“Will it change Lord Warriner’s bill?” she asked quietly.
“Ever the practical,” he said with a rueful little smile. “Do you want women to be able to institute divorce for neglect or unhappiness?” His face was unreadable, wry, humorous, sad, uncertain.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I never even thought about it until I saw the play. But surely that’s the point. I should have.”
He stretched across the table and laid his hand lightly over hers, barely touching her. “Yes, it is the point. And yes, it probably will affect it. Warriner may well lose his nerve. Too many of his friends will lose theirs. They will have felt which way the wind blows, and retreat.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, raising her head and closing her fingers over his. She remained like that for a moment, then withdrew and picked up the newspaper from where he had left it.
Farther down on the page from the article on the closure of the play was a letter from Oscar Wilde, eloquent, witty and informed, with the same outrage Joshua felt. He wrote of censorship as an act of oppression of the mind, performed by cowards who were as much afraid of what was within themselves as anything others might say.
“The thing I resent most of all,” Joshua said, his eyes still on her, “is not the restriction in what I may or may not say, but what I may or may not listen to! What monumental arrogance makes the Lord Chamberlain believe he has the right to dictate whether I shall listen to this or that man’s views on faith and religion? I may find I agree with him! Where does the whole concept of blasphemy come from?”
“From the Bible,” she replied quietly. “There are many people to whom it is a very real offense to speak mockingly or vulgarly of God.”
“Whose God?” he asked, searching her eyes.
For a moment she was at a loss.
“Whose God?” he repeated. “Yours? Mine? The vicar’s? The man next door? Anybody’s?”
She drew in her breath to reply, thinking she knew exactly what she was going to say, then realized like a shaft of light in darkness that she did not. There were probably as many ideas of God as there were people who gave the matter a thought. It had never occurred to her before.
“Isn’t there. . some sort of consensus. . at least. .” She tailed off. They had never discussed religion before. She knew his morality but not his faith, not the deep, unspoken part that governed his heart. They had never even discussed his heritage of Judaism, even though he made little outwardly of it now. But perhaps it was still part of him if you touched a nerve?
As if reading her thoughts, he looked at her with a twisted smile. “Didn’t they crucify Christ for blasphemy?” he said softly. “I would have thought as a Christian you would have a certain tolerance towards blasphemers.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she contradicted him, a little catch in her voice. Suddenly they were speaking of such fierce reality. “You know better than that; we have almost no tolerance at all. We are perfectly happy to burn one another for a difference of opinion, let alone outsiders of a different religion altogether.”
“You are more likely to burn each other than outsiders,” he pointed out. “But new ideas do find their way in every now and then, through the bloodshed, the smoke and the fury. It used to be a sin unto death for ordinary people to read the Bible; now we are encouraged to. Somebody had to be the first to challenge that monumental piece of censorship. Now we all accept that the whole concept of denying God’s word was monstrous.”
“Well. . perhaps I don’t mind about blasphemy,” she said reluctantly, thinking of the Marchands again. “But what about obscenity? As well as the good that new ideas can do, what about the harm?”
Before he could answer her the door flew open and the old lady stumped in, banging her cane on the floor.
Joshua rose to his feet automatically. “Good morning, Mrs. Ellison. How are you?”
She drew in her breath deeply. “As well as can be expected,” she replied.
He pulled out her chair and assisted her to be seated before returning to his own place.
Caroline offered her tea and toast, which she accepted.
“What harm are you talking about?” She reached for the butter and black cherry preserve. Her appetite was excellent, although this morning she did look a little paler than usual.
Joshua’s eyes barely flickered to Caroline before he answered. “There is an article about censorship in the newspapers-” he began.
“Good!” she interrupted, swallowing her toast half eaten in order to speak. “Far too much is said without regard to decency these days. It never was when I was young. The world today is filled with vulgarity. It degrades all of us. I am glad I am at the end of my life.” She reached for the butter and helped herself. “At least someone cares enough to fight for standards of a sort.”
“It is a protest against censorship,” Caroline corrected her, and then instantly wondered if it would not have been a great deal wiser to have allowed the subject to drop.
“Some actress, I suppose.” Mrs. Ellison raised her eyebrows. “There seems to be nothing women will not say or do these days, and in public for all to see.” She looked at Caroline meaningfully. “Morality is on the decline everywhere-even where one would least expect.”
“You agree with censorship?” If Joshua was angry he masked it so well no one would have guessed it. But then acting was his profession, and he was very good at it. Caroline reminded herself of that quite often.
The old lady stared at him as if he had questioned her sanity.
“Of course I do!” she responded indignantly. “Any sane and civilized person knows there are some things you cannot say without corrupting our entire way of life. Where there is no reverence for things which are sacred, for the home and all it embodies, no safety for the mind, then the entire nation begins to crumble. Did they not teach you history wherever you come from? You must have heard of Rome?”
Joshua kept his temper superbly. There was even a shadow of amusement in his eyes.
“London,” he replied. “I come from London, the other side of the river, five miles away from here. And certainly I have heard of Rome, and of Egypt, and Babylon, and Greece and Inquisitorial Spain. So far as I know, Greece had the best theatre, although Egypt had some excellent poetry.”
“They were heathens.” The old lady dismissed them with a flick of her hand, perilously close to the milk jug. “The Greeks had all sorts of gods who behaved appallingly, if the stories we hear are to be believed. And the Egyptians were worse. They worshipped animals. If you can imagine such a thing!”
“There was one pharaoh who set up his own new religion believing in and worshipping only one God,” Joshua told her with a smile.
She looked startled. “Oh. . well, I daresay that is a step forward. It didn’t last, though, did it?”
“No,” he agreed. “They accused him of blasphemy and obliterated everything he had done.”
She glared at him. It was a moment before she recovered her thought. “You weren’t talking about blasphemy. You said ‘obscene.’ ”
“That’s a matter of view as well,” he argued. “What is beautiful to one may be obscene to another.”
“Nonsense!” Her face was flushed pink. “Every decent person knows what is obscene, intrusive into other people’s private lives and feelings, and where it is unforgivable to trespass, and only the most vulgar and depraved would wish to.”
“Of course there are-” he began.
“Good!” The word was like a trap closing. “Then that is the end of the subject. My tea is cold. Will you be good enough to send for some more.” It was a command, not a request.
Caroline rang the bell. She could see the anger inside Joshua, barely suppressed by a thin veneer of courtesy because of the old lady’s age, and because she had been Caroline’s mother-in-law and she was a guest in their home, however unwillingly.
Caroline found herself saying what she knew Joshua wished to. “Everybody agrees there are things which should not be said, the disagreement is as to which things they are.”
“All things that flout morality and disregard the decent sensibilities of men and women,” Mariah Ellison said flatly. “You may have lost sight of what they are, but most of us have not. Ask any of those who used to be your friends. Thank God the Lord Chamberlain knows.”
Caroline held her tongue with difficulty, and only because she knew the pointlessness of arguing any further.
The maid came and was sent for fresh tea. Joshua rose and excused himself, kissing Caroline on the cheek and wishing the old lady a pleasant day.
Caroline picked up the newspaper again and looked at an article about Cecily Antrim. Above it, there was a
