Collected Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
that the future of the world lies with the Mulatto?
MRS LUTESTRING [rising] Mr Archbishop: if the white race is to be saved, our destiny is apparent.
THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: our duty is pretty clear.
MRS LUTESTRING. Have you time to come home with me and discuss the matter?
THE ARCHBISHOP [rising] With pleasure.
BARNABAS [rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door, where he turns to bar her way] No you don't. Burge: you understand, don't you?
BURGE-LUBIN. No. What is it?
BARNABAS. These two are going to marry.
BURGE-LUBIN. Why shouldn't they, if they want to?
BARNABAS. They don't want to. They will do it in cold blood because their children will live three hundred years. It mustnt be allowed.
CONFUCIUS. You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power to interfere with them.
BARNABAS. If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against marriages above the age of seventy-eight.
THE ARCHBISHOP. There is not time for that before we are married, Mr Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady's way.
BARNABAS. There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before anything comes of your marriage. Dont forget that.
MRS LUTESTRING. What nonsense, Mr Accountant General! Good afternoon, Mr President. Good afternoon, Mr Chief Secretary. [They rise and acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the Accountant General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she leaves the room].
THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at you, Mr Barnabas. Your tone was like an echo from the Dark Ages. [He follows the Domestic Minister].
Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the Archbishop and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the President. The Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed visitors, and bursts into savage abuse of them.
BARNABAS. Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do, Burge?
BURGE-LUBIN. Do?
BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence. Are you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to do, and crowd us off the face of the earth?
BURGE-LUBIN [sitting down] Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them?
BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters. They are poison to me.
BURGE-LUBIN. What possible objection can there be to their living as long as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it?
BARNABAS. If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don't see why another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up?
BURGE-LUBIN. But what can we do to them?
BARNABAS. Kill them.
BURGE-LUBIN. Nonsense!
BARNABAS. Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow.
BURGE-LUBIN. But what reason could we give?
BARNABAS. What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you to do it.
BURGE-LUBIN. My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind.
BARNABAS. Havnt you said that once too often already this morning?
BURGE-LUBIN. I don't believe you will carry a single soul with you.
BARNABAS. I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them.
CONFUCIUS. Mr Accountant General: you may be one of them.
BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man, not a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the true expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will resist any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if need be.
BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can you, a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still remembered by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?
BARNABAS. You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I am going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if you shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.
CONFUCIUS [very impressively] You will regret it if you do.
BARNABAS. What is to make me regret it?
CONFUCIUS. Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to count on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet as strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will lose their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the possibilities of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck human society. This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [He sits down].
BARNABAS. And if I refuse to keep the secret?
CONFUCIUS. I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you blab.
BARNABAS. You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my statement.
CONFUCIUS. So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him killed?
BARNABAS [desperate] Burge: are you going to back up this yellow abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government? or are we damned blackguards?
CONFUCIUS [unmoved] Have you ever known a public man who was not what vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some inconsiderate person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?
BARNABAS. Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen. Burge: I spoke to you.
BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very long-headed chap. I see his point.
BARNABAS. Do you? Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will never speak to you again. Do you hear?
BURGE-LUBIN [cheerfully] You will. You will.
BARNABAS. And don't you ever dare speak to me again. Do you hear? [He turns to the door].
BURGE-LUBIN. I will. I will. Goodbye, Barnabas. God bless you.
BARNABAS. May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole world! [he dashes out in a fury].
BURGE-LUBIN [laughing indulgently] He will keep the secret all right. I know Barnabas. You neednt worry.
CONFUCIUS [troubled and grave] There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves. Consider. There are those films at the Record Office. We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from publishing this discovery made in his department. We cannot silence the American—who can silence an American?—nor the people who were there today to receive him. Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a resemblance.
BURGE-LUBIN. Thats very true. After all, the whole thing is confounded nonsense, isnt it?
CONFUCIUS [raising his head to look at him] You have decided not to believe it now that you realize its inconveniences. That is the English method. It may not work in this case.
BURGE-LUBIN. English be hanged! It's common sense. You know, those two people got us hypnotized: