Pygmalion - 5

HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].
LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of their being missing.
HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains].
LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one you bought me in Brighton. I don't want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Don't you hit me.
HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.
LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own back, anyhow.
HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.
LIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she won't be told by me.
HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely].
Eliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring.



ACT V
Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The parlor-maid comes in.
THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with Colonel Pickering.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, show them up.
THE PARLOR-MAID. They're using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the police, I think.
MRS. HIGGINS. What!
THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry's in a state, mam. I thought I'd better tell you.
MRS. HIGGINS. If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when they've finished with the police. I suppose he's lost something.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, maam [going].
MRS. HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam.
Higgins bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.
HIGGINS. Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing!
MRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?
HIGGINS. Eliza's bolted.
MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened her.
HIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual, to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn't slept in. She came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool Mrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What am I to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect right to leave if she chooses.
HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can't find anything. I don't know what appointments I've got. I'm— [Pickering comes in. Mrs. Higgins puts down her pen and turns away from the writing-table].
PICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry told you? [He sits down on the ottoman].
HIGGINS. What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered a reward?
MRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You don't mean to say you have set the police after Eliza?
HIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He sits in the Elizabethan chair].
PICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he suspected us of some improper purpose.
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, of course he did. What right have you to go to the police and give the girl's name as if she were a thief, or a lost umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again, deeply vexed].
HIGGINS. But we want to find her.
PICKERING. We can't let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins. What were we to do?
MRS. HIGGINS. You have no more sense, either of you, than two children. Why—
The parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very particular. He's been sent on from Wimpole Street.
HIGGINS. Oh, bother! I can't see anyone now. Who is it?
THE PARLOR-MAID. A Mr. Doolittle, Sir.
PICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?
THE PARLOR-MAID. Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.
HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it's some relative of hers that she's gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the parlor-maid] Send him up, quick.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, Sir. [She goes].
HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we shall hear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].
MRS. HIGGINS. Do you know any of her people?
PICKERING. Only her father: the fellow we told you about.
THE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws].
Doolittle enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable frock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A flower in his buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes complete the effect. He is too concerned with the business he has come on to notice Mrs. Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with vehement reproach.
DOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this? You done this.
HIGGINS. Done what, man?
DOOLITTLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look at this coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me clothes?
MRS. HIGGINS. Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Won't you sit down?
DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten his hostess] Asking your pardon, ma'am. [He approaches her and shakes her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on Pickering's right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I can't think of anything else.
HIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you?
DOOLITTLE. I shouldn't mind if it had only happened to me: anything might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry Higgins.
HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That's the point.
DOOLITTLE. Have you lost her?
HIGGINS. Yes.
DOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her; but she'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.
MRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.
HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle] You're raving. You're drunk. You're mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. I've never seen you since.
DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for him?
HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down again carelessly].
DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman.
HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of the kind.
DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year.
HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!
PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you twice.
DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don't you be anxious: I bet she's on my doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn't respectable. And the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English. That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you done it for.
MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. I believe so.
DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's the tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven't the nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, ma'am: that's what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don't know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had my provocation). They've got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven't the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you're not going to do anything foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza's future. You can provide for her now.
DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma'am; I'm expected to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.
HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can't provide for her. He shan't provide for her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pounds for her. Doolittle: either you're an honest man or a rogue.
DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a little of both.
HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right to take her as well.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don't be absurd. If you really want to know where Eliza is, she is upstairs.
HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].
MRS. HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit down.
HIGGINS. I—
MRS. HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.
HIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows]. But I think you might have told me this half an hour ago.
MRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night partly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself into the river and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton Hotel. She told me of the brutal way you two treated her.
HIGGINS [bounding up again] What!
PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she's been telling you stories. We didn't treat her brutally. We hardly said a word to her; and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on Higgins]. Higgins: did you bully her after I went to bed?
HIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my face. She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her the slightest provocation. The slippers came bang into my face the moment I entered the room—before I had uttered a word. And used perfectly awful language.
PICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her?
MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn't she, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Very tender-hearted, ma'am. Takes after me.
MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked very hard for you, Henry! I don't think you quite realize what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! I should have thrown the fire-irons at you.
HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to bed. Did we, Pick?
PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.
MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?
PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.
MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell her how splendid she'd been.
HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn't make speeches to her, if that's what you mean.
PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate. Is she very angry?
MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I'm afraid she won't go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr. Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but she says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones.
HIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho!
MRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite enough of my time.
HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of the mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair].
DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some consideration for my feelings as a middle class man.
MRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the bell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so good as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don't want Eliza to have the shock of your news until she has made it up with these two gentlemen. Would you mind?
DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her off my hands. [He disappears through the window].
The parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in Doolittle's place.
MRS. HIGGINS. Ask Miss Doolittle to come down, please.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam. [She goes out].
MRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.
HIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.
PICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs. Higgins.
A pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs; and begins to whistle.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you don't look at all nice in that attitude.
HIGGINS [pulling himself together] I was not trying to look nice, mother.
MRS. HIGGINS. It doesn't matter, dear. I only wanted to make you speak.
HIGGINS. Why?
MRS. HIGGINS. Because you can't speak and whistle at the same time.
Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.
HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that girl? Are we to wait here all day?
Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much taken aback to rise.
LIZA. How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?
HIGGINS [choking] Am I— [He can say no more].
LIZA. But of course you are: you are never ill. So glad to see you again, Colonel Pickering. [He rises hastily; and they shake hands]. Quite chilly this morning, isn't it? [She sits down on his left. He sits beside her].
HIGGINS. Don't you dare try this game on me. I taught it to you; and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a fool.
Eliza takes a piece of needlework from her basket, and begins to stitch at it, without taking the least notice of this outburst.
MRS. HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could resist such an invitation.
HIGGINS. You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't put into her head or a word that I haven't put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me.
MRS. HIGGINS [placidly] Yes, dear; but you'll sit down, won't you?
Higgins sits down again, savagely.
LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and working away deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the experiment is over, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. Oh don't. You mustn't think of it as an experiment. It shocks me, somehow.
LIZA. Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf.
PICKERING [impulsively] No.
LIZA [continuing quietly]—but I owe so much to you that I should be very unhappy if you forgot me.
PICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn't it? You see it was so very difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have known that ladies and gentlemen didn't behave like that if you hadn't been there.
HIGGINS. Well!!
PICKERING. Oh, that's only his way, you know. He doesn't mean it.
LIZA. Oh, I didn't mean it either, when I was a flower girl. It was only my way. But you see I did it; and that's what makes the difference after all.
PICKERING. No doubt. Still, he taught you to speak; and I couldn't have done that, you know.
LIZA [trivially] Of course: that is his profession.
HIGGINS. Damnation!
LIZA [continuing] It was just like learning to dance in the fashionable way: there was nothing more than that in it. But do you know what began my real education?
PICKERING. What?
LIZA [stopping her work for a moment] Your calling me Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-respect for me. [She resumes her stitching]. And there were a hundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors—
PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.
LIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a scullerymaid; though of course I know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let in the drawing-room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when I was there.
PICKERING. You mustn't mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over the place.
LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But it made such a difference to me that you didn't do it. You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
MRS. HIGGINS. Please don't grind your teeth, Henry.
PICKERING. Well, this is really very nice of you, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA. I should like you to call me Eliza, now, if you would.
PICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.
LIZA. And I should like Professor Higgins to call me Miss Doolittle.
HIGGINS. I'll see you damned first.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!
PICKERING [laughing] Why don't you slang back at him? Don't stand it. It would do him a lot of good.
LIZA. I can't. I could have done it once; but now I can't go back to it. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours. That's the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.
PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you're coming back to Wimpole Street, aren't you? You'll forgive Higgins?
HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow.
Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his daughter, who, with her back to the window, is unconscious of his approach.
PICKERING. He's incorrigible, Eliza. You won't relapse, will you?
LIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don't believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried. [Doolittle touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work, losing her self-possession utterly at the spectacle of her father's splendor] A—a—a—a—a—ah—ow—ooh!
HIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A—a—a—a—ahowooh! A—a—a—a—ahowooh ! A—a—a—a—ahowooh! Victory! Victory! [He throws himself on the divan, folding his arms, and spraddling arrogantly].
DOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don't look at me like that, Eliza. It ain't my fault. I've come into money.
LIZA. You must have touched a millionaire this time, dad.
DOOLITTLE. I have. But I'm dressed something special today. I'm going to St. George's, Hanover Square. Your stepmother is going to marry me.
LIZA [angrily] You're going to let yourself down to marry that low common woman!
PICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has she changed her mind?
DOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle class morality claims its victim. Won't you put on your hat, Liza, and come and see me turned off?
LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I—I'll [almost sobbing] I'll demean myself. And get insulted for my pains, like enough.
DOOLITTLE. Don't be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone now, poor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of her.
PICKERING [squeezing Eliza's elbow gently] Be kind to them, Eliza. Make the best of it.
LIZA [forcing a little smile for him through her vexation] Oh well, just to show there's no ill feeling. I'll be back in a moment. [She goes out].
DOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous about the ceremony, Colonel. I wish you'd come and see me through it.
PICKERING. But you've been through it before, man. You were married to Eliza's mother.
DOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?
PICKERING. Well, nobody told me. But I concluded naturally—
DOOLITTLE. No: that ain't the natural way, Colonel: it's only the middle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But don't say nothing to Eliza. She don't know: I always had a delicacy about telling her.
PICKERING. Quite right. We'll leave it so, if you don't mind.
DOOLITTLE. And you'll come to the church, Colonel, and put me through straight?
PICKERING. With pleasure. As far as a bachelor can.
MRS. HIGGINS. May I come, Mr. Doolittle? I should be very sorry to miss your wedding.
DOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condescension, ma'am; and my poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous compliment. She's been very low, thinking of the happy days that are no more.
MRS. HIGGINS [rising] I'll order the carriage and get ready. [The men rise, except Higgins]. I shan't be more than fifteen minutes. [As she goes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her gloves]. I'm going to the church to see your father married, Eliza. You had better come in the brougham with me. Colonel Pickering can go on with the bridegroom.
Mrs. Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room between the centre window and the ottoman. Pickering joins her.
DOOLITTLE. Bridegroom! What a word! It makes a man realize his position, somehow. [He takes up his hat and goes towards the door].
PICKERING. Before I go, Eliza, do forgive him and come back to us.
LIZA. I don't think papa would allow me. Would you, dad?
DOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning, Eliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you could have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of them chaperoned the other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It was artful of you, Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have done the same myself. I been the victim of one woman after another all my life; and I don't grudge you two getting the better of Eliza. I shan't interfere. It's time for us to go, Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St. George's, Eliza. [He goes out].
PICKERING [coaxing] Do stay with us, Eliza. [He follows Doolittle].
Eliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone with Higgins. He rises and joins her there. She immediately comes back into the room and makes for the door; but he goes along the balcony quickly and gets his back to the door before she reaches it.
HIGGINS. Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you call it. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable? Or do you want any more?
LIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.
HIGGINS. I haven't said I wanted you back at all.
LIZA. Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?
HIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's.
LIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.
HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.
LIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman, facing the window]. The same to everybody.
HIGGINS. Just so.
LIZA. Like father.
HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the comparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously] The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
LIZA. Amen. You are a born preacher.
HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.