Nor Many Waters

by Alec Waugh

It was not till he was in the passage, a little weak and a little flushed by the strain of conflict, that James Merrick found occasion to wonder what impulse had induced him to defend so hotly and after all so rashly a case into whose rights he had as yet no opportunity of judging.

  “Let’s hope to heaven that Bradshaw doesn’t find too many obstacles to raise!” he thought.

  It was not without nervousness that he walked down the passage to Bradshaw’s room.

  §

  Bradshaw was the one person in the firm of whom James Merrick was genuinely alarmed. He was, an admitted man, Mr. Merrick’s managing clerk, and he stood to Merrick in the same relation that a regimental sergeant-major does to a recently joined subaltern. The lot of birth and opportunity had placed him in a position subservient to Merrick’s, but never at any time had Merrick been able to persuade himself that Bradshaw was not fitter to deal with any situation than he was himself. Which was a feeling that never made negotiations too easy an affair for them. Usually Merrick endeavoured to pass things off in a light-hearted manner, producing difficulties as though he were inviting Bradshaw to take a drink with him. He did on this occasion.

  “Trouble, Mr. Bradshaw,” he announced genially. “Another of these unpleasant divorce suits that I’m sure you think are getting us a terrible name in the profession.”

  Bradshaw looked up from his desk, and blinked unsmilingly. He was a wiry, short, sixty-year-old-looking little man who with his bald head, wrinkles and tight-drawn parchment skin might well have passed as a Cruikshank model.

  “So, Mr. James,” he muttered, “so.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bradshaw. And quite a simple case, I think. A Mrs. Herbert Eagar who’s suing her husband for divorce. Cruelty and infidelity. She found this letter in her husband’s pocket.”

  Bradshaw took the letter between his thin, dry fingers, and holding it up to his left eye, his head bent cockwise over it, he read it out slowly in a thin, wheezing, high-pitched voice, that could have scarcely been more ludicrously inappropriate to those hot-blooded words. When he had finished the letter he chuckled croakingly, then tapped his finger against the top line of it.

  “‘Days and nights,’” he repeated. “‘Days and nights.’ And then ‘utterly together,’ that’s good, that’s good. Ought to convince any judge. And then the references to dresses at the end. We ought to be able to work that up all right. Would a man, a married man, be giving a girl dresses unless he was receiving some substantial recompense? It isn’t even as though he were giving them, he is allowing her to charge them to him. A girl has to be fairly sure of a man before she can do that kind of thing. And no girl can be sure of a man till that man’s sure of her. And the way she’s put it too. She starts by reminding him of the pleasure she’s given him so as to humour him, so as to make him feel grateful to her, so that he won’t be angry with her for running up bills. Pretty, very pretty. I don’t think we could have got a greater amount of valuable evidence into a narrower space.”

  And he tapped his finger appreciatively against the letter. To Merrick it all seemed rather ghoulish. This high-pitched eunuch’s voice, this wasted tapping finger, this cold-blooded analysis of what had been spontaneous and fresh and possibly rather lovely. He had no wish to linger in this cemetery.

  “So you feel that there’s no need to worry about that?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Oh no, scarcely that,” said Bradshaw, cocking his head and winking a watered eye slyly. “I simply said that we could make a very good case out of it. There are one or two little difficulties, of course. For one thing, the letter’s not addressed, and it’s not signed. That’s a pity. And we can’t as yet identify this Madge. Probably we should be able to if it became necessary.—There aren’t, I suppose, too many people with the Christian name of Madge who bought frocks at Poiret’s round about April the 16th.—Not, I imagine, that we shall need to.”

  “And there’s the point that he wasn’t at Liverpool when he said so.”

  “I was coming to that. We’ld do just as well to get those facts proved definitely, I think. There’s a young man working in Rob and George’s that I can trust. He could find out for us whether Herbert Eagar stopped in any good hotel there during those days, because if he’d been going up to see his people he would have had to have stayed under his own name in a good hotel. There’s no need for me to make inquiries of Armitage. The hotel registers will be enough.”

  And as the bloodshot eye blinked again Merrick was forced to recognize, though against his will, the efficiency and the logic of Bradshaw’s reasoning.

  “So there only remains the cruelty,” he said.

  “Only the cruelty, and you have got the witness’s address? Ah, yes, 13B, Bramwall Mansions. A good address, such a lot depends on that. It’s so important that the witness should be the sort of witness that will impress a judge. He mustn’t be flashy, he mustn’t be shabby, he must look the ordinary respectable clubman. I’ve known times when it was better to keep good evidence out of court rather than to let it come through an unsound source. It’s most important that this Mr. McMurtrie should be the right sort of witness.”

  “And if he is,” said Merrick, “it should be a pretty straightforward case.”

  The wise eye blinked slowly.

  “Did you ever know,” said Bradshaw, “any case that didn’t look straightforward before you’d heard what the other side had got to say?”

  §

  Than Mr. Oswald McMurtrie it would have been hard, James Merrick reflected, to have found anyone more admirably adapted to the purpose for which in this instance he was required. He might have served as a museum exhibit of the perfect witness. He was tall, but not so tall as to give the impression that he was looking down on you. He was broad-shouldered, but not so broad-shouldered as to make you wonder whether he might prove a bully. His clothes were neat and well cut: with the impression of having been made in St. James’s rather than Savile Row, in an establishment little patronized by the stage. His moustache was trim and turned backwards gracefully. Not so gracefully, however, that you were forced to wonder whether a damp compress was applied to it at night. His features were delicate, but not blatantly aristocratic. His manner was a most happy mixture of respectful diffidence and worldly self-assurance. He would give his evidence in the tone of one who performs reluctantly a grave, not too pleasant, but necessary duty. He would not give the impression of enjoying the experience. He happened also to be exactly the right age, thirty-seven; young enough, that was to say, to understand the younger generation: old enough to appreciate the obligations of sound citizenship. As he came into the room James Merrick sighed inwardly with relief. Things were looking well for Marian. He felt himself to be on sound ground.

  “I’m afraid,” he began, “that the matter on which I have asked you to come and see me will prove somewhat distasteful to you.”

  The answer was in the tone and spirit that he had expected. Mr. Oswald McMurtrie shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s about Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Eagar,” Merrick proceeded to explain. “You know them, I believe?”

  “Not well.”

  “You’ve seen a certain amount of them, however?”

  “I have been very often in the same room with them. Eagar is a member of my club. We have a number of mutual friends. It is quite likely, though, that I have never been for two consecutive moments alone with either of them.”

  Merrick nodded his head. It was even better than he had expected. Evidence such as this, precise but not irritatingly precise, was of the exact nature that would favourably impress a court.

  “You would move, though, in circles where you would be likely to hear them spoken of?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Then possibly,” said Merrick, “you will not be surprised to learn that Mrs. Eagar is bringing a divorce suit against her husband?”

  It was a question that gave abundant opportunity for flippant comment. But Mr. McMurtrie’s Scots gravity remained unstirred. He pouted, made
the gesture of whistling, nodded his head twice, slowly.

  “So, so,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that, very sorry. One could see they were not in too great harmony with one another. But then one has seen so many couples who appear to have made a mistake, but decide to make the best of a bad job, and ultimately prove the bad show to have been quite a good one. I had hoped that something like that might have been going to happen in the Eagars’ case. But she’s bringing a divorce suit already? It’s sad, that, sad.”

  “She’s suing him on the charges of unfaithfulness and cruelty. On the score of unfaithfulness there can be little doubt. But cruelty of course requires witnesses. It is for this reason that I have asked you to come and see me. I expect you will guess to what incident I refer. It took place last winter at a week-end house party of Mrs. Richmond’s.”

  “A most regrettable occurrence.”

  “Perhaps, because it would obviously be unjust for me to prompt you, and because as her solicitor I want to be able to verify Mrs. Eagar’s story by your own, you will tell me what you remember?”

  “Of course.”

  In point of fact James Merrick had not the vaguest idea of what had happened. He had seen on that first afternoon that Marian was in no mood for a lengthy cross-examination, and since he had been anxious to spare her pain, he had not thought it necessary to bother her with a further interview till he had heard McMurtrie’s story. He was therefore extraordinarily anxious to know what exactly had happened at the scene which had decided as likely as not the fortune of that marriage.

  “It was in the evening,” McMurtrie said. “Some of us were playing bridge and the rest were dancing. There were about eight of us staying in the house, and possibly another eight had come in to dinner. Anyhow, there was only one bridge four. And I was Eagar’s partner. As far as I can recall nothing in the least dramatic had been happening during the day: nothing that any of us had noticed. Nor had anything in the least unpleasant occurred during our game. There had been no acrimonious post-mortems. We were playing half-a-crown a hundred, which was well within the means of each of us. Nobody had been losing heavily. Everything was going delightfully pleasantly, when suddenly Mrs. Eagar appeared.

  “The dancing was taking place in the hall, and she had come into the room on a partner’s arm, mistaking possibly the study for the dining-room where there would be probably sandwiches and drinks of some kind. On noticing her mistake she turned round as if she was going to leave the room, then hesitated, said something to her partner and ran back to the room.

  “I was Eagar’s partner, so I could see exactly what happened then. She came across, leant over his shoulder, whispered something to him that I could not hear. His face flushed, he dropped his cards down on the table; and while she was still bending forward, he hit her.”

  “He swung round to hit her,” Merrick prompted. McMurtrie hesitated.

  “Scarcely that,” he said, “it was more a jab than an actual blow, rather like a hand off in rugger. At first it looked as though he was just going to push her away and then suddenly the arm straightened out to make a blow of it.”

  “It was in the face, though?”

  “Across the cheek.”

  “With the fist?”

  “The open hand.”

  “And then…”

  “What always does happen at an incident like that. We were all too startled to say anything. We just sat there gaping. Then the man on my right suddenly cut into the bidding. ‘Well, it’s my call,’ he said. ‘Three spades.’ It was the best thing to do. I had hardly looked at my hand, certainly I had forgotten what was in it, but I called, ‘Three No Trumps.’ And the man on my left doubled and before we all knew what was happening Mrs. Eagar was back in the hall dancing, and I was going down four hundred. As far as I’m concerned the incident has not been mentioned from that day to this.”

  “And you’ll bear witness to that effect when the case comes on?”

  “If it’s necessary.”

  “It will be necessary.”

  Merrick spoke on a grim note. He was feeling grim. He could picture the scene so clearly and he could remember the expression of eyes and voice with which Marian Eagar had described it as ‘infinitely humiliating!’ It was monstrous that a girl like that should have to suffer such an indignity.

  “Do you imagine,” he asked, “that the whole party heard of it?”

  “Probably.”

  “But there were only the three of you who saw?”

  “Possibly her partner did.”

  “Who was he, by the by?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “And the other two men who were playing bridge with you?”

  “The other two? Let me see now. One was Rogers; he’s in the Sixtieth, he’ld be in India now. And the other: I am bad at names. He was a fellow I hadn’t seen before and haven’t since. Hodges he was called, I think. I’m not sure. He talked about travel and the East most of the time. He represents some firm, I think. He was going away in a day or two. I could find out easily, if you want me to.”

  “It’s hardly worth bothering. When it gets nearer the time I’ll let you know. Your evidence endorses Mrs. Eagar’s so exactly.” Then, after a pause, and half vindictively: “Her husband must be a pretty appalling man.”

  McMurtrie pouted. “You haven’t met him?”

  “No.”

  “I thought you hadn’t. You’d scarcely say that about him if you had. He’s… well, he’s not the kind of man I should ever choose to be particularly intimate with, he’s not the kind of man that a woman like his wife would have thought twice about if she’d met him two years later. But he’s a decent enough chap really. And she was only nineteen when they met.”

  “Only that!”

  “And in the things that matter, a good deal less. It was an odd upbringing. An only daughter with a mother dead. And a father trailing her round from one Riviera town to another, yet keeping her so closely chaperoned that life never had a chance of getting near her. It’s not surprising that when her father died she should be fair game for the first man who happened to attract her.”

  “And he’s not really a bad chap, you say?”

  “Not by any means. But he’s older than she is. Fifteen years older, and he’s rougher hewn. He’s north country; of a different stock and of a different generation. They were bound to be at outs with one another.”

  “Then perhaps,” said Merrick, “they’re as well rid of one another.”

  §

  A few minutes later he was reporting the interview to Bradshaw.

  “If you had hunted all round the world,” he said, “you couldn’t have found a better witness.”

  Bradshaw grunted and sniffed, shuffled away some paper on his desk and produced finally a longish typewritten letter.

  “Heard from Liverpool,” he said. “Our man didn’t stop under his own name at any of the principal hotels.”

  “Then we may be quite certain that he didn’t go up there for business.”

  “More or less.”

  “And when you say ‘more or less,’ Mr. Bradshaw, that means a cast-iron certainty. I think I shall have some pretty encouraging news to-morrow for Mrs. Eagar.”

  §

  One does not make the same journey for five years on five days of the week without knowing pretty exactly how long it lasts. And James Merrick knew to a second how long it took him to walk from the First Avenue Hotel to his office in Stone Buildings. On the following afternoon, however, he kept glancing fretfully at his watch as he sat on his high stool waiting for his two dozen natives to be opened. Ten minutes to two he told himself. And she would be arriving at half-past. And unless this infernal white-coated idiot put some pace on, he would be late and keep her waiting. Although he knew quite well that it would not take him a quarter of an hour to eat two dozen natives, and with the traffic in Holborn at its most inopportune the walk back would not take five minutes, “I’ll be late,” he muttered. “I’ll be l
ate.” And for the first time in the course of his five years patronage of the hotel, he tapped a fork impatiently on the marbled bar.

  The whole day had been for him a crescendo of irritation. His post had consisted exclusively of bills. His secretary had stayed away with a cold and he had had to wait forty minutes till his father’s was disengaged to dictate his letters. Unexpected complications had arisen in the title deeds of a client whom Merrick disliked intensely, complications that would involve at least a couple of lengthy interviews. The telephone bell had rung incessantly and needlessly. A series of minor annoyances that on any ordinary day should not and would not have disturbed the urbanity of a young man of fashion; but on the day that had for its climax an interview with Marian Eagar, such hindrances were sufficient to produce in him the equivalent of a temper of gouty testiness.

  “The whole situation,” he informed himself, “is extremely delicate. It will need to be handled with the utmost tact. It is the most difficult and the most important piece of work with which I have ever been entrusted. It is essential that I should be in a condition to conduct it satisfactorily. And how can I, on a day when everything is going wrong?” His nerves were in a completely jangled state by the time he returned to Stone Buildings shortly before quarter-past two, and he refrained only with the exercise of very considerable self-control from boxing the ears of the boy who came to tell him that Mrs. Eagar had telephoned up to say that she would be unable to come before three o’clock.

  “I told her, sir,” said the boy, “that you had an important appointment at a quarter past, but she said that she didn’t imagine that she’ld be taking up a great deal of your time, so I said that would be all right, sir.”

  “Oh, you did, and who’s my appointment with at a quarter past?”

  “Sir Everard Forrester.”

  “Then you can ring up Sir Everard, and tell him that I can’t see him before four.”

  “But you’re seeing Mrs. Humphrey, sir, at four.”

  “She can come to-morrow.”

  And with his right fist clenching and unclenching in his trouser pocket he hurried out of the front office to his room to stage for three-quarters of an hour imaginary contests of noughts and crosses on his blotting paper.