1
If you, being a stranger to this London of ours, inquire after Temple
Bar, your inquiry will be fruitless.
Temple Bar was removed about forty years since; but if you traverse the
Strand, and, leaving the jostle of the Strand behind you, venture
on--past Mr. Gladstone's statue and the two churches which part the
streaming traffic as rocks part the waters of a river--you will become
suddenly aware of two pointed wings and a grotesque dragon-shaped head
showing black between high buildings against a narrow slip of sky.
This is the "Griffin." He stands where Temple Bar stood. Above him tower
the clock and gray pinnacles of the law courts. Westward, he looks
toward the seethe of near Aldwych, and far Trafalgar Square. Behind him
clang the news-presses of Fleet Street. At his right wing and his left
you will find the advocates of our law; "barristers," as we call them.
They are not quite of the every-day world, these barristers. Their
minds, even their bodies, seem to move more precisely. The past
influences them rather than the present. Sentimentality influences them
hardly at all. At home--even now very few of them live at the wings of
the Griffin--these men may be lovers, husbands, friends. Here they are
advocates of a code, a selected body, inheritors of a
six-hundred-year-old tradition. Very pleasant fellows on the whole: not
at all inhuman; only--as befits their calling--a little aloof.
It may perhaps help our stranger to understand this aloofness if,
turning southward from the Griffin down the clefts of Inner or Middle
Temple Lane, he will explore some of the "courts" where these barristers
of ours have their "chambers"--Hare Court, Pump Court, Fountain Court,
Miter Court, and the rest.
Here, not a newsboy's shout from Fleet Street, our exploring stranger
will find a veritable sanctum of time-defying quiet--red-brick and
gray-stone houses, paved or graveled walks, fountains, courtyards,
trees, gardens, cloisters, colonnades, and quadrangles; the whole set,
as though it were a symbol of tradition controlling progress, midway
between the moneyed "City" and the governing "West End."
But the quiet of the Temple--Gray's Inn and Clifford's Inn lie north of
the Griffin and beyond our story--is an illusive quiet; the quiet of
good manners concealing busyness. If you watch the faces of the men who
walk those graveled courtyards, you will see them as obsessed by thought
as the faces of any merchant in the moneyed City. If you climb the
uncarpeted stairs of those Georgian houses, and read the names painted
in block letters on the doors, you will find many whom the clanging
presses of Fleet Street have made familiar--and many, many more to whom
even the fame of Fleet Street has never come.
* * * * *
So far, Ronald Cavendish, who shared his chambers in Pump Court with
three other barristers and Benjamin Bunce, their communal clerk--a
little melancholy individual with a face like parchment, the clothes of
a waiter off duty, and watery blue eyes which perpetually craved
recognition--belonged to the latter category. "But the Ellerson case,"
thought Benjamin, "might easily bring 'us' into prominence."
It meant a good deal that "we," who had lost five years at the bar
through "our" going to the war, should be briefed by Wilberforce,
Wilberforce & Cartwright, that very solid firm of Society solicitors, as
junior to the great Brunton. "We," backed by our friendship with young
Mr. Wilberforce, "our" mother's name, and an undoubted grip of common
law problems, were certainly going to get on--an excellent circumstance
for Bunce.
"Ellerson _v._ Ellerson to-day, sir. King's Bench Seven. Mr. Justice
Mallory's court. I have put the papers on your desk." The little man
spoke as though "we" were so busy as to need reminding; and withdrew
into the anteroom.
Ronald Cavendish threw an amused "Thanks, Bunce," after the retreating
figure; and applied himself to study. Ellerson (Lady Hermione) _v._
Ellerson (Lord Arthur) presented features of intense legal interest.
Could a wife, actually but not yet judicially separated from her
husband, sue him for libel? If successful, could she obtain damages?
There were precedents, of course--Hill _v._ Hill and another, Rowland
_v._ Rowland. To say nothing of the celebrated Clitheroe decision!
Long ago the junior, acting on Brunton's instructions, had looked up
those precedents. Now another possible one crossed his mind. He rose
from the ink-stained table; searched among the bookshelves; found a
volume; and stood thumbing it. The precedent was useless: Brunton, as
usual, had drawn the covert like a pack of beagles--leaving not even a
rabbit unscented.
Brunton! Thinking of his "leader," professional instincts blurted in the
barrister's brain. The low, dingy, paneled room, the shaft of sunlight
on the worn carpet, the green of trees at his window, seemed to vanish
from view. He was on horseback again--fox-hunting--with Brunton's wife.
"March," he thought. "And now it's May. Why can't I forget?"
But he couldn't forget. The woman's face, flawless, almost colorless,
the vivid wallflower-brown of her eyes and hair, had haunted him for
nearly three months. He was "in love" with her. At least, he supposed he
must be "in love."
He had been "in love" before; with a girl in Hampshire (long ago,
that--he could scarcely remember her name--Prudence); with the usual
undesirable; with his cousin, Lucy Edwards, when he went to the front.
Remembering such milk-and-water affairs, it seemed impossible that this
new emotion could be love.
Was it perhaps passion! He began, standing there in the sunlight, to
consider passion--as dispassionately as Aliette herself might have tried
to consider it. (In deliberation of thought, they resembled each other,
these two.) Although by no means an ascetic, he hated the abstract idea
of passion, finding it rather indecent--like the letters not meant for
public eyes which, defying the vigilance of solicitors, occasionally
found their way into that stereotyped farce, the divorce court.
And yet this emotion could hardly be other than passion.
The blue eyes under the broad brow grew very serious. Inwardly Ronald
Cavendish, despite his outward poise--the result of training--had
remained extraordinarily young. "Passion," he thought; "how beastly."
And for another man's wife! That made it impossible. That was why the
emotion must be fought.
He had been fighting it ever since they parted. But the emotion would
not be conquered. At times it became an ache, a sheer physical ache.
At such times--and one of them, he knew, was on him now--Ronnie
conceived an amazing distrust of his own self-control; an amazing
gladness that they had not met in London: although he had seen her, at a
distance, more than once, walking across Hyde Park, a Great Dane dog at
her heels. They looked, to his imagination, the tiniest mite forlorn--a
little lonely woman (he always thought of her as little) with a big
lonely hound. Invariably, the sight of her dispelled mere passion,
melting it to a strange tenderness, akin to the tenderness he felt
toward his mother.
"Mr. James Wilberforce on the telephone, sir," announced Benjamin Bunce;
and shattered introspection. Ronnie went outside to the communal
telephone.
"Hello, Ronnie." The solicitor's voice sounded irascible over the wire.
"Hello, Jimmy; what's the trouble?"
"The Ellerson case. Lady H. has got the wind up. She's with the pater
now; wants to go and sit in court till the case comes on; wants a
conference with Brunton; wants anything and everything. Of course we
can't get hold of H. B. Can we bring her over to you?"
"Bring her along, by all means," said the barrister.
2
The offices of Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, which occupy three
floors of a modern red-brick building at the foot of Norfolk Street,
fifty yards from the Thames Embankment and the Temple station of the
Underground, are rabbit-warrened by white-wood partitions and frosted
glass doors into a maze of conflicting passages.
On the top floor are the bookkeeping rooms, whence issue--still in
stately clerical handwritings--those red-taped folioed bills ("To long
and special interview when we informed you that we had taken counsel's
opinion and he was of the opinion that . . .") which are never disputed
though often delayed in payment by an aristocratic clientèle.
Below these, the Cartwrights--an old-fashioned firm of City solicitors
and commissioners for oaths, with a practice one third commercial (Mr.
Jacob Cartwright), one third admiralty (Mr. Hezekiah Cartwright), and
one third criminal (Mr. John Cartwright), who amalgamated with the
Wilberforces in 1918--hold undisputed sway.
On the ground floor, guarded by a bemedaled commissionaire, sit Sir
Peter Wilberforce and his son, surrounded by their secretaries, their
telephone-exchange, their notice-boards, and their waiting-rooms.
Jimmy Wilberforce finished his conversation on the private telephone;
left the box; gave a casual glance at two obviously seafaring gentlemen
who were importuning Sergeant Murphy to "hurry up Mr. Hezekiah"; and
went back to his father's office--a scrupulously tidy apartment, black
gold-lettered deed-boxes lining one of its walls, the rest pictureless
and painted palest écru in contrast with the mahogany furniture and the
tobacco-brown carpet on which Lady Hermione Ellerson's ermine muff now
sprawled like a huge white cat.
Jimmy's father--a white-haired, white-mustached old gentleman,
gold-eye-glassed, black-coated, a little bald of forehead but still
ruddy of cheek--sat in his favorite attitude, one fine hand on the
chair-arm, the other grasping an ivory paper-knife, at the
leather-topped desk by the big bright window. By his side drooped his
client.
"Well?" queried Sir Peter Wilberforce.
Jimmy turned to Lady Hermione. "I am afraid I can't get hold of Brunton
for you. But Cavendish can see us if we go over at once."
"Oh, that is kind of Mr. Cavendish!" purred Lady Hermione.
3
"Lady Hermione Ellerson, Sir Peter Wilberforce, Mr. James Wilberforce,"
announced Benjamin Bunce.
Ronald, rising to receive his client, was met with an outstretched hand
and a torrent of words.
"Oh, Mr. Cavendish, you will help us, won't you? It's like this, you
see. Last night while I was playing bridge at the club, Mr.
Vereker--he's a barrister, you know--told me that I ought to settle. Of
course, as Sir Peter says, he _is_ in a kind of way a friend of my
husband's----"
The tall willowy creature--she had dark hair, dark eyes, long nervous
hands, and a long pearl necklace which bobbed nervously on her flat
young bosom--rattled away till Wilberforce senior stopped her. Then she
drooped to the offered chair, and sat interjecting staccato comments
while the three men did their best to reassure her.
"And still I think I'd rather settle," she ejaculated, after half an
hour's conference.
"My dear Lady Ellerson"--old Peter Wilberforce employed his softest
purr--"of course I'll settle if you want me to. But I _do_ ask you to
consider the effect on your reputation. And besides, we have an
excellent case. A really excellent case. Your husband's own admission,
in the interrogatories, that he had discussed the question of divorcing
you with other people besides his father. The fact that he never _did_
institute proceedings for a divorce, that he never had the slightest
grounds for instituting such proceedings----"
"Still, Mr. Vereker said----"
"Can't we forget Mr. Vereker? Mr. Cavendish has assured you that
legally----"
"Oh, I hate the law!" burst out Lady Hermione. "I wish that Arthur----"
She began to cry, in a ladylike lace-handkerchief way that made her
extraordinarily alluring; and Ronnie, who had only been giving his sober
opinion on the professional subtleties involved, without considering the
human aspect, felt suddenly sorry for her. Women, in matrimonial cases,
nearly always got the worst of it.
Besides, he knew the Ellersons socially, knew a little of their
history--war-marriage, quarrels about money, separation, and now this
curious case in which she was suing her husband for libel and slander.
It seemed a pity that they did not arrange a divorce and have done with
it.
The telephone rang. Benjamin Bunce came in to say that Sir Peter's
office wanted him, that Mr. Justice Mallory was already summing up the
preceding case, and that Ellerson _v_. Ellerson would come on
immediately after the adjournment. The conference broke up.
4
"I'm afraid she won't fight it out," pronounced Wilberforce, snatching a
hasty meal, at Ronnie's invitation, in the somber paneled splendor of
Inner Temple Hall.
All up and down the long monastic tables, under the stained-glass
windows and dignified pictures, other barristers and their guests were
lunching, their low talk hardly reaching their neighbors' ears.
"Unless Brunton makes her," went on the solicitor.
They discussed their client with some frankness for another ten minutes,
consulted watches, and moved themselves to a second monastic apartment
for coffee and cigarettes.
"Talking of H. B.," said Wilberforce, "reminds me that I had a letter
from his wife's sister the other day. She's staying with the Bruntons at
Lancaster Gate, and wants me to call on her."
"Really?"
"You'd better come too. There's nothing like a bit of social work for
getting briefs. Besides, little Mrs. Brunton's charming. We'll go next
Sunday afternoon."
"Sorry, I'm going to play golf." Ronnie spoke calmly, his serious face
giving no hint of the emotions which his friend's suggestion had set
stirring. "What made Miss Fullerford write to you?"
"Oh, we've been corresponding for some time. I promised to help her
about--a legal matter." Wilberforce nearly blushed. "She's a nice girl,
isn't she?
"I'm getting on for forty, you know," he went on, getting no reply. "And
they'll make the pater a baronet one of these days. About time I got
married, don't you think, old man!" Then he consulted his watch again;
and hurried off to Norfolk Street.
Ronnie, having paid for their coffee, sauntered out through the
colonnades to his chambers, and back through Inner Temple Lane toward
the law courts. Sauntering, brief under arm, he thought of his friend.
So Jimmy intended proposing to Mollie Fullerford. She would accept him,
of course. Jimmy was a splendid match. Reticent devil--he hadn't even
mentioned the girl since their return from Key Hatch. Jimmy would be
Aliette's brother-in-law. Aliette! He had no right to think of her as
"Aliette." Jimmy to marry Aliette's sister--that would mean the end of
their friendship. How women complicated one's life! Why should he end
his friendship with Jimmy, his best pal, just because . . .
"Because of what?" asked the schoolmaster Cavendish in Ronnie's mind.
"Because you're in love with his future sister-in-law," answered the
imaginative Wixton.
5
Passing up the broad steps into the law courts, Ronnie was aware of
unusual commotion. Society, mainly represented by the "Ritz crowd," had
decided to patronize the Ellerson case. Lady Cynthia Barberus and her
friend Miss Elizabeth Cattistock were posing to massed batteries of
press cameras. An aristocratic poetess with bobbed hair had draped
herself by the railings. Two actresses, so fashionable that they only
needed to act when off the stage, drove up with Lord Letchingbury, the
latest patron of the unpaying drama, in a Rolls-Royce limousine, causing
mild excitement among a crowd of collected loafers. The constable,
saluting Ronnie, positively beamed approval.
Ronnie, returning the salute a trifle grimly (like many of his kind, the
publicity side of the law always irritated him), entered the archway and
turned left-handed into the robing-rooms.
Here all was quiet again. Hugh Spillcroft, a rising young specialist in
commercial cases, spoke to him as he arranged the white bands round his
collar, tucked in the tapes and drew on his black "stuff" robe before
adjusting the light gray, horsehair wig.
"Going to win?"
"Settled out of court, I should say."
"Not if H. B. can help it," snapped Henry Smith-Assher, am enormous
Pickwickian fellow with a bull-neck and a bull-face. "That chap never
misses a chance of self-advertisement."
Two or three other men chimed in. Brunton, it appeared, was paying the
usual penalty of the successful--unpopularity. Ronnie put on his wig,
and passed out, a dignified legal figure, into the great hall of the
courts.
This place, so vast and bare that the largest cloud of witnesses would
leave it uncrowded, so high and dim that even at noon its vaulted roof
seems lost in a brown haze, exercised a peculiar fascination over Julia
Cavendish's only son. The Wixton in him saw it as the gigantic anteroom
of traditional justice, a symbol whose hugeness hushed even scoffers to
an awed silence.
For he loved his profession, this diffident, difficult young man; and,
loving it, held its code, despite all the imperfections he was first to
acknowledge, very high.
But this afternoon, somehow or other, the inhumanity of the place
depressed him. Outside, there was sunshine, traffic, life, even love;
here, only gloom and rules. As he strode diagonally across the
flagstones up the tortuous staircase to "king's bench division," he met
Thurston, the divorce specialist.
"Hello, Cavendish," greeted Thurston; "you've got the spicy case
to-day."
Lady Hermione was standing by the embrasure of the corridor-window,
talking to Sir Peter. Already a little crowd had foregathered round the
glass-paneled oak doors of the court-room. She smiled at Ronnie over
their heads. He smiled back at her reassuringly; caught Sir Peter's
conference-forbidding eye; and pushed his way through the swing-doors
and the red curtain into court.
The square, high apartment, paneled in dark oak as a church--judge's
daïs, jury-box, clerk's table, and pulpit-like witness-box dominating
its raked pews (above which the spectators' and judge's galleries
already rustled anticipatory silks and feathers),--was still half-empty.
Ronnie insinuated his long body into the junior's pew, which is behind
that reserved for king's counsel, and began turning over his brief.
Turning it, he could not help thinking of his "leader"--of
Brunton--Brunton whose "war service" had not cost him five years' loss
of briefs--Brunton, who had fame, and fat fees, and a house in Lancaster
Gate . . . and Aliette for wife. The court began to fill. Twelve
"special" jurymen, equally fed up with a bad lunch and the
disappointment at not having been dismissed after the last case,
clattered into their box. The clerk and the reporters took their places.
Barristers, some with applications to present before the opening of
Ellerson _v_. Ellerson, some mere spectators, pushed their way along the
front pews. In the back pews crowded various witnesses, solicitors'
clerks, and a favored few among the public who had bluffed or bribed
their way in.
Lord Arthur arrived with his solicitor. They stood talking for some
moments, and finally sat down. Ronnie, looking up from his brief, could
see their two heads, still conferring, below him to his left. The
opposing K.C., Sir Martin Duckworth, a smooth-faced, smooth-voiced
politician, arrived in a very new silk gown, and asked audibly of his
junior if he'd seen the plaintiff. The plaintiff and Sir Peter sidled to
their places in front of the clerk's table, turning courteous backs on
the defendant. Last of all, five seconds before the opening, Brunton
rushed in.
Aliette's husband, looking dignified enough in full legal trappings,
nodded at Ronnie; and leaned over to greet his client just as the
bewigged clerk announced "Silence"; and Mr. Justice Mallory, a
benevolent-looking old image--scarlet baldrick across his wide-sleeved
gown, winking spectacles across his creased forehead--appeared through
the curtain at the back of his daïs; was risen to by the court; and took
his seat.
Various barristers rose up; presented various applications; and sat down
again to hear "Ellerson _v._ Ellerson" or withdrew--according to the
degree of busyness they had attained.
For Ellerson _v._ Ellerson, as "opened" a moment later by Hector
Brunton, was more than a _cause célèbre_: it might, if fought to a
decision, go down to legal history as a "test" case, a precedent
established for all time. Wherefore the barristers--such as
could--stayed.
But the twelve men in the jury-box were not barristers. "His lordship,"
Brunton told them, "will direct you on the legal questions involved. All
_I_ ask you to consider is this. If I prove, as I shall prove to you by
the mouths of competent witnesses, that this unhappy, this innocent
lady, my client, has been slandered, and vilely slandered--for, mark my
words, there is no slander so vile as a slander on a woman's virtue--by
the man at whose hands she has the right most to expect protection--by
her husband: if I prove to you that, through this slander, she has
suffered damage, intellectual damage, social damage, damage to her
health and to her reputation: then, gentlemen, I hope you will
demonstrate by your verdict that, in England at any rate, a wife is not
her husband's property, his chattel to do with as he will, but a free
citizeness, as much entitled to be protected from the slanders of her
husband as from those of any other man or woman in this country."
Brunton boomed on--his appeal all to sentiment. The judge drowsed.
Ronnie, nonchalant behind his leader, could not help envying the even
flow of his oratory. "If only I could speak like that," thought Ronnie
vaguely.
But suddenly, as the K.C. neared his peroration, Ronnie's nonchalance
vanished. "Marriage," boomed Brunton, "is not slavery. A man, just
because he happens to marry a woman, does not own her."
"But he does," thought the junior; "in law he does own her. In law this
man owns Aliette."
And suddenly the broad black-silked back, the bulging neck under the
horsehair curls, the loud confident voice, and every gesture of the
gentlemanly hands grew hateful. He, Ronald Cavendish, the man and not
the lawyer in him, resented all these; and resented them all the more
furiously because he hated himself for the resentment.
At last Brunton sat down.
"Opened high enough, didn't he?" whispered Jimmy Wilberforce, who had
insinuated himself to the side of Ronnie's pew. "Wonder what he'll make
of her in the witness-box."
But now, before Brunton could call his witnesses, Sir Martin Duckworth
rose to address his lordship.
No case, submitted Sir Martin, had been made out for the jury. A
husband--in law--could not slander his wife; nor a wife her husband. In
law they were both one. Therefore, even if his learned friend succeeded
in obtaining a verdict, he could not succeed on the question of damages.
That had been laid down in . . . The politician produced authorities,
calf-bound volumes book-marked with strips of paper. He began quoting
them in his singsong sleepy voice. Lady Cynthia yawned audibly.
Brunton turned to Cavendish, as a sportsman to his loader; and, as a
well-trained loader, Cavendish supplied the legal weapons--books. The
flash of hatred against Brunton was forgotten in his eagerness to win.
The judge began arguing with the politician. "He, the judge, understood
that the parties in this case were not actually living together. Did not
that, in Sir Martin's opinion, make any difference?" In Sir Martin's
opinion, it did not. Brunton chipped in. The lawyers in court stiffened
to interest. Miss Elizabeth Cattistock blew an irritated nose.
The wrangle between bench and bar persisted: only Ronnie, who took no
part in it, saw Lady Hermione's black hat turn slowly from right to
left. It seemed to Ronnie's imagination that the invisible eyes under
the hat-brim were making some call to Lord Arthur. Then he saw Lord
Arthur's head turn, almost imperceptibly, from left to right; saw Lord
Arthur's eyes light with understanding, soften to that invisible appeal.
"She'll never go into the box," thought Ronnie. "She'll go back to her
husband." And despite his eagerness to win, he felt glad--glad that
humanity should triumph over the law.
But Brunton was not bothering about the humanities, Brunton protested
that Sir Martin had not made good his argument. Brunton pressed his
lordship to allow the case to go to the jury.
His lordship thought it quite possible there might be a case to go to
the jury. Nevertheless, his lordship felt it his duty to impress on both
parties the painfulness, the unnecessary painfulness, of such a case as
this. Would not the distinguished counsel on both sides consult with
their clients? Surely there must be some way by which--Mr. Justice
Mallory coughed judicially--a compromise, if necessary a financial
compromise, could be effected.
"Interfering old fool," whispered Brunton to his junior.
Ensued a further orgy of whispering: Lord Arthur, his solicitor and Sir
Martin on one side: Brunton, Lady Hermione and Sir Peter on the other.
Behind him, Ronnie heard Lady Cynthia's muffled staccato, "I say, she
isn't going to settle, is she?" and Miss Elizabeth Cattistock's "If she
does, I win my bet."
Now the K.C.'s withdrew from their clients; drew together, still
whispering; drew away from each other; whispered with their clients
again; and returned to conference.
"I'm afraid it's a wash-out, Cavendish," the leader managed to convey
behind his hand as Sir Martin Duckworth rose to address the court.
His lordship and the jury, announced Sir Martin, would not--he was
delighted to say--be further troubled with this--er--very painful case.
His client had agreed to terms, the financial aspect of which--with his
lordship's permission--Sir Martin did not think it necessary to
disclose.
Did he understand, interrupted Mr. Justice Malory, that the action would
be withdrawn?
Brunton took up the cue. "_My_ client," boomed Brunton, "has consented
to withdraw her action; not that she feels her case in any way weakened,
but because--acting on your Lordship's advice, and, if I may be allowed
to say so, on my own--she has, at the very earnest solicitation of her
husband, decided," the K.C.'s voice dropped to its point, "to return to
him."
Lady Cynthia's audible "Well, I'm damned!" a little rustle of mannerly
applause, and a beam from Mr. Justice Mallory marked the ending of
Ellerson _v._ Ellerson--a happy ending, as it seemed to Lady Hermione's
junior counsel.
6
But Hector Brunton thought otherwise. Recently it had seemed to him as
though Aliette might relent. Ever since her return from Devonshire he
had been conscious of some subtle, incomprehensible change in her.
Therefore it piqued his pride to find her, on his return from court, not
even vaguely interested in the newspaper reports of his speech--more
especially as that speech was quoted almost verbatim under the heading:
"K.C. says woman is not man's property."
"We ought to have fought the thing out," he told her. "That's what I
said to Cavendish."
Aliette's face did not betray her, but her heart--the heart which had
almost persuaded itself of cure--dropped two telltale beats.
"Clever chap, young Cavendish," went on the K.C. "I'd like to have him
to dinner one evening."
With a thoughtful "Why not take him to the club, Hector?" the K.C.'s
wife went upstairs to dress.