The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day/Act I, § i
- In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50 is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat, though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though it buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity indicated by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to suggest the clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor bishop; he is rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church enthusiast; and he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster.
- The study windows, which have broad comfortable window seats, overlook Hampstead Heath towards London. Consequently, it being a fine afternoon in spring, the room is sunny. As you face these windows, you have on your right the fireplace, with a few logs smouldering in it, and a couple of comfortable library chairs on the hearthrug; beyond it and beside it the door; before you the writing-table, at which the clerical gentleman sits a little to your left facing the door with his right profile presented to you; on your left a settee; and on your right a couple of Chippendale chairs. There is also an upholstered square stool in the middle of the room, against the writing-table. The walls are covered with bookshelves above and lockers beneath.
- The door opens; and another gentleman, shorter than the clerical one, within a year or two of the same age, dressed in a well-worn tweed lounge suit, with a short beard and much less style in his bearing and carriage, looks in.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [familiar and by no means cordial] Hallo! I didn't expect you until the five o'clock train.
THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [coming in very slowly] I have something on my mind. I thought I'd come early.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [throwing down his pen] What is on your mind?
THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [sitting down on the stool, heavily preoccupied with his thought] I have made up my mind at last about the time. I make it three hundred years.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [sitting up energetically] Now that is extraordinary. Most extraordinary. The very last words I wrote when you interrupted me were 'at least three centuries.' [He snatches up his manuscript, and points to it]. Here it is: [reading] 'the term of human life must be extended to at least three centuries.'
THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN. How did you arrive at it?
- A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman.
THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [She withdraws].
- The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and the two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their dismay. Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar, and wears a snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness that makes it impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into obviously unpremeditated speech.
HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose one ought to call on people.
THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [in ghostly tones] We're not Church people, you know.
HASLAM. Oh, I don't mind that, if you don't. The Church people here are mostly as dull as ditch-water. I have heard such a lot about you; and there are so jolly few people to talk to. I thought you perhaps wouldn't mind. Do you mind? for of course I'll go like a shot if I'm in the way.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [rising, disarmed] Sit down, Mr—er?
HASLAM. Haslam.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN. Mr Haslam.
THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [rising and offering him the stool] Sit down. [He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs].
HASLAM [sitting down on the stool] Thanks awfully.
THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [resuming his seat] This is my brother Conrad, Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University: Dr. Conrad Barnabas. My name is Franklyn: Franklyn Barnabas. I was in the Church myself for some years.
HASLAM [sympathizing] Yes: one cant help it. If theres a living in the family, or one's Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the Church by one's parents.
CONRAD [sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of amusement] Mp!
FRANKLYN. One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one's conscience.
HASLAM. Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go? I'm afraid I'm not intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me, and nothing better for me to do. I daresay the Church was a bit thick for you; but it's good enough for me. It will last my time, anyhow, [He laughs good-humoredly.]
FRANKLYN [with renewed energy] There again! You see, Con. It will last his time. Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
HASLAM. Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.
FRANKLYN. I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam: I felt it to be my vocation to walk with God, like Enoch. After twenty years of it I realized that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and that I was not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom I was pretending to.
HASLAM. Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think twice before he took on anything for life. If I thought I was going to live nine hundred and sixty years, I don't think I should stay in the Church.
FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be very different from the thing it is.
CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to walk. Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a few centuries to do it in?
HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with me: it's quite easy to be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something more than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.
FRANKLYN. The bird?
HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or chuck it: stick it or chuck it'—just like that—for an hour on end in the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.
- The parlor maid comes back.
THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?
FRANKLYN. These. [He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the table and takes them].
HASLAM [to the maid] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?
THE PARLOR MAID [flinching a little] No, sir.
FRANKLYN. Told me what?
HASLAM. She is going to leave you.
FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?
HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.
THE PARLOR MAID [reddening] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt ask for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the post. [She goes out with the letters.]
- The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam.
HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.
CONRAD [demurring] She said it was because she had only one life.
HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I call it.
CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She has to die before she knows.
HASLAM [agreeably] Thats it.
FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.
HASLAM [still more cheerfully] Quite.
FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience at all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world without conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
HASLAM [beaming] Simply fatuous. [Rising] Well, I suppose I'd better be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my calling.
CONRAD [in his former low ghostly tone] You neednt go, you know, if you are really interested.
HASLAM [fed up] Well, I'm afraid I ought to—I really must get back—I have something to do in the—
FRANKLYN [smiling benignly and rising to proffer his hand] Goodbye.
CONRAD [gruffly, giving him up as a bad job] Goodbye.
HASLAM. Goodbye. Sorry—er—
- As the rector moves to shake hands with Franklyn, feeling that he is making a frightful mess of his departure, a vigorous sunburnt young lady with hazel hair cut to the level of her neck, like an Italian youth in a Gozzoli picture, comes in impetuously. She seems to have nothing on but her short skirt, her blouse, her stockings, and a pair of Norwegian shoes: in short, she is a Simple-Lifer.
THE SIMPLE-LIFER [swooping on Conrad and kissing him] Hallo, Nunk. Youre before your time.
CONRAD. Behave yourself. Theres a visitor.
- She turns quickly and sees the rector. She instinctively switches at her Gozzoli fringe with her fingers, but gives it up as hopeless.
FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our new rector. [To Haslam] My daughter Cynthia.
CONRAD. Usually called Savvy, short for Savage.
SAVVY. I usually call Mr Haslam Bill, short for William. [She strolls to the hearthrug, and surveys them calmly from that commanding position].
FRANKLYN. You know him?
SAVVY. Rather. Sit down, Bill.
FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam is going, Savvy. He has an engagement.
SAVVY. I know. I'm the engagement.
CONRAD. In that case, would you mind taking him into the garden while I talk to your father?
SAVVY [to Haslam] Tennis?
HASLAM. Rather!
SAVVY. Come on. [She dances out. He runs boyishly after her].
FRANKLYN [leaving his table and beginning to walk up and down the room discontentedly] Savvy's manners jar on me. They would have horrified her grandmother.
CONRAD [obstinately] They are happier manners than Mother's manners.
FRANKLYN. Yes: they are franker, wholesomer, better in a hundred ways. And yet I squirm at them. I cannot get it out of my head that Mother was a well-mannered woman, and that Savvy has no manners at all.
CONRAD. There wasnt any pleasure in Mother's fine manners. That makes a biological difference.
FRANKLYN. But there was beauty in Mother's manners, grace in them, style in them: above all, decision in them. Savvy is such a cub.
CONRAD. So she ought to be, at her age.
FRANKLYN. There it comes again! Her age! her age!
CONRAD. You want her to be fully grown at eighteen. You want to force her into a stuck-up, artificial, premature self-possession before she has any self to possess. You just let her alone: she is right enough for her years.
FRANKLYN. I have let her alone; and look at the result! Like all the other young people who have been let alone, she becomes a Socialist. That is, she becomes hopelessly demoralized.
CONRAD. Well, arnt you a Socialist?
FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought up in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners: there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than no manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least they exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of them. Savvy doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to improvise her manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often charming, no doubt; but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully; and then I feel that she is blaming me for not teaching her better.
CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.
FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She never comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is concerned. [He resumes his seat at the writing-table].
CONRAD. I must have a talk to her.
FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what she made of it.
FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word of it.
CONRAD [rising indignantly] What!
FRANKLYN [inexorably] Not a word of it.
CONRAD [beaten] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.[He sits down again resignedly].
FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [The parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the interruption]. Well? what is it now?
THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak to you.
FRANKLYN [astonished] Mr Joyce Burge!
THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir.
FRANKLYN [to Conrad] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard from him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the chairmanship of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party politics from my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of course, he dropped me like a hot potato.
CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to pick you up again.
THE PARLOR MAID [warningly] He is holding the line, sir.
FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [he hurries out].
The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire. Conrad rises and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks quizzically down at her.
CONRAD. So you have only one life to live, eh?
THE PARLOR MAID [dropping on her knees in consternation] I meant no offence, sir.
CONRAD. You didn't give any. But you know you could live a devil of a long life if you really wanted to.
THE PARLOR MAID [sitting down on her heels] Oh, dont say that, sir. It's so unsettling.
CONRAD. Why? Have you been thinking about it?
THE PARLOR MAID. It would never have come into my head if you hadnt put it there, sir. Me and cook had a look at your book.
CONRAD. What!
- You and cook
- Had a look
- At 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 sitsdown. 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?