_Morrison._ You know what I am after.
_Wetherbee._ Yes, that dinner.
Just a round dozen: Ferguson and Binner For the fine arts; Bowyer the novelist; Dr. Le Martin; the psychologist Fletcher; the English actor Philipson; The two newspaper Witkins, Bob and John; A nice Bostonian, Bane the archaeologer, And a queer Russian amateur astrologer; And Father Gray, the jolly ritualist priest, And last your humble servant, but not least.
The food was not so filthy, and the wine Was not so poison. We made out to dine From eight till one A.M. One could endure The dinner. But, oh say! _The talk was poor!_ Your natives down at Clamhurst--
_Morrison._ Look ye here!
What date does Thanksgiving come on this year?
_Wetherbee._ Why, I suppose--although I don"t remember Certainly--the usual 28th November.
_Morrison._ Novem-- You should have waited to get sober!
It comes on the 11th of October!
And that"s to-morrow; and if you happen down Later, you"d better look for us in town.
XVI
TABLE TALK
They were talking after dinner in that cozy moment when the conversation has ripened, just before the coffee, into mocking guesses and laughing suggestions. The thing they were talking of was something that would have held them apart if less happily timed and placed, but then and there it drew these together in what most of them felt a charming and flattering intimacy. Not all of them took part in the talk, and of those who did, none perhaps a.s.sumed to talk with authority or finality. At first they spoke of the subject as _it_, forbearing to name it, as if the name of it would convey an unpleasant shock, out of temper with the general feeling.
"I don"t suppose," the host said, "that it"s really so much commoner than it used to be. But the publicity is more invasive and explosive.
That"s perhaps because it has got higher up in the world and has spread more among the first circles. The time was when you seldom heard of it there, and now it is scarcely a scandal. I remember that when I went abroad, twenty or thirty years ago, and the English brought me to book about it, I could put them down by saying that I didn"t know a single divorced person."
"And of course," a bachelor guest ventured, "a person of that sort _must_ be single."
At first the others did not take the joke; then they laughed, but the women not so much as the men.
"And you couldn"t say that now?" the lady on the right of the host inquired.
"Why, I don"t know," he returned, thoughtfully, after a little interval. "I don"t just call one to mind."
"Then," the bachelor said, "that cla.s.ses you. If you moved in our best society you would certainly know some of the many smart people whose disunions alternate with the morning murders in the daily papers."
"Yes, the fact seems to rank me rather low; but I"m rather proud of the fact."
The hostess seemed not quite to like this arrogant humility. She said, over the length of the table (it was not very long), "I"m sure you know some very nice people who have not been."
"Well, yes, I do. But are they really smart people? They"re of very good family, certainly."
"You mustn"t brag," the bachelor said.
A husband on the right of the hostess wondered if there were really more of the thing than there used to be.
"Qualitatively, yes, I should say. Quant.i.tatively, I"m not convinced,"
the host answered. "In a good many of the States it"s been made difficult."
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 fashion. "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.