George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

and cannot go on].

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52
Heartbreak House
MRS HUSHABYE 
[rising and marching about]. You may
have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my
pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it.
ELLIE 
[hopelessly]. No: it’s no use. I am bound in honor and
gratitude. I will go through with it.
MRS HUSHABYE 
[behind the sofa, scolding down at her].
You know, of course, that it’s not honorable or grateful to
marry a man you don’t love. Do you love this Mangan man?
ELLIE
. Yes. At least—
MRS HUSHABYE
. I don’t want to know about “at least”: I
want to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all
sorts of impossible people, especially old people.
ELLIE
. I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be—
MRS HUSHABYE 
[impatiently completing the sentence and
prancing away intolerantly to starboard]. —grateful to him
for his kindness to dear father. I know. Anybody else?
ELLIE
. What do you mean?
MRS HUSHABYE
. Anybody else? Are you in love with any-
body else?
ELLIE
. Of course not.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Humph! [The book on the drawing-table
catches her eye. She picks it up, and evidently finds the title very
unexpected. She looks at Ellie, and asks, quaintly] Quite sure
you’re not in love with an actor?
ELLIE
. No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head?
MRS HUSHABYE
. This is yours, isn’t it? Why else should
you be reading Othello?
ELLIE
. My father taught me to love Shakespeare.
MRS HUSHAYE 
[flinging the book down on the table]. Re-
ally! your father does seem to be about the limit.
ELLIE 
[naively]. Do you never read Shakespeare, Hesione?
That seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Do you, indeed? He was jealous, wasn’t he?
ELLIE
. Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is
horrible. But don’t you think it must have been a wonderful
experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home,
to meet a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts
of brave things and having terrible adventures, and yet find-

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53
GB Shaw
ing something in her that made him love to sit and talk with
her and tell her about them?
MRS HUSHABYE
. That’s your idea of romance, is it?
ELLIE
. Not romance, exactly. It might really happen.
Ellie’s eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. Mrs
Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to
the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Ellie darling, have you noticed that some
of those stories that Othello told Desdemona couldn’t have
happened—?
ELLIE
. Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have hap-
pened.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Hm! Desdemona thought they could
have happened. But they didn’t.
ELLIE
. Why do you look so enigmatic about it? You are
such a sphinx: I never know what you mean.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Desdemona would have found him out
if she had lived, you know. I wonder was that why he strangled
her!
ELLIE
. Othello was not telling lies.
MRS HUSHABYE
. How do you know?
ELLIE
. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there
are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello,
only, of course, white, and very handsome, and—
MRS HUSHABYE
. Ah! Now we’re coming to it. Tell me all
about him. I knew there must be somebody, or you’d never
have been so miserable about Mangan: you’d have thought it
quite a lark to marry him.
ELLIE 
[blushing vividly]. Hesione, you are dreadful. But I
don’t want to make a secret of it, though of course I don’t tell
everybody. Besides, I don’t know him.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Don’t know him! What does that mean?
ELLIE
. Well, of course I know him to speak to.
MRS HUSHABYE
. But you want to know him ever so much
more intimately, eh?
ELLIE
. No, no: I know him quite—almost intimately.
MRS HUSHABYE
. You don’t know him; and you know

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54
Heartbreak House
him almost intimately. How lucid!
ELLIE
. I mean that he does not call on us. I—I got into
conversation with him by chance at a concert.
MRS HUSHABYE
. You seem to have rather a gay time at
your concerts, Ellie.
ELLIE
. Not at all: we talk to everyone in the greenroom
waiting for our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he
looked so splendid. But he was only one of the committee. I
happened to tell him that I was copying a picture at the
National Gallery. I make a little money that way. I can’t paint
much; but as it’s always the same picture I can do it pretty
quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It happened that
he came to the National Gallery one day.
MRS HUSHABYE
. One students’ day. Paid sixpence to
stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might
have come in next day for nothing and found the floor clear!
Quite by accident?
ELLIE 
[triumphantly]. No. On purpose. He liked talking to
me. He knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable
women who are all in love with him. But he ran away from
them to see me at the National Gallery and persuade me to
come with him for a drive round Richmond Park in a taxi.
MRS HUSHABYE
. My pettikins, you have been going it.
It’s wonderful what you good girls can do without anyone
saying a word.
ELLIE
. I am not in society, Hesione. If I didn’t make ac-
quaintances in that way I shouldn’t have any at all.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Well, no harm if you know how to take
care of yourself. May I ask his name?
ELLIE 
[slowly and musically]. Marcus Darnley.
MRS HUSHABYE 
[echoing the music]. Marcus Darnley!
What a splendid name!
ELLIE
. Oh, I’m so glad you think so. I think so too; but I
was afraid it was only a silly fancy of my own.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys?
ELLIE
. Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an an-
tique chest—
MRS HUSHABYE
. A what?
ELLIE
. An antique chest, one summer morning in a rose
garden, after a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.

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55
GB Shaw
MRS HUSHABYE
. What on earth was he doing in the chest?
Did he get into it because he was afraid of the lightning?
ELLIE
. Oh, no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley
was embroidered on his baby clothes. And five hundred
pounds in gold.
MRS HUSHABYE 
[Looking hard at her]. Ellie!
ELLIE
. The garden of the Viscount—
MRS HUSHABYE
. —de Rougemont?
ELLIE 
[innocently]. No: de Larochejaquelin. A French fam-
ily. A vicomte. His life has been one long romance. A tiger—
MRS HUSHABYE
. Slain by his own hand?
ELLIE
. Oh, no: nothing vulgar like that. He saved the life of
the tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward’s hunt-
ing parties in India. The King was furious: that was why he
never had his military services properly recognized. But he
doesn’t care. He is a Socialist and despises rank, and has been
in three revolutions fighting on the barricades.
MRS HUSHABYE
. How can you sit there telling me such
lies? You, Ellie, of all people! And I thought you were a per-
fectly simple, straightforward, good girl.
ELLIE 
[rising, dignified but very angry]. Do you mean you
don’t believe me?
MRS HUSHABYE
. Of course I don’t believe you. You’re
inventing every word of it. Do you take me for a fool?