List Of Contents | Contents of Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw
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the Superman?

THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.

THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red
fire will make me sneeze. [They descend].

ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing
herself devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the
universe] A father--a father for the Superman!

She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing: all
existence seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a
live human voice crying somewhere. One sees, with a shock, a
mountain peak showing faintly against a lighter background. The
sky has returned from afar; and we suddenly remember where we
were. The cry becomes distinct and urgent: it says Automobile,
Automobile. The complete reality comes back with a rush: in a
moment it is full morning in the Sierra; and the brigands are
scrambling to their feet and making for the road as the goatherd
runs down from the hill, warning them of the approach of another
motor. Tanner and Mendoza rise amazedly and stare at one another
with scattered wits. Straker sits up to yawn for a moment before
he gets on his feet, making it a point of honor not to show any
undue interest in the excitement of the bandits. Mendoza gives a
quick look to see that his followers are attending to the alarm;
then exchanges a private word with Tanner.

MENDOZA. Did you dream?

TANNER. Damnably. Did you?

MENDOZA. Yes. I forget what. You were in it.

TANNER. So were you. Amazing

MENDOZA. I warned you. [a shot is heard from the road]. Dolts!
they will play with that gun. [The brigands come running back
scared]. Who fired that shot? [to Duval] Was it you?

DUVAL. [breathless] I have not shoot. Dey shoot first.

ANARCHIST. I told you to begin by abolishing the State. Now we
are all lost.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [stampeding across the amphitheatre]
Run, everybody.

MENDOZA. [collaring him; throwing him on his back; and drawing a
knife] I stab the man who stirs. [He blocks the way. The stampede
it checked]. What has happened?

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT, A motor--

THE ANARCHIST. Three men--

DUVAL. Deux femmes--

MENDOZA. Three men and two women! Why have you not brought them
here? Are you afraid of them?

THE ROWDY ONE. [getting up] Thyve a hescort. Ow, de-ooh lut's ook
it, Mendowza.

THE SULKY ONE. Two armored cars full o soldiers at the end o the
valley.

ANARCHIST. The shot was fired in the air. It was a signal.

Straker whistles his favorite air, which falls on the ears of the
brigands like a funeral march.

TANNER. It is not an escort, but an expedition to capture you. We
were advised to wait for it; but I was in a hurry.

THE ROWDY ONE. [in an agony of apprehension] And Ow my good Lord,
ere we are, wytin for em! Lut's tike to the mahntns.

MENDOZA. Idiot, what do you know about the mountains? Are you a
Spaniard? You would be given up by the first shepherd you met.
Besides, we are already within range of their rifles.

THE ROWDY ONE. Bat--

MENDOZA. Silence. Leave this to me. [To Tanner] Comrade: you will
not betray us.

STRAKER. Oo are you callin comrade?

MENDOZA. Last night the advantage was with me. The robber of the
poor was at the mercy of the robber of the rich. You offered your
hand: I took it.

TANNER. I bring no charge against you, comrade. We have spent a
pleasant evening with you: that is all.

STRAKER. I gev my and to nobody, see?

MENDOZA. [turning on him impressively] Young man, if I am tried,
I shall plead guilty, and explain what drove me from England, home
and duty. Do you wish to have the respectable name of Straker
dragged through the mud of a Spanish criminal court? The police
will search me. They will find Louisa's portrait. It will be
published in the illustrated papers. You blench. It will be your
doing, remember.

STRAKER. [with baffled rage] I don't care about the court. It's
avin our name mixed up with yours that I object to, you
blackmailin swine, you.

MENDOZA. Language unworthy of Louisa's brother! But no matter:
you are muzzled: that is enough for us. [He turns to face his own
men, who back uneasily across the amphitheatre towards the cave
to take refuge behind him, as a fresh party, muffled for
motoring, comes from the road in riotous spirits. Ann, who makes
straight for Tanner, comes first; then Violet, helped over the
rough ground by Hector holding her right hand and Ramsden her
left. Mendoza goes to his presidential block and seats himself
calmly with his rank and file grouped behind him, and his Staff,
consisting of Duval and the Anarchist on his right and the two
Social-Democrats on his left, supporting him in flank].

ANN. It's Jack!

TANNER. Caught!

HECTOR. Why, certainly it is. I said it was you, Tanner, We've
just been stopped by a puncture: the road is full of nails.

VIOLET. What are you doing here with all these men?

ANN. Why did you leave us without a word of warning?

HECTOR. I want that bunch of roses, Miss Whitefield. [To Tanner]
When we found you were gone, Miss Whitefield bet me a bunch of
roses my car would not overtake yours before you reached Monte
Carlo.

TANNER. But this is not the road to Monte Carlo.

HECTOR. No matter. Miss Whitefield tracked you at every stopping
place: she is a regular Sherlock Holmes.

TANNER. The Life Force! I am lost.

OCTAVIUS. [Bounding gaily down from the road into the
amphitheatre, and coming between Tanner and Straker] I am so glad
you are safe, old chap. We were afraid you had been captured by
brigands.

RAMSDEN. [who has been staring at Mendoza] I seem to remember the
face of your friend here. [Mendoza rises politely and advances
with a smile between Ann and Ramsden].

HECTOR. Why, so do I.

OCTAVIUS. I know you perfectly well, Sir; but I can't think where
I have met you.

MENDOZA. [to Violet] Do YOU remember me, madam?

VIOLET. Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.

MENDOZA. It was at the Savoy Hotel. [To Hector] You, sir, used to
come with this lady [Violet] to lunch. [To Octavius] You, sir,
often brought this lady [Ann] and her mother to dinner on your
way to the Lyceum Theatre. [To Ramsden] You, sir, used to come to
supper, with [dropping his voice to a confidential but perfectly
audible whisper] several different ladies.

RAMSDEN. [angrily] Well, what is that to you, pray?

OCTAVIUS. Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another
before this trip, you and Malone!

VIOLET. [vexed] I suppose this person was the manager.

MENDOZA. The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you
all. I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me
that you all enjoyed your visits very much.

VIOLET. What impertinence! [She turns her back on him, and goes
up the hill with Hector].

RAMSDEN. That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies
to treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have
waited on them at table.

MENDOZA. Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The
ladies followed your example. However, this display of the
unfortunate manners of your class closes the incident. For the
future, you will please address me with the respect due to a
stranger and fellow traveller. [He turns haughtily away and
resumes his presidential seat].

TANNER. There! I have found one man on my journey capable of
reasonable conversation; and you all instinctively insult him.
Even the New Man is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved
just like a miserable gentleman.

STRAKER. Gentleman! Not me.

RAMSDEN. Really, Tanner, this tone--

ANN. Don't mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this time
[she takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join Violet
and Hector. Octavius follows her, doglike].

VIOLET. [calling from the hill] Here are the soldiers. They are
getting out of their motors.

DUVAL. [panicstricken] Oh, nom de Dieu!

THE ANARCHIST. Fools: the State is about to crush you because you
spared it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the
bourgeoisie.

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [argumentative to the last] On the
contrary, only by capturing the State machine--

THE ANARCHIST. It is going to capture you.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [his anguish culminating] Ow, chock
it. Wot are we ere for? WOT are we wytin for?

MENDOZA. [between his teeth] Goon. Talk politics, you idiots:
nothing sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.

The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with
their rifles. The brigands, struggling with an over-whelming
impulse to hide behind one another, look as unconcerned as they
can. Mendoza rises superbly, with undaunted front. The officer
in command steps down from the road in to the amphitheatre;
looks hard at the brigands; and then inquiringly at Tanner.

THE OFFICER. Who are these men, Senor Ingles?

TANNER. My escort.

Mendoza, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows profoundly. An
irrepressible grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They
touch their hats, except the Anarchist, who defies the State with
folded arms.



ACT IV

The garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it
is like must go to Granada and see. One may prosaically specify a
group of hills dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one
of the hills, and a considerable town in the valley, approached
by dusty white roads in which the children, no matter what they
are doing or thinking about, automatically whine for halfpence
and reach out little clutching brown palms for them; but there is
nothing in this description except the A1hambra, the begging, and
the color of the roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as
Spain. The difference is that the Surrey hills are comparatively
small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey
Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the
amenity which conceals their size does not compromise their
dignity.

This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and
the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if
it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and
English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the
garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a
flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the
hill. Between us and this platform is a flower garden with a
circular basin and fountain in the centre, surrounded by
geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew trees in
the genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn; so we
reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The
platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a
couple more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of
the town up the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond
it to where, in the remotest distance, they become mountains. On
our left is the villa, accessible by steps from the left hand
corner of the garden. Returning from the platform through the
garden and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves the
villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary
interests on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no
tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little
iron garden table with books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a
chair beside it. A chair on the right has also a couple of open
books upon it. There are no newspapers, a circumstance which,
with the absence of games, might lead an intelligent spectator to
the most far reaching conclusions as to the sort of people who
live in the villa. Such speculations are checked, however, on
this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a little
gate in a paling an our left, of Henry Straker in his
professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman,
and follows him on to the lawn.

This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock
coat, tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark
grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black
necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a
man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous
affirmation without regard to climate: one who would dress thus
for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. And since
he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its
life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate
tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in
a working dress of any kind he would look dignified enough. He is
a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion, stubbly hair,
smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the corners, and a
dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes with age has
attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is still
hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his
face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of
one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one
who has made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having
under it a perceptible menace that he has other methods in
reserve if necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he
is not to be feared; for there is something pathetic about him at
times, as if the huge commercial machine which has worked him
into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own way
and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word
that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose
native intonation has clung to him through many changes of place
and rank. One can only guess that the original material of his
speech was perhaps the surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of
speech that occurs in London, Glasgow, Dublin and big cities
generally has been at work on it so long that nobody but an
arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue now; for its
music is almost gone, though its surliness is still perceptible.
Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with implacable
contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his own
language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old
gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence
expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him
normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky
species, but occasionally with indignant alarm when the old
gentleman shows signs of intending his Irish nonsense to be taken
seriously.

STRAKER. I'll go tell the young lady. She said you'd prefer to
stay here [he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].

MALONE. [who has been looking round him with lively curiosity]
The young lady? That's Miss Violet, eh?

STRAKER. [stopping on the steps with sudden suspicion] Well, you
know, don't you?

MALONE. Do  I?

STRAKER. [his temper rising] Well, do you or don't you?

MALONE. What business is that of yours?

Straker, now highly indignant, comes back from the steps and
confronts the visitor.

STRAKER. I'll tell you what business it is of mine. Miss
Robinson--

MALONE. [interrupting] Oh, her name is Robinson, is it? Thank
you.

STRAKER. Why, you don't know even her name?

MALONE. Yes I do, now that you've told me.

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