etters forgeries?

BURGE. Certainly not. But _I_ did not do it. I was not Prime Minister
then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was
Prime Minister then, not I.

FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?

BURGE [_sitting down again with a shrug_] Oh, I had to be told. But what
could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.

FRANKLYN. Precisely.

BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was
at the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country
at such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we
never gave party a second thought. We stuck to--

CONRAD. Office?

SURGE [_turning on him_] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to
responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and
misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in
the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide
of potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as
if it were a catch.

FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin
could not have helped himself?

BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say
one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is
old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on
a hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for
nothing but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes
down with the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that
you do not think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get
things done. I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my
stars, Lubin!! If you only knew--

_The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor._

THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.

SURGE [_bounding from his chair_] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?

_They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man
at the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of
Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature,
unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted,
but wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to
the intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric
self-assertiveness of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact
that they are unhappy men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes,
whilst he flo