One airless July morning, a good many years ago, now, old Winstanley came bustling into the sporting editor's room, where I sat on a desk, swinging my legs and talking "bulldog" with Stedall. He had a typewritten slip of paper in his hand.
"Probate and Admiralty for you this morning, my boy!" he said, addressing me. "Here's the cause list. There's two cases down. M—m—m! 'Vacuum Recovery Co. v. Owners of Dacia. Assessment for Salvage.' That's a friendly case; it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Here's something spicier: 'Hepworth v. Hepworth: no parties named.' It's a defended case. Special jury. Hepworth is old Lord Hallamshire's grandson, younger son of a younger son, but that's good enough for a 'Society Divorce,' lead and about a column and a half. If the turtle doves come on to-day, keep your eyes and ears open, Prentice! There's some dashed mystery about the case; secret marriage and that sort of thing. Mrs. Hep's a Yankee. There appears to have been a separation three years ago, and now the respondent wants the kid. Blackmail, no doubt."
And off bustled Winstanley, fretting and bawling.
If secret there were, no one seemed to have winded it but Winstanley. There were not more than the average knot of idlers in the public gallery. But the body of the court was filled with a bevy of smartly dressed women, and the five seniors who were briefed were all well-known leaders. The Salvage case was called first, but the Trinity Masters were not ready, and so the conjugal knot was attacked forthwith.
Hart-Milner, the well-known silk and wit, opened with an appeal to the press. The case, said he, raised no point of any public importance, but its detail was of the most painful nature with which that court could be called upon to deal. How far such evidence as they were about to hear should ever be reported in the public sheets was, he thought, a vexed question. The entire position of the press in such matters might, at some future date, have to be revised, and he believed that the final decision would depend a great deal upon the restraint and decency with which the privilege had previously been handled. The position of the parties, moreover—at least of the party to whom his interest was confined—made a further and personal claim for indulgence upon a body whose association with literature was growing closer each year. The name which appeared upon the cause list—the name which he could well believe had grown to be to his client the intolerable symbol of all she sought relief from to-day—was, it is true, as obscure as it was besmirched. But it was far different with the petitioner's maiden name. That name, a name which, in accordance with a line of defence he left his friend on the other side to justify if he could, it seemed was to be imported into this sordid case, it would be only necessary to mention, in order at once to strike a responsive chord in the breasts of all who had the interest of literature at heart. (A pause, and "Oh! you are strong," from Nicholls, leading for respondent.) In her capacity of authoress, petitioner was well known to the reading public as "Althea Rees."
My! what a buzz and hum and craning of necks! And how the people who were in congratulated themselves on being in, and of having refused to be frightened away by the possible technicalities of Vacuum Salvage, and how they determined that no luncheon interval should tempt them away from the precincts of the court.
"I say, 'imported into the case,'" goes on Hart-Milner, when order had been restored, "because I believe I am divulging no secret when I say that the other side intend to plead condonation, and to take the unprecedented course of deducing it, not only from letters that passed between the parties subsequent to the alleged offences, but from passages in the published work of the petitioner bearing upon the position of the sexes—passages which, I make no doubt, my learned friend will know not only how to select, but——"
Nicholls was on his feet. "M'lud! I protest most strongly against the line my learned friend is seeing fit to take. My learned friend can have no knowledge whatever of what is in my brief."
"I think, Sir Frederick, I should let it alone at the present stage," the president suggests pacifically. "If it's there, we'll come to it in time."
"Very well, m'lud! Then I'll open my case. The petitioner—Althea Clara Hepworth, born Althea Clara Rees—only daughter of Mr. Lyman Rees, president of the Anglo-Occidental Bank, an American gentleman resident in London, and who has been for years a prominent figure ..." and so on, and so on, and so on.