No More Learning

Were you not so before?

THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess
to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell;
and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of
the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the
pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because
it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a
thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and
a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no
longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation,
every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform,
progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on
the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will
see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover
the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is
nothing new under the sun. Vanitas vanitatum--

DON JUAN. [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant
about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than
a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything?
Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act
of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander
expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for
his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit
on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its
bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us
the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay
more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the
earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up
a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between
the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?

THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a purpose,
Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and
toes because you have them.

DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And I,
my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me.
If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline,
my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself.
My dog's brain serves only my dog's purposes; but my brain labors at a
knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter
to me and my decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a
purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher;
for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps
better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving. This
is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force. This Life
Force says to him "I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously
by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance:
now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so
I have made a special brain--a philosopher's brain--to grasp this
knowledge for me as the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me. And
this" says the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive to do
for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another
philosopher to carry on the work. "

THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?

DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage
instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a
ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The
philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be
in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

THE DEVIL. On the rocks, most likely.

DON JUAN. Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the
bottom--the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?

THE DEVIL. Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be my
own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know
that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is
good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about.
I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and
studies is to be a refined and cultivated being. Whatever they may say
of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in
good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is
enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character.
But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it
will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on
babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion
into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water
sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it
accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the
catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs;
and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and
shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes
and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in
a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has
secured the good.

DON JUAN. But at least I shall not be bored. The service of the Life
Force has that advantage, at all events. So fare you well, Senor Satan.

THE DEVIL. [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think of our
interesting chats about things in general. I wish you every happiness:
Heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But if you should change
your mind, do not forget that the gates are always open here to the
repentant prodigal. If you feel at any time that warmth of heart,
sincere unforced affection, innocent enjoyment, and warm, breathing,
palpitating reality--

DON JUAN. Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have left those
two greasy commonplaces behind us?

THE DEVIL. [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my teeth,
then, Don Juan?

DON JUAN. By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from a
cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor Commander:
you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven. Be good enough to
direct me.

THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of
looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want
to get there.

DON JUAN. Good. [saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.

ANA. But I am going with you.

DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; but I cannot find yours
[he vanishes].

ANA. How annoying!

THE STATUE. [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final
blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute. A faint
echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in acknowledgment]. Ah!
there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out through his lips] Whew! How he
does talk! They'll never stand it in heaven.

THE DEVIL. [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot keep
these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have
had since that Dutch painter went--a fellow who would paint a hag of 70
with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.

THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.

THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There a something unnatural about these
fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is
dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an
indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and dogs and
cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman,
men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world. This
Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here
was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the
exclusively human character of the soul.

THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?

THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. Did
you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish
madman--what was his name? Nietzsche?

THE STATUE. Never heard of him.

THE DEVIL. Well, he came here first, before he recovered his wits. I had
some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper. It was
he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th
century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired
of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.

THE STATUE. Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the battle. I
should like to see this Nietzsche.

THE DEVIL. Unfortunately he met Wagner here, and had a quarrel with him.

THE STATUE. Quite right, too. Mozart for me!

THE DEVIL. Oh, it was not about music. Wagner once drifted into Life
Force worship, and invented a Superman called Siegfried. But he came to
his senses afterwards. So when they met here, Nietzsche denounced him
as a renegade; and Wagner wrote a pamphlet to prove that Nietzsche was
a Jew; and it ended in Nietzsche's going to heaven in a huff. And a
good riddance too. And now, my friend, let us hasten to my palace and
celebrate your arrival with a grand musical service.

THE STATUE. With pleasure: you're most kind.

THE DEVIL. This way, Commander. We go down the old trap [he places
himself on the grave trap].

THE STATUE. Good. [Reflectively] All the same, the Superman is a fine
conception. There is something statuesque about it. [He places himself
on the grave trap beside The Devil. It begins to descend slowly. Red
glow from the abyss]. Ah, this reminds me of old times.

THE DEVIL. And me also.

ANA. Stop! [The trap stops].

THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an
apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.

ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me where can I find the
Superman?

THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.

THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red fire
will make me sneeze. [They descend].

ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing herself
devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the universe] A
father--a father for the Superman!

She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing: all existence
seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a live human voice
crying somewhere. One sees, with a shock, a mountain peak showing
faintly against a lighter background. The sky has returned from afar;
and we suddenly remember where we were. The cry becomes distinct and
urgent: it says Automobile, Automobile. The complete reality comes
back with a rush: in a moment it is full morning in the Sierra; and the
brigands are scrambling to their feet and making for the road as the
goatherd runs down from the hill, warning them of the approach of
another motor. Tanner and Mendoza rise amazedly and stare at one another
with scattered wits. Straker sits up to yawn for a moment before he gets
on his feet, making it a point of honor not to show any undue interest
in the excitement of the bandits. Mendoza gives a quick look to see that
his followers are attending to the alarm; then exchanges a private word
with Tanner.

MENDOZA. Did you dream?

TANNER. Damnably. Did you?

MENDOZA. Yes. I forget what. You were in it.

TANNER. So were you. Amazing

MENDOZA. I warned you. [a shot is heard from the road]. Dolts! they will
play with that gun. [The brigands come running back scared]. Who fired
that shot? [to Duval] Was it you?

DUVAL. [breathless] I have not shoot. Dey shoot first.

ANARCHIST. I told you to begin by abolishing the State. Now we are all
lost.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT.
[stampeding across the amphitheatre] Run,
everybody.

MENDOZA. [collaring him; throwing him on his back; and drawing a knife]
I stab the man who stirs. [He blocks the way. The stampede it checked].
What has happened?

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT, A motor--

THE ANARCHIST. Three men--

DUVAL. Deux femmes--

MENDOZA. Three men and two women! Why have you not brought them here?
Are you afraid of them?

THE ROWDY ONE. [getting up] Thyve a hescort. Ow, de-ooh lut's ook it,
Mendowza.

THE SULKY ONE. Two armored cars full o soldiers at the end o the valley.

ANARCHIST. The shot was fired in the air. It was a signal.

Straker whistles his favorite air, which falls on the ears of the
brigands like a funeral march.

TANNER. It is not an escort, but an expedition to capture you. We were
advised to wait for it; but I was in a hurry.

THE ROWDY ONE. [in an agony of apprehension] And Ow my good Lord, ere we
are, wytin for em! Lut's tike to the mahntns.

MENDOZA. Idiot, what do you know about the mountains? Are you a
Spaniard? You would be given up by the first shepherd you met. Besides,
we are already within range of their rifles.

THE ROWDY ONE. Bat--

MENDOZA. Silence. Leave this to me. [To Tanner] Comrade: you will not
betray us.

STRAKER. Oo are you callin comrade?

MENDOZA. Last night the advantage was with me. The robber of the poor
was at the mercy of the robber of the rich. You offered your hand: I
took it.

TANNER. I bring no charge against you, comrade. We have spent a pleasant
evening with you: that is all.

STRAKER. I gev my and to nobody, see?

MENDOZA. [turning on him impressively] Young man, if I am tried, I shall
plead guilty, and explain what drove me from England, home and duty. Do
you wish to have the respectable name of Straker dragged through the mud
of a Spanish criminal court? The police will search me. They will find
Louisa's portrait. It will be published in the illustrated papers. You
blench. It will be your doing, remember.

STRAKER. [with baffled rage] I don't care about the court. It's avin our
name mixed up with yours that I object to, you blackmailin swine, you.

MENDOZA. Language unworthy of Louisa's brother! But no matter: you are
muzzled: that is enough for us. [He turns to face his own men, who back
uneasily across the amphitheatre towards the cave to take refuge behind
him, as a fresh party, muffled for motoring, comes from the road in
riotous spirits. Ann, who makes straight for Tanner, comes first; then
Violet, helped over the rough ground by Hector holding her right hand
and Ramsden her left. Mendoza goes to his presidential block and seats
himself calmly with his rank and file grouped behind him, and his
Staff, consisting of Duval and the Anarchist on his right and the two
Social-Democrats on his left, supporting him in flank].

ANN. It's Jack!

TANNER. Caught!

HECTOR. Why, certainly it is. I said it was you, Tanner, We've just been
stopped by a puncture: the road is full of nails.

VIOLET. What are you doing here with all these men?

ANN. Why did you leave us without a word of warning?

HECTOR. I want that bunch of roses, Miss Whitefield. [To Tanner] When
we found you were gone, Miss Whitefield bet me a bunch of roses my car
would not overtake yours before you reached Monte Carlo.

TANNER. But this is not the road to Monte Carlo.

HECTOR. No matter. Miss Whitefield tracked you at every stopping place:
she is a regular Sherlock Holmes.

TANNER. The Life Force! I am lost.

OCTAVIUS. [Bounding gaily down from the road into the amphitheatre, and
coming between Tanner and Straker] I am so glad you are safe, old chap.
We were afraid you had been captured by brigands.

RAMSDEN. [who has been staring at Mendoza] I seem to remember the face
of your friend here. [Mendoza rises politely and advances with a smile
between Ann and Ramsden].

HECTOR. Why, so do I.

OCTAVIUS. I know you perfectly well, Sir; but I can't think where I have
met you.

MENDOZA. [to Violet] Do YOU remember me, madam?

VIOLET. Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.

MENDOZA. It was at the Savoy Hotel. [To Hector] You, sir, used to come
with this lady [Violet] to lunch. [To Octavius] You, sir, often brought
this lady [Ann] and her mother to dinner on your way to the Lyceum
Theatre. [To Ramsden] You, sir, used to come to supper, with [dropping
his voice to a confidential but perfectly audible whisper] several
different ladies.

RAMSDEN. [angrily] Well, what is that to you, pray?

OCTAVIUS. Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another before this
trip, you and Malone!

VIOLET. [vexed] I suppose this person was the manager.

MENDOZA. The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you all.
I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me that you all
enjoyed your visits very much.

VIOLET. What impertinence! [She turns her back on him, and goes up the
hill with Hector].

RAMSDEN. That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies to
treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have waited on them
at table.

MENDOZA. Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The ladies
followed your example. However, this display of the unfortunate manners
of your class closes the incident. For the future, you will please
address me with the respect due to a stranger and fellow traveller. [He
turns haughtily away and resumes his presidential seat].

TANNER. There! I have found one man on my journey capable of reasonable
conversation; and you all instinctively insult him. Even the New Man
is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved just like a miserable
gentleman.

STRAKER. Gentleman! Not me.

RAMSDEN. Really, Tanner, this tone--

ANN. Don't mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this time [she
takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join Violet and Hector.
Octavius follows her, doglike].

VIOLET. [calling from the hill] Here are the soldiers. They are getting
out of their motors.

DUVAL. [panicstricken] Oh, nom de Dieu!

THE ANARCHIST. Fools: the State is about to crush you because you spared
it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the bourgeoisie.

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [argumentative to the last] On the contrary,
only by capturing the State machine--

THE ANARCHIST. It is going to capture you.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [his anguish culminating] Ow, chock it. Wot
are we ere for? WOT are we wytin for?

MENDOZA. [between his teeth] Goon. Talk politics, you idiots: nothing
sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.

The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with their
rifles. The brigands, struggling with an over-whelming impulse to hide
behind one another, look as unconcerned as they can. Mendoza rises
superbly, with undaunted front. The officer in command steps down from
the road in to the amphitheatre; looks hard at the brigands; and then
inquiringly at Tanner.

THE OFFICER. Who are these men, Senor Ingles?

TANNER. My escort.

Mendoza, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows profoundly. An irrepressible
grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They touch their hats,
except the Anarchist, who defies the State with folded arms.




ACT IV

The garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it is like
must go to Granada and see. One may prosaically specify a group of hills
dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one of the hills, and
a considerable town in the valley, approached by dusty white roads in
which the children, no matter what they are doing or thinking about,
automatically whine for halfpence and reach out little clutching brown
palms for them; but there is nothing in this description except the
Alhambra, the begging, and the color of the roads, that does not fit
Surrey as well as Spain. The difference is that the Surrey hills are
comparatively small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey
Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the
amenity which conceals their size does not compromise their dignity.

This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the villa
is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to be let
furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors. If we
stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our horizon
is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of infinite
space at the top of the hill. Between us and this platform is a flower
garden with a circular basin and fountain in the centre, surrounded
by geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew trees in the
genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn; so we reach it
by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The platform is higher
again than the garden, from which we mount a couple more steps to look
over the balustrade at a fine view of the town up the valley and of the
hills that stretch away beyond it to where, in the remotest distance,
they become mountains. On our left is the villa, accessible by steps
from the left hand corner of the garden. Returning from the platform
through the garden and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves
the villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary interests
on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no tennis net nor
set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little iron garden table with
books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a chair beside it. A chair on the
right has also a couple of open books upon it. There are no newspapers,
a circumstance which, with the absence of games, might lead an
intelligent spectator to the most far reaching conclusions as to the
sort of people who live in the villa. Such speculations are checked,
however, on this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at
a little gate in a paling an our left, of Henry Straker in his
professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman, and
follows him on to the lawn.

This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock coat,
tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac
blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a
bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position
needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate:
one who would dress thus for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont
Blanc. And since he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its
life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate tailoring and
millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in a working dress of
any kind he would look dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with
a red complexion, stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds
down at the corners, and a dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes
with age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is
still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his
face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of one who
has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has made it
in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a perceptible
menace that he has other methods in reserve if necessary. Withal, a man
to be rather pitied when he is not to be feared; for there is something
pathetic about him at times, as if the huge commercial machine which has
worked him into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own
way and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word
that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose native
intonation has clung to him through many changes of place and rank. One
can only guess that the original material of his speech was perhaps the
surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of speech that occurs in London,
Glasgow, Dublin and big cities generally has been at work on it so long
that nobody but an arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue
now; for its music is almost gone, though its surliness is still
perceptible. Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with
implacable contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his
own language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old
gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence
expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him
normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky species, but
occasionally with indignant alarm when the old gentleman shows signs of
intending his Irish nonsense to be taken seriously.

STRAKER. I'll go tell the young lady. She said you'd prefer to stay here
[he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].

MALONE. [who has been looking round him with lively curiosity] The young
lady? That's Miss Violet, eh?