Heartbreak House · Act I (2/2) (5/5)

| Captain Shotover | What then is to be done? Are we to be kept forever in the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing but a machine for greasing their bristles and filling their snouts? | | Hector | Are Mangan’s bristles worse than Randall’s lovelocks? | | Captain Shotover | We must win powers of life and death over them both. I refuse to die until I have invented the means. | | Hector | Who are we that we should judge them? | | Captain Shotover | What are they that they should judge us? Yet they do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and their seed. They know it and act on it, strangling our souls. They believe in themselves. When we believe in ourselves, we shall kill them. | | Hector | It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate has a very nice daughter. Mangan’s son may be a Plato: Randall’s a Shelley. What was my father? | | Captain Shotover | The damnedst scoundrel I ever met. He replaces the drawing board; sits down at the table; and begins to mix a wash of color. | | Hector | Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent grandchildren? | | Captain Shotover | They are mine also. | | Hector | Just so⁠—we are members one of another. He throws himself carelessly on the sofa. I tell you I have often thought of this killing of human vermin. Many men have thought of it. Decent men are like Daniel in the lion’s den: their survival is a miracle; and they do not always survive. We live among the Mangans and Randalls and Billie Dunns as they, poor devils, live among the disease germs and the doctors and the lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant chefs and the tradesmen and the servants and all the rest of the parasites and blackmailers. What are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power to kill them; and I’ll spare them in sheer⁠— | | Captain Shotover | Cutting in sharply. Fellow feeling? | | Hector | No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them in simple magnanimous pity. | | Captain Shotover | You can’t spare them until you have the power to kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There are millions of blacks over the water for them to train and let loose on us. They’re going to do it. They’re doing it already. | | Hector | They are too stupid to use their power. | | Captain Shotover | Throwing down his brush and coming to the end of the sofa. Do not deceive yourself: they do use it. We kill the better half of ourselves every day to propitiate them. The knowledge that these people are there to render all our aspirations barren prevents us having the aspirations. And when we are tempted to seek their destruction they bring forth demons to delude us, disguised as pretty daughters, and singers and poets and the like, for whose sake we spare them. | | Hector | Sitting up and leaning towards him. May not Hesione be such a demon, brought forth by you lest I should slay you? | | Captain Shotover | That is possible. She has used you up, and left you nothing but dreams, as some women do. | | Hector | Vampire women, demon women. | | Captain Shotover | Men think the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. Walking distractedly away towards the pantry. I must think these things out. Turning suddenly. But I go on with the dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind ray that will explode the ammunition in the belt of my adversary before he can point his gun at me. And I must hurry. I am old: I have no time to waste in talk. He is about to go into the pantry, and Hector is making for the hall, when Hesione comes back. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Daddiest, you and Hector must come and help me to entertain all these people. What on earth were you shouting about? | | Hector | Stopping in the act of turning the door handle. He is madder than usual. | | Mrs. Hushabye | We all are. | | Hector | I must change. He resumes his door opening. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Stop, stop. Come back, both of you. Come back. They return, reluctantly. Money is running short. | | Hector | Money! Where are my April dividends? | | Mrs. Hushabye | Where is the snow that fell last year? | | Captain Shotover | Where is all the money you had for that patent lifeboat I invented? | | Mrs. Hushabye | Five hundred pounds; and I have made it last since Easter! | | Captain Shotover | Since Easter! Barely four months! Monstrous extravagance! I could live for seven years on 500 pounds. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Not keeping open house as we do here, daddiest. | | Captain Shotover | Only 500 pounds for that lifeboat! I got twelve thousand for the invention before that. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Yes, dear; but that was for the ship with the magnetic keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we do, you cannot afford lifesaving inventions. Can’t you think of something that will murder half Europe at one bang? | | Captain Shotover | No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn’t your husband invent something? He does nothing but tell lies to women. | | Hector | Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However, you are right: I ought to support my wife. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort: I should never see you from breakfast to dinner. I want my husband. | | Hector | Bitterly. I might as well be your lapdog. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other poor husbands? | | Hector | No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is anyhow! | | Mrs. Hushabye | To the Captain. What about that harpoon cannon? | | Captain Shotover | No use. It kills whales, not men. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Why not? You fire the harpoon out of a cannon. It sticks in the enemy’s general; you wind him in; and there you are. | | Hector | You are your father’s daughter, Hesione. | | Captain Shotover | There is something in it. Not to wind in generals: they are not dangerous. But one could fire a grapnel and wind in a machine gun or even a tank. I will think it out. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Squeezing the Captain’s arm affectionately. Saved! You are a darling, daddiest. Now we must go back to these dreadful people and entertain them. | | Captain Shotover | They have had no dinner. Don’t forget that. | | Hector | Neither have I. And it is dark: it must be all hours. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Oh, Guinness will produce some sort of dinner for them. The servants always take jolly good care that there is food in the house. | | Captain Shotover | Raising a strange wail in the darkness. What a house! What a daughter! | | Mrs. Hushabye | Raving. What a father! | | Hector | Following suit. What a husband! | | Captain Shotover | Is there no thunder in heaven? | | Hector | Is there no beauty, no bravery, on earth? | | Mrs. Hushabye | What do men want? They have their food, their firesides, their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are they not satisfied? Why do they envy us the pain with which we bring them into the world, and make strange dangers and torments for themselves to be even with us? | | Captain Shotover | Weirdly chanting. I builded a house for my daughters, and opened the doors thereof, That men might come for their choosing, and their betters spring from their love; But one of them married a numskull; | | Hector | Taking up the rhythm. The other a liar wed; | | Mrs. Hushabye | Completing the stanza. And now must she lie beside him, even as she made her bed. | | Lady Utterword | Calling from the garden. Hesione! Hesione! Where are you? | | Hector | The cat is on the tiles. | | Mrs. Hushabye | Coming, darling, coming. She goes quickly into the garden. | | | The Captain goes back to his place at the table. | | Hector | Going out into the hall. Shall I turn up the lights for you? | | Captain Shotover | No. Give me deeper darkness. Money is not made in the light. |