You and cookHad a lookAt my book!
And my niece wouldn't open it! The prophet is without honor in his own family. Well, what do you think of living for several hundred years? Are you going to have a try for it?
THE PARLOR MAID. Well, of course youre not in earnest, sir. But it does set one thinking, especially when one is going to be married.
CONRAD. What has that to do with it? He may live as long as you, you know.
THE PARLOR MAID. Thats just it, sir. You see, he must take me for better for worse, til death do us part. Do you think he would be so ready to do that, sir, if he thought it might be for several hundred years?
CONRAD. Thats true. And what about yourself?
THE PARLOR MAID. Oh, I tell you straight out, sir, I'd never promise to live with the same man as long as that. I wouldnt put up with my own children as long as that. Why, cook figured it out, sir, that when you were only 200, you might marry your own great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and not even know who he was.
CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to marry may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable, sir?
CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself about that.
Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit down. The parlor maid goes out.
CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want?
FRANKLYN. Oh, a silly misunderstanding. I have promised to address a meeting in Middlesborough; and some fool has put it into the papers that I am 'coming to Middlesborough,' without any explanation. Of course, now that we are on the eve of a general election, political people think I am coming there to contest the parliamentary seat. Burge knows that I have a following, and thinks I could get into the House of Commons and head a group there. So he insists on coming to see me. He is staying with some people at Dollis Hill, and can be here in five or ten minutes, he says.
CONRAD. But didn't you tell him that it's a false alarm?
FRANKLYN. Of course I did; but he wont believe me.
CONRAD. Called you a liar, in fact?
FRANKLYN. No: I wish he had: any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use. He pretends to believe me, and assures me his visit is quite disinterested; but why should he come if he has no axe to grind? These chaps never believe anything they say themselves; and naturally they cannot believe anything anyone else says.
CONRAD [rising] Well, I shall clear out. It was hard enough to stand the party politicians before the war; but now that they have managed to half kill Europe between them, I cant be civil to them, and I dont see why I should be.
FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our new gospel. [Conrad sits down again]. Party politicians are still unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce Burge.
CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen. Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening. He doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly just inside the door.
SAVVY [running to Franklyn] I say! Who do you think has just driven up in a big car?
FRANKLYN. Mr Joyce Burge, perhaps.
SAVVY [disappointed] Oh, they know, Bill. Why didnt you tell us he was coming? I have nothing on.
HASLAM. I'd better go, hadnt I?
CONRAD. You just wait here, both of you. When you start yawning, Joyce Burge will take the hint, perhaps.
SAVVY [to Franklyn] May we?
FRANKLYN. Yes, if you promise to behave yourself.
SAVVY [making a wry face] That will be a treat, wont it?
THE PARLOR MAID [entering and announcing] Mr Joyce Burge.
Haslam hastily moves to the fireplace; and the parlor maid goes out and shuts the door when the visitor has passed in.
FRANKLYN [hurrying past Savvy to his guest with the false cordiality he has just been denouncing] Oh! Here you are. Delighted to see you. [He shakes Burge's hand, and introduces Savvy] My daughter.
SAVVY [not daring to approach] Very kind of you to come.
Joyce Burge stands fast and says nothing; but he screws up his cheeks into a smile at each introduction, and makes his eyes shine in a very winning manner. He is a well-fed man turned fifty, with broad forehead, and grey hair which, his neck being short, falls almost to his collar.
FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our rector.
Burge conveys an impression of shining like a church window; and Haslam seizes the nearest library chair on the hearth, and swings it round for Burge between the stool and Conrad. He then retires to the window seat at the other side of the room, and is joined by Savvy. They sit there, side by side, hunched up with their elbows on their knees and their chins on their hands, providing Burge with a sort of Stranger's Gallery during the ensuing sitting.
FRANKLYN. I forget whether you know my brother Conrad. He is a biologist.
BURGE [suddenly bursting into energetic action and shaking hands heartily with Conrad] By reputation only, but very well, of course. How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw such a light on the age of the earth. [With conviction] There is nothing like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles, the gorgeous temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit shall dissolve, and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.' Thats biology, you know: good sound biology. [He sits down. So do the others, Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his Chippendale]. Well, my dear Barnabas, what do you think of the situation? Dont you think the time has come for us to make a move?
FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you whether we like it or not. We—
FRANKLYN [interrupting firmly] I never meddle in party politics now.
SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people swear by you.
BURGE [shining at her] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency to contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. A metropolitan seat. What do you say to the Strand?
FRANKLYN. My dear Burge, I am not a child. Why do you go on wasting your party funds on the Strand? You know you cannot win it.
BURGE. We cannot win it; but you—
FRANKLYN. Oh, please!
SAVVY. The Strand's no use, Mr Burge. I once canvassed for a Socialist there. Cheese it.
BURGE. Cheese it!
HASLAM [spluttering with suppressed laughter] Priceless!
SAVVY. Well, I suppose I shouldnt say cheese it to a Right Honorable. But the Strand, you know! Do come off it.
FRANKLYN. You must excuse my daughter's shocking manners, Burge; but I agree with her that popular democratic statesmen soon come to believe that everyone they speak to is an ignorant dupe and a born fool into the bargain.
BURGE [laughing genially] You old aristocrat, you! But believe me, the instinct of the people is sound—
CONRAD [cutting in sharply] Then why are you in the Opposition instead of in the Government?
BURGE [shewing signs of temper under this heckling] I deny that I am in the Oppositionmorally. The Government does not represent the country. I was chucked out of the Coalition by a Tory conspiracy. The people want me back. I dont want to go back.
FRANKLYN [gently remonstrant] My dear Burge: of course you do.
BURGE [turning on him] Not a bit of it. I want to cultivate my garden. I am not interested in politics: I am interested in roses. I havnt a scrap of ambition. I went into politics because my wife shoved me into them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people. The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people; and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What has he to offer to the people?
FRANKLYN [cutting in before Burge can proceed—as he evidently intends—to answer his own question] I will tell you. He has ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where they are with Lord Dunreen. They know what he thinks right and what he thinks wrong. With your followers they never know where they are. With you they never know where they are.
BURGE [amazed] With me!
FRANKLYN. Well, where are you? What are you?
BURGE. Barnabas: you must be mad. You ask me what I am?
FRANKLYN. I do.
BURGE. I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who—unworthily perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully—held the helm when the ship of State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.
FRANKLYN. I know that. I know who you are. And the earth-shaking part of it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even whether you have either beliefs or principles. What we did know was that your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber of henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.
BURGE [adroitly, as he thinks] I agree with you. I agree with you absolutely. I dont believe in coalition governments.
FRANKLYN. Precisely. Yet you formed two.
BURGE. Why? Because we were at war. That is what you fellows never would realize. The Hun was at the gate. Our country, our lives, the honor of our wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent babes, were at stake. Was that a time to argue about principles?
FRANKLYN. I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle. Do you think the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would be shut in his face on principle? Did he not hold his own against you until America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our rescue? Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?
BURGE. Barnabas: America was carried away by words, and had to eat them at the Peace Conference. Beware of eloquence: it is the bane of popular speakers like you.
FRANKLYN} [exclaiming]{Well!!
SAVVY} [all]{I like that!
HASLAM} [together]{Priceless!
BURGE [continuing remorselessly] Come down to facts. It wasn't principle that won the war: it was the British fleet and the blockade. America found the talk: I found the shells. You cannot win wars by principles; but youcanwin elections by them. There I am with you. You want the next election to be fought on principles: that is what it comes to, doesnt it?
FRANKLYN. I dont want it to be fought at all! An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul concerned in it. You know very well that it will not be fought on principle.
BURGE. On the contrary it will be fought on nothing else. I believe a program is a mistake. I agree with you that principle is what we want.
FRANKLYN. Principle without program, eh?
BURGE. Exactly. There it is in three words.
FRANKLYN. Why not in one word? Platitudes. That is what principle without program means.
BURGE [puzzled but patient, trying to get at Franklyn's drift in order to ascertain his price] I have not made myself clear. Listen. I am agreeing with you. I am on your side. I am accepting your proposal. There isnt going to be any more coalition. This time there wont be a Tory in the Cabinet. Every candidate will have to pledge himself to Free Trade, slightly modified by consideration for our Overseas Dominions; to Disestablishment; to Reform of the House of Lords; to a revised scheme of Taxation of Land Values; and to doing something or other to keep the Irish quiet. Does that satisfy you?
FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they are hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they hate the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses in the Midlands? I can find you hundreds of the most sordid rascals, or the most densely stupid reactionaries, with all these qualifications.
BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of England, whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the shop. The supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its enemies are of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people are a mob in which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and Positivists by Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest unbelievers and all the crudest fanatics.
BURGE. We stand, as Cromwell did, for liberty of conscience, if that is what you mean.
FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a man's conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military service, how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not my point.
BURGE [testily] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you principles you say they wont work.
FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths are not principles. If you get into power again you will find yourself at the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists and ecstatic Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory Inoculationists, of Syndicalists and Bureaucrats: in short, of men differing fiercely and irreconcilably on every principle that goes to the root of human society and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping such a team together will force you to sell the pass again to the solid Conservative Opposition.
BURGE [rising in wrath] Sell the pass again! You accuse me of having sold the pass!
FRANKLYN. When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all legislation of which they did not approve. And you could not even hold them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced the coalition on you.
BURGE. I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.
FRANKLYN. Do you deny that the thing occurred? Were the uncontradicted reports false? Were the published letters forgeries?
BURGE. Certainly not. ButIdid not do it. I was not Prime Minister then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was Prime Minister then, not I.
FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
BURGE [sitting down again with a shrug] Oh, I had to be told. But what could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
FRANKLYN. Precisely.
BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was at the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country at such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we never gave party a second thought. We stuck to—
CONRAD. Office?
SURGE [turning on him] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide of potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as if it were a catch.
FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin could not have helped himself?
BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on a hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for nothing but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes down with the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that you do not think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get things done. I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my stars, Lubin!! If you only knew—
The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor.
THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.
SURGE [bounding from his chair] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?
They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man at the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature, unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted, but wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to the intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric self-assertiveness of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact that they are unhappy men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes, whilst he flourishes like a primrose.
The parlor maid withdraws.
LUBIN [coming to Franklyn] How do you do, Mr Barnabas? [He speaks very comfortably and kindly, much as if he were the host, and Franklyn an embarrassed but welcome guest]. I had the pleasure of meeting you once at the Mansion House. I think it was to celebrate the conclusion of the hundred years peace with America.
FRANKLYN [shaking hands] It was long before that: a meeting about Venezuela, when we were on the point of going to war with America.
LUBIN [not at all put out] Yes: you are quite right. I knew it was something about America. [He pats Franklyn's hand]. And how have you been all this time? Well, eh?
FRANKLYN [smiling to soften the sarcasm] A few vicissitudes of health naturally in so long a time.
LUBIN. Just so. Just so. [Looking round at Savvy] The young lady is—?
FRANKLYN. My daughter, Savvy.
Savvy comes from the window between her father and Lubin.
LUBIN [taking her hand affectionately in both his] And why has she never come to see us?
BURGE. I don't know whether you have noticed, Lubin, that I am present.
Savvy takes advantage of this diversion to slip away to the settee, where she is stealthily joined by Haslam, who sits down on her left.
LUBIN [seating himself in Burge's chair with ineffable comfortableness] My dear Burge: if you imagine that it is possible to be within ten miles of your energetic presence without being acutely aware of it, you do yourself the greatest injustice. How are you? And how are your good newspaper friends? [Burge makes an explosive movement; but Lubin goes on calmly and sweetly] And what are you doing here with my old friend Barnabas, if I may ask?
BURGE [sitting down in Conrad's chair, leaving him standing uneasily in the corner] Well, just what you are doing, if you want to know. I am trying to enlist Mr Barnabas's valuable support for my party.
LUBIN. Your party, eh? The newspaper party?
BURGE. The Liberal Party. The party of which I have the honor to be leader.
LUBIN. Have you now? Thats very interesting; for I thoughtIwas the leader of the Liberal Party. However, it is very kind of you to take it off my hands, if the party will let you.
BURGE. Do you suggest that I have not the support and confidence of the party?
LUBIN. I dont suggest anything, my dear Burge. Mr Barnabas will tell you that we all think very highly of you. The country owes you a great deal. During the war, you did very creditably over the munitions; and if you were not quite so successful with the peace, nobody doubted that you meant well.
BURGE. Very kind of you, Lubin. Let me remark that you cannot lead a progressive party without getting a move on.
LUBIN. You mean you cannot. I did it for ten years without the least difficulty. And very comfortable, prosperous, pleasant years they were.
BURGE. Yes; but what did they end in?
LUBIN. In you, Burge. You don't complain of that, do you?
BURGE [fiercely] In plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder, and sudden death.
LUBIN [with an appreciative chuckle] The Nonconformist can quote the prayer-book for his own purposes, I see. How you enjoyed yourself over that business, Burge! Do you remember the Knock-Out Blow?
BURGE. It came off: don't forget that. Doyouremember fighting to the last drop of your blood?
LUBIN [unruffled, to Franklyn] By the way, I remember your brother Conrad—a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow—explaining to me that I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be dead long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me. They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill which gave them the vote.
LUBIN [discovering Conrad's presence for the first time] Youre right: it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman, Barnabas?
CONRAD [not at all affably] I am the Conrad in question. [He sits down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale].
LUBIN. Are you? [Looking at him pleasantly] Yes: of course you are. I never forget a face. But [with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy] your pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through times terrible enough to make any man serious.
LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time I used to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly considerations from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the Sabbath; and there have been Sundays within the last few years on which I have had to play as many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind off the news from the front.
BURGE [scandalized] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on bridge.
FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.
BURGE. But I am in the truest sense myself a Labor leader. I—[he stops, as Lubin has risen with a half-suppressed yawn, and is already talking calmly, but without a pretence of interest].
LUBIN. The Labor Party! Oh no, Mr Barnabas. No, no, no, no, no. [He moves in Savvy's direction]. There will be no trouble about that. Of course we must give them a few seats: more, I quite admit, than we should have dreamt of leaving to them before the war; but—[by this time he has reached the sofa where Savvy and Haslam are seated. He sits down between them; takes her hand; and drops the subject of Labor]. Well, my dear young lady? What is the latest news? Whats going on? Have you seen Shoddy's new play? Tell me all about it, and all about the latest books, and all about everything.
SAVVY. You have not met Mr Haslam. Our Rector.
LUBIN [who has quite overlooked Haslam] Never heard of him. Is he any good?
FRANKLYN. I was introducing him. This is Mr Haslam.
HASLAM. How d'ye do?
LUBIN. I beg your pardon, Mr Haslam. Delighted to meet you. [To Savvy] Well, now, how many books have you written?
SAVVY [rather overwhelmed but attracted] None. I don't write.
LUBIN. You dont say so; Well, what do you do? Music? Skirt-dancing?
SAVVY. I dont do anything.
LUBIN. Thank God! You and I were born for one another. Who is your favorite poet, Sally?
SAVVY. Savvy.
LUBIN. Savvy! I never heard of him. Tell me all about him. Keep me up to date.
SAVVY. It's not a poet.Iam Savvy, not Sally.
LUBIN. Savvy! Thats a funny name, and very pretty. Savvy. It sounds Chinese. What does it mean?
CONRAD. Short for Savage.
LUBIN [patting her hand] La belle Sauvage.
HASLAM [rising and surrendering Savvy to Lubin by crossing to the fireplace] I suppose the Church is out of it as far as progressive politics are concerned.
BURGE. Nonsense! That notion about the Church being unprogressive is one of those shibboleths that our party must drop. The Church is all right essentially. Get rid of the establishment; get rid of the bishops; get rid of the candlesticks; get rid of the 39 articles; and the Church of England is just as good as any other Church; and I don't care who hears me say so.
LUBIN. It doesn't matter a bit who hears you say so, my dear Burge. [To Savvy] Who did you say your favorite poet was?
SAVVY. I dont make pets of poets. Who's yours?
LUBIN. Horace.
SAVVY. Horace who?
LUBIN. Quintus Horatius Flaccus: the noblest Roman of them all, my dear.
SAVVY. Oh, if he is dead, that explains it. I have a theory that all the dead people we feel especially interested in must have been ourselves. You must be Horace's reincarnation.
LUBIN [delighted] That is the very most charming and penetrating and intelligent thing that has ever been said to me. Barnabas: will you exchange daughters with me? I can give you your choice of two.
FRANKLYN. Man proposes. Savvy disposes.
LUBIN. What does Savvy say?
BURGE. Lubin: I came here to talk politics.
LUBIN. Yes: you have only one subject, Burge. I came here to talk to Savvy. Take Burge into the next room, Barnabas; and let him rip.
BURGE [half-angry, half-indulgent] No; but really, Lubin, we are at a crisis—
LUBIN. My dear Burge, life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis; I am always in the convalescent stage. I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
SAVVY [half-rising] Perhaps I'd better run away. I am distracting you.
LUBIN [making her sit down again] Not at all, my dear. You are only distracting Burge. Jolly good thing for him to be distracted by a pretty girl. Just what he needs.
BURGE. I sometimes envy you, Lubin. The great movement of mankind, the giant sweep of the ages, passes you by and leaves you standing.
LUBIN. It leaves me sitting, and quite comfortable, thank you. Go on sweeping. When you are tired of it, come back; and you will find England where it was, and me in my accustomed place, with Miss Savvy telling me all sorts of interesting things.
SAVVY [who has been growing more and more restless] Dont let him shut you up, Mr Burge. You know, Mr Lubin, I am frightfully interested in the Labor movement, and in Theosophy, and in reconstruction after the war, and all sorts of things. I daresay the flappers in your smart set are tremendously flattered when you sit beside them and are nice to them as you are being nice to me; but I am not smart; and I am no use as a flapper. I am dowdy and serious. I want you to be serious. If you refuse, I shall go and sit beside Mr Burge, and ask him to hold my hand.
LUBIN. He wouldnt know how to do it, my dear. Burge has a reputation as a profligate—
BURGE [starting] Lubin: this is monstrous. I—
LUBIN [continuing]—but he is really a model of domesticity. His name is coupled with all the most celebrated beauties; but for him there is only one woman; and that is not you, my dear, but his very charming wife.
BURGE. You are destroying my character in the act of pretending to save it. Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your own wife. Both of them need all your attention.
LUBIN. I have the privilege of my age and of my transparent innocence. I have not to struggle with your volcanic energy.
BURGE [with an immense sense of power] No, by George!
FRANKLYN. I think I shall speak both for my brother and myself, and possibly also for my daughter, if I say that since the object of your visit and Mr Joyce Burge's is to some extent political, we should hear with great interest something about your political aims, Mr Lubin.
LUBIN [assenting with complete good humor, and becoming attentive, clear, and businesslike in his tone] By all means, Mr Barnabas. What we have to consider first, I take it, is what prospect there is of our finding you beside us in the House after the next election.
FRANKLYN. When I speak of politics, Mr Lubin, I am not thinking of elections, or available seats, or party funds, or the registers, or even, I am sorry to have to add, of parliament as it exists at present. I had much rather you talked about bridge than about electioneering: it is the more interesting game of the two.
BURGE. He wants to discuss principles, Lubin.
LUBIN [very cool and clear] I understand Mr Barnabas quite well. But elections are unsettled things; principles are settled things.
CONRAD [impatiently] Great Heavens!—
LUBIN [interrupting him with quiet authority] One moment, Dr Barnabas. The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues—if Burge will excuse that expression—
BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
LUBIN.—that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary new principles and new politics. The Labor members will find that the immutable laws of political economy take no more notice of their ambitions and aspirations than the law of gravitation. I speak, if I may say so, with knowledge; for I have made a special, study of the Labor question.
FRANKLYN [with interest and some surprise] Indeed?
LUBIN. Yes. It occurred quite at the beginning of my career. I was asked to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men's College; and I was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others were doing that sort of thing at the moment. It was rather a troublesome job, because I had not gone into political economy at the time. As you know, at the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession was the Law. But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most carefully. I found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism and Socialism and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that wages and the production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by legislation or by any human action whatever. They obey fixed scientific laws, which have been ascertained and settled finally by the highest economic authorities. Naturally I do not at this distance of time remember the exact process of reasoning; but I can get up the case again at any time in a couple of days; and you may rely on me absolutely, should the occasion arise, to deal with all these ignorant and unpractical people in a conclusive and convincing way, except, of course, as far as it may be advisable to indulge and flatter them a little so as to let them down without creating ill feeling in the working-class electorate. In short, I can get that lecture up again almost at a moment's notice.
SAVVY. But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all this about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of political economy is obsolete rot.
FRANKLYN [shocked] Oh, my dear! That is not polite.
LUBIN. No, no, no. Dont scold her. She mustnt be scolded. [To Savvy] I understand. You are a disciple of Karl Marx.
SAVVY. No, no. Karl Marx's economics are all rot.
LUBIN [at last a little taken aback] Dear me!
SAVVY. You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it's like hearing a man talk about the Garden of Eden.
CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first attempt at biology anyhow.
LUBIN [recovering his self-possession] I am sound on the Garden of Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
LUBIN. What! Already!
SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask Uncle. Ask the first person you meet in the street. [She rises and crosses to Haslam]. Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
HASLAM. Priceless. [He complies].
FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin; but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke, dear.
Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes his mind.
LUBIN [shrewd and serious] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised; and I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I may be wrong.
BURGE [in a burst of irony] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!
LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for being always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could not conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so completely filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on by my duties as leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime Ministers were also leaders—
BURGE [stung] Not to mention bridge and smart society.
LUBIN.—not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them; but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will be so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they are talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do it in terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of what her granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. I have no objection whatever to denounce Karl Marx. Anything I can say against Darwin will please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You must not call a voter a Socialist until—
FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call him a Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all. Surely you would not say that I must not address my constituents as gentlemen until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because they wish to be so addressed. [He rises from the sofa and goes to Franklyn, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder]. Do not be afraid of Socialism, Mr Barnabas. You need not tremble for your property or your position or your dignity. England will remain what England is, no matter what new political names may come into vogue. I do not intend to resist the transition to Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to lead it, to give suitable expression to its aspirations, and to steer it clear of Utopian absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the most advanced Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal ones.
BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything is going to change. The millions are still to toil—the people—my people—for I am a man of the people—
LUBIN [interrupting him contemptuously] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You are a country solicitor, further removed from the people, more foreign to them, more jealous of letting them up to your level, than any duke or any archbishop.
BURGE [hotly] I deny it. You think I have never been poor. You think I have never cleaned my own boots. You think my fingers have never come out through the soles when I was cleaning them. You think—
LUBIN. I think you fall into the very common mistake of supposing that it is poverty that makes the proletarian and money that makes the gentleman. You are quite wrong. You never belonged to the people: you belonged to the impecunious. Impecuniosity and broken boots are the lot of the unsuccessful middle class, and the commonplaces of the early struggles of the professional and younger son class. I defy you to find a farm laborer in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the poor, and he'll punch your head. When you talk to your constituents about the toiling millions, they don't consider that you are referring to them. They are all third cousins of somebody with a title or a park. I am a Yorkshireman, my friend. I know England; and you don't. If you did you would know—
SURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time. [Franklyn rises]. May I take it, my dear Barnabas, that I may count on your support if we succeed in forcing an election before the new register is in full working order?
SURGE [rising also] May the party count on your support? I say nothing about myself. Can the party depend on you? Is there any question of yours that I have left unanswered?
CONRAD. We havnt asked you any, you know.
BURGE. May I take that as a mark of confidence?
CONRAD. If I were a laborer in your constituency, I should ask you a biological question?
LUBIN. No you wouldnt, my dear Doctor. Laborers never ask questions.
BURGE. Ask it now. I have never flinched from being heckled. Out with it. Is it about the land?
CONRAD. No.
SURGE. Is it about the Church?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about the House of Lords?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about Proportional Representation?
CONRAD. No.
SURGE. Is it about Free Trade?
CONRAD. No.
SURGE. Is it about the priest in the school?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about Germany?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about the Monarchy?
CONRAD. No.
SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of a laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns thirty now, when he can get it?
BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
BURGE [taken aback] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in your politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or anyone else at the election. Good evening.
LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that my daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or laborer. MayIcount on your support?
SURGE [hurling the epithet at him] Humbug!
SAVVY. Stop. [They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to look at her]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about it. You just hold your tongue.
SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed to come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their silly parliamentary game?
FRANKLYN [severely] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our guests.
SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me, did he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going to stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of them. It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be told about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own souls. You just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers Barnabas, Daddy.
Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form a new party.
FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a little program of our own which—
CONRAD [interrupting] It's not a little program: it's an almighty big one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd non-political question.
FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It would not interest you.
BURGE [with challenging audacity] Try. Lubin can go if he likes; but I am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
FRANKLYN [to Lubin] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall I thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
LUBIN [sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn] With pleasure, Mr Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank in the party platform, it will have to reach me through the National Liberal Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal and Radical Association.
FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition to your party program of measures of which no local branch of your Federation had ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really interested. I will spare you, and drop the subject.
LUBIN [waking up a little] You quite misunderstand me. Please do not take it in that way. I only—
BURGE [talking him down] Never mind the Federation:Iwill answer for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [he sits down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him].
FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be extended to three hundred years.
LUBIN [softly] Eh?
BURGE [explosively] What!
SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
HASLAM. Priceless!
Lubin and Surge look at one another.
CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
LUBIN [cautiously] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what this has to do with politics?
FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior by about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a European group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very best for your respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded in all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe out of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
BURGE. Less than a million.
FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners—!
HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
SAVVY [with intense satisfaction] Well said, Bill.
FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity. What with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our systems of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on to control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God, much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at war again.
CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their own government.
LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations very acutely.
BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power above us.
CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies—Dilke's, for instance—which revealed the truth about them?
LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr Barnabas.
FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by a little woman who knew her own mind?
SAVVY. Hear, hear!
LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her death Europe became a hell.
SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.
FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?
SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.
FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program of hanging him?
SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; but the people wouldnt listen to reason. Besides, I knew the Dutch wouldnt give him up.
SAVVY. Oh, don't start arguing about poor old Bill. Stick to our point. Let these two gentlemen settle the question for themselves. Mr Burge: do you think Mr Lubin is fit to govern England?
SURGE. No. Frankly, I dont.
LUBIN [remonstrant] Really!
CONRAD. Why?
BURGE. Because he has no conscience: thats why.
LUBIN [shocked and amazed] Oh!
FRANKLYN. Mr Lubin: do you consider Joyce Burge qualified to govern England?
LUBIN [with dignified emotion, wounded, but without bitterness] Excuse me, Mr Barnabas; but before I answer that question I want to say this. Burge: we have had differences of opinion; and your newspaper friends have said hard things of me. But we worked together for years; and I hope I have done nothing to justify you in the amazing accusation you have just brought against me. Do you realize that you said that I have no conscience?
BURGE. Lubin: I am very accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent. I dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in spite of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you have a mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and lucid as to what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight and no hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no continuity; and a man without continuity can have neither conscience nor honor from one day to another. The result is that you have always been a damned bad minister; and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend. Now you can answer Barnabas's question and take it out of me to your heart's content. He asked you was I fit to govern England.
LUBIN [recovering himself] After what has just passed I sincerely wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since Joseph Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without intellect and without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has not been stored with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse with educated minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen to have enjoyed that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my mind. Candidly, I think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your weaknesses.
BURGE. Oh! What did it find out in you?
LUBIN. You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my hands. The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in.
FRANKLYN. Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel. The war went England's way; but the peace went its own way, and not England's way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it. Your peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had actually had was a few years at the bar or in a counting-house or on the grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us, who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
CONRAD. Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are able to tell off one another's defects so cleverly in your afternoon chat?
BURGE [angrily] If you come to that, what consolation will it be that you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no responsibility! you, who havnt lifted a finger, as far as I know, to help us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than my proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during the whole infernal business?
CONRAD. We're not blaming you: you hadnt lived long enough. No more had we. Cant you see that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long enough for a very crude sort of village life, isnt long enough for a complicated civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one of them failed just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens and statesmen died of old age or over-eating before they had grown out of schoolboy games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs of the end are always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for Women. We shall go to smash within the lifetime of men now living unless we recognize that we must live longer.
LUBIN. I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women are signs of decay.
FRANKLYN. Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly.
SAVVY. Hear, hear!
SURGE. A useful point. We cannot put back the clock.
HASLAM.Ican. Ive often done it.
LUBIN. Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr Barnabas: I am a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if we could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser, certainly older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky fell we should all catch larks.
FRANKLYN. Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead.
CONRAD. I don't think it's any good. I don't think they want to live longer than usual.
LUBIN. Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost, the habit of crying for the moon.
BURGE. Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time.
CONRAD. Is your time of any value?
SURGE [unable to believe his ears] My time of any value! What do you mean?
LUBIN [smiling comfortably] From your high scientific point of view, I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as well hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge does when he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir, Dr Barnabas? Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest?
SURGE. We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at the chance of talking rot. [He rises]. Good evening. [He turns to the door].
CONRAD [rudely] Die as soon as you like. Good evening.
BURGE [hesitating] Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive for ever; and he died of it.
CONRAD. You might as well have taken sour beer.
BURGE. You believe in lemons?
CONRAD. I wouldn't eat a lemon for ten pounds.
BURGE [sitting down again] What do you recommend?
CONRAD [rising with a gesture of despair] Whats the use of going on, Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle to give them that will make them live for ever, they are listening to me for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. Thats their notion of science.
SAVVY. Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort.
CONRAD [growls and sits down]!!!
LUBIN. You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that, far from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I am prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been infallible, the men of science have always been wrong.
CONRAD. Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right?
LUBIN. The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not to repeat this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical profession and its worshippers is not to be trifled with.
FRANKLYN. You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of Eden.
BURGE [pricking up his ears] Whats that? If you can establish that, Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I am listening. Go on.
FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it, was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
SURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental death. The other was the prospect of living for ever. They could bear neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a thousand years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair. Consequently, they had to invent natural birth and natural death, which are, after all, only modes of perpetuating life without putting on any single creature the terrible burden of immortality.
LUBIN. I see. The old must make room for the new.
SURGE. Death is nothing but making room. Thats all there is in it or ever has been in it.
FRANKLYN. Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.
SAVVY. I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk. I suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree with me.
CONRAD. You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It wears out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You are only a new hat and frock on Eve.
FRANKLYN. Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry out Its eternal pursuit.
LUBIN [with quiet scepticism] What pursuit, may one ask, Mr Barnabas?
FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk of our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that pursuit and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from a microbe only in being further on the path.
LUBIN. And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?
FRANKLYN. Never, thank God! As there is no limit to power and knowledge there can be no end. 'The power and the glory, world without end': have those words meant nothing to you?