"I don't need to tell you then that when adopted here they provided that
marriage should be a civil contract. In so providing, they merely
reaffirmed the existing common law. Subsequently, the law was changed.
The legislature enacted that a marriage must be solemnised by certain
persons--ecclesiastic, judicial or municipal--or else, that it should be
entered into by written contract, which contract was to be filed in the
office of the town clerk. Coincidentally the legislature prohibited any
marriage contracted otherwise than in the manner then prescribed."
That morning Cassy had been to an agent, a saponacious person with a
fabulous nose. At the moment the nose was before her. She was wondering
whether it would scent out for her an engagement.
"However," Dunwoodie, twisting the edge of his towel, continued,
"various amendments were afterward adopted and certain sections
repealed. Among the latter was the one containing the prohibition which
I have cited. In my opinion, it was not the intention of the legislature
to repeal it. Yet, however that may be, repealed it was. Since then, or,
more exactly, a few weeks ago, the enactments regarding the manner in
which marriage must be solemnised were held to be not mandatory but
directory, the result being that the law originally prevailing has now
come again into operation, common-law marriages are as valid as before
and----"
Here Dunwoodie flaunted the towel.
"And you are Mrs. Paliser."
Of the entire exposition, Cassy heard but that. It ousted the agent and
his fabulous nose. She bristled.
"I can't be. I don't want to be. You don't seem to see that the
clergyman was not a clergyman at all. He was one of the help there. I
thought I told you. Why, there was not even a license! That man said he
had one. It was only another of the whimsicalities that took me in."
Dunwoodie repocketing the towel, showed his yellow teeth. "A young
gentlewoman who dreams in Latin, and who was brought up on the Revised
Statutes, must be familiar with Byron. 'Men were deceivers ever.' Not
long ago, a Lovelace whose history is given in the New York Reports
conducted himself in a manner that would be precisely analogous to that
of your late husband, were it not that, instead of dying, he did what
was less judicious, he married again--and was sent up for bigamy. He too
had omitted to secure a license. He also entertained a lady with a
fancy-ball. None the less, the Supreme Court decided that he had legally
tied the matrimonial noose about him and that decision the Court of
Appeals affirmed."
Cassy shook her pretty self. "Well, even so, I don't see what difference
it makes, now at any rate. He is dead and that is the end of it."
"Hum! Not entirely. As widow you are entitled to a share in such
property as your late husband possessed. How much, or how little, he did
possess I cannot say. But I assume that such share of it as may accrue,
will be--ha!--adequate for you."
"But he hadn't anything. He told me so."
"He didn't always tell you the truth though, did he? In any event it is
probable that he left enough to provide for your maintenance."