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

That’s not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don’t you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I’d liked. I’ve seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute. Higgins Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling about? Liza Much troubled. I want a little kindness. I know I’m a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I’m not dirt under your feet. What I done Correcting herself what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I come⁠—came⁠—to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like. Higgins Well, of course. That’s just how I feel. And how Pickering feels. Eliza: you’re a fool. Liza That’s not a proper answer to give me. She sinks on the chair at the writing-table in tears. Higgins It’s all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you’re going to be a lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don’t spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it’s a fine life, the life of the gutter. It’s real: it’s warm: it’s violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate. Liza Desperate. Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can’t talk to you: you turn everything against me: I’m always in the wrong. But you know very well all the time that you’re nothing but a bully. You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father’s. But don’t you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down. I’ll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he’s able to support me. Higgins Sitting down beside her. Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I’m not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy. Liza You think I like you to say that. But I haven’t forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won’t be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can’t have kindness, I’ll have independence. Higgins Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. Liza Rising determinedly. I’ll let you see whether I’m dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I’ll go and be a teacher. Higgins What’ll you teach, in heaven’s name? Liza What you taught me. I’ll teach phonetics. Higgins Ha! Ha! Ha! Liza I’ll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean. Higgins Rising in a fury. What! That impostor! that humbug! that toadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one step in his direction and I’ll wring your neck. He lays hands on her. Do you hear? Liza Defiantly nonresistant. Wring away. What do I care? I knew you’d strike me some day. He lets her go, stamping with rage at having forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into his seat on the ottoman. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can’t take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That’s done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don’t care that Snapping her fingers for your bullying and your big talk. I’ll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she’ll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself. Higgins Wondering at her. You damned impudent slut, you! But it’s better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isn’t it? Rising. By George, Eliza, I said I’d make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this. Liza Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I’m not afraid of you, and can do without you. Higgins Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you