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Play 4. Tragedy Of An Elderly Gentleman - Act 1 |
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_ PART IV. Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman. ACT I [Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the year 3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and three feet high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and called a bollard or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land with his head bowed and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt skin contrasts with his white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black frock-coat, a white waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk cravat with a jewelled pin stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and patent leather boots with white spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude from his coat sleeves; and his collar, also of starched white linen, is Gladstonian. On his right, three or four full sacks, lying side by side on the flags, suggest that the pier, unlike many remote Irish piers, is occasionally useful as well as romantic. On his left, behind him, a flight of stone steps descends out of sight to the sea level. A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap with the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and stares in astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed: her face is firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is unyouthful in its severity and determination.]
[_The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back._] THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat. [_He punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes and nose._] Hay fever. THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a Briton. THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amiably pompous_] From its capital, madam. THE WOMAN. From Baghdad? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a period now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand years ago. Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I assure you it is true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of the numerous lands of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I. Blood is thicker than water. We are cousins. THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again shewing signs of distress_] I find it very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a machine, but to a--a--a sentimental journey. THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious. THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is thicker than water. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_sniffing: almost in tears again_] We will leave it at that, madam. THE WOMAN [going _nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern_] I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous for shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pulling himself together huffily_] It has no effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If not, the remedy is in your own hands. THE WOMAN [_looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him_] Where? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down_] Oh, this is dreadful. No understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy--[_his sobs choke him_]. THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] I am not ill. I have never had a day's illness in my life. THE WOMAN. May I advise you? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you, madam. THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] I am afraid I do not understand. I said nothing about a butterfly. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, _I_ said nothing about a butterfly. THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as the name of a butterfly. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_insanely_] I give up. I can bear this no longer. It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [_He rises and dances about, singing_]
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_halting abruptly in his antics_] My dress ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but my clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where yours--pardon my saying so--would be considered extremely unusual and hardly decent. THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it mean? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency cannot be discussed without indecency. THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer. THE WOMAN [_severely_] They apply to you very strictly. You are expected to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long without bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize that you are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and usually fatal complaint? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no danger of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately and at the greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you cannot discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say that your advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of dotage. THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am responsible for your welfare-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper? THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are, if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_snorts indignantly_]! THE WOMAN [_continuing_]--and why you are wandering here alone without a nurse. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_outraged_] Nurse! THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons in my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by well-bred people; and-- THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and the normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own protection. Now tell me at once who you are. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Madam, I am a retired gentleman, formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and Vegetable Cheese Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British Historical and Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. THE WOMAN. All that does not matter. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again snorting_] Hm! Indeed! THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find my mind noticeably stiff? THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has that effect. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_haughtily_] I was born, not in the Eastern Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in need of a mental health resort. THE WOMAN. Then why are you here? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it. THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way. [_He offers her a shilling_]. THE WOMAN [_taking it and examining it without much interest_] I do not understand a single word of what you have just said. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the landlord? THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] There is a tradition in this part of the country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down again_] It is a dreadful thing to be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [_He collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs_]. Excuse me. Hay fever. THE WOMAN [_taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning a psalm_] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical foreign dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his chin. THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult. THE WOMAN [_replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly gentleman_] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you here? How did you obtain permission to visit us? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_importantly_] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I may mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really the Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a question to put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit the country. THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more natural? I shall be the only member of the Travellers' Club who has set foot on these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique. THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be like everyone else. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever between the two cases. THE WOMAN. They are both unique. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them. THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers' Club is an assembly of persons who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place where nobody else has been. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us-- THE WOMAN. What is sneer? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with a wild sob_] I shall drown myself. [_He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by a man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and intercepts him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache proclaims his sex._] THE MAN [_to the elderly gentleman_] Ah, here you are. I shall really have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the slip like this. THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger's nurse? THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a moment, he runs away and talks to everybody. THE WOMAN [_after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as before_] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [_She puts up the fork, and addresses the man_]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says. You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If I can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [_She goes away_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me. She spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And she has made off with my shilling. THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What is an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met in the whole course of my life. THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking to me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were geological strata. THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are in their second century. I am still classed as a primary [_he points to his number_]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second childhood. THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again resorting to the bollard_] Oh! I cannot bear these unnatural arrangements. THE MAN [_impatient and helpless_] You shouldn't have come among us. This is no place for you. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] May I ask why? I am a Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. I have been everywhere: I hold the record in the Club for civilized countries. THE MAN. What is a civilized country? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is--well, it is a civilized country. [_Desperately_] I don't know: I--I--I--I shall go mad if you keep on asking me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you can travel comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but, though you say you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child of five with your eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once? THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M. THE MAN. That is five men's names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not do here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the O'Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father. THE MAN [_shocked_] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter whether you are my father or not? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age? THE MAN. A young person? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young person. THE MAN. Why? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense? THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn't you? THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does it make whether the person is a man or a woman? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of such scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human intercourse. THE MAN. What are decencies? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_shrieking_] Everyone asks me that. THE MAN [_taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did_] Zozim on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged shortliver he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too old he is asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [_He puts up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman_]. Zoo is a girl of fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank you. THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing. Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [_He turns his back on the Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs dangling over the water_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my conversation on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like to take a nap. If so, pray do not stand on ceremony. THE MAN. What is a nap? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated, going to him and speaking with great precision and distinctness_] A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep. Sleep. [_Bawling into his ear_] Sleep. THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_awestruck_] Good Heavens! [_A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a thousand years before. Younger, if anything._] THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient? THE MAN [_scrambling up_] This is Zoo. [_To Zoo_] Call him Daddy. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_vehemently_] No. THE MAN [_ignoring the interruption_] Bless you for taking him off my hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [_He goes down the steps and disappears_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_ironically taking off his hat and making a sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean_] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings, your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [_Clapping his hat on again_] Pig! Ass! ZOO [_laughs very heartily at him_]!!! THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_turning sharply on her_] Good afternoon, madam. I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find that here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be treated with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest would protect me from insult. ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is it not? What does it mean? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who understands plain English? ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special historical study of what we call the dead thought. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages, but never of the dead thought. ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your language; but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will understand you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of Turania, the greatest military genius of the age. ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at home? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World. ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_out of patience_] Damn it, madam, you don't want to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [_Checking himself_] I beg your pardon for swearing in your presence. ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds quite pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam. Say it as often as you please: I like it. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_expanding with intense relief_] Bless you for those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first time since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home. The strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were at the club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young as I was. [_He sits on the bollard_]. Promise me that you will not hand me over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever you call them. ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim. You see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these adolescents will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally feel more at home with a flapper like me. [_She makes herself comfortable on the sacks_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean? ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who is no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I ask your name? ZOO. Zoo. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo. ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er--Zoo what? ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_puzzled_] Mrs Zoo, perhaps. ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to feel sure--er-- ZOO [_hopelessly puzzled_] What? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can say things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste to anyone without that experience. ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop, though. Is married an old form of the word mothered? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me for embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it. ZOO. What does embarrassing mean? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so natural and common a condition would be understood as long as human nature lasted. To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek. ZOO. What is a blush? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] Dont you blush??? ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may ask how many--? ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_reeling on the bollard_] Oh! dear! ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven's name, madam, how old are you? ZOO. Fifty-six. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill. Not so young as I was. ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many of the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called on to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stimulated by indignation_] My name, I repeat, is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M. ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did your mother call you? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my childhood. I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from absurd nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I was called Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for children's rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen I refused to answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I discovered that the name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly prudery because of some old story about a Joseph who rejected the advances of his employer's wife: very properly in my opinion. I then became Popham to my family and intimate friends, and Mister Barlow to the rest of the world. My mother slipped back into Iddy when her faculties began to fail her, poor woman; but I could not resent that, at her age. ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were ten? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would you have had her do? ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest if I met them. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again drooping_] I am dying. Let me die. I wish to die. ZOO [_going to him quickly and supporting him_] Hold up. Sit up straight. Whats the matter? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_faintly_] My spine, I think. Shock. Concussion. ZOO [_maternally_] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [_Shaking him playfully_] There! Sit up; and be good. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_still feebly_] Thank you. I am better now. ZOO [_resuming her seat on the sacks_] But what was all the rest of that long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat in these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge and Hengist Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime ministership of the British Empire, and occupied that position successively with a glory of which we can in these degenerate days form but a faint conception. When I think of these mighty men, lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Baghdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears: my heart bursts with emotion: I feel that to have lived but to the dawn of manhood in their day, and then died for them, would have been a nobler and happier lot than the ignominious ease of my present longevity. ZOO. Longevity! [_she laughs_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have to be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those heroes. ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their time. Dont you know that? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire. When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history occurred. ZOO. Miracle? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years was an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of Methuselah. ZOO. Oh, that! THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of one another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which statesmen from all over the earth come to consult English sages who speak with the experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land that once exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but wisdom. You see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo Koosh. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, 'At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,' the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout 'No: we'll be damned if you do,' and emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Corea, to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were ever foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world rang continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. And what poem can do justice to the end, when it came at last? Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the position of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable bores. The communities which had once idolized them as the incarnation of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain, fled from them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the Irish claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city and redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these devoted Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled by an English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their own country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was nothing to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the suggestion. They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground. When they reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves down and passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young to embrace the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young looked gloomily on, and said 'There is no earth, only stone.' You will see by looking round you why they said that: the fields here are of stone: the hills are capped with granite. They all left for England next day; and no Irishman ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his own children; so that when that generation passed away the Irish race vanished from human knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest they should be sent back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of heroes and poets? ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them to understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the Irish landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a hundred people. It couldn't have happened to a hundred thousand: you know that as well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people Irish because they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish because they live in air. They must be just the same as other people. Why do you shortlivers persist in making up silly stories about the world and trying to act as if they were true? Contact with truth hurts and frightens you: you escape from it into an imaginary vacuum in which you can indulge your desires and hopes and loves and hates without any obstruction from the solid facts of life. You love to throw dust in your own eyes. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather than of savagery. ZOO [_giving him up as hopeless_] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly believe that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your people in the olden days, 'Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.' THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nobly_] My body is dust, madam: not my soul. What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground, the particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important thing is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into its nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes, madam, a living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living soul. That is an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great scientific fact. I am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes: I leave them to the chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the muckrakers who are incapable of their own glorious destiny, and unconscious of their own divinity. They tell me there are leucocytes in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my flesh. I thank them for the information, and tell them that there are blackbeetles in my kitchen, washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my cellar. I do not deny their existence; but I keep them in their proper place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility. Humanly I pity you. Intellectually I despise you. ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not die of discouragement after all. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so, madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when I approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive me by ten thousand years. ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you up so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated Agnostics, and change the subject. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it: when I don't believe it I say I don't believe it. I do not shirk my responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility. We must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human society. ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science in the long run. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research. But what is the consequence? Their discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion. At first we had no idea of astronomical space. We believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it. Death was to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs into the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our morality, our laws, our lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple belief. Well, the moment men became astronomers and made telescopes, their belief perished. When they could no longer believe in the sky, they found that they could no longer believe in their Deity, because they had always thought of him as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to believe in their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed their name and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of science. They set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only wonders and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the wonder workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the Deity, men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and worshipped the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples for his telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with microscopes, and found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in, but millions of micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at the millions of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible sacrifices were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed by the microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as infallible and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our wisdom, only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant you is that they increased our knowledge. ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean than many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance. ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a mariners' compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle turns always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that consciousness than he was without it? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt. Still, I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a thing without knowing it. ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_illuminated_] Oh how true! Of course, of course. There is a member of the Travellers' Club who has questioned the veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man almost every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him. ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying glass, or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect out all his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could only increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more determined than ever not to know him on any terms. ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at the South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole, which can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He declared he had hung his hat on it. ZOO [_laughing_] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they are telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope you would find some good in him. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides, madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of mine which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never ventured to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for blasphemy, or even burnt alive. ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_after looking cautiously round_] I do not approve of microscopes. I never have. ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain that it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what they are looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks at the world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous madman if he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and microscopes. Even when he is telling fairy stories about giants and dwarfs, the giants had better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small and too malicious. Before the microscope came, our fairy stories only made the children's flesh creep pleasantly, and did not frighten grown-up persons at all. But the microscope men terrified themselves and everyone else out of their wits with the invisible monsters they saw: poor harmless little things that die at the touch of a ray of sunshine, and are themselves the victims of all the diseases they are supposed to produce! Whatever the scientific people may say, imagination without microscopes was kindly and often courageous, because it worked on things of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre of men of science took place in the twenty-first century of the pseudo-Christian era, when all their laboratories were demolished, and all their apparatus destroyed? ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to know more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was afraid to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some poisonous acid to kill the microbes, was no longer given titles, pensions, and monstrous powers over the bodies of other people: he was sent to an asylum, and treated there until his recovery. But all that is an old story: the extension of life to three hundred years has provided the human race with capable leaders, and made short work of such childish stuff. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pettishly_] You seem to credit every advance in civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own age? ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An ancient writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such as Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage about your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the reaches of your souls. That does not come to much, does it? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you come to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may be, you are younger than I am. ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it matter to you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass: you come up like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie will last your time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in twenty years it would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should not bother about anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we are, we--the best of us, I mean--regard civilization and learning, art and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the hand of one generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling it to a brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short, contributes a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred volume, a chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects; but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I-- ZOO [_interrupts him by laughing heartily at him_]!!!!!! THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with offended dignity_] May I ask what I have said that calls for this merriment? ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones and mountains. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely. ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating--not, I hope, quite infelicitously--the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how, shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from civilization to perfection. ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high, and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four miles high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you call giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes with a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in earnest. I am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the son of a man six feet high would be twelve feet high. ZOO. You didn't mean that? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not. ZOO. Then you didn't mean anything. Now listen to me, you little ephemeral thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed on from generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed on, it dies down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can rekindle it only by his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or Bluebeard; and you are no wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished with them: so did their strength, if their strength ever existed outside your imagination. I do not know how old you are: you look about five hundred-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam-- ZOO [_continuing_]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have before he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his folly, his destiny from his delusions, his-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own. ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today. If you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have learnt from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in their hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and encouraged me to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and they were able to tell me why. They have no power over me except that power: they refuse all other power; and the consequence is that there are no limits to their power except the limits they set themselves. You are a child governed by children, who make so many mistakes and are so naughty that you are in continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that they are right: they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough to kill or torture them. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better. The greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who arose in the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern spiritual leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that punishment and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that the golden rule-- ZOO. [_interrupting_] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in governing you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it. They couldn't do it because they did not live long enough to find out how to do it, or to outlive the childish passions that prevented them from really wanting to do it. You know very well that they could only keep order--such as it was--by the very coercion and militarism they were denouncing and deploring. They had actually to kill one another for preaching their own gospel, or be killed themselves. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of the Church. ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony ground. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising, very testy_] You are simply mad on the subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather personal and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or shortlived, and always will be. ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and the brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress and for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent. ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that the compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it. ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever things and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always forget them ten minutes after they have uttered them. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that. [_He sits down again_]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in the right place. ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right place. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha! ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor's pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exhausted_] Well, a woman must have the last word. I will not dispute it with you. ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and metaphors. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_aghast_] Do you mean to say, madam, that after having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by your intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again? I shall leave you at once. ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort [_he rises and walks away with marked dignity_]. ZOO [_using her tuning-fork_] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at Ennistymon have you got me?... What?... I am picking you up now but you are flat to my pitch.... Just a shade sharper.... That's better: still a little more.... Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_is heard to yell_] Oh! ZOO [_still intoning_] Thanks.... Oh nothing serious I am nursing a shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged himself very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I must keep him strictly to heel. [_The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant._] ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [_She puts up her tuning-fork_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins and needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones. ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very crude method of keeping animals from straying. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad, madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously applied to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me. ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other, being a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to have invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you have taken a very great liberty. ZOO. What is a liberty? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated_] I shall not explain, madam. I believe you know as well as I do. [_He sits down on the bollard in dudgeon_]. ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed that all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you see my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches of its original auburn still distinctly discernible. ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction. ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They all get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the chance. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your duties; and do not presume to ape your elders. ZOO. [_rising ominously and reddening_] You silly-- THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_thundering_] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your tongue. ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all over. I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_triumphant_] Aha! I have made you blush. Now you know what blushing means. Blushing with shame! ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you do not stop I will kill you. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_apprehending his danger_] Doubtless you think it safe to threaten an old man-- ZOO [_fiercely_] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take care. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising with crestfallen courtesy_] I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I--[_swallowing the apology with an effort_] I beg your pardon. [_He takes off his hat, and bows_]. ZOO. What does that mean? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said. ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry. ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you dead. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. _I_ attempt to kill you! What a monstrous accusation! ZOO [_frowns_]! THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_prudently correcting himself_] I mean misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot believe that I am a murderer. ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to kill that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never before has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be killed. I must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no longer a Conservative. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_dropping his hat_] Gracious Heavens! you have lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [_Offering his chest for the sacrifice_] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you! ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed at the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken politically and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared to discuss it with you. ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for advice when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are in difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that led to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice: you often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been left to your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would not come to us at all: you would learn from experience that your consultations of the oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw wonderful imaginary pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems about our beneficent operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice, our mercy: stories in which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your prayers and sacrifices; but you do it only to conceal from yourselves the truth that you are incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived: we know quite well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable ones. He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and promulgated. The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the nations know them. Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished. ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And even if you published our real answers it would make no difference, because the shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your scriptures command you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary of everything your own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You cannot defy Nature. It is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation between conduct and length of life. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally to the party funds. [_He picks up his hat, and sits down again_]. ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is the most momentous in the world for you and your like. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_interested_] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it is? I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [_He puts on his hat, cocking it slightly_]. ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should increase our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should stay as we are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in the majesty of our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an adoring world, with our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the sea. They contend that it is our destiny to rule the world, and that even when we were shortlived we did so. They say that our power and our peace depend on our remoteness, our exclusiveness, our separation, and the restriction of our numbers. Five minutes ago that was my political faith. Now I do not think there should be any shortlived people at all. [_She throws herself again carelessly on the sacks_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live because I allowed myself--perhaps injudiciously--to give you a slight scolding? ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to yourself? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stupent_] Well, upon my soul! ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride in us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher than ourselves. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the good you do us by your oracular counsels! THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam. ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call us, have lengthened our lives very considerably. ZOO. How? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the ocean in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the burden of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more leisure than they will know what to do with. ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch his faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who live three hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a hundred, and that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but to supplant and supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a Colonizer and an Exterminator. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I implore you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the natives. Would you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous forefathers treated the Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons, entitled at least to some reservations? ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly in our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost dead when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for a few minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go upon. Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the ancestral type, and are born shortlived? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_eagerly_] Never. I hope you will not be offended if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be placed in charge of one of those normal individuals. ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all out. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send a cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you--that you--that you assist Nature in any way? ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy because he has not two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite another matter. If one of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear the strain of our truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by depraved appetites and superstitions, or is unable to keep free from pain and depression, he naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to live. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean? ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He is out of countenance, as we call it. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of you? ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we occasionally produce. He emigrates. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then? ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept him as what you call a great man. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what you tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the private life of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a dumping place for your failures. ZOO. I admit that. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will you do with your undesirables? ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers! ZOO [_glancing up at the sun_] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and you have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising_] Galway! Shall I at last be able to boast of having seen that magnificent city? ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of the oracle: that is all. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two long-cherished dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See Galway and die.' The other was to contemplate the ruins of London. ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any importance? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] What! London! It was the mightiest city of antiquity. [_Rhetorically_] Situate just where the Dover Road crosses the Thames, it-- ZOO [_curtly interrupting_] There is nothing there now. Why should anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the water. [_She goes down the steps_]. THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi! ZOO [_from below_] What did you say? THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_despairingly_] Nothing. You would not understand. [_He goes down the steps_]. _ |
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