"No. You see," said Septimus confidentially, "marriage has been out of my line. But perhaps you have been married, and might be able to tell me."
"Look here, sir," said the policeman, eyeing him kindly, but officially. "Take my advice, sir; don't think of getting married. You go home to your friends."
The policeman nodded knowingly and stalked away, leaving Septimus perplexed by his utterance. Was he a Socrates of a constable with a Xantippe at home, or did he regard him as a mild lunatic at large? Either solution was discouraging. He turned and walked back down Holborn somewhat dejected. Somewhere in London the air was thick with special licenses, but who would direct his steps to the desired spot? On passing Gray's Inn one of his brilliant ideas occurred to him. The Inn suggested law; the law, solicitors, who knew even more about licenses than Hall Porters and Policemen. A man he once knew had left him one day after lunch to consult his solicitors in Gray's Inn. He entered the low, gloomy gateway and accosted the porter.
"Are there any solicitors living in the Inn?"
"Not so many as there was. They're mostly architects. But still there's heaps."
"Will you kindly direct me to one?"
The man gave him two or three addresses, and he went comforted across the square to the east wing, whose Georgian mass merged without skyline into the fuliginous vapor which Londoners call the sky. The lights behind the blindless windows illuminated interiors and showed men bending over desks and drawing-boards, some near the windows with their faces sharply cut in profile. Septimus wondered vaguely whether any one of those visible would be his solicitor.
A member of the first firm he sought happened to be disengaged, a benevolent young man wearing gold spectacles, who received his request for guidance with sympathetic interest and unfolded to him the divers methods whereby British subjects could get married all over the world, including the High Seas on board one of His Majesty's ships of the Mercantile Marine. Solicitors are generally bursting with irrelevant information. When, however, he elicited the fact that one of the parties had a flat in London which would technically prove the fifteen days' residence, he opened his eyes.
"But, my dear sir, unless you are bent on a religious ceremony, why not get married at once before the registrar of the Chelsea district? There are two ways of getting married before the registrar—one by certificate and one by license. By license you can get married after the expiration of one whole day next after the day of the entry of the notice of marriage. That is to say, if you give notice to-morrow you can get married not the next day, but the day after. In this way you save the heavy special license fee. How does it strike you?"
It struck Septimus as a remarkable suggestion, and he admired the lawyer exceedingly.