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
superstition! 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 transmute it?
TREBELL. Don't mock at money.
WEDGECROFT. I never have.
TREBELL. But you speak of it as an end not as a means. That's unfair.
WEDGECROFT. I speaks as I finds.
TREBELL. I'll buy the Church, not with money, but with the promise of
new life. [_A certain rather gleeful cunning comes over him._] It'll
only look like a dose of reaction at first . . Sectarian Training
Colleges endowed to the hilt.
WEDGECROFT. What'll the Nonconformists say?
TREBELL. Bribe them with the means of equal efficiency. The crux of the
whole matter will be in the statutes I'll force on those colleges.
WEDGECROFT. They'll want dogma.
TREBELL. Dogma's not a bad thing if you've power to adapt it
occasionally.
WEDGECROFT. Instead of spending your brains in explaining it. Yes, I
agree.
TREBELL. [_With full voice._] But in the creed I'll lay down as
unalterable there shall be neither Jew nor Greek . . What do you think
of St. Paul, Gilbert?
WEDGECROFT. I'd make him the head of a college.
TREBELL. I'll make the Devil himself head of a college, if he'll
undertake to teach honestly all he knows.
WEDGECROFT. And he'll conjure up Comte and Robespierre for you to assist
in this little _rechauffee_ of their schemes.
TREBELL. Hullo! Comte I knew about. Have I stolen from Robespierre too?
WEDGECROFT. [_Giving out the epigram with an air._] Property to him who
can make the best use of it.
TREBELL. And then what we must do is to give the children power over
their teachers?
_Now he is comically enigmatic._ WEDGECROFT _echoes him_.
WEDGECROFT. And what exactly do you mean by that?
TREBELL. [_Serious again._] How positive a pedagogue would you be if you
had to prove your cases and justify your creed every century or so to
the pupils who had learnt just a little more than you could teach them?
Give power to the future, my friend . . not to the past. Give
responsibility . . even if you give it for your own discredit. What's
beneath trust deeds and last wills and testaments, and even acts of
Parliament and official creeds? Fear of the verdict of the next
generation . . fear of looking foolish in their eyes. Ah, we . . doing
our best now . . must be ready for every sort of death. And to provide
the means of change and disregard of the past is a secret of
statesmanship. Presume that the world will come to an end every thirty
years if it's not reconstructed. Therefore give responsibility . . give
responsibility . . give the children power.
WEDGECROFT. [_Disposed to whistle._] Those statutes will want some
framing.
TREBELL. [_Relapsing to a chuckle._] There's an incidental change to
foresee. Disappearance of the parson into the schoolmaster . . and the
Archdeacon into the Inspector . . and the Bishop into--I rather hope
he'll stick to his mitre, Gilbert.
WEDGECROFT. Some Ruskin will arise and make him.
TREBELL. [_As he paces the room and the walls of it fade away to him._]
What a church could be made of the best brains in England, sworn only to
learn all they could teach what they knew without fear of the future or
favour to the past . . sworn upon their honour as seekers after truth,
knowingly to tell no child a lie. It will come.
WEDGECROFT. A priesthood of women too? There's the tradition of service
with them.
TREBELL. [_With the sourest look yet on his face._] Slavery . . not
quite the same thing. And the paradox of such slavery is that they're
your only tyrants.
[_At this moment the bell of the telephone upon the table rings. He goes
to it talking the while._]
One has to be very optimistic not to advocate the harem. That's simple
and wholesome . . Yes?
KENT _comes in_.
KENT. Does it work?
TREBELL. [_Slamming down the receiver._] You and your new toy! What is
it?
KENT. I'm not sure about the plugs of it . . I thought I'd got them
wrong. Mrs. O'Connell has come to see Miss Trebell, who is out, and she
says will we ask you if any message has been left for her.
TREBELL. No. Oh, about dinner? Well, she's round at Mrs. Farrant's.
KENT. I'll ring them up.
_He goes back into his room to do so leaving_ TREBELL'S _door open. The
two continue their talk._
TREBELL. My difficulties will be with Percival.
WEDGECROFT. Not over the Church.
TREBELL. You see I must discover how keen he'd be on settling the
Education quarrel, once and for all . . what there is left of it.
WEDGECROFT. He's not sectarian.
TREBELL. It'll cost him his surplus. When'll he be up and about?
WEDGECROFT. Not for a week or more.
TREBELL. [_Knitting his brow._] And I've to deal with Cantelupe. Curious
beggar, Gilbert.
WEDGECROFT. Not my sort. He'll want some dealing with over your bill as
introduced to me.
TREBELL. I've not cross-examined company promoters for ten years without
learning how to do business with a professional high churchman.
WEDGECROFT. Providence limited . . eh?
_They are interrupted by_ MRS. O'CONNELL'S _appearance in the doorway.
She is rather pale, very calm; but there is pain in her eyes and her
voice is unnaturally steady._
AMY. Your maid told me to come up and I'm interrupting business . . I
thought she was wrong.
TREBELL. [_With no trace of self-consciousness._] Well . . how are you,
after this long time?
AMY. How do you do? [_Then she sees_ WEDGECROFT _and has to control a
shrinking from him_.] Oh!
WEDGECROFT. How are you, Mrs. O'Connell?
TREBELL. Kent is telephoning to Frances. He knows where she is.
AMY. How are you, Dr. Wedgecroft? [_then to_ TREBELL.] Did you have a
good holiday? London pulls one to pieces wretchedly. I shall give up
living here at all.
WEDGECROFT. You look very well.
AMY. Do I!
TREBELL. A very good holiday. Sit down . . he won't be a minute.
_She sits on the nearest chair._
AMY. You're not ill . . interviewing a doctor?
TREBELL. The one thing Wedgecroft's no good at is doctoring. He keeps me
well by sheer moral suasion.
KENT _comes out of his room and is off downstairs_.
TREBELL _calls to him_.
TREBELL. Mrs. O'Connell's here.
KENT. Oh! [_He comes back and into the room._] Miss Trebell hasn't got
there yet.
WEDGECROFT _has suddenly looked at his watch_.
WEDGECROFT. I must fly. Good bye, Mrs. O'Connell.
AMY. [_Putting her hand, constrained by its glove, into his open hand._]
I am always a little afraid of you.
WEDGECROFT. That isn't the feeling a doctor wants to inspire.