“And how do we stand now?” asked Jack. “Are we anything the better for Lyman’s visit?”
“Not a great deal up to the present,” said Mr. Liscomb. “What I now fear is that Blaydon will clear off without waiting to oppose the petition for nullity.”
“Then all will be plain sailing,” cried Jack.
“Anything but that,” said Liscomb, shaking his head. “There’s nothing that the judge is more cautious about than collusion. If a case like this is not opposed, he begins to suspect that the opposition has been bought off. We shall have to make the whole thing very clear to him.”
“And that is more difficult now than it was before,” said Priscilla; “for we cannot now say that he went straight away from the prison to the woman in Canada. As a matter of fact, he was taken away from England practically by main force; and the woman in Canada was the last person whom he wished to be near.”
“I am glad that you appreciate the difficulties of the case,” said the lawyer. “The sacredness of the ceremony of marriage is cherished by the people of England very much more scrupulously than are its obligations. A judge feels that his responsibility in a question of pronouncing a marriage null and void is almost greater than he can bear. I believe that one of them never could be induced to believe that he had the power to pronounce such a decree. It all comes from those foolish words in the marriage service, ‘Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’ The old powers of the Church survive in that sentence. The marriage was not a civil contract, but a sacrament of the Church, and some nice hanky-panky tricks the Church played in the same connection. And now when the ceremony in the church is only kept on as an excuse for a display of the dernier cri of fashion, and when the civil contract part—the only part that is according to the law of the land—is made the centre of some beautiful but absolutely useless embroidery of words and phrases, the final aweinspiring sentence, ‘Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder’ is supposed to be the motto on the seal of a sacred bond. But it is really nothing more than the ordinary phrase of a parson addressing his congregation, unless you wish to assume, which for obvious reasons I don’t, that the civil laws of England have the same Divine origin as the Ten Commandments.”
Priscilla smiled. How much plainer he had expressed what she had often tried to express, was what she was thinking at that moment.
Jack was becoming uneasy. If Priscilla and that lawyer were to begin to exchange opinions and compare views on the great marriage question, they might easily remain in that stuffy office for another hour or two. But as usual, Priscilla’s extraordinary capacity for keeping silence came to his aid. She smiled, but said not a word.
“Then how do we stand just now?” asked Jack, picking up his hat.
“Well,” said Mr. Liscomb. “I am bound to say that I am disappointed, but by no means surprised——”