_Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an
expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her
face in her hands_.



ACT II


_A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand
the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the
middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow
of a tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by
hand, is a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the
opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it
barred by a hurdle.

The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves.
They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and
jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam
looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up
worrying), sits and spins and thinks._

A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!

EVE [_looking across the garden towards the hurdle_] Here is Cain.

ADAM [_uttering a grunt of disgust_]!!! [_He goes on digging without
raising his head_].

_Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In
pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with
huge spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's
head with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a
lion's skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass
ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military
moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive,
not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not
forgiven nor approved of._

CAIN [_to Adam_] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the
old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I
be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?

ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's
blood crying from the ground against you?

CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could
be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the
first murderer one must be a man of spirit.

ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us
apart.

EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my
own body. I want to see my work sometimes.

ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him
after that?

CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did
I? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug
and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the
earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But
Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He
was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found
out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He
invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he
killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by
eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and
an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you
drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do
the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for
not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he
shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to
him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the fire that cooked his
food, and that the fire that could cook could also eat. It was true: I
saw the fire consume the food on his altar. Then I, too, made an altar,
and offered my food on it, my grains, my roots, my fruit. Useless:
nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then came my great idea: why not
kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck; and he died, just as they
did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had
lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the fire. Am I not better
than you? stronger, happier, freer?

ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot
endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has
invented poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If
you take a step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will
strike you with my spade as you struck Abel.

EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.

ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.

CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And
for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through
you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not
resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you
would kill me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of
us should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and
shield to shield. It is terrible; but there is no joy like it. I call
it fighting. He who has never fought has never lived. That is what has
brought me to my mother today.

ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you
the destroyer.

CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more
and more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create
more men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than
there are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great
hosts. One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I
fear most and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try
to kill the other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of men
fighting, fighting, killing, killing! The four rivers running with
blood! The shouts of triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair!
the shrieks of torment! That will be life indeed: life lived to the very
marrow: burning, overwhelming life. Every man who has not seen it, heard
it, felt it, risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the
man who has.

EVE. And I! I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!

ADAM. Or to kill you, you fool.

CAIN. Mother: the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony,
your glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience,
as you call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod
for you, like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who
carries his burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's
life. I will hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my
sinews. When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw
it to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She
shall have no other food; and that will make her my slave. And the man
that slays me shall have her for his booty. Man shall be the master of
Woman, not her baby and her drudge.

_Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve._

EVE. Are you tempted, Adam? Does this seem a better thing to you than
love between us?

CAIN. What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has
faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last
rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the
arms of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife,
whether she would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways
of Adam, and was a digger and a drudge?

EVE [_angrily throwing down her distaff_] What! You dare come here
boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the
worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam's ox or
your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk
of your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor
wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that?
Do you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the
blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an
animal than a woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds
because it is too much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of
a great warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your
life; but who gets the striped skin you have run that risk for? She
takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You
fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire
you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and
the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and
propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that
I make a mere convenience of Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and
bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please
men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and
a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a
woman-child when I bore her. What have you made of yourselves?

CAIN [_letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and
twirling his moustache_] There is something higher than man. There is
hero and superman.

EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other
men what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is
to the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will
be the richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, 'He was a
great warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had
never been born.' And of Lua they will say nothing; but when they think
of her they will spit.

CAIN. She is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged
at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black
and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am.

EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at
her feet, and cried, and begged her to forgive you, and were ten times
more her slave than ever; and she, when she had finished screaming and
the pain went off a little, she forgave you, did she not?

CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true nature of woman.

EVE [_now pitying him maternally_] Love! You call that love! You call
that the nature of woman! My boy: this is neither man nor woman nor love
nor life. You have no real strength in your bones nor sap in your flesh.

CAIN. Ha! [_he seizes his spear and swings it muscularly_].

EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot
taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love
Lua until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh
until you have stuck a squirrel's fur on it. You can feel nothing but a
torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to
look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten
miles to see a fight or a death.

ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone.

CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha!

EVE [_to Adam_] You think, perhaps, that his way of life may be better
than yours after all. You are still tempted. Well, will you pamper me as
he pampers his woman? Will you kill tigers and bears until I have a heap
of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms waste
into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of
kids whose milk you will steal for me?

ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and
I will stay as I am.

CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple
country folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and
asses you have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I
have a plan. Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring
them up from childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may
believe that we are gods, and that they are here only to make life
glorious for us?

ADAM [_impressed_] That is a great thought, certainly.

EVE [_contemptuously_] Great thought!

ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not?

EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate
creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted
and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a
man and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to
make still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and
worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting
curse. A fine dream, truly! [_To Cain_] Your father is a fool skin deep;
but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife is
worse.

ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you?

EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our
children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that?

CAIN. It did; but I am not a child to be afraid of a Voice. The Voice
thought I was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was
myself, and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to
himself. He was not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not
kill me? There was no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me:
it was man to man; and I won. I was the first conqueror.

ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that?

CAIN. Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, a
burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.
And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, the
men who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of their
masters, are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. He who bears
the brand of Cain shall rule the earth. When he falls, he shall be
avenged sevenfold: the Voice has said it; so beware how you plot against
me, you and all the rest.

ADAM. Cease your boasting and bullying, and tell the truth. Does not the
Voice tell you that as no man dare slay you for murdering your brother,
you ought to slay yourself?

CAIN. No.

ADAM. Then there is no such thing as divine justice, unless you are
lying.

CAIN. I am not lying: I dare all truths. There is divine justice. For
the Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if
he can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for
Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them
courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that
raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.

ADAM [_picking up his spade and preparing to dig again_] Take yourself
off then. This splendid life of yours does not last for a thousand
years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do not
get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die from
mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh: it
grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or cough
up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten; your
hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die before
your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig, and
live.

CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you
old vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for
hundreds of years? I have not lived as long as you; but I know all there
is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself
free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft
of fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What
certainty have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and
you could no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I spare you;
but others may kill you. Why not live bravely, and die early and make
room for others? Why, I--I! that know many more crafts than either of
you, am tired of myself when I am not fighting or hunting. Sooner than
face a thousand years of it I should kill myself, as the Voice sometimes
tempts me to do already.

ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's
life with your own.

CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you. I am a man: you
are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man.
And a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes
the Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.

ADAM. May your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy!

EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was
Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally
between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel,
or had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you
would not have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save
his. That is why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just
now when he threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went
by me like foul wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there
is enmity between Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I
am your mother. You are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and
painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others
have made. When you dug, you made the earth live and bring forth as I
live and bring forth. It was for that that Lilith set you free from the
travail of women, not for theft and murder.

CAIN. The Devil thank her for it! I can make better use of my time than
to play the husband to the clay beneath my feet.

ADAM. Devil? What new word is that?

CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened
willingly when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There
must be two Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that
trusts and respects me. I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of
God.

ADAM. Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.

CAIN. Be it so. For it whispers to me that death is not really death:
that it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid and
intense: a life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades,
hunger or fatigue--

EVE. Selfish and idle, Cain. I know.

CAIN. Selfish, yes: a life in which no man is his brother's keeper,
because his brother can keep himself. But am I idle? In rejecting your
drudgery, have I not embraced evils and agonies of which you know
nothing? The arrow is lighter in the hand than the spade; but the energy
that drives it through the breast of a fighter is as fire to water
compared with the strength that drives the spade into the harmless dirty
clay. My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.

ADAM. What is that word? What is pure?

CAIN. Turned from the clay. Turned upward to the sun, to the clear clean
heavens.

ADAM. The heavens are empty, child. The earth is fruitful. The earth
feeds us. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind.
Cut off from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably.

CAIN. I revolt against the clay. I revolt against the food. You say it
gives us strength: does it not also turn into filth and smite us with
diseases? I revolt against these births that you and mother are so proud
of. They drag us down to the level of the beasts. If that is to be the
last thing as it has been the first, let mankind perish. If I am to
eat like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I had
rather be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no
better. If you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman
who gives you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams.
Grope in the ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with
my arrows, or strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its
life. If I must have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a
remove from the earth as I can. The ox shall make it something nobler
than grass before it comes to me. And as the man is nobler than the ox,
I shall some day let my enemy eat the ox; and then I will slay and eat
him.

ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve?

EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face to the clean clear
heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! For that is what it would come to,
just as it came to lambs and kids when Abel began with sheep and goats.
You are a poor silly creature after all. Do you think I never have these
thoughts: I! who have the labor of the child-bearing: I! who have the
drudgery of preparing the food? I thought for a moment that perhaps this
strong brave son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could
desire what he imagined, might also be able to will what he desired
until he created it. And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a
bear and eat children. Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get
honey instead.

CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do
not know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and
nobler than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring
me into the world, and whom you despise now that he has served your
turn.

ADAM [_in sullen rage_] I have half a mind to shew you that my spade can
split your undutiful head open, in spite of your spear.

CAIN. Undutiful! Ha! ha! [_Flourishing his spear_] Try it, old
everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting.

EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to
me. [_Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with
a laughing one, throws down his shield and spear. Both sit on the
ground_]. I hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your
dirty digging, or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for
either of these cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [_To Adam_]
You dig roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down
a divine sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food;
and makes up idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his
terror-ridden life with fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine
clothes, so that men may glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as
murderer and thief. All you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my
sons' sons, or my sons' sons' sons: you all come to see me: you all shew
off before me: all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted
out before mother Eve. The diggers come: the fighters and killers come:
they are both very dull; for they either complain to me of the last
harvest, or boast to me of the last fight; and one harvest is just like
another, and the last fight only a repetition of the first. Oh, I have
heard it all a thousand times. They tell me too of their last-born:
the clever thing the darling child said yesterday, and how much more
wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any child that ever was born
before. And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested;
though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing
that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it. For you were
the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and
delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts. When I
can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles
and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to. But you
have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is dead: I
never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam saying the
same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit from the
last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress me with
his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly seven
hundred years of it to endure.

CAIN. Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything.
There is nothing new under the sun.

ADAM [_to Eve, grumpily_] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing
better to do than complain?

EVE. Because there is still hope.

CAIN. Of what?

EVE. Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created
things. Of better things. My sons and my son's sons are not all diggers
and fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more
useless than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are
vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their
hair. They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want,
because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember
their dreams. They can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough
to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream
could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it.
There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through
them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can
weave the patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and
raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make
little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and
ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those
faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up
quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on
their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars,
and can foretell when the sun will be covered with a black saucepan lid.
And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me which has saved me so
much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the hills, and hears the
Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the
Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they come, there is
always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They
never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating
either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you,
Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your
foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid,
and that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of
death makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you,
Adam, go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.

CAIN. I am not, perhaps, very clever; but--

EVE [_interrupting him_] Perhaps not; but do not begin to boast of that.
It is no credit to you.

CAIN. For all that, mother, I have an instinct which tells me that death
plays its part in life. Tell me this: who invented death?

_Adam springs to his feet. Eve drops her distaff. Both shew the greatest
consternation._

CAIN. What is the matter with you both?

ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a terrible question.

EVE. You invented murder. Let that be enough for you.

CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
upon me? I say, who invented death?

ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be
Adam, Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the
two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much
in me that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who
enabled you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for
you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.

CAIN [_rising_] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But
if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of death?

ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
mother to her spinning.

CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better
way. [_He picks up his shield and spear_]. I will go back to my brave
warrior friends and their splendid women. [_He strides to the thorn
brake_]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?
[_He goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the
distance_] Goodbye, mother.

ADAM [_grumbling_] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [_He
replaces the hurdle across the passage_].

EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of
our grandchildren die before they have sense enough to know how to live.

ADAM. No matter. [_He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade
again_]. Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are
making it.

EVE [_musing_] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for the
other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat manna?

ADAM. What is manna?

EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the
Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.

ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it.
I will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be
damned.

EVE. Damned? What is that?

ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
you.

EVE [_slowly taking up her distaff_] If you were not a fool you would
find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
digging.

ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.

EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else.
We do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then
we will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor
spinning, nor fighting nor killing.

_She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently._




PART II

The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas


_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 sits
down. 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?