Powers of Attorney (22 page)

“My dear fellow, why should they have either?”

 

Webb felt that he had reason to be satisfied with the strengthened attitude of his client at his first interview with Mrs. Hobart's counsel. Mr. Clarence Cup was small and grey and very neat; he walked with a jerky confidence to the chair before Webb's desk and sat with his two little round white hands on top of a bulging briefcase, as if it were full of missiles too deadly, or too explosive, to be entrusted to the floor or any table.

“I suppose you hate these domestic matters as much as I do, Mr. Webb,” he began. “I wish there was some way we could figure out to duck them.”

It was the time-honored downtown opening, but it irked Webb that a regular divorce hack like Cup should presume to use it to him.

“It's all in the day's work,” he said dryly. “We lawyers can't pick and choose.”

“Quite so.” Cup paused to glance about the room as though trying to find a clue for a new approach. His gaze lingered on the silver framed photograph of Mrs. Webb, in a dull brown evening dress snapped at the Waldorf as she was being introduced to Tom Dewey, and on another of Waldron Jr., looking very large in football clothes against a small gymnasium. “What a fine young man. Your son, of course? May I see him closer?” Cup rose and leaned over the picture. “I'm sure you feel as badly about this business as I do,” he continued, his back to Webb. “It's a tragedy, that's what it is. Two young persons with everything to live for. I make it a point never to open negotiations until I've been convinced that every last step has been taken towards a reconciliation.”

“I'm afraid that's up to your client.”

“There's never been a situation in my experience where it was all up to
one
side. We're dealing with human beings, Mr. Webb. Human beings who are confused and unhappy. Human beings who need help. Your help and mine.”

Webb winced. If there was anything in the world more nauseating than hypocrisy, it was sentimentality. “Of course I can't speak for your client, Mr. Cup. But I know that mine engaged me as a lawyer and not a marriage counselor. I'm afraid I must limit my advice to the scope of my retainer.”

Cup's round cheeks slowly filled with pink. “I'm sorry to hear you take that attitude. Very sorry.”

“It's not
my
attitude, Mr. Cup. It's my client's. Shall we proceed to business? It shouldn't keep us long. There's no question, I take it, of alimony?”

Cup's voice now sank to a mild, incredulous whisper. “May I ask why?”

“Surely the divorce is all of Mrs. Hobart's seeking?”

“The divorce may be of her seeking, Mr. Webb. But only in the sense that a woman in desperate agony who blindly takes an overdose of drugs may be called a suicide.”

“Desperate agony? From what?”

“From neglect, Mr. Webb.” Here Cup, who was not a man to fear the dramatic, struck his hands together. “From financial stinginess, Mr. Webb. From attentions to other women, Mr. Webb!”

“I know of no other women.”

“Not even Mrs. Marsden? I should have thought that the most casual reader of the evening papers would have learned of Mr. Hobart and Mrs. Marsden.”

“I don't read gossip sheets,” Webb retorted angrily, “and I don't choose to have them quoted at me by those who do. Mrs. Hobart has asked for her freedom to be able to contract another alliance. Very well. Let her renounce all interest in Mr. Hobart's property. Let her release him from all further obligations for her support. Let her ...”

“Mr. Webb!”

“Let me finish, please, Mr. Cup. Let her give him custody of the children, subject to rights of reasonable visitation. And
then
she may have her divorce.”

There was a pause, and Mr. Cup rose. “Obviously, our positions are too wide apart to make further discussion fruitful.”

It was now Webb's turn to be taken aback. “You don't wish to state your position?”

“What would be the use?”

“It might interest my client. Who knows? He may be more accommodating than I. I can't decide for him.”

“You can't?” Cup sat slowly down again and opened his briefcase a crack, as if to let out only the top item of its bursting contents. “First off, I should insist that your client settle on his wife the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Outright?”

“Outright. Plus a third of his gross income before taxes, until such time as Mrs. Hobart dies or remarries. And, of course, I should insist upon absolute custody of the children. A mother's prerogative. With reasonable rights of visitation to Mr. Hobart, so long as he behaves himself.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, yes,” Cup continued, as if the inquiry had not been sarcastic. “Mrs. Hobart is worried about the influence of a future wife, or wives, on Mr. Hobart. We would ask him to place half his property in trust to ensure that it would go to his
present
children on his death. And that, I think, is all. Except, of course, for my fee, which I should expect him to pay.”

“You were quite right, Mr. Cup.” Here Webb rose and stretched out a hand of farewell across the desk. “We
are
too far apart for fruitful discussion. Our clients must learn to bear their chains of wedlock.”

 

At India House, where Webb took his client for lunch, amid prints of clipper ships and the patient smiles of Buddhas, he explained the interview as best he could. Peyton Hobart was obviously distressed.

“So what do we do now?”

“We sit tight. We sit tight and sit it out.”

“And how long does that take?” Hobart demanded fretfully.

“You should be able to answer that better than I. How long can Mrs. Hobart wait to marry Mr. Gwinnett? Or, more important, how long will
he
wait? Bear in mind, she'll have to behave herself, for, of course, we'll have her watched. One misstep, and you'll get your divorce right here in the empire state!”

“What about
my
missteps?”

Webb became very grim. “There'd better not be any.”

Hobart, who normally looked ten years less than his age, now looked twenty. The frank boyish petulance of his expression was not agreeable to behold. “See here, Webb, I came to you for a divorce, not a waiting marathon. I told Mrs. Marsden I'd be free to marry her in a month's time. What am I to tell her now?”

But if Peyton's petulance was that of a schoolboy, Webb's frown was that of a schoolmaster. He reflected with ire how quickly the spoiled polo player betrayed his innate contempt for the professional man. No doubt this very whippersnapper across the tabic from him, who could not have graduated from college, much less from law school, referred to Waldron P. Webb as “my little man downtown.”

“You never told me about Mrs. Marsden,” he said sternly.

“What was the point? I told you Georgette had asked me for a divorce, and she
had.
Did you expect me to remain a monk for the rest of my days?”

“Hardly.” Webb smiled with faint sarcasm at the vision of such abstinence. “But I expected you at least to tell me that your hands were tied before I sent you into the boxing ring.”

“I didn't know I was going to have to fight! Can't you help me, please, Mr. Webb? I was told you could do
anything.”

The sudden, unhappy note of appeal went far to make up for Webb's vision of that “little man downtown.” “I'll do what I can, of course,” he said in a milder tone. “But we'll have to bargain. And if we bargain, we'll have to give. Have I your authority?”

“Without a string!”

The first conference between the lawyers had been at Tower, Tilney & Webb; etiquette required that the second should be at Cup's. Yet Webb was not, when he called, after the diplomatic lapse of a week, kept waiting, as he had expected to be. Cup was evidently too clever a tactician for such crudeness. He came out himself to the reception room to lead Webb back to an office whose walls were covered with Victorian prints of legal scenes: “The Reading of the Will,” “First Day in Court,” “The Judge's Nap.”

“It's a great pity, indeed, Mr. Webb,” he said, when the latter had made his opening statement, “that this offer to negotiate comes so late. Unhappily, it was my duty to communicate your prior position to my client. She felt—and not without warrant, I'm afraid—that it impugned her character. As a consequence, she has withdrawn my authority to bargain. I'm afraid that the terms which I offered you are final.”

“You mean you won't even
discuss
anything else?”

Cup shrugged in assumed helplessness. “How can I? It's beyond the scope of my retainer.”

It was always said in Tower, Tilney & Webb that Waldron Webb knew when to lose and when to find his temper. But there was nothing planned about the explosion that followed Cup's exasperating use of his own earlier phrase. “Don't give me that kind of talk, Cup. We both know you put her up to it.”

Cup rose promptly and stretched out his hand. “My dear Mr. Webb, you forget yourself. It's not like a litigator of your reputation. Let us conclude this conference before more painful things are said.”

An hour later Webb was still furious as he paced up and down his office, relating to Peyton Hobart the case of his wife's obduracy.

“There's only one thing to do now.” He paused and wheeled suddenly on his staring and fascinated client. “Hobart, do you really want to marry Mrs. Marsden?”

“Of course!”

“And does she really want to marry you?”

“I hope.”

“Enough to give up New York?”

“Gee, I guess so. Would we have to?”

“Listen.” Webb's speech became conspiratorial and rapid, punctuated by sharp taps on the furniture with the silver paper cutter that he grasped like a weapon. “If your wife had been reasonable, you could have had a ‘quickie' divorce in Alabama or Mexico. But if one side refuses, they're out. What we have to get you is a
valid
divorce in a ‘quickie' jurisdiction. To do this you'll have to go to Idaho and establish a
real
residence. Not just six weeks, but a real one.”

“You mean I'll have to stay there forever?”

“Forever's a long time. But you'll have to stay until this thing is worked out. Are you willing?”

“I'll do anything you say, Mr. Webb. I'm in your hands.”

“Good. Now here's what you do. Ship all your securities out of New York. Today or tomorrow at the latest. Don't tell anyone where they are. Perhaps you know brokers in San Francisco. I say no more. Next, I want you to resign from the family insurance business. And, finally, I want you to pack bag and baggage—secretly—and take yourself off to Boise. I'll have a lawyer meet you who will take care of everything. All you have to do is
get
there!”

Hobart's eyes had the excitement and wonder of a young soldier who has been ordered for the first time to the front. “And Olive? Can she go with me?”

“She can follow. But be discreet! Be discreet, and you'll be married to her in three months' time!”

 

When Cup discovered that his client's husband had left the state with all the certificates of his participation in American industry, he called up Webb and, in a voice that was almost a scream, threatened to report him to the Grievance Committee of the City Bar Association. Webb simply chuckled and settled back to watch the ineffective fury of his opponent as expressed in a series of lawsuits which dashed as harmlessly as seething surf over the wet black rock of his own maneuver. Cup sued to enjoin Hobart from getting an out-of-state divorce and secured an order, but how could he enforce it? He proceeded to attach everything of Hobart's that he could find in the state, but he could find nothing but half of the Westbury house already occupied by Georgette and a remote interest in a couple of old family trusts. He dared not appear in Idaho, for fear of thus validating the very divorce that he was contesting, but he paid a visit to the district attorney and warned Webb that if his client ever appeared in New York married to Mrs. Marsden, he would find himself jailed for bigamy.

On the other hand, the news from Idaho was exhilarating. Mrs. Marsden loved it, and she and Peyton Hobart skied daily at Sun Valley and danced all night. Webb read his client's letters with a sentimental eye. The more he found out about Hobart, the worse he decided Georgette must have behaved. He had none but the softest feelings now for the handsome young man with the prematurely grey hair and unhappy eyes who was finding contentment at last after the embittering experience of marriage to a faithless wife. Webb could be very severe indeed about “society” people (not that they were any more
real
society than the descendant of six generations of Webbs from Utica), but he was quick to appreciate the charm of their spontaneity and ease once they had made it clear that they were not looking down their noses at the senior trial partner of Tower, Tilney & Webb. And not only did “Peyton” (as he now called him) write daily to Webb, but “Olive” added the sweetest postscripts about the beautiful job he had done. On the day they were married, a case of Moët et Chandon was delivered to Webb at his home with the telegraphed message: “All our love and gratitude to Waldron, our lawyer, judge and friend, whose heart is as big as his brain.”

But it seemed, as in classic tragedies, that this trio of new friends had reached only the illusory peak of third-act success, and that the fourth and fifth were to contain the required nemesis. Olive had not been married two weeks before she began to tire of Idaho. She belonged to that exotic class of New York women who, like certain wines, did not travel. Spring had driven away the snow and her friends, and she pined for a glimpse of Manhattan before a seaside summer. Webb, against his better judgment, finally allowed them to move to California where Peyton was promptly met with a summons and suit for maintenance. San Francisco counsel defended on the grounds that Georgette had abandoned her husband, and Georgette struck back by removing the children from private school, even though funds for their tuition had been offered by Peyton's mother. The latter came down to call on Webb, and they took an instant liking to each other. Mrs. Hobart, Sr., was a thin, freckled, dark-skinned, husky-voiced, blue-haired lady of seventy, dressed like a debutante, who hated Georgette with a depth of emotion that seemed out of all proportion to her mild affection for her son.