Dolly Reforming Herself Part 31

PROFESSOR STURGESS _enters at back, with the proofs of his book in his hand._

_Prof._ How do you do?

_Pilcher._ [_Has put down box._] How do you do? [_Shaking hands._] Happy New Year!

_Prof._ Happy New Year to you! [_To_ LUCAS.] How d'ye do?

_Lucas._ First rate. Happy New Year!

[_Shaking hands._

_Prof._ Thank you. An accident?

_Lucas._ Bit of one. Getting over it.

_Prof._ If I might recommend the constant use of Pableine.

_Lucas._ Oh, thanks, it's quite well----

_Prof._ Try Pableine. It's a wonderful restorative. I'm intruding----

[_Looking round._

_Pilcher._ Not at all. We were just about to settle the question Mr.

Barron raised last New Year's day----

_Prof._ Oh, yes; I remember! Curiously enough I have only this morning received the proofs of my new volume, "Free Will, the Illusion."

[_Showing the proofs to_ PILCHER.

_Pilcher._ Very interesting. I should like to discuss the matter with you, but [_taking out watch_] I have so many New Year's calls to make.

[_Looking at_ MATT.] Perhaps we ought to get on with the--a----

_Matt._ Inquest.

_Pilcher._ Vindication.

_Matt._ [_Accepting the correction._] Vindication.

_Prof._ I may perhaps be allowed to point out that Mr. Barron's novel and humorous experiment can in no sense be said to settle, or even to touch, the question of Free Will, which as I have proved here depends upon---- [_Again offering the proof._

_Pilcher._ I should like to look through those sheets, but----

[_Glancing at_ MATT.

_Prof._ You shall! I have put the whole argument into the concrete case of Sarah Mumford----

_Pilcher._ Sarah Mumford?

_Prof._ The baby farmer----

_Matt._ Sarah's gray matter gone watery?

_Prof._ Not watery, but she had a yellow effusion----

_Matt._ I suppose that's just as bad?

_Prof._ Quite.

_Matt._ What did they do with her?

_Prof._ They hanged her. They then discovered extensive lesions and this yellow effusion----

_Matt._ Pity they didn't discover that before they hanged her.

_Prof._ My exact point! Where is the justice of punis.h.i.+ng a woman whose gray matter functions perversely? It is nothing short of a crime.

_Dolly._ But she had suffocated five dear little babies?

_Matt._ How could she avoid suffocating babies if she had a yellow effusion in her brain?

_Prof._ Precisely my argument----

[_Puts his proofs into_ MATT'S _hands. Points out a pa.s.sage_. MATT, _a little embarra.s.sed, takes them, looks through them._]

_Prof._ The point I wish to establish is this. While we all allow that extensive or recognizable diseases of, or injuries to, the brain, free a man from responsibility and punishment, how can we logically mete out blame or praise, punishment or reward to our ordinary acts, thoughts, and impulses, seeing that all our acts, thoughts, and impulses, good or bad, virtuous or criminal, are equally the mere expressions of certain inevitable physical changes in the brain, the mere register on the dial plate of consciousness of necessary predetermined complications in the working of certain atoms of the gray matter of our cortex?

_Matt._ Quite so! Quite so! [DOLLY _is about to speak, but_ MATT _hushes her down with a warning look and sign._] The Professor wants to say with Socrates that no man would be such a fool as to do wrong, if he could possibly help it.

_Prof._ Well, if you like to put it that way----

_Pilcher._ And now perhaps we might proceed. Can you remember the exact terms, Mr. Barron?

_Matt._ I am to pay a sovereign for everyone of your hearers who has so far benefited by the wise admonitions of your last year's sermon as to have broken off his bad habits, or some especial bad habit----

_Lucas._ We aren't bound to say what the habit is that we've broken off?

_Matt._ I don't wish to be inquisitive, but if you don't mention the particular bad habit, you will have to give me your word of honor that you've conquered it. [_Putting down proofs on table, taking up the money-box, giving it a shake._] Now, who will be first to step into the confessional? [_Looking round._

_Dolly._ I will. As I've nothing to confess.

_Matt._ Nothing?

_Dolly._ No. I had what some husbands might think a bad habit, but----

_Harry._ No bills this Christmas, eh, Doll?

_Dolly._ No.