The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(187)

‘Not what, Sir James?’

‘Stuffy, my lord; it’s an expression a good deal used in modern Society.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Strait-laced, my lord.’

‘I see. Well, he’s asking you if you’re stuffy?’

‘No, my lord. I hope not.’

‘You hope not. Go on, Sir James.’

‘Not being stuffy, you wouldn’t be exactly worried if somebody said to you: “My dear, you haven’t a moral about you”?’

‘Not if it was said as charmingly as that.’

‘Now come, Mrs Maltese, does such an expression, said charmingly or the reverse, convey any blame to you or to your friends?’

‘If the reverse, yes.’

‘Am I to take it that the conception of morality in your circle is the same as in – my lord’s?’

‘How is the witness to answer that, Sir James?’

‘Well, in your circle are you shocked when your friends are divorced, or when they go off together for a week in Paris, say, or wherever they find convenient?’

‘Shocked? Well, I suppose one needn’t be shocked by what one wouldn’t do oneself.’

‘In fact, you’re not shocked?’

‘I don’t know that I’m shocked by anything.’

‘That would be being stuffy, wouldn’t it?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Well, will you tell me then – if that’s the state of mind in your circle; and you said, you know, that your circle is less free and easy than the plaintiff’s – how it is possible that such words as “she hasn’t a moral about her” can have done the plaintiff any harm?’

‘The whole world isn’t in our circles.’

‘No. I suggest that only a very small portion of the world is in your circles. But do you tell me that you or the plaintiff pay any–?’

‘How can she tell, Sir James, what the plaintiff pays?’

‘That you, then, pay attention to what people outside your circle think?’

Soames moved his head twice. The fellow was doing it well. And his eye caught Fleur’s face turned towards the witness; a little smile was curling her lip.

‘I don’t personally pay much attention even to what anybody in my circle thinks.’

‘Have you more independence of character than the plaintiff, should you say?’

‘I dare say I’ve got as much.’

‘Is she notoriously independent?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Maltese.’

Foskisson down, Bullfry up!

‘I call the plaintiff, my lord.’

Soames uncrossed his legs.





Chapter Six



IN THE BOX



MARJORIE FERRAR stepped into the Box, not exactly nervous, and only just ‘made-up’. The papers would record a black costume with chinchilla fur and a black hat. She kissed the air in front of the book, took a deep breath, and turned to Mr Bullfry.

For the last five days she had resented more and more the way this case had taken charge of her. She had initiated it, and it had completely deprived her of initiative. She had, in fact, made the old discovery, that when the machinery of quarrel is once put in motion, much more than pressure of the starting button is required to stop its revolutions. She was feeling that it would serve Alec and the lawyers right if all went wrong.

The voice of Mr Bullfry, carefully adjusted, soothed her. His questions were familiar, and with each answer her confidence increased, her voice sounded clear and pleasant in her ears. And she stood at ease, making her figure as boyish as she could. Her performance, she felt, was interesting to the Judge, the jury, and all those people up there, whom she could dimly see. If only ‘that little snob’ had not been seated, expressionless, between her and her Counsel I When at length Mr Bullfry sat down and Sir James Foskisson got up, she almost succumbed to the longing to powder her nose. Clasping the Box, she resisted it, and while he turned his papers, and hitched his gown, the first tremor of the morning passed down her spine. At least he might look at her when he spoke!

‘Have you ever been a party to an action before, Miss Ferrar?’

‘No.’

‘You quite understand, don’t you, that you are on your oath?’

‘Quite.’

‘You have told my friend that you had no animus against Mrs Mont. Look at this marked paragraph in The Evening Sun of October 3rd. Did you write that?’

Marjorie Ferrar felt exactly as if she had stepped out of a conservatory into an east wind. Did they know everything, then?

‘Yes; I wrote it.’

‘It ends thus: “The enterprising little lady is losing no chance of building up her ‘salon’ on the curiosity which ever surrounds any buccaneering in politics.” Is the reference to Mrs Mont?’