“Yes. She called for me at Wentworth’s and we went back to the flat together.”
“Was Mrs. Cope there?”
“Yes.”
“What took place?”
“My sister told me about the Divorce Papers—showed them to me.”
“Was Mrs. Cope present?”
“No, she had gone.”
“Why?”
“I told her I would make the tea—that she need not wait.”
“Was there any unpleasantness before she left?”
“Oh yes. At least Mrs. Wisdon asked me to send her away.”
“Can you remember the words she used?”
“Approximately. She said, ‘Send that dreadful woman away; I can’t think how you can bear her near you.’”
“Did Mrs. Cope hear the words?”
“I’m afraid she did. I was sorry about it.”
“You were sorry about it. You knew that Mrs. Cope was easily offended, that she was a dangerous woman to offend.”
“I was sorry because I knew it would hurt her feelings.”
“Was Mrs. Cope angry?”
“Yes, I think she was.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Wisdon’s tired is she, she’s had a tiring day has she? Fancy that!’—or words to that effect.”
“She said it in a disagreeable way?”
“Yes.”
“Did you form the opinion that her feeling toward the respondent was amicable?”
“No.”
“You felt the respondent had made an enemy, rather a dangerous and unscrupulous enemy, perhaps?”
“I didn’t think of that. I just felt sorry that Mrs. Cope’s feelings were hurt.”
I saw by this time what Mr. Amber was driving at. He wanted to prove that Mrs. Cope was furious with Kitty; that she had given her evidence maliciously. It seemed to me a very frail straw to support his case, but I suppose it was the only straw left. I thought that it might be true up to a certain point. Mrs. Cope was not above getting her own back for the insult which had been offered her—probably she was glad of the opportunity—but she wouldn’t have lied to get her own back, I was sure of that. I had known the woman for twelve years and she was a simple creature, simple and good-hearted; intensely loyal to her friends, implacable to her enemies. Kitty had made an enemy of Mrs. Cope by a few inconsiderate words and this was the result. It would have been just as easy for Kitty to have made a friend of Mrs. Cope, and, if she had done so, Mrs. Cope would have gone to the stake rather than given evidence against her. Those few words of Kitty’s had lost her case, for it was lost entirely upon Mrs. Cope’s evidence. The alibi which seemed to be the whole defense had been utterly destroyed; there was not a shred of it left.
Mr. Amber sat down, and Garth’s counsel rose to cross-examine me. He did not trouble me much; he had won his case already, and he knew it—everybody in court knew it.
I did not go back to my seat after leaving the witness-box; I was too frightened of Kitty to go back. That look of hatred which I had caught was too clear in my mind. I leaned against the wall at the back of the court feeling sick and shaken. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm and looked down into the red, cheerful face of Mrs. Cope.
“You come along wif me, Miss,” she said in a friendly manner. “You do look green an’ no mistaike. Come an’ ’ave a nice cup o’ tea wif me. They won’t want us no more; it’s all over but the shouting.”
I let her lead me away. What she said was quite true—it was all over but the shouting.
Mrs. Cope and I had tea together in the court restaurant. I was glad of the tea, and I was glad of Mrs. Cope’s cheerful company. She made the whole affair seem unreal—she was real and human, the other was a bad dream. We talked about everyday matters, about the crying need for new linoleum for my hall, and whether the curtains in my sitting room could be made to last out another winter. When we had had our tea we went back to the courtroom, the three counsels had finished addressing the court and the Judge was summing up. He was very short.
“…the crux of the matter is this, do you or do you not believe in the honesty of the witnesses? If you believe them to be speaking the truth you have no option but to find the respondent guilty of adultery with the co-respondent, and the co-respondent guilty of adultery with the respondent. But if you believe the witnesses to be untrustworthy and moved by malice to give lying evidence you may discount their evidence or dismiss it entirely. I can trust you to give your best attention to the matter, weighing the evidence with care and impartiality. You may retire if you wish to do so.”
“There is no need for us to retire, my lord,” replied the foreman.
“You are agreed upon your verdict?”
“Yes, we are all agreed.”
“Do you find the respondent guilty of adultery with the co-respondent?”
“Yes.”
“Do you find the co-respondent guilty of adultery with the respondent?”
“Yes.”
I had known that Kitty’s case was hopeless, but the bald words were a shock, nevertheless. I did not wait to hear the Judge; I blundered out of the place, found a taxi and went home.
Chapter Six
Mr. Corrieston Explains
I was ill, really ill, for several days. I lay in bed, burning and shivering by turns, and the pain in my head was appalling. Mrs. Cope came in twice a day and looked after me like a mother. She made me strange lumpy concoctions which she called milk puddings and stood over me while I tried to eat them.
“’Ow’s the pore ’ead?” she would ask, looking down at me with a commiserating expression upon her usually cheerful countenance. “I remember the awful ’ead I ’ad two years ago when I ’ad the ’flu—that time I was off work an’ my sister-in-lor came an’ did for yer.”
“She very nearly did for me,” I replied weakly.
Mrs. Cope did not see my feeble joke. “There’s only a few spoons more,” she said, peering into the bowl, “taike it all up now, an’ ye’ll feel better.”
We did not mention the divorce case at all. At first I felt too ill to speak of anything, and afterward it seemed unnecessary to go back and rake it up. I did not want to quarrel with Mrs. Cope; she was the only friend I had at this time, and she was a good friend to me. When I recovered a little, and was able to sit up in bed without the whole room going round like a whirligig, I began to look forward to Mrs. Cope’s visits with something approaching eagerness. (It was so dull lying in bed, and I could not read for long without making my head ache.) I drew her out so that she should stay longer with me and Mrs. Cope was not loath to be drawn. She told me long tales—somewhat involved I found them—about the battles she had with the people on her stair, and especially about a certain Mrs. Ammet—or Hammet, I never knew which—who lived in the flat immediately below.
“She’s a pore weak thing,” said Mrs. Cope scornfully. “The kind wot taikes to ’er bed every time she ’as a pine an’ leaves ’er ’usban’ ter mind the baiby—you know.”
I nodded gravely.
“But fer all that she’s a tongue like a asp,” continued Mrs. Cope, “an’ the other d’y when I wos comin’ dahn the stairs we ’ad a bit of a argument so to speak. It’s not the first we’ve ’ad by no means, an’ it won’t be the last. Wot bisniss is it of ’ers, I should like ter know, if Cope does taike a drop too much of a Friday night?”
“None at all,” I agreed.
“That’s wot I s’y,” said Mrs. Cope. “’Er ’usban’s T.T. an’ a nasty ugly-tempered thing at that. Wot ’e don’t spend on a friendly drop o’ beer ’e spends on ’orses. Well, Mrs. Ammet ses—”
And with ghoulish glee Mrs. Cope embarked upon her complicated tale. Mrs. Ammet’s tongue might be aspish, but it seemed to me that Mrs. Cope was more than a match for it. In the encounters reported to me, at le
ast, Mrs. Cope always had the last word.
Mr. Wentworth was kind too. He came and saw me in bed, much to Mrs. Cope’s excitement, and brought me grapes and a new book about the Antarctic to while away the time.
“Don’t hurry back to work, Miss Dean,” he said as he rose to go. “Take another week off. I miss you very much, but I can manage for another week, and you deserve a little holiday.”
I was glad of the week, it was lovely autumn weather, and, when I had recovered sufficiently I went and sat in Kensington Gardens and watched the children playing. I felt weak and silly, and the happiness of the children, as they ran about and shouted at each other, touched a spring in my heart. They were so gay and pretty in the sunshine, like a flock of bright birds flitting to and fro. I had missed all that in my life—all the joys of normal womanhood—I was a very lonely woman, on the way to a lonely old age.
I wrote to Kitty saying that I was sorry for what had occurred and asking her to come to see me if she was in town, but I had no reply. Kitty vanished out of my life. She was angry with me, I knew. She had wanted me to lie, and I would not lie—I could not. Even if I had lied and said that I had looked into the bedroom and seen her there before I left the flat, nobody would have believed me.
I went over the whole case—all that I could remember of it—as I sat in the gardens in the sunshine with the children playing round me. I thought that if I could only get the whole thing straight and understand it, I could dismiss it from my mind, and that was what I wanted above all things. It was so horrible, so sordid and shameful, it made me feel unclean to think about it; and yet I had to think about it, because I could not understand it. There were several things about the case that baffled me completely.
Strangely enough it was Mr. Corrieston who enabled me to see the case in its proper light. I was sitting on a seat in the gardens and I saw him walking past. He looked very dapper in his top hat and morning coat. He saw me sitting there and came over the grass toward me, raising his hat.
“May I sit down and talk to you for a few minutes, Miss Dean?” he inquired.
“If you want to,” I replied. It seemed strange that he should want to talk to me, considering that I had lost him his case. He had worked for victory with such amazing energy, and I had brought him defeat; but it was evident from his manner that he bore me no ill-will, and he did not look like a defeated man; he was cheerful and brisk as ever and very smart.
Mr. Corrieston smiled at me in a friendly manner and sat down beside me. “Of course I want to,” he said. “I should not have asked for permission to talk to you if I had not wanted it.”
“I thought you might be annoyed with me,” I replied, half smiling in return.
“It was not your fault, Miss Dean.”
“I know, but—”
“So I am not annoyed with you. I am not an unreasonable man.”
“Why did you advise my sister to defend?” I asked him. “She had not a leg to stand on as far as I can see.”
“It was rather a strange case—but I was sure we could win, and Mr. Amber was quite confident.”
“But why?”
“For several reasons.” He ticked them off on his fat stubby fingers as he spoke. “One—Mrs. Wisdon is a very pretty woman and a very charming one. I was sure she would make a good witness, and she did. Two—Mr. Wisdon is hot-tempered and impatient. I was sure he would make a bad witness, and he did. Three—we thought the alibi was secure. Mrs. Wisdon had spent the night with her sister, therefore she could not have been at Maidenhead—these hotel proprietors and chambermaids can usually be discredited or bamboozled if the defense is at all convincing. Four—you have an honest face.”
“Then it all hung upon me?”
“It all hung upon you,” smiled Mr. Corrieston.
“But you said—”
“I said what I said for your good—and ours. I did not want you to think your evidence supremely important. You would have been even more nervous than you were.”
“And you think—but for Mrs. Cope—we would have won?”
“I think so. That woman upset the apple-cart—an interesting type, Miss Dean.”
“You don’t seem at all upset at losing the case. I suppose you get used to it,” I said, not very tactfully I’m afraid.
He laughed heartily. “I’m not so used to it as all that,” he said. “To tell you the truth I don’t often lose a case. If I had lost the case through carelessness, or for want of forethought, or through any mistake on my part I should have been very much upset. As it was, the case was perfectly handled.”
I disagreed with Mr. Corrieston, but I did not voice my opinion. I wanted to ask some more questions while he was in the mood to answer them.
“If you had trusted me, instead of bewildering me on purpose—” I began.
“Ho! ho! So I bewildered you on purpose,” he said, laughing foxily. “That was very reprehensible indeed.”
“It was very foolish,” I told him frankly.
“It was not foolish, Miss Dean. The first time I saw you I formed the opinion that you were too honest to be trusted—my judgment is rarely at fault. You would have made an excellent witness if you had been certain of your ground. If you had been sure that Mrs. Wisdon had slept in your bed—as you were until Mrs. Cope appeared on the scene—you would have convinced the jury quite easily and given Mrs. Wisdon the necessary alibi. That was all we wanted from you, but we wanted it badly. Everything would have gone well if it had not been for Mrs. Cope.”
“I could have warned you about Mrs. Cope,” I pointed out. “If I hadn’t been completely in the dark I would have warned you.”
“I didn’t know that such a person as Mrs. Cope existed,” said Mr. Corrieston. “I didn’t know that there was anything to be warned about. I could see no danger at all from keeping you in the dark—as you so aptly put it—and I could see the dangers of enlightening you quite clearly. I knew that you would be useless as a witness unless you could give your evidence with a perfectly clear conscience—and I was right.”
“I don’t quite see—”
“You were useless,” he said smiling. “Because you believed Mrs. Cope, you were worse than useless. But don’t worry too much, the case was lost before you gave your evidence—irretrievably lost. It was lost when Mrs. Cope went into the box. She was the unexpected factor in the case.”
“I wonder how Garth’s solicitor found her,” I said musingly.
“They made a fortunate hit. Law is like that, Miss Dean, there is a good deal of luck in the way the cards fall. I don’t mind losing a rubber when the cards are against me and my conscience is clear.”
“And if you had won the case,” I asked him, “won it knowing that you had won it by a lie?”
“Would my conscience still have been clear?” he said, laughing. “That’s what you meant, isn’t it? Oh, Miss Dean, you have much too tender a conscience for this world! That is my living. If I can win a case for a client who is not altogether innocent of what he is accused I am all the more pleased. Some men refuse such cases when they can afford to do so, but I shall never do that. Such cases interest me intensely, there is more in them, and they require more careful handling. I love to pit my brain against another equally astute. To watch skillful counsel handling such a case is meat and drink to me. To listen as he makes a point, or skates gracefully over a thin patch of ice, to see him encouraging one witness or bamboozling another—it is a great game. The most fascinating game in the world.”
We sat in silence for a minute or two while I assimilated the information I had gained. Mr. Corrieston had surprised me. I found I did not dislike him now; in fact I quite liked him. He had opened his heart to me and shown me his real self. I saw his point of view, and, although it could never be mine, I found it less despicable than I had expected.
“I’m afraid your sister is taking this hard,” he said at last.
“I don’t know—yes, I expect she is. I haven’t seen her.”
He shook his head. “She blames you—the most innocent and well-meaning of sisters—how like a charming lady!”
“Do you know where she is?” I inquired.
“I do. But I cannot tell you. She is not in London, I am glad to say. I found your sister slightly exhausting, Miss Dean. She is very charming, of course, but like many charming ladies she lacks balance, and she has too few reticences. She does not bear her burdens on her own back; she unloads them onto the nearest person with a sublime disregard of the said person’s feelings. Just a leetle bit inconsiderate, don’t you find?”
“So she was angry with you, too?” I said, and I couldn’t help smiling.
“She was angry with me, too.”
“Will she marry Mr. Hamilton, now?”
“My dear lady!” exclaimed Mr. Corrieston with a return of the manner which I so detested. “My dear lady, I do not know. If I knew I would tell you—that I do not know.”
“So that’s that,” I said, laughing against my will.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s that—and I hope we part friends, Miss Dean. You do not bear me any grudge for keeping you in the dark I hope?”
“I still think it was foolish policy.”
“And I still think it was wise.”
We shook hands and he got up and walked away quickly.
Chapter Seven
The Cross-Roads
I am now nearing the point where I want your advice, Clare. You will have been wondering why I have been so long in coming to the point, and why all this history—somewhat sordid in parts—should be necessary. I did not intend it to be so long when I started to write it. I thought a few pages would suffice to put the facts before you; but, as I wrote, I found that all that had happened in my life had a bearing on my choice of roads, and, to tell the truth, the task of writing it all down eased my mind and cleared my brain. Already I feel lightened, as if part of the burden of my loneliness and perplexity had fallen from my shoulders. I am doing what Mr. Corrieston deplored when he said of Kitty, “She does not bear her burdens on her own back; she unloads them onto the nearest person.” You are my nearest person, Clare, so I am unloading my burdens onto you, but you will not really have to bear them upon your back, my dear, for you will never read this history.
The Young Clementina Page 9