Nor Many Waters Read online

  “What other counts are there?” she asked. “There’s cruelty.”

  She made no reply, just leant back rocking herself slowly in her chair, her hands that were enclosed, for the day was cold, in a small chinchilla muff, were lifted against her cheek.

  “It’s going to be harder than I thought,” she said at length.

  “That, I’m afraid, is what one usually does find when one goes to law. As you’ve never discussed the question with your husband, you can’t tell I suppose whether he really wants his freedom.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think he does,” she said. “Not yet, anyhow. In his way, well, I suppose he rather likes me.”

  “And cruelty?”

  For a moment she made no reply, her cheek was rested against her muff, and her eyes that had grown solemn were distant-looking.

  “Cruelty,” she repeated, “cruelty? I don’t know. I’ve been difficult, I suppose, in lots of ways. I’m twelve years younger than he is. It was unfair of me to marry him. I daresay on the whole he’s been pretty good, pretty patient. I don’t know that I’ve really anything to complain of.”

  She spoke slowly, dubiously, and Merrick could see that she was keeping something back.

  “Has he ever been cruel to you, though?” he asked.

  Again she hesitated.

  “On the whole,” she said at length, “he’s been pretty lenient.”

  “But there’ve been occasions.”

  She nodded her head slowly.

  “Has he ever struck you?”

  Again she nodded; more slowly though this time, and more reluctantly.

  “In public?”

  “At a party.”

  “There were people there whom you’ld remember as being there; witnesses you could call?”

  “Yes.”

  It was his turn now to hesitate. The gay careless girl who had come laughing into his room had been changed into a worried, harassed, uncertain woman. That was the way things always were in his profession. People came cheerfully into his office, as though it were a shop in which verdicts and decrees were to be had for purchase. And they were angry and disappointed because they could not get them. Usually he found it hard to tolerate the ignorance and arrogance of the average layman. There were occasions, however, when the whole traffic of legality became repugnant to him. When he longed to be able to say, “Yes, that’s justice; you ought to have it. Here’s your freedom.” Just once in a while he felt that way, and he would have given anything to have been able to say that to Marian Eagar now. The inevitable cross-examination was repulsive to him.

  “I hate,” he said, “having to ask you all these questions. But I must, you know, if I’m to take up this case for you. Where did he hit you, in the face?”

  “Yes.”

  “With his fist?”

  “With his open hand.”

  “Was it serious, did it have any effect, was it very painful?”

  Again she hesitated.

  “It was infinitely humiliating,” she said; said it so quietly that Merrick felt that to question her any further would be needless cruelty. It was obviously painful for her to have to discuss the subject. And he could get all the details he required from the witnesses.

  “Suppose,” he said, “you were to give me the name or names of the people that you’ld like to have called as witnesses. And then I’ll get in touch with them and have a chat, and I needn’t bother you again till we’ve got your case pretty well cut and dried.”

  But still she hesitated.

  “Has one really got to drag all that out into the light?” she said. “It seems rather a grubby business.”

  Merrick shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m afraid one can’t help that. The divorce law is based, you see, on a theory of punishment.

  There’s assumed to be an innocent and a guilty party, and you must prove guilt.”

  She smiled a little wistfully.

  “It seems all rather a pity,” she said. Then stretching out her hand she took a penholder from his desk, and a sheet of paper and began to write an address on it.

  “If you write to him at once,” she said, “I’ll write by to-night’s post, so that he’ll get both of our letters to-morrow and know that it’s all right. Here you are.”

  And she handed the sheet over to him.

  He glanced casually at the address. Oswald McMurtrie, 13B, Bramwall Mansions, S.W. Written in a square handwriting that slanted backwards.

  “Can you read it?” she said. “It’s an odd handwriting. An irresponsible handwriting, I’m told, but then perhaps I’m rather an irresponsible person. You may find that out before you’re through with me.”

  With a rather wistful smile she rose to her feet and held out her hand to him.

  “And thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very sweet to me.”

  For James Merrick it had been by no means an easy twenty minutes; but now that it was over, he was seized by a desire to prolong it. He wished that there were something else for them to discuss, but he knew that it would be painful for her to talk further, and unprofitable till he had had an opportunity of examining her evidence.

  So instead, “I wonder,” he said with a little laugh, “that you can trust so delicate a matter to a person you’ve such little reason for placing trust in.”

  She laughed in answer, a gay, frank laugh; and her eyes twinkled roguishly. “Oh that,” she said. “Why, now that all that’s understood and over, we ought to be quite good friends. And just to prove it to you…”

  And before he had realized what she was doing, she had sprung forward, had flung an arm impulsively about his neck, had kissed him quickly and airily upon the mouth, had turned and, swinging quickly across the room, had paused only for an instant on the threshold to wave a grey-brown muff at him.

  The kiss had been so light, so fleeting, that it had left upon his lips no more than the delicate sensation of a passing fragrance. And it was with a sense of loss that he saw the door close behind her dainty person. The room seemed very empty suddenly.

  §

  James Merrick had spoken confidently and reassuringly enough to Marian about interviewing witnesses and getting her case cut and dried, but it was with little pleasure that he looked forward to the interview with his father which must precede the opening of any negotiations. He knew only too well what his father’s attitude would be. His father was a solicitor of the old school.

  When Arthur Montgomery Merrick had come to Lincoln’s Inn in the years so comfortable for England that had followed the Franco-Prussian War, lawyers could be divided into two classes. There were on the one hand the rogues and robbers, the exploiters of dubious causes, and on the other the venerable upholders and protectors of privilege and property. And in the same way those that had resource to the law could be divided into two classes. There were the heads of family with lands to convey, title deeds to peruse, wills to revoke and draft; and on the other hand the shifty buccaneers of ill-phrased bequests, the scheming litigants, the bearers of false witness, the libellers and defamers, the profligate husbands and the wanton wives. There had been a clear dividing line between the types of client that a respectable solicitor could accept, and in those days potential divorcees had been classed with blackmailers.

  When an unknown and casually presented client would arrive with a request that divorce proceedings should be opened, Mr. Montgomery Merrick would sit up stiffly in his chair, his lips tightly compressed, his head erect, the fingers of his left hand combing his long black whiskers.

  “I am sorry,” he would say, “but we do not undertake that kind of work. If you will consult the law notices page in the daily Times you will be able to ascertain the names of those solicitors that do.”

  And when a client of long standing arrived with a story of domestic friction Mr. Merrick would slowly and sadly shake his head.

  “That’s sad,” he would say. “That’s sad. And you are anxious to be divorced. And your mind is quite made up
? Yes, yes, of course. Now and again these things are inevitable. And you’ve come to ask my advice. Well, I’m afraid that’s not very much in my line, you know. We never have touched that kind of work. I’ll be delighted, however, to give you a letter of introduction to a firm that does, a firm that I can thoroughly recommend to you.”

  But that was thirty years back. Customs had changed. And even if divorce had not reached in the early days of the twentieth century the fortunate levels of post-war London; even if it had not become wholly free of social stigma, it had become too general to be looked on as much more than a misfortune. Certainly Mr. Merrick had found it no longer prudent to adopt an Olympian attitude towards a relief that so many of his most important clients sought. It was not merely that the negotiation of divorce suits was in itself a profitable proceeding, but the strain and intimacy of a divorce had proved to form a bond between solicitor and client that rarely ended with the granting of a decree, and many clients introduced to other solicitors had ultimately transported their other affairs to them. Mr. Merrick could no longer afford to be quixotic. At the same time his own distaste for the business had remained, and his son knew that the matter of Marian Eagar’s divorce suit would have to be presented with a considerable amount of tact. Which was not a task that James Merrick viewed with the prospect of the faintest pleasure. It is never easy for members of the same family to work harmoniously in the same firm, and Merrick found his father’s office manner, simply because it was his father’s, extremely difficult.

  He knew so exactly how it would happen. He would find his father at his desk, writing or studying documents. His father would lift his eyes quickly from his paper to see who it was, then having decided that the immediate piece of work he was engaged upon was more important, he would return his attention to his desk, while his son would stand in the centre of the room remarking irritably to himself: “It’s only because I’m his son that I’m left standing here. If I were anyone else, even an office boy, I’ld be attended to.” Then, after a longer or shorter interval, his father would spin round in his swivel chair and, “Well, what is it?” he would ask abruptly, as though the matter were of such little importance that it could be settled in a second. “Just because I’m his son,” James Merrick thought, “he can’t imagine that anything I’ve got to say to him can be of the least importance.” It was not going to be easy.

  It happened exactly as he had expected. His father was engaged upon a letter; he looked up, said nothing, turned back to his desk, and went on writing. Then, after a three minutes’ interval, swung quickly round in his chair. “Well, what’s it all about?” he asked.

  “Just as though he were a schoolmaster,” thought Merrick, “and I was a fourth-former coming to ask for leave off football.” And he felt irritated, childishly irritated, and in no mood for the exercise of tact. “Though that’s just what I’ve got to have,” he told himself, “if I’m to get this thing through for Marian.”

  So he smiled breezily as though there were no cause for disquiet in the news he brought. For there are two ways of approaching an awkward situation. One is to start by making it appear infinitely worse than it is, so that the receiver of the news feels a sense of relief when he discovers it to be less bad than he imagined, and does not realize quite how bad it is. The other way is to make it appear light to start with, and gradually present the difficulties. Ordinarily the first method is to be preferred, but Merrick knew his father was always liable to be fussed at the opening of an interview, and he had always found a placid opening the wiser.

  “Well, Father,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ve got another of those cases for you that thirty years ago you would have been shooting on to Jimmy Marshall.”

  “What, divorce?”

  “Afraid so; quite straightforward and aboveboard, though. No complications: cruelty and infidelity. We’ve got all the evidence and all the witnesses. The kind of thing that’ll get rushed through in six or seven minutes.”

  Mr. Merrick grunted. “Glad to hear that, anyhow,” he said. “I’m sick of these divorces; we’re getting too many, far too many of them nowadays. Don’t know what your grandfather would say if he were alive. We never touched a single suit while he was here. Refused even the Carlrey case. Lost a good two thousand, too, by it. Wouldn’t touch a thing that was likely to hurt our name.”

  “Divorces don’t hurt a name as much as all that now, Father.”

  “I know, I know. And if the client’s an old friend of the firm we’ve got to stand by him, I suppose. Who is it, by the way?”

  “A she. I don’t think you know her. Herbert Eagar’s wife.”

  “Herbert Eagar?” Mr. Merrick repeated the name dubiously; then shook his head, smoothing his fingers along the rib of cheek down which thirty years back had curled the whiskers of which his adolescence had been so proud. “Herbert Eagar? No, I don’t know the name. Are they old clients?”

  “I’m afraid not, Father.”

  “How old are they, then?”

  “They are not old at all. This is the first time that either of them has been here. But Mrs. Eagar is a particular friend of mine.”

  “I’ve never heard you mention her.”

  “There must be a great many friends of mine you’ve not heard me mention.”

  “I know, I know. But still…” and the long thin fingers were fluttering fretfully between ear and chin. “She’s a young woman, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the charge is cruelty and infidelity. There’s no question of desertion as far as you can see?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Um, I see.” And again Mr. Merrick paused, and when he spoke it was impatiently and acidly. “Infidelity and cruelty, a young woman. Yes, yes, I know the story. She marries, and she gets bored with marriage. And she thinks it would be fun to have some alimony.”

  “She’s said nothing about alimony to me.”

  “No, but she will. Of course she will. They all do. That’s what she’s brought the case for. She’ll have all the freedom and all the privileges and none of the responsibilities of marriage.”

  “But, Father, he has been cruel and he has been unfaithful to her.”

  “Cruelty and infidelity. Yes, yes, but what do they amount to? Do you suppose that there are many husbands who haven’t at some time been rough with their wives and at some time or another been unfaithful? The wise wife shuts her eyes. As long as her husband protects and supports her and is reasonably decent to her, she sees only what she needs to see. And it’s her job to. Men aren’t the same as women. Men slip into affairs. And it’s not fair to a man to try and get rid of him for just one slip. As long as he’s good to her and supports her, she ought to be content.”

  “Women don’t feel that way nowadays.”

  “And no credit to them for it. They expect to get a thing both ways.”

  “They expect fidelity if they give it.”

  “Do they? I doubt it. They’re just out for a good time. That’s all they think about. No sense of responsibilities. I suppose this Mrs. Eagar has no children?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There you are, you see. All the privileges and none of the responsibilities. They’re not wives, they’re mistresses. They live with a man for a few years; then they move on to the next. I suppose this Mrs. Eagar has another man up her sleeve waiting.”

  “I don’t think so, Father.”

  And for the first time during the interview Merrick’s voice grew tart. Another man! The idea had never occurred to him that it might be in order to marry again that she was seeking a divorce. And yet that was the reason that was at the back of the majority of such applications. It had never occurred to him that it might be so with her, and the idea hurt him.

  “I’m quite sure,” he insisted, “that she hasn’t.”

  “If she hasn’t now she soon will have. And she’ll have a nice income in alimony to live her own life with till she does.”

  “Marian Eagar’s not that
sort.”

  His father sniffed impatiently. “She may be or she mayn’t. That’s neither here nor there. There’s too many of that sort for me to run the risk with her. You can send her over to James Marshall. She’s their kind of client, not ours.”

  And with a little grunt he turned his attention to his desk. His son, however, remained firmly in the centre of the room.

  “Father,” he said quietly, “you’re being most unreasonable.”

  It was the first time, practically, that he had inside the office set his opinion against his father’s. And Mr. Merrick swung round immediately in his swivel chair to stare at his son in a questioning astonishment.

  “My dear James, I don’t understand,” he said; I don’t begin to understand. You come to tell me about a case. I give you my opinion on it. The matter ends there.”

  “But you haven’t given me your opinion on the case.”

  “I have. I’ve told you to hand it on to James Marshall.”

  “I don’t call that an opinion.”

  “As far as you are concerned, it is. It is what I propose to have done, anyway.”

  “But you don’t know Marian Eagar, and you’re not being fair to her. You’re judging her by other people. Because most wives who are suing for divorce are rotten, you say that she must be, and she isn’t.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “I give you my word for it.”

  Mr. Merrick wavered. “You’re sure, James, really sure?”

  “Really sure, Father. I wouldn’t have brought this case on to you if I hadn’t been. I knew how you’ld feel about it.”

  His father looked him very steadily in the eyes, and James Merrick met the look unflinchingly. Working in the same office had been admittedly a strain upon their relations, but at root they were sound friends.

  “Are you making a personal matter of this?” said Mr. Merrick finally.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Very well, I leave it in your hands. Consult with Bradshaw.”

  And without waiting for any expression of his son’s gratitude Mr. Merrick turned back again to his desk and his correspondence.