Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw [e book reader free TXT] 📗

conscious of being thoroughly up to date, and is heard descending the stairs in a stream of silvery laughter. Freddy To the heavens at large. Well, I ask you He gives it up, and comes to Mrs. Higgins. Goodbye. Mrs. Higgins Shaking hands. Goodbye. Would you like to meet Miss Doolittle again? Freddy Eagerly. Yes, I should, most awfully. Mrs. Higgins Well, you know my days. Freddy Yes. Thanks awfully. Goodbye. He goes out. Mrs. Eynsford Hill Goodbye, Mr. Higgins. Higgins Goodbye. Goodbye. Mrs. Eynsford Hill To Pickering. It’s no use. I shall never be able to bring myself to use that word. Pickering Don’t. It’s not compulsory, you know. You’ll get on quite well without it. Mrs. Eynsford Hill Only, Clara is so down on me if I am not positively reeking with the latest slang. Goodbye. Pickering Goodbye. They shake hands. Mrs. Eynsford Hill To Mrs. Higgins. You mustn’t mind Clara. Pickering, catching from her lowered tone that this is not meant for him to hear, discreetly joins Higgins at the window. We’re so poor! and she gets so few parties, poor child! She doesn’t quite know. Mrs. Higgins, seeing that her eyes are moist, takes her hand sympathetically and goes with her to the door. But the boy is nice. Don’t you think so? Mrs. Higgins Oh, quite nice. I shall always be delighted to see him. Mrs. Eynsford Hill Thank you, dear. Goodbye. She goes out. Higgins Eagerly. Well? Is Eliza presentable? He swoops on his mother and drags her to the ottoman, where she sits down in Eliza’s place with her son on her left. Pickering returns to his chair on her right. Mrs. Higgins You silly boy, of course she’s not presentable. She’s a triumph of your art and of her dressmaker’s; but if you suppose for a moment that she doesn’t give herself away in every sentence she utters, you must be perfectly cracked about her. Pickering But don’t you think something might be done? I mean something to eliminate the sanguinary element from her conversation. Mrs. Higgins Not as long as she is in Henry’s hands. Higgins Aggrieved. Do you mean that my language is improper? Mrs. Higgins No, dearest: it would be quite proper⁠—say on a canal barge; but it would not be proper for her at a garden party. Higgins Deeply injured. Well I must say⁠— Pickering Interrupting him. Come, Higgins: you must learn to know yourself. I haven’t heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in Hyde Park twenty years ago. Higgins Sulkily. Oh, well, if you say so, I suppose I don’t always talk like a bishop. Mrs. Higgins Quieting Henry with a touch. Colonel Pickering: will you tell me what is the exact state of things in Wimpole Street? Pickering Cheerfully: as if this completely changed the subject. Well, I have come to live there with Henry. We work together at my Indian Dialects; and we think it more convenient⁠— Mrs. Higgins Quite so. I know all about that: it’s an excellent arrangement. But where does this girl live? Higgins With us, of course. Where would she live? Mrs. Higgins But on what terms? Is she a servant? If not, what is she? Pickering Slowly. I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Higgins. Higgins Well, dash me if I do! I’ve had to work at the girl every day for months to get her to her present pitch. Besides, she’s useful. She knows where my things are, and remembers my appointments and so forth. Mrs. Higgins How does your housekeeper get on with her? Higgins Mrs. Pearce? Oh, she’s jolly glad to get so much taken off her hands; for before Eliza came, she had to have to find things and remind me of my appointments. But she’s got some silly bee in her bonnet about Eliza. She keeps saying “You don’t think, sir”: doesn’t she, Pick? Pickering Yes: that’s the formula. “You don’t think, sir.” That’s the end of every conversation about Eliza. Higgins As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I’m worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot. Mrs. Higgins You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll. Higgins Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul. Pickering Drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to her eagerly. Yes: it’s enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs. Higgins, we take Eliza very seriously. Every week⁠—every day almost⁠—there is some new change. Closer again. We keep records of every stage⁠—dozens of gramophone disks and photographs⁠— Higgins Assailing her at the other ear. Yes, by George: it’s the most absorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up; doesn’t she, Pick? Pickering We’re always talking Eliza. Higgins Teaching Eliza. Pickering Dressing Eliza. Mrs. Higgins What! Higgins Inventing new Elizas. Higgins and Pickering, speaking together: Higgins You know, she has the most extraordinary quickness of ear: Pickering I assure you, my dear Mrs. Higgins, that girl Higgins just like a parrot. I’ve tried her with every Pickering is a genius. She can play the piano quite beautifully Higgins possible sort of sound that a human being can make⁠— Pickering We have taken her to classical concerts and to music Higgins Continental dialects, African dialects, Hottentot Pickering halls; and it’s all the same to her: she plays everything Higgins clicks, things it took me years to get hold of; and Pickering she hears right off when she comes home, whether it’s Higgins she picks them up like a shot, right away, as if she had Pickering Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Morickton; Higgins been at it all her life. Pickering though six months ago, she’d never as much