Act III - Page 2

useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsense! Hastings told me the very first day he
came here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is wrong with the
house.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What! The numskull said there was something
wrong with my house!

LADY UTTERWORD. I said Hastings said it; and he is not in the
least a numskull.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What's wrong with my house?

LADY UTTERWORD. Just what is wrong with a ship, papa. Wasn't it
clever of Hastings to see that?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The man's a fool. There's nothing wrong with a
ship.

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, there is.

MRS HUSHABYE. But what is it? Don't be aggravating, Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD. Guess.

HECTOR. Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar. Demons.

LADY UTTERWORD. Not a bit. I assure you, all this house needs to
make it a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with good appetites
and sound sleep in it, is horses.

MRS HUSHABYE. Horses! What rubbish!

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes: horses. Why have we never been able to let
this house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in
England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really
nice English people; and what do you always find? That the
stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any
visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset
before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I
never lived until I learned to ride; and I shall never ride
really well because I didn't begin as a child. There are only two
classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and
the neurotic classes. It isn't mere convention: everybody can see
that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who
don't are the wrong ones.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is some truth in this. My ship made a man
of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.

LADY UTTERWORD. Exactly how Hastings explained your being a
gentleman.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Not bad for a numskull. Bring the man here with
you next time: I must talk to him.

LADY UTTERWORD. Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well
bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has
been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has
lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so
contemptible? Why can't he get a valet to stay with him longer
than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and
pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and
sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books
and poems. He actually plays the flute; but I never let him bring
it into my house. If he would only--[she is interrupted by the