Fleur’s voice behind her said:
“Isn’t it cold enough for you in here, my dear? Did you ever know such a year? I say that every May. Come and have tea. Clare’s in her bath, and very nice she looks, with a cup of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I suppose they’ll get to the end tomorrow?”
“Your cousin says so.”
“He’s coming to dinner. Luckily his wife’s at Droitwich.”
“Why ‘luckily’?”
“Oh! well, she’s a wife. If there’s anything he wants to say to Clare, I shall send him up to her; she’ll be out of her bath by then. But he can say it to you just as well. How do you think Clare will do in the box?”
“Can anyone do well in the box?”
“My father said I did, but he was partial; and the Coroner complimented you, didn’t he, at the Ferse inquest?”
“There was no cross-examination. Clare’s not patient, Fleur.”
“Tell her to count five before she answers, and lift her eyebrows. The thing is to get Brough rattled.”
“His voice would madden me,” said Dinny, “and he has a way of pausing as if he had all day before him.”
“Yes, quite a common trick. The whole thing’s extraordinarily like the Inquisition. What do you think of Clare’s counsel?”
“I should hate him if I were on the other side.”
“Then he’s good. Well, Dinny, what’s the moral of all this?”
“Don’t marry.”
“Bit sweeping, till we can grow babies in bottles. Hasn’t it ever struck you that civilisation’s built on the maternal instinct?”
“I thought it was built on agriculture.”
“By ‘civilisation’ I meant everything that isn’t just force.”
Dinny looked at her cynical and often flippant cousin, who stood so poised and trim and well-manicured before her, and she felt ashamed. Fleur said, unexpectedly:
“You’re rather a darling.”
Dinner, Clare having it in bed and the only guest being ‘very young’ Roger, was decidedly vocal. Starting with an account of how his family felt about taxation, ‘very young’ Roger waxed amusing. His Uncle Thomas Forsyte, it appeared, had gone to live in Jersey, and returned indignantly when Jersey began to talk about taxation of its own. He had then written to The Times under the nom de guerre of ‘Individualist,’ sold all his investments, and reinvested them in tax-free securities, which brought him in slightly less revenue than he had been receiving nett from his taxed securities. He had voted for the Nationalists at the last election, and, since this new budget, was looking out for a party that he could conscientiously vote for at the next election. He was living at Bournemouth.
“Extremely well-preserved,” concluded ‘very young’ Roger. “Do you know anything about bees, Fleur?”
“I once sat on one.”
“Do you, Miss Cherrell?”
“We keep them.”
“If you were me, would you go in for them?”
“Where do you live?”
“A little beyond Hatfield. There are some quite nice clover crops round. Bees appeal to me in theory. They feed on other people’s flowers and clover; and if you find a swarm you can stick to it. What are the drawbacks?”
“Well, if they swarm on other people’s ground, ten to one you lose them; and you have to feed them all the winter. Otherwise it’s only a question of the time, trouble, and stings.”
“I don’t know that I should mind that,” murmured ‘very young’ Roger; “my wife would take them on.” He cocked his eye slightly: “She has rheumatism. Apic acid, they say, is the best cure.”
“Better make sure first,” murmured Dinny, “that they’ll sting her. You can’t get bees to sting people they like.”
“You can always sit on them,” murmured Fleur.
“Seriously,” said ‘very young’ Roger, “half-a-dozen stings would be well worth it, poor thing.”
“What made you take up law, Forsyte?” struck in Michael.
“Well, I got a ‘blighty’ one in the war, and had to get something sedentary. I rather like it, you know, in a way, and in a way I think it’s—”
“Quite!” said Michaeclass="underline" “Hadn’t you an Uncle George?”
“Old George! Rather! Always gave me ten bob at school, and tipped me the name of a horse to put it on.”
“Did it ever win?”
“No.”
“Well, tell us, frankly: What’s going to win tomorrow?”
“Frankly,” said the solicitor, looking at Dinny, “it depends on your sister, Miss Cherrell. Corven’s witnesses have done well. They didn’t claim too much, and they weren’t shaken; but if Lady Corven keeps her head and her temper, we may pull through. If her veracity is whittled away at any point, then—!” he shrugged, and looked—Dinny thought—older. “There are one or two birds on the jury I don’t like the look of. The foreman’s one. The average man, you know, is dead against wives leaving without notice. I’d feel much happier if your sister would open up on her married life. It’s not too late.”
Dinny shook her head.
“Well, then, it’s very much a case of the personal appeal. But there’s a prejudice against mice playing when the cat’s away.”
Dinny went to bed with the sick feeling of one who knows she has again to watch some form of torture.
CHAPTER 31
Day by day the Courts of Law are stony and unchanged. The same gestures are made, the same seats taken; the same effluvium prevails, not too strong, but just strong enough.
Clare was in black on this second day, with a slim green feather in a close-fitting black hat. Pale, her lips barely touched with salve, she sat so still that one could not speak to her. The words “Society Divorce Suit,” and the ‘perfect’ headline, “Night in a Car,” had produced their effect; there was hardly standing room. Dinny noticed young Croom seated just behind his counsel. She noticed, too, that the birdlike jurywoman’s cold was better, and the foreman’s parroty eyes fixed on Clare. The Judge seemed to be sitting lower than ever. He raised himself slightly at the sound of Instone’s voice.
“If it please your Lordship, and members of the jury—the answer to the allegation of misconduct between the respondent and co-respondent will be a simple and complete denial. I call the respondent.”
With a sensation of seeing her sister for the first time, Dinny looked up. Clare, as Dornford had recommended, stood rather far back in the box, and the shade from the canopy gave her a withdrawn and mysterious air. Her voice, however, was clear, and perhaps only Dinny could have told that it was more clipped than usual.
“Is it true, Lady Corven, that you have been unfaithful to your husband?”
“It is not.”
“You swear that?”
“I do.”
“There have been no love passages between you and Mr. Croom?”
“None.”
“You swear that?”
“I do.”
“Now it is said—”
To question on question on question Dinny sat listening, her eyes not moving from her sister, marvelling at the even distinctness of her speech and the motionless calm of her face and figure. Instone’s voice today was so different that she hardly recognised it.
“Now, Lady Corven, I have one more question to ask, and, before you answer it, I beg you to consider that very much depends on that answer. Why did you leave your husband?”
Dinny saw her sister’s head tilt slightly backwards.
“I left because I did not feel I could remain and keep my self-respect.”
“Quite! But can you not tell us why that was? You had done nothing that you were ashamed of?”
“No.”
“Your husband has admitted that he had, and that he had apologised?”
“Yes.”
“What had he done?”
“Forgive me. It’s instinct with me not to talk about my married life.”
Dinny caught her father’s whisper: “By Gad! she’s right!” She saw the Judge’s neck poked forward, his face turned towards the box, his lips open.