After twenty
years to be forgiven by your more broad-minded friends and tolerated as a
dotard by a new generation....
WEDGECROFT. Nonsense. What age are you now ... forty-six ... forty-seven?
TREBELL. Well ... let's instance a good man. Gladstone had done his best
work by sixty-five. Then he began to be popular. Think of his last years of
oratory.
_He has gone to his table and now very methodically starts to tidy his
papers,_ WEDGECROFT _still watching him._
WEDGECROFT. You'd have had to thank Heaven for a little that there were more
lives than one to lead.
TREBELL. That's another of your faults, Gilbert ... it's a comfort just now
to enumerate them. You're an anarchist ... a kingdom to yourself. You make
little treaties with Truth and with Beauty, and what can disturb you? I'm a
part of the machine I believe in. If my life as I've made it is to be cut
short ... the rest of me shall walk out of the world and slam the door ...
with the noise of a pistol shot.
WEDGECROFT. [_Concealing some uneasiness._] Then I'm glad it's not to be cut
short. You and your cabinet rank and your disestablishment bill!
TREBELL _starts to enjoy his secret._
TREBELL. Yes ... our minds have been much relieved within the last half
hour, haven't they?
WEDGECROFT. I scribbled Horsham a note in a messenger office and sent it as
soon as O'Connell had left me.
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