The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw - 60 Titles in One Edition (Illustrated Edition) - GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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With pillows on his fists?

      [He tears off his gloves and attacks Cashel with his bare knuckles.

      THE CROWD. Unfair! The rules!

      CETEWAYO. The joy of battle surges boiling up

       And bids me join the mellay. Isandhlana

       And Victory! [He falls on the bystanders.

      THE CHIEFS. Victory and Isandhlana!

      [They run amok. General panic and stampede. The ring is swept away.

      LUCIAN. Forbear these most irregular proceedings.

       Police! Police!

      [He engages Cetewayo his umbrella. The balcony

       comes down with a crash. Screams from its

       occupants. Indescribable confusion.

      CASHEL [dragging Lydia from the struggling heap].

       My love, my love, art hurt?

      LYDIA. No, no; but save my sore o’ermatchéd cousin.

      A POLICEMAN. Give us a lead, sir. Save the English flag.

       Africa tramples on it.

      CASHEL. Africa!

       Not all the continents whose mighty shoulders

       The dancing diamonds of the seas bedeck

       Shall trample on the blue with spots of white.

       Now, Lydia, mark thy lover. [He charges the Zulus.

      LYDIA. Hercules

       Cannot withstand him. See: the king is down;

       The tallest chief is up, heels over head,

       Tossed corklike o’er my Cashel’s sinewy back;

       And his lieutenant all deflated gasps

       For breath upon the sand. The others fly

       In vain: his fist o’er magic distances

       Like a chameleon’s tongue shoots to its mark;

       And the last African upon his knees

       Sues piteously for quarter. [Rushing into Cashel’s arms.] Oh, my hero:

       Thou’st saved us all this day.

      CASHEL. ’Twas all for thee.

      CETEWAYO. [trying to rise]. Have I been struck by lightning?

      LUCIAN. Sir, your conduct

       Can only be described as most ungentlemanly.

      POLICEMAN. One of the prone is white.

      CASHEL. ’Tis Paradise.

      POLICEMAN. He’s choking: he has something in his mouth.

      LYDIA [to Cashel]. Oh Heaven! there is blood upon your hip.

       You’re hurt.

      CASHEL. The morsel in yon wretch’s mouth

       Was bitten out of me.

      [Sensation. Lydia screams and swoons in Cashel’s arms.

      ACT IV

       Table of Contents

      Wiltstoken. A room in the Warren Lodge

      Lydia at her writing table

      LYDIA. O Past and Present, how ye do conflict

       As here I sit writing my father’s life!

       The autumn woodland woos me from without

       With whispering of leaves and dainty airs

       To leave this fruitless haunting of the past.

       My father was a very learnéd man.

       I sometimes think I shall oldmaided be

       Ere I unlearn the things he taught to me.

      Enter Policeman

      POLICEMAN. Asking your ladyship to pardon me

       For this intrusion, might I be so bold

       As ask a question of your people here

       Concerning the Queen’s peace?

      LYDIA. My people here

       Are but a footman and a simple maid;

       And both have craved a holiday to join

       Some local festival. But, sir, your helmet

       Proclaims the Metropolitan Police.

      POLICEMAN. Madam, it does; and I may now inform you

       That what you term a local festival

       Is a most hideous outrage ‘gainst the law,

       Which we to quell from London have come down:

       In short, a prizefight. My sole purpose here

       Is to inquire whether your ladyship

       Any bad characters this afternoon

       Has noted in the neighborhood.

      LYDIA. No, none, sir.

       I had not let my maid go forth to-day

       Thought I the roads unsafe.

      POLICEMAN. Fear nothing, madam:

       The force protects the fair. My mission here

       Is to wreak ultion for the broken law.

       I wish your ladyship good afternoon.

      LYDIA. Good afternoon. [Exit Policeman.

       A prizefight! O my heart!

       Cashel: hast thou deceived me? Can it be

       Thou hast backslidden to the hateful calling

       I asked thee to eschew?

       O wretched maid,

       Why didst thou flee from London to this place

       To write thy father’s life, whenas in town

       Thou might’st have kept a guardian eye on him —

       What’s that? A flying footstep —

      Enter Cashel

      CASHEL. Sanctuary!

       The law is on my track. What! Lydia here!

      LYDIA. Ay: Lydia here. Hast thou done murder, then,

       That in so horrible a guise thou comest?

      CASHEL. Murder! I would I had. Yon cannibal

       Hath forty thousand lives; and I have ta’en

       But thousands thirty-nine. I tell thee, Lydia,

       On the impenetrable sarcolobe

       That holds his seedling brain these fists have pounded

       By Shrewsb’ry clock an hour. This bruiséd grass

       And cakéd mud adhering to my form

       I have acquired in rolling on the sod

       Clinched in his grip. This scanty reefer coat

       For decency snatched up as fast I fled

       When the police arrived, belongs to Mellish.

       ’Tis all too short; hence my display of rib

       And forearm mother-naked. Be not wroth

       Because I seem to wink at you: by Heaven,

       ’Twas Paradise that plugged me in the eye

       Which I perforce keep closing. Pity me,

       My training wasted and my blows unpaid,

       Sans stakes, sans victory, sans everything

      

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