Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw (best e books to read txt) 📗

suppose, whether I could do without you. Liza Earnestly. Don’t you try to get round me. You’ll have to do without me. Higgins Arrogant. I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But with sudden humility I shall miss you, Eliza. He sits down near her on the ottoman. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather. Liza Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It’s got no feelings to hurt. Higgins I can’t turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you. Liza Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you don’t care a bit for her. And you don’t care a bit for me. Higgins I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask? Liza I won’t care for anybody that doesn’t care for me. Higgins Commercial principles, Eliza. Like Reproducing her Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness s’yollin voylets, Selling violets isn’t it? Liza Don’t sneer at me. It’s mean to sneer at me. Higgins I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn’t become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don’t and won’t trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else. You’ve had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog’s tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I’ll slam the door in your silly face. Liza What did you do it for if you didn’t care for me? Higgins Heartily. Why, because it was my job. Liza You never thought of the trouble it would make for me. Higgins Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed. Liza I’m no preacher: I don’t notice things like that. I notice that you don’t notice me. Higgins Jumping up and walking about intolerantly. Eliza: you’re an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please. Liza What am I to come back for? Higgins Bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to her. For the fun of it. That’s why I took you on. Liza With averted face. And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don’t do everything you want me to? Higgins Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don’t do everything you want me to. Liza And live with my stepmother? Higgins Yes, or sell flowers. Liza Oh! if I only could go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I’m a slave now, for all my fine clothes. Higgins Not a bit. I’ll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering? Liza Looking fiercely round at him. I wouldn’t marry you if you asked me; and you’re nearer my age than what he is. Higgins Gently. Than he is: not “than what he is.” Liza Losing her temper and rising. I’ll talk as I like. You’re not my teacher now. Higgins Reflectively. I don’t suppose Pickering would, though. He’s as confirmed an old bachelor as I am. Liza That’s not what I want; and don’t you think it. I’ve always had chaps enough wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and three times a day, sheets and sheets. Higgins Disagreeably surprised. Damn his impudence! He recoils and finds himself sitting on his heels. Liza He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me. Higgins Getting off the ottoman. You have no right to encourage him. Liza Every girl has a right to be loved. Higgins What! By fools like that? Liza Freddy’s not a fool. And if he’s weak and poor and wants me, may be he’d make me happier than my betters that bully me and don’t want me. Higgins Can he make anything of you? That’s the point. Liza Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural. Higgins In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that it? Liza No I don’t.