marble. What's that play in which the statue of the wife comes to life?
"If my learned friend declines—I do not choose to take such a step at this time, my lord," Bovill tells the judge.
William puts the thing back in his jacket pocket. Harry's hands are shaking, between his knees, like some small captured animal.
"Then," says Hawkins, as quick as a snake, "I move to strike the whole tangential discussion from the record."
What difference would that make, Harry wonders? How can the jury unhear what they've heard?
Judge Wilde frowns in indecision, then says, "No, the transaction is part of the regestae, and no fact bearing upon the case should be concealed from the court."
Bovill gives Harry the smallest of smiles. "Gentlemen of the jury, in conclusion. We of the petitioner's counsel have shown how the latent germs of corruption that Helen Codrington displayed as a young bride gradually ripened into criminality of the most sordid kind. We need shock and weary you no longer, although a French novelist would no doubt delight in showing in endless, repulsive detail how immediately Mrs. Codrington fascinated, how inevitably she injured, all those drawn into her web—whether confidantes, paramours, or, above all, her long-deluded and now heartbroken husband."
Harry's learning to recognize his twisted image in a succession of cracked mirrors. When this whole thing is over, when the stacks of newspapers are wrappers for tea-leaves or turnip peelings, which Harry Codrington will linger? The hero of a tragedy, the butt of a farce? The battle-coarsened rapist, or Old Pantalone, the dotard who wears the horns he deserves?
It seemed such a simple decision, when he said it in Bird's chambers, during that first interview: I want a divorce. But it's himself Harry seems to be divorcing. Will he ever get back that firm sense of who he is, like a pebble in his palm?
When he turns his head sharply, to ease his aching neck, he notices Helen's elderly solicitor slipping out. Few stops to speak to his client; she adjusts her veil and follows him out. The door is closed softly behind them, and Bovill is still spelling out the nefarious details of Helen Jane Smith Codrington's career. You're missing the grand climax, Harry tells his wife in his head.
"I urge you," Bovill addresses the jury, "to acknowledge the terrible facts of this marriage, though they may contradict the polite, fashionable fiction of feminine innocence. I urge you to release, as from the coils of a serpent, one of the most honest, valiant servants our sovereign has ever had."
Bird turns to beam at Harry. But instead of any surge of pride, or even relief, Harry feels only a flatness.
In the brief recess, he stands in Westminster Hall, keeping one eye out for Helen, but there's no sign of her.
William takes him out for a turn around Parliament Square in the smoky October air. To the left of Westminster Bridge stretches the muddy chaos of London's most ambitious construction project. Having squeezed houses, streets and railway lines into every square inch of the city, the developers now mean to build on the Thames: fill a broad slice of water with mud and sewers and call it the Victoria Embankment. It would be hard to explain to a South Sea Islander. Harry thinks of himself as a progressive thinker, but in this case he can't help wishing they'd left the river alone.
"This city still stinks," observes William.
Harry nods. "Though the Board of Works are boasting they've found a salmon in the river."
"What, a single fish?"
"Mm, but alive. A sign of hope for the new age of sanitation, they're calling it."
William lets out a sardonic laugh. "You may as well have this back," he says, holding out the packet with the black seal.
Harry finds himself strangely reluctant, but pockets it. "I was sure, at one point, that Hawkins would insist on its being opened."
"No, it was just as Bovill predicted: no counsel will risk a document being read unless he knows exactly what it contains."
Exhaustion passes over Harry's head like a wave. "Was it worth the fuss, do you think?"
"Hard to tell, yet," says his brother, smoothing his glistening white beard. "It'll be in all the papers tomorrow, and just might flush this Faithfull woman from her nest in time to be examined."
Somehow, Harry doesn't believe it. Fido, in whatever corner of Europe she's hidden herself, on whatever ship steaming towards Philadelphia or Shanghai, seems as remote as a character from a fairy tale.