The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
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