“Well, that doesn’t make any difference, does it? It ought to be all the better. You must know all the old chap’s tricks.”
There was a suggestion of cunning about the man which completely transformed him for a moment. His watchful eyes, however, read the doubt in Sargent’s face and bespoke a charming sincerity as he added:
“Why, of course, I knew you were brought up with ‘the Ancients,’ Sargent. I was only joking. But that is merely another reason why you are best fitted to undertake this case. If it were the ordinary divorce dirt I wouldn’t ask you to plough it up. But it’s not. Mr. Harding knows you and you will be able to approach him easily. Mrs. Fenton has been poorly advised, I think, but the mischief’s not yet wholly done. Make your ‘motion’ or whatever you call it, and then you’ll find the rest is easy. I know you can handle the matter as few men could. I’ve wanted to give you some business for a long time and I’m sorry to begin with this. However, it will not be the last, you know.”
Sargent had built up a fair practice since he left “the Ancients,” but this was the first time he had ever been opposed to them. He confessed to himself that he did not like it.
Fenton was not wholly convincing, but if he did not take up this case someone else would. If he was better than his profession it was high time to retire from it. Then, too, Mr. Harding was growing old, and doubtless the woman deceived by silly stories had deceived him. Very probably, as Fenton said, the first aggressive move would settle the whole affair. What fools women were to listen to every Old Wife who came along with idle tittle-tattle seeking recruits for the great Army of the Misunderstood! Fenton’s business was worth having, and if this matter went well there was no knowing where it might lead. Moreover all the essential facts were in the defendant’s favour, and as Sargent skilfully set them forth in his “moving papers” he experienced that subtle influence, known to every lawyer, which can turn the most judicial counsel into a partisan, and make the silliest quarrel a matter of deadly moment between strangers to its cause.
II.
Any Court with jurisdiction in divorce proceedings draws an audience peculiar to itself.
Every Court Room has, of course, its individual devotees. For instance “Dutch Pete” is accustomed to the corner bench in Part XV. and would not change it for any other sleeping quarters, and even the migratory loafers seem to know and respect old “Lawyer” Brady’s seat in Trial Term Part XX.
But, with divorce matters on the calendar, Special Term Part I. appeals to a particular class. One can recognise its women out in the Rotunda long before they turn toward the haven, and one can almost feel its moist and clammy type of man.
To see the women with their hard faces well nigh intelligent with curiosity—their long necks and ears turned to catch each salacious morsel—is a sight to sicken every man with memory of a mother. To watch the flabby-jowled, pimply persons of the masculine gender, their drooling mouths fashioned to a grin, and their perspiring hands clutching the soiled and soiling newspapers, is to understand the cynic who protested that “the more he saw of men the better he liked dogs.”