Part 19 (2/2)

The husband on the right of the hostess was not convinced, he said, as to the qualitative increase. The parties to the suits were rich enough, and sometimes they were high enough placed and far enough derived. But there was nearly always a leak in them, a social leak somewhere, on one side or the other. They could not be said to be persons of quality in the highest sense.

”Why, persons of quality seldom can be,” the bachelor contended.

The girl opposite, who had been invited to balance him in the scale of celibacy by the hostess in her study of her dinner-party, first smiled, and then alleged a very distinguished instance of divorce in which the parties were both of immaculate origin and unimpeachable fas.h.i.+on. ”n.o.body,” she said, ”can accuse _them_ of a want of quality.”

She was good-looking, though no longer so young as she could have wished; she flung out her answer to the bachelor defiantly, but she addressed it to the host, and he said that was true; certainly it was a signal case; but wasn't it exceptional? The others mentioned like cases, though none quite so perfect, and then there was a lull till the husband on the left of the hostess noted a fact which renewed the life of the discussion.

”There was a good deal of agitation, six or eight years ago, about it.

I don't know whether the agitation accomplished anything.”

The host believed it had influenced legislation.

”For or against?” the bachelor inquired.

”Oh, against.”

”But in other countries it's been coming in more and more. It seems to be as easy in England now as it used to be in Indiana. In France it's nothing scandalous, and in Norwegian society you meet so many disunited couples in a state of quadruplicate reunion that it is very embarra.s.sing. It doesn't seem to bother the parties to the new relation themselves.”

”It's very common in Germany, too,” the husband on the right of the hostess said.

The husband on her left side said he did not know just how it was in Italy and Spain, and no one offered to disperse his ignorance.

In the silence which ensued the lady on the left of the host created a diversion in her favor by saying that she had heard they had a very good law in Switzerland.

Being asked to tell what it was, she could not remember, but her husband, on the right of the hostess, saved the credit of his family by supplying her defect. ”Oh, yes. It's very curious. We heard of it when we were there. When people want to be put asunder, for any reason or other, they go before a magistrate and declare their wish. Then they go home, and at the end of a certain time--weeks or months--the magistrate summons them before him with a view to reconciliation. If they come, it is a good sign; if they don't come, or come and persist in their desire, then they are summoned after another interval, and are either reconciled or put asunder, as the case may be, or as they choose. It is not expensive, and I believe it isn't scandalous.”

”It seems very sensible,” the husband on the left of the hostess said, as if to keep the other husband in countenance. But for an interval no one else joined him, and the mature girl said to the man next her that it seemed rather cold-blooded. He was a man who had been entreated to come in, on the frank confession that he was asked as a stop-gap, the original guest having fallen by the way. Such men are apt to abuse their magnanimity, their condescension. They think that being there out of compa.s.sion, and in compliance with a hospitality that had not at first contemplated their presence, they can say anything; they are usually asked without but through their wives, who are asked to ”lend”

them, and who lend them with a grudge veiled in eager acquiescence; and the men think it will afterward advantage them with their wives, when they find they are enjoying themselves, if they will go home and report that they said something vexing or verging on the offensive to their hostess. This man now addressed himself to the lady at the head of the table.

”Why do we all talk as if we thought divorce was an unquestionable evil?”

The hostess looked with a frightened air to the right and left, and then down the table to her husband. But no one came to her rescue, and she asked feebly, as if foreboding trouble (for she knew she had taken a liberty with this man's wife), ”Why, don't we?”

”About one in seven of us doesn't,” the stop-gap said.

”Oh!” the girl beside him cried out, in a horror-stricken voice which seemed not to interpret her emotion truly. ”Is it so bad as that?”

”Perhaps not quite, even if it is bad at all,” he returned, and the hostess smiled gratefully at the girl for drawing his fire. But it appeared she had not, for he directed his further speech at the hostess again: really the most inoffensive person there, and the least able to contend with adverse opinions.

”No, I don't believe we do think it an unquestionable evil, unless we think marriage is so.” Everybody sat up, as the stop-gap had intended, no doubt, and he ”held them with his glittering eye,” or as many as he could sweep with his glance. ”I suppose that the greatest hypocrite at this table, where we are all so frankly hypocrites together, will not deny that marriage is the prime cause of divorce. In fact, divorce couldn't exist without it.”

The women all looked bewilderedly at one another, and then appealingly at the men. None of these answered directly, but the bachelor softly intoned out of Gilbert and Sullivan--he was of that date:

”'A paradox, a paradox; A most ingenious paradox!'”

”Yes,” the stop-gap defiantly a.s.sented. ”A paradox; and all aboriginal verities, all giant truths, are paradoxes.”

”Giant truths is good,” the bachelor noted, but the stop-gap did not mind him.

<script>