"WHY MARRY?"
This is a protracted discussion of a venerable topic and takes place
in a sun-parlour, which I regret to say is the brightest thing about
it.
_John_ is a dollar-snob--it is _John's_ parlour--and has two sisters,
_Jean_ and _Helen_. _John_ is easily the heavy-weight champion in
stage brothers. Sister _Jean_, who is entirely dependent on _John_,
loves a poor man, but under _John's_ guidance traps a rich one. Sister
_Helen_ (who has a job) also loves a poor man, but thinks marriage not
good enough. This was, I imagine, due chiefly to living with _John_
and _Mrs. John_. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her
man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues
deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The
colleagues died while _Ernest_ survived, which I regretted. However he
became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with _Helen_ as
his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of
his new bacillus the two spend the night in the laboratory totally
unchaperoned. The discovery saved thousands of American babes, but it
ruined _Helen's_ reputation.
Here the narrative becomes confused, but anyhow _John_, who was a
trustee of the Institute, spent the three Acts in alternately sacking
and reinstating _Helen_ and _Ernest_, in thinking of a salary,
doubling it, adding thousands of dollars to it and taking away the
salary first thought of, together with the additions (and so _da
capo_), according as he wished to prevent the marriage because of
_Ernest's_ poverty, or bring it off because of _Ernest's_ disposition
to take _Helen_ to Paris (France) and dispense with empty rites, or
postpone it to gain time, or, on the contrary, have it celebrated
between the dressing and the dinner gongs in order to announce it
to important members of the family, who, if I understood the butler
aright, had already fallen on their food while host and hostess, two
pairs of lovers, Uncle _Everett_ and Cousin _John_ were bickering in
the sun-parlour.
Cousin _Theodore_, a guileless and dollarless clergyman, padded about
on the outskirts of the discussion, making obvious remarks about the
sanctity of marriage and enunciating the highest principles, which he
promptly swallowed. But it was Uncle _Everett_, the judge (the only
human figure in the bunch), who grasped the fact (long after I did,
but let that pass) that the two principal young egotists simply loved
being talked over at such gross length. To put an end to the business
he used a trick whereby, apparently according to the law of the
unnamed State in which the parlour was situate, the two were legally
married without intending it. They had the tact to accept this
solution, and this softened my heart towards them for the first time.
It was amusing to see Mr. AUBREY SMITH wondering how on earth he had
got into this play, and Mr. A. E. GEORGE prowling about the stage
intent apparently on showing how many ways there are of uttering
"Pshaw!" and "Tut-tut!" or noise to that effect. It isn't as easy as
it ought to be to do justice to players playing impossible parts; to
Miss HENRIETTA WATSON struggling pluckily and skilfully with her
_Mrs. John_; or to Mr. COWLEY WRIGHT or Miss ROSA LYND, so perfectly
appalling did _Ernest_ and _Helen_ seem to me and so anxious was I
to get them off to Paris respectably or otherwise. They never, by the
way, gave me the faintest impression that they could ever have done
work of any value in their laboratory.
I have no idea what the moral of this modern mystery play may be, but
I did gather that the authoress was seriously perplexed, not perhaps
in any startlingly new way, about the difficulties of marriage and the
conventional hypocrisies that hedge round that honourable institution,
but just forgot that serious argument cannot easily be conveyed
through the medium of fantastically impossible and uninteresting
people in an extravagantly farcical situation. The play was kindly
received.