HOTCHKISS. I'll do my best.

REGINALD [relieved] Righto. You wont mind, old chap, do you?

HOTCHKISS. It's Fate. Ive touched coal; and my hands are black; but theyre clean. So long, Rejjy. [They shake hands; and Reginald goes into the garden to collect Boxer].

COLLINS. Excuse me, sir; but do you stay to breakfast? Your name is on one of the covers; and I should like to change it if youre not remaining.

HOTCHKISS. How do I know? Is my destiny any longer in my own hands? Go: ask SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED.

COLLINS [awestruck] Has Mrs George taken a fancy to you, sir?

HOTCHKISS. Would she had! Worse, man, worse: Ive taken a fancy to Mrs George.

COLLINS. Dont despair, sir: if George likes your conversation youll find their house a very pleasant one--livelier than Mr Reginald's was, I daresay.

HOTCHKISS [calling] Polly.

COLLINS [promptly] Oh, if it's come to Polly already, sir, I should say you were all right.

Mrs George appears at the door of the study.

HOTCHKISS. Your brother-in-law wishes to know whether I'm to stay for the wedding breakfast. Tell him.

MRS GEORGE. He stays, Bill, if he chooses to behave himself.

HOTCHKISS [to Collins] May I, as a friend of the family, have the privilege of calling you Bill?

COLLINS. With pleasure, sir, I'm sure, sir.

HOTCHKISS. My own pet name in the bosom of my family is Sonny.

MRS GEORGE. Why didnt you tell me that before? Sonny is just the name I wanted for you. [She pats his cheek familiarly; he rises abruptly and goes to the hearth, where he throws himself moodily into the railed chair] Bill: I'm not going into the hall until there are enough people there to make a proper little court for me. Send the Beadle for me when you think it looks good enough.

COLLINS. Right, maam. [He goes out through the tower].

Mrs George left alone with Hotchkiss and Soames, suddenly puts her hands on Soames's shoulders and bends over him.

MRS GEORGE. The Bishop said I was to tempt you, Anthony.

SOAMES [without looking round] Woman: go away.

MRS GEORGE. Anthony: "When other lips and other hearts Their tale of love shall tell

HOTCHKISS [sardonically]

In language whose excess imparts The power they feel so well.

MRS GEORGE.

Though hollow hearts may wear a mask, Twould break your own to see In such a moment I but ask That youll remember me."

And you will, Anthony. I shall put my spell on you.

SOAMES. Do you think that a man who has sung the Magnificat and adored the Queen of Heaven has any ears for such trash as that or any eyes for such trash as you--saving your poor little soul's presence. Go home to your duties, woman.

MRS GEORGE [highly approving his fort.i.tude] Anthony: I adopt you as my father. Thats the talk! Give me a man whose whole life doesnt hang on some scrubby woman in the next street; and I'll never let him go [she slaps him heartily on the back].

SOAMES. Thats enough. You have another man to talk to. I'm busy.

MRS GEORGE [leaving Soames and going a step or two nearer Hotchkiss] Why arnt you like him, Sonny? Why do you hang on to a scrubby woman in the next street?

HOTCHKISS [thoughtfully] I must apologize to Billiter.

MRS GEORGE. Who is Billiter?

HOTCHKISS. A man who eats rice pudding with a spoon. Ive been eating rice pudding with a spoon ever since I saw you first.[He rises]. We all eat our rice pudding with a spoon, dont we, Soames?

SOAMES. We are members of one another. There is no need to refer to me. In the first place, I'm busy: in the second, youll find it all in the Church Catechism, which contains most of the new discoveries with which the age is bursting. Of course you should apologize to Billiter. He is your equal. He will go to the same heaven if he behaves himself and to the same h.e.l.l if he doesnt.

MRS GEORGE [sitting down] And so will my husband the coal merchant.

HOTCHKISS. If I were your husband's superior here I should be his superior in heaven or h.e.l.l: equality lies deeper than that. The coal merchant and I are in love with the same woman. That settles the question for me for ever. [He prowls across the kitchen to the garden door, deep in thought].

SOAMES. Psha!

MRS GEORGE. You dont believe in women, do you, Anthony? He might as well say that he and George both like fried fish.

HOTCHKISS. I do not like fried fish. Dont be low, Polly.

SOAMES. Woman: do not presume to accuse me of unbelief. And do you, Hotchkiss, not despise this woman's soul because she speaks of fried fish. Some of the victims of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes were fried. And I eat fried fish every Friday and like it.

You are as ingrained a sn.o.b as ever.

HOTCHKISS [impatiently] My dear Anthony: I find you merely ridiculous as a preacher, because you keep referring me to places and doc.u.ments and alleged occurrences in which, as a matter of fact, I dont believe. I dont believe in anything but my own will and my own pride and honor. Your fishes and your catechisms and all the rest of it make a charming poem which you call your faith. It fits you to perfection; but it doesnt fit me. I happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. [Mrs George, a.s.sociating Mohammedanism with polygamy, looks at him with quick suspicion].

I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed Mohammedanism before the end of the century. The character of Mahomet is congenial to me. I admire him, and share his views of life to a considerable extent. That beats you, you see, Soames.

Religion is a great force--the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows dont understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you cant see the quintessential equality of all the religions. Who are you, anyhow, that you should know better than Mahomet or Confucius or any of the other Johnnies who have been on this job since the world existed?

MRS GEORGE [admiring his eloquence] George will like you, Sonny.

You should hear him talking about the Church.

SOAMES. Very well, then: go to your doom, both of you. There is only one religion for me: that which my soul knows to be true; but even irreligion has one tenet; and that is the sacredness of marriage. You two are on the verge of deadly sin. Do you deny that?

HOTCHKISS. You forget, Anthony: the marriage itself is the deadly sin according to you.

SOAMES. The question is not now what I believe, but what you believe. Take the vows with me; and give up that woman if you have the strength and the light. But if you are still in the grip of this world, at least respect its inst.i.tutions. Do you believe in marriage or do you not?

HOTCHKISS. My soul is utterly free from any such superst.i.tion. I solemnly declare that between this woman, as you impolitely call her, and me, I see no barrier that my conscience bids me respect.

I loathe the whole marriage morality of the middle cla.s.ses with all my instincts. If I were an eighteenth century marquis I could feel no more free with regard to a Parisian citizen's wife than I do with regard to Polly. I despise all this domestic purity business as the lowest depth of narrow, selfish, sensual, wife- grabbing vulgarity.

MRS GEORGE [rising promptly] Oh, indeed. Then youre not coming home with me, young man. I'm sorry; for its refreshing to have met once in my life a man who wasnt frightened by my wedding ring; but I'm looking out for a friend and not for a French marquis; so youre not coming home with me.

HOTCHKISS [inexorably] Yes, I am.