Over the River eotc-3 Page 22
‘Or the Catholic church,’ she thought, ‘and I don’t believe in either.’
She opened the window, and leaned against its frame. A fly buzzed at her; she blew it away, and it instantly came back. Flies! They fulfilled a purpose. What purpose? While they were alive they were alive; when they were dead they were dead. ‘But not half-alive,’ she thought. She blew again, and this time the fly did not come back.
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 Michael: “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.”
“Q
uite! 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.
“I understood you to say you felt you could not remain with your husband and keep your self-respect?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Did you feel you could leave him like that and keep your self-respect?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Dinny saw the Judge’s body raise itself slightly, and his face moving from side to side, as if carefully avoiding any recipient of his words: “Well, there it is, Mr. Instone. I don’t think you can usefully pursue the point. The respondent has evidently made up her mind on it.” His eyes under drooped lids continued to survey what was unseen.
“If your Lordship pleases. Once more, Lady Corven, there is no truth in these allegations of misconduct with Mr. Croom?”
“No truth whatever.”
“Thank you.”
Dinny drew a long breath and braced herself against the pause and the slow rich voice to the right behind her.
“You, a married woman, would not call inviting a young man to your cabin, entertaining him alone in your room at half-past eleven at night, spending a night with him in a car, and going about with him continually in the absence of your husband, misconduct?”
“Not in itself.”
“Very well. You have said that until you saw him on the ship you had never seen the co-respondent. Could you explain how it was that from, I think, the second day at sea you were so thick with him?”
“I was not thick with him at first.”
“Oh, come! Always together, weren’t you?”
“Often, not always.”
“Often, not always—from the second day?”
“Yes, a ship is a ship.”
“Quite true, Lady Corven. And you had never seen him before?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Ceylon is not a large place, is it, from a society point of view?”
“It is not.”
“Lots of polo matches, cricket matches, other functions where you are constantly meeting the same people.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you never met Mr. Croom? Odd, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all. Mr. Croom was on a plantation.”
“But he played polo, I think?”
“Yes.”
“And you are a horsewoman, very interested in all that sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you never met Mr. Croom?”
“I have said I never did. If you ask me till tomorrow I shall say the same.”
Dinny drew in her breath. Before her sprang up a mental snapshot of Clare as a little girl being questioned about Oliver Cromwell.
The slow rich voice went on:
“You never missed a polo match at Kandy, did you?”
“Never, if I could help it.”
“And on one occasion you entertained the players?”
Dinny could see a frown on her sister’s brow.
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“I believe it was last June.”
“Mr. Croom was one of the players, wasn’t he?”
“If he was, I didn’t see him.”
“You entertained him but you did not see him?”
“I did not.”
“Is that usual with hostesses in Kandy?”
“There were quite a lot of people, if I remember.”
“Come now, Lady Corven, here is the programme of the match—just take a look at it to refresh your memory.”
“I remember the match perfectly.”
“But you don’t remember Mr. Croom, either on the ground, or afterwards at your house?”
“I don’t. I was interested in the play of the Kandy team, and afterwards there were too many people. If I remembered him I should say so at once.”
It seemed to Dinny an immense time before the next question came.
“I am suggesting, you know, that you did not meet as strangers on the boat?”
“You may suggest what you like, but we did.”
“So you say.”
Catching her father’s muttered: “Damn the fellow!” Dinny touched his arm with her own.
“You heard the stewardess give her evidence? Was that the only time the co-respondent came to your state-room?”
“The only time he came for more than a minute.”
“Oh! He did come at other times?”
“Once or twice to borrow or return a book.”
“On the occasion when he came and spent—what was it?—half an hour there—”
“Twenty minutes, I should say.”
“Twenty minutes—what were you doing?”
“Showing him photographs.”
“Oh! Why not on deck?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that it was indiscreet?”
“I didn’t think about it. There were a lot of photos—snapshots and photos of my family.”
“But nothing that you couldn’t have shown him perfectly in the saloon or on deck?”
“I suppose not.”
“I take it you imagined he wouldn’t be seen?”
“I tell you I didn’t think about it.”
“Who proposed that he should come?”
“I did.”
“You knew you were in a very dubious position?”
“Yes, but other people didn’t.”
“You could have shown him those photographs anywhere? Looking back on it, don’t you think it was singular of you to do such a compromising thing for no reason at all?”
“It was less trouble to show them to him in the cabin; besides, they were private photos.”
“Now, Lady Corven, do you mean to say that nothing whatever took place between you during those twenty minutes?”
“He kissed my hand before he went out.”
“That is something, but not quite an answer to my question.”
“Nothing else that could give you satisfaction.”
“How were you dressed?”
“I regret to have to inform you that I was fully dressed.”
“My Lord, may I ask to be protected from these sarcasms?”
Dinny admired the stilly way in which the Judge said:
“Answer the questions simply, please.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Clare had moved out from under the shadow of the canopy and was standing with her hands on the rail of the box; spots of red had come into her cheeks.
“I suggest that you were lovers before you left the ship?”
“We were not, and we never have been.”
“When did you first see the co-respondent again after you left him on the dock?”
“I think about a week later.”
“Where?”
“Down near my people’s at Condaford.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was in a car.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, I had been canvassing and was going home to tea.”
“And the co-respondent?”
“He was in a car, too.”
“Sprang up in it, I suppose, quite naturally?”
“My Lord, I ask to be protected from these sarcasms.”
Dinny heard a tittering, and heard the Judge’s voice addressing nobody:
“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, Mr. Brough.”
The tittering deepened. Dinny could not resist stealing a glance. The handsome face was inimitably wine-coloured. Beside her, ‘very young’ Roger wore an expression of enjoyment tinctured by
anxiety.
“How came the co-respondent to be on this country road fifty miles from London?”
“He had come to see me.”
“You admit that?”
“He said so.”
“Perhaps you could tell us the exact words he used.”
“I could not, but I remember that he asked if he might kiss me.”
“And you let him?”
“Yes. I put my cheek out of the car, and he kissed it, and went back to his car and drove away.”
“And yet you say you were not lovers before you left the ship?”
“Not in your sense. I did not say that he was not in love with me. He was; at least he told me so.”
“Do you suggest that you were not in love with him?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“But you let him kiss you?”
“I was sorry for him.”
“You think that is proper conduct for a married woman?”
“Perhaps not. But after I left my husband I did not regard myself as a married woman.”
“Oh!”
Dinny had a feeling as if the whole Court had said that word. ‘Very young’ Roger’s hand emerged from his side pocket; he looked at what it contained intently, and put it back. A rueful frown had come on the pleasant broad face of the jurywoman who resembled a housekeeper.
“And what did you do after you had been kissed?”
“Went home to tea.”
“Feeling none the worse?”
“No; better if anything.”
Again the titter rose. The Judge’s face went round towards the box.
“Are you speaking seriously?”
“Yes, my Lord. I wish to be absolutely truthful. Even when they are not in love, women are grateful for being loved.”
The Judge’s face came round again to gaze at the unseen above Dinny’s head.
“Go on, Mr. Brough.”
“When was the next occasion on which you saw the co-respondent?”
“At my aunt’s house in London where I was staying.”
“Did he come to see your aunt?”
“No, to see my uncle.”
“Did he kiss you on that occasion?”
“No. I told him that if we were to meet, it must be platonically.”
“A very convenient word.”