The artist was in a mood even more joyful than before he went out, the cause being that he had been given commission for a portrait that was at once easy and lucrative, a fact which he triumphantly announced to his model, and upon which she congratulated him.
In November the light in London grows yellow early, and before four o’clock the artist had to lay down his palette for the day. Tea was brought in a few minutes later, and the pair sat tête-à-tête before the blazing fire, Dolly listening to the painter’s technical description of the picture that he had been commissioned to execute.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Without the Queen’s Proctor.
The last act of a matrimonial drama was being watched attentively by six rows of eager spectators.
Already the gas had been lit, for the dull yellow light of the wintry London moon was insufficient to illuminate the sombre Court. Upon the bench, at the rear of which hung a large square board covered with dark-blue cloth and bearing a golden anchor, the judge sat—grave, silent, almost statuesque. The public who filled the tiers of seats before him listened intently to every word of the story of a woman’s faithlessness, which counsel was relating. It was an undefended, and therefore not an unusually interesting case. Nevertheless, the Divorce Court has an attraction for the curious, and is nearly always crowded, even when there are scarcely a dozen people in any of the Queen’s Bench or Chancery Divisions. The very word divorce is sufficient to interest some, and for the novelty of the thing they desire to witness the procedure by which husband and wife are disunited.
Perhaps such curiosity is pardonable. It certainly is more excusable than the ignominious conduct of some soi-disant ladies, who consider it good form to attend a Criminal Court where a woman is indicted for murder, and there watch and comment audibly, and with heartless inhumanity, upon the agonies of their wretched sister who is being tried for her life. Such scenes at recent trials of unfortunate women have been a scandal to our civilisation.
In the Divorce Court, however, it is different. The surroundings are more refined. The dénouement of the marriage drama there enacted frequently develops into broad comedy before the curtain is rung down by the judicial decision. Even there, however, women gloat over the stories of the domestic woe of another woman, and ridicule the deceived husband with a cool indifference that is astounding; they are apparently quite unimpressed by the gravity of the question at issue.