by Dan Laurence
SIR ARTHUR. That was why I didnt consult you.
SIR DEXTER. Psha!
SIR ARTHUR. The responsibility is mine and mine alone.
SIR BEMROSE. Not at all. I claim my share, Arthur. You got the part about the navy from me.
GLENMORISON. Same here, Sir Dexter. I claim at least two items.
SIR DEXTER. Much good may they do you. Arthur’s seat is safe: anybody named Chavender can get in unopposed in this constituency because his cunning old father-in-law has every voter in the place bribed up to the neck. But your majority at the last election was seventeen: there were three recounts. Your seat’s gone, anyhow.
GLENMORISON. On the contrary, Sir Dexter, it’s safe for the first time in the history of Scotland.
SIR DEXTER. Safe! How? You will get the boot as a crazy Bolshevik unless you come out with me and repudiate Chavender promptly and decisively.
GLENMORISON. Oh, I’m afraid I cant do that, Sir Dexter. You see, the balance is held in my constituency by the tradesmen and shopkeepers. Their great grievance is the heavy rates. And though they are all doing middling well they think they could do better if they could raise enough capital to extend their businesses a bit. But the financiers and promoters wont look at small businesses. They are thinking in millions while my people are thinking in thousands, and mostly in only four figures at that. It’s easy enough to get a couple of hundred thousand pounds if you are willing to call it a quarter of a million and pay interest on that sum. But what good is that to a man in the High Street in my constituency who wants from five to twenty thousand to extend his little business?
SIR DEXTER. Nonsense! The bank will give him an overdraft if his credit is good.
GLENMORISON. Yes; and call it in at the next slump and panic on the Stock Exchange. I can shew you half a dozen men who were forced into bankruptcy in the last panic, though they were as solvent as you or I. But Sir Arthur’s proposal of panic-proof national and municipal banks, as ready and eager to find five thousand for the five thousand man as the financiers are to find a million on condition that enough of it sticks to their own fingers, is just the thing for my people. I darent say a word against it. It’s an inspiration as far as my constituents are concerned. Theyre a canny lot, my people: theyd vote for the devil if he’d promise to abolish the rates and open a municipal bank. My majority fell to seventeen last time because I went to them with empty hands and a bellyful of advice to economize and make sacrifices. This bank nationalization is good business for them: theyll just jump at it.
SIR DEXTER. In short, you will make Utopian promises that you know very well will never be carried out.
GLENMORISON. You made a lot of Utopian promises, Sir Dexter, when you formed this National Government. Instead of carrying them out you told the voters to tighten their belts and save the Bank of England. They tightened their belts; and now the Bank of England is paying twelve and sixpence in the pound. Still, I admit, you pulled down my Liberal majority over my Conservative opponent from four thousand to seventeen. Ive got to pull that up again. I say nothing about the rest of the program; but I represent the small man; and on this bank business I am with Sir Arthur all the time.
HILDA [announcing] Sir Jafna Pandranath. [She withdraws].
This announcement creates a marked sensation. All five gentlemen rise as if to receive a royal personage. Sir Jafna is an elderly Cingalese plutocrat, small and slender to the verge of emaciation, elegantly dressed, but otherwise evidently too much occupied and worried by making money to get any fun out of spending it. One guesses that he must make a great deal of it; for the reverence with which he is received by the five Britons, compared with their unceremonious handling of one another, is almost sycophantic.
SIR JAFNA. Hallo! Am I breaking into a Cabinet meeting?
SIR ARTHUR. No: not a bit. Only a few friendly callers. Pray sit down.
SIR DEXTER [offering the end chair to the visitor] You are welcome, Sir Jafna: most welcome. You represent money; and money brings fools to their senses.
SIR JAFNA. Money! Not at all. I am a poor man. I never know from one moment to another whether I am worth thirteen millions or only three. [He sits down. They all sit down].
SIR BEMROSE. I happen to know, Sir Jafna, that your enterprises stand at twenty millions today at the very least.
GLENMORISON. Fifty.
SIR JAFNA. How do you know? How do you know? The way I am plundered at every turn! [To Sir Dexter] Your people take the shirt off my back.
SIR DEXTER. My people! What on earth do you mean?
SIR JAFNA. Your land monopolists. Your blackmailers. Your robber barons. Look at my Blayport Docks reconstruction scheme! Am I a public benefactor or am I not? Have I not enough to live on and die on without troubling myself about Blayport? Shall I be any the happier when it has ten square miles of docks instead of a tuppeny-hapeny fishing harbor? What have I to gain except the satisfaction of seeing a big publicly useful thing well done, and the knowledge that without me it could not be done? Shall I not be half ruined if it fails?
SIR BEMROSE. Well, whats wrong with it, old chap?
SIR JAFNA. Rosy: you make me puke. What is wrong with it is that the owners of all the miles of land that are indispensable to my scheme, and that without it would not be worth fifteen pounds an acre, are opening their mouths so wide that they will grab sixty per cent of the profit without lifting a finger except to pocket the wealth that I shall create. I live, I work, I plan, I shatter my health and risk all I possess only to enrich these parasites, these vampires, these vermin in the commonwealth. [Shrieking] Yes: vermin! [Subsiding] You were quite right at the Guildhall last night, Arthur: you must nationalize the land and put a stop to this shameless exploitation of the financiers and entrepreneurs by a useless, idle, and predatory landed class.
SIR ARTHUR [chuckling]. Magnificent! I have the support of the City.
SIR JAFNA. To the last vote, to the last penny. These pirates think nothing of extorting a million an acre for land in the city. A man cannot have an address in London for his letters until he has agreed to pay them from five hundred to a thousand a year. He cant even die without paying them for a grave to lie in. Make them disgorge, Arthur. Skin them alive. Tax them twenty shillings in the pound. Make them earn their own living, damn them. [HE WIPES HIS BROW AND ADDS, RATHER HYSTERICALLY] Excuse me, boys; but if you saw the Blayport estimates—! [he can no more].
SIR DEXTER. May I ask you to address yourself to this question not as an emotional oriental [Sir Jafna chokes convulsively] but as a sane man of business. If you destroy the incomes of our landed gentry where will you find the capital that exists solely through their prudent saving—their abstinence?
SIR JAFNA. Bah pooh! Pooh bah! I will find it where they find it, in the product of the labor I employ. At present I have to pay exorbitant and unnecessary wages. Why? Because out of those wages the laborer has to pay half or quarter as rent to the landlord. The laborer is ignorant: he thinks he is robbed by the landlord; but the robbed victim is me—ME! Get rid of the landlord and I shall have all the capital he now steals. In addition I shall have cheap labor. That is not oriental emotion: it is British Commonsense. I am with you, Arthur, to the last drop of my oriental blood. Nationalized land: compulsory labor: abolition of rates: strikes made criminal: I heartily endorse them all in the name of Capital and private enterprise. I say nothing about the rest of your program, Arthur; but on these points no true Liberal can question your magnificent statesmanship.
SIR ARTHUR [delighted] You hear that, Dexy. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
HILDA [announcing] His Grace the Duke of Domesday. [She goes out].
An elderly delicately built aristocrat comes in. Well preserved, but nearer 70 than 60.
THE DUKE [surprised to see so many people] Do I intrude, Arthur? I thought you were disengaged.
SIR ARTHUR. Not at all. Only a talk over last night. Make yourself at home.
SIR DEXTER. You come in the nick of time. Sir Jafna here ha
s just been qualifying you as a bloodsucker, a pirate, a parasite, a robber baron and finally as vermin. Vermin! How do you like it?
THE DUKE [calmly taking the end chair nearest the window, on Basham’s left] I wonder why the epithet robber is applied only to barons. You never hear of robber dukes; yet my people have done plenty of robbery in their time. [With a sigh of regret] Ah, thats all over now. The robbers have become the robbed. I wish you would create some immediate class of honest folk. I dislike your calling me vermin, Arthur.
SIR ARTHUR. I didnt. It was Jafna.
THE DUKE. Ungrateful Jafna! He is buying up my Blayport estate for next to nothing.
SIR JAFNA. Next to nothing! Holy Brahma!
THE DUKE [continuing] He will make millions out of it. After paying off the mortgages I shall get three and a half per cent on what is left to me out of the beggarly price he offers; and on that three and a half I shall be income-taxed and surtaxed. Jafna’s grandsons will go to Eton. Mine will go to a Polytechnic.
SIR BEMROSE. Send them to Dartmouth, old chap. Theres a career for them in the navy now that Arthur is at the helm.
SIR DEXTER. A lieutenant’s pay and pension for the future Duke of Domesday! Thats the proposition, is it?
THE DUKE. He will be lucky to have any pay at all. But I shall support you in any case, Arthur. You have at last publicly admitted that the death duties are unsound in principle, and promised to abolish them. That will save us from utter extinction in three generations; and the landed classes are with you to the last man for it. Accept the humble gratitude of a pauperized duke.
SIR DEXTER. And the rest of the program. Do you swallow that too?
THE DUKE. I doubt if the rest of the program will come off. Besides, I dont pretend to understand it. By the way, Sir Jafna, I wish you would take Domesday Towers off my hands for a while. I cant afford to live in it. I cant afford even to keep it dusted. You can have it for a hundred a year.
SIR JAFNA. Too far from town.
THE DUKE. Not by aeroplane. Do think it over.
Sir Jafna shrugs his shoulders and intimates that it is hopeless. The Duke resigns himself to the expected.
SIR ARTHUR. Dexy: you are in a minority of one. The landlords are on my side. The capitalists, big and little, are on my side. The fighting services are on my side. The police are on my side. If you leave us you go out into the wilderness alone. What have you to say?
SIR DEXTER. I have to say that you are a parcel of blind fools. You are trying to scuttle the ship on the chance of each of you grabbing a share of the insurance money. But the Country will deal with you. The Country does not want change. The Country never has wanted change. The Country never will want change. And because I will resist change while I have breath in my body I shall not be alone in England. You have all deserted me and betrayed your party; but I warn you that though I am utterly alone in this room …
HILDA [reappearing] The deputation, Sir Arthur. Theyve come back. [She vanishes].
The deputation enters. Hipney is not with them. Barking shaved, brilliantly dressed, and quite transfigured, is jubilant. Aloysia glows indignation. Blee and the Mayor, doggedly wearing their hats and overcoats, are gloomy, angry, and resolute. They group themselves just inside the door, glowering at the Prime Minister and his colleagues.
SIR ARTHUR [beaming] Gentlemen: a Labor deputation from the Isle of Cats. The one element that was lacking in our councils. You have heard the voice of the peerage, of the city, of the King’s forces. You will now hear the voice of the proletariat. Sit down, ladies and gentlemen.
THE MAYOR [rudely] Who are you calling the proletariat? Do you take us for Communists? [He remains standing].
ALOYSIA. What you are going to hear, Sir Arthur, is the voice of Labor. [She remains standing]. BLEE. The verdict of democracy. [He remains standing].
EARL OF BARKING. The bleating of a bloody lot of fools. I am with you, Chavender. [He detaches himself from the group and flings himself into Hilda’s chair with intense disgust].
SIR ARTHUR [surprised] Am I to understand that your colleagues are against me?
THE MAYOR. Of course we’re against you. Do you expect me to go back to my people and tell them they should vote for compulsory labor and doing away with strikes?
BLEE. Arnt the workers enslaved enough already without your depriving them of that last scrap of their liberty? the only weapon they have against the capitalists?
SIR ARTHUR. My dear Mr Mayor, what is the right to strike? The right to starve on your enemy’s doorstep and set the whole public against you. Which of you starves first when it comes to the point?
THE MAYOR. I am not going to argue. You can beat me at that. But if you think that the British workingman will listen to compulsory labor and putting down strikes you dont know the world youre living in; and thats all about it.
SIR ARTHUR. But we need not compel the workers to work: they are working already. We shall compel the idlers. Not only your idlers but our idlers: all the idle young gentlemen who do nothing but waste their own time and your labor.
BLEE. We know. Keep all the soft jobs for your lot and the hard ones for us. Do you take us for fools?
BARKING. He does. And you are fools.
SIR ARTHUR. I am glad to have your lordship’s support.
ALOYSIA. Support your grandparents! He wants to marry your daughter.
BARKING [springing up] Oh! You can hit below the belt, Aloysia. But as a matter of fact, I do want to marry your daughter, Chavender.
SIR ARTHUR. Hardly the moment to go into that now, is it?
BARKING. It was Aloysia and not I who let the cat out of the bag. Being a cat herself she had a fellow-feeling for the animal. [He resumes his seat].
BLEE. Youre an aristocrat, young-fellow-me-lad. I always said that when things got serious youd turn on us and side with your own.
BARKING. Rot! Youre always bragging that you are descended from the Blee of Blayport, whoever he may have been. I shouldnt have tuppence in my pocket if my grandfather hadnt made a fortune in pork pies and bought my father’s Norman title for his daughter with it. The blue blood is in your skimpy little veins: the proletarian red’s in mine.
ALOYSIA. Youve too much money, Toffy.
BARKING. I havnt had all the pluck taken out of me by poverty, like you chaps. And what good will it do me to have a lot of money when I have to work like anyone else?
SIR DEXTER. Why should a man work like anyone else if he has money?
BARKING. My brother had heaps of money; but he had to go into the trenches and fight like anyone else in the war. Thats how I came into the property.
BLEE. So we’re all to be slaves for the sake of setting a few loafers to work. The workers will die sooner than put up with it. I want my liberty—
BARKING. Liberty to work fourteen hours a day and bring up three children on thirtyfour shillings a week, like your brother the shopman. To hell with your filthy liberty!
BLEE [hotly] I—
THE MAYOR. Order! order! Dont argue with him, Blee. No good ever comes of arguing with college men. I’m not arguing with Sir Arthur: I’m telling him. The long and the short of it is that if he dont withdraw that silly new program he’ll lose every vote in the Isle of Cats. And what the Isle of Cats thinks today, all England thinks tomorrow.
SIR JAFNA. May I speak to this gentleman? Will you introduce me, Arthur?
SIR ARTHUR [introducing] Sir Jafna Pandranath. The Mayor of the Isle of Cats.
SIR JAFNA. You have heard of me, Mr Mayor. You know that I am a man who knows what he is talking about. Well, I tell you that the fundamental question is not the Labor question but the Land Question.
THE MAYOR. Yes: we all know that.
SIR JAFNA. Then you will vote for Sir Arthur because he will nationalize the land for you.
BLEE [scornfully] Yes, with compensation! Take the land with one hand and give back its cash value to the landlords with the other! Not likely. I ask again, do you take us for fools?
SIR ARTHUR [introducing] Mr Alderman Blee.
THE DUKE. Enchanted. I happen to be a landlord—a duke, in fact—and I can assure you, Mr Alderman, that as the compensation will come out of my own pocket and that of my unfortunate fellow landlords in the form of income tax, surtax, and estate duties—what you call death duties—you will get all your cash back and the land as well.
THE MAYOR. Blee: I tell you, dont argue. Stick to your point. No compensation.
BLEE. Not a penny, by God.
THE DUKE. You believe in God, Mr Alderman. I am charmed to hear it.
Here the Duke is astonished to find Aloysia towering over him and pointing an accusing finger at him. At the moment of his introduction of himself as a duke, her eyes lighted up; and she has moved menacingly across the hearth towards him until she is now standing behind the vacant chair between him and Basham.