§ 5

The next morning Sir John drove up to London to consult his solicitors. The next day he was there again, taking Mary with him. After that came endless arguments, letters and consultations. The solicitors’ advice was to persuade Julian Pembroke to withdraw his petition, but this proved impossible, for Julian, it now appeared, was anxious to marry again. He had fallen in love with a young girl of nineteen, whose parents were willing to accept him if Mary could be decorously got rid of.

This made Sir John all the more resolute that Mary should not be decorously got rid of—if mud was slung there was always a chance of some of it sticking to Julian and spoiling his appearance for the sweet young thing who had won the doubtful prize of his affections. He would have sacrificed a great deal to bring a counter-petition, but very slight investigations proved that there was no ground for this. Julian knew what he was doing, and had been discreet, whereas Mary had put herself in the wrong all through. Sir John would have to content himself with vindicating his daughter’s name and making it impossible for Julian to marry his new choice.

Mary’s resistance had entirely broken down—the family had crushed her, and she was merely limp and listless in their hands. Nothing seemed to matter—her chance of a quiet retreat into freedom and obscurity was over, and now seemed scarcely worth fighting for. What did it matter if her life’s humiliation was exposed and gaped at?—if she had to stand up and answer dirty questions to prove her cleanness?... She ought to have been stronger, she knew—but it was difficult to be strong when one stood alone, without weapon or counsellor.

Jenny and Gervase were on her side, it is true, but they were negligible allies, whether from the point of view of impressing the family, or of any confidence their advice and arguments could inspire in herself. Vera Alard, though she did not share the family point of view, had been alienated by her sister-in-law’s surrender—“I’ve no sympathy with a woman who knows what she wants but hasn’t the courage to stand out for it,” she said to Peter. In her heart she thought that Mary was lying—that she had tried Charles Smith as a lover and found him wanting, but would have gladly used him as a means to freedom, if her family hadn’t butted in and made a scandal of it.

As for Peter, he no longer felt inclined to take his sister’s part. He was angry with her for her forgetfulness of her dignity. She had been careless of her honour, forgetting that it was not only hers but Alard’s—she had risked the family’s disgrace, before the world and before the man whose contempt of all the world’s would be hardest to bear. Peter hated such carelessness and such risks—he would do nothing more for Mary, especially as she had said she did not want to marry Charles Smith. If she had wanted that he would have understood her better, but she had said she did not want it, and thus had lost her only claim to an undefended suit. For Peter now did not doubt any more than his family that Julian would fail to prove his case.

Outside the family, Charles Smith did his best to help her. He came down to see her and try to persuade her people to let the petition go through undefended. But he was too like herself to be much use. He was as powerless as she to stand against her family, which was entering the divorce court in much the same spirit as its forefathers had gone to the Crusades—fired by the glory of the name of Alard and hatred of the Turk.

“I’m disappointed in my first co-respondent,” said Gervase to Jenny after he had left—“I’d expected something much more spirited—a blend of Abelard, Don Juan and Cesare Borgia, with a dash of Shelley. Instead of which I find a mild-mannered man with a pince-nez, who I know is simply dying to take me apart and start a conversation on eighteenth-century glass.”

“That’s because he isn’t a real co-respondent. You’ve only to look at Charles Smith to be perfectly sure he never did anything wrong in his life.”

“Well, let’s hope the Judge and jury will look at him, then.”

“I hope they won’t. I’m sure Mary wants to lose.”

“Not a defended case—she’d be simply too messed up after that.”

“She’ll be messed up anyhow, whether she wins or loses. There’ll be columns and columns about her and everything she did—and didn’t do—and might have done. Poor Mary ... I expect she’d rather lose, and then she can creep quietly away.”

“Do you think she’ll marry Smith?”

“No, I don’t. He’d like to marry her, or he thinks he’d like to, but I’m pretty sure she won’t have him.”

“Then she’d better win her case—or the family will make her have him.”

“George says she can’t marry again unless she’s the ‘innocent party.’”

“I don’t think what George says will make much difference. Anyhow, it’s a silly idea. If the marriage is dissolved, both of ’em can marry again—if the marriage isn’t dissolved, neither of ’em can, so I don’t see where George’s innocent party comes in. That’s Stella’s idea—part of her religion, you know—that marriage is a sacrament and can’t be dissolved. I think it’s much more logical.”

“I think it’s damned hard.”

“Yes, so do I. But then I think religion ought to be damned hard.”

“I’ll remind you of that next time I see you lounging in front of the fire when you ought to be in church. You know you hurt George’s feelings by not going.”

“I’m not partial to George’s sort of religion.”

“I hope you’re not partial to Stella’s—that would be another blow for this poor family.”

“Why?—it wouldn’t make any difference to them. Not that you need ever be afraid of my getting religion ... but if I did I must say I hope it would be a good stiff sort, that would give me the devil of a time. George arranges a nice comfortable service for me at eleven, with a family pew for me to sleep in. He preaches a nice comfortable sermon that makes me feel good, and then we all go home together in the nice comfortable car and eat roast beef and talk about who was there and how much there was in the collection. That isn’t my idea of the violent taking the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”

“Are you trying to make me think that you’d be pious if only you were allowed to wear sandals and a hair shirt?”

“Oh, no, Jenny dear. But at least I can admire that sort of religion from a distance.”

“The distance being, I suppose, from here to Birmingham?”

“May I ask if you are what is vulgarly called getting at me?”

“Well, I’d like to know how long this correspondence between you and Stella has been going on.”

“Almost ever since she left—but we’ve only just got on to religion.”

“Be careful—that’s all. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“How?—with Stella or with Stella’s ideas?”

“Both,” said Jenny darkly.