In Chancery tfs-3 Page 17

  “Will you come with me this morning…”

  “I’ve got to see…” began Val, but something in her face stopped him. “I say,” he said, “you don’t mean…”

  “Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning.” Already! – that d–d business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since nobody ever mentioned it. In self-commiseration he stood picking little bits of skin off his fingers. Then noticing that his mother’s lips were all awry, he said impulsively: “All right, mother; I’ll come. The brutes!” What brutes he did not know, but the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored a measure of equanimity.

  “I suppose I’d better change into a ‘shooter,”’ he muttered, escaping to his room. He put on the ‘shooter,’ a higher collar, a pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous accompaniment. Looking at himself in the glass, he said, “Well, I’m damned if I’m going to show anything!” and went down. He found his grandfather’s carriage at the door, and his mother in furs, with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly. They seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the business in hand. “There’ll be nothing about those pearls, will there?”

  The little tufted white tails of Winifred’s muff began to shiver.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “it’ll be quite harmless to-day. Your grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn’t let her. I thought you could take care of me. You look so nice, Val. Just pull your coat collar up a little more at the back—that’s right.”

  “If they bully you…” began Val.

  “Oh! they won’t. I shall be very cool. It’s the only way.”

  “They won’t want me to give evidence or anything?”

  “No, dear; it’s all arranged.” And she patted his hand. The determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val’s chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on. He had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats; they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan; whether to keep them on or not he could not decide. They arrived soon after ten. It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the building struck him at once.

  “By Jove!” he said as they passed into the hall, “this’d make four or five jolly good racket courts.”

  Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.

  “Here you are!” he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had made them too familiar for such formalities. “It’s Happerly Browne, Court I. We shall be on first.”

  A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing now in the top of Val’s chest, but he followed his mother and uncle doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that the place smelled ‘fuggy.’ People seemed to be lurking everywhere, and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.

  “I say, Uncle, you’re not going to let those beastly papers in, are you?”

  Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence in its time.

  “In here,” he said. “You needn’t take off your furs, Winifred.”

  Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up. In this confounded hole everybody—and there were a good many of them—seemed sitting on everybody else’s knee, though really divided from each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip down together into the well. This, however, was but a momentary vision—of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery—before he was sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all, glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the last time. His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and that he counted for something in this business.

  All right! He would show them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an ‘old Johnny’ in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody else.

  ‘Dartie versus Dartie!’

  It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one’s name called out like this in public! And, suddenly conscious that someone nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he were eating his own words—queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the port; he knew now where they ‘dug them up.’ All the same he found the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare if his mother had not touched his arm. Reduced to gazing before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge’s face instead. Why should that old ‘sportsman’ with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs—hadn’t he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty? And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated individualism of his breed. The voice behind him droned along: “Differences about money matters—extravagance of the respondent” (What a word! Was that his father?)—“strained situation—frequent absences on the part of Mr. Dartie. My client, very rightly, your Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course—but lead to ruin—remonstrated—gambling at cards and on the racecourse—” (‘That’s right!’ thought Val, ‘pile it on!’) “Crisis early in October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club.” Val sat up and his ears burned. “I propose to read it with the emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been—shall we say dining, me Lud?”

  ‘Old brute!’ thought Val, flushing deeper; ‘you’re not paid to make jokes!’

  “‘You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house. I am leaving the country to-morrow. It’s played out’—an expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who have not met with conspicuous success.”

  ‘Sniggering owls!’ thought Val, and his flush deepened.

  “‘I am tired of being insulted by you.’ My client will tell your Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him ‘the limit’, – a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all the circumstances.”

  Val glanced sideways at his mother’s impassive face, it had a hunted look in the eyes. ‘Poor mother,’ he thought, and touched her arm with his own. The voice behind droned on.

  “‘I am going to live a new life. M. D.’”

  “And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship Tuscarora for Buenos Aires. Since then we have nothing from him but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her. With your Ludship’s permission. I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the box.”

  When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and say: ‘Look here! I’m going to see you jolly well treat her decently.’ He subdued it, however; heard her saying, ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ and looked up. She made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud of her thus confronting all these ‘confounded lawyers.’ The examination began. Knowing that this was only the preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back. It seemed to him that they were ‘foxing Old Bagwigs finely.’

  And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:

  “Now, why did your husband leave you—not because you called him ‘the limit,’ you know?”

  Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told him that the issue was in peril. Had Uncle Soames and the old buffer behind made a mess of it? His mother was speaking with a slight drawl.

  “No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time.” />
  “What had gone on?”

  “Our differences about money.”

  “But you supplied the money. Do you suggest that he left you to better his position?”

  ‘The brute! The old brute, and nothing but the brute!’ thought Val suddenly. ‘He smells a rat he’s trying to get at the pastry!’ And his heart stood still. If—if he did, then, of course, he would know that his mother didn’t really want his father back. His mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.

  “No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money. It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last—and when he did…”

  “I see, you had refused. But you’ve sent him some since.”

  “My Lord, I wanted him back.”

  “And you thought that would bring him?”

  “I don’t know, my Lord, I acted on my father’s advice.”

  Something in the Judge’s face, in the sound of the papers behind him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle’s legs, told Val that she had made just the right answer. ‘Crafty!’ he thought; ‘by Jove, what humbug it all is!’

  The Judge was speaking:

  “Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie. Are you still fond of your husband?”

  Val’s hands, slack behind him, became fists. What business had that Judge to make things human suddenly? To make his mother speak out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn’t know herself, before all these people! It wasn’t decent. His mother answered, rather low: “Yes, my Lord.” Val saw the Judge nod. ‘Wish I could take a cock-shy at your head!’ he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat beside him. Witnesses to his father’s departure and continued absence followed—one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for restitution, and they got up to go. Val walked out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to despise everybody. His mother’s voice in the corridor roused him from an angry trance.

  “You behaved beautifully, dear. It was such a comfort to have you. Your uncle and I are going to lunch.”

  “All right,” said Val; “I shall have time to go and see that fellow.” And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs and out into the air. He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the Goat’s Club. His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow’s paper.

  * * *

  When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the Cheshire Cheese. He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr. Bellby. At that early hour of noon they would have it to themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be ‘amusing’ to see this far-famed hostelry. Having ordered a light repast, to the consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half’s suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity. Mr. Bellby entered presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum. Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the matter with that!

  “Quite,” said Soames in a suitably low voice, “but we shall have to begin again to get evidence. He’ll probably try the divorce—it will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the start. His questions showed well enough that he doesn’t like this restitution dodge.”

  “Pho!” said Mr. Bellby cheerily, “he’ll forget! Why, man, he’ll have tried a hundred cases between now and then. Besides, he’s bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is satisfactory. We won’t let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge of the facts. Dreamer did it very nicely—he’s got a fatherly touch about um!”

  Soames nodded.

  “And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie,” went on Mr. Bellby; “ye’ve a natural gift for giving evidence. Steady as a rock.”

  Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and the remark: “I ‘urried up the pudden, sir. You’ll find plenty o’ lark in it to-day.”

  Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose. But Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of gravified brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-givers. Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece. Conversation turned on the war. Soames thought Ladysmith would fall, and it might last a year. Bellby thought it would be over by the summer. Both agreed that they wanted more men. There was nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of prestige. Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season too would be over. The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six months was necessary—after that the earlier the better. People were now beginning to come in, and they parted—Soames to the city, Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let her mother know how she had fared. The issue had been so satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn’t know about Winifred’s affair, he couldn’t tell. As his sands ran out; the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him, as if he were feeling: ‘I must make the most of it, and worry well; I shall soon have nothing to worry about.’

  He received the report grudgingly. It was a new-fangled way of going about things, and he didn’t know! But he gave Winifred a cheque, saying:

  “I expect you’ll have a lot of expense. That’s a new hat you’ve got on. Why doesn’t Val come and see us?”

  Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon. And, going home, she sought her bedroom where she could be alone. Now that her husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to find out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.

  Chapter VIII.

  THE CHALLENGE

  The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would canter on to the usual tryst. His spirits were rising rapidly. There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning’s proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy. ‘If we were engaged!’ he thought, ‘what happens wouldn’t matter.’ He felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the results of matrimony, and hastens to get married. And he galloped over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late. But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully. He could not go back without seeing her to-day! Emerging from the Park, he proceeded towards Robin Hill. He could not make up his mind for whom to ask. Suppose her father were back, or her sister or brother were in! He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first, so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them were in—an ‘excuse for a ride’ must be his saving grace.

  “Only Miss Holly is in, sir.”

  “Oh! thanks. Might I take my horse round to the stables? And would you say—her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie.”

  When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy. She led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.

  “I’ve been awfully anxious,” said Val in a low voice. “What’s the matter?”

  “Jolly knows about our riding.”

  “Is he in?”

  “No; but I expect he will be soon.”

  “Then!” cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand. She tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at him wistfully.

  “First of all,” he said, “I want to tell you something about my family. My Dad, you know, isn’t altogether—I mean, he’s left my mother and they’re trying to divorce him; so
they’ve ordered him to come back, you see. You’ll see that in the paper to-morrow.”

  Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed his. But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:

  “Of course there’s nothing very much at present, but there will be, I expect, before it’s over; divorce suits are beastly, you know. I wanted to tell you, because—because—you ought to know—if—” and he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, “if—if you’re going to be a darling and love me, Holly. I love you—ever so; and I want to be engaged.” He had done it in a manner so inadequate that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face. “You do love me—don’t you? If you don’t I…” There was a moment of silence and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut. Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he gasped: “Oh, Holly!”

  Her answer was very soft: “Oh, Val!”

  He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched, trembly. He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own surrender—so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids closed and his lips nearing them. Her eyes opened, seemed to swim a little; he pressed his lips to hers. Suddenly he sprang up; there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt. He looked round. No one! But the long curtains which barred off the outer hall were quivering.

  “My God! Who was that?”

  Holly too was on her feet.

  “Jolly, I expect,” she whispered.

  Val clenched fists and resolution.

  “All right!” he said, “I don’t care a bit now we’re engaged,” and striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside. There at the fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately turned. Val went forward. Jolly faced round on him.