PICKERING [drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to
her eagerly] Yes: it's enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs.
Higgins, we take Eliza very seriously. Every week--every day
almost--there is some new change. [Closer again] We keep records of
every stage--dozens of gramophone disks and photographs--
HIGGINS [assailing her at the other ear] Yes, by George: it's the most
absorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up;
doesn't she, Pick?
PICKERING. We're always talking Eliza.
HIGGINS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
MRS. HIGGINS. What!
HIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas.
Higgins and Pickering, speaking together:
HIGGINS. You know, she has the most extraordinary quickness of ear:
PICKERING. I assure you, my dear Mrs. Higgins, that girl
HIGGINS. just like a parrot. I've tried her with every
PICKERING. is a genius. She can play the piano quite beautifully
HIGGINS. possible sort of sound that a human being can make--
PICKERING. We have taken her to classical concerts and to music
HIGGINS. Continental dialects, African dialects, Hottentot
PICKERING. halls; and it's all the same to her: she plays everything
HIGGINS. clicks, things it took me years to get hold of; and
PICKERING. she hears right off when she comes home, whether it's
HIGGINS. she picks them up like a shot, right away, as if she had
PICKERING. Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Morickton;
HIGGINS. been at it all her life.
PICKERING. though six months ago, she'd never as much as touched
a piano.
MRS. HIGGINS [putting her fingers in her ears, as they are by this time
shouting one another down with an intolerable noise] Sh--sh--sh--sh!
[They stop].
PICKERING. I beg your pardon. [He draws his chair back apologetically].
HIGGINS. Sorry. When Pickering starts shouting nobody can get a word in
edgeways.
MRS. HIGGINS. Be quiet, Henry. Colonel Pickering: don't you realize
that when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with
her?
PICKERING. Her father did. But Henry soon got rid of him.
MRS. HIGGINS. It would have been more to the point if her mother had.
But as her mother didn't something else did.
PICKERING. But what?
MRS. HIGGINS [unconsciously dating herself by the word] A problem.
PICKERING. Oh, I see. The problem of how to pass her off as a lady.
HIGGINS. I'll solve that problem. I've half solved it already.
MRS. HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem
of what is to be done with her afterwards.
HIGGINS. I don't see anything in that. She can go her own way, with all
the advantages I have given her.
MRS. HIGGINS. The advantages of that poor woman who was here just now!
The manners and habits that disqualify a fine lady from earning her own
living without giving her a fine lady's income! Is that what you mean?
PICKERING [indulgently, being rather bored] Oh, that will be all right,
Mrs. Higgins. [He rises to go].
HIGGINS [rising also] We'll find her some light employment.
PICKERING. She's happy enough. Don't you worry about her. Good-bye. [He
shakes hands as if he were consoling a frightened child, and makes for
the door].
HIGGINS. Anyhow, there's no good bothering now. The thing's done.
Good-bye, mother. [He kisses her, and follows Pickering].
PICKERING [turning for a final consolation] There are plenty of
openings. We'll do what's right. Good-bye.
HIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the
Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court.
PICKERING. Yes: let's. Her remarks will be delicious.
HIGGINS. She'll mimic all the people for us when we get home.
PICKERING. Ripping. [Both are heard laughing as they go downstairs].
MRS. HIGGINS [rises with an impatient bounce, and returns to her work
at the writing-table. She sweeps a litter of disarranged papers out of
her way; snatches a sheet of paper from her stationery case; and tries
resolutely to write. At the third line she gives it up; flings down her
pen; grips the table angrily and exclaims] Oh, men! men!! men!!!
ACT IV
The Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock
on the mantelpiece strikes twelve. The fire is not alight: it is a
summer night.
Presently Higgins and Pickering are heard on the stairs.
HIGGINS [calling down to Pickering] I say, Pick: lock up, will you. I
shan't be going out again.
PICKERING. Right. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything
more, do we?
HIGGINS. Lord, no!
Eliza opens the door and is seen on the lighted landing in opera cloak,
brilliant evening dress, and diamonds, with fan, flowers, and all
accessories. She comes to the hearth, and switches on the electric
lights there. She is tired: her pallor contrasts strongly with her dark
eyes and hair; and her expression is almost tragic. She takes off her
cloak; puts her fan and flowers on the piano; and sits down on the
bench, brooding and silent. Higgins, in evening dress, with overcoat
and hat, comes in, carrying a smoking jacket which he has picked up
downstairs. He takes off the hat and overcoat; throws them carelessly
on the newspaper stand; disposes of his coat in the same way; puts on
the smoking jacket; and throws himself wearily into the easy-chair at
the hearth. Pickering, similarly attired, comes in. He also takes off
his hat and overcoat, and is about to throw them on Higgins's when he
hesitates.
PICKERING. I say: Mrs. Pearce will row if we leave these things lying
about in the drawing-room.
HIGGINS. Oh, chuck them over the bannisters into the hall. She'll find
them there in the morning and put them away all right. She'll think we
were drunk.
PICKERING. We are, slightly. Are there any letters?
HIGGINS. I didn't look. [Pickering takes the overcoats and hats and
goes down stairs. Higgins begins half singing half yawning an air from
La Fanciulla del Golden West. Suddenly he stops and exclaims] I wonder
where the devil my slippers are!
Eliza looks at him darkly; then leaves the room.
Higgins yawns again, and resumes his song. Pickering returns, with the
contents of the letter-box in his hand.
PICKERING. Only circulars, and this coroneted billet-doux for you. [He
throws the circulars into the fender, and posts himself on the
hearthrug, with his back to the grate].
HIGGINS [glancing at the billet-doux] Money-lender. [He throws the
letter after the circulars].
Eliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers. She places
them on the carpet before Higgins, and sits as before without a word.
HIGGINS [yawning again] Oh Lord! What an evening! What a crew! What a
silly tomfoollery! [He raises his shoe to unlace it, and catches sight
of the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks at them as if they had
appeared there of their own accord]. Oh! they're there, are they?
PICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a
long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the opera! Rather too
much of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the
trick, and something to spare, eh?
HIGGINS [fervently] Thank God it's over!
Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she
recovers herself and sits stonily as before.
PICKERING. Were you nervous at the garden party? I was. Eliza didn't
seem a bit nervous.
HIGGINS. Oh, she wasn't nervous. I knew she'd be all right. No, it's
the strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on
me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics;
but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn't backed myself to do
it I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a
silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore.
PICKERING. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart
began beating like anything.
HIGGINS. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going
to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing
nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour,
with nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell
you, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The
whole thing has been simple purgatory.
PICKERING. You've never been broken in properly to the social routine.
[Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dipping into it
occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a
great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice
because Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people
can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by
nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's
always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.
HIGGINS. Yes: that's what drives me mad: the silly people don't know
their own silly business. [Rising] However, it's over and done with;
and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow.
Eliza's beauty becomes murderous.
PICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it's been a great
occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes].
HIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door]
Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for
me in the morning: I'll take tea. [He goes out].
Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and
walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she
gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins's
chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings
herself furiously on the floor raging.
HIGGINS [in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with
my slippers? [He appears at the door].
LIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the
other with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your
slippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them!
HIGGINS [astounded] What on earth--! [He comes to her]. What's the
matter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything wrong?
LIZA [breathless] Nothing wrong--with YOU. I've won your bet for you,
haven't I? That's enough for you. _I_ don't matter, I suppose.
HIGGINS. YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! _I_ won it. What did
you throw those slippers at me for?
LIZA. Because I wanted to smash your face. I'd like to kill you, you
selfish brute. Why didn't you leave me where you picked me out of--in
the gutter? You thank God it's all over, and that now you can throw me
back again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers, frantically].
HIGGINS [looking at her in cool wonder] The creature IS nervous, after
all.
LIZA [gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her
nails at his face]!!
HIGGINS [catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How
dare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. [He throws her
roughly into the easy-chair].
LIZA [crushed by superior strength and weight] What's to become of me?
What's to become of me?
HIGGINS. How the devil do I know what's to become of you? What does it
matter what becomes of you?
LIZA. You don't care. I know you don't care. You wouldn't care if I was
dead. I'm nothing to you--not so much as them slippers.
HIGGINS [thundering] THOSE slippers.
LIZA [with bitter submission] Those slippers. I didn't think it made
any difference now.
A pause. Eliza hopeless and crushed. Higgins a little uneasy.
HIGGINS [in his loftiest manner] Why have you begun going on like this?
May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?
LIZA. No.
HIGGINS. Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs.
Pearce? Any of the servants?
LIZA. No.
HIGGINS. I presume you don't pretend that I have treated you badly.
LIZA. No.
HIGGINS. I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps you're
tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne?
[He moves towards the door].
LIZA. No. [Recollecting her manners] Thank you.
HIGGINS [good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days.
I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party.
But that's all over now. [He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She
writhes]. There's nothing more to worry about.
LIZA. No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and
gets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and
hides her face]. Oh God! I wish I was dead.
HIGGINS [staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven's name,
why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this
irritation is purely subjective.
LIZA. I don't understand. I'm too ignorant.
HIGGINS. It's only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody's
hurting you. Nothing's wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep
it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you
comfortable.
LIZA. I heard YOUR prayers. "Thank God it's all over!"
HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, don't you thank God it's all over? Now you
are free and can do what you like.
LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What
have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to
become of me?
HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's
worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks
about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if
condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't
bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much
difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't
quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he
does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and
decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He
bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see,
Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel.
Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not
bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes--not now,
of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil;
but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call
attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you
understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up
and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap.
Eliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.
The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy
expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.
HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother
could find some chap or other who would do very well--
LIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?
LIZA. I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of
me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you
found me.
HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate]
Tosh, Eliza. Don't you insult human relations by dragging all this cant
about buying and selling into it. You needn't marry the fellow if you
don't like him.
LIZA. What else am I to do?
HIGGINS. Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist's
shop? Pickering could set you up in one: he's lots of money.
[Chuckling] He'll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing
today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole
in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it
the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! you'll be all
right. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By the way, I came
down for something: I forget what it was.
LIZA. Your slippers.
HIGGINS. Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up,
and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].
LIZA. Before you go, sir--
HIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir]
Eh?
LIZA. Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?
HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very
climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?
LIZA. He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.
HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is THAT the way you feel towards us?
LIZA. I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know
is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.
HIGGINS. But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about
that in the middle of the night?
LIZA. I want to know what I may take away with me. I don't want to be
accused of stealing.
HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn't have said that,
Eliza. That shows a want of feeling.
LIZA. I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I
have to be careful. There can't be any feelings between the like of you
and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what
doesn't?
HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you
like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He
turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].
LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a
further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take
these to your room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of
their being missing.
HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If
these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your
ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets,
unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the
chains].
LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one
you bought me in Brighton. I don't want it now. [Higgins dashes the
ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly
that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and
exclaims] Don't you hit me.
HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such
a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.
LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own
back, anyhow.
HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have
caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to
me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.
LIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the
coffee; for she won't be told by me.
HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you;
and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and
the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He
goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door
savagely].
Eliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild
pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her
own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to
look for the ring.
ACT V
Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The
parlor-maid comes in.
THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with
Colonel Pickering.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, show them up.
THE PARLOR-MAID. They're using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the
police, I think.
MRS. HIGGINS. What!
THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry's
in a state, mam. I thought I'd better tell you.
MRS. HIGGINS. If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it
would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when they've
finished with the police. I suppose he's lost something.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam [going].
MRS. HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and
the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam.
Higgins bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.
HIGGINS. Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing!
MRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and
kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?
HIGGINS. Eliza's bolted.
MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened
her.
HIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual,
to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she
changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn't slept in. She
came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool
Mrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What
am I to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect
right to leave if she chooses.
HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can't find
anything. I don't know what appointments I've got. I'm-- [Pickering
comes in. Mrs. Higgins puts down her pen and turns away from the
writing-table].
PICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry told
you? [He sits down on the ottoman].
HIGGINS. What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered a
reward?
MRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You don't mean to say you
have set the police after Eliza?
HIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He
sits in the Elizabethan chair].
PICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he
suspected us of some improper purpose.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, of course he did. What right have you to go to the
police and give the girl's name as if she were a thief, or a lost
umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again, deeply vexed].
HIGGINS. But we want to find her.
PICKERING. We can't let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins. What
were we to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. You have no more sense, either of you, than two children.
Why--
The parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very
particular. He's been sent on from Wimpole Street.
HIGGINS. Oh, bother! I can't see anyone now. Who is it?
THE PARLOR-MAID. A Mr. Doolittle, Sir.
PICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?
THE PARLOR-MAID. Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.
HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it's some relative of
hers that she's gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the
parlor-maid] Send him up, quick.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, Sir. [She goes].
HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we shall
hear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].
MRS. HIGGINS. Do you know any of her people?
PICKERING. Only her father: the fellow we told you about.
THE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws].
Doolittle enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable
frock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A flower in his
buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes complete the
effect. He is too concerned with the business he has come on to notice
Mrs. Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with
vehement reproach.
DOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this? You
done this.
HIGGINS. Done what, man?
DOOLITTLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look at this
coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me clothes?
MRS. HIGGINS. Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Won't you sit down?
DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten
his hostess] Asking your pardon, ma'am. [He approaches her and shakes
her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on
Pickering's right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I
can't think of anything else.
HIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you?
DOOLITTLE. I shouldn't mind if it had only happened to me: anything
might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you
might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry
Higgins.
HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That's the point.
DOOLITTLE. Have you lost her?
HIGGINS. Yes.
DOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her; but
she'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.
MRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up
and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.
HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle] You're
raving. You're drunk. You're mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I
had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. I've never
seen you since.
DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you
not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five
millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that
wanted you to invent a universal language for him?
HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down again
carelessly].
DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not
write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present
in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a
common dustman.
HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of
the kind.
DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me
right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans
is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of
life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which,
Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his
Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that
I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as
they ask me up to six times a year.
HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!
PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you twice.
DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the
face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I
object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was
free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same
as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and
heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you,
says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I
says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a
pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me
shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove
me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and
nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't
live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let
do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for
it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three
that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's
wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for
myself: that's middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don't
you be anxious: I bet she's on my doorstep by this: she that could
support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn't respectable. And
the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn
to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper
English. That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you
done it for.
MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this
if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this
bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. I believe so.
DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's the
tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven't the
nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, ma'am:
that's what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the
workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job
as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit,
I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor
might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They
don't know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor,
have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted
three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the
expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had my provocation).
They've got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of
the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven't the
nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought
up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their
tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son
has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you're not going to do anything
foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza's future.
You can provide for her now.
DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma'am; I'm expected to
provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.
HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can't provide for her. He shan't
provide for her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pounds for
her. Doolittle: either you're an honest man or a rogue.
DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a
little of both.
HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right
to take her as well.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don't be absurd. If you really want to know where
Eliza is, she is upstairs.
HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her
downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].
MRS. HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit down.
HIGGINS. I--
MRS. HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.
HIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself
ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows]. But I
think you might have told me this half an hour ago.
MRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night
partly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself into the
river and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton Hotel. She told me
of the brutal way you two treated her.
HIGGINS [bounding up again] What!
PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she's been telling you
stories. We didn't treat her brutally. We hardly said a word to her;
and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on Higgins]. Higgins
did you bully her after I went to bed?
HIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my face.
She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her the slightest
provocation. The slippers came bang into my face the moment I entered
the room--before I had uttered a word. And used perfectly awful
language.
PICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her?
MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is
naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn't she, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Very tender-hearted, ma'am. Takes after me.
MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked
very hard for you, Henry! I don't think you quite realize what anything
in the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems
that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing
for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never
said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it
was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then
you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! _I_ should
have thrown the fire-irons at you.
HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to
bed. Did we, Pick?
PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.
MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?
PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.
MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell
her how splendid she'd been.
HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn't make
speeches to her, if that's what you mean.
PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate.
Is she very angry?
MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I'm
afraid she won't go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr.
Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but
she says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let
bygones be bygones.
HIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho!
MRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to
come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite enough of my
time.
HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us
put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of
the mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair].
DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some
consideration for my feelings as a middle class man.
MRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the
bell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so good
as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don't want Eliza to have
the shock of your news until she has made it up with these two
gentlemen. Would you mind?
DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her off my
hands. [He disappears through the window].
The parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in Doolittle's
place.
MRS. HIGGINS. Ask Miss Doolittle to come down, please.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam. [She goes out].
MRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.
HIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.
PICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs. Higgins.
A pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs; and
begins to whistle.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you don't look at all nice in that
attitude.
HIGGINS [pulling himself together] I was not trying to look nice,
mother.
MRS. HIGGINS. It doesn't matter, dear. I only wanted to make you speak.
HIGGINS. Why?
MRS. HIGGINS. Because you can't speak and whistle at the same time.
Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.
HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that girl?
Are we to wait here all day?
Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly
convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little
work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much taken aback to rise. |
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