man] Professor Higgins?

HIGGINS. Here. Good morning. Sit down.

DOOLITTLE. Morning, Governor. [He sits down magisterially] I come about
a very serious matter, Governor.

HIGGINS [to Pickering] Brought up in Hounslow. Mother Welsh, I should
think. [Doolittle opens his mouth, amazed. Higgins continues] What do
you want, Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE [menacingly] I want my daughter: that’s what I want. See?

HIGGINS. Of course you do. You’re her father, aren’t you? You don’t
suppose anyone else wants her, do you? I’m glad to see you have some
spark of family feeling left. She’s upstairs. Take her away at once.

DOOLITTLE [rising, fearfully taken aback] What!

HIGGINS. Take her away. Do you suppose I’m going to keep your daughter
for you?

DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, look here, Governor. Is this
reasonable? Is it fair to take advantage of a man like this? The girl
belongs to me. You got her. Where do I come in? [He sits down again].

HIGGINS. Your daughter had the audacity to come to my house and ask me
to teach her how to speak properly so that she could get a place in a
flower-shop. This gentleman and my housekeeper have been here all the
time. [Bullying him] How dare you come here and attempt to blackmail
me? You sent her here on purpose.

DOOLITTLE [protesting] No, Governor.

HIGGINS. You must have. How else could you possibly know that she is
here?

DOOLITTLE. Don’t take a man up like that, Governor.

HIGGINS. The police shall take you up. This is a plant—a plot to
extort money by threats. I shall telephone for the police [he goes
resolutely to the telephone and opens the directory].

DOOLITTLE. Have I asked you for a brass farthing? I leave it to the
gentleman here: have I said a word about money?

HIGGINS [throwing the book aside and marching down on Doolittle with a
poser] What else did you come for?

DOOLITTLE [sweetly] Well, what would a man come for? Be human, governor.

HIGGINS [disarmed] Alfred: did you put her up to it?

DOOLITTLE. So help me, Governor, I never did. I take my Bible oath I
ain’t seen the girl these two months past.

HIGGINS. Then how did you know she was here?

DOOLITTLE [“most musical, most melancholy”] I’ll tell you, Governor, if
you’ll only let me get a word in. I’m willing to tell you. I’m wanting
to tell you. I’m waiting to tell you.

HIGGINS. Pickering: this chap has a certain natural gift of rhetoric.
Observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes wild. “I’m willing to tell
you: I’m wanting to tell you: I’m waiting to tell you.” Sentimental
rhetoric! That’s the Welsh strain in him. It also accounts for his
mendacity and dishonesty.

PICKERING. Oh, PLEASE, Higgins: I’m west country myself. [To Doolittle]
How did you know the girl was here if you didn’t send her?

DOOLITTLE. It was like this, Governor. The girl took a boy in the taxi
to give him a jaunt. Son of her landlady, he is. He hung about on the
chance of her giving him another ride home. Well, she sent him back for
her luggage when she heard you was willing for her to stop here. I met
the boy at the corner of Long Acre and Endell Street.

HIGGINS. Public house. Yes?

DOOLITTLE. The poor man’s club, Governor: why shouldn’t I?

PICKERING. Do let him tell his story, Higgins.

DOOLITTLE. He told me what was up. And I ask you, what was my feelings
and my duty as a father? I says to the boy, “You bring me the luggage,”
I says—

PICKERING. Why didn’t you go for it yourself?

DOOLITTLE. Landlady wouldn’t have trusted me with it, Governor. She’s
that kind of woman: you know. I had to give the boy a penny afore he
trusted me with it, the little swine. I brought it to her just to
oblige you like, and make myself agreeable. That’s all.

HIGGINS. How much luggage?

DOOLITTLE. Musical instrument, Governor. A few pictures, a trifle of
jewelry, and a bird-cage. She said she didn’t want no clothes. What was
I to think from that, Governor? I ask you as a parent what was I to
think?

HIGGINS. So you came to rescue her from worse than death, eh?

DOOLITTLE [appreciatively: relieved at being understood] Just so,
Governor. That’s right.

PICKERING. But why did you bring her luggage if you intended to take
her away?

DOOLITTLE. Have I said a word about taking her away? Have I now?

HIGGINS [determinedly] You’re going to take her away, double quick. [He
crosses to the hearth and rings the bell].

DOOLITTLE [rising] No, Governor. Don’t say that. I’m not the man to
stand in my girl’s light. Here’s a career opening for her, as you might
say; and—

Mrs. Pearce opens the door and awaits orders.

HIGGINS. Mrs. Pearce: this is Eliza’s father. He has come to take her
away. Give her to him. [He goes back to the piano, with an air of
washing his hands of the whole affair].

DOOLITTLE. No. This is a misunderstanding. Listen here—

MRS. PEARCE. He can’t take her away, Mr. Higgins: how can he? You told
me to burn her clothes.

DOOLITTLE. That’s right. I can’t carry the girl through the streets
like a blooming monkey, can I? I put it to you.

HIGGINS. You have put it to me that you want your daughter. Take your
daughter. If she has no clothes go out and buy her some.

DOOLITTLE [desperate] Where’s the clothes she come in? Did I burn them
or did your missus here?

MRS. PEARCE. I am the housekeeper, if you please. I have sent for some
clothes for your girl. When they come you can take her away. You can
wait in the kitchen. This way, please.

Doolittle, much troubled, accompanies her to the door; then hesitates;
finally turns confidentially to Higgins.

DOOLITTLE. Listen here, Governor. You and me is men of the world, ain’t
we?

HIGGINS. Oh! Men of the world, are we? You’d better go, Mrs. Pearce.

MRS. PEARCE. I think so, indeed, sir. [She goes, with dignity].

PICKERING. The floor is yours, Mr. Doolittle.

DOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes
refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his
visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him].
Well, the truth is, I’ve taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if
you want the girl, I’m not so set on having her back home again but
what I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a
young woman, she’s a fine handsome girl. As a daughter she’s not worth
her keep; and so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a
father; and you’re the last man alive to expect me to let her go for
nothing; for I can see you’re one of the straight sort, Governor. Well,
what’s a five pound note to you? And what’s Eliza to me? [He returns to
his chair and sits down judicially].

PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins’s
intentions are entirely honorable.

DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn’t, I’d ask
fifty.

HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you
would sell your daughter for 50 pounds?

DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn’t; but to oblige a gentleman
like you I’d do a good deal, I do assure you.

PICKERING. Have you no morals, man?

DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if
you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza
is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?

HIGGINS [troubled] I don’t know what to do, Pickering. There can be no
question that as a matter of morals it’s a positive crime to give this
chap a farthing. And yet I feel a sort of rough justice in his claim.

DOOLITTLE. That’s it, Governor. That’s all I say. A father’s heart, as
it were.

PICKERING. Well, I know the feeling; but really it seems hardly right—

DOOLITTLE. Don’t say that, Governor. Don’t look at it that way. What am
I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving
poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means
that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s
anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same
story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as
great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six
different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I
don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less
hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement,
cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band
when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as
they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an
excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two
gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you.
I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go
on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take
advantage of a man’s nature to do him out of the price of his own
daughter what he’s brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his
brow until she’s growed big enough to be interesting to you two
gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it
to you.

HIGGINS [rising, and going over to Pickering] Pickering: if we were to
take this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat
in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales.

PICKERING. What do you say to that, Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, thank you kindly. I’ve heard all the
preachers and all the prime ministers—for I’m a thinking man and game
for politics or religion or social reform same as all the other
amusements—and I tell you it’s a dog’s life anyway you look at it.
Undeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with
another, it’s—it’s—well, it’s the only one that has any ginger in it,
to my taste.

HIGGINS. I suppose we must give him a fiver.

PICKERING. He’ll make a bad use of it, I’m afraid.

DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid
that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a
penny of it left by Monday: I’ll have to go to work same as if I’d
never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for
myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to
others, and satisfaction to you to think it’s not been throwed away.
You couldn’t spend it better.

HIGGINS [taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and
the piano] This is irresistible. Let’s give him ten. [He offers two
notes to the dustman].

DOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn’t have the heart to spend ten; and
perhaps I shouldn’t neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a
man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what
I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less.

PICKERING. Why don’t you marry that missus of yours? I rather draw the
line at encouraging that sort of immorality.
