George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

darkness].
MANGAN 
[tearfully, as he disappears]. Yes: it’s all very well
to make fun of me; but if you only knew—
HECTOR 
[impatiently]. How is all this going to end?
MAZZINI
. It won’t end, Mr Hushabye. Life doesn’t end: it
goes on.
ELLIE
. Oh, it can’t go on forever. I’m always expecting some-
thing. I don’t know what it is; but life must come to a point
sometime.
LADY UTTERWORD
. The point for a young woman of
your age is a baby.
HECTOR
. Yes, but, damn it, I have the same feeling; and I
can’t have a baby.
LADY UTTERWORD
. By deputy, Hector.
HECTOR
. But I have children. All that is over and done
with for me: and yet I too feel that this can’t last. We sit here
talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and
to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan
and his mutual admiration gang wield! It’s madness: it’s like
giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to play at earth-
quakes with.
MAZZINI
. I know. I used often to think about that when I
was young.
HECTOR
. Think! What’s the good of thinking about it?
Why didn’t you do something?
MAZZINI
. But I did. I joined societies and made speeches
and wrote pamphlets. That was all I could do. But, you know,
though the people in the societies thought they knew more
than Mangan, most of them wouldn’t have joined if they had
known as much. You see they had never had any money to
handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected a revolu-
tion, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that
we could blunder and muddle on any longer. But nothing
happened, except, of course, the usual poverty and crime and
drink that we are used to. Nothing ever does happen. It’s amaz-
ing how well we get along, all things considered.

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129
GB Shaw
LADY UTTERWORD
. Perhaps somebody cleverer than you
and Mr Mangan was at work all the time.
MAZZINI
. Perhaps so. Though I was brought up not to
believe in anything, I often feel that there is a great deal to be
said for the theory of an over-ruling Providence, after all.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Providence! I meant Hastings.
MAZZINI
. Oh, I beg your pardon, Lady Utterword.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Every drunken skipper trusts to
Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken
skippers is to run them on the rocks.
MAZZINI
. Very true, no doubt, at sea. But in politics, I
assure you, they only run into jellyfish. Nothing happens.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. At sea nothing happens to the sea.
Nothing happens to the sky. The sun comes up from the east
and goes down to the west. The moon grows from a sickle to
an arc lamp, and comes later and later until she is lost in the
light as other things are lost in the darkness. After the ty-
phoon, the flying-fish glitter in the sunshine like birds. It’s
amazing how they get along, all things considered. Nothing
happens, except something not worth mentioning.
ELLIE
. What is that, O Captain, O my captain?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER 
[savagely]. Nothing but the smash
of the drunken skipper’s ship on the rocks, the splintering of
her rotten timbers, the tearing of her rusty plates, the drown-
ing of the crew like rats in a trap.
ELLIE
. Moral: don’t take rum.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER 
[vehemently]. That is a lie, child.
Let a man drink ten barrels of rum a day, he is not a drunken
skipper until he is a drifting skipper. Whilst he can lay his
course and stand on his bridge and steer it, he is no drunk-
ard. It is the man who lies drinking in his bunk and trusts to
Providence that I call the drunken skipper, though he drank
nothing but the waters of the River Jordan.
ELLIE
. Splendid! And you haven’t had a drop for an hour.
You see you don’t need it: your own spirit is not dead.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Echoes: nothing but echoes. The
last shot was fired years ago.
HECTOR
. And this ship that we are all in? This soul’s prison
we call England?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. The captain is in his bunk, drink-

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130
Heartbreak House
ing bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the fore-
castle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think the
laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because
you were born in it?
HECTOR
. Well, I don’t mean to be drowned like a rat in a
trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to do?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your
business as an Englishman.
HECTOR
. And what may my business as an Englishman
be, pray?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Navigation. Learn it and live; or
leave it and be damned.
ELLIE
. Quiet, quiet: you’ll tire yourself.
MAZZINI
. I thought all that once, Captain; but I assure
you nothing will happen.