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.