Chapter 9
THE GENERAL. This is perfectly astonishing to me. Why did you do it? Why did Leo allow it?
REGINALD. Youd better ask her.
LEO [still in tears] I'm sure I never thought it would be so horrid for Rejjy. I offered honorably to do it myself, and let him divorce me; but he wouldnt. And he said himself that it was the only way to do it--that it was the law that he should do it that way. I never saw that hateful creature until that day in Court. If he had only shewn her to me before, I should never have allowed it.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. You did all this for Leo's sake, Rejjy?
REGINALD [with an unbearable sense of injury] I shouldnt mind a bit if it were for Leo's sake. But to have to do it to make room for that mushroom-faced serpent--!
THE GENERAL [jumping up] What right had he to be made room for? Are you in your senses? What right?
REGINALD. The right of being a young man, suitable to a young woman. I had no right at my age to marry Leo: she knew no more about life than a child.
LEO. I knew a great deal more about it than a great baby like you. I'm sure I dont know how youll get on with no one to take care of you: I often lie awake at night thinking about it. And now youve made me thoroughly miserable.
REGINALD. Serve you right! [She weeps]. There: dont get into a tantrum, Leo.
LESBIA. May one ask who is the mushroom-faced serpent?
LEO. He isnt.
REGINALD. Sinjon Hotchkiss, of course.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Sinjon Hotchkiss! Why, he's coming to the wedding!
REGINALD. What! In that case I'm off [he makes for the tower].
LEO } { [seizing him] No you shant. You promised to be nice to (all four him. THE GENERAL } rushing { No, dont go, old chap. Not after him from Edith's wedding. and capturing him on the MRS. BRIDGE- threshold) NORTH } { Oh, do stay, Benjjy. I shall really be hurt if you desert us. LESBIA } { Better stay, Reginald. You must meet him sooner or later.
REGINALD. A moment ago, when I wanted to stay, you were all shoving me out of the house. Now that I want to go, you wont let me.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. I shall send a note to Mr Hotchkiss not to come.
LEO [weeping again] Oh, Alice! [She comes back to her chair, heartbroken].
REGINALD [out of patience] Oh well, let her have her way. Let her have her mushroom. Let him come. Let them all come.
He crosses the kitchen to the oak chest and sits sulkily on it. Mrs Bridgenorth shrugs her shoulders and sits at the table in Reginald's neighborhood listening in placid helplessness. Lesbia, out of patience with Leo's tears, goes into the garden and sits there near the door, snuffing up the open air in her relief from the domestic stuffness of Reginald's affairs.
LEO. It's so cruel of you to go on pretending that I dont care for you, Rejjy.
REGINALD [bitterly] She explained to me that it was only that she had exhausted my conversation.
THE GENERAL [coming paternally to Leo] My dear girl: all the conversation in the world has been exhausted long ago. Heaven knows I have exhausted the conversation of the British Army these thirty years; but I dont leave it on that account.
LEO. It's not that Ive exhausted it; but he will keep on repeating it when I want to read or go to sleep. And Sinjon amuses me. He's so clever.
THE GENERAL [stung] Ha! The old complaint. You all want geniuses to marry. This demand for clever men is ridiculous. Somebody must marry the plain, honest, stupid fellows. Have you thought of that?
LEO. But there are such lots of stupid women to marry. Why do they want to marry us? Besides, Rejjy knows that I'm quite fond of him. I like him because he wants me; and I like Sinjon because I want him. I feel that I have a duty to Rejjy.
THE GENERAL. Precisely: you have.
LEO. And, of course, Sinjon has the same duty to me.
THE GENERAL. Tut, tut!
LEO. Oh, how silly the law is! Why cant I marry them both?
THE GENERAL [shocked] Leo!
LEO. Well, I love them both. I should like to marry a lot of men. I should like to have Rejjy for every day, and Sinjon for concerts and theatres and going out in the evenings, and some great austere saint for about once a year at the end of the season, and some perfectly blithering idiot of a boy to be quite wicked with. I so seldom feel wicked; and, when I do, it's such a pity to waste it merely because it's too silly to confess to a real grown-up man.
REGINALD. This is the kind of thing, you know [Helplessly] Well, there it is!
THE GENERAL [decisively] Alice: this is a job for the Barmecide. He's a Bishop: it's his duty to talk to Leo. I can stand a good deal; but when it comes to flat polygamy and polyandry, we ought to do something.
MRS BRIDGENORTH [going to the study door] Do come here a moment, Alfred. We're in a difficulty.
THE BISHOP [within] Ask Collins, I'm busy.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Collins wont do. It's something very serious. Do come just a moment, dear. [When she hears him coming she takes a chair at the nearest end of the table].
The Bishop comes out of his study. He is still a slim active man, spare of flesh, and younger by temperament than his brothers. He has a delicate skin, fine hands, a salient nose with chin to match, a short beard which accentuates his sharp chin by bristling forward, clever humorous eyes, not without a glint of mischief in them, ready bright speech, and the ways of a successful man who is always interested in himself and generally rather well pleased with himself. When Lesbia hears his voice she turns her chair towards him, and presently rises and stands in the doorway listening to the conversation.
THE BISHOP [going to Leo] Good morning, my dear. Hullo! Youve brought Reginald with you. Thats very nice of you. Have you reconciled them, Boxer?
THE GENERAL. Reconciled them! Why, man, the whole divorce was a put-up job. She wants to marry some fellow named Hotchkiss.
REGINALD. A fellow with a face like--
LEO. You shant, Rejjy. He has a very fine face.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. And now she says she wants to marry both of them, and a lot of other people as well.
LEO. I didnt say I wanted to marry them: I only said I should like to marry them.
THE BISHOP. Quite a nice distinction, Leo.
LEO. Just occasionally, you know.
THE BISHOP [sitting down cosily beside her] Quite so. Sometimes a poet, sometimes a Bishop, sometimes a fairy prince, sometimes somebody quite indescribable, and sometimes nobody at all.
LEO. Yes: thats just it. How did you know?
THE BISHOP. Oh, I should say most imaginative and cultivated young women feel like that. I wouldnt give a rap for one who didnt. Shakespear pointed out long ago that a woman wanted a Sunday husband as well as a weekday one. But, as usual, he didnt follow up the idea.
THE GENERAL [aghast] Am I to understand--
THE BISHOP [cutting him short] Now, Boxer, am I the Bishop or are you?
THE GENERAL [sulkily] You.
THE BISHOP. Then dont ask me are you to understand. "Yours not to reason why: yours but to do and die"--
THE GENERAL. Oh, very well: go on. I'm not clever. Only a silly soldier man. Ha! Go on. [He throws himself into the railed chair, as one prepared for the worst].
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Alfred: dont tease Boxer.
THE BISHOP. If we are going to discuss ethical questions we must begin by giving the devil fair play. Boxer never does. England never does. We always assume that the devil is guilty; and we wont allow him to prove his innocence, because it would be against public morals if he succeeded. We used to do the same with prisoners accused of high treason. And the consequence is that we overreach ourselves; and the devil gets the better of us after all. Perhaps thats what most of us intend him to do.
THE GENERAL. Alfred: we asked you here to preach to Leo. You are preaching at me instead. I am not conscious of having said or done anything that calls for that unsolicited attention.
THE BISHOP. But poor little Leo has only told the simple truth; whilst you, Boxer, are striking moral attitudes.
THE GENERAL. I suppose thats an epigram. I dont understand epigrams. I'm only a silly soldier man. Ha! But I can put a plain question. Is Leo to be encouraged to be a polygamist?
THE BISHOP. Remember the British Empire, Boxer. Youre a British General, you know.
THE GENERAL. What has that to do with polygamy?
THE BISHOP. Well, the great majority of our fellow-subjects are polygamists. I cant as a British Bishop insult them by speaking disrespectfully of polygamy. It's a very interesting question. Many very interesting men have been polygamists: Solomon, Mahomet, and our friend the Duke of--of--hm! I never can remember his name.
THE GENERAL. It would become you better, Alfred, to send that silly girl back to her husband and her duty than to talk clever and mock at your religion. "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Remember that.
THE BISHOP. Dont be afraid, Boxer. What God hath joined together no man ever shall put asunder: God will take care of that. [To Leo] By the way, who was it that joined you and Reginald, my dear?
LEO. It was that awful little curate that afterwards drank, and travelled first class with a third-class ticket, and then tried to go on the stage. But they wouldnt have him. He called himself Egerton Fotheringay.
THE BISHOP. Well, whom Egerton Fotheringay hath joined, let Sir Gorell Barnes put asunder by all means.
THE GENERAL. I may be a silly soldier man; but I call this blasphemy.
THE BISHOP [gravely] Better for me to take the name of Mr Egerton Fotheringay in earnest than for you to take a higher name in vain.
LESBIA. Cant you three brothers ever meet without quarrelling?
THE BISHOP [mildly] This is not quarrelling, Lesbia: it's only English family life. Good morning.
LEO. You know, Bishop, it's very dear of you to take my part; but I'm not sure that I'm not a little shocked.
THE BISHOP. Then I think Ive been a little more successful than Boxer in getting you into a proper frame of mind.
THE GENERAL [snorting] Ha!
LEO. Not a bit; for now I'm going to shock you worse than ever. I think Solomon was an old beast.
THE BISHOP. Precisely what you ought to think of him, my dear. Dont apologize.
THE GENERAL [more shocked] Well, but hang it! Solomon was in the Bible. And, after all, Solomon was Solomon.
LEO. And I stick to it: I still want to have a lot of interesting men to know quite intimately--to say everything I think of to them, and have them say everything they think of to me.
THE BISHOP. So you shall, my dear, if you are lucky. But you know you neednt marry them all. Think of all the buttons you would have to sew on. Besides, nothing is more dreadful than a husband who keeps telling you everything he thinks, and always wants to know what you think.
LEO [struck by this] Well, thats very true of Rejjy: In fact, thats why I had to divorce him.
THE BISHOP [condoling] Yes: he repeats himself dreadfully, doesnt he?
REGINALD. Look here, Alfred. If I have my faults, let her find them out for herself without your help.
THE BISHOP. She has found them all out already, Reginald.
LEO [a little huffily] After all, there are worse men than Reginald. I daresay he's not so clever as you; but still he's not such a fool as you seem to think him!
THE BISHOP. Quite right, dear: stand up for your husband. I hope you will always stand up for all your husbands. [He rises and goes to the hearth, where he stands complacently with his back to the fireplace, beaming at them all as at a roomful of children].
LEO. Please dont talk as if I wanted to marry a whole regiment. For me there can never be more than two. I shall never love anybody but Rejjy and Sinjon.
REGINALD. A man with a face like a--
LEO. I wont have it, Rejjy. It's disgusting.
THE BISHOP. You see, my dear, youll exhaust Sinjon's conversation too in a week or so. A man is like a phonograph with half-a-dozen records. You soon get tired of them all; and yet you have to sit at table whilst he reels them off to every new visitor. In the end you have to be content with his common humanity; and when you come down to that, you find out about men what a great English poet of my acquaintance used to say about women: that they all taste alike. Marry whom you please: at the end of a month he'll be Reginald over again. It wasnt worth changing: indeed it wasnt.
LEO. Then it's a mistake to get married.
THE BISHOP. It is, my dear; but it's a much bigger mistake not to get married.
THE GENERAL [rising] Ha! You hear that, Lesbia? [He joins her at the garden door].
LESBIA. Thats only an epigram, Boxer.
THE GENERAL. Sound sense, Lesbia. When a man talks rot, thats epigram: when he talks sense, then I agree with him.
REGINALD [coming off the oak chest and looking at his watch] It's getting late. Wheres Edith? Hasnt she got into her veil and orange blossoms yet?
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Do go and hurry her, Lesbia.
LESBIA [going out through the tower] Come with me, Leo.
LEO [following Lesbia out] Yes, certainly.
The Bishop goes over to his wife and sits down, taking her hand and kissing it by way of beginning a conversation with her.
THE BISHOP. Alice: Ive had another letter from the mysterious lady who cant spell. I like that woman's letters. Theres an intensity of passion in them that fascinates me.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Do you mean Incognita Appassionata?
THE BISHOP. Yes.
THE GENERAL [turning abruptly; he has been looking out into the garden] Do you mean to say that women write love-letters to you?
THE BISHOP. Of course.
THE GENERAL. They never do to me.
THE BISHOP. The army doesnt attract women: the Church does.
REGINALD. Do you consider it right to let them? They may be married women, you know.
THE BISHOP. They always are. This one is. [To Mrs Bridgenorth] Dont you think her letters are quite the best love-letters I get? [To the two men] Poor Alice has to read my love-letters aloud to me at breakfast, when theyre worth it.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. There really is something fascinating about Incognita. She never gives her address. Thats a good sign.
THE GENERAL. Mf! No assignations, you mean?
THE Bishop. Oh yes: she began the correspondence by making a very curious but very natural assignation. She wants me to meet her in heaven. I hope I shall.
THE GENERAL. Well, I must say I hope not, Alfred. I hope not.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. She says she is happily married, and that love is a necessary of life to her, but that she must have, high above all her lovers--
THE BISHOP. She has several apparently--
MRS BRIDGENORTH. --some great man who will never know her, never touch her, as she is on earth, but whom she can meet in Heaven when she has risen above all the everyday vulgarities of earthly love.
THE BISHOP [rising] Excellent. Very good for her; and no trouble to me. Everybody ought to have one of these idealizations, like Dante's Beatrice. [He clasps his hands behind him, and strolls to the hearth and back, singing].
Lesbia appears in the tower, rather perturbed.
LESBIA. Alice: will you come upstairs? Edith is not dressed.
MRS BRIDGENORTH [rising] Not dressed! Does she know what hour it is?
LESBIA. She has locked herself into her room, reading.
The Bishop's song ceases; he stops dead in his stroll.
THE GENERAL. Reading!
THE BISHOP. What is she reading?
LESBIA. Some pamphlet that came by the eleven o'clock post. She wont come out. She wont open the door. And she says she doesnt know whether she's going to be married or not till she's finished the pamphlet. Did you ever hear such a thing? Do come and speak to her.
MRS BRIDGENORTH. Alfred: you had better go.
THE BISHOP. Try Collins.
LESBIA. Weve tried Collins already. He got all that Ive told you out of her through the keyhole. Come, Alice. [She vanishes. Mrs Bridgenorth hurries after her].
THE BISHOP. This means a delay. I shall go back to my work [he makes for the study door].
REGINALD. What are you working at now?
THE BISHOP [stopping] A chapter in my history of marriage. I'm just at the Roman business, you know.
THE GENERAL [coming from the garden door to the chair Mrs Bridgenorth has just left, and sitting down] Not more Ritualism, I hope, Alfred?
THE BISHOP. Oh no. I mean ancient Rome. [He seats himself on the edge of the table]. Ive just come to the period when the propertied classes refused to get married and went in for marriage settlements instead. A few of the oldest families stuck to the marriage tradition so as to keep up the supply of vestal virgins, who had to be legitimate; but nobody else dreamt of getting married. It's all very interesting, because we're coming to that here in England; except that as we dont require any vestal virgins, nobody will get married at all, except the poor, perhaps.
THE GENERAL. You take it devilishly coolly. Reginald: do you think the Barmecide's quite sane?
REGINALD. No worse than ever he was.
THE GENERAL [to the Bishop] Do you mean to say you believe such a thing will ever happen in England as that respectable people will give up being married?
THE BISHOP. In England especially they will. In other countries the introduction of reasonable divorce laws will save the situation; but in England we always let an institution strain itself until it breaks. Ive told our last four Prime Ministers that if they didnt make our marriage laws reasonable there would be a strike against marriage, and that it would begin among the propertied classes, where no Government would dare to interfere with it.
REGINALD. What did they say to that?
THE BISHOP. The usual thing. Quite agreed with me, but were sure that they were the only sensible men in the world, and that the least hint of marriage reform would lose them the next election. And then lost it all the same: on cordite, on drink, on Chinese labor in South Africa, on all sorts of trumpery.
REGINALD [lurching across the kitchen towards the hearth with his hands in his pockets] It's no use: they wont listen to our sort. [Turning on them] Of course they have to make you a Bishop and Boxer a General, because, after all, their blessed rabble of snobs and cads and half-starved shopkeepers cant do government work; and the bounders and week-enders are too lazy and vulgar. Theyd simply rot without us; but what do they ever do for us? what attention do they ever pay to what we say and what we want? I take it that we Bridgenorths are a pretty typical English family of the sort that has always set things straight and stuck up for the right to think and believe according to our conscience. But nowadays we are expected to dress and eat as the week-end bounders do, and to think and believe as the converted cannibals of Central Africa do, and to lie down and let every snob and every cad and every halfpenny journalist walk over us. Why, theres not a newspaper in England today that represents what I call solid Bridgenorth opinion and tradition. Half of them read as if they were published at the nearest mother's meeting, and the other half at the nearest motor garage. Do you call these chaps gentlemen? Do you call them Englishmen? I dont.[He throws himself disgustedly into the nearest chair].
THE GENERAL [excited by Reginald's eloquence] Do you see my uniform? What did Collins say? It strikes the eye. It was meant to. I put it on expressly to give the modern army bounder a smack in the eye. Somebody has to set a right example by beginning. Well, let it be a Bridgenorth. I believe in family blood and tradition, by George.
THE BISHOP [musing] I wonder who will begin the stand against marriage. It must come some day. I was married myself before I'd thought about it; and even if I had thought about it I was too much in love with Alice to let anything stand in the way. But, you know, Ive seen one of our daughters after another--Ethel, Jane, Fanny, and Christina and Florence--go out at that door in their veils and orange blossoms; and Ive always wondered whether theyd have gone quietly if theyd known what they were doing. Ive a horrible misgiving about that pamphlet. All progress means war with Society. Heaven forbid that Edith should be one of the combatants!
St John Hotchkiss comes into the tower ushered by Collins. He is a very smart young gentleman of twenty-nine or thereabouts, correct in dress to the last thread of his collar, but too much preoccupied with his ideas to be embarrassed by any concern as to his appearance. He talks about himself with energetic gaiety. He talks to other people with a sweet forbearance (implying a kindly consideration for their stupidity) which infuriates those whom he does not succeed in amusing. They either lose their tempers with him or try in vain to snub him.
COLLINS [announcing] Mr Hotchkiss. [He withdraws].
HOTCHKISS [clapping Reginald gaily on the shoulder as he passes him] Tootle loo, Rejjy.
REGINALD [curtly, without rising or turning his head] Morning.
HOTCHKISS. Good morning, Bishop.
THE BISHOP [coming off the table]. What on earth are you doing here, Sinjon? You belong to the bridegroom's party: youve no business here until after the ceremony.
HOTCHKISS. Yes, I know: thats just it. May I have a word with you in private? Rejjy or any of the family wont matter; but--[he glances at the General, who has risen rather stiffly, as he strongly disapproves of the part played by Hotchkiss in Reginald's domestic affairs].
THE BISHOP. All right, Sinjon. This is our brother, General Bridgenorth. [He goes to the hearth and posts himself there, with his hands clasped behind him].
HOTCHKISS. Oh, good! [He turns to the General, and takes out a card-case]. As you are in the service, allow me to introduce myself. Read my card, please. [He presents his card to the astonished General].
THE GENERAL [reading] "Mr St John Hotchkiss, the Celebrated Coward, late Lieutenant in the 165th Fusiliers."
REGINALD [with a chuckle] He was sent back from South Africa because he funked an order to attack, and spoiled his commanding officer's plan.
THE GENERAL [very gravely] I remember the case now. I had forgotten the name. I'll not refuse your acquaintance, Mr Hotchkiss; partly because youre my brother's guest, and partly because Ive seen too much active service not to know that every man's nerve plays him false at one time or another, and that some very honorable men should never go into action at all, because theyre not built that way. But if I were you I should not use that visiting card. No doubt it's an honorable trait in your character that you dont wish any man to give you his hand in ignorance of your disgrace; but you had better allow us to forget. We wish to forget. It isnt your disgrace alone: it's a disgrace to the army and to all of us. Pardon my plain speaking.