60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      LYDIA. His voice is nearer. Fare you well, my tenant.

       When next your rent falls due, come to the castle.

       Pay me in person. Sir: your most obedient. [She curtsies and goes.

      CASHEL. Lives in this castle! Owns this park! A lady

       Marry a prizefighter! Impossible.

       And yet the prizefighter must marry her.

      Enter Mellish

      Ensanguined swine, whelped by a doggish dam,

       Is this thy park, that thou, with voice obscene,

       Fillst it with yodeled yells, and screamst my name

       For all the world to know that Cashel Byron

       Is training here for combat.

      MELLISH. Swine you me?

       I’ve caught you, have I? You have found a woman.

       Let her shew here again, I’ll set the dog on her.

       I will. I say it. And my name’s Bob Mellish.

      CASHEL. Change thy initial and be truly hight

       Hellish. As for thy dog, why dost thou keep one

       And bark thyself? Begone.

      MELLISH. I’ll not begone.

       You shall come back with me and do your duty —

       Your duty to your backers, do you hear?

       You have not punched the bag this blessed day.

      CASHEL. The putrid bag engirdled by thy belt

       Invites my fist.

      MELLISH [weeping]. Ingrate! O wretched lot!

       Who would a trainer be? O Mellish, Mellish,

       Trainer of heroes, builder-up of brawn,

       Vicarious victor, thou createst champions

       That quickly turn thy tyrants. But beware:

       Without me thou art nothing. Disobey me,

       And all thy boasted strength shall fall from thee.

       With flaccid muscles and with failing breath

       Facing the fist of thy more faithful foe,

       I’ll see thee on the grass cursing the day

       Thou didst forswear thy training.

      CASHEL. Noisome quack

       That canst not from thine own abhorrent visage

       Take one carbuncle, thou contaminat’st

       Even with thy presence my untainted blood

       Preach abstinence to rascals like thyself

       Rotten with surfeiting. Leave me in peace.

       This grove is sacred: thou profanest it.

       Hence! I have business that concerns thee not.

      MELLISH. Ay, with your woman. You will lose your fight.

       Have you forgot your duty to your backers?

       Oh, what a sacred thing your duty is!

       What makes a man but duty? Where were we

       Without our duty? Think of Nelson’s words:

       England expects that every man ——

      CASHEL. Shall twaddle

       About his duty. Mellish: at no hour

       Can I regard thee wholly without loathing;

       But when thou play’st the moralist, by Heaven,

       My soul flies to my fist, my fist to thee;

       And never did the Cyclops’ hammer fall

       On Mars’s armor — but enough of that.

       It does remind me of my mother.

      MELLISH. Ah,

       Byron, let it remind thee. Once I heard

       An old song: it ran thus. [He clears his throat.] Ahem, Ahem!

      [Sings] — They say there is no other

       Can take the place of mother —

      I am out o’ voice: forgive me; but remember:

       Thy mother — were that sainted woman here —

       Would say, Obey thy trainer.

      CASHEL. Now, by Heaven,

       Some fate is pushing thee upon thy doom.

       Canst thou not hear thy sands as they run out?

       They thunder like an avalanche. Old man:

       Two things I hate, my duty and my mother.

       Why dost thou urge them both upon me now?

       Presume not on thine age and on thy nastiness.

       Vanish, and promptly.

      MELLISH. Can I leave thee here

       Thus thinly clad, exposed to vernal dews?

       Come back with me, my son, unto our lodge.

      CASHEL. Within this breast a fire is newly lit

       Whose glow shall sun the dew away, whose radiance

       Shall make the orb of night hang in the heavens

       Unnoticed, like a glow-worm at high noon.

      MELLISH. Ah me, ah me, where wilt thou spend the night?

      CASHEL. Wiltstoken’s windows wandering beneath,

       Wiltstoken’s holy bell hearkening,

       Wiltstoken’s lady loving breathlessly.

      MELLISH. The lady of the castle! Thou art mad.

      CASHEL. ’Tis thou art mad to trifle in my path.

       Thwart me no more. Begone.

      MELLISH. My boy, my son,

       I’d give my heart’s blood for thy happiness.

       Thwart thee, my son! Ah, no. I’ll go with thee.

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