REGINALD [violently] Now look here, Hotchkiss. Who asked you to
cut in? Is your name Edith? Am I your uncle?
HOTCHKISS. I wish you were: I should like to have an uncle,
Reginald.
REGINALD. Yah! Sykes: are you ready to marry Edith or are you
not?
SYKES. Ive already said that I'm quite ready. A promise is a
promise.
REGINALD. We dont want to know whether a promise is a promise or
not. Cant you answer yes or no without spoiling it and setting
Hotchkiss here grinning like a Cheshire cat? If she puts on her
veil and goes to Church, will you marry her?
SYKES. Certainly. Yes.
REGINALD. Thats all right. Now, Edie, put on your veil and off
with you to the church. The bridegroom's waiting. [He sits down
at the table].
EDITH. Is it understood that Slattox and Chinnery are liars and
thieves, and that I hope by next Wednesday to have in my hands
conclusive evidence that Slattox is something much worse?
SYKES. I made no conditions as to that when I proposed to you;
and now I cant go back. I hope Providence will spare my poor
mother. I say again I'm ready to marry you.
EDITH. Then I think you shew great weakness of character; and
instead of taking advantage of it I shall set you a better
example. I want to know is this true. [She produces a pamphlet
and takes it to the Bishop; then sits down between Hotchkiss and
her mother].
THE BISHOP [reading the title] Do YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO
DO? BY A WOMAN WHO HAS DONE IT. May I ask, my dear, what she did?
EDITH. She got married. When she had three children--the eldest
only four years old--her husband committed a murder, and then
attempted to commit suicide, but only succeeded in disfiguring
himself. Instead of hanging him, they sent him to penal servitude
for life, for the sake, they said, of his wife and infant
children. And she could not get a divorce from that horrible
murderer. They would not even keep him imprisoned for life. For
twenty years she had to live singly, bringing up her children by
her own work, and knowing that just when they were grown up and
beginning life, this dreadful creature would be let out to
disgrace them all, and prevent the two girls getting decently
married, and drive the son out of the country perhaps. Is that
really the law? Am I to understand that if Cecil commits a mur-
der, or forges, or steals, or becomes an atheist, I cant get
divorced from him?
THE BISHOP. Yes, my dear. That is so. You must take him for
better for worse.
EDITH. Then I most certainly refuse to enter into any such wicked
contract. What sort of servants? what sort of friends? what sort
of Prime Ministers should we have if we took them for better for
worse for all their lives? We should simply encourage them in
every sort of wickedness. Surely my husband's conduct is of more
importance to me than Mr Balfour's or Mr Asquith's. If I had
known the law I would never have consented. I dont believe any
woman would if she realized what she was doing.
SYKES. But I'm not going to commit murder.
EDITH. How do you know? Ive sometimes wanted to murder Slattox.
Have you never wanted to murder somebody, Uncle Rejjy?
REGINALD [at Hotchkiss, with intense expression] Yes.
LEO. Rejjy!
REGINALD. I said yes; and I mean yes. There was one night,
Hotchkiss, when I jolly near shot you and Leo and finished up
with myself; and thats the truth.
LEO [suddenly whimpering] Oh Rejjy [she runs to him and kisses
him].
REGINALD [wrathfully] Be off. [She returns weeping to her seat].
MRS BRIDGENORTH [petting Leo, but speaking to the company at
large] But isnt all this great nonsense? What likelihood is there
of any of us committing a crime?
HOTCHKISS. Oh yes, I assure you. I went into the matter once very
carefully; and I found things I have actually done--things that
everybody does, I imagine--would expose me, if I were found out
and prosecuted, to ten years' penal servitude, two years hard
labor, and the loss of all civil rights. Not counting that I'm a
private trustee, and, like all private trustees, a fraudulent
one. Otherwise, the widow for whom I am trustee would starve
occasionally, and the children get no education. And I'm probably
as honest a man as any here.
THE GENERAL [outraged] Do you imply that I have been guilty of
conduct that would expose me to penal servitude?
HOTCHKISS. I should think it quite likely, but of course I dont
know.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. But bless me! marriage is not a question of law,
is it? Have you children no affection for one another? Surely
thats enough?
HOTCHKISS. If it's enough, why get married?
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Stuff, Sinjon! Of course people must get
married. [Uneasily] Alfred: why dont you say something? Surely
youre not going to let this go on.
THE GENERAL. Ive been waiting for the last twenty minutes,
Alfred, in amazement! in stupefaction! to hear you put a stop to
all this. We look to you: it's your place, your office, your
duty. Exert your authority at once.
THE BISHOP. You must give the devil fair play, Boxer. Until you
have heard and weighed his case you have no right to condemn him.
I'm sorry you have been kept waiting twenty minutes; but I myself
have waited twenty years for this to happen. Ive often wrestled
with the temptation to pray that it might not happen in my own
household. Perhaps it was a presentiment that it might become a
part of our old Bridgenorth burden that made me warn our
Governments so earnestly that unless the law of marriage were
first made human, it could never become divine.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Oh, do be sensible about this. People must get
married. What would you have said if Cecil's parents had not been
married?
THE BISHOP. They were not, my dear.
HOTCHKISS } { Hallo!
REGINALD } { What d'ye mean?
THE GENERAL } { Eh?
LEO } { Not married!
MRS. BRIDGENORTH } { What?
SYKES [rising in amazement] What on earth do you mean, Bishop? My
parents were married.
HOTCHKISS. You cant remember, Cecil.
SYKES. Well, I never asked my mother to shew me her marriage
lines, if thats what you mean. What man ever has? I never
suspected--I never knew--Are you joking? Or have we all gone mad?
THE BISHOP. Dont be alarmed, Cecil. Let me explain. Your parents
were not Anglicans. You were not, I think, Anglican yourself,
until your second year at Oxford. They were Positivists. They
went through the Positivist ceremony at Newton Hall in Fetter
Lane after entering into the civil contract before the Registrar
of the West Strand District. I ask you, as an Anglican Catholic,
was that a marriage?
SYKES [overwhelmed] Great Heavens, no! a thousand times, no. I
never thought of that. I'm a child of sin. [He collapses into the
railed chair].
THE BISHOP. Oh, come, come! You are no more a child of sin than
any Jew, or Mohammedan, or Nonconformist, or anyone else born
outside the Church. But you see how it affects my view of the
situation. To me there is only one marriage that is holy: the
Church's sacrament of marriage. Outside that, I can recognize no
distinction between one civil contract and another. There was a
time when all marriages were made in Heaven. But because the
Church was unwise and would not make its ordinances reasonable,
its power over men and women was taken away from it; and
marriages gave place to contracts at a registry office. And now
that our Governments refuse to make these contracts reasonable,
those whom we in our blindness drove out of the Church will be
driven out of the registry office; and we shall have the history
of Ancient Rome repeated. We shall be joined by our solicitors
for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years--or perhaps months.
Deeds of partnership will replace the old vows.
THE GENERAL. Would you, a Bishop, approve of such partnerships?
THE BISHOP. Do you think that I, a Bishop, approve of the
Deceased Wife's Sister Act? That did not prevent its becoming
law.
THE GENERAL. But when the Government sounded you as to whether
youd marry a man to his deceased wife's sister you very naturally
and properly told them youd see them damned first.