Fanny’s First Play: An Easy Play for a Little Theatre by George Bernard Shaw

Author:George Bernard Shaw
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: English drama
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2024-12-26T20:14:04+00:00

Act III

Again in the Gil­beys’ din­ing room. Af­ter­noon. The table is not laid: it is draped in its or­din­ary cloth, with pen and ink, an ex­er­cise book, and school­books on it. Bobby Gil­bey is in the arm­chair, crouch­ing over the fire, read­ing an il­lus­trated pa­per. He is a pretty youth, of very sub­urb­an gen­til­ity, strong and manly enough by nature, but un­trained and un­sat­is­fact­ory, his par­ents hav­ing ima­gined that do­mest­ic re­stric­tion is what they call “bring­ing up.” He has learnt noth­ing from it ex­cept a habit of evad­ing it by de­ceit.

He gets up to ring the bell; then re­sumes his crouch. Jug­gins an­swers the bell.

Bobby Jug­gins.

Jug­gins Sir?

Bobby Mor­osely sar­cast­ic. Sir be blowed!

Jug­gins Cheer­fully. Not at all, sir.

Bobby I’m a gaol-bird: you’re a re­spect­able man.

Jug­gins That doesn’t mat­ter, sir. Your fath­er pays me to call you sir; and as I take the money, I keep my part of the bar­gain.

Bobby Would you call me sir if you wer­en’t paid to do it?

Jug­gins No, sir.

Bobby I’ve been talk­ing to Dora about you.

Jug­gins In­deed, sir?

Bobby Yes. Dora says your name can’t be Jug­gins, and that you have the man­ners of a gen­tle­man. I al­ways thought you hadn’t any man­ners. Any­how, your man­ners are dif­fer­ent from the man­ners of a gen­tle­man in my set.

Jug­gins They would be, sir.

Bobby You don’t feel dis­posed to be com­mu­nic­at­ive on the sub­ject of Dora’s no­tion, I sup­pose.

Jug­gins No, sir.

Bobby Throw­ing his pa­per on the floor and lift­ing his knees over the arm of the chair so as to turn to­wards the foot­man. It was part of your bar­gain that you were to valet me a bit, wasn’t it?

Jug­gins Yes, sir.

Bobby Well, can you tell me the prop­er way to get out of an en­gage­ment to a girl without get­ting in­to a row for breach of prom­ise or be­hav­ing like a reg­u­lar cad?

Jug­gins No, sir. You can’t get out of an en­gage­ment without be­hav­ing like a cad if the lady wishes to hold you to it.

Bobby But it wouldn’t be for her hap­pi­ness to marry me when I don’t really care for her.

Jug­gins Wo­men don’t al­ways marry for hap­pi­ness, sir. They of­ten marry be­cause they wish to be mar­ried wo­men and not old maids.

Bobby Then what am I to do?

Jug­gins Marry her, sir, or be­have like a cad.

Bobby Jump­ing up. Well, I won’t marry her: that’s flat. What would you do if you were in my place?

Jug­gins I should tell the young lady that I found I couldn’t ful­fil my en­gage­ment.

Bobby But you’d have to make some ex­cuse, you know. I want to give it a gen­tle­manly turn: to say I’m not worthy of her, or some­thing like that.

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