After supper, Mr. Palfrey opened the discussion on Marriage. He
declared that Marriage was the coward's refuge from Love. He said that
Marriage had been invented by lawyers and parsons for the purpose of
obtaining fees and authority. These unpleasant people, the lawyers and
the parsons, had contrived to make Love an impropriety and had reduced
Holy Passion to the status of a schedule to an act of parliament. Cupid
had been furnished with a truncheon and a helmet and had been robbed of
his wings in order that he might more suitably serve as a policeman. He
demanded Free Love, and pleaded for the chaste promiscuity of the
birds!... After he had said a great deal in the same strain, he sat
down amid applause, and Mr. Haverstock invited discussion. He would
like to say, however, that he strongly believed in regulation. In his
opinion there was something beautiful in the sight of a bride and a
bridegroom signing the parish register in the presence of their
friends. The young couple, he said, asked for the approval and sanction
of the community in their love-making. Love without Law was License,
and he trusted that Mr. Palfrey was not inviting them to approve of
Licentiousness....
Mr. Palfrey created an enormous sensation and some laughter by saying
that that was precisely what he did invite them to do. All law was
composed of hindrances and obstacles and forbiddings, and therefore he
was entirely opposed to Law. This statement so nonplussed Mr.
Haverstock that he abruptly sat down, and for a few moments the meeting
was in a state of chaotic silence. Then a large man rose from the floor
where he had been lying almost at full length and announced that in his
opinion the world would cease to have any love in it at all if the
present craze for vegetable diet increased to any great extent. How
could a bean-feaster, he demanded, feel passion in his blood? Meat, he
declared, excited the amorous instincts. All the great lovers of the
world were extravagantly carnivorous, and all poetry, in the last
resort, rested on a foundation of beef-steak puddings. What sort of
lover would Romeo have been had he lived on a diet of lentils? Would
Juliet have had the power to move the sympathies of generations of men
and women if she had nourished her love on haricot beans?...
Immediately he sat down, a lean and bearded youth sprang to his feet
and announced in vibrant tones that he had been a practising vegetarian
from birth and could affirm from personal experience that a vegetable
diet, so far from suppressing the passions, actually stimulated them;
and he offered to prove from statistics that vegetarians, in proportion
to their number, had been more frequently engaged in romantic
philandering than carnivorous persons had. Look at Shelley!... He
could assure those present that he was as amorous and passionate as any
meat-eater in the room....
The discussion went to pieces after that, and became a wrangle about
proteid and food values. There was an elderly lady who insisted on
telling John all about the gastric juices!... Hinde rescued him on the
plea that they had a long journey in front of them, and very gratefully
John accepted the suggestion that they should set off at once in order
to reach their lodgings at a reasonable hour. Mr. and Mrs. Haverstock
conducted them to the door ... a chilly and contemptuous nod had been
accorded to John by Mr. Palfrey ... and pressed them to come again
soon. "Every Wednesday evening," said Mr. Haverstock, "we're at home,
and we discuss ... everything!..."
They hurried along the Spaniards' Road towards the Tube Station, and as
they did so, John told Hinde of his encounter with Miss Bushe over the
trifle.
"That accounts for it," Hinde exclaimed aloud.
"Accounts for what?" John demanded.
"The _Daily Groan_. I've often wondered what was the matter with
that paper, and now I know. They're always wondering whether there's
anything intoxicating in the trifle!... I don't mind a boy talking in
that wild way. A clever, intelligent lad ought to talk revolutionary
stuff, but when a man reaches Palfrey's age and is still gabbling that
silly-cleverness, then the man's an ass. There's no depth in him!..."