“Why Marry?”

This is a protracted discussion of a venerable topic and takes place in a sun-parlour, which I regret to say is the brightest thing about it.

John is a dollar-snob—it is John’s parlour—and has two sisters, Jean and Helen. John is easily the heavy-weight champion in stage brothers. Sister Jean, who is entirely dependent on John, loves a poor man, but under John’s guidance traps a rich one. Sister Helen (who has a job) also loves a poor man, but thinks marriage not good enough. This was, I imagine, due chiefly to living with John and Mrs. John. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The colleagues died while Ernest survived, which I regretted. However he became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with Helen as his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of his new bacillus the two spend the night in the laboratory totally unchaperoned. The discovery saved thousands of American babes, but it ruined Helen’s reputation.

Here the narrative becomes confused, but anyhow John, who was a trustee of the Institute, spent the three Acts in alternately sacking and reinstating Helen and Ernest, in thinking of a salary, doubling it, adding thousands of dollars to it and taking away the salary first thought of, together with the additions (and so da capo), according as he wished to prevent the marriage because of Ernest’s poverty, or bring it off because of Ernest’s disposition to take Helen to Paris (France) and dispense with empty rites, or postpone it to gain time, or, on the contrary, have it celebrated between the dressing and the dinner gongs in order to announce it to important members of the family, who, if I understood the butler aright, had already fallen on their food while host and hostess, two pairs of lovers, Uncle Everett and Cousin John were bickering in the sun-parlour.

Cousin Theodore, a guileless and dollarless clergyman, padded about on the outskirts of the discussion, making obvious remarks about the sanctity of marriage and enunciating the highest principles, which he promptly swallowed. But it was Uncle Everett, the judge (the only human figure in the bunch), who grasped the fact (long after I did, but let that pass) that the two principal young egotists simply loved being talked over at such gross length. To put an end to the business he used a trick whereby, apparently according to the law of the unnamed State in which the parlour was situate, the two were legally married without intending it. They had the tact to accept this solution, and this softened my heart towards them for the first time.

It was amusing to see Mr. Aubrey Smith wondering how on earth he had got into this play, and Mr. A. E. George prowling about the stage intent apparently on showing how many ways there are of uttering “Pshaw!” and “Tut-tut!” or noise to that effect. It isn’t as easy as it ought to be to do justice to players playing impossible parts; to Miss Henrietta Watson struggling pluckily and skilfully with her Mrs. John; or to Mr. Cowley Wright or Miss Rosa Lynd, so perfectly appalling did Ernest and Helen seem to me and so anxious was I to get them off to Paris respectably or otherwise. They never, by the way, gave me the faintest impression that they could ever have done work of any value in their laboratory.

I have no idea what the moral of this modern mystery play may be, but I did gather that the authoress was seriously perplexed, not perhaps in any startlingly new way, about the difficulties of marriage and the conventional hypocrisies that hedge round that honourable institution, but just forgot that serious argument cannot easily be conveyed through the medium of fantastically impossible and uninteresting people in an extravagantly farcical situation. The play was kindly received.

“WHY MARRY?”

Mr. C. Aubrey Smith (Uncle Everett). “Do you know the answer?”

Miss Henrietta Watson (Lucy). “There are a good many questions about this play that I wouldn’t care to have to answer.”