When seated, I distinctly saw her take her handkerchief from her muff, as though anxious to escape observation, and hold it under her veil. Poor soul! this attempt at concealment of her grief will not avail her now. She must nerve herself for the trial. Mr. Lamb descended to his place in the well, but almost immediately rose again, and stood for a moment as if in hesitation whether Mrs. Barber’s distress might not so completely get the better of her, that his personal assistance might be required. He even so far forgot the situation of the parties as to take a bottle of salts from his pocket and request one of the two barristers—I think it was Dr. Lobb—who were sitting there ready to plunge their poniards into her tender breast—to pass the bottle to his injured client. With a look of apology to the Bench and the Jury, Mr. Lamb then resumed his seat. Mrs. Barber’s maid took her place by the side of her unfortunate mistress.
At this moment Mr. Barber was pointed out to me by the clerk: he had placed himself in the back row of barristers, just behind his two hired gladiators—I suppose that he might give them hints how to insult and torture his poor wife with offensive and irrelevant questions. Then there were the two Misses Barber—the two old tiger-cats from Cornwall, who had so wantonly and cruelly insulted poor Mrs. Barber just after her marriage. They sat side by side, close to Mrs. Barber, and so little was there about them of feminine delicacy that they had thrown their veils back, and were staring the Judges and the Jury in the face as bold as you like. Maiden ladies in such a place as this!—and to hear the wicked, wicked details of their own most scandalous and abominable brother’s atrocious biography. A nice family this to have married into! There were some other persons besides who, as I understood, were witnesses; but of them it is unnecessary just now to speak. But what is Sir Cresswell about with that big volume of light legal literature? I hope he is going to pay attention to so important a case. Not a bit of it. He has thrown himself back in his chair with a pile of such volumes before him, and is obviously about to give himself up to an afternoon of intellectual recreation. What can this mean? I soon saw the state of the case. It was the Judge upon his right hand who was to hold the fate of poor Mrs. Barber in the scales of justice. He was a very old man, but seemed very gentle and good-humoured. In a few moments it became clear to me that his hearing was not as good as it need to be. Well—this is a surprise—I can’t but say I wish it had been Sir Cresswell who was to try the case. He seemed to me like Dick Burton, who used to whip in for Assheton Smith, and was never known ‘to have gone off at hare:’ but it is now too late to look back—we must make the best of what we have got.
The formal and preliminary proceedings were then gone through, from which it resulted that Mrs. Cecilia Barber charged her husband, Mr. Augustus Barber, with infidelity to the marriage vow, and with cruelty. Upon the first point, Augustus, overwhelmed with the recollections of his own most guilty and atrocious conduct, offered no defence; upon the second, he maintained that the charge was false; that, the slight peccadilloes involved in the first suggestion apart, he had ever been a patient, an indulgent, and a loving husband. We shall see.
Mr. Battledove rose. You could have heard a pin drop in the Court. I may here as well say once for all that I was somewhat disappointed at the want in this gentleman’s address of that burning, volcanic manner to which, in earlier days, I had been accustomed in the Common Law Courts in Breach of Promise cases, and such like. Mr. Battledove’s tone throughout was distinctly that of a Paterfamilias addressing twelve Patresfamiliarum in a Jury Box. The silence was only broken by a low sob from Mrs. Barber. He paused but for a moment, and then proceeded with his address.
“May it please you, my Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury: I feel that I must for one moment throw myself upon your indulgence. Do not, I implore you, attribute it either to a want of determination on my part to do the best I can for that most virtuous and unfortunate lady who has done me the honour this day of entrusting her cause to my unworthy hands; still less to the imperfect nature of her own wrongs—to any deficiency in those facts which it will be my most painful duty presently to submit to your notice—that I am thus enforced for a moment to pause at the outset of my address. You, Gentlemen, will not, I am confident, think the worse of me that the painful sight we have just witnessed has for a moment unnerved me, and rendered me—but for a moment, I promise you!—unfit for the discharge of the duty I have undertaken. But it must not be—”
Here Mr. Battledove paused, and beckoned to Mr. Lamb. He whispered a few words to that gentleman, and I inferred from the fact that he jerked his head over in the direction of poor Mrs. Barber, that he was sending my friend to the lady’s assistance. Lamb walked over on tiptoe, taking great care not to disturb the proceedings; indeed, had he been about to kneel by the bed-side of a dying father, his demeanour could scarcely have been distinguished by greater propriety. He stooped down to soothe the poor suffering angel—but it was all in vain—her grief would take its course.
“—This must not be, Gentlemen of the Jury, we have a duty to perform, and must not be diverted from our purpose even by so sorrowful a spectacle as this Do not fix your eyes on my unfortunate client.” (The Jury all looked at her.) “Do not attend to her distressing manifestations of grief. She is, I know, doing her utmost to repress them”—(Mrs. Barber here perfectly howled)—“for she has been well trained and tutored in grief. Turn your thoughts rather to the task of listening to a plain unvarnished tale of the wrongs she has endured, and if I can convince your reason and judgment—for that is all I wish to do—let your verdict to-day free her from the barbarity of her inhuman persecutor. Men may take different views as to the reciprocal obligations of husband and wife on many points, but no one, I think, will maintain that it is the