George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

lifts his fists in invocation to heaven]. Fall. Fall and crush. [He
goes out into the garden].

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115
GB Shaw
ACT III
In the garden, Hector, as he comes out through the glass
door of the poop, finds Lady Utterword lying voluptuously
in the hammock on the east side of the flagstaff, in the circle
of light cast by the electric arc, which is like a moon in its
opal globe. Beneath the head of the hammock, a campstool.
On the other side of the flagstaff, on the long garden seat,
Captain Shotover is asleep, with Ellie beside him, leaning
affectionately against him on his right hand. On his left is a
deck chair. Behind them in the gloom, Hesione is strolling
about with Mangan. It is a fine still night, moonless.
LADY UTTERWORD
. What a lovely night! It seems made
for us.
HECTOR
. The night takes no interest in us. What are we
to the night? [He sits down moodily in the deck chair].
ELLIE 
[dreamily, nestling against the captain]. Its beauty soaks
into my nerves. In the night there is peace for the old and
hope for the young.
HECTOR
. Is that remark your own?
ELLIE
. No. Only the last thing the captain said before he
went to sleep.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. I’m not asleep.
HECTOR
. Randall is. Also Mr Mazzini Dunn. Mangan,
too, probably.
MANGAN
. No.
HECTOR
. Oh, you are there. I thought Hesione would have
sent you to bed by this time.
MRS HUSHABYE 
[coming to the back of the garden seat,
into the light, with Mangan]. I think I shall. He keeps telling
me he has a presentiment that he is going to die. I never met
a man so greedy for sympathy.
MANGAN 
[plaintively]. But I have a presentiment. I really
have. And you wouldn’t listen.
MRS HUSHABYE
. I was listening for something else. There
was a sort of splendid drumming in the sky. Did none of you
hear it? It came from a distance and then died away.
MANGAN
. I tell you it was a train.

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116
Heartbreak House
MRS HUSHABYE
. And I tell you, Alf, there is no train at
this hour. The last is nine forty-five.
MANGAN
. But a goods train.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Not on our little line. They tack a truck
on to the passenger train. What can it have been, Hector?
HECTOR
. Heaven’s threatening growl of disgust at us use-
less futile creatures. [Fiercely]. I tell you, one of two things
must happen. Either out of that darkness some new creation
will come to supplant us as we have supplanted the animals,
or the heavens will fall in thunder and destroy us.
LADY UTTERWORD 
[in a cool instructive manner, wal-
lowing comfortably in her hammock]. We have not supplanted
the animals, Hector. Why do you ask heaven to destroy this
house, which could be made quite comfortable if Hesione
had any notion of how to live? Don’t you know what is wrong
with it?
HECTOR
. We are wrong with it. There is no sense in us.
We are useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Nonsense! Hastings told me the very
first day he came here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is
wrong with the house.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. What! The numskull said there
was something wrong with my house!
LADY UTTERWORD
. I said Hastings said it; and he is
not in the least a numskull.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. What’s wrong with my house?
LADY UTTERWORD
. Just what is wrong with a ship, papa.
Wasn’t it clever of Hastings to see that?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. The man’s a fool. There’s nothing
wrong with a ship.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Yes, there is.
MRS HUSHABYE
. But what is it? Don’t be aggravating,
Addy.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Guess.
HECTOR
. Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar.
Demons.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Not a bit. I assure you, all this house
needs to make it a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with
good appetites and sound sleep in it, is horses.

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117
GB Shaw
MRS HUSHABYE
. Horses! What rubbish!
LADY UTTERWORD
. Yes: horses. Why have we never been
able to let this house? Because there are no proper stables.
Go anywhere in England where there are natural, whole-
some, contented, and really nice English people; and what
do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the
household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano
the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened,
there are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I
learned to ride; and I shall never ride really well because I
didn’t begin as a child. There are only two classes in good
society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic
classes. It isn’t mere convention: everybody can see that the
people who hunt are the right people and the people who
don’t are the wrong ones.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. There is some truth in this. My
ship made a man of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Exactly how Hastings explained
your being a gentleman.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Not bad for a numskull. Bring
the man here with you next time: I must talk to him.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Why is Randall such an obvious
rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a
university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the
best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he
so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why can’t he get a valet
to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he
is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums
the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and
reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute;
but I never let him bring it into my house. If he would only—
[she is interrupted by the melancholy strains of a flute coming