“Dinny!”
She moved up to the carriage.
“Shake hands with these young men. My niece.”
In the midst of a queer hush she shook the seven hands of the seven capless youths, and seven times said: “Good luck!”
There was a rush to get into the carriage, a burst of noise from uncouth mouths, a ragged cheer, and the train moved. She stood by Hilary’s side, with a slight choke in her throat, waving her hand to the caps and faces stretched through the window.
“They’ll all be seasick to-night,” muttered Hilary, “that’s one comfort. Nothing like it to prevent you from thinking of the future or the past.”
She went into Adrian’s after leaving him, and was rather disconcerted to find her Uncle Lionel there. They stopped dead in their discussion. Then the Judge said:
“Perhaps you can tell us, Dinny: Is there any chance at all of mediating between those two before this unpleasant business comes on?”
“None, Uncle.”
“Oh! Then seeing as I do rather much of the law, I should suggest Clare’s not appearing and letting the thing go undefended. If there’s no chance of their coming together again, what is the use of prolonging a state of stalemate?”
“That’s what I think, Uncle Lionel; but, of course, you know the charges aren’t true.”
The Judge grimaced.
“I’m speaking as a man, Dinny. The publicity will be lamentable for Clare, win or lose; whereas, if she and this young man didn’t defend, there’d be very little. Adrian says she would refuse any support from Corven, so that element doesn’t come in. What IS all the trouble about? You know, of course.”
“Very vaguely, and in confidence.”
“Great pity!” said the Judge: “If they knew as much as I do, people would never fight these things.”
“There IS that claim for damages.”
“Yes, Adrian was telling me—pretty medieval, that.”
“Is revenge medieval, Uncle Lionel?”
“Not altogether,” said the Judge, with his wry smile; “but I shouldn’t have thought a man in Corven’s position could afford such luxuries. To put his wife into the scales! Thoroughly unpleasant.”
Adrian put his arm round Dinny’s shoulders.
“Nobody feels that more than Dinny.”
“I suppose,” murmured the Judge, “Corven will at least have them settled on her.”
“Clare wouldn’t take them. But, why shouldn’t they win? I thought the law existed to administer justice, Uncle Lionel.”
“I don’t like juries,” said the Judge abruptly.
Dinny looked at him with curiosity—surprisingly frank! He added:
“Tell Clare to keep her voice up and her answers short. And don’t let her try to be clever. Any laughter in court should be raised by the judge.”
So saying, he again smiled wryly, shook her hand, and took himself away.
“Is Uncle Lionel a good judge?”
“Impartial and polite, they say. I’ve never seen him in court, but from what I know of him as a brother, he’d be conscientious and thorough; a bit sarcastic at times. He’s quite right about this case, Dinny.”
“I’ve felt that all along. It’s Father, and that claim for damages.”
“I expect they regret that claim now. His lawyers must be bunglers. Angling for position!”
“Isn’t that what lawyers are for?”
Adrian laughed.
“Here’s tea! Let’s drown our sorrows, and go and see a film. There’s a German thing they say is really magnanimous. REAL magnanimity on the screen, Dinny, think of it!”
CHAPTER 29
Over was the shuffling of seats and papers, which marks the succession of one human drama by another, and ‘very young’ Roger said:
“We’ll go into the well of the court.”
There, with her sister and her father, Dinny sat down, bastioned from Jerry Corven by ‘very young’ Roger and his rival in the law.
“Is this,” she whispered, “the well at the bottom of which truth lies, or LIES?”
Unable to see the rising ‘body’ of the court behind her, she knew by instinct and the sense of hearing that it was filling up. The public’s unerring sense of value had scented out a fight, if not a title. The Judge, too, seemed to have smelt something, for he was shrouded in a large bandana handkerchief. Dinny gazed upward. Impressively high, and vaguely Gothic, the court seemed. Above where the Judge sat red curtains were drawn across, surprisingly beyond the reach of man. Her eyes fell to the jury filing into their two-ranked ‘box.’ The foreman fascinated her at once by his egg-shaped face and head, little hair of any sort, red cheeks, light eyes, and an expression so subtly blended between that of a codfish and a sheep that it reminded her of neither. His face recalled rather one of the two gentlemen of South Molton Street, and she felt almost sure that he was a jeweller. Three women sat at the end of the front row, no one of whom, surely, could ever have spent a night in a car. The first was stout and had the pleasant flattish face of a superior housekeeper. The second, thin, dark, and rather gaunt, was perhaps a writer. The third’s bird-like look was disguised in an obvious cold. The other eight male members of the jury tired her eyes, so diverse and difficult to place. A voice said:
“Corven versus Corven and Croom—husband’s petition,” and she gave Clare’s arm a convulsive squeeze.
“If your Lordship pleases—”
Out of the tail of her eye she could see a handsome, small-whiskered visage, winy under it’s wig.
The Judge’s face, folded and far away, as of a priest or of a tortoise, was poked forward suddenly. His gaze, knowing and impersonal, seemed taking her in, and she felt curiously small. He drew his head back, as suddenly.
The slow rich voice behind her began retailing the names and positions of the ‘parties,’ the places of their marriage and cohabitation; it paused a moment and then went on:
“In the middle of September of last year, while the petitioner was up-country in discharge of official duty, the respondent, without a word of warning, left her home and sailed for England. On board the ship was the co-respondent. It is said by the defence, I believe, that these two had not met before. I shall suggest that they had met, or at all events had had every opportunity of so meeting.”
Dinny saw her sister’s little disdainful shrug. “However that may be,” proceeded the slow voice, “there is no question that they were always together on the ship, and I shall show that towards the end of the voyage the co-respondent was seen coming out of the respondent’s stateroom.” On and on the voice drooled till it reached the words: “I will not dwell, members of the jury, on the details of the watch kept on the respondent’s and co-respondent’s movements; you will have these from the mouths of expert and reputable witnesses. Sir Gerald Corven.”
When Dinny raised her eyes he was already in the box, his face carved out of an even harder wood than she had thought. She was conscious of the resentment on her father’s face, of the Judge taking up his pen, of Clare clenching her hands on her lap; of ‘very young’ Roger’s narrowed eyes; of the foreman’s slightly opening mouth, and the third jurywoman’s smothered sneeze; conscious of the brownness in this place—it oozed brownness as if designed to dinge all that was rose, blue, silver, gold, or even green in human life.
The slow voice began its questioning, ceased its questioning; the personable owner of it closed, as it were, black wings; and a different voice behind her said:
“You thought it your duty, sir, to institute these proceedings?”
“Yes.”
“No animus?”
“None.”
“This claim for damages—not very usual, is it, nowadays among men of honour?”
“They will be settled on my wife.”
“Has your wife indicated in any way that she wishes you to support her?”
“No.”
“Would it surprise you to hear that she would not take a penny from you, whether it came from the co-respondent or not?”