Pygmalion
HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is THAT the way you feel towards us?
LIZA. I don’t want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know
is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.
HIGGINS. But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about
that in the middle of the night?
LIZA. I want to know what I may take away with me. I don’t want to be
accused of stealing.
HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn’t have said that,
Eliza. That shows a want of feeling.
LIZA. I’m sorry. I’m only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I
have to be careful. There can’t be any feelings between the like of you
and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what
doesn’t?
HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you
like. Except the jewels. They’re hired. Will that satisfy you? [He
turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].
LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a
further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take
these to your room and keep them safe? I don’t want to run the risk of
their being missing.
HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If
these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I’d ram them down your
ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets,
unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the
chains].
LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn’t the jeweler’s: it’s the one
you bought me in Brighton. I don’t want it now. [Higgins dashes the
ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly
that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and
exclaims] Don’t you hit me.
HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such
a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.
LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I’m glad. I’ve got a little of my own
back, anyhow.
HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have
caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to
me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.
LIZA [pertly] You’d better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the
coffee; for she won’t be told by me.
HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you;
and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and
the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He
goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door
savagely].
Eliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild
pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins’s exit is confused with her
own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to
look for the ring.
ACT V
Mrs. Higgins’s drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The
parlor-maid comes in.
THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with
Colonel Pickering.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, show them up.
THE PARLOR-MAID. They’re using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the
police, I think.
MRS. HIGGINS. What!
THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry’s
in a state, mam. I thought I’d better tell you.
MRS. HIGGINS. If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it
would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when they’ve
finished with the police. I suppose he’s lost something.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, maam [going].
MRS. HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and
the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam.
Higgins bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.
HIGGINS. Look here, mother: here’s a confounded thing!
MRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and
kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?
HIGGINS. Eliza’s bolted.
MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened
her.
HIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual,
to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she
changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn’t slept in. She
came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool
Mrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What
am I to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I’m afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect
right to leave if she chooses.
HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can’t find
anything. I don’t know what appointments I’ve got. I’m— [Pickering
comes in. Mrs. Higgins puts down her pen and turns away from the
writing-table].
PICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry told
you? [He sits down on the ottoman].
HIGGINS. What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered a
reward?
MRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You don’t mean to say you
have set the police after Eliza?
HIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He
sits in the Elizabethan chair].
PICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he
suspected us of some improper purpose.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, of course he did. What right have you to go to the
police and give the girl’s name as if she were a thief, or a lost
umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again, deeply vexed].
HIGGINS. But we want to find her.
PICKERING. We can’t let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins. What
were we to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. You have no more sense, either of you, than two children.
Why—
The parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very
particular. He’s been sent on from Wimpole Street.
HIGGINS. Oh, bother! I can’t see anyone now. Who is it?
THE PARLOR-MAID. A Mr. Doolittle, Sir.
PICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?
THE PARLOR-MAID. Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.
HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it’s some relative of
hers that she’s gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the
parlor-maid] Send him up, quick.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, Sir. [She goes].
HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we shall
hear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].
MRS. HIGGINS. Do you know any of her people?
PICKERING. Only her father: the fellow we told you about.
THE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws].
Doolittle enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable
frock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A flower in his
buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes complete the
effect. He is too concerned with the business he has come on to notice
Mrs. Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with
vehement reproach.
DOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this? You
done this.
HIGGINS. Done what, man?
DOOLITTLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look at this
coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me clothes?
MRS. HIGGINS. Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Won’t you sit down?
DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten
his hostess] Asking your pardon, ma’am. [He approaches her and shakes
her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on
Pickering’s right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I
can’t think of anything else.
HIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you?
DOOLITTLE. I shouldn’t mind if it had only happened to me: anything
might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you
might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry
Higgins.
HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That’s the point.
DOOLITTLE. Have you lost her?
HIGGINS. Yes.
DOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain’t found her; but
she’ll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.
MRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up
and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.
HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle] You’re
raving. You’re drunk. You’re mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I
had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. I’ve never
seen you since.
DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you
not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five
millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that
wanted you to invent a universal language for him?
HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He’s dead. [He sits down again
carelessly].
DOOLITTLE. Yes: he’s dead; and I’m done for. Now did you or did you not
write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present
in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a
common dustman.
HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of
the kind.
DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me
right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans
is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of
life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which,
Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his
Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that
I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as
they ask me up to six times a year.
HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!
PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won’t ask you twice.
DOOLITTLE. It ain’t the lecturing I mind. I’ll lecture them blue in the
face, I will, and not turn a hair. It’s making a gentleman of me that I
object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was
free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same
as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and
heels; and everybody touches me for money. It’s a fine thing for you,
says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it’s a good thing for you, I
says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a
pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me
shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove
me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and
nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I’m not a healthy man and can’t
live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I’m not let
do a hand’s turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for
it. A year ago I hadn’t a relative in the world except two or three
that wouldn’t speak to me. Now I’ve fifty, and not a decent week’s
wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for
myself: that’s middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don’t
you be anxious: I bet she’s on my doorstep by this: she that could
support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn’t respectable. And
the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I’ll have to learn
to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper
English. That’s where you’ll come in; and I daresay that’s what you
done it for.
MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this
if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this
bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn’t that so, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. I believe so.
DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That’s the
tragedy of it, ma’am. It’s easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the