LADY UTTERWORD And a very fascinating gentleman whose chief occupation is to be married to my sister.

HECTOR All heartbroken imbeciles.

MAZZINI Oh no. Surely, if I may say so, rather a favorable specimen of what is best in our English culture. You are very charming people, most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane, unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people.

MRS HUSHABYE You do us proud, Mazzini.

MAZZINI I am not flattering, really. Where else could I feel perfectly at ease in my pyjamas? I sometimes dream that I am in very distinguished society, and suddenly I have nothing on but my pyjamas! Sometimes I haven’t even pyjamas. And I always feel overwhelmed with confusion. But here, I don’t mind in the least: it seems quite natural.

LADY UTTERWORD An infallible sign that you are now not in really distinguished society, Mr Dunn. If you were in my house, you would feel embarrassed.

MAZZINI I shall take particular care to keep out of your house, Lady Utterword.

LADY UTTERWORD You will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of simplifying it by doing these ridiculous things.

ELLIE Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady Utterword?

HECTOR Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That poor devil upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his heart, just as Mangan howls when my wife twists his.

LADY UTTERWORD That is because Randall has nothing to do but have his heart broken. It is a change from having his head shampooed. Catch anyone breaking Hastings’ heart!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER The numskull wins, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD I shall go back to my numskull with the greatest satisfaction when I am tired of you all, clever as you are.

MANGAN [huffily] I never set up to be clever.

LADY UTTERWORD I forgot you, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN Well, I don’t see that quite, either.

LADY UTTERWORD You may not be clever, Mr Mangan; but you are successful.

MANGAN But I don’t want to be regarded merely as a successful man. I have an imagination like anyone else. I have a presentiment —

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I am devoting myself to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous presentiment. You bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the stars. [She drags him away into the darkness.]

MANGAN [tearfully, as he disappears] Yes: it’s all very well to make fun of me; but if you only knew —

HECTOR [impatientty] How is all this going to end?

MAZZINI It won’t end, Mr Hushabye. Life doesn’t end: it goes on.

ELLIE Oh, it can’t go on forever. I’m always expecting something. I don’t know what it is; but life must come to a point sometime.

LADY UTTERWORD The point for a young woman of your age is a baby.

HECTOR Yes, but, damn it, I have the same feeling; and I can’t have a baby.

LADY UTTERWORD By deputy, Hector.

HECTOR But I have children. All that is over and done with for me: and yet I too feel that this can’t last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It’s madness: it’s like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to play at earthquakes with.

MAZZINI I know. I used often to think about that when I was young.

HECTOR Think! What’s the good of thinking about it? Why didn’t you do something?

MAZZINI But I did. I joined societies and made speeches and wrote pamphlets. That was all I could do. But, you know, though the people in the societies thought they knew more than Mangan, most of them wouldn’t have joined if they had known as much. You see they had never had any money to handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected a revolution, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that we could blunder and muddle on any longer. But nothing happened, except, of course, the usual poverty and crime and drink that we are used to. Nothing ever does happen. It’s amazing how well we get along, all things considered.

LADY UTTERWORD Perhaps somebody cleverer than you and Mr Mangan was at work all the time.

MAZZINI Perhaps so. Though I was brought up not to believe in anything, I often feel that there is a great deal to be said for the theory of an over-ruling Providence, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD Providence! I meant Hastings.

MAZZINI Oh, I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks.

MAZZINI Very true, no doubt, at sea. But in politics, I assure you, they only run into jellyfish thing happens.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER At sea nothing happens to the sea. Nothing happens to the sky. The sun comes up from the east and goes down to the west. The moon grows from a sickle to an arc lamp, and comes later and later until she is lost in the light as other things are lost in the darkness. After the typhoon, the flying-fish glitter in the sunshine like birds. It’s amazing how they get along, all things considered. Nothing happens, except something not worth mentioning.

ELLIE What is that, O Captain, my captain?[321]

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [savagely] Nothing but the smash of the drunken skipper’s ship on the rocks, the splintering of her rotten timbers, the tearing of her rusty plates, the drowning of the crew like rats in a trap.

ELLIE Moral: don’t take rum.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [vehemently] That is a lie, child. Let a man drink ten barrels of rum a day, he is not a drunken skipper until he is a drifting skipper. Whilst he can lay his course and stand on his bridge and steer it, he is no drunkard. It is the man who lies drinking in his bunk and trusts to Providence that I call the drunken skipper, though he drank nothing but the waters of the River Jordan.

ELLIE Splendid! And you haven’t had a drop for an hour. You see you don’t need it: your own spirit is not dead.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Echoes: nothing but echoes. The last shot was fired years ago.

HECTOR And this ship that we are all in? This soul’s prison we call England?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?

HECTOR Well, I don’t mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to do?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman.

HECTOR And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and be damned.

ELLIE Quiet, quiet: you’ll tire yourself.

MAZZINI I thought all that once, Captain; but I assure you nothing will happen.

A dull distant explosion is heard.

HECTOR [starting up] What was that?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Something happening [he blows his whistle]. Breakers ahead!

The light goes out.

HECTOR [furiously] Who put that light out? Who dared put that light out?

NURSE GUINNESS [running in from the house to the middle of the esplanade] I did, sir. The police have telephoned to say we’ll be summoned if we don’t put that light out: it can be seen for miles.

HECTOR It shall be seen for a hundred miles [he dashes into the house].

NURSE GUINNESS The rectory is nothing but a heap of bricks, they say. Unless we can give the rector a bed he has nowhere to lay his head this night.