Charlotte laughed, pulling him toward the carriage. "Only five thousand, George? You’re getting soft in your old age."
The ceremony was brisk. Shaw, true to form, attempted to interrupt the proceedings twice—once to question the phrasing of "lawful impediment" and again to suggest that the room’s ventilation was a crime against public health.
When it came time for the rings, Shaw fumbled. "A gold hoop," he muttered. "The smallest handcuff ever forged by man." Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw
As they stepped back out onto the street, the London fog swirling around them, Charlotte took his arm.
"Here I am," he sighed. "A victim of my own exhaustion. I have worked myself into a state of physical collapse, and you, Charlotte, are the only person with the efficiency to see that I am properly buried or properly fed. Since I am not yet ready for the former, I suppose we must proceed with the latter via this legal ritual." Charlotte laughed, pulling him toward the carriage
Shaw regained his posture, his eyes sparking with their usual mischievous fire. "I feel," he declared, "that I have just committed a very popular mistake. However, as mistakes go, I find the company to be of a much higher caliber than I deserve. Now, shall we go home? I have a preface to write, and I suspect marriage will provide me with at least five thousand words on why it is a disaster for everyone else."
"You look remarkably like a prisoner waiting for the gaoler, George," Charlotte remarked, her eyes twinkling behind her spectacles. Shaw, true to form, attempted to interrupt the
But as he slid the band onto Charlotte’s finger, his voice lost its theatrical edge. For a fleeting second, the satirist vanished. He looked at this "Green-Eyed Millionairess" who had nursed him back to health and challenged his every dogma, and he felt something dangerously close to the very sentiment he spent his career mocking.