Back to Methuselah · Part III (2/2) (2/6)

| The Negress | I cannot live on the East Coast: it is hard enough to keep my blood warm here. Besides, my friend, it would not be safe. These distant flirtations are very charming; and they teach self-control. | | Burge-Lubin | Damn self-control! I want to hold you in my arms⁠—to⁠—the negress snatches out the peg from the switchboard and vanishes. She is still heard laughing. Black devil! He snatches out his peg furiously: her laugh is no longer heard. Oh, these sex episodes! Why can I not resist them? Disgraceful! | | | Confucius returns. | | Confucius | I forgot. There is something for you to do this morning. You have to go to the Record Office to receive the American barbarian. | | Burge-Lubin | Confucius: once for all, I object to this Chinese habit of describing white men as barbarians. | | Confucius | Standing formally at the end of the table with his hands palm to palm. I make a mental note that you do not wish the Americans to be described as barbarians. | | Burge-Lubin | Not at all. The Americans are barbarians. But we are not. I suppose the particular barbarian you are speaking of is the American who has invented a means of breathing under water. | | Confucius | He says he has invented such a method. For some reason which is not intelligible in China, Englishmen always believe any statement made by an American inventor, especially one who has never invented anything. Therefore you believe this person and have given him a public reception. Today the Record Office is entertaining him with a display of the cinematographic records of all the eminent Englishmen who have lost their lives by drowning since the cinema was invented. Why not go to see it if you are at a loss for something to do? | | Burge-Lubin | What earthly interest is there in looking at a moving picture of a lot of people merely because they were drowned? If they had had any sense, they would not have been drowned, probably. | | Confucius | That is not so. It has never been noticed before; but the Record Office has just made two remarkable discoveries about the public men and women who have displayed extraordinary ability during the past century. One is that they retained unusual youthfulness up to an advanced age. The other is that they all met their death by drowning. | | Burge-Lubin | Yes: I know. Can you explain it? | | Confucius | It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do not believe it. | | | The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the middle of the table. | | Burge-Lubin | What’s the matter? Are you ill? | | Barnabas | Choking. No. I⁠—He collapses into the middle chair. I must speak to you in private. | | | Confucius calmly withdraws. | | Burge-Lubin | What on earth is it? Have some oxygen. | | Barnabas | I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have. | | Burge-Lubin | Seen what? | | Barnabas | Seen the Archbishop of York. | | Burge-Lubin | Well, why shouldn’t they see the Archbishop of York? What are they fainting for? Has he been murdered? | | Barnabas | No: he has been drowned. | | Burge-Lubin | Good God! Where? When? How? Poor fellow! | | Barnabas | Poor fellow! Poor thief! Poor swindler! Poor robber of his country’s Exchequer! Poor fellow indeed! Wait till I catch him. | | Burge-Lubin | How can you catch him when he is dead? You’re mad. | | Barnabas | Dead! Who said he was dead? | | Burge-Lubin | You did. Drowned. | | Barnabas | Exasperated. Will you listen to me? Was old Archbishop Haslam, the present man’s last predecessor but four, drowned or not? | | Burge-Lubin | I don’t know. Look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. | | Barnabas | Yah! Was Archbishop Stickit, who wrote Stickit on the Psalms, drowned or not? | | Burge-Lubin | Yes, mercifully. He deserved it. | | Barnabas | Was President Dickenson drowned? Was General Bullyboy drowned? | | Burge-Lubin | Who is denying it? | | Barnabas | Well, we’ve had moving pictures of all four put on the screen today for this American; and they and the Archbishop are the same man. Now tell me I am mad. | | Burge-Lubin | I do tell you you are mad. Stark raving mad. | | Barnabas | Am I to believe my own eyes or am I not? | | Burge-Lubin | You can do as you please. All I can tell you is that I don’t believe your eyes if they can’t see any difference between a live archbishop and two dead ones. The apparatus rings, he holds the button down. Yes? | | The Woman’s Voice | The Archbishop of York, to see the President. | | Barnabas | Hoarse with rage. Have him in. I’ll talk to the scoundrel. | | Burge-Lubin | Releasing the button. Not while you are in this state. | | Barnabas | Reaching furiously for his button and holding it down. Send the Archbishop in at once. | | Burge-Lubin | If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall be two to one. | | | The Archbishop* enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black boots that button high up on his calves. His costume does not differ otherwise from that of the President and the Accountant General; but its color scheme is black and white. He is older than the Reverend Bill Haslam was when he wooed Miss Savvy Barnabas; but he is recognizably the same man. He does not look a day over fifty, and is very well preserved even at that; but his boyishness of manner is quite gone: he now has complete authority and self-possession: in fact the President is a little afraid of him; and it seems quite natural and inevitable that he should speak fast. | | The Archbishop | Good day, Mr. President. | | Burge-Lubin | Good day, Mr. Archbishop. Be seated. | | The Archbishop | Sitting down between them. Good day, Mr. Accountant General. | | Barnabas | Malevolently. Good day to you. I have a question to put to you, if you don’t mind. | | The Archbishop | Looking curiously at him, jarred by his uncivil tone. Certainly. What is it? | | Barnabas | What is your definition of a thief? | | The Archbishop | Rather an old-fashioned word, is it not? | | Barnabas | It survives officially in my department. | | The Archbishop | Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie! my apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that without them I cannot be a proper Archbishop. | | Barnabas | Indeed! Well, in my department the word thief survives, because in the community the thing thief survives. And a very despicable and dishonorable thing he is, too. | | The Archbishop | Coolly. I daresay. | | Barnabas | In my department, sir, a thief is a person who lives longer than the statutory expectation of life entitles him to, and goes on drawing public money when, if he were an honest man, he would be dead. | | The Archbishop | Then let me say, sir, that your department does not understand its own business. If you have miscalculated the duration of human life, that is not the fault of the persons whose longevity you have miscalculated. And if they continue to work and produce, they pay their way, even if they live two or three centuries. | | Barnabas | I know nothing about their working and producing. That is not the business of my department. I am concerned with their expectation of life; and I say that no man has any right to go on living and drawing money when he ought to be dead. | | The Archbishop | You do not comprehend the relation between income and production. | | Barnabas | I understand my own department. | | The Archbishop | That is not enough. Your department is part of a synthesis which embraces all the departments. | | Burge-Lubin | Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a job for Confucius. I heard him use that very word the other day; and I wondered what the devil he meant. Switching on. Hallo! Put me through to the Chief Secretary. | | Confucius’s Voice | You are speaking to him. | | Burge-Lubin | An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don’t understand. Come and help us out. | | The Archbishop | May I ask how the question has arisen? | | Barnabas | Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you? You thought yourself pretty safe. You⁠— | | Burge-Lubin | Steady, Barnabas. Don’t be in a hurry. | | | Confucius enters. | | The Archbishop | Rising. Good morning, Mr. Chief Secretary. | | Burge-Lubin | Rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop. Honor us by taking a seat, O sage. | | Confucius | Ceremony is needless. He bows to the company, and takes the chair at the foot of the table. | | | The President and the Archbishop resume their seats. | | Burge-Lubin | We wish to put a case to you, Confucius. Suppose a man, instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of life, were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the Accountant General be justified in calling him a thief? | | Confucius | No. He would be justified in calling him a liar. | | The Archbishop | I think not, Mr. Chief Secretary. What do you suppose my age is? | | Confucius | Fifty. | | Burge-Lubin | You don’t look it. Forty-five; and young for your age. | | The Archbishop | My age is two hundred and eighty-three. | | Barnabas | Morosely triumphant. Hmp! Mad, am I? | | Burge-Lubin | You’re both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting a bit⁠—well⁠— | | The Archbishop | To Confucius. Mr. Chief Secretary: will you, to oblige me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a hypothesis? | | Burge-Lubin | What is a hypothesis? | | Confucius | It does not matter. I understand. To the Archbishop. Am I to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis⁠— | | Burge-Lubin | Met⁠—Emp⁠—Sy⁠—Good Lord! What a brain, Confucius! What a brain! | | The Archbishop | Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that I was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief? | | Confucius | I do not know. Was that one of your professions? | | The Archbishop | No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a President, and a General. | | Barnabas | Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or six incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that. | | Confucius | Certainly not. The hypothesis is that he has worked continuously since 1910. We are now in the year 2170. What is the official lifetime? | | Barnabas | Seventy-eight. Of course it’s an average; and we don’t mind a man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming a centenarian. But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler. | | Confucius | Seventy-eight into two hundred and eighty-three goes more than three and a half times. Your department owes the Archbishop two and a half educations and three and a half retiring pensions. | | Barnabas | Stuff! How can that be? | | Confucius | At what age do your people begin to work for the community? | | Burge-Lubin | Three. They do certain things every day when they are three. Just to break them in, you know. But they become self-supporting, or nearly so, at thirteen. | | Confucius | And at what age do they retire? | | Barnabas | Forty-three. | | Confucius | That is, they do thirty years’ work; and they receive maintenance and education, without working, for thirteen years of childhood and thirty-five years of superannuation, forty-eight years in all, for each thirty years’ work. The Archbishop has given you 260 years’ work, and has received only one education and no superannuation. You therefore owe him over 300 years of leisure and nearly eight educations. You are thus heavily in his debt. In other words, he has effected an enormous national economy by living so long; and you, by living only seventy-eight years, are profiting at his expense. He is the benefactor: you are the thief. Half rising. May I now withdraw and return to my serious business, as my own span is comparatively short? | | Burge-Lubin | Don’t be in a hurry, old chap. Confucius sits down again. This hypothecary, or whatever you call it, is put up seriously. I don’t believe it; but if the Archbishop and the Accountant General are going to insist that it’s true, we shall have either to lock them up or to see the thing through. | | Barnabas | It’s no use trying these Chinese subtleties on me. I’m a plain man; and though I don’t understand metaphysics, and don’t believe in them, I understand figures; and if the Archbishop is only entitled to seventy-eight years, and he takes 283, I say he takes more than he is entitled to. Get over that if you can. | | The Archbishop | I have not taken 283 years: I have taken 23 and given 260. | | Confucius | Do your accounts show a deficiency or a surplus? | | Barnabas | A surplus. That’s what I can’t make out. That’s the artfulness of these people. | | Burge-Lubin | That settles it. What’s the use of arguing? The Chink says you are wrong; and theres an end of it. | | Barnabas | I say nothing against the Chink’s arguments. But what about my facts? | | Confucius | If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside. | | Barnabas | Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind. Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and himself into the bargain; all five of them. | | The Archbishop | I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has ever asked me. | | Burge-Lubin | But damn it, man⁠—I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but really, really⁠— | | The Archbishop | Don’t mention it. What were you going to say? | | Burge-Lubin | Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat, you know. | | The Archbishop | That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live three hundred years! I⁠— | | Confucius | Interrupting him. Pardon me. Such a discovery was impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years if you have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three hundred years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy tale, Mr. Archbishop. | | Burge-Lubin | Good, Confucius! To the Archbishop. He has you there. I don’t see how you can get over that. | | The Archbishop | Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue, he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated 1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It showed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and how it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the brothers. | | Barnabas | Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine? | | The Archbishop | I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on the family. | | Burge-Lubin | Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that calculation correct, Confucius? | | Confucius | In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks on population. | | Burge-Lubin | This is a staggerer. It brings home to one⁠—but recovering it isn’t true, you know. Let us keep sane. | | Confucius | To the Archbishop*. You wish us to understand that the illustrious ancestors of the Accountant General communicated to you a secret by which you could attain the age of three hundred years. |