Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (24 page)

MORELL
[philosophically]
She seems to bear it pretty well.
[Looking him straight in the face.
Eugene, my boy: you are making a fool of yourself—a very great fool of yourself. There's a piece of wholesome plain speaking for you.

MARCHBANKS Oh, do you think I don't know all that? Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about?
[MORELL's gaze wavers for the first time. He instinctively averts his face and stands listening, startled and thoughtful.]
They are more true: they are the only things that are true. You are very calm and sensible and moderate with me because you can see that I am a fool about your wife; just as no doubt that old man who was here just now is very wise over your socialism, because he sees that y o u are a fool about it.
[MORELL's perplexity deepens markedly. EUGENE follows up his advantage, plying him fiercely with questions.
] Does that prove you wrong? Does your complacent superiority to me prove that
I
am wrong?

MORELL
[turning on EUGENE, who stands his ground
] Marchbanks: some devil is putting these words into your mouth. It is easy—terribly easy—to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
¹⁰
Take care of what you are doing. Take care.

MARCHBANKS
[ruthlessly]
I know. I'm doing it on purpose. I told you I should stagger you. [
They confront one another threateningly for a moment. Then MORELL recovers his dignity.
]

MORELL
[with noble tenderness]
Eugene: listen to me. Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a happy man like me. [EUGENE chafes
intolerantly, repudiating the worth of his happiness. MORELL, deeply insulted, controls himself with fine forbearance, and continues steadily, with great artistic beauty of delivery]
You will be married; and you will be working with all your might and valor to make every spot on earth as happy as your own home. You will be one of the makers of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; and—who knows?—you may be a pioneer and master builder where I am only a humble journeyman; for don't think, my boy, that I cannot see in you, young as you are, promise of higher powers than I can ever pretend to. I well know that it is in the poet that the holy spirit of man—the god within him—is most godlike. It should make you tremble to think of that—to think that the heavy burthen and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.

MARCHBANKS
[unimpressed and remorseless, his boyish crudity of assertion telling sharply against MORELL's oratory]
It does not make me tremble. It is the want of it in others that makes me tremble.

MORELL
[redoubling his force of style under the stimulus of his genuine feeling and EUGENE's obduracy]
Then help to kindle it in them—in m e -not to extinguish it. In the future—when you are as happy as I am—I will be your true brother in the faith. I will help you to believe that God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise. I will help you to believe that every stroke of your work is sowing happiness for the great harvest that all—even the humblest—shall one day reap. And last, but trust me, not least, I will help you to believe that your wife loves you and is happy in her home. We need such help, Marchbanks: we need it greatly and always. There are so many things to make us doubt, if once we let our understanding be troubled. Even at home, we sit as if in camp, encompassed by a hostile army of doubts. Will you play the traitor and let them in on me?

MARCHBANKS
[looking round him]
Is it like this for her here always ? A woman, with a great soul, craving for reality, truth, freedom, and being fed on metaphors, sermons, stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you think a woman's soul can live on your talent for preaching?

MORELL
[stung]
Marchbanks: you make it hard for me to control myself. My talent is like yours insofar as it has any real worth at all. It is the gift of finding words for divine truth.

MARCHBANKS
[impetuously]
It's the gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing less. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? I've never been in your church; but I've been to your political meetings; and I've seen you do what's called rousing the meeting to enthusiasm : that is, you excited them until they behaved exactly as if they were drunk. And their wives looked on and saw clearly enough what fools they were. Oh, it's an old story: you'll find it in the Bible. I imagine King David, in his fits of enthusiasm, was very like you.
[Stabbing him with the words.
“But his wife despised him in her heart.”

MORELL
[wrathfully]
Leave my house. Do you hear?
[He advances on him threateningly.]

MARCHBANKS
[shrinking back against the couch]
Let me alone. Don't touch me.
[MORELL grasps him powerfully by the lappell of his coat: he cowers down on the sofa and screams passionately.]
Stop, Morell, if you strike me, I'll kill myself: I won't bear it.
[Almost in hysterics.]
Let me go. Take your hand away.

MORELL
[with slow, emphatic scorn]
You little snivelling, cowardly whelp.
[Releasing him.]
Go, before you frighten yourself into a fit.

MARCHBANKS
[on the sofa, gasping, but relieved by the withdrawal of MORELL's hand]
I'm not afraid of you: it's you who are afraid of me.

MORELL
[quietly,
as
he stands over him]
It looks like it, doesn't it?

MARCHBANKS
[with petulant vehemence]
Yes, it does. [
MORELL turns away contemptuously. EUGENE scrambles to his feet and follows him.
] You think because I shrink from being brutally handled—because
[with tears in his voice]
I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with violence—because I can't lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab like you—because I can't fight you for your wife as a navvy would: all that makes you think that I'm afraid of you. But you're wrong. If I haven't got what you call British pluck, I haven't British cowardice either: I'm not afraid of a clergyman's ideas. I'll fight your ideas. I'll rescue her from her slavery to them: I'll pit my own ideas against them. You are driving me out of the house because you daren't let her choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her again.
[MORELL, angered, turns suddenly on him. He flies to the door in involuntary dread.]
Let me alone, I say. I'm going.

MORELL
[with cold scorn]
Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: don't be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our threshold again, she will want to have that explained, too. Now I don't wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a blackguard.

MARCHBANKS
[coming back with renewed vehemence]
You shall—you must. If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified; and how you called me a snivelling little whelp and put me out of the house. If you don't tell her, I will: I'll write it to her.

MORELL [taken aback]
Why do you want her to know this?

MARCHBANKS
[with lyric rapture]
Because she will understand me, and know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from her—if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am—then you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and not to you. Good-bye.
[Going.]
]

MORELL
[terribly disquieted]
] Stop: I will not tell her.

MARCHBANKS
[turning near the door]
Either the truth or a lie you must tell her, if I go.

MORELL
[temporizing]
Marchbanks: it is sometimes justifiable.

MARCHBANKS
[cutting him short]
I know—to lie. It will be useless. Good-bye, Mr. Clergyman.
[As he turns finally to the door, it opens and CANDIDA enters in housekeeping attire.
]

CANDIDA Are you going, Eugene?
[Looking more observantly at him.
Well, dear me, just look at you, going out into the street in that state! You area poet, certainly. Look at him, James!
[She takes him by the coat, and brings him forward to show him to MORELL.]
Look at his collar! look at his tie! look at his hair! One would think somebody had been throttling you.
[The two men guard themselves against betraying their consciousness.]
Here! Stand still.
[She buttons his collar; ties his neckerchief in a bow; and arranges his hair.]
There! Now you look so nice that I think you'd better stay to lunch after all, though I told you you mustn't. It will be ready in half an hour.
[She puts a final touch to the bow. He kisses her hand.]
Don't be silly.

MARCHBANKS I want to stay, of course—unless the reverend gentleman, your husband, has anything to advance to the contrary.

CANDIDA Shall he stay, James, if he promises to be a good boy and to help me to lay the table?
[MARCHBANKS turns his head and looks steadfastly at MORELL over his shoulder, challenging his answer.
]

MORELL
[shortly]
Oh, yes, certainly: he had better. [
He goes to the table and pretends to busy himself with his papers there.
]

MARCHBANKS [
offering his arm to CANDIDA]
Come and lay the table.
[She takes it and they go to the door together. As they go out he adds]
I am the happiest of men.

MORELL So was I—an hour ago.

ACTII

PROSERPINE Bother! You've been medling with my typewriter, Mr. Marchbanks; and there's not the least use in your trying to look as if you hadn't.

MARCHBANKS
[timidly]
I'm very sorry, Miss Garnett. I only tried to make it write.

PROSERPINE Well, you've made this key stick.

MARCHBANKS [
earnestly
] I assure you I didn't touch the keys. I didn‘t, indeed. I only turned a little wheel.
[He points irresolutely at the tension wheel.
]

PROSERPINE Oh, now I understand.
[She sets the machine to rights, talking volubly all the time.
] I suppose you thought it was a sort of barrel-organ. Nothing to do but turn the handle, and it would write a beautiful love letter for you straight off, eh?

MARCHBANKS
[seriously]
I suppose a machine could be made to write love-letters. They're all the same, aren't they?

PROSERPINE
[somewhat indignantly: any such discussion, except by way of pleasantry, being outside her code of manners
] How do I know? Why do you ask me?

MARCHBANKS I beg your pardon. I thought clever people— people who can do business and write letters, and that sort of thing—always had love affairs.

PROSERPINE
[rising, outraged]
Mr. Marchbanks!
[She looks severely at him, and marches with much dignity to the bookcase.]

MARCHBANKS [approaching
her humbly]
I hope I haven't offended you. Perhaps I shouldn't have alluded to your love affairs.

PROSERPINE
[plucking a blue book from the shelf and turning sharply on him]
I haven't any love affairs. How dare you say such a thing?

MARCHBANKS
[simply]
Really! Oh, then you are shy, like me. Isn't that so?

PROSERPINE Certainly I am not shy. What do you mean?

MARCHBANKS
[secretly]
You must be: that is the reason there are so few love affairs in the world. We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy.
[Very earnestly.
Oh, Miss Garnett, what would you not give to be without fear, without shame-

PROSERPINE
[scandalized]
Well, upon my word!

MARCHBANKS
[with petulant impatience]
Ah, don't say those stupid things to me: they don't deceive me: what use are they? Why are you afraid to be your real self with me? I am just like you.

P ROSERPINE Like me! Pray, are you flattering me or flattering yourself? I don't feel quite sure which. [She turns to go back to the
typewriter.
]

MARCHBANKS
[stopping her mysteriously]
Hush! I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things—foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it.
[Almost whispering.]
It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to.
[At his normal pitch, but with deep melancholy.]
All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world's tragedy.
[With a deep sigh he sits in the spare chair and buries his face in his hands.]

PROSERPINE
[amazed, but keeping her wits about her—her point of honor in encounters with strange young men]
Wicked people get over that shyness occasionally, don't they?