dooty. 
 
 Morell. What's the matter. 
 
 Burgess. Mr. Morchbanks will bear me out : he was a
 
 122 Candida Act n 
 
 witness. (Vert/ solemnly.) Your young woman so far 
 forgot herself as to call me a silly ole fat'ead. 
 
 MoRELL {delighted — 7vith tremendous heartiness). 
 Oh, now, isn't that exactly like Prossy? She's so 
 frank: she can't contain herself! Poor Prossy! Ha! Ha! 
 
 Burgess (trembling with rage). And do you hexpec 
 me to put up with it from the like of 'er? 
 
 MoRELL. Pooh, nonsense! you can't take any notice 
 of it. Never mind. {He goes to the cellaret and puts 
 the papers into one of the drawers.) 
 
 Burgess. Oh, / don't mind. I'm above it. But is 
 it right.^ — that's what I want to know. Is it right? 
 
 MoRELL. That's a question for the Church, not for 
 the laity. Has it done you any harm, that's the ques- 
 tion for you, eh? Of course, it hasn't. Think no more 
 of it. {He dismisses the subject by going to his place 
 at the table and setting to work at his correspondence.) 
 
 Burgess {aside to Marchbanks). What did I tell 
 you? Mad as a 'atter. {He goes to the table and asks, 
 with the sickly civility of a hungry man) When's din- 
 ner, James? 
 
 Morell. Not for half an hour yet. 
 
 Burgess {with plaintive resignation). Gimme a nice 
 book to read over the fire, will you, James : thur's a good 
 chap. 
 
 Morell. What sort of book? A good one? 
 
 Burgess {with almost a yell of remonstrance). 
 Nah-oo! Summat pleasant, just to pass the time. (Mo- 
 rell takes an illustrated paper from the table and offers 
 it. He accepts it humbly.) Thank yer, James. (He 
 goes back to his easy chair at the fire, and sits there at 
 his ease, reading.) 
 
 Morell {as he writes). Candida will come to enter- 
 tain you presently. She has got rid of her pupil. She is 
 filling the lamps. 
 
 Marchbanks {starting up in the wildest consterna- 
 tion). But that will soil her hands. I can't bear that.
 
 Act II Candida 123 
 
 Morell: it's a shame. I'll go and fill them. {He makes 
 for the door.) 
 
 Morell. You'd better not. (Marchhanks stops ir- 
 resolutely.) She'd only set you to clean my boots, to save 
 me the trouble of doing it myself in the morning. 
 
 Burgess (with grave disapproval). Don't you keep 
 a servant now, James.'' 
 
 Morell. Yes; but she isn't a slave; and the house 
 looks as if I kept three. That means that everyone has 
 to lend a hand. It's not a bad plan: Prossy and I can 
 talk business after breakfast whilst we're washing up. 
 Washing up's no trouble when there are two people to 
 do it. 
 
 Marchbanks (tormentedly) . Do you think every 
 woman is as coarse-grained as Miss Gamett? 
 
 Burgess {emphatically). That's quite right, Mr. 
 Morchbanks. That's quite right. She is corse-grained. 
 
 Morell {quietly and significantly). Marchbanks! 
 
 Marchbanks. Yes. 
 
 Morell. How many servants does your father keep ? 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, I don't know. (He comes back 
 uneasily to the sofa, as if to get as far as possible from 
 Morell's questioning, and sits down in great agony of 
 mind, thinking of the paraffin.) 
 
 Morell (very gravely). So many that you don't 
 know. (More aggressively.) Anyhow, when there's 
 anything coarse-grained to be done, you ring the bell 
 and throw it on to somebody else, eh? That's one of 
 the great facts in your existence, isn't it? 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, don't torture me. The one great 
 fact now is that your wife's beautiful fingers are dab- 
 bling in paraffin oil, and that you are sitting here com- 
 fortably preaching about it — everlasting preaching, 
 preaching, words, words, words. 
 
 Burgess (intensely appreciating this retort). Ha, ha! 
 Devil a better. (Radiantly.) 'Ad you there, James, 
 «rtraight.
 
 124 Candida Act II 
 
 (Cajidida comes in, well aproned, with a reading lamp 
 trimmed, filled, and ready for lighting. She places it on 
 the table near Morell, ready for use.) 
 
 Candida (brushing her finger tips together with a 
 slight twitch of her nose). If you stay with us^ Eugene, 
 I think I will hand over the lamps to you, 
 
 Marchbanks, I will stay on condition that you hand 
 over all the rough work to me. 
 
 Candida. Thatis very gallant; but I think I should 
 like to see how you do it first. (Turning to Morell.) 
 James : you've not been looking after the house properly. 
 
 Morell. What have I done — or not done — my love? 
 
 Candida (with serious vexation). My own particular 
 pet scrubbing brush has been used for blackleading. (A 
 heartbreaking wail bursts from Marchbanks. Burgess 
 looks round, amazed. Candida hurries to the sofa.) 
 What's the matter.'' Are you ill^ Eugene.'' 
 
 Marchbanks. No, not ill. Only horror, horror, hor- 
 ror! (He bows his head on his hands.) 
 
 Burgess (shocked). What! Got the 'errors, Mr. 
 Morchbanks ! Oh, that's bad, at your age. You must 
 leave it off grajally. 
 
 Candida (reassured). Nonsense, papa. It's only 
 poetic horror, isn't it, Eugene? (Petting him.) 
 
 Burgess (abashed). Oh, poetic 'orror, is it? I beg 
 your pordon, I'm shore. (He turns to the fire again, 
 deprecating his hasty conclusion.) 
 
 Candida. What is it, Eugene — the scrubbing brush? 
 (He shudders.) Well, there ! never mind. (She sits 
 down beside him.) Wouldn't you like to present me with 
 a nice new one, with an ivory back inlaid with mother~ 
 of-pearl ? 
 
 Marchbanks (softly and musically, but sadly and 
 longingly). No, not a scrubbing brush, but a boat — a 
 tiny shallop to sail away in, far from the world, where 
 the marble floors are washed by the rain and dried by 
 the sun, where the south wind dusts the beautiful green
 
 Act II Candida 125 
 
 and purple carpets. Or a chariot — to carry us up into 
 the sky^ where the lamps are stars, and don't need to 
 be filled with paraffin oil every day. 
 
 MoRELL {harshly). And where there is nothing to do 
 but to be idle, selfish and useless. 
 
 Candida {jarred). Oh, James, how could you spoil 
 it all ! 
 
 Marchbanks {firing up). Yes, to be idle, selfish and 
 useless: that is to be beautiful and free and happy: 
 hasn't every man desired that with all his soul for the 
 woman he loves .^ That's my ideal: what's yours, and 
 that of all the dreadful people who live in these hideous 
 rows of houses ? Sermons and scrubbing brushes ! With 
 you to preach the sermon and your wife to scrub. 
 
 Candida {quaintly). He cleans the boots, Eugene. 
 You will have to clean them to-morrow for saying that 
 about him. 
 
 Marchbanks, Oh! don't talk about boots. Your 
 feet should be beautiful on the mountains. 
 
 Candida. My feet would not be beautiful on the 
 Hackney Road without boots. 
 
 Burgess {scandalized). Come, Candy, don't be vul- 
 gar. Mr. Morchbanks ain't accustomed to it. You're 
 givin' him the 'orrors again. I mean the poetic ones. 
 
 {Morell is silent. Apparently he is busy with his 
 letters: really he is puzzling with misgiving over his new 
 and alarming experience that the surer he is of his moral 
 thrusts, the more swiftly and effectively Eugene parries 
 them. To find himself beginning to fear a man whom 
 he does not respect afflicts him bitterly.) 
 
 {Miss Garnett comes in with a telegram.) 
 
 Proserpine {handing the telegram to Morell). Reply 
 paid. The boy's waiting. {To Candida, coming back 
 to her machine and sitting down.) Maria is ready for 
 you now in the kitchen, Mrs. Morell. {Candida rises.) 
 The onions have come. 
 
 Marchbanks {convulsively). Onions!
 
 126 Candida Act II 
 
 Candida. Yes, onions. Not even Spanish ones — 
 nasty little red onions. You shall help me to slice them. 
 Come along. 
 
 (She catches him by the wrist and runs out, pulling 
 him after her. Burgess rises in consternation, and stands 
 aghast on the hearth-rug, staring after them.^ 
 
 Burgess. Candy didn't oughter 'andle a peer's nevvy 
 like that. It's goin' too fur with it. Lookee 'ere, James: 
 do 'e often git taken queer like that? 
 
 MoRELL {shortly, w7-iting a telegram). I don't know. 
 
 Burgess {sentimentally). He talks very pretty, I 
 alius had a turn for a bit of potery. Candy takes arter 
 me that-a-way: huse ter make me tell her fairy stories 
 when she was on'y a little kiddy not that 'igh {indicating 
 a stature of two feet or thereabouts) . 
 
 MoRELL {preoccupied). Ah, indeed, {He blots the 
 telegram, and goes out.) 
 
 Proserpine. Used you to make the fairy stories up 
 out of your own head? 
 
 {Burgess, not deigning to reply, strikes an attitude 
 of the haughtiest disdain on the hearth-rug.) 
 
 Proserpine {calmly). I should never have supposed 
 you had it in you. By the way, I'd better warn you^ 
 since you've taken such a fancy to Mr, Marchbanks. 
 He's mad. 
 
 Burgess. Mad! Wot! 'Im too!! 
 
 Proserpine, Mad as a March hare. He did frighten 
 me, I can tell you, just before you came in that time. 
 Haven't you noticed the queer things he says? 
 
 Burgess. So that's wot the poetic 'orrors means. 
 Blame me if it didn't come into my head once or twyst 
 that he must be off his chump! {He crosses the room 
 to the door, lifting up his voice as he goes.) Well, this 
 is a pretty sort of asylum for a man to be in, with no 
 one but you to take care of him ! 
 
 Proserpine {as he passes her). Yes, what a dreadfjil 
 thing it would be if anything happened to you!
 
 Act n Candida 127 
 
 Burgess (loftily). Don't you address no remarks to 
 me. Tell your hemployer that I've gone into the garden 
 for a smoke. 
 
 Proserpine (mocking). Oh! 
 
 (Before Burgess can retort, Morell comes back.) 
 
 Burgess (sentimentally) Goin' for a turn in the gar- 
 den to smoke, James. 
 
 Morell (brusquely). Oh, all right, all right. (Bur- 
 gess goes out pathetically in the character of the weary 
 old man. Morell stands at the table, turning over his 
 papers, and adding, across to Proserpine, half humor- 
 ously, half absently) Well, Miss Prossy, why have you 
 been calling my father-in-law names? 
 
 Proserpine (blushing fiery red, and looking quickly 
 up at him, half scared, half reproachful). I — (She 
 bursts into tears.) 
 
 Morell (with tender gaiety, leaning across the table 
 towards her, and consoling her). Oh, come, come, come!. 
 Never mind, Pross: he is a silly old fathead, isn't he? 
 
 (With an explosive sob, she makes a dash at the door, 
 and vanishes, banging it. Morell, shaking his head re- 
 signedly, sighs, and goes wearily to his chair, where he 
 sits down and sets to work, looking old and careworn.) 
 
 (Candida comes in. She has finished her household 
 tvork and taken off the apron. She at once notices his 
 dejected appearance, and posts herself quietly at the 
 spare chair, looking down at him attentively ; but she 
 says nothing.) 
 
 Morell (looking up, but with his pen raised ready to 
 resume his work). Well? Where is Eugene? 
 
 Candida. Washing his hands in the scullery — under 
 the tap. He will make an excellent cook if he can only 
 get over his dread of Maria. 
 
 ISIoRELL (shortly). Ha! No doubt. (He begins 
 writing again.) 
 
 Candida (going nearer, and putting her hand down 
 softly an his to stop him, as she says). Come here, dear.
 
 128 Candida Act II 
 
 Let me look at you. {He drops his pen and yields him- 
 self at her disposal. She makes him rise and brings him 
 a little away from the table, looking at him critically all 
 the time.) Turn your face to the light. {She places 
 him facing the window.) My boy is not looking well. 
 Has he been overworking? 
 
 MoRELL. Nothing more than usual. 
 
 Candida. He looks very pale, and grey, and wrin- 
 kled, and old. {His melancholy deepens; and she attacks 
 it with wilful gaiety.) Here {pulling him towards the 
 easy chair) you've done enough writing for to-day. 
 Leave Prossy to finish it and come and talk to me. 
 
 MoRELL. But 
 
 Candida. Yes, I must be talked to sometimes. {She 
 makes him sit down, and seats herself on the carpet 
 beside his knee.) Now {patting his hand) you're be- 
 ginning to look better already. Why don't you give up 
 all this tiresome overworking — going out every night 
 lecturing and talking? Of course what you say is all 
 very true and very right ; but it does no good : they don't 
 mind what you say to them one little bit. Of course they 
 agree with you; but what's the use of people agreeing 
 with you if they go and do just the opposite of what you 
 tell them the moment your back is turned? Look at our 
 congregation at St. Dominic's ! Why do they come to 
 hear you talking about Christianity every Sunday? 
 Why, just because they've been so full of business and 
 money-making for six days that they want to forget 
 all about it and have a rest on the seventh, so that 
 they can go back fresh and make money harder than 
 ever ! You positively help them at it instead of hindering 
 them. 
 
 MoRELL {with energetic seriousness). You know very 
 well, Candida, that I often blow them up soundly for 
 that. But if there is nothing in their church-going but 
 rest and diversion, why don't they try something more 
 amusing — more self-indulgent? There must be some
 
 Act II Candida 129 
 
 good in the fact that they prefer St. Dominic's to worse 
 places on Sundays. 
 
 Candida. Oh^ the worst places aren't open; and even 
 if they were, they daren't be seen going to them. Be- 
 sides, James, dear, you preach so splendidly that it's as 
 good as a play for them. Why do you think the women 
 are so enthusiastic ? 
 
 MoRELL {shocked). Candida! 
 
 Candida. Oh, / know. You silly boy: you think it's 
 your Socialism and your religion; but if it was that, 
 they'd do what you tell them instead of only coming to 
 look at you. They all have Prossy's complaint. 
 
 MoRELL. Prossy's complaint ! What do you mean, 
 Candida .'' 
 
 Candida. Yes, Prossy, and all the other secretaries 
 you ever had. Why does Prossy condescend to wash up 
 the things, and to peel potatoes and abase herself in all 
 manner of ways for six shillings a week less than she 
 used to get in a city office? She's in love with you, 
 James: that's the reason. They're all in love with you. 
 And you are in love with preaching because you do it so 
 beautifully. And you think it's all enthusiasm for the 
 kingdom of Heaven on earth; and so do they. You dear 
 siUy ! 
 
 MoRELL. Candida: what dreadful, what soul-destroy- 
 ing cynicism! Are you jesting.^' Or — can it bei' — are 
 you jealous.'' 
 
 Candida (with curious thought fulness) . Yes, I feel a 
 little jealous sometimes. 
 
 MoRELL (incredulously). What! Of Prossy! 
 
 Candida (laughing) . No, no, no, no. Not jealous of 
 anybod}^ Jealous for somebody else, who is not loved as 
 he ought to be. 
 
 MoRELL. Me! 
 
 Candida. You ! WTiy, you're spoiled with love and 
 worship: you get far more than is good for you. No: I 
 mean Eugene.
 
 130 Candida Act II 
 
 MoRELL (startled). Eugene! 
 
 Candida. It seems unfair that all the love should go 
 to you, and none to him, although he needs it so much 
 more than you do. (A convulsive movement shakes him 
 in spite of himself.) What's the matter.'' Am I worry- 
 ing you? 
 
 MoRELL, {hastily). Not at all. {Looking at her with 
 troubled intensity.) You know that I have perfect con- 
 fidence in you, Candida. 
 
 Candida. You vain thing! Are you so sure of your 
 irresistible attractions ? 
 
 MoRELL. Candida: you are shocking me. I never 
 thought of my attractions. I thought of your goodness 
 — your purity. That is what I confide in. 
 
 Candida. What a nasty, imcomfortable thing to say 
 to me! Oh, you are a clergyman, James — a thorough 
 clergyman. 
 
 MoRELL {turning away from her, heart-stricken). So 
 Eugene says. 
 
 Candida {with lively interest, leaning over to him with 
 her arms on his knee). Eugene's always right. He's a 
 wonderful boy: I have grown fonder and fonder of him 
 all the time I was away. Do you know, James, that 
 though he has not the least suspicion of it himself, he is 
 ready to fall madly in love with me.'' 
 
 MoRELL {grimly). Oh, he has no suspicion of it him- 
 self, hasn't he? 
 
 Candida. Not a bit. {She takes her arms from his 
 knee, and turns thoughtfully, sinking into a more restful 
 attitude with her hands in her lap.) Some day he will 
 know — when he is grown up and experienced, like you. 
 And he will know that I must have known. I wonder 
 what he will think of me then. 
 
 MoRELL. No evil, Candida. I hope and trust, no evil. 
 
 Candida {dubiously). That will depend. 
 
 MoRELL {bewildered). Depend! 
 
 Candida {looking at him). Yes: it will depend on
 
 Act n Candida 131 
 
 what happens to him. {He looks vacantly at her.) 
 Don't you see? It will depend on how he comes to learn 
 what love really is. I mean on the sort of woman who 
 will teach it to him. 
 
 MoRELL (quite at a loss). Yes. No. I don't know 
 what you mean. 
 
 Candida (explaining). If he learns it from a good 
 woman, then it will be all right: he will forgive me. 
 
 MoRELL. Forgive! 
 
 Candida. But suppose he learns it from a bad woman, 
 as so many men do, especially poetic men, who imagine 
 all women are angels ! Suppose he only discovers the 
 value of love when he has thrown it away and degraded 
 himself in his ignorance. Will he forgive me then, do 
 you think? 
 
 MoRELL. Forgive you for what? 
 
 Candida (realizing how stupid he is, and a little dis- 
 appointed, though quite tenderly so). Don't you under- 
 stand? (He shakes his head. She turns to him again, 
 so as to explain with the fondest intimacy.) I mean, 
 will he forgive me for not teaching him myself? For 
 abandoning him to the bad women for the sake of my 
 goodness — my purity, as you call it? Ah, James, how 
 little you understand me, to talk of your confidence in 
 my goodness and purity! I would give them both to 
 poor Eugene as willingly as I would give my shawl to 
 a beggar dying of cold, if there were nothing else to 
 restrain me. Put your trust in my love for you, James, 
 for if that went, I should care very little for your ser- 
 mons — mere phrases that you cheat yourself and others 
 with every day. (She is about to rise.) 
 
 MoRELL. His words! 
 
 Candida (checking herself quickly in the act of get- 
 ting up, so that she is on her knees, but upright). 
 Whose words? 
 
 MoRELL. Eugene's. 
 
 Candida (delighted). He is always right. He under-
 
 132 Candida Act II 
 
 stands you; he understands me; he understands Prossy; 
 and you, James — you understand nothing. (She laughs, 
 and kisses him to console him. He recoils as if stung, 
 and springs up.) 
 
 MoRELL. How can you bear to do that when — oh, 
 Candida (with anguish in his voice) I had rather you 
 had plunged a grappling iron into my heart than given 
 me that kiss. 
 
 Candida (rising, alarmed). My dear: what's the 
 matter } 
 
 MoRELL (frantically waving her off). Don't touch me. 
 
 Candida (amazed). James! 
 
 (They are interrupted by the entrance of Marchhanhs, 
 with Burgess, who stops near the door, staring, whilst 
 Eugene hurries forward between them.) 
 
 Marchbanks. Is anything the matter.'' 
 
 MoRELL (deadly white, putting an iron constraint on 
 himself). Nothing but this: that either you were right 
 this morning, or Candida is mad. 
 
 Burgess (in loudest protest). Wot! Candy mad too! 
 Oh, come, come, come ! (He crosses the room to the fire- 
 place, protesting as he goes, and knocks the ashes out 
 of his pipe on the bars. Morell sits down desperately, 
 leaning forward to hide his face, and interlacing his 
 fingers rigidly to keep them steady.) 
 
 Candida (to Morell, relieved and laughing). Oh, 
 you're only shocked! Is that all? How conventional 
 all you unconventional people are ! 
 
 Burgess. Come: be'ave yourself. Candy. What'll 
 Mr. Morchbanks think of you? 
 
 Candida. This comes of James teaching me to think 
 for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what 
 other people may think of me. It works beautifully as 
 long as I think the same things as he does. But now, 
 because I have just thought something different! — look 
 at him — ^just look! (She points to Morell, greatly 
 amused. Eugene looks, and instantly presses his hand
 
 Act II Candida 13S 
 
 on his heart, as if some deadly pain had shot through 
 it, and sits down on the sofa like a man witnessing a 
 tragedy. ) 
 
 Burgess (on the hearth-rug). Well, James, you cer- 
 tainly ain't as himpressive lookin' as usu'l. 
 
 MoRELL (with a laugh which is half a sob). I sup- 
 pose not. I beg all your pardons: I was not conscious 
 of making a fuss. (Pulling himself together.) Well, 
 well, well, well, well ! (He goes back to his place at the 
 table, setting to work at his papers again with resolute 
 cheerfulness.) 
 
 Candida (going to the sofa and sitting beside March- 
 hanks, still in a bantering humor). Well, Eugene, why 
 are you so sad.'' Did the onions make you cry.'' 
 
 (Morell cannot prevent himself from watching them.) 
 
 Marchbanks (aside to her). It is your cruelty. I 
 hate cruelty. It is a horrible thing to see one person 
 make another suffer. 
 
 Candida (petting him ironically). Poor boy, have I 
 been cruel? Did I make it slice nasty little red onions .-^ 
 
 Marchbanks (earnestly). Oh, stop, stop: I don't 
 mean myself. You have made him suffer frightfully. I 
 feel his pain in my own heart. I know that it is not your 
 fault — it is something that must happen; but don't make 
 light of it. I shudder when you torture him and laugh. 
 
 Candida (incredulously). I torture James! Non- 
 sense, Eugene: how you exaggerate ! Silly! (She looks 
 round at Morell, who hastily resumes his writing. She 
 goes to him and stands behind his chair, bending over 
 him.) Don't work any more, dear. Come and talk to us. 
 
 Morell (affectionately but bitterly). Ah no: / can't 
 talk. I can only preach. 
 
 Candida (caressing him). Well, come and preach. 
 
 Burgess (strongly remonstrating). Aw, no. Candy. 
 'Ang it all ! 
 
 (Lexy Mill comes in, looking anxious and important.) 
 
 Lexy (hastening to shake hands with Candida). How
 
 134 Candida Act II 
 
 do you do, Mrs. Morell? So glad to see you back 
 again. 
 
 Candida. Thank you, Lexy. You know Eugene, 
 don't you? 
 
 Lexy. Oh, yes. How do you do, Marchbanks .-* 
 
 Marchbanks. Quite well, thanks. 
 
 Lexy (to Morell). I've just come from the Guild of 
 St. Matthew. They are in the greatest consternation 
 about your telegram. There's nothing wrong, is there? 
 
 Candida. What did you telegraph about, James ? 
 
 Lexy (to Candida). He was to have spoken for them 
 to-night. They've taken the large hall in Mare Street 
 and spent a lot of money on posters. Morell's telegram 
 was to say he couldn't come. It came on them like a 
 thunderbolt. 
 
 Candida {surprized, and beginning to suspect some- 
 thing rvrong). Given up an engagement to speak! 
 
 Burgess. First time in his life, I'll bet. Ain' it, 
 Candy ? 
 
 Lexy {to Morell). They decided to send an urgent 
 telegram to you asking whether you could not change 
 your mind. Have you received it? 
 
 Morell {with restrained impatience). Yes, yes: I 
 got it. 
 
 Lexy. It was reply paid. 
 
 Morell. Yes, I know. I answered it. I can't go. 
 
 Candida. But why, James? 
 
 Morell {almost fiercely). Because I don't choose. 
 These people forget that I am a man: they think I am a 
 talking machine to be turned on for their pleasure every 
 evening of my life. May I not have one night at kome, 
 with my wife, and my friends ? 
 
 {They are all amazed at this outburst, except Eugene. 
 His expression remains unchanged.) 
 
 Candida. Oh, James, you know you'll have an attack 
 of bad conscience to-morrow; and I shall have to suffer 
 for that.
 
 Act n Candida 135 
 
 Lexy {intimidated, hut urgent). I know, of course, 
 that they make the most mireasonable demands on you. 
 But they have been telegraphing all over the place for 
 another speaker : and they can get nobody but the Presi- 
 dent of the Agnostic League. 
 
 MoRELL {promptly). Well, an excellent man. What 
 better do they want? 
 
 Lexy. But he always insists so powerfully on the 
 divorce of Socialism from Christianity. He will xmdo 
 all the good we have been doing. Of course you know 
 best; but — {He hesitates.) 
 
 CxKT>iB\ {coaxingly). Oh, do go, James. We'll all go. 
 
 Burgess {grumbling). Look 'ere. Candy! I say! 
 Let's stay at home by the fire, comfortable. He won't 
 need to be more'n a couple-o'-hour away. 
 
 Candida. You'll be just as comfortable at the meet- 
 ing. We'll all sit on the platform and be great people. 
 
 Eugene {terrified) . Oh, please don't let us go on the 
 platform. No — everyone will stare at us — I couldn't. 
 I'll sit at the back of the room. 
 
 Candida. Don't be afraid. They'll be too busy look- 
 ing at James to notice you. 
 
 Morell {turning his head and looking meaningly at 
 her over his shoulder). Prossy's complaint, Candida! 
 Eh? 
 
 Candida {gaily). Yes. 
 
 Burgess {mystified). Prossy's complaint. Wot are 
 you talking about, James ? 
 
 MoRELL {not heeding him, rises; goes to the door; and 
 holds it open, shouting in a commanding voice). Miss 
 Garnett. 
 
 Proserpine {in the distance). Yes, Mr. Morell. 
 Coming. 
 
 {They all rvait, except Burgess, who goes stealthily 
 to Lexy and draws him aside.) 
 
 Burgess. Listen here, Mr. MiU. Wot's Prossy's 
 complaint? Wot's wrong with 'er?
 
 (36 Candida Act n 
 
 Lexy (c07ifidentiallt/). Well, I don't exactly know; 
 but she spoke very strangely to me this morning. I'm 
 afraid she's a little out of her mind sometimes. 
 
 Burgess {overwhelmed). Why, it must be eatchin' ! 
 Four in the same 'ouse ! (He goes back to the hearth, 
 quite lost before the instability of the human intellect 
 in a clergyman's house.) 
 
 Proserpine {appearing on the threshold). What is 
 it, Mr. Morell? 
 
 MoRELL. Telegraph to the Guild of St. Matthew that 
 I am coming. 
 
 Proserpine (surprised). Don't they expect you? 
 
 Morell (peremptorily) . Do as I tell you. 
 
 (Proserpine frightened, sits down at her typewriter, 
 and obeys. Morell goes across to Burgess, Candida 
 watching his movements all the time with growing won- 
 der and misgiving.) 
 
 Morell. Burgess: you don't want to come? 
 
 Burgess (in deprecation). Oh, don't put it like that, 
 James. It's only that it ain't Sunday, you know. 
 
 Morell. I'm sorry. I thought you might like to be 
 introduced to the chairman. He's on the Works Com- 
 mittee of the County Council and has some influence in 
 the matter of contracts. (Burgess wakes up at once. 
 Morell, expecting as much, waits a moment, and says) 
 Will you come? 
 
 Burgess (with enthusiasm) . Course I'll come, James. 
 Ain' it always a pleasure to 'ear you. 
 
 Morell (turning from him). I shall want you to 
 take some notes at the meeting. Miss Garnett, if you 
 have no other engagement. (She nods, afraid to speak.) 
 You are coming, Lexy, I suppose. 
 
 Lexy. Certainly. 
 
 Candida. We are all coming, James. 
 
 Morell. No : you are not coming ; and Eugene is not 
 coming. You will stay here and entertain him — to cele- 
 brate your return home. (Eugene rises, breathless.)
 
 Act II Candida 137 
 
 Candida. But James 
 
 MoRELL (authoritatively). I insist. You do not want 
 to come; and he does not want to come. (Candida is 
 about to protest.) Oh, don't concern yourselves: I shall 
 have plenty of people without you: your chairs will be 
 wanted by unconverted people who have never heard me 
 before. 
 
 Candida (troubled). Eugene: wouldn't you like to 
 come? 
 
 MoRELL. I should be afraid to let myself go before 
 Eugene: he is so critical of sermons. (Looking at him.) 
 He knows I am afraid of him: he told me as much this 
 morning. Well, I shall shew him how much afraid I 
 am by leaving him here in your custody, Candida. 
 
 Marchbanks (to himself, with vivid feeling). That's 
 brave. That's beautiful. (He sits dorva again listening 
 with parted lips.) 
 
 Candida (with anxious misgiving). But — but — Is 
 anything the matter, James.'' (Greatly troubled.) I 
 can't understand 
 
 MoRELL. Ah, I thought it was I who couldn't vmder- 
 »tand, dear. (He takes her tenderly in his arms and 
 kisses her on the forehead; then looks round quietly at 
 Marchbanks.) 
 
 end op act ii.
 
 ACT III 
 
 Late in the evening. Past ten. The curtains are 
 drawn, and the lamps lighted. The typewriter is in its 
 case; the large table has been cleared and tidied; every- 
 thing indicates that the day's rvork is done. 
 
 Candida and Marchbanhs are seated at the -fire. The 
 reading lamp is on the mantelshelf above Marchbanhs, 
 who is sitting on the small chair reading aloud from a 
 manuscript. A little pile of manuscripts and a couple 
 of volumes of poetry are on the carpet beside him. Can- 
 dida is in the easy chair with the poker, a light brass 
 one, upright in her hand. She is leaning bach and look- 
 ing at the point of it curiously, with her feet stretched 
 towards the blaze and her heels resting on the fender, 
 profoundly unconscious of her appearance and surround- 
 ings. 
 
 Marchbanks (breaking off in his recitation) . Every 
 poet that ever lived has put that thought into a sonnet. 
 He must: he can't help it. (He loohs to her for assent, 
 and notices her absorption in the poher.) Haven't you 
 been listening? (No response.) Mrs. Morell! 
 
 Candida (starting). Eh? 
 
 Marchbanks. Haven't you been listening? 
 
 Candida (with a guilty excess of politeness). Oh, 
 yes. It's very nice. Go on, Eugene. I'm longing to 
 hear what happens to the angel. 
 
 Marchbanks (crushed — the manuscript dropping 
 from his hand to the floor). I beg your pardon for 
 boring you. 
 
 138
 
 Act III Candida 139 
 
 Candida. But you are not boring me, I assure you. 
 Please go on. Do, Eugene. 
 
 Marchbanks. I finished the poem about the angel 
 quarter of an hour ago. I've read you several things 
 since. 
 
 Candida {remorsefully). I'm so sorry, Eugene. I 
 think the poker must have fascinated me. {She puts it 
 down.) 
 
 Marchbanks. It made me horrible imeasy. 
 
 Candida. Why didn't you tell me? I'd have put it 
 down at once. 
 
 Marchbanks. I was afraid of making you uneasy, too. 
 It looked as if it were a weapon. If I were a hero of 
 old, I should have laid my drawn sword between us. If 
 Morell had come in he would have thought you had taken 
 up the poker because there was no sword between us. 
 
 Candida {wondering). What? {With a puzzled 
 glance at him.) I can't quite follow that. Those son- 
 nets of yours have perfectly addled me. Why should 
 there be a sword between us ? 
 
 MATicuBAi^iKS {evasively). Oh, never mind. {He stoops 
 to pick up the manuscript.) 
 
 Candida. Put that down again, Eugene. There are 
 limits to my appetite for poetry — even your poetry. 
 You've been reading to me for more than two hours — 
 ever since James went out. I want to talk. 
 
 Marchbanks {rising, scared). No: I mustn't talk. 
 {He looks round him in his lost way, and adds, sud- 
 denly) I think I'll go out and take a walk in the park. 
 {Making for the door.) 
 
 Candida. Nonsense : it's shut long ago. Come and sit 
 down on the hearth-rug, and talk moonshine as you 
 usually do. I want to be amused. Don't you want to? 
 
 Marchbanks {in half terror, half rapture). Yes. 
 
 Candida. Then come along. {She moves her chair 
 back a little to make room. He hesitates; then timidly 
 stretches himself on the hearth-rug, face upwards, and
 
 140 Candida Act III 
 
 throws back his head across her knees, looking up at 
 her.) 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, I've been so miserable all the 
 evening, because I was doing right. Now I'm doing 
 wrong; and I'm happy. 
 
 Candida (tenderly amused at him). Yes: I'm sure 
 you feel a great grown up wicked deceiver — quite proud 
 of yourself, aren't you.'' 
 
 Marchbanks (raising his head quickly and turning a 
 little to look round at her). Take care. I'm ever so 
 much older than you, if you only knew. (He turns quite 
 over on his knees, with his hands clasped and his arms on 
 her lap, and speaks with growing impulse, his blood be- 
 ginning to stir.) May I say some wicked things to you? 
 
 Candida (without the least fear or coldness, quite 
 nobly, and with perfect respect for his passion, but with 
 a touch of her wise-hearted maternal humor). No. 
 But you may say anything you really and truly feel. 
 Anything at all, no matter what it is. I am not afraid, 
 so long as it is your real self that speaks, and not a 
 mere attitude — a gallant attitude, or a wicked attitude, 
 or even a poetic attitude. I put you on your honor and 
 truth. Now say whatever you want to. 
 
 Marchbanks (the eager expression vanishing utterly 
 from his lips and nostrils as his eyes light up with 
 pathetic spirituality). Oh, now I can't say anything: 
 all the words I know belong to some attitude or other — 
 all except one. 
 
 Candida. What one is that? 
 
 Marchbanks (softly, losing himself in the music of 
 the name). Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida, Can- 
 dida. I must say that now, because you have put me on 
 my honor and truth; and I never think or feel Mrs. 
 Morell: it is always Candida. 
 
 Candida. Of course. And what have you to say to 
 Candida ? 
 
 Marchbanks. Nothing, but to repeat your name a
 
 Act III Candida 141 
 
 thousand times. Don't you feel that every time is a 
 prayer to you? 
 
 Candida. Doesn't it make you happy to be able to 
 pray ? 
 
 Marchbanks. Yes, very happy. 
 
 Candida. Well, that happiness is the answer to your 
 prayer. Do you want anything more? 
 
 Marchbanks (in beatitude). No: I have come into 
 heaven, where want is unknown. 
 
 (Morell comes in. He halts on the threshold, and 
 takes in the scene at a glance.) 
 
 Morell (grave and self-contained). I hope I don't 
 disturb you. 
 
 (Candida starts up violently, but without the smallest 
 embarrassment, laughing at herself. Eugene, still 
 kneeling, saves himself from falling by putting his 
 hands on the seat of the chair, and remains there, star- 
 ing open mouthed at Morell.) 
 
 Candida (as she rises). Oh, James, how you startled 
 me ! I was so taken up with Eugene that I didn't hear 
 your latch-key. How did the meeting go off? Did you 
 speak well? 
 
 Morell. I have never spoken better in my life. 
 
 Candida. That was first rate ! How much was the 
 collection ? 
 
 Morell. I forgot to ask. 
 
 Candida (to Eugene). He must have spoken splen- 
 didly, or he would never have forgotten that. (To 
 Morell.) Where are all the others? 
 
 Morell. They left long before I could get away: I 
 thought I should never escape. I believe they are hav- 
 ing supper somewhere. 
 
 Candida (in her domestic business tone). Oh; in that 
 case, Maria may go to bed. I'll tell her. (She goes out 
 to the kitchen.) 
 
 Morell (looking sternly down at Marchbanks). 
 WeU?
 
 142 Candida Act III 
 
 Marchbanks (squatting cross-legged on the hearth- 
 rug, and actually at ease with Morell — even impishly 
 humorous). Well? 
 
 Morell. Have you anything to tell me? 
 
 Marchbanks. Only that I have been making a fool 
 of myself here in private whilst you have been making a 
 fool of yourself in public. 
 
 Morell. Hardly in the same way^ I think. 
 
 Marchbanks (scrambling up — eagerly). The very, 
 very, very same way. I have been playing the good 
 man just like you. When you began your heroics about 
 leaving me here with Candida 
 
 Morell (involuntarily). Candida? 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, yes: I've got that far. Heroics 
 are infectious : I caught the disease from you. I swore 
 not to say a word in your absence that I would not have 
 said a month ago in your presence. 
 
 Morell. Did you keep your oath? 
 
 Marchbanks (suddenly perching himself grotesquely 
 on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until 
 about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on 
 desperately reading to her — reading my own poems — 
 anybody's poems — to stave off a conversation. I was 
 standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go 
 in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, and how un- 
 comfortable ! Then 
 
 Morell (steadily controlling his suspense). 
 Then.? 
 
 Marchbanks (prosaically slipping down into a quite 
 ordinary attitude in the chair). Then she couldn't bear 
 being read to any longer. 
 
 Morell. And you approached the gate of Heaven at 
 last? 
 
 Marchbanks. Yes. 
 
 Morell. Well? (Fiercely.) Speak, man: have you 
 no feeling for me? 
 
 Marchbanks (softly and musically). Then she
 
 Act III Candida 143 
 
 became an angel; and there was a flaming sword that 
 turned every way, so that I couldn't go in; for I saw 
 that that gate was really the gate of Hell. 
 
 MoRELL (trimiiphantly). She repulsed you! 
 
 Marchbanks {rising in wild scorn). No, you fool: 
 if she had done that I should never have seen that I was 
 in Heaven already. Repulsed me ! You think that 
 would have saved me — virtuous indignation ! Oh, you 
 are not worthy to live in the same world with her. {He 
 turns away contemptuously to the other side of the room.) 
 
 MoRELL {who has watched him quietly without chang- 
 ing his place). Do you think you make yourself more 
 worthy by reviling me, Eugene? 
 
 Marchbanks. Here endeth the thousand and first 
 lesson. Morell: I don't think much of your preaching 
 after all: I believe I could do it better myself. The man 
 I want to meet is the man that Candida married. 
 
 Morell. The man that — ? Do you mean me? 
 
 Marchbanks. I don't mean the Reverend James 
 Mavor Morell, moralist and windbag. I mean the real 
 man that the Reverend James must have hidden some- 
 where inside his black coat — the man that Candida 
 loved. You can't make a woman like Candida love you 
 by merely buttoning your collar at the back instead of 
 in front. 
 
 Morell {boldly and steadily). When Candida prom- 
 ised to marry me, I was the same moralist r.nd windbag 
 that you now see. I wore my black coat; and my collar 
 was buttoned behind instead of in front. Do you think 
 she would have loved me any the better for being in- 
 sincere in my profession? 
 
 Marchbanks {on the sofa hugging his ankles). Oh, 
 she forgave you, just as she forgives me for being a 
 coward, and a weakling, and what you call a snivelling 
 little whelp and all the rest of it. {Dreamily.) A 
 woman like that has divine insight: she loves our souls, 
 and not our follies and vanities and illusions, or our col-
 
 144 Candida Act III 
 
 lars and coats, or any other of the rags and tatters we 
 are rolled up in. {He reflects on this for an instant; then 
 turns intently to question Morell.) What I want to 
 know is how you got past the flaming sword that stopped 
 me. 
 
 MoRELL (meaningly). Perhaps because I was not 
 interrupted at the end of ten minutes. 
 
 Marchbanks {taken aback). What! 
 
 MoRELL. Man can climb to the highest summits; but 
 he cannot dwell there long, 
 
 Marchbanks. It's false: there can he dwell for ever 
 and there only. It's in the other moments that he can 
 find no rest, no sense of the silent glory of life. Where 
 would you have me spend my moments, if not on the 
 summits } 
 
 MoRELL. In the scullery, slicing onions and filling 
 lamps. 
 
 Marchbanks. Or in the pulpit, scrubbing cheap 
 earthenware souls ? 
 
 Morell. Yes, that, too. It was there that I earned 
 my golden moment, and the right, in that moment, to 
 ask her to love me. / did not take the moment on credit ; 
 nor did I use it to steal another man's happiness. 
 
 Marchbanks (rather disgustedly, trotting back to- 
 wards the fireplace). I have no doubt you conducted 
 the transaction as honestly as if you were buying a pound 
 of cheese. (He stops on the brink of the hearth-rug 
 and adds, thoughtfully, to himself, with his back turned 
 to Morell) I could only go to her as a beggar. 
 
 Morell (starting). A beggar dying of cold — asking 
 for her shawl? 
 
 Marchbanks (turning, surprised). Thank you for 
 touching up my poetry. Yes, if you like, a beggar dying 
 of cold asking for her shawl. 
 
 Morell (excitedly). And she refused. Shall I tell 
 you why she refused? I can tell you, on her own au- 
 thoritv. It was because of
 
 Act III Candida 145 
 
 Marchbanks. She didn't refuse. 
 
 MORELL. Not ! 
 
 Marchbanks. She offered me all I chose to ask for, 
 her shawl, her wings, the wreath of stars on her head, 
 the lilies in her hand, the crescent moon beneath her 
 feet 
 
 Morell (seizing him). Out with the truth, man: my 
 wife is my wife: I want no more of your poetic frip- 
 peries. I know well that if I have lost her love and you 
 have gained it, no law will bind her. 
 
 Marchbanks {quaintly, without fear or resistance). 
 Catch me by the shirt collar, Morell: she will arrange 
 it for me afterwards as she did this morning. (With 
 quiet rapture.) I shall feel her hands touch me. 
 
 Morell. You young imp, do you know how danger- 
 ous it is to say that to me.'' Or (tvith a sudden mis- 
 giving) has something made you brave? 
 
 Marchbanks. I'm not afraid now. I disliked you 
 before: that was why I shrank from your touch. But I 
 saw to-day — when she tortured you — that you love her. 
 Since then I have been your friend: you may strangle 
 me if you like. 
 
 Morell (releasing him). Eugene: if that is not a 
 heartless lie — if you have a spark of human feeling left 
 in you — will you tell mc what has happened during my 
 absence ? 
 
 Marchbanks. WTiat happened! Why, the flaming 
 sword — (Morell stamps with impatience.) Well, in 
 plain prose, I loved her so exquisitely that I wanted 
 nothing more than the happiness of being in such love. 
 And before I had time to come down from the highest 
 summits, you came in. 
 
 Morell (suffering deeply). So it is still imsettled — • 
 still the misery of doubt. 
 
 Marchbanks. ■Misery ! I am the happiest of men. 
 I desire nothing now but her happiness. (With dreamy 
 enthusiasm.) Oh, Morell, let us both give her up. Why
 
 146 Candida Act III 
 
 should she have to choose between a wretched little 
 nervous disease like me, and a pig-headed parson like 
 you? Let us go on a pilgrimage, you to the east and I 
 to the west, in search of a worthy lover for her — some 
 beautiful archangel with purple wings 
 
 MoRELL. Some fiddlestick. Oh, if she is mad enough 
 to leave me for you, who will protect her? Who will 
 help her? who will work for her? who will be a father 
 to her children? {He sits down distractedly on the sofa, 
 Tvith his elbows on his knees and his head propped on 
 his clenched fists.} 
 
 Marchbanks (snapping his fingers wildly). She does 
 not ask those silly questions. It is she who wants some- 
 body to protect, to help, to work for — somebody to give 
 her children to protect, to help and to work for. Some 
 grown up man who has become as a little child again. 
 Oh, you fool, you fool, you triple fool! I am the man, 
 Morell: I am the man. (He dances about excitedly, cry- 
 ing.) You don't understand what a woman is. Send for 
 her, Morell: send for her and let her choose between — 
 (The door opens and Candida enters. He stops as if 
 petrified.) 
 
 Candida (amazed, on the threshold) . What on earth 
 are you at, Eugene? 
 
 Marchbanks (oddly). James and I are having a 
 preaching match; and he is getting the worst of it. 
 (Candida looks quickly round at Morell. Seeing that he 
 is distressed, she hurries down to him, greatly vexed, 
 speaking with vigorous reproach to Marchbanks.) 
 
 Candida. You have been annoying him. Now I won't 
 have it, Eugene: do you hear? (Putting her hand on 
 Morell's shoidder, and quite forgetting her wifely tact 
 in her annoyance.) My boy shall not be worried: I will 
 protect him. 
 
 Morell (rising proudly). Protect! 
 
 Candida (not heeding him — to Eugene). What have 
 you been saying?
 
 Act in Candida 147 
 
 Marchbanks (appalled). Nothing — I 
 
 Candida. Eugene! Nothing? 
 
 Marchbanks {piteously). I mean — I — I'm very 
 sorry. I won't do it again: indeed I won't. I'll let him 
 alone. 
 
 MoRELL (indignantly, with an aggressive movement 
 towards Eugene). Let me alone! You young 
 
 Candida (stopping him). Sh — no, let me deal with 
 him, James. 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, you're not angry with me, are you? 
 
 Candida (severely). Yes, I am — very angry. I have 
 a great mind to pack you out of the house. 
 
 MoRELL (taken aback by Candida's vigor, and by no 
 means relishing the sense of being rescued by her from 
 another man). Gently, Candida, gently. I am able to 
 take care of myself. 
 
 Candida (petting him). Yes, dear: of course you are. 
 But you mustn't be annoyed and made miserable. 
 
 Marchbanks (almost in tears, turning to the door). 
 I'll go. 
 
 Candida. Oh, you needn't go: I can't turn you out at 
 this time of night. (Vehemently.) Shame on you! For 
 shame ! 
 
 Marchbanks (desperately). But what have I done? 
 
 Candida. I know what you have done — as well as if 
 I had been here all the time. Oh, it was unworthy ! 
 You are like a child: you cannot hold your tongue. 
 
 Marchbanks. I would die ten times over sooner than 
 give you a moment's pain. 
 
 Candida (with infinite contempt for this puerility). 
 Much good your dying would do me ! 
 
 MoRELL. Candida, my dear: this altercation is hardly 
 quite seemingly. It is a matter between two men; and 
 I am the right person to settle it. 
 
 Candida. Two men ! Do you call that a man? (To 
 Eugene.) You bad boy! 
 
 Marchbanks (gathering a whimsically affectionate
 
 148 Candida Act III 
 
 courage from the scolding). If I am to be scolded like 
 this, I must make a boy's excuse. He began it. And 
 he's bigger than I am. 
 
 Candida (losijig confidence a little as her concern for 
 Morell's dignity takes the alarm). That can't be true. 
 {To Morell.) You didn't begin it, James, did you? 
 
 MoRELL (contemptuously). No. 
 
 Marchbanks (indignant). Oh! 
 
 MoRELL (to Eugene). You began it — this morning. 
 (Candida, instantly connecting this rvith his mysterious 
 allusion in the afternoon to something told him by Eu- 
 gene in the morning, looks quickly at him, rvrestling 
 with the enigma. Morell proceeds rvith the emphasis 
 of offended superiority.) But your other point is true. 
 I am certainly the bigger of the two, and, I hope, the 
 stronger, Candida. So you had better leave the matter 
 in my hands. 
 
 Candida (again soothing him). Yes, dear; but — 
 (Troubled.) I don't understand about this morning. 
 
 MoRELL (gently snubbing her). You need not under- 
 stand, my dear. 
 
 Candida. But, James, I — (The street bell rings.) 
 Oh, bother ! Here they all come. (She goes out to let 
 them in.) 
 
 Marchbanks (running to Morell). Oh, Morell, isn't 
 it dreadful? She's angry with us: she hates me. What 
 shall I do? 
 
 Morell (with quaint desperation, clutching himself 
 by the hair). Eugene: my head is spinning round. I 
 shall begin to laugh presently. (He walks up and down 
 the middle of the room.) 
 
 Marchbanks (following him anxiously). No, no: 
 she'll think I've thrown you into hysterics. Don't laugh. 
 
 (Boisterous voices and laughter are heard approach- 
 ing. Lexy Mill, his eyes sparkling, and his bearing de- 
 noting unwonted elevation of spirit, enters with Burgess, 
 who is greasy and self-complacent, but has all his wits
 
 Act m Candida 149 
 
 about him. Miss Garnett, with her smartest hat and 
 jacket on, follows them; hut though her eyes are brighter 
 than before, she is evidently a -prey to misgiving. She 
 places herself with her back to her typewriting table, 
 with one hand on it to rest herself, passes the other 
 across her forehead as if she were a little tired and 
 giddy. Marchbanks relapses into shyness and edges 
 away into the corner near the window, where Morell's 
 books are.) 
 
 Mill (exhilaratedly). Morell: I must congratulate 
 you. (Grasping his hand.) What a noble, splendid, in- 
 spired address you gave us ! You surpassed yourself. 
 
 Burgess. So you did, James. It fair kep' me awake 
 to the last word. Didn't it. Miss Gornett.^ 
 
 Proserpine (worriedly). Oh, I wasn't minding you: 
 I was trying to make notes. (She takes out her note- 
 book, and looks at her stenography, which nearly makes 
 her cry.) 
 
 Morell. Did I go too fast, Pross? 
 
 Proserpine. Much too fast. You know I can't do 
 more than a hundred words a minute. (She relieves her 
 feelings by throroing her note-book angrily beside her 
 machine, ready for use next morning.) 
 
 Morell (soothingly). Oh, well, well, never mind, 
 never mind, never mind. Have you all had supper.? 
 
 Lexy. Mr. Burgess has been kind enough to give us 
 a really splendid supper at the Belgrave, 
 
 Burgess (with effusive magnanimity). Don't mention 
 it, Mr. Mill. (Modestly.) You're 'arty welcome to my 
 little treat. 
 
 Proserpine. We had champagne! I never tasted it 
 before. I feel quite giddy. 
 
 Morell (stirprised). A champagne supper! That 
 was very handsome. Was it my eloquence that pro- 
 duced all this extravagance.'' 
 
 Mill (rhetorically). Your eloquence, and Mr. Bur- 
 gess's goodness of heart. (With a fresh burst of ex-
 
 150 Candida Act HI 
 
 hilaration.) And what a very fine fellow the chairman 
 is, Morell ! He came to supper with us. 
 
 MoRELL (with long drawn significance, looJcing at 
 Burgess). O-o-o-h, the chairman. Now I understand. 
 
 (Burgess, covering a lively satisfaction in his diplo- 
 matic cunning with a deprecatory cough, retires to the 
 hearth. Lexy folds his arms and leans against the cel- 
 laret in a high-spirited attitude. Candida comes in with 
 glasses, lemons, and a jug of hot water on a tray.} 
 
 Candida. Who will have some lemonade? You know 
 our rules: total abstinence. (She puts the tray on the 
 table, and takes up the lemon squeezers, looking enquir- 
 ingly round at them.) 
 
 MoRELL. No use, dear. They've all had champagne. 
 Pross has broken her pledge. 
 
 Candida (to Proserpine). You don't mean to say 
 you've been drinking champagne ! 
 
 Proserpine (stubbornly). Yes, I do. I'm only a beer 
 teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller. I don't like 
 beer. Are there any letters for me to answer, Mr. 
 Morell ? 
 
 MoRELL. No more to-night. 
 
 Proserpine. Very well. Good-night, everybody. 
 
 Lexy (gallantly). Had I not better see you home. 
 Miss Garnett? 
 
 Proserpine. No, thank you. I shan't trust myself 
 with anybody to-night. I wish I hadn't taken any of 
 that stuff. (She walks straight out.) 
 
 Burgess (indignantly). Stuff, indeed! That gurl 
 dunno wot champagne is ! Pommery and Greeno at 
 twelve and six a bottle. She took two glasses a'most 
 straight hoff. 
 
 MoRELL (a little anxious about her). Go and look 
 after her, Lexy. 
 
 Lexy (alarmed). But if she should really be — Sup- 
 pose she began to sing in the street, or anything of that 
 sort.
 
 Act m Candida 151 
 
 MoRELL. Just so: she may. That's why you'd better 
 see her safely home. 
 
 Candida. Do, Lexy: there's a good fellow. (She 
 shakes his hand and pushes him gently to the door.) 
 
 Lexy. It's evidently my duty to go. I hope it may 
 not be necessary. Good-night, Mrs. Morell. (To the 
 rest.) Good-night. (He goes. Candida shuts the door.) 
 
 Burgess. He was gushin' with hextra piety hisself 
 arter two sips. People carn't drink like they huseter. 
 (Dis7J2issing the subject nd bustling away from the 
 hearth.) Well, James: it's time to lock up. Mr. Morch- 
 banks: shall I 'ave the pleasure of your company for a 
 bit of the way home.'' 
 
 Marchbanks (affrightedly). Yes: I'd better go. 
 (He hurries across to the door; but Candida places her- 
 self before it, barring his rvay.) 
 
 Candida (with quiet authority). You sit down. 
 You're not going yet. 
 
 Marchbanks (quailing). No: I — I didn't mean to. 
 (He comes back into the room and sits down abjectly 
 on the sofa.) 
 
 Candida. Mr. Marchbanks will stay the night with 
 us, papa. 
 
 Burgess. Oh, well, I'll say good-night. So long, 
 James. (He shakes hands with Morell and goes on to 
 Eugene.) Make 'em give you a night light by your bed, 
 Mr. Morchbanks: it'll comfort you if you wake up in 
 the night with a touch of that complaint of yores. Good- 
 night. 
 
 Marchbanks. Thank you: I will. Good-night, Mr. 
 Burgess. (They shake hands and Burgess goes to the 
 door.) 
 
 Candida (intercepting Morell, who is following Bur- 
 gess). Stay here, dear: I'll put on papa's coat for him. 
 (She goes out with Burgess.) 
 
 Marchbanks. Morell: there's going to be a terrible 
 scene. Aren't you afraid .''
 
 152 Candida Act III 
 
 MoRELL. Not in the least. 
 
 Marchbanks. I never envied you your courage 
 before. {He rises timidly and puts his hand appeal- 
 ingly on Morell's forearm.) Stand by me, won't you? 
 
 MoRELL {casting him, off gently, but resolutely). 
 Each for himself, Eugene. She must choose between us 
 now. {He goes to the other side of the room as Candida 
 returns. Eugene sits down again on the sofa like a 
 guilty schoolboy on his best behaviour.) 
 
 Candida {between them, addressing Eugene). Are 
 you sorry.'* 
 
 Marchbanks {earnestly). Yes, heartbroken. 
 
 Candida. Well, then, you are forgiven. Now go off 
 to bed like a good little boy: I want to talk to James 
 about you. 
 
 Marchbanks {rising in great consternation). Oh, I 
 can't do that, Morell. I must be here. I'll not go away. 
 Tell her. 
 
 Candida {with quick suspicion). Tell me what? {His 
 eyes avoid hers furtively. She turns and mutely trans- 
 fers the question to Morell.) 
 
 MoRELL {bracing himself for the catastrophe). I 
 have nothing to tell her, except {here his voice deepens 
 to a measured and mournful tenderness) that she is my 
 greatest treasure on earth — if she is really mine. 
 
 Candida {coldly, offended by his yielding to his ora- 
 tor's instinct and treating her as if she were the audi- 
 ence at the Guild of St. Matthew). I am sure Eugene 
 can say no less, if that is all. 
 
 Marchbanks {discouraged). Morell: she's laughing 
 at us. 
 
 Morell {with a quick touch of temper). There is 
 nothing to laugh at. Are you laughing at us, Candida? 
 
 Candida {with quiet anger). Eugene is very quick- 
 witted, James. I hope I am going to laugh ; but I am 
 not sure that I am not going to be very angry. {She 
 goes to the fireplace, and stands there leaning with her
 
 Act in Candida 153 
 
 arm on the mantelpiece, and her foot on the fender, 
 whilst Eugene steals to Morell and plucks him by the 
 sleeve.) 
 
 Marchbanks (whispering). Stop, Morell. Don't 
 let us say anything. 
 
 Morell (pushing Eugene away without deigning to 
 look at him). I hope you don't mean that as a threat, 
 Candida. 
 
 Candida (with emphatic warning). Take care, James. 
 Eugene: I asked you to go. Are you going? 
 
 Morell (putting his foot down). He shall not go. 
 I wish him to remain. 
 
 Marchbanks. I'll go. I'll do whatever you want. 
 (He turns to the door.) 
 
 Candida, Stop! (He obeys.) Didn't you hear James 
 say he wished you to stay .? James is master here. Don't 
 you know that? 
 
 Marchbanks (flushing with a young poet's rage 
 against tyranny). By what right is he master? 
 
 Candida (quietly). Tell him, James. 
 
 Morell (taken aback). My dear: I don't know of 
 any right that makes me master. I assert no such right. 
 
 Candida (with infinite reproach). You don't know! 
 Oh, James, James! (To Eugene, musingly.) I wonder 
 do you understand, Eugene! No: you're too young. 
 Well, I give you leave to stay — to stay and learn. (She 
 comes away from the hearth and places herself between 
 them.) Now, James : what's the matter ? Come: tell me. 
 
 Marchbanks (whispering tremulously across to him). 
 Don't. 
 
 Candida. Come. Out with it! 
 
 Morell (slowly). I meant to prepare your mind 
 carefully, Candida, so as to prevent misunderstanding. 
 
 Candida. Yes, dear: I am sure you did. But never 
 mind: I shan't misunderstand. 
 
 Morell. Well — er — (He hesitates, unable to find 
 the long explanation which he supposed to be available.)
 
 154 Candida Act m 
 
 Candida. Well ? 
 
 MoRELL (baldly). Eugene declares that you are in 
 love with him. 
 
 Marchbanks (frantically). No, no, no, no, never. 
 I did not, Mrs. Morell: it's not true. I said I loved you, 
 and that he didn't. I said that I understood you, and 
 that he couldn't. And it was not after what passed there 
 before the fire that I spoke : it was not, on my "n^ord. It 
 was this morning. 
 
 Candida (enlightened). This morning! 
 
 Marchbanks. Yes. (He looks at her, pleading for 
 credence, and then adds, simply) That was what was 
 the matter with my collar. 
 
 Candida (after a pause; for she does not take in his 
 meaning at once). His collar! (She turns to Morell, 
 shocked.) Oh, James: did you — (she stops)? 
 
 MoRELL (ashamed). You know, Candida, that I have 
 a temper to struggle with. And he said (shuddering) 
 that you despised me in your heart. 
 
 Candida (turning quickly on Eugene). Did you say 
 that.? 
 
 Marchbanks (terrified). No! 
 
 Candida (severely). Then James has just told me a 
 falsehood. Is that what you mean? 
 
 Marchbanks. No, no: I — I — (blurting out the ew 
 planation desperately) — it was David's wife. And it 
 wasn't at home : it was when she saw him dancing before 
 all the people. 
 
 MoRELL (taking the cue with a debater's adroitness). 
 Dancing before all the people, Candida ; and thinking he 
 was moving their hearts by his mission when they were 
 only suffering from — Prossy's complaint. (She is about 
 to protest: he raises his hand to silence her, exclaiming) 
 Don't try to look indignant, Candida: — 
 
 Candida (interjecting). Try! 
 
 MoRELL (continuing). Eugene was right. As you 
 told me a few hours after, he is always right. He said
 
 Act in Candida 155 
 
 nothing that you did not say far better yourself. He is 
 the poet, who sees everything ; and I am the poor parson, 
 who understands nothing. 
 
 Candida (remorsefully). Do you mind what is said 
 by a foolish boy, because I said something like it again 
 in jest? 
 
 MoRELL. That foolish boy can speak with the in- 
 spiration of a child and the cunning of a serpent. He 
 has claimed that you belong to him and not to me; and, 
 rightly or wrongly, I have come to fear that it may be 
 true. I will not go about tortured with doubts and sus- 
 picions. I will not live with you and keep a secret from 
 you. I will not suffer the intolerable degradation of 
 jealousy. We have agreed — he and I — that you shall 
 choose between us now. I await your decision. 
 
 Candida {slowly recoiling a step, her heart hardened 
 by his rhetoric in spite of the sincere feeling behind it). 
 Oh ! I am to clioose, am I ? I suppose it is quite settled 
 that I must belong to one or the other. 
 
 MoRELL (firmly). Quite. You must choose definitely. 
 
 Marchbanks (anxiously). Morell: you don't under- 
 stand. She means that she belongs to herself. 
 
 Candida (turning on him). I mean that and a good 
 deal more. Master Eugene, as you will both find out 
 presently. And pray, my lords and masters, what have 
 you to offer for my choice? I am up for auction, it 
 seems. What do you bid, James? 
 
 Morell (reproachfully). Cand — (He breaks down: 
 his eyes and throat fill with tears: the orator becomes 
 the wounded animal.) I can't speak 
 
 Candida (impulsively going to him). Ah, dearest 
 
 Marchbanks (in wild alarm). Stop: it's not fair. 
 You mustn't show her that you suffer, Morell. I am on 
 the rack, too; but I am not crying. 
 
 Morell (rallying all his forces). Yes: you are right. 
 It is not for pity that I am bidding. (He disengages 
 himself from Candida.)
 
 156 Candida Act in 
 
 Candida (retreating, chilled). I beg your pardon, 
 James; I did not mean to touch you. I am waiting to 
 hear your bid. 
 
 MoRELL (with proud humility). I have nothing to 
 offer you but my strength for your defence, my honesty 
 of purpose for your surety, my ability and industry for 
 your livelihood, and my authority and position for your 
 dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a 
 woman. 
 
 Candida (quite quietly). And you, Eugene.^ What 
 do you offer .-^ 
 
 Marchbanks. My weakness! my desolation! my 
 heart's need ! 
 
 Candida (impressed). That's a good bid, Eugene. 
 Now I know how to make my choice. 
 
 She pauses and looks curiously from one to the other, 
 as if weighing them. Morell, whose lofty confidence 
 has changed into heartbreaking dread at Eugene's hid, 
 loses all power of concealing his anxiety. Eugene, 
 strung to the highest tension, does not move a muscle. 
 
 MoRELL (in a suffocated voice — the appeal bursting 
 from the depths of his anguish). Candida! 
 
 Marchbanks (aside, in a flash of contempt). Coward! 
 
 Candida (significantly) . I give myself to the weaker 
 of the two. 
 
 Eugene divines her meaning at once: his face whitens 
 like steel in a furnace that cannot melt it. 
 
 Morell (bowing his head with the calm of collapse). 
 I accept your sentence, Candida. 
 
 Candida. Do you understand, Eugene? 
 
 Marchbanks. Oh, I feel I'm lost. He cannot bear 
 the burden. 
 
 Morell (incredulously, raising his head with prosaic 
 abruptness). Do you mean me, Candida? 
 
 Candida (smiling a little). Let us sit and talk comfort- 
 ably over it like three friends. (To Morell.) Sit down, 
 ^ear. (Morell takes the chair from the fireside — the
 
 Act in Candida 157 
 
 children's chair.) Bring me that chair, Eugene. (She 
 indicates the easy chair. He fetches it silently, even with 
 something like cold strength, and places it next Morell, a 
 tittle behind him. She sits down. He goes to the sofa 
 and sits there, still silent and inscrutable. When they 
 are all settled she begins, throwing a spell of quietness 
 on them by her calm, sane, tender tone.) You remember 
 what you told me about yourself, Eugene: how nobody 
 has cared for you since your old nurse died: how those 
 clever, fashionable sisters and successful brothers of 
 yours were your mother's and father's pets : how miser- 
 able you were at Eton: how your father is trying to 
 starve you into returning to Oxford: how you have had 
 to live without comfort or welcome or refuge, always 
 lonely, and nearly always disliked and misunderstood, 
 poor boy ! 
 
 Marchbanks {faithful to the nobility of his lot). I 
 had my books. I had Nature. And at last I met you. 
 
 Candida. Never mind that just at present. Now I 
 ■want you to look at this other boy here — my boy — 
 spoiled from his cradle. We go once a fortnight to see 
 his parents. You should come with us, Eugene, and see 
 the pictures of the hero of that household. James as a 
 baby ! the most wonderful of all babies. James holding 
 his first school prize, won at the ripe age of eight! 
 James as the captain of his eleven ! James in his first 
 frock coat ! James under all sorts of glorious circum- 
 stances ! You know how strong he is (I hope he didn't 
 hurt you) — how clever he is — how happy! (With deep- 
 ening gravity.) Ask James's mother and his three sis- 
 ters what it cost to save James the trouble of doing any- 
 thing but be strong and clever and happy. Ask me 
 what it costs to be James's mother and three sisters and 
 wife and mother to his children all in one. Ask Prossy 
 and Maria how troublesome the house is even when we 
 have no visitors to help us to slice the onions. Ask the 
 tradesmen who want to worry James and spoil his beau-
 
 158 Candida Act m 
 
 tiful sermons who it is that puts them off. When there 
 is money to give, he gives it: when there is money to 
 refuse, I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and in- 
 dulgence and love for him, and stand sentinel always to 
 keep little vulgar cares out. I make him master here, 
 though he does not know it, and could not tell you a 
 moment ago how it came to be so. (With sweet irony.) 
 And when he thought I might go away with you, his 
 only anxiety was what should become of me! And to 
 tempt me to stay he offered me (leaning forward to stroke 
 his hair caressingly at each phrase) his strength for my 
 defence, his industry for my livelihood, his position for 
 my dignity, his — (Relenting.) Ah, I am mixing up 
 your beautiful sentences and spoiling them, am I not, 
 darling? (She lays her cheek fondly against his.) 
 
 MoRELL (quite overcome, kneeling beside her chair 
 and embracing her with boyish ingenuousness) . It's all 
 true, every word. What I am you have made me with 
 the labor of your hands and the love of your heart ! You 
 are my wife, my mother, my sisters: you are the sum 
 of all loving care to me. 
 
 Candida (in his arms, smiling, to Eugene). Am I 
 your mother and sisters to you, Eugene.'' 
 
 Marchbanks (rising with a fierce gesture of disgust). 
 Ah, never. Out, then, into the night with me ! 
 
 Candida (rising quickly and intercepting him). You 
 are not going like that, Eugene? 
 
 Marchbanks (with the ring of a man's voice — no 
 longer a boy's — in the words). I know the hour when 
 it strikes. I am impatient to do what must be done. 
 
 MoRELL (rising from his knee, alarmed), Candida: 
 don't let him do anything rash. 
 
 Candida (confident, smiling at Eugene). Oh, there 
 is no fear. He has learnt to live without happiness. 
 
 Marchbanks. I no longer desire happiness: life is 
 nobler than that. Parson James: I give you my hap- 
 piness with both hands: I love you because you have
 
 Act m Candida 159 
 
 filled the heart of the woman I loved. Good-bye. {He 
 goes towards the door.) 
 
 Candida. One last word. (He stops, but without 
 turning to her.) How old are you, Eugene.'' 
 
 Marchbanks. As old as the world now. This morn- 
 ing I was eighteen. 
 
 Candida (going to him, and standing behind him with 
 one hand caressingly on his shoulder). Eighteen! Will 
 you, for my sake, make a little poem out of the two sen- 
 tences I am going to say to you ? And will you promise 
 to repeat it to yourself whenever you think of me? 
 
 Marchbanks (without moving). Say the sentences. 
 
 Candida. When I am thirty, she will be forty-five. 
 When I am sixty, she will be seventy-five. 
 
 Marchbanks (turning to her). In a hundred years, 
 we shall be the same age. But I have a better secret than 
 that in my heart. Let me go now. The night outside 
 grows impatient. 
 
 Candida. Good-bye. (She takes his face in her 
 hands; and as he divines her intention and bends his 
 knee, she kisses his forehead. Then he flies out into 
 the night. She turns to Morell, holding out her arms to 
 him.) Ah, James! (They embrace. But they do not 
 know the secret in the poet's heart.) 
 
 CURTAIN.
 
 THE MAN OF DESTINY
 
 THE MAN OF DESTINY 
 
 The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavaz- 
 zano, on the road from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon 
 sun is blazing serenely over the plains of Lomhardy, 
 treating the Alps with respect and the anthills with in- 
 dulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine 
 and oxen in the villages nor hurt by its cool reception 
 in the churches, but fiercely disdainful of two hordes 
 of mischievous insects which are the French and Austrian 
 armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians tried 
 to prevent the French from crossing the river by the 
 narrow bridge there; but the French, commanded by a 
 general aged 27, Napoleon Bonaparte, who does not un- 
 derstand the art of war, rushed the fireswept bridge, 
 supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young 
 general assisted with his own hands. Cannonading is 
 his technical specialty; he has been trained in the ar- 
 tillery under the old regime, and made perfect in the 
 military arts of shirking his duties, swindling the pay- 
 master over travelling expenses, and dignifying war with 
 the noise and smoke of cannon, as depicted in all mili- 
 tary portraits. He is, however, an original observer, 
 and has perceived, for the first time since the invention 
 of gunpowder, that a cannon ball, if it strikes a man, 
 will kill him. To a thorough grasp of this remarkable 
 discovery, he adds a highly evolved faculty for physical 
 geography and for the calculation of times and dis-^ 
 tances. He has prodigious powers of work, and a clear, 
 realistic knowledge of human nature in public affairs, 
 
 163
 
 1G4 The Man of Destiny 
 
 having seen it exhaustively tested in that department 
 during the French Revolution. He is imaginative with- 
 out illusions, and creative without religion, loyalty, pa- 
 triotism or anij of the common ideals. Not that he i^ 
 incapable of these ideals: on the contrary, he has stval- 
 lowed them all in his boyhood, and now, having a keen 
 dramatic faculty, is extremely clever at playing upon 
 them by the arts of the actor and stage manager. With- 
 al, he is no spoiled child. Poverty, ill-luck, the shifts 
 of impecunious shabby-gentility , repeated failure as a 
 rvoidd-be author, humiliation as a rebuffed time server, 
 reproof and punishment as an incompetent and dishonest 
 officer, an escape from dismissal from the service so nar- 
 row that if the emigration of the nobles had not raised 
 the value of even the most rascally lieutenant to the 
 famine price of a general he woidd have been swept 
 contemptuously from the army: these trials have ground 
 the conceit out of him, and forced him to be self-siiffi- 
 cient and to understand that to such men as he is the 
 world will give nothing that he cannot take from it by 
 force. In this the world is not free from cowardice and 
 folly; for Napoleon, as a merciless cannonader of po- 
 litical rubbish, is making himself useful: indeed, it is 
 even now impossible to live in England without some- 
 times feeling how much that country lost in not being 
 conquered by him as well as by Julius Ccesar. 
 
 However, on this May afternoon in 1796, it is early 
 days with him. He is only 26, and has but recently be- 
 come a general, partly by using his wife to seduce the 
 Directory (then governing France) partly by the scarcity 
 of officers caused by the emigration as aforesaid; partly 
 by his faculty of knowing a country, with all its roads, 
 rivers, hills and valleys, as he knows the palm of his 
 hand; and largely by that new faith of his in the efficacy 
 of firing cannons at people. His army is, as to dis- 
 cipline, in a state which has so greatly shocked some mod- 
 ern writers before whom the following story has been
 
 The Man of Destiny 165 
 
 enacted, that they, impressed with the later glory of 
 " L'Empereur," have altogether refused to credit it. 
 But Napoleon is not "L'Empereur" yet: he has only 
 just been dubbed " Le Petit Caporal," and is in the 
 stage of gaining influence over his men by displays of 
 pluck. He is not in a position to force his will on them, 
 in orthodox military fashion, by the cat o' nine tails. 
 The French Revolution, which has escaped suppression 
 solely through the monarchy's habit of being at least 
 four years in arrear with its soldiers in the matter of 
 pay, has substituted for that habit, as far as possible, 
 the habit of not paying at all, except in promises and 
 patriotic flatteries which are not compatible with martial 
 law of the Prussian type. Napoleon has therefore ap^ 
 proached the Alps in command of men without money, 
 in rags, and consequently indisposed to stand much dis- 
 cipline, especially from upstart generals. This circum- 
 stance, which would have embarrassed an idealist sol- 
 dier, has been worth a thousand cannon to Napoleon. He 
 has said to his army, " You have patriotism and cour- 
 age; but you have no money, no clothes, and deplorably 
 indifferent food. In Italy there are all these things, 
 and glory as well, to be gained by a devoted army led 
 by a general who regards loot as the natural right of the 
 soldier. I am such a general. En avant, mes enfants! " 
 The result has entirely justified him. The army con- 
 quers Italy as the locusts conquered Cyprus. They 
 fight all day and march all flight, covering impossible dis- 
 tances and appearing in incredible places, not because 
 every soldier carries a field marshal's baton in his knap- 
 sack, but because he hopes to carry at least half a dozen 
 silver forks there next day. 
 
 It must be understood, by the way, that the French 
 army does not make war on the Italians. It is there 
 to rescue them from the tyranny of their Austrian con- 
 querors, and confer republican institutions on them; so 
 that in incidentally looting them, it merely makes free
 
 166 The Man of Destiny 
 
 nnth the property of its friends, who ought to he grateful 
 to it, and perhaps jvould he if ingratitude were not the 
 proverhial failing of their country. The Austrians, 
 whom it fights, are a thoroughly respectahle regular army, 
 well disciplined, commanded hy gentlemen trained and 
 versed in the art of war: at the head of them Beaulieu, 
 practising the classic art of war under orders from 
 Vienna, and getting horrihly heaten hy Napoleon, who 
 acts on his own responsihility in defiance of professional 
 precedents or orders from Paris. Even when the Austri- 
 ans win a hattle, all that is necessary is to wait until 
 their routine ohliges them to return to their quarters for 
 afternoon tea, so to speak, and win it hack again from 
 them: a course pursued later on with brilliant success at 
 Marengo. On the whole, with his foe handicapped by 
 Austrian statesmanship, classic generalship, and the exi- 
 gencies of the aristocratic social structure of Viennese so- 
 ciety. Napoleon finds it possible to he irresistible without 
 working heroic miracles. The world, however, likes 
 miracles and heroes, and is quite incapable of conceiving 
 the action of such forces as academic militarism or Vi- 
 ennese drawing-roomism. Hence it has already begun 
 to manufacture " L'Empereur," and thus to make it dif- 
 ficult for the romanticists of a hundred years later to 
 credit the little scene now in question at Tavazzano as 
 aforesaid. 
 
 The best quarters at Tavazzano are at a little inn, the 
 first house reached by travellers passing through the 
 place from Milan to Lodi. It stands in a vineyard; 
 and its principal room, a pleasant refuge from the sum- 
 mer heat, is open so widely at the back to this vineyard 
 that it is almost a large veranda. The bolder children, 
 much excited hy the alarums and excursions of the past 
 few days, and hy an irruption of French troops at six 
 o'clock, know that the French coinmajider has quartered 
 himself in this room, and are divided between a crav-< 
 ing to peep in at the front windows and a mortal terror
 
 The Man of Destiny 167 
 
 of the sentinel, a young gentleman-soldier, who, having 
 no natural -moustache, has had a most ferocious one 
 painted on his face with hoot blacking by his sergeant. 
 As his heavy uniform, like all the uniforms of that day, 
 is designed for parade without the least reference to his 
 health or comfort, he perspires profusely in the sun; and 
 his painted moustache has run in little streaks down his 
 chin and round his neck except where it has dried in- 
 stiff japanned flakes, and had its sweeping outline 
 chipped off in grotesque little hays and headlands, mak- 
 ing him unspeakably ridiculous in the eye of History a 
 hundred years later, hut monstrous and horrible to the 
 contemporary north Italian infant, to whom nothing 
 would seem more natural than that he should relieve the 
 monotony of his guard by pitchforking a stray child up 
 on his bayonet, and eating it uncooked. Nevertheless 
 one girl of had character, in whom an instinct of privi- 
 lege with soldiers is already dawning, does peep in at the 
 safest window for a moment, before a glance and a 
 clink from the sentinel sends her flying. Most of what 
 she sees she has seen before: the vineyard at the back, 
 with the old winepress and a cart among the vines; the 
 door close down on her right leading to the inn entry; 
 the landlord's best sideboard, now in full action for din- 
 ner, further hack on the same side; the fireplace on the 
 other side, with a couch near it, and another door, lead- 
 ing to the inner rooms, between it and the vineyard; and 
 the table in the middle with its repast of Milanese risotto, 
 cheese, grapes, bread, olives, and a big wickered flask of 
 red wine. 
 
 The landlord, Giuseppe Grandi, is also no novelty. 
 He is a swarthy, vivacious, shrewdly cheerfid, black- 
 curled, bullet-headed, grinning little man of JfO. Nat- 
 urally an excellent host, he is in quite special spirits 
 this evening at his good fortune in having the French 
 commander as his guest to protect him against the li- 
 cense of the troops, and actually sports a pair of gold
 
 168 The Man of Destiny 
 
 earrings whicli he would otherwise have hidden care- 
 fully under the winepress with his little equipment of 
 silver plate. 
 
 Napoleon, sitting facing her on the further side of the 
 table, and Napoleon's hat, sword and riding whip lying 
 on the couch, she sees for the first time. He is working 
 hard, partly at his meal, which he has discovered how to 
 dispatch, by attacking all the courses simultaneously, in 
 ten minutes (this practice is the beginning of his down- 
 fall), and partly at a map which he is correcting from 
 memory, occasionally marking the position of the forces 
 by taking a grapeskin from his mouth and planting it on 
 the map with his thumb like a wafer. He has a supply 
 of writing materials before him mixed up in disorder 
 with the dishes and cruets; and his long hair gets some- 
 times into the risotto gravy and sometimes into the ink. 
 
 Giuseppe. Will your excellency- 
 
 Napoleon (intent on his map, but cramming himself 
 mechanically with his left hand). Don't talk. I'm busy. 
 
 Giuseppe (with perfect goodhumor). Excellency: I 
 obey. 
 
 Napoleon. Some red ink. 
 
 Giuseppe. Alas ! excellency, there is none. 
 
 Napoleon (with Corsican facetiousness). Kill some- 
 thing and bring me its blood. 
 
 Giuseppe (grinning). There is nothing but your ex- 
 cellency's horse, the sentinel, the lady upstairs, and my 
 wife. 
 
 Napoleon. Kill your wife. 
 
 Giuseppe. Willingly, your excellency; but unhap- 
 pily I am not strong enough. She would kill me. 
 
 Napoleon. That will do equally well. 
 
 Giuseppe. Your excellency does me too much honor. 
 (Stretching his hand toward the flask.) Perhaps some 
 wine will answer your excellency's purpose. 
 
 Napoleon (hastily protecting the flask, and becoming
 
 The Man of Destiny 169 
 
 quite serious). Wine! No: that would be waste. You 
 are all the same: waste! waste! waste! (He marks the 
 map with gravy, using his fork as a pen.) Clear away. 
 (He finishes his wine; pushes back his chair; and uses 
 his napkin, stretching his legs and leaning back, but still 
 frowning and thinking.) 
 
 Giuseppe (clearing the table and removing the things 
 to a tray on the sideboard). Every man to his trade, 
 excellency. We innkeepers have plenty of cheap wine: 
 we think nothing of spilling it. You great generals have 
 plenty of cheap blood: you think nothing of spilling it. 
 Is it not so, excellency? 
 
 Napoleon. Blood costs nothing: wine costs money. 
 (He rises and goes to the fireplace.) 
 
 Giuseppe. They say you are careful of everything 
 except human life, excellency. 
 
 Napoleon. Human life, my friend, is the only thing 
 that takes care of itself. (He throws himself at his ease 
 on the couch.) 
 
 Giuseppe (admiring him). Ah, excellency, what 
 fools we all are beside you ! If I could only find out the 
 secret of your success ! 
 
 Napoleon. You would make yourself Emperor of 
 Italy, eh ? 
 
 Giuseppe. Too troublesome, excellency: I leave all 
 that to you. Besides, what would become of my inn if 
 I were Emperor? See how you enjoy looking on at me 
 whilst I keep the inn for you and wait on you! Well, 
 I shall enjoy looking on at you whilst you become Em- 
 peror of Europe, and govern the country for me. 
 (Whilst he chatters, he takes the cloth off without re- 
 moving the map and inkstand, and takes the corners in 
 his hands and the middle of the edge in his mouth, to 
 fold it up.) 
 
 Napoleon. Emperor of Europe, eh? Why only 
 Europe ? 
 
 Giuseppe. Why, indeed? Emperor of the world, ex-
 
 170 Tlie Man of Destiny 
 
 cellency! Why not? {He folds and rolls up the cloth, 
 emphasizing his phrases by the steps of the process.) 
 One man is like another (fold) : one country is like 
 another (fold): one battle is like another. (At the last 
 fold, he slaps the cloth on the table and deftly rolls it 
 up, adding, by way of peroration) Conquer one: conquer 
 all. {He takes the cloth to the sideboard, and puts it in 
 a drarver.) 
 
 Napoleon. And govern for all; fight for all; be 
 everybody's servant under cover of being everybody's 
 master. Giuseppe. 
 
 Giuseppe {at the sideboard). Excellency. 
 
 Napoleon. I forbid you to talk to me about myself. 
 
 Giuseppe (coming to the foot of the couch). Pardon. 
 You excellency is so unlike other great men. It is the 
 subject they like best. 
 
 Napoleon. Well, talk to me about tlie subject they 
 like next best, whatever that may be. 
 
 Giuseppe (unabashed). Willingly, your excellency. 
 Has your excellency by any chance caught a glimpse of 
 the lady upstairs.'' (Napoleon promptly sits up and 
 looks at him with an interest which entirely justifies the 
 implied epigram.) 
 
 Napoleon. How old is she? 
 
 Giuseppe. The right age, excellency. 
 
 Napoleon. Do you mean seventeen or thirty? 
 
 Giuseppe. Thirty, excellency. 
 
 Napoleon. Goodlooking? 
 
 Giuseppe. I cannot see with your excellency's eyes: 
 every man must judge that for himself. In my opinion, 
 excellency, a fine figure of a lady. (Slyly.) Shall I 
 lay the table for her collation here? 
 
 Napoleon (brusquely, rising). No: lay nothing here 
 until the officer for whom I am waiting comes back. (He 
 looks at his watch, and takes to walking to and fro be- 
 tween the fireplace and the vineyard.) 
 
 Giuseppe (with conviction). Excellency: believe me,
 
 The Man of Destiny 171 
 
 he has been captured by the accursed Austrians. He 
 dare not keep 3'ou waiting if he were at liberty. 
 
 Napoleon (turning at the edge of the shadow of the 
 veranda). Giuseppe: if that turns out to be true, it will 
 put me into such a temper that nothing short of hanging 
 you and your whole household^ including the lady up- 
 stairs, will satisfy me. 
 
 Giuseppe. We are all cheerfully at your excellency's 
 disposal, except the lady. I cannot answer for her; but 
 no lady could resist you. General. 
 
 Napoleon (sourly, resuming his march). Hm ! You 
 will never be hanged. There is no satisfaction in hang- 
 ing a man who does not object to it. 
 
 Giuseppe (sympathetically). Not the least in the 
 world, excellency: is there? (Napoleon again looks at 
 his watch, evidently growing anxious.) Ah, one can see 
 that you are a great man. General: you know how to 
 wait. If it were a corporal now, or a sub-lieutenant, at 
 the end of three minutes he would be swearing, fuming, 
 threatening, pulling the house about our ears. 
 
 Napoleon. Giuseppe: your flatteries are insuffer- 
 able. Go and talk outside. (He sits dorvn again at the 
 table, with his jaws in his hands, and his elbows propped 
 on the map, poring over it with a troubled expression.) 
 
 Giuseppe. Willingly, your excellency. You shall not 
 be disturbed. (He takes up the tray and prepares to 
 withdraw.) 
 
 Napoleon. The moment he comes back, send him 
 to me. 
 
 Giuseppe. Instantaneously, your excellency. 
 
 A Lady's Voice (calling from some distant part of 
 the inn). Giusep-pe ! (The voice is very musical, and 
 the two final notes make an ascending interval.) 
 
 Napoleon (startled). What's that? What's that? 
 
 Giuseppe (resting the end of his tray on the table and 
 leaning over to speak the more confidentially). The 
 lady, excellency.
 
 172 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Napoleon {absently). Yes. What lady? Whose 
 lady? 
 
 Giuseppe. The strange lady, excellency. 
 
 Napoleon. WTiat strange lady? 
 
 Giuseppe (rvith a shrug). Who knows? She arrived 
 here half an hour before you in a hired carriage belong- 
 ing to the Golden Eagle at Borghetto. Actually by 
 herself, excellency. No servants. A dressing bag and 
 a trmik: that is all. The postillion says she left a horse 
 — a charger, with military trappings, at the Golden 
 Eagle. 
 
 Napoleon. A woman with a charger! That's extra- 
 ordinarv. 
 
 The Lady's Voice {the two final notes now making a 
 peremptory descending interval). Giuseppe! 
 
 Napoleon {rising to listen). That's an interesting 
 voice. 
 
 Giuseppe. She is an interesting lady, excellency. 
 {Calling.) Coming, lady, coming. {He makes for the 
 inner door.) 
 
 Napoleon {arresting him with a strong hand on his 
 shoulder). Stop. Let her come. 
 
 Voice. Giuseppe!! {Impatiently.) 
 
 Giuseppe {pleadingly). Let me go, excellency. It is 
 my point of honor as an innkeeper to come when I am 
 called. I appeal to you as a soldier. 
 
 A Man's Voice {outside, at the inn door, shouting). 
 Here, someone. Hollo ! Landlord. Where are you ? 
 {Somebody raps vigorously with a whip handle on a 
 bench in the passage.) 
 
 Napoleon {suddenly becoming the commanding offi- 
 cer again and ir rowing Giuseppe off). There he is at 
 last. {Pointing to the inner door.) Go. Attend to 
 your business: the lady is calling you. {He goes to the 
 fireplace and stands with his back to it with a determined 
 military air.) 
 
 Giuseppe {with bated breath, snatching up his tray) ,
 
 The Man of Destiny 173 
 
 Certainly, excellency, {He hurries out by the inner 
 door.) 
 
 The Man's Voice (impatiently). Are you all asleep 
 here? (The door opposite the fireplace is kicked rudely 
 open; and a dusty sub-lieutenant bursts into the room. 
 He is a chuckle-headed young man of 21f., with, the fair, 
 delicate, clear skin of a man of rank, and a self- 
 assurance on that ground rvhich the French Revolution 
 has failed to shake in the smallest degree. He has a 
 thick silly lip, an eager credulous eye, an obstinate nose, 
 and a loud confident voice. A young man without fear, 
 without reverence, without imagination, without sense, 
 hopelessly i7isusceptible to the Napoleonic or any other 
 idea, stupendously egotistical, eminently qualified to 
 rush in where angels fear to tread, yet of a vigorous 
 babbling vitality which bustles him into the thick of 
 things. He is just now boiling with vexation, attrib- 
 utable by a superficial observer to his impatience at not 
 being promptly attended to by the staff of the inn, but 
 in which a more discerning eye can perceive a certain 
 moral depth, indicating a more permanent and momen- 
 tous grievance. On seeing Napoleon, he is sufficiently 
 taken aback to check himself and salute; but he does not 
 betray by his manner any of that prophetic conscious- 
 ness of Marengo and Austerlitz, Waterloo and St. Hel- 
 ena, or the Napoleonic pictures of Delaroche and Meis- 
 sonier, which modern culture will instinctively expect 
 from him.) 
 
 Napoleon (sharply). Well, sir, here you are at last. 
 Your instructions were that I should arrive here at six, 
 and that I was to find you waiting for me with my mail 
 from Paris and with despatches. It is now twenty min- 
 utes to eight. You were sent on this service as a hard 
 rider with the fastest horse in the camp. You arrive a 
 hundred minutes late, on foot. Where is your horse ! 
 
 The Lieutenant (moodily pulling off his gloves and 
 dashing them with his cap and whip on the table). Ah!
 
 174 The Man of Destiny 
 
 where indeed? That's just what I should like io know, 
 GeneraL {With emotion.^ You don't know how fond 
 I was of that horse. 
 
 Napoleon {angrily sarcastic). Indeed! {With, sud- 
 den misgiving.) Where are the letters and despatches? 
 
 The Lieutenant {importantly, ratlier pleased than 
 otherrvise at having some remarkable nervs). I don't 
 know. 
 
 Napoleon {unable to believe his ears). You don't 
 know ! 
 
 Lieutenant. No more than you do. General. Now 
 I suppose I shall be court-martialled. Well, I don't 
 mind being court-martialled; but {with solemn deter- 
 mination) I tell you. General, if ever I catch that inno- 
 cent looking youth, I'll spoil his beauty, the slimy little 
 liar! I'll make a picture of him. I'll 
 
 Napoleon {advancing from the hearth to the table). 
 What innocent looking youth? Pull yourself together, 
 sir, will you; and give an account of yourself. 
 
 Lieutenant {facing him at the opposite side of the 
 table, leaning on it with his fists). Oh, I'm all right. 
 General: I'm perfectly ready to give an account of my- 
 self. I shall make the court-martial thoroughly under- 
 stand that the fault was not mine. Advantage has been 
 taken of the better side of my nature; and I'm not 
 ashamed of it. But with all respect to you as my com- 
 manding officer. General, I say again that if ever I set 
 eyes on that son of Satan, I'll 
 
 Napoleon {angrily). So you said before. 
 
 Lieutenant {drawing himself upright). I say it 
 again. Just wait until I catch him. Just wait: that's 
 all. {He folds his arms resolutely, and breathes hard, 
 with compressed lips.) 
 
 Napoleon, I am waiting, sir — for your explanation. 
 
 Lieutenant {confidently). You'll change your tone. 
 General, when you hear what has happened to me. 
 
 Napoleon. Nothing has happened to you, sir: you
 
 The Man of Destiny 175 
 
 are alive and not disabled. Where are the papers en- 
 trusted to you? 
 
 Lieutenant. Nothing! Nothing!! Oho! Well, 
 we'll see. (Posing himself to overwhelm Napoleon with 
 his news.) He swore eternal brotherhood with me. Was 
 that nothing.^ He said my eyes reminded him of his 
 sister's eyes. Was that nothing? He cried — actually 
 cried — over the story of my separation from Angelica. 
 Was that nothing? He paid for both bottles of wine, 
 though he only ate bread and grapes himself. Perhaps 
 you call that nothing ! He gave me his pistols and his 
 horse and his despatches — most important despatches — 
 and let me go away with them. (Triumphantly, seeing 
 that he has reduced Napoleon to blank stupefaction.) 
 Was that nothing? 
 
 Napoleon (enfeebled by astonishment). What did 
 he do that for? 
 
 Lieutenant (as if the reason were obvious). To 
 shew his confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not 
 exactly drop; but its hinges become nerveless. The 
 Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And 
 I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them all 
 back honorably. But would you believe it? — when I 
 trusted him with my pistols, and my horse, and my 
 despatches 
 
 Napoleon (enraged). What the devil did you do 
 that for? 
 
 Lieutenant. Wliy, to shew my confidence in him, of 
 course. And he betrayed it — abused it — never came 
 back. The thief ! the swindler ! the heartless, treacher- 
 ous little blackguard ! You call that nothing, I suppose. 
 But look here. General: (again resorting to the table 
 with his fist for greater emphasis) you may put up with 
 this outrage from the Austrians if you like; but speak- 
 ing for myself personally, I tell you that if ever I 
 catch 
 
 Napoleon (turning on his heel in disgust and irri-
 
 176 The Man of Destiny 
 
 tahly resuming his march to and fro). Yet,: you have 
 said that more tlian once already. 
 
 LiEVTEN ANT (excitedly). More than once ! I'll say it 
 fifty times; and what's more I'll do it. You'll see, Gen- 
 eral, I'll shew my confidence in him, so I will. I'll 
 
 Napoleon. Yes, yes, sir: no doubt you will. What 
 kind of man was he.'' 
 
 Lieutenant. Well, I should think you ought to be 
 able to tell from his conduct the sort of man he was. 
 
 Napoleon. Psh ! What was he like? 
 
 Lieutenant. Like! He's like — well, you ought to 
 have just seen the fellow: that will give you a notion of 
 what he was like. He won't be like it five minutes after 
 I catch him; for I tell you that if ever 
 
 Napoleon (shouting furiously for the innkeeper). 
 Giuseppe! (To the Lieutenant, out of all patience.) 
 Hold your tongue, sir, if you can. 
 
 Lieutenant. I warn you it's no use to try to put the 
 blame on me. (Plaintively.) How was I to know the 
 sort of fellow he was.? (He takes a chair from between 
 the sideboard and the outer door; places it near the 
 table; and sits doivn.) If you only knew how hungry 
 and tired I am, you'd have more consideration. 
 
 Giuseppe (returning). What is it, excellency.? 
 
 Napoleon (struggling with his temper). Take this 
 — this officer. Feed him; and put him to bed, if neces- 
 sary. When he is in his right mind again, find out what 
 has happened to him and bring me word. (To the Lieu- 
 tenant.) Consider yourself under arrest, sir. 
 
 Lieutenant (with sulky stiffness). I was prepared 
 for that. It takes a gentleman to understand a gentle- 
 man. (He throws his sword on the table. Giuseppe 
 takes it up and politely offers it to Napoleon, who throws 
 it violently on the couch.) 
 
 Giuseppe (with sympathetic concern). Have you 
 been attacked by the Austrians, lieutenant? Dear, dear, 
 dear!
 
 The Man of Destiny 177 
 
 Lieutenant {contemptuously). Attacked! I could 
 have broken his back between my finger and thumb. I 
 wish I had, now. No: it was by appealing to the better 
 side of my nature: that's what I can't get over. He said 
 he'd never met a man he liked so much as me. He put 
 his handkerchief round my neck because a gnat bit me, 
 and my stock was chafing it. Look ! {He pulls a hand- 
 kerchief from his stock. Giuseppe takes it and ex- 
 amines it.) 
 
 Giuseppe (to Napoleon). A lady's handkerchief, ex- 
 cellency. (He smells it.) Perfumed! 
 
 Napoleon. Eh.'' (He takes it and looks at it at- 
 tentively.) Hm! (He smells it.) Ha! (He walks 
 thoughtfully across the room, looking at the handker- 
 chief, which he finally sticks in the breast of his coat.) 
 
 Lieutenant. Good enough for him, anyhow. I no- 
 ticed that he had a woman's hands when he touched my 
 neck, with his coaxing, fawning ways, the mean, effemi- 
 nate little hound. (Lowering his voice with thrilling 
 intensity.) But mark my words, General. If ever 
 
 The Lady's Voice (outside, as before). Giuseppe! 
 
 Lieutenant (petrified). What was that? 
 
 Giuseppe. Only a lady upstairs, lieutenant, calling 
 me. 
 
 Lieutenant. Lady ! 
 
 Voice. Giuseppe, Giuseppe: where are you? 
 
 Lieutenant (murderously). Give me that sword. 
 (He strides to the couch; snatches the sword; and draws 
 it.) 
 
 Giuseppe (rushing forward and seizing his right 
 arm.) What are you thinking of, lieutenant? It's a 
 lady: don't you hear that it's a woman's voice? 
 
 Lieutenant. It's his voice, I tell you. Let me go. 
 (He breaks away, and rushes to the inner door. It opens 
 in his face; and the Strange Lady steps in. She is a 
 very attractive lady, tall and extraordinarily gracefid, 
 with a delicately intelligent, apprehensive, questioning
 
 178 The Man of Destiny 
 
 face — perception in. the brow, sensitiveness in the nos- 
 trils, character in the chin: all keen, refined, and orig- 
 inal. She is very feminine, but by no means weak: the 
 lithe, tender figure is hung on a strong frame: the hands 
 and feet, neck and shoulders, are no fragile ornaments, 
 but of full size in proportion to her stature, rvhich con- 
 siderably exceeds that of Napoleon and the innkeeper, 
 and leaves her at no disadvantage rvith the lieutenant. 
 Only, her elegance and radiant charm keep the secret 
 of her size and strength. She is not, judging by her 
 dress, an admirer of the latest fashions of the Directory; 
 or perhaps she uses up her old dresses for travelling. 
 At all events she wears no jacket with extravagant lap- 
 pels, no Greco-Tallien sham chiton, nothing, indeed, that 
 the Princesse de Lamballe might not have worn. Her 
 dress of flowered silk is long waisted, with a JVatteau 
 pleat behind, but with the paniers reduced to mere rudi- 
 ments, as she is too tall for them. It is cut low in the 
 neck, where it is eked out by a creamy fichu. She is 
 fair, with golden brojvn hair and grey eyes. 
 
 She enters with the self-possession of a woman accus- 
 tomed to the privileges of rank and beauty. The inn- 
 keeper, who has excellent natural manners, is highly ap- 
 preciative of her. Napoleon, on whom her eyes first 
 fall, is instantly smitten self-conscious. His color deep- 
 ens: he becomes stiver and less at ease than before. 
 She perceives this instantly, and, not to embarrass him, 
 turns in an infinitely well bred manner to pay the respect 
 of a glance to the other gentleman, who is staring at her 
 dress, as at the earth's final masterpiece of treacherous 
 dissimulation, with feelings altogether inexpressible and 
 indescribable. As she looks at him, she becomes deadly 
 pale. There is no mistaking her expression: a revela- 
 tion of some fatal ejTor, utterly unexpected, has sud- 
 denly appalled her in the midst of tranquillity, security 
 and victory. The next moment a wave of color rushes 
 up from beneath the creamy fichu and drowns her whole
 
 The Man of Destiny 179 
 
 face. One can see that she is blushing all over her body. 
 Even the lieutenant, ordinarily incapable of observation, 
 and just now lost in the tumult of his wrath, can see a 
 thing when it is painted red for him. Interpreting the 
 blush as the involuntary confession of black deceit con- 
 fronted with its victim, he points to it with a loud crow 
 of retributive triumph, and then, seizing her by the wrist, 
 pulls her past him into the room a^ he claps the door to, 
 and plants himself with his back to it.) 
 
 Lieutenant. So I've got you, my lad. So you've 
 disguised yourself, have you? (In a voice of thunder.) 
 Take off that skirt. 
 
 Giuseppe (remonstrating). Oh, lieutenant! 
 
 Lady (affrighted, but highly indignant at his having 
 dared to touch her). Gentlemen: I appeal to you, 
 Giuseppe. (Making a movement as if to run to Giu- 
 seppe.) 
 
 Lieutenant (interposing, sword in hand). No you 
 don't. 
 
 Lady (taking refuge with Napoleon). Oh, sir, you 
 are an officer — a general. You will protect me, will you 
 not? 
 
 Lieutenant. Never you mind him. General. Leave 
 me to deal with him. 
 
 Napoleon. With him! With whom, sir? Why do 
 you treat this lady in such a fashion ? 
 
 Lieutenant. Lady! He's a man! the man I shewed 
 my confidence in. (Advancing threateningly.) Here 
 you 
 
 Lady (running behind Napoleon and in her agitation 
 embracing the arm which he instinctively extends before 
 her as a fortification). Oh, thank you. General. Keep 
 him away. 
 
 Napoleon. Nonsense, sir. This is certainly a lady 
 (she suddenly drops his arm and blushes again) ; and 
 you are under arrest. Put down your sword, sir, in- 
 stantly.
 
 180 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Lieutenant. General: I tell you he's an Austrian 
 spy. He passed himself off on me as one of General 
 JVIassena's staif this afternoon; and now he's passing 
 himself off on you as a woman. Am I to believe my own 
 eyes or not.'' 
 
 Lady. General: it must be my brother. He is on 
 General Massena's staff. He is very like me. 
 
 Lieutenant (his mind giving way). Do you mean 
 to say that you're not your brother, but your sister? — 
 the sister who was so like me? — who had my beautiful 
 blue eyes? It was a lie: your eyes are not like mine: 
 they're exactly like your o%vn. What perfidy! 
 
 Napoleon. Lieutenant: will you obey my orders and 
 leave the room, since you are convinced at last that this 
 is no gentleman? 
 
 Lieutenant. Gentleman! I should think not. No 
 gentleman would have abused my confi 
 
 Napoleon (out of all patience). Enough, sir, enough. 
 Will you leave the room. I order you to leave the 
 room. 
 
 Lady. Oh, pray let me go instead. 
 
 Napoleon (drily). Excuse me, madame. With all 
 respect to your brother, I do not yet understand what 
 an officer on General Massena's staff wants with my let- 
 ters. I have some questions to put to you. 
 
 Giuseppe (discreetly). Come, lieutenant. (He opens 
 the door.) 
 
 Lieutenant. I'm off. General: take warning by 
 me: be on your guard against the better side of your 
 nature. (To the lady.) Madame: my apologies. I 
 thought you Avere the same person, only of the opposite 
 sex; and that naturally misled me. 
 
 Lady (srveetly). It was not your fault, was it? I'm 
 so glad you're not angry with me any longer, lieutenant. 
 (She offers her hand.) 
 
 Lieutenant (bending gallantly to Jciss it). Oh, 
 madam, not the lea — (Checking himself and looking
 
 The Man of Destiny 181 
 
 at it.') You have your brother's hand. And the same 
 sort of ring. 
 
 Lady (sweetly). We are twins. 
 
 Lieutenant. That accounts for it. (He kisses her 
 hand.) A thousand pardons. I didn't mind about the 
 despatches at all: that's more the General's affair than 
 mine: it was the abuse of my confidence through the 
 better side of my nature. (Taking his cap, gloves, and 
 whip from the table and going.) You'll excuse my leav- 
 ing you. General, I hope. Very sorry, I'm sure. (He 
 talks himself out of the room. Giuseppe follows him 
 and shuts the door.) 
 
 Napoleon (looking after them with concentrated irri- 
 tation). Idiot! (The Strange Lady smiles sympatheti- 
 cally. He comes frowning down the room between the 
 table and the fireplace, all his awkwardness gone now 
 that he is alone with her.) 
 
 Lady. How can I thank you. General, for your pro- 
 tection ? 
 
 Napoleon (turning on her suddenly). My de- 
 spatches: come! (He puts out his hand for them.) 
 
 Lady. General! (She involuntarily puts her hands 
 on her fichu as if to protect something there.) 
 
 Napoleon. You tricked that blockhead out of them. 
 You disguised yourself as a man. I want my despatches. 
 They are there in the bosom of your dress, under your 
 hands. 
 
 Lady (quickly removing her hands). Oh, how un- 
 kindly you are speaking to me! (She takes Iter hand- 
 kerchief from her fichu.) You frighten me. (She 
 touches her eyes as if to wipe away a tear.) 
 
 Napoleon. I see you don't know me madam, or you 
 would save yourself the trouble of pretending to cry. 
 
 Lady (producing an effect of smiling through her 
 tears). Yes, I do know you. You are the famous Gen- 
 eral Buonaparte. (She gives the name a marked Italian 
 pronunciation — Bwaw-na-parr-te.)
 
 182 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Napoleon (angrily, with the French pronunciation). 
 Bonaparte, madame, Bonaparte. The papers, if you 
 please. 
 
 Lady. But I assure you — (He snatches the hand- 
 kerchief rudely from her.) General! (Indignantly.) 
 
 Napoleon (taking the other handkerchief from his 
 breast). You were good enough to lend one of your 
 handkerchiefs to my lieutenant when you robbed him. 
 (He looks at the two handkerchiefs.) They match one 
 another. (He smells them.) The same scent. (He 
 flings them down on the table.) I am waiting for the 
 despatches. I shall take them, if necessary, with as lit- 
 tle ceremony as the handkerchief. (This historical in- 
 cident was used eighty years later, by M. Victorien Sar- 
 dou, in his drama entitled " Dora.") 
 
 Lady (in dignified reproof). General: do you threaten 
 women } 
 
 Napoleon (bluntly). Yes. 
 
 Lady (disconcerted, trying to gain time). But I don't 
 understand. I 
 
 Napoleon. You understand perfectly. You came 
 here because your Austrian employers calculated that I 
 was six leagues away. I am always to be found where 
 my enemies don't expect me. You have walked into the 
 lion's den. Come: you are a brave woman. Be a sen- 
 sible one: I have no time to waste. The papers. (He 
 advances a step ominously). 
 
 Lady (breaking down in the childish rage of impo- 
 tence, and throwing herself in tears on the chair left 
 beside the table by the lieutenant). I brave! How lit- 
 tle you know ! I have spent the day in an agony of fear. 
 I have a pain here from the tightening of my heart at 
 every suspicious look, every threatening movement. Do 
 jou think every one is as brave as you } Oh, why will not 
 you brave people do the brave things ? Why do you leave 
 them to us, who have no courage at all.'' I'm not brave; 
 I shrink from violence: danger makes me miserable.
 
 The Man of Destiny 183 
 
 Napoleon {interested) . Then why have you thrust 
 yourself into danger? 
 
 Lady. Because there is no other way: I can trust 
 nobody else. And now it is all useless — all because of 
 you, who have no fear, because you have no heart, no 
 feeling, no — (She breaks off, and throws herself on 
 her hneesS) Ah, General, let me go: let me go without 
 asking any questions. You shall have your despatches 
 and letters: I swear it. 
 
 Napoleon {holding out his hand). Yes: I am wait- 
 ing for them. {She gasps, daunted by his ruthless 
 promptitude into despair of moving him by cajolery; 
 but as she looks up perplexedly at him, it is plain that 
 she is racking her brains for some device to outrvit him. 
 He meets her regard inflexibly.) 
 
 Lady {rising at last with a quiet little sigh). I will 
 get them foT yon. They are in my room. {She turns to 
 the door.) 
 
 Napoleon. I shall accompany you, madame. 
 
 Lady {drawing herself up with a noble air of offended 
 delicacy), I cannot permit you. General, to enter my 
 chamber. 
 
 Napoleon. Then you shall stay here, madame, whilst 
 I have your chamber searched for my papers. 
 
 Lady {spitefully, openly giving up her plan). You 
 may save yourself the trouble. They are not there. 
 
 Napoleon. No: I have already told you where they 
 are. {Pointing to her breast.) 
 
 Lady {with pretty piteousness). General: I only want 
 to keep one little private letter. Only one. Let me 
 have it. 
 
 Napoleon {cold and stern). Is that a reasonable 
 demand, madam.'' 
 
 Lady {encouraged by his not refusing point blank). 
 No; but that is why you must grant it. Are your own 
 demands reasonable.'' thousands of lives for the sake of 
 your victories, your ambitions, your destiny ! And what
 
 184 The Man of Destiny 
 
 I ask is such a little thing. And I am only a weak 
 woman, and you a brave man. {She looks at him with 
 her eyes full of tender pleading and is about to kneel 
 to him again.) 
 
 Napoleon (brusquely). Get up, get up. (He turns 
 moodily away and takes a turn across the room, pausing 
 for a moment to say, over his shoidder) You're talking 
 nonsense; and you know it. (She gets up and sits down 
 in almost listless despair on the couch. When he turns 
 and sees her there, he feels that his victory is complete, 
 and that he may now indulge in a little play with his 
 victim. He comes back and sits beside her. She looks 
 alarmed and moves a little away from him; but a ray of 
 rallying hope beams from her eye. He begins like a 
 man enjoying some secret joke.) How do you know I 
 am a brave man.'' 
 
 Lady (amazed). You! General Buonaparte. (Ital- 
 ian pronunciation.) 
 
 Napoleon. Yes, I, General Bonaparte (emphasizing 
 the French pronunciation). 
 
 Lady. Oh, how can you ask such a question? you! 
 who stood only two days ago at the bridge at Lodi, with 
 the air full of death, fighting a duel with cannons across 
 the river! (Shuddering.) Oh, you do brave things. 
 
 Napoleon. So do you. 
 
 Lady. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are 
 you a coward.'' 
 
 Napoleon (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). 
 That is the one question you must never ask a soldier. 
 The sergeant asks after the recruit's height, his age, his 
 wind, his limb, but never after his courage. (He gets 
 up and walks about with his hands behind him and his 
 head bowed, chuckling to himself.) 
 
 Lady (as if she had found it no laughing matter). 
 Ah, you can laugh at fear. Then you don't know what 
 fear is. 
 
 Napoleon (coming behind the couch). Tell me this.
 
 The Man of Destiny 185 
 
 Suppose you could have got that letter by coming to me 
 over the bridge at Lodi the day before yesterday ! Sup- 
 pose there had been no other way, and that this was a 
 sure way — if only you escaped the cannon ! (She shud- 
 ders and covers her eyes for a moment with her hands.) 
 Would you have been af^-aid? 
 
 Lady. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She 
 presses her hand on her heart.) It hurts only to im- 
 agine it. 
 
 Napoleon (inflexibly). Would you have come for 
 the despatches.'' 
 
 Lady (overcome by the imagined horror). Don't ask 
 me. I must have come. 
 
 Napoleon. Why? 
 
 Lady. Because I must. Because there would have 
 been no other way. 
 
 Napoleon (with conviction). Because you would 
 have wanted my letter enough to bear your fear. There 
 is only one universal passion: fear. Of all the thou- 
 sand qualities a man may have, the only one you will 
 find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my 
 army as in me, is fear. It is fear that makes men fight: 
 it is indifference that makes them run away: fear is the 
 mainspring of war. Fear ! — I know fear well, better 
 than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regi- 
 ment of good Swiss soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris 
 because I was afraid to interfere : I felt myself a coward 
 to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it. Seven months 
 ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death 
 with cannon balls. Well, what of that.'' Has fear ever 
 held a man back from anything he really wanted — or 
 a woman either.'' Never. Come with me; and I will 
 shew you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death 
 every day for the price of a glass of brandy. And do 
 you think there are no women in the army, braver than 
 the men, because their lives are worth less .'' Psha ! I 
 think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had
 
 186 The Man of Destiny 
 
 had to come across to me at Lodi, you would not have 
 been afraid: once on the bridge, every other feeling 
 would have gone down before the necessity — the ne- 
 cessity — for making your way to my side and getting 
 what you wanted. 
 
 And now, suppose you had done all this — suppose 
 you had come safely out with that letter in your hand, 
 knowing that when the hour came, your fear had tight- 
 ened, not your heart, but your grip of your own pur- 
 pose — that it had ceased to be fear, and had become 
 strength, penetration, vigilance, iron resolution — how 
 would you answer then if you were asked whether you 
 were a coward? 
 
 Lady (rising). Ah, you are a hero, a real hero. 
 
 Napoleon. Pooh ! there's no such thing as a real 
 hero. (He strolls down the room, making light of her 
 enthusiasm, but by no means displeased with himself 
 for having evoked it.) 
 
 Lady. Ah, yes, there is. There is a difference be- 
 tween what you call my bravery and yours. You wanted 
 to win the battle of Lodi for yourself and not for any- 
 one else, didn't you? 
 
 Napoleon. Of course. (Suddenly recollecting him- 
 self.) Stop: no. (Fie pulls himself piously together, 
 and says, like a man conducting a religious service) I 
 am only the servant of the French republic, following 
 humbly in the footsteps of the heroes of classical an- 
 tiquity. I win battles for humanity — for my country, 
 not for myself. 
 
 Lady (disappointed) . Oh, then you are only a woman- 
 ish hero, after all. (She sits down again, all her enthu- 
 siasm gone, her elbow on the end of the couch, and her 
 cheek propped on her hand.) 
 
 Napoleon (greatly astonished). Womanish! 
 
 Lady (listlessly). Yes, like me. (With deep melan-> 
 choly.) Do you think that if I only wanted those de- 
 spatches for myself, I dare venture into a battle for
 
 The Man of Destiny 187 
 
 them? No: if that were all^ I should not have the cour- 
 age to ask to see you at your hotel, even. My courage is 
 mere slavishness : it is of no use to me for my own pur- 
 poses. It is only through love, through pity, through the 
 instinct to save and protect someone else, that I can do 
 the things that terrify me. 
 
 Napoleon (coyitemptuously). Pshaw! (He turns 
 slightingly away from her.) 
 
 Lady. Aha! now you see that I'm not really brave. 
 (Relapsing into petulant listlessness.) But what right 
 have you to despise me if you only win your battles for 
 others ? for your country ! through patriotism ! That is 
 what I call womanish : it is so like a Frenchman ! 
 
 Napoleon (furiously) . I am no Frenchman. 
 
 Lady (innocently) . I thought you said you won the 
 battle of Lodi for your country. General Bu — shall I 
 pronounce it in Italian or French? 
 
 Napoleon. You are presuming on my patience, 
 madam. I was born a French subject, but not in France. 
 
 Lady (folding her arms on the end of the couch, and 
 leaning on them with a marked access of interest in him). 
 You were not born a subject at all, I think. 
 
 Napoleon (greatly pleased, starting on a fresh 
 march). Eh? Eh? You think not. 
 
 Lady. I am sure of it. 
 
 Napoleon. Well, well, perhaps not. (The self- 
 complacency of his assent catches his own ear. He stops 
 short, reddening. Then, composing himself into a sol- 
 emn attitude, modelled on the heroes of classical an- 
 tiquity, he takes a high moral tone.) But we must not 
 live for ourselves alone, little one. Never forget that 
 we should always think of others, and work for others, 
 and lead and govern them for their own good. Self- 
 sacrifice is the foundation of all true nobility of char- 
 acter. 
 
 Lady (again relaxing her attitude with a sigh). Ah, 
 it is easy to see that you have never tried it. General.
 
 188 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Napoleon {indignantly, forgetting all about Brutus 
 and Scipio). What do you mean by that speech, madam? 
 
 Lady. Haven't you noticed that people always exag- 
 gerate the value of the things they haven't got? The 
 poor think they only need riches to be quite happy and 
 good. Everybody worships truth, purity, unselfishness, 
 for the same reason — because they have no experience of 
 them. Oh, if they only knew ! 
 
 Napoleon (with angry derision). If they only 
 knew! Pray, do you know? 
 
 Lady (with her arms stretched down and her hands 
 clasped on her knees, looking straight before her). Yes. 
 I had the misfortune to be born good. (Glancing up at 
 him for a moment.) And it is a misfortune, I can tell 
 you. General. I really am truthful and unselfish and 
 all the rest of it; and it's nothing but cowardice; want 
 of character; want of being really, strongly, positively 
 oneself. 
 
 Napoleon. Ha? (Turning to her quickly with « 
 flash of strong interest.) 
 
 Lady (earnestly, with rising enthusiasm). What in 
 the secret of your power ? Only that you believe in your- 
 self. You can fight and conquer for yourself and for 
 nobody else. You are not afraid of your own destiny. 
 You teach us what we all might be if we had the will 
 and courage; and that (suddenly sinkitig on her knees 
 before him) is why we all begin to worship you. (She 
 kisses his hands.) 
 
 Napoleon (embarrassed). Tut, tut! Pray rise, 
 madam. 
 
 Lady. Do not refuse my homage: it is your right. 
 You will be emperor of France 
 
 Napoleon (hurriedly). Take care. Treason! 
 
 Lady (insisting). Yes, emperor of France; then of 
 Europe; perhaps of the world. I am only the first 
 subject to swear allegiance. (Again kissing his hand.) 
 My Emperor !
 
 The Man of Destiny 189 
 
 Napoleon (overcome, raising her). Pray, pray. No, 
 no, little one : this is folly. Come : be calm, be calm. 
 (Petting her.) There, there, my girl. 
 
 Lady (struggling with happy tears). Yes, I know* 
 it is an impertinence in me to tell you what you must 
 know far better than I do. But you are not angry with 
 me, are you.'' 
 
 Napoleon. Angry! No, no: not a bit, not a bit. 
 Come: you are a very clever and sensible and interesting 
 little woman. (He pats her on the cheek.) Shall we be 
 friends ? 
 
 Lady (enraptured). Your friend! You will let me 
 be your friend! Oh! (She offers him both her hands 
 with a radiant smile.) You see: I shew my confidence in 
 you. 
 
 Napoleon (with a yell of rage, his eyes flashing)^ 
 What I 
 
 Lady. What's the matter? 
 
 Napoleon. Shew your confidence in me ! So that I 
 may shew my confidence in you in return by letting you 
 give me the slip with the despatches, eh.^ Ah, Dalila, 
 Dalila, you have been trying your tricks on me; and I 
 have been as great a gull as my jackass of a lieutenant. 
 (He advances threateningly on her.) Come: the de- 
 spatches. Quick: I am not to be trifled with now. 
 
 Lady (flying round the couch). General 
 
 Napoleon. Quick, I tell you. (He passes swiftly 
 up the middle of the room and intercepts her as she makes 
 for the vineyard.) 
 
 Lady (at bay, confronting him). You daje address 
 me in that tone. 
 
 Napoleon. Dare! 
 
 Lady. Yes, dare. Who are you that you should pre- 
 sume to speak to me in that coarse way } Oh, the • 
 vile, vulgar Corsican adventurer comes out in you very 
 easily. 
 
 Napoleon (beside himself). You she devil! (Sav~
 
 190 The Man of Destiny 
 
 agely.) Once more^ and only once, will you give me those 
 papers or shall I tear them from you — by force? 
 
 Lady (letting her hands fall). Tear them from me 
 — by force! (As he glares at her like a tiger about to 
 spring, she crosses her arms on her breast in the attitude 
 of a martyr. The gesture and pose instantly awaken his 
 theatrical instinct: he forgets his rage in the desire to 
 shew her that in acting, too, she has met her match. He 
 keeps her a moment in suspense; then suddenly clears up 
 his countenance; puts his hands behind him with provok- 
 ing coolness; looks at her up and down a couple of times; 
 takes a pinch of snuff ; wipes his fingers carefully and 
 puts up his handkerchief , her heroic pose becoming more 
 and more ridiculous all the time.) 
 
 Napoleon (at last). Well? 
 
 Lady (disconcerted, but with her arms still crossed 
 devotedly). Well: what are you going to do? 
 
 Napoleon, Spoil your attitude. 
 
 Lady. You brute! (Abandoning the attitude, she 
 comes to the end of the couch, where she turns with her 
 hack to it, leaning against it and facing him with her 
 hands behind her.) 
 
 Napoleon. Ah, that's better. Now listen to me. I 
 like you. What's more, I value your respect. 
 
 Lady. You value what you have not got, then. 
 
 Napoleon. I shall have it presently. Now attend 
 to me. Suppose I were to allow mj'self to be abashed 
 by the respect due to your sex, your beauty, your heroism 
 and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such 
 sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine 
 and those papers which you have about you, and which 
 I want and mean to have : suppose I, with the prize with- 
 in my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my 
 hands emptj^; or, what would be worse, cover up my 
 weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and spar- 
 ing you the violence I dared not use, would you not de- 
 spise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would
 
 The Man of Destiny 191 
 
 any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte can rise to 
 the situation and act like a woman when it is necessary. 
 Do you understand? 
 
 The lady, without speaking, stands upright, and takes 
 a packet of papers from her bosom. For a moment she 
 has an intense impulse to dash them in his face. But her 
 good breeding cuts her off from any vulgar method of 
 relief. She hands them to him politely, only averting her 
 head. The moment he takes them, she hurries across 
 to the other side of the room; covers her face with her 
 hands; and sits down, with her body turned away to the 
 back of the chair. 
 
 Napoleon (gloating over the papers). Aha! That's 
 right. That's right. (Before opening them he looks at 
 her and says) Excuse me. (He sees that she is hiding 
 her face.) Very angry with me, eh? (He unties the 
 packet, the seal of which is already broken, and puts it 
 on the table to examine its contents.) 
 
 Lady (quietly, taking down her hands and shewing 
 that she is not crying, but only thinking). No. You 
 were right. But I am sorry for you. 
 
 Napoleon (pausing in the act of taking the upper- 
 most paper from the packet). Sorry for me! Why? 
 
 Lady. I am going to see you lose your honor. 
 
 Napoleon. Ilm! Nothing worse than that? (He 
 takes up the paper.) 
 
 Lady. And your happiness. 
 
 Napoleon. Happiness, little woman, is the most te- 
 dious thing in the world to me. Should I be what I am 
 if I cared for happiness ? Anything else ? 
 
 Lady. Nothing — (He interrupts her with an ex- 
 clamation of satisfaction. She proceeds quietly) except 
 that you will cut a very foolish figure in the eyes of 
 France. 
 
 Napoleon (quickly). What? (The hand holding 
 the paper involuntarily drops. The lady looks at him. 
 enigmatically in tranquil silence. He throws the letter
 
 192 The Man of Destiny 
 
 down and breaks out into a torrent of scolding.^ What 
 do you mean? Eh? Are you at your tricks again? Do 
 you think I don't know what these papers contain? I'll 
 tell you. First, my information as to Beaulieu's re 
 treat. There are only two things he can do — leather- 
 brained idiot that he is ! — shut himself up in Mantua or 
 violate the neutrality of Venice by taking Peschiera. 
 You are one of old Leatherbrain's spies: he has dis- 
 covered that he has been betrayed, and has sent you 
 to intercept the information at all hazards — as if that 
 could save him from me, the old fool! The other pa- 
 pers are only my usual correspondence from Paris, of 
 whicli you know nothing. 
 
 Lady {projnpt and businesslike). General: let us 
 make a fair division. Take the information your spies 
 have sent you about the Austrian army; and give me the 
 Paris correspondence. That will content me. 
 
 Napoleon (his breath taken away by the coolness of 
 the proposal). A fair di — (He gasps.) It seems to 
 me, madame, that you have come to regard my letters as 
 your own property, of which I am trying to rob you. 
 
 Lady (^earnestly). No: on my honor I ask for no 
 letter of yours — not a word that has been written by you 
 or to you. That packet contains a stolen letter: a letter 
 written by a woman to a man — a man not her husband — 
 a letter that means disgrace, infamy 
 
 Napoleon. A love letter? 
 
 Lady (bitter-sweetly). What else but a love letter 
 could stir up so much hate? 
 
 Napoleon. Why is it sent to me? To put the hus- 
 band in my power, eh? 
 
 Lady. No, no: it can be of no use to you: I swear 
 that it will cost you nothing to give it to me. It has 
 been sent to you out of sheer malice — solely to injure the 
 woman who wrote it. 
 
 Napoleon. Then why not send it to her husband in- 
 stead of to me?
 
 The Man of Destiny 193 
 
 Lady (completely taken aback). Oh! {Sinking back 
 into the chair.) I — I don't know. {She breaks down.) 
 
 Napoleon. Aha ! I thought so : a little romance to 
 get the papers back. (He throws the packet on the table 
 and confronts her with cynical goodhumor.) Per Bacco, 
 little woman, I can't help admiring you. If I could lie 
 like that, it would save me a great deal of trouble. 
 
 Lady (wringing her hands). Oh, how I wish I really 
 had told you some lie ! You would have believed me then. 
 The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe. 
 
 Napoleon (with coarse familiarity, treating her as if 
 she were a vivandiere). Capital! Capital! (He puts 
 his hands behind him on the table, and lifts himself on 
 to it, sitting with his arms akimbo and his legs wide 
 apart.) Come: I am a true Corsican in my love for 
 stories. But I could tell them better than you if I set 
 my mind to it. Next time you are asked why a letter 
 compromising a wife should not be sent to her husband, 
 answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do 
 you suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be com- 
 pelled by public opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, 
 to break up his household, to injure his career by a scan- 
 dal, when he can avoid it all by taking care not to know ? 
 
 Lady (revolted). Suppose that packet contained a 
 letter about your own wife.'' 
 
 Napoleon (offended, coming off the table). You are 
 impertinent, madame. 
 
 Lady (humbly). I beg your pardon. Caesar's wife 
 is above suspicion. 
 
 Napoleon (with a deliberate assumption of superior- 
 ity). You have committed an indiscretion. I pardon 
 you. In future, do not permit yourself to introduce real 
 persons in your romances. 
 
 Lady (politely ignoring a speech which is to her only 
 a breach of good manners, and rising to move towards the 
 table). General: there really is a woman's letter there. 
 (Pointing to the packet.) Give it to me.
 
 194 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Napoleon (with brute conciseness, moving so as to 
 prevent her getting too near the letters). Why? 
 
 Lady. She is an old friend: we were at school to- 
 gether. She has written to me imploring me to prevent 
 the letter falling into your hands. 
 
 Napoleon. Why has it been sent to me? 
 
 Lady. Because it compromises the director Barras. 
 
 Napoleon {frowning, evidently startled). Barras! 
 (Haughtily.) Take care, madame. The director Barras 
 is my attached personal friend. 
 
 Lady {nodding placidly). Yes. You became friends 
 through your wife. 
 
 Napoleon. Again! Have I not forbidden you to 
 speak of my wife? {She keeps looking curiously at him, 
 taking no account of the rebuke. More and more ir- 
 ritated, he drops his haughty manner, of which he is 
 himself somewhat impatient, and says suspiciously , lower- 
 ing his voice) Who is this woman with whom you sym- 
 pathize so deeply? 
 
 Lady. Oh, General ! How could I tell you that ? 
 
 Napoleon {ill-humoredly, beginning to walk about 
 again in angry perplexity). Ay, ay: stand by one an- 
 other. You are all the same, you women. 
 
 Lady {indignantly). We are not all the same, any 
 more than you are. Do you think that if I loved another 
 man, I should pretend to go on loving my husband, or 
 be afraid to tell him or all the world? But this woman 
 is not made that way. She governs men by cheating 
 them; and {with disdain) they like it, and let her govern 
 them. {She sits down again, with her bark to him.) 
 
 Napoleon {not attending to her). Barras, Barras! 
 {Turning very threateningly to her, his face darkening.) 
 Take care, take care : do you hear ? You may go too far. 
 
 Lady {innocently turning her face to him). What's 
 the matter? 
 
 Napoleon. What are you hinting at? Who is this 
 woman ?
 
 The Man of Destiny 195 
 
 Lady (meeting his angry searching gaze with tranquil 
 indifference as she sits looking up at him with her right 
 arm resting lightly along the back of her chair, and one 
 knee crossed over the other). A vain, silly, extravagant 
 creature, with a very able and ambitious husband who 
 knows her through and through — knows that she has lied 
 to him about her age, her income, her social position, about 
 everything that silly women lie about — knows that she is 
 incapable of fidelity to any principle or any person; and 
 yet could not help loving her — could not help his man's 
 instinct to make use of her for his own advancement with 
 Barras. 
 
 Napoleon (in a stealthy, coldly furious whisper). 
 This is your revenge, you she cat, for having had to give 
 me the letters. 
 
 Lady. Nonsense ! Or do you mean that you are that 
 sort of man? 
 
 Napoleon (exasperated, clasps his hands behind him, 
 his fingers twitching, and says, as he walks irritably 
 away from her to the fireplace). This woman will 
 drive me out of my senses. (To her.) Begone. 
 
 Lady (seated immovably). Not without that letter. 
 
 Napoleon. Begone, I tell you. (Walking from the 
 fireplace to the vineyard and back to the table.) You 
 shall have no letter. I don't like you. You're a detest- 
 able woman, and as ugly as Satan. I don't choose to be 
 pestered by strange women. Be off. (He turns his 
 back on her. In quiet amusement, she leans her cheek 
 on her hand and laughs at him. He turns again, angrily 
 mocking her.) Ha! ha! ha! What are you laughing at.^* 
 
 Lady. At you. General. I have often seen persons 
 of your sex getting into a pet and behaving like children ; 
 but I never saw a really great man do it before. 
 
 Napoleon (brutally, flinging the words in her face). 
 Pooh: flattery! flattery! coarse, impudent flattery! 
 
 Lady (springing up with a bright flush in her cheeks). 
 Oh, you are too bad. Keep your letters. Read the story
 
 196 The Man of Destiny 
 
 of your own dishonor in them; and much good may they 
 do you. Good-bye. {She goes indignantly towards the 
 inner door.) 
 
 Napoleon. My own — ! Stop. Come back. Come 
 back, I order you. (She proudly disregards his savagely 
 peremptory tone and continues on her way to the door. 
 He rushes at her; seises her by the wrist; and drags 
 her back.) Now, what do you mean.'' Explain. Ex- 
 plain, I tell you, or — (^Threatening her. She looks at 
 him with unflinching defiance.) Rrrr! you obstinate 
 devil, you. Why can't you answer a civil question.'' 
 
 Lady (^deeply offended by his violence). Why do you 
 ask me? You have the explanation. 
 
 Napoleon. Where.'' 
 
 Lady (pointing to the letters on the table). There. 
 You have only to read it. (He snatches the packet up; 
 hesitates; looks at her suspiciously ; and throws it down 
 again. ) 
 
 Napoleon. You seem to have forgotten your solici- 
 tude for the honor of your old friend. 
 
 Lady. She runs no risk now: she does not quite un- 
 derstand her husband. 
 
 Napoleon. I am to read the letter, then? (He 
 stretches out his hand as if to take up the packet again, 
 with his eye on her.) 
 
 Lady. I do not see how you can very well avoid doing 
 so now. (He instantly withdraws his hand.) Oh, don't 
 be afraid. You will find many interesting things in it. 
 
 Napoleon. For instance? 
 
 Lady. For instance, a duel — with Barras, a domestic 
 scene, a broken household, a public scandal, a checked 
 career, all sorts of things. 
 
 Napoleon. Hm ! (He looks at her; takes up the 
 packet and looks at it, pursing his lips and balancing it 
 in his hand; looks at her again; passes the packet into 
 his left hand and puts it behind his back, raising his right 
 to scratch the back of his head as he turns and goes up
 
 The Man of Destiny 197 
 
 to the edge of the vineyard, where he stands for a mo- 
 ment looking out into the vines, deep in thought. The 
 Lady watches him in silence, somewhat slightingly. Sud- 
 denly he turns and comes hack again, full of force and 
 decision.^ I grant your request, madame. Your cour- 
 age and resolution deserve to succeed. Take the letters 
 for which you have fought so well ; and remember hence- 
 forth that you found the vile, vulgar Corsican adventurer 
 as generous to the vanquished after the battle as he was 
 resolute in the face of the enemy before it. {He offers 
 her the packet.) 
 
 Lady {without taking it, looking hard at him). What 
 are you at now, I wonder? (He dashes the packet furi- 
 ously to the floor.) Aha! I've spoiled that attitude, I 
 think. (She makes him a pretty mocking curtsey.) 
 
 Napoleon (snatching it up again). Will you take 
 the letters and begone (advancing and thrusting them 
 upon her) ? 
 
 Lady (escaping round the table). No: I don't want 
 your letters. 
 
 Napoleon. Ten minutes ago, nothing else would sat- 
 isfy you. 
 
 Lady (keeping the table carefully between them). 
 Ten minutes ago you had not insulted me past all bear- 
 ing. 
 
 Napoleon. I — (swallowing his spleen) I apologize. 
 
 Lady (coolly). Thanks. (With forced politeness he 
 offers her the packet across the table. She retreats a 
 step out of its reach and says) But don't you want to 
 know whether the Austrians are at ISIantua or Peschiera.'' 
 
 Napoleon. I have already told you that I can con- 
 quer my enemies without the aid of spies, madame. 
 
 Lady. And the letter ! don't you want to read that ? 
 
 Napoleon. You have said that it is not addressed to 
 me. I am not in the habit of reading other people's 
 letters. (He again offers the packet.) 
 
 Lady. In that case there can be no objection to your
 
 198 The Man of Destiny 
 
 keeping it. All I wanted was to prevent your reading it. 
 {Cheerfully.) Good afternoon. General. {She turns 
 coolly towards the inner door.) 
 
 Napoleon {furiously flinging the packet on the 
 couch). Heaven grant me patience! {He goes up de- 
 terminedly and places himself before the door.) Have 
 you any sense of personal danger? Or are you one of 
 those women who like to be beaten black and blue? 
 
 Lady. Thank you, General: I have no doubt the sen- 
 sation is very voluptuous ; but I had rather not. I 
 simply want to go home : that's all. I was wicked enough 
 to steal your despatches; but you have got them back; 
 and 3^ou have forgiven me, because {delicately reproduc- 
 ing his rhetorical cadence) you are as generous to the 
 vanquished after the battle as you are resolute in the 
 face of the enemy before it. Won't you say good-bye to 
 me? {She offers her hand sweetly.) 
 
 Napoleon {repulsing the advance with a gesture of 
 concentrated rage, and opening the door to call fiercely). 
 Giuseppe! {Louder.) Giuseppe! {He bangs the door 
 to, and comes to the middle of the room. The lady goes 
 a little way into the vineyard to avoid him.) 
 
 Giuseppe {appearing at the door). Excellency? 
 
 Napoleon. Where is that fool ? 
 
 Giuseppe. He has had a good dinner, according to 
 your instructions, excelleiicy, and is now doing me the 
 honor to gamble with me to pass the time. 
 
 Napoleon. Send him here. Bring him here. Come 
 with him. {Giuseppe, with unruffled readiness, hurries 
 off. Napoleon turns curtly to the lady, saying) I must 
 trouble j^ou to remain some moments longer, madame. 
 {He comes to the couch. She comes from the vineyard 
 down the opposite side of the room to the sideboard, and 
 posts herself there, leaning against it, watching him. He 
 takes the packet frovi the couch and deliberately buttons 
 it carefully into his breast pocket, looking at her mean- 
 while with an expression which suggests that she will
 
 The Man of Destiny 199 
 
 soon find out the meaning of his proceedings, and will 
 not like it. Nothing more is said until the lieutenant 
 arrives followed by Giuseppe, who stands modestly in 
 attendance at the table. The lieutenant, without cap, 
 sword or gloves, and much improved in temper and, 
 spirits by his meal, chooses the Lady's side of the room, 
 and waits, much at his ease, for Napoleon to begin.) 
 
 Napoleon. Lieutenant. 
 
 Lieutenant {encouragingly). General. 
 
 Napoleon. I cannot persuade this lady to give me 
 much information; but there can be no doubt that the 
 man who tricked you out of your charge was, as she 
 admitted to you, her brother. 
 
 Lieutenant (triumphantly). What did I tell you. 
 General! What did I tell you! 
 
 Napoleon. You must find that man. Your honor is 
 at stake; and the fate of the campaign, the destiny of 
 France, of Europe, of humanity, perhaps, may depend 
 on the information those despatches contain. 
 
 Lieutenant. Yes, I suppose they really are rather 
 serious (as if this had hardly occurred to him before). 
 
 Napoleon (energetically). They are so serious, sir, 
 that if you do not recover them, you will be degraded 
 in the presence of your regiment. 
 
 Lieutenant. Whew ! The regiment won't like that, 
 I can tell you. 
 
 Napoleon. Personally, I am sorry for you. I would 
 willingly conceal the affair if it were possible. But I 
 shall be called to account for not acting on the de- 
 spatches. I shall have to prove to all the world that 
 I never received them, no matter what the consequences 
 may be to you. I am sorry; but you see that I cannot 
 help myself. 
 
 Lieutenant (goodnaturedly). Oh, don't take it to 
 heart. General : it's really very good of you. Never mind 
 what happens to me: I shall scrape through somehow; 
 and we'll beat the Austrians for you, despatches or no
 
 200 The Man of Destiny 
 
 despatches. I hope you won't insist on my starting off 
 on a wild goose chase after the fellow now, I haven't a 
 notion where to look for him. 
 
 Giuseppe {deferentially). You forget. Lieutenant: 
 he has your horse. 
 
 Lieutenant (starting). I forgot that, (Reso- 
 lutely.) I'll go after him, General: I'll find that horse if 
 it's alive anywhere in Italy. And I shan't forget the 
 despatches : never fear. Giuseppe : go and saddle one 
 of those mangy old post-horses of yours, while I get my 
 cap and sword and things. Quick march. Off with you 
 (bustling him). 
 
 Giuseppe. Instantly, Lieutenant, instantly. (He 
 disappears in the vineyard, where the light is now red- 
 dening with the sunset.) 
 
 Lieutenant (looking about him on his way to the 
 inner door). By the way. General, did I give you my 
 sword or did I not.^ Oh, I remember now. (Fretfully.) 
 It's all that nonsense about putting a man under arrest: 
 one never knows where to find — (Talks himself out of 
 the room.) 
 
 Lady (still at the sideboard). What does all this 
 mean. General? 
 
 Napoleon. He will not find your brother. 
 
 Lady. Of course not. There's no such person. 
 
 Napoleon. The despatches will be irrecoverably lost. 
 
 Lady. Nonsense! They are inside your coat. 
 
 Napoleon. You will find it hard, I think, to prove 
 that wild statement. (The Lady starts. He adds, with 
 clinching emphasis) Those papers are lost. 
 
 Lady (anxiously, advancing to the corner of the table). 
 And that unfortunate young man's career will be sacri- 
 ficed. 
 
 Napoleon. His career! The fellow is not worth 
 the gunpowder it would cost to have him shot. (He turns 
 contemptuously and goes to the hearth, where he stands 
 with his back to her.)
 
 The Man of Destiny 201 
 
 Lady (wistfully). You are very hard. Men and 
 women are nothing to you but things to be used, even if 
 they are broken in the use. 
 
 Napoleon (turning on her). Which of us has broken 
 this fellow — I or you? Who tricked him out of the 
 despatches? Did you think of his career then? 
 
 Lady (naively concerned about him). Oh, I never 
 thought of that. It was brutal of me ; but I couldn't help 
 it, could I? How else could I have got the papers? 
 (Supplicating.) General: you will save him from dis- 
 grace. 
 
 Napoleon (laughing sourly). Save him yourself, 
 since you are so clever: it was you who ruined him. 
 (With savage intensity.) I hate a bad soldier. 
 
 He goes out determinedly through the vineyard. She 
 follows him a few steps with an appealing gesture, but 
 is interrupted by the return of the lieutenant, gloved and 
 capped, with his sword on, ready for the road. He is 
 crossing to the outer door when she intercepts him. 
 
 Lady. Lieutenant. 
 
 Lieutenant (importantly). You mustn't delay me, 
 you know. Duty, madame, duty. 
 
 Lady (imploringly). Oh, sir, what are you going to 
 do to my poor brother? 
 
 Lieutenant. Are you very fond of him? 
 
 Lady. I should die if anything happened to him. 
 You must spare him. (The lieutenant shakes his head 
 gloomily.) Yes, yes: you must: you shall: he is not 
 fit to die. Listen to me. If I tell you where to find him 
 — if I undertake to place him in your hands a prisoner, 
 to be delivered up by you to General Bonaparte — will 
 you promise me on your honor as an officer and a gentle- 
 man not to fight with him or treat him unkindly in any 
 way? 
 
 Lieutenant. But suppose he attacks me. He has 
 my pistols. 
 
 Lady. He is too great a coward.
 
 202 The Man of Destiny 
 
 Lieutenant. I don't feel so sure about that. He's 
 capable of anything. 
 
 Lady. If he attacks you, or resists you in any way, I 
 release you from your promise. 
 
 Lieutenant. My promise ! I didn't mean to prom- 
 ise. Look here: you're as bad as he is: you've taken an 
 advantage of me through the better side of my nature. 
 What about my horse? 
 
 Lady. It is part of the bargain that you are to have 
 your horse and pistols back. 
 
 Lieutenant. Honor bright? 
 
 Lady. Honor bright. (She ofers her hand.) 
 
 Lieutenant (taking it and holding it). All right: 
 I'll be as gentle as a lamb with him. His sister's a 
 very pretty woman. (He attempts to kiss her.) 
 
 Lady (slipping away from him). Oh, Lieutenant! 
 You forget: your career is at stake — the destiny of Eu- 
 rope — of humanity. 
 
 Lieutenant. Oh, bother the destiny of humanity. 
 (Making for her.) Only a kiss. 
 
 Lady (retreating round the table). Not until you 
 have regained your honor as an officer. Remember: you 
 have not captured my brother yet. 
 
 Lieutenant (seductively). You'll tell me where he 
 is, won't you? 
 
 Lady. I have only to send him a certain signal; and 
 he will be here in quarter of an hour. 
 
 Lieutenant. He's not far off, then. 
 
 Lady. No: quite close. Wait here for him: when he 
 gets my message he will come here at once and surrender 
 himself to you. You understand? 
 
 Lieutenant (intellectually overtaxed). Well, it's a 
 little complicated; but I daresay it will be all right. 
 
 Lady. And now, whilst you're waiting, don't you 
 think you had better make terms with the General? 
 
 Lieutenant. Oh, look here, this is getting fright- 
 fully complicated. What terms?
 
 The INIan of Destiny 203 
 
 Lady. Make him promise that if you catch my 
 brother he will consider that you have cleared your char- 
 acter as a soldier. He will promise anything you ask on 
 that condition. 
 
 Lieutenant. That's not a bad idea. Thank you: I 
 think I'll try it. 
 
 Lady. Do. And mind, above all things, don't let 
 him see how clever you are. 
 
 Lieutenant. I understand. He'd be jealous. 
 
 Lady. Don't tell him anything except that you are 
 resolved to capture my brother or perish in the attempt. 
 He won't believe you. Then you will produce my 
 brother 
 
 Lieutenant (interrupting as he masters the plot). 
 And have the laugh at him ! I say : what a clever little 
 woman you are! (Shouting.) Giuseppe! 
 
 Lady. Sh ! Not a word to Giuseppe about me. (She 
 puts her finger on her lips. He does the same. They 
 looJc at one another warningly. Then, with a ravishing 
 smile, she changes the gesture into wafting him a kiss, 
 and runs out through the inner door. Electrified, he 
 bursts into a volley of chuckles. Giuseppe comes back 
 by the outer door.) 
 
 Giuseppe. The horse is ready. Lieutenant. 
 
 Lieutenant. I'm not going just yet. Go and find 
 the General, and tell him I want to speak to him. 
 
 Giuseppe (shaking his head). That will never do. 
 Lieutenant. 
 
 Lieutenant. "UHiy not? 
 
 Giuseppe. In this wicked world a general may send 
 for a lieutenant; but a lieutenant must not send for a 
 general. 
 
 Lieutenant. Oh, you think he wouldn't like it. 
 Well, perhaps you're right: one has to be awfully 
 particular about that sort of thing now we've got a 
 republic. 
 
 Napoleon reappears, advancing from the vineyard, but-
 
 204 The Man of Destiny 
 
 toning the breast of his coat, pale and full of gnawing 
 thoughts. 
 
 Giuseppe (unconscious of Napoleon's approach). 
 Quite true, Lieutenant, quite true. You are all like inn- 
 keepers now in France: you have to be polite to every- 
 body. 
 
 Napoleon (putting his hand on Giuseppe's shoulder). 
 And that destroys the whole value of politeness, eh.? 
 
 Lieutenant. The very man I wanted! See here, 
 General: suppose I catch that fellow for you! 
 
 Napoleon (with ironical gravity). You will not 
 catch him, my friend. 
 
 Lieutenant. Aha! you think so; but you'll see. 
 Just wait. Only, if I do catch him and hand him over 
 to you, will you cry quits.'' Will you drop all this about 
 degrading me in tlie presence of my regiment? Not that 
 / mind, you know; but still no regiment likes to have 
 all the other regiments laughing at it. 
 
 Napoleon (a cold ray of htimor striking pallidly 
 across his gloom). What shall we do with this officer, 
 Giuseppe.'' Everything he says is wrong. 
 
 Giuseppe (promptly). Make him a general, excel- 
 lency; and then everything he says will be right. 
 
 Lieutenant (crorving). Haw-aw! (He throrvs 
 himself ecstatically on the couch to enjoy the joke.) 
 
 Napoleon (laughing and pinching Giuseppe's ear). 
 You are thrown away in this inn, Giuseppe. (He sits 
 dorvn and places Giuseppe before him like a school- 
 master Tvith a pupil.) Shall I take you away with me 
 and make a man of you? 
 
 Giuseppe (shaking his head rapidly and repeatedly). 
 No, thank you. General. All my life long people have 
 wanted to make a man of me. When I was a boy, our 
 good priest wanted to make a man of me by teaching me 
 to read and write. Then the organist at Melegnano 
 wanted to make a man of me by teaching me to read 
 music. The recruiting sergeant would have made a man
 
 The Man of Destiny 205 
 
 of me if I had been a few inches taller. But it always 
 meant making me work ; and I am too lazy for that, thank 
 Heaven ! So I taught myself to cook and became an 
 innkeeper ; and now I keep servants to do the work, 
 and have nothing to do myself except talk, which suits 
 me perfectly. 
 
 Napoleon (looking at him thoughtfully). You are 
 satisfied .'' 
 
 Giuseppe (with cheerful conviction). Quite, excel- 
 lency. 
 
 Napoleon. And you have no devouring devil inside 
 you who must be fed with action and victory — gorged 
 with them night and day — who makes you pay, with the 
 sweat of your brain and body, weeks of Herculean toil 
 for ten minutes of enjoyment — who is at once your slave 
 and your tyrant, your genius and your doom — who brings 
 you a crown in one hand and the oar of a galley slave 
 in the other — who shews you all the kingdoms of the 
 earth and offers to make you their master on condition 
 that you become their servant ! — have you nothing of that 
 in you? 
 
 Giuseppe. Nothing of it! Oh, I assure you, excel- 
 lency, my devouring devil is far worse than that. He 
 offers me no crowns and kingdoms: he expects to get 
 everything for nothing — sausages, omelettes, grapes, 
 cheese, polenta, wine — three times a day, excellency: 
 nothing less will content him. 
 
 Lieutenant. Come, drop it, Giuseppe: you're mak- 
 ing me feel hungry again. 
 
 (Giuseppe, with an apologetic shrug, retires from the 
 conversation, and busies himself at the table, dusting it, 
 setting the map straight, and replacing Napoleon's chair, 
 which the lady has pushed back.) 
 
 Napoleon (turning to the lieutenant with sardonic 
 ceremony). I hope / have not been making you feel 
 ambitious. 
 
 Lieutenant. Not at all: I don't fly so high. Be-
 
 206 The Man of Destiny 
 
 sides: I'm better as I am: men like me are wanted in the 
 army just now. The fact is, the Revolution was all very 
 well for civilians ; but it won't work in the army. You 
 know what soldiers are, General: they will have men of 
 family for their officers. A subaltern must be a gentle- 
 man, because he's so much in contact with the men. But 
 a general, or even a colonel, may be any sort of riff-raff 
 if he understands the shop well enough. A lieutenant is 
 a gentleman: all the rest is chance. Why, who do you 
 suppose won the battle of Lodi.'' I'll tell you. My 
 horse did. 
 
 Napoleon (rising). Your folly is carrying you too 
 far, sir. Take care. 
 
 Lieutenant. Not a bit of it. You remember all 
 that red-hot cannonade across the river: the Austrians 
 blazing away at you to keep you from crossing, and you 
 blazing away at them to keep them from setting the 
 bridge on fire? Did you notice where I was then? 
 
 Napoleon (with menacing politeness). I am sorry. 
 I am afraid I was rather occupied at the moment. 
 
 Giuseppe (trith eager admiration). They say you 
 jumped off your horse and worked the big guns with your 
 own hands. General. 
 
 Lieutenant. That was a mistake: an officer should 
 never let himself down to the level of his men. (Na- 
 poleon looks at him dangerously, and begins to rvalk 
 tigerishly to and fro.) But you might have been firing 
 away at the Austrians still, if we cavalry fellows hadn't 
 found the ford and got across and turned old Beau- 
 lieu's flank for you. You know you daren't have given 
 the order to charge the bridge if you hadn't seen us 
 on the other side. Consequently, I say that whoever 
 found that ford won the battle of Lodi. Well, who 
 found it? I was the first man to cross: and I know. It 
 was my horse that found it. (With conviction, as he 
 rises from the couch.) That horse is the true conqueror 
 of the Austrians.
 
 The Man of Destiny 207 
 
 Napoleon (passionately'). You idiot: I'll have you 
 shot for losing those despatches: I'll have you blown from 
 the mouth of a cannon: nothing less could make any 
 impression on you. (Baying at him.) Do you hear? 
 Do you understand? 
 
 A French officer enters unobserved, carrying his 
 sheathed sabre in his hand. 
 
 Lieutenant (unabashed). If I don't capture him. 
 General. Remember the if. 
 
 Napoleon. If! If!! Ass: there is no such man. 
 
 The Officer (suddenly stepping between them and 
 speaking in the unmistakable voice of the Strange Lady). 
 Lieutenant: I am your prisoner. (She offers him her 
 sabre. They are amazed. Napoleon gazes at her for a 
 moment thunderstruck ; then seizes her by the wrist and 
 drags her roughly to him, looking closely and fiercely at 
 her to satisfy himself as to her identity; for it now be- 
 gins to darken rapidly into night, the red glow over the 
 vineyard giving way to clear starlight.) 
 
 Napoleon. Pah ! (He flings her hand away with 
 an exclamation of disgust, and turns his back on her 
 with his hand in his breast and his brow lowering.) 
 
 Lieutenant (triumphantly, taking the sabre). No 
 such man: eh. General? (To the Lady.) I say: where's 
 my horse? 
 
 Lady. Safe at Borghetto, waiting for you. Lieu- 
 tenant. 
 
 Napoleon (turning on them). Where are the de- 
 spatches ? 
 
 Lady. You would never guess. They are in the most 
 unlikely place in the world. Did you meet my sister 
 here, any of you? 
 
 Lieutenant. Yes. Very nice woman. She's won- 
 derfully like you; but of course she's better looking. 
 
 Lady (mysteriously). Well, do you know that she is 
 a witch? 
 
 Giuseppe (running down to them in terror, crossing
 
 208 The JNIan of Destiny 
 
 himself). Oh, no, no, no. It is not safe to jest about 
 such things. I cannot have it in my house, excellency. 
 
 Lieutenant. Yes, drop it. You're my prisoner, you 
 know. Of course I don't believe in any such rubbish; 
 but still it's not a proper subject for joking. 
 
 Lady. But this is very serious. My sister has be- 
 witched the General. (Giuseppe and the Lieutenant 
 recoil from Napoleon.) General: open your coat: you 
 will find the despatches in the breast of it. (She puts 
 her hand quichhj on his breast.) Yes: there they are: 
 I can feel them. Eh? (She looks up into his face half 
 coaxingly, half mockingly.) Will you allow me, Gen- 
 eral.'' (She takes a button as if to unbutton his coat, 
 and pauses for permission.) 
 
 Napoleon (inscrutably). If you dare. 
 
 Lady. Thank you. (She opens his coat and takes 
 out the despatches.) There! (To Giuseppe, shewing 
 him the despatches.) See! 
 
 Giuseppe (flying to the outer door). No, in heaven's 
 name ! They're bewitched. 
 
 Lady (turning to the Lieutenant). Here, Lieutenant: 
 you're not afraid of them. 
 
 Lieutenant (retreating). Keep off. (Seising the 
 hilt of the sabre.) Keep off, I tell you. 
 
 Lady (to Napoleon). They belong to you. General. 
 Take them. 
 
 Giuseppe. Don't touch them, excellency. Have noth- 
 ing to do with them. 
 
 Lieutenant. Be careful. General: be careful. 
 
 Giuseppe. Burn them. And burn the witch, too. 
 
 Lady (to Napoleon). Shall I burn them? 
 
 Napoleon (thoughtfully). Yes, burn them. Giu- 
 seppe: go and fetch a light. 
 
 Giuseppe (trembling and stammering). Do you 
 mean go alone — in the dark — with a witch in the house? 
 
 Napoleon. Psha ! You're a poltroon. (To the 
 Lieutenant.) Oblige me by going. Lieutenant.
 
 The Man of Destiny 209 
 
 Lieutenant (remonstrating). Oh, I say. General! 
 No, look here, you know: nobody can say I'm a coward 
 after Lodi. But to ask me to go into the dark by myself 
 without a candle after such an awful conversation is a 
 little too much. How would 3'ou like to do it yourself ? 
 
 Napoleon (irritably) . You refuse to obey my order? 
 
 Lieutenant (resolutely). Yes, I do. It's not rea- 
 sonable. But I'll tell you what I'll do. If Giuseppe 
 goes, I'll go with him and protect him. 
 
 Napoleon (to Giuseppe). There! will that satisfy 
 you.'' Be off, both of you. 
 
 Giuseppe (humbly, his lips trembling). W-willingly, 
 your excellency. (He goes reluctantly towards the inner 
 door.) Heaven protect me ! (To the lieutenant.) After 
 you. Lieutenant. 
 
 Lieutenant. You'd better go first: I don't know the 
 way. 
 
 Giuseppe. You can't miss it. Besides (imploringly, 
 laying his hand on his sleeve), I am only a poor inn- 
 keeper; and you are a man of family. 
 
 Lieutenant, There's something in that. Here: 
 you needn't be in such a fright. Take my arm. (Giu- 
 seppe does so.) That's the way. (They go out, arm in 
 arm. It is now starry tiight. The lady throrvs the packet 
 on the table and seats herself at her ease on the couch 
 enjoying the sensation of freedom from petticoats.) 
 
 Lady. Well, General: I've beaten you. 
 
 Napoleon (walking about). You have been guilty of 
 indebcacy — of unwomanliness. Do you consider that 
 costume a proper one to wear? 
 
 Lady. It seems to me much the same as yours. 
 
 Napoleon. Psha ! I blush for you. 
 
 Lady (naively). Yes: soldiers blush so easily! (He 
 growls and turns away. She looks mischievously at him, 
 balancing the despatches in her hand.) Wouldn't you 
 like to read these before they're burnt. General? You 
 must be dying with curiosity. Take a peep. (She
 
 210 The Man of Destiny 
 
 throws the packet on the table, and turns her face away 
 from it.) I won't look. 
 
 Napoleon. I have no curiosity whatever, madame. 
 But since you are evidently burning to read them, I 
 give you leave to do so. 
 
 Lady. Oh, I've read them already. 
 
 Napoleon (starting). What! 
 
 Lady. I read them the first thing after I rode away 
 on that poor lieutenant's horse. So you see I know 
 what's in them; and you don't. 
 
 Napoleon. Excuse me: I read them when I was out 
 there in the vineyard ten minutes ago. 
 
 Lady. Oh! (Jumping up.) Oh, General: I've not 
 beaten you. I do admire you so. (He laughs and pats 
 her cheek.) This time really and truly without sham- 
 ming, I do you homage (kissing his hand). 
 
 Napoleon (quickly withdrawing it). Brr! Don't do 
 that. No more witchcraft. 
 
 Lady. I want to say something to you — only you 
 would misunderstand it. 
 
 Napoleon. Need that stop you? 
 
 Lady. Well, it is this. I adore a man who is not 
 afraid to be mean and selfish. 
 
 Napoleon (indignantly). I am neither mean nor 
 selfish. 
 
 Lady. Oh, you don't appreciate yourself. Besides, 
 I don't really mean meanness and selfisluiess. 
 
 Napoleon. Thank you. I thought perhaps you 
 did. 
 
 Lady. Well, of course I do. But what I mean is a 
 certain strong simplicity about you. 
 
 Napoleon. That's better. 
 
 Lady. You didn't want to read the letters; but you 
 were curious about what was in them. So you went into 
 the garden and read them when no one was looking, and 
 then came back and pretended you hadn't. That's the 
 meanest thing I ever knew any man do; but it exactly
 
 The Man of Destiny 211 
 
 fulfilled your purpose; and so you weren't a bit afraid or 
 ashamed to do it. 
 
 Napoleon (abruptly). Where did you pick up all 
 these vulgar scruples — this (with contemptuous empha- 
 sis) conscience of yours? I took you for a lady— an 
 aristocrat. Was your grandfather a shopkeeper, pray? 
 
 Lady. No: he was an Englishman. 
 
 Napoleon. That accounts for it. The English are a 
 nation of shopkeepers. Now I understand why you've 
 beaten me. 
 
 Lady. Oh, I haven't beaten you. And I'm not Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 Napoleon. Yes, you are — English to the backbone. 
 Listen to me: I will explain the English to you. 
 
 Lady (eagerly). Do. (JVith a lively air of antici- 
 pating an intellectual treat, she sits down on the couch 
 and composes herself to listen to him. Secure of his 
 audience, he at once nerves himself for a performance. 
 He considers a little before he begins; so as to fix her 
 attention by a moment of suspense. His style is at first 
 modelled on Talma's in Corneille's " Cinna; " but it is 
 somewhat lost in the darkness, and Talma presently 
 gives way to Napoleon, the voice coming through the 
 gloom with startling intensity.) 
 
 Napoleon. There are three sorts of people in the 
 world, the low people, the middle people, and the high 
 people. The low people and the high people are alike 
 in one thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The 
 low are beneath morality, the high above it. I am not 
 afraid of either of them: for the low are unscrupulous 
 without knowledge, so that they make an idol of me; 
 whilst the high are unscrupulous without purpose, so 
 that they go down before my will. Look you: I shall 
 go over all the mobs and all the courts of Europe as a 
 plough goes over a field. It is the middle people who 
 are dangerous : they have both knowledge and purpose. 
 But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of
 
 212 The Man of Destiny 
 
 scruples — chained hand and foot by their morality and 
 respectability. 
 
 Lady. Then you will beat the English; for all shop- 
 keepers are middle people. 
 
 Napoleon. No, because the English are a race apart. 
 No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no English- 
 man is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But 
 every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous 
 power that makes him master of the world. When he 
 wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. 
 He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no 
 one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral 
 and religious duty to conquer those who have got the 
 thing he wants. Then he becomes irresistible. Like the 
 aristocrat, he does what pleases him and grabs what he 
 wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose with 
 the industry and steadfastness that come from strong 
 religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibil- 
 ity. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. 
 As the great champion of freedom and national inde- 
 pendence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and 
 calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for 
 his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary 
 to teach the nativ^es the gospel of peace. The natives 
 kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Chris- 
 tianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the 
 market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his 
 island shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails 
 a flag with a cross on it to his top-gallant mast ; and sails 
 to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroy- 
 ing all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. He 
 boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches 
 British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six 
 years of age to work under the lash in his factories for 
 sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions, and then 
 declares war on our one in the name of law and order. 
 There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find
 
 The Man of Destiny 213 
 
 Englishmen doing it ; but you will never find an English- 
 man in the wrong. He does everything on principle. 
 He fights you on patriotic principles ; he robs you on 
 business principles ; he enslaves you on imperial prin- 
 ciples ; he bullies you on manly principles ; he supports 
 his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head 
 on republican principles. His watchword is always 
 duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets 
 its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is 
 lost. He 
 
 Lady. W-w-w-w-w-wh ! Do stop a moment. I want 
 to know how you make me out to be English at this rate. 
 
 Napoleon {dropping his rhetorical style). It's plain 
 enough. You wanted some letters that belonged to me. 
 You have spent the morning in stealing them — yes, steal- 
 ing them, by highway robbery. And you have spent the 
 afternoon in putting me in the wrong about them — in 
 assuming that it was / who wanted to steal your letters 
 — in explaining that it all came about through my mean- 
 ness and selfishness, and your goodness, your devotion, 
 your self-sacrifice. That's English. 
 
 Lady. Nonsense. I am sure I am not a bit English. 
 The English are a very stupid people. 
 
 Napoleon. Yes, too stupid sometimes to know when 
 they're beaten. But I grant that your brains are not 
 English. You see, though your grandfather was an 
 Englishman, your grandmother was — what? A French- 
 woman ? 
 
 Lady. Oh, no. An Irishwoman. 
 
 Napoleon (quickly). Irish! (Thoughtfully.) Yes: 
 I forgot the Irish. An English army led by an Irish 
 general : that might be a match for a French army led 
 by an Italian general. (He pauses, and adds, half 
 jestingly, half moodily) At all events, you have beaten 
 me; and what beats a man first will beat him last. (He 
 goes meditatively into the moonlit vineyard and looks 
 up. She steals out after him. She ventures to rest her
 
 214 The INIan of Destiny 
 
 hand on his shoulder, overcome by the beauty of the 
 night and emboldened by its obscurity.^ 
 
 Lady (softly). What are you looking at? 
 
 Napoleon {pointing up). My star. 
 
 Lady. You believe in that.^ 
 
 Napoleon. I do. {They look at it for a moment, 
 she leaning a little on his shoulder.) 
 
 Lady. Do you linow that the English say that a man's 
 star is not complete without a woman's garter? 
 
 Napoleon (scandalized — abruptly shaking her off 
 and coming back into the room). Pah! The hypocrites! 
 If the French said that^ how they would hold up their 
 hands in pious horror ! (He goes to the inner door and 
 holds it open, shouting^ Hallo ! Giuseppe. Where's 
 that light, man. (He comes between the table and the 
 sideboard, and moves the chair to the table, beside his 
 own.) We have still to burn the letter. (He takes up 
 the packet. Giuseppe comes back, pale and still trem- 
 bling, carrying a branched candlestick with a couple of 
 candles alight, in one hand, and a broad snuffers tray 
 in the other.) 
 
 Giuseppe (piteously, as he places the light on the 
 table). Excellency: what were you looking up at just 
 now — out there? (He points across his shoulder to the 
 vineyard, but is afraid to look round.) 
 
 Napoleon (unfolding the packet). What is that to 
 you? 
 
 Giuseppe (stammering). Because the witch is gone — 
 vanished ; and no one saw her go out. 
 
 Lady (coming behind him from the vineyard). We 
 were watching her riding up to the moon on your broom- 
 stick, Giuseppe. You will never see her again. 
 
 Giuseppe. Gesu Maria ! (He crosses himself and 
 hurries out.) 
 
 Napoleon (throwing down the letters in a heap on 
 the table). Now. (He sits down at the table in the 
 chair which he has just placed.^
 
 The Man of Destiny 215 
 
 Lady. Yes ; but you know you have th e letter in your 
 pocket. {^He smiles; takes a letter from his pocket; and 
 tosses it on the top of the heap. She holds it up and 
 looks at him, saying) About Caesar's wife. 
 
 Napoleon. Csesar's wife is above suspicion. Burn it. 
 
 Lady {taking up the snuffers and holding the letter 
 to the candle flame with it). I wonder would Cassar's 
 wife be above suspicion if she saw us here together ! 
 
 Napoleon {echoing her, with his elbows on the table 
 and his cheeks on his hands, looking at the letter). I 
 wonder ! 
 
 {The Strange Lady puts the letter down alight on the 
 snuffers tray, and sits down beside Napoleon, in the 
 same attitude, elbows on table, cheeks on hands, watch- 
 ing it burn. When it is burnt, they simultaneously turn 
 their eyes and look at one another. The curtcin steals 
 down and hides them.) 
 
 curtain.
 
 YOU NEVER CAN TELL
 
 YOU NEVER CAN TELL 
 
 ACT I 
 
 In a dentist's operating room on a -fine August morn- 
 ing in 1896. Not the usual tiny London den, but the 
 best sitting room of a furnished lodging in a terrace on 
 the sea front at a fashionable watering place. The oper- 
 ating chair, with a gas pump and cylinder beside it, 
 is half way between the centre of the room and one of 
 the corners. If you look into the room through the 
 window which lights it, you will see the fireplace in the 
 middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it 
 to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on 
 the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather 
 on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, 
 and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near 
 this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided 
 with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recog- 
 nising this as a dental drill, you shtidder and look away 
 to your left, where you can see another window, under- 
 neath which stands a writing table, with a blotter and a 
 diary on it, and a chair. Next the writing table, towards 
 the door, is a leather covered sofa. The opposite wall, 
 close on your right, is occupied mostly by a bookcase. 
 The operating chair is under your nose, facing you, with 
 the cabinet of instruments handy to it on your left. You 
 observe that the professional ftirniture and apparatus are 
 new, and that the wall paper, designed, with the taste 
 of an undertaker, in festoons and urns, the carpet with 
 
 219
 
 220 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 its symmetrical plans of rich, cahhagy nosegays, the glass 
 gasalier with lustres; the ornamental gilt rimmed blue 
 candlesticks on the ends of the mantelshelf, also glass- 
 draped with lustres, and the ormolu clock under a glass 
 cover in the middle between them, its uselessness empha- 
 sized by a cheap American clock disrespectfully placed 
 beside it and now indicating 12 o'clock noon, all com- 
 bine with the black marble which gives the fireplace the 
 air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Vic- 
 torian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible 
 fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of pov- 
 erty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of 
 art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first 
 fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the 
 industrial revolution. 
 
 There is no shadow of this on the two persons who 
 are occupying the room just now. One of them, a very 
 pretty woman in miniature, her tiny figure dressed with 
 the daintiest gaiety, is of a later generation, being 
 hardly eighteen yet. This darling little creature clearly 
 does not belong to the room, or even to the country; for 
 her complexion, though very delicate, has been burnt 
 biscuit color by some warmer sun than England's ; and 
 yet there is, for a very subtle observer, a link between 
 them. For she has a glass of water in her hand, and a 
 rapidly clearing cloud of Spartan obstinacy on her tiny 
 firm set mouth and quaintly squared eyebrows. If the 
 least line of conscience could be traced between those 
 eyebrows, an Evangelical might cherish some faint hope 
 of finding her a sheep in wolf's clothing — for her frock 
 is recklessly pretty — but as the cloud vanishes it leaves 
 her frontal sinus as smoothly free from conviction of 
 sin as a .kitten's. 
 
 The dentist, contemplating her with the self-satisfac- 
 tion of a successful operator, is a young man of thirty 
 or thereabouts. He does not give the impression of 
 being much of a workman: his professional manner evi-
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 221 
 
 dently strihes him as being a joke, and is underlain by 
 a thoughtless pleasantry which betrays the young gen- 
 tleman still unsettled and in search of amusing adven- 
 tures, behind the nervly set-up dentist in search of 
 patients. He is not rvithout gravity of demeanor; but 
 the strained nostrils stamp it as the gravity of the 
 humorist. His eyes are clear, alert, of sceptically mod- 
 erate size, and yet a little rash; his forehead is an excel- 
 lent one, with plenty of room behind it; his nose and chin 
 cavalierly handsome. On the whole, an attractive, no- 
 ticeable beginner, of whose prospects a man of business 
 might form a tolerably favorable estimate. 
 
 The Young Lady {handing him the glass). Thank 
 you. {In spite of the biscuit complexion she has not the 
 slightest foreign accent.) 
 
 The Dentist {putting it down on the ledge of his 
 cabinet of instruments). That was my first tooth. 
 
 The Young Lady {aghast). Your first! Do you 
 mean to say that you began practising on me? 
 
 The Dentist. Every dentist has to begin on some- 
 body. 
 
 The Young Lady. Yes: somebody in a hospital, not 
 people who pay. 
 
 The Dentist {laughing). Oh, the hospital doesn't 
 count. I only meant my first tooth in private practice. 
 Why didn't you let me give you gas ? 
 
 The Young Lady. Because you said it would be five 
 shillings extra. 
 
 The Dentist {shocked). Oh, don't say that. It 
 makes me feel as if I had hurt you for the sake of five 
 shillings. 
 
 The Young Lady {with cool insolence). Well, so 
 you have! {She gets up.) Why shouldn't you ? it's your 
 business to hurt people. {It amuses him to be treated 
 in this fashion: he chuckles secretly as he proceeds to 
 clean and replace his instruments. She shakes her dress
 
 222 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 into order; looks inquisitively about her; and goes to the 
 window.^ You have a good view of the sea from these 
 rooms ! Are they expensive ? 
 
 The Dentist. Yes. 
 
 The Young Lady. You don't own the whole house, 
 do you? 
 
 The Dentist. No. 
 
 The Young Lady (talcing the chair which stands at 
 the writing-table and looking critically at it as she spins 
 it round on one leg.) Your furniture isn't quite the latest 
 thing, is it? 
 
 The Dentist. It's my landlord's. 
 
 The Young Lady. Does he own that nice comfort- 
 able Bath chair? (pointing to the operating chair.) 
 
 The Dentist. No: I have that on the hire-purchase 
 system. 
 
 The Young Lady (disparagingly). I thought so. 
 (Looking about her again in search of further conclu- 
 sions.) I suppose you haven't been here long? 
 
 The Dentist. Six weeks. Is there anything else 
 you would like to know? 
 
 The Young Lady (the hint quite lost on her). Any 
 family ? 
 
 The Dentist. I am not married. 
 
 The Young Lady. Of course not: anybody can see 
 that. I meant sisters and mother and that sort of thing. 
 
 The Dentist. Not on the premises. 
 
 The Young Lady. Hm ! If you've been here six 
 weeks, and mine was your first tooth, the practice can't 
 be very large, can it? 
 
 The Dentist. Not as yet. (He shuts the cabinet, 
 having tidied up everything.) 
 
 The Young Lady. Well, good luck ! (She takes out 
 her purse.) Five shillings, you said it would be? 
 
 The Dentist. Five shillings. 
 
 The Young Lady (producing a crown piece). Do 
 you charge five shillings for everything?
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 223 
 
 The Dentist. Yes. 
 
 The Young Lady. Why? 
 
 The Dentist. It's my system. ±'m what's called a 
 five shilling dentist. 
 
 The Young Lady. How nice! Well, here! (hold- 
 ing up the crown piece) a nice new five shilling piece ! 
 your first fee ! Make a hole in it with the thing you 
 drill people's teeth with; and wear it on your watch- 
 chain. 
 
 The Dentist. Thank you. 
 
 The Parlor Maid (appearing at the door). The 
 young lady's brother, sir. 
 
 A handsome man in m,iniature, obviously the young 
 lady's twin, comes in eagerly. He wears a suit of terra- 
 cotta cashmere, the elegantly cut frock coat lined in 
 brown silk, and carries in his hand a brown tall hat and 
 tan gloves to match. He has his sister's delicate biscuit 
 complexion, and is built on the same small scale; but 
 he is elastic and strong in muscle, decisive in movement, 
 unexpectedly deeptoned and trenchant in speech, and 
 with perfect manners and a finished personal style which 
 might be envied by a man twice his age. Suavity and 
 self-possession are points of honor with him; and though 
 this, rightly considered, is only the modern mode of 
 boyish self-consciousness, its effect is none the less stag- 
 gering to his elders, and would be insufferable in a less 
 prepossessing youth. He is promptitude itself, and has 
 a question ready the moment he enters. 
 
 The Young Gentleman. Am I in time.^ 
 
 The Young Lady. No: it's all over. 
 
 The Young Gentleman. Did you howl? 
 
 The Young Lady. Oh, something awful. Mr. Val- 
 ■entine: this is my brother Phil. Phil: this is Mr. 
 Valentine, our new dentist. (Valentine and Phil bow to 
 one another. She proceeds, all in one breath.) He's only 
 been here six weeks ; and he's a bachelor. The house isn't 
 his; and the f'::rniture is the landlord's; but the profes-
 
 224 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 sional plant is hired. He got my tooth out beautifully 
 at the first go; and he and I are great friends. 
 
 Philip. Been asking a lot of questions ? 
 
 The Young Lady (as if incapable of doing such a 
 thing). Oh, no. 
 
 Philip. Glad to hear it. (To Valentine.') So good 
 of you not to mind us, Mr. Valentine. The fact is, we've 
 ncAer been in England before; and our mother tells us 
 that the people here simply won't stand us. Come and 
 lunch with us. (Valentine, bewildered by the leaps and 
 bounds with which their acquaintanceship is proceeding, 
 gasps; but he has no opportunity of speaking, as the 
 conversation of the twins is swift and continuous.) 
 
 The Young Lady. Oh, do, Mr. Valentine. 
 
 Philip. At the Marine Hotel — half past one. 
 
 The Young Lady. We shall be able to tell mamma 
 that a respectable Englishman has promised to lunch 
 with us. 
 
 Philip. Say no more, Mr. Valentine: you'll come. 
 
 Valentine. Say no more ! I haven't said anything. 
 May I ask whom I have the pleasure of entertaining? 
 It's really quite impossible for me to lunch at the Marine 
 Hotel with two perfect strangers. 
 
 The Young Lady (flippantly). Ooooh! what bosh! 
 One patient in six weeks ! What difference does it make 
 to you? 
 
 Philip (maturely). No, Dolly: my knowledge of 
 human nature confirms Mr. Valentine's judgment. He 
 is right. Let me introduce ]\Iiss Dorothy Clandon, com- 
 monly called Dolly. (Valentine bows to Dolly. She 
 nods to him.) I'm Philip Clandon. We're from Ma- 
 deira, but perfectly respectable, so far. 
 
 Valentine. Clandon ! Are you related to 
 
 Dolly (unexpectedly crying out in despair). Yes, 
 we are. 
 
 Valentine (astonished). I beg your pardon? 
 
 Dolly. Oh, we are, we are. It's all over, Phil: they
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 225 
 
 know all about us in England. {To Valentine.) Oh, 
 you can't think how maddening it is to be related to a 
 celebrated person, and never be valued anywhere for 
 our own sakes. 
 
 Valentine. But excuse me: the gentleman I was 
 thinking of is not celebrated. 
 
 Dolly {staring at him). Gentleman! {Phil is also 
 puzzled.) 
 
 Valentine. Yes. I was going to ask whether you 
 were by any chance a daughter of JVIr. Densmore Clan- 
 don of Newbury Hall. 
 
 Dolly {vacantly). No. 
 
 Philip. Well come, Dolly: how do you know you're 
 not? 
 
 Dolly {cheered). Oh, I forgot. Of course. Per- 
 haps I am. 
 
 Valentine. Don't you know? 
 
 Philip. Not in the least. 
 
 Dolly. It's a wise child 
 
 Philip {cutting her short). Sh ! {Valentine starts 
 nervously ; for the sound made hy Philip, though but mo- 
 mentary, is like cutting a sheet of silk in two with a 
 flash of lightning. It is the residt of long practice in 
 checking Dolly's indiscretions.) The fact is, Mr. Val- 
 entine, we are the children of the celebrated Mrs. 
 Lanfrey Clandon, an authoress of great repute — in Ma- 
 deira. No household is complete without her works. We 
 came to England to get away from them. They are 
 called the Twentieth Century Treatises. 
 
 Dolly. Twentieth Century Cooking. 
 
 Philip. Twentieth Century Creeds. 
 
 Dolly. Twentieth Century Clothing. 
 
 Philip. Twentieth Century Conduct. 
 
 Dolly. Twentieth Century Children. 
 
 Philip. Twentieth Century Parents. 
 
 Dolly. Cloth limp, half a dollar. 
 
 Philip. Or mounted on linen for hard family use.>
 
 226 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 two dollars. No family should be without them. Read 
 them, Mr. Valentine: they'll improve your mind. 
 
 Dolly. But not till we've gone, please. 
 
 Philip. Quite so: we prefer people with unimproved 
 minds. Our own minds are in that fresh and unspoiled 
 condition. 
 
 Valentine (dtibiously). Hm! 
 
 Dolly (echoing him inquiringly^. Hm? Phil: he 
 prefers people whose minds are improved. 
 
 Philip. In that case we shall have to introduce him 
 to the other member of the family: the Woman of the 
 Twentieth Century; our sister Gloria! 
 
 Dolly (dithyrambically) . Nature's masterpiece! 
 
 Philip. Learning's daughter ! 
 
 Dolly. Madeira's pride ! 
 
 Philip. Beauty's paragon ! 
 
 Dolly (suddenly descending to prose"). Bosh! No 
 complexion. 
 
 Valentine (desperately). May I have a word? 
 
 Philip (politely). Excuse us. Go ahead. 
 
 Dolly (very nicely). So sorry. 
 
 Valentine (attempting to take them paternally). I 
 really must give a hint to you young people 
 
 Dolly (breaJdng out again). Oh, come: I like that. 
 How old are you? 
 
 Philip. Over thirty. 
 
 Dolly. He's not. 
 
 Philip (confidently). He is. 
 
 Dolly (emphatically). Twenty-seven. 
 
 Philip (im perturb ably). Thirty-three. 
 
 Dolly. StuiF ! 
 
 Philip (to Valentine). I appeal to you, Mr. Valen- 
 tine. 
 
 Valentine (remonstrating). Well, really — (resign- 
 ing himself.) Thirty-one. 
 
 Philip (to Dolly). You were wrong. 
 
 Dolly. So were you.
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 227 
 
 Philip {suddenly conscientious). We're forgetting 
 our manners^ Dolly. 
 
 Dolly {remorseful). Yes, so we are. 
 
 Philip {apologetic). We interrupted you, Mr. Val- 
 entine. 
 
 Dolly. You were going to improve our minds, I 
 think. 
 
 Valentine. The fact is, your 
 
 Philip {anticipating him). Our appearance? 
 
 Dolly. Our manners? 
 
 Valentine {ad misericordiam). Oh, do let me speak. 
 
 Dolly. The old story. We talk too much. 
 
 Philip. We do. Shut up, both. {He seats himself 
 on the arm of the operating chair.) 
 
 Dolly. Mum! {She sits down in the writing-table 
 chair, and closes her lips tight with the tips of her fin- 
 gers.) 
 
 Valentine. Thank you. {He brings the stool from 
 the bench in the corner; places it between them; and sits 
 down with a judicial air. They attend to him with ex- 
 treme gravity. He addresses himself first to Dolly.) 
 Now may I ask, to begin with, have you ever been in an 
 English seaside resort before? {She shakes her head 
 slowly and solemnly. He turns to Phil, who shakes his 
 head quickly and expressively.) I thought so. Well, 
 Mr. Clandon, our acquaintance has been short; but it has 
 been voluble; and I have gathered enough to convince me 
 that you are neither of you capable of conceiving what 
 life in an English seaside resort is. Believe me, it's 
 not a question of manners and appearance. In those 
 respects we enjoy a freedom unknown in Madeira. 
 {Dolly shakes her head vehemently.) Oh, yes, I assure 
 you. Lord de Cresci's sister bicycles in knickerbockers; 
 and the rector's wife advocates dress reform and wears 
 hygienic boots. {Dolly furtively looks at her own shoe: 
 Valentine catches her in the act, and deftly adds.) No, 
 that's not the sort of boot I mean. {Dolly's shoe van'
 
 228 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 ishes.) We don't bother much about dress and manners 
 in England, because, as a nation we don't dress well and 
 we've no manners. But — and now will you excuse my 
 frankness? (They nod.) Thank you. Well, in a sea- 
 side resort there's one thing you must have before any- 
 body can afford to be seen going about with you; and 
 that's a father, alive or dead. {He looks at them alter- 
 nately, with emphasis. They meet his gaze like mar- 
 tyrs.) Am I to infer that you have omitted that indispen- 
 sable part of your social equipment? (They confirm him 
 by melanclioly nods.) Then I'm sorry to say that if you 
 are going to stay here for any length of time, it will be 
 impossible for me to accept your kind invitation to lunch. 
 (He rises with an air of finality, and replaces the stool 
 by the bench.) 
 
 Philip (rising with grave politeness). Come, Dolly. 
 (He gives her his arm.) 
 
 Dolly. Good morning. (They go together to the 
 door with perfect dignity.) 
 
 Valentine (overwhelmed with remorse). Oh, stop, 
 stop. (They halt and turn, arm in arm.) You make me 
 feel a perfect beast. 
 
 Dolly. That's your conscience: not us. 
 
 Valentine (energetically, throwing off all pretence 
 of a professional manner). My conscience! My con- 
 science has been my ruin. Listen to me. Twice before 
 I have set up as a respectable medical practitioner in 
 various parts of England. On both occasions I acted 
 conscientiously, and told my patients the brute truth in- 
 stead of what they wanted to be told. Result, ruin. 
 Now I've set up as a dentist, a five shilling dentist; and 
 I've done with conscience forever. This is my last 
 chance. I spent my last sovereign on moving in ; and I 
 haven't paid a shilling of rent yet. I'm eating and 
 drinking on credit; my landlord is as rich as a Jew and 
 as hard as nails; and I've made five shillings in six 
 weeks. If I swerve by a hair's breadth from the straight
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 229 
 
 line of the most rigid respectability, I'm done for. Un- 
 der such circumstance, is it fair to ask me to lunch 
 with you when you don't know your own father? 
 
 Dolly. After all, our grandfather is a canon of Lin- 
 coln Cathedral. 
 
 Valentine (like a castaway mariner who sees a sail 
 on the horizon) . What! Have you a grandfather ? 
 
 Dolly. Only one. 
 
 Valentine. My dear, good young friends, why on 
 earth didn't you tell me that before? A canon of Lin- 
 coln ! That makes it all right, of course. Just excuse 
 me while I change my coat. (He reaches the door in a 
 bound and vanishes. Dolly and Phil stare after him, and 
 then stare at one another. Missing their audience, they 
 droop and become commonplace at once.) 
 
 Philip (throwing away Dolly's arm and coming ill- 
 humoredly towards the operating chair). That wretched 
 bankrupt ivory snatcher makes a compliment of allow- 
 ing us to stand him a lunch — probably the first square 
 meal he has had for months. (He gives the chair a 
 kick, as if it were Valentine.) 
 
 Dolly. It's too beastly. I won't stand it any longer, 
 Phil. Here in England everybody asks whether you have 
 a father the very first thing. 
 
 Philip. I won't stand it either. Mamma must tell 
 us who he was. 
 
 Dolly. Or who he is. He may be alive. 
 
 Philip. I hope not. No man alive shall father me. 
 
 Dolly. He might have a lot of money, though. 
 
 Philip. I doubt it. My knowledge of human nature 
 leads me to believe that if he had a lot of money he 
 wouldn't have got rid of his affectionate family so easily. 
 Anyhow, let's look at the bright side of things. De- 
 pend on it, he's dead. (He goes to the hearth and stands 
 with his back to the fireplace, spreading himself. The 
 parlor maid appears. The twins, under observation, in- 
 stantly shine out again with their former brilliancy.)
 
 230 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 The Parlor Maid. Two ladies for you, miss. Your 
 mother and sister, miss, I think. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon and Gloria come in. Mrs. Clandon is 
 between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, 
 sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none 
 the worse preserved because she has evidently followed 
 the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension 
 in that direction after her marriage, and might almost 
 be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries her- 
 self artificially well, as women were taught to do as a 
 part of good manners by dancing masters and reclining 
 boards before these mere superseded by the modern ar- 
 tistic cult of beauty and health. Her hair, a flaxen hazel 
 fading into white, is crimped, and parted in the middle 
 with the ends plaited and made into a knot, from which 
 observant people of a certain age infer that Mrs. Clan- 
 don had sufficient individuality and good taste to stand 
 out resolutely against the now forgotten chignon in her 
 girlhood. In short, she is distinctly old fashioned for 
 her age in dress and manners. But she belongs to the 
 forefront of her own period (say 1860-80) in a jealously 
 assertive attitude of character and intellect, and in being 
 a woman of cultivated interests rather than passionately 
 developed personal affections. Her voice and ways are 
 entirely kindly and humane; and she lends herself con- 
 scientiously to the occasional demonstrations of fondness 
 by which her children mark their esteem for her; but 
 displays of personal sentiment secretly embarrass her: 
 passion in her is humanitarian rather than human: she 
 feels strongly about social questions and principles, not 
 about persons. Only, one observes that this reasonable- 
 ness and intense personal privacy, which leaves her re- 
 lations with Gloria and Phil much as they might be be- 
 tween her and the children of any other woman, breaks 
 down in the case of Dolly. Though almost every word 
 she addresses to her is necessarily in the nature of a 
 remonstrance for some breach of decorum, the tender-
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 231 
 
 ness in her voice is unmistakable; and it is not surpris- 
 ing that years of such remonstrance have left Dolly hope- 
 lessly spoiled. 
 
 Gloria, who is hardly past trventy, is a much more 
 formidable person than her mother. She is the incarna- 
 tion of haughty highmindedness, raging with the impa- 
 tience of an impetuous, dominative character paralyzed 
 by the impotence of her youth, and unwillingly disci- 
 plined by the constant danger of ridicule from her light- 
 er-handed juniors. Unlike her mother, she is all passion; 
 and the conflict of her passion with her obstinate pride 
 and intense fastidiousness results in a freezing coldness 
 of manner. In an ugly woman all this woidd be repul- 
 sive; but Gloria is an attractive woman. Her deep chest- 
 nut hair, olive brown skin, long eyelashes, shaded grey 
 eyes that often flash like stars, delicately turned full lips, 
 and compact and supple, but muscularly plump figure 
 appeal with disdainful frankness to the senses and imag- 
 ination. A very dangerous girl, one woidd say, if the 
 moral passions were not also marked, and even nobly 
 marked, in a fine brow. Her tailor-made skirt-and- jacket 
 dress of saffron brown cloth, seems conventional when 
 her back is turned; but it displays in front a blouse of 
 sea-green silk which upsets its conventionality with one 
 stroke, and sets her apart as effectually as the twins from 
 the ordinary run of fashionable seaside humanity. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon comes a little way into the room, looking 
 round to see who is present. Gloria, who studiously 
 avoids encouraging the twins by betraying any interest in 
 them, wanders to the window and looks out with her 
 thoughts far away. The parlor maid, instead of with- 
 drawing, shuts the door and waits at it. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Well^ children.^ How is the tooth- 
 ache, Dolly.'' 
 
 Dolly. Cured, thank Heaven. I've had it out. {She 
 sits down on the step of the operating chair. Mrs. Clan- 
 don takes the writing-table chair.)
 
 232 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 Philip (striking in gravely from the hearth). And 
 the dentist, a first-rate professional man of the highest 
 standing, is coming to lunch with us. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {looking round apprehensively at the 
 servant). Phil! 
 
 The Parlor Maid. Beg pardon, ma'am. I'm wait- 
 ing for Mr. Valentine. I have a message for him. 
 
 Dolly. Who from? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (shocked). Dolly! (Dolly catches 
 her lips with her finger tips, suppressing a little splutter 
 of mirth.) 
 
 The Parlor Maid. Only the landlord, ma'am. 
 
 Valentine, in a blue serge suit, with a straw hat in his 
 hand, comes back in high spirits, out of breath with the 
 haste he has made. Gloria turns from the window and 
 studies him with freezing attention. 
 
 Philip. Let me introduce you, Mr. Valentine. My 
 mother, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon. (Mrs. Clandon hows. 
 Valentine bows, self-possessed and quite equal to the 
 occasion.) My sister Gloria. (Gloria bows with cold, 
 dignity and sits down on the sofa. Valentine falls in 
 love at first sight and is miserably confused. He fingers 
 his hat nervously, and makes her a sneaking bow.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I understand that we are to have the 
 pleasure of seeing you at luncheon to-day, Mr. Valen- 
 tine. 
 
 Valentine. Thank you — er — if you don't mind — I 
 mean if you will be so kind — (to the parlor maid test- 
 ily) What is it.? 
 
 The Parlor Maid. The landlord, sir, wishes to 
 speak to you before you go out. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, tell him I have four patients here. 
 (The Clandons look surprised, except Phil, who is i?nper- 
 turbahle.) If he wouldn't mind waiting just two min- 
 utes, I — I'll slip down and see him for a moment. 
 (Throwing himself confidentially on her sense of the 
 position.) Say I'm busy, but that I want to see him.
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 233 
 
 The Parlor Maid (reassuringly'). Yes, sir. (She 
 goes.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (on the point of rising). We are de- 
 taining you, I am afraid. 
 
 Valentine. Not at all, not at all. Your presence 
 here will be the greatest help to me. The fact is, I owe 
 six weeks' rent; and I've had no patients until to-day. 
 My interview with my landlord will be considerably 
 smoothed by the apparent boom in my business. 
 
 Dolly (vexed). Oh, how tiresome of you to let it all 
 out! And we've just been pretending that you were a 
 respectable professional man in a first-rate position. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (horrified). Oh, Dolly, Dolly! My 
 dearest, how can you be so rude? (To Valentine.) Will 
 you excuse these barbarian children of mine, Mr. Valen- 
 tine? 
 
 Valentine. Thank you, I'm used to them. Would 
 it be too much to ask you to wait five minutes while I get 
 rid of my landlord downstairs ? 
 
 Dolly. Don't be long. We're hungry. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (again remonstrating). Dolly, dear! 
 
 Valentine (to Dolly). All right. (To Mrs. Clan- 
 don.) Thank you: I shan't be long. (He steals a look 
 at Gloria as he turns to go. She is looking gravely at 
 him. He falls into confusion.) I — er — er — yes — thank 
 you (he succeeds at last in blundering himself out of the 
 room; but the exhibition is a pitiful one). 
 
 Philip. Did you observe? (Pointing to Gloria.) 
 Love at first sight. You can add his scalp to your col- 
 lection, Gloria. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Sh — sh, pray, Phil. He may have 
 heard you. 
 
 Philip. Not he. (Bracing himself for a scene.) And 
 now look here, mamma. (He takes the stool from the 
 bench; and seats himself majestically in the middle of 
 the room, taking a leaf out of Valentine's book. Dolly, 
 feeling that her position on the step of the operating
 
 234 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 chair is iivworthi/ of the dignity of the occasion, rises, 
 looking important and determined; crosses to the win- 
 dow; and stands with her back to the end of the writing- 
 table, her hands behind her and on the table. Mrs, 
 Clandon looks at them, wondering what is coming. 
 Gloria becomes attentive. Philip straightens his back; 
 places his knuckles symmetrically on his knees; and opens 
 his case.) Dolly and I have been talking over things a 
 good deal lately; and I don't think, judging from my 
 knowledge of human nature — we don't think that you 
 speaking very staccato, with the words detached) 
 quite appreciate the fact 
 
 Dolly (seating herself on the end of the table with a 
 spring). That we've grown up. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Indeed? In what way have I given 
 you any reason to complain? 
 
 Philip. Well, there are certain matters upon which 
 we are beginning to feel that you might take us a little 
 more into your confidence. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {rising, with all the placidity of her 
 age suddenly broken up; and a curious hard excitement, 
 dignified but dogged, ladylike but implacable — the man- 
 ner of the Old Guard of the Women's Rights movement 
 — coming upon her). Phil: take care. Remember what 
 I have always taught you. There are two sorts of family 
 life, Phil; and your experience of human nature only 
 extends, so far, to one of them. {Rhetorically.) The 
 sort you know is based on mutual respect, on recognition 
 of the right of every member of the household to inde- 
 pendence and privacy {her emphasis on " privacy " is 
 intense) in their personal concerns. And because you 
 have always enjoyed that, it seems such a matter of 
 course to you that you don't value it. But {with biting 
 acrimony) there is another sort of family life: a life in 
 which husbands open their wives' letters, and call on them 
 to account for every farthing of their expenditure and 
 every moment of their time; in which women do the same
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 235 
 
 to their children ; in which no room is private and no hour 
 sacred; in which duty, obedience, afTection, home, 
 morality and religion are detestable tyrannies, and life 
 is a vulgar round of punishments and lies, coercion and 
 rebellion, jealousy, suspicion, recrimination — Oh! I can- 
 not describe it to you: fortunately for you, you know 
 nothing about it. (She sits down, panting. Gloria has 
 listened to her with flashing eyes, sharing all her indig- 
 nation.) 
 
 Dolly (inaccessible to rhetoric). See Twentieth Cen- 
 tury Parents, chapter on Liberty, passim. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {touching her shoulder affectionately, 
 soothed even by a gibe from her). My dear Dolly: if 
 you only knew how glad I am that it is nothing but a 
 joke to you, though it is such bitter earnest to me. (More 
 resolutely, turning to Philip.) Phil, I never ask you 
 questions about your private concerns. You are not going 
 to question me, are you? 
 
 Philip. I think it due to ourselves to say that the 
 question we wanted to ask is as much our business as 
 yours. 
 
 Dolly. Besides, it can't be good to keep a lot of 
 questions bottled up inside you. You did it, mamma ; but 
 see how awfully it's broken out again in me. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I see you want to ask your question. 
 Ask it. 
 
 Dolly and Philip (beginning simultaneously). Who 
 — (They stop.) 
 
 Philip. Now look here, Dolly: am I going to con- 
 duct this business or are you.'' 
 
 Dolly. You. 
 
 Philip. Then hold your mouth. (Dolly does so lit- 
 erally.) The question is a simple one. When the ivory 
 snatcher 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (remonstrating). Phil! 
 
 Philip. Dentist is an ugly word. The man of ivory 
 and gold asked us whether we were the children of Mr.
 
 236 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 Densmore Clandon of Newbury Hall. In pursuance of 
 the precepts in your treatise on Twentieth Century Con- 
 duct, and your repeated personal exhortations to us to 
 curtail the number of unnecessary lies we tell, we replied 
 truthfully that we didn't know. 
 
 Dolly. Neither did we. 
 
 Philip. Sh ! The result was that the gum architect 
 made considerable difficulties about accepting our invi- 
 tation to lunch, although I doubt if he has had anything 
 but tea and bread and butter for a fortnight past. Now 
 my knowledge of human nature leads me to believe that 
 we had a father, and that you probably know who he 
 was. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (her agitation returning) . Stop, Phil. 
 Your father is nothing to you, nor to me (vehemently) . 
 That is enough. (The twins are silenced, but not satis- 
 fied. Their faces fall. But Gloria, who has been fol- 
 lowing the altercation attentively, suddenly intervenes.) 
 
 Gloria (advancing). Mother: we have a right to 
 know. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (rising and facing her). Gloria! 
 "We!" Who is "we?" 
 
 Gloria (steadfastly). We three. (Her tone is un- 
 mistakable: she is pitting her strength against her moth- 
 er's for the first time. The twins instantly go over to 
 the enemy.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (wounded). In your mouth "we" 
 used to mean you and I, Gloria. 
 
 Philip (rising decisively and putting away the stool). 
 W^e're hurting you: let's drop it. We didn't think you'd 
 mind. I don't want to know. 
 
 Dolly (coming off the table). I'm sure I don't. Oh, 
 don't look like that, mamma. (She looks angrily at 
 Gloria. ) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (touching her eyes hastily with her 
 handkerchief and sitting down again). Thank you, my 
 dear. Thanks, Phil.
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 237 
 
 Gloria (inexorably). We have a right to know, 
 mother, 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {indignantly). Ah! You insist. 
 
 Gloria. Do you intend that we shall never know? 
 
 Dolly. Oh, Gloria, don't. It's barbarous. 
 
 Gloria {with quiet scorn). What is the use of being 
 weak? You see what has happened with this gentleman 
 here, mother. The same thing has happened to me. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon") . „ f What do you mean? 
 
 Dolly [■ . ^j •. < Oh, tell us. 
 
 Philip ) ^^ ler). ^ -yyjj^i- happened to you? 
 
 Gloria. Oh, nothing of any consequence. {She 
 turns away from them and goes up to the easy chair 
 at the fireplace, where she sits down, almost with her 
 back to them. As they wait expectantly, she adds, over 
 her shoulder, with studied indifference.) On board the 
 steamer the first officer did me the honor to propose to 
 me. 
 
 Dolly. No, it was to me. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. The first officer! Are you serious, 
 Gloria? What did you say to him? {correcting herself) 
 Excuse me: I have no right to ask that. 
 
 Gloria. The answer is pretty obvious. A woman 
 who does not know who her father was cannot accept 
 such an offer. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Surely you did not want to accept it? 
 
 Gloria {turning a little and raising her voice). No; 
 but suppose I had wanted to! 
 
 Philip. Did that difficulty strike you, Dolly? 
 
 Dolly. No, I accepted him. 
 
 Gloria ^ / 77 • ( Accepted him I 
 
 Mrs. Clandon f (f /^ymg ) , 
 
 Philip j ^"^ iogetJier).^ ^^^^ j ^^^ , 
 
 Dolly {naively). He did look such a fool! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. But why did you do such a thing, 
 Dolly? 
 
 Dolly. For fun, I suppose. He had to measure my
 
 238 i^ou Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 finger for a ring. You'd have done the same thing your- 
 self. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. No, Dolly, I would not. As a mat- 
 ter of fact the first officer did propose to me; and I told 
 him to keep that sort of thing for women who were 
 young enough to be amused by it. He appears to have 
 acted on my advice. (She rises and goes to the hearth.) 
 Gloria: I am sorry you think me weak; but I cannot tell 
 you what you want. You are all too young. 
 
 Philip. This is rather a startling departure from 
 Twentieth Century principles. 
 
 Dolly {quoting). " Answer all your children's ques- 
 tions, and answer them truthfully, as soon as they are old 
 enough to ask them." See Twentieth Century Mother- 
 hood 
 
 Philip. Page one- 
 
 DoLLY. Chapter one 
 
 Philip. Sentence one. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. My dears: I did not say that you 
 were too young to know. I said you were too young to 
 be taken into my confidence. You are very bright chil- 
 dren, all of you; but I am glad for your sakes that you 
 are still very inexperienced and consequently very un- 
 sympathetic. There are some experiences of mine that 
 I cannot bear to speak of except to those who have gone 
 through what I have gone through. I hope you will 
 never be qualified for such confidences. But I will take 
 care that you shall learn all you want to know. Will 
 that satisfy you.'' 
 
 Philip. Another grievance, Dolly. 
 
 Dolly. We're not sympathetic. 
 
 Gloria (leaning forward in her chair and looking 
 earnestly up at her mother). Mother: I did not mean 
 to be unsympathetic. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (affectionately). Of course not, dear. 
 T}o you think I don't understand? 
 
 Gloria (rising). But, mother
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 239 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (drawing back a little). Yes? 
 
 Gloria {obstinately). It is nonsense to tell us that 
 our father is nothing to us. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (provoked to sudden resolution). Do 
 you remember your father.'' 
 
 Gloria (meditatively, as if the recollection were a 
 tender one). I am not quite sure. I think so. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (grimly). You are not sure? 
 
 Gloria. No. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (with quiet force). Gloria: if I had 
 ever struck you — (Gloria recoils: Philip and Dolly are 
 disagreeably shocked; all three stare at her, revolted as 
 she continues) — struck you purposely, deliberately, with 
 the intention of hurting you, with a whip bought for the 
 purpose! Would you remember that, do you think.'' 
 (Gloria utters an exclamation of indignant repulsion.) 
 That would have been your last recollection of your 
 father, Gloria, if I had not taken you away from him. 
 I have kept him out of your life: keep him now out of 
 mine by never mentioning him to me again. (Gloria, 
 with a shudder, covers her face with her hands, until, 
 hearing someone at the door, she turns away and pre- 
 tends to occupy herself looking at the names of the 
 books in the bookcase. Mrs. Clandon sits down on the 
 sofa. Valentine returns). 
 
 Valentine. I hope I've not kept you waiting. That 
 landlord of mine is really an extraordinary old character. 
 
 Dolly (eagerly). Oh, tell us. How long has he 
 given you to pay.'' 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (distracted by her child's bad man- 
 ners). Dolly, Dolly, Dolly dear! You must not ask 
 questions. 
 
 Dolly (demurely). So sorry. You'll tell us, won't 
 you, Mr. Valentine.'' 
 
 Valentine. He doesn't want his rent at all. He's 
 broken his tooth on a Brazil nut; and he wants me to 
 look at it and to lunch with him afterwards.
 
 240 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 Dolly. Then have him up and pull his tooth out at 
 once; and we'll bring him to lunch, too. Tell the maid 
 to fetch him along. (She runs to the bell and rings it 
 vigorously. Then, with a sudden doubt she turns to 
 Valentine and adds) I suppose he's respectable — really 
 respectable. 
 
 Valentine. Perfectly. Not like me. 
 
 Dolly. Honest Injun? (Mrs. Clandon gasps 
 faintly; but her powers of remonstrance are exhausted.) 
 
 Valentine. Honest Injun! 
 
 Dolly. Then off with you and bring him up. 
 
 Valentine {looking dubiously at Mrs. Clandon). I 
 daresay he'd be delighted if — er ? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (rising and looking at her watch). I 
 shall be happy to see your friend at lunch, if you can 
 persuade him to come; but I can't wait to see him now: 
 I have an appointment at the hotel at a quarter to one 
 with an old friend whom I have not seen since I left 
 England eighteen years ago. Will you excuse me? 
 
 Valentine. Certainly, Mrs. Clandon. 
 
 Gloria. Shall I come? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. No, dear. I want to be alone. (She 
 goes out, evidently still a good deal troubled. Valentine 
 opens the door for her and follows her out.) 
 
 Philip (significantly — to Dolly). Hmhm! 
 
 Dolly (significantly to Philip). Ahah! (The parlor 
 maid answers the bell.) 
 
 Dolly. Show the old gentleman up. 
 
 The Parlor Maid (puzzled). Madam? 
 
 Dolly. The old gentleman with the toothache. 
 
 Philip. The landlord. 
 
 The Parlor Maid. Mr. Crampton, sir? 
 
 Philip. Is his name Crampton? 
 
 Dolly (to Philip). Sounds rheumaticky, doesn't it? 
 
 Philip. Chalkstones, probably. 
 
 Dolly (over her shoulder, to the parlor maid). Show 
 Mr. Crampstones up. (Goes R. to writing-table chair).
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 241 
 
 The Parlor Maid {correcting her). Mr. Crampton, 
 miss. {She goes.) 
 
 Dolly {repeating it to herself like a lesson). 
 Crampton, Crampton, Crampton^ Crampton, Crampton. 
 {She sits dorvn studiously at the writing-table.) I must 
 get that name right, or Heaven knows what I shall call 
 him. 
 
 Gloria. Phil: can you believe such a horrible thing 
 as that about our father — what mother said just now.'' 
 
 Philip. Oh, there are lots of people of that kind. 
 Old Chamico used to thrash his wife and daughters 
 with a cartwhip. 
 
 Dolly {contemptuously). Yes, a Portuguese! 
 
 Philip. When you come to men who are brutes, 
 there is much in common between the Portuguese and 
 the English variety, Doll. Trust my knowledge of 
 human nature. {He resumes his position on the hearth- 
 rug with an elderly and responsible air.) 
 
 Gloria {with angered remorse). I don't think we 
 shall ever play again at our old game of guessing what 
 our father was to be like. Dolly: are you sorry for 
 your father — the father with lots of money? 
 
 Dolly. Oh, come! What about your father — the 
 lonely old man with the tender aching heart.'' He's 
 pretty well burst up, I think. 
 
 Philip. There can be no doubt that the governor is 
 an exploded superstition. {Valentine is heard talking 
 to somebody outside the door.) But hark: he comes. 
 
 Gloria (nervously). Who? 
 
 Dolly. Chalkstones. 
 
 Philip. Sh ! Attention. {They put on their best 
 manners. Philip adds in a lower voice to Gloria) If 
 he's good enough for the lunch, I'll nod to Dolly; and 
 if she nods to you, invite him straight away. 
 
 {Valentine comes back with his landlord. Mr. Fer- 
 gus Crampton is a man of about sixty, tall, hard and 
 stringy, with an atrociously obstinate, ill tempered,
 
 242 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 grasping mouth, and a querulously dogmatic voice. 
 Withal he is highly nervous and sensitive, judging by 
 his thin transparent skin marked with multitudinous 
 lines, and his slender fingers. His consequent capacity 
 for suffering acutely from all the dislike that his temper 
 and obstinacy can bring upon him is proved by his wist- 
 ful, wounded eyes, by a plaintive note in his voice, a 
 painful want of confidence in his welcome, and a con- 
 stant but indifferently successful effort to correct his 
 natural incivility of manner and proneness to take of- 
 fence. By his keen brows and forehead he is clearly a 
 shrewd man; and there is no sign of straitened means 
 or commercial diffidence about him: he is well dressed, 
 and would be classed at a guess as a prosperous master 
 manufacturer in a business inherited from an old family 
 in the aristocracy of trade. His navy blue coat is not 
 of the usual fashionable pattern. It is not exactly a 
 pilot's coat; but it is cut that way, double breasted, and 
 with stout buttons and broad lappels, a coat for a ship- 
 yard rather than a counting house. He has taken a 
 fancy to Valentine, who cares nothing for his cross- 
 ness of grain and treats him with a sort of disrespectful 
 humanity, for which he is secretly grateful.) 
 
 Valentine. May I introduce — this is Mr. Crampton 
 — Miss Dorothy Clandon, Mr. Philip Clandon, Miss 
 Clandon. (Crampton stands nervously bowing. They 
 all bow.) Sit down^ Mr. Crampton. 
 
 Dolly {pointing to the operating chair). That is 
 the most comfortable chair, Mr. Ch — crampton. 
 
 Crampton. Thank you; but won't this young lady 
 — (indicating Gloria, who is close to the chair) ? 
 
 Gloria. Thank you, Mr. Crampton: we are just 
 going. 
 
 Valentine (bustling him across to the chair with 
 good-humored peremptoriness). Sit down, sit down. 
 You're tired. 
 
 Crampton. Well, perhaps as I am considerably the
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 243 
 
 oldest person present, I — (i/e finishes the sentence by 
 sitting down a little rheumatically in the operating 
 chair. Meanwhile, Philip, having studied him critically 
 during his passage across the room, nods to Dolly; and 
 Dolly nods to Gloria.) 
 
 Gloria. Mr. Crampton: we understand that we are 
 preventing JNIr. Valentine from lunching with you by 
 taking him away ourselves. My mother would be very 
 glad, indeed, if you would come, too. 
 
 Crampton (gratefully, after looking at her ear- 
 nestly for a moment). Thank you. I will come with 
 pleasure. 
 
 Gloria^ , ,. , T Thank you very much — er 
 
 Dolly >- ^^ . ^ . -( So glad — er 
 
 T^ I murmuring). I t\ ^^ ^ . j t 
 
 Philip J °'^ (^Delighted, Im sure — er 
 
 {The conversation drops. Gloria and Dolly look at 
 one another; then at Valentine and Philip. Valentine 
 and Philip, unequal to the occasion, look away from them 
 at one another, and are instantly so disconcerted by 
 catching one another's eye, that they look bach again 
 and catch the eyes of Gloria and Dolly. Thus, catching 
 one another all round, they all look at nothing and are 
 quite at a loss. Crampton looks about him, waiting for 
 them to begin. The silence becomes unbearable.) 
 
 Dolly (suddenly, to keep things going). How old 
 are you, Mr. Crampton? 
 
 Gloria (^hastily). I am afraid we must be going, 
 Mr. Valentine. It is understood, then, that we meet at 
 half past one. (^She makes for the door. Philip goes 
 with her. Valentine retreats to the bell.) 
 
 Valentine. Half past one. (i7e rings the bell.) 
 Many thanks. (He follows Gloria and Philip to the 
 door, and goes out with them.) 
 
 Dolly (who has meanwhile stolen across to Cramp- 
 ton). Make him give you gas. It's five shillings extra: 
 but it's worth it. 
 
 Crampton (amused). Very well. (Looking more
 
 244 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 earnestly at her.) So you want to know my age, do you? 
 I'm fifty-seven. 
 
 Dolly {with conviction). You look it. 
 
 Crampton (grimly). I dare say I do. 
 
 Dolly. What are you looking at me so hard for? 
 Anything wrong? (She feels whether her hat is right.) 
 
 Crampton. You're like somebody. 
 
 Dolly. Who? 
 
 Crampton. W^ell, you have a curious look of my 
 mother. 
 
 Dolly (incredulously). Your mother!!! Quite 
 sure you don't mean your daughter? 
 
 Crampton (suddenly blackening with hate). Yes: 
 I'm quite sure I don't mean my daughter. 
 
 Dolly (sympathetically). Tooth bad? 
 
 Crampton. No, no : nothing. A twinge of memory. 
 Miss Clandon, not of toothache. 
 
 Dolly. Have it out. " Pluck from the memory a 
 rooted sorrow : " with gas, five shillings extra. 
 
 Crampton (vindicatively). No, not a sorrow. An 
 injury that was done me once: that's all. I don't for- 
 get injuries; and I don't want to forget them. (His 
 features settle into an implacable frown.) 
 
 (Re-enter Philip: to look for Dolly. He comes down 
 behind her unobserved.) 
 
 Dolly (looking critically at Crampton's expression). 
 I don't think we shall like you when you are brooding 
 over your sorrows. 
 
 Philip (who has entered the room unobserved, and 
 stolen behind her). My sister means well, Mr. Cramp- 
 ton: but she is indiscreet. Now DoUy, outside! (He 
 takes her towards the door.) 
 
 Dolly (in a perfectly audible undertone). He says 
 he's only fifty-seven; and he thinks me the image of his 
 mother; and he hates his daughter; and — (She is in- 
 terrupted by the return of Valentine.) 
 
 Valentine. Miss Clandon has gone on.
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 245 
 
 Philip. Don't forget half past one. 
 
 Dolly. Mind you leave Mr. Crampton enough teeth 
 to eat with. {They go out. Valentine comes down to 
 his cabinet, and opens it.) 
 
 Crampton. That's a spoiled child, Mr. Valentine. 
 That's one of your modern products. When I was her 
 age, I had many a good hiding fresh in my memory to 
 teach me manners. 
 
 Valentine {taking up his dental mirror and probe 
 from the shelf in front of his cabinet). What did you 
 think of her sister? 
 
 Crampton. You liked her better, eh} 
 
 Valentine (rhapsodically). She struck me as being 
 — {He checks himself, and adds, prosaically) How- 
 ever, that's not business. {He places himself behind 
 Grampian's right shoulder and assumes his professional 
 tone.) Open, please. {Crampton opens his mouth. 
 Valentine puts the mirror in, and examines his teeth.) 
 Hm! You have broken that one. What a pity to spoil 
 such a splendid set of teeth! Why do you crack nuts 
 with them.'' {He withdraws the mirror, and comes for- 
 ward to converse with Crampton.) 
 
 Crampton. I've always cracked nuts with them: 
 what else are they for.^ {Dogmatically.) The proper 
 way to keep teeth good is to give them plenty of use 
 on bones and nuts, and wash them every day with soap — • 
 plain yellow soap. 
 
 Valentine. Soap ! WTiy soap ? 
 
 Crampton. I began using it as a boy because I was 
 made to; and I've used it ever since. And I never had 
 toothache in my life. 
 
 Valentine. Don't you find it rather nasty.'' 
 
 Crampton. I found that most things that were good 
 for me were nasty. But I was taught to put up with 
 them, and made to put up with them. I'm used to it 
 now: in fact, I like the taste when the soap is really 
 good.
 
 246 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 Valentine (snaking a wry face in spite of himself). 
 You seem to have been very carefully educated, Mr. 
 Crampton. 
 
 Crampton (grimly). I wasn't spoiled, at all events. 
 
 Valentine {smiling a little to himself). Are you 
 quite sure? 
 
 Crampton. What d'y' mean? 
 
 Valentine. Well, your teeth are good, I admit. 
 But I've seen just as good in very self-indulgent mouths. 
 {He goes to the ledge of cabinet and changes the probe 
 for another one.) 
 
 Crampton. It's not the effect on the teeth: it's the 
 effect on the character. 
 
 Valentine {placably). Oh, the character, I see. 
 {He recommences operations.) A little wider, please. 
 Hm! That one will have to come out: it's past saving. 
 {He withdraws the probe and again comes to the side 
 of the chair to converse.) Don't be alarmed: you shan't 
 feel anything. I'll give you gas. 
 
 Crampton. Rubbish, man: I want none of your gas. 
 Out with it. People were taught to bear necessary pain 
 in my day. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, if you like being hurt, all right. 
 I'll hurt you as much as you like, without any extra 
 charge for the beneficial effect on your character. 
 
 Crampton {rising and glaring at him). Young man: 
 you owe me six weeks' rent. 
 
 Valentine. I do. 
 
 Crampton. Can you pay me? 
 
 Valentine. No. 
 
 Crampton {satisfied with his advantage). I thought 
 not. How soon d'y' think you'll be able to pay me if you 
 have no better manners than to make game of your pa- 
 tients? {He sits down again.) 
 
 Valentine. My good sir: my patients haven't all 
 formed their characters on kitchen soap. 
 
 Crampton {suddenly gripping him by the arm as he
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 247 
 
 turns away again to the cabinet). So much the worse 
 for them. I tell you you don't understand my charac- 
 ter. If I could spare all my teeth, I'd make you pull 
 them out one after another to shew you what a prop- 
 erly hardened man can go through with when he's made 
 up his mind to it. {He nods at him to enforce the effect 
 of this declaration, and releases him.) 
 
 Valentine (his careless pleasantry quite unruffled). 
 And you want to be more hardened, do you? 
 
 Crampton. Yes. 
 
 Valentine (strolling away to the bell). Well, 
 you're quite hard enough for me already — as a land- 
 lord. (Crampton receives this with a growl of grim 
 humor. Valentine rings the bell, and remarks in a 
 cheerful, casual way, whilst waiting for it to be an- 
 swered.) Why did you never get married, Mr. Cramp- 
 ton .'' A wife and children would have taken some of 
 the hardness out of you. 
 
 Crampton (with unexpected ferocity). What the 
 devil is that to you.'' (The parlor maid appears at the 
 door.) 
 
 Valentine (politely). Some warm water, please. 
 (She retires: and Valentine comes back to the cabinet, 
 not at all put out by Crampton's rudeness, and carries 
 on the conversation whilst he selects a forceps and places 
 it ready to his hand with a gag and a drinking glass.) 
 You were asking me what the devil that was to me. 
 Well, I have an idea of getting married myself. 
 
 Crampton (with grumbling irony). Naturally, sir, 
 naturally. When a young man has come to his last 
 farthing, and is within twenty-four hours of having his 
 furniture distrained upon by his landlord, he marries. 
 I've noticed that before. Well, marry; and be mis- 
 erable. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, come, what do you know about it? 
 
 Crampton. I'm not a bachelor. 
 
 Valentine. Then there is a Mrs. Crampton?
 
 248 You Never Can Tell Act I 
 
 Crampton (wincing with a pang of resentment). 
 Yes — damn her ! 
 
 Valentine {unperturbed). Hm! A father, too, 
 perhaps, as well as a husband, Mr. Crampton? 
 
 Crampton. Three children. 
 
 Valentine {politely). Damn them? — eh? 
 
 Crampton {jealously). No, sir: the children are as 
 much mine as hers. {The parlor maid brings in a jug 
 of hot water.) 
 
 Valentine. Thank you. {He takes the jug from 
 her, and brings it to the cabinet, continuing in the same 
 idle strain) I really should like to know your family, 
 Mr. Crampton, {The parlor maid goes out: and he 
 pours some hot water into the drinking glass.) 
 
 Crampton. Sorry I can't introduce you, sir. I'm 
 happy to say that I don't know where they are, and 
 don't care, so long as they keep out of my way. ( Valen- 
 tine, with a hitch of his eyebrows and shoulders, drops 
 the forceps with a clink into the glass of hot water.) 
 You needn't warm that thing to use on me. I'm not 
 afraid of the cold steel. {Valentine stoops to arrange 
 the gas pump and cylinder beside the chair.) What's 
 that heavy thing? 
 
 Valentine. Oh, never mind. Something to put my 
 foot on, to get the necessary purchase for a good pull. 
 {Crampton looks alarmed in spite of himself. Valen- 
 tine stands upright and places the glass with forceps 
 in it ready to his hand, chatting on with provoking 
 indifference.) And so you advise me not to get 
 married, Mr. Crampton? {He stoops to fit the handle 
 on the apparatus by which the chair is raised and 
 lowered.) 
 
 Crampton {irritably). I advise you to get my tooth 
 out and have done reminding me of my wife. Come 
 along, man. {He grips the arms of the chair and 
 braces himself.) 
 
 Valentine {pausing, with his hand on the lever, to
 
 Act I You Never Can Tell 249 
 
 look up at him and say). What do you bet that I don't 
 get that tooth out without your feeling it? 
 
 Crampton. Your six weeks' rent, young man. 
 Don't you gammon me. 
 
 Valentine {jumping at the bet and winding him 
 aloft vigorously). Done! Are you ready? (Cramp- 
 ton, who has lost his grip of the chair in his alarm at 
 its sudden ascent, folds his arms: sits stiffly upright: 
 and prepares for the worst. Valentine lets down the 
 back of the chair to an obtuse angle.) 
 
 Crampton (clutching at the arms of the chair as he 
 falls back). Take care man. I'm quite helpless in 
 this po 
 
 Valentine (deftly stopping him with the gag, and 
 snatching up the mouthpiece of the gas machine). You'll 
 be more helpless presently. (He presses the mouthpiece 
 over Crampton's mouth and nose, leaning over his chest 
 so as to hold his head and shoulders well down on the 
 chair. Crampton makes an inarticulate sound in the 
 mouthpiece and tries to lay hands on Valentine, whom he 
 supposes to be in front of him. After a moment his arms 
 wave aimlessly, then subside and drop. He is quite in- 
 sensible. Valentine, with an exclamation of somewhat 
 preoccupied triumph, throws aside the mouthpiece 
 quickly: picks the forceps adroitly from the glass: and 
 — the curtain falls.) 
 
 end of act I.
 
 ACT II 
 
 On the terrace at the Marine Hotel. It is a square 
 flagged platform, with a parapet of heavy oil jar pilas- 
 ters supporting a broad stone coping on the outer edge, 
 which stands up over the sea like a cliff. The head 
 waiter of the establishment, busy laying napkins on a 
 luncheon table with his back to the sea, has the hotel on 
 his right, and on his left, in the corner nearest the sea, 
 the flight of steps leading down to the beach. 
 
 When he looks down the terrace in front of him he 
 sees a little to his left a solitary guest, a middle-aged 
 gentleman sitting on a chair of iron laths at a little 
 iron table with a bowl of lump sugar and three wasps 
 on it, reading the Standard, with his umbrella up to de- 
 fend him from the sun, which, in August and at less 
 than an hour after noon, is toasting his protended in- 
 steps. Just opposite him, at the hotel side of the ter- 
 race, there is a garden seat of the ordinary esplanade 
 pattern. Access to the hotel for visitors is by an entrance 
 in the middle of its fagade, reached by a couple of 
 steps on a broad square of raised pavement. Nearer the 
 parapet there lurks a way to the kitchen, masked by a 
 little trellis porch. The table at which the waiter is 
 occupied is a long one, set across the terrace with 
 covers and chairs for five, two at each side and one at 
 the end next the hotel. Against the parapet another 
 table is prepared as a buffet to serve from. 
 
 The waiter is a remarkable person in his way. A silky 
 old man, white-haired and delicate looking, but so cheer- 
 ful and contented that in his encouraging presence 
 ambition stands rebuked as vulgarity, and imagination 
 
 250
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 251 
 
 as treason to the abounding sufficiency and interest of 
 the actual. He has a certain expression peculiar to men 
 who have been eoctraordinarily successful in their call- 
 ings, and who, whilst aware of the vanity of success, 
 are untouched by envy. 
 
 The gentleman at the iron table is not dressed for 
 the seaside. He wears his London frock coat and 
 gloves; and his tall silk hat is on the table beside the 
 sugar bowl. The excellent condition and quality of these 
 garments, the gold-rimmed folding spectacles through 
 which he is reading the Standard, and the Times at his 
 elbow overlying the local paper, all testify to his re- 
 spectability. He is about fifty, clean shaven, and close- 
 cropped, with the corners of his mouth turned down 
 purposely, as if he suspected them of wanting to turn 
 up, and was determined not to let them have their way. 
 He has large expansive ears, cod colored eyes, and a 
 brow kept resolutely wide open, as if, again, he had 
 resolved in his youth to be truthful, magnanimous, and 
 incorruptible, but had never succeeded in making that 
 habit of mind automatic and unconscious. Still, he is 
 by no means to be laughed at. There is no sign of stu- 
 pidity or infirmity of will about him: on the contrary, 
 he would pass anywhere at sight as a man of more than 
 average professional capacity and responsibility. Just 
 at present he is enjoying the weather and the sea too 
 much to be out of patience; but he has exhausted all the 
 news in his papers and is at present reduced to the 
 advertisements, which are not sufficiently succulent to 
 induce him to persevere with them. 
 
 The Gentleman {yawning and giving up the paper 
 as a bad job). Waiter! 
 
 Waiter. Sir? (coming down C.) 
 
 The Gentleman. Are you quite sure Mrs. Clandon 
 is coming back before lunch? 
 
 Waiter. Quite sure, sir. She expects you at a quar-
 
 252 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 ter to one, sir. (^The gentleman, soothed at once by the 
 waiter's voice, looks at him with a lazy smile. It is 
 a quiet voice, with a gentle melody in it that gives sym- 
 pathetic interest to his most commonplace remark; and 
 he speaks with the sweetest propriety, neither dropping 
 his aitches nor misplacing them, nor committing any 
 other vulgarism. He looks at his watch as he continues) 
 Not that yet, sir, is it? 12:43, sir. Only two minutes 
 more to wait, sir. Nice morning, sir? 
 
 The Gentlkman. Yes: very fresh after London. 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir: so all our visitors say, sir. Very 
 nice family, Mrs. Clandon's, sir. 
 
 The Gentleman. You like them, do you? 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. They have a free way with them 
 that is very taking, sir, very taking indeed, sir: espe- 
 cially the young lady and gentleman. 
 
 The Gentleman. Miss Dorothea and Mr. Philip, I 
 suppose. 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. The young lady, in giving an or- 
 der, or the like of that, will say, " Remember, William, 
 we came to this hotel on your accoimt, having heard what 
 a perfect waiter you are." The young gentleman will tell 
 me that I remind him strongly of his father {the gentle- 
 man starts at this) and that he expects me to act by him 
 as such. {Soothing, sunny cadence.) Oh, very pleas- 
 ant, sir, very affable and pleasant indeed! 
 
 The Gentleman. You like his father! {He laughs 
 at the notion.) 
 
 Waiter. Oh, we must not take what they say too 
 seriously, sir. Of course, sir, if it were true, the young 
 lady would have seen the resemblance, too, sir. 
 
 The Gentleman. Did she? 
 
 Waiter. No, sir. She thought me like the bust 
 of Shakespear in Stratford Church, sir. That is why 
 she calls me William, sir. My real name is Walter, 
 sir. {He turns to go back to the table, and sees Mrs. 
 Clandon coming up to the terrace from the beach by the
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 253 
 
 steps.) Here is Mrs. Clandon^ sir. (To Mrs. Clandon, 
 in an unobtrusively confidential tone) Gentleman for 
 you, ma'am. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. We shall have two more gentlemen 
 at lunch, William. 
 
 Waiter. Right, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. {He 
 withdraws into the hotel. Mrs. Clandon comes forward 
 looking round for her visitor, but passes over the gentle- 
 man without any sign of recognition.) 
 
 The Gentleman (peering at her quaintly from un- 
 der the umbrella). Don't you know me? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (incredulously, looking hard at him). 
 Are you Finch McComas? 
 
 McComas. Can't you guess? (He shuts the um- 
 brella; puts it aside; and jocularly plants himself with 
 his hands on his hips to be inspected.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I believe you are. (She gives him 
 her hand. The shake that ensues is that of old friends 
 after a long separation.) Where's your beard? 
 
 McComas (with humorous solemnity). Would you 
 employ a solicitor with a beard? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (pointing to the silk hat on the table). 
 Is that your hat? 
 
 McComas. Would you employ a solicitor with a som- 
 brero ? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I have thought of you all these 
 eighteen years with the beard and the sombrero. (She 
 sits down on the garden seat. McComas takes his chair 
 again.) Do you go to the meetings of the Dialectical 
 Society still? 
 
 McComas (gravely). I do not frequent meetings 
 now. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Finch: I see what has happened. 
 You have become respectable. 
 
 McComas. Haven't you? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Not a bit. 
 
 McComas. You hold to your old opinions still?
 
 254 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. As firmly as ever. 
 
 McCoMAS. Bless me! And you are still ready to 
 make speeches in public, in spite of your sex (Mrs. 
 Clandon nods) ; to insist on a married woman's right to 
 her own separate property (she nods again) ; to cham- 
 pion Darwin's view of the origin of species and John 
 Stuart Mill's essay on Liberty (nod) ; to read Huxley, 
 Tyndall and George Eliot (three nods); and to de- 
 mand University degrees, the opening of the profes- 
 sions, and the parliamentary franchise for women as 
 well as men? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (resolutely). Yes: I have not gone 
 back one inch; and I have educated Gloria to take up 
 my work where I left it. That is what has brought me 
 back to England: I felt that I had no right to bury her 
 alive in Madeira — my St. Helena, Finch. I suppose she 
 will be howled at as I was ; but she is prepared for that. 
 
 McComas. Howled at! My dear good lady: there 
 is nothing in any of those views now-a-days to prevent 
 her from marrying a bishop. You reproached me just 
 now for having become respectable. You were wrong: 
 I hold to our old opinions as strongly as ever. I don't 
 go to church; and I don't pretend I do. I call myself 
 what I am: a Philosophic Radical, standing for liberty 
 and the rights of the individual, as I learnt to do from 
 my master Herbert Spencer. Am I howled at? No: 
 I'm indulged as an old fogey. I'm out of everything, 
 because I've refused to bow the knee to Socialism. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (shocked). Socialism. 
 
 McComas. Yes: Socialism. That's what Miss Gloria 
 will be up to her ears in before the end of the month if 
 you let her loose here. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (emphatically). But I can prove to 
 her that Socialism is a fallacy. 
 
 McComas (touchingly). It is by proving that, Mrs. 
 Clandon, that I have lost all my young disciples. Be 
 careful what you do: let her go her own way. (With
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 255 
 
 some bitterness.) We're old-fashioned: the world thinks 
 it has left us behind. There is only one place in aU 
 England where your opinions would still pass as ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {scornfully unconvinced). The 
 Church, perhaps? 
 
 McCoMAs. No, the theatre. And now to business! 
 Why have you made me come down here? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Well, partly because I wanted to see 
 you 
 
 McCoMAS (with good-humored irony). Thanks. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. — and partly because I want you 
 to explain everything to the children. They know noth- 
 ing; and now that we have come back to England, it is 
 impossible to leave them in ignorance any longer. 
 (Agitated.) Finch: I cannot bring myself to tell them. 
 I — (She is interrupted by the trvins and Gloria. Dolly 
 comes tearing up the steps, racing Philip, who combines 
 a terrific speed with unhurried propriety of bearing 
 which, however, costs him the race, as Dolly reaches 
 her mother first and almost upsets the garden seat by 
 the precipitancy of her arrival.) 
 
 Dolly (breathless). It's all right, mamma. The 
 dentist is coming; and he's bringing his old man. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Dolly, dear: don't you see Mr. Mc- 
 Comas? (Mr. McComas rises, smilingly.) 
 
 Dolly (her face falling with the most disparagingly 
 obvious disappointment). This! WTiere are the flow- 
 ing locks? 
 
 Philip (seconding her warmly). Where the beard? 
 - — the cloak? — the poetic exterior? 
 
 Dolly. Oh, Mr. McComas, you've gone and spoiled 
 yourself. Why didn't you wait till we'd seen you? 
 
 McCoMAs (taken aback, but rallying his humor to 
 meet the emergency). Because eighteen years is too 
 long for a solicitor to go without having his hair cut. 
 
 Gloria (at the other side of McComas). How do
 
 256 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 you do, Mr. McComas? (//e turns; and she takes his 
 hand and presses it, with a frank straight look into his 
 eyes.) We are glad to meet you at last. 
 
 McCoMAS. Miss Gloria, I presume? (Gloria smiles 
 assent, and releases his hand after a final pressure. She 
 then retires behind the garden seat, leaning over the 
 back beside Mrs. Clandon.) And this young gentleman? 
 
 Philip. I was christened in a comparatively prosaic 
 mood. My name is 
 
 Dolly (completing his sentence for him declama- 
 torily). " Norval. On the Grampian hills " 
 
 Philip (declaiming gravely). " My father feeds his 
 flock, a frugal swain " 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (remonstrating). Dear, dear chil- 
 dren : don't be silly. Everything is so new to them here. 
 Finch, that they are in the wildest spirits. They think 
 every Englishman they meet is a joke. 
 
 Dolly. Well, so he is : it's not our fault. 
 
 Philip. My knowledge of human nature is fairly 
 extensive, Mr. McComas ; but I find it impossible to take 
 the inhabitants of this island seriously. 
 
 McCoMAS. I presume, sir, you are Master Philip 
 (offering his hand) ? 
 
 Philip (taking McComas' s hand and looking solemn- 
 ly at him). I was Master Philip — was so for many 
 years; just as you were once Master Finch. (He gives 
 his hand a single shake and drops it; then turns arvay, 
 exclaiming meditatively) How strange it is to look back 
 on our boyhood! (McComas stares after him, not at all 
 pleased.) 
 
 Dolly (to Mrs. Clandon). Has Finch had a drink? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (remonstrating). Dearest: Mr. Mc- 
 Comas will lunch with us. 
 
 Dolly. Have you ordered for seven? Don't forget 
 the old gentleman. 
 
 Mrs, Clandon. I have not forgotten him, dear. 
 What is his name?
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 257 
 
 Dolly. Chalkstones. He'll be here at half past one. 
 (To McComas.) Are we like what you expected? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (changing her tone to a more earnest 
 one). Dolly: Mr. McComas has something more serious 
 than that to tell you. Children: I have asked my old 
 friend to answer the question you asked this morning. 
 He is your father's friend as well as mine; and he will 
 tell you the story more fairly than I could. (Turning 
 her head from them to Gloria.) Gloria: are you sat- 
 isfied .'' 
 
 Gloria (gravely attentive). Mr. McComas is very 
 kind. 
 
 McComas (nervously). Not at all, my dear young 
 lady : not at all. At the same time, this is rather sudden. 
 I was hardly prepared — er 
 
 DoLLT (suspiciously). Oh, we don't want anything 
 prepared. 
 
 Philip (exhorting him). Tell us the truth. 
 
 Dolly (emphatically). Bald headed. 
 
 McComas (nettled). I hope you intend to take what 
 I have to say seriously. 
 
 Philip (rvith profound mock gravity). I hope it will 
 deserve it, Mr. McComas. My knowledge of human na- 
 ture teaches me not to expect too much. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (remonstrating). Phil 
 
 Philip. Yes, mother, all right. I beg your pardon, 
 Mr. McComas : don't mind us. 
 
 Dolly (in conciliation). We mean well. 
 
 Philip. Shut up, both. 
 
 (Dolly holds her lips. McComas takes a chair from 
 the luncheon table; places it between the little table and 
 the garden seat with Dolly on his right and Philip on 
 his left; and settles himself in it with the air of a man 
 about to begin a long communication. The Clandons 
 tvatch him expectantly.) 
 
 McComas. Ahem! Your father 
 
 Dolly (interrupting). How old is he?
 
 258 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Philip. Sli ! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {softly). Dear Dolly: don't let us 
 interrupt Mr. McComas. 
 
 McCoMAs (^emphatically). Thank you^ Mrs. Clan- 
 don. Thank you. {To Dolly.) Your father is fifty- 
 seven. 
 
 Dolly {with a bound, startled and excited). Fifty- 
 seven ! Where does he live ? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {remonstrating). Dolly, Dolly! 
 
 McCoMAs {stopping her). Let me answer that, Mrs. 
 Clandon. The answer will surprise you considerabl}^ 
 He lives in this town. {Mrs. Clandon rises. She and 
 Gloria look at one another in the greatest consterna- 
 tion.) 
 
 Dolly {rvith conviction). I knew it! Phil: Chalk- 
 stones is our father. 
 
 McCoMAS. Chalkstones ! 
 
 Dolly. Oh, Crampstones, or whatever it is. He said 
 I was like his mother. I knew he must mean his daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 Philip {very seriously). Mr. McComas: I desire 
 to consider your feelings in every possible way: but I 
 warn you that if you stretch the long arm of coincidence 
 to the length of telling me that Mr. Crampton of this 
 town is my father, I shall decline to entertain the in- 
 formation for a moment. 
 
 McCoMAS. And pray why? 
 
 Philip. Because I have seen the gentleman; and he 
 is entirely unfit to be my father, or Dolly's father, or 
 Gloria's father, or my mother's husband. 
 
 McCoMAs. Oh, indeed! Well, sir, let me tell you 
 that whether you like it or not, he is your father, and 
 your sisters' father, and Mrs. Clandon's husband. Now! 
 Wliat have you to say to that? 
 
 Dolly {whimpering). You needn't be so cross. 
 Crampton isn't your father. 
 
 Philip. Mr. McComas: your conduct is heartless.
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 259 
 
 Here you find a family enjoying the unspeakable peace 
 and freedom of being orphans. We have never seen the 
 face of a relative — never known a claim except the claim 
 of freely chosen friendship. And now you wish tcr 
 thrust into the most intimate relationship with us a man 
 whom we don't know 
 
 Dolly (vehemently). An awful old man! (re- 
 proachfully) And you began as if you had quite a nice 
 father for us. 
 
 McCoMAs (angrily). How do jou know that he is 
 not nice.^ And what right have you to choose your own 
 father? (raising his voice.) Let me tell you. Miss Clan- 
 don, that you are too young to 
 
 Dolly (interrupting him suddenly and eagerly). 
 Stop, I forgot! Has he any money .^ 
 
 McCoMAS. He has a great deal of money. 
 
 Dolly (delighted). Oh, what did I always say, 
 Phil? 
 
 Philip. Dolly: we have perhaps been condemning 
 the old man too hastily. Proceed, ]\Ir. McComas. 
 
 McCoMAS. I shall not proceed, sir. I am too hurt, 
 too shocked, to proceed. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (urgently). Finch: do you realize 
 what is happening? Do you understand that my chil- 
 dren have invited that man to lunch, and that he will be 
 here in a few moments? 
 
 McCoMAs (completely upset). AVhat! do you mean 
 — am I to understand — is it 
 
 Philip (impressively) . Steady, Finch. Think it out 
 slowly and carefully. He's coming — coming to lunch. 
 
 Gloria. Which of us is to tell him the truth? Have 
 you thought of that? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Finch: you must tell him. 
 
 Dolly. Oh, Finch is no good at telling things. 
 Look at the mess he has made of telling us. 
 
 McCoMAS. I have not been allowed to speak. I pro- 
 test against this.
 
 260 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Dolly (takijig his arm coaxingly). Dear Finch: 
 don't be cross. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Gloria: let us go in. He may ar- 
 rive at any moment. 
 
 Gloria (proudly) . Do not stir^ mother. I shall not 
 stir. We must not run away. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {delicately rebuking her). My dear: 
 we cannot sit down to lunch just as we are. We shall 
 come back again. We must have no bravado. {Gloria 
 winces, and goes into the hotel without a word.) Come, 
 Dolly. {As she goes into the hotel door, the waiter 
 comes out with plates, etc., for two additional covers on 
 a tray.) 
 
 Waiter. Gentlemen come yet, ma'am? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Two more to come yet, thank you. 
 They will be here, immediately. {She goes into the 
 hotel. The waiter takes his tray to the service table.) 
 
 Philip. I have an idea. Mr. McComas: this com- 
 munication should be made, should it not, by a man of 
 infinite tact.'' 
 
 Mc Comas. It will require tact, certainly. 
 
 Philip. Good ! Dolly : whose tact were you noticing 
 only this morning.'' 
 
 Dolly {seizing the idea with rapture). Oh, yes, I 
 declare ! William ! 
 
 Philip. The very man! {Calling) William! 
 
 Waiter. Coming, sir. 
 
 McComas {horrified). The waiter! Stop, stop! I 
 will not permit this. I 
 
 Waiter {presenting himself between Philip and Mc- 
 Comas). Yes, sir. {McComas's complexion fades into 
 stone grey; and all movement and expression desert his 
 eyes. He sits down stupefied.) 
 
 Philip. William: you remember my request to you 
 to regard me as your son? 
 
 Waiter {with respectful indulgence). Yes, sir. 
 Anything you please, sir.
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 261 
 
 Philip. William: at the very outset of your career 
 as my father, a rival has appeared on the scene. 
 
 Waiter. Your real father, sir? Well, that was to 
 be expected, sooner or later, sir, wasn't it? (Turning 
 with a happy smile to McComas.) Is it you, sir? 
 
 McCoMAs (renerved by indignation). Certainly not. 
 My children know how to behave themselves. 
 
 Philip. No, William: this gentleman was very 
 nearly my father: he wooed my mother, but wooed her 
 in vain. 
 
 McCoMAS (outraged). Well, of all the 
 
 Philip. Sh ! Consequently, he is only our solicitor. 
 Do you know one Crampton, of this town? 
 
 Waiter. Cock-eyed Crampton, sir, of the Crooked 
 Billet, is it? 
 
 Philip. I don't know. Finch: does he keep a public 
 house? 
 
 McComas (rising scandalised). No, no, no. Your 
 father, sir, is a well-known yacht builder, an eminent 
 man here. 
 
 Waiter (impressed) . Oh, beg pardon, sir, I'm sure. 
 A son of Mr. Crampton 's ! Dear me ! 
 
 Philip. Mr. Crampton is coming to lunch with us. 
 
 Waiter (puzzled). Yes, sir. (Diplomatically.) 
 Don't usually lunch with his family, perhaps, sir? 
 
 Philip (impressively). William: he does not know 
 that we are his family. He has not seen us for eighteen 
 years. He won't know us. (To emphasize the com- 
 munication he seats himself on the iron table with a 
 spring, and looks at the waiter with his lips compressed 
 and his legs swinging.) 
 
 Dolly. We want you to break the news to him, 
 William. 
 
 Waiter. But I should think he'd guess when he 
 sees your mother, miss. (Philip's legs become motion- 
 less at this elucidation. He contemplates the waiter 
 raptly.)
 
 2G2 You Never Can Tell Act n 
 
 Dolly (daszled). I never thought of that. 
 
 Philip. Nor I. {Coming off the table and turning 
 reproachfully on McComas.) Nor you. 
 
 Dolly. And you a solicitor ! 
 
 Philip. Finch: Your professional incompetence is 
 appalling. William: your sagacity puts us all to shame. 
 
 Dolly. You really are like Shakespear^ William. 
 
 Waiter. Not at all, sir. Don't mention it, miss. 
 Most happy, I'm sure, sir. (Goes back modestly to the 
 luncheon table and lays the two additional covers, one 
 at the end next the steps, and the other so as to make a 
 third on the side furthest from the balustrade.^ 
 
 Philip (abruptly). Finch: come and wash your 
 hands. (Seizes his arm and leads him toward the hotel.) 
 
 JNIcCoMAS. I am thoroughly vexed and hurt, Mr. 
 Clandon 
 
 Philip (interrupting him). You will get used to us. 
 Come, Dolly. (McComas shakes him off and marches 
 into the hotel. Philip follows tvith unruffled com- 
 posure.) 
 
 Dolly (turning for a moment on the steps as she 
 follows them). Keep your wits about you, William. 
 There will be fire-works. 
 
 Waiter. Riglit, miss. You may depend on me, miss. 
 (She goes into the hotel.) 
 
 (Valentine comes lightly up the steps from the beach, 
 followed doggedly by Crampton. Valentine carries a 
 walking stick. Crampton, either because he is old and 
 chilly, or with some idea of extenuating the unfashion- 
 ableness of his reefer jacket, wears a light overcoat. He 
 stops at the chair left by McComas in the middle of the 
 terrace, and steadies himself for a moment by placing 
 his hand on the back of it.) 
 
 Crampton. Those steps make me giddy. (He 
 passes his hand over his forehead.) I have not got over 
 that infernal gas yet. 
 
 (He goes to the iron chair, so that he can lean his
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 263 
 
 elbows on the little table to prop his head as he sits. 
 He soon recovers, and begins to unbutton his overcoat. 
 Meanwhile Valentine interviews the waiter.) 
 
 Valentine. Waiter! 
 
 Waiter (coming forward between them). Yes, sir. 
 
 Valentine. Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon. 
 
 Waiter (with a sweet smile of welcome) . Yes, sir. 
 We're expecting you, sir. That is your table, sir. Mrs. 
 Clandon will be down presently, sir. The young lady 
 and young gentleman were just talking about your 
 friend, sir. 
 
 Valentine. Indeed ! 
 
 Waiter (smoothly melodious). Yes, sir. Great 
 flow of spirits, sir. A vein of pleasantry, as you might 
 say, sir. (Quickly, to Crampton, who has risen to get 
 the overcoat off.) Beg pardon, sir, but if you'll allow 
 me (helping him to get the overcoat of and taking it 
 from him). Thank you, sir. (Crampton sits down 
 again; and the waiter resumes the broken melody.) The 
 young gentleman's latest is that you're his father, sir. 
 
 Crampton. What ! 
 
 Waiter. Only his joke, sir, his favourite joke. Yes- 
 terday, I was to be his father. To-day, as soon as he 
 knew you were coming, sir, he tried to put it up on me 
 that you were his father, his long lost father — not seen 
 you for eighteen years, he said. 
 
 Crampton (startled). Eighteen years! 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. (With gentle archness.) But I 
 was up to his tricks, sir. I saw the idea coming into his 
 head as he stood there, thinking what new joke he'd 
 have with me. Yes, sir: that's the sort he is: very pleas- 
 ant, ve — ry off hand and affable indeed, sir. (Again 
 changing his tempo to say to Valentine, who is putting 
 his stick down against the corner of the garden seat) 
 If you'll allow me, sir.? (Taking Valentine's stick.) 
 Thank you, sir. (Valentine strolls up to the luncheon 
 table and looks at the menu. The waiter turns to
 
 264 You Never Can Tell Act ii 
 
 Crampton and resumes his lay.) Even the solicitor took 
 up the joke, although he was in a manner of speaking 
 in my confidence about the yoimg gentleman, sir. Yes, 
 sir, I assure you, sir. You would never imagine what 
 respectable professional gentlemen from London will do 
 on an outing, when the sea air takes them, sir. 
 
 Crampton. Oh, there's a solicitor with them, is 
 there ? 
 
 Waiter. The family solicitor, sir — yes, sir. Name 
 of McComas, sir. (He goes towards hotel entrance with 
 coat and stick, happily unconscious of the homhlike ef- 
 fect the name has produced on Crampt07i.) 
 
 Crampton (rising in angry alarm). McComas! 
 (Calls to Valentine.) Valentine! (Again, fiercely.) 
 Valentine!! (Valentine turns.) This is a plant, a con- 
 spiracy. This is my family — my children — my infernal 
 wife. 
 
 Valentine (coolly). Oh, indeed! Interesting meet- 
 ing! (He resumes his study of the menu.) 
 
 Crampton. Meeting ! Not for me. Let me out of 
 this. (Calling across to the waiter.) Give me that 
 coat. 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. (He comes back, puts Valentine's 
 stick carefully down against the luncheon table; and 
 delicately shakes the coat out and holds it for Cramp- 
 ton to put on.) I seem to have done the young gentle- 
 man an injustice, sir, haven't I, sir. 
 
 Crampton. Rrrh ! (He stops on the point of put- 
 ting his arms into the sleeves, and turns on Valentine 
 with sudden suspicion.) Valentine: you are in this. 
 You made this plot. You 
 
 Valentine (decisively). Bosh! (He throws the 
 menu down and goes round the table to look out uncon- 
 cernedly over the parapet.) 
 
 Crampton (angrily). What d'ye — (McComas, fol- 
 lowed by Philip and Dolly, comes out. He vacillates 
 for a moment on seeing Crampton.)
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 265 
 
 Waiter {softly — interrupting Crampton). Steady, 
 sir. Here they come, sir. {He takes up the stick and 
 makes for the hotel, throwing the coat across his arm. 
 McComas turns the corners of his mouth resolutely down, 
 and crosses to Crampton, who draws back and glares, 
 rvith his hands behind him. McComas, with his brow 
 opener than ever, confronts him in the majesty of a 
 spotless conscie7ice.) 
 
 Waiter {aside, as he passes Philip on his rway out). 
 I've broke it to him, sir. 
 
 Philip. Invaluable William! {He passes on to the 
 table.) 
 
 Dolly {aside to the waiter). How did he take it? 
 
 Waiter {aside to her). Startled at first, miss; but 
 resigijed — very resigned, indeed, miss. {He takes the 
 stick and coat into the hotel.) 
 
 McCoMAs {having stared Crampton out of counte- 
 nance). So here you are, Mr. Crampton. 
 
 Crampton. Yes, here — caught in a trap — a mean 
 trap. Are those my children .'^ 
 
 Philip {with deadly politeness). Is this our father, 
 Mr. McComas.'' 
 
 McComas. Yes — er — {He loses countenance him- 
 self and stops.) 
 
 Dolly {conventionally). Pleased to meet you again. 
 {She wanders idly round the table, exchanging a smile 
 and a word of greeting with Valentine on the way.) 
 
 Philip. Allow me to discharge my first duty as host 
 by ordering your wine. {He takes the wine list from the 
 table. His polite attention, and Dolly's unconcerned 
 indifference, leave Crampton on the footing of the casual 
 acquaintance picked up that morning at the dentist's. 
 The consciousness of it goes through the father with 
 so keen a pang that he trembles all over; his brow be- 
 comes wet; and he stares dumbly at his son, who, just 
 conscious enough of his own callousness to intensely 
 enjoy the humor and adroitness of it, proceeds pleas-
 
 266 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 anily.) Finch: some crusted old port for you, as a 
 respectable family solicitor, eh? 
 
 McCoMAS (firmly). Apollinaris only. I prefer to 
 take nothing heating. (He walks away to the side of the 
 terrace, like a man putting temptation behind him.) 
 
 Philip. Valentine ? 
 
 Valentine. Would Lager be considered vulgar? 
 
 Philip. Probably. We'll order some. Dolly takes 
 it. (Turning to Crampton with cheerful politeness.) 
 And now, Mr. Crampton, what can we do for you? 
 
 Crampton. What d'ye mean, boy? 
 
 Philip. Boy! (Very solemnly.) Whose fault is it 
 that I am a boy? 
 
 (Crampton snatches the wine list rudely from him and 
 irresohitely pretends to read it. Philip abandons it to 
 him, with perfect politeness.) 
 
 Dolly (looking over Crampton's right shoulder). 
 The whisky's on the last page but one. 
 
 Crampton. Let me alone, child. 
 
 Dolly. Child! No, no: you may call me Dolly if 
 you like ; but j^ou mustn't call me child. (She slips her 
 arm through Philip's; and the two stand looking at 
 Crampton as if he were some eccentric stranger.) 
 
 Crampton (mopping his brow in rage and agony, and 
 yet relieved even by their playing with him). Mc- 
 Comas: we are — ha! — going to have a pleasant meal. 
 
 McComas (pusillanimously) . There is no reason 
 why it should not be pleasant. (He looks abjectly 
 gloomy.) 
 
 Philip. Finch's face is a feast in itself. (Mrs. 
 Clandon and Gloria come from the hotel. Mrs. Clandon 
 advances with courageous self-possession and marked 
 dignity of manner. She stops at the foot of the steps 
 to address Valentine, who is in her path. Gloria also 
 stops, looking at Crampton with a certain repulsion.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Glad to see you again, Mr. Valen- 
 tine. (He smiles. She passes on and confronts Cramp-
 
 Act n You Never Can Tell 267 
 
 ton, intending to address him with perfect composure ; 
 but his aspect shakes her. She stops suddenly and says 
 anxiously, rvith a touch of remorse.) Fergus: you are 
 greatly changed. 
 
 Crampton {grimly). I daresay. A man does change 
 in eighteen years. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {troubled). I — I did not mean that. 
 I hope your health is good. 
 
 Crampton. Thank j^ou. No: it's not my health. 
 It's my happiness : that's the change you meant, I think. 
 (^Breaking out suddenly.) Look at her, McComas ! 
 Look at her; and look at me! (He utters a half laugh, 
 half sob.) 
 
 Philip. Sh ! {Pointing to the hotel entrance, where 
 the waiter has just appeared.) Order before William! 
 
 Dolly {touching Crampton's arm warningly with her 
 finger). Ahem! {The waiter goes to the service table 
 and beckons to the kitchen entrance, whence issue a 
 young waiter with soup plates, and a cook, in white apron 
 and cap, with the soup tureen. The young waiter re- 
 mains and serves: the cook goes out, and reappears from 
 time to time bringing in the courses. He carves, but 
 does not serve. The waiter comes to the end of the 
 luncheon table next the steps.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {as they all assemble about the table). 
 I think you have all met one another already to-day. 
 Oh, no, excuse me. {Introducing) Mr. Valentine: Mr. 
 McComas. {She goes to the end of the table nearest 
 the hotel.) Fergus: will you take the head of the table, 
 please. 
 
 Crampton. Ha! {Bitterly.) The head of the 
 table ! 
 
 Waiter {holding the chair for him with inoffensive 
 encouragement). This end, sir. {Crampton submits, 
 and takes his seat.) Thank you, sir. 
 
 ]\Irs. Clandon. Mr. Valentine: will you take that 
 side {indicating the side next the parapet) with Gloria?
 
 268 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 (Valentine and Gloria take their places, Gloria next 
 Crampton and Valentine next Mrs. Clandon.) Finch: I 
 must put you on this side, between Dolly and Phil. You 
 must protect yourself as best you can. (The three take 
 the remaining side of the table, Dolly next her mother, 
 Phil next his father, and McComas hetrveen them. Soup 
 is served.) 
 
 Waiter (to Crampton). Thick or clear, sir? 
 
 Crampton (to Mrs. Clandon). Does nobody ask a 
 blessing in this household.'' 
 
 Philip (interposing smartly). Let us first settle 
 what we are about to receive. William! 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. (He glides swiftly round the 
 table to Phil's left elbow. On his way he whispers to 
 the young waiter) Thick. 
 
 Philip. Two small Lagers for the children as usual, 
 William; and one large for this gentleman (indicating 
 Valentine). Large Apollinaris for Mr. McComas. 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. 
 
 Dolly. Have a six of Irish in it. Finch.? 
 
 McComas (scandalised). No — no, thank you. 
 
 Philip. Number 413 for my mother and Miss Gloria 
 as before; and — (turning enquiringly to Crampton) 
 
 Crampton (scowling and about to reply offensively). 
 
 Waiter (striking in mellifluously) . All right, sir. 
 We know what Mr. Crampton likes here, sir. (He goes 
 into the hotel.) 
 
 Philip (looking gravely at his father). You fre- 
 quent bars. Bad habit! (The cook, accompanied by a 
 waiter with a supply of hot plates, brings in the fish 
 from the kitchen to the service table, and begins slicing 
 it.) 
 
 Crampton. You have learnt your lesson from your 
 mother, I see. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Phil: will you please remember that
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 269 
 
 your jokes are apt to irritate people who are not ac- 
 customed to us, and that your father is our guest to-day. 
 
 Crampton {bitterly). Yes, a guest at the head of 
 my own table, {The soup plates are removed.) 
 
 Dolly {sympathetically). Yes: it's embarrassing, 
 isn't it? It's just as bad for us, you know. 
 
 Philip. Sh ! Dolly: we are both wanting in tact. 
 {To Crampton.) We mean well, Mr. Crampton; but 
 we are not yet strong in the filial line. {The waiter re- 
 turns from the hotel with the drinks.) William: come 
 and restore good feeling. 
 
 Waiter {cheerfully). Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. 
 Small Lager for you, sir. {To Crampton.) Seltzer and 
 Irish, sir. {To McComas.) Apollinaris, sir. {To 
 Dolly.) Small Lager, miss. {To Mrs. Clandon, pour- 
 ing out wine.) 413, madam. {To Valentine.) Large 
 Lager for you, sir. {To Gloria.) 413, miss. 
 
 Dolly {drinking). To the family! 
 
 Philip {drinking). Hearth and Home! {Fish is 
 served.) 
 
 McCoMAs {with an obviously forced attempt at cheer- 
 ful domesticity). We are getting on very nicely after 
 aU. 
 
 Dolly {critically). After all! After all what, 
 Finch .'' 
 
 Crampton {sarcastically). He means that you are 
 getting on very nicely in spite of the presence of your 
 father. Do I take your point rightly, Mr. McComas? 
 
 McCoMAs {disconcerted). No, no. I only said " af- 
 ter all " to round off the sentence. I — er — er — er 
 
 Waiter {tactfully). Turbot, sir? 
 
 McCoMAS {intensely grateful for the interruption). 
 Thank you, waiter: thank you. 
 
 Waiter {sotto voce). Don't mention it, sir. {He 
 returns to the service table.) 
 
 Crampton {to Phil). Have you thought of choosing 
 a profession yet?
 
 270 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Philip. I am keeping my mind open on that subject. 
 William ! 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. 
 
 Philip. How long do you think it would take me to 
 learn to be a really smart waiter.^ 
 
 Waiter. Can't be learnt, sir. It's in the character, 
 sir. (Confidentially to Valentine, who is looking about 
 for something.) Bread for the lady, sir? yes, sir. (He 
 serves bread to Gloria, and resumes at his former pitch.) 
 Very few are born to it, sir. 
 
 Philip. You don't happen to have such a thing as a 
 son, yourself, have you.^* 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir: oh, yes, sir. (To Gloria, again 
 dropping his voice.) A little more fish, miss.'' you won't 
 care for the joint in the middle of the day. 
 
 Gloria. No, thank you. (The fish plates are re- 
 moved.) 
 
 Dolly. Is your son a waiter, too, William.'' 
 
 Waiter (serving Gloria with fowl). Oh, no, miss, 
 he's too impetuous. He's at the Bar. 
 
 McComas (patronizingly). A potman, eh? 
 
 Waiter (with a touch of melancholy, as if recalling 
 a disappointment softened by time). No, sir: the other 
 bar — your profession, sir. A Q.C., sir. 
 
 McCoMAS (embarrassed). I'm sure I beg your par- 
 don. 
 
 Waiter. Not at all, sir. Very natural mistake, I'm 
 sure, sir, I've often wished he was a potman, sir. 
 W^ould have been off my hands ever so much sooner, sir. 
 (Aside to Valentine, who is again in difficulties.) Salt 
 at your elbow, sir. (Resuming.) Yes, sir: had to sup- 
 port him until he was thirty-seven, sir. But doing well 
 now, sir: very satisfactory indeed, sir. Nothing less 
 than fifty guineas, sir. 
 
 McCoMAS. Democracy, Crampton ! — modern democ- 
 racy ! 
 
 Waiter (calmly). No, sir, not democracy: only edu-
 
 Act n You Never Can Tell 271 
 
 cation, sir. Scholarships, sir. Cambridge Local, sir. 
 Sidney Sussex College, sir. {Dolly plucks his sleeve 
 and whispers as he bends doivn.) Stone ginger, miss? 
 Right, miss. {To McComas.) Very good thing for him, 
 sir: he never had any turn for real work, sir. {He goes 
 into the hotel, leaving the company somewhat over- 
 whelmed by his son's eminence.) 
 
 Valentine. Which of us dare give that man an 
 order again ! 
 
 Dolly. I hope he won't mind my sending him for 
 ginger-beer. 
 
 Crampton {doggedly). While he's a waiter it's his 
 business to wait. If you had treated him as a waiter 
 ought to be treated, he'd have held his tongue. 
 
 Dolly. What a loss that would have been ! Per- 
 haps he'll give us an introduction to his son and get us 
 into London society. {The waiter reappears with the 
 ginger-beer.) 
 
 Crampton {growling contemptuously). London so- 
 ciety ! London society ! ! You're not fit for any society, 
 child. 
 
 Dolly {losing her temper). Now look here, Mr. 
 Crampton. If you think 
 
 Waiter {softly, at her elbow). Stone ginger, miss. 
 
 Dolly {taken aback, recovers her good humor after a 
 long breath and says srveetly). Thank you, dear Will- 
 iam. You were just in time. {She drinks.) 
 
 McComas {making a fresh effort to lead the conver- 
 sation into dispassionate regions). If I may be al- 
 lowed to change the subject, Miss Clandon, what is the 
 established religion in Madeira.^ 
 
 Gloria. I suppose the Portuguese religion. I never 
 enquired. 
 
 Dolly. The servants come in Lent and kneel down 
 before you and confess all the things they've done; and 
 you have to pretend to forgive them. Do they do that 
 in England, William.''
 
 272 You Never Can Tell Act n 
 
 Waiter. Not usually, miss. They may in some 
 parts: but 'it has not come under my notice, miss. 
 (Catching Mrs. Clandon's eye as the young waiter of- 
 fers her the salad borvl.) You like it without dressing, 
 ma'am: yes, ma'am, I have some for you. (To his 
 young colleague, motioning him to serve Gloria.) This 
 side, Jo. (He takes a special portion of salad from the 
 service table and puts it beside Mrs. Clandon's plate. 
 In doing so he observes that Dolly is making a wry 
 face.) Only a bit of watercress, miss, got in by mis- 
 take. (He takes her salad away.) Thank you, miss. 
 (To the young waiter, admonishing him to serve Dolly 
 afresh.) Jo. (Resuming.) Mostly members of the 
 Church of England, miss. 
 
 Dolly. Members of the Church of England! 
 What's the subscription? 
 
 Crampton (rising violently amid general consterna- 
 tion). You see how my children have been brought up, 
 McComas. You see it; you hear it. I call all of 
 you to witness — (He becomes inarticulate, and is about 
 to strike his fist recklessly on the table when the waiter 
 considerately takes away his plate.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (firmly). Sit down, Fergus. There is 
 no occasion at all for this outburst. You must remember 
 that Dolly is just like a foreigner here. Pray sit dovm. 
 
 Craaipton (subsiding unwillingly). I doubt whether 
 I ought to sit here and countenance all this. I doubt it. 
 
 Waiter. Cheese, sir; or would you like a cold sweet? 
 
 Crampton (taken aback). What? Oh! — cheese, 
 cheese. 
 
 Dolly. Bring a box of cigarets, William. 
 
 Waiter. All ready, miss. (He takes a box of cig- 
 arets from the service table and places them before 
 Dolly, who selects one and prepares to smoke. He then 
 returns to his table for a box of vestas.) 
 
 Crampton (staring aghast at Dolly). Does she 
 
 smoke ?
 
 Act n You Never Can Tell 273 
 
 Dolly (out of patience). Really, Mr. Crampton, 
 I'm afraid I'm spoiling your lunch. I'll go and have my 
 cigaret on the beach. {She leaves the table with petu- 
 lant suddenness and goes down the steps. The waiter 
 attempts to give her the matches; hut she is gone before 
 he can reach her.) 
 
 Crampton (furiously). Margaret: call that girl 
 back. Call her back, I say. 
 
 McCoMAS (trying to make peace). Come, Crampton: 
 never mind. She's her father's daughter: that's all. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (with deep resentment). I hope not. 
 Finch. (She rises: they all rise a little.) Mr. Valen- 
 tine: will you excuse me: I am afraid Dolly is hurt 
 and put out by what has passed. I must go to her. 
 
 Crampton. To take her part against me, you mean. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (ignoring him). Gloria: will you take 
 my place whilst I am away, dear. (She crosses to the 
 steps. Crampton's eyes follow her with bitter hatred. 
 The rest watch her in embarrassed silence, feeling the 
 incident to be a very painful one.) 
 
 Waiter (intercepting her at the top of the steps and 
 offering her a box of vestas). Young lady forgot the 
 matches, ma'am. If you will be so good, ma'am. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (surprised into grateful politeness by 
 the witchery of his sweet and cheerful tones). Thank 
 you very much. (She takes the matches and goes down 
 to the beach. The waiter shepherds his assistant along 
 with him into the hotel by the kitchen entrance, leav- 
 ing the luncheon party to themselves.) 
 
 Crampton (throwing himself back in his chair). 
 There's a mother for you, McComas ! There's a 
 mother for you ! 
 
 Gloria (steadfastly). Yes: a good mother. 
 
 Crampton. And a bad father.^ That's what you 
 mean, eh? 
 
 Valentine (rising indigiiantly and addressing 
 Gloria). Miss Clandon: I
 
 274 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Crampton (^turning on him). That girl's name is 
 Crampton, Mr. Valentine, not Clandon. Do you wish 
 to join them in insulting me? 
 
 Valentine (^ignoring Mm). I'm overwhelmed. Miss 
 Clandon. It's all my fault: I brought him here: I'm 
 responsible for him. And I'm ashamed of him. 
 
 Crampton. What d'y' mean ? 
 
 Gloria (rising coldly). No harm has been done, Mr. 
 Valentine. We have all been a little childish, I am 
 afraid. Our party has been a failure: let us break it up 
 and have done with it. (She puts her chair aside and 
 turns to the steps, adding, with slighting composure, as 
 she passes Crampton.) Good-bye, father. 
 
 (She descends the steps with cold, disgusted indiffer- 
 ence. They all look after her, and so do not notice 
 the return of the waiter from the hotel, laden with 
 Crampton's coat, Valentine's stick, a couple of shawls 
 and parasols, a white canvas umbrella, and some camp 
 stools.) 
 
 Crampton (to himself, staring after Gloria with a 
 ghastly expression). Father! Father!! (He strikes 
 his fist violently on the table.) Now 
 
 Waiter (offering the coat). This is yours, sir, I 
 think, sir. (Crampton glares at him; then snatches it 
 rudely and comes down the terrace towards the garden 
 seat, struggling with the coat in his angry efforts to put 
 it on. McComas rises and goes to his assistance; then 
 takes his hat and umbrella from the little iron table, and 
 turns towards the steps. Meanwhile the waiter, after 
 thanking Crampton with unruffled sweetness for taking 
 the coat, offers some of his burden to Phil.) The ladies' 
 sunshades, sir. Nasty glare off the sea to-day, sir: 
 very trying to the complexion, sir. I shall carry down 
 the camp stools myself, sir. 
 
 Philip. You are old. Father William; but you are 
 the most considerate of men. No: keep the sunshades 
 and give me the camp stools (taking them).
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 275 
 
 Waiter (with flattering gratitude). Thank you, sir. 
 
 Philip. Pinch: share with me (giving him a couple). 
 Come along. (They go down the steps together.) 
 
 Valentine (to the rvaiter). Leave me something to 
 bring down — one of these. (Offering to take a sun- 
 shade.) 
 
 Waiter (discreetly). That's the younger lady's, sir. 
 (Valentine lets it go.) Thank you, sir. If you'll allow 
 me, sir, I think you had better have this. (He puts 
 down the sunshades on Crampton's chair, and produces 
 from the tail pocket of his dress coat, a hook with a 
 lady's handkerchief between the leaves, marking the 
 page.) The eldest young lady is reading it at present. 
 (Valentine takes it eagerly.) Thank you, sir. Schopen- 
 hauer, sir, you see. (He takes up the sunshades again.) 
 Very interesting author, sir: especially on the subject 
 of ladies, sir. (He goes down the steps. Valentine, 
 about to follow him, recollects Crampton and changes 
 his mind.) 
 
 Valentine (coming rather excitedly to Crampton). 
 Now look here, Crampton: are you at all ashamed of 
 yourself ? : 
 
 Crampton (pugnaciously). Ashamed of myself! 
 What for? 
 
 Valentine. For behaving like a bear. What will 
 your daughter think of me for having brought you here."* 
 
 Crampton. I was not thinking of what my daughter 
 was thinking of you. 
 
 Valentine. No, you were thinking of yourself. 
 You're a perfect egomaniac. 
 
 Crampton (heartrent). She told you what I am — a 
 father — a father robbed of his children. What are the 
 hearts of this generation like? Am I to come here after 
 all these years — to see what my children are for the first 
 time ! to hear their voices ! — and carry it all off like a 
 fashionable visitor ; drop in to lunch ; be Mr. Crampton 
 — Mister Crampton! What right have they to talk to
 
 276 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 me like that? I'm their father: do they deny that? I'm 
 a man, with the feelings of our common humanity: have 
 I no rights, no claims? In all these years who have I 
 had round me? Servants, clerks, business acquaintances. 
 I've had respect from them — aye, kindness. Would one 
 of them have spoken to me as that girl spoke? — would 
 one of them have laughed at me as that boy was laugh- 
 ing at me all the time? (Frantically.) My own chil- 
 dren! Mister Crcimpton ! My 
 
 Valentine. Come, come: they're only children. The 
 only one of them that's worth anything called you father. 
 
 Crampton (wildly). Yes: "good-bye, father." 
 Good-bye! Oh, yes: she got at my feelings — with a 
 stab! 
 
 Valentine (taking this in very bad part). Now 
 look here, Crampton: you just let her alone: she's 
 treated you very well. I had a much worse time of it at 
 lunch than you. 
 
 Crampton. You ! 
 
 Valentine (rvith growing impetuosity). Yes: I. 
 I sat next her ; and I never said a single thing to her the 
 whole time — couldn't think of a blessed word. And not 
 a word did she say to me. 
 
 Crampton. Well ? 
 
 Valentine. Well? Well??? (Tackling him very 
 seriously and talking faster and faster.) Crampton: do 
 you know what's been the matter with me to-day? You 
 don't suppose, do you, that I'm in the habit of playing 
 such tricks on my patients as I played on you? 
 
 Crampton. I hope not. 
 
 Valentine. The explanation is that I'm stark mad, 
 or rather that I've never been in my real senses before. 
 I'm capable of anything: I've grown up at last: I'm a 
 Man; and it's your daughter that's made a man of me. 
 
 Crampton (incredulously) . Are you in love with my 
 daughter ? 
 
 Valentine (his words now coming in a perfect tor-
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 277 
 
 rent). Love! Nonsense: it's something far above and 
 beyond that. It's life, it's faith, it's strength, certainty, 
 paradise 
 
 Crampton {interrupting him with acrid contempt). 
 Rubbish, man ! What have you to keep a wife on? You 
 can't marry her. 
 
 Valentine. Who wants to marry her? I'll kiss her 
 hands; I'll kneel at her feet; I'll live for her; I'll die 
 for her; and that'll be enough for me. Look at her 
 book! See! {He kisses the handkerchief.) If you 
 offered me all your money for this excuse for going 
 down to the beach and speaking to her again, I'd only 
 laugh at you. {He rushes buoyantly off to the steps, 
 where he bounces right into the arms of the waiter, who 
 is coming up from the beach. The two save themselves 
 from falling by clutching one another tightly round the 
 waist and whirling one another round.) 
 
 Waiter {delicately). Steady, sir, steady. 
 
 Valentine {shocked at his own violence). I beg 
 your pardon. 
 
 Waiter. Not at all, sir, not at all. Very natural, 
 sir, I'm sure, sir, at your age. The lady has sent me 
 for her book, sir. Might I take the liberty of asking 
 you to let her have it at once, sir? 
 
 Valentine. With pleasure. And if you will allow 
 me to present you with a professional man's earnings 
 for six weeks — {offering him Dolly's crown piece.) 
 
 Waiter {as if the sum were beyond his utmost ex- 
 pectations). Thank you, sir: much obliged. {Valen- 
 tine dashes down the steps.) Very high-spirited young 
 gentleman, sir: very manly and straight set up. 
 
 Crampton {in grumbling disparagement). And 
 making his fortune in a hurry, no doubt. I know what 
 his six weeks' earnings come to. {He crosses the ter- 
 race to the iron table, and sits down.) 
 
 Waiter {philosophically). Well, sir, you never can 
 tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll
 
 278 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 excuse my having such a thing, sir. (^Delicately sinking 
 the philosopher in the ivaiter for a moment.^ Perhaps 
 you haven't noticed that you hadn't touched that seltzer 
 and Irish, sir, when the party broke up. {He takes the 
 tumbler from the luncheon table, and sets it before 
 Crampton.) Yes, sir, you never can tell. There was 
 my son, sir ! who ever thought that he would rise to wear 
 a silk gown, sir.^ And yet to-day, sir, nothing less than 
 fifty guineas, sir. What a lesson, sir! 
 
 Crampton. Well, I hope he is grateful to you, and 
 recognizes what he owes you. 
 
 Waiter. We get on together very well, very well in- 
 deed, sir, considering the difference in our stations. 
 (With another of his irresistible transitions.) A small 
 lump of sugar, sir, will take the flatness out of the 
 seltzer without noticeably sweetening the drink, sir. Al- 
 low me, sir. (^He drops a lump of sugar into the 
 tumbler.) But as I say to him, where's the difference 
 after all.'' If I must put on a dress coat to show what 
 I am, sir, he must put on a wig and gown to show 
 what he is. If my income is mostly tips, and there's a 
 pretence that I don't get them, why, his income is mostly 
 fees, sir; and I understand there's a pretence that he 
 don't get them! If he likes society, and his profession 
 brings him into contact with all ranks, so does mine, 
 too, sir. If it's a little against a barrister to have a 
 waiter for his father, sir, it's a little against a waiter 
 to have a barrister for a son: many people consider it 
 a great liberty, sir, I assure you, sir. Can I get you 
 anything else, sir? 
 
 Crampton. No, thank you. (With bitter humility.) 
 I suppose there's no objection to my sitting here for a 
 while: I can't disturb the party on the beach here. 
 
 Waiter (with emotion). Very kind of you, sir, to 
 put it as if it was not a compliment and an honour to 
 us, Mr. Crampton, very kind indeed. The more you are 
 at home here, sir, the better for us.
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 279 
 
 Crampton (in poignant irony). Home! 
 
 Waiter (reflectively). Well, yes, sir: that's a way 
 of looking at it, too, sir. I have always said that the 
 great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from 
 home life, sir. 
 
 Crampton. I missed that advantage to-day, I think. 
 
 Waiter. You did, sir, you did. Dear me! It's 
 the unexpected that always happens, isn't it? (Shak- 
 ing his head.) You never can tell, sir: you never can 
 tell. (He goes into the hotel.) 
 
 Cramptox (his eyes shining hardly as he props his 
 drawn, miserable face on his hands). Home! Home!! 
 (He drops his arms on the table and bows his head on 
 them, but presently hears someone approaching and 
 hastily sits bolt npright. It is Gloria, who has come 
 up the steps alone, with her sunshade and her booh in 
 her hands. He looks defiantly at her, with the brutal 
 obstinacy of his mouth and the wistfulness of his eyes 
 contradicting each other pathetically. She comes to the 
 corner of the garden seat and stands with her back to 
 it, leaning against the end of it, and looking down at 
 him as if wondering at his weakness: too curious about 
 him to be cold, but supremely indifferent to their kin- 
 ship.) Well.? 
 
 Gloria. I want to speak to you for a moment. 
 
 Crampton (looking steadily at her). Indeed? 
 That's surprising. You meet your father after eighteen 
 years; and you actually want to speak to him for a 
 moment! That's touching: isn't it? (He rests his head 
 on his hand, and looks down and away from her, in 
 gloomy reflection.) 
 
 Gloria. All that is what seems to me so nonsensical, 
 so uncalled for. What do you expect us to feel for you 
 — to do for you? AVhat is it you want? Why are you 
 less civil to us than other people are? You are evi- 
 dently not very fond of us — why should you be? But 
 surely we can meet without quarrelling.
 
 280 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Crampton (a dreadful grey shade parsing over his 
 face). Do you realize that I am your father? 
 
 Gloria. Perfectly. 
 
 Crampton. Do you know what is due to me as your 
 father ? 
 
 Gloria. For instance ? 
 
 Crampton (rising as if to combat a monster}. For 
 instance ! For instance ! ! For instance, duty, affection, 
 respect, obedience 
 
 Gloria (quitting her careless leaning attitude and 
 confronting him promptly and proudly). I obey noth- 
 ing but my sense of what is right. I respect nothing 
 that is not noble. That is my duty. (She adds, less 
 firmly) As to affection, it is not within my control. I 
 am not sure that I quite know what affection means. 
 (She turns away with an evident distaste for that part 
 of the subject, and goes to the luncheon table for a 
 comfortable chair, putting down her book and sun- 
 shade.) 
 
 Crampton (following her with his eyes). Do you 
 really mean what you are saying.^ 
 
 Gloria (turning on him quickly and severely). Ex- 
 cuse me: that is an uncivil question. I am speaking 
 seriously to you; and I expect you to take me seriously. 
 (She takes one of the luncheon chairs; turns it away 
 from the table; and sits down a little wearily, say- 
 ing) Can you not discuss this matter coolly and ration- 
 ally? 
 
 Crampton. Coolly and rationally ! No, I can't. Do 
 you understand that? I can't. 
 
 Gloria (emphatically). No. That I cannot un™ 
 derstand. I have no sympathy with 
 
 Crampton (shrinking nervously). Stop! Don't say 
 anything more yet; you don't know what you're doing. 
 Do you want to drive me mad? (She frowns, finding 
 such petulance intolerable. He adds hastily) No: Fm 
 not angry: indeed I'm not. Wait* wait: give me a little
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 281 
 
 time to think. {He stands for a moment, screwing and 
 clinching his brows and hands in his perplexity; then 
 takes tJie end chair from the luncheon table and sits 
 down beside her, saying, with a touching effort to be 
 gentle and patient^ Now, I think I have it. At least 
 I'll try. 
 
 Gloria {firmly). You see! Everything comes right 
 if we only think it resolutely out. 
 
 Crampton {in sudden dread). No: don't think. I 
 want you to feel: that's the only thing that can help us. 
 Listen ! Do you — but first — I forgot. What's your 
 name? I mean your pet name. They can't very well 
 call you Sophronia. 
 
 Gloria {tvith astonished disgust). Sophronia! My 
 name is Gloria. I am always called by it. 
 
 Crampton {his temper rising again). Your name is 
 Sophronia, girl: you were called after your aunt So- 
 phronia, my sister: she gave you your first Bible with 
 your name written in it. 
 
 Gloria. Then my mother gave me a new name. 
 
 Crampton {angrily). She had no right to do it. I 
 will not allow this. 
 
 Gloria. You had no right to give me your sister's 
 name. I don't know her. 
 
 Crampton. You're talking nonsense. There are 
 bounds to what 1 will put up with. I will not have it. 
 Do you hear that.'' 
 
 Gloria {rising warningly). Are you resolved to 
 quarrel ? 
 
 Crampton {terrified ^ pleading). No, no: sit down. 
 Sit down, won't you.^ {She looks at him, keeping him in 
 suspense. He forces himself to utter the obnoxious 
 name.) Gloria. {She marks her satisfaction with a 
 slight tightening of the lips, and sits down.) There! 
 You see I only want to shew you that I am your father, 
 my — my dear child. {The endearment is so plaintively 
 inept that she smiles in spite of herself, and resigns her-
 
 282 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 self to indulge him a little.) Listen now. What I want 
 to ask you is this. Don't you remember me at all? You 
 were only a tiny child when you were taken away from 
 me; but you took plenty of notice of things. Can't you 
 remember someone whom you loved, or (shyly) at least 
 liked in a childish way ? Come ! someone who let you 
 stay in his study and look at his toy boats, as you 
 thought them.^ (He looks anxiously into her face for 
 some response, and continues less hopefully and more 
 urgently) Someone who let you do as you liked there 
 and never said a word to you except to tell you that 
 you must sit still and not speak? Someone who was 
 something that no one else was to you — who was your 
 father. 
 
 Gloria (unmoved). If you describe things to me, no 
 doubt I shall presently imagine that I remember them. 
 But I really remember nothing. 
 
 Crampton (wistfully). Has your mother never told 
 you anything about me? 
 
 Gloria. She has never mentioned your name to me. 
 (He groans involuntarily. She looks at him rather con- 
 temptuously and continues) Except once; and then she 
 did remind me of something I had forgotten. 
 
 Crampton (looking up hopefully). What was that? 
 
 Gloria (mercilessly). The whip you bought to beat 
 me with. 
 
 Crampton (gnashing his teeth). Oh! To bring that 
 up against me ! To turn you from me ! When you need 
 never have known. (Under a grindirig, agonized 
 breath.) Curse her! 
 
 Gloria (springing up). You wretch! With in- 
 tense emphasis.) You wretch!! You dare curse my 
 mother ! 
 
 Crampton. Stop; or you'll be sorry afterwards. 
 I'm your father. 
 
 Gloria. How I hate the name! How I love the 
 name of mother ! You had better go.
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 283 
 
 Crampton. I — I'm choking. You want to kill me. 
 Some — I — (His voice stifles: he is almost in a fit.) 
 
 Gloria (going up to the balustrade with cool, quick 
 resourcefulness, and calling over to the beach). Mr. 
 Valentine ! 
 
 Valentine (answering from below). Yes. 
 
 Gloria. Come here for a moment, please. Mr. 
 Crampton wants you. (She returns to the table and 
 pours out a glass of water.) 
 
 Crampton (recovering his speech). No: let me 
 alone. I don't want him. I'm all right, I tell you. I 
 need neither his help nor yours. (He rises and pulls 
 himself together.) As j^ou say, I liad better go. (He 
 puts on his hat.) Is that your last word? 
 
 Gloria. I hope so. (He looks stubbornly at her for 
 a moment; nods grimly, as if he agreed to that; and 
 goes into the hotel. She looks at him with equal steadi- 
 ness until he disappears, when she makes a gesture of 
 relief, and turns to speak to Valentine, who comes run- 
 ning up the steps.) 
 
 Valentine (panting). What's the matter? (Look- 
 ing round.) Where's Crampton? 
 
 Gloria. Gone. (Valentine's face lights up with sud- 
 den joy, dread, and mischief. He has just realised that 
 he is alone with Gloria. She continues indifferently) I 
 thought he was ill; but he recovered himself. He 
 wouldn't wait for you, I am sorry. (She goes for her 
 book and parasol.) 
 
 Valentine. So much the better. He gets on my 
 nerves after a while. (Pretending to forget himself.) 
 How could that man have so beautiful a daughter ! 
 
 Gloria (taken aback for a moment; then answering 
 him with polite but intentional contempt). That seems 
 to be an attempt at what is called a pretty speech. Let 
 me say at once, Mr. Valentine, that pretty speeches make 
 very sickly conversation. Pray let us be friends, if we 
 are to be friends, in a sensible and wholesome way. I
 
 284 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 have no intention of getting married; and unless you 
 are content to accept that state of things, we had much 
 better not cultivate each other's acquaintance. 
 
 Valentine {cautiously). I see. May I ask just 
 this one question? Is your objection an objection to 
 marriage as an institution, or merely an objection to 
 marrying me personally ? 
 
 Gloria. I do not know you well enough, Mr. Val- 
 entine, to have any opinion on the subject of your 
 personal merits. {She turns away from him with in- 
 finite indifference, and sits down with her book on the 
 garden seat.) I do not think the conditions of mar- 
 riage at present are such as any self-respecting woman 
 can accept. 
 
 Valentine {instantly changing his tone for one of 
 cordial sincerity, as if he frankly accepted her terms 
 and was delighted and reassured by her principles). 
 Oh, then that's a point of sympathy between us already. 
 I quite agree with you: the conditions are most unfair. 
 {He takes off his hat and throws it gaily on the iron 
 table.) No: what I want is to get rid of all that non- 
 sense. {He sits down beside her, so naturally that she 
 does not think of objecting, and proceeds, with enthus- 
 iasm) Don't you think it a horrible thing that a man 
 and a woman can hardly know one another without 
 being supposed to have designs of that kind.'* As if 
 there were no other interests — no other subjects of con- 
 versation — as if women were capable of nothing better ! 
 
 Gloria {interested). Ah, now you are beginning to 
 talk humanly and sensibly, Mr. Valentine. 
 
 Valentine {with a gleam in his eye at the success of 
 his hunter's guile). Of course!— two intelligent people 
 like us. Isn't it pleasant, in this stupid, convention- 
 ridden world, to meet with someone on the same plane — 
 someone with an unprejudiced, enlightened mind? 
 
 Gloria {earnestly). I hope to meet many such peo- 
 ple in England.
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 285 
 
 Valentine (dubiously). Hm ! There are a good 
 many people here — nearly forty millions. They're not 
 all consumptive members of the highly educated classes 
 like the people in Madeira. 
 
 Gloria {now full of her subject). Oh, everybody is 
 stupid and prejudiced in Madeira — weak, sentimental 
 creatures ! I hate weakness ; and I hate sentiment. 
 
 Valentine. That's what makes you so inspiring 
 
 Gloria {with a slight laugh). Am I inspiring.'' 
 
 Valentine. Yes. Strength's infectious. 
 
 Gloria. Weakness is, I know. 
 
 Valentine {with conviction). You're strong. Do 
 you know that you changed the world for me this morn- 
 ing.'' I was in the dumps, thinking of my unpaid rent, 
 frightened about the future. When you came in, I was 
 dazzled. {Her brow clouds a little. He goes on quick- 
 ly.) That was silly, of course; but really and truly 
 something happened to me. Explain it how you will, 
 my blood got — {he hesitates, trying to think of a suffi- 
 ciently unimpassioned word) — oxygenated: my muscles 
 braced ; my mind cleared ; my courage rose. That's odd, 
 isn't it.'' considering that I am not at all a sentimental 
 man. 
 
 Gloria {uneasily, rising). Let us go back to the 
 beach. 
 
 Valentine {darkly — looking up at her). What! 
 you feel it, too? 
 
 Gloria. Feel what? 
 
 Valentine. Dread. 
 
 Gloria. Dread ! 
 
 Valentine. As if something were going to happen. 
 It came over me suddenly just before you proposed that 
 we should run away to the others. 
 
 Gloria {amazed). That's strange — very strange! I 
 had the same presentiment. 
 
 Valentine. How extraordinary! {Rising.) Well: 
 shall we run away?
 
 286 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 Gloria, Runaway! Oh, no: that would be childish. 
 (She sits down again. He resumes his seat beside her, 
 and rvatches her ivith a gravely sympathetic air. She is 
 thoughtful and a little troubled as she adds) I wonder 
 what is tlie scientific explanation of those fancies that 
 cross us occasionally ! 
 
 Valentine. Ah, I wonder! It's a curiously help- 
 less sensation: i»n't it.^ 
 
 Gloria (rebelling against the rvord). Helpless? 
 
 Valentine. Yes. As if Nature, after allowing us 
 to belong to ourselves and do what we judged right and 
 reasonable for all these years, were suddenly lifting her 
 great hand to take us — her two little children — by the 
 scruffs of our little necks, and use us, in spite of our- 
 selves, for her own purposes, in her own way. 
 
 Gloria. Isn't that rather fanciful.'' 
 
 Valentine (with a new and startling transition to a 
 tone of utter recklessness). I don't know. I don't care. 
 (Bursting out reproachfully.) Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss 
 Clandon: how could you? 
 
 Gloria. What have I done? 
 
 Valentine. Thrown this enchantment on me. I'm 
 honestly trying to be sensible — scientific — everything 
 that you wish me to be. But — but — oh, don't you see 
 what you have set to work in my imagination? 
 
 Gloria (with indignant, scornful sternness). I hope 
 you are not going to be so foolish — so vulgar — as to say 
 love. 
 
 Valentine (ivith ironical haste to disclaim such a 
 weakness). No, no, no. Not love: we know better than 
 that. Let's call it chemistry. You can't deny that there 
 is such a thing as chemical action, chemical affinity, 
 chemical combination — the most irresistible of all natu- 
 ral forces. Well, you're attracting me irresistibly — 
 chemically. 
 
 Gloria (contemptuously). Nonsense! 
 
 Valentine. Of course it's nonsense, you stupid girl.
 
 Act n You Never Can Tell 287 
 
 (Gloria recoils in outraged surprise.) Yes, stupid girl: 
 that's a scientific fact, anyhow. You're a prig — a 
 feminine prig: that's what you are. {Rising.) Now 
 I suppose you've done with me for ever. {He goes to 
 the iron table and takes up his hat.) 
 
 Gloria {rvith elaborate calm, sitting up like a High- 
 school-mistress posing to be photographed). That shows 
 how very little you understand my real character. I am 
 not in the least offended. {He pauses arid puts liis hat 
 down again.) I am always willing to be told of my own 
 defects, Mr. Valentine, by my friends, even when they 
 are as absurdly mistaken about me as you are. I have 
 many faults — very serious faults — of character and tem- 
 per ; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you 
 call a prig. {She closes her lips trimly and looks 
 steadily and challengingly at him as she sits Tuore col- 
 lectedly than ever.) 
 
 Valentine {returning to the end of the garden seat to 
 confront her more emphatically). Oh, yes, you are. 
 My reason tells me so: my knowledge tells me so: my 
 experience tells me so. 
 
 Gloria. Excuse my reminding you that your reason 
 and your knowledge and your experience are not infal- 
 lible. At least I hope not. 
 
 Valentine. I must believe them. Unless you wish 
 me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imag- 
 ination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies 
 about you. 
 
 Gloria {the collectedness beginning to relax). Lies! 
 
 Valentine {obstinately). Yes, lies. {He sits down 
 again beside her.) Do you expect me to believe that you 
 are the most beautiful woman in the world .^ 
 
 Gloria. That is ridiculous, and rather personal. 
 
 Valentine. Of course it's ridiculous. Well, that's 
 what my eyes tell me. {Gloria makes a movement of 
 contemptuous protest.) No: I'm not flattering. I tell 
 you I don't believe it. {She is ashamed to find that this
 
 288 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 does not quite please her either.) Do you think that if 
 you were to turn away in disgust from my weakness, I 
 should sit down here and cry like a child? 
 
 Gloria {beginning to find that she must speak shortly 
 and pointedly to keep her voice steady). Why should 
 you, pray? 
 
 Valentine {with a stir of feeling beginning to agi- 
 tate his voice). Of course not: I'm not such an idiot. 
 And yet my heart tells me I should — my fool of a heart. 
 But I'll argue with my heart and bring it to reason. If 
 I loved you a thousand times, I'll force myself to look 
 the truth steadily in the face. After all, it's easy to be 
 sensible: the facts are the facts. What's this place? 
 it's not heaven: it's the Marine Hotel. What's the 
 time? it's not eternity: it's about half past one in the 
 afternoon. What am I ? a dentist — a five shilling 
 dentist ! 
 
 Gloria. And I am a feminine prig. 
 
 Valentine {passionately). No, no: I can't face 
 that: I must have one illusion left — the illusion about 
 you. I love you. {He turns towards her as if the im- 
 pulse to touch her were ungovernable: she rises and 
 stands on her guard wrathfully. He springs up impa- 
 tiently and retreats a step.) Oh, what a fool I am! — an 
 idiot ! You don't understand : I might as well talk to the 
 stones on the beach. {He turns away, discouraged.) 
 
 Gloria {reassured by his withdrawal, and a little re- 
 morseful). I am sorry. I do not mean to be unsym- 
 pathetic, INIr. Valentine; but what can I say? 
 
 Valentine {returning to her with all his recklessness 
 of manner replaced by an engaging and chivalrous re- 
 spect). You can say nothing. Miss Clandon. I beg 
 your pardon : it was my own fault, or rather my own bad 
 luck. You see, it all depended on your naturally liking 
 me. {She is about to speak: he stops her deprecatingly.) 
 Oh, I know you mustn't tell me whether you like me 
 or not; but
 
 Act II You Never Can Tell 289 
 
 Gloria (Jier principles up in arms at once). Must 
 not ! Why not ? I am a free woman : why should I not 
 tell you? 
 
 Valentine (pleading in terror, and retreating). 
 Don't. I'm afraid to hear. 
 
 Gloria (no longer scornful). You need not be 
 afraid. I think you are sentimental, and a little foolish; 
 but I like you. 
 
 Valentine (dropping into the iron chair as if 
 crushed). Then it's all over. (He becomes the picture 
 of despair.) 
 
 Gloria (puzzled, approaching him). But why? 
 
 Valentine. Because liking is not enough. Now that 
 I think down into it seriously, I don't know whether I 
 like you or not. 
 
 Gloria (looking down at him rvith wondering con- 
 cern). I'm sorry. 
 
 Valentine (in an agony of restrained passion). Oh, 
 don't pity me. Your voice is tearing my heart to pieces. 
 Let me alone, Gloria. You go down into the very depths 
 of me, troubling and stirring me — I can't struggle with 
 it — I can't tell you 
 
 Gloria (breaking down suddenly). Oh, stop telling 
 me what you feel: I can't bear it. 
 
 Valentine (springing up triumphantly, the agonized 
 voice now solid, ringing, and jubilant). Ah, it's come at 
 last — my moment of courage. (He seizes her hands: she 
 looks at him in terror.) Our moment of courage! (He 
 drarvs her to him; kisses her with impetuous strength; 
 and laughs boyishly.) Now you've done it, Gloria. It's 
 all over: we're in love with one another. (She can only 
 gasp at him.) But what a dragon you were! And how 
 hideously afraid I was ! 
 
 Philip's Voice (calling from the beach). Valentine! 
 
 Dolly's Voice. Mr. Valentine ! 
 
 Valentine. Good-bye. Forgive me. (He rapidly 
 hisses her hands, and runs away to the steps, tvhere he
 
 290 You Never Can Tell Act II 
 
 meets Mrs. Clandon, ascending. Gloria, quite lost, can 
 only stare after him.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. The children want you, Mr. Valen- 
 tine. (^She looks anxiously round.) Is he gone? 
 
 Valentine {puzzled). He? {Recollecting.) Oh, 
 Crampton. Gone this long time, Mrs. Clandon. {He 
 runs off buoyantly dorvn the steps.) 
 
 Gloria {sinking upon the seat). Mother! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {hurrying to her in alarm). What is 
 it, dear? 
 
 Gloria {with heartfelt, appealing reproach). Why 
 didn't you educate me properly? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {amazed). My child: I did my best. 
 
 Gloria. Oh, you taught me nothing — nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. AVhat is the matter with you? 
 
 Gloria {with the most intense expression). Only 
 shame — shame — shame. {Blushing unendurably, she 
 covers her face with her hands and turns away from her 
 mother.) 
 
 END OF ACT II.
 
 ACT III 
 
 The Clandons' sitting room in the hotel. An expen- 
 sive apartment on the ground floor, with a French 
 window leading to the gardens. In the centre of the 
 room is a substantial table, surrounded by chairs, and 
 draped with a maroon cloth on which opulently bound 
 hotel and railway guides are displayed. A visitor en- 
 tering through the window and coming down to this 
 central table would have the fireplace on his left, and a 
 writing table against the wall on his right, next the door, 
 which is further down. He would, if his taste lay that 
 way, admire the wall decoration of Lincrusta Walton 
 in plum color and bronze lacquer, with dado and cor- 
 nice; the ormolu consoles in the corners; the vases on 
 pillar pedestals of veined marble with bases of polished 
 black wood, one on each side of the window; the orna- 
 mental cabinet next the vase on the side nearest the 
 fireplace, its centre compartment closed by an inlaid 
 door, and its corners rounded off with curved panes of 
 glass protecting shelves of cheap blue and white pot- 
 tery; the bamboo tea table, with folding shelves, in the 
 corresponding space on the other side of the window; 
 the pictures of ocean steamers and Landseer's dogs; the 
 saddlebag ottoman in line with the door but on the other 
 side of the room; the two comfortable seats of the same 
 pattern on the hearthrug; and finally, on turning round 
 and looking up, the massive brass pole above the win- 
 dow, sustaining a pair of maroon rep curtains with dec- 
 orated borders of staid green. Altogether, a room well 
 arranged to flatter the occupant's sense of importance, 
 and reconcile him to a charge of a pound a day for its 
 use. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon sits at the writijig table, correcting 
 
 291
 
 292 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 proofs. Gloria is standing at the windorv, looking out 
 in a tormented revery. 
 
 The clock on the mantelpiece strikes five rvith a sickly 
 clink, the hell being unable to hear up against the black 
 marble cenotaph in which it is immured. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Five ! I don't think we need wait 
 any longer for the children. They are sure to get tea 
 somewhere. 
 
 Gloria (wearily). Shall I ring? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Do, my dear. (Gloria goes to the 
 hearth and rings.) I have finished these proofs at last, 
 thank goodness ! 
 
 Gloria (strolling listlessly across the room and com- 
 ing behind her mother's chair). What proofs.^ 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. The new edition of Twentieth Cen- 
 tury Women. 
 
 Gloria (with a bitter smile). There's a chapter miss- 
 ing. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (beginning to hunt among her proofs). 
 Is there? Surely not. 
 
 Gloria. I mean an unwritten one. Perhaps I shall 
 write it for you — when I know the end of it. (She goes 
 back to the window.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Gloria! More enigmas! 
 
 Gloria. Oh, no. The same enigma. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (puzzled and rather troubled; after 
 ■watching her for a moment). My dear. 
 
 Gloria (returning). Yes. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. You know I never ask questions. 
 
 Gloria (kneeling beside her chair). I know, I 
 know. (She suddenly throws her arms about her mother 
 and embraces her almost passionately.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (gently, smiling but embarrassed). 
 My dear: you are getting quite sentimental. 
 
 Gloria (recoiling). Ah, no, no. Oh, don't say that. 
 Oh ! (She rises and turns away with a gesture as if 
 tearing herself.)
 
 Act m You Never Can Tell 293 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {mildly). My dear: what is the mat- 
 ter? What — {The waiter enters with the tea-tray.) 
 
 Waiter {balmily). This was what you rang for, 
 ma'am, I hope? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Thank you, yes. {She turns her 
 chair away from the writing table, and sits down again. 
 Gloria crosses to the hearth and sits crouching there 
 with her face averted.) 
 
 Waiter {placing the tray temporarily on the centre 
 table). I thought so, ma'am. Curious how the nerves 
 seem to give out in the afternoon without a cup of tea. 
 {He fetches the tea table and places it in front of Mrs. 
 Clandon, conversing meanwhile.) The young lady and 
 gentleman have just come back, ma'am: they have been 
 out in a boat, ma'am. Very pleasant on a fine after- 
 noon like this — very pleasant and invigorating indeed. 
 {He takes the tray from the centre table and puts it on 
 the tea table.) Mr. McComas will not come to tea, 
 ma'am: he has gone to call upon Mr. Crampton. {He 
 takes a couple of chairs and sets one at each end of the 
 tea table.) 
 
 Gloria {looking round with an impulse of terror). 
 And the other gentleman? 
 
 Waiter {reassuringly, as he unconsciously drops for 
 a moment into the measure of " I've been roaming," 
 which he sang when a boy.) Oh, he's coming, miss, he's 
 coming. He has been rowing the boat, miss, and has 
 just run down the road to the chemist's for something to 
 put on the blisters. But he will be here directly, miss — 
 directly. {Gloria, in ungovernable apprehension, rises 
 and hurries towards the door.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {half rising). Glo — {Gloria goes 
 out. Mrs. Clandon looks perplexedly at the waiter, 
 whose composure is unruffled.) 
 
 Waiter {cheerfully). Anything more, ma'am? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Nothing, thank you. 
 
 Waiter. Thank you, ma'am. {As he withdraws.
 
 294 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 Phil and Dolly, in the highest spiiits, come tearing in. 
 He holds the door open for them; then goes out and 
 closes it.) 
 
 Dolly (ravenously). Oh, give me some tea. (Mrs. 
 Clandon pours out a cup for her.) We've been out in a 
 boat. Valentine will be here presently. 
 
 Philip. He is imaccustomed to navigation. Where's 
 Gloria ? 
 
 ]\Irs. Clandon (anxiously, as she pours out his tea). 
 Phil: there is something the matter with Gloria. Has 
 anything happened.'' (Phil and Dolly look at one an- 
 other and stifle a laugh.) What is it.^ 
 
 Philip (sitting down on her left). Romeo 
 
 Dolly (sitting down on her right). — and Juliet. 
 
 Philip (taking his cup of tea from Mrs. Clandon). 
 Yes, my dear mother: the old, old story. Dolly: don't 
 take all the milk. (He deftly takes the jug from her.) 
 Yes: in the spring 
 
 Dolly. — a young man's fancy 
 
 Philip. — lightly turns to — thank you (to Mrs. 
 Clandon, who has passed the biscuits) — thoughts of 
 love. It also occurs in the autumn. The young man in 
 this case is 
 
 Dolly. Valentine. 
 
 Philip. And his fancy has turned to Gloria to the 
 extent of 
 
 Dolly. — kissing her 
 
 Philip. — on the terrace- 
 
 Dolly (correcting him). — on the lips, before every- 
 body. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (incredulously). Phil! Dolly! Are 
 you j oking } ( They shake their heads. ) Did she allow it ? 
 
 Philip. We waited to see him struck to earth by the 
 lightning of her scorn; 
 
 Dolly, ^but he wasn't. 
 
 Philip. She appeared to like it. 
 
 Dolly. As far as we could judge. (Stopping Phil,
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 295 
 
 rvho is about to pour out another cup.) No: you've 
 sworn off two cups. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (much troubled). Children: you must 
 not be here when Mr. Valentine comes. I must speak 
 very seriously to him about this. 
 
 Philip. To ask him his intentions? What a viola- 
 tion of Twentieth Century principles ! 
 
 Dolly. Quite rights mamma : bring him to book. 
 Make the most of the nineteenth century Avhile it lasts. 
 
 Philip. Sh ! Here he is. {Valentine comes in.) 
 
 Valentine. Very sorry to be late for tea, Mrs. 
 Clandon. {She takes up the tea-pot.) No, thank you: 
 I never take any. No doubt Miss Dolly and Phil have 
 explained what happened to me. 
 
 Philip {momentously rising). Yes, Valentine: we 
 have explained. 
 
 Dolly {significantly, also rising). We have ex- 
 plained very thoroughly. 
 
 Philip. It was our duty. {Very seriously.) Come, 
 Dolly. {He offers Dolly his arm, which she takes. 
 They look sadly at him, and go out gravely, arm in arm. 
 Valentine stares after them, puzzled; then looks at Mrs. 
 Clandon for an explanation.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {rising and leaving the tea fable). 
 Will you sit down, ]Mr. Valentine. I want to speak to 
 you a little, if you will allow me. {Valentine sits down 
 slowly on the ottoman, his conscience presaging a bad 
 quarter of an hour. Mrs. Clandon takes Phil's chair, 
 and seats herself deliberately at a convenient distance 
 from him.) I must begin by throwing myself somewhat 
 on your consideration. I am going to speak of a sub- 
 ject of which I know very little — perhaps nothing. I 
 mean love. 
 
 Valentine. Love ! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Yes, love. Oh, you need not look so 
 alarmed as that, Mr. Valentine: / am not in love with 
 you.
 
 296 You Never Can Tell Act IH 
 
 Valentine (overwhelmed) . Oh, really, Mrs. — {Re- 
 covering himself.) I should be only too proud if you 
 were. 
 
 JNIrs. Clandon. Thank you, Mr. Valentine. But I 
 am too old to begin. 
 
 Valentine. Begin! Have you never ? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Never. My case is a very common 
 one, Mr. Valentine. I married before I was old enough 
 to know what I was doing. As you have seen for your- 
 self, the result was a bitter disappointment for both 
 my husband and myself. So you see, though I am a 
 married woman, I have never been in love; I have never 
 had a love affair; and to be quite frank with you, Mr. 
 Valentine, what I have seen of the love affairs of other 
 people has not led me to regret that deficiency in my ex- 
 perience. (Valentine, looking very glum,, glances scep- 
 tically at her, and says nothing. Her color rises a little; 
 and she adds, with restrained anger) You do not be- 
 lieve me? 
 
 Valentine (confused at having his thought read). 
 Oh, why not? Why not? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Let me tell you, Mr. Valentine, that 
 a life devoted to the Cause of Humanity has enthusiasms 
 and passions to offer which far transcend the selfish 
 personal infatuations and sentimentalities of romance. 
 Those are not your enthusiasms and passions, I take it? 
 (Valentine, quite aware that she despises him for it, 
 answers in the negative with a melancholy shake of the 
 head.) I thought not. Well, I am equally at a disad- 
 vantage in discussing those so-called affairs of the heart 
 in which you appear to be an expert. 
 
 Valentine (restlessly). What are you driving at, 
 Mrs. Clandon? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I think you know. 
 
 Valentine. Gloria? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Yes. Gloria. 
 
 Valentine (surrendering). Well, yes: I'm in love
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 297 
 
 with Gloria, (^Interposing as she is about to speak.^ I 
 know what you're going to say: I've no money. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I care very Little about money, Mr. 
 Valentine. 
 
 Valentine. Then you're very different to all the 
 other mothers who have interviewed me. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Ah, now we are coming to it, Mr. 
 Valentine. You are an old hand at this. {He opens his 
 mouth to protest: she cuts him short with some indigna- 
 tion.) Oh, do you think, little as I understand these 
 matters, that I have not common sense enough to know 
 that a man who could make as much way in one inter- 
 view with such a woman as my daughter, can hardly be 
 a novice ! 
 
 Valentine. I assure you- 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (stopping him). I am not blaming 
 you, Mr. Valentine. It is Gloria's business to take care 
 of herself; and you have a right to amuse yourself as 
 you please. But 
 
 Valentine (protesting). Amuse myself! Oh, Mrs. 
 Clandon ! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (relentlessly). On your honor, Mr. 
 Valentine, are you in earnest? 
 
 Valentine (desperately). On my honor I am in 
 earnest. (She looks searchingly at him. His sense of 
 humor gets the better of him; and he adds quaintly) 
 Only, I always have been in earnest; and yet — here I 
 am, you see ! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. This is just what I suspected. (Se- 
 verely.) Mr. Valentine: you are one of those men who 
 play with women's affections. 
 
 Valentine. Well, why not, if the Cause of Hu- 
 manity is the only thing worth being serious about? 
 However, I understand. (Rising and taking his hat 
 with formal politeness.) You wish me to discontinue 
 my visits. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. No: I am sensible enough to be well
 
 298 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 aware that Gloria's best chance of escape from you now 
 is to become better acquainted with you. 
 
 Valentine (unaffectedly alarmed). Oh, don't say- 
 that, Mrs. Clandon. You don't think that, do you? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I have great faith, Mr. Valentine, 
 in the sound training Gloria's mind has had since she 
 was a child. 
 
 Valentine (amazingly relieved). O-oh ! Oh, that's 
 all right. (He sits down again and throws his hat fiip- 
 pantly aside with the air of a man who has no longer 
 anything to fear.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (indignant at his assurance). What 
 do you mean.'' 
 
 Valentine (turning confidentially to her). Come: 
 shall I teach you something, Mrs. Clandon.? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (stiffly). I am always willing to 
 learn. 
 
 Valentine. Have you ever studied the subject of 
 gunnery — artillery — cannons and war-ships and so on.? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Has gunnery anything to do with 
 Gloria } 
 
 Valentine. A great deal — by way of illustration. 
 During this whole century, my dear Mrs. Clandon, the 
 progress of artillery has been a duel between the maker 
 of cannons and the maker of armor plates to keep the 
 cannon balls out. You build a ship proof against the 
 best gun known : somebody makes a better gun and sinks 
 your ship. You build a heavier ship, proof against that 
 gun : somebody makes a heavier gun and sinks you again. 
 And so on. Well, the duel of sex is just like that. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. The duel of sex ! 
 
 Valentine. Yes: you've heard of the duel of sex, 
 haven't you.? Oh, I forgot: you've been in Madeira: 
 the expression has come up since your time. Need I 
 explain it.? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (contemptuously). No. 
 
 Valentine. Of course not. Now what happens in
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 299 
 
 the duel of sex? The old fashioned mother received an 
 old fashioned education to protect her against the wiles 
 of man. Well, you know the result: the old fashioned 
 man got round her. The old fashioned woman resolved 
 to protect her daughter more effectually — to find some 
 armor too strong for the old fashioned man. So she 
 gave her daughter a scientific education — your plan. 
 That was a corker for the old fashioned man: he said 
 it wasn't fair — unwomanly and all the rest of it. But 
 that didn't do him any good. So he had to give u}) his 
 old fashioned plan of attack — you know — going down 
 on his knees and swearing to love, honor and obey, and 
 so on. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Excuse me: that was what the 
 woman swore. 
 
 Valentine. Was it? Ah, perhaps you're right — 
 yes : of course it was. Well, what did the man do ? Just 
 what the artillery man does — went one better than the 
 woman — educated himself scientifically and beat her at 
 that game just as he had beaten her at the old game. 
 I learnt how to circumvent the Women's Rights woman 
 before I was twenty-three: it's all been found out long 
 ago. You see, my methods are thoroughly modern. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (with quiet disgust). No doubt. 
 
 Valentine. But for that very reason there's one 
 sort of girl against whom they are of no use. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Pray which sort? 
 
 Valentine. The thoroughly old fashioned girl. If 
 you had brought up Gloria in the old way, it would have 
 taken me eighteen months to get to the point I got 
 to this afternoon in eighteen minutes. Yes, Mrs. Clan- 
 don: the Higher Education of Women delivered Gloria 
 into my hands ; and it was you who taught her to be- 
 lieve in the Higher Education of Women. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (rising). Mr. Valentine: you are 
 very clever. 
 
 Valentine (rising also). Oh, Mrs. Clandon!
 
 300 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 I\Ius. Clandon. And you have taught me nothing. 
 Good-bye. 
 
 Valentine (horrified). Good-bye! Oh, mayn't I 
 see her before I go? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I am afraid she will not return until 
 you have gone, Mr. Valentine. She left the room ex- 
 pressly to avoid you. 
 
 Valentine {thoughtfully). That's a good sign. 
 Good-bye. {He horvs and makes for the door, appar- 
 entlij well satis fed.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {alarmed). Why do you think it a 
 good sign ? 
 
 Valentine {turning near the door). Because I am 
 mortally afraid of her; and it looks as if she were 
 mortally afraid of me. {He turns to go and finds him- 
 self face to face with Gloria, who has just entered. She 
 looks steadfastly at him. He stares helplessly at her; 
 then round at Mrs. Clandon; then at Gloria again, com- 
 pletely at a loss.) 
 
 Gloria {white, and controlling herself with diffi- 
 culty). Mother: is what Dolly told me true? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. What did she tell you, dear? 
 
 Gloria. That you have been speaking about me to 
 this gentleman. 
 
 Valentine {murmuring). This gentleman! Oh! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {sharply). Mr. Valentine: can you 
 hold your tongue for a moment? {He looks piteously at 
 them; then, with a despairing shrug, goes back to the 
 ottoman and throws his hat on it.) 
 
 Gloria {confronting her mother, with deep reproach). 
 Mother: what right had you to do it? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I don't think I have said anything 
 I have no right to say, Gloria. 
 
 Valentine {confirming her officiously). Nothing. 
 Nothing whatever. {Gloria looks at him with unspeak- 
 able indignation.) I beg your pardon. {He sits down 
 ignominiously on the ottoman.)
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 301 
 
 Gloria. I cannot believe that any one has any right 
 even to think about things that concern me only. {She 
 turns away from them to conceal a painful struggle 
 with her emotion.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. My dear, if I have wounded your 
 pride 
 
 Gloria (turning on them for a moment). My pride! 
 My pride!! Oh, it's gone: I have learnt now that I 
 have no strength to be proud of. (Turning away 
 again.) But if a woman cannot protect herself, no one 
 can protect her. No one has any right to try — not even 
 her mother. I know I have lost your confidence, just as 
 I have lost this man's respect; — (She stops to master a 
 sob.) 
 
 Valentine (under his breath). This man! (Mur- 
 muring again.) Oh! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (in an undertone). Pray be silent, 
 sir. 
 
 Gloria (continuing). — but I have at least the right 
 to be left alone in my disgrace. I am one of those 
 weak creatures born to be mastered by the first man 
 whose eye is caught by them; and I must fulfil my 
 destiny, I suppose. At least spare me the humiliation of 
 trying to save me. (She sits down, with her handker- 
 chief to her eyes, at the farther end of the table.) 
 
 Valentine (jumping up). Look here 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Mr. Va 
 
 Valentine (recklessly). No: I will speak: I've 
 been silent for nearly thirty seconds. (He goes up to 
 Gloria.) Miss Clandon 
 
 Gloria (bitterly). Oh, not Miss Clandon: you have 
 found that it is quite safe to call me Gloria. 
 
 Valentine. No, I won't: you'll throw it in my teeth 
 afterwards and accuse me of disrespect. I say it's a 
 heartbreaking falsehood that I don't respect you. It's 
 true that I didn't respect your old pride: why should I? 
 It was nothing but cowardice. I didn't respect your in-
 
 302 You Never Can Tell Act m 
 
 tellect: I've a better one myself: it's a masculine spe- 
 cialty. But when the depths stirred ! — when my moment 
 came ! — when you made me brave ! — ah, then, then, 
 then! 
 
 Gloria, Then you respected me, I suppose. 
 
 Valentine. No, I didn't: I adored you. (She rises 
 quicldy and turns her hack on him.) And you can never 
 take that moment away from me. So now I don't care 
 what happens. (He comes down the room addressing a 
 cheerful explanation to nobody in particidar.) I'm per- 
 fectly aware that I'm talking nonsense. I can't help it. 
 (2'o Mrs. Clandon.) I love Gloria; and there's an end 
 of it. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (emphatically). Mr. Valentine: you 
 are a most dangerous man. Gloria: come here. (Gloria, 
 wondering a little at the command, obeys, and stands, 
 with drooping head, on her mother's right hand, Valen- 
 tine being on the opposite side. Mrs. Clandon then he- 
 gins, with intense scorn.) Ask this man whom you have 
 inspired and made brave, how many women have in- 
 spired him before (Gloria looks tip suddenly with a 
 flash of jealous anger and amazement) ; how many times 
 he has laid the trap in which he has caught you; how 
 often he has baited it with the same speeches; how much 
 practice it has taken to make him perfect in his chosen 
 part in life as the Duellist of Sex. 
 
 Valentine. This isn't fair. You're abusing my con- 
 fidence, Mrs. Clandon. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Ask him, Gloria. 
 
 Gloria (in a flush of rage, going over to him with 
 her fists clenched). Is that true.'' 
 
 Valentine. Don't be angry 
 
 Gloria (interrupting hi?n implacably). Is it true? 
 Did you ever say that before.'' Did you ever feel that 
 before — for another woman? 
 
 Valentine (bluntly). Yes. (Gloria raises her 
 clenched hands.)
 
 Act m You Never Can Tell 303 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (horrified, springing to her side and 
 catching her tiplif ted arm). Gloria!! My dear ! You're 
 forgetting yourself. (^Gloria, with a deep expiration, 
 slowly relaxes her threatening attitude.) 
 
 Valentine. Remember: a man's power of love and 
 admiration is like any other of his powers: he has to 
 throw it away many times before he learns what is 
 really Avorthy of it. 
 
 ISIrs. Clandon. Another of the old speeches, Gloria. 
 Take care. 
 
 Valentine {remonstrating). Oh! 
 
 Gloria {to Mrs. Clandon, with contemptuous self- 
 possession). Do you think I need to be warned now? 
 {To Valentine.) You have tried to make me love you. 
 
 Valentine. I have. 
 
 Gloria. Well, you have succeeded in making me 
 hate you — passionately. 
 
 Valentine {philosophically). It's surprising how 
 little difference there is between the two. {Gloria turns 
 indignantly away from him. He continues, to Mrs. Clan- 
 don) I know men whose wives love them; and they go 
 on exactly like that. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Excuse me, Mr. Valentine; but had 
 you not better go? 
 
 Gloria. You need not send him away on my account, 
 mother. He is nothing to me now; and he will amuse 
 Dolly and Phil. {She sits down with slighting indiffer- 
 ence, at the end of the table nearest the window.) 
 
 Valentine {gaily). Of course: that's the sensible 
 way of looking at it. Come, Mrs. Clandon: you can't 
 quarrel with a mere butterfly like me. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I very greatly mistrust you, Mr. 
 Valentine. But I do not like to think that your unfort- 
 unate levity of disposition is mere shamelessness and 
 worthlessness ; 
 
 Gloria {to herself, hut aloud). It is shameless; and 
 it is worthless.
 
 304 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. — so perhaps we had better send for 
 Phil and Dolly and allow you to end your visit in the 
 ordinary way. 
 
 Valentine {as if she had paid him the highest com- 
 pliment). You overwhelm me, Mrs. Clandon, Thank 
 you. {The waiter enters.) 
 
 Waiter. Mr. McComas, ma'am. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Oh, certainly. Bring him in. 
 
 Waiter. He wishes to see you in the reception-room, 
 ma'am. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Wliy not here? 
 
 Waiter. Well, if you will excuse my mentioning it, 
 ma'am, I think Mr. McComas feels that he would get 
 fairer play if he could speak to you away from the 
 younger members of your family, ma'am. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Tell him they are not here. 
 
 Waiter. They are within sight of the door, ma'am; 
 and very watchful, for some reason or other. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (going). Oh, very well: I'll go to 
 him. 
 
 Waiter (holding the door open for her). Thank you, 
 ma'am. (Ske goes out. He comes back into the room, 
 and meets the eye of Valentine, who wants him to go.) 
 All right, sir. Only the tea-things, sir. (Taking the 
 tray.) Excuse me, sir. Thank you, sir. (He goes out.) 
 
 Valentine (to Gloria). Look here. You will for- 
 give me, sooner or later. Forgive me now. 
 
 Gloria (rising to level the declaration more intensely 
 at him). Never! While grass grows or water runs, 
 never, never, never ! ! ! 
 
 Valentine (unabashed). Well, I don't care. I can't 
 be unhappy about anything. I shall never be unhappy 
 again, never, never, never, while grass grows or water 
 runs. The thought of you will always make me wild 
 with joy. (Some quick taunt is on her lips: he inter- 
 poses swiftly.) No: I never said that before: that's 
 new.
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 305 
 
 Gloria. It will not be new when you say it to the 
 next woman. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, don't, Gloria, don't. (//e kneels 
 at her feet.) 
 
 Gloria. Get up. Get up! How dare you? (Phil 
 and Dolly, racing, as usual, for first place, burst into the 
 room. They check themselves on seeing what is pass- 
 ing. Valentine springs up.) 
 
 Philip (discreetly). I beg your pardon. Come, 
 Dolly, (He turns to go.) 
 
 Gloria (annoyed). Mother will be back in a mo- 
 ment, Phil. (Severely.) Please wait here for her. 
 (She turns away to the ivindoiv, where she stands look- 
 ing out with her back to them.) 
 
 Philip (significantly). Oh, indeed. Hmhm! 
 
 Dolly. Ahah! 
 
 Philip. You seem in excellent spirits, Valentine. 
 
 Valentine. I am. (Coynes between them.) Now 
 look here. You both know what's going on, don't you? 
 (Gloria turns quickly, as if anticipating some fresh out- 
 rage.) 
 
 Dolly. Perfectly. 
 
 Valentine. Well, it's all over. I've been refused — 
 scorned. I'm only here on sufferance. You understand: 
 it's all over. Your sister is in no sense entertaining my 
 addresses, or condescending to interest herself in me in 
 any way. (Gloria, satisfied, turns back contemptuously 
 to the window.) Is that clear? 
 
 Dolly. Serve you right. You were in too great a 
 hurry, 
 
 Philip (patting him on the shoulder). Never mind: 
 you'd never have been able to call your soul your own 
 if she'd married you. You can now begin a new chap- 
 ter in your life. 
 
 Dolly. Chapter seventeen or thereabouts, I should 
 imagine. 
 
 Valentine (much put out by this pleasantry). No:
 
 306 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 don't say things like that. That's just the sort of 
 thoughtless remark that makes a lot of mischief. 
 
 Dolly. Oh, indeed. Hmhm! 
 
 Philip. Ahah ! (//e goes to the hearth and plants 
 himself there in his best head-of -the- family attitude.) 
 
 McComas, looking very serious, comes in quickly with 
 Mrs. Clan don, whose first anxiety is about Gloria. She 
 looks round to see where she is, and is going to join her 
 at the window when Gloria comes down to meet her 
 with a marked air of trust and affection. Finally, Mrs. 
 Clandon takes her former seat, and Gloria posts herself 
 behind it. McComas, on his way to the ottoman, is 
 hailed by Dolly. 
 
 Dolly. What cheer, Finch? 
 
 McComas (sternly). Very serious news from your 
 father. Miss Clandon. Very serious news, indeed. (He 
 crosses to the ottoman, and sits down. Dolly, looking 
 deeply impressed, follows him and sits beside him on 
 his right. ) 
 
 Valentine. Perhaps I had better go. 
 
 McComas. By no means, Mr. Valentine. You are 
 deeply concerned in this. (Valentine takes a chair from 
 the table and sits astride of it, leaning over the back^ 
 near the ottoman.) Mrs. Clandon: your husband de- 
 mands the custody of his two younger children, who are 
 not of age. (Mrs. Clandon, in quick alarm, looks in- 
 stinctively to see if Dolly is safe.) 
 
 Dolly (touched). Oh, how nice of him! He likes 
 us, mamma. 
 
 McComas. I am sorry to have to disabuse you of 
 any such idea. Miss Dorothea. 
 
 Dolly (cooing ecstatically). Dorothee-ee-ee-a ! 
 (Nestling against his shoulder, quite overcome.) Oh, 
 Finch ! 
 
 McComas (nervously, moving away). No, no, no. 
 
 no! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (remonstrating). Dearest Dolly!
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 307 
 
 {To McComas.) The deed of separation gives me the 
 custody of the children. 
 
 McCoMAS. It also contains a covenant that you are 
 not to approach or molest him in any way. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Well, have I done so.'* 
 
 McCoMAS. Whether the behavior of your younger 
 children amounts to legal molestation is a question on 
 which it may be necessary to take counsel's opinion. At 
 all events, Mr. Crampton not only claims to have been 
 molested; but he believes that he was brought here by a 
 plot in which Mr. Valentine acted as your agent. 
 
 Valentine. What's that.'* Eh? 
 
 McCoMAS. He alleges that you drugged him, Mr. 
 Valentine. 
 
 Valentine. So I did. (They are astonished.) 
 
 McCoMAS. But what did you do that for? 
 
 Dolly. Five shillings extra. 
 
 McCojiAS (to Dolly, short-temperedly). 1 must 
 really ask you, Miss Clandon, not to interrupt this very 
 serious conversation with irrelevant interjections. (Ve- 
 hemently.) I insist on having earnest matters earnestly 
 and reverently discussed. (This outburst produces an 
 apologetic silence, and puts McComas himself out of 
 countenance. He coughs, and starts afresh, addressing 
 himself to Gloria.) Miss Clandon: it is my duty to tell 
 you that your father has also persuaded himself that 
 Mr. Valentine wishes to marry you 
 
 Valentine (interposing adroitly). I do. 
 
 McCoMAs (offended). In that case, sir, you must 
 not be surprised to find yourself regarded by the young 
 lady's father as a fortune hunter. 
 
 Valentine. So I am. Do you expect my wife to 
 live on what I earn ? ten-pence a week ! 
 
 McCoMAs (revolted). I have nothing more to say, 
 sir. I shall return and tell Mr, Crampton that this 
 family is no place for a father. (He makes for the 
 door.)
 
 308 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {with quiet authority). Finch! (He 
 halts.) If Mr. Valentine cannot be serious, you can. 
 Sit down. {McCovias, after a brief struggle between his 
 dignity and his friendship, succumbs, seating himself 
 this time midway between Dolly and Mrs. Clandon.) 
 You know that all this is a made up case — that Fergus 
 does not believe in it any more than you do. Now give 
 me your real advice — your sincere, friendly advice: you 
 know I have always trusted your judgment. I promise 
 you the children will be quiet. 
 
 McCoMAs (resigning himself). Well, well! What I 
 want to say is this. In the old arrangement with your 
 husband, Mrs. Clandon, you had him at a terrible dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. How so, pray? 
 
 McCoMAS. Well, you were an advanced woman, ac- 
 customed to defy public opinion, and with no regard for 
 what the world might say of you. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (proud of it). Yes: that is true. 
 (Gloria, behind the chair, stoops and Jcisses her mother's 
 hair, a demonstration which disconcerts her extremely.) 
 
 McComas. On the other hand, Mrs. Clandon, your 
 husband had a great horror of anything getting into the 
 papers. There was his business to be considered, as 
 well as the prejudices of an old-fashioned family. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Not to mention his own prejudices. 
 
 McCoMAS. Now no doubt he behaved badly, Mrs. 
 Clandon 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (scornfully). No doubt. 
 
 McCoMAS. But was it altogether his fault.'' 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Was it mine.^ 
 
 McCoMAs (hastily). No. Of course not. 
 
 Gloria (observing him attentively). You do not 
 mean that, Mr. McComas. 
 
 McCoMAS. My dear young lady, you pick me up 
 very sharply. But let me just put this to you. When a 
 man makes an unsuitable marriage (nobody's fault, you
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 309 
 
 know, but purely accidental incompatibility of tastes) ; 
 when he is deprived by that misfortune of the domestic 
 sympathy which;, I take it, is what a man marries for; 
 when, in short, his wife is rather worse than no wife 
 at all (through no fault of her own, of course), is it to 
 be wondered at if he makes matters worse at first by 
 blaming her, and even, in his desperation, by occa- 
 sionally drinking himself into a violent condition or 
 seeking sympathy elsewhere? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I did not blame him: I simply res- 
 cued myself and the children from him. 
 
 McCoMAS. Yes; but you made hard terms, Mrs. 
 Clandon. You had him at your mercy: you brought him 
 to his knees when you threatened to make the matter 
 public by applying to the Courts for a judicial separa- 
 tion. Suppose he had had that power over you, and used 
 it to take your children away from you and bring them 
 up in ignorance of your very name, how would you feel? 
 what would you do? Well, won't you make some allow- 
 ance for his feelings? — in common humanity. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I never discovered his feelings. I 
 discovered his temper, and his — {she shivers) the rest 
 of his common humanity. 
 
 McComas {wistfully). Women can be very hard, 
 Mrs. Clandon. 
 
 Valentine. That's true. 
 
 Gloria (angrily). Be silent. {He subsides.) 
 
 McComas {rallying all his forces). Let me make one 
 last appeal. Mrs. Clandon: believe me, there are men 
 who have a good deal of feeling, and kind feeling, too, 
 which they are not able to express. What you miss in 
 Crampton is that mere veneer of civilization, the art 
 of shewing worthless attentions and paying insincere 
 compliments in a kindly, charming way. If you lived in 
 London, where the whole system is one of false good- 
 fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years 
 without finding out that he hates you like poison, you
 
 310 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 would soon have your eyes opened. There we do un- 
 kind things in a kind way: we say bitter things in a 
 sweet voice : we always give our friends chloroform when 
 we tear them to pieces. But think of the other side of 
 it! Think of the people who do kind things in an un- 
 kind way — people whose touch hurts, whose voices jar, 
 whose tempers play them false, who wound and Avorry 
 the people they love in the very act of trying to conciliate 
 them, and yet who need affection as much as the rest of 
 us. Crampton has an abominable temper, I admit. He 
 has no manners, no tact, no grace. He'll never be able 
 to gain anyone's affection unless they will take his desire 
 for it on trust. Is he to have none — not even pity — 
 from his own flesh and blood? 
 
 Dolly {quite melted). Oh, how beautiful. Finch! 
 How nice of you! 
 
 Philip (with conviction). Finch: this is eloquence — 
 positive eloquence. 
 
 Dolly. Oh, mamma, let us give him another chance. 
 Let us have him to dinner. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (timnoved). No, Dolly: I hardly got 
 any lunch. My dear Finch: there is not the least use in 
 talking to me about Fergus. You have never been mar- 
 ried to him: I have. 
 
 McCoMAs (to Gloria). Miss Clandon: I have hither- 
 to refrained from appealing to you, because, if what Mr. 
 Crampton told me to be true, you have been more merci- 
 less even than your mother. 
 
 Gloria (defiantly). You appeal from her strength 
 to my weakness ! 
 
 McCoMAs. Not your weakness. Miss Clandon. I ap- 
 peal from her intellect to your heart. 
 
 Gloria. I have learnt to mistrust my heart. (With 
 an angry glance at Valentine.) I would tear my heart 
 out and throw it away if I could. My answer to you is 
 my mother's answer. (She goes to Mrs. Clandon, and 
 stands with her arm about her; but Mrs. Clandon, unable
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 311 
 
 to endure this sort of demonstrativeness, disengages 
 herself as soon as she can without hurting Gloria's 
 feelings.) 
 
 McCoMAs {defeated). Well, I am very sorry — very 
 sorry. I have done my best. {He rises and prepares 
 to go, deeply dissatisfied.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. But what did you expect. Finch? 
 What do you want us to do? 
 
 McCoMAS. The first step for both you and Cramp- 
 ton is to obtain counsel's opinion as to whether he is 
 bound by the deed of separation or not. Now why not 
 obtain this opinion at once, and have a friendly meeting 
 (her face hardens) — or shall we say a neutral meeting? 
 — to settle the difficulty — here — in this hotel — to-night? 
 What do you say? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. But where is the coimsel's opinion 
 to come from? 
 
 McCoMAS. It has dropped down on us out of the 
 clouds. On my way back here from Crampton's I met 
 a most eminent Q.C., a man whom I briefed in the case 
 that made his name for him. He has come down here 
 from Saturday to Monday for the sea air, and to visit 
 a relative of his who lives here. He has been good 
 enough to say that if I can arrange a meeting of the 
 parties he will come and help us with his opinion. Now 
 do let us seize this chance of a quiet friendly family 
 adjustment. Let me bring my friend here and try to 
 persuade Crampton to come, too. Come: consent. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {rather ominously, after a moment's 
 consideration). Finch: I don't want counsel's opinion, 
 because I intend to be guided by my own ojDinion. I 
 don't want to meet Fergus again, because I don't like 
 him, and don't believe the meeting will do any good. 
 However {rising), you have persuaded the children that 
 he is not quite hopeless. Do as you please. 
 
 McCoMAs {taking her hand and shaking it). Thank 
 you^ Mrs. Clandon. Will nine o'clock suit you?
 
 312 You Never Can Tell Act III 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Perfectly. Phil: will you ring, 
 please. {Phil rings the bell.) But if I am to be ac- 
 cused of consj^iring with Mr. Valentine, I think he had 
 better be present. 
 
 Valentine {rising). I quite agree with you. I 
 think it's most important, 
 
 McCoMAS. There can be no objection to that, I think. 
 I have the greatest hopes of a happy settlement. Good- 
 bye for the present. {He goes out, meeting the waiter; 
 who holds the door for him to pass through.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. We expect some visitors at nine, 
 William. Can we have dinner at seven instead of half- 
 past } 
 
 Waiter {at the door). Seven, ma'am .^ Certainly, 
 ma'am. It will be a convenience to us this busy evening, 
 ma'am. There will be the band and the arranging of the 
 fairy lights and one thing or another, ma'am. 
 
 Dolly. The fairy lights ! 
 
 Philip. The band ! William: what mean you? 
 
 Waiter. The fancy ball, miss 
 
 Dolly and Philip {simultaneously rushing to him). 
 Fancy ball ! 
 
 Waiter. Oh, yes, sir. Given by the regatta com- 
 mittee for the benefit of the Life-boat, sir. {To Mrs. 
 Clandon.) We often have them, ma'am: Chinese lan- 
 terns in the garden, ma'am: very bright and pleasant, 
 very gay and innocent indeed. {To Phil.) Tickets 
 downstairs at the office, sir, five shillings: ladies half 
 price if accompanied by a gentleman. 
 
 Philip {seizing his arm to drag him off). To the 
 office, William ! 
 
 Dolly {breathlessly, seizing his other arm). Quick, 
 before they're all sold. {They rush him out of the room 
 between them.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. What on earth are they going to do? 
 {Going out.) I really must go and stop this — {She 
 follows them, speaking as she disappears. Gloria stares
 
 Act III You Never Can Tell 313 
 
 coolly at Valentine, and then deliberately looks at her 
 watch.) 
 
 Valentine. I understand. I've stayed too long. 
 I'm going. 
 
 Gloria (with disdainful 'punctiliousness) . I owe you 
 some apology^ Mr. Valentine. I am conscious of having 
 spoken somewhat sharply — perhaps rudely — to you. 
 
 Valentine. Not at all. 
 
 Gloria. My only excuse is that it is very difficult to 
 give consideration and respect when there is no dignity 
 of character on the other side to command it, 
 
 Valentine {prosaically). How is a man to look 
 dignified when he's infatuated? 
 
 Gloria (effectually unstilted). Don't say those 
 things to me. I forbid you. They are insults. 
 
 Valentine. No: they're only follies. I can't help 
 them. 
 
 Gloria. If you were really in love, it would not 
 make you foolish: it would give you dignity — earnest- 
 ness — even beauty. 
 
 Valentine. Do you really think it would make me 
 beautiful.'' (She turns her hack on him with the coldest 
 contempt.) Ah, you see you're not in earnest. Love 
 can't give any man new gifts. It can only heighten the 
 gifts he was born with. 
 
 Gloria (^sweeping round at him again). What gifts 
 were you born with, pray.'' 
 
 Valentine. Lightness of heart. 
 
 Gloria. And lightness of head, and lightness of 
 faith, and lightness of everything that makes a man. 
 
 Valentine. Yes, the whole world is like a feather 
 dancing in the light now; and Gloria is the sun. (^She 
 rears her head angrily.) I beg your pardon: I'm off. 
 Back at nine. Good-bye. (He runs off gaily, leaving 
 her standing in the middle of the room staring after 
 him.) 
 
 END OF ACT III.
 
 ACT IV 
 
 The same room. Nine o'clock. Nobody present. The 
 lamps are lighted; but the curtains are not drawn. The 
 rvindow stands ivide open; and strings of Chinese lan- 
 terns are glowing among the trees outside, with the 
 starry shy beyond. The band is playing dance-music 
 in the garden, drowning the sound of the sea. 
 
 The waiter enters, shewing in Crampton and Mc- 
 Comas. Crampton looks cowed and anxious. He sits 
 down wearily and timidly on the ottoman. 
 
 Waiter. The ladies have gone for a turn through the 
 grounds to see the fancy dresses, sir. If you will be 
 so good as to take seats, gentlemen, I shall tell them. 
 {He is about to go into the garden through the win- 
 dow when McComas stops him.) 
 
 ]\IcCoMAS. One moment. If another gentleman 
 comes, shew him in without any delay: we are expecting 
 him. 
 
 Waiter. Right, sir. What name, sir? 
 
 McCoMAS. Boon. Mr, Boon. He is a stranger to 
 Mrs. Clandon; so he may give you a card. If so, the 
 name is spelt B.O.H.U.N. You will not forget. 
 
 Waiter (smiling). You may depend on me for that, 
 sir. My own name is Boon, sir, though I am best known 
 down here as Balmy Walters, sir. By rights I should 
 spell it with the aitch you, sir; but I think it best not 
 to take that liberty, sir. There is Norman blood in it, 
 sir; and Norman blood is not a recommendation to a 
 waiter. 
 
 314
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 315 
 
 McCoMAS. Well, well: " True hearts are more than 
 coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood," 
 
 Waiter. That depends a good deal on one's station 
 in life, sir. If j^ou were a waiter, sir, you'd find that 
 simple faith would leave you just as short as Norman 
 blood. I find it best to spell myself B. double-O.N., 
 and to keep my wits pretty sharp about me. But I'm 
 taking up your time, sir. You'll excuse me, sir: your 
 own fault for being so affable, sir. I'll tell the ladies 
 you're here, sir. {He goes out into the garden through 
 the window.^ 
 
 McCoMAS. Crampton: I can depend on you, can't I? 
 
 Crampton. Yes, yes. I'll be quiet. I'll be patient. 
 I'll do my best. 
 
 McComas. Remember: I've not given you away. 
 I've told them it was all their fault. 
 
 Crampton. You told me that it was all my fault. 
 
 McCoMAS. I told you the truth. 
 
 Crampton (plaintively). If they will only be fair 
 to me ! 
 
 McCoMAS. My dear Crampton, they won't be fair 
 to you: it's not to be expected from them at their age. 
 If you're going to make impossible conditions of this 
 kind, we may as well go back home at once. 
 
 Crampton. But surely I have a right 
 
 McCoMAs (intolerantly). You won't get your rights. 
 Now, once for all, Crampton, did your promises of good 
 behavior only mean that you won't complain if there's 
 nothing to complain of.'' Because, if so — (He moves 
 as if to go.) 
 
 Crampton (miserably). No, no: let me alone, can't 
 you.'' I've been bullied enough: I've been tormented 
 enough. I tell you I'll do my best. But if that girl 
 begins to talk to me like that and to look at me like — 
 (He breaks off and buries his head in Jiis hands.) 
 
 McCoMAs (relenting). There, there: it'll be all 
 right, if you will only bear and forbear. Come, pull
 
 316 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 yourself together: tliere's someone coming. (Crampton, 
 too dejected to care much, hardly changes his attitude. 
 Gloria enters from the garden; McComas goes to meet 
 her at the window; so that he can speak to her without 
 being heard by Crampton.) There he is, Miss Clandon. 
 Be kind to him. I'll leave you with him for a moment. 
 (//e goes into the garden. Gloria comes in and strolls 
 coolly down the middle of the room.) 
 
 Crampton {looking round in alarm). Where's Mc- 
 Comas ? 
 
 Gloria (listlessly, but not unsympathetically) . Gone 
 out — to leave us together. Delicacy on his part, I sup- 
 pose. (She stops beside him and looks quaintly down at 
 him.) Well, father? 
 
 Crampton (a quaint jocosity breaking through his 
 forlornness). Well, daughter.'' {They look at one an- 
 other for a moment, with a melancholy sense of humor.) 
 
 Gloria. Shake hands. {They shake hands.) 
 
 Crampton {holding her hand). My dear: I'm afraid 
 I spoke very improj^erly of your mother this afternoon. 
 
 Gloria. Oh, don't apologize. I was very high and 
 mighty myself; but I've come down since: oh, yes: I've 
 been brought down. {She sits down on the floor beside 
 his chair.) 
 
 Crampton. What has happened to you, my child.'' 
 
 Gloria. Oh, never mind. I was playing the part of 
 my mother's daughter then; but I'm not: I'm my father's 
 daughter. {Looking at him funnily.) That's a come 
 down, isn't it.'' 
 
 Crampton {angry). What! {Her odd expression 
 does not alter. He surrenders.) Well, yes, my dear: I 
 suppose it is, I suppose it is. {She nods sympatheti- 
 cally.) I'm afraid I'm sometimes a little irritable; but 
 I know what's right and reasonable all the time, even 
 when I don't act on it. Can you believe that.f" 
 
 Gloria. Believe it! Why, that's myself — myself all 
 over. / know what's right and dignified and strong and
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 317 
 
 noble, just as well as she does; but oil, the things I do! 
 the things I do ! the things I let other people do ! ! 
 
 Crampton (a little grudgingly in spite of himself). 
 As well as she does? You mean your mother? 
 
 Gloria (quickly). Yes, mother. (She turns to him 
 on her knees and seizes his hands.) Now listen. No 
 treason to her: no word, no thought against her. She is 
 our superior — yours and mine — high heavens above us. 
 Is that agreed? 
 
 Crampton. Yes, yes. Just as you please, my dear. 
 
 Gloria (not satisfied, letting go his hands and draw- 
 ing back from him). You don't like her? 
 
 Crampton. My child: you haven't been married to 
 her. I have. (She raises herself slowly to her feet, 
 looking at him with growing coldness.) She did me a 
 great wrong in marrying me without really caring for 
 me. But after that, the wrong was all on my side, I 
 dare say. (He offers her his hand again.) 
 
 Gloria (taking it firmly and warningly). Take care. 
 That's my dangerous subject. My feelings — my miser- 
 able, cowardly, womanly feelings — may be on your side; 
 but my conscience is on hers. 
 
 Crampton. I'm very well content with that division, 
 my dear. Thank you. (Valentine arrives. Gloria im- 
 mediately becomes deliberately haughty.) 
 
 Valentine. Excuse me; but it's impossible to find a 
 servant to announce one: even the never failing William 
 seems to be at the ball. I should have gone myself ; only 
 I haven't five shillings to buy a ticket. How are you get- 
 ting on, Crampton? Better, eh? 
 
 Crampton. I am myself again, Mr. Valentine, no 
 thanks to you. 
 
 Valentine. Look at this ungrateful parent of yours. 
 Miss Clandon ! I saved him from an excruciating pang; 
 and he reviles me ! 
 
 Gloria (coldly). I am sorry my mother is not here 
 to receive you, Mr. Valentine. It is not quite nine
 
 318 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 o'clock; and the gentleman of whom Mr. McComas 
 spoke, the lawyer, is not yet come. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, yes, he is. I've met him and talked 
 to him. {TVith gay malice.) You'll like him. Miss Clan- 
 don: lie's the very incarnation of intellect. You can 
 hear his mind working. 
 
 Gloria {ignoring the jibe). Where is he? 
 
 Valentine. Bought a false nose and gone into the 
 fancy ball. 
 
 Crampton (^crustily, looking at his watch). It seems 
 that everybody has gone to this fancy ball instead of 
 keeping to our appointment here. 
 
 Valentine. Oh, he'll come all right enough: that 
 was half an hour ago. I didn't like to borrow five 
 shillings from him and go in with him; so I joined the 
 mob and looked through the railings until Miss Clan- 
 don disappeared into the hotel through the window. 
 
 Gloria. So it has come to this, that you follow me 
 about in public to stare at me. 
 
 Valentine. Yes : somebody ought to chain me up. 
 
 Gloria turns her back on him and goes to the fireplace. 
 He takes the snub very 'philosophically , and goes to the 
 opposite side of the room. The waiter appears at the 
 window, ushering in Mrs. Clandon and McComas. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (^hurrying in). I am so sorry to have 
 kept you all waiting. 
 
 A grotesquely majestic stranger, in a domino and false 
 nose, with goggles, appears at the window. 
 
 Waiter {to the stranger). Beg pardon, sir; but this 
 is a private apartment, sir. If you will allow me, sir, 
 I will shew you the American bar and supper rooms, 
 sir. This way, sir. 
 
 He goes into the garden, leading the way under the 
 impression that the stranger is following him. The 
 majestic one, however, comes straight into the room to 
 the end of the table, where, with impressive deliberation, 
 he takes off the false nose and then the domino, rolling
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 319 
 
 up the nose in the domino and throwing the bundle on 
 the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He 
 is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and 
 fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasised 
 by stiff black hair, cropped short and oiled, and eye- 
 brows like early Victorian horsehair upholstery. Phys- 
 ically and spiritually, a coarsened man: in cunning and 
 logic, a ruthlessly sharpened one. His bearing as he 
 enters is sufficiently imposing and disquieting; but when 
 he speaks, his powerful, menacing voice, impressively 
 articulated speech, strong inexorable manner, and a ter- 
 rifying power of intensely critical listening raise the 
 impression produced by him to absolute tremendousness. 
 
 The Stranger. My name is Bohun. (General 
 awe.) Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Clandon? 
 (Mrs. Clandon bows. Bohun bows.) Miss Clandon? 
 (Gloria bows. Bohun bows.) Mr, Clandon? 
 
 Crampton (insisting on his rightful name as angrily 
 as he dares). My name is Crampton, sir. 
 
 Bohun. Oh, indeed. (Passing him over without fur- 
 ther notice and turning to Valentine.) Are you Mr. 
 Clandon ? 
 
 Valentine (making it a point of honor not to be im- 
 pressed by him). Do I look like it? My name is Val- 
 entine. I did the drugging. 
 
 Bohun. Ah, quite so. Then Mr. Clandon has not 
 yet arrived? 
 
 Waiter (entering anxiously through the window). 
 Beg pardon, ma'am ; but can you tell me what became of 
 that — (He recognizes Bohun, and loses all his self- 
 possession. Bohun waits rigidly for him to pidl himself 
 together. After a pathetic exhibition of confusion, he 
 recovers himself sufficiently to address Bohun weakly 
 but coherently.) Beg pardon, sir, I'm sure, sir. Was — 
 was it you, sir? 
 
 Bohun (ruthlessly). It was I. 
 
 Waiter (brokenly). Yes, sir. (Unable to restrain
 
 320 You Never Can Tell Act rv 
 
 his tears.) You in a false nose, Walter ! (He sinks 
 faintly into a chair at the table.) I beg your pardon, 
 ma'am, I'm sure. A little giddiness 
 
 BoHUN (commandingly). You will excuse him, Mrs. 
 Clandon, wlien I inform you that he is my father. 
 
 Waiter (Jiearthrohen). Oh, no, no, Walter. A 
 waiter for your father on the top of a false nose ! What 
 will they think of you? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (going to the waiter's chair in her 
 hindest manner). I am delighted to hear it, Mr. Bohun. 
 Your father has been an excellent friend to us since we 
 came here. (Bohun bows gravely.) 
 
 Waiter (shaking his head). Oh, no, ma'am. It's 
 very kind of you — very ladylike and affable indeed, 
 ma'am; but I should feel at a great disadvantage off my 
 own proper footing. Never mind my being the gentle- 
 man's father, ma'am : it is only the accident of birth after 
 all, ma'am. (He gets up feebly.) You'll excuse me, 
 I'm sure, having interrupted your business. (He begins 
 to make his way along the table, supporting himself 
 from chair to chair, with his eye on the door.) 
 
 Bohun. One moment. (The waiter stops, with a 
 sinking heart.) My father was a witness of what passed 
 to-day, was he not, Mrs. Clandon ? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Yes, most of it, I think. 
 
 Bohun. In that case we shall want him. 
 
 Waiter (pleading). I hope it may not be necessary, 
 sir. Busy evening for me, sir, with that ball: very busy 
 evening indeed, sir. 
 
 Bohun (inexorably). We shall want you. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (politely). Sit down, Avon't you? 
 
 Waiter (earnestly). Oh, if you please, ma'am, I 
 really must draw the line at sitting down. I couldn't 
 let myself be seen doing such a thing, ma'am : thank you, 
 I am sure, all the same. (He looks round from face to 
 face wretchedly, with an expression that would melt a 
 heart of stone.)
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 321 
 
 Gloria. Don't let us waste time. William only 
 wants to go on taking care of us. I should like a cup 
 of coffee. 
 
 Waiter {brightening perceptibly). Coffee, miss? 
 (He gives a little gasp of hope.) Certainly, miss. 
 Thank you, miss : very timely, miss, very thoughtful and 
 considerate indeed. (To Mrs. Clandon, timidly hut ex- 
 pectantly.) Anything for you, ma'am? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Er — oh, yes: it's so hot, I think we 
 might have a jug of claret cup. 
 
 Waiter (beaming). Claret cup, ma'am! Certainly, 
 ma'am. 
 
 Gloria. Oh, well, I'll have claret cup instead of cof- 
 fee. Put some cucumber in it. 
 
 Waiter (delighted). Cucumber, miss! yes, miss. 
 (To Bohun.) Anything special for you, sir.f* You don't 
 like cucumber, sir. 
 
 Bohun. If Mrs. Clandon will allow me — syphon — 
 Scotch. 
 
 Waiter. Right, sir. (To Crampton.) Irish for 
 you, sir, I think, sir.'' (Crampton assents with a grunt. 
 The waiter looks enquiringly at Valentine.) 
 
 Valentine. I like the cucumber. 
 
 Waiter. Right, sir. (Summing up.) Claret cup, 
 syphon, one Scotch and one Irish? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. I think that's right. 
 
 Waiter (perfectly happy). Right, ma'am. Directly, 
 ma'am. Thank you. (He ambles off through the window, 
 having sounded the whole gamut of human happiness, 
 from the bottom to the top, in a little over two minutes.) 
 
 McComas. We can begin now, I suppose? 
 
 Bohun. We had better wait until ]\Irs. Clandon's 
 husband arrives. 
 
 Crampton. What d'y' mean? I'm her husband. 
 
 Bohun (instantly pouncing on the inconsistency be- 
 tween this and his previous statement). You said just 
 now that your name was Crampton.
 
 322 You Never Can TeU Act IV 
 
 Crampton. So it is. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon "i 
 Gloria 
 McCoMAs 
 Valentine 
 
 (all four 
 speaking 
 simul- 
 taneously). 
 
 I 
 
 My- 
 Mrs.- 
 You- 
 
 BoHUN {drowning them in two thunderous words). 
 One moment. {Dead silence.) Pray allow me. Sit 
 down everybody. {They obey humbly. Gloria takes 
 the saddle-bag chair on the hearth. Valentine slips 
 around to her side of the room and sits on the ottoman 
 facing the window, so that he can looJc at her. Cramp- 
 ton sits on the ottoman with his back to Valentine's. 
 Mrs. Clandon, who has all along kept at the opposite side 
 of the room in order to avoid Crampton as much as pos- 
 sible, sits near the door, with McComas beside her on 
 her left. Bohun places himself magisterially in the 
 centre of the group, near the corner of the table on Mrs. 
 Clandon's side. When they are settled, he fixes Cramp- 
 ion with his eye, and begins.) In this family, it ap- 
 pears, the husband's name is Crampton : the wife's Clan- 
 don. Thus we have on the very threshold of the case 
 an element of confusion. 
 
 Valentine {getting up and speaking across to him 
 with one knee on the ottoman). But it's perfectly 
 simple. 
 
 BoHUN {annihilating him with a vocal thunderbolt). 
 It is. Mrs. Clandon has adopted another name. That 
 is the obvious explanation which you feared I could not 
 find out for myself. You mistrust my intelligence, Mr. 
 Valentine — {Stopping him as he is about to protest.) 
 No: I don't want you to answer that: I want you to 
 think over it when you feel your next impulse to inter-v 
 rupt me. 
 
 Valentine {dazed). This is simply breaking a but- 
 terfly on a wheel. What does it matter.? {He sits down 
 again.) 
 
 BoHUN. I will tell you what it matters, sir. It mat-
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 823 
 
 ters that if this family difference is to be smoothed over 
 as we all hope it may be, Mrs. Clandon, as a matter of 
 social convenience and decency, will have to resume her 
 husband's name. (Mrs. Clandon assumes an expression 
 of the most determined obstinacy.^ Or else Mr. Cramp- 
 ton will have to call himself Mr. Clandon. (Crampton 
 looks indomitably resolved to do nothing of the sort.) 
 No doubt you think that an easy matter, ISIr. Valentine. 
 {He looks pointedly at Mrs. Clandon, then at Cramp- 
 ton.) I differ from you. (He throws himself back in 
 his chair, frorvning heavily.) 
 
 McCoMAs (timidly). I think, Bohun, we had per- 
 haps better dispose of the important questions first. 
 
 Bohun. McComas: there will be no difficulty about 
 the important questions. There never is. It is the trifles 
 that will wreck you at the harbor mouth. (McCornas 
 looks as if he considered this a paradox.) You don't 
 agree with me, eh? 
 
 McCoMAS (flatteringly). If I did 
 
 Bohun (interrupting him). If you did, you would 
 be me, instead of being what you are. 
 
 McCoMAS (fawning on him). Of course, Bohun, 
 your specialty 
 
 Bohun (again interrupting him). My specialty is 
 being right when other people are wrong. If you agreed 
 with me I should be no use here. (He nods at him to 
 drive the point home; then turns suddenly and forcibly 
 on Crampton.) Now you, Mr. Crampton: what point in 
 this business have you most at heart.'' 
 
 Crampton (beginning slowly). I wish to put all 
 considerations of self aside in this matter 
 
 Bohun (interrupting him). So do we all, Mr. 
 Crampton. (To Mrs. Clandon.) You wish to put self 
 aside, ]\Irs. Clandon? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Yes: I am not consulting my own 
 feelings in being here. 
 
 Bohun. So do you, Miss Clandon?
 
 324 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 Gloria. Yes. 
 
 BoHUN. I thought so. We all do. 
 
 Valentine. Except me. My aims are selfish. 
 
 BoHUN. That's because you think an impression of 
 sincerity will produce a better effect on Miss Clandon 
 than an impression of disinterestedness. (Valentine, 
 utterly dismantled and destroyed by this just remark, 
 takes refuge in a feeble, speechless smile. Bohun, sat- 
 isfied at having now effectually crushed all rebellion, 
 Ihrows himself back in his chair, with an air of being 
 prepared to listen tolerantly to their grievances.^ Now, 
 Mr. Crampton, go on. It's understood that self is put 
 tiside. Human nature always begins by saying that. 
 
 Crampton. But I mean it, sir. 
 
 Bohun. Quite so. Now for your point. 
 
 Crampton. Every reasonable person will admit that 
 it's an unselfish one — the children. 
 
 Bohun. Well? What about the children? 
 
 Crampton {n-ith emotion). They have 
 
 Bohun {pouncing forward again). Stop. You're 
 going to tell nie about your feelings, Mr, Crampton. 
 Don't: I sympathize with them; but they're not my busi- 
 ness. Tell us exactly what you want: that's what we 
 have to get at. 
 
 Crampton (uneasily). It's a very difficult question 
 to answer, Mr. Bohun. 
 
 Bohun. Come: I'll help you out. What do you ob- 
 ject to in the present circumstances of the children? 
 
 Crampton. I object to the way they have been 
 brought up. 
 
 Bohun. How do you propose to alter that now? 
 
 Crampton. I think they ought to dress more quietl}'. 
 
 Valentine. Nonsense. 
 
 Bohun (instantly flinging himself back in his chair, 
 outraged by the interruption) . When you are done, Mr. 
 Valentine — when you are quite done. 
 
 Valentine. What's wrong with Miss Clandon's dress ?
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 325 
 
 Crampton (hotly to Valentine). My opinion is as 
 good as yours. 
 
 Gloria {warningly). Father! 
 
 Crampton {subsiding piteously). I didn't mean you, 
 my dear. {Pleading earnestly to Bohun.) But the two 
 younger ones ! you have not seen them, Mr. Bohun ; and 
 indeed I think you would agree with me that there is 
 something very noticeable, something almost gay and 
 frivolous in their style of dressing. 
 
 ]Mrs. Clandon (impatiently). Do you suppose I 
 choose their clothes for them? Really this is childish. 
 
 Crampton (furious, rising). Childish! (Mrs. Clan- 
 don rises indignantly.) 
 
 McCoMAs 
 Valentine 
 
 (all ris- 
 ing and 
 speaking 
 together).^ 
 
 Crampton, you promised- 
 
 Ridiculous. They dress charm- 
 ingly. 
 
 Gloria j together).] Pray let us behave reasonably. 
 
 Tumult. Suddenly they hear a chime of glasses in the 
 room behind them. They turn in silent surprise and find 
 that the waiter has just come back from, the bar in the 
 garden, and is jingling his tray rvarningly as he comes 
 softly to the table with it. 
 
 Waiter (to Crampton, setting a tumbler apart on the 
 table). Irish for you, sir. (Crampton sits down a little 
 shamefacedly. The waiter sets another tumbler and a 
 syphon apart, saying to Bohun) Scotch and syphon for 
 you, sir. (Bohun waves his hand impatiently. The 
 waiter places a large glass jug in the middle.) And 
 claret cup. (All subside into their seats. Peace reigns.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (humbly to Bohun). I am afraid we 
 interrupted you, Mr. Bohun. 
 
 Bohun (calmly). You did. (To the waiter, who is 
 going out.) Just wait a bit. 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. (He takes his 
 stand behind Bohun's chair.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (to the waiter). You don't mind our 
 detaining you, I hope. Mr. Bohun wishes it.
 
 326 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 Waiter (now quite at his ease). Oh, no, ma'am, not at 
 all, ma'am. It is a pleasure to me to watch the working 
 of his trained and powerful mind — very stimulating, 
 very entertaining and instructive indeed, ma'am. 
 
 BoHUN (resuming command of the proceedings). 
 Now, Mr. Crampton: we are waiting for you. Do you 
 give up your objection to the dressing, or do you stick 
 to it? 
 
 Crampton (pleading). Mr. Bohun: consider my 
 position for a moment. I haven't got myself alone to 
 consider: there's my sister Sophronia and my brother- 
 in-law and all their circle. They have a great horror of 
 anything that is at all — at all — well 
 
 Bohun. Out with it. Fast? Loud? Gay? 
 
 Crampton. Not in any tmprincipled sense of course; 
 but — but — (blurting it out desperately) those two chil- 
 dren would shock them. They're not fit to mix with 
 their own people. That's what I complain of. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (with suppressed impatience). Mr. 
 Valentine: do you think there is anything fast or loud 
 about Phil and Dolly? 
 
 Valentine. Certainly not. It's utter bosh. Noth- 
 ing can be in better taste. 
 
 Crampton. Oh, yes: of course you say so. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. William: you see a great deal of 
 good English society. Are my children overdressed? 
 
 Waiter (reassuringly). Oh, dear, no, ma'am. (Per- 
 suasively.) Oh, no, sir, not at all. A little pretty and 
 tasty no doubt; but very choice and classy — very genteel 
 and high toned indeed. IMight be the son and daughter 
 of a Dean, sir, I assure you, sir. You have only to look 
 at them, sir, to — (At this moment a harlequin and colum- 
 bine, dancing to the music of the band in the garden, 
 which has just reached the coda of a waltz, whirl one 
 another into the room. The harlequin's dress is made of 
 lozenges, an inch square, of turquoise blue silk and gold 
 alternately. His hat is gilt and his mask turned up.
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 827 
 
 The columbine's petticoats are the epitome of a harvest 
 field, golden orange and poppy crimson, with a tiny velvet 
 jacket for the poppy stamens. They pass, an exquisite 
 and dazzling apparition, hetrveen McComas and Bohun, 
 and then hack in a circle to the end of the table, rvhere, 
 as the final chord of the waltz is struck, they make a 
 tableau in the middle of the company, the harlequin 
 down on his left knee, and the columbine standing on his 
 right knee, with her arms curved over her head. Unlike 
 their dancing, which is charmingly gracefid, their atti- 
 tudinising is hardly a success, and threatens to end in a 
 catastrophe.) 
 
 The Columbine {screaming). Lift me down, some- 
 body: I'm going to fall. Papa: lift me down. 
 
 Crampton (anxiously running to her and taking her 
 hands). My child! 
 
 Dolly {jumping down with his help). Thanks: so 
 nice of you. {Phil, putting his hat into his belt, sits on 
 the side of the table and pours out some claret cup. 
 Crampton returns to his place on the ottoman in great 
 perplexity.) Oh, what fun! Oh, dear. {She seats her- 
 self with a vault on the front edge of the table, panting.) 
 Oh, claret cup ! {She drinks.) 
 
 BoHUN {in powerful tones). This is the younger 
 lady, is it? 
 
 Dolly {slipping down off the table in alarm at his 
 formidable voice and manner). Yes, sir. Please, who 
 are you? 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. This is Mr. Bohun, Dolly, who has 
 very kindly come to help us this evening. 
 
 Dolly. Oh, then he comes as a boon and a bless- 
 jjig- 
 
 Philip. Sh! 
 
 Crampton. Mr. Bohun — McComas: I appeal to you. 
 Is this right? Would you blame my sister's family for 
 objecting to this? 
 
 Dolly {flushing ominously). Have you begun again?
 
 328 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 Crampton (propitiating her). No, no. It's perhaps 
 natural at your age. 
 
 Dolly {obstinately). Never mind my age. Is it 
 pretty .'' 
 
 Crampton. Yes, dear, yes. {He sits dorvn in token 
 of s2ib77iission.) 
 
 Dolly {follorving him insistently). Do you like it? 
 
 Crampton. My child: how can you expect me to like 
 it or to approve of it? 
 
 Dolly {determined not to let him off). How can you 
 think it pretty and not like it? 
 
 McCoMAS {rising, angry and scandalised). Really I 
 must say — {Bohun, who has listened to Dolly with the 
 highest approval, is down on him instantly.) 
 
 Bohun. No: don't interrupt, McComas. The young 
 lady's method is right. {To Dolly, with tremendous em- 
 phasis.) Press your questions. Miss Clandon: press 
 your questions. 
 
 Dolly {turning to Bohun). Oh, dear, you are a 
 regular overwhelmer ! Do you always go on like this ? 
 
 Bohun {rising). Yes. Don't you try to put me out 
 of countenance, young lady: you're too young to do it. 
 {He takes McComas's chair from beside Mrs. Clandon's, 
 and sets it beside his own.) Sit down. {Dolly, fasci- 
 nated, obeys; and Bohun sits down again. McComas, 
 robbed of his seat, takes a chair on the other side be- 
 tween the table and the ottoman.) Now, Mr. Crampton, 
 the facts are before you — both of them. You think 
 you'd like to have your two youngest children to live 
 with you. Well, you wouldn't — {Crampton tries to pro- 
 test; but Bohun will not have it on any terms.) No, you 
 wouldn't: you think you would; but I know better than 
 you. You'd want this young lady here to give up dress- 
 ing like a stage columbine in the evening and like a 
 fashionable columbine in the morning. Well, she won't 
   — never. She thinks she will; but 
 
 Dolly {interrupting him). No I don't. {Reso-
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 329 
 
 lutely.) I'll never give up dressing prettily. Never. 
 As Gloria said to that man in Madeira, never, never, 
 never while grass grows or water runs. 
 
 Valentine (rising in the wildest agitation). What! 
 What! (Beginning to speak very fast.) When did she 
 say that? Who did she say that to? 
 
 BoHUN (throwing himself hack with massive, pitying 
 remonstrance). Mr. Valentine 
 
 Valentine (pepperily). Don't you interrupt me, 
 sir: this is something really serious. I insist on know- 
 ing who Miss Clandon said that to. 
 
 Dolly. Perhaps Phil remembers. Which was it, 
 Phil? number three or number five? 
 
 Valentine. Number five!!! 
 
 Philip. Courage, Valentine. It wasn't number five: 
 it was only a tame naval lieutenant that was always on 
 hand — the most patient and harmless of mortals. 
 
 Gloria (coldly). WTiat are we discussing now, pray? 
 
 Valentine (very red). Excuse me: I am sorry I 
 interrupted. I shall intrude no further, Mrs. Clandon. 
 (He hows to Mrs. Clandon and marches away into the 
 garden, boiling with suppressed rage.) 
 
 Dolly. Hmhm ! 
 
 Philip. Ahah ! 
 
 Gloria. Please go on, Mr. Bohun. 
 
 Dolly (striking in as Bohun, frowning formidably, 
 collects himself for a fresh grapple with the case). 
 You're going to bully us, Mr. Bohun. 
 
 Bohun. I 
 
 Dolly (interrupting him). Oh, yes, you are: you 
 think you're not; but you are. I know by your eye- 
 brows. 
 
 Bohun (capitulating). Mrs. Clandon: these are 
 clever children — clear headed, well brought up children. 
 I make that admission deliberately. Can you, in return, 
 point out to me any way of inducing them to hold their 
 tongues ?
 
 330 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Dolly, dearest ! 
 
 Philip. Our old failing, Dolly. Silence! (Dolly 
 holds her mouth.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Now, Mr. Bohnn, before they be- 
 gin again 
 
 Waiter (softly). Be quick, sir: be quick. 
 
 Dolly (beaming at him). Dear William! 
 
 Philip. Sh ! 
 
 BoHUN (unexpectedly beginning by hurling a question 
 straight at Dolly). Have you any intention of getting 
 married .'' 
 
 Dolly. I ! Well, Finch calls me by my Christian 
 name. 
 
 McCoMAS. I will not have this. ]\Ir. Bohun: I use 
 the young lady's Christian name naturally as an old 
 friend of her mother's. 
 
 Dolly. Yes, you call me Dolly as an old friend of 
 my mother's. But what about Dorothee-ee-a.'' (Mc- 
 Comas rises indignantly.) 
 
 Crampton (anxiously, rising to restrain him). Keep 
 your temper, McComas. Don't let us quarrel. Be pa- 
 tient. 
 
 McCoMAS. I will not be patient. You are shewing 
 the most wretched weakness of character, Crampton. I 
 say this is monstrous. 
 
 Dolly. i\Ir. Bohun: please bully Finch for us. 
 
 Bohun. I will. McComas: you're making yourself 
 ridiculous. Sit down. 
 
 McCoMAs. I 
 
 Bohun (rvaving him down imperiously). No: sit 
 down, sit down. (McComas sits down sulkily; and 
 Crampton, much relieved, follows his example.) 
 
 Dolly (to Bohun, meekly). Thank you. 
 
 Bohun. Now, listen to me, all of you. I give no 
 opinion, McComas, as to how far you may or may not 
 have committed yourself in the direction indicated by 
 this young lady. (McComas is about to protest.) No:
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 331 
 
 don't interrupt me : if she doesn't marry you she will 
 marry somebody else. That is the solution of the diffi- 
 culty as to her not bearing her father's name. The other 
 lady intends to get married. 
 
 Gloria (flushing). Mr. Bohun ! 
 
 BoHUN. Oh, yes, you do: you don't know it; but you 
 do. 
 
 Gloria (rising). Stop. I warn you, Mr. Bohtm, not 
 to answer for my intentions. 
 
 BoHUN (rising). It's no use. Miss Clandon: you 
 can't put me down. I tell you your name will soon be 
 neither Clandon nor Crampton; and I could tell you 
 what it will be if I chose. (He goes to the other end of 
 the table, where he unrolls his domino, and puts the false 
 nose on the table. When he moves they all rise; and 
 Phil goes to the rvindow. Bohun, with a gesture, sum- 
 mons the waiter to help him in rohing.) Mr. Crampton: 
 your notion of going to law is all nonsense: your children 
 will be of age before you could get the point decided. 
 (Allowing the waiter to put the domino on his shoul- 
 ders.) You can do nothing but make a friendly arrange- 
 ment. If you want your family more than they want 
 you, you'll get the worse of the arrangement: if they 
 want you more than you want them, you'll get the better 
 of it. (He shakes the domino into becoming folds and 
 takes up the false nose. Dolly gazes admiringly at 
 him.) The strength of their position lies in their being 
 very agreeable people personally. The strength of your 
 position lies in your income. (He claps on the false 
 nose, and is again grotesquely transfigured.) 
 
 Dolly (running to him). Oh, now you look quite 
 like a human being. IMayn't I have just one dance with 
 you? Can you dance? (Phil, resuming his part of 
 harlequin, waves his hat as if casting a spell on them.) 
 
 BoHUN (thunderously). Yes: you think I can't; but 
 I can. Come along. (He seises her and dances off with 
 her through the window in a most powerful manner.
 
 332 You Never Can TeU Act IV 
 
 but with studied propriety and grace. The waiter is 
 meanwhile busy putting the chairs back in their cus- 
 tomary places.) 
 
 Philip, " On with the dance: let joy be unconfined." 
 William ! 
 
 Waiter. Yes, sir. 
 
 Philip. Can you procure a couple of dominos and 
 false noses for my father and Mr. McComas? 
 
 McCoMAS. Most certainly not. I protest   
 
 Crampton. No, no. What harm will it do, just for 
 once, McComas.'' Don't let us be spoil-sports. 
 
 McCoMAs. Crampton: you are not the man I took 
 you for. (Pointedly.) Bullies are always cowards. 
 (He goes disgustedly towards the window.) 
 
 Crampton (following him). Well, never mind. We 
 must indulge them a little. Can you get us something 
 to wear, waiter.^ 
 
 Waiter. Certainly, sir. (He precedes them to the 
 window, and stands aside there to' let them, pass out be- 
 fore him.) This way, sir. Dominos and noses, sir? 
 
 McCoMAs (angrily, on his way out). I shall wear my 
 own nose. 
 
 Waiter (suavely). Oh, dear, yes, sir: the false one 
 will fit over it quite easily, sir: plenty of room, sir, 
 plenty of room. (He goes out after McComas.) 
 
 Crampton (turning at the window to Phil with an 
 attempt at genial fatherliness). Come along, my boy, 
 come along. (He goes.) 
 
 Philip (cheerily, following him). Coming, dad, 
 coming. (On the window threshold, he stops; looks 
 after Crampton; then turns fantastically with his hat 
 bent into a halo round his head, and says with lowered 
 voice to Mrs. Clandon and Gloria) Did you feel the 
 pathos of that.^ (He vanishes.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (left alone with Gloria). Why did 
 Mr. Valentine go away so suddenly, I wonder? 
 
 Gloria (petulantly). I don't know. Yes, I do
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 333 
 
 know. Let us go and see the dancing. {They go to- 
 wards the window, and are met by Valentine, who comes 
 in from the garden walking quickly, with his face set 
 and sulky.) 
 
 Valentine (stiffly). Excuse me. I thought the 
 party had quite broken up. 
 
 Gloria (nagging). Then why did you come back? 
 
 Valentine, I came back because I am penniless. I 
 can't get out that way without a five shilling ticket. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Has anything annoyed you, Mr. 
 Valentine ? 
 
 Gloria. Never mind him, mother. This is a fresh 
 insult to me: that is all. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (hardly able to 'realize that Gloria is 
 deliberately provoking an altercation). Gloria! 
 
 Valentine. Mrs, Clandon: have I said anything in- 
 sulting,'' Have I done anything insulting? 
 
 Gloria. You have implied that my past has been 
 like yours. That is the worst of insults. 
 
 Valentine. I imply nothing of the sort. I declare 
 that my past has been blameless in comparison with 
 yours. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (most indignantly). Mr. Valentine! 
 
 Valentine. Well, what am I to think when I learn 
 that Miss Clandon has made exactly the same speeches to 
 other men that she has made to me — when I hear of at 
 least five former lovers, with a tame naval lieutenant 
 thrown in? Oh, it's too bad. 
 
 Mrs, Clandon. But you surely do not believe that 
 these affairs — mere jokes of the children's — were seri- 
 ous, Mr. Valentine? 
 
 Valentine. Not to you — not to her, perhaps. But 
 I know what the men felt. (With ludicrously genuine 
 earnestness.) Have you ever thought of the wrecked 
 lives, the marriages contracted in the recklessness of de- 
 spair, the suicides, the — the — the 
 
 Gloria (interrupting him contemptuously). Mother:
 
 334 Tou Never Can Tell Act iv 
 
 this man is a sentimental idiot. {She sweeps away to the 
 fireplace. ) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (shocked). Oh, my dearest Gloria, 
 Mr. Valentine will think tlaat rude. 
 
 Valentine. I am not a sentimental idiot. I am 
 cured of sentiment for ever. (He sits down in duda- 
 eon.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon. Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us 
 all. Women have to unlearn the false good manners of 
 their slavery before they acquire the genuine good man- 
 ners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar 
 (Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so. 
 
 Gloria. Mother! You apologize for me to him! 
 Mrs. Clandon. My dear: you have some of the 
 faults of youth as well as its qualities; and Mr. Valen- 
 tine seems rather too old fashioned in his ideas about liis 
 own sex to like being called an idiot. And now had we 
 not better go and see what Dolly is doing .^ (She goes 
 towards the window. Valentine rises.) 
 
 Gloria. Do you go, mother. I wish to speak to Mr. 
 Valentine alone. 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (startled into a remonstrance). My 
 dear! (Recollecting herself.) I beg your pardon, 
 Gloria. Certainly, if you wish. (She hows to Valentine 
 and goes out.) 
 
 Valentine. Oh, if your mother were only a widow! 
 She's worth six of you. 
 
 Gloria. That is the first thing I have heard you say 
 that does you honor. 
 
 Valentine. StuiF! Come: say what you want to 
 say and let me go. 
 
 Gloria. I have only this to say. You dragged me 
 down to your level for a moment this afternoon. Do you 
 think, if that had ever happened before, that I should 
 not have been on my guard — that I should not have 
 known what was coming, and known my own miserable 
 weakness }
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 335 
 
 Valentine (scolding at her passionately'). Don't 
 talk of it in that way. What do I care for anything in 
 you but your weakness, as you call it? You thought 
 yourself very safe, didn't you, behind your advanced 
 ideas! I amused myself by upsetting them pretty 
 easily. 
 
 Gloria (insolently , feeling that now she can do as she 
 likes with him). Indeed! 
 
 Valentine. But why did I do it? Because I was 
 being tempted to awaken your heart — to stir the depths 
 in you. Why was I tempted? Because Nature was in 
 deadly earnest with me when I was in jest witli her. 
 When the great moment came, who was awakened? who 
 was stirred? in whom did the depths break up? In my- 
 self — myself: I was transported: you were only of- 
 fended — shocked. You were only an ordinary young 
 lady, too ordinarj^ to allow tame lieutenants to go as far 
 as I went. That's all. I shall not trouble you with con- 
 ventional apologies. Good-bye. (He makes resolutely 
 for the door.) 
 
 Gloria. Stop. (He hesitates.) Oh, will you under- 
 stand, if I tell you the truth, that I am not making an 
 advance to you? 
 
 Valentine. Pooh ! I know what you're going to 
 say. You think you're not ordinarj^ — that I was right — 
 that you really have those depths in your nature. It flat- 
 ters you to believe it. (She recoils.) W^ell, I grant that 
 you are not ordinary in some ways: you are a clever girl 
 (Gloria stifles an exclamation of rage, and takes a 
 threatening step towards him) ; but you've not been 
 awakened yet. You didn't care: you don't care. It was 
 my tragedy, not yours. Good-bye. (He turns to the 
 door. She watches him, appalled to see him slipping 
 from her grasp. As he turns the handle, he pauses; 
 then turns again to her, offering his hand.) Let us part 
 kindly. 
 
 Gloria (enormously relieved, and immediately turn-
 
 336 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 ing her hack on him deliberately.^ Good-bye. I trust 
 you will soon recover from the wound. 
 
 Valentine {brightening up as it flashes on him that 
 he is master of the situation after all). I shall recover: 
 such wounds heal more than they harm. After all, I 
 still have my own Gloria. 
 
 Gloria (facing him quickly). What do you mean? 
 
 Valentine. The Gloria of my imagination. 
 
 Gloria (proudly). Keep your own Gloria — the 
 Gloria of your imagination. (Her emotion begins to 
 break through her pride.) The real Gloria — the Gloria 
 who was shocked, offended, horrified — oh, yes, quite 
 truly — who was driven almost mad with shame by the 
 feeling that all her power over herself had broken down 
 at her first real encounter with — with — (The color 
 rushes over her face again. She covers/ it with her left 
 hand, and puts her right on his left arm to support 
 herself.) 
 
 Valentine. Take care. I'm losing my senses again. 
 (Summoning all her courage, she takes away her hand 
 from her face and puts it on his right shoulder, turn- 
 ing him towards her and looking him straight in the 
 eyes. He begins to protest agitatedly.) Gloria: be 
 sensible: it's no use: I haven't a penny in the world. 
 
 Gloria. Can't you earn one? Other people do. 
 
 Valentine (half delighted, half frightened). I 
 never could — you'd be unhappy — My dearest love: I 
 should be the merest fortune-hunting adventurer if — 
 (Her grip of his arms tightens; and she kisses him.) 
 Oh, Lord! (Breathless.) Oh, I — (He gasps.) I 
 don't know anything about women: twelve years' ex- 
 perience is not enough. (J?i a gust of jealousy she 
 throws him away from her; and he reels back into the 
 chair like a leaf before the wind, as Dolly dances in, 
 waltzing with the waiter, followed by Mrs. Clandon and 
 Finch, also waltzing, and Phil pirouetting by himself.) 
 
 Dolly (sinking on the chair at the writing-table).
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 337 
 
 Oh, I'm out of breath. How beautifully you waltz, 
 William ! 
 
 Mrs. Clandon (sinJiing on the saddlebag seat on the 
 hearth). Oh, how could you make me do such a silly 
 thing, Finch ! I haven't danced since the soiree at South 
 Place twenty years ago. 
 
 Gloria (peremptorily at Valentine). Get up. {Val- 
 entine gets up abjectly.) Now let us have no false deli- 
 cacy. Tell my mother that we have agreed to marry one 
 another. (A silence of stupefaction ensues. Valentine, 
 dumb rvith panic, looks at them with an obvious impulse 
 to run away.) 
 
 Dolly (breaking the silence). Number Six! 
 
 Philip. Sh ! 
 
 Dolly (tumultuously). Oh, my feelings! I want to 
 kiss somebody; and we bar it in the family. Where's 
 Finch ? 
 
 McCoMAS (starting violently). No, positively — • 
 (Crampton appears at the nindorv.) 
 
 Dolly (running to Crampton). Oh, you're just in 
 time. (She kisses him.) Now (leading him forward) 
 bless them. 
 
 Gloria. No. I will have no such thing, even in jest. 
 When I need a blessing, I shall ask my mother's. 
 
 Crampton (to Gloria, with deep disappointment). 
 Am I to understand that you have engaged yourself to 
 this young gentleman? 
 
 Gloria (resolutely). Yes. Do you intend to be our 
 friend or 
 
 Dolly (interposing). — or our father? 
 
 Crampton. I should like to be both, my child. But 
 surely — ! Mr. Valentine: I appeal to your sense of 
 honor. 
 
 Valentine. You're quite right. It's perfect mad- 
 ness. If we go out to dance together I shall have to 
 borrow five shillings from her for a ticket. Gloria : don't 
 be rash: you're throwing yourself away. I'd much bet-
 
 338 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 ter clear straight out of this^ and never see any of you 
 again. I shan't commit suicide: I shan't even be un- 
 happy. It'll be a relief to me: I — I'm frightened, I'm 
 positively frightened; and that's the plain truth. 
 
 Gloria {determinedly^ . You shall not go. 
 
 Valentine (quailing). No, dearest: of course not. 
 But — oh, will somebody only talk sense for a moment 
 and bring us all to reason ! / can't. Where's Bohun ? 
 Bohun's the man. Phil: go and summon Bohun 
 
 Philip. From the vasty deep. I go. (He makes his 
 hat quiver in the air and darts away through the window.) 
 
 Waiter {harmoniously to Valentine). If you vpill 
 excuse my putting in a word, sir, do not let a matter of 
 five shillings stand betAveen you and your happiness, sir. 
 We shall be only too pleased to put the ticket down to 
 you: and you can settle at your convenience. Very glad 
 to meet you in any way, very happy and pleased indeed, 
 sir. 
 
 Philip {re-appearing). He comes. {He waves his 
 bat over the window. Bohun comes in, taking off his 
 false nose and throwing it on the table in passing as he 
 comes between Gloria and Valentine.) 
 
 Valentine. The point is, Mr. Bohim 
 
 McCoMAs {interrupting from the hearthrug). Ex- 
 cuse me, sir: the point must be put to him by a solicitor. 
 The question is one of an engagement between these two 
 young people. The lady has some property, and {look- 
 ing at Crampton) will probably have a good deal more. 
 
 Crampton. Possibly. I hope so. 
 
 Valentine. And the gentleman hasn't a rap. 
 
 Bohun {nailing Valentine to the point instantly). 
 Then insist on a settlement. That shocks your delicacy: 
 most sensible precautions do. But you ask my advice; 
 and I give it to you. Have a settlement. 
 
 Gloria {proudly). He shall have a settlement. 
 
 Valentine. ]\Iy good sir, I don't want advice for 
 myself. Give her some advice.
 
 Act IV You Never Can Tell 339 
 
 BoHUN. She won't take it. When you're married, 
 she won't take yours either — (turning suddenly on 
 Gloria) oh, no, you won't: you think you will; but you 
 won't. He'll set to work and earn his living — {turning 
 suddenly on Valentine) oh, yes, you will: you think you 
 won't; but you will. She'll make you. 
 
 Crampton {only half persuaded). Then, Mr. Bohim, 
 you don't think this match an imwise one ? 
 
 BoHUN. Yes, I do: all matches are imwise. It's un- 
 wise to be born ; it's unwise to be married ; it's unwise to 
 live; and it's wise to die. 
 
 Waiter {insinuating himself between Crampton and 
 Valentine). Then, if I may respectfully put a word in, 
 sir, so much the worse for wisdom! {To Valentine, be- 
 nignly.) Cheer up, sir, cheer up: every man is fright- 
 ened of marriage when it comes to the point ; but it often 
 turns out very comfortable, very enjoyable and happy 
 indeed, sir — from time to time. I never was master in 
 my own house, sir: my wife was like your young lady: 
 she was of a commanding and masterful disposition, 
 which my son has inherited. But if I had my life to 
 live twice over, I'd do it again, I'd do it again, I assure 
 you. You never can tell, sir: you never can tell. 
 
 Philip. Allow me to remark that if Gloria has made 
 up her mind 
 
 Dolly. The matter's settled and Valentine's done 
 for. And we're missing all the dances. 
 
 Valentine {to Gloria, gallantly making the best of 
 it). May I have a dance 
 
 BoHUN {interposing in his grandest diapason). Ex- 
 cuse me: I claim that privilege as counsel's fee. May I 
 have the honor — thank you. {He dances arvay with 
 Gloria and disappears among the lanterns, leaving Val- 
 entine gasping.) 
 
 Valentine {recovering his breath). Dolly: may I — 
 (offering himself as her partner) ? 
 
 Dolly. Nonsense! {Eluding him and running
 
 340 You Never Can Tell Act IV 
 
 round the table to the fireplace.') Finch — my Finch! 
 (iS/ie pounces on McComas and makes him dance.) 
 
 McCoMAS {protesting). Pray restrain — really — 
 {He is borne off dancing through the rvindow.) 
 
 Valentine {making a last effort). Mrs. Clandon: 
 may I 
 
 Philip {forestalling him). Come, mother. {He 
 seises his mother and whirls her away.) 
 
 Mrs. Clandon {remonstrating). Phil, Phil — {She 
 shares McComas's fate.) 
 
 Crampton {following them with senile glee). Ho! 
 ho ! He ! he ! he ! {He goes into the garden chuckling 
 at the fun.) 
 
 Valentine {collapsing on the ottoman and staring at 
 the waiter). I might as well be a married man already. 
 {The waiter contemplates the captured Duellist of Sex 
 with affectionate commiseration^ shaking his head 
 sloivly.) 
 
 curtain.
 
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