Three Plays by Granville-Barker Part 83

WEDGECROFT. We shan't see the day.

TREBELL. [_Lifting the subject off its feet._] Not if I come out of the cabinet and preach revolution?

WEDGECROFT. Or will they make a Tory of you?

TREBELL. [_Acknowledging that stroke with a return grin._] It'll be said they have when the bill is out.

WEDGECROFT. It's said so already.

TREBELL. Who knows a radical bill when he sees it!

WEDGECROFT. I'm not pleased you have to be running a tilt against the party system. [_He becomes a little dubious._] My friend . . it's a nasty windmill. Oh, you've not seen that article in the Nation on Politics and Society . . it's written at Mrs. Farrant and Lady Lurgashall and that set. They hint that the Tories would never have had you if it hadn't been for this bad habit of opposite party men meeting each other.

TREBELL. [_Unimpressed._] Excellent habit! What we really want in this country is a coalition of all the s.h.i.+bboleths with the rest of us in opposition . . for five years only.

WEDGECROFT. [_Smiling generously._] Well, it's a sensation to see you become arbiter. The Tories are owning they can't do without you.

Percival likes you personally . . Townsend don't matter . . Cantelupe you buy with a price, I suppose . . Farrant you can put in your pocket.

I tell you I think the man you may run up against is Blackborough.

TREBELL. No, all he wants is to be let look big . . and to have an idea given him when he's going to make a speech, which isn't often.

WEDGECROFT. Otherwise . . I suppose . . now I may go down to history as having been in your confidence. I'm very glad you've arrived.

TREBELL. [_With great seriousness._] I've sharpened myself as a weapon to this purpose.

WEDGECROFT. [_Kindly._] And you're sure of yourself, aren't you?

TREBELL. [_Turning his wrist._] Try.

WEDGECROFT. [_Slipping his doctor's fingers over the pulse._]

Seventy, I should say.

TREBELL. I promise you it hasn't varied a beat these three big months.

WEDGECROFT. Well, I wish it had. Perfect balance is most easily lost.

How do you know you've the power of recovery? . . and it's that gets one up in the morning day by day.

TREBELL. Is it? My brain works steadily on . . hasn't failed me yet. I keep it well fed. [_He breathes deeply._] But I'm not sure one shouldn't have been away from England for five years instead of five weeks . . to come back to a job like this with a fresh mind. D'you know why really I went back on the Liberals over this question? Not because they wanted the church money for their pensions . . but because all they can see in Disestablishment is destruction. Any fool can destroy! I'm not going to let a power like the Church get loose from the State. A thirteen hundred years' tradition of service . . and all they can think of is to cut it adrift!

WEDGECROFT. I think the Church is moribund.

TREBELL. Oh, yes, of course you do . . you sentimental agnostic anarchist. Nonsense! The supernatural's a bit blown upon . . till we re-discover what it means. But it's not essential. Nor is the Christian doctrine. Put a Jesuit in a corner and shut the door and he'll own that.

No . . the tradition of self-sacrifice and fellows.h.i.+p in service for its own sake . . that's the spirit we've to capture and keep.

WEDGECROFT. [_Really struck._] A secular Church!

TREBELL. [_With reasoning in his tone._] Well . . why not? Listen here.

In drafting an act of Parliament one must alternately imagine oneself G.o.d Almighty and the most ignorant prejudiced little blighter who will be affected by what's pa.s.sed. G.o.d says: Let's have done with Heaven and h.e.l.l . . it's the Earth that shan't pa.s.s away. Why not turn all those theology mongers into doctors or schoolmasters?

WEDGECROFT. As to doctors--

TREBELL. Quite so, you naturally prejudiced blighter. That priestcraft don't need re-inforcing.

WEDGECROFT. It needs recognition.

TREBELL. What! It's the only thing most people believe in. Talk about superst.i.tion! However, there's more life in you. Therefore it's to be schoolmasters.

WEDGECROFT. How?

TREBELL. Listen again, young man. In the youth of the world, when priests were the teachers of men . . .

WEDGECROFT. [_Not to be preached at._] And physicians of men.

TREBELL. Shut up.

WEDGECROFT. If there's any real reform going, I want my profession made into a state department. I won't shut up for less.

TREBELL. [_Putting this aside with one finger._] I'll deal with you later. There's still Youth in the world in another sense; but the priests haven't found out the difference yet, so they're wasting most of their time.

WEDGECROFT. Religious education won't do now-a-days.

TREBELL. What's Now-a-days? You're very dull, Gilbert.

WEDGECROFT. I'm not duller than the people who will have to understand your scheme.

TREBELL. They won't understand it. I shan't explain to them that education is religion, and that those who deal in it are priests without any laying on of hands.

WEDGECROFT. No matter what they teach?

TREBELL. No . . the matter is how they teach it. I see schools in the future, Gilbert, not built next to the church, but on the site of the church.

WEDGECROFT. Do you think the world is grown up enough to do without dogma?

TREBELL. Yes, I do.

WEDGECROFT. What! . . and am I to write my prescriptions in English?

TREBELL. Yes, you are.

WEDGECROFT. Lord save us! I never thought to find you a visionary.

TREBELL. Isn't it absurd to think that in a hundred years we shall be giving our best brains and the price of them not to training grown men into the discipline of destruction . . not even to curing the ills which we might be preventing . . but to teaching our children. There's nothing else to be done . . nothing else matters. But it's work for a priesthood.

WEDGECROFT. [_Affected; not quite convinced._] Do you think you can buy a tradition and trans.m.u.te it?

TREBELL. Don't mock at money.

WEDGECROFT. I never have.