RIDGEON How, pray?

LOUIS Well, you set up to appreciate Jennifer, you know. And you despise me, dont you?

RIDGEON (curtly] I loathe you. [He sits down again on the sofa].

LOUIS Just so. And yet you believe that Jennifer is a bad lot because you think I told you so.

RIDGEON Were you lying?

LOUIS No; but you were smelling out a scandal instead of keeping your mind clean and wholesome. I can just play with people like you. I only asked you had you seen Jennifer’s marriage lines; and you concluded straight away that she hadnt got any. You dont know a lady when you see one.

B. B. [majestically] What do you mean by that, may I ask?

LOUIS Now, I’m only an immoral artist; but if y o u d told me that Jennifer wasnt married, I’d have had the gentlemanly feeling and artistic instinct to say that she carried her marriage certificate in her face and in her character. But y o u are all moral men; and Jennifer is only an artist’s wife — probably a model; and morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married. Arnt you ashamed of yourselves? Can one of you look me in the face after it?

WALPOLE It’s very hard to look you in the face, Dubedat; you have such a dazzling cheek. What about Minnie Tinwell, eh?

LOUIS Minnie Tinwell is a young woman who has had three weeks of glorious happiness in her poor little life, which is more than most girls in her position get, I can tell you. Ask her whether she’d take it back if she could. She’s got her name into history, that girl. My little sketches of her will be fought by collectors at Christie’s. She’ll have a page in my biography. Pretty good, that, for a still-room maid[161] at a seaside hotel, I think. What have you fellows done for her to compare with that?

RIDGEON We havnt trapped her into a mock marriage and deserted her.

LOUIS No: you wouldnt have the pluck. But dont fuss yourselves. I didnt desert little Minnie. We spent all our money —

WALPOLE All h e r money. Thirty pounds.

LOUIS I said all o u r money: hers and mine too. Her thirty pounds didnt last three days. I had to borrow four times as much to spend on her. But I didnt grudge it; and she didnt grudge her few pounds either, the brave little lassie. When we were cleaned out, we’d had enough of it: you can hardly suppose that we were fit company for longer than that: I an artist, and she quite out of art and literature and refined living and everything else. There was no desertion, no misunderstanding, no police court or divorce court sensation for you moral chaps to lick your lips over at breakfast. We just said, Well, the money’s gone: weve had a good time that can never be taken from us; so kiss; part good friends; and she back to service, and I back to my studio and my Jennifer, both the better and happier for our holiday.

WALPOLE Quite a little poem, by George!

B. B. If you had been scientifically trained, Mr Dubedat, you would know how very seldom an actual case bears out a principle. In medical practice a man may die when, scientifically speaking, he ought to have lived. I have actually known a man die of a disease from which he was scientifically speaking, immune. But that does not affect the fundamental truth of science. In just the same way, in moral cases, a man’s behavior may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he is morally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles. But that does not affect the fundamental truth of morality.

SIR PATRICK And it doesnt affect the criminal law on the subject of bigamy.

LOUIS Oh bigamy! bigamy! bigamy! What a fascination anything connected with the police has for you all, you moralists! Ive proved to you that you were utterly wrong on the moral point: now I’m going to shew you that youre utterly wrong on the legal point; and I hope it will be a lesson to you not to be so jolly cocksure next time.

WALPOLE Rot! You were married already when you married her; and that settles it.

LOUIS Does it! Why cant you t h i n k? How do you know she wasnt married already too?

LOUIS [ignoring their outcry] She was married to the steward of a liner. He cleared out and left her; and she thought, poor girl, that it was the law that if you hadnt heard of your husband for three years you might marry again. So as she was a thoroughly respectable girl and refused to have anything to say to me unless we were married I went through the ceremony to please her and to preserve her self-respect.

RIDGEON Did you tell her you were already married?

LOUIS Of course not. Dont you see that if she had known, she wouldnt have considered herself my wife? You dont seem to understand, somehow.

SIR PATRICK You let her risk imprisonment in her ignorance of the law?

LOUIS Well, I risked imprisonment for her sake. I could have been had up for it just as much as she. But when a man makes a sacrifice of that sort for a woman, he doesnt go and brag about it to her; at least, not if he’s a gentleman.

WALPOLE What a r e w e to do with this daisy?

LOUIS [impatiently] Oh, go and do whatever the devil you please. Put Minnie in prison. Put me in prison. Kill Jennifer with the disgrace of it all. And then, when youve done all the mischief you can, go to church and feel good about it. [He sits down pettishly on the old chair at the easel, and takes up a sketching block, on which he begins to draw].

WALPOLE He’s got us.

SIR PATRICK [grimly] He has.

B. B. But is he to be allowed to defy the criminal law of the land?

SIR PATRICK The criminal law is no use to decent people. It only helps blackguards to blackmail their families. What are we family doctors doing half our time but conspiring with the family solicitor to keep some rascal out of jail and some family out of disgrace?

B. B. But at least it will punish him.

SIR PATRICK Oh, yes: itll punish him. Itll punish not only him but everybody connected with him, innocent and guilty alike. Itll throw his board and lodging on our rates and taxes for a couple of years, and then turn him loose on us a more dangerous blackguard than ever. Itll put the girl in prison and ruin her: itll lay his wife’s life waste. You may put the criminal law out of your head once for all: it’s only fit for fools and savages.

LOUIS Would you mind turning your face a little more this way, Sir Patrick. [SIR PATRICK turns indignantly and glares at him]. Oh, thats too much.

SIR PATRICK Put down your foolish pencil, man; and think of your position. You can defy the laws made by men; but there are other laws to reckon with. Do know that youre going to die?

LOUIS We’re all going to die, arnt we?

WALPOLE We’re not all going to die in six months.

LOUIS How do you know?

This for B. B. is the last straw. He completely loses his temper and begins to walk excitedly about.

B. B. Upon my soul, I will not stand this. It is in questionable taste under any circumstances or in any company to harp on the subject of death; but it is a dastardly advantage to take of a medical man. [Thundering at Dubedat] I will not allow it, do you hear?

LOUIS Well, I didnt begin it: you chaps did. It’s always the way with the inartistic professions: when theyre beaten in argument they fall back on intimidation. I never knew a lawyer who didnt threaten to put me in prison sooner or later. I never knew a parson who didnt threaten me with damnation. And now you threaten me with death. With all your talk youve only one real trump in your hand, and thats Intimidation. Well, I’m not a coward; so it’s no use with me.

B. B. [advancing upon him] I’ll tell you what you are, sir.Youre a scoundrel.