Jenny and Gervase were on her side, it is true, but they were negligible allies, whether from the point of view of impressing the family, or of any confidence their advice and arguments could inspire in herself. Vera Alard, though she did not share the family point of view, had been alienated by her sister-in-law’s surrender—“I’ve no sympathy with a woman who knows what she wants but hasn’t the courage to stand out for it,” she said to Peter. In her heart she thought that Mary was lying—that she had tried Charles Smith as a lover and found him wanting, but would have gladly used him as a means to freedom, if her family hadn’t butted in and made a scandal of it.
As for Peter, he no longer felt inclined to take his sister’s part. He was angry with her for her forgetfulness of her dignity. She had been careless of her honour, forgetting that it was not only hers but Alard’s—she had risked the family’s disgrace, before the world and before the man whose contempt of all the world’s would be hardest to bear. Peter hated such carelessness and such risks—he would do nothing more for Mary, especially as she had said she did not want to marry Charles Smith. If she had wanted that he would have understood her better, but she had said she did not want it, and thus had lost her only claim to an undefended suit. For Peter now did not doubt any more than his family that Julian would fail to prove his case.
Outside the family, Charles Smith did his best to help her. He came down to see her and try to persuade her people to let the petition go through undefended. But he was too like herself to be much use. He was as powerless as she to stand against her family, which was entering the divorce court in much the same spirit as its forefathers had gone to the Crusades—fired by the glory of the name of Alard and hatred of the Turk.
“I’m disappointed in my first co-respondent,” said Gervase to Jenny after he had left—“I’d expected something much more spirited—a blend of Abelard, Don Juan and Cesare Borgia, with a dash of Shelley. Instead of which I find a mild-mannered man with a pince-nez, who I know is simply dying to take me apart and start a conversation on eighteenth-century glass.”
“That’s because he isn’t a real co-respondent. You’ve only to look at Charles Smith to be perfectly sure he never did anything wrong in his life.”
“Well, let’s hope the Judge and jury will look at him, then.”
“I hope they won’t. I’m sure Mary wants to lose.”
“Not a defended case—she’d be simply too messed up after that.”
“She’ll be messed up anyhow, whether she wins or loses. There’ll be columns and columns about her and everything she did—and didn’t do—and might have done. Poor Mary ... I expect she’d rather lose, and then she can creep quietly away.”
“Do you think she’ll marry Smith?”