Source Text: CANDIDA1.3Morell: Must you go?
Burgess: Dont stir.
Morell: Oh, I'll see you off.
Candida: Well, Eugene? What do you think of my father?
Marchbanks: I -- I hardly know him yet. He seem to be a very nice old gentlemen.
Candida: And youll go to the Freeman Founders to dine with him, wont you?
Marchbanks: Yes, if it will please you.
Candida: Do you know, you are a very nice boy, Eugene, with all your queerness. If you had laughed at my father I shouldnt have minded; but I like you ever so much better for being nice to him.
Marchbanks: Ought I to have laughed? I noticed that he said something funny; but I am so ill at ease with strangers; and I never can see a joke. I'm very sorry.
Candida: Oh come! You great baby, you! You are worse than usual this morning. Why were you so melancholy as we came along in the cab?
Marchbanks: Oh, that was nothing. I was wondering how much I ought to give the cabman. I know it's utterly silly; but you dont know how dreadful such things are to me -- how I shrink from having to deal with strange people. But it's all right. He beamed all over and touched his hat when Morell gave him two shillings. I was on the point of offering him ten.
Candida: Oh, James dear, he was going to give the cabman ten shillings! ten shillings for a three minutes drive! Oh dear!
Morell: Never mind her, Marchbanks. The overpaying instinct is a generous one: better than the underpaying instinct, and not so common.
Marchbanks: No: cowardice, incompetence. Mrs Morell's quite right.
Candida: Of course she is. And now I must leave you to James for the present. I suppose you are too much of a poet to know the state a woman finds her house in when she's been away for three weeks. Give me my rug. Now hang my cloak across my arm. Now my hat. Now open the door for me. Thanks.
Morell: Youll stay to lunch, Marchbanks, of course.
Marchbanks: I mustnt. I mean I cant.
Morell: You mean you wont.
Marchbanks: No: I should like to, indeed. Thank you very much. But -- but --
Morell: But -- but -- but -- but -- Bosh! If youd like to stay, stay. If youre shy, go and take a turn in the park and write poetry until half past one; and then come in and have a good feed.
Marchbanks: Thank you, I should like that very much. But I really mustnt. The truth is, Mrs Morell told me not to. She said she didnt think youd ask me to stay to lunch, but that I was to remember, if you did, that you didnt really want me to. She said I'd understand; but I dont. Please dont tell her I told you.
Morell: Oh, is that all? Wont my suggestion that you should take a turn in the park meet the difficulty?
Marchbanks: How?
Morell: Why, you duffer -- No: I wont put it in that way. My dear lad: in a happy marriage like ours, there is something very sacred in the return of the wife to her home. An old friend or a truly noble and sympathetic soul is not in the way on such occasions; but a chance visitor is. Candida thought I would rather not have you here; but she was wrong. I'm very fond of you, my boy; and I should like you to see for yourself what a happy thing it is to be married as I am.
Marchbanks: Happy! Your marriage! You think that! You believe that!
Morell: I know it, my lad. Larochefoucauld said that there are convenient marriages but no delightful ones. You dont know the comfort of seeing through and through a thundering liar and rotten cynic like that fellow. Ha! ha! Now, off with you to the park, and write your poem. Half past one, sharp, mind: we never wait for anybody.
Marchbanks: No: stop: you shant. I'll force it into the light.
Morell: Eh? Force what?
Marchbanks: I must speak to you. There is something that must be settled between us.
Morell: Now?
Marchbanks: Now. Before you leave this room.
Morell: I'm not going to leave it, my dear boy: I thought you were. Come: sit down quietly; and tell me what it is. And remember: we are friends, and need not fear that either of us will be anything but patient and kind to the other, whatever we may have to say.
Marchbanks: Oh, I am not forgetting myself: I am only full of horror. You shall see whether this is a time for patience and kindness. Dont look at me in that self- complacent way. You think yourself stronger than I am; but I shall stagger you if you have a heart in your breast.
Morell: Stagger me, my boy. Out with it.
Marchbanks: First --
Morell: First?
Marchbanks: I love your wife.
Morell: Why, my dear child, of course you do. Everybody loves her: they cant help it. I like it. But I say, Eugene: do you think yours is a case to be talked about? Youre under twenty: she's over thirty. Doesnt it look rather too like a case of calf love?
Marchbanks: You dare say that of her! You think that way of the love she inspires! It is an insult to her!
Morell: To her! Eugene: take care. I have been patient. I hope to remain patient. But there are some things I wont allow. Dont force me to shew you the indulgence I should shew to a child. Be a man.
Marchbanks: Oh, let us put aside all that cant. It horrifies me when I think of the doses of it she has had to endure in all the weary years during which you have selfishly and blindly sacrificed her to minister to your self- sufficiency: you! who have not one thought -- one sense -- in common with her.
Morell: She seems to bear it pretty well. Eugene, my boy: you are making a fool of yourself: a very great fool of yourself. Theres a piece of wholesome plain speaking for you.
Marchbanks: Oh, do you think I dont know all that? Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true. You are very calm and sensible and moderate with me because you can see that I am a fool about your wife; just as no doubt that old man who was here just now is very wise over your Socialism, because he sees that you are a fool about it. Does that prove you wrong? Does your complacent superiority to me prove that I am wrong?
Morell: Marchbanks: some devil is putting these words into your mouth. it is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work. Take care of what you are doing. Take care.
Marchbanks: I know. I'm doing it on purpose. I told you I should stagger you.
Morell: Eugene: Listen to me. Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a happy man like me. You will be married; and you will be working with all your might and valor to make every spot on earth as happy as your own home. You will be one of the makers of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; and -- who knows? -- you may be a master builder where I am only a humble journeyman; for dont think, my boy, that I cannot see in you, young as you are, promise of higher powers than I can ever pretend to. I well know that it is in the poet and the holy spirit of man -- the god with in him -- is most godlike. It should make you tremble to think of that -- to think that the heavy burthen and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.
Marchbanks: It doesnt make me tremble. It is the want of it in others that makes me tremble.
Morell: Then help to kindle it in them -- in me -- not to extinguish it. In the future, when you are as happy as I am, I will be your true brother in the faith. I will help you to believe that God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise. I will help you to believe that every stroke of your work is sowing happiness for the great harvest that all -- even the humblest -- shall one day reap. And last, but trust me, not least, I will help you to believe that your wife loves you and is happy in her home. We need such help, Marchbanks: we need it greatly and always. There are so many things to make us doubt, if once we let our understanding be troubled. Even at home, we sit as if in camp, encompassed by a hostile army of doubts. Will you play the traitor and let them in on me?
Marchbanks: Is it like this for her here always? A woman, with a great soul, craving for realty, truth, freedom; and being fed on metaphors, sermons, stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you think a woman's soul can live on your talent for preaching?
Morrel: Marchbanks: you make it hard for me to control myself. My talent is like yours insofar as it has any real worth at all. It is the gift of finding words for divine truth.
Marchbanks: It's the gift of the gab, nothing more and nothing less. What has your knack of fine talking to do with the truth, any more than playing the organ has? Ive never been in your church; but Ive been to your political meetings; and Ive seen you do whats called rousing the meeting to enthusiasm: that is, you excited them until they behaved exactly as if they were drunk. And their wives looked on and saw what fools they were. Oh, it's an old story: youll find it in the Bible. I imagine King David, in his fits of enthusiasm, was very like you. "But his wife despised him in her heart"
Morell: Leave my house. Do you hear?
Marchbanks: Let me alone. Dont touch me. Stop, Morell: if you strike me, I'll kill myself: I wont bear it. Let me go. Take your hand away.
Morell: You little sniveling cowardly whelp. Go, before you frighten yourself into a fit.
Marchbanks: I'm not afraid of you: it's you who are afraid of me.
Marchbanks: Yes, it does. You think because I shrink from being brutally handled -- because I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with violence -- because I cant lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab like you -- because I cant fight you for your wife as a drunk navvy would: all that makes you think I'm afraid of you. But youre wrong. If I havnt got what you call British pluck, I havnt British cowardice either: I'm not afraid of a clergyman's ideas. I'll fight your ideas. I'll rescue her from her slavery to them. I'll pit my own ideas against them. You are driving me out of the house because you darent let her choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her again. Let me alone, I say. I'm going.
Morell: Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: dont be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our threshold again, she will want to have that explained too. Now I dont wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a blackguard.
Marchbanks: You shall. You must. If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified; and how you called me a sniveling little whelp and put me out of the house. If you dont tell her, I will: I'll write to her.
Morell: Why do you want her to know this?
Marchbanks: Because she will understand me, and know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from her -- if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am -- then you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and not to you. Goodbye.
Morell: Stop: I will not tell her.
Marchbanks: Either the truth or a lie you must tell her, if I go.
Morell: Marchbanks: it is sometimes justifiable --
Marchbanks: I know: to lie. It will be useless. Goodbye, Mr Clergyman.
Candida: Are you going, Eugene? Well, dear me, just look at you, going out into the street in that state! You are a poet, certainly. Look at him, James! Look at his collar! look at his tie! look at his hair! One would think somebody had been throttling you. Here! Stand still. There! Now you look so nice that I think youd better stay to lunch after all, though I told you you mustnt. It will be ready in half an hour. Dont be silly.
Marchbanks: I want to stay, of course; unless the reverend gentleman your husband has anything to advance to the contrary.
Candida: Shall he stay, James, if he promises to be a good boy and help me to lay the table?
Morell: Oh yes, certainly: he had better.
Marchbanks: Come and lay the table. I am the happiest of mortals.
Morell: So was I -- an hour ago.