Part 29 (1/2)
”Well, it had to be done, and the sooner the better,” he said, turning away.
”So I suppose,” said Johnson.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE TONGUE OF SCANDAL.
Alan returned to town with the full knowledge that he had something formidable to face and overcome.
He had gone to Birchmead partly in redemption of an old promise to his aunt, not knowing when he might be able to keep it if he did not do so now, and partly because his mind had been distracted by a fresh outbreak of violence in his wife, and he found it absolutely impossible to sit still and endure in patience.
The country journey refreshed him, and he came back stronger and braver than before. He was resolved to press for his divorce, and as Lettice was in Italy, no time could be better than the present for proving to the desperate woman, who was trying to terrify him, that there were laws in England to which she must yield obedience. He a.s.sured himself that he was now prepared for any fate; and yet that which had happened before he left town was an earnest of what he had to expect.
What had happened was this.
A few days before Cora had been served with a notice to appear and defend the suit for divorce which her husband was bringing against her; and this had set her inflammable soul on fire. She had tried hard to discover his whereabouts, without success. She had gone to Maple Cottage and banged at the door in such furious style, that a policeman, who happened to be pa.s.sing, came up to see what was wrong, just as the new occupants made their appearance, in mingled alarm and indignation.
”I want Miss Campion,” said Cora, who was half-intoxicated, but still more excited by rage and jealousy.
”She no longer lives here,” said the man at the door.
”Where is she?”
”I don't know. And I should not tell you if I did. Policeman, take this woman in charge for annoying me! You must have seen her knocking like a fury--and now she is evidently tipsy.”
Her rage increased rather than diminished when she found that her intended prey had escaped her, she began to declaim at the top of her voice, and to shriek hysterically; and the policeman, regarding it as a simple case of ”drunk and disorderly,” took her off to the station, where she was locked up.
The first that Alan heard of it was from the papers next morning. In one of these, which he was accustomed to read after breakfast, he found the following report:--
”At Hammersmith, a dissipated-looking woman, who gave the name of Cora Walcott, was charged with being drunk and disorderly on the previous day, and annoying Mr. Peter Humphreys, of Maple Cottage, Brook Green.
Sergeant T 14 stated that he had observed the prisoner behaving in an extraordinary manner outside Mr. Humphreys' house, and knocking at the door in a most violent manner. As she would not go away, and her conduct was a serious annoyance to the neighbors, he was compelled to take her into custody. In reply to the prisoner, the witness said that she was undoubtedly drunk. She had asked for Miss Campion, and he had ascertained that that lady did previously live at Maple Cottage. She had told him that she was the wife of Mr. Alan Walcott, who had deserted her, after making an attempt on her life. The magistrate here interposed, and said that the prisoner's questions were totally irrelevant. What she had stated, even if true, was no excuse whatever for the conduct of which she had been guilty. Prisoner (excitedly): 'This woman had taken my husband from me.' Magistrate: 'Be silent.'
Prisoner: 'Am I to starve in the streets, whilst they are living in luxury?' Magistrate: 'You are fined five s.h.i.+llings and costs. If you have grievances you must find another way of remedying them. If you say any more now, I shall have to send you to prison without the option of a fine.' The money was paid by a gentleman in court.”
As soon as Alan had read this he went to the solicitor who knew all his affairs, and got him to go to the Hammersmith Police Court. The magistrate permitted him to make a statement contradicting the lies told by Cora, and the newspapers printed what he said. But how many persons read the first report who never saw the second? And how many of those who read both preferred to believe the scandal, taking the contradiction as a matter of course?
The ”gentleman in court” who paid Cora's fine was an enterprising reporter, who thought it might be worth his while to hear what this deserted wife had to say. He knew two or three papers which would welcome a bit of copy dealing with the marital troubles of a well-known literary man. The story of this French wife might be a tissue of lies--in which case it would be a real advantage to Mr. Walcott and Miss Campion to have it printed and refuted. Or it might be partly or wholly true--in which case it was decidedly in the interest of the public to make it known. The argument is familiar to everyone connected with a popular newspaper, and it proves that sensational journalists have their distinct place in the cosmogony of nature, being bound to print what is scandalous, either for the sake of those who are libelled or out of simple justice to those who start and spread the libel. This desire to give fair play all round, even to slanderers and malefactors, and the common father of these, is the crown and apex of civilization.
The consequence of this gentleman's activity was that Cora found plenty of a.s.sistance in her malicious design, to take away the characters of Alan and Lettice. The charges which she brought against her husband were printed and commented on in some very respectable newspapers, and were repeated with all kinds of enlargement and embellishment wherever the retailers of gossip were gathered together. If Alan had been under a cloud before, he was now held up to scorn as a mean-spirited creature without heart or conscience, who had allowed his lawful wife to sink into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond into which she had fallen.
This was not, of course, the universal judgment; but it was the popular one. It might not even have been the popular judgment a year before, or a year after, but it was the judgment of the day. The mult.i.tude is without responsibility in such cases, it decides without deliberation, and it often mistakes its instincts for the dictates of equity. Alan was judged without being heard, or what he did say in his defence was received as though it were the mere hard-swearing of a desperate man.
The storm had begun to rage when he went to Birchmead, and it reached its height soon after he returned. His lawyer advised him to bring an action for libel against one paper which had committed itself more deeply than the rest, and the threat of this had the effect of checking public references to his case; but the mischief was already done.
Nothing could make him more disgusted and wretched than he had been for some time past, so far as his own interests were concerned. It was only the dragging of Lettice's name into the miserable business which now pained and tormented him.
But there was one who had more right than himself to come forward as the champion of Lettice's fair fame, and was able to do it with better effect. When a man is a Member of Parliament and a Queen's Counsel, he occupies a position which his fellow-countrymen are inclined to regard as one of very considerable dignity. Editors and sub-editors think twice before they print unsubstantiated rumors about the near relatives of such distinguished individuals as Mr. Sydney Campion, Q.C., M.P. Thus, after the first report of the proceedings at the police court, Lettice's name scarcely appeared again. She was, indeed, referred to as ”the lady who seems, reasonably or unreasonably, to have excited the jealousy of the unfortunate wife,” or ”the third party in this lamentable case, also well-reputed in the world of letters, with whom the tongue of scandal has been busy;” but she was not mentioned by name. And therein the scandal-mongers exercised a wise discretion, for Sydney had secured the a.s.sistance of Mr. Isaacs, one of the smartest solicitors in London, who found means to impress upon everyone whom it might concern that it would be a very serious matter indeed to utter anything approaching to a libel on Miss Lettice Campion.
Moreover, the worthy Mr. Isaacs had an interview with Cora, whom he found in a sober mood, and so terrified her by his warnings and menaces, but most of all by the impressive manner and magnetic eye wherewith he was wont to overawe malefactors of every kind and degree, that she ceased for a time to speak evil of Lettice.