Getting Married (2/2) (7/12)

| The General | I shall have the great pleasure, Mr. Alderman, in waiting on the Mayoress with the Bishop’s orders; and I shall be proud to return with municipal honors. He stalks out gallantly, Collins rising for a moment to bow to him with marked dignity. | | Reginald | Boxer is rather a fine old josser in his way. | | Hotchkiss | His uniform gives him an unfair advantage. He will take all the attention off the Beadle. | | Collins | I think it would be as well, my lord, to go on with the contract while we’re waiting. The truth is, we shall none of us have much of a look-in when Mrs. George comes; so we had better finish the writing part of the business before she arrives. | | Hotchkiss | I think I have the preliminaries down all right. Reading. ‘Memorandum of Agreement made this day of blank blank between blank blank of blank blank in the County of blank, Esquire, hereinafter called the Gentleman, of the one part, and blank blank of blank in the County of blank, hereinafter called the Lady, of the other part, whereby it is declared and agreed as follows.’ | | Leo | Rising. You might remember your manners, Sinjon. The lady comes first. She goes behind him and stoops to look at the draft over his shoulder. | | Hotchkiss | To be sure. I beg your pardon. He alters the draft. | | Leo | And you have got only one lady and one gentleman. There ought to be two gentlemen. | | Collins | Oh, that’s a mere matter of form, ma’am. Any number of ladies or gentlemen can be put in. | | Leo | Not any number of ladies. Only one lady. Besides, that creature wasn’t a lady. | | Reginald | You shut your head, Leo. This is a general sort of contract for everybody: it’s not your tract. | | Leo | Then what use is it to me? | | Hotchkiss | You will get some hints from it for your own contract. | | Edith | I hope there will be no hinting. Let us have the plain straightforward truth and nothing but the truth. | | Collins | Yes, yes, miss: it will be all right. There’s nothing underhand, I assure you. It’s a model agreement, as it were. | | Edith | Unconvinced. I hope so. | | Hotchkiss | What is the first clause in an agreement, usually? You know, Mr. Alderman. | | Collins | At a loss. Well, Sir, the Town Clerk always sees to that. I’ve got out of the habit of thinking for myself in these little matters. Perhaps his lordship knows. | | The Bishop | I’m sorry to say I don’t. Soames will know. Alice, where is Soames? | | Hotchkiss | He’s in there. Pointing to the study. | | The Bishop | To his wife. Coax him to join us, my love. Mrs. Bridgenorth goes into the study. Soames is my chaplain, Mr. Collins. The great difficulty about Bishops in the Church of England today is that the affairs of the diocese make it necessary that a Bishop should be before everything a man of business, capable of sticking to his desk for sixteen hours a day. But the result of having Bishops of this sort is that the spiritual interests of the Church, and its influence on the souls and imaginations of the people, very soon begins to go rapidly to the devil⁠— | | Edith | Shocked. Papa! | | The Bishop | I am speaking technically, not in Boxer’s manner. Indeed the Bishops themselves went so far in that direction that they gained a reputation for being spiritually the stupidest men in the country and commercially the sharpest. I found a way out of this difficulty. Soames was my solicitor. I found that Soames, though a very capable man of business, had a romantic secret history. His father was an eminent Nonconformist divine who habitually spoke of the Church of England as The Scarlet Woman. Soames became secretly converted to Anglicanism at the age of fifteen. He longed to take holy orders, but didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English family life. So poor Soames had to become a solicitor. When his father died⁠—by a curious stroke of poetic justice he died of scarlet fever, and was found to have had a perfectly sound heart⁠—I ordained Soames and made him my chaplain. He is now quite happy. He is a celibate; fasts strictly on Fridays and throughout Lent; wears a cassock and biretta; and has more legal business to do than ever he had in his old office in Ely Place. And he sets me free for the spiritual and scholarly pursuits proper to a Bishop. | | Mrs. Bridgenorth | Coming back from the study with a knitting basket. Here he is. She resumes her seat, and knits. | | | Soames comes in in cassock and biretta. He salutes the company by blessing them with two fingers. | | Hotchkiss | Take my place, Mr. Soames. He gives up his chair to him, and retires to the oak chest, on which he seats himself. | | The Bishop | No longer Mr. Soames, Sinjon. Father Anthony. | | Soames | Taking his seat. I was christened Oliver Cromwell Soames. My father had no right to do it. I have taken the name of Anthony. When you become parents, young gentlemen, be very careful not to label a helpless child with views which it may come to hold in abhorrence. | | The Bishop | Has Alice explained to you the nature of the document we are drafting? | | Soames | She has indeed. | | Lesbia | That sounds as if you disapproved. | | Soames | It is not for me to approve or disapprove. I do the work that comes to my hand from my ecclesiastical superior. | | The Bishop | Don’t be uncharitable, Anthony. You must give us your best advice. | | Soames | My advice to you all is to do your duty by taking the Christian vows of celibacy and poverty. The Church was founded to put an end to marriage and to put an end to property. | | Mrs. Bridgenorth | But how could the world go on, Anthony? | | Soames | Do your duty and see. Doing your duty is your business: keeping the world going is in higher hands. | | Lesbia | Anthony: you’re impossible. | | Soames | Taking up his pen. You won’t take my advice. I didn’t expect you would. Well, I await your instructions. | | Reginald | We got stuck on the first clause. What should we begin with? | | Soames | It is usual to begin with the term of the contract. | | Edith | What does that mean? | | Soames | The term of years for which it is to hold good. | | Leo | But this is a marriage contract. | | Soames | Is the marriage to be for a year, a week, or a day? | | Reginald | Come, I say, Anthony! You’re worse than any of us. A day! | | Soames | Off the path is off the path. An inch or a mile: what does it matter? | | Leo | If the marriage is not to be forever, I’ll have nothing to do with it. I call it immoral to have a marriage for a term of years. If the people don’t like it they can get divorced. | | Reginald | It ought to be for just as long as the two people like. That’s what I say. | | Collins | They may not agree on the point, sir. It’s often fast with one and loose with the other. | | Lesbia | I should say for as long as the man behaves himself. | | The Bishop | Suppose the woman doesn’t behave herself? | | Mrs. Bridgenorth | The woman may have lost all her chances of a good marriage with anybody else. She should not be cast adrift. | | Reginald | So may the man! What about his home? | | Leo | The wife ought to keep an eye on him, and see that he is comfortable and takes care of himself properly. The other man won’t want her all the time. | | Lesbia | There may not be another man. | | Leo | Then why on earth should she leave him? | | Lesbia | Because she wants to. | | Leo | Oh, if people are going to be let do what they want to, then I call it simple immorality. She goes indignantly to the oak chest, and perches herself on it close beside Hotchkiss. | | Reginald | Watching them sourly. You do it yourself, don’t you? | | Leo | Oh, that’s quite different. Don’t make foolish witticisms, Rejjy. | | The Bishop | We don’t seem to be getting on. What do you say, Mr. Alderman? | | Collins | Well, my lord, you see people do persist in talking as if marriages was all of one sort. But there’s almost as many different sorts of marriages as there’s different sorts of people. There’s the young things that marry for love, not knowing what they’re doing, and the old things that marry for money and comfort and companionship. There’s the people that marry for children. There’s the people that don’t intend to have children and that aren’t fit to have them. There’s the people that marry because they’re so much run after by the other sex that they have to put a stop to it somehow. There’s the people that want to try a new experience, and the people that want to have done with experiences. How are you to please them all? Why, you’ll want half a dozen different sorts of contract. | | The Bishop | Well, if so, let us draw them all up. Let us face it. | | Reginald | Why should we be held together whether we like it or not? That’s the question that’s at the bottom of it all. | | Mrs. Bridgenorth | Because of the children, Rejjy. | | Collins | But even then, ma’am, why should we be held together when that’s all over⁠—when the girls are married and the boys out in the world and in business for themselves? When that’s done with, the real work of the marriage is done with. If the two like to stay together, let them stay together. But if not, let them part, as old people in the workhouses do. They’ve had enough of one another. They’ve found one another out. Why should they be tied together to sit there grudging and hating and spiting one another like so many do? Put it twenty years from the birth of the youngest child. | | Soames | How if there be no children? | | Collins | Let ’em take one another on liking. | | Mrs. Bridgenorth | Collins! | | Leo | You wicked old man⁠— | | The Bishop | Remonstrating. My dear, my dear! | | Lesbia | And what is a woman to live on, pray, when she is no longer liked, as you call it? | | Soames | With sardonic formality. It is proposed that the term of the agreement be twenty years from the birth of the youngest child when there are children. Any amendment? | | Leo | I protest. It must be for life. It would not be a marriage at all if it were not for life. | | Soames | Mrs. Reginald Bridgenorth proposes life. Any seconder? | | Leo | Don’t be soulless, Anthony. | | Lesbia | I have a very important amendment. If there are any children, the man must be cleared completely out of the house for two years on each occasion. At such times he is superfluous, importunate, and ridiculous. | | Collins | But where is he to go, miss? | | Lesbia | He can go where he likes as long as he does not bother the mother. | | Reginald | And is she to be left lonely⁠— | | Lesbia | Lonely! With her child. The poor woman would be only too glad to have a moment to herself. Don’t be absurd, Rejjy. | | Reginald | That father is to be a wandering wretched outcast, living at his club, and seeing nobody but his friends’ wives! | | Lesbia | Ironically. Poor fellow! | | Hotchkiss | The friends’ wives are perhaps the solution of the problem. You see, their husbands will also be outcasts; and the poor ladies will occasionally pine for male society. | | Lesbia | There is no reason why a mother should not have male society. What she clearly should not have is a husband. | | Soames | Anything else, Miss Grantham? | | Lesbia | Yes: I must have my own separate house, or my own separate part of a house. Boxer smokes: I can’t endure tobacco. Boxer believes that an open window means death from cold and exposure to the night air: I must have fresh air always. We can be friends; but we can’t live together; and that must be put in the agreement. | | Edith | I’ve no objection to smoking; and as to opening the windows, Cecil will of course have to do what is best for his health. | | The Bishop | Who is to be the judge of that, my dear? You or he? | | Edith | Neither of us. We must do what the doctor orders. | | Reginald | Doctor be⁠—! | | Leo | Admonitorily. Rejjy! | | Reginald | To Soames. You take my tip, Anthony. Put a clause into that agreement that the doctor is to have no say in the job. It’s bad enough for the two people to be married to one another without their both being married to the doctor as well. | | Lesbia | That reminds me of something very important. Boxer believes in vaccination: I do not. There must be a clause that I am to decide on such questions as I think best. | | Leo | To the Bishop. Baptism is nearly as important as vaccination: isn’t it? | | The Bishop | It used to be considered so, my dear. | | Leo | Well, Sinjon scoffs at it: he says that godfathers are ridiculous. I must be allowed to decide. | | Reginald | Theyll be his children as well as yours, you know. | | Leo | Don’t be indelicate, Rejjy. | | Edith | You are forgetting the very important matter of money. | | Collins | Ah! Money! Now we’re coming to it! | | Edith | When I’m married I shall have practically no money except what I shall earn. | | The Bishop | I’m sorry, Cecil. A Bishop’s daughter is a poor man’s daughter. | | Sykes | But surely you don’t imagine that I’m going to let Edith work when we’re married. I’m not a rich man; but I’ve enough to spare her that; and when my mother dies⁠— | | Edith | What nonsense! Of course I shall work when I’m married. I shall keep your house. | | Sykes | Oh, that! | | Reginald | You call that work? | | Edith | Don’t you? Leo used to do it for nothing; so no doubt you thought it wasn’t work at all. Does your present housekeeper do it for nothing? | | Reginald | But it will be part of your duty as a wife. | | Edith | Not under this contract. I’ll not have it so. If I’m to keep the house, I shall expect Cecil to pay me at least as well as he would pay a hired housekeeper. I’ll not go begging to him every time I want a new dress or a cab fare, as so many women have to do. | | Sykes | You know very well I would grudge you nothing, Edie. | | Edith | Then don’t grudge me my self-respect and independence. I insist on it in fairness to you, Cecil, because in this way there will be a fund belonging solely to me; and if Slattox takes an action against you for anything I say, you can pay the damages and stop the interest out of my salary. | | Soames | You forget that under this contract he will not be liable, because you will not be his wife in law. | | Edith | Nonsense! Of course I shall be his wife. | | Collins | His curiosity roused. Is Slattox taking an action against you, miss? Slattox is on the Council with me. Could I settle it? | | Edith | He has not taken an action; but Cecil says he will. | | Collins | What for, miss, if I may ask? | | Edith | Slattox is a liar and a thief; and it is my duty to expose him. | | Collins | You surprise me, miss. Of course Slattox is in a manner of speaking a liar. If I may say so without offence, we’re all liars, if it was only to spare one another’s feelings. But I shouldn’t call Slattox a thief. He’s not all that he should be, perhaps; but he pays his way. | | Edith | If that is only your nice way of saying that Slattox is entirely unfit to have two hundred girls in his power as absolute slaves, then I shall say that too about him at the very next public meeting I address. He steals their wages under pretence of fining them. He steals their food under pretence of buying it for them. He lies when he denies having done it. And he does other things, as you evidently know, Collins. Therefore I give you notice that I shall expose him before all England without the least regard to the consequences to myself. | | Sykes | Or to me? | | Edith | I take equal risks. Suppose you felt it to be your duty to shoot Slattox, what would become of me and the children? I’m sure I don’t want anybody to be shot: not even Slattox; but if the public never will take any notice of even the most crying evil until somebody is shot, what are people to do but shoot somebody? |