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[319] 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.

LADY UTTERWORD As a Conservative or a Liberal?

MANGAN No such nonsense. As a practical business man. [They all burst out laughing.] What are you all laughing at?

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, Alfred, Alfred!

ELLIE You! who have to get my father to do everything for you!

MRS HUSHABYE You! who are afraid of your own workmen!

HECTOR You! with whom three women have been playing cat and mouse all the evening!

LADY UTTERWORD You must have given an immense sum to the party funds, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN Not a penny out of my own pocket. The syndicate found the money: they knew how useful I should be to them in the Government.

LADY UTTERWORD This is most interesting and unexpected, pected, Mr Mangan. And what have your administrative achievements been, so far?

MANGAN Achievements? Well, I don’t know what you call achievements; but I’ve jolly well put a stop to the games of the other fellows in the other departments. Every man of them thought he was going to save the country all by himself, and do me out of the credit and out of my chance of a title. I took good care that if they wouldn’t let me do it they shouldn’t do it themselves either. I may not know anything about my own machinery; but I know how to stick a ramrod into the other fellow’s. And now they all look the biggest fools going.

HECTOR And in heaven’s name, what do you look like?

MANGAN I look like the fellow that was too clever for all the others, don’t I? If that isn’t a triumph of practical business, what is?

HECTOR Is this England, or is it a madhouse?

LADY UTTERWORD Do you expect to save the country, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN Well, who else will? Will your Mr Randall save it?

LADY UTTERWORD Randall the rotter! Certainly not.

MANGAN Will your brother-in-law save it with his moustache and his fine talk?

HECTOR Yes, if they will let me.

MANGAN [sneering] Ah! Will they let you?

HECTOR No. They prefer you.

MANGAN Very well then, as you’re in a world where I’m appreciated and you’re not, you’d best be civil to me, hadn’t you? Who else is there but me?

LADY UTTERWORD There is Hastings. Get rid of your ridiculous sham democracy; and give Hastings the necessary powers, and a good supply of bamboo to bring the British native to his senses: he will save the country with the greatest ease.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER It had better be lost. Any fool can govern with a stick in his hand. I could govern that way. It is not God’s way. The man is a numskull.

LADY UTTERWORD The man is worth all of you rolled into one. What do you say, Miss Dunn?

ELLIE I think my father would do very well if people did not put upon him and cheat him and despise him because he is so good.

MANGAN [contemptuously] I think I see Mazzini Dunn getting into parliament or pushing his way into the Government. We’ve not come to that yet, thank God! What do you say, Mrs Hushabye?

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, I say it matters very little which of you governs the country so long as we govern you.

HECTOR We? Who is we, pray?

MRS HUSHABYE The devil’s granddaughters, dear. The lovely women.

HECTOR [raising his hands as before] Fall, I say, and deliver us from the lures of Satan!

ELLIE There seems to be nothing real in the world except my father and Shakespeare. Marcus’s tigers are false; Mr Mangan’s millions are false; there is nothing really strong and true about Hesione but her beautiful black hair; and Lady Utterword’s is too pretty to be real. The one thing that was left to me was the Captain’s seventh degree of concentration; and that turns out to be —

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Rum.

LADY UTTERWORD [placidly] A good deal of my hair is quite genuine. The Duchess of Dithering offered me fifty guineas for this [touching her forehead] under the impression that it was a transformation; but it is all natural except the color.

MANGAN [wildly] Look here: I’m going to take off all my clothes [he begins tearing off his coat].

MRS HUSHABYE [catching his arm and stopping him] Alfred, for shame! Are you mad?

MANGAN Shame! What shame is there in this house? Let’s all strip stark naked. We may as well do the thing thoroughly when we’re about it. We’ve stripped ourselves morally naked: well, let us strip ourselves physically naked as well, and see how we like it. I tell you I can’t bear this. I was brought up to be respectable. I don’t mind the women dyeing their hair and the men drinking: it’s human nature. But it’s not human nature to tell everybody about it. Every time one of you opens your mouth I go like this [he cowers as if to avoid a missile], afraid of what will come next. How are we to have any self-respect if we don’t keep it up that we’re better than we really are?

LADY UTTERWORD I quite sympathize with you, Mr Mangan. I have been through it all; and I know by experience that men and women are delicate plants and must be cultivated under glass. Our family habit of throwing stones in all directions and letting the air in is not only unbearably rude, but positively dangerous. Still, there is no use catching physical colds as well as moral ones; so please keep your clothes on.

MANGAN I’ll do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a child or a grown man? I won’t stand this mothering tyranny. I’ll go back to the city, where I’m respected and made much of.

MRS HUSHABYE Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city. Think of Ellie’s youth!

ELLIE Think of Hesione’s eyes and hair!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Think of this garden in which you are not a dog barking to keep the truth out!

HECTOR Think of Lady Utterword’s beauty! her good sense! her style!

LADY UTTERWORD Flatterer. Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere: that is the essential point, isn’t it?

MANGAN [surrendering] All right: all right. I’m done. Have it your own way. Only let me alone. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels when you all start on me like this. I’ll stay. I’ll marry her. I’ll do anything for a quiet life. Are you satisfied now?