The Doctor’s Dilemma

like you. I only asked you had you seen Jennifer’s marriage lines; and you concluded straight away that she hadn’t got any. You don’t 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 you’d told me that Jennifer wasn’t 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 you 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. Aren’t 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 bought by collectors at Christie’s. She’ll have a page in my biography. Pretty good, that, for a still-room maid at a seaside hotel, I think. What have you fellows done for her to compare with that? Ridgeon We haven’t trapped her into a mock marriage and deserted her. Louis No: you wouldn’t have the pluck. But don’t fuss yourselves. I didn’t desert little Minnie. We spent all our money⁠— Walpole All her money. Thirty pounds. Louis I said all our money: hers and mine too. Her thirty pounds didn’t last three days. I had to borrow four times as much to spend on her. But I didn’t grudge it; and she didn’t 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: we’ve 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 doesn’t 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! I’ve proved to you that you were utterly wrong on the moral point: now I’m going to show you that you’re 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 can’t you think? How do you know she wasn’t married already too? All crying out together: B.B. Walpole! Ridgeon! Ridgeon This is beyond everything! Walpole Well, damn me! Sir Patrick You young rascal. 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 hadn’t 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. Don’t you see that if she had known, she wouldn’t have considered herself my wife? You don’t 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 doesn’t go and brag about it to her; at least, not if he’s a gentleman. Walpole What are we 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 you’ve 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