LADY BRITOMART [violently] Don't dare call me Biddy. Charles Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit. Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a vehemence that almost wrecks the chair].
UNDERSHAFT. My dear,you are the incarnation of morality. [She snorts]. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late; and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.
CUSINS. Understand this, you old demon—
LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!
UNDERSHAFT. Let him alone, Biddy. Proceed, Euripides.
CUSINS. You have me in a horrible dilemma. I want Barbara.
UNDERSHAFT. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the
difference between one young woman and another.
BARBARA. Quite true, Dolly.
CUSINS. I also want to avoid being a rascal.
UNDERSHAFT [with biting contempt] You lust for personal
righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good
conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call
patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself.
CUSINS. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good
man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity—
UNDERSHAFT. Pity! The scavenger of misery.
CUSINS. Well, love.
UNDERSHAFT. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love
the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the
Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do
you love the English?
CUSINS. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the
wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.
UNDERSHAFT. That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it?
CUSINS. May I not love even my father-in-law?
UNDERSHAFT. Who wants your love, man? By what right do you take
the liberty of offering it to me? I will have your due heed and
respect, or I will kill you. But your love! Damn your
impertinence!
CUSINS [grinning] I may not be able to control my affections, Mac.
UNDERSHAFT. You are fencing, Euripides. You are weakening: your
grip is slipping. Come! try your last weapon. Pity and love have
broken in your hand: forgiveness is still left.
CUSINS. No: forgiveness is a beggar's refuge. I am with you
there: we must pay our debts.
UNDERSHAFT. Well said. Come! you will suit me. Remember the words
of Plato.
CUSINS [starting] Plato! You dare quote Plato to me!
UNDERSHAFT. Plato says, my friend, that society cannot be saved
until either the Professors of Greek take to making gunpowder, or
else the makers of gunpowder become Professors of Greek.
CUSINS. Oh, tempter, cunning tempter!
UNDERSHAFT. Come! choose, man, choose.
CUSINS. But perhaps Barbara will not marry me if I make the wrong choice.
BARBARA. Perhaps not.
CUSINS [desperately perplexed] You hear—
BARBARA. Father: do you love nobody?
UNDERSHAFT. I love my best friend.
LADY BRITOMART. And who is that, pray?
UNDERSHAFT. My bravest enemy. That is the man who keeps me up to the mark.
CUSINS. You know, the creature is really a sort of poet in his
way. Suppose he is a great man, after all!
UNDERSHAFT. Suppose you stop talking and make up your mind, my young friend.
CUSINS. But you are driving me against my nature. I hate war.
UNDERSHAFT. Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. Dare you make war on war? Here are the means: my friend Mr Lomax is sitting on them.
LOMAX [springing up] Oh I say! You don't mean that this thing is
loaded, do you? My ownest: come off it.
SARAH [sitting placidly on the shell] If I am to be blown up, the
more thoroughly it is done the better. Don't fuss, Cholly.
LOMAX [to Undershaft, strongly remonstrant] Your own daughter, you know.
UNDERSHAFT. So I see. [To Cusins] Well, my friend, may we expect
you here at six tomorrow morning?
CUSINS [firmly] Not on any account. I will see the whole
establishment blown up with its own dynamite before I will get up
at five. My hours are healthy, rational hours eleven to five.