told me the very first day he came here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is wrong with the house.
Captain Shotover
What! The numskull said there was something wrong with my house!
Lady Utterword
I said Hastings said it; and he is not in the least a numskull.
Captain Shotover
What’s wrong with my house?
Lady Utterword
Just what is wrong with a ship, Papa. Wasn’t it clever of Hastings to see that?
Captain Shotover
The man’s a fool. There’s nothing wrong with a ship.
Lady Utterword
Yes, there is.
Mrs. Hushabye
But what is it? Don’t be aggravating, Addy.
Lady Utterword
Guess.
Hector
Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar. Demons.
Lady Utterword
Not a bit. I assure you, all this house needs to make it a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with good appetites and sound sleep in it, is horses.
Mrs. Hushabye
Horses! What rubbish!
Lady Utterword
Yes: horses. Why have we never been able to let this house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I learned to ride; and I shall never ride really well because I didn’t begin as a child. There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes. It isn’t mere convention: everybody can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who don’t are the wrong ones.
Captain Shotover
There is some truth in this. My ship made a man of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.
Lady Utterword
Exactly how Hastings explained your being a gentleman.
Captain Shotover
Not bad for a numskull. Bring the man here with you next time: I must talk to him.
Lady Utterword
Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why can’t he get a valet to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute; but I never let him bring it into my house. If he would only—She is interrupted by the melancholy strains of a flute coming from an open window above. She raises herself indignantly in the hammock. Randall: you have not gone to bed. Have you been listening? The flute replies pertly:
How vulgar! Go to bed instantly, Randall: how dare you? The window is slammed down. She subsides. How can anyone care for such a creature!
Mrs. Hushabye
Addy: do you think Ellie ought to marry poor Alfred merely for his money?
Mangan
Much alarmed. What’s that? Mrs. Hushabye, are my affairs to be discussed like this before everybody?
Lady Utterword
I don’t think Randall is listening now.
Mangan
Everybody is listening. It isn’t right.
Mrs. Hushabye
But in the dark, what does it matter? Ellie doesn’t mind. Do you, Ellie?
Ellie
Not in the least. What is your opinion, Lady Utterword? You have so much good sense.
Mangan
But it isn’t right. It—Mrs. Hushabye puts her hand on his mouth. Oh, very well.
Lady Utterword
How much money have you, Mr. Mangan?
Mangan
Really—No: I can’t stand this.
Lady Utterword
Nonsense, Mr. Mangan! It all turns on your income, doesn’t it?
Mangan
Well, if you come to that, how much money has she?
Ellie
None.
Lady Utterword
You are answered, Mr. Mangan. And now, as you have made Miss Dunn throw her cards on the table, you cannot refuse to show your own.
Mrs. Hushabye
Come, Alf! out with it! How much?
Mangan
Baited out of all prudence. Well, if you want to know, I have no money and never had any.
Mrs. Hushabye
Alfred, you mustn’t tell naughty stories.
Mangan
I’m not telling you stories. I’m telling you the raw truth.
Lady Utterword
Then what do you live on, Mr. Mangan?
Mangan
Travelling expenses. And a trifle of commission.
Captain Shotover
What more have any of us but travelling expenses for our life’s journey?
Mrs. Hushabye
But you have factories and capital and things?
Mangan
People think I have. People think I’m an industrial Napoleon. That’s why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you I have nothing.
Ellie
Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus’s tigers? That they don’t exist?
Mangan
They exist all right enough. But they’re not mine. They belong to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy good-for-nothing capitalists. I get money from such people to start the factories. I find people like Miss Dunn’s father to work them, and keep a tight hand so as to make them pay. Of course I make them keep me going pretty well; but it’s a dog’s life; and I don’t own anything.
Mrs. Hushabye
Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it to get out of marrying Ellie.
Mangan
I’m telling the truth about my money for the first time in my life; and it’s the first time my word has ever been doubted.
Lady Utterword
How sad! Why don’t you go in for politics, Mr. Mangan?
Mangan
Go in for politics! Where have you been living? I am in politics.
Lady Utterword
I’m sure I beg your pardon. I never heard of you.
Mangan
Let me tell you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime Minister of this country asked me to join the Government without even going through the nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a great public department.
