Kandy

“ Travellers from Kandy by the great north road making the usual halt at Dambulla, forty-five miles distant, and climbing the steep rock to view the cavernous temples with their numberless images and curious paintings for which the place is famous, are invariably attracted by the sight of the ocean plain of jungle spread out before their eyes. Only a few pale green patches of field are seen close beneath the rock on which they stand. All fields and villages beyond are as much hidden from view as weeds that grow beneath the standing corn. ”

“ We have been travelling through many miles of cultivated land on a comfortable railway; yet in this same district, in the early nineteenth century, our soldiers on the march to Kandy had to hew a path through the jungle and sling the heavy guns from tree to tree. The railway now extends from one end of the island to the other; off the main routes we find good roads on which 60 coaches run ”

“ He is a thorough Socialist in feeling, and a jolly fellow, always bright and good-natured, and with a great turn for music. We came up here to Kandy, and shortly after our arrival went to call on a Cinghalese peasant whose acquaintance I had lately made—Kalua by name—and found him in his little cabin, about a mile out of the town among the hills, where he lives with his brother Kirrah. ”

“ Coming out of them we see the road which we had just crossed just beneath us now. The place is rightly named “Sensational Rock”—it is a succession of precipices and torrents. We are rolling along ledges cut in the rock, twisting and turning above sheer abysses.
When we arrived at Kandy, we ran on the platform in pursuit of our luggage, which a swarm of vociferous natives had confiscated and carried off. Having overtaken them, we climbed into an omnibus which brought us to Queen’s Hotel, situated on the shore of a miniature lake. ”

“ When the English took possession of Kandy, Tickery Banda and two or three brothers, children of the first minister of the King of the Kandians, were taken and educated in English by the then Governor of the island. Tickery afterwards became manager of some coffee plantations, and was so employed on the arrival of a Siamese mission of [114] priests in 1845, who came to see Buddha's tooth. It seems that he met the mission returning disconsolate, having spent some 5,000 rupees in presents and bribes in a vain endeavour to obtain a sight of the relic. ”

“ At length Jan Kanty passed his hand across his eyes as if thinking very deeply. Then he said, “It seems to me that there is one course open to you. You have enemies in the city, you believe, and therefore you must remain for the present unseen. I advise a change of name, for such subterfuge is no sin where the end to be gained is righteous. For your present needs you can obtain money by selling your horses and cart; if you wish I will send a man with them to the horse market in the plain below the Wawel. ”

“ If there had been no magic in Pan Andrew, his wife, or his boy, there was magic in the name of Jan Kanty, and a very healthy magic, too, for at once every hat in that crowd came off, and men began to look askance at each other as if caught in some shameful thing.
“The good Jan Kanty,” was whispered on every side, and in the briefest second imaginable the crowd had melted until there remained not one person, not even the leader of the ruffians who had begun the attack. ”

“ CANDIDA. When I am thirty, she will be forty-five. When I am sixty, she will be seventy-five.
MARCHBANKS (turning to her) . In a hundred years, we shall be the same age. But I have a better secret than that in my heart. Let me go now. The night outside grows impatient.
CANDIDA. Good-bye. (She takes his face in her hands; and as he divines her intention and bends his knee, she kisses his forehead. Then he flies out into the night. She turns to Morell, holding out her arms to him.) Ah, James! (They embrace. But they do not know the secret in the poet's heart.) ”

“ MORELL (taking the cue with a debater's adroitness) . Dancing before all the people, Candida; and thinking he was moving their hearts by his mission when they were only suffering from— Prossy's complaint. (She is about to protest: he raises his hand to silence her, exclaiming) Don't try to look indignant, Candida:—
CANDIDA (interjecting) . Try!
MORELL (continuing) . Eugene was right. As you told me a few hours after, he is always right. He said nothing that you did not say far better yourself. He is the poet, who sees everything; and I am the poor parson, who understands nothing. ”

“ It is she who wants somebody to protect, to help, to work for—somebody to give her children to protect, to help and to work for. Some grown up man who has become as a little child again. Oh, you fool, you fool, you triple fool! I am the man, Morell: I am the man. (He dances about excitedly, crying.) You don't understand what a woman is. Send for her, Morell: send for her and let her choose between— (The door opens and Candida enters. He stops as if petrified.)
CANDIDA (amazed, on the threshold) . What on earth are you at, Eugene?
MARCHBANKS (oddly) . James and I are having a preaching match ”

“ Candida is in the easy chair with the poker, a light brass one, upright in her hand. She is leaning back and looking at the point of it curiously, with her feet stretched towards the blaze and her heels resting on the fender, profoundly unconscious of her appearance and surroundings. MARCHBANKS (breaking off in his recitation) : Every poet that ever lived has put that thought into a sonnet. He must: he can't help it. (He looks to her for assent, and notices her absorption in the poker.) Haven't you been listening? (No response.) Mrs. Morell! ”

“ Precisely at five, Kant made his appearance; and nothing could equal his astonishment on finding me in the room. Fresh from the confusion of dreaming, and bewildered alike by the sight of his new servant, by Lampe's absence, and by my presence, he could with difficulty be made to comprehend the purpose of my visit. A friend in need is a friend indeed; and we would now have given any money to that learned person who could have instructed us in the arrangement of the breakfast table. But this was a mystery revealed to none but Lampe. At length Kant took this task upon himself ”

“ MARCHBANKS. I don't mean the Reverend James Mavor Morell, moralist and windbag. I mean the real man that the Reverend James must have hidden somewhere inside his black coat—the man that Candida loved. You can't make a woman like Candida love you by merely buttoning your collar at the back instead of in front. ”

“ And I remember in particular, that upon the very last Monday of his life, when the extremity of his weakness moved a circle of his friends to tears, and he sat amongst us insensible to all we could say to him, cowering down, or rather I might say collapsing into a shapeless heap upon his chair, deaf, blind, torpid, motionless,—even then I whispered to the others that I would engage that Kant should take his part in conversation with propriety and animation. This they found it difficult to believe. Upon which I drew close to his ear, and put a question to him about the Moors of Barbary. ”

“ So absurdly does fortune throw about her favors! The case is told, I think, in an anonymous life of this very great man. For health's sake, Kant imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day along a highroad. This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for committing murder, at the third milestone from Königsberg, he waited for his "intended," who came up to time as duly as a mail-coach. But for an accident, Kant was a dead man. ”

“ A curious wavering followed in the mind and conduct of Kant’s new disciple. He wrote to his brother that Fräulein Kahn was indeed the noblest soul in the world, but that for one thing he himself was a wanderer, an independent creature, and that for the rest something new had just come into his life, which seemed to drive him out to conquer the whole world afresh. Marriage would clip a man’s wings, would imprison him yonder in Switzerland, would perhaps hinder his philosophizing in this wondrous and novel way. ”

“ The corpse being laid out and properly attired, immense numbers of people of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, flocked to see it. Everybody was anxious to make use of the last opportunity he would have for entitling himself to say—'I too have seen Kant.' This went on for many days—during which, from morning to night, the house was thronged with the public. Great was the astonishment of all people at the meagreness of Kant's appearance; and it was universally agreed that a corpse so wasted and fleshless had never been beheld. ”

“ MORELL (rising from his knee, alarmed) . Candida: don't let him do anything rash.
CANDIDA (confident, smiling at Eugene) . Oh, there is no fear. He has learnt to live without happiness.
MARCHBANKS. I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that. Parson James: I give you my happiness with both hands: I love you because you have filled the heart of the woman I loved. Good-bye. (He goes towards the door.)
CANDIDA. One last word. (He stops, but without turning to her.) How old are you, Eugene?
MARCHBANKS. As old as the world now. ”

“ One remembers how Candida, when her two lovers are debating which of them is to possess her—brings them at once to their senses by reminding them that it is not in the least necessary that she should be possessed by either of them; but she does in the end give herself to the one who needs her most. ”

“ CANDIDA (retreating, chilled) . I beg your pardon, James; I did not mean to touch you. I am waiting to hear your bid.
MORELL (with proud humility) . I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your defence, my honesty of purpose for your surety, my ability and industry for your livelihood, and my authority and position for your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a woman.
CANDIDA (quite quietly) . And you, Eugene? What do you offer?
MARCHBANKS. My weakness! my desolation! my heart's need!
CANDIDA (impressed) . That's a good bid, Eugene. ”

“ Morell sits down desperately, leaning forward to hide his face, and interlacing his fingers rigidly to keep them steady.)
CANDIDA (to Morell, relieved and laughing) . Oh, you're only shocked! Is that all? How conventional all you unconventional people are!
BURGESS. Come: be'ave yourself, Candy. What'll Mr. Morchbanks think of you?
CANDIDA. This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does. ”

“ Candida is not for mixed audiences. Christian socialism is caviare to the general. In characterization there is much variety; the heroine—if there be such an anomaly as a Shaw heroine—is most engaging. Every time I read Candida I feel myself on the trail of somebody; it is all in the air. The Lady from the Sea comes back when in that last scene, where the extraordinary young poet Marchbanks, a combination of the spiritual qualities of Shelley, Shaw, Ibsen's Stranger, and Shelley again, dares the fatuous James Morell to put his wife Candida to the test. ”

“ LEXY. What a good man! What a thorough, loving soul he is! (He takes Morell's place at the table, making himself very comfortable as he takes out a cigaret.)
PROSERPINE (impatiently, pulling the letter she has been working at off the typewriter and folding it.) Oh, a man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.
LEXY (shocked) . Oh, Miss Prossy!
PROSERPINE (rising busily and coming to the stationery case to get an envelope, in which she encloses the letter as she speaks) . Candida here, and Candida there, and Candida everywhere! ”

“ Wasianski for kneeling at the bed-side of his dying friend, to record, with the accuracy of a short-hand reporter, the last flutter of his pulse and the struggles of expiring nature, except by supposing that the idea of Kant, as a person belonging to all ages, in his mind transcended and extinguished the ordinary restraints of human sensibility, and that, under this impression, he gave that to his sense of a public duty which, it may be hoped, he would willingly have declined on the impulse of his private affections. ”

“ My dear lad: in a happy marriage like ours, there is something very sacred in the return of the wife to her home. (Marchbanks looks quickly at him, half anticipating his meaning.) An old friend or a truly noble and sympathetic soul is not in the way on such occasions; but a chance visitor is. (The hunted, horror-stricken expression comes out with sudden vividness in Eugene's face as he understands. Morell, occupied with his own thought, goes on without noticing it.) Candida thought I would rather not have you here ”

“ Where is Eugene?
CANDIDA. Washing his hands in the scullery—under the tap. He will make an excellent cook if he can only get over his dread of Maria.
MORELL (shortly) . Ha! No doubt. (He begins writing again.)
CANDIDA (going nearer, and putting her hand down softly on his to stop him, as she says) . Come here, dear. Let me look at you. (He drops his pen and yields himself at her disposal. She makes him rise and brings him a little away from the table, looking at him critically all the time.) Turn your face to the light. (She places him facing the window.) My boy is not looking well. ”