She was conscious again of blood in her cheeks.
“No.”
“WERE you hard up when you brought it?”
“Yes.”
“Very?”
“Not worse than I have been before.”
“I put it to you that you owed a great deal of money, and were hard pressed.”
“If you like.”
“I’m glad you’ve admitted that, Miss Ferrar; otherwise I should have had to prove it. And you didn’t bring this action with a view to paying some of your debts?”
“No.”
“Did you in early January become aware that you were not likely to get any sum in settlement of this suit?”
“I believe I was told that an offer was withdrawn.”
“And do you know why?”
“Yes; because Mrs. Mont wouldn’t give the apology I asked for.”
“Exactly! And was it a coincidence that you thereupon made up your mind to marry Sir Alexander MacGown?”
“A coincidence?”
“I mean the announcement of your engagement, you know?”
Brute!
“It had nothing to do with this case.”
“Indeed! Now when you brought this action did you really care one straw whether people thought you moral or not?”
“I brought it chiefly because I was called ‘a snake.’”
“Please answer my question.”
“It isn’t so much what I cared, as what my friends cared.”
“But their view of morality is much what yours is—thoroughly accommodating?”
“Not my fiance’s.
“Ah! no. He doesn’t move in your circle, you said. But the rest of your friends. You’re not ashamed of your own accommodating philosophy, are you?”
“No.”
“Then why be ashamed of it for them?”
“How can I tell what THEIR philosophy is?”
“How can she, Sir James?”
“As your lordship pleases. Now, Miss Ferrar! You like to stand up for your views, I hope. Let me put your philosophy to you in a nutshelclass="underline" You believe, don’t you, in the full expression of your personality; it would be your duty, wouldn’t it, to break through any convention—I don’t say law—but any so-called moral convention that cramped you?”
“I never said I had a philosophy.”
“Don’t run away from it, please.”
“I’m not in the habit of running away.”
“I’m so glad of that. You believe in being the sole judge of your own conduct?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not alone in that view, are you?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“It’s the view, in fact, of what may be called the forward wing of modern Society, isn’t it—the wing you belong to, and are proud of belonging to? And in that section of Society—so long as you don’t break the actual law—you think and do as you like, eh?”
“One doesn’t always act up to one’s principles.”
“Quite so. But among your associates, even if you and they don’t always act up to it, it IS a principle, isn’t it, to judge for yourselves and go your own ways without regard to convention?”
“More or less.”
“And, living in that circle, with that belief, you have the effrontery to think the words: ‘She hasn’t a moral about her,’ entitles you to damages?”
Her voice rang out angrily: “I have morals. They may not be yours, but they may be just as good, perhaps better. I’m not a hypocrite, anyway.”
Again she saw him look at her, there was a gleam in his eyes; and she knew she had made another mistake.
“We’ll leave my morals out of the question, Miss Ferrar. But we’ll go a little further into what you say are yours. In your own words, it should depend on temperament, circumstances, environment, whether you conform to morality or not?”
She stood silent, biting her lip.
“Answer, please.”
She inclined her head. “Yes.”
“Very good!” He had paused, turning over his papers, and she drew back in the box. She had lost her temper—had made him lose his; at all costs she must keep her head now! In this moment of search for her head she took in everything—expressions, gestures, even the atmosphere—the curious dramatic emanation from a hundred and more still faces; she noted the one lady juryman, the judge breaking the nib of a quill, with his eyes turned away from it as if looking at something that had run across the well of the Court. Yes, and down there, the lengthening lip of Mr. Settlewhite, Michael’s face turned up at her with a rueful frown, Fleur Mont’s mask with red spots in the cheeks, Alec’s clenched hands, and his eyes fixed on her. A sort of comic intensity about it all! If only she were the size of Alice in ‘Wonderland,’ and could take them all in her hands and shake them like a pack of cards—so motionless, there, at her expense! That sarcastic brute had finished fiddling with his papers, and she moved forward again to attention in the Box.
“Now, Miss Ferrar, his lordship put a general question to you which you did not feel able to answer. I am going to put it in a way that will be easier for you. Whether or no it was right for you to have one”—she saw Michael’s hand go up to his face—“have you IN FACT had a—liaison?” And from some tone in his voice, from the look on his face, she could tell for certain that he knew she had.
With her back to the wall, she had not even a wall to her back. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds—judge, jury, that old fox with his hand under the tail of his gown, and his eyes averted! Why did she not spit out the indignant: No! which she had so often rehearsed? Suppose he proved it—as he had said he would prove her debts?
“Take your time, Miss Ferrar. You know what a liaison is, of course.”
Brute! On the verge of denial, she saw Michael lean across, and heard his whisper: ‘Stop this!’ And then ‘that little snob’ looked up at her—the scrutiny was knowing and contemptuous: ‘Now hear her lie!’ it seemed to say. And she answered, quickly: “I consider your question insulting.”
“Oh! come, Miss Ferrar, after your own words! After what—”
“Well! I shan’t answer it.”
A rustle, a whispering in the Court.
“You won’t answer it?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Miss Ferrar.” Could a voice be more sarcastic?
The brute was sitting down.
Marjorie Ferrar stood defiant, with no ground under her feet. What next? Her counsel was beckoning. She descended from the Box, and, passing her adversaries, resumed her seat next her betrothed. How red and still he was! She heard the judge say:
“I shall break for lunch now, Mr. Bullfry,” saw him rise and go out, and the jury getting up. The whispering and rustling in the Court swelled to a buzz. She stood up. Mr. Settlewhite was speaking to her.
Chapter VII.
‘FED UP’
Guided by him into a room designed to shelter witnesses, Marjorie Ferrar looked at her lawyer.
“Well?”
“An unfortunate refusal, Miss Ferrar—very. I’m afraid the effect on the jury may be fatal. If we can settle it now, I should certainly say we’d better.”
“It’s all the same to me.”
“In that case you may take it I shall settle. I’ll go and see Sir Alexander and Mr. Bullfry at once.”
“How do I get out quietly?”
“Down those stairs. You’ll find cabs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Excuse me,” he made her a grave little bow and stalked away.
Marjorie Ferrar did not take a cab; she walked. If her last answer had been fatal, on the whole she was content. She had told no lies to speak of, had stood up to ‘that sarcastic beast,’ and given him sometimes as good as she had got. Alec! Well, she couldn’t help it! He had insisted on her going into Court; she hoped he liked it now she’d been! Buying a newspaper, she went into a restaurant and read a description of herself, accompanied by a photograph. She ate a good lunch, and then continued her walk along Piccadilly. Passing into the Park, she sat down under a tree coming into bud, and drew the smoke of a cigarette quietly into her lungs. The Row was almost deserted. A few persons of little or no consequence occupied a few chairs. A riding mistress was teaching a small boy to trot. Some sparrows and a pigeon alone seemed to take a distant interest in her. The air smelled of Spring. She sat some time with the pleasant feeling that nobody in the world knew where she was. Odd, when you thought of it—millions of people every day, leaving their houses, offices, shops, on their way to the next place, were as lost to the world as stones in a pond! Would it be nice to disappear permanently, and taste life incognita? Bertie Curfew was going to Moscow again. Would he take her as secretary, and bonne amie? Bertie Curfew—she had only pretended to be tired of him! The thought brought her face to face with the future. Alec! Explanations! It was hardly the word! He had a list of her debts, and had said he would pay them as a wedding-present. But—if there wasn’t to be a wedding? Thank God, she had some ready money. The carefully ‘laid-up’ four-year-old in her father’s stable had won yesterday. She had dribbled ‘a pony’ on at a nice price. She rose and sauntered along, distending her bust—in defiance of the boylike fashion, which, after all, was on the wane—to take in the full of a sweet wind.