George Bernard Shaw

“ THE CADI. As I live, O Cadi, and thou, moon of loveliness, ye shall be led back to Mogador with honor. And thou, accursed Brassbound, shall go thither a prisoner in chains, thou and thy people. (Brassbound and his men make a movement to defend themselves.) Seize them.
LADY CICELY. Oh, please don't fight. (Brassbound, seeing that his men are hopelessly outnumbered, makes no resistance. They are made prisoners by the Cadi's followers.)
SIDI (attempting to draw his scimitar) . The woman is mine: I will not forego her. (He is seized and overpowered after a Homeric struggle.)
SIR HOWARD (drily) . ”

“ BRASSBOUND. Ah; but I'm not an aristocrat,you see. And like most poor men, I'm proud. I don't like being patronized.
LADY CICELY. What is the use of saying that? In my world, which is now your world--OUR world--getting patronage is the whole art of life. A man can't have a career without it.
BRASSBOUND. In my world a man can navigate a ship and get his living by it.
LADY CICELY. Oh, I see you're one of the Idealists--the Impossibilists! We have them, too, occasionally, in our world. There's only one thing to be done with them. ”

“ LADY CICELY. Sometimes he won't even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.
BRASBOUND. 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You seem to be able to make me do pretty well what you like; but you can't make me marry anybody but yourself.
LADY CICELY. Do you know, Captain Paquito, that I've married no less than seventeen men (Brassbound stares) to other women. And they all opened the subject by saying that they would never marry anybody but me.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can only plead that an author who lives in England necessarily loses his consciousness of the peculiarities of English speech, and sharpens his consciousness of the points in which American speech differs from it; so that it is more convenient to leave English peculiarities to be recorded by American authors. I must, however, most vehemently disclaim any intention of suggesting that English pronunciation is authoritative and correct. My own tongue is neither American English nor English English, but Irish English; so I am as nearly impartial in the matter as it is in human nature to be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BRASSBOUND. I'll change altogether. (He leaves the room to get his own trousers.)
REDBROOK (softly) . Look here, Johnson, and gents generally. (They gather about him.) Spose she takes him back to England!
MARZO (trying to repeat his success) . Im! Im only dam pirate. She saint, I tell you--no take any man nowhere.
JOHNSON (severely) . Don't you be a ignorant and immoral foreigner. (The rebuke is well received; and Marzo is hustled into the background and extinguished.) She won't take him for harm; but she might take him for good. And then where should we be? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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; for he has a better head and a higher place. ”

“ BRASSBOUND (haughtily) . My men, madam, are not children in the nursery.
LADY CICELY (with unanswerable conviction) . Captain Brassbound: all men are children in the nursery. I see that you don't notice things. That poor Italian had only one proper bootlace: the other was a bit of string. And I am sure from Mr. Drinkwater's complexion that he ought to have some medicine.
BRASSBOUND (outwardly determined not to be trifled with: inwardly puzzled and rather daunted) . Madam: if you want an escort, I can provide you with an escort. If you want a Sunday School treat, I can NOT provide it. ”

“ KEARNEY. Verry good. I'm waiting.
The bluejacket turns and intimates this to those without. The officers of the Santiago enter. SIR HOWARD (rising and bobbing to them in a judicial manner) . Good morning, gentlemen.
They acknowledge the greeting rather shyly, bowing or touching their caps, and stand in a group behind Kearney. KEARNEY (to Sir Howard) . You will be glahd to hear that I have a verry good account of one of our prisoners from our chahplain, who visited them in the gaol. He has expressed a wish to be cawnverted to Episcopalianism.
SIR HOWARD (drily) . Yes, I think I know him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ RANKIN. Then how did ye get it back?
SIR HOWARD (with crafty enjoyment of his own cunning) . By hoisting the rogue with his own petard. I had to leave matters as they were for many years; for I had my own position in the world to make. But at last I made it. In the course of a holiday trip to the West Indies, I found that this dishonest agent had left the island, and placed the estate in the hands of an agent of his own, whom he was foolish enough to pay very badly. I put the case before that agent; and he decided to treat the estate as my property. ”

“ A woman of great vitality and humanity, who begins a casual acquaintance at the point usually attained by English people after thirty years acquaintance when they are capable of reaching it at all. She pounces genially on Drinkwater, who is smirking at her, hat in hand, with an air of hearty welcome. The gentleman, on the other hand, comes down the side of the garden next the house, instinctively maintaining a distance between himself and the others. ”