Bernard Shaw

“ RANKIN. They are the outposts, so to speak, of the Atlas Mountains.
LADY CICELY. The Atlas Mountains! Where Shelley's witch lived! We'll make an excursion to them to-morrow, Howard.
RANKIN. That's impoassible, my leddy. The natives are verra dangerous.
LADY CICELY. Why? Has any explorer been shooting them?
RANKIN. No. But every man of them believes he will go to heaven if he kills an unbeliever.
LADY CICELY. Bless you, dear Mr. Rankin, the people in England believe that they will go to heaven if they give all their property to the poor. But they don't do it. ”

“ BRASSBOUND (with disgust) . Agh! Trickster! Lawyer! Even the price you offer for your life is to be paid in false coin. (Calling) Hallo there! Johnson! Redbrook! Some of you there! (To Sir Howard) You ask for a little privacy: you shall have it. I will not endure the company of such a fellow—
SIR HOWARD (very angry, and full of the crustiest pluck) . You insult me, sir. You are a rascal. You are a rascal.
Johnson, Redbrook, and a few others come in through the arch.
BRASSBOUND. Take this man away.
JOHNSON. Where are we to put him? ”

“ Sir Howard starts. The shock is too much for him: he sits down again, looking very old; and his hands tremble; but his eyes and mouth are intrepid, resolute, and angry.
LADY CICELY. Uncle! What do you mean?
BRASSBOUND. Has he never told you about my mother? this fellow who puts on ermine and scarlet and calls himself Justice.
SIR HOWARD (almost voiceless) . You are the son of that woman!
BRASSBOUND (fiercely) . "That woman!" (He makes a movement as if to rush at Sir Howard.)
LADY CICELY (rising quickly and putting her hand on his arm) . Take care. You mustn't strike an old man. ”

“ LADY CICELY. Sometimes he won't even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.
BRASSBOUND. I don't deny that: nothing makes a man so selfish as work. But I was not self-seeking: it seemed to me that I had put justice above self. I tell you life meant something to me then. Do you see that dirty little bundle of scraps of paper?
LADY CICELY. What are they?
BRASSBOUND. Accounts cut out of newspapers. Speeches made by my uncle at charitable dinners, or sentencing men to death—pious, highminded speeches by a man who was to me a thief and a murderer! ”

“ BRASSBOUND. He knows that the Mahdi killed my master Gordon, and that the Mahdi died in his bed and went to paradise.
SIR HOWARD. Then he knows also that England's vengeance was on the Mahdi's track.
BRASSBOUND. Ay, on the track of the railway from the Cape to Cairo. Who are you, that a nation should go to war for you? If you are missing, what will your newspapers say? A foolhardy tourist. What will your learned friends at the bar say? That it was time for you to make room for younger and better men. YOU a national hero! You had better find a goldfield in the Atlas Mountains. ”

“ REDBROOK. Sidi el Assif: this is one of the mighty women Sheikhs of Franguestan. She goes unveiled among Kings; and only princes may touch her hand.
LADY CICELY. Allah upon thee, Sidi el Assif! Be a good little Sheikh, and shake hands.
SIDI (timidly touching her hand) . Now this is a wonderful thing, and worthy to be chronicled with the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Is it not so, Osman Ali?
OSMAN. Allah upon thee, master! it is so.
SIDI. Brassbound Ali: the oath of a just man fulfils itself without many words. The infidel Cadi, thy captive, falls to my share. ”

“ LADY CICELY. Oh, I don't know about that, Mr. H—I mean Captain Brassbound. Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
BRASSBOUND. You forget that I am like my uncle, according to you. Have you any doubt as to the reality of HIS badness?
LADY CICELY. Bless me! your uncle Howard is one of the most harmless of men—much nicer than most professional people. Of course he does dreadful things as a judge ”

“ Did ye not hear what Sir Howrrd told me on the yacht last night?
LADY CICELY. All a mistake, Mr. Rankin: all a mistake, I assure you. You said just now, Heaven forgive you for judging him! Well, that's just what the whole quarrel is about. Captain Brassbound is just like you: he thinks we have no right to judge one another; and its Sir Howard gets £5,000 a year for doing nothing else but judging people, he thinks poor Captain Brassbound a regular Anarchist. They quarreled dreadfully at the castle. You mustn't mind what Sir Howard says about him: you really mustn't. ”

“ A man of few words, fewer gestures, and much significance. On the whole, interesting, and even attractive, but not friendly. He stands for a moment, saturnine in the ruddy light, to see who is present, looking in a singular and rather deadly way at Sir Howard; then with some surprise and uneasiness at Lady Cicely. Finally he comes down into the middle of the garden, and confronts Rankin, who has been glaring at him in consternation from the moment of his entrance, and continues to do so in so marked a way that the glow in Brassbound's eyes deepens as he begins to take offence. ”

“ LADY CICELY. No: trembling, I assure you. Now will you try this on for me: I'm SO afraid I have made it too tight under the arm. (She holds it behind him.)
BRASSBOUND (obeying mechanically) . You take me for a fool I think. (He misses the sleeve.)
LADY CICELY. No: all men look foolish when they are feeling for their sleeves.
BRASSBOUND. Agh! (He turns and snatches the coat from her; then puts it on himself and buttons the lowest button.)
LADY CICELY (horrified) . Stop. No. You must NEVER pull a coat at the skirts, Captain Brassbound: it spoils the sit of it. ”

“ LADY CICELY. My uncle is first Lord of the Admiralty; and I am always telling him what a scandal it is that an English captain should be forbidden to take his wife on board to look after the ship.
KEARNEY. Stranger still, Lady Waynflete, he is not forbidden to take any other lady. Yours is an extraordinairy country—to an Amerrican.
LADY CICELY. But it's most serious, Captain. The poor men go melancholy mad, and ram each other's ships and do all sorts of things.
SIR HOWARD. Cicely: I beg you will not talk nonsense to Captain Kearney. Your ideas on some subjects are really hardly decorous. ”

“ LADY CICELY. Oh no. After all, those men must really like you, Captain Brassbound. I feel sure you have a kind heart. You have such nice eyes.
SIR HOWARD (scandalized) . My DEAR Cicely: you really must restrain your expressions of confidence in people's eyes and faces. (To Brassbound) Now, about terms, Captain?
BRASSBOUND. Where do you propose to go?
SIR HOWARD. I hardly know. Where CAN we go, Mr. Rankin?
RANKIN. Take my advice, Sir Howrrd. Don't go far.
BRASSBOUND. I can take you to Meskala, from which you can see the Atlas Mountains. ”

“ Further, it begins to dawn on Brassbound's wrath-blurred perception that Lady Cicely has at some unnoticed stage in the proceedings finished Marzo's bandage, and is now stitching a coat. He stops; glances at his shirtsleeves; finally realizes the situation.
BRASSBOUND. What are you doing there, madam?
LADY CICELY. Mending your coat, Captain Brassbound.
BRASSBOUND. I have no recollection of asking you to take that trouble.
LADY CICELY. No: I don't suppose you even knew it was torn. Some men are BORN untidy. You cannot very well receive Sidi el—what's his name?—with your sleeve half out. ”

“ Captain Hamlin Kearney is a robustly built western American, with the keen, squeezed, wind beaten eyes and obstinately enduring mouth of his profession. A curious ethnological specimen, with all the nations of the old world at war in his veins, he is developing artificially in the direction of sleekness and culture under the restraints of an overwhelming dread of European criticism, and climatically in the direction of the indiginous North American, who is already in possession of his hair, his cheekbones, and the manlier instincts in him, which the sea has rescued from civilization. ”

“ BRASSBOUND. Then I shall be the first man you ever found to stand to his word.
LADY CICELY (part pleased, part amused, part sympathetic) . Do you really want a wife?
BRASSBOUND. I want a commander. Don't undervalue me: I am a good man when I have a good leader. I have courage: I have determination: I'm not a drinker: I can command a schooner and a shore party if I can't command a ship or an army. When work is put upon me, I turn neither to save my life nor to fill my pocket. Gordon trusted me ”

“ LADY CICELY. Do you think she would really have killed Howard, as she threatened, if he hadn't sent her to prison?
BRASSBOUND (breaking out again, with a growing sense of being morally trapped) . What if she did? Why did he rob her? Why did he not help her to get the estate, as he got it for himself afterwards?
LADY CICELY. He says he couldn't, you know. But perhaps the real reason was that he didn't like her. You know, don't you, that if you don't like people you think of all the reasons for not helping them, and if you like them you think of all the opposite reasons. ”

“ On the heights overlooking the harbor of Mogador, a seaport on the west coast of Morocco, the missionary, in the coolness of the late afternoon, is following the precept of Voltaire by cultivating his garden. He is an elderly Scotchman, spiritually a little weatherbeaten, as having to navigate his creed in strange waters crowded with other craft but still a convinced son of the Free Church and the North African Mission, with a faithful brown eye, and a peaceful soul. Physically a wiry small-knit man, well tanned, clean shaven, with delicate resolute features and a twinkle of mild humor. ”

“ REDBROOK. Righto, Brother Johnson. (To Brassbound) Won't do, governor. Not good enough.
BRASSBOUND (fiercely) . Mutiny, eh?
REDBROOK. Not at all, governor. Don't talk Tommy rot with Brother Sidi only five minutes gallop off. Can't hand over an Englishman to a nigger to have his throat cut.
BRASSBOUND (unexpectedly acquiescing) . Very good. You know, I suppose, that if you break my bargain with Sidi, you'll have to defend this place and fight for your lives in five minutes. That can't be done without discipline: you know that too. ”

“ LADY CICELY. Marzo. That's Marzo (pointing to Marzo, who grins and touches his forehead) .
KEARNEY (slightly overwhelmed by the unexpected profusion of incident and character in her story) . Well, what happened then?
LADY CICELY. Then the escort ran away—all escorts do—and dragged me into the castle, which you really ought to make them clean and whitewash thoroughly, Captain Kearney. Then Captain Brassbound and Sir Howard turned out to be related to one another (sensation) ; and then of course, there was a quarrel. The Hallams always quarrel. ”

“ BRASSBOUND. You are safe here. I warn you, in those hills there is a justice that is not the justice of your courts in England. If you have wronged a man, you may meet that man there. If you have wronged a woman, you may meet her son there. The justice of those hills is the justice of vengeance.
SIR HOWARD (faintly amused) . You are superstitious, Captain. Most sailors are, I notice. However, I have complete confidence in your escort. ”

“ LADY CICELY (coming to the opposite end of the table) . So you've taken off all my beautiful clothes!
BRASSBOUND. Your brother's, you mean. A man should wear his own clothes; and a man should tell his own lies. I'm sorry you had to tell mine for me to-day.
LADY CICELY. Oh, women spend half their lives telling little lies for men, and sometimes big ones. We're used to it. But mind! I don't admit that I told any to-day.
BRASSBOUND. How did you square my uncle? ”

“ Sir Howard goes out through the arch between Johnson and Redbrook, muttering wrathfully. The rest, except Brassbound and Lady Cicely, follow.
Brassbound walks up and down the room, nursing his indignation. In doing so he unconsciously enters upon an unequal contest with Lady Cicely, who sits quietly stitching. It soon becomes clear that a tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming. ”

“ LADY CICELY. But I always go everywhere. I KNOW the people here won't touch me. They have such nice faces and such pretty scenery.
SIR HOWARD (to Rankin, sitting down again resignedly) . You can imagine how much use there is in talking to a woman who admires the faces of the ruffians who infest these ports, Mr. Rankin. Can anything be done in the way of an escort?
RANKIN. There is a certain Captain Brassbound here who trades along the coast, and occasionally escorts parties of merchants on journeys into the interior. I understand that he served under Gordon in the Soudan. ”

“ You killed her for me that day in the castle; and I am better without her. (He throws away the fragments.) Now everything is gone. You have taken the old meaning out of my life; but you have put no new meaning into it. I can see that you have some clue to the world that makes all its difficulties easy for you; but I'm not clever enough to seize it. You've lamed me by showing me that I take life the wrong way when I'm left to myself.
LADY CICELY. Oh no. Why do you say that?
BRASSBOUND. What else can I say? See what I've done! My uncle is no worse a man than myself—better, most likely ”