MANGAN I like the place. The air suits me. I shouldn’t be surprised if I settled down here.

ELLIE Nothing would please me better. The air suits me too. And I want to be near Hesione.

MANGAN [with growing uneasiness] The air may suit us; but the question is, should we suit one another? Have you thought about that?

ELLIE Mr Mangan, we must be sensible, mustn’t we? It’s no use pretending that we are Romeo and Juliet. But we can get on very well together if we choose to make the best of it. Your kindness of heart will make it easy for me.

MANGAN [leaning forward, with the beginning of something like deliberate unpleasantness in his voice] Kindness of heart, eh? I ruined your father, didn’t I?

ELLIE Oh, not intentionally.

MANGAN Yes I did. Ruined him on purpose.

ELLIE On purpose!

MANGAN Not out of ill-nature, you know. And you’ll admit that I kept a job for him when I had finished with him. But business is business; and I ruined him as a matter of business.

ELLIE I don’t understand how that can be. Are you trying to make me feel that I need not be grateful to you, so that I may choose freely?

MANGAN [rising aggressively] No. I mean what I say.

ELLIE But how could it possibly do you any good to ruin my father? The money he lost was yours.

MANGAN [with a sour laugh] Was mine! It is mine, Miss Ellie, and all the money the other fellows lost too. [He shoves his hands into his pockets and shows his teeth.] I just smoked them out like a hive of bees. What do you say to that? A bit of shock, eh?

ELLIE It would have been, this morning. Now! you can’t think how little it matters. But it’s quite interesting. Only, you must explain it to me. I don’t understand it. [Propping her elbows on the drawing-board and her chin on her hands, she composes herself to listen with a combination of conscious curiosity with unconscious contempt which provokes him to more and more unpleasantness, and an attempt at patronage of her ignorance.]

MANGAN Of course you don’t understand: what do you know about business?You just listen and learn. Your father’s business was a new business; and I don’t start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends’ money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They’re what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and they haven’t enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares:[309] that is, if they’re lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more money and a couple of years more work; and then perhaps they have to sell out to a third lot. If it’s really a big thing the third lot will have to sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind them. And that’s where the real business man comes in: where I come in. But I’m cleverer than some: I don’t mind dropping a little money to start the process. I took your father’s measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and that he would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that he was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn’t know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no risks in ideas, even when they’re my own. Your father and the friends that ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap of squeezed lemons. You’ve been wasting your gratitude: my kind heart is all rot. I’m sick of it. When I see your father beaming at me with his moist, grateful eyes, regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes feel I must tell him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know he wouldn’t believe me. He’d think it was my modesty, as you did just now. He’d think anything rather than the truth, which is that he’s a blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of himself. [He throws himself back into the big chair with large self-approval. ] Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE [dropping her hands] How strange! that my mother, who knew nothing at all about business, should have been quite right about you! She always said — not before papa, of course, but to us children — that you were just that sort of man.

MANGAN [sitting up, much hurt] Oh! did she? And yet she’d have let you marry me.

ELLIE Well, you see, Mr Mangan, my mother married a very good man — for whatever you may think of my father as a man of business, he is the soul of goodness — and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

MANGAN Anyhow, you don’t want to marry me now, do you?

ELLIE [very calmly] Oh, I think so. Why not?

MANGAN [rising aghast] Why not!

ELLIE I don’t see why we shouldn’t get on very well together.

MANGAN Well, but look here, you know — [he stops, quite at a loss].

ELLIE [patiently] Well?

MANGAN Well, I thought you were rather particular about people’s characters.

ELLIE If we women were particular about men’s characters, we should never get married at all, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN A child like you talking of “we women”! What next! You’re not in earnest?

ELLIE Yes, I am. Aren’t you?

MANGAN You mean to hold me to it?

ELLIE Do you wish to back out of it?

MANGAN Oh, no. Not exactly back out of it.

ELLIE Well?

He has nothing to say. With a long whispered whistle, he drops into the wicker chair and stares before him like a beggared gambler. But a cunning look soon comes into his face. He leans over towards her on his right elbow, and speaks in a low steady voice.

MANGAN Suppose I told you I was in love with another woman!

ELLIE [echoing him] Suppose I told you I was in love with another man!

MANGAN [bouncing angrily out of his chair] I’m not joking.

ELLIE Who told you I was?

MANGAN I tell you I’m serious.You’re too young to be serious; but you’ll have to believe me. I want to be near your friend Mrs Hushabye. I’m in love with her. Now the murder’s out.

ELLIE I want to be near your friend Mr Hushabye. I’m in love with him. [She rises and adds with a frank air] Now we are in one another’s confidence, we shall be real friends. Thank you for telling me.

MANGAN [almost beside himself] Do you think I’ll be made a convenience of like this?

ELLIE Come, Mr Mangan! you made a business convenience of my father. Well, a woman’s business is marriage. Why shouldn’t I make a domestic convenience of you?

MANGAN Because I don’t choose, see? Because I’m not a silly gull like your father. That’s why.

ELLIE [with serene contempt] You are not good enough to clean my father’s boots, Mr Mangan; and I am paying you a great compliment in condescending to make a convenience of you, as you call it. Of course you are free to throw over our engagement if you like; but, if you do, you’ll never enter Hesione’ s house again: I will take care of that.

MANGAN [gasping] You little devil, you’ve done me. [On the point of collapsing into the big chair again he recovers himself.] Wait a bit, though: you’re not so cute as you think. You can’t beat Boss Mangan as easy as that. Suppose I go straight to Mrs Hushabye and tell her that you’re in love with her husband.

ELLIE She knows it.

MANGAN You told her!!!

ELLIE She told me.

MANGAN [clutching at his bursting temples] Oh, this is a crazy house. Or else I’m going clean off my chump. Is she making a swop with you — she to have your husband and you to have hers?