Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [62]
She swung around to face him, and emotion overtook her. She saw confusion in him also, and tiredness after the mental and physical effort of a performance, and yet his concern was for her. She felt utterly selfish. What did the issues of censorship, or what the Marchands thought about it, matter tonight?
“Silly dinner conversation.” She dismissed it with a smile, stepping forward into his arms. It was still easier to hold him than to meet his eyes. She felt his slightness and his strength. He was very gentle. It was far too late to wonder about whether she had made the right decision in marrying him, whether she was absurd or not. She could either go with her heart or deny it. Nothing would change the commitment inside her.
But in the morning censorship mattered very much. She saw it in Joshua’s face even before her eye caught it in the newspapers.
“What is it?” she asked, a lurch of alarm inside her. “What has happened?”
He held up the paper. “They’ve taken off Cecily’s play! Banned it!” He sounded stunned, defeated. There were pink spots of color in his cheeks.
She did not understand. “How can they? The Lord Chamberlain gave it a license . . .” She stopped. She did not understand the details of the process, but the principle was clear. Something in his face held her. “What?”
“It isn’t quite . . . like that.” He bit his lip. “He would never have given it a license,” he admitted. “Because it would raise questions, make some people uncomfortable.” He shrugged very slightly. “There are ways around that—submit the script late and hope he’ll not read it carefully . . . that seldom works because he’s clever enough to suspect anything presented that way and read it extra carefully. The other is to perform a new play under the title of an old one that already has a license. That’s what they did this time. . . .”
“But they’d all have to know!” she protested. “The theatre manager in particular!”
“They do. Bellmaine is as keen as Cecily. He’s prepared to take the chance, pay the fine if he has to. It’s worth it to say the things you really believe in, to ask the questions, shake the damnable complacency! If we could stir public opinion, we could reform all manner of laws that are antiquated, unjust.” He leaned forward a little, the flush in his cheeks deepening. “More than that, alter the attitudes that are beyond the law, the prejudices that wound . . . and cripple. Can’t you see how . . . how terrible this is? Some censorship is absurd. Did you know we aren’t even allowed to represent a clergyman onstage—at all. Not even sympathetically! How can we question anything?”
“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