Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw [bookstand for reading txt] 📗

or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don’t organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment. Sarah By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives? Undershaft In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed. Stephen, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly, and moves away quickly to the cannon. At the same moment the door of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the door open for Lomax, who appears in the doorway. Lomax With studied coolness. My good fellow: you needn’t get into a state of nerves. Nothing’s going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldn’t be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap. He descends and strolls across to Sarah. Undershaft To the foreman. Anything wrong, Bilton? Bilton With ironic calm. Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigarette, sir: that’s all. Undershaft Ah, quite so. To Lomax. Do you happen to remember what you did with the match? Lomax Oh come! I’m not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away. Undershaft The top of it was red hot inside, sir. Lomax Well, suppose it was! I didn’t chuck it into any of your messes. Undershaft Think no more of it, Mr. Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches? Lomax Offering his box. Certainly. Undershaft Thanks. He pockets the matches. Lomax Lecturing to the company generally. You know, these high explosives don’t go off like gunpowder, except when they’re in a gun. When they’re spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper. Warming to the scientific interest of the subject. Did you know that Undershaft? Have you ever tried? Undershaft Not on a large scale, Mr. Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of guncotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home. Bilton looks puzzled. Sarah Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it’s your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. Bilton gives it up and retires into the shed. Lomax My ownest, there is no danger. He sits beside her on the shell. Lady Britomart arrives from the town with a bouquet. Lady Britomart Coming impetuously between Undershaft and the deck chair. Andrew: you shouldn’t have let me see this place. Undershaft Why, my dear? Lady Britomart Never mind why: you shouldn’t have: that’s all. To think of all that Indicating the town. being yours! and that you have kept it to yourself all these years! Undershaft It does not belong to me. I belong to it. It is the Undershaft inheritance. Lady Britomart It is not. Your ridiculous cannons and that noisy banging foundry may be the Undershaft inheritance; but all that plate and linen, all that furniture and those houses and orchards and gardens belong to us. They belong to me: they are not a man’s business. I won’t give them up. You must be out of your senses to throw them all away; and if you persist in such folly, I will call in a doctor. Undershaft Stooping to smell the bouquet. Where did you get the flowers, my dear? Lady Britomart Your men presented them to me in your William Morris Labor Church. Cusins Springing up. Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church! Lady Britomart Yes, with Morris’s words in mosaic letters ten feet high round the dome. No Man Is Good Enough To Be Another Man’s Master. The cynicism of it! Undershaft It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in church. Lady Britomart Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan’t. I don’t ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons, if they are really necessary. Undershaft I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in English business. But he’s not a foundling; and there’s an end of it. Cusins Diplomatically. Not quite. They all turn and stare at him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft. I think⁠—Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my future course⁠—but I think the foundling difficulty can be got over. Undershaft What do you mean? Cusins Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a confession. Sarah Confession! Lady Britomart Barbara Stephen Lomax Oh I say! Cusins Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Until I met Barbara I thought myself in the main an honorable, truthful man, because I wanted the approval of my conscience more than I wanted anything else. But the moment I saw Barbara, I wanted her far more than the approval of my conscience. Lady Britomart Adolphus! Cusins It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I