Back to Methuselah Part 24

LUBIN. By the way, Barnabas, is your daughter to keep her good looks all the time?

FRANKLYN. Will it matter? Can you conceive the most hardened flirt going on flirting for three centuries? At the end of half the time we shall hardly notice whether it is a woman or a man we are speaking to.

LUBIN [_not quite relis.h.i.+ng this ascetic prospect_] Hm! [_He rises_].

Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about it; and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [_He shakes hands with Savvy_]. Goodbye. [_He shakes hands with Franklyn_]. Goodbye, Doctor. [_He shakes hands with Conrad_]. Come on, Burge: you must really tell me what line you are going to take about the Church at the election?

BURGE. Havnt you heard? Havnt you taken in the revelation that has been vouchsafed to us? The line I am going to take is Back to Methuselah.

LUBIN [_decisively_] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You don't suppose, do you, that our friends here are in earnest, or that our very pleasant conversation has had anything to do with practical politics! They have just been pulling our legs very wittily. Come along. [_He goes out, Franklyn politely going with him, but shaking his head in mute protest_].

BURGE [_shaking Conrad's hand_] It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No spiritual side to him: only a sort of cla.s.sical side that goes down with his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [_He begins moving towards the door with Conrad_]. Of course I cant put it exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something fresh; and I believe an election can be fought 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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--hs.h.!.+ [_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 [_a.s.senting_] 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 b.u.t.ton.

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 doc.u.ments 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 b.u.t.ton 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?