Collected Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
on the death rate and on Adam and Eve as scientific facts. It will take the Opposition right out of its depth. And if we win there will be an O.M. for somebody when the first honors list comes round [by this time he has talked himself out of the room and out of earshot, Conrad accompanying him].
Savvy and Haslam, left alone, seize each other in an ecstasy of amusement, and jazz to the settee, where they sit down again side by side.
HASLAM [caressing her] Darling! what a priceless humbug old Lubin is!
SAVVY. Oh, sweet old thing! I love him. Burge is a flaming fraud if you like.
HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.
SAVVY. What?
HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons were killed in it.
SAVVY [sobered] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.
HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!
SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. I forgot about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
HASLAM. I didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to kill their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and everything else except you.
SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets in my best clothes; and—hsh! [she jumps up and pretends to be looking for a book on the shelves behind the settee].
Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum.
CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to be received! [He drops into Burge's chair].
FRANKLYN [going back to his seat at the table] It's no use. Were you convinced, Mr Haslam?
HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
CONRAD [to Savvy] Nor you, I suppose?
SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in a sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when you came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I saw how absurd it was.
FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We should only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false pretences in the days of our ignorance.
CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
SAVVY. What does that mean?
CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt have the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the loudest laugher of the lot.
SAVVY. Or the first woman?
CONRAD [assenting] Or the first woman.
HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
FRANKLYN. How do you know?
This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say.
PART III—The Thing Happens
A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the President of the British Islands. A board table, long enough for three chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is no fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it.
A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold fillet round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like Lubin, as if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men. He takes off the fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the presidential chair at the head of the table, which is at the end farthest from the door. He puts a peg into his switchboard; turns the pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but younger, and much more commonplace.
BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!
BARNABAS [without looking round] What number?
BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.
Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who is now visible to him as well as audible.
BARNABAS [curtly] Oh! That you, President?
BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything wrong?
BARNABAS [harsh and querulous] I wish to make a protest.
BURGE-LUBIN [good-humored and mocking] What! Another protest! Whats wrong now?
BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the grossest want of consideration.
BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?
BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You must go.
BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take the job off your hands—
BARNABAS. Then do it. Thats all I want [he is about to switch off].
BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen. This American has invented a method of breathing under water.
BARNABAS. What do I care? I don't want to breathe under water.
BURGE-LUBIN. You may, my dear Barnabas, at any time. You know you never look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations. Some day you will walk into the Serpentine. This man's invention may save your life.
BARNABAS [angrily] Will you tell me what that has to do with your putting your ceremonial duties on to my shoulders? I will not be trifled [he vanishes and is replaced by the blank screen]—
BURGE-LUBIN [indignantly holding down his button] Dont cut us off, please: we have not finished. I am the President, speaking to the Accountant General. What are you dreaming of?
A WOMAN'S VOICE. Sorry. [The screen shews Barnabas as before].
BURGE-LUBIN. Since you take it that way, I will go in your place. It's a pity, because, you see, this American thinks you are the greatest living authority on the duration of human life; and—
BARNABAS [interrupting] The American thinks! What do you mean? I am the greatest living authority on the duration of human life. Who dares dispute it?
BURGE-LUBIN. Nobody, dear lad, nobody. Dont fly out at me. It is evident that you have not read the American's book.
BARNABAS. Dont tell me that you have, or that you have read any book except a novel for the last twenty years; for I wont believe you.
BURGE-LUBIN. Quite right, dear old fellow: I havnt read it. But I have read what The Times Literary Supplement says about it.
BARNABAS.